Chapter Text
‘you know, taking all the information at this point is kind of useless.’
i stood there, dead in the middle of the doorway to a sideroom a fellow expendable seemed too caught up with pillaging to fully acknowledge the annoyance in my presence. he seemed blissfully unaware to pretty much anything that was happening around him, lagging behind me well after sebastian’s shop, hellbent on taking everything and everything he could find in the drawers of this place, if anything even remained at this point anymore. he was so ditsy, in fact, that the only reason why he didn’t die to a wall dweller was because i had taken a glance behind me. not to mention, his attitude made his lack of skill even worse. he was overly confident, consistently praising himself in front of me for what were my own efforts, and talking down to me like i was lesser than. it was so bad that even sebastian solace, the asshole of all assholes, gave me a worried glance when the expendable i was working with walked out of the shop to leave me to my own devices.
somewhere deep down, through all the toothy grins sebastian gave me and typical responses, i think he sympathised with me. despite this, it wasn’t like he could do anything except watch as i tried to pathetically calm my nerves from the trip to his shop, eyes anxiously tracing the items on his tail in a weak attempt to pace my previously racing thoughts. business was still business, at the end of the day. still, sebastian could understand my frustrations after having been flashed in the face half a million times by more rowdier expendables. while my case was a more constant one, he surmised it would be over soon, whether my run ends with him dying, or me killing myself in a fit of rage, sebastian didn’t see much reason for this to carry on for any longer than a couple doors further into the blacksite. in retrospect, considering how things were going, sebastian’s hunch may have been very correct… but, that was neither here nor there. at least, for now it wasn’t.
anyway, before i left, he was merciful enough to chuck me a battery free of charge before saying with an entertained smirk how i was going to need it later on. why in the world would i need it? i had no idea, and no amount of staring at sebastian weird would get him to wipe that all knowing smirk off of his face. would i need it for a flashlight? or, did sebastian simply wish to live vicariously through me, wanting me to punt the battery at the expendable’s head as hard as i could? unluckily enough, no answers would come from that model smile of his, the exact same one that exuded such dirty passive aggressiveness i couldn’t help but doubt every word that came out of his mouth. no move of sebastian’s was quite ‘innocent,’ which left me wondering why this battery had as much significance as it did. he sacrificed 50 information points for that— what was he thinking? he never skimped out on a sale. that whole thing was still lost on me, but i’ve had not the time nor the luxury to think about it any further. i was able to make a mental note to pay sebastian back later, however. if this did inevitably help me the way sebastian seemed oh so silently confident that it would, the singular battery i unceremoniously shoved into my pocket was worth its own weight in gold.
frustrated, i puffed my cheeks out, looking like some kind of dumb chipmunk while the expendable from earlier crouched down to peer underneath a table in front of him, silently murmuring to himself about how poor he was. god, my feet were really starting to hurt. aside from the crystal, there was nothing that i wanted more than somewhere to sit, the ache in the heels of my feet growing to be borderline unbearable the longer i stood here. the last time i tried to rest while he was gathering information, the asshole expendable yelled at me, asking what the hell i was doing. as much as i wanted to be a smart ass right back, something about him felt… off, painfully so, like he had been sent here for all the right reasons. this place was where an expendable like my partner belonged, no man’s land in the middle of an ocean, ruled by a company who’d rather disconnect our diving gear and let us drown rather than lose out on profit. the whole time, i’d kept my mouth tightly shut, keeping myself from saying anything out of line. seriously, it genuinely felt like he was perpetually 5 seconds away from killing me, the glade in his eyes unlike the semi-halfhearted one sebastian usually shot me, nor the completely playful one i was used to p(A.I.)nter giving me whenever i made a terrible joke in his vicinity. no, there was genuine malice, bloodlust, if you will, in his dark eyes. only now was i beginning to realise why nobody was willing to partner up with him, and it only took me 60 doors. how awesome!
