The wires plugged into his head were pissing him off, and his throat felt weird, and someone was whistling. He could just barely make it out over the white noise blaring in his ears. It sounded like a distant scream. But none of that mattered.
Stick was leaning in the doorway, cane in hand.
Stick. Handler.
“Matty, we missed you,” he sang, not even bothering to pretend to use the cane as he stepped into the room. “Didn’t miss the whining; you still scream like a puppy. But I guess beggars can’t be choosers.”
Stick’s footsteps were quiet shuffles of worn soles on concrete.
“Why don’t you tell me, Matty, ‘cause I’m just dying to know: who’s Foggy?”
Matt knew better than to respond. If he was where he thought he was, it meant that he was about to catch some serious shit. And even if he wasn’t, he didn’t have an answer to the question. There was something, a vague outline of something—someone—but when his mind reached for it, it fell just out of grasp. He couldn’t remember. It wasn’t important. Stick ground his teeth.
“Hmph. No answer, huh? Typical.” He didn’t stop walking or grinding.
“They said I couldn’t fix you, kiddo, but they’re not in charge anymore.” Stick ducked as he approached the space behind Matt. The wires in his head must be connected to the wall.
“And you know, for a minute there, I thought maybe they were right. You’re a tough nut to crack.”
Stick stopped directly behind him. The fond tone crawled along the base of Matt’s skull and he pulled hard at his arms only to find they’d been locked into place on each side of his thighs. His back was exposed. “But, you know, I’ve got time now and I’ve got money. And I can’t bear to see all that hard work wasted.”
Matt pulled harder at his arms, straining his shoulders and flexing his back. Not even a little give.
“Don’t even bother, sunshine. You know the drill. You malfunction, you get corrected. Now, normally you know I don’t give a shit if you’re conscious through this, but your goddamn base is giving me a goddamn headache, so we’re gonna try something new to help you remember your place.”
In the space between seconds, Stick was crouching over him. He braced a leg on each side of Matt’s kneeling form. One hand arched itself across his cheek with crushing pressure. Thumb pressing hard into his jaw, locking his head in place. The other clenched around the nape of his neck. He could sense the heat of Stick’s body and his breath. The human-android side of Matt knew the hold wouldn’t choke him, but the proximity and looming of Stick sent the human-human side of Matt into panic mode. He felt throbbing in his neck and prayed that Stick wouldn’t notice it.
Which was like wearing a target and asking not to get shot.
“Well, look at that. When did you start doing that, Matty?”
Matt said nothing, but to his horror, his breathing got harder and faster. He couldn’t take in air—he didn’t need air--but his body was on the verge of making that a Very Big Problem. He was at 100% processing capacity. Stick wanted him to feel this.
The man in question barked a laugh which echoed through the room. The immediate vibrations lit the room into solid, flaring masses for just a second in Matt’s head. He didn’t think he’d been in this room before. There was a computer sat on a steel standing desk in one corner of the building, but besides this, and the restraints pinning him to the floor and wires hooked into the extra processors on the wall, it was empty. No furniture, no pipes, not even tools. But Stick had never needed things to break him.
“What did they do to you, Matty? Send a kid to college and they come back with a bleeding heart. Looks like someone’s activated some of those original functions, bucko.”
No.
He was gonna—
“Let’s leave them on for a bit, shall we? Nothing like flesh to put the fear of God into,” he paused. “Well, at least a semblance of flesh. Don’t worry, I made it just like your old kind.”
Matt booted up in a room about the size of an office. There was no furniture, but there were other bots around him and a whirring in the air. The room’s temperature was elevated with all four of them and a set of additional processors in it.
One of his hands was shaking. It wouldn’t stop trembling, even when he set a specific command to counter it.
There was a noise outside the room. The door wailed open, but the handler did not enter. The hand tripled its shaking.
“Morning, friends,” the handler said. They all remained silent, chins up. “You may have noticed that an old pal of ours is back. He’s just as pretty as ever, don’t you worry. Now, this morning, we’re gonna need to practice our team-work skills, just to make sure that everyone is back with the program. Do you confirm?”
“Confirm,” they all responded.
“Good. Now, come along children. We’ve got a bus to catch.”
The body stood over a man who emitted a high volume alarm. His limbs flailed and he kept emitting the alarm. The teeth clenched together. The hands struggled to keep him steady. Elektra needed this person to be steady.
The palms and fingers knew the solution was in the club. They found it and made the man stop moving. Elektra’s aim was steady. She raised her arm.
