The moon's surface cracked beneath Miles boots like thin ice.
Charlotte's silhouette stretched unnaturally, bones elongating with wet cracks until she loomed three meters taller.
Her skin split like overripe fruit, revealing glistening black chitin beneath.
Six segmented limbs unfolded from her back, each ending in hooked talons that scraped against the lunar rock with a sound like nails on slate.
"Submit," she crooned, her voice vibrating through his skull like a struck tuning fork.
Miles raised his pistol - or tried to. His arm moved through molasses as the weapon twisted in his grip, steel flowing like liquid before reforming as a barbed vine that coiled around his wrist.
Thorns bit deep, drawing beads of blood that floated upward in the low gravity.
**CRITICAL SYSTEMS ALERT: NEURAL INTEGRITY COMPROMISED**
**SUGGESTED PROTOCOL: SELF-TERMINATION INITIATED**
A laugh like shattering glass echoed through the vacuum, "Poor little rabbit," the nightmare Charlotte purred, circling him.
Her movements left afterimages that lingered in the air, "Still fighting when the cage is already locked?"
Through the hallucinations haze, Miles' HUD flickered with intermittent reality.
The real Charlotte stalked toward his motionless body in the greenhouse, her staff spewing violet gas that swirled in fractal patterns.
Her hips swayed with predatory grace, each click of her heels against the tile syncing with the pounding in his temples.
"Amateurs shouldn't play with professionals," the hallucination whispered directly into his ear, her breath smelling of roses.
Clawed fingers traced his jaw before pressing her cold lips to his cheek.
The kiss burned like dry ice, leaving a glowing crimson imprint.
Then steel pressed under his chin, "Pity we didn't meet under better circumstances," sighed the hallucination, finger tightening on the trigger-
**CRACK!**
Sarah's voice shattered the illusion like a hammer through stained glass.
Reality returned in jagged fragments.
Miles tasted blood...he'd bitten clean through his tongue.
Blood flooded his mouth as he wrenched control from the gas's grip.
Charlotte's eyes widened a half-second before his bullet tore through her shoulder, the round punching clean through and embedding itself in the greenhouse wall behind her.
"Ghk-!" She staggered, staff sparking.
Her gaze locked on the blood dripping from his lips, "You... bit through your own-?"
Miles spat a glob of crimson and snatched her fallen pistol with his off-hand. Three rounds punched through her staff's core in quick succession.
The violet gas sputtered out with a dying wheeze.
The conservatory erupted in motion.
Vines lashed from the walls like striking cobras as Charlotte lunged for her damaged weapon.
Miles ducked all the incoming strikes from the vines. Then suddenly a strike within the purple mist against his arm.
Then a vine wrapped around his ankle sending him crashing through a glass specimen table containing some writhing botanical horror.
Shards bit into his back as vines coiled around his ankles with crushing force.
"You damn roach," Charlotte hissed, charging through the pollen-hazed air.
Miles twisted his body, using the vine's momentum to swing himself upright.
He fired blind - two shots missed, punching holes in exotic flowers that screamed with disturbingly human voices.
Three found their mark - chest, stomach, thigh.
She crumpled... then laughed as fibrous tendrils knitted her wounds shut with audible squelching sounds.
"Kira spares no expense for her favorites." She rose, skin stitching itself back together with visible threads of photosynthetic biomass.
"Regenerative chloroplast infusion. Hurts like hell, but elegant, isn't it?"
Miles ejected his spent mag, catching it mid-air and slamming in incendiary rounds with practiced ease, "Let's test its heat resistance."
The world turned white. Then orange. Then black.
Charlotte's staff vaporized in the missile's impact, the shockwave hurling her across the room like a ragdoll.
She crashed through a support beam, bringing part of the glass ceiling down in a deadly rain.
Sarah landed in the smoldering crater, the rocket launcher attachment on her right arm glowing cherry-red from the point-blank shot.
"You took too-" Her optics dilated as they locked on the lipstick stain.
A hydraulic hiss escaped her vocal modulator, the sound a fusion of rage and static.
Charlotte dragged herself upright using a half-melted table, one eye swollen shut, her once-elegant dress hanging in scorched ribbons.
She spat blackened blood that sizzled where it hit the floor, "Two against one? How-"
"I'LL WEAR YOUR SKIN AS A NECKLACE!" Sarah's scream tore through the conservatory with enough force to shatter remaining glass panes.
Her back plating split open with a sound like tearing metal, and twin vibro-claws erupted from her spine, their edges humming at ultrasonic frequencies.
Charlotte's remaining eye gleamed with something between fear and admiration.
Her fingers found a hidden switch on her ruined thigh holster, "Till we meet again, gunslinger."
The remaining pollen tanks detonated in a choking cloud that filled the room.
When the haze cleared minutes later, only a trail of blood remained, forming a grotesque heart with an "M" at its center - the petals arranged with mocking precision.
Miles slumped against the wall, tongue swollen to twice its size with congealing blood.
Sarah's claws retracted with sharp clicks as she dropped beside him, fingers probing the injury with terrifying gentleness.
"Hallucinogenic payload," he garbled through the pain, each word sending fresh waves of agony.
"Had to... override neural lock... with physical stimulus."
Sarah wiped the kiss mark away with methodical precision.
The synth-skin of her thumb came away stained crimson, "Rest," she commanded.
"I'll handle Kira." She stood, cycling Miles pistol before walking to the depths of greenhouse.
Somewhere in the greenhouse's depths, a chainsaw roared to life, its buzzsaw whine harmonizing with Sarah's rising thermal signature.
Then the screaming began - not of pain, but of something far worse. The sound of a mind unraveling at the seams.
Miles closed his eyes as the conservatory trembled with the force of Sarah's wrath.
Somewhere beneath the pain and the blood, he made a mental note to never, ever make her jealous.