Page 7 of Alliance
He couldn’t fight three yogs while prey-fluid.
But he sure as fuck could take down one.
“My hand! My hand! Get him off me!” Mez?a wailed, viscous blood smearing across Fásach’s mouth.
“Fuck this shit, I’m out!” the other yelled, scampering into the crowd.
But Turj wasn’t cowed. He raised the butt end of his hand cannon, fixated on the bulge of shiver stickers strapped to Fásach’s chest beneath his jacket.
The firearm fell like a hammer.
And Fásach knew no more.
02
Present Day
Coming back online was not like being born in the nursery. There was no NRS or Master to greet me, and rather than a peaceful instant, I floated in a thick soup, struggling to grasp consciousness as I drowned in confusion and sluggish processes.
My body was on a [flat plane] floor. A sticky floor.
I could see out of only one eye. Hear out of one ear. Breathe through one nostril.
Iron and motor oil had dried inside my mouth…
Correction.
Blood, not iron.
When I swallowed, my throat felt like packing foam. And my charging port was damaged, but parumauxi were already working at the site, reconstructing biological tissues and the conducive plates that had been bent out of shape. It would repair itself within two sols.
“Ay…”I hissed, a deep, pulsing pressure in my head. Was it painful? I couldn’t tell exactly, but I thought—perhaps I was meant to find it painful.
I sat up and my palms were [raw] sunburned as they took my weight.
No.
Allof me felt sunburned. I blinked down at the bare skin of my legs and arms. The sticky floor was filling with a thin layer oflight green foam save for the impression of where I’d been laying like a [dead body] murder scene. And the parts of me that had been exposed to the air were foaming too.
“Oh,” I realized, blinking the eye that could not see. Foam squeezed between my eyelids, dripping down my cheek. When I opened the eye again, my vision was smeared like [cleaning product] Windex on a window.
What was Windex?
[Cannot connect to nursery database. Search [[Windex]] paused until connection reestablished.]
But I already knew what Windex was. It was a blue liquid in a clear spray bottle. We used it to clean the mirrors and sliding doors in our house every first Saturday of the month.
LMem fragments flashed across my mind, burning into the back of my eyelids.A bathroom lined in off-white tiles.The mirror was small and hung without a frame above the pedestal sink. I looked at myself in the mirror. Yes, this was me. Rozs-zs-sy-y-y-y. I blew myself a kiss, then sprayed the clear bottle of blue Windex at myself–
I jumped, hand out to stop the cleaner from hitting me in the face.
But I was alone in the hallway in which the overseer had been performing quality control.
I attempted to dial down my sensory intake and limit the percentage of LMem running as a background task to no avail. Why could I not control my sensory intake anymore? This was one of my central functions and ensured that I could adapt to the appetites and instruction of future clients, regardless of if my unit was damaged.
Perhaps the overseer had been correct in performing a quality control test.
The foam on my skin burned incessantly, after all. It was in my eye and respiratory system. In my silk. I peered at my fingerclosely and heard the substance hiss as if it was alive and eating me.
