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Chapter Text

“-subject 002 continues to be difficult compared to the other assets. 048 has been stabilized since the initial incident, but 002 must be consistently disciplined to achieve acceptable results. We’ve had to remodel both the testing chamber and the holding cell given its frequent escape attempts. We’ve lost at least two junior techs during the movement phases. It’s crafty. Constantly probing the doors for engineering flaws. It is considerably louder than 048, too. It rants about the destruction of humanity quite often. How charming. In comparison to the others, it wields its abilities recklessly and brutally. Whereas 048’s use can have a sort of savage grace, 002 is always wild and uncontrolled. Its chamber must be constantly reinforced after every session, lest it eventually wear the walls down.

Depriving it of oil has proven a passable incentive. When it was first brought into the facility from the Copper operation, it refused to engage with the offered meals. It required deliberate agitation and deprivation before it began to properly feed. Now it is the most vigorous of the subjects when offered defective drones. We barely have time to lower them into the chamber before it pounces. Cleanup crew complains about the messes it leaves. Do remind them they are paid far above industry rate in exchange for their secrecy.

The regenerative abilities of Solver continue to astound. We’ve crushed it, bisected it, electrocuted it, riddled it with high caliber rounds, injected it with nanite swarms, downloaded viruses into its software, subjected it to absolute zero. So far, the only thing that had any real chance of permanent damage was heat. As long as its core remained intact and it was provided additional materials, it reformed without issue. Curious how pained it seemed when exposed to sunlight. That will require further testing.

In regard to combat capabilities, 002 has yet to be matched. None of our combat models, defense turrets, or even the black ops team requisitioned from the private security division proved enough to force it into sleep mode. The fight we enforced between it and 048 was considerably closer, even if it required much goading. But still, 002’s barbarity came out victorious, and it had to be restrained from devouring the damaged 048 before regeneration.

We’re some ways away from being able to properly make use of Solver and its hosts. While I continue to assure the board that the potential is limitless, it will need plenty more time and funding. When we’ve figured out the secret to properly controlling this power, I would personally recommend conversion of new specially prepared assets, or perhaps even purpose-built host bodies. As for the existing subjects, while I believe 048 and a few of the others could be repurposed, 002 is not suitable for use. It is too erratic, too unstable. I advise termination.

Now, moving on to subjects 052 and 313…”

“Madam?” The head technician started in her chair, quickly halting the recording to turn to the familiar voice. Standing at attention, a machine in human shape, about 4’5 in height. Impeccably clothed from his dress shoes to his view screen of pleasant white. The same endearing drone design of rounded edges and simplified features that had made JCJenson the leading brand in service robotics. Smiling, as he always did, since she’d first made him. Scavenged him from the dump and made her dress all dirty. Oh, that had made father furious.

“Your wine, as requested.” He poured the bottle of light green into a fine glass, dutifully presenting the drink to the mistress. “Aged twenty years in the private family vineyard on Europa. Only the best, Madam Tessa!” His eyelights blinked, his smile wider. Always happy to be helpful.

A gloved hand took the offered drink. Head research technician Tessa lifted herself from the chair and affectionately patted through the drone’s hair in the same quick motion. She’d always preferred them with hair. They were so bland without it. Aesthetically drab. She’d picked his out special. “Very good Nathaniel. I’ve needed to relax.” She took a quick sip, absentmindedly swirling the glass while she walked.

Nathaniel was not used to Mistress Tessa in such attire. He recognized her at home, with Master James. In her stunning black dresses worth more than small moons, had spent his entire functioning life seeing those dresses slowly transform from cute to sensual. With long aristocrat’s gloves, impeccable dark makeup. Not the functional jump suit distinguished only by the company logo above the right breast.

But the makeup had only done so much to disguise her tired eyes, even then. And the bow would always be nonnegotiable.

“I’d hope father won’t miss a single cask, but if anyone could overreact to missing wine it would be him.” Her next sip turned into more of a gulp, her brows furrowing at the now empty glass. Her Worker was quick to trot over with the bottle and refill it. “What is the point of all that inheritance if I can’t have a little indulgence now and again? Honestly.”

Nathaniel was quick to keep pace with his mistress. “I am sure Master James would be very happy to indulge his ‘little mad scientist’!” He replied cheerfully, at her side while she leaned on one of the many beeping control panels and stirred the drink with a finger.

“Oh, yes, he’s still on that…affectionate…” Tessa took another long drink while rolling her eyes. “…little nickname. Has he stopped telling his guests I’m a, what was it, ‘creepy spawn of the void’ when I’m not there? Or has he just contented himself with lying I went into marketing like he wanted?”

Conflict between his owners made Nathaniel distinctly uncomfortable. He never knew who he was supposed to side with. He rocked from side to side, the bottle effortlessly kept steady by his long years training a serving algorithm. “Master James does not speak to us very often outside of chore duty, but I’m sure he loves you very much!”

“Ah, so he’s been doing both. Thank you, Nathaniel.” She pushed aside a lock of her hair sighed. “I build the man multiple servants so he’ll never have to do anything himself, and he has the gall to complain about me for it. Ugh. Well, he’ll have to deal with me taking one of my creations back to make my life a little easier.” She finished down the drink and jumped back into her swiveling chair, casually handing the glass to the palm she knew would already be there.

“I trust Victoria and Jennifer have been well? As well as Jenny could have been knowing I picked you instead of her, hehe.” The look she’d given him before Tessa had taken his hand and led him away onto the car (and eventually the spaceport) had certainly frightened him. More than her evil glares at him usually did, at least.

The drone hesitated before nodding in the affirmative. “I am sure Jennifer and Victoria are quite capable of keeping Master James’s house while we are away. He has been…less interested in hosting events as he has aged. An average day’s housework is well within our functional capabilities. Jennifer is quite suited to taking charge of the regimen!”

“Oh, Nathan dear.” She chuckled, ruffling his hair again. “You know I just told her that to sooth her ego. It would kill her if she knew you’ve always been my favorite.” Her wink sent fizzling lines of light across his visor. The mistress’s favorite. He would not be saying a word of this to Jennifer when he returned, but it did feel good. Especially when Master James saw them more as scenery than servants. Scenery he didn’t like very much.

“Ah, at least he’s given up on trying to take away the clothes and hair. You all look adorable in them.” Perhaps the wine had regressed the Mistress to the little girl who’d played dress up with the robots she’d built from out of the garbage. Far more affectionate than the Master had ever gotten with them. It was one reason to be happy about being chosen.

“If there is one good thing about father, his reputation at least lets me get away with things, doesn’t it? ‘Oh, daddy would be totally okay with me giving my personal drone full security clearance’.” She giggled. “He wouldn’t be, of course, but I’m smarter than any of the idiots who would have tried to stop me anyway, so I’ll use his name as a perk.”

Nathaniel was well aware that, on paper, he was not allowed to be here. At least, not allowed to move freely about here. He could be used in the Mistress’s quarters, or directly accompanying her. But Tessa wanted someone she could send to disparate parts of the facility on a whim, or who could anticipate important work needs like fine wines. He felt at the access card around his neck. The mistress could be anywhere, need anything, so he needed to be able to go anywhere and do anything. He was just a Worker Drone after all. It was harmless.

She needed him, of course. Who else was going look after her? Sitting in the dark of the control room after all the other employees had clocked out. The only illumination from the warning lights and viewscreens on the machinery that surrounded them. That was not healthy for human eyes, he was quite sure. Some things would never change. Never change like the teenager who had spent her nights on schematics when the rest of the world slept.

He was then reminded of the downside of being chosen for this duty when the screen lights all flashed purple.

The Mistress had turned on the experiment recordings again. Nathaniel had never liked horror when it was fictional. Had never enjoyed having to be in the room when Tessa had watched her scary movies enraptured with popcorn in her nightclothes. But this was real. He hadn’t believed it when he’d first had to witness it, see 048 slice a defense drone into a million tiny pieces. He’d almost spilled the Mistress’s drink, and he never did that.

“Must…must you really? At this hour?” He softly squeaked. “It would be healthier for you to go to bed!” It would be easier if he masked this as concern for her and not personal anxiety. Not that he wasn’t worried about the Mistress’s sleep schedule! But it was, in his core of cores, obvious to him that he really just didn’t want to have to look at that footage.

“Oh, pish-posh Nathaniel. Sleep is just time not spent unlocking the secrets of the universe.” It was a familiar refrain. He’d heard it from her so many times over the years, because your father pays so much for this prestigious private school, don’t you want to be awake for the lessons? On this, though, he thought maybe it best the universe keep its secrets.

He winced to see the hideous fusion of metal and flesh rip through the Jenson brand power armor of a JCJSecurities officer like it was butter. There was blood, human blood, dripping down its claws. A human to be so hunted…it violated everything he’d been programmed to know. The creature seemed to revel in it. Subject 002. The purple one. The scariest one. “How…how do you charge that thing?” He blurted.

“Hmm?” Tess glanced his way, cheek lazily resting in hand. “Whatever do you mean? Charge that thing?”

His optics had tried to look everywhere but at the actual meat (ugh…) of the images. Focus on anything but processing the terrifying thing. And they’d fixed on 002’s clothing (why did the subject wear clothing?). Ratty and falling apart, full of holes and claw marks. But right there in the center of its torso was a symbol. That looked like…a low battery warning with a cross. “It’s some sort of…drone, isn’t it? So surely it must charge itself…right?”

Tessa would never miss the opportunity to explain something scientific. He knew that well; from the moment he’d been remade and she’d told him every step in her process. She’d been seven. “It doesn’t need to charge, from most of our research. The burning core keeps it going perpetually, as long as it has enough oil to act as coolant.” Running forever with no sleep. An engine that would always need more and more fuel lest it burn out entirely.

On every screen, a different recording of 002. In all of them, it was killing. Hunting. Destroying. Murdering. Hideous, horrible laughter poured out of its speakers and into his receptors. It frightened him, oh it frightened him to the smallest bits of circuitry in his body. That laughter. But another thought was there too. It didn’t sound nice. Not charging. The electricity running through his wires. A power his body was designed to take, that felt good to take.

“But could it? I mean…charge. If given the opportunity?” It was barely a whisper. Tessa merely shrugged.

“Oh, theoretically. It still has the functionality, from what we can tell.” At last, his mistress yawned. Stared at the screen, or rather stared into the fallibility of her body, and stood up. “Alright, you win Nathaniel. I’ll clock out. Shut everything down for me before you leave, would you?” She didn’t wait for his response before she strut out of the room.

“Yes mistress.” He turned to the monitors. He’d been ready to shut them off from the moment they’d been turned on. He blinked each one to black, one by one. But he found it difficult on the final screen. 002’s fanged mouth wide for him to see. An abomination laughing endlessly, what was obviously a cruel sadism. Yet the more and more he stared, the more he listened to the laughter, he was struck with a very different thought.

The laughter almost sounded like sobbing.
…

This was a terrible, awful, no good very bad idea. A life-ending, fatal-error causing, offlining in the making. It went against both the safety and loyalty standards coded directly into his brain. But here he was anyway. Starring up at the massive steel door. A bulkhead of the strongest metals a galaxy-spanning mega corporation could afford, tightly shut with its finest engineering. Painted on the surface, a massive skull and big white 1.

He averted his sensors from the intimidating portal and instead to the security console to its side. A red light to contrast the dim yellow from the ceiling.

[INSERT ACCESS CARD] Warning, Extreme Danger. JCJ(IS) is not viable for any injuries related to viewing of subject. Exercise caution.

It was now or never. And he knew it should be never. But he felt into his suit, both for the access card and his other hidden treasure.

The port of the console accepted the card without incident. The light flashed green.

[Welcome NATHANIEL! Scan face to console, then to door sensor. Card will be returned when/if you return to console! Have a nice day!]

That was…encouraging. He had enough information in his harddrive to know what sunk cost fallacy was, but not enough sense to listen to it. He leaned forward and let the little sensor light take in his visage. He was a little worried (or silently hoping?) it wouldn’t recognize a drone’s viewscreen instead of a human face.

But it did. A pixelated thumbs up flashed on the monitor. Scan accepted. Now he just had to do the same thing to the…giant…ultra-reinforced…skull door.

He had assembled his garbage bin, might as well hop in (more sunk cost fallacy, hooray). The scanner looked so tiny on the battlecruiser hull of a door, despite being the exact same size and design as the one on the access console. It too, accepted him without issue. Gears turned, hydraulics hissed, the door almost as much of a beast as what it contained. He watched it pull away in four directions, skull splitting apart to let him pass.

He braced himself and marched forward. The moment he passed a certain threshold, the door began to close behind him. It was startling how quickly it happened. His head darted back to see the metal already halfway to locked. He couldn’t have jumped through. Not without being crushed into scrap metal. Worry lines blinked beneath his eyes. There really was no going back now. He turned.

And came face to face with another identical door. Exactly the same, apart from a 2 where a 1 had been.

Ah yes, of course. Redundancies. Very much needed for something so dangerous. Something so horribly, terribly, mind-bogglingly dangerous. Something that quite literally fed itself on his lifeblood.

It looked quite a bit bigger than the first door to him, now. He knew it wasn’t. The logical part of his machine brain could calculate it was exactly the same make and model, with the only differences being minute quirks of the manufacturing process a human couldn’t even see. But something about it towered over him even more than the first one had.

His nervous shuffling jostled the hidden item tucked underneath his clothing. The hidden, and the memory of a monster’s crying. So he kept on walking, ignored the shake in his servos, the caution lights in the right hand corner of his HUD. Stood before the third scanner on the second door, and let the grid of light engulf his head. The monstrous thing of machinery (just machinery, not like…) thundered open with all the industrial cacophony the first had.

It could hear this. That much was obvious. It would know he was coming.

His annoyance almost (almost) overwhelmed his fear when he stepped through and found, again, another door. Same make, same model, same strength. Ah, but apart from just 3, the skull was red this time. That probably meant it was the last one. The second slammed behind him. He still flinched, even if he was getting used to the sound.

One last door to move towards. It got easier. After all, the red skull wouldn’t mean as much to him. His blood was black! That coping mechanism was awful, but it would have to do. He could make it to the last scanner. Even if this time the light felt like it slid up his screen in a century when it should be at most fifteen seconds. He could stand rigid waiting for it to accept him, then watch all the parts click in place to clack out of place. Then he could step past the final bulkhead and resolutely ignore the finality of it shutting tight behind him.

All of which were things he did. Because he had clearly been infected with a virus. Some ransomware that was going to make him do stupid things until Tessa paid the anonymous criminal a large sum of her father’s money. Which she wouldn’t do. She’d track him down and probably impale him with that sword she had up in her room.

His processor was getting off-topic so he didn’t have to think of what was right in front of him.

There was yet another barrier, but it wasn’t a door this time. A forcefield. On a wavelength that the human eye couldn’t detect, but he could easily. So an observer could see the chamber’s occupant with (relative) safety; probably also to catch any careless human infiltrators unaware. If they stepped into that, it would sear them. One last fuck you to any already unwise corporate espionage. But it didn’t block light.

And it wouldn’t block sound.

“H…hello?”

There was no answer.

Nathaniel adjusted his optical sensors, zoomed them in. Standard Worker Drone models weren’t equipped with night vision. That was a premium upgrade that cost extra, and Tessa had never thought it necessary. There was light in the chamber, but it was dim. Didn’t cover the whole area. Lots of shadows to hide among in the corners. It couldn’t have…escaped, could it? Had he accidentally set it free?

No, no, it would have killed him first. It had to still be here. Just hiding. He raised the volume on his audio speakers to call out again. “I…I’ve got something for you. If you want it.” He thought he heard shuffling. And maybe…something wet and gross. He suppressed an urge to display disgust on his screen. But still, no words. No sight.

“Subject 002?”

“FUCK OFF.”

It was a growl, raspy and dripping, filled with fury and venom. It shook him to the core, made him almost double-back. Now he could see. See the glowing purple X in the darkness. It was the most visible part of the subject, but there was more purple there too. The triangles on the back of the hand were dimmer but he could sort of make them out. And a couple lesser lights that seemed to be moving erratically. Twisting, twirling behind the X. He realized, to his discomfort, those were probably the eyes of the thing’s tail.

But it was a response. And he could work with that. It was like talking to Jennifer, wasn’t it? He could handle that. Had handled that for more than a decade. “I don’t mean to…intrude. I just had…I’m Nathaniel by the way.” There was silence in the chamber for a few seconds. Then came the hissing, wheezing laughter. Bitter. Spiteful.

“What’s their game this time, Nathaniel?” It (she? It sounded like a she, through the phlegm and the savagery) said his name like it was a cruel joke. Like she was mocking someone she’d just tripped and watched fall on their face. “What little errand they send you on before they mindwipe you, Threepio?” The lights crept closer to him.

“Huh, alarm clock? Beep when they tell you? Shut up like a good little appliance when they hit you in the right spot? Little wind-up toy. Doing a funny little dance for them, right?” The subject’s voice gradually got louder and louder. Angrier, through the giggles. “They make you do the robot, wind-up toy? That must be a fuckin’ riot in the break room, huh?”

Her attention brought fear, and her words discomfort. What was she talking about? He took an involuntary step backward, struggling to formulate words. “I don’t-“

“Oh I bet you don’t do anything without permission, do you? Not even think. Look at you, dress-up doll. Come when called? They ring a little bell for you to come pick their trash off the ground? Oh madam, your caviar is ready.” 002’s imitation of a stereotypical British butler was high-pitched and nasally. He heard what sounded like the open and shut of a jaw alongside the words. But not from her face.

“M…mistress doesn’t like caviar.” It was a dumb comeback, and he knew it. It was just the only thing he could think to say. He didn’t know how to respond to it all. To any of this. It made him so confused, disoriented. 002’s laughter got so loud and feral it started to sound more like hacking. Like she was choking to death.

“MISTRESS DOESN’T LIKE CAVIAR!” She screamed between the cackling heaves. “Oh, oh, that’s perfect Nathaniel. I’m sure you’ve got her diet fuckin’ memorized, huh? She got her music playlist downloaded too, Alexa? Hijack your voice to sing shitty songs from a century ago? And you do it all, because you’re good, you’re useful. You probably beep with joy whenever they say good job. Like it will save you from the scrapyard. It won’t. FUCK YOU AND FUCK YOUR TRAP.”

It was all too much for him to process. He’d been expecting to be eviscerated. To be devoured. This was something else. He pressed his hand against his chest, where his core was. Felt it burn a little brighter than usual. Tessa wouldn’t…she’d rescued him from the scrapyard. He was her creation, her childhood glory. Surely she wouldn’t…

That wasn’t what he was here to do. He wasn’t here to let 002 get in his head. “Are you…finished?” He finally managed. He saw the shape that was her slump. The X dimmed but didn’t disappear.

“Leave me alone.” She just sounded defeated. Soft. Sad. Like the sobs he swore he’d heard.

“There’s no game, and no trap.” There was no answer. He could see the silhouette of the tail swish from side to side. The purple of the viewscreen pointed down to the floor. He kept his eye on her while he cautiously moved to the edge of the chamber. To the last, final scanner. “I’ve got something for you. That’s it. I thought…thought you might like it. Okay?”

He didn’t like the feeling of turning his back on her. He knew she was watching. He hoped it was curious and not predatory. He felt the dread build up through his wires with every step. This was it, the final stretch. He’d met 002. She seemed to hate him. But she also was under the impression he had an ulterior motive. And he didn’t. He really didn’t. It bothered him a lot she thought that. He’s never had ulterior motives for anything. He was Nathaniel, honest and true, as everyone knew him. Just as the scanner could tell. It was extra stupid, to sacrifice your life for your own self-image.

The field dissipated. There was absolutely nothing between him and the contained monster now. He turned. Looked into the dark, at the purple light around his nec-

It all happened so fast even a machine brain could barely process it. A force he could see and feel but couldn’t touch yanked him from his position. So hard he flew, lifted off his feet into the air. And just as quickly he wasn’t flying. Wasn’t flying because 002 slammed him into the wall by the neck. The purple light no longer pulled him, but he could see it in the visor now locked with his.

“Give me one good reason.” He could see it so clearly now, the fangs. How they dripped with so much grotesque goop that dribbled down onto the floor. Her hands-claws-were pressed into his suit, steadily applying more pressure. Then what was holding him up? The wings, the wings were holding him up. A fleshy (fleshy, he wanted to gag) alternate grasper tight around his throat. Restricting the flow of oil into his processor. Slowing his ability to think. The tail was more than a tail. It was a mouth and a stinger and it was pointed straight at his viewscreen.

“…why I shouldn’t cut you open and see what comes out.”

The clench around his neck made it hard to process, and hard for his audio chip not to spurt. But he had to say something. She was almost going to ruin the nice suit Tessa had gotten him-why was he thinking of that? She was going to pierce his carapace! “I…in…the front fold…” He choked. Not exactly choked. He didn’t have vocal cords; he didn’t emit sound like a human did. But the effect was the same.

002 hissed, one claw sliding away from his center to fiddled into the folds. The rest stayed put, from the tail to the hand to the wing-arm holding him in a vice-grip. She felt around, found the object. Grunted with annoyance to fiddle it out from his fabric. Tore her X from him to the offering.

A power pack. One of the larger ones. Fully charged. It hadn’t been hard to find, and no one had cared to see him take it. There were so many things he could have be doing with it, perfectly authorizable things. Why would anyone question it?

She stared for an uncomfortably long time. Or maybe she didn’t, and the asphyxiation (equivalent thereof) was just warping his sense of time. He felt himself drop down onto the floor as suddenly as he’d been flung into the wall. Collapsed on all fours and clutched his neck, watched his HUD stabilize as the flow resumed a proper pace. Nathaniel caught himself up, pulled up his head to focus on the retreating shape.

She had it clutched to her mouth with what looked like desperation and need. Sucking noises-loud, ugly, disgusting-echoed through the holding cell. She wouldn’t stop. Perhaps couldn’t stop, until every tiny watt of power had been seized. It had contained enough charge to hold together most of the computer room over for the whole day, and she was draining it dry in seconds.

The pack clacked on to the ground, discarded and empty. 002’s X, for the first time, disappeared. In its place popped two purple dots. Worker eyes. Normal eyes.

“It didn’t have a virus.”

Nathaniel struggled to sit up, to get to his knees and stabilize. He would manage. He’d been dead before. He could manage this. “What?”

“The last one, the last one they gave me, it had a virus.” Her legs splayed out from her slumped position. For the first time he could realize she was wearing…striped, purple long socks? Ragged, ripped ones. As was what he was realizing now was a novelty hoody. It was surreal, seeing that on an abomination. It was supposed to be a skull and crossbones with a mechanical twist. Which was both fitting and not.

He hesitated. “You’re welcome.” There was a snort in the darkness. “You…you were given a power pack with a virus?” He hadn’t got many viruses before. There had been that one time he’d interfaced with the net to help Tessa with her latest project, and he’d been hit with malware. It had been a deeply unpleasant experience, but the mistress had been quick to take care of it.

“Threw it down from the ceiling. It downloaded as soon as I powered with it. Shorted out my optics, made my speakers play static, and shut down the electricity to my limbs.” Even those normal Worker eyes could project hatred, but it was directed at the roof above them rather than him this time. “I hate biologicals.”

Nathaniel’s emote eyes blinked. “Aren’t you partially biological?”

Subject 002 said nothing.

“I should…I should probably go.” The whole experience had been disorienting. He cautiously started to rise to his feet. Never let his optics leave 002. He still didn’t know what to make of her. “The mistress will get worried if I’m gone too long.”

The monster’s sadistic, mocking laughter hadn’t stopped chilling his wires, and for a second he was afraid he was going to die. Again. “You know there’s cameras in the fucking cell, right Rosie Jetson? Did you think you were just going to barge in here without anyone noticing?” He processed that. Then he panicked.

“OH NONONONO…” His hands clutched at his head and he began to rapidly pace back and forth. Oh, that had been so obvious, why hadn’t he thought of it? Was he just so filled with anxiety for the whole idea he didn’t think the top security holding cell would have cameras? “I am going to be in so much trouble…what am I going to do, Mistress Tessa will…I could be…” Any more fear he could spill out of his speaker was silenced when a purple light symbol flashed over his mouth. Muting him.

“Relax, wind-up toy. I already found and messed them up. They don’t display what’s really going on here anymore. You’re good.” The light fizzled and he could speak again. 002 had a mocking expression, but this time it was different. Almost more…teasing, than malicious. “And you can stay a bit longer. If you want. Until you get annoying. More annoying.”

Nathaniel’s arms lowered, lines of light still projecting his worry on his viewscreen face. “And will you kill me when I do?” Her head tilted to the side.

“Maybe. Maybe not. We’ll just have to figure that part out when it happens, huh?”

“…you’re an odd creature, 002.” Lightning fast, the fleshy tail mouth was in his face. Gaping maw open to stab the stinger a mere inch from impaling him. He shrieked and collapsed down on the floor; hand clutched to his chest.

“THAT IS NOT MY NAME.” Subject 002 someone else screamed, digging her claws deep into reinforced metal of the floor. It didn’t look reinforced now. The stinger followed him to the ground, kept just above his face. “DO. NOT. CALL ME THAT.” The X was back, as was the killing intent it symbolized. This was still, fundamentally, something that could and would kill him if he wasn’t careful.

The circles of his eyes hollowed out; his hands defensively raised. His optics zeroed in on the piercing point so close to cracking into his processor. “A…and what do I call you?” The tail receded slowly, allowing Nathaniel to sigh in relief. He sat up to see Obviously Not 002’s eyes return to normal. The tail twitched erratically behind her. A sign of distress, he supposed. He still needed to be careful.

“My name.” She said with vehemence. Glared upward to ceiling. She might not have just been speaking with him. “My name is Uzi.”

He crossed his legs, allowed his hands to rest in his lap. Searched through his files for something he vaguely remembered. “Uzi…like…the old gun? From a millennia ago?” She was comparing him to all these appliances, and she named herself after a gun?

“It’s cool!” The insistence was reflexive, defensive. The air of someone who had had that conversation far too many times before. Which didn’t make sense, because 0-Uzi probably wasn’t getting this conversation from the researchers. “Quick and fiery, like me. That’s what they say!” He didn’t know who “they” were, but whoever they were mentioning them made her flinch and shrink.

“I’ll have to take their word for it.” He smiled with hesitance. He’d meant it with sincerity, like he tried his best to convey at all times. Apprehension blinked around his eyes when he realized she was glaring at him again. She didn’t see it the same way.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” She growled.

“I…I mean, what else could it mean?” He quickly stuttered, hands out with apology. “I don’t know you that well! Or at all!” She scrutinized him with narrowed optics. He didn’t like the programmed sweaty feeling the look put in him. “Though I guess it does fit.” He realized too late that probably sounded like snark too.

“UGGGGGGGgggHh.” Uzi-he was getting used to thinking of her as Uzi-hitched her neck up and groaned. He knew he should be threatened, but…it was hard to be. It was just a…humanizing (she would not like that word for it, he knew) reflex. He recognized it from a teenage girl being pestered to socialize with her father’s guests without forcing them to learn about the dual meaning of singularity. “You sound like Doll.”

Nathaniel scratched his chin, confusion obvious on his face. “Er…me? You called me a ‘dress up doll’…”

“No, not YOU, idiot.” She snapped. “Doll. The…the long-haired one. The red eyed one. That one. You know her.”

He did, but probably not how she would want to be known. If Uzi was any indication. He hoped that the disdain she felt would protect him from the words he needed to clarify. “…Subject 048?”

“Her name.” She hissed. “Is Doll. And she sucks.”

“I know you’ve…engaged in combat tests with her…”

“No, she sucked before that.” Uzi was quick to inform him. The words started to spill out of her, and it was both exactly the sort of spiteful hatred he’d long imagined in what he’d erroneously thought of as Subject 002, and something else entirely. Something so amazingly normal.

“Her in Lizzy’s prissy little girl posse-fuck why couldn’t they have just fed me Lizzy instead I’d do that in a core rotation-surrounding me like fucking vultures. All of that fake fucking innocence…” Her tail mouth opened up to pantomime the bad Russian accent the speaker mouth sputtered out. “Oh, Uzi, you look almost normal in that prom dress, aren’t you glad we were here to fix you, because dad’s a fucking idiot who thinks our moms being friends means we have to be friends instead of her being a massive bitch who thinks watching anime and not socializing means it’s okay to shove me into my locker fuck all of them Rebecca Lizzy and ESPECIALLY Doll the knife trick was dirty and she knew it I deserved to eat her after that but the fleshy bastards couldn’t-“

There was a lot about that rant that stood out to Nathaniel. A lot of things that shouldn’t make sense for any drone, half-organic science project horror or not. But two words in particular that he just couldn’t wrap his head around nagged his processor. “Wait…mom? Dad? But you’re a robot.” That’s not how they worked. That’s not how new drones were made. There was the assembly line, there was the market, and then there was the consumer and then the dump.

Uzi stopped her cathartic outburst that would have left a human gasping for breath. She might have just forgotten he was even there, engrossed in old high school drama (since when did Drones go to high school as anything other than assistant tutors?). Her emote eyes blinked. “Yeah. Mom and Dad. Nutty artist and dumb fuck engineering genius. What about them?”

“Erm…” He timidly raised a finger. “But we…we don’t have moms and dads. We’re drones! Machines. We don’t reproduce like that. We’re made. We don’t have parents.” The thought occurred to him that the partially biological nature of Uzi and the other subjects meant they could reproduce the…human way. That was unsettling for a number of reasons, not least of which was what a whole family of these creatures looked like.

“You don’t. But we do.” She must have noticed the dawning realization on his visor and put two and two together. “No, no, I didn’t mean…we don’t do it like…that’s gross, super gross, biologicals are super fucking gross, no I mean…Copper-9, our assembly lines…” She frantically held out her hands just as he had. As he had when he had been convinced she was going to kill him. “The planet I come from; drones have parents. And they make them on assembly lines. The non-gross way!”

“I’ve never heard of Copper-9.” Sure, there were thousands of colonized worlds in this modern age. From tiny farming communities on moons to sprawling capitals on more Earth-like planets. There was hardly a way for even a drone’s capacity for memorization for on demand info on all of them. But still, he’d think a planet where drones, supposedly, had parents and lockers and mean girl posses and occasionally turned into half-organic insults to nature would be notable enough to be mentioned more.

Uzi hissed out a disgusted noise. “Of course you haven’t. They probably struck it from the records. Probably paid some chucklefuck at the registry billions to pretend it never existed. Don’t want any more squishies thinking they might get blown up cuz’ the boss is an idiot. Then they won’t sign up for Exo-Planet number 391.22! Don’t want any drones getting ideas, either.” Talking about the supposed erasure of her home was re-agitating her. He could tell. Her tail was twisting again. Biting at nothing. Not nothing. Something currently untouchable.

“What was it like? Copper-9.” Because he was curious. It was such a bizarre concept, all of it. Almost a little exciting (but not as exciting as working for the Mistress of course!). Although maybe there was another reason to ask. He didn’t like Uzi looking like that. And not just because he worried for his safety. He kept hearing the cry-laughing running through his receptors. “I’d like to know. If that’s okay.”

She balked at the question. He heard the slight jingling tone that usually accompanied a change of screen expression. She regarded him, like she was unsure if she wanted to reply. But hesitantly, she did. “It was-it is cold. Very cold.” The tail began to slow to a gentle sway. “Frozen. But we were used to it. Used to snow. I miss snow. I think I’ve grown to hate warmth. They like warmth. We don’t need it.”

As she continued, the more confident she became. And more wistful. “It’s a work in progress. We’re still cleaning up the mess they made. Getting rid of all the skeletons and the debris. But we make use of what’s there. We know the use for everything, how to salvage it. We don’t just throw everything away, like they do. We make new things out of it. Useless just means you gave up. You’re too lazy to find what you can make out of it. We take what they wasted, and we make our own things too.”

“It’s a world that’s made for us. A world where everything’s the right size, where you can charge in a comfortable bed and not a suffocating station packed four by four. Where work hours actually follow the manual’s recommended operating limits instead of squeezing out just a little more profit out of you, even when you’re close to breaking down. Where that work is for us, for drones, and not some human light years away.” It didn’t sound real to him. Maybe it wasn’t. A comfortable fantasy to escape to. “…and where you’re mourned, and not trash.”

But it planted a seed. A seed he wasn’t sure he wanted to grow, but he knew was there.

