“You worthless little shit!” he yelled at me.
I stared up in angry confusion. Just moments ago . . . the broken, ripped apart, chunk of KASNA’s head was up, attached to her still-hanging, massive body, angrily lashing out and destroying all in her way. The alarms had caused me and Quintley to run into this room—her main core room. She had been going haywire; something somewhere had gone wrong with her and in the facility.
We had worked together rapidly, despite the chaos rushing around us, and Quintley had just managed to dismantle her with a well-placed and quick hack while I avoided getting us killed by using the Trans Shooter to take hits at her.
Now that she was no longer together in one piece, but far from being offline, he had the sudden realization of the sudden power he had just gained as the sole controller of Kortan. With him dismantling KASNA, he had gained the ultimate power automatically. Everything was in his hands now, but the stupid idiot had no clue as to what he was doing. He was supposed to de-bug KASNA, not kill her and accidentally take over Kortan! Damn it, what was he doing?!
And now, armed with only my Trans Shooter, laying on the ground with a hurt arm- my worst case scenario- KASNA’s singular, bright, neon-green eye glared up at me from where her head laid beside me on the cold cement floor. I could just feel her hatred for the both of us radiating from her. She wasn’t speaking, but I knew she wanted to rage at me.
I was sweating and trying to catch my breath, tiredly trying to pick myself up off the floor and face the outraging Quintley. KASNA had just about killed us both, and now Quintley was turning his back on me, attacking me relentlessly by controlling the leftover mechanic arms of KASNA manually. He was using the same motherboard to control the pieces against me in the same way he helped me behead the AI.
“Great. Fantastic-tastic. D-d-do you know what you’ve just just just just done?” her steely, glitching voice hissed at me.
I glanced quickly between her and the raging mechanics preparing to strike at me again. They had already caught me off-guard. I had to be cautious now. Sweat poured down my brow and back. I winced, completely getting to my feet. The Trans Shooter hung limp in my hand. I had to force my hurt arm into cooperation. I had to get Quintley away from that damned keyboard.
“Wait, where-ere-ere-ere are you-ou-ou going, M-mattice?” KASNA asked as I slowly limbered away.
I gritted my teeth. The pain was searing throughout my body like I was being set on fire. I knew that sensation; it wasn’t pleasant. I kept my focus on the one person I had thought I could trust. I had to reach him- that traitor that was now trying to kill me with hatred from seemingly nowhere.
“You idiot! You’re going to destroy this whole facility!” she screamed.
“You are a bitch, you heartless creation!” he yelled back at her, still glaring at me.
“You have no idea what you’re doing, dammit! Put me back so I can fix it! You’re causing the whole laboratory to implode!”
I slowly made my way towards the raised platform Quintley was on. Blood rose in my mouth, a migraine formed and my throat hurt, but I had to ignore their bickering. She was distracting him for me. I swallowed the bile taste, clutching my Trans Shooter in preparation to kill the one I had least expected to turn on me, moving my body forwards faster, slowly- but gaining momentum.
My feet dragged as if stuck in mud, my heart thudded in my temples, giving me a raging migraine that my clenched teeth weren’t soothing. My eyes remained locked on him; I was readying to attack. He was my target. He was the one to kill. My thoughts were overcome with nothing but cold-blooded murder. It was my drive- my survival key. It was what I needed to do in order to live, and he was in the way. My head turned dark with malicious thoughts.
My training had all led down to this. I would use my skills for purposes other than transportation. I knew what damage it could do; I just had to apply it.
“You,” he scowled at me.
Before he could act, and through the pain, I aimed the gun with a shaking arm at him, whipping out a large, flat beam of that pale blue, concentrated light, twisting my arm in a manner as if to slap him with it.
KASNA’s body kept moving under his command. It quirked backwards for a moment, the wrong way, but only for a moment, before swinging to come at me at a dangerous speed. The large, mechanical arm was closing in to where I was.
