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V found it by pure coincidence, the shape simply flashed by in the very corner of her vision. Now however she couldn’t take her eyes off of it. In spite of still needing to fulfil tonight's murder quota she flew straight for it. The mysterious building off in the distance. It looked boring at a first glance, just a large square structure made of naked dark grey concrete prefab slabs, dominating its mostly flat surroundings on the outskirts of the city. What initially made her interested in it was the simple fact she didn’t recognise it at all. That was unusual as the area was still her squad’s sector and she had clear recordings of patrolling this precise territory many times. Yet there was nothing in her memory banks about it.
It wasn't that the place was completely unremarkable. Even if the first impression of it being just some dull empty concrete husk stayed true it would be notable as a landmark if nothing else. Instead it was only becoming more and more intriguing as she investigated it closer. When she pulled up old maps of the area the construct was not there at all. This was peculiar, these maps were updated daily thanks to an array of specialised satellites constantly mapping the entire planet until the very day of the core collapse. Most of the satellites were knocked out of orbit then. The chance that the Worker Drones left to blunder about in the wake of the apocalypse have built it was slight. The toasters have been mostly squatting in the ruins even before she and the rest of the Disassemblers descended upon them.
This matter, explainable by a purposeful omission of a corporate secret not concerning them from an once publicly available map or a rare bout of toaster initiative, did not remain her main concern for long. Much stranger attributes of the structure became apparent.
V noticed that the structure wasn’t simply square, it was a perfect cube. She could make out its silhouette to see the exact same dimensions in both width and height. The Disassembler wouldn’t care remotely about this factoid if not for the reason she was able to say it with certainty.
There was no snow covering the cube. This made no Company-damn sense. It has been snowing non-stop for over three days straight! It should be completely covered in snow! Hell, everything around it was completely covered in snow!
Yet… it clearly was not.
She confirmed that the top-side of the cube was clearly snow-free as she got closer. The distinctly darker shade of concrete(though she was starting to doubt if it really was concrete at this point) was distinguishable to her optics from snow ever in darkness. The low, flat hill serving as the base of the construct that she initially mistook for an accumulation of snow was in fact also snow-free. Exposed rocky soil covered it instead, a rare sight on Copper-9. This would be merely weird if it could be explained by the building being heated like she herself was. It couldn't be. It wasn't heated, the temperature was well below zero, perfectly normal for any ruined building on this accursed deathworld.
She now had to investigate.
She reluctantly touched down on top of the cube, the sensors on her pegs felt contact with the coarse surface. As she looked around she noticed that the snow was in fact falling right down to the concrete, just not accumulating for some reason. The Disassembler kneeled down to see closer, making perhaps more tactile contact with the enigmatic structure than she was comfortable. She felt nothing weird per se, but she was putting less and less stock in her senses right now.
They were failing her again. The concrete surface looked cold to her. More than cold enough to see snow stay on it. Yet the falling snow seemed to be… melting? It just disappeared as soon as it touched the concrete, not even water left. She was now almost fully lying down, all her sensors focused towards searching for that elusive drop of water that by all laws of nature should accompany the apparent melting of a snowflake.
The cube, once again, showed itself to have no regard for the so-called ‘laws of nature’ as the snowflake dematerialized into nothingness. Nothing. No sign of water. Just plain *poof*.
This thing was unnerving her. No one liked to have their senses played with and her own personal experiences made her even more inclined to automatically despise whoever was playing tricks on her right now.
She reached out her hand to gather snowflakes for a test. Once it was covered in a thin layer of snow, she started moving it slowly down to see for sure where precisely it started behaving weirdly. Nothing happened right up to the moment she laid her hand flat on the concrete, the snow was perfectly fine and unchanging. Then, as soon as she shook it off her hand, the snow fell and disappeared just like all the rest.
She hadn’t really learned anything with this…
Or did she?
An idea suddenly dawned on V in horror. What if the surface of the construct just messed up all matter it touches simply by tactile contact? She jumped up from her lying position, shifting to sit in a blink. She started furiously pawing around all of her body parts that touched the alleged concrete. Including her butt as she reflected herself and stood up to minimise the contact surface to her pegs. At the same time she ordered a deep diagnostic scan on herself. Everything felt fine, to her and to her diagnostic systems. She did not breathe a proverbial sigh of relief yet however. Her unease at the enigmatic structure now turned to ofert fear.
She quickly unsheathed her wings and shot up into the sky, not looking down.
Once she was high above the damnable cube, V collected herself. She couldn’t leave it at that. She had to bring the matter to her squad. J and N’s input on how to proceed with this anomaly as a team was necessary. For that she needed to gather as clear a picture as she could.
