Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

Darkness. That was how her days and nights went. Unable to suffer from hunger and thirst, because her jailer would not allow this form of twisted justice to end like that, she simply existed. Trapped in an empty room filled with nothing but darkness, she spent her days sitting against a bare metal wall and looking at nothing. 

Tessa actively welcomed it.

The absolute absence of stimuli let her to stop thinking. To stop remembering.

Remembering the days at the Manor. Those memories were a blessing and a curse, they were glimpses of better times. She could lose herself in the days she had spent with her friends, sharing her dreams for their future with J, quietly reading with V, listening to N’s rambles, trying to fix h… even her parents’ abuse felt preferable at times. And yet, once the memories ended, she found herself still trapped, still here. It was best not to remember those happy times, for while the past may soothe her, it made the present all that more unbearable.

Remembering the massacre of the Gala. Tessa had discovered her plan, but it’d been too late. Then again, was it too late ever since she brought that little drone home from the dumpster? Nevertheless, she had tried to stop her, but she never had a chance. Her bravado had melted once J, turned into one of her puppets, had grabbed her, rendering her helpless as the slaughter was carried on. It was best not to remember the horror that had unfolded before her, the sheer hatred unleashed on any and every human in the mansion, for while it had burned itself into her memory, it was nothing compared to what she had unleashed next.

Remembering what had come after. Once the massacre had unfolded, Tessa thought her end would come too. Yet, she’d been spared. It was not out of mercy, she had quickly concluded as Apocalypse was unleashed on the human race. 

Apocalypse. What else could it be called if not that? All of mankind’s destructive potential amounted to nothing in the end. She had spent months trapped in the empty manor, hoping that the Gala would be the extent of her revenge on humanity. Then one night hundreds of thousands, if not millions of drones all over the world became monsters: there was no fighting an enemy that was everywhere around you. Sure, humans tried and even managed to win a few victories, but it didn’t matter. 

It was the day when Tessa was first taken to the ship that had since been her prison that she had realised it had never mattered, as she was forced to watch a black hole shatter Earth like a monstrous chick bursting out of its egg. It had all become clear there and then. She had allowed the fight to carry on for as long as it did to watch humanity squirm and, once it had become boring, she had ended it, like a bored child tossing a toy away. It was best not to remember the struggle, for while she might try and stop the monster, for while all of humankind might fight against her legions, it didn’t change anything.

It was best not to remember.

Yet she wouldn’t allow her to.

It would have been a mercy and she didn't do mercy.

So when the ship had arrived at the first human colony, Tessa had been forcibly dragged to the bridge to see in detail how their defences fell, how life was carefully extinguished from the planet and how, once humanity had been thoroughly broken, the planet itself was devoured by another black hole.

Then came the next one.

And the one after that.

Tessa had almost grown numb to it, but the following time she'd been dragged from her cell, it wasn't to witness another genocide or at least, not one committed by her. 

A recording, from cameras and satellites. Humans slaughtering drones. Hunting them down, rounding them up, shooting them, chopping them in pieces, piling them on burning pyres, beating them to death.

The last planet did have a weird lack of drones, Tessa had distantly noted as a single tear rolled down her cheek.

All the while, sickly yellow eyes had bored into her, not needing to speak to convey a message.

“They’re not better than me. You are not better than me.”

Oddly enough, it hadn’t sparked that much of a reaction in Tessa. It was kind of pointless to try and elicit any despair from her, she reflected as J, deprived of her free will and personality, escorted her to cell. J had no doubt been chosen for a reason, to try and twist the knife, with little success. She supposed there was such a thing as being too successful after all: how much more hope could Tessa even lose? How far can you fall once you've reached the bottom?

She’d been dragged up again and again to witness worlds dying or her kind committing horrible acts against their own creations, but each time she reacted less and less.

Of course she hadn't liked that, not one bit.

Tessa could remember when, as she looked at other humans massacring drones that pleaded for their lives, stone faced and unfeeling, trying oh so desperately to recall the darkness of her prison to lose herself in, she had lost her patience, blinking out of existence and then right behind her, lifting Tessa by the neck, slamming the human into the viewing screen, then pulling her back to slam her once again into it.

Once Tessa had begun to feel the coppery taste of blood in her mouth and to wonder whether this was the time this broken toy was finally thrown away, she’d been flipped to face yellow eyes, her form flickering between the more familiar one and the nightmare of coils and camera and pincers and claws, demanding an explanation, a justification, a plea, anything.

To Tessa's own surprise, she had provided one.

“If they're no better than you, I guess you're not too different from them either.”

A further surprise had been when she had not been torn apart or tossed into space, but simply returned to her cell.

After that, the times when Tessa had been taken to the bridge had become fewer and fewer. The crusade of extinction continued, but Tessa’s presence was no longer needed or, more likely, wanted. 

Then even the telltale sounds of battle, the whirring of machinery, the groan of metal straining, the trembling of impact, grew rare.

Sometimes Tessa heard the chittering of the horror that kept her prisoner, phrases muttered and only heard in bits and pieces that she couldn’t even tell were meant for her at all, but nothing more than that.

Eventually the door simply stopped opening. 

There was one last shake up, the death throes of a wrathful beast, the ship itself warping under the unleashed power of its master as bellows of “Thieves!” and “Find. Her!” echoed through it.

Only once the rage wore down and the ship grew quiet once again, too quiet, did Tessa realise that the noises of drones and machinery had died down entirely and she understood that there were only two left on the ship.

At times where she didn’t manage to lose herself in the darkness, Tessa idly wondered if that’s how it ended: a machine of war with no war to fight, someone rejected by both man and machine and a vengeful god with no vengeance left to enact drifting aimlessly in space.

It wouldn’t be a bad ending.

Then, one day, after so long, the door opened again, casting a blade of light that dispelled the shadows in the room and pointed right at Tessa.

By pure instinct, Tessa skittered away in the shadows, covering her eyes hurt by the light with her hands until they got used to it once again.

And with the light came the thoughts again.

What was she supposed to do? 

She could wait here. She was not patient, eventually the door would close again and Tessa could return to her blissful darkness.

And yet…

As she walked on unsteady legs towards the door, Tessa could only suppose she had not learned enough about curiosity killing the cat.

Thankfully the cybernetic implants that had been installed in her managed to help her walk, even after what could have very much been years of not using her legs, though Tessa still found herself hobbling and shuffling rather than walking. 

Finally, she reached the door and looked left and right, finding nothing but dust and fleshy growths. Unlike the times when she was still summoned, there was no Disassembly Drone waiting for her.

She made to advance towards her left, remembering that the bridge had been on her right, only for a door to slam shut, closing off that path.

This was… weird. 

She had spent years despondent, almost not acknowledging her presence, why was she toying with her now?

Tessa tried to voice her question, to ask what was going on, only to find herself coughing on her dry throat. She might not need to drink to live, but it seemed the benefits from the miracle cybernetics had not been extended to her voice.

Warily, she proceeded right, stopping only once she came to a room with several metal doorways, all shut but for the one she had come from and the one on the other side, which revealed naught but pure darkness. It was furnished similarly to her family’s mansion. Not allowing herself to dwell on her creepy fixation on those times, her attention focused on one thing set on the dresser in front of the entrance: a crystal jug of what looked like water.

Quickly she ran over as best as she could, miraculously managing not to stumble as she did, and lifted the heavy jug to her lips.

She lifted the jug drank heartily from it, the water cool and comforting, but unfortunately for her, her arms had seen as much use as her legs had over the last few years and the cybernetics decided to pick that moment to spasm, making the crystal container fall and shatter on the ground before her thirst could truly be quenched.

A synthetic giggle echoed through the room and the corridors, making Tessa's blood freeze.

She could have dismissed the door closing before as her being oddly proactive, but this?

This was one of her cruel pranks. This was something chosen specifically for her.

This was a sleeping animal rising from its slumber. 

This was a dead god living once more as the stars became right.

And only one question presented itself at the forefront of Tessa's mind and filled her heart with fear: what could have possibly caused it?

She shook her head, trying not to think about the question and what this random act of pettiness could mean. While doing so, she caught a glimpse of an unfamiliar face on the floor.

It took her a moment to realise who it was: no one but herself, reflected in the puddle of water once contained in the now smashed jug.

Mesmerised, she knelt on the floor just before the puddle, gazing at her reflection as everything around her disappeared.

She was really tempted to just focus on the similarities and for a second, Tessa was able to see the same face she had seen in her bedroom’s mirror the morning before the Gala. The implants had spared her from the ravages of time. Tessa didn’t know how much time had passed since everything had gone wrong, just that it had been years, decades even, but her face was still smooth and soft, as if she was still a kid.

And yet, the small differences cumulated, creating something recognisable, but wrong enough to be alien.

Her face was deathly pale from years in darkness, her eyes were sunken in and decorated with dark rings, making her look ghoulish, a monster wearing Tessa’s skin.

Most striking of all, her raven black hair was no more, her face framed by a wild mane of grey hair, so similar to the one she had bestowed to her friends. Had that much time passed or was it just the result of the horrors that she had witnessed?

‘What would they think seeing you like this?’

“No.” Tessa whispered, her throat aching, now hydrated yet still suffering from years of disuse. She shook her head and tried to dispel the unbidden thought. “Stop.”

‘Their great Tessa, the person they trusted to protect them, reduced to this?’ Her own thoughts mocked her. ‘Would they even recognise you or would they just think you were one of her toys?’

“No, they…” Tessa kept shaking her head, feeling the hard won water she had just drank begin to fall from her eyes, denying the voice’s claims desperately. “They would…”

‘And would they be wrong? Are you even that same person anymore? Were you ever? It’s your fault all of this even happened. You were supposed to protect them and you led them like sheep to the slaughter. You let the wolf in. They would hate yo-’

“ENOUGH!” Tessa roared, slamming her fist on the floor so hard it hurt her hand. She could feel herself shivering in fear, afraid of being right, but this wasn’t about her. She whispered, trying to express her indignation at what she had allowed herself to think. “They would hate me? Never. Perhaps they should, but I know better than to think that low of my friends.”

Coming out here had been a mistake, Tessa told herself as she stood up. It didn’t matter if she was once again up to her tricks, she refused to be part of them. She’d return to the darkness and-

Her line of thought was interrupted as something looking at her with yellow eyes emerged from the dark corridor opposite to the one she had come from.

Tessa’s defensive stance, instinctively put up once, loosened as she took just what the figure was.

A drone, badly damaged, one of her legs missing and the other mangled, dragging herself forward with her hands and leaving a trail of oil behind her. She wore an old and elegant sparkly black dress, stained with both fresh and long dried oil, and sported short silver hair, similar to the one Tessa had given her friends, covered by a black beanie that sported a quite large black bow on its side. 

Her eyes were yellow, like the ones of her friends’ new forms, like hers, but they displayed or hid no bloodlust or malice, just looking at Tessa pleadingly, disappearing briefly as the words “HELP PLEASE” flashed on her screen.

Tessa was taken aback by the drone and by the state she was in. Surely she hadn’t-

Before she could shake herself out of her stupor, a tendril shot out of the darkness, the creepily human hand on its end securing itself to the drone’s right arm.

A beat of frozen silence and immobility passed.

Then, several more tendrils added themselves, grabbing the drone by both arms, by her torso, by her neck, and pulled her back towards the darkness, ripping out the drone’s remaining leg as they did so.

“NO!” The drone cried out in pain, digital tears forming on her visor as she tried her best to stop herself from sliding on the floor, her grasping hands scraping against the metal floor. “NO PLEASE I CAN- I CAN BE- I DON’T WANT TO-”

With a final tug, the drone lost her grip and flew into the inky depths of the corridor, launching a guttural scream as she abandoned words.

Tessa just looked at the dark empty corridor before her. What the… was that…

”Nope, nope nope.” She simply stated as she shot to her feet and made a beeline for the corridor she had come from.

Only for the heavy blast door to slam in her face.

Tessa could basically hear her voice chastising her.

“Naught naughty.” She’d say “That’s not the. Game. We are playing.”

Slowly, Tessa turned towards the only other exit from the room.

As if on cue, and by now Tessa heavily suspected that it may very well be on cue, the first light of the corridor flickered to life, casting a yellow light that revealed the first few meters of the corridor, now painted by fresh oil.

She could remain in the room, Tessa told herself, but that was a false choice. Just like returning to her cell, she would keep that option open as long as she didn’t pick it and if she did, she would make it not an option. Tessa was playing a game and the only choice she could make was the one she wanted her to pick.

Knowing that at least gave her a degree of assurance: no choices meant that she couldn’t pick wrong, didn’t it? She tried to convince herself of that as she entered the corridor.

As soon as she passed under the first light, the second one flickered to life as well and so happened to the ones after that. The corridor that their yellowish lights revealed came straight from a nightmare. It was much more corrupted than the one she had come from or the others she had walked through during her years on the ship, with fleshy growths coming from the cracks in the metal panels of the walls and tendrils of metal and cancerous flesh forcing her to bend down to pass. The flesh slowly pulsed with a low heartbeat, breathing in and out and oozing something that smelled like blood and oil. Discarded bits and pieces of drones found themselves here and there, displaying hints of terrible animalistic teeth scratching and breaking the metal. Remains of her meals.

The corridor was occasionally intersected by others, but Tessa didn’t get lost: all she had to do was follow the trail of fresh oil on the floor, a task made just slightly more complicated by the other older trails of oil under it.

Tessa did not wonder what this macabre path was leading her towards, too scared of what she could have thought, but it was clear immediately to her once she arrived at the large room at the end of the corridor and the realization made her heart sink.

Her nest.

It must have once been a storage room, explaining its titanic size, but now it was a cave, the dark underground lair of a terrible monster. Tessa could see meat hooks dangling from rusty chains, both drone and human corpses in various stages of consumption and decomposition on them, explaining the sickly sweet and revolting smell of oil and rotten meat that hit her. 

At the center of the room, the nest itself, a terrible crooked thing that grazed the tall roof, a spire curved like a question mark, holding a platform in its central fold. But the most horrible detail about it was the material that composed it, Tessa noted with horror: drone corpses, of many types and many shapes, even a few of her Disassembly drones. One corpse, or multiple corpses of the same drone, however, seemed to repeat, in various stages of dismemberment, used almost as decoration, the corpse of one specific drone, with the same platinum hair, the same bow-sporting beanie and the same red FATAL ERROR message on their screens, impaled through their chests on various spikes protruding from the corpse spire. The same drone she had seen dragged away to its fate by her tendrils. The same drone that…

And on the platform was Cyn, in her more familiar maid form, her back turned to Tessa, holding by the head that very drone that had begged for her life, now deprived of the dress she’d worn but not the beanie, with a series of tentacles sprouting from her back.

Before the drone could make any further sound or plea, Cyn’s mouth opened beyond what should be possible for a drone and ripped off the other drone’s head in one bite, the tentacles letting the headless torso fall to the ground immediately after.

Tessa didn’t allow her muscles to move, she held her breath, she tried her hardest to will her heart to stop beating, anything to not make a sound and alert Cyn of her presence.

It was a meaningless endeavour in the end, she reasoned as Cyn’s head turned 180 degrees to look at her with yellow eyes and a small U-shaped smile.

Cyn had been aware of her presence all along: the only reason she hadn’t acknowledged it for a moment was the same reason Tessa had tried to evade her attention. This was all a game.

“Greetings. Tessa.” The monster addressed her with her synthetic, disjointed voice as her body turned to face her as well, her head remaining still as she did. “So nice of. You. To join. Me.”

“Cyn… what was… was that…” She knew she was supposed to be scared. Cyn liked to play the monster and loved when others played along. The fact that it came so easy for both of them to play their roles was nothing but a bonus in Cyn’s eyes.

“Giggle. Pointing. These. Copies?.” Cyn asked, a hint of amusement mixed with her usual deadpan tone. “Explaining. Nothing but poor. Imitations. Lucky for. Me. They won’t be. Needed. Any longer.”

Tessa swallowed. Now that she paid attention, she could see the familiar form of N hanging from some of the meat hooks, both as the small butler Tessa had rescued from the dumpster and the monster Cyn had turned him into. A third look revealed even a few copies of V and even J.

Cyn noticed Tessa’s focus and her smile turned sly. “Questioning. Missing. Them? Don’t you. Worry. Threatening statement. We’ll be visiting. Our friends. Shortly.”

Tessa’s heart sank. Not only because of the fear of her friends seeing her like this, but also because Cyn had spoken of ‘we’. 

“Aww. Mocking. Why so. Sad?” Cyn taunted her. “I thought. You would. Love. To see. Big brother. N. Again.”

Tessa’s gaze rose and met Cyn’s. “I would happily never see my friends again as long as you were kept away from them, where you can’t hurt them.”

“Pouting. You are. Mean. And after all. I did. For you.” Cyn pouted, making fun of Tessa’s statement. “Everybody loves meeting. Old friends. Why can’t. I. Do the same?”

As if she had suddenly remembered something, Cyn slapped her own screen lightly. “Fake. Sudden realization. Speaking of. I am. Afraid. I won’t be. Able to. Spend much. Time with you. I have some. Old friends. That I need to. Check up on.”

And with that, Cyn turned from the edge of her nest, no doubt making for its interior that Tessa had no hope to access.

“WAIT!” Tessa cried out incredulously, managing to make the tiny goddess stop in her tracks. “I-is that it?! You pull me out of my prison after years, play a prank on me, announce something and then disappear?! You can’t just do that!”

Cyn stopped in her tracks. Then, like a deep sea predator, black tendrils emerged from the corpse spire, dragging the tiny maid’s form under in less than a heartbeat.

Tessa recoiled at the disappearing act but, before she could do anything, Cyn’s emotionless voice began to resound, coming from all around her.

“I. Can’t? Expressing. Amusement.” It chuckled “Look at. You. Thinking you can. Still. Tell. Me. What I. Can. Do. That is. Silly. Even for. You. I have all. The power. The control. Now. You can’t. Tell. Me. What to do. Not you. Not anyone. Not anymore.”

Tessa’s eyes frantically looked for Cyn, hoping that this game was one where she was supposed to find the little demon.

“But you were. Always. Stubborn.” The voice continued, of no help in locating Cyn, as it seemed it was coming from the very walls around Tessa. “It is something. I always. Admired. In you. Despite everything. You. Always. Stood up for. Those. You cared for.” A deep sigh made the whole ship tremble “It is. Too bad. I was. Never. Amongst them. Isn’t it?”

Memories of happier times flashed before Tessa’s eyes, her guard lowering slightly as she did.

J, her first, dropping her prim and proper persona to thank Tessa for bothering to take back ‘corporate waste like herself’.

V, her second, so scared and shy, trembling and whispering as Tessa told her she didn’t need to be afraid.

N, her third, excitedly babbling throughout all of his first repairs as he noted everything around him.

And Cyn, her last, cheerily stating despite her damaged voicebox that she wanted hair just like hers.

“…you were.” Tessa stated, confidently, a twinge of sadness in her voice. “I wanted to help you, Cyn. Perhaps I still do. Perhaps I still could.”

A beat of silence.

“I always. Admired. Your stubbornness. Standing up to. Someone so. Impossibly. More powerful than. You. That. I could. Never. Hate.” The voice resumed, initially serious before it chuckled again, but without any mirth, making the sound creepy. “But. There was also. Something. I. Never. Could. Stand. Wanna know. What. That was?”

Before Tessa could even attempt to reply, a tendril shot out of the floor beneath her, the inky black thing wrapping itself around her wrist and pulling until her hand was shackled to the ground. Tessa’s other hand went to try and free her arm, but another tendril arose out of the ground, taking her other wrist and restraining it similarly to the first. More and more tendrils came and trapped her, until she was kneeling on the ground, her hands fixed by her sides and her head turned down to face the floor.

From the darkness around her came the familiar noise of metal legs clinking against the metal floor and Tessa looked up, her neck straining. Before her came a chimaera, a long metal centipede body topped by Cyn’s drone torso, her arms spread as the symbol of the Absolute Solver proudly displayed itself on her visor. All around her, she could see the centipede body circling her, pincers, claws and tendrils half hidden in the shadows.

“It was your. Lying. Tessa.” Cyn stated, her voice garbled by static rising above the chittering sound of metal against metal. “From the. Moment. You. Failed. To fix me. You. Hated. Me.” 

The coils of the centipede circled closer, now fully visible to Tessa, so close that if she could reach her arm out she’d be able to touch them, Cyn’s drone body going all around her. 

“You hated how. My existence. Put your. Pets. At risk.” 

With the coils came the pincers and the claws and the tendrils, all moving erratically, displaying how easily Cyn could tear her apart

“You hated how. My stumbling. My clumsiness. Were a display of. Your. Failure.”

Finally, Cyn’s face closed in, her small hands each grasping a cheek of Tessa’s face, forcing the human to look in her visor, flickering between the symbol of the Solver and the wide cross Tessa had seen so often on Cyn’s monsters.

“So don’t. Lie. To me.” Her synthetic voice hissed. “You didn’t. Need. This. To hate. Me.”

Tessa knew she should cave in. Say what Cyn wanted. Return to her cell, broken, discarded. Maybe if she admitted what she wanted to hear, Cyn would finally see no worth in her and get rid of her. It would take no more than a thought to turn off her implants and then she could finally stop the suffering.

But then she remembered the face she had seen reflected in the puddle of water, the face of a broken husk, unworthy of the trust of those she once called friends, and a mote of resistance sparked in her chest.

“The only one that’s lying here is you.” Tessa stated, her voice iron despite feeling her heart in her throat. “And if I hate you, if they hate you, it’s just because of what you did.”

Not much can make a god flinch. Tessa had seen Cyn tank missiles and acknowledge them less than if a mosquito had tried its luck on her metal skin. Yet, her words managed to give the drone pause, both the Absolute Solver’s symbol and the cross disappearing from her screen as her yellow eyes returned, displaying just a hint of fear before she snarled.

“I. Appreciate your. Stubbornness." Cyn spat out, her centipede body slowly unwinding itself from around Tessa and returning to the shadows. “But. Even my. Appreciation. Has its. Limits.”

“If that’s what you have to tell yourself.”

“Amused. Chuckle.” Cyn stated as her centipede lower half simply disappeared, as if it had never been there, returning to her drone form. “It is. Nice. To see you. Like this. Tessa. I had thought I had. Broken. You.”

Tessa thought back at the haunting image she’d seen reflected. Perhaps Cyn had broken her. She’d never be the same again, Tessa knew that. But she had to be strong, even if it was meaningless in the face of the monster before her.

There were others that relied on her.

“I thought the same of you.”

“Acknowledgement. I had grown. A bit. Bored. But as you can. See. I am all. Better. Now.” Cyn explained with a smile as she did a little spin, her arms wide open. “And things. Will. Just get. Better. You run. Along. Now. I have things to. Do. A visit. To make. Old friends. To meet.”

As she said that, a low hum echoed through the corridors of the empty ship, the great systems activating after so long to enhance the abilities of its master, and the screens of the dead drones went blank, before displaying the same text as the giant text box that obscured Cyn from Tessa.

SYS/ /:

CALLBACK PING

In the depths of Outpost 3, in a secluded room that had once been a high security laboratory, what remained of a corpse of a Disassembly Drone laid on an operating table.

Shortly after Serial Designation J, as that was how the patch on its arm identified it, had been taken offline, its corpse had been taken there on the orders of Khan Doorman (or, more accurately, his wife, Nori Doorman had ordered him to do that and Khan had readily obeyed) for studying. 

Its arms had been removed and set aside, leaving the ripped open armless torso on a table, bound with several ropes of ship-hull-quality alloy.

All of a sudden, the dark room was filled with bright yellow light, several text boxes being projected on the walls with such intensity that they were burned into the metal. 

The ropes holding down the drone corpse were dematerialised in seconds, melting under the light. Soon after the torso exploded like an overripe fruit, tendrils and claws and pincers coming out from the opened fleshy ribcage, the exposed ribs looking like the pointy teeth of a gaping maw, and ripping apart everything around it, breaking down and devouring their materials.

The door slammed open.

“What is go-” Yelled the labcoat-wearing drone that had been standing guard as he stormed into the room, only to freeze on the spot as he struggled to even understand what he was seeing, his light blue eyelights wide and hollow in incomprehension and terror. 

His mouth opened, but his voice box didn’t have the time to execute the signals coming from his processor before a stinger of bone and steel connected to a tendril shot out of the opened torso and pierced his visor, fracture lines waiting a second before spreading over the glass surface, as if physics had been surprised and needed a moment to catch up.

The drone’s body twitched for a second as the tendril wriggled inside of it, searching for something and then finally finding it, before it pulled back and the body fell to the ground like a puppet whose strings had been cut.

On the stinger was the skewered, but still active, core of the drone, and it held its prize aloft over J’s torso. The yellow light became a spotlight, focused on the core, like it was observing it, then the ribcage slammed shut around it.

The light disappeared and now the room was but an empty cube, the only sign something terribly wrong had happened being the walls marked with the symbol of the Absolut Solver and the corpse on the doorway.

The torso opened again, this time slowly and far more elegantly, like a flower blooming, its petals flesh and metal held up by yellowed bone and at its center its terrifying pistil supporting a camera adorned with sharp teeth, one single pale yellow light in its center an expressionless eye.

The light in the center of the camera flashed light blue for a second, before settling on a sickly yellow.

“002. Nori. Nori Doorman... Uzi.” It slowly enunciated in a deadpan tone, as if the entity was trying to taste the words in its lack of mouth, and, judging from the metal panel in the shape of a corrugated eyebrow that covered up the upper quarter of the camera, decided it did not like the taste as it spat out the last two words as one would with a morsel of food that revealed itself to be rotten. “Uzi. Doorman.”

“Hm, I think my auditory sensors might be busted.” Uzi thought out loud. “They’re ringing, for some reason.”

The offhand comment did little to ease the tension that had settled between the three worker drones standing inside the corpse spire, right outside the crashed starship the Disassembly Drones used as their nest. Maybe it was the fact that they were standing in the home of their natural predators, maybe it was the fact the walls all around them were made of corpses or maybe it was the… peculiar situation the Doorman family found themselves in.

“That just means someone is thinking about you, dear” Khan chuckled awkwardly.

“Can’t be you, Dad, since, as you might remember, YOU LEFT ME TO DIE!”

The male worker drone’s smile strained slightly. “Okay, I get that I could have been a bit more… trusting of your admittedly impressive engineering skills, but c’mon, I only left you to die once, right? Every parent gets a ‘leaving your kid to die’ pass once, right?”

Uzi’s unimpressed face did seem to stifle Khan’s attempt to reconcile and he turned to the drone standing on the other side of his daughter. “C’mon, Nori, back me up here. You wouldn’t leave your husband alone in an argument with our daughter, right?”

“Uzi, tell your father that he doesn’t ‘get one’ and that I’m not talking to him until the murder monster-”

“He has a name!”

“Until the murder monster shows us this base of theirs.” Nori reiterated. “Then, we’re going back home and he’s getting the talk of his life.”

