Evidence File #13 for Case 3419
October 20th
Naigus was mostly concerned over nerve damage. I'd taken worse. My leg cauterized itself immediately from the holo-fence. It could have been worse.
I'm more concerned about the cyborg. He was in such bad shape.
That pleading. . .it was unearthly. I don't know what he was pleading for. It felt so pained.
Every time I breathe, I think my chest is trying to tell me it hates me. The painkillers help, a little, though I've been hobbling around more often than not.
Giriko is going to be a pain to deal with. I don't think I have it in me to bite down and keep silent for much longer.
Sometimes, I want to throw him through a wall.
Most of the time.
Mostly when he talks to me.
Or anyone else.
Marie couldn't take any days off from work. Her leg was still injured, and it hurt so badly when she walked that it felt as though she had fire licking at her skin with every movement, but if she requested a sick day so close to a run, they'd absolutely knew it was her. Or they would suspect her and she was a shit liar.
The news reported nothing of a blonde. The only people that had seen her face were, she assumed, the two dead guards who had been found under a pile of rubbish so heavy, it took a truck to take them out from under it.
Unrecognizable, the programs said. Mangled, brutalized.
Security would be even higher, but Marie knew she wouldn't be going for another run for a while, which meant they had to go on what they had on them for any repairs, and considering she'd personally shoved a new patient to the top of their list, that meant that they were going to be out of commission for a little while while Spirit worked his way through stripping the small parts she'd managed to drag back.
Nonetheless, Giriko had bitched about it for days at the lab, and Marie kept her head down, nodding occasionally while she worked through the synthesized serotonin samples.
"Fucking Vultures, goddamn shithead idiots-" and more of the same.
She'd learned to tune him out, most of the time, only working silently as his unwilling assistant on the Synthempathy project. It was only when Arachne would show up, her crisp, low voice asking how it was coming along that Giriko would revert to something that even resembled eloquent.
He was closer to the level of a drunk man trying to explain quantum physics, but at least he wasn't raving, and it was in those moments that Marie could actually find some semblance of information to report back.
But there was nothing. No reports she could give when she hobbled her way to Azusa's small abode after work, taking the cramped bus that led her through the winding streets of what had been nicknamed Death City, what with their cyborg toll count.
She supposed it was a good reason that she wasn't visiting Azusa for pleasantries, or for an information session, either.
It took three days for her to finally find a slot when she could check on the cyborg, and she was so nervous, she felt like her stomach was going to eat itself when she gave Azusa a call on her outdated device, having gotten off three bus stops before her home so as not to draw any unwanted attention.
Everyone was taking note of where everyone else was going, and Marie made sure to cut through the bakery Killik worked at, being ushered around silently in the empty shop so that anyone who had spotted her would simply assume she'd gone in for a cake.
Azusa already had her door open when Marie got to her home, and she was brought inside with a definitive click of the barrier shutting behind her.
"Is he-"
Azusa only sighed. "Hello, Marie."
Marie had the decency to blush slightly in embarrassment as she followed Azusa to her humble kitchen-area as Azusa grabbed up a mug and handed it to her, taking note of the dark circles under Marie's eyes. She'd been so worried the night Marie'd brought the cyborg in that she interrogated Sid for nearly half an hour as she worked over the cyborg, her sharp glare poking holes in Sid's very soul as she asked him for every detail.
It seemed Sid was right. Marie was a little singed, a lot bruised, but she wasn't The Pulverizer for nothing. She would be fine. Azusa sighed, sipping at her drink as she watched Marie fidget, and after the blonde opened her mouth once more, Azusa cut her off.
"Something was removed in his coding," she informed, taking a deep drink of the sludge that was meant to pass as coffee. Azusa knew that Marie wasn't there for pleasantries, so it was best to cut right to the information that she was actually interested in.
Marie seemed to freeze. "What? Azusa, what? Removed?" Marie asked, her throat constricting as she stepped forward. "But that means he's. . . physically alright?"
"For the most part. His parts are functional."
"But his coding?"
"Lacking."
"But how. . .?"
"I don't know. But it's a lot."
"Located where?" Marie asked, her entire body steeling once more for the bad news. Azusa toyed with her mug and Marie set her own to the side, looking at her best friend in concern. "Where?"
"In the hippocampic region."
Marie bit at her lip at that, her golden eye widening. "But that would mean he'd be-"
"Emotionless. Yeah, that'll do it."
Marie winced. Ever since the law passed that all automatons with emotional capabilities were exempt from human experimentation, she'd seen more than a few cyborgs that were built without them, in order to bypass the strides made in cyborg rights. But to remove them? It was cruel on a level Marie couldn't even stomach.
"Is he okay, at least?"
Azusa shrugged, fiddling with her mug and looking at Marie deeply. "Dependant on definition."
"Can I see him?" she requested, a worried tone seeped in her voice, and Azusa looked over her face before she nodded, making her way past her close friend and stepping to one of her work rooms, her crisp shoes clacking over no-nonsense hardwood floors.
