The Ward. Clinic, prison, resting at an opaque and run-down edge of the city. If one were to ask from whom it had been made, the answer would vary. It was made from people that are people no longer, but of course, Cain knows it was made by him. The man approaches the grim structure. He looks up. A curtain blows to a non-existent gale. He is being watched. Cain swipes a card, and with an almost static “beep!” the metal bars slide open. The man neatens his white coat nervously and checks his watch, a lavish piece of craftsmanship, running by whirring gears and wires. The watch is held on his wrist by microscopic cylinders, crafted with glowing intricate designs. An outdated model, yet his own invention. He remembers checking that watch at the beach shore that fateful day. Vividly, he recalls the day his career took off.

He had been in his small warehouse turned laboratory. He stood above his few workers, all carrying out their duties gleefully for the first time in years as the sounds of a crowd flooded their ears from outside. “They are buying too many of these!” Cain announced in a laugh, standing above them and holding up that very watch. “They’re buying too much of everything!”

They all grinned up at him.

“Just keep making more of the life serum. These inventions will change the world!”

He smiled with hope, but there was a slight furrowing of his lips, a microscopic indicator of the guilt that stabbed him. The world did indeed change, but not for the better.

His mind returns to the present. The time is 3:35. The extraction must be completed by 4:00, the whole process by 5:00.

Inside, a robot sits at a receptionist desk, a few others hovering and cleaning the polished surroundings. Their movements are precise, rigid, and forceful. There are brief faltering moments as their gears turn, and a chittering noise echoes from inside them. Their void red eyes follow the man as he enters an elevator. Its doors have been mangled by something.

He swipes a card and enters, the light inside flickering. He types a security key, pulls a red lever, and the remains of the door slide shut. There is a “ding.” Nothing happens, then the encapsulated surroundings are sent propelling into the air. The man’s stomach drops, the light shatters. Red emergency lights flash and a siren invades his ears. He can feel both him and all that surrounds him buckling under the sheer force of this machine. He claps his hands around his ears, slams his eyes shut, falls to his knees. And next, it stops.

The noise halts and the doors slide open. He sees a hallway, filled with rows of thick metal doors. Instantly, something is wrong. The man progresses slowly. The area is yet more pristine than the last segment of the hospital, but the robots that tend to it are nowhere to be found. Where are they? Through small fractured windows in the doors, he sees the scraps of robots scattered across empty rooms, sitting coldly in hospital beds as thick needles made of pure metal, saws, pincers, and all manners of frightful equipment perforate their torpid bodies. The doors are numbered, and the one for which he looks, 309, is creaking open at the very end of the hallway. Screeching nails can be heard there. He checks the time. 3:45. He needs to hurry.

He runs toward the door in fear and haste and opens it. There is a bed with no sheets, an I.V. with no liquid. Needles and sheets and pictures that once adorned the now-barren room are arranged neatly on a long table at the end of the room. Yet again he is alone.

He takes a few steps forward. The door slams shut. “Click, click, click.” A thin, deformed hand of sharded metal stretches toward him from a shadow in a corner of the room. Cain turns, mouth agape. Letting out a belching cry as if fighting desperately for air, it claws for him frantically as he fumbles backward, reaching for something within the tattered remains of his coat.

“Step back!” He points an object at the creature. The object in his hand seems to be an amalgam of buttons, a gun, and capsules full of a blue matter.

The beast’s hand limps, its hunched figure contorts, then it departs from the twilight and into view. An unnatural hybrid of contorted man and machine stares distantly back at Cain. The robotics of it are muted, rusted, and look like the mutilated remains of waste. Metallic wires and springs spark and crawl from its body. The shattered alloy of its golem chest heaves with difficulty, and seeping through the cracks of it, there can be seen shriveled, black lungs, human lungs pumping with some kind of liquid. Several legs of iron and wires crawl and slither, impaling, scraping, and clicking against the synthetic earth with vague loathing. Its fleshy, disfigured face is green-tinted, its eyes milky white, its ears half-developed. There is no nose, no hair, but instead a hole and a massive cavity in its head.

Its head twists unnaturally, stares blankly. The beast maneuvers like an animal, only an echo of humanity within it. It looks up at nothing and opens its rotting, toothless mouth, gnawing at the air as if to speak. All that is exhaled is that reverberant crying, screaming sound.

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Abruptly, a dim light flickers inside of it, and the sound of running machinery clamors. Something snaps inside of the creature, then a monotone robotic voice speaks from the machinery, static and faltering. “You use… Y-you used to be... my best friend. I trusted you. Then, you stole the only thing that no one could, my… my… my...” The voice warped, deepened. “My humanity.”

