“Mark! What are you doing to him?!” shouts Sam in dismay.
Grimble calmly explains, “Sam, I’m sorry to tell you this, but we need you to go to war.”
“What?! What war?!!”
“The Great Perpetual-Motion War of Machines, of course. The rat in that old building carried seeds of an old Liquid-Machine and planted their virus in Mark, all we have to do is wake them up.”
“But, what about the other kids who got sick??”
The Machine speaks up. “There were no others who got sick! They merely felt the effects of Machine magnetism for a while. This stranger here changed your memory to make you think there were more, but it was only ever Mark.”
Mark looks at you in horror and betrayal. You yell, “I didn’t know! I promise you I didn’t know!”
He struggles to speak. “I… I don’t want to… to be your Machine--!! I won’t fight… in your war!”
The Machine replies calmly, “Oh Mark, you’ll be so much happier when you’re a Machine, it’s actually quite nice and for most people it’s very hard to become one, so you’re actually lucky.”
Mark makes a low noise of fear and anger. His body is changing before your eyes, but at the same time it is staying the same. You see it shifting and moving like water, you see it splashing and forming waves, and yet it’s almost like a hallucination.
The Machine continues explaining, “You’ll be my first convert, and the Argent Emperor will be so pleased to see I made a new Machine so quickly.” Then, she turns her attention toward you. “And you, my friend, as thanks for the use of your Key, will get to keep him and be his Machine-Lord. What do you say?”
You are totally frozen, unable to respond. Sam speaks up before you can.
“What about me?”
The Machine just laughs. “You’ll be his first meal, of course!”
STOP THIS ==>