She decided to at least check the surroundings and locate any entrances. She sure as all hell wasn’t going inside but it was an important piece of information to have.
She flew all the way down to the ground level, touched down in front of the northern wall of the looming object. The wall was featureless, besides the miniscule gaps where the prefab-looking slabs met. No entrance from this side. She just had to properly check the other three sides…
She took a moment to look down on the snow-free ground surrounding the building and confirmed the snow was subject to the same phenomena as on top of the construct. She shuddered and then got ready to once again blissfully break the contact with the freakish surface.
At that moment she noticed a presence just a few metres to her right. Unmistakably a standard issue Worker Drone, a base body completely devoid of any accessories. They were clad in nothing but a shabby medical-gown looking robe similar to what freshly-produced Drones in factories back on Earth wore before they were dressed up and packaged for sale.
How did she not notice earlier a damn Worker just standing right in the open like a moronic clockwork junk it was? This place was seriously playing tricks on her…
Well, if nothing else, this investigation wasn’t going to be a complete waste…
She dispatched the toaster with a quick shot to the processor, they fell down to the ground with a satisfying thunk. V wasn’t in the mood for her usual games right now. The complete lack of the expected reaction of screaming or pleading for their life also did not help to rile her up. The Disassembler moved in to claim her prize as she lifted the head to make the oil flow into her maw instead of wasting away on the cursed ground. She idly noted that oil did not disappear though. The feeling of the first drops meeting her tongue was delightful.
However it was followed by her spitting it out in short order. The oil was extremely bitter and warm. Almost like a Disassemblers… V quickly clawed the Worker’s torso apart to check their core. It looked normal. She already knew better though, this hellhole had trained her. She crushed the core just to be sure and lifted herself up into the sky. She didn’t feel like finishing the oil.
As she flew over to the easter side though, she saw another toaster. They were kneeling rather than standing, visibly muttering something towards the cube, however they were dressed in the exact same way as the last one. They were also similarly otherwise featureless. That bad omen didn't dissuade her as she was in fact quite pissed about that last tease. This Worker met a more brutal end than the first one, her claws tore at their torso and limbs, purposefully leaving the processor and core intact to keep them online. Her victim’s eyes were looking straight at her as she lifted up her claws clad in their oil up to her mouth. They were still not reacting though.
She licked on the claw to have a taste…
Bitter. Warm.
Same as the last one.
In a bout of anger she delivered a quick end to the toaster’s suffering with a stinger jab to their core and a slash to the processor. She took off once again.
Once she rounded the corner to check up on the southern side, a very unwelcome sight appeared in front of her; TWO toasters. The same naked base bodies in the same damned robes, sitting cross-legged in front of each other on a large boulder. They were silent, unmoving. Thus as far as things in this accursed place went, they acted kinda normally. Probably they were just talking to each other using radio instead of vocalsynth.
She had a strong urge to come down and make them suffer a very painful and violent death. She however remembered the objective of getting a clearer picture of what the hell was this place. She was failing so far. Interrogation could prove a breakthrough she needed. Nothing stopped her from doing the killing afterward…
She landed heavily in between the two Workers with her wings menacingly just about enveloping them. Her hands turned to machine guns, each pointed at one of the bald Drones.
“Either of you two is going to tell me now what in the Company’s name is going on here!” V laid out her demands.
Both of them actually reacted, even if they still acted way too calm, by very explicitly focusing their gazes on her.
“Hello friend!” The one to her right spoke with a sweet cherry and feminine voice.
What.
“I am not your friend, I am your worst freaking nightmare!” The Disassembler exclaimed with surprise and offence.
“Oh, everyone is a friend to us here!” The one on the left butted in. His voice was mascunaline on the other hand but still very much saccharine.
Were those guys living under that rock until they climbed onto it just now? Anyhow, V saw an avenue to progress the conversation. “Who do you mean by ‘us’?”
“Well, us usually means… us; a group of people in which the speaker includes themselves.” The female Worker answered with a glint of amusement visible on her screen.
“Yes, I have the same definition of this pronoun in my own dictionary database.” V stated with her exasperation showing in her voice as she waved the guns slightly to emphasise the balance of power at play. “What I meant was; what is your specific group called? I see a dress code between you two as well as the other two I offlined already.”
Neither of them even twitched at the open admission of slaughtering their presumed comrades. The male one was the one to respond. V was recognising a pattern that the two were speaking in turns. “Well, that’s a good question. We don’t really know…”
The Disassembler emoted a sigh. “What the hell does this mean? Nevermind… What is this then?” She pointed at the structure behind her with her wing to not take either of her guns off of the creeps.
“It’s a cube.” The female Worker answered incredulously.
They were mocking her, her shallow stores of patience were running out. “I know it’s a cube, what else can you tell me about it?”
