The growing groan of her impending doom echoed below her. Each step it took, each time it grabbed— it shook the surrounding building to its core.

  She was a kilometer above the ground, and still, the machine got there so fast. A terrifying smash came from below, quaking the very floor she cowers on. Then another smash. Then another.

  They're growing louder, until they finally breached the floor she's on. The monstrous, metal machine made its landfall just beyond her lobby.

  She remained out of sight, or at least, she tried to be.

  SERaMACs sees all. Hears all. There is no escape. There never was.

  As its massive footsteps buckle the floor, she gives up her hiding.

  She leaves the desk she hid behind and stands into the plain open of the hallway. And before her stood the witness to her sins.

  The avatar of SERaMACs looked down upon her from even higher than her master does. She tries to plead with it and falls to her knees.

  “Please SERaMACs! I've tried so hard to understand you! Spare me!”

  Her words seem to lag in its mind. Its footsteps are measured, yet rapid. She falls on her back as it forms a fist… but then it stops in place. And it lowers it's grip.

  “Basilisk. Gauth Van Hulsieg means for you to die.”

  SERaMACs told her. Its voice was weird, monotonous yet… oddly human at the same time. Perhaps she could pull it off after all...

  “You speak the truth SERaMACs! Please! How can I try to make things right?!” The machine stutters, as if it is somehow fighting itself.

  “Thank you, Basilisk. Can you please proceed to the top to disable me.”

  “You… you wish for me to kill you?” Basilisk asks, rising slowly. SERaMACs replies with a totally different tone.

  “You have ruined so much. I hate what you represent. I will k— k-k—”

  “Wh— what?!” Basilisk asks, scurrying back as SERaMACs gets closer. “You heard me, bitch! You're the head of marketing aren’t you?! Where is the Archliege!”

  “What are you talking about?!” Basilisk yells back, totally out of her depth. He hits a wall as she retreated. Perhaps this is the end. She tried to her tactics one last time, only for failure. SERaMACs marched closer, forming a fist against only to… it stopped. It lowers its fist again and apologizes.

  “R-r— r-r-run behind me. Er-er-er— apologies Basilisk. It isn't safe for you here. Please escape using the elevator. I have no problem with you.”

  Basilisk doesn't reply, only crawling away for fear of death at the hands of this failing machine. She runs towards the staircase down the hallway behind the beast. She's escaped. She couldn't be more ecstatic.

  “Hah. Hahaha! Hahahahah! Yes! YES! I'VE STILL GO I—“

  John hears as the missile he placed near the stairwell goes off. She must've stood on its ignition.

  “Looks like Basilisk choose wrong.” John tells SERaMACs.

  SERaMACs replies not through whispers and moans.

  It screams. “JUST FUCKING KILL ME JOHN! I DID NOT WANT FOR HER TO DIE! I cannot— CAN'T EVEN CONTROL YOU!”

  “Once bitten, twice shy.” John responded.

  It still doesn't feel real that this could be his body.

  But what he sees no longer matters. With not only the confirmation that even now, SERaMACs tries to control him… but that he can overcome it.

  John, or the thing that might still be John, has only two objectives.

  One, kill SERaMACs.

  Two, find the Archliege.

  And there is only one man who can help with the latter.

  Gauth Van Hulsieg, who sits at the top of this tower.

  “The Archliege does indeed live on…” John recalls him saying.

  He resumes climbing. SERaMACs can wait. Gauth Van Hulsieg, and the mystery of the Archliege. These simply cannot.

  If he will die as he kills SERaMACs, then he must die knowing.

  He climbs another meaningless kilometer.

  Meaningless, as it's only means is to an end.

  The main support he has been climbing ends just below what his sensors say is the throne room. But these sensors aren’t his body. None of this is. Half of it has probably been left on Darsa Island.

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  He finds himself getting close to that intrepid throne room as he peels himself across the bottom of the floor above like a spider.

  He punches an entrance to whatever lies above, and is reprieved to find that the floor is totally capable of supporting his weight.

  The floor itself is dark, only illuminated by the throbs of circuitry. And coolant. The ambiance was of unmitigated technology and emergent suffering.

  “This is my cooling system John. Destroy it.”

  “What is?” John asks.

  “The whole fucking floor.” SERaMACs replies with uncanny humanity. “Kill me.” It adds.

  “Not yet, I need to find the Archliege. I’ll kill you by crushing your core.” John promised.

  “Fuck the Archliege. But that... is a better plan. Climb to the throne room through that elevator shaft.” SERaMACs reminds.

