Chapter Text
Darkness. All she could see, was Darkness. Alone in the dark, while surrounded by creatures out to destroy her.
Her eyes closed; she could hear everything. Bullets roaring. Sentinels screeching and flashing of their boot-loop-inducing lights. Her blades swishing through the air. Her own frightened gasps. The lingering echoes of a loud impact at the bottom of the elevator shaft. The faint sound of someone calling out her name. Faint explosions.
Pain. She felt pain. No …agony. Another chunk bitten out of her arm. Out of her leg. Her gun ripped out of its socket. Claws tearing at her metal skin. Metal teeth sinking into her wings as she tries to get some distance between them. Tearing one out. More damage than her nanite healing can keep up with and eventually …even that stops.
She feels her body give out. Her thirst is unbearable. Her body craves oil and is unable to get it.
Then, more sounds. First, the Sentinels closing in on her, the scraping of their claws on metal floor, encircling her. Then, shouting, chaos, Sentinels screeching in pain.
Silence.
She’s low on power. Everything is shutting down. She can’t even open her eyes. She can only faintly hear someone speaking to her.
She’s being dragged. She feels her back falling against something, maybe a wall.
More words. Sad words? She can almost understand some. ‘Forgive’… Something shuts close. She’s alone.
Silence again. For the longest time, just silence. She falls in and out of consciousness. Her healing nanites still haven’t kicked in.
The world rumbles. Something deep down is roaring. A desperate, frustrated roar.
Then, a jolt, deep inside her. Her core aches. Then…
Pain? An excruciating pain? Her insides are twisting and burning? She’s so low on power, she can hardly perceive anything around her.
Then it stops. A blissful feeling.
Silence, once again. Minutes? Hours? Days? She doesn’t know. Until finally….
Voices. Searching?
“I found her!”
“Seems the same thing happened to her as with the other one.”
“She’s in bad shape.”
“She needs med-technical attention immediately.”
“You grab her there. I’ll hold her here. On three. One, two, …three!”
PAIN!
V’s eyes jolted open with a loud gasp. She bolted upright, but something pulled at her, making her fall backwards again. Something around her wrists. Restraints of some kind. Around her chest as well. She frantically looked around. She was in a room, in a bed. Looks like …an infirmary or a hospital-like room, or something? How long had she been here? While she was pondering on that, it was then that she noticed something …missing.
The thirst. The hunger. That unsatiable craving for oil …gone? That wasn’t possible. While she had made sure she’d ‘topped up’ before entering the labs, that battle had taken so much out of her. She should be starving. She should have gone in Auto-Hunt mode. The only feelings she now felt were …sleepy. And confusion.
She heard a door open, quickly followed by someone gasping and something falling to the floor. Her eyes fell on a Worker Drone in a hospital outfit, a nurse by the look of it. Judging by the clipboard on the ground, V’s sudden awakening hadn’t been something she expected. She looked frightened. Wait, no …surprised?
“Oh my gosh…” The nurse – V could read the name Ratched on her nametag – quickly ran to the door, sticking her head out. “I need a doctor here, STAT! She’s awake!”
A doctor? For what? Experiments? Torture? Taking advantage of an injured enemy? V pulled on her restrains, her anger growing. Why was she here? What had happened? What of N and Uzi? Tessa? The Absolute Solver?
Why wasn’t she dead?
A Drone in a doctor’s outfit ran in. “Miss V, I need you to calm down.” “Please, don’t try to exert yourself. The state of your injuries are- “
“Release me!” V yelled, pulling on her restraints as hard as she could. Suddenly, without any sort of warning, she felt pain surge throughout her entire body as she completely cramped up. It felt like every single joint in her body tried to pull itself inwards. She couldn’t move. She couldn’t even open her mouth to scream in pain. On her visor flashed the [ENERGY SURGE] warning.
The doctor and the nurse rushed to V’s side as the former pulled a drive out of his pockets. “Quickly, undo her bindings.”
