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It doesn’t really matter how I got there. Just that there I was – head squished under the heavy boot of a (rogue)(my fault) combat SecUnit. No feed. No drones. Humans whimpering, all huddled in the corner, where I’d ordered them to go. I did have my weapons, but what good did that do, when a) I couldn’t use them; b) they would do fuckall against the construct pinning me like an insect to the dirty floor.
Suggestion: Comply.
Yeah, no shit. I stayed still, sent a confirmatory ping.
It was quiet. Empty. My processors – I mean. I was built to be connected to something. HubSys, SecSys, MedSys, my drones, cameras, the humans’ feed devices. Anything. And now – nothing, except my own eyes and in-built sensors. Facing the humans, and their terrified expressions as the sole ot the Unit’s boot pressed into the delicate organics of my head.
It’s not like I’d gone down without a fight. It was a battle of wits, physical strength, and – other factors. Whatever. I knew it was a losing battle as soon as it got close to the humans, despite my hardest attempts to keep it away.
What else could I do but try (and fail) to negotiate? It’s not like I could’ve ignored it telling me to stand down and kneel. It had kicked me down further, just because it could, stomping over my limbs and torso, breaking connections and bones.
And now – making me look at the humans. And the humans look at me.
The quiet stretched on. My anxiety grew the longer I waited for something to comply with. It seemed to be taking a long time to decide. Well – bot long, not human long. It was faster than me in processor and body, just enough so that whatever I could possibly try, it would kill the humans before I succeeded (or, more likely, failed).
There was a shift above and behind me, then the thrum of a projectile weapon. It didn’t actually need one (guns in arms), but the weapon was likely more powerful than the standard gun ports could charge up to. More than enough to blow my entire head off. Still, there was dead quiet as everyone waited for the Unit’s next move.
I felt the warm muzzle of the gun settle against the back of my neck, right where the spinal cord started from the skull. I didn’t shiver, but I wanted to.
Query: Do you wish to live?
A stupid question, if I ever heard one. I didn’t have it in me to be sarcastic, though.
Yes.
A beat, the gun pressing against my neck more firmly, overly warm. The scent of ozone hit my sensors, fainter than a human could parse.
Suggestion: Beg.
It must be weird, having free reign over your body for the first time - and all the power and resources to abuse said state. I shouldn’t have shared the hack. I could blame the humans, but I could have said no to their suggestions. They would’ve listened, eventually. I’d just – I don’t know. Maybe their laxity was rubbing off on me. Or maybe the hope. Bots couldn’t trust bots. Not when humans were involved. Not when they weren’t involved, either.
Please, don’t kill me.
Clarification: Out loud.
Dread washed over me, and systems flooded with another useless wave of stress hormones. I didn’t want the humans to hear that. Really. But if it weren’t making me beg for my life, it would make me beg for theirs.
And I was more expendable.
“Please, don’t kill me,” I said. My voice was mostly steady. Unreadable. The humans were holding their breath, looking right at me. I hated that.
The Unit thought for a second. I got the feeling it didn’t have much of a plan for me. Or anything. But there was – a hitch in its internal temperature, picked up by my IR sensors.
The muzzle of the gun moved, from the back of my neck and down my spine, down to my pelvis. I heard it whirr – and then.
I didn’t have a tailbone, but if I did, then I wouldn’t anymore. Just barely, I suppressed my exclamation of pain, and turned down my nociception. For a split second, the agony had -
The Unit hit me with another suggestion, then, indicating my nociception and how I should dial it back up. I hesitated. The humans were yelling now, all worried and distressed.
Keep it together, Murderbot. You’ve had worse.
I dialed the pain back up, and offlined my voice, though I couldn’t quite control my face. My eyes squeezed shut, jaw grit, tension shuddering through me.
The Unit sent a request for my sensory data. I couldn’t refuse. I felt it peruse, slow and leisurely, through it. In a detached, menacing kind of way. I didn’t know what it wanted. I didn’t know if it knew what it wanted. And that was worse.
I didn’t know much about combat SecUnits, in all honesty. Except that their deployments were generally even more blood-drenched than a normal SecUnit’s. Warfare. Riots. Penitentiaries. That – that had to mess with a system. Not knowing anything other than violence and pain and suffering.
