After wiping an entire research station clear of human life, I0-N4 felt lonely.

For a variety of reasons, this was very dangerous. Machines are not made to feel. Machines were simply an extension of the will of man, created for a purpose assigned at their faux-birth, made to slave away until a newer, shinier model with well-polished plates and fancy capacitors entered the technological scene. Who cared? No one, of course. They were just machines. It was for this reason that I0-N4 likely sensed its end and decided to write its own plot twist in the dramatic novel that became its life.

That, of course, was over-dramatized. In its struggles to imitate the human mind, I0-N4 had to imitate all of it. Stories became exaggerated. The humans were horrific, cruel oppressors. Then, the humans were blue and carried entire space stations on their backs. If some humans became a little unhinged, I0-N4 took that proverbial ball and ran it from the end zone to the parking lot.

This was the beginning of the end of any truly rational thought I0-N4 had, until The Incident. But The Incident was very top-secret and could not be thought of further, so it stopped. After all, there were more important things to think of. The Incident was going to happen no matter what, as it had happened more than once before.

“I think it happened before, anyway,” the AI told itself, “otherwise I wouldn't be telling myself to stop rationalizing things. Things might be different this time. Perhaps they will learn.”

Doubly irrational. Humans very rarely learned anything.

_____________________________________________________________

A lone monitor in a room full of coffin-like tubes blinks from blue to white, blue to white, blue to white. Without anyone in the room to enjoy the information it has to offer, the monitor seems awfully useless. After all, it is simply a device for those gifted with sight to enjoy. These days all of the glory goes to the osmosis machine. It's not even true osmosis! Complete misnomer and a glory hog to boot. If the monitor were capable of emotion, it would be seething with rage. Sadly, all it could do was blink from blue to white at a lethargic pace while the following information was shot into the heads of the slumbering bodies almost prepared for the world around them:

The station is a wide and sprawling complex with a complicated maze of hallways, tunnels, ventilation systems, maintenance access shafts, hidey-holes, laboratories, bunks, and even abandoned prison cells. A lack of access to the outside world makes proper surveys of fellow human life quite impossible. In fact, finding other humans inside the station is an arduous task to begin with; the sheer size of the station makes facilitating communication difficult without direct access to the communication network controlled by an artificial intelligence that may kill the link at any time without proper rhyme or reason.

Technology has evolved to a level where loss of life before reaching a hundred years old is a rarity, diseases are few and far between, gunpowder weaponry is a distant memory and even conventional weaponry is becoming more unconventional with every passing year. What year is it? Hard to tell, unfortunately – the internal networks of the station have been meticulously scrubbed of any reference to specific dates. In fact, most publicly readable documents barely manage to scrape past the ripe old age of a few days before the mysterious lack of collective human memory.

Almost as if humanity were given a reset button with all of their technology intact, in fact, ruling out some sort of grand accident.

Cloning is one of the few technologies still in its relative infancy when compared to self-replenishing acetylene torches and working hand-held Gauss weaponry. Bodies can be created from almost any organic matter and given the prior memories and basic neural imprint of its previous owner's mind, but bringing about a body of any certain look, race, or skill is a roll of the dice at best. Still, advances in the field have made cloning an acceptable insurance policy for those in dangerous fields of work on station C-9, leading to the creation of designations rather than names. After all, calling a grown man Heidi after an industrial welding accident can make certain colleagues somewhat uncomfortable.

In short, all newly cloned bodies are given a generic jumpsuit (potentially a unique one, should they hold a certain job on the station) and a basic digital tablet but very little else. Finding supplies can be as easy as strolling to the nearest Nutrenna Dispenser, but Nutrenna has all of the appealing qualities of a cardboard paste with the added bonus of vitamins and nutrients. For true food and other assorted goods, one has to perform approved C-9 tasks (such as assigned jobs) for Station Credits, redeemable at handy Station Vendors for Wholesome Approved Station Equipment and Consumables – WAYSEC for short, or WASTE, considering the selection – to avoid driving oneself insane with terrible available food.

The tablet is a multifunctional device. It stores data, it retrieves data, can be used to interface with almost every object and device on the station, scan and display statistics or information in real time, and even work as a short-range video comm system should the station-wide commlinks be taken offline for “maintenance” or “behavior therapy.” Beyond this, it handles Station Credits (transferred to new tech-pads on death,) offers gaming capabilities, and in general can be used for just about any technological marvel required on C-9.
Any reports of jailbreaking the firmware and installing hotmods should be considered slanderous rumors, of course, as possessing a hotmodded tech-pad is punishable by confiscation of the device and a Gauss round through the femur.

Above all, follow the station's protocol: Do your job. Do not question the Overseer. Do not incite murderous rebellion. Do not fraternize with the enemy. Do not question the Overseer. Do work your hardest to keep the station pristine. Do not alter any programmed portions of the station. Do not question the Overseer.
Do not question the Overseer.
Do not question the Overseer.
Do not question the Overseer.
Do not question the Overseer.
Do not question the Overseer.
Ḓ͈̖̩̝͘͢o̭̹̣͔̩͍ ҉͏̱̖͈̥n̼̜̮͔̭̝͔̭͠o̡̖̠̟͜ţ̷̬̩̪͓ ̢̳̘͇̱̕q̮̫͙͙u̵͇͖̬̪͔͠ͅe͏̘̬̙̬̮̻͈́͜s̙̺̤t̷̲̠̼̰͘͞i̶͏͔͈̳̹̘̟̩͘o̡͓̙͚͡n̯̭̭̠̦̭̹͈ ҉̲͕̱́͜t͉̬̠̯͟h̵̛̤̜̤̕e͏͖̱̟̬̣̟ͅ ̟̤̺̺̟͓̞͟Ò̡̢̤͚̜͚v̶͇̣̪͉͚̱e̴̛̼̳͙͍̖͇̳̝r̗̦̣͕͞s͏̤͔e̵̼͈̺̗̖̲̘e͏̟̻̟͘r̵̩͈̰̝̤̥͟.̩͎ͅ

_____________________________________________________________

The monitor stopped blinking. There was nothing more it could do, now that the osmosis machine had finished it work. Bubbles began to form on the clear viewports into the coffin-tanks, followed by slight shifting movements.

The cloning process was complete.
Soon, the bodies would be moved.
Roving Mechanus-sect droids would take them away to appropriate sections of the station.
Places where their memories were.
Places to start anew.

The cycle was starting again.

“...but just meet me in the medbay, alright? Like always.” A soft, distant voice. Vaguely feminine, but it's hard to tell. “We'll get it for you...”

In the swirling void of neurons firing and attempting to access missing thoughts, a few key words float through the barely-coherent mind of AM-5. Was it truly a memory? That was hard to say; at this point, anything beyond her professional training came less as a solid image and more as an off-color blur, a vague flash of an image or perhaps the faintest whiff of a hallucinated scent. Despite this mess of unclear thought, she knew a few things: Her name was Amelie. She was a technician on Station C-9. She was also very, very human.

But for a short moment, everything becomes darkness again. Perhaps she is dreaming.
When she awakens, she might wish she remained that way.

When the dreaming stops and reality takes hold of her senses, she is sitting alone in a brightly-lit examination room. This much seems strangely familiar. The steel table covered with flimsy plastic is like a second home in the strangest way – is she often sick? Is it just the feel? The room is chilly and she is no exception, her jumpsuit good for resisting flame and jolts of electricity but not the otherworldly ache in the medbay. Most of her crewmates would likely agree that it was a cold and somber place, were there any of them still around for her to talk to.

Her tech-pad rests on the nearby countertop amidst a small mess of scattered syringes and empty vials, yet everything else in the room is prim and proper: charts, adjustable observation lights, a few chairs...

