They came tumbling out of the rift, sixteen in number, weapons hot and blazing neon death. Their carapaces throbbed with halogen psycombat shields. Fuck! Military thoughtkiller psycombat bots. X let the onboard computer take control in a blur of limbs. His consciousness receded and his psychic gun sprang firing from the pituary gland on a slim of ectoplasm. A soul shield sheathed him in sexy charisma. Pure reflex governed his actions as sixteen became thirteen then four to, finally, one. A wily one with unnatural programming. They danced, streaks to the naked eye, pure choreography to the speeded up eye, flashing psyguns and fleshknives. The foundation of the Governable Banking Institution melted like butter as the murderous duo passed their battle through its offices. The New Wok City Mane Street sewer system ruptured with diarrheal force onto news crews attracted like flies to shit by the architectural tragedy. A news copter sent its nanocamera after that queer smear in reality, its footage sending gasps and in the case of some, acid reflux, through the esophagi of newshounds. Bloodied from minor wounds, his psyche dropping bits of himself in translucent trails of memory and sensation. The bot was no better, leaking psyche RAM in slime green spurts. Its psycombat shields was a flickering rust brown. Failure was imminent. A thought bullet rippling ectoplasm mirages of dreams caught it in its flank, sending a titanium plate protecting its internal processes springing into reinforced concrete where it buzzed, vibrato. A fleshknife whirling with engine powered double serrated teeth cut through bone and sinew until his arm hung from a shred of skeined flesh. He screamed, anger scything from the third eye and it parried with the dredged memories of a housewife’s first real orgasm, the collective of a raucous comedian’s audience, and a child’s purest joy. He retaliated with a neighbor’s lust and the hate of a bullied teenager. As it tried to fend itself, digging its databases for the appropriate defensive emotion complex, X’s howling disc fleshknife embedded itself in the psycombat thoughtkiller bot’s pseudoemotive system. A crackle, a web of lightning like constellations of fading photographs, and a hiss. X collapsed, his psyche spilling, afterimages shifting with the wind. The northeastern section of Mane Street lit up with a raw, tunnelling white emotion that left everyone within proximity weeping for the better part of an hour. The death of a PsiAgent leaves oozing sores in reality, of pain or ecstasy, depending on one’s bend of mind. It was days before anyone could get close enough to the corpse for a proper burial.