When Marie came to the doorway and took the sight of the man in, it was jarring. He looked. . . better than before, certainly. The harsh infection that had been bright red and stinging over his face when she'd first found him had been covered up with some synthetic skin, easy to peel aside in order to get to his hardware underneath, and he was outfitted with new parts. When she'd first found him, she could make out where metal met bone with how torn aside his flesh was, but the new snytheskin was so close to the texture of regular, the seam would be absolutely unnoticeable. Only the stitches that Naigus must have administered gave away the fact that he had to be pieced back together.
He was clean, finally, having been scrubbed of the grit and grime of a dump site.
He was a handsome man. She didn't expect that when she'd first found him, wearing only tatters of a face. But he was, and from her spot at the door, she could almost convince herself that he was just a regular man, asleep. Yet, when she blinked, the image of him so wounded flared back at her and she felt a fierce protection churn inside of her.
She would never let that happen again. Not to him. Not to anyone.
"Any idea on how the coding was removed?" Marie asked, glancing over how his body was sprawled out, wearing nothing but a pair of oversized sweatpants Azusa must have gotten from Spirit or Sid, and hooked up to the many old, repurposed machines Marie knew she found in bits and pieces.
Azusa was a master at putting things together, though the details of stripping them of serial and model numbers, the grit work, was all on Spirit's shoulders. The bespectacled woman sighed, removing her glasses to wipe off the ever-present dust the whirring of the outdated models kicked up with their fans.
"As much as it pains me to say it: no. We'll have to call in Spirit. This is more his business," Azusa informed, handing Marie her empty coffee cup so that she didn't have to hold onto it when she plopped down in front of her computer, typing in various things in order to safely unhook the lifeless mechanoid. Marie tucked a lock of hair behind her ear, setting the mug on the floor. When she stepped forward to start unplugging him, her fingers lingered moments too long on his skin, and the compassion that welled up in her, the yearning to just hold him and make him okay again was near-overwhelming. Instead, she only pulled the wires away, closing the ports and smoothing her hands over his flesh. She took great care to avoid the mug on the floor as she looped the wires away, winding them around her fingers carefully before she made her way back to the cyborg.
Azusa watched her friend from the corner of her eye. No doubt, the man looked far different
from when Marie last saw him: no longer corroded and burned at the edges, no longer a man made of pieces. Having looked him over, she'd realized almost instantly that, even if someone else, someone with more monetary goals, were to find him first, they'd be out of luck. If they stripped him for parts, they'd barely find much of anything.
And, on top of it all, he was entirely unresponsive, only eating up all the energy the makeshift generators were producing.
Azusa was bitter about having to give up most of her surplus, especially on a cyborg that might not even function. There were a million existing, needy people they had to help first. She still had to find a day that Naigus could come in so she could check him more thoroughly for necrotic tissue, radiation poisoning, anything dealing with the medical.
There were cyborgs who had to wait months to get an appointment with them, because their waitlist was just so long and supplies were so scarce: it amazed and baffled her that someone could cut in line just because Marie happened to stumble upon them. To call her so short notice wasn't fair, nor was it something they'd done before.
But Azusa knew Marie, and so did Naigus: the blonde woman would do anything for someone in need, especially if they had more need than others. And the man was clearly in need, more so than anyone else she could think of on their lists. She couldn't think of anyone she'd seen in the past four years that they'd found in worse shape.
Well, she could. But none that were alive.
Moreover, she couldn't deny that it was a very strange thing for there to be a cyborg with their emotions removed. Violently, it seemed, or at least, traumatically, if the coding had anything to say about it. After the hole, the lines were spaced farther apart, numbers looping furiously before slowly winding down back to what was commonplace. Were she examining something organic, she knew it would be pulsing and red, angry.
She'd have to tell Marie, but she was trying to hold off on the details of just how bad it must have been for the man. If the blonde knew how mistreated he must have been, she'd be adamant about helping him, which could simply prove impossible. Additionally, finding whoever did that would be a miracle: if they were strong enough to go in and demolish that much coding, there was no way they left a trace of who they were or where to find them.
There was no calling card to speak of, and she'd never seen something so. . . cruel inflicted on a cyborg before. Physical wounds were commonplace, from fights and brawls and abusive owners, but those things could be patched up and healed and repaired.
It was when it took place in the coding, when it was so traumatic and violent that it left a sore, gaping hole, that was the most heart-clenching.
There was no telling how damaged, he truly was. With that much coding missing, he likely wouldn't even wake up.
Azusa would tell Marie it was hopeless, but on the off-chance they could make progress, she knew that emotional removal was close to emotion synthesizing. And if they could prove that much, that those lines were arbitrary and easily changed, then they could make the case that it was equally as wrong to experiment on cyborgs of any emotional level. They could finally make more strides on banning the experimentation, making a case for a blanket-law of protection.
Azusa heard from Marie that Baba Yaga were in a standstill trying to create synthetic emotions in Giriko's lab. A good thing, since everyone involved knew if they actually did succeed, it would lead to nothing but sorrow. There would be no way that Arachne would let it slip into the public, and even if it did, she could somehow convince people that synthemotions were less valuable than true, and that could spell disaster for everyone in their resistance group, dubbed, ever so eloquently by Spirit, the Experiment Annihilation Team. Or E.A.T, for short.
