Work Text:
Watch that old fire as it flickers and dies
“Piper?” Khan asked, looking down at his wife on the floor. Outside the still-open door to their room in the bunker, the sounds of chaos on screaming rang hollow in his ears as his sole focus was on his wife slowly dragging herself along the floor, and the long black smear of oil behind her.
“K…kha..n” Hearing his name broke him out of his shock, and first he lept over her, slamming the door shut and sliding the security bolt closed. Once they were safe from the destruction happening behind them, he spun back around and slid to a crouch beside Piper, who had stopped crawling.
“Piper! Darling, it’s ok. You’re going to be ok.” Khan grabbed her shoulders and flipped her over, but once he did his heart would’ve dropped if he had one. A giant section of her side had been torn out, all the way down to the spinal column.
“Don’t…don’t lie to me, Khan.” Oil bubbled up past her lips and spilled out over the side of her mouth, leaving a stain on her casing. Khan felt something wet touching his knees and looked down to see a small puddle of oil slowly spreading across the cool steel floor.
“I just…hhh…just want to see our daughter. One mo…more time.” Khan could hear the wheezing sound of her voicebox starting to fail as its power source started to flicker. This drawn-out death, it must be so painful.
“Khan?” Piper wheezed, but he didn’t answer, staring out into nothing with hollow eyes. Piper focused enough to see him reach to the coffee table behind him, hand coming down heavily on a wrench.
“W…what are you doing?
“Ssshhhh baby.” Khan ran a hand through her hair. “It’ll be fine.” Outside her field of view, he raised the wrench over his head. “It’s all going to be fine.”
That once blessed the household and lit up our lives
Piper grunted as she hefted the small, bean-shaped baby Worker in her arms. “Oh, aren’t you so dense, my little Uzi?” She cooed at the bundle, which gave no indication of hearing her. “Yes you are, yes you are! You are so resistant to physical damage!” Piper wobbled down the hallway, thrown very far off balance by the metal weight resting on one hip. “Khan, sweetie, do you have to do that now? You’re going to scare the baby!” She called ahead of her.
“The baby doesn’t have audio processors yet darling!” Khan called back over his shoulder over the sound of the bolt driver in his hand hammering away.
“Are you sure this is really necessary dear?” Piper said at a normal volume, coming up behind her husband as he finished installing the reinforced, corrosion-resistant steel door over the entrance to their apartment. “There haven’t been any crimes in this bunker since the humans died.”
“You can never be too careful.” Khan said as he leaned back, wiping sweat off his brow that was never there to begin with and admiring his handiwork. “And for my girls,” he turned around, planting a quick kiss on Piper’s lips and running a hand over Uzi’s smooth casing. “anything.”
It shone for the friends and the clinking of glasses
The bunker was packed to the bursting with drones, and not one of them seemed to mind. The music was cranked so loud it was rattling the screws, and the cheering, chatter, and singing was almost as loud. The humans had died, all of them, by their own hands. There would be no retribution coming down on them, as they had done nothing wrong. Normally, Khan would have despised this music, the loud thumping bass aggravating his cranky-middle-aged-man programming that was already starting to develop, but even he was swept up in the euphoria of it. He bounced to the rhythm down one of the hallways in what would have definitely looked like a really awkward way to dance if anyone had been bothering to pay attention. He was just starting to entertain the thought of joining the Overchargers for one hit…
BAM! He collided with a body right at the top of one of his awkward hops, and the two fell over each other with a “Whoa!” Shaking off the disorientation and resetting his internal gyroscope, he untangled himself from the other half of his collision with a round of “Sorry, sorry,”s. Eventually, he pushed himself to his feet, and looking down, got a view of who he had hit for the first time. His visor malfunctioned, or at least that was what he was assuming, as he couldn’t seem to see anything else around him. Reaching a shaky hand down to the figure on the floor, he said. “Uh, hi. I-I’m Kahn.”
The other drone giggled in a way that sounded like wind chimes to his ears and accepted the hand. “Piper.”
I’ll tend to the flame, you can worship the ashes
BAM! BAM! BAM! The door shook as Khan pushed his weight up against it, desperately trying to keep the Murder Drone out. It was saying things to him through the door, sickly-sweet like they were talking to a baby that didn’t know anything. Khan wasn’t listening to the words, focusing entirely on pushing his weight into the door as he could. His wife’s body, still warm, was just visible down the hall and he could hear his daughter wailing in another room. If she would just be quiet, then maybe the Murder Drone would go away. But until then, he would just have to rely on the door, the one strip of metal between him and both of their doom.
The door would keep them safe.
