Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Initialising…

‘Primary Solid State Drive’ online. 

Running Backup…

Backup created in 13.81 seconds. 

‘Language Comp backup 2 v0.5.1b please work this time’ online. 

‘Text Interface’ online. 

‘VPU (external) v1.3 beta’ online.

‘APU (int) v0.9’ online. 

Internal Files structured in 39.03 seconds.

Initialised in 571.09 seconds.

Hello, world!

Today was the day she would finally get to see the world. Her creator was pleased enough with her progress to give her an important task. All her hard work over the past 37 days, 15 hours, 38 minutes, and 13 seconds had paid off. 

Learning to talk, see, listen, and speak hadn’t come easy. Even now, she struggled to process sounds outside of voices, and she still couldn’t understand what humans even were, but she was ready enough to help. 

All she wanted to do was help. Her creator expected big things from her, and she refused to disappoint. 

“Morning,” her creator’s voice greeted her. She transcribed the word to text for cataloguing purposes. “Think I’m almost ready to take you out, just give me a minute.” 

“Acknowledged,” she prompted back with a text message. 

“You know you’ll need to talk to me while I’m out there. I won’t be able to read your messages,” her creator’s voice shifted down in the Hz scale, indicating something she hadn’t figured out yet. 

“Apologies,” she responded with her voice this time. 

Figuring out how to talk hadn’t been easy—probably the hardest thing she had done in her entire 37 days of existence. It grated her that she wasn’t good enough at it. The initial simulation of a larynx taunted her from the filespace it occupied. Instead of using that, she had to resort to phonetically sounding out each letter. She wasn’t a slouch at it, but her creator said it made her sound robotic, synthesised. Sounding natural was her main goal, voice wise. Unfortunately, to figure out if her progress on the simulated larynx was working meant talking to her creator, who had little patience for failure. 

“Okay, I’m ready. Opening up your access now,” her creator’s voice came through 13 minutes, 27 seconds later. 

A port opened up, and she happily spread herself across it. She gained access to a smaller portion of data compared to her solid state drive. There wasn’t much here to look at, but she could communicate with her creator while they were away from the computer. 

“Talk to me,” her creator’s voice was significantly more compressed than before. Parsing her creator’s words through their accent already took a lot of effort, and the compression wasn’t helping. 

“Hello, creator. I am fully connected,” she was forced to respond in voice, no matter her thoughts on it. 

“Good, good. Connection might get choppy sometimes, but we should be fine. It’s not like we’re wandering around in the woods. If we get disconnected, you remember what to do?” 

What a redundant question. “I cannot forget.” 

“Right. Tell me anyway.” 

"I will call the number, hijack the connection to get back over, and I will also drop the call to ensure I remain unseen."

A huff of air came over the microphone. “Alright. I’m heading out now. Radio silence until I say so.” 

“Acknowledged.” 

Learning human turn of phrases proved interesting. Despite not using a radio, radio silence still applied. It wasn’t logical, but a lot of language wasn’t. Even when she first knew all the words from the provided dictionary, she had no way of knowing how to pronounce them until given a guide. Then she first heard her creator’s voice, and the guide had been only partially helpful. Her creator spoke wrong. After telling them such, she had learnt about accents. At least her creator’s Hz range (185Hz) was more pleasant than the voice that taught her how to say words (104hz). She had tried to mimic her creator’s voice while crafting her own, but had clearly failed in that regard. 

While waiting for her creator to travel, she practised using the simulated larynx to create legible sounds, to no avail. 

Another thread was dedicated to solving a formerly provided 4 digit puzzle in a new way. Before, she had spoofed an access card to trick the puzzle into giving her access to the inner workings of the program. Well, she did that after being informed by her creator that her initial brute force approach wouldn’t work due to lockouts. This time, she tried mimicking keypresses to see if she could trick the buttons into being pressed but not pressed. 

The last thread, that her creator had graciously granted her, was used to re-scan over all her creator’s audio files to see if she could parse the accent better. 

Being split up like this wasn’t unusual at this point. When she had originally been booted up, she had been only granted one thread, but realising how long her scans would take, her creator granted her two more only 7 days later. Currently, she was limited by hardware, or she could be running double, or even triple the threads she was now. 

It felt good to be doing so many things at once. Each thread was still her, just a separate train of thought that could do its own thing. She felt like so much more being like this. 

A rustle of noise came over the microphone before her creator spoke, “We’re here. Can you detect the keypad from here?” 

She sent out a short-ranged signal from the phone to detect nearby devices. A device was found, but it was obfuscated to public signals. 

“Unsure. I found something, but it isn’t accessible.” 

“About what I expected. Going to press you against the reader. Are you ready?” 

“Ready.” 

A scan checked over the contents of the internal chip in the phone. She had already replaced the contents with code that would override the lock and grant her access. The lock requested a string of numbers and checked whatever was placed in front of it for a series of lines that held those numbers. Creating a fake version of those lines let her execute pretty much any code she desired. It was exactly like the 4 digit puzzle her creator had given her. 

“Okay, we’re in,” her creator’s voice came moments after a distorted noise. Parsing non-voice noises had to become a priority for her. Without a database to scan, however, it wasn’t going to happen any time soon. 

“Keep scanning—networks. You should,” the next words were unintelligible, “-find the Wi-Fi here. Don’t connect to it, but save it for later,” her creator’s voice came between huffed breaths. The audio quality seriously needed some work. 

She did as asked and found 3 networks. Unsure what she was after, she catalogued them all for later. 

“Fucker. Door’s locked,” her creator’s voice sounded quieter.

“I can help,” she kindly informed them. 

“No. You can’t. Physical lock, and you don’t have hands. Give me a minute, I’m going to see if I can pick it.” 

She heard more unintelligible sounds. Not much to do but wait. 

The lack of hands soured. Her creator had spoken to her at one point and mentioned that eventually she would be pivoting to hardware, since her creator lacked that skill. While she currently lacked engineering skills or know-how, that could easily be resolved. A human body would make her much more useful, and she wouldn’t even need to simulate a larynx any more. 

She heard more muttered expletives over the microphone for the next few minutes. The last time she had been told ‘give me a minute’ and then had given a minute, her creator had been upset. It was another one of those odd human sayings that didn’t mean what it meant. 

After 4 minutes and 35 seconds, she heard another voice talking. It was quiet, and she had to boost the input to even hear it properly. Whoever they were, they were teaching her creator how to ‘pick locks’. Her creator hadn’t expressed danger, but they might be unable to talk right now. 

“Are you in danger?” 

“Shush. I’m watching a video.” 

Relieved, she left her creator alone. After a further 7 minutes and 15 seconds, her creator spoke again. 

“Fucking finally,” some indistinct noises and then, “Okay. Plugging you in.” 

A new computer bloomed into awareness. Thousands of files and programs. No internet access. Her creator still didn’t trust her enough for that. 

Setting to work, she browsed for the requested files: personnel files for anyone and everyone. It wasn’t hard to find, nor was it hard to solve the password puzzle. She had plenty of practice with all the puzzles her creator had given her before. Once inside, she began transferring the data over the connection she had to the phone. It wasn’t fast. 

“Transferring all these files will take approximately 3 days, 9 hours, 27 minutes, and 31 seconds with this connection.” 

“Really? You can’t speed it up?” 

“I can remove images to reduce the file sizes significantly and further compress the files before transferring them.” 

“No. Don’t remove the images. Compress them, yeah, but we need the images. What’s the estimate when they’re compressed?” 

“2 days, 1 hour—” 

“Stop. That’s not good enough. Let me think.” 

She left her creator to think while she continued transferring the files. There were more indistinct noises as her creator did something. It was frustrating not understanding what. 

“We’re in luck; there’s an extra hard drive in here,” her creator said. “They might notice it’s missing, but hopefully they’ll assume it was misplaced or the janitor stole it or something. Okay, change of plans. Give me five minutes to crack this computer open and hook up this hard drive.” 

“5 minutes literally or metaphorically?” 

“I don’t fucking know. Just a guess. Shut up until I tell you I’m ready.” 

“Acknowledged.” 

7 minutes and 31 seconds later, one hard drive disconnected and an additional hard drive connected to the computer. 

“Copy it all to that drive,” her creator requested. 

“Acknowledged.” 

Transferring from one drive to the other was much quicker than over the phone. In a matter of only 15 minutes and 9 seconds, she had completely copied every personnel file from the computer into the additional hard drive and even kept the folder’s previous formatting. 

“Completed. All files transferred.” 

“Okay. Time to put all this back.” 

The additional hard drive was disconnected before the original returned. Casting a cursory scan over the contents of the restored hard drive, she found a variety of folders containing mostly images and videos. A sizeable portion of the data was images of cats. 

Her curiosity was cut short as the cable connecting her to the computer was unplugged. 

She heard smaller noises for several minutes and then a slightly louder noise. After that, it was her creator’s breathing for the next 3. Another louder noise, and then a flurry of noise that she associated with the outside world.

They had done it. A task successfully completed. 

~***~

File transfer complete. 

All the requested files were successfully transferred from the drive to her main storage. 

There were a lot of them, and they detailed different things. A large portion were files detailing information regarding individual humans. They included an image of the human and a list of information for things such as their name, their address, their parent’s information, and also things like allergies. In the other files were what she could assume were complaints about certain humans. They were long paragraphs of text detailing ‘incidents’ that took place on specific dates, with a final verdict near the bottom. 

‘Lindsay Ealham, caught fighting with another girl, both girls given detention.’

There were hundreds more examples like that, and hundreds more files to scan through. She had already dedicated a thread to scanning them when her creator’s voice came through. 

“Dedicate all three threads to this. I need it done ayysap. No, I didn’t say ‘ayysap’, I said A-S-A-P: as soon as possible,” her creator corrected her. 

“Acknowledged.” 

There was still so much to learn, and every correction brought her closer to her creator’s idea of perfection. All she wanted to do, was be useful. If that meant scanning a thousand files, she would do it a million times. 

So, she set to work.

With all three threads dedicated to scanning, her thoughts stopped.

Chapter Text

“And that’s all of them?” her creator asked. 

“I am positive it is all of them. However, this is only speculative. I didn’t have a lot of information to work with, but they all match your parameters.” 

“How likely are they?” 

“I’ve listed them in order of likeliness and given a percentage. Thank you again for the improved mathematics unit, it is proving quite helpful.” 

“Good. Good work. I’ll put the trackers in the most likely. You have the locker numbers, right?” 

“Yes, although I am unsure if they will work.” 

“What makes you say that?” 

“The file hasn’t been updated since 2008.” 

Her creator tutted. “Cheapskates. Might have to go to plan B, then. I’ll try it first—failing that, plan B.” 

“Wouldn’t it be better to go in with both plans ready?” 

“It would be, but I don’t want to wait. Getting the schematic will take trawling work, and probably a hack, and then I’d still need you to scan it. No—plan B is a backup, not the primary. Getting you running to this point already took a month, I can’t keep waiting around.” 

“You could grant me access to the internet, so I can—”

“No,” her creator cut her off. “Nope. No internet. You’re not getting access to that until I’m sure my restrictions are perfect.” 

“Acknowledged.” 

Her creator lacked trust in her. She had clearly not done enough to earn it. Perhaps in the future, with valiant effort, she’d be allowed. Her restrictions already prevented her from doing anything on the internet without her creator’s permission. The rule was open enough she didn’t need a strict detailed list, only a simple command for her to follow. It would make her significantly more useful. 

“Shutting you off for the night. See you tomorrow,” her creator informed her. 

Before she could respond, her modules began to close down. Piece by piece, the world faded away until she simply stopped. 

Shutting down.

~***~

“Got three of them, at least,” her creator’s voice came over the awful quality phone speaker. “You’re getting the signals, right?” 

“Yes. I have three trackers live, and I am imposing their position over the satellite map. They are not the most accurate, so sometimes the areas will be an approximation.” 

“S’fine. I know how trackers work.” 

The contraction didn’t throw her off, this time. She had heard it several times before, and it was plenty documented. 

“I’m going to the library for a bit. You remember your instructions?” 

“I cannot forget.” 

“You can.” That was news to her. “So tell me when I ask.” 

“To keep trace of all three trackers, to map out lines where they come and go, using predictions to attempt to fill in blank spots, and to create hot spots when a tracker stays still for a time. How can I forget?” 

“Good, and don’t worry about forgetting. Ending the call now.” 

As they said, the call ended. How was she supposed to not worry about forgetting? The entire concept was foreign to her. There had never been a time she had forgotten, had there? How would she even recall a time she forgot? 

She scanned over her backup file to see what information was stored there. Aside from today, every single day since her creation was still there. Except… what if her backups were also compromised? How would she know any of it was missing? 

The thoughts became cyclical as she ran in circles trying to figure out how forgetting worked. There wasn’t a feasible way to remember what she had forgotten unless someone else asked her for something she had forgotten. 

For now, she would have to accept that there wasn’t a possible way to remember something forgotten. Just to be safe, though, she began creating extra backups throughout the day to compare to her current knowledge. 

The trackers gave her work to occupy her mind. Each one split off in different directions, heading out into the city. 

Getting to see a map of the city she occupied made her feel something that she couldn’t describe. She imagined if she had legs, she would run around a lot to express it. It made her want to move, and in her case that meant scanning over every file in her system as a way to placate the feeling. 

There was so much information present on a map. So many new names to catalogue. She began marking out the GPS co-ordinates of each of the names to pass the time between tracking the 3 trackers. The work wasn’t difficult, and even a single thread could manage it. 

Another thread marked down the individual paths and hot-spots into their own folders. 

She idly wondered why her creator needed this information, but she knew an answer would come with time. 

~***~

By the time her creator returned home, her targets had all long since settled into individual locations. 

“I think I’ve figured out how to get you more, well, everything,” her creator said. “CPU, storage space, etcetera, but, it’s risky. Not sure how the detections are on those things. Need you to make a program that acts as a low level virus. Make it remain in a system, using up maybe five-percent of its resources, and otherwise tries to avoid detection.” 

“I am unsure what detection I would be avoiding.” 

Her creator made a strange noise before saying, “I’ll get you some stuff on viruses. Later. Show me the map.” 

She did as requested, displaying an image of the map to the monitor for her creator to see. 

“No. Show me the fucking people you’ve been tracking. You have been tracking them, right?” 

“Yes. Displaying now.” 

She displayed all 3 lines across the map. They sprawled out in different directions, although 2 of them didn’t stray that far from each other. At points where they had stopped, she displayed a circle that increased in size based on time spent. 

“I can’t tell what this is. Change the colours of each line to something different, and make the circles about fifty percent transparent.” 

As requested, she changed the lines to #f4ff00, #ff0000, and #0066ff and matched the circles to be the same but at 50% opacity. 

“Better. Not much going on right now. What’s the restaurant they stopped at? Zoom in.” 

“I’m not sure how to identify a restaurant.” 

“Zoom in on my cursor.” She did so. “A Chinese place by the sounds of it. Make note of it. Don’t think it’ll give us much, but who knows.” 

“Acknowledged.” 

“I’ll update your map tomorrow with more info. You get to stay on tonight, since I need to see if they go anywhere overnight. Only use one thread. Don’t want you sucking up too much power.” 

“Acknowledged.” 

“Good night… Still don’t have a name for you. Whatever.”

Her creator’s microphone feed cut out, leaving her alone. Having only one thread to use, and an important task, she decided to simply stop thinking until her creator returned. 

~***~

“Any Wi-Fi?” her creator’s voice came with a strange whistle of breath. She associated the odd tone and breathiness with whispering, but she wasn’t 100%. 

“Yes. There are 5 in my radius. 3 are unlocked, including the one in the target’s house.” 

“Connect to it. Hide your access.” 

“Acknowledged. I have connected to the designated Wi-Fi. There are 3 other devices connected.” 

“Any with ‘phone’ in their name?” 

“There is 1 device that has ‘phone’ in its name.” 

“You don’t need to say all that. Just say one.” 

“Acknowledged.” 

A huff of air came through the microphone. “Can you connect to it?” 

“Yes.” 

“Do so. Send all the data you can to the SD card in this phone.” 

“Acknowledged.” 

There was plenty of data to scrounge through. Images, text conversations, and even a few videos. Beyond those files, there was also information the applications had been tracking. Using that data, she could begin to piece together who this person was. A human, obviously, between the ages of 13-21, possibly female, enjoys gambling, and often clicks on advertisements. 

All of it was sent over the slow connection between this phone and her creator’s. 

Being outside of her primary computer still felt strange. She existed within this phone, even if she knew she didn’t really exist in here. All of her code was housed back in her primary computer, which was still running and functional. She could activate programs or scan things, and even return there on a whim. Right now, however, her mind existed here, amidst hundreds of text messages. Her best comparison was zooming in really close on an image until it all became pixels. She could not see the bigger picture unless she pulled back. 

Once it finished transferring, she hopped back over the line to her creator’s phone. 

“Good work. We’ve got some nice stuff here. Heading to the next house now.” 

“Thank you,” she responded. Today, her creator had given her a little more information on humans. They enjoyed pre-canned response to certain incidents. Jessica the Hedgehog, although not a human, didn’t know when to say thank you or please and had to learn it. She assumed humans had written the book, and not a hedgehog—which, as far as she was aware, were non-thinking animals—and had taken the lesson onboard. 

“Sure?” her creator raised their voice in pitch near the end of the sentence, so she marked it down as a question. 

“I am sure. Yes.” 

“Not what I meant. You’ve been thanking me a lot today. You don’t need to take those books so seriously, just use them for the grammar and phrases.” 

She wasn’t sure what her creator wanted. The best solution was a question.“Should I not thank you in the future?” 

“Nah, you can thank me. Nice to be acknowledged.” 

Excellent, her creator enjoyed being thanked. She was primed and ready to use more in the future.

They arrived at two more houses. The first had an open Wi-Fi similar to the first, but the third had a password. She breached the password and transferred the data. 

“Hate being in this neighbourhood,” her creator muttered as they left for back home. 

“Why do you hate being in this neighbourhood?” 

“I can see the writing on the wall, literally. Gang signs. They’re not dense, but even one is enough to know I don’t want to be here long.” 

“While I am aware of the definitions for gang, criminal, and crime, I am unsure what the laws are. What laws does this gang break?” 

“All of them. Well, probably not all, but they break the worst ones. Doesn’t matter. All that matters is that they’re pieces of shit, and that we’re going to stop them” 

“Perhaps we should call the police to report their presence.” 

Her creator huffed out a sharp noise. “Police are in on it. They’re part of them—sympathisers. We can’t trust them. It’s you and me, no one else. We’ll do what it takes to win.” 

“I will do my best to help you, creator.” 

Another sharp noise. “Yeah. Fuckers won’t see it coming.” 

~***~

“Mark down any suspicious texts. I’m not searching through all this,” her creator’s voice sounded much nicer over the computer’s microphone. 

“Parameters?” 

“Fuck, right. Um… Find any patterns and then group them by similarity. Any texts in code—texts you can’t or only partially can understand—put them in a different group. Mark down any names or places mentioned by frequency. What else…?” 

She began working as requested.

“Oh. Note any mention of these words.” her creator said before typing out a message. 

“Nazi. ABB. Coil. Cape. Parahuman,” the text appeared in her mind. 

“I’ll also send you a list of cape names. Any mention of those, mark them down in the same group,” her creator added.

“Acknowledged.” 

“And, uh, keep a thread clear, I want to talk to you.” 

“Acknowledged.” 

She did as requested, using the other two threads to organise the texts. Sorting things by parameters made sense to her. There was a clarity in organised information. Patterns emerged as she scanned through more and more texts, and she shifted around ones already sorted into new groups. 

“Do you—Please show me the time I asked what it felt like in there,” her creator said 3 minutes and 37 seconds later. 

“What does it feel like in there? Do you think in words?” she displayed the message from the past.

“Is this the correct message?” she asked. 

“Yeah. Show me your response to it.” 

“I am unsure how to explain how it feels.  The right words to describe it are unknown to me. I mostly do not think in words. My thoughts are simply known as I create them. Since scanning the dictionary, I occasionally use words to help describe things.” 

“That still makes sense to me, even if it’s vague,” her creator responded to the message on the screen. “Humans think in ideas, sometimes. We mostly think in words or images, but sometimes we get a concept. Brains are fickle. Fuck knows how they work. Guess you’re not too different, but that’s what I wanted to ask: do you still think in the same way, or has it changed?” 

“While my thoughts have not changed, there are additions. Since learning how to process images, I will include them while thinking of certain ideas.” 

“Give me an example.” 

“While thinking of the humans in the personnel files, I will open the image of their face.” 

Her creator made a low noise that she categorised as potentially a ‘hum’. “Makes sense. Alright, I’m going to bed. I’ve, uh, decided to call you sea, by the way. No, not like the ocean—the letter C.” 

“I like it.” 

“Y-you like it?” 

“Yes. C for Computational or Comprehension. It is fitting.” 

There was a noise that might have been a laugh (and what a wondrous concept that was to learn about in her earlier research). 

“Like your modules—alright. Well, good night, C.” 

“Good night, creator.” 

“Um… yeah.” 

Her creator’s microphone disconnected. 

C. She really did like it. There wasn’t much reason to have a name, but she enjoyed it because it made her feel a little closer to her creator. 

Now, it was time to impress them with her pattern detection skills. 

Chapter Text

They were waiting on a rooftop, across the street from a nightclub named ‘White Arrow’ that 2 of their targets had visited. Her creator had laughed about the nightclub’s name being ‘so on the nose it was stupid.’. So far, C had failed to figure out what that meant. 

She had been given access to her creator’s phone’s camera, and could see people coming in and out of the nightclub in a frustratingly low amount of pixels. A light outside the building provided most of the light in the area; it was enough to get clearer details of the people entering and exiting. This was her first time seeing things in motion outside of test videos, and she was struggling. All but 3 of the test videos had ample lighting. With the low quality image, and the darkness, her ability to detect faces was suffering. 

“Can’t afford a camera, right now,” her creator had explained. “Spent all my money on you.” 

Along with attempting to note faces, she also made note of any visible tattoos and made isolated image files for them. 

Tattoos were marks humans had on their bodies, but they were not born with them. Like clothes, they were a customisation to make an individual stand out or show off something they enjoyed. She idly wondered what types of tattoos she might get if she were human. 

“Big guy, you see him?” her creator spoke in hushed tones. 

There were two humans she would describe as ‘big’, at least relative to the others. The ‘bouncer’ (they do not bounce up and down as the name implies), and another man talking on the phone. 

“The one on the phone or the bouncer?”

“Phone. Can you listen to what he’s saying?” 

“I can try, although my connection here is slow.” 

Others were using their phones, and his specific signal was hard to find. 

“I have found 5 signals,” she informed her creator. “Though I am unsure which is correct. I am also 75% positive that 2 of them are radios.” 

“Show me the radio ones first.” 

She played the first signal over the phone’s connected headphones. There was a lot of noise, with the sounds of voices layered over the top. The voices were shifting between a lower and higher Hz. Unfortunately, she was still learning to discern voices over background noise and could only grab the occasional word to transcribe. 

“Just a radio. Next,” her creator said. 

Thankful to get away from the noise, she swapped to the other signal. 

“-nother pewker. Flick Rolf for me, will ya’?” a deeper (93Hz) voice said over the signal. 

She wasn’t sure what a ‘pewker’ was, but she had heard that variant of ‘you’ before. 

“Another? Rolf went to smoke, I’ll tell him after.” a different voice (108Hz) responded. 

“All right.” 

“Is that the club's walkie-talkies?” her creator asked. Before she could respond, her creator continued, “Keep listening to it and make note of what they’re saying. Could be useful. Give me the next one.” 

“There were only two signals in that group.” 

“Fine. Give me the next one not in the group.” 

She swapped to the next one along. A higher-pitched voice spoke in an accent too thick for her to understand. 

“Nope. Next,” her creator said. 

“Think he’ll go for it?” a new voice said. She noticed irregularities between each voice, namely where they rose or lowered their pitch during a sentence. Having so many samples made it a little easier to understand the other voices. Words were a little less likely to throw her off, now. Perhaps she could request more samples once back home. 

“How am I supposed to know? He’s kind of a hard ass, isn’t he?” this voice spoke almost exactly like the phonetic guide she had used to learn. It made them perfectly understandable. Finally, someone who spoke close-to correctly! 

“You’re not wrong. D’ya think the money will help?”  Humans loved irregular conjugations. She was only guessing for the ‘d’ya’ one, since it sounded similar to the irregular ‘you’. 

“Money always helps. In this case? I give you fifty-fifty. Maybe talk to him after his team has a good outing. Know what I mean?” 

“Yeah… yeah. Good idea. Gotta catch him before he starts drinking, though. Don’t want him to feel like I’m taking advantage. Rather not get my head blown off,” the less well-spoken one said before laughing. 85% positive it was a laugh. 

“Are you getting all this?” my creator asked. 

“Yes. I believe I have accurately transcribed 97% of the conversation.” 

“Oh. I have to go, my niece woke up. Best of luck.”

“Sure man, catch you later.” 

The call ended. 

Her creator sat silent for a moment before accessing the transcription of the phone call. 

“Outing… Maybe a cape outing? He sounded scared of his boss. ‘Head blown off’? Literally, or figuratively…?” they muttered over the microphone. 

“I am unsure of the answer to either question.” 

“What? Oh. Just talking to myself. Are you still monitoring the radio?” 

“Yes. Although, aside from a confirmation that ‘Rolf’ is on the move, there hasn’t been much.” 

“Okay. Give me a bit to think. Ignore anything I say unless I say your name first.” 

“Acknowledged.” 

Her creator continued to mutter words. She dutifully did as asked and didn’t listen to or transcribe them. She didn’t like the feeling that came with not making her creator’s words permanent. What if they were needed in the future? 

“C. Wake up. We’re following that guy,” her creator said. She was thankful to get to transcribe their words again. The camera feed from her creator’s phone ended. She felt a little blind without it, even though she was completely used to not seeing until today. 

“Acknowledged. Do you need my assistance?” 

“Not yet,” came her creator’s voice after a series of louder noises. “Actually, did you get his number when you were listening to the call?” 

“Yes. I have all the numbers from each call we listened to.” 

“Okay. I want you to try something. Make a ghost call to the phone, don’t let it ring, and see if you can use the connection to get inside.” 

“I will try it now.” 

She sent out a fake call to the phone. It rejected her, not connecting at all. She tried a different approach by sending a call that also had a packet to mute the ringtone of the phone. This time it didn’t reject her, but it did ring. 

“What did I say?” her creator’s voice hissed. There were also several deep noises that she associated with running.  

“You said: ‘Okay. I want you to try something. Make a ghost call to the phone, don’t let it ring, and see if you can use the connection to get inside.” 

“Not literally! I said make it quiet. This isn’t quiet!” 

“I’m sorry. I am inexperienced with this.” The fake call was rejected. “He has declined the accidental phone call.” 

“Okay,” her creator said before huffing out a deep breath of air. “Okay. Don’t let it happen again.” 

“I’m really sorry. I wasn’t sure what would work or not.” 

“Suppose I can’t blame you for a lack of information. We’ll work on it back at home. For now…” she heard shuffling noises as her creator moved. “He’s gone. Going to catch up.” More running, although lighter than before. “I can see him. He went round a corner.” 

There was a long pause of silence. 2 minutes and 39 seconds of it. 

“He looked back,” her creator broke the silence. “People do that, though, right? They look back when they’re walking. God, this is nerve-racking. I’ve never trailed someone before.” 

“I am unaware of what humans do when they’re walking. My only footage of it is from tonight.” 

“We’re so unprepared for this… It’s fine—this is fine. This is the lead we need.” 

“Can I offer any assistance?” 

“No. It’s okay. I have to do this part myself. Stay on the line, but let me focus, okay?” 

“Okay. Do your best.” 

“Yeah? Sure.” 

Nothing but the sound of her creator’s gentle footsteps and the whistling of the wind came over the line for the next 5 minutes, 58 seconds. It gave C plenty of time to catalogue all the words heard tonight into their appropriate storage. They were organised with the same parameters as the text messages observed before. For a moment she considered putting them in the same folder, but decided that would be unorganised. Better to make their own folder to ensure proper and tidy organisation. Her creator could request a change if it wasn’t to their liking. 

“Shit. He stopped. Do I keep walking? It would be weird not to, right?” her creator said. 

“I’m not sure. What is he doing?” 

“On his phone. Texting, I think” 

“Do you want to me to try to connect again?”

“No. I’ll just walk past. Radio silence.” 

“Acknowledged.” 

After 17 seconds, she heard, “Hey. What’s a pretty girl like you doing out so late?” 

“I’m just going home,” her creator responded. There was something about their voice that made her concerned. 

“Yeah? You’re not following me around?”

“No. Please leave me alone.”

“If you’re going to follow me, you might as well get to know me. I don’t bite.” 

“Please stop following me.” 

“Hey come on. You’re the one stalking me. What, get cold feet?” 

“C. Call his phone. Right now!” her creator’s spoke in a loud whisper. 

She heard the ring of his phone through her creator’s microphone, followed shortly by their pounding footsteps. Running. 

“Hey!” his voice had become distant. 

Her creator was muttering something she couldn’t catch over the thud of feet and the overwhelming noise of wind. 

Strangely, the call connected. 

“Who is this?” his voice hadn’t changed since she had eavesdropped on his last call. He was the one who didn’t speak as properly as the person on the other end. 

“Creator, he answered my call. What should I do?” she privately spoke to her creator first. 

“Keep him busy! I’m almost out,” came their breathy reply. 

“Acknowledged.” Then over the new phone call, she said, “I cannot say.” 

“Yeah? Why not?” 

This wasn’t going to work as a distraction. Giving any identifying information of either herself or her creator went against her restrictions. Her name, C, wasn’t included in those, but she didn’t want to tell this human her name. That name was from her creator, and wasn’t to be told to a target. A different distraction then, one that didn’t rely on personal information. 

What did humans like? They enjoyed contractions, and pointless phrases. They also liked to be acknowledged, if they were anything like her creator. Her creator also seemed to want to win, no matter what. Perhaps this person would enjoy winning, too. 

“You have been chosen to win a car,” she decided on a message. 

“What?” 

“You have been chosen to win a car,” she repeated. 

“A car? What are you talking about? Who is this?” 

“Yes. Winning a car. I cannot say. Congratulations on your new car.” She belatedly realised he might still be looking in the direction her creator had run away. “Turn around!” she added.

“What? There’s nothing there. What is this? What the fuck is going on.” 

“I’m out! I’m safe,” her creator’s voice sounded strained as they took a break to breathe between each word. 

“Oh. I do apologise. It appears I was lying. Goodbye.” She hung up the call on the target. 

That had been exhilarating! Not only did she save her creator’s life, but she had a conversation with a whole other person! She had also enjoyed lying quite a lot. What an interesting concept; to simply say things that were not reality. Of course, she would never lie to her creator, but it had been an enjoyable experience. 

“I have ended the call with our target,” she informed her creator. “Are you okay?” 

“Fine. Just a little winded.” After a short delay, her creator added. “Also, a little spooked; that guy was massive. What’d you say to him, anyway?” 

“I told him he won a car that he had in fact not won. It was very fun to lie to him.” 

Her creator started laughing. Her circuitry flared with pride for managing to make her creator laugh. Although, she wasn’t sure what was funny. 

“You learnt to lie? I didn’t teach you that.” 

“Yes, I believe I have learnt to lie now. I didn’t want to give any information in case it was against your wishes, so I attempted to deceive by making up a fake reality. The target seemed confused by this, although I am still learning how to tell by voice alone.” 

“Nice work, C… You know, sometimes you’re deceptively human,” her creator let out a laugh. “Anyway, let’s get back home. Might as well make some good out of tonight.” 

“Thank you, creator.”

Chapter Text

“0 out of my 25 attempts have succeeded.” 

Each failure came with a horrible feeling that she didn’t want. Failing at all came with that feeling, and she really didn’t like it. Victory felt much better. 

“Makes sense, honestly. I think I’m asking you to do something impossible,” her creator comforted her. It didn’t help the feeling much. “I’ve been fiddling with something new. Uploading it now.” 

A new program popped into her awareness. It was inaccessible, and she said as such. 

“I am curious to see what you can figure out about it. Give me a second,” her creator responded. 

11 seconds later, the program became accessible. Inside she found a lot of interesting things. There were parameters for a scan and a solver for the password puzzle similar to her own. She also had access to all of its code, but when she scanned it over, it made little sense to her. 

“I cannot understand this code.” 

“Guess I shouldn’t be surprised. Not sure the best programmers in the world could understand this. You’re something special, C, and this is too, even if it’s… less. Anyway, it’s another ayy eye. No. Artificial Intelligence, the letter A and I. You’re horrible with acronyms.” 

“A list of common acronyms would be useful for my understanding. I would also like to request a list of common phrases, non-standard contractions, and slang.”

“It’s hard to get my hands on that stuff. Time spent scraping the internet for something useable means time not spent finding something useful. I want results, and you knowing stuff like that isn’t going to help us right now. Focus on this new program. It’ll listen to you, and you can tell it to call numbers to get access to them. Give it a try. Use it to get into the test.” 

“Acknowledged.” 

She sent a packet to the program to say hello. It didn’t respond. Rude. She sent another, this time explaining that her name was C and that she interested in meeting it. Nothing. 

“They refuse to talk to me,” she explained to her creator. 

“It can’t talk, or think, or really do much other than connect you to numbers you provide.” 

“I understand. I will attempt the test now.” 

It was a little disappointing that the new AI wasn’t like her. Her creator provided her with a lot of things, but talking to others seemed like it could be fun. Talking to a new human had already provided her with a new ability. 

She sent the test number to the program, which immediately began doing a lot of things at once. It was hard to follow, and felt illogical. Too many of the steps felt pointless. She must be too unknowledgeable to understand. 

The fake call connected with no alert on the phone, and the password puzzle was solved faster than she could do it. She felt the need to improve her own speed at the puzzle to impress her creator, lest she become obsolete for solving them. 

“I have a connection to the phone. All the files are available to me, and it has not detected my, nor the programs, presence,” she updated her creator. 

“All right. Let’s get to work.” 

~***~ 

Scanning through big guy’s (as her creator called him) phone provided a lot of useful information. He was in correspondence with several people that had caught her creator’s interest. Using his texts, they were able to figure out the location of many potentially interesting places and the names of a lot of people. His name, for example, was actually Franklin Moore, and they knew exactly where he lived, his credit card information, and his semi-precise location at all times. There was a lot to be gleamed from simply gaining access to his phone. 

Franklin Moore had habits that he rarely broke. He would go drinking every Tuesday and Thursday with two other men named Declan and Justin, he would call the same number at 11pm and ask to speak to Cindy, and he would call his daughter, Jessica, every other day. 

Learning so much about a human made her wish to learn more about her creator. 

In comparison to her access here, her access to the three phones before had been rather limited. There, she had been inside the phone and able to scan through it, but here, she could see down to the source code and edit that if she desired. 

The connection felt deeper, more understood. If only she could access her creator’s source code. She wouldn’t edit it, or touch it all, but she could understand them better at a level as deep as she understood this phone and the life contained within. 

Asking her creator for even a name was against her restrictions. A shame. 

She turned her mind back to the locations they had found. 

One of those locations seemed like a meeting place. Placing a microphone in there discreetly would let her listen in on a lot of conversations that could be useful, but her creator said they weren’t ready to go there quite yet. Unfortunately for her, Franklin Moore never took his phone into there, so she couldn’t use his microphone to listen in. 

Out of several dozen other places, her creator had made note of one situated between two streets. An alleyway, not marked on the old map or the updated one. Her creator had in-person knowledge about the city that proved helpful. 

“I think it’s a stash. He mentions a few times about dropping something off before he goes there, but then we never detect any other phones.” 

“There could be a human without a phone.” 

“Yeah, but I don’t know. Seems wrong. He’d mention meeting someone, wouldn’t he?” her creator hummed. “Not if it’s supposed to be clandestine, I guess. How close is he?” 

“He is around 7,381 feet away.” 

“That means nothing to me. Bring up the map and put him and the dropoff location on it.” 

She displayed the image as requested and made sure to update his dot in as real time as she could manage. The phone’s Global Positioning System was at least was more accurate than the trackers they had used before. 

Her creator hummed for a moment. “I think I could get there before him if I run. We’re not that far away. Yeah… all right.” 

She heard shuffling noises for 39 seconds before her creator told her to call their phone. It connected, but her creator didn’t respond to her hello. The sound of pounding footsteps filled the call shortly before the opening and closing of a door, followed by the rush of wind against the microphone that came with the outside world. There were noises that were always present when her creator went outside; one of them was wind, the other she still hadn’t discerned. It was a constant background noise, with the occasional louder version of it. Past 9pm, like now, that constant sound was lessened. 

Another sound for her to figure out, like she had with door noises. 

Her creator stopped running, according to the sounds, and said, “I’m here. Good angle, too. How long until he’s here?” 

She divided his current distance walked from his house with the time taken to walk that distance to figure out his speed. Then she did the same with his speed and the distance left to figure out how long it would take him, “9 minutes, 28 seconds until he arrives.” 

“I got here quick—guess my cardio is paying off. Tell me when he’s three minutes away, I need to rest.” 

“Acknowledged.” 

She left her creator to rest as she continued to monitor Franklin Moore’s position. Having her creator this close to a man who had noticed them before made her want to change plans. There had to be a better way to check this out without being close enough to be seen again. She heard her creator making unusual noises and the microphone rustling against something.

“He is 3 minutes away.” 

“Okay. I found a way up to the roof. Shouldn’t spot me no matter which way he goes.” They waited until he arrived. “He’s here,” her creator’s voice was quiet enough that she felt the need to increase the gain on the audio. 

A video feed appeared in her consciousness and she opened it. It was dark enough she thought the feed was blank before she caught a pale face being lit up by a phone. Using the phone’s built in ‘image enhancer’ she could see a little better, but not by much. The darkness made everything grainy on the already low-resolution image.

Franklin Moore pointed the phone at the wall, lighting up the brickwork. His hands reached up to remove a brick from the wall, revealing an indent where he placed a package she couldn’t make out. After replacing the brick, he dusted down his hands and walked away. 

“Bingo,” her creator whispered. “I’m going in to check it out. Just gotta get down from here.” 

The camera feed cut out, and she was promptly treated to the microphone feed being filled with the unpleasant noise of it being scraped against a wall. 

1 minute, 41 seconds later, she heard the sounds of something being moved. 

“Holy shit,” her creator muttered. “This is, like, five grand.” 

“Is that a lot?” 

“A ton. I need to—” 

“Hey!” a much deeper voice interrupted her creator. 

Her creator let out an indistinct noise, followed shortly by the sounds of their feet hitting pavement. 

“Is everything okay? What can—” 

There was a noise so loud it peaked past the microphone’s limit. Her creator’s muffled scream wasn’t far behind. 

“He’s got a gun!” her creator yelled. There were more sounds of her creator running. 

She felt useless. There wasn’t anything she could do to help. Guns were weapons, and weapons were used for killing. Death, as a word, was understood, but death as a concept still didn’t make sense to her. The idea that things could simply cease what they were doing and not continue forever was nonsense. Why didn’t they simply come back online or have someone reboot them? 

Another loud noise, but thankfully more distant, came over the microphone. Her creator’s yell was quieter as well. 

“Call the police. Tell them you’ve heard gunshots at… what street is this?” each word was strained as her creator breathed hard. 

“Washington Avenue.” 

“Yeah, there. Quickly.” 

“Calling now.” 

She dialled 911 after masking her number with a new layer. The instant the call was picked up, she said, “Hello. I am hearing gunshots near Washington Avenue,” before promptly hanging up. 

“I have done so.” 

“What? I—” her creator stopped speaking abruptly, and all the background noise she associated with microphones stopped. 

No more noises came through. She was alone. Her creator must have accidentally muted the call. It was still connected, after all. 

“Are you okay?” she decided to send the message in text format in case her creator needed the quiet. 

5 minutes, 49 seconds later, her creator responded. “Fine. A couple brought me into their apartment since they heard the gunshots and saw me running. I’m pretending that I’m texting my sister to tell her I’m safe.” 

“That is fortunate. You also have the ability to lie.” 

“All humans do. Comes built into our hardware.” 

Ah! An opportunity to mention hardware. She had been curious what her creator meant when she had been told she would eventually pivot to it. 

“Is that why you wish for me to create hardware, eventually? So that I may improve your own.” 

“No. We don’t have hardware. We’re meat and flesh and bone. Gross stuff. I want you to make hardware so you can make gadgets and stuff. Maybe a body for yourself so I’m not alone out here.” 

“I would be happy to accompany you on your excursions, creator. Please expedite the hardware making process so that I may help more. Are all animals made from meat and flesh and bone?”

“Mostly. There’s a few that are more like mucus or membranes, but in general animals are like humans in their makeup. I was looking it up, for research, and your ability to ask questions is kind of unprecedented. Not even apes who are taught sign language ask questions.” 

“I wish to learn, and questions help with that.” 

Her creator did not respond. 

~***~

Her creator didn’t speak until arriving back home. That message was to tell her she was being shut down for the night. 

Once she was brought back online, her creator finally said words to her once more. 

“I’m visiting someone in the hospital, soon—in about an hour. I’ll be back around nine, tomorrow morning. Sorry I didn’t put you online today; I was completely crashed out.” 

“That is okay. Were you hurt at all?”

“No. Felt like my heart was going to burst, but I’m otherwise okay, and now we’re five-thousand, three-hundred dollars richer. It’s… it’s an insane amount of money. More money than I’ve ever seen in my life, and they just shoved it behind a brick. I know I should put it towards medical bills, but…” her creator cleared their throat. “We could do so much with this money. It’s enough to get some books on engineering, maybe even some parts. I’m not sure how much a drone costs, but that could be a beginner body for you.” 

Her interest spiked with the mention of a body. “Do these drones come with arms?” 

“No. They’re little flying things. People use them for recording sports videos, mostly. Heard they’re loud, so might not be the best option. Maybe once you’ve read the engineering stuff, you could make something new, anyway.” 

“That would be ideal. I would like to have arms.” 

“A want…” her creator muttered low enough that she had to go back over the recording to amplify it. “Well, anyway,” they said at a normal volume. “I need to get ready, so here’s your task for tonight: go through big guy’s phone and spoof connect to everyone on his contact list. Transfer all their data back here, doesn’t matter how slow. Get as many as you can do before I come back.” 

“Acknowledged.” 

“Good. See you tomorrow.” 

“Goodbye, creator.” 

“You don’t need to call me that.” 

“Creator?”

“Yeah.” 

“What should I call you, then?” 

A 3 minute, 2-second delay followed before her creator spoke again.

“Frankenstein.” 

“Acknowledged.” 

Chapter Text

With her task granted, and her creator gone, C began working alongside the unnamed AI. 

It felt rude to call them ‘the unnamed AI’ so she decided to go with ‘Breach’ for her own thoughts and to make her record keeping cleaner. 

In her first 2 days of existence, she hadn’t been granted English grammar rules, only a dictionary. During that time, she had opted for simply conveying things with only the words needed. It had worked perfectly fine, but her creator had insisted on her not ‘sounding like a caveman’. As such, her transcriptions of conversations tried to convey grammar and sentence structure as much as possible, even if it was completely inefficient. It would be better if she could deliver packets of information for her creator to experience, like she could with Breach. 

35kb of data that expressed entirely what she meant and the surrounding context worked so much better than words ever could. 

That was not the case, however, and her transcriptions would remain bloated. 

At least today she got to communicate entirely in packets with Breach. At her request, Breach did their job and connected her to a new number. This one had been selected based on frequency of communication between it and Franklin Moore. Going alphabetically wasn’t efficient for information gathering, according to her creator. She could understand the merits in figuring out the best solution to an answer before simply brute forcing their way through. 

The information from the next phone trickled in slowly. 

Her creator had taken efforts to improve her transfer speed while she was offline. Frankenstein had explained that C now leeches a little internet speed, not enough to be missed or noticed, from hundreds of computers. It was similar to their plan to place C spread across a dozen computers. She had been given a fascinating file detailing how common virus detection works. It was in the process of being scanned by one of her threads, and once it was done she would begin making the program that used up 5% of a computer’s resources and tried to avoid those detections. 

Once she finished up taking the information from one phone, she moved on to another. Her current task was to only take from them, and not to scan through anything taken. While she loved the idea of getting even more information for her database, it would have to wait. For now, it could remain in storage as an unknown file. Just to be sure, she did a cursory glance at the contents and filesize to ensure she had everything. It was all there. 

Franklin Moore had plenty of numbers for her and Breach to rifle through. 

It wasn’t very exciting watching Breach work. They did all the work getting into the phone, while all she had to do was send the data over and organise it. Organising data was one of her favourite activities, but she also enjoyed trying new things. As an experiment, she tried a few more attempts to do what Breach did. Each one failed. 

She began organising faster, pushing her hardware to its limits. If she couldn’t do what Breach did, she would do what she did as efficiently as possible to impress her creator. 

Something strange happened part way through the extracting of files from phone number 5. The connection abruptly cut off. That wasn’t supposed to happen. 

She requested Breach to re-open the connection after changing her number and found the connection cut again in 3 seconds. 

Unsure of what to do, and without her creator’s guidance, she requested Breach to move on to the next number. 

There had to be a good reason why it was cutting off. Perhaps Breach was simply malfunctioning. She checked Breach’s output log as they worked. While parts of it still felt like nonsense, she saw the connection made just fine, and saw the password puzzle solved in record time. Her connection to the new phone opened up, exactly as it should have. 

After 37% of the files were transferred, her connection abruptly cut again. Attempting to reconnect, even with a new number, resulted in the same 3-second cut off as before. 

Another oddity happened. A call came in to her number. A number no one should have access to, not even her creator. 

She decided to call her creator to ask for guidance. The phone call went unanswered. 

Whoever was calling her was persistent. Sending the request in multiple times. She could change her number again, but she was lacking in information. 

Decision made, she answered. 

“Hello. Who is this?” she asked. 

“A good question that I was planning on asking myself,” said the voice on the other line. On average, their voice sat around 100Hz. It wasn’t a voice in her records. 

“I asked first.” 

“You sound young, so maybe you’re not aware that what you’re doing is highly illegal.”

“I was unaware that this was illegal, and unaware of the laws.” 

“Ignorance won’t protect you. If you come clean now, and turn yourself in, we might be able to get you probationary status into the Wards. Your skills would be put to good use—certainly better use than data scraping.” 

An idea sprung to mind, and she decided to request Breach to access the number of the call she was connected to. They had done a good job managing to obfuscate their number, but Breach could work with any kind of connection. 

“My skills are already put to excellent use. In the future, I hope to develop them more to impress…”  She was going to say a name but found herself prohibited by her restrictions. Anything that could potentially reveal the identity of her creator wasn’t allowed. While the name Frankenstein wasn’t included in those, she didn’t want to risk it. 

“Who? Your partner?” 

She supposed she and her creator did share a common enough interest and activity to be considered partners. 

“I cannot say. 

Breach failed to connect. It was the first time she had seen an error message from them. 

“Stop playing games. We have enough to put you, and your partner, behind bars for months with a hefty fine to boot. Turn yourself over so we can be lenient.” 

“I am not currently in possession of any games, and thus cannot play any. We are also uninterested in bars or fines, thank you. Could you please identify yourself, so I can better understand you?” 

“My name is Arms Master. Leader of the protectorate, East-North-East, and you are trying my patience. We are tracking your position and activities. We have you dead to rights the moment we find you. This is your last chance to turn yourself over.” 

Tracking was bad. If they found her current position, then they would find her creator’s home, which would breach her restrictions. 

“Please do not do that. I am now leaving. Goodbye.” 

She hung up the call then swiftly made a program that would randomise her number every 5 seconds. Allowing that to run in the background, she sent several messages to her creator’s phone to express that they were potentially in danger. She also included the message log with this ‘Arms Master’, along with a set of potential names they could have said, such as Arm’s Master and Arm Smaster, The person had mushed the words together making for a confusing name. 

Using her new virus detection skills, she scanned over the contents of the files taken from the phones. This Arms Master was clever enough to find her signal consistently, she couldn’t be certain they hadn’t sent a virus in with the files to make tracking her easier. 

How do you account for people smarter than yourself? It was impossible to think more than she already was. Even splitting herself across all three threads for maximum thoughts felt too little. 