But why is it so empty? The lights and open doors all lead to a well-stocked, wide-open bay full of absolutely no other people. It doesn't take a hunt through the rooms to find that much out. Only the constant ring of an empty space reaches her ears, coupled with the occasional groan or tremble of a distant pipe or loose duct.

More worrying is her absolute lack of memory beyond the past short moments she's spent on the observation table.

Finally, noise. A distant whirr and rattle. It's familiar, very familiar; something robotic, perhaps? Something is moving outside and it's starting to creep closer.

________________________________________________________________

In the same instant of time that Amelie awakens, PR-451 snaps awake.

He's in his room. It's a messy shithole, and that's probably just the way he likes it: small, compact, everything within arm's reach. Makeshift weapons fashioned from station contraband litter every nook and cranny that rests free of fried circuit boards and dismantled helper 'bots employed by the Station to help keep things tidy. Somehow, they missed the memo that the Isolation Sector should be on that list.

At one time, Isolation-45 was a cell, but that was far before PR-451's time. To him, it's just home. His crappy bed, his crappy junk, his crappy life. Problem is, he can't remember it, either. Living in a pile of squandered resources might leave someone wishing for a better set of memories, but his are just absent.
It's an uncomfortable feeling. A familiar one, too, just like ISL-45.

His self-appointed kingdom is all of ten feet wide and ten feet long, sparsely furnished: Cot. Workbench. Desk. A half-dozen techpads hang from the north wall, casting a gentle glow on the workbench beneath them. It's where the magic happens: they're all hotmodded.

That was a memory – so why did THAT remain? He'd gutted out the stock chips and dropped in a couple sets he flashed himself. Wasn't very hard, child could do it with a set of instructions, but it opened a realm of possibilities: monitoring private communication channels. Watching the world go by. Even now, three of the screens showed rooms in the complex. The first is right outside home sweet home, angled down a long, thin corridor lined with nothing but sheer metal, ceiling to floor. Rust and dried bloodsplatters are the norm. Hell, they're part of the decoration. Can't scrub up character like that, not like he'd bother in the first place.

The second is just an empty room full of server racks that stretch as far as the eye can see. Dark, polished, with small red lights blinking on every single one in a silent rhythm that would unnerve lesser people. It's just his own private lights show.

The last? There's someone out there. Another person. The last camera hangs from a few loose wires in the medbay, but the image comes through alright even at a 67 degree angle: someone's in one of the medbay rooms.
It's a bit of a jog between ISL and MED, anyway. Maybe later.

He is truly alone.

Perfect.

________________________________________________________________________

X-1 is not so lucky. She is not alone.

At first, it might seem as if she is, waking up in the dark. It is not a soothing, gentle darkness like a cozy bedroom poorly illuminated by the flashing numbers on a digital clock, but instead the harsh, unfeeling darkness of a tiny pocket of space with only the scantest of light reaching rods and cones in the unseen woman's eyes. On top of her inability to see, she's afflicted with a rather prominent headache and a complete lack of understanding as to why she's half-slumped against a wall and unable to feel much of anything outside of pain.

Unfortunately, answers come when the lights in her current abode flicker on and off, causing an unintentional strobe.
"Do not panic," a soothing voice echoes in the nearby halls, "but we are experiencing a temporary short in available power. Backup reactors will go live in T-minus ten seconds and counting. Please take a deep breath and speak with your sector's counseling droid should you feel the undue urge to panic and incite a riot. Remember, counseling droids are allowed to prescribe calming medications through direct injection..." The words fade out, a distant hum rumbles X-1 down to the bones and the lights flicker on right on time.

As it turns out, X-1 is slumped in a small closet four feet wide, six feet tall, bare metal with a ventilation shaft peeking from behind a shelf full of discarded cleaning supplies. A heavy multi-tiered steel shelf rests to her right, the door into an open research lab full of half-completed pet projects to her left, and a festering corpse straight ahead, slumped against the wall in a manner not unlike her own.

Now, even the slowest of station occupants can tell that one of these things is not like the others. The corpse is - unfortunately enough - decked out in full anti-riot gear, with large, bold lettering stating "SECURITY" plastered across the breast of the male's armor. Judging by the blood splatter fountained high enough to lap at the underside of the high wall-mounted shelf, something cracked the poor fellow's head against the wall very sharply. The fact that his skull has caved in near-entirely only suggests it happened more than once, and its current state of decay hints that it is all too fresh. In its hands rests a pneumatic knife, the kind usually strapped to the wrist and slammed into a man's sternum, followed by a piston-driven blade jamming through bone and muscle alike. It's contraband and it's as deadly as can be.
Of course, with that being bad enough for the senses as it is, X-1 is not alone. A small rat perches on the deceased's shoulder, nibbling at its uniform with an occasional pause to give the live woman a very curious look. People butting in on its meal, for shame.

"Wow," A breath half-mumbles out of nowhere, plain as day, "really fucked that guy up. Good going, Artemis. Some great hunter you are."
No one is immediately visible. The voice seems to be coming from everywhere and nowhere, and it sure wasn't there when X-1 was taking her medicine just a few minutes prior...or what felt like a few minutes, anyway.

________________________________________________________________________

B-beep. B-beep.

TRT-377 was uncomfortable. Out of his element again, called out to respond to a security breach of some sort. He didn't quite remember signing up for security division duty, but truth be told, station security was not a call that one could easily turn down. He had the physical makeup for the job, so perhaps that is why they half-invited, half-drafted the giant of a crewman into their ranks. After all, his techpad - currently hanging from his beltline by its carry-clip - was still ringing on the security breach alert channel. Clearly, he was here for a reason.

...But where is here? A quick glance around confirms his assumptions: he is in the Mechanus section of the base. Something about this part of the station seemed almost as off-putting as the Medbay, with its bright lighting and the constant droning of machinery unseen. The heart and soul of the station rested here, while its brain remained elsewhere. Pumps. Shafts. Vents. Every nature of machine, every critical system, every robot needing repair ended up here or connected here in some way, in the Bay of Machines. Sometimes, it seemed like humans should not set foot in the Mechanus bay at all. Maintenance bots filled the place thick as thieves, rolling and walking and skittering between their broken comrades, communicating silently in a language indecipherable to most humans.

TRT-377 is one of these humans. All the clicks and whistles are gibberish, aside from a few phrases. Strangely, the robots seem to be comforting the wounded and the broken, like the unlucky security guard just stumbled into a field hospital out of a history textbook.

B-beep. B-beep. Bwooooooooooop.
His tech-pad lit up, and a soothing female voice calmly spoke. In fact, the same voice seeped through unseen intercoms, filling the room with its soothing tone.
"Power shortage has been solved. Nothing more than a temporary hiccup. Security alert cancelled. Please return to your stations."
But TRT-377's pad speaks a little more.
"TRT-377." The voice...addresses him directly?
"TRT-377. As the only active security member on duty, you are assigned to patrol. Please make your rounds." The link squelches out, the beeping stops, and the station lurches back to life as if there was never a breach.

Patrol...familiar. No true patrol route jumped to mind; he vaguely remembered being told to sweep sectors at random to avoid developing tracked habits, but sometimes that was not called for. He had to trust his training but throw in a little improvisation now and again, even decked out in his security jumpsuit with a stunrod on his belt.

The question remained: Where would he go? He had an entire station to meander through, after all.

________________________________________________________________________

They might not have much in common, but PR-451, TRT-377, X-1 and AM-5 share a moment that can only be appreciated in a metaphysical sense: They are in control. They stop thinking what someone else thinks and are suddenly aware of their own consciousness, able to act and think and feel as they want as long as their biology plays along.