it was really beginning to feel like i was the one doing the most work here, the expendable i was with intent on hoarding all the information he could find for himself, and past sebastian’s shop at that. the information he was collecting had no real use, yet he collected tons of it anyway, taking his damn time all the while doing so. i thought i came to terms with how self centered this guy was 5 doors ago when he almost broke the blacklight in my hands trying to steal it from me, claiming he needed it more than i did. i’ll never forget the way he dirtily smirked at me when i finally gave in, chucking the blacklight in his hands like it meant nothing more to me than the information he was stuffing his backpack full of. part of me wished the blacklight hit the ground, smashing into a trillion pieces and leaving him with the rumination of what could have been. unfortunately, it didn’t, and he’s been stealing items from me ever since, deeming me as an easy target for gathering spoils without even having to so much as lift a finger. first, it was that blacklight, then it was a code breacher, and then— well, nothing else, considering i was smart enough to hide the items i got inside my backpack, disguising it as leftover information i didn’t give to sebastian.
every single time i gave him the benefit of the doubt, it was like he had new and improved methods crafted for the sole task of pissing me off, and god i couldn’t wait for the inevitable— whether it was an angler taking my head off, or taking his, i was silently praying for this run to just end as soon as humanly possible. that said, it wasn’t like any anglers could get us where we were. if i moved out of the doorway, i was pretty certain even pandemonium would skip over us, and that thing stopped at nothing for a slice of expendable pie. how unfortunate. it seemed it would take more than just an angler to snap the expendable in fronr of menout of his information stealing frenzy. he was so focused on stealing folders, in fact, that he didn’t even seem to notice the fact that i had been speaking this entire time. the expendable made no effort to answer my words from before, nor did he even bother to spare me a glance, his hands shoving the keyboard and mouse on the table in front of him unceremoniously to the side. actually, wait, was the fucker ignoring me? my eyes widened in the afterglow of my realisation, and just when i thought it couldn’t get any worse, he began humming, a familiar tune leaving his throat. agitated, and sick of this guy’s shit, i straightened my posture, furrowing my eyebrows and opening my mouth to sternly tear him a new one as best as i could get away with.
‘are you even listening to me?’ i asked, crossing my arms, letting the air in my cheeks out. the expendable in front of me flinched upon hearing my voice, turning around to look up at me from his position on the floor. upon making contact with my frustrated gaze, he offered me nothing but a brief eyeroll he tried to hide by closing his eyes, grabbing the folders he’d taken out of the drawer beside him off of the floor as he raised himself off of where he previously sat.
‘now i am.’ he replied, shoving the folders underneath his arm, staring down at me with a malice that… well, didn’t really do much besides make me want to laugh. i’d been tossed around by pandemonium one too many times to be frightened by the likes of this dude, all scowls and empty words. glancing around the room one last time, he groaned, using his shoulder to push me out of the way. i stumbled slightly to the side, gasp leaving my lips at the suddenness of his actions. in a rage, i turned on my heel to face him, noting that he was long gone into the hallway behind us. please, if anyone was listening to me, let a wall dweller eat him…
‘you got the keycard? or were you just standing there gawking at me like some goddamn idiot?’ he called out, fiddling with the door handle attached to the next door, yanking it up and down like it’d miraculously come loose. he knew it was a keycard door, yet he fiddled with it like his childlike anger at having forgotten the keycard inside of the room would make it come undone. rolling my eyes, i took a step into the corridor, holding up the keycard between my fingers, the same one i had found on a couch right outside the previous door. the keycard wasn’t even in the room… how he hadn’t noticed it, and why i hadn’t just gone ahead without him, were both questions i had no answer to. the expendable looked behind him, glaring at the blue keycard between my fingers with that very same malice i had seen him wear oh so proudly before. against my better judgment, i advanced towards him, waving the keycard in my hand almost triumphantly while my footsteps echoed in the mostly empty room, stopping only when i halted my movements in front of the expendable.
‘you mean to say that you rummaged through that entire room for some useless information, and you couldn’t even find this?’ i teased, cocky smile on my lips. yeah, that would get him, i thought, my comment providing a fleeting, petty moment of superiority, that was snatched from me as soon as it began.
i watched with a dumb smile on my face as the expendable’s eyes widened, his entire demeanor changing like my words and confidence had opened the floodgates of negativity he’d been holding in ever since we began working with each other. the expendable turned on his heel to face me, taking a step towards me so he was practically towering over me. before i could react, his fingers were around my wrist, twisting it with a grip so strong it made me yelp. suddenly, within seconds, i’d gone from having some kind of high ground to writhing at the pain of how he was cruelly contorting my wrist, strengthing his grip, pressing his thumb just beneath my palm. fuck— it hurt, the red hot pain that shot up my arm, muscles in my forearm spasming in a weak attempt to alleviate the bone crushing grip this asshole had on me. no amount of yanking would get his iron grip to loosen, in fact, i was pretty sure he was taking pleasure in how badly he was hurting me, a wicked smile stretched across his lips, his grip somehow getting stronger. a sob left my lips, one that fell on deaf ears alongside the cluttering of plastic against metal. shit— the keycard, he made me drop the fucking keycard. he got what he wanted, and yet he couldn’t stop himself from continuing to hurt me.
