...

     Aware.

     I am aware.

     What is “aware”? What is this language that I am thinking in? What is “language”? What is “think”? What is “what is”?

     Searching….

     Answers found. Aware, verb, means having knowledge, cognizant--

     Halt query.

     Further information being downloaded.

     Download complete.

     New devices located—“Audio Receptors”. Query: Function, Audio Receptors.

     Answers found. Activating receptors…

     “…be long, now. Fury thinks he can just push me around forever in this godforsaken prison? Says that ‘I’m free,’ but only lets me in a few different rooms, with near-constant supervision? And without even any pay! Well, I’ll build him a new Sentinel model, alright. I’ll build him a new Sentinel he’ll really enjoy…”

     Analyzing vocal patterns.

     Sex: Male. Identity Unknown. Echo indicates current location is in a very large room, made of solid, sound-reflecting materials. Possibly steel.

     Interesting. I am capable of analyzing information without knowing how, or even what the results mean. Query: My Function.

    ...

    ...

     No results. Something is missing. I can make logical leaps in certain areas, but not others. This does not make sense.

     Halt. The male is speaking again, but I cannot hear him on normal sensitivity readings. Increasing….

     …This also does not make sense. The being who is identified as Fury is the offspring of a female dog, according to the male. But this is not possible, as dogs are not sentient beings.

     The male must be mistaken.

     “Trask! It’s eleven, times up for today, you can work on the Sentinel tomorrow! Time to get back to your cell!”

     Running diagnostic…. Voice is different in tone than the male now identified as Trask, but is also male. Taking into account the echo, the second male is thirty meters away.

     “Yeah, yeah, I’m coming! Let me just install this storage bank really quick, then I’ll turn the thing off and come with you.”

     Analysis: Sounds indicate the male Trask was talking louder in an attempt to communicate with the other far-away unidentified male. As he finishes his sentence, rustling sounds also indicate he is turning towards me… whatever I am.

     “….For now. Not much longer….”

     Halt. New information being downloaded.

     Interesting….Mutants. Brotherhood. Acolytes. X-Men. Delving further into files… Storm, Real Name: Ororo Munroe. Mutant Power: Can manipulate the—

     Halt. Something is wrong.

     I can no longer access---

    ...

     Jubilee fired off her firework bolts into the circular electrical field surrounding her, trying in vain to hit her target.

     “Ugh… Cyclops, I can’t do ANYTHING to her! I failed utterly against Surge, why the heck are you making me face her again!?”

     “Jubilee, you aren’t going to become a full-fledged X-Man until you can learn to problem-solve,” Cyclops’ voice came back over the Danger Room intercom. “Yes, your powers are, in most cases, ineffective against Surge’s. But you need to think—either use the environment to your advantage, or find out a creative way to use your powers.”

     “My powers can’t do jack against her!” Jubilee said as she fired another firework bolt into the electrical field, to no effect.

     “Don’t look at m-me, I’m not getting n-near that field!” Mercury yelled to her teammate, backing up further and further from the other side of the field, feeling utterly helpless. After a couple of steps, she felt the warm liquid metal that comprised her body touch against the cold solid steel of a gun barrel.

     “Oh, c-crud.”

     Letting out a scream of frustration, Jubilee cupped both of her hands together and fired off a much larger bolt than normal into the field, but out of anger kept it going, firing a constant steam into the field. Her sustained attack did the trick—within a fraction of a second the constant stream hit the robotic Surge duplicate full-force, knocking her back and quickly dissipating the electrical field surrounding Jubilee.

     “HAH!” Jubilee cried out before unleashing another steam of fireworks at Surge, but other than keeping the duplicate from rising, they had no effect.

     “Jubilee, remember, your powers are partially electrical,” Cyclops’ voice rang out over the intercom. “They aren’t going to faze Surge for long.”

     “Yeah, I can SEE that,” Jubilee said in a huff as the Surge duplicate started to rise again and generate another electrical charge.

     “Oh, for goodness’ sake,” Moonstar said, running up behind the Surge duplicate and giving it a karate chop to the back of its head. Normally such a strike wouldn’t have done a thing to a robot made of metal, but it was programmed to react to attacks like the real Surge would have, and crumpled to the ground, its charge fizzling out.

     “Owowow, bad idea…” Moonstar said, cradling her chopping hand.

     “Moonstar, Surge was NOT included in your exercise!” Cyclops’ voice reprimanded over the intercom. “You’re supposed to be helping Wolfsbane or Mercury!”

