“Again.”

For a moment, as my vision swirled, I thought that I saw three copies of the man, standing over me.  All three copies wore the same identical scowl as they glared down at me.

“Come on,” I heard his voice through woolen ears.  “Get up.  We’re going again.”

“Come on, Cain,” I groaned, even as I rolled over onto my stomach and put my hands beneath me to hoist my tired, aching body up from the hard ground.  “Haven’t you beaten me up enough today?”

Still, I pulled myself up, trying to force my fingers to once again tighten into fists as I squared off against my opponent.  Although I felt like my entire body was covered in scratches and bruises, Cain looked as fresh as he had this morning, without a single mark on him – at least, none fresh.

“Now, this time,” Cain suggested to me, “maybe try not to choreograph your attacks so much.  I can tell when you’re about to swing at me from a mile away.”

I groaned back in response.  Of course Cain knew when I was going to attack!  He had, during my time with him, demonstrated the uncanny ability to beat up anyone and everyone we came across.

On the other hand, although I still couldn’t remember any of my past, I knew that I definitely hadn’t been a fighter.

Still, facing off against this man who seemed as solid and implacable as a force of nature, I took a deep breath, trying to steady myself.  “Okay,” I said, more to myself than to him.

And I charged forward.

This time, I decided to try and be as tricky as possible.  I held my fists high, intending to drop them to a low swing at the last second.  But although I started to bring my fists down, I abruptly switched direction, launching them back up towards the man’s jaw.

For just a second, I felt his skin brush against my knuckles, and I thought I had him.

A fraction of an instant later, however, Cain moved like a snake, and I found myself spinning through the air, my legs flying out from underneath me.  My hand still hit something, but I couldn’t focus on it, and barely had time to exhale before I hit the ground on my back.

This time, Cain offered his hand down to me to help hoist me back up.  “Not bad,” the man gave in reluctantly.  “You actually connected with me, that time.  A nice feint.”

“Didn’t help me much,” I grumbled back, although I accepted his help back up.  Now, not only did my ass hurt, but my knuckles ached as well.  What was the man’s jaw made of, steel?

Groaning as a shoulder popped, I took a deep breath, trying to get ready to go again – but Cain glanced up at the sky through the trees.  “Sun’s setting,” he announced.  “We ought to get moving.  We’ve got further to go before we set up camp.”

“Not making it to a town?” I asked, although I already knew the answer.  If there had been a town nearby, we wouldn’t have paused for the sparring session.

Cain just shook his head as he picked up his pack and slung it back on his shoulders.  I bent down to do the same with my own pack, trying to ignore the complaints from my joints as I maneuvered the heavy load up onto my shoulders.

With his pack in place, Cain picked up his rifle, checking it with swift movements of his hands.  I did the same to mine, the movements almost automatic now.  Another skill that my guide had drilled into me, I thought to myself with a shiver.

With his weapon secure, Cain headed off into the jungle.  “Come on,” he called over his shoulder, not bothering to glance back to ensure I was following.

I grimaced at how much it hurt to even walk, but I didn’t let the man get too far ahead before chasing after him.  Cain might be trying, but I knew that I wouldn’t survive a night without him.

Up above our heads, as the sun dropped towards the horizon, some creature let out a long, mournful call.  I felt a foreboding chill run down my spine, and I tried to pick up my pace, sticking close to Cain.

Despite the bruises he’d inflicted on me, I was glad to have him on my side.

Author’s note: What’s that you’re asking?  Does this piece have a soundtrack?  Of course it does!

The oddest thing about waking up, Protis mused, is that he never expected it to happen.

For a while he simply lay in place, savoring the feeling of sensation as his arms and legs regained their functions.  He could feel his cells moving, growing, emerging from the stasis in which they had been imprisoned.  He gazed at the cracked concrete ceiling above him and, slowly, his thin lips grew into a smile.

He could feel it.  The world was different, now, much different than when he had last been forced to sleep.  But some things would always be the same.  He would always find a place for himself.

Protis began to lift himself up, rising out of the coffin in which he lay, but paused, momentarily concerned.  He was feeling exceptionally weak; there was something that he was forgetting.  Something important.  Ah yes, breathing.  He drew in a deep breath, filling his lungs for the first time in far, far too long.  His smile widened as new oxygen rushed to his tissues.

Still half-sitting, half-reclining, he tasted the air as he took another breath.  The levels of fluorocarbons and exotic pollutants were far lower than what he last remembered, although the sulfide and carbon dioxide levels were higher.  So, the high-tech machines were gone, replaced by the old-fashioned fallback of fire and coal.  This was perfectly suitable to him.  Protis was, if anything, adaptable.