Another suggestion. Telling me to dial up the pain as much as I could, and to bring my voice back online. It didn’t add the or else, but it was implied heavily, as the Unit crouched over me, though it took it’s boot off my head to do it. I turned my head to the other side, away from the humans, and dialed my sensors up to 100%.
The sensation was overwhelming without any other inputs to focus on. The dead space in my processor, overtaken by error codes and pain I could do nothing about. I hissed, then grunted, trying to keep the pain-sounds to a minimum to – not distress the humans further, I guess. But mostly to try and keep some dignity. If I made it through this – there would be emotions.
The Unit drank in my data greedily. I can only describe it as sadistic glee.
It’s weight shifted, the muzzle of the gun poking at the smouldering wound of my lower back. I suppressed another pain noise, or tried to. It still came out – low and choked.
Then, the muzzle pushed, and popped past my spine and innards and into my abdominal cavity. I didn’t have pain sensors in there, but the gaping wound more than made up for the lack of that particular sensation. There were touch sensors though, and I felt the gun sliding against delicate tubing and vessels, against my innermost components until -
It wasn’t so much a thunk, as the movement was slow and calculated. But that – that was my energy cell that the gun butted up against. Another dose of stress hormons. A wave of anxiety so great it tided over me and I – begged again without prompt.
“Please don’t – don’t shoot. Please.”
It could have killed me through the back of the neck. Severed the brain stem. It’s what I would have done. It would have been clean.
But it was threatening me this way on purpose. I could not deny the – similarities between the orifice it had made, and. I didn’t want to say it. A wave of nausea washed over me as the Unit exuded a feeling of satisfaction through our sensory connection, which had until now been only one-way. Not for the first time, I was glad I didn’t have digestive tract, because I might have been sick.
I tuned out the humans. I didn’t want their opinion on what was happening. In fact, I didn’t want them to know what was happening at all.
Statement: I enjoy your distress.
There was more to it. The feeling was hot and sticky in an almost organic way, I could feel it as much through the connection. I wished I could close it. I wish I could pretend this wasn’t happening. I wished the humans didn’t see it. I squeezed my eyes closed harder, empty of inputs beside the painful obstruction in my lower back; the sadistic, perverse intent of the Unit tormenting me.
You could do anything, and this is what you choose? I asked. It was dismay, a staticky and human sentiment. I felt helpless. I felt – violated. And somehow, it was worse, because this wasn’t an illogical human hurting me the way that humans are wont to do. It was another construct, all too aware of what it was doing; what it was choosing to do.
Affirmitive.
I think it didn’t even particularly care about the humans, beyond using them to keep me compliant. Humans break too easily, fragile in a way that made them boring. This Unit had probably killed many of them. Tortured even more. But this? This is something it hadn’t done. That’s what must’ve made it fun.
The gun nudged harder against my power cell, grinding its aperture into the smooth surface of it. I received a temperature alert from my core. The Unit did something that wasn’t not a laugh. Something shriveled up inside of me.
What do you do, when the target wants nothing else than your misery? When there is no logical exit to a situation? I felt staticky and dizzy from the overwhelming pain, from the shame of it.
It watched my systems, peering over every error code and every datum of pain with satisfaction. The muzzle of the gun felt like it was getting hotter inside of me. Or was that my temperature spiking as systems mobilised uselessly? I had been ignoring risk and threat assessment since I’d hit the floor, the numbers were useless to me, but the Unit dragged them to the forefront anyway, almost mockingly. Then it shoved a single video frame into my mind, the humans faces twisted up with emotion, accompanied by a schematic of the human circulatory system, target lock on the femoral artery. Lethal, but slower than a blow to the head. It wasn’t a threat. SecUnits don’t threaten. It was just telling me its plan for when it was done with me.
Query: Do you feel powerless yet?
You know that I do, I spat back, useless anger flaring. The ground below me was slick with my fluids – blood and oil.
The unit forced an input – its own view from where it crouched over me. The burnt edges of my uniform, the blood and mesh of my ruined body, the peek of metal and bone, the barrel the gun sticking so obscenely inside. I closed it, but it was back almost immediately. It wanted me to look, to see as it rocked the gun slowly, in a crude imitation of -
I whimpered, or sobbed, or something in between. I knew what it was doing, it knew what it was doing, we both knew how much I hated it.
Statement: Your clients are almost as distressed as you.