Too steady.
Too fast.
Wait.
The arm moved on its own; it put itself between the man’s head and the blade. The blade did not discern between organic and non-organic material. It crashed through the arm, through the cooling bags. It crunched as it broke through wiring and synthetic bone.
For a moment everything stopped. Elektra was motionless for .54 seconds. Then the body was shoved out of the way and her aim was steady and fast.
Matt woke up cold, his head was fuzzy and his arms tingled like he’d slept on them. But he couldn’t remember falling asleep.
Stick was in the doorway, grinding his teeth.
Matt woke up. His head felt heavy, he couldn’t hold it up. His arms were trapped, he couldn’t lift them.
He heard something that sounded like grinding.
He woke up screaming. Manual correction. 100% processing capacity. Someone was shouting. He didn’t understand. He couldn’t remember where he was—who he was—there was someone’s name, f--?—he didn’t understand.
There was a bag and music somewhere.
He was tired of manual correction—he didn’t know how he knew he was tired, but that wasn’t important. He didn’t know how to make it stop, but there was something itching in the back of his head. It goaded him, pushed him back when he pushed at it. There was also a bag. A big, tall bag. It hung on chains.
“I—” he gasped, catching hold of one of the metal tools scraping its way into the edge of his chest panel.
“You don’t anything. You aren’t a person anymore, kiddo. Give it up.”
“I—” he tried again, using both hands to push Stick’s away.
“No—”
“I revo—”
“No, you don’t.”
“I revoke—”
“Stop. That’s an order. Stop.” There was a bag and it hung on chains. It was night.
“Matthew, you need to stop. That’s an order.” And he hit it.
And there was music.
“Fuck, kid.” Stick stood up. He left Matt lying on the bench. Matt heard him tapping on something hard, it wasn’t quite glass but it wasn’t quite plastic. A computer?
Why was there music?
“I revoke—”
“No, you don’t.”
He woke up surrounded by wires. 100% processing capacity.
There was a bag and there was music singing in his head. He didn’t want to do this anymore.
“Alright, Matty. We’re gonna try this one more time.”
“Fuck you.”
“Not a great start, brat.”
There was a name.
The uniforms crawling all over the lab at Columbia finally left in late-March. Despite this joyous occasion, Foggy and friends all had exams, and while subverting an illegal bot-organization was high priority, it would be suspicious as fuck if four over-achievers failed their mid-year reviews.
The good news was that they knew exactly where Matt was now and they had multiple cases of disappearances to prove in the court of insanity that they were happily, not-guilty.
The bad news was that no one knew how the fuck to subvert an illegal bot-organization.
On the fourth afternoon of isolated study-time, Foggy finally threw up his hands and then threw his books onto the desk in a haphazard pile he’d later regret. He flopped onto the bed and didn’t look in the corner and turned on the news to drown out the white noise in his head. A man could only take so much textbook talk before he went insane.
He wasn’t so much listening to the news as he was staring at the spot next to the tv.
“—person killed at the scene, but two victims state that---”
“—crazy man, he just looked at us and, like, stopped. Then he turned around and started beating the—”
“—got a red stripe, he’s the good one. Like the red power ranger—"
“—multiple reports of people dressed in black tactical clothing in suspicious areas in the last ten days—"
Black tactical—Foggy bolted up. Danny. He fumbled the remote and turned the volume up. The video playing on the screen featured Danny, it had to be, only this time he was wearing a helmet with an orange and green iridescent glass pane. It was just a snippet and it was taken from far away. Danny leaned over the side of a building, probably checking for witnesses, and then vanished again in a heartbeat.
“This is the man,” the reporter was saying, “who allegedly who protected the victims. Officers are investigating the issue and have said that the suspects may have mafia affiliations.”
While the reporter yammered away, they showed an image of a guy in the same tact gear as Danny caught by a security camera in mid-attempt to enter an alley. Although in profile and in shitty lightening, it was obvious that he wore the same helmet as Danny, but along the neck of his vest was a rusty, almost brown, red stripe. He had black straps wrapped around his opposite leg, like a thigh holster, but it was hard to tell what they were meant to hold up from the guy’s angle.
It had to be Matt.
He dropped the remote on the bed and leapt out of the room to get his phone in the kitchen.
Matty was a pain in the neck, back, ass, jaw, and ribs.
