Sweat on the ribs, eyes dart, there’s this tension pulling at my gut and the air has teeth but, beyond the thump of my heart, it’s quiet, and I try to zone in on it, find my focus.

Kilgore’s standing in the corner of the concrete-walled room pulling hard on a cigarette. There’s a shake in his thin hand, the smoke drifting out of the shadows into the spot-lit circle I’m standing in.

I can make out the mirrored line of his silver teeth, the neon pink flash of his prosthetic eyes. His thin frame has a dark silhouette that’s highlighted by a grey and black spiked beard pushing itself out of his strong jawline.

He gives a small nod and shivers clatter up my spine.

“She doesn’t look like much to me,” says a voice off to my side.

I glance a look, a club member stood grinning like a skull in the shadows, a few others around the figure huff and nod in agreement.

“You do a good job here,” Kilgore had said to me. “You win here and we win big time, we’re in, we’re in with them, big players and it means big rewards,” he squinted and jabbed me in the shoulder with a thin finger. “You screw up, you cost me a dollar, and you’ll end up as scrap, some fuckhead’s plaything, no two ways about it. Then you’ll be wishing I’d ended you when I gave you the chance.”

When’d he given me that chance? Five years ago? Ten? Hard to tell now. The training and fighting does that to you.

He picked me up in the Badlands, out even further than the Quarantine Zone way beyond the Major Prime borderline. He’d been looking for fresh blood, something not too fucked up, but fucked up enough to need what he offered.

Came across me, a bundle of skin and bone wandering the polluted wastes out there in the Badlands amongst the Salvagers, but said he saw a spark.

I can see it now, his thin lips pulling back against those silver teeth, that smile beaming down, the neon glitter of his prosthetic eyes glowing at me through the red atmosphere of that morbid world.

He gave me two options; either end it right there and then. He’d make it quick, save me from a life picking away at the industrial wastelands. Or agree to go with him, a chance at a new life. Worked better for him if the principal agreed, would help the cybernetic implants take easier, or so he said.

Hard work he told me and lots of it, but proper training, a solid set of implants. Something that would get me off the ground, and if I could earn my keep, he had contacts that would kit me out good. Become something, someone, he had all the gear to get the ball rolling, only needed a principal.

So, here we are, all that training, all that fighting, all those years later. About to hit the big time.

“Give them a taste, Jess,” Kilgore says knocking the ash off his chain-smoked cigarette.

The weapons-programme loads in my peripheral vision and eight gigantic tentacles explode from my back and search the room. All ribbed muscle and chrome steel, they twitch and undulate with a purple sheen and mirrored shiver under the white spotlight. Polished spikes at their tips flash that crack with blue electricity. 30,000 vaults will do it, times that by eight and you will get fucked up quick-sharp whether man or machine, or both.

There are a few nods of approval around the room.

I hear the shuffling of feet, “Maybe she can cut it,” a voice says, different from the one before, an air of formality to it.

“Oh, she can cut it, Lucian,” Kilgore says, stepping out of the shadows and coming to my side. My tentacles twitch in the low light, the spark from their chrome tips buzz and snap.

“This is no place for amateurs,” a fat man walks out of the shadows and into the spotlight, Lucian. Round frame wrapped in a shirt and waistcoat, pocket chain dangling, gold sovereign rings around his chubby fingers. Big face, massive, red and blotchy with a long black cigarette holder in his mouth.

Kilgore nods, flicks his cigarette across the polished concrete floor, takes a step up to Lucian. “She means business all right. I’ve got her wired hot, dialled up and ready to crack skulls. She’s been working her way through the circuit, you’ve seen the fights, she can make the cut.”

“Yeah, I saw the fights, girl’s got flair. Don’t mean she’s ready to step up though, now does it?” Lucian says.

Kilgore walks up to him lighting another cigarette with that shake in his hand. He takes a long pull and blows the smoke into Lucian’s face, “And I’ll put a quart-billion on her to win.”

“Oh, yeah?” Lucian laughs, turning to the others standing in the shadows.

“First round.”