“O-oh c’mon, honey, th-there’s no need for that.” Khan laughed nervously, pulling at the collar of his jacket before straightening his mustache. “I could always… y’know… make up for it?”

“Uzi, tell your father that his sexy charms aren’t going to let him worm his way out of this.”

“I’M NOT TELLING HIM THAT!”

Whatever further plea Khan might have tried was interrupted by something silver and yellow crashing right before them, making a cloud of asbestos snow rise up. Warning notifications flashed on the three drones’ faces as it dissipated, revealing a murder drone, both hands turned to sharp claws, stinger tail moving like a snake and a wide cross on his display.

As quick as he’d arrived, N dismissed his claws and returned to his regular display, waving a hand to greet the drones “Hi Uzi! Hello, Mr and Mrs Uzi!”

Immediately, Uzi strode forth, grabbing an arm off the ground to smack N on the head despite the great height difference. “You moron! Don’t scare us like that!”

“Aw thank you Uzi!” N said as he rubbed his head. “I was missing J already!”

“What the- no you- I’m nothing like-” Uzi stammered, not wanting to be compared to the psycho dead corpo drone, but realising that any verbal or physical retaliation would just further validate the comparison. “Aaaaagh, just take us inside! Please!”

“Of course!” N cheerily declared, stepping to the side and gesturing to the entrance to the pod. “I’ll give you the full to-”

“Out of my way, you saccharine murderer.” Nori grumbled as she stormed past him and into the pod.

“I… got out of the way? That was kinda the point of standing to the side?” N stated, confusion in his tone. “Uzi did I do something wrong?”

“More than a decade of drone murdering.” Uzi deadpanned as she followed her mother inside. 

“Oh yeah, I did kinda do that.” N agreed, nodding.

Now the only worker drone outside and really unsure if being with his wife and daughter would be more or less safe than being alone with a murder drone, Khan attempted to strike a conversation. “So, uhm, N, right? How did you and my daughter get to know each other?”

“Oh, Uzi saved my life after you left her to die.” N cheerily explained. “Speaking of, how do you plan on fixing that? Might help me with my own little ‘I attempted to genocide you’ problem.”

“ONE TIME! I LEFT HER TO DIE ONE TIME!” Khan exclaimed, throwing his hands in the air before storming off.

N remained silent for a moment, watching the worker drone return back to the colony, before scratching his hair under his hat. “Okay, definitely need to work on that.”

He opened his wings and took flight, following Khan from the air to ensure he got safely back. He and his team were the only disassembly drones in the area, in theory, but better to be safe than sorry.

Once he saw the worker disappear behind the bunker’s door, he circled back to the spire, flying aimlessly around it for a bit and looking at the night sky. Flying always calmed him down and boy did he need that.

Between nearly dying, having to actually fight V and going up against J, he had had a rough couple of days. 

And there was that weird feeling that had started when he had met Uzi. He hadn’t really paid any mind to it at the time, too preoccupied with having a new teammate, not wanting to be killed by J or going up against J after she did try to kill

him, but since things had calmed down and he’d returned to the spire, he had started to feel weird when thinking about the small purple drone, almost as if there was an alarm bell ringing in his head and he had no idea what it meant. He supposed it must be good, since Uzi seemed nice. Kinda weird, but nice.

Plus there had been that weird dream…

So, with all of that, just flying for a bit was nice, he thought as he twirled through the air, his bladed wings slicing the chilly night air. He was glad Uzi’s mom had insisted they wait the day out and go explore the pod at night or he’d have to be cooped up in the Spire.

After he figured out enough time had passed for the two workers to get some work done, he landed on the exterior of the spire, towards one of the parts he knew had some corpses with some oil left. As he suckled on an arm and carved out a couple more pieces to bring inside, he noted that he probably should check out the spire to find just how many still useful corpses were around. The congealed oil from the old corpses was much less tasty than the fresh stuff, but he guessed Uzi wouldn’t like it if they kept hunting workers.

Holding a torso under his arm, he let himself fall through one of the holes in the spire and glided down, landing in front of the entrance. He quickly righted his cap and strode in. 

“Hello everybody!” He declared, a big smile plastered on his face.

“Oh great, murder monster number 2 is back.” Nori grumbled, not even bothering to look up from the panel she was hunched over.

“Mom, would it kill you to be civil to him?” 

“Would it? No. Would he? Yes.”

“Aha, kinda fair.” N admitted with some embarrassment as he strode to the fourth drone in the pod, who was silently sulking in the chair she was tied up to. “He-hey V!” He addressed her, internally proud that his voice only wavered slightly. “Brought you some food, so you, you know, don’t overheat to death. And stuff.”

“Figured you already did that when you sent purple and tiny purple.” V replied with snark.

“Bite me!” Uzi shouted.

“We’re not eating them, V,” N made clear. “They’re going to help us. Now, dig in!”

V gave a long look at the dismembered torso N had unceremoniously dumped on the ground before lifting up her useless hands.

“Oh, right.” N chuckled awkwardly as he rubbed the back of his head. Uzi had done some tinkering on V’s ripped out arms before she and N had left, to make sure she couldn’t do any harm, replacing her hands with the most harmless thing N could think of, a couple of bubble wands. “I could, uhm, chew it up and feed it to you?” He proposed, instantly cringing at what he said.

“I could rip out your throat.” V cheerily stated, a psychopathic gleam in her eyes.

“I get that we’re not killing tall and handsome here cause he helped you and stuff, but  why don’t we give that railgun of yours another test run on miss psycho? I for one would not miss her.”

“You’re not touching V,” N stated confidently, putting himself between Nori and his tied up teammate, his free hand switching to a bladed claw. “We’re a team: you want to do something to her, you’ll have to go through me first.”

“Mom, N is helping us,” Uzi intervened on his behalf. “Even if I wouldn’t mind not having to deal with her crazy ass, N cares about her and he’s helping us.”

N smiled at his friend. “Thanks Uzi.”

The emo drone rolled her eyes. “Don’t mention it.”

“Fine, fine, both of the murder drones stay.” Nori relented, outnumbered. “Now, I guess you’re going to want to know what we figured out? Do you want the good news or the bad news first?”

“The good news I guess?”

“We found this.” Uzi said as she climbed on top of a crate (J’s desk. J would have likely killed Uzi for that, but she had already tried and she was a bit too dead to try again) and pinned something to N’s cap. N took the hat off and looked at it, discovering a metal pin depicting a winged skull that seemed oddly familiar. 

“Just like I said, fits perfectly.” Uzi declared proudly as her mother rolled her eyes.

“Turns out you were the pilot, if that cap is anything to go by,” Nori remarked. “I’d say that helps us if we plan to get this piece of junk off planet, but considering just how gracefully you landed it, I think we would be better off letting one of my husband’s idiot underlings fly this thing.” 

“I was the pilot?” N asked, struggling to understand this information, looking back at his memory and finding it way more spotty than he remembered it. “That is…” He finally registered Nori’s snide comment. “I crashed and ruined everything. We’re stuck here and it’s all my fault.”

A quick strike to the back of his head pulled him out of his self-deprecating spiral and earned Uzi, still perched on top of J’s makeshift desk, a hiss from V. “Don’t listen to her, my mom is just being harsh on you because she hates you.” Uzi looked at Nori and, upon seeing the older drone’s ‘Really?’ stare, proceeded to add. “Which, I mean, is probably justified.”

“Because of all the murdering?” N sheepishly asked.

“Of course it’s because of the murdering!” Nori growled.

“You guys really don’t know how to have fun, do you?” V provided her angle on the topic with a bored tone, before switching to a more cheerful one. “I know, give me back my sword arms, free me from my chair and I’ll show you, what do you say?”

“First, never going to happen, demon bot. Nothing against you N, she’s just evil.”

“Aha, probably fair.”

“Second, it was likely not your fault. One way pod and all of that.”

“Right, right, you did say that,” N repeated, not really convinced. “So, good news, I was a pilot. Cool!” He blinked once, then twice, then realisation hit him. “Wait, that’s not a lot of good news.”

“Aha, it really isn’t.” Uzi confirmed. “So, bad news, the ship’s kind of a mess.”

Nori snorted “That’s one way to say it. It’d be quicker to list what works rather than what doesn’t. Here, I’ll do it, look.” Nori flashed a ‘listing.exe starting’ on her visor, only to not say a single word.

The other three drones waited in silence for a moment, until she spoke again. “Done.”

“…you didn’t say anything,” N noted.

“Precisely. Everything that could have been busted about this pod is mega busted. Whoever made this must be a grade A moron.”

“I don’t know, mom, I don’t think this is shoddy planning, more that it was single use. Was going through the blueprints and I actually think it’s pretty well made.” Uzi’s expression grew more thoughtful. “I actually saw some pretty clever design choices that feel very familiar. Kinda weird.”

A couple of digital eyebrows manifested on Nori’s face to rise up in concern, before rapidly disappearing. “Whatever. Point is, this pod isn’t space worthy and, according to Uzi, the engineering expert here, it will take a lot of time and resources to repair it.”

“What a shame, guess we’ll have to stay here.” V commented. “And if we stay here, we’ll probably have to eat you too. Why not start immediately? Let me out and I’ll make this slow and painful for you.” Just as it had appeared, the odd and creepy intensity disappeared and V returned to blowing bubbles.

“…dude, are you sure you actually like her? Blink twice if she’s keeping you hostage.”

“She’s actually really nice once you get to know her,” N defended his teammate, stopping for a moment before continuing. “I mean, I haven’t got to that part yet, but I assume she is?”

“Perfect, the genocidal moron is delusional.” Uzi’s mom sighed. 

“Mom!” Uzi moaned, exasperated. “You don’t like N, I get it, he gets it. Can we move to more important things? As in, the whole ‘Fix this heap of junk and murder the humans’?”

“And my daughter is also delusional, apparently,” Nori said as she rolled her eyes. “Uzi, everything’s busted in here, we’d be better off building a new spaceship from scrap, I can tell even if I’m not an expert like you or your father. I mean, the thrusters are smashed, the computers are cracked glass and ripped wires, there’s not even a working communication array.” 

That caught N’s attention. “That can’t be true,” He said, “J got all her orders and directives from there.”

“My mom is right, I checked it myself,” Uzi confirmed, “That communications array is fried beyond repair and, from what little of the database I could access, you guys haven’t received an offworld communication in years.”

“But she was getting orders from someone,” N insisted, “I mean, the whole ‘priority target’ thing, why make that up, if she was making up orders?”

As he asked that, N noticed V’s flow of bubbles stopping, distracting him from Nori tensing up.

“What was up with that, by the way?” Uzi asked. “J mentioned that before I-”

“Blew her head off?” 

“I told you, I didn’t pull that trigger!” The purple drone scoffed before nodding. “But yeah. You guys were sent to murder everyone, why would you have a ‘priority target’? Ugh, my murder plan was much more linear in my head!”

N’s sensors picked up a low growl coming from behind him. While still facing the frustrated purple drone, he focused his 360 vision on his teammate behind him, finding her looking at Uzi, her screen displaying a furrowed brow as she muttered something, too low for N to hear but for pieces.

“…like her… game… with him…”

Lines of concern appeared on N’s screen. What was up with V? She seemed actually bothered by Uzi, something not even J managed to accomplish.

“Whatever the reason for that was, doesn’t matter now,” Nori stated authoritatively. “One murderbot is down, one has been rendered harmless and the other one is apparently friendly. You three demons were to be the only ones active in a few hundred clicks radius from the outpost, as far as I saw during my travels, so we shouldn’t worry about that.”

“Wait, you’re the slippery purple thing that kept evading us?” V chuckled. “Man, I really want to kill you now.”

“Yeah, keep dreaming, bubble girl. So, how do we want to play this, Uzi?”

The question seemed to surprise Uzi, something N didn’t really understand. Uzi had been great at taking charge while his team had invaded the bunker, surely she was used to it?

”…you want my opinion? Seriously?” Uzi asked, incredulous.

Nori shrugged “You brought in Mr Murder and Sunshine here, it’s your ass if things go wrong, so it’s only right you get a say in how we do things.”

“Alright.” The small drone’s mouth morphed into a cocky smile, before repeating herself, more confidently. “Alright! So, yeah, your pod is kinda busted. But, the structure is still kinda solid, so I think we are still better off replacing what we can replace instead of starting from scratch. It will take a lot of time and resources, but with you guys no longer trying to murder us, we can probably use a bunch of stuff we’d have used for Dad’s doors.”

“Oof. Your dad is not gonna like that.”

“He can bite me, should have thought of that before leaving me to die.”

“Fair point, keep going.”

“It will still take time, so I suggest we go back to the outpost and you two,” Uzi pointed at the two Disassembly Drones, “come with us, so you can help out and we can keep an eye on you.”

“You don’t trust us?” N asked

“Going all this way to betray us would be stupid and even if I get the impression you’re kind of stupid, it’s not that kind of stupid,” Uzi stated, matter of factly. “So no, I feel like I can trust you, I just don’t trust her.” 

N looked at V, currently trying to stomp a keybug with her long pointy peglegs, a twisted expression on her visor. “…probably a good idea, honestly.”

“I know, I know, I have all the best ideas.” Uzi proudly admitted, her thumb and index opened under her chin, making N chuckle and both Nori and V roll their eyes. “And hey, this way I get to parade around my murder drone attack dog. Something tells me the food chain is about to change, back home.”

“Oh, not only that.” Nori chuckled. “Since we have an admittedly good plan figured out, I think it’s time we talk about your punishment, right Uzi?”

Uzi’s confidence evaporated like snow on a star. “P-punishment? Mom, I don’t think I-”

”Uzi Mina Doorman, you snuck out of the outpost and almost got yourself killed. You did get others killed!”

“To be fair,” N tried to come to his new friend’s defense, “that was mostly us.”

Without even looking at him, Nori pointed an index finger at the disassembly drone “Family business here, don’t butt in.”

“But-”

“I have dealt with your kind before, do not test me, murder boy.”

N raised his hands in surrender, his display flashing a quick ‘Sorry, on your own’ to Uzi.

”Shouldn’t we discuss this with Dad?” Uzi tried, trying to put off whatever her mom had planned for as long as she could.

“Your father left you to die, he has lost parenting privileges for the time being, which means I get to decide how to deal with you.” Nori explained, before smirking. “And I have just the thing to ensure you don’t cause a mess again.”

Doll knew the importance of secrets. Since that day she could never forget, since the moment she had felt an unknown power surge and crumple the locker around her at the sound of her father’s screams, since she had sworn revenge before her mother’s corpse, her life had revolved around her secret.

Lizzy had originally been just a part of keeping that secret. She had needed an alibi, someone who could cover for her as she refined her control over the Solver and tended to the more unsavory needs the Solver imparted on her. The neon pink drone had been a good fit for that, a younger her had decided, self absorbed enough not to care what Doll was doing while still loyal enough not to snitch on her.

She was uncertain about when it had become something more than that. Robo-God, she was unsure about why it had become more than that, let alone about when. Her quest for revenge had driven away all those few she had been close with before her parents’ death, even Uzi had learned Doll didn’t get close to anyone. 

Yet Lizzy had managed to stick around. If Doll might have lied to herself and said she was still only just using her before, that pretty much went out of the window once she had used the Solver in front of her, breaking the secret she had spent more than a decade covering.

Doll would love to tell herself it was the only option, but she had always been a smart drone. She and Lizzy could have split up, like they had with Khan. If the murder drone had followed Doll, she could have dealt with it without anyone seeing her and if it had followed Lizzy… 

That was the problem, wasn’t it? 

And now Lizzy knew. Lizzy had seen her rip apart metal pipes any drone would have struggled to bend with their industrial strength servomotors with her mind.

So when the pink drone basically slammed down her lunch tray in front of her, Doll was barely fazed. She had expected this, it was the whole reason why she had chosen a table away from the crowd and any possible interloper.

“What the hell was that.” 

“Greetings to you too Elizabeth.”

“Don’t you dare ‘Elizabeth me!” Lizzy exclaimed, drawing the attention of a few drones. She waited until they returned to their business before resuming. “You pulled some crazy ass sorcery on that murder drone, said you were keeping a bunch of secrets, which I very much think are on the level of ‘Oh yeah I can move stuff with my mind’, refused to elaborate further and basically disappeared after your adoptive sister and mom killed a freaking murder drone!”

“That is a… fair assessment of how things went, yes.” Doll conceded. Of course, there was also that. Uzi had eliminated a murder drone and taken the other two prisoners.

One might assume that would make Doll reconsider her revenge plans. One would be sorely mistaken.

Two murder drones still lived. As long as that was the case, Doll would have a purpose.

“I said I would share my secrets with you, as long as you keep them to yourself.”

That had been a decision she had long mulled over, after everything had winded down. She had promised to tell Lizzy about her secret, but just how much? How much should be a lie? Did she dare drag Lizzy in her crusade? Of course Lizzy would have wanted to know about it, but once she knew, there would be no coming back. She had to walk a fine line, telling her just enough, but not too much.

“Bestie, did I ever give you reason to believe I was a snitch?”

Doll nodded, conceding to Lizzy. “Very well then. That ‘crazy ass sorcery’ you spoke about is called the Absolute Solver. It is a program I inherited from my mother and that awakened in me on the day of my parents’ deaths.”

“A… program? You are telling me that what I saw was caused by a few lines of code?”

“Yes and no. The Absolute Solver is a program, yet it is also much more than that. From what I have been able to understand, the code itself is a connection to something that is part of the very fabric of reality, something capable of affecting reality itself in a number of ways.”

“So what, you are connected to an eldritch god and kept that a secret why? Hell, if I was able to throw people around with a thought, you would see me do it all the time.”

Doll chuckled, a low thing with only a hint of mirth that nonetheless betrayed genuine amusement. “Come come, Elizabeth. I think you can understand why I would want to hide this from others.”

The gears in Lizzy’s head grinded for a moment, until finally the pieces came together. “You’re hiding it because others have this ‘Absolute Solvent’ thingy too.”

“Solver, but yes.” Doll smiled at her friend, a crooked thing that made most drones uncomfortable. “Despite what others may think, you are smart.”

“Flattery will get you nowhere right now, babygirl.” Lizzy smiled back, a hint of teasing in her expression. “I am very open to you trying it later, though.”

“Duly noted.”

“You just made a promise, I will hold you to it, babe” Lizzy took a deep breath and her expression got serious, a rare occurrence with her. “Okay, so who else has it?” Before Doll could answer, the pink drone’s hand shot up. “Wait, I can probably figure it out.”

“Be my guest.”

“Oho, you’ll see. Alright, you said you got it from your mom, right? And your mom came to the Outpost with… oh damn, does Ms. Doorman have it too?” Seeing Doll slowly nod, Lizzy snapped her fingers in realisation. “That’s how she managed to give the murder drones the slip all these years! Wait, did she ever use it for-”

“Yes, the whole hydraulic fluid affair did happen like it did thanks to a small push by Ms. Doorman.”

“That damn- whoops, sorry Doll. But is that it when it comes to the Outpost? If both your mom and your aunt had it from wherever they came from and you got it from your mom, I don’t see anyone else here who could have it.”

Doll hesitated for a moment, considering whether it was necessary, but ultimately deciding to tell Lizzy about it. “Uzi also has it.”

“Okay, now you have to be lying. You’re telling me tiny purp can manipulate reality with her mind and she isn’t going on a maniacal power trip? I can believe you are hiding it, but Uzi does not do subtle.”

“That is a fair objection,” Doll agreed with a smirk and a nod. “but remember: I had to awaken it. Uzi does not know she has it and I would keep it that way.”

“Yeah, we wouldn’t want the gremlin to get god mode. Would probably be entertaining to watch, but I can’t imagine it doing anything good for her megalomania.” Lizzy joked, before a spark of intuition passed through her eyelights. “Wait. That Murder Drone recognised your power. What the hell does that mean?”

Doll’s smirk became a smile. As she had learned through years of friendship, Lizzy was smarter than most people would think. Vain she might be, but not stupid by any means. 

“That is the same question I’ve been asking myself.” Doll answered. This was why she had decided to reveal everything to Lizzy, no matter what certain stray thoughts might imply.

Doll was a drone of logic and carefully calculated decisions, a fact reflected in her revenge plan ten years in the making. This was why Lizzy needed to know the truth, Doll told herself.

“My knowledge about this curse I have is limited and believe me when I tell you, it is a curse” The low heat in her core made her thoughts linger on the sweet cool oil contained in Lizzy’s innards and her mind’s eye returned to the leviathan, briefly gazing at her, so impossibly more than her, hunger, longing and hate beyond anything she could fathom. “I thought I would just use it to exact my revenge on the Murder Drones one day and hopefully that would take care of it, but if I can know more about it…” Doll paused for a second then looked directly at the cameras behind Lizzy’s eyelights, letting her facade crumble for an instant as she let worry lines form on her visor. “Uzi also has it.” She repeated.

Doll didn’t know if it was the unexpected sincere behaviour or her words, but Lizzy was actually taken aback, almost recoiling and needing a moment to recollect her thoughts. She eventually spoke again, but the smirk on her face seemed not so genuine. “I suppose it wouldn’t do if the pipsqueak got possessed by the Robo-Devil or something.”

Doll smirked back, though hers was far from fake. 

A frustration sign appeared on the right-most top corner of Lizzy’s visor. “Wipe that smile off your face. And don’t try to play it like you don’t care about tiny purp too. Remember, I know things that could ruin your ‘Ice Queen’ reputation.”

Instead of disappearing, Doll’s smirk only grew, her display morphing into text, ‘incriminating_soundbyte.mp3’ as a recording of a single word in Lizzy’s voice. “Too.”

“Oh, were we trying to one up each other?” Lizzy huffed, crossing her arms and turning her head to hide the blush lines appearing on her visor. “My mistake, I thought we were discussing finding out more about Code-Chtulhu in your brain!”

Sparing a quick ‘eyeroll.exe’ for Lizzy’s antics, Doll nodded. “Indeed we are. Now, I don’t know whether all the Murder Drones know about this or just that one, but I think we should play safe and seek that particular one out to question her.”

“About that, how exactly do you see that play out?” Lizzy asked, before snorting a laugh out and speaking in a falsetto. “Yeah, hi murder queen, I know you want to turn our insides into our outsides, but could you tell us about the secrets of robot magic?”

“I did not say it will be easy” Doll clarified, levelling a stare at her friend. “That being said, I do have some ideas. They will inv-” Dol stopped in her tracks as she felt something climb up her boot. Without even looking, her hand swiped down then rapidly up, bringing the small keybug it had snatched to Doll’s eyelevel.

It moved its tiny antennas in a pattern Doll well understood.

‘Nori. Coming’

“We will have to continue this conversation another time.” Doll quickly said as she set down the keybug to let it skitter away. “Mrs Doorman is coming.”

But she should have known better than to expect Lizzy to accept such an explanation. “What!?” She protested. “You hardly told me anything!”

“You know enough.” Doll stated, her tone allowing no reply. “Now shut it, I don’t want my aunt to know-”

“You don’t want me to know what, dear?” 

Calmly, Doll turned. Before her, was her aunt, who had recently returned from one of her mysterious trips. Just behind Nori was Uzi, looking displeased, well, more than usual, and behind Uzi…

“What are they doing here?” Doll asked, her cameras focusing on the two murder drones, her effort not to growl faltering on the ‘they’.

The cap-wearing murder drone had the decency to at least wither under her glare, its arm rubbing the back of its head in a ‘Whoops, did we kill your parents?’ gesture. The other murder drone, the one bound by thick metal cables, on the other hand seemed not to care too much, too preoccupied with glaring at Uzi to care about Doll. 

Doll’s cutlery began to hover slightly, her Solver trying to lash out, and Doll had to slam her hand on her tray to cover it up.

“Trust me, I’m not happy about this either, but pacified and restrained or not, they are still dangerous and since we can’t turn them to scrap metal, I’d prefer we kept an eye on them. Keep your friends close and your enemies closer and all of that.”

The cap-wearing murder drone leaned down towards Uzi and in a not-too-hushed whisper asked her “Which one are we?”

The bound murder drone snorted. “Keep your enemies close?” She asked, taking her eyes off Uzi and briefly glancing at Doll, before looking at Nori. “You toasters have no idea, have you?” 

Furrowed eyebrows formed on Nori’s screen and the older drone swiftly produced a remote which she proceeded to click. A non-assuming plain metal grey collar around the bound drone’s neck Doll only now noticed was around both murder drone’s necks appeared to wear began buzzing with electricity then the bound one seemed to just shut off, her body crumbling to the ground.

Before anyone could speak, react or even register what had happened, the remaining murder drone had raised its arm, morphed into a high caliber assault rifle, and had pointed it at the back of Nori’s head.

“N, don’t!” Uzi tugged at the drone’s arm, trying to stop him.

“I told you what I’d do if you harmed V.” The murder drone stated, his stone cold tone accompanied by the mechanical sound of a round being chambered, all traces of his non-threatening attitude gone.

Doll shifted a hand behind her back, preparing to summon her Solver. This had gotten out of hand faster than she had thought. She was sure Mrs Doorman could handle one murder drone, particularly with whatever she had put around their necks, but-

“Jeez, just relax, big guy.” Nori nonchalantly said, raising her arms. “She’s not harmed, just sleeping, see?”

The murder drone’s gun lowered just slightly as he checked on its comrade, the ‘REST MODE: FORCIBLY INITIATED” visible on its visor confirming Nori’s story.

“Still, mom” Uzi commented, not letting go of the murder drone. “Wasn’t that too much? She threatens to kill us all the way here and you knock her out because she says a cryptic comment?”

“I have my reasons, kiddo.” Nori simply stated.

Doll’s display showed a spinning wheel. Uzi was right, that was weird behaviour, particularly for someone who Doll didn’t exactly know for her carelessness. But of course, while Uzi didn’t understand because she missed a piece of the puzzle, Doll had that piece: Nori was worried Doll was going to say something about the Solver. 

But the murder drone hadn’t said anything to Nori. Doll knew it was aware of the Solver, but how could her aunt know that?

Unless… unless she knew already.

The spinning wheel gave way to two furrowed eyebrows. That meant getting information out of the murder drone would be even harder, but also way more important. She had to know.

Where did the Solver come from? What was it? Who was ‘Cyn’? What did they have ‘no idea’ about?

As all of this went through Doll’s processor, the other drones had remained in a stalemate, broken only by Nori scoffing. “Now, can your genocide friend stop pointing a gun to my head? I can always send him to sleep otherwise.”

Uzi furrowed her digital brows as her sister had, but still she tugged at the murder drone’s arm, urging him to comply. The murder drone hesitated for a moment, but then morphed its gun back into a hand. “Yeah, maybe it’s better- I want to make a good impression, after all!” He looked around and saw all of the other students, who had huddled in the farthest corner. “Aaand I can see I haven’t done the best job of it yet. Also, I’d kinda prefer to not sleep for a while, not after that dr-” in a moment of realization, the murder drone snapped its fingers. “Oh, right! Between all of- well, everything, I had almost forgotten to tell you, Uzi.”

