“O-Ori…”
The drones whizzed and buzzed against the blue light of the monitor, lenses glowing red as they screeched. The lights on each server flickered yellow, green, red, and then nothing at all, electric sparks erupting from the connections. Skeletal fingers twitched against the chair, before curling inward, clenching tightly as Sybil gazed at the last few seconds repeating on each monitor.
“This…shouldn’t…happen…” Her chair turned towards the exit of her lair, “He-help him. Help Ori…”
Logically, Orsin would survive; his metabolism and flesh would heal over and after a good meal, he would be right as rain. He would come back and they would play video games together, or watch a horror movie through his thick, soft fingers. Her mind, replicated over many processors and buzzing around in her drones, would calculate millions of possibilities and each one would end similarly.
However, Ira and her sins were human. Each one was an individual, rife with emotional responses that would kick in before any calculation could be reached. Sybil, Sloth, at this very moment, was no exception.
Her arms shook as she pressed her palms against the arms of her chair, her silver-blue eyes that saw everything yet nothing. As she pushed herself upwards, her drones screamed; atrophied muscles with unused nerves flared awake and while she only flinched, her mechanical, wireless familiar reflected the genuine horror her body was subjected to. When she stood from her chair, her knees, bone protruding again, thin, gray flesh, buckled. She was a doll made of thin crystal and with her first tiny step, her body split and crack. Thousands of tiny fractures spread, making and shattering web and with the next, even smaller step, she could feel herself falling into pieces.
“M-must he-help…Ori…”
It was exhausting to breathe.
Moving an inch from her chair was absolute agony.
The exit from her expansive cavern of neon blue lights and circuitry was across the diameter of the Earth and when she took a third, excruciating step, she collapsed and the exit was now as far away as the moon.
When she hit the floor, she shattered into a million pieces and everything became so loud. The blue lights turned red and when she coughed, her heart dug into the brittle pieces of glass that were her ribcage.
Everything hurt. It hurt to move.
Her heart was beating so hard it was exhausting.
A gasp escaped from her lips and her drones froze in mid panicked flight. They all turned, looking down at their controller, lens going from dizzying red to blinding white.
Her eyes closed as she took another rasping breath.
So tired.
She was so tired and everything was so loud.
Her monitors were sparking with electric anguish. She was overloaded with illogical humanity and it was cacophonic.
Pure hell.
She wanted to sleep. Her arms were going numb and her chest constricted, bone sand digging into the crevices and squeezing her brittle heart.
Yet she had to focus. As the drones flew towards her at the center, her thin lips parted. The alarms blared. The guards would rush through the halls, but there was only one person she had to call.
“Get…Ira…”
There will be hell to pay.
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