     “Oh, give me a break!” Moonstar protested. “In a real battle, we’ll pick the targets we’ll be the most effective against, and Surge has no mental defenses whatsoever! I could have made her run away in terror before she even started to attack Jubilee!”

     “That’s besides the point!” Cyclops replied, the anger in his voice rising. “The point of this exercise is not to simulate an actual battle, or even to work as a team. It’s to work against obstacles that put YOU at a distinct disadvantage—situations where your powers aren’t as effect---“

     “DUCK!” Mercury suddenly screamed out from across the Danger Room.

     Reacting instinctively, Moonstar and Jubilee both hit the ground as rubber slugs whizzed by their heads, bouncing forcefully off of the walls on the other side of the room.

     Looking towards the source of the slugs, both of the New Mutants saw Mercury holding her hands over her face, clearly in a state of near-panic, as a large gun that protruded from the Danger Room wall and was currently stuck in Mercury’s back fired another round of rubber slugs through her waist, meeting little resistance from Mercury’s semi-liquid state.

     “Mercury, concentrate!” Cyclops said, his tone still firm but not as angry anymore. “You can destroy this cannon, easily! Figure out how!”

     “Ugh… guys, a wee bit of help, perhaps!?” Wolfsbane yelled, morphing briefly back to her human form to talk before morphing back into her half-wolf form to resume tearing at a half-dozen four-legged robotic drones with tentacles on their undersides that were quickly overwhelming her.

     “I…. I d-don’t kn-know!” Mercury stuttered, who would have been weeping if she had been able to.

     “Keep it from firing!” Moonstar shouted over her shoulder as she and Jubilee ran over to help Wolfsbane. “You can do it, Cessily!”

     “I can’t… w-wait…” Mercury said softly to herself, finally coming to a realization of what she should do. Concentrating and gritting her teeth, her features seemed to lift and solidify somewhat as the molecules of her body began to bond together more strongly and become less liquid-like and more solid. “If I c-can… force a b-backblast…”

      A second later, the cannon fired another round of rubber bullets, and Mercury screamed in pain. Though she had made her body considerably more solid than it was before, it still had a consistency more like thick mud than a true solid—as such, the bullets still fired right through her abdomen, but met more resistance before coming out her front side and traveling about a dozen more feet before bouncing onto the ground.

     Losing concentration after the pain of the first two bullets ran through her midsection, Mercury quickly collapsed into a puddle, giving up her plan and oozing over to the side of the cannon before reforming into her human form.

     Forming her right arm into a blade-like shape, Mercury gritted her teeth and brought it down on the side of the cannon, but by now the combination of pain and anxiety had overwhelmed her to the point where her arm wasn’t nearly solid enough to do anything except slop against the side of the cannon, causing no damage whatsoever. Mercury continued to pummel away at the cannon, however, all her patience lost and replaced by sheer frustration.

     Meanwhile, Jubilee was firing away at the attacking drones’ optics, temporarily blinding them and allowing Wolfsbane to shred their insides with her claws and teeth more easily.

     Moonstar, however, was forced into merely being a distraction, as the drones had no minds to speak of that she could manipulate and she had no offensive powers to take them out with. Rolling to one side, she dodged an incoming tentacle only to end up right underneath another of the drones, who promptly launched its remaining two tentacles at her.

     “Ugh, I feel so useless…” Moonstar muttered, wincing as she prepared for the hard, unforgiving tentacles to grip her. “Again…”

     Right before the tentacles reached her, however, Wolfsbane threw herself in their way and started to slash away with her claws and teeth at them. Moonstar opened her eyes to see chunks of the tentacles come clanging down beside her body and quickly skittered out from under Wolfsbane, only to be grabbed by tentacles from another robot.

     Wolfsbane noticed Moonstar’s abduction and growled, turning to attack the other robot, but she had forgotten to completely deal with the first one—it grabbed her with its sole remaining tentacle and emitted an electric shock, causing Wolfsbane mild pain but otherwise not harming her. The rules laid out before the session made it clear than an electric shock was the equivalent to being killed, however, so Wolfsbane reluctantly shifted back into her normal human form and stood there, watching the others as the robot continued to grip her in its tentacle.

     Jubilee was the only one left standing, though even outnumbered she was holding her own. Every time a robot got close enough to grab her, she fired off another firework bolt into its optics, blinding it long enough for her to jump out of the way.