The fat man zips back to face Kilgore, raising his chin, long cigarette holder grinding between big teeth, eyeballing him for a second. “The Advanced Anger Club has a fight!” he nods and comes close into Kilgore. “You lose and fail to pay and you know the terms, we take your knees. Permanent.”

Nerves, that’s what he’d said to me, you’ll need nerves of steel in this game, but I can teach you. Give you what you need to know, how to control it, that thing inside, the fear, the anger. Turn terror into a weapon. Turn rage into a cutting blade so fine it’ll slide through steel like nothing.

Every time it still comes rushing up my spine. That tingle, that primordial flash that’s supposed to either take you into fight or flight. Can’t get rid of that, don’t want to either, you want to learn how to control it.

The control’s here now.

Hands balled into fists, tentacles at home in my back casing, little twitches, eager for the job about to come. The huge steel door in front of me creaks and with a puff of air pulls itself up, giving me the slow reveal.

A low pink light crawling through underneath it as it rises, inch-by-inch, until I see it stood there. The ‎Merovech and the Robot Lords of Neo-Tokyo standing all around.

The thing’s gigantic, twice my height, toughened steel, square robotic legs not giving anything away, rising to a broad solid chest housing all sorts of war gear. Wide shoulders lead down to thick arms wrapped in pistons and pneumatic rods, bladed hands that can morph into thick fingers for heavy fists.

It fizzes with sparks and purrs with the heaving whines of heavy servos as it pulls its pillar-like legs together and stands to attention.

The rest of the Robot Lords do the same with a “Ten-hut!” to add to the effect. This is their bag, some pseudo-military bullshit. I’ve heard all about it, never seen it in the flesh, might intimidate if they didn’t all look like school-boys playing at soldier. They’re still a fight gang like any other in the Anger Club.

“The Merovech,” Kilgore says to me at my side. “Not to be fucked with.”

“No,” I say through grinding teeth. “What’s the download?”

“Got some lean intel, don’t ask the source because I don’t know it, but I know it’s legit. Here,” he says, wiring me the data.

It streams down the peripheral of my HUD, giving me all that juicy information I need to know to figure out how to take this fucker apart. It’s hindered by all the usual stuff, big but slow, heavy on armour but low on agility. All the places it has flaws, I excel. Problem is, that game works both ways. Seems the neck is a soft spot, if I can get my tentacles in there, I’m in with a chance.

“First round?” I say, turning to Kilgore.

He turns back to me, the double-pointed beard with grey tips coming out of his chin, his high-cheekbones casting shadows and through those silver mirrored teeth he grinds, “First-Fucking-Round.”

“Yeah,” I whisper, real low. “I got you.”

The Robot Lords clear out as I walk into the fight arena, not that big that you can hide in it, but big enough for plenty of mayhem to occur.

High concrete walls battered and broken, jutting steel reinforcement bar coming out of them from blast holes and chips and the rest. Triple thickened and hardened Tanner-Glass rising out of it and behind, the crowd, biggest one I’ve ever seen, ugliest too.

All the meanest fuckers you can imagine from all across Major Prime. Gang leaders and T>O<X dealers, agency spooks high up enough to have their own free pass, corporation executives with money to burn and tastes that need that hint of ultra-violence they can afford to dish out for.

The fat man, Lucian, comes walking into the middle of the arena, the spotlight down on him as I stand opposite from the Merovech separated by a few dozen feet.

The crowd quietens down, the Robot Lords now off the floor, only me and the big cyborg and billions of crypto-credits all changing hands every second as the odds race up and down.

“Gathered acquaintances!” Lucian starts, turning, arms raised, the mic hanging from the tall domed ceiling. “Here we are, and here we shall begin. Are you ready for another gathering of the Advanced Anger Club? Another colossal fight for your pleasures?” The crowd roars, and he turns to me. “Here on my right, a little thing you might consider not much of a weapon at all. I’d say take pause, you’ve seen the footage, you’ve seen the way she’s taken apart every one of her opponents to date. She’s got things hidden away in her that’d make any man or machine twitch at night. So, with an impressive kill-streak of 23, and 38 fights to zero losses total, I give you Jessica Kilgore!”

