Humanity 2.0, Year 055, Day 301

I growled, still not having quite grasped the enormity - the evil - of Miller's creation. "It looks to me like you already have everything you wanted." I waved one open hand widely. "You've taken everything you need to conquer the world - you had it years ago. Forget about us. We're history."

He shook his head, already knowing the answer. "Conquer, yes... it's on the horizon. Maybe even before I die. Hold it? Not so much. That's where you come in - you can change the equation. You have the secret to making people think straight, and you just sit on it.

"You're a slippery bastard, I'll give you that, Ben. It's taken me this long to finally corner you, and even an idiot can tell I don't have long for this world - but I'll be damned if I let an opportunity like what you have just pass me by. I have four kids, Ben. I want better for my children than what people like you would leave them."

I knew better than to put much stock in whatever rationalization he'd been rehearsing in his mind for the past decade. "Yeah, okay. It's all for the sake of the world. You're such a wonderful guy, going to all this length to blow shit up for world peace." I glared right back at him. "Drop it, Miller. This is you being an even greedier son of a bitch than ever."

He shrugged, giving me a wide smile. "Them's the breaks, though." He shook his head. "I never expected you to see eye to eye with me, Ben. You see, it takes a certain kind of hubris to change the world; you would never really understand. Who do you think made more of a mark - Alexander the Great, Genghis Khan, Napoleon... or clowns like Plato and Confucius? It's damn galling that someone as idealistic as you managed to go toe to toe with me so long, but this is the end of the game. This is where things really start to happen."

He nodded to the formation of ghilmen surrounding us, who fell in closer. One ghilman's hand had a set of wicked and razor-sharp claws, the other held some kind of contraption with - oh hell, whatever it was was sharp enough to be a needle, but far, far too wide. It was nearly as thick around as one of the girls' pinkies... and if I recognized the hardware, that was a semi-autonomous control unit on the side - what the hell was the thing meant to do?

They had me on my knees in an instant, and before I knew it, I was in agonizing, terrible pain. Fire ripped open of my neck and blasted my body to pieces, and soon I couldn't even think of anything than the horrible pain. Something was inside my spine, inside my... oh fuck, inside my brain. What were they doing, I had no idea, and couldn't even think enough to speculate. I had to get it out, get it out, get it out -

I knew my body was struggling, trying to escape, but they were even stronger than me individually - and there were two, maybe three, holding me. They had my joints locked, all in a perfect formation to prevent even small motions from interfering with their work. Nina, who I could see now was being held, and even Wren, unconscious and bleeding from her nose, were also being held back by ghilmen, who held them fast - unable to help me.

The searing pain began to subside after an eternity or two. I had no idea how long it had been, and had never experienced pain like I had just then. The word alone is insufficient; I couldn't begin to truly describe what it was. Even now, I can't sleep when I think of it too much. My thoughts were utterly scrambled, and much like waking up when one is deathly ill, I couldn't even remember where I was or why I was there... only that I felt awful.

Through the haze of pain, I could hear the girls shouting my name over and over. Their warm bodies soon were on my bare skin; the ghilmen must have released the girls from their holds. Weird. Why would they do that? The odd thought drifted through my head, along with other, equally important speculation such as who would win this year's World Cup and why that particular cloud had chosen to look like a hippopotamus. Didn't he know hippos were assholes?

The ghilmen were standing around me in a formation again as my thoughts gathered again. When I could realize the concept of focusing, I did it, drawing myself together and bringing me back to the here and now - a decision that immediately seemed terrible. I must have been unconsciously shutting out the residual pain from my ordeal by retreating to la-la-land, and now I was experiencing it in incredible detail. I felt like I had to be screaming louder than anything, but the girls tell me I didn't make a sound the whole time - I just fell to the ground afterward, trembling and soon covered with the mud covering the earth.

"Good, good... finally... wait." I heard Miller's voice. Miller. The fucker hadn't had enough of hurting me? I turned my head - oh fucking hell my neck - and glared upward at him, spitting out half a mouthful of mud in the process.

He was now holding out a hand toward the ghilman who held the hated pain-machine - it had a small canister which was now likely full of... whatever they'd taken. The bloody needle, far thicker than any I'd seen used for medicine before, was still dripping. The ghilman turned toward Miller, impassive.

"The docs said we needed a sample from the brain - hippocampus? - not the spine. Check your orders. Do it again." He was sounding impatient, and gestured toward me.

The ghilman remained impassive. Zee, who had been looking at me before, was now focused on him... and had a subtly different expression. I sensed something... wrong, even through the pain. An almost imperceptible shift, yet profound. My immediate instinct blared over every mental loudspeaker I had. Get the hell out of here. Now.

