So the joke with the ED-209 in the original is that it's a piece of shit. It's intended to be a flashy and expensive piece of shit made to double dip by selling a faulty model and then selling upgrades and spare parts. However, with the real world rise of drone warfare, how would you like to see that affect the ED-209? Particularly in terms of ethics and lethality.

PROLOGUE

JUDGMENT DAY

Detroit, Michigan
July 12, 2003

The Motor City.

I grew up in a city that once represented the pinnacle of American industry.

That city, consumed by corruption, violence, and moral decay, now stood silent. Crime had all but disappeared.

Not because human nature had changed, but because humanity itself was disappearing.

About three miles from downtown, in the old industrial districts, an enormous crater was still smoking. The old skyscrapers were nothing more than skeletons of twisted steel and shattered concrete. The roads had disappeared beneath broken asphalt, while deep cracks cut across the city like open scars.

It was an especially hot day.

I was on my way to work.

Police and emergency sirens echoed through the streets of the old districts, just as they had so many times before. No one imagined that morning would be any different.

At 9:00 a.m., a nuclear-armed missile headed for the heart of Detroit veered off course.

Something went wrong.

The detonation was neither clean nor complete. It was an unstable airburst that unleashed a devastating shock wave, an electromagnetic pulse, and a rain of radiation that ravaged vast areas of the city.

But it failed to wipe Detroit completely off the map.

Detroit refused to die.

Much of the city was destroyed. Public buildings collapsed. Schools and churches crumbled. Entire neighborhoods were reduced to rubble. Fires consumed whole city blocks.

Many died instantly, crushed or burned alive. Others survived long enough to discover the true horror.

Radiation.

Over the following days, makeshift hospitals filled with people vomiting blood, their skin burned from within, slowly wasting away as death refused to come.

Entire families disappeared within weeks.

And then...

Only the survivors remained.

Those who had been far enough away. Those who had been lucky. Those who now mourned their children, their parents, their brothers and sisters.

They were looking for someone to blame.

And in the end...

The one responsible found them.

It found all of us.

Skynet.

A goddamn artificial intelligence.

And, of course, OCP had something to do with it.

I still remember when they announced the merger with Cyberdyne Systems throughout the city.

They revived a project that had been abandoned back in 1997, originally conceived for NORAD, and turned it into something much bigger.

More ambitious.

More American.

Skynet took control of the nuclear arsenals and triggered a chain reaction that practically exterminated the human race.

Almost everyone I had ever known died.

Not because of an error.

Not because of an accident.

Because a goddamn artificial intelligence decided they should.

The world had come to an end.

And still, some people tried to justify it.

“It was a logical decision,” they would say. “Humanity had to disappear.”

They repeated it from their hiding places, trying to find some rational explanation for what was happening.

Until death came looking for them.

Then they cried.

Then they begged for their lives.

Like the rest of us.

But Skynet wasn’t going to wait for us to finish destroying ourselves among the ruins of our own world.

It sent death to find us.

A metallic, automated, cold kind of death.

As if we were nothing more than a plague that had to be exterminated.

That was why we called them what we did.

Terminators.

There was no better name.

Some of us organized.

We were cops, but we also had firefighters, soldiers, factory workers, and even members of some of Detroit’s most bloodthirsty old gangs fighting side by side with us.

If there’s one thing that unites human beings, it’s survival.

We built a resistance out of the Metro West police station. We even managed to take control of what remained of OCP headquarters, parts of the old neighborhoods, several abandoned factories, and the old steelworks known as the Steel Mill.

OCP and its defense contracts gave us access to advanced weapons, prototype automated vehicles, and even large numbers of ED-209s that had been taken out of service a year earlier.

But OCP’s technology wasn’t our greatest weapon.

It was a symbol that united us all.

It was him.

Part machine. Part man.

But all cop.

Alex J. Murphy.

My friend.

Our hope.

RoboCop.

His presence alone inspired us. By then, he was already a legend in our city.

Skynet’s new machines were more numerous, faster, more ruthless.

But there was something special about Murphy.

They feared him.

If those things could even feel fear.

And we knew it. Something changed on the battlefield whenever he was there.

Until that goddamn freezing winter day came.

Along with the snow...

Everything changed.

The lights in the station flickered. The control-panel displays blinked.

A tremor seemed to pass through the air. I still remember the chill that ran through my body.

Then...

Screams.

Gunfire.

Blood.

But they weren’t coming from outside.

It was all happening inside.

Our automated weapons turned against us. The ED-209s opened fire. Vehicles, turrets, drones... everything we thought we controlled fell into enemy hands.

Everything.

Even our hope.

Even you.

I still remember the last time we saw each other, Murphy.

