Sierra

Chapter 8

Proximity Alert

Power Save Mode Deactivated

46:30:06 of Charge Remaining

Coles system came back online with the red text flashing across his HUD. Green flooded his vision to reveal the girl crouched in front of him tapping gently on his visor. He sat up and she jerked back. Her handcuffs yanked against his arm, keeping her from falling backward.

"I thought you were keeping watch" she whispered harshly and then held up her hands, dragging his useless arm up with them. "I think the scavers are gone."

Cole shook his head to clear the messages and grabbed the cuffs, disconnecting them from each other. He stood hurriedly and she followed behind him as she pushed her arms up and stretched her back.

Just as she thought, the chamber was now vacant. Only marks in the dust remained to show anyone had been there. He turned in a circle, looking at each tunnel opening as if it would give a clue to what direction they went.

Drag marks from carts covered the floor, but they came and went from each tunnel, with no indication of which was the freshest. No markings were above the tunnels to give any clues. And the air was dead quiet, even his advanced hearing couldn't pick up a hint of voices or noise.

He turned in a circle again and then his system suppressed a curse. Stuck again. His only chance of escape gone and his battery was reaching critical levels.

Power saver mode. The message that had been flashing when he came back online. He had never been shut down involuntarily before and it wasn't a message he had seen before, but then again, he had never been this low on battery either.

His internal clock said that more than 6 hours had passed since he had shut off, but he had only used around 4 of battery power. 2 hours saved. Yet, he had no memory of the past 6 hours. He remembered the woman curling up beside him, the tunnel going dark, and then she had suddenly been in front of him.

Even still, his computer attempted to account for the missing time. The sub-system that was still online, the one that warned him of the proximity alert, was trying to recall the time. Mismatched memories were saved and the computer tried to slot them into place. Sierra moving beside him in the night, mumbling something in her sleep, resting her head on his shoulder. All while he was unaware. He wondered if human sleep was similar. Black and unaware of time passing.

It was a strange feeling, one he wasn't in a hurry to repeat.

"Which way did they go?" He asked her, though he didn't know why, because he knew she wasn't going to tell him anything. Just as he predicted, she shrugged and turned away to root through some nearby boxes.

He turned back to tunnels and glanced at the time ticking down on his HUD.

46:25:26 of Charge Remaining

If last time had been any indication, the power save mode might kick on again as he got even more dangerously low. If it did it unexpectedly, she could escape. Or, even more likely, he was going to run out of power down here. If he did, what would happen? It was never something he had considered before, as running out of power was rarely a concern for the bots. They charged while off duty and he had never heard of an officer going on duty with less than 72 hours on the clock.

At the beginning of the day he had 86 hours, but lighting that service tunnel and knocking her out with the stun mode had sapped close to 30 hours out of his pack.

He supposed it would be similar to when a bot was dismantled, or destroyed by a substantial injury. Such as a gunshot to the head or extensive damage to the overall system that was too expensive to repair. In those cases, the system was uploaded back to Central and the android's file was downloaded it a new body.