City of Light

Chapter 3

In the minutes that slowly came after our encounter, it followed me home. Never said a word. All eyes on me, it stuck close. It stopped when I did when I checked the dumpsters,  while I continued my rounds, I thought long and hard.  I noticed it doesn't have a weapon, or a model number anywhere, a rogue one? No. It seemed perfectly aware and capable. It tried to save its self but repairing. The AI is not malfunctioning. The steam I saw coming out of it wasn't even close to looking like smoke, so its core wasn't damaged. I have no idea whats wrong with it.

I stop dead in my tracks and gather enough courage to look at it.

"If you can understand me, is your owner dead? Missing? I need to know because in you keep following me you will get me in a lot of trouble for being near you." I stand up straight and hold my breath, I'm so scared it will lash out for what I just said.  Instead, it again does nothing for a moment, slowly it holds out its arm to me and a small dull blade pops out from his fore arm, steaming, orange vibrant and bright. It fits it in its hand and walks over to me. My body won't move, my eyes won't blink. Why can't I move? As it looms closer I don't blink but a tear goes down my cheek. It takes off my big, worn brown scarf off and unzips my brown leather, jacket with a high collar. Then my gas mask. Only my dirty white tank top remains and my jeans with black leather knees, and my muddy combat boots. My jacket slides of my shoulder and drops to the ground, it folds a small part of my scarf into a small roll. With its cold fingers it pinches my joint on my jaw and my mouth falls open, it puts the scarf in my mouth, and before I know it searing pain rips through my body I clamp my jaw down so hard my head hurts. My skin begins to sizzle like bacon, I scream as loud as I can. I finally shut my eyes, but they won't open anymore, I can feel my knees about to give, my heart may explode. I try to stay conscious and when the pain becomes clearer my left shoulder is where it's cutting me. I can feel small precise cuts being made, I thought it was a star at first but it becomes more completed and I still don't know what it is. I feel a circle being made around the complicated piece of art. I finally give up, my knees give and I feel the knife quickly jerked away, and my head hitting the ground. I don't feel anything.

Dreams, people say that they are our memories that our inner eye is responsible for making them into our dreams every night. But they can be demons the beautiful memories turned evil and ugly, horrifying. Every day I wake up I hope and hope again it was only a bad dream and my mom would be coming to my room and tell me everything is alright. As the days dragged on and trying to cope with the horrifying nature of our reality I stopped hoping for a new world. It will never happen, I gave up trying. I can hope that one day my sister will get a better chance than me. I won't survive this.

I feel so light, in a way I feel like a doll I won't move until I am forced to. I hear sharp ticking sounds and freezing cold metal. I know what it did to me.
I gasp out my sleep and my spine immediately makes me sit up and I have my mask on and my scarf back exactly the way it was on me along with my jacket. I look around I am in between a canal and a building. A dumpster is on my left and canal is polluted and disgusting. The grass is gone and I'm laying on dirt. The protector is on my right meditating. I have never seen one do that before, none the less even know what that is. I take a deep breath and center my self.
"What did I just agree to?" My shoulder throbs, and it raises its head and looks at me. Am I supposed to know?
We don't move an inch, but the mind is moving a thousand miles an hour.
I simplify things.
It has no owner as far as I can tell, doesn't appear to be rogue, has medical programming, no communication, unknown model, has been in combat before. Then it hits me like I lost a fight with a train, none of those things make sense, but it's happened before
"You just bound me, didn't you?"