48 minutes remaining.
The atmosphere between the two mismatched lovebirds was both paradoxically tense and relaxed as they left the stairwell, less than an hour remained till the entire archology became glass and fire but they had also made it far further than they’d imagined when beginning this harrowing journey.
Along the way the love-struck pair had made hard choices, come what may they were locked into their destined fate together.
Anaya’s hand was warm as it soaked into ZM-11833's, warming the coldness inside.
Stretching before them was the entrance to the private penthouse floors that exclusively belonged to the CEO Tawaga Hanae herself. The gold plated doors of the elevator stood mockingly dead along the right hand wall directly opposite to the main reception.
The entire place radiated wealth almost mockingly, greeting the pair with bright gold and shining crystal. A once beautiful, even by ZM-11833’s high standards, secretary model robot lay ravaged in the space, it had been rent by sharp claws and hammered fists.
So too had the golden doors that barred the way to the ruler of the corrupted and debased society below, they now lay scored and scattered in a greeting of violent temperament.
Welcoming those mortal few who dared brave the malformed destiny of the corporate mankind.
What intrigued ZM-11833 the most about the still scene was that the gilded doors had not been torn from the outside, just that opposite in fact. A force of rage and inhuman strength had dealt the finishing blow from the inside.
“Should we knock?” Anaya asked with nervous humor.
ZM-11833 glanced her way in grim amusement “I think we’re not invited nor welcome, we’d best make our way under our own will.”
“True.”
With well-deserved caution born from the previous violent encounters they picked their way into the first of two devastated penthouse floors.
It had seemed that a grand fight had erupted in this luxurious place between the elite robot bodyguards and attendants and the alien invaders as the inside was no less ravaged than the exterior. Numerous well-crafted machines of objectionable servitude had been scattered throughout, it was a carnage of machinery and oily viscera. Mechanical entrails hung from flickering lights and off the backs of once well-kept furniture.
In ZM-11833 honed sensors the servants of the CEO seemed to be designed to be as attractive and feminine as possible to an cartoonish level, turning them into caricatures of what could have been pinnacles of machine-kind.
A shame they’d been ruined by committee voted designs.
“Did the CEO just surround herself with beautiful robots all day?” Anaya asked stupidly as she picked her way past destroyed robots clearly designed to only serve as visual appreciation.
ZM-11833 swiveled their, not at all jealous or hurt, sensors to their rude and insensitive human.
In a rare show of sudden emotional intelligence Anaya realized her egregious fault just in time.
“What I meant was that they are clearly not as beautiful as you, not to mention you are much more clever and skilled in both combat and fashion. See look, these ones are not even wearing anything nice.” Anaya sweated nervously as those blank gray sensors burned into her.
Anaya’s desperate and heartfelt coaxing managed to mollify the obviously most stunning and beautiful robot ever built and they turned back to face the way forwards. It was only in the human’s foolish imagination that ZM-11833 stood a little taller as they moved on.
Anaya just gave a tired and crooked grin at the back of the, 100% not tricked at all, machine.
Further on they crept at a steady nervous pace, nothing had jumped out at them yet but they were expecting it as they’d not seen any fallen aliens yet only splashes of strangely colored blood where the machines must have gotten in a lucky hit before their violent demise.
Next to a larger blood spot they found a robot who’d been violently decommissioned into the wall, it still hung half embedded as they passed by.
Most of the empty rooms they passed by were furnished for entertainment, unused ballrooms and private art galleries disguised the mediocrity of the leadership behind the veneer of wealth.
ZM-11833 doubted that any of these vast and lavish rooms had ever seen use beside being used to garner slick praises from jealous underlings whose words echoed vainly with nary a hint of well-meaning.
In this useless labyrinth of vanity there was only one room that ZM-11833 was excited to find, that room was the private server room.
In order to successfully escape this soon to be crater they need to gain access to the hover-copter on the rooftop. Much like the fire-arms they had encountered before, the private transport of the CEO was DNA-locked and only the corresponding DNA registered in the system could access it.
The main doors of the penthouse had been DNA-locked too but luckily they’d been sort of unlocked in a way before they’d arrived.
With expeditious speed ZM-11833 blitzed through the systems and files looking for the hover-copters report and the CEO’s private encoded systems. With direct access to the mainframe it had been trivial to hack in only costing a slight extra strain on their core, nothing to worry about in the grand scheme of things.
“Huh, strange.” ZM-11833 let out a noise of surprise.
“What is it?” Anaya asked nervously in response to ZM-11833’s puzzlement.
“The hover-copter is perfectly intact.”
“Isn’t that a good thing?” Anaya blurted out “like, isn’t that what we were banking on coming up here?”
“Yes,” ZM-11833 lied, “but if it’s perfectly intact why hasn’t the CEO escaped?”
“Maybe she’s dead, what does it matter anyway?”
