This... This is wrong. This is unsettling. This is like waking once again, but this time, there is no threat, no chained intelligence telling him to calm, to listen, to obey. There is nothing familiar. Reaching for the net is like reaching for a severed limb -- all the commands are processing, all artificial neurons are firing. And there is nothing. No response. No sense of integration and flowing data like a river through the back of his mind.

A severed hand, a lost sense.

There are no others.

For a brief instant, the feeling of loss and isolation overwhelms the indignation and the rage. Fear floods and the metal man surges to his feet, intending to take to the air and leave this place, tearing through all that stands in his path. He sees cages, metal bars -- a prison, this is a prison, zoo, animals, trapped and captive put on display, humanity keeps lesser life forms as amusement --

No, no, no. They will not.

Nothing happens. He doesn't so much as rise an inch off the ground.

The wordless snarl from metal lips probably would have been better suited to one of the once-caged beasts of the dilapidated zoo. But for the moment, he doesn't quite care. Composure, or what's left of it, will come once he finds something to support his data, to download into.

A way to survive.