But I can’t find it. It doesn’t matter how often I work the trigger, or how close I hold the muzzle to my eye. I can’t find what should have been mine.

I reach for the chemical reservoirs in my suit, but they’re already empty, their contents already boiling in my blood. I’m coming down too quickly for another dose to make much difference, anyway. I’d need two more hits to start a heart attack, and three to make it stick. To get dead enough that another C-SAR won’t make the mistake of trying to bring me back.

Fuck.

All that, all the fire poured across my skin, and there’s still a chance I might survive.

The thought carries me along a railgun scar, carved metres deep through the mud. Between huge footprints, and a field of broken plating and debris.

Back to my Spirit, struggling to stand.

I reach for it, and take its hand; not skin on steel, but mind to mind.

But the sync is too low from where I am. The machine turns to look at me, not understanding the command. It queries my suit, tries to find a way of telling me to sit down, to wait for evac, to say that it will get me out.

I march closer, fighting for access. I don’t know what my numbers are, not without the helmet, but that doesn’t matter. I tear at it, force my way past its mindless objections.

“Give your hand to me.”

I find muscle, make it bend with priority codes and adrenaline. I’ve never had to work so hard for connection, but the Spirit isn’t used to fighting back.

I force the hand, and ball it into a fist above the old shell’s head, ready to come crashing down on me. The machine tries to pull away, but it’s already too close to what I need it to do, its hindbrain systems demanding that it do as I say.

What’s one more dead jockey, more greasy ashes worked between its fingers? It’s killed before, and it will again. NorCol will make sure of it.

It might as well start here, with me.

KILL ME.

The Spirit fights back. It lets me have the right hand, but takes the connections to the left and locks them down, out of my reach. I can’t beat it. Blood stings my eye and smoke turns in my chest, doubles me over and tries to force my lungs out through my swollen throat.

The Spirit takes the opening. Its free arm swings around and takes hold of the one under my control. It laces one set of fingers in between the other—and twists.

The wrist fails first, and then the knuckles, joints popping out at odd angles. Eventually, the machine pulls its whole hand out at the roots.