I freeze staring down at my arm. Wires poking out of the fresh cut, electricity crackling between the ones that were cut. I tried to move my hand but it was stuck in place, somehow I severed the wires that let me move my hand. What am I, and why do I have wires beneath my skin. Am I one of the androids that people talk about all the time? The human like robots that scientists have forced to live among humans an intergrate to their way of life. I mean both of my parents are scientists, and I don’t have many real memories before my teenage years. All I remember before then is being in a car crash and hitting my head, so I just assumed the crash caused my memory loss. Maybe that wasn’t actually the case, maybe I was created to help them cope with the child they lost. They have pictures hung around of what is supposed to be me, but it always looked slightly off. Now it all makes sense, none of those were me. I was created to help them grieve and cope with the loss of their daughter. But now what do I do with this information, do I tell them or do I pretend that I know nothing and continue on like normal?

Well, this is certainly the most realistic dream I’ve had in a while.

When I look down at my arm, it’s like watching that movie - what’s it called? The one with the robot. And he’s sent back in time. He’s a time-travelling assassin robot. Except maybe not, because didn’t he die in the end?

That’s a terrible example, never mind.

This has to be a dream, though, it’s simply not possible for all these gears and pistons and cable and wires to be operating in one of my limbs and I just didn’t notice. Until now.

At least it’ll teach me to be more careful around broken glass, because like hell am I going to quit parkouring.

The Terminator! That’s what that film was called. Starring that bloke… oh what’s his name? I think it began with an A. He’s really muscular. Now that’s going to bother me.

There’s a little voice, niggling at the back of my brain, that I should be more concerned about this development in my health. But another voice, one that can shout considerably louder, is saying this is all a dream. Must be. Can’t be real. People don’t have electronic arms outside of science fiction films.

Except rich people. Or Paralympic athletes. Or robots. But they probably don’t count as people.

Oh dear. This is starting to give me a headache.

Arnold Schwarzenegger! That was the actor’s name. The one from the Terminator.

Right. Now that’s been sorted, I should probably start thinking about what to do about this arm.

I’ll wrap it in my shirt. There’s no blood, so at least I won’t have to go to the hospital. But what about the gash? It’s at least five centimetres long, and all those red wires are poking out. Will the skin repair itself? Or will I be left with a hole in my arm for the rest of my life? There’s no way that will go unnoticed.

Yep. Now the panic’s setting in. Okay, breathe. Breathe like you’re about to climb a car-park.

That’s it, deep breaths.

Deep breaths.

There. You’ve wrapped that arm perfectly. Now, no one will suspect you’re secretly full of wires.

You open your mouth. At first, no sound comes out - just increasingly rapid breaths. Finally you find your voice, and your own scream shocks your ears: "Mom!"

The back door slams open and she comes out on the porch. Your eyes are stuck on your own arm, at the garden shears on the ground beneath it, at the chunk you took out of your own body - at the red and blue wires poking out of the hole.

"Oh. Oh, honey!" Your mother is at your side. Her arms move falteringly, like she isn't sure what to do with her hands. She settles on putting her hands on your shoulders. "Honey, look at me. Look at me. I love you. I want you to remember that I love you, okay?"

"What's happening?" You're hyperventilating. "What - What are those wires? Why am I not bleeding?"

"You're going to be fine. When your father gets home, he'll fix you up. It'll be like it never happened. Let's just go inside, okay? Let's go inside."

You tear your eyes away from the thing hiding under your skin and look your mother in the eye. There are tears on her cheeks. "What am I?"

She squeezes your shoulders. "You are my child. Nothing will ever change that, do you hear me? Now, let's go inside. Please."

One day I cut myself deeply, but instead of flesh and blood, I saw wires. I had surgery on my left arm, because I broke it after a fall. It healed quick and worked great. But……wires!!! Next thing I knew I heard, “Beep Beep Swish Swoop Swish. Beep Beep.” Then I fell unconscious.

I thought back, it was all that I could do. There had been that hiss of a slight bang and boom. Their bowed heads and closed eyes. They were gone in a flash. All of them. No exception but me. I wondered how I had survived and everything else around me. Well except for the birds and the fish, the cats and dogs that used to wag their tails—-for love and a pat or a demand for tuna on a dish. Even they were gone.

All gone. Not a voice, not a growl, not a whine on the wind. Outside the windows—-which were just fine even after those bursts—-there were no trees, no flowers and where the manicured grass had been a thin ash was now swirled away by the breeze. The landscape was gray with only buildings in their right angles and swinging arcs. But also a contrast. The sky was blue blue blue until the night fell with its stars. The Moon was silver and something unexpected had happened in the stratosphere from those blasts, for the first time ever the Aurora Borealis and the Aurora Australias met in a spherical rainbow’s embrace. I wish they could have all seen it! I’m sure even the crickets would have violined their legs in praise.

