Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The pod was finally in sight, and I saw T locking the door, forgetting about me, as usual. I’d always sneak in myself, and none of them would even say hello. Even the leader, M, didn’t even bat a eye. My room was surprisingly like the others, but my furnishings were second-hand, from the others. I didn’t complain, I could survive with them, and that’s all that mattered.

And kill all the walking scrap metal out there. “Get over here, y’all!” M shouted, summoning us to a meeting room. A map of our sector was plastered onto the wall, with multiple yellow X’s on it. All the places we had checked for workers.

“Damn, we’re running out of places to check.” I whispered apon sitting down.

“Exactly, we need to start looking farther, and harder.” M replied, before he pointed to a set of gauges. They represented the oil levels we were allotted, with mine being lower quality, since I joined after the pod was built.

“Wouldn’t we consume more oil looking farther? It’s a 100% chance of a decrease in oil for a… I’m not even sure how low% of finding a worker.” H objected.

“We don’t have any better ideas. What about you, T?” M asked.

“Nothing here, except checking the sewers. Maybe there’s a underground settlement thing going on that we don’t know about.” T suggested.

“We could always kill L.” T joked, earning a “Screw you too” from me, with M reprimanded him.

He somewhat cared about me. The three started debating about better solutions, while I examined the map closer.

Something was off about it. It wasn’t consistent with my memory backup of it, which was about a day ago, after we cleared a corner store. “What the hell is different…” I whispered to myself. There was absolutely a inconsistency in the map, all I had to do was find it.

“Hey L, what are you doing?” H asked me. He was a bit of a pushover, never really leading. He always followed what other people were doing.

“Does the map look off to you?” I asked H.

“Yeah, it does. When did we clear the factory?” H asked me, immediately zeroing in on the anomaly. “We didn’t. The X there is on the corner store, but it looks like it’s on a factory!” I realized, speaking loud enough that M and T came over.

“Damn, your right.” M realized.

“Nice work, you sentient toaster.” T congradulated, leading to a system reboot on the part of M. “Alright, let's conduct a raid!” M decided, all of us setting out. The four of us reached the factory at prime time, in the beginning of the night.

“Be careful, don’t trip over any corpses.” H warned.

“Reports from neighbouring sectors suggest the place is filled with activity, mostly consisting of transporting materials to a concrete vault in the factory. I and H will check that out, you and T investigate the assembly portion of the area.” M ordered, everyone, setting out.

Why did he pair me with T of all drones?!

“Alright, stay out of my way, and you won’t get hurt.” T threatened, immediately smashing crates to check if anyone was inside.

“Good luck with that.” I replied with a chuckle, checking the monitoring station, which was slightly sunken into the floor.

meanwhile...

H and M had cleared many rooms leading up to the concrete vault, all of them empty.

“So, what do you think is in the vault?” H asked M, speculating.

“Honestly, I have no idea. Probably building materials.” M suggested, rounding a corner that lead to a catwalk. There, on the floor, was a gigantic steel vault door. It appeared to be locked by a rotating valve, likely a rack and pinion system.

“Danger - Anaerobic Space.” M read out. “What does that even mean?”

“High-temperature materials inside - do not enter without protective suits.” H read out. “I don’t think we should open this.”

“These signs are probably fake, lets open it.” M decided, H turning the valve. When it was fully contracted, the door seemed to sink further in, as if it was being pulled down. We agreed to try and lift it using our wings, with a countdown.

“3!”

“2!”

“1!”

meanwhile...

“There’s nothing here!” T yelled in anger after destroying all the boxes.

“Nothing here either!” I yelled from where I was checking.

“You probably didn’t look hard enough.” T suggested, shoving past me to check. I looked at him, annoyed, before we got a transmission from H.

“The hell?” T asked apon recieving the notification, while I played it aloud.

We could faintly hear H saying something, but it was being drowned out by static. “I’m thinking their transmitters were damaged by something.” T speculated. “What could it be...?”

“I don’t think it’s a physical issue. The static just doesn’t match with what they taught us.” I pointed out before the sound of the wind started growing fast. Like air was being pulled somewhere really hard. “Damn, what the hell is going on out there?” T asked before I realized what it was. “

“GET DOWN!” I yelled before diving under a metal table. The side wall of the factory, where M and H where, exploded in a torrent of fire, which engulfed the room completely. Under the table, I saw T escape through a window, look back at me, and leave.

I was about to chase him and beat him for leaving me when a steel girder fell on the table I was hiding under, pinning me down, while also giving me a view of the metal ceiling burning.

The beam wouldn’t budge, no matter how hard I kicked it. My internal systems were starting to shut down from all the heat, before my consciousness simulator failed as well.

