Chapter 6

Lost Light

Early the next morning, Sally's optics snapped open and scanned the room, as she woke up from her sleep. Or whatever it was.

Just like when they were humans, she and Max had just closed their eyes and relaxed in their respective beds, and had drifted off into unconsciousness after a little while. But it wasn't sleep, not really. It was something closer to a power-saving mode or similar, where most of their body shut down. There were even dreams or the like in her mind while she was in this state, so it did indeed seem like she was sleeping.

But it wasn't really sleep, not to her, and she knew it.

Sally ran her hand through the fiber optics that were once her hair and vented.

She had hoped that everything had just been a strange dream, a bizarre nightmare that just couldn't be real.

But it was, and she hated it.

She looked at her mechanical form, and then over to Max's still form as he still lay unmoving.

If it hadn't been for him, she would never have made it this far, which made what she was planning to do all the more difficult.

With an inhuman level of stealth, she got dressed in the baggy clothes she had used the day before, and made her way out of his room and downstairs.

She passed the bedroom of Carl and Susan, Max's parents, and she stopped for a moment and thanked them in her mind for being so understanding and caring.

As she approached the main door, she stopped and looked around, finding a pen and piece of paper. With a heavy vent, she started writing a note for Max, it was the least she could do.

'Dear Max.

Thank you so much for sticking with me through all of this. I would not have made it this far without you. But what comes next, I have to handle on my own, as I have no right to ask you to accompany me on that. You have already done more for me than I could ask, and I am forever grateful to you.

Thank you for everything. And I'm sorry.

Love, Sally. Your best friend.'

Sally held the note for a long time, contemplating whether or not she really should go through with it, but she just couldn't postpone meeting her family any longer. She missed them so much.

Having placed the note on the fridge in the kitchen, she unlocked the door and walked out into the early dawn, gently closing the door behind herself. She didn't like any of this, especially not leaving the door unlocked while the others slept, but she had to do this.

With the hood pulled up as much as possible, she began the long walk home.

Despite the early hour, there were still people out and about, a few joggers out for an early jog, people preparing to go to work, the usual, and Sally hoped that no one would think twice about a girl in a hoodie going for a walk in the morning.

She had a long way to go, though, as she lived over an hour away from Max's home, and all she could do was keep her head down and pray that that would be enough.

And that it would drown out the guilt she felt over leaving Max.

By the time that Max awoke from his sleep, Sally had already gotten roughly halfway home, and he was none the wiser.

Looking over to the improvised bed they had made for her, he found that she wasn't there.

"Sally?" he asked as he scanned the room, looking for any clues to where she might have gone.

At first he thought that maybe she had gone to the bathroom, but then it hit him that they hadn't needed to do that since they were transformed. It seemed that their mechanical bodies were able to convert all of the food they ate into energy, leaving no waste behind, nor did they seem to produce any other kind of waste products.

But if she wasn't there, then where was she?

The clothes that she had worn were missing, but her backpack was still there, so she had to be close by.

"Maybe she is just somewhere else in the house." he mused.

Suddenly, there was a gentle knock on the door that made Max jump.

"Max, dear? Are you awake?" he heard his mother ask through the door.

"Yeah, mom, I'm up." he answered. "Have you seen Sally anywhere?"

"No. Isn't she in her bed in there?"

"She isn't. She must be somewhere else in the house then." Max started to get dressed. He needed to find Sally, for a dreadful feeling was starting to gnaw at him.

Together with his parents, they quickly searched the entire house, finding neither hide nor hair of Sally.
They did, however find the note she left.

"Max!" his father called out having read the note when he found it. Max hurried into the kitchen upon hearing his father's voice

"You better read this." Carl said, handing Max the note.

Max quickly read the text, his optics flaring upon finishing it, and he read it over and over, as if expecting it to change, to not be true.

But it was.

"Damn it, Sally." he vented. "Why couldn't you just wait for me?"

"She left?" Susan asked, piecing things together, taking and reading the note to confirm her fears.

"She did…" Max said, sadness in his slightly metallic voice. Clenching his fist, he grabbed his phone and called her, only to be met with a message that the number couldn't be reached. "Damn it! She must have turned off her phone!"

"She can't have gotten far." said Carl. "Let's take the car and go looking for her."

"But where? I don't even know where she lives. As soon as I said were I lived, she agreed that it was closer than hers." said Max. "We never traded addresses, only phone numbers."

"We have to at least try. We know what to look for, and we can cover a lot of ground more quickly with the car. Besides, people are used to me driving around, so we will attract a lot less attention like this than if we were to just run around."

"You're right." Max admitted, seeing the logic in his father's reasoning. "Let's go, I remember the clothes she wore."

"I'll stay here, in case she comes back." said Susan as her husband and son hurried to the garage through a door past the laundry room.

