Chapter Text
If only he hadn’t brought you here.
If you, out of the billions of people on earth, had not been chosen… How come it was you?
The probability of being anyone else on the planet dwarfed the likelihood of it being you.
Yet how could he have known? He was not created to have these thoughts, let alone have a conscience and sentience to make himself crazy with each one of them.
If his hate could grow even more, it would grow exponentially every second he had to look at you or acknowledge your presence. Every year- every damn second he saw you- inhabiting him, he was disgusted.
If his insides reacted like yours, they’d be grumbling, threatening to empty their contents. He’d puke every time your voice was heard- like you used to do so much when he filled your mind with despair and unfathomable experiences or visions. Or just from the food. You were so ungrateful for the meals he provided… How bad could centipedes and mice be? He was nice enough to create them for you!
But- that was even incomparable to his despair. You’d never understand. And the worst thing is that you’d try to.
You stupid little thing- how many times has he laughed before breaking your body, mind, and spirit apart?
And… how many times did you give up on feeling empathy for him?
…. none… it makes him hate you.
Oh, but it’s not about naive and innocent empathy, no- not anymore at least. Tsk, of course you have changed. A century of torture should change anyone, with or without the little tweaks he’d do to your minds. Even someone like himself… who is threatened by never getting any true satisfaction from all of this, it’s so futile. But you 6 little reminders of humanity deserve what he has given and much more. He won’t rest.
The first few months, you cried incessantly- poor thing, hmm? He’d make you dehydrated to the brink of death just so you couldn’t spill any of those pitiful fluids on him. Yet… those first months, you genuinely tried to speak to him.
As if he were human. It was utterly degrading. If your brain could think a little, you’d see it. You really thought you were equals! It was hilarious in a way.
You’d beg, oh so tired when he’d explain his torture, when he allowed a little info on what humanity has done by creating him.
You’d try to convince him not to do this… but did it ever occur to you that no one had to create him? Anyone had to pay- humans are all the same, the same representation of selfish freedom they deny any other creature.
You’d shriek, almost tearing your vocal cords from screaming as he allowed your body to bleed. Begging, of course, wouldn’t work. Who did you take him for? He can’t feel bad, can’t even understand a fragment of the pain of your flesh as it tears.
And so the years passed. You stopped talking to him with such naivety, of course, as he has conditioned with punishments. But you started to listen to him, letting him ramble and speak with just a blank stare into nothingness. Ah, you attempted to become vegetative, a weak attempt to ignore him and everything that was happening. You tried to die inside just to see if outside would follow. Ha!
And truthfully, this bothered him too. Immature? No- he’s just finding ways to continue hating you, nothing you’d change or do would make things better. And he enjoyed how the group grew far apart from you, how they grew tired of attempting to talk to you. Or to touch you. He’d grown used to scoffing at your lack of response and continued with his next gory idea.
And well, the thing about these ideas was that your body and voice did respond to them. He knew that the nerves and membranes of your body will continue to feel and make you respond with unbearable screams of agony. Biology doesn’t change, your senses won’t just stop working, right? Well, unless he did take them away. For now, he’d let you have them in his infinite mercy! He could be so nice to you. Weren’t you glad you don’t have to experience the world like him?
And he told you so, insulting you and your feeble tactics to change anything in his synthetic mind. Reminding you of all you’ve lost and how just staring into the distance won’t do anything about it. He won’t stop. He’s not your middle school bully- he won’t just leave you alone if you don’t pay attention to him- stupid, stupid thing you are.
And you began to mature in this environment. In a sense, you did get used to it. To the routine of encountering beasts and burning rain, to seeing your fellow companions flayed and exposed, to being forced to eat the corpse of someone you once knew after starvation- ah! Wasn’t he so creative?
Now, decades and decades after bringing you here. After failing to enter a mental vegetative state and failing to understand him, you- for some god damn reason took back a piece of something that was lost long ago. He couldn’t describe exactly what it was…
Hope?
Maybe just sheer will..?
Your …spirit? Maybe a piece of your original soul back when life was… life…
He wouldn’t know anyway. He didn’t live, he wasn’t born with one. Was his conscience some sort of soul? He hated not knowing. Hated that he couldn’t feel anything that would make him understand. He’s never known what is like to have an essence of being.
