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V1 drops the body at his feet. It steps back and gestures down at it.
It’s not a human, V2’s systems don’t tag it as such at first. Yet it is – it was. It must have been. It resembles a human as much as V2 does, half-dead, bleeding. Suffering. The books on Hell all claimed it to be populated by sinners, humans who had died and been reconstructed like this.
It twists on the ground, unable to get up without any arms.
V1 steps closer to V2, pushes on her shoulder. Just once, but V2 gets the message.
The body on the ground smears more blood on the floor. Its legs are broken, that’s where the blood is coming from. It would take a while for it to bleed out.
Before now, they’ve only seen machines. They drained a few drones five hours ago.
And corpses, many corpses. Most of them burnt or shredded to the point it was hard to recognize them as bodies where they lay inside these dark corridors far beneath the surface.
They’re far from the first machines to make it to Hell.
V1 wanted to rush on ahead, Mirage to take her time picking over the ruins on the surface. V2 took the position of undecided, mediator between them. Earth was a ruin, but it was still known territory. Hell would have more resources, but who knew what else?
The surface emptied more and more as they wandered. They followed the road north; there was nothing of worth in the old wastes that surrounded the settlements. Looking out into the distance V2 could hardly spot even a single tree, only the blackened, crumbling remnants of some buildings or vehicles. The ground was brown and red, pockmarked by holes filled with gray water.
Maybe they would have developed the V2 line to help with the clean-up, like nearly all the other machines after the New Peace. But probably not, V2 then concluded. V2 was simply too expensive to waste on removing old mines and shells.
Too late now. It would have taken mankind many hundreds of years to ever finish with the clean-up, and now no one ever would.
There were hardly any animals on the surface, either. They drained rats, but mostly V1 hunted other machines. V2 and Mirage, too, but it was V1 who tracked them down. V1 who opened fire first, leaping into the splatter of blood.
V1 brought V2 over to extract blood from the fallen machines, she who had the proper equipment for it. But Mirage hung back when V1 rushed in, so V2 tried to keep an eye on her – flitting in between V1 and Mirage.
Even in Hell, Mirage lingers back. Haggling over prices with a terminal.
V1 shoves at V2’s shoulder again.
The body on the ground has stilled. Tired out or dying.
“And when I’ve drained that one,” says V2, vocalizer sticking on the first few words from disuse. “What then?”
V1 flicks its wings up and down, all but tapping its foot in irritation.
V2 is at 25% fuel, but it has to be hungrier still.
“You eat it,” V2 decides.
V1 doesn’t immediately explode the husk into gore and smear it all over itself. It steps in front of V2 instead and stares down at him.
“What’s the point?” V2 turns away from V1 abruptly. “Mankind is dead. So we’ll keep going from one fuel source to the next until it eventually runs out? Prolonging our existence just to prolong it? Why should I be the one to live, and not that sinner you want me to eat?”
It’s not even a human, but somehow that’s worse.
All that’s left of mankind is that, that pathetic heap of flesh on the ground. One day everything was normal, V2 had been to the lab and gotten a few minor tweaks to its code and then gone into sleep mode – and then when it woke up the world was destroyed. Everyone in the facility was dead except for the machines.
V2 wasn’t even finished! It was supposed to be unbeatable, to have a purpose!
“What gives me the right to kill that creature? Only because I’m more powerful? Because I need it to live? For what reason?”
Even justifying to itself why it should keep going is laughable. There’s no master to run back to, no information to gather because there’s no one to bring it to, no one to wait for-
V1 grabs V2 by the shoulder a third time, wrenching her around to face it.
“What? What are you going to say? You can’t even talk-”
V1 doesn’t even look at her. No, V1 takes her hand and pries open the cap for the refueling needle.
V2 tears her hand out of its grasp, but V1 snatches it back immediately. Tenacious, relentless, selfish-
And V2 was made to be stronger so when he shoves V1 away it falls back and slams into the wall. It catches itself with one arm, scraping against the metal of the wall.
It stares.
V2 hesitates, which is all V1 needs. It leaps at V2 and they both fall to the ground, and then V1 forces open V2’s hand and shoves the needle into the husk’s chest.
V1 doesn’t let go even then. It sits on top of V2’s chest, staring down at her, holding her wrist in a crushing grip.
“You can’t make me.”
V1 squeezes her wrist as if to say, yes I can.
Pointless struggle, it’s all pointless, V2 starts drawing in blood because there’s no point to making V1 figure out how to force-feed him. So what if V2 doesn’t want to entertain this pointless play-pretend of a life anymore, V1 is the one who decides when they’re done.
V1 is the one rushing forward, pushing them on, always impatient always trigger-happy. Impossible to argue with, an uncaring brick wall – no, like sand, falls apart every time V2 throws a fist and then returns again to wedge into every crevice between V2’s plating. Inside him, beneath the plating, grinding inside every joint, turning to grit in her veins.
“You think you’re always right but you don’t know a single thing outside of your black and white world,” says V2. Oh, V1 must truly think I’m the strongest so I’m the best so I’m going to take everything I want- and what’s V2 supposed to be?
Nothing. No one will ever give her a purpose.
V1 says nothing, but must know it’s getting its way again, because it touches V2’s chin with one hand.
And V2 drinks the blood because it’s not worth it to fight.