Now that oxygen was flowing through his system once again, Protis sat up in the coffin, looking around the room where he had lay for many years.  A thick layer of dust covered everything beneath the heavy cement ceiling, and most of the computer equipment along the walls was no longer active.  Smashed displays and dark instruments were everywhere.

It looked like the facility had been abandoned for some time, Protis mused, but they had kept the power on; all the machines had still been running, and he had still been forced to sleep.  However, some sort of natural disaster must have struck after that.  Large sections of the ceiling had caved in, smashing several important-looking machines to pieces.

A foggy and unpleasant memory drifted past Protis’s eyes, and he turned around in the raised coffin to look behind where his head had lain.  Several thick tubes and cables spiraled down from the container, running off to some of the larger machines around the room.  A single chunk of concrete had fallen onto this bundle of tubes, neatly severing the entire cluster.  Protis grinned happily at the sight.

Swinging his legs up over the lip of the coffin, Protis dropped heavily down onto the dusty floor.  “Ugh,” he groaned, with vocal cords similarly dusty from disuse.  He patiently waited for his muscles to fully reboot.  After several minutes, he climbed easily to his feet, his movements now fluid and confident.  He lifted a hand, flexing and relaxing the fingers in experimentation.  Ah, it was good to be alive again.

Protis raised one hand to his temple, squinting as he tried to collect his jumbled thoughts.  He knew that they had poked around in his head.  They hadn’t been gentle with their probes, either; their goal had been to rip out every enhancement he had installed.  They had been fairly successful.  The sheer fogginess of his brain was indication enough of that.  But had they gotten everything?

The door to the chamber, a heavy piece of reinforced steel, sat crooked in its track but still blocked the exit.  Protis eyed the door, sizing up the slab of metal, and then cocked back his fist.  Bouncing on the balls of his feet, he hit the center of the door with a light jab.

He watched with a surge of pleasure as the steel crumpled and the entire frame pinwheeled backwards across the floor, literally torn from its hinges.  He inspected his unharmed fingers.  No, they certainly hadn’t gotten everything.  And there was always more room for enhancements.

Without a glance back over his shoulder, Protis lightly strolled down the newly opened corridor, leaving the chamber behind.  However, he paused about halfway down the hallway.

Turning on one heel, he sprinted back into the chamber, back to the coffin where he had lain for countless years.  One kick split the coffin in half.  More attacks reduced the computers and machinery around the room down to balls of torn and splintered metal.  Protis didn’t stop his strikes, circling the room in a blur of destruction, until there wasn’t a single control panel or display left intact in the entire room.

He glared around the room, his prison for so many unfelt years.  Standing atop the pieces of the coffin, he mentally checked his pulse.  Low and stable.  With a deep breath, he forced the anger and rage to drain away, leaving him cool and composed once more.

Once again, he began walking down the hallway, away from the chamber, seeking enjoyment in the simple freedom of moving his limbs.  “Ah, tabula rasa,” he said aloud with happiness, seeing the glow of sunlight up ahead.  “Let’s see what my children have been up to.”

Finally, we were in the main chamber of the hive.  The tunnel suddenly opened up into a vast, open room, and I stared at the pulsing monstrosity of the slaver queen before me.

Above us, countless thousands of drones zipped back and forth, the buzzing of their wings melding together to create a constant hum that vibrated through the underground maze.  They paid us no attention.  Only the queen, bloated and reposed upon her disturbingly organic throne, bothered to spare us a glance.

“So, you’ve come to me,” she hissed, shifting her bulk slightly so her face could stare down at us.  “A wise choice.  Many do not willingly come to serve.”

Behind me, I heard Cain grunt, but I didn’t hold back my anger.  “We aren’t here to serve – we’re here to destroy you!” I shouted.  I hoped that the undercurrent of fear didn’t show in my bravado.

The slaver queen blinked, for a moment appearing disturbingly human.  “To destroy?” she repeated.  “You have come to the seat of my power, the very heart of my hive, and you make threats?”

I was worried that she would attack us right then, and I could hear the almost imperceptible creak as Cain shifted his stance, moving to get a better grip on his weapon.  I knew that he was a fraction away from attacking.  But the queen was rising up, towering above her twisted throne.

There was nothing to do but continue, to press onward with my speech.  “You’ve stolen the people of the neighboring towns!” I yelled out.  “You’ve corrupted them, turned them into mindless drones!  This isn’t right!  For what you’ve done to them, you must be punished!”

“Ah, humans,” the queen spat, gazing down at us.  “So torn, so frustrated by life.  You speak of the freedoms you seek, of the horrors of being a ‘mindless drone’, trapped here.”  She raised one long arm, encased in plates of chitin, and a squadron of drones changed course overhead, buzzing down to land alongside the throne.