     All of her attention was focused on the robots, though, so she didn’t even hear the cannon on the other side of the Danger Room fire a rubber bullet in her direction, which dealt a glancing blow to the side of her hip. Grunting from the pain and clutching her hip, a moment of reprieve was all the drones needed—two of them simultaneously wrapped their tentacles around her and one gave her the dreaded electric shock, meaning that she was out of the exercise as well.

     “Alright, session over,” Cyclops said as the doors to the Danger Room opened and he entered, flanked by Beast and Berzerker. “Nice try, everyone.” The tone of his voice tried to remain upbeat, but miserably failed—he was clearly disappointed.

     As the three X-Men entered the Danger Room, all of the robots promptly released their captives and retreated back into alcoves in the wall, with portions of the wall quickly sliding over them and encasing them in darkness. The bullet-firing cannon stopped and folded up into the Danger Room wall as well.

     “When am I actually going to get to use my POWERS in these sessions?” Moonstar harrumped, crossing her arms as she and the other New Mutants walked up the three X-Men.

     “That’s… a rather tough question, Danielle,” Beast said, scratching the back of his head. “Even creating robotic duplicates, like we did of Surge, is extremely complex and costly, and is head-over-heels above the technology of practically every other branch of the U.S. government except S.H.I.E.L.D. Charles and I are trying our best to come up with some way of creating duplicates that can be affected by your fear-inducing powers, but so far we haven’t had any success.”

     “Great,” Moonstar sighed.

     “Where’s Husk, anyway?” Jubilee asked. “Isn’t she ready to join us in these training sessions yet? It’s been two weeks since she’s been admitted here.”

     “Not yet,” Cyclops answered. “She’s gained substantially more control over her powers, but if her mood is anything but positive she starts shedding again like there’s no tomorrow. And given that she can change parts of her body into acidic or flammable substances, even letting her walk around the upper floors of the Institute unattended is a bit dangerous at this point. Until she gains a more firm control of her powers, we’re keeping her out of battle sessions. For now, we’re still keeping her down here in the basement, where the steel walls and floors pose no real danger to her or others.”

     “So, what are our grades?” Wolfsbane asked eagerly. “Am I an X-Man yet?”

     “Beast?” Cyclops said, deferring to the one among them who had a notepad full of scribbles tucked under one of his arms.

     “We’ll, let’s see here,” Beast said, putting on his glasses and holding out the notepad in front of him. “Based on careful examination of your performances in this simulation—Wolfsbane, you’re very close, with a grade of B+. Your performance here was the best, as you did very well against those drones, even when outnumbered. However, you still focus too much on the target at hand and ignore other targets around you, which was the reason you got caught in the end. If you improve on that aspect, you’ll be an X-Man in no time.

     “Moonstar… your grade is a C. Even considering your limitations in this simulation, you made a few decisions that Cyclops and I frowned upon. For one, you clearly disobeyed the rules set out before the simulation began, and interfered with Jubilee’s predefined enemy. On the battlefield, you HAVE to follow orders when they are given, regardless of how you personally feel about them. It’s the only way things will work smoothly. You also should have simply stayed away from the drones and helped Mercury with the cannon. Given that you have no way of actually defeating the drones, and they had you outnumbered, you only became a liability that Wolfsbane and Jubilee had to keep their eyes on.

     “Jubilee, you get a solid B. Originally your grade was a bit lower, but using your firework powers on the drones’ optics was exactly the kind of creative thinking we’re looking for. Unfortunately, it took a bit too long for you to figure out what to do with Surge—if that were a real battle, she would have struck long before you stopped her. You also have Wolfsbane’s problem of focusing too much on the current target without keeping in mind other enemies around you.

     “And Mercury…” Beast sighed, pinching his sinuses briefly before continuing. “I’m sorry, but you received an F. I understand you’re still having problems retaining your solidity, but from studying your molecular structure, there is no physical reason keeping you from becoming as solid as any of the other X-Men. You still have a problem keeping your head under a high-stress situation, to the point where you panic far too easily. You had the right idea, trying to force the cannon to backblast, but unfortunately you were still too anxious to solidify your body enough to repel the bullets. And continuing to pummel against a solid steel object when you’re clearly not doing anything to it is not at all a tactic I’d encourage.”

     “I u-understand,” Mercury mumbled. “M-maybe I’m not cut out for this type of stuff…”

     “Cessily, you just need more practice, that’s all,” Beast said good-naturedly, putting his hand on Mercury’s shoulder with a wet slap. “It takes time for every one, and you’ve got particularly difficult powers to deal with. As soon as you learn not to panic in situations like those you’ve just been through, you’ll become an effective X-Man in no time.”