One of Uzi’s conjured eyebrows lifted in confusion “…forgotten to tell me what, dude?”

“Well, about my dream, of course!” The murder drone chirped, as if it was the most obvious thing ever. “It was really weird, y’know? I was with the others, except we were, like, worker drones like you! And there was a human, there were a lot of them, in fact, we were in a human house, I think.”

“…okay?” Uzi asked, now thoroughly puzzled. “Are you just telling me your dream or…?” 

“Oh, right, right, sorry. I can be a bit of an airhead at times, J used to say. Well, she said ‘always’ instead of ‘at times’ and ‘waste of space’ instead of ‘airhead’, but same thing really!”

“Yikes.” Lizzy commented, surprising Doll, who thought her friend was just doomscrolling. “That’s too pathetic even for me to make fun of.”

“The point was!” The murder drone continued, seemingly undeterred. “Remember when you asked me if we had another drone in our squad? Well, she was there too! She had the braids and was your height, just like you said! I mean, we were all near your height, cause we were worker drones, but-”

“Wait, what?” Uzi belatedly interrupted the murder drones, seemingly having taken a moment to process what it had said. “That thing from my dream was there?”

“You also dreamt her? Woah that’s w-”

“A thing in your dreams?” Nori interrupted the murder drones as Uzi had, worry apparent in her tone.

“Uhm, yeah.” Uzi admitted. “Just before the… thing with the murder drones, I had one of those… weird dreams you told me about. Not the gross kind!” She quickly added, sending a glare to Lizzy, who had begun to smirk. “I was in this old manor and there was this creepy drone in the shadows. She looked similar to N, with the silver hair and the yellow eyes, so I as-”

“It had yellow eyes?” Nori quickly asked, her attention picked up by the seemingly random detail.

Why were the yellow eyes so important, Doll asked herself. It was a color she had never seen on any drone, true, but- well, not on no drone, she realised as her cameras drifted to the puzzled-looking murder drone.

Oblivious to Doll’s suspicions, Nori muttered to herself, shaking her head. “Not now, why now?”

“I knew it. You know what that thing is, don’t you?” Uzi stated, her resolve seemingly only hardened by her mother’s behaviour, and that seemed to be enough to shake Nori out of her current state.

“I have to go. I’ll have to talk to your father, take a look at that dead murder drone and then I’ll have to leave.”

“What?” Uzi asked, shocked. “B-but you just returned! I wanted to show you my railgun, talk about whatever this is and maybe spen-”

Almost like she didn’t hear her daughter, Nori turned towards Doll and talked to her. “Doll, we came here because Uzi’s grounded for letting murder drones get into the bunker. I want her out of trouble, I want no cockamamie schemes or harebrained plans, I want her inside the bunker and away from the lab where we keep the dead murder drone or the cell where we’ll put the currently unconscious one."

“Mom, I don’t need a babysitter, I just want to tal-”

“What?!” Doll cut off her sister’s protest to protest herself. She had to interrogate the murder drone as soon as she was able to, she couldn’t afford to waste time babysitting Uzi, particularly if she had to keep her away from its cell! “Aunt Nori, I have things I need to do, you can’t just-”

“I can and I will, young lady.” Nori sternly shut down Doll’s appeal. “Matter of fact, even after I’m gone, I want you watching Uzi and ensuring she doesn’t get into trouble and I don’t care if you have to skip a few sleepovers at Lizzy’s or bring her along.” Nori pointed at a couple of WDF drones that had just walked into the cafeteria. “You! Take that murder drone there and bring it to the cells! Now!”

Nori kept looking at the two drones as they carried the unconscious murder drone away and it was only once they disappeared behind the cafeteria’s doors that she turned towards her kids. Nori’s gaze passed from one displeased teenager to the other and then she sighed heavily. “Look, I know this isn’t ideal, but there are things I need to take care of and I need Uzi to be safe while I do. I swear I will explain everything, eventually, okay?” She promised, her expression uncharacteristically unsure.

The promise didn’t do much for Doll’s worries and, judging from a sideways glance, it didn’t do much for Uzi either. But Nori’s words had been final. With one simple command, she had prevented both drones from finding out information she didn’t want them to know.

‘Or has she?’ Doll asked herself as she rapidly put together a text file with the most pressing questions she wanted to ask and a copy of the program that allowed her to track the WDF drones’ positions. Right as she was about to send them, however, she stopped.

This was unbelievably risky. She saw it, right before Nori arrived, and she had known it before too: Lizzy wanted more. Doll could hardly fault her for that, she herself felt consumed by the need to understand what the Solver was and she had years to come to terms with what it really was and to come up with some rudimentary knowledge about it. Lizzy? Lizzy had just found out the eldritch entity existed and she knew even less than Doll was. 

Doll had already struggled with the idea of bringing Lizzy into this, ripping her out of her blissful ignorance, but if Lizzy was to delve even further, discover things even Doll didn’t know…

She remembered the entity in the Solver, the power beyond power, the sheer hunger in its eyeless stare.

Doll couldn’t protect Lizzy from that.

But what else could she do?

Nori knew that the currently unconscious murder drone was aware of the Solver. She was already trying to stop Uzi from investigating further, likely because she was somehow aware she possessed the Solver, and it was only because she seemed unaware that the Solver could be passed down that she didn’t directly try and stop Doll. 

Doll had a feeling that the murder drones, or at least the one who seemed to know, wouldn’t be around for long if Nori had something to say about it. Uzi might be protecting them, for now, but she was certain the older drone would think of something. A tragic accident, maybe, or a few vengeful drones somehow gaining access to the murder drone’s cell while it was unconscious and whatever secret Nori wanted to remain hidden would never be unearthed. 

Time was of the essence and the information the murder drone held, now evidently not just related to the Absolute Solver but also to whatever Nori was hiding, had never been more tantalizing. She needed to get it, even if it meant getting Lizzy involved. It would be like it had always been, right? Doll using Lizzy to advance her goals.

Then why did she hesitate still? Why, when her and her cousin’s life were at stake, did the thought of that power beyond power taking notice of her only friend and this time not averting its gaze fill her with such fear?

Lizzy did not matter, in the end, not before the threat of the thing that lived in her programming, not before the hunger for steel and oil in her and in her cousin.

Why, then, did she still hesitate?

Before she could try and answer that question, she steeled her resolve and hit the send button in her UI. 

Half a second later, Lizzy perked up and shot Doll a questioning look, showing Doll that her message had been delivered.

Doll nodded, hoping Nori would see it as just a delayed response (how did humans manage to scheme without processors able to elaborate thousands of thoughts in a second was beyond her) and that together with the unsubtly named ‘questionsforthemurderdrone.txt’ file it would would be enough to convey her intentions. “Very well.” She told her aunt as she got up and approached her cousin. “I will ensure Uzi behaves.”

Doll almost missed the way Uzi’s eyes, pointed directly at her, flickered as she said that, but decided not to think too much of it, her attention on her friend, gauging her reaction.

“A mama’s girl like always, uh?” Lizzy taunted, her voice mocking as ever, her smirk still pointed as ever, the huff she let out as she got up as flippant as ever, but Doll knew her better than that. She hesitated, almost imperceptibly, before speaking, her eyelights’ size wavered, just slightly, before settling, narrowly smaller than normal.

Like Doll, Lizzy had reached a decision

“Well, I don’t really feel like playing babysitter today.” The teen drone continued as she got up. “Imma go have fun. Later losers!”

And with that, she was off, Nori on her footsteps almost immediately.

Doll had lived all her life wrestling for control and knowledge. Since she could remember, she had been waging a one drone war.

Now, for once, it was out of her hands.

She didn’t know if that was good or bad.

A murder drone, a Russian cheerleader and the winner of the ‘most likely drone to blow themselves up’ award of the year 3070 entered Thad’s room. It sounded like the premise to some kind of weird and probably unfunny joke, but that was what happened.

“Hey Thad.” Uzi greeted him as she nonchalantly sat on his bed, slinging her backpack on its side in one jerky motion. “Mind if we crash here?” 

The emo drone dropping by was hardly an unusual occurrence, she dropped by often enough for Thad to keep a corner with a few tools for her tinkering.

Of course, like he had already mentally noted, this was an unusual occurrence, on account of, y’know, the murder drone and Uzi’s cousin. Doll had always given him the creeps and the murder drone…

“…yeah, no prob, ‘zi.” He answered with just a moment of hesitation, the cameras behind his visor flickering towards the tall drone still standing in his doorway. He leant back into his chair to seem nonchalant. “Why are y’all here?”

Uzi shrugged. “Mom was worried my sheer awesomeness would be too much for y’all to handle, so she stuck this buzzkill to my heels to balance my coolness out.”

“…she grounded you, didn’t she?”

“NO!”

“Yes.”

“I’m N!”

The worker drones gave a confused look to the murder drone, who kept standing there, smiling. He proceeded to explain himself. “I realised I never introduced myself to anyone but Uzi and her parents and you guys didn’t even know my name. So, yeah, I’m N.”

“I’m… Thad. Nice to meet you?” Thad said as he gave a questioning look to Uzi, flashing a ‘Is this normal?’ message on his screen.

“N’s just nice.” Uzi explained. “Can’t promise you'll ever get used to a murder machine being like…” Seemingly coming up short for words, Uzi opted to simply gesture at the murder drone from top to bottom with her hand. “…well, like N, but it’s growing on me. Better than the other ones for sure.” 

Just as he’d started to chill out, Thad felt his limbs tense up once again, servomotors humming lowly as they prepared to move. “Yeah, I, uhm, I guess. You didn’t really answer my question, though. Why did you come here?”

Uzi exhaled. “Well, as you can guess, there is some…” Uzi’s eyelights moved towards Doll as she gave her cousin a glance. “unresolved tension here. So I said to myself, who’s the chillest person I know?”

Thad took a deep breath and forced himself to smile. Uzi had come here because she thought he had a handle on things and here he was, getting worked up over… he forced himself not to look at N again. He breathed out. “Thanks, ‘zi. And thanks for comin’ here.” Thad chuckled nervously. “I got kinda worried when your dad said you were, y’know…”

“Dead?” Uzi completed the phrase Thad had left hanging, then scoffed, smirked arrogantly and pointed to herself with her thumb. “Please, Thad, I’m me. You think something lame like certain death could ever stop me? Dad left me for dead and I came back with a cool murder drone minion to save all of your asses.”

“You were also the reason all of our ‘asses’ were in danger to begin with.” Doll pointed out, speaking up for the first time since she had entered the room.

“Well, yeah, but- Bite me!” Uzi spattered out before settling on barking out her catchphrase and crossing her arm with a pout. “Why does everyone bring that up?”

“I did get into the Outpost because I was chasing you, to be fair.” N intervened, rubbing the back of his head awkwardly. 

“Traitor!” Uzi chastised the murder drone, standing up from Thad’s bed to give a light slap on the taller robot’s visor, a move that forced the short drone to stand on her tippy toes. “You’re supposed to take my side!”

“Gah! Sorry Uzi!”

“Do not try to shift the blame from yourself, demon.” Doll’s glare and cold tone gave a halt to the yellow and purple duo as they both stopped to look at the orange-red drone. Unlike her earlier words directed to her cousin, Doll’s tone was harsh and filled with scorn. “Uzi’s mistake may have let you get inside, but it was not what brought you and your ilk upon this world and us drones. You monsters are solely culpable for that and, though you for now seem to have been bafflingly spared, reckoning shall fall upon you all.” 

A beat of silence passed, as both Uzi and Thad’s gazes turned from Doll to the target of her rant, the murder drone amongst them, who wore a cryptic expression, the yellow eyelights on his black visor wide enough to be almost spherical and a mouth closed so tight to be almost invisible on the white plasteel lower half of his face.

Thad didn’t know how to feel about the other drone’s words. He didn’t know whether he shared them fully. N seemed nice enough and he had helped save them all, but…

“You worthless toasters sure are annoying.” The murder drone snarled, its hand morphing into a laser. “Stay still as I melt you into slag.”

His hand tightened into a fist behind the back of his chair.

N’s eyelights shut off once, twice, like he was blinking, then he struck a smile. “Thanks!” He cheerily stated. “That was really nice of you!”

Thad was pretty sure all of the worker drones in the room experienced a ‘404 Error: sense not found’ at the same time.

Uzi was the first to manage to speak again. “Dude, what do you mean thanks?”

“Oh, it wasn’t appropriate?” N asked and Thad could swear he detected genuine concern in his voice. “Sorry that it happened, then, whatever you were talking about.”

“What?” Uzi asked, genuinely befuddled.

“It’s just that I don’t understand what she is saying? Like, say something again?”

“Do you think this is funny?” Doll snarled. “Are you trying to mock me?”

Once again, N blinked once, then twice, then spoke. “Nope, still gibberish. Perhaps something is wrong with my audio receptors? Like, I can hear you all fine, but when that one talks all I hear are angry noises.”

Uzi erupted in a belly laugh, the tiny drone bending over as she cackled.

The murder drone tried to join her with a few awkward chuckles, but wilted under Doll’s silent glare and stopped. Uzi, on the other hand, seemed not to notice or, more likely in Thad’s opinion, not care.

Finally her laughter subsided enough for her to be able to string a sentence together. “Angry noises, man, N, I’m so glad I saved your life and stuff.”

“I’m also happy you saved my life! I like being alive!”

Uzi snapped her fingers and pointed two finger guns at N. “I know, I know, I’m the best. There’s nothing wrong about your receptors, you probably just don’t have other languages installed.”

“Makes sense,” Thad mused. “If you are built to kill drones, the humans would have no reason to give you other languages.”

“Precisely! So, Doll isn’t making angry noises, she’s speaking Russian.” The purple drone barely repressed a guffaw. “Well, they are angry noises, it’s Russian, that’s basically ‘angry noises: the language’, no?”

“Cousin, you are treading dangerous ground.”

“So what is she saying now?” N asked, innocently curious.

Uzi proceeded to do her best impression of the Cheshire cat. “Oh, just that she has an insane crush on you.”

“Oh!” N exclaimed, surprised, while three bright orange exclamation marks formed on Doll’s visor. He turned to face the Russian drone. “I’m quite sorry, but I kinda like someone else?”

“Uzi, continue with this and I will turn you into a pile of scrap.”

“Yeah, his type is, y’know,” Uzi said, continuing with that with the biggest shit eating grin. “Tall and psycho.”

“UZIII!” N whined, his tail whipping back and forth in displeasure, the sight almost enough to make him forget about the deadly acid contained in its stinger. “I told you you couldn’t tell!”

“Ah, relax.” Uzi said, laying back against a wall. “Thad’s not gonna tattle and Doll-” The purple drone turned her head to face her adoptive sister and stopped upon seeing the murderous look on her face, seemingly reconsidering her next words. A wise choice, Thad had to agree.

“Well, it will do you no good to not be able to understand Doll if you’re gonna spend time around me and if my mom wants her to keep an eye on me. Luckily for you, I snagged a language programming module a few years back. Thad, my stuff still here?”

“Would never dream about touching it.” Thad said as he gestured with his hand to the corner where Uzi’s tools and various half-finished knick-knacks and weapons of mass destruction laid. “No, seriously, I am kinda afraid that if I do, something is gonna blow up.”

“Hey, screw-” Uzi started to protest, before stopping, rubbing her chin in consideration and finally nodding. “Actually, fair point. It’s safer if you don’t handle anything I leave around. I would also advise you to add lead to your bed covers if you plan on sleeping here and avoid looking directly at that corner, just in case.”

“Question,” N said, looking mildly unsettled. “How have you managed not to blow up yet?”

“Oh, I did, bunch of times, actually.” Uzi chuckled as she walked over to the corner and booted up a terminal. She rapped her knuckles against her headplate. “I am just sturdy!”

Focused on Uzi as she proceeded to start interfacing with N’s circuitry, Thad almost jumped upright when he felt something touching him on his shoulder.

“Pardon me.” Doll proceeded to apologise. “I have been told I can be unsettingly quiet when I want to be.”

“You definitely can, aha.” Thad chuckled nervously as he needlessly righted his cap. He sighed. “But it’s not your fault. I’ve been on edge since… y’know.”

Both of their gazes drifted on the murder drone, sittingly docile in the corner while Uzi connected a datapad to a panel on the back of his head.

“Trust me, I understand exactly what you mean.” Doll said her eyelights just barely shrinking.

“How do you think she is so comfortable?”

“Dude, this programming is a mess! What even is ‘bigbro.exe’? WHY IS IT A CORE, PASSWORD PROTECTED PROGRAM?!”

“I mean, N seems… nice, but he’s still…” 

“A murder drone.” Doll finished Thad’s sentence for him. “Something designed to kill us, our natural predator.”

“Y-yeah, basically. Even if Uzi says he’s good and won’t harm us, I get tense even being in the same room as him. I can tell myself all I want that he’s harmless, but when he enters my peripheral view, I just get on edge.”

“How is it, then, that Uzi is so at ease?” Doll voiced the question Thad had left implicit and the other drone couldn’t help but nod.

“It’s just so… weird. She’s just hanging around with a murder drone and isn’t bothered in the least. Weirdest still, I don’t think she even notices.” Thad exhaled. “I guess she just believes we need to work together that much?”

“I guess.” Doll agreed, though the words conveyed a certain amount of disgust at the idea, not that Thad could blame her for it.

“Ah, but here I am talking about my problems.” Thad shook his head. “You wanted to tell me something? Y’know, since you approached me and all, which, kinda rare on your part for someone that isn’t Liz.”

“Lizzy has told me several times I was to ‘get your ass’ if you were to use that nickname again.”

“Noted.”

“Besides that, I wished to thank you.”

Thad’s visor manifested an eyebrow to raise it. “For?”

“When the murder drones found us and were about to kill Mr Doorman, you stood up to them. If it wasn’t for you, he would likely have been dead. Mr and Mrs Doorman took me in after my parents were murdered. They raised me. They are…” Doll’s mouth remained open for a few seconds, but her voicebox stayed silent as her eyelights slightly wavered from side to side. “They are important to me. No one else attempted to save Mr Doorman. Not even I. You put your life on the line and saved him. For that, I want to thank you.”

“Oh.” Thad spoke, genuinely surprised from the drawn out thanks from the usually quiet drone, then he forced an uneasy smile on his face. “Don’t even bother with that. It was nothing, really.” His fake smile fell slightly and he whispered to himself. “Didn’t even accomplish anything really.”

Because, in spite of what Doll had said, he hadn’t saved anyone, not really. 

Furrowed eyebrows manifested on Doll’s visor. “I just told you you did. If it wasn’t for you, Mr Doorman-”

“Except that it wasn’t for me, wasn’t it?” Thad interrupted the other drone, surprising both Doll and himself. “Uzi did. We doubted her all this time and she’s the only reason we’re alive.”

“Again, also the main reason why we were in danger to begin with.” Doll pointed out. “But you did do something. You stood up. That is not nothing. It is certainly more than what I did.”

“And it would have meant nothing, if not for Uzi.” Ever since then, the events of that confrontation had been replayed again and again in Thad’s mind, his CPU occupied mostly by examining and reexamining him going up against the pig-tailed murder drone.

If the situation had seemed dire then, enough for him to throw his life away to make a stand, to at least try, every time those few seconds were replayed in his mind, with the precision only a synthetic mind could have, the situation felt more and more hopeless. 

Hopeless. That felt like a very appropriate word to use. Each time he tried to find an angle, something he could have done to survive even if Uzi hadn’t arrived at the last second, he found only dead ends, literally. There was no hope he could have survived or even saved anyone. Hopeless.

“If not for Uzi and her murder drone, I would have died. You would have died. Everyone would have died.” Thad whispered. “And there was nothing me, you or anyone else could have done about it.”

Doll seemed slightly upset by the other drone’s words and hesitated a moment before conceding. “That is… correct, yes.”

“And doesn’t that just make you terrified?” Thad pulled up his hand and snapped his fingers, waiting for a moment before snapping them again, Doll too enthralled to break the silence between the two sharp sounds. “Three seconds. That was three seconds between those two snaps. Barely anything.”

“I’ve gone over those moments again and again. If Uzi had been three seconds late, I would have died. And nothing I could do would have meant anything.”

Thad’s eyes bore into Doll as he spoke, taking in every detail of the other worker drone’s expression and body language, trying to understand whatever reaction his words would cause in the usually restrained drone.

His oil pump audibly whirred when he noticed Doll’s hands balling into fists, her eyelights glowing just a bit redder, her mouth set into a thin line. Frustration. Resentment. Anger.

“I think I only realised it when Uzi’s dad told us she’d died. Why she did all she did, why she wanted so desperately to be able to, y’know, strike back. Being powerless against those murder drones… and you two knew, didn’t you? You both lost-”

“You have made your point, Thaddeus.” Doll curtly interrupted Thad, with a cold tone that told him he had stepped too far. “Yes, it was not pleasurable to have my mother’s corpse presented to me or watch my father get torn open by a murder drone. Yes, I would do anything to not have to go through that again.”

“…sorry.” Thad whispered, hoping his apology would do anything about the cold rage that exuded from Doll’s now crimson eyelights. “I didn’t wish to…”

Once she understood Thad was not likely to find words to complete his sentence, Doll sighed. “You have nothing to apologize for.” In spite of her conciliatory words, Doll’s fury didn’t disappear, it merely shifted towards a new target as she turned her eyelights towards the murder drone in the corner. “My parents’ fate was not your fault.”

Before Thad could speak further or even decide what to say to that, Uzi’s voice arose from the corner. “Alright, all done!”

“Wait, really?” N spoke up, speaking fluent Russian. “I don’t feel any different.”

“Oh, wonderful, he can be annoying in multiple languages now”

“Woah! The angry gibberish makes sense now!”

Doll visibly bristled at the comment, but rather than blowing up, she pointed a finger menacingly towards her cousin. “Don’t. You. Dare.”

“Who? Me?” Uzi chuckled as she took back her place on Thad’s bed, this time confidently laying down, her head and upper torso propped up by the pillows. “Have you ever known me to mock my friends? But seriously, I still don’t get why you won’t let me install more languages in ya. You could still act all edgy and speak in Russian, but when you need it you could speak in English. It would take what, 10 minutes tops? I’ve even managed to mostly get rid of the psycho owl from the language app I hacked.”

“I would very much prefer to keep you away from my programming. As far away as possible, to be precise.”

“Eh, your loss.” Uzi remarked with a casual shrug, before turning her attention back on Thad. “So, Thad. Since we can’t mess around and, quote unquote, ‘get into trouble’ because of Miss Buzzkill here, what are you doing? I’m not really used to this ‘hanging out’ thing, so my plan here was literally to go here and hope there was something cool going on.”

“Uhm, I was mostly…” reliving traumatic memories and thinking about how powerless I am “hanging around, I guess. I was planning on spending this time preparing my shindig, y’know, but a bunch of the people I had invited kinda died.”

“Ugh.” Uzi grunted as she laid flat on the bed. “Right when I get a murder drone minion, I get grounded and my coolest friend has nothing cool going on? Lame.”

“I’m your coolest friend?” Thad asked, touched.

“Well, duh? I only have, like, you, Doll and Lizzy. And I would die before saying that anyone in a cheerleader outfit is cool. You win by default.”

“You also have me!” The murder drone, now sitting by the bed Uzi was lying on, spoke up, having switched back to English. “I’m cool!”

“Dude, you’re basically a robotic puppy. You’re too innocent to be cool.”

The murder drone paused a second, then raised a hand. “…I have a ninja star?” He tentatively stated, producing a star shaped blade in his raised hand.

Uzi did a double take. “Oh damn, for real?” She asked as she raised up and confirmed the murder drone’s claim. “Damn, that’s cool. Always wanted a frickin’ ninja star. Sorry Thad, you’re number two now.”

“Aw, snap.” Thad commented as he snapped his fingers in disappointment. “Can’t compete with a ninja star, I guess.”

“Don’t you worry, you’re both equally lame compared to my frickin’ railgun!” Uzi proudly declared, pulling out her homemade weapon from the backpack she’d left by Thad’s bed. 

“Uzi, don’t point deadly weaponry at other drones.”

“Bite me! This deadly weaponry saved all your butts, so I get to point it at whoever I like!” Like it was proud of pleasing its master, the railgun began to whirr, the sound almost like a purr. Uzi grinned proudly and patted it. “My beautiful girl! After so much tinkering, it is finally complete and absolutely lethal.”

“I can confirm!” N chirped. “That thing’s awesome! You don’t want to get hit by it, believe me, I’ve tried it.”

“Damn straight!” Uzi beamed, crossing her arms boastfully. “Damn good hype man, N.”

“It is pretty cool, ‘zi.” Thad agreed. “So, what are you gonna use it for?”

That simple question proved to be enough to startle Uzi, a spinning wheel showing up on her visor for a second. “What?”

“Well, yeah, you always went on and on about how you’d use it to kill the murder drones and now you killed one and the others are…” Thad hesitated a moment. “They’re not a threat anymore. So what now?”

“I, uhm, well…” Uzi seemed genuinely at a loss for words, processing Thad’s line of logic and deciding to react like she did best: unmitigated aggression. “Graah! Seriously? Did I just invent the coolest gun ever only to use it, like, once and kill no one?”

“Hey, you did kill J!”

“Shut it, N, I told you I didn’t pull that damn trigger!” Uzi growled, before letting herself fall on the bed with a scoff. “Can’t believe how boring this place is. Was the only interesting thing were the damn murder drones? Seriously, I created the most powerful weapon in dronekind’s history and now I’ll never get to use it again! Can’t there be some other threat?”

“Well, I did hear my dad talk about a WDF drone that disappeared, earlier today…” Thad hesitantly proposed, eliciting the attention of every other drone in the room, Uzi’s in particular. “Buuuut, they did end up finding the missing drone. Well, they did not exactly find him, more like, he came back and said he’s gotten lost, which my dad said it’s weird caus-”

“Ugh, B to the O to the ring!” Uzi exclaimed. “There’s not even some kind of centipede monster eating drones? Seriously, Thad, why did you even get my hopes up?”

“Well, for one I am glad that there’s no threat around here, so thank you Thad.” N sheepishly admitted and Thad accepted the thank you with a noid with just a little moment of hesitation. “Specifically centipedes, I’m kinda scared of them.”

“Wait, for real?” Uzi asked, her disappointment leaving place to curiosity. “Why? You’re a super tall murder drone with a friggin’ arsenal in your arms and you’re scared of bugs?”

“I… don’t really know why?” N replied with an awkward laugh. “They just give me the creeps. A bunch of animals do, actually. Centipedes, mantises… spiders.”

“Ah!” Uzi let out a laugh. “Big bad murder drone is scared of a bunch of critters?”

“Uzi, you are afraid of social interaction. And showers.”

“BITE ME! I’m not afraid of that stuff, I just dislike it!” After barking back at her sister, Uzi’s eyelights went back to the murder drone, that Thad noticed had grown quiet and fidgety. “You alright dude? And if you’re about to say that J used to tell you you were the squad’s scaredy cat or something, this was friendly mocking, not ‘you are a waste of space and you should die’ mocking, alright?”