Azusa finished saving all of the copied files, knowing how to do so by muscle memory. Her back was ramrod straight from stress, from thinking, parallel with her chair while she stroked over the keys.
Before she got too far ahead of herself, they had to get in contact with Spirit. She wanted to roll her eyes. He would know what to do. The man was an idiot on the best of days, in her opinion, but he could do detail work, investigation work such as what was needed in that moment better than anyone else she knew. He just understood how to read into things that other people wouldn't know how to. And once, if, he figured out how the coding was destroyed, then Marie would be able analyze his findings under the scope of the synthetic empathy research she did in Giriko's lab. Maybe something could spark from there. Azusa sighed, feeling the need to clean speckles off of her glasses once more, but refrained.
She just wanted their investment to pan out.
"You can leave him on the table," Azusa called back, shutting down the machines and welcoming the whir that indicated that they were slowing to a stop. She turned around, her side twisting so she could look at Marie.
In the moment that Azusa's gaze settled, she noticed how her best friend whipped her hand close to her chest, as though she'd been caught doing something. Like a child with a hand in the cookie-jar, or something equally as silly. Marie was a grown woman, she could do as she pleased, so for her to look so guilty was more ludicrous than anything else.
But then Azusa raised a slim brow, realizing that the blonde's palm had probably been on the man, smoothing his hair from his face, patting his shoulder. Comfort tactics.
Good God, she had latched onto him that quickly? It didn't matter how many times the woman got burned, she simply refused to let her kindness be guarded.
"He isn't a puppy, Marie," Azusa told her sharply, more concerned over her friend's well-being than upset at anything.
Marie winced, looking down. "I know," she said. She had a nasty habit of getting too attached, too invested, and then when things didn't pan out how they should, she got moody. Reckless. It was why Azusa couldn't tell her just how terrible what destroyed his emotions must have been. If she knew that, if she made it personal and latched onto him even more, she'd be a whirlwind of hellfire and when she did that, she was downright careless.
They couldn't afford that. Not after everyone was on red-alert after the stunt she pulled to get the cyborg out of the dump site.
And what a curious thing that was, that he was there to start with. Usually, whole cyborg bodies, especially emotionless ones, would be shipped back to Baba Yaga so they could repurpose them for parts.
So, it wasn't Baba Yaga. That much was for sure.
Especially considering that worm best known as Mosquito was so livid when he found out about how two of his guards had died on the job. Four other Vultures had been found and arrested, Marie having been the only one who escaped, but Mosquito was still absolutely furious that the situation had to happen in the first place. It was always better to keep the public in the dark, making sure that they believed Baba Yaga had everything under control.
A company as a government. Azusa scoffed. Who in the world would ever think that was a good idea? But with faith in Baba Yaga shaken, there were new outcries for stronger fences, for more pay for the guards, for better guns, for more surveillance cameras. There was already an unspoken rule that Vultures would be killed on site, but with the public crying for blood, Mosquito had to act fast in order to twist it all into an act of terrorism that Baba Yaga was doing everything to prevent happening again.
As if the rebel groups needed any worse of a title.
Regardless, Azusa wasn't going to be comfortable sending Marie out on another expedition for a long time, least of all when she was finally healed. After having Kami taken from them for less, Azusa wanted to hold her friends as close to her as she possibly could.
They had a mission, a duty, yes, but they also had a responsibility for one another. Yet, she couldn't deny the fact that they had depleted nearly their entire inventory on the cyborg, repairing him as best they could, and their parts collection was so lacking, Azusa didn't think they'd be able to help anyone considering the circumstances. Moreover, the cyborg was really leaching the energy out of her generators, and if she ran out of fuel, they'd all be screwed.
There was no time for being tentative. None at all.
She knew Justin would insist that, as soon as Marie could run properly, she go back out there. She knew that Spirit, though reluctant, would see how bad their stock was, and realize that they desperately needed to bulk up. They could buy off the black market, where they usually got Tsubaki's parts, but their funds were pitifully low. Azusa barely had enough to pay rent as it was, same with Marie.
They could never ask Spirit, who was the only one who had more mouths to feed than just one. And speaking of him, they needed to get him on the job immediately. The small treasure-trove of parts Marie had managed to bring back along with the cyborg was desperately in need of being repurposed, and they would make up the bulk of their inventory for the time being.
Azusa shook her head. "Could you call Spirit?" she asked, blinking drowsily.
"Does he know the situation with the parts?" Marie responded. She knew that, since he was in such poor shape, they must have stripped their entire collection clean, and she was already reaching for the button on her earpiece, announcing 'Spirit' to the mechanized voice that put her call through.
"No," Azusa replied, having been too concerned with trying to keep the cyborg alive than in cataloguing parts at the time, deciding to hold off on telling Spirit.
Marie's smile was a thin, delicate wisp, more a forced twitch than anything else. "Still mad at him for pinching your ass?"
Azusa simply blinked at her, blankly, and turned back around to face her dark screens. "Yes. But I assumed you'd want to tell him yourself that it's because of you that we lost our entire inventory."
