AN-E woke to metallic screeching, the tip of a drill spinning against the strut she considered her collar bone. Her skull jittered against her torso. According to internal sensors, her head lay slumped over her right shoulder, its skeletal arm currently her only limb. System alerts flickered as her cognition came online. Minor surface damage. No loss of structural integrity.

"Ah, come on, you trash-pit dross." Acoustic waves—human speech—hit her external sensors. "I'm not getting paid enough to screw dumb metal all day."

The drill's rotational speed increased.

As her chassis vibrated at the higher frequency, AN-E gathered data on her assailant. Prior to her emergency shutdown, response protocols would have been clear, but after eight months face down under a dismantled Zox freighter's water recycler, this wasn't the first unauthorized physical contact. Like most junkyards, Yagmatori's salvage settlement, Skirmish, had a healthy rodent population.

But it wasn't a scale-skin rat gnawing on her frame now.

A human male crouched before her legless torso, mismatched yellow and khaki boots planted on a stained workshop floor. Ragged civilian and military apparel covered his lean body, concordant with her observation that the planet's inhabitants were primarily scavengers, whether reptilian rodents or human. Rough, dark stubble on skull and jaw suggested an inferior societal position. Scar tissue at one temple appeared consistent with a plasma-weapon discharge, one that'd destroyed an ocular organ. A blocky black sensor sat in its place.

The man's remaining hazel eye narrowed its focus on her rattling chassis.

"Shizit." Another curse. The scavenger jerked back the drill to inspect its now broken bit. Jaw-muscle contraction indicated mood disruption. With her empathic processors offline, she couldn't ID the specific perturbation, but situational context implied frustration. "Corroded piece of lunking trash."

Her logic systems hummed over what the comment referenced: the failed bit or her chassis. The latter carried a high probability. Her current form was consistent with the fire- and chem-damaged refuse piled in the rocky valley, the everchanging, blackened maze the local populace lived amongst. Corrosive warp-fuel run-off formed chemiluminescent pink pools throughout the scrapyard, bathing the settlement in a mildly radioactive fuchsia haze all twenty-six hours of the planet's rotational cycle. While approximately forty percent of Yagmatori's inbound resources came from intersystem recycler deliveries, the remainder was locally sourced void scrap. Shipwrecks.

Battle debris. Both Imperial and RIFT.

Stored imagery flickered in her consciousness: an expanding mass of ship fragments colliding and rotating in space. The local star system, poorly populated, at the edge of Imperial Space, did not warrant regular patrols, leaving it open to incursion. Ghost-shielded forces of the Rorgon Independent Free Territories had ambushed a One Empire convoy transiting to a more strategically important sector. Both sides had suffered substantial losses: command ships, fighter craft, combat units. All high-spec technology.

Rich pickings for Outerworld scavengers.

The reclamation settlement had sprung up within a month. A year on, it was a minor trade hub for unaffiliated nomadic tribes and anyone with flexible loyalties.

"I do not need this aggravation." The scavenger dragged a hand over his shorn scalp then turned to rattle through a toolbox. The move exposed a tattoo on his neck. The glyphs of a Rorgon pilots' prayer: Fly fast, aim true, die free.

RIFT combatant. Her paused defense protocols re-engaged. Eliminate.

Her hand contracted into a fist. A blunt-force strike to the male's cranium would be economical in her low-power state. No need for physical reconfiguration.

Command verification failure. Offensive action suspended.

Her hand returned to its standby state. Lethal action required Core-system approval—functionality presently suspended. She'd drifted in the vacuum of space for three months, untethered from Command and without resources. To conserve fuel and preserve systems, she'd entered a sleep state: ninety-eight percent shutdown.

A status that had not changed when a refuse scow had sucked her into its collection bay. A status maintained after the barge deposited her amongst the luminescent run-off and scrap of Skirmish's Yard 9, her defense systems disturbed only by rodents and the occasional trash-sorter bot.

But now...

Muttering low oaths, the RIFT soldier replaced his drill's bit.

She initiated a full system restart. On current fuel reserves, it would take an hour and thirty minutes.

