Age of the Machine (Market Comodity 3)

AN: It's not really that good. If I could write a chapter with as much detail as I can review... maybe I'd get somewhere. Tell me what you think and if you enjoy it or not. And I just realized I left absolutely no hint at who Zero Cool was. ...I really meant to but when I went that route it just turned out bad. If you can guess you are awesome and if not, I'll probably either say it or leave actual hints next chapter.

Family Ties

Prologue- Sleep

Zero Cool came out of recharge to the sound of coughing. Sadly it had become more and more common since the disaster happened. Despite the fact that he should be growing more and more used to it, Zero still acted like it was the first time. Jumping up from his spot, he ran. “Nana? Nana, you alright?!” he called out, rummaging through the bag of medicine they set aside.

Finding the inhaler, he rushed over to the gagging woman. She wasn’t even coughing anymore. Nana hadn’t been this bad off since the ash first began falling. Zero Cool had to force the medicine down her throat to make her swallow it. Finally, after the longest, most spark breaking minute of his life, the gags turned to gasps as Zero pulled graying sweat slick hair off the woman’s forehead. “Feel better now?”

“Cero… I’m fine.” The words were spoken slowly, carefully, but they were strong. Zero delighted in the strength in that voice, the beauty of the way that Spanish accent rolled over his name.

“What happened?” The small red clone asked. Nana hadn’t had a coughing fit in nearly two weeks, much less one as bad as this. Maria and Crash Override had been gone for months now- they were probably dead. Nana was all Zero had left.

“It was probably just some ash got in my lungs. I’m fine baby.” Zero frowned, clearly not believing her. “Really, go back to sleep.” Shooting the woman one last suspicious look, as if she would collapse the second his back turned, Zero nodded and headed back to ‘bed’.

It happened again- the coughing fit. It had been getting more and more common, and nothing Zero did seemed to help. Ash, asthma, and old age were all catching up with Nana at once. All Zero could do was hope that this wouldn’t be the day that she would leave him forever.

This time, Zero Cool hadn’t even been ‘home’. He had been out looking for supplies for Nana, when he came back to her coughing. The inhaler they had recovered was running low and medicine was hard to find. Nana had been napping peacefully when he left. Obviously that hadn’t lasted long. It was different from the last time. Nana threw up before she finished coughing. Thick mucus, blackened with dark ash.

“Nana?” Zero couldn’t bring himself to ask any more than that.

“It’s fine. It was all stuck in my lungs, its just coming out now.” Nana reassured him. “It’ll all be fine.”

Zero sat the woman against the wall and leaned against her chest. She was warm and soft, but more fragile than normal. Her insides sounded… off. It took him a moment to realize what the rasp was. “Your lungs are rattling.”

“That’s because it’s not all out yet.” Zero could hear the faint smile in her voice before she coughed again lightly. It wasn’t anything alarming, just a regular human cough. “Got to sleep Cero. I will be alright by the time you wake.”

Zero Cool didn’t want two, but he had spent the last 3 days watching Nana with a feverish intensity before he had decided to brave the outside world. Mostly because the asthma medicine had began to run low. Noticing his hesitation, Nana began to hum as she rocked them back and forth. It was a tactic that never failed. Fussy babies, 45 year old angry men, and stubborn machines could not resist the call of sleep then. Zero was in recharge before he could recognize the song she sung.

Nana was right. When he woke up, she was sitting by his side, knitting a scarf out of yarn recovered from a ripped sweater. “Morning.” Zero yawned. It was a completely human habit, considering that Zero really didn’t need oxygen for his processor to work, but he had watch Nana long enough that he’d begun to do it to.

It was two days before Nana began to cough again. It was like the other really bad ones. Though she had yet to stop coughing completely to merely choke, her body shook and convulsed with the force of the coughs. In all honesty, Zero wasn’t shocked that his recharge, and Nana’s sleep, had been interrupted this way. Zero grabbed the inhaler again, frowning at how light it was. It wasn’t until Zero tried to get Nana to take it that he noticed that there was hardly anything left much less enough to help her now. Frantically, Zero began to search the designated medicine bag for more.

“C-cero…” it was soft, shaky and broken with the coughs that attacked her. It forced Zero Cool to stop everything else to run to her side. “Rest now. When you wake it will all be fine.” It was a lie. Even if he hadn’t known just from the sheer hopelessness of the situation, the look in Nana’s eyes told him. She was lying to comfort him. She went as far as to try to suppress the coughs. “Relax.” She told him. It was only then that he realized that he was shaking. Annoying human habit. It solved nothing, only showed to make his discomfort obvious. Nana began to rock him again, humming when the coughs would let her. It didn’t work well, the rocking was jerky and sharp, and the singing was horse and off key. Zero forcefully shut down his processors. He refused to let her effort to comfort him go to waste. The last thing he noticed before everything went dark was Nana smiling. “Thank you Cero. I’m not alone.”

And then there was nothing.