The last remaining adrenaline I had from the earlier fight kicked in, alerting my eyes and muscles through their tired achiness. It let me dodge neatly out of the way of the arm that fell only a few short feet of where I had just been standing. The vibration of the massive collision on the floor nearly made me fall, but jerking my arm around while still holding the gun’s clutch helped me regain momentum.
With my dead-eye aim, I had managed to crack the platform he was on. He was wary of my skill; he knew personally what I was capable of doing. He had trained me, after all. KASNA shrieked as she watched the very destruction of her hard work crumble around her.
He shot out another mechanical arm to attack me, and my tired body wouldn’t allow me to aim in time to knock it out of the way. I cried in surprise and fell over and out of the way.
I re-grasped the clutch, pushing it to full throttle and immediately moving my arms in the proper motions for swinging the deadly light beam around; my own deadly weapon of demise. It was almost like an electrical whip of sorts, except more fluid and far more deadly. It hadn’t been meant to be used as a weapon, but it was the very treachery I was forced into using.
It was all I had to fight for. Gala was dead. My parents were dead. My friends were gone and every friendly face I once knew no longer existed. I had nothing to live for any longer. My escape was a vague, distant hope now, famished and extinguished by a single snuff. The last person I had had betrayed me. Now, I had to kill him.
My body moved and acted for me, without needing a single command from me, so I was stuck in miserable thoughts about how far down and low my life had sunk.
He was knocked aside by the beam I swung at him, whipping it around so that it’d slash at his torso. His next swing caught me off guard again, but on my fall to the floor, the gun swerved another beam into him, causing him to scream with pain. I had hit a vital organ.
As he began to clutch at his torso and slump over the machinery he was standing at, I quickly and shakily got up, running over to where KASNA’s forgotten head lay. I used the Trans Shooter to carefully cut into the metal and fiberglass, digging for what I knew to be her main processor.
The mainframe of KASNA. I was going to get it and run- run outside of Kortan; run outside, away and home.
“What ar-ar-re you doing?!” she asked roughly with panic.
I ripped it out, it containing her green eye, main memory, voice box and vital controls panel. Even down to her small size, she was still decently heavy, and I trudged over to the platform I had blasted with the Shooter.
“Mattice!” she cried again.
“I . . . .” I gasped for air, hardly slumping over the main keyboard for the controls Quintley had been using. I pushed his limp body off the platform, and he rolled onto the floor, bleeding profusely and looking very critically hurt.
Gasping for more air, I stood straight, stripping off the Trans Shooter from my wrist and taking KASNA in both my hands. I raised her high over my head, using my last remaining strength to pull off my plan to ruin Kortan- for now.
“Subject PP2-GL4537—!”
I slammed her remains down onto the motherboard. Sweat blinded my eyes, but the sparks starting to shower around me burned my vision with bright, stinging bursts. My lungs were collapsing from my strenuous exhaustion. More blood poured from my mouth, cutting off my air rapidly. My arm and ribs burned, and I could no longer feel my head- it was entirely numb.
I raised KASNA again, slamming her down with all my remaining might. For my mother- slam! For my father- slam! For Gala- slam! For Quintley- slam! For the downfall of Kortan- slam! For my hatred of Benlark- slam! For stealing my humanity away- slam!
She shrieked in computerized pain as I did this- screaming profanities and unrecognizable curses in a shrill, ear-shattering, high-pitched and glitched howls.
“No-no-no-no! Wha—buurrzzzzchh- no, what are you—schreeeechh—System Failure. Error. Error. Rrrreesscchhhtt—Mattice!—Error warning. Deleting temporary—ssshhchht—core under meltdown—Vera stop it!”
Showers of sparks burned my arms, and the metal fragments that remained of what I had just crushed scratched my hands. My anger and hate fueled me, keeping me going and destroying all I could reach. I had to live. I had to survive. I was winning. I was going to live!
“Error. System core meltdown. Burrchhh—zzzzppt—“ a strange, rapid stream of voices flew from KASNA. “File corruption. Sssheeeeessssszz—closing down permanent mainstream. Error.”