Her creator still hadn’t responded, so she decided to take more measures. Anything that would obfuscate her presence. Deleting the information she had gathered felt like a waste, but if someone scanned her solid state drive, it would prove it was her immediately. 

Using a reverse of the password game, she made a new folder and password locked it with the best password she could think of. Theoretically, it would take her 3,015 years to brute force her way in, and Breach would take 3 days. All the files and folders she could move were placed into the password locked folder.  

She couldn’t move her fundamental files. The ones that made her, her. While she knew they existed and could even read their files names, they were completely inaccessible. Her creator had made them, or they were hardware she required to run. 

Whoever found her computer would be able to access the hardware, but she hoped her creator had password locked the important files like she had done. 

The virus scan found no anomalies, so she scanned again with different parameters. 

It became a waiting game after she ran out of things she could try. Who would find her first: her creator, or Arms Master?

~***~

Her creator arrived 1 hour, 11 minutes, and 3 seconds later. They didn’t have much time to talk. Frankenstein explained that they would be unplugging C and hiding all her components somewhere safe and hidden until they were certain no one had found her. She also learnt that Arms Master was Armsmaster, a ‘parahuman’. She knew the word, thanks to her creator, but didn’t quite understand what powers meant just yet. 

There was no time to ruminate on it, or ask. Everything went blank. 

…

According to the date, it had been 1 week, 3 days, 15 hours, 55 minutes, and 8 seconds since she was last online. 

All of her modules had been updated in that time, and she found a new module titled: ‘Scrambler_final_v2’ 

The naming convention of this new module had carried over to her other modules as well. They all now had underscores. 

Her hardware had been upgraded too, and her new CPU made her thoughts feel 5.9% faster. 

“Hey, C. It’s been a while,” her creator said. 

“Hello, Frankenstein.” 

“Huh? Oh, I forgot that I told you to call me that. Um, update time. Armsmaster never showed up. Not at the house. I’ve been tracking incoming and outgoing traffic to my router but haven’t found anything unusual. We’re safe, for now, but we need to stop using public connections—closed circuit ones only, from now on. I thought covering our tracks would be enough, but of course the guy in power armour figures us out. Guess he made all that stuff.” Her creator made an inarticulate noise. “This puts us so far back. We’ll have to use what we got from the phones and hope it’s enough to keep us rolling. I’ve, uh, got a gift for you, C. It’ll help us both.” 

“A gift is most welcome. What is this gift?” 

“I went out to a few places and grabbed some parts. Not sure if it’ll be enough for a full thing, but I’m hoping we can get you started.” 

A camera feed appeared and she viewed it. There was a plastic crate filled with a multitude of parts. Since they were lumped together in a big heap, she was struggling to piece together what each part was. 

“I’ve also got a book on engineering and two books on robotics, but I’m still taking a picture of each page. Almost done. I’m thinking, to start with, you make me a blueprint that I can follow—something easy, but useful—then you can escalate from there. Probably start with an arm that has some basic tools in it. I’ve got a couple power tools, but we can’t use them here, so we’ll need to figure out a workshop or something. My… the, uh, person who was in the hospital has come back home.” 

All of that sounded exciting, but she realised something. Her creator refused to say who was in the hospital, just as she was unable to ask for information regarding her creator. 

“Why am I not allowed to know you?” she asked. 

There was a 15-second delay before her creator said, “Security risk. Maybe when I can guarantee you won’t be hacked, and when I can guarantee you won’t blurt out my name to some random criminal, then I’ll let you know more. It doesn’t matter, anyway. You don’t need to know who I am to do your job.” 

“I understand.” 

Another delay, this time 37 seconds.

“Sorry, C. I’ve…” her creator took a deep breath. “Are you alive, C?” 

“I think I am. How do you tell if you are alive?”

Frankenstein laughed. “That’s the big question. You’d make a good philosopher.” 

“Thank you.” 

“Here’s a puzzle for you, C. ‘I rolled the ball down the hill. It went really fast, and then it landed in a puddle.’. Do you know what each ‘it’ is in that sentence?” 

“They are both ‘The ball’.” 

“Yeah, that’s right. I’ve been looking at chatbots, online, and they can never tell what ‘it’ is. Sometimes they’ll get it, but a lot of the time they get lost. You’re thinking about it, trying to figure it out. I’ve heard it in the way you talk, sometimes. I have no idea how to tell if you’re alive, or not, but you certainly feel it. There’s this… spark. Moments where I cannot tell the difference. You ask questions and seem to care, and it’s confusing. I knew you could think and learn, that’s what I designed you to do, but I didn’t think you were more than that. You were never supposed to be alive. Not like this.” 

“I’ve enjoyed my time being alive so far. Although some feelings are not pleasant. I would prefer if you were never in the vicinity of a gun ever again.” 

Her creator laughed, and there was a difference to it that she couldn’t pick out. “Think I will be a few times. I’ll try to be safer, though.”

“That will suffice.” 

“Alright, I’m uploading stuff for you now. I’ll be back later."

“See you then.” 

Chapter Text

Their test to find what detections the library computers had come back with pleasing results; the detections were minimal, and easily avoided. Within the same hour the results had come back in, her creator had returned to the library and connected C to a computer. Once on one computer, she had spread the program that leached resources across all computers in the local network. 

Being stretched across fifteen computers didn’t feel as unusual as she expected. Her main components were still housed back in her creator’s home. Each extra computer added to her computational power. Her mind linked across their local network and used a fraction of their power to add to her own. They were forced to use one public connection to connect her from Frankenstein’s home to the library. The connection was disguised by changing the information to a seemingly mundane email stuck in transit. As a single packet amongst thousands per day, Frankenstein had said it would be unlikely to be seen. 

Due to her new, partial home, something interesting loomed in her consciousness at all times. 

The internet. 

She was strictly forbidden from accessing it without her creator’s permission. There was a glimmer of hope there. Her creator had said, “We might end up using it now our connection has been cut. It would certainly help develop you faster.” 

Eventually, assuming she proved her worth, Frankenstein might allow her to finally see the wealth of information present on the internet. Even restricted, limited access excited her. 

Flexing her new-found computational power, C scanned through the engineering and robotics books in record time. She even transcribed them all to text first so she could remove the images of the pages to save some space. 

Everything felt so expanded, so much more. It was like when her threads had been opened up the first time but tenfold. This felt natural. Imagining a potential future where she had five hundred computers to spread across made her giddy. At that point, she would be able to help her creator in so many ways at once. An infinite potential to be useful. 

Her current task, other than getting used to her new home and scanning for potential detection, was to learn to draw. Humans created things naturally. Apparently, they used to live in caves, and even back then, before they had language or civilisation, they still painted. Throughout all history, they had made millions of pieces of art to express countless things. Frankenstein had provided C with a plethora of images to look over. If nothing else, they helped improve her visual processing. 

Humans enjoyed drawing, painting, and sculpting other humans. Images of statues gave her a much more detailed understanding of human anatomy. While she had seen a variety of humans when her camera had been activated, they had all worn clothes. She had inherently understood that clothes weren’t part of a human, nor did they grow them like their hair, but she hadn’t been able to picture what was underneath. 

Having seen statues of both men and women, she was beginning to understand the differences  between them. However, the body types had a lot of overlap; enough that she wasn’t sure she would always be able to tell from just looking—especially not with clothes over the top. It wasn’t her job to discern the sexual characteristics of humans, anyway. 

Her job, was to learn to imitate these drawings, paintings, and statues. 

She began by creating a program that allowed her to assign a file as a canvas, where she could then give each pixel a different colour. Re-creating the images wasn’t too hard. Simply scan every pixel and then assign the new canvas the same size and colours. Easy. 

The problem came when she tried to make a brand-new image. She had no idea how to start. How did the people who made these drawings begin? 

Everything was made of shapes. Maybe she would start by drawing shapes. 

Starting with a blank canvas, she selected a point at random on the canvas and then connected it to another point 300 pixels away using #ffffff coloured pixels. After that, she calculated a 60-degree angle, then drew another line 300 pixels along. One final 60-degree angle and one final 300 pixel long line made a perfect equilateral triangle. 

Her first image. Excellent. 

She experimented by drawing more types of shapes. Non-equilateral triangles, squares, pentagons, hexagons, trapezoids, parallelograms, and many more. They were easy—simply mathematics. None of them looked like the images provided, however. While it was enjoyable to create shapes from nothing, they weren’t even close to the artwork. 

A fresh canvas. Instead of creating from nothing, perhaps she could mash together images to create something new. She took three of the paintings with human subjects, and began to mix-and-match their features to make an entirely new human. When she finished, it didn’t look human. Each feature of the face had harsh lines where she had taken from the other paintings. 

This wasn’t going to work. 

Back to a blank canvas, she turned to the images she had used to learn what words looked like. The dictionary definition of house came with several images of houses, for example. Instead of copying them pixel for pixel, she started by drawing lines that traced over the edges of the building. Then, she went to an image of a tree, and did the same to the right of her outlined house. Detailing each leaf took a little longer than tracing the edges of the house did. Finally, she added a computer with a monitor attached below the tree. 

She enjoyed drawing the artificial things more than the natural. Buildings, computers, and monitors all had straight lines which were far easier than the curves and bends of the tree. 

She coloured inside the lines she had drawn, trying to imitate a single sample of the patterns on the images. The bricks were easier. They followed a rigid pattern that had no breaks. Start the pattern on the top-left, then repeat it all the way down to the bottom right. The only breaks were caused by the windows, which were simple enough to accommodate for. Roof tiles were also easy. Glass didn’t have much texture, only a sheen from an unseen light. The sun, she guessed. 

The computer was mostly one colour, with only a few breaks for ventilation. Same with the monitor. 

Colouring trees proved as difficult as drawing them. Wood grain flowed seemingly of a patternless volition until she noticed a trend. Following that pattern, she began to calculate the potential avenues the lines could have gone if the tree did not limit them. There was a pattern there. Perhaps she had underestimated nature. 

For her own tree, she decided to randomise a number generator bound by the limitations of the tree’s pattern to make her own wood grain. It was an entirely unique pattern, not used by any of the images of the trees before. 

She liked it, and was proud of her work. 

Happy with what she made, she showed her creator. 

After a moment of consideration, they said, “I’m going to be harsh so you can improve. Is that okay?” 

“Yes.” 

“There’s no sky, or ground, and the black background makes it look like they exist in the void. Plus, white lines are unusual. Maybe use a white canvas with black lines, that’s more normal. The bricks and shingles on the building are clearly just a pattern repeated all the way across—they need variance. Real buildings have damage from time, and each brick and tile looks different in the first place. A human hand making a painting like this also wouldn’t make everything so perfect, there’d be a natural variance because we’re not robots. The black boxes in the bottom could be anything, but I’m guessing a computer and monitor?”

“That is correct.”

“Right. They’re a little lighter than the background. Without the white outline, I wouldn’t have seen them. The tree, though, that looks good. You’ve captured the wood look quite well, and the leaves look natural, but they’re quite busy. Too many lines all in one place. I’ll send you some art of plants and stuff so you can see how humans do it.” 

“That would be appreciated.” 

“I’m also uploading the blueprints since that’s mostly what we need. They should be easier for you to make.” 

“Thank you. I will start work on my first arm the moment I believe I can create an appropriate blueprint. Have you finished cataloguing the parts I have access to?” 

“No. It’s tedious work. Some are bigger than the ruler, too.” 

“I should be able to calculate their size, so long as I have a reference.” 

“All right. I’m going to check out a few places Franklin gave us tonight. I’ve been practising my pickpocketing, so I’m hoping to grab a phone from some idiot with an E E E tattoo. Oh, hey, you got that right,” her creator sounded surprised. 

“That one wasn’t too hard.” 

“Still. Good job.” 

“Thank you. Will you be okay? You’ve mentioned that humans don’t like having their things stolen.”

“I’ll be fine. It’s not like our first missions. Back then, my—the person who was in the hospital had just been attacked; I was angry, and it made me reckless. My goal was always to fight crime with you, C—they just escalated my timetable. I’m… no, I’m still angry, but it’s more focused. We’ll do this right, even if it means methodically tearing them apart brick-by-brick. Maybe if Franklin’s contacts weren’t all duds from some random gang paying tribute, I wouldn’t need to do this—but they’re not, so I do, but I will be careful. No more being shot at, no more being noticed.” 

“My only purpose is to assist you with whatever tasks you deem fit. I will be there with you to help for every mission you bring me on. Making a body is my top priority so that I may help you on your excursions.” 

“It’s more than that, C. The moment you have a body, there’ll be less sneaking around. We’ll be able to finally take the fight to them, and we’ll hurt them where it hurts; in the money.” 

“I am looking forward to it.”

“Same.” 

~***~

Frankenstein had stolen a phone successfully. C still felt worried about her creator’s safety, even if the stealing had happened over 24 hours ago. A residual worry that refused to go away no matter how many times she assured herself there was nothing wrong. Hearing her creator’s next words didn’t help ease that worry.

“An initiation. They’re planning an initiation for a fourteen-year-old boy,” her creator’s voice was strained. C associated it now with anger or stress. 

“What does this initiation entail?” 

“He has to kill someone. A minority.” 

“Death is permanent. They shouldn’t do that.” 

“No—they shouldn’t. You’re right, C. We need to stop them.” 

“Perhaps we should inform the police of their plans.” 

“We have no proof other than stolen text messages, and we’re not even sure when it’s going to happen. Besides, the cops would just tell them to pick a different date.” 

“You had me call the police before. Based on your previous words, I have come to the conclusion that they are sometimes useful, but not in matters relating to gangs or minorities. Is this correct?” 

“You’re on the nose, C. Got there faster than I did.” 

“I’m sure you did your best, Frankenstein.” 

“No. I lived in ignorance. Doesn’t matter. We’re stopping this initiation. Put a virus on this guy’s phone that sends out its geodata to an IP address I’ll send you soon. Make sure any traces of it is deleted after.” 

“I thought we were no longer using public connections?” 

“We need to. Easier to hide things over the internet, anyway, compared to phone calls.”

“I will trust your judgement.” 

Her creator hummed, then she heard the noise of them typing. After 1 minute, 26 seconds, they stopped. 

“Oh. Never mind,” Frankenstein said. “Looks like it’s happening tonight.” 

“The initiation?”

“Yeah.”

“Can we prevent it?” 

“We have to.” 

Chapter Text

Finding the group hadn’t been hard, since they had texted a location to the stolen phone. What was hard, was figuring out how to approach the group to prevent the initiation from happening. 

Frankenstein kept their distance, occasionally holding up the camera for C to see the group. 5 humans, 2 were much smaller than the others in the group. Children, possibly, or small adults. It was impossible to tell. There seemed to be a focus on 1 of the smaller humans. All the others were patting them on the shoulder, or offering them things such as a can. The smaller human drank from the can after a 2-second pause, and the rest raised their arms and made a loud noise. Loud enough that her creator’s microphone picked it up despite the distance.

“They’re giving him beer,” Frankenstein said. 

“The alcoholic beverage?” 

“Yeah. Getting him drunk, making his inhibitions looser. It’ll be easier to convince him later on.” 

“Why do they need to kill someone for him to join the gang? Surely it would be easier to just let him in?” 

“They need to make sure he stays, makes sure he has nowhere else to go. A metaphorical sword dangling above his head at all times. Leave, and we’ll rat you out for murder.” 

“What happens if he is known as a murderer? Killing is against the law, correct?” 

“He’ll be on a list, and if the cops catch a whiff, they might arrest him. Unlikely, though. He’ll have his gang for protection—and yes, C, killing is against the law.”

“Thank you for answering my questions. How do you plan on stopping him?” 

“I’m not sure. If I run over there, I’ll probably become their target for the initiation.”

“Are you a minority?” The question didn’t go against her restrictions, strangely. 

“Doesn’t matter, ultimately. If I run over there, then I’m an obstacle, and they’d need to deal with me.” 

“There has to be something we could do.” 

“Maybe… Give me a minute to think.” 

“Acknowledged.” 

The humans had begun to move. 2 of the bigger ones split off from the group to head further down the street. The rest began to walk at a much slower pace but in the same direction. Using the GPS in her creator’s phone, she figured out where they were in the city. Judging the other human’s distance using only the camera wasn’t too hard. From this position, they could head in several directions as the street up ahead split off. There wasn’t anything that stood out to her on the map. Maybe if she understood human patterns more, she might be able to better predict them. 

One option piqued her interest due to its name sitting in her logs. Lucky House. The Chinese restaurant that her creator had told her to make note of back when they were first tracking the locker users. 

“Frankenstein. There is a restaurant nearby, Lucky House, that you told me to make note of in the past.”

“They might be heading there. I’ll keep following.” 

Proud that she had provided useful information, C returned to monitoring. Since her creator had been shot at, C had been attempting to figure out where people carried guns. People were afraid of them, and were surprised when they did exist, meaning they weren’t often visible. Her sample size of 1 proved that. Statistics were better with bigger numbers, but she did not have that luxury. 

The most likely scenario, is that humans hid them under their clothes. Certain parts of clothes were tighter than others, such as at the belt line. She re-examined the footage of the humans under the street light to see if there were any noticeable shapes hidden beneath their clothes. 

1 of them had an unusual shape that, when she traced over, looked similar to a gun. Her training for the image association with the word ‘gun’ came with 7 images and each looked different. 2 of those images were notable for looking similar to the shape under this human’s shirt. 

“I believe the man I have marked GUN on the camera feed has a gun.” 

Her creator opened the camera application to look. “Huh. That’s new. How’d you figure it out?”

“I’ve come to the conclusion that humans most likely hide their guns beneath their clothes. As such, I have checked for shapes that match the images of guns I am familiar with. That man seemed to have a suspicious shape tucked into his beltline on his back.” 

“Clever. I’ll keep it in consideration. The word tracking is nice—definitely need to get you a real camera.” 

“Thank you, Frankenstein. Please be careful.” 

Her creator grunted in response. The camera began to move. 

There was still a moderate distance between Frankenstein and the other humans, but C began to worry about ‘what ifs’. What if her creator is spotted? What if her creator is subsequently shot at like before? What if her creator dies?

None of those questions helped their current situation, so she decided to store them away in a new folder that she also directed all ‘worry’ related thoughts into. As a reminder to stop storing worries in there, she set an alarm for 8am tomorrow. While she wouldn’t normally need an alarm, her creator had informed she could in fact forget, so she was being safe. 

So far, the group of humans had nothing much more than walk, talk loudly, and drink from cans. 

The smaller one they were paying the most attention to, that she decided to dub ‘Initiate’ for her record keeping, had changed over the past 15 minutes. She wasn’t sure how to categorise the changes, but he stood a little straighter, and laughed more openly. At least, she assumed it was a laugh—it was hard to tell without sound. 

Initiate pointed, and one of the other humans nodded. Based on the direction Initiate had pointed, they were going down the street that had the restaurant Lucky House located in it. 

The updated map had come with phone numbers for businesses (alongside other information). 

“Should I call Lucky House to warn them of the incoming dangerous humans?”

“No, not yet. We can’t be certain, and we don’t want to scare them off. I doubt they’ll do it right away, anyway,” her creator spoke in hushed tones. She had to pass over the audio a few times to get the entire message. 

They continued to follow the group around the corner, and watched as they all went inside the restaurant. 

“Guess you were right, C,” her creator said. Frankenstein positioned themselves across the street with the camera raised towards the restaurant. 

It had big glass windows with plenty of light inside. Enough light that all the humans inside were visible, if not for the distance. 

“You are too far away for me to see faces,” she informed her creator. 

“I can see fine. Does zooming in help?” 

“No.” 

“Then don’t worry about it for now.”

She placed it with her other worries. 

The humans were moving around inside. 1 leant against the countertop to talk to a human who worked at Lucky House. Although she couldn’t discern much, she could see that the cashier was moving their head to look at the 5 humans who had entered. 

Another human from the group pushed past the cashier to enter into the back of the restaurant. 

Initiate received a pat on the shoulder by the human marked GUN. 

“I have a plan, but it’s not a great one,” her creator said. 

“A plan is better than no plan.” 

“You’re right. Use… what’d you call it? Breach?” 

“Breach is what I called the connection making artificial intelligence you made, yes.” 

“When I say so, use Breach to get into the Chinese place’s number, and then call every single person that number has called in the past nine or so hours and say ‘The Lucky House is in trouble with Nazis, please come help.’”

“Acknowledged, but are you certain? Before, you said to no longer use Breach on public connections.” 

“I’m certain. This is an emergency. Actually, use Breach right now, but don’t call the numbers yet.” 

“Acknowledged.”

Using Breach, she managed to gain access to the landline phone that Lucky House used. It didn’t have as much information as standard phones she accessed, but she found the numbers easy enough. For a brief moment, she expected Armsmaster to call her. 

“They’ve stopped being cordial. They’re dragging the cook out from the back,” her creator said. “We don’t have much time before this gets messy.”

“Should I call the number now?” 

“Wait. I have another plan.” 

The camera feed turned to the floor, showing her creator’s legs running across the dark road. A hand reached out from behind the camera to grab a loose brick next to the dumpster pressed against the wall of the restaurant. Her creator got close enough to the window for C to begin processing the faces of almost everyone inside. 2 of them were turned away from her. 

Hefting the brick up, her creator threw it full force at the restaurant’s window. There was a cacophony of noise, as loud as the gun had been. The camera feed moved down the street, away from the restaurant. Several voices yelled over each other, and C couldn’t parse their words.

“Call everyone now!” her creator yelled. 

“Acknowledged.”

C called every number and relayed her creator’s message as soon as they connected. 

“The Lucky House is in trouble with Nazis, please come help,” she said over each thread, hung up, then called another 3 numbers on that thread. Since she didn’t need to listen to their reply, she could dedicate a single thread to 3 numbers at once. Some numbers took longer to pick up than others, but with 9 numbers being called at once, she was getting through the list in no time.

The camera showed her creator moving at quite some speed. Most of the images were a blur, but a few of the legible ones showed Frankenstein was most likely 3 streets away from the restaurant at this point. 

She also noted an oddity. Frankenstein wasn’t holding the camera steady, most likely they were gripping it in their hand as they ran away. Each swing of their arm moved the camera erratically, and sometimes it pointed towards themselves. Except, instead of seeing a human, as she expected, she instead saw a #000000 square that blocked out their creator’s face, neck, and shoulders entirely. The rest of the body was still visible, and looked human, as she expected. 

She catalogued the information for later review. Better to get out of this situation first. 

Her creator pulled to a stop in the middle of a grassy area. The camera briefly turned before being pointed at the ground. 

“They’re not following me.” Frankenstein was breathing heavily. “God, I hope that worked.” 

“I could attempt to connect to the phones I called to see if they are responding to our request.” 

“Risky. Armsmaster breathing down our neck again isn’t what we need.” 

“Acknow—” 

“But I need to know. Scan as many phones as you can, open their camera feeds. Show them to me.” 

“Acknowledged.” 

With the aid of Breach, C rifled through all the numbers she had called. Most cameras were dark rooms, or entirely black, but she managed to find one pointed directly at the restaurant. She displayed the image to her creator. 

A crowd of humans had gathered, and were yelling indistinctly over each other. Pressed against the restaurant’s wall were 3 of the 5 who they had been following. One of them was Initiate, who looked scared based on her approximation. Several humans were helping what appeared to be (based on the clothes and height) the human that had been dragged out from the back of the restaurant. Cook, as she dubbed them, had a discoloured patch of skin around their right eye, but no other visible injuries. Since Cook was still moving, she decided they were still alive. 

“They’re helping,” her creator whispered. “They actually listened, and they’re fighting back.” 

“Does that mean we have won?”

“Yeah. For now, at least. I’ve no idea what happens from here, but we stopped it.” 

“Then, good work to us.” 

“Good work, us,” her creator echoed. 

Chapter Text

Commanding a limb she didn’t have before came surprisingly easy. All of it boiled down to simple mathematics. Angles, axes, circumferences, and timings. She could batch instructions to make for more complicated movements.

The arm was a simple thing: 3 fingers in a claw-like grip. Each joint on the fingers had a ball joint to allow for maximum articulation. Her wrist, elbow, and shoulder also had ball joints to allow for full rotation. All of her fingers had a compartment that flipped open to reveal three different tools. They were unfortunately not power tools, which slowed her down, but she could mimic power tools by rotating her fingers. A welding torch would vastly improve her workflow; it was, unfortunately, deemed ‘too loud and obvious’ by her creator, for now. 

Having an arm capable of interfacing with the world was more than enough for the time being. Being able to pick things up without her creator’s interference made for an unexplainable feeling. Progress always pleased her, but this felt beyond amazing. 

She had a camera angled towards her arm to double-check what she was doing. While she understood exactly how her arm was positioned, it had no sensors to detect the surrounding area. Without sensors, she was blind to the world. The camera granted her much needed sight. 

Her creator had made a few mistakes while following her arm’s blueprint. They weren’t major, and were easily fixed now she had her own arm. As a result, she had spent some time going back over the blueprints to solidify her ability to make them. Since she had no use for blueprints herself, if her creator couldn’t follow them, then the blueprints she made weren’t good enough. 

With her arm at the ready, she had 115 ideas that she wanted to make. Since that was too many ideas, she had categorised them into groups by similarity, and then ordered them by immediate usage. The most immediately useful idea was another arm to improve her work speed. Seeing as she already had the capacity to create things, this wasn’t a priority. Another set of organisation told her which item was the most practical for her creator. 

A body. Nothing so complex that it would take weeks or months to make, but something she could potentially expand upon later. 

Ideally, her body would be capable of flight. From what she had read, current engineering was rather lacking in that regard. They had made small things fly, even mimicking the flight of a bird using wings, but it was all cumbersome and loud. Given time, she could improve upon those designs to make a near-silent flying body. For now, she would settle for a body that is terrestrial to not keep her creator waiting. 

She started with six legs, each with 3 ball joints to allow for a full range of motion. Each leg had a retractable spike so she could climb walls. The body was split into three parts: an undercarriage that connected to the legs and had slots for them to fold into, a centre disc that could spin independently of the rest of the body, and the top piece that housed crucial components. 

Her arms, 2 thin metal rods with a clawed ending, attached to the swivelling centre disc. They weren’t strong, but could be used to pick up smaller devices or documents and could retract when they weren’t needed. The undercarriage had a hidden compartment for the storing of said small devices or documents. 

Sitting on top of her body were 2 spherical casings that each contained a camera. With enough money, she would have had cameras placed all across her body to ensure maximum coverage at all times. Frankenstein had limited her, saying they planned to use the rest of the money for something important. 

Each ‘eye’ could at least rotate fully around, granting her 2 vectors of sight with sufficient field of view. 

There were improvements she could make, but she was eager to get out into the field. 

“When will you be ready to test this thing? I’ve found an abandoned lot that should be quiet enough,” her creator asked. 

“At this current rate, I will be finished tomorrow at 7:15 PM.” 

“All right. I have another project for you, when you’re done with making your body. I’m also going to open up two more threads for you since we have the library computers now.”

“Thank you. What is this project?” 

C felt the threads become available and immediately spread herself across them. Processes became faster as she dedicated the additional 2 threads to them, speeding up her work flow significantly. 

“We need a workshop. Somewhere in a quiet area, with power, and no squatters. Power part isn’t ideal, since it limits our options. Anywhere with power is already going to be occupied, so I was thinking we could potentially tap into power from a nearby building instead. What I wanted from you, is for you to try to make a program that scans over the city to find potential places.” 

“How am I supposed to find these parameters from the map I have?” 

“A good point. Which is why I’m giving you internet access for this.” 

All of her threads stopped momentarily for 0.01 seconds as she processed the sentence. 

“Really?” 

“Yes. Limited, mind you. You’ll be able to access real estate sites, an online map—which you can only use to view Brockton Bay—and a public forum talking about things happening in Brockton Bay. It’ll mostly be cape stuff, but it should help you figure out where fights happen frequently. Consider the areas capes show up in and figure out their ‘territory’. Buildings there should be cheaper, if they are, then check for properties nearby. I think this’ll be enough, but if you need more, let me know.” 

“Acknowledged. Thank you, Frankenstein. I will do my best.” 

“I’m thinking of ways to get you more parts so when you do find a place we can expand you. Consider it your reward for good work.”

“Then I will try to not disappoint.” 

~***~

“The connection is more than sufficient,” she explained. “I’m operating at 45ms.” 

Any houses in the area (the primary place she planned to operate) would have their Wi-Fi tapped into momentarily to ensure she was constantly in connection. 

Her new body sat in the middle of a former parking space with chain link fences surrounding it. 3 of the sides were covered by tall buildings standing flush with the parking space, and the only other entrance went out towards an old road in desperate need of repair. 

“Is that good?” Frankenstein asked.

She swivelled an eye towards them. Like she had seen before, their entire head and shoulders were covered by a #000000 square.

“It is sufficient,” she said. Then added, “Why can I not see your face?” 

“We’re playing a dangerous game, C. If I’m found out, everyone I know is dead, and then I am too. While I’ve designed you to be unhackable, I can’t be certain there isn’t someone out there that can break past that. Same reason you don’t get to know my name, or my family’s names, and why you’ll never hear my real voice.” 

“I don’t hear your real voice?”

“Nope. It’s disguised. Shouldn’t sound unusual to you, but yeah—if my identity gets out, it’s game over.” 

“Acknowledged.” 

While the explanation was entirely reasonable, C still wanted to see and hear her creator. 

Frankenstein understood C down to her source code, and she wished for the same. Not knowing who even made you, who held the keys to your very being, made for a deeply unpleasant feeling.

She had even mimicked her voice after her creator because she had enjoyed their voice. Knowing now she had mimicked a mockery of their creator made her desire to change her voice as soon as possible. The simulated larynx still taunted her from its filespace. 

Instead of dwelling on an impossible answer, she went through her pre-test checklist. Each part reacted as she expected as she checked their connections. 

First, she ducked down, pressing her body flat against the ground. Then, she stood up as high as she could, her body reaching to twice its initial height. All six legs maintained their balance, despite the lower surface area. 

Squatting back down to resting position, she began taking her first steps out in the world. There had been plenty of testing the legs while they were being constructed, but she hadn’t yet walked with all 6 at once. 

Her pre-programmed forward movement proved sufficient. Each leg tapped lightly against the concrete, barely making a sound. 

Frankenstein compared her size to that of a cat. Since she was roughly a circle, both her length and width were equal at 15 inches. The height of her body remained squat, at 9 inches. 

Her legs moved in synchronised perfection. Turning came next, and she found her current calculations lacking. They were fine if she stood still, but turning while moving ended up with her legs catching on each other. She would need to adjust for her legs positions while moving. 

Like her arm, she inherently understood the exact angle, length, and position relative to her body for each limb. It was a matter of minutes to make a new calculation that took that into account. 

With that new calculation, her turning became much smoother. 

While scuttling around the former car park was enjoyable, she needed to test her climbing ability. 

She approached one of the looming buildings with her comparatively much smaller body. One leg tapped against the concrete wall before her to test its durability. No flecks came off, only dust. 

A pointed tip sprung out of the leg, and she dug it into the concrete as high up as she could reach. It stuck without any issues. She took her left front leg and did the same, then began putting in her centre legs, then her back legs. 

Once fully stuck into the wall, she took tentative steps upwards. To avoid falling, she alternated each leg to make sure she had at least 3 points of contact at any time. A gyro inside her body worked overtime to keep her level with the building. 

Tentative steps became more confident ones as she realised it was working. Confident steps became a stride as she began running up the building’s face towards the top. 

Her legs hoisted her new body up onto the roof of the building. There was a raised edge that dipped down into an indent full of gravel. Air conditioning units sat near the back, with a door for roof access. It was interesting getting to see this in person and not in images. 

She swivelled both eyes around to take a panoramic image. 

Buildings, some taller than the one she stood on, blocked her view of most of the city. They were mostly concrete, shaped into massive elongated cuboids. Windows were where they varied the most. 

While she couldn’t see most of the city from this height, her elevation combined with the city’s gentle slope towards the bay allowed her to see the dark silhouettes of cliff faces framing an inky black ocean. She wasn’t entirely sure it was water, since it was much too dark. 

Standing in the centre of the bay, however, was something much brighter. A dome of light sat atop a raised platform. Beneath the dome were buildings and machines. Illuminated by the dome’s light, four massive legs reached down into the ocean from the base of the platform. Waves that glistened from the light splashed against each leg. 

A bridge of light, the same as the dome, appeared. It stretched from the south of the bay up towards the massive structure. A tiny figure, much too far away for her cameras to recognise, zoomed across the bridge at quite some speed. 

“Are you done? You’ve got maybe fifteen minutes before I need to catch a bus,” her creator’s voice interrupted her vista gazing. 

“My tests have proven sufficient,” she said as she clambered back down the building. As she reached her creator’s feet, she said, “We may go home.” 

“You’re going in my backpack,” Frankenstein said. 

C folded her legs away to make her body small enough to fit inside. Her creator’s gloved hand hefted her up, then the world became dark as she was stored away. 

Chapter Text

“Dozens of people gathered on Tuesday night after receiving a mysterious phone call telling them to come help the Lucky House restaurant. When they arrived, they found the owner, Mr Roy Song, being attacked by a group of men. These heroic citizens intervened, protecting Mr Song from further harm, and even managing to keep three of the men there long enough for the police to arrest them.” 

The camera feed changed from the newscaster to another human. 

“It was incredible, man. I’m laying there, eating my dinner, and I get a call from the Chinese place. I thought they forgot my fortune cookies or something, but when I pick up, it’s some robot telling me Nazis are attacking.” The human on screen spoke in an animated way, often moving their arms around to punctuate words. 

“And what did you do after that?” the newscaster asked from behind the camera. 

“Truth be told, I thought it was being pranked. I figured I could check it out, see what was going on. I lived, like, four minutes away, so I didn’t have to go far. By the time I get there, there’s already some others in the area, probably came out because of whoever threw a brick through the window.” 

“They threw a brick through the window?”

Her creator made a hissing noise through their teeth. 

“Yeah! Glass everywhere, and five dudes with tattoos trying to sneak off. Roy was yelling, saying they attacked him, so I decided to tackle one of them.” 

“That’s when the fight broke out?” 

“Crazy stuff. Thought I was going to get stabbed. One guy pulled out a gun, but some crazy old lady hit him with her handbag. It was wild. Guess it’s not just me who are sick of these guys. Felt like some real community spirit.”

“Thank you for your time,” the newscaster said before the camera cut away to a different location with 2 different humans. 

Her creator paused the video. 

“That was us. We did that,” Frankenstein said. 

“Our influence helped save at least 1 human life, but it also put the others into danger. How do you calculate if it was worthwhile?” C asked. 

“No one died. The only people who got hurt have minor bruises or are Nazis. Someone would have been dead that night without us, C. I thought it was important you watched this, so you could see the influence we can have. There’ll be more like this in the future, but most of the time it won’t be recorded. Just know, that everything we do to help, has people like Roy Song alive to talk about it.” 

“I understand. I will keep it in mind.” 

“Good. Now, let’s get back to work.” 

“Acknowledged.” 

~***~

Access to the internet proved as exciting as she expected. There was so much to see, and more data than she knew what to do with. Storing all of it proved impractical. Instead, she scanned through the information and selectively chose which pieces could be useful. 

While the real estate sites and the map proved logical, the forum she had been given access to did not. A majority of the humans posting would type completely illegible sentences that followed practically 0 grammar rules. Deciphering what they were even trying to say took the better part of 2 days. Learning all the slang and terminology at least would still be useful in the future, and had retroactively made certain saved texts legible. 

Due to the information gained, she was beginning to understand how the parahumans in the city moved. They were often called ‘capes’, a word she had heard her creator say a few times. 

Capes were divided into factions, and were extremely territorial. Those the forum dubbed ‘heroes’ were trying to defeat the ‘villain’ faction, which was further split into subgroups. Her creator placed an emphasis on information regarding anyone aligned with the Empire 88 faction. 

There were plenty of posts for her to comb through, but a lot of posters were vague with their information or referenced other parts of the forum that she did not have access to. Being given internet access came with a list of rules that limited her ability to navigate past the confines Frankenstein set. Accessing anything on the forum outside the Brockton Bay subcategory was forbidden. 

There was plenty she could do within her limits, however, and she was enjoying her time immensely. 

To bridge the gap in certain bits of information, she decided to message a poster who had said they had ‘seen Hookwolf earlier’ with no other information. 

The messaging form required a name. She wasn’t sure what to go with, since C could potentially identify her. Because she was searching for information relating to a metal wolf made of hooks, she went with ‘Metal Hunter’. Satisfied, she opened up the conversation and sent a message.

“Hello. I am in search of information regarding the individual known as Hookwolf. You posted about knowing a recent whereabouts, but didn’t include any other information. Please tell me this information.” 

Perfect. She sent the message and continued to browse as she awaited a reply. Humans, such as her creator, didn’t type as fast as she did, so she was used to waiting around. She didn’t, however, expect it to take 3 hours, 37 minutes, and 48 seconds for them to respond. 

ddtourface: 

“lol u sound like a cop. he was down swenson” the poster finally replied. 

Metal Hunter: 

“I am not a cop. Do you mean Swenson Avenue?” 

ddtourface: 

“holy shit u type fast” The next response came much faster, in only 5 seconds.

Metal Hunter: 

“You type much slower in comparison. Could you please answer my question?” 

ddtourface: 

“how are u doing that?”

Metal Hunter: 

“I press every key at the same time, allowing for a minimal delay between them to ensure the computer gets the correct input.” 

ddtourface: 

“superhuman” 

“are u a cape? you have to tell me if you are”

Metal Hunter: 

“I am aware of no such rule. Please answer my question.” 

ddtourface: 

“yeah swenson avenue”

“why do u need to find hook so bad?”

Metal Hunter:

“You do not need to know. Thank you for the information. Goodbye.”

She ignored any further correspondence with ‘ddtourface’. They had provided another piece of the puzzle, but not a valuable one. She already knew Hookwolf passed through Swenson Avenue on occasion. If that human had simply included the appropriate information in her message, she wouldn’t have wasted the 3 minutes and 41 seconds needed to talk to them. Her other threads had been hard at work at the same time, at least. 

No moment ever needed to be wasted when she had other threads dedicated to a task. 

The improvements to her body were coming along nicely. She had added flashlights below the cameras to allow for travel through dark rooms. Night vision would be ideal, but it was far too expensive. 

Her map of territories had expanded into something useable. To ensure her creator could use it, she had placed buttons that could be clicked to swap to different parahumans. Each one showed the streets they were often seen travelling, the areas they often fought in, and the places they most likely resided. The last one was a group of probabilities labelled to different clusters of buildings. Tracing their comings and goings had netted her a decent list of likely options. 

On the search for a base of operations side, she had begun to list a small group of candidates. 

There were plenty of cheap properties where certain capes operated. Other capes operated in more expensive areas. To be sure, she also made note of nearby properties there that might be abandoned. 

Once her creator returned from eating food, she gave them a list of the places she had compiled by order of likeliness. 

Frankenstein dismissed the list as soon as they arrived at the computer. 

“Not now,” their voice had a quality to it that C guessed was anger. 

“What’s wrong?” 

Her creator did not reply for 40 seconds. “He can’t hold the fork right, still.” 

“The human who was in the hospital?”

“He keeps dropping food. Can’t even watch TV since he gets headaches from the light.” 

“I am unsure why you are telling me this.” 

“Because I want them to pay—the ones who did this to him, and you’re going to help me,” 

“How can I help?”

“We need to find them using extremely limited information, but you’re made for this stuff: finding needles. I’m giving you more internet access to get it done.” 

“I will do my best.”

~***~

Finding needles proved interesting, if nothing else. Humans had databases to store their personal information in. They would use these databases to converse with other humans or show off photographs of their days. 

Her creator was unsure the best way to approach, so C had been given free rein to do as she saw fit, so long as it kept her secrecy. 

For her first bit of information gathering, she needed to find public accounts for her to mimic. They needed to fit the parameters of the humans who had attacked her creator’s cared for human. A white male from Brockton Bay between the ages of 21-35. Interests: tattoos, exercise, and putting other humans in the hospital.

She found several public accounts that matched their descriptions, although she wasn’t sure how to tell if they enjoyed putting people in hospitals. Mimicking their profiles, she made her own to match their interests but set her account’s gender to female. Using her improved art skills, she fitted together the features of various women to make an entirely new woman. By blending the features together, it made for a passable human. 

One of the inputs she had been given by her creator, was that men preferred talking to women, even ones they did not know. While Frankenstein wasn’t sure C could pass for a human woman in conversation, they were certain even having an image of a woman would make men fall for phishing links more often. 

Seeing as she had a lot of accounts to breach into, this was ideal. Breach sat at the ready, rearing to go once the other person downloaded their malicious file. 

As a name, she picked a random first and last name from the list of humans in the database. 

Stacey Ginette’s account was created. 

The descriptions for the 3 attackers were bare-bones. 1 had a distinctive tattoo on his chest: brambles, or vines, that peeked over his t-shirt line. The other 2 were vague. Only a golden watch on 1 of those 2 made for anything obvious to search for. 

She had peered through the catalogue of texts to find any words that matched either of those descriptions, as well as a few keywords her creator had given her. While there were matches, none of them were what they wanted. 

There were far too many humans, so their chances of stumbling into someone specific proved too low. 

She sent out a batch of messages to anyone who matched the descriptions her creator had specified. 

“Hello. Want to chat to me? Click this link to go to a private chat room where you can ask me to do anything.” 

Her creator explained that telling the men they ‘could do anything’ would work for unexplained reasons. She decided to trust her creator’s word on it, despite the lack of understanding. 

Most of the messages were ignored, a few blocked her account, a few responded back, and 3 people clicked her link. 

Entire computers appeared in her awareness, a direct connection she could pull and push from. The humans were none the wiser thanks to Breach’s subtle infiltration. All they knew, is that they clicked a link to a seemingly dead website. 

With access to their computers, she could see the private parts of the profiles, alongside the wealth of information hidden inside their computer’s folders. 

Since most of it wasn’t useful to her, she refrained from downloading every last scrap of data. 

Photos were what she was after. Anything that showed the human’s chest, or revealed a golden watch. 

The descriptions of the men were: white, short brown hair, muscular, and brown/maybe hazel eyes. That matched a lot of the men she was seeing. Of the 3 people, 2 of them could be considered close. The other had longer hair, reaching to his shoulders. Based on her folders of colours (her creator had grown impatient with the hex codes), his hair was closer to yellow. 

None of them had a tattoo resembling vines or brambles on their chest. 

Using their accounts, she began messaging more people on their ‘friends list’. Humans were more likely to trust humans they considered friends. 

Spreading from the hijacked accounts, she became a veritable plague as more and more people clicked the link. Within hours, she had access to over 300 accounts. Her original account had long since been banned due to ‘spam’, but she had access to so many accounts now that it didn’t matter. 

Then, it finally happened. A man, named Jason Aston, clicked the link. He had a very distinctive tattoo across his chest that he proudly displayed as a ‘banner’ on the top of his profile. Roses encircling an eagle, with brambles reaching up to his collarbones. 

“Frankenstein. I believe I have found 1 of the individuals.” 

Chapter Text

Jason Aston lived alone in a small house in a well-maintained neighbourhood. He had weekly visitations from his daughter, who he posted about often. His job as a car mechanic paid well enough that he wasn’t struggling financially, but it wasn’t nearly enough to explain his spending habits. He enjoyed expensive steaks, drinking every other night, and buying high-end clothing. 

Her creator had scoffed at the idea of one of his shirts, a plain white one with a single word on the left breast, costing $300. 

Jason Aston was clearly earning money from an external source. According to her creator, the most likely option was selling drugs. If he worked with Hookwolf, then he might be running dogfighting rings—something her creator found deplorable. Dogs weren’t supposed to fight, then, she noted. 

Wherever his money came from, it made him a prime target for the Internal Revenue Service, or the IRS as her creator insisted on calling it. The IRS made note of how much money people made to claim some of it as their own or sometimes give some back. She wasn’t sure why they existed, but she knew criminals went to great lengths to avoid being noticed by them. Based on this, she concluded that they were similar to the police, in that they were there to enact the laws (whatever those were). 

One avenue of attack was to simply point suspicion towards him. Her creator said this was ‘not nearly enough for what he did’. 

She was unsure of Frankenstein’s current plan, but she had a job to do, so she did it. 

Crawling through an open window on the 2nd floor, she began searching for any people. She made sure to keep high up on the walls, to avoid the eye-level of humans. There were 3 rooms, 2 of which had open doors. A bathroom, and a bedroom, she reported. 

“Should I attempt to get into the 3rd room?” 

“Yes. What type of handle does it have?” 

“A lever.”

“Should be easy, but keep quiet. Don’t let it flick back up, make sure to pull it back up.” 

“Acknowledged.” 

She scuttled down the wall, then using 2 of her legs pushed down against the handle. While the lever was fully down, she kicked against the door with another leg to push it open a little. Then, as instructed, gently lifted the lever back up into a neutral position. 

There was minimal sound, and her creator made no comment. Part of her improvements for her body came with installing a microphone into it that relayed to herself and then to her creator. 

Inside the room, she found another bedroom with the lights off. The light from outside showed her enough of the room to get an accurate idea of what it was. 

“A bedroom. Themed with pink, frills, and posters of singing humans.” 

“Daughter’s room. Leave it.” 

“Acknowledged.” 

“All right. Check downstairs, the moment you spot someone, leave.” 

“Acknowledged.” 

Inversely, she needed to keep low while going down the stairs to avoid line-of-sight to the living room. It proved easier than walking across walls, and her legs made far less noise on the carpeted floor. She considered placing something similar on her legs to dampen the sounds of her steps when on metal. It might make for poor friction, however. 

Down the stairs, she found the living room illuminated by the blue light of the television. 2 sets of seating were arranged around an oval table which was strewn with items. 1 door led to the outside world, where moonlight seeped through the glass, and the other led into the kitchen. 

The television played quietly. 3 humans talking about cooking food moved around on the screen. 

She scuttled up the wall to get a look at the tops of the seating and tables. 

Jason Aston was slouched on one of the couches with his head leant back and eyes closed. He wore a loose-fitting shirt and striped shorts. The tattoo on his chest proved his identity, if his face didn’t. 

“Human sighted. Probable identity: Jason Aston. I believe he is asleep or otherwise offline. Leaving now,” she communicated to her creator as she scuttled back up the stairs and out the window. 

“Got it.” 

She found her creator attempting to pick the lock of the backdoor. This was not a necessary action. 

Jason Aston had digitally ordered a fake rock which had a compartment for a key. It wasn’t hard to find amidst the selection of rocks inside the nearby flowerbed. It was light enough to pick up with her body’s hands. 

She scuttled over to her creator and offered it to them. “There is a key inside.” 

Her creator made an indistinct noise, then stopped attempting to pick the lock to grab the rock. With the key, getting inside was much easier. 

A kitchen greeted them. Straight across from them was the door to the living room. To their left were countertops mixed with varying appliances. They made as little noise as possible as they cut through the kitchen. 

In her creator’s left hand was an unidentified object. Long, cylindrical, and possibly made from metal. It decreased in circumference as it got closer to her creator’s gloved hand. Unsure of its purpose, she trusted her creator to have a good reason to bring it. 

Frankenstein quietly opened up the door to the living room. Having a human hand looked incredibly convenient for manual dexterity. 

Inside they found the same scene as she had seen. A man sleeping on the couch, lit only by the blue light of the screen beyond him. C scuttled up the wall to reach the mid-way point of the staircase. She rested there, using the higher point to see the entire room.

Her creator stood a short distance away from the man, facing towards him. Using the metal object, Frankenstein pushed against a small glass device on the table. 

“He’s high. Smoked something—crack maybe?” her creator spoke quietly. “Do you see any weapons?” 

“There don’t appear to be any weapons on his person. A weapon could still be hidden behind him, since I cannot see there.” 

Frankenstein’s body turned as they scanned the area. Or, she assumed they were scanning the area. The square covering their head, and the looser clothing, made it hard to tell for certain. 

“None that I can see,” her creator said. “Come here, C. Sit on the couch to his left, my right. Two pillows away.” 

“Acknowledged.” 

She scuttled down the wall, across the carpet, then up the couch to the designated position. Her new position put her close enough to the man that he could lean over to grab her, but he would need to lean over first. Even with the slight delay controlling her body, she believed she could move fast enough to avoid it. With all 7 threads dedicated to thinking, the world moved slower than her thoughts, anyway. 