Marie cringed, her fist curling, tempted to throw a punch but she swallowed the urge, her gaze softening when she looked down at the unresponsive cyborg on the table. She glanced at Azusa, making sure the woman had her back to her before she allowed her fingertips to ghost over the exposed seam on his face again. She frowned, listening to the dial tone, waiting for Spirit to accept the call.
Removed.
She couldn't stand it. The thought made her very blood boil.
Evidence File #15 for Case 3419
October 24th
Giriko was laughing during the newest attempts at the Empathy Project. He's getting fed up with administering usual doses of emotional chemicals, and tried to overdose a cyborg, today.
Her name was Evie.
I don't want to remember.
It turned out that Spirit couldn't come in for another few days since he was tied up at the police force, hiding and forging various documents to cover their tracks. Some of his coworkers were catching on a bit, but they trusted him enough to disregard any feelings of suspicion.
It was Spirit's tip-off that had Marie go straight to Azusa's place instead of coming to her home after work, since the police were going to be patrolling the streets once again. And since the two of them were there together, they were stuck poring over the coding. Frustrated. As per usual. At the very least, Mira finally called in and told them she'd be available that day, though it couldn't be for very long. As a policewoman, she could slide through undetected regardless of the beefed up patrol. Yet, she wouldn't be able to stay, not for much longer than twenty minutes or so, considering Sid was still at the station on the other side of town, and she had to meet up with him as soon as he got off work to talk about another patient and seeing what they could do about filing a case for the aggressive assault they were subjected to.
So, Azusa was polishing another part needlessly, looking down at the man, waiting for Mira's call. She'd taken him apart once again only to put him together, cleaned him of rust, replaced what had to be replaced. But there was something so strange about him that she just couldn't put her finger on.
"When is Mira coming over?" Marie asked, pouting as she went over the black hole of obliterated coding on Azusa's computer. Again.
Azusa shrugged, though Marie couldn't see that. "Half an hour, maybe. She hasn't called yet. It might be earlier." She looked down at the part in her hands, a piece of the port on his shoulder. It would have gone into a man called Tezca, had Marie not found the cyborg currently unresponsive on the table.
Unresponsive. Nothing about that made sense to her. He didn't have a speck of dust obstructing his wiring, all the parts were usable. In theory, they should have been able to plug him in and awaken him already. The fact that they could access his coding while dormant meant that he didn't self-destruct: he wasn't dead.
But he wouldn't wake up. It was beyond infuriating. When he first came in, she understood. He needed to recharge, she assumed. But even after draining half of a generator tank like a leech, he was still out cold. The gap in his coding would only make him emotionless, not useless. Marie worked with emotionless cyborgs day in and day out: there was no reason for him to play Sleeping Beauty.
With the way Marie kept looking at him, Azusa was tempted to ask if a kiss would rouse him. She'd certainly run out of any other options.
Azusa was deep in thought, but she didn't jump when her earpiece, that she'd left next to the archaic mouse on her desk, started to buzz and chirp. Marie, however, let out a small squeak and almost knocked the thing over when she whirled. Azusa jumped forward, snatching the device off of the desk before Marie could cause any further damage and checked who it was.
She let out a relieved sigh, connecting the call.
"Mira?" Azusa asked, her voice coming out tinny.
"I'm rounding the corner."
"Okay," Azusa replied, making her way out of the small control room of her house, hidden all the way in the back, so she could make her way to the door, opening it just as the other woman showed up. Naigus brought her finger up to her ear, disconnecting them, her eyes serious behind her zipped up collar, her ears trained for any sound of her coworkers, who were going to be making another round down the block any moment.
Azusa moved to the side, quickly letting the other woman through, sparing only two quick glances around to make sure no one was paying attention to them. She thanked the fact that the area she lived in was particularly abandoned, and closed her door, double locking it. Naigus already made her way to the room she was most familiar with, so Azusa found her way back alone, coming in to listen to Marie's offended scoff. Azusa raised a brow.
"He did not fight a chainsaw, Mira."
"He looks it," Naigus responded, tugging her jacket down so the cloth was under her chin and Marie could see the slight smirk pulling at her face, which went away as soon as she stepped closer to the man. "What's the problem with him?" she asked, knowing she'd looked him over just a week or two ago, having given Azusa medicine for his infections and any surface issues she'd managed to treat in the short time she'd gotten at Blair's Pub.
"We don't know," Azusa answered, coming to stand next to her. "His programming is intact, but he's unresponsive."
Marie looked over at Azusa when she said the word "intact", since it wasn't, but she knew what she meant. Nothing that was crucial to his functioning was compromised. She stood up, leaving to room to get Mira's bag of medical supplies so the woman could examine him.
Azusa came over, scooping up the part that she was polishing and gently setting it back where it should be, securing it and leading the wire to a different machine so she could monitor him.
As soon as that was done, Mira made a small sound in the back of her throat, leaning over and seeing what she could figure out without the use of tools. Her fingers found his mechanized pulse, steady. When she lifted his eyelids, everything seemed normal. Save for the seams, he was entirely whole, nothing missing, no chunks. She looked at where his flesh met metal, finding no signs of irritation.