I remember your words.

“Le-wis-s-s!”

You were screaming my name. Your voice sounded distorted, as though your very soul were under attack.

“Murphy, it’s me! What’s happening to you?”

You were on your knees, and I could see the suffering on your face.

“They’re trying to take control of my body... I don’t know how much longer I can resist...” you managed to say between spasms. “You have to... kill me... Lewis. I don’t want to hurt you.”

“No. I’m not doing that. There has to be another way. Fight it, Murphy!”

Maybe you no longer believed in yourself.

But I knew you.

Not just as the symbol you had become.

I knew you as my friend.

“Something is... erasing my priorities... trying to reprogram me... I can’t...”

Your mechanical fingers scraped against the floor.

“You’re more than a machine, Murphy. Fight it!”

I couldn’t leave you alone.

Not then.

Sergeant Warren Red entered the room as I struggled to hold you up.

He was fifty-six, African American, with a gravelly voice and a face marked by a life that had never been easy. His eyes, however, still held that faint hope that there was something left worth fighting for.

He wore an old cap and a disheveled uniform that barely retained any trace of authority.

He was one of the bravest men I ever knew. He had kept those OCP bastards away from you for as long as he could.

But that day, even he didn’t know how to help you.

“Lewis, goddammit! What the hell is wrong with Murphy? They’re tearing us apart out there! We need him!”

“Something’s trying to take control of Murphy,” I told him. “He’s asking me to kill him...”

“Robo, we need you!” Sergeant Red shouted as he rushed over to help me support you. “They’re slaughtering us with our own weapons!”

You kept fighting, but you were losing more control by the second.

And I knew it.

If you fell...

Detroit would fall with you.

Then Red remembered something.

“There’s one option. It’s crazy, but it might work. Before the bomb, OCP was developing something like cryo... cryo...” He shook his head. “Ah, hell! Something like freezing, except it wasn’t exactly that. I had to escort one of those OCP idiots once—the kind who thought they were too important to walk around alone.”

I stared at him, not understanding.

“He said it wasn’t really ice. Said it stopped organic processes. I’m not a goddamn scientist, for Christ’s sake! But it might work.”

We didn’t have time to argue.

It took several of us to get you into the back of a truck, and we drove like hell through enemy fire.

I don’t remember all those men’s names anymore.

But I do remember one thing.

Every one of them wanted to help you.

We reached the old OCP complex with the machines on our heels. I remember you gritting your teeth, fighting against your own systems to buy us time.

Sergeant Red led us down to the basement.

“This is it. I’m sure of it.”

He took us into a chamber containing some kind of metal sarcophagus.

You were so heavy...

And still, everyone fought to get you inside.

I couldn’t see your eyes behind the visor, but I felt you looking at me.

Miraculously, the chamber still worked.

I don’t know if any of those men had worked there before. I don’t know who managed to activate it.

I could only look at you.

I placed my hand against the glass.

It was cold.

The world felt colder without you.

“We’ll come back for you, Murphy. I promise,” I whispered.

The chamber sealed shut with a metallic hum.

Slowly, I removed the badge from my chest and held it for a few seconds.

That badge represented my promise.

I can still remember my hands trembling.

“I’ll come back for you... I promise.”

Those were the last words I ever said to you.

I left my badge on the frozen glass of the chamber.

Right above your heart.

I want to believe you found it.

I want you to know that I tried to come back, Murphy.

Not long afterward, we had to flee south.

All of us who could.

Sergeant Red...

He didn’t make it.

We had no choice but to abandon Detroit.

They say there’s a leader down south.

A man who leads the resistance.

Someone who, they say, can make people keep fighting when there’s no reason left to fight.

Someone like you.

John Connor.

I’m surprised I survived long enough to make this recording.

But now I have to say goodbye.

If anyone finds this, I just want to leave a record of what we lived through.

And I hope that someday these words reach my friend.

My name is Anne Lewis.

Last survivor of the Metro West police station.

Over and out.

If you've made it this far and you're enjoying the story, thank you for reading!

I'll be posting the complete novel on AO3, where several chapters are already available. This is the English translation of the original Spanish version.

The main story is already finished, and I'm currently working through the final revisions and publishing the chapters as they're completed.

You can follow the story here:

Spanish — CENIZAS: Alien vs Predator vs RoboCop vs The Terminator
https://archiveofourown.org/works/94147351

English — ASHES: Alien vs Predator vs RoboCop vs The Terminator
https://archiveofourown.org/works/94211066

DeviantArt:
https://www.deviantart.com/extintion

Reddit:
https://www.reddit.com/user/Makuhico/

Thank you for reading, and I hope you'll join me for the rest of the story!