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System reboot….Failure.

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System reboot….Failure

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System reboot….

Kara wake up! Kara!

"Alice!" Kara gasped awake.

But everything was blurry, slow, dulled. A persistent ringing clouded her audio sensors and her HUD was tinged red.

Running diagnosis….

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….

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….Thirium pump regulator: Low power

….Left optical unit: Damaged, in need of replacement.

…..Left shoulder mount: Severely damaged. Left arm module missing

…..Left leg mount: Severely damaged. Left leg module missing.

…..Audio input module: Damaged, in need of repair

…..Biocomponent #8067k: Severely damaged, in need of replacement

…..Biocomponent #1604e: Severely damaged, in need of replacement

…..Biocomponent #3983e: Damaged, in need of repair

…..

The diagnosis continued on with the final result being that every biocomponent either needed repair or replacement with the worst generally on her left side where the impact must have occurred.

Kara looked around with vision blurred by static.

A hellscape greeted her.

Hundreds of androids dead or dying, groaning, begging, crying, moaning, pleading. Hundreds of hands grasping to a sky which showered them with rain.

As if the heavens were crying for them, washing away the mud that sullied their bodies.

And further covering those that stayed on the ground, either the dead or those that wished to be.

Kara would not be one of them.

Priority action: repair/replace thirium pump regulator.

Crawling on a snail's pace she managed to reach a torso, just a single torso with no attached limbs. A scan over revealed that its thirium pump regulator was badly damaged.

The next one.

On she went, crawling through the mud, dirt and debris. Over the remains of the broken and forgotten.

I could have been like them, the first time Todd broke me.

But she hadn't been thrown into a scrapyard. She had been repaired.

Alice.

Maybe it was cheaper to repair than buy new, but Kara felt that Alice must have wanted her, HER, Alice's Kara. Not a copy but the boriginal.

Accessing[?] ….Restoring memory clip.

What?

A memory played out, a little girl holding her hand and taking her outside into a backyard.

Alice. A smiling, happy Alice.

The memory ended and Kara was back in hell.

For a moment Kara stood frozen but the flashing red on her HUD, warning her of her systsmes in need of repair, moved her to action.

Priority objective. Focus.

She moved onto the next corpse, a construction android whose right side looked like it had been crushed. Thankfully, some biocomponents were still intact. They were degraded but functioning better than some of hers.

The thirium pump regulator however was not one of them.

Still, she exchanged the parts she could and moved on.

A domestic android was next. It was smilar to the AX400 but more advanced, designed to be customisable by the owners to have their ideal servant.

It did not save it from being discarded it seemed.

Kara took what she could, adding a new arm and a leg, slowly piecing herself back together.

But for the thirium pump regulator, that still eluded her.

Have to find it. Running low on thirium.

She stumbled over the dead now instead of crawling over them. With increased range she ventured from the pile she had initially been thrown into, towards a different part of the scrap heap.

She ignored the agonized moaning of the doomed and damned. She had to look after herself, she had to get out.

She had to find Alice.

"Hey! Hey!"

Kara looked at the android calling towards her, stumbling her way over, analysing along the way.

"Hey, you can walk! Whoo that's great, and you've got arms as well! Fantastic!"

It was a cheery android. Literally, it wore a torn and mud covered cheer uniform. It's form was female, with a youthful 'skin' and a pretty face underneath a layer of wet mud with only a few strands of hair left on her head.

"Hi, im Amy, nice to meet ya!" The cheer-bot said as Kara settled over her.

This close, Kara could see Amy was missing an arm and both her legs, and that she was stuck in a pile of other dead androids.

"So, you see I'm in a bit of a pickle dont you? Well that's because my legs were broken by an accident, it's why I'm here, and my arm was taken by a rude customer!"

Amy's voice seemed permanently set on "peppy" setting despite how her pretty eyes conveyed her pain. She was aware, awakened.

Her LED spun red.

"So I was thinking, since you're all walking and touching, perhaps you can help me out? Teamwork is best-work as they say! Please?"

The water running under Amy's eyes wasn't just rain. She was desperate, begging. Her hardware could not convey it but Kara could still see.

Analysis complete: Thirium pump regulator functioning.

She had been paying very close attention, after all.

Slowly Kara put her hands on Amy's torso.

The cheer-bot smiled, extatic "Oh yes! Ive been asking for help for so long, nobody listened to me but I knew there had to be somebody who would list-hey, what are you doing?"

Kara hooked her fingers over Amy's stomach area, digging into the 'skin'.

"Hey now come on, you dont need to do that. Just lift me up! L-I-F-T!"

If anyone was listening, the way Amy's fear was spoken with such a peppy voice would have been disturbing.

Kara pushed on, doing her best to ignore Amy and breaking Amy's 'skin' to reveal the plastic beneath.

Amy began to struggle, and beg.

"Please! No! N-O, I dont want to go!" she cheered in fright.

"Im sorry" Kara said her first words to the struggling Android, ignoring the other android's eyes. "I'm really sorry. But Alice needs me"

Invading nails found gaps, fingers starting to pry Amy's stomach open.

"Please, Please No! Please, let me go!"

The compartment opened. Inside was the 'beating heart' of every android, the thirium pump. Amy's was pulsing a bright, inviting blue.

"You, you cant!"

Kara grasped at the biocomponent.

Amy freed her one arm to grab onto Kara.

"N-O! N-O! N-O! N-O! N-O!"

The deviant looked into the cheer-bot's eyes, eyes which were frozen in a state of terrified happiness. Kara hesitated at that terrible, desperate look.

Accessing [?] ….restoring memory. Playing memory clip.

There a flsh of white. She was back in Alice's room in Todd's house. theyw ere sta together looking at something on the ground.

"Ka-ra, see?" Small fingers pointed to her name spelled out on a piece of paper. "It means 'love'. I think It suits you" Alice smiled at her.

Kara blinked. The memory vanished.

Her fingers gripped Amy's 'heart'...

"NO-!"

"Im sorry"

...and pulled.

Kara stumbled back, falling onto the mud as Amy's grip slackened.

The cheer bot's final expression was a painful, agonized smile.

Kara turned away, clutching Amy's heart with shaking hands.

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