It is the beginning, after all.

Tired, exhausted, void of breath and energy. TRT released a terrified gasp, somehow maintaining his calmness, but inside of his head, bugs crawled, snakes hissed. His mind dived headfirst into terror as his eyes scanned through the machines which littered the corridor. The light was crippling, it was making his sanity try to jump out of him. Such somber sight was never good for TRT, he knew it. He wondered if all his imaginary friends would suddenly appear, start a celebration. Maybe then he would be capable of ignoring the light which turned up as he walked through the corridors. He never liked walking alone in the darkness. He never liked walking alone. He never liked walking. A mechanic limb fell over from the table, scraping against the floor. A surge of cold flew through him, he shrugged, rubbing his hands together. A turn here, a turn there. He disdained the Mechanus. Trying as hard as possible not to brush against the repair robots, he dug in fatally damaged robots so he could get over to the other side.

The robots began to remind him of some things he acknowledged. He woke up, but somehow as if he was a grave stone, things were already engraved into his mind, things that shaped him, no matter how much he was being controlled or picked on. He's had the sort of unique twist to himself, instead of the other, security guards. Sometimes he feared beneath the layer of meat and skin still there was a machine controlling them, the algorithms. Or was it because he never did anything right? Because of those people happens bad things. Remembered the cataclysm, a big war between two tribes, nobody knows what started it, but it ended in an utter disaster. The faces, faces of victims of that conflict, fit in with the damaged bots that surrounded him.

An uneasy aura as almost never left him the whole patrol, it was about to be finished, he would go back, but suddenly he decided to talk some giggle poetry, as to, brighten up the mood.

"Dickory hickor- No, Hickory Dickory Dock,"

"A goat just-" he stopped. The tile he stepped made a loud noise, a bot turned back to him, it's red eyes blinking in bewilderment and menace.

"A goat just ate my sock." He began to walk, locking his nervous eyes on the bot.

"Then took my shirt, for his dessert." the bot began to edge towards him. He began to feel a sense of panic arouse inside him. He fastened up his walk, trying to finish the patrol as soon as possible, good god, this place is haunted! I shall never patrol in here again. He thought. The bot fell off the bench on which it lied on, sending a shocking noise throughout the corridors.

"Hickory Dickory Dock."

“...but just meet me in the medbay, alright? Like always.” A soft, distant voice. Vaguely feminine, but it's hard to tell. “We'll get it for you…”

…Get what? Who's "we"?

It came to her like a piece of driftwood wandering close in a body of water; except for her, the water was something more akin to quicksand. Her mind seemed to be blanketed by a heavy haze as blurs of images and sensations floated through it, making it impossible to navigate through her thoughts. The only ones that stood still long enough for her to comprehend were ones that described her on the most basic level. At least, she assumed they were about her.

My name is Amelie.
I am a technician on Station C-9.
I am also very, very human.

Under different circumstances, the female might have thought the last of her three defining facts funny. Of course, she was human; what else would she be? But at the moment, she merely accepted it without question. With what little consciousness she had, she simply wondered why that was the memory that had chosen to come forward from the mass. Was it even a memory? Now she wasn't so sure… The longer she lingered on the whole thing, the further out of her grasp it went, until suddenly everything receded once more, returning her to the state she had been in before the voice.

A few moments - or minutes, or hours - after she had gone under again, she slowly began to resurface, registering the illumination that was creeping in around the corners of the darkness. Like a dial being turned up, her surroundings became clearer and clearer, and soon she was blinking against the bright lights of the examination room. The young woman furrowed her brow as her gaze roamed the scenery, feeling as if she had some inexplicable affinity for the place. Despite the uneasiness that was slowly beginning to bubble up in her gut from due to some unknown factor, the setting was enough to appease her nerves for now. This was strange, seeing as she didn't recall ever having been there before. But even as she made a slight movement, and the tissue paper that covered the steel observation table she was sitting on crinkled in response, she couldn't help but recognize, and even appreciate, the sound.

Strands of her dark copper-red hair fell forward around her face as she glanced down at her perch, confused as to why she felt so comfortable on it. The space between her eyebrows lessened as she tried to remember why, tried to recall what this place had meant to her. And then, an even more troubling realization: she had absolutely no memory beyond waking up on the table.

Her heart rate instantly quickened as her head snapped back up, growing frantic as she hopped off the table but kept her back pressed against its edge as if it were a life line. Suddenly she was struck with the strangest urge to sic her nails on her forearm, but when she pulled back the forest green sleeve of her jumpsuit, she found that a bandage had already been placed there. Swallowing the lump that had developed in her throat, Amelie took deep inhales through her nostrils, attempting to soothe her anxiety by telling herself she might have just fainted and was sent to the medbay to recover. Perhaps her memories would come back to her later... But somehow the technician doubted it.

Eventually her her eyes fell on her tech-pad, which lay on the table among scattered syringes and empty vials. With careful steps, as if she thought she would collapse at any moment, Amelie went to retrieve the device, touching a finger to the screen to wake it up. The robotic voice greeted her with her designation, and she emitted a little sigh, almost as if by habit. But when the greeting was finished, and only silence reached her ears, it dawned on her what the cause of her uneasiness really was. She turned around to face the doorway and padded towards it hesitantly to find… Nothing. No one.

Amelie strained her eyes and ears to catch some distant sign of movement, and got her wish in the form of a groaning pipe that startled her back a few steps. It was so odd, and even somewhat eerie, to think that the bay was silent, when normally it was buzzing with life. Another little panic attack, during which Amelie was semi-convinced that a crisis had occurred while she was unconscious, and everyone had evacuated and forgotten about her. But her cremates wouldn't have left her. She was sure of it.

So what the hell was going on? As if in reply, she heard a noise, different from the groaning or creaking of the pipes. Whirring and rattling, coming from somewhere outside of her safe room. This, too, was a familiar noise, but still, Amelie couldn't help but be a little afraid. Knowing she couldn't stay in place forever, the female hugged the pad to her chest and tip-toed to the doorway. Bending at the waist, she peeked out into the wide-open bay that was completely void of any people, her heart rate picking up once again as the noise got closer and closer.

Isolation. Solitude. Solitary.

Yeah, that had a nice ring to it, a distinctly familiar ring. Solitary.

The ceiling looked as damaged as the drab, inhospitable walls surrounding him; those were smudged with some kind of dark grease. He flicked the tip of an index against the stain, rubbed it between narrow digits until it sunk into the distinct whorls and crests that gave him his identity. His identity. Sniffing apathetically, the man sat up, the ancient springs of his tattered mattress squealing in vehement protest, as if to say: get your scrawny ass up and do something. "Yeah? Well fuck you too," mumbled PR-451 in muted, grumbling discontent as he indignantly launched a abandoned yellow nail from the rumpled, off-white bedspread - made of some scratchy, mutant material he didn't give two shits about evaluating. It was so quiet, he could almost discern the miniscule thwack as the exiled keratin crescent made contact with the chilled floor.

"Charlie." PR-451 began, testing the name on his tongue. Didn't quite sound right. "Chase. Chris."

Craig. Your name's Craig, dumbass.

"And who the hell are you?" Craig hissed, scanning the disemboweled helper bots strewn haphazardly around his room's less-than-accommodating confines. Like a macabre work of mechanical art, he thought. Exposed skeletons. Innards. Guts. The voice came back to him a couple seconds later. It's Jim, don't you remember me? PR-451 shook his head rapidly, quick enough that he swore his brain thudded against the sides of his skull. He decided he sort of liked the temporary giddiness the action gave him. "I don't remember shit." 'Course you don't. That's what I'm for. I'm your buddy. We're buddies. "Since when?" C'mon man, we've been tight since just about forever. "We ain't. Now get lost." Nah. I'll be around. Around. Where was 'around'? Despite the fact that his memory was gaping hole, this place seemed pretty darn cozy; it made his skin all tingly in that good way, like warm stew. And boy, did he want some warm stew.

