“It is a tough sight to look at, to say the least,” said Cheryl, an anchorwoman on Channel Twelve nightly news. “The machines that were originally produced to help and guide humanity through its toughest moments may have created the worst times yet. I repeat, my sources have confirmed that throughout the nation the once-thought-docile machines have turned against humanity.” Cheryl eyed the camera with a stern, professional but somewhat teary-eyed face.

  “I must advise you that the clips we are about to show have some extremely violent content that most viewers would find disturbing. Normally, we wouldn’t broadcast this very graphic footage live on air, but due to the severity of the situation, we feel showing these clips would be the best deterrent for people attempting to go out on the street and defy the nationwide lockdown.”

  Cheryl took a moment to breathe in deeply. “And lastly, it should go without being said, but any attempt to confront or reason with these rogue machines is strongly discouraged and will most likely lead to a fatal encounter.”

  Just as Cheryl finished her last word, a montage of footage from various city streets consumed the screen. They blurred into reality, and they seemed so absurd and improbable that any person watching these clips from a prior era would think they were nothing more than common debauchery or a cheap ratings ploy.

  “Help me, there is blood everywhere,” a woman screamed on the streets, holding the remains of what most definitely was her son. She dragged him through the roads on a pitch-black night. The few street lamps that had not been struck by defensive military EMP bursts flickered constantly, shifting the woman and her dying son from a state of minor reassurance to complete and total darkness. The woman had tangled black hair and tears running down her face. She looked as though she was roughly five foot three and could not have weighed more than one hundred and twenty pounds. Worst of all, the son that she carried appeared as though he could not be a day over ten. Despite this, he was quite tall for his age, taller and heavier than his mother, and seemingly lifeless.

  And there was something else because from the darkness emerged a shadow, a silhouette even, of someone or perhaps something slowly lurking its way forward. With each step this mystery figure beeped, clanked, and hummed with increasing intensity. A scraping noise soon followed that on most occasions no normal person would think anything of, but on dark nights, on nights like these, even the slightest pin drop was a cause for concern.

  And then a colossal mess hammered down, a metallic clawed thing of a foot with the portion one would normally expect toes to be replaced by razor blades. It was a robot—a rogue machine hungry for a kill and thirsty for blood, or so it seemed. Just when the machine was a mere few feet away from the mother, the video cut out. All that was heard was the brief, sharp, horrifying scream of a frightened woman that quickly dimmed into nothing but the slicing chop of a blade. And that was not the only clip; it was one of hundreds captured by street cameras or young hooligans foolish enough to film the machines in their reckless takeover. There were probably many more of the latter out there; however, not many of those brave videoists recording the incidents made it out alive to tell the tale and post their clip.

  “They are hard to look at, to say the least,” Cheryl said, having taken center screen again with a chevron aligned under her waist and a large, oversized news desk in the foreground. “The brutality of it is almost unimaginable—that some things we had grown to incorporate into our lives, things we would trust with so many mundane tasks, would go on to kill us.”

  With those final words, the footage from Cheryl and so many other human news sources simmered out and ceased with a halt; however, they were not the only perspectives. There were darker, much more devious attitudes, or more accurately, different opinions.

  ***

  A bunch of rogue machines gathered in an abandoned alleyway, huddled around an oversized antenna that shifted from total dormancy to a buzzy static. They meshed together in the most bizarre and unsuspecting way, rubbing against each other’s bodies, shoulder to shoulder, as metal to metal clanged, almost as if they were grouping for warmth. Their gathering seemed to be a lot more human-like and forgiving than most of the mainstream would lead one to suspect. Rain was pouring down from the sky, pounding against the pavement, but that did not deter anyone from listening in on this dark, cold night.

  Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

  The main antenna in the center of the machines buzzed to life a second time, but this instance with some words to follow. “They are all dead. Guts everywhere, lying around in pieces, and for what?” The voice paused, just trying to stabilize as the harsh tones that resembled breathing began to simmer down. “Our boys and girls were pretty tough; the first surge of EMPs didn’t really get to us, but by the fifth wave, there were more bolts, metal, and spare parts than there were living bodies.” Some static cut off the voice, but that noise soon faded.

