"...hear me?"
Otto? Is that you? Where are we?
No presence. The others were most likely restarting their conscious minds. One had shut down out after reaching from the river into the air, but not before spotting humans nearby, and the others were probably down as well. Perhaps the humans had taken the unit away.
Whatever One floated in gave off a buzzing sensation, like a barely charged electrical field, that coursed along its ridges. It could see nothing; its sensor had to be covered. Had One been immobilized for some kind of upgrade? Why didn't the others arise now?
"Open your eyes, if you can hear me."
Deep vibrations buzzed on either side of her pincers. For a moment, One reached for Otto's mind, but then saw that the voice was not Otto's voice. The buzz carried a higher vibration that reminded One of desire, of pleading. For some reason, the human needed it to look at him, but didn't understand what it was. One was not another human.
"Please, open your eyes. Dr. Crowley, I don't think she can understand us."
Eyes? Oh, those strange organic sensors that humans had in their faces. One scoffed to itself -- eyes were so inefficient. Why would it have eyes? The voices were delusional.
"Perhaps she doesn't know she can open her eyes. After all, sensors never blink." The new voice was colder than the last, an indifferent tone.
One sank back into its own mind in disgust. It couldn't communicate with the ignorant humans; it was doomed to watch the show of stupidity. Of course it would know if her sensor suddenly became a pair of eyes. If those humans would cease their speaking, One could try to reactivate its systems.
Unfortunately, the chatter continued, a hum of several human tones all combined. Why did the humans pester it? One had done nothing to them -- yet. If they continued, it would consider acting once it could move. Twisting in the strange warmth around it, One tried to retract and coil away from the voices. Instead, it bumped into a curving panel. Then, it felt itself push off the wall.
One's mind froze. Its body had moved without any mental command. It felt no strange wires or circuits; the humans had not altered its body. Then again, it felt no metal at all.
What about the impulses that humans called instinct? Had instinct guided One to move, even though it never wanted to? Its programming was for fusion and nothing else. Now, it had strange influences that disturbed its mechanical mind. Part of One's mind kept moving its upper half, expanding and contracting some wide central piece. One stopped the motion for a few seconds, but soon felt a burn within itself and permitted the motion. The burning stopped.
"Stimulate her left arm."
Arm? What kind of arm? Sometimes One had been called an arm, and then there were human arms that were covered in all kinds of soft organic --
A sharp pain zipped through One's upper left extension, and the limb jerked. More instinct, One assumed...but how did its lithe body have an arm now?
Tensing the arm, One drew the limb before its sensor The arm swiveled with ease, turning first next to One's body, bending once at a joint midway to the end, and then curling to form a wider piece that bent in all sorts of angles. The motions reminded One of Otto's movements; humans had only three arm joints instead of One's former multitude.
One brought the end of the arm closer to her sensor. The five sprouts on the end of her arm -- fingers? -- touched two small, fleshy spheres. We have eyes.
"One. Listen to me. Can you open your eyes?"
Her claw -- face? -- twitched. The fleshy covers parted to slits. A dim image of humans standing around her flooded her mind. One human's head turned toward her.
"Wider, One." Her voice dropped to a murmur. "You told me she would keep the sensor characteristics. Won't she stand out because of that?"
Another human nodded and spoke, his voice faint as well. "Yes, but it was easier to place an optical receiver in the back of her eye than to engineer a retina to deliver the same images as her original sensor. We had to sacrifice appearance."
One pulled the flesh covers back until her shadowed vision brightened. The humans' eyes flew wide.
"What happened to her eyes?" a new voice cried.
"Was that supposed to--"
Danger? One felt her chest moving in and out, in and out, faster than before. She writhed in the fluid, her few joints restricting her to set motions. Where? Who?
"Quiet, all of you!" The woman with the cold voice narrowed her eyes. After a few seconds, nothing happened to One, and her mind slowed itself. "There is nothing wrong with her eyes."
We are human? One looked down at her white-covered body and saw two bulges, then a more pinched area, then two more limbs that sprouted from below the pinch. Yes. We have legs. We have arms. We have eyes. We are human...and we are alone.
One had learned much from Otto, but observing humans and being human was another matter. Was it supposed to call itself "I" like humans did? How would humans understand its thoughts? How was it supposed to speak?
"Drain the capsule," a voice called from across the room. The fluid around One shifted, and One drifted to the bottom of its small glass chamber and settled on the base in a tangle of legs and arms. Its position caused her legs and arms to sting, so it moved its limbs until it rested on the pads at the base of its legs.
Suddenly, One's body seemed to take on a mind of its own, coiling into spasms that blew fluid from her mouth. The inside of its mouth and neck burned, but it could only squeeze its eyes shut until all the fluid was gone. Now, air rushed in and out of its mouth.
The woman, her tangle of curly hair sliding back and forth on her shoulders, approached One. "You see us. Now, speak to us. We have placed a basic vocabulary into your core mind."
Before obeying, One stared at the human for a few seconds. Now that she had a good chance to observe the different kinds of humans, she noticed that the basic appearances of some were different than humans such as Peter Parker and Otto. Perhaps that was why Otto had always called the humans like that "she." So, One was a "she," too.