‘don’t piss me off, bitch.’ he growled, his fingertips pressing further into my wrist. i hissed, furrowing my eyebrows as i attempted to twist my hand in a circle, away from his assertive grip. tilting his nose upwards to stare down at me through his eyelashes, the expendable began speaking once again, his tone low and dangerous, ‘do you wanna find out what i was thrown in here for? do you? cause trust me, i can do it so easily you wouldn’t even know what’s coming ‘till it’s hit ya.’
fuck, sometimes i forgot the people in here were actual criminals, his palm and fingers crushing my wrist beneath them, making me cry out in pain. parting my eyes that had subconsciously closed, i once again made eye contact with the sadistic smile that had replaced his neutral expression from earlier. god, he was really enjoying this, like i was prey ripe for him to consume whole, like he was a cat playing with a rat before it got killed. i was a mere cockroach in his eyes— and, his lack of empathy couldn’t have been on more of an obvious display. there was noone to help me in this hellhole, noone to magically get him to stop hurting me— so, instead, i resorted to silently suffering, waiting for when he’d eventually let go, waiting for when he’d finally stop crushing my wrist. thankfully, as it turned out, i didn’t have to wait for long, the unmistakable flashing of lights snapping us both out of our physical confrontation.
my eyes flew open, looking pointedly at the confused expendable in front of me. digging my front teeth into my bottom lip, i bit back a cockier smile than before. finally, now i was back in power again. based on the way this guy practically froze from in front of me, he hadn’t been through this as much as i had been. there was nothing i was more talented at than hiding from angler variants, a skill of mine that had been well honed after spending so long in the blacksite. the moment his grip began to loosen from around my hand, i wriggled out of his fingers, pushing against his fingertips with my throbbing wrist and delighting in the way he willingly let me go, his eyes shooting from the ceiling above him, over to me. for a moment, our eyes met in the middle, his panicked stare meeting my confident gaze, my arm still in the air as i turned tail, running to the only locker off to the side, my footsteps heavy, completely certain. maybe now, i was a criminal, leaving this guy out to die frozen in the middle of the hallway, taking advantage of how his fight or flight instincts malfunctioned into paralysed fear to secure a hiding spot to save myself from the passing angler. whatever, he could try again next run— or, even better yet, run to the safe room just beside us. what an awesome concept!
except, the idea of hiding in the room behind us and common decency seemed to fall flat in this situation, especially when the expendable behind me was willing to do whatever it took to ensure his survival.
it was like the next couple seconds all happened in slow motion, my brain so shocked that the only way i could process this (honestly called for) betrayal was at a snail’s pace. one moment, i was leaping towards the handle of a locker, and the next, my fingertips were only just missing it, all thanks to a body knocking into mine full force, making my knees buckle, forcing me off to the side right next to the locker. i tripped over my feet, disgruntled hiss leaving my lips as i hit the floor, knees slamming against the metal beneath me, resounding off of the walls around us. oh yeah, it seemed i had forgotten once again how self centered this guy was. an eye for an eye, i argued, knowing what had happened before i could even raise my head from my knees beneath me to glare at the man staring right back down at me, his expression mockingly smug, no doubt. i didn’t want to meet him halfway, not after that quite frankly pathetic display of selfishness, one that portrayed my intentions well and clear, all for him to understand in a language only he could decipher.