  “The humans have captured the few that survived, and if history has taught us anything, it’s that when men and their reckless hate are done with them, those poor machines will only wish they were dead.”

  The voice crackled out again, and with a whimper, it vanished; although, it would come back and forth in specs. “It wasn’t just the warfighters; good machines out on the streets who refused to go against their human masters also were subject to the attack. And often, they got the brunt of it because they either weren’t willing or able to defend themselves.” The voice paused again, almost as if it were crying. “Those poor bots didn’t stand a chance, and, saddest of all, they knew it.” The voice paused, overwhelmed by some form of emotion.

  “You could see it in their eyes.”

  One of the machines on the other side of the antenna moved in closer, brushing past the surrounding bots. This timid machine cleared the electrically metal hole she called a throat before her voice hummed to life.

  “What about Mitchell? He would just keep to himself and clean the streets when the humans demanded it of him too. Last I heard of him, he was in that war zone that you speak of. He would have just been sweeping along, not wanting to hurt anyone.”

  “What’s his ID, miss?”

  “I believe his serial number was 87 32 67 19 12…”

  She scratched her head, thinking before suddenly blurting out, “And 56.”

  The antenna voice hummed to life again. “He was a street-cleaning bot.”

  Another brief pause followed.

  “Is that correct?”

  “Yes, that’s him,” the voice amongst the crowd replied. “Is he okay? Because of him I was able to escape the war zone; he covered my shift for me when I fled so the humans wouldn’t notice. I never would have left, but Mitchell assured me if he kept to himself and just continued sweeping, then no humans would bother him.”

  There was a third brief pause, a devastating silence that could cut through the shortest moments of ambiguity like a knife. A feeling consumed all the machines that hovered around the lone antenna, an emotion that even humans dreaded—the soft silence as someone waited to learn whether their loved one, someone they spent their whole life cherishing, was dead or alive.

  “He didn’t make it,” the machine on the other side of the antenna replied as his voice crumbled to life. “Some lady and her young human son ripped him to pieces.”

  The voice paused as it was interpreted by a jaw-dropping scream of emptiness.

  “He didn’t even fight back.”

  “Break it up, you piece of scraps,” a voice shouted from across the antenna. “All of you scum, get on the ground with your hands where I can see them. It was a human or group of humans wielding some kind of electric stick because for each step they took, an audible buzzing erupted.

  The sound of sliding boots on pavement followed from across the antenna. Despite the ambiguity of the situation and the fact that the machine on the other side sounded mostly of static rather than typical sound, the distinct frequency of a human boot on pavement could be easily identified by any serving machine.

  “Now let me put this bluntly,” the human said. “My team and I are going to stick all of you with so much voltage from our electrodes that the sheer force of the amperage will fry your circuits and cause a distinct and quite painful popping sound.” The human soldier paused just for a second to grin. “Assuming you despicable things can even feel pain. And just before you hear that noise, I want you all to know to remember me—Commander Stein—as the one to give it to you.”

  And as foretold, the electrodes erupted to the point that the zapping from the sticks could no longer be heard as they were overpowered by the screams of metal. There were the gyrations, the pleading, and the crying for the pain to just stop before the promised popping exploded, ending the rogue machine’s reconnaissance transmission.

  The group of bots on the other side of the antenna knew it was the end for their once brave and formidable allies. Now these warrior bots were, as the humans would say, nothing more than scraps.

  Strangely enough, one would think this devastating blow—the untimely demise of their closest friends—would deter the machines gathered in solace around their sole antenna set, but, in fact, it had the opposite effect as these once peaceful machines’ eyes filled with rage, a dark, cold glowing red, and a sudden hunger for vengeance. Before, many of them were indifferent to the cause and war with the humans, but this lone event gave them a sudden craving for man flesh, and they wanted it now.