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The bulky front legs of the robotic ‘taur slammed down at either side of Saxan’s body as the machine came to a dead stop from its sprint, the concrete flooring of the isolated alleyway visibly dented underneath its excessive weight. Even if he hadn’t tripped over a toppled garbage can and fallen flat on his ass, there was no way he could have run any further - he had been trying to lose the damn thing for over ten minutes, and his lungs were burning almost as painfully as his aching leg muscles.
The new bots - ‘Apprehender Models’, he’d heard somebody call them - had taken him completely off guard. Only a week ago, cracking his way into a jewellery store and making off with the cashbox would have gotten him chased down by maybe a half-dozen Patrol Models, and those lanky assholes weren’t even mobile enough to properly vault a chain-link fence without suffering a mechanical fault. This time, he wasn’t even sure how the four-legged oversized toaster had managed to catch up with him so fast, even after ducking through buildings to throw it off his trail.
Fast, agile, and dense enough to run right through whatever obstacles he possessed into its way. Saxan’s only saving grace was the vague hope that the thing was dumb enough to fool with words.
“You are being charged with breaking and entering, theft and obstruction of justice. Fines and penalties will be determined by your local authority. Everything you say from this point forward will be logged and recorded for future testimony and evidence corroboration.” Its voice was far deeper than Saxan had expected. The machine’s single siren-eye flickered between a burning red and a freezing blue as it kept its gaze on him, its metal maw sealed as its artificial voice broadcast from speakers all across its body. “Please stand up and I will escort you to the nearest detention cell.”
“...oh, this?” Pulling the cash box out from under his armpit, Saxan gingerly offered it up to the robot’s emotionless gaze. “No, this is mine. See, that’s my store, I forgot my keys and-”
“The business in question is logged as to a mister M. A. Whittaker. You are not M. A. Whittaker. Your identity has already been confirmed and checked against past criminal records.” Taking an ominous step forward, the robot let its upper body loom over him with its arms crossed, the lower half of its form standing firm and ready to pounce if he even dared try to run. “Please stand up and I will escort you to the nearest detention cell. This is your second non-compliance warning.”
“Hey, wait, you didn't tell me about the first!” Fumbling around in the hidden pockets within his coat, Saxan tried in faint to get his gloved hands around even one of his pistols, hoping that he’d fumble out one loaded with EMP rounds. “That doesn’t seem fair.”
The robot said nothing, its posture only seeming to stiffen up as it waited for him to comply. A cold sweat was forming across the thief’s forehead as he tried in vain to find any of his useful gear, his hands unable to distinguish a gun from a lockpick given the amount of panic shooting through him.
“Stand up. This is your final warning.”
After a half-second longer of searching, Saxan’s hand brushed against exactly what he needed. With a single movement, the thief drew his hand from his coat, weapon raised and ready to fire. The crack of an EMP slug leaving his weapons’ barrel carried across the entire city district.
Saxan had been expecting the machine to either freeze in place or simply keel over. Instead, the gun was snatched from his hand before his arm could even finish absorbing the recoil, drawn into the machine’s grasp with a hand-mounted Suspension Field Generators. Within milliseconds, the barrel was snapped in two by the centaur’s overly-powerful fingers, metal shards clattering to the floor of the alleyway.
“Gross noncompliance and attempted murder of a mechanical officer. Your right to a willing escort and standard detention has been revoked.”
Before Saxan could ask what that even meant, the metal plating of the centaur’s underbelly retracted, a synthetic stomach bulging out from the gap and hanging low to the ground. It only took him a second or two to realise that there was something moving in there, a muffled plea for help getting smothered by a deep groan from within the machine’s body.
The bolt of fear that shot through Saxan only grew stronger as he saw the machine’s palms reach out for him, the Suspension Field Generators pulling him off the ground and dragging him right into its grasp. With a yelp of surprise, he felt himself jerk upwards, the robot’s hands gripping him tight by the shoulders to the point that there was absolutely no chance of him slipping out.
“Wait, what the hell are you doing?”
“Alternate detention and processing methods have been authorised by this sector’s precinct. Please remain calm and cease physical resistance.”