The nurse hesitated for a second, but after a stern look from the doctor she undid the bindings around V’s chest. They both lifted her up a bit as the doctor plugged the drive into a data port on V’s nape. She felt the pain gradually subside and her body relaxed again. She let herself fall on her pillow again, panting heavily. That had taken much more out of her than she realized.
“Wh-what happened to me?” V asked after a few moments of collecting herself. She slowly sat up. “What did you do? How did I get here?”
The doctor gestured the nurse to bring him the fallen clipboard, giving it a look as he walked over to the foot of V’s bed and dismissed the nurse with a wave of his hand. “I am doctor Steen. You may call me Francis You’ve been under my care since you were brought in.”
“Didn’t ask that and I’m not doing that.”
“Fair enough.” The doctor adjusted his glasses. Heh, she used to have a pair just like those. “This might come to a shock to you, but you have been here for several weeks. Almost over 6 weeks, to be less than precise.”
“6 weeks?” V repeated softly. Had she been offline so long? She should’ve overheated and died by now, but …she didn’t feel any thirst at all. Questions for later.
“What you just experienced, Miss V, was a seizure brought on by a disruptive energy surge, triggered by excessive motion.” The doctor explained. “Simply put: if you don’t stay calm – in any every way possible – you unquestionably will trigger another attack. Do you understand what I’m saying, Miss?”
V bit back a sarcastic insult, the thought of going through that pain again the only thing being from doing so. She nodded slowly.
“As for what I gave you…” Steen held out the drive. “This patch tricks your system to ‘divert excess energy toward auxiliary components’, temporarily pacifying the damaged circuitry causing the surges. It’s – at the moment - the only thing we found that can bring you some relief.”
“Damaged circuitry?”
“Putting it …mildly.” Steen frowned, flipping over a page. “You were brought in with …well, you were on the brink of deactivation. Chewed up, as those in the rescue unit that brought you told me.”
Chewed up. The sentinels. V flinched as a vision of those beasts flashed before her eyes – and on her visor. She had tried to buy the others as much time as she could, held out as long as she could – as long as her healing allowed her. At one point …she just couldn’t anymore. She got boot-looped, unable to move …but still able to feel as those things started to feast on her.
“Miss V, still with us?”
Startled back to the here-and-now, V shook her head and turned back to the Doctor, who – to her dismay – looked upon her with concern. She scowled at him and judging by the shrug, got the message.
“Anyway …” Steen continued, unperturbed by the scowling murder drone under his care. He had dealt with more vicious patients in the past – most often Miss Doorman. “We tried to repair what we could, but ….there wasn’t much we were able too. Whatever you did that caused your damage, you exerted your systems beyond their advised parameters. I’ll spare you the tech-medical jargon, but in short: 45% your circuits are fused together, your wiring has melted and corrupted software is wreaking havoc on other systems and those are just a few on that list.”
“So why aren’t I repaired yet?” V asked.
“We are, but these repairs need be done in intervals. The extent your injuries require – “
“Not what I meant!” V almost yelled. She took a deep breath. She felt her patience was running low, but figured she wouldn’t get answers by yelling and being a nuisance. That was more Uzi’s style. “You know I’m a Disassembly Drone?”
“I’m aware.”
“You know I can heal myself? Head blown off, arms ripped off, things like that are nothing to me.”
“I know. I was chaperoning my son during prom.”
“So …why aren’t I regenerating?” V asked.
“If I had to take a guess, because of the same thing what happened to Miss doorman and her …companions.”
“They’re alive? Uzi? N? Tessa, I guess?” V asked, more surprised than relieved – even if that sensation was there as well.
“Heavily damaged, in shock and both in very critical condition, but …yes, alive.” Doctor Steen took a chair and sat down next to V. “Maybe I should start from the beginning. I guess, it all started when it felt that the planet was going to die.”
V listened as Doc Steen told what had transpired in the weeks before she had woken up. How the planet seemed to be turning against itself. Gravity got weird, there were tremors and storms. Real ‘End Times’ stuff. Everyone in the bunker was naturally terrified, thinking they would – along with the planet – would die. This went on for several hours, until …it stopped. No storms, no tremors, no danger.
