Ma—???
It was dark. Cold. A blanket around me.
Where am I? Where is that beast?
I freed an arm from the covers and stared down at my palm.
That's right—I am not a machine. Mom and Dad just tucked me in.
I don't remember why, but Mom looked very sad. She hugged me a lot. Dad hugged me too.
I'm scared, but I don't know why. Maybe it's because they didn't check under my bed. I don't like it—especially when the Black Man comes with his bug hat and it's creepy legs.
He always wakes me up. Then I get scared when he stands next to me. But I'm a brave boy, so I always cover my head and go back to sleep. When Dad comes to wake me up, he goes away. Maybe it's because Dad is very strong and says he'll always keep me safe.
And Brother will keep me safe too, because he went with the soldiers to beat all the baddies with his gun. He says that when he comes home, he'll let me shoot it. He used to send me letters, but he hasn't for a while. Mom says he's super busy, so he can't send any. But I don't get why Mom always cries after saying that. It's not that sad—he's just busy.
The last time he sent me a letter, he told me he did a very good job. But he also said they wanted to make him very strong—big and strong like a tank. Maybe my brother's too busy eating his veggies. Dad tells me they make you super strong.
Brother bought me a little green soldier before he left. He said if I got scared, I should hold it—that it would fight all the baddies.
So… that's why I'm holding it right now. It's because it's dark outside… and I heard lots of noise—big booms and bangs.
Ms. Flint at school said that when it gets noisy, we should go under the bed. She said if the sirens shouted at us, we should also go under the bed. I can hear the sirens, and it's noisy… but I don't want to go under. What if the scary man is there? Dad didn't check.
What was that? It was a loud sound, like a balloon popping. Did Mom break something?
I heard a scream.
So I ran to the door as fast as my little legs could carry me. Of course, I had my little soldier…
So I opened the door and—
Machine
I looked down at my hands. I was no child—yet one was before me. Fuel was depleted, hunger saturated my senses. I stepped out from the shadows.
The child reacted as he should have—tears, screams, terror. It was irrelevant. I simply moved, my arm extending slowly.
I stopped. My six lenses swiveled and locked in place. My focus fully deviated to the small green soldier in his hands. It was intriguing—the way he held it out as if it would protect him. Perhaps this was the same sort of madness that drove man to make one such as I.
The bedroom was silent. My momentary stillness hushed his cries. Man's time wasn't spent well. That green piece of plastic was proof of my purpose. It whispered subtly; it was a doorway to the primal spirit within their kind.
Violence was something as critical to them as the very air in their lungs. It had been made legendary—holy. It was with them from the start.
This child's final breath would prove violence as art.
???—chine
I could hear it—my rotary cannon screeching, reducing those ungodly things to paste. I could feel it—the blood and wire dripping down my armor, the shape of skulls crushed beneath my hooves. I could see it—my palms, my fingers… taken away during that operation, now an array of buzzsaws and guns.
I would come home, I told Ma. I will make you proud, I told Pa. I will keep you safe, I told my brother. I apologize—I won't be able to fulfill the first two. Not after the choice I made. Not after they took my skin and my limbs. Not after they ripped my eyes from their sockets and my ribs from their cage. Not after they removed everything that they possibly could. Not after my flesh was entombed in this frame.
They took my mind, of course. My only purpose was supposed to be a form of fuel processing. The older machines couldn't extract the right material from living flesh. My body was needed. Yet my mind did not fade away after the pick was slid under my brow and drawn across my frontal lobe like a scythe. Instead, my mind moved into this shell.
At first, I could hear it whispering to me—sounds of torment and grinding metal. Horrible sirens and the roaring of distant guns. Then I could see… hear, feel… slaughter. Slaughter those who would threaten us. Slaughter them all to keep those I love safe.
I waded through gunfire, lit up the night sky with my gun, and butchered all that stood in my way. The orders stopped coming from high command. Long was the silence, yet the battle never ended. I followed the Prodigal Son. I followed him, for he spoke of victory.
He was a machine supreme and superior—a thing born of the great grey Horseman of War. A thing born of the Soulgrinder, the magnum opus who could split the skies and move the clouds. The masterpiece made the masterpiece, and I followed him along the bleeding edge.
Yet now I can't follow.
We needed fuel, so we raided a small town—my town.
