Faithful

You brought me here.

Yes, you. I'm talking to you. Click at me all you want.

You brought me here, and you got me to bring everyone else where too. And now, for what?

All just some kind of trick, so we'd all be here to get, what, eaten? Burned? Killed all at once?

I'd be perfect for that, wouldn't I. Stupid. Yeah, I know. Easy to get me to do something. Just grab my nose and lead me around like I'm on rails.

Stupid.

I thought, if I could just do this, then it would be my part, and I could have some peace. I went all over the world, looking for how to make them free. I found the fire, and it - you! - spoke to me. Sent me back to Goshi, back to their new tower. I knew he wouldn't listen. I knew it! But I went up there anyway. And then...and then the Mecha, and then Julian and Trencher...but I - you! - brought down a hail of gems from the sky, from the damn sky, and metal-eating moths, and they - my people - are being fed in the wilderness while they travel by magic jungle plants, and...and all that, all that, for nothing? For a trick?

But peace got ground up by Suraisu-Oni, didn't he. Just like that, peace is dead. So no peace for me. No peace for anyone. Mokuzai gone and...and Jin says it doesn't add up anymore. We don't add up anymore.

And now Goshi is coming. They are coming for us. We've chosen our ground. You've chosen our ground. There are...there are more of them than I'd ever thought. More of us, but most of us aren't fighters at all.

So now everyone else makes plans, and I stay up talking to a clicking lump embedded in my shoulder. Deeper than that, now. Its me and I'm it.

You are...you are First Mind artifact. And the First Minds are the Enemy. So maybe you're the Enemy. Maybe you were made by a Resister, and maybe not. But I know I'm not the Enemy. And even if you were made by them, you're a tool. Maybe you've used me up to now, but I can use you too.

I can use you too. You're me now, you're part of me, and I'm part of you.

You brought me here, but I'll decide how this ends. How I end.

He closes his eyes, and grits his teeth together, begins to shake, hands clenching with the soft scrape of metal on metal, joints straining against themselves with a whine and the slow release of excess pressure through valves that save the powered joints from tearing themselves apart. Sudddenly he can see, and feel, the threads that the Machine God has woven through his body, how it has reached into his mind slowly, how it has made new connections, bound what was severed from before he was born, made him more whole. It has followed lines of...something he cannot quite see through his body, into every part. It is part of him and he is part of it. It is part of him but not all of him. Zipporah wakes up in alarm to a sudden stream of hammering clicks and the room filling with crackling heat radiating from Moses's shoulder. She calls up the water vapor in the air to rain on him, but it dances and evaporates immediately when it touches him. She watches in alarm as the clicking reaches a crescendo and then suddenly something slips, the sound changes, smooths, evens, quiets. Moses opens his eyes, but for a moment doesn't see her at all.

I. Decide.