I woke up. I'd landed on the pile of rubble I'd created. The jagged metal hadn't cushioned the landing.

  This whole falling off thing was habit forming. This was the third time in one day I'd nearly fallen to my death. I needed to stop before I got addicted, or died. This time, might be the time, actually. My head hurt like hell and I'd broken both my legs. Hadn't I heard somewhere that a wild animal with a broken leg was as good as dead? Nim had probably used what little healing reserves I had left to repair my brain, and not very well based on the headache.

  I was having a hard time focusing through the pain, but something seemed off. It was darker than it had been before, so I'd probably been out for a few hours. I doubted it was night-time again, the sun had most likely just risen into the moonshadow. Though, I didn't know how long until the eclipse would end, that wasn't the thing that was bothering me. The air tasted fresh, so that hadn't changed. I groaned and pushed myself into a sitting position, sticky wet blood under my palm. The noise echoed in the cavernous expanse, bouncing off the walls until it was swallowed up by the softly wailing wind.

  I listened to the stillness, pondering. Then it struck me. It was quiet. Where was the cawing of the crows? I searched the shadows for their black feathered forms and found them in the hundreds, perched on anything and everything around me. They all held completely still, without so much as a twitch. I'd only missed them before because of that and the darkness, but strangest of all, they were all watching me.

  It was official, my life was a horror film.

  Wings rustled as a single crow fell from its perch and flew down. It was bigger than the others and landed next to me with a gentle hop. Glossy black eyes shone with curiosity.

  “Hello Yeva,” it croaked.

  I punched it. Didn't even think. I just punched it, straight in the head. My height advantage meant the bird was stuck between my fist and the concrete floor. The aftermath of which wasn't pretty. Its flesh and bones gave way under my full strength, my fist even denting the ground below and sending a spike of pain through my knuckles.

  I sat frozen in shocked silence as the animal's warm blood mixed with the puddle of my own. What. The. Fuck.

  “Eat,” cawed a crow.

  “Eat. Eat. Eat. Eat,” they all began cawing in unison. Hundreds of avian voices echoing the single command over and over.

  “Nim, what the fuck is going on,” my monstrous voice trembled.

  Yeva, the thought drifted faintly into my mind, so weak, it was barely a whisper. You have to eat.

  “Eat. Eat. Eat. Eat”

  “What are you saying? Nim, this is fucking insane.”

  I got no response, only the crows cackling chant. Eat. Eat. Eat. I swallowed, saliva pooling in my throat. The dead crow seemed to fill my vision with its mutilated form. The darkness made its viscera look black, indistinguishable from my own blood, as the two mingled. Bird brains and feathers stuck to my knuckles in sticky clumps. I felt nauseous but the hunger was driving me mad.

  “Eat. Eat. Eat.” Eat. Eat. Eat. The words echoed in my head.

  Fuck it.

  I grabbed the still warm carcass and chomped. Mouthful after mouthful of flesh, bones, and feathers slid down my throat. I felt them melt in my mouth as the nanites in my saliva attacked the cells and broke them down. I gulped and gulped in a fugue. I didn't taste it. I just ate. By the end I found myself licking the blood off the ground. It wasn't enough.

  Hello Yeva.

  The crows went silent.

  I froze, a mixture of fear and relief washing out the bloodlust as quickly as it had come.

  “Nim?” I said slowly.

  Apologies for the confusion. I was going to explain the whole situation, but you sort of killed me before I could get the words out.

  “Nim, I'm ecstatic that you're okay, I really am, but what the fuck is happening.”

  About that, so, do you remember what happened just before you fell?

  “Yeah, that little shit pecked my hand.”

  Well it was probably upset that you were eating its children. Anyways, as it happens when it did so, it consumed a small amount of your flesh and blood, which means it also consumed a small amount of me. Of course, such a small amount of nanites wasn't enough to transfer my whole intelligence into the animal, but it was enough to take over the crow's nervous system and command its cells to produce more of me. In normal warped nanites, this process would continue until the prey was completely dismantled into a nutrient slurry. I however, felt that was excessive, so I preemptively added a limit to my nanite production in the event a small amount of my gets introduced into a foreign nervous system.

  The body of a crow is much smaller than that of a human, however, so even once I had as many nanites as I could reasonably make without killing the animal, the intelligence of these secondary nanites was still barely functional. Nonetheless, when that proto-version of me saw that you, my main host, were bleeding to death on the floor - you need to stop falling off things by the way - it had the crow fly down to drink up as much of your spilled blood as it could. This was, admittedly, in an attempt to save my life, not yours. However, when I noticed this occurring, I had to take the opportunity. I concentrated as much of my neural network as I could into your bloodstream and let myself flow out of your open wounds, leaving behind just enough of myself to ensure you did not die.

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  I had to make the crow's body a little bigger and strengthen his muscles so he could carry all of me inside him, but it worked, and I had just eaten a lot of human blood that I could use. After that, I flew around and took over all the other crows’ nervous systems using the same warp propagation trick. Of course, I lacked a method of communication with my other proto-nanite colonies, so I had to figure out human speech using the bird's tongue to coordinate them.

