Angeline shut down the dispys built intgles, and turo look at me in disbelief. “What did you just say?”

  The two of us were riding oop of my truck’s trailer, following behind the front lines. I was standing oiptoes, at the top of a step dder, arm shoved up to the shoulder into the back of Bob, trying to get his auto-repair funality running again. I’d even purchased a virtual training shard, which plugged into my augs, to help me. “I said, do you ever feel like you should be doing more?”

  “You mean like right now?” she asked. “I don’t see how we could. I’m struggling to keep track of dozens of current camera data feeds, despite all my impnts; And you’re currently up to your elbows in a repair job, while also monit your teams for heavier threats. What else could we be doing?”

  Something snapped in Bob’s metallic carapace, and I pulled out a crushed metal der. I ied it for a sed, before passing it over to Deadbeat, who took it and passed back a rept. I immediately shoved my entire arm bato the giaal bear, once again feeling around for the proper socket. “I don’t know, retly I feel a little restless. Maybe I’m just overthinking things… Fourteen approag hree.”

  Angeline flicked back to her dispys, while I watched on my augs. One of the oversized tipede-like Antithesis was indeed approag one of the squads. The IFVs on was slowing it down, crag open its armor in several locations, but not doing any signifit damage. Just when it looked like the Fourteen would overwhelm the squad, Silent Saber showed up, stuck his bde into the side of the monster and skated down its entire length, eviscerating the mohe creature shuddered for a moment, then y still, and the bears went back to their extermination just like nothing happened.

  After it was eline shook her head, “I thought you gave your bears more autonomy, how are you tagging these threats and inf everyone before I even spot them?”

  There was a quiet click deep within Bob’s chassis, and I quickly snatched my arm out again. Slowly, but surely, the deep i in the bear's front started to push out, and the fuzzy c began tee. Taking a rag from Deadbeat, I slowly ed my hands, before heading over to where Angeline was seated. “I'm not sure, I just know when they’re in trouble.”

  “That’s due to the brain impnt.” Nyx’s voice echoed out of Deadbeat, while the little bear ed up the repair area.

  “Beg your pardon?” I hissed, spinning on the spot and started staring down the bear. “What do you mean impnt? When did I authorise that?”

  Deadbeat stopped ing for a moment and stood up, “The distributed and upgrade. It not only allows you to and the squad leader bots directly under you, but it also allows you to offload some processing to them. The squad leaders, once upgraded to css II, will then be able to do the same for the forces uhem. Allows all levels of and to give more informed decisions, without overloading your brain.”

  “I didn’t know that, I thought it was just an upgrade to my Augs.” I said, narrowing my eyes, “Why did you lie to me?”

  “I didn’t lie, the majority of the ges happened in ys, it just happeo also require a very minor brain augmentation too.”

  “ime I do any upgrades I want you to inform me of the full extent of the ges ahead of time, got it?”

  “ do.” The intelligence left Deadbeat’s eyes, and the bear went back to ing up.

  “Smart ass.” I whispered, before I resumed ing Bob’s internal fluids off my arm.

  I was still ing up the area when Angeliarted swearing. “Motherfucker. How the fuck did they mahis? The edges are toht, is this man made?”

  “What’s up,” I asked as I wandered over. “You’re not usually so… expressive.”

  Angeline looked over at me, her goggles flickering as the interior dispys ged. “Take a look,” she hissed as she shared a feed.

  I pulled it up, curious at what got her all riled up, and groaned when I saw it. “What the fuck is this?”

  The feed, which taihe view from multiple squirrels spliced together, showed a massive hole ier wall, about two kilometres ahead of the n. It looked like there used to be a building in front of the hole at one point, but it had been knocked down by the Antithesis to get through. The worst part was there was a small, but steady, stream of Antithesis ing through.

  “See how the sides are?” Angeline asked, “It probably started as a smuggler’s tunnel or something. There were no cameras poihat dire, iionally I would guess, so I wouldn’t even have noticed without the squirrels. I doubt the city administration would have left this alone, if they knew, so it must have been camoufged before. sidering how messed up the surrounding area is, I suspect this might be one of the first pces the Antithesis peed.”

  “Right.” I chewed on my lip for a minute, sidering the situation. “Let’s move ahead of the n, we o close off that breach, but I don’t think it’s worth breaking up the n and risk leaving a pocket behind. It’ll only take about half an hour for the rest of the n to catch up, between my squad and the APC full of rabbits I’ve been keeping in reserve, we’ll be able to hold.”

  Angeline sidered for a moment, then nodded. “I’ll call Epona a her to meet us there, then I’ll tact the camp ahem know we have ahat o be sealed.”

  I took off towards the front cab without another word, Deadbeat only a few steps behind. The soohey got that breach sealed the better.

  As I turhe truck towards our destination I saw Epona in the distance, blur off towards our destination. She would definitely arrive before we did.

  It only took a couple mio make it to our destination. Even with all the devastation around the ugly, square hole was impossible to miss. Not only was it big enough to drive a truck through, but there were a number of the smaller models p through. Caitlin was already standing directly in the breach, her nce glowed white for a moment before iing a Twelve charging her way. With the rger Antithesis taken care of, she started smashing some of the smaller ones while áine, her horse, trampled others.

  I quickly found a side-street to park in, but before the truck even hit the ground I received a call from Caitlin. I could see her quickly bag away from the breach.

  [We have a problem, Model Twenty-Three at the breach.]

  She wheeled her horse around and took off just moments before a massive reptilian head snapped down on her former position. As if that wasn’t bad enough, as the titanic bipedal monster cleared the breaother showed up behind it.

  [Actually, make that two.]