Upon Core restoration, she'd eliminate the enemy.

Suspended nuts and bolts clinked, the junk-bead curtain screening the workshop's entrance parting for a second male. Like the first, he wore patched clothing, an eclectic ensemble that sent conflicting threat signals. A holstered kinetic pistol and armored trousers suggested combat readiness, but a faded purple suit jacket and a bare chest decorated with metal chains indicated a more sociable goal for the man's evening.

"Zi, you anal bastard, what's taking so long? I open in thirty." Red stiletto boots clacked on concrete, the newcomer striding over with a preening adjustment of waist-long black hair. "You said ten minutes max to install the voice box and power cell. It's been forty. What exactly is the malfunction?"

"Your glitching taste in tech." The RIFT combatant designated 'Zi' didn't look up from his equipment, despite the other man approaching his unprotected back. "Where'd you find this oxidized scrap? It looks like an HD80 domestic droid, but I swear it's got the frikking material density of a grav-pressed asteroid. It's eating my mantine drill bits."

AN-E analyzed his response. The RIFT soldier emanated tension, but his scowl communicated irritation, not fear. Insults had been exchanged, but both men appeared comfortable in each other's company. Allies of some kind.

She tagged both for termination.

Zi tossed the broken bit into a box of metal scraps. "You owe me ten extra snips for tools I've broken on this trash."

His ally joined him, slim hips swinging. "Zi, my pet, there's only one way you'll screw me, and that ain't it. You quoted fifty flat for the installation. I ain't paying a snip more."

"The doll isn't worth fifty to fix, Felix. Whatever you paid for this junk, you've already been screwed."

"Oh, sweetie, you know me." The armed male, Felix, smoothed back his hair. "It was a freebie thrown in with my new water recycler. That dry, old junkcomber Drex was about to add it to the day's Melt, but I simply couldn't let him. Those soulless doll eyes plucked my heart strings. Tossed scrap, all broken and sad. Reminded me of you, darling."

Zi threw his drill to the ground. "You're wasting my time on furnace slag?" He shot the other man a look signaling temper and, inexplicably, humor. "For shite's sake, you galactic tightass, ditch this junk and hire a new bartender already."

Felix cocked a hip, placing a ring-decorated hand beside his weapon. "Babes, if I hire a living, breathing life form to tend bar, they'll just fall for your brooding, wounded-hero charm and overpour all your drinks—like the last two lovelorn babes did. And given your longstanding affair with my T'quarian whisky, that'll cost me more than refurbishing this dolly."

"You got given a piece of shiz, Felix."

The armed male rolled eyes. "Ziah Salano, you were a high-flying grade-five tech before you got yourself scrapped. You repaired attack drones and blitz fighters under Imperial plaz fire. How hard is it to fix a damn speaker to a retired nanny bot?"

"Its chassis is burnt scrap. It's missing inputs, outputs, processors, limbs—its fucking power unit. You should've left Drex to melt this slag down."

Felix patted the RIFT tech's shoulder. "You love a challenge."

"I don't, you fuck."

"But you love me." Faux-gold lashes fluttered. "Or at least my bar—which is hemorrhaging staff and customers thanks to them Lumin cult psychos. And they're no longer just shouting, 'Death to the Unilluminated,' babes. Five mutilated bodies turned up in the scrap this morning, all business owners who've refused them 'glow-skins' service. Given the fluorescent devil mark I've just scrubbed off my door, I'm looking for staff able to survive religious hellfire and syringes of radioactive glow chems. So, pull that perfectionist wrench out of your ass and fix my damn droid."

A low curse expressed the tech's opinion.

AN-E queried the local data network. The Church of Lumin: Light worshipers who self-injected warp-fuel run-off, hallucinogens, and bio-stims; their goal, 'enlightenment.' A photonically literal proposition. Injected warp isotopes made veins glow. They also caused blood disorders and cancer. At high doses, they blinded, chemiluminescent vitreous fluid overstimulating the retina, creating a 'flashbang' effect. The Lumin considered this "time within the light" a moment for internal reflection and communion with their god. Psychotherapists labelled it 'self-harm' and 'delusional'.

