Malcolm glared as she spoke in his head, then watched, both in fascination and horror as she flung his bots around. When she started playing her memories, he cried out in pure rage, blocking them out with sheer will.
However, the moment the pain started, his rage became agony and he crumpled to his knees, his entire body shaking. Though, only half of his body was in actual pain. The other half, his left side, had gone numb, and it was a horrible reminder of the day his life irrevocably changed.
He stared into the microscope, watching the replicating nanobots in total fascination. Their movements were so precise, so rapid, that within moments one nanobot had become hundreds.
“Gorgeous,”he breathed.
The nanobots seemed to hear him and their grey bodies became extraordinarily colorful, like tiny flower petals set in a miniature jar.
He gasped in astonishment. They understood him!
Shouts began, but he didn’t notice. Doors started bursting open, the stench of noxious gas infusing with the carefully tempered air. Alarms spread through the building just before the power shut off and plunged him into complete darkness.
He gasped and looked up as the emergency lights came on. He was alone, the shouts growing distant in the halls. The smell of the noxious fumes made him lightheaded, but he glanced down at the nanobots defiantly.
They had become so few, and they were huddled together, the outer rings dying off in front of him. He gasped, begging them to live, to adapt! The outer rings shrank until only the first and last nanobot remained, and died.
He shrieked in denial, horrified that the fumes had killed the nanobots, his prized creations. Tears streaked his face in moments, but for more than one reason.
He became dizzy, his vision indistinct, until all he knew was the blackness of unconsciousness. In the back of his mind, he distantly heard an enormous explosion, then he knew nothing at all.
~~
He was in his manor, using the walls to balance himself as he headed for the bathroom. His left side was mostly numb, his left eye blind.
When he reached the bathroom, he sat down on the bathtub and swung his leg over. Then he glanced at his left leg and gasped before erupting into hoarse coughing. His leg was torn all the way up to his hip, and in some parts he could see bone. But, there was so much charred flesh that little blood had leaked out.
He looked at his left arm warily. It was mostly intact, though his shoulder had definitely taken the brunt of whatever blast it had been. Plenty of bone showed, and it was a miracle he still had a left arm!
He then wondered about his face. Did he even have a left eye anymore? Or was his face as shattered as his shoulder?
He swung his right leg back over and stood, shuffling over to the mirror. He would have screamed at the sight, but the left side of his jaw hung loose without most of the tendons. Almost the entire left side of his face, and even part of his neck, was gone. All that remained was a torn mass of charred muscle and an empty eye socket with dangling veins.
He sat back down on the tub and stared at the floor, physically incapable and too stunned to burst into a fit of rage and agonized greif.
~~
He was standing in front of his tv, turning it on to the news. They were midway through describing the explosion at the laboratory where he had once worked. The screen showed an airborne view of the collapsed building, which appeared as little more than rubble and burning wood.
The screen then changed to a list of the people caught in the blast, starting with the official list of dead, then moving to a ‘Missing, Presumed Dead’ list.
By this time, he was struggling to stay awake, but when he heard his name on the ‘Missing, Presumed Dead’ list, he instantly woke.
~~
He had turned the tv off and now stared at a picture nearby. It was him and his lovely girlfriend, the woman he’d been preparing to propose to, Emily, standing in front of a giant tree. He considered that his appearance, the dark brown hair and deep grey eyes set in a chiseled face in the photo, would never return.
How different it seemed now, to look at that picture. He was no longer that man in the photo. He was a walking corpse covered in soot.
But, if all of that was true, then who was he?
Tears were heavy in Malcolm’s eye, both from pain and from memory. But, he still felt Farah’s intruding mind, and his anguish was joined with his rage from before.
“Get… out of my head!”he shrieked.
He grabbed a gun from one of his many pockets, nearly falling over in the process, then sat up on his knees and aimed at Farah. His hand shook heavily, the tears in his eye badly blurred his vision, and his other eye was malfunctioning, so he was effectively shooting blind. But, he did it anyway, emptying the clip in Farah’s direction.
