Well, that took much longer then I thought it would. I allowed myself to be distracted a few too many times. May I now present, my blurb:
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Another day in paradise.
X-1's eyes opened. Taking a moment to acclimate to the sudden illumination of her living quarters, she blinked again. It was either the bright fluorescents or the pure ridiculousness of her cynical thoughts that had pulled her from sleep.
Paradise. This place is too dismal to compare to paradise even in my ever growing cynicism.
X-1 stood up, her black hair disheveled, falling to her shoulders, and turned to face the door of her quarters. The person she saw standing there caught her attention. Blue eyes locked onto blue eyes as she was once again startled by the individual she found in front of her. It was all strangely foreign to her. As if she expected to see someone else standing there in her own reflection.
She gave her body a once-over in another effort to force herself to fully assimilate this form as her own. Her defined figure, muscular and toned, added a certain strength to her demeanor while at the same time not taking away from her femininity -- a balance rarely found. Augmenting her strength, although maybe not her beauty, was her robotic arm and leg. Each of which were made to fully replicate their organic counterparts with the exception of being constructed of a metal alloy exterior. An exterior that only broke at the various joints allowing but a glimpse into it's advance robotic interior of electronics, hydraulics, and mechanics.
Her face was just beginning to show signs of aging as her body moved out of its prime and into its more mature years, and her complexion bore a sickly, pale shade slight enough to not cause alarm while at the same time evident enough to, upon inspection, beget mild anxiety. X-1's health was not as it should be.
She coughed and coughed again breaking out into a fit of uncontrollable sputtering. As quickly as it came it subsided and looking down she knew the outbreak's genesis. Her hand was coated in wet crimson.
Damn. I forget to take my STABILIZER.
With all the perks that came from being outfitted with robotic limbs there came a downside as well. It was simple checks and balances. An unforgiving natural law that the universe never allows its occupants to violate. In full compliance with this, there is only one thing that prevents her body from rejecting it's new appendages, the C-9 provided medication, STABALIZER designation XM-1.
X-1 took the XM-1 she had placed on the table the night before, quickly throwing it back and swallowing it.
Damn this place. Damn their medications. Damn their clones, their machines, their jobs. Damn it all.
There was something wrong about C-9. Whatever and where ever it was. This base that they had all been forced to call home. It doesn't sit well with any of its inhabitants, and it doesn't sit well with X-1.
She didn't care so much for her own designation. She was human, of that she was certain, and assuming that this certainty of hers' wasn't unfounded - which was an assumption she had taken the liberty of adopting if only for the sake of her sanity - then a human should not be given a serial number. That is all these designation were to her -- serial numbers not unlike the one found imprinted on the blue and white pills that hold her together.
So she decided, several incarnations ago, to adopt a self-proclaimed name. It would have to be a fitting name. No matter what body she found herself inhabiting it would persist. Whether man or woman. Old or young. Fit or dying. The name would stick. It would stick to this incarnation and it would stick to the next.
The name X-1 had chosen was Artemis. It was the name of someone who will one day leave this dismal hell called C-9.