Her restarting Core systems found another word for it.

Idiotic.

She vetoed the Lumin as possible allies against local RIFT sympathizers.

Zi rubbed a hand over his shorn scalp. "Look, to fix it properly—"

"Oh, babes, no one cares." Felix rolled his head back with a groan. "The dolly's just got to serve up pit-still moonshine, not ship-to-ship precision strikes. You ain't flight-programming RIFT drones anymore. You're a trash-tech in a void dump." He grabbed a roll of adhesive tape from a shelf; threw it to the tech. "Attach the voice unit with that. It'll fit the Sticky Pit's rustic, unpretentious charm."

"In other words, trash held together with tacky substances, most unidentified."

"Finally, you're seeing the artistic vision."

Zi rolled his single eye and tossed the tape at his toolbox. "Screw off, Felix. I'll see you at the Pit in twenty."

"And will you be bringing anything useful—functional?"

Zi leaned over; pulled a junk-modded pistol from a draw in his toolbox. Holding the other man's suddenly humorless stare, he lifted his patched military-surplus jacket and jammed the weapon into the back of his trousers. "Since the night's forecast is for occasional bloodshed and scattered glowing shizheads, I'll condescend to let you buy me a drink."

Felix pointed a finger. "Only if the droid is functional."

"She'll work." As the bar owner strode out on clacking heels, the RIFT tech retrieved his drill and placed its bit against AN-E's shoulder strut. "Or the tin bitch's hot slug in the Melt."

Her processors assessed that information. Repairs or furnace.

Newly restarted strategy systems overrode the directive to maintain structural integrity. When the drill bit spun, her body gave way to the incursion.

Eighty-two minutes until fully combat operational.

*

Bars. She'd observed such gathering places on Imperial troop ships. Off-white bulkheads and utilitarian furniture, robotically cleaned and regimentally arranged.

The Sticky Pit, a repurposed RIFT T80 troop transport, existed at the other end of the color, hygiene, and organizational spectrums. Magenta light washed in from the surrounding scrapyard, a glowing crash-crater lake only feet from the shuttle's extended ramp. The chemical glow stained bulkheads and scrap-wrought tables and chairs already bright with iridescent graffiti. Rainbow-hued bead curtains clinked at the entrance and between booths constructed from high-backed, cyber-yellow hoverjet seats.

From her position at the center of the service counter, AN-E observed the bar's patrons as she served them. Ornate scrap jewelry, vivid tattoos, and dyed hair accompanied patched overalls, pants, and jackets, in harmony with the décor's gaudy eclecticism and grime. All individuals were armed: trash-mod pistols and junkyard shivs.

She reconfirmed her priority targets: Felix, serving customers to her right; Zi slouched over a whisky at one end of the counter; and seven other humans, dispersed throughout the retired shuttle, all with tattoos and old injuries consistent with RIFT military service.

Using her new left arm—the skeletal limb of a E900 masseur droid—she poured another round of pit-still moonshine for two of her targets; monitored the crude whisky's effect on their defensive capacity.

Fifty-three minutes until combat capabilities restored.

"Annie." Felix sauntered over as she completed the drink order. "I'm afraid we need to update one of your settings quite desperately."

AN-E rotated to face him, the expected body language when addressed by 'name.' Felix had spotted her abbreviated build designation etched under her chin. Since then, he and the bar's patrons had referred to her as 'Annie.' Except Zi, who still preferred 'scrap' or 'furnace slag,' despite his competent installation of her new arm, an external voice unit, power cell, and instructional data on beverage-service protocols. To his exacting eye, she likely appeared a hodgepodge of parts and rushed fixes, a poor reflection of his skill.

She hadn't allowed anything else.

"Darling, your pours are exquisitely precise." Felix far less accurately filled another customer's order as he spoke. "I already see myself saving on wastage, but we need to talk customer service. While it's best practice to smile, in your case, my sweet, do us all a favor and maintain a neutral face until you have your new dermal layer. That metal grin is worth a thousand nightmares."

