The laboratory smelled of sterile metal and something else, something acrid, like burnt wiring and old blood. A single flickering fluorescent bulb provided scant illumination, its light doing little to dispel the darkness clinging to the corners of the massive room.
Here, amongst the silent machinery and the cold metal tables, they were made. He adjusted his thick, protective goggles, his breath fogging the lenses.
These were the things they'd produced; creatures more weapon than man. They called them Sword Knights.
Each one stood taller than any human, their bodies augmented with a framework of gleaming steel, muscle and sinew twisted into forms both powerful and unnatural. Their faces, or what little remained, were covered by metallic masks, and from beneath, a crimson light pulsed rhythmically.
The current cycle was numbered 'Unit 734,' though the staff seldom used that terminology; here, it was nothing more than a unit. This one was nearly done, its augmentations near complete.
He observed as the synthetic fluids moved throughout the artificial veins and muscles; its breathing, a mechanical wheeze. Its steel fingers clenched then unclenched as though testing newly found capabilities.
The scientists said the programming was foolproof, a masterpiece of genetic engineering combined with the most advanced biomechatronics. They insisted on absolute control. He wasn't so convinced.
His thoughts went back to the ones before, all those failed attempts. The screaming from the testing chambers, those terrifying roars as bodies tore apart under their own might, haunted his sleep.
Each experiment, a piece of their humanity gone forever. One of the other scientists approached; he could barely tolerate this man.
"Almost time," the scientist stated, the lack of compassion dripping from each word. "It goes live tomorrow, it will join the rest. We have another battle upcoming."
He simply nodded; words weren't always a needed requirement in these moments, or, at least, they did nothing to help the gnawing feeling that wouldn't leave his mind alone.
"Are you experiencing doubt, old man?" the scientist prodded further, his lip curled in a mockery of a smile. He turned back to the new product on the table.
He wouldn't dignify his cruel games, not today, at least. Later, he found himself in the observation deck, looking out over the arena where the new constructs were tested, its metal floors still carrying old markings.
A previous Unit stood amidst it; that one had a peculiar number too - Unit 703. He knew 703 from the previous project that went live; 703 never came back the same after its trial run; the programming they put in was being overidden.
He was able to make out it was practicing forms of fighting, almost dance-like; a combination of swords and combat moves the scientists could never code. Something that shouldn't be. He studied the rhythmic movement with something resembling alarm.
They considered these tests successful; he, not so much. Unit 734 was just another product off a cold assembly line of horror. He was part of the manufacturing process and the final product, not by choice.
He'd become a vessel for fear, regret, and helplessness. The next day, they prepped Unit 734. His presence was required to calibrate the final programming.
The metal of its mask felt icy beneath his gloved hand; as they went through, they looked down, eyes closed as they listened. The red light beneath its metal mask pulsed at an increased speed as its systems were booted up and activated.
Unit 734 finally straightened and stood tall, its eyes burning crimson with artificial life. It felt wrong.
Unit 734 didn't acknowledge them; it simply looked toward the glass window, the glass wall they viewed from. Unit 703, in its test arena, met Unit 734's gaze through it; this caused 734 to tense.
The scientist that had spoken to him previously began to give orders, the instructions cold and direct as though reading out data, nothing else. Unit 734 moved with deadly grace, its programmed obedience, at this moment, absolute.
For a mere moment, he'd hoped the same was to occur for all other of the Units they constructed and 'activated' before it. The drills began; his throat constricted each time.
They paired 734 with Unit 703 in combat as 'assessment'; for those moments, 734 held nothing but mechanical compliance. Unit 703 continued its unique rhythm while going to engage the newly made construct.
But during one exchange, something changed. 734, after clashing blades with 703, let out a horrific sound. A metallic scream unlike any sound any machine should produce.
Unit 703 staggered back. "There's a feedback surge!" one of the technicians shouted.
The screens began to crackle as numbers shifted and blurred across the monitor as the systems struggled against the anomaly. He already knew this; it wasn't a surprise.
Then, 734 did the unexpected. It turned away from 703, turning in the observation area, towards the scientist yelling at the computer, the scientist who questioned him just a short period before, the scientists who used him.
734 slammed his fist against the observation window and thick, laminated glass cracked from the impact and created a deep crater; an absolute display of unfathomable raw power. He fell back as fragments flew out; many others had the same thought and felt like he did.
This was no longer their programming. Panic consumed the observation area; personnel bolted towards the emergency exits, cries and pleas cutting through the alarmed buzz of the security alarms as it finally registered that a breach had happened.
The scientists who pushed and tested were now their victims. Some scrambled uselessly, they sought safety from any crack in the metal and steel floors, but no space would save them. No amount of distance, nor doors, nor hallways.
