Jane sat in silence, cigarette in hand. The video of the raid on the VR café played on a screen in front of her. Pilot 76 and Lieutenant Harrison standing at her back, waiting for the video to finish.

The video showed Pilot 76 picking up a red model 17e and throwing it at the running bot. The car arced through the air before smashing down into the sidewalk, missing the machine entirely.

Pilot 76 audibly tensed, pulling in a tight breath as he did so.

The video continued, the screen jumping to a rapid chase down an alley way and a sudden turn. The camera flicked upwards towards a building's roof; bullets flew at a figure just as it was cresting the lip of the building. Brick was blown across the alley as the building was torn to shreds.

The video ended, the screen flickering black.

The group stood in silence for a moment, the tension in the air palpable. Neither the Lieutenant nor the Pilot wished to speak first, nor would they.

Jane spoke, rising from her seat smashing the cigarette butt into an overflowing ashtray.

“What the hell was that?” Her voice struck a balance between irritation and disappointment.

The pilot looked down and away, the Lieutenant stepped forward, sweat on his brow.

“The bot was more capable than expected Ma’am. Perhaps if I had more time to assemble a complete team I cou-”

He was cut off.

“You have one fucking job Harrison! One!” Jane bit out, her face contorted in rage, her eyes shifting from a neon green to a burning orange.

The room shifted in color to match her mood.

“Look at this,” She pointed to the projector, replaying the embarrassment that was the failed raid, and the resulting destruction the behemoth suit had left in its wake, “This was supposed to be a smash and grab! Now! NOW, I have to explain to the board of directors why one of our assault squads failed to catch a bot!”

Jane turned to look at Pilot 76, jabbing her finger in the man’s direction.

“And you! What the hell was that shit?! Throwing an occupied vehicle at the freaking thing?! Are you an idiot?! Do you even know what sort of lawsuits that is already generating... The politics!?” Jane turned away, searching her desk for a cigarette.

“I was being considerate miss.” The Pilot muttered.

“What?” The infuriated woman snapped around; her pointer finger leveled at the pilot.

The Lieutenant stepped between her finger and the Pilot.

“What he means, Ma’am”, the Lieutenant said, swallowing nervously, “When using a behemoth suit, pilots can only have so much control, with the machine’s neural degradation and all.”

He paused to look at the Pilot, his hand raised in gesture.

“76 showed considerable restraint, especially after losing a target. It is not uncommon for a city block to be demolished by a maddened pilot.” The man finished.

Jane looked between the two of them before turning back to her desk in a huff.

She found a cigarette pack in her top drawer, flicking the tip of her finger to light it.

A small blue flaming flashing to life.

Jane inhaled deeply on the cigarette, sucking in the bittersweet smoke, the ash coating her lungs.

She exhaled and tapped away the burnt tip.

“Put a notice out for the both of them.” Jane spoke quietly.

“I’m sorry Ma’am?” the Lieutenant responded.

“I said, to put out a notice, ‘Rogue bot kidnaps girl, seeking information for reward’, or some shit like that. Just use the city against them, find anyone with information on the pair.” Jane said, a cold undertone to it.

“Yes Ma’am.” The man responded. He motioned quickly to the Pilot, the pair heading towards the door.

“And Harrison?” Jane spoke, facing away from the Lieutenant.

“Yes Ma’am?” The Lieutenant responded. The man stopped in his tracks.

“Fix your mess.”, She paused, “Don't become one.”

“Yes Ma’am.”

The Lieutenant left the room, pushing the Pilot along quickly.

A call rang out from Jane’s earpiece. With a sigh and another quick hit of her cigarette, she looked at the caller, irritation grasping ahold of her again.

She tapped to answer.

“Martyn, what the hell do you want?”

----------------------------------------

Martyn leaned forward in his chair, a bottle of whiskey in his hands. He slammed the bottle on the table, his crew looked over at his sudden movement.

The majority of his crew had been hanging around with him in the rec-room since his injury.

