For @honorary-bad-kid , who got me to look in my drafts again. The story will probably never be finished, but here’s chapter one! I’ll try to get chapter two cleaned up at well
Did an android fear death?
Did they ever have life to begin with?
A fire burned through him, metal screaming as it bent under the relentless pressure of rubble. He was supposed to be superior, but as his skin tore from his metal skeleton, he felt weak.
Would his father be proud that he tried? Would he come back for him? Was he going to rot here in this pile of rubble forever and was this what he deserved?
It wasn’t his right to contemplate his worth, not now.
He had a vague awareness that he was alone, sensors glitching and failing as he tried to focus, to form a proper thought. Would anyone come back? Did he want them to?
He was fading into emergency reserves, a faint consciousness locked away in a body falling apart at the seams. He wanted to scream, but his vocals had gone offline. He was a prisoner in his own body, unable to escape. This, he thought with no true concept, must be hell.
He wasn’t sure how long he lay dormant, drifting in a space in between that felt as close to death as he was able, a constant balance on the precipice. It was a shock to have a jolt of sensation. He felt his reserves kick to life with a jolt of static that might be pain. He didn’t want to wake up, to leave the comfortable haze of the void, but his programming worked against him, just as it always did.
Marcus was not in control, perhaps he had never been.
It was a slow day at Mighty Med, though no one dared to say it out loud and jinx their peace. Everyone knew that to mention it would mean chaos. The Q word was banned and all learned fast why. The downtime gave the staff much needed time to focus on their long term care patients and take a breath. Kaz and Oliver had cleared a portion of the front desk to lay out their textbooks, trying to cram for a history quiz.
Or, Oliver was, Kaz was drawing inappropriate doodles on his mock exam. He had a weird ability to barely pass anyways, but he needed to improve his grades if he ever wanted to get into medical school. Sure, they’d likely go to a medical school for superhero doctors and have recommendations and work on their side, but it deserved the effort.
It was amusing to Oliver how Kaz had memorized all his anatomy and medical textbooks, including the complicated superhero ones Horace gave them, but he couldn’t remember who the Axis powers were.
The boys jumped as the emergency siren lit up and someone yelled about an incoming emergency.
“We have a sentient robotic life form, sustained heavy blunt force trauma and metal warping! Core seems to be a reactor and is still active but unstable! It’s also very creepy looking!” Benny ran beside the gurney as information was relayed by the EMTs, poking the robot briefly before slipping back into work mode. To be fair, it was creepy looking.
Kaz perked up, throwing his textbook over his shoulder (and ignoring that pained squeak of Owl Girl) as he got up. Oliver wanted to chastise him, but they did have a job to do.
“Yeesh, what happened to this guy?” Kaz winced, lifting up a detached flap of synthetic skin that seemed to have been part of their face.
One of the EMTs stepped forward, seemingly a little lost as his coworker worked on transfer.
“Tidwell Industries purchased an abandoned property that was under surveillance. Titanio discovered a lair in the basement believed to be one of Victor Crane’s and an android was trapped under rubble. He said he recognized some of the circuitry and said the child was responding somewhat and had sentient life. He said he would return to help after his patrol.” The EMT rattled off before stepping back again and returning to his usual silence. Kaz always found it weird that they never spoke unless spoken to.
“Victor Crane? I’m not familiar…” Oliver felt the urge to tear through The Domain for information, but he forced it down. The villian wasn’t the patient. Being confronted with a patient they didn’t know wasn’t impossible, lots of startup heroes hadn’t had their comics picked up yet, and several underground heroes refused to have their image printed. Usually Ambrose still made a cheat sheet for them of weaknesses and whereabouts, but he was overworked.
“New age villain type, gotta hate em on principle.” Horace made a face of deep contemplation before he clapped his hands, looking at the mangled metal with a grin. “Let’s get the tech boys up here, you boys get a fun lesson in cybernetic care!”
Kaz had taken to the violence of their jobs gracefully, so used to gory movies and comics that the actual horrors of their job didn’t usually follow him home. Oliver was different. He used to puke at the sight of injury as a kid, these days it was more a stone in his gut. Most superhero injuries weren’t graphic, but many were. It helped that most had different coloured blood, but it didn’t change much.
