Chapter Text
Luger was a nervous wreck. The presentation he had worked on for the past two weeks had gone down in flames, quite literally due to his schools outdated media board short circuiting midway through a slide transition. As he put the fire out using the extinguisher next to him, still desperate to finish the presentation, the fire caught onto his visor leading to it burning severely.
The presentation had originally been to show off the design for his new laser rifle. It didn’t actually use a laser, instead functioning in a way closer to a railgun, magnetically propelling pieces of metal at high speeds. Intended as a method to counteract the growing problem of the murder drones knocking right on the bunkers doors. Being as old as they were, it was clear to him that they would not hold forever, not even mentioning the hidden entrance through the vents.
It was honestly a miracle they were even still alive.
When the presentation had started, Luger had assumed that everyone else was aware of this fact as well, and that he was just stating a solution to the problem on everyone's minds. As it turned out this was not the case.
“Like, why would we even need to fight back, the bunker doors are there for a reason we don’t need to go out”. The snide remark originated from the back of the classroom were Jessica, the most popular kid in the bunker, sat.
“Well yes they are there, but there's no way there going to hold for much longer, haven't people seen the state most of the parts are in?! And we can’t fix or replace most of them because every time we try and service an external piece, the murder drones chase us back into the bunker!” Luger replied, his speech accelerating to keep time with his heartbeat.
He was failing. Luger was fully aware of this. It was all he could think about really. Everything was weighing in on him, and just as it seemed like it couldn’t get any worse, the overly ambitious animation caused the entire thing to burn down right on top of him.
After the visor burn, Luger was forced to go to the medical room in order to have it replaced.
Sitting in the office, a thought occurred to him. He wasn’t going to be able to finish the weapon without getting the last few parts from outside, but that raised a further question in and of itself.
How was he going to get out of this bunker in the first place?
As the repair gel seeped into the cracks remaining between the parts where his visor met his faceplate, he remembered back to his presentation that landed him here and that’s when it occurred to him.
The vents.
Mostly used to bring fresh oxygen in so that the outdated equipment that still ran on combustion wouldn't choke itself into non functioning, they were the least secure part of the bunker due to the general attitude in the bunker that “nothing has gone wrong yet so we’ll be fine”. This left them as the only unsecured exit to the bunker despite Lugers 286 various complaints to bunker about their security (all still sitting in the suggestion box unbeknownst) they never seemed to do anything about these ever-present gaps in security remained and Luger had never been more thankful for bureaucratic incompetence.
After a half hour of sneaking through the cramped vents, the entire area feeling like it could fall in on itself at any moment, Luger dramatically burst out of the vent system to a resounding nothing.
The entire area of outside of the bunker was practically mute outside of the wind blowing and the small trembling Luger had seeing the corpse directly in front of the vent. The bodies of like-minded people around. His slender frame traversing the area in search of the three remaining parts for the weapon.
The search for the first two parts proved fruitful very quickly, but finding the third was proving increasingly difficult, eventually leading him to the near vomit inducing object known as the corpse spire.
Standing near the nearly 500 metre obelisk of death that stood pridefully as a testament to the destructive capabilities of the Murder Drones. The area proved bountiful in resources, likely for reasons Luger preferred not to think about, and he found the final part and installed it in a matter of minutes.
Unfortunately his luck seemed to turn, as did the head with glowing yellow lights affixed to it.
N had been attempting to find some extra oil to bring to his crush friend coworker, Z. She largely stayed in the landing pod, building new weapons and upgrades for her coworkers instead of helping to exterminate the rest of the workers like the rest of them did. His emotions always felt complicated around her, having a crush on Z as well as their other coworker V, but V barely noticed him and he didn’t want to ruin his tentative friendship with Z.
His search for oil was proving fruitless, and since Z wasn’t allowed to leave the landing pod after being grounded by J for “anti-company activities” (trying to get access to the communications relay), N had to continue his search alone. Luckily, he spotted a distinct green hue that could only be the eye-lights of a lone worker drones. Success!
He was already prematurely celebrating the kill when the end of a mysteriously long-barrelled item began making humming sounds and the metal scrap surrounding the area started to float before a piece hit the barrel and fired off in the direction of his visor before-
[SYSTEM OFFLINE]
Luger was practically shaking his screws off with excitement. He’d just killed a Murder Drone! How was that even possible! This was revolutionary. As his perceived victory washed over him, the dread came as well as the body on the ground started to get back up. Oh fuck.
The Laser rifle was still cooling from its firing with 30 minutes left before he could even consider firing it, all else seeming lost, Luger grabbed the nearest object, an arm from a deceased worker, and flung it into the drones reforming visor.
“Did you just slap me with that arm?”
“Holy crap it talks”
This was a huge revelation for Luger, not only were these things clearly capable of complex thought, but they could even communicate in the exact same manner as worker drones, and on that note, why had this one ceased attacking?
The Taller drone opened his mouth and began to address Luger, “I’m guessing you must be a new Disassembly Drone for for the squad, I’m Serial Designation N just call me N though, oooohhh J’ll be really excited to hear about hear about this!” Luger was, despite the very obvious danger, incredibly ecstatic. He was finally getting a chance to learn more about the mysterious Murder Drones, even while still reeling from the discovery that they were sentient. This changed absolutely everything he and the rest of the bunker knew.
“I can’t seem to remember the last few hours of my life, but I’ll just have Z take a look at that in the landing pod and you can get to know her as well!” The taller of the two drones exclaimed a while wagging the injector like a puppy’s tail. This was not ideal. Luger needed to figure out either how to escape from a Murder Drone or trick a different one into thinking he’s another of the same despite his distinctly worker appearance.
