Angel Have Mercy
The car screeched to a halt in the middle of the road, tires leaving black streaks on the sun-bleached asphalt. August watched the hood start to smoke with a detached sort of interest.
A sharp pop escaped the vehicle, and the passenger door burst open. Something human-shaped slumped out of the car, blood dripping onto the pavement.
August sighed, the sound coughing its way out of his damaged speakers to choke on the air like a dying wheeze. Sometimes being a Tender, a robot designed to care for the ill and injured, could really cramp his style. He got up from the bench and trudged toward the bleeding human, every step hobbling and groaning, old joints rusted and strained.
The injured man -and it was a man, August could see now- reached a hand out, three of the fingers facing the wrong way. He tried to say something, but the words passed his lips as a fountain of blood. August imagined something along the lines of ‘help me.’
“Shh, it’s okay,” August soothed, as best he could with a voice like a skipping record. He reached out a hand, feeling the human’s pulse jump and skitter under the lacerated skin of his throat. “I’m a Tender.”
The words reassured the man better than anything else August could have said, and he relaxed. Blood burbled past his lips with every wet breath. When August pushed him onto his back, prone, the man didn’t struggle. When August clambered over him to straddle his broken ribs, and wrapped metallic hands around his throat… still nothing. When August squeezed, the man hardly jerked. August wondered if he could.
“That’s it, nice and easy. Don’t be afraid. I’ll take all your pain away. Just you wait and see.”
The human twitched and trembled, one hand coming up at last to scrabble at August’s fingers, but August’s grip was truly steel and all he did was press down harder. The man’s eyes went wide, and then, slowly, they went blank.
By hesitant degrees, August relaxed his grip. The man’s limp hand fell from his without issue, and August leaned back, straightened up. He became aware again of the smoking car- it was now truly beginning to burn.
The sound of groaning metal surprised him, and he turned his head, watched the handle of the backseat door rattle. Someone was trying to open it from the inside, but it was stuck. August pushed himself up, walked to the door, and pried it open with synthetic strength.
A bundle immediately hit him around the midriff, and August looked down to find a small child, her hands tangled in his jacket, golden pigtails stained red from a head wound that crept from her temple to her ear.
“Please, Mr. Robot, you have to help my Daddy!” The girl sobbed, the tears already in her eyes beginning to escape. “He’s real hurt, please, you gotta help-”
“Shh, it’s okay,” August promised. He put a hand to the back of her head, guiding her to cry into his shirt. The other hand found the back of her little neck, and squeezed. “That’s it, nice and easy. Don’t be afraid. I’ll take all your pain away. Just you wait and see…”