Marie came back into the room with the bag in her hands that she set down next to the cyborg with a startling thump. Azusa would never get over just how strong her friend was, but that was a thought for a different day. She was too busy taking note of the look of concern that washed over Marie's face while Mira unzipped the pack, rummaging around, the expression not letting up even when Marie had to go back to her seat at Azusa's desk. Azusa double checked his wires, making sure he was plugged in properly and receiving adequate energy levels.
There wasn't much else they could do. If it wasn't a matter of coding or parts, it had to be physical. And if there was anyone who could diagnose and fix a physical ailment, it was Naigus.
Which was why they were amazed when, thirty minutes later, the dreadlocked woman pulled away from her examination and announced that there was nothing bodily wrong with him.
"What?" Marie asked, dropping the hem of her shirt that she was previously playing with. "Then why won't he wake up?"
"It's probably a neurological issue," Naigus told her, putting her things away.
"Well, what does that mean?" Marie pressed, standing up. Azusa's gaze cut over to her, already aware of her agitation. "He was fine at the pub! You wouldn't let Sid bring him here if you didn't think so."
Mira looked at Marie, her expression and tone even. "I could only check for a pulse then. His body is alive, but he's likely experienced brain death. His coding could easily direct his heart pump and lungs to keep working but nothing is going on upstairs."
Marie made a frustrated sound. "Wha-"
Azusa pushed off from the wall, her voice no-nonsense. She'd mourn her sucked-dry generator tank later, but at least it meant that the parts she'd invested in the cyborg could go toward others who required their help. "Marie. If he's braindea-"
"He isn't!" Marie cried out, whirling around so fast her long skirt almost tangled around her ankles. "He flickered when I found him! He told me to help him. He was pleading."
"It might have been a malfunct-"
"It wasn't-!"
"Azusa is right, Marie. The bolt through his skull could have-"
"No!" Marie argued, turning back around, her eyes finding the steel that protruded from his head. "No, it can't have! He wouldn't have talked-!"
"He could have. He still has coding and his body is alive even if his brain isn't. It's possible it was prerecorded," Azusa said, finally getting a word edgewise.
Naigus nodded. "Besides, why else would he have something like that through his skull?"
Marie's fist clenched, her teeth gritting down while her eye zoomed onto the steel visible around his hair. She took in a deep breath, blinking a few times while she acknowledged how true her friends were. They were right. That would explain why his calling was nothing more than a loop, the same tone, the same rasp, the same hitch in her ear when she carried him out. And, at the time, she'd been so busy trying to get them out of that potential graveyard that she hadn't taken notice of the bolt.
Why else would someone have a bolt in their head if not a means to kill them? She shuddered, nothing but fury in her bones for whoever would do that to someone. He'd sounded so broken when she found him, too. To jab a bolt through his brain: how heartless could someone be? And they were right. She knew that. Why else would he have it through his head?
But there was no blood. She remembered that much in clarity, since she'd been so focused on his face. Everything was clotted on his face, but his hair had been clean.
He was in such a bad state of disarray when she found him, but she'd seen many a cyborg in her day and not one who had that particular feature. She'd focused on it so heavily. And Mira didn't know that he'd had his emotional coding ripped from him, the trauma so heavy. She didn't know that whoever dumped him wouldn't have bothered to clean him of any blood.
The bolt. . . the bolt.
Marie stopped. Her eyebrows went up, mouth scrunching. "Why else?. . . a bolt. . . a screw," she whispered, suddenly jumping forward. A screw. He was part machine: could it be so simple for him to just have a screw loose?
Naigus leapt back when Marie raced past her, situating herself at the front of the table and moving the bag down onto the floor to better maneuver. Her fingers found their way into the gray mop, specifically feeling around the base of the steel.
"Marie!" Mira called, inhaling sharply when some of her supplies scattered over the floor. Azusa blinked, astonished when Marie let out a triumphant noise.
When her hand twisted the bolt, the wet, gurgle it gave off didn't prove promising. Marie felt some of the cerebrospinal fluid leak over her fingers, but she gave another rotation of her wrist, hope showing on her face.
Azusa stepped forward, but even she stopped when she caught sight of what was taking place on the computer screens.
The code stuttered, going entirely blank. There was nothing but a plain black screen showing.
But it wasn't the blue error screen that would flash at her if he was dead. No. He was simply empty.
Empty, that is, until Marie gave one more yank, making a grand total of three rotations of the bolt, and the coding began to rewrite itself. Immediately. Just filling up the screen and going on and on. It came to a furious halt when it reached the gap, twisting and blinking, before pressing on, leaving a sad, sore gape.
Mira gasped, her eyes on something else entirely.
Namely, the olive orbs of the cyborg. Open.
Alert and trained on the woman curled over him for a second time, her fingernails soothing his scalp, her smile radiant and glowing.
The lights above her bounced off of her golden hair, forming something of a strange halo, blurry since he didn't have vision correction working properly, not yet. And for a single moment, he could only see the sharp, cold eyes of the woman he'd last been in the clutches of, before he was shut down, before his system crashed. With a single blink, he was brought back. This woman was too different: too warm, too gentle as she caressed his hair.
