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It’s snowing properly, now, and Markus can feel the snowflakes melting against his skin. He’d sat down, just for a moment, on an abandoned bench, one of the few that hadn’t been damaged in the altercation. Hart Plaza is deafeningly quiet. Androids mill around and FBI officers are still skulking around, allegedly doing damage control, but the battle is over. Markus has won. He takes a deep, shuddering breath. He’s done it. He’s won. He’s free.
If he’s won, why does he feel so terrible? His chest feels tight and his body feels heavy all over. Every movement is too much of an effort to bear. He’d just sat down for a moment, hoping to breathe, to take a second for himself, but now he’s terrified that he won’t be able to get up. His coat is starting to get uncomfortably damp from where he’s sitting on it. Markus has found that he doesn’t much like being wet. An attempt to straighten his legs sends static buzzing up them, into his hips, and errors bursting into his vision.
Warning. Biocomponents #6847j and #8427g critically noncompatible.
Excuse him? That can’t be right, he’s been walking on them since he installed them. They should be fine. They’re fully compatible with his model, despite having been from newer androids than him. He leans down to prod one of them, experimentally, testing for sensation, but he doesn’t get the chance. Instead, Markus tumbles off of the bench into the snow. His gyroscope is sending frantically confusing information to his processor, and he finds himself wildly dizzy. What he’s seeing does not at all match what he’s feeling, and as he attempts to right himself, the spinning sends his vision blacking out. Despite that, he does manage to get himself into a sitting position, and his vision does return. Partially. His new-to-him replacement eye refuses to reactivate. What in the world? He doesn’t even get an error message for that one. He brings his hand up to his face, and from what he can tell, the skin has deactivated over the entire eye socket. That is… Somewhat problematic. Especially since he’s likely going to be doing a lot of work with humans, and soon. He needs to look acceptable, and looking human is going to be part of that. North would kick him for even thinking that, but it’s true. A visible difference, especially a facial one, will impact his credibility.
Eugh. His pants are soaked.
His pants shouldn’t be soaked. Androids run cold, that’s part of what allows them to run the complicated processes they do. The snow shouldn’t be melting into his clothes. This is probably related to why his body is suddenly choosing to reject all his replacement parts. It takes Markus a second to realize why this might be really, really bad.
Markus’s heart.
Frantically, he runs a diagnostic, and his breath catches in his throat as he does. It takes way too long, and when he does get the results back, it prints to his console three times. The results are… problematic, to say the least. The most urgently worrying thing is that his systems are currently running at approximately 123°, which isn’t quite hot enough to start to damage his processors but is far from ideal. He’s also noting chassis failures in his chest, the fact that both of his leg components and his replacement eye are being rejected, and the fact that his thirium pump regulator is operating at only 84% efficiency. He’d been happy with it running at 97%, considering the fact that it’s a newer model than he was made for, but the drop is significant. It might explain why his chest feels so bad. He hates how apt the word is, because Markus would like to think himself an artist, and would like to think he could come up with a better word for it, but he really can’t find one. At least sitting in the snow is probably doing him some good. He debates taking off his jacket, for a moment, but the idea of sitting there in a soaked shirt makes his guts twist, so he decides against it. Markus hates the way the rejected eye has halved his field of vision, and he decides to make another attempt at standing up rather than thinking about how much it reminds him of being thrown away. Because it’s different. It really is! Honestly, the comparison is pretty shallow.
The tightness in Markus’s chest worsens. So he’s not going to think about it, because even thinking about not thinking about it is making everything break down more. So, he pushes himself up from the ground, holding onto the bench for stability. From what he can tell before his vision cuts out again, he crumples to his right. When he compensates, leaning heavily to the left, he hits his head on the bench for his efforts. He’s managed to plant his head onto the bench, and he tries not to think about how many people’s butts have been there prior to using it as a landing pad for his face. The buzzing from before has begun pulsing behind his eye.
“Markus, where are you?”
North has sent him a message on their private server. She sounds angry, but Markus knows it’s because she’s worried.
“I’m alright. Taking a quick breather.”
“I’m coming to join you, then. I need out of this crowd.”
Markus wants to tell her no, because honestly he’s kind of embarrassed at how… floppy he’s become. But telling her no will only make her more suspicious, so he doesn’t.
“Alright. You can come and watch the stars with me.”
He pushes a wave of overly saccharine, exaggerated emotion through the line. North sends him the physical impulses required to gag.
“You dork.”
It was worth a shot. Now that his attention is back to the cold of the real world, his chest feels tight, again. It feels like his sternum has started to collapse into his lungs. A cautious press to the plating there reveals that he’s not entirely wrong in that assessment, which makes his breathing catch again.
Warning. Pulse elevation ill-advised with current operational status. Lower activity levels.
Markus is sitting on the ground with his head face-down on a bench. He doesn’t know if his activity levels can get much lower.
“Markus, are you okay?”
Markus cringes, a little. He had hoped he would be able to put himself back on the bench by the time North had gotten to him. He attempts to reassure her, but he’s not sure how clear he is with his face pressed into the seat. North grabs him, then, by the shoulders, sliding his knees around so that his back is leaning against the bench instead of his chest. It relieves some of the tightness, which is nice.
“Holy shit, Markus, you’re burning up. What are you running at?”
Markus closes his eyes. Being moved made the buzzing in his head worse. Half of his face simultaneously feels pulled tight and numb.
“Hundred and twenty-three. I don’t feel awesome.”
North’s laugh is astonished.
“I bet the fuck not! What happened? Were you attacked?”
“I wish.”
“What do you mean, ‘I wish?’ Are you crazy?”
It’s Markus’s turn to laugh.
“Yeah, probably. That’s not what I meant, though. I sat down and I just started experiencing errors.”
North whistles.
“What’s the damage?”
“Both my legs are out of commission. Can’t see out of this eye,” Markus taps the right side of his face, “and I think I’ve got a headache?”
“No wonder you look like shit. Fate really has it out for you, huh?”
“She’ll have to try harder than this.”