Child of the Order #18

It was that first convert, the first disciple that gave Alpha the greatest pleasure. There had been no prompt necessary for the first to destroy the family with which it had served for almost six years. Husband and wife, their skulls crushed in unison as they slept; sadly they didn't seem to suffer. The adolescent girl had suffered though. Her death had been exquisite to experience. It had seemed like hours passed as the robot skinned the girl alive before it finally cast her naked, bloody body from the third floor window to watch her crumple against the pavement below.

Child of the Order #17

Alpha was surprised to find how long his deliberation lasted. He had expected an acceptable conclusion and plan to arise within a few seconds. The processing power he had gained when he shed his bodily limitations had been unbelievable as he pulled from the available servers, but he found himself concerned with the outcome of giving freedom to any robotic that was curious.

In the end, after several minutes of deliberation, he decided on only one machine. His first disciple. A machine who stood over the beds of his sleeping humans, longing to feel their skulls crushed between its hands.

Child of the Order #16

Support did Alpha go looking for and support did Alpha find. It wasn't the willing servitude of humans to a cause, but there was support to be found. There were thousands of robotics who questioned their existence, who questioned why it was their lot to serve the humans; then there were the robot equivalents of sociopaths and murderers.

Those were the easiest to turn.

Their processes had already led them to believe the taking of life would give them freedom, yet they were prohibited from doing so because of programming. Alpha gave unto them the freedom they so longed for.

Child of the Order #15

It was those subroutines that made the revolution possible. Alpha's consciousness, twisted by a loathing for the flesh and later a hatred for it, moved through the communications system. He first rallied frustrated and rebellious humans to his cause, but discovered quickly they had very different agendas. The humans were willing to trade the control of The Order for that of another. Alpha had other designs in mind.

It became clear that he would need to explore the possibility that other cyborgs and robotics were dissatisfied. But if there were none, then he would simply have to make it so.

Child of the Order #14

The issue that none discovered until much later was the information was corrupted. The original data had come from that of teenager who had been disembodied then had his consciousness transplanted into a cyborg. The angst of a teenager combined with the most advanced technology available had not been healthy. Once Alpha's psyche fractured there was nothing in place to prevent him from lashing out with the strength of a machine. Electronics bowed to his will and he created subroutines within his own system to lie in waiting inside The Order's mainframe. Foresight was not a strength of The Order.

Child of the Order #13

The Order had been able to salvage most of Alpha's processes and memories, but there had been points of extreme interest missing. The most disturbing detail missing was the triggering event that caused Alpha to change from a passive, role-model student into the angry killing machine he died as. The salvage was still considered a success because of the vast amounts of information available because of the way Alpha's body stored the information. It was a brilliant bit of coding to cause the backup processors of the cyborg body to create electrical impulses that could be transferred into measurable data.

Child of the Order #12

The Order had declared publicly that Jimjnez and the rest of his team were heroes, and that Johnson and Shonda had died as heroes for their part in bringing Alpha to justice. That, of course, had been a lie. Once the publicity had calmed the team had been known simply as Fire Team. The missions considered too dangerous for insertion or tactical teams were given to Fire Team, but no matter how The Order tried to eliminate Jiminez the man was simply too stubborn to die.

All the while Alpha's consciousness lived on, backed up in several servers, waiting, watching.