Static Crush {M/M} ✔

Chapter #54

Including Sami, there are eight androids in the security detail. If they don't gain access in the next fraction of a second, then Sami will likely discover the fault that allowed Damo past her firewalls and alert her compatriots. They must work quickly. Damo no longer feels close, splitting off to divest the other androids of their control.

By proximity alone, it's easy to find them—their network connections like red homing beacons in the night. Hale presses the first one he finds with a network connection request, copying Damo's trojan file to his own drive and sending it back in the feedback data. There's a sense of wrongness to it. This is how Damo first hacked Hale as well, connecting illegally, pressed into his thoughts like an incurable infection.

It's the only way to communicate though. The only way to reclaim some of their lost control.

The android he connects with balks at the intrusion.

>>Your connection is not authorized here. Desist.

Hale ignores it. He moves fast. Already he's squeezing past the firewalls of the next android, and the next. Messages of confused retaliation barrage his inbox. They go unanswered. He remembers this from his fights with Damo. Press into the motor function controls, prising fingers off the trigger of firearms. Invade visual feeds to reorient himself in the real world. Vision returns to him through the eyes of a Sami—the one who pulled Rayner away from him. It's disorienting. Rayner rails against her arms. He hurls himself against the restraint of them. At the moment, they seem like Hale's arms. Rayner twists around to look back at the truck, at the road, at the asphalt where Hale's prone body lies. Another android and human approach it.

Meanwhile, Damo is everywhere. He controls one android, then another. Turning the guns they hold on their partners. Releasing Theo. Releasing his own body, which they'd begun to drag towards one of the cars. The human security guards shout to one another in alarm and confusion.

"What the hell?"

"Sami, stand down!"

"What's wrong with the bots?"
"Fuck, they've been hacked."

"Ha! Suck a bag of dicks!" This last is Theo, who shucks the slack hands of the android holding her and returns to Damo's body. She taps frantically at his temple to access the emergency reboot controls.

Hale releases Rayner, or rather, he makes the Sami do it. There isn't time to watch Rayner pelt back towards his body; they have control of the androids, but the humans will retaliate too.

So Hale jumps. He leaps from this Sami to another. He maintains control of three, but now he sees through the eyes of the one hovering over his body. She's preparing to haul it into one of the unmarked cars, to transport him back to a Bionic Capital facility where he'll be dissected and tested for flaws.

This Sami is older than the previous one, her hardware dating back several android generations. She tries to push Hale out, but she isn't prepared. She's never dealt with this type of assault before.

Next to Hale's body, Damo's reanimates with a sudden breath.

Hale isn't used to piloting more than one unit. He holds onto two androids with the fringes of his control, keeping them frozen in place. The one he controls pulls her gun from its holster and points it at her partner.

It feels wrong. Awful. An affront to Hale's nature. But he does it.

And at the same time, he reaches down and presses a palm to the temple of his fallen body. The panel there opens at his digital command, and he presses the emergency restart button.

The final leap into his own body is strange in its familiarity and discomfiture. Now he is four people. Two frozen, because he's struggling to do more than keep them still. The other holding the gun. And he's himself too. Finally.