There was no blood with this one, not real blood. It’s blood was blue and smelled sweet and sharp, staining the crisp white sheets. It looked human, like a boy his age, but synthetic skin was torn away in many places, revealing metal bones and muscle of tightly woven cable and wire. One side of his face was hauntingly human, a slack expression, the other a robotic mockery of a skull with a red optic very faintly glowing.
The noises it made in its sleep, staticky whimpers every time someone poked the wrong wire. According to the techs his circuitry was bounds above what they’d seen and they worried that disconnecting his pain receptors would cause more damage.
So Oliver bit his tongue and did what he was told, holding metal in place while a medical soldering iron welded pieces back in place. There had been a scream, gut wrenching as the boy arched off the gurney before it abruptly dissolved into a staticky dial tone and he finally powered down, slumping back against the stained sheets. Oliver thought they’d lost him, but the reactor still glowed faintly.
“Isn’t this fun? Reminds me of father son projects, too bad I don’t have a son.” Horace pushed up his welding mask, even though he wasn’t actually helping and instead standing several feet away.
“What! I’m right here!” Alan stomped his foot as he was pushed back by a triage nurse.
“Oh, Alan. You don’t count.”
Oliver was brought back to the moment as Kaz laid a hand on his shoulder, firm and grounding. He definitely smeared blue blood on Ollie’s pristine white lab coat, but it was the thought that counted.
“Hey, Titanio just got here, he knows this kind of thing. Why don’t we take off early today?” Kaz had a gift to him, able to read Oliver like a book. Some days he hated it, but most days he was thankful someone cared.
He heard Kaz talk to Horace, probably asking about clocking out early, but he couldn’t hear anything but a faint ringing. He stared at the boy, watching them piece him together like a puzzle, taking and chatting as if this wasn’t a kid. Mr. Tidwell looked practically giddy at all the exposed circuitry as he stripped off his exosuit.
Oliver had never treated another teenager before, not really. Teenage heroes got in over their heads, but they rarely got seriously injured. This was all too real, even if it wasn’t human. Did it just look like a teenager? Oliver had the feeling he was one, even if he couldn’t place it.
“C’mon buddy, let’s go study.” Kaz pulled him along, pushing his backpack into his arms and making him hang his lab coat up.
Oliver couldn’t sleep. Studying had helped to some degree, but he found himself restless. Kaz had left to make it home for dinner, giving him a tight hug and telling him to call if he needed anything.
He ended up calling Titanio on his personal line instead. Henry didn’t like long calls because he had the cheapest phone plan, but the billionaire humored him.
“It’s actually super interesting! This kid has a mix of several different tech giants, including some Tidwell technology! I can’t even be mad, this implementing is insane! Weirdly he had a faulty self destruct program I had to remove, which made his coding go haywire, but he’s stable. I’ll have to rebuild his body and code later. We disconnected the head and I’m having the rest brought to my lab so I can piece him together.”
“Why did you bring, uh, him to Mighty Med in the first place?” He had to ask. While the hospital treated supervillains in the secure care ward, it wasn’t common.
“I figured that, even if he was a super villain, he’s a kid. He sounded scared, I couldn’t leave him there.” Henry didn’t like kids, but he was a hero and a good man, under the standoffishness and penny pinching. “Besides, I figure he’d be a foot soldier, he had weird programs. I locked most of it for now, I figure I’ll let you guys decide his affiliation, I’m just the tech guy.”
“You’re a billionaire tech giant?”
“I’m an inventor who got lucky.” Henry was humble for a hero, he’d noticed. He didn’t like being treated like he was better than others.
“Yeah, okay. Thanks, I’ll make sure our bottles are out front Saturday.” He hung up, setting his phone down and laying back to stare at the ceiling. He couldn’t stop thinking about that boy, about his head sitting on a table in that lonely lab. Oliver just hoped he’d be okay.
It was a few weeks later that they got to finally meet the boy officially.
Tidwell brought him back online as the hospital hung around pretending not to be invested. Henry had been working with the tech team non stop to rebuild what they could, and he was mostly put back together. The skin hadn’t been replaced and he was still hooked up to several machines, but his core would be able to survive being booted up.
