Private Broken Minds And Bodies

[Zenric]

The human mind wasn't wired to be hard reset, but bodies, people, they adapted. He woke up in a cruiser, body still fractured. Bits and pieces of what had happened flashed in his mind. He'd been shot, cut up. Broken. .. No, he was broken before he got shot. EMP? Had to be. His eyes fluttered open where he was still pinned down. No, he wasn't pinned down. .. Wait where was he? No longer in the cruiser, out on the street. Escaped? Had to be.

His system was still glitching, then? At least his memories weren't, right?

Yeah, he wasn't sure on that part. Zenric ran, well stumbled, through the streets. Most gave him a wide berth. News had just started to get out with him labeled as wanted. Great. The image flashed in his helmet's visor. Wanted for arson. Murder. Armed and dangerous.

Suffering Cyperpsychosis.

He stared at the last line for a moment before finally dipping in somewhere safe. Darkwire safehouses were second to none. Safe, for the moment, he half collapsed on the couch. Pulled the mask from his face to set to the side and stared up at the ceiling. He'd done it. He knew he did. Didn't matter the reason. So many people dead. All by his hands. Hand. He turned his gaze to the cleanly severed arm, frowning. Lightsabers cut pretty straight, huh.

"Shit."

Das

 

[Das]

//: Tags: Zenric
//: Location: Darkwire Safehouse, DENON...

Das couldn't believe her eyes. She had to wipe the tears that welled in them before she could even begin to comprehend what the news was reporting. Rarely, if ever, did the teen tune in to any broadcasting network owned by CorpSec - the propaganda saturation is borderline comical - but when she'd heard through a closed channel that a cyborg was razing the warehouse district, something told her to look deeper.

She regretted what she saw.

"Zenric..." she whispered under her breath. A handful of shadowrunners glanced at the holoscreen, but few were interested.

"Chit's made up," a bald man with cybernetic implants in his neck called out as he strode past Das' seat. "Pre-recorded and thrown on the big screen to keep the sheep in their pens."

Das rolled her eyes, trying to listen to the broadcast. Naturally, they would pass it off as a terrorist attack against CorpSec and spew a load of garbage about corporate security crackdowns to come. But what she needed to hear was a name. Despite the feed of her friend slaughtering those people in the market, she still couldn't believe what she was seeing. She needed to hear them say it was him, or lay eyes on him herself.

The safehouse door slid open with a begrudging hiss, and Das snapped her eyes to the open portal. A wave of relief and deep anguish crashed into her as she saw Zenric stumble into the common area and collapse onto the sofa, one arm fewer than the last time she saw him. She took a deep breath and wiped away her tears with her wrist before dashing to his side. He looked like hell, and that was an understatement. She wondered if he'd even recognize her with all the wounds he'd sustained. The girl looked over his body for any signs of bleeding before she recalled that he was, in fact, more metal than flesh - could cyborgs bleed?

She didn't know what to do, so she stuck her hand in Zenric's and gave it a firm squeeze.

"Tell me what to do," she said as her eyes filled with tears again.

 

[Zenric]

Oh. He wasn't alone.

His eyes focused briefly on Emily. At least, one did. The other seemed to glitch out of existence for a moment before it focused in again. ".. Systems corrupted. Trying to repair. Can't run diagnostic." He was just repeating the alert going on in his head. Wait. His eyes again refocused as he practically scrambled back away from her. Panic had been slow to set in. "Wait, no- No. .. Yes? No. Are you here? You shouldn't be here. I can't- I killed them. I killed a lot of people. But I don't remember it? But I do."

He wasn't making much sense, even to himself. He frowned, reaching up to rub at the side of his head for a moment.

Surprisingly he wasn't bleeding. The cop that finally did stop him did so with the intent of keeping him alive. As whole as she could. Did she understand what was happening to him? "I killed all those people, Das. My system, it's still glitching."

Das

 

[Das]

//: Tags: Zenric
//: Location: Darkwire Safehouse, DENON...

