#pr0t0type things

The highblooded bouncer at the door lost his morals when you handed him enough cash, so you didn’t even need to try and disguise yourself to do the actual deed. All you had to do was wait in an alleyway for her to be led right to you, under the guise that she had to wait here for her ‘friend.’ The only thing missing was the silver platter. 

You’re glad that you don’t plan on actually hurting her or anything. 

She’s so small compared to you. Not quite as small as your matesprit, but damn close. You cover her mouth with one hand about the size of her face, muffling any noise she would make when you hoist her up with your other arm and carry her off. She thrashes in your grip, but not even her robotic strength can free her; you might not be a real drone, but you’re not built half bad either. 

Regardless, you do try to make the trip to your destination as quick as you can. You’re definitely not particularly discreet, carrying a struggling girl, and would really prefer to encounter as few trolls as possible. 

At least you’re not far from the lab. 

She starts to still when she realizes where the two of you are headed. After all, this is home to her. Or perhaps she recognized the make of the drone carrying her off. 

You don’t remember if she’s old enough to know you. You don’t care either. 

The only caveat in your plan is that Xamidi Biotechnology is still wrapping up the workday when you arrive. Shocked employees scatter away from you as you make your way to the elevators down to the Chimera lab--none of them brave enough to be a action movie hero, apparently. 

Finally, when you get to the elevator, you speak. 

“I am going to set you down. If you bolt, I will kill you. Got it?” You speak slowly, carefully. 

She nods. You set her down, and she does not bolt, but you keep one hand around her neck and shoulders just to make sure. Maybe she does have some sense in her programming after all. 

You both take the elevator when it arrives. You can feel her shuddering when you push her ahead of you--how did he even do that, make her capable of quivering in fear? She’s an android, you think. Made of metal. It feels pointedly unnatural for her to be so convincingly troll-like. 

None of this is natural, really. You don’t dwell on the thought long. 

“Xamiiiidiiiii.” You call out in a lilting tone, loud enough to echo through the mazelike halls. The loud sound makes a couple of drones in cells wake up and smash to their doors, enraged by the unwelcome stimulation. Hopefully that ruckus will draw him to you even quicker. 

“I know you’re down here!” Your voice is unmistakable, a deep scratchy rumble that couldn’t belong to anyone else. 

You shift your hold on Xinxiu’s shoulders to her neck, then lift her up. Her hands reflexively fly to yours, trying to pry it away, even though she doesn’t actually have a windpipe to cut off or lungs that need air. You lift her up until she’s level with your head, opening your jaw to cradle her valuable memory boards between your teeth. 

The doctor finally swings around a corner, obviously startled by your sudden appearance. You can practically see his mechanical heart skip a beat when he processes the scene in front of him: his daughter, terrified for her life, one crunch away from death. 

“Listen to me,” you still enunciate your words slowly and carefully, “I need something from you. But I need you to swear on your daughter’s life that you will do it as I ask, with no complaints or sabotage, and you will not trap me in this prison ever again.” 

“I-- yes, anything you want, please--” Wow. You’ve never seen the famously cool-headed Xuange Xamidi this frazzled. He must really care for his daughter, huh?

“Promise me. And know that I will kill you if you break it.” 

“I promise! I promise I’ll do anything you want me to, just please let her go, please.” 

You sense something around the corner, just out of view, around the bend he came from. It crackles with energy, enough to confuse your sensors and prevent you from getting a good read on its form. 

“What is that. What is with you.” 

“Wh-- my assistant?” 

“Let me see them. I don’t trust you.” 

The lab assistant in question steps slowly out into the opening of the hallway. Sparks crackle between her horns. 

“Good. Don’t move.”

“I need you to…” you trail off, unsure of how to even say what you need, “I need you to fix my matesprit. Nobody else has the skills I need.” 

“... Fix? Is… Are they a drone? Android?” 

“No. I could get any mechanic to fix those issues. But her-- she was mixed with a lusus when she pupated so she’s built wrong. Or, not wrong, no, just… Badly. She hurts all the time. I want you to fix her.” 

“Oh… I-- I can do that, yes. I can do that. Of course I can do that.” 

“But don’t you dare try anything--” 

“Of course not, of course not!” 

“... She would rip you apart worse than I would if you did.” 

You lower Xinxiu back to the ground. 

“When I come back with her, you will help her, yes?” 

“Yes. You have my word.” 

You let go of her throat. She immediately launches into her father’s arms, who is immeasurably relieved to have her returned safely. You can sense the mechanisms in his body facilitating the reaction. 

You receive a notification that Vrayan’s GPS signal can no longer be traced. Her phone battery also dropped to zero at the same time. Of course, the GPS signals from most mobile phones would keep functioning even after the phone’s battery was dead, or if it was powered off, so you figured both of these indicators happening at once meant really only one thing: someone had just busted the thing.

Which would be very, very bad. You freeze for a moment, trying to process this information. What the fuck do you do about this? Call someone? Try and find her? Yeah, that sounds good. You finally leap back into action, sending a very very quick text to Nyctea, Dziban and Icarus-- the former to warn of danger, and the latter two to let them know you’ll be a little late. 

0̷̻͚͒̕0̴̬̍̃ : HELP 0̷̻͚͒̕0̴̬̍̃ : VRAY IN DANGER You send the last pinged location from her phone as you race across the rooftops, dropped down on all fours like some sort of awful mechanical beast. It’s faster and safer to run like this, you know you won’t fall off anything or miscalculate your jumps. 

You’re grateful for once in your life that you run on an engine. You don’t have to stop and catch your breath for a single moment, each of which already feeling agonizingly long as you approach that alleyway. You’re even grateful for your mechanical legs, which won’t get tired no matter how many times you make jumps between the sunbleached rooftops. You’re especially grateful for your weird sort of sonar-adjacent sensory program that lets you bolt between obstacles and over ledges with more accuracy than someone who wasn’t blind. 

Maybe sometimes all those augmentations do come in a little handy, you guess. 

Despite how much distance you were covering, it still felt like your location indicator was crawling across your GPS app like a snail. What if she had gotten in serious trouble and you were too slow? What if you had to be the one to bring her corpse back to Nyctea’s hive, desperately explaining that you weren’t the one to kill her? 

You would be, though. Because you were too slow. 

You don’t want to think about that. She’s tougher than she looks. 

You start to slow down as you approach her last pinged location. Now you need to focus on finding her, not her bricked phone-- which you find in the alleyway, smashed far beyond repair. Oh no. 

You turn off the GPS tracker to free up more space for sensory programs, everything up to 11. Vrayan is clearly not here right now, but it doesn’t take you long to figure out where she went-- her blood is stained on the nails embedded in an old rotten board sticking out of a trashcan. You can easily smell it on the ground after that, tracking her path through the mazelike network of one-way streets and alleyways between buildings before you come to a wall. There’s more blood here, like it was dripping for a longer time, so you suspect the way is up; you crouch down like a cat to spring halfway up the wall then easily scale the rest.

You sense them both immediately. One figure is large, imposing, cold-- well, cold in some places, hot in others. Odd. The other is your moirail, pinned on her stomach and laying in her own blood. Her speeding heart rate is doing nothing to help the blood loss, but everything to fuel the rage you feel for the man doing this to her.