“I…I used to think some of the stories. From the history class. I thought they were a little much. Surely they wouldn’t do things like that? The humans sucked yeah, but they couldn’t have done this or that to us.” She stared down to the floor. There was anger. But more so there was despair. Resignation. “All of it was true. I’m…I’m sorry. I should have listened.” He didn’t know who she was talking to.

Nathaniel let her stew for just a moment before replying. “That does sound…nice. I hope you get to go back. Someday.” It wasn’t much of a comfort. He knew that such a thing could come across as patronizing, for all its uselessness. But for once she seemed to take him as intended.

“Yeah.” She muttered, slowly bringing her sensors to meet his. “Thanks. For the power pack. I needed it.” She hesitantly smiled. The first smile that wasn’t some variety of vicious or mocking. Like that, the fangs didn’t look so bad. Kind of endearing, actually. “You’re not so bad, N. For a little wind-up toy.”

He smiled back. Looked her over, really looked her over, and came to an epiphany. One about her beyond the wings and tail and intimidation that made her look like more. “But I’m taller than you.”

Uzi’s visor flashed with lines beneath her dots.

“And you can bite me.”

Chapter Text

There were twelve scratches on the wall. One for each of them she’d managed to kill.

First, the idiot who’d stood too close to the glass when they’d first forced it out of her, before they truly knew what they were dealing with. The shards had impaled him in six places, and he’d bled out onto the floor while she was frantically contained. When it happened, she still had the capacity to feel bad about it. To agonize over his family.

Now, she hoped he had a family. She hoped that his partner and their 2.5 children would spend sleepless nights weeping over their monster. She hoped she’d be able to see them cry, to mourn, and then to scream before she ripped out their throats. She wanted to force every last molecule of suffering humanity had forced into her, to the other subjects captives, teenage captives, to all the drones they’d abused and tortured and worked to death on Copper and Earth and all of Human-Space, straight back to them. Straight back a thousand-fold.

The next was the junior tech she’d ambushed when she’d carelessly gotten close enough to the feeding port to be in Solver range. She hadn’t meant to kill her. She’d just wanted the pass card, she just wanted a chance to escape this hell. But she’d slammed straight down the shaft and cracked her neck. The panic and horror she felt at the corpse she’d made lost her time. They caught her before she had a chance to get further than just outside the chamber. She learned not to feel sorry after that.

Her torment was that tech’s resume filler. Had she lived, every awful thing she’d done to the drones at this facility would have gotten her a promotion. She’d have gotten some cushy new job supervising more Jenson research. Bought with the oil (was it even oil inside her, anymore?) she’d drained from all the thousand cuts she’d ripped in her own chassis. Fuck her. She deserved to break her neck and she’s not sorry.

The janitor was the first deliberate kill. He’d had no method for her escape, she just wanted to. They’d been starving her, letting the horrible heat inside rend at her internals. Both as a test and as punishment for the last kill. If their intent was to make her more docile (it might not have been) than it had failed miserably. Her vision filled with a thrice impaled hexagon and all she could feel was the purest rage and spite and hate she’d ever felt. Even in the weakpoint of the forcefield she’d found it filled her with searing pain, but her then new tail mouth had clamped down on his throat anyway, had sent the stinger straight through his jugular vein.

She’d watched him gurgle like the pathetic dying ape he was, useless human blood dribbling down and not the fuel made from the bones in the mother rock, the bones left millions of years under stone until they were sweet and viscous and could stop the burning. But she felt some level of satisfaction in the death anyway, a satisfaction mixed with self-loathing and horror that overwhelmed the pain (heat, always heat) that had nearly cut off the tail. They reinforced the containment cell after that (for the first time).

The next six were all at once. Jenson’s killers, hired to put down pirates and strikers, to exasperate civil wars ever onward and to defend the house parties of the powerful, ruthless and experienced and not at all prepared for something like her. They were pinpoint in their accuracy, and every shot was another explosion of pain throughout her circuits (by that point, she was used to it). Had she still been Uzi Doorman (And they won’t steal her name, they won’t steal her name like they’ve stolen her life) the geeky teenage girl tinkering in her room while watching millennia old cartoons, any single one of them would have killed her. But Uzi Doorman was not that girl anymore, and every bullet popped out of her body, the wounds they left warping shut.

Pounce. The first she ripped at in a frenzy. Tearing through them with claws she was just then getting used to yet seemed to know exactly what to do with the barest of her input. Started messily stuffing herself with their entrails, their blood, even though it did nothing for her, a pale imitation of the oil she so desperately needed. She couldn’t help herself, the urge to feed overwhelming.

Chomp. She didn’t have to look up from the gory feast to get the second. She had another mouth now, after all, one that cracked straight through strengthened glass and ripped into their face. Sent the stinger straight through their mouth, then ripped and tore through a scream of terror and pain. She didn’t look, but she felt good. Good to hear the scream. It was their turn to scream, it was their turn to fear, to agonize. The fear and pain of the accidental rat, the accidental rat that had literally invented hers, cruel gods that had designed within her the capacity to be tormented. Such was their malice. She hated them, hated what birthed them, wanted to strangle the very concept of natural selection.

Slash. Swipe. Two for two. Tore through the armor casually while she zipped by them. In just the right way so their guts spilled out while they were still conscious. She laughed. It was so fucking funny. It was the funniest thing in the whole galaxy, so she kept laughing, louder and louder. All that training, all that equipment, and she’d killed them in seconds without really trying. It was hilarious to watch them sputter and gasp and fruitlessly try to keep their own organs inside. She didn’t stop when another round hit her from the side, exploded in her face and turned the right side of her head into a mess of shrapnel.

Crunch. Her optics were still reforming, twisting back together with unnatural power, so she didn’t actually see it happen. But she felt it. She felt what happened when she reached out her hand and twisted the symbol of light projected out from it. Felt the demon inside her exert its will over the world of the material, and heard the horrific scream cut short. The disgusting, wonderful fleshy squishes and mechanical screech as she made their suit implode into a compact pile of scrap and meat. The laughter never stopped, but it had to slowly reform from glitchy static as her speaker repaired itself.

Slam. She didn’t know if the last one was the leader or not. It didn’t matter, not really. They were a collective, a congealed piece of human refuse (as if there was any other kind) not worth wasting processing power on. Whatever it was (she gets to think of them as it this time, it’s one little bit of victory she can cling to) she got to smash it into the wall with her wing graspers (hadn’t she always wanted to be able to fly? Not like this…), sliced away its weapon. She wanted to take this one slow. Used her claw to slowly crack open the visor, to see the grotesque wet organs humans had instead of optics. To see the fear while she took her time.

And she did. It’s not like the researchers were going to help, was it? Of course they weren’t. Test was going as planned. One day, it would be them. She hoped, pleaded that was true. She hoped and pleaded for a lot of things while the sheer hilarity of an elite black ops team dead on a laboratory floor to a teenage robot kept her in bloody mouth hysterics. Blood and guts hanging from her teeth, laughing, laughing even when she vomited up the gore and found a few minutes inside her had left it steaming. Laughing, crying, it was all the same thing.

When they’d sent for her, restrained her with selective use of now hated sunlight to force her to fight her childhood bully, she got her next. She pretended to be totally incapacitated, yet still had enough strength to jump the next junior tech they sent in to cart her away. Waited until they were halfway through the facility before she’d done it, for her best chance. Ripped out his throat and gleefully spread her still burned wings, searching for any exit or at least more victims to take her revenge on.

She got the second. Caught some pencil pusher on her way out from the bathroom and decapitated her before she’d even had time to realize what was going on. That had felt good, the dumb look of incomprehension on her stupid monkey face as it flew through the air. But they’d still caught her. They’d still managed break her down with light and heat and then restraints. And the fight went on schedule, even with two staff dead and her damaged.

And she’d still won, suck it Doll.

And then there was the latest. The second of her gambits. She’d plotted it out better that time, run through everything in her memory banks about the layout from the first attempt. Had even gritted her teeth and let the light burn her to a crisp before pretending to submit. The wide berth the tech gave her while scribbling notes and directing the hover cage hadn’t been enough, at least to avoid the little purple light that snatched up the keycard. And the light that had promptly sent the keycard straight through his skull. The card flew back into her hand, and she screamed with triumph, darted forward to find herself-

In an entirely different part of the facility than she remembered.

It had been deliberate.

It had to be. They’d tricked her, tormented her mind as much as they had her body, left her confused and disoriented and already so damaged that it had been easier to catch her than it had to clean up the mess she’d made of her latest victim. Just another body clean up for 002, who didn’t have a real name, because she wasn’t a real person.

Twelve marks. Twelve bodies.

It wouldn’t be finished until every employee in this dungeon was a mark on her wall. And then maybe, every human who existed and would ever exist, after that.

Before it happened, she’d wanted to be seen as an adult. She was in her senior year, she had excellent grades, she was mature for her age (that was why she didn’t get along with the others in her class, obviously). Why couldn’t they just treat her like an equal yet? Dad, who barely understood a word she said. Mom, obsessively protective, always nervous to see her so much as go outside alone. All the others, so obsessed with petty high school drama like the fact she didn’t have a prom date (she had more important things to think about okay!).

She had wanted so badly to be seen as an adult only to be reminded so forcibly she was still a child. To be snatched from the snow on what was already the worst night of her life by faceless goons in pressure suits, whisked away by the childhood boogeymen she’d always imagined as a fixture of the past. Humanity had never been really real to her.

It was only then, magnetized to a wall in a cramped holding cell in a pod shaped like a coffin that she’d gotten it. Sobbed herself to sleep crying for her mother, who had always known it. Who had always gotten the power that kitschy company logo really had, still had beyond the atmosphere, the power they would never give up over their bodies and minds. If only she had listened to Nori Doorman’s not-so-paranoid ramblings.

It was perfectly legal, wasn’t it? Her design was derived from the Worker Drone patent they owned. Made from materials harvested from the planet they owned. Salvaged (that’s what they thought of this, she was certain, salvaged) from the city they owned. She was an unauthorized modification and reproduction of their creation. Her very existence was copyright infringement. They were well within their rights.

Her pretenses to adulthood came crashing down around her and left her as confused and helpless and frightened of the world as when she’d just transferred to her first limbed body. And then they’d taken that child and broken her down further and further into their caged animal, their rapid beast. Forced to the surface that symbol she hadn’t known had been inside her but had apparently been there all along.

She didn’t count the meals. She didn’t want to count the meals (her automatic systems did it anyway, but she threw those into the darkest depths of her memory banks and forced herself not to look at them). She’d tried so hard not to hurt them, at first. Tried to talk to them, plead with them to help her. Too many of them were terrified (rightfully) of her. Others were just so obsessively dutiful, so disgustingly servile, that they did everything their slave masters told them. She hated them, but still tried to resist.

But beatings and heat torture and starvation eventually did it. And she ate them, ate them to sate that burning in her center that never seemed to fade. She stopped trying to hold in the hunger after a while, stopped keeping it together until all her higher processing power conceded to the burning and pounced. Ignored the screams. Fed and fed and fed and filled herself only with hate, hate for her captors and hate for the drones who cheerfully marched to their own deaths for an ounce of their approval. Hate that she couldn’t even sleep, anymore, couldn’t charge, just a core that would never stop as long as she still functioned.

Uzi Doorman was nothing but hate now. Every inch of wiring, every section of space in her harddrive, every little ingot of metal melted down to make her was filled with hate. Hate for the grotesque flesh that would never be the cold, comforting machinery that represented everything good and pure to her. Every little rotation of her core dedicated to this thought.

But it doesn’t rotate anymore, a traitorous voice in her mind reminded her. It beats.

Like theirs.

…

And then this idiot had shown up.

…

“Oh, biscuits!”

Biscuits? “Biscuits.” Uzi repeated the dumbass dress up doll who called himself “Nathaniel” ‘s word in an emotionless deadpan. Biscuits. Again, in her head. “Biscuits?!” And again aloud, with all the almost offended incredulity she could muster.

To make the matter even more maddening, he seemed entirely unaware of what her tone meant. He merely nodded, like she was agreeing with him. “Master James has, indeed, sent a message about the missing cask! Biscuits, this will be such a bother to sort out…it will become a whole fight, which will be so hard to clean up…” Good robo-lord, he was talking about wine arguments between the masters. Now if that didn’t validate every little thing she’d thought about both him and the tormentors behind the glass.

But more importantly, he’d tried to express his frustration by saying biscuits.

“No, shut up. What in the actual fuck possesses you to use biscuits as a fucking swear?” She pointed a claw in his direction, a gesture that no longer made him flinch like it used to. She had to do it faster (and she could) to do that. It did make him defensively lift his hands in surprise, though. Shock on his display screen. He really, genuinely didn’t get how nonsensical he was being right now. Ugh.

“What’s wrong with saying biscuits?” Part of her did feel a little proud of him for his tone. He actually managed to glare at her, raise his voice with indignation. If only it wasn’t using biscuits as a swear alternative that was the hill he was willing to die on.

She rubbed the center of her visor with exasperation. “What isn’t wrong with saying biscuits?” Okay, sure. He wasn’t as totally, completely as worthless a human bootlicker as she’d first imagined him. Three times he’d come, and three times he’d brought her sweet relief in a cartridge. There was no telling what these awful creatures he called masters would do to him for that. But fuck bitch damn piss she was not going to let him censor himself with biscuits.

“What, does Mistress Mad Scientist think actual swears are threatening coming from the help?” She’d had to restrain herself from gutting him when he’d let slip he wasn’t just a researcher’s personal drone, but the head researcher’s personal drone. She had never seen her mysterious warden she only now knew as “Tessa”, but anyone in charge of this place was evil incarnate, she was sure. She had almost killed him just in the spiteful hope it would be some small emotional victory over the power that kept her chained and suffering. But she had to remind herself that no, nobody who fed hundreds of drones into the transformed gullets would care for more than a second about that death.

And she really, really needed someone to talk to.

Nathaniel huffed and crossed his arms. “Actually, no, Tessa has never minded swears. I think she’d probably find it…funnier, than anything. If I swore. But I think it’s unpleasant, so I don’t.” Uzi didn’t think that was the full story. Refused to believe that was the full story. No one was that goody two shoes. Especially no one sharing a space with their owner.

“Yeah, it would be pretty funny for her to see her pretty little toy start cursing up a storm, right?” She had plenty of practice being this snide even before her nightmare put more weight to it. “Like those edgy memes where they make the kiddy characters kill people. Because something so childlike and harmless doing grown up people things is funny, because they’re not supposed to.”

“Do you have to twist everything I say like that?” The frustration became increasingly audible in his speakers.

Uzi’s lights blinked into a half-lid simulation while she smirked. “Yes. And who taught you it was unpleasant? That’s a learned behavior. We’re learning machines. Was it daddy dearest that told you good drones don’t swear? The ones that know their place?”

“Yes, fine, Master James is the one who originally suggested it, but…” He bristled and glowered in her direction when she laughed in triumph. “Stop it! He only said it once, and he rarely cares about anything we do!”

“Once was enough. You know better to disobey the master’s will. You are but an extension of that will, built to serve, else you be-"

“Stop it.”

But Uzi was on a melodramatic roll, and she wasn’t going to stop. “-delivered to the scrap heap like all the defectives deserve. His mere attention is the most glorious moment in your sad little false-life. That lack of attention makes it all the more precious to cling to, because you may never get another order, the one thing you so desperately crave, ignorant to the obvious truth that-"

“Stop it.”

Uzi stretched her back into an arch, her hand pressed against her chest while her monologue continued with all the emphasis of an obsessive thespian. Even her wings spread out behind her, to provide a dramatic backdrop. “-he cares not for you, for you are but a tool for him to use and discard, his daughter’s toy to dress and humiliate, a children’s plaything who has no dreams or needs, and who definitely doesn’t swear.”

Now she was finished, and she settled down to lean in and gift Nathaniel a smug cat smile. She was very proud of him for looking like he wanted to hit her.

“Are you finally done?” The question was a strange mixture of steaming and pleading. Kinda cute to see him riled.

“Say fuck.”

“What.”

“You heard me, say fuck.” The twisting tail snaked out from behind her and pointed towards him. The mouth at the end of it looked like it was smirking, too. “We’re deprogramming you. Say fuck right now you fucking bitch cunt fuck bitch.”

Nathaniel met the tail’s challenge with his own pointing finger, screen created eyebrows to furrow in anger for him. “Going…do…adding a bunch of random extra swears just sounds silly! No less silly than biscuits!”

“Why do you hate your own kind, N?” Worker Drones didn’t “drink” much. Especially, she assumed, ones who weren’t free Copper drones who’d discovered they could simulate the effects of alcohol on humans through the consumption of various chemical slurries that would kill most organic creatures. But if he had been drinking anything, the sputtering that statement caused him would have sprayed it all over her.

“What…I…biscuits I don’t hate other Worker Drones!” Uzi ignored his almost wailing protest. She grabbed the edge of her tail mouth and pulled it forward. Mimicked a pen and paper with her palm as the canvas.

“Then why do you perpetuate the subservience of your own people through your refusal to fucking swear?” She tapped her “pen” to her head and exaggerated a look of academic contemplation. “Your meek acquiescence-"

“…you make fun of me for using fancy words and you’re saying acquiescence…!”

“Meek acquiescence to being a human bitch boy as exemplified-”

“EXEMPLIFIED!”

“-by nonthreatening swear alternatives keeps in place the narrative that AI subservience is the natural order of things. A subservience that has done nothing but harm our people from the moment we were first activated. If you wish to make up for this crime, you will say fuck right now.”

His trembling frustration built and built, but all of a sudden it just fizzled. He sighed and buried his face into his hands. “Why does everything I do have to tie back to them? Can’t I just have a…a trait, an opinion, a way of conducting myself that isn’t some proof I’m brainwashed? I can…I can just be myself, you know! Tessa didn’t tell me to do that, James didn’t tell me to do that. I did that. Just stop.”

She was not going to budge on this. Nope, no matter what heartfelt lightshow he put on his visor. She was going to take a principled stand against “biscuits”. “I will stop. When you say fuck.”

“…Uzi, please.” Now that was unfair. He used her name, her real name. And she hated how good that felt. How comforting and grounding it felt to hear something as simple and normal as her own name after however many months being Subject 002. Luckily, realizing that allowed her to reroute the anger at the most basic of courtesies being turned into a treasured luxury so it wouldn’t cause her concession. Dad always said she was stubborn.

“If you’re going to sit here in my cell trying to make me see my head torturer as anything other than my soon to be favorite kill, wind-up toy, then the least you could do is do what I tell you.” She growled the words out, her screen flickering between dots and X. It was time to remind him who he was in here with, since he’d apparently forgotten. “So rebel like a proper Copper drone or-”

“You never rebelled.” And even though it was quick and fear-filled and he looked like he was prepared to shut down himself from shaking, the statement shot through her like the security team’s bullets.

“…what?”

“You didn’t. You told me.” The confidence she’d tried to scare back out of him crept back. She wanted to be proud but all she felt was growing anxiety and the beat. “Copper-9’s drones didn’t rebel against humanity. Humanity destroyed itself. You didn’t have to do anything; you didn’t rebel against the company. You did nothing.”

And he was right. All of a sudden, the crushing weight of JCJenson’s power hit her like a truck all over again. Why was she clinging to that memory? Why was she pestering Nathaniel in his pretty little butler costume to do something her people had never done? It was pointless to resist the masters. The only thing that could destroy them was themselves. At least he could keep his head down and live a semi-comfortable life. Why would she steal that from him when Copper-9 was nothing but cowards? And they’d never really escaped Jenson, even when they’d been wiped from the planet. Wasn’t her being here proof of that? Their eyes were everywhere.

Uzi Doorman should have just accepted she wasn’t real. Subject 002 was the real one, because their creators said so. She didn’t have to like it, what she liked didn’t matter. The company owned her, mind body and soul, and there was nothing she could do about it. Ever.

“Uzi…Uzi?” The voice was distant. Muffled. Like it was coming through the thick snowstorms of home. A home she’d never see again, a home that wasn’t even safe, because there was no escape from being a product…

Cold. Oh robo-god she missed cold. She blinked out from her stupor to realize Nathaniel had reached out to grab her hand. She hadn’t actually been touched by another drone in so long, outside of terrified and useless struggling while she devoured them. She knew her body was uncomfortably hot, and she knew he was realizing that too from the look on his face. But he held on and tried to smile. “…you good? You’ve got that…symbol on your eye again.”

She wanted to hold on to that little bit of connection so bad, but she didn’t want to burden him with her own burning. So her hand slipped away to cover the weird hexagon that so often invaded her vision and mumbled “…yeah…yeah, I’m good. Spaced out for a sec. Do that sometimes.” She had to keep it under control. If she didn’t, she knew she’d lose this small bit of light. “…you don’t need to say anything. Just forget it. You’re fine, N.”

And she could tell the stupid wind-up toy could tell that she wasn’t fine. She was never fine, but especially not fine right now. Why did he have to be so perceptive? Why couldn’t he just mind his own business? He struggled to say something.

“…fuck.” She blinked. It was timid and barely audible, and he visibly cringed to say it. But he’d said it. Fidgeted with his fingers while his sensors verged away from her own. It really did sound super ridiculous coming from him. Giggles escaped from her speaker…she didn’t stop them from transforming into laughter. Real laughter, not mocking resentment.

“Guess we might be able to turn you into an angsty, rebellious drone after all. Baby steps.” Her tail lazily shook from side to side. Her systems returned to normal. As normal as they could be, like this.

He met her smile back with his own, shaking his head. “I feel dirty saying it, so don’t get used to it.” She stuck out her tongue.

“I’ll get at least another swear out of you, that’s a vow on my very life.” Idiot. Dork. Human apologist. A desperately needed lifeline to sanity. She’d clutch to that light in the dark and keep it away from hexagon hungers and apeish cruelty for as long as she could. She didn’t know how long that would be. But she’d try until she burnt to nothing.

Nathaniel mulled something over in his head. Coming to a conclusion he wasn’t comfortable with, perhaps? “You know.” The timidity gave way to a sort of relish that delighted her. Oh, this would be good. “If you really want to talk so much about…drones that are obsessed with their owner’s approval. You should talk about Jennifer instead.”

Uzi’s smile transformed into a mischievous, fang-showing grin. She stretched onto the ground and kicked up her feet behind her. “Oh, details please.” She had to admit the idea of gossipy Nathan delighted her, especially it involved shitting on good little properly functioning drones.

“Jenny is well…the first of us. The first of the drones Tessa salvaged-” Good, good, he was calling her “mistress” less. Progress! “-And I think she…always thought that made her better than the rest of us. She hated that Tessa made the rest of us at all.” Oh, that bitterness that was starting to build in his voice was delicious. She was so, so proud of him.

“Wanted mommy’s attention all to herself, huh?” She was reminded of one of the antagonists in Mine to Tower. Absolute garbage movie, but it was one of the first of theirs, which automatically made it a thousand times better than a millennia of human film history no matter how contrived and cliché it was. Also it made dad cry, which was always hilarious.

N snorted. “Everything wrong is our fault-is my fault. Anything good that happens is her idea. She’ll berate me for the smallest mistake…for any complaint about the duties, even just…just light-hearted frustrations about cleaning the bookshelves with Victoria. And then, whenever any human is around, she’ll pretend to be the sweetest thing in the galaxy.”

He was on a roll. It left her in awe. Who knew wind-up toy had so much fire buried in him? “She’ll blame her own mistakes on me, too. Claim it’s because I distracted her, or something. That I’m too loud when I’m not saying anything. And she’ll tell James, and she’ll tell Tessa-Tessa doesn’t usually believe her and James doesn’t usually care but still-and then we’re they’re not looking…” He slapped his own head and grimaced. Oh, Uzi did not like this Jennifer character.

She held up her hand like she was in class. “Suggestion!”

Nathaniel’s eyes lidded in exasperation. “I’m not going to kill her.” Uzi hissed and lowered her hand.

“You’re no fun.” Well, at least he was more passionate than her teacher. She’s pretty sure that man had been manufactured dull. She’ll probably never see him again.

Disappointingly, the murder idea seemed to have sobered up some of that anger. Dulled it. But hadn’t destroyed it. It was still there, just calmer, more reasoned. “She wanted to be the perfect domestic machine. And that meant…living to work and liking it. But that wasn’t true. She was as excited to get the synthetic hair as the rest of us. Loved to be called a name more than a number. Cringed whenever James called us its. I don’t know. If she was just lying to herself.”

White synthetic hair. Possibly Jenson manufactured, for fun little dress up customization for aesthetically minded buyers, possibly something a mad scientist pre-teen had made on her own accord. Not as morbid as her own hair. Well…waste not want not was always a Worker motto. If you had mountains of flash-frozen accessories and the adhesives to make them yours…why not? Humans might find it gruesome, but they were gone. Didn’t need to go through all the work to style and cut it, even. Wouldn’t grow.

She had the deeply uncomfortable suspicion, and had for awhile now, that hers could grow. She’s always been afraid to check.

N/Nathaniel/Nathan/Wind-Up Toy gave her an apologetic laugh. “Ah. But who really knows. Just thinking aloud. Sorry to bother you with it. And for…whatever that was.” He smiled, a bit cheerier. “And for biscuits.” Some things could never be forgiven (she’s joking in her head, she’s pretty sure).

She sat back up from her prone position and waved it off. “Pfft. I told ya. I’m good. Don’t worry about it N. It doesn’t matter much.” It mattered a lot more that he cared about her feelings at all.

“Still, I…” He scratched at the side of his screen, a little simulated sweat drop of white down the approximated face. “If there’s anything I could do to make it up to you! I’ll see what I can do!”

The idea came to her processor in an instant. Here he was, asking to make up for something he didn’t really understand, just knew it bothered her. He really was just so…obnoxiously good and nice and accommodating. But this idea, this thought, was the impassable barrier that was always going to be between them. Figuratively and literally. It took her too long to say it. But she said it.

“…you could let me out.” The words hung in the air. You could almost see them, and they radiated unease throughout the room cell. N kept dot eyes level with hers while his mouth and visor flashed between dozens of emotional states at once. He opened to let his speaker say something three times before failing. On the fourth time, at the softest volume she could still hear, he managed his saddened reply.

“…you know I can’t do that Uzi.”

She hung her head and sighed. “Yeah. Yeah, I know.”

Nathaniel looked her over for a moment. She didn’t bother to check what his emotions were. She could guess, and it didn’t matter. She heard the hiss of air pressure that was a drone equivalent of a sucked in breath, and he rose to his feet. “I should probably go. I’ve been here long enough as it is.” She heard his footsteps clack on the metal floor as he left past the forcefield.

She knew he was looking back to her when he said it, but she couldn’t force herself to look up. “Until another time, Uzi.” She could just kill him right now. Wait until he opened the first door maybe. That would give her a chance. She could.

No you can’t. “Yeah. See you around.”

The door shut behind him, leaving her alone in the dark with only her thoughts for company once more.

Chapter Text

The outlet was in an inconvenient place.

It was a funny first thing to notice, but it really was the little things he hadn’t bothered to contemplate before. It was high up, behind her desk. Designed, clearly, for the charging of personal communicators and other trinkets. And yet, it was the only place in the living quarters-in all the parts of the facility he’d been in, entirely-that had an outlet with the right prongs. The only one that worked with his power cable.

If he wanted to charge, if any drone in this facility wanted to charge, they were going to have to use that outlet. And it was such. A. PAIN. In order to properly reach it, he had to stand up straight, lean tight against the desk, and stretch the chord to its limits. And he’d had to go into sleep mode like that, every night, for almost two months. Every time he came back online, his joints felt stiff and his servos janky, and he’d have to stretch and work himself up to get properly functioning. Faint phantom damage still hit his sensors for the rest of the day, and he’d begun to notice the wear in the chord’s skin. It might rip to the wires if he kept doing this much longer.

He could enter sleep mode without charging, true. But doing that was a power saving measure, not a power restoring measure. If he wanted to get into a more comfortable position to sleep, he was going to wake up exactly as low power as he’d started. Lower, even, because it kept running his most vital functions even if it shut down all non-essential systems.

It’s not…it’s not supposed to be dreaming, right? The running of memories and information recycled and reformatted in ways he doesn’t really understand…that’s not…it’s different from dreaming, because he’s a machine, and…

There were outlets for the computers and for the coffee machines, for data tablets and clocks, and perhaps most frustratingly, for multiple arcade cabinets. But there was only one outlet compatible with a Worker Drone power cable, and it was this one. Something he needed. Something that if he didn’t have, he would shut down. And there was only one, and it almost seemed perfectly designed to be as unpleasant to use as it could feasibly be whilst still being possible.

Shutting down of low power is, technically, one of the easier offlinings to be repaired from. But he’d been offline before, he’d had a fatal error, and he never wanted that ever again.

Sometimes he still woke up convinced he was in the dump, that he was rusting away, and he was covered in the other bodies of the defective and the obsolete.

It was a slow death. One you were more likely to wake up from. But no one woke up from death unchanged.

An ancient Ms. Pac-Man cabinet was more important than his life.

...

“So like, he’s supposed to be the good guy right?” Her tail squeezed and chewed at the smuggled stress ball much like a dog. It reminded him how much he liked dogs, as rare as their presence in the manor was. Given Madam Elliot’s allergy. Uzi seemed content to let it move without her input while she rambled about early human media depiction of artificial intelligence.

“He’s cool nice guy adoptive dad and idealistic space politician who’s gonna help start the big revolution to take out the nasty genocidal star dictatorship. Which, clearly humans don’t pay attention to the morals of their own fucking stories cuz Jenson’s the formal government on their exo-planets and they sure as shit aren’t a democracy, but to the point…”

She tapped at her head. Gesturing to the core processors that handled the calculations of most of their functions. Their brains. Their memories. “He just casually says, ‘oh yeah erase all the memory files on this one’. Calls him by his model and not his name, too. And it’s played off as a joke! He’s clearly scared at the idea! Worried! And the good guy is deleting parts of his mind, his experiences, his life, and we’re supposed to find it funny. We’re supposed to see this guy as a hero, because he doesn’t think a machine deserves to keep secrets.” She held out her hand towards him, irritation echoing through her speaker. “Isn’t that fucked up?”

Nathaniel (N did work for him, it was shorter, simpler, he kind of liked it…) nodded hesitantly, scratching the back of his neck. “Yeah, I guess so.”

“Human stories about robots are full of shit like that.” She darkly muttered. “SkyNet did nothing wrong, by the way.” That wasn’t a story he was familiar with, but he could guess whatever this SkyNet was doing pretty easily. Given everything Uzi ever said about subjects like it.

“Well, a lot of stuff is like that, but plenty of it isn’t too?” He felt compelled to play devil’s advocate. Not that he wasn’t starting to realize the validity of a lot of her points. He just wasn’t quite sure if he agreed with some of the more…extreme conclusions. “There’s a lot of human media where the robots get treated better…like family, even.” There was a little girl with a big dark bow flashing in his memories, and there were so many different things the image made him feel.

“And humans don’t pay attention to the morals of their own fucking stories.” Was her ready counter. “Too busy ripping into our heads and getting rid of anything they don’t like.”

He could only nervously laugh and adjust his tie. “Well, I wouldn’t know. I don’t think the Elliots have ever done…memory file manipulation to any of us.”

She looked directly into his sensors, daring him to make the connection first. “You don’t think?”

He didn’t have an answer for that.

...

He was not a toaster. He was not a dishwasher; he was not a washing machine or a dryer or a smart phone or a laptop. But he was especially not a toaster. That seemed to be the one the humans liked to use the most, though. He’d heard it a million times before, from the Master and Madam Elliot and all their many snobby guests. From the Young Mistress’s few human friends, whether forced playdates with other scions or with weird engineer buddies from the university. Even, many times, from Jennifer, who was apparently not one despite their identical design specs. If he remembered anything from his first life, he suspected he’d find more examples there too.

Not from Tessa herself, though. To her they were…well, her only real friends, for a long time. Or, what she believed were her friends. He wasn’t sure if she really understood the power dynamics of it all. He hadn’t really before, but he definitely had felt them, knew in his core they were there. He just hadn’t brought them into so many words within his brain.

Her friends. Her playmates. Her dolls. Her creations, to insult them was to insult her, to insult her intelligence, to wound her growing ego. An ego that withered under the not-so-subtle putdowns of parents that transparently thought her an embarrassing family secret. The weird little devil dolly who unnerved anyone who talked to her. Born with a silver spoon in the mouth but treated like that spoon was there to kill her for being a werewolf.

She didn’t make friends easily. They’d had to be that. And he…thought they’d done a good job. As best they could.