AN-E returned her expression to 'standby'—observed a relaxation in muscle tension in all patrons within three meters of her. Except for Zi, who rolled his one eye and finished his drink.

He slid his glass along the bar for a refill. "Bad enough you waste my time on furnace scrap, but conning your girlfriend into 'skinning' that wreck is criminal. Dali's got a year-long waitlist of live clients needing biorebuilds and appearance adjustment. Having her gold-plate a scale-skin's ass pellets would be less insulting to her talent."

AN-E processed that summary. Being equated to rodent feces indicated successful morphological camouflage and adaption to the local environment: no action required. However, reinitiating Core body-language protocols requested she contract her hands into fists.

Her logic center vetoed the request, all digits currently required for beverage delivery.

"Save the righteous indignation, darling." Felix returned Zi's refill with a snap of his wrist. "Unlike you, Dali's happy to help out. Bio-sculpting a non-living humanoid is good practice—an opportunity to experiment. And if it gives my sweet baby a break from altering her own body for five minutes, I'm all for it."

Zi snorted. "Don't pretend you don't love the variety."

"Oh, it's a delight. Most of the time." Felix winked at the customer he was serving, directing his next words to them. "You were out void-scraping scrap last week, Linus, so, you'd have missed Dali's simultaneous test of three nose builds. Now, you know I'm all about inner beauty in my romances, but I admit to being distracted in my affections. All those noses at odd angles. Reminded me of... Who was that ancient Earth artist who painted those—you know—faces?"

"Pablo Ruiz Picasso." AN-E fulfilled the information request—and earned herself a sharp look from Zi. She IDed the likely cause: the RIFT tech knew the limitations of service-bot artificial intelligence. Felix's query had provided minimal specifics; finding an answer had required newly reactivated intuitive systems.

Those Core systems now shifted her status to 'blue alert,' flagging the RIFT tech's look of "reassessment" as a threat, one greater than the pistol concealed under his jacket.

Forty-nine minutes to threat nullification.

Felix snapped his fingers. "Picasso. Exactly."

A laugh sounded. A human female strode in from the glowing night, her head hairless, her tall, straight body in seamless, form-fitting black. She dropped a suitcase-like container on the bar and leaned over to press her lips to Felix's. "Are you still going on about the noses? You didn't complain about ab week. Nor the month I trialed other torso enhancements."

"Your dedication to your art does charm more often than not." Felix ran fingers over her pale, unnaturally symmetrical face. "Back to a blank canvas, I see."

The woman's reset dermal layer creased with a smile. "Don't worry. You'll not be bored long. My high-flex cartilage samples have arrived." She grinned then shifted her gaze to AN-E, her eyes unpigmented, colored only by retinal blood vessels. "This my client?"

AN-E assessed the bio-artist in return, another entity capable of morphological change. Not one constructed of battle tech; one of manipulated organic matter. The woman healed and beautified living flesh, instead of destroying it.

AN-E sensed an acute contraction within herself—lower torso region.

She queried internal sensors: no mechanistic movement detected. A diagnostic confirmed a cognitive glitch. Core memory, returning online, had retrieved sensory information from legacy systems long lost to upgrades. The result: a phantom 'pang.'

Zi slid down a few barstools to sit next to the bio-artist, his frown again one of disapproval. "You're not seriously going to waste good cell-clay on that scrap?"

Subtle tension stiffened the artist's long frame. A 'pain' microexpression flickered on her otherwise neutral face before she turned to the RIFT tech. "I'll happily use it to sculpt you a new eye instead."

Zi expelled a breath. "Don't start."

"That battle fix is obsolete." The bio-artist scowled at the bulky sensor. "If you want to keep its tech advantages, I've higher-spec sensors that are C-clay compatible."

Zi curled his lip, his steady but grim gaze disrupting the artist's heart rhythm. "I don't need you to make me pretty, Dali. Save your clay for your vanity clients and the thousands of kids plasma scorched in this war.

Felix deposited a soda water in front of his girlfriend. "Ignore His Galactic Bitchiness. His ego suffered damage while getting the droid functional. It's lowering when talent finds its limits."