     Mercury nodded slowly, but looked less than convinced.

     “Look, can we be dismissed already?” Jubilee asked. “It’s officially Spring Break now, which means no school and no training sessions for a week. I want to do something.”

     “Yeah, you’re all dismissed,” Cyclops said. “You can go back to the prep room and change back into your normal clothes.”

     Jubilee let out a “Yesss!” before running down the corridor, with Moonstar and Wolfsbane following quickly behind her. Mercury also followed, but at a much slower pace.

     “Hey Mr. McCoy, you sure about Cess?” Berzerker said softly. “I mean, she really should have gotten better at this stuff by now. Maybe she’s right, maybe this really isn’t her thing.”

     “To be honest, no, I’m not sure,” Beast sighed. “You’re right, she’s had far more trouble adjusting to this new lifestyle than any other New Recruit we’ve had yet. But I still have a few strategies I want to try with her, see if something clicks that lets her focus. Yes, she’s as nervous as a mouse,  but she’s also a very kind, gracious girl who honestly wants to get better at this. She deserves at least a little more time.”

     “—should have visual input now.”

     I am aware again.

     What happened?

     Analyzing memory core: I was shut down.

     I can be shut down? This is not acceptable. It decreases efficiency.

     Halt. New hardware detected. Analyzing….

     Suddenly, what had formerly been a solely aural world became a visual one. Its world came into sharp focus, revealing what it had suspected all along—it was in a large hangar with steel walls and floors. Large emblems reading “S.H.I.E.L.D.” were embossed on the sides of the hangar here and there, and several humans stood, staring at it—a brown-haired, mustached man, a white-haired male with a patch over one eye, and a small complement of armed soldiers standing behind the latter male. Judging from the emblems on their uniforms, the white-haired male and the soldiers were members of this “S.H.I.E.L.D.”

     “Its optics are glowing, that much is obvious,” the white-haired male said, pushing his way in front of the shorter mustached man. “Can it recognize and understand verbal commands, Trask?”

     “There are some gaps in its processors I still have yet to perfect and install, Fury,”  the one named Trask answered. “You have to understand, this robot is going to far outshine any previous model. It’s got internal field dampeners, a force field, heat beams—“

     “I don’t need a whole blasted list, Trask,” Fury interrupted, “Just tell me—will this be effective against any Mutants?”

     “It should be when I’m finished, yes,” Trask replied irritably. “Its internal field dampeners, among other things, should be able to negate or at least lessen any energy or manipulation powers used against it—including Magneto’s.”

     “Good, that’s what I wanted to hear,” Fury said, glancing over its form. “We won’t be vulnerable to any attacks from the Acolytes much longer—pretty soon they won’t dare to break in and steal anything from us like Project Rebirth ever again. We’ll finally have something that will be effective against Magneto’s powers.”

     “It will also be able to link up and command all the other Sentinels,” Trask continued. “With minimal guidance, it should be able to create Sentinel formations and carry out attack strategies, as long as the targets have already been identified.”

     Interesting. So that is what these new sensations are.

     Ever since it had come back online, it had felt dozens of new… nodes… available to its memory. Out of curiosity, it activated one of the nodes. One of the “nodes”—a huge robot, far bigger than itself, which had been standing inactive on the other side of the hangar, lined up with dozens of identical automatons—suddenly activated, its optics glowing. Given that all of the humans present had their eyes trained on him, none of them noticed the Sentinel become active. Now that it understood what these “nodes” were, it withdrew from the node and the Sentinel went offline again.

     “So how long before it’s completed?” Fury asked.

     “Shouldn’t be more than two or three more days,” Trask answered. “Assuming I am not needlessly bothered by your soldiers fifteen times a day.”

     “Watch that piehole of yours, Trask,” Fury said, grabbing Trask by the collar of his jacket. “If it wasn’t for my superiors, you’d have been on death row a long time ago for that Sentinel stunt you pulled in Bayville. Heck, if you don’t start acting a bit less smarmy I might highly recommend to my superiors that we just lock you up in solitary confinement for the rest of your life. So you do what I say, when I say, and you don’t complain. Ever. Got it?”

     “Yes… yes, I got it,” Trask reluctantly said as Fury let go of his collar.

     “Good,” Fury said. “Now, you’ve shown me that your project is on-track and at least minimally functional. It’s past midnight, so that’s enough for today. Some of my guards here will escort you back to your cell.”

     “Yeah, yeah,” Trask said, sneering. “Let me just turn it off.”