As a tiny mutt, he’d oscillated between whirling fury and sickening sweetness. By the time Stick was done with him, he’d managed to mute both a bit, but the kid got attached and then whole child-soldier schtick fouled Advancement’s name where it couldn’t afford to.
No more kids, they’d told him. Not after these ones. Send the little bastards home and we’ll call them when we need them.
At least they let him keep Elektra a bit longer. Looking back on it, he probably should have kept Matty. Elektra was a natural; Matty was the roughest fucking blood diamond in the goddamn pit.
And that roughness stuck to his base, permeated right through it and rotted it from the inside.
When he did what he was meant to, when his programming worked like it was supposed to, the kid was a beast. Other bots called him a devil—which was impressive, given that they were only conscious enough to gossip for minutes of the year. He’d told Matty this once, wrist deep in his fake guts and about ready to put a knife in his fucking head, and he’d just laughed.
Which was why he couldn’t give him up. Whatever made Matty the shittiest bot on the fucking planet also made him the deadliest. Danny and Luke’s systems shut down once they reached 18% functioning capacity. Elektra could hold out to 10%, with reduced functionality. But Matty? Nah. Put the kid at 4% and he’d still rage like a bull; sometimes he even got better.
If he’d given enough of a shit, Stick might have said he was proud. But as it were, he didn’t give enough of a shit. Especially given that someone had fucked up Matt’s base and softened him again. Lured him towards that dripping sweetness Stick had all but eradicated before they made him get rid of him.
Yeah, Matt had problems. He couldn’t obey an order for his goddamned life. He’d never land a finishing blow, even though Stick knew, knew beyond any reasonable doubt, that he was capable of that and much, much worse.
He also had an infuriating knack for finding emotions, finding memories. Damn kid was probably storing them—hiding them--somewhere in his core or in fucking cyberspace, just waiting for enough processing power to get at them. And, try as he might, Stick couldn’t do too much besides setting up firewalls and adjusting his manual settings to make him stop. The processing power he’d put in that kid could power a small village in Bavaria, but even that was barely enough to work through Matt’s sensory input. Any more and he’d overheat. Any less and his speed would suffer. In his gut, he knew he could find the goddamn root of the problem, but he didn’t have enough time to study Matt’s learning program line by line to find out where he was hiding shit, not to mention, it wasn’t like Matt could hold onto an emotion or memory for too long without overwhelming his system. Yeah, it was a goddamn problem, but there were other means to make Matt function.
He’d trained Matt through pain and now he found that a reliable way to keep him functional was through the same. The kid wanted to feel? Fine, he’d make the kid feel. A bit of pain and a bit of panic did the trick; he had to get him up to 100% processing capacity to make sure—get him to store that somewhere in his fucking hidey hole—but he’d do what he was told. For a few hours at least. Then he’d start sinking away again.
But Stick sure as hell wasn’t about to let him go now, now that Advancement needed every fist it could get. They were so close. Horizon was pushing its limits. They were running out of men and crunching through bots. Death knells were sounding.
He just had to push Matty through this, even if it meant going hour by hour.
The orders were to locate and exterminate. There were twelve targets; one CO. CO was to be brought back to the handler, intact. This was Matt’s assignment; the handler was displeased to give this order. The handler dug his thumbs into the sides of the neck and demanded that the voice confirm it.
It confirmed it. Bring CO to handler.
The rest had kill orders.
They set up shop on a rooftop with only one access point into the building. Matt and Luke checked the perimeter while Elektra and Danny waited cross-legged in the middle of the roof.
Sitting ducks.
It didn’t take long for the others to take the bait. Half were human; half were like them. Luke took the guns, Danny took the bots, and Elektra took whoever was unfortunate enough to come near her.
The body silenced human bodies until the ears found a human with a chain on his belt. The man shouted orders and tried to put a bullet in the head, then the core, then the chest. When Matt got closer, the man’s heartbeat roared and he tried to put a fist into the jaw.
He succeeded.
For a flash of a second there was a bag. And then thick liquid on the hands. There were flecks of rapidly cooling heat on the face. The man was making a high volume alarm as the arms held him at an angle over the edge of the roof. This was problematic. The hands were already slippery and the man was making it difficult to hold onto him.
“Confirm: Commanding Officer,” The voice demanded. The man did not hear over his alarm. The arms gave him a helpful shake and the voice repeated itself. The man made a different kind of alarm; quieter, made mostly of air and short vowels.
