Release Me From Heaven (Release Me From Hell Series)

Chapter 10: (System 86: Number 5/Askin) The Pretender *Present*

        "May we talk?"
     The words pained me as Vaeshi came from the shadows of the corridor with Alieka completely out of sight. The night had set in a while before, so she was probably asleep on the couch near the front door. Alieka never talked to me anymore, anyway. Vaeshi had her arms crossed as she stared up at me, her body illuminated by the clear moonlight, and she waited for me to answer her. And how hard that was. These past two weeks were a blur mostly, but there had been a hard glitch in my voice since I had gone to the Land of Scraps with Nomedd. It was getting harder and harder to talk to anyone without revealing I was virused.
     "Speak," I replied.
     "Yentira is coming in a few days, you know," she told me. "The house has been reinstated, we have new ID numbers, and you've had everything shipped to Kikai, right? Has everything been taken care of?"
     I took no time to think about it as I tried my hardest to dismiss this conversation. "Yes. We'll get there by Saturday."
     She nodded. "Just making sure. As a reminder, I will be at the Factory in a few hours to discuss citizenship in Japan. Will you be fine here?"
     I crossed my arms. "Take the child with you. I have important business to attend to today."
     Vaeshi didn't respond to me, just nodded and turned on her heel down the corridor again. S-SHE <ERROR# KN-N-N-NOWS-S-S <ERROR#?//>. I turned y head away from her figure and thought about my plan. And while thinking about my plan, I paced my way back to my room so I could figure out what exactly I was about to do. My room, covered in a layer of dust, had a monitored pulled up with the eye footage of Iskil Madoeken's memories and current moment. I had papers scattered all across the monitor with different theories and patterns of him, things I had only written in these past few weeks. Vaeshi hadn't come into my room to snoop around, possibly because she thought that this was all still an empty, grey resting place that I barely used. In fact, since I got this virus, I hadn't slept once, as long as you don't count the shut down in the Land of Scraps.
     And maybe the Land of Scraps was meant to be the place I slept in,a place of robotic bodies all meshed together that called out their last breaths forever. Was I afraid of it? Yes. Even now as I had my scribblings of it all written across each see-able surface, the thought of death was a menacing truth I hadn't wanted to face in my time of dissonance from reality. Not death. The cruelty of humans, of Iskil, seemed to burn my metal to the point where it felt like I was a fresh Factory make.
     The truth was, I was always afraid. Of everything. I pushed those thoughts away to focus on Iskil's POV, seeing him stir for the first time in a long time since these last six weeks. He had his mind on so many things as the city stared their way at him. He knew of the virus, however little he could must the fathomable idea of it. HE D-D-DESERVES TO DIE! <ERROR>. Yes, I had to agree with myself. I pointed at the Land of Scraps map I made, pointed directly at the center as if that's where I assumed he'd go. But I couldn't go. Not yet. If I was going to kill Iskil, I was going to bring him here with us in our home where he was vulnerable to all sorts of wrong things here.
     And why did I want him dead? Because it was him that made me this way. Him that made me chew through bone and muscle and all these tasteful things that made me distasteful.
I heard a knock on my door, firm yet warm.
    A human's knock.
     I opened the door a crease, letting just enough light in to reveal absolutely nothing to Alieka as she stood there oblivious to my cave of unspoken wonders.
     "Speak," I demanded of her.
     Her meek, tired voice crumbled in my vision. "W-we're leaving now. Vaeshi's been called in."
     "Ah, I see. You two be careful now. The virus has taken all edges of Matum now."
     I shut the door on her and heard the skittering sounds of her feet as she ran back into the comfort of wherever Vaeshi must've been. Good. The house was mine. I turned back to the monitor to study Atum and its streets, the utter decay of machines as they pondered their existence. I hated it there. Not that I had been there myself, but the hatred was painful to watch, and it was hard to piece together in my head how machines could push down their emotions without exploding. Were they not afraid? Were they not anxious? I started to write down the anatomical bodies that swayed the streets in hope for answers to my queries.
     It wouldn't be easy, I had to remember. Iskil was considered immortal, a death of significance rather than just a simple cut of wires. But no machine was immortal. We would all have sought that immortality the same way humans once searched for it before confiding in us, and that would have been a terrible mistake. I moved towards my diagrams of Iskil's body, trying to find weakness. There were plenty, but they were somehow fortified. His body was just scraps, too, which made the lines of him unconventional and unpatterned, and it bothered me to a point where I made sure to darken those parts of his being enough to go through the paper.