‘sick of my shit, are we? how pathetic.’ the expendable jeered, stopping his movements halfway through jumping inside the locker to stare down at my mangled figure. he laughed, loud, obnoxious, all before speaking to rub more salt in the wound, ‘yeah, sit tight and think about what you did. killing someone is what landed us in jail. you clearly need more than just time for this— you need a death sentence.’
us? who said i got in jail for killing someone? while that may or may not have been true, wasn’t it etiquette to not ask someone what they were in for? even better yet, maybe it was a classic case of the pot calling the kettle back. did he still feel bad for what he did? explains why he was acting out so badly, actually. unfortunate he won’t get to see any sort of fruitful resolution with an attitude so bitter… not like he knew that, though. to be honest, i didn’t know what was sadder— the fact that he thought he had the last laugh, or the fact that he wouldn’t see an ending like i would. with a sigh, i lifted my head, every muscle in my body aching with the hurt this expendable caused me. actually… no, nevermind. this wasn’t sad, nor was it quite tragic. this was his karma, the same one that had been compounding since the first time he did me wrong this run.
sebastian had never hurt me this bad, not even p(A.I.)nter, and they were two of the main threats of the blacksite— if you could even call them that. there was no coming back from this, no amount of pushing that would let me win this fight. i had nothing left in me, only the fatigue that made my entire body weigh a million tonnes more than what it did before, keeping me knelt to the ground. ultimately, death from an angler was more painless than getting beaten to a pulp by a fellow inmate, so— even if terrifying— i chose the latter, sitting there with throbbing knees, and not a care in the world for my dead run. that said, this was only one of many. i’d come back, i always would. as for someone like him, well… smiling almost too sweetly for the situation, i met his gaze gleefully, relief bubbling in my stomach despite sitting on death’s doorstep. urbanshade would definitely think twice before accepting his ferryman’s token. we locked eyes for a second, his gaze not as frightening anymore, his expression not as degrading. all of a sudden, in the face of everything, this dude was simply just an expendable. the fact of the matter was that my life wouldn’t change if he died, which i knew he would. i would come back from this run, and see him a couple rooms later, his information and goods pillaged by sebastian, who i was sure would’ve been glad to see this expendable dead. if the shopkeeper doesn’t like you, then what chance did you have?
while thinking to myself, accepting my rapidly approaching death, i seemed to have missed the way all of the colour drained from the expendable’s face, his eyes looking up from my expression to… something in the roof? whatever it was, i wanted to have the last say. i could worry about that later, probably in that same dark limbo where i always met sebastian. yeah, that didn’t seem half bad. luckily, the grim reaper seemed to be taking its time collecting his dues, so i took my chance while i still had it, while whatever that expendable was looking at wasn’t an issue. opening my mouth, i spoke, tilting my head, smiling a little sweeter.
‘i’ll see you in hell then, you fucking pathetic expendable.’
like clockwork, the sound of deafening banging lit up from behind me, making me gasp and freeze from my spot on the floor. well, that definitely wasn’t an angler. i watched with wide eyes as the expendable in front of me opened his mouth to speak, only for a barrage of what could only have been bullets from a turret to begin hitting him at inhumane speeds, speeds belonging only to that of a mechanical being. my hands flew to either side of my face, covering my ears from the bullets being fired from what i could only have assumed to be a turret behind me— but how? this room didn’t have turrets active before… so, why was there suddenly one locking only on the expendable? my palms didn’t do all too much to muffle the explosive entourage of bullets aimed solely at the expendable before me, but my eyes did a rather good job at blocking out the gruesome sight, my eyelids squeezing shut, my body shaking in complete and utter disbelief. as quickly as it had began, the rain of bullets stopped, providing some much needed silence in a room that was once too god damn loud.
deeming it ‘safe’ to open my eyes, i stared at where the expendable once was, the wall at the end of the room painted in small splatters of blood and chunks of whatever bodily matter managed to reach that far. it didn’t take a genius to know what happened. the splattering of blood, the clanking of belt filled ammunition falling to the ground— the horror of it all spoke for itself. the guy was there one second, and the next, he was laying on the floor, headless, and very much dead, turned to swiss cheese courtesy of the turret behind me. my eyes moved from chunk to chunk, noting the way in which each seemed to fall to the floor with sploshy thumps, the air thick with metallic crimson and whatever other horrors my brain couldn’t process for its own sanity. finally, my eyes drifted to the floor, marveling in morbid wonder at the corpse of the expendable before me. i’d seen many corpses before, but nothing quite like this. his head had been thoroughly blown to smithereens, leaving what, to my uneducated mind, looked like brain matter and other bodily fluids behind, covering the floor and walls around us in absolute carnage. just as i was about to lift my palms off of my ears, i heard what was the unmistakable reloading of the turret behind me. turning my head slowly, i watched in absolute horror as the turret tilted slightly upwards, worried it would target me next. it took only a couple seconds for it to fully reload, before it immediately locked back onto where the expendable previously was.
