Chapter two

What is good? All that heightens the feeling of power in man, the will to power, power itself. What is bad? All that is born of weakness. What is happiness? The feeling that power is growing, that resistance is overcome.
~~Nietzsche

I have never seen a creature like her, that much is sure. It is logical. She is halfbred, born of two different races, so there would be none like her, and probably never again.

That is illogical, crossbreeding between two entirely different species. It is nearly impossible to tell if the infant will be born deformed or better than the parents. DL-C-13's memories indicate that she is an even blending of both, stronger than one bloodline, weaker than the other, but possessing talents and abilities given to both. Clearly she has surpassed expectations from all sides, including my robotic mentor, H-N- 777.

I still had Organic doubts when I saw her, lying across the Upgrading table. She did not look like the warrioress that I had watched playing a game of battle. She looked frail, physically, with her snakes hanging limp and her tail dragging the floor. Her normally dark skin was pale, dark circles forming underneath her eyes. No doubt that was an effect of the sedative, keeping her safely asleep while the operation was performed.

Soon after she was opened, the medical Mechanoids, myself included, realized something strange. Her memories indicated that her entire species were allergic to what they called "working metals", but we thought that was nothing more than heathen paranoia and random chance. After a tool made from stainless steel was place against one of the scales on her tail, she burned. An immediate change in design was called, and new schematics were drawn up.

It is fortunate for her that steel is too outdated to use much. Even the older Mechanoids have been Upgraded past that metal. Today we use an alloy that does not seem to affect her. Her kind knows of it, and many of her weapons and finger armor were made from it. Her kind call it "rubeus" because of its naturally pink color, of which her sai were left in.

We scanned her memories into a supercomputer, viewing them carefully to gauge her strengths and weaknesses. Mostly, she hates direct confrontation, but she has a sharp tongue when the moment suits her. Her regent, for she is a young queen, has trained her well in archaic forms of medicine, warfare, and history.

She will make my master very proud.

I watch her, curled in a small room, on the monitor screen, my feet on the footrest and my fingers tapping silently away at keys. Since she has only had her first Upgrade, she still needs to eat regularly. I need to eat only once a month, H-N-777 is solar-powered. I am synthesizing a meal for DL-C-13.

She is a predator by nature. Her memories had clear descriptions of what it was like for her to run down a fully-grown, living animal at eat of its flesh, completely raw. The bloody images were enough to make my Organic stomach turn.

As an Organic myself, I was mostly a plant-eater. My Organic kind, Echoes, known for being able to emulate sounds they hear, had been driven underground thousands of years ago by several biological disasters that made the land inhospitable for them. Every last thing on that planet that created irrational Organic fear was vested in her, the acid on her breath, the viciousness when hunting.

Completely illogical of me to fear her, even worse to admit it without trying to overcome it. There is nothing she could do to me to harm me, my master gave me the mechanism for turning her Mechanoid pieces off when in her presence. Not to mention that I am farther along that she is, physically stronger and probably faster.

My Organic eyes flash across the screen. She has gotten bored with sitting still and has started to move around the room, feeling it for an exit. She will find none, not from that side, anyway.

My eyes focus on her serpentine tresses. I may be physically superior, but I do not have the means to inject nitric acid directly into the bloodstream.

A beep awakens me from my thoughts. The meal is finished synthesizing. I have made her spiced meat stew, something familiar and probably comforting to her. The Collection as a whole does not seek her love, but her cooperation.

I carry the steaming bowl to her in my Organic arm, keeping my Mechanoid arm free. Unlike hers, my entire left side is Mechanoid. My Mechanoid foot, clawed at the toes, clanks against the chrome flooring, while my Organic one thuds softly.

I retch at the smell of the synthesized meat in my hand. Even made from spare amino acids and proteins, it is real enough to play on my Organic instincts.

DL-C-13 is standing against the doorway when it opens, her hybrid hands placed against it. She steps backward when she sees me, reacting similarly to me as I did her choice in diet.

Both her species are omnivores, why does she choose meat over harmless plant life?

Five sets of bright, glowing red eyes, some reflecting the light naturally, train on me. The room was darkened, an attempt to break her, but she liked it better that way. Now I wish we had left the lights on, since she is a thing to behold in the shadows.

