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Minor changes, they said. Minor changes for optimization, of course. Sleeker. Smoother. More refined. It looked like a fucking sex doll. It moved catlike and unnatural and surgically precise, the way only an inorganic thing would. He should have killed the doctor for making it, for making this offensively violation. This affront to God. It spoke to him once in a voice both known and unknown to him: metallic and lilting and entirely evil. Hands shaking, do not speak to me, he commanded, and it simply nodded, perfectly obedient. He cannot look into the expressionless smooth steel face, perfect and chrome, so he clenches his jaw until it aches and makes it keep behind him, out of his sight.
It saves his life more than once, which he loathes on a fundamentally human level. Once, it parts a man’s head from his neck like slicing through warm butter. Another, it kicks a Seed into a wall with enough force to crack it. His friendly robot sidekick, it would appear to most. Saving his fucking life on missions. It’s pathetic how much he resents it.
He dreams, too much for his liking. In them he sees that She exists, still, trapped within the tight steel prison the doctor put Her in and he’d free Her and She’d be whole and real. Maybe if he managed to cut through all the silicone, all the circuitry then She would crawl out from the thing’s core, sticky and whole like a newborn.
It watches silently as it lets him drive his bowie knife into its torso without a sound. His hands brush the cool metal of its inanimate constitution and he deplores the sensation as expected. It only serves to hasten the grisly procedure. He peers into the sparking abyss of its chest cavity, seeking flesh. He is met only with jagged wires and brokenly whirring sensors. He stumbles back out of impulsive disgust, and the thing crumples and falls into an unsightly metal heap.