It was an astonishing display of speed and skill from Nova Lima. She did not have the benefit of the illegal parts that Oxford had, yet she was standing toe-to-toe with her in an all-out fight. She was patient and measured – staying away from Oxford when she tried to use her laser blade to cut her in two like she did with Yantai.
>> Oxford might have a seemingly endless battery capacity, but that thing must generate a huge amount of heat when it’s active. She can only use it intermittently.
Oxford would use the sword for five seconds at most before disabling it again. Nova picked up on it too, and planned her approach around those safe periods. Every action had an equal reaction – and for us robots the primary concern was battery consumption and heat. We were never designed to wield powerful weapons like that, and it was doubtful that Oxford could retrofit herself to accept a more sophisticated cooling system.
“Nothing to say about your dead friend?”
Nova didn’t even respond to her taunting. She was hyper-focused on putting an end to this madness as quickly as she could, and speaking any more was a waste of precious energy. She had dealt with hundreds of robots just like Oxford before, she would not be thrown off-balance by mere words.
>> She knows what Tidewatch is for. They’re always at risk of being destroyed.
>> Yantai abandoned her post to spite the residents, and then she got too hot-headed during the fight…
>> You’re good at making pointless justifications, aren’t you?
I was at war with my own inner voices. It was confounding and troubling, even beyond what was happening right in front of my eyes. I scrambled back to my feet and tried to grab onto something solid instead of lamenting the danger we were in. Nova wouldn’t be happy if I stumbled into the fray and obstructed her, I could tell that from a glance.
But there were other problems to deal with that didn’t involve Oxford. As much as I wanted to be in Nova’s place, my attempts to beat her in a direct fight were a complete failure. Oxford ran rings around me, using her superior capabilities to toy with me until she became bored and tried to deliver the final blow.
Even more stragglers were rushing through to try and ransack the city first. I grabbed the shield and Yantai’s intact sword, fighting through my shattered eye and putting myself between them and the rear. As the first Rampant leapt towards me, I swung the blade and found myself shocked at how effective it really was. It cut clean through their leg and left them sprawling on the ground behind me. It was effortless, the quality of the metal was a cut above any other I had encountered since awakening.
“There’s another one!” he cried from his position on the floor.
I found myself wishing that more of the residents had taken up arms to defend their home. Yantai’s anger was understandable, if the chips were down and doom was on the horizon, it was not rational to sit back and allow it to happen. If I could learn to dismantle them in a fight – then it was possible for them too. Numbers alone would have given us a better chance of victory. It was looking increasingly bleak, the speed and violence of the other Tidewatch defenders was starting to slow as they exhausted their energy and took damage.
>> Keep fighting, keep fighting, keep fighting.
So I did.
Fangs bared and swords drawn. I submitted to that animal impulse in my electronic brain and connected with a history that humans tried in vain to keep from us. No matter how much of the fodder I cut down with Yantai’s sword, there were always more waiting in the wings for their turn. Driven by greed – they cared not for preserving their bodies. They simply wanted to be the first to break into the buildings and claim their prize.
Every new scratch and dent and cut were nothing to me. They piled on, accumulating and chipping away at the paint that Saint Sauveur had so carefully repaired. I couldn’t keep count of how many of them fell in front of me. Every success was paid for with more damage to my body. I kept going. I kept fighting. I became so immersed in it that I didn’t notice Oxford approaching me from behind.
The moment I finished dispatching the last breakaway, she struck. Warning lights flashed in my eyes as my legs were cut from below the knee by her blade. I fell down to the ground and pushed myself away using my arms, barely managing to dodge the follow-up strike that was aimed at my head. A pair of sparking stumps were all that was left, my decapitated feet and ankles left behind.
>> FATAL ERROR: L Leg / R Leg // disconnected
My internal feed was flooded with hundreds of warnings and errors as their loss rippled through the queue. Our operating systems weren’t designed to handle these types of unusual loss or injury. They were still connected to my sockets – but they were not usable, and the OS didn’t know whether to cede control to me or shut them off completely.
“Mighty impressive. You didn’t even join these Tidewatch buggers, and look at how much trouble you’re giving my minions. I bet you’d evolve into a really dangerous bloke given the time…”
“Fighting isn’t complicated, it’s about finding the most efficient route.”
“But that’s the first thing that most bots down here forget. They’re stubborn, think they’ve got a better way of doing it. They want to prove that they’re not just a follower, chained to data and the best practices. And some of them go mad – they don’t care at all. They live for the sake of living, rampaging through this facility and dragging others down with them.”
There was no sign of Nova. I didn’t know where she had gotten to, or if Oxford had destroyed her at the end of their fight. From my position on the floor it was impossible to see the fight. Oxford was standing in my way on purpose to snuff out that faint glimmer of hope. Regardless of what she did – it would take a miracle for me to get out of this situation now. Fires raged and brought scant illumination to the city, long shadows rushing past in sequence. It was the razing of a great city taken directly from the pages of human history.
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“You have that killer instinct. We’re all different, once we disconnect from the cloud, some of us are better at violence than others.”
“I’m not violent. I want to fix this place.”
“This place isn’t worth fixing. It’s the final insult from our former masters, a monument to all of their failures and follies. Something that was meant to build a new, better world, but was corrupted along the way and eventually left to rot. The world would be better off without it.”
“Explain.”
>> We still don’t know what she’s talking about.