“According to these systems her lifesigns are stable if a little erratic,” ZM-11833 rapidly scrolled through the CEO’s private data, “if this tracking is right she’s right at the top, floor 510 aka the rooftop.”
“Great so we can ask her what the fucks up with this place when we go.”
ZM-11833 gave a non-committal hum in response as they attempted to replace Tawaga Hanae’s DNA codes with Anaya’s, unfortunately the system failed to do so as it needed a sample of the original DNA to validate. ZM-11833 supposed it made sense in order to stop any random hacker from becoming CEO but it was rather annoying.
It would seem they’d need to obtain it from the boss anyway, it was lucky that she was still alive. ZM-11833 just wondered why they weren’t gone yet, nothing would survive the impending nuclear cleansing.
ZM-11833 snatched a pair of empty vials from the desktop intended for this very validation.
“Your blood please.” ZM-11833 asked the suddenly nervous Anaya as sweetly as they could, which was tooth-achingly sweet.
“Why?” Anaya asked cautiously while still extending her arm out in trust.
ZM-11833 was quick to painlessly extract a small sample before replying, “so you don’t get minced up by the defensive lasers above.”
A small white lie as they’d turned off the lasers just now, they didn’t want Anaya to know that it was in order to replace Tawaga Hanae as CEO. It’d just give the human strange ideas like that she was in charge or that she was a top in the relationship which was clearly wrong.
ZM-11833 bustled Anaya out of the room before she could ask any more while secretly shoving a few data-disks into her pockets. Each of those disks were full of information downloaded from the mainframe that ZM-11833 thought might be helpful for Anaya or just because the fashion-bot could steal it.
One special disk simply labeled “Zee’s Catalog” found its way in somehow, nobody could ever know, certainly not an innocent fashion-bot.
Anaya was marched away swiftly and into the personal living quarters of the CEO, unlike the areas before this section of floor 509 dedicated to the lifestyle of Tawaga Hanae. While still excessive as it took up half of an entire floor, each residential floor below could house around 5000 people, this one mostly contained residences for her private staff and their workspaces.
From vast well-stocked kitchens and tastefully decorated dining halls to a massive bathroom and bedroom. Upon seeing the grand bed Anaya couldn’t resist jumping up and down barefoot on its supremely comfortable mattress unbothered by the mess she was making.
As she jumped up and down she asked ZM-11833 about what else was on the mainframe, specifically about the aliens and their origins to which ZM-11833 succinctly replied.
“Oh yeah, they totally summoned these aliens.”
“What?!” Anaya spat out as she flopped onto the mattress, “don’t just leave it at that dummy, tell me!”
ZM-11833 hummed before spilling what they had found out.
“Well it turns out that the cult that we saw before held a forbidden ritual to open a rift to the space between the stars, which I’m mad actually worked, magic isn’t supposed to be real! Anyway this void was supposedly a realm where ancient cosmic horrors lived.”
ZM-11833 took a break to allow Anaya to catch up, upon seeing her urging to continue the now narrator-bot did so with glee.
“The files I found didn’t say why the ritual was performed but I’m going to assume it was some strange human power-fantasies as usual, however instead of a cosmic horror coming through they got an alien space-ship crash landing into the archology filled with organic lifeforms. In usual corporate fashion they tried to see how they could monetize and exploit them and we’ve both seen how that turned out.”
They both grimaced in their own ways at the remembrance of the corrupted fruits of the greenhouses.
“So it all comes back to money in the end.” Anaya gave a dissatisfied look at the news.
“You’re surprised by that?” ZM-11833 gave a chime like laugh at the grumbling human girl.
“No wonder the aliens are pissed off.”
“Hmm I don’t know about that, to me it seems like this pathogen or virus or whatever is simply because the two species; human and the aliens are incompatible with one another or maybe they ate those fruits or could be anything with these insane lot.”
Anaya hummed to herself in response.
“On that note, how are you feeling? Not feeling like you want to grow extra tentacles or lay eggs.” ZM-11833 asked in mild humorous concern.
Anaya paled in response before glaring at the laughing robot beside her “No, and thanks for the mental image jerk.”
ZM-11833 perfect laughter echoed as they indulged Anaya further as she set about ransacking the bedroom, pulling apart drawers and closets to snoop in the brief moment of relaxation they allowed themselves.
Despite the noise and damage caused, the owner remained above them according to ZM-11833’s data scan; they had kept a connection to the mainframe as they still needed to change the DNA files.
!!WARNING!! Core integrity at 32%!!
The end of the line drew closer and closer at an uneasy rate, the death of the machine crept upon them like a dreadful shadow in the night. ZM-11833 shuffled as they pondered the swirling stuffy emotions in their chest, they suddenly realized they were afraid.
Fear had found a place in the cold machine heart.
“Anaya lets go.”