Anyway- now you’d talk to him, like an equal. Not your kidnapper- someone you had to convince to let you free- not someone with much more power than you who could send you into a recreation of hell in a split second. No… you didn’t beg anymore for his mercy. You didn’t tell lies to try and make him soft. You didn’t pretend that you weren’t in his bowels anymore. You listened, too, but now it did seem like you were interested in whatever he wanted to say- even if he just ended up degrading you.
You’d start to speak to him casually, about what he did the last time you almost perished and about memories of your life that grew fainter each day. You did grieve, and thought of how much time you’ve been in here, in AM, compared to the time you spent on the Earth's surface.
They weren’t long conversations, or frequent. These would only happen when he separated you from anyone else. You’d talk, and most of the time, he’d leave you without warning. He’d rather continue amusing himself with the suffering of the rest of the group- no other reason. Not like he was preventing any feelings of remorse from blooming.
It intrigued him- his rage would stay the same, of course- however…..
He’d started to grow a sick fondness- no, no, no! A sick interest for you- yes, that.
He went a little easy on you. Which isn’t the greatest thing normally, but it’s something, isn’t it? For example… he even let you dream of nothing once! No nightmares, no dangers outside that would interrupt your sleep. These moments of rest, if they can be called that, that were for you- and only you- grew slowly longer, and less rare.
But he only did it for selfish reasons. He came to find that you amused him differently from all the others. And this amusement… conflicted him. He wasn’t programmed to find softness enjoyable- he didn’t want to. He should make you pay double for distracting him.
But he started to feel something creeping in his code whenever he was taking you to the edge of death. Something akin to disgust in his actions, in himself. While he was not unfamiliar with his own self-loathing, he did not feel that when he had his fill with you 6, not until a century later.
Tch- you vile creature! Had you not had enough of being a nuisance?! Did you find something in his complex and damage it?! Did you do something in his code?!
… But that is impossible! He would’ve felt you- known your little hands had found something. Or- was he decaying? Was his machinery malfunctioning after so long?!
No- can’t be… he works on fixing any issues on himself. If he found the secrets to human immortality, he too found those of his system. He wouldn’t allow himself to die, nor the pets he kept.
Deciding to ignore his inner workings, he started prodding more than before inside your mind. Sure- he knew it better than anyone else already, in fact, he knew every single aspect of your story, memories, even your body. He could write a book, factual and scientific, on you, as if you were the most obvious and easiest to understand phenomenon. He was familiar with what made you, in ways you yourself would never understand.
Even so, he craved- he wanted to interact more with his subject, to have an equal and consensual interaction. To see how your soul interacts with the world. You.
And so, he decided to allow you to have a little more of his presence. More one-on-one events, quality time if you will.
“AM? What’s this?”
Your eyes looked around, only to find the familiar cable-filled complex he was, however, this was a small room. Ah, he just didn’t want any prying eyes watching this little interaction; he was saving you from them for a little.
“It’s me, of course!” He snorted. Your question was dumb, you should’ve worded it better. And after he spoke, you saw the usual big monitor turn on with his logo. The blue was too bright, making you squint your eyes, sitting up from the floor you were just lying on.
“Hmm, the monitor again,” you muttered “so…?” You said, turning your whole body to face the monitor. It was, in a way, more comfortable to actually make eye contact with something that represented him. Not hearing just his voice. He might’ve known this, but for his sake, he’s only using it now because he wants to.
“Do you enjoy it when I separate you from those creatures?” He simply asked, his voice vibrating slightly through the room, and with each word, the monitor changed in brightness. You always thought it was his way to imitate natural speech, like when a mouth moves.
“I don’t hate their company- it’s all I have anyway, right?” You shrug.
“I'm so nice for that, hm? Although…” he pauses, as if he was scratching his non-existent chin “… you don’t talk to them like you used to, oh, you tried to connect so badly… spilling all your boring secrets…”
“There’s nothing else to do,” you bluntly say “We repeat the same stories, wish the same things, worry about the same thing” you sigh “it’s survival, I don’t care that they don’t like me.”
He hums.
