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J soared down in a slow spiral, the bottomless pit carved from concrete and steel coming to an end. The top of a cathedral came into view, just as Cyn had described to her on their way to Copper-9. She angled her wings and sped up, zipping inside the building’s destroyed roof with a flash of bladed feathers.
She touched down, the sound of her sharp legs against the shattered glass and broken concrete echoing throughout the building. She engaged her night vision, the subterranean building engulfed in shadow and inky darkness.
The pews and discarded equipment emerged from the dark, bones of long dead humans scattered throughout. But none from the human she was looking for.
She turned. Before her lay a spacesuit and a round helmet, somehow not disturbed by the planet’s recent destruction and reformation. She sighed and picked up the spherical object, tracing her eyes over the glass plating.
There was no doubt in her mind that Tessa would have decorated a space helmet with stickers and attached her big bow to it. This could have truly been her helmet in some other world. One where she didn’t die at the age of fifteen.
She gazed into the void of the glass, her core tightening. How many times had J looked at this helmet and pretended it was actually Tessa underneath? That it wasn’t her flayed corpse being worn by a mechanical nightmare? That she and the human were really traveling space together, just like they had always dreamed of?
J was taken back to a time when Tessa was planning her escape from earth, and by proxy whatever arranged marriage her parents had surely set up for her. She was only eleven or twelve at the time, so the plans were quite unrealistic, but they were magical. She told J of all the worlds they would visit, of the comets and the belts of asteroids they would pass by as they flew to their new life.
It would be just the two of them, among the stars.
But then N and V came along. Then Cyn. Then J’s life ended the moment Tessa’s did.
She was pulled from the memory, her core feeling like it had been pierced with a virus spike. She looked over to the bottomless pit merely meters away, and in a split second decision, threw Cyn’s helmet into it. She watched blankly as it vanished into the darkness. She was hoping it would make her feel something, but no rush of relief or satisfaction came.
She looked down to the spacesuit at her feet and picked it up. She held it up to examine it, the suit slimy in her large hands. She traced her optics over it, rank, rotten fluid pooling at her feet from disturbing the thing. She lingered on the patch of X’d out planets longer than she would have liked, along with the technician badge Cyn had made for the suit. Her gaze shifted to the inside, where chunks of viscera and gore dribbled off of the inner lining.
No. Chunks of Tessa dribbled off the inner lining.
The realization made J’s oil tanks churn, the drone fighting back a gag. Despite this, she plucked a blob of meat off of the inside of the suit, examining it. Did humans figure out organic cloning before Cyn killed them all? She stared at the flesh for a moment, racking her memory banks, then tossed the meat into the pit. No. It’s far too late for any of that.
Swallowing hard, J balled up the suit, the remaining fluids and flesh squirting out onto her hands. She looked towards the pit, and the suit met the same fate as the helmet. She sighed, letting her arms drop.
Drip.
J’s brow furrowed. She slowly brought her hands back up to look at them, the light of her visor reflecting off of her wet hands. They were soaked in the blood that had leaked from the suit.
Tessa’s blood.
She stared down at her hands, her head beginning to pound as her vision blurred. The heavy-handedness of the situation wasn’t lost on her. Tessa’s blood was on her hands, figuratively and literally. It really was her fault, wasn’t it? If only she had protected her better, fought harder, she might still—
With a choked sob and tears dribbling down her vision, J sank her teeth into her left hand, and tore. It came off easily, a spurt of oil and droplets of Tessa’s blood splattering across the ground as she spat it out. She quickly turned her attention to her right hand, doing the same.
She huffed a flurry of heaving breaths and dropped to her knees. The pain was minimal, though she wished it was a trillion times worse. Anything to distract her from the taste in her mouth.
The heavy, metallic, rotting flavor of blood coated her teeth and tongue.
She retched, and before she could shut down the reflex manually, the remaining oil in her tanks escaped her mouth, bits of wire and scraps of metal speckling the vomit. Her hands regenerated after only ten seconds, but she barely noticed. Her head pounded, alerts popping up over her visor.
She couldn’t take it. She couldn’t take it. SHE COULDN’T TAKE I—
“J! Come on!”
“Slow down! You’re going to slip!”
J desperately tried to keep up with Tessa as she all but sprinted through the manor halls. How the girl was so agile with heels on, J would never know. Tessa’s hand was enclosed in J’s, the worker trying her best to hold onto her human.
