My system was beginning its reboot process, ensuring nothing was damaged by the blow that my head took. Even though most of my processing power came from my abdomen, my head still played a big part in ensuring my functionality.

My optical sensors were reporting that the environment around me was dark, possibly nighttime. The night vision function set in and began illuminating my surroundings into a blue hue, where I could see two figures sitting near me. It appeared that we were at the opening of a drain sewer that emptied off into the canal; it seemed like the best place to hide from the enemy.

An assessment of the damage I received to my temple was minor, not from a ballistic. My guess is that it was from falling stone. Lucy was sitting closest to me, only a foot away from my head. Henry was sitting close to my feet, rifle in hand looking out at the end of the drain for any threats. My hand was scanning the back of my head to assess the damage to find that the last chunk of muscle fiber that connected my back to my head was taken off from the damage, the only visible muscle left on my synthetic shell was on my arms and my head, beneath the skin on my face. If not for the clothes on me, I’d most likely look like a living skeleton of a person.

Once Lucy noticed the movement of my hand, she quickly moved over to me and put her hand on my head.

“Norman, are you functioning alright? You can hear me?” she asked.

My sensors were picking up all kinds of distortion that made her sound like she was under water. Henry was beginning to stir as well.

For some reason contrary to my programming, I felt the need to place my hand onto hers.

“I will be alright.” I replied, sitting up to face Lucy and Henry.

The sewer was empty besides us and half a foot of water below us, they must’ve dragged me here from the cathedral. Sewer would’ve been the quickest and safest bet.

Lucy explained that “We dragged you out of the cathedral once you went offline; thankfully the remaining clinks were buried under the rubble.”

Henry was kneeling beside me know, staring at my right optical for some reason.

“Were you followed at all?” I asked.

“The cathedral brought down most of the street; it wasn’t hard to find the sewer after that.”

We sat in an awkward silence for a bit, three androids waiting out whatever threat was marching above them. After a minute of fidgeting with her bag, Lucy turned to me and asked:

“Norman, do you remember anything about me? About the time we spent here?”

I couldn’t rightly answer the question. My memory was still only twinkling back and all I could remember was images of her in different places and time. She clearly meant a lot to me in the past and she still remembered me as a lover.

I turned to meet her gaze and replied honestly, about how I’ve forgotten anything. I was lost.

 “What do we do now?” I asked them.

Instead of replying, Henry held out both his hands towards Lucy and me. He wanted to sync up and talk properly, not through his corrupted speech. Lucy and I both took the cables hidden under the plates in our wrist and connected with him. We were transported into a sort of purgatory which shape or form, just a room where only our voices and thoughts resonated.

Henry spoke first, much more confidently that his physical counter-part:

“It’s clear that Eve is nowhere near Paris, if she is she could’ve been gunned down along the way.”

“Why do you suggest we go?” I asked.

Lucy replied, “The clinks are marching all around the city clearly using a new code, our best bet is to locate the least radiated area where plant life could grow.”

“That’s right,” Henry added “I was heading north before meeting up with Norman, our best bet is to trace a place where the missiles didn’t manage to land.”

I asked “How do we find that out?”     

“We already did that, using old world records.” Replied Lucy.

“North will be our best bet, we think.” Henry added.

A route was being mapped in my memory, highlighting a path towards the Northern Countries of Europe. The image of the map was beginning to tear on its edges, as if something else was feeding information. Both Lucy and Henry began suddenly silent, not by their lack of speech, because their voice was being drowned out. Something was corrupting my system.

Right before Lucy and Henry disconnected their cables from me, a red marker appeared on my map. It was faint and a couple hundred miles East of where it marked my position on my map.

Before I could analyze the image any longer, my senses awakened and brought me back to the drainage sewer where the three of us sat. Lucy and Henry were both staying at me with the look of shock on their faces. If my face could make expression, it would be doing the same.

“What just happened?” Lucy asked, looking to Henry for answers.

“You-you-you have been hacked.” Said Henry.

I was doing laps in my memory trying to figure out a time when this could have happened. The map was almost scorched into my vision, sitting in the background on my lenses like a hair. My mind was running up and down until it stopped upon something obvious: the clink I linked with in Annecy.  I knew that its code as mostly fried, but I had no idea that it could’ve been hacked and manipulated. It was stupid of me to have connected with it and no some bad code was flowing through my already corrupted programming.

Both Lucy and Henry were staring at me. Both were probably thinking that I was hiding behind a facade about my memory, where in reality it could’ve been the foreign programming messing with me. I needed an analysist.

I met their gaze, both embarrassed and shocked.

“While I was in Annecy I linked up with a malfunctioning clink, hoping to find out why it was acting against its protocols…I found out that something from the outside was trying to give it new commands, which is most likely what happened with the ones roaming the city now.”

“How could you do that? Now we both might be corrupted.” Lucy said.

They would need to reboot and purge anything that could corrupt them.

“Both of you reboot, your memory should restart to before the lync. This should purge any bad code from your systems.”

“The clinks…” Henry said, pointing above us.

I reassured him, “Don’t worry, I’ll watch over the two of you, just hurry.”

Lucy looked at Henry to confirm and then her head nodded downwards, along with Henry’s. Both were now offline. At least they would be saved.

Once they rebooted to an earlier save point, they would have no recollection of what just occurred. Perhaps that was for the best.

feetE�֢1��

Next Chapter: Eleven: Henry 2.0