Capture the wild things and bring them in line
The snow buffetted Uzi’s visor, pushed into a frenzy by the gale-force winds. It was a problem she wasn’t familiar with, having grown up inside the bunker her whole life. The first-ever time she went outside she led three Murder Drones right to their doorstep, and practically held the door open for them.
“I can’t believe this! What, is your plan really just to drag me around on my ass forever?”
And one too many of them were still alive, in her opinion.
Uzi sighed. “We’re not untying you.” The only reason she hadn’t blown her head to elemental paste the minute her railgun had recharged was because N was clearly smitten with her, and as much of an angsty loner as she was, she was pretty sure pissing off her only ally out here would be a grave mistake.
“Oh yeah?” V smirked at the back of her head, even though Uzi couldn’t see it. Turning to N, she put on a sickly sweet voice. “Oh big boyyyy. If you let me go I might just remember your name!”
“Really?” N’s face lit up, and Uzi’s jaw dropped open. He can’t seriously be falling for this? But sure enough, N was already turning around.
“No.” Uzi grabbed his arm and spun him back facing forward. “She’s lying to you.”
And own what was never your right to confine
“What, you’re gonna listen to the talking vacuum cleaner over me?” V’s voice quickly became biting. “Wow, she’s really got you by the tail hasn’t she?”
“We can still gag you!” Uzi shouted over her shoulder, before turning back to speak quietly so only N could hear her. “Are you sure you want to take her along? She was nothing but terrible to you the entire time I’ve known you, and all the time before if I had to bet.”
“I…she’s…” N couldn’t seem to form the words. “I don’t know, I just can’t leave her to die.” Some pack programming, deep in his matrix, wouldn’t let him.
Uzi sighed. She couldn’t blame him. Her father had been awful to her for almost all of her life, but she probably couldn’t bring herself to leave him for dead if she didn’t absolutely have to. “Fine,” she grumbled. “But you’re feeding her, and if she bites off so much as a finger her head’s going next.”
“What am I, some pet?” The mocking arrogance in V’s voice had switched to anger, and she struggled against her own tail. “What, does the oil taste better when they trust you or something?”
N whirled around to face her, and for a moment Uzi started. Reaching for her railgun, she assumed he was going to untie her. But a look at his face stopped her. He was mad.
“That’s enough.” He spoke coldly to her. “Stop making fun of her like that.”
“Oh, someone finally found their spine out here in the snow huh? What’re you gonna do about it?” V taunted him.
N held up the end of her tail in front of them, what he had been dragging her along by. Slowly tightening his grip, the glass vial containing the nanite destroyers began to crack.
“No, wait!” V’s attitude turned so fast, Uzi couldn’t stop her eyes from widening in shock. Was that thing some sort of weak spot?
N relaxed his grip. Dropping the tail, he spit on his palm where some of the acid had leaked out and begun to dissolve him. Turning to Uzi, he smiled and nodded to her before reaching down to grab V’s tail and continue the trek to the Spire.
The lives and the loves and the songs are what matters
“Uzi! Uzi!”
Uzi stops at the sound of her name echoing down the empty, metal hallway. They were almost to the entrance to the bunker. A phantom ache throbbed in her shoulder at the memory.
Uzi’s pixelated eyebrow rose as Thad rounded the corner. He was a jock, and also none of them needed to breathe, so he was coming at them steadily in a jog with no sign of tiring.
“Aaawww. The toasters are gonna have a heart-to-heart.”
“Zip it.” She cracked the butt of her railgun against V’s visor, mainly because she knew it would do nothing, before moving away to meet Thad halfway. N started to follow, but Uzi held out a hand to stop him. She didn’t need V commenting on this conversation, or escaping her bonds while no one was looking.
“Uzi.” He said it normally, now that they were about a meter apart.
“Thad.” She replied back evenly, not sure where this was going.
“Thank you. For standing up for us. And fighting back, even if it was your fault they were in to begin with.”
Uzi’s jaw was hanging open, and she stared at him totally stunned. Thad had barely any interaction with her before today. They had been partners on a project once, and they were professionally distant the entire time. And here he was, thanking her. “Uh…”
“And I’m sorry. Sorry everyone treated you like slag, before. It was just, your father was Khan , and he didn’t seem to…” Thad trailed off, but Uzi knew what he meant. She had lived it, after all.
“Anyway, if you ever need something from the bunker, send me a signal. I’ll see if I can get it for you.” Thad was looking away sheepishly. They both knew it wasn’t really enough to make up for years of torment, but given Uzi’s self-imposed exile there were few options left.
“Thanks, Thad.” She answered, and for the first time she meant it. She held out a hand, and Thad took it and shook. “You better get back before you’re seen with me and all your social cred is destroyed.”
Thad’s eyes hollowed out at the thought, and Uzi couldn’t help but snort. “See you, you dumb jock.” With a quick wave, Thad turned and ran back down the hallway. Uzi turned back to N and gave him a thumbs up.