She opened her mouth, voice lilting out. "Thank God," she said. "Thank God."
And his face remained blank. Lips cracking open then closed.
He couldn't find a single thing to say.
He found he didn't have a desire to do or say anything, actually.
So he brought his hand up, uncaring of how his massive palm entirely engulfed her own, onto his screw and twisted once more, finding some clarity. His face was smooth, expressionless.
His eyes remained focused up, at the golden woman's face, until her smile dampened.
He had been so apathetic to his situation, she didn't even know what to do with herself. He could hardly remember himself, couldn't recall his name, his prior memories, and he delivered all the answers with the most blank look in his eyes.
He refused to look at her. That much she realized instantly. He couldn't take a single second to glance her over despite the fact that she had been the first person to greet him when he opened his eyes. She was confused, but he seemed unresponsive to almost everyone else, too, so she didn't take it personally.
It wasn't like the cyborgs she was used to working with. They were cold and emotionless, but not monosyllabic. Azusa looked frustrated as she talked to him, trying to get some semblance of information.
"What's your name?" she asked, and the man jerked his shoulders up and down, a sad imitation of a shrug. Marie's throat felt tight.
"Do you remember where you were?" Naigus asked, having put aside all of her medical instruments and settled herself on the wall across from the cyborg, her keen eyes scoping out every single movement he made.
"No," he replied, and the tone was so empty, Marie couldn't help but flinch.
She wanted to know what had happened to him, what had hurt him so deeply, so traumatically. What he had gone through that left his voice a shell, a hollow thing that seemed both fragile yet solid, so secure in the emptiness.
"I'm assuming you have nowhere to go, then?" Azusa asked from the side, her brow lifted as she adjusted her glasses, and the man stared at her for a moment, his eyes focused on the longer ends of her hair, her bob short in the back yet coming into long pieces that framed her face. After a beat, he looked away, a though uninterested.
Because he was, Marie reminded herself. He didn't have the capacity for interest.
But he did, once, and that was the worst of it.
Azusa didn't wait for him to make a noise in the negative, already having known the answer before she asked the question. The woman's eyes met Naigus's, first, before they shifted to Marie.
"He can't stay here," she informed, her voice holding no nonsense. "This is my workspace. He'd only get in the way."
Azusa's lack of tact was flinch-worthy, and Marie opened her mouth to try to defend the man, but she knew it was true. He wouldn't be a help amongst Azusa's computers, and, if anything, he'd be more of a hindrance, since she'd have to hide him.
Naigus didn't even have to say anything to let the room knew that she wasn't going to be taking in the stray: between sharing a tiny apartment with Sid, and occasionally keeping patients in her living room, on her couch and her kitchen table as makeshift hospital rooms and beds, she just didn't have the space. It wasn't that she thought he'd be a liability, but rather that she couldn't afford to house yet another person in her home.
And Spirit, though he lived in a massive house that had room for three, would never put Maka in danger. To expose her to a cyborg that she didn't know, one they had no real idea of, it would be something Spirit would fight against to his dying day. If there was anything in the entire world that he would protect with his entire self, it was his daughter.
Justin was only sixteen, having dropped out of school to join their group, a genius, but still just a boy.
Which left. . . her.
Really, Azusa and Naigus didn't have to look at her so expectantly. She got the hint pretty quickly.
Yet, there was something about him that put her on edge, something about the way he refused to meet her eye, the way he had to glance away quickly. Down and away.
Like he'd been trained to.
Marie swallowed before she stepped forward, and at the click of her heels, he finally glanced up at her.
He didn't have far to tilt his head, considering just how small she was and how much of a hulking figure he had, but it was still a motion he had to make, considering he'd settled his gaze against Azusa's immaculately clean floorboards.
"Hello?" she started, as she did in the very beginning, approaching him with a slowness that felt like she was reaching for a feral animal, one that would bolt away at the slightest sudden movement.
An animal he wasn't, but skittish, certainly. He barely tensed, as though going on nothing but muscle memory, though no panic was shown on his face, and she swallowed down her sadness for him at the fact.
"My name is Marie," she told him, holding her hand out. "If you'd like, you can stay with me until you find a place to go?"
The offer seemed to echo in the room. It was less a choice on his part, and more a semblance of one, an imitation of option. He seemed to realize instantly, though he didn't even lift a brow at her small speech.
He was smart, she could tell, and his gaze slowly lowered until he seemed like he was examining her fingers. Ringless, she realized, and calloused. They weren't much of a sight. Her hands had never been her most beautiful feature, as her mother had pointed out to her on many an occasion, but they were capable, and she was proud of the things they had done.
Or, rather, she was proud of the things they had done when she had a choice in the fact.
His eyes flickered up her arm, settling over her shoulder until he took in her face.
She was too different from the original visage that flashed across his mind, when he'd first awakened and found her staring down at her. She was warm, and golden, a rosy woman swathed in all black, her hair the color of a sunflower, rather than that of dead hay.
There was nothing. . . snakelike about her face. Instead, she was rounded where he had once envisioned angles, and her caramel eye was concerned and kind.