Chapter Text

“I think he’s dead.” A voice rang out above all others.

“Eh, looks more like a emergency shutdown.” Another voice joined.

“Just get the weapon-disabler that Jen created on this thing.” The first voice ordered.

“Yes sir.” The other voice answered, before rushing off.

later…

“The POST card doesn’t show any errors, we should be able to power him up.” a new voice emerged.

“Do it.” the first voice demanded, as a lever was flipped. Electricity flowed through L’s circuitry, and soon, two eyes emerged.

L POV…

The hell? Where am I?

“Hey, can you hear me?” A female WORKER asked me!?

“Yeah. Aren’t you supposed to be running by now?” I asked her.

“Try using your weapons. I DARE you.” She taunted.

“Alright, maybe I will!” I replied, trying to summon some rockets, but to no avail. Repeating the task several times, I gave up. “Okay fine, maybe I won’t. Did you install a signal block?”

“Yeah. Name’s Jen, and that’s Captain Pick.” She replied, pointing to a worker dressed in military-style uniforms, with a good-looking hat, and a award-winning moustache.

“Hello.” was all he had to say.

“Nice moustache. Anyway, what’s the deal with all of this?” I inquired, trying to figure out a escape plan.

“Well, your teammates just sealed us underground.” Pick explained.

“How so?” I asked.

“They opened Reactor 9-C. Or the lid, I should say. It’s one of the reactors that keeps the lights on here. It used hyper-efficent setups and a water-cooling design to generate power. Your teammates opened the lid of the IN FULL USE REACTOR, which caused not only a massive amount of radiation to spill out into the enviorment, but cause a large graphite fire.” he explained.

“Can’t you just close it?” I asked him.

“Nothing we have down here could withstand the amount of radioactivity present within the reactor. Even if we could get out, that graphite fire is still burning, which would incinerate anyone. You are stuck, one way or another.” he explained.

meanwhile...

M, H and T were speaking to eachother just inside the corpse spire, a large plume of ionized air visible in the distance.

“That was a disaster!” H figured.

“We even lost L!” M yelled in anger.

“More oil for us, so I don’t care,” T responded.

“Should we recover L’s body?” H asked.

“It would be hard with that amount of radiation,” M added.

“NO! I mean, we shouldn’t risk our lives for him.” T quickly replied, much to the suspicion of M.

later…

“Do you think T is hiding something?” H whispered to M.

“Not really. It is odd how he shot down looking for L’s body so fast.” M whispered back.

“Is it? T was always rude to L for some unknown reason, but I feel like this goes deeper.” H countered.

“I’m not entirely sure, let’s wait until we have more evidence to suspect T,” M replied, before heading to the top of the spire.

“I hope you are alive, L…” he whispered, looking at the smoke cloud and transparent blue laser heading into the sky from afar.

meanwhile...

“Alright, so what’s the escape plan then? Are we tunnelling out?” I inquired, trying to get more information.

“We are voting on that soon. Maybe you can offer some of your expertise.” He ordered as I followed him. Thankfully, they never took many of my clothes off, so I still looked like a slightly-tall worker.

We soon entered a large meeting room, with chairs everywhere. I sat down in the crowd before a stern look from Pick brought me to the table. I had always been trying to disguise myself as a worker to fool other workers. With nobody screaming, it appeared to be working.

“All of you, shut up!” Pick ordered, sitting at the head of the table. Everyone immediately quieted down, and the meeting appeared to start.

“As you all know, a graphite fire was ignited when Reactor 9-C’s lid was opened, exposing it to air, as well as releasing radiation. Now, we must figure out a way to exit so we can continue gathering materials from outside. Any ideas?” Pick explained, him looking at me with the word ‘ideas’.

Jen was also there, along with several workers with diverse clothing, colours, and personalities.

“What if we use water to fight the fire and contain the radiation?” Jen suggested.

“We don’t have any firefighting equipment. Also, we would still need to get on the surface. The entryway collapsed when the factory roof fell, adding more complexity to that.” Pick shot down.

“What if we tunnel outside?” I thought of.

“That could work, but we do not have enough resources to get far enough away.” a different worker answered. He was wearing a cap with a crate emblem on it, so I assumed he was the resources manager.

Another worker at the table immediately corrected him, saying that they had more than enough to tunnel out. Soon, the entire table was in a heated debate about a solution.

This was going to take a while...

meanwhile...

T had snuck away from the spire and was looking at the factory, which was a pile of mangled beams. He looked down at the floor where L was, and used landmarks to trace back to the table he was under.

He was not there. Worse still, it didn’t look like he burned to death but escaped entirely. If he was out there, he could reveal what happened, and get T executed.

He needed to kill L at all costs.