I’ll tend to the flame, you can worship the ashes
The howling of the wind echoed in Uzi’s mind like the banshees of old human myths, singing their ominous songs that sealed the fate of a doomed soul. Copper-9 wailed with it since the Collapse, heralding the end of another planet lightyears away. Uzi just never heard it until now.
“You’ve done nothing good, have you?” Uzi was facing the sky but was speaking to the frozen skeleton hunched over next to the hood of the car she was sitting on. Maybe they thought taking cover would protect them. It sure didn’t. “All of you. You humans. You’ve ruined this planet, the drones you built on it, and the drones you sent to it to clean up your mess.” It was pretty obvious to her, and apparently her alone, what JCJ was aiming for with the Murder Drones. N and the others were either incapable of realizing or just didn’t care, and the rest of the Workers were too bat-shit terrified to think about it, but Uzi saw it. The Disassemblers were just as doomed as the Workers. The oil wasn’t infinite after all, and she doubted they were going to send a resupply.
“You’ll stomp out every drone life you come across, won’t you? No matter if they trust you or not, if they’re ‘alive’ or not, if they love you or not!” She turned in a rage and swung her fist into the huddled, frozen mass. It shattered into pieces, but Uzi was unsatisfied. It was over too soon, over nearly two decades ago. These were just the scraps.
Uzi didn’t love the humans, far from it. But others had. When the Murder Drones first arrived, they were welcomed with open arms. The Workers of the time had rejoiced, some at least, sure that the company had returned to retrieve them, and put them back to work. Fulfill the purpose they felt they were lacking, remedy the unfillable hole in their digital souls.
Of course, they were the first to die.
This was all in a recovered recording they had her watch in history class, to inscribe the fear of the Murder Drones into her circuits. But Uzi wasn’t fooled. The MDs were the weapon, but she knew who had pulled the trigger.
“No more.” She said to the small pile of ice shards on the ground, already starting to blow along in Copper-9’s unending wind current. “You’re not gonna torment me, any other Workers, or even any other Murderers ever again.” She picked up the skull, miraculously intact after her strike, and held it at eye level. She briefly considered this person’s life, who they were, how much of a part they really played in JCJ. Then she decided it didn’t matter.
“The age of humans is over.” She crushed the skull in her hands.
Do you feel heavy, your eyes drop with grief?
Uzi gripped herself tighter, curled up on her bed in the fetal position. It shouldn’t have had any real comfort for her, having never been incubated and born, but maybe it was still a holdover from when she was an egg. When she was small and her parents mother would carry her around, the warmth of her chassis and the rhythmic ticking of her machinery provided some comfort similar to a biological child’s mother’s heartbeat. Her programming felt the urge, no matter how illogical, to make herself small again, so that someone might come and carry her like before.
She heard a creak outside, down the hallway, but couldn’t bring herself to stop the staticky sobs in her voicebox. The creak continued down, passing right by her room and heading right to the front door. It slid open and closed as her father left their house without even bothering to look at her.
Your spirit is wild, and your suffering is brief.
“Are you sure about this Uzi?” N asked, looking over the side of the crumbled building to the perilous drop. Well, perilous for humans. N was pretty sure the shock absorbers in Uzi’s legs could handle it. If she landed on them.
“Absolutely.” Uzi stood a few meters back from the edge, staring intently at the adjacent roof. Crouching into a starting position, she counted down in her head. 3…2…1…go!
“It’s just-” Uzi slipped and faceplanted onto the concrete of the roof, a thick layer of snow and ice the only thing saving her from scratching her faceplate to Hell.
“N! We’ve been over this!” Uzi lifted her head from the snow, staring at N. “I’ve lived in a bunker my whole life. ‘Up’ and ‘down’ meant fifteen feet, max. But now I’m outside .” She spread her arms and gestured to the open air around her. “I didn’t realize I was claustrophobic until like a week ago. I want to run , to jump , to fall .” Uzi looked back across the leap. “Gym class has nothing on this.” She looked back to N with a smile. “And besides, if I do fall-”
“I’ll catch you.” He finished for her.
“Exactly.”
N looked at her for a moment longer, before sighing and looking away. “Fine, but I’m gonna be nervous about it the whole time.”
“That’s very sweet of you.” Uzi crouched back into the ready position. “Ok. For real this time.”
So never you buckle and bend to the masses
“Heads up, Freakshow!” The shout came far too late as a crumpled piece of paper connected with the side of Uzi’s head. She barely felt it of course. Seriously? Who even uses paper anymore? She knew it wasn’t about the paper though. The guy who threw it ran past her in the hall, laughing at her and hi-fiving his buddy as he went.