After a moment, he looked back at her hand before shrugging once again, as though it didn't make much difference to him, one way or another.
And it didn't, not really. It was either going to her home or...
Or, what?
He had no idea where he was from, where he had been found, what had happened to him. He tried to examine his memories but found them shrunk away from him, as though he were blocked, in some way. Though he had a hard time finding comfort in his skin, he realized that particular reaction wasn't one he was used to.
His body had more muscle memory than any other sort, so he had to trust it.
Inside his head, something was laughing at him, and when he looked down and to the side, having determined that the woman, Marie, was satisfied with what eye-contact he had made. For a single second, he wanted to curl his shoulders in.
His body did, at least. He didn't truly want to do anything.
He wondered what it would feel like, to not have to. To not be forced into speaking, reacting, talking.
There was no desire to live with the woman.
No.
There was just no desire for anything.
The emptiness gaped in him, leaving a massive chasm he had no means to fill.
And the silence stretched and stretched and stretched.
Naigus had to call Sid and tell him that she would be late. It seemed that everyone was making all too many adjustments for the man that Marie had found in the scrap heap, the one without a name, the one without serial numbers, the one without a model stamped on him.
Azusa told her, when she pulled them all to the side away from the cyborg, that he reminded her of the original cyborgs, the ones that started off as people with organic lives before becoming machines. The ones after them, however, knew technology in their very bones mere moments after their births, but the cyborg Marie had found, he had no semblance to them.
Not much, at least. He shared the lack of emotional center that the freshest bots all had, that same blank stare, the same indifference, yet he had a coldness that felt more artificial and unworldly than anything else.
He reminded Marie more of the children she'd worked with at the Trauma Centers, back before she became an Engineer. Volunteering was good for resumes: that's what her teachers had said. But Marie had gotten too attached, took her work home with her and refused to let it leave her bones. The depressed, the suicidal, the ones who lashed out with a fury that was nothing if not justified: Marie wanted to cull everything in her chest out just to make a safe-home for them, just to have them experience something other than horror.
She couldn't. Not then, not ever. Having left, it was the hardest decision she had ever made. But, young and naïve, she thought she was moving to bigger things, a place where she could make a difference to several people, not just a few.
How she wished she'd stayed with those children. How she wished she never joined Baba Yaga.
Those were all things for the past, however, things she could not change. Things she didn't know if she would or would not change. What mattered, then, was that she had a man in desperate need of help and all their safe-havens had been occupied by those who came before him: the ones who had run, the ones who had hidden, the ones that had come, pounding and yelling and sobbing, at Azusa's and Naigus' and her door at all hours of the night. The ones who were already trying to pass their way into society.
But when she looked at him, remembered his reactions, he wasn't like them. He had asked for help, yes, but not in any usual way.
He asked for help, back in that would-be-could-be graveyard as though he were begging for something else, something Marie had no way of understanding.
He asked for help like he was told to.
She shook the thought away as Azusa dug around in her closet, trying to find clothes for the cyborg. Usually, it wouldn't be much of a problem, since no one would question a group walking down the street.
Not unless one of the members had such obvious cyborg features. The screw through his head and his obvious seam-lines were a dead give-away, and Marie knew Azusa didn't keep too well stocked in the men's clothing department, considering any of the lovers the dark-haired woman had would be of the much more female persuasion.
Naigus picked up a plaid button-up and lifted a brow, checking the tag and finding that it was a female's large.
"Would this work?"
"We could try it," Azusa replied. "He's scrawny."
She wasn't wrong. But there was no way that the shirt would fit over his shoulders: he wouldn't even be able to lift his arms. Marie shook her head, rummaging around in a drawer. Sometimes, when Spirit and Justin would hole themselves at Azusa's home, they'd leave behind jackets and such.
Whether he got a shirt or not was irrelevant: so long as they covered him up properly, they'd be fine. It was a bus ride to Marie's house, but if he was dressed well enough, no one would question them. She'd have to drag him to the very back.
She hoped he didn't have any sort of motion sickness. That would be the last thing they needed.
Marie finally found the sleeve of one of Spirit's suit jackets and she lifted it up with a triumphant "Aha!" just as Azusa managed to fish out a beanie that she hoped to whichever deity was still listening would be enough to cover up the screw.
A hoodie would be the best option, but that wasn't really a possibility, considering the only boy that they'd had around the place who wore them was Justin, and the kid was as slim as Marie was.
"It'll have to do," Naigus said, straightening up and rolling her shoulders. "I can walk you to the bus-stop."
The appreciation showed on Marie's face. It wasn't that it was a bad area: it was, but Marie had always known how to hold her own against everyone and anyone. It was that with Naigus still wearing her Police-Patch, she'd ensure that no questions were asked in the short, four-block walk to the bus stop closest to Azusa's house.
Thankfully, Marie's apartment complex was practically right in front of a different stop, so she'd be able to sneak the cyborg in with only a few lewd comments from someone everyone only ever called Auntie.
Good Lord, she'd never be able to live it down. She could imagine the comments come the morning, when Marie would have to go to work again.
