[TheRaisin]

Ian

We were shoved and prodded and dragged into the pine grove. At the center was a small clearing, ringed by fallen logs. In nature it might have looked like a campsite. Here, in this artificial hell, it looked like a place for human sacrifice. We were pushed into the center of the circle, then all but two robots drew back to the edge of the clearing. The two that remained, large guards that stood menacingly behind us, were presumably our executors. There was a momentary lull. The robots stood at attention.
A tiny, caterpillar-like robot scuttled into the clearing. It's foot-long body was composed of four plate-like segments: a long, blunt head with a swept-back, spike-like crest, followed by two interlocking plates identical to the back of the head, and finally a long, stiff tail that jutted out parallel to the ground. The bizarre and ingenious shape of it's body, with each plate locking into the one in front of it, made it aerodynamic, sleek, and would deflect nearly any frontal attack. Coincidentally, it made the tiny robotic creature look like a spiky caterpillar, or a small wolverine-like predator with it's hackles raised.
The construct moved on six long wire-frame legs, each one quadruple-jointed like an insect's legs. At the end of each leg were three equally thin claws, which spread out and dug into the ground to stabilize it as it moved. The whole thing was made of the same dark, reflective metal, like specular hematite. It reflected its surroundings in crystal clarity, but direct light didn't glare off it like on silver or steel. This made it nearly invisible to the naked eye, even when it was only a few feet away. It was definitely designed for spying.
As it approached, the top section of it's head raised up with a hydraulic whirring sound on a small, pivoting arm. A camera lense extended out from a compartment in this section of the head.
"Excellent," Ms. Fletcher said. "Now I can watch closely. Any last requests?"
"Just one," Lyra said. "Don't kill us?"
"No. What about you?" The camera turned to me.
"Let Lyra go. She hasn't done anything, I'm the one who tried to escape."
Lyra spoke up.
"No, I convinced Ian into trying to fight back and escape. You should kill me."
"This is a moot point," Ms. Fletcher said, "as you are both going to die."
I gulped.
"If you're really going to slag us both," I said, "could you do me first?" I didn't want to have to watch someone else dying-- especially this girl who had, in the two days since I had awoken from my coma and met her, saved my life at least twice.
"A reasonable request," Ms. Fletcher said.
I sighed, partially in relief, and partially in resignation.
"Kill the girl!... slowly."
"What?!" I shouted.
Before either of us could move, the fingers of the guard behind her extended out like snakes and coiled around her wrists and ankles. I tried to rush the robot, but my own executioner bound my limbs in a similar fashion.
Lyra's executioner lifted her into the air as if she were to be crucified, her arms held out straight to either side. From the robot's back compartment, a secondary arm extended. Attached to it was a hyperdermic needle, filled with a dark reddish-black poison. Lyra twisted her head to see the needle. Her eyes widened in terror. She looked straight at me. Her jaw was set in defiance, and her breath was calm, but her eyes betrayed her.
They said, "I don't want to die."
I struggled and strained as the needle moved closer and closer to her neck. It wouldn't just knock her out this time. I twisted and clawed and bit at the robot, but there was nothing I could do.
Frustration welled up within me, and quickly turned to rage.
There's nothing I can do!
The thought repeated itself over and over in my mind as Lyra's death moved ever closer. I realized that the rage was not just my own: I could feel the "ghosts" feeding their anger into me, an anger that could never die, for neither could they. I had not tried to tap into it-- they had forced themselves into my mind.
My vision grew blurry as hot tears welled up in the corners of my eyes.
Just when I thought my mind would burst, a voice sprang up from some primal corner of my mind:
Let the ghosts in.
I did, and suddenly I could feel the presence of other minds in my brain. They were tattered, incomplete remnants, but they held power. I felt the control chip begin to spark as it read my brainwaves, sending pain shooting out from the base of my skull and into my brain, then down through my whole body. But I couldn't stop-- the ghosts had gotten a hold over me, and I became a spectator in my own mind. They were trying to do something, but they were too far gone from normal human minds to tell me what it was.
A red cloud enveloped my field of vision, through which I could just barely make out Lyra, the robots, and the pine grove. The pain in my skull was becoming excrutiating. My mind started to drift, but something pulled it back. The ghosts, as far apart as they were from humans, were conscious, and they wanted me to see something.
The pain had become unbearable. Finally, just when I thought the pain would kill me, I felt the pain-inducing part of the control chip break and short-circuit-- it had burned itself out.
I heard my voice, as if through a thick fog, ring out in a victorious shout. The robots' heads all swiveled in unison to watch me. The hyperdermic needle paused a hair's breadth away from Lyra's neck.
I turned my head towards the robot holding Lyra. The air between us began to ripple and distort. The robot shivered and vibrated violently, as if falling apart inside. Then a muscle in my face twitched, and the robot simply crumpled into a ball and crashed to the ground. A seven-foot-tall robot just folded up to the size of a basketball.
Lyra was flung into the air as her captor was crushed, and then everything went black.
-----------------------------------------
Lyra

