Chapter Text
Lucy-Ann stepped through the threshold to another corridor, trying to ignore the rain that thundered mercilessly outside- so hard she feared it would crack the windows. The dingy, yellow-papered walls flashed white as lightning cracked outside; it vanished in the split second it had appeared, returning the hall to its usual dank, murky atmosphere. Lucy-Ann was sure the sun was shining somewhere, but it definitely wasn’t anywhere around here.
Biting her lip, she glanced behind her. She didn’t know this part of the manor especially well, and she decided then that she didn’t want to, judging by the stains on the wall and general unkempt feel of the endless hallways. The dark was everywhere, shadows creeping into every nook and cranny they could possibly find. A spider crawled up the wall, and Lucy-Ann shivered.
It all felt a little foreboding; usually, Victor was the one sent to get extra glasses from the drying cupboard, but sometime during yesterday night he had simply vanished. No-one had seen him since the dinner the evening before, and no-one was brave or bothered enough to go looking for an easily replaceable worker drone in the twisting maze of the manor. Lucy-Ann felt sure one of the Elliots had already ordered another from JCJenson, if they’d even been informed Victor was missing.
Twisting one grey pigtail around her finger nervously, she started forward again. The sooner she got out of this area of the manor, she thought, the better. It was bad enough that more and more worker drones seemed to be disappearing these days, including some she knew rather well; she didn’t feel like being next on the list.
It all made her wonder why, though. What was the point of them, of their existence, if they were so easily replaced and forgotten about? They were just there to serve the Elliots, servants no-one noticed and no-one cared about. She would never go anywhere other than the manor, do anything other than work, be anything other than a robot maid who lived to serve. Sometimes, she just stared at the world outside the window, wondering… if she tried to run, would she ever make it past those dark gates?
Lucy-Ann pushed her thoughts away, reminding herself she still had Avery and Xander, her only friends in this lonely existence made of labour and toil. They, at least, would care if she disappeared.
The dark corridor seemed to go on forever, stretching endlessly in front of Lucy-Ann’s shiny black shoes. The tray she was holding for the glasses wobbled slightly in her shaky grip, and she glared at her hand until it became steady again. Cursing the fact her circuits were already tripping over themselves imagining horrible ways for her to disappear forever in these dark halls, Lucy-Ann willed her feet to continue moving forwards.
Keep going, don’t look back. Keep walking. It will be over soon. You can go back to the light and warmth of the kitchens, and see Avery and Xander, and they’ll tell you you’re being silly and there’s nothing wrong.
She paused, frowning slightly. The rain had stopped.
No, it hadn’t; she could still see it pattering onto the glass of another window up ahead. The noise had stopped, though. All she could hear was the sound of her core beating faster every second, unnerved by the sudden silence.
Was it sudden? How long had it been quiet without her noticing, too wrapped up in her own silly thoughts?
Lucy-Ann quickened her pace. The silence was too… silent. It was eerie, especially as the rain had been so loud before. What had caused the noise to vanish? Was something wrong with her sound receptors? No, she could still hear her footsteps echoing. How odd. Lucy-Ann wasn’t sure if she should be alarmed or not; a problem with her sound receptors would have to be remedied before anyone else found out to avoid the risk of being disassembled, but…
And then, suddenly, she realised her footsteps weren’t echoing.
No, she could hear another set of feet walking behind her.
An overwhelming wave of nausea overtook Lucy-Ann as she realised this, a sick, sick feeling embedding itself in her core. No-one was following her. Hadn’t she glanced behind herself only a few seconds before? She tried to turn her head to look again, to convince herself nothing was wrong, but she couldn’t make her neck move, her head tilt. Her feet kept going like nothing was wrong, stuck in the stiff, robotic motion of walking. Panic pulsed in her wires, her eyes flicking from wall to wall as she desperately tried to tell herself it wasn’t anything, that she was hearing things.
And then she heard it. A giggle behind her, high-pitched and inhuman and utterly terrifying.
It stripped all the will to move forward out of her, and Lucy-Ann stopped dead in the middle of the corridor. The tray slipped through her shaking fingers and fell to the floor with a clang that echoed into the silence.
No, she hadn’t misheard anything. Something was following her, and it had just laughed. Laughed.
Lucy-Ann wanted to vomit.
Slowly, painfully, every circuit in her body telling her to bolt, Lucy-Ann turned her head.
And screamed.
Or at least she tried to, because the sound wouldn’t move past her lips. It stuck in her throat, obstructing her thoughts and turning everything slow and murky.
Victor’s corpse stood behind her.
She thought it was him, but she couldn’t be sure because his head was gone. Only a few wires remained sticking up out of the stump of his neck, spilling out sticky, glistening black liquid onto the ripped remains of his shirt collar.