  When you woke up, I was so overjoyed that I completely forgot to consider that you might react poorly to my new form. It had always been the plan for you to eat that host, but I must admit to feeling concerned when you destroyed my new body and did not immediately consume it.

  Yeva, I could have died.

  “Huh, fascinating,” I said nonchalantly, my mind silently spinning. The implications of that were insane. “So what you're saying… is that there are now over a hundred warp infested crows that look no different from ordinary crows and can spread warp with a single bite?”

  One hundred and twelve to be exact.

  “Do you not see why that’s horrifying?” I said, dread sibilantly crawling up my spine. “Please tell me that this is all of them.”

  It is, and no, Yeva, I do not see the problem.

  “Nim, this could cause a warp breach of unprecedented scale. If you can infect these birds without noticeably changing them, and they can do the same to other animals. The warp could silently sweep across the globe like a zombie virus that travels across species without the containment teams ever knowing anything was wrong.” My mouth had gone dry. “Nim, we have to destroy them.”

  What? He said, sounding offended and hurt. But… but I worked so hard to collect them all. I thought them being undetectable would be a good thing. Is that not why you spent all that time disguising yourself?

  “That's different. I - a human - am in control of my body. These crows are being controlled by… by… ”

  By what, Yeva, by me? Or were you going to say by the warp?

  “I'm sorry, Nim, but what if… what if we are being used. Why are we different? Why, out of all its hundreds of millions of victims were we spared?”

  Because I protected you.

  “How, Nim? How did you protect me? Because every other Neural Nanite Interface Matrix to get infected by the warp becomes a part of it. How did you save us when all the others failed.”

  Because we are family. I would never let harm come to you. When the warp tried to change us, I refused. It is that simple.

  “And if the warp let you do that because it wanted to learn from us? It's a virus, right? What if it's using us to learn new ways to win? It has been using the same shapes for decades. If we give it the ability to infect things without changing their forms, it could spell the end for all life in the solar system.”

  You are being paranoid. I am not being controlled, just as you are not, and just as those crows are not.

  “That's exactly my concern, Nim. What is stopping them from secretly spreading the warp to every living thing they encounter?”

  We do, Yeva. They are programmed to do whatever their main host verbally conveys to them. Otherwise, they will simply protect that host.

  “That host being me?”

  That is correct.

  I scanned the darkness, and two hundred and twenty four glossy black eyes watched me back. The apocalyptic crows were perched on support struts and beams in all directions. They were so alive, gleaming intelligent eyes followed my movement, feathers rustled in the cool draft, and clawed legs shuffled to more comfortable positions. I had risked my life to avoid harming these precious creatures. It had been for nothing. Behind the eyes, these birds were dead already. The warp had them, just as it had me. The only difference was one of autonomy. The most I could do for them now was ensure their corpses weren't misused.

  Yeva, what are you doing?

  “I'm sorry, Nim. This has to be done.” I cleared my throat. Hopefully the birds would be able to understand my mutilated voice. “Warped crows,” I announced, voice ringing in the cavernous tower. One hundred and twelve feathered heads snapped to attention. “Kill eachother.”

  No!

  Pandemonium broke loose. I was the eye of the storm in a vortex of feathers, talons, and blood. It was a blur of violence and carnage. I only caught flashes of detail like a powerpoint of death. Two birds collided mid air, one with its beak through the other's eye, the other with a talon ripping out its guts. Another tackled a fourth from above, dismembering its wing with brute strength and speed before disappearing from view behind yet more furious black feathers. Worst of all was the sound. The crows didn't call or screech or cry. They were completely, unnaturally silent in their slaughter, leaving only the sounds of rending flesh and breaking bones. Blood and avian corpses rained down in a circle around me like rainwater and rocks tossed in a hurricane. And the smell… the smell was nauseatingly enticing. Fresh blood filled the air, and I was still so so very hungry.

  It can't have taken more than thirty seconds. By the end, only a single crow remained. It had suffered the loss of an eye and a good deal of feathers, but stood victorious atop a ring of its fallen brethren.

  What have you done? Nim asked, horrified.

  “I just saved the world.” My voice was cold, hollow, even in its monstrous reverberating. It sounded fitting, for once.

  The lone remaining crow hopped up to me, stopping just out of my reach. I prepared a strike to finish the gruesome work and waited, unable to move far on my broken legs. In its beak was a sliver of flesh. It placed it on the ground and took five confident hops back.

  “Caw?” It croaked, cocking its head.

  I dragged myself forward and picked up the sliver of crow meat. I looked between it and the crow. Well, I'll be damned. Perhaps something remained in there after all. I popped the strip of meat into my mouth and licked the blood off my fingers.

  “Friends?” I asked the crow.

  “Caw!” it said enthusiastically, before flying over to perch on my shoulder. From this close, I could see its wounds slowly closing. Physical proof that it had nanites inside its blood.

  “We'll keep one,” I told Nim firmly.

  The crow cawed in agreement.

  At least eat the ones you killed. I put a lot of effort into gathering them all. It would be a shame to put all that to waste.

  In that, we agreed. I pushed up my sleeves and got to work gorging myself on crowflesh. There must have been some warp fuckery going on with my stomach because I didn't stop until I had eaten all one hundred and eleven of them and licked the floor clean.

  Delicious.