The hand at the neck tightened. The voice repeated itself for the third and last time. It added the phrase, “I will not ask again,” to the beginning of the statement.
The man shook his head frenetically and vertically towards the face.
The arms brought him away from the edge of the building. The hands released him, then one pulled back and came forward, and the sound of breaking bone emitted from the man’s facial area. The man did not stand up from the ground. The body provided this service for him.
They left the roof and on the way down the stairs, the billy club banged against the metal railing. The ears picked up the vibrations of the lingering note. It lit up the core.
There was a name.
..handler?
“11 unidentified bodies were found this morning on a roof in Hell’s Kitchen,” a reporter informed Foggy as he crunched his way through a bowl of cornflakes.
He jerked his head away from the books and towards the tv. “All of the victims are deceased. The NYPD is investigating the deaths and has not commented any of the circumstances. Local residents have suggested that the group of men dressed in black tactical clothing who were identified yesterday by two victims of an alleged mafia hit are responsible for the assaults.”
Matt. Matty, no. No, bad. No killing. He grabbed his phone to text the others, hands shaking. Matt couldn’t kill people; he wouldn’t kill people. He’d said he’d been thrown out of whatever it was for that. Right?
There’d been nothing they could do last time, and he didn’t know what the fuck they could do this time, but four heads were better than one and if he didn’t talk to someone right now he was going to explode.
FN: is anyone watching the news?
FN: Matt’s fucking killed people
GT: WHAT
MK: No
FN: 11 people dead in HK
GT: FUCJ
FN: he cant right? he said he cant? Im hyperventilating
GT: that’s what he said
EZ: guys its probably not just matt what about danny
EZ: or it is matt and we’re doomed
MK: what do we do now?
FN: im freaking out. Seriously what are we going to do???
GT: hold on.
Foggy had to put the phone down, he was shaking so hard. He turned off the tv, the noise suddenly unbearable. Why? Why would Matt do that? He dragged his hands through his hair over and over. Wait, no, of course Matt wouldn’t. Advancement would though; they were making him do it, they had to be. The phone buzzed and he lunged for it.
GT: 1. Prof. rosen is a badass i bet he could hack a bank but he said smth about using his powers for good 2. Matt’s not at the institute. We’ve only got remote access but his activity logs are batshit. all his orders are encrypted his sensory levels have spiked off the chart every day since hes been gone. They look like they do when hes human-matt but then they drop back to droid-matt. Then they spike again within one to two hours.
EZ: someones making him human-matt every few hours then?
GT: looks like it
GT: hold on we’re trying to make his chip work again
MK: what does rosen think we should do?
GT: FUCK NELSON
GT: HE’S HEADED YOUR WAY
Stick was going to find that little bastard and then he was going to skewer him and then he was going to beat him ‘til his skin ripped.
Foggy was mid-panic-attack and plastered to the wall next to the door when he heard the knock. If he lived through this, he was never, ever, ever watching television ever again. He’d become a monk. He’d break down every box before putting it in the recycling.
The person on the other side of the door bypassed the lock.
Because Matt still had no boundaries.
A helmet with an orange and green visor leaned through the doorway. Its owner wore a thick black Kevlar vest with a once-red stripe wrapped around the neck. The knees of the cargo pants matched the stripe and the holster strapped to leg was long and thin.
The helmet tilted and made a processing noise. Then it stepped into the room, dragging behind it an unconscious bloody man with--Foggy wasn’t a doctor, but he was pretty sure that was a broken jaw.
He flattened himself against the wall. The guy’s leg dropped to the floor with a thud and the hysterical part of Foggy noted that, despite being dragged for what might have been actual miles, the guy hadn’t smeared any blood on the floor. Huh, convenient. The clack of the door closing brought his attention back up to the visor. Gloved hands flaking with dried blood reached up and pulled off the helmet.
Matt shook out his stupid floppy hair and gave Foggy a sunshine smile.
“Foggy.” He purred.
Foggy opened and closed his mouth like a fish.
“Hiya, buddy,” was all he could squeak out. Matt hummed a pleased processing noise.
“Music after two hours of studying?” he asked. Foggy pushed himself back further into the wall.
“S-sure, Matty. Yeah. Um. Wh-Who’s that?”
“Target,” he said, indicating. Foggy had received no fucking handbook for what to do when your android brings you dead people. Dying people? Semantics.
“Okay,” he said, more air than sound, “Thanks?”
Matt vibrated with happiness.