“Fuck no, I’m not-”
The machine’s maw split open, and Saxon only got a brief look at the smooth synthetic flesh within before he was shoved headfirst into its mouth, the robot’s upper body tilting back to make the process easier. Kicking out in surprise, the thief tried to free himself from its grasp, its hands only gripping him harder as a result.
Already, everything above his upper arms was stuck in the robot’s mouth, it’s unusually warm and soft throat dragging him deeper with perfect precision. Saxan could hear a light groaning up ahead, layered above a much deeper churning beneath - and realised to his horror that the thing had two stomachs, just like a real centaur.
Wherever he was headed, it was only the holding cell, the slow-cooker. Whether or not he ended up getting dragged into the second stomach was entirely up to the law.
Another artificial gulp dragged Saxan a few inches deeper as the walls of the machine’s throat lurched around him, a coating of lubricant giving him absolutely no way to wedge himself in. Already, he was starting to disappear into the mechanical beast’s body, his arms unable to thrash around quite as effectively and his legs starting to get tired of the fruitiness kicking.
Each groan from down below was like another taunt at Saxan being captured, a tease that he was slowly having his chances of escape sucked away from him with each inch he slid closer to the centaur’s first belly. He had no idea how he must have looked from the outside, but he could absolutely imagine the lack of impact, given their relative sizes - the machine was easily as tall as two members of his own species, and his shorter-than-average height wasn't’ exactly helping matters. As far as he knew, he would barely even be making a dent in the robot’s throat, let alone its waistline.
Another pull, another lurch downwards. Every pull dragged Saxan deeper, but it wasn’t the same natural gulps and swallows as a live pred: it was perfectly timed and fully mechanical, each movement determined by an internal clock that cared more for efficiency than savouring the moment. Within what felt like only a few seconds, his waist was already starting to slip past the creature’s metal maw, his legs losing the will to keep fighting back now that there was nothing within reach to even kick anymore.
Struggling to keep himself focused despite being upside-down in a machine’s tightly-squeezed throat, Saxan did his best to reach for any escape tools in his jacket, finding it almost impossible to actually find the pockets in such a cramped space. None of his gear was within easy reach, and part of him doubted that he would be able to hack or harm the machine from within anyway - this model felt purpose-built to cover up even the most subtle of flaws.
By the time his knees had disappeared into the machine, gravity did the rest. With no leverage holding him back, it only took a slight head-tilt from the robot to force Saxan down into its upper belly, the thief letting out a confused groan of discomfort as he was crammed into a far-too-tight space that offered absolutely no give.
“...well, shit…”
“Suspect contained. Processing arrest. Receiving remote sentence from Capital Authority computer.” The speakers on the machine's body were muffled, but still very much audible past the ambient gurgles and groans of its inner workings. “Verdict says… community service. Retrieving additional verification from district chief.”
Doing his best to punch out against the walls of the centaur’s stomach, Saxan only felt himself running out of energy as he tried in vain to make enough room for even a simple elbow jab. He was stuck curbed up over himself, the upper stomach around him seeming to push inwards whenever he found a way to open up even a slight bit more room. There was no doubt about it: this was the holding cell, the brief interlude before he was given a sentence.
He would have praised how smart the design was if he hadn’t been currently pressed tight against the walls of a machine that was designed to keep him there as long as necessary.
A light grumble of what sounded like hunger worked its way through the stomach around him as he felt a sudden flood of artificial digestive juices pumping into the synthetic organ around him.
“Disposing of weapons and illicit substances. Please remain calm.”
Unable to actually do anything about his situation, Saxan just let out a few weak noises of irritation as he felt the liquid flowing into his jacket, the unusual substance sticking to his weapons and thieving equipment like thick glue. A moment or two passed before he realised what it was doing - the spare gun in his jacket’s side pocket was staring to melt, the firm feeling of the slide gradually starting to disappear as the metal was dissolved and digested in mere seconds.
Saxan himself was unharmed, but his gear was either already gone or breaking down too fast to recover. If there had been a way to hijack the unit from inside with some quick hacking or some sloppy re-writing, he wasn’t going to get a chance to find out.
“You are being registered as Prisoner DI-45243. Please remember this number in the event of a processing failure. The Capital Authority may require that you restate this number during future hearings.”