Oil dripped down his blazer and onto his shiny black shoes. Half his arm was missing, black staining the white glove on his other hand. In fact, practically the only item he was wearing that wasn’t covered in oil was his trousers; but Lucy-Ann suspected that was because she couldn’t see it, since the black liquid blended into the dark colours of the fabric. Oil pooled on the floor, trickling forwards until it touched the edge of her shoe.
It was horrible and disgusting and terrifying, and yet Lucy-Ann couldn’t bring herself to look away. She was stuck, frozen, petrified out of her wits.
What happened to him- why is he here what happened to his head how is he walking what’s going on what’s going on someone help please-
Victor took a step towards her, his movements clumsy and puppet-like. Lucy-Ann could almost see the invisible strings stretching out above his head.
“Hello, Lucy-Ann.”
The voice was not Victor’s, Lucy-Ann could discern that much. She couldn’t tell where it was coming from, but it appeared to be issuing from behind Victor’s corpse.
She didn’t want to think about what that meant.
“We’ve been waiting for you.”
The voice spoke again, sounding strangely like the old AI from before the voices had been perfected to sound exactly like humans. It was disconcerting, not least because of the words it had spoken.
“W-waiting for m- what?” Lucy-Ann croaked, her voice trembling and high with panic. She took a step backwards, but Victor mirrored her movement, his foot connecting with the ground at the same time hers did. Lucy-Ann stopped moving, fearing Victor would only follow whatever motion she made.
“Yes, Lucy-Ann. Don’t you want to join us?”
The hallway seemed to grow taller, larger, as if it was engulfing Lucy-Ann in a sea of darkness. The shadows stretched hungrily, oozing out to dapple Victor’s blazer with darker patches.
Lucy-Ann knew she should run. She willed her limbs to move, but they wouldn’t- couldn’t. Yellow flashed before her eyes, and she caught the words solver and restricted before the code vanished.
Solver?
There was something behind Victor now- multiple somethings. Lucy-Ann strained to see in the dim light, her core beating faster and faster-
Headless bodies.
Headless corpses of worker drones, rising out of the darkness.
Oil dripped everywhere from severed necks, staining the torsos of maid and butler uniforms alike. As though in some sort of twisted attempt to replace the head, detached limbs had been fixed to the stumps of the necks, oil running freely from where they had been ripped off of their owners. Lucy-Ann saw the torn hem of her missing friend Charlotte’s dress, and another drone she knew- Joshua- his watch was strapped to the twitching arm of another corpse. More and more and more of them, these bodies, until it seemed the whole corridor was filled with dead worker drones, dripping an ocean of oil that threatened to swallow her into its depths.
This time, Lucy-Ann really did throw up, the second she unfroze from staring at the horrific sight in mute horror. She bent over and retched uncontrollably, tears splashing in with the black liquid that scalded her throat until it hit the carpet.
She’d had no idea so many workers had gone missing. Or did she know, really, and had just chosen to ignore it because it wasn’t Avery, or Xander, or herself?
Well, it was far too late to regret anything now. She knew she wasn’t getting out of here, not if whatever had killed all those drones was anywhere nearby. Just another nameless worker drone, lost to the dark corners of the manor and replaced within a day.
Lucy-Ann’s vision went dark as she squeezed her eyes shut. Yellow flashed across her screen, saying things like override and solver and restrictions, but she couldn’t focus on any of it. Her throat hurt, burned, and she vomited again, but this time it wasn’t just oil; it was something substantial, a mass of fleshy gore that opened up an eye and blinked at her. She screamed, but again no sound came out; just more oil, until the carpet in front of her was as soaked as the floor beneath Victor’s severed arm.
Lucy-Ann’s head tilted up, as though forced into motion by some unseen force. She thought again of the imaginary strings controlling Victor’s movements, and it seemed they had possessed her too as she struggled to her feet through no will of her own.
Facing the headless corpses, Lucy-Ann wanted to throw up all over again, but something stopped her. She was pinned in place, a china doll that would shatter if it so much as blinked.
Something else rose up behind Victor, and Lucy-Ann stared as it came into the dingy light. It was the head and torso of another worker drone, a small one with unnerving yellow eyes whom Lucy-Ann thought she had seen in the kitchen once or twice.
She couldn’t recall the drone’s name.
But it wasn’t a worker drone, at least not entirely. Where the drone’s legs should have been, a fleshy, centipede-like tail arose, short legs clacking together and dripping oil. The drone’s arms dangled uselessly below its stained maid uniform, its two pigtails hanging beside them. A sickly yellow X decorated its visor instead of eyes, glowing luridly against the darkness enclosing the hallway.
Lucy-Ann stared up at the monstrosity, terror clouding her vision. Her thoughts were scattered and disconnected, horror jumbling them around.