Well in either scenario he’s probably going to die so he might as well see inside the home of the mysterious predator species that was currently wagging its tail like a dog in front of him.
So, with an aura of acceptance, Luger decided to put his rusty improv skills to use and hope that N was the smartest of his species. “Sure, Ill go into the incredibly dangerous spaceship thing that we all apparently live together in?” Even now Luger was still fishing for any scrap of information he could get from this almost fantastical monster that was standing in front of him.
As Luger was led into the the landing pod, he found that it was made up of several areas that seemed to act as rooms for the various “disassemblers” (the apparent proper name for the murder drones) One was filled with branded JC Jenson merchandise, and another filled with Golden retriever images, likely N’s based off of how much he talked about the dogs.
“We don’t have a room for you right now but you can use mine until we figure out something more permanent, I don’t mind and J banned me from sleeping inside anyway because I was breathing to loud”
“I didn’t think you were able to breathe”
“Oh I can’t intentionally but I guess I must have done it by accident” The Disassembler replied with a shocking lack of concern for his own well being.
As they walked into a gaping maw of darkness that was the final room, Luger braced himself for the death by disassembly that was all but inevitable. The room was incredibly dark with a purple glow that emitted form various LEDs scattered around the room.
N rapped his knuckles on the open door and called out to the inhabitant inside “Hey Z, can you take a look at my internals, my memories are on the fritz again, oh and we’ve got a new drone joining our squad!”
Yeah he was definitely about to die.
Well, might as well go out trying not to die (it was his favourite activity, after all)
“Just a minute N, also, how do we have a new member, I thought J said the squads were capped at 4, and I swear to robo-god if she was just making bullshit up agai-” The drone cut herself off as she opened the door and perceived a smaller worker standing unusually intact for being so close to a disassembly drone
“N…… is this the new member you were talking about”
“Yeah he appeared just after my memory cut off, probably nothing to worry about”
“Huh….. okay, N can you heat up some oil for us while I have a conversation with luger, just need to catch him up to speed on what are squad does and prep him for mods”
Luger was sweating bullets. He wasn't even sure why he was able to do that as a robot but nevertheless he was. His subpar improv skills were already being stretched beyond their limits but there really wasn't any way out of this expect further in so Luger waltzes right into the heart of the dragons den to hopefully have a nice chat and not die.
As he entered the room the light allowed him to make out the silhouette of Z, and he realised that she was significantly shorter than N, potentially shorter than himself even, and all of the other disassembly drones that the workers who had survived the outside described to the rest of the colony.
The door locked shut with a loud screech of protest from the ageing mechanism.
As Luger opened his mouth to talk he was cut off by the other drone in the room.
“I know you’re a worker...” Fuck.
“...and honestly I don’t really care all that much” Huh
Luger had expected many things that could have happened, most resulting in his death, but this had most definitely not been one of them. In fact it had been so far out of his expectation that it didn’t even feel like he was still inhabiting the same reality he had been in were the actions previously occurred. But he was. And they did happen.
The Disassembler spoke up again, catching Lugers attention “First though, I have questions for you, mainly how you got N’s targeting system to fail and secondly how you managed to make him think you weren’t a worker”
This was somewhat good. Probably. Luger wasn't really sure what was happening to him anymore, he’d really just tried to roll with the punches for the last couple hours. Either way he knew the answer to at least one of those questions so he might as well give the lady the answers. “I shot him in the head hard enough that it had to regenerate, I think that knocked some systems offline. As for how I tricked him, he called me a disassembler so I just kinda ran with it and hoped to eventually find a point where I could run away.”
“Did he not notice your build being different? Your not exactly the height of the average Disassembly Drones.” Z questioned further.
“Well for one does he really seem like the kind of person to question anything in a way that could be seen as rude, and aren’t you the same height as me? He must have figured we were roughly the same build.” Luger attempted to word his answer as politely as he could given the circumstances, but it still came off as a bit blunt.
Z proceeded to make a groaning noise that managed to swiftly carry the idea of “I have received to many comments on my height and you should not bring it up again if you wish to live” before changing her posture and beginning to speak again. “I’m only this short because I’m the groups engineer, it lets me get into small spaces and lets me work precisely on more delicate components, not that there’s all that much that’s fixable in this hunk of junk. On that note, I’m very curious about that device you’ve found, how the hell did you do enough damage to knock his systems offline? I didn’t think there was any weapon still working on this planet with that kind off power.” Z enquired with a curious tone.
Lugers eyes began to glow twice as bright as before as he realised he’d finally got to a topic that he knew how to talk about. The two conversed for almost 30 whole minutes about how the rifle worked, how it was made, and how the internal magnets functioned. N had been there for 25 of those minutes but was too polite to interrupt until he finally spoke up to prevent the oil he’d just heated up from getting cold, provoking a startled reaction from the two drones who had been completely distracted.
“Sorry for interrupting your conversation, but I didn’t want the oil to cool back down” N said, guilt clear in his voice despite how unnecessary it actually was.
“Its fine, N, we just got too distracted, anyway lie down I need to have a look at your memories.” Z said, trying to keep herself calm so she didn’t accidentality blow Lugers cover.
As N went under, Z, began to lock him into some shaky looking restraints, which she explained to Luger was because she wanted to get him to come over to their cause.
“And what cause is that exactly Z?” The worker inquired.
The Disassembly drone replied with a smirk. “Simple. We’re going to take down JC Jenson.”