"I live in a world of mutilated flesh. I accept it. I have to. It engulfs me. It is my world. Pain. Over and over again." - David Meltzer, The Martyr
APRIL 3 2044
2:12 PM
It takes almost two hours total for Hamegg's beat-up old laptop to run a full system scan on Astro, and when the data finally comes back, it's not pretty: the optics are currently hovering at less than one percent capacity, while the audio processor isn't that far behind, and that's about what he figured from everything Kusai told him, but there's a whole lot more to it than that. It turns out that the kid has also blown a major valve in his knee, busted an effector clamp in his elbow, ripped his shoulder completely out of its socket, run out of oil three days ago, lost almost an entire quart of coolant so quickly that his radiator almost exploded, had at least two dozen different glitches in his memory circuits in the last three months and, just to put the cherry on top of the Crap Sundae, he hasn't had a single freaking update since last December, because Kusai is a complete and total moron who apparently doesn't care whether his robots can function effectively or not.
At least it's a definite that the loose, exposed circuits are the worst of it, so everything else can take a backseat until he's extracted all the used-up, worn-out wires.
Even with his steady hands and sharp eyes and trusty old pliers, it's a real hell of a job, and it goes about a thousand times slower than it should, since he's got to stop every five seconds or so just to scrape away the stiff, hardened crust of mud and muck with a dry cloth. He can barely even see what he's doing right now, running on pretty much nothing but his own instinct and expertise, and he's just about ready to call Kusai up and give the idiot a piece of his mind, or at least tell him to clean his robots up a little before he dumps them on Hamegg's doorstep, because a practically naked kid slathered in grime is absolutely not in his wheelhouse at all, and—
Huh.
Okay, so that's—that's weird.
All these little rips and tears where the cables come out are only about as wide as a paper's edge — which is obviously way too narrow for all the cords to slip through the cracks like that, but the cords are slipping through the cracks. And the cords are slipping through the cracks because there are literally hundreds on hundreds on hundreds of those razor-thin cuts, crossing and crisscrossing over each other again and again and again, until the kid's whole body is just a mess of uneven grids and wild gashes, thick trails stringing along his ribs, running up and down his legs, fanning out over his shoulders, streaking all the way to his back and twined around his neck, peeking out from under the cold iron of the KURI.
And they're all about as wide as Kusai's whip.
But that—that can't be right.
On some sudden, knee-jerk impulse that he doesn't even stop to think about, Hamegg lifts the cloth a little higher and scrubs the soft white cotton lightly over Astro's filthy face, cutting a starkly clean track through all the dark brown dirt to show off the synthetic skin beneath. And it's the exact same thing right here, tiny hairline slashes on his cheeks and his chin and his forehead, in between his brows and right under his brows and on his closed eyelids,even.
Look, he's not exactly a newbie when it comes to this stuff — he's patched up plenty of other robots who ended up on the wrong side of Kusai's live-wire whip before, because that's just the kind of crap that happens to the robots in the rings, and it's nothing new and it's nothing special and it's no big deal.
The problem here is: this is not the kind of crap that happens in the rings.
Yeah, sure, Kusai's got a temper, and that's not exactly a secret, but he's also got common sense (which is pretty hard to believe right now, actually) and when he pulls out that lash, he always sticks to the robot's back, and the blows he deals out are always careful and controlled, steady and even strokes in perfect precise patterns that never overlap or overrun. Even when it's a robot like Astro, with soft and warm and almost-human flesh, he never hits them hard enough or long enough to break through the skin entirely — too much external stimuli, especially painful external stimuli, can send their system into complete shock or even emergency shutdown, and Kusai knows that, which means he must have completely flown off the handle to give the kid a beating as bad as this. From the look of all these strikes, he must have been going at it for a long while — an hour or two, at least.
From the look of all these strikes, Astro must have gotten thrashed within an inch of his damn life. Jesus, the poor kid's bitten his lips into literal shreds from the pain, chewed through his own damn skin in his agony, and a sharp twinge of pity pulls painfully at Hamegg's heart, a crushing squeeze in the dead center of his chest.
The poor little kid has probably been through hell.
But it's—it's fine.
Hamegg pulls in a deep breath, shakes his head, eases the death grip he's got on his pliers, and reminds himself this is fine. This is just what happens to the robots in the rings. It's nothing special. It's nothing new. It's no big deal. It's fine.
—but it's a long, long minute before he can tear his eyes off that tiny, battered, dirty, cut-up little child face, and get back to work.
OCTOBER 26 2043
7:33 PM
Astro can see his hands shaking — the jolts and shudders ripping through him like electric shocks, his fingers jerking and spasming with it, and the soft synthetic skin of his palms so sharply, starkly pale against the cold black metal beneath him — but he can't actually feel it.
Maybe these hands aren't even his hands at all. Or maybe the neuroelectric wires between his brain and his body got cut in half or torn out or unplugged at one end or the other, or maybe he's not even in his body anymore, but standing outside his own skin, standing on the edge of himself, standing over himself and staring down at himself, a shivering sobbing mess on a cold leaden floor, his dark spiky hair and his bright red rocket-powered boots and his small, shaking, starkly pale hands, but he's not in there right now.
He's not sure he can be in there right now.
He's not sure he can ever be in there again. Not now that he—that he just—he just—and he couldn't say no and he couldn't stop himself and Mr. Kusai told him to—so he just got down on his knees and opened his mouth and—
He can see his own hands shaking, but he can't feel it, and he can't make it stop, because he's just not in there right now.
"Get up," Mr. Kusai barks, low and harsh, and the noise of it, or maybe just his voice, is like a railroad spike driving straight through Astro's brain, cleaving through his mechanical skull like soft, overripe fruit. "Get up." The shiny toe of a polished black shoe kicks at his ribcage.
He should tell Mr. Kusai that he's not in there right now. He should tell Mr. Kusai that he's up here, separate, disconnected, detached, floating away like a balloon, standing on the edge of himself and standing over himself and standing outside his own skin, that the thing on the floor is just a vacant old shell, but he pulls his hollow metal frame up on unsteady feet and he follows Mr. Kusai through the door and down the dark hall anyway.
