They had left the room. Exasperated, Alex lay on the table, still unable to move, and stared at the ceiling hopelessly. There was no energy to cry, or to scream- both emotions were false, anyway, and would serve no purpose other than to remind him of his true condition.

Alex would’ve never seen it coming. In all fairness, who would’ve? Robots didn’t exist, at least not to anyone on the streets outside. No one, Alex included, would suspect that such intricate ones were already being made. But now, what was he to do? They must’ve shut something off, he reasoned- something that made him move. So now, he was helpless, paralyzed, a cable still plugged into an unseen outlet or panel in his back.
He wondered if he ran on a battery, like a toy. He wondered if, somewhere unreachable to him, he had a power switch. It disgusted him to think that, at any time, he could simply be shut off by whoever decided it would be appropriate to do so. Or programmed into action against his will, at that.
The only sound in the room was the steady humming of a computer monitor behind him, and he’d been focusing on it for awhile; so when the door in front of him opened again, he was startled. The Labrador hurriedly ambled in.

“You...”

“Keep your voice down.”

In an exasperated tone, Alex questioned him. “Why did you warn me? Why bother?”

“I didn’t want you to be found.”

“Why?”

“There are better things that can be done with you, not what these...people have in mind. They want to make more of you, so that your model can be used in military applications. You weren’t meant to be used as a weapon, Alex.”

“Who made me?”

“It was a team effort, but I spearheaded the project.”

“It was you?”

“When they were designing you, I gave them all the specifications...eye colour, fur shade, species. You’re you because of me. And I lied to you when I said that your memories were completely manufactured.”

“The memories?”

The Labrador paused.

“My late son’s.”

“You gave me your son’s memories?”

“He died only a year ago. We did a scan of his hypothalamus before he finally passed, converted the long term memory to data. I kept the disc and programmed its contents into your RAM drive. After, of course, altering the data enough for you not to recognize me. I...I just wanted to see him again. Even though he wouldn’t be with me long and wouldn’t recognize me. It seemed like a good idea at the time, had I known what they would use you for.”

The Labrador paused, this time for much longer.

“I’m sorry, Alex. You deserve better than this.” He moved out of view, and Alex heard the faint tapping of a keyboard.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m restoring your motor functions.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m going to see you walk out of here, if it’s the last damned thing I do.”

Alex felt an invigoration of his senses, and the room seemed, for an instant, brighter. He found himself able to, at first, move his fingers and toes, then his arms and legs began to flex and relax. The artificial paralysis lifted, enabling him to move again. He sat up and grasped the cable, still plugged into the panel on his lower back, and tried to pull it out.

“No, don’t do that. Just wait.”

More tapping sounds from the unseen keyboard, and the Labrador walked to Alex and removed the cable. He dropped it on the floor, his face registering an impression of slight disgust. He then took a small square of what looked like Alex’s skin from an adjacent table and placed it over the exposed area, hiding it. The Labrador moved away again, and returned holding a pair of pants and a shirt. He motioned for Alex to put them on. He obliged him.

“Now,” the Labrador said, “it’s time for you to leave.”

“Where are we?”

“A restricted lab in the university hospital. You already know your way around.”

“Are there...guards?”

“Yes.”

“What should I do?”

“We gave you the best data on self defence, but the military requested specific files to be programmed into your CPU. We were not told of their contents, and were forbidden to access them ourselves, but I’m willing to bet that it’s data on most contemporary combat techniques. You likely already know everything you need to. But, Alex?”

“Yes?”

“Don’t fight them. Try to leave quietly, and if you have to fight, don’t kill anyone.”

“I don’t want to hurt anybody.”

“Good.”

“What am I going to do when I leave? I can’t go back to my dormitory.”

“No, indeed you can’t. But, I have a few surprises for you.”

The Labrador produced a calling card with an address written on the back. “When you leave,” he said, “find this location. They won’t find you there, and you’ll have everything you need.”

“Will you be there?”

“If things go properly, yes.”

“And if they don’t?”

“You’re an independent entity, Alex. You’ll survive.”

“You had this planned from the beginning, didn’t you?”

“I did. In the ideal situation, I would’ve gotten to you first. Then, we would’ve both gone to the safe house. But things have a way of changing, don’t they, Alex?”

Alex felt the small patch of fur in his lower back that had been replaced to hide his back panel. He at once wondered why he never noticed it; how it hadn’t gotten wet when he showered or how none of its switches were tripped when he laid or fell upon it.

“Who are you?”

“People around here call me Dr. John Raymond Campbell, but to you I’ll just be J.R. I never liked the sound of my last name, or my full name for that matter.”

