"By the Nine-Veined Skulls, what happened now?”
A voice: harsh, mechanical, amused. I don’t need to open my eyes to know who it is.
Trebuchet. The monster with a man’s memories stitched over a machine’s skull. He enters, boots clanging softly on stone slabs, cloak dragging like a death shroud. The cell’s glow flickers off him in silvery shards, glinting on his rope-metal spine, rigid plated arm, cables trailing like broken veins into grey walls.
I keep still. Every muscle tensed under the edge of collapse. My head swims; my vision edges in waves.
He stops at the rim of the slab. His red optic pulses slow. For a heartbeat, he bends over me — silent, detached. He touches nothing. Smells nothing. He just watches.
“Human fragility wears thin fast,”he mutters, just above a whisper — not for me, but for the shadows the cell walls throw.“But you always snap back on fragility thresholds.”
I catch the word — “fragility.”
The link between fear and control. He thinks I’m broken.
Good. Let him think.
His servos click. He turns away, steps toward the faint console half-hidden against the wall — the very console I studied. The one that keeps half-metal monsters like him alive. The one with soft switches, pulsing lights, thin conduits that hum low, absolute.
I force it all into focus: the hiss of ventilation, the faint drip of condensation along the far wall, the click of his plating-field boots. The steady pulse of the console’s heart-light.
I drag breath down. Pain tastes bitter. But beneath it — hot determination.
As Trebuchet leans forward, tweaking gauges, tapping switches, the console clicks obediently. The vent port hissesbehind him — cold, deadly air sliding through rusted metal. He’s adjusting oxygen flow, or neural stabilizers, or some translator of life and metal I’ll never understand.
Soft hum, click-click, light flicker.
He stands, turns.
I wait.
Then — I strike.
I jerk forward. The surge hits like thunder. My head snaps back into pain — skull-fog burrows deep. But I don’t stop. Air leaks, life stutters. My stunned arm flails — reflex takes over.
A bone-cracked roar tears from my throat as I reach out — fingers hit hard, grab the calibration tool that lies half-concealed on the console. It sparks under my grip as the tool snags wires, fractures circuits.
Sparks burst — blue, white, sharp — like lightning in a bottle. The panel flares, flickers, then goes black.
Alarms scream. Red lights bloom. The hiss behind the vent port inverts — a rush of air, then silence. Metal clangs. The cell door’s heavy plate shudders under pressure.
Trebuchet jerks — sways like a puppet tugged by frayed strings. His left forearm spasms, then goes dead — limp. The servo whines, drops. The arm hangs grotesque, useless. Sparks sputter at the shoulder-joint as power cuts off.
He staggers. His optic pulsing erratic — glitching.
And I’m on my feet before I even know. Pain flares, ribs burning, muscles wobbling — but instinct drives me. I snatch the shard — half a broken calibration plate — from the shattered console. Cold and jagged. Metal warmth press-sharp under my palm. I don’t pause.
I raise the shard, wild eyes locked on the shoulder-joint twisting at a sick angle, metal whine leaking weakness. I swing — I don’t think, I’m not graceful or careful.
I stab.
The shard sinks deep between panel seams. Sparks fly. Circuitry fries inside him. The coil cables sputter black smoke. A grunt — hybrid of synth-servo and pain — tears from Trebuchet’s throat, mechanical voice garbled.
His ruined arm spasms and drops to his side. The cell door bursts open as internal security systems register breach — dull clang-clack of bulkheads releasing across corridors. Sirens begin to shriek — a mechanical wail of warning and alert status.
I don’t hesitate.
I snatch the key-card clipped to his belt — cold plastic etched with clan-sigils and security codes. Fingers slip (blood mixes with grime) but I don’t drop it. I tuck it inside my uniform.
