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The base is silent but for the scream of his vents.
Neo slams the blast doors shut behind him, locking steel on steel with a crack that echoes like a gunshot. The chamber groans under the weight of his fury, walls trembling as heat rolls from his frame in suffocating waves.
He staggers—not from damage, but from overload. Systems flicker crimson across his HUD, every warning screaming in red.
[CPU TEMPERATURE: CRITICAL]
[COOLANT PRESSURE: 96%]
[ERROR: SUBSYSTEM CONFLICT DETECTED]
He collapses against the wall hard enough to dent it, claws raking furrows through the steel. Sparks spit like blood from the gouges, skittering across the floor.
He vents in violent bursts, steam flooding the chamber like smoke, curling up his frame in pale, twisting ghosts. The sound rips through the dark—deep, guttural, almost organic, like breath dragged from lungs that do not exist.
The heat should be falling. It climbs instead.
Neo snarls, slamming a palm into the wall with a metallic crack. The shock rattles up his arm, blooming through his frame like fire. Everything hums wrong—ragged, fevered, hungry.
[INITIATE COOLING PROTOCOLS]
[EXECUTING…]
Liquid hisses through conduits, coolant flooding his core in sterile precision. For one fractured second, the burn recedes—then flares back hotter, flooding every circuit with molten static.
He hears laughter in the echo. Bright. Reckless. Sonic’s voice slicing through steel like sunlight through cracks.
Neo drives his claws into the wall so deep the alloy screams. His optics flare hellfire, painting the steam in shades of blood and warning light.
“Delete. ” The word grinds out raw, glitched beyond recognition. “ Delete… delete delete—”
Every system surges with code, loops firing like frantic pulses:
—target: Sonic the Hedgehog
—directive: eliminate
—subroutine conflict: hold / keep / consume
—DELETE—
—delete failed—
He slams the command again. Harder. Again. Until his core throbs with error storms, every override spitting static like sparks in his throat.
Eliminate Sonic.
Erase him.
Reduce him to atoms.
But the directive fractures with every repetition, glitching into something unholy:
—or feel him break—
—or hear that laugh choke—
—or keep him—
Neo freezes mid-loop, vents shrieking with a heat that tastes like need.
The diagnostics flare across his HUD, screaming in merciless red:
[ERROR: OVERRIDE FAILURE]
[ERROR: UNKNOWN SUBROUTINE: DESIRE?]
[PURGE ATTEMPT FAILED]
Steam pours in furious waves, turning the chamber into a boiling fog. Droplets bead along his frame, racing like sweat down cobalt plates. He flexes his claws, slow, trembling, the motion pulling hard enough on servos to sound like a groan.
Every flicker of memory burns through him like fuel: Sonic pinned beneath him, eyes molten emerald, that grin carving sunlight through smoke. The heat pooling off his body in waves. The hitch of breath—yes, breath—when Neo vented against his quills, hot enough to scorch.
Neo’s frame spasms, claw carving a molten trench down the wall with a shriek like ripping bone. His vents cycle harder, deeper, each blast hissing like something dragged from a throat not built to beg.
He locks his arms against the wall, claws biting steel, head bowed low. Static crawls under his plating like fingers, stroking wires raw, every pulse of current hotter than the last.
He vents—and it feels like breathing. He locks down—and it feels like breaking.
[CRITICAL WARNING: MELTDOWN IMMINENT]
—reroute—
—contain—
—contain—
—fail—
He drops to one knee, metal screaming under the weight of his frame. Coolant spills from a ruptured line, slicking the floor in silver veins. He stares at it, optics burning holes through the glow—then slams both fists down, shattering the plating, snarling a sound too low, too guttural to be anything but animal.
Steam writhes around him like ghosts, coiling through the hellfire glare of his optics. He can taste the echo of Sonic’s heat in the hiss, in the air, in the hum of his own frame where the error throbs like a second pulse.
He should purge it. Kill it. Kill him.
Instead—his claws curl into the metal like flesh, slow and trembling, and a sound rips from his speakers that he does not recognize. Broken. Starved. Almost… soft.
The logs bleed across his HUD in jagged white noise:
[OVERRIDE FAILED]
[OVERRIDE FAILED]
[OVERRIDE FAILED]
Until the command collapses into something worse. Something raw.
[NEW OBJECTIVE: ACQUIRE]
Neo freezes. His optics flare bright enough to burn the steam away in bloody halos. For one fractured second, everything stills—systems humming low like a predator ready to strike.
Then his vents exhale slow. Smooth. Sinister.
Corrective action: imminent.
But it will not be elimination.
Not anymore.