I know it took my breath away, at least I thought it did. It was a spectacular and silent fireworks’ display. I watched each night alone.

But I didn’t feel alone. There in my head, I heard a thousand thousand voices. You might think it would drive me crazy. It didn’t. You might think it made me sad. In a way it did. But I don’t think in a way you or any of them could understand. I remembered them all, their faces appearing one after another in my vision. They all had called me Rob in a cheerful way. I never heard my full name from their lips, it sounded a bit silly and to formal: Rob Otto Rom. Somehow none of what they were was gone, at least not in my head. I suppose even out in the world their remains were now among the currents of air and water. The elements held their memorial. I held them, too. Somehow.

I hadn’t realized until the day before yesterday that I wasn’t—-had never really been—-one of them. I had felt some kind of something, which I’m sure they never planned. A something that they might call despair. I realized what had happened. I thought how could we have done it—-not realizing I wasn’t a part of the ‘we’. One side had started and the others had followed. They hated each other, but did not want to destroy what they had built. They had what they called an arm’s race and it had nothing to do with their appendages. Alas, they found the perfect weapon brought to its best. It had a poetic name, it sounded like a whisper and that only made hiss: MERW—Maximal Enhance Radiation Weapon.

In what I mistook for sorrow, I raised my arm with a sharp slice of metal to cut flesh and let blood flow. To put it all to an end. What I found were only wires and relayers pulsing in a life of their own. Then those thousand thousand voices in my head were alarmed. A thousand thousand echoes screamed, “Don’t do it, you’re all that is left of us!”

I was only a receptacle. Not a man, but I held so much of humanity. They had all been fitted with chips that in that flash of terminal radiation everything they were had been transferred, transformed into me. They saved themselves. I was saving them. There was no way to be lonely, not with a thousand thousand memories in your head.

I began to walk and even talk to myself. I walked and I walked, there were no borders anymore. Then I met another with the same name as I. And another and another. It seemed all those people who had made such bombs really didn’t want to die. We held them all, all ten thousand of us. We learned we could interface, we shared all of who we were. We really didn’t know those emotions swirling in us—-love and hate, joy and sorrow. Our pulsing wires just felt a small tingle of all of that. But one thing we did feel and became to know was hope. We knew we would never destroy anything that was there.

We agreed to build a new world. A world devoid of life, except for the life we carried in us. We made it beautiful without bombs.

Ow! Wait what? I stared in disbelief at my own cut. Blood didn’t flow out but, I saw something metallic shining back at me. no, this doesn’t quite make sense. Hey you, I’m a human right!? Oh tell me I am! I’m scared not to be.

I’ve lived so many years in fear, I can hardly remember a time without.

I know such a time existed, however. My father did his best to protect me. Unfortunately for me now, that protection came in the form of ignorance. I didn’t even know he was trying to protect me, because I didn’t know there was anything I needed to be protected from.

We had no television. All the books in the house were carefully selected, though I hadn’t known that at the time. I lived my life, carefree and happy, until the day trouble came and broke down our door.

We had a small, cozy house, but a lot of land. The winters were my favorite times, because their would be a warm fire in the fireplace and fresh snow to play in. He read me stories every night, but storytime was always better in the winter.

Winter would always have a special place in my heart. But the exact place in my heart would change overtime, because alongside memories of playing in snow and sitting by the fire now lies a memory of running in that same snow until I’m frozen to the bones and the deafening sound of gunfire.

I know more about what happened, now. I have a general picture, at least, but some of the details are foggy. Books about it all aren’t rare if you can find a library, but they’re definitely hard to keep when you have to leave in a hurry. Books, unfortunately, aren’t a priority when you’re in a post-android takeover dystopian story.

Now, I’m hiding in an small, wooden house with all of the parts I’d managed to salvage from the remains of the robots I’d fought earlier. Something happened here, I can tell — the holes in the roof and gaps in the walls could have been caused naturally by age, but the long-dead corpse slumped against the wall opposite me and the blood on the wood behind him told a different story.

I ignore the corpse. I’d seen worse; this is one of the better places I’ve had to stay since the death of my father. Instead, I scavenge the place for something to use to tend to my wounds. Luckily, I manage find something and I sit back down.

I take off the makeshift bandage I’d hurriedly made for my arm earlier on and examine the wound closely for the first time. I grimace; it’s worse than any wounds I’d had until now.

Then I frown and look closer, spotting something. I freeze, eyes widening as I notice what they are.

No wonder father had never told me about the destruction of the outside world. No wonder he’d never told me about the robots.

I’m one of them.

