8 hours and 16 minutes remaining.

The heavenly Anaya polished off another hyper-energy drink in order to top off her chemically enhanced stamina, gulping down its contents along her slender swan-like neck.

She had been on the continual move for almost 40 long hours by now and it was taking its inevitable toll. It was taking longer and longer for her to recover after each ascended floor, calves were burning painfully with exertion.

“Ahh, Damn these floors” Anaya complained as she threw away her empty can, bouncing and clanging to the floor below. ZM-11833 resisted the urge to file numerous reports for littering.

“Only a little longer~ you can totally make it~” ZM-11833 didn’t want to upset their delicate human with the truth. There were 29 arduous floors left to climb and they were full of aggressive and lethal aliens.

“Yeah, we just need to kill our way through a horde of aliens,” Anaya gestured with frustration towards the open door.

Ahead of them was a devastated floor which had once been host to banks of servers and cubicles, the monstrous aliens had rampaged their way through this floor leaving only a husk of corporate ill-maintenance behind. Sparking machines heralded the death rattle of the Tawaga-net.

The fallen bodies had once again been cleared from the floor, only the bloody trails that lead downwards this time. It looked like the dynamic duo had torched the creature’s larder, even now the acrid smoke billowed upwards to this floor and the ground cracked and bubbled in places.

“At the rate we’re going they won’t need a nuke, the place’ll be burnt out by then” Anaya huffed and puffed as they ran from the blazing heat that scorched the air.

“The fire-retardant foam should deploy soon~” All floors should hopefully be equipped with them.

“And if it doesn’t?”

“Run faster?” ZM-11833 stated brilliantly as they fired into the alien horde that appeared before them.

Unlike the mutated forms below of dogs, fruits and people, the ones up here seemed to be in their natural forms. They looked to the cultured fashion-bot like floating deformed squids with hanging tentacles and snapping beaks. Their slimy mucus-like skin dripped and sizzled on the floor, pitting it with acid-etched holes.

They also appeared to be more resistant to bullets and lasers than their brethren, it took almost double the ammunition to carve into their mucus covered flesh.

Luckily they had gathered up a lot of ammo earlier and weren’t hesitant to use it.

ZM-11833 ducked under a flailing tentacle, its tip was filled with hooked barbs that oozed a greenish acidic fluid. Now under the creature they unleashed a hail of electro-rounds into its bulk, carving it in half.

As they rolled away from falling foul-smelling guts that ate into the floor they looked over to Anaya, the punk-girl was rapidly backing away from their own floating monstrosity as fast as she could on a partially lamed leg.

Before ZM-11833 could help, bright flashes of lasers melted into the slimy squid-like beast till it dropped. It seemed Anaya didn’t need the help, she looked more and more like an ideal heroine from a cheesy sci-fi movie in ZM-11833’s optical sensors. She stood above the squirming oozing form and fired coldly into the foul menace, ending whatever it called a life.

As if sensing their recording of her heroics, the glamorous Anaya turned to the watching fashion-bot “what? Is there a problem?”

“Nothing~ you just looked so dashing~”

Anaya turned back towards the hovering slimy monsters before her, pink dusting her cheeks “shut up. Dumb bot must be broken or something”

Hehe~ ZM-11833 fired repeatedly into a screeching alien-squid with their rail-shotgun, sending what was left splattering into the wall behind it, melting another hole. The repair bill is going to be massive.

Teasing their photogenic human while fighting their way through hordes of slimy monsters was surprisingly fun. They should do this more often, if not for the oncoming nuclear bomb of course.

---

 

ZM-11833’s timer started beeping again just before the 4 hour remaining mark and they knew they needed to change again. This would be the last time they would be able to do so, it was a lot of pressure.

They wondered what they wanted to die in.

The stuffed duffle-bag housed an assortment of different clothes, so much so that ZM-11833 didn’t know what to wear. With only one choice to make they were lost in the options.