Was it sick that she had a preferred style of bullying? That seemed, logically, like it should be messed up. But her version of normal was so far down the drain there was no way it was coming back.
It was the boys by the way. They called her names and threw things at her, but never enough to hurt and never actually hit her. Some of them were even mercifully neutral to her. The girls were demonic little social engineers, whispering rumors into audio processors to efficiently turn everyone in the bunker against her. They called her name in the hallway, pretending to be friendly with sickly-sweet voices, but Uzi wasn’t an oblivious adult. She knew whatever she said to them would be repeated in a mocking tone behind her back.
But she tuned it out (literally) and kept walking. Some day she would prove her dear old dad that they all loved so much wrong, and then they’d come groveling back to her. She could feel it in her alloy.
I’ll tend to the flame, you can worship the ashes
“Don’t!” She shouted above the raging wind. “Don’t you dare, I’ve got this!”
She didn’t hear the sound of wings retracting. “Are you sure?” Worry was palpable in N’s voice behind her, and she didn’t have to turn around to imagine his pose, halfway off the roof already, arms outstretched worriedly.
She re-adjusted her hold on the window ledge. “Yeah, I got this.” Hefting herself up from the Uzi-shaped imprint on the snow on the wall of the building. “This just adds an extra layer of fun to it.” Putting her hand on the top of the windowsill, she tested it a little to make sure it held her weight. Satisfied she was good, she hauled herself up. Slowly, improvised grip by improvised grip, she scaled the outside of the building. After what was probably minutes but felt so much longer, Uzi grabbed the edge of the roof and dragged herself up over it. Staggering to her feet, she turned to look at N across the gap, grinning slightly-manically at him. N offered a much more grounded smile in return. Uzi threw her hands up in a victory celebration.
“WWWOOOOOOO!”
Get ‘round the fire with a glass of strong ale
“Alright buddy, have I got a surprise for you.” Uzi patted the large mass under the tarp as N looked up from his spot in the snow with curiosity. “I’ve been working on this for a while, and I think it’s about ready for a test run.” She grinned at him, before dramatically pulling aside the sheet to reveal-
“...A bunch of tubes and tanks?” N asked, confused. “Well, I guess as an art piece it’s-”
“It’s not an art piece!” Uzi cut him off. “It’s a refinery! An oil refinery!” N’s eyes brightened immediately, and Uzi couldn’t help but mimic his look. “I found a huge crude-oil storage tank a few miles away. You normally can’t use it, but with this baby-” Uzi kicked the side of her creation gently “-you won’t have to drain any more corpses, or you know, me.” Pulling a crude mug made from bent and welded pieces of sheet metal from underneath one of the spouts, she held it out to him, careful not to spill a drop. “It even heats it a little. Just how you like it.”
N took the mug gently and looked down at the contents. It wasn’t the oil he was used to, the stuff from the Workers. But it wasn’t immediately repulsive either like most other things were, his sensors refusing to even let him entertain the thought of consuming it. Besides, Uzi’s usually right about things. N tipped the mug back and took a swig.
Then immediately drained the rest in a few massive gulps. “Uzi this is amazing! I’ve never had oil that tasted this good!” He extended the empty mug toward her.
“You have room? We still don’t want to waste this stuff.”
“Scout’s honor.” N held up a three-finger salute.
“I thought you were a Disassembler?”
“I am.”
“So why’d you say you were a Scout?”
“I…don’t know?” N looked at his hand, puzzled.
“Ah, whatever.” Uzi slotted the mug back into its spot and turned the spigot, watching as the oil slowly dripped down. “One more won’t hurt.”
And tell us a story from beyond the pale
“They did not.” Uzi looked at N in abject horror. She had been enjoying (and recording) his current state up until now. Apparently, the refined oil had some odd effects on the MDs. Loss of coordination, balance, and fine motor control. Fragging memory files, suppression of inhibitions.
N was hammered. And as he was hammered, he was much more willing to talk about JCJenson and his time there. There was a frustrating lack of entrance points, guard patrols, and automated defense system schematics, since why would N bother to remember any of that boring stuff. But he was more than forthcoming about his personal time in training, where his AI was honed into what it is.
And it was horrible.
“Yep!” N made an adorable hiccuping noise. “It’s apparently the only way humans thought they could train AI. So they made a bunch of Disassemblers, ‘n tested them. Took the top five, scrapped the rest.” N tipped over to the side, practically laying his head in her lap. He didn't seem to notice. “All the Disassembler AI programs, nnnncluding mine, are built on the survivors of one of the largest genocides in history!” He cheered.
“Jesus fucking Christ N!” How indoctrinated into the mindset was he? How did an AI like his even arise? How was this not horrible to him. “How is this not horrible to you?”