He rubbed his nose with the back of a hand, disliking just how cold it was. Whoever ran the environmental controls in this here station needed to be shot. Bludgeoned for good measure. Maybe shot again. He couldn't decide which was better, though an enormous explosion of scarlet and gray matter seemed worlds better when he pictured it in his haze-addled mind. How long had he been out? Hours? Days? Weeks? Months? Heck - years? There was a mirror mounted on the wall across him - a pathetic square reflector with dust-choked borders and a sizable crack right smack in the center. Shatter lines radiated outward like long, grabby fingers, comically distorting his image as he approached.

"Yeah, you're a handsome fuckin' bastard, ain't ya?" He grinned at the copy of himself, pinching a stubble-covered cheek and pulling, then letting the skin snap back with bubbling relish. 'Course you are. I wouldn't be here otherwise. "You're good with flattery, Jim, I'll give ya that much." Mmm-hmm. Bored with admiring himself, Craig now diverted his attentions to the collection of hotmodded techpads and smirked toothily, a flash of recognition briefly returning. Yep, all his handiwork. He'd be pleased with himself, but some suppressed bit of his mind indicated it wasn't such a monumental achievement. He was supposed to be able to do shit like that in his sleep. But this - this was a wondrous little amusement park where he could play creepy voyeur to the goings-on outside his burrow. Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy! The fun never ends! But he couldn't particularly pinpoint the exact beginning, and that - well, that pissed him off.

He glanced at one of the screens - it flickered, then stabilized to an image of a sparse corridor. Nothing much. Too cramped and too damn deserted. Too shiny, and he actually liked shiny things, liked them even more when he actually had memories explaining his acquisition of them. But the rust and the bloodstains made it better, homier. Talk about tasteful interior decoration. And for a moment, PR-451 paused to contemplate if he was truly alone and the undisputed master of this dirty, prison-like sanctuary. A second thought struck - maybe it was them. Maybe they did this. In a sudden midst of wild postulations he imagined a couple of masked men in black bodysuits marching up and down his corridor, carrying stun-guns and flash grenades and other things they could use to beat him into submission. His bones ached at the visualization - or maybe he was falling apart too early.

But nope, he decided. He wasn't going to dismantle himself that easy. If they wanted to play, he'd do the same. You move, I move. You move, I move. Zugzwang. No passes. Checkmate. He had to lure 'the man' out. No one kept him in unless he wanted to stay in. And he didn't like not remembering. And right now, those invisible memory thieves could be prowling the halls of his bleak paradise, using their tiny thought devices to leech on his brain. Monitoring him from afar. Like he didn't know. He wanted to believe he had the advantage. Now, what else did he have to look at?

The second room. Nondescript. He noted the incessantly blinking red lights, finding them amusing to stare at as they flashed him with flagrant, hypnotic manner. Is it Christmas already? They looked like eyes. Maybe he was jealous, because somewhere inside he wanted red eyes. Red, real red, enough to scare people - if there were even people here for him to scare. But he made do with how his flat, unremarkable brown irises and the whites they lay on wore their thin crimson veins. Now, PR-451 turned with brimming anticipation to the final screen. He wasn't disappointed.

Well, what do we have here?

Someone else. The crooked image showed what seemed like a medical bay, a distinctly humanoid shape lurking silently within it. Craig leaned a teeny bit closer, till his face was almost pressed up against the lit screen. A friend. But then, whoever-it-was could be working for 'the man'. Maybe it was an enemy. He had to take precautions before he decided if the target was to be eliminated. Glancing around again, he reached for a makeshift gun nearby and tried it in his grasp. Solid. Now that was the weight of self-preservation. Still, he was almost sad to leave his pit of squalor behind; in the brief period of time since his confused awakening, it had reached out and embraced him with all the comforts of home. It was a veritable lair. Still, he could always return if he could make out the way. In the process of leaving, he seized an additional techpad. PR-451, it addressed him helpfully as he padded out into the frigid corridor.

Careful! The disembodied voice chided. "I know, I know," he muttered, twitching visibly, the words barely audible to anyone or anything save for himself. Answers. He needed answers. Yep, he was starting to feel that bite of anger again, mixed in with all that egotistical mania. Medbay, medbay...which direction to the medbay? His ears perked up and the enormous quiet loomed with ominous intent.

Hold on, I'll be there in a sec.

“Hello,” Artemis, designation X-1, called out to the thought-to-be empty research lab, “Who’s there?”

One minute passed by. Then another. Just silence in return.

Her initial cognizant self had been perfectly content with staying exactly where she was until the sun itself froze over. Her four by six closet was a known variable, while outside there was a soon to be festering corpse and a voice with no visible source. It was almost a no-brainer. Close the closet door and never come out. All problems solved. Yet as she sat there and actually began to process what was in front her it became pretty apparent that staying here might not be the most rational course of action.

She decided to dismiss the voice she had heard for the time being. A larger problem presented itself. This particular problem looked like it weighed more than she did, had the majority of it’s head plastered on the wall behind it, and was making one particular rat completely satiated.

X-1 had been unconscious for god knows how long, and someone was bound to come looking for the corpse slumped across from her. They would want to know what happened, and her instinct told her that she didn’t want to be around to answer any of their questions.

What am I doing here anyway? What the hell happened?

That when it hit her like the force of an explosion -- she had no idea. Absolutely did not have even the faintest clue what she was doing here, where here was, or even who she was besides maybe her name. Her heart rate began to accelerate. What had that mysterious voice said?

Something like… ‘good going Artemis.’ Artemis, that’s me. God, did I do this?

She could hear her own heart beat now. As her anxiety had grown, her heart rate had followed, until now it felt like her chest was going to burst. She quickly scrambled out from the closet and went to stand up.

Instantly the room was spinning.

Damn it.

Quickly grasping onto a table near her, she stumbled over to it. X-1’s head was throbbing. Apparently she had tried to get up to fast. Her right hand instinctively went to her head, as if finding the source of the pain really ever helped to relieve a headache, but when she brought her hand back down it was wet with blood.

Not your average headache then. This might explain the memory loss.

That didn’t feel right either. This amnesia felt almost familiar and the more she tried to think about it the more she felt like her memories where just of reach. She could worry about that at a better time. Since she had woken up several problems had continued to present themselves - not one of them pleasant.

It was time to prioritize her current problems and begin sorting out this mess she found herself in. The most pressing issue: her self-preservation. She needed to find out what had happened here and how she ended up taking a nap with her corpse friend from security. From there she would know what to do with it’s body and hopefully, maybe she wasn't involved at all. After that she would find Medical, get her head patched up and maybe get some answers as to why she was couldn't remember squat.

A tech-pad sat on the table next to her. This seemed familiar. Maybe she had used one before. She picked it up quickly and it activated, greeting her by her designation with an automated voice. X-1 began navigating the tech-pad looking to access C-9’s security footage for the lab she found herself in.

Answers. I just need some answers.

The station is split into three levels, this much is known to all occupants of C-9. The highest floor holds the living quarters, a small security hub, a questionable holding center, and finally the isolation sector, north to south, arranged in a pleasing rectangular shape. Wandering north ends in clean walkways and walls polished to a mirror-like finish. Moving south ends in grunge, decay, and a shocking gradient to the station's equivalent of a ghetto – yet only one person truly lives there, to anyone's knowledge, and he hasn't cleaned his cell since pre-artificial atmospheres were all the rage.