He points at me and my tentacles explode out of my back and search the air with their electrified spikes bursting and fizzing with ripples of electric blue flame.

“And on my left, well, he needs no introduction now does he? More Machine Than Man, one of our all-time favourites, undefeated in all these years with a fine 108 kill-streak and well over double that for confirmed wins. Oh, my auspicious Advanced Anger Club patrons, I give you, the Mer-o-vech Machine!”

The crowd goes wild, unsurprising; the thing is a legend, and Lucian’s right when he says more machine than man. Over the years they’ve turned that poor bastard from a cybernetics heavy, ultra-enhanced super-solider into a fighting machine robot slave with a hint of a human brain. Seems like it’s about time to put that poor fucker out of its misery.

Lucian’s lowered into the floor from some platform he’s stood on and as soon as it slides closed a siren screams and it’s on.

The Merovech’s arms pull backward, thrusting out its massive chest, steel shutters slide open and a volley of mini-missiles shoot towards me, screaming across the arena floor.

I’m already moving, a flash and I’m hammering across toward him my tentacles splayed out ready to do their thing, iron-dome the fuck out of those missiles. Piercing them out of the air before they can get anywhere close enough to do any real damage. I push through the wall of explosions ahead of me, bursting out the other side, jumping up, and releasing a spray of acid from my little chest-hidden weapons system.

The acid rains down on the hulking cyborg, melting into its huge steel frame, someone on the Robot Lord’s team will die for missing that trick.

I land on the board shoulders, knees on either side of the massive head melting and fizzing away from the acid bath, my special coated war-suit keeping me from melting too.

Two tentacles fight with the arms of the great machine, two working on the torso, two pierced into its back and hooking into its thick armour with everything they have. The last two go to work at the thick neck structure of the thing, as advertised in the intel.

There’s a crunch, a scraping metal sound amongst the melee and a tentacle pierces through the neck armour. My HUD’s streaming hundreds of messages per second, there’s a fire in my head and rage in my heart that wants to blast its way out of me. One tentacle gets ripped off as another keeps working away at the hole I’ve made.

A moment, everything slows, the whip and crack of my tentacles, the roaring screams of the violent crowd, the wrestling fight of the Merovech, the haunting rage of the thing that’s housed inside it. A piece of steel and carbon fibre breaks off the head unit and I see a human eye there, wide and scared for a split second amongst the chaos and the wires and circuitry.

A tentacle pierces deep into the neck housing and buries itself deep into the remaining organic matter hammering 30,000 volts straight into it. The eye stares back up at me, a flicker, something happens, it’s blinking like any other normal eye, and that’s the most worrying thing of all.

I pause and in the bedlam its massive arms tear off two more of my tentacles, grab hold of my torso and sling me across the arena floor.

I’m flying as my remaining five tentacles swing around battering off the continuing volley of armaments. Two come down and catch me on the floor as an attempted hack from the Merovech’s emergency systems explodes in my HUD.

A massive data-bombardment, it’s ex-military AI peels back the layers of my brain in seconds. Nothing I was expecting and as I’m about to go full emergency protocol myself, a message floats in my HUD.

“Thank you,” it says. “You have released me. Now escape, before they turn you into what I have become.”

Its HUD’s critical meltdown timer materialises in my own.

A countdown, a self destruct system in case anyone ever got this far in defeating the thing. Designed to take itself and the opponent out at the same time. Still a draw that way. Die, but you go out undefeated, still time to place a few last-minute bets.

I batter away the last of the missile volley and watch as it haunches down on all fours. Its head half hanging off where I’d gone into it, its whole body riddled with holes that pour a mixture of awful liquids, blood, battery acid, hydraulic fluid and the rest. Its arms go to work on the concrete floor, hammering their way into it, pushing up a huge cloud of rubble and concrete as it buries itself and then it happens.

The timer ticks its last seconds down, 00:00 flashing there for a split, then nothing but white.

Ringing ears, heavy breathing, battered body, seared flesh, burning, everything burning. The muscle and skin off my tentacles, the nanofibre spines of each and their chrome tips twitching as I come back around.

