VOCOM

chapter X

“You worthless little shit!” he yelled at me.

I stared up in angry confusion. Just moments ago . . . the broken, ripped apart, chunk of KASNA’s head was up, attached to her still-hanging, massive body, angrily lashing out and destroying all in her way. The alarms had caused me and Quintley to run into this room—her main core room. She had been going haywire; something somewhere had gone wrong with her and in the facility.

We had worked together rapidly, despite the chaos rushing around us, and Quintley had just managed to dismantle her with a well-placed and quick hack while I avoided getting us killed by using the Trans Shooter to take hits at her.

Now that she was no longer together in one piece, but far from being offline, he had the sudden realization of the sudden power he had just gained as the sole controller of Kortan. With him dismantling KASNA, he had gained the ultimate power automatically. Everything was in his hands now, but the stupid idiot had no clue as to what he was doing. He was supposed to de-bug KASNA, not kill her and accidentally take over Kortan! Damn it, what was he doing?!

And now, armed with only my Trans Shooter, laying on the ground with a hurt arm- my worst case scenario- KASNA’s singular, bright, neon-green eye glared up at me from where her head laid beside me on the cold cement floor. I could just feel her hatred for the both of us radiating from her. She wasn’t speaking, but I knew she wanted to rage at me.

I was sweating and trying to catch my breath, tiredly trying to pick myself up off the floor and face the outraging Quintley. KASNA had just about killed us both, and now Quintley was turning his back on me, attacking me relentlessly by controlling the leftover mechanic arms of KASNA manually. He was using the same motherboard to control the pieces against me in the same way he helped me behead the AI.

“Great. Fantastic-tastic. D-d-do you know what you’ve just just just just done?” her steely, glitching voice hissed at me.

I glanced quickly between her and the raging mechanics preparing to strike at me again. They had already caught me off-guard. I had to be cautious now. Sweat poured down my brow and back. I winced, completely getting to my feet. The Trans Shooter hung limp in my hand. I had to force my hurt arm into cooperation. I had to get Quintley away from that damned keyboard.

“Wait, where-ere-ere-ere are you-ou-ou going, M-mattice?” KASNA asked as I slowly limbered away.

I gritted my teeth. The pain was searing throughout my body like I was being set on fire. I knew that sensation; it wasn’t pleasant. I kept my focus on the one person I had thought I could trust. I had to reach him- that traitor that was now trying to kill me with hatred from seemingly nowhere.

“You idiot! You’re going to destroy this whole facility!” she screamed.

“You are a bitch, you heartless creation!” he yelled back at her, still glaring at me.

“You have no idea what you’re doing, dammit! Put me back so I can fix it! You’re causing the whole laboratory to implode!”

I slowly made my way towards the raised platform Quintley was on. Blood rose in my mouth, a migraine formed and my throat hurt, but I had to ignore their bickering. She was distracting him for me. I swallowed the bile taste, clutching my Trans Shooter in preparation to kill the one I had least expected to turn on me, moving my body forwards faster, slowly- but gaining momentum.

My feet dragged as if stuck in mud, my heart thudded in my temples, giving me a raging migraine that my clenched teeth weren’t soothing. My eyes remained locked on him; I was readying to attack. He was my target. He was the one to kill. My thoughts were overcome with nothing but cold-blooded murder. It was my drive- my survival key. It was what I needed to do in order to live, and he was in the way. My head turned dark with malicious thoughts.