The air in the atrium was clean and sweet, the pine boughs still growing in the living walls of the Roma bases main offices. You could almost not smell the burning flesh and gore that splashed the hallway behind them after the Yuuki finished off the last of the guards.

Yuuki had fought her way here with him, the two of them, chests heaving for a solid breath, as freedom was at last in sight.

The facility was mostly evacuated, the last three floors all but empty, but that also meant he was low on ammo. He was just glad this backwards country didn’t trust genelocked tech, the guns the soldiers had dropped were all still powder actuated style.

He tossed the wooden bodied Kalashnikov aside, pulling out the long curved saber he had taken off one of the wardogs after he had changed back.

Lud could see more of them out there through the amber resin windows, rows of them standing behind barricades. Barking and howling, their clothing gone except for the harnesses that held their weapons.

Even as tired as they were though, he wasn’t scared.

The onslaught of soldiers and wardogs they had already passed was nothing. He could see a few spidertanks, sure, but it was only three. Yuuki was faster than they were.

Their spiderhaulers clicked up behind him, carrying the last two pods.

He had refused to leave them, not wanting to risk the Roma getting even a shred of their work.

“How’re you feeling Yu?”

She looked down at him, the plated armour around her face clinking like glass chimes.

“<Tired>”

The force of the thought hit him, his nosebleed returning. He was glad he wasn’t weak minded. When he was young his test scores had brought him to the Roma to get evaluated for military school, but in the interim his parents had had him tested for PK as well. It was why he was so smart, gleaning books just by touching them, and his capabilities in PK was what had taken him on to live in the Americas, and eventually Canada where the civil war had claimed his arm.

He flexed his biomech arm, then looked at the pods.

“<No>”

Yuuki reached out, her massive clawed hand blocking his path to the pods.

He shook his head, “If it comes down to it, I won’t hesitate, Yu, this is too important.” He hugged her, his head resting against her chest, the sound of her heart, and her new heart beating almost in perfect synch.

She pet his head.

A bullhorn squelched outside.

He couldn’t make it out over the hum of her body, the kinetic shielding covering her skin made a crackle as he held her.

It didn’t matter, such myopic fools could never convince him to give in and be taken alive.

“Yu, I need to use it, I need to prove it can work.”

He felt it then, a pang in the connection between them, a pause in her heartbeat that~

“That’s it!”

He grabbed her waist, resting his forehead against her breast. He felt her pulling back, but even as she did he found the chink in her mental armour that it made and latched on.

He blinked, finding himself floating in a dark void, it was just like with the tests with the mouse in the lab. Their minds were syncing up, a clicking was all around him, nodes tied to him as he felt the dark, he was distinctly aware he was both here inside Yuuki, as well as standing in front of her.

“Can you hear me?”

“Yes,” her voice sounded deep, guttural, but it didn’t hurt this time, just echoed a little around him in the void.

He couldn’t help but laugh, “Oh Yuuki, you’re the mouse.”

Connected as they were, their minds now one she could already see what he was thinking.

They had used mice with their motor functions disconnected to connect them to the mini kevin, so they had used PK to control the test subject.

He opened his mind further into hers, moving her hands, felt her resist him, and yet it wasn’t hard to take control from her either.

“Don’t… like…,” she whispered.

He pulled back, the feeling like being pulled out of cold water that he had been plunged into face first.

“Sorry,” he mumbled. He looked around, the soldiers here were dead, no use there.

He looked out through the window, they needed a live subject.

“Yu, can I do that again?”

She shudders, but quickly nodded.

He closed his eyes, made contact, and then turned her towards the hall, back the way they’d come. He opened her cranial plate using the clicks she made to see. The echolocation lit up the darkness as she made her little clicks and whistles, soundwaves rebounding and crackling like background radiation. And in seconds he found what he needed.

He found the closet-like door, a panic room of sorts in actuality. Yuuki tore the door from the hinges with little effort, she then grabbed two of the people there, bullets practically bouncing off her hide and the shield taking the brunt.

The man she grabbed first looked a lot like Lud in fact, so much so even Lud was curious.

He begged and pleaded in Roma, some crap about how he was just an analyst.

Lud didn’t care.

An analyst in a POW internment camp, was still a monster of complacency as far as his beat body was concerned.

“Sit,” he commanded the man.

“Please… please… I have a family,” he lied.

Obviously he had no idea that connected to Yuuki like he was, Lud’s already impressive mind reading and PK abilities were even higher.

The man sat down, held around his middle by Yuuki, while Lud carefully activated the second pod.

The second kevin stood up slowly, it’s body identical to the first that Yuuki had merged with.

They had lobotomized the mouse for this procedure.

He grabbed the mans head.

“Hold him tight.”

The man whimpered and cried, but Yuuki’s claws held him fast as Lud worked with practiced precision and a letter opener to leave the man functional but brain dead.

It worked too well.

The man seized, collapsing back and foaming at the mouth.

Lud sighed, “Grab another.”

He looked them over, a woman in the back was a visiting general, she had been in the viewing area when Yuuki had attacked.

“Her.”

She didn’t struggle or resist, she just spit in his face as Yuuki held her head.

He wiped the mess off on his sleeve and slid the blade along her eye socket.

“Attempt two is usually as good, but here’s hoping for better results.”

She cried a little as the blade punched into her skull, but his aim was much better and the results, promising.

The kevin was clearly overwhelmed, feelers of psychic energy ranging out, the beast shying away from the frightened people they held captive, till it saw her.

Instantly it calmed, it reached out to the recently lobotomized general, her hand came up on its own, and she heaved to her feet as if pulled up like a marionette on too loose strings. She twitched and thrashed, removing her clothes as the two approached each other.

It was frightening to watch the kevin split open down the front, pulling the woman inside without a sound.

“<Happy>”

“What?”

He pushed past the headache from her thoughts.

“<It’s… happy…>”

The creature began to shake and convulse just like before, its flesh bubbling and twisting as it began to reshape itself to a new form. Oddly though, nothing like how Yuuki looked now.

Something terrifying.