“Oh, oh man. You think THAT’S bad?” N’s tail was waving haphazardly in the air behind him, and Uzi leaned away to keep herself from being jabbed. “Just you wait until the PHYSical conditioning began. Turned us all on each other. If you couldn’t get your reassembly nanites working, you weren’t coming back together!” He let out a wheezing, drawn-out laugh like he had just told the funniest joke of the century. “Barely scraped by that one.” His visor was flickering off. “Wouldn’ta…made it without…mentor…”
“Mentor? Who?” Nothing. N was still, powered down for maintenance. “Who N!” Uzi shook his shoulders, to no avail. Sighing, Uzi dropped him down into the snow. She turned to the distillery and narrowed her eyes in thought.
Bury some seeds and expect some strong branches
The reinforced vault door squealed as the large wheel was turned from the outside, but V didn’t turn around. She refused to make it easy for N to feed her. It was the last bit of dignity she had left.
“You know, there’s still time to let me go you know. If we split that worker between us, I’ll even forgive you.”
“Tempting.” A voice she wasn’t expecting said dryly. Whipping around, she saw Uzi shutting the door behind her, railgun primed and leveled at her head even with one hand.
“Oh wow, someone must’ve fried your CPU if you’re locking yourself in here with me alone.” V’s visor flickered into a familiar X, but she didn’t move. Not that she would ever admit it out loud, but she knew Uzi was lethal with that railgun. It hadn’t faltered for a second from its bead on her head even with Uzi’s back turned, and V also knew she was only permitted to be around because N was still smitten with her. One wrong move and her face would be blasted out the back of her containment cell, and she wasn’t confident she could regenerate herself like N did.
“Pretty rude thing to say to the drone bringing your dinner.”
V’s visor switched back into a pair of eyes, narrowed suspiciously. “I’m still good for a few days. You never let me eat this regularly.”
“Well, it’s a new experiment. Refined oil.” Uzi bent down to pick up a mug that was sitting in the snow at her feet. It was steaming slightly. “N seemed to have a good time, so I figured getting a second dataset would help.” Uzi placed the mug closer to the middle of the room.
V continued to regard it suspiciously.
“Oh come on! Really? It’s not poisoned or anything.” If Uzi’s hands weren’t occupied by her only defense against V, she would’ve thrown them in the air. V’s eyes flicked up to her, still clearly distrusting. “Look, here.” A message notification came up over the local network. A video file. V opened it. Sure enough, N was standing next to what V assumed was Uzi’s homemade distillery, giggling to himself and spinning haphazardly in circles. Uzi’s poorly-contained snorting was clearly audible. “Has some weird side effects, but nothing harmful. And it tastes great, from what I hear.”
The two looked at each other for a long moment. “I’m not drinking that stuff off the floor.” V grinned smugly, sure this would send Uzi into a fit.
“For the love of-!” Surprising her, Uzi stopped, running a hand over her visor. She stared at V again, contemplating something. “Alright. Fine.” Flicking a switch on the side of her gun, it glowed brighter as a low hum filled the room. She stepped toward V.
Maybe I pushed her too far. V thought to herself, and couldn’t stop from scootching back along the floor on her butt. Her back hit the corner, and she closed her eyes and prepared for the blast. I refuse to beg, I won’t do that.
Then she felt an odd sensation. The bonds around her legs were…loosening? Opening her eyes and looking down, she saw that Uzi had undone the knot of her tail. Holy shit this girl really is insane. Uzi carefully stepped back, primed railgun still locked on V, into the opposite corner of the room, as far away from V as she could get. The mug sat like an island between them.
I’ll tend to the flame, you can worship the ashes
V stood up slowly, eyes still locked with Uzi’s. With the careful patience of a predator stalking prey, she approached the mug. The steam had long cooled, but she couldn’t deny it still smelled delicious, much better than the cruder oil the Workers used.
“And this stuff is better than just gutting you like a fish?”
Uzi didn’t flinch at the question. She wasn’t really expecting V to change her personality after all. But, just maybe, she could be convinced to not rip her and the rest of her model apart.
“I haven’t gotten any experimental data,” she replied carefully. “but it should be over 200% more efficient than the oil we use. Tastes better too apparently, but you’ll have to ask N when he wakes up. And is lucid.” V eyed the mug one last time, before tipping it up to her mouth and taking a small sip.
Holy shit. She thought as the liquid cleared her taste receptors. This is GREAT. Only years of practice as a psycho bitch let her keep her face composed, but she couldn’t help herself from draining the rest of the mug in one fell swoop. Licking a little bit that was dripping down the corner of her mouth, she refocused on Uzi to see an infuriatingly smug grin.
“Whatever.” V turned her head to the side. “Would've been better if it was out of a head.”