The shadow-creature growls at me, a waft of HNO3 drifting toward my hypersensitive nose. I step back, wishing to show weakness, indulge my fears, and run.

Silently, I hold the bowl out to her, the long, thin shafts of my Organic ears quivering. She lifts her chin up, peering over the edge of the bowl, wide-eyed. I nudge it in her direction. She takes it gingerly from me, trying to avoid touching me or looking directly at her left arm.

When she has her food, she vanishes back the corner of the room, her jetpack toward me and growling softly. She ignores the utensils I brought for her, picking up chunks of solid food delicately between her claws and placing them in her mouth. Animalistic resentment, or trying to aggravate me as much as possible.

Her tail swings gently across the floor, warily. It looks like a serpent in itself, long and strong, covered in tightly rolled, glistening scales. It is black with flame-patterns etched across the surface, traced in gold. The very tip is metallic gold with a fringe of soft, luminescent red fur. It had been decoratively pierced in barbaric manner when she was brought to us, but the silver rings were unnecessary and so removed.

I watch her eat, as feral as any wild animal. Her red eyes glint at me, all four snakes hissing in my direction. Testing a theory, I waver from left to right, watching those snakes follow me. I shudder. Their hissing intensified when I moved.

She sets her bowl down, licking her fingers. Animals accept things quickly, I know. She has accepted what has been done to her body, but at the current time she is not about to let the Collection benefit from it.

"What are you so upset about?" I inquire, trying to concentrate on Organic curiosity, at least partially logical in comparison to fear. "Do you not see what a gift you have been given?"

DL-C-13 does the one thing I had not wanted her to do: she turns on me. She keeps her fingers on the ground, walking in a crouched position, swinging her tail around. The expression on the right and lower sides of her face is angry, all four snakes hissing.

"A gift? You call bein' kidnapped out of my bed in'a middle of the night a gift?" she snarls.

I smile. I do not remember ever being Organic, not in a hundred years of being Mechanoid.

"I call being given immortality and strength a gift," I answer, rotating my left wrist on its artificial joint, spinning it completely around.
That catches her attention. If anything, it frightens her. Her snakes make a rattling noise, acid dripping from her fangs and scorching the floor.

For a split second I feel burning pain run across my Organic shoulder. I shut my eyes and try to block it out. When I open them again, DL-C-13 is almost nose-to-nose with me. The heads of her serpentine tresses are on either side of my face, two on each side, hissing in my ears.

"What are you?" she asks, cocking her head to one side.

"I am a Cyborg, a Mechanoid/Organic blend." I keep my voice neutral.

She nods, "That's nice, but what are you?"

It figures. "Cyborg", "Mechanoid", and "Nanobot" hardly mean anything to her. Her kind do not use machinery past looms and mills. She has seen machines before, but not any that her Organic kind have made, and never was she ever told about robotics. All machines are alike to DL-C-13.

"My Organic kind was Echo," I answer. That word holds little meaning for her, too.

"An echo," she echoes. "Do you follow behind people, mimicking what they say?"

I do not understand the reference.

"You have been given a great honor," I tell her. "Out of your entire world, only you were chosen to further the Collection."

An honor. Was it only a century ago that I was told the same thing? Unable to remember, it seems longer.

Her black lips curl, revealing pointed incisors. The smell of acid is on her breath, an aura of smoke hangs around her. Her snakes are patterned as her tail, her black hair has vertical streaks of red. Even if I had not seen her light a fire with nothing but a thought, I would associate fire with her.

Black fire. Heathen fire.

It is shameful of me to feel fear in her presence. She is like my sister, so I have been told by my full-robot superiors. DL-C-13 can no more harm me than I could harm H-N-777.

Her Organic hand reaches up, fingers curling around my neck, squeezing enough to let me know that she is serious, gentle enough to let it slip that she does not want to hurt what she considers to be an Organic...at least until she becomes filled with hunger again.

The motion is meant to be intimidating to me, but I do not let it. She desires to cause nothing Organic pain, if she can avoid it. As long as she is unprovoked by me, I should be fine.

Then again, her Organic kind fear metal the way my Organic kind fear acid. I may seem no more living to her than a simple computer.

Unimpressed, however, with her show of force, I grab her arm with my robotic arm, pulling her off me. She is more or less superficially Mechanoid at this point, her reflexes improved and more spectrums given to her left eye. She knows this, I suppose, but she is, after all, only an animal.

