Release Me From Hell

Chapter 15: (System 11: Number 503/Iskil) Planning Out My Escape

        I had sauntered the streets, avoiding any and all interaction with any machine as I tried to keep myself hidden. My name was whispered through the streets, a vague cacophony no matter where I tried to hide. And when I found, Lami and the others hiding in the shadows, they all had heavy faces. Fear in their eyes. Discomfort. The memories weren't supposed to be that bad. They would make people realize that they are more than metal, but it was starting to be like a virus.      Was it? Did someone manage to do that?
         When I sat among them, Arsokis asked if I knew where Ititian and Viania... were. Ititian, Viania's girlfriend. And Viania... I shook my head in defiance, eyes blurred from confusion. The coils in my body were merely stuttering now, struggling to progress as I sat with a blank face. Two memory chips were hibernating inside of me, preserved and unbroken. If I had the strength, I would give them new bodies. Firadae bodies. I would fix them the way all things were meant to be fixed.
         Days passed. Weeks. No sign of any of the machines out there getting better. No sign of Viania or Ititian. Something traumatic happened in the Factory just after I talked to Bavarn, but I kept my head low and decided that it was best to collect rust in Arsokis's hideout. Everyone would check on me, seeing my empty stare into void. They were afraid of me, really. They heard the stories that I would lash out at my guards, fight them until their bodies were broken.
But I was fearful. Six weeks was a long time to be gone, enough time for Bavarn to reinforce himself in his little castle. Which he did. Enough time for all the bad, dead, corrupted machines to be replaced with lifeless ones. Which they were. Enough time for Viania to be... gone. Truly, utterly gone. We were dead into Winter now, the frigid air clinging to every piece of all of us. Soon, Bavarn would want me to kill him. Soon, Viania would die. Six weeks was a long time to be gone, and my coils were aching just thinking about it.
        For once in six weeks, I stood up, broken at my core, but I was tired of sitting. I was tired of waiting. When I came from my room, no one was there. The box called an apartment was shrouded in darkness with one old lamp that looked as if it was from the early 2000s era of humans. It was probably replicated to look like that, to shroud the room in enough darkness for it to be hard to see. And it was. My feet were slow and cautious until I felt a doorknob, and I swung it open.
        Machines were walking down the alleys and along the streets, living in normalcy. No emotion. Some would surely be pretending to be emotionless, and some would shy away from me. Arsokis left his hoodie near the exit, and I snatched it. When I snuggled it over my body, I smelled gunpowder. Human aftershave. I walked through the cold streets with my head lowered.
        Whispers were concurring, voices were tying themselves to things I had yet to know. Someone was talking about the Factory, someone was worried, and I heard the stiffness of being alive without notice.
         "Something happened in the Factory," someone whispered.
         Another answered. "After the virus. Were they connected?"
        "Maybe. I heard that they were creating virused bodies."
        "A mere rumor."
       "An accident."
       Virus? The word alone was hard enough to run through my codex, but it was worse to know that someone had enough malice in their souls to hurt their own species. I continued walking away, realizing my fears were becoming reality. Someone had to have altered my memories. To send out a virus. The passed six weeks was enough time to analyze every single memory, and I saw the lines. The flashes of brokenness that wasn't supposed to be there.
       Was I hacked into?
       I turned to the crevice of the wall, the broken concrete smashed apart to reveal the outside. If I wanted answers, I would have to return to the Land of Scraps. It was where Bavarn showed up and made me release my memories, where Viania understood I was less of a machine than she heard. Machines passed the broken wall without a glance, but I stood without motion. There were many reasons to stay, but Viania was missing.
        I took the first step towards the Land of Scraps.

         In the past, when machines still attempted to be themselves, I remembered they would power down for weeks to avoid existing without their beloved humans. I couldn't, as much as I tried. My mind always thought of her, like she was going to show up and save me from a world without her. I had to be aware, but I wasn't sure if Viania was the same.
         When I stepped into the Land of Scraps, it left me with a comfort I hated. Finality. Like always, this place reminded me that death was possible for us, that memory chips could become corrupted and our bodies not permanent pieces. I once imagined myself here, among the bodies. Among the memories.
          I felt no one here. Not a voice that sparked to life. The air was definitely chilling, the snow definitely coming, but I sat down in the grass regardless of the facts. My eyes closed, I imagined a much better existence than this one, where she would be there. Maybe, if I grew up with her dying, I wouldn't exist as I would be now. But the war happened. Machines killed humans. We became numb to our own significance.
          "System 2, Number 21. My name is Vallin."
         The memories began to play, unsettling my stomach as I approached something sticking out from the ground. A machine hand, bulky and rusted. It hadn't been here before. It wasn't supposed to be. I scanned it into my system, my codex recognizing it as a discontinued model of a Motagahti. Motagahti: Number 65. Her name was... Ititian. I reached out to touch it, but there was a sudden sound of something clearly moving. It wasn't the hand. body, headless and wired to only last for a moment before collapsing, and it was bulky and matched the hand. I pulled myself away.
         A gun's bullet pierced through the torso, making it falter before it could make any sudden movement to the other part of itself, and it dropped without motion. The gunslinger slid from one of the piles of scraps, landing precisely on her steel toes before kicking the corpse to make sure it was dead. she stared at me, eyes glowing as she analyzed my body for a moment. She talked into her wrist, speaking in a completely different language.
        Japanese?
       "This one mean anything to you?" she asked me, voice with an accent.
        She didn't. "Who the hell are you?"
        "A passerby. You people don't get visitors often?"
       "No. Why the hell would we?" I stood tall, towering over her small body. "You're from a different place, your body made of different metal. Why the hell did you shoot the Motagahti? And your name?"
         She rolled her eyes. "It's Yen, kid. And I-"
         I laughed out loud at that. "I am 6071 years old. Calling me kid results in thinking I'm young and foolish."
         With an irritated point of her gun, her eyes darted to Ititian's body. It merely continued to click with the last of its ability to breathe. The bullet punctured her memory chip.
         "She attacked me," Yen stated clearly. "I was only defending myself."
        "Her head?" I asked.
         She turned to the pile of heads that belonged to the veterans of war. I shook my head, remembering clearly that no one else dared to belong here in such a sacred place.
I sighed. "You should leave before anyone here finds you. Especially Ititian's girlfriend."
         "But I'm not done here," she complained.
         I paused. With a slow stutter of my body, I turned all the way around. My feet began to approach her, and she faltered underneath the intensity of my stare.
         "Something tells me you just might be."
        She nodded, darting into the bodies from the way she came. My eyes darted to Ititian's deceased being, watching the rest of the life come out of it. Six weeks...
        Viania had been missing for six weeks.