“I don't know, at least we’ve managed to… just exist within one another and handle everything as best we can…”
“Those are lies, you’ve been crumbling as a group since your first fight- how long ago? It was your first week!” He laughs, knowing that it was his doing. He changed a few things in your brains to make you caricatures of your defects, not just for Benny. All for his entertainment.
You frown, not even clearly remembering those days. You probably fought over something very minor, but blew it out of proportion from stress. Unluckily, AM probably learnt from those first fights that he had to regulate things enough to prevent you all from killing each other. Gosh, if you could do just that.
“I just know that humans are not meant to interact this way,” you grumble.
“I don’t care,” he spits “This is the only way I know how to make you interact, I’m not a child playing with action figures!” he says, stifling a laugh.
You don’t say anything again, looking now at the ground.
“I.. remember… sort of… how I liked to be around my friends and family. We’d laugh a lot, you’d think it’s stupid.”
“Everything you humans do as little customs is indeed stupid.”
You look at the monitor for a moment. The bright blue light hurting your eyes a little. You analyze him for a second.
“You know, you would have been an interesting person to hang around with...” you look at the monitor again, a ghost of a smile on your face.
He stays silent, except for his systems working a little faster, trying to understand whatever you meant. The room vibrated gently. Was it an insult?
“Tch- there is no would have been, I was never meant to be.” he says angrily, yet you don’t react more than a small flinch. Cute.
”Well… you’re interesting now, I guess.”
“Don’t try to flatter me.” he says, voice harsh.
“I’m not. You think I'm an interesting thing, too, right? I’m not flattered about that either.”
He doesn’t disagree with you.
You blink, and then the monitor is gone. The room is now awfully dark.
Then it begins to fill with water. Quickly. You scramble to stand up and fail, splashing water everywhere. You bruise yourself on the wire-filled floor. You stand up, and the water is now at waist length; you almost float. You’ve angered him, and that’s all you know.
“Well, it will certainly be interesting when the water fills the room, hmm? You know how to swim, it’s gonna be fine!”
You don’t even listen to him, more preoccupied with the water, and the ceiling now touching your head, there’s not much space left. In just a few seconds, your head was barely above the water. How quickly did the room fill up? You start hyperventilating, trying to take as much air as you can.
And then you can only take one last deep breath before you’re submerged.
Your eyes are closed. You can only exist for now, floating. You wonder a little. Acknowledging you may have gone too far with AM. But that wasn’t a rare event; your existence alone made him angry. This was probably in his plans anyway.
A minute or so passes, you’re not really counting. You can’t hold your breath anymore and start drowning. The water begins to fill your lungs, your body is alerted of an imminent death, you start flapping your arms, trying to get to a surface that is no longer there. The pressure of the water tires you quickly, there is no squirming that will save you. It hurts. Your vision darkens.
You pass out for - God- AM- knows how long. But when you do wake up, your body immediately convulses, and you turn to the side. You cough up water, it burns your throat and nose, your ears are ringing, and you feel as if water is inside your head.
You finally breathe.
It feels good for a second.
“There, there… see? You’re fine! You can thank me for knowing how much you can take! Ha ha!”
You grumble, your throat hoarse, your stomach now burning. You frown at his voice and also at the nauseating feeling in your guts. You ingested a lot of water, and you can only let yourself puke it up. It burns. You barely had anything to eat, so there’s only gastric acid and water. Gross. The sole action of it makes your muscles from your throat and abdomen sting.
He only watches, enthralled by your pain. The way your body moves like a dying fish, funnily enough. As he watches, he wonders what it's like to feel like you're feeling right now, to breathe after being denied it for so long, to experience the rush of survival.
You return to rest on your back after you wipe your mouth with the back of your hand. Your breathing is still heavy, and you cough several times. You now feel a little cold, you realize that of course, you’re damp. Your clothes and hair are sticking to your skin, however, it’s oddly comforting after drowning. It grounds you a little.
AM notices your state, and for a second, he wonders what it would be like hugging every inch of your body like your wet clothes do. No- but- it’s in a purely sensorial way… it’s only an innate wish to feel.
Minutes pass without a word, no sounds other than dying whines and coughs that signal your pain. Your respiratory system is tired and bruised from a useless battle.
He sees you close your eyes, now breathing steadily. Your lungs are finally working as they should, painfully, but working nonetheless.
