Choking on the nanite flood pouring down his throat, Silverblue Alpha stared at the Idol, the metal man crawling inexorably towards him, and the Cee-Metal rising behind the metal man.  Silverblue Ceta had played him for a fool, as the humans said.  All of this had been a ruse.  He couldn’t jump to the Data Pool, couldn’t escape his meat body’s state of rapid decay.

The nanites chewed into him, and he watched as the metal man lashed out at Silver, a long metal blade extending from his wrist clipping the Idol’s boot heel.  Silver’s blood splashed the nanocrete, and he cried out.  The Cee-Metal withdrew two heavy pistols, and began to empty them into the metal man’s back.

The nanites spread into his chest, and he rasped out ragged breaths as his lungs were attacked.  The metal man turned over, some kind of big gun protruding from his groin.  The very ridiculousness of it made Silverblue Alpha laugh.  The Cee-Metal pulled an autoshotgun from his waist, and opened up on the metal man’s groin.  The metal man jerked with the impact, and the Cee-Metal turned the barrel of the autoshot up to the metal man’s head.

The metal man’s head held up well to the burst of shotgun fire.  Silverblue Alpha found he was having a very difficult time focusing now, and turned his blurring vision towards the Idol.  Billy Silver had stood up, and was walking to where the metal man lay on the ground.  He pulled something off of the uniform the metal man wore and rammed it into the metal man’s mouth.

Everything was fading fast into grey.  Silverblue Alpha only dimly heard the explosion which rocked his body on the nanocrete and barely felt the shards of fragmented metal slamming into it.  His one good eye focused on the form of Billy Silver lying not too far away.  Then the nanites ate into his heart, a sharp pain, and he knew no more.