{insert clever title here}

thingy

I AM SO SORRY I LEFT IT AT A CLIFFHANGER FOR SO LONG!

Ugh, this happens to me a lot more than it should. I write half a chapter that resolves the cliffhanger, then I have writer's block and forget I left you lot hanging.

Yeah so I could not think of a chapter name

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Taron's shoulder ached. It was dull and the exact source was impossible to pinpoint, but the over all soreness was present. Groggy, he moved to rub his eyes and was surprised that one arm wouldn't budge. Then physical awareness and memory slammed exhaustion forcibly from his mind. Groaning, he stretched his free arm as best he could. Looking down with concern, he forced himself to think logically and not give into emotion-at least for now.

Aris was still unconscious, the blood that had seeped from the rim of where her faceplate had been was dry and clotted. The red and charcoal grey metal itself was on the floor, discarded and twisted out of shape. That -thing- must have stepped on it. He seethed at the thought of their robotic assaulter. His chest burned along the ragged gash that stretched diagonally across it, and the electrical damage about his neck itched uncomfortably. His fingertips of his free hand were sore, and his wrist felt raw.

Inwardly sighing, he forced himself to concentrate. His priority was escape, he wanted to be long gone before that -he felt bile rise- machine returned and discovered their absence. He would not be studied like some cell in a Petri dish and he most certainly would not watch Aris be dissected like a problematic computer. His determination gave him energy and he concentrated on ripping apart the restraint on his wrist. Once that was off, he shed the analytic equipment on his hand and stared wearily at the wires stuck into his fingers. Biting his lip, he gripped them all and, on a count of three, turned his head and yanked fast and hard. The wires came out, and with them a flare of pain that nearly caused him to fall of the board he was precariously leaning on. How stupid it would be to free his hands, but be unable to escape because he fell forward and broke his ankles. On that note he wiped his bloody fingers on his khaki pants leaving scarlet smears. Carefully sliding down he freed his ankles.

Stepping over Aris to kneel at her other side, he winced at the crunch of glass under his sneakers. Squatting, careful to keep his knees from digging into the layer of shards, he rolled her carefully over and stared at Aris. She was unconscious, and looked miserable. The tear tracts and blotchiness from the ordeal were evident and her brow was furrowed, a deep groove showed a glare near the border of her implants. Her hands had broken her fall. The metal one was fine -not even scratched, but the human one was covered in fine cuts from the glass and an overall greenish-purple bruise tinge. He gingerly took her hands in his and shook them, trying to rouse her in as non-alarming as a way he could. She would probably be distressed and possibly in pain, he didn't want her to scream or be terrified.

"Aris... Ari....please..." He hissed, trying not to make too much noise. She twitched her hands and her lips moved, but her eye stayed shut. He tentatively reached out and brushed his fingers against her cheek. Instantly her eye shot open and her robot eye, which he had never seen uncovered, started moving. It was a box shaped like an angled parallelogram with a track and a smaller device mounted to swing at a perpendicular angle to the slant of the track. It wasn't spherical motion, but it made up for it in ingenuity. Other interesting features of her physiology, artificial muscles, bones and more, moved before his eyes.

"What..?" Aris started, glaring, but stopped suddenly gasping in pain. The barely scabbed wounds near her eyebrow and above her mouth reopened. She sat up and leaned against the board. Taron made a silent vow to rip that robot circuit from circuit next time he encountered it. It would pay for causing his closest friend pain.