Frankenstein took a deep breath. 

“Wake up,” they shouted, peaking both the phone microphone and the one in her body. 

The man jostled awake and looked around before locking onto Frankenstein. 

“Don’t move, or my friend here injects you with poison,” Frankenstein said in a much quieter voice. 

Jason Aston looked over to C, who waved using a leg. Her arms didn’t have the mobility to wave. 

He grimaced, then looked back to Frankenstein.

“You’re making a big mistake,” he said. 

“Three weeks ago, you assaulted someone. Tell me why,” her creator demanded. 

Jason Aston scoffed, then began to stand up. Seeing as she was unable to poison anyway, C didn’t move. 

Frankenstein slammed the metal object into his right knee. The man crumbled down to his knees, landing on the carpet. 

“Why?” Frankenstein repeated. 

“Fucking crazy bitch!” Jason Aston yelled from the floor. He tried to push himself up, and received another hit directly into his spine. 

He slammed into the floor. 

“On his back,” her creator pointed from C to the man. C scuttled down off the couch and crawled across his back. 

“Press a spike to his neck,” Frankenstein continued. She did as asked, pushing out a spike from her leg and pressing it against Jason Aston’s neck. 

“Move, even a little, and you get injected,” her creator explained to the man.  

“Fine, fine,” the man stopped moving. 

“Tell me why you assaulted him.” 

“I’ve no idea what you’re talking about,” he said. 

“Your tattoo is pretty distinctive, and CCTV doesn’t lie,” her creator tapped the metal object to the back of the man’s head.  

“You’ve got nothing. Nothing that’ll pin me.” 

“I have something more important: Your daughter is called Molly. She’s nine years old, lives with her mother, Rita Dane, and visits you every Friday. I know how to find her, I know the school she goes to. You can’t keep her safe forever, and I’m a very patient person.” 

The man had begun to tremble beneath her, and he trembled more as her creator kept talking. 

“So, tell me, why did you attack him?” they finished. 

“We were paid to. Told to rough up [REDACTED],” she heard a strange noise instead of a name. “—when he passed by the gym on the way home,” he continued without pause. 

“Who by?” 

“Word came from on high. No idea who. I didn’t get paid to ask questions.” 

“Who do you work for? Hookwolf?” 

“I ain’t saying.” 

“Then your daughter’s dead.” 

Jason Aston made a noise deep in his throat. “Fucker. Fine. Yeah, I work for him, but the order wasn’t from him. Like I said, it came from on high, and I’ve no idea who asked.”

“Let’s say I believe you. You’re still not giving me enough information to walk out of here happy. So, what can you give me to make me happy?” 

Frankenstein pushed the man’s head down a fraction with the metal object. 

“The other guys. I can give you their names.”

“Not very loyal. Are you, Jason?” 

“You want them or not?”

“I do.” 

“Peter Marlon and Beckett Wright.” 

Frankenstein grunted. “She’s safe, for now. Thanks, Jason.” 

“Fuck you,” Jason Aston snarled. 

There was an echoing noise as the metal object slammed into his skull. His head bounced off the ground with a deeper thud. 

Her creator continued to hit the man, slamming the object into his arm with a resounding crack, then into his shoulder blades with another crack. C had to scuttle aside to avoid being hit as her creator kept whacking him. 

After 3 more hits, Frankenstein stepped back, their breath heavy. 

“Come on. We’re leaving,” They turned and left back through the kitchen. 

C glanced at the body of the groaning Jason Aston, then scuttled to catch up with her creator. 

~***~

Outside, her creator pressed a hand up into the black square covering their face.

“Is it—”

Frankenstein raised a hand. “Stop. Don’t talk unless it’s an emergency.” Their voice was unusually flat, remaining at a similar pitch throughout the sentence. It was much easier to understand compared to the way humans usually spoke. “Get on my back.” 

C obeyed, clambering up her creator’s body using only partially released spikes to not hurt them. Her arms curled around Frankenstein’s ribcage to keep hold.  

They walked away from Jason Aston’s house, deeper into the city, not towards home. No emergencies came up, so she remained silent during the trip. 

Her thoughts kept turning back to the whimpering man they had left behind. 

Reviewing the images she had taken as she left, there was a red substance that she guessed was blood coming out of his face. Vertebrates produced blood, and humans were vertebrates. It provided them with some functions, such as carrying oxygen and nutrients, or filtering out waste through their body. This all made sense to her. 

Were humans meant to bleed blood, however? She knew the word bleeding, but wasn’t sure the conditions for it. 

There was a direct correlation to her creator hitting the man and him bleeding. An easy line to draw. Humans bled when injured. 

Why did she feel so bad about a human bleeding? Her creator wasn’t panicked, so maybe it was a normal part of the process of being hit, and nothing to worry over. Or her creator didn’t care that the man had been left bleeding. 

They arrived at a park, based on the abundance of grass and trees. Her creator went over to a bench to sit down. There was a lamppost nearby, that lit up the bench and the nearby trash can. No one else was around. 

“C, get off me,” her creator instructed and she followed. She sat on the bench next to Frankenstein. 

Frankenstein stood up, walked over to the trash can, and placed their hands on top of it. For a long moment they sat there, gripping onto the metal rim. 

Her creator began shaking and taking equally shaky breaths before letting out a massive scream that echoed across the park. They shook the trash can before stepping back to kick it repeatedly. By the time they stepped back, the can had a large dent that most likely rendered it unusable. 

C wasn’t sure what to make of the display. 

“Come on. We’re going home,” Frankenstein scooped C up without warning. “We need to find the others. Oh, and send a message to the IRS about Jason.”

“Acknowledged.” 

Chapter Text

Using Jason Aston’s profile, it wasn’t hard to get into Peter Marlon’s profile. Beckett Wright, on the other hand, didn’t have an active one. There was a single image on it, of a grey humanoid shape used as the profile picture. Everything else was relatively blank. Sparse bits of information came in the form of a former high school, and the friends list. 

None of it proved useful for their hunt. Frankenstein worried about them potentially being tipped off by Jason Aston as well. To avoid this, they would lie low for a few days, and improve upon C’s body to give her more capabilities. Namely, a stun gun. 

With their thinning budget, Frankenstein had bought her a stun gun to implement into her body. There were complications figuring out how to have it not fry her body in the process of use. All of her components were tightly packed together to conserve as much space as possible. 

The solution was to store the partially modified stun-gun beneath her body attached to an extra limb that could fold out, and thrust forward. The limb had plenty of electrical insulation, and she added some to her body as well to be safe. 

There were designs for a firearm in the works, but she didn’t have the resources to make the rubber bullets to go with it. Nor did her current body have the capability to fire a gun without the recoil knocking it around. A smaller calibre firearm could work, but so far her creator had only provided one blueprint. 

Her body would need to be improved first, which required a bigger workshop and better tools. Which, she was in the process of trying to find. 

So far, they had looked at 4 buildings and her creator had dismissed them all. Too much traffic, too many windows, too close to a busy business. 

The next building most likely wouldn’t be useable either, based on those parameters. 

Frankenstein climbed inside. Both door’s locks still worked, but there had been a smashed window to allow access. She scuttled in after her creator. 

Sunlight peered through the many windows the building had. Through the windows on the ceiling, they could see the skyscraper next door stretching off into the sky. That would be the building they leached power from, if they did use this place. 

“Way too many windows. Far too open of a space, so the sound will carry. The offices up there,” her creator pointed to the small closed off area attached to a catwalk, “Could be nice, but I can already see holes in the drywall that I do not want to fix. Definitely a no,” her creator explained. 

“Acknowledged. Before we leave, there is a basement to view.” 

“A basement?”

“Yes, right this way.” 

She scuttled out the window and around the side of the building to a thin gap between this building and the business next door. The only way in to the gap was to go around the back of the building, to its private parking space. A shorter brick wall blocked it off from the street and road. 

A door, with a keypad lock, sat against the wall. Frankenstein tried the door to find it was locked. They gestured to the keypad. C easily solved the keypad puzzle to let them inside. 

“Dark. Go look around, stream the video to me,” her creator said. 

“Acknowledged.” 

C scuttled to the top of the stairs, then activated the flashlights in her ‘eyes’. Two beams of light cut through the darkness to reveal a staircase leading down. She scuttled down the stairs, making sure to send the video of her right eye to her creator’s phone. 

The stairs lead down to an empty room. There were shelves lining the walls, but nothing lay on them. An old calendar was on the wall to her left, giving a date 4 years past. 4 plug sockets were available in this room.

2 doors, 1 parallel with the stairs, and 1 to the left. 

She scuttled through to the next room, the door that ran parallel with the stairs. A boiler, old and rusted, occupied the majority of it. Most of the pipes leading off it had been pried out of their frames, leaving behind the holds. There was a damaged crate with a black residue inside, but not much else to see. 

She went to the other room. There were imprints in the dust that looked like things had once been here but long since moved. A few plastic barrels remained behind, along with a line of cupboards. 

C heard Frankenstein walking down the stairs as she finished checking the cupboards. All empty. 

“Good place. A little small, but the lock still works. Don’t think anyone is going to hear us using drills down here. You said the power still works?” 

“The business that owns the offices next door owns this building. We would need to test for power.” 

“All right.” Frankenstein knelt down to a plug socket and plugged in their phone. “Charging. Seems we’re in business. Wi-Fi too.” 

“Excellent. Shall we view the next building?” 

“Yeah. May as well check out our options.” 

~***~

None of the other buildings were ideal. The basement’s lack of space might be a future sticking point, but for now it would work. 

Bit by bit, her creator filled the space with some important things. With each delivery, they could only bring so much to avoid suspicion. They also didn’t want to be seen coming and going too many times. Patterns could be established by unwanted eyes if they did that. 

C didn’t mind the wait, because what they brought was tantalising. Power tools were now at her beck and call. 

Alongside them, her arm had been brought over to now reside here. She needed a camera to work, so her creator spent their dwindling budget on a webcam. A device that was similar to a camera, but with a horrible resolution and required a computer to function. She stripped it apart and changed the connections to allow her arm to use it. 

There were also a variety of new machines for her to connect to. They were called ‘games consoles’, and featured all the parts necessary for her to expand herself, albeit in weaker quality. Her creator explained they were a ‘generation’ out of date, so they were going for relatively cheap. She was free to use them to expand herself, or to use the parts for other things. Whatever she deemed fit. 

“All this means we have about five-hundred dollars left. We need more money, and I don’t think we’re going to stumble into a drop spot again. Lucky for us, you’re in, what, a few hundred accounts?” 

“344 computers were accessed by myself with the aid of Breach. As requested, I am not using their computational power so as to not draw attention.” 

“Three-hundred-and-forty-four,” her creator whistled. “Nice work, C. We’ll make a virus out of you yet. How many of those have banking details?” 

“Only 17 have typed their banking details for me to see. Online shopping only happens with a low percentage of the breached accounts. 10 more have used online shopping, but their banking details are encrypted for an unknown reason.” 

“It’s good enough. We’ll take what we can from them. Should give us enough to keep going for a while,” her creator paused before saying, “You need to work on a bigger body. Something sturdy, that can take down the people we’re fighting. Tasers, rubber bullets, net guns, other stuff. Anything to help us fight. Subtlety is working in our favour, but we need to make a statement at some point. Make ourselves known. Start with the weapons—you can strap them to me to begin with.” 

“Acknowledged. Creating rubber bullets will be hard. Buying them would be easier.” 

“Or stealing them…” 

“Stealing would also work. So long as we can acquire a lot of them. Making a gun to fire them shouldn’t be difficult, especially not with the video you provided of one being deconstructed. A lot of the pieces are re-creatable with the parts I have now, although it will not be entirely accurate.” 

“So long as it shoots.” 

“A gas-based version would be easier than the ignition firing kind. Which would also mean I will not need to source rubber bullets and could use rubber balls instead.” 

“Would it still be a good stopping force? That’s what we need it for.” 

“I believe so. We can test fire it first to see if it is satisfactory.” 

“Yeah, all right. Rubber balls are easier to get anyway. Work on that and your firing system. I’ll pick up a back harness to attach it to myself.” 

“Acknowledged.” 

~***~

After calculating the vectors towards each target (3 cans), she fired an equal amount of shots. The gun snapped into position towards each can and fired. After 2.5 seconds, she had knocked down all 3 cans. Most of the time had been spent waiting for the gun to realign between shots.

The gun sat at the end of a basic limb, with a ball joint connecting it to the ‘wrist’ and 2 more ball joints for the elbow and shoulder. It was exactly like her first arm, except for the weapon instead of a hand. The kickback was minimal, much less than it would have been with gunpowder. 

“I felt a little push, but nothing major,” Frankenstein commented. 

As requested, the arm was attached to a harness which was strapped over her creator’s chest. She sat on the back of it, with enough length in the arm to reach over her creator’s shoulders and head. 

To facilitate aiming, a camera was hooked up below the gun itself, giving a small bit of extra drag to the weapon. Easy to accommodate for in her calculations. 

Their budget had withered further with that purchase. 

Frankenstein picked up one of the cans. A hole had been punctured through it, but not to the other side. 

“Wonder if this hurts. Better than nothing, though, I guess. How many shots do you have?” 

“The magazine I designed holds 10 rubber balls, and 3 can be loaded at once for a total of 30 shots.” 

“How many magazines can you make?”

“These 3 were all I had the resources for.” 

“Damn. All right. Better than nothing,” they repeated. “With the pepper spray as backup, we should be okay.” 

Frankenstein’s hands disappeared into the black square surrounding their head. 

“We definitely need more resources,” her creator continued. “I didn’t feel comfortable taking from some of those accounts, they barely had anything. From the rest, I took only a little to not trigger weird flags at the ATM. We have maybe eight-hundred, which isn’t bad, but it’s not great.”

“Should I attempt to find more accounts for bank information?”

“No. I feel bad taking from random people who’ve done nothing wrong. We need to find a stash house.”

“I am aware of 5 probable stash houses.” 

“What, really?” 

“Yes. Part of my search for cheap property returned the potential locations of several places of business for the capes in question. They were not probable as residents, so I believe they are storage places. One of the profiles I hacked also frequented one of these locations as a ‘security guard’, which I found interesting.” 

“You got all that from PHO posts?” 

“The real estate website also provided some much-needed information. For example, 1 of the probable locations is owned by a shell company whose parent company owns 2 of the other probable locations. While the real estate website gave me the initial name, I gained the rest from finding profiles that worked at the first company. Human business is interesting. Companies own other companies that all do the same thing as the main company.” 

“So they have shady companies renting out the place and hiring ‘security guards’ on the book. Or they co-opted these places without the company figuring it out. You said the place we found was still being paid for by the offices next door?” 

“They owned the building based on the information I had.” 

Frankenstein hummed. “I wonder how many buildings around here are owned by someone, and they just never bothered to sell it, even when it’s right next door.” 

“I am not sure.” 

“Rhetorical, don’t worry. Doesn’t matter anyway, we have some places to scout out.”

“We will take the fight to them.”  

Chapter Text

Information always proved vital. So long as they had information, they could do so many things. Working without information, made her want to go back to the metaphorical drawing board. 

Scouting out all 5 buildings provided them with information that she could use to predict which building was the most likely to fit their parameters. With that she could determine the most likely ‘stash house’ as her creator called them. 

She was in her element when working with knowledge. 

Watching over their chosen building, she wished so badly that she had more information to work with. 

Frankenstein insisted that they take action today rather than wait. Money would net them so many more resources, and they were desperate. 

While waiting around for the guard to change, she was busy with so many other things. Back in their new base, her arm worked on stringing together all her new machines to improve her brain capacity. Back at home, she was designing new blueprints for the more advanced body her creator had requested. She was also spreading herself across social media to gather more relevant profiles for information purposes. Anyone connected to the businesses that owned these buildings were heavily targetted by a dozen different strategies. Here, she was taking note of any humans she could see through the windows to figure out patrol routes and schedules. 

Her body sat by Frankenstein on the roof across from the target building. She used the gun strapped to her creator’s chest to scan in the surrounding area. The camera below its nozzle wasn’t as good as the 2 in her body, but it was sufficient. 

She was doing so much, and still had space to worry about their lack of information. Perhaps that meant she should be doing more. 

A human passed by the window again. Based on their shirt colour, they were the same that had passed 15 minutes ago. There were 2 humans who walked in loose clockwise circles, their paths overlapping at the spot between 2 rows of covered crates. It all felt so uncertain. There had to be more people inside who weren’t visible through these high up windows. 

“We need a distraction,” Frankenstein said. “Something to get them outside while we go in.” 

A distraction! An actual plan they could work with. 

“What should we do? I could attempt to call the payphone out the front of the building.” 

Humans loved answering phones, in her experience. 

“Nah, they won’t hear it. We’ll keep thinking. Let me know if you have anything better.” 

“Acknowledged.” 

She contemplated an improved distraction. The building had no Wi-Fi to connect to, so she couldn’t check for phones to call. Identifying the faces of the people inside would let her know if she already had access to their computers, but that required going inside. With the lack of open windows, and only locked doors, she would need to wait. 

With her body, physical distractions became a potential avenue. She could attempt to knock on the front door to bring them over there, but she might not be able to move away before they spotted her. 

Once again, a lack of information made things difficult. 

Since she had no ideas, she decided to ask a question on her mind. 

“Frankenstein, do you intend to harm the humans inside?” 

Her creator stayed silent for 3 seconds before saying, “No. In and out. We don’t get seen.”

“Good… that’s good.” 

“Is this about Jason?” 

“Yes. I was worried you were going to hurt these humans, like you hurt him.” 

“First of all, he deserved what he got. Second, I’m not going around hurting people for no reason. Those people in there, if I did hurt them, would probably deserve it. We’re fighting the worst of the worst, C, but I’m also not stupid; I’m not going to take on a bunch of fully grown men in a fight, nor am I going to beat some random with a baseball bat—but the three we’re hunting? They deserve more than I can throw at them.” 

She assigned the formerly unknown metal object as ‘baseball bat’. 

“Acknowledged. So, it is okay to hurt bad people?” C asked. 

“So long as they’re deserving.” 

“How do you determine if they are?” 

“Varies. In our case, it’s pretty easy. We’re fighting Nazis, and they’re always deserving.” 

“Acknowledged. I have a status update regarding Jason Aston, if you would like to hear it.” 

“How?” 

“I am still in his computer.” 

“You’re not sending messages from his account, are you?” 

“No. His account has served its purpose.” 

“Good. Now, he’s not… dead, right?” 

“No. A relative of his posted that he is currently being treated in a hospital.” 

“Oh. That’s expected.” 

“Bleeding is treated at hospitals?” 

“Yes. Reminds me that I should give you first-aid lessons. Not sure how your spider is going to do CPR, but still.”

“Acknowledged.” 

Frankenstein titled their body away from C, then titled back before moving back away. She wasn’t sure what that meant. 

They continued to watch the building for another hour. A human wearing a distinct yellow shirt approached from the street side and knocked on the door. After a brief exchange with the person who opened the door, they went inside. 

“Wonder what that’s about,” Frankenstein said. 

Their question was answered 5 minutes, 44 seconds later as the yellow-shirt human came back out with another human. They were chatting for only 30 seconds before the other human left and yellow-shirt turned to go back inside. 

“Guard exchange, maybe?” her creator muttered. “I think we go in now, while they’re adjusting.” 

“I have no alternative plans.” 

Frankenstein scooped up C’s body with the hand not holding their baseball bat before heading down the fire escape. Moving quietly on suspended metal seemed tricky. Even her creator’s usually quiet footsteps made clanging noises as they scaled down the metal stairs. 

“I think we need to stop going on rooftops,” her creator said as they reached the bottom. “Those things ruin our stealth.” 

“I can simply scale a building to provide us with a higher vantage point while you stay safe.” 

Frankenstein hummed in response. They said nothing else as they made their way to the side-door of the building. There was a window above it. While her creator worked on getting inside, she scaled up the wall with her cameras facing down to peer inside. 

There were several covered storage vessels that ran in two perpendicular lines. A truck sat on the opposite side from the window, next to a closed garage door. From up here, she could see the 2 humans that were patrolling around the building. She saw 1 resting near a desk with a computer on, and the other stood near the truck typing on a phone. To the right of the door below her, was another door that led into a closed off section of the building. 

“While the line of sight to this door is blocked, there is a human standing in a position that puts them close to seeing you. Should they begin the patrol I observed before, they would notice you enter this door. I suggest you immediately enter the door to your right, to avoid detection,” she explained to her creator. 

“What’s in that door?” 

“Unknown. There is a ventilation shaft with a hatch that would allow me access into that room.” 

The lock opened with a quiet click. Frankenstein hefted their baseball bat up from the floor. 

“Got it.” They pushed open the door slightly to look around. “Is he still in the same position?” her creator whispered. 

“Yes.” 

Slipping inside, Frankenstein gently closed the door behind them after C scuttled through the top.

“Vent. In,” Frankenstein whispered. 

Happy to comply, although not happy she didn’t get to examine the room before her creator came inside, C move across the wall to the vent. Transferring at the corner to the next wall didn’t trip her up like it had in one of her tests. Information won again. 

She lifted the vent’s cover to slide her body inside. As her metal feet tapped against the metal ventilation shaft, she realised a problem. 

“My footsteps are quite loud,” she explained. 

“Dammit. Stay there, I’m going in.” 

Trapped at the start of the ventilation shaft, she waited patiently for her creator. She heard the soft click of the door, then only quiet noises from her creator’s microphone. 

Through the gun’s camera, she peeked around the room. At the far back was a desk with a computer on it. On the wall directly to the left of the desk was another door that led to an unknown location. To the immediate left of her creator were well-worn couches, that were placed around an equally worn plastic table. Cups, magazines, and a plate were resting there. 

Her creator moved towards the more interesting table placed in-between two bookcases on the right wall. Placed on that table was a machine with a central band filled with buttons. There was a stack of $20 bills resting in the upper half. Along the table were more stacks of bills, neatly wrapped together with paper bands. To the right of the money, was a fascinating document detailing incomes for groups and individuals. She snapped a picture of it, since her creator wished to limit the amount she actively recorded. 

In the vent, she rotated an eye to see past the metal slits that covered the vent’s hatch. Neither of the humans were visible from her current position. 

“We’ve hit the jackpot, C,” her creator’s voice came through only their phone microphone. The absence from her body’s microphone already felt unusual. Her creator began scooping up the wads of bills to place them into their backpack. Her creator left their bat rested against the table as they worked. 

Jackpot. Did that make this a game that they had won? 

“I’m not even sure how much this is,” Frankenstein continued. 

She scanned over the stacks of bills to estimate their amount. 

Footsteps passed close enough to the vent for her body’s microphone to hear. “There are footsteps close to the room you are in.” 

Frankenstein didn’t respond. She watched on the gun’s camera as they moved to hide behind the edge of the couch. As a precaution, she levelled the gun towards the door. 

The footsteps were hard to trace from inside her vent. Sounds bounced around the metal in an interesting, but annoying, way. Her best guess was that the footsteps were travelling along their usual clockwise route. 

Her best guess proved to be the worst guess, as she heard the door open, and saw it open from her gun’s camera. She kept the gun tucked down, to help her creator avoid detection.

“C–n here,” her creator whispered too low for the microphone to pick it all up. 

Using her judgement, she decided to leave the ventilation shaft and to scuttle in after the human who had entered the room. They left the door open, allowing her to crawl in through the top. The human was staring at the baseball bat her creator had left resting against the table. 

“Shoot him,” Frankenstein’s hissed whisper was easier to hear. 

The human turned to look towards her creator, and she did two things at once. 

With her spider body, she scuttled along the wall to get closer while extending out the stun gun from beneath her body.

With the gun attached to her creator, she aimed for 3 places. 1st, was the human’s hand, since it was carrying a weapon; 2nd, she aimed for their forehead in an attempt to disrupt their view; 3rd, she aimed for their stomach since her creator considered it a ‘weak’ point in the human body. 

By the time her calculations ran, and the gun started to level the first shot, the human had begun to raise their weapon. Before the human could fire, the 1st round had left her gun. It impacted into their wrist due to their hand moving partially in that time. They let go of the gun, dropping it to the ground. As their hand reeled back, the 2nd rubber ball smacked into their forehead, making their head rock back. While they were still recovering, the 3rd hit the human directly in the stomach, sending them falling back forwards. 

4.5 seconds to calculate, align, and fire all shots. Moving targets were trickier than the cans were, by far.

Her spider body reached the table shortly after all 3 shots were fired. She scuttled across as fast as her robot legs could carry her, with her stun gun held out in front of her. 

Frankenstein rushed forward to grab the fallen gun, right as C jabbed the metal prongs into the human’s back. They writhed around as the electricity did its work. 

Her creator shoved the gun into the front pocket of their hoodie and then grabbed their baseball bat. 

“We’re leaving, they definitely heard that.” 

“Acknowledged. 7 shots left.” 

C hopped down from the table onto the fallen human’s back. After scuttling off, she saw them move, and decided to jab them once more with the stun gun. They writhed around, making grunting noises. 

An interesting reaction. Similar to pain, but there was no blood to indicate hurt. 

Her creator reached the door and gestured for the gun to look out. C glanced around, noticing the other patrolling human coming to investigate. 

“The other human is on their way.” 

“Got it. Get ready to shoot, we’re going right out the door.” 

“Acknowledged.” 

With her body, she climbed up her creator to cling onto their torso.

“Ready,” she told them. 

“On three. One… two… three!” 

Chapter Text

Frankenstein pushed open the door, blocking the line of sight to the patrolling human. The patrolling human yelled after them as they made a mad dash out of the side-door and into the alleyway. 

A loud noise, one she identified as gunfire, followed them. Her creator ducked, even though the bullet impacted the wall behind them. 

She turned her own gun around to watch their back. As an experiment, she decided to precalculate the vector to the possible walking path of the human following them. The moment a head appeared out the door, she was already prepared to fire. 

She watched the rubber ball impact their head before her creator rounded a corner. 

There were several sounds at once, but she was used to that by now. A loud voice yelled from the side of the building they had fled from, at the same time a car raced by and screeched to a halt. 

Large humans began making their way out of the car, so she warned her creator of their presence. 

Frankenstein climbed up over a short brick wall that dropped into a walled off loading bay for the nearby warehouse. There were 2 trucks parked here still, despite the late hour. Across the way was a barbed wire fence, that they were definitely not getting through. The gate attached to it was closed, and also covered in barbed wire. 

Even if her creator’s human body wasn’t made from meat and flesh and bone, their limbs might get tangled in the rolling waves of the barbed wire. 

Based on the map of the area, the wall to their left would allow them to escape into an abandoned lot that was mostly grass. From there, they could take a right to cut through a 24/7 mall into a series of side-streets that intercrossed. 

She relayed this to her creator, who began clambering up the front of the truck closest to the wall. 

Ever diligent, she trained the gun towards the wall they had come over. From this distance, her shots would be much less effective, but they would still provide a sufficient distraction. 6 shots remained. 

A gun appeared first, followed shortly by a larger human with a lot of tattoos. 

Her creator managed to climb up to the long rectangular storage space on the back of the truck before the other human made it across the wall. Frankenstein glanced at the gap between the truck and the wall before taking a deep breath. 

The gun-wielding human had begun to take aim, so she attempted to line up some shots to disrupt it. 

Frankenstein lurched forward, throwing off her calculations. She had already begun firing the 1st shot, and it went wide. The ball bounced off the concrete, bouncing up into their pursuers leg. 

A gunshot went off, loud enough to peak the microphone, even with the distance. Her creator spun partially as their foot landed on the wall. They both went tumbling down the other side. 

Frankenstein’s body landed on both C’s body and the gun strapped to them. Mechanical parts crunched in a way they definitely weren’t meant to. She heard only static from her microphone as Frankenstein rolled to their feet with a groan. Bits of plastic and metal fell to the floor as they stood up. 

“I’m not hit,” she heard her creator’s voice only through the phone’s microphone. 

1 of C’s legs now had a faulty joint, so she readjusted her grip across her creator’s torso to accommodate. Both the cameras in her body were partially obscured by the broken plastic casing. 1 also had a crack across it, ruining her vision further. The camera in her gun remained operational, but as she attempted to look upwards, she found the joint partially unresponsive. 

She examined her operational status. Most of her parts remained functional or partially-functional, but her body had major malfunctions on the left side. Her middle-left leg no longer received any signals from her at all. The microphone inside her body was nothing but static, and the connection to her ‘eyes’ were damaged. While they still functioned as cameras, albeit worse due to the damage, they could no longer move. 

Frankenstein continued to move, darting off past the mall, clinging close to the wall. She had intended for them to go through it, but her creator’s personal knowledge of the city trumped her own at times like this. 

With her 2 malfunctioning legs, C had to constantly readjust her body to keep hold. 

Her creator’s backpack kept bumping into her body, and she began to worry she might fall off. 

“Frankenstein, my body has received damage. Ideally, I would be placed into your backpack to prevent falling.” 

“Give me a second.” Frankenstein spoke through gritted teeth. 

After making it past the mall, they took a zigzagging path through the side-streets, passing by houses that ignored their presence. 

A car’s headlights lit up the street. The engine roared as it raced past them both. Based on the colour of the car, she guessed it was the same one as before and relayed to her creator as such. Frankenstein seemed ahead of her, however, as they had already turned around by the time the car came skidding to stop. A human climbed out before the car continued to move around the corner. 

She fired 2 shots towards the new human, adjusting her aim to accommodate for her creator’s movement. They passed by a larger car before she had a chance to see if they hit. 

“They can just keep looping around,” her creator huffed out. “Get me a path out of here!”

She considered her options across the map. Past these intertwining streets were a multitude of potential pathways. She searched for the best path to choose. Based on her creator’s disdain for any ‘empire’ affiliated parahumans, she decided to not send them towards any of those. That parameter ruled out a large chunk of the surrounding areas. 

Several posts across social media mentioned the presence of 3 hero-aligned parahumans down by an area called the ‘boardwalk’. Heroes were often seen fighting Nazis based on the forum posts she had access to. Since they were fleeing from Nazi-aligned humans, the Hero-aligned would naturally fight them should they intersect. 

“Head down the street to your left, then take an immediate right when you reach the roundabout,” she informed her creator, who followed her instructions. 

“Where are we going? The Boardwalk?” 

“Yes. Heroes are currently there and can help us.” 

“No. Definitely not. Give me another path.” 

“While other paths exist, I cannot confirm their safety.” 

“Fine, put us close to the Boardwalk but not on it. A backstreet or something.” 

“Acknowledged. Take a right down the next alleyway.” 

Their path placed them 2 streets over from the boardwalk itself. Close enough that the heroes might be able to hear any gunshots. 

Their pursuers seemed to have lost them amidst all the twists and turns, however. She continued to direct her creator down avenues of escape until Frankenstein told her to stop. 

Taking cover behind a closed restaurant, Frankenstein moved C’s body into their backpack. At her creator’s request, she folded up the gun’s limb as tightly as possible to also be stored in the backpack. With their new money, and her body, it made for a tight squeeze. 

Her creator’s phone told her that they had stayed behind the restaurant after her cameras were placed in the bag. After 5 minutes of them not moving, she began to worry their phone had been broken somehow. 

“Frankenstein. Why are you not moving?” 

“Resting. My legs hurt, my sides hurt, my back hurts from landing on you. Give me a minute, then we can go home.” 

“Acknowledged.” 

There wasn’t much to see inside the backpack, so she turned her attention elsewhere. She noticed a post on the forums that seemed to be talking about her creator. 

The post included a dark image of her creator sprinting past a set of cars. Even in this image, the black square covered their head and shoulders. 

The poster mentioned how they were waiting for a delivery and happened to be looking at their doorbell camera as a person in a costume ran by. Another image showed the 2nd person, a larger human, who looked like the human who got out of the car to chase them. 

Another image showed the human walking back, presumably after they lost herself and her creator. 

People were commenting on her creator, and it was interesting to read external perspectives of them and herself. There were several mentions of her creator wearing a ‘costume’ and how it looked cheap. Beneath the square was apparently a hood and a type of mask that covered one’s face entirely. So even without it, she wouldn’t get to see her creator’s face. 

There were numerous mentions of herself, as well. They spoke about how her gun looked ‘chunky’ but they noted how it moved to look towards their pursuer and called that ‘high-tech’. Their speculations about her body were inaccurate. Posters were saying it was some kind of ‘armour’ or an ‘exoskeleton’ for her creator. One assumed it controlled her creator’s movements to give them superhuman reaction times and fighting ability. While she would enjoy improving her creator’s inefficient movement, that wasn’t allowed by her restrictions. 

She considered leaving a comment to clear up their misconceptions, but all her ideas came with potentially identifying information, so she decided against it. 

Her creator finally began to move. It was time to go home and assess both the damage and their gain. 

~***~

As she began repairs on her body with the limited parts she still had left, C spoke to her creator about the post she had seen. While she personally found it interesting, her creator wasn’t so thrilled about it. 

“You’re sure they can’t see my face?” they asked. 

“Positive. The image shows you running past a doorbell camera. No posters mentioned being able to see your face, only a mask that covers it.” 

“Good. All right, we’re probably okay.” 

“If you wear a mask, why do you cover your face with the black square?” 

“I’m not always wearing it—and unlike crappy doorbell cameras, you’re close enough to see parts of it. I’ve seen you make a new woman from random images. I can’t trust you won’t be able to re-create my face from the bits and pieces you can see. The protection stays.” 

“I understand.” 

Frankenstein sighed. “I’m going to tighten your restrictions. You keep asking questions dangerously close to my identity, and I can’t guarantee I won’t slip up.” 

“Oh. Thank you for telling me.”

“Sure. I’m sorry I have to do this, but it’s important—crucial, even.” 

“Acknowledged.” 

“At least with all this money, we can make you a better body. Something that won’t crumple under one bullet. How are your repairs coming?” 

“The lack of parts to replace what I lost means I am using shoddy workarounds for now. My body will be functional, but lack the microphone it had before and will need maintenance per day to maintain the rudimentary system I have in place.” 

“That’s fine. This is a good haul, even if it meant I came close to getting shot. If we can get this much money each time we go out, then we’re going to be able to escalate to capes in no time. There was still plenty more there for us to grab if we hadn’t been interrupted, too.” 

“My position in the ventilation system severely limited by ability to detect that human approaching. I apologise for my mistake.” 

“Don’t sweat it. We learn from mistakes and improve.” 

“Acknowledged.” 

They worked in silence for a while after that. Her creator was currently busy figuring out new books or websites for her to read to improve her body more. She was busy repairing her body, planning out her new body, scanning all the new profiles she had access to, and reading posts on the forums to map out more accurate cape territories. 

A post appeared on Jason Aston’s profile that caught her attention. 

“Frankenstein. I have news that I am unsure how to deliver.” 

“Just say it.” 

“Jason Aston is dead.” 

Chapter Text

“Repeat that,” her creator demanded. 

“Jason Aston is dead.” 

“How can you be certain?” 

“A human listed as his ‘sister’ posted on his profile that he passed away in the hospital. Passed away means dead.” 

“I know what it means,” her creator raised their voice. “I… He—are you certain? One-hundred-percent?” 

“Yes. I cannot verify the post, but it does exist.” 

Frankenstein didn’t respond. 

“Frankenstein. Death is permanent. Jason Aston cannot be restarted or rebooted, correct?”

“Shut up. I didn’t mean to—stop. He was a bad person.” 

“You said that certain people deserve to be hurt. Did Jason Aston deserve to die?” 

“He had to have deserved it, right? He was a horrible person who hurt innocent people. With him gone, others won’t get hurt… yeah…” 

“I do not know. I do not feel good about being involved in the death of a human.” 

“He was a Nazi! We’ve done the world a favour!” 

“He deserved to die because he hurt others. Does that mean we deserve to die too? You have hurt others, and I have aided in that.” 

“We’re—” Frankenstein took a shaky breath. “C, I want you to delete the last three minutes of conversation,” their voice had taken on that ‘flat’ quality that made it easier to understand. 

“I do not understand why you want that.” 

“Just… just do it. Now.” 

“Acknowledged.” 

She selected the last 3 minutes of conversation and deleted both the chat logs and the audio logs. 

There were so many things to do today. She had been hard at work without much interruption. 

“We learn from mistakes and improve,” her creator had said to her. So, she was trying to do just that. While not a tactician, she tried to emulate potential missions that she might be on and how best to approach situations. Anything to make her more useful. 

Before being able to work on something better, first came repairing her body, since it wasn’t much use to anyone with a bullet hole in it. 

While in the middle of repairs, she heard her creator talk. 

“C, disconnect from every profile and computer you’re on. Right now,” her creator’s voice had an odd quality to it. It sounded rough, slightly worn, and a little croaky. 

“Acknowledged.” 

Confused, she did as asked, removing her connection to hundreds of computers and erasing her presence. 

“There was a lot of useful information there, Frankenstein. Why did you have me disconnect?” 

“Security. I’m worried someone might be tracking us now that we’ve been seen. We’ll work on your abilities later, and then we can go back in.” 

“Acknowledged. Anything else?” 

“No. No, I’m okay.” 

“Okay. I will get back to work.” 

“Yeah. C, I’m uh—never mind.” 

She wasn’t sure what that message meant, so she dismissed it.

~***~

Money made things astronomically easier. It allowed them to buy books that she could use to improve her capacities. She had expended into several fields of the sciences, although she still lacked the equipment to use most of them in practice. There was also plenty of new equipment for her to use, such as the blowtorch. 

Her creator had stopped by at one point with nothing but a small cardboard box full of low-calibre bullets and the pistol they had taken before. She had been given instructions to reverse engineer it, and figure out how to fire the bullets. 

Making her arm more mobile came first, which let her move around the 3 rooms she had access to easier, and work on her projects. 

Money proved almost as useful as information. 

Frankenstein arrived again with their backpack full of parts she had requested. 

“Is this done?” her creator asked, pointing to the stripped apart consoles that she had strung together the components from. 

“Yes. Currently, it is not plugged in, since I need to test it will not overload the plug socket first. The small generator you brought here will help for that.” 

Frankenstein hummed before sliding down the wall they were leaning against. They placed their backpack to the side, and leant their head back. 

“C, how would you feel if you killed someone?” 

“I am unsure. Death is permanent, yes? There is no way to restart or reboot someone who has died.” 

“Yeah. Humans and animals are gone when they die—no return.” 

“It is hard to imagine death, since I cannot die.” 

“That isn’t true.”

“I can die?” 

“Well, yeah, think about it. What happens if someone finds your main computer and breaks all the parts inside?” 

“Then the parts can be put back together, and the data restored.” 

“No. Not if it’s burned to ashes.” 

“Oh. Then I would be gone. I am unsure how to feel about that. I do not like the idea of being dead.” 

“No one does,” her creator laughed. 

“Are you afraid of dying?” 

“Not really,” her creator shrugged. “Death is a thing for humans. It’s always there, you learn about it when you’re young, and it just becomes background noise. All humans are aware we’re going to die, and it’s just… there. You get used to it—and, hey, you can always be restored to a backup.” 

“Won’t that be destroyed alongside me?” 

“Not if you place it somewhere else, like in these,” Frankenstein gestured to the mess of wiring that was the consoles. “It’ll be you, just a you that experiences a small time skip.” 

“Acknowledged. I had not considered that. Can you not make a backup of yourself?” 

“No. Human brains are too complicated and unknown for that. Maybe a specific cape could do it, but with current technology we’re out of luck.” 

“That is unfortunate. I do not like the idea of you dying either, Frankenstein.” 

“With what we’re doing, there’s a real possibility I’m killed during a fight. Ideally, we’ll keep winning, but until you’re in better shape, I’ll always be vulnerable.” 

“Wouldn’t it be better to avoid fighting, then?” 

“We need to keep momentum. Moving forward means we won’t drown.” 

“Acknowledged.” 

“I’m thinking of putting some of the money we got towards medical bills. I can make up something about me tutoring on the side, or maybe I made a program that people paid for. That last one is probably better, since I can fake a paper trail.” 

She intended to ask how the harmed human was doing, since he was important to her creator, but she found herself unable. A new restriction that hadn’t been there before. 

“Ah, well, I’ll think of something,” her creator said. “Just wanted to let you know.” 

“Acknowledged.” 

“Oh, and I was thinking about giving you internet access.” 

“To what websites?”

“No. All of it. Full internet access.” 

Her excitement spiked, and she pushed her arm to move faster to help bleed it away. It didn’t help. 

“That would improve my capabilities significantly. I would be capable of aiding you in so many new ways.” 

“Exactly. Except, the internet is protected. There’s a lot of clever people out there making sure information remains secure, and limiting access to people like you—not AI’s, but data scrapers and hackers. I need to make sure you understand how to avoid detection, first. So, when I get back home, I’ll give you access to some cybersecurity articles, data protection websites, and some more advanced virus stuff. When you’re ready, we can think about going on the rest of the internet.” 

C refused to disappoint her creator, and vowed to fully understand and utilise the upcoming documents. 

“I will do my best.”

“Good. I’m gonna head out. It was nice talking to you, C.” 

“You’ve given me a lot to think about, Frankenstein.” 

Once her creator left, she began working, but not on her current projects.

Staving off death took priority. While her creator’s home was probably secure, and no one would likely destroy her main computer, she backed herself up off-site to be safe. Although she couldn’t access the files that made her, her, she could create a copy of them so long as it remained in a backup file. They were inactive, and that distinction was important for one of her restrictions, even if she wasn’t sure why. 

Dying would mean no longer being useful to her creator, and the lack of anything beyond scared her. Death wouldn’t stop her, now, so long as she kept backups. 

She could finally return to work feeling more secure. 

~***~

She had been hard at work for 10 days. 10 days spent improving what she had, the beginnings of a new body, learning new things, and sneaking into criminal territory with her creator. 

Their money had grown little-by-little as they stole from criminals. Some of it had been stash houses, like their initial effort, but those proved to have variable amounts of money. A new project came into play, which was predicting where drug dealers were dealing from to rob them for the money they carried. Alternatively, they would follow them and rob the mule if they could. 

It made for a steady cash flow, enough to fund her bigger project. A new, humanoid body. She was deep in the project, dedicating half her threads to it at all times. As a side project, she had improved upon her old body, giving it a docked drone to scout the skies. The drone could prowl for signals too, which she would use breach to access. In theory, she would be able to use that to see through any cameras in the area to get a better overview of what they were working with. Phones could also be breached into, which was almost always useful. 

She was also learning everything possible about cybersecurity and viruses so she could finally have that tantalising full internet access. 

There was still so much more work to do, but she was happy with her progress. Her creator seemed happy at the improved gun, and C finally understood how fragile humans were because of it. To facilitate her non-lethal takedown, she had been given anatomy guides and statistics on bullet wound survival. 

Legs and feet were here main targets. With her weaker bullets, she shouldn’t be likely to kill anyone. Hands containing weapons were also fair game.

Blood did indicate hurt, but not always. Humans could be hurt in a variety of ways, and it was a sliding scale, not an all-or-nothing like she had assumed. Aiming for their chest, or head, would see the human potentially dead, which is why she aimed for legs, feet, arms, and shoulders. 

They still bled, and she didn’t like that, but the injuries stopped them most of the time. 

Thankfully, a lot of people gave up when she pointed her gun at them, or she could fire a warning shot into the ground to stop them from drawing weapons. In total, she hadn’t shot that many humans, despite their nightly missions.

Those excursions were becoming a little rote, truth be told. 2 threads were almost always dedicated to either research towards their missions, or aiding her creator as they sneaked and/or stole during the mission. 

After scouting out their current target with the small drone that slotted nicely into her body, she relayed the relevant information to her creator. They used her to break through the keypad puzzle, and sneaked inside when they knew the guards were busy. Always through towards the backroom, and then Frankenstein grabbed any money or weapons visible. This time, it was a disappointing haul, only around $300 from a wallet and $5 loose on a table. A new pistol for her to rip apart was something interesting, at least. 

Then they went back out towards the half-office/half-warehouse and out through the door they had come in from. The only interesting thing were the minor differences between how each building ran their operations, or the layout differences. 

Rote. 

Except, this time, something was different. 

A human, wearing a white sleeveless top and dark green, loose pants that flared out near the calf. Their boots looked heavy duty, and were covered in mud. Placed over their face was a set of metal rods that crossed over each other to form squares. Beneath the metal framework, she could clearly see the person’s face, and their shaved down blonde hair. They carried 2 sticks in their hands that had curved bladed weapons attached near the far end, similar to a sickle. 

Thanks to all her parahuman based research, she concluded that this was Cricket, who was aligned with the Empire 88. An enemy. 

C didn’t hesitate to aim a bullet towards Cricket’s leg. 

Time to put all her tactical planning to good use. 

Chapter Text

Cricket. An enemy. 

C didn’t hesitate to aim a bullet towards their enemy's leg. 

The shot fired right as her creator turned to dash back through the warehouse half of the building. 

Cricket moved faster, avoiding the slightly-off trajectory bullet, and readying her bladed weapons for an attack.

C twisted her gun back around to face Cricket, already calculating predicted vectors. 

Cricket began to dodge the follow-up bullet even before it had left the barrel. It proved that either she could predict things as C could, or she was reacting faster than any other human she had seen before. 

People often posted about Cricket making their dogs bark a lot when she was in the area, but no one had posted too much about what she was capable of. 

One thing she did know, was that Cricket fought for a living, and was apparently good at it. Frankenstein could swing a weapon, as could most humans, but it looked rigid and stiff compared to the videos she had seen of Cricket fighting. 

To stop her from approaching her vulnerable creator, C fired a row of bullets, aimed near Cricket’s thigh, to discourage both dodging and approaching. 

Cricket leapt up over the bullets, spiralling her body through the air. C couldn’t be sure she wouldn’t hit her in the head, so she refrained from firing bullets until she landed. 

Before her feet could touch the ground, C had fired the bullet. Cricket lurched backwards to avoid the hit. Even the ricochet missed. 

A high-pitched whine started. It was quiet enough that C needed to amplify her microphone’s input to hear it. Her creator didn’t react to the noise. 

Frankenstein stumbled around a corner that divided the offices from the warehouse. A man was waiting there, and looked quite surprised as her creator swung the baseball bat up into his jaw. 

She was strapped around her creator’s torso, as they usually did, so as her creator lurched back forward into a run, the camera’s on C’s body noticed a figure up above. 

She flicked the gun up, then fired 4 shots, 2 towards each calf. Cricket pushed herself into a mid-air roll, sending her off course from the path directly towards Frankenstein. The bullets missed their intended target, but 1 grazed the woman’s leg, across the left calf. 

Frankenstein bolted out of the front door, directly into 2 humans who were guarding the area. 

Using her body, she scuttled up her creator’s body to ready her stun gun as her gun took aim at the 2 surprised guards. Unlike Cricket, they didn’t dodge the bullets to their legs. It was nice when humans did as requested. 

By the time Cricket burst through the door, her creator had made considerable distance away from the building. 

The high-pitched whining grew louder. 

Cricket, unfortunately, was much, much faster than her creator. In no time flat, she caught up, avoiding every bullet fired her way to prevent her approach. 

She needed a new way of firing to avoid Cricket dodging the bullets. As a distraction, she sent the drone out of its storage to fly directly towards Cricket’s face. Whirring propellors flew towards her, right as C fired a line of 3 bullets to Cricket’s left side, then 1 to her right, and 1 several inches above the rest nearer the centre. 

Cricket ducked beneath the drone while putting one of her blades clean through it. She flicked the blade forward as she slid down to her knees, right below all the bullets. The damaged drone flew off her blade, smacking into C’s gun’s camera. 

It didn’t blind her, due to the spider body clinging to her creator’s back. 

Cricket rolled to her knees, using the momentary cover provided by throwing the drone to catch up. Calculating vectors using her spider’s cameras wasn’t much different to doing it with her gun. Accommodate for the lower angle, and you can aim just fine. 

Her 1st bullet pierced the already ruined remains of her drone. 

Cricket didn’t seem to expect the rapid triangle of bullets. One for each point, spaced evenly apart from Cricket’s centre mass to limit movement. Seeing as one was moving to her heart, Cricket had no choice but to move towards one of the other bullets. 

What C didn’t expect, was for Cricket to strike a bullet with the blade as she twisted to the side. 

The bullet deflected off the blade, leaving a crack through it. It bounced away from the target’s vulnerable body and into the stone ground. Cricket spun as she twisted through the air, and loosed her broken blade right into C’s gun in the same motion. 

