And Shall Machines Surrender (Machine Mandate, #1)

by Benjanun Sriduangkaew

The force of their strike shatters a pane of obsidian behind her. She sidesteps in time: only just—Seung Ngo is unarmed but their proxy is weapon enough, fast, a tool of impact precisely delivered. Glass becomes hail as fine as diamond dust. For an instant the air is luminous, refracted rainbows caught and held in stasis. Time dilates, elastic and soft. Krissana assesses, split-second, which arm to sacrifice and then switches off her pain receptors. She blocks Seung Ngo’s fist—despite the absence of pain, it jars to the bone, seismic. Two times she withstands this, then three. She lurches from the fourth, into a cornucopia of glass woven like reeds. Seung Ngo is upon her at once and though she tries to kick and thrash there is a vast disparity—durability, strength, substance; she feels her bones bend, snap. A shoulder gone. They hit her again and her eye socket gives. An optic hisses as it falls free, dangling down her cheek on a pale tendril of coupling, warm and wet as tears.