Chapter Text
It was like the beginning of a horror story, a child's sobs singing through the nightmare wind.
Nori Doorman, (Subject 002, according to her human tormentors) knew all about horror stories.
She'd spent most of her life in one, from the day she was activated, to the day she'd escaped Cabin Fever Labs. She tried to tell herself it was over. She had a home now, a husband and daughter she loved more than life.
But old ghosts never rested. She could hear them humming through her code when nights fell quiet, could see them reflected by her own eye in many a fractured mirror. The Absolute Solver was a curse she'd bear until the end of her days, but it had certain advantages.
She could still use it in a fight.
There had been another attack recently.
The Disassembly Drones were getting bolder, but there was something...wrong about the way this new batch fought. Nori had been helping repel raids from the damned things ever since she'd settled into the Copper Nine colony. Previous squadrons had moved together in a smoothly rehearsed, murderous dance.
These newcomers, three that she'd seen so far, were sloppy. Uncoordinated. Didn't make them any less deadly, though. The colony had lost another family today and several more were wounded. That's why she was out here, in the pre-dawn hours, trudging through a snowstorm and sifting through piles of drone corpses for anything she could use to patch up the living.
If she found any spare battery packs or material that could be used to reinforce the colony doors, even better.
Sunlight was death to a Disassembly Drone, and while it wasn't dawn yet, the hour was close enough that Nori thought she'd be safe. She knew how to handle herself, anyway. She adjusted her knapsack containing the night's collection on her shoulder and marched on.
The sobs of the unseen child made her feel colder than the snow ever could. For a frantic moment, she'd thought it was her own daughter, Uzi, having somehow followed her out here. That girl had a natural talent for finding trouble, but Nori supposed she had no one but herself to blame for that. No, this voice didn't belong to Uzi. For one thing, it sounded like a little boy. The swirling wind played a game of keep-away with the sound, so she couldn't tell exactly where it was coming from. She pressed her gloved hands into the sides of her head, trying to drown it out. Ignore it, she commanded herself. It's just another one of the Solver's tricks.
But while the Solver understood deception and brutality, it knew nothing of feeling. She didn't believe that it could imitate the despair she was hearing now.
So, she decided to make an incredibly stupid decision and call out. "Hello?"
The crying stopped at once. "Is someone there?"
Robo-God, this voice was painfully young.
"My name is Nori," she called into the dark. "I live in this colony. Do you need help?"
"Oh..." the voice was smaller. "You probably shouldn't help me, then."
"Why not?" Nori asked, moving closer now that she had a lock on the voice. Her heavy boots crunched through the snow. "Where are you?"
She rounded past the decayed skeleton of a car.
A wave of sickness stopped her in her tracks.
Lying atop a pile of Worker limbs was the equally mangled torso of a Disassembly Drone, somehow still alive. He'd been torn clean in half at the chest, leaving him only his right arm. His wings had been sliced off.
His head had been smashed in on one side, and with that crack in his visor, he was likely blind in one eye. Worst of all, he was clearly no older than her own child back home.
So that's why this new batch had been so sloppy.
The Solver had started sending child soldiers after them. It must be getting desperate.
"Um...hi?" The Disassembler boy said shyly.
"What in the..." Nori began, her mind rapidly sifting through all her questions. "What happened to you? I fought you things back, but I didn't take it this far."
"Oh, so you were the one," the boy sounded impressed rather than hostile. "You were very brave, ma'am. No, this..." he gestured to himself as best he could.
"My squadron leader was upset with me. It was a poor hunt today."
"A poor hunt?" A spark of anger flared amid Nori's sympathy. "Because of you, the colony has four new funerals to arrange!"
The boy's remaining yellow eye creased in remorse.
"I'm sorry. Really, I am. None of us want to do this...but we don't want to die, either."
She shut her eyes tight against the memory of the Solver trying to infect her with that same hunger for oil, the lifeblood of her fellow Drones. By some unknown grace, it had failed.
Nori glanced up at the sky, growing lighter by the minute. "Yeah, well, I don't think you get any more say in that than we do, kid. Sunrise will be here soon."
"I know," he whispered. "I deserve this. At least, after today, nothing will hurt anymore."
Nori was trembling. Rage, pity, indecision, the need to do something were at war inside her. Overwhelmed, she spun on her heel and began the trek back home.
"I need to get out of here. I...I'm sorry."
Why was she apologizing to one of the Solver's murder pets? Was she truly losing her mind?
As she stomped away, she heard the boy say a soft, cheerful, "Good night, ma'am."
Something inside Nori's core broke. This...child...was wishing her good night. While he was waiting to die.
