Kiss Me

A black blur fluttered in the light of an explosion and the armoured windscreen cracked and crazed as indigo fire lashed across it. Great gobs of polymer glass denatured and collapsed, smothering the servitor in a suffocating blanket of superheated plastic. The car spun out and collided with a bollard.
Jun pulled wildly at the door’s locking handle, then stabbed it with the push-dagger. He was operating on blind panic.
Taking her time, the Culexus clambered in through the destroyed window and disarmed him, almost as an afterthought. The warlord soiled himself as the skull came closer. “I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry—”
“Kiss me,” she said, her voice devoid of all emotion.
Jun’s lips were pressed to the cold steel of the mask, and agony spiked through him. He fell back, and spat dust. Raw pain boiled at his extremities as his flesh blackened and became thick ash, crumbling before his eyes until those too rotted in their sockets and shrivelled to nothing. Jun Yae Jun’s very energy of life was drawn from him, leached into the force matrix webbing the assassin’s stealthsuit, until there was nothing left of him but a slurry of indeterminate matter.

Chapter Four