Crashing
Pain. That's all Kalinka could comprehend. Just overwhelming, searing pain. Someone was holding her in arms made of metal, someone was crying her name over and over. Someone she knows. She opened her eyes and didn't recognize the robot holding her. She didn't understand why the yellow scarf he was wrapping around her was seeped with a dripping red. There were other robots on the ground, but she was being lifted up and away.
Ptolemy…?
But the robot she didn't know was picking her up and taking her—somewhere. Words were slipping from her grasp. They were leaving Ptolemy. She tried to protest, but all that came out was something hot and choking, spilling from her mouth.
"You're gonna be okay," the robot keeps telling her. She did know that voice. It was the boy—her boy. But why was he wearing armor? Why did he sound so scared?
Why was she so cold?
The boy kept talking to her, but she was fading in and out, the pain hazy, then sharp. Over and over.
"Don't leave me," he kept saying. "Please don't leave me."
I'm not, she wanted to say. I'm staying right here, I promise.
But she wasn't able to say anything at all.
There was darkness.
And pain. A lot of pain.
A thought, when she woke again—He's Proto Man, that's right—but it was soon gone.
Another thought, much later.
He shot me.
But that too vanished.
Bright lights and cries of alarm woke her again. The boy, still sounding scared.
"Help her," he said. "Please help her!"
Many hands grabbed her and —no, they were taking her away. She promised to stay. She promised to stay.
The boy's touch slipped away. The boy let her go.
The voices were fading, and she couldn't feel anything anymore. She thought she heard something—an electric snapping sound, the boy's scream, cut off—and then nothing.
Kalinka Cossack was gone.