As soon as they got him to her home, everything would be, more or less, fine. She'd have to go and find some other clothes to put him in, since he'd need them. He had nothing to his name, and she knew, from working at the trauma center, that sometimes, just having something to call your own was enough to make you feel better.
Yeah, she'd have to go to the store after work, the next day. Besides which, he wasn't going to stay with her forever, and they'd have to find a way to either take him to a safe-house, or work out a means of legal protection.
Or integrate him as human-passing.
Though it was the most effective, long term, it would take more work than anything else. A bot like Tsubaki, one who moved like water, one who could smile and pretend like it was genuine, one who could smother down her hurt with a soft giggle, that was plausible. Tsubaki's path to human-passing included four years of finding proper skin grafts and working out internal generators that Naigus spent 6 months working out a surgery for.
For a cyborg like the one in the next room, such a path could prove absolutely impossible. She was fretting over taking him to a bus stop with a policewoman walking with them, since he was so. . . obvious. He'd have to work on emotionally passing before he could even hope to be human-passing, and being just emotionally passing wasn't enough to escape the harsh interrogations, the terrifying treatment that cyborgs would get.
If he could emotionally pass, it wouldn't be an issue, getting him to the bus stop, to her apartment. Those bots were allowed outside without ownership papers, but emotionless cyborgs had to have proper documentation and a human being walking with them.
Even with Naigus next to them, it might not be enough to prevent Marie getting stopped for some sort of identification and proof of ownership.
But she'd never have proof of ownership: she didn't believe it was possible to own someone else. She didn't believe it was right.
Regardless of what she believed or didn't, Azusa grabbed up the clothes that they had collected, determining that the workout pants that she had found before he was awake and responsive would simply have to do, and left the room.
When she left, Naigus looked over at her, folding her arms and sitting herself down on Azusa's bed.
"You're nervous," she commented, and Marie sighed, running a hand through her hair.
"I'm still hobbling and I'm about to smuggle a cyborg with no emotions or identification to my apartment on the other side of town. Why wouldn't I be?"
"You'll be fine. Getting to the stop will be the hardest part, and I have my badge with me."
"And after?" Marie asked. "What's the long term plan?"
"I thought you couldn't handle long term," Naigus threw back, evading the original question and bringing Marie back to when she had to spend a night at the Pub under her and Blair's care.
"I'm serious, Nai. He can't pass."
"We'll have to do what we did with Crona, then," Naigus responded, playing with one of her dreadlocks and looking over the time.
"What? Leave them to rot in a safehouse while their assault case is permanently 'pending'?" Marie replied, bitterly.
Crona's situation would always be the cruelest to her. It would always make her want to fight, fire licking in her bones.
Naigus sighed, closing her eyes for a second.
Marie always got too invested, too fast. Couldn't let things go. She knew that, she had always known that. No one got into a resistance group if they didn't feel each thread of yearning for justice.
That didn't make it any easier to deal with. It didn't mean Naigus didn't get exasperated with her friend.
"Let's focus on getting him to your apartment, first. We'll go from there," she commented, pushing herself off from the bed, and Marie frowned, wondering why she wasn't more concerned, considering how unique the man's situation truly was.
But then, Marie remembered. Naigus couldn't have known that his emotional coding was removed. She must have just assumed that he was an emotionless cyborg, just like the ones Marie worked with, day in and day out. For a moment, Marie wanted to scowl: Azusa was a woman who was known for her exemplary skill in details, and yet, she tended to gloss over them more often than not when it came to reports.
Still, it could prove easiest to gather her, Sid, Justin, and Spirit in her apartment with the cyborg after she managed to get him to her apartment, in order to tell all of them all together instead of having to give the information one at a time.
She felt bad for keeping Naigus in the dark, but it wouldn't make any difference to the situation they were in, at the moment. The dreadlocked woman was right, anyway. The first priority was getting him out of Azusa's house and in a place where he'd be able to find some sort of familiarity.
Besides, after Joe left, Marie's apartment had been relatively empty. It would be nice to have someone take up the space, even if just in presence with no conversation.
Marie had gotten all too close to investing in a cat or fifteen just to have some sort of constant company, so she figured that she wasn't losing out on anything by having him in her home. And once he was there, she'd be able to work out some more plans in what they could do for him. An assault case could be some sort of progress, but since he had no semblance of self and no memories, it was going to be a long road to any sort of progress. Beyond which, the law always had a way of sucking the life out of everyone involved.
No, she determined, she'd have to work something else out, for him.
When Azusa walked back in, stretching her arms and looking to be in desperate want of another cup of coffee, Marie met Naigus' gaze.
"Ready to go?" Marie asked, wiping her palms over her long skirt, and Naigus gave a curt nod before the two of them made it over to the door, passing by Azusa.
When her hand met Marie's arm, the two of them looked at each other.
"Be careful. . . please?" Azusa said, as she always said whenever Marie was going to do anything dangerous, and Marie smiled, bringing her touch over her closest friend's hand.
"Of course. I'll call when I get home, okay?"
Azusa nodded, once, letting her arm drop to her side.
"He's in the living room," she told them, and Naigus walked forward before Marie did, her footsteps clean and purposeful across the floor.
Marie took in a deep breath before she followed her.