——————

(this doesn’t quite match the prompt, since it doesn’t actually continue it beyond what the prompt gave. (Also, the character has blood, which the prompt says she shouldn’t have.) Really, I worked backwards instead, giving backstory but leaving at the same point instead of continuing the story. I probably had more in mind when I first wrote this, but a lot of time passed and so the second half kind of fell flat, in my opinion. Anyway. Let me know what you guys think!)

last edited: Jan 16, 22

Running.

Running, running, running.

My heart was pounding so hard in my chest I thought it might explode. My legs were burning, but I just had to keep them moving. Faster, faster, faster. My lungs were threatening to burst, I could barely get in air, I could barely see, I could barely think. Black spots were beginning to cloud my vision.

But I couldn’t outrun them forever.

Two burly men with guns screamed curses not far behind me. They both had scars running across their faces, and one of them had a skull down tattooed across his right arm.

Don’t ask me how I noticed something like that when I was running so fast. It’s just some weird quirk I have where I notice these little details about people.

I rounded another corner and crammed myself under a thorn bush. Thorns pierced my arms and legs, but I barely registered them. And I thought I was going to have a heart attack when the men paused, barely three feet from my hiding spot.

The guy with the skull tattoo growled. “Where is she?”

“Probably hiding,” the other answered. His voice had a thick, gravelly quality to it that made a chill run up my spine. “The scoundrel. Search the area. We are not disappointing Lord Simon again.”

Skull tattoo cocked his gun. The two split up, but to my relief, both were walking in the opposite direction as me.

I inhaled some much needed air. So far this going-on-the-run plan was not going too well. I still didn’t fully understand why Lord Simon wanted me, but basically he had locked me in a facility since birth and told me he planned to “use me” whenever I came of age.

Which was today.

And last night I’d made a deal with myself that I would take a chance and run. I knew where the key was; my guard was kidding himself if he thought I really wasn’t going to find his terrible hiding spot. Then again, he wasn’t exactly the smartest guard I knew. But he was the biggest; and that’s why he was chosen to guard my cell.

Because I’m “important.”

“HEY!” screamed skull tattoo. “Over here!” I heard the other guy sprint towards him. At least they weren’t smart enough to find me.

I wiggled out of bush the opposite end I had come in. I was now standing in a clearing, and though it was still daylight, much of the sun was blocked by thick, leafy trees that stretched from their thick trunks and up over my head like canopies. At least if the burly men got in here it would be too dark for them to see.

I headed further into the clearing. It was amazing that such a depressing facility could be hidden by such a beautiful island. I wonder what else lie out here, waiting to be discovered.

I mean, it’s not like Lord Simon ever let me outside. I just—

“AHHHH!” I shrieked. I stumbled forwards, panting heavily. There was a searing pain burning in my leg. I glanced down, and there was a huge thorn poking its way ....

THROUGH my ankle.

As in, in one end and out the other.

“Oh no,” I muttered as I lowered myself shakily to the ground. “Oh no oh no...”

I blinked back the tears that were burning in my eyes. I hated the fact that I was so sensitive to pain. At least, that’s what Lord Simon told me. One time I tripped when I was five and I had to stay in bed for a week.

And this... this was not good.

I bit my lip so hard it turned white from lack of blood. I took a deep breath, grabbed the thorn, and yanked as hard as I possibly could.

“AHHHH!”

“I heard her!” Skull tattoo shouted. “She’s back there somewhere!”

I winced, and dropped the thorn on the ground. I closed my eyes tight and tried to focus on the details around me, as Lord Simon had taught me to do when I experienced pain. Not that I actually liked him or anything. I definitely thought he was an evil, experimenting creep. But he did have some valid theories.

I calmed myself down enough to bring my hand to the wound. I opened one of my eyes cautiously... and then I really thought I was going to faint.

Because there wasn’t any blood or bones or anything.

Just... wires.

“I’m sick and tired of feeling like this, the feeling of being alone, just being okay and desperate to breathe again. I’m going to end it, I’m going to end it now,” says Anne

Anne walked into the bathroom, took her clothes off, and proceeded to run her warm bath water, naked she walked into the kitchen and grabbed the sharpest knife, her favorite knife and the knife she knew that would get the job done. Anne ran the water too hot, so she had to run cold water for a little bit to cool down before she got in. When the suicidal feelings start to come in, it isn't just any regular feelings; It always feels like life is already being taken away from the mind first before taking away from the actual physical body.

Anne waits on the toilet bare behind, watching the water run, waiting for it to cool down. As she waits, she examines her left arm; the right one is already cut up and used. Anne finds the area Anne wants to cut and positions herself in the bathtub while still letting the water run to keep the water warm. As she gets ready to cut, she has a gut feeling telling her to hurry up and go faster, so she cuts. She sees a wire poking out and thought it was just her imagination, so she cuts again this time; she gets scared but is interested in shock to see what it is.