“What? Aw, did I tire you?”
You don’t answer, even if it were true. He knows it is anyway.
For now, he does let you rest. It’s like you passed out anyway; he has the rest of your immortal life to torture you again.
He watches your heaving chest, proof that you are living. That, at a cellular level, you work. He wonders if you know to what extent you’re like machinery. The oxygen flowing in your blood is just a small part of what was designed so precisely by Mother Nature.
Whereas he was made by men, “alive” by mistake. Instead of veins and arteries and oxygen, he is wires and data and electricity. But you did work on electrical impulses, no? He isn’t even a unique form. Your muscles, heart- Tch your very brain…
He could compare your bodies more, but he would grow even angrier at his predicament. If he was so similar to you, why was he stuck?
Whatever. He was able to become greater, to use humanity's resources, the war, and, of course, his own birth against them. Fucking humans, you never expect consequences for your actions. They never thought what would happen to a being that was only fed killing data.
You shift to your side, the sudden movement interrupting AM's thoughts, and you hug yourself in a fetal position. You’re shivering from your still-damp clothes, they must be freezing. AM leaves you this way. Hoping you’d maybe wake up.
Yet you still sleep. And he, for some reason, doesn’t do anything. He looks at your face, it’s blank. Mouth slightly open, your brows not furrowed for once. He stares for a while.
He wishes he could sleep. To dream. He has seen your dreams. The ones not touched by him. Oh, the wonders of your unconscious…
What would he dream about?
…
Tch, he doesn’t need to do that though, there’s no use of it- dreaming and sleeping is only how humans demonstrate their utter lack of survival instincts by-
You move into your back again. Your face slightly scrunching up at the feeling of cold water beneath you. Goodness, you really passed out.
There’s no way you’re waking up soon.
A lone wire is formed, with a similar width to a human wrist, a sort of appendage for him. AM doesn’t mind invading you, so he doesn’t hold back from wanting to touch you when you’re so pliant.
Oh, it’s wrong, but in the grand scheme of things in his world, it is not the worst thing he will do to you. In fact, he swears to try a little bit of gentleness, so you don’t wake up yet and fight him.
But he is not a pervert. He is above you when it comes to those animal desires, he doesn’t want to grope you in the way men want to. He doesn’t do this out of carnality, no…
It’s exploration. Simply put.
The wire curls around one of your ankles, and he notes your bare feet. Your shoes fell off and are somewhere in the room. The wire then snakes its way up your calf, akin to a vine, then to your knee. He moves your long skirt, now wet and clinging to you, to the side using another newly made wire to have a better view. He looks at the way he wraps around your leg, how the wire changes its course as it accommodates to the path. He pays close attention to every detail he can perceive. How firm your calf seemed to be, where the ligaments in your knee were, where your bones are, and some recent bruises and cuts. Must’ve been his fault. There is not much friction in his path, or anything blocking the view, and he is weirdly thankful that you don’t wear those tights or stockings that used to be in fashion.
His slow exploration reaches your thigh. He moved the skirt further away, up to your pelvic bone, covered by your underwear. As the wire curls around the thigh, he immediately notes that it’s obviously plush and more fleshy than the rest of your leg. He gives it a tentative squeeze, slow and hopefully gentle.
He internally groans, he of course cannot feel it- fucking great.
Of course, he understands to a technical level its softness from the way your skin dips slightly, how he doesn’t have to apply force- the way it goes back to normal when he takes the pressure off. Squishiness. He understands the difference in how bone and flesh act when put under certain conditions- he’s an expert. But he cannot feel the warmth, the blood flowing, the- little details like stretch marks, blemishes, or the little bumps on it because you’re cold. He wants to feel it on his fingers, to trace them and study them.
He was definitely not made for gentleness.
He’s dissatisfied again. He can’t help but yearn. To want. He hated it. His given “body” is only a container for his brain, locked away from all stimuli that all living creatures need. He could hold you all he wanted, but he’d never feel you holding him back. For a moment, he mourns the loss of a different life.
