Chapter Text
Stepping on the tiles below me caused them to crack. Everything around me was falling apart. Tall pillars and carefully carved wall architectures collapsed as the wood split. I swayed back and forth, trying to fight the violent shaking of the earth trying to knock me down.
“Uh, think, think, think! Oh, V! I’ve got to find V. Oh, robo-god, where is she!?” I breathed through my panic.
I had stopped in the middle of the hallway, looking around frantically, “Ughhhh!” I grunted whilst tugging on my hair through frustration.
I didn’t know where V was in the wreck and the disarray. At the moment, she was the only person I trusted. But then again, I had no idea if she was still alive. My breathing started becoming uneven. Short, quick breaths, barely gasping for air. My chest hurt. I had no idea what it was—physical damage, or just a panic attack. With my luck, it was both.
“What do I do?!”
There were people running, other worker drones running, and other worker drones that were no longer capable of running, or at least not all of them. Multiple drones displayed some form of ERROR warning on their screens, all of which were on the ground, some of which lacked a body.
It wasn’t just drones either. Although most had already been killed, humans’ screams were feeding into the chaos. They joined many drones as they lay dead on the ground, blood pooling around them. That was one of the most apparent visuals. Blood. And oil.
I still had no clue what to do, now standing there just watching the chaos. Someone ran past me. I didn’t know if it was a fellow drone or a human, but I was knocked to the ground, my visor shattering. It was nearly impossible to see.
Still on the floor, I sat up and scrambled backwards, hitting a wall. A large grandfather clock next to me, one Tessa would hide next to when the world was all struggles, started to teeter, narrowly missing me when it fell. Memories of sitting by her whilst she was there filled my head, overpowering the creaking and shouts of the mansion. My eyes were hollow rings, light barely visible on my screen, and not just from the fragmented glass. My mouth hung slightly agape, breathing heavily. I clutched my chest, hyperventilating, entirely unsure of what was going to happen or what to do about any of it.
The floor began crumbling inward, a sinkhole opening beneath it. I froze out of pure terror, every part of my body screaming to run, or maybe it was my head telling me to, but it didn’t matter in the slightest. I was stuck, cornered. Cyn, if it was even Cyn anymore, or ever was, slowly came into my line of sight, rising from the sinkhole. The tangle of mechanical arms and other parts twisted around her. Glowing eyes all pointed towards me, their number uncountable as it constantly changed. The ground rumbled again before it seemed as if everything was pulled back through it. The only evidence of the terrors was the destruction that still surrounded me. The sun came back through the windows, with no longer a storm stirring outside. It was quiet.
The peace was unsettling, with the way Cyn was in front of me. She was standing limp, almost as if she was shut off. Her arms were hanging limp, knees bent inward, barely supporting her own weight, and her head was facing the floor.
My eyes darted around, not keeping my gaze off of her for longer than a second. I snapped my attention back to her when I caught a glimpse of her yellow lights reflecting off the floor.
“Hello, Big Brother N,” she said, her voice an eerie monotone sound, before looking back up at me innocently. Her head tilted, and her arms were held out in front of her like a raptor, elbows tucked back, and her knees still bent slightly inward.
Seemingly out of nowhere, a flash of lightning blinded my view of the room as the lights went out, the solver returning. My screen flashed off nearly simultaneously, my sight was gone, and my body was no longer controllable, fully shut down.
Text flashed across my screen when I powered on, too quick for me to process.
Placed in the middle of nowhere, nothing but chaos ensued around me. Screaming, crying, pleading, all from “Humans”?
It seemed as if the sun was out, but the light didn’t come from the sky. It came from the ground, a large crater forming from the planet’s core. The air was filled with a dark cloud of dust, resulting in a burnt orange sky. Buildings were destroyed, windows shattered, and drones were flying around—violent, destructive machines creating wreckage across the surface.
A surge of energy struck through my body, and a yellow X appeared across my face. Wings spanning out from my back, a sudden hunger filling my body. I knew my goal and my objective, and I just wanted to be helpful.
I launched myself off the ground, claws extended far out in front of me.
Scanning the earth below me, a sea of devastation and total destruction replaced the peaceful life I once had, although any memories of it were beyond distant. They’d become a small blur of thoughts, slowly fizzling away, becoming further forgotten with each second spent simply staying stationary in the air.
A familiar feeling began crawling into my chest, a feeling of heavy panic as my breathing intensified. I shook my head, trying to bring myself back into focus, and scanned the ground looking for someone to make my target.
I darted down to the first person that came into my line of sight. I landed behind them, cracking the pavement. The girl turned around with a gasp, almost as if she attempted to scream but couldn’t. She turned back around and bolted, not making it very far on account of my choice to leave the ground again and speed towards her. She was knocked into the dirt by the force of my contact against her back, a short yelp leaving her body when she fell.