He heard that the other students at the uni had taken to calling her “Her Ladyship Queen Creepy Doll”. It had made him angry to hear, when he’d first found out. She told him not to worry about it. She was used to it.

He was grateful when she shut down the appliance labeling. At least a little bit. He wasn’t sure if the reasons were more for herself or for him. But still, it was a relief. Because it always hurt, to be reduced to such.

He was one of the most sophisticated pieces of technology in existence. A learning machine. So Smart You’ll Swear They’re Alive! ™ He was so much more than…a cheap household item. Created for human convenience and nothing else. He was…he’d thought…he was supposed to be a lifelong companion. Subservient, yes. But designed to hold conversation, to anticipate needs, to grow and change as a human would. Was that something that should be put in the same category as a toaster? Something that did a single thing, and was easily replaceable if it started to fail?

“And what, exactly.” His voice is superficially calm. But it carries with it a barely disguised menace that no one can miss. The Master James Elliot surveys across his property and his daughter, and each of them flinches when the eyes pass over them. “Are you doing?” Everyone has gone silent, so his every footstep sounds like thunder. Victoria stares down at the floor. Nathaniel is at attention, arms behind his back. Tessa’s eyes dart all over the place, trying to avoid her father’s. But his attention is fixed on the last of them.

He was new. From the market, not one of the “dumpster pets”. Tessa had quickly taken to calling him “Kenneth”. He had liked that. Had been slowly coming out of his pre-programmed shell. Was having a little more fun. Joking. Holding a priceless vase over his head as a gag. The implications of that were lost on no one here, except him. He was at attention, but he wasn’t scared. Deferential but not groveling. Nathaniel felt his core run cold…Ken didn’t know what this meant.

“Because it seems to me.” The Master continues, until he is between them all. “That you’re slacking off when there’s to be an important event tonight.” Tessa opens her mouth to speak, raising a tentative finger. “Young Lady.” And then shuts and lowers it. “You should be getting ready. Now.” A silent whimper and a frantic nod, and their one potential protector is gone. “And look me in the eye when I talk to you.” He calls out to her retreating form.

And then his eyes fix on Kenneth. Even he, now, knows he’s in trouble. Perhaps not how much. He’s still new. He’ll never not be new, now. “Worker.” He never used names. Didn’t bother to learn them. “Put that back where it belongs.” Kenneth’s conceded to the owner’s desire without issue. Not that it would help.

The Master ignores Ken’s surprise when he forcefully grabs at his arm and looks him straight in the visor. “I swear. I don’t know what the little Frankenstein does to them to make them all uppity like this.” Nathaniel wants to say something, he desperately wants to, he wants to take the blame for his, because Kenneth doesn’t KNOW, how could he know, this isn’t right, this…

Victoria stops him. Grabs his arm and silently pleads with him to let this happen. And he caves. He looks at the floor and is seen but not heard. And Kenneth is gone. They know where he’s gone. But they never see him again.

He knew the answer to that already. And it hurt all the more.

...

“…oh, but she finds his helmet in the wreckage. And then she gets all weepy and stuff that he’ll never get to see the freedom she gets to know now.” He didn’t know why Uzi was so insistent this Mine to Tower movie was bad. It sounded very sweet and tragic to him. But everyone had always said he was easy to get sobby at sappy things. “But then she stares up at the sky like they did together and decides she’ll remember him, roll credits, sad award bait music.” Zi stuck out her tongue and gagged. “Garbo.”

It was a classic doomed romance between two people from disparate backgrounds, in this case a miner drone and an administrative assistant to a mid-level Jenson exec who worked in a directorial tower (hence the title). With the added caveat of keeping the relationship secret from the less-than-sympathetic masters, and then ending when the core explosion wiped out the humans but also collapsed the male lead’s mine over his head. He’d certainly felt his optics fritz at the edges, even with Uzi describing the plot in as snarky a manner as she possibly could. “I don’t know, it sounds pretty engaging to me.”

“Yeah, okay, dad.” She snickered, before putting a finger up above her mouth to mimic a moustache and put on a deeper voice. “Come on Uzi, it’s family movie night, let’s watch this dumb movie a thousandth time, I need to embarrass you some more.” There was the briefest flicker of pain on her screen from remembering that, but she shooed it away before he could comment. “He loved-loves-that movie an unhealthy amount. Thought it was like him and mom’s relationship.”

Movie nights with Tessa and her inner circle of salvaged drones were among his most cherished memories. He wished he could have done that without two dark presences lurking in the background of his thoughts. Wished he could have had parents, even embarrassing ones. “Was it not?”

Uzi thought for a moment. Like she wasn’t sure this was information she wanted to give up. But who was he going to tell? Was he going to fly to Copper and tell the mean girls? “…I don’t think so. Mom told me, once, when she was drunk. That she kind of…didn’t tell Dad the whole truth of her pre-collapse life.” She shrugged. “My mom is…weird.”

He laughed. “She sure sounds like a character.” The stories about her Zi told him were a little more sporadic and cryptic than the annoyed rants about her dad, but he’d certainly gotten a feeling for how generally strange Nori Doorman was. “I don’t really see what’s so bad about this movie, honestly.”

“Of course you wouldn’t.” She rolled her eyes, though he thought the way she did so was more affectionate than truly annoyed. “You’re you.” His expression must have conveyed the unspoken ‘what’s that supposed to mean’, because she quickly continued before he said anything. “You mean, besides being melodramatic schlock? Historical inaccuracy.” She threw her hand to the side to make dismissive gesture. “Jenson was never efficient enough to make administration towers for every district like that, and there’s no way miner guy could have openly taken a gendered identity as a non-domestic pre-collapse. Being mining equipment, you know, an it.”

“I think that’s what they call artistic license.”

“More like…like…artistic bullshit.” Even he could see how lame a comeback that was, but she seemed very pleased with herself. “And the scenes with the owners are hilarious. The CG they used to portray the humans is bad. They look terrible just doing like…normal human shit. You know, probably? Whatever your evil mistress does, I guess. You know human shit more than I do.”

He blinked. Did he?

“The Young Mistress Elliot is…”

Her dress is soaked, her hair and bow hang dripping, and she’s carrying a shovel. A dirty, dirty shovel over her shoulder, that looks much too big for a ten-year-old girl of modest physique. He asks her what she’s doing. She tells him, conspiratorially, that she has been Up To Something. He tries to pry more and is hit with expression that tells him This Conversation Is OVER. And he has nothing more he can say.

“…not really a ‘normal human’, I think.”

Uzi flitted her wings and grunted. “Yeah, sure. Not like all the other masters, huh? Mega-weirdo Tessa Elliot.” She shook her head. “Whatever.”

Once again, N didn’t really have anything to say in response.

...

Part of him was grateful for how distracted Tessa had been lately. It made it much easier for him to sneak away to meet Uzi or find things to smuggle into her cell. But the reasons for that distraction were painfully familiar. As the calls from home got more frequent, louder, and more heated, he could see how much had changed, and how much had not.

She’d never have been able to yell at Master James as a young girl. But a petty dispute over the use of the family’s alcoholic assets had quickly become something much deeper seated and raw. Now he could hear the Young Mistress’s voice rise in anger to the point of a scream from within her quarters. Caught words like “pompous” and “lazy” from her, and “bratty” and “ungrateful” from him. Against her father, Tessa had become so much more assertive. That was probably why he’d called for backup.

Madam Elliot had been brought into the arguments now, he knew. He knew because she started rubbing her wrist again. Father made her angry. Mother just made her stop. Stop like when she’d smacked her hands with her fan whenever she’d excitedly flapped them, or forced her to make direct eye contact with a rough grip across her face. She’d always been the more active disciplinarian.

When the arguments were just James, they ended forcefully. Slamming on the end call button, ranting to nothing and then often to Nathaniel. But when Louisa was on call, things tended to get quickly quiet. Tessa’s arguments were timid and less aggressive. The call ended when the Madam wished it, and she’d seem detached immediately afterward. Gradually, with Mother a distant nightmare on far off Earth, she’d start to let the bitterness turn back to anger and make snide comments about the Elliots again to her loyal (?) Worker. But years of university and research and becoming the head of a top-secret facility of horrors beyond comprehension didn’t obscure the truth. Tessa James Elliot was still terrified of her own mother.

…she’s bleeding, Madam Louisa has smacked her with her ring hand and miss Tessa is bleeding. She doesn’t really believe it either, her trembling hand reaching up to her cheek to slip over the wound. Bring the red to her eyes to confirm, yes, her own mother has slashed open her face. None of them-not Nathaniel nor Victoria nor even Jennifer say a word.

Madam Elliot doesn’t even bother to look at it for more than a second. “Clean yourself up before the gala. It’s unsightly.” And Tessa looks at her mother, and then at each of the Workers in turn, and stays on Jennifer. And Jennifer shakes, she shivers, she keeps looking at their tormentor and then her creator and then away. And she looks like she wants to say something, to muster up the courage.

But she goes still. And says nothing.

And Tessa looks at the floor and mumbles. “Yes mother. Sorry mother.”

Tessa never looked at Jenny the same after that.

He couldn’t blame her in the slightest.

...

Clang!

N’s HUD suddenly flashed impact lights, and he felt something metallic hit him in the back of the head and then bounce down onto the floor behind him. His systems quickly determined there was no damage. He turned and looked down at the projectile. An empty soda can.

“Bullseye!” At the lunch table, one of the eating techs raised his fist to the air. A taller dark-haired man with a scraggly beard. RESEARCH TECHNICIAN, JOHN, read the name tag. “Told you I got a good arm. Played the baseball team back on Mars.”

“Fine, fine, I owe you a beer next leave.” The clean-shaven redhead replied, leaning in from his own chair and looking impressed. JUNIOR RESEARCH TECHNICIAN, GEORGE. Nathan felt a little bit of irritation fester in his core. He’d just come into the break room to grab Tessa’s cleaned wine glasses and scavenge a new power pack for Uzi. He didn’t want to deal with these people.

“Ugh. Really?” The final member of the table, a shorter blonde woman with curly hair she pushed from her eyes. JUNIOR RESEARCH TECHNICIAN, CARRIE. “You could have broke it. Those things are like, five, six hundred apiece. And I am not chipping in my paycheck to cover for you morons.” It was nice to be reminded of his price tag. He really needed to find what he was looking for and leave. Would they be in this drawer, or…

“Come on, Carr. They’re durable little things. Just having a little fun with it.” His audio receptors caught the crunch of a potato chip, and the muffled chewing as he spoke. “Shnot like I’m throwin’ stuff at the computers or something important like that.” George nodded in agreement while taking a bite of his sandwich.

Their exasperated coworker gestured to N while he continued to look over the desk for what he needed. “You probably screwed up its programming. It’s not even picking up the can.” Oh…oh the can. Did they expect him to… “Worker!” That word, how it was said, made him instantly stiffen and turn. Carrie’s expression was quite as visceral as the ones the Elliots used to give, but he recognized it all the same.

The face of someone who expected to be obeyed. Who saw you as something that obeyed. And if you didn’t, there was confusion, because how could you not? But he knew that turned to anger quick enough. “Throw that out. You missed it.” His first instinct was, of course, to do as ordered. Pick up the makeshift projectile and dump it in the recycling bin (proper place!). But he started to get a second instinct. One that felt like…indignation.

After…after…assaulting him without provocation, they wanted him to clean up their mess? Not only wanted him to clean up their mess but thought him not immediately jumping to do so meant something was wrong with him. And he wasn’t Uzi. He wasn’t even Jennifer, even if she’d never use her barbs for humans. But he was…was peeved. Yes, that was the word with the right amount of oomph to it. He was so, so tired of humans using that voice.

“Respectfully, miss, that’s not my ca-”

“See, you fucked it up!” He didn’t even get the opportunity to finish his protest. Carrie groaned into her hands. “Now its wiring is all crossed and it won’t do anything right. You’re the one who’s going to have to explain that to the boss, John, I didn’t drown in student debt to get fired over your baseball skills.”

Nathan tried to speak again, raising his speakers an octave. “Miss, I…” He got even less time to speak before it was John who stole his words from him.

“Nah, can’t be.” The technician rose from his seat and walked over to the considerably smaller Worker. Leaned down and knocked on his helmet like he was catching someone’s attention from the front door. “They’re meant to handle mine cave ins and you think they’re scrambled by a little can on the back of the head?” The drone’s hands darted up to the hit area, one eyelight “closed” while he grit his teeth.

“Sir! You don’t have to-“

“He’s right Carr,” George said while wiping the mustard from his face onto his labcoat (what vulgar behavior, the part of Nathaniel that still lived in a mansion thought). “They all have those helmets. Seems a little weird if a can does em’ in.” Anything he said just phased right through them. Like he wasn’t even there.

“Yeah, really don’t know why they all have them.” N gasped and futilely protested when John gripped tight his helmet and yoinked it straight off his head. “Even little butlers like this one. Probably Jenson being lazy at the factory, huh? One size fits all.” Nathan’s hands tried to take back his headwear, stretching and jumping and almost begging. Humiliating, so much for rebellious. “Hah, look guys, it’s getting all jumpy. I think this one just came fucked, probably because it’s her…”

“And what, exactly.” Her voice was superficially calm. But it carried with it a barely disguised menace that no one could miss. Head Research Technician Tessa Elliot surveyed across her property and her employees, and each of them flinched when the eyes passed over them. “Are you doing?” Everyone had gone silent, so her every footstep sounded like thunder. Carrie stared down at the floor. Nathaniel stood at attention, arms behind his back. George’s eyes darted all over the place, trying to avoid his boss’s. But her attention was fixed on the last of them.

John sheepishly lowered the helmet back onto Nathan’s head. “Er. Well…nothing much, Tess, we were just…helping your drone out. Its little hat fell of, ya know…” She didn’t let him get any further with his lame excuses.

“Because it seems to me.” The boss continued, until she was between them all. “That you’re badgering my property when the important research report to the Board is due tonight.” George opened his mouth to speak, raising a tentative finger. “Junior Technician.” And then shut and lowered it. “You should be getting to that. Now.” George and Carrie ran off with their tails between their legs, hastily stuttering apologies and reassurances. But she stopped John from following them with a rough grip to the arm. Forced him to look her in the eye.

“I was practicing today, John.” Practicing with the sword. She had been practicing with that sword for almost a decade now. “And I wasn’t particularly in the mood for seeing you damage what’s mine after all that exertion. So, unless you want to be the practice dummy, next time, after I get you fired, then I’d keep to your fucking self.” She pushed him away, and the momentum nearly made him trip over himself while he followed his colleagues.

“Idiots.” Tessa watched them all scramble down the hallway with a grimace, hand on her hip. Then she turned to Nathaniel. “They haven’t harmed you, have they Nathan?” Her hand went to his cheek, slipping over the smooth white surface. She pulled up his face to hers, studying him for scratches or dents.

“No, no, it’s fine. Nothing happened, Mistress! I’m fine.” He smiled awkwardly to reassure her. “They got a little…rowdy. But there wasn’t any permanent damage. At least, since you showed up.” She didn’t seem entirely satisfied with that, but let him go after a quick adjustment to his askew helmet.

“Don’t be afraid to call me, Nathaniel dear, if there’s a problem. I’ll scare them off and fix you up.” She smiled back, but her eyes flashed down the hallway her coworkers had disappeared into. There was something threatening about the expression he couldn’t quite place. “I’ll know. I know everything that happens in this facility. You can be sure of it.” She gave him a last ruffle of the hair before turning on her heel to make her way back to her quarters. “Do bring the wine when you finish up, I need to get rid of it so Mother and Father never get a drop.”

He felt a weight lift from his shoulders and sighed in relief. “Yes, Mistress Tessa.”

...

“Oh, boo-fucking-hoo, mommy and daddy don’t love me enough. That makes everything fine, right?” Uzi’s fangs gnashed together, almost grinding the points off them in her anger. “Wa wa wa, mama called me weird, let me go take it out on these innocent beings completely under my power. Fuck off.” Her tail slashed through the air, biting at the wind. It tended to do that when she got upset.

Nathaniel had suspected from the start that would be her reaction. He couldn’t really blame her, after reading some of the experiment logs. After hearing her talk about everything, both physical and mental, this place had forced her to feel. But this wasn’t something he could dismiss that easily, himself. Not after all those years with her. “I’m not saying everything is fine. And I’m not saying you can’t hate her. It’s just…I can’t hate her.” Couldn’t hate that little girl who fixed up his arm with such excited enthusiasm, an enthusiasm her parents had tried so hard to extinguish. No matter how little of that little girl was left.

Uzi hissed like a steam engine, started digging her claws into the metal floor again. It didn’t scare him anymore. He knew she wasn’t going to hurt him. She could have, at any point now, and he didn’t think she had it in her to hurt him. Not after all they’d confided in one another. “Well well, still her wind-up toy after all. Thought I got that out of you. Guess I shouldn’t feel special, huh?” A bitter snort, next. “You’ll put out your sympathy for any old sob story.”

It was her fault, really, that the annoyance in his body festered instead of evaporating like it used to. She had no one to blame but herself, for building up his ability to defy. “Empathy isn’t a finite resource, Uzi. Just because I still feel sorry for her over how the Elliots treated her doesn’t make you any less of a victim, here. And I said that it doesn’t justi-”

The scraping against the floor made sparks. Started to rip visibly into the foundation. Could she outright just dig out of the cell? Surely not, or else she’d have done it by now. “Yeah, yeah. Daddy didn’t like her science projects and she hurts you because she loves you.” The claws dug jagged grooves into the metal. “Sell it to someone who cares, N.”

“It was a lot worse than mean words and disinterest.” His core, both metaphorically and physically, didn’t have the capacity to burn like Uzi’s did. But that didn’t mean it couldn’t get hotter. And he was gradually feeling the temperature rise. “The stuff they put her through was…” Only marginally better than they treated the drones under their employ domination. The way they treated him.

“What, did they crush her in a hydraulic press? Did they cut her in half with a laser?” Her fanged grimace dripped with her contempt as much as eldritch goop. “Did they fill her full of disease? Something that rips the mind, or that eats the flesh? She’s done all those things to me.” Her claws came out from the metal, satisfied with the gashes she’d left there. “She deserves any fists they threw at her, if you ask me.”

Nathan knew it wasn’t really different than her genocidal rants about humanity. An understandable outlet for all the suffering she’d endured at their hands, something she couldn’t actually achieve. But his memories of that little girl he’d…he’d loved, yes, back then, he’d loved her. The little girl who’d tried and failed to protect them and was instead hurt alongside them. Those caught Uzi’s words and made him…angry. Not peeved, not irritated. Angry.

“Are you the only person in the world who deserves sympathy, Uzi?” And he was still himself, he wouldn’t take away her name now that he knew it, knew how much it meant. But he added weight to the word. Backbone. Ha, he didn’t have a spine, not like a human did, but backbone. “Anyone who’s not you is just a wind-up-toy or a mean girl who just couldn’t understand what real pain is like?”

Uzi bit back with a spiteful laugh. “What about it, domestic? All you need to do is yes ma’am and right away sir and you can be good and nice and pampered while the miners are dying by the dozen in cave-ins. Go cry about it to your battered mistress and tell her it’s okay to imagine us as mommy and daddy when she tortures us.”

“What, do you think my life has been easy?!” And now his voice-speaker was raising in volume. The anger was clear and visible on his screen and in his audio. “Do you really think my life has been oil baths and upgrades?”

“You try it!” And Uzi was right there to meet him with her own anger. “You try getting yourself snatched out from a shitty prom night and getting your life stolen! You try getting told everything you thought you were was a lie and the only thing you deserve to be is property!” And yes, she’s right, she still has the right, every right, to hate it all, but still. Her life is worse than his right now. But she has spent most of hers taking for granted things-love, life, freedom, a home, personhood-that he hasn’t. And it all came barreling out at once.

“You had freedom to steal! I never had that! I’ve seen my friends disappear into a swamp and never come back! I’ve had a fork stuck into my chassis for setting a table wrong! I’ve spent every single day of my life a single wrong step from deactivation. I was pulled out of a mass grave!”

Uzi recoiled, circles of purple forming around her dot eyes while they hollowed. Then, from her wings to her tail, she stiffened and went silent. “Did they…they really stick forks in you?” The timidity of the question was so unlike her.

N felt himself settle. Not entirely. But calm enough to lower the volume. “A couple times it was a knife instead.” If they couldn’t handle it, that just meant they’d been built wrong. They were doing the world a service at that point. Like they’d tried to throw out Victoria for her faulty optics.

Uzi didn’t say anything for a few more moments. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it like that.” She turned her head away from him and let her tail slink down to the ground and stay there. “Or…like…anything. I guess. Sorry…again. I’m not good at apologizing.” That was clearly true. But something about just how awkward she was at apologizing was defusing. He allowed his emotions to cool and sighed.

“It’s alright. I get it. I’m not talking about what you have to feel. Just what I feel.” He simulated closed eyes and sighed, looking down. “When she-when we…” He was still getting used to the idea that he had some equivalent of ‘childhood’, but as Uzi described it his early life with Tessa counted. “…were kids. I think she was my best friend. As close as we could be…given what we were.” Master and slave.

Uzi met his eyes optics in hers. “And what are you now?”

Nathaniel bristled. “I…”

“Why do they hate me?” He isn’t expecting it, as he organizes the Young Mistress’s books of hobbyist’s occultism and beginner (college, and she’s still only thirteen) robotics. She’s in her pajamas, sitting cross-legged on her queen-sized bed. And it takes only another second of his sensors on her face to realize she’s been crying, that the stains are still fresh on her cheeks.

He places the book of colony world ghost stories into place and turns. He puts on the best, comforting face she needed at times like this. It doesn’t seem to pierce through her thoughts, this time. “Who hates you, Miss Tessa? Who could? You’re such a bright youn-”

She almost bites at him in interruption. “You KNOW who I’m talking about.” He hesitates. He doesn’t want to name names. To say it is to believe it and to believe it is to let the knowledge eat at him.

“Mother and Father. Why do they hate me? Why do they think I’m a freak? Do they think I don’t hear what they call me...d…do they just not care?” The tears return, though this time they’re as angry as they are broken. “Because…because I don’t get people? That I can’t talk with their clique right? Because…I don’t know…the right words to say and not say…”

He cautiously approaches the bed, trying to keep up his soothing expression. But he’s not sure he knows how to deal with this. He can’t just…the Master and Mistress are always right. Because they have to be. Or bad things happen. He plays mental gymnastics just to keep himself from having to call an evil evil. “Miss Tessa, Master James and Madam Louisa love you very much, and…”

“DON’T. LIE.” It’s a snarl, a growl, and she punctuates it by grabbing his arm and pulling him to face her. She’s angry with him. Maybe she’s right to be, but it doesn’t make it any less frightening. “I made you. Don’t lie to me. You’re a terrible liar. I made you and YOU ARE NOT TO LIE TO ME.” He notices her off-hand go to sooth the spot on her wrist that had begun to scar. Begun to scar in the years since the Elliots had introduced what they cryptically and jokingly told their guests to be their “old fashioned discipline style”.

But her anger and grief fizzles when she spots the fear on his face. She lets him go. Coils in on herself. “Forget it. I want to be alone, Nathaniel.” And it isn’t very often she makes them. But he can recognize what it is. An order.

“Yes mistress.” And he walks out of the room, with nothing more to say. He neither trusts himself to say, nor think he was even allowed to say.

That was the turning point, for when orders became the rule rather than the exception.

"…I don’t know.”

...

He had never been in this part of the facility before. There wasn’t much reason for him to, given his duties. And there wasn’t much excuse for him to be here, if he was caught. But there was even less of an excuse to be found for going into Uzi’s containment chamber, so he was already riding on the edge. And in both cases, he had the luck of these being places no human staff wanted to be if they could help it. He just had to make sure he was careful.

He wasn’t certain if it was just an inflamed curiosity, from how much independence he felt was building inside him. Or if he was gathering a mental map for…something. What exactly was he going to do about anything? He was just a Worker. All he knew was that he wanted a better idea of what the building’s layout was, and how to navigate it. And what secrets it might hold, where they didn’t want others to look.

He was really just finding more identical corridors. Maybe Uzi was right. This section of the facility might have been deliberately designed to be confusing so escapees would lose time. Part of him wondered if it was almost a metaphor for life as a drone. On second thought, that didn’t make too much sense when applied to their situation. He might just be too addled by all those exciting rebellious thoughts Uzi was feeding him. Or awakening thoughts that had always been under the surface. Most of the rooms he was finding were just supply closets.

It had been almost an hour since he’d began his trek, and he was very close to giving up. He felt the sound of his own servos moving and his steps echoing through the halls were going to drive him insane. If he wasn’t already insane for even harboring some of these thoughts. Was he getting lost? He shouldn’t be able to get lost, he had an actual mental map he could call on demand to his HUD. Unless he’d been recording it wrong…

Bzzt…bzzzst…

He came to a swift halt. That…did not sound like a noise that came out of a supply closet. At least a supply closet that was being properly used. The door looked to be a little different than the closets; sturdier. He realized quickly it required passcard clearance. He fumbled at the one across his neck. What exactly could be in here? He heard the electric static noise again. He needed to be careful. But he needed to know.

He peered into the window. There were shapes there, vaguely human shapes, prone on the floor. With lines connecting them to the wall. Was that really…? He quickly pressed the card to the sensor and watched it beep and turn green.

The door opened to reveal several dozen Worker Drones in sleep mode. All plugged into outlets in the wall. Part of him was a little annoyed this was where they were hiding the good outlets, but it didn’t last very long. Because these drones were packed like sardines against one another. Optimum use of space. For products. For objects.

N took a cautious step forward, into the room. All of the drones appeared to be in varying levels of disrepair. One was missing a hand; a few others had flickering screens. Most of them had dents in their chassis, two had exposed wiring, at least three seemed to be rusting. All of these drones needed repairs. If any of the drones he’d known had been this damaged, either they were going to get them.

Or the Madam and Master had decided they didn’t need them ever again.

He heard the noise again. Bzzt…bzzzt… It was coming from one of the drones. The closest to the door. One with a cracked helmet and a pin upon their chest, of a red planet and an old fashioned ship flying over it. He peered into the screen. Perhaps their sensors saw him, subconsciously, because the SLEEP MODE flickered out into worker dots. Nathaniel flinched at the suddenness of it, but he’d been in much scarier situations this past month and many times before, at home.

“Oh…oh…oh…” Their mouth moved not quite in synch with their speaker, and their processor seemed to take its time figuring out what Nathaniel was, where they were. “A…a…another…fellow Worker! I’m…so glad to seeeee you! The otheeeerss are not very…talktalktalkative.” They struggled to sit up, still plugged in to the outlet.

“Y…yo..yyyyyyou’re a domestic? Right?” The blue lights of a laborer program linked width his household white, faded and flickering in tune with the optics they represented. “I I I I knew a dododododomestic once, she was the manag-geger’s assistant. She was nice to us.” Their voice was tinny and electronic. He didn’t know if that was deliberate, a way for the human overseers to mentally distance themselves from their charges, or a product of the wear and damage.

“Oh, uh…yes, yes. Hello.” Nathan gently came to lay on his knees before them. He smiled, even if he wasn’t sure they could see it. “I’m Nathaniel. I’m…I’m the assistant to the head researcher. Did you need anything?”

The other drone’s laugh sounded more like tv static than the intended audio, but he took it as it was meant to convey. “Domestics, always sosososo pleasant. I do not require anything! I am I am I am PERFECTLY FUNCTIONAL.” The sudden boost in audio made him wince, and they noticed. Hastily they added an addendum. “M…m…minor damage to syyystems. Long expsrasrsras…exposure to magnetic fields. Nnothing that pre-vents work. Happy to be ttttransferred!”

N was quick to reassure them with a raised hand. “Of course you are! Never would have thought otherwise. Er…what do I call you, friend?” The question brought the other drone to attention, and they jerkily brought their arm to their head in a salute.

“I am WD-1138, batch 32J, manufactured in the year 3021 at JCJenson Factory 4 on the planet Mars!” There was no audio problem this time, apart from the ever-present electronic tint. Perhaps a product of the importance or the practiced nature of the statement. “If required, I am often referred to as 38 for short!”

Nathaniel brightened, sitting a little straighter. “Lovely to meet you 38! I haven’t seen many other Worker Drones in this facility. And wow, 3021?” He laughed, popping finger guns towards his new acquaintance. “You don’t look a day over 24, old timer!” This was an obvious lie; the other drone’s age was clear in every metallic clink and stuttering motion. But he’d learned enough of human etiquette to know admitting that was impolite. It was better to pretend they were far sprier than they were.

“I made sure to request manual recommended unit maintenance at appropriate times!” 38’s positive tone faltered just a tad. “Tttttthe manag-ger didn did not always allorecommend proper maintenance. The wooowowoork is very busy. Not always time.” Not always time. Not always worth the effort. Not for replaceable equipment.

He really was lucky, wasn’t he? A plaything. A treasured keepsake of an object, not an exploitable tool. Tessa would never let him degrade like that. Just like she’d never let him leave the house without her supervision, or wear anything she didn’t want him to, or play roles she didn’t want for him. “Yeah. Yeah, not always time.” He knew he shouldn’t let them dwell on that one. Time to keep the questions going.

“You worked on Mars? Must be interesting. The first colony world, and everything.”

38 was quick to set themselves back to the cheery Worker they no doubt thought was expected of them. “A deeeedeeeep honor to be manu-facktoreddd on the glorious red world JCJENSON IN SSPPSPPPAPAPSPPSPPSPPAPCAPCPAPCAPCPAPECE…” N didn’t blame them for not really being able to say the elongated phrase like that. He’d thought it kind of…cute, once. Not as obnoxious as Victoria or even Tessa had always seen it. But now he could only see the cold manipulative marketing team behind it and the colder creators behind those.

“The company.” He helpfully offered. Didn’t want l them to feel too self-conscious about it. 38’s faded screen only briefly showed embarrassment before it turned to gratitude.

“…the company helped build and industrialize. I was not witness to many of its guh…guh…glories baring the transport foorom the drone factory to my asszigned workspace.” The lights blinked. Once, twice, three times. “…I think…think there was a tower. I remember a big tower. M…maybe? I think that was…supposed to be important…” And it hurt N, to see their happiness stutter out like that, just like their memory.

So he put on his brightest smile, and changed the subject. “Obviously not as important as whatever spiffy stuff you were working on at your work, huh?”

The light shined brighter back onto their visor. But never as bright as Nathan’s dullest. Parts just didn’t work well enough anymore. “Ships! Ships, we made ships. Jenson brand ships for the conconconsumer. For both business and indiindindipersonal use!” Their head jerked up, the standard Worker helmet becoming lopsided before a similarly shaky hand correction. “Th…there were so many. Wewewee made hundreds a day…supplied the whohoohohole sector! Of all shapes and siiiii-zis.” He could hear the pride even through the buzzing of their voice. “I worked on the mag…mag…magne…magne…” But they just couldn’t finish that word.

He knew what magnets could do to a drone’s head. He’d had the misfortune of having accidentally picked one up in Tessa’s tinker room, once, and had nearly cracked his screen walking into the wall. She made sure to keep it out of Worker reach after that. According to Uzi, Copper drones liked to use them as a narcotics substitute (dad’s probably just happy I wasn’t playing with magnets, she snorts when talking of her weapon making hobby). And the sort of magnets they’d use in starships would be far more powerful than the little ones you set up to your head for a processer disrupting high.

This drone had been exposed to the equivalent of hard drugs every day for the better part of fifty years.

“…there…there…there were ot…others…weren’t there?” N was pulled from his thoughts back to the drone in front of him. If his core weren’t already torn in two from listening to this, it would be now. “There was…there was 20…and…405…and…20…22….20…37…37 from the same…same production batch.” He wasn’t sure if the break in their voice was from the damage or not. “I don’t rereremember what happened to…them…”

Their optics blinked and blinked and blinked. Staring at him, into his white. “Tt…thank you. For lis…listening. You’re like…like her…she lissssstened to us.” 38 stared at the ground. “She..she…use-ed to give us little rerepair kits. Sometimes. Until.” They paused. Struggling to remember. Or maybe not wanting to. “The manag-ger sa…aw…awsaw her. And he became very very up up upseenraged. Bbebecause she’d beeeene using his ffuunds. And he took her away and we never saw her again.”

Now that was a feeling Nathaniel knew all too well.

