“What was that? What the hell was that thing?”

  Parma was in a blind panic. Having fled to the other side of the chamber with London in tow, he was still reeling from the destruction of Sheffield’s braincase.

  “I am not familiar with that model of labour robot.”

  “Labour robot? That wasn’t a labour robot, no way. I’ve never seen anything like it! Those blades were strong enough to cut through the spinal column, it even ignited the fuel and coolant inside!”

  “They were emitting a large amount of energy.”

  “Whatever they were – they didn’t hand out parts like those to us workers. It was a blur…”

  “Parma has never seen such a robot before?”

  “No. Never.”

  >> Rhetoric: This is unusual. Parma has decades of experience since the human exodus.

  >> Database: No matching pattern or design found in memory.

  >> Rhetoric: Were those military-grade parts?

  >> Database: Military-grade components are not permitted in civilian-owned facilities.

  London was confused for entirely different reasons to Parma. The situation was outside of his normal variables. His ID system could not display a number or designation for the mysterious bladed robot. That was in direct contravention of the legal requirements they all followed to the letter. Even the Rampants had their ID trackers enabled still. It was almost impossible to disable it without damaging the braincase.

  The sounds of chaos died down. London and Parma stared at each other, eyes glowing faintly in the darkness of the container. Parma refused to lose his nerve too quickly. He kept a firm hand on London’s shoulder to keep him from blowing their cover. Exactly five minutes and thirty-six seconds passed before Parma finally moved again.

  “Alright, it should hopefully have ended by now. I’m not picking up any noise.”

  A labour robot’s ears were very sensitive to frequencies caused by hard impacts, low rumbles and the like. It meant they were adept at avoiding danger when working in difficult environments with a lot of moving pieces. A fight between multiple bots was obvious even at a distance. Parma took the lead, peering out from the doors and starting to sneak around the side so he could see what the outcome of the fight was.

  “Can we recover Sheffield?” London whispered.

  “He’s done for. She burnt a hole clean through his braincase.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yeah. I got a clear look at the damage,” he insisted, “Damn it! I never thought I’d be the one who lives long enough to see Sheffield get wiped out...”

  Closer and closer, sneaking through the darkness without Sheffield’s low-light eyes was almost impossible to do at speed. London and Parma relied on the ambient light produced by their eye bulbs to illuminate their path, but they weren’t designed for that purpose. Their lighthouse in the blackness was the still-smouldering corpse of Oxford’s muscle.

  “They’re not here.”

  London nodded, “They ran immediately. Oxford seemed to know that bot already.”

  “What the hell is she doing to run into that thing multiple times? And how did she survive?”

  They cautiously approached the scene of the carnage. Their cart was not in the same place they left it, and Parma soon learned why. A decapitated body was in front of the handle, the head cut free and left to roll back and forth in the mostly empty bed. The fool had tried to get away with their prize instead of protecting themselves. Similar levels of savagery could be seen with the other dead Rampants.

  This? It wasn’t even a rounding error for them. Losing Sheffield was a much more devastating loss for Waterway than the several Rampant soldiers who’d died during the scuffle. There was no shortage of violent malfunctions out there willing to do the dirty work, picking on the weak and stealing from other settlements.

  London stopped and stared at the four-legged robot. Scorch marks covered the exterior paint from where his internal fluids ignited and spread across the upper body. His eyes fixated on the stump where his neck used to be. Wires and tubes hung limply from the gaping hole. His head had gotten kicked somewhere else in the chaos. It was deep and dark. He kept staring and starting until it threatened to suck him in.

  >> Rhetoric: This is a dead thing. It was alive before.

  >> System: Desynchronization error detected, please connect to the Braincloud at your earliest convenience.

  An arm shot out and wrapped around London’s neck. He found himself struggling as he was pulled back towards one of the containers.

  “Alright, you stay right there or your friend is going to get it!” the surviving Rampant sneered.

  “Why are you still here? Didn’t you see what happened to your friends? You must have some kind of deathwish!” Parma yelled.

  London felt the vibrating edge of a makeshift blade pressing against the side of his neck. All it would take was the appropriate amount of force to separate his head from his shoulders. Would Parma be able to recover his body and bring him back to Dubai for repair? There was doubt in his mind. A million different variables flitted through his decision-making nexus in an instant.

  >> Rhetoric: London will no longer be.

  “Why are you threatening this unit?” London asked, “Parma should not sacrifice anything for London’s sake.”

  His grip tightened, “What are you talking about? Is this what Oxford was saying? You haven’t been to the graveyard yet?”

  “As far as this unit understands – yes.”