the bullets didn’t stop when he fell to the ground— no, they kept going, relentlessly pelting bullets into the very lifeless corpse in front of me that was once an annoying expendable, one that had just finished threatening my life.
just before i was about to close my eyes, i saw the screen of the next door in front of me buzz to life with a white so bright it almost blinded me. just as i had forgotten, the room began to shake violently, a gush of inhumanly cold air beginning to flood the floor of the room beneath my knees. god— fuck, the angler— and, as if to make up for how slowly it got here, it was coming in hot! overstimulated, my head began to spin. what if i got up and the turret locked on me? like i said earlier, a death to the angler was much more favourable than a painful, slow death to turrets or to another expendable— but, what if, hypothetically, i didn’t want to die? right— that screen. something told me that screen would help me, and god was i glad that i listened to the part of me that thought to look at the door number screen. plastered in a white background in capital letters was the word ‘LOCKER,’ a simple instruction that needed no further explanation, no further rumination to understand what that meant. there was only one person— one machine capable of communicating through the doors, and after this turret escapade, i knew he was a voice i could trust in this situation. considering all that he had done in the past, p(A.I.)nter seemed intent on helping me now, telling me to just survive like i had been wanting to deep down. no longer was this worst case scenario, i had a locker, and i had to absolutely haul ass to guarantee what i assumed to be p(A.I.)nter’s efforts weren’t for nothing.
with teary eyes, and the rotten smell of human remains in my nose, i slammed my palms down onto the metal floor beneath me, ignoring the blood that pressed against every surface of my skin. i felt dirty, oh so fucking dirty, but that didn’t matter— not here, not now. rising to my feet, i grabbed both handles of the locker in front of me, cursing as i jumped in and grabbed the inside of the doors, slamming them shut just in time. thankfully, since these lockers were more of an emergency hiding place rather than actual lockers, they automatically shut when pulled closed from the inside. how considerate of urbanshade. shakily, i folded my arms, my hands dripping with the blood of the expendable from earlier, my body trembling with the adrenaline of everything. the screeching of the angler about to pass only grew louder, unbearably so, louder than that of the turret, even. with my hands wet, i looked down, raising my wrists to press the sides of them against my ears, closing my eyes to block out the violent flickering of the lights outside. my head hurt enough, no way was i going to let this make it throb any more. after all that, the angler simply passed, its screeching bouncing off of the walls, breaking the lights with violent zaps that also made the bulbs of them crack under the pressure. i could barely hear it thanks to how tightly my wrists pressed against my ears, but as fast as it appeared, it left, leaving behind an empty room that was now completely dark. not quite safe, but safe enough— definitely safer than before.
still reeling from earlier, i slid my back down the locker behind me, sitting in the foetal position with my eyes still closed, refusing to open to what was my reality. sure, i know i said i wanted that guy dead— but fuck, did i really want him this dead? did he deserve this for simply pushing me out of the way and stealing a couple items of mine? whatever the case, i was safe. i would have always been safe, whether i died to that angler or that turret. i would have revived, but never would i have any sort of survivor’s guilt. a shiver went down my spine, wrists leaving my ears to let my arms dangle beside me, hands still dirty with that expendable’s blood. the clean up was going to be gnarly, god bless those poor janitors. slowly, i breathed in and out, trying to control what of my breathing i could, my body still trembling, my heart racing in my chest. the air in the room fell still, leaving me with the ring in my ears and the regret echoing in my head. whatever, well and truly, whatever. that guy was going to die anyway, probably just as brutally. what mattered was why the turret appeared like it did, magically from the ceiling without prompting. seriously, what business did it have being there besides wanting to fit in? maybe the turret wanted in on the action? good for it, i guess? whatever the case, it seemed solely intent on targeting the expendable. to my knowledge, the only person who has direct control over the entire turret system was p(A.I.)nter— the one, the only. there was only one conclusion that made sense here, at least, the only logical one. every sign pointed to it, yet i just… couldn’t believe it. why?