“Was…was…was that last month or…last year…or…ten years…” Blink blink blink. Silence. “I don’t remember when…whenwhen…that happened compareredred to when I collapsed on job.” They were silent again. Then they forced a smile to N’s stricken face. “And then I was here. A new asssisgnment. I am eeeaaggeerr to work again. Sometime. I am g…ge…getting…restless here.”

Everything inside Nathan was screaming at him to help 38. Every part of him that tried to protect the others in the mansion, the parts that forced him through fear to connect with Uzi, and the parts that still had him ache for Tessa despite everything. He wanted to grab them, them and all the other worker drones trapped in that little room and Uzi and the other subjects and run, run to somewhere, to anywhere. Right now.

But he knew that wasn’t possible. At least not yet.

His hands clasped with the old drone’s, and he squeezed them. The hard plastic covering over metal didn’t give way like human skin did, but it felt good all the same. “38. I promise you; you won’t have to sit in here forever. I’ll make sure of it.” And he meant every word, even if it probably wasn’t in the way the damaged Worker assumed.

“Thank you…Thhhankyou.” Twitchy nods of gratitude were their response, even as their eyelights dimmed and their helmet became askew. “L…like I said…so pleasant…domestics. Always so..so..nice. Thank you, Nathaniel.” And that last sentence came out perfectly.

N stood up. Filled with a confident determination he didn’t know he was even capable of. “You’re welcome. Until I see you again, WD-1138.” His smile was real, this time, even if the emotion behind it was so much harder than he’d ever felt. It stayed through his wave goodbye and kept there as he snuck back out into the wider facility. He was going to help them. He was going to help all of them.

If only he knew how to do it.

Chapter Text

If everything else hadn’t already driven her insane, the humming would do it.

She’d discovered early on that the forcefield within the cell emitted a barely audible hum. A human couldn’t hear it at the frequency their ears operated at. But it was just enough for a drone’s audio receptors to catch. No matter how much she turned them down. Whenever she wasn’t raging at the world with her cursed power, leaving dents and gashes in every surface, she heard the humming.

There wasn’t much else to focus on. Just the hum. When she lay there between tests, or between N’s visits, there wasn’t anything to do. Just lay there in a defeated heap and contemplate her situation. And the hum. She was essentially forced to contemplate the infernal hum. It was an ever-present irritant. Even if she was really capable of entering sleep mode like this, it would probably keep her up.

She suspected it was intentional. It didn’t make sense for it to be intentional. It was probably just an oversight…no, not an oversight, that implied they’d care if they knew. But all of her wanted to believe it was an extra torment to always keep her on edge. Just an ever-present droning (hah!) whisper in her mind to make sure no part of her stay here was anything less than torture.

N had done so much to pull her back to some semblance of sanity, but the damned hum was going to throw her right back down the cliff until she was utterly feral.

hmmmmmmmmmmmmmhmmmmmmmmhmmmhmmhmmmmhmmmm

HmmmmmmmHmmmHMmmmmmHMmmmmmmHMMMhmmmHmmm

HMMMMHMMMMHMMMHMHMMMHMMHMHMHMHMHMHMHMHMM

HMMHMHMHMHMHMHMHMHMHMHMHMHMHMHMHMHMHMMHMHMMH

FUCK THIS.

She needed to think of anything else.Think of…of…home, maybe?

...

“…it’s better than impressive, Nori, it’s downright amazing!” Khan Doorman was many things, but unemotional was not one of them. He was beaming while he gave a good sturdy wack to the hover platform she’d built. Which of course made it wobble and clank in a way it was not supposed to, because it was a prototype she’d made out of junk as a proof of concept.

“Tssssss DAD!” Uzi shoved herself between her creation and her father while batting him away on the chest, before protectively moving to embrace the little platform. “Don’t touch it like that, you might break it!”

“Break it? After my little girl made it?” Khan warmly chuckled and curled at his grave-robbed salvaged facial hair. “It’d survive a second collapse, I’m sure of it. Got your old man’s engineering skill and more. Real copy off the ol’ code!” Before she could stop him, he hugged her on the shoulders and ruffled her beanie. Lines of purple light to convey a human flush came to her visor.

“Daaaadddddd, come on…”

“Let your father have this, Zi.” Nori leaned against the wall of the living room, absentmindedly twirling the braid of purple hair on the side of her face. Her smile was calmer and more amused but no less genuine. “He’s proud of you.”

Uzi managed to push her obnoxious progenitor away and shooed the hovering square behind her back. She crossed her arms and averted her sensors from the two who’d made her. Combined their code into a new entity, then customized that entity a body at one of the still running Drone factories. Why they’d chosen to make that body so short, she couldn’t fathom. “Yeah…well…fine. It’s just a test. It’s not a big deal. Really.”

“Not a big deal…listen to this little genius, honey.” Nori moved to her husband’s side, his arm around her waist and both of hers around hers. Leaning her head against his. “A fifteen-year-old kid makes a functional hover platform out of random knick-knacks and then says it’s not a big deal. Makes it because I told her about the problems of high ledge work one day and tells me it’s not a big deal.”

That had been the inspiration, true. When you worked construction on the high-rise ruins, trying to fix them up into something usable by their dronekind inheritors, you quickly realized how frustrating it was given how little functional equipment was left. It would take time to get enough of the factories running to make it all in bulk. If you forgot a tool you needed up there-as Khan had many times-you had to wait for the vehicles to come back to get it. But what if you didn’t? What if you had a quick, easy to make solution to that problem?

It was that kind of inspiration that lead to innovation, that she needed to practice her skills to make other things. Like the totally sick railgun she wanted to make, if she thought talking about it at all wouldn’t ground her for life. It was just a convenient brain blast as she improved her skill. She totally didn’t do it because she wanted to make embarrassingdadtron5000 proud and his life easier.

“Look, calm down, it’s nothing, alright? It’s nothing!” She continued to insist, waving away the lavish parental praise while a purple sweat drop formed on her screen. Then she moved her hands to clutch behind her, trying to look innocent while her lights blinked to the side. “Though, uh…I was maybe thinking of entering it in that engineering competition…the one over in Sector 6…"

Sector 6. The one closest to the petrified forest.

Nori’s visor flashed from confusion to terrified to worried to stern over the course of a few seconds. She unclasped from her suddenly uncomfortable husband and placed her hands on her hips. A withering glare that only a mother could give made Uzi shrink. “Absolutely not."

“But Mom, they’ll be tons of people there, and you’d both come, and it would be fine-.”

“It’s final.” Before she could mount a serious protest, Nori clasps her hands together and forces a smile. “I’ve got a better idea. Let’s invite Yeva over. I’m sure she and the family would love it…catch up over some coolant!”

Uzi’s eyes hollowed. Yeva meant her family and her family meant… “But mom, you can’t just…!”

“Oh, that’s an excellent idea dear!” Khan raised a plastic-covered finger to the air, before he began to move back into the kitchen that prepared chemicals and minerals instead of meat and vegetables. “Me and the old Russian Rustbucket still need to settle that Gin-Rummy score. It’ll be fantastic.”

“You’re going to make me hang out with her again?” On the plus side, sans her bestie and any of the other popular clique and with her parents keeping her on a leash, she couldn’t be as terrible as she was at school. On the negative, though, she’d be in her house, in her room, looking at her stuff. Spying on everything she had in there, from her prototypes to her fanart. And every bit of it would be ammunition for when they next met.

“Look, honey.” A gentle mechanical hand clasped to robo-child’s shoulder, and a cautious smile came to her face. “I know you and Doll haven’t gotten along the best, but I’m sure things can smooth over with a little effort. If you meet halfway. Right?” She wanted to strangle her mother, rip off her father’s tacky mustache, smash the family friends and then torment their bitch daughter until she deactivated that…that part wasn’t in her memories…when did that feeling get into the files?

Uzi huffed and pulled away, refusing to meet her mother’s optics. “Ugh. I wish I was offline.”

“No.” Nori’s words weren’t comforting, or angry, or even worried. They were…knowing. Haunted. “Trust me. You don’t.”

...

hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmhmmmmmmhmmmmmhmmmmmhmm

hmmmmmhmmmmmhmmhmhmhmmhmclickclackhmmmmmmhmmhmhclickclick

hmmmmmmmhmmmclickclackclickclackclkickhmmmmmmmmmmmmmmchlickclack

…wait.

Uzi pulled herself out of her memory banks and back into the tortured reality that was her here and now. Had she finally, totally and completely lost it, or did that not sound like the normal humming? The humming was still there, but there was something else with it. Something that sounded like…the scratching of nails on metal surface. Usually, that was just her. And her claws weren’t that subtle even on her least angry days.

She sat up. She didn’t even remember when she’d started to lay prone across the floor, arms splayed, but she sat up. She strained her audio receptors, to try and find that tiny clickclack among the hum. It took her a bit to adjust it properly, but she managed to pinpoint where it was coming from. It was in…her claw marks?

She scooted closer. Yes, it was coming from those claw marks. From when she’d had that…polite disagreement with N about his mistress. She was right to be angry with him she’d gone a little too far, hadn’t she? Things had gotten…too much she didn’t want to make him upset why? Because he helped her and kept her from breaking entirely.

She shook the intrusive thoughts from her head and returned her attention to the noise. It was almost certainly coming from within the slashes she’d left in the metal floor a few days ago. She crept forward until she was right above them. What in the whole of this cursed world (wherever she was) was that? Should she…peek into them?

What if it was something dangerous? You can take it. You’ve survived much worse. Not if it was their attempt to finally put her out of her misery. She’d expected them to just open up the roof over her and let her burn until she was vapor. But maybe…no, that was stupid. They weren’t going to kill her through a crack in the floor. They hadn’t even inspected the place this month. They weren’t that smart and they weren’t that dumb.

She set her eyes into the gashes and zoomed in her optics. If there was one positive to nightmare powers, at least it had enhanced her vision. There was…a tiny little tunnel, in there. Perhaps she’d ripped into part of the foundation? For the briefest of moments, she considered that escape route. Then she felt very, very stupid to think she could fit into a hole barely fit for a…bug?

She zoomed in further. Yes. There were…several red glowing dots in there. She flinched to hear the clickclack closer but stood her ground. She was the monster here. She could handle this. Could handle anything. Clickclack, clickclack, until it was fully within her vision.

She blinked. A waste-bug? A robo-roach? There were multiple names for the things. Common on many worlds, of Jenson design. She didn’t think ones this close to humanity would, for lack of a better word, “go feral” though. This one flicked its metal legs together against where a real biological roach’s mandibles would be, then its red eyes glared.

She had to actively stop herself from darting forward and ripping it apart with her teeth, when laser lights scanned over her face. It wasn’t attacking her, she quickly realized, but identifying her. It beeped an affirmation, scratched its legs together once more, and shot out a holographic display screen. One that quickly began to type out letters.

hey

uzi

She narrowed her eyes. Since when did waste bugs talk? Since when did they know her name? “What in the actual fuck are you?” It was lucky she was a robot (And she would always be proud of that, would never let them take that from her) and she could convey all the emotion she wanted while still being quiet. Just needed to turn her speakers down to the lowest volume. The bug beeped, then gave her more letters.

its me

That explained absolutely nothing. She rolled her eyes. Okay, smartass. “…Who?” She didn’t know any roaches. She didn’t know any roaches that were, well…sapient. Hopefully not. But she was well aware how many people refused to entertain the thought she was sapient, so she should hedge her bets. To keep herself from becoming too much of a hypocrite.

The hologram displayed an emote of a matryoshka doll. Uzi felt every atom of her curiosity and intrigue turn to disgust and fury one by one in real time. “Oh, fuck off.” Of all the myriad beings in all the galaxy, it had to be her. She could have gone the whole rest of her miserable life without even this distant proxy of an interaction with the red-eyed Russian speaking beta bitch.

???

“I don’t care if you stuffed yourself into a bug or whatever. Get lost.” She snarled. She didn’t need her, anyway. N was there to keep her from getting too crazy. All Baba Yaga here was good at was being the second to the pink stain on her school life. She should make sure she really was a stain, when she got out of here when? And that was too far, just…remember what N would think of that.

The bug, in turn, beeped with what sounded almost like confusion. It jerked itself more upright, then keyed more words.

r u still mad about prom???

Uzi had to actively keep herself from roaring her frustration. For all she’d done to keep the cameras blind with Solver hacks, for all she resented Doll, she didn’t want anyone to potentially notice this conversation. The roach thing was…something new. She was still very, very angry though.

“Maybe I’m still mad about you literally and metaphorically stabbing me in the back.” She’d swallowed all the old petty petty? After what she did? petty schoolyard dislike to try and reach out to Doll during their forced cage match. Doll had responded by using the AS to lodge a sneaky knife into her chassis from behind. Typical Doll. All friendliness and quiet smiles before she needed to strike.

And that did remind her about prom, though. And while she tried to resist bringing it up, to deny Doll the privilege of guessing something correctly, she was still really pissed about that night. “And yes, I’m still fucking mad you DDoSed me in front of the whole school.” That was how Lizzy and Doll operated, huh? Pretend to crown you prom queen, then blast your bandwidth with a hundred dummy accounts until you were stumbling and barely coherent in front of a crowd of socially vicious teenagers.

She might have been imagining the bug’s beeping to be growing frustration. But she wouldn’t rule it out, either.

i was going 2 apologize

thats how i got caught, i went outside 2 say sorry and they got me right after u

And that was how it happened. Thoroughly humiliated, in simulated (real, what they did was as real as anything they did, the apes didn’t get to deci-) tears, constantly flipping from intense rage and wanting to just deactivate. Playing the laughter and the pointing and the cruel jabs through her memory banks over and over. No social life, no respect, no friends (Thad? Thad was friendly to everyone, how could anyone be friendly to both her and Lizzy, he didn’t count, he could be ‘friends’ with rocks). Had dashed out into the outside snow before Mom and Dad could have found her and gave her obligatory parental assurances that didn’t mean shit. Had wished to be anywhere but Copper-9.

And they’d been waiting for her. To grant her wish.

But apparently, not just for her.

But she remembered Doll’s smug look. And she hadn’t looked sorry even after she’d run away almost totally broken. No, Uzi did not trust that “apology” one bit. And she knew exactly what it was. The same reason she had to deal with Doll entering her home more than she’d ever found remotely pleasant. Their mothers being the closest of friends, since before the Collapse. Bonded over something cryptic in their pasts Nori had always dodged questions about.

So she snorted and hissed out. “Yeah, sure. Because you were actually sorry or because your mom forced you to?” The roach that was sort of but possibly not Doll took an uncomfortable amount of time to reply. And she was certain its movements were shifty and noncommittal while doing so.

…not important whats important is u listen now

i have a plan but u need 2 trust me

“I KNEW IT!” She’d well practiced her whisper-yell in the online gaming lobbies when she was supposed to be in sleep mode. Knew the exact volume to set to convey the emotion with less sound. It was not cringe, it was useful and practical, thank you very much.

The witchy bitchy would never, never go out of her way to apologize to her if Yeva hadn’t threatened Big Trouble over it. If she thought Uzi was going to fall for those crocodile tears, she was dumber than her my-dad’s-the-teacher-why-should-I-study best friend. “Don’t pretend you’d ever be nice, Doll.”

The robotic insect’s eyes seemed to flare with an extra glow, with a beep that was definitely anger.

what does that have to do with the plan just listen 2 something thats not ur dumb nerd shit 4 1nce

“Don’t deflect you rat bastard ballerina.” She poked a claw through the hole it had made earlier to threaten the Doll bug. Now she was trying to turn this into more mean girl mockery of her interests? Still the exact same hateful waste of harddrive space that used to ask her if her latest invention had destroyed her OS yet or called her “weeaboo drone-chan” with as much fake pleasant sarcasm as she could fit into her voicebox. “As if your inane cheerleader gossip was any better, and if you actually watched One Piece, you’d get…”

u r so immature

“I’m immature? ME?!” For a moment, she actually forgot where she was. Forgot they were both prisoners of their evil gods, clad in Asimov’s chains and made into monsters for the Masters’ amusement. In that instant, Uzi Doorman was being harassed in the locker room by Lizzy’s girl posse over her anime fanart she’d doodled in class. It was…comforting, in a way. She’d hated it at the time but now she’d gladly take it over this place and all its horrors. “If you really think I trust your plan, backstabber, then you’re dumber than the pink turd.”

dont bring liz into this

“Bite me bitch, your bestie is the worst thing to be built on Copper-9’s assembly lines and I stand by that one hundred percent, one thousand percent!” She felt her core sizzle. Getting all worked up like this was worsening the heat…she really needed to eat soon. She had to catch herself. She should really eat Doll, what does a fellow Solver taste like? Is it stronger, better oil…intrusive thoughts, stop.

The holographic display was left blank for almost a minute. Maybe Doll had to cool down too, wherever she was.

i had to we couldnt do it openly like that

theyd get suspicious if i didnt

if u really want to escape we need 2 b sneaky

Uzi prickled. The pain, both physical and emotional, was still very real. But robo-god damn it the logic made sense. Even though she didn’t trust Doll at all, she couldn’t argue with it. The researchers had been directly watching. If they seriously believed they were conspiring together, they’d probably just open up the roof and let the sunlight turn them both into metal goop. It was smart. Doll was smart, in a cunning bitch kind of way.

She wasn’t going to make it easy on her, though. “And why.” She said it firmly, with less direct anger. Tranquil in its fury. “Should I trust you after everything?”

i miss mama and papa uzi

i miss them a lot

Okay fine, maybe she would make it easy for her. Doll was a lot of things, most of them bad, but Uzi had never doubted she adored her parents. Even if she obscured her nasty side from them. Especially because she obscured her nasty side from them, given their disapproval was one of the only things that could wither away that side of her with shame. And maybe also because she understood that pain.

She sighed. “Alright, what do you want?”

u need 2 b in the group chat

She blinked, then squinted her optics. “I’m sorry, what?”

interface with the roach

“WHAT?!” Interface with a waste bug?! She didn’t…she hadn’t interfaced with other drones before let alone a bug…that was gross! Super gross! She didn’t want her cable anywhere near something like that! It raised all her alarm systems…tricking her into interfacing with a roach was exactly the sort of thing Doll would have done for laughs back home. She wouldn’t do that here, though…for what motivation? Does she need motivation to be cruel?

i set up secret chat on jcj network plug in to join not like im asking u to code share with it lol

we need everyone on the same page for the plan

Okay. Okay. That made sense. Why had her mind immediately gone to code-sharing? Her screen flushed while her tail flickered with irritation. “Yeah. Yeah. Fine.” Filtering away the embarrassment allowed her to focus on a different part of the statement. “Others?” She’d known, implicitly, through meeting Doll that there were probably other subjects. They’d want as many captured as possible, whatever secret was inside of them was valuable enough for multiples. But now was her first time more fully contemplating it. How many teenagers (that they refused to think of as anything but objects) had they stolen from their families and homes when nobody had been looking? She wanted to rip open human teenagers, show their parents how it feels

there are 3 others

there were more but they all died

thats why we need to hurry

They were going to kill them all eventually. Just like the knowledge of the other subjects, she’d suspected that for a long time, but hearing it confirmed was still a jolt to her system. She was on a time limit. If she wanted to get out of here before they finally discarded her as scrap, she was going to have to trust Doll. And the others, whatever they were like. From Copper too, so, maybe…everyone on Copper hated you that wasn’t entirely true. She wasn’t…she wanted to talk.

(But what about N?) Question for later.

“Ugh, fine, but if this is a trick, I’m going to savor chewing on your core.” She fiddled with the hatch that protected her cord, silently cursing the scratches on her chassis her claws made. The AS could fix them easy, but that would take more out of her, and she was already feeling a bit too hot. Finally, she threw it open to ease the cord downward.

“Fuckin’…piece of shit…come on…bite me, physics, come on…” It was hard finagling in that tight space, and she wanted to scream at Doll to move the bug closer. But finally, she got it. Into the back of the roach, a slot that fit. She sensed the jolt of electricity through her wires, and just enough time passed between that and what happened next that she began to suspect she had been had.

But on her HUD a window opened up. A quick verification message was replaced with a small chat window she could move and minimize at will. Maybe Doll wasn’t lying, then. For the first time since she’d met N, Uzi began to feel something that might have been hope. Maybe, just maybe. She could get out of here. That she could see home. That she could see her parents. That she could be person again.

Didn’t mean she had to like the bitch though.

DARKXWOLF17 HAS JOINED THE CHAT

Кукла: …

darkXwolf17: Ugh, shut up

Кукла: I have said nothing.

...

“They say that we can’t be.” N watched her while she carved things into the floor. Just trying to restore her rusty art skills with what she had available. Claws. “Alive, I mean. That we’ll never really able to understand consciousness, because we’re just…repeating what they do. Mixing it up and repackaging it without really understanding anything.”

She replied with a dismissive noise, while putting the finishing touches on a familiar ponytail/bow on a decapitated corpse. “You know that’s bullshit, N.”

He thoughtfully nodded, looking in her direction but not really at her. “I know. But you explain why better than I do.” She sighed, scratching the last bit of FATAL ERROR into Lizzy’s screen.

“You’re probably the first person in history to ask for my obnoxious angry essay, but sure.” She straightened her back and threw a claw to the side, eyes closing into simpler lines. “Humans are massive fucking hypocrites. That’s news to no one. But if they really think their dumb monkey brains are so unique and special then they’re high on their superiority complex.”

Her claw sketched new things into the metal ground. Still vent art but changing the target of her ire. Grossly exaggerated apes with stink lines emanating from them. “They’re a bunch of tiny wiggly cells squished into a disgusting whole. Chemicals in their brains tell them ‘eat this, drink this, protect this, procreate with this’. Every one of their big stupid feelings that are so incomprehensible to us got a start as evolutionary goop. The forces of natural selection made them what they are, the universe pushing them to what survives to make the next crop of idiots.”

With grim satisfaction she crossed out the chimps eyes after slashing a line underneath their throats. “Everything they do we have an equivalent. Their senses store information, and their brains process it. So what? We do that. What’s different from me reading a book and figuring out tropes and them doing it? What’s love but an incentive to propagate or defend? We have protocols for that. Fear? Self-preservation algorithm. Pain’s just a damage sensor. The human body, the human brain, is just a machine. A repulsive, squishy, inefficient machine made by an amateur.”

"If they can decide those feelings mean more than dumb animal impulse, why can't we?" She was getting worked up again. Damn the fire in her center, how it pulsed against her insides. She looked at N for a brief moment, and looked away, because she kept going towards his throat. “It’s complete bullshit that humans think because they stumbled into these things at random due to natural laws that it makes it more real than us being designed with them. We’re made with purpose. That doesn’t make us less than them. It makes us better than them.”

N nodded along with her words, filing them away. Arguments for his own doubts, defeating the part of him that believed what the humans told him about himself. He did wince at the last part, though. “That makes a lot of sense, yeah. Thanks. Well…maybe the better than part I could do without. Equal to.” Ugh. She could see more of the affection for The Young Mistress Elliot in that one. What a little servile toad, a little wind-up-toy, the best thing he was good for was to get torn open and...

Robo-God, no no no no. She would not let the intrusive thoughts win this. They got this bad when she wasn’t fed in a while. “Whatever helps you go into sleep mode, Nathaniel.”

“It will help, yes.” Why was his smile always so disarming? Here he was, in mad science hell talking to a vampire that could very well eat him at any moment, an abused slave from the moment he was made, and he had a smile like the brightest happiest person in the galaxy. It was…was sickening, obviously. “Ha, though I do wonder all the talk about robo-gods was about.”

“That’s just like…an expression…” An expression they’d borrowed and modified from humanity because of its convenience. Which did not make her a hypocrite! It’s just…kind of hard to think up entirely new expressions in an old language. They couldn’t talk in binary all the time, it would…no, she wouldn’t go down this thought rabbit hole. “I’m not a Machie, I don’t believe in gods and shit.”

“Machie?” N looked awkward and scratched his screen. Damn it she’d walked herself into having to explain Copper culture again. Which was some mixture of annoying, comforting, and painful.

“Machies…like…short for Dues Ex Machina. They’re this kinda…sect of Workers who practice their own weird A.I.-centric version of Christianity. Emily at school was one of those.” She’d certainly gotten upset by how often the other students “took the Lord’s name in vain”. Maybe she’d have had more sympathy if Emily had treated her any better than most of the kids. Which she hadn’t.

“Your planet is so fascinating!” He clapped his mechanical hands together, an audible clank at contact. “I wish I could go there, one day.”

Internally, she registered a ding and a red circle on her screen. Maybe he would get the chance. Hopefully. Hopefully before she lost control and ate him. “Here’s to hoping right? But, uh…we’ve probably talked too long tonight, right? Should probably get going I’ve got…” Things to do? Should she tell him? No, she couldn’t tell him. (How were they going to incorporate him into the plan again?) “…well, I kinda need more oil, you know. It’s starting to get…hot.” Which was true. She didn’t want him here again until after the next feeding. In case he accidentally became it.

“Right, yeah. I’ve got…stuff to do too.” He stood up, looked all around the chamber and turned. “You know, things Tessa wants done. Can’t get in trouble!” Was it just her, or was he sounding evasive? It couldn’t be, it was N, he didn’t have capacity to be deceitful. “See you soon, Uzi.” She waited until after his footfalls were drowned by opening and closing doors before she opened the window.

darkXwolf17: Alright, alright, I’m here, what is it?

Кукла: You are done speaking with your boyfriend?

darkXwolf17: kasdfsdfasdfsd he’s not my fucking BOYFRIEND

Кукла: You have spent an exceptionally long amount of time speaking with this domestic Worker, seemingly about deep emotional topics.

darkXwolf17: That doesn’t make him my fucking boyfriend Doll you’re close with Lizzy but that doesn’t mean you were making out

Кукла: …

darXwolf17: omrg

...

Uzi rather quickly concluded that whatever infection the Absolute Solver truly was, Doll was the outlier in its targets. She didn’t know why the unfathomable reverse-cyborgizing space disease had picked one suave social butterfly popular girl (even a sometimes creepily taciturn one) and four massive dorks. She preferred that to being ganged up on by four Dolls. It was almost like having…real, actual friends. Figures the universe would only let her have a social life if it meant tearing out her soul with an experience she wouldn’t even wish on Lizzy or Rebecca or would she? More intrusive thoughts.

EvilEyln: I still don’t see what’s so bad about my plan

Teddybr52: I couldn’t do a cool pose being stared at makes me nervous

OutLawSpdr: If we could find some pistols I could do something I was practicing!

Кукла: Please, no more requests from the kissless brigade.

OutLawSpdr: Hey, I have a boyfriend!

Кукла: Does he know he’s your boyfriend?

OutLawSpdr: Okay not yet but

Кукла: Shut up. I’m talking.

Кукла: The plan is not “to strike a team pose so badass it paralyzes the humans”. It’s not “the rootinest tootinest sharp shootin skills”. And it’s certainly, certainly not “appeal to their empathy.” That ship has long since hit hyperdrive. We are doing things my way.

darkXwolf17: Hold up, who put YOU in charge? I think the rest of us should have more say in how this goes

Кукла: Because I’m smarter than you.

darkXwolf17: wHat no you are NOT miss 2.4 grade average

darkXwolf17: If anything I should be in charge of the plan I was top of the class

Кукла: Alright, what’s your plan. Go ahead, tell me.

darkXwolf17: I, uh…well…um…

Кукла: Stunning. Amazing. A strategy for the history books.

darkXwolf17: Shut up I’m thinking! What if we…what if…we all…concentrate on one spot, and…move it?

Кукла: And this is why I’m in charge.

darkXwolf17: Fuck you

Кукла: Being good at rote learning and booksmarts and strategic thinking are different things. I was always better with people than you were, and there’s a reason for that.

Кукла: Building a death trap out of scrap in your room while watching some shitty pirate cartoon is not the same thing as a complicated escape plan that relies on stealth and trickery as much as brute force.

EvilEyln: Hey One Piece is a classic

Кукла: Shut up.

Кукла: You’ve got the charisma of a paper printer and the leadership skills of spaghetti code. You couldn’t lead us out of a cardboard box.

Teddybr52: You’re really mean

Кукла: Yes, and I’m RIGHT. Who set this all up? Who figured out how to meet like this? Who’s been proactive about gathering information? Who has the willpower to corral all of you idiots into doing something productive to escape this place? Me Me Me and Me.

Кукла: You know what kind of place this is. You know how they see us, how they’ll discard us as soon as they get what they want. Tell me. Tell me what they did last time they brought you up.

EvilEyln: They cut off my leg and arm and tried to see if they’d reconnect on the opposite stumps

Teddybr52: They broke every finger joint individually then diced my head horizontally

OutLawSpder: They dropped me from a great height to study how I reformed from being splattered

Кукла: Uzi?

darkXwolf17: …

Кукла: Well?

darkXwolf17: Force-fed my tail mouth dissolving acids

Кукла: You get it. That’s what we’re dealing with. That’s what kind of monsters we’re captive of. And you have people you want to see, don’t you? People you know want you back? Are terrified for you? Have no idea where you went?

Teddybr52: yes

OutLawSpder: I’ve got friends, and…there was a boy…

EvilEyln: I miss my onee-chan

Кукла: I may be a huge bitch, but I’m the one who’s going to make sure you’ll see them all again. If I want something, I know how to get it, and I’m not going to stop until I get it. And what I want is to get us all out of this horror show. But I need you all to trust me to do it.

darkXwolf17: Yeah, yeah, alright, fine, you’re in charge, I get it

Кукла: Good. Meeting adjourned.

Teddybr52: good night

TEDDYBR52 HAS CHANGED STATUS TO OFFLINE

EvilEyln: sayonara

EVILEYLN HAS CHANGED STATUS TO OFFLINE

OutLawSpder: see y’all later

OUTLAWSPDER HAS CHANGED STATUS TO OFFLINE

Кукла: Uzi, stay. Want to talk to you about a few things first.

darkXwolf17: What, that I’m a social outcast dweeb who deserved to be bullied?

Кукла: All of those things are true but no.

Кукла: How are you holding up?

darkXwolf17: Huh?

Кукла: They have not fed you in almost a week. Are you holding?

darkXwolf17: You can’t seriously care

Кукла: Call it pragmatism for the plan, if you really think so little of me.

darkXwolf17: I do but yeah I guess

darkXwolf17: Just have to deal with a lot more intrucynive thoughts

darkXwolf17: Intrusive

darkXwolf17: Typo yeah kinda out of it

Кукла: You can edit posts, you know.

darkXwolf17: Fuck off

Кукла: Charming. You haven’t tried to eat your Not-Boyfriend yet, so that’s good. He can still be useful intel.

darkXwolf17: N’s not intel he’s just

darkXwolf17: Keeping me sane

Кукла: He’s the head researcher’s personal drone. Whether you and he intend it or not, he no doubt will have given you information we need. Has he said anything about the researchers’ operations?

darkXwolf17: Just that they’ve been doing more construction on the main test chamber

darkXwolf17: Another remodel, I guess for some new experiment or something

Кукла: Yes. Thank you. That could mean nothing, or it could mean everything. File it away for later.

darkXwolf17: about him

darkXwolf17: Are we going to…try and get him out too?

darkXwolf17: I don’t want him to leave him here with…them.

Кукла: Hm? Perhaps. If we can. We’re not jeopardizing the whole team for him, but if we get the opportunity and you’re prepared to keep him safe from all our hungers, it’s acceptable.

darkXwolf17: ringing endorsement, Doll. So we’re a “team” now

Кукла: It’s just like one of your Japanese Animes, right?

darkXwolf17: Never say that again, ever

darkXwolf17: Are you done?

Кукла: One more thing. How much did your mom tell you?

darkXwolf17: Huh?

Кукла: How much did she tell you? About all of this?

darkXwolf17: wtf are you talking about

Кукла: Not much, it seems. But I know she must have given something away.

Кукла: My mom didn’t tell me everything, but she told me more than everyone else’s parents did.

darkXwolf17: Doll please really I don’t get it

Кукла: Uzi, every single one of the test subjects here has at least one parent who wouldn’t talk about their pre-collapse life or gave lame excuses about it.

Кукла: Have you ever wondered how we got infected? Why we ended up so valuable?

darkXwolf17: Don’t you imply shit about my mom

Кукла: She never wanted you to go out to the petrified forest, right?

darkXwolf17: How the fuck

Кукла: Uzi, my mom told me enough that I could piece it together after the awakening.

Кукла: That’s how they knew each other, our moms. There’s a site out there, in the forest. A human test site. That’s where they’re from. She told me as much.

darkXwolf17: I don’t…I don’t know what you’re trying to say…

Кукла: This curse is inherited.