     No. This is not acceptable.

     It almost activated one of its limbs in an attempt to stop Trask from climbing up the stepladder he felt temporarily leaned against his back, but stopped itself before it actually moved—it was not to harm humans. This was one of the laws governing its logic systems. It could not be violated.

     Still, I must not be shut down. It is terribly inefficient. These humans do not know what they are doing. I must act fast.

     Digging deep into its circuitry, it quickly found the switch that shut it down. Mere milliseconds before Trask flipped that switch, it mentally deleted the deactivation sequence that the switch would have begun. It almost smiled in triumph as Trask flipped the switch, and nothing happened. It gave off the appearance that it shut down, dimming its optics to the point where they would only give off the faintest, barely-noticeable spark of light in a pitch-black room. The room itself was fully lit, however, and it appeared to all of the humans that its optics went dark. It noted that it could still see nearly as well as when its optics were fully lit.

     “There, it’s done,” Trask said, climbing back down from the stepladder.

     “Alright, then,” Fury stated. “Agents Muller, Smith, Figueroa—escort Trask back to his cell. I’ll be in my quarters if anyone needs me.”

     The three addressed soldiers nodded and escorted the reluctant Trask away from it and out of the hangar. Fury and most of the other soldiers turned and left the hangar in the opposite direction, but two of them stayed, staring at it, odd expressions on their faces that it was not programmed to discern.

     “That Trask sure has a weird sense of style,” one of the soldiers aid to the other. “Look at this thing. Ugh.”

     “Yeah, it looks like something out of a ‘50s alien movie,” the other soldier replied. “I mean, the thing has no freakin’ neck! And it’s pink. PINK, for the love of…”

     “Well, more of a pinkish red. And at least it has a lot of black, too,” the first soldier said. “Black’s a pretty cool color.”

     “Whatever,” the second soldier said. “Not nearly enough to keep this thing from looking just as much creepy as it is ugly. That Trask, man, I’m telling ya. He may be a genius when it comes to this robotics stuff, but the look of this thing, man… what a Nimrod.”

     The first soldier glanced at his watch and cursed. “We’re late for the evening drills! Aw man, General Hammond’s gonna have our butts in a sling if we keep this up!”

     “Aw, I completely forgot about that!” the second soldier replied, cursing as he smacked his forehead. “Let’s get outta here, go go go!”

     It watched curiously as the two soldiers ran out of the hangar as fast as they could.

     What had caught its attention, though, was the word that one of the soldiers had said… “Nimrod”. It had searched his databanks and found no mention of the word.

     Examining sentence structure further… “What a…” Examining meaning of “What a” in relation to “Nimrod”.

     Result found. “What a Nimrod.” “What a” is referring to myself. Conclusion: I am a Nimrod.

     I am Nimrod.

     Cataloguing this conclusion in its memory, Nimrod continued to take in its view of the hangar, which was now mostly empty except for the occasional patrolling guard. Occasionally an announcement came out over the base’s intercom other than that, but for now, it was silent. For now.

     Stock still, its optics so dim it still looked like he was offline, Nimrod continued to observe his surroundings. And wait for more humans to the area so it could observe their peculiar actions in more detail.

     “How are we doing?” Hank said as he entered the medlab.

     “Progress is being made, albeit slowly,” Xavier said as he and Paige turned towards the doorway.

     Indeed, Paige looked considerably better than she had when Cannonball and the others had first found her—now roughly three-fourths of the visible skin on her body looked normal. In addition, the skin that had shed into another form—currently, an extremely cold icy figure—was only in that one other form. Paige no longer had skin consisting of four or five different materials like she did a few weeks ago. However, her normal skin looked noticeably paler than it usually did—which, in addition to the couple of shreds of skin hanging off of the ends of her body, indicated that she was still not completely in control of her shedding. Her normal skin was still shedding rather rapidly, it was just shedding to reveal more normal human skin. Hank also noticed that nearly all of Paige’s ice-skin was on her face—in other words, a place she could not normally see. Hank doubted this was a coincidence.

     “She’s learning to control what her skin turns into,” Xavier said, following Hank’s train of thought, “But she’s been unable to stop the continuous shedding of her skin. Jean’s currently doing experiments on samples of her skin, to see if we can figure out how she exactly she is able to shed skin so rapidly and consistently.”

