Chapter Text
She shoved the [null] into her mouth, and that was it. It was over.
The twisted, melting figure clawing at her desperately didn't cease her attempts even in death. The thing's form distorted disturbingly, human flesh far past its expiration date melted off a biomechanical skeleton. Blood and oil boiled as it clawed desperately at its own melting form.
Uzi stepped back. Eyes unfocused, digits trembling against her faceplate. Something worse than nausea wracked her body as Cyn's body finally dissipated.
Something remained. Slick with liquid, but alive.
Uzi had half a mind to stomp it till it was nothing more than a pulpy mass, but saw through the increasing fog in her mind.
Wire-strung appendages hung limply over the unstable pipes surrounding them. The flesh covering the metal underneath was just barely clinging on. A faint, red glow emanated from its center.
Robo-God, she's alive.
Was the last thing Uzi thought before she scooped up the fleshy core and everything went black.
---
Doll woke up.
Awake, really awake, in her own body. Mutilated, painful, but her body nonetheless.
Lights that weren't her own flashed across her visor in a haze of colors, rising paranoia from her inability to move.
Purple. White. White. Purple. Yellow. Yellow. Yellow. YELLOW .
Once the overwhelming need for sleep mode overcame her fear, her recharging state was dreamless and fear-filled. She woke up feeling worse than before she had fallen asleep.
The fog lifted eventually, to the point where she could just barely make out her surroundings.
It was bright. Too bright. The last thing in her visor being pure darkness before she...
Before...
Oh.
Oh, no, no no no .
All her senses came back to her at once. The weakness wracking her body was overwhelmed with the adrenaline surging through her wires.
The false sensation of oil raining down from her chassis nauseated her as she leapt from whatever platform she'd been placed on. A casket? They couldn't put her 6 ft under if they tried.
Which they did , she reminded herself. If she had been given a second chance, another life, she'd use it for the thing she'd failed to do before Cyn took her out.
Uzi, she wanted to get to Uzi. With several steps, joints rattling from disuse, she reworked that sentence in her mind. She needed to get to Uzi.
She felt like she'd keel over any second, her hand gripping some kind of railing she didn't bother to identify, the room around her barely registering.
Something about this was wrong, wrong, wrong. Too quiet, too peaceful. False safety. Danger under the guise of security.
She'd known something like that before. Her home. Her mother, her father, their apartment. Safety, she'd always believed, always been told.
But the world wasn't so kind. Sooner than later, something always happened. In the world she lived in, there was no safety. There was no peace. Only lies to satisfy her cowardice as a child.
Gritting her teeth, she continued trudging forward, each step as if her legs weighed a hundred tons. She could never let something like this trick her again. Never, never, ever -
The door clicked and pushed open. It was a drone, a worker drone, wearing a white coat and glasses far too large for their face. Visor buried in some paperwork, hand on the doorknob and humming quietly to themself.
Doll scrambled backwards, feet slipping on the floor ( tiles? Cold, hard .) She tensed her chest, her attempt at teleportation being met with an agonizing slash of pain in her core. The world slowed as she slammed against the floor, a loud crack meeting her auditory sensors. The warm trickling down her visor hinted to her as to what it was.
She didn't waste a moment. She shoved herself back to her feet and configured her hand into a long memorized symbol, no matter how much it made her body twist with agony.
The entire room lurched to one side, the drone who had just entered yelping with fear as assorted objects zipped through the air with a cacophony of shattering glass and clattering plastic and metal. Her stomach lurched and she groaned in response, teeth grinding against one another so harshly they began to chip.
The drone called out, words she couldn't register, but she knew all too quickly what it meant. Others would hear her. Others would know she was there. Danger was what it meant.
She rushed forward on unsteady legs, shoving the drone out of the way. Killing them would take too long, she needed to get
out.
The hallways here were unrecognizable. Could she have still been dreaming? Cyn had a talent for visual manipulation, everything here could be fake. Another trick, another false sense of safety.
Ahead of her was an airtight door, frost covering its edges. She practically slammed into it, hands barely steady enough to turn the crank to open it. As she fell through the frame, a much brighter light overwhelmed her senses.
She'd been here before. A familiar silver floor dusted with snow and oil that couldn't quite be scrubbed out. Steel crates and wet cardboard boxes piled up in every corner. Tall metal pillars holding the bunker steady against the harsh natural forces outside. As she looked up, however, the hole that was once there was patched up. As she looked down again...
Worker drones. Everywhere. They all had ceased their bustling around in favor of staring at her in surprise. She froze like a deer in headlights, the weakness in her body beginning to catch up to her. She could feel her core, slightly out of place in her chest, pulsing rapidly. She had to get out. She had to get out, out, out .
Her back pressed against the cold wall, a jarring contrast to her casing, practically steaming with heat. One hand desperately searched for the door's crank, the other gripping her chest -- covered with a soft fabric she could only identify upon glancing down. Stark white, a hospital gown. If she only had the necklace, she'd look like...
Her vents were thrown offbeat and suddenly everything that was already too much was so, so much worse. Her core felt like it was being peeled apart, this room was so bright, too cold, breaths coming out far too fast and far too hot. She collapsed against the wall, pressed between it and a crate like a cornered animal. Why had she come out here, again? There was so much to run from, too much to escape all at once, no one to help her. Where was Uzi, had she failed? She didn't want to be here, she didn't want to be here at all .
All she wanted was to see her mom again. What happened? Why had she come back? What else could the Solver possibly gain from doing this to her? It had won , it had already won -
Muffled sounds approached her rapidly, something like footsteps. The shaking of her chassis and heaving of her chest were far too much for her to hear them properly. She weakly resisted when someone's hands pried hers off her chest.
"-oll, Doll, dude! Chill, what in the name of robo-God are you doing out of bed?"
Oh. Her eyes focused enough for her to catch bright purple lights clashing against the red ones on the back of her hands. Was this a trick? She wasn't aware enough to tell. She had to wake up, she had to do something other than be weak. If it was real, they were in danger. Uzi couldn't be in danger, not on her watch. She'd lost so much, too much, she couldn't take it if she lost another thing dear to her.
Her hands were around Uzi's wrists instantly, red eyes honed in on her purple ones.
...Not purple. Purple and yellow, yellow, too yellow . Doll could feel her mouth shut and breaths come out faster. The concerned look on Uzi's face betrayed the evil radiating from her gaze.
She lashed out, an obvious hint to Uzi to keep her distance, which she respected by taking several quick steps back.
[Are-] Doll forced out, startled by the hoarseness of her own voice, [You are real? Not a hologram?] As if it would tell her the truth, she growled afterwards.
"Bud, relax. I'm not, like... a rabid animal or a hologram and you aren't either. Get the hell off the floor, you're gonna catch frostbite." Uzi urged in the same forceful tone that she always carried, and heaved Doll up off the floor without warning, "...or, whatever the drone equivalent of that would be I guess."
Doll was barely able to keep her knees locked, her entire body threatening to buckle underneath itself. She felt all the waves of exhaustion she'd suppressed prior to this moment crashing down upon her. If Cyn was playing the long game, she'd play it longer than this. She had a moment -- one, single moment.
She lurched forward, bleary and weak, and collapsed against the smaller drone before entering sleep mode. She barely felt it when her dead weight knocked both her and Uzi onto the hard ground with a yelp.