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 revealed that the damage was minor, not from a ballistic. My guess is that it was from falling stone. Lucy was sitting closest to me. Henry was sitting near my feet, rifle in hand, looking out at the end of the tunnel for any threats. I felt 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 neck was knocked off. If not for the clothes on me, I’d most likely look like a skeleton.

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

“Norman, are you alright, can you understand me?” she asked.

My senses were still distorted, making her sound like she was under water. Henry was beginning to shift his gaze towards us.

 “I will be alright.” I replied, placing my hand over hers.  

The sewer was empty aside from us, they must’ve dragged me here from the cathedral. The sewer would’ve been the quickest and safest bet of breaking away from the clinks.

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

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

“Were you followed at all?” I asked.

“I don’t think so - the cathedral brought down most of the street; it wasn’t hard to find the sewer after that.” Lucy said.

We sat in 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 coming back to me in waves 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 thought of me as a lover.

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

I was lost.

 “I am lost Lucy…I don’t remember at all.” I told her.

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 without shape or form, just a room where only our voices and thoughts resonated.

Henry spoke first, much more confidently than in the physical world:

“It’s clear that Eve is nowhere near Paris, if she was she would’ve been gunned already by this new wave of clinks.”

“What do you suggest we do?” I asked.

Lucy replied, “The clinks are marching all around the city with new directives, our best bet is to locate the least radiated area where plant life could grow and see if Lucy is there.”

“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 found that out using old world records, there’s a place at the border of France and Germany that never got hit.” Replied Lucy.

“So, travelling North to this place will be our best bet.” Henry added.

A route was being uploaded to my memory, highlighting a path up North. The image of the map was beginning to tear flash, as if something else was feeding information too. Both Lucy and Henry were suddenly silent, not for lack of talking, but because their voice was being drowned out by a signal. The signal came from 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 north-east of from where Paris.

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 staring 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.

“Y-y -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. 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 let its code merge with mine.

Both Lucy and Henry were still staring at me,  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 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 link. This should purge any corruption 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 able to get rid of the corrupted code.

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

Next Chapter: Chapter Eleven: Henry