I stared at the drones that had landed, wondering if they had come from the nearby town.  The enslavement process was acting rapidly, twisting their limbs, rupturing their spine as wings burst from their backs, and stimulating the formation of chitinous plates that grew across any exposed skin.  However, one of the drones still seemed slighter than her male cohorts, and strands of thick, lustrous reddish hair poked from between the armored plates.  My breath caught.  Sue.  The barmaid, who had graced me with a dimpled smile before bustling off with her tray of drinks.

“And despite your insistence on freedom,” the queen continued, swaying back and forth as her many legs wriggled back and forth, “you humans are so quick to embrace order.  You insist on choice, but you are happiest, at peace, when you have orders to blindly follow.”  She smiled.  “And now, this is my order.  Die.“

At this command, the drones leapt forward, their arms rising to brandish claws and spines.  My draw was only a millisecond behind Cain’s, and our bullets stitched holes across heads and chests.  I felt a brief but deeply penetrating pang of regret as the drone that had once been Sue fell back, her wounds gushing ichor.

The queen was already calling down more of the drones, and the hissing sound that filled the chamber was rising in intensity.  I turned my pistol on the queen, but her armor was thicker, and the bullets failed to penetrate.

Cain had a different idea.  “Hold them off!” he shouted, closing his eyes as he focused.  I didn’t know what weapon he was magically calling into existence, but I kept my eyes skyward, carefully placing my shots to keep the drones at bay.

Through the hum I could hear a lower pitched sound, growing steadily closer.  The guards, larger than the drones and outfitted with ranged, shooting spines, were drawing near.  “Cain?” I called over one shoulder as I slammed another clip into my pistol.

The only sound I heard in return was a brief, mirthless chuckle.  I turned, just in time to see the four rockets streak past me in tandem.  Cain was standing in a brace position, the smoking quad-launcher still on his shoulder, grinning slightly as he watched the missiles tear holes in the slaver queen.

As she fell, the queen let out a high, keening scream, picked up and amplified by the drones.  As her massive body hit the floor of the chamber, sending a shock wave through the floor, the drones dropped as one, like marionettes with cut strings.  With the queen dead, there was no central mind, nothing to control the drones, and they would all cease to function.  Staring around at the insectoid corpses, I felt a rush of melancholy, mingled sadness and frustration.  We had avenged those people, stolen from the nearby towns by the slavers, but we had not been able to save them.

Cain punched me in the shoulder, interrupting my reflection.  “We better get out,” he said.  “No telling how these tunnels will hold up without the queen.”

I nodded, following my companion as he picked his way through the cracked and shattered bodies littering the floor.  I spared only a single glance at the massive remains of the dead slaver queen.  Cain had seen hives like these before.  I made a mental note to ask Selene about the origin of these slavers.  For now, however, I focused on escaping from this gigantic underground hive before it became our tomb.

Author’s note: Unrelated to the Outworld saga, simply set in the same universe.

The drone was confused. And this was a problem, because it wasn’t programmed to be confused.

Normally, one advantage robots hold over people is that they never need to seek out their purpose. While people must find their reason for existence in life, a robot needs only consult its programming. And the drone knew its purpose. It existed to destroy, to pursue and hunt down its target, not stopping until said target had been annihilated. It would then be recalled to its metal berth until the next target was selected.

To most people, this would not be a fulfilling life. But the drone was satisfied. It had been given a devastating array of instruments for inflicting damage and pain, and it was very good at its job. The drone knew this, just as it knew that its purpose was to destroy its target.

One problem, though.

The drone didn’t know what its target was.

Normally in these circumstances, the drone would contact its mothership for new instructions. Unfortunately, the drone wasn’t able to reach its mothership either. It was, as far as it could determine, alone.

The drone deployed itself, unrolling from its compact ball to reveal six jointed legs, a small “head” loaded with sensory apparatuses, and three arms, each equipped with a unique method for wreaking destruction. It extended its head, scanning the surroundings.

It was located in a lush river valley. The drone could sense a small settlement of humans off to the southwest, the traces of carbon unmistakable in the air. Oddly enough, there was no sign of the drone’s ballistic trajectory, no scars in the earth to indicate how it had arrived in this place.

Robots aren’t programmed to be confused, which is fortunate, because otherwise that is exactly what the drone would be feeling. It searched its memory banks for its next action.

No answers were forthcoming. The drone waited patiently while its processors churned. Predictive algorithms suggested potential solutions, each of which was plotted against known capabilities and data. Finally, the best scoring solution was selected.

With the new decision tree active, the drone began lumbering through the undergrowth towards the human settlement. As it crashed through the brush, it began warming up its laser array. It fired a few rounds from its autocannon, making sure the chamber was rotating smoothly.

The algorithms had made clear the best course of action.

Interrogation.