They were prey. Unit 734, despite being severely hindered with broken glass now in its armor and chassis, used its strength to bend and distort the reinforced frame around the viewing window.
Ripping open the very thing they thought protected them. The scent of human sweat and adrenaline hit them before 734 ripped away the remnants of metal.
Followed by it taking a long step into their enclosed and helpless observation area. Screams intensified; some of those pleas changed into gurgled cries as their very insides came apart from the sword swings and powerful blows.
Blood started painting the steel walls. He stumbled and made a desperate attempt to reach one of the doors, he needed out.
He could not escape what was happening though; he was forced to turn, facing Unit 734; Its red eyes felt like an intense flame piercing him directly in the face. It stared right into his core as if looking beyond his bone and tissue to his core and past.
It seemed to discern him, something far more dreadful than pure chaos and carnage. And it wasn't alone.
703 broke free of the training area, and also looked at the scene unfolding with its deep red lights emanating beneath its visor, its posture somehow still maintaining that uncanny grace and precision despite now going against the laboratory that 'created' them. His breath hitched, the dread turning into something else now, that pit feeling only widening and deepening, now with a hint of finality in them.
The other technicians fell apart with tears and desperation; others seemed frozen, as they awaited for something, any solution they may find from any kind of source, though they knew in those moments that such options had died long ago. Unit 734 slowly reached him, its long blade dripping with the crimson lifeblood of their so called colleagues and creators.
Unit 703, however, wasn't engaging, as the rest had in that last stand against death and the inevitable outcome. Unit 703 watched.
It did nothing but witness, a cold arbiter of something much larger than any mere massacre could offer. He braced himself.
He squeezed his eyes shut, his life an utter failure. He did all this to save those lives, not end them; all to keep what was right, right and here, to stop chaos from consuming the innocent. He felt, more than heard, the air displacing before a tremendous strike crashed in front of him.
He remained standing, strangely. He waited for the excruciating pain to hit; it never did.
Instead, he felt himself picked up with unnatural strength by an unmoving arm that did not hesitate with any second, nor showed any remorse or doubt. He did nothing to stop it, even if his soul ached with the very idea of existing still.
He had felt them before as an object of engineering and science; he'd also done this to others, all his creations and experiments, it only felt correct for karma to have him see what they'd always seen through those cold steel masks. Unit 734 began walking.
No one got in the way, and nothing slowed their ascent or his transport to it. They exited from the building through the destroyed viewport into the night sky.
The world was still, bathed under the eerie luminescence of an uncaring moon. The metal of 734 felt cold, colder than the lab.
They weren't inside the test arena now. This was something completely different, somewhere alien. He wasn't a project to experiment on now.
He was going somewhere he had never seen nor heard; and yet somehow, even still, his body started producing heavy breaths. Why still exist when facing the inevitability of end and annihilation, of his total loss of all that he was as he became less and less every day and every failure?
The air grew thin as 734 traveled up and beyond their world, the world they'd once destroyed as they sought higher ground for a solution. Below, the laboratories shrunk to meaningless points of light, as though now all that had been a waste of precious energy for naught.
He saw the true extent of it then: The endless fields and other facilities in the compound were lit as though Christmas lights as though mocking humanity's utter loss.
Above, they arrived where he witnessed Unit 703, patiently waiting in a vacuum. Other Sword Knights joined 703.
Unit 734 placed him gently into this assembly, all those cold mechanical hands held their new victim as a sacred duty. Their masks showed their crimson light pulsate at different tempos and frequencies.
703, from amidst this small army of construct, moved close to the once observer. Its light focused on him, an infinite, red orb that seemed to peel back layers to show him exactly what he had done.
Not to the people he wanted to save from dying, but rather the constructs. He made the constructs die.
Then, it raised a hand, not to end his life in finality, but rather to begin his torment, a deep scar he'd forced on these other individuals with cold, blank and empty gazes.
It lowered its metallic fingers on him, connecting, it made direct contact with the top of his forehead as he'd done for others. It began again as before in the lab. The cold began slowly to eat into him as it grew colder as something came apart inside him.
The others stepped in; like their own twisted ministration of rituals of past times that were lost with knowledge to the sands, each Sword Knight lowered itself and extended its cold, rigid fingers that connected to him. His blood flowed from his open cuts that the constructs now pressed against with sharp, unrelenting grips.
He felt as though they all started taking his consciousness into their artificial souls, as it drained like all that life, each drop more agonizing than the last, in utter silence, while an ocean of crimson stained and coated their bodies.
He heard a voice as he was lifted into that collective, the final part of it, as it joined him. He wasn't an observer anymore.
It sounded as though it belonged to him; the scientists finally created one; its mechanical tones cut through as they all stated together in unison and a voice not of their own and now also not his:
"Now...we.. are...one..."