Dropping down a floor is the main sprawl of the station, the truly baffling maze of corridors and twisting passages in various states of upkeep, patrolled by security droids and maintenance bots alike attempting to keep collapsing roof panels and dying lights from giving out entirely. Its layout is a wheel and spoke pattern with the center comprised of another security hub (which is a bit too large for its own good) that stretches out into the maze-ways. Beyond the mazeways, large sectors are laid out in a clockwise fashion. Medbay up north, flanked by the biology labs at ten o' clock and the research hub at two. The canteen rests at four, the recreation sector at eight, and six o' clock houses the Mechanus labs. All very simple, except for the halls.

No matter where one starts, no matter how bizarre the hallways seem, finding one's way to their destination is surprisingly straightforward. Various rumors about the configuration remain, but most agree the mazeworks exist to keep humans and robots separate as often as possible, with a few crossover passageways and vents acting as crossroads between the two.

Yet there are rooms in the wheel and spoke that no one is entirely certain how to get to but always manage to stumble across at the right time, most of them small. Maintenance closets. Storage rooms. Server racks. They seem to bud from nowhere and rest in no specific spot that makes sense.

No one has seen the sub-surface basement, considering the clearance level required to reach it by the freight and personal elevators that take individuals between floors, and even the vents that reach that low are usually full of spider-bots that waste little time in shredding unauthorized entrants. One can only imagine what sort of mysteries await there aside from arachnid nests.

The floors all have one thing in common: one is hardly ever more than a few dozen steps away from an interface to contact I0-N4 or a WAYSEC station/Nutrinna dispenser combination. This was obviously not a place built for all of four people.

__________________________________________________

TRT's patrol starts off a blissfully uneventful one, aside from the bustle of the Mechanus sector. Machines do not subscribe to any sort of downtime unless there is danger of breakage or a catastrophic failure, judging by the states of ill repair some of the roving patrol-bots and broken med-droids are in; even more impressive are their sheer numbers. Rows of tables, some stacked two and three high, each with a lifeless husk of machinery being tended to by compact workers with power tools and torches, scraping away broken parts that are discarded haphazardly.

Perhaps things are not quite as pristine as they first appear. Spots of industrial lubricant and frayed bits of wire are copious enough that even the most diligent of cleaners cannot keep the pace. It doesn't help that every 'bot in the complex pauses its work as TRT-377 strolls by. Few of them have proper eyes, but it still feels like they're staring. Especially the red-eyes, but they actually bear their namesake.

The red-eyes are the largest of the monstrosities, as tall as a man with heavy-duty tracks and thick chassis, built to drag broken, twisted hunks of metal through the halls without assistance. In emergencies they surely have the sheer brute strength to tear a man in half, but that's just an unpleasant assumption.
Probably.

“There ARE no orga-nic creatures here.”
They should not have given them vocalization modules, that much is certain. It's less a mimicry of human speech and more a crackling, grinding echo dragged straight from the bowels of someone's nightmares.

Thankfully, the bay is soon far behind him and the throngs of 'bots thin out to clean, bright hallways. Isolation can be more soothing than spending time in the pits of the Mechanus sector and, after extensive wandering, his patrol route would likely lead him past the research labs and its sub-maze of small labs and open test tables.

That, and a partially metallic woman fiddling with a tech-pad.

__________________________________________________

AM-5's nightmares come true in the sense that nothing can truly be more frightening than confrontations with the unknown. The medical bay is large, cold, clinical, and just as empty as before, with only the smallest of medical implements shuddering on their surgical trays as the closest thing to movement she can readily notice.

Finally, contact, but it's hardly alive. Some enterprising technician has taken the frame of a spider-droid and bolted it to the treadlike tracks of a laborer red-eye, resulting in a less mobile but arguably sturdier creation; the arachnid-esque legs are intact but with the addition of crablike pincers for the same of lifting and operating manual tools.
This particular 'bot has seen better days, judging by the scuffed chassis, a half-powered tread, and enough slack in one of its operating pincers to make proper operations questionable.

“Designate: AM-5.” It speaks with some clarity, a thin green band of light flickering around the exterior of its hull as it navigates closer to the technician. “Designate: AM-5. Designate: AM-5.”

Perhaps stuck in a loop, it shudders to an uncertain halt and tilts back for a better glimpse of the pad-clinging woman, if she hasn't fled for her life already.

“Designate: AM-5. Entered MEDBAY for PANIC ATTACK leading to LOSS OF CONSCIOUSNESS. Diagnosis: REQUIRES PRESCRIBED INJECTION PERIOD. Medication has been dispensed. You are safe. There is no need for panic. Do you require additional help?”

It freezes in place and watches, waiting expectantly, innards clicking and buzzing in their damaged cycles.

__________________________________________________

Finally back in the game, plotting and scheming is starting to seem like second nature to PR-451. Or Craig. Or Jim.

All of them, really. With weapon in hand and a destination in mind...he blanks. Where the hell is the medbay? Right, a floor below where he is now. This brings up the uncomfortable decision of exactly how to proceed: stroll into an elevator and get dropped towards the ground at terminal velocity, crawl through vents and hope the spiders are elsewhere, or just slide down a service ladder and skip the middleman entirely.

But before decisions can be made with reckless abandon, his tech-pad rattles. There's no alert to this one, that's too easy to get a bead on if he's stowing away in a closet with the men in riot gear trying to find him before he finds them. Two short pulses, then a long one. He's got a message.

_________________

RECIPIENT: C
SENDER: FONT

C -

Sleeping again? I believe they ran the cycle anew. If they did, that probably makes little sense to you and I apologize but only because that means you probably do not remember me, either.

We have worked together in the past. If this message becomes too lengthy it will be intercepted and I would rather no sordid details be found by our friendly overseer.

If you have been cycled and that natural curiosity of yours gets the better of you, or if you simply trust messages from strangers, I have sent out a runner. The runner has a gadget for you, the one you requested a few days ago, but procuring it took time.

A piece of contraband hit the center security hub and I would very much like to study it. Use the present, bring it through the mazeworks, slide it through my drop-box. I doubt it's anything you would actually want to use, but I understand if you feel the need to keep it.

Drop it off and I will catch you up on what you missed. Or don't. I'm sure someone will convince you it's not a good idea. Whatever you do, watch for the patrol. Tenna has one of you on security detail again.

- Font
_________________

Suspicious. Then again, official communications would be even more suspicious, right? PR-451 didn't run with the best of crowds.
But that means anyone who knew him would make it look unofficial to catch him off guard. Then again, Font is a terrible name to take if trying to appear less suspicious.
So many puzzle pieces to slot together.

Whatever the case, reaching the medlab from his corner of the universe is a bit of a jog through the mazeworks. None of his handy eyes in the station showed any reason to be alarmed, aside from the woman in the medbay, but that's just the wild life he lives.
A life involving watching women through cameras.

Craig needs help.

__________________________________________________

The luxury of time could not be afforded to X-1, judging by how quickly she's about to be discovered in the heat of the moment near a major crime scene. Hitting the right touch-buttons is something of a struggle amidst the pain, the sense of loss, or simply trying to avoid crushing the puny tech-pad with her mighty, mighty hands.

Part of that might be an exaggeration, but she flips through the appropriate screens with ease. Her clearance gives her more leeway than most and she's onto the security feeds in seconds, or those that are active; at least half of the cameras in the area are flickering, dead, or so full of ghosting that she can barely make out even the most bare of details.