I pry her fingers away from my throat, leaving red tracks in their wake on my weak flesh. She watches my Mechanoid arm in morbid fascination. The feel of my clawed fingers against her skin, cool since my body has not been warmer than needed for my Organic to function in several decades, must be strange to her. I cannot remember the first time that I gazed upon the face of H-N-777, but I suppose it must have been something like that: curious, albeit wary.

I rotate my wrist when I pull her arm down, to show her the free range of motion I have. It is the same on nearly all joints on my Mechanoid side, three hundred and sixty degrees. My waist, my elbow, shoulder, ankle, toes, fingers, hip, and knee, all have free range of motion. As flexible as Dragons and Elves are, how can she compete with that?

"How did..." she mumbles, staring from my Mechanoid Upgrades to her own. "Fey..."

"Yes," I say. "We saw that in your memories. But you should recognize the material, since your weapons are made from them."

Her fingertips brush her metal arm, her Organic eye beginning to glow polished gold with touches of gas flame blue around the edges and the iris, pulsating and bleeding strange pigment. She seethes, unable to gather her words. Heat radiates off DL-C-13 like metal warmed by the sun.

"You read my mind?" she hisses, all four snakes hissing at me, but staying on the sides of my head. I am backed up against the door, DL-C-13 pressing up against me.

"I do not understand," I answer. "There was a mind reader you associated with. Are the circumstances not the same?"

Her snakes are dripping acid, sizzling into the floor. Her teeth are bared, tounges of flame curling around her fingers. She pins me against the door with her body, arms on either side of me, hissing violently.

In one fluid motion, a snake on my right side shoots forward, sinking its fangs deep into my cheek, just beneath my eye. I scream in pain, dropping to my knees, pain shooting through my right eye and knee. There is wetness in my hand, holding onto my eye, the only thing keeping it in the socket.

I do not want to see what it is.

I crawl backwards, feeling around in my pocket for the cut-off switch to DL-C-13's Mechanoid parts. I hear her thud onto her Mechanoid side, growling at me. I quickly reach up with my Mechanical hand, closing the door and locking her inside.

***

My fingers tap away at the computer, still watching DL-C-13. Her Mechanoid parts have been turned back on again, but I can see I shall have to turn them off once more. For a species that is supposed to be highly intelligent, albeit technologically deprived because of their biology, she does not learn quickly. She has positioned herself on her haunches, scratching at the door. Normal Metal 3141592654 would be impervious to such an attack, being harder than diamond, but this is a softer alloy, cheaper to make. Curls of metal are flying away from her, snakes hissing and dodging.

Those snakes are fascinating. Each one possesses a brain independent of hers, yet function parallel to DL-C-13. That is, they move on their own, but they hiss when she is angry and she can swivel them around to see in all directions. A wonderful biological ability.

She was not born with them, they are a mutation, like her tail. The extra sensory input brought on so suddenly has not driven her insane? Fascinating.

My left index finger punches the button to shut down DL-C-13's Mechanoid side. She collapses instantly on the screen, hissing and growling. All four snakes and her tail lay limp on the floor, quivering as she tries to lift them.

The door behind me opens. My new eye swivels out of my skull and toward the Mechanoid entering. H-N-777.

He walks toward me, his many tiny nanos holding tightly together in one solid form, functioning as a unit. If he so chose, he could melt into a puddle and "flow" toward me, but that is unnecessary at this time.

"I was unaware that you were scheduled for an Upgrade," he says, looking down at my new eye.

I return the new eye into my skull, facing my master.

"So was I," I answer. "But apparently, she was not."

He needs not to face his "eyes" toward the monitor, but he does so anyway, because his nanos are grouped by directed function, which he may change at will. His entire face is dedicated to sensory input of sound, sight, smell, and touch, as well as producing sound.

He sees the mess she has made of this room, too, and so asks, "And you would suggest?"

"Under the circumstances Upgrading her HNO3 glands would prove unwise," I reply. "And removing them is even worse."

A/N: By this point I'm just glad I can update. The Pyrdegin references and possibly the snakes come from a collaboration between me and Syluna of Pyrdegin, which can be found on my favorites list. In the first chapter, I got confusled on the names. H-N-777 and E-C-12 were the only ones in the room.