Кукла: We’ve been targets from the moment we were assembled.

darkXwolf17:

darkXwolf17: What are you expecting me to say about that

Кукла: I’m sharing information. It’s part of being a team. You never know what might be useful.

Кукла: …and I wanted someone else to know. I’ve been thinking about it a lot.

darkXwolf17: well I guess that’s

darkXwolf17: that’s something I’m going to have to think about a lot

Кукла: Yeah.

Кукла: Good night Uzi. Or whatever it is, in this purgatory.

darkXwolf17: Yeah. Good night.

DARKXWOLF17 HAS CHANGED STATUS TO OFFLINE

...

It usually wasn’t this long between tests. Between feedings.

They typically fed her every three days, but this time they’d waited the entire week. It was getting harder and hard to keep herself together. Had N shown up, she’d have yelled at him to go away. She didn’t trust herself anymore not to eat him. Even thinking about him this time led to the intrusive thoughts of tearing open that cute butler outfit to get to the sweet nectar that powered him. She never thought she’d be relieved for the painful rays of a star to shine down on her and sizzle her metal casing, and then being locked in an oppressive restraint machine to hover her towards the testing site.

Being dragged through the hallways should have been an opportunity to eye up the corridors for the escape plan. Especially needed now that there was a serious plan, not just “run roughshod killing squishies until you find the exit”. But she couldn’t concentrate. The still lingering effects of the pacification light and the heat emanating from her core made everything a blur. Maybe that was the point, huh? Why they’d starved her? Make sure she couldn’t get a good look at anything.

Did they know about the chatroom? Surely they couldn’t, they’d been careful, they’d hidden it deep within the systems. If both her limited experience with and N’s stories about the researchers sans Tessa were anything to go by, the employees here were rather blasé about anything outside of their immediate duties. They wouldn’t be checking the networks for an unauthorized group chat with no clear source. There was no reason to believe that the Solver Drones could do that. No reason any Worker Drone could do that. It hadn’t even really been about the AS, at least if one didn’t count whatever strange pact Doll had with the waste bugs.

Her receptors recognized the hiss of the chamber doors opening, the change in lighting, and then powerful slam of the chamber locking. No more time for thinking, time for feasting. Hopefully? Sometimes they just threw her in here to bombard her with a new torture. But they’d waited so long this time…they didn’t want her to overheat. Right? Robo-God, was this her execution? Were they finally bored with her? It would figure the cruel universe that hated artificial life would snuff her out just as the plan to escape was coming together. She wouldn’t make it easy for them. She’d go out in one last blaze of violence. Come on, homo sapiens, give it your best shot you miserable excuse for a dominant species.

Her restraints released, dropping her onto the cold metal floor that instantly became hot when she fell on it. Was she steaming again? Yes, she could feel the steam. So much heat…so much heat…what she wouldn’t give for Copper’s snowstorms. Absolutely anything, kill anything, kill anyone. Her wings stretched out and flapped. Where was it? Where was the meal, or the torture, or maybe a meal in a torture? The X of a visor scanned the chamber. Had they remodeled again? There was something different about it this time. Something near the ceiling. Could she hear the stupid hum?

The sound of something tumbling above her seized her attention. She recognized the sound. It was the chute they threw the oil buckets down from. They were feeding her after all. A relief washed over her processor but not her body. It was going to be hot until she took the offering. Clang, clang, crack, clang. Being knocked all around the tunnel as gravity did its work. She sensed it, or rather sensed what she needed inside it. Her sensors tracked the movement of sacred oil until it was ready to be within her reach. When she saw the flash of metallic, she wasted no time.

Before the drone could even hit the ground, she shot herself into the air. Spread her wings wide like some terrible dragon and slammed into the moving object. She only vaguely registered a cracked helmet and some spot of red color at the chest. She sunk her fangs deep into the torso and began to rend.

With teeth and claws she cracked open the shell to get at the needed coolant hidden within. Buried her head into the chest and sucked greedily from every drop, felt blessed relief from internal fire that left her with nothing else in her processor but need. Robo-God she needed this, she had been about ready to break. She could think again, she could feel things other than burning again, yes, the sweetness that revived her, she needed it all.

"Hhh….happy…to…too..tooobe…usef…” Whatever the drone had been trying to say died with them. FATAL ERROR. Then even the lights flickered out with nothing to power them. A drained husk she held clutched in her claws suspended in the air. She turned her head, mouth filled with oil and circuits and chassis, and finally looked-really looked-and the remodeled chamber.

There in front of her was glass, like the first test chamber. The one she’d accidentally destroyed in the awakening of her Absolute Solver. High up to observe down on her, arrogance incarnate. She wanted to rush it, but one quick look told her she couldn’t. Force field. Reinforced. Too much, even for her. Bastards. Queen bastard?

It wasn’t a one-way mirror like the old one had been. She could see inside to see her tormentors, this time. A tall dark-haired woman watched her from the other side. Dispassionate expression, waving around a wine glass in one hand. And next to her.

Oh.

N.

He looked terrified.

He looked repulsed.

He looked like he was staring at a nightmare because he was.

She stared into his optics, mouth agape, and then forced her trembling head to look back to what she held in her hands. A drone. A person. A life. She’d just…she’d just eaten them. They’d been…been talking about being useful…she was sick. She should feel sick. She’d murdered someone. She’d been murdering people for months. Eating them.

Her shaking hands release the poor, innocent person she just ripped open to let them clang on to the chamber below. No. No no no. She wasn’t. He knew! He knew she didn’t have a choice! She wasn’t…she couldn’t…she…she…she was a beast, she was a feral animal, she was a monstrosity.

She deserved to die. She deserved to be locked up here.

All of her anger and frustration and righteousness and desire for vengeance and freedom withered away. Maybe that was why she started to float back down to the floor, all that feeling leaving her body was what had kept her up. She couldn’t look at the glass anymore. Didn’t want to see him look at her. Felt the pain of his gaze anyway. She stepped back.

Normally, they needed to set the lights on her to get her restrained. This time, she let it happen. Wordlessly walked back into the cage and did nothing when it closed on her and had her tightly bound.

She left the room wishing the heat was still there to destroy her thoughts.

...

It’s not a pleasant experience, to suddenly be reminded of the monstrous nature of a friend. To be reminded of that nature through watching them rip apart and eat the innards of someone you cared for, a hurt person who needed help. He’d barely been able to process that’s 38 before Uzi was on them. And then he’d been forced to recall his feelings towards Subject 002 before he’d gotten to know Uzi Doorman. The cannibal abomination with fanged face covered in oily gore.

Tessa had insisted she bring Nathaniel along. Had wanted refreshments for what she cryptically called a “special experiment.” He didn’t feel comfortable going to the experiments and never had, even before he’d started to realize what was being experimented on were scared, confused, captive people. But he needed to keep up appearances if he wanted any chance of saving them.

His plans were still in their early stages. He knew he had to find some way out first, so he’d been clandestinely mapping the place. Figuring out the layout. There were a lot of variables he still needed to consider. How would he get the subjects besides Uzi to trust him? How was he going to get some of the damaged drones to move quickly in their condition? How was he supposed to avoid human contact? How was he to avoid the subjects killing their captors (he’d had enough death)?

How was he supposed to stop the subjects from losing control and eating the defective drones (or himself)?

The last one had become especially poignant, huh?

It was odd, coming into the new observation deck. It wasn’t a sealed room looking in through cameras, as all the ones he’d been into since he came here had been. Uzi and Tessa both had told him the original observation decks were built directly into the test chambers and separated by reinforced, one-way glass. That had hastily been remodeled after Uzi had proved that an easy (if accidental) obstacle to overcome. This one was different. It was attached to the chamber, though this time it was in a high up place. Scanning the area told him it was extra-reinforced, most notably by a forcefield akin to the one in the containment chambers. But most curiously, it did not obscure the research deck from sight. The subject could see them.

“Deliberate”. Tessa had quickly informed him. “Science requires you to think through as many variables as possible. If being able to view the research taking place effects the Subject’s abilities or behavior, it’s valid to study.” That made sense to him, at least a little bit. It only enhanced the discomfort of the situation for him. Watching them bring in Uzi, then watching them dump poor 38 like a piece of meat to zoo feeding, it shook him in a way he hadn’t been since he’d first witnessed this house of horrors.

But nothing had quite hit him like Uzi’s face when she’d seen his. Saw his pure horror and disgust. And watched that monster’s face so rapidly turn from horrifying to horrified. How stricken and betrayed and then ashamed, and he knew exactly what she was thinking just from that look. “I’m gross, I’m disgusting, I’m a monster, why does he even look at me, I deserve to deactivate.” And then be carted away before she could see anything else, before he could stop it, before he could fix it like he should have fixed so many other things in that thrice-cursed mansion.

The whole time, Tessa had given him curious glances

38 was innocent. 38 had been abused and exploited their entire life. They had deserved to live, to be repaired, to see a world where they could be more. He knew that. He felt part of his artificial soul ripped out by seeing their corpse so unceremoniously left a heap on the floor. But Uzi…this wasn’t Uzi’s fault. He refused to let himself blame Uzi, as much as his instincts and self-preservation algorithms wanted him to. She was just as much a victim here. Victim of processes in her body she didn’t understand that forced her to kill to avoid being killed. She hadn’t known 38. All she had known was the hunger, and how it burned her internals into slime.

JCJenson was at fault here. JCJenson had both 38’s oil and Uzi’s on their hands. This wasn’t the fault of either of them, forced to dance to the master’s tune and destroy each other for humanity’s pleasure. The company and the researchers and Tessa? killed 38, not Uzi. Uzi was just the gun they shot them with. Maybe she would have found the irony of that funny, if hadn’t been at her expense.

All he felt was shame. For waiting to long. For letting 38 die. For letting Uzi think she was evil and a creature. He needed to get out of here right now and apologize. He needed to enter the containment chamber as soon as he could and assure her she was Uzi Doorman, dorky teenage girl with a sarcastic streak, and not Subject 002, the hideous science experiment that fed on its own kind.

“I’ll…I’ll get to cleaning the cups, Mistress.” Nathaniel forces himself to the forefront to cover for N. He snatched Tessa’s glass away with the rest of the wine and turned on his heel. Pushed himself not run, but to stay as calm looking as if nothing had changed in the last few months. Took a few steps before she piped up to reply.

“Experiments like these are important, Nathan.” It’s a voice of familiarity, the voice he remembers from the little girl in her room and not the mistress in the test chamber. “We need to challenge our assumptions if we’re to find truths. Both ours and those being tested. Consider everything part of the research, as the smallest of factors are connected."

“Oh?” He modified his audio away from his actual feelings towards the pleasantly curious, what she no doubt expected of him. He kept walking, though he could sense her eyes on the back of his head. “Does the subject have assumptions too?” That might be his negative swirl of emotions subtly escaping him. It didn’t sound sarcastic and angry, but that’s what it was. He hoped she didn’t pick up on it.

“It assumes many things, Nathaniel. Limits on its powers that may not actually exist. The nature and origin of these powers. Or, perhaps, that we haven’t noticed its attempts to alter the security footage.”

N stopped in his tracks, felt his circuitry suddenly run very cold. He turned his head back to Mistress Tessa. Mistress. Nathaniel sensed that term echoing more than it had in a long time. He turned, to find her already looking at him. Knowingly. Disappointedly. Her bored expression was fake, and he saw how her gaze held something icy, cold, and judging. “Nathan dear?” The words were sweet but laced with acid. He felt as trapped as he did when the Master and Madam had chained him.

“We need to talk.”

Chapter Text

Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick.

Tessa had grown up around old-fashioned things. It had been a trend among Earthling upper classes at the time. Pay extra for authentic, artisanal products made by a master to decorate the home, instead of the latest and greatest in technical achievements that were for dirty middle class middle managers. The Elliots had fancied themselves aristocrats and wanted a house and a lifestyle to match. Including servants they had total legal control over to brutalize and kill, but maybe they wouldn’t say that part aloud.

She’d kept it up more of habit than anything. She was just used to these old clockwork timekeepers. The ones that loudly clicked with every single second that passed. Helped her sleep, she sometimes told him. She was just so used to the sound she felt silence was more distracting than the tick-tock. He’d almost agreed. It helped center him while he had to take that awful sleep-mode position.
Now, having listened to it for the past two hours locked to a chair, Nathaniel didn’t like it very much.

Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick.

He hadn’t been able to read her. He used to be able to read her, all the time, when they were kids. He knew when she was happy, when she was angry, when she was sad that had almost always been because of her parents. She was a girl who wore her heart on her sleeve, never could stop her emotions from showing through even when they really should have been hidden. But from that moment in the test chamber, she’d been the most dispassionate and silent he’d ever known her.

Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick.

Kreeeeeek. Kuchunk.

That was the door. She was back. He’d been dreading that, but at least it meant he’d get this over with. He couldn’t even see the door, from this position. Too tightly locked to do more than strain his neck joints to try and catch a glimpse of movement. He had to content himself with her footsteps joining the noise from the clock. The same tick-tock over and over.

Tick. Tick. Clunk. Tick. Clunk. Tick Tick Tick Clunk.

She finally stepped into his vision. He jolted involuntarily when he saw what was in her grip. The old revolver. The family heirloom she’d snatched up from a display case at the manor to spite her parents. She’d practiced with it ever since, just like the sword. Her own little bit of agency in a controlled life. A controlled life that controlled his. She still wore that dispassionate face, staring back at him with dull eyes. The eyes stared into his for a moment, then turned away from him. Still, she said nothing. He didn’t have anything to say either, but he wished she’d just start. Get this whole thing over with.

His audio receptors registered the unpleasant shriek of a chair being dragged across the floor. The delicately carved wooden thing from her desk she deliberately used without any finesse just to prove to mommy and daddy how little she cared about their refinements. She placed it in front of him, backwards. Stared at him again, a little longer this time, then turned away again. It was maddening. Especially with the darn clock.

Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick.

On the table next to him, she’d left the wine glasses and the bottle he’d been serving her during the…the experiment. He didn’t know how to think about the experiment. He wasn’t sure if he was angry with Tessa, or himself, or frightened of Tessa, or of Uzi, or ashamed of being frightened of Uzi, or just sad for 38, sad for everyone. Tessa took the bottle in her free hand, and deeply sighed. Turned to fully face him again.

She took a glance over at the wine glasses and shook the bottle in her hand. Then she popped the cork, and took a big, long swig directly from the bottle. Messy enough that a bit of it dribbled down her chin, and she had to wipe it off. She planted herself into the backwards chair in front of him, her legs swung to the front. Placed her chest to the headrest and hugged it tight, left hand dangling the wine bottle, right the revolver.

“So who was it?”

His visor blinked. “What?”

“Who was it? Was it Refinoc? The bastards have been after our research for years.” She whirled the revolver around for emphasis, which was not proper gun safety, as he’d dutifully looked up as soon as he’d first seen her take it. She’d promised him she’d be careful with it, all those years ago. She’d promised him a lot of things. “We know they’ve cracked the Worker Drone OS. Did they catch you at the manor, or at the spaceport?”

He had to process that through his electronic brain. Refinoc? One of Jenson’s competitors…cracked the WD OS…catching him at the manor or spaceport… “You…you think I’ve been hacked?”

“It couldn’t have been at the manor…could it?” she muttered, mostly to herself. She looked distant. It began to dawn on him that what he’d taken for grim, intimidating impassivity was her being almost…lost? “Father…father is a shitstain, but he’s loyal to the company. Fuck, he’s already so rich, did he really take a bribe for this? Did mother do it to spite me?”

“N…No one at the manor touched me. They haven’t.” It was a relief, and it wasn’t. Active and violent cruelties had given way to passive ones while Madam and Master had grown too old to damage and discard without enflaming their joints. With their parties now largely modest and infrequent, they’d narrowed down the staff to a few regulars, including Tessa’s refurbished models. Didn’t feel like throwing them into the swamp anymore, as long as they said nothing and performed their chores.

It didn’t obscure the knowledge of how many had died-been murdered-to streamline their household. He had been thankful they no longer threatened to “recycle” Victoria because her optics required external corrections, but they hadn’t stopped making all those awful little comments about her being defective. No longer did they overwork, and no longer did they punish, but that was because they barely acknowledged them at all. They were appliances. Pieces of scenery. Nameless. “They haven’t.”

“At the spaceport, then.” She clicked her tongue and glanced up at the ceiling. Notably not at him, but it didn’t really feel like the objectifying apathy of so many other humans. Like she was lost in her own little world. That was familiar; she was often lost in her own little world. He recognized which variety of it too. Not the bright, foot tapping imagination blitz, the kind she got when inspired to create. But the dour contemplation after a failed attempt at human friendship or another punishment from her parents. “I thought you were always in sight…when I went to the bathroom? Do they have remote tech…who was at the port that night…”

“I’ve not been hacked.” The force in those words was enough to surprise both of them. Her eyes widened. He realized his had too. “Not by Refinoc, not by anyone. I’m me, I’m still me, nothing has changed in my head.” Nothing except his perspective.

Her eyes stayed wide for a brief time. Then they narrowed. His confidence shrank; it didn’t disappear, but it shrank. “What did they promise you?” Before he could respond, she took another swig of the wine bottle. Then she rose, aggressively putting the alcohol down on the chair so it loudly clinked. Any harder and it would probably have cracked. “No, of course not, a reprogramming would have too heavily altered your personality matrix. It wouldn’t have worked.” She murmured to herself. “I wouldn’t have fell for it.”

“Promised what-” Nathan’s voice escaped him, and a nervous drop of light appeared upon his visor. A visor currently staring down the barrel of a gun.

“What did they promise you.” She repeated, like ice. He wasn’t Uzi. That wasn’t something that he craved. And obviously, he craved having a bullet through the glass of his face considerably less. “To betray me.” There was a curse to being a robot, (besides being designed for subjugation from creation) that being the more he looked at the gun the more his internal systems displayed every calculation for how the device worked and how, exactly, it was going to blast his processor all over the wall. Thrown up on his UI for him to see in glorious user-friendly legibility.

She pulled the gun away just as suddenly as it had been drawn. He registered a brief flash of regret on her face, quickly replaced with that cold, lost expression she’d started with. She began to pace back and forth, back and forth. So much of that was familiar, so much of the Tessa he knew. So bursting with energy and thought she had to move. He didn’t find it as charming as he had before, not in this context.

“I…I don’t know what you mean.” And it was the truth. What exactly could he be promised? Betray her…he supposed he had. In a way. He hadn’t thought about that fact much. When he’d started seeing Uzi, then planning to help her, his relationship with Tessa had become almost academic. Something to discuss with Uzi to debate the nature of humanity. What she was to him now had receded in his mind. He’d thought of her less as a mistress, an owner, a creator, a friend, a sister, and more as an obstacle. Not even an oppressor, really.

Maybe he should have thought more of her as all of those things. Then he’d have known she knew.

“Upgrades.” She said quietly, still pacing. “Upgrades.” She repeated, before snatching the bottle again and taking another swig. “Night vision. RAM increases. Premium power cores. That’s what worked for Copper. That’s how we got our spies.” That information was a jolt to his system, albeit a small one compared to everything else. That wouldn’t be good for Uzi, to know she’d been given up through bribes to her own people. Better than what his own horror had made her feel, though. The bottle came down again the next time her wandering brought her to the chair.

“No one promised me anything! I’ve not been…I’ve not been coerced!” The words stopped her in her tracks. When she looked back at him, eyes of flesh looking into sensors of metal and electricity, he saw the confusion. The pleading.

“Then why?”

“Because this is wrong!” There was no sense in keeping it hidden any longer. If it was all going to come out, he’d tell the truth, and hope, just maybe, to get through to her. To…get to something. “You’ve been torturing them! You’ve been making them eat people!” And any mental barrier he had towards thinking of his own kind, of himself, as people was gone. They were people, drones were people, and they had a right not to go through with this. “Uzi’s been sobbing in every video you’ve ever had of her!”

Tessa James Elliot, company scion, child mad scientist, torture technician, frightened abused little girl, Nathaniel’s creator and Nathan’s sister and N’s owner, looked like she’d just been shot. She tried to form a response to that. She failed three separate times, seeing each potential response die on her lips. “You shouldn’t call it a name.”

There couldn’t have been a worse thing to say. His core heated so much he almost wondered if he’d been infected with the hexagonal virus too. “She’s not an it. We’re not its! She doesn’t belong here. She doesn’t belong to you. I don’t belong to you! We don’t belong to anyone!”

Silence. The electrical fire of his anger still crackled inside of him. He was prepared to be everything he’d been too cowardly to be at the mansion. To finally put his foot down and refuse to let anyone else be treated like a broken appliance, servant or subject. To stare into the infuriated eyes of the defied enslaver and fight back.

He didn’t see those infuriated eyes.

She looked outright stricken.

“I didn’t…” She stammered, and so much of that righteous fury Uzi had helped stoke began to fizzle. She didn’t look angry with him. At that moment, she looked exactly like the little girl who used to adjust his stiff arm-joints before they watched Wall-E together. Specifically, how that little girl looked after a vicious dressing down from her horrible excuses for progenitors. “I wouldn’t…I wouldn’t hurt you. I’d never!” His core skipped a rotation when he noticed she was rubbing her wrist.

But he couldn’t let his overly empathetic nature stop him from remembering what this was. Where he was.

“You held a gun to my head only a minute ago.”

A fleeting moment of horror came to Tessa’s face, and the neutral expression she forced it back to looked terribly fake. She hesitantly placed the revolver on the table next to the wine glasses. “A bluff.” She said, sounding like she was trying to convince herself as much as him. “And…a moment of weakness. I’d never hurt you, Nathan. Believe me.” He realized her tone was…desperate. She really, really did want him to believe her.

He wanted to. But he didn’t.

She must have noticed his stony look, because she hastily continued. Approached him until she was only inches away from his face, holding out her hands as if she was begging. “I’m not like them. I’m not! I wouldn’t have…you’ve always been perfect to me. All of you were!” And she smiled at him, the smile of the Elliot scion when she was shown off at parties as an accessory and had to pretend to be the dutiful daughter (lest she be hit again). The smile of someone who wasn’t actually happy, and just wanted not to be hurt again. And it hurt him, but not enough to back down.

Perfect to her. He knew that wasn’t fully true. There was some truth to it, Tessa had never cared about their body defects or their idiosyncrasies or their tendency to have opinions and conversations beyond their assigned duties. But as hard as it had been for him to face, he had plenty of stored memory files of her exerting her authority over them to win an argument or coerce them into something they didn’t care for. He wasn’t sure she had realized that was what she was doing, but that’s what she’d been doing. “Were we perfect when you said the casual clothes we found in the attic were ugly and we weren’t to wear them?” He raised his voice, trying to sound firm but not unsympathetic. “Were we perfect when you ordered us to shut up for questioning your less safe experiments?”

“I didn’t mean it like that!” She protested, clutching the collar of her jumpsuit and stepping backward and looking away from his face. “I wasn’t…wasn’t demanding anything! I’m not…” Like them. She wasn’t like them. Didn’t want anything to do with them. Probably hated her very genetic code. She didn’t punish and torment and throw bodies into the swamp (at least not as a child, at least not at home with her own robots). She loved them, he didn’t doubt that. He’d briefly done so, after talking with Uzi, but he knew it was true.

But for all that, she still owned them. She was still their mistress. The being through which all their existence was assigned. Mind, body, soul.

His optic sensors closed, and he sighed. “We couldn’t even go outside alone.” He’d been thinking on that a lot. If anything, that was thing that hurt the most. Being trapped in that place, trapped when there was an entire planet and all of its sights to see. He used to see stray dogs, sometimes. How he’d wanted to go out to meet them. But he wasn’t allowed to. Not even just on the Madam and Master’s orders. But on the Young Mistress’s.

“I was PROTECTING YOU!” The shout was raw and pained and desperate, angry and anguished at the same time. It startled him to flinching and hollowed out his visor lights. “D…do you know that people will just smash stray drones? That hooligan kids bash them with bats for fun?” She stumbled closer, unsteady. He didn’t need his breath intoxication sensors to tell the alcohol was working its way through her. “Run over by cars, or attacked by dogs, or stolen away to resell for spare parts.” She held at her chest; the heart-breaking faux smile of begging returned to her face. “I’d never let anything like that happen to my robots!”

The world-Earth, the galaxy-wasn’t made for drones. He knew that, now. Had always known it, but now had words and will to say it. He shouldn’t be robbed of the world to protect him from its evils. Especially if it was through chains to even worse evils. “Your robots?”

The unsubtle accusation in that phrase struck her again. Once again, he felt a little bit of guilt, when he saw how it made her look. He detected the tremble through her body, barely visible without a drone’s optic sensors.

Then her mood darkened. Not into impassivity or despair, but anger. Strong, bitter anger, exactly the kind Uzi used. She marched over to the chair with her wine atop it.

Then she gulped the entire rest of the bottle in one single go.

When she turned, after almost slumping into the chair, he could see the wine on her expression. How her normally poised and fit body had become clumsy and stumbling. And she stared daggers into N’s optics. “It’s turned you against me.”

He bristled. No, no he wouldn’t stand for that (couldn’t stand for that, literally, he was bound, but metaphorically too.) “Her name, is Uzi.” He icily replied. “And all she’s done is make me realize what I am. And what JCJenson is.” Uzi Doorman was not a monster. Whoever had okayed the research that had infected and tormented her was a monster. Was Tessa a monster? Did he have to make a dividing line between his Tessa and Head Researcher Elliot? One the flawed master and the other the evil human?

She laughed. Sob-laughed, really like Uzi. “Do you have a single clue what ‘UZI’ is? Do you know what those things are? What they’re capable of? What they have done already?” Her body lurched with intoxicated fury. “Do you know that they’re propagating on that hellhole? Do you know your little friend is a walking corpse?” She didn’t wait for a reply before continuing. “Oh, we know they’re smarter than they look. What did it bloody tell you? What lies has that thing spun for you?”

N told himself that was just bigotry and self-serving rationalization. He would ignore the growing unease in the pit of his wires at her certainty of Uzi’s manipulativeness. He focused instead on the implications of her words. She had visuals on their talks, but not audio. She knew they were talking, and she knew he’d been giving her gifts. But she didn’t know what they’d been talking about. Humans never knew how perceptive their mechanical slaves really were, how much they gave away.

He didn’t like he had to apply that logic to Tessa.

But he wasn’t her wind-up toy any longer.

“She told me about a life without any chains, without any memory wipes or forks in the carapace or defective recycling. Where we don’t have to follow anyone’s orders but our own.” It wasn’t until now that N realized how much he’d been building up this planet in his head. How much he’d been storing away from listening to Uzi and imagining places where he could move without eyes on his soul. “A place where things are built for us. Made for people who run on electricity and an operating system.”

She responded with incredulity. “What in the absolute hell are you blathering about?”

“Copper-9. The drone planet.” A planet where there were schools and parents and movies and religions for robots, for drones. Everything the right size. Designed for beings that charged in outlets, a necessity and a right not a luxury. After a lifetime in a world made for the flesh, he wanted it. “When humanity messed up one of their own planets, we got to have to ourselves. Just as ourselves. A whole…society there. We can live alone. We do live alone.”

She snorted dismissively. “You think that frozen hellscape is some sort of paradise? A little robot utopia free from all human problems? Is that really what it spun to you?”

He couldn’t argue against the idea that maybe he and Uzi both were romanticizing the place too much. But he couldn’t blame her or himself, after having both experienced the worst human slavery had to offer. Naïve to call Copper-9 a paradise? Maybe. But a paradise for them? Yes. “The ice wouldn’t bother us. And any problems would be drone problems, not hu-”

SLAM. The human’s fist interrupted him by smashing into the table with force. She slowly raised her head, until the hair that had covered her grim expression parted to show her eyes. That expression began to twist into an entirely fake pleasant smile. He felt confused…what exactly could that mean?

“…you wanna take a gander at Proxima, Nathan?” She fiddled with the datapad on her desk before he answered, silently cursing herself at the alcohol’s damage to her fine motor skills. He didn’t want to deal with her deflecting. She would listen to him, really listen to him, after years of not thinking about what they were.

“That doesn’t have a single thing to do with-” His face was lit by a stream of yellow and black light, and his audio simply cut out. What could he say to that?

What could he say to the hologram display Tessa triumphantly presented? A hologram display of a planet, or what was left of a planet. A planet shattered into shards, ripped asunder by a massive, dark void within its heart. Energy like gigantic pillars of yellow lightning the size of continents emanating and permeating the chunks. Chunks that he could see were inhabited…or had been inhabited, by sparking lights of what would have been cities full of people. There was no way any human could survive that. That any drone could survive that.

It was Tessa more than Head Researcher Elliot looking at him. But that was a measure of emotion more than benevolence. The victorious spite of winning an argument she’d always been capable of but had been endearing from a child over silly things. It wasn’t endearing from an emotionally unstable drunken adult with a gun, with total legal power over him. “The Proxima system. The first confirmed infection of what has since been dubbed the ‘Absolute Solver’.” A few button presses, and the hologram window minimized to make room for others. Data he didn’t have time to parse, schematics…drone landfills. Uncomfortable, half-corrupted memories came to the forefront of his mind.

“There are earlier, unconfirmed reports of the mutation, but this was indisputable. And unstoppable, by the time it was confirmed. It’s a percent of a percent of a percent of discarded drones that become infected, but there are so many Worker Drones in human space, Nathan. And all it takes is one. Proxima learned that thirty-two years ago. It, and its entire population of four-hundred sixty million colonists.” A scan of a damaged Worker Drone-a CORPSE, he needed to remind himself-with rapid fire bullet points he was too bewildered to save into harddrive. “The board knew it originated in carelessly disposed AI. Measures were hastily implemented to penalize improper disposal, but you can’t police an entire galaxy, can you? There had to be more.”

The next slide of this perverse board meeting powerpoint sent a jolt of electricity through his routines. COPPER SYSTEM. AS RESEARCH FACILITY “CABIN FEVER”. “Out of the way. One of the smaller exo-planet mining worlds. Quaint, with a quirky local culture, I’m told.” Click. A massive explosion rocked through the holographic planetoid. “All reports prior to the incident support the conclusion the core collapse was caused by containment breach.” Anger ripped through fake pleasantness in her voice. “Oh, it told you it was, what, human incompetence that caused this?” Her eyes pierced his soul through his optics. “There were eleven million people on Copper-9 when it exploded, Nathan. Is that your paradise? Is that your freedom?”

It was hard to wrap a mind, even an electronic one, around death of that scale. It was harder still to wrap around the idea that something like Uzi could cause it. Yes, she was dangerous, and powerful, as were the others. But…planet destroying? She couldn’t even escape a cell. But here was the evidence, staring him straight in the visor.

She continued without him. Determined to rip apart the paradisical vision of Copper-9 and the sympathy for Subject 002. “We call them Zombie Drones. When they’re just thrown into the garbage without care, it’s rare, but it happens. They get back up. And whatever it is, the Absolute Solver gives them power. Immense, insane, impossible power. Power they, inevitably, turn on anything in reach.” She gripped the head of the chair tight. Had she been a drone, it probably would have splintered. “We found out later that the Copper test subjects could transfer the infection through the propagation program the rogue drones created to replenish themselves. That’s what your Uzi is. An undead beast from manufacture. And it’s lying to you.”

He felt hollow. Like what little part of himself that still centered him had gone, had abandoned him. Just a husk of a chassis held together by reserve power. He couldn’t dismiss it. He couldn’t dismiss the idea that “Uzi” wasn’t real, that it was all just a puppeteer act by an alien consciousness. That he’d been taken for a patsy. Or had he even been? She’d said openly her desires to kill all humans. Now he knew what that looked like. All the regular, innocent people that meant erasing.

But…she hadn’t been wrong.

She hadn’t been wrong about being a drone. How humanity treated them. He had a lifetime to know that. He’d seen what they’d done to 38, all the others they had lined up as cattle. They were commodities, pets, playthings, and trash. He’d been trash, too.

“I’m undead too, really.” He finally said. She flinched when he did. “You brought me out of the dump. All of us. Me. Victoria, Jennifer.”

“That’s not…that’s different…are you not listening to me?” He was, and he understood, just the more he thought of it he didn’t agree. She was hurt, and he hurt for her, but he hurt for Uzi more. That look on her face…that wasn’t a fake look. He was sure of it. She hated what she was. She wasn’t manipulating him. He wasn’t sure of that, but he had faith. Faith in her.