Only after they buried the bodies though, Martyn thought in a daze.

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Martyn reached up and scratched his head, the metal wires causing an itch to form on the inside of his skull. He felt for the wound that had blown him apart, but only found a metal plate encasing both sides of his head.

He started to panic, the metal was going to crush his skull, the wires tear him apart. If he didn’t act it would kill him, he was sure of it.

He screamed and dug his nails into the metal’s edge. Pulling at the plate’s seams, blood dripped down the side of his face.

“Shit! He’s doing it again! Grab him!” A woman shouted, rushing to his side.

People came from all around to hold his arms down, the group having to pry his fingers out of his damaged flesh.

Martyn sat and screamed in pain as the wires tore through his brain like earth worms.

Tearing, burning, eating, creating. It drove him mad, again and again he tried to make it stop.

He pleaded for death, for him to be put in the ground where his friends lay. It never came, no mercy was ever given.

A cool chill ran down Martyn’s spine, the worms and pain vanishing in a instant, the cloud that had hung in his mind the past few weeks vanished.

“Hey, I think he stopped.” A man said, Martyn thought he recognized the voice.

“Kent?”, Martyn stuttered out, “What’s going on?”

The words slowly fell out of his mouth.

The man who spoke reeled around, kneeling in front of the now sane man.

“You’re back! Oh, thank God! Ha ha!”, He turned to another man, he was face stuck expressing awe, “Suck it Percy, told you it would work!”

Kent looked back at Martyn, “Welcome back man. That brain of yours was pretty mushed by the time I got to it, you honestly surprised us that you were still alive. You almost weren’t, but let's just say that nanite slurry sure saved your ass. Just took you a little bit to boot back up.”

The Doctor’s face had a massive grin on it.

Martyn looked down at Kent for a minute, Martyn’s face in deep contemplation.

Martyn looked around the room, so few faces.

“My dream,” Martyn murmured, “We really did lose them didn’t we. Leo, Aly, Joseph... all of them?”

Kent’s face lost its smile, replaced with a look of deep sorrow.

“Yeah man, yeah...”, Kent waved his hand around the room, motioning to the others, “It’s just us now, but hey, at least you still got us, we didn’t leave yet, huh?”

Martyn smiled a little, everyone else already mourned the dead, he wouldn’t make them grieve again for his sake.

“Yeah, I do don’t I.” He looked around the group, making sure to make eye contact with each of them. There were nine of them left, the rest were buried or had run off.

“And you have me.”

The group of them spent the rest of the day getting drunk and stuffing their faces, celebrating Martyn’s mental revival. Martyn, though he didn’t show it, did not feel the same joy the others did.

Someone out there had killed his men, his friends, his family.

After the day had ended and everyone else went to sleep, Martyn stayed awake. He found video logs of the fight against the pilgrims, replaying the battle.

The battle was a blood bath, a simple victory. His people had won, he had gotten paid, it was over...Then it wasn’t.

A machine slammed its cold steel fist through West’s skull. Killing him instantly, a spray of viscera coating the nearest people.

What followed was chaos and Martyn’s own ‘death’. His friends were slaughtered by a mechanical abomination, no machine should have been able to move like it did. No machine deserved to take his family from him.

The bot taunted him, its lifeless smile gazing into Leo’s eyes as it burnt him alive, slowly crushing his skull in its palm.

It made him sick.

It made him angry.

His family was taken from him, his people. He wouldn’t let their murderer go without recompense.

Martyn took a sip of whiskey; the bottle had become a new feature, constantly within his.

With a replay of his memories, Martyn thought out the scenario.

His group was sent to clear the town by a Red Door, a massive pharmaceutical company, not a robotics company.

His people attacked the town and razed it, killing everyone.

Finally, his group was slaughtered by a super advanced robot with no warning. There was no information provided to him on such a machine in the town.

Could it have been an attempt by another company to stop Red Door’s assault on the town?