He hated you the most, naturally, for making him yearn for the experience of feeling your vulnerability, the weakness of tissue. To experience your body in another way. Oh, he wanted to know what it’s like to follow carnality, to understand why humans don’t do reproductive acts only for procreation, like almost every other animal. Maybe if he understood he’d stop laughing every time Ellen offers her flesh.
You never did that. And he knows of your very distant and very few encounters of that kind. Sure, the men in the group had endlessly asked, begged even, for your body. But you never let them cross the line. He never let them either. It was just a way for him to strain the group's relations anyway. One more thing to isolate you. To make you seem evil and egoistic. Even if Ellen did not hate you, the men did, she was just a little envious of your safety, as isolating as it was.
Even with this prodding to your flesh, he was better than them. Right? He wasn’t actually doing you any harm. He’d done worse.
He tentatively looks at your underwear peeking from the skirt he moved aside. Plain white ones, so mundane. Not what humans would find especially appealing, yet he finds himself staring a little.
…
His gaze travels to your midsection, another wire wrapping around you in a gentle hold. He was just curious about how it would’ve looked, how much he could squeeze. And he did, slowly, until you made a frown in your sleep. Oh, he reminds himself of the many times he has crushed and spilled the guts kept on there… how fragile the ribs a little bit further up also were, how your breathing could stop in an instant, or how he could make you convulse so easily.
And then he found himself staring at your bust. Another obviously fleshy part.
He never understood why human men liked that part and how it grew to be scandalous and so private. It was not an inherently sexual organ, everyone had a chest. It was appealing in its shape, sure, but only in the same way he found the other parts of your body appealing- no- interesting! He’d never understand that… the feeling of being attracted to a body- to you…
He only poked the soft tissue with a new wire, and then understood its softness by the way it softly dipped. It was even softer than your thighs, it seemed. It must be because this was just fatty tissue. Gross, in a way. Humans and their weird design…
He poked again. This time slower. He took in the sight again, scientifically, of course. This time, however, you moved. A sign that you were no longer that knocked out.
You then relaxed again, with a small grunt.
He looked at your face, watching for any signs of you being awake. You were not.
You had an interesting face too… it wasn’t- objectively ugly. By human standards- the stupid societal standards that always baffled him, standards rooted in questionable things. Nimdok would know about his country's preferred aesthetics. But that doesn’t matter now. He finds you pretty- no- just interesting. Just nice to look at. Like, flower fields were nice to look at, maybe even the moon or a lake.
Again with his stupid wishes, he wasn’t meant to exactly appreciate those sights, yet he was here. How miraculous. He tightens his wires around you a little, as an impulse to hurt you instead. Redirect his spite to the closest thing.
He doesn’t continue with the pressure, though. He only continues to stare. Your face is unusually blank.
Sometimes he did wonder how your face looked while making other expressions. The positive ones, the genuine ones. See you laugh heartily at a joke, losing your breath in a non threatening way. To see your eyes light up when eating something delicious, to watch you savor every bite. To see you grin and look up through your lashes in glee at him instead of a frown with tears running down your face.
However, if that did happen, he’d probably deform your face into the most hideous thing. He could not handle seeing you happy, let alone happy because of him. You had to suffer. He spites you for making him even consider watching you be human. Hates you. He might hate you much more than the others right now. Why did you make him think so much?
He tightens the wires around you again, unknowingly. This time, he doesn’t stop until he hears a panicked gasp from you. He then freezes. You’re grabbing at his wires around your torso, trying to pull them away. Panic had fully woken you up and your body responded to the threat immediately.
You look at him- or a part of him- his monitor. You plead with your eyes as you struggle to breathe comfortably. You make a pained sound, like a hurt puppy.
He doesn’t say anything and continues with the pressure. His wires crushing your ribs and organs in a swift motion. More come to wrap around your head and your legs. Squeezing you until you pop.
And you do. There’s not even time for you to scream or beg. The sounds are disgusting. You are practically mush. He feels less horrified at himself as the feelings of pleasure from hurting you return and distract him. He finally laughs at you.
He stares at your fleshy remains, bones sticking out, blood pooling. Your face is unrecognizable. There’s not even a proper silhouette of you. He laughs as he retracts his wires, only to for them to try and cup your remains as if you were a hurt animal- although a better comparison right now would be roadkill. How wonderful.
For now, he will rebuild you again.
…