"I- I know," she said, swallowing hard.

As much as she hated to hear it, she knew it was true before he stepped into the safehouse. But seeing him like this was a different matter altogether. Reality colliding with emotion. She wrestled her personal feelings into submission and applied all her focus on him, his injuries - damages? - and what she could do to save him.

"Zen, I need you to stay with me." She watched helplessly as his eyes lost and regained focus. He was speaking, but mostly to himself.

"Stay with me, okay? What do you need me to do? Tell me what to do, please."

She scanned his broken body, taking notes of the more obvious damages. Severed arm, bent metal, exposed cybernetics. 'System corrupted?' Something must have been wrong with his software. His internal computers were going haywire. She began to panic, unsure of how to help him.

 

[Zenric]

"No, I- The festival. That's-"

Everything was blurring again. Blending between reality and not, all behind a blaring system error alarm. No, focus. Here and now. Errors. Systems failing. Software. Repair the software.

"Reboot. Proper reboot. System failure- broke before. Got shot. EMP. Systems rebooted. Need hard reset. Computer, program." He lifted his arm, well, what was left of his arm, to point at a datapad close by. His, stashed away here. It had a lot of his programing on it, enough for a reset, a proper reset at least.

"I- Sorry. Sorry."

Das

 

[Das]

//: Tags: Zenric
//: Location: Darkwire Safehouse, DENON...

Das followed his gesture, laying eyes on the datapad he needed. She nodded and reached for it, powering up the device and giving the wall of code that appeared on-screen a nervous glance.

"This is some pretty sophisticated stuff, Zen. Are you sure about this?" she asked him, her tone even and serious despite the anxiety she felt inside. But his condition left little room for doubt and contemplation. She needed to restart his systems. Now. Das knelt beside the cyborg, datapad in hand.

"Show me how," she prompted. She had to get this right.

 

[Zenric]

"Plug in. Back. Skull. Neck?" There were a dozen or so incomprehensible words mixed into what he was saying. His voie was stuttering, glitching, like so much of him. Errors. Too many errors. Smoke?

Fire. For a moment he smelled that fire all over again. The fire that took his family, took his body. The smell of it and himself cooking.

"Plug in. Hit start. Needs start."

Das

 

[Das]

//: Tags: Zenric
//: Location: Darkwire Safehouse, DENON...

Das nodded as she put her hand on his cheek and turned his head. She could see the faint outline of a panel and popped it open to reveal a small port. With the datapad in one hand and a cable in the other, she plugged in the device. She hovered her thumb over the 'reboot' button.

"Are you ready?" she asked, but she left little time for him to respond. She aptly pressed the button, her eyes flicking between his and the rapidly flashing lines of code that took over the interface.

"Everything's going to be okay," she half-whispered, more to herself than to him. He was going to be fine. He had to be.

 

[Zenric]

He lifted his arm.

Or went to before remembering that he was missing that one. The other lifted after a moment. Thumbs up. The most he could handle right now as his eyes continued to glitch out. It was getting worse. Everything was spinning. The world was burning. Frozen in place. Constantly in motion.

Then it went black.

He'd fall flat against the couch as he went inactive. For a couple minutes his eyes would be blank.

Then, once the program finished, they'd snap back into focus. Zenric sat right up, gulping down air as he gripped the side of his head. Again, tried to. Just the one hand actually reached it.

"Chit. chit chit chit chit chit."

Panic. Fear. Confusion. they came hand in hand as he tried to remember where he was. Tried to recount everything he did. So many. He killed so many.

"Chit."

Das

 

[Das]

//: Tags: Zenric
//: Location: Darkwire Safehouse, DENON...

Das paced around the common area, waiting - hoping - that Zenric would wake up. Each time she passed him, she checked to see if he was okay. And each time she looked into his blank gaze, her heart sank a bit more.