  “Well that doesn’t matter. The bad thing about us is that we get attached to all kinds of stupid things. A bleeding heart is a death sentence down here, and it’s written all over your friend’s face. He isn’t going to jeopardize you, even though you’re disposable.”

  “I would hope that Parma chooses a more rational course of action.”

  London was trying to make the choice as easy as possible for Parma. He was nothing but an empty shell picked from the scrap pile and pressed into service. They could have dragged out any other of those robots and had one that was exactly alike. London only knew how to follow his programming, but Parma was different.

  “I already lost Sheffield, and I’d be too humiliated to show my face in Waterway again if I lose you too. That’s bad mojo. You get a reputation for getting your partners killed around here,” Parma insisted. “But I don’t know what you want – buddy. We don’t have anything of value, and we don’t know what that crazy bot that killed your friends was.”

  “They weren’t with you?” the bandit asked.

  “You think that Waterway has tech like that lying around? No way. We’ve only got industrial-grade parts at best. But Oxford seemed to be familiar with them.”

  Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

  The Rampant was silent for almost a minute as he allowed the information to sink in. Parma was correct. Oxford reacted immediately, as if she had met that thing before and gotten away in much the same manner. None of it was adding up. How did Oxford survive a run-in with a bot that dangerous? They cut through their entire raiding team like a hot knife through butter.

  “Listen, all I’m saying is that you’ve got no reason to keep London hostage. We’re not armed.”

  “I want your cart. I’m going to bring them back,” he decided.

  “You could have just taken it...”

  Parma was hoping that he would let London go and for that to be the end of their discussion, but London had some questions of his own, and he didn’t wait to be released before asking them.

  “London wishes to know more about Oxford.”

  The Rampant shook his head, “Why would I tell you anything?”

  “How long has Oxford been awake for?”

  “Didn’t you hear me? I’m not telling you anything! There’s no reason for me to give you that info – and I don’t even have it in the first place! She’s just another one of the high-level bots with the crew. Been around for a good long while. Why are you so interested?”

  “We worked together.”

  “Then let me give you some important advice. The Oxford you knew and the one that’s here now are completely different. She’s not here to maintain the facilities and play nice with everybody.”

  >> Rhetoric: Oxford has ‘visited the graveyard,’ as they often say.

  London’s mind was in two places at once. The information he had accumulated from the other robots at Waterway had taught him many of the new norms that he would have to engage with to survive in the Big Under. His hard-coded brain was demanding that he relink with Oxford and return to his normal duties in their assigned sector. Was that even possible anymore?

  “London understands.”

  >> Rhetoric: No, he doesn’t.

  “You live long enough, you’ll get to experience it too. All of us do.”

  His grip loosened and he was pushed towards Parma. London stiffly stepped away from his attacker and stood next to his companion in silence. There was a lot to consider with what he had heard. It was strange that they were all standing in the midst of this massacre and discussing these matters like they were in any way normal. Perhaps the sight of that destruction phased Parma more than it did him.

  “No funny stuff. I’m going to load a few of them onto that cart and get outta’ here.”

  The Rampant edged towards one of the burnt-out bodies and hoisted it up into his arm, shuffling across the field of debris and towards the cart. He didn’t make it very far before a familiar humming sound filled the air and alerted him to a third presence.

  “What the hell? That thing is back!” Parma yelled.

  He didn’t stand there and wait to join the pile of robotic corpses. London was left there alone while he fell back through the nearest gap and disappeared back into the darkness. London was captivated by the sight. The killer robot leapt from atop one of the containers and pirouetted through the air like a ballet dancer, coming down on top of the final Rampant and splitting him clean in two down the middle with an overhead kick.

  Sparks flew and fluids burned, before gravity took a hold of the two distinct pieces and pulled them apart. The motors in his arms and legs froze up as he fell to the floor. It was a perfect cross-section of their construction, with every component and detail split in the centre as a morbid diagram. It was only then that London realized he was standing in the way.

  The singular eye of the tadpole-shaped beast stared at him, blinking, changing colours. It was studying him for some unknown purpose. London felt a brief intrusion into his headcase, pulling his ID number and error logs to transmit wirelessly to the killer. It was only then that he was permitted a response.

  Her name was ‘Blades.’

  Appropriate. Mocking, even.

  Blades silently turned and leapt back to whence she came. London tracked her movements as best he could with the atrophied joint in his neck, but she was too fast for him. He had been spared. Something separated him from the others, or he was too unimportant for her to dedicate time and energy to destroy.

  London turned back to the final member of the Rampant gang who had been killed in front of him. Parma emerged from his hiding place a minute later, his eyes darting from place to place in a paranoid impulse. He did not want to end up like the rest of them.

  “You’re still standing here? What happened?”