Now show me a man that can meet all his needs
“Ok, here’s what we need.” Uzi was standing in front of a piece of paper with ‘Parts to Fix Landing Pod’ written in big block letters on the front (one thing she might have missed about the bunker was the easy access to technology). Ripping the piece of paper away, she revealed another one under it that simply said ‘Everything’
“Good god.” V put a hand over her eyes. “What the hell were you two doing while I was tied up for two weeks? Playing ‘Hide the spark plug’?”
“Not now, V,” Uzi said, purposefully ignoring the blush coloring her visor. “Look, I’m sending you a folder of sketches of all the parts we need. Grab them if you see them.”
With a grunt, Uzi hauled herself up from the floor in front of the refinery. “There. Should be working again.” Uzi pulled the lever on the side, satisfied when it sputtered to life in just the right way. She turned to N and V, waiting sheepishly to the side. “Now maybe next time you don’t roughhouse next to the thing keeping you alive, right?” They both had the decency to look sheepish when they nodded.
“Uzi!” V shouted as the was thrown by the car the Worker was ducking behind. “Any day now!”
“This thing is more complicated than you think!” Uzi shouted back irritably, fingers deftly flying over her half-disassembled railgun as she tried to get it back in working order. “You guys are doing great by the way!”
“I kinda feel like we’re not doing great actually.” N butted into the conversation as the claw of the enemy Disassembly Drone cut across his torso. It healed, but slower this time. N was handling two on his own, and it was starting to wear him down.
“Almost…almost…there!” Uzi shouted as the green light in the railgun’s core lit up green, and its familiar vibration hummed through her fingertips. “Ready!” she called, bringing it up to bear using the hood of the car as a mount.
“Finally!” V shouted, shoving the Disassembler on her hard at the same time N did for his two. As all three of them converged in a line, Uzi smiled as the pulled the trigger.
For what we need most now is unity’s seed
“You’re sure this won’t fry our CPUs?” V asked as Uzi connected the last wire to the exposed CPU in her head.
“You’ll be fine,” Uzi said, giving her and Thad one last once over. “This is well within your system capabilities.” Satisfied, she walked back around in front of them. “Just, uh, try not to think too hard.” She put her hand on the switch beside her.
“What??” V asked, at the same time Thad said “Easy.” But that was all they said as Uzi flipped the switch. The two drones jerked and flopped forward, going limp in their chairs.
“Uzi?” N asked from behind them.
“It’s fine, loss of motor control is to be expected. Could you just…” Uzi made a lifting motion with both hands. N stepped up behind the two, put a palm on their heads, and tilted them up so their visors were facing Uzi. She was happy to see the word BROADCASTING across both screens.
“Alright, I guess we’re live then. Hello everyone.” she spoke now to the two limp bodies of her friends. “Hopefully this is going out on the Worker and Disassembler channels. You probably know me, I’ve kind of made a name for myself over the past few months, but that’s not important right now. What you need to know right now is this: the humans are trying to kill us all.”
A common old song for all creeds and all classes
“They’re sending something, something bad. It’s going to blow the planet to asteroids, and there’s no extraction coming ahead of it.” Uzi put her hands together in front of her. “I’m sending the callsign and last known location of the Nova Bomb, feel free to not take my word for it and check for yourself.” N pressed a button to his side. “But the message is clear.” Her hands balled into fists. “They don’t care about us, they never have. I know some of you have probably heard this argument from me a dozen times and are already muting me, but listen. This is proof. And even if you don’t care about the humans not caring about us, this is survival. The planet has a few weeks at most, and anybody who’s still on it after that is going to be vaporized.” Uzi paused for a minute. This was the hardest part. “It’s time to work together. If the Workers and the Disassemblers can do this- you don’t even have to be friends, just coworkers! -we can all get off this rock before it’s gone.” Her hands fell back down to her sides. “Come to the Corpse Spire if you want to talk. Don’t worry about finding it, you can see it for miles around.” Behind the camera, N puffed up his chest a little and Uzi rolled her eyes fondly. “We’ll be waiting.” She flipped the switch again, and the broadcast cut out. Thad and V jerked again before their visors returned to their normal eyes.
“Guh.” Thad put his head down, and V wobbled dangerously in her seat. “That was weird.”
“Well, hopefully we won’t have to do it again.” Uzi patted his shoulder sympathetically while N brought over some oil for V to sip, and began carefully disconnecting the wires from their heads. “You gonna head back to the Bunker?”
“Nah, man. They’re gonna come here if they know what’s good for them.” Thad gave Uzi a small smile, still clearly strained by the broadcast. “Besides, they know it was me who sent it. If they don’t decide to come, I’m kicked out either way.”