I flew up into the air, tumbling head-over-heels. For a moment I was weightless, then I plummeted back toward the bed of pine needles covering the ground. I stuck my feet straight down, ready to duck and roll as I hit the ground to absorb the force of the impact. But several feet above the ground, I simply stopped. I hung ridiculously there in space above the pine needle carpet. I looked at Ian, and I could tell he was doing it somehow.
His would-be executioner was crumpled up behind him like half-completed origami, as was mine. His arm was outstretched toward me, fingers splayed. His face was expressionless, and his eyes were red and clouded with blood leaking from burst vessels-- it looked like someone else was inhabiting his body.
Slowly, he lowered his hand, and I sank to the ground.
For a long moment, there was complete silence. Finally it was broken by Ms. Fletcher's voice.
"Well done, Ian," she said. Her voice was shaky and quiet, as if she, the indomitable robot I had thought her to be, was actually scared. "You have discovered your true weapon, telekinesis, faster than any other subject before you. You are the only one to ever burn out the control chip."
Ian nodded. "Your attempt to kill this girl, and the cruelty with which you did it, angered him. That anger gave him power enough to ignore the pain your device induced, and therefore he bested it."
I listened in stunned silence.
"A mistake I shall not make again." She paused. "Who... am I speaking to?"
"You know little about your own weapon," Ian-- or whoever was speaking through him-- said. "The weapon you give your soldiers comes only partially from their own minds. You give them not power, but the knowledge and ability to tap into a power that exists totally independently of them. The power comes from the traces of human minds that have long since been destroyed, but left imprints of themselves on their surroundings."
He turned his head slightly toward me and winked.
So Ian was right, I thought. But how did he know?
"We are those imprints, those remnants. You might call us.... ghosts."
Ms. Fletcher's voice was now quaking audibly: she was terrified by the thought that human minds could linger, and more importantly, remember.
"If you are what you say you are," she said, "then tell me who subject 372 was."
The ghosts thought for a moment. When they responded, Ian's voice sounded different once again.
"Evan R. Patterson. I lived in Manhattan when the Tenae attacked. Your organization's patrols scooped me up out of the rubble because I had all the right statistics for one of your soldiers, and left my brother and sister and mom and dad to die. Oh, yes, I remember you well. You told me my family had been rescued and treated for "mild injuries", and that I could see them as soon as I was completely well. Then you forced me into the training room, and told me that if I didn't work for you, you'd kill my family. One of your blade traps cut my arm off, and I slowly died in a pool of my own blood. I lingered for quite a while. I remember you standing over me, saying what a waste it was that I had been killed on my first training mission. I was still alive for that. You didn't even bother to check my pulse. You just ordered some robots in to clean up my body. I was sixteen."
"... It doesn't matter what you are," Ms. Fletcher said after a long silence. "You can't do anything to me without a living body and brain. And I don't intend to let you keep those ones."
The robots at the edge of the clearing received a signal, and slowly began advancing.
"You'd better get down," the ghosts said, once again using their voice that suggested more than one speaking at the same time.
I dropped to the ground and covered my head, leaving a small space between my arms so I could see what was happening.
Ian's body didn't even move at all as a rippling wave of distortion spread out from him in rings. It washed over the gleaming wall of robots. Whenever one was touched, it shook and shivered before simply shutting down and slumping forward. In a few seconds, the whole army had been deactivated, and they stood smoking slightly. Ian's head turned toward the control room. He blinked, and the room exploded instantly, raining smoking debris down on the grass.
Finally, except for the sounds of burning pyre and running water, all was silent.
I could feel a shift in Ian's mind. The red in his eyes receded slightly, and his body slumped. He dropped onto his knees, swaying as if he might fall flat on his face.
I had no time to think about what had just happened. I grabbed Ian's wrist and hauled him up. He seemed unconscious: his feet dragged across the pine needles as I ran for the exit to the training room, nearly a kilometer away.
As we crossed the stream, I noticed that Ian's ammo belt had gotten snagged on an upthrust rock. I fished it out and grabbed the assault rifle, and shoved several clips into my pockets.
After a minute or so of dragging him along, he began to run of his own accord, but though his feet moved, he still looked vacant and unconscious. As we ran, I couldn't help but wonder exactly what had transpired. But there would be time to find out later. The first order of business was staying alive.