With a loud groan at her own idiocy, she made room in her knapsack and turned back around.
"Nori!" Annie, a brown-haired Worker who was waiting just inside the colony doors, waved her inside. "Thank goodness! We were all getting worried!"
Nori raised her hand in greeting, but kept her eyes on her boots as she strode inside.
She winced as the inevitable struck.
"What in the world..." Annie stammered. "Tell me that's not what I think it is!"
The head in her duffel bag spoke up with a chipper, "Hello!"
Annie leapt back with a frightened yelp.
"I'll explain soon, I promise!" Nori was almost running toward the infirmary now, scaring any unfortunate soul who happened to cross her path. It didn't help that her salvage was so chatty.
"Hi! Sorry about trying to kill you all earlier today. Wow, this is where you live? It's cozy in here!"
"Do you ever stop talking?" Nori growled.
The doors to the infirmary slid open. Infirmary was too fancy a name, perhaps. It was just a few rows of cots, currently occupied by injured Workers receiving oil infusions and having their wounds treated.
The most advanced tech they had was pushed into the far corner, a 3D printer Nori and her husband had modified to create prosthetics, if it had enough material.
That's why Nori risked these scouting missions so often. She couldn't help the dead. But they might help the living.
Her husband, Khan, was dozing in a chair pressed against the back wall, their small daughter pacing anxious half-circles around him.
"Khan!" Nori exclaimed. "You know I don't want Uzi in here! She doesn't need to see all this!"
"I'm sorry, honey," Khan said, rising to his feet and adjusting his mustache. "But she wouldn't sleep until--"
"Mom!"
Uzi shot forward like a small purple bullet and threw her arms tight around her mother's waist. Nori knelt down to return the embrace. "I'm here, little bug. I'm right here."
Uzi pulled away and began running her hands over Nori's face and hair. She was always like this after a mission. Like she needed to be absolutely certain that her mother had come back safely. Uzi often had night terrors, waking up screaming about being left behind. It was a generational fear, Nori thought, passed down from herself.
She prayed that was all she had passed down.
It was then that Uzi and the boy in the bag met each other's eyes.
"Pretty," the kid said, mindlessly, the word falling out of him like a stray coin. His eyes instantly hollowed, embarrassed.
So did Uzi's. "Holy crap, it talks."
Khan came up behind their daughter and gave her shoulders a gentle shake.
"Language, young lady," he chided gently.
Two seconds later, he burst out, "Holy crap, honey, what are you thinking?!" "
"Just raising the half-dead, love," Nori said flatly on her way to the printer. "We do it all the time around here."
She set the Disassembler kid onto a cot and hooked him up to an oil IV.
Annie came into the infirmary next, holding a box of more ordinary medical supplies like bandages and gauze. She and Nori often worked together to save whoever they could after a raid.
Now she approached Nori slowly, as one approaches a potential lunatic. "Nori...what are you going to do?"
"Look at him, Annie," Nori said, getting the printer ready for a long night's work. "He's a kid. Most of the murder was ripped out of him by his own kind. I'm going to print him a Worker body."
Annie's mouth fell open in shock. "Can you even do that?"
"I'm sure as hell gonna try. Here," Nori handed her the sack of the night's gathering. "This should be enough to help patch up the others."
"On it," Annie said, lingering a moment to look at the broken boy on the operating table. Carefully, she brushed her fingers through the tips of his hair. "You poor thing," she whispered, before hurrying to her work.
Khan was at her side now. "Honey, his body's one thing, but what about his programming? The...the you-know-what?"
Not taking her eyes off her workscreen, she answered, "I've been working on a patch for that, just in case we might need it." She couldn't stop her gaze from wandering toward Uzi, who was curiously observing the new kid from a safe distance.
"I think I've got it down. I've had the infection too long, it won't work on me. But on a younger model, it should work."
Khan shook his head with a tired sigh. "I hope you know what you're doing."
"So do I."
Before too long, the Worker parts were printed, and it was time to start fusing. The process was a painful one. The kid whimpered, and tears bled from his single functioning eye.
That was when Uzi gently intertwined her fingers with his. He looked at her in shock.
"Hey," Uzi said with soft encouragement. "Don't worry. My mom's the best at what she does. You're gonna be okay."
The boy gave a timid smile. "Th...thank you."
"My name's Uzi, by the way. What's yours?"
"Serial Designation N." He tried to salute, then remembered he didn't have an arm available.
"Yikes," Uzi said with a playful grimace. "We'll have to get you a better name than that."
"A real name? For me?" He shut his eyes, the pain and the past suddenly worlds away, while his future was being built piece by piece. "Wow."