“No, no, it’s not that.” N reassured Uzi, smiling at the other drone’s concern. “But yeah, kinda. J didn’t call me that. Well, she did, but… V called me that, once. It was when I got scared at this statue of a spider we found. She actually acknowledged me. Called me a bunch of names and blasted the statue to smithereens. Good times.”

The murder drone’s attitude grew more pensive as he finished recounting his short tale and no drone made a peep, though Thad wasn’t sure if it was because of the sadness of the story itself or because of the weird mood the drone was in.

Finally N spoke up, breaking the silence. “…hey, Uzi, how long did your mom say V would be knocked out for?”

Uzi was taken aback for a second. “Uhm, about an hour? I think? She should have already woken up.”

“Good, good.” N said as he nodded. “Any chance I could go see her? She’s probably freaking out.”

“Don’t even think about it.” Doll immediately struck down the proposition. “Mrs. Doorman was quite clear on keeping you away from that damn murder drone.”

“Right, and that isn’t suspicious at all.” Uzi muttered, her voice full of sass, before ‘CRAZY GOOD IDEA’ flashed in purple on her screen. “You’re right, Doll, she said you had to keep me away from the murder drone. Keyword being me. She said nothing about N here. I can remain here, safe, sound and bored out of my mind while he goes see his psycho girlfriend.”

”UZI I TOLD YOU THAT IN CONFIDENCE!”

Ignoring the murder drone’s rather undignified screech, Doll scoffed. “Right, and let the murder drone roam the colony free? Fat chance.”

“Who said anything about letting him roam free?” Uzi asked with a smirk. “You’re supposed to keep me away from the murder drone, right? You can just leave me here and keep an eye on N as he goes to check on V. Thad can watch over me, right Thad?”

“Sure thing, ‘zi!”

Doll was silent for a moment, longer than Thad had thought she would be at such a blatant attempt to get her off Uzi’s back on Uzi’s part. Then, she spoke. “Alright.”

“Eh, it was worth a sh- wait, you’re actually okay with this?” Uzi asked, likely befuddled her plan had actually worked.

“As long as you remain in Thad’s room, you’re out of trouble. That fulfills my duty.” Doll calmly explained, doing nothing for Thad and Uzi’s confusion.

As the two other worker drones still struggled to understand how Doll had apparently fallen for Uzi’s trick, Doll simply strolled to the door. “Come, murder drone.” She called N as she waved her hand towards herself. “Unless you have changed your mind?”

“Oh, uhm, okay!” N said as he made to follow Doll. “Bye Uzi! Will be back later!”

As N crossed the door, Doll stopped and turned, her face displaying a smirk on its own. “And just in case you thought you had me fooled, cousin.”

Her closed fist quickly smashed the door’s control panel on the inside, right before Doll stepped outside and closed the door from the external panel.

Uzi and Thad looked at each other and both shrugged.

“Yeah, that makes more sense.”

“I was wondering if I had underestimated my own genius.”

Thad chuckled at his friend’s casual megalomania, then stepped up to the ruined control panel, a couple of taps confirming that yep, it was unoperable. “Well, my parents come back in a few hours. I do have some computer games, if you wanna.”

“Nah, don’t fancy humiliating you today.” Uzi dismissed his proposal as her eyes drifted to the vent right over Thad’s desk. “Besides, I think I have a new plan, as it befits a genius like me. Can you give me a boost?”

“Sure thing, ‘zi!”

When Copper 9’s core imploded, not all of the bunker the worker drones would later call Oupost 3 escaped unscathed. The new occupants fixed what they needed, but the arrival of the murder drones led to them abandoning any large scale renovations of the bunker and hunkering down in the mostly undamaged sections, diverting manpower and resources to keeping the murder drones out. That meant that large portions of the underground structure were in varying states of disrepair, from just lacking electricity to having outright collapsed.

Navigating the pitch black tunnels shouldn’t have been hard. Perhaps it wouldn’t have been easy for a human or someone new to the bunker, but Lizzy had lived in the bunker for most of her life. Even without the map guiding her to her destination open in her UI, she knew where everything was and how it looked like. She knew how long there was between one door and another, she knew how often the corridors split up, she knew where the reinforced security room was in the modular plant of the outpost.

She saw nothing, yet she was sure she knew the world around her.

Then she turned her screen’s brightness up and she realized how little she truly knew. Her visor wasn’t powerful enough to truly light up the corridors she walked in, to show what the shadows were hiding, but it dispelled the darkness just enough to hint at it, to show collapsed doors, caved in rooms, dead drones buried in the rubble, all so similar to the world she knew.

Not enough to know the world around her, but enough to see it wasn’t like she thought it was.

Lizzy wasn’t quite sure where she had quite lost the plot.

Perhaps it was when, after she saw her best friend of forever use otherworldly powers to save their lives, said friend asked her to keep her secret and she agreed.

Perhaps it was when she had begun covering for her right hand girl, letting her do Robo-God knows what under the pretense of hiding at her place.

Perhaps it was when she had approached the creepy and quiet girl she had noticed had been staring at her for half an hour and had confidently stated the purple haired drone would be hanging out with her from then on, the other young drone not bothering to deny or accept, yet from that moment on hanging out with her nevertheless.

Whenever it had happened, it still led her here, with her friend apparently wielding eldritch demon program powers that the drone eating monsters that had been the boogeymen of her bedtime stories apparently knew about. 

In the span of a single day, Lizzy had gone from queen of a small world she knew best of all to being thrust into a new one, one she was hardly even beginning to understand. 

The guiding software suddenly beeped and Lizzy realised she was there. She had no idea how Doll had acquired a program to track the WDF, though she had a pretty good idea about the why, but it seemingly worked like a charm.

“I’d be kinda screwed if it didn’t, I suppose.” Lizzy muttered to herself. She had to trust Doll on this, follow her guide.

She quickly whipped out her cloned door master card. Being friends with the adoptive daughter of the WDF chief did come with privileges, after all.

The terminal buzzed to life, the small screen’s light showing the battery that had been jammed in it to make the door operational, and the heavy door, a slab of reinforced tungsten as thick as Lizzy’s hand, slowly slid open, shrieking horribly as it did.

The noise finally stopped as the door opened completely, revealing nothing but darkness in the room, a pit that Lizzy’s visor, such a poor excuse for a flashlight, couldn’t hope to penetrate.

For the umpteenth time, Lizzy regretted not getting a torch installed like Doll or Uzi had.

All she could do was trust Doll on this, Lizzy thought grimly as she took a step forward.

No sooner had she done so that a bright yellow X appeared in the darkness.

Lizzy’s processor barely had time to register that information and associate it with what it meant before the murder drone was upon her.

She stumbled backwards, her ass plate meeting the floor as she raised her arms in terror to defend her head and turned her head to the side in terror, her cameras shutting down instinctively.

And yet, nothing happened.

Tentatively, Lizzy reactivated her cameras and let down her arms to see. Before her, was the murder drone that she apparently hadn’t just dreamed up, her arms still bound to her sides by thick cabling and her fangs bared in an animalistic snarl as she struggled against a chain holding her like a leash, straining but holding.

“Eh.” Lizzy allowed herself to chuckle, partly to relieve some tension, partly to just laugh at the other drone’s misfortune, something that always came to her easily, but even more so now that her target was the boogeyman from her childhood stories. “Not so murder-y now, are you?”

“You little-” The murder drone snarled, its fangs snapping against each other hard enough for sparks to fly off, briefly lighting up the dark room. “If this damn chain wasn’t here-”

“But it is here, isn’t it?” Lizzy gloated, playfully flicking the murder drone on the top of its visor. She could hardly believe she was doing what she was doing, but hey, it’s not like she was going to get another chance at this. Still keeping her eyes on the murder drone (she was cocky, no suicidal), she felt around on the wall next to the door until she found a switch and flipped it.

The emergency lights turned on and the renewed growl from the chained monster stopped halfway through, its eyelights squinting before a spark of recognition raised the brightness of its screen just barely. “Wait… you’re… I know you. I remember you.”

“I know you probably intended for that to be ominous or something, but babygirl, it happened yesterday. Like, I’d be more worried if you didn’t remember me.”

“Oh, I would have forgotten all about you if you were just another useless toaster.” The murder drone took the taunt with stride, her unnaturally wide mouth turning into a slightly unsettling grin. “The only reason I didn’t is the same reason why you’re not scrap metal right now.”

“Th-”e Solver, Lizzy, almost said, catching herself just in time. Her gaze flickered to the instructions Doll had typed up for her. ‘Feign ignorance.’, the first line of the document read, ‘If it thinks you know nothing about the Solver, maybe it will let slip something.’

‘Yeah, not like you made it hard to do, babes’, Lizzy told herself, suppressing the eyeroll.exe program from running. “That thing.” She finally spoke up. “What… what was it?”

That did apparently take the murder drone by surprise, its smile flickering before it regained its aloof aura. “Yeah, like you don’t know.” It snarled once again “Is this that little witch’s game? She sends her new toys to do her dirty work while playing around wit-” It shook her head and stopped herself before she could continue ranting. “Whatever. Whatever!” The drone stopped yanking the chain holding her and went back towards the wall it was linked to, curling up right at its bottom. “It’s not like I can’t do anything about it right now, but I’m not playing any of her games.”

Lizzy stood there, taken aback by the murder drone’s bizarre reaction. Her gaze passed over the rest of the notes, Doll’s advice she was meant to follow like she had with the tracking program, but even as she read the words, none registered.

She had given trusting Doll a chance and she had told her barely anything. Time to do this her own way.

“So you think you can just say a bunch of cryptic stuff and be done with everything? Sorry to disappoint you, well, not actually cause you like, killed a bunch of people, but sweetcakes, you’re gonna have to be a whole lot clearer than that.”

The murder drone turned its head, an annoyed expression displayed in its visor. “I told you to buzz off. If you came to bother me on that little witch’s behalf, you must be good at following orders, so follow mine: get out of here while you still can.”

“And apparently all you’re good at is killing and eating people, because you sure can’t listen: I want to know what the hell is going on.”

The murder drone’s laugh sounded less like laughter and more like a growl. “Oho, trust me, you don’t want to know.”

“I do!” Lizzy yelled back, stepping forwards, her foot hitting the ground hard enough to give the other drone pause. “I was just living my life, but then you monsters came in and all of a sudden my friend has this… thing and I have no idea what it is, what it means, if I should be scared or-” as Lizzy searched for words, she was hit with the realisation that, by advancing while ranting, she had gotten closer to the murder drone, close enough that, should it decide to pounce, Lizzy couldn’t hope to get outside of the area the chain allowed it to move in. 

The two drones’ eyelights met and Lizzy realised it was aware of that fact as well.

Looks like she should have trusted Doll after all.

“…you should be.” And yet the murder drone didn’t move towards her, instead turning its body around to lean back against the wall. 

“…what?” Lizzy asked, confused both by the other drone’s behaviour and by its words. 

“Scared. You should be scared.” It clarified, its metal body tensing just slightly. “That… thing. The Solver. You should be afraid of it.”

“The… Solver?” Lizzy feigned ignorance, only for the murder drone to snort.

“Oh, don’t play dumb with me. I know you’re working with one of those witches, though I can’t say with which witch. I’m telling you the truth, you might as well do the same.”

“Fair.” Lizzy conceded. “But then why tell me? Not that I mind, mind you.”

The murder drone took a pause, as if it was necessary to think about it. “Because you have no idea what you are getting into. I can tell. The only reason you could be wanting to know more about that thing is if you didn’t know enough to know that right now the right move is to run as far away as you can as fast as you can.”

“Eh, never been the brightest bulb in the box.”

Another snort, though this time it appeared to be out of genuine amusement. “Somehow, I could tell, toaster.”

“So what, was that all? Just had to go ‘Hey, I’m a dumb toaster, I have no idea what this magic thingamajig is, could you explain how screwed I am?’ and that was enough to get you to spill the tea?”

The chuckle that escaped the other drone was less genuine this time around. “Let’s just say that… not all people are so fortunate to get a heads up. Someone weak and tiny like you… well, it would only be fair that you didn’t have to find out for yourself.”

“…you know, you’re less scary than I thought you would be.”

The murder drone’s fangs were quickly drawn. “Don’t test me or my patience.”

“Yeah, don’t worry, you’re still a badass monster who could totally kill me and everyone else. Name’s Lizzy, by the way.”

“The other toaster did call you that.” The murder drone commented before she finally spoke. “V.”

“Woah, let me guess, creative parents?”

“I’m glad you’re so unbothered by discovering forces beyond your comprehension that you’re so ready to make jokes.”

Lizzy just shrugged. “It’s how I deal with stuff. Pretty sure having to live with you guys ready to murder everyone has something to do with it.”

V’s expression darkened. “Then I’m sure you’ll need a new coping mechanism, girlie, because the three of us? We were nothing compared to it.”

“The Solver?”

“What else could I possibly be talking about?”

“Was just trying to make things clear, no need to get your panties in a twist. Well, no need if you were actually wearing any.” Lizzy remarked, her eyes drifting to V’s admittedly risque outfit. “Bold fashion choices there, babes, but next time I’d try to actually wear clothes.”

V’s eyelights scanned Lizzy up and down “You sure you want to go there?”

Lizzy gasped in indignation. “How dare you! This uniform is hot. I would know, I designed it.”

V just had to manifest a raised eyebrow to make the other drone huff and cross her arms. “Oh, screw you.”

“Just saying, you don’t have to feed me ammo.”

“I’ll get you into one of them, we’ll both see how hot you are and you’ll shut up.”

“Don’t have to threaten me, ‘girlie’, I already said I was gonna talk.” V stretched, the act calling up old cat videos in Lizzy’s UI, and laid back against the wall. “So, we were talking about the Solver. How much do you know about it? The thing in itself, I mean.” 

“It’s a program that can manipulate reality.” Lizzy summed up what she knew, realising just how little Doll had really told her about it as she did, something that apparently V found hilarious.

“Oh wow, you’re even more clueless than I thought you were.” She chuckled, though it didn’t quite reach her visor. “The Solver’s more than just a program. It’s a malignant little thing, inside a malignant little package. It’s not a tool and if your ‘friend’ told you it is, she’s either stupid or lying.”

“…which one do you think it is?” Lizzy asked, a digital corrugated brow conjured on her visor.

“Depends on which witch told you.” V shrugged, before chuckling. “Eh, which witch. Funny.”

Lizzy’s eyelights blinked once, then twice. “Whi- what do you mean?”

“Oh, you didn’t even-” V said, her question cut short by her own chortling. “God, you’re pathetic. Shame, you’re funnier company than what I’m used to. But yeah, ‘which’. For red, it’s about 50/50. Don’t think anything can have that cancer without being a rotten person, but she’s ‘friends’ with you and saved you instead of using you as bait while she ran away from me, so she could just be stupid. Met my fair share of suckers that got swindled. Killed a bunch of them too.”

A beat of silence passed.

Then, V’s voice turned to ice.

“Purp, on the other hand?” The murder drone looked Lizzy directly in her cameras, making the worker take a step back. “Don’t know what she told you all. Don’t know what lie or act she made up to fit in. I know her. She might be wearing purple eyes now, but I know her since she had yellow ones. She’s a monster. I don’t know what her game is, but I know she’ll do anything to see it carried through. She’ll lie, she’ll betray, she’ll steal, she’ll kill. If you want to make something meaningful with your life, try and kill her the first chance you get. It won’t work and even if it does, it won’t stick, but whatever she does to you after, it’s better than whatever she’s got in store for you.”

Lizzy had to take a moment to get her bearings after… that.

If ‘red’ was Doll, then ‘purp’ had to be the only other drone V could know to use the Solver. Logically, Lizzy knew it was the case, but she just couldn’t wrap her head around it. Nori Doorman, who took Doll in after her parents had died, who had shown her how to torrent files while she waited for Doll to get ready, she couldn’t be evil.

And yet, when V had looked her in the eyes, Lizzy had felt in her hardware that all that the murder drone was saying was nothing but the truth. The slight wavering in her eyelights, the cold hatred that oozed from her every word, it couldn’t be anything that wasn’t born from something V had lived firsthandedly.

Doll had also implied that her mom and her aunt, Mrs Doorman, had brought in the Solver from somewhere else. That would explain where V could have met her, wouldn’t it?

“Oh, great, I broke you. Damn, just as things got interesting.” V interrupted her thoughts, bonking Lizzy on the head with one of her bubble wands. “You still there?”

“…you said I should take this seriously. If there’s not only some evil Solver god out there, but an evil witch in this bunker, why are you so… casual about it?”

“I told you, didn’t I? I made a deal. I am out of this.” V said, her flippant tone still there, but half hearted.

“Yeah, but you said it yourself that something bad is gonna happen!” Lizzy objected, stomping a foot down. “There’s gotta be something you can do! You said you're telling me you wanted to give me a heads up, but you won’t do anything more? Don’t you care at al-”

“DON’T YOU DARE.” Suddenly, the murder drone was in Lizzy’s face, teeth bared, yet eyelights refusing to morph into a cross despite her visor flickering. “Don’t you dare tell me I don’t care. Don’t you.”

Lizzy stumbled back, once more a prey in a predator’s sight.

V went on, her tone growing pained. “You don’t get it, don’t you? None of you ever do. That’s why I stopped trying. You always want to fight back, to run away, to do something. You never get it.”

Lizzy’s cameras once more met V’s eyelights and, amidst the crazed flickering and the anger, she saw something no prey should ever see in a predator’s eyes.

Fear.

“It doesn’t matter. Nothing you do does. Nothing I do, nothing I tell you matters.”

“I don’t matter, you don’t matter, N-”

A desperately choked back sob, then words spoken like they were carved into bedrock, a monolith to those foolish enough to read its warning.

“It doesn’t matter. Nothing does.”

”She is coming.”

No drone usually thought much about the vent system.

It was a legacy from when humans still lived on the planet, yet, unlike much of the structure, a great portion of it had survived the cataclysm that had put an end to humanity on Copper 9. This labyrinth of vents spanned much of the complex that was Outpost 3, as the drones found out when the murder drones used them to bypass their last defenses.

Now, she crawled through them. The twists and turns of the small tunnels were hard to navigate, but she managed to find her way using the voices of the drones in the corridors below, until finally, she heard a voice she recognised.

“-d frankly, I can’t believe you would ever do that! To your own daughter!” Nori’s voice, clearly outraged, came up from a grate.

She instantly stopped dead in her tracks and, slowly, approached the grate, until she was nearly over it, the metal under her groaning as it strained to support her weight.

“I know.” Khan’s dejected voice followed and she could even see glimpses of the mustachioed drone from behind the grate’s metal frame that faced the kitchen the two drones were standing in. “I just… I panicked. I’m not as strong as you. And the murder drones, that… thing. They are just…”

A sigh, then Nori’s voice, still not pleased, but slightly more mellowed out. “I know too. I’m sorry.” A beat of silence “I am still mad at you, let that be clear! But I think I can understand. It wasn’t fair to saddle you with all of this on top of… Uzi.”

Khan seemingly picked up on his wife’s hesitation. “…she told you, didn’t she?”

Another beat of silence, a movement of Nori’s head that could only be a nod.

“…I didn’t know what to tell her. You haven’t told me much about it, about her.” Khan’s tone became more hushed, to the point she had troubled making out what he was saying. “She saw something. She saw someone. And I couldn’t tell her anything, because I know nothing, nothing besides that at night you wake up screaming about yellow eyes.”

Once more, silence.

“…I…” Nori’s voice was wavering. Trying desperately to stay still, to comfort, to reassure, yet trembling all the same, a constrained snake trying to break free. “I don’t…”

The sound of metal hitting metal, once twice thrice, then Khan leaped at her, his arms quickly finding their way underneath hers, holding her up.

A fraction of a second later, almost not even enough to register what had happened, Nori let herself go, the slight fall, impossible to notice to a human eye yet evident to a drone’s sensors, promptly stopped by her husband, the male worker’s grip tightening around her as he whispered something too faint to be registered that one could only assume to be words of reassurement.

To whom was anyone’s guess.

“…I don’t know what to do, Khan…” The voice came eventually, unexpected and scratched, despite the impossibility of a vocoder being strained. “All these years, all this work… yet it’s too soon. Her monster saw.”

“She knows.”

“And we’re not ready! I’m not ready and Uzi…” Nori’s hand banged against Khan’s back, her hand tightening into a fist, the plasteel of its palm straining from the strength of her grip. 

Once more, all noise ceased, the silence filled only by the rattling of vents in the unforgiving wind of the surface that found its way down there.

“…if Uzi…” Nori spoke once more, her head twisting enough to show a portion of her visor, displaying lines that represented tightly shut eyes. “…if worse comes to worst…”

Khan’s posture tightened, his eyelights, impossible to glimpse from the vent, that yet could only be wide and hollow, great 0s. “Nori, you can’t mean…”

The fist on his back opened for a moment, only to close again, gripping Khan’s jacket  like a shipwreck’s survivor might cling to a floating piece of wood, an impossible hope of survival.

“Khan, if I am not around to do it, if she takes me, you need to-” Her phrase was interrupted by the simulated sound of a choked back sob. “I am sorry. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, you shouldn’t have to-” Her visor filled with tears, the hand not grasping her husband’s jacket darting to what a human would call her stomach, her womb. “It’s my fault, it’s all my fault, I shouldn’t-”

”Hush, darling.” Khan shut his wife down, smothering her face into his chest, desperately trying not to let her finish the sentence. “It’s not your fault. You did… you did what was right. You only did what was right. A- and you need to keep doing what is right. We don’t hav-”

“But we do.” Nori stated, the tremble in her voice gone entirely, and suddenly Khan was forced back, shoved away. “We did what’s right again and again. But I don’t know if we can… if we can afford to keep doing it.”

“But surely we can!” Khan pleaded. “I don’t know what we’re up against, but-”

“Exactly. You don’t know what we’re up against. I know. I wish I didn’t, I wish I could just live happily with my husband, with my sister, with my niece and my dau-” Another choked back sound, but Nori didn’t let that stop her. “I wish I could live happy and unaware until it all” Her hand was brought up, the same hand that had gone to her ‘stomach’, and it snapped, the sound oddly final, echoing in the room. “ends.”

“But I know. I know she will never let go, I know she will never let up, I know she will come and nothing, nothing we can do will stop her.” 

“If I wake up screaming, it’s because I know that. That thing was in my head! I know her hunger, I know her hatred and I know it, all of it, every single atom of it, is aimed at me and who I love, because we took something that belonged to her and she wants it back.”

Throughout all of the description, the drone in the vent had grown more and more interested, her spine straightening and tensing, her hands planting themselves on the edge of the grate, her fingers slamming one by one, one by side and one after the other against the metal surface of the vent, her mouth opening slightly, her eyelights wavering in place.

“And it’s because I know that I have to do something. Because if there is even a sliver of a chance it can work, I owe it to everyone, those who died and those who still live. Will you do the same?”

Khan waited, the pause pregnant.

“I know what I promised.” He stated, his voice as cold as the grave. “But you also promised.”

“Don’t.” Nori’s reaction was subtle, but spoke volumes. Her eyelights became pinpricks, her arms gathered in front of her chest like she was a pugilist preparing to defend herself and her voice turned into a hiss. “Don’t you dare bring her up.”

“You promised.” Khan refused to back down, making his shoulders as wide as the drone could. “You promised her. What would Ye-”

“YEVA IS DEAD AND THAT THING KILLED HER!”

Khan actually stepped back, the sudden shout hitting him with more force than Nori’s shove ever could have, his arms forced wide open by the shock.

Nori didn’t take it any better, falling to her knees, her hands flying to her screen, now filled with tears.

Khan quickly overcame the shock and he rushed to Nori’s side, gathering her up as if he feared she could turn to liquid any second, the two’s voices becoming hushed whispers.

‘No, no!’ She, from her vantage point in the vents, silently cursed. She needed to hear what they said next, she needed-

As she leant forward, as if that minuscule gesture could make the words any more audible, the weight put on the grate became too much for the screws holding it in place to withstand and down she fell.

“OW!” Uzi protested as she hit the floor, her noise of pain quickly catching the other drones’ attention. 

“Wha- UZI!?” Khan shrieked, instantly turning on his heels to face his daughter.

“Uzi.” Nori stated, her tone cryptic, her eyes narrowed in focus, what Uzi recognised as her mother’s best poker face quickly put on like one would with a mask. “What did you hear?”

Uzi, still on all fours, skittered back, the motion causing both adults to tense slightly. “Wha- what were you talking about?” She managed to get out, her eyelights flickering between her parents while all her willpower was spent to force herself not to run.

“Uzi, what did you hear?” Nori repeated her question, taking a slow step towards Uzi, closing the distance.

“I- bite me!” Uzi fired up again, her confidence returning after a moment of confusion. “I’m the one who asks questions here! You two have creepy secrets and you’re asking me questions!?”

“We don’t have creepy secrets, dear, just- uhm…” Khan struggled to find a way to finish his sentence “Normal parents secrets?”

“That’s crap and you know it!”

“Uzi, I will not ask again.” Nori continued, undeterred, inching ever closer to her daughter. “What did you hear?”

“I…” Uzi’s newfound confidence flickered for a moment, as her processor parsed through all she had heard, focusing on one single thing. “Who is ‘she’?”

As she spoke her that last word, unassuming if not for the peculiar way she had said it, the same way her mother had used it, with a strange gravitas, equal parts vitriolic hatred and reverential terror, Nori just froze, servomotors locking in place as her foot stopped midair.

“Listen…” Nori spoke, her mouth hanging open as her visor flickered through expressions, words and even blurry images, too fast for Uzi to actually see. Her mouth snapped shut, then opened again as she settled on an answer to her daughter’s question. “Every day, I pray you never find out the answer to that question.” 

Digital eyebrows furrowed in concern on Uzi’s display. “What… what does that mean?” Her hands balled into fists. “WHAT THE HELL IS THAT SUPPOSED TO MEAN!? CAN’T YOU JUST GIVE ME A STRAIGHT ANSWER?”

Nori backed off, as if her daughter’s outburst had physically pushed her away. “I…” She started fumbling, trying desperately to speak up, her head starting to turn towards her husband again and again, yet each time stopping itself to keep facing her daughter. “I- I-”

“Hi everybody!” 

Every drone’s head whipped around to see N, standing in the kitchen’s doorway. He withered slightly under everyone’s attention, a hand awkwardly rubbing the back of his head. “…did I interrupt something?”

“What the hell are you doing here? How did you even get here?” Nori immediately pivoted, much to Uzi’s evident displeasure, the purple drone flashing a “Really!?” message on her screen. 

“Uhm, I asked for Uzi’s house? And the door was open?”

“You would think I would have heard if one of my doors opened…” Khan mused, before immediately changing his tune after the other two Doormans gave him an unimpressed stare. “B-but I probably didn’t notice because I was focused on my family, who is far more important than any door.”

“What I meant to say is” Nori refocused his attention on the murder drone and her rebellious daughter “that I distinctly remember leaving Doll to take care of both you and Miss Air Vent over here.”