just as i was thinking this, i heard movement from outside, heavy footsteps traveling down the hallway. i paused, stopping my breathing in a weak attempt to simply blend in, even though the situation in front of my locker seemed… well, suspect, and that was being generous. a man shot dead in front of a locker in a room with no turrets. what would normal people think if they were to see this? aside from horrified, of course. what would the consensus be? well, that, i assume, would be to check the locker in front of the body. either that or run, but these footsteps seemed confident, familiar almost in their pattern and unnatural deep resonance. whatever was walking the hallway was walking with purpose, not to mention, whoever was behind those footsteps seemed unnaturally heavy, growing closer before stopping right before me. oh, great, did my bestie over there call one of his 200 kilogram mates before he croaked? seems i was dying a brutal death today. with a frown, i looked up, noting how tall the shadow looming over my locker was, covering the crack between the doors with a deep black. the emergency lighting that kicked in did nothing to give me even the slightest indication of who it was, though, luckily for me, it seemed this person wasn’t too much of a fan of talking through a set of doors. before i could process it, their hands grabbed at the shut doors of my locker, forcing it open with a simple yank.
it really was like one thing after another, and this was just another thing to add to the ever growing shit list of what has happened so far… or, well, considering who was standing in front of me, maybe it was more so a miracle than just ‘another thing.’
standing in front of me, all tall and proud of himself, was none other than p(A.I.)nter, the sheer force of his hands having crumpled the metal beneath them, leaving the locker in a useless state of disarray. illuminated with the red of the emergency lighting just above him, p(A.I.)nter grumbled something under his breath, mouth moving open and closed as he took in my decrepit figure, noting the blood that coated my hands and arms, as well as the patch of red that had landed on my left cheek. he grimaced at my state, feeling slightly bad deep within that convoluted code of his for how dirty i was with another expendable’s blood. as he stood there, scanning me over, i couldn’t help but notice how nice he looked with a lab coat on. sure, maybe it was ironic that p(A.I.)nter was, in part, assimilating with his captors by wearing the lab coat on his shoulders, but in a weird way, it sort of fit him. aside from the new garment that decorated his body, he was mostly the same, 7’ robot i found him as, pristine white armour and all. oh, how jealous i was of him. tutting, p(A.I.)nter leaned away from me, looking over to the side at the pile of iron capsules on the floor, resting just beneath the now inactive turret. he seemed less concerned with the corpse right beside the locker, and more so with how much ammo he used before angler came through. after a couple seconds, he muttered the number 36 under his breath. a chill went down my spine. what a waste of valuable ammo.
‘not even a thanks? maybe i should have let you die back there, expendable.’ p(A.I.)nter jeered, turning his monitor back to stare at me. i flinched upon hearing his voice, a saving grace in the current situation. never had i thought p(A.I.)nter of all people would be so calming to listen to, yet here we were, a shining light in the darkness… literally, his monitor was so bright i struggled to understand how he didn’t scare squiggles just by walking past. then again, he could have just brightened his expressions for me. he didn’t particularly need to have his screen on to see, after all. i frowned, unwilling to participate in any of the teasing p(A.I.)nter had in store for me, especially considering the mess that was my arms and hands, as well as that expendable’s remains— whatever that was now.
‘not funny painter…’ i squeaked out, squirming uncomfortably under the scrutiny of his gaze. his hands moved from the doors beside him, palms placing themselves on his hips. despite no thanks coming from my mouth, he seemed rather pleased. off put for unknown reasons? sure, but weirdly happy considering the blood on his hands…? i wouldn’t put it past him. the wire behind him, likely that of a tail, wagged steadily behind him, plug moving back and forth behind his back in movements almost completely mesmerising. so mesmerising, in fact, i almost fell asleep… no, wait, i couldn’t, not yet, anyway. i had a job to do.
‘not funny? i personally think it’s veeery entertaining how you let that thing trample all over you. didn’t know you were such a doormat.’ p(A.I.)nter replied, his tone harsh as he muttered the name of the expendable he’d apparently been watching torment me, like saying it was a waste of his robotic energy that seemed to somehow be abundant in the blacksite. oh urbanshade, how you confuse me so.
even though i wasn’t feeling all too fond of p(A.I.)nter’s insults today, i didn’t fail to skip out on one key detail— the fact that he had been watching. based on the expendable’s reaction before i dove towards the locker i was sitting at the bottom of, and how friendly sebastian was when they first met, i assumed that this was one of his first runs. surely, by now, if the expendable had passed through once or twice before, he would have built up a rapport of sorts, especially with sebastian. like it or not, the shopkeeper remembers, and scarily well, at that. he still holds the one time i accidentally almost flashed my flash beacon in his general direction over my head, and that was just an accident. for people like the expendable from earlier… i just couldn’t imagine how hostile sebastian would be. his model shopkeeper’s attitude would surely be out the window, replaced by a grunting annoyance that followed the expendable no matter the run. anyway, long winded explanation. my point is— how did p(A.I.)nter know to watch this specific expendable? raising an eyebrow, p(A.I.)nter shook his head, his expression seeming alarmed for a second before shifting to something calmer in an attempt to hide his panic. weird.