They took a sharp turn around one of the halls, J stumbling. But, she was quickly steadied by Tessa.
“Oh, I’m gonna slip?” she chided, stealing a glance back at J.
J rolled her eyes playfully as they raced through the manor. It was quieter than usual. Louisa was at the salon, and James was on a conference call, leaving the two to their own devices. The fleet of drones were still out and around cleaning, but they didn’t mind if Tessa was a little rowdy. The girl was the only human who treated them kindly; there was no world where they would snitch on her.
They were almost to the back door that led out to the garden, the two planning on sitting on the swing and cuddling. The moment Tessa had finished her homework she had dragged J out the door at full speed, not wasting a second.
Tessa must not have seen the winkle in the rug, likely caused by a worker’s vacuuming. Before J could warn her, the girl caught the wrinkle at full speed, the two crashing to the ground and rolling over the rug in a tangle of limbs.
J’s head spun, but she quickly picked herself up and turned to Tessa. “B-boss! You’re not hurt are y—”
J was cut off by Tessa’s…. Laughter? Tessa was laying on the floor with her arms out like a starfish, tears pouring from her eyes as she laughed harder than J had seen in a long time. The sound was wonderful, sweeter than any music could ever dream of being. J found herself laughing too, a bit surprised by the sound as she rarely laughed, but Tessa’s laughter proved to be contagious.
J flopped down onto her back next to Tessa, her chassis heaving with the sound, the air full of mirth. After a wonderful eternity, it died down. Tessa turned her head to look at J, and J turned her head to look at Tessa. Tessa smiled at her, her soulful, glittering eyes making her core sing.
“Probably shoulda’ listened to you, huh?”
Tessa slid closer, her face inches away from her drone’s. She leaned in, J’s core skipping a beat as—
J’s optics blinked to life.
The drone was on her back, her head turned to the side. Tessa’s face wasn’t inches away from hers anymore, and had been replaced with her own severed head. Her golden eyes reflected on the glass visor, the light of the yellow FATAL ERROR mingling with the ovals. The memory of what she did came back as a slow wave.
She began to spiral, and had cleaved her own head off.
All I achieved down here was wasting company resources, she told herself, though she knew there hadn’t been a company in a long, long time. She sat up, a rush of grief pounding her core. She missed when she was numb to it, doing her Cyn-assigned tasks in a hazy dream of violence.
She had tuned out her grief long ago, so why was it returning now? Was it because she was finally able to express it without the watchful eye of Cyn? Was it because she was, for the first time in years, alone? Did she no longer feel the need to act cold and unfeeling, and truly express how broken she was?
No. That couldn’t be it. J was strong.
She shook off the string of thoughts, shoving the events of the last fifteen minutes down deep in her core. She was on a mission. She wasn’t returning without finding what she was searching for.
She deployed her wings and deftly shot up through the caved in ceiling, a shockwave of dust billowing out from under her as she blasted off. She quickly gained altitude, reaching the top of the cavern and the massive hole punched through the top.
She paused, gazing back down at the building. It was a rather beautiful sight. Haunting. J sighed to herself. Tessa would have loved this view. A creepy cathedral in a foggy cave was just her style.
As if the thought of her name activated something, an urge came over her, tugging at her core.
Check the bell tower.
She squinted and soared downwards, angling her flight path to approach in a wide arc. She touched down, surprised that the tower had survived this long, as most of the spire-like ceiling was caved in. She looked around a bit before she zeroed in on something out of place.
Partially buried under a pile of concrete rubble, was a tattered black dress.
J deployed her claws and easily moved the fallen debris, chunks clattering to the floor of the cave. Her claws became hands again, and she picked up the dress. He trailed her gaze over it softly, as if the wrong look would shatter it like glass. It was Tessa’s, she was certain. Her mind flashed back to the night of the gala. She had helped Tessa tie the bow on the side of the waist, her hands too sore from the shackles to do it herself.
She looked over to the pile of rubble, spotting more oddities. This time, human bones. A radius and ulna, a femur, and ribcage sat scattered among the chunks of cement. She carefully picked up the femur first, a smattering of mostly dried biological sludge clinging to it.
