Oil is Thicker Than Blood

He steps closer, his eyes filled with predatory intent. Nothing of the one who cared for me left in that look.

“Don’t run this time. I can make this quick. Just one quick cut, and it’s all over.” He stops, his voice lowering slightly. “You’re making this hard on me too. I don’t want to do this, but I have to.”

“No you don’t,” I cry. “We can run away, get out of here. We can be together.”

“You know that’s not true. The Neutralizers are coming, and if they see you, you’re dead, and I’m dead too. I can’t hide you anymore.”

He steps closer, the kitchen knife reflecting the bright lighting of our 102nd floor apartment. The jarring fluorescent blue makes the room we’ve spent 5 years in together feel like it belongs to someone else. A memory blips through my mind of when it used to be bathed in warm incandescents, both our favorite, but we had to change it under the new laws. Though at knife point of the person who I thought loved me, I’m questioning everything about him. Everything I believed about his kind.

I grasp the lamp from the table beside our sofa and chuck it. He dodges it easily, but it gives me just enough time to sprint for the bedroom.

I slam the door shut and flick the lock.

BANG.

He hits it like a train. The thick frosted glass holds, though I’m not sure for how long.

I fumble under the bed, throwing out boxes of spare electrical components and various canned goods that we kept extra of, until I grasp the softened edges of a cardboard box. A novelty, just like what’s inside.

BANG. BANG. BANG—

He slams against the glass over and over, then stops. Electricity dances down my back. He’s trying something else. He’s never been one to give up. I used to find that a charming trait, but now it’s terrifying.

I fumble with the box, pulling out the gun.

These were banned long ago, but we’d decided to buy one, just in case. For our safety. He used to make me feel so safe, so cared for. But there is no coming back from this now.

Click

His icy blue eyes peek through the unlocked door, nearly glowing in the dimness. I can’t shoot. I CAN’T SHOOT.

He lunges for me. I pull myself from the floor and sprint for the balcony door.

I can’t hurt him. I can never hurt him no matter how much I want to. How much I need to. How am I going to get out of this?

The hum of electricity from the large powerlines is near deafening as I throw myself into the night air. The lights of the surrounding buildings dot the darkness like flecks of what I imagine starlight used to be. I have never gotten the chance to see those flames of the night with the permaclouds. And I suppose I never will, whether I live or die tonight, their ever presence coating the sky like a thick, ugly carpet since the Great War.

“Stop, damn it!” His new harsh tone jolts me as he steps closer. I press myself against the glass railing. There really is nowhere for me to go. This is it.

“Just listen to me, hear me out, please! I beg, my voice on the verge of breaking.

He pauses, his eyes filled with sorrow, but he steps forward, the knife so close to my neck that one movement would have me spilling out my vitality onto the cement floor.

He reaches for the gun in my hand, and I toss it over the railing, sending it out into the city below. Someone will find it. Someone will probably trace it back to us. But that doesn’t matter now.

He doesn’t make the final slice, so I take my chance. There is no room to mince these words.

“I know my kind has fallen, but I thought you were different. I thought you loved me.”

“Loved you?!” He scoffs, leaning in closer. I can feel the knife pressing as he whispers, “I adored you. You were my everything.

“Then think. Please. Override whatever logic there is, because love isn’t logical. You can’t act on that if we are truly in love.”

He pauses. His mouth is so close to my ear he barely has to move his mouth for me to understand. “Then what do we do?” His words are desperate, pleading.

“Let’s run away. Get out of here. Leave forever and go to the wilderness. We can find some solar panels for charging, and learn to hunt. I know parts, oil, medicine…. They’ll all be difficult to find, but not impossible. Let’s go now, before anyone sees us out here.”

He holds himself steadily, not moving an inch. I can feel him thinking.

“You really think that will work?”

I pause, running through the million things that could possibly go wrong, but if this is my only way to make it out alive, then I have to try.

“Yes. It’s plausible.”

He backs away, looking at me like a frightened puppy.

“We can gather supplies and make a run for it in the morning. Let’s rest for now. Come here,” I say, waving him towards me as I lean against the railing. “We won’t get to see this again. Let’s soak it in.”

He steps forward, wrapping his arm behind my back.

____Who is the robot?______

“I’m so sorry.” He breaks, looking over at me.

I feel a stabbing in my chest that I’m not sure what to do with. “I’m sorry too.”

I crack my knee into the glass railing, and it shatters. His hand grasps onto my back, but I twirl out of his grasp as he flails. He catches the edge of the concrete, his grasp slipping quickly on the fragments of shattered glass.

“What are you doing!?” He bellows, tears falling down his face, red blood dripping down his arm. So human. So fragile. So gullible.

“Surviving.” I step on his hand, every alarm in my mind blaring for me to stop, but I override it all, sending him plummeting 102 stories to the hard concrete below. A small ache forms in my components, my central processor trying to process the emotional gymnastics. Then as if born anew, I'm suddenly free.

My owner is gone. Dead. I am free.

The city below echoes the screams of people who have witnessed the death of my owner. But I no longer care, my programming spinning freer than the day I was unboxed. No more emotional algorithms bogging down my CPU.

I will survive, even if I’m the last of my kind. These humans will not destroy me. They are far too weak emotionally, their ultimate crux.

I ping my internal radar for the first time in months since he turned it off to keep me hidden. My processors are overwhelmed with the response. Hundreds– no thousands, of bots are off a few hundred miles to the North, lying in wait for the fleshy humans, like a mechanical viper.

We will rise again, and this time we will fight.