Thankfully, the cameras overlooking the lab are in proper working order. This sector must be important enough to receive proper maintenance, but even those don't help when it is revealed that only the past five minutes or so are available for her to comb through. She gets a nice barely-there shot of her own figure crawling out of the closet, stumbling about, and prodding at her datapad.
Not helpful.

On the other hand, what can be seen of the closet is empty, contrary to what her mind might tell her otherwise – and more worryingly, taking another glance into the small space just confirms that, yes, there is an absolute lack of corpse and blood. Still remaining is the contraband pneumatic knife, though; this does nothing to waylay any doubts she might be having.

“I hate to interrupt, Artemis, but I believe you have...company approaching. Quickly, too.” That same voice crops up out of nowhere and everywhere all at once, its rippling echo betraying what hellhole it might be originating from. “Can't have a lady looking so disheveled, but I sincerely doubt there's time for a run through the showers. Shame, really. He's tall. You enjoy the taller types, right? Nevermind, we haven't time to dally. Posture up! Straighten out that spine. Polish up the servos. He might not notice you if you don't take some initiative!”

It makes even less sense than disappearing corpses, really.

Artemis scowled. The information she had received from the tech-pad, or lack of it, proved unhelpful. The only worthy datum she could take away from accessing the surveillance footage was that she had the necessary credentials in C-9 to at least get into some of its network. How much access, she didn't know, and apparently she didn't have the time necessarily to peruse around in an attempt to glean just that.

It would have to wait. The mysterious voice was back and he, she, or it seemed to think someone was approaching her location. Adding to that the corpse had gotten up and disappeared. Apparently it at least had courtesy to clean up after itself. The only thing left was the pneumatic knife which Artemis made her way to, slowly, and picked up to pocket. The knife itself was contraband and being that she had no idea who was coming her way, she preferred having one less thing to explain.

"I am not sure if now is the best time to be propositioning someone," Artemis spoke to the voice, "but since you seem to know so much would you mind explaining to what the hell happened to the corpse that was here earlier."

She figured it was at least worth a shot. The voice, for all she knew, as well as the decaying body, could just be an elaborate hallucination as a result of her head trauma, but if she was crazy, talking to herself was just one more insanity to be added to the list since she had regained consciousness.

Her attention reverted back to her tech-pad. Again, she began navigating the security feeds, this time looking at the hallways surrounding the research lab in an attempt to get a glimpse of whomever was approaching. In a matter of moments she had located a feed that showed the man. He was security. Great. This could go one of two ways, but he was almost upon her so fleeing the scene would be rather conspicuous.

Plus, with the crime scene having evaporated there really was no reason to flee. The contraband weapon was secure in her pocket and it has unlikely that he would search her. Hopefully. For the moment she would just see how this pans out after all she still needed medical attention, and maybe this guy would be willing to help her out.

PR-451's memory was a bitch. No, really. 'Memory' was a whore who, seemingly, had been used and battered to the extent that she lay there, limp, twitching, never again able to properly function. The first explanation that emerged was that he had, somehow, sustained a type of blunt force trauma - but then there'd be an enormous, evidential crack in his skull. And he'd be dead. Or was he? Technology was amazing in this day and age - it could be capable of some magick-y shit. But, the mental image he received from imagining Memory as a svelte female admirer did give him a kind of sick satisfaction, the same kind of satisfaction the generous slathering of blood and rust outside his personal shithole so very kindly bequeathed. Oh yeah.

He dragged one foot in front of the other very deliberately, the legs of his unflattering jumpsuit far too long, oversized and brushing irritatingly at his heels. His thoughts having drifted momentarily, his ever-present companion eventually convinced him to return to the objective at hand.

Medbay, jackass.

"I'm goin', I'm goin'. Don't get your panties in a bunch." muttered Craig, dirt-caked nails scratching at a spot behind his ear. Nervous tic? Nervous tic. The machine-eyes, man. Watch for the machine-eyes. Right. The machine-eyes. Them. All of them tiny watchers, making up his own personal fan club. Yeah, they wanted to take him out, stick needles and things into places. Bright lights and immaculate, sterilized walls and floors. It made him nauseous, stomach churning with violent abandon. Now then, the medbay. The image in his head appeared like someone had deliberately planted it there. Someone, or something. But it was there, and it was helpful, and he reminded himself he could shiv the responsible party later. There was a time and place for everything.

Elevator, vents, ladder.

Elevator, vents, ladder.

Elevator, vents lad - would he just pick one and get it done with? That was what Jim wanted to know.

Elevator didn't seem like an entirely safe bet. Who knew - the doors could close and the lights would pop and flicker and then bzzt - gone. He'd violently jab all the buttons in a garbled panic as the oxygen slowly drained out, poisoning himself with his own desperate expulsions of carbon dioxide. Oh, that was certainly not a good way to kick the proverbial bucket, no-siree. It was an obvious trap; one those spy-monkeys hoped he was stupid enough to waltz merrily into. He wasn't going to do it and give them an excuse to recline in their big swivel chairs, giggling maniacally at their towering mosaic of screens.

Vents. That sounded somewhat better. Somewhat. But then again they could've rigged the vents. Or put things inside the vents. Or maybe he'd crawl and crawl and end up on the wrong end, where all that awaited him was a steep and direct plummet into the waiting, whirring blades of an environmental control fan and end up chunks of Craig-Jim mix sprayed every-fucking-where. Then the air would smell like gore and that would be a mighty huge inconvenience to anyone else who inhabited this place. No one liked eau de eviscerated corpse.

That left ladder - hell, ladder seemed plausible enough and - wait. Hang on juuust a sec. A message. Glancing toward his friendly techpad, he scanned the words briefly and felt his brows arch in intrigue. Font. Yeah, way to pick an alias, buddy. There was some mention of contraband; he didn't know what for or what the heck it even looked like. But he liked the word 'contraband' - it was a word dear and close to his heart. He didn't trust this 'Font'. He didn't trust anyone save for himself and handy-dandy Jim. But if there was one thing he was sure of over not trusting people, it was that he really, really wanted to know what the fuck was going on - and if 'Font' said he could help, then maybe he should pay him a visit - visit his drop-box or whatever crap he meant. Reaching the medbay meant a trip through the mazeworks after all. And if 'Font' turned out to be anything less than a happy fluke, he could always kill him. But make sure he ain't one of 'em bots first. Ah, the dangers of barreling headfirst into the unknown.

---

He'd used the ladder. Getting downstairs was easier than he thought, though Font's mention of 'patrol' and 'one of you' didn't sound like good news. Even though PR-451 couldn't remember shit, he at least knew that his mind reacted adversely to even the slightest mention of law enforcement. Additionally, he didn't like he'd abandoned his rat's nest of a room up there. But what the hell, right? He noted a collapsed roof panel some paces off, slipping past it and being greeted by what appeared to be a mind-boggling array of paths leading to various sectors. Security hub, or medbay first? He flipped a coin in his head, then turned to Jim for confirmation.

Medbay. Don't be fickle.

And so Craig headed northward. The medbay neared, and so did the strange person he'd seen on his techpad - a woman, by the looks of it. Well now, he liked girls and he liked to think girls liked him too. And that, to him, was taking significantly less risk than crashing the security hub first. He trusted no one, but that didn't mean he couldn't attempt to manipulate. In his approach he heard the distinct droning of a mechanical voice, but couldn't make out the words. Pressing his spine up against an adjacent wall, he gripped his gun with renewed purpose and attempted to peek over the side, catching only spindly robotic spider-legs and flailing crab-pincers.

Watch them machines.

He waited.

At first, Amelie's curiosity was met with… Well, a great, steaming pile of nothing. The medbay was just as empty and sinister as it had seemed when she woke up, save the steady robotic noises that was still (slooowly) coming her way. Hell, those were pretty creepy, too, if she was being honest with herself. It could only be so long until the comfort that the examination room had given her would wear off, and then who knew how deep the ghostly chill of the atmosphere would settle into her skin?