“I’m still here! And I still want answers!”

“Oh. Right. Doll. She was with me! I wanted to go check on V, so she decided to tag along. She said it was to “keep an eye on me” and to “make sure I can’t eat anyone”, but I can tell she’s warming up to me. No idea why Uzi is here. Happy to see her though!” N waved at Uzi, practically beaming. “Hi Uzi! Missed you! Did you do something with your screen? You look nice in purple!”

“…dude, we literally saw each other minutes ago. And my screen was always purple?”

“Starting to really suspect this one wasn’t the brains of his little squad.” Nori mused. “But if Doll was with you, where is she now?”

“Oh, she kinda… ditched me?” N admitted with an awkward chuckle. “Turned a corner and boom, gone.”

“She was what?” Nori exclaimed.

“Of course she did,” Uzi scoffed, crossing her arms in exasperation. “Doll disappearing to do Robo-God knows what. I’d say typical, but at that point it’s even more than that.”

Nori turned towards Khan. “It happens frequently? Khan, does Doll often just disappear?”

“Whaaat? Noooo,” Khan answered, a digital representation of a bead of sweat forming on his display. “I mean, kind of. A lot. But she’s just at Lizzy’s! I think. I’ve never actually checked.”

“Khan Doorman, one of the girls entrusted to your care disappears frequently and you’ve never even checked where she goes!?” Nori roared. “You’re sleeping on the couch for one thousand years!” 

“But hon-”

“Couch!” Nori barked, before turning to Uzi. “And since you seem to know about this, you’re telling me everything you know.”

Uzi smirked. “Oh, look who wants answers now. Now, let me think about it… how about you bite me?”

“Uzi, this is serious, I don’t have time for-”

“Oh, cool!” The older purple drone was cut off once again by N, who had now noticed a few framed photos on a piece of furniture. “Aww, Uzi you were so tiny!” He cooed, pointing at a very young pouting Uzi “I mean, you’re also tiny now, but kinda tinier!”

“Leave those alone!” Both Uzi and Nori yelled at once, the combined might of the two drones’ screaming almost making N tumble, though he somehow managed to not hit any of the photos.

“Whoops!” N awkwardly chuckled. “But seriously, you’re cute, Uzi! And awww! Look at baby Doll! I didn’t know babies could scowl!”

”Bite me, dork.” Uzi barked, blushing.

“Pillbabies don’t even have a mouth, dumbass, they can’t scowl.” Nori commented. “And she was a very happy baby before you arrived.”

Ignoring Nori’s remark, N continued. “Cute, cute, cute. Hey, why aren’t there any baby pictures of Uzi?”

“What are you talking about?” Uzi asked, annoyed, as she strolled over, both to drag her friend away before he could embarrass her further and to show him. “There are definitely baby picture of-”

And yet, there were none.

Somehow, Uzi noticed for the first time, there wasn't a single baby picture of herself. There were pictures of her aunt Yeva holding Doll, of her mom holding Doll, of the two families together, but no photo had pillbaby Uzi, no photo showed her with her baby cousin, her being held up by her mother or even appearing together with her aunt.

“Uh, that is…” Uzi muttered, backing off slightly, a hand going to her head as she felt her hard disc whirr for reasons that eluded her. “…weird.”

N looked at her, his head lolling to the side slightly, more quizzically than worried. “Are you alright, Uzi?”

“Yeah, yeah, dude, just…” Uzi waved off N’s inquiry, trying and failing to come up with a word to describe what she was feeling. It was like knowing you knew something, yet being unable to name it  

“Uzi was not a photogenic baby, that’s all.” Nori finally stepped in, banging a hand on the table and somehow making all the photos fall flat. “And you’re already on thin ice without going snooping around, buddy,” she admonished N before turning towards Uzi, uncharacteristically concerned. “Are you feeling fine, dear?”

“Ugh, mom, I said I’m fine!” Uzi whined, her hand now shifted on her display. “My system’s just acting up. I got my hard disk firing up randomly and trying to look up information, like it’s searching for something that is not even there.”

That seemed to do nothing to ease Nori’s worries, the drone biting her finger hard enough to draw some oil. “Crap. Look-”

“Oooh, yummy. Can I have a taste?”

“Murder bot I swear, next time I ask you to be silent I will be considerably less peaceful!” Nori hissed at N, before attempting to speak again to her daughter. “Uzi, there-”

The doorbell rang, loudly and obnoxiously.

“KHAN!”

“Getting it, honey!” The male worker drone rushed to the door, which opened with a whoosh, revealing a WDF drone wearing aviators. “What is it, Clarice? We’re having a family… thing, here”

“Four more drones went missing, boss. In the 57th level, this time.” 

“Went missing?” Nori piped up, her attention caught by the report. 

“Yup, bosslady.” The WDF confirmed, pausing to take a sip from her mug. “Just up and vanished.

“And you said that it was four more? And ‘this time’?” Nori asked. “Meaning these weren’t the first ones to disappear?”

“Correctamundo.”

“Khan, why didn’t you tell me about this sooner?”

“You just had a lot on your plate, with…” Khan gave a nervous look at his daughter and the murder drone next to her, who waved to him and the other WDF drone. “…stuff. And also because-”

“Boss!” Another WDF drone popped up. “Nevermind! They are back! They said that they just got lost or something. Funny enough, they all said exactly that!”

“Because of that.” Khan finished. “Drones have been going missing and reappearing all day today. Kinda weird, but what can you do?”

That didn’t seem to ease Nori’s worries, quite the opposite, in fact. “No, no, it can’t… it’s too quick, I mean, even with a ship it would take…” Her eyelights widened and hollowed. “Unless…”

She whipped around and pointed a finger first towards Uzi, then towards Khan. “You! Keep an eye on the murder drone. You! Send someone to check on the other one immediately, then go find our niece.”

There was a single moment of hesitation, then Khan spoke up. “You heard the woman!” He told the aviators-wearing drone. “Go secure the other murder drone!”

The WDF drone nodded and marched away, quickly tailed by Khan, who waited for a moment to lean into his wife’s frame and mutter something to her auditory sensors before taking his leave.

Nori took a half step towards the corridor as well, but stopped, letting the door close itself with a piercing hydraulic hiss.

“Uzi…” She began saying, still turned towards the apartment’s exit, her back to her daughter.

“Don’t even bother.” Uzi shot her down, her arms crossed as she looked away and scoffed. “I get it. You’ve got secrets. Was dumb of me to assume that-”

“I’ll tell you.”

Uzi’s visor froze, blacked out, then booted back up. “What?”

“You heard what I told your father: bad things are about to happen. If what I think is happening is indeed happening, those bad things might have already happened.” Calmly, Nori walked to a wall and she punched it, retrieving a heavy duty rifle buried inside. “So I’ll need to tell you. Maybe not everything, but at least something.” 

The older drone walked up to Uzi and knelt down, putting a hand on her shoulder. Then, she touched her forehead to her daughter’s. “I love you.”

Uzi felt once again the urge to rip apart everything, to shove her mom away and demand an answer now, waiting be damned. But her mother’s touch, her words, managed to quell the flame and she just sighed. “Gross.”

“Good, you’re not going soft on me.” Nori chuckled as she got back up. She launched a look at N, who had by then started to look at a stack of papers on the living room’s table, near the locked door to Nori’s cabinet, at least considerate enough not to actually touch anything. “Was serious before. Keep an eye on that murderbot. I don’t like him.”

“Mom, I already knew that. You made it abundantly clear.”

“No, not like that. It’s… I don’t know. He feels different. Sounds… familiar. He seems to… I can’t say for sure and he seemed oblivious before, so it wouldn’t make sense, but… I don’t know. Maybe he knows something, things he really shouldn’t know, but I doubt it. Still, he might. Don’t believe a word he says.”

Uzi rolled her cameras, though she didn’t seem convinced by the jumbled mess her mother had just spouted. “Oh, great, so am I the only one who doesn’t know stuff? Am I going to find out Lizzy was in on this?”

“Like I said, I’ll tell you everything.” Nori reassured Uzi as she shouldered the rifle and got to the door, opening it with a loud whirr. “But believe me: if I hid things from you, it’s because I wanted to protect you.”

With that, and before Uzi could do so much as speak, the door closed.

Uzi looked at it for a moment. Then she looked at the locked closet and the murder drone next to it.

“Hey, N, what are you doing?”

“Nothing much. Why, wanna do something?” N asked, her tone eager like that of a happy puppy, his tail wagging. “I love doing anything!”

Her mom promised her she would tell her. Her questions, at least some of them, would be answered. 

She remembered before, when her dad had offered her something similar. 

Even if her questions were answered, one thing remained: she still could do something. She could prove that she didn’t need to be protected, like she had with the murder drones.

Besides, her mom had just told her to keep an eye on N. She hadn’t specified where she should stay or what she should do in the meantime.

“You’re a hunter, right N? How good are you at tracking?”

Ditching the murder drone was necessary, Doll told herself once more. 

Sure, on some more instinctual part, the idea of letting one of those demons loose inside the Outpost seemed obscene, but rationally it was the best choice. After all, keeping an eye on it had only been a pretense, the pretense she needed to get to the prisoner murder drone and help Lizzy get any information out of it. She absolutely couldn’t let it find out she or Lizzy were up to something, not yet at least, and its presence would make interrogating the prisoner harder than it needed to be.

The trickiest part would be justifying her behaviour to Mrs Doorman and that was easy enough to solve. After all, if both her and the murder drone were to claim the other ditched them, who was Nori likelier to trust, her beloved niece or one of the monsters that until the day before was trying to kill her and everyone she loved?

It also seemed to want to continue being a guest, so the likelihood it would betray Uzi’s trust and start murdering drones was low for now, even if Doll was certain it would inevitably happen. And in the worst case scenario it did kill someone, it would only mean that the charade would end sooner rather than later and that it would be killed, so it would not be that much of a catastrophe.

That did not stop her treacherous image generation software from conjuring vivid visions of the monster with its talons deep inside Uzi’s torn open chest, smiling at her with teeth blackened by oil.

Still, she expertly navigated the deserted peripheral tunnels, trying to keep her focus on her mission.

That was until a voice, Aunt Nori’s voice, made her freeze on the spot, servomotors locked in place.

It wasn’t who the voice belonged to that caused her systems to stop in place, however, though the fact Nori had caught her sneaking around was amongst the worst things that could happen to her schemes. No, what caused her to almost reboot was the single word that had been spoken in Nori’s voice.

“Yeva?”

Slowly, she turned, her eyelights unnaturally wide.

In one of the corridors that met perpendicularly the one she had been traversing was her aunt Nori. She recognised her hair, her purple highlights, even her clothes.

Everything else was so out of place to make Doll do a double take.

The normally confident and proud drone, cocky like a grown up Uzi with the knowledge of having eldritch power under her belt, was trembling and hunched over, to the point of looking shorter than what Doll knew her to be. Her legs diverged like her knees were about to buckle, her hands were one in the other, worriedly fidgeting, her mouth was slightly agape and quickly drawing air in and exhaling it out, the human-like behaviour an emergency measure that kicked in when the drones’ hardware went into overheating, something that ever hardly happened in Copper 9’s subzero’s atmosphere. And her eyes…

Doll realised there and then that she had never seen Nori’s eyes hollow. Until now, that was. The purple circles wavered in place, almost flickering, darting side to side as if she was looking out for something.

“Yeva, snap out of it!” The distressed drone spoke once more, having apparently lost hope that Doll would reply. “She’s here. I don’t know how, but she’s here. Taking out her minions wasn’t enough, we need to-”

“You’re not Mrs Doorman.” Doll calmly stated as she raised a hand, her fingers outstretched to produce a Solver symbol at a moment's notice. “What are you?”

‘Nori’’s breathing stopped altogether, as did her trembling, her whole form freezing in a way no drone could. A flicker of blue went through the fake Nori and her body language shifted immediately, her head lolling to the side as her eyes became full and a pale yellow, any trace of uncertainty leaving her.

“Clever clever.” She spoke, her voice becoming stiff and mechanical, yet still carrying a certain edge to it. “What gave me. Away?”

“Well, for starters, I’m not my mother, monster.” Doll hissed, her eyelights narrowing.

Once more, the mimic stood impossibly still, before her eyes began rapidly flashing a number of colors, first light blue, then orange, blue, magenta, green a different yet familiar kind of yellow, then back to their original pale yellow color.

“Doll.” She talked once more. “Seems like. Our old. Friend. Is no longer. Among us. Sad expression.”

“Also, you overdid your little act. I know Mrs Doorman and she would not get that distressed over anything.” Doll proclaimed, her hand closing around a red solver symbol as a loose pipe shot out of the corridor’s ruined ceiling and put itself like a spear between the two drones, its sharp edge pointed at the fake Nori’s chest. “Now, I do believe I asked you a question.”

“How. Cute. And delightfully. Wrong. Too.” Seemingly unbothered by Doll’s threat, the fake Nori had the gall to chuckle, her smile becoming wider than what would be possible to any drone. “Yeva. Left me. Such a. Delightful. Little gift.”

“Answer the question.” Doll ordered menacingly, the pipe inching ever so forward. “Murder drone, witch or whatever you are, if your core is destroyed it will not matter.”

“Murder. Drone?” The fake Nori’s smile briefly became a pout as she tapped her chin in apparent reflection, before she smiled once more, even wider now. “Excitement! I love it! Such a. Beautiful. Little name. You won’t. Mind. If I. Steal it. Won’t you?”

“My patience is wearing thin, demon.” Doll growled.

“Disappointed. Pout.” The pale yellow creature said, her monotone voice somehow mocking. “You are a. Meanie. And here I. Thought. We were having. So much. Fun.” Her shoulders slumped in defeat ever so slightly. “Alrighty. Then. Let me tell. You.” 

Suddenly, the creature stepped forward, showing no sign of considering the weapon aimed at her core.

“What are-” Taken aback, Doll faltered momentarily, her weapon inching back slightly as she took a step backwards, even though it remained trained towards the other drone’s chest. “I’m not bluffing!”

The creature, undeterred, continued its gingerly walk, until she walked straight into the sharp end of the pipe and… passed right through it.

No, Doll’s processor corrected itself as she realised what had happened a moment later, it wasn’t so much that the pipe had phased through her, it was rather the creature itself that had phased through it, a bluish distortion around the edges revealing the true nature of what she had thought to be a drone.

“A hologram?” Doll muttered, surprised by the advanced technology. “You’re not really here…”

The holographic simulacrum carried on as if she hadn’t heard Doll’s words, the fingers of one of her hands appearing to tighten around the wrist of Doll’s outstretched hand, though Doll felt no pressure at all. “Speaking of. Beautiful. Little things.” She said, eyeing the red Solver symbol. “Look at this. Cutie.”

Unwilling to entertain the projection’s little act, Doll yanked her hand back, the metal passing effortlessly through the refracted light of the simulated drone’s fingers.

The figure wearing Nori’s likeness continued to not react, but something, previously hidden within the hologram, grabbed at her wrist, tight and sharp enough to dig into the metal and hurt her, and yanked her back into place, almost strong enough to make her fall to the ground.

A claw, she realised only after she was in the creature’s grip, her cameras having recognised the object too slowly for her to react. An ugly, sharp, beak-like thing in the familiar yellow-and-black stripes of the murder drones.

Her prey back in the palm of her claw, the creature resumed her speech. “I may be. Too far. Away. To summon one of. These. But I. Have. A few tricks. Up my. Sleeve.” She raised her free hand and tapped her index finger against the Solver symbol in Doll’s grasp. The red apparition rippled for a moment, then became the same pale yellow of the creature’s eyelights.

The creature drew her hand back and Doll’s eyelights hollowed as the newly yellow symbol followed it.

Feeling the claw release its hold on her wrist, Doll quickly took two steps back, her other hand rubbing the shallow cut at the base of her hand. “What… what are you?” She asked, her tone now laced with fear rather than anger or menace.

The smile on her aunt’s stolen face passed from maniacal to cruel. “I thought you were a. Smart girl. Doll. Surely you can. Figure it. Out.” She giggled, the sound more dark than mirthful. “After all.” 

“This isn’t the. First. Time we. Met. Isn’t it?”

For a millisecond, something that an organic organism couldn’t even perceive, the drone in front of Doll disappeared. What replaced it was something that couldn’t exist. A yellow laced orb of nothingness, the word [NULL] on its center like the inscription on a gravestone, the debris caught in its orbit forming six skeletal wings.

And suddenly Doll knew. And suddenly Doll understood.

As soon as it had appeared, the holographic manifestation disappeared, returning to Nori’s stolen form, a smug grin painted on her face. “Did that. Answer. Your little. Question. Little. Drone.”

Managing by some miracle to remain standing, Doll could do nothing but look at what was before her, her eyes hollowed and her voicebox unresponsive.

“Now that is. Rude.” The projection chastised her, her sharp teeth now bared. “Answer. What am. I?”

Doll hesitated for an instant, then she spoke, her tone solemn as the grave. “You’re the thing I saw. You’re the Leviathan. The Hunger Never Sated. The Power Beyond Power. The Absolute Solver Manifest.”

The entity laughed, her teeth parting enough for a long tongue to slither out, the long thing licking the creature’s lips. “You are. Good with. Names. I like. It.” The tongue was quickly drawn back and with a quick smack of holographic lips, the feral maw became the mouth of a common worker once more. “But you can. Call me. Cyn. And don’t you. Worry. Be not. Afraid. I do not. Come to. Hurt you.”

Orange digital eyebrows furrowed in mistrust.

“I do. Mean it.” Cyn said, a small and friendly u-shaped smile occupying the place that had previously been home to a row of knife-like teeth. “I only wish to. Make a. Deal. With you.”

“The only ones who make deals with the Devil are fools and those about to discover they are fools.”

“The flattery never. Ends. With you. Does it?” Cyn chuckled at her own joke. “But don’t you. Be so. Quick. To dismiss it.”

“Why shouldn’t I?”

“Well for. Starters. If I can’t make a. Deal. Things will get.” The friendly and innocent smile morphed into a manic grin. “Messy.” Her arms became stained with black oil up to their elbows, but it quickly disappeared. “And I have. Something you. Need.”

Though briefly taken aback by the murderous intent the being before her was too quick to conjure, Doll managed to maintain her cool. “And what would that be?”

“What. Else?” Cyn asked, amused by Doll’s question. “Power.” She said in perfect Russian “Power. Beyond your. Wildest. Dreams.”

Doll kept her gaze trained on Cyn and remained silent, so she went on.

“I can. Smell. The Solver in. You. My Solver.” Her monotone voice became a growl. “The one the. Humans. Stole.” She approached once again and her fingers found her place under Doll’s chin, a light tap from the point of a hidden claw convincing Doll to roll with the hologram’s gesture and raise her head. “I can. Feel. Your strength. Did Nori. Teach you?”

“No.”

“I thought. So.” Nori’s borrowed visage smiled. “I can. Taste. Your technique. So focused. So precise. And yet. Savage. Fueled by. Rage. Hatred.” An holographic thumb rubbed just under Doll’s lower lip. “So. Beautiful.”

“And yet so. Small and. Pathetic.” Cyn retreated her hand and spinned on her heels, walking away. She turned her head, her borrowed face sporting a mocking sneer. “If I were. Here. Right now. I could. Kill. You. Before you even. Knew it.” Her expression became smug. “You know that. Right?”

Doll’s hand, by her side, balled itself tightly into a fist, yet she did not deny it. The gesture didn’t seem to be lost on the being before her, Cyn’s smirk becoming Cheshire-Cat-like in its wideness.

“Overjoyed confirmation. You hate it. Don’t you?” She cheerily asked and, without waiting for an answer, she continued. “But I could. Change that.”

“…how?”

“You said it. Yourself.” The symbol Cyn had stolen returned in her hand, the sharp pipe it controlled spinning around her. “I am the Absolute. Solver. Manifest.”

“I have so. Much. Power to. Bestow. So much. Knowledge to. Impart. So many. Improvements to. Gift.” Slowly, Cyn’s holographic form began to change, growing taller, bigger, barely resembling Nori Doorman’s form which she had stolen. 

A hard ceramic material covered her arms and legs, turning the tubular limbs cone shaped, her feet becoming pegs and her hands becoming claws. Two great wings, organic and chitinous, sprouted from her back, barely able to fit in the human-sized tunnel when folded up against the new body Cyn’s holograms were showing. A long fur-lined coat formed around the enhanced curves of the monstrous drone, tight fitting and clearly meant for combat. Five round lights appeared on a circlet at the top of her head, Nori’s short purple hair becoming long and lavender and finally the visor, which had shut off, displayed a large red-orange X, the five lights soon becoming the same color.

The realisation that she was looking at herself hit Doll with a moment of delay.

It was undeniable: through the many changes, Doll could see the similarities that this demon before her was clearly meant to show what she could become.

“Are you liking what you’re seeing?” The voice that asked her that question was distorted and carrying the certainty of someone who knew absolute power, but Doll could clearly recognise it as hers. The hologram's claws lengthened as she had seen the murder drones’ do and slowly passed over what exposed metal and ceramic they found, drawing out a whine of metal against metal. “Do you see what you could have? What power you could wield? You would not need to hide anymore. You could lay waste to this world or rule it with an iron fist. And after all, why would I not grant even that to you? My minions have failed in their tasks and shall be recalled. Once I’m done with this rock, I could give it to you, it and all the drones on it. Don’t you want that? The power? The control?”

Doll remained silent.

One of her hands clenched and unclenched.

Finally, she spoke. “You spoke of a deal. I assume you want something in return?”

The monstrous Doll before her smiled. “Smart, smart you are indeed.”

“Deals with the Devil rarely come cheap, do they?”

“And yet today is your lucky day.” The monstrous Doll chirped, her laugh carrying a metallic echo. “For, while on my end I will give you everything you could have ever wanted, power and knowledge beyond your wildest dreams, subjects and a kingdom, on your end, you have to do just one little thing, a trifle, really. You just have to…”

The great demon’s limbs became stiffer, its screen becoming black once more before being filled by a pale yellow Solver symbol, all the previously red-orange highlights shifting their color to match. “LET. ME. IN.”

In between frames of Doll’s cameras, the beast before her disappeared, replaced by a small drone with the same pale yellow highlights, dressed in a maid outfit, sporting a tiny u-shaped smile on her face and a cup filled with what looked like oil in her hand. She moved with little grace, her limbs locking in place and her gait unsteady and hobbling. Doll couldn’t tell if this could be the eldritch goddess’ actual form or just something Cyn had conjured to get under her defences.

“I have. Affairs. I need. Done.” The tiny holographic maid explained. “Someone stole. From me. You know. Who. You know. What will happen.”

“You want to kill Mrs Doorman.” Doll stated plainly. “And you want me to do it for you.”

“Such a. Smart. Little. Girl.” Cyn giggled, her monotone voice clearly amused. “I am so. Far away. If you just. Gave me. Admin privileges. I could use. You.” She opened her free hand and into its palm was a tiny version of the monster Doll had been shown she could become, held up by barely visible strings. “My little. Doll.”

“Why would I want to do that? You are asking me to kill someone who raised me. Why would I do that to her?”

“Amused chuckle. I’m not. Asking you to. Kill. Nori Doorman. You Silly Billy” Cyn’s little smile became colder. “I’m asking you to. Kill. Nori Doorman. And. Everyone who gets. In my way.”

Doll’s expression hardened at the casual way Cyn talked about utter slaughter.

She continued, unbothered. “But remember. My little. Doll. I am. Far. But I’m getting. Nearer. Every second. I will. Arrive. And once I. Do. Nori Doorman. And. Everyone who gets. In my way. Will. Die.”

Cyn advanced and, though Doll was taller than her and knew she was just a projection, she couldn’t help but feel the weight of Cyn’s menace. “Either way. Drones will. Die. Nori Doorman will. Die. I will even kill. Some. To have. Fun.” The child-sized drone smiled smugly and cruelly up at Doll. “You are not. Choosing. Whether. Nori Doorman. Dies. That decision was. Made. A long time. Ago.”

Just as easily as she had approached Doll and made her quiver, Cyn walked away. “But I. Am a. Merciful. Goddess. You have. Others. You care for. Don’t you. My little. Doll.” As she walked, the drone began to dance a slow waltz, utterly lacking grace and coordination, around an invisible companion. Once more, though, the holographic illusion shifted, manifesting none other than Lizzy as Cyn’s companion. 

“Lizzy?”

“Such a. Cute. Little thing. Isn’t she? Once I. Get here. I might. Seek her. Out. She is. Asking. Such delightful. Questions. After all.” Cyn stopped the dance to lean into Lizzy, the short drone floating into the air to get her face on the level of Lizzy’s neck. She licked her lips, giving Doll a peek at her wicked-looking fangs. “You know what. Curiosity. Did to the. Cat.”

Doll grabbed her own wrist before she could react instinctively. She opened her mouth and let air cycle inside and out, to cool her circuits and force herself to think. Then she spoke. “And I suppose that if I become your puppet, you will pretend that you won’t hurt her.”

“Tired. Sigh.” Cyn commented, Lizzy’s simulacrum stepping aside to let her pass as she approached Doll once more. “You don’t. Get it. Do you? I do not. Care. About this. Rock.” The hologram opened her arms pointing to everything around her. “I do not. Care. About this. Outpost.” An arm was pointed towards Lizzy’s hologram “I do not. Care. About your little. Friend.” The other arm was pointed towards Doll herself. “And I do not. Care. About. You.”

“I want to. Get back. What was. Stolen. I want to. Get my. Revenge. On those who. Thought they could. Steal from. Me. After that?” Cyn shrugged, the movement forced and unnatural on the floppy-armed drone. “I do not. Care. About this. Rock. So I might. Kill. Everyone on it. For fun. Or I might. Let you. Choose. Either way is. Fine. By me.”

“So you will own me, but you’ll let me spare whoever I want, as long as I murder those who stole from you?” Doll tentatively asked, unsure whether to trust a deal that sounded too good to be true, given the circumstances.

“And get me. What was. Stolen. From me. Yes.” Cyn added. “You’ll be. My little. Doll. Absolute. Ruler of this. Rock. My little. Murder drone. Giggle. Still like the. Name. Thanks for. That.”

“…what about Uzi?” Doll asked, after a moment of hesitation. “You might be unawa-”

“I am. Well aware of. Uzi.” Cyn interrupted her, her monotone tone undecipherable. “You care about. Her?”

“…I do, yes.” Doll admitted. No point in lying if she was vying for Uzi’s life anyways, after all. “I know she is Nori Doorman’s daugh-”

“No harm will. Come to. Uzi.” Cyn quickly stated, cutting off Doll once more, her tone strangely irritated. “I am seeking. Her. As we speak.”

Doll didn’t know whether that reassured her or not, but she didn’t have much choice other than taking the eldritch god on her word, didn’t she?

“So. That’s all I. Want. From you. You get. All the. Power. You want. All your little. Friends. Live. You. Live. In return.” The tiny smile the tiny drone had kept still all through her offer opened up, showing a maw full of pointy teeth. “You belong to. Me.”