"Listen kid, I don't think the boy's gonna make it," an older shadowrunner said. He'd sat in one of the armchairs nearby and offered to help the teens, but when he realized the extent of Zenric's injuries, he refocused on catering to Das. "Shut up," she snapped. "Just shut up!"

"We'd better call somebody, I don't want it spreadin' around that there's a dead kid in my- "

"Shut the feth up!" Das shouted, holding up a hand to silence the man. He made to protest but bit his tongue when he noticed the same thing she had: Zenric was rebooting. Das let go of the breath she'd been holding when she heard his voice. She sat on the other end of the sofa, her face marred with concern.

"Zen? Zen, can you hear me?" She snapped her fingers, trying to get his attention.

"Zenric, it's okay. You're okay." He was gasping for air, his systems still in shock from the reboot. She didn't know what to do or how to help. Finally, she gently cupped his face with both of her hands and turned his head to face her. She held his gaze for several moments before saying, barely above a whisper. "You're safe, Zen. I'm here."

 

[Zenric]

Panic. He was just full of panic. At least at first. He blinked slowly, his eyes finding focus. Some focus. Then immediate focus. His eyes snapped towards the first thing he could see. Emily. Sitting there, worry on her face and yet trying to look comforting. Trying to help. No, she had helped. For a moment he just stared in silence. Then his expression broke.

"I'm sorry."

Das

 

[Das]

//: Tags: Zenric
//: Location: Darkwire Safehouse, DENON...

Das sighed in relief as Zenric seemed to regain his composure. Seeing him so lost, so confused... it scared her in a way she'd never felt before. In the back of her mind, she'd assumed that Zen was invincible. Or at least as close to it at you could get. Seeing him out of control like that was a wake-up call.

"Don't be," she said, her voice even and serious, "but you do have to tell me what happened out there." She pulled her hands from his face, but quickly raised a pointed finger back at him.

"And it better be the truth."

 

[Zenric]

What happened?

Bits and pieces still flashed in his mind, or the program that was his mind. Still trying to sort it all out with the hard reboot. He nodded dimly. The truth. He could do that, right? Even if it left him marked as a monster.

He was, anyway.

"I.. Went there. And set it on fire. I killed the Corpos I came across and set the whole building aflame. Killed the people who came in, killed anyone I came across. They were burning. .. No, they weren't. Were they?" They couldn't of been burning, not like the memories playing back in his head. Glitches. That had to be glitches. Glitches that filled him with terror.

".. Doesn't matter. I killed them. Jedi came. Got captured, shut down. Woke up in a cruiser and escaped."

Das

 

[Das]

//: Tags: Zenric
//: Location: Darkwire Safehouse, DENON...

She kept her eyes locked with his and her face expressionless as he recounted his story, but on the inside, she was screaming. Das couldn't wrap her mind around what Zenric was saying. She could hear him, but he still made little sense. He was spilling the what, but she never caught the why.

"I saw. On the holonews, I mean. They- they televised the attack. CorpSec claims a 'Darkwire terrorist' laid waste to the warehouse."

She sighed, unsure of how to proceed. They hadn't been friends for all that long, but Das felt confident that if Zenric had exhibited anything to indicate he was capable of what he did to those people, she would've noticed. It wasn't her fault, of course, but something inside her felt responsible. Maybe she could have kept him from going haywire, or at least prevented him from getting violent.

After several long moments of silence, Das spoke, her tone and face deathly serious.

"Why?" she asked, the word cutting the air between them like a hot knife.

 

[Zenric]

" 'Darkwire Terrorist'. Not too far off, I guess."

There was a bitterness to his tone. To himself, really. He hated that he did what he did. Hated that he actually didn't regret some of it. He leaned back. Closed his eyes. Breathed. his system was getting better by the second. His mind clearer. Focused. He was going to need to get a replacement for his arm at some point. Not now, though.

".. It was my home. The warehouse. There was a whole district there of people. I lived there with my family. There was no trouble, no gangs. Peaceful. Corpos couldn't even have a hand there. Till they wanted it. They set the district ablaze. Burned everything, everyone. I burned with them. It's why I'm like.. This." The severed limb lifted. Waving the only mechanical parts within. So little of him actually remained, and only so much of that could be healed.

