Get off me!"
Wren awoke with a jerk and flung herself forward onto the orange carpet. A tangle of blankets and pillows fell to the floor where she had been. She looked up and saw Robbie looking down at her, fury in every line of his body.
"I found a name," she said, but he wasn't interested. He grabbed her arm and dragged her to her feet. Her plug was torn from its moorings, and she cried out in pain.
"You can't feel pain!" Robbie shouted, whirling her around until his fingernails dug into her shoulders. She looked up at him, terrified, and he saw the change in her eyes. A strangled cry rose from his throat and he shook her roughly. "You're a robot! You idiot girl, you're not even human!"
Wren's sensors ached from his shouting and roughness, and her processor was falling behind this influx of new information. Hidden away in her basic emotion software, something stirred. Robbie had put it in there on purpose, for those days when the brats aboveground got the better of him. He had wanted someone who he could torment in their stead: someone who could show him the fear and respect that was his due. But it was also a failsafe: an overarching program that would shut down other applications if she were overwhelmed.
And so Wren cried.
Robbie's grip on her quivered briefly when he saw the tears begin to roll down her face, but he didn't let her go. Instead he wrenched her close and leaned down to whisper to her.
"You spent three hours with that Sportakook last night," he growled in her ear. "Three hours. I could see you through the periscope, you traitorous brat! I told you to find a name, and you went and frolicked with my worst enemy!"
Wren had no response. He was clearly right, but his actions were too much for her to handle. She hung there, limp in his grip, and cried silently.
Robbie's hands shook with rage, and after a moment's hesitation, he grabbed her hair and pulled. She whimpered briefly, but stopped when she felt the left part of her head plate come away in his hand. Red and yellow lights blinked cheerfully at him from between mounds of rainbow wires.
He drew back and hit her with all his strength.
Stunned, Wren was thrown to the floor. He kneeled on top of her and continued his assault. "You were supposed to be /mine!" he shouted. "You were the only one in this whole town who was supposed to be mine, and he ruined you! You were mine! Mine! Mine!" He struck her with each exclamation, and she could only try to cover her face with her arms.
Eventually his voice gave out, and the beating continued in silence, the only sound coming from the painful staccato of fist on girl.
System reboot. Checking hardware...
Please.
Hardware damaged. Rerouting to backup systems...
Please stop.
Backup systems operational. Rebooting software...
You're hurting me.
Software damaged. Rerouting to backup systems...
I didn't mean to hurt you.
Emotion.exe corrupted. Delete Y/N?
No!
N
I thought you loved me.
File will be deactivated and quarantined.
I thought I loved--
Upper functions disabled pending repair.
Restarting in safe mode...
Robbie had returned to his chair by the time the girl jerked back to life. His hands were wrapped in bloody towels, and his face was drawn and pale. He only glanced at her when she looked his way, quickly looking away once more when her expressionless gray eyes met his.
She rose to her feet like a broken marionette. Her right arm hung limply at her side, and parts of her scalp had skittered away across the concrete floor, making her look like a demented mockery of a little girl.
Slowly, she retrieved her lost pieces and clipped them back into place as best she could with one hand. He realised that he'd broken her gyroscope: that was why she was moving with such hesitation.
It took her half an hour to find everything. He glanced at her several times at first, but every time he did, she stopped what she was doing and stared at him expectantly, waiting for a command. He stopped looking when he saw the smear of blood his fist had left on the side of her head.
Soon the sounds of her shuffling diminished. There was a brief silence, then a resounding clang as the heavy door to his workshop slammed shut.
Only then did he allow himself to cry.