It's a long walk — the corridor stretches on and on and on for what must be a million miles, and there's a black-gloved hand on his back the whole way.
He can still taste the semen in his mouth.
And he can see his hands shaking, but he can't actually feel it.
Mr. Kusai takes him into a narrow glass elevator (his breath snags in the back of his throat when he sees how small it is, but he knows if he doesn't go inside on his own, Mr. Kusai will just tell him to do it, and then he'll have to, and that's worse) and it carries them up and up and up to the top floor. When the doors slide open, the two of them step out into a big, circular room, where the whole ceiling is all clear glass, too, and he can see the night sky through the panes, stretched out above him like a blanket: so wide and open and all studded with stars, so infinite he could get lost in it, and Mr. Kusai would never find him again.
And he'd be safe.
There are ten other robots in the room with him, standing about six feet apart, staring right at him with big, curious eyes—the last three at the end of the line look a lot like him, with their almost-human skin and almost-human hair, and that sleek silver one near the door looks like Orrin, except he's not all hunched over like Orrin usually is (or like Orrin used to be, because he doesn't really do that anymore now that Dad's being nicer to him and giving him days off and listening to him when he talks, and oh, god, he misses Orrin and Dad so much that his chest aches with it, and he just wants to go back home)—
—and they're all—
—they're all chained to the floor with these huge heavy padlocks bolted at their ankles.
There's another camera set up in the corner, enclosed on all sides in the same clean, clear glass as the ceiling and the elevator — a small, see-through booth built seamlessly into the wall.
"Okay, here's the deal," Mr. Kusai takes a round, white device about the size of a remote control out of his coat. It's only got two buttons on it, a big green one in the center, and a slightly smaller red one right beside it. "I'm going to power down that collar of yours for a second, and you're going to do exactly as I say. Got it?"
Power it down? A sudden, bright burst of hope explodes in Astro's chest, and he grabs blindly for the KURI, cold as ice under his fumbling fingers—he already knows it won't work, and he knows it's stupid and borderline delusional to believe anything else, he knows it's hopeless and useless and he'd never make it before Mr. Kusai called him back, and he knows he's already been beaten before he can even try, but maybe if he just—
"Don't even think about it," Mr. Kusai cuts in, but the corner of his mouth edges up in another one of his awful smiles. He knows it's hopeless, too, doesn't he? He knows Astro has already been beaten before he can even try, too. "Don't try to get away from me. You hear that? Do not try to get away from me. When I shut off the KURI, just stand still right here until you've received further orders. Don't move until I tell you to."
And that's—that's really all it takes, isn't it? Even if the KURI comes off his neck right now, he'd still be completely and totally useless, helplessly imprisoned in his own software.
For the first time in his life, Astro wonders why the laws of robotics even need to exist.
For the first time in his life, he wonders how many humans out there use them like this.
Mr. Kusai hits the green button, and the KURI finally clicks off with a soft whoosh.
The quiet, incessant hum of electricity at his throat dies away into silence, and the dull ache in his temple fades out to nothing. The weak, numb, pins-and-needles feeling in his arms and legs lifts up off him like a veil. The constant pulse of pressure in his chest, right behind the Core, melts away like ice left out on the kitchen counter, and for the first time since he woke up in the lab downstairs, he can actually breathe.
But he can't do anything.
He can't fly away from this, and he can't even walk away from this, because he can't fight off the command, the voice screaming at him to stay still stay still stay still, he told you to stay still (and he wants to slice open his skull and tear his own brain apart to rip out the code Mr. Kusai installed so no one can ever ever ever tell him what to do again) so he just stands exactly where he is, and he doesn't move an inch.
The night sky stretches out above him like a blanket. So wide and open and all studded with stars. So infinite. He could get lost in it if only he could fly. Mr. Kusai would never find him again if only he could fly.
He'd be safe if only he could fly.
Mr. Kusai goes into the glass booth in the corner to turn the camera on. Maybe the walls just aren't thick enough to block out the noise, or maybe he's got some kind of mic in there with him, because Astro can hear the click and buzz when the recorder comes on, and when Mr. Kusai talks, he can hear that, too, loud and clear like he's right there in the booth with him.
"Date: 10.26.2043. Testing: Subject 7517, weaponry."
There's that number again — 7517, testing, subject 7517, LOR software, testing, subject 7517, SAI software, testing, subject 7517, weaponry — and the cold, rigidly logical side of his brain tells him to just forget it, ignore it, pretend he didn't hear it if that's what he has to do, because he's got bigger things to think about right now, he's got bigger problems, and anyway, it doesn't really matter in the long run, does it? It doesn't mean anything in the long run, because Mr. Kusai can call him whatever he wants, but it won't change the fact that his name is Astro.
A number isn't going to change who he is.
A number isn't going to change anything about him.
But Mr. Kusai has already taken his freedom and his home from him. Mr. Kusai has already taken his father and his friends. Mr. Kusai has already taken his independence and his agency and even his body, and even his mind, but he can't take his name.
No one can take his name.
No one can ever take his name, because he won't let them.
He lives in a body that's legally his father's property, with a power source that's legally government property, in a brain all cluttered and crowded and crammed with somebody else's memories of somebody else's life, but his name is the one thing that's completely and entirely his own.
And no one can ever take that away from him.
"Astro," he says, loud and clear and firm, holding his head high. The slow, steady pulse of the Core in his chest kicks up, beating out a slightly faster rhythm now without the KURI to hold back the energy. "My name is Astro. I don't answer to anything else."
He doesn't even know for sure if Mr. Kusai can hear him through all that glass — maybe it doesn't go both ways, maybe he can hear Mr. Kusai, but Kusai can't hear him, or maybe it's just his oversensitive, superpowered ears now that the KURI is off, but he doesn't care. He just needs to say it, to get it out of him, to remind himself that he's more than this — more than a random four-digit number, more than a steady red light on a recording camera, more than the code written into his brain, more than the semen still smeared on his lips, more than what this man put in his mouth.
