Excelsior, etc.
Oh, and a WIP, from near the end.
The Baby Killer could feel its head pressure dropping. One punchtape intelligence had fallen silence, damaged by Daddy's guns or possibly the lunatic who had clung to its back a little while. There was less sense to its purpose now, more confusion about the world.
Choice subtracted certainty.
There was still the cold comfort of numbers, vectors, lines of force and power. With its mechano-electrical eyes it had seen lighting chasing after more lightning across the skies. Every thud of a bullet into its casing had registered. Every imprecation hurled by Daddy had been heard.
Where was Mommy, it wondered for the first time in so many words. There had been Mommy, not so long ago.
The lambent brown eyes in the skin-stretched face could not weep, but the machine could. Oil, water, vivimantic solute.
Its time was almost over. Daddy would surely tear apart the baby's head, rip out the punchtape intelligences and neural cannulae which helped this Baby Killer to possess a rudimentary soul, a sense of self, a door open to free will.
Tiling its head back, the Baby Killer began to scream. All the powers of its altered voicebox were brought to bear, breaking an electrical trail through the air which would call down the lightning that even now played across the sunset sky.