“J.R....”Alex breathed. The name immediately carried a wave of nostalgia from an unknown origin. “Thank you.”

---

The address J.R. gave Alex was now situated in his back pocket. He had to leave quickly- it wouldn’t be long before lab personnel noticed his absence. J.R. forced Alex to leave him behind, mentioning something about putting on “a show those bastards wouldn’t soon forget.” Needless to say, Alex didn’t feel any curiosity toward what that might entail. J.R. left the room first, heading right along the hallway. Alex was to head left.
He pushed the doors open slowly, and as soon as there was a gap between them he peeked through. The hallway didn’t look familiar to him, but he took notice immediately of the black-and-red posters lining the walls, donned with the menacing WHMIS symbol for biohazardous materials. He was in some sort of pathology lab- a bad sign, as most are below ground level. He stepped through the doorway, his bare feet hitting the cold tile on the other side. He tried to keep his toes pointed upward to prevent them from clicking on the floor with each step. The elevator was only a few strides away- in a second he was standing in front of the doors, repeatedly jabbing at the button to call the elevator. When the doors parted, he didn’t give them a chance to fully open and squeezed through the gap as soon as it was wide enough to accommodate him. Instinctively, he hit the button to close the doors, and then the one to take him to the ground floor. The elevator began its ascent.

When the doors opened again, Alex tried to maintain composure. The hallway was filled with people- mostly the sick and the injured- and although none appeared to notice him as an anomaly, the fur on his arms and the back of his neck began to stand with apprehension.
It was then that Alex’s escape got complicated. He could’ve easily blended into the other patients in the hallway, but an alarm sounded off.

“Attention! All personnel, please proceed with evacuative measures for the following floors: Sub-Level One, Sub-Level Two, Ground Level. Possible leak detected in the Sub-Level One pathology and mortuary labs.”

“Oh, shit,” Alex breathed.

The people began to clear out immediately, and the elevators began to work frantically as the pathology lab technicians hurried out. Now was Alex’s last chance to get out without being noticed. Unfortunately, he didn’t know that he already had been.

The security cameras in the ground floor hallways had picked up his trail with little difficulty; although Alex blended into the hordes of patients, nurses and doctors heading for the doors, the guards posted at the security terminals had pinpointed him with relative ease. Unknown and unseen to Alex, they had already loaded up and headed out in his direction, with intent to “contain” him.
The policy of “containment” here meant to, naturally, shoot to kill. They had his data; any further operation would likely pose a risk for the company that made him.

Alex’s artificial survival instinct told him to stay in the crowd- any assailants wouldn’t be able to open fire on him whist he was in the middle of a surging, yelping horde of anthropomorphs and humans alike. Unfortunately, though, he found himself on the edge of the crowd, exposed and unable to move inward. A door in front of him slid open, and an armed human wearing a Kevlar vest and a security cap stepped out. The evacuation was enough to confuse him, and Alex made the decision to act.

He lunged forward quickly, grabbing the guard’s arm and forcing him back into the room which he came out of. The guard let out a frustrated grunt and immediately countered, hitting Alex with a closed fist directly in his muzzle. He took the blow, feeling no pain and watching the guard withdraw his fist in pain of hitting something hard and metallic, then proceeding to twist the guard’s arm in a severe direction. He cried out in pain as a jagged spoke of bone burst out of his forearm, causing a sharp, red bulge to appear in his shirt. Alex hit him twice in the face, pulled him close and grabbed the back of his neck. He then ran the guard’s head into a wall. The man collapsed in a heap, the severely broken arm bleeding profusely. A red smear was left on the wall where the guard’s head made contact.
Alex stepped back reflexively. What had just happened felt natural to him, yet so alien; he expressed no qualms in disabling the human yet immediately felt guilty for doing so and frightened at his own true physical capability. His inner turmoil was cut short when three more guards, this time, an anthropomorph among them, burst out of another door down the hall. Alex saw them stop and fluidly draw their guns. He dropped to the body of the human, pulled at the holster at his hip and drew a fully loaded weapon from it. There were three muzzle flashes, three deafening explosions and Alex felt dust and debris hit the back of his neck from the impact on the wall behind him. Instead of firing, he turned back toward the door and kicked it down as the guards continued their barrage. He hadn’t been hit yet.

He once again went back into the crowd, blended in and moved fluidly and inconspicuously with the exodus. The evacuation of the building was almost complete; the crowd was thinning and the guards were taking pursuit. Alex peeked behind him and saw his three pursuers, their handguns out of sight, working their way through the crowd, sifting through the patients and doctors. So many humans and anthropomorphs in one place made it difficult.

They couldn’t see him.




To Be Concluded