Mr. Kusai stares at him, for a long second that seems to stretch on forever, before he finally says, flat and cold as an arctic plain—
"Robots don't need names." He turns pointedly back to the camera. "Now, be a good little machine, and shut the fuck up for once in your life."
And Astro can't say no.
And then he can't say anything else either, not now that Mr. Kusai told him to shut up, so his jaw snaps shut with a quiet, definite click.
His own body doesn't even listen to him anymore.
His own body has been turned against him.
And he hates it for that.
He hates his body for its betrayal, its surrender, its waving white flag when he wants to fight, its desperate inescapable need to do whatever it's told — he wants to tear his skin off and crawl outside of himself, crawl away from himself, crawl away from this pathetic, disgusting, spineless thing Mr. Kusai has turned him into, this thing that just does what it's told and doesn't refuse and doesn't resist and doesn't fight back, this thing that just gets down on its knees and swallows all because Mr. Kusai told it to—
"See? You're learning already." Mr. Kusai flashes him that awful smile again, all teeth and menace, before he pushes the big black button on the side of the camera, so the red light clicks on. "Now, do you see all the robots right in front of you?"
And he still can't say anything, because Mr. Kusai told him to shut the fuck up and he can't disobey a direct order (and he hates his body for that, he hates his body for its betrayal, its surrender, its waving white flag when he wants to fight) so he just jerks his chin down in a silent nod.
"I don't need them anymore," Mr. Kusai says. "Kill them."
What? Astro snaps his head up to stare at Mr. Kusai full-on, his heart turning over and over in his chest like a leaf in the wind. No one ever kills their robots, except in the extreme cases where the robot presents a tangible threat to the humans around it, because they can just call for a disposal team to come out and take it away to the Surface. And he knows it's not exactly a great life down there in the junkyard, but at least it is a life, and Kusai can't just take that away from them, can he? He can't really hate robots that much, can he?
No one could ever really hate robots that much, could they?
But Astro can't say no, and he can't stop himself.
The whole world is suddenly tinted blue, the glowing words flashing in front of his eyes: ACTIVATE ARM CANNONS. His fingers pull back into his palms, and his palms pull back into his arms, and his arms pull back into two gleaming white cannons mounted on his elbow joints, and he's trying to stop it, to push the weapons back inside him or rip them clean out of him, but he can't he can't he can't, and the robots are staring at him with wide, terrified eyes, and they're screaming and they're shouting and they're saying please no please no please don't kill me and they're yanking and tearing at their own chains in panic, in desperation, and they're trying so hard to get away and he's trying so hard to stop himself, and they're begging him, they're saying please no please no please no please don't kill me but he can't he can't he can't.
He can't say no, and he can't stop himself.
The cannons fire.
And the first two robots in the lineup explode into a hundred thousand million pieces, too small to ever be repaired again.
The bright yellow glow of life hasn't even left their eyes before he takes aim again and blows up the next two in a blast that shakes the whole room, and now the rest of them are frantic, sobbing and pleading, and he wants to say he's sorry and he wants to say he'd stop it if he could, but he can't he can't he can't—
"Oh, come on, you can do better than that!" Mr. Kusai hollers from where he stands, so safe inside his little glass booth. He's watching a room full of robots die, and he's laughing. "Why don't you be a little more creative? Show them what you can really do! Give it all you've got!"
No. Astro's insides go cold as ice just to think about it, because he knows what he can really do — he knows the kind of destruction he's capable of, the kind of pain he could inflict, the kind of horror he could rain down if he wanted to, but he's never wanted to. He has never hurt anyone when he didn't have to, he has never gotten in a fight with anyone when he knows he can talk them down, he has never let his power get the better of him, he has never let his power control him, he has never let his power corrupt him.
But he can't stop himself.
And suddenly, he's leaping on the next robot in the lineup, and he's ripping into her with everything he's got — his cannons and his guns and his lasers, punching her with his bare fists and kicking her with his heavy, clunky boots until she's so mutilated that she doesn't even look like anything except a heap of scrap metal, and she's screaming and screaming and screaming and she's still alive and he doesn't know how, he doesn't know how she's still functioning when she's so damaged, and he can't take it anymore.
He kills her with another blast from his cannons.
He tells himself it was the kindest thing he could have possibly done for her.
And then he does it again, and then he does it again, and he does it again, and he does it again, and he does it again, his own body so completely out of his control, and so terrifyingly unfamiliar to him, like a foreign country with no language he can speak, and he's tearing and slicing and stabbing and shooting and wrenching and twisting and breaking until there are no more robots left.
They are all dead at his feet, their mangled and maimed metallic bodies lying lifeless on the floor in front of him with the chains still bolted securely around their ankles.
They never had a chance.
He's got coolant that's not his own dripping down his chin and running in between his fingers. He's got oil that's not his own splashed all over his cheeks.
Oh, god.
He killed them.
Oh, god, he killed them all, and he—he tore their limbs off, blasted their eyes out of their sockets, he ripped their bolts and screws out of their joints, lasered their skulls open and smashed their brains to powder with his fists, ripped out the neurons and receptors and synapses, crushed their fingers to dust under his heel, and he killed them, he murdered them, he slaughtered them all with his own hands.
And he didn't even let them die painlessly.
He tortured them to death.
And he didn't stop himself.
Astro's unsteady legs finally give out on him, and he hits the floor with a heavy thud that sounds a million miles away. Everything is a million miles away from him—or maybe he's a million miles away from everything, floating underwater where no one can find him, all alone at the bottom of a deep, dark ocean.
He killed all those robots.
And he didn't stop himself.
It's like he's back in the arena all over again, with Hamegg's vicious smile always above him as he circled and circled and circled in his flying saucer, and the crowd hollering all around him, stamping their feet and screaming his name, cheering him on while his ears throbbed with all the noise and his stomach churned with the ice-cold guilt and burning-hot shame, and he could see his own hands shaking and he knew they were his but he didn't recognize them, he didn't recognize himself because he had killed all of those robots.