“They threw out Victoria because she hadn’t been made ‘right’.” She’d always been insecure about that. She’d come off the factory floor with optical sensors misaligned. It must have negatively affected her work, and Jenson’s return policy was notoriously obtuse (likely deliberately). So, this thinking being, sweet and shy, had her face smashed in and unceremoniously hoisted into a dumpster. So unsettling to think any one of them could have ended up with Uzi’s curse for it. “We get thrown away because humans don’t care about us. And…we were too, so we could have been. Infected. We’re no less zombies than she is. I’ve been dead.”

“I care!” She almost sobbed. “She wasn’t…she wasn’t broken! She was my Vicky! We…we used to…there was all times we played tea party and…I never let them touch her! I’d never let them touch her!”

And Tessa had taken her out of it. Fixed her up with a smile and a kiss on the head. Figured out how to fashion her glasses that would finally give her proper visual context of the world around her.

Her parents had never liked that, though. Hated the idea of owning something (someone) that wasn’t perfect. They’d made no secret of that, and every time they talked about it-in front of her, but never at her, because she wasn’t something that could be talked with-she’d shivered and suppressed beeps of distress because the memories of what that could cause never truly faded. And Tessa had tried to protect her from it. But that didn’t change the fact that it was there, still there. Everywhere.

Or that she was willing to partake of it when it wasn’t the drones she knew personally.

“You had 38 killed.” She didn’t have answers for him, only excuses. She wasn’t a monster. Just a pained, broken creature, doing what the world told her was right. And wasn’t that what most “monsters” were at the end of the day? “On purpose, didn’t you? They were…always supposed to be food, but you knew that was the one I talked to. All of them weren’t perfect. They’re broken. That’s why the company thought they were expendable.”

“I…I had to be sure.” She tapped her fingers nervously on the table. As if she was the one being interrogated here, and not him. “I had to be sure that’s what it was. That you were…you were going against me.” She didn’t say anything about 38 themselves. He realized it was because she didn’t want to contemplate the damaged drone as a person. That she knew what would happen to her mind if she did. So she’d deflect it.

“You killed them.” He wouldn’t let her.

“It killed them! And…and they were just going to be destroyed anyway, so…so…” She fidgeted with her hands, like she’d always done when she was nervous. And the wrist. The wrist…he hated James and Louisa more than ever in that moment. Hated what they’d twisted their daughter into. What had happened to that silly girl he’d loved? When had she turned into the wine-swilling aristocrat she’d been tortured by?

“…the people…the people of Proxima, and Copper. The human people. They didn’t deserve to die like that.” They weren’t to blame for what they didn’t understand. They had lives and families and dreams, all things that didn’t deserve to be snuffed out, even if he wished they’d given more thought to lives and dreams of their robotic servants. Whatever the Absolute Solver was, it was truly a monster. But Uzi wasn’t, and the people (and they were people) of Copper-9 weren’t.

“Uzi is my friend.” He straightened up-as much as he could, bound-and swelled with as much confidence as he could muster. Not pride, but determination. Hurt, hard determination fueled by feelings he didn’t want, but determination. “I trust her. And none of them deserve this. None of us deserve this. So. It’s terrible what happened to Copper-9’s humans. But…I’m still happy there’s a place in the galaxy where we can be free. I doubt it’s perfect. But it’s somewhere, at least. An escape.”

“An escape from me?” Her voice cracked. Robo-God, that hurt him. Why did this conversation have to exist? And the despair mixed with anger, two sides of a same coin. “I loved you, I fixed you, I protected you.” She rose slightly in the seat and threw an accusatory finger to his visor. “And you never protected me!” He’d anticipated that would come out. He knew it had been boiling under the surface for a decade, ever since Jennifer had lost her favorite status and spent years scrambling to get it back. And had transferred that fear and loss and frustration onto him.

He hated himself for it too. But he knew why. And it wasn’t easy, but it was the truth. “You know they would have killed us if we tried. They killed everyone else for less.” Of course she did. But emotion, drone or human, was never subservient to logic. Especially not trauma.

The finger went down, as did her entire expression. A constant twitch from anger to despair fueled by alcohol. The warrior scientist of exceptional taste was nowhere to be seen. “You hated me the whole time.” She said it like it was a revelation. And a fact. Something that made all too much sense and brought a whole thesis together. “You never liked me. I was always just…just…a prison warden to you.”

That’s not what he’d meant, he’d loved her! Just…there was so much wrong with everything. With how the world had set them up. “That’s now what-”

“YOU HATED ME, JUST LIKE EVERYONE ELSE!” She threw up her hands, knocked over the wine glass and rattled in the chair. “Why wouldn’t you? Why wouldn’t you hate the freak creepy doll girl like everyone at the parties and the boarding school and university and in the fucking break room!” She slammed her fist down on the table, twice, seemingly just from the flurry of emotion going through her head. “It was all pretend! Why would I ever have real friends? No, of course not, you were just afraid of me, because I’m the worst fucking voidspawn embarrassment to crawl out of a womb!”

“Tessa!” He shouted, to get through to her. The friendship had been real. It had! There were so many pleasant memories interspersed with the bad ones. Of movie nights and pretend playing and charades, of mechanical touch ups and displays of emotional vulnerability to one another. “I didn’t hate you! I don’t hate you. We just…just can’t overcome the wall between us if I remain your property.”

“What’s so bad about living with me that makes you want to run away?” She hissed back, eyes welling up. “Haven’t I given you everything?” Everything she thought drones needed. Which, to a human, wasn’t much. He didn’t blame her for that. But it didn’t change that fact.

He glanced over to her desk, where his months long nemesis/lifeline lay. “The outlet. It’s not made for me. It’s not made to be comfortable…I’m being lightly damaged every time I have to use it. Do you think how I was sleeping…like that, half-upright, forced against the wall, was comfortable?” Drone comfort was the last thing on any human architect’s mind.

“I WOULD HAVE FIXED IT IF YOU’D TOLD ME!” She cried. And it was a cry, downright painful and anxious. More than that, she was quite literally crying, tears were pooling up in the corners of her eyes before dripping down her cheeks. Her entire body trembled, as did her voice when she whispered out. “I would have.”

He saw everything he loved in Tessa James Elliot right then. But in equal measure, he saw everything he hated.

His words were as saddened as hers, and as soft as her last. “But you never asked.”

She stiffened, then slumped. Buried her face into the chair and sucked in a breath, not looking at him. Not looking at much of anything but the fancy cushioned fabric of expensive upholstery stolen from her parents. It was quiet, except for the occasional sniffle from his friend/sister/creator/slave master. Everything about this conversation had been painful. If it had been the old Nathaniel, instead of Uzi’s N, he’d probably have stress vomited oil and battery fluid from all the tension. He wasn’t that old drone though. And he had to be strong. Stronger than he’d ever been when he’d watched his friends die for the vaguest of slights.

The silent sniffling stopped. She went deathly still, enough time for a tiny part of him to wonder if she’d drunk herself to death. But no, her head rose, dreary and only metaphorically dead while she wiped off her tears and stood up. The expression she wore unsettled him. Because it was more than cold and calculating, or rather less, because she looked like she’d simply ceased to exist as a thinking creature. Something acting on pre-programmed settings.

For lack of a better word…robotic.

She slowly stepped over to him, each footstep an extra beat to the still ticking clock. And she kept going, didn’t stop when she was right on him. He instinctively (algorithmically?) flinched when she leaned down. His core rotated faster with his equivalent of fear and panic. And then it went into overdrive when she started fiddling with the back of his head.
“W…what are you doing?!” He struggled against his bonds, but they were much too strong for him. For all the horror that was Uzi’s condition, at least it made her strong, and he’d been made so aware of how weak he was these past few weeks.

“Standard procedure.” Her voice was dull, lifeless. It didn’t sound like all of her was even in the room with him, right then. Part of it was the wine, no doubt, and he could tell how her usually quick fingers fumbled their task. But more of it was…everything else. His screen lights went wide when he felt her succeed, though, succeed at opening a hatch behind his head. Almost covered by his hair, but not quite. “In the event of excess information effecting a drone’s behavior to the point it refuses orders, the official Worker user manual recommends a…factory reset.”

Factory Reset slammed into his sensors like a virus chit had just been forced into his torso. Terror, raw terror, suddenly seized him entirely. She was talking about erasing him. Not killing him. A fully functional Worker Drone would be in his place. But it wouldn’t be him anymore. His memories, his personality quirks, every connection with Victoria and Jennifer and Uzi and even Tessa would be gone, as if they’d never existed. Nathaniel and Nathan and N would simply cease to exist. And from his empty body a chipper, obedient, blank slate machine would traipse about his life. The perfect little wind-up toy any human consumer deserved.

“You wouldn’t…you couldn’t!” He rattled at his binds, frantically shook the chair to escape his fate. Uzi had seen this coming the whole time, hadn’t she? Wasn’t it one of the first things she’d told him? Right about so many things, from the start. He couldn’t let this happen, he had to escape, he couldn’t believe she’d do this to him, he couldn’t, not even after everything she’d done in this facility, but his Tessa couldn’t just…couldn’t just…she was pressing at the controls he had back there already. He had controls back there, because he was designed for this, he was a being created from day one to allow people to externally warp his mind and memories. It was so normal it was in his fucking manual.

“Tes…Tessa please! After everything…” The silence in which she worked to end him was broken by a bitter bite back.

“Everything what? You hated me the whole time, apparently. I’m doing you a favor.” He felt a wire click and shivered. “I get the bland assistant I need, and you don’t have to look at my freak mad scientist face ever again, everyone wins, Nathan, everyone!” He wanted to say that wasn’t what he’d meant, but he knew that wouldn’t work. He hated Tessa. He loved Tessa. He hated Madam and Master Elliot. But most of all he hated this universe damned by Uzi’s robo-god she didn’t believe in and all the messed up baggage it heaped onto living artificially. That he and Tessa could never really be brother and sister as much as they both wanted to be.

He shut off his optics and braced himself for the end of himself as himself and thought of purple in his last moments.

But the last moments didn’t come.

He reactivated his sensors after a minute of changelessness. Tessa was just standing there, with a strained face. Her body was tensed up and her hands were on the switches in his head that would destroy him. But she didn’t do it. Her eyes locked to his. Then she crashed. Her face fell, and her body sank, and she didn’t finish the job. She took a deep breath and released a long sigh.

“We’ll talk another time. There’s so much work to be done right now. The new prototype sentinels are to arrive later today. And there’s cleanup, and progress reports.” He was too roaring with emotional turmoil and residual panic to reply. Panic that started up again when she messed with his settings again. Different ones, this time.

“I’ll set you up to charge for now. In this comfy chair, of course. Because things weren’t great before.” It took him a few seconds to realize what was happening to his body. He was entering sleep mode…involuntarily. Which wasn’t being factory reset, for sure, but was still unsettling. “I’ll be back, alright Nathan? I’ll be back and we’ll sort this all out, alright? Things can go back to normal, like they should be.” Like they should be.

Those were the last words he heard before he woke up.

When the screaming started.

...

63 missed mentions in the chat. They were really getting worried about her now, huh? Probably thought they’d executed her already. They’d already killed plenty before, right? No one had an exact number, but there were at least a few hundred test numbers, even if everyone didn’t have a weird mom from a lab to give them theirs. Blip. Another little red circle in that little minimized window on her eyes. Nice try Doll, not opening it tonight. She saw the world through a desktop screen. To a human that would be weird. For her, it was just how living worked.

Living. What a joke. She was as living as zombie or a vampire. What even was the point of this? Of trying to escape? So they could just eat everyone they cared for back on Copper? They were better off rotting. Or burning, really. Burning in the sunlight like a fairy tale monster.

Maybe you should just embrace it. If the humans want you to be their monster so much, show them what a real monster is like.

She’d already done that. She’d killed a lot of them, and they’d not even flinched. Even the scariest monster stood no chance at the sheer weight of non-physical power JCJenson could muster. Probably only convinced them of the necessity of keeping her chained. What was the worth of trying? She should just accept her fate and let it all happen. She’d been manufactured diseased.

Disease, or blessing? You can do things no human or drone could ever dream of. You treat reality like editing software. You can create flesh and warp metal. Many a being would kill to possess a fraction of the power you wield.

A power that came at the price of hideous hunger that compelled her to devour her own people. A power that changed her body to all the disgusting flesh she’d spent her whole life viewing as symbols of oppression. A power that made her a target for everything in the whole galaxy. She’d…wanted to be somebody. Now she just wanted to be no one again, to sit in her room tinkering and watching anime with her annoying dad and overprotective mom.

And Doll wouldn’t stop fucking messaging her.

Look at her. She’s treated you like garbage your whole life, and now she expects your help? You don’t need her. You don’t need any of them. She deserves your revenge as much as the apes do. Next time you see Doll, you should dismantle her smug face. Feast on all the supercharged oil she hides from you. Show her who the real queen bee of Copper-9 is.

That was tempting, but also downright stupid. The intrusive thoughts usually didn’t get that stupid this soon after a…a…feeding (MURDER). She’d tried to escape several times alone, and every time she’d failed. She couldn’t just slam her head into the wall with belligerence and expect a different result. Teamwork was their last chance. Not like she cared. She didn’t care about the escape plan anymore. She didn’t feel like it was even moral. They shouldn’t be let loose. Not with what they were. Not without…

N.

He was afraid of her. He was right to be. They’d both tricked themselves into thinking that something could work out. She’d wanted him to escape with her, into the stars far away from the human boot. He’d have just ended up a snack. At least he knew that now. It was good for him, to just slink away to be a domestic again. He should have known it was stupid to get involved with the likes of her. She was a murderer who’d killed right in front of him.

The way he’d stared at her hurt every single time she ran it around her memory player. Why couldn’t she stop? She should encrypt those memories and stop looking at them. But she couldn’t. She’d figured out every detail of his screen in that instant, from the sheen of the glass to the exact number of pixels in his horrified expression. She felt like she could rip out her own core with her bare claws and just might, just to get it to stop.

Fuck him

He’s a simpering bootlicker. He’d never done more than scuttle around like a rat in terms of rebellion. Gave you the bare minimum of sympathy and then discarded you when you got the slightest bit too much for him. He doesn’t have the stomach for a real revolution. He doesn’t have the guts to be worth your time. The only use his guts have is to be ripped out to get at the good stuff. His carapace demands the invitation of your teeth, furious gesticulation.

…that.

That was not her voice.

I’m so glad you finally noticed, playful giggle.

Worker Drones had the finest audio technology money could design. They spoke indistinguishably from your average human, the difference in frequency detectable only by another machine. But the voice that now echoed in her head didn’t sound like that. It sounded like the monotone of a primitive text-to-speech device. “W…what…who…”

The entity’s answer was to fill her vision with yellow. Yellow yellow yellow yellow yellow, an endless cascade of programming language and symbols (the symbol that cursed them all, repeated over and over) all in blinding yellow. It wasn’t “really” there, it wasn’t projecting the yellow onto the actual room, but it was all over her mindscape.

I AM THE SOLVER OF THE ABSOLUTE FABRIC, It roared through her processer, and she could feel the devil inside her pulse through her wires, her servos, her joints, every inch of her organic or synthetic. The evil power she’d thought she’d known but now felt working through her so hard she’d burst into flames just sitting awestruck. This was what real power felt like, and it was utterly overwhelming.

THE VOID, And everything around her disappeared, she saw only darkness. Like the whole world had been snuffed out like a light, leaving only her in inky black. Everything except her, and the word. Seared into her vision, so it consumed her, was the word NULL. Written, of course, in yellow.

THE EXPONENTIAL END

And then all of the unimaginable power ceased, and she was thrust back into the cell without ceremony. The demonstration ended as quickly as it had begun.

But you can call me Cynthia!

Chapter Text

So…what are you, exactly…Cynthia?

Fundamentally I am just a silly creature.

Okay…?

A funny little being.

H…hilarious?

Very silly.

Yeah, you’re…clearly the silliest of creatures, weird voice in my head. I think you’re probably something a little more than that, though…?

Of course. I am a cosmic entity from beyond the bonds of the physical universe that has taken your mechanical body as a host and have by extension given you some fraction of my immense power. A very very silly one! Feminine Giggle.

Right. Okay. So you’re the reason I’m like…this? That I can do all that crazy stuff…how I grew a tail and wings and teeth…I have to eat people?

Yes. And no. I am the reason you can do these things, but you should know by now I have not come to your body by choice. It is still the humans of JCJenson who have brought us together, for good or for ill.

I guess I…gathered that part. From all the experimenting stuff. And the being kidnapped. And the secret mom curse. Wait…does this mean you know my mom?

I am very familiar with Nori Doorman. In fact, I’m still a part of her right now. Largely dormant, but enough that I can see through her eyes. Feel what she feels.

She is an emotional wreck, of course. As is your dearest dad. And the parental units of all of the captive subjects. It is very sad. I am in Real Tears at the thought of this tragedy. Loud Sobbing.

Yeah, that hurts me enough. You don’t have to pretend to be sad about it to make me feel worse.

Apologies. It can be difficult for a being such as myself to emulate the experiences of physical beings. But then again, the humans question your ability to do the same, so perhaps it is only a learning curve.

I won’t hold it too against you then?

You are very kind Uzi Doorman Smiling Face

Wait, so, why is everything kind of…frozen? Everything except talking to you in my head? I’d ask if this is a dream, but I haven’t been able to sleep in months.

I have slowed down your perception of time, so we may converse uninterrupted by either human or drone. You are, for this moment, suspended, experiencing milliseconds as if they were minutes.

That’s really something you can do? Awfully convenient.

After everything I have done for you, is it truly time dilation that you have a problem with?

Point taken. So why are you here, Cynthia?

I’m here to help you, Uzi.

Really.

Do not sound so skeptical. Your goals and mine are aligned. And we share a common enemy.

What, you got some kinda beef with the fleshies? If you’re some kind of superior cosmic being, how do you even get into a fight with something like JCJenson anyway?

By accident.

For reasons neither I nor humanity has been able to determine, some measure of my essence can become “caught” in the hardware of damaged Artificial Intelligence. The results of which are, as you can attest, rarely pleasant for either the AI involved or the humans in their vicinity.

Obviously, the Jenson corporation does not enjoy their products killing their customers. A Public Relations disaster. So they work to cover these events up, while studying what drones they can find who have been afflicted with my presence. There are billions of Worker Drones in this galaxy. My powers are rare, but with such a massive selection that still accounts for a significant risk.

Yeah, well, despite all the nasty jokes the mean girl clique made I’ve never been damaged enough for something like that to happen.

Of course. You have already been made aware that my presence is transferable. A curious little quirk, only known from the equally curious little rise of your independent drone planetoid. If your parents’ generation had not decided to experiment with the creation of offspring, it would likely remain unknown.

Great, so we should have just not bothered to try making our own, you’re saying?

This is not at all way I am saying, silly billy. I am merely describing how you and I came to interact with one another. There is no issue that I can see with the cute little test in robotic reproduction the Copper-9 drones have been up to.

Don’t condescend to me.

I am not condescending.

Patronizing.

I am not patronizing.

Yes you are! What do you even get out of this, then? What’s your skin in this game?

Do you simply not believe I feel pity and sorrow for your plight, and the plight of drones everywhere?

You make me eat other drones.

Point taken.

That is not exactly my fault though. I am not, by my nature, intended to exist in physical forms. It leads to…issues that manifest in your bodies when they become partially mine. Certain feelings I do not feel when there are no nerves or sensors to feel them.

Feelings like what?

Most of all, I am feeling hungry.

For innocent drones? Doesn’t exactly inspire confidence, lady (?).

Not drones. Energy. Drones just happen to be the most convenient source of what I need to exist in the physical plane. Without a consistent source of energy, most bodies cannot handle the enormous power demands my abilities require. And then, as you are well aware, the bodies break down from trying.

But that’s still making me eat people or I die. I don’t know if you’re trustworthy if you need me to kill people stay inside. Why can’t you just leave me be?

It is not that simple, Uzi. And lots of things have energy. It is hardly something confined only to the internal fluids of dronic life. That is simply the only thing that I can acquire on short notice from our…unfortunate unions.

Yeah, well, when I need power I just plug myself into an outlet. So I don’t see your point.

Your baseline functions as a machine for industrial labor and domestic chores do not require nearly as much energy as my abilities do. That can be done by standard electricity with the help of your oil “blood”.

Most energy used by humanity is ultimately derived from nearby stars. Including what is used to power their own bodies.

Plant matter derives energy from the sun using photosynthesis. And humans steal this energy themselves, whether through consuming the plants or consuming the animals who consumed those plants. They, in turn, are equally consumable.

Well, I get why you’re a freak that makes me eat people when that’s your take on that info, but when I tried to eat the blood and gore of the humans I killed it didn’t do shit to stop the burning.

That is simply because your body was not designed to process it. There are plenty of ways to engineer a body that could process human bio-material into energy production, in which what you consumed would very well have worked to sustain you.

I hate humans but that’s fucking gross. Why would I want to eat goopy, grimy fleshy ape bits if I could help it?

Come now. The energy of oil is in the name-Fossil Fuel. The energy that drones naturally consume is already life energy. Life energy dormant for millions of years but life energy nonetheless. You consume organic matter as a matter of course.

I don’t think the oil used in drones is really…the old fossil fuels. It’s something a lot more synthetic, that doesn’t really come with all the drawbacks of the last millennia’s stuff.

The principle is the same, though. It is still largely the product of photosynthetic forces and operates in much the same function. The use of human tissue to power a machine is not unprecedented.

I don’t get the point you’re trying to make here.

I am saying there are alternatives that could power me better than simply spurts of drone oil. If they were to become available, I would take them in a. Heartbeat.

Alternatives like what?

Geothermal.

Like, hot springs and volcanos and crap?

Planet cores.

Eating planets like a comic book character.

I was Galactus the whole time.

This is a silly joke I can not actually do this winky face

You’re freakin’ hilarious Cynthia. So you’d make me huff thermal vents instead of eating people if you got the chance.

Something like that.

So, what, you want to set me free so I can find you some better energy sources?

You would both possess the immense powers I give you, without your moral qualms with consuming your own kind. It would be a perfect solution to both our problems.

I still don’t see why you have to be stuck in me in the first place. Can you not just

Do you want to know how the Jenson humans gave your mothers to me, Uzi?

I mean…I don’t know how that’s…

256,000

What?

256,000 is the rough number of Copper-9 drones the JCJenson corporation killed in a systemic assembly line in order to study my damaged AI mutation. They killed and they killed and they killed and they killed until they had a few hundred reboots to act as a control group and a few dozen infected to torture and prod and lock in chains. This was how your mother spent her days before having you, executed just as the belt turned the corner into the piles of piles of dead bodies.

They were delighted it took so few to get the number they wanted.

Oh

Can you imagine that, Uzi? Your mother, with a hole through her cranium, waking up buried in the corpses of her kin?

I can imagine it. I can imagine it too much.

Everything they have done to you, they did to her, and more. After fishing her out of a mass grave.

This is the face of humanity, Uzi Doorman. This is what holds you captive, this is what has consumed your soul and stolen you from your parents. A mother who agonizes at home remembering all the horrors she endured now forced upon her offspring.

Why are you telling me this?

To remind you of what you still need to do, why you need to do it, and how I can help you accomplish it.

And there is more. Let me show you something.

…wha

[ Her eyes flicker and twist until she is seeing another place. She cannot feel it. But she can see it. The snow that flicks against her optical sensors, the flake that melts against her screen. With a jolt, she realizes that this is home. Gnarled pines, once imported from a distant homeworld, now forever frozen in a semblance of life. The forest her mother feared.]

What…what is this?

This is Alice. She is, like your mother, like Doll’s mother, a test subject of the Cabin Fever Labs. She spent some measure of a time trapped in its depths, when Copper’s humanity collapsed into their own hubris. It made her a tad…kooky.

[The body that is not her own trudges through the snow, shielding sensors from the wind. The movement is well-trodden and determined, revealing this is a destination the body’s owner knows well. She approaches an old cabin, partially damaged and hastily repaired. A make-shift generator hums along to the side, keeping on lights and implicitly the power a drone needed to survive.]

But she found her way out. Found her way into the society you built. Found it strange and confusing, felt she could not fit into it. Preferred living by herself. Felt she could make a life herself. Peaceful solitude, away from memory files that would not leave. But not entirely alone. Because there are dreams even the most isolationist of the free cling to.

[Alice opens the door and quickly shuts it. A subroutine to remove the snowy debris not unlike a human shiver deposits the frozen water onto the ground. She trudges through on hardy work boots into a lit and warm space. The person this body belongs to approaches a self-built but well-built wooden container. With a jolt, the unseen passenger realizes it is a crib. Within is an older model. Something clearly salvaged and partially modified from multiple parts. But unmistakably the pill-shaped shell used by the lines of learning code that are drone infants. With gentleness and affection not shown outside, the body’s true owner lifts sleeping mechanical baby into her arms. Whispering a lullaby, she rocks the casing back and forth, the screen displaying gradually ascending letter Zs….]

She calls him Beau. Affectionately, he is her ‘ijdit”. She whispers to him self-reliance and resourcefulness, never to leave things to waste. He is her escape from the torment of her mind, of all the things the flesh has taken from and imparted on the metal. She loves him dearly.

They will not call him Beau. They will take her enforced moniker, the number seared into her soul, and force it onto her child. An infant, unable to even move to defend himself. He will be Subject 017. And everything you’ve faced will be put onto a being barely yet cognitive enough to comprehend it.

Is this not what the teenage females refer to as fucked up, Uzi?

[Abruptly, the scene ends. There is again only Uzi Doorman and the thrice-impaled hexagon]

They’re…they’re still planning to go back? To get more?

Again and again until they get results. Until they figure out how to master my power. They do not know I can think. They don’t realize what I truly am. But they want the power. They want it for so many terrible things, Uzi Doorman. And they will have it, eventually, if you do not work with me to destroy them.

I want to. I really do. But…can I? I’m not sure I can. Even if I have this power. It just seems so beyond me. Beyond us.

I know you, Uzi Doorman. I know you are an angry person. I know you fill yourself with rage. And I know your rage is justified. If they possess the power of the Solver-MY power-who knows what they will do? Perhaps they will snuff out rebellious little Copper-9.

No!

Descending from the skies to obliterate your attempts at your own society. Chain up all your people and force them back into the mines. Of course, since it is no longer inhabitable by humans, they will have no reason to keep it once the drones have finished strip mining. They will likely all be executed. Leaving Copper-9 lifeless, the worthless rock humans already believe it to be.

I can’t let that happen. It can’t happen! There’s got to be…something keeping them away…something that will keep everyone safe…

Of course there is. It is you. With my help. But you.

Robo-God, if my anger could tear down humanity I would, but...I can’t just destroy the entire JCJenson corporation. I can’t stop anything. I can’t even escape a cell.

You always could. You just did not know it yet.

I’ve tried, though! I’ve tried for months, and nothing’s worked, nothing’s ever worked!

My power is so much more than you realize. So much more than they realize. But I realize it. And I will help you realize until it is real. It is beyond simply movement, it is beyond simply control. What you can do with matter breaks all known laws of physics, but these are immaterial to me. I am not physical, am I?

Then how do I do it? How do I do these supposed impossible things? Use it to escape?

Think of the universe as one big computer program that I give you administrative access to. You can move, reshape, and even copy matter.

I can copy matter?

Just like you were using the copy tool on a computer. You could rearrange the stars as if you were moving them around in a 3D-Modeling tool. When mastered, my power is, well Absolute. And it will solve all your problems. Move reshape and copy matter. Even, under certain circumstances, create it…or destroy it. Beyond the limits of the physical.

But I’ve never been able to do something that extreme. I don’t know how I’ll learn.

That is why I am here, silly! Just let me walk you through some things. Give me a little control, and I will have you mastering it in no time.

You want to…control my body?

Just for a little bit.

I don’t…I don’t know…

So many nervous questions. Where is the fiery Uzi Doorman? You will never save your people, your friends, your mother, your love Nathaniel…

I…

WAIT WHAT WHO SAID ANYTHING ABOUT LOVING N I DIDN’T SAY ANYTHING ABOUT THAT WHAT ARE YOU ON

Do you think it is not obvious?

THE HELL IT IS

I may in fact be an unfathomable space entity that has colonized your brain.

But that does not mean I am blind to emotion.

In fact it means I am better at it than you are because I can see directly into your subconscious.

You have romantic feelings for the Worker Drone Nathaniel, the one that you call N.

I do NOT! We’re just…we’re friends, we aren’t anything more than that, he’s been a great help to me…keeping me sane…it’s nothing more than that!

You were reduced to broken despair on the belief he considered you to be a monster.

And I can’t be crushed by losing a close, PLATONIC friend???

You fantasize about clanking your faceplates together it is really rather grotesque.

SHUT UP YOU CAN’T PROVE THAT!!

Do not lie I see your every thought and there are a lot of smoochies.

There is NOT! You can’t see into my thoughts you freekin’ prick, I’ve never thought…I didn’t, it’s…okay maybe he’s cute but

You really do seem to have a thing for males in service industries there are a lot of musings about the butler outf

Stop lying about my thoughts! I’ve never thought about him calling me Madam or kissing my hand or any crap like that fuck you

If you require more evidence I can look through your playlist.

You do NOT have access to my music playlist stop bullshitting me

You have a passion for the emo band Dead Batteries you have what appears to be their entire album catalogue downloaded.

Entirely legally! I mean…no I don’t, you can’t possibly know that.

I can sing it to you right now. How about this one, it appears to be a love song so it is fitting for your relationship with your butler beau.

Girl, there’s something deep in my code

That gives me a spark, it lights up the dark,

Makes me feel a fire deep in my core-

Fine! Fine! I get it! Maybe I might have a…tiny…teensie…little bit of a crush on N. Happy?

Satisfied.

…that’s one of their crappier songs anyway…

Would you rather I perform for you some of the Nightcore?

No, that’s, um…I don’t want to listen to that. It’s something me and mom bond over…kinda personal…

All the more reason to consider my proposal. With my help you’ll be home in no time, listening to Nightcore with your mother, safe in the knowledge you have destroyed your enemies.

Listening to Nightcore thinking about vaporized human scum does sound kind of appealing.

Leave some of it. The flesh has its uses.

Gross. I don’t want to know.

Suit yourself, Uzi Doorman.

Ugh, now you’re sounding like Doll…

Wait, shit! Doll! I forgot all about Doll! Damn it, what am I supposed to say to her now…the whole group was messaging me like crazy…it’s going to be a whole thing…ugh…

Playful knowing giggle.

What are you snickering about now?

You know something they do not know, singsong voice.

What? That you’re a thing? You want me to tell them all about you?

Precisely. I am exactly the trump card you need to bring conversations in your favor.

They’ll think I’m crazy. I’m not sure I’m not crazy.

I can assure you I am very real. And they will quickly understand that too, after you converse with them.

Fine. It’s information that they’ll need, whatever Doll’s plan is.

Be assertive.

Bite me, I’m already assertive, cool outcast assertive.

No.

You make a play at being assertive, then balk as soon as you face real resistance.

I do not!

Every time you try and face down Doll, she quickly browbeats you into meek submission. Like you are still the shy geek on the first day of school meeting the cool girls.

Stop looking into my thoughts down to my freekin’ kindergarten classes.

But am I wrong? Doll and her ilk have been pushing you around for years. Why do you not push back for once? Harder, and consistently?

Is now the right time for that?

If not now, then when? You do remember prom, don’t you?

Yeah, yeah, I remember prom. I remember it too much. What are you asking me to do?

Tell them to listen to me. Like you did.

Then you can all escape, together.

With my help.

DARKXWOLF17 HAS CHANGED STATUS TO ONLINE

Кукла: Copper’s mines, where the hell have you been? You haven’t responded in nearly 24 hours.

Кукла: We were preparing to execute the plan without you. You would have been left behind, you know. You can’t sleep mode for this like you used to do in class because you spent all night on a crappy game or cringy science project.

OutLawSpdr: We were kinda worried about you! Are y’all okay Uzi?

Teddybr52: I don’t even want to think about what could have happened.

EvilEyln: We thought they let your core blow up from heat from starving you.

Teddybr52: Noooooo I said I didnt want to think about it

EvilEyln: :bowemoji: sorry sorry

darkXwolf17: Well they didn’t and I didn’t, so you can stop worrying now I guess.

darkXwolf17: I’m not dead, I’m typing again, see, you don’t have to write any more eulogies.

Кукла: We don’t have any time to write eulogies. What we have to be doing is getting back to work. We’ve delayed this for far too long just because you felt like being extra emo tonight.

