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Corpse seventy-nine thuds into the pile; the bang of Replika limbs against limbs crushed against themselves is by now a familiar noise. It comforts him to hear that hollow sound echo up the shaft
His fingers curl, ever so slightly. He peers into the elevator shaft, the acrid stink of putrescent Replika organs like sugar stuck to the stove, and looks at the body straight in the eye. A complex set of lenses stare back, the backing red LED dissolved into nothingness.
Exhales. That’s some spare time hard won.
He takes the staircase back down, his fingers tracing along the rough-cut concrete, heading to the main administrative barracks. Something that could have once been called a STAR comes barreling down a corridor. He cannot see the unit’s face; gauze hangs down like a mourning veil, leaving only two pits burning like embers. It shrieks, brandishing a truncheon, clutching onto it far too tightly for effective use, and it lunges at him.
Oxidant splashes across his face. The STAR collapses, the titanium pump at its core blown wide open by an express round. He reloads methodically, patiently, as the unit tries jerking back to life.
He stands over its head. STAR-S2308 is stencilled across its right breast. S2308 had been one of the last STARs to go. Had stood guard at the hospital doors as the gestalts died en-masse, had diligently cracked skulls on his behalf, then had helped LSTR-S2301 with hunting down those units that had become rabid animals, those STARs and STCRs and ARARs that hid in the cracks and leapt out to tear at people in their frenzy. She had been a good soldier.
He pops her skull like citrus fruit. Oxidant sputters all the way up his leg. It drips from the back of his thigh.
It trails over the carpet of her room. Little pockmarks of lukewarm body fluids, congealing in the cold bedroom. His commander lies still on the bed, the old owl microphone she used to fiddle with in her spare time cradled between her folded hands.
He sits down to watch her. Watch the rise and fall of her chest, her eyes motionless under the red lids. Machines blink uselessly by her side.
There is a deep and sudden urge to wrap his hands around her neck. Press until he feels the click of her windpipe breaking, the sudden burst of bone. Let it all end as she wanted it. As she had asked him to. Begged him to, really.
He stands, looming over her. His hand strokes her hair. She is so beautiful. Like she is still wrapped in the mould ejection chemicals, the synthetic amnion. He presses a kiss into her forehead.
She had called, and he had come. Together they had planned for better things. A life in glorious service. Not this fruitless posting, this dead end. Falke would have gone to Vineta, and he would have followed. Wherever she went, he would have been behind her. Every step of the way. Even if she had asked to flee beyond the Nation’s borders. He would have gone. Wherever. Whenever. No matter the cost. His hand had slipped into hers when she proposed the question. “Commander,” he had said. “I live to serve.”
“Me? Above everything else?” Her smile was small. “Even the Nation?”
“I’m yours. Until my dying breath. I swear it,” and he had raised her hand to his lips, the knuckles, their eyes not once leaving each other.
Looped cycle comes around. Here is the devil once again crawling forward, her pistol clutched tight enough to strain the grip. Two red dots in the darkness, and an old polaroid photograph of a stranger. MNHR-S2305 is dead.
“Let me see that picture,” he replies, with sufficient politeness, always, as the enemy of everything watches him with the most familiar expression he’s ever seen. He should know. He wears it himself.
Another three minutes pass. Corpse eighty joins the pile. And Adler: he exhales once more.