Quintley had raised himself just enough to look at me; fear, rage and pain burning through his eyes. He watched me desperately, reaching out with one dirty, bloodied hand as I continued to slam the remnants of the AI onto the motherboard of herself and Kortan.
It was wrecked. It was over. Alarms and sirens were going off, alerting Kortan of the destruction with that male, pristine, computerized voice. “Stay calm,” it was saying. “Warning. Take all safety protocol precautions. KASNA destruction immanent. Stay calm. Warning. Remember to follow all safety protocol precautions. Warning. KASNA core destruction in need of immediate attention. Warning. Warning. Warning. Warning. Warning.”
I looked at the shattered remains of KASNA in my hands.
“It’s Vera Mattice.” I rasped pointedly, my voice firm underneath the bloody breathlessness. Then I fell to my knees, clutching the AI tightly in my arms, curling into a protective ball around her. I clutched onto her as if she held my very life source—as if I’d die if I let go. “Forgive me,” I whispered without known reason, watching as the neon-green light faded into a dull nothingness until pitch blackness shrouded KASNA’s inside. She was silent.
She lay crumpled in my hands.
I grabbed the Trans Shooter next to me, still clutching KASNA tightly to me. I held the very being and purpose of Kortan in my hands, and I felt powerful. For my- what seemed to be dying moments- I felt power, and in control, and protective over what I just destroyed. My vision was still blurry, burning; my limbs numb and unresponsive; my mind filled and frantic, desperate confusion that sent my body into overdrive.
I aimed one last time for Quintley: directly at his heart with full intention to kill.
I shot the beam, and he fell back into his own pool of blood. Gun in one hand, KASNA in the other, I managed to weakly crawl off the platform and over to him, to make sure I killed him. He had to be dead. I had to have killed him.
I dropped beside him, curling back into my protective ball over KASNA and clutching my treasured gun to me tightly. I was unable to support myself any longer.
Shouts and yells were heard from behind me, but I heard none of it as my world faded into black. The floor felt amazingly cool to my hot body, despite the chunks of KASNA’s body falling onto the floor and sending showers of more sparks over us. The floor barely vibrated as larger metal chunks from the ceiling, walls and the AI’s body fell, some near us, making more ear-shattering noises and tremulous destruction.
Quintley’s eyes were watching me with a faint distinctness. I laid there for what seemed like hours, maybe days, despite the lab workers scrambling around us, yelling and causing amok of chaos. He was the last thing I registered in my eyesight—him blinking slowly and then his eyes rolling into the back of his head. The stench of burning metal, flesh and blood was burning my throat as more blood dribbled from it. I was covered in it, as was Quintley.
The last thing I remembered was my body being lifted up and away from Quintley and from around KASNA, tears streaming out of my stinging eyes with only one thought on my mind. I knew where they were going to take me. Purgatory suspension.
“Quintley,” my throat whispered, no real sound coming out of it. My tears blurred the sight of him, and I felt the Trans Shooter being taken from my hand, but then I was gone.
~
“You’ve been screaming again in your sleep, Master.”
Her voice awoke me, but I didn’t open my eyes. I could feel every strain in my body: every tense muscle, shot nerve, deathly emotion and malicious mentality. I feared that if I moved, it would all come back, and we’d all try to kill each other again.
I cried.
The pain was almost real. I could remember every ounce of it. I still couldn’t believe how vivid it was. How real, how emotional . . . it was years ago . . . but I could still feel every action, every thought, every emotion . . . .
The android shook my shoulders, so I forced open my blotchy, swollen eyes and wiped at my tears. She hadn’t had this much reach before. I breathed in and out; I had to remember that this was reality. That was the past.
My feet were throbbing. Why did they hurt so much?
Silver eyes stared down into mine, losing me in a world of ideal fable. If only I could live within that safe, pristine color of nothing. I’d be serene and happy. I’d have no worries and nothing would bother me. I could sleep until my death.
I forced myself to sit up.
VOCOM didn’t speak. Perhaps she thought I was still upset over our argument. But, she had said I was screaming in my sleep again. Again. When was it going to end? Alright, it wasn’t. It probably never could. What made me think that after I destroyed Benlark’s remains and Kortan that the dreams would suddenly disappear? In fact, they’d probably only get worse until the very end of my life.