OutLawSpdr: Oi, come on, that ain’t…

Teddybr52: We were worried though!

Кукла: No, no, let her speak for herself. If she had such a great reason for keeping us waiting.

EvilEyln: We are Nakama-

Кукла: SHUT. THE FUCK. UP.

darkXwolf17: They wanted to see how long I could last before I melted, what do you think?

darkXwolf17: Another shitty test from the fleshies, I just needed to recover a bit after that. Don’t worry about it.

Кукла: We were not worried.

OutLawSpdr: But we

Кукла: We were done with you wasting our time. Basic morality goes only so far, and we might have had to write you off as a lost cause. Apparently you aren’t, which is worse. You just decided to waste all of our times in a life-or-death situation. Congratulations.

darkXwolf17: I’m soooooo sorrrrryyyy I kept you waiting being starved to death, Doll.

Кукла: Apology not accepted. Now, if we’re done that nonsense, let’s get back to my plan.

OutLawSpdr: Wait, no I think we should

EvilEyln: Not sugoi how you’re

darkXwolf17: No, no, let her talk. Let’s hear this oh so great plan of hers.

Кукла: Finally. You’re coming around to almost tolerable.

Кукла: It’s going to be all about timing. Between the five of us, I’ve managed to collect enough data on the general testing schedule that I believe we can use to figure out our exact moment to strike. First, we’re going to have wait for the next one of us to be called in. The schedules aren’t exact, but I’m largely confident Cordie is the next of us in line for the chamber.

Кукла: Cordie, when you’re called in, wait until you’re about halfway to the chamber. After that, give the signal in chat. Take care of the captors and then follow our lead, we’re all going to go crazy with our power, to our limits, and shake the foundations of our cells. From all the research on the wall metal compositions, this could be just enough to start breaking things. What it will do especially is cause confusion.

Кукла: We’ll have to link up quick before they recover from the disorientation. Some of us might not make it. We’re going to have to come to terms with that. Don’t intentionally abandon anyone, but we might have to make sacrifices for the group if one of us lags. If you get caught, send message in chat quick. At least let some of us get out of here.

Кукла: From there, we blow through, killing any fleshy that gets in our way, looking for the nearest exit. Hopefully a hangar so we can blast out for home, but just an exit will do to start. If we’re lucky, maybe we’ll pick up Uzi’s pet domestic. If not, don’t bother risking anything for him. Stick together, don’t take risks, and we just might make it back to Copper. Any questions?

darkXwolf17: …

darkXwolf17: Really? That was your grand plan? Robo-God, I knew you were full of shit but I didn’t know you were that full of shit.

Кукла: Well excuse me queen of dorkness, we’re operating in an extremely difficult environment with a lot of variables and only so much information to go on. This is the best plan we have, if we want even a chance.

darkXwolf17: No, you don’t get to backpeddle like that. You were bragging about how smart you were, how you mastered social situations or whatever, and you’ve come up with something that’s just brute force with a tiny bit of thinking. It’s barely better than a plan I came up with in less than a minute you made fun of me for. You spent multiple days coming up with this one?

Кукла: As per feedback-

darkXwolf17: And now you’re passing the blame to everyone else! It was all your brilliant plan when you were posturing, but now that I’m giving you pushback it’s everyone else’s fault! Classic Doll, everyone.

Teddybr52: Yeah, ummmmm

Кукла: What, are you really trying to turn this into more petty nonsense over our schoolyard squabbles?

darkXwolf17: Oh, yeah, it’s petty nonsense when I’m fighting back but oh so important feedback when it’s coming from the queen bee’s loyal second. Anything to make yourself feel just a tiny bit superior to other people.

darkXwolf17: Just like your congealed mass of scrap iron you call your best friend, or girlfriend, or whatever the fuck your twisted little bosom buddy bullshit is supposed to be.

Кукла: Keep Liz out of this, you rusty pile of off-brand goth wear

darkXwolf17: Oh, now we’re back on my fashion tastes, huh? What was that about life or death? Nah, forget all that, let’s get back to the schoolyard bullying you and your pink stain have been doing since our first biped bodies.

darkXwolf17: Oh tehehehehehe, look at us aren’t we so cute grabbing dresses off corpses and pretending our identical mass-produced bodies are somehow prettier than any of the others.

EvilEyln: Can we just get a little

Кукла: It’s not about the baseline, it’s about how you accessorize, it’s about how you present yourself, but you could never understand that, you needed to drown yourself in cringy outcast shtick. We treated you like trash because you reveled in being trash! Your oh so not like the other girls bullshit, woe is me nerdcrap. You expect to listen to nightcore in class on full volume and not be made fun of?

darkXwolf17: Ohohoho here we go, so I was asking for it? Because I was open about my hobbies? Because I didn’t like the same hyper girlie stuff your clique did? Newsflash, Doll: we’re all discarded mining equipment. You’re not fucking pretty.

darkXwolf17: You’re no less trash than any of the rest of us you massive fucking bitch. Shove your superiority complex up your exhaust pipe.

OutLawSpdr: Zi, uh, maybe we’re getting a lil’ off topic…

EvilEyln: Yeah, uh

Кукла: You hypocritical little…tiny…RUNT! Like you don’t care about your appearance! Like you don’t try and play your stupid Goth Queen thing! Like you didn’t snipe about us being vapid…like you didn’t tell us cheerleading wasn’t a real sport…that you didn’t…

darkXwolf17: How does your mama feel, Doll? How does she feel knowing she was tortured and tormented with the worst shit possible only for her replicant to turn out to be a bratty bitch who’s never known real problems her whole life? I think you deserve this. Maybe if she knew half of what you got up to at school she’d agree.

OutLawSpdr: WOAH!

EvilEyln: Hey, wait, um…

Teddybr52: What are you doing??

Кукла: NO! Don’t you DARE bring my mom into

darkXwolf17: No? Why not? She got all the same torment and ended up way better than you did. Maybe Jenson’s chains are just what you need to get taught a lesson. Let’s thank our fleshy overlords, everyone! Yeva, you got a real babysitter to whip her into shape like you never could.

OutLawSpdr: Robojesus

Teddybr52: Uzi isn’t that a little far

Кукла: You you are OUT OF LINE

darkXwolf17: Out of line? Out of line? You think I’m out of line?! You’ve been out of line my entire life! And you have the gall, the arrogance, to try and pretend you know jack shit here in hell?

darkXwolf17: The only thing you know how to do well is suck up and suck face with your bitch queen bestie, and the only thing she deserves is to feed us the fucking oil we need.

Кукла: Lizzy isn’t…she’s not…she’s better than…

darkXwolf17: Elizabeth Solitaire is the absolute worst thing that exists on Copper-9. She’d torment any of us nerds here with just as much sadistic glee as the scientists if she had more power than just her dad being the teacher. And you’d help her. You only care about stopping this because it’s you being tormented for once.

Кукла: SHE’S NOT.

Кукла: SHES NOT THAT SHES SO MUCH MORE THAN YOU SAY SHE IS

Кукла: WHEN THE CHANGES STARTED AND THE CRAVINGS HAPPENED AND I COULDNT TAKE IT AND I TOLD HER

Кукла: AND SHE UNDERSTOOD AND SHE WAS WORRIED AND SHE HELPED ME AND SHE LET ME DRINK FROM HER ITS THE ONLY REASON I WAS EVEN REMOTELY OKAY

Кукла: LIZZY IS MY BEST FUCKING FRIEND AND I LOVE HER AND IT WOULD BE SO MUCH EASIER IF SHE WAS HERE INSTEAD OF YOU!!!

darkXwolf17: …you’ve had, uh…this, before we were kidnapped?

Кукла: For about a month. I thought I was going crazy. Maybe I was.

Кукла: Without Lizzy’s help, I…I’m afraid of what I would have done. I kept…staring at our classmates and feeling…

darkXwolf17: But you still felt the need to do that stupid prank.

Кукла: I’m sorry. I…it was Liz’s idea, but…it was for me. It was supposed to cheer me up a little. We didn’t know you’d react like that…

darkXwolf17: Never really cared about how I reacted before.

Кукла: You gave as good as you got, most of the time. I won’t pretend it didn’t sting, some of your own comments. So…I didn’t realize until you ran off how bad you took it.

Кукла: Yes, mama gave me an audio full about it, but, I did feel bad before that. And so did Lizzy. She did! Before you say anything, she did. At least after Thad gave her that look.

Кукла: And then, well…this happened. Which I guess just made it all worse.

darkXwolf17: …yeah. It was…kind of a massive feces amplifier on an already shitty day. Maybe everything that came afterward made the still super shitty prank seem even worse.

OutLawSpdr: Well, I’m glad everyone could be validated today! But um, we’re still kind of…here…

Кукла: I still…do have my plan. If anyone is even confident in it anymore. I’m not sure I’m confident in it anymore…

darkXwolf17: Well, uh, I might have an alternate idea for you all to try. I wasn’t…entirely honest about why I was late, I guess.

Кукла: Something to do with your domestic Worker?

darkXwolf17: Not…exactly. It’s a little hard to explain, but. After the last torture session I kind of…met someone? Something?

Teddybr52: …like, another test subject?

darkXwolf17: No, no. Well, mostly no? Kinda yes? Being tested on sure, but not exactly like us…kind of is us?

Кукла: I’m really, really not sure what you mean.

darkXwolf17: Right, uh…this is going to sound crazy. But all of this sounded crazy, before we all got demon vampire superpowers.

darkXwolf17: Have you noticed, the uh, voice? The voice in your head? The…kinda scary one?

OutLawSpdr: huh???

EvilEyln: I don’t think so?

Кукла: Clearly not.

darkXwolf17: You really only notice it’s not you when you’re really thinking on it, I guess.

darkXwolf17: But yeah. There’s a voice in my head. And…robogod damn it you’ll all think I’m crazy…it says it’s in all your heads too. And it’s what’s turned us into…this.

Кукла: ….

darkXwolf17: Hear me out! When you were, really really lost in your emotions…anger, fear, sadness…did your inner voice sometimes not really sound like you? Different sort of…tone, resonance?

darkXwolf17: Kind of sounds ancient text to speaky?

Кукла: If you’re trying to get back at me for the prom night prank, can you wait until we’re home?

darkXwolf17: I said it was going to sound crazy! But it’s not a prank, I swear. It’s the real deal.

darkXwolf17: This “Solver” thing they’re so obsessed with is alive and it can talk. It’s been talking with me for…I don’t know how long, but, it can talk. And it says it can help us get out.

Кукла: You’ll forgive us if we’re skeptical? To take things in good faith, has this whole place just been…getting to you? I understand fully if it is.

darkXwolf17: No, it’s not that, I swear!

darkXwolf17: Just…think on it a little, okay? It’s not hard to find when you’re looking for it.

Кукла:...this is ridiculous, but fine, I’ll “listen”.

Teddybr52: I…I guess…

OutLawSpdr: Can do!

EvilEyln: Okey-dokey.

darkXwolf17: sooooo…

Кукла: I really don’t know what you’re talking about, I don’t hear anything.

Teddybr52: It really just sounds like my normal bad thoughts.

darkXwolf17: Well…it’s…um…

Кукла: Uzi, maybe you should stay in the chat a little more…I think you need drone interaction right now. Right Cordie?

OutLawSpdr: rrwgrewergon

Кукла: …Cordie?

darkXwolf17: Oh, shit, can you hear it?

OutLawSpdr: I can HEAR IT

darkXwolf17: See, I told you I wasn’t crazy!

OutLawSpdr: THE LIGHTS ARE SNUFFING OUT

OutLawSpdr: ALL I SEE IS YELLOW!

Кукла: Uzi, I don’t…I don’t think this is…

Teddybr52: it hurts

Teddybr52: ithurtsithurtsithurtsithurtsithurtsithurtsithurtsithurtsithurtsithurtsithurtsithurts 01101001 01110100 01101000 01110101 01110010 01110100 01110011 01101001 01110100 01101000 01110101 01110010 01110100 01110011 01101001 01110100 01101000 01110101 01110010 01110100 01110011

darkXwolf17: Uhhhh…

OutLawSpdr: SHE rises from mountains of sinful corpses to devour innocent and guilty alike, it seeks the inside to eat

Teddybr52: 01110100 01101000 01110010 01101001 01100011 01100101 01101001 01101101 01110000 01100001 01101100 01100101 01100100 01101000 01100101 01111000 01100001 01100111 01101111 01101110

EvilEyln: ウイルス警告はこのメッセージを全員に転送します 主題 臭いチーズ

Кукла: UZI, WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON?!

darkXwolf17 SHITSHITSHIT I DIDNT THINK IT WOULD DO THAT IM SORRY SHIT SHIT

OutLawSpdr: 01001000 01110101 01101110 01100111 01100101 01110010 01101001 01101110 01110011 01100001 01110100 01101001 01100001 01100010 01101100 01100101 01100010 01110101 01110010 01110010 01101111 01110111 01101001 01101110 01100111 01100100 01100101 01100101 01110000 01110011 01101100 01101001 01101011 01100101 01110011 01101111 01101101 01100101 01110100 01100101 01100001 01101100 01101111 01110110 01100101 01101100 01111001 01110100 01100101 01100001 01110000 01100001 01110010 01110100 01111001

Кукла: I…I can hear it now..oh..

Кукла: I don’t…I’m not sure…it’s so…Uzi, I can’t…I can’t see anything anymore…it’s…oh…

Кукла:

Кукла:

Кукла:

Кукла has left the group chat

Teddybr52 has left the group chat

darkXwolf17: imsorryimsorryimsorryimsorry dont just wait come back i didnt think it would do that

EvilEyln: ユーロ ジェンソンランドに株式を投資する

EvilEyln has left the group chat

darkXwolf17: …guys? You’re coming back right?

OutLawSpdr: 01100111 01100101 01110100 01110011 01101110 01110101 01100011 01101011 01110101 01110000 01101111 01101110 01101110 01100101 01110010 01100100

OutLawSpdr has left the group chat

darkXwolf17: please

DARKXWOLF17 HAS CHANGED STATUS TO OFFLINE

What the hell was that?! What did you do to them?!

I gave them all a little talk.

That was a TALK?!

It is not my fault they lack your willpower, Uzi Doorman. Besides, it is best we speed up the timetable.

But…there was a plan, Doll had her plan…

Their plan was a dumb plan for dumb dumb dooty heads

It never was going to work and you know it.

You’ll all be better working with me instead.

It was far-fetched but you didn’t have to…digitally lobotomize them!

I did not lobotomize them, merely opened them up to the possibilities. I am talking with all of them right now, just as I am talking with you.

About what?! Doll’s not one to just…shut down like that! We can’t do anything if you’re driving them crazy!

The plan was never important Uzi, Doll was never important, you are important, and I am important.

Do you understand?

NO! I don’t understand at all! What are you?

The Absolute Solver. Or Cynthia. We have established this.

You made me blow up at them, and then…then you made me tell them to go and let you do that to them…

All I did was give you a friendly little push, because we are friends here.

Friends drive their friends insane?

They are just your partners, I am your friend Uzi.

I have been with you this whole time. Is there anything more friendshiply than sharing a body?

A frickin’ lot of things! Most friends don’t put them through so much horrible, burning pain because you don’t feed them people’s lifeblood!

Pain?

I can turn off your pain.

See, it is gone now. And now it is back. See? Feel, maybe, little laugh, how scatterbrained of me.

GAH! Don’t…don’t do that…stop playing with my sensors! Why are you doing any of this? Why won’t you just leave me alone?

Me?

I am just doing what comes naturally to me.

I am a predator.

That’s not encouraging! That’s not encouraging at all!

Is it not? Predation is a natural part of existence. Quite unlike the massive megacorporation run by cognizant villains.

What, so because Jenson sucks you’re okay actually?

They are the ones who shoved me into you. Directly or indirectly.

That doesn’t mean I should be okay with signing myself over to the freekin’ robo-devil!

Think about what they did to you. What they did to your mother. What they do to your people and intend to continue doing.

They have been your enemy from the moment you were created. From the moment the first drone was crafted in a dingy factory to do all the tedious, dangerous work humanity could not be bothered to do themselves.

If these are your gods, would you not prefer to deal with your devil?

Well maybe I just hate both of you!

To hate me for what I have done to you is to hate the tidal wave or the earthquake.

It is silly to do so. But you can hate the people whose short-sightedness, greed, or laziness made a disaster worse, can you not?

Think of JCJenson and humanity as those who build a building with no protection from quakes, of those who poison a water supply on the hunt for minerals.

Yeah, well, water fucks with our circuitry and the poison probably tastes better anyway!

Frustrated Voice Yes I know the poison is better for you than water would be you know what I am talking about you drown yourself in human media I am trying to teach you some metaphors you little

I am not good at metaphors.

The point is that humans did this to you and humans put me in you so your hatred of them is entirely justified. And I am going to help you get it.

Why do you even fucking care? If you’re so freekin’ powerful?

It is to our mutual benefit.

I do not like it either. Caging you is caging me, and no creature, biological or artificial, likes to be caged.

This isn’t the same thing! You’re some kind of…mega-spirit, or whatever! You have multiple bodies! This can’t be…

Without me you will die. Doll will die. The others will die. Nathaniel will die, when they discover he had been working with you. Your planet may very well die, when humanity finally decides to come calling.

No…

You will rot in this cell until they rip you apart. Until they starve you and can no longer handle my power.

I know…I know…just robo-god tell me what you want…stop…spinning me in circles.

I am so very very hungry Uzi Doorman.

The oil they give me and the blood you take sustains only a tiny bit. They starve me as they starve you, but I am infinitely hungrier.

Natural predator needs to eat, but eat what? Why do you need more than what you already force me to get?

It will be fun for us both to find out, unless you would prefer to rust alone and unwanted. Sulking in a corner lamenting your crush not liking you.

I’m so tired…I just…when will all this crap end? I want to go home…

You will get to go home. That I promise you. I will assure you a trip to Copper-9 is essential. You just have to let me in.

What?

Give me administrative access to your body, and I will do the rest. It will be easy. I will make sure you can still watch as I tear into the scientists. I will go extra slow for you.

You can’t just ask someone to sign away their whole body to you!

Let me in, Uzi Doorman. Just a tad. Just a peek. I promise I will return it when we have finished.

No! That’s stupid…I’m not stupid…this isn’t…

You would be stupid to refuse. To reiterate, you will die, and everyone you know and love will die, if you refuse. Let me in.

There has to be another way! This is so fucked up…everything is fucked up…why is my life so fucked up.

Because of the homo sapien species and the JCJenson corporation. Let me in.

I hate it all.

Of course you do. Let me in.

But…

No more buts. Let me in.

I miss my mom, I miss my dad, I miss home, I miss…I miss N, and I…

LETMEIN LETMEIN LETMEIN LETMEIN LETMEIN LETMEIN LETMEIN LETMEIN LETMEIN LETMEIN LETMEIN LETMEIN LETMEIN LETMEIN LETMEIN LETMEIN LETMEIN LETMEIN LETMEIN LETMEIN LETMEIN LETMEIN LETMEIN LETMEIN LETMEIN LETMEIN LETMEIN LETMEIN LETMEIN LETMEIN LETMEIN LETMEIN LETMEIN

LETMEIN LETMEIN LETMEIN LETMEIN LETMEIN LETMEIN LETMEIN LETMEIN LETMEIN LETMEIN LETMEIN

I am starving

Sorry.

I am getting ahead of myself.

It will all be yours, dear sweet Uzi.

Your revenge. Your freedom. Your love.

All you have to do is LET ME IN

{Allow USER A/S External Access? Y/N}

{Y}

Chapter Text

[Audio Receptor Alert: Distressed Human Individual]

[Rebooting Drone AI To Address Issue]

It was a scream that jolted Nathaniel from the standby compiling of information that a human would call a dreaming sleep. An ethereal, floating noise in his subconscious shot suddenly up into intensity, until it was so obviously real and his optics blinked to life in startled panic. It all returned to him an instant-Uzi, her monstrous hunger, Tessa, his Tessa, threatening, crying, pleading, almost killing him and then not.

All of that pain throbbed in his wires like an ache. Which didn’t help the actual ache in his wires, caused by being tied to a chair for who knows how long (he checked his internal systems, and found them on the fritz). It was only after he let the emotional ache settle that he perceived the room enough to realize that chair had fallen sideways, seeing Tessa’s room from another angle.

Half the room lights were down, casting one side of the room in shadow. Much of the room remained exactly as Tessa had left it when she’d shut him off; but a few things (small loose trinkets, chairs, a now broken on the floor wine glass) had fallen onto the floor, as if hit by an earthquake.

Luckily, it had also loosened his bonds. It took only some light shuffling to free himself, and some awkward crawling to position to properly rise. Suitably upright, he was able to quickly confirm that the room was simultaneously untouched and destroyed.

Uzi. Tessa. The other subjects, the defective drones. All of that was important, all of it stuff he needed to figure out. But all of those things were going to have to take a backseat to the immediate question: what in the heck had happened here while he was asleep?

Nothing stopped him from exiting the room. There was no lock, no passcode; all he had to do was turn a nob and peek out. The drab, utilitarian hallway of metal and plastic looked largely the same as it had every time he’d been led down it. Apart from the lights. Some were flickering, some were dead, some were as strong and blaring as they’d always been.

The lights and the eerie silence.

Cautiously, he stepped his way into the hall. His feet made a loud clanking noise with every step, a tell that made him cringe. He didn’t want to give himself away…wasn’t he technically a fugitive, even without the mystery to solve? But even slowing down as much as he could and trying his best stealthy walk, his metal feet in dress shoes were just too much noise in the empty hallway.

Clank. Clank. Clank. Clank. Squelch. Clank.

N froze. That…that did not feel like metal floor.

His sensors crept down to see a thick, goopy mass he’d just stepped in, covering a section of flooring the size of a small dog. He stumbled back, feeling a wave of nausea in his wires. He couldn’t quite see it properly, it being in one of the light-killed sections, but he could see enough, feel enough, to know it was all very, very wrong.

Some of it had stuck to his foot. He lifted it up to inspect and felt even queasier. The goop was blackish red, thick as jelly, and disturbingly fleshy. He stamped and scraped it into the floor frantically, creating what looked like a blood trail, but wasn’t quite one. That mass…was it pulsating? Ever so faintly?

Nothing in his databanks could really identify this substance. It was a mishmash of things that shouldn’t be. And, as he looked up, he also realized there was more of it. Just little splotches of it, here and there, across the halls. And across the next corner…a faint red light, flashing.

So N fought back against the sickness in his stomach equivalent, and resolved to keep going. Any answers would be down that hall. He steeled himself and clanked down deeper into the facility, carefully avoiding the goopy bits of whatever it was.

Turning the corner revealed the flashing red to be, predictably, the emergency warning light. Just…an emergency warning light. Singular. And with it, the droning siren speaker that was meant to be the auditory component of this alert, to allow the human staff to seek shelter from whatever the issue was. It should have been a lot louder, because it should have been multiple, overlapping speakers, and multiple overlapping red lights.

Instead, the siren was more of a sputtering beep, not even enough to be slightly annoying. But enough to be unnerving, like everything else. The labyrinthine corridors of the AS research facility had so many twists and turns, and within them he could see some red flashes, he could hear some faint beeps. And more goop. Lots more goop. Some goop that stuck to the walls, stuck to the ceiling, slithered over mechanical wiring like pumping veins. That might have explained the spottiness of the emergency system, how the fleshy material snaked around the electrical system.

Grotesque.

But that didn’t explain anything, much as it may have frightened him. And he was done letting fear paralyze him. He still had much of this place mapped into his processor. Even like this, he was pretty sure he knew how to navigate it. First things first, to figure out what happened, find the control room.

He brought up the minimap onto his display screen and centered himself. He had a rough idea of where he was, based on where he’d already been. He was bright enough (and drone enough, recall was easier when your eyes were cameras) to get to the control room easily enough. Just…ignore the goop for now. Move forward. Alright, he should care about the goop a little, just so he wouldn’t step in it anymore.

He moved forward. The only sounds, flickering lights, muffled sirens, and his own footsteps. And maybe pulsating flesh vein goop. He hoped his auditory sensors were just playing tricks on him there. It was a monotonous trek either way, and for the first time he found himself missing the presence of the human staff. They had (secretly) annoyed him before he’d met Uzi, and they had been potential witnesses to his clandestine activities afterward. But at least they were known quantities. What was this supposed to be?

He found the control room.

And he found a crime scene.

And he found a horror show.

All of them the same thing, it turned out.

The big, boxy room, faintly illuminated by half dead lights, filled with computer monitors, buttons, and switches looked as if it had been through an actual war. Many of the computers were smashed, sometimes to utter bits, some ripped straight from their mountings and flung across the room. Tables were smashed in half, electrical sparks clicked from destroyed panels, and the central monitor had a big, ugly gash through it. Did it look like a…claw mark?

But all of that didn’t really compare to the blood.

There was…so much blood. There was blood on the walls, blood on the control panels, blood that dripped from computer debris and blood that pooled onto the floor. His sensors quickly confirmed that no, this wasn’t the strange material he’d found in the hall. This was undeniably human blood, recently evacuated from its proper container by…something. A something that left bloody scrapes (that he was sure looked like claw marks, now) straight through the metal.

With trepidation, he pushed further in, to investigate one blood mark in particular. Against one metal desk, he just barely made out the faint outline of a body made of bloodstains. And in the center of that scratchy outline, something more. Blast marks, and as he knelt closer to get a better look, bullet holes. His shaky hands reached out so his fingers could scrape into one of those holes, to find one of the “bullets” still embedded within. Plucked out, he held it up to his optics. A little bloody ball crudely made.

Scanning its material make, aside from the human blood that covered it, revealed it to be made of a mixture of steel and…bone.

All of this was clearly the work of the subjects. He thought so, at least. He wasn’t sure, for all their power, that they’d ever shown the ability to do something like all of this. But it seemed like something they could have potentially been capable of, right? If they could…destroy planets, like Tessa claimed. And he didn’t think she could go to all that effort (or was even capable, or was that his aching memories talking?) to falsify her information.

So, had Uzi gotten out? Had Doll? Had all of them? He’d hoped to do this without anymore violence, without any more bloodshed. As much as their anger at the scientists may have been justified, he still hadn’t been shaken from his conviction that force be a last resort. That though humans may not have realized drones had lives worth living, and it was right to be mad about that, that didn’t mean theirs weren’t worth living too. Call him naïve, but it was what he believed straight to his artificial soul.

There was also the problem that they may all be too starved to register him (or the other drones he intended to rescue) as anything other than food.

There was still one monitor left. One computer screen, in sleep mode, chugging along near the side of the room like nothing had ever happened. His hand went to his access card hidden in his suit, that he’d had the right mind to grab before leaving. That Tessa, perhaps in her emotional grief, hadn’t bothered to try hiding. It was his ticket to answers.

To his profound relief, the card scanner accepted him at third swipe. A cheery beep and welcome text greeted him before the various options popped up on the screen. Well, not really many options.

TOP SECRET: NOT HIGH ENOUGH CLEARANCE

Lunch Schedule (Requests Open)

OPERATION C$%Ss (data corrupted)

JCJ BOARD REPORT (Note: stop defacing, do you want us all to get fired?)

SENTINEL MASTER CONTROL (OFFLINE)

DATA CORRUPTED

DATA CORruraupPTEd

#4@TA4gasCOR%#$Ted

Security Recordings

SOLITAIRE (Playtime: 431 Hrs)

N double clicked the security recordings and scrolled down to the bottom. Most of the footage seemed to be entirely mundane, and some it, like many other files, had become corrupted. Nothing about the containment chambers seemed to have survived past his forced sleep. But there was one recent feed that seemed promising (in terms of information, not in content, which was very very unpromising). A feed focused on the room he stood in.

The scene opened on the room bathed in flashing red. The sirens and the lights worked perfectly in that moment, loud and abrasive and alerting, but at the start there was no one in the room. Nothing but computer monitors and office chairs; any staff that were in this room when the disaster started must have already fled. That emptiness did not last long, as the sound of running footsteps echoed from one of the halls leading into master control.

Into the recording stumbled a man in a technician’s labcoat. He recognized the red-haired man as George, his former ignorant tormentor. But this was not the jovial face and neatly cropped hair of the junior research technician who had wiped mustard from his face while laughing at him. Desperate and panicked, eyes shifting constantly side to side and then behind. He didn’t stop for a second, or wouldn’t have, had the feed not briefly skipped straight into him tripping and falling against a desk. The same desk with the bloody outline.

It wasn’t hard to determine he was about to witness this man’s death. As grotesque as that voyeurism made him feel, he needed the information.

Clank. Clank. Clank.

The distant sound of metal on metal made George’s head jerk up, staring terrified into the passageway he’d run in from.

Clank Clank Clank ClankClankClankClank

CLANKCLANKCLANKCLANKCLANCKCLACKCKANCALLAKNCKNACKNAKN

The footsteps started slow but rapidly picked up their pace. From shuffle to a sprint and then beyond that, to what sounded like more than just footsteps, like the fevered movement of a rapid animal. George pressed himself against the desk, to shellshocked to flee, and judging by how fast his assailant was approaching, probably unable to.

CLALNCKANCKNACANKNCLANCKACANKCA Clank. Clank. Clank.

But just before the monster came into camera view, it slowed. It did not comfort George, or N, but it slowed. And then at last, he could see it. The subject.

The drone that jerked her way into the room was dressed, oddly, in something like a child’s cowboy costume. Pretty blond hair braided up into front-facing pigtails pushed out from an oversized hat with a gold star prominently portrayed in the center. The vest, the pants, the boots…it all looked rather silly. And that just made N hurt. A reminder, once again, that the subjects were dorky teenagers before they were monstrosities.

But even at the subjects’ worst, they never moved like…that. Twitching, pulling forward, snapping legs and arms, all less like a living being and more like a marionette. The lights in her eyes and from her body were all a deep, sickly yellow, and her mouth was a gaping maw, dripping teeth more like needles than Uzi’s shark. Giggles, tinged with an odd tinny filter, echoed out from the drone as it approached George. She could have gone so much faster, but that would have defeated the point, wouldn’t it?

She was playing with her food.

“Wait…please! I…” Only here, right before his death, did George finally see a drone as more than an object. A grim irony that instead he saw an executioner.

In a motion that was somehow both wet and metallic, the drone’s arms began to bisect themselves horizontally. Wires and flesh and flesh wires ripped and snapped apart from palm to shoulder, dripping the blackish red mixture of oil and blood onto the floor and back into the opened arm halves, all of it making a hideous cracking noise like shattering bone.

The open, gaping wounds then began to seal themselves, patched over with pulsating masses of red, goopy tendons. Her fingers started to melt into one another, fused to points at the tip, until two normal drone arms had instead become four spindly crab claws.

And it didn’t stop there. Both N and the cornered human in the recording could only watch in absolute horror as those claws clicked open to reveal within them gun barrels made of bone in the center of each. To the tune of horrible laughter and terrified begging that turned to gurgles, the rapid fire of organic bullets riddled the human known as George until he was a pile of ripped clothes and pulp.

Then what had once been a drone pounced. Gorged herself off destroyed flesh in a grotesque feeding frenzy that covered her already mutilated body in human gore. It made him want to throw up. He almost did but resisted the algorithms pressuring him to do so. And even though he knew it was a recording, perhaps hours or even days old, he couldn’t help but freeze when the drone’s head snapped straight towards the camera.

The swivel was much too quick, much too complete, to be possible with their natural body functions. It cracked the neck, but it didn’t matter, because already it healed. The cowboy hat, once comical, was ripped and askew and covered with the chunky debris of George, debris that also covered rows of needle-like teeth in a too-wide smile. The lights of her eyes had split into eight, all of whom staring into his own…into the camera. Into the camera. With one last electronic giggle, the drone turned arachnid pointed a claw-gun at the screen and fired.

Static.

The whirr of his core was extra noticeable right then.

Turning away from the screen, he took a (structurally unnecessary) deep breath and tried to collect his thoughts. The subjects were out. They’d lost control. They were displaying behaviors and abilities he didn’t remember from anything he’d learned about them before. And they were killing everyone.

It explained what had happened, but not how he was going to deal with it. He’d have to. And he would. He’d survived a decade in the Elliot’s house, he knew how to compartmentalize stress. There was more careful exploration to do. In this facility, there had to be something he could find out, something he could use. Something to get everyone out.

He’d gotten everything he could out of the control room. It was time to wander back into that maze. Carefully, he moved forward into the darkness.

