Neill's fingers clawed blindly across the floor, his body twisting under the crushing weight of the droid's boot on his spine. The pressure forced the air out of his lungs in ragged gasps, each breath burning against his ribs. He gritted his teeth and pushed against the hulking weight, searching with desperate precision.
He knew these models, knew every joint, every seam, every weak point. He'd worked with android bodies long enough, programming their movements, inputting endless strings of code and calibrating their responses. To him, the difference between a companion unit and a bodyguard chassis was nothing more than circuitry wrapped in different shells. And every shell had a failsafe.
His hand scraped along the droid's leg, sliding over smooth alloy until he found the groove behind the knee. His fingertips fumbled, then pressed against a small recessed notch, the reset switch, the one manufacturers pretended didn't exist but he'd long since committed to memory.
Click.
The effect was immediate. The droid froze mid-motion, its servos whining down as its systems collapsed into forced hibernation. The crushing force on his back eased, not gone, but dead weight now, no longer actively pinning him down.
Neill groaned, every muscle screaming as he shoved against the inert mass. It wasn't like pushing a person off, this was a slab of steel and synthetic muscle. But with the constant drive of its servos gone, the pressure had shifted from deliberate restraint to a heavy, awkward press, like a heap of Styx scraps dropped onto his spine.
Summoning everything left in his body, Neill braced his good arm against the floor and heaved. Inch by inch, he slid out from under the droid's boot, sweat and grime slicking his face as his pulse thundered in his ears.
He knew he had only seconds before anyone noticed.
Neill scrambled to his feet, his body still trembling from the weight that had crushed him. His vision swam, one side clear, the other drowning in static and overlayed warnings spilling from the new eye.
Red boxes blinked across his sight, lines of code and half-finished sentences screaming for his attention. He barely had time to skim, but a handful of words seared themselves into his brain,
( Target is considering stubbing his cigar out on "Stan Down" )
And then, just moments later, it had happened.
The sickening hiss of burning still echoed in his ears. His father writhed on the floor, clutching the ruined socket where his eye had been, his silent screams filling the room louder than his owns screams ever could.
Neill's stomach knotted at the sight, his chest heaving. Something broke loose inside him, hotter than fear, heavier than panic. Rage surged through his veins, burning away hesitation.
He spun, grabbing the nearest thing within reach, his own detached arm. The joint was stiff, little more than scrap metal and wiring now, but it was heavy, solid. A weapon, if nothing else.
Kerri, who had been busy making fun of his father writhing in pain, finally noticed him. Looking up from his position, his mouth was already parted, ready to bark a command at his lone remaining droid.
Neill didn't give him the chance.
"YOU FUCKING PIECE OF SHITT!!"
With a guttural shout, he swung his useless arm up and hurled it with everything he had. The metal flew through the smoke filled air, a glint of neon catching across its jagged edge before it smashed against Kerri's face.
Twwaackkk
The impact was brutal. The sound of metal meeting flesh and bone cracked through the room. Kerri stumbled back, his cigar dropping from his hand as he reeled, crashing against the sofa. Blood smeared down the corner of his cheek, his sunglasses snapping askew.
"Get him!" Kerri's shout ripped through the haze, spittle and blood flecking from his split lip as he staggered to his feet. His sunglasses hung crooked, one lens shattered, and the fury burning in his exposed eye was far more dangerous.
The remaining droid responded instantly, their servos whirring as they lunged toward him. One reached first, a hulking arm sweeping low to catch Neill around the waist.
But Neill wasn't new to this.
He twisted, shoving back with all his weight, slipping past the grasp. His movements were jagged but nimble, years of surviving by ducking under heavier fists, dodging debts, and scraping through fights in the Styx lending him an instinctual edge. He shoved hard against the droid's metal chest, the clang of palm against steel reverberating up his arm.
Still, for every step he slipped free, the droid's shadow still loomed. Their size alone was suffocating, their sheer bulk pressing down on him like the room itself was collapsing.
Through it all, Neill's gaze kept dragging back, again and again, to the figures on the floor.
His father and to Anita.
Stan Down writhed weakly, his limbs jerking in silent spasms. No sound escaped him, couldn't escape him. But his face… the twisted agony on it was louder than anything. His hand clutched his ruined eye, dark and wet and slick, the blood trinkling through his fingers, staining the floor.
Neill's new eye glitched again, the red static fluttering across the edges of his vision like sparks off broken wiring. But nothing, no alerts, no warnings, could blot out the image of that burned socket, the place where the droid had held his father down, wide eyed, as Kerri pressed the glowing end of his cigar deep into it.
The smell of charred flesh still clung to the air, mixing with the cigar smoke. It made Neill gag, rage bubbling hotter in his chest.
