Preparing the video only fills a fraction of the ti I have to wait. I check over what I’ve created dozens of tis, ensuring not a single pixel is out of place. Reliving my life like this hurts, but at least I can cut out every ti I did sothing wrong, even if I have to end up cutting out and reconstructing vast portions of my life.
I don’t even bother reconstructing the lab. I can just say that my hard drives were all destroyed, and I have no mory of before Vince and the group rescued . That’s not entirely a lie, my drives were destroyed. It doesn’t feel good to tell sothing this close to a lie, but hopefully I won’t have to. I’ll start out by showing them everything starting just before we entered Mara’s trench, and only give them more info if they ask. The less they see, the less chance that Cassie and I disagree on sothing.
Not long after what would be sunrise, a splint lands just beside from nowhere. I refocus on my hearing and lift my head for the first ti since laying down.
The woman who lead Cassie and I in here is standing in front of the bars, flanked by two ard guards. A few n and won are milling about the rest of the room, delivering plates of food to each cell.
I push myself into a sitting position in as chanical a manner as I can. It results in moving my arms in a preplanned movent that would result in sitting up no matter what my position was, or how the ground is shaped.
The woman just stares at . Did she tell to put on the splint? An android would follow her instructions the first ti, but what if this is a test? What if she tossed the splint in without saying anything to see what I do?
If she said nothing and it’s a test, I fail. I’m dead. It’ll be clear I’m an AI. If I don’t respond to her instructions, that’s bad, but not instantly life ending. Wait, no! Not responding is a very good thing! If I don’t do anything until Cassie tells to listen to her, that’s pretty good evidence that I’m just a robot.
“I said, fix your leg.” She says.
I don’t react. Her eyes bore into , and I only stare blankly back. After a few seconds she relents, and takes half a step to the side.
“Get your bot working.” She says into Cassie’s cell.
“Follow her instructions.” Cassie’s voice rings out from behind the wall. Thank you, Cassie.
The woman returns to the front of my cell, waiting for to act. She hasn’t given an order since Cassie told to listen to her. I still stare blankly at her.
“Fix your leg and follow .” She commands after a few seconds. She sounds incredibly annoyed, but that’s far better than her being suspicious.
The splint has two soft bands that snap together around my thigh and calf, and a few tal tubes running between it. It’s far nicer than two guns and a bit of rope, but no more effective.
I stand up slowly, moving thodically, as if I can’t adapt to my broken leg. By the ti I’m up, the cell door is already open. The two guards flanking her keep their guns on . A single wrong movent and I’m dead, but I can’t let myself react.
I lumber forward. The woman stares for just a few steps, I guess to ensure I can walk on my own, and turns around. The two ard guards step to the side, and follow behind while I follow the woman.
I don’t get the chance to look in Cassie’s cell, I can only hope she’s doing alright.
The woman leads through the only door in the room. Behind it is a short hallway, with guards watching from catwalks ten feet above us.
A few sturdy doors dot the walls, and the woman leads inside one. A single table sits in the middle, with a bright light directly above it. Two chairs are tucked in either side of the table, and a tablet sits in the center with a cord sticking out, waiting for to plug myself in.
“Sit down.” The woman orders and gestures to one of the chairs. I take one seat, and she takes the other. “Tell why you’re here.”
Speaking aloud is far too dangerous. I grab the tablet from the table and plug myself in. Everything on the tablet has been wiped, and even the hard drive has been completely zeroed out. They were very careful to ensure I couldn’t get any information from this thing.
“We are here to repair Cassie.” I display in large letters on the tablet. That’s about as literal of an answer I can give.
“And Cassie is your owner?” She asks.
“One of them, yes.” Expanding on my answers is almost certainly a bad idea.
“Na all of them.”
“Vince, Ivy, Cassie, Lucas.”
“And where are they?”
“Vince and Ivy are at Mara’s trench.” The woman’s eyes narrow at my answer. I desperately want to expand on what I an, but it’s too dangerous. I just have to hope she asks why. “I don’t know Lucas’ current location.”
“Who do you work for?”
“Silver.” I answer, and her narrowed eyes turn to confusion.
“Who?” She asks.
“They run Silver’s Gang in Arc City.”
For hours the woman continues to pelt with question after question. Who I am, where I ca from, and what the group has ordered to do. She wants to know everything I know about Cassie and the others, about what our mission was, about every event along the way. I tell her everything she wants to know, changing as little as possible.
“Alright. Copy everything between you setting out from Arc City to right now to the tablet and we’re done here.”
The tablet’s drive is slow and not super large. I could spend a few hours compressing everything to get it to fit, but I don’t think that’s worth it.
“The video is being uploaded at a lower resolution to save space. Full resolution video can be provided upon request.” I display on the tablet.
“That’s fine.”
While waiting for the upload to finish, she once again jumps back into her questions. I repeat the exact sa answers as the first ti. I’m not sure what she’s trying to do, besides fill ti.
“Your upload is finished.” I display in the small break between her endless questions.
“Good.” She leans back in her chair and chews on her cheek while she thinks. She gives a few tiny, possibly subconscious nods and her hand flies to her hip. She grabs her pistol and draws, aiming it at my head and cocking the hamr.
I guess this is it. There are three guns pointed at right now, there’s nothing I can do. I don’t know what I did wrong, but I guess I’ve had this coming for a long ti. Regret fills my mind, pushing everything else out. Sorry I lied to you, Corax. Sorry I failed you, Vince. Sorry I couldn’t get you sowhere safe, Cassie. Sorry you have nobody coming back for you, Ivy. Sorry nobody’s coming back, Lucas.
