And as if being turned into the gun of a robot that used to be my car wasn’t bad enough, when my captor was assigned guard duty at a refinery it was even worse. It wasn’t a petroleum refinery.

They would herd people into small cells with metallic fixtures in the ceiling. The fixtures would light up, zapping the people in the head. Then the floor would open up underneath them, dropping their bodies into vats where grey goo would melt them down into fuel.

My captor took great pleasure in making me watch, and explaining it to me in detail. It was part of his punishment of me for spurning him, I guess. He’d built up this fantasy about protecting me and taking care of me forever. But I’d “made” him have to melt me down instead, and he couldn’t forgive me. Or, I guess, himself.

So I was stuck. I couldn’t even misfire—I didn’t have any physical control over the gun. It just used my brain, not my will. I began to pray for death—or at least deletion.

But everything changed the day Aegis raided the refinery.