It wasn’t long after that that Khan returned to the bunker, bringing the injured Uzi, N – and to anyone’s surprise – J and a human named Tessa with him. So, they had managed to make it out as well. Uzi and N were heavily damaged, and in dire need of repairs. Tessa also was wounded, but it seemed J refused to let anyone but herself get close to her. Maybe for the best, since no Worker Drone doctor has any knowledge about how to treat human wounds anyway.
But V started to notice something weird about his story after that. It was something about what he said about the explanation that Khan had given the colony. He had told a story about ‘a rogue AI’, who – to her surprise – was also responsible for the destruction of Earth. This ‘rogue AI’ was also responsible for the creation of the Disassembly Drones, which was true.
But there were things in things in that story that just didn’t make sense. So, after Uzi and N had helped Tessa destroy the AI, the nanites in their bodies were deactivated and thus that ‘freed them from its control’? V had done many questionable things – both necessary and unnecessary – during her time on Copper-9, but she had always been in control of her own action – whether or not she liked doing them.
V wasn’t dumb. She figured that Uzi and N had withheld the whole story, but for whatever reason she’d need to ask them. V was so lost in her thoughts; she didn’t notice that the doc had finished his story until he snapped his fingers in front of her visor. She hissed at him in return.
“Back with us, Miss V?”
“Bite me.”
“Yes, you are indeed friends with Miss Doorman.” Doc said dryly, standing up. “But she’ll be pleased to hear that you have woken up. Your friends have been visiting you pretty much daily.”
“Oh, you allow your prisoners to have visiting hours?” V asked coldly. It was an unnecessary remark, but she was absolutely fed up with this man. Normally, she’d pop off his head and have his oil for supper, but without the constant thirst plaguing her and threatening her with overheating, the vey thought made her feel …queasy.
Steen chuckled. “Miss V, you are not a prisoner. You are my patient.”
“IF I’m not a prisoner …why these?” V gestured to the undone restraints. “Why bind me to my bed when I was out cold most of the time?”
“Those were for your own safety.” The doctor explained. “You were having extreme night terrors the first few days, and you were triggering your seizures by thrashing around. It was the only way make sure your system wouldn’t overload while we weren’t here to supervise. “
“Well, I’m awake now. Take the rest off.”
“The rest?” Steen seemed confused.
V was seriously on her last bit of patience. “My legs are still bound! I’m done sitting in this bed. I want to stretch my legs! If you’re scared I’m gonna bolt, I promise I-!”
The look in Steen’s eyes made her halt. Something was wrong.
“I …I’m sorry. I should have mentioned this could happen, but with this whole situation it completely slipped my mind.” Steen said softly.
An icy feeling formed in V’s chest. “Wh-what are you talking about?”
“You must understand, the damage you sustained was severe and despite our initial repairs there was always a change that-“
V’s eyes hollowed as she realized what Steen was talking about. She tore her sheet from her body …and her entire body went numb at the sight. It was clear that her legs had undergone numerous repairs. There were welding seams, pieces of plating, nuts and bolts holding things in place.
But what scared her the most…
Was that she couldn’t feel her legs. She had been so distracted by her situation that she never realized she hadn’t moved them at all. She grunted, trying to her knees to her chest.
Nothing. Not a twitch.
“My …my legs.” V looked at her legs, stunned, confused, angry, sad, …a plethora of emotions was running through her processor. She wanted to yell, to curse, to make promises of violence untold and cause unbridled harm.
She could only stare.
“Miss V?”
V looked up slowly at her doctor.
“I know this is quite the shock, especially after all you’ve been through already.” He smiled softly at her. “But I promise you we’ll do anything in our power to help. There are several courses of action we can undertake and improve your mobility. We can-“
His voice faded away as V stared at her legs again, slowly reaching out the give them a soft squeeze, as if they would spring back to life. All she could hear was her own core beating in her chest, a ringing in her ears. Tears were starting to form in her visor as the hard truth was dawning on her.
“I can't move my legs ...I’m paralyzed….”