Quoted By:
Something wells up in your chest, and you instinctively bend over and hack, but instead of yet more amniotic fluid being expelled from your lungs, you simply heave dry air and shudder. You try to stop, but it comes again in a wave, leaving you powerlessly gasping for breath. You didn't know what to do. What <span class="mu-i">could</span> you do? You were to go to the spires and - no, that doesn't make sense, there were other things humans did than what you...
A frenzied scream shakes you out of your paralysis. Someone yelled, muffled by many layers of bodies, mixing into the background whine of engines as their voice seemingly approached you, then spun away from you, seemingly passing by the bodies just under your feet. You flinch as the sound echoes up through the chamber and across the hive walls. Things thump in the distance, and in the other room, you hear the din of another engine die down.
...it wasn't safe to be here, at least. Only corpses were supposed to fall down these chutes, you were sure.
Your hand finds it's way to the wall, and you slowly grope the punched metal for hand holds. Humans were not supposed to crawl on all their limbs, you think. The Voice hadn't taught you much about that, yet, but you recall standing upright. Fingers closing around a line of slots, you carefully lift yourself up: first onto your knees, then unsteadily onto one foot. It shakes as you try to figure out how to position it, but it holds, so you bring your other foot forward and manage to stand up.
You immediately stumble, but something in your bones makes your arms come out, and instead of falling, you merely fall forward and smack yourself on the wall.
The world goes blank for a moment, and a few seconds later when things swim back into focus, you realize that the thing that just shrieked was <span class="mu-i">you</span>. You feel dazed, and your ears ring slightly with a harsh pain that makes you wince. You were slumped against the wall, again, the side of your thigh and chest that were scraping against the metal felt hot and angry.
Memories from the water stirred, and you struggled to recall. You knew that you were never to harm certain soft parts of your body, as they... they- right, it was a feature of your series. Enhanced intellect, expanded brain matter. You were forbidden from replacing several specific body parts with bionics, as they would damage your capabilities. The throbbing pain told you something was wrong, though - a simple bump wasn't supposed to hurt this much.