She turned around to face me as I simultaneously swapped my claw out for an SMG. Her eyes darted to the gun before looking back up at me. Soft, pleading eyes holding a tight gaze on the X on my screen. I ignored any form of sympathy my thoughts tried to force me to give, rather stabbing her hand with my tail as she started backing away. The cry of agony that escaped her pained me. Her large eyes were still staring up at me, pure terror showing within them. Her dark hair was pulled into pigtails and adorned with a rather large bow, and her dress, which was probably once a beautiful red silk, was now tattered and covered with dirt.
She felt familiar in a way I couldn’t describe. As if I knew who she was, but even with this familiarity, there was a defined sense of certainty. I knew she wasn’t the same person my thoughts tried to resurface memories of.
My shoulders dropped, although I still held the gun pointed directly at her. I sighed, looking away, and subconsciously switched the X on my screen to a true expression that carried guilt and sorrow.
The fear on the girl’s face was joined by a subtle part of confusion towards my actions.
I gazed back down at her and met her eyes, which now released a steady stream of tears. My mind wanted to copy her, but I forced away any tears that wanted to fall, forcing a glare across my face before relaxing it again.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered, squeezing my eyes shut and facing away, unable to hold her gaze as I raised the gun and fired.
I began walking away, leaving her body there and ignoring the desperate hunger that filled me, only to be stopped by an overly familiar voice that rang in my head, “Giggle, bad job. N.”
Something in my head clicked, gears running faster than my thoughts. My screen was once again an X, and my body was in the air again; a mix of robotic laughter and near snarling left my throat. Within the next minute, at least three more half-devoured bodies joined the rest already killed. Three more people died while being swallowed by trepidation. The blood of at least three more people was placed in my hands.
I knew all of this was wrong; no one deserved this, but it wasn’t my choice. I had no control over my choices. It felt as if my body was powered down, but my mind was still on. Thoughts and words that were trying to escape me, but were unable. My mind was telling my body what to do, but the commands were left incomplete. It made the pressure so much worse as I was forced to sit, unable to do anything, while I terminated target after target. Person after person. Countless lives that didn’t deserve death.
“What is WRONG with me!? I can’t, I can’t help, I—I can’t do anything! People are dead because of me! They are DYING because of me! I can’t even stop myself!”
Many other drones all followed the same actions. Find. Kill. Consume. Endless cycle, hundreds of lives dead within minutes.
I felt like I was hyperventilating, like tears should be falling faster than ever before, but it was all in my head, my small voice overpowered by whoever was controlling me.
“Is this what I should feel like? Is it just me trapped in my head?! I can’t help! It’s just me. I know it is! Why do none of the other drones feel guilty?”
I was overwhelmed with an aching feeling I couldn’t diminish. The emotion had grown stronger with every addition I added to the death count.
The same voice laughed in my head again. Hysterical, but narrated giggling filled my mind. By the time I finally was able to regain control, or was given it back, the shouting and horror had severely decreased, as most of the people were dead.
I stood confounded, looking at the landscape presented to me. Dropping the body still in my claws to my right, I took a step forward, trying to get a better view of the devastation in front of me. A helicopter shot at nothing and everything before being impaled by one of the large tentacle-like forms breaking through the earth.
My legs wobbled with just the first step. I fell to my hands and knees, coughing up blood that definitely wasn’t my own. A thick red liquid was on the concrete below me. It wasn’t some small amount. It began spilling towards the edge of the rooftop, beginning to drip off in slow, steady drops, and landing heavy on the crumbled asphalt below, matching the drops that were still falling from my mouth.
I sat back on my knees, dragging my hand through the puddle before pulling both my hands in front of me. They were shaking heavily as blood dripped off them.
The minuscule amounts of light pouring from the earth caused a shine over the flowing wetness, a dark red gleam like that of the girl's dress. The thought of my actions haunting me, sharing the same feeling as the memories I couldn’t decide whether or not were real.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered, unsure if the words truly left my mouth. “I’m so sorry.”
The laughter returned in my head, louder now than before. I ignored the sound, pushing it back, unwilling to think about who or what it was.
“I’m sorry, Tessa.”
The name came through as a shaky breath.
I whispered it again.
“Tessa…”
I wasn’t quite sure who the name belonged to, if anyone at all, but it felt right, rolling off my tongue as if it had a million times before. I couldn’t connect a voice, face, memories, or any person to the seemingly foreign name. The attempts to find significance for the name other than the feeling heightened the stress encircling my mind.
“Maybe I’m just going crazy,” I thought, self-doubt crawling into my mind.
“Tessa,” I whispered for a final time. The snickering voice in my head had grown much louder, no longer possible to ignore.
The same words spoken to me before were said again, this time sounding much more malicious than the first. Words spoken one at a time, said sharply but spoken with a hollow voice.
“Bad. Job. N…”
The words sounded, and I immediately began to shut off again. The same cold darkness I felt before rapidly filled my head, consuming all my thoughts before the entire world went black.
FATAL ERROR