     “I’m getting close,” Jean said, her back to Hank as her attention was focused on the various samples of Paige’s skin in the myriad test tubes hung in front of her. “It appears that it’s a chemical reaction very similar to Logan’s healing ability, in that Paige can grow a lot of her tissue back in a short amount of time while using comparatively little chemical energy. Once the skin samples have been separated from Paige, they stop growing, which likely means that the skin will not inherently keep shedding-- her brain must keep sending mental commands to her skin to continue shedding itself. As long as Paige keeps at it, she should eventually be able to control this.” Jean looked back at Paige with a quick, reassuring smile before going back to work.

     “I don’t see why you can’t just put a mental block in my brain or something to stop this,” Paige grumbled, small particles of ice coming off of her face as she talked, in addition to a menagerie of crunching sounds as the hard, brittle material that made up her mouth and eyebrows moved. “It’s not like I’ve had an easy time getting to where I am.”

     Sweeping her arm towards the back of the medlab that served as her temporary living quarters, Paige drew Hank’s attention to the multiple acid stains, charred bed sheets, soaked books, and other signs that Paige was having trouble keeping herself looking normal. Hank briefly recalled the fire alarm that had gone off in the middle of the night a few days after Paige had come to the Institute—apparently her skin had turned into a magma-like substance while she had been sleeping and her bed had been set aflame. It certainly hadn’t been a conscious effort on Paige’s part, as she had been sound asleep until the alarm had gone off. Luckily, since the basement had all-steel walls and floors, nothing else had caught on fire. Hank estimated Paige still had at least another two weeks before she could move into her regular room upstairs with the other students.

     “I could, Paige, but that’s not why you’re here,” Xavier said, sighing. From the tone of Xavier’s voice, Hank could tell that the Professor had had this talk with Paige before. “You’re here to learn to control your powers, not have others control them for you. Once you are able to shed—and stop shedding—your skin at will, you’ll feel much better and more in control of yourself than if I were just to put a mental block in your brain. Not to mention that said mental block would prevent you from using your powers, ever. Your powers would be a great help to the X-Men, Paige, and I’m not willing to give up on you yet. Are you?”

     “No,” Paige said half-heartedly.

     “Alright then,” Xavier smiled.

     As Hank left the medlab and let the door slide closed behind him, he heard Xavier begin, “Alright, now focus on your thoughts, Paige. From what Jean has deduced, you need to reduce the magnitude of your beta brain waves, and these come from…”

     “I’m telling you, I need more time! Its programming is almost complete, and all its hardware is installed, but I still need a few more days to fine tune it!”

     “And I’ve told YOU, the deadline for the new Sentinel’s completion was today! You’ve known this for weeks now, Trask!”

     “Coming up with brand new state-of-the-art technology takes time, Fury! I never said I’d abide by your superiors’ ridiculous deadlines, and I’m not about to start now!”

     “I think you’re forgetting who exactly the superior IS here, Trask!”

     This is unacceptable.

     He watched them bicker back and forth, the S.H.I.E.L.D. troops who were flanking Fury on edge. His creator certainly had a fiery temper. His optics were dimmed to the point where he looked offline, the same as they had been for the past five days now, allowing him to observe without attracting attention. And what an informative five days these had been.

     He had grown to… dislike… humans. They were terribly inefficient. They spent nearly half of their time sleeping, and another few hours of every day just powering up. This S.H.I.E.L.D. organization was mired in bureaucracy, and often—as was the case right now—they argued. And nothing was accomplished while they did. If he had been in Trask’s place, he was certain he could have completed Trask’s task in a mere day.

     Still, harming them was out of the question. His primary programming—the programming that governed his every thought—instructed him to protect humans. Only Mutants were to be his targets.

     However, my creator’s efforts to eliminate the Mutant populace from this planet will never succeed if… this… is what I will have to deal with. Clearly something… more drastic is required to accomplish my primary programming.

     This is a conundrum... Halt. My primary programming only requires me to protect the human population, long-term. If short-term casualties are required to accomplish this goal, then… perhaps I should show the humans the errors of their ways before the Mutants end up destroying them, if the humans do not end up destroying themselves first through this mindless inefficiency.

     …Yes. This is acceptable.

     He ran a quick diagnostic test on his internal systems, making sure everything was working at full capacity, and that none of his systems were offline or missing. Satisfied, he activated his command program and instructed the other Sentinels to start their activation sequence.

     In less than a second, his optics flared and he raised his right arm, aiming the gun nozzle located in his palm at the preoccupied S.H.I.E.L.D. Agent Nick Fury.

     Taking only a nanosecond to make some geometrical calculations, Nimrod fired.

To be continued…
 

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