The Schism Wars
by Diana Parrilla
[this is the third in the three part series–
read Systems of Us from the beginning.]
Ame Menez stood atop Nephilim’s crystalline skull, their fingers intertwined with the neural tendrils that pulsed beneath the kaiju’s armored hide. The colossal creature—neither male nor female, an unaltered echo of Ame’s own fluid existence—resembled a titanesque fusion of Triceratops and Eastern dragon, its obsidian scales crowned by a natural helmet of bone and corrugated metal that jutted like a rhinoceros horn from its massive brow.
“Dad, you seeing this shit?” Ame’s voice crackled through the comm system, their father’s laboratory perched precariously on Leviathan’s dorsal ridge three clicks away.
Dr. Emilio Menez adjusted his spectacles, watching the infernal mechas emerge like metallic locusts from the interdimensional fissure. Beside him, Kai Nakamura—his partner of fifteen years in both research and companionship—sparked arc-welders against Leviathan’s bio-mechanical spine.
“Affirmative, hija,” Emilio replied. “These aren’t like the ones we fought in training. This is the real thing, the one we’ve spent years preparing for. Now, for the first time since the gates of hell began to crack open, we’re starting to understand what they really are: stolen armor, once worn by hell’s soldiers, now piloted by the dead. Humans who overthrew their captors and took the bodies of their guardians for themselves after emptying them.”
The mechas advanced slowly because of their weight, but no less terrifying. Their hollow shells, once worn by the underworld’s jailers, now moved with the very souls they had once imprisoned.
Ame had earned Nephilim’s trust after eighteen hours of relentless combat. The kaiju’s acidic breath had almost dissolved their left arm before it recognized them as kindred—genderless, boundless, existing beyond human constructs.
Leviathan reared beside them, its serpentine neck crowned with metallic spikes that formed a natural gladiator’s helmet, while its massive haunches rippled with muscle beneath chitinous armor plating. These were living fortresses, prehistoric magnificence wedded to alien technology.
“They’re beautiful,” Kai murmured, watching the hellish automatons stride across the wasteland. “But beauty don’t mean jack when they’re trying to reclaim our planet for the permanently pissed-off.”
The first wave struck like metallic thunder. Nephilim’s plasma cannon discharged cobalt fire while Leviathan’s claws raked through mecha ranks, but the enemy’s numbers seemed inexhaustible. Ame felt their kaiju’s distress through their neural link, these battles were pyrrhic at best.
“We can’t win through brute force,” Ame transmitted. “These bastards have eternity and stolen divine armor on their side.”
Emilio’s mind raced while Kai’s fingers moved over the jury-rigged control panels. “What if we don’t need to defeat them?” the electrician suggested, his hand briefly touching Emilio’s shoulder. “What if we make them… us?”
Ame’s eyes blazed. “Infection protocol. Nephilim, prepare bio-viral injection, we’re going dental on these tin psychos.”
The kaiju lunged forward, massive jaws clamping around a mecha’s torso. Nephilim’s saliva—teeming with adaptive nanobiota—flooded the robot’s circuitry through ruptured armor plating. The effect cascaded through the enemy’s network as infected mechas began exhibiting kaiju characteristics: scales erupting through steel plating, optical sensors morphing into compound eyes that bulged grotesquely from metallic skulls.
“Holy shit, it’s working!” Ame shouted as half-transformed mechas attempted to continue their assault. But their programming encountered an insurmountable paradox—they could no longer distinguish between enemy and ally. Mechanical limbs seized mid-strike, hydraulic systems stuttered, targeting computers crashed attempting to reconcile contradictory identity matrices.
The infected mechas stood paralyzed, half their bodies frozen while the other half thrashed wildly. They had become what they fought, and their original directives crumbled against this fundamental transformation.
Then Ame noticed something that made their blood crystallize: the deceased pilots were adapting too. Through the neural feedback, Ame glimpsed their confusion transforming into something else.
“Dad,” Ame whispered, “I think the dead souls aren’t our enemies anymore. They’re remembering what it felt like to be alive, to be connected to something greater than vengeance.”
Emilio squeezed Kai’s hand. “Similarity breeds empathy,” he observed. “Attack yourself, and you achieve nothing but self-destruction.”
As the infected mechas dropped to their knees, confused and trembling in their new forms, Nephilim turned its head toward Ame, not as a mount to rider, but as one equal to another. Through their link, Ame felt no separation between their body and the kaiju’s. The last of their human thoughts dissolved into something vaster, something more powerful. It wasn’t the loss of self, it was the triumph of grasping the everything.
Ame reached for the comm but found no mouth to speak with. Instead, their thoughts ignited, erupting as incandescent flame from the beast’s throat in the loudest cry ever heard by human ears.
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