There was no doubt in her mind that it was Tessa’s. Traces of the Solver’s influence permeated the bone like a cancer, J’s sensors zeroing in on the places where the bone had been snapped and fused back together with something foreign. Something evil.
A tiny prick of accomplishment bloomed in her core. These were exactly what she was looking for. She looked over the pile of bones, J being brought back to when she first found out that Cyn had kept more than just the outside of Tessa.
It had been before J gave into Cyn, before she joined her in devouring the universe. She had cleaved Cyn in half, organs and stray ribs spilling out.
“Oopsie col-on three. Let’s ju-st get Tessa back in the-re,” Cyn had said.
J would never forget the sound of her picking up a pulsating organ off the ground, then shoving it back into the cavity.
She remembered staring in horror as Cyn smiled at her.
“Don’t w-orry, J. I m-ade sure not to wa-ste her!”
Nausea pulled J back from the memory, and she forcefully shut down the reflex. She couldn’t afford to waste more oil from something so frivolous as vomiting. Her grip on the remnants of Tessa tightened as she once again deployed her wings and shot through the subterranean clouds. She continued up through the crater, the bent steel and crumbling concrete flying by at incredible speeds.
She broke through the top, shooting like a missile through the night sky. The cold of the night washed over her, her ponytails billowing in the wind.
J gently touched down, the piling snow coming up to where her ankle would be if she had conventional legs. The snow around her quickly melted, two small rings growing around where the points of the limbs touched the flash-frozen grass.
She stood at the top of a small hill overlooking a frozen lake, towers looming in the distance. There were trees nearby, but none close enough to obscure the occasional view of the stars. The spire wasn’t visible from here, though. She knew Tessa wouldn’t be proud of the atrocities she committed.
She knelt down and gently laid the bones and dress off to the side, then began to clear snow off of something in front of her.
Three objects emerged from under the white blanket.
Stuffed bear. Check.
Rocking horse. Check.
Basement key. Check.
J sighed with relief, looking over the small collection of items. Good. Nobody stole them while I was gone. Though it’s not like there's anyone out here to do so.
J flashed back to the day Cyn was defeated.
She was instructed by Cyn to destroy all ways off the planet, including the pod the two arrived in. Though, there was something different about that pod. The pod they arrived in was filled with Tessa’s belongings. Cyn had kept them as souvenirs from Tessa’s room on earth, and had brought them along on her terroristic rampage. Why, J wasn’t completely sure.
But J couldn’t bring herself to destroy the pods they arrived with. Tessa’s things were too precious to her, so instead of blowing them up, she simply cut the fuel injector in each one, thoroughly mangling the insides so there would be no chance any would be operational.
She was technically working under the constraints of the contract. She did destroy the pods, just not in the way Cyn had in mind. She was glad she disobeyed though, as she was able to return and scavenge what she could from them.
She was looking for two objects specifically.
The first was the bear, the one that she remembered having been thrown from the ship upon their landing. She had the stuffed animal since she was little, having been a gift from her baby shower. It was a ratty old thing that needed a wash now, but it made sense that it was Tessa’s. The drones she brought in from the dump were a testament to her propensity for giving the unloved love.
The second was the rocking horse, the one J had sat on the moment Cyn revealed herself as the eldritch nightmare she truly was. It had been Tessa’s favorite when she was young, when it was just her and J. She would make a game out of standing on top of it and trying to balance as it rocked back and forth. Tessa was always better at it than her, J’s balance calibration still slightly jostled from her sudden reactivation in the dump.
She smiled at the memory, her gaze flicking to the brass key.
She had kept the keyring on her at all times since N stole the pod right out from under her. Not that she thought he would try to steal it again (he was way too busy committing JCJ fraternization violations with that purple worker), but that the seemingly insignificant brass key next to the clicker and keychain would be lost.
It was the key to the basement, and while she was aware of the horrors that occurred down there, either she or Cyn had deleted the memories of the specifics. She remembered it as Tessa’s workshop. She and the drone spent hours down there, the human fine-tuning her friend so she worked as perfectly as could be.
J longed for the slow conversations they had down there, the drone sitting on the workbench and the human with a tool in hand. The rainy days spent down there, just two of them……J wouldn’t trade the memories for every branded pen in the universe.
She looked from the pile and began to brush some snow off of the top of a slab of cut concrete, the piece about a foot and a half tall. Engraved on it was Tessa’s name, birth date, and death date.