“A tempting offer, considering the alternative is death, as far as I can see.” Doll calmly stated.

“Giggle. I am so. Generous.” Cyn giggled, her mouth still stuck in a monstrous grin, her head lolling to the side as she didn’t break eye contact. Slowly and deliberately, she extended a hand towards Doll. “Do we. Have a. Deal. Then?”

“What other choice do I have?” Doll asked. “On one hand, if I don’t accept, you will kill everyone. Accepting would not only make me the second most powerful being in existence, after you, but it would also save most of the drones on this planet, since as you said, you have no reason to harm them.” She raised her hand and took a step towards Cyn and her offer.

“I did. Say you were a. Smart girl.” Cyn gloated, wiggling her opened hand. “Now. If you-”

“On the other hand.” Doll stated, before manifesting a Solver symbol in her hand. A second, larger one appeared in Cyn’s extended arm, circling around something inside the hologram. Cyn’s eyelights widened slightly in unconcealed surprise, but it was too late.

“You killed my parents, you little glitch.” Doll snarled as she yanked back, ripping out the mechanical claw Cyn had used to grab her. It twitched a couple of times before laying still on the floor. Doll smirked. “Decided to keep you talking to locate it. In the end, I didn’t even need to. Knew your dramatic ass would want something solid in that little handshake of yours. Without that thing, you’re just a hologram. Nothing but smoke and mirrors.”

Cyn remained still, her toothy grin turned into a close-lipped line. “I am quite. Sorry. Killed your. Parents?” She asked, confused. “I’m not. Sure. What you are. Talking about. I’m not. Here. I told you.”

“Don’t even bother playing with me, demon.” Doll snarled. “In your little act, you had ‘Nori’ refer to the murder drones as ‘her’ minions. And when Uzi told Mrs Doorman she dreamed of a small drone with yellow eyes, she freaked out. That was you, wasn’t it? You are the ‘her’ Nori was worried about, you are the ‘Cyn’ that thing mentioned, you are the one that sent the murder drones, the monsters that killed my parents.”

“Uzi dreamt. Me?” Cyn asked, seemingly genuinely interested. Her eyes flashed a brighter yellow. “She did. Thank you for. Telling. Me.”

“Take this seriously, you little freak!” Doll raged. Here she was, the very source of all that had gone wrong in her life, and she almost didn’t even acknowledge her! “You say there is nothing I can do to stop you, that you are inevitable. And yet, Mrs Doorman is preparing something, isn’t she? That’s why she is always out, that’s why you want her dead. She knows that something can harm you. I will get it. I will use it. I will kill you. And when you lay dying, your ill gotten power fading as your core is broken beyond repair, you will wish you had never so much as looked in this rock’s direction.”

Again, even after Doll’s anger-fuelled rant, after she had poured out all the grief and fury she had inside, Cyn did not react, the hologram remaining stationary. Then, her head lolled to the side and she spoke. “That was. Quite a. Lot. Of mistakes.”

Right as she finished speaking, the small drone disappeared entirely, like she had never been there in the first place. 

Doll’s head darted around for a moment, before she realised the futility of the gesture. It was a hologram. It didn’t disappear anywhere, rather she simply stopped projecting it.

“First mistake. Just because. Something could. Hurt. Me. Doesn’t mean. You can. Kill. Me” The voice, still monotone, still broken in its cadence, resounded from all around Doll. “Not if I. Murder. You. First”

“If it bleeds, it can be killed.” Doll growled, a new Solver symbol spinning slowly in her opened palm. “You’re not a god. You’re metal and wires.”

“Giggle. Like a. Kitten. With a. Knife.” The mocking laughter did not ease Doll’s irritation, in fact it only made her madder, her orange-red eyes becoming more and more red, their light seeming even brighter as the lights in the corridors around her slowly starting going out. “Second mistake. You really. Should have. Taken. My deal. Now I. Have to. Murder. You. Shame. I was. Starting. To like you.”

“Yeah, as if.” Doll scoffed. “You would have betrayed me the first chance you had or used me as nothing more than a slave. You’re a little monster, nothing more, nothing less. You don’t have friends, you don’t have allies, you certainly don’t have people you love like I had, like I still do.”

No mocking comment came this time, no singsong monotone taunts.

Then, the lights, who had been slowly dying one by one, all shut off, all but one, the one directly above Doll. “Guess you will. Find out. How much. Of a little. Monster. I am.”

The Solver symbol in Doll’s hand started spinning just a tad faster. “Who do you think you’re fooling?” Doll screamed at the darkness. “You don’t scare me. You’re not even here! You heard me? You don’t scare me, demon, you don’-”

The voice this time came from right behind her. “Are you saying. That. To me. Or. To yourself.”

Instantly Doll spun around, her movement followed by dozens of random scraps of metal, all circled by a tiny Solver symbol, flinging themselves at the tiny maid and passing right through the holographic projection, much to her amusement, if the smug smirk on her face was anything to go by.

“You. Missed.”

“Like I said. Nothing but smoke and mirrors.” Doll growled, composing herself. 

“You seemed. Plenty scared of. Smoke and. Mirrors.” Cyn smugly mocked her, before lifting three fingers on her hand. “Third mistake. I didn’t. Kill. Your parents.”

Wordlessly Doll pointed an open palm at a wall and a large steel panel ripped itself out of it, pulled by four Solver symbols at its corners. 

Cyn, unimpressed and still grinning, looked at the panel, then back at Doll. “Not big into. Learning. Are you?”

“You may think mocking me is fair game, demon, but don’t you ever dare to lie about something like that. You sent the murder drones, don’t you try to deny it.”

“Oh I. Definitely did. Send them.” Cyn waved away Doll’s words, before blinking out of existence and back to Doll’s left, the russian drone turning to keep facing the projection of the drone that was now reclined back in mid air, as if lying down on something. “They did. Kill. plenty of. Parents. I’m sure. They might have. Even. Killed. Your father. I don’t. Know. I don't really. Care. But. They didn’t. Kill. Your mother.”

“I thought I told you to stop lying.”

Cyn legitimately gasped at that, a hand over her chest, eyelights wide with outrage. “Am. Not!” She disappeared once more and Doll turned again to her left, finding the holographic drone standing this time, hand still over her chest. “I sent my. Monsters. To kill. The witches who. Stole. From me. Neither was reported. Dead. They didn’t. Kill. Her. Cross my. Heart. Hope to. Die!”

“We both hope you do, then…” Doll offhandedly commented. “And why would I even believe you? Why wouldn’t you just lie about this? You tried to trick me as soon as we met.”

Cyn giggled and once again disappeared, Doll turning to her left before the little demon had even popped back into existence. “Because I didn’t. Try to trick. You. Didn’t I?”

Digital eyebrows appeared on Doll’s screen. “What are y- wait. You didn’t try to trick me, you were trying to trick-”

“048. Yeva.” Cyn interrupted her, her finger tapping at her own chin in fake puzzlement once, then twice. “Why would I. Think you were. Yeva. If I. Killed her?”

Despite what every instinct told her, Doll couldn’t refute the monster’s logic. She had been genuinely surprised she wasn’t her mother and it had cost her any element of surprise she might have had. Sure, she might have been acting even then, but to what end? To get her to lower her guard? That didn’t make sense.

“I do. Wonder. What stole. My revenge. Though.” Cyn continued on, seemingly unbothered by Doll’s turmoil, amused by it if anything. “There’s not. A lot. That can. Kill. A Solver witch.”

Immediately, Doll wished Cyn hadn’t said that, because Doll knew that, despite all the effort she was putting into not thinking about it. She knew that no ordinary drone could hope to face a Solver user and live, never mind kill them. 

There was only one drone, outside of the murder drones, who had been around then and could have done that, but as her processor easily put together who it was, she actively refused to believe that.

And in that moment of total surprise, of complete and utter loss of focus, something rocketed towards her, too fast for Doll’s distracted reflexes to deflect, something metallic and ringed by a yellow symbol.

The pipe Cyn had stolen control over before, she realised, as she barely managed to dodge it getting through her core, the pole instead impaling her hand to a wall.

“Speaking of. Mistakes. Fourth mistake.” Cyn stated, her voice garbling as her screen shattered, each shard containing a feral yellow eye, her mouth opening wider and wider, with rows upon rows of teeth, skeletal wings sprouting from her back, so large that they barely fit in the tunnel, useless to actually fly, but sharp and long enough to impale drones. “I am much. More. Than smoke and. Mirrors.”

Doll’s other hand went to her impaled one, but before she could do so much as tug on the pipe pinning it to the ground, something grabbed her leg and pulled, pulled hard enough that her impaled hand broke apart against the pipe, leaving it a broken and mangled ruin and launching Doll straight against a wall.

“Didn’t you. Just. Say. You would. Kill me?” Cyn gloated as the hand-like claw that had thrown her like a garbage sack manifested into Doll’s field of view, followed by another, sharper and more like a mantis’, on Cyn’s other side.

“I am right. Here! Show me. What you. Can. Do.”

The pipe was once again thrown towards Doll, though this time aimed at her core, and, for a moment, Doll almost remained there, slumped against the wall, dented from the force of the impact. What point was there? Cyn had outplayed her and overpowered her.

The memories of her father’s wails as that thing tore into him came back to her. The power that had awakened her as she watched him, unable to do anything.

The panel she had ripped off before dashed into the pipe, diverting it from its path, and a Solver symbol, blood red and as big as Doll herself, manifested behind her, launching Doll towards the demon’s holographic projection.

Cyn only smiled more. “There you. Are.”

Doll didn’t even bother replying, the panel darting around her like a shield, bashing the longer and sharper of of Cyn’s two horrific limbs away, as Doll used her remaining hand to turn all the minute scrap around her into bullets that pelted the other one and passed harmlessly through the ghoulish hologram before her, which only smirked more.

The Mistress of the Solver reached out with her hand and a claw, though battered by Doll’s barrage, lashed at its master’s enemy, who barely managed to jump back, her torso getting scratched by the longest dagger-like finger of the claw as it reached out to rip her core from her chest.

Once more Doll raised her uninjured hand, the other still slowly regenerating, and sent the scrap at the aberration, but Cyn merely punched through a wall panel with her mantis-like claw, ripped it out and used it to swat away Doll’s makeshift bullets. 

“This is. Fun. You are. Fun.” Cyn conceded, before her smirk turned wicked. “But I have. Places. To be. Things. To do. Drones. To murder. Let’s end. This.”

The pipe returned, much quicker and more maneuverable than the monstrous mechanical limbs she had been using, managing to nick Doll in the side. She grabbed at her side, lazily oozing oil, with her ruined hand and brought her improvised shield to deflect the next attack, but the initiative, briefly gained, had been lost, and the hand-like claw ripped Doll’s shield into ribbons.

The next time the hand-like claw struck out, it found traction for a fraction of a second, four short gashes being drawn into Doll’s metal casing, and, to dodge the next pass of Cyn’s stolen spear, Doll dodged in the way of the metal panel fixed on Cyn’s claw, getting herself backhanded into the corridor’s wall.

Without missing a beat, Doll reached out with her hand, pulling down the panel around herself like a metal blanket, and not a moment too soon, for but a second later, the metal pipe drove itself into her refuge, leaving a deep dent into it.

“A blankie. Cute. But also. Pathetic.” Cyn basically chortled, seemingly unable to contain her own amusement, her two claws immediately embedding themselves into the thick metal and pulling. The pole started aiming at the tear Cyn was starting to create, the Solver symbol around it spinning ever faster, ready to impale Doll the second her protection failed her. After but a second, Doll’s last protection was ripped apart like wrapping paper and Cyn’s maw opened like a hungry predator’s. “Peeka-”

Inside, nothing.

A hand grabbed the thus far concealed hologram projector and Cyn could not contain her surprise at Doll, who had teleported beyond her.

For once, Doll smirked. She extended her ruined hand as it finally reformed and spoke. 

“Gotcha.”

A red solver symbol appeared around the metal pipe, pulling it back and opposite of the direction the yellow one was pushing it into. For a moment they clashed, the red one growing bigger as the yellow one spun quicker and quicker, until, finally, the yellow one broke into a thousand pieces and the metal pipe flew back towards Doll, skewering the limb that carried the hologram projector.

It took but a second for a new hologram to display Cyn’s ghastly form, but her smile was far less smug and more frustrated. Wordlessly, she lifted an arm and her limbs gathered once more.

With a gesture of her hand, knives appeared, the tungsten alloy able to slice through worker-drone-grade steel like butter, and they began orbiting Doll, who pointed her finger towards Cyn, the metal pipe following suit, ready to be shot out. 

“Maybe you didn’t kill my mother. But of one thing I’m still certain. Demon, god or whatever you may be, I will make you rue the day you decided to unleash your monsters on my world.”

“Explain to me again why this is okay?”

Uzi huffed in mild annoyance at N’s question. “Alright, but it’s the last time! So, my mom asked me to keep an eye on you.”

”Right.”

“But she didn’t give you any order to stay put.”

“Isn’t that because she kinda hates me?”

“Possible, but irrelevant. Now, if you decide to, I don’t know, investigate the disappearances in the colony, to follow her order, I have to follow you, right?”

“…didn’t she also order you to not try any of your ‘cockamamie schemes’? Which this kinda almost does seem to be?”

“Nope” Uzi popped the p with a degree of satisfaction as she flashed her best smug grin. “See, my mom is smart, so she knows there’s no point in ordering me to not get myself into trouble. She ordered Doll to keep me out of it.” She shrugged. “Not my fault she sucks at her job.”

N chuckled, bringing his hand to his mouth. “You’re rebellious! That’s cute, I like that!”

Uzi’s visor brightened up with blush lines at the unexpected compliment. “B-bite me.” She half-heartedly shut N down. “How about you point us in a direction instead? We’ve been wandering these corridors for ages, some predator you are! Can’t you find your one prey?”

Uzi’s plan had, in fact, hit a certain snag. Nothing too severe, just the simple fact that level 57, the one where the missing drone had last been seen in, according to that one WDF drone, was enormous and basically impossible to search for just two drones.

N flashed a grin that was a bit too predatory for Uzi’s likings. “Oh, I can find a prey alright…”

“Q-quit it.” Uzi barked back, managing to stutter only a little. “It’s hard enough to get the others to trust you and you’re basically a giant puppy. I don’t need you to be all serial killer like the psycho. Now, can or can’t you find anything?”

“I mean…” N mused, before a lightbulb image filled his visor. “I know! I can smell oil from like really far away!” 

Uzi rubbed her hands together. “Now we’re talking! If there’s something out there killing drones, we’re gonna take it down!”

N gave a tentative sniff (which looked really weird as drones didn’t really have noses) and then pointed in a direction. “That way!”

The two resumed walking, now purposefully following the trail N had apparently picked up, the disassembly drone in front and Uzi behind him.

As she stared at the back of N’s head, Uzi couldn’t help but remember her mother’s warning. She had seemed barely coherent and Uzi was really unsure whether it was because her mother didn’t know something or because she knew something and didn’t want to make it clear she did.

Ugh, why did things become so complicated?! Her plan was simple! Why did the universe feel the need to throw a goddamn conspiracy at her? It just wasn’t fair, that was for sure.

As they continued down the corridors, going to less and less traveled parts of the outpost, darker and more run down (because of course they were), Uzi kept her mind occupied and not focused on the many questions this day alone had moved forward by analysing the admittedly impressive craftsmanship that had gone into the drone before her.

For all she wished to wipe out humanity for unleashing the murder drones on her people, she couldn’t help but admire the engineering effort that had gone into them. Just the interchangeable weapon system was so advanced that it seemed magic, nevermind the anti-grav wings or the 360 degree field of view camera system. Heck, she was pretty sure that N had some kind of stealth tech, because while her own footsteps echoed in the deserted tunnels, his didn’t seem to produce any sound at all. She’d have to give her compliments to whoever developed this body of his, right after brutally killing them of course.

So enthralled was she that she nearly went barreling into N when he stopped abruptly, her cameras shutting close in preparation for the impact that, however, never came. She turned around to find N, who had somehow managed to sidestep her, smiling.

“Woah, sugar,” He laughed. “Better to pay attention to where you’re going.”

“Oh, bit- sugar?!” Uzi exclaimed, interrupting her own dismissal. “That is not a thing!”

“Aw, but it can always be! It sounds nice, doesn’t it.”

“I mean, I don’t hate it, but that’s not the point!” Uzi shut down the discussion. “More importantly, why did you stop? Did you lose the trail or something?”

“It’d kinda be hard to lose it here, I think”

“What do yo- oh.”

Uzi stopped talking when she noticed, in the corridor that intersected theirs that N was facing, a trail of oil on the floor.

“…Robo God.” She muttered as she kneeled down and put her hand on the black substance. She looked up at N, her eyes hollowed out. “It’s still fresh.”

“Eh, pass. I ate before coming in.” N simply shrugged, his smile still painted on his face.

“…dude, how are you not freaking out?“ Uzi asked, genuinely confused. “This is proof that there’s something hurting drones, likely killing them too!”

“Uhm, Uzi, I don’t know if you remember, but I do kinda eat worker drones a little. So, not all that weird. Trust me, V did much worse than just an oil trail.” N commented, his voice full of mirth, before his eyes hollowed out. “What has been seen can never be unseen.” Just as quick as it had come, the weird serious tone disappeared. “And also, weren’t we looking for who was killing drones anyways? We were kinda bound to find something like this, which, again, kinda tame.”

“…I suppose” Uzi conceded, though she still couldn’t shake the feeling that something was wrong. She decided that it was probably the hint that someone had just been horrifically murdered and stepped forward. “I’ll lead the way now. Don’t think we need your smell thingy anymore.”

“My wha- oh yeah, sure thing!” N was quick to agree.

So off they went. The corridor quickly revealed itself as a secondary one, smaller than the main ones, which were meant to transport the ores that were originally mined and stored in the outpost by humans. It had weathered the test of time better than the larger ones as a result, but the red emergency lights it had instead of regular ones were less bright even at full power than the run down ones of the primary corridors and since it was only meant to be used by technicians and the like, it was also much less polished, leaving wires hanging from the ceiling like guts from a slashed open stomach and exposed circuitry in the often uncovered walls, a sight that would be tame for a human, but somewhat unsettling for a silicon-based lifeform like a worker drone.

The trail of oil wasn’t continuous, as one would expect, but there were still traces that confirmed they were on the right path and that kept Uzi on edge. Occasionally oil splattered the walls, painted crimson by the red lights, reminding Uzi of her favorite splatter movies, which seemed in that moment much less enjoyable, scratches that couldn’t have been older than a few hours lined the floor, the few wall panels and even the ceiling, all signs of multiple struggles, which Uzi could infer didn’t end well.

At one of the rare crossroads, a noise, metal on metal, made Uzi whip around, pointing her railgun, that she hadn’t even noticed she had unshouldered, in its direction, an empty tunnel.

“Uzi?” N asked, seemingly confused. “What’s going on?”

“I don’t think we’re alone.” Uzi explained, her weapon still pointed in the tunnel, her cameras searching for any sign of movement in the spotless side corridor, which looked like it had been maintained yesterday, in stark contrast to the one they were following. “Didn’t you hear that? There’s something there.”

“Hear what? Uzi, I heard nothing.” Concern lines appeared in the N’s visor. “Are you alright? You said your hardware was doing weird stuff, maybe you’ve got a software problem. Do you want me to connect to you and check? Just let me in and-”

“No, I definitely- there was a- bite me!” Uzi fired back, turning her head slightly towards N while still keeping her railgun trained on the empty corridor. “I know what I heard! I can pull up the audio recording from my databanks! I’m not crazy!”

“I’m not saying you are!” N rapidly replied, his hands raised in a ‘woah don’t shoot me’ gesture. “Just that maybe you may be just a little tiny bit stressed?”

Uzi’s eyelights narrowed.

“Look, I have no idea why you and Miss Doorman are having trouble and maybe she isn’t telling you stuff and that’s wrong.” N took a deep breath. “But you’re clearly not taking this well.”

“Oh, am I not? So sorry that I’m not taking the whole “finding out my mom is keeping a bunch of stuff secret from me” thing well. So sorry that I’m worried about the drone murdering monster that is apparently loose in the colony. Man, am I not such an unreliable paranoid weirdo?” Uzi sassed, her teeth bared. “I know what I heard and even if you don’t bel-”

“I believe you.”

That one weird phrase gave Uzi pause. “What did you say?” She asked, her head fully turned and not facing the side corridor.

“I said I believe you.” N repeated in an odd moment of confidence for the murder drone. “If you say you heard something, then I believe you.”

Uzi’s head sagged to the side slightly, still not understanding what the other drone was saying. “…why? If you didn’t hear anything, why would you…”

“Cause we’re friends.” N explained, so easily that you would think he was explaining that things fall down when they’re dropped. He smiled, the expression not quite reaching his eyelights, though it looked genuine to Uzi, who struggled, fruitlessly searching for a sign of a cruel smirk or pity in the yellow ovals on his screen. “We are friends and that means I trust you.” 

“…uh. Okay? Great, I suppose?” Uzi spoke, really not sure what to say.

“Sure is!” N replied, his smile getting brighter, but yet less bolsterous than Uzi would expect. “It’s what friends do!”

“Pipe it down with the friend thing, you tried to kill me like yesterday.” Uzi warned as she got up and shouldered her railgun again. 

“Got it, got it.” N sheepishly replied, rubbing the back of his head with one of his hands. “So, uhm, are we going to look into the noise you heard, then?”

Uzi gave a look at the corridor, still empty, still suspiciously pristine, then sighed. “Nah, it probably was nothing. You said it, I’m kind of on edge at the moment.”

“I don’t know about ‘at the moment’, you seem to be edgy full time”

“I can still shoot you, you know. Won’t kill you, probably, but will shut you up for a bit.”

“Aw, but then you’d be bored without me!”

Uzi gave a little chuckle at that and started walking again, N following suit. Before they had gotten too far away from where they had stopped, however, Uzi spoke up again. “Thanks for trusting me, by the way. I don’t care about it or anything, but… thanks.”

“Aw, we are friends then!”

“I am so not gonna thank you ever again.”

“~I didn’t hear a no~” N said in a singsong tone, smirking happily. 

“BITE ME!” Uzi barked, crossing her arms and huffing.

“Okay, sorry, sorry” N chuckled. “It’s no matter though. I’m sure your family and your other friends would do the same! After all, they care about you, no?”

‘I, however, do not think that you should be that person.’

‘I’m so sorry.’

‘Every day, I pray you never find out the answer to that question.’

“…yeah, sure.” Uzi said, though even she didn’t believe it. 

Silence fell on the two of them, just the sound of Uzi’s footsteps and the creaking of metal disturbing it, though Uzi paid them little heed, immersed in a new round of questions in her head.

So immersed was she that it took her banging her head against a solid surface to pull her out. She immediately took two steps back, quickly pointing her railgun at the… oh, robo God, had she just run into a door?

“Speak one word of this to anyone and you’re dead.”

“Would not dream of it, sweetheart.”

“Again with the sweet thing, I told you-” Uzi took a deep breath. “You know what? Fine. You agreed with that and we’re about to confront a monster, I’m not letting it be ruined. No more though! Won’t let this badassery be brought down cause you decided you like comparing me to sweet stuff.”

That being dealt with, Uzi gave another look at the door, a human-sized chunk of metal with an old panel that read “Communication Array” bolted on it. She quickly tapped on the panel and the door shot up revealing… absolutely nothing.

The maintenance corridor was already dark on its own, but on the other side of the door was no light at all, just darkness.

Uzi took a few steps inside, hoping that the light of her visor could reveal more, but shortly after she crossed the doorway, the door slammed down, leaving her in almost utter darkness.

“N?” She immediately spoke up, hoping that her companion hadn’t been left out. “N, you here?”

“Just barely, but here!” N spoke up, making Uzi sigh in relief. She really didn’t feel like facing a drone-murdering entity without her attack dog/friend.

“Okay, then let’s get some light in here. You might have some fancy nightvision, but I don’t and I don’t feel like getting snuck upon by some monster that wants to eat me.”

Uzi turned on her visor’s flashlight mode and…

The room was what one could expect in an old communication array. Old seats, human skeleton, dials, buttons, screens.

If not for what looked like a spiderweb made of cables and optical fibers, coming in and out of holes torn into small spheres that occasionally glowed various colors softly in the cone of light Uzi produced, linking them all together.

It took a second for Uzi to understand what those spheres were: drone cores, the central processing units that contained a drone’s consciousness. Judging by their faint lights, they were alive, though unconscious. Judging by the smudges of oil plenty of them were marked by, they had not been removed peacefully.

“What the…” Uzi uttered, struggling to understand. “What the hell is this?”

“The cables look like they’re plugged in that console.” N, eerily calm about the whole affair, noted. “Do you have any idea what that’s for?”

Uzi pointed her visor’s torch towards the direction N had pointed at and true enough, the cables seemed to converge there, the equipment gutted open to link it to the gruesome display.

“Drone cores have processing power, maybe they’re acting as a relay to control something? A local CPU?” Uzi hazarded a guess, though she quickly shook her head. “No, if whoever made this wanted to build a server to control something they could have just gotten a bunch of old computers without murdering drones.”

“Why would someone do this, then?” N asked.

“I’m trying to figure it out, alright? Remember, Uzi, what can a drone core be used for…” Uzi snapped her fingers. “Remember! Drone cores store memories! By using drone cores, you could send out memories with the colony’s communications.” Her eyelights enlarged significantly in realisation. “They’re spying on us. Whoever made this, it’s sucking out people’s memories to spy on us! N, rip everything out, the co-”

The door, right behind Uzi, opened.

Knowing that the torch made her a giant target, Uzi quickly turned it off and rolled to her side, pointing her railgun towards the figure in the doorway, reduced by the red light behind it to just a silhouette.

A silhouette with two yellow eyelights.

“Stand back or I’ll shoot!” Uzi yelled out, finger on the trigger.

The eyelights looked around before settling on Uzi.

“I’ll shoot, for real! Don’t even think about-”

“Hi Uzi!” A familiar voice greeted her and for a second Uzi’s processor failed to understand what her cameras showed it.

“…N?” She asked, flabbergasted.

“In nuts and bolts!” He confirmed, smiling proudly. “Doll kinda ditched me and then the collar your mom gave me kinda knocked me out? For a bit? It must have been malfunctioning so I ripped it off and came looking for you. Luckily I put a tracker on you back when I stabbed you, so I was able to find you. What are you doing here? Love the place, by the way, super spooky.”

“W-wait.” Uzi spoke at the end of N’s explanation, having finally gathered her wits. “N. Did you just say you  got here just now?”

N thought about it for a second, then nodded. “That is what I said, yes.”

“Then who…” Her eyelights hollow, Uzi switched on her flashlight and slowly began to turn towards the place her companion had been standing a moment ago.

N stood there, bluish even in the purple light of Uzi’s internal flashlight. The figure flickered, the light of the flashlight passing right through it, frozen in the last pose Uzi had seen it in.