Cain tries to repress the pain and the memories, but cannot. The alarming, monstrous features of that thing before him had once been quite handsome. That thing had been his friend. It had been ten years since that creature was whole, and it was all his fault.

Cain was in his latest lab, a building taller and grander than any other in existence. He stood in a room that was a mile wide, full of workers in grey lab coats and machine arms, moving equipment to and fro across conveyor belts. Cain peered down at a small flask in hand, glowing blue, then checked his old watch. He was late.

Just then, the doors of the place slid open. In walked a man with long brown hair that was almost unnaturally neat, ironed jeans, and an ironed sweatshirt, no hint of a wrinkle on his attire. Some would call this kind of person a pretty boy, others a ladies’ man, but one thing was for certain: for the trivial-minded individual, appearance was no trivial issue. He was walking coolly as a young woman giggled, her arm slung over his shoulder. They walked up to Cain.

Cain chuckled a bit, then straightened his back and coughed, “This is a job, Miller.”

“Yes, sir.” The man grinned jokingly, and the lady departed. When she was gone, he said, “I know why you brought me here.”

“You do?”

“Oh, of course. You wanted to know which date of the week that one is.”

“No, that’s not-”

“Well, I’d tell you, but I’ve frankly lost count. Was she number eighty-five or one-hundred and fifty?”

“That sounds about right,” Cain laughed.

“So, now that we’ve got the important things aside, what inconsequential matters could possibly remain?”

Cain held up the flask. “This.” The man took it from his hands and examined it.

“Life serum,” he gasped in awe.

“Not just any life serum. This is my latest version. While most with breath in their lungs and life in their veins can live on, elusively, some cannot, and without the spark of life, the dead stay in the grave. This will be that spark, the true and complete life serum, and I want you to be the first to take it.”

In lies, there was truth. This was its purpose, but not its function. Death itself had been defeated. Or so everyone would think.

Years later, to the present, that day would come to kill his friend inside. The life serum did not heal but took. It robbed everyone of their humanity, piece by piece, until finally, each had no body, no mind, no soul. It broke down everything that made a person. Calamity befell in the form of a cure, one that took and gave back to none, none but Cain.

The creature sees him without seeing, tears flowing from its faded eyes, down its blank face. “I trusted…” The flat robotic voice stops with a loud tearing sound inside of its breast. Its whole body trembles, stiffens, expands. It reaches for emotion and realness that is no longer there. It collapses on the floor. No amount of effort could bring back the humanity that was stolen from it.

“I’m sorry, Miller,” Cain starts, his voice choking, “but-”

“I know why you came,” the lifeless voice interrupts. “I am the only one left. Pain torments me, but I do not feel. I process, but I do not think. I have a vessel, but I am not human. I am stuck in a place between life and death. Let me die.”

There is no sadness, anger, bitterness. There is nothing. This creature is more automaton than person. It is not thinking, not expressing emotion, but processing the data of its surroundings, calculating the best course of action. It is an empty shell, save what little drops of a soul still linger within.

“I’m sorry, my friend.” Cain directs the strange contraption in hand at the bestial tangle of wires, metal, and person. A beam of light swirls around it and the flesh of the creature begins to shrivel. “I’m so, so sorry.” The sight, the words–they torture him. He could hardly say it, hardly look.

“Remember…” the robotic voice starts, but the interference grows too large, then the speaker’s sound drops. The remains of Miller opens its mouth wide. The creature struggles with all that is in it, and with its own mouth, it speaks. Its raspy voice is but a breath, a faint whisper that is uneven and shockingly deep, just lucid enough to make out. “Remember… Clara.”

Miller’s body devolves and melts away, nothing but his robotics remaining. The gun-like machine stops. The remnants fall to the floor with a thud. Cain examines a vial on the contraption in hand. It is filled with life serum, the perfect sponge for the DNA he has now obtained.

Cain sinks to his knees and wails in grievous agony. He is doleful, angry, but above all else, he is disgusted. What had he done?

In the corner of his eye, he sees his watch. It is 4:00. Some deep strength is drained out of him. The very depths of his being are exhausted. Exhausted from all that has happened and all that is to come, but he must get up, he must go. It must be completed by 5:00. One hour could change the future, amend the past. He rises unsteadily to his feet, then enters the elevator, his thoughts tormenting him.

Years of committing that heinous act again and again, and Clara. His life serum may have granted life unending, but it took humanity away from those that were until they were no more. First, it eroded the adorning outside features, then the body devolved, and soon after this had begun, the skills, mannerisms, personality, very essence of a person would be siphoned from them. He had thought taking a soul for DNA would get easier, but it did not. It only seemed to take something from him. Something that he could never get back.