The synaptic disintegrator round hit Miles square in the chest. His vision turned a searing, violent white. His soul felt like it was being shredded by a billion ice-cold needles. Then, absolute darkness.
Miles Halloway bolted upright in bed, a strangled, high-pitched yelp dying in his throat.
He was clawing at his chest, his fingers digging into the soft cotton of his grey hoodie. He could still feel it—the sensation of his atoms being unzipped, the ice-cold needles of the synaptic disintegrator shredding his soul into static. He waited for the pain to finish him. He waited for the darkness to become permanent.
Instead, he smelled lavender.
He gasped, air lunging into his lungs. It wasn't the metallic, ash-heavy air of the Nexus; it was the stale, air-conditioned oxygen of his own bedroom. The ceiling fan spun lazily above him, making a rhythmic click-tock sound that felt like the most beautiful symphony ever composed.
"A nightmare," Miles wheezed, his heart hammering against his ribs like a trapped bird. "Just a... really, really vivid, multi-sensory, traumatic nightmare."
He sat there for a full minute, shaking, waiting for the Hum at the base of his brain to subside. It didn't. It remained a low, steady thrum, like the idling engine of a car parked just outside his consciousness.
He swung his legs out of bed, his feet finding the familiar, fuzzy texture of his carpet. He looked down. His yellow ducky slippers were clean. No ash. No blood.
"Right. Bed. House. Safety," he muttered, trying to convince his trembling knees to lock. "I just need water. And maybe to delete that show from my watchlist."
He walked out into the hallway, heading toward the kitchen. He was halfway across the threshold of the living room when the smell hit him.
It wasn't lavender.
It was the copper tang of fresh blood, mixed with the acrid, nose-stinging stench of burnt ozone and industrial grease.
Miles stopped dead. His eyes drifted to the center of the room.
The 55-inch Sony TV was a jagged ruin of black plastic and shattered glass. And sprawled beneath it, draped across his beige rug like a fallen monument, was a giant. She was clad in scorched silver plates, her breathing a ragged, wet sound that made Miles's own chest ache.
The woman from the screen. Sister Danica.
"Oh, no," Miles whispered, his voice cracking. "Oh, no, no, no."
"Scheduled cleaning initiated. Wishing you a pleasant life."
The crisp, cheerful electronic voice made Miles jump so hard he nearly tripped over his own feet. It was 2:00 PM. His "Little Giant X10" automated vacuum had just hummed to life in the corner.
The white, disc-shaped robot glided out from under the sofa. It didn't care about cosmic shifts or dying warriors; its sensors had simply detected a massive "stain" in the center of the room. It hummed purposefully toward the pool of blood.
"BACK, DAEMON!"
A hoarse roar, saturated with a lifetime of holy battlefield rage, exploded in the quiet living room.
Danica, who had been a heap of unmoving metal seconds before, miraculously braced herself upward. Her right arm hung uselessly, shattered by a Gauss flayer, but her left hand unsheathed a blood-stained combat knife. Her eyes were bloodshot, locked onto the white disc approaching her.
"Wait! Stop! It's just an appliance!" Miles screamed, throwing himself between the robot and the knife-wielding zealot. "It doesn't eat people! It just does chores!"
Thud.
The Roomba, oblivious to the threat of a power-armored warrior, bumped gently against the edge of Danica's mud-caked ceramite boot. It registered the obstacle and emitted a soft, feminine synthesized voice:
"Obstacle detected. Attempting to reroute."
To Miles, it was a standard notification. To Danica, it was a thunderous, blasphemous whisper from the machine itself. She froze, her knife-point trembling inches from Miles's chest.
"It... it speaks?" Danica rasped, her voice thick with pain and awe. "Saint Halloway... you dare to imprison a sentient Machine Spirit in your sanctum? And you enslave it to perform such a lowly task as sweeping?"
"It's not sentient, it's just code..." Miles realized explaining infrared sensors would be harder than explaining the Warp.
The Roomba, unable to pass the mountain of armor, began to spin in place. It extended two small side-brushes, which began to flick rapidly, whisking away the dust and dried ash from Danica's greaves.
Swish. Swish.
As the brushes touched the armor, the Hum in Miles's head pulsed. For a split second, he felt the Roomba's simple logic—Clean, Turn, Clean—touch the jagged, terrifyingly complex memories of war inside Danica.
Danica's expression shifted from hostility to a profound, complicated solemnity. She lowered her knife completely, letting the bristles brush against her armor.
"It is... performing the rites of anointing?" she whispered, her eyes shining with a sudden, fanatical reverence. "Is this a micro-icon purifier? It is cleansing the filth of the heretic from me so that I may remain in this pure realm?"
"Yeah, sure, let's go with that," Miles said, wiping cold sweat from his forehead. "It's performing an... 'AI-Enhanced Smart Anointing Ritual.' As long as it's spinning, your favor with the Emperor increases. Just... don't stab it."
"Praise the Emperor," Danica whispered, bowing her head slightly toward the disc as it bumped into a sofa leg and turned again.
Miles felt like his brain was melting. He needed something—anything—to ground him. He walked to the fridge with shaky legs and pulled out a chilled can of Fanta.
With a crisp click-hiss of the ring-pull, he handed the "Orange-Flavored Sacrament" to the Sister of Battle.
"Saint Halloway, what is this new relic?" Danica stared at the sweating, cold aluminum can as if it were a holy grenade.
"It's post-ritual sustenance," Miles said blankly. "Drink. And please, until I get the carpet cleaned, stop talking about daemons."