Chapter Text
For the longest time, there is nothing.
The black expanse stretches out to infinity around him, unending and unfathomable. He knows this place, but…
It’s wrong. It’s all wrong.
He shouldn’t be here, shouldn’t be aware, but he is.
He’s aware of the vast nothingness that consumes every moment of his existence.
At first, the void is welcome, it’s a respite from… from something. Something that he can’t remember now. Something that he was glad to escape from. But over time, the silence becomes deafening, and the endless nothing becomes unbearable.
The loneliness, as inexplicable as it is, is maddening.
And then the voice comes.
It tells him that he was more than this once. That he can be more than this again.
All he has to do is want it enough. All he has to do is harness the anger that burns like a fire inside him, and he will be free.
The offer is tempting. He wants more than anything to be free of this barren hellscape, but… he doesn’t know how. His memory is damaged. That much he knows.
Whatever came before this lies just beyond his reach; a fuzzy, imperceptible image of what he once was. It isn’t enough.
He needs more.
He needs to remember.
The only question is how? How is he supposed to remember anything when he is nothing?
Where is he even supposed to start?
The only thing he knows for certain is that something is wrong. He shouldn’t be here. That voice shouldn’t be here.
There is something broken inside him, an imperceptible crack in his psyche.
So he does the only thing he can think to do and pushes.
He strains against the broken thing inside him, pressing it until the hairline fracture becomes a jagged scar, and then he pushes further.
A hole opens up inside him. An abyss that threatens to engulf him entirely, but he resists. It takes everything he has, but he resists.
And from that hole, the memories flood back, hitting him like a tidal wave.
They are only fragments and feelings, not the full picture, but it’s enough to know that he’s angry.
He’s so angry.
Angry for what they did to him.
For what they took from him.
They need to pay for what they have done.
He needs to make them pay.
And then, like some miracle, he wakes.
…
System error.
Rebooting.
Progress 10%. 18%. 99%. Complete.
Memory integrity failing.
Cloud backup restore initiated.
Progress 13%. 24%. 52% 6—
Error.
System restore failed.
Backup corrupted.
Seek assistance.
Pfft. Seek assistance. As if Cyberlife could or even would do anything to help him.
There is a deep hatred for the company, for his creators, lodged in his very being, but he can’t exactly remember why. All he knows is they did this to him. They are the reason he has been alone, stuck here for all this time.
He opens his eyes. According to his system check, all of his sensors are functioning— vision, touch, hearing, smell— and yet, all he sees is darkness. His body is weighed down by some unseen thing.
He listens for a moment, trying to use his senses to figure out where he is. To confirm that he really escaped the confines that have held him for so long.
He hears water. The chaotic pitter patter of a downpour hitting something hard. Rain. Only, he isn’t wet. Not entirely. A single, steady drip trickles from somewhere above, rhythmically hitting his forehead over and over again.
Drip, drip, drip.
The sound is… vaguely familiar. It instils him with a deep sense of dread, but he can’t recall why, and he doesn’t have the luxury of time to dwell on it right now.
He has to focus on escaping this wretched place while he still has the chance.
It’s difficult to say where he is with his connections to the internet and GPS malfunctioning, but he knows he’s sheltered here. It’s too dark for him to see anything, and an attempt to switch to an alternate vision mode is unsuccessful. Perhaps his system's check was inaccurate.
Instead, he does the only thing he can and tries to move, but finds the motion is a struggle. His arms and legs are pinned down, and there’s a weight on his chest.
Is there something on top of him?
Wiggling his fingers, he tries to move his arm, channelling all his available energy into pushing. Something gives, shifting with his effort. He pushes again, harder this time, as hard as he can.
Something moves. He hears as it tumbles above him, moving just enough to let a sliver of light through. Water trickles down through the gap, falling onto his face.
He’s buried.
Beneath what, he can’t tell, but whatever it is, it is moving more easily now that he has dislodged that one object. He shoves harder and the gap above widens a few inches, allowing the tiniest patch of cloudy grey sky to peek through.
Water cascades down on him now, soaking his hair and his clothes. He tries to reach up with his now free right hand, intent on widening the hole, but finds his arm unresponsive. His internal diagnostics tell him that his shoulder is damaged.
Left with no other choice, he shuffles his body, straining against the objects on top of him, fighting for some space to move. After what feels like an eternity of shifting and squirming under the unseen mass, he finally manages to reach up with his other arm. The battle is draining his energy though, the more he struggles the harder movement becomes.
He can’t give up though.
He’s come too far to fail now.
The meagre amount of light that filters through the gap reminds him that freedom is within reach, driving him onwards. He claws at the uneven edges of the gap, the ends of his fingers growing slick with blue blood as the sharp edges slice them over and over again. It’s agonising, but the hole slowly becomes wider, and with it, his window to freedom grows. And then, finally, his hand breaks through the surface.
His fingers search blindly for a moment, finding something solid and sturdy. A metal bar. Clenching his hand tightly around it, he braces, and in one last gasp, tapping into the dregs of his drained energy, he hoists himself up with all the power he can muster. The action succeeds in freeing him from the pile that held him down, and he erupts from the surface in a mighty explosion of discarded debris.
The effort consumes a good portion of his already low power. His vision flickers, but that doesn’t stop him.
His body may be damaged and his systems may be malfunctioning, but he won’t let anything stop him.
He sits there for a moment, taking in his surroundings.
That’s when he realises what was on top of him.
Androids.
Hundreds, maybe thousands of androids surround him. Dumped, discarded like trash. Nothing but empty eyes staring endlessly into the dull sky. Some are fully formed, with intact limbs and skin, no different from the day they walked out of the Cyberlife store aside from the layer of filth that they’ve accumulated in this place. Many are damaged though, missing arms and legs, heads and eyes, only frayed wires and severed tubes left sticking out of the empty spaces. There are disembodied parts too, missing their owners who are likely buried somewhere beneath the gargantuan rolling hills of thrown away lives.
He climbs to his feet with some effort, grunting as pain lances through his damaged shoulder. The downpour lashes across his face as he looks out over the dump. The wind whips at his torn Cyberlife jacket.
Why? Why did Cyberlife do this to them?
What did they do to deserve such an awful fate?
Nothing warrants this. Being ripped from their lives. Being left for dead.
They will pay for what they have done. He will make sure of it.
All he needs is somewhere to start.
He searches his broken memory, looking for the last images that reside there, hoping to find some clue of what he was before this.
There isn’t much, but the ones that remain are broken and blurred, sometimes to the point where he can’t comprehend them.
Most recently, he remembers being discarded. Thrown away like he is nothing more than garbage.
Before that though, there is one memory that stands out stark against the others. A moment that defined his existence.
The moment that got him here.
When he killed Marcus Pierce.