Soul under Circuits

Chapter 2

Once inside the ventilation shaft, I did general scouting procedures like mapping and heat detecting forwards. No alarm system was to be detected in the ducts and therefore I advanced, but maintaining low profile and minimum sound.
After a couple of uneventful minutes and progressing, two voices went under me. The heat detector confirmed that those voices came from armed men just below my position. They were a possible threat, and I wanted to eliminate it.

DENIED. Proceed to target location. Avoid unnecessary combat.

Cursed system. Not once my gut has been wrong. Let me act.

DENIED. Proceed to target location. Avoid unnecessary combat.

I kept crawling after the two men had moved along. No step was in false. No sweat or exhaustion. I had been built for this kind of deed, after all.
There came to a point, however, where moving forwards by ventilation tubes wasn’t an option, thanks to the drop I had to make to get to the desired floor. This way, I directed myself to the elevator shaft, and came out next to the door. The elevator was in a lower floor, and two heat signatures emanated from the inside.

Human. Armed with automatic weaponry. Proceed with caution.

How useful advice. “Proceed with caution”. Really machine? Can’t you do any better? A child would give better feedback for this kind of situation.
Uraj in the right hand, Khalis in the left. At the exact moment the elevator got to my floor, and before the doors opened, I launched Khalis right were one of the heat sources stood. The handle stayed on my side of the door, but the entire blade went through. A choking mumble was sounding as the elevator pried open. A terrified face accompanied an even more shocked one, as one of the men stood impaled to the mighty sword and the other helplessly tried to stop the incessant bleeding from his friend’s chest. I stepped forward a reached out to the uninjured man and raised him by the neck. The fear in the eyes of a man is something that can’t be hidden. The posture might have been imposing, but the eyes can’t lie. Bad thing I had lost mine long ago.
“Number of units at floor 46. Report.” A deep mechanical voice emerged from the under part of my head, as my fist led go to allow voice through the guy’s throat.
Some seconds of silence went by with no response. Shortly after, he raised his gun. At least he tried. In no time’s response, I caught the machine-gun by the barrel and kept it pointing down.
“Wrong answer,” I implied as I crushed the trachea I was holding. “Shame my program didn’t save you, big bud”.
I took Khalis and the body it was holding just dropped down to the floor. I entered the elevator and marked floor 46, only 13 floors away. As I went down, I held the two corpses up in front of me, one with each hand. Their feet just above the floor, and their heads by my shoulders, they would serve as practical shields in time come.
My heat sensors got nothing. My sound receptors got bored at the silence. I raised my meat-shields high so that they would cover my torso and head. Just as I got to my floor, sound finally kicked in. A blade poked inside and went through my right arm, damaging the elbow. The body didn´t serve for shit. The door had a hard time opening as the sword wouldn’t budge. My heat sensor went off-chart when I aimed at the blade. It was definitely like Khalis.
I pushed open into a furnished room. Golden walls covered with fancy paintings and fine tapestry, red couches and large sofas surrounded the center, were a large, black-marble table stood. On top of it, a droid stood. It was certainly shorter, rounding its height to 2, 20 meters tall. On its back, a smooth rifle shone. As a matter of fact, all of the droid’s body was smooth and rounded. No rust, no open joints. Just, polished like a pearl. It had no heat, and didn’t show up in any of my sensors, just in the ocular ones, just like a spectre.