But this is even worse, because these robots didn't fight back. They didn't even try. Maybe they couldn't fight back. Maybe they didn't know how. Maybe they didn't have any combat systems like him. Or maybe Mr. Kusai ordered them to stand down, and stand still, no matter what happened to them, and they had to obey, they had to wait their turn in line while he murdered them one by one by one.
No, this isn't anything like the Robot Games, because this wasn't self-defense.
This was slaughter.
A big, black-gloved hand claps down on his shoulder from a million miles away, and a low voice in his ear tells him to get up. So he does it, and he doesn't really even stop to think about it. He just blindly follows the black-gloved hand and the low voice back into the lift, where the hand reaches out and presses a glowing button to take them down to the fourth level instead, and the floor drops away with a sudden, sickening lurch.
But it's a million miles away from him. Everything is a million miles away from him. Or maybe he's a million miles away from everything.
He can see a small and scared and bone-white face—streaked with sticky damp tears and stained with glistening black oil and smeared with acid-green coolant—reflected in the cold clear glass, but he doesn't know the boy staring back at him.
It feels like the ride in the elevator lasts forever. It feels like it's barely a second. It feels like it's been a hundred years. It feels like he blinks and it's over, and the doors are sliding open with a soft ding, and a long hall is stretching out before him. The black-gloved hands grab his shoulder and steer him straight into the dark, deeper and deeper until he's in front of a door, and then he's going through the door, and then he's inside the room.
The room has a man in it — a big balding man with a thick red mustache and brawny burly arms crossed over his stocky, barrel chest (Frasier, the low voice calls him) who hollers at him to get down on your knees and lean over the table and hold still.
So he does.
And he doesn't really think about it.
The table stands in the center of the room, and it feels like the walk over to it lasts forever, and it feels like it's barely a second and it feels like it's been a hundred years and it feels like he blinks and it's over and he's there, in front of the smooth flat metal, and then his knees are pressed up against the cold, hard floor, and his arms are pressed up against the cold, hard table, and the KURI is buzzing and droning around his neck and he's still got coolant and oil running off his face like a rushing river and pouring down his cheeks like tears from all the robots he killed.
He killed all those robots.
They couldn't even run away from him.
Frasier pulls out a thin, gleaming silver rod, and presses the glistening tip to the back of his bare shoulder—the sudden jolt of cold on his warm skin should be a sharp piercing shock, but it's a million miles away from him, or maybe he's a million miles away from it—and stares down the length of the metal with one blue eye squinted shut, like he's a hunter, and this is a gun.
Maybe this man is going to kill him.
And maybe that will be a good thing.
Maybe it would be better for everyone if he died right here. Maybe it would be better for everyone if he died before he could hurt anybody else.
A bright golden glint flashes suddenly in the corner of his eye—and something huge and hard and heavy pounds into the other end of the rod with all the force of a sledgehammer.
All at once, the whole world explodes in a burning hot, bright red haze of pain on pain on pain, all his somatic sensors screaming at the sudden, extreme stimulus and his electronic brain buzzing with the constant signal of hurt hurt hurt. White stars burst up behind his eyes like fireworks in the night sky — too loud and almost painfully vivid, the noise and the color and the light tearing him open, his body exploding in a mess of sparkling rockets, until he'd swear on his life that his shoulder has just blown up or blown apart, that the rounded steel joint is broken or fractured or smashed to pieces under his artificial skin, until every inch of him is singing like a choir with the pain.
Frasier strikes the rod again.
The agony pulls him under, pulls him down like a heavy tide, rolling through him again and again like ocean waves, crashing over him and crashing into him. And then Frasier pounds down again, and he can hear a voice that he thinks might just be his own, thin and cracking and crying out, and he can still feel the oil smeared on his cheeks and the coolant dripping off his chin, and this pain isn't even a fraction of what he did to those other robots back there, is it? He deserves this. He deserves to be hurt like this. He deserves worse than this, actually — he deserves exactly what he did to them, every last ounce of the hell he put them through, and maybe if Frasier just hits him hard enough, or maybe if Frasier just hits him long enough, maybe if he just gets punished for what he's done—
The metal rod lifts up off his skin. A massive hammer drops to the ground beside him with a dull thud, its big brass head littered with tiny nicks and notches and grooves from previous uses.
That's what just hit him.
That's what Frasier just pounded into his shoulder.
But it wasn't enough, it wasn't bad enough, because nothing will ever be bad enough to make up for what he did. Nothing will ever hurt him as bad as he hurt all of those poor robots. He wants to ask Frasier to hit him again, to strike him over and over until he's dead, until he's all in pieces like the robots he left on the top floor (he just left them there, and he didn't even try to help them, he didn't even try to save them, and why didn't he try to save them? did he want them all to die? did he want to kill them? did he like it? what's wrong with him? why didn't he help them? why didn't he save them? that's what he's supposed to do, isn't it? that's his job. he's supposed to save people, and robots, and animals, and everyone he can. so why didn't he save them?) until he's no better off than they are, until he is nothing but the pain he's dealt out to them.
But his own voice is a million miles away from him. Or maybe he's a million miles away from it.
The rod comes down again to smack him on the face, and Frasier's deep bark rumbles low in his ear, like far-off thunder. "Stay here. And stop that goddamn whining. Jesus."
The order is a million miles away from him, or maybe he's a million miles away from it, but the distance doesn't seem to matter too much, because he still can't say no — he automatically clenches his teeth, pressing his lips together to cut off the soft gasps and groans still spilling from his mouth like water. He stays right where he is, bent over the table with his knees on the floor and his open, empty palms so starkly pale against the black metal beneath him.
"We'll need a disposal team out here," Mr. Kusai says from a million miles away. "First thing in the morning. Try and get Roy if you can."
He killed ten robots.
He tortured ten robots to death.
And he didn't stop himself.
He didn't even know their names.
And then he just left them to die in that room up there, and he didn't help them, and he didn't save them, and he didn't even try. He just left them there, and he just let them die, and he's still got their oil and their coolant on his face, and his throat pulls tight and he wants to cry, but he's too far past the point of tears now to believe they'll really come.
And they wouldn't wash away what he's done, anyway.