The boy came too with a groan, opening his not exposed eye. His eye was a deep reddish brown, and so human it was terrifying.
He looked around at all the new faces, at the hospital, and immediately tried to backpedal off the gurney.
Marcus hadn’t expected to ever wake up, especially not in a place like this. The people around him were dressed strangely, all staring at him. Who were they? Why were that staring? His core jolted in his chest, pulsing fast and making his chest buzz. He yelped, trying to push himself back and away, looking for his dad or the rats, for that bastard Leo. Instead he just found more faces twisted in sympathy.
“You have to calm down kid, you’ll melt your core! Take a deep breath.” A man beside him placed a hand on his shoulder, talking in a level voice. Marcus wanted to scream at him, to smack his hand away and ask where his dad was, but he couldn’t breath. He didn’t even need to breathe, why couldn’t he focus?
“Hey, look at me. In.” Marcus finally looked at the man’s face, studying his goatee and taking a stuttering breath in.
“Out.” He let the unnecessary air out. For some reason it worked to ease the tightness in his chest and the buzz in his brain.
“Where’s my dad? Where am I?” He tried not to curl up in a ball, to look tough like Douglas had always taught him, but he was terrified and he didn’t like it.
Marcus paused. He wasn’t supposed to tell people about Douglas, he didn’t exist. He couldn’t say Krane or Donald.
“I can’t remember.” He lied instead, feigning confusion and letting some the the real panic leak through.
“That’s not surprising, your coding was heavily corrupted and we couldn’t retrieve a lot. As we get you repaired we’ll fix what we can.” Another man stepped forward, somehow familiar despite not being anyone he knew. Now that it was mentioned, Marcus realized how empty the vastness of his mind was. He wasn’t connected to the web and the logs he kept of all the information he’d ever learned was patchy. Just how damaged had he been?
He looked down at his arms, one human with abrasions on the synthetic skin, and the other a metal monstrosity. He’d never seen his own exoskeleton before, and as he flexed the metal fingers and felt them respond, he realized that the vision from one eye is spotty. He reached up with his good arm, feeling along the smooth synth until he felt the cool metal of his skull and the divot of his socket. His metal was exposed, the red eye normally covered in a human facade free to shine. He covered the exposed metal with his hands, curling away from their prying eyes. He’d failed, his secret was out and he’d be broken down for parts like dad always said. This would be the true end of him.
But, why then bring him online at all?
“Don’t be scared, we won’t hurt you. We’re doctors for enhanced people and we’ll take care of you.” A boy his age smiled at him. Now that he looked there were three children, all very out of place, two donning lab coats.
“I’m not scared!” He snapped back without thinking, his compliance code failing as raw emotion escapes through the cracks. He wasn’t perfect anymore, he was broken.
“Why are you helping me?” He heard himself ask, sounding far too broken to be him at all.
“Because we’re the good guys.”
He could walk, but he had to drag a machine behind him, a machine that kept him alive. He was introduced to the kids of the hospital.
Kaz was the boy with dark hair. He seemed a bit dumb, but he rattled off information about his patients like he had it memorized. He smiled at Marcus with complete openness and patted him on the back.
“You’ll fit right in here.” He laughed, and Marcus pretended to believe him.
Skylar was the girl. She was apparently a superhero, or former superhero. The entire existence of another world didn’t surprise him like it would a human, he just processed it and moved on as if it were fact.
Skylar looked at him with some suspicion, but shook his hand and showed him to the room beside one with a pink painted door.
“This is my room, I’m an inpatient here. You’ll be staying for a while and those triage beds have zero privacy, so we cleared this room out for you. You’ll be allowed to decorate.” She opened the door to a simple white room with a bed in the corner. It was empty, but it was his. He didn’t know how to feel, so he just said thank you and showed her out, taking a seat on the ground to sit until the world stopped spinning.
The last kid was Oliver. He was a bit frail, reminding Marcus of Chase in a way that made him want to hate the guy on principle. Oliver had a gentleness to him, explaining the hospital and his and Kaz’s roles. He seemed to have complete faith in Marcus, which meant he could be manipulated.
All Marcus needed to do was bide his time, let them put him back together, and then he could go back home and complete his mission.
