In the lobby, the android approaches the unexpectedly empty front desk.
It scans around quickly with its metallic eyes and finds the entire lobby absent of employees. The construct’s expression shifts to a smirk. It doesn’t suit its face at all. It remains perfectly still for a few moments when a door flies up across the hall and Caufmann emerges, his lab coat soaked in blood and his glasses shining.
In his hand is a dripping bone saw and the sight of it makes the android smile.
“To die fighting, is that it?” asks the android.
Caufmann shrugs minutely.
“Shall we?” asks the progenitor bowing as if requesting a dance.
Caufmann’s expression remains neutral when he shows his other hand that is holding a matte black capsule about the width of his index finger.
The progenitor doesn’t say anything, it just regards the capsule closely.
“I know what you are and more importantly what you’re made of. You’re a prototype; the Prototype Progenitor-class android designed for the template uses of all subsequent test types and production line androids. You were once war coordinator during the CryoZaiyon War and were also the catena for data from the Embryon Protocol.
You chose all candidates for the CryoZaiyon Program. Then were incarcerated indefinitely due to your astronomical value. How you are operational, or even functioning, is somewhat of a mystery.”
“Incarcerated?” the expression on Prototype’s face is cold and its eyes are shining furiously. It takes a step forwards.
“Stay where you are,” Caufmann orders, again showing the capsule.
Prototype laughs. This disturbs the doctor because he can’t tell whether the construct is just being theatrical or whether it’s genuine. “What bioweapon do you possess that can affect me?”
“As I said, I know what you’re made of.”
Rennin is meandering around his second sewage water coffee when the glass front doors of the lab shatter outwards followed by smoke. He drops his cup and his rifle in his hands in a split second. His scope is immediately trained on the smoke pouring out the entrance.
That android is going down.
There is a slight ripple in the plume, or perhaps a rush of air. Time seems to slow down as Rennin readies to fire but it is not the android fleeing the lab like he thought it would be. It’s Caufmann, lab coat bloodied and torn, who is thrown into the courtyard.
Rennin’s sights are back on the doorway, waiting for the progenitor but Caufmann dashes back inside leaving Rennin to wonder what is coming next.
What happens next is not something Rennin expected. Caufmann and the android are wrestling but the scientist looks to be dragging it outside, but that can’t be right. Rennin looks closer and sees that it is indeed the case. Caufmann is dragging the android outside whilst the two of them are locked with hands at each other’s throats.
Rennin’s mouth falls ajar as Caufmann takes a right hook to the jaw that the sniper heard from the tower but doesn’t go down. The doctor flicks his right arm and Rennin catches a glimpse of something long and slender sliding out of the sleeve.
His arm swings up impossibly fast striking the android in the neck drawing a spurt of dark fluid. The progenitor covers the wound clumsily stumbling away from Caufmann who faces Rennin’s tower, points to his knee, then drags his index finger across his throat in the kill gesture.
Leg it. Rennin aims and fires a perfect shot striking the android in the left knee. The bullet glances off and hits the front of the lab. Rennin is shocked at this construct’s armour strength. The ammunition he uses is about as strong as it gets.
The android looks at Caufmann, then to the tower and makes a dash for the front gate. Rennin fires again, hitting it in the same knee. The second bullet glances off like the first. This time, though, the android’s balance is thrown completely by the bullet’s impact, and it tumbles unceremoniously to the ground.
Rennin could put it down for good but Caufmann obviously wants it alive, so he takes another shot at the knee and finally the bullet achieves its goal. It punches through, drawing a spray of dark purple liquid.
The android screeches more from rage than any discomfort. The sniper cringes, the sound is remarkably like fingernails scratching blackboard.
Despite the heavily gushing wound, the android lifts itself and attempts a massive, albeit unbalanced, leap over the front gate. Rennin takes one final pot shot, hitting the thing in the upper spine. The shot glances off as the sniper knew it would, but the momentum throws the android off the wall into the street.
Rennin’s communicator beeps and he can see Caufmann talking into his gauntlet in the grounds below. “Ren? Don’t call for assistance.”
“Why not? And I could have taken it out. I thought you wanted it dead!”
“I know. But now I need it alive.”
The blade. “What was that shit you stabbed it with?”
“A nano-transmitter. A temporary and traceable blood virus. It’ll wear off in a few days at best, but we’ll know where it’s going, if it’s alone… or working with someone else, with a little luck.”
Rennin has to hand it to him, Caufmann has balls. “Who’s tracking it?”
“Beta HolinMech will follow it.”
Caufmann turns to see several employees emerging from the foyer, so he hurriedly cuts communication and covers his arm with the remainder of his sleeve.
Security staff put the area back together over the next few hours, while Rennin wonders how Caufmann is going to answer all those questions about fighting a very combat-worthy android.
He smiles to himself as he thinks of his shooting. He comfortably leans back in his chair to ease the throbbing in his head. Four shots, four hits and one of them a successful crippling shot. It didn’t impair its movement much, but a hit is a hit, especially since he wasn’t supposed to kill the thing.
For just a moment when he had it lined up on the ground, he knew he could have taken its head off. Something inside him knows he should have.
Caufmann is in his office, his upper body bared in front of a mirror. He inspects his wounds, fresh and old. His torso is a sea of scars. Up and down his arms and his chest is another miasma of frequent surgeries. All of them self-inflicted.
There are quite a few smaller holes around his shoulders and chest that could only be bullet holes. He remembers some, but not others. Only the surgical ones he can fully account for. His scalp is riddled with winding incision marks, where he’s been removing implants and learning about what he is, or once was.
His right arm—where his skin has been removed to seat the gauntlet—is sparking from time to time, drawing his attention. Prototype gripped his arm so hard it cracked the shell casing. A few of the underlying circuits are damaged.
Caufmann sighs, feeling that nagging razorblade pain in his chest for a moment before having a closer look at his fresh wounds. They steam mildly, but are already closed and fading.
He looks hard at his ruined body and his jaw clenches. He is glad his glasses are on because he can’t bear to look himself in the eyes at this moment. Their luminous glow through jagged cracks in his irises haunts him more each day.
He barely recognises himself anymore, but not because of the scarring. Each time he removes an implant, it should make him feel less forged and more real, but it doesn’t. He wonders how much more he has to excise.
There are some parts he will never be able to remove, he knows. However, after his fight with the android, he isn’t sure if he wants to remove them all. That kind of strength can be very useful. He’d forgotten what it was like to fight like that. But the fact he even had to bothers him.