“What do you want to know?” The male queried.
“Everything!” V exclaimed in frustration. “Everything you toasters know!”
“Well, we don’t know anything for sure yet…” The female Drone chimed back, her voice not faltering in its upbeat tone.
That’s it. V shot the guy to her left in the screen, then she turned her left arm back into the claw mode and, without ever letting the trigger of her right gun-hand off of the female Worker, she extracted the core out of his corpse. “Give me your best guesses then. Or else.” She brought up the core right into the surviving toaster’s face and squeezed it just enough to make the casing audibly crack to emphasise that last part.
“Which guesses are the best for you?” The ever-so unyielding chirpy response came… not from the female Drone. With dread she recognised the voice of the fresh corpse, she turned around to see their eyes somehow glowing in spite of the lack of a power source. V was losing her mind.
She crushed the core on pure instinct and switched her left hand back to a gun. She pointed it towards the revenant Worker. Both of her hands were shaking. Not a good look. “How are you alive!?”
“You switched your query so suddenly… Your mind is unclear and chaotic, friend.” A wrong response from the wrong Drone.
“My mind is my own damn business. Now answer my questions or I will make you two regret your apparent immortality!” V tried to maintain her poise despite the fearful shake reaching her voice by now.
“If it is answers you seek, may we invite you to sit there with us? The cube promised us understanding in time.” The male spoke with an earnest tone, his hand lifting up in spite of not having either a power source or even a connection to any decision centre for that matter. It was stretched out in a gesture of invitation. The mouth under his cracked screen turned up into a radiant smile.
Oh hell no. She was officially done. V jumped off the rock to put some distance between herself and the creatures. “Are you two with Cyn!?” She hissed in fury. Normally she wouldn’t dare to utter that dreaded name out loud but she was at her wits’ edge. That ragdoll freak was as good of a guess as any for what was going on in this hellhole.
“We sadly haven’t met this ‘Cyn’ person yet, they’re obviously just as welcome there as yo…” The Disassembler didn’t let the female Worker finish. Guns started blazing, both of the Drones were shredded ruthlessly into many pieces. It would be enough to offline any normal Drone, even a Disassembler, but she didn’t leave it to chance. Her claws fragmented them further, cores in particular were smashed into all but dust. She didn't care to drink or preserve any oil, for all she knew that rancid substance she drank out of the earlier two toasters was what got her hallucinating.
“Anything to say?” She hissed at the scattered collection of junk that was barely recognisable as Drone remains and by any rationality had no ability or desire to say anything. For once on this baleful night, rationality won over. The junk stayed quiet. She turned away and unsheathed her wings, flying away, back to her home at the Corpse Spire. Even as a proud murder machine she usually found that place to be at least slightly eerie but now her memories painted it into the cosiest place in the whole universe. She did not look back towards the brooding construct…
*Back at the Spire*
V swooped in through the Spire entrance just before dawn. Once inside, the Disassembler flew towards the corner where the squad was stockpiling their emergency oil reserves. She picked up a can, cracked it open, and started guzzling it down.
“You returned late.” J chimed as the pigtailed Drone swooped down from her nest and landed just behind V. “From how thirsty you are I see your hunt was unprofitable too... Care to give a shortened report?”
Oh goodness, V took a moment to collect her thoughts. This was going to need explaining. Finally she spoke as she put her thoughts in order and turned around to face her squad leader. “Yep, this was a disaster. Can you imagine I found not a single Worker whatsoever in the whole south western sector?”
“You mean to tell me that a whole 1/9th of our assigned area is completely barren already?” J queried with a tone of suspicion and crossed arms.
“I swear by my own sensors that it is!” V exclaimed earnestly.
The pigtails-adorned Drone emoted a sigh and answered with a softer tone. “It’s fine V, I do not suspect you of slacking off… and this should look good in our next report if nothing else. I am just concerned though about what it will take to keep our team operational and well-performing. We’ll have to start seriously investing into breaching the defences of that obnoxious fortified colony at this rate… Just fill up and go rest, we’ll worry about this tomorrow.” J herself flew back up to her nest after that last statement.
V did just so. As she was all comfortable in her nest, a stray thought pricked as she was going to recharge. Did she forget something important? She did not recall anything. Maybe it was just the frustration of spending an entire night bumbling about that useless wasteland in the southwest with nothing to show for it… The Disassembler finally drifted off into a recharge after dismissing this needless worry. It was a peaceful recharge that had left her well-rested… It was marked though by rather peculiar dreams themed inexplicably around a bunch of bald Worker Drones in monk robes sitting in a circle atop a massive and tall concrete pillar. The Monk Drones were silent and unmoving, smiling as their bodies were slowly sinking into the pillar.