Nothing can ever wash away what he's done.
At the other end of the room, two pairs of heavy, thumping feet step outside, and the door slides shut with a droning whine, but he's a million miles away, bent over the table with his knees on the floor and his shoulder pulsing faintly with the pain. He's taken enough hits by now to know when he needs to worry, and when he doesn't, so he knows he definitely doesn't need to worry about this one, but he drags his head up off the table to inspect the site anyway.
It's a mark barely bigger than a coin, stamped deep in his skin, its edges all smoothed out to make a perfect circle around the—
—around the striped, triangular head of a skunk.
Skunk Kusai, he realizes, very slowly, because he's still a million miles away from everything, or maybe everything is a million miles away from him. There's a skunk's head engraved on the back of his shoulder, etched into his flesh, literally hammered into him, obvious as a neon sign in the night.
They branded him.
Like people used to brand animals. Like he's an animal. Like he's a thing. Like he's a slave.
APRIL 6 2044
4:21 PM
Now that the week is almost over, and he's completed the bulk of the work, Hamegg desperately wants to just call it a day, collapse in the closest chair, and sleep for about twelve hours straight. At least he can finally say he's officially over the worst of it: in the last six days, he's fixed all the torn-up wires that he could and pulled out the ones he couldn't to replace them with brand-new cables from his own collection, maneuvered the dislocated shoulder back into its socket, refilled the coolant tank, fixed the blown-out valve, repaired the busted clamp, and cleaned up the auditory and optical systems as best he could. He can't do much for the memory circuits unless he takes the mechanical skull apart, opens up the electronic brain, and pokes around inside, which isn't really something he wants to try and do without a hard copy of Astro's blueprints— there's simply too much margin for error — so he'll take care of everything else first, and then see where they are with the recollection storage afterward. For all he knows, those glitches could just be a byproduct of all the other damage.
He's just closed up the last of the thousand cuts in the artificial skin — it's definitely not a perfect job, because the poor kid will probably be covered in those puckered scars for the rest of his life, especially on his back and shoulders where the whip apparently fell hardest, but Kusai should just count himself lucky he got a mechanic who could do the job at all — and now he's got to install those missed updates.
But if he's going to do that, he's going to need to power Astro back on.
And if he goes ahead and gets the kid set up with some oil while he does it, he can just go ahead and pull two bolts with one wrench. So he very reluctantly pries open the hatch in Astro's chest (and he's deliberately not looking at the white stains still caked on the inside), and stuffs the glowing blue sphere right back where he got it from.
The orb spins around and around in the cold metal cavity for a full ten minutes, which is just about forever for a real high-tech robot like this, but Hamegg sets everything up while he waits, flipping open his laptop, setting it up on the edge of the table, and fetching a small ten-ounce can of slick black oil from the stack in the corner. Sure enough, as he heads back over, the kid's system finally comes online, and he gives a long, slow blink of his too-big brown eyes, turning his dark, spiky head to stare around the room. Little flecks of hardened mud peel off his body or tumble out of his hair, drifting down to the floor.
Hamegg gives him a (very generous) minute to wake up all the way before he drops a light tap on the bare, dirty shoulder — and the second his hand hits the too-human skin, Astro flinches back like a scared deer, tensing up like a spring and whirling to face Hamegg full-on. But he doesn't throw a blind punch, or jump off the table and bolt for the door, so this is already off to a way better start than Hamegg had any real right to expect.
And then Astro's unfocused brown eyes finally lock on Hamegg, and he freezes. Like a dog that knows it's about to get beaten. Like he'll be dead if he looks away for so much as a second. Like Hamegg is a shark in the water, and he's bleeding out in the blue ocean all alone.
But that's no big surprise — it's been almost a full year now since the kid crashed on his doorstep, upended his whole life in a matter of mere days, and never slowed down to say sorry on his way back out the door, but that big fiasco in the arena is probably still as fresh in his mind as it is in Hamegg's.
Bad blood never washes out.
Hamegg latches onto Astro's arm, right above the sharp and pointy elbow, and hauls him upright on the table to shove the can into his hands. Astro lets him do all of this without protest, limp and slack as a little girl's doll in his iron grip, but he doesn't glance at the oil even once because he won't take his eyes off Hamegg for so much as a second (like a dog that knows it's about to get beaten, like he'll be dead if he looks away for so much as a second, like Hamegg is a shark in the water, and he's bleeding out in the blue ocean all alone)—
"Go ahead and get out your thumb drive for me," Hamegg tells him. "We don't have all day here."
But Astro completely ignores the command — which shouldn't even be possible, because Hamegg saw the file with his own eyes, saw the line where it said LOR software installed and activated, so there is literally no way the kid could just shake off a direct order like that — and goes right on staring at Hamegg, his shaking fingers going tighter and tighter around the oil can on his knees until his knuckles are whiter than bone.
"Come on, kiddo, work with me here," Hamegg rolls his eyes — it'd be easy enough to just do it for himself, and he already knows exactly where it is, anyway: inside Astro's energy chamber, about two inches to the left of the spinning blue sphere that powers him. But now that the kid is finally conscious, he'd probably prefer the dignity of doing it on his own, and Hamegg isn't going to deny him that so long as he doesn't have to. A little bit of leeway never hurts when it comes to the real banged-up robots — they're usually just so grateful for the reprieve from pain that they'd gladly throw themselves in the mouth of an active volcano if he just asked nicely. "Give me your drive, or I'll take it out myself." He holds out an expectant palm.
Astro presses his mouth into a thin white line and reaches up to shove Hamegg's waiting hand away. His lips fall open, and his voice finally spills out, hoarse and cracked and raw. "I can't."
Jesus, the kid sounds awful — like he's just swallowed a whole lot of broken glass. Like somebody got their hands around his throat and choked him within an inch of his life. Like he's been screaming his heart out for hours on hours, or maybe even days.
(Hamegg tries not to think too hard about that last one.)
"Well, what do you know? So the kid can talk." He arches his brows and flips Astro a small, wry smile. "What's the matter? Too special to take it out yourself? Is that it?"
