Colin threw himself against the wall in a panic, his artificial heart pounding out of his chest. He grabbed at his head and shook back and forth without reason. He needed to get out of here, now! As he whipped around to hurry out the door, he slipped on the blood and face planted directly on the wet, sticky floor. He would have vomited if he had a stomach. The stench, how had he lived with it for so long before?!

He trembled and pleaded for himself to get up but his body wasn't listening. For the first time in his life, instead of his body moving without action from his brain, it was the other way around. He clenched his fist and felt that strange liquid fall out from his eyes. After three years of being in existence, he still didn't understand that aspect of himself. He looked at his gloved hand. There was a thick layer of the red child's blood soaking the palm of it. It seeped into his clothes and his hair and stained his pure white face, splattered against the glass on his glasses and his screen.

Colin glued his eyes shut and begged for it to all be over.

...

In the world of unconsciousness, what better to make of your time than to go over all the mistakes you made?

All this time, Colin realized, he'd been murdering people. That was a complete and undeniable fact. Either just because they got in his way, or he felt the impulse. You could argue he didn't know any better. Truthfully, he didn't, at the beginning. He was abandoned and unfinished, with no morality built in to him and no morality taught to him. He seemed almost incapable of understanding what was wrong.

At least, that would've been his excuse if he didn't start regretting it.

Why did he? By all means, he should NOT have been capable of further development. He should've gone through the rest of his life without being able to learn anything new about what he already knew. Why did he regret? Was this some cruel trick by the world? Just take some robotic child, make them kill people, and then make them realize they were a monster! Simple... perfect...

He wished he could go back to before he felt regret. Colin wished he was ignorant about morality. If he was, maybe he wouldn't be so conflicted. On one hand, he had the intense impulses, those desires to destroy brought on by unfinished programming and hate towards his own existence. On the other, that very same hatred of being a robot and desire to be alive led to that morality development.

Maybe, he thought once again, he would have been better off never being made.

That murder of the red haired kid, and the conclusion he finally believed during the song made something click. All the conflicts finally made sense. He could see inside himself now, the parasite that snipped the wires was gone. His memory would not stumble like it used to, and everything was clear as day, the fog having been removed. What he saw hiding under that fog was disgusting. What he saw inside himself was disgusting. And not just because he was made of wires and metal and processors.

He wished his creator never left.

Someone was calling his name...

...

Colin jolted awake to find himself lying on a couch in Roy's living room. The man himself was sitting across the room on a chair, sipping tea and reading the newspaper as casual as one could be.

Colin clenched his teeth and sputtered out, "I'm sorry! I- I'm so so sorry!"

Roy glanced over the edge of the paper with what one might claim was a confused look. "What for?"

"I'm sorry I murdered your son! What else for?!"

"Hmm." Roy folded the newspaper. "I specifically hired you because I thought you wouldn't apologize for something like that." The tone in his voice indicated that this was a scenario not worth fretting about, as if Colin was apologizing for spilling a drink.

His voice caught in his throat. Now that he seemed to fully unlock his morality (almost like an achievement in a video game, funnily enough) he was startled by how horrible Roy actually was. Did he WANT his kids dead?

Roy stood up and walked across the room towards Colin, towering over the little robot. He wasn't saying anything, just glaring and... breathing heavily. Like always.

"Where is he, if I may ask?" Colin asked inanely. Perhaps his, still a little warped, logic mandated that he apologize to the corpse too.

"I threw him out."

"..."

Roy pulled Colin to his feet, "But that's not important right now. Come with me, I have to pay you for your service."

Roy practically dragged Colin through the winding hallways of the house to a heavy metallic door, and shoved him inside, slamming it shut. Inside the room was almost pure darkness, with just a large light shining on yet another weird looking machine. This one was much larger, with three segments to it and a large, blank screen in the center. The checkered floor was covered with broken and sparking electrical wire. Perhaps this machine was not quite finished yet.

Colin edged cautiously towards the machine, "What is this?"

"It's something I've shown to all the other objects who've worked for me."

"There have been others?"

"Yes. You're the only one who's permanently killed someone though. Quite the achievement." Colin couldn't read Roy's voice at all. It was flat and emotionless.

"I don't intend on paying you though. I haven't paid any of them."

He felt a chill down his spine as Roy circled around the perimeter of the room. If given the opportunity, he was sprinting the hell out of there. He tried to walk parallel to Roy, keeping a decent distance as he stepped deeper inside the room.

"You've done your service well. But there's another thing I need done. Thankfully, you have no say in the matter. And you won't ever again."

Roy flicked a switch on the wall. "Goodbye."

Colin felt a surge of electricity shoot through his body and beat on his skull. The wires on the floor nearly quadrupled their output and sent energy coursing through and piercing his entire body! He let out a desperate and ear-piercing SHRIEK as he writhed in pain. The overload was damaging his body and cracking his skin; his face started to split open and his glasses shattered. Cracks spiderwebbed across his pure black, inky skin and the blood-ink inside of him was starting to steam up and boil. His body was totally uncontrollable in the way it spasmed and twisted and curled in on itself. Colin fell to the floor as the electricity continued to surge through him and crush all senses in his body. It felt like a string of thorns or barbed wire being pulled through ever part of his being and his head felt like it was being crushed by a hydraulic press.

Then it was over.

Roy flicked the switch off and stood over Colin's smoking, smoldering body. He let the smallest of smiles crack on his face as he waited for the life to drain out of Colin's red, wavering eyes.

Colin couldn't think of anything. His brain was too fried to think of anything. The circuits had been totally wrecked.

Actually, he did have one last spark of thought before shutting down.

'At least I got what I deserved...'

Colin's eyes stopped glowing, and his body fell still and quiet.