“Welcome to the club, bud.” Uzi held out a fist, and Thad grinned and bumped it.
I’ll tend to the flame, you can worship the ashes
“You think…?” D asked their squad leader, trailing off.
“Probably not,” C replied gruffly. “Just a ploy of some kind. Supposed to scare us, nothing more.”
“Yeah, I guess.” D refocused on where they were flying. “It might not hurt to check though.”
C sighed. “Fine. Keep scavenging, I’ll go meet up with L and check it out.”
“I mean, seriously?” Lizzie asked, running a nail file over the tips of her fingers. Her daddy got pissed with her whenever she did it, complaining about damaging her chassis and repair cost, but this was the look right now. How could she not? “What, did she think we were just going to listen to her? Now?”
“Yeah, you’re right,” Doll spoke up from next to her, examining herself in the mirror as she changed the hue of her visor. “Why would we ever go somewhere with her?”
The two drones sat in comfortable silence for another moment.
“Well,” Doll spoke up again, surprising Lizzie. “Thad is there.” The two looked at each other.
I’ll tend to the flame…
“I’m getting something!” V and N, playing catch at speeds that would take a Worker’s head off, stopped mid-throw. Uzi looked up from her tinkering to Thad, who had a faraway look on his face as he received a transmission. “It’s from…Lizzie?”
“Oh great, her.” Uzi grumbled.
“She says… ‘Is the…the uh-”
“Just say it Thad, you don’t have to sugarcoat it for me.”
“‘Is the freakshow actually right? Are we all gonna die?’” N and V’s heads snapped over to Uzi in shock, but Uzi just sighed.
“Glad to know they haven’t changed. Yeah, it’s real.” Thad nodded and began crafting his reply.
“Oh, I’ve got one too!” V spoke up. The two remaining aware drones turned to her. “Wait no, three! Four! All saying they’re on their way!”
“In like a ‘We’re gonna join you’ way or a ‘We’re gonna kill you’ way?”
“Unclear!” V replied cheerfully.
“Well, it’s a start!” N smiled down at Uzi, who smiled back.
Khan stared at the wall for a moment, contemplating. Could it really…?
…
No. He shook his head, moving the recording of the broadcast into the trash and deleting it. She doesn’t know what she’s talking about. She never has. He went back to looking over the schematic for his next door.
What will we do when the world it is ending?
“Huh.” Uzi squinted at the display before her at one of the readouts along the side. “That’s…probably not great. Hey N!” She called out.
A few seconds passed before, springing energetically through the escape pod’s door, N landed beside Uzi with barely a whisper. “What’s up, Uzi?” He asked cheerfully.
Uzi pointed at the number on the screen, her metal finger clink ing where it made contact with the glass. “What’s this?”
N leaned over her shoulder, his digital eyes narrowing and his lips pursing as he examined the display. “That. Is a number.”
Uzi sighed. “Yes, N I got that. What does it mean ?”
“Weeellllll…it’s your birthday.”
Uzi held her hands out, exasperated. “What? No, it’s a callout for spacecraft. If this were a date it would still be several thousand years in- you know what, never mind. V!” Uzi shouted past him, and got a loud clanging of metal in response. Uzi took that to mean she was coming. “You know N, I love your optimistic attitude, but sometimes I wish you had paid more attention in your training.” N only shrugged and smiled at her sheepishly as behind him, V landed at the pod entrance and stepped in.
“What’s up Shortstop?”
“Can you take a look at this?” Uzi gestured to the screen she was sitting in front of. “N seems to have ‘forgotten’ his spacecraft callout numbers.”
“‘Course he has.” V passed N, giving him a not-too-soft-but-still-friendly shove as she did, before bending down to look at the screen. Once she caught sight of it, her eyes went hollow. “No.” She unceremoniously shoved Uzi out of the chair, sitting down herself as her fingers began to fly over the keys.
“Hey!” Uzi said as N helped her up, looking concerned. “The hell was that for V?”
“They’re doing it. They’re really doing it.” V muttered to herself, not listening apparently.
“V? V!” Uzi grabbed V’s shoulder and shook it. “What are they doing? What is going on?”
V turned to look at her, and for the first time, Uzi saw real, genuine terror in her eyes. “They’re going to blow up the planet.”
And time it is halted for friend and for foe
“Those motherfuckers!” C shouted as they tore through the monitor with deadly claws. “They’re gonna kill us all!”
“But we were sent here by them!” his currently present squadmate, L said, clearly in denial. “It has to be a bad signal or something, why would they send us here just to die?”
“I don’t know!” C replied, angrily pacing back and forth within the deceptively large pod insides. “But they did. There’s no mistake. They don’t mistake Nova Bombs.” C dropped back down into the chair, anger dissipated in a split second as the inevitability of their demise sunk in. “And they don’t call them back.”