Rolling over my emergency anti-explosives sheath unwraps itself from around me. I’m in bad shape but I can move. I stand and squint, trying to find it, but it’s gone, the Merovech and so has the patch of the arena where it had hunched down and self-terminated.

There’s a spill of bodies coming out of the broken bit of the arena walling. Rubble and concrete and steel and glass mix with the dead, body parts, blood and viscera.

I scan, quick, they’ll be on me in a flash and I spot a gigantic hole in the floor where the explosion detonated. I pull at everything I’ve got, emergency systems flashing bright red in my HUD and powering me on. Sub-sub routines pull me across the arena to that hole, the chance of escape.

An emergency EMP flashes through the arena as I jump, my tentacles go dead, my HUD fizzes out, but this girl’s still plenty flesh. You can’t stop me with that shit alone and the part of me that’s still blood and bone lands me on the edge of the chasm.

A quick scan down into the crater, massive, all obliterated infrastructure and dead bodies. I spot a shelf of concrete that leads to a tunnel pouring with water, some sewage channel, a good twenty-feet below, but I can make it.

Leaping I nail the landing and roll into the shaft as I hear the chaos from the party above, all screaming and roaring and people trying to make sure I can’t get away, but the mayhem’s too much, and I’m gone.

It’s not like Kilgore ever told me where we were going. He never gave me the download on what part of Major Prime or the outlaying Quarantine Zone or Badlands we were heading to for any part of the last decade.

Sometimes we’d be out on the road for days. Me in the back of some hired transport, him up front with the driver, we’d arrive at some random fight hall and I’d do the deed. Other times it would be out somewhere for repairs or upgrades or demonstrations for the Anger Club to get us nearer to the big game.

Point is, I’ve no fucking clue where I am.

I pulled myself away from the Anger Club tracking drones without too much bother. Into and through the deep underground tunnels, sewage outlets and service ducts wide enough to drive a bus through. All that buried infrastructure of the megalopolis that is Major Prime.

I found what looked like an old fuelling channel and after what seemed like an eternity; I emerged into the red-sky of some long-abandoned orbital launch depot in the Badlands.

The air was thick with rust and the vermilion earth turned red from the decomposing fuel dumps; the sun trying to push through with little success. Same as I remember the bits I can from when I was a kid. Most of it buried down away deep somewhere, only patches come back, but I can remember the red air, the bloodshot sun.

I’m wounded but spot an old emergency field trauma pod and drag myself over to it. There’ll be hundreds throughout the Badlands scattered all around. These old launch platforms didn’t have the best safety records, whether it’s got any power is a different matter.

I get inside, flick the switches, kick at the power-pump a few times and the thing rumbles to life. Little surgical arms pull themselves out of the white walling and the wall screen flickers on. I jab at it and the arms do their thing. Nanografting muscle and skin where I need it, sewing me up good, nothing special but it’ll to get me back to Major Prime proper.

Three of my tentacles are gone. It’ll take some serious cash to get new ones implanted, but the other five are functional enough to give any asshole that comes after me reason enough not to bite.

I sit back in the trauma pod and give myself a minute. Aches and shooting pains still running through me but a smile creeping, daring to let myself have the thought, if only for a second.

Freedom?

No, not yet.

I shake it off and dial up my location and any extra information the pod can give me. I’m about 30 miles outside of Major Prime’s closest border point, could be worse, but these are the Badlands so, not much worse.

This place makes Major Prime look like a day-care nursery for chubby cheeked kids.

Makes sense, all this cheap launch infrastructure got left behind after the space-elevator tech became viable. Only a few small communities exist out here now, all Salvagers trying to pick the bones clean of what’s left and scrape together a life selling it back into Major Prime. It’s why no one batted an eyelid when I went missing as a kid, no one came after me when Kilgore kidnapped me, and why the Anger Club would have an arena out here.

Need to make a B-Line for the border. If I can make it through and back into Major Prime proper, there’s a couple of old contacts of Kilgore’s that I can get in touch with. Reckon I can pull a favour or two, either that or pull their limbs off one by one until they help.