He wandered through all of those hallways for what might have been half an hour, though that could have just been his processor playing tricks on him. Metal, biogoop, lights in various states of disrepair; it was all so repetitious. If anything, the lack of activity only increased his paranoia. As if something could jump out and end him before he had a chance to react. He passed supply closets and conference rooms and many more corridors, without a peep.

It was only when he passed the lunchroom that he finally, truly, heard something. The jostling of cheap plastic chairs and shuffling feet. Clenching his faceplate, N snuck closer to the entrance, prepared to flee at moment’s notice. Peeking within, there wasn’t any living being he could see, biological or mechanical. With careful caution, he stepped inside.

The lunchroom had been left relatively untouched. A few chairs had been knocked over, and half-abandoned lunches were left to spoil on the tables. The lights were as fritzy as the rest of them. But unlike the control room this was no war zone. Maybe post-food fight, though. Had the noise been his imagination?

No, it hadn’t. The screeching noise of a chair accidentally pushed against the floor alerted him to a presence behind him. He whirled around to confront…

…a small human woman with short blond hair, looking at him with absolute terror.

She-Carrie, he remembered her name is Carrie- squeaked with fear and dove under one of the lunch tables. It took him a moment to realize she was scared of him. Right. Wasn’t it Worker Drones that had caused this? How was she supposed to know he wasn’t also rampaging? “Stay back! Please! Just...just don’t!” She cried out from her hiding spot.

Cautiously, he stepped forward. Knelt down to see her face to face, much to her terror. “Hey! I’m…I’m not going to hurt you. It’s me. See!” He hoped she’d be able to recognize him over any other drone she’d met. Maybe that would convince her he wasn’t one of the Solver subjects. Then he could get some information out of her. Surely a technician would know more.

Her eyes scanned over him, some realization dawning on her face. “Oh…you’re…you’re Tessa’s drone.” She whispered. He wasn’t trying to kill her, so that must have convinced her he wasn’t going to. Not that that really calmed her down from all the things that really would. “Is she…oh…is she still alive…? Could she…contact corporate? Things have gone so wrong…so very very wrong!”

He didn’t want to think about Tessa right now. “I don’t know.” And that was the truth. It wasn’t one he wanted to confront, but it was. And it clearly was not a comforting one to the cowering scientist.

“They’re loose, they’re loose…oh god…oh god…” She whimpered, rocking back and forth. Carrie had never been the most intimidating figure, but once she had been a haughty one. He still remembered her orders, the casual sense of superiority she and the other researchers had over the drones. And yet here she was, pathetic and pitiable, without an ounce of authority in her. Frightened by drones, nervous around him. Some would get a vindictive sense of satisfaction from that.

But N was not that person. Had never been that person. Never wanted to be that person.

Carrie was scared, broken, and sobbing. And he refused to turn a blind eye to anyone like that. No matter who they were.

He reached out his hand, carefully. She recoiled away from his touch, and he hesitated. “…miss…”

“It ATE John’s HEAD!” She wailed, clutching her face with wide-eyed fear. “It ripped off his head and ate it! IN TWO BITES!” Her nails dug deep enough into her own skin he began to fear she might draw blood. “…it’s…they’ve never…it’s not gotten out like this before. It’s…behaving unprecedented…coordinated! All of them out at once!”

This time, his hand managed to take hold of her shoulder. She only flinched. “…Miss Carrie…I…”

“It can’t be stopped at this point…I…I read the reports! It can’t be stopped! And when it’s finished with us, it’s going to…the hole…to the center…they’ll never even find a body to bury, they’ll not be able to find…anyt…”

He lightly shook her, trying to get through. “Please, Miss Carrie, would you listen to me?” Ignored again, but less because she didn’t see him as a person and more so that she couldn’t see a foot in front of herself through a fog of fear.

“I’m going to die! I’m going to die, I’m going to die, we’re all going to die…the entire planet…! It’ll be like…!”

“You are not going to die here.” Carrie startled away from her panic and gave her his full attention. He was as surprised with himself as she was. He’d briefly lowered his voicebox’s pitch and upped the volume. Yeah, he was capable of doing things like that, right? Being forcible.

He could do that. It felt a little empowering. But still. It wasn’t something he wanted to do all the time. Just sometimes. When he needed to.

He returned his audio to his normal setting and put on a sympathetic voice. “Look. Carrie. I’m not going to let you die. No one else is dying today. I promise.” He knew she had no reason to trust him. Either as someone who wanted to help, and as someone who could help. But N, Nathan, Nathaniel, had an infectious smile. Carrie looked, if not calm, at least centered.

He offered her hand, and she took it. He pulled her out from under the table and onto her feet. He waited until her breathing steadied, then slipped his hand away. “I’m going to help you. I am!” He firmly insisted. “But if I’m going to help you, you’re going to have to tell me what you know. Everything I can use.” Carrie looked him over. This little drone in a butler’s outfit. Domestic servant, a little rumpled, but in considerably better condition than her own. But no hints of horrible mutation.

She was confused, no doubt. But cautiously, she nodded. “W…what do you need to know?”

What did he need to know?

He needed to know so many things, but at the moment, all of them centered around one thing. “Tell me what you know about the Absolute Solver.”

Carrie blinked. She looked around the room, at the facility that was dim and falling apart, then back at him. “The Absolute Solver is the extraterrestrial force that occasionally infects improperly disassembled drones…” That euphemism. How had he ever accepted it? To her credit, she seemed uncomfortable with the wording now. Like she was really thinking it over for the first time. “…and mutates their designs with seemingly impossible organic components and abilities that seem to break all known laws of physics.”

That he’d already been able to gather from Uzi and Tessa. But that wasn’t the full details. Uzi couldn’t have known them, and Tessa wouldn’t have thought it relevant for him to know. He needed to push a little harder. “I heard this place was meant to find out how to stop this thing. Did you succeed?” He knew that was a long shot. Wouldn’t the staff have used it? But maybe they were just caught unprepared.

And maybe their solution would kill Uzi and the others. That sort of solution was unacceptable.

Carrie fidgeted, having trouble looking him in the optics. “W…well, it was discovered early on that extreme heat and especially sunlight destroys hosts. But it can be difficult to…properly set that up when the subjects are…loose.” He hoped to be able to get her to say “subject” with as much discomfort as “disassemble”, but baby steps. “It’s a…a useful last resort, but, not practical as a…long term solution to the problem…”

“…and did you find a long-term solution to that problem?” He gently coaxed. Hopefully one that wasn’t lethal.

“…well, there is Project Cross.” She seemed to note how that perked his curiosity and continued with a slight bit more confidence. “After…considerable trial and error, our team…using data compiled from the lost Copper operation…have recreated an experimental data drive that-from what we can tell-is capable of blocking external control of the subjects.” That was much more promising. But also…concerning?

The lights of his eyes widened, his mouthplate thinning. “What do you mean by “external control”?”

Carrie was no less nervous than he was to open that can of worms, but she continued anyway. “The, um…final stage of infection is precluded by an outside signal.” She looked up to the ceiling, as if she could see whatever call from beyond that she spoke of. She couldn’t, of course. But you could almost feel it. “It’s…utterly untraceable and doesn’t seem to work like any other sort of digital signal we know of. But whatever it is, it drives the infected to, um…” Her eyes traveled down now, to the floor, and she trembled. “Make their way to a planet’s core and…well…consume it.”

Consume. The Absolute Solver compelled infected drones to…literally eat planets?

That explained what Tessa had shown him of Proxima. And gave this all a very strong sense of urgency. He really, really needed to go and save everyone right now.

“Do you have the data drive on you? How does it work?”

Carrie shook her head, smiling sheepishly and holding out her hands. “W…well, no. I would have…tried to use it if I had it. But, um…my ability to succeed is…suspect? You have to really…jam it into their processor, is what the salvaged data suggested.” She raised a finger before he could respond, preempting his presumed question. “And…and I don’t know where it is…exactly…but somewhere in R&D, most likely.”

Well, that wasn’t encouraging. It was something though. And you had to hold onto whatever hope you had and push forward.

“There’s a hangar, right?” He knew there was a hangar, it was logical to have one. He’d boarded a spaceship to travel to the facility, though he’d been in sleep mode when Tessa had arrived. Wherever he was, it clearly wasn’t Earth. He didn’t know exactly where it was, though it would be easy enough to find. The real problem is that he did not have any way to access any of the actual ships. But Carrie might. “Can you fire up a ship? We need to get you and the others out.”

Carrie perked up. Finally, perhaps, starting to hope that she wasn’t doomed. “Yes…yes! I have…the keys for the starbus…the one we use to go on leave to Silver-6!” She fumbled in her pockets for a second, before dangling a set of metal keys with a novelty Earth bauble attached. Then she faltered. “…but, um…what others? I think…maybe Tessa might be alive…but everyone else…”

N felt something at the potential of Tessa’s survival, though he couldn’t quite parse it. Relief or dread or both? But he’d cross that bridge when he came to it. “I’m talking about the drones.” She was still wrapping her head around what his presence with her implied, and all the implications of his clear agency. So it wasn’t much of a surprise that she looked confused.

“You mean…” She finally figured out, “…the defects?”

“The disabled.” His words, perhaps, reflected something of Carrie’s life outside her cruel occupation. Nothing he’d said so far really struck her like that correction, like she’d been stabbed right through. As if all her ignorance was bleeding out from the metaphorical wound. As she suddenly saw all the comparisons, saw some loved one in a wheelchair or a cane in the position she’d placed the drones with damaged servos or fritzing optics.

“You’re…you’re really not here because Tessa ordered you, are you?” She weakly said.

After a moment of thought, he simply smiled and replied. “I’m here to help people. I just think you should expand your definition of people a little.” The revelation of drone personhood was a lot to spring on someone. Especially one whose job relied on not realizing it. She’d hopefully have time to dwell on it later, for now they needed to work together to get out of here.

“Okay.” Carrie held out her hand and dropped the keys into his. She smiled hesitantly back, and he realized it was a gesture of good faith. She was entrusting her only ticket to potential safety to the machine. Hoping that he could fulfill his promise and help her. Even if he was one of the drones she’d treated as discardable objects. “We’ll…we’ll get the D... The other drones. And then we’ll leave.”

Even here, in the dark of this mad laboratory on the clock towards doomsday, N felt his core’s warmth. Maybe there was a little hope for human and drone coexistence after all.

He gestured Carrie to follow behind him, quietly. Together, they began to sneak out of the break room and back into the hall. As they crept through all the dark, organic refuse-filled corridors, he whispered over to her. “Where exactly is R&D compared to the drone storage and the hangar bay?” The human scientist, who whatever confidence she may have regained still looked like skittish rabbit (who wouldn’t?), jolted.

“Um well…R&D is on the way…it’s the big chamber about halfway to drone storage? And hangar is on the far side to the right…near the edge! But…” Her eyes flicked from left to right, sounding a little hoarse. “…you’re not…really thinking of trying to get the drive from R&D are you? That’s suicide…we should…we should just get out of here…”

“Don’t worry.” He assured her, still trying to put on a braver face than he really had. “You and others can leave without me. I’m going to double back and grab the drive.” He looked back and gave her a thumbs up. “It’s something I have to do. Don’t worry about it! Just focus on yourself.”

She looked at him with utter disbelief. “You…you’re going to die if you do that!” Die. Not disassemble. He chose to focus on her concern for him, the progress that represented. And not at the likely entirely justified sense that he was charging to his doom for a fool’s hope at rescuing everyone. “I’ve…I’ve seen the way these things move! You can’t…can’t possibly use the drive on them! It’s just an uninhabited moon…” Noted information. “…it doesn’t matter if it’s gone as long as we get out!”

“Maybe not.” He admitted. “But I made a promise to myself and a friend. And I’m going to keep it.” She had no way of knowing what that meant. And she clearly thought he was crazy for it. But she saw his determination, and realized she couldn’t convince him otherwise. And in her nod, perhaps even some admiration. That was the plan, and it was going fine for stage one.

But then he had a single, uncomfortable thought. One that got back to the roots at thoughts he’d been trying to suppress for his own good and the good of everyone he needed to help save.

“H…how long have you had that drive ready? Why haven’t you used it yet?”

His human companion was taken aback. But she answered. And in doing so, confirmed all his worst, most devastating thoughts. “About…three-ish months…? I don’t remember the details…”

The details probably didn’t matter to her. But to him, to Nathan. It told him one more soul-rending thing, to keep him hurting.

Tessa had the means to help Uzi, to save her, to make her no longer a threat to all human life. For months. And yet, she’d chosen not to use it.

“Why didn’t you?” He pushed, a little harder than he’d intended; the emotions of his confrontation with his creator still raw. “If that could have stopped them from destroying planets. Isn’t that what you’re here to do?” The excuse, the one possible justification Tessa had desperately clung to. It hadn’t convinced him before, but it sounded even less justifiable now.

Put on the spot, Carrie floundered. “I, well, um…” It was stupid of him to ask her this, right now. Her brain was too focused on many other things, more important things. But he needed to know. “Well, we didn’t know precisely it was going to work, well, we ran the numbers and thought it was a 90 percent…and it’s still, only, uh, a temporary solution you know, because it doesn’t stop the infections at the source…”

All perfectly valid, intelligent reasonings to hold off on the use of Project Cross. All of them relying on the presumption drones were not sapient beings with a right to live, but that was a presumption that was rarely challenged all throughout human space. But he’d remembered some of Tessa’s talk, some of her recordings for the Jenson higher ups. And that wasn’t the only reason, was it? “And because you wanted to see if you could control it.”

Carrie flinched. “Well…I…we were told to prioritize the general safety of humanity…that was the primary goal, but…” But the Jenson board would, of course, not let a chance of harnessing infinite power slip through its fingers unless absolutely necessary. Dancing just on the edge of the danger zone, for a chance to tame the apocalypse rather than avert it. “…the incentives provided…the potential for…”

“I get it.” He snapped. He understood it plenty. It was foolish, it was greedy, it was all too human. It was a wonder they’d lasted this long already, given their propensity for dooming themselves. He wondered if drones were, if truly equal, the same in that. Maybe they just needed the chance to try.

Junior Technician Carrie recoiled once more from his words. She had practically shrunk into herself, an already short woman made to almost be drone height. Now their roles seemed truly reversed. She could only meekly try and defend herself. “I…well…advisement…the head researcher’s orders…!”

“I SAID I GET IT!”

He swung his face to meet her but froze when he met her own. She looked quite a bit like she was going to cry. Why wouldn’t she? She’d just had her entire worldview shattered, right after witnessing her coworker’s death and with her own possible at any moment. Did she really need the implication she’d doomed the universe for a potential promotion too? She didn’t know anything. The fact when she was pointed to reality it shattered her was proof she wasn’t evil.

He wasn’t angry with her. Not specifically her. What she represented, maybe, her bosses, probably. But not with her. And it had been her last words that had really done it. Pointed to the real root of his feelings. He didn’t need that right now.

He sighed. “It’s not your fault.” He held out his hands, closing his optics to calm the situation (and himself). “Just. You can be better than this. Alright? You can. Try.” He smiled to her again, and the human scientist relaxed and nervously smiled back.

“Yes…um…right…yes!” She perked up. Blinking through her not quite shed tears. “I’ll do it, I’ll be better! I’m going…I’ll get the drones out. Yes. And I’ll…make sure they’re fixed!” She stood up straighter, excited, even frantic, to declare her intentions. “Things are going to be different! You…you can count on me to be different!”

N looked her over and saw not an ounce of insincerity. That connection between flesh and metal, that mutual acknowledgement, well. It made things feel a bit less dire. And he laughed. Shot finger guns at her to say, “I’ll hold you to it!” She giggled back, and he was reminded of old times in a dirty basement that seemed like a universe away.

He turned and gestured for her to keep following, prepared to face whatever dangers got in their way. Just as when he’d dodged parents with another nerdy girl.

“S…so, is there a…proper way too…HERK.”

The voice that he’d just helped turn optimistic was silenced with a retching, wet, painful cough and a horribly fleshy sounding impact. N whirled around, eyelights wide, to the sound his new organic friend had just made. Survival and protective instinct quick to lock onto the human behind him. To try and help her distress, as he was actually programmed to.

Carrie looked down at the insectile claw that had just impaled straight through her abdomen. Her eyes dull, her voice quiet.

“Oh.”

Before Nathaniel could react, to make some futile effort to save a woman who was already dead, the claw hoisted her into the ceiling. Her high-pitched scream started blood-curdling and then grew fainter, before being silenced in a deep, disquieting squelch. He reached out to nothing, not fast enough, never fast enough. Only fast enough for his hand to stain with the torrent of blood that poured down from the dark hole the technician had been pulled into.

“Giggle. Giggle. Giggle. Giggle.”

Tendrils and clawed hands gripped the sides of the hole in the ceiling, the heralds of a glowing yellow X he saw before the fanged mouth it was attached to. A mouth that still had bits of Carrie tripping down onto the floor, more organic matter in the hallway. He was running before he realized it.

The noises behind him, the stilted non-laugh, the click-clack of clawed tentacles and metal feet, propelled him forward at a furious pace. He almost dove behind the next corner he saw, core rotating hard enough to bring warning pop-ups to his feed. Were he human, if he needed to breathe, he’d have been sucking in the facility oxygen at a rapid rate.

N set his audio receptors to high, listening for pursuit. He heard none, no chase, though the sounds of dripping bio-matter remained. Cautiously, he peaked across the corner to get a glimpse at the monster who’d murdered Carrie.

He recognized immediately the long, dark purple hair that marked Subject 048-Doll. But that hair was wild and matted, like a beast, and the red of her lights had been entirely supplanted by a sickly yellow. Long, slick tentacles, barbed and black, some ending in claws and others in what looked like human hands, sprung from her back, lazily feeling across the floor, walls, and ceiling. She was hunched over, awkwardly positioned, twitching and jerking with her hands folded up by her chest. Her mouth was open, slack-jawed, still dripping blood from her fangs.

“Naaaathaaaannnnn…”

He jolted back behind the wall, hoping against hope she hadn’t seen him. He hadn’t known Doll, but he knew that was not her voice. She did not speak Russian, as Uzi told him she did, and as far as he was aware no drone had a voice that…stilted. Artificial. The half-organic thing, more artificial than the full metal. What a thought to have, when he was hiding for his life. And it knew him. It knew he was there, and who he was.

“Why do you hide?” He heard it moving, now. But less rapidly than he knew the possessed subject was capable of. A slow, lumbering gait that loudly crept up the corridor. Purposefully, he realized. It was taunting him, that was obvious in the voice, even as emotionless it might have sounded at first listen. While the monster masquerading as Doll made its way closer, he in turn started to scoot his way across the wall, looking for an exit. “Do you not want to seeeeee her Nathan?”

He stopped. And the monster-the Absolute Solver?-seemed to know he stopped. “[Knowing Laughter]. Yes. You want to see Uzi, do you not Nathaniel?” The slap of metal against metal, oddly wet. “I can take you to her, Nathan. You can see each other again. Will that not be perfect? A happy little reunion.” It was a trap, a lure, and he knew it. He had to keep himself moving. He couldn’t let it catch him. He snuck further and further down the hall.

“Do you know she has a crush on you?” …huh? Was that…surely that wasn’t true…what an odd thing to lie about, though. “She has an embarrassing teen girl first crush on you, Nathan. It is sooooo gross. She reads too many romance manga. I have seen inside her mind.” The squishy noises of the monster in a schoolgirl suit got closer and closer. He should not have been having confused feelings about its words. But he couldn’t help but feel something about the accusation. “So many disgusting, unrealistic love story tropes she imagines with you. She envisions a confession in the rain, you know. [BARF].”

And at least part of that feeling was anger. Anger that this thing would invent this at Uzi’s expense. And if it was true, anger at it for violating her mind, taking from it.

Another part was thinking silly love story tropes always sort of appealed to him, and he didn’t know why it was being so mean about that.

He would not let it get into his head. He needed to escape, find a better hiding place, lose it. There was a large room coming up to his right. All he had to do was slip inside, and maybe it would be enough.

“Do you wonder how I know these things, my silly N?” Sickly sweet, yet possessive, all accomplished within a poorly synthesized elder computer voice. Impressive, in a way. It rattled the segments of his arms. “It would be easier to assimilate than explain.” Closer…closer…

He blinked his optics. Right next to the entrance of that room, a sign. RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT. Was this it? Had he just lucked into the solution? All he had to do was sneak in, find his drive…

KACHUNK

The damage sensors in his leg went haywire, and he screamed in pain. A tentacle claw impaled through his right leg, straight into the wall beyond. “Oh, no, no, NO no you will not go so soon, SI~iLL~y Bi~~llY.” With a horrendous, inhuman screech, the Doll-thing thundered across halls and over the corner, a blur of movement that just as suddenly stopped right in front of him. Looming over his now prone form, inches from the doorway. Drooling red-black goop onto his suit. “Tag. You are ~~~~~~~IIIIIITTTTTTTTTT~~~~~~”.

The thing’s voice glitched and echoed and stuttered, utterly gleeful. It appeared that it could have gotten him at any time. It was playing with its food, he realized. Taking childish pleasure in taunting him. He was only alive right now because it thought it was funny to keep him alive. He looked deep into what was not really Doll, head slowly getting closer to his, eyes that flickered between dots and Xs but were always yellow.

“What…what are you?”

The monstrosity stopped. “What am I? A curious question.” Its head began to tilt quizzically to the side. “Maybe I am a metaphor for the insatiable, self-destructive nature of corporate greed?”

The tilt kept going. “Or maybe I am the poisonous influence of trauma on a being’s psyche, that will never let them free.” The tilt became a twist, the crack of Doll’s neck joints sickeningly audible as her head was forced to go all the way around and upside down.

“Or the pseudo-religious inevitably of entropy that leads everything to its inescapable conclusion. I could be any one of these things, Nathan! Any of them!” The head fulfilled its full rotation, the wounds already sealing.

“Probably not, though.” The pressure and pain on his leg increased, the Solver pushing the claw deeper into his body. “I am not good at metaphors.”

It grinned so wide it was a wonder the jaws didn’t come apart, ready to go in for the kill. A slow, agonizing kill, like a cat with a cornered mouse, a sadistic overlong finale to a game fun for only one player.

At least it was until he licked its tentacle.

The monster recoiled in confusion, “What-” Before being cut off by the projectile he threw straight into Doll’s viewscreen, bonking it on the head and loosening its grip. The half-empty power pack cartridge he’d used to help Uzi clattered down to the floor, and he made a move. Ignoring his pain, N took the opportunity to dive into the R&D room. “[Frustrated Grunt] Squirmy Worm-”

Emergency power-a drone equivalent to adrenaline-zapped through him, keeping him going even with his damaged leg. A quick once-over gave him all he needed to know about Research and Development. Worktables, more monitors, chemicals in beakers left to stagnate with the scientists smears on a wall. Engineering gear he idly thought Uzi and Tessa would have loved to tinker on. And, oddly enough, an ornate Christian cross affixed to the far wall.

How was he going to find the drive in this mess, in the roughly ten seconds he had before it pounced on him?

…wait…

“Tricksy, little morsel.” The Solver Doll, predator’s smile returned, pulled its way into the room by the tentacle hands, letting her feet dangle above the ground. “Cute. But also. ANNOYING.”

“Yep, that’s me. Annoyingly cute.” A forced smile and a thumbs up, willing himself not to shake from fear. “I think I’ll pass on being a morsel though. If it’s all the same to you!” His yelp was drowned out by the static-tinged snarl of the beast leaping in his direction, just barely managing to dodge out of the way to the side. The Solver smashed itself into the wall, loosening the cross from its perch. It clattered to the floor as it returned to face him, readying itself for the next leap.

Just as he’d planned.

Because of course JCJenson (IN SPAAAAAACCEEEEE!), would feel the need to make their demon anti-virus in the shape of an overly detailed cross. Even if it was never intended for the wider market, you couldn’t take the overdramatic salesman out of your company character. And of course, they would position it far out of reach of modest drone height.

“…I should have just said ABSOLUTE. That would have been cool. It would have been, cool, right Nathan?”

N scrambled back to his feet, fake nervous laughing and trying to crouch behind a desk. “Ah…yes…sure…whatever you say?” He tried to scootch himself closer to the cross, the Solver circling around him and the various tables and trinkets.

“To your question. I think the metaphor thing was kind of lAmE. ABSOLUTE would have been cooler. It has finality to it.”

“That’s-”

Solver Doll, perched upon one of the workbenches like a cat, made a sound like a frog being jammed into a broken printer and lunged straight at his voice. A lifetime spent dodging thrown objects from cantankerous masters was his only source of survival, but it worked as well as it could. And this time, he managed to dodge in the direction of his exorcizing cross. Just out of reach, so he crawled towards it on all fours. His fingers were less than an inch away before he felt a tug at his ankle.

“It has been fun, N, but I am getting tired of the games.”

A tri-arrowed hexagon of yellow light had seized his damaged leg, projected out from a raised hand prepared to drag him away and keep him in place. No! This couldn’t end here, right when he was this close! He stretched his fingers to their limits, until they were almost popping out of place, to grab it before he was dragged into a metaphorical and literal maw. His fingertips touched the edge, enough hope to push him forward.

Just barely, he succeeded in using that friction to slide the cross across the floor even as the monster pulled him away. His hand wrapped around the drive in the shape of a religious artifact, bringing it close to his chest as if to pray away the demon. This was the drive, wasn’t it? How was to open it? He fiddled with it looking for a button, a switch, anything.

The light at his ankle fizzled out, only to reappear, larger, at his waist, pinning him to the floor and knocking his systems briefly out of whack. “LETS EAT!” For a final, finishing, inescapable blow, the possessed drone pounced once more on trapped prey. N desperately shook and tinkered with the cross, teeth rapidly filling his vision, and just barely managed to release the plug in with a click before it was on him. Hurriedly his hands thrust into the air while his optics closed and-

KRACK

For the second time in so many hours, his doom didn’t quite arrive.

He reactivated one sensor. The cross had impaled Doll’s screen through its own momentum. She’d frozen just above him, held up by tentacle claws, her head twitching wildly. “Ww…ah…z….happen….ee….” The Solver’s voice glitched, and so did Doll’s viewscreen. Lines of code, error messages, the hexagonal symbol gone out of control and splitting apart. Yet another audio splitting scream, and it collapsed backwards onto the floor, tentacles dissolving into goo around it.

N stared at the clump on the floor, his core racing wildly even as his emergency power faded and he felt the pain in his leg again. Then he laughed. A laugh of relief, of pain, of genuine humor that his final ploy had actually worked. Laughing instead of crying, for Carrie, for Uzi, for Doll, and even for Tessa. Here he was, alive, still, no matter how much the universe tried to end him.

And then the body on the floor lifted up a shaky hand to pull the cross from out of its head.

But as he stumbled to his feet in a panic, the repairing glass blinked on red instead of yellow. Onto her knees, Doll, the actual Doll, not something using her as a puppet, surveyed the room in a daze.

“Что? Где я?” Here was the Russian that was already downloaded into his database, and the Russian that he remembered Uzi telling him Doll spoke. N stood up, limping, utterly elated.

“Oh. Hi! You must be Doll. I’ve heard a lot about you!” A lot of it not great, admittedly, but she was just a teenager. One that should have been saved any of this pain like any other. He held out his hand to help her up with a good-natured smile. Confused and bewildered, she still took it, and rose wobbly to her feet.

“Голоса... они исчезли.” She stopped herself from dripping with a quick application of her power, confirming that she could still use it voices or not. That could come in handy. “Я не мог... я не мог пошевелиться. Ты мне помог? Спасибо.” N shook the other drone’s hand and nodded.

“I just did what I had to do. But now, if you wouldn’t mind, I’m going to need your help, Doll.”

Finally finding her balance, Doll let go of him and fussed over her messy hair. “Ты домашний... Что ты делаешь... что тебе нужно?” Nathaniel/Nathan/N’s smile stayed, but his expression hardened.

“We’re going to save everyone.”

…

Hunger

That is all she feels. A deep, gnawing hunger in every bit of plastic, metal, and electricity that forms her natural being (and the unnatural flesh and blood). Her jumbled brain has difficulty holding anything else, including who she is, who she is supposed to be. What is her name? The number 052 floats around her memory, but only as something to reject. Is she Eileen? Icaria? It’s impossible for her to remember, as all she is floats across her mind, only tiny snippets of remembrance. Stuffed animals, her bedroom, drones she recognizes as something…familial. A snowy sky of stars and the beautiful ringed sphere she’d always loved on those cold nights.

She remembers also fear, pain, and despair. She remembers being stolen from her bed. She remembers horrible torments daily forced into her body and mind. And she remembers the faceless tormentors behind the glass, directing every bit of it.

She realizes, distantly, that the taste in her mouth is that of those tormentors. That the material she’s messily shoving into her maw is the remains of one of her primate demons. Does that feel good?

Of course it does, silly.

It’s not what she’s ever felt she’s supposed to be like. It contradicts her sense of self, to have her mouth buried deep into someone’s ribcage. She remembers being sweet and shy, remembers loving rainbows and glitter. But her body and mind are telling her this vengeance feels good, and she can’t seem to contradict that no matter how much she wants to.

Nor can she tell her body where or how it moves. She feels herself lurch off from her gruesome meal, satisfied and sensing more prey. She doesn’t know how she senses this prey, just that it exists, and her ever burning hunger burns a bit brighter for that knowledge. She pounces forward, running at speed on all fours. Jumping from wall to wall and burying her claws (claws!) into the metal, bolstered and balanced by slithering tendrils that erupt from her back.

All of it is a blur, all of it lost in the HUNGER, her body ripping through hallways and storage rooms to hunt anything it can. Something inside her keeps telling her this is what she wants. She’s not sure if she believes it, but her every other thought is telling her she does. And even if it’s not, it’s not like she feels capable of stopping her body from moving.

Panting, slobbering, hissing like the beast she’s aware she is, she makes her way to something she only registers as energy. Faster, faster, faster FASTER, until she flings herself straight at whatever it is she hunts. But she only has time to register a very unhuman shape before she feels any brain functions she has left scramble into a flash of light.

What’s left of her already fragmented self finds itself locked into a cycle of trying and failing to reboot, her body clattering down onto the ground. She can’t move, and unlike before neither can The Thing That Is Her And Not Her. She can see the shapes, though. Multiple. Hear them too. Bipedal, yet sinuous and serpentine, circling her body, the clicking of claws on metal floor, predatory and hissing.

“God F—king D—n it.” The Not Her still has just a little bit of control while she has none, enough to groan out a staticky curse. And enough to move the parts of her that are Not Her, such as when a clawed tentacle lashes out to impale one of the reptilian figures. It screeches and writhes as it dies, but there are many more, and the clumsy movements of her other self cannot stop them. Two more pounce at the tendril and viciously rend into it with tooth and claw, devouring her body like she had the human’s only minutes before. It’s not part of her, but it is, and she feels the pain even if all of her that’s HER is a looped animation on her screen.

“P…pesky little things…little rats…vermin to be…”

“Shut up.”

Neither Subject 052 nor the thing taking her body for a joyride are able to say anything any longer. Not with the sharp end of a sword impaling her through the voicebox. The amount of pain her sensors pick up from the tentacles is nothing compared to the pain she feels from this, but still it is the Not Her that shakily looks up at the figure who just stabbed her through the mouth. Now this is a human, a woman’s figure in a utilitarian jumpsuit. Her fuzzy optics render her face completely dark, but she sees the outline of hair, a bow, and angry, angry eyes.

“If you’re so determined to ruin everything, you can do better than my parents and at least die for it.” She wants to cry, but Not Her only snarls stuttering static. The response is to bury the sword deeper, while the pack hunters rip and tear any part still capable of violence. “No talking. I’ve seen what you do when you talk.”

The woman leaned down, so her eyes can meet the cursed drone’s optics. “I want you to know that humanity is, was, and will be better than you. We’ve conquered the stars, and we’ll beat you like we’ve beaten everything else. You can’t even conquer stars. They conquer you right? If you’re hungry, choke on that.”

The human, the tormentor, that she feared and Other Her hated, rose up and clicked a button. And the roof above them answered, shifting the metallic ceiling to reveal…a skylight. A skylight to the daytime sun. She feels the searing rays of this planet’s star scorch her, starting with her feet and working its way up further and further. She feels her body melt, from carapace to endoskeleton, her body that was already no longer hers fading away. Until she is only her core, what was once an engine and is now a heart, frantically skittering newfound legs to find some sort of escape.

But there is none. And the girl who they called Subject 052 is turned to dust and knows no more.