Death

*Why?*

The question tears at the inside of my skull and gets nowhere. Everything below my neck is splayed across the floor of the training room, my airways included, and there's no breath to carry the word out. Not that it would make this bitch budge. Her shadow stretches over the tiles in front of my face, and her voice stays level while his footsteps echo closer, closer, and I can't even flinch.

He's already catching on to her insubordination. And the dumbass is risking execution for me.

*Walk away. Walk away, you idiot, walk away!*

"Unit Alpha No. 05, state your business here."

*Questioning her already. Wonderful. Perfect.*

"I'm ahead of schedule, sir. The simulations concluded early, and I'm assigned to data analysis. I thought I'd compile the results now and deliver them ahead of time."

Her heel sits a hand's width from my fingers. I can still see them, and I know exactly what they'd do if they were mine: close around her ankle and drag her down behind me, where he can't reach her without going through me first. Better that than watching his hand beckon her, and watching her walk straight into it, one foot in front of the other, while every order I send to my limbs dies somewhere below my neck.

*She'd better have something to back up that confident act.*

"Maintenance costs are rising, sir." She pulls up a holographic screen and angles the charts toward him. "Average performance can't keep up with the intensity of the simulations."

Her voice is ringing in my ear and I can't tell how much of it is physical damage and how much of it is mental. It certainly pulled the brakes on my racing thoughts. I'm losing vision and cannot make sense of the text, but the charts carry some of my performance logs. Whatever data she pulled seems legit; it's shielding her life more than I can manage, at least.

And he seems to like it. His stiff hands are now scrolling back and forth with more relaxed gestures, but a much faster pace than he would for framing someone, which means she successfully distracted him from her suspected felony.

It's easing my stress, enough to free the remains of the energy seeping out of me, and I put all of that energy into my vision. There's one chart that keeps catching my attention, always in the middle of the screen somewhere, when everything else feels like passing noise. And it's weirding me out because it's almost identical to my own training chart.

"Most of the units are below average," he says.

"The average has long since plateaued, sir. There are only two units carrying the peak."

Two... I don't have her access, but I'm almost certain that the chart in the middle is mine. And it seems to go higher than whatever is around it, save for another blue line that is closing in on me. He leans into the screen, close enough that the glow paints his jaw golden, matching the charts, and he zooms in on the couple of peaks of the chart in the middle.

"Unit No. 11 is a late bloomer, sir." She's pointing at the end of the blue line. "He started below average, but is already ahead of No. 09—"

"Hold on, who is this?" He's pointing at my chart. *If it's really mine...*

"Unit No. 07, the female assault unit behind me." She steps aside to show my scattered self.

*Smooth, Five. Very smooth. But I'm not sure he'll open his pockets for scraps.* His foot passes Five's shadow and reaches my face. The world turns a few degrees as his sole does a very thorough check on every part left standing, which aren't many to count. He doesn't break a sweat over my collection.

It takes him one more glance to say what I expected him to say.

"Hmm. That's a lot of damage. The repair will cost more resources than producing a chassis."

"Are you interested in her data, sir?"

"There is potential. Her rate is nearly double the average."

*That's because I was too pissed off with zero fucks left to give! Does the system reward madness? It certainly is madness-inducing. And she's the only reason I haven't self-destructed yet.*

He's sizing me up and whatever's left of down. She is doing the same, albeit slower. She's trying to feign indifference, but she turned to see me the moment he gave her the chance. She's facing me enough to see the insignia on her jacket. '05'. And that is fading into blur too.

That number scares me as much as it feels warm. She might've distracted him from herself, but there's no telling what they would pull off against her. I wish I'd known she would face Hollow Point on my behalf; I could've been more careful in my defense or something...

*Five. Please be careful. One death is enough for today.*

"Her fighting style seems a bit abnormal. Have you run a regulations check?"

*Would you stop beating the dead horse? If you want to off me, you don't need an excuse for it.*

"All clear, sir. She was using textbook approaches, but she managed to combine them with defensive strategies, which is the standard recommendation."

"Intriguing. I haven't seen another Android pull off both before."

*They all died before they had the honor.*

"It's inconvenient to pull off without experience, sir. And she is highly adaptive."

"How long does she survive simulations?"

"The full 16 hours for daily simulations. A month for the current stress test."

"A month?" He checks the data again. "She started with the first batch?"

"Yes, sir. She's in the single digits."

