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Doll observed her marks from the shadows. The Worker Drone couple, male and female, in her sights were suspiciously eyeing their surroundings, tightly clutching onto their shabby rifles. A careless step onto a metal can alerted the two to her presence.
The Russian-speaking drone chastised herself internally for it, she was slipping. Exhaustion and the building up heat within her were gnawing at her strained processor. She needed to feed tonight, lest she will completely lose herself to the Solver virus. Her stealth failing at this critical moment made it all the more clear.
Luckily, after a few minutes of this stillness she felt safe in assuming the worst case scenario did not come to pass. These two had no reinforcements to call on. They were actually travelling all by themselves on the surface and though sheltering in a measly car charging station store was going to be enough to be safe from the demons prowling the night.
Well, technically they were right in that assumption. The murder drones won't get to them.
She got to them first.
With a mere two moves of her hand, both of their weapons snapped in a flash. They became useless, just like that...
She could have ended this simply and efficiently right there, materialised a couple blades and finished them. However, as she heard their scream of terror, something awoke in her. She had long ago noticed this streak within herself, slaughtering people who were once her own kind felt uncannily satisfying. Their horrified pleas falling deaf upon her audials as she cut into their fragile metal bodies were one of her last joys left. She hated this. Despised this. She didn't know yet how she will deal with not having to do it anymore once she finds a cure
She revealed herself, teleporting right in front of them, bearing her signature eerie grin.
They panicked even harder, the male drone threw the remains of his small arm at her. She teleported again to avoid it.
She reappeared behind them, tapping the other drone on her shoulder. She realised that may have been a mistake as the woman reacted by throwing a quick punch. Doll didn't realise what happened until a literal fiat of hard steel met her screen, shattering it.
She coiled in pain, furious. Playtime was over.
In spite of her temporary blindness she easily grabbed the female drone's arm. With her strength amplified by the curse, she easily had the strength to tear it off. The pained scream would be quickly cut short by Doll if not for the male drone's reaction.
"Get away from my wife you freak!" He exclaimed as he pounced at her. Announcing his attack was a major mistake of his. Even though he was merely a blur due to her optics still healing, she managed to block his strike. For added irony then she decided to throw a punch into the visor. Where a normal punch into her own screen just shattered it, the strike into the man's screen went right through his head. She reached his processor and proceeded to grab it and pull it out, ending him. The limb body fell to the ground.
The newly-made widow roared in anger and anguish, trying to attack Doll with all the strength in her one-armed body. Unfortunately for her, the screen was the only such fragile spot in a drone's body. The furious strike fell flat onto the chassis of the Russian-speaking drone. With another move of her hand the defiant prey was thrown with her powers into the wall behind the counter.
Doll teleported over to her and crouched in front of the woman. She decided to just end it here, she materialised a cleaver with the intent to decapitate the drone. As her vision came back just enough for her to see the horrified expression of her victim's flexible plastic face, an even wider grin made its way onto her own face in spite of herself.
For a moment, she was still and quiet. This came out way messier than it was supposed to. Though she got the oil she needed either way. Two corpses will carry her for a good few days, even with the spill caused by the injuries. In a gesture she knew meant nothing in reality, she quietly thanked the couple for their involuntary sacrifice. She did this private song and dance after every hunt, every rush of thrill she felt with every new life taken. It felt more and more hollow every time.
She was about to consume the fruit of her labour as she heard a quiet sound of something shuffling around coming from inside one of the cupboards just right next to her... Was someone there?
She quickly turned around and tore the cupboard door open. Inside of it was a baby. She wasn't sure how old it was, it still had an eponymous Untrained Neural Network 'baby pill' as its main body but it also had a small set of makeshift legs and arms attached. A wealthy colony such as her old home would probably have fitted it by now with a downscaled normal-looking Worker body but its parents were clearly more resource-scarce. Doll idly noted it looked cute but that was quickly pushed aside in light of the present circumstances.
The circumstances being that she was covered in the fresh oil of the child's parents with the mauled corpse of its mother being right there behind her. The child had an apt reaction of being terrified, cringing away from the murderer of its parents. Sliding deeper into the corner furthest away from her, almost as if it was trying to dig into it.
In this moment, an instinct becoming of a normal person rather than someone like her struck Doll. She reached out her hand with the instinct to comfort the child even as her conscious processor was very well aware of how stupid it was.
Then her second least favourite feature of her Solver curse, right after the oil drinking aspect, reared its ugly face. The wretched ability to perfectly recall and share her past memories, superior to mere compressed recordings the rest of her kind were limited to. It had a penchant for popping up uninvited like this.
A scene heavily related and similar to what just happened came to her mind. A little girl, hiding in a cupboard in her family's hab unit. A cackling murder drone outside, gunning down her parents before taking just a few sips of oil from their pierced heads and moving on. It was a miracle Outpost-3 didn't fall during that breach.
The night she lost her parents replayed often in Doll's mind, both as a nightmare as well as these cursed visions. Under normal circumstances it was just unpleasant but now... it was downright paralysing. These two deaths she has taken tonight suddenly felt more impactful than the entire test of her almost triple-digit killcount combined. The obvious relation between what she just did and that night horrified her.
This shock was silly, really. She killed other people's kids, though never outside of her own age range, she killed parents. She killed a couple of her own classmates, some of whom she even later missed. All to prolong her own hungering existence. Tonight was only different in how precisely familiar the situation was. It felt like fate itself mocked her...
She barely registered when the child picked up some can and threw it at her. Its arm servos were weak and the can was empty; it harmlessly bounced off of her, not even scratching her freshly regenerated screen. The young one then rose up on its measly legs, jumped out of the cupboard and... presumably was trying to run. It was more of a shamble, like a fast walk in terms of speed. The legs were clearly misaligned, shoddy craftsmanship. She could easily finish it off, put it on the course to reunite with its parents in whatever afterlife was afforded to robots. She did not do so however.
She didn't move an inch as her optics followed the child escaping out of the building. She was at a loss, it clearly will not survive long without assistance. It also clearly would not want her assistance...
Her mind trailed back to considering what she was even doing at this point. She had long hung onto a notion that she somehow was still morally superior to the murder drones. That she merely killed to survive, in a temporary measure she was forced into by the curse tormenting her. The thrill and dreadful joy she felt when commiting slaughter was clearly in her case just another side effect of the curse. Any thoughts of such benefit of doubt being given to murder drones was squashed under the memory of that cackling harpy.
"[V...]" Doll quietly mouthed her name, the murderbot that started the descent of her life into hell. Could she now maintain the same burning hatred for that drone she felt for years, now that she retraced her steps closely tonight? She could see now. V was merely honest with what she was, what both of them were. Was that why Lizzy backstabbed her in favor of that murder drone? She put her friend into a choice between an honest monster seemingly making a genuine effort to reign herself in and Doll herself, another monster who was hiding behind excuses.
She... was at a loss now, unsure what to think of herself...
Hesistance passed after a moment. Her mind refocused. Without wasting anymore time, she turned to quench her thirst with oil. She already killed for it, wasting it now would be simply disrespectful to the dead. As soon as she filled herself up, she moved onto her next goal; finding that damn baby. She wasn't sure what she is going to do with it but she won't leave it to die out there. If its end is going to came about on her watch, it will be about 15 years down the line if it won't prepare for its vengeful assasination attempt correctly, no sooner.
Maybe still holding onto delusions of not being a full monster was dangerous for Doll but she decided to now indulge in them once again, with actions for once.