The pain was immediate and devastating. Alice’s clock overloaded, safety buffers torn away. Time slowed as Takamatsu’s torture device dumped a high-voltage current into her fragile mechanical circuits. She felt/saw fuses blow, felt/saw gears melt, molten alloys eating into the soft flesh of her brain. She knew she was falling, the outside world a slow-moving blur with slanted angles, but had no control over her body.