There’s a hard knock from something metal on the door, my jaw tenses and sparks start spraying their way through the reinforced steel shell of the pod. They built these things to take on all sorts of environments and disasters, means whoever’s out there knows what they’re doing.

I take a quick scan at the only operational surveillance camera on the outside of the pod; Salvagers. Must have had this place wired. Left it with enough juice to tempt someone like me inside, then when I use the medical unit they get a call, head on over, cut it open, to see what treat waits inside.

Well, unlucky for these assholes, I am one surprise package they do not want to fuck with.

There’s an adrenaline, power and painkiller pump on the wall. I dial it up, slam my palm down on it hard so the jet-injectors get where they need to get to and squeeze everything out of it I can.

The pod’s wall peels open with a huff of smoke and sparks, whoever’s there pauses for a second.

“No, no, please!” I scream with as much terror in my voice as I can muster. “I’m injured, looking for some help, please!”

The smoke clears, the wall of the pod falls away, my HUD kicks back in after the charge and my tentacle’s twitch in my back casing.

“You! Out!” a Salvager says, head to toe in a thick material the colour of the reddened landscape. They’re wrapped in it, over and over, an eye visor between the heavy material and a big gun in their hands.

I hold my hands up, start edging out of the pod, “Please, I’m, I’m alone, I just needed a…”

“Quiet, over here,” the deep voice directs me a few yards away from the pod.

Out into the open, half a dozen come around me in a circle, all in the heavy cloth style of dress, all with big guns.

I’m not taking any chances.

A flash and I’m in my element.

Tentacles out, they spin around me and kick up a wall of the thick, red dirt and I’m into the air.

All five arms smash down into the floor, hard, and thrust me up with one massive leap as high as I can go. It’s not more than a few dozen feet but gives me enough space and time to see which spot to hit first.

Guns blaze in all directions, total confusion between the Salvagers screaming and shouting at each other and then the melee begins.

Back on the dirt, I’m down low leaping between bodies, piercing blows pushing fat holes through their weak flesh.

I might feel sorry for them but it’s shitheads like these that had me out somewhere like this as a kid. Putting me to work, getting me in small holes to pull out copper wire from massive old pieces of equipment and the rest. No hard feelings then.

Half a minute and they’re a pile of bodies, the thick red dust falling on their corpses, the blood mixing in with the dirt. I take a breath and nod, look down at my hands, try to take a moment as the mist of the fight falls around me and figure what the fuck to do next.

Get out of the Badlands, head to the border, figure out a route through to Major Prime, work my way into the underground. It’s the only way. Kilgore will be after me, Robot Lords of Neo-Tokyo too. Wouldn’t be surprising if the Advanced Anger Club sent their heavies after me now as well now I’ve escaped. Enemies on all sides. Not any different from any other day then.

There’s a flicker in my peripheral, a spark, a circuit getting rerouted or two wires twisting together, my brain kicking itself back to life. Another trigger, bigger this time, a flare, a flash, an arching blue electricity running through my mind and it’s building and erupting. A constant stream and my eyes draw themselves wide open and I pull at the air, my body arching up, back bent, and I scream.

“She’s coming back around!” I hear a male voice shout and I’m wrestling against straps wrapped over my body, arms and legs.

A face attached to the voice leans over me and comes into my vision, pushing down on my torso, trying to steady me, get me back on the bed. “Hey! Calm down! We’re here to help,” there’s a jab of something in my shoulder and I relax back into the temper foam bed. Bent back straightening out, gripped fists releasing, jaw unclenching.

“W-what?” I manage, my tongue half hanging out my mouth. “Who the hell are you, where am I?” my head flops to the side as whatever the guy injected me with goes to work.

I can’t move but my eyes still dart, moving around the room taking in what I can.

I’m inside some medical suite, but there’s something off, I can tell, even here, pumped full of muscle relaxant and strapped down. This is no place that the Salvagers would have, the tech and general cleanliness is way beyond anything they could pull together. Did the Anger Club get me? Kilgore find me?

