Voices—she was surrounded by them. Some felt familiar, others foreign, and though each one spoke softly, there were so many that their words bounced off the walls of her head as indistinct echoes. Time she’d lost track of long ago, and in the darkness of pseudo-hibernation, all she could do was imagine what each voice was doing far outside her line of vision. At times like this, she imagined she was being repaired, as every now and again, one of her limbs would be prodded or lifted up. She’d wake up on the table in a lab, restrained until a Crystex Core was inserted into her implant and her new objective was declared.

This time, however, something was different. It was an indistinct something, a new flavor to the air. As she focused on it, her lethargic brain began to process the sensation and, strangely enough, labeled it as intense discomfort. Well, that wasn’t new. Nemesis prepared to nestle back into the comfort of unconsciousness until another thought sparked on its own. If she was safely restrained in a lab, why was she in an uncomfortable position? Why was it so cold?

Nemesis’ eyes shot open, blank, yet full of unstinting purpose. Though her vision was little more than a blur at first, she eventually came to see that she was in an outside area—namely, a junk heap. Her barely moveable lips cracked into a smirk, and in one smooth motion, she tore the shell of a drone off her torso. That thing had been restricting her ability to breathe for some time; it was evident from the greyish spots on her torso that would soon become bruises.

On some level, she understood what’d happened in her lapse of consciousness. The scientists responsible for her care had made no secret of her increasingly difficult upkeep and the inevitability that she would malfunction beyond repair. Rather than feeling outcast and useless, however, she felt a strange rush of pleasure. The junkyard riddled with her foes of the past was impressive. Here lay her opponents, creation after creation that had not been able to match her. These were her trophies, the sum of her existence, and if her fate truly was to be tossed aside, her value had at least been greater than those doleful creations—for a time.

Like the mortal beings surrounding her, her prime had reached its brink and was fated to retreat until she was nothing but bones and ash. Her lack of commands was, in truth, a very clear command she’d dreaded ever since her first failure to deconstruct a drone: her only task now was to die. It wasn’t resentment she felt, but confusion. If she was functional enough to move, to think, to act, why was she resting among the inert remains and other junk from her commanders? Surely, if she was active, there was a purpose beyond submitting herself to the abyss.

Rain drizzled down, and the torn remains of her suit flapped idly against skin and metal as she sat in her heap of victory and contemplated her next move. To attempt to return to the lab would be futile, and even if she wished it, a mere glance at her surroundings was enough to tell such a thing was impossible. She was in unfamiliar, yet familiar territory: she recognized the drones and machinery from the base she’d lived in, but all of the garbage had been dumped off-location.

What choice did she have but to move? Nemesis paid no mind to the racket she made as she dug her legs out from the slimy, broken machinery. It took a bit of time, given that she had only one mechanical arm attached, but then the real feat began. Just rolling down the grimy heap would result in cuts and bruises, and she knew her constitution was already at its limits. She had to carefully wade her way down, letting her legs sink with every step. It was a macabre little symphony as metal bits clinked, scraped, and popped, oozing out pockets of oil and mud.

The next obstacle she faced was much less intimidating: it was nothing more than a wire-linked fence. Beyond it, there was a barren space of land before a smattering of buildings. Past those black shapes was a brighter, taller skyline completely alien to her. Even so, that was sign enough of civilization: there she would find purpose again.

Nemesis slipped her foot into one of the links, then her hand. With her foot on the bottom and fingers on the top, she began to pull it open, effectively ripping the fence apart.  When she had a hole large enough to fit through, she edged out of the junkyard. She still received a myriad of shallow scratches from the jagged edges of the broken links as she passed, but that was nothing to her frozen skin. All she could do was limp forward now, either to find her salvation or find her end.