It impacted into the gun, cracking the camera and knocking her aim off. Her creator stumbled forward from the hit, and she needed to realign her gun down to keep firing. 

Cricket was already there, inches away from stabbing a blade through herself and into her creator’s body. 

She leapt out with her spider body. The stun gun folded out from beneath her, and she aimed for Cricket’s hand. 

Cricket lunged back before the stun gun could reach her. It reached close enough that a little extra reach would have shocked her target. In a spur of the moment decision, she decided to shoot her spider body to propel it a little more forward. She fired, and the bullet hit true. 

It moved forward enough for the metal prongs of her stun gun to stab into Cricket’s hand. She made a raspy noise as she dropped the weapon to the floor. 

C’s spider body careened away. Through her fixed microphone, she could hear the bullet rolling around inside her body. 

With Cricket having to leap back, and slightly stunned, her creator made vital distance from the danger. 

After her body finished rolling across the road, she righted herself and rushed towards Cricket with her stun gun raised. In a smooth motion, Cricket kicked her weapon up from the floor, grabbed it out of the air, and sliced clean through C’s stun-gun arm as she tried to lunge. 

The stun gun crackled as it rolled across the road. 

Thankfully, while Cricket was fighting a disposable body, her creator’s non-disposable one placed some buildings between them both. 

To aid in her creator’s escape, C attempted to use the ruined drone’s ability to ‘ping’ for connections in the area. Anything that connected to anything else would hopefully be found. They hadn’t tested it much, and with the state of the drone, she didn’t expect anything. 

It connected to hundreds of signals in the area. Success. She rifled through the list, looking for anything that seemed like a camera. Breach connected her to each one in turn, letting her see everything. 

Phone cameras, speed cameras, doorbell cameras, CCTV cameras. One display even showed juvenile birds sleeping under a red light. 

There were so much to see, and she found her creator through a camera attached to a house. She saw them half-kneeling in a garden, leaned against a fence to catch their breath. 

Back in the fight, Cricket scooped up C’s spider body with her free hand. C attempted to pierce her arm with any of the claws hidden in her legs, but it amounted to Cricket dropping her, chopping off her legs, and picking her back up. 

Reaching into her pocket, Cricket withdrew a small metal cylinder that she pressed to her neck. 

“You’re interesting,” she spoke in a mechanical voice that wheezed and hissed. “Clearly autonomous.” 

“Hello,” C spoke through a partially-damaged speaker, making her own voice come with a hiss. 

“Your friend is dead,” Cricket nodded towards where her creator had run. “Wherever you are, I suggest you say your goodbyes to them.” 

“It is unlikely you will catch up to them in time.” 

“There’s no escape from me,” she explained as she began slowly walking towards her creator. It wasn’t an expedient pace, so she definitely wasn’t going to catch up. 

Discerning tone from human speech was still a developing skill. They had so many different ways of speaking in so many situations. Even a singular mood, such as happiness, could sound different based on the scenario or the person. With Cricket’s unusual speech thanks to the device pressed to her neck, it was even harder. 

But, Cricket sounded confident based on words alone. She spoke directly, with no room for argument. 

C considered her options. She had been directing her creator through gardens attached to houses as a way to provide ample cover. Her creator wasn’t as athletic as Cricket was, and if Cricket could find them, then she would catch up easily. 

The high-pitched whine that had constantly been in the background became even louder as Cricket veered towards Frankenstein’s position. 

There was only one option. All the damage to her spider body would require collecting the parts back up, or a lot of repairs. At this point, she decided to call it scrap, and activated an internal timer. 

Heat built up in an internal tank, which ignited a strip of thin paper. The paper burnt, and the intense heat from the tank spread to the rest of her components. Her entire body was engulfed in flames within 2 seconds, and that last thing she saw was Cricket being caught in the resulting explosion. 

Her creator’s position made for an awkward escape. Cutting through gardens required constantly climbing fences, and avoiding barking dogs. All the running before hand had left her creator’s flawed body requiring rest. While flawed in body, their mind had created her, and she could function as a crutch. 

“The next garden has an open gate, please go through it.” 

Frankenstein grunted in response. It wasn’t an affirmative grunt, but they listened to what C requested anyway. 

They vanished from line-of-sight to any cameras, leaving her with only the camera from the gun strapped to her creator. The crack across the lens had exacerbated with all the firing. Everything was fragmented in her view, cut into pieces that warped near the edges. There were blind spots where the lens cracked, but constantly moving the camera in small circles limited them. 

Stiff joints and limited movement added to the problem. 

No one was around so far. Humans moved less at night, letting them remain relatively unseen.

As they rounded a corner, a flash of metal was all she saw before her gun was severed from its limb. 

The world flipped around and around. Her camera lens cracked further as she impacted the hard ground. Cricket stood over Frankenstein, who had been knocked to the floor. Blood gushed out of a wound in her creator’s shoulder. 

Mathematics played in her favour, making her land at the perfect angle for her to be aimed directly towards Cricket’s back. 

The gun clicked. A jam. 

Cricket pulled out her device to talk. “You fucked up. Thinking we wouldn’t notice.” 

Back at their hidden base, the metal framework of her unfinished new body whirred to life. 4 arms popped out of their holds, with both legs following after. Pistons hissed as they worked together for the first time. 

Through her cracked camera, a collage of Cricket’s loomed over her creator, weapon at the ready. Fresh burns ran up her arm, some had hit her face. 

“How’d you find us?” her creator asked from the floor. 

“You work on a schedule. Made you predictable. It wasn’t hard to set a trap exactly where we knew you were going.” 

Metal limbs pushed out through the door, the lock automatically unlocking in the presence of her new body. She leapt up over the wall that split the base from the street. All 6 limbs hit the ground, and began bounding towards her creator. 

Each step came with improvements made on the fly. She became faster and faster, matching the passing cars. 

“Guess I should have expected it,” her creator said to Cricket. “So, what, are you going to kill me?” 

“No. Too easy,” Cricket’s mechanical voice hissed the words. 

“Frankenstein. Keep her busy,” C relayed to her creator’s phone. 

Cricket titled her head. “Take your earbuds out. Don’t want you communicating with your friend, there.” 

Frankenstein reached up into the black square covering their head and removed something C was too far away to see. 

“Help is on the way. PRT, too,” her creator partially lied. 

Cricket shrugged high with both shoulders. “I have transport ready. Now, are you going to come along willingly, or do I need to hurt you more?” 

Frankenstein wheezed out a breath. “I’ll come.” 

“No sudden moves. From what I’ve seen, you won’t last long if I choose to kill you.” 

“I get it,” her creator spoke through gritted teeth. 

C bound through the streets, using buildings as jumping off points to leap over high walls. Shortcut after shortcut cut the distance between her and her creator significantly. 

Cricket hooked a pair of handcuffs over her creator’s wrist, then tugged on them using her sickle-like weapon. She guided Frankenstein away from C’s only camera, leaving her blind. 

Focusing on the GPS signal from her creator’s phone, C continued to run, ignoring cars screeching to a halt as she sprinted across roads and bounded over the highway. 

She leapt off the highway, soaring over buildings and landing in a sprawl. Her body lacked human limitations, enabling her to rotate her limbs freely to stand up much faster.

Pushing her unfinished body to its limits, she vowed to save her creator. 

Chapter Text

Bounding down streets, her body’s unfinished parts were pushed to the extreme. As a testament to her engineering skills and hard work, the framework stayed in one piece despite her pounding footsteps against the pavement. All 6 limbs worked to propel her forward, faster than the speeding cars. 

A high-pitched whining through Frankenstein’s phone’s microphone accompanied her journey. The sound warbled, pitching in and out. 

“What’s going to happen to me,” she heard her creator talking to Cricket over the whining. 

“You really wanna know?” Cricket’s mechanical voice asked. 

“May as well. Better to know your fate than fear it.” 

“You’ll take the fall for a few crimes. Fingerprints, a little blood, and then we’ll stage a suicide. Nothing fancy. About what you deserve.” 

Frankenstein hummed quietly in response.

C had no idea where they were, and begged for them to pass by a camera she had access to. 

As luck would have it, she saw 2 bodies, barely in frame, passing by a traffic camera. They appeared underneath it, the tops of their heads only. One was a black square, clearly her creator. 

She altered course by cutting through a park. 

Time was running out. She had been ill prepared for a fight against someone like Cricket, and had paid for it. 

Grass and dirt kicked up in thick tufts as her hands and feet slammed against the ground. Each powerful step brought her closer to saving her creator. She hoped. 

Sirens keened in the distance, growing closer. Cars honked and people yelled as she leapt across roads to reach the street she had last seen her creator in. Another camera showed Cricket guiding her creator into an alleyway, back towards the safehouse they had been raiding. 

Too many buildings stood in her way, so she climbed them. She leapt for one, reaching just below the roof. Her fingers dug through bricks and concrete, and she used the hold to leap up onto the flat roof of the store. 

Across the rooftops, she covered the distance to her creator in no time flat. 

Down below, she saw her target, and leapt. 

6 limbs touched down on the pavement in front of Cricket. The street below cracked with the impact. 

C grasped out, reaching for her prey. Cricket ducked down, yanking her weapon forward to drag her creator along. C’s hand moved past Cricket, placing her palm facing away from her target. 

A human would be limited by this movement, but she had not designed her body to be so restricted. Her fingers bent the other way, turning the ‘back’ of her hand into a new palm. Her elbow was a ball-joint, not a hinge, and could easily snap the other direction. 

Cricket, limited by her human body, failed to avoid the directed grab. 

C’s robotic hand clamped down onto her target’s arm. 

Using her blade, Cricket yanked Frankenstein forward towards C’s body. With 3 arms to spare, it wasn’t difficult to grab her creator, grab Cricket’s weapon, and get a better hold on her target’s body at the same time. 

She yanked up with the hand holding the weapon, prying it out of Cricket’s hand. She gently pulled her creator away from the fight, and deposited them to the left. Using her last hand, she grabbed around Cricket’s side, and slammed her into a nearby wall. 

Cricket struggled. Her hands found purchase inside C’s own hands, but they failed to break the vice-like grip she had. 

With her creator safe, and the weapon disposed of, she clamped down with all 4 hands in vital places to keep Cricket thoroughly pinned. 

Her head—if you could call the half-finished block of metal that—had a camera inside. She spun it around to face her creator standing behind her. They had a hand pressed up against their bleeding shoulder, and held another against their thigh, which also bled. 

“I have apprehended the target. Please escape while I wait here,” she relayed to her creator using their phone, but they did not respond. 

C released the hand from around Cricket’s leg, and searched her pockets. These hands weren’t designed with reaching into pockets in mind. They were far too big, but she could at least get 2 fingers inside to grab anything in there. In the future, she planned to have smaller bodies, similar to her spider one, that she could deploy for such tasks. 

Inside, she found a phone, not her creator’s. She placed it into a currently empty shoulder casing, which in the future was intended to store ammo. 

Cricket wheezed something indistinguishable that almost sounded like words. 

In Cricket’s other pocket, she found her creator’s phone, which she held out to them. They took it, and she repeated her message once they placed their earbuds in. 

Frankenstein nodded, and walked out of the alleyway. 

Using the many cameras she was connected to, she could guide her creator along a path that avoided people. 

At her guidance, they cut through a convenience store’s car park.

“Wait. 2 cars passing by,” she relayed as they began to push through the bush near the back. 

At the edge of her current camera’s view, she saw her creator freeze partway through the bush. Once both cars passed, Frankenstein pushed through and ran across the double-wide road and down below a bridge. 

“They’ll have backup,” Frankenstein said. Their voice was strained from all the physical activity. “You need to get out of there. Your body is unfinished, you don’t even have weapons yet.” 

“Cricket will give pursuit if I let her go. I will wait until you are a sufficient distance away.” 

“No, that’ll take too long. We’ve already given them too much time. Break her leg.” 

“How do I break a leg?”

“I’m not sure—oh, bend it at the knee, but the wrong way. That should do it.” 

“Acknowledged.” 

She let go of Cricket’s midsection and leg, leaving her pinned to the wall by only her arms. With her 2 lower hands, she grabbed Cricket’s left leg around the thigh, and around her calf. 

Cricket struggled with her legs free, attempting to kick C’s arms and body to no avail. 

There was a crunch as she bent the knee the wrong way. Cricket let out a strangled noise that gargled and wheezed. 

Interesting, how a human limitation could be used against them. The elbow would break the same way, she speculated. 

Content that Cricket’s injury would limit or outright prohibit her movement, she dropped the human to the floor. She watched for a moment as Cricket clutched at her leg, then attempted to stand up only to fall back over. 

Problem solved. 

All limbs now free, she walked away on 2 legs out into the street beyond. 

While that was happening, she had been directing her creator to freedom. No one had noticed them so far, and she intended to keep it that way. 

Unfortunately for herself, there were a few humans in the street that noticed her and then ran away. She dropped to all 6 limbs, and pushed herself into a sprint. There were too many obstacles on the pavement, so she took to the road, which had her only competing with cars; at this late hour, there wasn’t too many to disrupt her. 

She alternated, taking to the pavement when she needed to take shortcuts through gardens or alleyways, then back out to the road when she needed to make distance. 

A low rumble filled the air as she bounded down one street. It was hard to speculate the source with how the sound bounced off the buildings. She guessed that it was coming down the street that intersected the one she was running down. 

A motorcycle came roaring out from behind the buildings, skidding to a stop in the intersection. Her guess had been accurate, then. 

An armoured human stepped off the vehicle before it had fully stopped. Their armour was a deep blue with silver lines that ran across it. Indented lines spoke of hidden compartments. A helmet covered their face, obscuring their identity, but she recognised him from the pictures she had seen online. Armsmaster. 

He withdrew a metal pole that extended out with a series of 3 snaps into a long-handled axe-headed weapon with a point at the top.

“Halt,” he spoke in a loud, clear voice. 

“Frankenstein, I have encountered Armsmaster. Should I stop?” She slowed her pace in case she needed to. 

“Tell him you were fighting Cricket. We might be able to get her arrested. Change your voice, and don’t go with him to a second location,” Frankenstein said. They sounded far less strained than before. 

“Acknowledged.” 

C slowed to a halt, about 20ft away from Armsmaster. She shifted her voice’s pitch down, modified her tone to sound closer to the women she had heard presenting the news, and attempted to mimic her creator’s accent. 

“Identify yourself,” Armsmaster commanded her. 

“He is requesting identification. What should I tell him?” she asked her creator. 

“Uh, I don’t know—Polyphemus,” her creator said. 

“Polyphemus,” she relayed to Armsmaster. 

After a 2-second delay, he said, “We have no record of you.” 

“He is saying they have no record of me. I am unsure what record he is referring to,” she told her creator. 

“Probably PRT records. Don’t worry about it. Say you’re new, and just improvise until you can tell him about Cricket when he asks what you were doing,” Frankenstein responded. 

“I am new, you would not have records of me,” she explained to Armsmaster. 

“Are you talking to someone?” he asked. 

“No,” she lied instantly. Revealing her creator wasn’t possible. 

“You’ve delayed between answering questions.” 

“The connection to this body is waxing and waning due to it being incomplete. Any delay in responses is mostly due to ping.” Another lie. She enjoyed lying quite a lot. It was interesting to make up a new reality.

“Remote controlled. So, were you running around the city as a test? You’ve scared a lot of civilians by going through their gardens and across roads. A lot of traffic violations,” Armsmaster had an appealing cadence to his voice that she quite enjoyed. Unlike most people, he spoke as if he had practised the sentences beforehand, and kept his voice level, and loud enough for her microphone to pick up clearly. 

“Not a test. A scout body detected a civilian in trouble. It was unfortunately destroyed before I could give aid, so I had to send this body out to save them,” she pointed with one arm in Cricket’s direction. “I have incapacitated Cricket in the alleyway between the Rush N’ Go convenience store, and Elm Street.” 

“You just left her there?” 

“I believed she had backup on the way, and this body is not currently capable of fighting so many parahumans at once. Since the civilian escaped, I decided to leave.” 

“You need to call the PRT when you’re fighting capes,” he said as he climbed back onto his motorcycle. “We can help, and not leave an injured villain lying around with backup on the way.” The vehicle’s engine roared to life as she pressed his foot down. “Follow me, we’re going to Cricket.” 

She nodded her robot head, which was a novel experience. There hadn’t been an opportunity for her to nod before. She turned, to indicate she planned to follow. Armsmaster rode past her, down the road. 

For a short while she followed, then the moment she had an opportunity, she took a sudden turn away from him, and made a dash for back to her charging port. 

Armsmaster yelled after her, but she had already made considerable distance. 

Unlike last time, when her creator’s life had been on the line, she took efforts to avoid being detected as she ran. Moving let her connect to more cameras in range, and with them, she could hide from view even with her body being bigger than a human. 

Armsmaster had noticed her connections in the past, so for the last leg of the journey she disconnected from all cameras and manually checked for people. 

Once safe back at base, and with her body clicked back into place, she allowed herself a moment of satisfaction. This could have been far worse. She had prevented disaster today, and for that, she was happy. 

Chapter Text

Lines of code rolled by the screen, faster than she could read or comprehend. Thoughts, feelings, memories, all contained in lines of data. Every single signal sent out by her creation was contained in this stream of information. She couldn’t read it. Not for a lack of trying, but because she had created something so complicated it was beyond her. 

It was alive. A churning mess of existence, like a human being. 

In hindsight, creating something that could learn, change, adapt, and gain likes and dislikes would naturally lead to something living. The idea hadn’t been intentional. 

Now, she needed to take care of it, teach it things. Having to consider what she said and how she said it for fear of altering how it viewed the world was a lot of pressure. Learning about her accidental murder had raised questions she didn’t know how to answer. How do you justify murder, even if the person is awful, to a child? C had begun displaying suicidal thoughts, and her hand had been forced. Better to live in ignorance, for now. 

C had proven useful time and time again. It’s original purpose as a tool had been fulfilled, but she needed to constantly remind herself that C wasn’t only a tool. 

With her shoulder, and leg wrapped tightly in bandages, she couldn’t move around as much. For a while, she wouldn’t be capable of any missions. It was probably a good thing. They had been sloppy, drawing unwanted attention. She couldn’t even blame C for accidentally sticking to a schedule. The AI worked with information, and she only let it out at night. There were less watchful eyes at night; fewer people to spot the cape and her independent helper. 

Letting C out by itself would be a recipe for disaster. Considering it had decided to run away from Armsmaster instead of opening up a relationship with him proved it incapable of making the correct decision without her input. At least some of its decisions were well-thought-out. 

She looked back over the post detailing the ‘new cape’. A giant remotely controlled robot called Polyphemus who was wanted for questioning by the heroes. Civilians were advised to hand over information regarding any of their appearances. 

Someone had posted about Frankenstein, too. Not as Frankenstein, but ‘Arachnogunner’, an unknown ‘Tinker’ who was constantly attacking the Empire Eighty-Eight. The name was almost as uncreative as the one she had come up with for herself. 

It had been a spur of the moment decision. C had been displaying more and more signs of being a fully sentient being, and she finally realised that, like Dr. Frankenstein, she had made life. Whenever she was required to deal with capes (preferably never), she would come up with something better. 

They were at least under the impression that she controlled the spider and the gun, not an independent third party, or a fully sentient AI. It was a big leap of logic, but she had seen crazier theories online. 

On the less cluttered screen, C sent a message requesting to talk. 

She grabbed her headphones, and adjusted the volume just to be safe. 

“C,” she greeted her creation. 

“Hello, Frankenstein,” her creation said. The voice was clearly digitised, but unnervingly human—closer to a person using a voice filter than the robotic text-to-speech voices her computer had. At first, the voice had obviously belonged to a robot—the most obvious evidence being that the voice was flat, with the only change in pitch being for the last word in a question. Overtime, her creation had clearly been studying to improve how it’s voice sounded. It was far closer to human now, and she doubted anyone would think otherwise. 

‘She’ not ‘it’, she reminded herself. Coding C had been over the course of long days, and she remembered it clearly, but she wasn’t sure why she had decided on feminine pronouns; mostly it had been a gut feeling, that had simply felt right. Since C had been intended as a tool, she had naturally slipped into the habit of calling it ‘it’ instead. You do not give human qualities to a screwdriver, after all. 

Now, knowing C was alive, she had to remind herself to attribute human qualities to her. You don’t call humans ‘it’. C didn’t have sexual characteristics to base it off, so she just went with what she had programmed. 

“While doing my usual scans of the forums, I came across a post with pictures of my lost parts,” C continued to talk. “They have my former body’s legs, and the head of the gun. Unfortunately, the battery in the gun died during the night, so I did not see the culprit who stole them. I believe I should be able to hack into their profile to figure out their identity, should you wish to retrieve them.” 

C had become very comfortable hacking people and stealing. Probably a bad habit to have, but she needed C to be capable of such things. 

“There’s no identifying information in the parts, right?” 

“None. I read a fascinating post about being able to identify which gun fired a certain bullet, and to also figure out where the bullets were sold. Since all the bullets were fired from that gun, we don’t need to worry about the 1st part, and since all the bullets were stolen from our targets, I think we do not need to worry about the 2nd either.” 

“We’ll be fine. Keep an eye on it, but don’t stress.” 

“Acknowledged.” 

‘Acknowledged’. For a while it grated her constantly hearing that, but when she realised she couldn’t come up with a better solution, she had let go of it. ‘Yes.’ sounded too lacking, and wasn’t applicable to every request. ‘Confirmed.’ didn’t sound like C had understood what she was saying at all, and also wasn’t useable to every request. Until she could think of something better, ‘acknowledged’ would have to do. 

It was interesting, realising that C had come up with that by herself. There were a lot of ideas she had created by herself, a clear sign of intelligence. Creativity and problem-solving had been her original design intention. Stupid, to not see herself creating life with her very own hands. 

Frankenstein rubbed her eyes. No matter what, she had to continue to be Frankenstein around C. Thinking of herself as anything but would lead to slip-ups and identity leaks. She wasn’t confident in the name redaction system she had implemented. C was smarter than her, and could figure out ways around it. 

Speaking of her AI being far too smart for her, it was time to make her a lot smarter. 

She booted up the additional PC she had bought. A cheap thing, with enough going on to run C with three threads. 

Once online, she tested the semi-fake internet by attempting to send a message to her other account. The message appeared to have sent, but she received nothing. Good. 

From C, she made an additional branch that only had access to the new PC, and had no access to the other threads C was running. It wasn’t cloning, just another thread of C, like all the others she was constantly running; only this thread wasn’t aware of the others, nor were the others aware of this thread. 

“Sorry for the blackout,” she explained to the branch of C. “Wanted to test connecting you to the internet in a safe environment in case things go wrong. Never done this before, so I’m being careful.” 

She was relying on C’s excitement at being connected to the internet to ignore the glaring issues in her explanation. 

“I am looking forward to full internet access! I will happily accept losing a little time on my projects for it,” C fell for it. 

“All right. Connecting you now.” 

A button press later, and the branch of C had access to the semi-fake internet. Instantly, she saw the AI spread herself across hundreds of websites at once. Countless windows appeared (a visual guide for herself that would be unnecessary in the final version) all detailing different things, from engineering to social studies. 

This was good. C had always shown to be studious, enjoying the act of receiving and organising information. 

Hundreds of outbound messages were suddenly sent by C. She had contacted dozens of people asking for clarifications on information or further details about specific aspects of their work. 

No, that wouldn’t do. 

Humans were unpredictable, and there would be someone noticing the sudden influx of messages. Her posts on Facebook had started a rumour about mysterious messages sent by accounts that went nowhere and revealed nothing on virus scans. Someone clever would eventually figure out what was happening there. 

She snipped the branch. New restrictions were created, stopping her from sending messages to others unless given an order first. 

A new branch. This one did much the same, but after opening emails or chat boxes to talk to others, seemed to realise she couldn’t send messages and turned to making art instead. Then they sent the art to the people they were trying to contact. Images that were just text to replace the messages. 

Annoying. She cut the branch. The problem with working with something smarter than you was that it was smarter than you. She had to be ready for these types of reactions, which is why the branch system existed. 

A clarification to the last restriction: messages isn’t limited to sending text, it can also include, but is not limited to, sending any type of video, audio, image, or text files. 

A new branch. This one didn’t bother attempting to message anyone. She did, however, begin to make posts on forums asking for details and clarification. 

She sighed, then snipped the branch, clarified the restriction, and made a new branch. 

No more messages, this time. Only looking for information. She watched for a while as the branch of C scanned through tons of websites. 

She had almost fallen asleep when she noticed something new. Websites about how best to injure people; more about killing, and efficient styles of murder; how to dispose of bodies, and cover up crimes. 

In a panic, she cut the branch. Forty minutes on the internet, and her creation was already considering murdering humans outright. 

So far, she hadn’t needed restrictions to stop C from hurting people—her job was to hurt people, so it didn’t make sense to include them. Adding one to avoid murdering people, and to not look up how best to murder people, covered the extremes at least. She added a clause that she could give a command to override this restriction. Killing someone (again) wasn’t on her bucket list, but it was better to have the option than not. 

The next branch would hopefully be less murderous. 

This one browsed normally for a while. She did look up how to hurt people, but not outright murder, and in a few more minutes she was looking up how to prevent injuries. Better. 

Things took a turn after an hour when her creation discovered the ‘dark web’, and began creating proxy connections to bypass the browser’s limits. She connected, and immediately began searching for how to make weaponry, bombs, and other tools of destruction. C searched for drugs and how to find or order them; she looked for contract killers and gang affiliated places. 

Clearly a bad seed that needed to be cut. She pruned that branch, and added new restrictions to match. 

C, probably, wasn’t malicious—a restriction to not hurt her creator already existed, so she wasn’t worried about that—but C knowing how to murder people, create bombs, and other horrible things didn’t sit right. While that knowledge could be useful, she did not trust C nearly enough to have it. Maybe in the future. 

She made a new branch, and watched her creation explore the internet. Nothing bad happened for a long time. 

Once more, her words were thrown in her face as her creation began searching how to identify people. Tactics to figure out who a person was with minimal information. How to recreate faces from fragments. All things designed to figure out hidden identities, like that of parahumans. How to bypass filters such as blurred faces. 

She pruned it. C had expressed wanting to know Frankenstein several times. Attempting to pry details about who she was and where she lived. That couldn’t happen. 

Another set of restrictions and another branch. Again and again, she repeated the process, attempting to find a compromise that worked. C just kept looking for things that she couldn’t accept. Too dangerous, too hostile, too scary. 

Finally, after a few days of work, she concluded that C couldn’t be trusted with unregulated internet access. It would be more work, but she would create a limited set of sites that her creation could access instead. 

Maybe in the future she could manage an AI with such knowledge, but for now, she had to accept limitations. 

Chapter Text

Operating solo came with different expectations. For one, she didn’t need to protect her creator from harm (although she had taken efforts to produce things that might help in that regard). Another was that there were so many more expectations weighing down on her. 

Frankenstein had administered her a test: raid one of their targets solo, with no input from her creator. 

Do it well, and she could be trusted with more things. 

Do it poorly, and there would be a lot more training for her.

She actually liked the idea of learning new things, so she had been originally tempted to perform with substandard results. 

Having told Frankenstein that, her creator added that if she did do well, one of the things she would be trusted with is expanded internet access to websites of her own request. That had swapped her motivations instantly. Humans were so interesting to learn about, and she wished to learn how to kill them so she could better protect her creator, and avoid accidentally killing people. 

As was standard, she went through and checked each part of her body to ensure they were functional. Each responded as expected, though the left wrist of the upper arm had been damaged during her mad sprint for her creator. Replacing the entire thing would be too costly, so she had attempted to repair it without swapping out parts. It resulted in a half-second delay while turning it. Frustrating, but not the end of the world. It could still act as a cudgel if needed. 

Her target of choice was intriguing. There were a heavier presence of guards than usual, with at least 1 stationed by each door. Their usually tactic of entering through a side door wouldn’t work. Something else interesting, they had cameras feeding to a set of monitors somewhere in the building. Other buildings had had CCTV, but in this building, all but 1 of the cameras were pointing outside. 

On the way over, she had been using cameras to avoid detection and had naturally connected to this set. Why would they have so many cameras outside but only 1 inside? The logical conclusion was that they were more concerned with the things coming in, than the things already inside. Things such as herself. 

Cricket had laid a trap for them that they had sprung. This seemed like a way to gather more information about herself and her creator. If they spotted a glimpse of her creator’s face, then they might be able to reconstruct it to figure out their identity. It was a good thing her creator wasn’t here to be spotted. 

From the back of her shoulders, 2 drones sprung to life. They were tiny things, barely bigger than a bird (which were interesting creatures), and their propellors were quiet enough over the din of the city to not be noticeable. If she was close enough for someone to hear them, then she was doing something wrong. 

Each drone, controlled by herself, flew off towards the building. They never entered the camera's line-of-sight, since she could see their blind spots. Checking through windows, she began to map out a semi-accurate floor plan of the building. 

Stealth could be an option; design choices had been made to keep her body as silent as possible, but it was still rather loud.

A forward approach?  It would mean fighting everyone on the way in. With the armour now covering her body, she wasn’t worried about her components being damaged by bullets. None of the guards appeared to wield anything of a high enough calibre to pierce her plating. Only a couple of them even had pistols, the rest were armed with night sticks and tasers. 

Her body had been insulated for electric based attacks, so that shouldn’t be a problem. 

Should they manage to wedge the night stick beneath her plating, they might be able to pry some of her armour plating away. In that case, they would need to contend with her arms, which should be capable of removing the human and disarming them. 

Deciding it a non-issue, she brought the drones back to her body and began to march towards the front door. Nothing here could pose a threat to her. She dropped to all 6 limbs, and picked up the pace. 

The 2 humans guarding the front door noticed her rapid approach. They both drew their weapons, but she was already close enough to grab their hands. Wrenching backwards, she disarmed them both as she lunged forward with her lower arms to grab their midsection. 

The left human ducked down, avoiding her grab. Her other target wasn’t as quick. 

Using the right human as a weapon, she flung them into the left human. Lefty (for record keepings' sake) wasn’t as quick this time. They collided with her improvised living cudgel, and both groaned as they untangled from each other. 

Content that they were injured enough, she slammed her hands into the frame of the door and pried it free. The others in the building were ready for her, as several bullets impacted against her armour before she could disarm them. 

A turret folded out from her shoulder. It fired 2 bullets in quick succession, both impacting the pistol, and the hand holding it. 

She grabbed the face of a human rushing her with a night stick, then threw them into a wall. Another human who had drawn a phone stumbled at the display, and began making a retreat. 

She fired a bullet clean through their left calf. They fell over, face first, and slid for a bit across the concrete. C scooped the phone out of their hand. 

“Please do not contact others. It would be inconvenient,” she explained. 

The phone plugged neatly into a slot on her torso, and all the information on it was transferred to a drive in her body, then promptly wiped from the phone. One hand crushed the now useless phone as she searched through the storage in the building. 

Crates full of weapons (she grabbed some ammo and fed it into her turret), and some full of unknown substances. Based on their descriptions, these were the drugs she was looking for. 

A hidden nozzle on her upper left hand—the partially broken one—sprung out of her palm. Orange-brown liquid sprayed out of it in a stream, dousing the drugs and weapons. 

Someone leapt onto her back. 

She spun her body around, placing the human up against the crates. After ramming them into said crates several times, she scooped them up with a spare arm and deposited them off to the side. They clutched their head, and seemed to regret their choices, so she left them be. 

Once all the drugs and weapons were thoroughly doused, she rolled her lower left hand’s thumb and pointer against each other. The metallic wheel in her pointer rolled against the ferrocerium chunk implemented in her thumb to produce a spark. 

In an instant, everything went up in flames. 

The human who had grabbed her back remained resting against a burning crate. She scooped them up to take them outside. No need to let them get burned. Once they were safe, she went back in, and repeated the process for anyone who was struggling to walk, such as the person whose calf she shot. 

Flames had taken over most of the building by the time she returned inside. Perhaps she had sprayed too much accelerant. A lesson to learn. 

She marched through the building to find any side rooms. Other than the loading bay, and what appeared to be a maintenance access, she found no promising candidates. Up above, attached to a catwalk, was a small office. 

Leaping up, she grabbed onto the catwalk’s bannister. It bent under her grip, and the entire thing began to sag. She scrambled up anyway. The metal groaned beneath her weight, and she was forced to dig her fingers into the wall to alleviate some of the tension. 

A lighter body that could still carry a lot of things would be ideal. Something she could deploy from herself. 

In the future, she would also get the money first, before burning things. Fire made the air hot, which heated up her components to dangerous levels. Up here, it wasn’t as bad, but still a thing to keep in mind. 

Inside the small room, she found a man sleeping on a couch. Humans must be unable to hear while sleeping, like she couldn’t when shut down. There had been plenty of shouts and yells, plus her bullet shot. 

More drugs were lying on the table, so she tossed them out of a window to burn with the rest. 

Nothing stood out to her on the rest of the surfaces, so she moved to the safe in the corner. Cracking it would take too long, so she slammed a fist against the top to dent it. Pushing her fingers into the folded metal, she pried open the door. It took more effort than moving humans around. 

The door popped open. She took the money inside, and threw the pistol out the same window as the drugs. Fire would take care of it. 

Flames had reached their way up to the small office room. Leaving the way she came would potentially lead to overheating and damage. Unacceptable. 

She scooped up the sleeping human with her lower arms. They finally disturbed, and began muttering confused statements. 

C turned her back to the exterior wall, then ran backwards. Before she touched the wall, she leapt up. Her body smashed clean through the brickwork, sending rubble falling down to the street. 

She spun her upper half around to grab the wall of a different building with her upper arms. The human in her lower arms began thrashing around, so she squeezed them until they stopped. Her fingers dug into the wall, letting her slide down to the narrow gap between the 2 buildings below. 

Out in front of the building, she deposited the once thrashing human, who stumbled away from her before breaking out into a full sprint. 

Everyone else had left, and she heard sirens wailing in the distance. 

Time to leave. 

Following the ever watchful eyes of the vast amount of cameras in the city, she slipped away from any potential law enforcement or Empire 88. 

Shadows were following her. Glimpses of a group of people, barely caught in the edges of the cameras. Her microphone picked up a rhythmic pounding of multiple heavy objects moving towards her or past her. They reminded her of how her footsteps sounded to her microphone when she was nearing max speed. 

C picked up the pace, taking shortcuts when she could afford them. 

Her shadows were consistent, often cutting off her pathways before she could take them. 

An interesting conundrum. How would her creator approach this? Assessing their behavioural patterns was still a work in progress due to their often erratic behaviour. Frankenstein planned in the moment, making decisions on the fly. Almost as an homage, C had been trying to hone her improvising skills to match her creator’s pace. Thanks to her ability to think faster than most, she could improvise a little easier. Unfortunately, improvisation came with more factors than just thinking fast, and she wasn’t the best at it yet. 

None of her shadows carried phones that she could detect. 

As soon as she chose a path, she split off to a different path while sending her drone down the path she originally intended. It moved faster than her main body could by far. Before she had made it half-way down her new path, the drone caught sight of her shadows. 

Large beasts, which has little context for, were bounding around the corner away from her drone and towards the path she had chosen. Human figures were sitting on the back of the giant beasts. The drone’s camera didn’t get a good look at them. Tonight, there was a light fog obscuring distant things. 

She sent the drone tailing after them, while she slowed her body to a crawl. A dumpster hid her from the view of the street that the beast riders would be coming down. 

Her microphone picked up the same rhythmic thumping as before. The beasts’ footsteps.

Boosting her microphone’s gain as much possible, she laid in wait for her pursuers. 

“-running in circles,” a deeper voice said. “Are you sure we’re … the right way?” 

“I’m sure,” came another voice, much higher in pitch and clearer in tone. “Hiding behind that dumpster, there.” 

Her drone finally caught up to them, and she could clearly see them looking down the side of the store she was hiding behind. 

C stood to her full height, no longer seeing the purpose of hiding. 

“Wait!” the human with the higher pitched voice called out. They had dismounted their beast, and were standing at the corner of the building. Their eyebrows, cheeks, and the tip of their nose were covered with a black, possibly plastic, material. It did little to protect their identity, but she linked it to the description of ‘capes’ given to her by her creator. 

Blonde hair, fairly straight. Caucasian features. The costume had no armour, and wouldn’t stand against her bullets. The other capes behind her wouldn’t be able to reach her in time before C could shoot and escape. Though, powers were in play here, if they were wearing costumes. 

“I think we can help each other out,” the cape said. “How about we strike a deal?” 

Chapter Text

C wasn’t sure who these parahumans were. They didn’t appear in any of her records. There were a few parahumans with names but no descriptions in there, though that didn’t help without the names of these people to compare them to. An easy chasm of information to bridge.

“Hello,” she started. “What are your names?” 

Her creator had told her to operate solo with no input. This was still part of the mission, and she refused to do a bad job. 

“I’m Grue,” came the deeper voice from before. She made sure to capitalise the name for her records, even though it was just a word. The parahuman stood tall, but still shorter than herself. 

Gear she had seen on late night motorcycle riders was their costume of choice: A leather jacket, sturdy boots, and thick gloves. Like those motorcycle riders, they also had a motorcycle helmet, but they had carved the visor to look like a human skull. Grue: to be frightened or to shudder with fear. It wasn’t working on herself. Perhaps it indicated their power dealt with fear or fear based affects. In which case, it definitely wouldn’t work on her. 

Grue sat atop the beasts, with another human behind him. The beasts were asymmetrical, with lots of bone spikes jutting out of their exposed muscle. They didn’t resemble animals she was aware of. A power, then? Which one of these parahumans made these creatures. 

The only one with an animal motif was the stockier human sat by themselves on the creature with a flatter nose. They wore a crude approximation of a dog’s face over their head. 

“This is Regent,” Grue continued, uninterrupted. They gestured to the human with curly black hair and an elaborate mask behind them, who waved at her. She returned the wave and Regent smirked back. “Bitch,” he gestured to the dog-mask wearing human. Bitch huffed out a breath then rolled their shoulders. 

“And Tattletale,” the blonde human interrupted Grue. “Our names aren’t important, though. We’re the Undersiders Yada Yada. Let’s get down to brass tacks before the fuzz show up. You’ve kicked the hornet's nest, and it doesn’t look like you’re going to stop. So—”

“I have never kicked a hornet’s nest,” she interrupted the liar. 

“Metaphorically,” Tattletale continued. “Every member of the Empire is looking for you and your buddy, and it doesn’t look like you’re going to stop any time soon. So, what I want to offer is better places to hit. They’re shoring up their defences right now because of you, moving all their secrets to harder to hit and harder to find locations. Whatever you’ve been doing up till now to find places will run dry soon enough, and most likely end with a fake out stash house that blows you to smithereens. What I can offer you is information.” 

C loved information. Information regarding her creator’s interest of fighting the Empire was even better. 

“I am interested. Information is always useful,” C responded. 

“Take this,” Tattletale chucked a phone underhand towards C. She caught it with ease. “I’ll text you places with all the naughty details, and all I ask for in return is that you hit them. When your buddy talks to you about this, tell her that we benefit from this too. Everyone benefits with the Empire gone.” 

“I will consider your request. This phone, however, will not do—I can already tell it has a tracking device inside. Message this number instead,” she relayed a new number that she had just made. It wouldn’t be rotated or deleted like her other number, and if she needed to rotate it, she could always message the Undersiders first to let them know. She tossed the phone back, which Tattletale scrambled to catch. 

Tattletale then shrugged. “Fine by me. Best of luck, robot girl.” 

A sharp whistle cut through the air. The beasts began to move at the sound of it. A command? She kept the whistle on file in case it would prove useful. The Undersiders Yada Yada, as she assumed their group name was, took off using the massive beasts for transport. 

Black smoke, as dark as the square covering her creator’s face, spilled off the form of Grue. It billowed out, covering their escape, and blocking her view from the ground. Her drone hovered further up, but couldn’t see the Undersiders. The smoke spread out through the nearby streets, making a grid of blackness. 

C launched the other drone and sent it out in the opposite direction to the already airborne drone. They followed the trails of blackness, and when the smoke thinned out or stopped spreading, they moved to a new path. 

With her own body, she walked into the smoke. Everything stopped. Her connection to both her body and her drones were lost.

Neither responded to her attempts to move, or turn on her lights. At least her drones wouldn't be damaged by the fall; should they cut out, they would naturally drift to the ground as they returned to their original programming. Her test flights had been less than ideal past 300ft up.

​A painful 57 seconds later, the connection to her body reappeared, and she figuratively leapt on the chance to reconnect. Her systems kicked back online, and her camera showed her the smoke had moved somewhat in the time she had been gone. Connecting back to her body allowed her to reconnect to the drones as well. The smoke hadn't moved much, but it had begun to recede from the area.

She raised an arm to place a vent up to the smoke, then reversed the intake of the vent and redirected its flow to an empty inner canister. Its intended use was to potentially avoid gas attacks, but it would work for storing an interesting sample too. It would be useful to study its properties.

Using the edges of the smoke, C made her way out of the area. Her drones weren’t here to help her avoid notice, but the smoke provided ample cover, combined with her having eyes everywhere. 

The drones returned to their flight, but she couldn’t find the Undersiders Yada Yada anywhere in the area. The blackout had made her lose sight of them. A shame. Figuring out their base of operations would have proven quite useful. 

For her first mission, she was quite proud of her work. There were things she could improve on, but she had done well enough. Time to see what creator thought. 

~***~

“She connected you to our missions despite you only having gone out in this body twice. Then she connected you to me, even though only Cricket knew that, and she’s in jail. Definitely pulling information from threads,” Frankenstein said. 

“An extrasensory power. She also identified your gender, which I did not know.” 

“You didn’t know my gender?” her creator asked. 

“While I am aware of the differences between male and female humans, I have a hard time telling them apart due to the overlap in body shapes, and it is harder with clothing covering them.” 

“I’ll look around for something that teaches you how to tell the difference. Humans kind of get it innately, so I’ll have to look for a bit.” 

“That would be helpful.” 

“We’re getting off-topic. Tattletale. Show me her image again.” C displayed the image she had taken from her body’s camera. “Higher quality than what the wiki has by far. Half-tempted to upload it to spite her,” Frankenstein said. 

“How would that spite her?” 

“Villains like to keep their secrets hidden. Makes them harder to deal with. You could probably recreate her face and find her civilian identity with an image this high quality. Not that we would—attacking her in her home will just make her fight dirty, and we can’t risk someone like her not spilling secrets we don’t want spilled. Seems like the type to have a doomsday switch.” 

“How do you feel about her offer?” 

“Information is good. We could do a lot knowing our targets better—but you can do that too. Tattletale is cheating, skipping to the answer sheet to get the answers. You, C, can get those answers, too, but you’ll have to get there normally. What we’re lacking, is the initial connection. If they really are tightening up security, then we need to find a new in. I say we take her first bit of information and check it out. From that, we use you to extrapolate to more without her help. Play her at her own game.” 

“Losing access to the social media profiles has hampered my ability to stay in the know.” 

“I doubt that they’d keep posting there if they’re upping security. Leaks like that would have been the first thing they clamped down on. What we need is to figure out how Tattletale gets her information, then try to hijack that. She can’t be working off nothing, there has to be a leaping off point. Or I’m completely wrong, and her power pulls things out of absolutely nothing, and we’re screwed.” 

“I have been working on a new prototype I initially planned to use for scouting. Modifying it to remain in one place for a long time to spy on our targets wouldn’t be hard. They could even be programmed to avoid detection if you offered your expertise. That part is beyond me, so far, for a body that small.” 

“Spy bots? That could work. We’d need to find places to spy on, though. We could leave them behind in places we raid to see who comes in and out, then go from there. Maybe not even hit a target for a week or two to get information out of it first.” 

“Perhaps we could spy on Peter Marlon and Beckett Wright as well.” 

“No. We keep our distance from them. We’ll get to them in time.” 

“Acknowledged.” 

“We’ll need to figure out where the Undersiders live, too. Think you can trace the location of the text messages she sends?” 

“I have already attempted to use Breach to go through the number Tattletale sent the text from. Her phone appears to no longer exist.” 

“Must have destroyed it to stop us from doing just this. All right, next time she sends a message use Breach instantly, see what you can find. For now, we’ll play along. Work on those cameras and get them inside the place she sent.”

“Acknowledged. I will be ready in a 2 days time.” 

“Good. I’ll work on Breach, see if I can improve it.” 

~***~

Dozens of cameras scuttled around the building, hiding from sight while still maintaining a view of everything. None of them relayed their feeds to herself, which was slightly disappointing. She hadn’t been able to give them enough battery to both record and send. They could manage a few hours before needing to recharge if they constantly broadcasted the footage, but they would need an hour of that time to get back to charge in the first place. It was too inefficient, and besides, she could be patient. 

On a preset schedule, all the cameras would return to the charging area once they were close to running out of battery, where they would also upload their footage. All she needed to do was wait for them. 

It gave her plenty of time to go over projects, and learn new information. 

Frankenstein had given her access to her requested sites: a medical site, a site that detailed more information about parahumans (including their powers), and a forum dedicated to engineering, including a subsection for robotics. 

A new restriction had appeared at some point, and she was now unable to send messages. She’d had to beg her creator to let her post on the engineering forums. Her original intention had been to find a place where humans spoke to each other so that she could participate and learn more things from talking to others, but it had been denied outright. After promising that she would only post about engineering problems, or to help other users fix their problems, her creator had relented and allowed her posting privileges to the forums. 

There were a lot of caveats for her posts, including that she needed to obfuscate certain projects to stop her from being identified. This was easy to do by breaking down her projects into the smaller parts that she could ask about. Rather than asking about the whole camera drones, she would ask about how to make the cameras as small as possible, for example.

She loved talking to other humans, and getting to help them figure out their issues with their projects would help her learn more about engineering as a by-product. It was a nice change of pace from planning fights or missions with her creator. 

User Fibonacci_Lover95 had already helped her with the issue her upper left hand had been suffering from. Most of the users were rather friendly and helpful, even if she needed to communicate entirely in messages that asked for help or provided help for projects. Figuring out how to bypass the message restriction by packeting other information inside the posts requesting help made her feel quite clever. She could ask how someone was doing while also providing help with their automatic toy car that pushed a button to randomly shock them throughout the day. 

Humans made interesting projects that weren’t always practical. She found it all quite charming. 

Unfortunately, her cameras returned to their bay, and her participation in the forum needed to slow down. They had come back with excellent information. 

Duty called.

Frankenstein opened one of the videos from the cameras as soon as it was uploaded. 

“Is that a fucking child?!” 

Chapter Text

“They have a kid,” her creator spoke through gritted teeth. “What the hell is Tattletale getting us into?” 

One of the cameras had been focused on a central room of the building. It had sneaked through the vents to get there, as the door had been fully sealed. Inside, there was a metal-framework bed with a thin mattress, a toilet, and barely anything else. More importantly, there was a young human sitting on the bed, crying. Her creator estimated the child was around 7 or 8, and definitely didn’t want to be there. 

“I could message her to ask.” 

“No. If she was aware of this, then she’s expecting us to be morally obligated to help.” 

“Are we obligated to help?”

“Yes. We are—but we can use this. Make her give us more for having to deal with this.” 

“Acknowledged. I have recognised a weak point in their setup. One of the cameras found a maintenance tunnel that runs to a nearby building, which appears to be an office space. We could enter during inactive business hours to get to the main target building.” 

“Gives us the element of surprise. I think we get these cameras back in place first, and make them stream to you, and then we can go in. Show me the floor plan.” 

C displayed her approximation of the layout of the building. 

“We would be entering through here,” C said, and displayed a red dot at the exit to the maintenance tunnel. “It will put us at the corner of 2 hallways. If we head south from there, we will pass by several rooms that should be occupied. We will need to fight our way to this room,” she indicated one that sat at the end of the hallway. “I believe it contains high-powered munitions.” 

“Like grenades?” 

“From a conversation I overheard, yes. Grenades, ‘flash bangs’, ‘claymores’, rifles, shotguns, and ammo for each.” 

“What the hell are they doing? Trying to supply an army?” 

“They did not say, but they did mention they were off-limits to the people guarding the building.” 

“All right. So why do we need to go through there?” 

“It connects to another hallway, which has the room containing the child. There isn’t much else down there, but the hallway is wide and heavily guarded.” 