Miller must not have gotten the memo. From the way Nina was trying to lift me by my arm, maybe she had. Miller was saying something else now, practically shouting at his ghilmen.

The double-tap that ended Miller's life rang out, twice in quick succession, a tiny sliver of an instant after his chest erupted with blood. I tried to see where it came from, eyes training around before I finally spotted the flashing muzzle - one of Naglfar's guns wasn't aimed at us. Miller collapsed forward onto his knees, then was caught by two ghilmen on either side of him.

Our eyes met right then - and I think that was the only time I ever saw him afraid. I hate to admit - I'd always wanted it to be fear of me, when I finally beat him head-on in some scenario that never quite happened... that, just then, felt hollow. The ghilmen he'd helped create were something totally different than he or anyone else ever imagined, and he'd seen that only too late. His tool had been using him for years, and he'd outlived his usefulness.

The horrible noises involved in a man having his brain and spinal column removed with bladed weapons is, like the pain I experienced, indescribable. It was a gruesome thing, and I suppose I'm blessed that I was too focused on trying to regain my bearings and get away than I saw all but the barest hints through the corner of my eye - but it was still enough to give me nightmares for years to come.

They did it with brutal, yet practiced and surgical precision - severing the head and spinal column with a series of powerful motions with their combat knives. The woman had something, some kind of complex mechanical contraption that unfolded like a daddy-longlegs - and approached the two as they did... something horrible, cleaning the intervening flesh and bone from what was once Miller's head.

The thing Zee held fastened itself to Miller's brain and began digging long, sinuous filaments of itself within the flesh, still dripping blood. It looked much like the framework that she'd had before, that held the fallen ghilman's brain, but this was different... more brutal. Maybe the ghilman's skull already was designed to be recovered this way?

A hatch opened, and a similar cable-like arm gripped the daddy-longlegs-thing with a claw - then quickly retracted the severed brain into the massive hull of the Naglfar unit... for some undoubtedly even more horrible fate within.

It wasn't clear, even then, what kind of monster Naglfar was. It was something almost beyond the concept of evil itself - it understood us, what made us tick, down to the last thought... but not a hint of that ever made it feel anything for us, or made it want to try and live with us. It was, however, soon abundantly clear that the thing now knew everything Miller ever knew; it even impersonated him, though mostly through his corporate attorneys.

For some reason, Naglfar - even in the later years when its technology was well beyond our understanding - seemed reluctant to impersonate humans and hominus directly. Was it that it hated us that much, that it couldn't even stand to pretend being human or hominus even for a few minutes - or was it simply incapable of that, perhaps only able to absorb the raw information in the brains it... added, to itself?

The ghilmen around us fell into formation and began to walk away, almost silently. I was confused for a few moments - why leave now? They have us right where they wanted us. I'd half-expected to be the next brain Naglfar... ate, or whatever it did. It was unnerving to think that the giant hull above was filled with who knew how many formerly human brains, converted into something else. Maybe the girls could have gotten away, at least. I'd have physically thrown them if I needed to - or had even been able to.

The whole time, the Naglfar itself hovered in the hair, its single red sensor cluster focused on me. Zee, too, only stared at me briefly, then backed away with the rest of the ghilmen. I spat out a glob of thickening blood, and looked back up at it. "What do you want?"

It never responded - then, or ever. Naglfar never spared a single word for me or anyone else among the living. To this day, I can only speculate as to why it left us all alive that day; maybe it thought we might be useful in the future, or maybe it didn't want to throw away whatever biological resources it might find in our DNA for future integration into itself.

Those are two of the more popular theories, anyhow. I myself sometimes suspect that the reason may not truly be comprehensible to we who still largely think in human and hominus terms. Naglfar may have understood us - but it was mostly certainly not... us.

The hulking shell that contained who knew how many half-dead human brains rose up on its hyperfans, its unblinking red eye never breaking the gaze I locked with it until it was no longer visible. It turned, and sped away over the horizon, leaving us in the cold morning air of Siberia - beaten yet alive.

Nina finally spoke, an unconscious Wren resting her head on Nina's lap. "What the hell just happened?"

I had no response; we could only exchange glances. There was no telling what it would do next. It was long gone by the time we sent more surveillance drones over Miller's abandoned camp - its small army of state-of-the-art ghilmen having vanished as well. I kept expecting the monster to reappear soon, to tip the balance of power in the many wars raging at the time - but a full decade passed without a single hint of it. When it did come back, though...

We resumed building Elysium, more because we couldn't think of anything else to do. Our naivete was quickly done away with; every hominus facility we ran was soon armed to the teeth. In time, I recovered as well - the damage was more mental than physical, Bethany said. I knew I lost something - but what? Before 15226 changed me, she'd given me something... maybe she'd told me about it, maybe not - but it was gone now.

If only I knew what it was...