All Is Not Lost
Authors Notes: This is based on the episode 'Lost Night' but with a twist. I like twisting things. This one's for Elfin, for inspiring me, and 'cause she's cool.
"Kitt?"
It was just his name.
But there was something in the way it was said, something different. A question, as if the speaker could not quite believe it were true. Happiness, relief… familiarity, all those things sang in his voice.
"Kitt, it's me, Michael."
Michael…
The name touched something in him. He fought with his memory, trying to pull something, anything, out of the scorched, scarred ruins of his memory cards.
Blood, seeping into his upholstery, dropping life signs… a plane on fire and about to blow…
"Do we know each other?" Kitt asked, uncertain. The empty, aching void of his memory filled with fear, reaching out with clawed hands to tear holes in his reason.
"Know each other?" The tall human asked, the hurt in his voice half-hidden by humour. "Butch know Sundance? Smith know Wesson? Abbot know Costello?"
He reached out to touch his door handle, trying to pull it open. The touch was too familiar, the feelings it caused too much for his damaged systems to cope with.
He kept the door locked.
"Kitt, I need ya!"
Another flash of memory. An image of this man, calling to him, as someone had called to him only yesterday…even when it had been impossible. His communications systems were a shorted-out mess.
"I have the strangest feeling someone is calling my name…"
Something told him to trust this man…
Confusion, lack of memory, absent data.
No. No trust. Not yet.
"Doug's been kidnapped."
Those words prompted his most coherent, sure response he had felt all day. He fired up his engine and shot out of the greenhouse, causing the human… (Michael…) to roll out of the way.
Kitt ran a scan, one of the few things that still came easily, trying to trace Doug.
Michael ran right in front of him.
"Please remove yourself from my path."
Even as he said it, he knew it was pointless. The human would not move. There was no fear on his face. Only confidence.
And trust.
He wouldn't move.
"There's this guy named Michael… he says you're his…"
Kitt felt panic crawl up his circuits as the human reached underneath him. But though every scrap of self-preservation programming he had said he should move, he found himself strangely paralysed, unable to move.
"Don't run over my leg, Kitt."
No fear in his voice. No threat. Just a request.
"Your dominant program is the preservation of human life…"
Michael's touch was gentle, sure, oddly comforting despite the terror inspired by the holes in his memory.
"…someone is calling my name…"
Michael touched the buttons, opening his secondary access port. Kitt still couldn't move.
"…he says you're his…"
Kitt barely felt it when one of his damaged memory modules was removed. But he definitely felt something when Michael replaced it with another module.
Information flooded into his CPU, and he processed it automatically, sorting it into files. The confusion and pain and terror vanished as the data filled the void. His engine silenced.
The instant that memory had returned, Kitt had processed that anomalous incident from yesterday. He now knew why he had heard his driver's voice calling to him over an impossible distance, despite the critically damaged communications hardware… he knew the answer.
But how he wished he didn't.
He needed more time to find more data, to find out if it were just a single anomaly caused by power overload or some other phenomena…
But Michael was calling him name.
And they had a child to rescue.
****
It was very late at night, and all the rest of the technical staff had long since sought their beds.
Bonnie set down the small tool she had been using and frowned. Kitt had been suspiciously quiet since he came in to have all his systems checked over and the electricity-damaged parts replaced. Usually Kitt would chat with her, talking about her work, new papers she had read, other projects on the go within FLAG, his assignments… many things. But today he was just…silent, and any inquiries about his mental state were met with polite but firm answers of 'I'm fine, Bonnie.'
Bonnie sighed and returned to her work on Kitt's damaged communication hardware. Next to the memory modules, it had probably taken the most damage. The transceiver array was basically the mess of fused wire and melted plastic. It took quite some effort to even remove it.
"Bonnie?" Kitt asked softly. Bonnie almost jumped.
"Yes, Kitt?" She replied, setting the burned-out unit on the work bench and picking up it's replacement.
"Is there any chance that the transceiver you just removed was still capable of receiving transmissions?"
Bonnie blinked in surprise.
"No, Kitt. It was completely burned out in the power surge. Why?"
Kitt was silent for a moment, his scanner tracking back and forth rapidly.
"When I was up near the dam, I jumped over a crevasse… and then I heard Michael's voice calling my name."
The new transceiver almost slipped out of Bonnie's grip.
"Kitt," She said slowly, "That's impossible."
There was a long, uncomfortable pause.
"I know." He said softly.
****
"In order for something to be born, something must break."
Michael tossed and turned in his bed, the sheet twisting around his legs as his dreams tormented him.
Lightning ripped through the sky lighting everything with an eerie blue glow. Thunder rolled in its wake, setting dogs to howling. Something was chasing him, through the night. Something dark, shadowed and unknown. It was calling to him, calling in a voice so sweet that he could barely resist… he felt so tired… it would be so easy to just give up, give in… lose himself…
No!
Lightning flashed again, thunder screaming in the air, deafeningly loud. He tried to run, but he found himself running into a wall of glass.
There was a… presence on the other side. An angel of light and kindness and purity, bright and beautiful and blindingly white, and it was waiting for him.
He looked behind him and saw the dark creature was still there, creeping upon him like a violent shadow, waiting to take him. He sobbed, knowing he was trapped, unable to reach his salvation through the glass wall.
Static grew in his mind, getting louder and louder, sounding like the combined voices of all those he had ever seen die… all his fault, he was a monster, a murderer…
He cried out in anguish, and the shadow's eyes glowed red with satisfaction, knowing there was no escape for its prey, now.
Then the Angel held out its hands, calling his name.
"Michael!"
The barriers broke.
And Michael screamed.
"Something must break…"
End.