Chapter Text

Lately, T had been visibly on edge, always pacing around, back and forth. M and H had no idea how to deal with him, or what his problem was.

“M?” H asked.

“Yeah?” he replied, before rubbing his visor, and knocking his officer’s hat onto the floor. It was something he picked out from a old store, and he even machined a skull to go on the front.

“Is there a way, as a leader, to check what the hell is wrong with T?” H inquired, about to collapse from exhaustion. Neither of them had slept since T’s insanity started.

“Yeah, but I don't want to do that, because it’s an invasion of privacy,” M responded.

“What if it helps T?” H countered, making M think.

“Come with me.” was all M had to say, leading him into the admin room. A large screen adorned the wall, which M switched on. He swiped through several screens until he got to one called ‘Drone Status’. It showed the vitals of M, H and T.

“Damn, L’s vitals haven’t been updated yet.” H pointed out, looking at L’s diagnostics. According to them, he was alive and well, but had his weaponry disabled.

“Odd. Anyway, there’s T. Why the hell is he so scared?” M pointed out, two bars representing ‘Stress’ and ‘Fear’ at 101%.

“I don’t know. Maybe he has some form of human PTSD from the factory fire?” H pointed out.

“Maybe. I need to write some reports, you do whatever you want.” M replied, walking to a computer terminal.

later...

Without the knowledge of M or H, T walked into the admin room. They had left the vitals panel on, and T looked, horrified, to see L was alive and well.

T knew that L had survived the fire. And if L told them what happened, he would be dead.

Meanwhile...

The meeting had gotten nowhere, and I left with everyone else, content to sit on a couch in a resting area.

I started covertly observing the workers and saw just how intricate their daily lives were. The company... they lied to us. These workers were not defective at all! They had real personalities, real lives, real feelings, all of it! JCJenson was borderline commiting genocide!

Anyway, when I said the meeting had dropped off, I meant that a combination of all the solutions was being attempted. We would dig a tunnel away from the plant, manufacture firefighting machinery, and fight the graphite fire, then clear the entryway debris.

This bunker had a very interesting structure. It ran on several nuclear reactors, and got it’s radioactive materials from a destroyed plant nearby. According to them, they could run the place for ‘5!’ years. I had also tried to contact M and H, but the ground provided too big a barrier for the transmitter signal.

Not only that, but I had lost trust in everyone in my squad. What if M intentionally paired me with T? What if this was a planned murder? It seemed unlikely, but not impossible, as were many other things in my current situation. I couldn’t take any chances, not after everything.

Anyway, I had met several other people. Jack was second-in-command to Pick, and was in charge of day-to-day operations.

Terry was the resource manager, and had delegation over a massive storage bay. He was good friends with Fre, who was one of the nuclear scientists. I’m suprised they even had a worker trained in such a specific field. They all had put me to work just cleaning the bunker, which allowed me to peek in on all the rooms they had. A pub, a infirmary, a daycare, and even a bedroom sector.

Turns out, my dependency on oil is still here, so I end up drinking some leftover motor oil after my cleaning sessions, so they replace it. It’s terrible compared to the oil from a worker but I can’t kill anyone.

I also had been assigned a bedroom. It didn’t have any cameras, so I planned to do an exploratory mission of the bunker via the vent system. According to my sensors, the night should be falling soon.

What the hell is my next move if I escape the bunker?

I don’t know if I can trust M or H, absolutely not T, and where do I go if I can’t go with them either? Either way, I should be able to start it about... now!

All the lights went out, plunging the bunker into darkness. Even though the reactors could keep the lights on, this was to recharge the batteries which they had.

I unscrewed the vent, and carefully climbed in. My infrared still was online, so I could see where I was crawling.

The next few minutes consisted of seeing empty halls until I found a room that had a candle lit. Inside, were Captain Pick, and Jack.

“So what do we do about L?” Jack asked. How did they know my name?!

“Well, we don’t tell him about the other exit. When we find the proper tools, we can dismantle him to see how murder drones work. Then we can cause an uprising.” Pick responded, shocking me.

“Alright. Good night.” Jack replied, leaving the room, as did I. If there was a secondary exit, I needed to find it at all costs. My life was now on the line, and I would not stop until I found it.

Sections and sectors of ductwork were cleared by me, as I never found the exit. I should have known these guys were going to murder me!

Soon, after taking every possible path, I retreated to my cell and decided to recharge. I needed to find that exit.

meanwhile...

M was trying to remove L from the vitals system, but he kept getting an error that drones could not be removed from the vitals system unless signs cease or with administration permission. The company wasn’t helping, and nothing worked. The system just did not think that L was dead.

T was also there, looking at the screen, getting steadily more worried internally.

All he could do is hope that L was far away from where they were.