Deus Ex Machina

Her modus operandi was to drive the rotting beast into the ground and feel every second of it.

Scrape, thud. Scrape, thud. Scrape, thud.

Her boot hit the ground with a bang, while her severed ankle raked along the dirt, intertwining exposed rusting screws with the earth. If she could sweat, she would. The sun beat down against her metal fixtures, trailing down from the crown of her skull, toward the silver plated calf with no foot attached.

She was minutes past being torn apart like a vehicle for scraps.

It was long after her eye-monitor had gone offline; she was due for a tune-up but didn’t have the credits to afford one. If not for this, she could have detected the smugglers and gotten away in time, ligatures in-tact.

Her human hand was covered in dirt and bruises. The other, a claw-like extremity, now had a finger missing, leaving a gap between fingers one and three.

"Shit," she muttered, opening and closing her hand into a fist, intertwining mortality with metal. She was a half-blood-- half human, half machine, trying to make her way to the next town over in hopes of finding safer housing.

Half-bloods had been a target of the humans ever since they were modified. These half-bloods-- they started out as human, becoming more and more robotic with each procedure they underwent. Humans, desperate for credits, ransacked the half-bloods for parts, and sold off the more expensive metals.

No one chose to be a half-blood.

With disease running rampant and the human population dwindling, people were desperate to keep the race going long enough to see another day. Anyone on the verge of death was forced to undergo "system modification", where they would replace your failing pieces and parts with something that couldn't die.

“Fucking hell,” she sighed, realigning her jaw with two hands and a tilt of the head. She could hear each little screw settling back into place. Then, with one fleshy finger, she traveled down her torso, feeling ripped fabric and inverted metal.

The smugglers dented her breastplate, but didn’t bother to look inside.

Her innards had long been hollowed out-- hollowed out, in lieu of an organ pumping blood in time to her breath.

It was strung in-place like a spider web of wires and ligaments. Coated in a fine layer of plexi-glass, displaying an array of rotting veins and congealed blood.

Her heart had been preserved despite the removal of almost everything else. At this point, it didn’t contribute any practical use to her system, unlike her brain-stem, which was protected by a half-metal skull. For this, she was grateful.

Her heart had become a thing of comfort, creating a steady beat of rhythm traveling up and down her spine. Ba boom. Ba boom. Ba boom. And so on, speeding up and slowing down as the day progressed.

At that moment, it was beating as though she were out of breath.

She hadn't realized how long she had been walking until her left calf began to ache, sending tremors throughout her leg.

Scrape, thud. Scrape, thud. Scrape, thud.

It took her nearly an hour, but she finally found a rest-stop-- a beat-up looking bar along the side of the road. She took a deep breath and trudged forward, scraping the foot-less screws against the dirt.

There was no door; it looked like it had been knocked off its hinges ages ago. She entered the room, glancing around and wishing her eye-monitor would turn on. If it was functional, she could get a read on the inhabitants of the bar.

No dice.

The bartender, wiping out a glass, watched her as she took a seat at a table across from him.

“You’ve been through the ringer, haven’t you sweetheart?” he asked.

She looked down, shaking her head. “I just need directions.”

“To where?”

She thought for a moment before shrugging. “Just somewhere better than this.”

The bartender raised a brow, his mouth twisting to the side. "Can't help you there, honey. You travel north of here and you end up in Kirkland, and any further south and you're in Greensborough. You'd have to go pretty far in either direction in order to find what you're looking for."

She took a deep breath, clenching her palms. "Great," she mumbled.

"There's a bus on the other side of town that goes toward the shoreline," the bartender continued. "Not sure if that's any better, but hey. At least it's a change of scenery."

She nodded, giving the bartender a weak nod. Then she glanced around the room, looking at its contents.

There weren't many people. A few tables, chairs. A couple to her left, three men in the back corner, and--

Her throat tightened.

He had been staring at her since she walked in; she hadn’t noticed until he stepped away from his table and toward hers.

“Well, well, well,” he proposed. “What do we have here?”

She immediately felt uneasy, and decided to make a break for it. “Leave me alone,” she spat, rising from her chair and limping her way toward the exit.

“Not so fast,” the man interjected, pushing her up against the wall with his forearm-- holding her right wrist with his left hand. "Half-blood, huh? Got anything useful for me?"

"You just missed the others who jumped me," she said through gritted teeth. "They took everything I had."

"I'm sure I can find something," the man insisted, unrelenting on his grip.

By this time, the other bar-goers began to gather around. She realized quickly that they hadn't come to her aid, but to see what they could get out of it.

Her eyes went wide.

In a moment of pure panic, she pressed forward as hard as she could, ramming her breastplate into the man's torso. Upon impact, the rusty screws holding her breastplate gave way, revealing her immaculately preserved heart.

It took them all a moment to realize what had happened.

She had just revealed the one valuable thing she had left.

And now the whole bar had seen it.

“Would you look at that?" the man declared. "Her heart’s intact.”

The others began to chime in at an alarming rate, saying, “Do you know how much money that’ll get on the black market?"

"We could eat for weeks.”

"Someone get the little bitch!"

Her hands fumbled to shut the breastplate. “It's nothing,” she pleaded. "Just let me go."

Before she could further interject, she was on the ground, brain rattling around her half-metal skull. Her breastplate slammed shut before flying wide open once more.

"Anyone got a knife?"

“No!” she shrieked, face-up and attempting to kick at whoever was holding her down. “You can’t! Don’t touch it!”

“Shut it, scrap metal," the man on top of her growled, taking a knife from his pocket and beginning to saw at her wires.

Her eye-monitor switched on for the first time in days, flashing a red warning message into her corneas.

SYSTEM CRITICAL. SYSTEM CRITICAL. SYSTEM CRITICAL.

She weakly glanced up at the smugglers as they pulled on her insides, tearing the heart out of place, slamming her breastplate shut.

“Stop,” she begged, but her voice had become nearly inaudible.

They took the heart by a wire-- swinging it back and forth like a locket on a chain. The leader of the group then snatched the heart and shoved it into a bag.

They began to flee the scene, together as a mass mob of destruction, leaving her alone, panting on the floor.

"No," she whispered, voice cracking. With one fleshy finger, she traveled down her torso, feeling ripped fabric and inverted metal.

The bar went silent.

So silent, she could no longer hear the beating of her--