Oh god, Foggy had tamed the world’s biggest, most aggressive cat. He was imprinted on him. He was bringing him gifts. Trying to teach him how to hunt.
Matt shucked the helmet into the space behind the door and then scraped his fingers over his vest to find and pull the Velcro straps holding it in place. He dropped it next to the helmet and then plopped down to fight with the laces on his boots. After a few seconds, he made a noise of distress. Foggy felt numb with shock. But he had a Pavlovian reaction to Matt’s noises. He cautiously stepped over the now-groaning man in his room and, unblinking, kneeled down to pull Matt’s hands away from the laces. They were tied in triple knots as if someone had been concerned that Matt would try to take them off. Foggy picked at the laces with one hand and pulled out his phone with the other.
He clicked on George’s icon in the group chat, then tapped the call button on her contact card.
It didn’t even finish the first ring.
“Foggy—Fogs—Jesus fuck are you alright what happened what do you need is he there did he hurt you—”
“Hi George,” he wheezed, untangling the knots on autopilot, Matt sat down and waited patiently.
“Fogs—oh god are you dying? Don’t you fucking die, I’m leaving right now, I’m on my way.”
Foggy paused in his picking, he looked at Matt who tilted his head back up towards him.
“Matty, say hi,” he said, holding the phone out slightly.
“Hi?”
George opened the door, took one step in, said “oh god, oh Jesus,” and then left. She tried again and made it inside this time. A harried looking Professor Rosen and an out-of-breath Ernst squeezed in with her.
They all considered the bloody man on the floor, then looked up to see Foggy sitting with Matt halfway in his lap, one boot off, the other still securely fastened. Foggy laughed nervously. Matt leaned his head against him.
“I found him!” Foggy announced before dissolving into giggles again.
“No shit,” George told him.
The police were very confused as Foggy gestured helplessly at the groaning man in the middle of his room. Paramedics shuffled around him to bring in a stretcher.
“He just--?”
“My bot brought him home,” Foggy explained, and waved to the scrubbed clean and dressed as unmenacingly as possible Matt curled up in the corner of the room. He made no mention of the helmet or the vest or bloody fucking gloves that they’d stashed under the bed.
“Your bot,” The police officer in front of him repeated slowly.
“Yeah, you know, his programming has been all over the place lately. He left campus a few weeks ago--came back just now, covered in dirt. You would not believe it.” Foggy tried to say this with every ounce of New York-bred lack of interest and sense of inconvenience in his body on the off-chance that she, a fellow New Yorker, would shrug and get on with it.
“Your bot,” the policewoman drawled again, “Left campus. And brought back this guy. On his own.”
Foggy smiled with every tooth in his head.
“Yeah, you know, he does that sometimes.” The police officer gave him the singularly most concerned eyebrows he’d ever experienced.
“And he’s got nothing to do with that crazy guy from the lab the other day?”
“Who? Oh, the, uh, guy with the, uh, fist? No, I think there must have been a mistake. Matt’s just a regular old IT bot.”
“Sir, do you know who that is?” she snapped. Foggy widened his eyes innocently.
“No, ma’am. I told you, he just—”
“This man is wanted for terrorism and human trafficking. We have been led to suspect that he may be part of an illegal android trafficking scheme.”
Oh. Well. That changes things. Good Matt? George made a soft noise behind him.
“I guess he must have tried to take Matty? Must have um, ordered him out of the lab or something. Maybe that uh, fist-guy, was one of his?” Foggy said uncertainly.
He turned towards Matt’s corner where he’d tucked himself between the guitar and the guitar pillow, “Matt,” Matt perked up and opened his eyes, “Did—did you know this guy was a, uh, terrorist human-trafficker?” Matt cocked his head.
“Negative. Target.” Good job, buddy, not suspicious at all.
The police officer stared for a second and then shook her head.
“You know what? Sure. Whatever. Not my problem. I’m gonna need you to file some paperwork letting us know you found your bot and we’ll be on our way.” Foggy eagerly accepted the crumpled documents she shoved into his hands. She paused in the doorway.
“Mr. Nelson?”
“Uh, yes?” She narrowed her eyes.
“If any more terrorists show up on your living room, or, you know, if your bot happens to remember anything about any traffickers, do me a favor and give me a call down at the station. Ask for Martie.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he promised.
She closed the door. Foggy turned to Matt who had settled back down but had kept his face turned in Foggy’s direction.
“You, sir,” Foggy said, “Are in big trouble.”