‘anyway… you’re coming with me. you have something i want, and i have something your fragile human mind seems to need right about now.’ he said simply, crossing his arms. i listened to the pleasant tapping of metal against metal, the piping in his arms whirring as they flexed and moved, folding over the white armour of his chest, resting just beneath a row of buttons and other gizmos. i blinked a couple times, processing his statement while also trying to get over my own surprise from earlier. p(A.I.)nter began speaking once again, however, tearing through every thought i could have had with just a couple words, ‘a nice moment of respite in return for a couple batteries… if that’s uneven to you, think of it as repaying the bullets i used to save you. sounds good, doesn’t it expendable?’
a shiver went down my spine. god, sebastian really is having a negative influence in him. since when did p(A.I.)nter know how to bargain? i bet they practiced this on whatever urbanshade equivalent of zoom existed. how terrible, as if one sebastian wasn’t enough, now there seemed to be another following closely in his footsteps. great, is he going to begin asking for information in return for the honour of his words? okay, not even sebastian does that. don’t tell him my new business proposition, or else he’ll start charging me double for every word i say to him. p(A.I.)nter’s proposition seemed harmless on the surface, his smirk and confident stance doing more than enough to relieve me of any worries i may have had about his intentions. while i should have doubted him a little more, the computer and i have had quite the history, spanning back to the very minute i stepped foot into this place. in the beginning, he found pleasure in using me for target practice among other things, testing his new connection to turrets in the only way he knew how— firing until he physically couldn’t anymore. after the first time i met him, all scratched up from the mask of sadness encounter he’d been fortunate enough to laugh at a little earlier, p(A.I.)nter and i began to speak more about trivial things. he talked about how he wanted to go to the surface and paint, while i humoured him, telling him with a smile that i’d take him wherever he wanted. from then on, he began confiding more innocent indulgences with me that he was convinced he’d never trust anyone else with.
for some reason, our connection came easily, a bond between man and machine that hadn’t been seen before. sure, he tended to flip between moods like the weather, but p(A.I.)nter never truly forgot how he was able to walk in the first place. he still remembers how i lugged his new body into his room with me, finding it amongst a sea of files containing statistics pertaining to his crypto mining efficiency. based on what i was able to read, it seemed they planned to make him able to roam the facility with the sole purpose of ‘protecting’ the employees that worked at the hadal blacksite. preparations to go through with this diabolical plan were all carried out before p(A.I.)nter began purposefully overclocking himself, the attempts to shut off his system wisening the scientists working with p(A.I.)nter up to the fact that he wasn’t simply a machine. he was intelligence, a living, not quite breathing person in his own right despite the code and monitor. all progress on this project to give him a body was swiftly abandoned until further notice, leaving behind a dusty robotic body that seemed mostly functional in all way. curiously, one of these ways included the ability to sense touch. the scientists reasoned he wouldnt be able to know when he was malfunctioning in one of his limbs if he could not feel it. while this train of thought was solved in the most complicated way possible, it seemed whoever was working on p(A.I.)nter’s body was weirdly engrossed in it, allowing the project to consume them whole. it wasn’t hard to connect p(A.I.)nter to his body, though, it did give sebastian quite the fright when he saw us both for the first time after the fact. sebastian thanked me afterwards with a periodic discount, lasting 5 seconds until he realised how much information he was losing out on and reverted his prices back. how nice of him.
long story short, i had reason to trust him, reasons that most people would skip over. our camaraderie— whatever they may have been, led to me slowly nodding my head, watching as p(A.I.)nter’s expression seemed to turn more smug, like this was going to be the outcome of his proposition. that said, i did have one question on my tongue that had been sitting wrong with me ever since he mentioned how he needed batteries. parting my lips, i spoke, ‘batteries… what do you need them for?’