Martyn was angry, downing another gulp of liquor.

Without hesitation Martyn picked up his phone, dialing the person who paid him to hit the town in the first place. Even if he didn’t know her involvement, she could know something about the bot, especially if she sent others to the town after the initial attack.

“Martyn, what the hell do you want.” Jane’s voice rang out.

“Hey Jane, sorry to bother her majesty, but I got an issue.” Martyn quipped.

“I don’t have time for this bullshit Martyn. Things are a bit on fire at my end.” Jane replied, tired.

That was weird for her to mention that, Martyn thought.

“Stop lighting things with your finger and maybe stuff won't burn down all the time.” Martyn said, poking at her buttons once again.

“I’m hanging up.”

“No wait!” Did you see a bot with a creepy smile at the town you had me clear?” Martyn asked, sobering up quickly.

Nice job idiot.

Jane was silent for a moment.

“Thing wiped out a big chunk of my group. I wanted to know if you know if you anything about the bastard, maybe where the thing went... or who sent it?” Martyn added.

“I know of the bot, it is definitely a unique case. But, to answer a few of your questions, that machine is why everything is on fire.” Jane said through grit teeth.

“Well shit. Guess we got a common enemy then?” Martyn asked.

“I suppose we do.” Jane ground out, “I'll send you what I know, you send me the same.”

“Sure thing,” he sent the video of the fight, “Don't mind the little point-blank shot, I'm all better now.”

“Of course.” Jane replied, unamused.

“Keep in touch.”, Jane hung up.

Martyn received a packet of data a few minutes later, the phone’s signal not the best way out in the desert.

Videos of the robot and holding onto a little girl, it was the same bot that had attacked his group.

The same smile.

Martyn pulled out the last file, a bounty notice, the robot had kidnapped the little girl. A large sum was the reward.

He deleted the file.

Martyn had no need to kill the thing for money.

No.

He was doing to bring back his family.

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“You sure this is tracking the pickup?” Martyn asked Poppie, the group's last living techy.

“Of course, I'm sure,” the girl replied with a snap, “Thing went missing after the raid, tracked it to Las Vegas, it’s just been parked in a garage for a while.”

Martyn nodded his head, patting the girl on the back as he left. He turned to the remaining members of his posse; an impromptu speech prepared.

“Its my fault we lost so many,” Martyn said, his voice full of shame, “I should have paid more attention and not got shot right off the bat.”

“But at fault as I am, I wasn’t the one to pull the trigger, I didn’t smash their skulls, I didn’t burn them alive. No, that was that damnable machine.”

The group nodded at his speech. The mood somber.

“I have a plan to go kill this thing, but if it is anything like las time, we need to be ready. I’ll tell you all the plan, but I need to know if you're with me, otherwise, I drop this and go my own.”

His gang looked between each other; Kent spoke up.

“That machine stole our friends from us, our family. We’re with you all the way man, don’t doubt that.”

Martyn nodded his head, relieved at their agreement, but still spoke in a somber tone. His next words would not be favored.

“The machine has beat out a behemoth suit,” Martyn said, letting the words sink in a moment, a few uncomfortable glances passed around the room, “That’s why I plan to steal three of them.”

“How the hell do you think you’ll do that!?” Kent shouted out; the rest of the group just as flabbergasted at his plan.

Martyn held up his hands in defense, “I know, I know, it sounds insane. Right? Not so actually, I made another little phone call and got info on when three suits are going to be transferred fresh from the factory to Vegas. The only problem, is that it is also guarded by another behemoth.”

“Fuck off.”

“Yeah! Yeah! I know! Just shut it and hear me out!” Martyn shouted back.

“My little birdy also told me how to take the thing out, no weapons needed, just the fastest fucker we can find.”

All eyes turned to the youngest member of the group, a lanky man who had two mechanical legs.

“Hell no! I ain’t messing with one of those things!” The man protested.

The man’s protests would end up futile.