     My HUD began to glow, and I paused as I looked at my palms.
     Nomedd: VC?
     I proceeded to call Nomedd where he answered me immediately without so much as a moment for pause. It was just audio, but I could sense the face of disappointment.
     "Nomedd?" I asked.
     "Today. Tonight. When the sun is at its rise, Iskil will be in the field outside of Matum," he whispered cryptically. "Bring Viania with you."
     "Who's Viania?"
     "Firadae, Number 732. You'll know when you see her."
     "I... Nomedd, I don't understand. Why are you helping me do this?"
     Nomedd didn't answer me. "Good luck to you."
     And then he was gone. I knew who Viania relatively, but I wanted more than just directions from him. Nomedd seemed to know everything I couldn't comprehend, and yet he refused to share any of it. I shook away the feeling and typed away on my computer on some website regulated by the Factory. It was just a social media page, most of it dead now because people were living scared lives as the virus walked freely on the streets. I was unbothered by that. With a few scrolls, I found a Factory issued ad that flashed.
     WARNING: STAY INSIDE AND LOCK YOUR DOORS.
     Blah, blah, blah. I nearly scrolled by it. In fact, I tried to, but my hand stiffened on the mouse. Looking down, my fingers were shaking violently, and my arm followed suit as it began the sudden back and forth of it bending over and over. I grabbed it with m controlled arm, but it wasn't enough to get it to stop. I backed away into the door in desperation. Nothing like this has ever happened to me before, and I knew this had nothing to do with the virus.
     "You're... You're cruel!"
     I looked up to my monitor, to Iskil's eyes as he looked down at Firadae: Number 732. I clung to my door and tried getting it open as quickly as possible so I could disconnect my arm to figure out what was wrong with me.
     "Glad you realize it now," I heard Iskil say as I burst through the door and sprinted to the basement door. "I am not someone to idolize for a better future. I am someone to fear as long as I exist."
     With my good arm, I began unscrewing the bolts in my shoulder with the screwdriver I left on one of the theater seats. The spasmic nature of it was starting to get worse by the second, and I was afraid. Yes, afraid. I was afraid of the omen, of all of the superstitious things I heard about this happening to machines just before they were killed. Or died. Or shutdown forever. My arm popped off, falling in between the seats that were all upturned and shut. I breathed in slowly.
     No. No, I wasn't old enough to die. Besides, my memory chip wasn't filled all of of the way to where my body would begin to dysfunction like that. I crouched down, holding my head and nearly crying in my weak state of mind, but I figured I was stronger than this. Behind my ear, I reached for my memory chip, and I pulled it out from within all the connected wires to look at its greyish glow.
      ERROR: INSERT MEMORY CHIP. NO LONGER RECORDING MEMORIES.
      I dropped the chip to the ground and backed away from it. It was covered in dried blood and some moving, twisted pink mesh that wasn't even remotely human. Dropping to my own knees, I puked in between the aisles, previous victims falling into undigested piles of metal and flesh.
     ERROR: INSERT MEMORY CHIP. NO LONGER RECORDING MEMORIES.
     I hastily picked it up and put it back into my head while attempting to fix my arm. It had stopped moving altogether, and I re-attached it to myself with a solemn stare.
     "Askin?"
     I backed into the seats as a shadow of a machine started walking down the staircase. System 149: Number 1000. Vyperaete. She gasped as she saw me, staring at the throw up in the aisle and then back at me.
     "I... Askin, you're sick!" she exclaimed. "I-I need to contact the Factory!"
     She began typing away on her arm panel, and my silicon heart began racing. No. No one was allowed to know! I had to do something. I had to act fast.
     "This is the Factory of Matum. How may we-"
     "NO!" I screamed. I slammed Vyperaete's body into the staircase and grabbed a hold of her arm panel to shut off the call. Vyperaete struggled under my grip as I sweat in desperation because I couldn't figure out how to fix this. Wait.
     My hand went under her neck, and I felt the surge of electricity moving towards her core. All I had to do was destroy her core. All I had to do... I ripped away her stomach panel and pulled on her core until I had a firm grip of it. Vyperaete still struggled, eyes wild as she tempted her fate.
     "Askin! Let go of me!" she screamed. "We're friends! You wouldn't k-kill me!"
     I knew what I needed to do. "No one is allowed to know."
     And I opened my mouth wide to take a bite of Vyperaete's core.
​​​​​​​      Just like a heart.