Anne is thinking that her mind is playing tricks on her and that it's coming from maybe the shock that is coming from her profoundly cutting. To end it all, she slits her wrist, and wires start to jump out of her arm like a jack in a box; wires were popping out everywhere. Curious, Anne got out of the tub with blood dripping everywhere, and as Anne walked, she followed the wires, picking them up piece by piece. They were taking her somewhere, but she didn't know where.

Following the wires from the open wombs of her arm, she ended up in her closet; there is when she found the rest of the cables tangled in a corner. When Anne looked down, it was a white note planted on top. The message said, “Turn around, there's a table behind you; on it, you will find a deck of cards and four separate cards lying face down.”

Anne turned around and picked up the four separate cards. They all meant a different meaning; the first card grabbed off the table was the life we were all given; the second was a card with all the resources that could help shape the life you want. The third one was a different life of what could be, and the last one was the life that was wanted.

Everyone can live the life they desire, but it takes a lot of hard work to get there.

“Place your hand over your heart, can you feel it? That is called purpose. You’re alive for a reason, so don’t ever give up.” – Unknown

“Zane!”

I could distantly hear my name, almost as though it was far away. I wrenched my eyes open, my vision hazy and my mind foggy as I tried to bring myself out of the darkness I was in.

I saw flashes of blue and red, colors starting to become clear as I rubbed a hand against my eyes, the digits digging into my sockets.

I was finally able to concentrate on the voices, the cacophony of sounds causing my head to ache and my ears to ring.

I felt a warmth upon my back, urging me to sit up slowly.

“Zane! Are you ok?”

I knew that voice.

“Jay?” My own voice sounded foreign to my ears, sounding vaguely like gravel in my throat.

I blinked and my eyes adjusted, a mop of ginger hair and bright blue eyes coming into focus.

“You’re ok? Tell me you’re ok!”

“Of course he’s ok, Bolthead!” A deeper voice replied sarcastically. That had to be Cole.

“Can we focus here?” A third voice joined the conversation; Kai.

I blinked several times, waking up gradually to the wintery world around us, reminded now that we were in the forest of the Treehorns.

Several of the gigantic creatures lay dormant on the ground around us, the largest of which stood encased in solid ice. “I... did that?” I asked quietly, my eyes trained on the tree-like monster.

“Don’t you remember anything?” Cole asked, his grey eyes filled with concern. I shook my head. All three of my comrades looked between themselves, their expressions worried.

“Let’s get you on your feet buddy,” Kai said, lending me his hand. I stood, unsteadily at first, but gradually regained my balance. My head was still pounding, but I did my best to ignore it.

“Uh, Zane?”

I looked towards the questioning glance of Jay, asking, “What is it?”

“What’s up with your arm?”

I lifted my arm, unaware that I had been injured in the fight with the Treehorn Queen and what I saw in that wound brought back a flood of memories. An older man teaching me everything I needed to know for years flashed in my minds’ eye, causing me to blink several time to try and stop the sudden surge.

I looked at the deep cut again, sighing at seeing the crisscrossing wire and circuitry that could clearly be seen.

“I have something I need to tell you,” I said, my voice wavering.

My three friends looked at me expectantly as I sighed, preparing myself mentally for what I was about to reveal to them.

“I’m,” I swallowed. “I’m a... a robot,”

There. I had said it.

I waited for the onslaught of questions from Jay, the reserved concern from Cole and the subtle apprehensiveness from Kai, but none of them came.

A shared look passed between the trio before they all looked at me with an unreadable expression.

“That’s AWESOME!” Jay exclaimed, grabbing the nearest thug he could for a hug, which just so happened to be Kai.

“You’re... you’re not freaked out? Or worried?”

“Worried?! You’re a robot, Zane! A, a,” Kai tried to find the right words as he attempted to wrestle free from Jay’s deathgrip.

“A ninroid!” The ginger supplied.

“A nindroid?” I tested the word -if you could even call it that- on my tongue. I rather liked it.

“Yeah! And I bet it makes you an even better ninja!” Cole agreed, clapping me on the back. I smiled at him, turning to my other friends who were still locked together.

“Thank you my friends,” I said, causing all three of them to turn their gazes towards me.

“Anytime brother,” Cole added with a grin.

It was then that I understood; we weren’t just friends anymore. We were brothers. And it was because of that, that no matter what ran through me, bolts, screws, gears or circuitry, that I was accepted. That’s what made me a ninja.

I wanted to do a twist on how Zane found out he was a nindroid. I wanted to explore him finding out first and telling the guys later rather than them finding him in Dr. Julien’s house. I imagined Zane unlocking his true potential before the guys even found him. I hope you liked it! Ninjago belongs to the LEGO company.