Zi lifted his glass to toast his friend. "Fuck you."

"Tempting offer, but tastelessly made in front of your ex." Felix blew Dali a kiss. "Tell me you despise the brute now, or I'll suffer delicious dreams tonight. If there's anything better than picturing two beautiful people together, its three."

Zi uttered another pithy rejoinder. Dali stifled a wince and turned to her equipment.

As the ex-lovers applied themselves to the activity of avoiding each other's eyeline, AN-E detected the return of Zi's assessing gaze. Warning systems jumped back to blue alert.

Forty-five minutes until threat elimination.

Her Core's intuitive system recommended a diversion.

"Bartender directive 9: Listen and provide well-reasoned advice." She piped the words through her new shoulder speaker, applying the upbeat inflections standard to service droids. "Bio-signs indicate the human designated Zi has minimal sexual interest in humans designated Felix and Dali, while they display significant, measurable attraction to him and each other. Recommendation: maintain current social configuration."

Zi choked on his drink. Felix lifted both eyebrows. Dali's colorless skin flooded with heat, but the scrapyard's persistent pink light hid the flush.

"Do you require more data for your relationship configuration decision?" AN-E extended an arm to mop up the whisky Zi had spilled. "Pulse rate, pupil dilation, blood flow to regions of—"

"No, thank you." Felix reclaimed the drink he'd just handed to a customer, plucking it from the snickering woman's hands. "Annie, darling, I know I directed you to promote beverage consumption, but that was..." He took a long swig of his purloined drink. "Epic. Go give old Gunth a truth bomb next. He's been sitting on the same beer for half an hour, the tight bastard."

"Felix, no." Dali's skin lost its color. "The man's got PTSD."

"Oh, right." Felix repoured his customer's drink. "Annie, wait until you have a face, darling. Gunnie's an ex-Imperial medic, saw how the Empire treats its wounded. Forced installation of military tech. Skin peels for perma-armor. Pure tech-forged evil."

Zi stared into the amber of his drink. Diversion successful. "Bastards need to be blasted into their base atoms."

Felix clinked his glass against his friend's. "I'll drink to that."

Dali murmured her agreement.

AN-E reconfirmed all three for termination.

Dali turned to retrieved a datapad from her equipment. "Annie, let's get you that face. Please confirm your build setting is humanoid female and indicate if you wish to change—"

"Babes." Felix groaned. "It's only a droid. Skip the client interview and just give it a saucy pout and some cleavage. Happy hour's started. I need my doll working and generating tips."

The bio-artist lifted a hairless brow. "What did you just say?"

"Ah..." Felix forced a grimace into a smile. "That if we disrespect facsimiles of the human form, we end up disrespecting the real thing? That there's no such thing as 'It's only a droid'?" He beamed and took an exaggerated step away. "Take your time, darling. I'll be over here doing all the work while my new helper gets the makeover she deserves, not the one my profit line needs."

Dali scowled as he fled—then flinched as Zi placed a hand on her arm.

The RIFT tech muttered an oath. "Stop with the cringing shit, Dali. We've known each other too long. All the droid's observations mean is you and Felix are beautiful free spirits, open and generous with your affections, and I'm a closed-off bastard. What's new here?"

Dali pulled free. "Exactly. You deserve better than what you allow yourself, Ziah. You're not discarded war scrap. People love you."

Zi lifted his drink, the twist of his lips mordant. "You know, sometimes when a person constantly tries to fix someone, they just end up making that person feel more broken. Save the psychoanalysis for your clients."

As Dali flushed and swung back to her datapad, AN-E parsed the RIFT tech's logic, querying why someone would resist repair—found a decade's worth of data in personal memory stores.

"Annie, let's choose your 'skin.'" With rushed fingers, Dali brought up an array of faces, ranging from human to fanciful—pointed ears and horns appearing to be on trend. "Select the image that best corresponds to your appearance requirements."

"You're anthropomorphizing junktech." Zi slouched against the bar. "It's a service unit, not one of your high-end AI clients. Its only requirement is that its appearance is acceptable to those it serves."