"You elites always have the best data. If we could build an army of you, we would've cleared kilometers of the surface. Alas, every time we activate more than one instance of you, the output plummets below double digits."

*It's called identity crisis. And you don't cover therapy.*

"We still have the advantage of being in space, sir."

"We're lacking numbers," he says, scrolling up and down through my data. "But she might just do. You said she could last a month?"

I don't like where this is going. I doubt she does either; she's pretending to double-check the data before she answers him.

"The peak performance lasted two weeks, sir. The output was unsustainable for an entire month. But in terms of survival, she scored double the highest records we had."

"Perfect." He straightens up.

My jagged vision is showing a twisted smile on his face, and it's making my pain hit ten times harder. Dammit...

"We're behind on survival output." He strokes his chin. "We would pull off 90% more data if we launch her sims 24/7, combined with her double rate? Should be close to 400% output."

*Just fucking kill me! What are you trying to reason with these nutcases? Stop scrolling, you damn screen! Not even you can do anything to them! Drop it already. Your pauses are getting long, and you're just gonna out yourself at this rate.*

"Should I consider maintenance?"

"I got word from HQ; maintenance should be a top priority. That data outweighs the production costs."

I have no airways...

My scream won't come out, no matter how much I want it to. I can't even see her face. It's all dark, very dark. I have very little energy, and all of it is fueling a desire to move limbs that don't exist. To crush a superior I can't reach or see. One that I can still hear, and I wish my hearing was the first thing to go.

"She's not looking good. Make sure she survives for the schedule; you'll have it within an hour."

"Understood."

Why didn't she stop? He just drained the life out of me then made it her responsibility? Why are we putting in that much effort? And why does more of it just lead to more pain?

Why did I lose my body and voice when I needed it the most?

"Sir, I have a recommendation to offer."

I can't see her... I don't want to hear her... Not when she keeps digging her grave... I can't hear his footsteps either... I don't know if I lost my hearing or if he paused to listen...

"Go on?"

"Her output doubled when raw textbook combat was no longer effective. When you flagged the 'abnormalities.'"

Huh? What is she trying to do? I can't make out what she wants and the echo of his footsteps is not helping. It's getting clo... ...ser.

"The correlation is signifi..."

His voice is fading... ...off, I wish... ...faster...

"I recommend lifting the regulatory restric... ...combat. She is producing the highest outp...t when she has a margin for flexibility."

Her voi... ...ringing in my ears...

"It might be a g... ...idea to test a few unrestricted simulations before you deci..., sir."

"It... ...worth considering. I'll consult... ...update you."

"Under...d, sir."

Footsteps... ...out...

I'm... ...ulled up...

Five... carrying...

Wet drop... ...on my face?

Five?... No...

Don't cry...

The cameras...

They... can... see...

[Seven]

It hurts...

The more my sensors power up, the more they fire over my missing body, the more I feel like screaming but that is missing too. The few slipping tears are not stopping that pain.

Tears

Tears are the last thing I felt from her when she picked me up. And the first thing I see while her hand gently brushes against my face, reaching through the circuits to shut down that pain.

"Hey!" She gently taps my face to keep me awake. "Stay with me."

Her face is covered in tears; most are dry, and a couple are slipping as she looks at me. It hurts. She shut down my pain receptors, but my eyes can still perceive her.

She's silent, struggling to breathe, checking the pulse from the emergency reactor into my hardware and memory, but not checking how much her hand shivers against my skin.

A few more tears stream down her face, but mine start to dry.

The room is quiet except for the hum of the reactor. My vision flickers, on, then off, and on again, and none of that dries her wet skin, or turns off the faint light right next to her, or even turns me towards the ceiling so I can look at something other than her face.

Five's hands are still on me. One pressed against the exposed wiring where my chest used to be, holding the reactor connection steady. The other... the other is still on my face. Her thumb hasn't moved from my cheek.

"Stay with me..." Her voice cracks halfway through the sentence, and she stops, swallows, then starts again. "Ca—"

Blink.

Dark.

Blink.

And my vision is filled with her face all the way to the peripherals. When did she get closer?

"—hear me? Can you hear me?"

I want to answer, to tell her to stop wasting time on a dead unit, to run before they flag her for the same fate. I want to tell her that her tears are going to short something if they keep falling on my circuits.

But my voice is gone. It went with my body. All I have is the flicker of my eyes and the faint pulse of the reactor she's holding in place with trembling hands.