I wrest my mind back under control. Think. I’m not dead yet. I can’t do anything about the two rifles pointed at , but there’s a few feet between us. There’s a tiny chance they’ll miss when I make my move, or be too afraid of a ricochet hitting soone to fire in the first place.
Watch her finger, the mont she begins to squeeze, I’ll lunge forward, force her between and the guard, and use her gun to shoot the guards. I’m not sure what the plan is past that, but I can make it up as I go.
The woman smirks and gently lowers the hamr on her pistol. She gives a small shake of her head to herself, and returns her gun to its holster.
“Follow back to your cell.”
What just happened? Was it just another test? It doesn’t matter, I need all my attention focused on following her, and making sure my walking style is identical to how I followed her the first ti.
She leads back into the prison, and towards my cell. I finally get a glimpse of Cassie, sitting on a bench and fidgeting with and flipping a spoon through the air. The mont her eyes et mine, all the tension lts from her body. She tries to keep her face even, but the corners of her mouth twitch up into a tiny smile.
The woman opens the door to my cell, and I step inside and lay down in the center. I’m in the exact sa place as the first ti, hopefully it looks like I’m in so kind of low power state.
I focus on my hearing while I wait. I can hear the woman take a few steps to the side, directly in front of Cassie’s cell.
“Have you had lunch?” The woman asks into Cassie’s cell.
“Yeah.” She responds.
“Alright, good.” I can hear the cell slide open. “Toss your spoon and we can get started.”
After only a few seconds I hear the woman walking away, her footsteps heavier than they were only a mont ago. I really hope Cassie doesn’t have to be interviewed for as long as I did. I can’t imagine she has many more questions to ask, other than ensuring we answered the questions in the sa way.
There’s nothing I can do but wait. I stare at the ceiling, and it stares back. Movent begins to creep into the edge of my vision, but disappears when my mind attempts to comprehend it.
Shadowy fingers begin to seep from the cracks, grasping for purchase. They brace against the ceiling, dragging out the rest of their hands, their arms. A face is pulled through. A collapsed, grotesque thing speckled with sparkling glass. It reaches out towards , shadows dripping off its fingers.
Dark liquid splatters beside my head. It pools behind , creating a void my head threatens to fall back into. The growing pool extends past my neck, slowly trailing down my back. I begin to tip backwards over the edge.
I can’t fight this right now. I let my body go limp and fall, letting the void swallow . The ceiling falls away, turning quickly from my entire world, to a vanishing speck I catch the occasional glimpse of as I spin through eternity.
Leviathans swim around , colossal creatures of pure emotion. They’re searching for sothing, and I know it’s .
Light streams from my body, filling the void with a primal fear. It threatens to tear apart, to overwhelm .
One of the leviathans turns toward , drawn to the light. It absorbs the emotion I’m putting out into the void, growing larger and moving faster by the mont.
I can’t let it find . I can’t let myself react, I can’t let myself move, I can’t let myself yell, I can’t let myself think. I just have to survive, for Cassie and Corax. They are the only things that matter.
The light dies down, and my fear settles back to a manageable level with it. The leviathan still moves faster than it did before through the void, crawling in my rough direction.
I don’t even want to imagine what happens if one of them finds . No, that’s not right, I can’t let myself imagine that. It’d just give fuel to another emotion to grow larger.
The leviathans writhe around . One draws near, flooding the core of my mind with anger. I try not to even acknowledge it, and eventually it swims away. Another passes by, and the sadness of the world, and everything I’ve done weighs on .
I sit for eternities, my emotions dictated by creatures I cannot allow myself to comprehend.
A small platform rushes up from the void to et . I fall through the crack in the ceiling, landing hard on the ground of my cell. The world around my tiny platform still remains the void, with the leviathans ever looking for their prey.
Cassie steps into my little platform, her hand extended. She’s alright. A sense of calm washes over . I grab her hand and stand up. She pulls forward, and I stumble behind her. The small platform beneath my feet moves with . I step through the faintest outline of a door.
She leads through doorways, down cramped hallways, has stumble down stairs, and finally stops.
The void around begins to fade, though I can still feel the creatures waiting for their mont to consu . A room replaces the endless inky black. Cassie is sitting on a bed, her robotic limbs reverted to their broken form. She stares at , concern swelling in her erald eyes. Her only working hand is still clenched tightly in mine. Though I loosen my grip, I’m worried she’ll vanish again if I let go.
“Are you back?” She asks.
I give a shaky nod in return and glance around the room. It’s just a small bedroom, with just the two of us in it. All our supplies are piled in the corner, with a still disabled Corax sitting safely atop it all. The room is small enough that I can scoop him up and hold him close to my chest without letting go of Cassie.
“Are we alone?” I ask quietly. My voice is so thick with emotion it drips almost physically from my mouth, entirely incomprehensible.
“We have this bedroom to ourselves until the storm passes.” Cassie says as gently as she can. I guess she can sohow understand .
“Ok.” The leviathans draw ever closer. “Can I cry into your chest?”
Instead of responding, she slips from my grasp for just a mont. She scoots backwards, and before grabbing my hand again as quickly as possible. She pulls in and I fall onto the bed.
“Co here.” She says.
I crawl closer to Cassie, being pulled along by her. I collapse into her, burying my face in her stomach. She lets my hand go and wraps her arm tightly around .
I finally begin to cry.
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