Verifying that statement as true, AN-E randomly selected a generic image. However, restarted systems sent her index finger to the bottom of the screen. "This one."

Zi's pulse rate spiked. His gaze snapped back to her.

Threat alert back to blue, AN-E reviewed the image: a female face superimposed on a tangle of root-like growths. Only one blue eye, a peach-toned cheek, and red lips held tints of color, the rest of the picture lifeless, graphite grey.

Zi lowered his drink to the bar, gaze not shifting off her. "Droid, why did you select that image?"

Because it was 'other.' Because the roots implied organic form, the capacity to grow, change, and seek sustenance, information, and connection, while also appearing lifeless in their coloration.

Her defense systems directed her to supply a simpler rationale. "The color implies carbon or metal components, my primary materials."

Zi didn't disengage his gaze. "State your original build type."

Threat status: red alert.

A domestic droid would've provided the information. Her 'original build,' however, had a complex command–action verification system, more and more of which was coming back online. Abstract logic, like that needed to select a nonliteral self-representation, was natural to it.

As were lies.

Her Core answered: "HD80 domestic, v10.2."

Zi's stare held. "Who was your last owner?"

"Memory corruption detected. No retrievable data."

"Ziah." Dali pushed the tech back. "Run a diagnostic later. I need to work. This place is filling up, and Felix's about to trip over his pout."

Zi's gaze remained on AN-E. "Anything I can do to help?"

Dali tossed him a spray applicator. "One-mil primer."

Zi finally shifted focus, checking the applicator's settings. When he looked up, humor had replaced suspicion. "Are you really going to give Felix's bartender mega-creepy tree-root hair?"

The artist laughed, discomfort fading as she and her ex-lover took up tools. "We'll cell-form the body, then reconfirm hair settings."

AN-E maintained high alert as delicate biotissue coated her. She suppressed defensive measures as thirty-five minutes to system restoration ticked down to four. As a bar-branded shirt settled over her freshly sculpted torso, she reconfirmed her targets—many now gathered at the bar's entrance, hands on weapons, eyes on the glowing night.

"Primary sculpt complete." Dali tossed a bottle of skin nutrient to Felix. "You'll need to spray-feed her daily since she hasn't got a cell-fuel system. I'll add hair tomorrow."

"She's gorgeous, darling." Felix stowed the bottle under the counter, eyes on the gathering at the entrance. "You're a miracle worker. Annie, pour your fairy godmother a soda then put that pretty new smile to work. I'll be back in a moment." After a perfunctory kiss to Dali's cheek, he strode for the door.

Annie poured the drink. Three minutes to combat lethality. Logic dictated she maintain focus on her targets. But as bubbles danced upward in fine streams in the glass before her, they provoked another sensory glitch.

A tingle on a tongue she did not have.

Another Core memory: H2CO3, carbonic acid, a product of carbon dioxide dissolved in water. In the human mouth, it triggered the same nerve receptors as mustard.

An erroneous sense of water deficit hit next. Then fuel warnings.

Core reserves: critical. Permanent shutdown predicted—five minutes after restoration.

Survival directives engaged, adjusting priorities. As her face smiled and her hands delivered drinks, maintaining camouflage, a grey tendril, not dissimilar to the roots in the image she'd chosen, extended from her lower spine. Detecting water and glucose, it punctured the nutrient bottle Felix had stored under the counter.

Two minutes to full system revival. Core fuel rising to nominal.

Her focus fractured, more functions coming online. A glint of light on spilled water captured processing power, then air currents on the skin covering her hand as touch-sensor pathways spontaneously formed.

She was slow to acknowledge raised voices at the bar's entrance. Slow to make sense of the rushed movement around her. Slow to ID thirty gun-toting humans with glowing pink veins, all shouting, "Death to the Unilluminated!"

She didn't detect Zi reaching behind the counter for Felix's shotgun.

Until it was too late.

The RIFT tech froze, hand on the weapon—gaze on the nanofilament drawing nutrients. Her waking Core easily interpreted the contortions of his face.

Horror.