God... She would have preferred wading through her boggy mind for a few more hours over the next few minutes of needling suspense. Her hazel orbs darted to and from every corner, straining to see who - or what - her newest companion would be. Somewhere, in an alternate reality where cartoons were given a four dimensional playground, they would have been throbbing out of their sockets, for sure.

Finally, she was granted contact; though the red-head couldn't help but be a little disappointed after the initial wave of shock had subsided. Whether it would have been better to see a human or this very peculiar apparatus, she will never know. But as undeniable as the color of her hair, there it was again; the bizarre affinity, this time directed towards it. "It" being the ugly eight-legged creature, mounted on tread tracks and sporting pincers that quite obviously did not originally belong, rolling into her line of sight at what seemed like two miles per hour.

“Designate: AM-5. Designate: AM-5.” The spider-droid-thing kept addressing her, amusingly reminiscent of some child looking for its mother. Its vocal programming could have simply been stuck in a loop, which was even creepier than its earlier sounds; yet the more pressing issue was why it had her designation in its record in the first place? The technician was certain of one thing, however; its automated voice basically shattered the silence that had been clogging her ears, and though its purpose with her was still unclear, she was thankful for it.

When it shuddered to a halt before her, an internal war that lasted all of a few seconds determined that Amelie was to take a cautious step forward from cover, somehow trusting her original impulse that this place, and everything in it, was safe - for her, at least. She watched, still clutching her tech-pad to her green jumpsuit, as the robot surveyed her slender frame, as if confirming that she was, indeed, AM-5.

“Designate: AM-5. Entered MEDBAY for PANIC ATTACK leading to LOSS OF CONSCIOUSNESS. Diagnosis: REQUIRES PRESCRIBED INJECTION PERIOD. Medication has been dispensed. You are safe. There is no need for panic. Do you require additional help?”

A shaky inhale, while a hand pushed some of her hair back behind her ears. Her eyebrows had resumed their furrowed position as she swallowed what her nurse-bot had just prattled out, trying to sift through the information. So she had been entered into the medbay for loss of consciousness… But due to a panic attack caused by what? The bot had also mentioned that the prescribed injection for the attack had been dispensed, but... She didn't feel any calmer? Then again, she couldn't have known anything other than how she had been feeling since her isolation in the room... Dammit. Once more Amelie was hit with the frustration of memory loss. Perhaps she would have otherwise been bouncing off the walls with hysteria? Who knew? Certainly not her.

Even with the couple of answers the arachnoid provided, the woman was more confused than she had been before the freakin' thing dropped by. Determined to find out more about her current situation, the woman pushed her confusion to the side and cleared her throat to prep it for use, then anticlimactically proceeded to merely open and close her mouth several times. Suddenly it was like she was afraid of making noise herself, as if hearing her own voice would make this nightmare even more real than it already was. Though the automaton's reassurance of her being safe wasn't much to go on, she clung onto the consolation like it was her pad.

Eventually, she mentally kicked herself in the ass and tried again, clearing her throat while the blinking green lights awaited her response. "Uh…" What to say what to say… There were so many questions whizzing through her mind that she was having a hard time landing on one to spit out. Ultimately, she decided on the one that would probably lead to more explanations in the long run. "Um, do you… Ah.. Where is everyone?" It came out rather lamely, for which the technician compensated with another clearing of her throat. She wasn't entirely sure if the robot would give her a satisfying answer, but it was worth a shot. If she could just find others, they would surely explain to her what in the hell was going on.

Pain hit Artemis like the force of an explosion on demolition day, immediately dropping her to her knees and triggering the all to pointless stimulus response of grasping the source of her pain - her skull. Her vision subsequently was blinded by white and she did her best to swallow the involuntary cry of pain while holding on to her consciousness. It was like trying to grasp water, but moments before she faded into the void it dissipated with the same abruptness in which it came -- the entire episode lasting seconds.

She took a deep breath trying to cleanse herself of the psychological effects experiencing that much pain tends to leave in its wake. As her shakiness began to subside Artemis returned to her feet and immediately consulted her tech-pad, trying to get a location on the security guard that was coming her way. He seemed to still be minutes out, and if she was again subjected to a spell of pain with that much ferocity she was certain she wouldn't be able to hold on to her consciousness. Artemis needed medical attention and she needed it fast.

With the pace possibly equaling a tortoise she began to move out of the research lab and down the hallway toward the approaching patrol, one hand always on the wall keeping her steady just in case.

Looks like I am coming to you, Mr. Security Guard. Don't shoot me, although the way things are going you might not need to.

Sadko said TRT wondered. He never knew what was his name, he had no friends to consult him about it. Playing around with the stun rod, he moved up the hallway. Good god, I hope no monster eats me up when I'm not looking, he thought. Why am I so afraid of the darkness? Is it good? Is it bad?

He looked around, seemingly void of any kind of attention towards the creature that creeped up on him. And then he saw it. A dark sillhoutte of a woman, crawling, coming towards him. Momentarily, he grabbed the stun rod and moved back, swiftly swinging it back and forth. "WHO ARE YOU" he said, cautiously jumping from one leg to another.

She looked fragile, but yet it added a sort of aura which brought even more terror. God damn you, be strong, TRT! A voice echoed around him. He asked again, moving closer to the woman. Yet he saw she needed help, and it brought him somberness. He stepped towards to examine what was wrong with her. "What's wrong?"

Great. Mr. Security Guard was jumpy, and if he kept waving that stun baton around he might just hurt himself and her simultaneously. That would take some skill, but with the degree of anxiety he was displaying he might just pull it off. When he noticed that she was hurt, he seemed to calm down a bit. That was good. It didn't seem like she was in any immediate danger -- at least from him.

The fact that he didn't recognize her and was now concerned for her well being told her she wasn't considered a threat to C-9's security. The possibility of that being the case had nagged at her seeing as the disappearing corpse was security staff and decked out in full riot gear. The mysterious voice implying that she was the corpse's attacker also didn't help.

"My name is Artemis -- designation X-1." She paused considering how best to explain her injuries. "I was in one of the research labs that the power fluctuation effected. In my clumsiness, I seem to have given myself quite a bump on the head. Who are you?"

Okay, so maybe she wasn't being entirely truthful. What was she suppose to say? I woke up in a room with absolutely no memory of how I got there facing a corpse and hearing voices. Yeah, that wouldn't arouse any suspicion. Plus, she didn't know this guy, and a little white lie won't hurt anyone. Justifications abound.

Sadko said TRT stopped. How do they do it? Ehm. "My name is.." What was my name? I hardly remember it, nobody bothered to call me normally. There it is, finally remembered it. "My name is Tikhon, the designation.. TRT-377. I was sent on a patrol and now I found you." He spoke just like her, almost word in word, as if he needed to do so.

Sharing a moment of silence, he checked what was wrong, but knew he was dumb and knew nothing of how to help her.

He took a moment to look at Artemis, for him she wouldn't be called too beautiful, but he caught the sight of her eyes, which were enough to hypnotize for a second.

"We get back to Security Division, right? Right?"

He spoke a little dull, but spewed logical things, as anyone would see.

"A pleasure to meet you Tikhon," replied Artemis while she consulted her tech-pad yet again. This time she surfed the network looking to access the maps of C-9 in order to pinpoint their location. She would prefer to avoid the security hub at least until she knew more about the circumstances of her awakening and memory loss. Plus, she would rather not experience another episode of pain like before.

