Waves of nanoware were sweeping through Orlando’s body, shutting down nerves and sealing off blood vessels to minimise the shock of invasion, leaving a moist pink residue on the rubble as flesh was read and then cannibalised for energy. Within seconds, all the waves converged to form a grey mask over his face, which bored down to the skull and then ate through it. The shrinking core of nanoware spat fluid and steam, reading and encoding crucial synaptic properties, compressing the brain into an ever-tighter description of itself, discarding redundancies as waste. Inoshiro stooped down and
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