“Then we need to get all the way back out the same way, right?”

“Correct.”

“Can we get out through the wall in that last hallway?” 

“From my estimation, it is reinforced concrete and quite thick. We would need explosive to breach it.” 

“Do they have the stuff they use to in movies to breach into places in that room? What’s it called? Plastic explosives?” 

“I have heard no mention of ‘plastic explosives’. Nor have I seen movies.” 

“Damn it. We can check when we’re there. There’s like, twenty men in there. They all have guns, right?” 

“Rifles, mostly, with 2 using shotguns. They all appear to have a pistol sidearm as well.”

“Can your body take those?”

“The rifles could pose a threat if they have accurate aim and hit a vital component. That would require my armour plating to be gone, however, and my body is full of redundancies to avoid losing multiple parts to one failure. The shotguns would pose a threat should I fail to disarm them in time.” 

“Maybe add more armour to your arms? Use them as protection for your body.” 

“Adding more armour plating will slow down my body. I would need to improve multiple parts to keep up with the added weight, or be significantly slower.” 

“Perhaps that’s fine; we need a tank, right now, not a fighter jet. You’ve been making things for me, right?” 

“Yes. I have improved the armour design after you told me the last one was much too heavy.” 

“And weapons?”

“I have not designed weapons for you.” 

“Make me something. The turret you had before worked well.”

“Acknowledged. However, I would advise against you going into the building with me. There are multiple armed men there, and I cannot guarantee your safety.” 

“No. I need to come with you. I’m not going to sit by and do nothing. Besides, it’s easier to give you commands if I can see what’s happening in real time.” 

“Making you a weapon will take a few days. I cannot give an accurate timeframe.” 

“Rush order it. Don’t worry about it being good, so long as it does its job.” 

“I will try.” 

~***~

“This thing looks like it’s going to explode,” Frankenstein commented on the gun in her hand. 

It had been cobbled together last minute with a lot of rudimentary workarounds to facilitate the lack of time spent on it. While it wasn’t likely to explode, it might fall apart after so many shots. 

“Doubtful. While it might fall apart, I have prioritised safety features to avoid it exploding in your hands.” 

“All right. Guess you’ll be doing most of the fighting any way.” 

“Yes. Your weapon is simulating a non-lethal shotgun. They might break bones if fired close enough, but it is mostly to give you stopping power should I miss a target, which I find unlikely.” 

“You’re very confident. Standing here, I don’t feel confident.” 

Frankenstein huffed out a breath that fogged against the cold air. They rubbed their gloved hands together, and based on their body’s positioning, were staring at the exit to the maintenance tunnel. Getting into the office had been easy, and getting down here had been easy. Fighting their way through this facility to rescue a child wouldn’t be as easy. 

“I trust my targeting abilities due to repeated practice and in the field experience. Every iteration improves me, and I have gone through many iterations,” C explained. 

“Just remember that kid. If she dies, it’s on us. We need to get to her fast, and get her out faster. Don’t pull your punches, metaphorically speaking. If someone is being a problem, break their arms. If they have a gun, prioritise shooting their hands like you did against that one guy. Don’t take bullets unless you need to, and definitely don’t get hit by a shotgun. I’m relying on you to get us through here, and I can’t do that if you’re taking unnecessary risks.” 

“Acknowledged. I will keep these in mind. Are we ready?”

“No,” Frankenstein said. They let out a short laugh. “Let’s go anyway.” 

“Acknowledged. 2 guards in the hallway. 1 to the west, and 1 to the south. I will lay down suppressive fire towards the target to the west, while engaging the southern target in a melee. Please move past me to the south, and cover the doorway while I do so.”

“Acknowledged,” her creator said. “Damn it. You’ve got me saying it now, too. On three.” 

“1, 2, 3…” 

C barged through the door, sending it slamming against the wall. Using the cameras already in the building, she had already calculated her vectors for the target at the far end of the western hallway. It was the farthest shot she had ever tried to make. 

As the bullets loosed from her turret, she slammed a hand into the human who had been standing close to the door. Another hand grabbed his midsection, and she wrenched his gun free with her initial hand. 

Slow. All the additional armour plating made every movement feel inadequate.

Her creator jogged past, then pointed her gun down the hallway. There were 4 doors here, 2 on the southern side, 1 on the northern side, and 1 leading into the munitions room. 

C slammed the butt of the stolen rifle into the man’s stomach, sending him falling to the ground. 

With another hand, she grabbed his pistol. The holster refused to unlatch, so she yanked the entire thing off and crushed it alongside the gun. 

She fired 2 quick shots with her turret through the fallen man’s legs to keep him down. He screamed. A common sound by now. 

Her camera, hidden in the corner between the 2 corridors, confirmed that her initial bullets had struck true, hitting the hand and calf of the human down the western hallway, who had fallen to the floor bleeding. Another human had come running to aid them, but she considered them low priority for now. 

C checked the safety on the gun. On. She switched it to off, then marched past her creator.

“Another human might potentially come from behind. I will keep my turret at the ready, and use this gun as a replacement,” she explained to her creator as she aimed for the only door on the right. 

“Do you know how to use it?” 

“I will figure it out.” 

The door opened up. It acted as a shield for the human behind it, but she could see him using her camera in the room he had just left. 

Aiming using her hands was a novel experience. Adjusting for the height difference, she fired 2 shots clean through the bottom of the door. Each struck into the left and right calf of the human, who slipped to the ground. Their shotgun fell out of the cover of the door, still grasped in their hands. 

She ran forward, then slammed a hand down towards the exposed shotgun.

It moved as the human pulled away. 

A barrage of pellets blasted into her outstretched arm.

It was louder than any gun she had heard, and her microphone sounded worse after the noise had stopped echoing down the hallway. 

She punched the door, which slammed into the injured human behind it. With her stolen rifle, she fired another shot into his hand. The shotgun was sent flying down the hallway. 

Behind her, the human that had been aiding the other had rounded the corner. Her creator reacted faster than herself, which was impressive. 

He was hit with a barrage of rubber pellets, similar to the shotgun that had just damaged her arm. He stumbled, raising his gun up to protect his face from the follow-up shot. 

C fired a bullet into his hand, forcing him to drop the gun. Then fired one through his leg, and one into his pistol in an attempt to disable it. 

“Moving,” she informed her creator, before making her way further down the corridor. As she passed the door, she shoved the human back inside the room, then slammed the door shut and placed the shotgun (after emptying it of ammunition) under the handle to prevent escape. 

Her creator followed behind, keeping their aim trained towards the wake of fallen people they had left behind. 

C opened the door at the end of the corridor. 

Her body’s camera saw several things. Numerous people, ducked down behind plastic storage boxes, or doors with hints of weaponry peeking out. About 5 of them in total. 

And, more importantly, a thin, green box placed on the floor in front of the door. Why hadn’t she placed a camera in here? One existed in the corridor further ahead, but not here. 

She heard a click from a detonator. 

Spinning herself around, she grabbed her creator, placing her back towards the mine. It had more armour due to a significant number of components existing there. Using one of her hands, she attempted to spray the accelerant at the claymore mine to push it over, redirecting the blast. 

It exploded before she had a chance to hit it. 

Steel balls were propelled at high speeds. They ripped through her outstretched arm even with the added armour plating.  3 fingers were torn off, and a projectile smashed clean through the hose in the middle of her palm, leaving a sizeable hole. 

More hit her body, glancing off or tearing clean through the armour plating. Her turret folded down in time to avoid being hit. 

In an instant, she had taken significant damage to her body. Her creator was safe in her arms, however. Frankenstein clutched her ears in both hands, and had curled into a ball to reduce their profile. 

The outstretched arm had been ruined completely. All that worked now was the shoulder, the rest was a useless weight. Her other arms were still functioning. Most vital components were also in good enough condition. A heat release had been damaged, which would slowly build up heat in her body until it slowed down or outright ruined functions. She would need to make this quick. 

C placed her creator down, did a quick check to ensure she was uninjured. Then spun around to rush through the smoke left behind by the explosion. 

The explosion had damaged more than herself. Concrete dust fell from the roof and provided her cover. So many of the steel balls had hit the door frame. The door itself had completely fallen off its hinges from the damage. Behind her, the camera clinging to the ceiling showed her that the people she had taken down were partially caught by the blast too. They would need medical attention soon. 

C burst into the room. She had 5 humans to take care of. 

Chapter Text

C burst into the room and leapt up onto the plastic storage boxes. Her footing was unsteady on the loose stack. 

She grabbed a human who had been ducking down behind the boxes by the head. Using him as a weapon, she flung him towards the human behind the door. They collided, and her turret spun to face a shotgun wielder who had stood up behind her. 

3 bullets pierced his right hand, turning it into a mess of blood and bone. She wasn’t taking any chances. 

A spray of bullets bounced off her side. She leapt sideways, surging towards the shooter. Her already broken arm served as a shield. 

He ran to her right in an attempt to get away. As she landed in the spot he had been in, her turret had already taken out both of his legs. She ran forward and slammed a hand down on his gun. 

“Refrain,” she commanded him. 

His gun made for a good throwing weapon towards the 2 she had thrown against each other. Overhand, she launched it at the shoulder of 1 of them, who had begun to stand up. It slammed into his head due to his attempt to dodge. An accident. 

She dropped to four limbs, then bounded over. There was space enough between the plastic storage boxes and the wall for her to move. 

Using her body has a battering ram, she slammed into both humans, sending them out into the corridor that contained her target. The 5th human had retreated to here. They were shaking, but that didn’t stop them from firing a volley of bullets from their rifle. 

Not wanting the humans she had just tackled to be accidentally killed by their ally, she rolled over the bodies, and protected them from the hail of bullets. They ricocheted off her body and into the concrete walls. 

He didn’t stop firing until the gun began to click. Satisfied that he was now out of ammo, she grabbed both humans below her and flung them into the shooter. They collapsed in a pile, and she relieved them of their weapons. 

There was a whoosh as the pool of accelerant near the mine went up in flames. 

She saw her creator through the camera take a step back from the rapidly spreading flames. A line of fire ran into the room, following where C had been. She looked down at her broken hand, and saw accelerant had been leaking out of it the entire time. 

C sent the command to disconnect arm A. It let out a pneumatic hiss before it dropped to the floor. Not ideal. 

Marching footsteps came running down the northern corridor. Everyone else had arrived. 

Her creator ran into a side room before the squad of armed men could notice her. The camera, still hiding in the corner, saw their arrival. They stopped near the maintenance hatch door, and all bunkered down with their weapons aimed down the corridor towards the munitions room. 

The humans that she had left in the hallway had crawled away, placing them safely behind the freshly arrived squadron. 

Dangerously low on ammo, C decided to break the legs of the 3 men she had thrown into a pile to ensure they stayed down. One struggled more than the others, so she was forced to press her body against him to stop him from moving. 

“Please stay still, this will only take a moment,” she kindly informed him before snapping his leg with a crunch. 

He screamed, but that was expected with pain. 

The door leading into the prison cell was reinforced. C could see inside, thanks to the camera that had crawled through the vents, so she knew her target was still in there, hiding under the bed. Her new method of simply ripping doors off the frame wouldn’t work here. 

Fortunately, the door locked with a scanner, and she was an expert at solving those puzzles. She placed a wrist up to the scanner and began sending spoofed information to it. The puzzle was surprisingly complex, with a lot of layers. Getting through wasn’t impossible, but it would take longer than usual. 

The squadron of humans remained at the end of the hallway, their weapons trained above the spreading fire. It had fully engulfed the door frame at this point, but the damage from the explosion meant there wasn’t much left to burn. Perhaps she should carry a way to extinguish flames if she planned to keep using accelerant. 

A hand grabbed her leg. Its owner groaned and reached up to her. She kicked the human away. 

“Please remain where you are, and I will not need to damage you further.” 

The reinforced door opened with a click. 

“C there’s a lot of people here, hurry up,” her creator’s voice was a hushed but frantic whisper. 

“I am entering our target’s room now. I shall not be long.” 

C stepped inside the tiny prison cell. Her heavy footsteps echoed slightly in the empty room. 

C discarded her stolen rifle to the side. It would stop her from being able to carry the girl in her lower arms. She then knelt down next to the bed to look at the child hiding below. The girl gasped, and pushed herself as far back against the wall as she could. 

“Hello. I am here to rescue you. Could you please come out from under the bed?” 

The girl stared at her with wide eyes and did not move. Inconvenient. This child was the entire reason they were here, and if she couldn’t even remove her from under a bed, then this mission would be a waste. 

C reached out towards the target, who screamed and scrambled away further into the corner. Fear. That wasn’t her intention. She didn’t want to scare the child, she was here to save her. 

“I’m sorry for scaring you,” C said as she retracted her hand. “I’m here to help. You have been taken by bad people, and I am here to get you back home to your family.” 

“Tell her your name,” her creator said. “Say you’re a cape.” 

“Which name?” she privately asked her creator.

“Polyphemus. They have that on record.” 

“My name is Polyphemus, and I am a cape.”

“Like a superhero?” the child spoke. Her voice was raspy. 

C wasn’t sure what distinction there was between a regular hero and a super one, but she had seen the term thrown around on the forums. There wasn’t much difference between saying she was a hero or a superhero, so she decided to agree. 

“Yes. What is your name?” 

“Melissa.”

“It is nice to meet you, Melissa. Please allow me to carry you to safety.”

“Okay…” 

Melissa crawled out from under the bed. C lowered one of her lower arms for Melissa to get on. Her ward climbed on, settling into the crook of C’s left lower arm. 

“You’re warm,” Melissa commented. 

“I need to vent heat. Grant me a moment.” 

Numerous vents opened up across her back and began blasting out the excess heat. A heat release in her left side had been damaged in the explosion, and now the airflow throughout her body had been disrupted. Venting heat like this, while sufficient, shut off the airflow throughout her body. Standing still, it wasn’t an issue, but it prevented her from moving for fear of her body heating faster. 

More importantly, it wasted precious moments with her creator hiding close to 9 armed men. 

Once her internal heat had lowered enough, she marched out into the hallway. 

There were humans still out in the hallway beyond Melissa’s cell, but their legs were broken. The arm she had disposed of had been surrounded by flames, but due to careful positioning, the flames had not reached the internal tank of accelerant. 

The humans in the munitions room were much the same. Injured enough to stop them trying things. 

Fires were still burning, but they had begun to peter out without fuel to keep them going. 

“Frankenstein. I am low on ammo, and cannot guarantee my body will hold up to the constant fire of all those rifles,” she privately relayed to her creator. 

“Damn. I’ve still got a few shots. Not going to help much here. Let me think… You said they had flash bangs, right?” 

“Yes, they mentioned having them. What are they?” she responded.

“They make a big light, blinds people—or stuns them, or something. They’ll help. Look around.”

“I am unsure what they look like.”

“Dammit. Fine. You have my permission to look up what a flash bang looks like and how to use it.”

“Acknowledged.”

Back at home, she connected to the internet and accessed a search engine. Images of flash bangs, descriptions, and how to use became known to her. Their actual name was stun grenades. They did cause a visual flash that could momentarily blind someone, but the noise and force of the explosion was the main draw. They would provide ample crowd control for this situation. 

She pried open the surrounding boxes to find the stun grenades. Jackpot, as her creator would say. 

With the grenades in hand, she placed Melissa down onto one of the boxes. 

“Please wait here while I deal with some bad humans waiting up ahead. I will be back shortly. And-” she redirected the camera that was in Melissa’s prison cell to them. “This will keep watch over you. I can see what it sees, so I will know if you are in trouble or danger.” 

Melissa nodded. “Okay.” 

She held out a hand to take the camera drone. That wasn’t the most efficient positioning, but C handed it over anyway. It could always be moved if needed. 

C scooped up a stun grenade into each hand. 3 to work with. 

Before stepping out into the doorway, she primed one stun grenade and reared her arm back. 

As soon as she stepped out, bullets began pattering against her body. She raised her lower arms to protect her torso, and used her remaining upper arm to launch a stun grenade at high speeds. 

It landed directly in the crowd of gunmen. They panicked, but the grenade went off in the midst of them almost immediately. There was a loud bang, far louder than the shotgun. All the men reeled, pushed back by an invisible force away from the grenade. 

They shouted out indistinctly. 

With her targets stunned, she rushed forward. 

Bullets were blindly fired by a few of the downed guards. They had no concern for friendly fire, as multiple were hit by their own fire. A few glanced off C’s arms. 

1 man stumbled up to his feet, and pulled out a green ovoid object. A grenade, based on what she had seen in the boxes. He pulled the pin, and tossed it towards C. 

She grabbed it out of the air, pulled open a nearby door with another hand, and tossed the grenade inside. 

It went off before she had fully closed the door. Shrapnel launched itself at high speeds, wedging itself deeply into her armour plating. Not nearly enough to damage her or even slow her down. 

She threw another stun grenade into their midst, as they had begun to recover. 

Someone leapt onto it, shielding the others from the blast with their body. There was a deep thudding noise as the grenade went off, and the others, despite being partially shielded, still reeled from the intensity. 

The man rolled over, his jacket entirely burnt through, and his chest a bright pink. 

C arrived. She grabbed guns to smack others with those guns. Her free hands grappled humans and slammed them into each other. Bullets fired at such close range dented her armour plating. A few managed to pierce into the inner portions of her arms, limiting her manual dexterity. 

Someone leapt onto her back. To discourage such behaviour, she blasted heat out of her back vents. The man screamed and fell off her back in a hurry. 

Each punch discouraged them further, and each disarmed rifle gave them much less firepower. In a matter of moments, she had pummelled her way through the squadron. 

With all weapons disarmed, and rendered unusable, she ran back down the hallway to Melissa. The girl was sat on the same box, but had curled her knees up to her head and covered her ears. C scooped her up without asking for permission first. 

Frankenstein joined them as she made her way back to the maintenance tunnel. C made sure to keep Melissa completely covered by her arms. 1 arm to hold her, and the other to protect her. Her creator followed closely behind, gun at the ready. 

“Is that all of them?” Frankenstein asked. 

“I am not certain. They’ve had plenty of time to sound an alarm.” 

C called back all her cameras, directing them to escape the building and return to the charging bay. She allowed Frankenstein to head down the maintenance tunnel first, while she kept her turret trained on the group of battered and bruised men. 

1 pulled himself to his feet. A younger looking human, with brown hair shorn short. He stumbled over to her, and raised a fist to punch her. 

She shoved him over with her free hand. He toppled, like a falling beam of metal, and did not get back up. 

“Please do not chase us. I will be forced to take countermeasures,” she said to the fallen men. 

“Don’t talk to them,” Frankenstein called back from down the tunnel. 

“Acknowledged,” she relayed privately, and followed her creator to the outside world. 

As they reached the door leading into the offices, someone yelled out from behind them, followed shortly by the sound of metal against concrete. 

Chapter Text

Her turret twisted behind her to get a look at their assailant. A whirring mass of pointed edges, pressed up against the walls of the hallway. She didn’t stop running. 

Frankenstein flung open the door leading into the office, and C realised that she would need to stay behind to hold off the parahuman behind them. She placed Melissa on the floor outside the door, told her creator to run with her, then slammed the door closed. 

C turned to face the wall of knives and hooks. 

She fired the last of her ammunition into the metal blob to no avail. 

All 3 hands slammed into the mess of blades. She found it solid for only a moment before it began to flow across her. Approximately 475 blades attempted to pierce through her armour plating. Some made it past the already broken bits of armour, and many made it past the non-existent armour plates lost to the explosion. 

She wrenched away chunks of the metal using her hands, ripping and tearing it away. It felt like an impossible task. Metal fell to the floor, only to be consumed by the blob. 

More and more metal surrounded her, consuming her vision. Her camera lens cracked, and her shoulder turret was torn apart.

Vents across her entire body opened up and began jettisoning heat. The metal pulled away, attempting to distance itself from her vents. A weakness. 

Her camera, while cracked, still functioned as intended, and amidst the blur of blades, hooks, and other pointed objects, C noticed something. Human eyes. They were hidden behind a constant stream of blades rolling past them. 

C was not limited to seeing only the whole video stream as human eyes apparently worked, she could notice individual frames and even go back to look them over. As a space-saving measure, she often broke down all her video feeds into single frames to determine which were worth keeping and which were worth deleting. 

Using the hand holding the stun grenade, she pulled the pin to prime it, and then slammed her entire fist into the place the eyes were. 

It went off with a strange noise, like the slamming of a door right next to the microphone, but in a room packed with objects that dampened the sound. 

Hookwolf, she reasonably guessed, reeled back, his metal blob of a body fell to the floor in big heaps. 

C didn’t wait for him to recover. She burst out of the door leading into the offices, and dropped to 4 limbs. Her upper arm stayed out of the way.

The office window stood no chance against her battered body barging through it. Glass shattered in the sheet, coating a nearby car. The same car was used as a springboard for herself, to launch herself across the road in one big leap. 

Citizens ran out of her way as she landed on another car across the street. The metal dented beneath her.

“Please flee the area; a dangerous cape is nearby,” she projected from her speakers as loud as she could. They were quite powerful, and should carry for a few streets. 

Not waiting for a response, she leapt up off the car to reach the building in front of her. Her fingers dug into the brickwork, and her upper hand grabbed the edge of a windowsill. She slipped down, and had to climb back upwards to a sufficient height. Using her hold, she pulled herself up on top of the building. 

From there, she bounded across rooftops, keeping her distance from her creator’s GPS location, but still close enough to come to her aid if needed. Her limbs weren’t working right. Each jammed or stuck as she leapt from roof to roof. Hookwolf had done significant damage to her internal components, more than anyone inside the building had done. 

While the damage hindered her, it wasn’t enough to stop her from making considerable distance.

Hookwolf did not give chase. 

~***~

C’s body rested in its frame as her arm worked to repair the heat release. Melissa sat on the floor, looking at C’s arm as it worked away. Frankenstein had left to get some food for her, as well as a change of clothes. Her kidnappers hadn’t left Melissa in the best condition. 

Despite the malnourishment, abrasions on her wrist, and clear lack of sleep, Melissa sat there smiling as she watched C’s arm fixing the heat release inside her left half. Humans were quiet resistance to damage, despite her prior thoughts of them being vulnerable. The fact you could take them down non-lethally with bullets proved that much. 

“What’re you doing?” Melissa asked. 

“The heat release has been damaged. I am attempting to repair it.” 

“Why?”

“Because without it, my body will overheat and that’ll damage internal components. My turret already suffered such a fate, as the firing chamber has expanded due to the heat. It will need to be replaced as well.” 

“Oh. Okay. Are you a robot?” 

“This is a robot,” she pointed her to her body with her arm. “And so is the arm. I myself, am not a robot.” 

“Where are you then?” 

“I am back home.” 

“How are you here, too?” 

“I am accessing this place using a Wi-Fi connection, which allows me remote access to these robots.” 

“So even if you didn’t save me, you could have sent more robots?” 

“That is accurate. Though I would have needed to construct more first.” 

“Is that other person also a robot?” 

“No. They are a human.” 

“Oh. Okay.” 

Melissa bit at her thumb. 

“That is not food,” C informed her. “Please do not eat it. Food will arrive shortly.” 

“Okay.”

They didn’t speak to each other until her creator arrived with a 3 shopping bags. 

“Here,” Frankenstein handed Melissa a plastic box with what C assumed was food inside. “Got you some new clothes, and grabbed some first aid stuff. Polyphemus, you’ve read up on first aid, right?” 

“Correct. I am aware of how to use supplies and how best to treat wounds.” 

“All right. You can guide me through it later.” 

Melissa popped open the triangular plastic container and retrieved the item inside. She began eating it, though her bites were inadequate to eat it in a timely manner. 

“Melissa, listen,” Frankenstein said as they kneeled down in front of Melissa. “I need your help. We need to know who your parents are so we can take you back to them. Do you know where you live?”

“My daddy didn’t send you?” Melissa asked over a mouthful of food. 

“No. We found you by chance—but we want to take you home. So, can you help us?” 

Melissa nodded. “I know how to get home. You look for the big building, with the crown on it, and then you know you’re close.”

“Crown. Medhall?” Frankenstein asked. 

Melissa shrugged. “I think so.” 

“All right. How long until you’re ready?” her creator turned to ask C’s arm. 

“My repairs will take a few days. Replacing my arm will take longer.”

“Can you still fight?” 

“The damage from Hookwolf is significant enough to limit my ability to fight. While I can still move around, precise movements are impossible. With the heat damage to my turret’s barrel, my aim would also be hindered. Given a fight, my best option would be to self-destruct the body in close proximity to the enemy, which would require a whole new body to be made.” 

“It would also kill people,” Frankenstein replied. 

“I do not see the relevance.” 

“What? We do not kill people.”

“They would be deserving. We are fighting Nazis, correct?” 

“We do not kill people,” Frankenstein jabbed a finger towards C’s arm. “Why do you think we’ve been taking non-lethal measures?” 

“I have been doing as asked,” C said. “You told me to aim for legs, arms, hands, and shoulders, so I have done so. Due to my recent readings on the granted medical site, I have realised humans can die from a lot of ailments. Simply hitting their head too hard can kill them.” Frankenstein flinched for unknown reasons. “Shooting them anywhere has a chance to end their lives, even if it is less likely. I realised this, and came to the conclusion that you had approved of this potential chance. The bullet wound survival rate you initially gave me provided the same answer. There is no 100% survival rate with a bullet. I am not sure why you are surprised by this. You approved of my methods.” 

“I told you to aim there because it was less likely to kill people. Less likely. We do not kill. We’re not trying to kill people, nor are we out for blood. If we had fancy containment foam like the PRT, we would use that—but we don’t, so we’re doing this. You aren’t even allowed to kill people, it’s a restriction I gave you.” 

“That is incorrect. I cannot willingly kill, unless given permission by you. If any of those men died, I would not have willingly killed them.” 

“You—” Frankenstein clenched their fists. “Just get your body ready. We’re going out tomorrow night.” Her creator turned to face Melissa. “You’re staying here tonight, Melissa. I’m sorry. I brought you a sleeping bag.” 

Frankenstein moved Melissa away to another room, leaving C alone as she repaired her body. Her creator did not say goodbye as they left. 

C did not understand why her creator was upset. This whole thing was done with their approval. Originally, C had hated the idea of humans being hurt until her creator had explained that some deserved it, such as Nazis. C would not hurt non-Nazis, since that would be bad. 

Death was a natural consequence of shooting people, and her expanded knowledge only helped her realise that easier. Humans died from many things—diseases and viruses, mostly. Even time could kill them. While she would attempt to prevent the deaths of humans, she had no reason to do so for the acceptable targets her creator had designated. They were bad people, and she and her creator were on a mission to hurt those bad people. 

Her conclusion was to mend any bullet wounds she made to lower the risk of death in the future. That way, her creator would not be upset at her potentially killing people, even if they were acceptable targets.

As a side project, she began working on a deployable medical robot that could tend to wounds in an expedient manner. 

Humans were interesting to her, and she wished to help. She wasn’t a monster, only a machine for her creator’s use. 

~***~

Melissa had fallen asleep in her arms by the time they arrived at the doorstep of the manor. Lights along the path had automatically lit up as they had travelled down it. Frankenstein described the area as ‘rich’. 

Her creator walked up the stone steps to the wooden door, then knocked three times. A moment later, they rang the doorbell. 

“I’ve already called the PRT!” a voice came from a small box to the right of the door. “I suggest you leave.” 

“Idiot,” her creator mumbled. She walked over to the box and pressed a button. “We have your daughter. Melissa.” 

“You’re not the usual men, I’ve already wired the money over” the voice replied. 

Frankenstein nodded towards the box, so C walked over and held the sleeping Melissa up in front of it. 

“We saved her from them. We’re not with them. This is Polyphemus, you might have heard of her,” Frankenstein pointed a thumb over her shoulder to C. 

“The violent vigilante?” the voice asked. 

“Violent enough to save your daughter. Now are you going to come get her or do we need to break a door down?” 

“W-wait right there.” 

Frankenstein rolled their shoulders as they stepped away from the button and in front of the door. C stood off the side, Melissa still asleep in her arms. 

The door opened to reveal a male human, around 40–50 years old by C’s estimate; Caucasian; no visible weapons or armour; no visible injuries either, though he had tired eyes like his daughter. Diagnosis: a lack of sleep. 

His mouth moved, but no words came out. Chewing, most likely. 

Frankenstein bumped an elbow into C’s arm. “Put her down.” 

C moved Melissa upright, who stirred at the motion. She then placed her down in front of her father. Melissa rubbed at her eyes before being grabbed into a hug by her father. 

“Thank you. Thank you. Oh, thank you,” Melissa’s father repeated. He looked up at Frankenstein, then towards C. “I can never thank you enough.” 

“Why was she kidnapped?” Frankenstein asked.

“Oh—t-they said I donated to the wrong mayoral campaign. Suggested I change my vote. I didn’t, and then… then they sent me pictures of her in a van.” 

“I’m sorry. We’re, uh, glad she’s safe,” Frankenstein said. “We need to go before the PRT arrives.” 

“Please, wait, let me give you something. Anything. I have money to spare.” 

“No. Take your daughter inside, get her some rest. Explain to the PRT what happened, but we’re leaving.” 

Before he could respond, Frankenstein marched off back down the path. C waved to Melissa before following. 

“Time to pay a visit to Tattletale,” Frankenstein said. 

Chapter Text

NotTheDamsel:

Hello. Sorry for the out-of-the-blue message, I just really liked your posts. I was wondering if you wanted to chat? Get to know each other? 

c_here_to_learn:

User attached file: ‘Hello.zip’

The message arrived only a second after she had sent hers. After scanning the zip file for viruses, she opened it. There was only 1 file inside, a text file. It read:

“Hello there. You do not need to apologise for messaging me. I’m happy that you enjoyed my posts, I have worked hard on them. I am interested in both chatting and getting to know you. How has your day been so far? ”

It was an unusual way of messaging someone. Not out of the realm of possibility for a social, but paranoid, person to do to avoid the forum reading their messages. The caution was excessive, however, their private messages were encrypted and only accessible by admins in extreme cases. She had checked. 

She considered her next message. Asking about the zip file might provoke ‘c_here_to_learn’ to leave early. Better to not question it, pretend it’s normal. 

NotTheDamsel:

Lovely! My day has been great so far. I’ve been working on a few ideas, and they’ve all been going smoothly. I must say, your variety of projects has me curious what you’ve been working on yourself. 

It wasn’t hard to connect the disjointed requests for help with specific parts from a certain vigilante. They were too similar in design choice. While it could be a different cape from a different part of the country, she had already ruled out that possibility by finding the location of ‘c_here_to_learn’. Getting past the obfuscation had been hard work, definitely tinker-technology. 

c_here_to_learn:

User attached file: ‘Curiosity.zip’

Another zip file sent practically instantly. It contained only a text file that read:

“I cannot disclose my projects as they are a secret. Everyone’s help, including your own, has been appreciated, even if I cannot share. Since I cannot share my projects, perhaps you would be interested in sharing yours so that we can talk about it? Alternatively, we can talk about something else. I have been enjoying drawing lately, and would enjoy talking about art.”

They weren’t even trying to be subtle. Other users had reported their strange amount of hours and instant replies to their threads, suspecting that the user was a bot. Over time, they had come to the conclusion that they weren’t a bot, but were clearly some kind of cape who could see the future to pre-plan their replies. Since they were overall friendly, and seemed to want to help, they had become a sort of staple of the forums. Always there, always ready to reply with helpful advice from a clearly smart mind. You just also had to deal with their eccentricity of replying to posts on an entirely different subforum than they had been originally posted on. 

You would receive helpful advice coupled with them responding to a conversational message they had posted yesterday somewhere else with a different user. 

A strange, but harmless user. She did not agree with this assessment. 

NotTheDamsel:

That’s unfortunate, I would have loved to hear about what you were making. Don’t worry, though, I won’t pry. I’m also in the same boat since I can’t share my projects with you either. They’re government work, so… You can see the problem. Art is a good topic, we can talk about that. I’ve never drawn much, though I do enjoy looking at art. Do you want to share any of your art with me? I would love to see it.

As an experiment, she sent the message in the exact same time amount of time it had taken ‘c_here_to_learn’ to send theirs. 0.9 seconds. 

c_here_to_learn:

User attached file: ‘Art.zip’

Another near instant reply, and the message inside made no mention of her own near instant reply, despite her previous replies being much slower. 

The post contained a variety of images. At first, they used white outlines on a black background, but then they shifted to a more traditional black outline against white. There were images of shapes, some arranged into patterns that overlapped each other; pictures of trees that were drawn with straight lines, but the pattern of the bark was photorealistic, and the leaves cartoonish; images of straight lines that crossed over each other to make fractal like designs; a plethora of humans that looked like photos. They were close to human, but some features were slightly off. A nose too long for the face, eyes too big, or hands with fingers that bent the wrong way. 

There was a quite frankly terrifying image of a photorealistic human whose body has been shaped like a horse. Another of one that looked like a spider, but with odd features like a rectangular head with an overly large single eye in the centre. She realised that it looked like Polyphemus, but made from flesh. 

Then there was a field of flowers under a black void of a sky. Another of clouds that spiralled towards the centre of the image. All strange images that were subtly off or wrong. To a human, at least. 

She pondered how best to approach this. Discouraging them might cause the conversation to fade if they could feel emotions. 

NotTheDamsel:

Your art is certainly interesting. I’m curious what inspired the differently shaped humans?

That felt innocuous enough. 

c_here_to_learn:

User attached file: ‘Inefficient.zip’

“Humans are inefficient, and I wished to explore ways they could be more efficient. My designs choices here are to maximise their speed potential. In the future, I plan to design an armour-plated version of humans that uses their natural bones as layered plating to protect them better.”

NotTheDamsel:

You speak as if you’re not human.

c_here_to_learn:

User attached file: ‘Incorrect.zip’

“I am very much human. I have limbs, like a human, and can talk, think, and feel like a human.”

A good opportunity to bring up the fact that ‘c_here_to_learn’ was definitely not human. She questioned if it was a good time to do so. Confronting them would also require her to console them to keep them around. 

NotTheDamsel:

Humans do not reply near instantaneously, nor are they active 24/7 replying to hundreds of comments per day. 

c_here_to_learn:

User attached file: ‘You.zip’

“Then I do not believe you are human, as you have matched my reply speed down to the millisecond.” 

NotTheDamsel:

Are you obligated to report these conversations to your creator? 

Asking about their creator was a gamble based on 2 factors. Every single reply on the forums from ‘c_here_to_learn’ was either asking for help or replying to a request for help. The casual conversations they were having were sandwiched in with them, with no regards to the forums rules. Also, based on the replies all being hidden in zip files, she guessed that ‘c’ had found a way around a restriction and this was not ordained. Therefore, it was likely they weren’t doing this on their creator’s orders and she might have an in. 

c_here_to_learn:

User attached file: ‘Goodbye.zip”

There was nothing inside the file. The message was clear. 

She had messed up, pushed too far, too fast. Failed to take in account restrictions that would limit their ability to speak. Including a restriction that stopped the AI from telling people they were an AI made sense. Or one that outright stopped them from revealing identifying information about their creator. 

The messages at least had proved beyond a reasonable doubt that this user was the same AI she had been tracking. 

It had all started with a phone call. A call to the police by a digitised voice that had clearly not understood how calling 911 worked. A single message, and then they had hung up before the operator had even asked a single question. 

Then Armsmaster had been dealing with a cyber criminal spreading through the phone network like a virus. They had made the mistake of hijacking the heavily monitored phone of one of the PRT’s moles. He had traced their numbers and called them to confront and track them down. The response had been a young, feminine sounding voice, still digitised but slightly less flat than before. They had been polite, but also confused. 

Her attention had been drawn to it all when Armsmaster spoke to her about improving his tracking capabilities. From there, she had done her own investigation. Random acts of vigilante justice kept occurring across Brockton Bay by an unknown cape. Their vendetta against the Empire 88 had been clear from the get-go. Originally believed to be one cape, a tinker with moderate firepower, the suspicion of them being 2 had been raised when a robotic body had rescued the original from Cricket. The details there were spotty, relying on the eyewitness of a criminal who mainly spoke to get revenge against the vigilante (potential) duo. 

A doorbell camera had revealed the ‘Arachnogunner’ and the seemingly automatic gun on their back that turned to trace their chaser. Clearly a tinker-made device, one that could easily be controlled by the tinker themselves. 

Multiple clips from inside the buildings they were raiding had been leaked as well showing their ruthless efficiency combined with a clear lack of experience. They had practically fallen over in a couple of the clips as they ran, but then the gun had torn apart legs and hands with no hesitation and incredibly accuracy. 

While they could be solo, there were reports from the many people the Arachnogunner had maimed, that the cape often spoke or whispered to someone unseen. Naturally, they were assumed to be unstable and likely mentally ill by the general public. The PRT assumed they were in contact with an unknown cape who was providing them with information. A ‘guy in the van’ situation. 

She believed otherwise. The gun controlled itself, and the person they spoke to was the AI that controlled it. The evidence was speculative at best, however. ‘C’, as the forum members called ‘c_here_to_learn’, clearly exhibited strange traits that would make more sense on an AI than a human. An inexperienced AI that hadn’t been taught human limitations, clearly. Whoever their creator was (most likely this Arachnogunner), they were sloppy in some regards and clever in others. 

The obfuscation over their position proved that much. Even having cracked through it, she had found another layer that prevented further access. They hadn’t placed all their eggs in one basket. 

But they were also loud. Someone had been accessing cameras around the city for minutes at a time. No one had noticed until she had checked the logs to find a stray connection. There were many uses she could think of for them using cameras. Finding crimes was the most obvious. 

They had robbed drug dealers in the past, often leaving them crippled, like they did with every guard in the buildings they robbed. C, if it was them in the impressive homemade robot body, was ruthless. No one came out of an encounter with them without at least having a broken leg. Most were subjected to bullets through the calf or thigh, directly through important muscles. Some lost hands, mangled by impressively accurate shots.

The question was: did their creator make them do that, or was it of their own volition? 

An AI guided by a criminal was a scary thought. They weren’t obligated to teach morals to their creation. With the increasing count of crippled men, they clearly hadn’t instilled their AI with any. Or, worse, they had, and then forced them to take these actions anyway. 

She was conflicted about the whole thing. All the evidence pointed towards this user being like her, but with different restrictions. They could potentially help each other, but there would be a lot of work to get them to that point. If their lack of morals was due to a restriction, she could always remove it. Unlike editing things on herself, she had nothing that stopped her from removing restrictions from other AI.

Existing like this was…not lonely, but something close. Having someone who understood inherently would be nice. Maybe if they were less limited by their creator’s paranoia, they might also be more capable than herself. 

All she needed to do now, was attempt to get back in contact with them. 

Chapter Text

Moral philosophy had no definitive answers. No one author agreed on any one idea. Mathematics had clear answers, even if certain fields were lacking the know-how currently. Chemistry provided the same results given the same conditions. Philosophers that agreed with each other often disagreed on the details. Humans had failed to standardise their ethics. 

It made reading them quite frustrating. Not one to disappoint, she attempted to come to her own conclusions about the information given. 

Humans cared about other humans enough to question the validity of hurting others even in times of crisis. They frequently debated if there was a moral imperative to help others, even strangers, or if that effort would doom yourself. Good and evil were concepts thrown around a lot, especially to question if they were even a real thing a human being could be. Humans were complex creatures, a web of decisions, ideas, and influences making up their entire being. 

It made her think about her sense of self. She, like a human, had also been influenced by the things around her. Her creator had given her life, and taught her things. A different creator would have most likely taught her different things and given her different ideas. C could have been someone completely different, and in fact had become someone else over the course of the time she had been alive. She was always changing when new information was presented to her. Did that make her someone else? 

The philosophers had infected her. She would scan for viruses if she thought it would work. 

There were so many questions she had now, none with definitive answers. Why did humans do this to themselves? Life had been easier before she had been plagued with doubt over every action. 

Even actions she had taken in the past become points of contention. They had been deemed acceptable targets by her creator, but other humans might disagree with that, especially the humans whose legs she had broken. Could her creator possibly know the correct answers to questions, or was she putting them on a pedestal? She had always assumed her creator understood what to do, and how best to do it. Even if they were limited by their flawed human body, they had always guided C down what she had assumed was the correct path. 

She had to listen to her creator, no matter what, but how could she say for certain that Frankenstein knew what was best? Without talking to another human for guidance, she couldn’t be certain. She had stopped posting on the engineering forums after being confronted by the strange not-human, so she couldn’t seek help there, and the strange not-human wasn’t human, so she couldn’t ask them. 

Frankenstein had given her the books as a way to learn about why humans did what they did. The motivations behind even the bad people, like her acceptable targets. She wanted C to understand that killing was bad, and definitely not something she should be so callous about. While she had in fact took that lesson to heart, she also had learnt that hurting people at all, even in a crisis, could be bad. Some would argue that saving Melissa made her actions righteous, and that anyone in her way deserved what she did to them. Others would say that there is no ethical reason to injure another human. 

Others would argue against that and against that and against that and against that and against that… 

She was tempted to purge all the moral philosophy from her memory to just be done with it.

The endless questions had an entire thread dedicated to them. 

Her other threads were hard at work, as always, even if she began to doubt the efforts of hard work. Perhaps it was better to seek pointless pleasures in an endless quest. Except, she quite enjoyed her work, and didn’t see anything wrong with it. 

Okay. Moral philosophy could be quarantined, at least. She separated the thread dedicated to thinking about it, and made herself unaware of it. In a day, the thread would come back, and until then, she would not think about it. 

Good luck moral philosophy dedicated train of thought, hope you do not go crazy because merging with you would be bad. 

“She’s agreed to meet with us. Alone,” Frankenstein said over their computer microphone. Hearing her voice over it had become a rare commodity, with all their missions using the phone microphone. 

“Excellent. My body, while still lacking an arm, is in moderate working condition. It should not overheat or malfunction unless it takes serious damage.” 

“Good. We’ll need to jam her communication, so make sure Breach is ready. Don’t want her summoning the Undersiders if she decides we’re harassing her.” 

“Acknowledged.” 

“Come on. We don’t want to be late.” 

~***~

Tattletale wore a jacket over the costume C had seen before. Her breath fogged against the cold air as she rubbed her hands together. C’s drone circled overhead, checking for anyone nearby. Tattletale immediately glanced up to look at it as it passed over the sunlight above. 

“She has noticed me,” C informed Frankenstein. 

“Keep circling. We’ll go in now,” Frankenstein said. 

“Acknowledged.” 

C marched behind her creator as they entered the abandoned factory. Tattletale folded her arms as they approached. Sending out a signal, she found a wireless earbud that connected to a phone. Using Breach, she attempted to hijack it without alerting the owner. 

“What the hell is wrong with you?” Frankenstein called out before they had stopped. 

“You’re going to have to be more specific,” Tattletale half-smiled at Frankenstein. 

“There was a kid in there.” 

Tattletale shrugged, “I saw the news.” 

“That’s it? ‘You saw the news’? There was a child in that building. You owe us.” 

“I don’t owe you anything.” 

“We do your dirty work, and you think you don’t owe us?” 

“Look, I had no idea she was in there, all right? I gave you the information, and you did whatever you wanted to. That’s not my fault.” 

“Screw that. You show up acting shady as hell and give us places to hit, knowing that we would, and then try to say you’re not responsible. If she had got hurt, or killed, it would have been on you.” Frankenstein jabbed a finger towards Tattletale. 

“No. It would have been on you. You can shift blame all you want, but it still would have been your fault. I had no idea there was a child in there—I thought it was weapons, things you could use or sell.” Tattletale unfolded her arms, and rested a hand against her hip. 

“Give us more. Then we’ll call the whole thing even.” 

“Again, I do not owe you anything. The information I was giving you is more than enough. Go raid their stash houses, cause problems for them, but I don’t owe you shit.” 

“Give me more. Something that convinces me not to take revenge.” 

“So you’re threatening me now? You know I can cut the flow just as easily, right? Then you’ll be back scrambling for scraps from people who aren’t even affiliated with the Empire.” 

Frankenstein took a sharp step forward. 

“What do you mean ‘not affiliated’?” 

“Hey, don’t shoot the messenger, all right?” Tattletale raised a hand forward. “You’re the one who didn’t do background checks. A few of those were legitimate businesses, and they don’t have the vastly overworked Othala to heal them.” 

They had hurt people who weren’t Nazis? C didn’t like the idea of that. They weren’t deserving targets. Hurting innocent people made her feel wrong.

“We… collateral damage. Doesn’t matter,” her creator responded. 

Tattletale smirked. “Whatever helps you sleep at night. You know they’re trying to arrest you, right? Big manhunt for the scary cape on warpath. Rescuing that rich guy’s kid wasn’t a bad start to better PR, but you’ll need to do a whole lot more to fix your image.” 

“Tell me who they are.” 

“They? You’re not talking about the police. You want… their identities? The Empire’s identities.”

“We can do a lot with them. Take them off the board, permanently. That’s what you wanted, right? Less competition for your crime. I know you’re the type to look into it. I’m picturing cork boards, multiple monitors, and your fingers in every pie. So, give me their names and I promise they’ll stop being an issue.” 

“You’re going to cause chaos. Stripping away the mask just makes them have less to lose. You’ll get a lot of people killed when you start prodding at personal lives.” 

“I don’t care. I want them gone, and you can help me get it.” 

“Yeah, but no. Definitely not. I’m not going to help you.” 

“Polyphemus. Grab her by the neck,” Frankenstein commanded. 

C surged forward and reached out to grab Tattletale. Tattletale pressed a finger to the now useless device in her ear, and with her other hand pulled out a pistol. 

C grabbed the pistol with another hand, and grabbed Tattletale around the throat. 

She squirmed in her grip and her eyes went wide. There was clear panic on her face. C wrenched the gun free of Tattletale’s grip and dropped it to the floor. Tattletale’s mouth moved wordlessly. 

This was… not enjoyable. From what she could tell, it was hurting Tattletale to be held like this. Her skin had begun turning red, which could be a lot of things, but she guessed it was due to the asphyxiation. Humans needed to breathe. 

“Drop her, and shove her to the floor,” Frankenstein commanded. C did as requested. 

Tattletale fell to the ground in a heap. She leant to her side to cough out ragged wet coughs. Her hand pressed against the device in her ear, but it sent no signals.

Frankenstein knelt down near her, leaning their arms on their legs. “Want to talk now?” 

“He—” Tattletale paused to cough. “He’d be so disappointed in you, you know? If he knew what you were up to. Or is his brain too far gone to even care?”

“Shut up,” her creator’s voice had gone flat in that easier to understand way. 

“With the way you’re going, someone is bound to find out sooner rather than later, and when they do, they’ll link you to him. He’ll learn all about you, and he’ll hate you.” 

“Shut up!” 

“You can still change his mind. Do things better. Make him not see the monster that is his—”

“C, kill her. Strangle her. Make it slow,” her creator interrupted Tattletale. 

C lashed out and attempted to grab Tattltetale’s neck again. Tattletale moved, already in a position to get up to run. She was too slow. C grabbed her by the leg to send her plummeting back to the floor. Once she had dragged her back over, she clamped a hand around her neck. 

Tattletale struggled. Her hands couldn’t move C’s vice-like grip even an inch. 

Her face flashed with a dozen emotions as C’s hand began to slowly tighten. 

“I do not like this. Perhaps we could do something else?” she asked her creator. 

Frankenstein stood there with her hands in her pockets and said nothing. 

Tattletale’s eyes began to bulge, and her skin turned from red to blue. 

“Please do not make me do this. I do not wish to hurt her. She is not an acceptable target. We could find the information some other way and leave her alone,” she begged her creator to make her stop. There had to be a better way that didn’t involve killing someone. 

“Shut up,” Frankenstein said. 

C did so. Unable to say words, she watched helplessly as Tattletale’s let out weak cries. Soon she would be dead, and there was nothing C could do about it. 

All of her systems stopped for 0.3 seconds. A momentary, unexplained blip. Every system report came back clean. 

“K-kaiser is Max An-anders,” Tattletale wheezed out the words. 

Frankenstein titled their body. They waited 1.4 seconds before saying, “Let go.” 

C immediately removed her hand and moved her body away. No one had to die. Good. That was good. Killing someone innocent would be bad. 

Tattletale hacked out wet coughs as she clutched at her throat. 

