Machine Man (serial)

I gasped and mentally retracted everything bad I had ever thought about my parts. I wailed: Come back, come back! I tried to flex the arm and it moved, and that was when I realized it was not dead at all. What I had felt was an undoing of the tingling that had occurred earlier, on my way here. I had felt the gun going offline.

Twin beams of light slid through the air, illuminating glittering columns of concrete dust. Doors thumped. I heard Cassandra Cautery say: “Charlie. Thank God you’re okay.” And I recalled the speaker, the microphone in my chest.

175.