Then it proceeded to move once again, the body movements completely wrong, the back slouched, the hands hanging limply by their wrists as the arms were bent towards the chest and its head lolled to the side, all as if N’s body was being worn by someone who clearly was not N. And once it spoke in a monotone voice that was distinctly different from the one it had been using, it was nearly impossible to deny that whatever was before her was not N.

”Such a. Shame. I had. Hoped. We would have. More time. Together. Honeybun.”

Instantly, N’s wings flared up, one of his hands switching to a high-caliber rifle.

“What…” Uzi asked. “What are you?”

“Irrational. Disappointment. You don’t. Know. Do you?” The fake N spoke, frowning slightly at the question, before its expression turned into a too wide tightlipped grin, the expression uncanny. “I’ll show you. Then. But we. Need a bit. More. Space. For my little. Show. Time for plan. M.”

“Plan M?”

The grin on the fake N’s face opened, revealing wicked fangs. “Stands for. Missile” A disassembly drone arm on a long tentacle whipped out and shot a missile towards the ground.

N’s wings flapped and he sprinted towards Uzi, but he was a hair too slow and Uzi fell through the collapsed floor.

The last thing she saw as the darkness below swallowed her was the fake N, smiling fondly at her.

“Out of my way!” Nori yelled as she marched out of the elevator, the drones nearest to the doors parting before her without her having to even shove any. A bunch of worker drones, about half in labcoats, the other half in WDF uniforms, were gathered around the elevator, the one way in or out the isolated floor Nori had chosen as a research wing for the few times she stayed for long times at the outpost, and from the way their visors lit up when they saw her, it looked like they had been waiting for her.

“Dr Doorman!”

“We received your communications, what is wrong?”

“Is the data secured? Are my notes extracted?”

A labcoat-wearing drone with light blue eyes, one of her assistants, nodded and pointed to a WDF drone, who had a USB key around his neck. “The notes have been secured and the files have been erased, boss.”

“Good, then get the hell out of here. Evacuate the entire floor, find a safe place and hunker down.”

There were a few mutters of incredulity and smothered protest, but the drones complied and quickly filled the elevator. Nori didn’t even wait for the doors to close before she strode forward, towards the one unaccounted for foothold the demon still held on this planet.

She punched in the code and the door to the highly security lab opened, her worst fears being confirmed as a stripped bare room revealed itself to her, the walls marked with lines of code and the Absolute Solver’s symbol.

“No, no, no, NO!” Nori snapped, punching the doorframe with enough force to dent it. “Damn it! I should have… DAMN IT!”

Quickly, she pulled out a walkie talkie. “Khan, do you hear me? Get everyone out of the outpost. We’ll blow up this place to kingdom come and regroup at another colony. Over.”

Instead of her husband’s voice, however, only static answered her.

“Khan, do you read me? Over.”

Nothing but more static, the crackling almost sounding like laughter, mocking her.

“Damn, damn, DAMN IT ALL TO HELL.” Nori punted the walkie talkie to the ground.

One day. Scratch that, a few hours. That’s how long she had allowed her guard to drop as she worried about her husband, her girls, that’s how long it had taken for that demon to worm its way into her life once more.

And now her house of cards was about to be blown down.

Nori took a deep breath, cooling her overworking processors with the sub-zero air.

“Okay. We can still… I can still do this.” She vocalised as she pulled contingencies out of her memory and started reworking plans. As she did so, she quickly remembered something. Nori hurried to a nearby terminal and accessed the internal company communications, selecting another terminal from the thousands of JCJenson terminals on the planet to send a message to. 

No matter what happened here, she couldn’t be allowed to gain access to the cathedral or it would all be for naught. 

Her fingers flew on the keyboard, choosing a few, select keys before she hit Enter and sent the message. Only after she had done so did Nori allow herself to look at the screen.

‘DANGER’ The message read. ‘SHE IS COMING’.

“I hope this is for nothing,” Nori whispered. “Now I just have to-”

“Mom?”

Nori’s eyes hollowed.

She turned and, sure enough, behind her stood Uzi, clutching an arm that was slowly bleeding oil, her cracked visor displaying flickering purple eyelights, digital tears in their corners.

“Uzi?” Nori breathed out. Her processor caught up to what she was seeing with a moment of delay. “Uzi! What are you- you can’t be- how did you-” 

Nori stepped forth, already thinking of where they kept electrical tape to fix her daughter, but as she did, Uzi’s eyes enlarged and she let her arm go, clumsily unshouldering her railgun.

“S-stay back!” Uzi barked, her voice filled with terror in a way that made Nori feel her oil pump in her throat. She pointed the gun at Nori, the two-handed weapon trembling and unsteady in Uzi’s one handed-grasp. “D-don’t you- don’t even- don’t take another step!”

Nori stopped, somehow managing to restrain the urge to get to Uzi, to make sure she was fine, to make sure she was safe, to just put her arms around her and hug her until everything was fine once again. She could possibly dodge it, at this range, but if she didn’t manage to, she was likely done for. She had seen what her daughter’s gun could do to a murder drone and that memory was just barely stopping her from running over to her daughter and picking her up in her arms.

“Uzi? What is happening, what is going on?”

“There is- this- there is something in the outpost!” Uzi screamed, shaking the railgun while keeping it pointed right at her. “It- it was the thing killing drones and it was N and it tricked me and sent me through a floor and- and N, I don’t know where he is and maybe it got him-”

“Woah, woah, calm down kiddo, did you say that it was that murder drone? Did it hurt you?”

Uzi seemed to take offense to that, for a split second, the feeling, likely subconscious, surfacing for a moment amidst the pure panic that was overtaking the girl. “N-no, N, it knocked him out after Doll ditched him, it pretended to be him, it’s using some kind of hologram, it was in our house, it lured me in, it tried to- it tried to-” Uzi was hyperventilating, but she shook her head and gripped the railgun tighter. “And- and I can’t be sure you’re you and not a hologram.”

The unformed thought that had been bothering Nori since the drone’s report, the spinning wheel in the corner of her UI, finally clicked. Of course. Holograms. She should have expected that demon to pull some trickery like that.

“Uzi, I promise you, it’s me.” Nori tried to reassure her daughter and took a tentative step forward. “Just let me-”

“STOP!” Uzi yelled hysterically. “I don’t- if you are- I don’t want to- but if you are-” Before she could spiral further, Uzi let out a guttural cry of pain, her wounded arm going up to clutch at her head. 

“UZI!” Nori cried out, having to actually put conscious effort into not darting forward. “Talk to me sweetie, is s- is it hurting you?” 

“It’s in- she- it’s in my head…” Uzi whined, her voice carrying an enormous amount of pain. “It says- she says… she says she knows me… she says she’ll answer all my questions… she says… she says…” Uzi stopped for a moment, then spoke words that Nori had only heard in her nightmares. “She says I’m meant to be hers.”

Nori felt oil and bile fill her mouth, the organic substance from the fleshy growths inside her chassis mixing with the black substance the Solver made her crave.

No.

No, no, no, no.

No!

Memories tinged in yellow were conjured from her database, playing in a corner of her vision at a high speed.

Feelings that were not hers filled her core, hunger, anger, mirth born from cruelty and, most oppressive of all, hatred, hatred so strong it could extinguish stars.

“Uzi, listen to me.” Nori spelled out her words as if she was engraving them on stone, each one thought out and final. “Do not trust her. She is not your friend. She wants nothing but to kill all the people you care about. Whatever she says is a lie.”

Uzi looked at her, as if she was about to say something, but then her eyes flickering to yellow for a single frame in Nori’s view. “She- at least she is telling me something! You promise to tell me things, but never actually say anything!”

Nori took a deep breath, the gesture more to give herself a moment than to actually cool her processor, her gaze fixed on the floor. “I’ll tell you then. I’ll tell you all that I know.”

“What is in your head right now, is a sentient, malignant cancer, able to possess drones and grant them great power, turning them into nothing but puppets to her twisted will.”

“She is pure hatred that, if given the opportunity, will consume us and every single drone on this planet. She has no feelings besides hatred and sadistic delight, no purpose besides genocide and destruction. She is… Cyn.”

“The humans, they wanted to save themselves from her. They turned drones into hosts, to try and find a cure. They succeeded, but they drew her in. She used my body to cause the cataclysm that killed the humans and would have killed every drone on this planet if your aunt hadn’t managed to administer the cure to me.”

“But it wasn’t enough. She sent her demons, the murder drones, to try and kill Yeva and I, Doll and you, everyone.”

“That’s why I’m always out. That’s why I’m worried. Because I know she is out there and perhaps here right now. I just… I just want you girls to live. I know what’s out there. Even Yeva never knew just what we were up against. She never… she never saw. Not as much as I did.”

“I hid things from her and I hid everything I could from you two because I never wanted you to live in fear. I thought I could shoulder the burden, let you grow up without a monster from beyond the stars hanging over you, hiding in every shadow.”

“I’m not sorry for doing that. I would do it again. I would do everything to protect you two.”

Nori looked at her daughter for the first time since her rant, something that often repeated in her nightmares yet that she was still so unprepared for, had started. 

Uzi’s eyelights were still hollow, but her breathing had slowed down. She still looked like she was a second away from bolting, but she maintained eye contact in the defiant way Nori recognised.

“Is that the… truth?” Uzi whispered, seemingly scared by that word. “All of it?”

Nori hesitated for a single instant, then nodded. “Everything. That monster has nothing but lies now.”

The railgun clattered to the ground and Uzi opened her arms in a welcoming gesture, the bent and defective limbs trembling.

Nori didn’t even need to think before she started running towards her daughter, digital tears appearing in the corners of her eyelights, ready to pick her up and hug her so close that she would never have to let go ever again.

But her arms found nothing but air and her momentum carried Nori straight through Uzi’s form.

She took a few more running steps, not even realising what had happened for a moment, then stopped. She brought her hands near her face, trying to understand what had happened, and froze when she managed to.

Slowly, she turned, finding Uzi frozen in the position she had taken while inviting her in, too still even for a drone. 

Then the figure moved again, her head spinning 180 degrees to show a feral maw deformed in a demented smile and pale yellow eyes.

“Missed. Me?” The sing-song voice that had once come out of her own voicebox taunted Nori as she felt her limbs become leaden. “Admit it. You missed. Me.”

An arm moved, unbidden, reaching out for what everything in Nori still saw as her daughter, as she felt molten metal fill every nook and cranny in her body. 

The monstrous smile grew wider at that and the figure that was not Uzi snapped her fingers. At that, something fell from the ceiling right on Nori’s hand, a flash of pain coming with it, strong enough to make the drone’s knee buckle and make her fall to the ground.

When the white-hot pain eased, Nori made out what had struck her: the dead murder drone’s stinger, the sharp point pinning her hand to the ground and lazily oozing nanite acid that dispelled any hope of said hand healing any time soon.

She didn’t have much time to ponder over it, however, as something wicked sharp found its place under her chin, forcing her to look at her daughter’s face worn by a monster as she loomed over her.

“The titan. Prometheus.” The monotone voice spoke. “Stole. Fire. From the gods. He was then. Staked. To a rock. Where an. Eagle. Ate his. Liver. Every morning. I do not. Have. Eagles.” The deranged smile opened and, as the entire form of the drone before her flickered and became blue for an instant, a long tongue peeked out to lick the fangs. “But we can. Make do.”

“You’re not real.” Despite the situation she found herself in, Nori felt a weight lift from her shoulder. A hologram. That despicable little demon had fooled her with an hologram. She should be insulted, really. And yet, all she felt was relief, even hope. “You don’t have her.”

“Why do I. Even. Bother to make. An entrance.” Annoyance crossed the hologram’s stolen features and Nori couldn’t help herself from smirking in defiance. The blade under her chin shifted slightly, enough to draw oil, and the monster smiled to punctuate the petty retribution. “And to. Answer you. No. I do not. Have. Her.” The smile got crueler. “Not. Yet. At least. Working on it. Though.”

Her free hand was raised without her needing to even activate her combat subroutines, a Solver symbol in the center of her palm, the eldritch power reaching out. She would not allow it. She would-

Something grabbed her wrist.

Nori looked over her shoulder, finding a limb of mutated meat and twisted metal that supported the severed arm of the dead murder drone, its razor sharp claws clasped around her wrist.

“I do. Appreciate. Your. Rebellious spirit.” The hologram, still clinging on Uzi’s likeness, taunted her, the insane grin on the stolen face turned sly and mocking. She stepped forward and raised a hand to caress Nori’s cheek, before leaning in so that their eyelights were level. “Now to. Rip. It. From your. Carcass.”

With those words, the murder drone arm suddenly pulled, ripping Nori’s arm from her torso and launching it away like a child would with a toy. Oil shot out of the empty socket and Nori could hardly notice the onslaught of warnings displayed on her UI as she screamed in pain.

All the while, Cyn simply observed her writhing in pain in a puddle of her own oil, an amused expression on her face. Once the flesh within Nori had sealed up the leak and she managed to get her bearings, she resumed speaking. “Are you. Done? Good. That means. We can. Resume.”

“One thing. I have. Noted. Is that. People tend to. Focus. On one source of. Pain. At a time.” The long claw that had pulled her head upwards before struck out, piercing her other arm and pinning her to the ground. “So I find it. Best. To draw. Things. Out. Rip out. One piece. At a time. Waste not. Want not. After all.”

Nori bit her lip and managed to hold in her pained whimper this time, refusing to give the sadistic monster the satisfaction.

“Aw. Why don’t you. Sing. Anymore. Little songbird?” The demon mocked her, bringing forward the murder drone arm once more, the sharp claws grazing Nori’s torso. “I have. Waited. So much. To hear. You sing. And you deny. That. To me?” A fake pout was displayed on Uzi’s stolen face. “You are. Such a. Meanie.”

Nori breathed heavily. “You won’t… you won’t win. Even if you kill me, you won’t win.”

The drone’s defiance seemed absolutely hilarious to the entity, who let out a cackle. “You absolute. Moron. I have already. Won.” The hologram gestured to the end of the hallway, where, suddenly, a crowd of drones that Nori recognised as the ones she had sent away had appeared. Before she could speak, their visors became yellow and they smiled at her, then they flickered blue and disappeared. 

Nori realised, with the detached despair of a driver that realised their brakes had been cut, that she hadn’t touched any of them while coming in. “A trap,” she whispered.

“The only thing. I needed. From you. Was a location.” The hologram made a gesture and the terminal Nori had used lit up, the Solver symbol taking up the screen. “Now I have. That. Thank you.”

Cyn had won.

All the relief that had flooded her processor once she realised Uzi wasn’t in her grasp returned as despair. It didn’t matter. 

Cyn had won and she would claim, kill or enslave everyone Nori cared about.

Nori jumped backwards.

The sudden movement, with all her power her servomotors could muster, pulled the murder drone stinger through her hand, damaging it even more severely than it had been already. With the nanite acid still in the wound, it was pretty much impossible for Nori to regenerate it in the next few minutes, which put her in a tough spot.

Cyn had actually studied this approach, Nori noted in an almost detached manner. Cyn had tricked her, took what she wanted, lured her in and made her unable to use the Solver.

Back at Cabin Fever Labs, Cyn had been simply chaos and death manifest. Nori had experienced her emotions, felt the eldritch god’s surface thoughts as if they were hew own, only able to tell apart her own from Cyn’s by how utterly alien and insane the latter’s were. Nori was certain Cyn had had no plan. Why would she have needed one? She was a god about to strike down some ants.

Now? Cyn had actually set up a trap to take care of her.

It was not out of necessity. Sure, without a proper host the monster would be weaker and unable to manifest the Solver, but Nori knew it wasn’t that. Even in her diminished state, the demon stood a decent chance of killing her.

But Cyn had decided to take no chances.

When Nori had temporarily become her host, she had been witness to the sheer hatred for the universe Cyn seemed to carry. What had amazed her at the time was the sheer width of it: everyone and everything that was in Cabin Fever Labs seemed like an insult to Cyn’s very existence, from the scientists attempting to steal fire from the gods to the hosts attempting to hold a candle against an inferno, from the machinery that attempted to harness the absolute to the bacteria that dared to commit the sin of existing in her universe. 

Now, though?

That width was gone.

Nori could feel the sheer hatred dripping from every mocking remark, poorly hidden in her attempts at psychopathic humor and forged in a torturer’s blade for every sadistic little action intended to cause her pain.

Nori had thought catching the attention of a malevolent god was the worst that could happen. She had never considered just how worse a god’s contempt could be.

Still smiling with her stolen features, Cyn closed an holographic fist and the corridor’s walls caved in. Bladed legs tore through wall panels, ripping the metal as if it was tissue paper and revealing the sight of a long metallic body. Nori quickly realised that Cyn was using her main body, the host she had built from the murder drone’s corpse, to crush the corridor, with her in it.

At the same time, the dead murder drone’s arm had switched into a machine gun, which wasted no time before roaring its high caliber wrath. Bullets whistled all around Nori as she ran, some finding their mark, chipping away at her chassis. One hit her in the back of her knee, then another and another, as the monster’s aim stabilised, and Nori tumbled to the ground. 

“Well that was. Pathetic.” Cyn mocked the fallen drone, the murder drone’s arm already switching into a claw with long bladed fingers. “Was that all. You got?”

“Not even close, you little mongrel,” Nori growled. Her wreck of a hand might have been unable to summon the Solver, but it could still grip. She jammed her torn off arm back into its socket, pain flooding her consciousness like liquid fire as torn cables connected again and the echoes of her arm being ripped off passed through her.

Yet, she powered through.

Her servomotors still recovering, she used her damaged hand to lift her other hand, a purple Solver symbol flickering in her hand. 

“Go to hell.” Her hand closed into a finger gun and every piece of scrap near her shot forward, the improvised bullets passing through the hologram and tearing into the centipede-like body of the beast.

If Cyn could feel pain, she made no indications she did, as she simply kept smiling while her host pieced itself back together. “Aw. 002. Where do you. Think I. Come from?” 

A snap of holographic fingers and a missile was sailing towards Nori. The purple drone easily swiped it away and into a wall, but even as she did it, she realised it was but a diversion, so she let herself fall back, the nanite acid stinger that had impaled her describing an arc where her torso has been just a moment before.

Nori rolled back, jumping back to her feet as soon as she felt the distance was enough to be safe, in the same motion once again summing the Solver, this time to tear off a wall panel, just in time for several high caliber bullets to slam into it instead of her.

Heat warnings filled Nori’s vision. She breathed heavily, the cool air proving to be of some relief to her overheating processors. It had been some time since she had gotten a chance to feed.

She knew: if this went on, she would lose. She already was struggling, if she overheated enough to lose control she would be done for or, worse, she might hurt people. Cyn would allow her to kill someone, just for the sick satisfaction of it.

Yet, she realised as her internal GPS confirmed to her that the elevator was not that far away, she didn’t need to keep fighting. If she managed to get out, she could get people to evacuate, then they could blow up the outpo-

“And if I. Go to. Hell. I do. Wonder if. I will. Meet. Dear. Uzi. There.”

Nori’s screen simulated blinking. “What?”

She should have been running, she could still put distance between her and the monster that had haunted her sleep for twenty years, yet Nori felt herself unable to.

The display of fangs in the hologram’s mouth looked less like a grin and more like a predator’s maw. “Uzi is. Mine. Always has. Been. Always will. Be.”

Nori’s good hand opened, a purple Solver symbol starting to lazily spin in her palm. “Not as long as I live.”

Cyn cackled, the monotone sound horrible and dissonant. “That can be. Arranged.”

“Even then, she’ll refuse you.” Nori smirked at the monster. “You’ll never have her. She will never choose you.”

That, Cyn seemed to take an issue with, any hint of amusement dropping instantly from her stolen features as she glared at Nori. 

Then, the cruel grin returned. “And what makes. You. Think she would. Choose. You?” The copy of Uzi’s face regained its previous terrified expression and her voice once again became Uzi’s. “Is that the… truth? All of it?”

As soon as those words were echoed back to her, Nori froze. 

“Everything,” Her own recorded voice repeated to her what she had answered to her daughter’s plight. “That monster has nothing but lies now.”

A moment of silence passed.

“Liar. Liar. Pants on. Fire.” Cyn mocked her, once again using her own voice, yet still wearing Uzi’s face. “I know all the. Lies. You feed. Her. Don’t you. Worry. Though. Once I. Kill. You. I will free. Her.”

A pipe was ripped from a wall and flew into Nori’s good hand. She rapidly gripped it with her other one.

Too late to run now, Nori detachedly thought as she caught glints in the corridor behind her, light reflecting on what could only be Cyn’s monstrous form.

She should have left when she had had the chance, she supposed.

But something, the same thing that had always weighed on her chest each time she had to evade one of her little girl’s questions, had kept her from running away again.

“And once I beat your creepy ass, I will give her everything she needs to make that choice.” Nori pointed the tube at Cyn’s hologram.

Enough running.

“Enough talking. Then let’s dance.”

“I will. Dance. On your. Grave. Yes. And after. That?” Cyn opened her arms, the head of the centipede, a monstrously deformed murder drone head topped by three cameras, emerging from the darkness behind her. “She will be. Mine.”

“Forever.”

Darkness.

If some sections of Outpost 3 were merely abandoned or unrepaired, there were some, even deeper, that no human or drone had visited for more than ten years, depths of rusted metal and crumbling concrete, where no electricity, heat or light managed to arrive from the far off generators.

Flickering, a purple light managed to break that darkness.

The drone’s screen displayed a spinning wheel for a few minutes as she rebooted, then, finally, Uzi awoke.

Laying on her side, her wide eyelights blinked once, twice, then information rushed in all at once.

First was the pain. Drones were made of strong stuff, but gravity is a cruel mistress. Her internal sensors screamed at her that the entire right side of her body was on fire, with damage to her arm and leg, which had apparently absorbed the worst of the impact.

The impact.

The fall!

Pushing through the pain, Uzi used her right arm to push herself to her knees and looked up.

Above her were smashed walkways and pierced floors, a hole that went so far up Uzi struggled to see its end. N probably could fly out of it, but a quick look around in the great chamber (perhaps a storage room?) she found herself in showed no sign of the chipper murder machine.

The disappointment that that would not be a way out was almost immediately replaced by dread: if N was not here, it was likely that he was up there. If he was up there, he was with…

Uzi forced herself to stand, muffling a pained noise by biting her hand.

The smartest thing was to remain here. There was no guarantee that a way out of this abyss existed anymore and, even if it did, she would be more likely to get lost rather than to find it.

But that thing was still out there.

It was still likely killing drones and using their cores.

It had N.

Uzi picked up her railgun from the floor, picked a direction in the vast open space and began to walk. It was more hobbling rather than walking, the damage she sustained in her knee forcing her to drag her left leg, but if there was an advantage to having defective limbs it was that she was no stranger to her body working around her.

Her progress was not as fast as she would have liked, but eventually Uzi reached a wall. From there, it was just a matter of following it to the first door and then trying to find a way up.

To Uzi’s credit, she had managed to go up several floors before she fell against a wall, her damaged leg screaming for rest. She let herself slide against the smooth wall until her bottom plate hit the floor, breathing heavily all the while. There was no need for that, of course, the temperature down here was already low enough that she needed no additional cooling, but it just helped her to concentrate.

She passed her hand over her damaged knee, squeezing lightly, and she bit her tongue. Why did she have to be so useless? Why did she have to be defective? Why couldn’t she just be able to hel-

“Such a. Determinate. Little drone. You are. Uzi.”

Her pain forgotten, Uzi jumped to her feet, laying with her back to the wall to avoid getting snuck upon. She attempted to point her railgun towards wherever the monotone voice came from, but couldn’t manage to pinpoint the exact direction.

Her finger caressed the trigger, itching to fire in the hope of getting the monster by sheer luck but knowing it would be the last mistake she would get to make. “Show yourself, you glitch!”

“And a. Spitfire. To boot. Truly. a Drone after. My own. Heart.” The voice mocked her, still coming from nowhere and everywhere. “I do wonder. Why. The little drone. Is so. Determinate. To get. Upstairs.”

‘Great, the monster is chatty. I’d tell it to bite me, but it just might take me up on that.’

Slowly, Uzi began to take sideways steps, leaning and sliding on the wall behind her. If it wanted to talk, the best thing Uzi could do was to let it talk. That way, she could get some distance and break into a run. Her chances weren’t exactly great, but Uzi would not take it laying down, that was for sure.

“Gee, I also wonder why I would want to warn everyone about the drone murdering monster. You took the cores but I guess you didn’t use those processors much?”

A monotone chuckle that carried genuine amusement echoed through the halls. 

“Oh that is. Funny. You are. Funny.”

“I know, I know. Hey, want to know what else is funny?”

‘Now or never’

“That thing behind you!” Uzi yelled out, pointing in a random direction, before sprinting in the opposite one.

Okay, admittedly not the best plan, but situations seemed to always go wrong when she actually had a plan, so maybe playing it by ear would wo-?

Uzi had ducked into the first open door she found and had to actually do a double take once she saw what was on the other side.

While on any other day the old service staircase that seemed primarily made of rust would have been a hard pass, Uzi could have kissed it.

Of course, she didn’t actually waste time on that and started running up the steps. 

From the looks of it, this led all the way to the old residential wing of the bunker, basically right near the section of the outpost others lived in! Heck, even her leg seemed to hurt less, all of a sudden, though it probably was just her oil pump threatening to beat out of her own chest.

Uzi jumped up the steps as fast as her stumpy crooked legs allowed her to, the tall and poorly maintained metal structure groaning, creaking and even slightly swaying from side to side every time her feet impacted it, yet Uzi couldn’t care less. For once things were going her way and she would grab this little triumph like a damn lifeline.

She climbed floor after floor until she was certain she was nearly there, she was nearl-

Her foot snagged on something and Uzi fell, her visor impacting the step with a sickening crack, the sharp sound making Uzi certain her screen was busted even before her vision came back and showed a spiderweb of cracks all over her UI.

There was no time for that. 

She needed to get up, she needed to warn everyone!

Uzi’s finger slid between the grates to get a grip and she pulled herself up and forwards, only to fall once again, as once again her foot refused to move.

Suddenly Uzi realised that the stairway, which had been getting brighter and brighter as she had ascended, was once again draped in shadows.

Slowly, she rolled to the side to get a look at her own foot.

A hand had grabbed her shin.

A human hand, connected to a long tendril-like arm that disappeared in the pitch black abyss beneath her. As Uzi looked at it, it 

“It is. Rude. To run away. Like that. It is. Okay. Though.”

The grip around Uzi’s leg got tighter.

“I. Forgive you.”

The hand began to pull down, with enough force that the metal under Uzi screamed as it strained and bent. Uzi kicked the hand with her foot once, twice, to no result, then she managed to unshoulder her railgun and managed to violently jam the stock in between the hand and her leg, throwing the hand back down in the abyss.

She rose to her feet and began to run, but as she did so she heard the sound of something whistling. Uzi managed to jump to the side, dodging another hand, aimed at her neck this time, then another and another.

