Machine Man (serial)

I stumbled out into the corridor, calling for help. At least, that’s what it felt like in my head. In reality, each step I took was machine-smooth and solid as steel. My hooves punched into the tiles and gripped. There was probably a setting to make them stop doing that, a command like imagine flexing your left big toe three times so I wouldn’t tear up the floor when indoors, but I didn’t know it. I had no user documentation.

“Help,” I croaked. This was the biological part of me, failing. Smoke stung my eyes. My thumb-and-forefinger grip slipped from my severed artery, and when I tried to pinch it closed, it hurt. Where were those drugs Cassandra Cautery mentioned, the ones that would make me functional pretty much immediately? I needed those. Not as badly as the man in green scrubs needed a doctor, but still. I wondered if there had been some surgical clamps back there, maybe in that overturned trolley. I should have looked for those before going out for help. I could pass out here. Would that guy understand if I went back and hunted around for clamps, as he lay there dying?

This light-headedness was becoming a problem.

These Contours felt different. I couldn’t put my finger on it, so to speak, ha ha. It wasn’t something in particular. It was everything. Did that make sense? No. It didn’t. I glanced back (swsss, said my torso) and saw a lot of blood in the water. That was not good. “Blood,” I said.

A man appeared in the corridor ahead of me. It was a moment before I recognized him as Jason, my lab assistant. “He’s here!” Jason shouted. “He’s alive!” He gestured urgently to people I couldn’t see. I had never been particularly fond of Jason before, but in this moment, I loved him very much.

150.