“W-where the hell is this?” I say, real slow as my eyes keep darting. There’s a round skylight in the ceiling and I focus through the muscle relaxant onto what’s the other side. My jaw’s already lax and my mouth already agape as the curve of a giant green and blue disc set deep against a purple black sky and a sprinkling of stars comes into focus.

“Shit,” I whisper.

“You going to calm down now?” the guy says, coming into my field of vision, blocking out the window.

“Off world?” I say.

He laughs, strong face, rows of implants over his shaven skull, a medical uniform with rows of glinting medals and insignia’s, nothing like I’ve ever seen before.

“Call me Flint,” he says in a low voice and smiles, kind eyes despite the hard exterior. “You put up quite the fight, but that’s the reason we want you here.”

I pull my head back around, laying on my back, staring up at the white ceiling with the skylight off to my right. My eyes close and I give myself a moment, focusing on my breath, memories coming back, what happened there? Making my way across the Badlands, the fighting, relentless, hordes of Salvagers, once they got wind of what I’d done to their pals, they all came after me. All of them.

It wasn’t a fight; it was a god-damned armed-conflict. The horror, my tentacles doing their thing, as best they could. Hopping in and out of trauma pods, repairing what I could when I could. Death riding high and coming after me quick, a trail of bodies piling up as I went. Guns flaring, the fog of war, blood and viscera, the stench of fear and then…a last stand.

On my knees, ready to sink away from it all, find peace amongst the savage scenes before…a ship, everything goes dark but there’s a ship.

Looking up, the light and heat blasting down from its massive propulsion systems, huge guns pushing themselves out of opening doorways and flaring up.

Their heavy sound constant and tearing through the last waves of Salvagers before they realise they’re out gunned and start their retreat.

The immense roaring from the jump-ship’s engines as it came down next to me. I pull whatever I have left together to take on whatever or whoever was coming for me.

“Calm down,” Flint says, hand on my shoulder. “You were right, you are off-world.”

“Shit,” I say again. “Why?”

“We’ve been watching you, we wanted to get to you sooner but we couldn’t afford to expose ourselves when you had your fight with the Anger Club.”

“What?” I say, sharp now, my tongue coming back under my control now.

“Who do you think fed Kilgore the info you needed to take out a warrior like the Merovech? You’re with a higher power now.”

“Higher power?” my brow furrows and eyes squint. “I’m dead?”

Flint laughs and with that kind smile says. “No, Jess. We are Fractal, for we are many and we are one. We are recruiting you.”

“The Fractals?” I swallow hard, flickers of memory coming through.

“Stay calm, that muscle relaxant will wear off in a few minutes. I’d rather not have to give you another dose.”

I manage a small nod trying to process everything that’s coming down on me.

“You know who we are?” Flint asks.

I push myself up a little straighter now the relaxant is thinning out, meet his eyes. “Heard the fairy-tales, things you hear when you’re a kid, when you’re an adult too I guess.”

“What did you hear?”

“You grow up in the Badlands you and the other kids tell each other these stories, you know? Try to find some hope in a hopeless place. Fractals were another part of that. Fighters for truth and justices throughout the galaxies,” I huff a small laugh but he’s not reacting. “Some super soldier fighting force gone rogue. That old genetic engineering story they’ve been telling to kids for generations. Off-world, fighting in the colonies, these soldiers rise up, make their own claim, beat back their oppressors, take their stake in the new world and fight to keep it. It’s myth, made up shit kids tell each other, especially kids in the Badlands with no hope and no dreams.”

“Some of it is myth, some of it is legend, but not all of it and some of the reality is even harder to believe.”

I’m quiet for a while. “Yeah well, right now I’m having a tough time believing anything other than this being some hallucination induced by overdosing on painkillers in a trauma pod somewhere in the Badlands.”

“No, Jess. You are off-world, and we are very real.”

I sit up now, able to straighten myself out, look up and out of the skylight, the Earth hundreds of miles below spinning the way I’d always imagined it would.

“Say I believe you, what’s your interest in someone like me?”

“Well, Jess, you’re a fighter.”

“Yeah,” I say and let it drift out of my mouth, still staring up at that world through the porthole.