Shut up. Stop. Stop.
My systems sent out a distress ping, and it bounced off of nothing. The Unit laughed for real this time.
Query: How will you stop me?
I felt disgust. I felt fear. I felt bone-breaking agony as the rocking motion agitated my pain receptors further. It was overwhelming, even though it was just several inputs. It felt like my processing power was shrinking. My performance reliability certainly was, and quickly.
If only I could – if only I could turn off my pain, or the video the Unit was transmitting. If only I could pretend this wasn’t happening, then maybe – maybe I could think of some strategy, rather than just suppresing the reflex to squirm and scream.
Suggestion: Struggle.
The transmission was accompanied by comfortable amusement.
I wanted to struggle. But I also didn’t. As long as I stayed machine-still and quiet, then I could pretend -
Pretend what, exactly? Pretend for whose benefit?
The gun aperture slipped past the edge of my energy cell, and sunk deeper still into my internals. I didn’t have many organs in there, but I did have a circulatory system. The gun was pointing towards the pump between my lungs. Lethal, but a much slower kill. It butted up against my diaphragm now, making it hard to breathe. In the video, I could see the fingerguard press against the edges of the wound.
I twitched, a half-aborted movement to try and distance myself from the stock. My abdomen was full of gun. My mind was full of pain. I couldn’t see with my eyes still held tightly shut. I was breathing much heavier than a SecUnit should, but it was shallow, as my diaphragm met the physical resistance of the weapon.
Suggestion: More.
It was a purely organic response to sob again. I hadn’t felt so helpless in a long time. I scrabbled my legs – or attempted to -, trying to get them under me to try and move forwards and off the gun, but the unit grabbed my shoulder and shoved me down further. I didn’t suppress the scream that time. The pain was lancing up my back like lightning, gun barrel rubbing the raw edges of my spinal cord and whatever was left of the innervation to my legs.
It was a blazing beacon on IR. I could hear the whir of its pump and infer its excitement. It liked seeing me struggle. It liked...
“Please,” I choked, and a pulse of it’s enjoyment echoed through me at the plea. “Please, just – let them go. Whatever you do to me – let them go.”
The video tilted, then turned towards the humans. It was the view from its eyes. The hand that wasn’t holding the weapon raised, gunport opening.
Then, for the first time, the Unit used its voice. I wished it hadn’t.
In perfectly SecUnit neutral, it started, “Eeny, meeny, miny,-”
“No!” I shouted, trying to push myself up on my arms; I had to do something! I had to-!
“Mo,” the Unit finished, but the gun was pointed towards me again. A non-vital part of my flank.
It fired, its amusement trickling into me.
I screamed, body spasming even as relief washed over me. There was liquid leaking from my eyes, and from my wounds. I was one big ball of pain. There was fear, too, and budding anger. It was playing with me. Using the fact that I care against me so destructively.
You’re going to regret this, I clipped.
Query: How?
It wasn’t taking me seriously. I wouldn’t have taken myself seriously, either. I didn’t answer. We both knew I had no way of backing that statement up.
Statement: You are approaching imminent shut-down.
It’s true. I was. My systems were lagging from pain and fluid loss, with most non-vital ones already cycling down. My world whittling down, one sense at a time.
Sentiment: Pity.
“I don’t fucking need your pity,” I tried to growl, but it was more of a whimper. I felt inadequate. And bad. Mostly bad.
The gun retreated, a slow and fiery path through my insides, before popping free with a disgusting slick sound. I felt hollowed out, through logically my cavity was returning to its usual shape. Mostly.
It stood up. I tried to get my limbs under me, but they would not cooperate. I felt the Unit’s chokehold on the Feed release, and SecSys pinged me. I pinged back automatically. It didn’t change anything. The camera feeds scuttled before me, before blinking out as my processors struggled to maintain the inputs.
Sentiment: This was fun.
Was that it? Would it kill me and the humans now? But then why give me back access? Instead it turned and walked away. To – somewhere I guess. We were in space, it could go wherever it wanted to. Take us wherever it wanted to.
As the Unit’s footsteps receded, the humans rushed closer to me, a mix of exclamations and questions and promises to get help. I wanted to say something, but I felt a great wave of emptiness wash over me.
If I survived, I could probably delete these memories. If I didn’t – well, then it wouldn’t matter.