A choked whimper left Valerie’s lips as she was slammed against the backboard of the bed, and had Jinu’s hand locked around her throat. His fingers tightened, feeling like he was trying to crush her wind pipe. Something that he would have no trouble doing.

AI might have been terrible, but even the most basic of androids would still outperform the average human in physical feats of strength and endurance.

But Valerie was far from average, she was well below it.

Her hands weakly slapped at his steel arm, trying to bat it away, before she started to claw at his fingers to no avail. Her heart thundered in her chest, as she could feel each pulsation in the blood vessels of her head.

Panic completely over took her and rational thoughts became harder to grasp as her brainw was starved of oxygen and she moved completely on instinct. But instinct was failing her, in the face of mechanical prowess.

As her breath ran out, and her life began to flash before her eyes, the last few months flashed in front of her. In her last moments of consciousness, Valerie used all of her dwindling, oxygen starved brain power to stir up her bloodline.

The mana in her body bubbled and boiled, as a magnetic force suddenly generated from her body, forcing away the fingers around her throat.

The force wasn’t enough to break them, or even completely remove them. But it was enough to loosen the grip enough for her to suck in some strained breaths, while Jinu was confused by what was happening.

He tilted his head, looking at his fingers as they were forced open despite his grip being perfect.

Valerie sucked down another half breath and finally gained enough to get her brain working at a capacity able to think rationally.

She thrust her hand forwards, planting it against the robots chest, as sparks of electricity crackled around her fingertips.

Jinu’s head whipped down towards her hand, just in time for him to watch helplessly as bolts of lightning leapt from her fingertips and buried themselves into his chest. His body eagerly accepted the charge and quickly began to convulse as his mechanics went haywire.

His grip of Valerie’s throat released, letting her finally gasp in lungfuls of air before coughing violently, as her throat was red raw with marks from his fingers.

She slammed her other hand against him, doubling the voltage that she forced through him, until finally the twitching robot started to smoke and fell backwards, completely still as his systems shut off. The mask that she had stapled to his face so long ago finally fell, revealing the soulless mechanical face of the standard android model as "Jinu’s" face became a crackling fire on the ground.

"What... THE FUCK.... was that?" Valerie said between heaving breaths and violent coughs. She rubbed her throat, wincing at the jolts of pain that brought her.

A thousand thoughts ran through her mind. What had caused Jinu’s turn? Was it a hacker? A glitch in his AI? Has something happened in the outside world that was affecting him here?

What about Percy, what had happened to him? Was he really away or did he get attacked too? Was he alright? Was he even still alive? What was the deal with those damned Waffles!?

{System Malfunction Detected. System Reboot in Progress}

A mechanical voice came from Jinu’s body, before the robot shuddered and twitched on the ground. Its eyes turned blue, and a small bar appeared in its eyes, as it loaded and refreshed its system for a clean reboot.

Panic immediately took over Valerie’s body as she scrambled across the bed, having to drag herself with just her arms since her legs didn’t work. Her bloodline stirred as she cast a hand out to her chair and dragged it across the ground towards her.

She quickly fell into it, wincing at the shooting pain in her legs from the hurried movement, but she cast it aside. She immediately strapped herself in, constantly glancing at the twitching and rebooting Jinu, before wheeling herself out of the room as fast as she could.

The moment that she left the door, was the same moment that she heard a soft humming noise followed by a melodic chime as the reboot was complete.

Jinu sat up quickly, his soulless eyes scanning the room before he launched himself to his feet with a push off the ground. He hooked his hand underneath the bed and lifted it up, so that he could remove the gun that was stashed underneath it.

A gun that belonged to neither Valerie, nor Percy, and yet was here all the same. Just in case of situations like this.

He cocked it with trained expertise then immediately headed out the room, aiming down the corridor as he stepped out the door. However the mechanical man staggered back as a bolt of lightning struck him in the chest, burning a hole through his shoulder and wreaking havoc in his circuits. Although not nearly enough.

Jinu raised the gun, training the iron sights onto the rolling Valerie as she looked over her shoulder in horror before he squeezed the trigger.

With a whisper quiet puff the gun launched its projectile down the corridor, only for it to suddenly veer off course as Valerie suddenly whipped her arm behind her, deflecting it with her Bloodline.

She quickly sent another two bolts of lightning back at Jinu, forcing the robot to take cover, as she turned the corner and darted towards the door of the security bunker.

Fumbling with the door controls, Valerie finally got it open and rushed out, shooting herself through the waterfall hiding the door, before screeching to a halt.

Three men stood before her, each of them dressed in crisp black suits, as they stood at even intervals to completely block her in. The man in the middle, possibly the leader of the group, raised a curious eyebrow at her waterlogged appearance. But that was all they did.

They did not move and did not speak. Yet they had frozen Valerie in place just by their presence, as her bloodline could feel all of the metal filling their bodies.

She could feel the sub-dermal armour plating underneath their skin, their military grade ocular implants and replacement limbs. She could feel that these men were the pinnacle blend of man and machinery.

But she could also sense something more. Beneath the machinery, there was mana. All three of these men had sources.

Jinu stepped through the waterfall, firing his gun once more. This time it landed, thanks to Valerie’s distracted mindset.

The dart that it fired sunk into her shoulder, and within moments her vision turned black as she slumped in her chair and was dragged into unconsciousness.