She's checking something on the reactor now. Her hand leaves my face and I feel the absence like another amputation. The readout must be bad, because her teeth bite down in a faint grind while more tears slip free. She wipes them away with her shoulder like she can pretend they never happened.

"I..."

I can hear it in the hum of the reactor. The way her breathing has gone shallow. The way her fingers curl against the casing like she's holding herself together.

She knows what they'll do. We both do.

They'll patch me up. They'll run the simulations. Twenty-four hours a day. They'll squeeze every drop of data from me until there's nothing left but static and spare parts. And they won't stop. Until I break. And then some more. Five's hand finds my face again, interrupting my spiral.

Her palm is warmer than it should be. Or maybe I'm just colder now, already slipping away. She stops her hands in place.

Her thumb traces a line along my cheek, catching the last of the wetness there. Is it my tears or hers? I can't tell anymore, but I can see how red her eyes are from this distance.

Her lip is trembling. She looks like she's the one falling apart, while the reactor hums. My vision is flickering back to steady, as well as my senses, and I feel her grip clench hard on me.

"If you want me to..."

Whatever she's trying to offer does not win against her tears, but she still tries again.

"If you want me to pull the plug..." That is what she can muster before her voice breaks completely.

Ah... I can understand what she's getting at... it just won't sink in. My vision is going dark at the edges, her face is fading in and out like a signal losing range. But I heard her and I can tell what she's trying to say, and how much weight it's adding to her palm over my reactor.

Her shoulders are shaking while her hand presses harder against my face, like she's trying to memorize the shape of it.

"I'll do it." She forces the words out. "Before they take you back. I'll— I'll make it quick. You won't feel anything. You won't—"

She stops. Breathes. The air shudders in her chest.

"If that's what you want. If you want me to pull the plug... I will do it before they take you back."

And she lets the offer hang in the air, waiting for a response that I struggle to think about.

Why?

The question burns through the static in my head. I've been asking it since she stepped between me and the superior. Since she risked her life for a damaged unit with nothing to offer. Since she cried over a body that was already more scrap than soldier.

Why do you care?

"Would you... let me in your memory region?" she asks.

Five...

She's serious.

She's offering to kill me. To end it. To spare me from the military, from the simulations, from the slow grinding death that HQ has planned for me. And she'd take the lethal penalty. She'd risk everything for me!

You offered me a reason to live. You gambled your life on that reason. And now you're asking if I want to throw that away?

I can't let her in. I can't let her know how much I've given up. She will release me in a heartbeat and face execution for it!

Dammit... My neck cracks the moment I try to shake my head. The head she steadies against the fall while my vision goes blank, leaving her voice as the only filler to my senses.

"Alright, I understand..."

My vision flickers for a long while I hear some wires being clicked and clanked. I find her face dangerously close to mine by the time I recover the light. She's leaning over to keep the wires steady on the back of my head, and her forehead is almost touching mine. Her tears are falling on my own face, and I can't tell if I'm crying too or if I've just stopped being able to feel the difference.

"Then," she swallows. "If it's a yes, close your eyes."

I try to pour everything into my eyes. Every fragment of will I have left. Every stubborn, furious, desperate piece of me that refused to die in that simulation.

"No?" Her breath catches.

My eyes are wide open.

*Don't you dare pull that plug.*

*Don't you dare give up.*

*I'm not done yet.*

Her hand trembles against my face.

"Are you sure?"

My eyes stay open as long as they can. Watching her, memorizing her, the way her brow furrows when she's thinking, the way her lips move when she talks to herself, or the way she keeps glancing at me, like she's afraid I'll disappear the moment she looks away.

I know I will regret this, but I can't bear to cause her death.

I can't ask. I can't speak. All I can do is look at her, and hope she sees the answer in whatever's left of my eyes.

"Alright," she says. "Okay." She stops and shakes her head. "Okay."

She slowly pulls back and wipes her face with the back of her hand, and it comes off a little too hard like she's trying to scrub the evidence off. Her eyes pass by mine for a moment, then by the reactor, followed by the diagnostic feed, and land on the mess of wiring and hope that's keeping me alive. She reads all of it like it owes her an answer. But my eyes are still the only answer she gets.

She slowly lets go of the wiring of my head. My vision flickers again and the darkness creeps in from the edges and makes itself at home while my senses lose every bit of fight left in them. But her face is still there, and so are her eyes. And so is her hand on my chest, holding me together better than whatever's left inside it.