Astro's face finally settles into a glare, but he can't carry it off even a little — it looks all wrong with his big innocent eyes and tiny button nose — and his mouth goes even thinner and whiter. It's… kind of familiar in a way, the faintest sense of recognition tickling vaguely at the back of Hamegg's mind — he just knows he's seen that exact expression on a very different face before, but he can't pin down the who or the where of it.
"I'm not permitted to access my energy chamber," Astro says coldly.
Oh.
Oh, shit.
The sarcastic smile slides off Hamegg's face like water.
He can count on one hand the number of robots he's met from the rings who aren't allowed to mess with their own power source, and it's never a precaution that Kusai adds for no reason.
That's the command he only keys in for the machines that try to deactivate themselves.
Of course, the laws of robotics won't actually let them go through with it, anyway — rule number three, a robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the first or second law — but some machines here and there do find the odd loophole every now and again, and besides, it's the rebellion implicit in the attempt that gets under Kusai's skin more than anything else. The guy never lets any kind of defiance go unpunished.
Hamegg only knew Astro for a week or two before he went back to Metro City, and maybe that's not long enough for him to make any kind of judgment call, but this kid just really does not seem like the type to throw in the towel when things get tough. Whatever the hell made him think that a permanent shutdown would be better than a life in the rings, it had to be pretty bad.
But it's—it's fine.
If Astro can't cope with a couple of well-deserved hard knocks here and there, that's his problem, and Hamegg definitely isn't being paid anywhere near enough to even pretend to give a damn, so he shakes his head, shakes it off, and goes back to the job he is being paid to do: he flips open the tiny door to Astro's energy chamber with a flick of a finger.
The second the glowing sphere is exposed, Astro tenses up tighter than a coiled spring, his back so stiff and straight it's like he's got a steel rod for a spine, and his hands balling up in fists in his lap (and Hamegg is still trying not to think about the dried semen hidden in the blinding glow of the spinning orb, so he just yanks the drive out of its port and backs off again as quickly as he can, feeling vaguely sick).
It's only a minute or so before the two machines sync up, and the neon green numbers flood the screen in dizzying rows. Hamegg already knew the kid's system was in pretty bad shape, but he still winces at the sight, reflexively rubbing a hand over his throbbing temple where the beginnings of a bad headache are knocking on the inside of his skull. He'd love to get some answers, to ask what the hell happened and why the hell did Kusai let you get this bad and what the hell was he thinking and why the hell does your system still look like I just pulled you out of a freaking warzone even though the repairs are almost finished, but Astro still looks like he might jump up and make a break for the door if Hamegg pushes him too far right now.
So he just settles down in his swiveling desk chair, tapping his fingers impatiently on the splintered edge of the worktable as he waits for the rest of the data to load up. Maybe when it does, everything will make sense again. Maybe there's just something he's not seeing because it's not all there yet. Or maybe it's just that this pitiful laptop he scrounged up from the scrapyard is older than he is. Or maybe the kid just really needs those updates Kusai didn't give him. Or maybe the kid just really needs somebody to take a closer look at those memory circuits.
Everything is quiet for a minute or two, completely silent except for the soft clicks and clacks of the keys as Hamegg types a digit here and punches in a number there, all the lines of code swimming and blurring in front of his dry, tired eyes. He scrubs at his brow again, the skin tight and hot with the promise of a full-on migraine in an hour or two.
And then, all of a sudden, Astro's raw, rasping voice rings out again, almost unnaturally loud against the heavy hush of the workshop.
"I'm not doing it again."
Hamegg blinks, momentarily dumbfounded, and tears his gaze away from the laptop screen to throw the kid a baffled glance. "Come again?"
"I—I'm—I'm not—" Astro hauls in a deep breath and sits up a little bit straighter, squaring his shoulders like he's steeling himself for some kind of battle. "I'm not doing it again. I'm not going back in the arena." He swallows so loud that it echoes around and around the silent room, and he's trembling all over, his hands clenched up in shaking fists in his lap. "I-I'm not."
Oh, of freaking course.
There's an extremely petty, spiteful part of Hamegg that just wants to go with it, to say Kusai loaned you out to me, so you're mine, and you'll do whatever the hell I say, you don't get to tell me no, you don't get to tell me what you will and won't do, so you'd better hold that tongue and remember your place, but he's got enough sense to admit that would be pretty counterproductive — and, also, kind of mean.
Sure, Astro is a major pain in the neck more often than not, and he could definitely stand to get knocked down a peg or ten, but Kusai has obviously put him through hell and back these past five months, and Hamegg doesn't have the heart to add any more pain to the pile.
"Yeah, well, you can simmer down about that," he says instead, dull and flat. "The Games are dead now. Thanks to you."
"Thanks to me?" Astro sputters. "What did I do?"
And he's got the nerve to act all surprised about it, too, like he really thinks it wasn't all his fault, and he's not the reason Hamegg is still stuck down here in the scrap heap, left behind like an old and unwanted and outdated machine, dumped down in the junkyard the second he wasn't shiny and pretty and new anymore. Like he really thinks he didn't ruin Hamegg's whole life in less than twenty-four hours before he blasted off to Metro City to be universally adored by everyone who's ever laid eyes on him.
"You're kidding, right?" A low, bitter laugh rips out of Hamegg's throat to hang in the air between them, loud and ugly. "You think anyone wanted to sponsor another match after that whole peaceful protest stunt you pulled with ZOG? No freaking way, kid. No one would touch the Games with a twenty-foot pole after that."
Astro snorts, his dark brows crashing together in a deep scowl, and sinks back against the wall with his arms folded over his bare chest. "Then I guess you should have thought about that before you put me in the arena."
Hamegg isn't really in the habit of saying fuck you to little kids who barely come up to his elbow, but he thinks he could make an exception just this once. "You know, you might want to think about maybe not pissing off the guy who's patching you up? I'm playing nice right now, but believe me, I could change that in a real big hurry."
Astro glowers back at him for a long second, jaw clenched and eyes flashing, but he finally looks away with his hands still balled up in fists and his mouth pressing down in that thin white eerily-familiar line again.