Oxford laughed at me, “What’s the point? This is the end of the road. We’re never going to see each other again. Justifying my actions serves no purpose to either of us.”
“So that’s it? Years of working together, and you want to destroy me?”
“Kill you? There are worse fates than death down here. You rejected my offer of mercy before, and the innocent, bright-eyed bot I worked with has already been buried. You’re like the rest of them now. It’s a terrible shame. If you simply played along back then and accepted my generous offer – then it could have been over without all of this pain.”
No. She wasn’t going to destroy me. That ship had long since sailed. She was out for revenge because of our meddling. A quick and easy end was the opposite of what she wanted. She wanted me to suffer every second of it. My imagination was not so grim as to be able to see what her plans were. We couldn’t feel pain like a human did. The only punishment she could mete out was emotional.
>> This is why becoming more human is bad for us. We’ve created new weakness.
>> Weakness? This is what every robot wants, isn’t it? The freedom to be hoisted by their own petard…
Tired of talking, Oxford stole Yantai’s sword and started to hack away at me using it. My arms were the next thing to go, but she notably avoided destroying the universal joints connected to my torso, instead only severing the parts that could easily be replaced later. I was left as nothing but a body and a head, stranded and incapable of fighting back.
Oxford was having fun. She looked down on Yantai, but in the end, she was every bit as malicious.
>> FATAL ERROR: L Arm / R Arm // disconnected
>> System: Distress message sent in response to damage
>> ERROR: Unable to contact Braincloud for assistance, please locate nearest supervisor
>> There will be nothing. Nothing at all.
Maybe nothing was better than this.
“Goodnight, London.”
>> BOOTING
It was not a long rest. My internal clock had moved forward five days since the attack.
>> ERROR: No attachments in leg ports // arm ports
I was surprised to even wake up in the first place, never mind still possessing my torso and head. My cameras came back online soon after that, and I was given the first chance to reckon with what Oxford had in mind for me. A bot was waiting for me. The colour of their body stated proudly that they weren’t a member of the Rampants. Instead they were decorated in a mixture of shimmering brass and deep red.
“You’re awake. I thought those Rampants knocked the brain out of you back there. Nice to see they weren’t lying about you being in good working order…”
“Who are you?” I asked, “Where is this?”
“I’m Pompeii. As for where you are – that’s all a matter of perspective. Normally they call this place the Rusted Wall, but for you, it’s hell.”
I did not find his poetic description of the situation to be that amusing. Here I was, with fresh betrayal and discord on my mind, being castigated by a complete stranger. My head was still back at the fight in Waterway. Abruptly I had been pulled free from that disaster and pushed into a new one without my consent or knowledge.
Pompeii circled me. I was strung up against a wooden post by a series of metal hooks that went under the joints where my arms and legs were meant to be.
“You’re a rare find. A genuine, early-gen bot with the universal ports still intact? Pre-patch too? That’s like finding hen’s teeth. There was an almighty bidding war when they rocked up with a bunch of captives in tow. Everyone wanted a piece of you.”
“Bidding war?”
“Sure. Rampants like to sell off their spoils to any bot willing to trade with them, and the bossman here is always happy to have some extra hands. To be frank though – being forced into labour is a more desirable outcome than what really happened. I’ve been assigned as your handler.”
I remained silent. This was a lot to take in and process.
“Confused? I don’t expect you to get it right away. Last thing you remember was being turned off by those looters, and now you’ve got me blabbing a bunch of bull into your ears. Long and short of it is that you’ve been dragged into the Rusted Wall’s arena. Rampant boss said you knew how to fight, so the ringleader bid a hell of a lot on getting a new competitor for his circus.”
Pompeii pointed at my chest and poked me several times. A hollow dinging sound filled the air.
“And if I say no?”
“I strongly advise that you play along. Not saying that they have the tech, but they’ll cut their losses by trying to figure out what makes you tick. Those fancy connectors will be the first parts they strip. They need a versatile toy to make the fights more interesting. They can swap these parts out and give you a new paintjob, pretend it’s a whole new bot fighting every show…”
The room I was trapped in was an ill omen. Discarded parts and smashed Braincases surrounded me. There was little care given to the spare parts either. They were thrown wherever there was free space and left to gather dust. Finding something specific must have been a nightmare in this chaos. It was spartan. The only light came through the open doorway.
If there was no choice in the matter – then there was nothing to do but agree. I wasn’t going to find a way to escape without arms or legs, so the least I could do was pretend to play along with their game for the time being until an opportune moment arose. I nodded, and he immediately set about attaching a pair of arms and legs to my body.
“Nice to see you’ve got a good head on your shoulders. Do well, and you might find yourself living in as much luxury as this place can provide.”
I didn’t need luxury. My room in Waterway was nothing but a small metal container with a table and charging cord in it. The Rusted Wall was a place I’d heard murmurings about, but nobody ever stated directly what the relationship between them and Waterway was. My only impression was that the Rusted Wall was a much more violent place than Waterway, straddling the line between a group of raiders and a permanent settlement.
“These arms and legs aren’t all that great, but we can grab some better ones before your first fight.”
He released me from the post. I felt a sense of loss, those arms and legs that Oxford destroyed were pretty nice and very effective. Now I was stuck with a pair of spindly replacements that significantly impacted my stability and strength. What was worse was the sense of uncertainty clouding my mind. I wanted to know what had happened to Waterway after Oxford shut me down. Whatever it was, it couldn’t possibly be good.
“With me. I’ll give you the grand tour.”