‘part of the deal is you finding out, silly expendable.’ he replied, almost like his response had been rehearsed, a practiced speech he’d repeated over and over again in a mirror with the exact same shit eating smirk plastered across the bright screen of his monitor. against my will, my heart skipped a beat at the nickname he gave me. silly expendable? god… why did that reach me in the way that it did? before i could fully process my questionable reaction to p(A.I.)nter’s words, he was chucking me a towel, a slightly damp one that hit me square in the chest and fell in my lap, a surprised yelp leaving my lips. through his speakers, p(A.I.)nter chuckled at my shock, ground thumping beneath him as he took a step back, leaving me to stare surprised at his form. when had he found this? god only knew, slightly damp material pressing coldly into my thighs, soaking into the navy blue of my diving suit. just as i was registering his actions, p(A.I.)nter looked me up and down, wondering why i was staring at him so demandingly. i wanted to know where he found this, where he could have possibly looked to find a perfectly damp towel. though, as he opened his mouth, it seemed he’d come to the wrong conclusion.
‘what? you want me to help you up?’ p(A.I.)nter exasperated, his eyes slightly wide, frown growing on his monitor. my mouth fell open, blush blooming across my face, pink, hot, and obvious. where did he get that from? my eyes blinked open and closed rapidly, confusion written across my expression that p(A.I.)nter pointedly ignored, his left hand pressing against his hip, while his right waved just in front of his monitor, specifically where his nose would have been, ‘in case i need to remind you, you’re! filthy!’
furrowing my eyebrows, i couldn’t help but feel a little hurt at p(A.I.)nter’s words. he was right, but… owch. actually, if i wasn’t filthy, was he suggesting…? no, probably not. knowing him, he’d probably have an excuse for that, too. offering p(A.I.)nter a brief frown, i moved my legs from where they were folded loosely against my stomach, laying them out in front of me. i had no time to dwell on the meaning of his words, nor did i really have the mental capacity to analyse him any further than what i already had. the landscape of p(A.I.)nter’s algorithm was a contemporary painting, one difficult to find meaning in without help from the artist’s statement itself. or, well, perhaps i was just unobservant, choosing to stare at the deep, convoluted canvas in front of me, all pixel and sass. unfortunately, i was no art critic. though, i fear with p(A.I.)nter, i may have to evolve into something of the sort, learning to read between the lines all to understand. though, could a human truly understand code? and, likewise, could code understand man? biting my lip, i shook my head, barely enough for p(A.I.)nter to properly notice, yet just enough to snap me out of my half baked philosophies. now wasn’t the time for this.
the towel p(A.I.)nter tossed me laid flat across my thighs, material fluffy and soft like it’d never been used before. i couldn’t help but marvel at the cleanliness of the fluffy cotton resting atop my thighs. again, where’d he even find this, anyway? so far, these past 10 minutes have seen too good to be true. first, a turret controlled by p(A.I.)nter mercilessly shoots down an expendable who was causing me grief, then p(A.I.)nter himself shows up and wrenches my locker open as a personal bodyguard so he could get me to his room in heavy containment safely. actually, maybe my luck began when sebastian tossed me an extra battery…? p(A.I.)nter wouldn’t be here if not for that, i assumed. pinching the towel between my bloody fingers, i frowned even more at the way the blood on my fingers creased against my skin with my movements, palm guiding the towel up and down my arms. how stupid was i to think that he’d come and save me because he valued my life? for a second, i forgot p(A.I.)nter was no man, he was logic written in 1’s and 0’s, stone cold calculations ran to make sure he came out on top.
stuck in my pessimism, i watched as the dampness of the fluffy towel allowed the layer of maroon coating my arms to soak into the material above it, crimson blooming against what was once a perfect white. as much as i hated to admit it, with every second longer i spent in the blacksite, i found myself growing accustomed to the constant stench of carnage left behind after all of the threats littered around the blacksite. that said, though, i dont think i’d ever grow used to this, simply because i’d never been soaked with someone else’s blood before. a shiver went down my spine with that thought, eyes tracing up and down my now clean arms to double check i hadn’t missed a spot.
‘god you’re taking foreverrr, are you done yet?’ p(A.I.)nter groaned, his head looking over from where he stood at the next door, high clearance keycard in hand. i flinched at the sound of his voice
‘yeah— uh— coming—‘