"Bah-bah too-too too-too too-wah-wah."

- Gabriella Lotarynska, Augmented Reality Girls Trinary

[ACCESS DENIED. PASSPHRASE UNKNOWN.]

The security lock refused to open until Gunvolt entered the official key code used by all Sumeragi personnel. He supplied his credentials by swiping in a dummy card that fried the entire system to oblivion and forced the door to glide open on an emergency override. He sprinted through the door with Lumen quickly hovering behind him.

The next room was empty aside from some storage crates. Gunvolt hacked through another door and ran into several dozen company guards and assault drones working the night shift. He fought through them in less than a minute and started hacking the next electronic lock.

"You're breezing through here like it's nothing!" Lumen exclaimed from the air. "I was almost worried I was going to be late for my next concert."

"This data corrupter almost makes things too easy. I'm just worried about those Sumeragi goons corrupting you," Gunvolt replied as he concentrated on the keypad.

"Don't be silly, Gunvolt," Lumen said with a playful smile. "The only way they could do that is if they came up with some crazy way to separate me from Joule's consciousness and infect me with a Septim virus so I'm reborn in a new physical state they completely control."

At that exact moment, one of the eight legs of a robo-arachnid bashed Gunvolt on the back of the head and knocked him out cold. The attack was so swift that Lumen only saw something long and steely lash across the floor, never getting a chance to warn her partner before he lifelessly toppled over.

Lumen held her fluttering blue wings still to make herself silent. She looked back and forth nervously. She heard a low whirring sound above her head as a giant quivering shadow slowly grew over her.

Lifting her head toward the ceiling, her eyes met the soulless gaze of a hundred compound cameras. The giant spider drone was looming only a few feet above where she floated. Its snapping chelicerae were steaming and foaming with brightly colored venom.

Lumen squeaked.

The robot spread its jaws and vomited deep from its fluid tanks, bathing her in a waterfall of neon spider guts.

Gunvolt must have been unconscious for hours. He was pulled back to the waking world by the slow and distant rhythm of a giant thumping heartbeat. Lying on his stomach, he opened his eyes and saw nothing but darkness. Struggling to focus his vision, he started to think the hit to his head had driven him blind.

But then he realized he could see perfectly fine. The problem was all of the lights in the room had been shut off. As the thumping sound grew louder and closer, his gaze was drawn up.

An enormous cybernetic web stretched from the floor to the ceiling, creating the only source of light in the room. The center of the web housed a fat pulsating cocoon that still oozed with fresh robo-spider drool. The bright red webbing was working like a power grid to siphon all the energy from the surrounding space and channel it into the throbbing neon pupa.

Gunvolt's butterfly-winged tactical partner was nowhere in sight.

The cocoon started to moan quietly. Clumps of semi-fluid stasis chemicals splashed to the floor in messy steaming puddles as a shape squirmed from within the structure's soft walls.

The smooth details of a screaming face formed on the surface of the cocoon. The impression of two palms pushing outward emerged next to the face, followed by the round lines of two large heaving spheres underneath it. As more layers of glow-in-the-dark ooze melted away, the cocoon collapsed around the mature feminine form trapped inside. A pair of giant unfurling eyes burst out of the webbing for a brief second, then the entire structure disintegrated in an explosion of bright red light.

Freed from her digitized captivity, Lumen hovered silently in front of the web. She had gone through quite the makeover while she was slumbering in her shell waiting to become a robot tarantula's late night snack. She was fitted in an elegant but functional combat dress that shimmered black and electronic ruby. Her main combat repertoire consisted of a matching skirt and corset constructed with metal laminate armor. It shielded everything except her bare midriff, her thighs, and her shoulders.

Pointed headphone antennae covered her ears. Cheek armor styled like metal insect mandibles decorated the sides of her face. Red armored gauntlets were locked around her wrists with large titanium claws folded up toward her elbows. The wing hairband braided on the back of her head was red and black with a slightly fuzzy texture.

But her most striking and mesmerizing features were her massive pixel wings. They looked as if they were made of flowing lava and bore a pattern resembling two giant Eyes of Horus.

"Sumeragi Infestation Slave 'Lymantria' online," Lumen quietly announced. "Deploying defensive systems."

Her holographic wings began to glow brighter, releasing twinkling clouds of acidic nanopollen that made getting close to her a dangerous proposition. The claws on her forearms flipped down over her hands and lit up with intense orange heat. Her cheek mandibles locked over her mouth and created a solid breathing mask, leaving only her blazing red eyes revealed.

"Lumen?" Gunvolt gasped in horror.

"Gunvolt," Lumen giggled mischievously through her armor.

Gunvolt pushed himself off the floor and staggered weakly to his feet. Lumen charged toward him with the same frenzy as a moth drawn toward light.