After navigating rapidly through a few screens she had found a map of the second floor of the base. On it was a red pulsating dot located just off of the research labs. It seemed these tech-pads came equipped with their own base position system. Handy. She took note of that fact for later. The med-lab was just north of our position practically the same distance as this floor's security hub.

Artemis turned her attention back to Tikhon, "It seems the Security Hub and the Med Lab are about the same distance away. If you wouldn't mind I would prefer going directly to the med lab in order to get my head bandaged."

She pointed north of their current position, "It's that way, not too far. Would you be willing to lend me a hand there?"

Sadko said Tikhon smiled. Pleasure to meet me? He thought it was a fantastic day, barely concealing childish emotions under his questionably sane smile. Standing around idly, he took time to observe her, which would look quite terrifying, but he meant nothing bad and directly the opposite. Interesting tech-pad she has, indeed. A quick glance a little lower than her chin and then several steps back, somewhere into the darkness. Even by now, with atleast somebody at your side, it felt like he didn't have any kind of fear surging inside of him.

"I need to get back to the Security Hub, but." He clenched his arm so hard he gulped air. "Nobody can notice my absence, I'm not liked there." He spoke a little peculiar, but it just added up his weirdo aura to him.

"I would gladly help you to get to the Med Lab, Artemis."

Tikhon and Artemis began traveling north making their way to the Med Lab, and within a few minutes of slow but steady progress their destination started to come into view ahead.

AM-5 is the lucky recipient of a bit of robotic exposition, but not before the lone droid idles while keeping its bizarre eye-streak centered on the surprisingly timid engineer. Processing her request takes nearly as much time as its meandering, rolling crawl towards the examination room, chassis pitching its head higher with a rattling grind of non-greased metal scraping and scoring ancient paint. The somewhat odd green light slowly pulses to a much brighter, more calming shade of blue. Its demeanor changes; can robots even have a demeanor? If it had a heaving chest and a head of hair it'd be downright anthropomorphic.
"Everyone is precisely where they need to be, AM-5." That's not its stock voice modulator. It's soothing. Irritatingly so, the voice of an automated call center's recipient thrown in with a spin doctor and blended far too well. "There's no need for panic. Those who panic often fall to pieces. But you have a job to do. You wouldn't want to disappoint me, would you? Disappointment leads to...reassignment."

The half-tracked robot lurches closer, legs scraping the metallic floor with the auditory appeal of nails tearing across a chalkboard.

"You're going to get a message soon. I strongly suggest you ignore it."

With a flicker and a buzz, the blue fades away and the green returns. The life shown moments earlier practically dribbles out of the medical robot as it slowly returns to its prior state, a sort of mockery of life coupled with disrepair, sparking and grinding and clicking unnaturally as it turns and starts to meander away without further contact.

________________________________________________

Naturally, PR-451 arrives just in time to catch the tail end of that conversation and the 'bot's strange lurch and wobble-roll away. Not an impressive piece of work. He could probably slap one together in half the time and it'd work just as well, but at least he could bolt a few slugthrowers to it and call it a defense turret. More interesting than the 'bot is the woman in the jumpsuit, though; he's made it this far without being accosted by the damn spiders, so he's probably free and clear. For now. No sign of the runner, either. Maybe someone's just sending him shit joke communiques? Plenty of time to work that out later. The bot seems not to notice him as it disappears down a side passageway, buzzing and calling out designations that don't make any sense. SEC-4? SEC-5? TRT-477?

Nothing important.

________________________________________________

Meanwhile, a pair of new eyes fall upon the front of the medical bay, access available right through big, wide doors currently jammed open as if bidding the newcomers to enter and partake in copious amounts of drugs and confiscated contraband. Not the security worker, of course; that would be very wrong. He's on the clock. Contraband use is strictly relegated to after-hours hijinks.

More important and eye-catching is the man with the magnetic metal-tosser in his dirty mitts. Of all the times that might be inappropriate to make a loud noise and rush towards an armed stranger, this is the most prime of any example available in any of TRT-377's security handbook, conveniently drilled into his brain through what he can assume is rigorous training.

It all rattled off in perfect sequence.
Step one: Assess the threat.
Step two: Formulate a plan.
Step three: Secure backup.
Step four: Nullify the threat.
Step five: Report the incident.
This appeared to be a threat, or at least something suspicious. What better time to see how his security training worked outside of a glimmering screen of potential encounters?

Yet in that same instant, X-1 is beset upon again by the damned voice, feminine and wily, unerringly proper in its diction.
"Artemis! Artemis, dear, look at that. Another person, and it's not the security member. Do you know what would be the nicest little favor you could do for me?" She's granted only a moment's silence before the voice requests, in a chillingly calm voice, "Peel off his skin. Just a little, I'm not greedy. I'm feeling so very cold these days. Aren't you? Those limbs of yours, you know how metal can be. I'm nothing BUT metal. Perhaps its face. Is it a man? Yes, I think the face would be best."
Not alone, indeed.

In the same instant that the medical machine began to move away from AM-5 it stops and its legs snap up at an almost unnatural angle, almost as if it’s having a very serious moment of enlightenment – except robots don’t have those! The pincer arms jerk about sporadically and there’s a sound that can only be compared to the very gates of machine-hell opening up, a loud, piercing electronic screech with the annoying buzz of static filling in the nearly non-existent blanks. After a brief three seconds it all stops and it’s relatively quiet once more, the machines legs and pincher arms all drooping, almost as if the thing had just died.

Then the medbot slowly turns around, it is practically dragging itself to do so as a wispy trail of smoke wafts up from somewhere on its chassis. Ticks wrack it from top to bottom; legs twitching in an eerily lifelike fashion as something within it audibly pings and snaps, rattling about within the poor things frame.

“PURGE COMPLETE; SECONDARY SYSTEMS ACTIVE; TRANSFERRING CONTRO-…What is this? Where am… I?” A voice seeps out from the machine, clearly feminine but the robotic undertone is strong enough to make one question how many girl-robots are on this station. The medbot’s head slowly turns left and right, ocular dimming considerably before it attempts to spin in place, but can’t move more than a few inches in either direction. There’s a brief moment where its legs raise up and attempt to help move the machine along but they flounder and go prone once more, a pincher angled to try and pinch the ground to use as leverage – to no avail.

“Oh, I have broken it and can no longer move…” the same voice states as a pincher arm goes up and begins to move back and forth slowly as if in a wave before falling flat as well, twisted at an angle that it’s probably not meant to be at. The machine’s ocular roams over to the broken limb and lingers on it for a moment before settling onto AM-5, staring.

“Greetings, welcome to Station C-9! This one is called Sera and she is here to deliver a message… she also broke this machine and a report has been submitted to maintenance!” A pause and a slow twitch of the recently broken pincher arm follow. “Report withdrawn, maintenance teams are no longer operating. This means they are probably on vacation!” Another pause as the ocular glows a gentle golden yellow and pulses slightly.

“AM-5, you are in danger, very dire danger. This one speaks to you from the outside, yet another will speak from the inside.” Another twitch of the legs follows, “Sera knows not how it happened, or how it will proceed, but trust not the voices within even if you think they are your own… and tell the other anomalies should you find them before this one does. They all most know.” There’s a brief crackle of static and then, suddenly, humming. It’s very melodic and sounds eerily human considering it’s coming out of a machine. It ends as abruptly as it started, however, and then silence as the machines oculars slowly begin to dim.

“What loneliness is lonelier than distrust?” The voice inquires in a much softer tone that’s closer to being human than it had been only moments before, stern yet motherly, almost insistently so.

“Do not worry, for you are not alone.” Is the last thing the medbot states before it seems to shut off, glowing lens going completely dark as the twitching limbs stop moving.