I promise, a memory whispered in a small, dark lab, a ruined Metal on the ground beside him, pleading with this girl with golden eyes. I will leave if you let me save you—

He jerked his head to the side and zeroed out the errant glitch.

“The Goddess must’ve already come,” said the girl, “and you’re too late—”

Mellifare snarled, and he felt the death threat in the song, wanting to snap the girl’s neck. To leave her body here to rot in this forgotten ruin—

Do not, he thought. Do not kill her—

But why did it matter?

The voice in his head was screaming, scratching against his skull.

And the next thing he knew, he had lunged toward Mellifare and caught her wrist to stop her. And they both froze. What—what had he just done? In horror, he wanted to let go. He needed to let go, but his hand would not cooperate.

The voice—it wailed in his head, so much louder than the song now.

Mellifare gave him a dangerous look. “Let go of me, brother.”

“I—I—I cannot,” he replied, and his hand holding Mellifare’s shook in terror.

Her eyes narrowed.

Suddenly, a spike of pain drove through his skull like a javelin, hurling through his programs, grabbing his ligaments like puppet strings, and his hand dropped hers. He could not stop himself. He could only watch as his body shoved the Empress against the far wall and pressed his lower arm against her throat, pinning her with his weight.

Mellifare patiently began to back up the stairs as the song tore through his head, telling him to crush her windpipe. The bones of the Goddess rattled on the ground, crumbling under his heel.

The girl gasped for breath, her eyes wide.

There is a grenade in her coat, Mellifare told him, and his hand did as she commanded and reached into her sage coat pocket. He found the grenade and brought it out, and he was helpless as his thumb brushed the pin.

Mellifare turned back for a moment from the middle of the stairs. “Brother, if you want to be hers, why not die with her?”

Die—

The word rang in his ears.

Die.

The girl gave him a frightened look. His hand shook, his thumb prying off the pin.

He was—

That was his—

“She’s wrong,” she whispered, and she stopped trying to claw away his arm and put a hand on his cheek. Her touch was soft and warm and—and she—she smiled. At him. Even though she was frightened. “You were mine, and I was yours. I was always yours, Di.”

Di.

Mellifare made his thumb pluck the grenade pin out. And the glitch in his head screamed—

I AM, it roared. I AM.

A voice that sounded—it sounded like—

Like him.

Electricity curled across his body, lashing up from the floor like vines. His hair levitated with static, the buttons on his intricate midnight cloak sparking. The song crackled, digging its claws deeper. It hurt—everything hurt so much. The song wailed, and the voice inside his head screamed, and between every red thread of code and angry integer, suddenly—there she was, this girl with golden eyes and a scar of constellations and a voice that was soft and sure—