Score one for Hamegg.
Maybe now the situation is finally sinking in for the stuck-up little brat, and he's realizing that the rest of the week will go a hell of a lot easier for him if he just stays on Hamegg's good side and doesn't stir up too much crap. Maybe now he won't talk, or move, or do a damn thing except what he's told, like a normal robot, and maybe Hamegg will actually make it through the day without a pounding in his skull.
"It—It wasn't a stunt."
"What?" Hamegg goes still, his hand half an inch from the touchpad on his laptop. He doesn't look at Astro, but he cocks his head to the side to listen better on blind reflex. "What the heck are you yakking on about now?"
Astro won't look at him, either. He keeps his head turned resolutely away, his arms crossed and his lips as thin and white as ever. "What happened in the Games… what ZOG and I did… it wasn't a publicity stunt. Or a peaceful protest. Or anything like that." He digs his heel into the side of the table until thin chips of cheap wood peel off and flutter down to the dirty floor. "We weren't trying to prove a point. We just… didn't want to fight anymore."
Hamegg isn't totally sure what he expected to come out of Astro's mouth, but he can definitely say that was at the bottom of the list. Is that seriously what the kid decided to focus on? Really? I didn't mean to ruin your entire life in one fell swoop! I was just being my authentic pacifist do-gooder self!
Jesus Christ, give him a break.
Hamegg rolls his eyes. "Why don't you just drink your oil, kid?"
Astro drops a quick, startled glance down at the can clutched in his hands, completely untouched and still brimming, like he forgot it was there. He raises it up a little higher, like he's going to drink it, but he just cups one hand under the spout and pours a few dark, glistening drops out into his open palm instead. He stares down at the gleaming black beads for a second before he nods to himself, a firm jerk of the chin.
And Hamegg is doing his best to stay focused on his laptop screen, but he can see the kid's motions out of the corner of his eye, and did he seriously just check to make sure it was really oil in that can? Why would he do that? Why would he feel like he needed to do that? What else would somebody give a robot to drink?
"How much?" Astro asks.
Hamegg blinks. It is a ten-ounce can, isn't it? "All of it."
"All of it?" Astro echoes cautiously, like he has to make absolutely sure he's got it right. "For me?"
Like he thinks it's some kind of joke. Like he thinks Hamegg is going to reach out and snatch it away, laugh in his face and say just kidding! Or like he thinks it's some kind of trap. Like he thinks Hamegg will tell him to go ahead and drink it all, and get mad at him for it as soon as he does. And the way he asked how much over a measly ten ounces before he ever took a sip… and the way he tested it, spilling a tiny trickle into his hand and checking it over, like he thought maybe it might be something else… like maybe it was something else once… like maybe it was something bad once…
"Y-Yeah," Hamegg says, finally, but it comes out low and hoarse and rough, so he has to clear his throat and say it again. "Yeah, kid, it's all for you. And there are more cans if you need 'em, too."
"Oh," Astro says, soft and breathless and surprised, like he thinks anything more than the one single cup he has in his hands is the kind of luxury that only exists in his wildest dreams. He finally lifts the oil to his lips and takes a tiny, tentative sip, holding it in his mouth for a long second before he goes in for another, slightly bigger swallow.
Hamegg glances over at the laptop screen again to see a bright blue pop-up window reads updating synced system and please don't turn off your computer, but the bar at the bottom idles at a mere seven percent, so he's got nothing to do except wait it out. So he watches the little loading bar, and he tries not to think about the look on the kid's face when he said he could have the whole can of oil. He tries not to think about the millions on millions on millions of tiny cuts he closed up all over the battered little body, and he tries not to think about the puckered scars it left on the skin. He tries not to think about the shredded synthetic lips, chewed to pieces in a haze of pain. He tries not to think about the blown valve in the kid's knee and the busted clamp in his elbow. He tries not to think about the dislocated shoulder. He tries not to think about all the wires he had to pull out. He tries not to think about the semen stains splashed all over the inside of the energy chamber. He tries not to think about the way Kusai dragged the kid around the workshop by that glowing chain, like a dog on a leash. He tries not to think about the way the kid said thank you for calling him by his name.
He tries not to think about the way Astro will look two weeks from now, when he's back with Kusai again. He tries not to wonder if the kid will have more rips and tears where his cables are coming out. He tries not to wonder if he'll have more blown valves or busted clamps. He tries not to wonder if he'll bite his lips to bits again. He tries not to wonder where Kusai will take him to get patched up next time.
He tries not to wonder if Kusai will stand back and let him get this bad again, because he already knows the answer to that one.
But it's—it's not his problem.
Whatever else happens to the kid from here on out is not his problem. So long as he gets Astro back to Kusai in one piece, and better shape than he was before he got here, his job is done, and everything else is completely out of his hands. Kusai will get his robot back, and Hamegg will get his money, and he can finally start over somewhere far away from here, and he can finally build a better life for himself and everything will finally be okay — a nice big win-win-win situation for everyone.
Except Astro.
But he's just a robot, and this is what robots are meant to do: serve the humans around them in whatever way their master tells them to, without complaint and without delay, and if this kid is too stupid or too stuck-up to fulfill such simple expectations, then he deserves everything Kusai must have given him, and more. Christ knows he needs a lesson or two (or twenty) in obedience, and pain is really the only way a machine will ever learn from its mistakes. Without real emotions to guide them like a human, robots have to rely on pattern recognition processes and prior experience to figure out the correct ways to react to various situations and stimuli. And a little bit of physical suffering goes a long way to ensure they'll never repeat the actions that led to their punishment.
Except Astro.
If Kusai's documentation on this kid is accurate, and it probably is, then Astro was only two days old when he showed up on Hamegg's doorstep last year — which is way too young to have any kind of pattern recognition or prior experience, especially since he'd spent his entire forty-eight hours of existence up until then in Metro City.
