The mechanical vulture—the Scavenger—didn't move like a bird. It moved like a corrupted video file, frame-skipping through the air. One second it was a speck against the "Internal-Error" gray sky; the next, it was close enough for me to see the rust on its saw-blade wings. Every time it flapped, it made a sound like a chainsaw hitting a metal pipe.
"Get down!" I lunged for the younger version of myself—Version 4—tucking him and Nix’s frozen body under a jagged ledge of glass-data.
The Scavenger shrieked. It wasn't a bird’s cry; it was a high-frequency burst of white noise that made my ears bleed. I felt the vibration in my molars. It dived, its talons—jagged hooks made of literal code-symbols—tearing through the "snow" right where I had been standing.
"Why won't it go away?" the little