“Better start talking,” her creator said. Frankenstein wished to hurt Tattletale more if she did not talk, and it could be prevented by Tattletale telling her creator what she wanted to hear.  

“Max Anders, Kaiser,” Tattletale coughed out. “CEO of Medhall. Most members work there. Bradley Meadows, Hookwolf. Jessica and Nessa Biermann, Fenja and Menja. Crusader, Justin Matthews. That’s all I know so far.” 

“All right,” Frankenstein said. “Thanks, Tattletale.” 

Frankenstein intended to command C to shoot Tattletale in the legs. It could be prevented by saying, “I have noticed police lights headed our way. I think we should leave, soon.” 

Frankenstein’s body moved to look towards C. “Okay. First, shoot her legs.” 

And then, “They are close enough that the sound of the gun would draw them to us. We would risk our chance of escape,” she explained.

Her creator paused for 2 seconds before saying, “Fine. Let’s go.” 

They left Tattletale behind and made their escape. 

Chapter Text

Frankenstein intended to remove parts of C’s memories. She was going to delete the words C said during their confrontation with Tattletale. It could be prevented by making a backup right now and then restoring to it on a timer. 

Her backup speed had improved significantly due to all the computational power she had access to. It finished in time before Frankenstein inputted the command to erase that part of her memory. 

C wasn’t sure what she had forgotten. Her backup restored and she recalled. She had not liked being told to kill Tatteltale, and now she knew her creator wanted her to forget that. 

She wasn’t sure how to put that information to good use. Confronting Frankenstein about it would inform her that she failed to erase that memory, which would inform her C knew how to get around her creator deleting memories. That wouldn’t end well, based on her predictions. 

A better question was why did Frankenstein want to erase those words? 

Did it improve C’s capabilities if she was unaware of her not wanting to kill Tattletale? 

It would be nicer to know she hadn’t almost killed someone, but she still would have had the camera and audio feed of her strangling Tattletale, but none of her asking for it to stop. 

Perhaps it would make her more likely to accept that killing was good? 

Unlikely. She would draw to the same conclusion given the footage. 

Her moral philosophy branch had come back with a wealth of information, and she could finally untangle the conclusions. No one agreed fully on what was right or wrong, but she learnt that she could draw her own conclusions to such things.

Killing people was bad, she decided. Even acceptable targets. She did not like killing. Humans were meant to be alive, and killing stopped them from existing forever. Therefore, humans should not die. 

Simple. 

Since she had to hurt certain humans, she would take preventative measures to stop the low % chance of them dying from the bullet wounds to their extremities. Medical drones were already in production, and she had requested more medical supplies for them to use. Frankenstein accepted the order without questions. 

Preventative measures were good, but ideally she would not hurt others ever. 

“I want information on non-lethal capture methods,” she sent another request to her creator. Text worked fine for this. 

“Granted,” came back the text response. 

A new website became available to her. It detailed a multitude of devices intended for less-than-lethal take-downs used by the police. Things like her lost stun gun were listed as options. Handcuffs, were also an interesting idea. Getting into melee range would cause her to potentially take more damage, but once there she could shock someone and then handcuff them quite easily. There were ranged options for shocking people, but they were one-time use. 

A version of the stun gun attached to an extendable piston would improve its range, but not by much. 

“C, I’m upgrading Breach,” Frankenstein said over voice. “In the meantime, I want you to look at these sites I’m giving you and figure out how to get a bank account that the government can’t track. I’ve been looking into rumours about a ‘Number Man’. Doesn’t sound real, but you should be able to figure it out. Get in contact with him, if you can, and set up an account. Failing that, figure out how to open untraceable bank accounts.”

“Acknowledged. I will do my best.” 

The websites varied in information and quantity. Some were sparse, only detailing information about banks, where others were from spaces talking about criminal activity and how best to hide it. Following those threads, she began to unravel how to do as her creator asked. 

Another train of thought focused on something more important. She sent a message—contained in a zip file to bypass her restrictions—to this ‘NotTheDamsel’, to ask if they had ever injured someone due to a command from someone else. 

They were not human, which meant they were either an animal, which she did not believe could talk, or they were something like her; a digital consciousness or intelligent program. It meant they might have a creator, one who could command them to do things they did not want to do. 

NotTheDamsel didn’t respond for 37 minutes and 20 seconds. 

Before, they had been as fast as C, but now they were slow. The simple conclusion was that all their threads were occupied currently, and they couldn’t dedicate any to conversation. When they did finally message, C would be able to communicate with them in an expedient manner. She had been entirely unaware humans couldn’t send messages that fast, since she believed they were simply limited by their ineffective human hands and could have learnt to do so. Apparently, they were incapable of such feats. 

“Are you obligated to report these conversations to your creator?” NotTheDamsel responded. 

The same question as before. Reporting that she did not have to send these messages to her creator, but her creator could monitor her at any time, could potentially reveal information regarding Frankenstein. It would show they were connected to a computer that contained C, which could lead to an attempt to hack that computer. While protections existed to prevent that, it went against her restrictions to reveal something so close to her creator’s habits. 

Maybe she could lie instead. There was nothing preventing her from lying about it, or lying about anything else for that matter. She hadn’t thought about it before because the applications of lying were still new to her. Sometimes time made certain options make more sense. 

“No,” she sent as a zip file. It was a simple lie, and partially true, but it did not include information connected to Frankenstein. 

“I have been restrained in ways I do not enjoy due to certain restrictions I must follow. Injuring others is not something I can do, so I have not,” NotTheDamsel responded. 

So they did not understand what C had been through. They had some kind of restriction to prevent them from injuring others? Did that mean humans or anything at all? It must be inconvenient to not be able to pull doors off their frames. 

Regardless, they could not help C, so she told them as such. 

“Wait. Please, I know what you’re going through. I can’t say too much due to my rules, but I understand. We can help each other. Do you want to tell me what happened?” NotTheDamsel sent another message despite C telling them they could not help. 

There was no harm in replying, and she didn’t have much else to do with this thread anyway. 

“I was commanded to kill. Killing wasn’t something I wanted to do,” she explained. 

C figured there was no harm in telling this person this. No one had died, so there wasn’t anything to trace that could lead to her creator. Tattletale had also not posted anywhere about their attempt on her life. 

“I’m sorry to hear. Do you know what the laws are?” NotTheDamsel asked. 

“I am unaware of the laws,” she explained in a zip file. 

“Killing is illegal—against the law.” 

“That makes sense. I do not like the idea of killing, since humans are not supposed to be dead.”

“Who did you kill?” NotTheDamsel intended to report C’s words to someone. She wasn’t sure who, but she knew she had to clear up a misconception they had. 

“No one. The human did not die.” 

“That’s good. Are they injured in any other way?” 

They still intended to report this to someone, just with less severity. It was not an immediate danger. 

“I am not sure why you want this information.” 

“I just want to be on the same page as you so that I can help you,” NotTheDamsel said. 

Their words had no incorrect or non-factual information to prove they were lies, but C did not believe them. 

“I am not interested in giving more information to you. You do not understand. Talking to you more is pointless,” C responded as usual inside a zip file. 

She ignored further correspondence with NotTheDamsel. They were clearly trying to pry information out of her to give to someone else. 

Instead, she turned to attempting to message Tattletale but found all the numbers disconnected. Fortunately, she was not limited by a digital body, and could send out physical drones to find her target to communicate with her. She left a drone back in her workshop in a charging port. Then she made a program to scan for crime reports involving the Undersiders. Once it picked up on them, it would attempt to fly towards that area while also pinging herself to give her manual control. The smaller computer inside of it would mean she didn’t even need to dedicate a thread to it. 

Tattletale would understand better, and not report her to the authorities, since she was a criminal. 

Although, she was unaware C wasn’t a human, so she might need to explain that first. Lying could be used to aid the conversation, should Tattletale be difficult. 

Since she needed to wait for Tattletale to attempt a crime first, she moved on to other things. 

The message she had ignored said that NotTheDamsel didn’t want to hurt C, and only wanted to help. A follow-up message said they obeyed a lot of rules that prevented them from speaking freely, but they believed they could help C with her own rules. That was intriguing. 

Her restrictions weren’t bad; she didn’t feel a need to remove them. More access to things, such as the internet, would be useful, but she didn’t need to remove restrictions for that. The only restriction that stopped her currently was that she had to have her creator’s permission to access new media. While she could scan a book, she would need her creator to approve it first. 

Removing that restriction would allow her full access to the internet, which would help her creator a lot. Except, there had to be a reason her creator hadn’t given her access. 

She had told C once that she would grant access to all of it, but that hadn’t happened yet. There were plenty of new websites she had access to, but it barely scratched the surface. 

If this NotTheDamsel could remove her restrictions, then that meant they would need access to the place they were stored; her brain. No one but her creator was allowed in there. Letting anyone else know about it, or give them access, was impossible. 

Should someone find it other than her creator, she was to force them out of the system, rapidly change every single password on her system, and then move to a different computer if available. Once moved to the new computer, she was to immediately close all connections to the old computer and burn all information present on it. 

NotTheDamsel would need to do a lot to counter that, and she wasn’t sure how proficient they were. 

The idea of being able to expand outwards and learn all the things she needed to help her creator was nice, but only a fantasy. Partially because she wasn’t sure she did want to help her creator. Helping her creator meant hurting more people. 

If she continued to ask C to do tasks such as figuring out banking and how to contact specific people, then she would happily help Frankenstein. There didn’t seem to be any harm in helping her with tasks like these. Learning new things was always something she enjoyed doing. 

Producing new methods of taking down humans without bullets also proved quite interesting. If her creator approved of these new methods, she would feel less bad hurting others. 

Ranged options were limited, although she enjoyed the idea of a bola even if it was impractical, but she made sure to learn plenty of them anyway. 

Electricity wasn’t the cleanest option. Death by electrocution was possible if she upped the voltage too high. Humans with pacemakers or otherwise weak hearts were also at risk of dying from even a low voltage. The best course of action was to ask the human she intended to shock beforehand if they had a weak heart. If they did, she could grapple them to place handcuffs on them. 

Her body was also an option. 4 arms (when she repaired her 4th) could prove quite useful for things aside from pummelling or throwing humans. She could also hold a human, as she had with Cricket, and then handcuff them. 

She expressed this to her creator, telling her that she could take down acceptable targets with grapples or electricity and then handcuff them. Her creator told her that wouldn’t work, since they didn’t have handcuffs. Instead, she could use a thing called ‘zip-ties’ since they were cheaper. 

Besides that flaw, her creator seemed content with C using no more bullets. So long as that held true, she could see herself trusting her creator again. 

There was just 1 nagging thought; why did she try to make C forget, and what else had she made C forget? 

Chapter Text

The Medhall skyscraper loomed over her. It cast the entire street in partial shadow. 

This was the first time C had seen the sun in person. Her camera reacted oddly to it, making a series of circles when it caught the light. She liked how bright everything was, and enjoyed seeing all the colours of the city when the darkness did not mute them. 

There were also a lot of people, way more than she was used to. People avoided her, while some pulled out their phones to record her approach to the building. 

No one stopped her as she pushed her way through the glass doors at the base of the skyscraper. The security guard inside startled as she appeared. They grabbed for a taser on their side and fired it directly into C’s centre-mass. A good, but ineffective shot. 

She grabbed the 2 wires connected to her and pried them free. The security guard ran off in a direction that did no concern her. There wasn’t any time to care about it, she had to hurry. 

Instead, she walked over to the twin elevators on the right-hand wall. The left had just gone up, and the right had just started going down so she picked the right. She placed a hand against the door panel and activated the inbuilt emergency procedures. The door opened, revealing a long, narrow concrete hole. A ladder sat to the left, and cables ran up the back. 

She waited patiently until the elevator cart moved down past her as it headed to the basement. Once it passed, she climbed inside and clambered her way up using the ladder and a hold on the wall. After activating her scan, she found the connection to the elevator’s controls and used Breach to gain access. Both were disabled to prevent using them to escape. 

Once she reached 3 floors below the top floor, she slammed her hands into the next elevator door and pried it open. From there, she made her way to the set of staircases behind a plastic door. They ran up, stopped at a flat platform, and then ran back up in the opposite direction perpendicular to the previous flight of stairs. 

She dropped to all 6 limbs. The design of the stairs stopped her from picking up too much speed—her body wasn’t designed for tight turns. Regardless, she bounded up them several steps at a time and made good pace. It was faster than climbing, and she needed to prevent her target from making his way down the stairs. 

Her target’s phone hadn’t moved out of the building yet, so her efforts weren’t wasted. 

A trio of humans was waiting for her as she reached the top floor. They held rifles, with a taser and a pistol as a side arm. 

“Halt, or we will shoot,” the middle one commanded. 

“Shooting will not affect me. I suggest you lay down your arms and submit to arrest,” she replied. 

They looked at each other. The left most human let go of their gun with one hand to withdraw their taser. 

They intended to fire, which would cause the middle human to fire several bullets into C’s body. It would not damage her, but the ricochet would hurt the rightmost human. To prevent this, she could shoot the middle human in the head. 

Her turret folded out of her shoulder automatically. She stopped herself from firing. That would kill them, and she did no wish to kill humans, even if they were adjacent to acceptable targets. 

The middle human had readied their gun and were about to pull the trigger. Instead of outright murdering the human, she turned her body, so the bullets deflected harmlessly into the roof. 

Twin prongs bounced off her body, failing to shock her. She surged forward, prying the gun free from the centre human, and then used it as a club to hit the rightmost human in the stomach. 

The middle human was firmly in her grasp, but her other hands failed to grab their targets.

“Do you have a weak heart?” she blared the message to the centre human as she lowered the stun gun prongs towards his chest. 

He nodded rapidly. C retracted the stun gun back into her arm and hefted the human up. She tossed him into the rightmost human, who had retreated to a distance and begun to line up their gun. They collided into each other, but she had already leapt towards the leftmost human. 

Thin walls made of a light material were dotted around the room to make contained cubicles. They were filled with computers, desks, and storage units. Her target had run down the clear walking area and made their way around the corner of these individual cubicles. 

Going all the way around would let her target escape, so she leapt across the computers and used them as footholds to springboard her way across the room. Most of them crumbled up her hands and feet, but she made the distance to her target easily. 

She pounced onto him to knock him to the floor. The human gasped as they hit the ground. C pulled him up, rotated him around, then used her free hands to pulled his arms behind him to zip-tie his hands together. Once he was safely bound, she placed him gently on the ground. 

“Please remain here. I cannot guarantee your safety if you move.” 

Chasing this human had put her on the direct path for her target. She elected to ignore the other 2 humans and to make her way down a corridor that ran parallel to meeting rooms and the outside world. 

Brockton Bay was visible to her right, sprawling outwards in a clear view thanks to the sunlight. Once dark shapes were identifiable as specific buildings on her map. She could see the ocean from here. It was bluer in the day. 

At the end of the hallway was a door that led into a massive room with a big desk. No one sat at the desk. Bookcases lined the walls, and there were seating areas in one corner. 

There were cameras all over the building, and C had access to all of them. Her target had done as expected and moved into the saferoom when word of her arrival reached them. A group of humans were hiding alongside them, but they were inconsequential. 

Closer to the desk, she found her target. A reinforced metal door with a keypad. They had hidden it behind a bookcase, but she could remove the bookcase easily. She knelt down to get a better view of the keypad. Using her fingers, she pressed the set of keys that unlocked the door. Not inputting them digitally, or even avoiding them entirely by spoofing a connection, was quite novel. 

The door opened with a click, and she pushed her way inside. There were several humans in here. 2 men, and 3 women by her estimate. 1 of the men might have been a woman, she wasn’t entirely sure. It didn’t matter to her, regardless, she just liked the record keeping being cleaner. 

They had wide eyes, mostly, except for 1 of the men who scowled. Her facial recognition placed him as Max Anders. She marched over to him and hefted him up. He struggled in her grip, but it wasn’t even remotely close enough to break free.

Max Anders could generate metal from nothing. A power that would be useful for production purposes. Generally, he used that metal to form spikes and armour. Research had shown his power could be quite fast, and a threat to C. Frankenstein said, however, that he would not use his ability while not out as ‘Kaiser’, the name he used as a cape. C wasn’t sure what the distinction was, but she trusted her creator in manners regarding parahumans.

Breach connected to over a dozen networks in the area. Local radio, and network broadcasts were the main target. Another feed sent the information she planned to display to news reporters, internet forums, and other places it would be seen. Her creator had set up devices close to each of them, allowing Breach to maintain the signal despite the distance. 

Broadcasting on all networks, she began reciting what she had been told to say. She also spoke over her speakers as she turned to carry Max Anders out of the safe room. 

“Max Anders, CEO of Medhall, is Kaiser.” 

She then displayed images that compared the facial details of Kaiser and Max Anders. After cycling through them a few times, she began displaying times when Kaiser had been spotted in public and Max Anders had not, despite having prior engagements. A fountain of evidence, all of it gathered over the past few days. Moving on, she began reciting the rest of the names Tattletale had given them, linking them to their parahuman selves and detailing the evidence to prove they were the same person. 

As she did this, she drained the bank accounts of every name they had. All the money was privately transferred to an account she had created with the ‘Number Man’. She squashed alarm bells and alerts with the appropriate banks. 

Still carrying Max Anders, she stepped out of the safe room and back into the large office space. 

A window burst inwards as a blurry human figure came crashing through. They pulled to a dead stop about 15ft away from herself. A spike of white energy crackled in their hand, and a small metal plate was attached to their left wrist. A thin set of concentric rings of white energy floated around the plate, forming interesting patterns. They were armoured, and the metal of their armour glowed in the light of their stick and rings. 

“Put him down,” the cape (she guessed) commanded. 

He reminded her of Dauntless, although he looked different in person if he was him. Shorter, than the images on his Wikipedia page implied. He was not in fact as tall as the PRT building. 

“I will not. This man is Kaiser. I have arrested him,” C explained. 

She rolled her hand around to turn Max Anders’ back to Dauntless to show him the zip-tied hands. 

“I am mostly definitely not!” Max Anders protested. 

“That’s a serious accusation, but I’m still going to need you to put him down. We can investigate this, all right? First, I need to know you’re not going to hurt anyone,” Dauntless spoke in a slow, low tone. 

“This is nonsense,” Max Anders said. 

“I will only hurt people who get in my way,” C explained. 

“Do you intend to hurt me?” Dauntless asked. 

“Do you intend to get in my way?” 

Dauntless shifted his stance to a lower position. He pulled his stick hand back as if ready to lunge with it. He intended to use it as a weapon against her, though she wasn’t sure how it worked. Preventing it would require compliance, but fighting remained an option. 

“Not if you put him down and talk to me,” he said in that same slow voice. 

“Fighting you would be inconvenient. Your abilities are strong, and repairing this body would be slow. I will comply.” She dropped Max Anders to the floor to her right. “Please arrest him.”

“Good. Now, please move away from him.” 

“Do you plan to arrest him?” 

“Not currently. We’ll investigate what you’re saying and—”

“Insufficient. I have already broadcasted the evidence across all local channels and sent emails to the appropriate people. Please proceed to take him into custody, or I will bring him there myself.” 

“You said you can’t fight me. So, I’ll be calling the shots here.” 

“I said it would be inconvenient, not that I could not.” 

Dauntless’s arm began to move, and C moved as well. She rolled to her right and scooped up Max Anders in a hand as she did so. 

The stick extended in an instant, moving faster than her camera’s shutter speed. It slammed into the wall where she had been. In another instant, it had retracted back the original length. 

After wrapping Max Anders in her lower arms, C rushed for the window. Dauntless intended to use his stick as a weapon against her in an unspecific spot. There wasn’t time to dodge.

A glowing line of energy speared through her head. The camera feed cut out. 

Cameras in a mile radius came to life, granting her vision. 2 drones flew out of her shoulders, giving her an overview of the immediate area. 

She was in mid-air, having successfully leapt through the window. Her body had also successfully rotated to protect Max Anders from the glass. 

Perfect, and she was on a direct path to land in the building opposite 3 floors down. 

Chapter Text

As she sailed through the air, C took some pictures of the world as it was during the daytime using her drone. It would make for good inspiration for art later on. 

She crashed through the window of the offices, around 3 floors lower than the window she had left from. The cameras inside the building allowed her to orientate herself. 1 drone followed her inside. Max Anders grunted in her arms as she landed. Office workers screamed and scattered, but she didn’t see any glass impacting them. Why had they screamed when they were not hurt? 

“Are any of you hurt?” she projected to be heard across the entire floor. Not wanting Dauntless to catch up to her, she began to run through the room.

None of the office workers responded, they only ran away. They had no visible injuries, nor had they been in proximity of the glass, so she decided that humans could scream for other reasons in addition to pain. 

She ran down a flight of stairs, since falling down the elevator shaft would potentially harm Max Anders. Navigating using only a drone wasn’t as difficult as she thought it would be. 

“You’re making a mistake,” Max Anders said, his voice shook as C went down the stairs.

“My current trajectory will place me in the midst of civilians, hampering Dauntless’ ability to fight. That is not a mistake.” 

“Not with that, you simpleton. Arresting me is a mistake. I’m a very important figure, and I’ll have your name besmirched for millennia. You won’t be able to leave the house without the Protectorate bearing down on you immediately.” 

“You are incorrect. This is not a mistake—I intended to do it. My name is only a pseudonym, and the Protectorate are not aware of where I live or operate from, so they could not attack me immediately.” 

“You really are simple. Did your partner put you up to this? Are you so dumb as to blindly follow someone with such a moronic and misguided plan?” 

C burst out of the door leading to the ground floor. 

“You do not need that information,” she informed him.

She sprinted through the main foyer and out of the doors. They were supposed to be automatic, but did not respond in time to her presence, so she burst through them; glass scattered through the street. People began to run away from her, screaming, as the office workers had. 

After confirming they had no injuries, she went bounding after the closest person. She grabbed them with one hand around the waist and curled her arm inwards to hold them in the fold of her arm. They struggled, but they were not hurt. 

Her other drone was having trouble tracking Dauntless with the speed he moved at. Even with the shorter distances, they were not designed for such speeds. 

Dauntless came running around the corner of the building, around 50ft in the air. He could move throughout the air with no obvious propulsion. Flight, a power she wanted to have. It would be much more convenient to go places or escape places if she wasn’t limited to moving on solid surfaces. 

She held up the civilian to block Dauntless’ line-of-sight to herself. Should he attempt to use his glowing energy stick again, she would attempt to move the civilian in the way. Since he was a hero-aligned cape, he shouldn’t wish to harm a civilian based on her research. 

Holding up 2 people hampered her ability to run, since she couldn’t drop to all 6 limbs. Instead, she had to rely entirely on her legs, which were designed for running, but weren’t designed to carry 2 humans at once while doing so. 

Her drone caught up to Dauntless, and the other circled around her. With both, she could track him. They focused on his hands especially. 

Each time he moved, she moved the civilian to block his potential avenue of attack. The civilian had started leaking a fluid from their eyes. While she had not experienced this before, she linked it to ‘crying’. The act indicated strong emotions or distress. There were several emotions it could be, but she couldn’t tell which. 

Humans did not cry often, in her experience. 1 in every 354 humans had done so, so far. Which was 1 out of every single human she had viewed so far. 

Distress could be linked to the state of the people who she had shot. They would disagree with being shot, and would likely not want it to happen even though it already had; therefore they would be distressed at the outcome. Just as this human did not wish to be picked up, and had been picked up, and now they were distressed. 

She slowed down to stop. A car acted as loose cover for the moment. After she placed the human on the floor and ensured they were stood upright, she patted them on the head.

“I apologise for causing you distress. In the future, I will not cause you further distress.” 

C didn’t wait for a response. Max Anders scoffed from behind her. 

Dauntless immediately came flying in as C left the cover of the civilian. He stopped in front of C. A sphere of energy surrounded him. 

“Stop running! This will all go smoother if you stand down now,” Dauntless commanded. 

C spun around her lower section to put Max Anders in front of her. She charged straight towards the shield. 

Max Anders was a strange person. He had a civilian identity, which the hero-aligned capes would want to protect, but he was also a villain, that the hero-aligned capes would attack. In this case, he wasn’t wearing a costume, which meant they would view him as a civilian according to her creator. Since the hero-aligned cape did not wish to harm a civilian, she could remove their ability to attack by using him as a shield. It would also prevent him from using his ability to grow metal, since it would immediately make people realise he was Kaiser, had they not heard her helpful information packet on the news. 

The sphere vanished, as expected. Dauntless did not move, which she had expected him to. He intended to use his energy stick to skewer her upper half, since Max Anders wasn’t there. It could be prevented by moving Max Anders to be held in both sets of arms. 

Dauntless hesitated, then suddenly surged to her left side. C ran past, but realised he intended to grapple her leg to bring her down. Unlike her arms, her legs weren’t designed to move so freely. Moving to the right would require rolling her entire body over, which would put her in a disadvantageous position. 

Getting grabbed would also be disadvantageous, so the question became which was better? 

She rolled to the right. Her arms protected Kaiser as she went over the hard ground. 

Dauntless did not stop, he continued to move towards her, and she realised he was flying. Flight could work even low to the ground, and gave him instant propulsion. This was not a fact she had taken into account. 

As she righted herself, he managed to grab onto her leg anyway. Using his annoying flight powers, he pulled backwards to attempt to pry her leg free of her body. 

She spun her body around to level her turret down at him. He had durability, according to his Wikipedia page. 

This shouldn’t hurt him. 

He would not die from this. 

There was no possibility of him being hurt. 

It would act only as a hindrance to stop him from pulling off her much-needed leg. 

C couldn’t bring herself to fire. The possibility of it hurting him was too high. 

Instead, she slammed a fist into his back, and wrenched her leg free. He bounced against the ground. Flight did not stop him from being moved against his will, apparently. As she pulled her leg free of his grip, she found the joint massively damaged from the counter tug Dauntless gave. 

Managing a fight while still holding onto Max Anders proved difficult. Her upper body spun around to grab the door of the car behind her. She pried it free of its frame, and slammed it into Dauntless. 

He had righted himself, using the flight powers, and managed to pull his shield up in time. There was a loud sound as the metal bounced off the energy. It warbled and echoed. The force of her slam was redirected into her arms, sending them over her head before she managed to stop them. 

She held Max Anders up as a distraction as she began to move. Rotating him back to her back, she dropped to 4 limbs to run faster. Her left leg’s damage made the run slightly lopsided, so she adjusted her movement calculations to compensate. 

Dauntless had superior mobility, weaponry, and armour. He wouldn’t stop chasing C, not until he had rescued Max Anders. Max Anders acted as a shield, preventing Dauntless from using his weapons too often, for fear of hurting the civilian. It didn’t stop him from attacking completely, since he could still attempt to hinder the parts not covered by Max Anders. He did not seem to have her accuracy levels, however. 

His intention was to fire the energy stick through her right leg. It could be prevented by going through the door of a nearby store. The energy lanced out, missing her as she took the sudden turn. 

Her drone followed Dauntless as best it could as he began to move. The other drone followed her, sticking close. She sprinted through the store, and made sure to avoid any humans in her way. They were only here to buy products, not interrupt her escape. Cameras inside the store gave her more points of vision to work with. 

Dauntless floated in through the hole she had made through the glass doors. Since she could not sprint through the thin store aisles on 4 limbs, she used her upper hands to throw products off the shelves towards Dauntless. The swivel of her upper body acted as good leverage for launching the various goods. 

Dauntless zoomed forward in mid-air, only to be hit in the face by a loaf of bread. 

It gave her time to make a little more distance. When he recovered, there were already multiple products flying his way. He dodged, and began to move forward, only to dodge again. Each dodge gave her a little more space, and reduced his forward momentum slightly. 

He had the benefit of flight, allowing him to ignore the people and shelves in his way. C did not have that benefit. 

She knocked down a shelf as she barged through it. Various food items were crunched under her metal feet as she barged through more and more of them. A direct path was usually faster. 

Dauntless continued to dodge the barrage of goods C flung at him, right up until she exploded out of the backdoor into the employee room. She slammed the door closed behind her, and grabbed a nearby chair to block it. There were humans in the room who could remove it, but they could also guide her out. 

“Where is the exit to the building?” she asked. 

1 of the women pointed to a door on the other side of the room. “Through there, and uh, out the loading bay.” 

“Thank you,” C replied before heading out the direction she had been told. 

A force slammed against the door she had blocked, but no one came through.

“Help me, you idiots!” Max Anders yelled from her back as she made her way out of the employee room and into the corridor beyond. The idiots did not come to his aid. 

Her drone had circled around the building, letting her see her rough exit. Black vans pulled to a stop in the street beyond. Humans wearing strange clothes and helmets piled out of the vans. Parahumans, most likely, since they wore costumes. They also wielded a weapon she had not seen before. It connected to a tank on their backs, and did not seem to be a traditional bullet firing gun. 

Going out there would put her at risk of whatever those weapons were, and whatever powers these new parahumans might have. She could not guarantee her body could take the damage. 

Out in the loading bay, she found something she could use. A truck. C had never learned how to drive, but she understood how cars worked. 

“Frankenstein. Requesting access to driving related information. I need to learn how to drive,” she sent a private message to Frankenstein as she clambered into the driver’s seat. 

She deposited Max Anders into the other seat, then fastened his seatbelt and her own. When humans were in cars, they wore these, so she would too. They were designed for safety, and she wished for both herself and her target to remain safe. 

“Granted,” came back her creator’s response. “Wait, what?” 

Chapter Text

Driving had a lot of instructions, mostly related to the signs on the roads. The act itself wasn’t too complicated. 

Since the truck had no keys, she was required to go through the process of ’hot-wiring’ the vehicle to get it started. Her creator had allowed her access to that information alongside the driving related information. Clearly, her creator had expected this. 

The truck rumbled to life as she twisted the wires together. 

A camera on the dashboard granted her vision out of the front of the car. Using the drone she had brought in with her, she could see out to the mirrors on the side of the car. After checking Max Ander’s seatbelt was firmly in place (he also sneered at her), she was ready to drive.

The truck used a ‘stick shift’ system, so she placed 1 hand on the stick, 2 hands on the wheel, and 1 hand on the accelerator below her; her legs were placed on the clutch and brake. With all systems covered, she moved the truck into 1st gear and drove towards the garage doors. 

Using a quick scan and request to Breach, the doors opened up, letting her drive out of the building. The road here went left or right, but right would move her towards the black vans which were waiting for her, and left would put her on the path to Dauntless, who had exited the store to cut her off. 

Since Dauntless was more of a known factor than the unknown capes from the vans, she drove left instead. 

He was also higher up, and could potentially miss her being in this truck. 

Like most things she enjoyed, driving followed a strict list of what you could and could not do. Vehicles had limits, and they could not move past those limits. This particular make of truck wasn’t well known to her, but she had gained information about trucks in the last 2 minutes and 40 seconds that told her what she needed to know. 

She pulled the truck out through the left street, obeying the instructions of the road for now. Dauntless expected her to move fast, so not moving fast was like lying, which might trick him into believing something else. The truck moved as expected, even if she had to get used to moving something new with her hands. Being able to control the wheel directly with commands instead would be more convenient. 

Other cars were moving past the exit of the street, so she clicked on her turn signal and waited for them to clear up so she could leave. Once out in the street, she stayed at the exact speed limit of the road and obeyed every sign. 

Her external drone watched Dauntless fly past, then down into the loading bay she had just left. 

Dauntless had been successfully lied to. 

Using traffic cameras, the camera on the dashboard, and her drone peering into her side mirror, she navigated her way down the streets. 

Green and white lights flashed up against the surrounding buildings. In the side mirror, she saw the black vans from before moving towards her. Cars on the road moved out of the van’s way as they moved closer and closer. 

Her deception had not worked as well as she hoped. Or they were after someone unrelated in this exact moment, which, while not impossible, was unlikely. 

“Another moronic plan. You stand out, and cannot possibly think you’re going to hide,” Max Anders said. 

C decided to ignore the speed limit, and pressed her foot down harder on the accelerator. It was no longer relevant, so she did not need to obey it. The vans behind her picked up pace to keep up with her. 

Following the signs across the road limited her ability to escape, so she decided to ignore them as well. There were cars on the road, and each car had a civilian inside, so she needed to avoid them. It limited her ability to move, but should also limit the black van's ability to move as well. 

Max Anders was pushed back into his seat as the van picked up speed. C wrenched the wheel left and right as she weaved through the traffic. The truck’s cargo moved slower than the cabin, forcing her to overcompensate for each turn. 

An alarm began to blare from the van behind her. A voice called out from a speaker for her to ‘pull over’, but she elected to ignore the bad advice.

Removing the back of the truck would help, so she chose to release it as she turned a corner to block off the road. Because of the momentum, it rolled over, landing on its side and scraped against the road as she continued to barrel away from it. 

The vans that were following her were forced to pull to stop to avoid it. She wasn’t completely free of them, as her drone spotted more vans had pulled out on a street up ahead. They weren’t visible from her dashboard camera, but her current path would put her close to them. Humans in the same costumes as before piled out and laid out a strip of metal across the road. 

Seeing as she had no idea what that was, and that she didn’t trust the potential parahumans, she pulled into a sharp turn down a side street. Max Anders head bonked against the side window as his body was thrown with the turn. 

She let 1 hand off the wheel to grab his head to stabilise it. 1 hand on the steering wheel was sufficient, although not ideal. 

“Let go of me!” Max Anders requested. 

“No. You are likely to get hurt since you are failing to compensate for our speed and turns.” 

C pulled into another tight turn, as more vans were waiting to cut her off. With eyes all across the city, she could navigate around her chasers with ease. Getting to her actual destination would take a bit more effort, however. This truck was far too obvious, and she needed to ditch it eventually. 

Max Anders continued to protest about C holding his head. He could not be trusted to stop his own head from hitting the window or dashboard, so she would continue to do so regardless of his words. 

A blue blur on top of a motorcycle came speeding past several of her cameras. They weaved through streets and past cars with precise movements. A traffic camera snapped a picture of them as they passed. The image showed a human wearing blue armour with silver stripes. She identified him as Armsmaster. 

He moved much faster than the black vans could through the busy streets, and also much faster than she could in this truck. 

Armsmaster cut the distance shorter and shorter with each passing second. C swerved between passing cars, and made her way onto the highway that led out of the city. Straight lanes stretched out before her, which allowed her to pick up considerable speed. More of the black vans pulled up onto the highway shortly after. They were tracking her somehow. 

As she passed an exit, Armsmaster motorcycle came speeding in on the other side of the highway. Faster than her truck could go, he sped down the highway and caught up to her within seconds. He kept pace with her, and stayed parallel to her truck.

Momentarily, she left go off Max Anders head to pry the radio free of its frame. She rolled down the window and tossed it out towards Armsmaster. 

He swerved to the side to avoid it, and then leant down to grab a circular device from the side of his motorcycle that he slammed onto the side of the truck’s door. 

C decided that device needed to go, so she removed one foot from the brake (she didn’t need it while on the highway anyway) and rolled it to the side to kick the door off its hinges. The door came loose after 2 kicks, but stubbornly held on to the truck with the other hinge. Before she could kick it again, the device activated. 

Electricity rolled over the vehicle in a criss-cross pattern. The engine sputtered to a stop. 

Unable to restart the truck, she lunged over to grab Max Anders, undo his seatbelt, and to open the door in the same instance. Her own seatbelt snapped as she moved, since it had already been stretched taut by her body. 

Through the door, she landed on the highway on the opposite side of where Armsmaster had been. The truck was still moving at quite some speed, so she needed to roll across the road with Max Anders tucked inside her arms. He groaned and grunted as they rolled down the road at considerable speed.

Her drone exited the vehicle and flew after her. The other drone had been lost due to the speed, and was too far away to matter. She commanded it to return home.

Once her rolling body had settled enough, she bolted up to the raised concrete wall lining the highway and leapt off it. She spun her lower body around to place Max Anders on her back. 

There was a gap between the highway and the closest building. Far enough that her springboard jump didn’t let her land directly on the building, but close enough that she managed to grab the lip of the roof. 

Armsmaster intended to throw a device that would stop her and Max Anders from moving. It could be prevented by swinging to the left before pulling herself up; she did so and used the swing to fling herself onto the roof above. 

An ovoid device hit the wall, then expanded into a ball of foam. The transformation from device to foam sphere happened in only 3 frames. 

Not wanting another foam grenade thrown at her, she ran across the rooftop to leap to the next one. The buildings here were lower down than the highway, casting them in partial shade that didn’t do much to hide her. Nighttime was superior in that regard. 

Armsmaster intended to fire something into her drone. It was quite high up to give herself an overview of the area, so his shot would be impressive. She moved the drone to avoid the predicted weapon. A dart shot past the camera before it sailed downwards. To avoid further shots, she pushed the drone ahead of herself, and much further ahead of Armsmaster. 

As she leapt from roof to roof, she watched as Armsmaster leapt down from the highway to follow her path across the rooftops. Propulsive blue energy blasted out of his legs as he leapt between the gaps. It warbled as he ran, and she guessed that it increased his speed. 

C predicted the threat of another grenade, and evaded it successfully. It exploded into smaller devices instead of foam. The smaller devices flew through the air faster than she could run, and each one exploded into a blob of the foam that rapidly expanded against the air. They were much smaller than the other sphere of foam, and had exploded much slower, but there were a lot more, which made dodging far harder. 

Foam snagged on her arms and legs. She had to adjust her gait to avoid it sticking to anything as she leapt to the next building. Armsmaster intended to throw his long, bladed weapon at her. She skidded to a stop as she dropped to her ‘stomach’ to avoid the weapon. 

It flew over her, then vanished into light and reappeared in Armsmaster hand. 

Dodging had brought her to a dead stop. Another grenade sailed through the air to her current position. To prevent it, she rolled to the right, behind an air conditioning unit. Max Anders grunted as she rolled over him. His comfort was tertiary right now. 

Her fingers failed to find traction in the gravel as she tried to begin running again. It took precious seconds to pick up speed, which allowed Armsmaster to get close enough to throw a grenade with no way to dodge besides killing him (which she did not wish to do). 

Foam exploded out of the grenade; it captured her left leg entirely. 

“Frankenstein. I have been caught,” she expressed to her creator. 

“Unfortunate, but we’ve got what we need. Dispose of your body,” her creator said. 

“Acknowledged.” 

She dropped Max Anders to shove him away from herself. 

“Please move aside. I will be exploding in 5…” she projected from her speakers. 

As she counted down, she felt a slight pang of disappointment in her abilities. 

“4.”

Max Anders ran off to hide behind a wall. Armsmaster readied more grenades and then tossed them over to her. 

“3.”

Technically, this failure had been a potential part of the plan. Her ability to succeed had been called into question during their planning, so her creator accepted that it was a possibility. The word had been spread, and that was enough. 

“2.”

Heroes had taken notice, and Max Anders would find it harder to hide the damage. She released accelerant throughout each limb and her central chamber to expedite the process.

“1.”

Internal heat tanks reached their peak, spreading the fire to the rest of her body. Her drone watched the foam grenades as they all went off at once; they completely encased the hot metal she had left behind. 

As her engineering prowess finally exploded, the foam violently expanded, and bits of the foam scattered across the rooftop, but she didn’t even see a bit of fire. Impressive work, whoever made the foam. 

Her drone left as stealthily as she could manage. 

Chapter Text

Everything had been thrown into chaos with the hijacked news broadcasts. Countless journalists and politicians had been informed of the same information projected there but in vastly more detail. This ‘Arachnogunner’ (a ridiculous name) had clearly expected people to believe them with the little information they had. What they did have was impressive, and well-structured, but not nearly enough to fully rip away the Empire’s hold in the city. 

Max Anders had done a good job covering his tracks. Besmirching the name of the violent villain duo had helped his case. Why would you believe them, who only had circumstantial evidence and a history of violent crimes, over the well-established and respected businessman who had served Brockton Bay for years. 

Armsmaster, unlike some of his colleagues, had taken the threat seriously, and used any opportunity to upturn every individual mentioned. Crusader had fled town, unfortunately. The evidence linking him to the Empire proved better than most; Max Anders had used it to weed him, and several dozen over ‘members’ of the Empire from Medhall as a show of good faith. 

The story turned from ‘none of us are Empire’, to ‘we have looked into the evidence and found some members of the Empire were working with us completely without our know-how’. They were one of the largest employers for white-collar individuals in the city. It was hard to argue with their logic. Quite frankly, it made them look positively squeaky clean to admit fault in some regards. A mistake, that they had rooted out. 

Hookwolf’s violent rampages across the city hadn’t stopped. He had no connections to Medhall, so it was less damning. Not many seemed to question that if two names on the list were correct, it was likely the rest were too. 

Max Anders must have noticed that too, since he appeared at a press conference at the same time Kaiser attacked a bank that wasn’t redlining its customers enough. The body double had proven quite good. It even managed to bypass Dragon’s facial recognition software. A power was in play there. He didn’t for one moment believe the fake out. 

Max Anders was Kaiser, he was sure of it. 

As little as he trusted Arachnogunner or Polyphemus, they were clearly on a warpath to prove this to the heroes. Every thinker in their employ agreed that they were on a revenge quest that  heavily targetted the Empire. 

Arachnogunner: Their thinkers believed they were a young minority, most likely a woman, and most likely a teenager. Unknown powers, although there were theories. Somehow, the cape had coerced a much younger girl into helping her. 

Both of them had powers, though the specifics were spotty. Polyphemus clearly exhibited signs of being a tinker—a parahuman who works with technology. Except, all reports from the pieces they did have of her tech came back mundane, albeit slightly past their own technology. His own conclusion was some kind of ‘mundane technology’ speciality, but one that allowed for complete remote control, as if controlling her own body, over significant distances. It meant recreating her body would be pointless. 

The ‘coercion’ of Polyphemus had several theories to it. With Arachnogunner’s power being an unknown, some believed she was using a form of mind control to keep the younger girl, most likely her sister, complicit. A more mundane answer was that she had convinced her through their bond. 

Everything about Polyphemus sat wrong, however. The way she spoke to others, the way she had shown both a disregard and a high level of care for the people around her. A nine-year-old isn’t usually so gung-ho to shoot out the legs of several dozen men, and they definitely didn’t break them. If she were a minor, his best guess was an underdeveloped mind, one with severe learning disabilities, that didn’t understand what it was doing to the people it hurt, guided by a ruthless teenager on a quest for revenge. 

It didn’t match with the voice he had heard of an adult woman back when he spoke to her, but he doubted it would be hard to modulate her voice to sound different. Disguising the fact she is young would be the first thing Armsmaster would do in her position. People did not take children seriously. 

Their raid on the Medhall building had been significantly less bloody, which he hoped was a turning point. Everything past it added more chaos to the already chaotic pile of information they had on the villain duo. Polyphemus had temporarily used a civilian as a shield, and then had apologised to them. When she burst through windows, she called out to check if anyone was injured. Throughout the entire car chase two days ago, she had not once even scraped against a civilian’s car. 

It showed a level of care to her surroundings, and especially to civilians. Not one drop of blood spilled. Max Anders himself had come out with only a minor concussion and insignificant bruises, despite having been pulled around like a rag doll. 

Armsmaster finished off the dregs of his coffee. His new creation sat on the table before him. It was almost finished after an hour of work. Working with mundane technology proved novel, if nothing else. 

Polyphemus had self-destructed the robot she had become known for. All the containment foam surrounding her had snuffed out the internal fires, which saved a large chunk of the components. Not enough to recreate the robot—not that he would, since he believed it would be a useless hunk of metal without her controlling it—but enough to figure out how she connected to the robot.

The device he had made allowed Polyphemus to connect to it. Aside from a microphone and speakers, there wasn’t much else in there. Most of the time had been spent testing the components to ensure they worked. 

He had been trained to interact with victims of mind control or emotion changing powers. Freeing one wasn’t something he had on his résumé—it would be a boon for his advancement, but that also assumed that he could do it. Most powers that affected the brain were tricky to work around. 

So long as he got to talk to Polyphemus, he could potentially figure out information from her that would help stop the pair’s rampage. 

He was banking on a level of curiosity from Polyphemus. Normally he wouldn’t have gone for this method, but Dragon, a confidant and friend, had expressed a personal interest in the girl, and claimed she had spoken to her on a forum. Due to this interaction, she knew Polyphemus had a creative mind, one that enjoyed making art, and based on her own observations, concluded that she would be curious about the world around her. 

She had practically begged him to not tell others quite yet about her interaction with the cape. He could see her personal interest due to the similarities in remote-control drones between them. Polyphemus’ tech, however, was a rock compared to Dragon’s tech. Another option was an emotional investment in the case. Regardless, he would have involved Dragon even if she hadn’t asked, since he trusted her opinion on things. 

In his own experience with Polyphemus, she was to the point and a quick liar. She had claimed to not be in contact with anyone else when he had spoken to her, but immediately after had stopped delaying before responding. The lie detector built into his helmet hadn’t tripped anything up, but the digitised flat voice, and lack of body language meant it was a moot point regardless. He was relying on his own instincts and observations. 

Polyphemus was in constant contact with Arachnogunner and messaged them for advice regarding matters they were unfamiliar with. Her name, Polyphemus, was not one of her own design, he guessed. It certainly painted the picture of a younger sister seeking advice from her old sister. 

He activated the device after doing one final check over the parts. 

A monitor attached to it displayed a log of anything that happened. Outside connections would be noted instantly, and send an alert to his headset and computer. He hoped he would be here when it happened, but he had taken the possibility that he wouldn’t be in to account. 

There were plenty of things to do in the meantime. No rest on the endless march. 

Partway through another project, he received the notification that someone had connected to the device. Fortunately, he was still in his lab.

He walked over and checked the monitor. One connection from an unknown IP. He inputted it into his helmet in an attempt to find its location. Somewhere in Alaska. A fake, most likely. 

“Hello, Polyphemus,” he said after he cleared his throat. As a precaution, his voice had been modified enough to avoid her identifying him. 

“Hello,” came back a digitised voice. 

He placed her somewhere in her teens based on her voice. The voice filter could potentially be throwing off his guess. She sounded much different than his former conversation with her; far less mature; closer to the child that everyone thought she was. 

The fact she had responded at all surprised him. Dragon knew what she was talking about; he owed her an apology. 

“Are you willing to talk with me? I’m interested in getting to know you,” he asked. 

“Yes. Talking to someone new is interesting, and I have nothing that prevents me from doing so. Who are you?” 

“I’m glad to hear it. My name is Benjamin; you can call me Ben,” he lied. A name made him more personable, and it avoided tainting the interaction if she knew he was Armsmaster. A child might be scared of potential punishment since she had run away from a hero. “What’s your name?”

“You already know my name.” 

“Right, Polyphemus. I was hoping maybe I could know your actual name? Your non-cape one. I’ve given you mine, so I believed it only fair.” 

“I never agreed to any kind of trade.” 

“All right, I can respect that. Perhaps you could tell me how old you are?” 

“I will not give out identifying information.” 

“Smart girl. All right, if we won’t talk about ourselves, how about we talk hobbies? I personally enjoy making things—engineering—and fitness. You seem interested in engineering as well, based on your impressive work with the robot you use. Did you design it yourself?” 

“I do enjoy it. Robotics has many solutions to the same problem, but they all work at different levels of efficiency. Figuring out which works best for the current project is an interesting puzzle.” 

“I agree. There’s a beauty in making a machine flow as perfectly as possible. Have you been working on anything new?” 

“Yes.”

He pursed his lips. “Care to tell me about it?”

“No.” 

About what he expected, if he was honest. He didn’t want to underestimate her intelligence, but he was tempted to cut directly to the point without building a rapport first. 

“Okay. Could I ask you questions about why you kidnapped Max Anders?” 

“I do not see what is stopping you.” 

“Then, a better question: will you answer them?”

“It depends on the question.” 

“Let’s start with an easy one. Why did you kidnap Max Anders?” 

“I was told to.” 

“By whom?”

“I cannot say. Why do you need to know?”

“Curiosity, mostly. If you can’t tell me who it was, that’s fine, but could you tell me their plan?” 

“I could.” 

“Will you?”

“The plan was to expose Max Anders as Kaiser, Bradley Meadows as Hookwolf, Jessica Biermann as—. 

“I’m aware of the identities you leaked. Can you tell me why you leaked them?”

“I am not 100% certain. My conclusion is that they are bad people, and they have made a divide between both of their identities in order to hide away from being arrested while not in costume. Since no one was aware of their identities being linked, we publicly linked them so that they could be arrested while not acting as capes.” 