The garage was large enough to hold up to four cars, but only two were actually there. One gray Toyota, and one black 1982 Pontiac Firebird Trans Am. The rest of the space was used for maintenance, restoration, and painting.

Carl and Max climbed inside the Trans Am, opening the garage doors with the custom build remote and drove off into the neighbourhood to look for Sally.

However, by the time they set out on the hunt, Sally had already reached her home.

She stood outside the front door, and had done so for at least ten minutes. She had told herself that she did it so that her family would have time to wake up, but the truth was that she needed the time to gather her courage, part of her hoping that Max would come to her rescue and help her.

Venting, she slowly reached out for the doorbell, her metallic finger hovering over it for what felt like the longest time.

The sound of a car approaching caught her attention, and she looked over her shoulder to locate it.

It was one of their neighbours driving off to work.

She vented again, finally pushing the button and ringing the doorbell.

Seconds ticked by, and she constantly fought the urge to turn and run. She had come this far, she had to see it through to the end.

Finally, the door was unlocked and opened, and on the other side was a girl roughly the same age as Sally, dressed in black yoga pants and a pink top, with her orange hair in a high ponytail.

Sally's sister, Ellen.

"Sal?" Ellen asked upon seeing her sister.

"Hi, Ellie." Sally said weakly, raising her head just enough for he metal features to be clearly visible.

"Oh my god, what have you done, Sal?" Ellen asked, more confused than shocked. "What kind of weird make-up did you pick up at that camp?"

"It's… not make-up… It's real…"

"Real? Real what? A mask?"

"No… it's… it's me…"

"You're not making any sense, little sister. And you sound… off."

"I know… could I just come inside? Please."

"Yeah, sure. I mean, you live here, so why wouldn't you be allowed." Ellen stepped aside and let Sally come inside before closing the door. "Mom! Dad! Sally's back!" Ellen called out.

It didn't take long before Sally's parents came to the entry hall to welcome their daughter back home. Her mother, Jill, was a woman in her early thirties, with long blond hair, dressed in jeans and a blue blouse, while her father, Hank, was closer to his forties with a few stains of grey in his otherwise red hair and beard, and he was dressed in yellow shorts and a green shirt.

Sally turned to look at her parents, but as soon as they laid eyes upon her robotic face, they stopped in their tracks, having been expecting to see their daughter again, not whatever they saw now.

"S-sally?" Hank stammered.

"Dad… Mom…"

"What… what are you?" Jill asked, her eyes wide with shock and horror.

"Chill, mom. It's just some kind of mask." said Ellen. "Sal is just playing a prank on us."

"I… I wish that was the case." Sally said, pulling back her hood, revealing that her appearance went beyond just her face, which further shocked her family even more. "Something… incredible happened at camp. As you can see, I was… I was turned into a robot, of some sort."

"No way…" Ellen gasped, her hands flying to her mouth as she took a few steps back when the reality of what she saw set in.

"This… this just can't be…" said Hank, looking at his daughter with great scepticism and fear in his eyes. "It's not possible…"

With her hands clutching at her chest, Jill scanned the robotic form of Sally in dismay, desperately searching for any sign of the girl she once knew.

"What happened to our little girl?" she almost sobbed, her voice shaking and unshed tears lingering in her eyes.

"I'm still here, mom, I promise." said Sally in an effort to comfort her mother. "It's just… I'm different now. Different but still me."

She took a few tentative steps towards her mother, but Jill instantly took several away and into the connecting kitchen, her eyes filled with horror and disbelief.

"Mom…?"

"Don't call me that! You're not my daughter!" Jill snapped, pulling a knife from the knife-block next to her, and pointing it at Sally, while Hank pulled Ellen into his arms.

"You are not my daughter! You're some metal copy of her! Trying to replace her! Take her place!"

"Mom! Please! It's really me!" Sally pleaded.
"Shut up! Do not dare call me 'mom'! You're nothing but a machine monster! Get out of our home! And never come back!"

"But…"

"OUT!" Jill screamed, tears streaming down her cheeks.

Had she been able to shed tears herself, Sally too would have had streams of them going down her cheeks, but she couldn't. All she could do was turn and run out of the door, barely caring enough to pull up the hood again.

Sally couldn't believe it.

They couldn't see that it was really her any more.

And as she ran, wishing that she could undo it all, what had once been her heart kept pumping her fuel through her body, completely untouched by the events that had just happened. But there was something else, something inside of her chest, that hurt as if it was about to explode, or flicker and fade, and she knew not if it could ever be repaired.
So she ran and ran, away from what had once been her home, from those that had once loved her and called her family, from those that now had cast her out.

Because she wasn't how they remembered her, because she was different.

Because she was a machine freak.

Poor Sally. Not only is she struggling with her new form, but her family couldn't see who she really was.
If only Max had been there, maybe things had gone differently, but is it too late for that?