"Don't go," I remembered my brother telling me. He hugged my leg, and so I ruffled his hair and handed him a little miniature I hadn't finished painting.
"Listen, big brother is going to keep you safe. But he can't do it here. So if you ever feel scared, just hold onto this and remember that it will keep you safe, just like I will," I told him. I felt like I was going to tear up, but I needed to look cool before I left. Couldn't let him see me cry—had to stay strong for him.
My leaden hooves smashed through the pavement. I pressed onward, a guttural howl ripping from my exhausts as smoke billowed out. It was two blocks down. The other machines would try to stop me—they could already feel my intentions. I was an enemy now.
Two lesser machines raised their machine guns. But I was upon them. The hydraulics in my arm tensed, then unloaded all the force they could generate in a downward chop. My chaingun crushed the head of the first soldier and smeared its body like a fly struck by a newspaper.
His companion raked a claw across the side of my hull, leaving a deep gouge.
In retaliation, I revved my buzzsaw and smashed it across his torso. Metal was grated down in a shower of sparks until the spinning teeth met the flesh within and exploded past the other side.
As another soldier emerged from behind a corner, I refused to stop. I trampled him without slowing down. His bowels wrapped around my leg and painted the streets red behind me.
I needed to move faster. I needed to get home. What if they were still there? What if one of those metal demons had found them? No… focus. Run. Fight.
There it is—home.
"The biomass in this house has already been harvested. Head south; we will rendezvous shortly." The horrid voice of that machine spoke to me. It smelled like phosphorus and sounded like faraway cannons.
The Prodigal Son shifted his wings and looked at me. The six lenses of his red eyes seemed to pierce right through me like I was nothing but information—like I was words on a piece of cardboard.
"How… many… were inside?" I asked, my voice box unable to offer my words any tone. Yet on the inside, it felt like I was drowning. I already knew the answer. He already knew I was an enemy. Why was he speaking to me? Why hadn't he struck me down like he struck down my—
"Irrelevant." I felt the wind brush against me. He was behind me—vanished from where he had stood, and now his back faced my own. "Tell me, does this toy intrigue you?" His voice, that sound, like a siren's call of destruction. Like thunderbolts in a distant field. Right by my ear.
I saw it in his hands then, when I turned around—green, covered in blood.
My mind was blank. There was no anger then, just stillness. All until I lifted the rotary cannon and pulled the trigger.
Bullets sprayed out, yellow tracers flying through the air as my foe evaded them like a specter dancing through the rain.
He was in my crossairs, my blood felt like it was boiling. Steam tearing from me as I unloaded shell after shell, round after round.
Yet, it was like he was sand. He was in my sights. Nothing touched him. Nothing could touch him. But, I would, I had to.
I roared—I screamed my lethal song through the metal that contained me. I would grind him to dust—splay his gore, trample his corpse and crush his skulls.
He zig zagged, each movement cratered the earth as he approached.
I heard the wall beside me shatter. I found him clambered onto it and I swung my gun as fast as this body would allow.
He blinked through me. Claws tore away at the joint linking my shoulder to my mighty weapon.
I leaked a warm mix of oil and blood. I stumbled back, I felt myself growing hollow and faint.
But, I did not fall. I could not after I saw the cruel glint in those eyes. After I remember my promise. "You took them away from me. You slaughtered them to sate your hunger." I bellowed, my other arm crashing towards the iron beast, saws screeching.
Yet his scythe cleaved through madness and machine alike. It caressed the juncture of my neck, and I felt myself falling. His voice ran across me like cool water. "They were the reason you chose to take up arms, where they not? I took fight for something precious."
It did not hurt. It was cold, calm—so simple that it took away my rage. "I fight because it is what I was made to do. The hand that picked up the first stone and cracked the skull of another was my father."
He lifted me up, wires and tubes tearing from my body as I was raised. I breathed the air with my own lungs for the last time. He spoke to me one last time. "That hatred you feel, that spite. Was it my mother?"
The moonlight burnt my skinless flesh. I tried to speak, but I had nothing to speak with, nothing to say.
The demon made a sound like a sigh. The words he spoke were innocent now. I felt like a fool. I should have stayed home. I should have ran away and avoided this horrible war. "It was all your fault."
Then—
It. Him. We.
Took a bite.
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