Soul under Circuits

Chapter 1

Lights turned on. A flash blurred everything for a second, until my receptors kicked in and the image got cleared. Tall roofs were just under me. A couple seconds of delay in my reboot and I would be as good as scrap. The jump pack boosted just before I touched the target building, granting me a soft landing. Right foot first, the shock absorbers did the rest of job.

HUD update. Drivers check. 15%... 46%... 82%... 99%... Driver corruption detected. Resetting unit.

Everything went dark, but I was still in there. My metal chassis immobile, my consciousness fading, I disappeared.

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Rebooting. 12%... 92% … Rebooting complete. Initializing.

The fading and focusing happened once again. The drivers were working appropriately now. It must have had been some damage leftover from last mission. Rain was pouring down on my steel and titanium body. My sound receptors adjusted to ignore the constant plopping of the drops. Complete silence surrounded me. I just stood, waiting for my mission, ready for any encounter, as always.

Mission updated. Proceed to marked location. Hostiles encountered. Combat programming advised.

A yellow dot was now displaying in my HUD. It went through the floor, and forwards. I had to go down in order to reach the target destination, but there was no need to reposition to another building. I walked towards the ventilation shaft that emerged from the top of the roof were I now walked on. As I got close, my reflection appeared in front of me.
I still wore the grey apron as I did when I had flesh to protect from the cold. It was nice to be allowed to keep it. Mi red scarf was still were my neck once had been. I remember… Why did I use it? Whatever the reason, it stayed. My swords hung in my back. Khalis, made to penetrate hard metals, wirelessly connected to my battery, it heats up to extreme temperatures, allowing the cutting of titanium as if it was jelly. Uraj, made to slice and dice flesh, covered in a strong acid, corrodes wounds and causes extreme pain for maximum efficiency in disabling targets. Both swords made out of tungsten, they were way higher quality than my whole system, and each one could probably match my body’s hardware’s worth.
As I pried open the ventilation shaft, a loud planking noise erupted from behind my back. As I turned around, I saw a fleshier model of my body. It was surely a new product. Metallic and robotic in nature, but covered of meat in places like the mouth and hand, it even had claws and teeth. The metal looked rusty, probably because of the blood that poured from some of the openings in the armor. I started an analysis as we faced each other, both without a movement.

Analyzing possible hostile. In progress. Hive plating detected. Eliminate threat.

Hive. The second greatest weapons dealer in Turuk, and second in the world for that matter. This was a great deal. The target wasn’t doing much other that standing menacingly and casually wobbling in place. I took a combat stance. The target didn’t react. A good 10 meters separated us, but it was short enough to reach in one dash and slash. Easy target, I thought.
As I leaped forward, the enemy dodged to my left and elbow-hit me in my back, making me drop to my knee. As I looked back, I realized the thing had taken my Khalis, and was now aiming it at me. I had fallen in the trap. I gripped Uraj and unsheathed it, brandishing it towards the foe.

Inspecting target. Flayed Hive minion. Sub category B. Berserker status. No human consciousness detected. Eliminate by disabling AI activity. Caution advised.

No shit. I was thinking about getting cut in half by the minion just to shut the useless programming. I had to take a new approach now that a frontal assault seemed risky. I jumped to the side, and charged. Just when I was about to clash against the minion, I used my jump-pack to leap over my target and land just behind it. The minion hadn’t had that in mind. He had lunged to where I would have landed if I hadn’t used my jump. At the exact moment it turned to me, I cleanly cut both of its meat hands with my Uraj, and an unbearable screech emerged out of the bloody mouth. Before Khalis hit the ground, and in a swift movement, I reached to it and grabbed the handle, spinning and cutting both of the minion’s legs just under the knees. Almost disabled, the flayed one boosted its jump-pack towards the edge, but I caught it just by a platform in the edge of the building, impaling it to the floor with my Khalis as I sheathed Uraj mid-air. A faint scream faded into the crowded city below us, and the enemy fell numb. The target had been eliminated, and I could now move on towards my real objective.