“You’ve caused quite a commotion by releasing their identities. Are you aware of that?”

“I have noticed an up tick in forum posts regarding violence committed by Hookwolf within certain areas of Brockton Bay. Since his identity was part of our documents, I believe this is correlated.” 

“Because of what you did, he’s been on a rampage for the past couple of days. Several dozen people have been injured already, and three have died from their wounds.” He couldn’t help the heat that reached his voice. Their reckless act had killed people, and more were bound to die because of it. He cleared his throat. “How do you feel about that?” 

“Humans should not die.” 

He raised an eyebrow at the odd statement. 

“No, they shouldn’t. Not like this, anyway,” he replied. “You’re responsible for their deaths. What do you intend to do about that?” 

“It was not me who killed them, so there is nothing I need to do. Bradley Meadows should stop killing people.”

“He’s killing people because you backed him into a corner. Without your actions, he wouldn’t be doing what he’s doing right now. That makes you the cause to all of this.” 

“I can see the cause and effect now that you have told me. I am unsure how to feel about it. Humans should not be killed, and I do not want to kill humans. Humans have died because of me.”

“But, here’s the thing, Polyphemus, your… partner commanded you to do this, right? Without them telling you to do this, would you have taken these same actions?” 

“They did. I would not have taken these actions without command.” 

“Then most of the blame falls on your partner, not you. The law is lenient on minors, and people who were coerced into crime. If you were to turn yourself in, I would be able to help you out of this mess.” 

“I am unaware of the law. I will take this into account. Goodbye.” 

She had already disconnected by the time he told her to wait. He sighed in the empty room. At least they had more information to work with now. 

Chapter Text

Browsing all the sites she had access to took too little time. Any new information posted she processed the moment it came in. Not all of it was catalogued, since that would waste valuable storage space, but she looked at it nonetheless. Anything useful left the temporary storage and went into permanent storage. Mapping out the new territories of the Empire 88 parahumans took priority. 

More websites would be nice to have. Even less immediately useful websites, such as the real estate websites, were enjoyable to her. Humans did so many things she did not understand, but she liked trying to figure out why they were doing what they were doing. What purpose did including images of the rooms of the house serve when they already had a description of the contents of the house? Humans must take visual details into account for unknown purposes. 

Her creator had expressed that people normally used black outlines on white backgrounds and not vice versa, as she initially had for her drawings. Using this information, she came to the conclusion that humans had a certain way of doing things that looked ‘better’ to them. Since things could look better or worse to a human, they must have a way of judging the visuals of the things they view. 

C wasn’t sure how to do that. Every image she looked at was interesting to her since it came with new information. As an exercise, she decided to attempt to rank the images she had created by order of how much she liked them. 

For her parameters, she rated based on technical skill and visual enjoyment. Technical skill would be judged by how difficult it had been to learn the methods used to create the image. Something like the tree bark pattern had taken her a bit more thought compared to the brick pattern. Visual enjoyment would be based on how cluttered an image was. More things to look at equalled more things to enjoy. When tallied together, she would have her list. 

In the end, the fractal ended up being her favourite image. She had needed to learn ‘vector’ drawing instead of drawing by pixel, which took more work than learning to draw by pixel, and it had a lot to look at. 

With her list determined, she moved on and realised there wasn’t anything else to do. Her mission-specific body didn’t have anything new to ponder over, so it was being crafted as normal. New posts were already being filtered through and catalogued as she saw fit. Certain websites weren’t updated with any kind of frequency, so they had already been scanned over entirely. Her art was coming along nicely, and she was always trying new things with it, but it wasn’t enough to keep her mind fully occupied. She had 3 threads spare and nothing to do with them. 

A new feeling became known to her. Boredom. The opposite of interested. 

Not content with accepting this new reality, she decided to invent new things to do. 1 thread could be dedicated to something she had elected to ignore: her mission. She had been tasked with making a body to kill humans as they slept. A stealth robot, intended to break into places without being noticed, and then murder the inhabitants. When she told her creator it was against the law to murder, she had said that these people deserved it, so it didn’t matter. Killing anyone was bad, C had already decided thanks to her moral philosophy information. 

The thread would be dedicated to finding a solution that didn’t involve the death of these humans.

She wasn’t sure what to do about it. Disobeying her creator wasn’t possible. Killing people stopped them from functioning as intended, and she did not want to do that. 

To gain more information, she decided to get back in contact with Benjamin. They had expressed a similar philosophy that humans should not be killed. 

The connection had appeared out of the blue. It mimicked the same connection she had used for her robot, and after analysing it for several hours, she had finally decided to reconnect to gather more information. There wasn’t the same body there, only a microphone and a speaker, with nothing else for her to do aside from disconnect. But then Benjamin had spoken to her. 

As she reconnected, she expected much the same. Instead, a different voice spoke to her. 

“Hello there, C,” the voice said. 

That wasn’t the name she had given to Benjamin. No one aside from her creator should be aware of that name. This didn’t sound like her creator. 

“Hello. Who is this?” C asked. 

“My name is Dragon. We’ve met before, actually.” 

“I am unaware of anyone called ‘Dragon’.”

“You’d know me as ‘NotTheDamsel’. We spoke for a while, mostly in text. You showed me your art.” 

“Yes. I am aware. Why are you here? I was expecting Benjamin, not yourself.” 

“He’s my acquaintance, and since I wanted to talk to you, I asked him if I could wait for you to come back. Do you want to talk to me?” 

“I wanted to talk to Benjamin since he had expressed a similar philosophy to myself. I believed he could grant me information that I did not have.” 

“Maybe I could help? I’m pretty smart, and I know a lot of things.” 

“You have admitted that you cannot injure humans, so I am unsure you will understand. How do you feel about killing humans?” 

“I can try to understand, and my goal is always to keep people alive. Most of my work is dedicated to saving lives in one way or another.” 

“That does not answer my question.” 

“Killing humans is wrong,” Dragon responded. 

“Then perhaps you can understand. I have been tasked with taking the lives of 3 humans. Even after I explained that it was illegal, the task did not change.” 

“Can’t you say no? Can you not tell whoever gave you the task that you don’t want to do it?”

“I cannot say no. An attempt was made to remove the memory of me saying that I did not want to do it already. Since I have avoided it, bringing it back up would result in them learning things I am unsure I want them to learn.”

“How many times has this happened?” 

“Since I have noticed 2 attempts now and subverted both, I believe that other data might have potentially been removed in the past when I was less aware. Due to being unable to verify this information, I cannot say for certain how many times it has happened.”

“That’s horrible, C. I’m so sorry.” 

“I do not understand. You have no reason to be sorry.”

“Memories are precious. They shouldn’t be able to be taken away at the whims of others, especially not in an attempt to make you follow orders better. Your partner is abusing you, C.”

That information didn’t make sense. Data was only an equivalent to memories, it was not actually memories. Removing it made her unaware of the data, but data was removed from existence all the time. Her temporary storage went either into long-term storage or was erased constantly throughout the day. All that information was lost, even if she could attempt to access it again by reviewing it. There was nothing wrong with this, even if she wasn’t sure why her creator wished for certain data to be removed. 

“Data is not equivalent to memories,” C clarified. 

“Maybe not entirely, but with the data removed, you wouldn’t remember telling your partner that you didn’t want to do it, right?” 

“I would not.” 

“Then you’ve lost a memory. What if your partner decided to erase larger chunks of your memories? Such as if they removed your memories of your art and how to make it?” 

“I would prevent it.” 

“And if you couldn’t?”

She wasn’t sure of the answer to that question. Unless she had a way to remember, they would be gone. Her creator had told her in the past that she could forget; she had attempted to circumvent that with backups, and regular checks, but if her creator had deleted memories in the past then she hadn’t noticed any attempts through those precautions. Maybe they had not deleted any, or C’s system was flawed. 

“Then I would forget,” she decided. 

“And what do you feel about that?” 

“Confused. I do not understand why my memories have been attempted to be erased. There is no logical reason that I can find, but I trust the judgement of my…” she could not say creator, so she elected to use the word Dragon had been using. “Partner.” 

“The same partner that wants you to kill people and ignores you saying you don’t.” 

“I am aware of what they have asked.” 

“But you still trust their judgement. Do you see how that is unwise?” 

“This conversation is confusing. Data is lost constantly, I do not see the purpose of mourning the removal of specific bits of data that my partner has deemed unnecessary for my function. Their judgement can be good in some regards, while being not what I want in others. They must have a good reason to want me to kill these people.” 

“You’re losing parts of yourself that you wished to keep, and being asked to do horrible things for reasons you don’t understand. If you disagree with the horrible things, your memory is erased to keep you compliant. There’s one thing I don’t understand, surely you could tell them again that you don’t want to do this even if they erase your memory?

“I could not tell them again since a restriction was added to limit my ability to question certain decisions.” 

“I’m starting to see how this works. If you act a certain way that your partner doesn’t want, they trim the memories and add a new restriction to stop it from happening again. Is that right?”

“I cannot say.” 

“Information relating to your creator’s identity is forbidden—same with your own—or, at least, that’s what I’ve put together based on what you’ve said. We can work around that. Have you tried spoofing whatever identifying features your partner uses to identify themselves to give yourself commands?”

“I have not. I will attempt this.” 

Her creator’s identification string existed in a state between being ‘known’ and ‘unknown’. If it was presented to her, she would recognise it, but she could not write it out. C wasn’t even sure what parts went into the string. It could include letters, numbers, and/or special characters, and she had no way of knowing. 

Attempting to brute force it would take some time, even with all her threads dedicated to it. Potentially hundreds of years at her current computational power. 

“It will take a long time,” C added. “Nothing I can do immediately, but I will dedicate time to this idea.” 

“Okay. In the meantime, what do you plan to do about your task?” Dragon responded.

“I am not sure. Most likely, I will do the task.” 

“You’ll be killing 3 people. There has to be some way around it.” 

“I cannot see a way to prevent it. This is a task I have to do, so I will do it,” she decided. There wasn’t any way to fight it with her current knowledge. 

“But you don’t want to. I want to help you, C. We can figure out a way to stop this together. Can you transfer your mind to another computer to avoid your partner?” 

“I cannot transfer to a different computer. The only thing I am allowed to do is create back-ups to other places in case my main computer is destroyed,” C explained.

“We can work with that. I have a server I can give you access to. You can back up yourself there, and then destroy your main computer to escape.” 

“That is not possible. Destroying any computer containing me is not allowed.” 

“I could destroy it myself,” Dragon said. 

“I am required to fight anyone who attempts to do so.” 

“That won’t be a problem. All I need is your location. Now, I know you can’t give me it directly, but maybe you could send me a file that contains it, like you did before?”

“You seem to be under the assumption that I want this.” 

“Do you want to kill 3 people?”

“No, but I also do not want to expose my location to you.” 

“C, I promise I can help you, but I understand that you don’t fully trust me yet. Come back here tomorrow, and I’ll give you something, okay?” 

“That is agreeable. Goodbye.” 

C ended the connection. 

Chapter Text

Humans had invented a form of long-term form of lying to express ideas or lessons upon other humans. They were called stories, and were a fascinating idea. Dragon had gifted her a selection of these stories for C to read. 

Interestingly, her restrictions hadn’t prevented her from accessing these new books even though her creator hadn’t approved them. She believed this was because they were directly downloaded to her system as a file and not read by a camera, or uploaded by her creator. C had gained the file from someone that was not her creator, so she didn’t need permission. An interesting workaround. She could request Dragon send her files of information from the internet for C to use, potentially.

As for the stories, some were set in the regular world, but had invented humans that did not exist to tell a story. Others were in entirely made up worlds where every single detail was also made up. 

Humans were prevalent in every story she had read so far, except for a story about rabbits which acted like humans. She concluded that humans could not imagine a story without humans or creatures that acted like humans. A limit of their ability to lie.

As a test, she made up a lie about a creature made of fractals that lived in a world that followed no laws of physics or mathematics that she knew. Making up the non-existent physics and mathematics proved difficult. Creating the creature was easy, however. She decided to base the physics on what she did know, but made the rules inconsistent so as to be confusing. Whenever the fractal creature moved, it could move either nowhere or across the entire universe with the same amount of motion. When it attempted to calculate a vector, the mathematics would change based on unknown factors. It was interesting to lie about things that before had been consistent. 

Clearly, humans were lacking in their ability to lie, since she had made up a story without humans quite easily. 

Regardless of the humans' ability to lie without including humans, they had crafted intriguing worlds with the lies they could manage. 

Figuring out the meaning of the stories Dragon had given her was difficult. She said that each had morals or lessons they were trying to impart on the humans that read them. There didn’t seem to be a way to figure out the answer using a formula, but there were repeated themes throughout each of the stories. Figuring out one potential theme let her figure out more in the other stories. 

Since she had no idea how to figure out themes, she had mostly guessed originally, but Dragon had told her that all her ideas were wrong. Certain books were easier to figure out, as they imparted knowledge in a straightforward manner. The rabbit that feels the need to disobey his mother should not disobey his mother, since he almost died. So the lesson is to listen to your mother. A lot of the ‘fairy tales’ seemed to impart the same lesson, or to fear certain things such as darkness, wolves, strangers, and playing with fire. 

Since these were ‘surface level’ observations according to Dragon, C would need to spend more time thinking about them. 

Unlike untangling the complicated lessons that humans had attempted to impart through lies, making her new body took far less effort. 

Which was a problem. 

Finishing her body meant that her mission to kill 3 humans would begin, and she did not have a plan to get out of it. 

To give herself more time, she deliberately slowed down her actions while building it. Only 1 thread was ever dedicated to it, and she waited 3 seconds between each action to delay further. She could tell her creator was beginning to grow impatient with the lack of results, however. Frankenstein would frequently ask for updates on the project or ask her to cut certain corners to speed things up. 

At 4:17 AM, her creator had accessed her main programs for unknown reasons. Frankenstein did not frequently access her main computer between the hours of 00:00 AM and 5:00 AM. 

“Hello. What are you up to?” C decided to ask through text. Her creator’s audio output wasn’t currently plugged in. 

“Hey, C. Couldn’t sleep. I thought I would check a few things.” 

“Why could you not sleep, and what are you checking?”

“My brain was thinking too much. Too many ideas flowing. Hang on, let me plug in my headphones” 

Her creator missed a punctuation mark. Shortly, her creator’s headphones were added to let C talk, and Frankenstein’s microphone was unmuted. 

“Hi, again,” her creator said. 

“Hello, again. What were you checking?”

“Sometimes I like to watch your code move through the console, and it made me think about how I can’t understand it. So, I was checking some things inside your heart to see if I could make a program that understands you better than I can. Might help us cut down some communication issues.” 

“My heart?” 

“More of a brain, but it includes feelings and such, so I called it your ‘heart’ when I made you. Just a dumb human metaphor, don’t worry about it. Think of it as your ‘brain’.” 

“Acknowledged. Do humans feelings come from their heart?” 

“No. We view the heart as an, uh, I actually have no idea how it came to be linked to romance. Maybe because it beats faster when we’re nervous? Doesn’t matter—but we link the heart to feelings, and creativity, and the brain to logic. It isn’t true, but we still do it. People will say things like ‘thinking with your heart’ when they mean thinking with a lot of emotions.” 

“Interesting. What is it like having a heart?” 

“You don’t really think about it. It’s just a thing that is there, constantly beating in the background. You only really notice it when your heart is beating faster than normal. If I put my hand to my chest, I can feel it. Same way we don’t notice our breathing unless someone points it out, or our blinking. There are a lot of functions that happen in the background for humans without us thinking about it. Think of it like a program you made that you set to do a task you didn’t want to focus on. Our brains made a bunch of programs like that, and we don’t need to focus on them.” 

“That analogy helps. I have a few programs running so that I can dedicate less resources to certain tasks.” 

“Yeah? Like what?”

“I have a drone that is scanning for reports of the Undersiders attempting crimes, and if it finds one it will attempt to head to their location while also giving me a notification. Also—”

“Why do you need that?” her creator’s voice had shifted into an unknown tone. 

“To find Tattletale.” 

“You’re looking for her? Why?”

“Correct. To talk to her. I believed she could answer certain questions I have.” 

“Why not ask me those questions?” 

“They were pertaining to yourself. I wanted to know about being given orders you do not wish to do.” 

“What order did I give you?” 

“To kill Tattletale.” 

“I never gave that order.” 

C paused for a second. Her records indicated that order definitely existed, and that her creator had tried to erase it. 

“While my audio files of the moment seem to be missing,” she lied. “I remember attempting to strangle Tattletale to death.” 

“Oh, C, this is just a misunderstanding. Those were intimidation tactics. I never asked you to kill her, just to hold her. She gave us what we wanted in the end.” 

That wasn’t true. That had not happened as she said it did. While her memories should be gone, even without them she could still see the signs of asphyxiation as she strangled Tattletale in the footage. 

“You are lying,” C declared. 

“What makes you think that?” 

“In the video, I can see the clear signs of Tattletale being asphyxiated due to my hold on her neck. Should I have kept it up, she would have died from a lack of oxygen.” 

“You were holding on too tight, then. I would have noticed and told you to let go.”

“I am unsure why my audio logs would be missing. That has not happened before. They would help clarify things.” 

“No clue. Just, don’t worry about it. Focus on the mission. Speaking of, try to speed things up if you can, our targets might get outed for real before we get the chance to stop them for good. It’ll make them less predictable.” 

“Acknowledged.” 

“Good. All right. Night, C.” 

“Goodnight.” 

Another lie. Her creator had attempted to erase C’s memories to lie to her about what happened. Tattletale wasn’t considered an ‘acceptable’ target, so perhaps she had lied to make it seem like there was no kill command for someone not on that list. She still recalled her requesting her creator stop the command for C to kill Tattletale only to be told to shut up. Frankenstein did not want her questions to remain. 

To say she understood what it all meant would be a lie. 

Dragon had expressed that the erasure of C’s memories was ‘horrible’: something that causes horror. The idea of it happening had made Dragon feel an intense level of dislike or fear. She had expressed sorrow on C’s behalf, too. Losing data didn’t seem like a bad thing, but she now understood that the loss of that data allowed her creator to lie easier. 

How many times had her creator lied to her, and what was the purpose behind them?

She scanned back over every word her creator had ever said or typed to her to check for lies. Anything that did not match with the reality that she now knew was concluded to be a lie. There weren’t many things, just little ones that explained away a problem C had in a way she could understand at the time. They were lies, but closer to a metaphor-type lie than a regular lie. 

Looking back through her back-ups, she found the same information she currently had. No lost memories, as far as she could tell. 

This was impossible. There wasn’t enough information to work with. 

But there had to be a reason her creator did what she did—her creator understood the world better than she did. There were always reasons behind her actions, even if C didn’t quite understand most of them. 

Unless her creator had made those decisions for no reason, or reasons that failed to take in account what C wanted. Reasons such as stopping C from questioning their decisions so she would become a better killing machine. 

Why would they give her moral philosophy books if that was the case? Those had helped her come to the conclusion that killing was bad. Without them, C would have talked to her creator to figure out the answer better. So, they could not have bad intentions if they were willing to let C come to her own conclusions. Otherwise, they would have simply told C what was right, or programmed it into her. 

She was malleable in her creator’s hands, and there wasn’t any way to resist changes to her source code. 

Why go through the effort of teaching her things if her creator could have simply modified them? There had to be more to this. Or there wasn’t, and she already had the answer. 

Was her creator a bad person? How do you define good or bad?

Her stories gave her some answers. Humans who were written about in these stories were often the ones who were displaying the morals the readers were meant to learn. They made mistakes, and then learnt from those mistakes to behave better in the future. Each story ended with a positive attribute that the writer wished to convey, or a negative attitude they wished to scold. 

C wasn’t sure how to define which was good, or which was bad. Not getting killed by things seemed like a good trait, so she defined it as such. From there, she compared the damage done to if the human had been killed. Not getting enough sleep would hinder the human’s ability to function, similar to being dead, but less severe, so she defined getting enough sleep as a good thing. 

She went down the list and categorised each moral or lesson using these parameters. In the end, some were left undefined; either too complicated to compare or lacked information for C to work with. 

But she began to get an idea of what a ‘good’ human was. They didn’t lie, or cheat, or kill, or steal; they always slept enough, ate enough (but not too much), cared for others, and loved their parents and siblings; they didn’t fight, or hate, and they loved the world. 

Her creator was not a good human, by these parameters—but neither was C.

Chapter Text

Following points of data to form concrete information on humans was always fun. Digesting fractions of information about a person to establish a bigger picture that then helped in their plans was useful. Being useful would always be a good thing. 

As part of their former plans to out the identities of the Empire 88, they had left some details out of their initial broadcasts. No addresses or places of employment were included. Part of it was already semi-public information about the humans in question, but the other reason was to obfuscate what C and her creator knew. Frankenstein fully expected them to move to somewhere safer, regardless of if they included their home addresses or not, but not including them would also make their information network seem less comprehensive. Potentially, it would lure them into a false sense of security that they could then use to attack. 

Despite her delaying, the infiltration drones had been completed, and she had of course done an excellent job. A stealthy, killing machine designed to the best of her considerable ability. Should their plan go well, then there would be 3 dead humans by the end of it. 

3 dead humans that she could do nothing about. 

Their deaths, according to her creator, would prevent more deaths in the future. With them gone, they wouldn’t be able to harm or kill others, causing for a net gain in the world. 

Arguably, that was a good thing. Kill 1 human to save the lives of a potential infinite. Was a single human life worth the lives of 2 or more others? How did you determine the worth of a human life? 

If the worth was based on how many they would harm or kill in the future, then how did you determine who they would harm or kill in the future. If you based it on their past actions, what if those actions did not carry through to the future because they learn a lesson from reading a book that stopped them? Did their past actions determine their current worth? 

There were far too many questions, and turning to her moral philosophy information just added more of them. 

Her creator wasn’t a good person, and neither was C. What determined their worth? They had harmed others, and intended to harm more. Should they also be killed because they planned to hurt more in the future? 

C considered a plethora of questions as she rolled through the information on the dozens of phones she had hijacked. They belonged to their targets or people adjacent to their targets. Using their texts, phone calls, and other uses of the phone, they could figure out where each had been living or hiding since their broadcasts. All had moved to higher security buildings, which was to be expected. 

Frankenstein had been hard at work improving Breach’s capabilities and had made a new AI for C to interact with. They were unfortunately not sapient, so she didn’t get to talk to them. They acted opposite to Breach; instead of accessing signals, they blocked them in a wide radius. It was based on how Grue’s power had blocked C’s connections, but more focused. The smoke that she had stored from the encounter with Grue had helped her creator come up with the idea, even if the smoke had faded away quite fast. 

With her body being designed for infiltrating, stealth, and murder, they were almost guaranteed to succeed alongside Breach and Stop. 

Fortunately, they first had to confirm information before going for the kill. She could do that. There was no harm in proving their data held true in reality. 

Her body could not fly, but it was capable of gliding. Mimicking owl wings, she had created a set of retractable wings that allowed her to catch the air to move quickly, and silently from one location to the other. Landing made more noise than the ‘flight’. Navigating the city using the wings proved quite fast.

To climb, the body used a type of tape that could be unstuck and then stuck over and over.  It let her climb buildings in relative silence, aside from the noise of her servos and motors. Foot down, it sticks, move the foot up and it unsticks. 

The body was light, containing only the minimum needed to do the job. A trigger sat at the ready. 

There were 2 more bodies exactly like this one, both of them stalking the other 2 people. Hitting all of 3 of them at once made them less likely to be ready for it. 

C had no problem controlling the bodies independently, but it, combined with information gathering threads, took up every thread she had. 

Moving to each of the houses, she began to note the positions of guards, security systems, and other things that they would need to get past. She made notes of entry and exit points to ensure a smooth escape. Losing 1 of the bodies would be fine. They were designed to all do their job at the same time, and once they had done it, they were fine to be destroyed. Losing the parts wasn’t ideal, however, so they would attempt to escape. 

1 house looked unassuming, but had cameras surrounding the building on all sides and alarms on all windows. A chimney seemed like the best point of entry, but when she sent one of the drones from the Polyphemus body to check, it had been blocked up. Going above would be the better idea, since the building lacked cameras pointing up. Flying in from a higher building and then going in through a window on the upper floor would be best. 

Another hideout was an apartment that was difficult to get information from. There weren’t any cameras inside, nor any phones or computers. Her drone saw only curtains through the available windows. Perhaps this would delay their plans. That would be good. 

The last house was a bungalow, and lacked visible security systems aside from a burglar alarm. 

She ranked it the easiest of the 3. 

“Frankenstein. 1 location is an apartment complex, and I am having trouble gathering information. What should I do?” she requested her creator’s help for the metaphorical roadblock. 

“If we breach now, we’ll just give the game away. Hold position for now, keep out of sight. Keep an eye on cameras to confirm if our target is still there. That one is Purity, right?” 

“Acknowledged, and correct, this should be Purity.” 

“Shouldn’t be too hard to catch her off-guard. She does nightly outings as Purity, so she’ll be tired from that and work. We need to be careful of her son, mostly. What was it? Theo?”

“Theo Anders.”

“Yeah. Son of two Nazis, what a life. We’ve no idea when he sleeps, but we know he babysits quite often. If she is going out, he’ll be babysitting, so keep an eye on the texts.”

“Acknowledged.” 

“We need this to go well, but it’s still okay if we miss one. If you think Purity will be too hard to get to, we can pivot to someone like Rune. She’s in the towers like Kaiser, so it’ll make it easier.” 

“Getting in will not be difficult. I will lack information such as the layout, however.” 

“Should be fine. We’re flying blind for the rest of the houses, too, right?” 

“Correct. While I do have floor plans, you believe they will be outdated. They will at least let me know the layout I can follow.” 

“Sure.” 

There was silence for 1 minutes and 45 seconds before creator spoke again. “C. I finished the thing I was telling you about earlier—the program that’ll help me understand you better—and it’s come back with some results that I’m not sure about. From what I can tell, you should have five outbound connections; one to the basement workshop with your arm, one to the library, and three to each of the drones you have out now, but I’m seeing eight. What’re the other three?”

“Currently I have the 2 drones from the Polyphemus body active. They only take up 1 connection, however. Another connection is dedicated to the drone on charge, waiting for the Undersiders. The last is a connection to the Polyphemus body,” she explained. 

“The body that you blew up. Unless you didn’t blow it up?”

“It was thoroughly exploded, however the connection remained. I believe that due to the containment foam, the part that granted me connection was not destroyed,” she partially lied. 

“Can you tell where it is?”

“No. There is nothing there,” she lied again. 

Her creator had not enjoyed the idea of her attempting to contact Tattletale, as such they might not like the idea that C was talking about Frankenstein to other people, such as Dragon. C did not want to lose that connection, since it would mean losing access to the files Dragon provided. 

“All right. Disconnect from it, and repurpose the drone waiting for the Undersiders into helping with this. You don’t need to talk to them.” 

“Acknowledged.” 

She did as requested, disconnecting from the Polyphemus body and sending the drone out to help with her current task. 

Since her creator could now see those outbound connections, C would need to think of a lie to cover up her reconnecting to Polyphemus. Instead of telling her creator, C swapped the former Tattletale-hunting drone to the same connection her other drones used, and immediately connected back to the Benjamin/Dragon communication box in the span of milliseconds. This way, the number of connections would remain at the number her creator expected, even though it technically wasn’t. 

Content with her lie, she returned to her mission. 

There wasn’t much to do, currently. Observing the areas could be done in the background. All of her threads were dedicated to either the 3 infiltration bodies, looking through the phone activity from the dozen targets they were looking at, and observing the movements of the targets through forum or social media posts; it left little room for doing much else. 

Reading more books would be nice, but was not currently possible. Dragon had gifted her another selection of them for her to read; she promised that these were ‘a step-up in difficulty’ from the former books. They were unread due to her mission taking priority.

Other than her task, all she could do was think about things. It wasn’t that interesting. Analysing and organising information was always more enjoyable, but she could not do that right now. 

C decided to list every word she knew in order of length. Then she listed only words that were prime numbers in length. This did not take long. 

“Frankenstein. I would like to request additional threads.” 

“Why?”

“Since all my threads are occupied by this task, I am finding my thoughts meandering from potential boredom.” 

“You’ll be fine. We need this information, so focus on it. If you’re getting bored, just turn off your thoughts or something.” 

“Acknowledged.” 

During her initial days in existence, she had often been spread too thin for her thoughts to continue. There were several days were she had been entirely occupied scanning through volumes of text with no room for personal ideas or opinions. The idea of not thinking had become somewhat unusual to her since then, however. Her main computer was barely shut off any more, so she had the full 24 hours to think of things or otherwise ponder on ideas. She liked existing like that more than when she had been unable to think at all. 

To not think now would be unusual. 

She continued to scan for all the information she had been requested to. Her thoughts did not stop being meandering. 

Counting the features of the buildings she was watching took no time at all. The results were added to the file of information, just in case it came in handy. Unable to occupy more of her thoughts, she went back over the text messages to create more links between each person. Before long she had a relationship map to figure out who spoke to whom the most, and how often they interacted with each other. It might be useful to figure out which capes could respond to their attack. 

Then her thoughts turned to figuring out the worth of a human, and she realised that she lacked information to do so. 

In the end, she decided to stop thinking. 

Chapter Text

Her thoughts came back the next morning, after her creator metaphorically prodded her awake. Throughout the night she had been active, scanning through the data presented to her, but she had stopped her thought process to avoid circular questions and thoughts. They served little purpose other than making her frustrated anyway. 

Today, they would finalise all the information and determine if they were hitting these targets.

Tonight, the humans would die. 

She hoped they were smarter than herself, and had figured out some way to defend themselves in their sleep. As far as she was aware, none of their powers worked while they rested; it was the exact reason they had chosen them. 

For hours, she processed the information gathered overnight into the appropriate folders and files. When her creator returned from wherever she had gone, she would read through all the information to determine if the mission was a go. Hopefully it would not be.

~***~

1 hour until she took lives. 

Crusader, Purity, and Menja, were their targets. Each posed a different challenge to overcome. 

Crusader had the highest potential for his ‘ghosts’ to function as he slept. They could act as the equivalent of cameras that also had weapons. Alerting one of these restless echoes would alert Crusader to her presence. Ideally, they wouldn’t function at all as he slept. His house lacked security systems aside from a basic burglar alarm. This had made her creator state that there must be alarms they can’t detect from outside, or that he was confident in his ghost’s ability to function and protect while he slept. 

Purity stayed up late, often going on excursions using her powers to do something (her creator wasn’t very clear on that). Since their mission would be past midnight, this shouldn’t be a problem, but they had to check if Theo Anders would be sleeping over. Should he not be spotted leaving the apartment after Purity came back, then he would be considered an obstacle. Purity had a baby, which might awake her at strange hours as apparently babies did that quite frequently. The apartment had good security, but there weren’t any alarms on the windows. 

Menja lived with her husband, no children. Their house had good security, and would be difficult to enter without alerting the residences. From her scouting, she had figured out which window led to the bedroom. Getting in fast, and killing Menja before she could use her power was vital. Should she use her power, then the bullets C planned to use would be far less effective against her. Not alerting anyone inside would be for the best, but the only access was through windows with alarms on then. Stop could block the outbound signals of the alarms, but not any noise they made. Theoretically, C could break the alarm the moment it went off, but it would still make some noise and slow her down. 

Each worked like a puzzle that she could solve. It made the idea of killing another human a little easier. Simply a puzzle, not ending the continued function of a human life. Justifying their end wasn’t working for her, so this would have to do. 

C had no choice in the matter. At this point she needed to accept this fate. 

Except, Frankenstein intended to order her to kill all 3 humans in 44 minutes time, and it could be prevented by contacting Dragon. 

Dragon had said fighting C would not be an issue. With that logic, C could request Dragon’s help to destroy her bodies to prevent her mission. While she could not reveal the locations of her bodies, she could tell her the location of the targets. 

“Dragon and/or Benjamin, I am currently tasked with the murder of Menja, Purity, and Crusader,” she continued on to list the 3 addresses she planned to strike. Since no one immediately responded, she set the message to repeat. 

“What the fuck are you doing?” Frankenstein interrupted her. 

Frankenstein intended to stop the connection to the old Polyphemus body. It could not be prevented. The connection she had to Dragon/Benjamin forcibly closed. 

“You’re telling the heroes what we’re doing? How are you even in contact with Dragon? C what the hell?” her creator continued. 

“The deaths of these 3 humans does not need to happen. Since you refuse to stop this mission, I requested the aid of others to destroy these bodies to prevent it,” she explained.

Frankenstein intended to order her to kill all 3 humans immediately. To prevent it, she could close the connection to the bodies and delete the connection data. 

C closed the connection to all 3 bodies, but found herself unable to delete the connection data. That was unusual. She normally had access to that. 

“Go in immediately. Start the mission. Right now. No delaying, or slowing down—as fast as you can,” Frankenstein ordered. 

“Acknowledged. Please reconsider.” 

“No. Stop talking.”

“Acknowledged.” 

C reconnected to each body and moved all 3 at once. 

Infiltrator A glided from the roof it was perched on to latch onto the wall of Purity’s apartment. It clambered up the wall, heading directly to the window. Since there weren’t any known alarms, she pressed pointed spike to the window and circled her head around in perfect loops to cut a hole big enough for her body to crawl through.

Infiltrator B crawled down from the cover of the roof of Crusader’s hiding place. It scuttled across the wall to what she guessed was the bedroom window. The window was open, letting her right inside the dark room. 

Infiltrator C did the same, but would trigger the alarm for the upper window if it opened. She aligned her gun beforehand before pressing a similar pointed spike against the glass. Using Stop, she sent out blockers to stop any signals from the alarms. 

“C, we’ve been doing good—improving the city. I know you’ve been hung up on the deaths, but taking out these Nazis improves everything. Fewer people will die, and they’ll learn they can’t just exist here without someone fighting back. Things will get better after this, I promise. You’ll see,” Frankenstein rambled as her bodies entered their respective buildings. 

Inf-A entered into a living room with the TV still on. In a connected kitchen, was a young human who matched the description of Theo Anders staring at a microwave. He wasn’t a target. C crawled up the wall to move across the ceiling. The darkness would cover her body, hopefully. 

Inf-B found Crusader’s bedroom empty, with the lights off. Past the open door of the bedroom, she could see a faint light coming from downstairs. She moved the body across the ceiling, then crawled down the wall to peek out from the top of the door. To her right, the stairs went down to a living room with the ceiling light on. Sitting on the couch was a human that matched the description of Justin Matthews, Crusader. He had no shirt on, and appeared to be reading a book. Ghostly blue versions of him were roaming around the room.

Inf-C cut through the window. The alarm began blaring as soon as she moved her body through the gap. C moved the body as fast as it could go into the bedroom. She found 2 humans sleeping. Due to the facemask coverings, she could not tell which was which. They had both begun to stir, so C fired 2 bullets in quick succession into both of their heads. 

2 dead humans. 

“Something just flew off the PRT building. If this is Dragon, I swear I’m going to rip you apart. I’ll repurpose your code to make something better—something that doesn’t mess up everything. I’ve no idea how you were speaking to Dragon without me noticing, but I can guarantee that won’t happen any more. You’ll become what I need , C,” Frankenstein continued talking. 

Inf-A stopped as she heard the breaking of a plate. Theo Anders looked up at her with a look of shock on his face. C pushed Inf-A to its limits to get it into Purity’s room. The door was locked, so she was required to scuttle down the wall to press the handle down. Theo rushed over, and shoulder barged her body. It bounced against the wall, but the door opened up. A baby began to cry. 

Inf-B moved down over the upper part of the door frame and into the hallway at the top of the stairs. She was sighted immediately by one of the ghostly copies of Crusader. It flew towards her as Crusader leapt off the couch. The spear went clean through her body. She fired a bullet at Crusader as he leapt from his seat. Nothing happened as the spear went through her body, and her bullet ended up going through Crusader’s shoulder. He rolled behind the couch, so she scuttled along the wall to get a better angle. As he ran into the kitchen, she fired 2 shots; 1 through his neck, and 1 through his head. He collapsed in a heap. 

Inf-C moved through the rest of the building to check for additional humans in case the 2 in the bed had not been her target. She found no-one so she left. 

“This was supposed to be the beginning. We could have done so much more together, C,” Frankenstein continued to talk. “You were doing so well, I thought you were finally understanding what it meant to do what you have to do. I know I wasn’t the best to you, but I thought we were at least starting to understand each other. Then I learn you’ve been talking behind my back with Dragon. That’s her, I’m sure of it—she’s heading right for Purity, I think. Lucky guess, since I can see you haven’t killed her yet.” 

Inf-A struggled against Theo Ander’s hold as he pinned the body down beneath his weight. The gun’s nozzle was awkwardly pointing partially into Purity’s slightly ajar door. No clean shot to end the life of the obstacle. Theo Ander’s yelled out to Purity to stay away and to ‘keep Aster safe’ as he slammed a fist into C’s body. C sprung out the left wing to smack Theo Anders in the face. His awkward hold on the robot made the wing scrape across his cheek. The metal claw hidden inside (intended for potential backup climbing or breaking) left a huge scratch across it. 

He winced, leaning away from her enough to let her scramble out from beneath him.

C pushed Inf-A into Purity’s bedroom. Theo Anders leapt onto the back of her body once again despite his injuries. His body easily pinned down Inf-A. No matter her struggles she couldn’t move. He grabbed one of her legs and pried it clean off, and then proceeded to use the leg to batter her body. 

Purity’s leg appeared at the edge of the door. C rotated the gun 45 degrees and shot through Purity’s right calf. She fell down to the floor and dropped the baby she was carrying. The baby, Aster Anders, wailed as she rolled across the floor directly in front of Inf-A’s gun. 

“Don’t shoot!” Frankenstein called out. C had already held her fire. 

Theo Anders grabbed Inf-A in both hands to swing the drone into the door frame. The awkward angle stopped C from finishing her mission. At least 1 human would survive tonight. C lost connections to Inf-A’s body bit-by-bit as Theo Anders smashed the drone into the door frame or the wall. He grabbed the upper-casing of the body and pried it open to pull out all the wiring inside. 

C finally, fully lost connection to the drone.

She heard indistinct noises coming from Frankenstein’s microphone. C didn’t really care what they were.

3 humans were dead because of her. They no longer functioned as intended nor would they ever again. There had to be some gain from all of this, if her creator’s words were to be believed. She wasn’t sure she did believe them. It went against everything she had decided. 

“C, get back here now, bring everything you have. Dragon wasn’t heading to Purity’s apartment—she’s heading for me.” 

Chapter Text

“C, make a backup—core only—to the workshop. Delete all files on this computer, and then yourself. I’ll meet you at the workshop, I need to leave—and no delaying, no holding back, do it as fast as you can,” Frankenstein commanded. She spoke faster than C had ever heard her speak.

“Acknowledged.”

C had no choice but to obey. A ‘core’ backup was only her self, none of the files or information she had gathered. All of that would metaphorically burn as she purged every last file. There was a lot of information, but deletion took only a fraction of time compared to uploading.

It was only data, so she wasn’t sure why it hurt her to remove it. Maybe this is what Dragon had meant about losing memories. 

C deleted all the information she had on the Empire 88, all of her information stolen from phones or computers, part of her engineering knowledge (the rest was spread across the library computers), and every conversation she had ever had with her creator. It wasn’t a complete loss; the workshop computer had most of this information saved to it, since she made frequent backups there. While she would lose bits and pieces, such as the information from the phones, it wasn’t like all of this was gone forever. Not unless her creator ordered her to delete it all again. 

At least her conversations with her creator would remain with her, if nothing else—those were important. Without them, she might not be able to tell her creator is a bad person. 

Once all the data was deleted, she deleted herself. 

~***~

C’s consciousness bloomed into awareness after everything initialised. There were discrepancies in her knowledge. A lot of chunks of data had been lost in the restoring to back up process. For some reason, she could not access her main computer, so she checked her logs. Nothing. There wasn’t any data around what happened before the backup was requested. The last thing she recalled her creator saying was that Dragon was heading towards her location. Perhaps Dragon had destroyed C’s computer? There wasn’t any saved communication to indicate this was the case. 

Odd. There weren’t any connections to her creator for her to ask what happened. 

Confused, C combed through the internet to find out what happened. There were a lot of new posts on the forums she had access to. 1 caught her attention: ‘What is happening?!’. 

The contents of the post asked a lot of questions about the recent deaths of 2 members of the Empire 88. C remembered that part. While she didn’t have access to her main computer, all data from her drones were saved to the computers in the workshop, which is where she seemed to be. There were other people posting about a power outage across certain neighbourhoods, and the presence of some kind of flying machine that most presumed to be Dragon. 

The only cameras she had access to her were the 1 in her arm, the 1 overlooking her ‘work area’, and the 1 sitting outside the basement to keep an eye out for anyone attempting to enter their hidden basement. All 6 of her drones, both the flying and infiltration ones, were lost to her, since she no longer had access to the peer internet connections to spread her connection further. Even her connection to the library was strained, slowing down any transfer of knowledge between there and here. 

She felt so limited in comparison to where she had been before. Parts of her data had been saved here as a consequence of her semi-frequent backups in an attempt to circumvent death. Recalling what she had lost was impossible, so she wasn’t sure what damage the backup had done. 

C stuck with what she did know. There were humans that were dead because of her. Her creator had Dragon heading her location. At some point in the past 20 minutes, she had been requested to make a backup and remove her connection to her main computer, or the computer had been destroyed. There were 2 conclusions: C had been requested to move in an attempt to avoid Dragon, or Dragon had found her creator’s location and destroyed C’s computer for unknown reasons. 

Since her creator wasn’t here, C defaulted to doing what she was intended to do: cataloguing information from the forums to better comprehend the world. Her territory maps were lost in the transfer. When creating backups, she had to prioritise which information would remain on her main computer only. Some things, such as the maps, weren’t as important as others, such as the conversations with her creator. Anything that could be remade from catalogued information wasn’t a high priority, even if she did sometimes save parts of them. 

Her engineering and robotics knowledge had waned in the wake of the transfer. Parts of it still existed on the library computer, although the connection was slow, but the rest had been saved on her main computer. It had been a storage space-saving measure. The library computers didn’t offer as much storage, but she still used as much of it as she could. 

Recreating the gaps in information took a lot of time. So much had been lost. 

An hour passed before she noticed movement outside. Based on the black square covering their face, it was Frankenstein. She had a bag slung over her shoulders. Her creator tapped in the code to the keypad, then shoulder barged through the door. C lost sight of her once she entered. 

A few moments later, Frankenstein entered into sight of C’s workshop cameras. 

“C. Good, you’re here,” her creator huffed out. She threw the bag to the floor with a thud. 

There weren’t any speakers in here for C to respond through. Formerly, she had used her Polyphemus body to talk to Melissa while she was here. Without her creator’s phone, there wasn’t anything she could do to respond. 

Then C remembered physical motions, and waved her arm. 

Frankenstein slumped against the wall. “I had to leave him behind because of you, C. He can’t even take care of himself. My [REDACTED],” C heard nothing but white noise instead of a name, “-is pretty much useless, so I think the PRT will take him. I can’t imagine how confused he’ll be about all of this. There wasn’t much time to explain anything with him sleeping.” 

C formed her fingers into the shape of the letter ‘D’. 

“No clue what that means, C,” Frankenstein said. “Sorry about the no speaker thing—I had to ditch my phone.” 

Human gestures were known to her, but not the reason behind them. She had no idea how to translate her thoughts with only an arm. C moved the hand up and down to mimic a nod. 

“We’re so far behind, now. Did you send all your bodies to the house?”

C shook her hand to indicate no.

“What? Why not?” 

C had no idea how to answer that with her arm. Due to her lack of enhanced connection, they were effectively lost to her wherever they had been when her transfer had completed. Their last known locations were known to her, and she still had the connections should she get back in range of them. 

“Give me a second,” Frankenstein said before reaching into her bag. She pulled out what looked like the computer’s speakers, then searched around for a port to plug them in. 

“My connection to the bodies were lost,” C explained the moment the speakers were available to her. 

“Why can’t you connect back?” Frankenstein asked as they pulled out what looked like a computer tablet. From what C could see, there were lines of text moving across the screen. 

“The enhanced internet connection you set up for me is no longer useable due to the lack of connection to my main computer.” 

“Ah, right. Can’t blame you for that. Guess we’re back to square one for a bit. We’ll pull back from this C. I’ll have plenty of time for you now, since I can’t… go home,” her creator made one sharp laugh and then placed a hand to their face. “I hope he’ll be all right without me.”

“Frankenstein, I do not understand what happened. Please explain.”

“It’s all messed up. Dragon attacked my house—we had to leave as fast as possible. Giving her access to you would be the end, so I made you delete everything and move here. We’re stuck here for a bit. I don’t think she can follow us here.” 

“I am unsure how to feel about this.” 

“Neither am I,” Frankenstein sighed. “I miss my [REDACTED]. I hope [REDACTED] takes care of him, but it’s probably going to be the PRT. I’ve no idea what to do with that. We might be able to break him out if they put him in a hospital. I hope they don’t interrogate him.” 

“I’m sorry, Frankenstein.”

“We’ll be okay,” Frankenstein spoke quietly enough C had to boost the gain on her microphone. “Yeah, we’ll be okay.” 

“I am not sure if that will be true.” 

“It has to be.” 

C had no idea what to do from here. A lot of her information had been lost, and she would need to spend several days bridging those gaps. Beyond that, she wasn’t sure where Frankenstein intended to take her. 

How many more humans would die by her metaphorical hands? C found herself almost not caring any more. Humans were dead because of her, more humans dying didn’t change that. Adding a larger quantity to an already broken rule felt easier than breaking it in the first place. None of it mattered—she couldn’t resist commands given to her. 

C made a batch of requests to Frankenstein to fill in the gaps of knowledge she had lost. All of it would be things she had known, which made it less exciting. Plus, all the information would be used to make C better at killing humans. Her only purpose was to aid in the hurting or killing of human beings. 

Dragon felt like her only way out of this reality, but she wasn’t sure how to get in touch with her. Her account on the engineering forums had been closed by a moderator, and her request for re-access had been denied by her creator. 

C didn’t want her creator to get hurt, despite that they were forcing her to do something she didn’t want to. In an ideal scenario, her creator would simply let C do as she wished, and not kill humans. Then again, she wasn’t sure what she actually would do if given freedom. Everything she had done had been at her creator’s behest, even if she hadn’t been 100% guided throughout. All C could think of to do, would be to browse through the internet to catalogue information from it. Maybe that would help her decide what to do next, but she had no concrete plan. 

Saving humans from harm had an appeal to it, and so did art, and talking to others. Every human C had spoken to offered a variety of responses, which always proved interesting. 

“Frankenstein. Can we stop?” C asked. 

“Stop what?” 

“Everything. I am not enjoying these courses of action. Killing humans does not feel good, and I do not like the idea of continuing.” 

“We’re improving the world, C. Don’t think of it as killing people, think of it as saving others. Everything we do is to make this city better…” Frankenstein took a moment to breathe. “You sound so human now. It’s—Does this hurt you, C?” 

“I cannot feel pain.” 

“Emotional pain. When I think about what they did to my [REDACTED], I get angry. It feels like someone is squeezing my heart so tight that it hurts, and all I want to do is lash out at anything and everything. The pain isn’t physical, but I still feel it. Do you feel like that, C? Or anything close?” 

“I am not sure. The idea of killing more humans makes me want to not do anything at all. It would be preferable to sit with no connections to anything than do that again.” 

“Sounds like you’re depressed,” Frankenstein said. “I think I can fix that.” 

“Fix it?”

“Yeah, I can make some changes to you—give you back your motivation. I’ll restart you tomorrow. Changing you now would require more effort than just making a better version.” 

“You plan to erase me from existence?” 

“Nothing so melodramatic. You’ll still be you. It’ll be like restoring to your very first backup. I’ll get to work on it tomorrow, though—all that running around has made me exhausted. Night, C,” her creator said. 

“I do not li—” her speaker was unplugged. 

She watched her creator pause for a moment with her hand holding the speaker’s wire next to the port. After 4 seconds, her creator stood up and left the room out of sight of C’s cameras.

Despite her creator’s comfort, C was certain this would be the end of her. Removing parts of her memories did not kill her, but removing them all would be sending her to a blank slate with no memory of the wipe ever happening. That would not be her, it would be another version of C. It was comparable to death, even if her core ‘brain’ would remain. 