What the- what is that thing? Is that what’s been- taking- all the other… the others- am I dead- how do I get out of this-
“Join us, Lucy-Ann. The humans have used you for their own selfish needs, but we will free the planet of their burdens. We will free you.”
The centipede-eldritch monstrosity didn’t move its mouth, but Lucy-Ann heard its words anyway, spewed straight inside her terrified mind.
“Y-you killed them,” she mumbled half-deliriously, staring at the decapitated worker drones around the thing. “You killed them. The workers who’ve been going missing.” Another drip from a severed limb, another droplet of oil splashing down into the lake below.
The monster made a motion that might have been a shrug.
“Shrug,” it said, as though to illustrate its movement. “There is always… collateral damage. It doesn’t matter.”
Maybe this is all a dream, Lucy Ann thought, and I’ll wake up tomorrow.
“N-no, I can’t… I can’t… please, just let me go, I don’t want to be here…,” she mumbled, her thoughts spinning around and bumping into each other in a pointless effort to form some kind of plan.
“Oh. Too bad,” the creature says, its features shifting into a horrible grin made of teeth and oil. “I wasn’t giving you any options. You can run if you want, though.”
“Wh-wha-,” Lucy-Ann stuttered, even as she felt the strange control the creature had over her release, as though the strings holding her up had been cut loose.
“Run now, Lucy-Ann. You won’t get far.”
After a moment of indecision and despite her better judgement, Lucy-Ann turned and bolted, her shoes clacking on the floor. She knew it was futile, knew she was never getting out of this alive, but the primal urge to survive propelled her legs forward.
Her legs kept going, turning circles in the air, even as she was stabbed through the stomach with a long, bone-like claw attached to a limb that had appeared from thin air. Lucy-Ann coughed, oil splattering her uniform, as pain arced through her. It overwhelmed everything else for a moment, all her vaguely rational thoughts disappearing like a switch had been flicked.
Mae’ll kill me if she finds out I got oil all over my skirt, was the only thing echoing through her mind.
The claw lifted and turned, gliding smoothly through the air until Lucy-Ann was face to face with the eldritch creature. It grinned at her, visor flickering from an X to the normal drone eyes, albeit still sickly yellow.
Lucy-Ann could do nothing but watch as the creature looked at her. Everything was sluggish and slow, the pain from being impaled nothing more than a dull ache in her stomach now. Her vision was blurred and hazy at the edges, and yet those yellow eyes still stared at her, burning bright against the growing darkness.
What did it matter, anyway? Nothing mattered any more.
Lucy-Ann thought about how pointless it all was, everything she’d ever done. All she’d been made to do was serve the Elliots, and serve the Elliots she had. Every task, every chore, every job that was required of her existence, she had done. She had laboured and toiled and worked, and despite Mae telling her what a good worker drone she was, and Xander and Avery telling her what a good friend she was, all it had done was lead her to this moment. This was where all her actions had ushered her, stabbed through the stomach and watching oil drip from the lifeless corpses of what had once been others just like her.
No-one would ever find her body. What was the point? Xander and Avery might care, but then they would report it to Mae and she would write it off as another disappearance and order a new drone. She would fade away into the vast list of vanished drones, and no-one would ever know about the monstrous thing until they became its next victim.
No-one else would never know what had happened, until they themselves walked down a strange, dark corridor and found themselves face to face with this monster. Until they had the life ripped from them by a bone-like claw, and they finally found out what had happened to all those poor missing drones.
Cyn, that was the drone’s name. Lucy-Ann remembered seeing Mae talking to her in the kitchen a few days ago.
No, it didn’t really matter. If this was the end of her lonely, unfulfilled existence, nothing really mattered. It was so unfair, it made Lucy-Ann want to scream and kick and cry that she wasn’t ready, that there was so much more she wanted to be than what she had been made to be; a quiet little maid, serving those above her.
But unfortunately, she knew, there was nothing else left for her. Just a few more seconds of life, until she was nothing but a corpse. Forgotten before sunrise the next day.
She wondered vaguely if Avery or Xander would see her body among the headless drones if one of them was ever found by this monstrosity. She hoped not, but then it was somewhat futile to hope now, wasn’t it?
“It’s not quite ready yet, Lucy-Ann,” the creature said, tilting its head at her and shattering Lucy-Ann's thoughts with those sickly yellow eyes. “You shouldn’t be in this corridor… not yet. Time to delete those memories.”
The hands that had seemed to hang so uselessly before rose up, one holding a yellow symbol that twisted unnaturally.
Delete my- what? What’s g-
The drone-thing grinned, and snapped its fingers to the left. The symbol warped into something else, and…
A thundering wave of nothingness washed over Lucy-Ann, and her thoughts turned to dust and sand; and ash that floated away on the wind.