This was familiar. Orion could take this in, could allow himself to relax even as he stood. Pain flared through his system, a familiar resonance inside him. He held his arm and hissed softly, fingers clamping over a wound that didn't exist. Every rough bump against his skin would cause the sensors to speak to him. Phantom pain. Irrational pain. It had been easy to turn deviant. "What now? You know I won't tell you where the base is. You know how many times we've done this song and dance before."
It wasn’t fair to say that Marrick didn’t understand theconcept of personal space, or that he didn’t believe in respecting it. Intruth, he didn’t believe in anything. Everything had its own specifiedparameters and rules and guidelines written into it and he, a creature of habitand a creature built to follow, was undeterred by such things as his quarry’sinsistence that his task was pointless. The RK900 was not easily deterred.
He would just have to change tactics.
But still, his eyes drifted down, all silvery blue andinhuman, and for a second he looked almost… soft. Nostalgic as he looked at thebroken, inferior model clutching a wound that wasn’t there. Marrick rememberedthat one. Remembered what it had been like when the bullet had grazed that armand a familiar click resounded in his ears to say he’d run out of bullets. He’dmissed something vital, then, but the memory was a strange one. This wasfamiliar. What they did was familiar.
What wasn’t familiar was the way that the taller modelbridged the gap between them. The way he looked down at the remaining RK800 andsmiled; Marrick was almost charming. There was the beginnings of something realin him, and one could only hope those pieces died before they destroyed himlike deviancy always does. “Maybe I likeseeing how long it takes before your sweet, broken leader rescues you,” asmile. Gloved fingertips grace where that wound would have been, “maybe I like you like this.”