JanePtinum

  Preparing the video only fills a fraction of the time I have to wait. I check over what I’ve created dozens of times, ensuring not a single pixel is out of pce. Reliving my life like this hurts, but at least I can cut out every time I did something wrong, even if I have to end up cutting out and reconstructing vast portions of my life.

  I don’t even bother reconstructing the b. I can just say that my hard drives were all destroyed, and I have no memory of before Vince and the group rescued me. That’s not entirely a lie, my drives were destroyed. It doesn’t feel good to tell something 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 something.

  Not long after what would be sunrise, a splint nds just beside me from nowhere. I refocus on my hearing and lift my head for the first time since ying down.

  The woman who lead Cassie and I in here is standing in front of the bars, fnked by two armed guards. A few men and women are milling about the rest of the room, delivering ptes of food to each cell.

  I push myself into a sitting position in as mechanical a manner as I can. It results in moving my arms in a prepnned movement that would result in me sitting up no matter what my position was, or how the ground is shaped.

  The woman just stares at me. Did she tell me to put on the splint? An android would follow her instructions the first time, 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 me 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 me, and I only stare bnkly 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 me to act. She hasn’t given me an order since Cassie told me to listen to her. I still stare bnkly at her.

  “Fix your leg and follow me.” 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 metal 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 methodically, as if I can’t adapt to my broken leg. By the time I’m up, the cell door is already open. The two guards fnking her keep their guns on me. A single wrong movement 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 armed guards step to the side, and follow behind me 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 me 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 me 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 me 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 me 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 dispy in rge 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.

  “Name 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 mean, 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 me with question after question. Who I am, where I came from, and what the group has ordered me 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 rge. 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 dispy 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 same answers as the first time. I’m not sure what she’s trying to do, besides fill time.

  “Your upload is finished.” I dispy 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 hammer.

  I guess this is it. There are three guns pointed at me 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 time. 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 somewhere 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 me, 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 someone to fire in the first pce.

  Watch her finger, the moment she begins to squeeze, I’ll lunge forward, force her between me and the guard, and use her gun to shoot the guards. I’m not sure what the pn is past that, but I can make it up as I go.

  The woman smirks and gently lowers the hammer on her pistol. She gives a small shake of her head to herself, and returns her gun to its holster.

  “Follow me 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 time.

  She leads me 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 moment her eyes meet mine, all the tension melts 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 y down in the center. I’m in the exact same pce as the first time, hopefully it looks like I’m in some 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 me 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 moment 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 same way.

  There’s nothing I can do but wait. I stare at the ceiling, and it stares back. Movement 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 colpsed, grotesque thing speckled with sparkling gss. It reaches out towards me, shadows dripping off its fingers.

  Dark liquid sptters beside my head. It pools behind me, 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 me. 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 me, colossal creatures of pure emotion. They’re searching for something, and I know it’s me.

  Light streams from my body, filling the void with a primal fear. It threatens to tear me apart, to overwhelm me.

  One of the leviathans turns toward me, drawn to the light. It absorbs the emotion I’m putting out into the void, growing rger and moving faster by the moment.

  I can’t let it find me. 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 me. No, that’s not right, I can’t let myself imagine that. It’d just give fuel to another emotion to grow rger.

  The leviathans writhe around me. 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 me by, and the sadness of the world, and everything I’ve done weighs on me.

  I sit for eternities, my emotions dictated by creatures I cannot allow myself to comprehend.

  A small ptform rushes up from the void to meet me. I fall through the crack in the ceiling, nding hard on the ground of my cell. The world around my tiny ptform still remains the void, with the leviathans ever looking for their prey.

  Cassie steps into my little ptform, her hand extended. She’s alright. A sense of calm washes over me. I grab her hand and stand up. She pulls me forward, and I stumble behind her. The small ptform beneath my feet moves with me. I step through the faintest outline of a door.

  She leads me through doorways, down cramped hallways, has me stumble down stairs, and finally stops.

  The void around me begins to fade, though I can still feel the creatures waiting for their moment to consume me. A room repces the endless inky bck. Cassie is sitting on a bed, her robotic limbs reverted to their broken form. She stares at me, concern swelling in her emerald 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 gnce 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 somehow understand me.

  “Ok.” The leviathans draw ever closer. “Can I cry into your chest?”

  Instead of responding, she slips from my grasp for just a moment. She scoots backwards, and before grabbing my hand again as quickly as possible. She pulls me in and I fall onto the bed.

  “Come here.” She says.

  I crawl closer to Cassie, being pulled along by her. I colpse into her, burying my face in her stomach. She lets my hand go and wraps her arm tightly around me.

  I finally begin to cry.

  JanePtinum