The sky above Aiur burned.
Fields of shattered pylons flickered in dying blue pulses, the psionic lattice unraveling as zerg biomass crawled across golden Protoss architecture. Explosions thundered like drums of doom as Carriers fell from orbit and Zealots screamed through their neural links. A world once sacred had become a graveyard.
And through it all, a lone Probe zipped between ruins and corpses, its tiny gravitic drive whining with effort.
Designation: DRN-5571. Task: Resource relay. Status: Compromised.
It didn't understand fear — not in the way organics did — but it recognized the weight of failure. The Nexus had fallen. The warp conduits were severed. The Overmind's minions had breached the inner sanctum.
The last command from the Executor's neural beacon rang in its core:
"Delay them. Buy us time."
DRN-5571 complied.
It blinked toward a ledge above the final approach — a small cliff overlooking a broken canyon. Below, a roiling tide of zerglings swarmed toward a handful of battered Templars, their psionic blades flickering.
The Probe activated its build matrix. Energy surged around it in golden spirals.
A Photon Cannon rose from the earth like a divine fang.
Then another.
And another.
Power flooded from the remaining pylons, barely enough — but enough.
The first wave of zerglings smashed into the kill zone and evaporated in blue fire.
DRN-5571 adjusted its position, drawing more fire, recharging the cannons, keeping the flow alive.
Until the sky darkened.
A monstrous shadow descended: a Mutalisk swarm, followed by something larger. Something ancient.
Kerrigan.
Even the machine spirit within the Probe recognized her — a psionic storm incarnate, wings of corruption trailing behind.
The cannons lit up in defiance.
So did she.
Blades of energy tore through metal. One by one, the cannons died. Then the pylons. Then DRN-5571.
In its final nanoseconds, it ran its diagnostics.
Core breach imminent. Warp lattice destabilized. Connection to the Khala— severed.
The Probe's sensors dimmed.
Its last thought was simple.
"Did I buy enough time?"
---
Darkness.
Silence.
Then— light. Blinding, warm, and wrong.
DRN-5571's consciousness rebooted, but not in any system it recognized. No interface. No Khala. No warp field.
And gravity. Real, crushing gravity.
It was... organic?
It looked down — hands. Flesh. Five fingers. No shell, no servos.
It screamed.