Champion of the Bots ✔️

Chapter 24 ~ TOB

No one remembers the day they were born.

But the Bot knew the day he was created. He could still feel the hands inside him, connecting the wires, the plugs, the veins around his heart. He knew what he had become—a Bot. An evil, blood-spilling Bot. A Bot that killed his family and took him when he was still...

Still what? What was he?

"You are Bot 278," a voice whispered in his ear. "You are now my servant, my child."

Something inside the Bot writhed. It squirmed and screamed inside the mechanics, inside his heart—

Did he have a heart? He didn't know, and he didn't care.

A virus seemed to melt and delve into his veins, into his core, into his very being. His memories—a red-haired girl, a cracked tea pot, a pile of brown leaves—slowly trickled out of his system as a dark thing seeped inside him.

A dark figure of a hunched man leered over him and flashed his teeth. The figure fumbled for a remote then pressed. The Bot gasped. A gushing midnight blue liquid pumped in a plastic bag. Lifting his head, the Bot's eyes trailed the long wire from the bag to the forearm, where the strange liquid oozed into his system and spread like water devouring tissue. Patches of blue crawled through his bones and spread like frost through his fingers, then his arm, all across his chest, his face, his legs, his toes.

"You are my latest creation," the voice hushed, his finger trailing a cold fire along his fevered skin. "You are B278."

"I am B278," the Bot opened his mouth to say; but the blue covered his mouth and tongue. The thought, his new name, echoed into his being, scattering the few remains of his human—

Human? He was not a human. He was a Bot, and his job was to hunt humans.

A whirlwind of events crashed into the Bot's database. He only remembered grabbing the velvet collars of humans, punching soft noses, feeling the warmth of thick, red liquid. He remembered the screams, the struggles, the kicks, the wails.

But he couldn't stop. The voice inside his head always controlled him like a stringed puppet. Take them, the voice would say. Bring them to me.

Sometimes the voice would say the word, that command, that the Bot always dreaded: Kill. But he always obeyed his master.

He had never seen his master. Only heard the raspy, gravelly voice that reverberated through his empty mind. The master also seemed to not want to see his servant, too. Sometimes the voice would suddenly jab into his mind, sometimes the voice would disappear for days until the Bot wished for the familiar presence in the back of his brain, only for a distraction away from the headaches and the squirming inside him.

He had the same job for days, months, years, an eternity perhaps. He didn't know. He didn't care. He simply woke from his recharge, rocketed to the sky, and returned with a handful of people—wriggling or dead—back to Eden. That was it.

He didn't remember much of his little missions, but he remembered the day the voice returned and told him to Stop. Find the Savior, and bring back their leader. Crash the whole darn plane, too, while you're at it. Go.