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7’s avatar floats in your weapon’s sights, distorted into a pink-blue-green ring by the gravitational lens between you. But you’re sure no matter how much you can amplify this attack, striking 7 head on is futile. You shift your aim and see her body down on the floor below, glowing with a faint aura, stretched into an arc halfway around your program’s event horizon. You fire.

Your multicolored laser bends around the supergravity simulation just as intended, hitting its target head on. 11’s weak barrier shatters under your beam--you feel it give way--and 7’s body recoils, held in place by her magnetic boots. The glow fades from her eyes as the construct’s avatar collapses and dissolves in pale green light and an illusion of sound like shattered glass.

????-??-?? ??:??:?? 7 > no!! 11!

Her avatar dives back down toward her dissociated body--empty pink eyes staring out at nothing--and leaver her æthermechanical armor floating above. You launch yourself off the conduits to a rough landing on the floor, but get your boots on the ground and stabilize yourself with your magnets.

“Aydan!” Zeta’s voice calls out on the surface. You feel it and Akiko’s signals moving toward you in the near-æther. 30 seconds have passed--they made it across. Akiko’s æthereal cable whip manifests in her hands, while Zeta cloaks itself in glitchy distortion ætherside. They run to your side as 7 reaches her body. The æthermech “2,” running autonomously, locks onto you and your companions.

You raise your weapon, invisible to your eyes but ready to strike in her moment of weakness--even experienced technopaths need a second or two for reassociation. You know it would probably cause serious damage, and disrupt her focus on her active programs. She’s also in reach--another option crosses your mind--her interface collar, you could disable her technopathy entirely, but forcibly resurfacing a technopath is always risky. Either way could result in unpredictable psychological damage.