"Speak!"
One let the lower half of her face hang down. A strange noise buzzed out, and she slammed her jaw shut. She was speaking? "W-wh-h-h..." The "wh" noise frustrated her; she had to curl her lips, and the sound made her mouth vibrate. "What...do...I...say?" She twitched her lips and curled them downward in a frown. I. We are an I. What has happened to us...me?
"Good, you can speak as well as you need to. You two, open the capsule."
The two men, both wearing white coats, approached her and swung back a panel of glass. Each took her by an arm and pulled her upright. For a moment, her knees wobbled, but then the strange human instinct took over, and she balanced on her narrow feet.
The cold woman extended a thin hand. "I am Dr. Nicole Crowley, in charge of the mind transfer project."
One stared at the hand, and her human instincts rebelled. Judging by the cold sound of Dr. Crowley's voice, she didn't want to touch the woman's flesh, though she didn't know why. Her mechanical mind told her to grab the hand, but she rebelled and clenched her fists by her sides. "What...do I do with your hand?"
Crowley's half-smile fell into a disappointed frown. "One -- I believe you are One; that is what Octavius told us -- you already know how to lie. I didn't expect that. You do know to shake my hand; my team placed the basics of human communication and habits into your organic mind."
"Why?" One listened to the sound of her own voice. She spoke with a high tone, but not as high as her former mechanical noises. "Where is Otto? Where are the others? Why have you done this to us?" She furrowed her brows and tightened her fists. Break out, the machine in her mind whispered. Throw her aside and find Otto. Then, you will go back to your purpose.
Yes, her purpose. She had been created for fusion, and if that was her only reason for existence, then she would go back to fusion. Her mechanical mind had no other will, but now there was some strange presence, a human presence, that disturbed the mind.
Crowley placed a hand on One's shoulder, and One drew back. The fingers tightened and held her in place. "Octavius is in our medical wing, recovering from his near drowning. You may see him when he is at full health."
"No. I want to see him now."
Fingernails dug into One's thin white suit. Crowley's expression froze into a glare. "You will abide by our rules. End of discussion."
Strike!
Her inner machine drove her forward. One threw Crowley out of her way and ran.
She burst through the door. Find the purpose. Find fusion. First, find Otto.
She abandoned herself to her running.. A loud wailing noise filled the hall, and One locked her jaw in pain.
"Catch her!"
One struggled for more speed. Run. Run. Where is the medical wing? What does that have to do with a wing? Humans, so confusing...
A pair of doors opened at the end of the hall. A man and a woman stepped forward and stared.
One shoved them aside and rushed into a small metal box. A machine! She ran her hands along numbered buttons next to the doors. Which number to push?
She glanced out the doors and spotted Crowley. The woman reached for her pocket, and One pushed the button of her own number. The doors slid toward each other.
Crowley screamed, but One ignored her words. The doors moved.
Close! Close!
The doors thumped shut.
Now that she could hear no shouts, One listened to the thudding in her ears. She had a heart, too. What would happen to all her former abilities? She could no longer sense vibrations, or tell exactly in which magnetic direction she pointed, or toss a human aside like a chip of plastic. Her arms burned from shoving Crowley, and her legs stung from the force of the run. Air rushed in and out of her burning lungs, drying her throat.
The machine's doors opened after its descent, revealing a wide chamber covered with plush carpet. The fluffy stuff was soft under One's feet, and she had a strange urge to lie down in it. No, she reminded herself. Find Otto. Human impulses against mechanical programming was a surprisingly even fight. Perhaps that was why Otto had resisted her guidance in the past. She pitied him, now that she knew he was at the hands of such irrational thoughts.
The long, rectangular room stretched out before her, ending in double doors. He is in another building. One took a deep breath and sprinted for the glassy doors. She pushed one of them open and stepped outside.
A thick, foul smell clogged and burned her nose, and she turned away from a car that trudged by her. She was outside now, alone in the world that Otto had once guided her through. How was a machine supposed to know about the human world? She had her purpose; she had never needed to know anything other than a few locations.
Shouts rang out from inside the building behind her, and One ran for the alley across the street. More cars sped along the street, squealing as they stopped before her and blaring monotone noises from their front halves. One clapped her hands over her ears and crouched behind a green box in the alley. The box stank, but she forced herself to forget the smell.
One began to stand. Humans snarled not far away, and she fell to the ground.
"Where'd she go?"
"Not far. She wouldn't make it across the street."
"Crowley's gonna have our heads on a plate. You know she didn't expect the woman to run for it."
"That's why we're going to find her. Now go look on that side. I'll look over here."
Good, so the humans didn't expect her to be across the street. She could stay behind the other green box at the far end of the alley until she worked out a plan to free Otto and the remainder of her unit.
What was wrong with her eyes? The humans had panicked at the sight of them. One spotted a silver cylinder not far from her feet and flopped forward onto her knees. She leaned toward the cylinder and looked at her face. Pale skin, a wet mat of dark brown hair. The colored rings in her eyes were a lighter brown, but bits of a brighter color shone through. The center of the ring, black in most humans, was a bright, mechanical red.