Maybe they’d give the decision to Anaya, ZM-11833 had always been dressed up by other people and they kind of missed that. It would also be the first time they’d been dressed up by a friend.

“Anaya~ can you choose an captivating outfit for me~” ZM-11833 pouted at their cutie Anaya “it’s also really sad you’ve never designed an outfit before”

“You do know I owned my own private store right? The one you kidnapped me from remember?” hmm didn’t ring an electronic-bell.

Anaya rummaged about in the clothing bag for a while, pulling out soft shirts and pretty pants then holding them up to ZM-11833’s perfect body. “No~ where are you touching Anaya?~”

“I haven’t even started yet, you pervert-bot” Anaya groused with pink cheeks.

The outfit she finally decided upon was simple but elegant in its creation. It consisted of a slim short-sleeved white dress-shirt and tight black pants with black faux-leather boots.

The white shirt had a sheer area from the upper chest to the neck ending in a solid white collar and down to sleeve ends which had folded over cuffs.

A slim black tie circled around their neck and draped down to their sculpted belly button. Anaya gently tucked the shirt into a pair of shiny black dress pants and then placed her polymer feet into the set of black buckled ankle boots they had picked out.

ZM-11833 looked more like a professional corporate than they had ever been before, it was fairly cute in their opinion. Anaya had made a good choice, ZM-11833 was proud of their student in fashion.

“My turn~” ZM-11833 fetched out a military influenced outfit they had their eye on before.

“Wait, I thought I’d get to choose my own?!” Not a chance sweet Anaya, ZM-11833 wanted one last time stripping their cutie.

The military-style outfit was made up of faux-leather in a stylish black with highlights of red and gold. A stiff collared jacket had a red seam line along a dominant front side, which went over to the opposite shoulder and then angled down to the waistline.

On one shoulder there was a slim red and gold epaulet and on the other was a black and gold ceremonial pauldron connected to a red half-cape.

To finish the look knee length black faux-leather boots were fitted over her tight black pants and ZM-11833 took the time to clean and place her armor back on. As this was a military style outfit they didn’t feel as bad about the armor clashing with the design.

ZM-11833 took a step back and admired the very regal and fierce looking girl, they were done now. Done dressing people up, done looking at fashion.

The end of an era.

“Time to go~” a solemn ZM-11833 marched quietly but proudly off towards the next floor.

Anaya caught up quickly “let’s get out of this dump together” her voice was full of determined vigor that suited her new commanding look.

---

 

The newly reclothed pair stumbled upon a rack of servers that were still in good condition and ZM-11833 decided to see if they could access any encrypted files located inside.

Upon breaking into it after a few seconds they found what they were looking for.

“I think it was the CEO Tawaga Hanae that let the aliens free.” The files had been heavily encrypted but ZM-11833 had found a small serial number for a piece of software that could generate false codes. That software was proprietary and only the CEO could access it or give permissions, and according to these files there were no permissions active.

“The CEO? Why? It’s her company that is falling apart around us. Why would she jeopardize her spot as one of the leading corporations?” Anaya was just as confused as ZM-11833.

“There must be more we aren’t seeing. Most of these files are corrupted, so I don't know anything more. I guess we’ll ask her if she’s still alive.”

ZM-11833 didn’t think that was likely judging by the aliens' love of carnage and eating dead humans, she is probably resting inside of something's stomach by now.

“Huh? What’s that?” ZM-11833 had spied another encrypted file, upon decrypting it they were met with an overview of reports from the corpo-war. Specifically about the defunct machines that were unneeded, they found through the mess the files about themselves.

There wasn’t much just numbers and profit estimates but there was an electronic signature embedded within, Carlson Deloque Board of Directors sales division.

“What is it? What did you find?”

“Just some business we might need to finish~”

That was the man who killed ZM-11833 once before, searching the board members profiles they found out that his apartment was on floor 508.

If they had the time maybe they’d take a detour and return the favor.