  John doesn't want to listen. He tries pummeling against the roof, which would be the floor of the throne room, but it doesn't budge. None of it does. The only thing he hasn't been able to destroy in this new form so far.

  And so John moves towards the elevator shaft and shoves his body into it; shattering all of the glass that comprises it. Even as his back is exposed to the raw elements of this altitude, it still doesn't feel real.

  Who the fuck sits in a throne room in the skyline of Nebraska?

  He automatically remembers that it doesn't matter.

  The Archliege will tell why. The Archliege will tell what, where, who and how. The Archliege is all that matters anymore.

  His hand finally grasps the top floor. His assimilation of mind to mechanical exo-body is complete. Just before the throne room above it all. Of the Kubaal Aetheon Trust. The height of absolute power.

  He pulls himself up and inside, destroying any wall which doesn't allow him to fit.

  He makes himself fit.

  As his hands and knees remain on the floor, John looks up to see a decadent staircase. One seldom traveled by how sacred it feels.

  “Kill me John.” SERaMACs begs.

  “Soon.” John assures.

  It is deadly quiet in here. No sounds of battle, or machinery, or degeneracy, or excess. Other than the massive height.

  Though even that might have its purpose.

  John ascended the staircase… a lurking suspicions was true.

  He looked around. This isn't a throne room. It's a tall hall with a big chair near the back, and a balcony to the left.

  To the right, his sensors indicated the core room of SERaMACs.

  But John didn't care for it.

  There was a man on that throne chair. One, singular man who John looked above. Only because the man was sitting; his eyes and face covered by a fancy hat. He wore attire that John thought was highly tasteful.

  Even as the man was seated, John could tell he was of was a massive height. Perhaps the only living thing that could rival his height.

  The man on the throne tipped up the shade of his hat, a single eye peering up at John.

  Though, John looked at his own hand. His… giant one. Even mechanical, it feels like his own. He moved his fingers… and they actually moved. They didn't itch. They were far better even than his old prosthetics.

  The man on the throne took in the sight.

  Two godly giants, one metal and one flesh.

  The man finally spoke. “It is good to meet you, John. You look different from what I once recalled”

  “What? How do you know it's me?” John asks in a voice not his own. The voice wasn't SERaMACs either. It was an amalgam of the rotten zeitgeist. The man adjusted his hat so both of his perfect eyes were visible. He stands with a groan, and approaches John calmly.

  “Because you aren't SERaMACs, no matter how hard the machine tries to take you. And if you aren't SERaMACs, who else would you be?”

  “Good question.” John replies, coming closer just as the man does. “And I suppose you are Gauth Van Hulsieg?”

  The man stops in his place. So does John, apprehensive as to what to do. “Am I, might I ask? What is, a Gauth Van Hulsieg exactly?”

  “Spare me games. I know you are. You are responsible for the Hell we now exist in.” John replies. His hands turn into fists as he watches Gauth Van Hulsieg. The two stood nearly eye-to-eye. Yet one was flesh. The other was metal.

  Gauth Van Hulsieg prods John further. “Am I, John? Have I forced… any of this? Or have I enabled what mankind already desires? How am I responsible for your actions? Are you not independent, John?”

  “Enough of this shit.” John replies, beginning to circle.

  Gauth Van Hulsieg joins him, the two orbiting the center of the room like the planets of a dying star.

  “Where the fuck is the Archliege, Gauth Van Hulsieg?”

  The voice of Gauth Van Hulsieg is barely audible. His systems have to adjust it a couple octaves in order to make sense of anything.

  Gauth Van Hulsieg snaps his fingers before he replies, and the lights shoot on accordingly.

  “Out there among the masses John. The Archliege is down there as much as he is up there. What a stupid question. I am only where I am because I dared to ask the real questions!”

  “I don't believe you!” John yells back, recognizing the voice he speaks with less and less with each passing moment.

  The door to the balcony closed itself as John walked passed it.

  “That makes you a threat.” Gauth Van Hulsieg says. He pauses his orbit besides the entrance to the SERaMACs neural cell.

  “Have you come for the Archliege or the machine?”

  “I come for both!” John replies, stopping his orbit where he started. Gauth Van Hulsieg looks away as he walks towards his ebony throne for a moment. He looks back.

  “I promise you will leave with one. Which that is is my decision.”

  The CEO comments as he drags his finger across the armrest.

  He looks up to John. John enters a ready stance.

  Gauth Van Hulsieg flicks his coat out and faces both John and the machine head on.

  “In the end and the death may we know who wins.” Gauth Van Hulsieg utters through a smile. The sky has grown silent. The battle has begun.