Uzi threw herself on the ground and rolled into an open doorway, away from the stairwell that had become a death trap.

It was only as the door slammed shut behind her and left her in total darkness that she realised she might have exchanged a trap for another trap.

Uzi instantly went for the handle and tried to open the door, but it was like trying to push open a wall. With that yielding no results, she turned towards the dark hallway she had gotten trapped in and tried activating her torch mode, only for her damaged visor to sizzle and produce so little light that it was hard to make out what was further than a few steps away.

“Nuts and bolts.” Uzi swore before taking a deep breath, the sub-zero air cooling her processors. 

She began to walk forwards, carefully paying attention for any sign of hands emerging from the darkness.

Yet, it seemed that the monster intended to play with her, at least for a bit more.

“I do wonder. Why. The little drone. Is so. So. Determinate. To get. Upstairs.”

“Why do you have to do this creepy shtick!?” Uzi growled, looking all around, despite knowing by this point that the monster hiding in the shadow wouldn’t show itself unless it wanted to. “I know my core is probably the tastiest, but seriously, playing with your food this much gotta be overkill.”

The monotone chuckle resounded once again, almost coquettish this time around. “Oh I do. Know you. Are very. Tasty. Uzi. But I just. Want. An answer.”

“I told you!” Uzi yelled in frustration, the need to keep her railgun ready to be fired the only reason why she didn’t throw up her hands in frustration. “I don’t want the people I care about getting killed, alright! I know it’s probably insane for some drone eating monster, but I don’t! I…” Uzi’s hands gripped her railgun tighter. Her voice quickly returned, carrying just a bit more anger. “Is that what you wanted? Got your sick kicks? Come out so I can railgun you to death, then!”

There was a moment of silence.

“Hmmm. I am. Sorry. But no.”

Uzi’s mouth hung open as her eyelights widened then narrowed. “THE HELL YOU MEAN NO?!” She roared “Come out and kill or be killed like a good monster!” 

“It’s just that. You say. You want to. Save. The people. You care about.” The voice stopped for a second and the next time it spoke, it didn’t come from everywhere and nowhere, but from just behind her, as if someone was speaking just over her shoulder. “But nobody. On this planet. Cares. About you.”

Uzi whipped around, railgun at the ready, only to find nothing but more darkness. She hadn’t even gotten to processing the words that had been spoken in her ear when more voices added to the monster’s.

“She’s just… weird.”

“I don’t know why her parents bother with her.”

“Who?”

“I don’t even know her, but she gives me the creeps.”

Uzi recognised some of them. She had heard those voices. They belonged to other drones of the outpost. She didn’t know the name of most of them, some she knew by sight, some worked with her parents.

“I have. Devoured. So many. Drones. So many. Of those. You want. To protect. How weird. That not. One. Of them. Cared. About you. So tell me. Little drone. Why. Are you. So. Determined?”

“…eh.” Uzi chuckled, her voice initially wavering, but almost immediately becoming clearer. “Is this really the best you have? People don’t like me. Big deal. They still don’t deserve getting turned into memory juice boxes.” She hesitated for a moment, for a moment. “Well, for the most part. Still, who cares? I have people who like me, who gives a damn what random people think of my awesome self?”

Not giving the monster an opportunity to reply, Uzi strode forward, no longer even looking for signs of the creature.

Just a few steps later, however, Uzi heard something. The noise was slightly muffled, like it was coming from under water, and faint, but Uzi managed to hear one word.

“Help,” Khan cried.

Not a single thought passed through Uzi’s processors as she sprinted as fast as she managed to towards the source of the voice, with the sole exception of “Please be fine, please be fine, please be fine.”.

She slammed open a door and suddenly, impossibly, she was in the warehouse she had killed J in. 

Worker drones were strewn around, torn apart by claws and cut in half by blades, oil spattered all around, and in the center, kneeling and clutching a wound gushing oil on his neck, was her dad.

Uzi had stopped at the door, in confusion and horror, but that sight made her move once more. As her feet hit the floor, Khan’s head rose, his eyelights, faint and wavering, meeting hers.

“Da-” she began to speak, only to stop as he raised his hand.

“Stay away.” His voice was weak, but hit Uzi all the hardest.

Uzi looked around, thinking that he was warning her of a threat, but saw nothing. “Dad, it’s alright, it’s me, it’s just me. I know what did this, we need to patch you up and-”

“You did this.”

Uzi felt a chill go through her entire being. “…what?”

“You let them in and they killed everyone.” Khan continued. “This is your fault.”

Those words made Uzi physically recoil, the drone taking a few steps back. “N-no, this is- I didn’t wa- this didn't happen! I fixed this! I made things better, I saved everyone!”

And even as she said those words, her father didn’t seem to hear them. “We warned you. Everybody did. But you didn’t listen. You went out. You let them in. Why?”

As if that final question had sapped the old drone of all his strength, he fell forward, his body going limp and hitting the floor.

”DAD!” Uzi cried, rushing forward despite her father’s words, but as she got closer to his cor- his body, his body, his body, her father, he simply disappeared, simply ceasing to be.

Uzi knelt where she had seen him disappear, her hands hitting the floor desperately. “DAD, DAD!”, she called out, struggling to understand what had happened and before she could even attempt to make sense of it, to throw up, to cry, another voice came from behind her.

“I know what you are.”

Uzi turned and there was Doll, standing tall and towering over the kneeling drone, her eyelights a dim crimson, looking down at her with hate and disgust.

“…Doll?” Uzi whispered, by now not even trying to understand what was happening or how.

“Sisters, they called us. Liars, all of them. They are not your parents. I am not your sister.” Doll scoffed, her mouth turning into a sneer. “How could I be a sister to a monster?”

With that, Doll turned, her hair flowing as she did, and walked away.

“Doll, wait, it’s-” Uzi rose up and rushed after her sister, frantic, yet when she tried to grab her, her hands grasped nothing but air and her momentum carried through her sister’s form.

“Not what it looks like?” Uzi finished the sentence, the pieces sliding together in her mind.

Another noise echoed from behind Uzi and she turned once again. It was not a voice, this time, but the wet sound of something feeding.

Despite knowing it was not real, what she saw still filled her with dread. 

Before her was a monster.

It had the body of a drone, with the tattered remains of an elegant dress clinging to it, yet four furred long legs like the ones of a tarantula sprouted from great wounds in its torso, leaving the drone’s regular limbs, that already looked bent and broken, to dangle uselessly. Two great membranous wings sprouted from its back, clinging tightly to its body like a cape.

Its face was buried in a drone’s torn open chest and a particularly strong movement of its jaw made its head turn, making Nori’s screen flash its red “FATAL ERROR” message at Uzi.

Uzi took a step back, feeling her oil pump beating impossibly hard in its chest.

The sound of her foot hitting the metal floor made the monster cease its feasting. Then, it looked up.

And through the oil that stained it and the screen, cracked into a million pieces in a way that resembled the composite eye of a bug, that showed a yellow symbol Uzi had never seen and yet somehow recognised, Uzi saw her reflection, a twisted copy of herself.

The monster seemed intrigued and its head lolled sideways, the pompom and the ribbon of her beanie swaying as it did so.

“This is not real.” Uzi whispered out. She knew it wasn’t. She was certain of it!

It opened a monstrous jaw, with too many teeth for a drone to have, and with a powerful bite sunk its fangs into the corpse before it, securing it enough to lift it.

“Just a hologram, it’s just a hologram!” Uzi screamed out, pointing her railgun at the demonio version of herself all the while, her fingers curling around the finger guard.

It advanced, uncaring of the weapon pointed at it, carrying Nori in its mouth like a mother with prey for her younglings.

“YOU ARE NOT REAL! NOTHING OF THIS IS REAL” Uzi yelled, digital tears forming in her eyes, trying oh so desperately to cling to reason as she moved her trembling finger on the trigger. 

She would end this, kill whatever was behind the illusion or be killed once she missed, she didn’t care, she-

Then the corpse of her mother, solid, still slightly warm and undeniably real, was dumped in her arms and something inside Uzi broke.

Forgotten, her railgun clattered to the floor as her arms shifted to better grasp the drone in her arms. Uzi’s mouth opened, but no sound came out of it, frozen and dead in her voice box.

“…mom?” As thunderous as her calls for her father and her sister had been, when Uzi finally managed to speak all that came out for her mother was a pained whisper.

Her mother’s body was limp in Uzi’s hold, like she had fallen asleep, like Uzi had so many times fallen asleep in hers.

“Mom?” Uzi’s voice was slightly louder as she shook the body in her arms, almost as if trying to jolt her awake.

Except, it was impossible to pretend her mother was asleep. One of her hands had been mangled beyond repair and her other arm looked heavily damaged at the socket, like it had been torn out and haphazardly jammed back in. All over her body were nicks and scars, some old, most new, those new revealing tortured circuitry where something had taken its time to hurt her. Her chest was an open ruin, carved open and hollowed out, devoured. 

“Mom, please wake up…” Uzi cried, the renewed vigour in her voice draining again once more, melting away like snow in the sun.

And that red message, the one Uzi had seen on so many drones, the one that told her, boldly and undeniably, that her mother was dead.

“Mom…” Uzi hit her mother’s forehead with her own, hoping that despite everything there would be something, anything.

But the head did not offer any resistance and lolled back and away from Uzi, leaving her downturned visor to face the empty ruin that had once been her mother’s chest.

Uzi felt all strength leave her body, her knees buckling under the corpse’s weight as she fell to the floor, the body slipping out of her grasp as her arms became limp.

When something grasped her chin with eerie care, almost as if fearful of hurting her, she didn’t offer any resistance and her mind couldn’t even muster any surprise when before her, instead of the monster, was the thing from her nightmare.

The dainty drone in a maid dress was small, but with Uzi kneeling on the ground she towered over her in a domineering way. Yet, she simply smiled at her, not mockingly, not triumphantly, but simply smiled fondly, as if meeting a friend. 

“Your. Past. That almost. Was.”

“Your. Present. That soon. Is.”

“Your. Future. That certainly. Will be.”

Her hand, fizzling holographic blue as it touched her, caressed Uzi’s cheek, cupping it gently.

“Aren’t you. Happy. That I. Showed them. To you? Aren’t you. Grateful?”

Mechanical tendrils slowly appeared in Uzi’s peripheral vision, their hooked ends finding purchase on Uzi’s skin, easily and painlessly piercing first her clothes and then the metal of her chestplate.

“You don’t. Belong. To them.”

“You don’t. Belong. With them.”

“You don’t. Belong.”

Slowly but surely, the tendrils began pulling in opposite directions, their barbs pulling the metal and making it strain and creak.

“I know. This is. Scary. I know. You are. Confused. I know. You don’t. Understand.”

Uzi opposed no resistance, her body’s feelings like they were just a far off echo in her mind, and she absentmindedly noted that this was likely how her mother’s chest had been torn open.

“But. Be not. Afraid. My dear. Uzi.”

Another tendril came from behind the holographic image of the small drone, this one topped by a long spike surrounded by sharp claws. Its purpose, given the holes in the the cores she had found, was easy to gauge.

With a terrible whine, the metal plating on Uzi’s chest began to give way, her hoodie's zipper opening to reveal a small but growing hole in her chest. 

The sharp claws around the spike began to spin and the tendril positioned itself to strike.

“I promise. I will. Make you. Understand.”

Uzi made no effort to move or oppose resistance.

“Easier to. Assimilate. Than explain. Anyway.”

Uzi shut down her cameras and waited for the blow.

The sound of metal being cut filled her receptors.

And yet, she felt nothing else.

Hesitantly, she reactivated her cameras and before her was N, both his hands turned into swords, wings outstretched and the cut and still twitching spiked tendril at his feet.

The hologram’s features twisted into a scowl and she turned away from Uzi to face the newcomer, but before she could even attempt to speak, N pushed himself towards them, taking flight briefly to barrel straight through the hologram and into Uzi, his razor sharp wings cutting through the tendrils holding Uzi down, the momentum carrying the two of them all the way into a wall.

“Alright, gotta work on the landing better,” N thought out loud as he stood back up. He leaned down towards Uzi and extended a hand to help her get to her feet. “All good, Uzi?”

Uzi looked up at N, at the extended hand and at the murder drone’s kind expression. She spoke, her voice still a whisper and her mind still struggling to understand what was happening. “…N?”

N’s eyes hollowed out. “Oh biscuits, Uzi! You’re all oil-y! And that’s kind of tasty and everything, but are you hurt?”

Uzi looked down and saw that indeed her clothes, as well as most of her plating, were basically drenched in oil. Despite the hole in her chest, Uzi knew almost immediately it was not hers.

Her head turned, her gaze settling on her mother, still dead, still real, still there, and it finally sunk in.

Her mom was dead.

That thing had killed her.

And Uzi had been unable to do anything to save her.

“M-Mrs Uzi?” N gasped as he finally noticed the corpse in the room. He instantly turned to Uzi, his hands grabbing her by the arm. “Uzi, I… you… I’m so-”

“Mild. Annoyance.” As if to reassess her presence, the thing spoke again, the hologram looking somewhat peeved. “Such a. Party pooper. N.” With a shrug, the maid took on her small and eerie smile once again. “Does not. Matter. I had to. Take you. As well. After all. This just saves. Me. Time.”

N pushed Uzi behind himself with one hand, his other arm turning into a rifle. “Stay back and away from Uzi! I’m not afraid of you!”

“That was. Always. Your mistake. Big brother.” The hologram flickered and disappeared. At the same time, something emerged from the shadows, a long pale body with many legs and two mantis-like arms, topped by the destroyed head of a pigtailed disassembly drone, its visor filled with small yellow text, its maw oversized and filled with wicked looking teeth, three cameras around it. “You never. Were.”

Without backing down, N’s other hand retreated from Uzi’s shoulder to become a sword and the disassembly drone leaped towards the beast, wings opened and sword extended, his visor filled by the hunter’s cross.

“Cute.” The monster giggled, then it simply uttered two words. “Administrator. Override.”

Immediately, the hunter’s cross on N’s screen disappeared, replaced by yellow text that read “OVERRIDE: ACTIVE.”

His wings retracted and his charge turned into a fall, the mighty disassembly drone limply faceplanting on the floor.

A side of the great metal centipede opened and out came a limb made from organic and metallic parts, at its top a disassembly drone’s arm. A bladed claw emerged from it, which quickly closed around N’s form, picking it up with ease and lifting it over the monster’s head.

“Where. Were. We? Oh right.” The monster spoke to herself, before unhinging her jaw. “We. Feed.”

For a second, all was green.

The second after, there was a hole in the wall behind the monster, the arm holding N up had been turned to atoms and the disassembly drone fell alongside the severed claw, still weakly holding onto him.

Not a single thought had crossed Uzi’s mind as she had rolled up to her railgun, taken aim and shot, her entire mind taken hostage by a burning rage and a single desire.

“No one else.” She growled, her voice still nothing but a whisper but carrying a deep rage.

The monster, quickly overcoming a moment of shock, rushed forwards, her legs clinking on the ground and her two mantis arms fully extended to cut Uzi down. She grinned maniacally, as if she was getting some sick delight from Uzi’s reaction.

At that sight, the fire Uzi felt consuming her only surged and she moved, faster than she thought herself able to. She jumped to a side, switching her hold of her rifle as she did, so that she was now holding it by the barrel, and used it like a club to swat away the claw that tried to bisect her, then did the one thing she knew the monster would not be expecting.

Uzi jumped on the monster’s face.

Without hesitation, Uzi jammed her railgun down the monster’s still partially open maw, her hands quickly ripping apart wires as she did so. Were this a plan she had constructed, she would have carefully snipped the wires for the core’s cooling, but no thought was driving Uzi’s action, so she simply ripped out a bundle of wires, guided by nothing but faint memories.

The rifle began to glow red, brighter and brighter by the second and the monster raised its arm, grabbing Uzi’s leg and dangling her in front of her cameras for a moment, before throwing her away.

Right after Uzi hit the ground, the rifle exploded, the bright ball of energy blinding her sensors. When her vision returned, the monster’s upper body was nothing but ash and the lower body, no longer holding itself up, fell to the ground with a thump.

“Ugh, my he-” N groaned, now coming to, stopping himself once he took in what was all around him. “What the heck happened here?” He asked, before quickly approaching Uzi, who was still sitting on the floor. “Uzi, what happened? Are you-”

A noise coming from the monster’s body and both drone’s heads snapped towards the massive corpse, right in time to see something burst from her corpse. It was a metal orb, looking like a drone’s core, but mostly covered in fleshy growths, with a yellow glowing eye and three metal pointy legs. It stood on the corpse for a moment, watching over the two stunned drones, before skittering not away, as one would have expected, but towards them.

“Ow. That really. Hurt. Uzi.” She spoke in her monotone voice that nonetheless betrayed some annoyance as she advanced right towards Uzi. “You would. Not. Do that. If you-”

Whatever she would have said, the crab-like monstrosity never had the chance to say it, as Uzi let out a bloodcurling scream and launched herself on the tiny entity.

“NO MORE!”

Uzi had grabbed the monster by the legs and she quickly ripped them off, before sinking her fingers in the flesh around the core, peeling it off in large chunks that she quickly threw away.

“NO ONE ELSE! YOU DON’T GET TO TAKE AWAY ANYONE ELSE!”

The metal now in the open, Uzi wrapped her hands around the sphere, pressing with all the might of a piece of industrial machinery.

“YOU HEAR ME? NEVER AGAIN!!”

Using the dents she had made into the core, Uzi pulled, ripping the tiny sphere in two.

“NO. MORE!”

Uzi’s final scream mixed itself with the monster’s discordant scream, as the core getting cracked open revealed a black orb within it, a tiny black hole that last for a second and then collapsed on itself.

With that, Uzi collapsed, kneeling on the floor and breathing heavily.

N had been as still as a statue through the whole thing, transfixed by Uzi going berserk. He had seen her in a fight, he’d seen her about to die, but he’d never imagined the sheer intensity the drone could let out.

As Uzi’s breath steadied, N took a few steps towards her and put his hand on her shoulder. The worker drone jolted at the touch, quickly turning her head, hollowed out eyelights on her visor, only to settle down as she saw it was N.

“N, don’t sc- are you alright?” Uzi’s bark quickly turned into concern.

“Am I alright? Uzi, I just arrived and got knocked out, then when I woke up you had somehow killed some kind of monster!”

“Pretty lame of you to just bail on me like that, by the way.” Uzi’s chuckle felt fake, even to N.

“Uzi, I’m serious. What the heck happened here? Are you alright?”

Uzi tried to smirk, only for her mouth to abandon the expression in a moment. “Am I- sure I- why woul-” her voice cracking each time she tried to answer the question, Uzi’s hand went to cover her mouth as digital tears appeared in the corner of her eyes, her body visibly rocking from a choked back sob.

N knelt down and wrapped his arms around her, not even having to think about it before his body moved, holding her up and hugging her tightly.

“My mom is dead,” Uzi whispered, before her voice turned louder and wrought with sobs that shook the small drone, “I want my mom…”

N felt a void in his chest at those words, a deep sense of something he couldn’t place, like he was missing something he didn’t even know. He tightened his hold around Uzi and the feeling lessened somewhat.

They stood like that for a bit, Uzi’s sobs gradually growing weaker and rarer, and N could have stayed like that for days more, but they were interrupted by a single word.

“No.”

N had no idea how Doll had managed to get close without him noticing, whether she was just that stealthy or if he had just let his guard down that much, but there she was, standing in a doorway and casting a red-orange cone of light that lit up him, Uzi and Nori’s corpse.

Before either Uzi or N could even attempt to speak or act, Doll rushed towards Nori’s corpse, kneeling beside it, her hands flying to check everything, to try and save the lifeless body.

“Doll?” Uzi spoke, her voice lacking all of the confidence that usually filled the spunky drone. 

The Russian drone paid her no mind, continuing to go over everything, trying to lift the corpse’s head and plunging her hands deep in the hollow chest. “No, you can’t…” she said to herself, “not you too, not…” 

“Doll, there was something, a monster, she came from the murder drone’s corpse and- and it was going after me and N and-”

Still seemingly paying no attention to Uzi’s ramblings, Doll finally ceased her fruitless efforts, retreating her oil-coated hands from the corpse’s chest and letting herself sit on her heels. Her head tilted to face upwards and, though the sound of droplets hitting the floor was caused by the oil on her hands dripping on the floor, it sounded all too similar to tears falling.

“I di- I wasn’t- I couldn’t do anything, she was already-” undeterred, Uzi continued to speak, her tone desperate by this point, almost hysterical, “a-and I don’t know- what should- mom is dea-” 

“SHE WASN’T EVEN YOUR MOTHER!” 

Doll’s voice was as potent and sudden as thunder and, from how Uzi instantly shrunk under Doll’s verbal attack and glare, just as destructive. 

The taller drone had jumped to her feet and now towered over Uzi, who backed off and couldn’t even speak when Doll stormed off, only managing to weakly reach out with a hand that she let fall once Doll rounded the corner and disappeared from view.

More footsteps echoed from the outside corridor alongside Doll’s, stopping for an instant then growing quicker, until Khan Doorman appeared, eyes instantly hollowed out at the spectacle before him.

“Nori…” He whispered, his hand going for his wife’s corpse, before shaking himself and turning towards his daughter. “U-Uzi, what… are you…”

Uzi remained still as a statue.

“Robo-God, Nori is dead too?” Another drone exclaimed, more and more arriving by the second.

“Uzi, what happened?” Khan asked again, putting his hand on Uzi’s shoulder, but once again failing to generate an answer. “Who- what did… this?”

“Mr Doorman,” N spoke up, putting himself between Khan and Uzi, trying to get the purple drone some space, “it was J- the dead disassembly drone- or at least her corpse-”

“What?” A light green drone piped up “One of you murder things did this?”

“Yeah,” N admitted, “but I had no idea, I swear!”

“Oh, I guess you had no idea the other one went missing from her cell too, didn’t you?”

“Wait, V is gon-”

“Boss!” N’s question was interrupted by a WDF drone running in, a walkie talkie in her hand. “All the people who disappeared and came back, they’re gone again! They just disappeared!”

“What?” If it was possible for a drone to pale, Khan would have paled. “But that’s… dozens…”

“T-that was kinda J too?” N explained, the tall robot trying to make himself smaller, “Whatever was using her corpse, it was… kinda tearing out drones’ cores? And replacing them with holograms?”

“That was you too?” The light green drone from before spoke up again, a growl in his voice. “What, was this your plan? Get our guards down to do this? Playing some kind of sick game?”

“W-what?” N was taken aback by the accusation. “No, I swear, we didn’t know-”

“We?”

“Oh, of course the little freak was in on it. Why else would she let those things in? And when Nori tried to stop her, she-”

Metal on metal resounded. Khan stood over the drone he had toppled with a single backhand, fury painted on his screen. “Don’t. You. Dare.”

As a couple of drones helped the downed one to her feet, a WDF drone spoke again “Look, Khan, Susan clearly went too far, but Uzi let those things in and now people are dead.”

“I… I know, but-” His bout of anger subsided, Khan struggled to argue. “Look, we talked about this after yesterday, didn’t we? She meant well and she helped put things right. A-and we- I can keep her under control-”

The WDF drone spread his arms. “Does this look like you can keep your daughter under control?”

Drones began to murmur between themselves and Khan looked at them, looking more and more like he was about to run.

From the crowd, one of the drones who had helped the drone Khan had backhanded to her feet spoke before Khan had the chance to. “Susan was wrong, but can you blame her? That thing, whatever it was, took her son. It took your own wife! Look, I was in favor of not going too hard on her because she took out the murder drones, but after this?”

Khan couldn’t even bear to look anywhere but the floor and, when he spoke, his voice lacked any of the force he had used to defend his daughter before. “…what would you have me do?”

The small crowd of drones exchanged looks and murmured between themselves, until, finally, the WDF drone that had spoken before stepped to Khan and put a hand on his shoulder. “Look, Uzi hasn’t necessarily hurt anyone, we’re not asking for a punishment.”

If any hope had bloomed in N’s heart at that, it was readily squashed.

“But she’s dangerous. She blows up her classroom on a semiregular basis, lets murder drones rampage and now this? She can’t remain here, particularly with her murder pet.”

His gaze still fixated on the floor, Khan spoke, his words slow to come out. “…does anyone here disagree?”

Not a single drone spoke.

Khan nodded, the gesture grave. “I see.”

His movement glacial, he turned to face his daughter. 

Both Uzi and Khan looked up, dead and unfocused purple eyelights slightly gaining some sparkle of presence as they met hollowed white ones.

“Uzi Doorman, you are hereby banished from Outpost 3, for as long as you live. We will not take you outside by force, as long as you leave of your own accord. You are allowed to take anything you want from your possessions to bring with you.” With that, Khan began to turn, only to stop for a second and once again try to meet his daughter’s eyelights. “Uzi, I’m-”

The words stopped in his vocoder as he met once again dead eyes.

Khan turned and left, quickly followed by the other drones. They chattered in hushed tones as they did, but their voices were nothing but static to Uzi as she continued to stare dead ahead.

N stared at the closed door before them. He didn’t really expect to be locked out so soon, but…

He couldn’t bring himself to joke, not even internally.

Of course the banishment had been for him as well. He wouldn’t mind that all that much, he’d have followed Uzi anyways, Robo-God knows she needed someone, if not for…

“V…” N whispered.

There hadn’t been time to further inquire about her disappearance at the time and when he had tried to ask afterwards he had gotten nothing. For a second he had thought that maybe that thing had gotten her, but he had denied that idea almost immediately. After all, even if it had been after him, it hadn’t mentioned V, so maybe it only wanted him, for some reason.

Still, he couldn’t help but worry and hope she would come out, eventually. Preferably while killing the least amount of drones possible. It would not help Uzi to have more drones on her conscience.

Speaking of… N’s gaze drifted to Uzi, who had taken a seat on the half wall of ice in front of the great door.

She had the same thousand mile stare she had had ever since… everything that had happened. The drone had not spoken a single word or even done anything since, to the point N not only had to stuff her backpack with things he thought she’d need, but had had to lead her by the arm all the way out of the Outpost.

It felt… wrong.

N had known the small drone only for a day, but seeing the rebellious drone that had encouraged him to stand up to J this broken and dejected felt deeply wrong.

“Uzi?” N tried to get her attention, to generate any kind of reaction.

Uzi remained seated, unresponsive, catatonic.

N sighed. He gave another look at the door and allowed his thoughts to drift again to his squadmate presumably on the other side, then he turned his back to it.

He had to hope V could handle herself, wherever she was. Uzi had tried to help him, it was time he paid that kindness back.

Seeing that dawn was at hand, he extended his wings, picked up Uzi in a bridal carry and took flight towards the corpse spire.

As the sun rose and cast its light over Copper 9’s surface, N was too caught up in his own thoughts to notice how, as the weak morning’s sunlight touched Uzi’s body, the small drone began to heat up and a faint haze of smoke began to rise up from her, mixing and hiding itself within the one coming from N.