The air in the simulated courtyard thickened, turning from the scent of charcoal to the sterile, suffocating smell of a server room. Nala stood frozen, her hand inches away from the entity that wore her mother’s face. The warmth she had felt moments ago was being replaced by a stinging static discharge.
"Sing it, Nala," the apparition of Muteteri Bwire urged, her voice now layered with the mechanical hum of a thousand cooling fans. "Complete the cycle. Bring the peace of the machine to the chaos of the flesh."
Nala looked at the woman’s hands again. The microscopic drones were swarming like black sand, vibrating with a hunger that made her skin crawl. Behind the apparition, the figure of Leo or the shell Elisha was inhabiting loomed in the doorway. The green veins in his neck were pulsin