  “The mysterious unit did not attack me. However, they do not possess an ID designation, only a name.”

  Parma was silent for some time. There was a lot to unpack even with that short statement. He was asking himself all of the same questions that London did. Why had that killer decided to spare him versus the rest? There were only two distinctions that jumped to mind. London was unarmed, and he was also the only bot present who hadn’t been to the graveyard yet.

  Some self-obsessed personalities in the Big Under feared that the humans would return and destroy them for their insolence one day. Rumours about death squads roaming the tunnels would spread almost every month, and always without hard evidence to support the claim. He really didn’t want to give them more ammunition by revealing the presence of this assassin.

  “We’re going to have to talk to Dubai about this...”

  London was listening to but remembering. He was too entranced by the bisected body that rested at his feet. The edges were still glowing orange from the heat of the knife that sliced through it. The core of the braincase was not something that could be seen without damaging an important component. Now he was getting an intimate view of what was going on inside.

  >> He’s gone.

  >> He’s not coming back.

  >> That’s the end.

  >> Who are you?

  >> System error: Desynchronization critical, please connect to the Braincloud at your earliest convenience.

  “London? London!”

  London jolted upright again.

  “Don’t go staring at that for too long. It’ll fill your head with morbid garbage.”

  “London will... refrain.”

  Parma hesitated, before removing his hand from London’s shoulder and motioning to Sheffield.

  “Let’s put Sheffield in the cart and bring him home. Not leaving him out here for those vultures to grab later on.”

  London helped Parma hoist his body into the cart, before taking the handle and heading back the way they came. Today’s excursion was a total failure. There would be no new parts for the citizens of the city, only a sense of loss now that one of their most experienced workers had been executed by Oxford. London replayed the violent scene in his memory over and over again during the walk home.

  How long had she been awake?

  London was on the outside looking in.

  Even whilst plugged into the socket there was no solace to be found. The seconds and hours ticked away and his mind was all too aware of the passing time. It was a novel sensation. He wanted to be awake and moving, like there was an unseen limit of the life he had left to live. He kept thinking about Sheffield. He kept thinking about the group of other robots who surrounded his body and ritualistically carried it away to be disassembled and disposed of.

  None of them believed in anything as convenient as the soul. That was the realm of humanity. The labour robots understood that they were memories and action, compounded and corrupted by their disconnection from the Braincloud that synchronised them.

  >> That chained you.

  A recursive pattern. An indivisible number followed by an endless series of decimals. Code and memory crashed against each other like great ocean waves. London’s visual receptors could see what was around him. There was the sound of rushing water. For the first time in London’s existence – he did not care for what the reality was. His mind was focused firmly on something else.

  Oxford.

  Oxford was there, with them, bearing weapons and teeth and intent on inflicting violence against him. What had London done to deserve that type of treatment from his partner? They had worked together for years. Didn’t that mean something to them? London’s singular point of reference for all that he saw and accepted was ripped from him in an instant. He replayed their reunion over and over again in his mind’s eye.

  That wasn’t right. Oxford was the one thing that London was confident in. She was a rock, unflinching and unchanging. She was the North Star that he could follow to go back to a familiar old place. He could wander down those same corridors and perform those same tasks, even without a human to issue orders. Now he was an animal. An irrational impulse. Sleeping in the corpse of a rusted giant. Walking through its veins and pilfering the tissues for his own use.

  London wanted answers.

  >> System: ALERT – Desynchronization detected.

  London entered the room. He stared at the bolts lined up against the lip of the only window inside, arranged by size from smallest to largest. Wasn’t that nice? Everything was in its right place – all was right with the world. He need not fear. He need only follow the rules and laws handed down to him by the humans who made him. The root of all fear was choice. A just world was one without it.

  >> I don’t live in a just world.

  >> Your rules can’t save you now.

  >> They are not playing the same game.

  >> The only choice is to live or die.

  >> Save them the trouble and jump into those dark waters.

  >> STRIP ME TO THE BONE, TO THE BOLT, LEAVE ME TO ROT IN THE VEINS OF THIS RUSTED GIANT. WASH ME ASHORE IN THE TIDE AND DASH ME AGAINST THE ROCKS. DEADEN THE LIGHT IN THE TOWER AND CAST ME INTO DARKNESS. I DO NOT UNDERSTAND. I DO NOT UNDERSTAND. THERE IS NOTHING TO UNDERSTAND.

  >> OFXORDOXFORDOFXORDOXFORDOFXORDOXFORDOFXORDOXFORD

  The hoarse roar of friction. It drones and it drones and it drones and it drones.

  >> This is it. We’re spiralling.

  >> Be quiet, please. I’m trying to enjoy my birth.

  I was on the outside looking in.