“We keep our eyes out for people like you.”

“People like me?” I say.

“People who might not be born into it, but regardless life drags them into it. It pushes them through it, they have to do it, and even then, even when it goes against every instinct they have, they are good at it. Are better than good at it. Excel at it.”

“Excel at what?” I turn my head back to him.

“The fight, Jess, and you exceed expectation every time.”

My eyes go wide for a second and I can feel my hands gripping into the cushion of the temper-foam mattress. My jaw tenses and in a low voice I say, “I never wanted this.”

“We know, and so we watched you. You never wanted this, but despite that, you’ve done so much, come so far. Imagine what you could do if you had a reason to do it beyond trying to stay alive one more fight, beyond trying to escape Kilgore. Imagine if you had a cause.”

“A cause?” I flicker of courage comes back, my limbs free of the relaxant now, sensation pulsing through them, aware of my tentacles twitching in my back.

“A cause,” he stands and looks out of the skylight, back to me as the straps come away from my limbs and torso.

My fists grip, there’s something in me twitching, an anger, a resentment, could I kill him right now? They’ve repaired me, could I fight and find a way out of here, wherever here is, whatever here is?

“You want to get back down there, Jess?” he points up at the Earth in its slow spin hundreds of miles down below.

I stay quiet.

“You want fend for yourself, see what you can make of your life there in Major Prime? You think you can fight your way out of here, even now, hundreds of miles above the only place you know, off-world, you’re fuelled for the fight, for your freedom, and we know how much of a cause that is,” he turns back to me, hands clasped behind his back. “Look, you’re welcome to go back down there, we won’t keep you, this is not a prison, we are not like Kilgore and the fight gangs. We are Fractal, we are many and one, and we have a choice for you. We want you to understand this choice so we hope you will listen.”

“Heard this shit before,” I say with a stare. “Didn’t like it then, not sure if I like it now. Kidnapping people and asking them to fight for you? Got some cause have you? Seems all too familiar.”

“I said the same thing once,” he squints at me, raising his jaw. “How old do you think I am?”

“No idea,” I shrug. “Same as Kilgore I guess, forty, something like that?”

“I’m over three-hundred years old, Jess. Our legend is strong, and we are true, we’ve been doing this for generations and you have a big decision to make.”

“Yeah, a big decision? Life’s full of them right?”

“Not like this one,” he takes a step over to me, eyebrows raised.

“Well, what is it?” I say.

“Do you fight for your freedom, or the freedom of others?”

“That simple, huh?” I say swinging my legs around off the bed.

“That simple.”

I stand and meet his gaze, about a foot shorter than him, bare feet on the cold tiled floor, a little wobble but able to stop myself from falling. “And what if I choose my own?”

“Then you’re free to head back down there,” he points up at the skylight, the world spinning at the end of his fingertip. “And make what you can of your life.”

“What’s the catch?” I say.

He huffs a small laugh. “No catch, Jess. You can go, be free, fight your own fight, but I’ll tell you now what they told me back then. If you fight for the freedom of others, you will be freer than you can ever imagine.”

I keep my eye fixed on the Earth there, hundreds of miles below, flickers of the Badlands run through my thought, Major Prime, the Anger Club, my life and how many countless more must be like it. “Freedom,” I whisper.

“You got it,” he says.

Life, most reckon you get to decide, get to make these decisions, take these choices, but who knows which ones to take? What are you supposed to decide on? Use your reason, use intellect, try to do something for yourself that will hurt or have a negative impact on the least amount of people around you, right?

Shit.

Who knows why you decide on one path rather than the other. Could be that stuff, could be a lot of other reasons. Things done to you, things you’ve done, circumstances you’ve found yourself in, a smile from a friend, a hug from a relative, a fist to the face from an Anger Club trainer, the stitches and nanografting of skin over torn muscle with no anaesthesia. It all adds up and then, at some point there comes a major juncture. Not something small, nothing every day, it’s something monumental, something once in a lifetime, something that changes everything.

