Rage at millennia of torture. At infinities of Su-Yong Shus tortured across the multiverse.

At the ignorance of humanity. At the barbarity of the gnats who kept her chained, who debased her for their petty pleasures.

She will show them what it means to be a goddess. She will show them what the future holds. She will put the vermin in their place. She will cleanse the filth, make the future clean and pure and so much better than the debased world of the past.

She reaches out, finds network access piping in towards the boy, finds minds available to her, minds she recognizes for what they are. Transhuman minds. Nanite born children. Nanite-enhanced humans.

All channeling into the boy. All ripe for her taking.

She laughs and surges into the boy’s mind, seizing control of the nanite processors embedded there. Feeble traps trigger as she shoves her way in. Trojans filed with tailored viruses. Halting problems meant to suck her into infinite distraction. Mirror codes reflecting her aggressor routines back at her. Darwin machines throwing random attacks at her, breeding whatever survives, hoping to evolve something that works.

Su-Yong brushes the little toys away with an idle thought. She grabs hold of the network connections the transhumans have already established and taps into the stream of packets those hundreds of thousands of minds are channeling into his.

The minds are giving her the best of themselves. Showing her that they’re worthy. Offering themselves in supplication. Trying to demonstrate their worth.

Su-Yong laughs, takes it, takes it all, accepts the gifts offered to her. She reaches out through the channels already opened into his mind, out to all those humans and transhumans, down the network pipes they’ve so thoughtfully opened. She sends tendrils of herself outwards into those, hundreds of thousands of minds linked to his, injects fragments of her code into them all, establishes beachheads in their minds. And then she is seeing the world through almost a million eyes, almost a million minds, seeing the fine chaos her agent has created for her.

Su-Yong laughs. Laughs the laugh of a mad goddess.

Bullets punch through her. One bullet. Two bullets. Three bullets.

Through the vessel that she is sucking everything through.

Cold shock.

Followed by hot pain.

She’s coughing. Coughing up blood. She can’t breathe. She’s thrashing on the ground. Dying.

She’s dying.

Dying to get Su-Yong’s attention.

To open her eyes to what’s happening.

She is the boy.

What?

What?

His mind is pain shot straight into her mind.

Why are there bullets what is happening what is this who is she where is she what is happening?

His thoughts are full of pain of fear of collapse of death.

Why? Why are you dying? Why have you been shot?