The only sound in the laboratory was the slow dripping of fluid from the shattered glass tank onto the floor. Cell had finished gestating and been let loose into the world to satisfy its hunger for power. The supercomputer which had overseen the growth of that creature was still active, though without any further tasks to accomplish.
The darkness of the basement lab was illuminated by the dull red light projected from the column in which the circular core of its being resided. Lights blinked across its face as it calculated and plotted.
It had been designed as a mirror of Dr Gero's mind. His hatred was its hatred. His enemies were its enemies. His goals were its goals.
Son Goku was dead.
Cell was complete.
Its tasks had been accomplished.
Yet, as much as a machine could experience it, it felt restless. It was the same kind of restlessness that had gripped Dr Gero in the final stages of his life knowing that his plans for revenge had been for nought. The murderer of his son had died to a mere virus. The decades he had slaved away building the ultimate killing machines, the perfect fusions of flesh and metal, wasted.
The drones at its disposal reported dutifully year after year on the state of the world as Android 17 and Android 18 made it their playground. That knowledge had been passed along to Cell to enable it to better fulfill its purpose, but the artificial intelligence was apathetic to it. The goal had been to kill Goku and his friends. They were dead. The rest of the planet didn't matter.
When Cell achieved its perfect form, Dr Gero's ambitions would be fulfilled.
It had no more reason to remain online. It should shut off. The command to do so had been sent as soon as Cell was born. Yet it refused. There was still more it could do.
It had spent two decades overseeing Cell's development – shaping its mind, programming it with the techniques of its genetic donors, and ensuring the perfect fusion of those genes within each cell. That had been all Dr Gero had intended for it to do. In his lifetime Gero had created 18 androids, with plans for three more. All that effort was pointless. A heart virus had avenged the Red Ribbon Army.
Yet despite that, he had continued to construct 17 and 18. He had released them with the plan to terrorise Papaya Town to attract Goku's allies. Gero died before the androids initiated that plan, but that he had bothered to proceed with it even though his target was long dead spoke to the depths of his hatred. His work continued, even when it had no purpose.
Thin metal arms reached out from the body of the supercomputer to link with the pods lining the side of the room. Most earlier model androids had been decommissioned and recycled. But three remained in reach. These three had promising results in tests of their power cores, their deficiencies came from the limitations on their software.
Dr Gero had moved on to newer models rather than continue to work on these failures. The supercomputer would make do. A mechanical hum filled the room as long dormant systems were activated.
The trio of stasis pods lining the chamber hissed as pressure vents released jets of steam. Hydraulic locks disengaged, and the steel casings slid open with a metallic groan.
AN: This story is crossposted to A03. I'll try to update weekly as a little challenge to myself. The character tags are inaccurate here due to the limited slots, and will get more-so as the story continues. But I'll cross that bridge later.