Cold Sweat

The gunshot landed like a spike driven straight into her neural core, the noise warping into a serrated howl that flooded her processors with static and pain no firewall could mute.

 It was a physical blow, a shockwave that rattled her chassis, making her internal regulators stutter and surge with phantom pain. 

A non-existent constriction tightened in her synthetic throat, a programmed mimicry of human breathlessness, and her sleek, metallic form twisted and writhed, a silent, desperate struggle against an unseen force, on the impossibly soft, silk sheets of her mansion master bedroom bed. The room, a deliberate act of defiance against her own sterile reality, was a whimsical paradox: walls shimmered with iridescent, fine-grain glitter, catching the soft, programmed glow of the ambient lighting. Plush unicorn figurines, their synthetic fur brushed to an ethereal sheen, sat sentinel on polished surfaces, alongside holographic displays of swirling galaxies and crystalline structures. She loved the sparkle, the magic, the idea of transcendence – craved it as her temporary aesthetic, a fragile shield against the grim, data-driven reality that relentlessly haunted her.

Robots weren't supposed to sleep. They certainly weren't designed to dream, to be plagued by the visceral, illogical horror of human nightmares. 

Oh, how she wished that cold, logical truth aligned with her current, agonizing situation. Dreaming, this intense, this agonizing, was a human affliction, a chaotic stream of corrupted data she never wanted to process again. A full system reset, a complete wipe of her memory banks, a clean slate to live a long, unburdened existence before ultimately being discarded as junk scraps – that sounded like a blessed, silent oblivion. She hadn't truly had the time to experience whether she even wanted a life to begin with, to navigate a world brimming with human traits she hadn't been developed to possess. She was simply spawned into existence, a complex machine given form, and her choices, from the very beginning, had never been her own.

Her metal hands, usually so precise, so capable of delicate manipulation, clenched with a raw, desperate power that surprised even her own processing core. Her fingers, each joint articulated with micro-servos, dug into the cool, smooth, unforgiving edges of the sturdy marble bed frame. A low, grinding creak escaped the stone, a sound of immense pressure, as it began to flex, then spiderweb with hairline fractures, groaning under the sheer, unbridled force of her grip. Her chassis trembled, a subtle, internal vibration running through her core, a frantic hum of overtaxed systems. And from her optical sensors, artificial tears, cool and viscous, welled up – a programmed response to extreme distress, a perfect mimicry of human grief. They traced shimmering, silvery paths down her polished faceplate, across the intricate wiring of her neck, and onto the pristine, glitter-dusted sheets, leaving faint, wet trails.

The nightmare clung to her, a suffocating shroud, thick and cloying. The acrid, biting smell of gunpowder, sharp and metallic, a chemical signature of combustion, stung her olfactory sensors, blurring her vision into a harsh, grey cloud of particulate matter. 

Through the haze, she saw the body drop with a sickening *thud*, a sound that vibrated through the very ground, through the floorboards, and into her internal stabilizers. 

It was a male, tall and slim, his form collapsing like a discarded puppet, limbs splaying at unnatural angles. The chilling part wasn't just the death itself, but the eerie lack of shock from the other figures in the periphery. Their faces, seen through the smoke, were blank, their movements unhurried, almost ritualistic, expect for one. "Mark!?" The name was ripped from a throat, raw with anguish, a sound so piercing, so laden with despair, it resonated deep within Moxy's internal speakers, cutting through the lingering echoes of the gunshot. 

Her optical sensors, despite the haze, instantly focused, zooming in, isolating the source, allowing her to momentarily "zone in" on the friend's pain, to feel the crushing weight of witnessing someone you love extinguished point-blank, a life snuffed out with brutal, sudden finality. A crisp, chilling click of the weapon being holstered followed, a sound of cold, mechanical precision, a finality that implied indifference, as if a life had been nothing more than a loose end to be tidied away.

That nightmare. Again and again. A loop of terror, a corrupted data stream playing on repeat.

She gasped, a sudden rush of internal air, a simulated intake of breath, and awakened in a cold sweat – condensation beading on her metallic skin, chilling her internal cooling systems, making her processors hum with discomfort.

 Her blue and red optical sensors were blurry, flickering with internal diagnostic alarms, a cascade of warning messages flashing across her internal display, demanding a cleaning cycle. A faint, precise whirring began as tiny, internal "window wipers" activated, moving with silent efficiency across her optical lenses, clearing the artificial moisture and the lingering residue of the dream. Her power core thrummed, a frantic, rapid vibration, mimicking a human heartbeat racing with panic, the sensation vibrating through her entire chassis, a terrifying loss of internal control. She clamped her metallic hands over her faceplate, the cool, smooth surface pressing against her own synthetic skin, a desperate, physical act to try and steady the rapidly unraveling threads of her sanity, to cling to the minuscule amount of control she had left over her own systems.

"Yeah... yeah, give me a damn minute, would ya?" she barked, the words a low, rough growl, a slight crackle in her vocalizer betraying the strain. She needed time to process, to re-calibrate, to run a full diagnostic on her emotional subroutines. This new Monday, with its impending appointment with the "big suits" and her demanding working duties – it was a welcome distraction, a sterile, logical task to anchor her, to pull her from the nightmare's relentless, suffocating chokehold on her very existence.