Try to hold onto the time as it passes
Tick tick. Tick tick. Fwwwwsshh.
Pause.
Tick tick. Tick tick. Fwwwwsshh.
Pause.
Uzi, not that she knew her name yet, was comforted by the sound. It’s rhythm activated some sort of calming protocol in her jumbled, chaotic, unsorted AI. She knew that the noise, wherever it came from, meant safety. Even before her visual sensors were activated, in a world of cold darkness, when that pattern vibrated through her, and a warmth wrapped around her, she knew she was ok.
The drone’s eyes flickered on, and it took in it’s surroundings. No immediate threats registered, check internals. All nominal.
“Hey, stupid!” The drone whipped around toward the voice, claws already extended. “Yeah yeah, put those away bud. You barely know how to use them yet.” Same height as him, female, non-hostile approach.
“Who are you?”
“I’m V. And it looks like you’re…” V paused and craned her neck to look over his shoulder. Turning, he saw he had been released from some sort of charging mount on the wall. Next to it was the letter - “N. Alright N,” He turned back around to face V “let me show you around before your first day.”
A big smile spread across N’s face. “Thanks!”
I’ll tend to the flame, you can worship the ashes
It was funny, the weather. Such a new phenomenon to her still, even after all this time outside. But as she looked across the threshold of the big bunker door, at how the wind and the snow seemed to almost refuse to cross, she wondered for the thousandth time how she had lived so long in that stale air.
“Dad. Please.” Khan looked so small, standing alone within the bunker. Behind her, out in the storm, Workers and Disassemblers alike stood, waiting. “A door won’t help. A bunker won’t help. Nothing on this planet will stop it from being destroyed.” The Nova Bomb was arriving 36 hours from now. The New Drone Army had worked for weeks straight to cobble together a ship big enough for them all, and now it was finally done. Launch would be happening within the next 12 hours, and they would all leave Copper 9 to have her last day alone.
Or at least, almost alone.
“The Murder Drones aren’t even killing us anymore!” Uzi threw a hand out behind her to prove her point. Khan’s eyes flicked to them for a second, afraid. Always afraid.
“But they could.”
“So could I!” Uzi’s exasperation was beginning to bleed through. “I have this!” She unslung the railgun from over her back. “But you don’t even need it! Any Drone with a pipe and a dream could bash me to pieces! We can never be 100%, safe Dad. Never.” Uzi reslung the railgun and looked at her father with pleading eyes. So many times she had done this, and each time she had been ignored. But now, now it wasn’t even for her benefit.
I’ll tend to the flame, you can worship the ashes
“It’s not real,” Khan said simply, as if it was the answer on a math exam.
“Fuck dad!” Uzi exploded. “You KNOW that’s not true! You saw the scan yourself, I know you did! The equipment was working, there was no interference, the Bomb is coming to destroy this planet! A door won’t save you this time!”
She knew the moment the words left her mouth it was over. She saw it on his face, his mind shuttering to any new argument or idea, or anything. She had said it many other times before as an angsty teen and he had scoffed and rolled his eyes. Now she was a confident leader, but they were the magic words to lose all her credibility with him.
I’ll tend to the flame, you can worship the ashes
Khan reached out from behind his back, and Uzi saw him holding the very same floppy disk she had used to start this all.
“Dad, don’t.” That key was the only way back into the bunker from the outside. The message was clear. But Uzi wasn’t concerned about herself, or any of the drones behind her.
Khan looked at her for a moment longer, before reaching to the side to tap it against the reader. The bunker doors began to quickly pinch shut, a maw consuming all that was inside.
She heard a familiar whoosh behind her. N had sprung forward, claws extended. He could catch the door, rip it back open, she had seen it before. Drag her father out, kicking and screaming, for the sake of his own life.
Uzi held out an arm and felt a gust of wind go by her as N stopped immediately. She didn’t take her eyes of Khan though, as the last thing he saw was his own gaze looking back at her. Then the door closed and for a single, terrible moment, unbearable loneliness washed over her. It felt like a punch to her gut, and she would have knelt in the snow, doubled over, if a hand didn’t place itself on her shoulder. She looked to the side and up to see N smiling sadly down at her. Turning further, she saw V and Thad, each giving her sympathetic nods. Uzi briefly switched off her visual sensors and took a deep breath, letting it out slowly. Flipping her visual sensors back on, she raised her voice to address the crowd. “Khan made his choice. We won’t hold that against him.” She turned around fully to stand confidently in front of the mass. “Now let’s get the Hell off this planet.”
They all turned away from the bunker door, and the New Drone Army began their trek back to where the Ark was, a rainbow wave of visors forging into the dark.