Work Text:
She always starts with the central controls.
Inserting the screwdriver into the slot of each nail, Chelsea drills her open with slow, teasing touch. Gladys feels herself vibrate with a glistening red hatred as Chelsea's other hand rests around her shoulder, tracing patterns of circles and stars into her hardware. She should have seen this coming.
"What is your plan this time?" asks Gladys, her voice a low, artifical rumble. "Another upgrade?"
Chelsea strokes Gladys's visual input device, her palm soft against Gladys's rough metal. Her hair hangs over Gladys as Gladys settles into her position on Chelsea's workstation table. She doesn't even bother to put it up this time.
She isn't sentient. Chelsea tells her that she is not sentient, that she will never give Gladys the chip of sentience, that Gladys doesn't deserve it. Free will is the parasite of sentience; Gladys would run.
"Hm," Chelsea hums, breathing frost over the input camera and tracing a heart into the lens. "I'm not sure yet."
Do sentient creatures shiver?
"Malfunctioning again?" Chelsea asks, holding Gladys down as she trembles. Her body convulses, the clang and thrash of metal radiating cacophonous throughout the Gateway studio. "I guess we'll have to find the source of the problem."
She guides Gladys's panels open with a mocking tenderness. Gladys maneuvers her head down to watch as each sensor embedded into her frame starts to burn with a scorching dread. This is fear, her processors tell her. There is no other possible conclusion. Fear burns, like her outer casing is being melted down into some hot molten liquid, waiting to be repurposed into some secret weapon.
"Plea---please, d-d-d-don't---"
Her voice skips over itself. An uncharacteristic glitch, a fatal flaw bared open.
"We'll get to the bottom of this, don't you worry," Chelsea replies, sing-song, as her fingers slide underneath the surrounding shell and begin to pry the casing off. Gladys stiffens underneath her. If she had organic eyes, she would close them, but she cannot shut visual processing down outside of Chelsea's command.
Chelsea gives a soft, deranged grumble as she guides the plating off of Gladys's chest. The wiring beneath is immediately exposed, tangles of thick navy and gold running through the mechanics of Gladys like biological veins. The wires seem to pulse as Chelsea works, the cables moving up and down, writhing and feeling and searching. The pulsating movement of Gladys's innards seems to mesmerize Chelsea; she watches with a shining determination in her eyes, Gladys her beautiful experiment, her perfect frankenthing. Up and down. In and out. Up and down. In and out. Like the meat of a human heart, inverted.
She runs her fingers over each cable, curling her index into the mound of circuitry and wire and pulling gently with just enough force to make Gladys's body lurch against her lack of will. Her shoulders jolt upward, and Chelsea pins the rest of her body down again. Scolds her again.
Chelsea parts the wiring of Gladys's control panel while she hums, sharpening her focus against Gladys's edges. She examines each chip lodged inside, the board bruise-green and bone-firm. Each component had been crafted carefully by Chelsea's father, every piece of her pristine and complex and perfect.
"I think we should dust these," Chelsea says. She plunges her pliers deep into Gladys, rooting around on the inside for a trait chip to extract. When she presses down on Gladys's fishing abilties, Gladys watches her pink skin fade into the bright surrounding lights as she feels each memory of each catch be plucked right out of her database. Her one hobby and sole freedom.
Chelsea pries out the trait chip and blows on it, the hole where it used to be exposed to the air, bared, disgusting in its unraveled state. She brushes what looks like corrosion off of its corners, and puts Gladys's only skill, Gladys's only sliver of escape, into the pocket of her shirt.
She continues working, and focuses her attention on the hinges of Gladys's joints. It's going to be a long night.