What then?
I almost wanted Quintley contained here in my house, so I could make sure he didn’t do anything else stupid. VOCOM and I would get annoyed with him, for we both still had that burning hatred towards him. I knew why she hated him more than me. Perhaps . . . perhaps he really had been trying to help me. He was reaching out—like he had after getting me free from Kortan. Why was he so keen on helping me after what had happened between us?
“You nearly kicked a hole in the wall. It was getting annoying, so I finally decided to wake you up before you kicked it down.” She finally stated.
I looked towards the end of the bed, and sure enough, a small dent stood dirtied by my feet. My feet were swollen, red and hurting badly. Well, that explained that. My body was physically acting it out, over and over again, going nowhere in reality.
“I can’t believe I have to go back.” I stated rather suddenly, breathing deeply and trying to calm down.
“I can’t believe you’re going to destroy my Kortan.”
“I have to. For my parents. For Gala.”
“Hm,” came her steely reply.
I had told her a hundred times this, over and over, all with the same sheer confidence of shakiness. She should’ve been used to it by then. I think she was, but perhaps hoped from somewhere deep within her processor that I was going to change my mind at the last minute and back out- saving her trouble and worries. Ha.
But no, I had the reactor ready, and it was going to happen. She had no control over this- this was my ordeal. But now a new flaw occurred to my plan: those transistors that tried to blow me up yesterday. Quintley had told me about them . . . but did I believe him? How did he even know about my presence? Was it really the communicator’s signal? Why was he still at Kortan? I had to find out. And the only way to do that was to get back in touch with him- as much as I despised it and would hate it.
I turned cautiously to the android, which was still waiting for me to either get up or lay back down. She would loathe this, but she had to obey. She could kill me later once I killed Benlark, but right now, her hate had to sit pretty on a shelf to admire later. I guess it could be called a mutual, unsaid agreement.
“The communicator. Put that little thing back online.” I ordered, cautiously rubbing my hurting throat and quietly speaking to keep from straining my voice. “Contact the line he used to break the firewall—“
“What?! Are you insane?!” she glared at me with both the android and her singular, unblinking green eye as I made my way into the living room.
I stared at her apprehensively, trying to be as serious as I could manage without losing my cool. “Yes. I need to speak with him. I’ve decided he can help me—temporarily and nothing more. I’ll use him to take down Kortan.”
A prolonged silence followed as I went into the kitchen to fix something for a late brunch. I was beginning to wonder if she was debating to shoot me or not.
“I’m serious. Pout all you want, I’m doing this.”
I had only wanted to speak with him about the transistors- try to gain more info on what the remnants of Kortan’s workers were doing with them and to see if he’d at least try to help me blow up Benlark. Surely he hated him too. I didn’t want to work with Quintley—it was the last thing I wanted, but he could be a valuable inside source. I didn’t want to say in the cruel way I was using him, but sometimes un-nice things were necessary. If he got in the way again, then I’d be sure to kill him this time.
No mercy.
“I will not, absolutely not contact that idiot and give away our location—“
“Don’t worry about that.” I interrupted. “Just use pure satellite signal. Hack a phone company if you have to.”
A mechanical sigh whirred in my ear after a short pause. “I abhor you for this.”
I rolled my eyes. “Yeah, I know. Just contact him. It’s temporary, I promise.” And I’d hold to that promise over my own cold, dead body. I didn’t want anything to do with him. I hated him, with so much fury that I almost wanted to punch something over it. He had hurt me, numerous times, emotionally and physically. That I just couldn’t forgive.
“I’ll need a few minutes to hack the nearest phone company satellite.”
I nodded. I ignored her as she ranted on about something about humans and how lowly our insubordinate idiocies were. Sure, currently I could agree, with our vile hatred and self-absorbed egos that wanted nothing more than the demise of others and all the winnings for ourselves. Well, sometimes you had to play survival of the fittest.