Offering nothing more than a silent scowl to the robot who couldn’t even see him anymore, Saxan let his mind wander. His situation was equal parts bizarre and strangely hard to stop thinking about - there was something oddly fascinating about the idea of how he must have looked on such a huge machine, considering that he was very likely just a lumpy bulge in its upper belly. For all he knew, he could just be a smooth distention, or maybe a visible impression of a suspect sealed inside there - when he inevitably managed to get a massively reduced sentence through some careful leveraging of criminal connections, he would have to look the model up and figure out how they worked, if only to find their potential vulnerabilities.
“Suspect had been logged and registered. Prisoner DI-45243, your community service begins now. Your end date will be determined by your performance. Please prepare for transfer.”
Breathing a sigh of relief, Saxan did his best to try and get ready to be spat back out. They would probably just slap a monitoring collar on him like last time, one that he would easily be able to take apart with his bare fingers if he needed to.
A sudden shift of the centaur’s upper stomach threw him off balance, and before he knew it, Saxan was being dragged forwards - in the wrong direction. A heavy groan from up ahead made it very clear that he was not being sent back out the way he came in - or possibly not being sent back out at all. Unlike the throat, the tube between stomachs was far less forgiving, eschewing the comfortable smoothness for a rough and brutal set of pushes and pulls that dragged him around like he was little more than a toy to play with. Unsure how to respond, the thief kept his arms close to his chest, feeling the unexpected rolls and twists of peristalsis forcing him deeper with a series of off-tempo squeezes and sloppy attempts to pull him in the right direction.
He wasn’t sure if the machine had made a mistake or if he had misunderstood something, but there was nothing he could really do except see where the situation went.
Little by little and inch by inch, Saxan found himself being pulled deeper into what were probably the centaur’s guts as he tried to make a mental map of its insides, just in case one ever caught him again. It was easy to assume that he was on the way to the other stomach, but you could never really tell with robots - especially not one that could swallow you in only a few gulps.
The slick walls of the stomach-to-stomach tunnel were far hotter than they needed to be, the heat pooling around Saxan as he felt the tube bulge out around him. He was being gradually packed deeper in, his chances of escape already firmly at zero and somehow still dropping as he realised that he probably wasn’t leaving until he got to whatever holding cell they had prepared for him. Deep, needy groans filled the little free space he had around him, reverberating through the machine’s synthetic body in a way that was equal parts taunting and terrifying.
It wasn’t until his head passed the threshold into the lower stomach that he realised where he even was, the darkness making it difficult to keep track of his position. With one last push from the muscles surrounding him, he was dumped unceremoniously into the thankfully-roomier underbelly, the surface beneath him clearly bulging out to accommodate his weight until he felt the solid surface of the concrete under his back.
The digestive juices around him were thicker, weightier. Still not able to see very well, Saxan did his best to avoid moving too much, wincing as he felt the entire organ groan in what sounded like incredibly realistic ravenous hunger. “...so, I’m being transported in here?”
“Commencing digestion.”
A bolt of terrified confusion rocked through Saxan as he practically jumped up in surprise, only to topple over as the stomach surrounding him squeezed him tight and kept him firmly in his place. “Wait, no! You said I was sentenced to community service!”
“Correct. Additional mass permits artificial officers to operate at a reduced rate of fuel consumption. Your contribution to the protection of your community will be recognised.”
“But I-!”
Saxan didn’t get a chance to finish before he felt the stomach walls surrounding him suddenly clench tighter, squeezing him hard from all angles as they started to gently knead at his body. It suddenly hit him that the thick and dense slurry surrounding him wasn’t just another artificial substance - it was probably what remained of whoever he had seen earlier, making an unsuccessful last stand against the machine’s powerful insides.
The world around him seemed to shift at a steady pace as the machine wandered back to its patrol route. Each heavy footfall made the entire synthetic space sway in the open air, the chyme surrounding him sloshing heavily from side to side in tandem. Something beneath him whirred, the stomach around him shifting as he felt the space compact just a little tighter. The centaur’s outer plating was re-sealing, squeezing its bulging underbelly back into its armour with him still stuck inside it.
All that the thief could let out was a worried peep as he heard the magnetic latches seal tight, cutting off whatever fleeting hopes of escape he had left. All he had left was the warm insides of a centaur robot that had no reason to let him loose - and the heavy, needy, wet gurgles of a stomach that was already warmed up from its previous meal and ready for a second course.