She had spent days getting the lettering just right. She fiddled with her laser cannon's intensity until it was just the right strength to cleanly engrave the headstone, having gone through at least four dozen previous iterations of it.
She would settle for nothing less than perfection for Tessa’s grave.
J wasn’t sure why she wanted to make a grave for Tessa. She knew that it wouldn’t change anything and it would only hurt her to do so, but she did it anyways. She knew humans made them as a sign of respect, and maybe she deserved to hurt. J certainly thought so……
The thought of letting her former squamates know that she was making a grave crossed her mind, but was quickly shoved away. They loved Tessa, sure, but not as much as J did. Hell, N and V barely remembered Tessa. And they would probably make a joke out of it anyways. What use would it be to invite them?
No. This was J’s mission and J’s mission alone. Tessa was hers, no one else’s. This was her responsibility.
She stood, picking up the objects and setting them with the bones. Once they were out of the way, she grabbed a shovel she had found in the ruined city and began to dig.
The ground was solid as stone, but that didn’t stop J. Her strength was unmatched, and she had lots of digging practice from her time with Tessa.
She let her mind wander, the memory of one of the times Tessa had taken her out to the manor’s ancestral graveyard. She had J dig up three separate coffins, the girl wanting to pilfer anything interesting from inside. Nothing of value came from the grave desecration, but Tessa was thrilled to share facts about the earthworms J churned up from the moist soil.
J caught herself smiling.
You are digging a grave for the only person who ever treated you with a shred of decency. She loved you more than anyone. Show some fucking respect, she silently snapped to herself.
The smile faded and she got back to digging.
After about five minutes, J was satisfied. The hole was large enough to fit every object in it without it being too crowded. She gave her work an approving nod and set the shovel down, brushing her hands off before she picked up the first item to be placed inside: the dress.
It was a beautiful dress before Cyn had let it fall into disrepair. It was tattered and stained now, but still held its elegant shape. Kneeling, J gently folded it up and set it in the hole. It looked so small and fragile at the bottom of the grave, blending in with the dark earth and the midnight shadows.
Next she placed the rocking horse in, then the bear next to it. She arranged them with more tenderness than she would have ever admitted, her core clenching in her chest.
Then came the key. She hated to part with the key, but she set it inside nonetheless. The days of her and Tessa in their basement hideaway were long gone.
Finally were the bones.
She picked them up from where they patiently sat, then gently arranged them around the other objects. The rib cage went over the dress, and the others went to either side of it. She traced her eyes over them, a chill running down her mechanical spine.
Her entire body clenched as alerts began to cloud her UI.
Her oil meter was left in the red after the incident in the cathedral. She would need to leave and find some soon.
Or she could just sit here beside the stone and wait for the sun to consume her. There were no more backups now that Cyn was gone. Death really would be an escape this time……
She shook off the thought. She knew Tessa would kill her if she did that. She didn’t know how, but she was certain her human would find a way.
J gritted her teeth against her rising internal temperature. She wasn’t leaving until she was finished.
She stepped out of the grave, casting a long look at the items in the hole, soaking up every detail she could. With a weighted sigh, she picked up the shovel and began to cover them, the memories of her love swallowed up by the soil.
When she was done, she patted the earth down and stepped back, setting the shovel down a few feet away. Snow was already beginning to pile up on top of the headstone, and soon the small site would be consumed by the endless blizzard.
Awkwardness spread through J, the drone shifting her weight as she stood before the grave. It was customary to speak about the dead at a funeral. Following correct human burial procedures, she should say something.
But she didn’t.
She merely stared, her brow hard and unwavering. She had so many things she wanted to say to Tessa. So many “thank you’s” and “I love you’s” and “I’m sorry’s” that she would never get to hear. How grateful she was for the companionship she gave her, and how much she hated herself for allowing her life to end the way it did.
Instead, she sat back down, this time next to the patch of snow-flecked dirt. She curled her knees to her chest and twined her tail around the stone, resting her head against its rough edge.
Unwillingly, digital tears began to dribble from her optics, and before she knew it, she was silently crying. J couldn’t remember the last time she cried. She didn’t like it very much. Through the droplets, more alerts of her dwindling oil supply appeared, but she manually closed them.
J had no plans of moving for a long while. The oil could wait.
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