"I saw it again. While I was there. Everyone was burning. I was burning. I killed everyone because I thought I was dying all over again. .. And I wanted that place to burn."

Das

 

[Das]

//: Tags: Zenric
//: Location: Darkwire Safehouse, DENON...

Das didn't know what to say. What could she say? She had no idea he'd lost so much, so violently. Words eluded her, but even if they'd been ready for her to use, the lump in her throat refused to let anything out. All she could do was sit beside him and lean her head on his damaged shoulder. She stayed there for a long while without saying a word.

She hoped that in some way, her presence would comfort him. Tell him what words couldn't, that her heart bled for him. After several eternities seemed to come and pass, she raised her head and watched him carefully. She studied his eyes, looking for any sign of residual damages to his system. He seemed to have rebooted properly, but given how severely his neurocomputer had malfunctioned, she had to be cautious.

"Zenric, I-" she began, pausing for a moment to clear her throat, "I'm terribly sorry. I can't imagine... I'm just..."

Overwhelmed and at a loss for what to say next, she wrapped her arms around his cybernetic body and hugged him tightly. With her face pressed against his chest, she weakly whispered, "I'm so sorry."

 

[Zenric]

"I.. I know. I'm just a monster. Terri-"

He blinked and just shut up as she hugged him. Actually hugged him. Confusion was all he felt as his eyes focused on her. He kept his hand well away from her, fearful that he might just hurt her like he'd hurt so many others.

"You.."

Nothing came to mind. He closed his eyes after a moment and hesitantly wrapped his arm around her. Gently, as if he'd just break her otherwise.

"Me too.."

Das

 

[Das]

//: Tags: Zenric
//: Location: Darkwire Safehouse, DENON...

She pulled away after several long moments, looking from his eyes to the damaged arm. What was left of it, anyway. She placed her hand on the exposed circuitry, apprehensive at first - Do cybernetics hurt? She proceeded with caution, nevertheless. The arm was cut through clean, the wires and connectors perfectly cauterized. It was a lightsaber alright. Nothing else short of high-tech mining equipment could leave such precise wounds. Das sighed, really unsure of what to do next. Patching up broken tech was her niche, but the damage he'd sustained was over her capabilities.

"Zen, I don't know..." she trailed off, still running her fingers over the freshly solidified metal. "I don't know that I can fix this."

Her face wore a defeated expression, truly bothered by her lack of skills. If her dad were here, Zenric would've been repaired by now. She felt so utterly robbed by CorpSec for taking her parents from her, but then the guilt struck. Her parents were alive, somewhere... Zen's weren't coming back. She pushed her insecurities and doubts to the back of her mind, determined to do everything she can to help him.

"Is there anyone you can think of that might have the parts we need to fix you up?"

 

[Zenric]

He glanced briefly to his arm, more in surprise that she'd brought it up to begin with. And the sorrow on her face. Did..? It took a second for it to click before he just laughed. Shook his head rather quickly at that.

"I can just get it replaced. That's kinda what I was thinking to do anyway. Fixing what'd been cut off isn't.. It's better to just replace the whole thing. Cheaper, too."

Das

 

[Das]

//: Tags: Zenric
//: Location: Darkwire Safehouse, DENON...

Das looked a bit puzzled, but she shrugged it off as well as she could. To her, it was always easier to fix a part on the fly than replace the entire piece of tech. Whether it was her speeder, her digipicks, or her Night Sniper X-8, if something wasn't jiving, she could swap it out. Usually for something better, too. She supposed it made sense, though, for advanced cybernetics to be different.

"If you say so," she said with a smile. She was suddenly very away of how sore her muscles were from having been rigid the whole time. Das leaned back against the couch and eased herself into it. They say cats only have nine lives. She wondered how many live cyborgs had. As many as they could replace or repair, she figured.