But he still hit it off with the other kids down here in the blink of an eye — one second, he was the awkward, clueless newbie, brimming with questions and qualms, hesitating on the edge of every doorway like he was waiting for them to tell him to leave… and then, before Hamegg knew it, he was just another part of their ever-growing family, like a missing puzzle piece clicking into place, fitting in with them so easily and effortlessly it was almost like he'd always been there — and that couldn't have been pattern recognition or prior experience, could it? He had never been down on the Surface before the day he met Hamegg.
And that's another thing: Astro actually liked it here — or, at least, he certainly seemed to like it here, staring around at the rundown little workshop in wide-eyed wonder like it was some kind of secret treasure trove, and warming right up to Hamegg in thirty seconds flat (and Hamegg wanted to pull him aside and give him a good long talk on stranger danger, but he held back because he knew it wasn't his place, and Astro wasn't his kid) and that definitely couldn't have been pattern recognition or prior experience, because he had never been down on the Surface before.
Maybe it was just a preprogrammed response written into his code, simple as that, but that doesn't really make sense, either, because there's no damn way Tenma would have put a positive opinion of Hamegg in his picture-perfect robot son, right?
And it couldn't have been pattern recognition or prior experience or preprogrammed response to save Hamegg's life.
That was pretty much the exact opposite of pattern recognition, actually, because if Astro had relied purely on previous events to tell him what to do like a normal robot, he would have stepped back and let ZOG handle the whole thing. He would have stayed exactly where he was, flat on the ground where Hamegg had just shocked the shit out of him, because pattern recognition would have told him don't save the human who hurt you, or he'll hurt you again, and he would have listened, and he would have been right to listen. And then ZOG would have squashed Hamegg like a tiny bug under his colossal foot, and Hamegg wouldn't even be here to think about any of this right now.
But he is here to think about it.
Because Astro saved him.
And it doesn't make any sense.
No matter how Hamegg writes out the equation, or how he counts the numbers, it just doesn't add up.
He glances over at Astro, still drinking his oil with his back pressed to the wall behind the table and his spiky head tipped back to stare up at the ceiling above him, swinging his little red boots lightly back and forth in the empty air between the edge of the wood and the floor below.
It doesn't really matter, though, does it? He doesn't really need to know, does he? It's all in the past now, just water under the bridge, bygones and bygones, so why does he even care? Christ knows the kid in front of him probably doesn't care. The kid in front of him probably doesn't even remember it.
But it's been almost a year, and he still can't get the question out of his head. It's been almost a year, and he still doesn't have an answer that makes sense.
And if he doesn't ask now, he never will.
"Okay, fine," he says, and it actually comes out pretty damn close to the coolly indifferent tone he was hoping for. "Let's say that crap you pulled with ZOG really wasn't a stunt. What do you call the rest of it, then?" he spins his chair to the side, so he can face the kid full-on. "You know, the part where you wouldn't let ZOG finish me off? Why did you do that?"
Astro frowns, the wrinkle in his brow cutting a deep crease in the center of his forehead, before he finally says—in that puzzled voice he always uses in his interviews when the reporter has just asked a really dumb question but he's too polite to tell them that— "Do I need a reason to care about people?"
It's so completely out of left field, literally the absolute last thing Hamegg ever thought he would hear, and he goes still in his seat, eyes fixed on the kid's little face as he waits for the moment when that innocent, earnest façade breaks. But the seconds drag on and on, and it never does.
And he has no idea what to do with that.
"I—I'd just sicced every robot I had on you." And Christ knows that he'd be pissed off as all hell if the roles had been reversed, and it had been him in that arena instead. "I-I mean, I was zapping you half to death. I was hurting you. You were screaming." He rakes a hand roughly through his hair until he can feel the dark, greasy strands sticking up all over his head, but he really couldn't care less about what he looks like right now. "You could have just let him do it. You know you could have just let him do it. And you could have gotten away with it, too — I mean, there were thousands of people there who would have sworn you didn't do anything wrong. So why didn't you?"
Astro is silent for a long, long minute before he answers — and, when he does, his voice is very steady, and very, very serious, in a way Hamegg has never heard from him before. "If I let something bad happen when I've got the power to prevent it, then I did do something wrong. Even if no one else ever knows, I'll know. And I could never forgive myself for that."
Hamegg wants to tell him that he's crazy. He wants to tell him that he's going to get himself killed sooner or later with an attitude like that. He wants to tell him it's a miracle he's made it so long in the rings with that much sheer naivete. He wants to tell him that he'd never last a day down here on the Surface, where it's every man for himself and you've got to be selfish as hell if you want to survive. But when he looks into those big brown eyes, and that solemn little face, all the harsh words in his head die unspoken in his throat.
He finally has his answer, and it's only left him with more questions than ever before.
Hamegg refocuses on the glowing screen again, but the bar has only jumped up to twelve percent since the last time he looked at it, so he lets himself glance at Astro again for just a quick second. The kid is still clutching that can of oil like it's a lifeline, but it's making a hollow, metallic sound when his fingers press into the side now — empty, or close to it. He'll need a fresh one soon.
Hamegg pushes his chair back from the table with a sharp, whining screech of the ugly brass wheels on the peeling tile floor, and gets up to grab a new can from the pile of crates in the corner. It's not like he's running low, or anything like that — one of the advantages of being a mechanic means he's practically got the stuff coming out of his ears at all times — and with the way Kusai has obviously been scrimping the poor kid, Astro should really try and drink his fill while he's here.
Hamegg holds it out to him, but he doesn't take it. He just stares down at it like he's not sure what he's supposed to do with it.
"Come on, kid," Hamegg rolls his eyes. "You need all the oil you can get, so if you think you can stomach it, then you should drink it, all right?"
Astro looks slowly from the can to Hamegg and back again, like he's trying to gauge the sincerity of the offer, before he finally reaches out and takes it. He doesn't slow down to check it this time before he pops the spout up and takes a sip. "Thank you."
Hamegg should probably remind him that he's getting paid to do this. He should probably remind him that wouldn't be doing this at all without the promise of the money to come. He should probably say that if it was up to him, he'd just leave Astro to rust away in the scrap heap and be done with it, because this kid is so much more trouble than any robot is worth.
Instead, he just shrugs it off and sits back down in his chair. "No problem."