Rewriting Seven Years

19. Inception

"Drillbit." Zip spoke through a speaker, he stood behind reinforced glass watching over Drillbit tied up in a chamber of glass. "My excavation robot came back to me."

"I'm not your servant." Drillbit struggled to resist. He tried his hardest to rip the hand restraints apart, but they were stronger than him.

"Of course you are," Zip said, "I built you, I gave you your personality, and I gave you your tools."

"These aren't tools," Drillbit spoke out in anger, "these are weapons. You refused to give me a sensitive body so everything I touch, I destroy. You made me a monster—all you did was give me a reason to hate you, and this operation you tried putting me in."

"You're a faulty robot, I didn't give you all personalities to think for yourselves—I gave you a personality so you could work together easier. You're not a monster. You're just malfunctioning."

"I never said my state of mind made me a monster," Drillbit muttered.

Zip cut off the audio connection. He gestured to Nexus, then left the ships compartment.

Nexus moved to the glass prison and opened one of the side glass panel. He held scrap wires in his free hand.

"You really messed yourself up in that volcano," Nexus said, referring to Drillbit's melted chest. "How did you get your core pushed in so deep?" Nexus reached into the jagged hole and tried grabbing the core.

Drillbit revved his engine arm, sending fire current through his body. It scorched Nexus' hand. Nexus pulled out, then fired his wrist spike into Drillbit's right shoulder, blocking the connection of wires between his arm and his chest. Drillbit growled. Nexus crouched low.

"I've never had the chance to look inside Maker's first robots." Nexus examined the visible inside of Drillbit's body. "Sadly the first one disappeared days after it was finally built. Now you're closest thing to Maker's vision, for as you can see us six are all similar in stature."

Nexus peered deeper into his chest. Drillbit's core was different from the main heroes'. It was triangular instead of circular, red instead of white, and metal instead of stone. It was carefully crafted, though. Definitely made with more care than the normal core.

"Your core fascinated me." Nexus whispered, asking himself. "Zip asked me to fix you but I only know how it repair cores like my own. I wish Zip could give me all the information I need before, but he'd rather I avoid private information."

"You care about something too?" Drillbit's asked with a spark of a thought. "See I'm not different from you."

"I am, though." Nexus looked up to Drillbit's melted face. "And it's because I have discipline built into my system—I am to follow Zip's commands, because all we are, is robots. Having feelings is nothing more than an extension of our personality subroutine."

"You keep on giving excuses for why you aren't acting normal," Drillbit said with remorse, "you say 'discipline' and 'subroutine' and all I'm hearing is mind controlled. Those 'Minions of Darkness have more free will than any of you have... combined."

Nexus took a wire and stabbed it under Drillbit's core. He pulled on Drillbit's cords, tugging to his delight.

Sergeant toyed with a sample of bugs. Bugs scavenged by the B Team. The three still didn't get their personalities to work, but Sibious worked hard to make them work.

Zip was getting annoyed. He wanted to be able to research the insects but he couldn't figure out how to magnify their size. He thought if he could look at the insects when they were the same size as him, it would be easier to dissect and test on them. Strontium, the supercomputer, created a design for a metal chamber that could manipulate the size of any object. The Resize-inator.