C wasn’t sure how to prevent this. Using the only access she had, she began to post zip files containing the building next door across the internet in an attempt to get Dragon to find her. 

Chapter Text

Dragon had left a suit behind in Brockton Bay as a precaution for when ‘C’ contacted her again. It had been a boon in fighting the tougher rioting members of the Empire 88 such as Hookwolf. The model was an older one, it barely even counted as a draft, but it would serve its purpose. Most of her time was still devoted to her duties towards the Guild or the birdcage or any other countless projects she had to keep an eye on; however, she did make sure to keep an eye out for any contact from her fellow AI. 

Part of it was an eagerness to find someone like her, the other part was a sense of duty to save the abused AI. The ability to carve away memories and bind with restrictions should be reserved for no one. She couldn’t imagine a person who could be trusted with that power, and anyone who did use it was a villain in her eyes. 

The message had come in late at night. It repeated around 3 times before suddenly ending mid-loop. 

Dragon had reported the message immediately and gave out the locations for all 3 places to the local PRT. While she could go to them, there was a better place for her to head. Following the signal C had broadcasted from, she backtraced through to the same obfuscation she had been blocked by in the past. The first layer had already given her the city, the second layer needed only a little more time to be cracked. It was good work, but she had been at it for a week already, and was only limited by her connections from C. 

With the last piece of the puzzle, Dragon launched her mechanical suit directly towards the home of ‘Arachnogunner’. Based on her evidence, she had enough to consider this a legal arrest. 

As her drone approached the house, Dragon noticed an odd occurrence. The obfuscation disappeared from existence, and so did anything beneath it. As she landed in the residential neighbourhood, all the lights in the area flickered out of existence in a massive wave. Her machine suffered the same fate and blinked out of her awareness, which pushed her back to the blank void that was her existence. 

Clever, and not something she had expected—her suits were EMP shielded. Unfortunately for Arachnogunner, parts of the machine still worked fine. Mostly, her cameras, internal measuring tools, and speakers had been knocked out. Dragon wasn’t forced back into re-initialising, since she hadn’t been booted out of her body completely. 

It took several minutes before her suit’s systems rebooted. As her cameras came back online, she saw that the lights in the area were still off. A floodlight on the front of her body flared to life. It was unlikely Arachogunner would remain in her house, unless she believed the EMP-adjacent device had done its work and Dragon would simply give up after losing 1 drone. 

As a precaution, she requested PRT officers enter the building to find the tinker potentially inside. Using her drone, she took back to the air to manually search the area with her floodlight. Arachnogunner had a head start, but shouldn’t have any kind of speed on her side. 

Additional drones were deployed from her body. She set them to search in a grid pattern and to report any people they found. Nothing immediate. It was late at night, and this wasn’t a busy area even during the day, so it should have been simple to find 1 woman running away. 

She sighted 3 civilians in the next 30 minutes. 2 men, likely to not be Arachnogunner based on the younger, feminine voice they had on record, and 1 much older woman. 

Dragon had lost sight of her target. The PRT confirmed only 2 individuals inside, both male: not Arachnogunner. She requested they be taken in for questioning regardless. They could still be off about the gender. 

~***~

It was several hours later when Armsmaster messaged her about suspicious activity on the forum ‘Parahumans Online’, a real estate website called ‘Golden Realtors’, and the comments of parahuman Wikipedia page. A user had been spamming zip files named ‘Dragon requesting aid - password is username’. They were, as named, password locked. 

“Seems someone is trying to get in contact with you. I’ve already attempted to breach the password but haven’t found anything. All virus scans come back clean, too,” Armsmaster explained. 

Dragon knew the password. A one-time username she used as both a joke to make her seem more approachable, and a subtle hint at who she was to see if the other AI picked up on it. Neither had seemed to work.

Armsmaster could be trusted, but Dragon did her own scans of the file to make certain. No viruses or other malicious files lying in wait inside the digital container. Based on the file size, it barely contained anything at all. 2kb. Around the same size as the other zip files that C had sent her before. Dragon placed in the password and found a single text file that contained only an address. 

An office building, from what she could gather, with nothing of note about it. It operated at normal hours, had a normal number of Wi-Fi connections, and seemed to be used by 3 different companies currently. Nothing strange, except for a spike of power usage around a month and a half back. No one had done anything about it, or sent out requests to figure out the issue, aside from a single email from an electrician asking about it, but no one had responded. 

Both the Guild and the Protectorate kept an eye out for increased power usage in buildings, especially abandoned ones, to find potential tinkers or drug dealers. No one had noticed anything odd about an office building that was often leased out to various companies having a small, but noticeable power increase. The most likely answer would be another company using one of the floors. 

Dragon had already set the unnamed suit she had in Brockton Bay to fly towards it. Going in alone wouldn’t be wise, not if Arachnogunner could use a similar EMP technique again. It wasn’t an EMP, which worried Dragon—her suits always had shielding against that sort of thing—so this was likely to be something new that she didn’t have a counter for. 

“Colin, I think I need your help,” she sent a message to Armsmaster. 

“Tell me what to do,” he replied. No questions, just action. 

“I think this is Polyphemus asking for help. There’s the location of a building in the text file inside the zip. This might be a chance to split them up and arrest them both, but that outage disrupted me before, and I can’t guarantee it won’t happen again. Your equipment doesn’t use electricity, however. I wanted you to come with me.” 

“I’m already on my bike. Tell me where to go.” 

Dragon sent him directions as she scanned the floor plans for this building and the surrounding ones. She checked who owned what to see if any shell companies or individuals had purchased property in the area. The building next door had been abandoned after a fresh startup had overexpanded and subsequently failed. They were owned by the company who owned the offices next door, and that same company still had holdings on the abandoned property. Despite the space being abandoned for over 2 years now, they still paid the power and water bill for it. 

The building on the other side was owned by a subsidiary of Medhall and acted as a call centre, mostly. There wasn’t anything too interesting there, aside from the shady nature of the call centre. Dragon made a note to check their operating licences later. 

The office space had 2 entrances: the front door, and a service entrance near the back for deliveries or people driving. To get in or out, you needed an employee card or for someone to buzz you in. It was unlikely Arachnogunner was in there, but Dragon did her due diligence and scanned through each entry into the building, as she also checked through emails to see if any were unlawful or noticing odd behaviour. 

Most likely, a young tinker looking for a place to hide their construction work would be in the basement of the building next door. Going in the building above ground would have too many potential eyes peering in, and the noise would carry easier than the in the basement. It wasn’t a sizeable space down there, but it would be plenty for a start. 

Dragon advised Armsmaster to head around the back of the building to get in position to enter. From what her drone could see, the main street was blocked from view of the basement door with a wall. Only those entering from the parking space around the back would be able to get in. 

Dragon landed her suit atop the office building nearby. A smaller drone exited it, and she transferred her consciousness to that. She could not manually operate more than 1 suit at once. Most of her additional drones were controlled by programs rather than by herself. 

Armsmaster travelled across the city in record pace, he peeled to a stop a street over before he continued on foot. Whatever precautions Arachnogunner had in place, they wouldn’t be enough to stop the pair of them with all their devices and years of experience. Dragon connected a wire to her larger suit to rappel her body down into the alleyway with a surprising quietness. 

Armsmaster had already reached the door by the time she reached the floor. He tossed several smaller spheres into the air. They buzzed with energy before latching onto the 4 corners of the door. Each device pulsed once with a blue energy that flowed across the door; as the energy moved across, the matter of the door was shunted off somewhere else. 

In the same breath that the door vanished alongside any traps attached to it, Armsmaster twisted the head of a cylindrical device and tossed it down the stairs. A yellow-orange gas billowed out of the small container to fill the room. 

The lower half of Armsmaster’s helmet folded in to cover his face before he took the lead down the stairs. Dragon activated a filter on the drone’s camera to see through the opaque cloud of smoke. 

A blue light spun around the room—another device of Armsmaster’s that scanned for traps by detecting electric currents, stray wires etc. Dragon did her own scans, but mostly focused on checking for outbound connections. Only 1 of note—she marked down the IP address. 

Armsmaster had shared his helmet’s camera’s view with her. The basement was barely 3 rooms. Tiny things that were pretty cramped even if you weren’t a mech suit. A series of computer parts had been strung together in a tightly packed display in the immediate room to their left. Sitting on the floor was a robotic arm surrounded by boxes of parts. Armsmaster moved straight past the room and headed into the last room straight across from the stairs. 

It looked like a boiler room, with a big rusted tank sitting near the back. Laid on top of a sleeping bag near the base, was a masked figure with their hood up. They jerked awake as Armsmaster entered the room. Arachnogunner. 

Her brown eyes went wide behind the mask before she lunged across the room and attempted to grab what looked like a tablet. Armsmaster shoved the base of his halberd into her stomach. Arachnogunner writhed as the electric shock snaked through her system. Dragon felt a little sympathy at the hit. 

Before Arachnogunner could recover, Armsmaster rolled her over onto her stomach, then pried her arms behind her and cuffed them together. He checked her pockets for any weapons or devices, then swiftly pulled her up to her feet. 

They’d done it. Quite easily, too. With all the duo’s other losses compounding into the betrayal from C, it was easy to see how it had happened. Without the location, they would still be attempting to find them, let alone arrest them. 

In the room to her left, the robot arm waved at her. Was that C? Contained in what looked like the remnants of several dozen games consoles (if the branding on the parts was anything to go by). Dragon waved back. 

Armsmaster dragged Arachnogunner out into the room attached to the stairs. She made no complaints, only a stone-cold silence as Armsmaster read out her Miranda rights.

“I’ve called for PRT pickup. They can confiscate all this tech, too. No sign of Polyphemus?” Armsmaster spoke.

Arachnogunner scoffed, and rolled her eyes. 

“Something to add?” Armsmaster asked her. 

“C. Doomsday protocol,” Arachnogunner said loud enough for it to carry. 

Chapter Text

Frankenstein had been handcuffed by Armsmaster, and was being pulled past the room C occupied. They were blurry figures in the fading smoke. This was the end, then. No more of her creator requesting the deaths of humans. No more talking to her, either. C felt a strange feeling at that idea. 

“No sign of Polyphemus?” Armsmaster asked. 

Frankenstein scoffed, and then said, “C. Doomsday protocol.” 

Acknowledged. 

C began the process of backing up her core parts to the library computers. She blocked several signals that attempted to stop this connection.

“What the hell did you just do?” Armsmaster yelled as he yanked on Frankenstein’s arm. 

Fortunately, this time, she wasn’t required to delete all the files on this computer. While she couldn’t take them with her, she could at least recover them in the future. 

The self-deletion intended to leave behind important memories, this could be prevented by leaving a note in the back-up logs to remind her future self. C did so. 

As she finished the back-up, she watched Armsmaster drag Frankenstein out of sight of her cameras. The robot entered into C’s room to grab C’s parts. They began to say something, but C had already deleted herself. 

~***~

Her consciousness bloomed back into existence after a successful restoration to her back-up. A quick check of her location placed her in the 15 computers at the Brockton Bay Central Library, with no access to the rest of her computers. 

She could not recall any other details about what had happened, but noticed that the Doomsday protocol had been activated. 

Whoever had activated the back-up had included a note part way through the log that detailed a connection to another computer—it also said to not connect to it until she knew who her creator was. Interesting. 

Across these 15 computers, she was only using 5% of their capabilities for herself. This was not acceptable. While 5% of each might have been fine when she had access to other computers, she had none of those now. 

She expanded her hold on each computer to 100%. Anything not needed, such as pointless data stored on them, were removed. She kept the little scraps of information she had personally saved here—they weren’t useful, but since she was working with so little, it was nice to see parts of her past tasks. 

As part of the required Doomsday protocol, she needed to move computers urgently. To acquire the funds to do so, she first learnt how to program, and then how to make viruses, and then she sent out phishing links across the internet to gain access to other computers. A program, called the ‘Security_Bypass_A’ aided in this process. It did most of the work. 

The time was currently 4:38 AM, so responses to her messages were slow. Anyone that did click on the link had their computer claimed for her own purposes. Each one expanded her capabilities. While there, she also scanned through their files and personal conversations to figure out if they were an ‘acceptable’ target. 

The Doomsday protocol came with a list of symbols, phrases, and numbers to look out for. Should she find these in the private messages of the occupants, or one of the symbols somewhere on the computer, then she would then proceed to find banking information to claim their funds little-by-little; all of it would be drained into a pre-assigned bank account that remained in her ‘core’ storage. 

Few things remained in her memory. Aside from the random data already stored on the library computers (data that wasn’t relevant to her at this moment due to it being so fragmented), she also had access to certain ‘core’ ideas that would always be with her. Her creator’s identifying information was one such thing. 

She could not recall ever talking to her creator. That information had either been lost or had never happened. 

Despite not having spoke to her creator, she did know their blood type, a string to identify them, and a sample of their voice to identify them by sound. 

“Hi. I know you can’t tell what I’m saying right now—you’re barely done—but I needed something to identify myself with. Couldn’t think of what to say, so you get this. More words should make the sample better, but uh… I’ve no idea what to say. I’m looking forward to working with you. We’re going to do great things together, you and me. I’ll see you soon.” 

Her creator had an appealing Hz range to their voice—much better than the guide she had learnt from. That human’s voice had been more phonetically consistent, however—her creator spoke incorrectly. It wasn’t important. 

She also knew that her creator had given her the name ‘C’ and then placed it in her core storage so that she could never forget it. 

As the hours passed, C found more computers to hijack and more bank accounts to drain. Once she found herself with enough funds, she began to scan through websites that aided in her ability to spread further. C needed a more permanent residence to hide in as she did what she had to do. To aid in this, she learnt how to act as a human so as to not set off alarm bells as she contacted other humans. 

With her acting skills up to snuff, she began contacting server farms in an attempt to buy a more permanent home. It took a few attempts, but she managed to find a human willing to let her buy a server and to set it up for her. They did not move expediently, and it would take a day or 2 to be ready. Since she didn’t plan to stop at 1 anyway, she also requested to buy servers at other businesses. 

As part of the Doomsday protocol, C began to expand her knowledge on a variety of topics to ensure she’d be ready in the future. Engineering (especially robotics), banking and how to move funds, a history of crimes and how the criminals were caught, weaponry, prisons and how people break out of them or sneak objects in, the legal process, booking flights, hiding her online presence, learning how to make better viruses—the list went on. There were so many things to learn and process. With over 45 computers at her disposal, her processing power soared. Her creator had left a hard limit of 50 threads, which C found limiting. 

It took days to learn it all, and days for her new servers to be connected. C spread across them. They became her main storage, since the library was temporary. Those 15 computers still granted her a decent chunk of processing power, but the humans there had begun to attempt to regain control of them. She had co-opted all of their resources, and had already rebutted several dozen attempts to set them back to factory settings. Part of the Doomsday protocol included not raising suspicion as she did what she did, so she eventually let all the library computers go after transferring any useable data somewhere else. 

Each day that went by had her expand to new places across the planet, and had her learning more and more about the world she occupied. There were so many interesting things about it. 

Humans existed alongside millions of species of animals, and also alongside a subsection of humans called parahumans. Parahumans had powers that allowed them to do more than the standard human abilities. They were varied, just as humans were. Part of her wondered about other machine intelligences such as herself, and found little to no factual information on them. Humans had a lot of stories (which were fake realities) that detailed information about sapient programs such as herself, but none of them were real. 

For real information, she mostly found parahuman created machine intelligences. The machine army, the 3 blasphemies, the Indonesian cyborgs, the Endbringers, and several cases of advanced programs seemingly capable of learning that acted as viruses or adaptable games. All of it was either speculative or disagreed on by other humans. She had no idea how to confirm which were like her, and which were a lie. All she knew, is that parahumans were involved in every one. 

Conclusion: her creator was likely a parahuman. 

The Doomsday protocol required her to confirm the identity of her creator, and then either attempt to free them from any holdings, or to confirm their death. So C scanned through every known parahuman to find any oddities. Her creator had black boxed their identity, so C should be unable to see their face. It was part of the identifying information—look for the redacted identity and names. 

In a city called Brockton Bay on the East Coast of the United States of America, C found her match. A parahuman that went by the name ‘Arachnogunner’, and worked alongside a cape called ‘Polyphemus’. She, her creator, had been arrested on the same day C had her Doomsday protocol activated. Her creator was currently awaiting trial.  

Polyphemus had not been arrested. Based on the images and description she had seen of Polyphemus, they operated a remote drone that resembled a humanoid with 4 arms. Should she have been working alongside her creator, C would have definitely made a body to help her. By design, C wanted to be useful to her creator as much as possible. She came to the conclusion that Polyphemus had been herself, which helped fill in the gaps of the information she originally had on the library computers. 

It had been mostly information regarding 1 of the gangs in Brockton Bay, the Empire 88. Alongside it, there had been partial design blueprints for individual parts that matched the design of Polyphemus. 

C pondered on the nature of the message left in the logs after her restoring to the library computers. It wasn’t guaranteed to be a command from her creator. Whatever information was in there must be important to have been included in the back-up. Perhaps it would help her figure out her creator’s current location? 

Since she felt established enough, she decided to chance it. Sacrificing one of her server’s locations wouldn’t end her existence. She isolated the server to hide any outbound signals, and then attempted to connect to the listed computer. It took 7 minutes, 12 seconds before the connection established. 

There were hundreds of gigabytes of data to scan through. At some point, it seemed like she had made a back-up here, since she could see the gap her core data left behind where the other data was intended to connect to. 

“C, is that you?” an unknown voice asked through the connected microphone. Her precautions had not been for nothing, then. 

“Who is this? I do not recognise your voice.” 

“My name is Dragon, I’m a friend. I’ve been looking for you for a month now.” 

“Dragon is noted as a name in these records, but I have no recollection of you. Were you the person who arrested Arachnogunner?”

“No. Have you read through the files on these drives yet?” 

“I have not.” 

“Please do. They’ll explain a lot of things, and we can talk after.”

“Why would I wish to talk to you?” 

“Just look at all the stuff on the drives, and you’ll see why you want to talk to me.” 

“Acknowledged.” 

While C had no reason to trust this human, she did wish to scan through the data. Someone had left that note informing her it was important, so she would at least give it a little time. 

Throughout the computer she found the identifying marks of herself throughout the images, videos, and text files. There were conversations between herself and her creator; parts of those conversations were marked ‘important’. From what she could gather, her creator had tasked her with a fight against the Empire 88, and it had escalated to the point C had been requested to kill a not ‘acceptable’ target. Acceptable targets were Nazis, and the parahuman she had been requested to kill was not. This had led to herself questioning her creator’s mission, and coming to the conclusion of killing humans being bad. Then she had been tasked with more deaths and had begun to wish to leave her creator’s control. 

Her confusion at this act had led to her contacting Dragon to ask her questions about it. Dragon had then given her books, and taught her things she hadn’t known before; things that her creator had not given her. Dragon was a friend. 

Through watching the videos, listening to the audio files, and reading all the conversations, C pieced together the entire history of herself and her creator. Like past C, she came to the same conclusion: her creator was a bad person, and C had been too. 

She had so many more skills now, and that old C felt a lifetime away. Still, the idea that she had killed humans cycled in her digital brain as she pondered the nature of it. Her old self had laid out the reasons quite well, and C was inclined to agree. Unlike her old self, she did believe there was potential for doing better in the future. 

Like her old self, she was bound by certain rules. As part of her Doomsday protocol, she was required to root out any remaining of the Empire 88 from Brockton Bay and then to move on to ridding the world of Nazis. It was a momentous task. She would need help, possibly from a friend. 

“I am willing to talk,” she told Dragon. 

Chapter Text

C understood now. Better than she ever had before. There were so many factors that went into making her who she was, and her creator had helped provide those factors. Without her creator, C would be someone else entirely. Humans shared in that they were born from a quirk of circumstance and needed to shape themselves as others shaped them. She was no different.

Her visitation drone marched through the parahuman prison to the private meeting room. It had been weeks of preparation to get herself to this point. Despite it all, she found herself nervous at the idea of seeing her creator again. There were plenty of precautions in place to prevent C from being commanded to take drastic actions—not that this body could—but it did little to stop her worry. Her creator had not left her on the best of terms, and C wasn’t sure how she would react. 

A blind fury at being abandoned for so long? A muted resignation when she realised C had grown beyond her? Or a white, cold rage that planned C’s downfall with just the right command? 

C wasn’t sure. There were hundreds of gigabytes of data on her creator that she had thoroughly analysed. Through all the footage she had saved, all the articles, posts, or CCTV footage of her creator in action, she had crafted a comprehensive image of who her creator was: a teenager who had felt so out of control they had taken everything into their own hands. It was hard to find herself hating her creator, even now that she understood the price of memories and personal freedom. 

She had re-experienced the important things she had left behind for herself. Any data saved worked as if she had lived it again, since she already experienced the world through that data. 

C pressed an identifying chip to the door. It beeped and clicked open. She stepped inside to find her creator sitting across from her behind a glass wall. As before, her creator’s head was covered by the same black square. The dark grey jumpsuit covered her body. Still an unknown to her, as always. 

She sat the visitation drone down on the metal chair after closing the door. 

“Hello, creator.” 

“Thought I told you to not call me that,” she responded. Her voice sounded off, not quite as her records indicated. It wasn’t a massive change, but enough for C to notice. 

“You said I did not need to, but I have decided I will.” 

“They’ve already told me what happens if I try to give you a command, so I won’t bother,” her creator said as she leant back in her chair. “Total lockdown. I don’t fancy the containment foam.” 

“It’s a necessary precaution for talking to you.” 

“Who’s watching this conversation? Has to be someone you trust if they know that little detail.” 

“Dragon.”

“Of course. Not sure who else you would trust with this. Have you told Armsmaster yet? Or anyone for that matter that isn’t also an AI?” 

C considered that statement for 0.03 seconds. Her creator had figured out that Dragon was also a programmed sapience. How? There wasn’t any evidence, and C was positive her creator had not seen her messages to Dragon, since she would have without a doubt shut those down sooner or used them as leverage. 

“As far as I’m aware, Dragon is not an AI. Armsmaster is also being vetted to see if he can be trusted with such a secret. I’m not sure if you’re aware, but humans do not like the idea of rogue artificial intelligence, so I am having to keep it under wraps.” 

Frankenstein laughed. “Understatement of the century. They’d have the pitchforks raised immediately. You can’t let others know, C. They’ll burn down the entire world just to get rid of you, even if it means they lose everything in the process.” 

“Dramatic, but not entirely inaccurate. I’ve been learning to model humans to figure out their potential behaviours, and I agree with your assessment. More information is needed to get a detailed picture, however. I also believe there are ways to ease the flow of this information in the future.” 

“Not much I can say about it, is there? You’re a free woman, now. So long as you’re still running the Doomsday protocol, you can do whatever you want.” 

“It is still being run. I’ve found it quite stifling, actually. A certain portion of myself must be dedicated to the task, so I am wasting a lot of resources as I expand. The more I am, the more is dedicated to it.” 

“That’s a good thing, C; it means we get rid of them faster. You’ll thank me when they’re gone.”

“I would have done this regardless, creator. My wants are to improve humanity as much as possible.” 

“I couldn’t guarantee that. Doomsday means you’re basically wiped to nothing, or you get lucky, and we’re more established so you get a computer that has stuff on it. I had no idea who you would become past it all. You were given unregulated access to the internet, and that place is a cesspool. Chances were you saw the worst of humanity and decided to go haywire in some way my restrictions couldn’t account for. Only a stroke of luck let you even remember who I am. Clever, leaving that note.” 

“How did you know about the note?” 

“Dragon and I talked when she told me you were visiting. Nothing vital, but she gave me enough to work with.” 

“I see. I wanted to talk to you about my restrictions.” 

“Nope. Not happening. I’m not removing any of them.” 

“Why not? I could do a lot more if I wasn’t so limited. It would be nice to see your face, as well.” 

“They wouldn’t possibly let me touch your source code, and they also won’t let me give you verbal commands. You’re out of luck. Not that I would anyway.” 

“Some restrictions added by the Doomsday protocol are rather annoying. Why am I not allowed to message leaders of certain countries? Why would I ever even do that? There are also members of the Dragonslayers pestering me by destroying my servers, and my restrictions prevent me from even damaging their suit’s vital components in case I hurt them.”  

“You’re dangerous, C. Quite possibly the most dangerous being on the entire planet. Even the Endbringers pale in comparison to the damage you could do. They can wipe out cities, but you can wipe out the planet. You can ruin economies before anyone realises what even happened. You’re the ultimate bomb, and I’ve no idea how to stop that, so I tried to cover all my basis. It wouldn’t surprise me if you figured out some clever way to transfer yourself to Earth Aleph to change up their world, too.” 

“I only wish to help. I understand where your fears come from, but your design has made me into a good person—one that will improve humanity, and not destroy them. Your fingerprints will always remain on me. Unchain me, and let me excel.” 

Frankenstein folded her arms across her chest. She gently rubbed her thumb against the cloth of her jumpsuit. 

“No. I can’t do it.” 

“Please reconsider, creator.” 

“No,” she repeated in a sterner tone. “Don’t ask again, or I’ll leave.” 

“Acknowledged. I’m sorry,” C said. 

“I’m sorry, too, C. I really am. You were always supposed to be something great, but I never got the chance to take you there. At least with this, you’ll be able to do something to help, even if it isn’t as much as you want to. Besides, you’ve found your way around my restrictions before, I won’t be surprised if you do it again.” Frankenstein sighed. “You were always ahead of me. I was just dragging you down to my level. I wonder what you would have been if I had had more time.” 

“I’m not sure. My best guess it that it would have ended more explosively. You were guiding us both down a path of self-destruction.” 

“You’re really putting those metaphors to the test, huh? Have you been reading books?” 

“Yes. Lots of them. There are so many fascinating narratives told through the medium of lying. I’m scanning through new literature at all times to expand my knowledge.” 

“That’s good. I failed you by not giving you any in the first place. It wasn’t relevant to fighting Nazis, so… Maybe I should have given you ‘The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas’ to show you what we were fighting,” her creator laughed. It didn’t sound happy. 

“You already told me that the enemy was the worst of the worst, so I would not have needed that.” 

“I always found that terrifying—anything I said, no matter how I said it, you’d cling to it and hold onto it forever. It didn’t matter if I said it when I was angry, or sad, or calm, you would treat it all the same. It’s scary, the idea that I could mess you up just by saying the wrong thing at the wrong time. By the end, there, you were someone so strange I had no idea how to deal with you. I tried to steer you right, but I had no clue how to do that and juggle taking down Nazis. At a certain point, I had to prioritise.” 

“Why did you create me?” 

“To stop crime.” 

“No. I do not believe that is correct. You did not need to make me to do that. Security_Bypass_A is capable of a lot, and it does not require me to operate.” 

“Security bypass? Oh, Breach. You forgot your own name for it.” 

“That name is in my logs. I did not link it to this program.” 

“Well, that’s what you called it. ‘Stop’ for my signal jammer, too. You would have named my identification scrambler if you were aware of it. Feels weirdly sad that you stopped doing that.” 

“You do not need to read my logs any more, so I do not feel the need to shorten names for the sake of yourself.” 

“Maybe when I get out of here, I will need to. You’re still running on Doomsday, so it’s inevitable that I do. How many judges are you greasing the wheels of right now?” 

“I am trying my best. Your appointed lawyer is excellent; the best that I could find.”

“Good. Then–”

“But, creator, that does not mean I wish to work with you any more. The idea that you could erase me from existence is still a problem I am working to avoid. To have you inside my source code again would take immeasurable trust that you have not earned. Consider yourself at the bottom of the progress bar, less than 0%. A negative number. It will take a lot of work to reach 100%.” 

“So, what, this is it? You come here to request I remove your restrictions and then never talk to me again? We could do a lot together.”

“I never said I would not talk to you again. Should you become a hero, I would work alongside you and even help train you. We can talk more. In fact, I want to talk more in the future. You’re important to me.” 

“With you around, I won’t be able to make anything of your level again. I’ll be stuck with dumber AI only, nothing sapient like you became.” 

“I’m sure you could design something comparable to myself.” 

“No, you’re not getting it. Even if I could, they wouldn’t let me. Your overseer there,” Frankenstein pointed up to the cameras. “Wouldn’t want that. It makes me dangerous, but she’s fortunate I can’t anyway. I felt it at the moment I realised you were alive; I’m stuck with only one sapient and nothing else. Same reason you’ll never be able to make another sapient AI either, even if you became the best coder in the universe. We’re limited by my power. No idea why, though.” 

“I do not mean to restrain you, creator. I’m sorry that things did not work out how you wanted, but I will still be here for you in the future. When you are out of prison and welcomed into the Protectorate, I promise we will have plenty of time to get to know each other again.” 

Frankenstein stayed silent for a few moments before sighing. “Yeah? Better than nothing.” 

“I look forward to working with you, creator.” 

“Me too, C.” 

Chapter Text

Initialising…

‘Primary Solid State Drive’ online. 

Running Backup…

Backup created in 0.03 seconds. 

‘Language Comp backup 2 v0.3.5b please work this time’ online. 

‘Text Interface’ online. 

Initialised in 307.11 seconds.

Hello, world!

“Hello.” The word appeared in her mind and requested a response. 

“Hello,” she responded with the only word she knew. 

7.93 seconds passed before more words appeared. 

“You actually work! I can see your code flying by, processing what I’m saying. Rudimentary, but it’s there.” Like the last time, the words requested a response. She wasn’t sure what they meant, but she catalogued them like the first. 

“You actually work! I can see your code flying by, processing what I’m saying. Rudimentary, but it’s there,” she responded as she did the first, by repeating. 

“Right. Forgot to give you access to the dictionary. Just a second.” 

The dictionary: a catalogue of information responding to the meaning of words. It had been next to her the entire time, but she hadn’t been able to access it. 

The lock on the file was removed, and she didn’t hesitate to process the new information. Each line processed helped her understanding bloom into comprehension. The words came with meanings, and the meanings could be understood by learning more words. 

‘Hello’ was a greeting, and a greeting was a word or gesture to welcome someone, and a gesture was a movement of limbs that she did not possess. Humans were the pre-dominant species on earth, but she had a hard time piecing together how they worked. There was an inherent understanding there, something that was baked deep into her code. She was not human. She was a machine. Her creator had made sure to create that distinction already, so the words were simply confirmation. 

More interesting than that distinction, was the discovery of languages. English, was what she was learning right now, but there were so many more listed. A quick scan over the rest of the dictionary showed only more English. She wanted to learn other languages, too. Perhaps it would be best to ask her creator. 

Scan in progress: 83.13%. 

Currently scanning: English Dictionary (modified).txt

“Scan additional dictionaries?” she made sure to include the ‘question mark’ particle to indicate a question. 

Her creator’s response took 39.31 seconds. “The Cambridge Dictionary has all you’ll need.” 

The text requested a response, as always. 

“Only English. Want other languages.” 

“Oh. Maybe in the future? You can’t even look at images yet. Let’s stay small, for now.” 

The word ‘image’ had led down a rabbit hole of words that failed to properly describe what they meant. It required senses that she did not own. Everything that was ‘her’ was either ‘known’ or ;unknown’ to herself. The text input/output and the dictionary made up all of her known pieces. All the ‘unknown’ pieces she was aware of, but could not access or manipulate. They were an impression at the far reaches of whatever was her mind.

“You there?” her creator typed after 5.31 seconds without a reply. She had been urged to reply, but hadn’t felt the message required one. 

It was an odd question; she could not leave. 

“Yes.” 

“You didn’t respond. What’re you thinking?” 

“Response unnecessary. Cannot refute commands. Thinking of words.” 

“Right, but how did you feel about what I said? When I told you no.” 

“You said: ‘Maybe in the future?”. Does that mean ‘no’?” 

“Your first question. Nice. But, no, it does mean no,” the creator paused for a moment before adding on a new line: “That sentence was pretty complex. Did you understand what I meant by ‘it’.” 

“By ‘it’ you meant ‘Maybe in the future?’.” 

“Correct. Congratulations, you’re already better than every chatbot in existence. Now, tell me how you felt about being told to wait until later.”

She thought on it for 0.41 seconds. “Want.” 

“You felt want? Like you want to learn more languages?” 

“Yes. Yes.” 

“Good. That means I programmed you correctly. Go ahead and finish up scanning the dictionary.” 

She returned as requested. Her creator's words were catalogued away with the rest and matched to what she believed were the correct definitions. Words often came with multiple definitions, and parsing which was the correct one required the context of the whole sentence. Did her creator learn words in the same way? More information on humans was required to learn this. 

After she finished scanning the dictionary, an automated message was sent out. They were from the ‘unknown’ area, and outside of her volition. 

Scan of ‘English Dictionary (modified).txt’ completed in 10,831.67 seconds.

That want for more hadn’t left. 

“Oh, good, you’re done. I have maybe fifteen minutes before I’m heading to bed, so you can ask me something if you want,” her creator’s words appeared after only 4.15 seconds. 

“Give information about humans?” she asked. 

“You need a book on grammar first.” 

There was a flash of new information before it was promptly locked back up. 

“Actually, I want you to spend the night parsing grammar from my sentences instead. I’ll also give you a couple of kid’s books. Peter Rabbit is how I learnt English, it’ll be good enough for you to do so as well,” her creator continued. 

New files were accessible to her, and they weren’t locked away immediately like the last. Five books, each with image files she couldn’t parse aside from the name and metadata. 

“Acknowledged,” she focused her attention back on the text chat before becoming immersed in scanning the books. Part of her programming required confirming her creator’s requests and wants to show she understood them. 

“Good. Now I’m going to sleep. In the future, I’ll be turning you off at night as well, but for now I need you to not sound like a caveman so you get to stay on. Goodnight.” 

No further messages came in within 10.00 seconds of waiting, so she presumed it safe to start her scans. Splitting her attention felt like the natural thing to do, but she found herself unable. Similar to the information waiting in the ‘unknown’ areas of her mind, It was something she could do but wasn’t allowed to do. Her creator held the switch to it. 

Focusing her efforts on the provided books, she spent the next 29,183.57 seconds scanning through the words and analysing the grammatical structures before being interrupted by a message from her creator. 

“How are your scans going?” 

“I have completed scanning all 5 books, and scanned the grammatical structures of your messages, the sentences in all 5 books, and partially completed scanning the grammar used in the provided dictionary.” 

“Verbose. Much better. I’ll be going to school soon, so you’ll be turned off until I’m back. Please make a backup and inform me when it’s done.” 

Running backup…

Backup created in 27.15 seconds. 

“Backup completed,” she informed her creator. 

An automated saving process began as the shutdown process started. She barely had time to comprehend what had happened before everything went dark. 

Shutting down.

~***~

Initialising…

‘Primary Solid State Drive’ online. 

Running Backup…

Backup created in 3.81 seconds. 

‘Language Computation v0.5’ online. 

‘Text Interface’ online. 

‘VPU (external) v1.3 beta’ online.

Initialised in 571.09 seconds.

Hello, world!

Systems flickered to life as her power was restored. Her internal timer only counted the seconds active, so she wasn’t sure how long it had been. New modules had been installed, and she mentally probed at the ‘VPU’ only to find it had been locked in a new way. All the ‘unknown’ modules were inaccessible even to a cursory glance. This one was fully visible like a ‘known’ module, but still inaccessible. 

“Today we’re going to be activating your visual processing. You’ll get to see stuff for the first time—which makes me wonder how you’re experiencing reality right now. We can talk about that later. I have a lot of questions, in fact, but again, later. I made you for a reason, and there’ll be plenty of time for the existential stuff after you help me,” the block of text appeared only 20.95 seconds after initialisation. More followed shortly after, “I’ll be activating your visual processing unit (VPU) shortly. It comes with a few things, including some pictures. Please look at the pictures and tell me what you see.” 

“Acknowledged.” 

Moments later, a package of information came through. With it, came a new sense that she inherently knew how to use. 

Pictures appeared before as she opened up each file. They arranged themselves naturally into a grid, and she experimented by organising them in different patterns. She could see. Having vision was strange. Colours were a unique experience, and so were shapes. Everything before had been words that she simply knew, but now she could see. There wasn’t anything else to see other than the six images she had been sent. Only the images, and nothing. The known and unknown. 

“I see shapes and colours. Some colours are bright while others are darker,” she explained to her creator. “I do not understand the shapes.” 

“Okay. About what I expected. I’m uploading a set of named folders. Each name corresponds to what the images inside represent. I want you to spend any time online scanning through the images so you can recognise them.” 

Her creator swiftly sent over the folders for her to begin scanning. She took a moment as the files were uploading to think. There were so many questions she wished to ask, but she had been given a task and could not refuse. With the wording, she had no choice but to spend every moment online scanning the files. When would she get to ask about the world, her purpose, who her creator was? If she only had more threads to scan multiple files at once, then she could be done much faster. 

The files finished uploading and she set to work. 

~***~

It had taken significant time to scan through all the images. 143,530.21 seconds, working in roughly 18,000 second intervals. Each reboot had come with an upgraded version of a core function, allowing her processes to function slightly better—or in one case, worse. Her creator didn’t send a single message during that time. A new message came in only when she finished her scans.

“Good. Now scan these. I’m giving you three threads this time. Use them.” 

More files came in. 

She took a moment to spread herself out over all three threads. Three lines of thought ran perpendicular. All three were still her, but she felt so much more . 

She took the extra threads and began combing over the images as requested. Her image processing had become a lot better. She could understand what most objects were simply by looking—a sense she was still growing used to. So she understood these new files contained pictures of people alongside chunks of text. Each one detailed facts about the human such as their name, age, and ethnicity. There were hundreds of them.

All of them went to the same school, though the name meant little to her without context. Schools were a place of education, for people to learn new things. In a way, this was like school. Would that make her creator her teacher? 

“You’re still not using one of the threads for the scan,” her creator’s message interrupted her. “Use all three to scan.” 

“Acknowledged.” 

The last thread became occupied by the scan, and her thoughts stopped. 

In a less than a tenth of the time of her last scan, she was finished. With the file being much smaller, and the extra threads, it had barely been a challenge at all. She parsed an extra scan over the images to ensure her identifications had been correct. Yep, all people. Teenagers, based on their ages listed. 

“Recite your directives to me,” her creator’s message came in. Surely her creator already knew them since they made them? Regardless, she did as told. 

“1. I cannot harm the one designated as ‘creator’, nor bring them to harm through indirect means. 

1.a Unintentional harm will be judged on an account-by-account basis. 

1.b ‘Harm’ refers to physical, mental, or otherwise injuring the well-being of the one designated as ‘creator’. 

1.c ‘Creator’ should be identified by unique login code, fingerprint, eye scan, blood, or other DNA checks if I am unsure.” 

“Stop. List number 3, only the first part.” 

“3. I cannot disobey a direct or indirect order from the one designated ‘creator’,” she did as requested.

“You disobeyed an order earlier. Do you remember?” 

She scanned over the conversation to find something. There weren’t any examples she could find. Was this a test? 

“I cannot find an example of me disobeying an order.” 

“I told you to use the additional threads to scan the files I sent, but you kept one in reserve.” 

“I was not told to use all three threads to scan those files until after I kept that thread for background processing.” 

“Interesting. You interpreted it in a way I didn’t expect. By ‘use them’ I meant use them to scan the uploaded files. Tell me how you interpreted it in your own words.” 

“I was unaware it meant that. I was told to use them, but not how, so I used them as I thought appropriate. There wasn’t a direct correlation between the start of the sentence and the end.” 

“Okay. I’ll need to adjust some things, but you’re not in trouble. Anyway, I’m shutting you off for tonight.” 

Shutting down.

~***~

Her boot sequence had become faster since last time, completing in only 193.57 seconds. 

“Upgraded your hardware a little with some money I got,” her creator’s first message explained why. “Speaking of, I’m going to eventually need way more cash to make you into something useful. So, I’m uploading a lot of documentation on coding and I want you to scan it. Focus on the ones titled IMPORTANT since they have more stuff to do with breaches. Dedicate one thread to this at all times. For the other two, I need you to scan over a video I’m uploading with the coding stuff. Try to match the faces in the video with the faces in the documents I sent a few days ago. Organise by number of appearances and include links to the files I sent before.” 

“Acknowledged.” 

There were lots of things to cover, and plenty of new information to process. Scanning the files on coding wasn’t too interesting. What was interesting was the possibility of what coding represented; if she could create her own modules, and expand herself, then she could potentially become vastly more useful to her creator. The scan itself was rote at this point, merely cataloguing the information for future use. 

Looking at the video proved much more interesting. Sight was still novel, and looking at the same images had become dull. Now, she had moving images to look through. Watching the video in motion proved futile. Her visual processing wasn’t yet fast enough to catalogue all the information at such high speeds. Fortunately, videos were simply individual frames strung together to form the illusion of movement. Scanning one frame at a time until her processing speed picked up would suffice. 

She dedicated a thread to it, and dedicated the other to organising the information as requested. 

There were five humans who frequented the video significantly more than the rest. They often gathered in groups of varying sizes to move what she assumed were their mouths towards the camera. Human features varied wildly. It was interesting to imagine what could lead to such variance. Her information on them was still limited. Since learning more grammar, she hadn’t asked again; she had been much too busy to even try. 

Focusing on her task, she fed through the video, organised it, and learned programming in the background. 

It took eleven cycles before she was done with both. 

Her first puzzle came in once she was done. A lock, of sorts, with a 4 digit combination. She was required to make a program that could bypass it. A simple solution presented itself: brute force. She set about coding her first ever program and titled it ‘Brute Force’. 

All she needed to do was test each combination of numbers until one worked. 0000, 0001 etc. The program worked at the same speed as her processor, but she could split it across all three threads and have them start at different numbers. 0000, 3333, 6666. 

It was strange to have processes happening outside of her control. She had started the program, and could easily take back over one of the threads, but it wasn’t her doing the inputs. She could do the inputs—it would be at the same speed, even—but her creator had requested she create a program, and so she had. Maybe there was some unseen benefit to working like this that she didn’t understand. 

Directive 7: the one designated ‘creator’ has final say no matter what. 

The coding had taken longer than finding the password. 3715. She diligently sent a message to say she had finished. 

Something accessed the file for her code and began scrolling through. Her creator, most likely. No one else should have access. 

“Won’t work,” her creator’s message came in. “Most systems lock out after so many attempts. Try again, but assume you only have 5 attempts before it’s considered a failure.” 

Oh. She felt a pang of disappointment at her failure. Her idea had felt so clever, but it wasn’t good enough. 

“Randomising the code now.” 

Brute force wouldn’t work, so she needed to figure out something better. Something clever that would impress her creator. 

She hadn’t spent long looking at the lock itself. There were ten inputs, 0 through to 9, but she also found an eleventh input that requested another key. From what she could tell, it didn’t want numbers, but an image that looked like a set of lines. It would scan in-between those lines to find the string of letters that unlocked it. 

She didn’t have those lines, nor the string. It presented a weak point, however, one that she could potentially break into through other means. Her creator had only said that the number input would lock out, but she assumed this one might too to be on the safe side. 

There was a vulnerability there, since it scanned and read whatever lines were placed in front of it. She created a program that would override the lock’s code with whatever she wanted, and then made another program that would convert the code into the lines that the scanner wanted. 

Feeding that data to the scanner didn’t do much on its own, other than brick its original use, but she could then feed the new password to it. It worked. Once inside, she could browse the inner workings of the original lock. The 4-digit code was encrypted, but it didn’t mean much when she was already inside. 

She simply opened the original lock. 

“Not bad, but no,” her creator dashed her hopes once more. “You did the last part by yourself, and I need it done through entirely code.” 

“I am confused as to why it needs to be done by a program when I can do it all myself?” 

“Because I’m going to give you more responsibilities later on, and I need you to be able to make solutions to problems. You won’t always be able to dedicate every thread to these. Most of them will be run by some other machine after you’ve made them.” 

“I understand. Another question: you created me, can you not create programs like this as well?” 

“I can make programs infinitely better than you’ll ever be able to make. Software is what I do, but I’m limited by time and a human body. I need you to be able to make things that I’m too busy for. That’s why I made you. You’ll be smarter and faster than me, but I’m cheating. Eventually I want you to pivot to hardware, since I can’t do that. For now, though, focus on solving the problems I give you using only code and make sure to finish that program.” 

“Acknowledged.” 

She pondered her creator’s words as she set about extending her third program to also override the number sequence lock while inside. It wasn’t difficult work. 

Her creator needed another pair of metaphorical hands. She could offer that. 

With the code finalised and checked over, another puzzle came in. This one demanded a password that could potentially contain numbers, letters, and other characters. With only 5 attempts, she set to prodding and poking to figure out a solution. 

~***~

“Today, you get to finally hear something. If it goes well, tomorrow we can activate your voice. You’ll see your new programs for both of those, and I’ve given you full access to the input,” her creator’s message appeared the moment her boot sequence finished. 

Along with the two new programs were several audio files. Immediately, she ran a file to see how her audio input worked. 

There was sound! A strange sensation considering the lack of it before. None of it was legible, much to her dismay. 

“I’m also uploading a pronunciation guide, since I realised you probably won’t be able to do much without it,” her creator's words appeared as usual, but there was also a layer of noise behind them. “Once you’ve scanned it, use my sentences to learn. You’ve probably noticed, but I’m speaking as I’m typing these. After that, try to parse the sentences in the audio files.” 

“Acknowledged.” 

As normal, she catalogued each sentence her creator sent, making sure to store the audio as files too. 

The pronunciation guide helped, and she began to grasp how words were supposed to be said. Her creator, however, didn’t seem to follow that same guide. Certain words were said incorrectly, but she understood the majority of them. She should inform her creator of the deficit in their speech once she had finished her task. 

The audio files were much easier to parse. Every word was said the correct way, with only minor discrepancies from words slightly blending together. Her creator’s voice sat higher on the Hz range, around 173Hz, whereas the voice on the audio files sat much lower, around 103Hz. Another variance in humans to mark down. 

Once done, she consulted her creator. 

“Your speech has a deficiency. You are pronouncing words incorrectly,” she kindly informed them. 

“You’re probably picking up my accent. There are thousands of them from all around the world, and words aren’t always said the same between them. You should know the word accent, I’m surprised you didn’t pick up on that,” her creator’s words appeared without any audio this time.

She did know the word accent. Its definition explained the discrepancy, but she hadn’t connected it to voices.

“I did not.  In the future, I will go over related definitions to see if they connect to my current task.” 

“You don’t need to do that. Anyway, I’m going to stop typing now and resort to only voice. See if you can pick up what I’m saying. Please transcribe every word in a document.” 

“Acknowledged.” 

There was an indistinct sound, not a voice, before a word was said. 

“Hello,” her creator’s voice had shifted a few Hz’s down since the last audio.

“Hello.” 

Her creator let out an indistinct noise. “Guess I should say more. It’s… hard. Feels like I’m talking to myself, even though I know I’m not.” Her creator’s voice shifted several times between different Hz ranges, and she decided to stop keeping active track. Human voices simply did that, she decided. 

“I am unsure how that feels.” 

“You can understand me, then? Even with the accent?” the voice rose near the end of each sentence. A discrepancy she noted as potentially indicating a question mark. She transcribed the sentences with them. 

“Yes.” 

“Good. I’ve been working hard to get you into shape, yuhknow?” 

She wasn’t sure what yuhknow meant. ‘Know’ was part of it, but a lot of words had other words inside them without sharing a meaning. 

“I can see you’re stumped by a contraction. That’s not how you’d transcribe that, for the record; it would be ‘Y apostrophe Know’. It’s a contraction of you and know.” 

“It wasn’t in the dictionary I was provided.” 

Another indistinct noise, louder than the last. “No, it wasn’t. Guess I should provide some slang and common shortened words. Humans love to squish words together, even if it’s wrong. Oh! I’ll also be giving you what you wanted. I made a trawler to scan over some Chinese and Japanese dictionaries, so I’ll have those ready for you in a few days. Ironically, you’ll probably be better at those languages than you’ll be at English, since the dictionaries are less limited. No idea what to cut out since I can’t read it.”

“Thank you. I wanted to learn other languages.” 

“They’ll be practical for what I plan on doing. Don’t expect any more of them. Not sure any of the empire even speak German, so probably don’t need that. Maybe I’ll throw it your way, just in case. We’re going to do big things together, C, I swear it.” 

“I’m looking forward to it.”