He ducked another swing from a droid's arm, teeth gritted, muscles coiled. Every movement was driven by that image, his father writhing, broken, because of them. Because of him.
Neill vaulted over Kerri in one desperate movement, his scrap-metal arm still humming faintly from the impact. Kerri was clutching his forehead where the heavy limb had smashed into him, blood leaking between his fingers. Neill wound his arm back, the movement practiced and angry, and drove his fist into Kerri's jaw with a snarl.
"Fucker!" he shouted, his voice breaking with rage and exhaustion.
Never underestimate a boy who's had to live his whole life with a secondhand, glitching arm that shuts down when he needs it most. The blow cracked through the air, sending a spray of blood from Kerri's nose as the man twitches, screaming in pain and shock.
Neill didn't care. He didn't care about the sting of glass slicing his knuckles from Kerri's shattered sunglasses, or about the droid's cold hands clamping down on his shoulders and hauling him back.
The overlays in his new eye burned red once again, systems flickering like warning sirens.
[ ************* ALERT ************* ]
[ WARNING ]
Target's dissatisfaction and hostility toward Host is escalating
( Host's ability to fulfill Target's Wants and Needs is currently compromised )
[ Target's Current State ] : Violence and aggression directed at Host
[ SYSTEM SUGGESTION ] : Immediate de-escalation required.
[ NOTICE ] : Target is actively considering lethal force against Host "Stan Down" and android unit [ANT–] / "Anita Bath."
***
That jolt of warning snapped Neill back. He couldn't risk it flashing again, couldn't risk more words spilling across his vision like a sentence he didn't understand but somehow knew would happen, had happened.
He didn't know what the hell was wrong with his new eye, or why it kept spitting out threats like that, but the message was clear, push any further, and the outcome would be worse than pain.
So he forced himself to still. He dragged in a shaky breath, trying to think, to plot a way to de-escalate before the system, or Kerri, decided to end him.
But that hesitation, that flicker of calm, only backfired. The droid gripping him seemed to read it as resistance in another form. Its metal arms clamped down harder, pulling him tighter until his ribs screamed. Something cracked inside him, he could feel it, and his breath hitched like broken glass in his lungs.
Kerri straightened slowly, groaning, one hand dragging away from his bloodied nose. His fingers trembled as they brushed across his ruined face, smearing the crimson. He picked his shattered sunglasses up from the floor with the other hand, turning them as though the jagged shards were priceless.
Neill wanted to laugh at the absurdity. Sunglasses. In this dim, suffocating room.
What kind of obnoxious bastard wore shades like he was strutting through Mercury District?
That place had its own artificial sun, bright enough to warrant tinted lenses, to pretend you lived in luxury.
But here? In the dark, reeking with rust and oil, old Pluto? Kerri's fashion choice looked pathetic.
And yet, standing there, bloodied and shaking with fury, Kerri managed to make it feel less like a joke and more their end.
But all those thoughts once again cut short when the droid slammed him back onto the floor. The impact stole his breath, rattling through his ribs that already felt like splintered wood.
From where he lay, Neill watched Kerri staggering with blood still dripping down his face. The man paced like a caged animal, spitting curses into the dim air.
"Fuck, fuck, fuck!" his voice cracking with fury.
Then he turned...
And Neill's gut dropped.
In his hand was a gun.
"Shit…" Neill hissed under his breath.
Of course. Even if they were banned. Even if every last one had supposedly been decommissioned after the war that made the world into a graveyard and left the rest of humanity clawing for scraps.
After the treaties, the laws, the endless slogans drilled into people's skulls...
...no more weapons of war, no more mistakes, no more repeating history.
Orbit's leaders had preached survival. They said the thirty percent of land left habitable had to stay free of old stains if humanity was going to last, radiation already ate everything else. Guns, missiles, tanks, every relic of bloodshed was outlawed, destroyed, erased.
But a stain never really fades, does it?
Even here, in the rotten corners of the edge of Orbit, the ghost of war still pressed its weight into the room, cold, metallic, and undeniable, in the shape of the gun clutched in Kerri's trembling, blood-slicked hand.
Neill's eyes widened. This was it, the end.
His vision clung desperately to the fragments that mattered, his father, pale as death, clutching at Kerri's trousers like a drowning man begging for mercy. Anita, battered, dented, still offline on the floor.
Tears burned at the corners of his eyes, the sharpness of his vision dissolving into blur. His throat seized with the desperate thought, how? How in hell was he supposed to de-escalate this?
Then, without warning, a searing red again show up across his retina.
[ ************* ALERT ************* ]
[ NOTICE ] : Additional targets detected within proximity.
[ CLASSIFICATION ] : Potential targets ( customers ).
Scanning…
***
And in the very next breath, the whole room, Kerri's curses, his father's silent agony, Anita's broken frame, the gun, the rage, all shattered like glass.