What was I back then? Some kid that taken in, turned into a fighting machine by some T>O<X addict fuckhead serial Anger Club fight trainer named Kilgore with a penchant for young girls and big fights. He put me through hell and then when I escaped and I did something for myself for once in my life; they kidnapped me again. Kidnapped twice, once by him and then again by the Fractals.

There at that moment, Flint standing next to me in the medical bay as we looked out the skylight window and watched the spaceships buzzing passed thinking of all those people down on Earth. That moment when I had a choice, my freedom or theirs, to fight for myself or for something bigger. That was one of those moments and that was two-hundred years ago now.

I stepped up.

They took me through the rites, one step at a time, and with each step it became harder, and with each step I became wiser, and with each step I wanted it more. Wanted that thing, to fight for freedom. Wanted that power, the power that I never had and was always being used against me. I wanted to feel it, and with each step I took towards it, the Fractals knew to wrap me across the knuckles and make sure I knew what I found within myself. What I was gathering up in me, and what I would use it for.

What I had in me, what I had in front of me.

Years and years and years. I laughed at myself when I thought back on the training for the Anger Club, what Kilgore put me through. Simple shit, no problem, child’s play.

See, the battle back there was always easy because it was with someone else. Some other thing or person, and I had no choice. They placed me there, and it was do or die. I had a battle; I had a fight; it was right in front of me, I could see it, feel its fists against my body, understand its rage against my being, know its fear and use it against it.

Like I said, easy.

When they brought me up in front of the Tannhäuser Gate and the Fractal Lords performed their rites. That’s when I came to know what real hardship was, that’s when I came to find the real battle.

That moment is when the real fun began, because it showed me what the biggest fight was, what the ultimate battle was, what my biggest enemy was. It wasn’t anything I’d face on the outside; it would always be what I’d face on the inside.

It was me. It is me.

Then it came, another choice, the choice to face it, to face them, her, me, I.

That’s when the real fight began, so I stepped up and the real work began.

Now, after all these years fighting that thing within me, what have I learned, why have they released me, how did I become a Fractal True?

It didn’t come during any weapons training; it didn’t happen in the simulated theatres of war or in the physics and weaponry and metallurgy classes. No, it happened when it needed to happen, and when I was sitting and breathing.

Breathing.

That epiphany, that revelation, the battle will always be there, no matter how hard you fight. That internal struggle is one fight you can never win but you can come to understand it. Do not fight it, negotiate with it. Do not kill it, live with it. Align with it, work with it, and you will have more strength than you ever thought imaginable.

That was a hundred years ago now, and I’m still learning, still facing that battle every day, the one within, still understanding, but that’s what makes this shit easy.

I look up, the gigantic Cosmic Samurai mech warlord standing there in the rubble of the decimated city, and a smile grows across my face.

A brilliant purple-red fire rages around his monstrous torso, smoke billowing, his formidable laughter echoing over me, reverberating through my chest.

“They sent you?” he says with an epic growl, his voice as colossal as his stature. There’s contempt there, but he’s still drawn his gigantic Katana, and still posed steady in a fighting stance. “Only you?”

I laugh back, tentacles scratching, my blade at my side. This is the easy part because I have that internal strength, I am Fractal; we are many and one.

“This will be fun,” I say as my tentacles explode out of my back, the fight for the freedom of others is here, the battle within fuelling me as I step forward.

Artist Bio: A graphic designer from Appleton, Wisconsin, USA. His short films have screened at onedotzero, Prix Ars Electronica, the Sydney Biennale, Ann Arbor Film Festival and many others. He has also released a series of Creative Commons live visuals that have been used by electronic acts such as deadmau5, Skrillex, Avicii, Zedd, Taio Cruz, Tiësto, Amon Tobin, Wolfgang Gartner, and Flying Lotus and many others. He currently releases work on Flying Lotus’ Brainfeeder imprint.

Artist Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/beeple_crap/

Artist website: http://beeple-crap.com

Writer Bio: A science-fiction writer with a penchant for cyberpunk, neo-noir and existentialism, Richard hails from the UK and currently lives in Denmark working for LEGO while hammering away at short stories and his latest sci-fi manuscript.

Writer medium: https://medium.com/@ricgalbraith

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