Notes: This is a 'missing scene' (and by 'missing', I mean it's not in the show) of the episode 'Man or Machine?'. Heavy spoilers, obviously.
I'm losing my mind.
I have to be, because that's the only explanation for what's been happening to me since I first came to this grim old castle: being nearly killed by a machine wearing my face, sent crashing by said machine wearing my face through the stone walls, and being spoken down to by someone (or something) that bore a disturbing resemblance to, but couldn't possibly have been Doctor Gilmore.
He did have me fooled at first. He had the Doctor's height and build, he even sounded like him, but Doctor Gilmore has never, even when he was the scientist and I was the experiment, ever spoken to me with such cold detachment in his voice before.
I don't know why I tried arguing with... whatever he was. There he stood, explaining very patiently that he had built that monstrosity to convince me that I was a weapon in sore need of improvement. He kept insisting it was time for me to accept that and stop clinging to the make-believe vestiges of my humanity. I realize now that it was a waste of breath, but what he was suggesting made me so angry that I insisted right back that I was still human.
And then... he was gone. Disappearing into the shadowy depths of Massel Castle, leaving me alone in the rubble. I'd like to think that my stubbornness finally drove him away, but I doubt it was that.
When 'Gilmore' had been looming over me, telling me that I was nothing but a machine, I was so furious at what he was suggesting that it had been easy for me to think otherwise. When I told him I was still human, I did it without any doubt in my mind. But now with no one here to keep me angry to the point of distraction, all these metal parts of mine are becoming difficult to ignore.
"I am still human," I mutter to myself, mostly to hear it out loud again. I can hear my voice echo off the walls.
You can keep telling yourself that, but it's not going to give you your hand back. Or your legs, or your shoulder, or any other part of your body that they replaced with some damn weapon.
This is much easier when I'm with the others. We've all been through the same thing, so despite our different backgrounds, we're able to understand each other. We worked together to escape from the Black Ghost, and eventually, became friends as well. We've fought and bickered and laughed together, and now we're close enough that sometimes they can almost make me forget that my body is now mostly metal.
I wish they were here now.
But as much as I'd like to continue pitying myself, I'm afraid I don't really have the time to right now. I don't need 003's enhanced hearing to know that that robot is still after me, and I'd rather not be around when it finally makes it way here. I need to... get up...
I can't.
Get up, I tell myself, struggling to rise to my hands and knees.
I still can't.
Get up, you lazy bastard! You're going to be killed! But all I can do now is lie there, unable to even crawl away.
All a machine can do once it's broken is lie there, waiting to be destroyed.
My biological parts are begging for me to stop, and my mechanical parts are dangerously close to shutting down completely. But it doesn't matter. I'm moving again.
A man, if he's willing, can get back up on his own feet.
I'm limping, running solely on willpower, and I'm still not entirely sure why or how any of this is happening, but I do know that I will make it out alive. I will leave this place, and I will see my friends again. Although part of me is wondering where the thought that finally got me to my feet came from.
I guess a person can surprise you sometimes.