Soulless Beauty Aorta

RANDOM ACCESS MEMORY//KANSATSU

Once again, Rose felt the elevator fall from under her ever so slightly. She needed more information. Perhaps the dispatch computer would have something in its archives.

She moved mechanically through the hallways. She wasn't concerned about the other active Aorta units she passed, since they were operating on the same empty code she had been, but instead wanted to avoid raising suspicion on any potential cameras. She made her way to the massive empty room with a gigantic glowing and flickering CRT computer monitor for a back wall. After years of blindly taking orders from this machine, Rose was almost giddy to finally be on the controlling side of it for once. She couldn't help but smile mischievously, feeling a soft warmth in her face and excitement in her small chest. There was a strange lack of cameras or guards in the dispatch room, so Rose simply walked up to the interface, and began to run a search on all files marked 'Rose'.

One result presented itself. It was labeled with the word "LOCKED" in bold red letters, no option to input a password. Searching for 'Shell' gave a warm and empathetic REDACTED message with a loud error chime. 'Aorta', REDACTED, again. 'MANNA'. She had typed it in without thinking. MANNA... What was it? Why did she put it in? Then she remembered- the black panel bolted to her left shoulder, bearing that same word. A single result flashed on the screen. Unsurprisingly, it was marked "PASSWORD PROTECTED", however, this one had a password input box. "R, O, S, E", she typed in, not actually expecting it to work. ACCESS GRANTED.

The result was revealed to be a folder. Inside were three files. A text document titled 'MICHAEL EXPERIMENT', a text document titled 'AORTA PROGRAM', and a video file titled SUR_01/01/GD3. Rose decided to open the video file first.

It was 24 hours long, and was a single shot of a dark room with two devices that looked like needle-less charging seats on either side of a computer bolted to the floor. Connecting the seats was a clear tube protruding from the wall, in the middle of which was a glowing, black and green crystal formation, the only source of light. The seat to the left of the computer was empty, but the camera angle made it impossible to see what was in the other one. Rose hit the virtual 'fast-forward' key in the player. Nothing happened for hours, until suddenly the lights flashed on. She hit play quickly, and watched the cataclysm unfold.

An old man in a white lab coat- a real, human man, not an Aorta- entered the room, and was followed by a group of 11 people. Two men, six women, a young child, and two people dressed in medical garb, all human. All but the medics were in identical black hospital gowns. One of them, a young woman, got into the prototype charging seat to the left of the computer. The man in the lab coat spoke with her a moment and then pressed a few keys on the keyboard. The crystal formation between the seats began to glow as it was charged with electricity. The screen suddenly filled with static, and after a few minutes, it cleared up. The woman who had gotten in the first seat was completely motionless. Her body was loaded onto a stretcher and carried out by the medics.

The same thing happened with the next seven people; seat, glow, static, medics. The last... test subject[?] in the room took up the position of the eight who went before her. It was another young woman.

Once more, the man in the lab coat pressed a sequence of buttons, strangely refusing to make eye contact or speak with the woman. This time, the crystal formation between the pods began to glow more harshly and vibrate intensely. Rose could swear she saw the glass tube containing the crystal crack through the low video resolution. The camera feed cut, and remained dark for much longer than the static had obscured the video before. Rose fast-forwarded again, and when the feed returned, a ghastly sight was before her.

The shot was tilted, with the ground much closer than before. The view shook violently, as smoke poured from off screen, the room from before in flaming ruins. Far in the distance, an enormous shape appeared from the horizon, and moved upward. It was an enormous, metallic face. The same one Rose saw in her vision.

"PLEASE STEP AWAY FROM THE TERMINAL AND PUT YOUR HANDS UP." Rose ripped herself away from the computer. A rarely seen 209 HOT-SHOT enforcement droid had spotted her. "YOU HAVE FIFTEEN SECONDS TO COMPLY." Thinking fast, Rose bolted toward the center of the widely-built, bipedal walker, dropping just before hitting it and sliding between the gaps in its legs and out of the room at the last second. "I AM NOW AUTHORIZED TO USE PHYSICAL FORCE." The hallway lit up with machine gun fire as the cockpit swiveled to target Rose. She crouch-ran from the slow moving HOT-SHOT, rolling left and right to dodge the scattering bullets. Just as Rose thought she had gotten away, the drone lifted and retracted its legs to the sides of its body, performing a quick-turn using its jets in mid-air, before slamming back down to the ground and pounding after her with a mechanical rhythm.

Another set of running footsteps echoed through the corridor towards Rose and the drone. A flash of silver and pink launched itself over Rose's head towards the HOT-SHOT, "HRRAH!" A thunderous whirring, grinding sound ripped through the air as an oddly shaped weapon clashed against the surface of the mech. It bounced off and struggled to get a grip in the body as Rose's savior braced her feet against the face of the unit with her feet. "Hup!" She hopped up a bit up off the face of the drone and then used her own weight to pull the chainsaw-like weapon down, forcing it through the drone's body in mere seconds, landing on the ground and bouncing from a crouch back up to her feet, then stumbling backwards just before the mech exploded. Rose's eyes shot open, a tall and well-built woman Aorta brushed her brow with the inside of her left forearm, pushing her hair up off her forehead at the same time as wiping away the sweat that would have been there if she had real skin. "HYACINTH?" Rose blurted out, instantly recognizing this oddly specific behavior. Hyacinth spun around to look at Rose in shock, deactivating her strange tool of carnage. "Rose!"