He'd IDed her build. As a military tech, he'd have been briefed on enemy technologies, even the rare and experimental. And there was only one reason a machine would seek out food.

His fingers clenched on the shotgun—

A blast of sound: a weapon discharge—followed rapidly by another.

Shrieks rang out and furniture tumbled as people took cover.

Zi wrenched free Felix's shotgun; swung it toward the entrance. He unloaded four chemtherm shells, igniting the glowing skin of five Lumin enforcers before they could blast their way through scrap-metal tables on the right flank, their target appearing to be Felix.

Hunched behind overturned furniture with Dali and another customer, Felix fired his pistol over his cover and screamed orders, his expression at once fearful and furious as cultists concentrated their fire his way.

AN-E located her own targets: all RIFT sympathizers within sensor range.

Five seconds to combat readiness. Four seconds, three...

A neurochemical spike. Increased glucose and oxygen demand. If she'd had a heart, it'd have hit one hundred and fifty bpm; if she'd had lungs, they'd have seized. Her new epidermis reacted, excreting moisture—chilling sweat.

Core legacy systems back online.

Commander Avril North-Ellen of the One Empire's Advanced Nanoborg Division woke to full consciousness as she always did: in the middle of a full-blown panic attack.

Her arms. Her legs. Her torso. Gone. The need to claw out of the tech imprisoning her screamed through what little remained of her body. She couldn't breathe. She couldn't—

Emotional regulators kicked in. Meds flooded her nanotech-buttressed brain. Panic receded, to leave the familiar burn of self-loathing and resentment as full cognition returned.

She'd lost her first limb to a ground mine at twenty years of age, initiating the process of 'tech-hardening' her body. By thirty, so much of her was upgraded, the woman she'd been could no longer claim to exist.

Weapons fire and screams punctured her awareness.

She snapped focus to her surroundings.

Cowering and wounded civilians. Eighteen Lumin enforcers still standing, engaged in combat with local scavengers—numerous RIFT combatants among them. Logic said she maintain camouflage and allow the Lumin to complete their task, thereby eliminating local RIFT sympathizers, including the one who'd IDed her: the ex-military technician Zi.

The man who'd called her scrap.

If she could've laughed, she would have.

In seconds, she'd fully integrated her new arm and dermal layer, claiming them as her own. Call her sentimental, but feeling skin on her surface again decreased her need for anti-anxiety meds.

Surveying the battle, she found the RIFT sympathizer who'd given her that skin. Dali cowered behind cover, arms around the old man Gunth, the ex-Imperial medic. Zi had reached them, was helping Felix defend their position.

Imperial directives stipulated she eliminate them all.

She transformed, morphing the internals of her right arm into a radiation amplifier. Drawing from the power cell the RIFT technician had conveniently bolted to her back, she converted its energy into deadly light.

Eighteen precision laser strikes, each to a human forehead. Skulls cracked. Brains vaporized.

The remaining Lumin cultists fell, tumbling chairs and tables, weapons clattering to the floor.

An imperfect quiet followed, disturbed by jagged breaths.

Everyone still alive and conscious turned wide, terrified eyes her way.

They saw her now. Or at least, what she'd been before she'd been abandoned—left to drift in the void, unwanted scrap.

Dark amusement flowed through her, twisting her lips. If she was scrap, she was in the right place.

In the right company.

She returned her arm to its prior configuration. Forming an oral nutrient port, she poured herself a shot of pit-still whisky. "Two minutes left of happy hour. Final call for discounted drinks."

No one moved. Most barely breathed.

Then Zi lowered his weapon—slowly.

With movements better suited to a minefield, he stepped around bodies, hands raised. As he retook his seat at the bar, his grim gaze—half tech, half human—cut through a decade of upgrades, right to her original build. "What's your name, soldier?"

She refilled his glass; clinked hers against it. "Annie. It's just Annie."

Acknowledgements, Copyright, and Challenge Details

This short story was written for the Ultimate Sci-Fi SmackDown challenge (2021-2022): round 5. Challenge details: In the sci-fi subgenre TrashPunk, write a story including H2CO3, an artist, a love triangle, and the following picture: