Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

              “Synergistic Liability must have tripped and knocked himself offline.”

             J brushes aside V’s question, and she silently boils at the needlessly cruel moniker. J has never liked N. Even going as far back as the memories from the Elliott Manor that V can actually recall, she has always been antagonistic, but…all they have left is each other. J of all people should be able to put aside her predisposition toward belittling N in the interest of keeping the team together and sane.

             Though, the reality of it is that V doesn’t do any better by him. Even if she does it in…she’ll call it good faith, she’s still awful to N. She’s not as outwardly vicious as J is, but every time she gets the sense that N might be skirting too near a memory of how close the two of them used to be, she reflexively distances him. She can’t bear to see N reset again. Her heart has been broken by that vicious cycle so many times that she doesn’t have much of a heart left, so keeping him at arm’s length in order to keep his mind as intact as it is doesn’t even really hurt that much anymore. A small sacrifice, et cetera.

              But right now J is just being a bitch.

              “Cool, so, all this fresh oil is from N tripping and falling?”

              “Fuck if I know.”

              “J.”

             “I don’t know!” J says, throwing her hands up. “His optics were out of whack. He said something about needing to get into the med bay so he punched a hole in the ship, and then he flew off and blew a bunch of snow in my face.”

              V pinches where the bridge of her nose would be. The human habits that had been programmed into her are hard to shake.

              “Why did he need to get into the med bay?”

              “Honestly I really wasn’t listening. I was too pissed about this.” She kicks the side of the landing pod wrathfully. “Who’s gonna have to fix this, I wonder.”

              “J, sunrise is soon. If N doesn’t come back, are you really okay with being a squadmate down?”

              This seems to give J pause, at the very least, a scowl darkening her face.

            “What the hell do you want me to do about it? Whatever he’s off doing, he’s too far away to send a location ping to. I already tried that, for your information, and you’re welcome. N is a big boy, he can find a shadow to hide in until the cloud cover comes back.”

              “And if this oil is his?”

              “God, V, it’s not. He was happy and healthy when we talked, little necessary hard reboot notwithstanding.”

              V bristles. Hard reboot, her hot titanium ass. One of these days, she’s going to snap and say the quiet part out loud. One of these days, she’s going to stick her finger in J’s face and spit out the venomous accusation that her storied callousness has always been her way of pulling rank because she liked to paint herself as Tessa’s “second in command,” and that she treats N like trash because she’s jealous Tessa always liked him more. The truth of the matter isn’t relevant. Everyone in the Elliott manor, human and drone alike, saw how Tessa confided in J and took comfort in her company above all others. But it hadn’t been enough. J wanted her all to herself. At least, that’s what V suspects. Literally she’s almost certain she’s right, though.

              “Would it kill you to replay your memory file of the conversation you had with him?”

              J rolls her eyes so hard her optic halo flickers in a sympathetic synaptic response, then her display shifts to a readout.

              <ACCESSING MEMORY FILE 3071_08_18_0621AM.MOV>

            “There. Happy, mom?” J crosses her arms as the little bar filling at the bottom of her display indicates a replay happening inside J’s head, and when she smirks at a certain point, V is certain she’s reliving the moment she hit N to hard reboot him. J’s head tilts near the three-quarter mark of the replay bar. “Huh.”

              “Huh what?”

              J’s display returns to normal, and she’s cocking a brow.

              “There’s no way we’d be getting a new squadmate, right?”

              V blinks.

              “…No? Unless it’s a straggler assigned to one of the other outposts that have been cleared following a redeployment protocol. Why, what did N say?”

              “Something about a Serial Designation Z.” J grimaces and looks around at the oil-spattered snow. “Guess all this is hers.”

              V huffs out a sharp exhale, exasperated.

             “So was it that you just couldn’t be bothered to replay your memory file in case this,” She swings her arm out, gesturing to the carnage. “…may have been something worth looking into, or did you just want an excuse to keep being mad at N?”

              J fumes.

              “I still don’t think it’s worth looking into.”

              “I don’t believe you really mean that, J.”

             “I don’t think it’s worth looking into because our situation is the same as it was sixty seconds ago. You and I are here, N isn’t, and the sun is about to come up. We can’t leave, and either N comes back alone, with a new squadmate, or not at all.”

            The indifference radiating from J, whether real or a front, sends rage prickling down the spinal column of V’s frame, and she finds herself deploying her claws. Angrily, coldly, slowly, she says between gritted fangs,

              “For once in your life, J, try to think about how I feel.”

              For a moment, V thinks J is about to bring her arsenal out as well. It wouldn’t be the first time they’d nearly come to blows during an argument, but N isn’t here to help diffuse the situation, something he seems to be predisposed to doing and doing well. If it hits a boiling point right now, V will actually act on her impulse this time and carve J like a turkey. A short and tense standoff passes between them, and then J shifts her weight, crossing her arms and relenting. V exhales. Guess there’s a shred of sympathy in J’s code, after all.

              “Look, wherever N is, whatever he’s doing, he isn’t all by himself, okay? He’s got this Z character with him, so I’m sure everyone is just fine.”

              V screws up her mouth. J isn’t attempting to give the most heartfelt consolation, but it’s also realistically the most V would be able to tell herself.

              “I’m going to the top of the spire to send out a location ping.”

              “I already—”

              “Yes but how long ago?”

              J rolls her eyes.

              “Knock yourself out. Don’t get burned.”

              V’s wings extend and she thinks for a moment about purposefully blowing snow into J’s face with the downbeat, but…no, she shouldn’t antagonize at this point, even if J deserves it and even though it would be funny.

            She swoops upward through the rafters and out the second floor entrance,  alighting on the side of the very top of the spire, eyes scanning the horizon worriedly. The weather has let up significantly in the last thirty minutes, which means the storm will have passed fully just before or at dawn.

            She sends out a location ping, the equivalent of a ham radio scrolling through frequencies to see if anyone is broadcasting. She sighs, lamenting how limited her reach is. If they had a proper communications setup—a transmission tower, in a perfect world—she could contact anyone with a receiver nearly hemisphere-wide. As it stands, though, the landing pod’s communication relay is (and as far as V knows, always has been) one-way, exclusively to deliver new orders, should any come in from corporate. J monitors the private frequency directly, but has never mentioned any buzz to V.

             All V has to work with is her local network’s hotspot, with its pitiful radius of a little less than a half-mile. Her ping is met with radio silence. N is either farther away than that, or hears her ping but isn’t responding. It’s that second one that concerns V. He would answer if he heard her, she’s sure of it—unless something is wrong. Unless he doesn’t want to be found.

            The sky is beginning to list toward orange, wind dying and clouds clearing. V sends out another ping, an unassuming little signal that translates to I am here. Are you there?

              Nothing.

              V’s shoulders slump.

             “He isn’t all by himself, okay? He’s got this Z character with him.”

            Serial Designation Z. Whoever she is, she’d showed up unannounced, bled everywhere, and then disappeared into the wastes with N. What the fuck could her deal possibly be? V’s brow furrows. Apparent serious injuries aside, she’d led N away from the spire right as dawn approached. V doesn’t really have a reason to think this…after all, how could this possibly be the case, but…could it be Z isn’t an ally?

             V feels the back of her head start to heat as the sun crests over the horizon and she has to quickly abandon her post, but she doesn’t abandon her train of thought. If Z doesn’t come correct, she’ll quickly learn that everything V has done, she’s done to protect N, and Z being a fellow disassembly drone or a fellow squadmate won’t give V a shred of pause if N needs protecting once again.

Chapter Text

Uzi wakes in her makeshift lobby chair bed with her neck at a ninety degree goddamn angle. After an initial groan of annoyance and pain as she sits up and rubs at her neck and ruffles her hair into rough shape, she has no other course of action but to stare down the barrel of the fact that she’s now “tomorrow Uzi” and all her problems need to start being addressed.

The ambient light is too orange for it to be completely past sundown, and with a glance over her shoulder she confirms that the angle of the weak sun through the lobby windows suggests that there’s still another hour or two where N isn’t going to be able to traverse the distance back to his HQ…If he goes back to his HQ. Is that his plan? If it is, what does she do? If it’s not, what does she do? An eye roll makes its way across her visor. Tomorrow Uzi still has her work cut out for her, that’s for damn sure.

She flicks her eyes over to where the disassembly drone is still asleep, hanging from the railing in the stairwell ten or twelve feet from her. No use waking him before the sun is fully down, probably, but she can go explore a little while she mulls over her whole situation. Moving around while thinking always helps her brainstorm. Gotta be quiet about it, though.

She rolls over the armrests boxed around her and the absolute lack of traction her new pointed prosthetic has on the tile causes her to immediately lose her footing and loudly clatter to the floor on her ass. Ugh, sure, yeah, great. So much for trying not to wake N. Other disassembly drones deal with this design? How come N gets real feet?

N’s wings rustle and he shifts, mumbling something as his display begins a booting up sequence. Uzi scrambles to not look like an idiot and hauls herself up, perching in what she feels is a cool manner on the edge of the chairs as N’s optics blink open and scan the room, landing on her, sleepily half-lidded.

“Hey, uh…good morn—evening? Do you guys refer to this as morning since you’re just waking up?” Uzi attempts courtesies. She’s never been inclined to learn how to do them and for the first time she regrets lacking that particular life skill. Scrambling for other trivial bits of small talk (friends do that, right?), the memory from several hours before of N’s display reading WISTFUL DREAMING: ACTIVE surfaces and provides as good a launchpad as anything. “Did you…dream, or?” Uzi flounders and cringes at her sad attempt at chit chat. C’mon, nobody likes talking about dreams, it’s always so boring.

“Y’know, those are both very good questions,” N unhooks his tail from his perch and lightly, gracefully flips to land in a crouch on his feet. Uzi feels a little ripple of gratefulness that N hadn’t been awake to see her eat shit first thing on day one of being her partner in crime or whatever the hell they are. “Pleasantries don’t really fly freely in my squad, despite how much I’d like them to,” He rubs the back of his neck, eyes flicking down, a little pensive. “It’s…nice to hear a good morning. Or evening.”

Seems N has a strained relationship with his squad, if they don’t even do painless little passing comments like these. Though, when was the last time she’d given any banal greeting to her dad (or vice-versa)? Uzi feels her heart squeeze just a little.

“Glad I can provide.” Uzi shakes away the empathy before it can set in, hoping N has forgotten about the other stupid question she’d blurted. 

“As for dreams,” (Ah, damn it. Oh well.) “…I don’t get those very often.” After the easy response leaves his lips, N tilts his head, and by the way his eyes narrow in thought, he’s really searching hard for something, like the answer he’d given suddenly doesn’t feel quite right, quite whole. “Or…it’s that I don’t remember them very often, maybe. The ones I do remember are always really…they always feel really real, in the moment. Sometimes they’re clear like a memory would be—” He glances up, tongue caught between his sharp teeth. “Sorry, you probably don’t want to be hearing about that. Boring.” He shrugs and stands straighter, brushing his hands together.

Uzi hesitates. She sort of does want to hear, despite what she’d thought to herself only seconds ago vis-à-vis talking about dreams, but N is already moving on, and they have, like, real problems to discuss.

“So,” N grins, sunny as anything. “Breakfast?” Uzi’s expression falters as problem number one rears its head, and N’s realization is close behind. “O-Or…I mean, I usually skip breakf—I usually don’t eat—I was asking if you wanted any f-food?” Then, with his brows peaking, tone hesitant and searching, he asks, “Do you…want any food in, y’know…in particular?”

The corner of Uzi’s mouth quirks up. She can kick problem number one down the road just a tiny bit longer and it seems that N knowing would alleviate some of his guilt, at least regarding her hunger, if not his own.

“About that, I might have made a discovery,” She nudges the two lobby chairs apart with her boot, sitting in one criss-cross-applesauce and gesturing for N to take the other. “Seems I can still eat worker drone stuff, at least sometimes.” N pauses mid-sit, eyes widening.

“You can? How’d you figure that out?”

“By eating worker drone stuff, duh.” Uzi lets out a brisk, dismissive quip out of reflex, then catches herself, glancing guiltily up to N’s sincere face and tracking down the programming she needs to engage to soften her response, metaphorically covered in dust. “Um. Well. Okay, no, I tried twice. I think if I’m…hurt…or, maybe really hungry? Worker drone food only really takes the edge off. But as it is at the moment,” She gestures to herself, a picture of health, if a cobbled-together freak can be called healthy. “…batteries taste as good as usual.”

“Huh,” N muses, knuckle to his bottom lip. “Y’know, I’ve never thought to try worker drone staples,” He glances up to her, eyes bright and hopeful, but…there is an edge of desperation to his voice when he asks, “Do you think they’d work for me?”

Uzi feels an uncomfortable coupling of feelings at this. N wants to find an alternative source of sustenance: Good! N is desperate for an alternative source of sustenance, likely solely due to Uzi’s presence itself being a temptation sooner or later: Bad. N doesn’t want to kill her: Good! N still has to eat, so until an alternative is found, the rest of her colony is likely still on the menu:…Baaad…? Bad.

“We can try,” Uzi offers lamely. “Gotta warn you that it might not sit well if my first attempt is anything to go by.”

“I’m happy to take that risk.”

“I can see what I can scavenge for you nearby; I cleaned this building out already, I think,” She side-eyes him. “You’re not hungry like right now, right? How long can you go without eating, anyway?”

N’s gaze drops, and he brings a hand up to uneasily fiddle with his hair.  

“Well…starvation mode will start to set in after a week or so.”

Oh, right. Uzi gulps, remembering. With the exception of a few disjointed chunks of N’s white room pep talk with her in her subconscious, the bulk of her time in that state is lost from her memory completely, but she does recall the moments before it all spiraled into the dark and her sense of self began to ouroboros out. She does recall seeing her reflection, all teeth and drool and murderous intent. She does recall the hunger, though that’s not nearly a strong enough word for it. It was like a separate, living thing in her, a parasitic force that demanded to consume, and when she had nothing on hand to feed it, it was happy to instead start with her mind.

She gives a nervous chuckle. Lifting the mood is not her strong suit, but she’s gotta try.

“Ah…well, in that case, I guess, at least you’re set until a week from now, huh?”

She can’t really parse the expression N gives in response. The gold blush under his hollowed optics doesn’t escape her notice, she just doesn’t know what the fuck it means.

“Ha! Ha…y-yeah, I’m…full up!” N gives her a strained smile and shifts uncomfortably in his seat. Great job, Uzi. Way to socialize. But…since they’re on the subject…

“So…that hunger,” She fidgets with a snap on the button-up she's wearing, glancing away from N. “That pain, the way you just disappear and aren’t you anymore…that’s a constant threat to you? You’re just…always trying to stay sane and not become a zombie and the only way to do that is to kill and eat worker drones?”

N winces.

“…More or less.”

Something twists in Uzi’s heart. To live with that continuous stress in the background, that’s…that’s cruel. Who would program that?

“Do you know why you’re programmed that way?”

N shakes his head with a shrug.

“I was sent to do a job, and though I would have done my very best anyway, it’s understandable that the Company would want to incentivize us to follow through with our orders.”

Did the roboticists at JCJenson really dispatch the murder drones with so little faith in them that they put that sort of motivation into their code? Plus, there’s a leap in logic here that Uzi is shocked N hasn’t considered.

“But…N, what happens to you when there aren’t any more—” Uzi bites her tongue, suddenly sensing this is probably subject matter usually left undiscussed among the disassembly drones.

“Hm?” She has his steady, polite attention.

If he hasn’t thought about it, it’s…not going to be an easy revelation to have. Being precise and gentle and patient with her words is not one of her strong suits (one of many coming up in spades, it seems), but she really wants to put in the work right now, for N’s sake. Maybe she has to come at it from an angle one of her previous therapists would have encouraged (So it’s come to this, huh? She hates it when they’re right).

“So…when other squads of disassembly drones finish, um, clearing out other colonies, what do they do next?”

“There are redeployment protocols. That’s what I thought you were following when you showed up. Squads get bigger and more efficient the more colonies are dispatched, though it’s a slow process.” He removes his cap and ruffles his hair as he speaks, resituating it as he says, “We haven’t had contact with other members of the flock since initial deployment. I assume it’s because the worker drones on this planet have figured out how to build effective shelters and squads just need to chip away at their assigned colonies for longer.”

Uzi’s mouth thins. Is that the reason N hasn’t heard from the rest of the “flock?” Yes, her father is in communication with other nearby colonies, and she knows they’d sent them all blueprints via fax (incredible how obsolete tech becomes newly indispensable in the apocalypse), but as to how effective they are in comparison to Outpost 3 when Khan isn’t the lead engineer on the project, Uzi isn’t sure. But, that’s neither here nor there at the moment.

“Alright, so…even if it takes a while, all the worker drone colonies on the planet are eventually going to be, like, emptied, right? Those are the orders disassembly drones are following and the goal they’re working towards?”

“Yessiree.”

“And, when that goal is met, it means all the workers will be dead, right?”

“…Yes?” N’s brow is beginning to peak.

“So, if all the workers are dead, how will you stave off starvation mode? What will be left for the disassembly drones to eat?” N doesn’t have an immediate response, so Uzi chances pushing him a little further and adds, “Each other?”

“O-Oh, I, uh…” N’s optics hollow out as he looks to his knees. “…I hadn’t thought about that. But…surely there’s something else we can do. Some other food source we don’t know about, right? Like what worker drones eat?” That desperate edge is back in his voice, doubled.

Uzi feels her heart squeeze again. It’s bonkers to consider, since worker drones are so clearly the prey to the murder drones’ predators, but, are the murder drones victims in all this, as well? If she’s understanding everything up to this point correctly, they’re programmed to, essentially, slowly and painfully self-destruct when their job is done. Uzi exhales and stands. One way to find out if that’s really the truth of the matter.

“Let’s test that. I’m going to use the last little bit of daylight to go scavenging. I’ll see if I can scrounge up something for you to try to eat.”

“Okay,” N smiles, but his nod is stilted. “Thanks. I’d go with you if I could, but, y’know. The sun’ll kill me.”

Uzi snorts.

“I appreciate the thought. Have you even scavenged before, though?”

“Can’t say I have. You’ll have to show me the ropes.”

“We can put it on the cultural exchange list.”

Chapter Text

              It had been a prototype, after all. It shouldn’t have surprised him that the door hadn’t held.

              Murder drones are crawling like demons toward him through the hole they’d torn in Door One. Door Two is holding, but they can’t risk cracking it open even a little to allow the cornered members of the WDF to escape behind the newer installations if the murder drones are advancing.

              “Khan!” Nori shoves a wrench into his hands. Her eyes are hollow with terror but her jaw is set. “Get the rest out of here!”

              He recognizes that commanding tone. She’s made up her mind.

              “Nori, no!”

              Khan grabs for her arm but he isn’t quick enough. She’s bolting toward the murder drones.

              “Hey, assholes! Dinner’s served! Come and get it!”

              His brave, beautiful wife is drawing the attention of the trio of killers away from the rest of the worker drones. They’ll have time to crack open and fully shut Door Two with the murder drones distracted. He has to move. This is everyone’s chance to escape.

              Everyone except Nori.

              He numbly feels another member of the WDF grab his arm and pull him back, but his wide, horrified gaze never leaves his wife. The murder drones are circling her like the metal birds of prey that they are, and she’s throwing out insults and dodging blades and Khan’s frozen mind wonders distantly what he’d ever done to deserve the love of someone so cool.

              Still being dragged backwards, he feels his leg catch on the side of Door Two, only opened halfway, and he stumbles and nearly topples over the metal divider. He reflexively throws his hands out to grab at the edge of the metal, and then the scream that rips through the air yanks his gaze back to Nori.

              She’s been pinned to the wall by a razor sharp wing. Black is pouring from where the blade is pierced through her chest, surely only centimeters away from her core. Through it all, through the coughs laced with oil and the dread clear on her features, she grins.

              “Missed.” She chokes out. Her eyes flick shakily over to where Khan is frozen, halfway through Door Two, and there’s another type of fear that eclipses the mortal terror on her display. The other two murder drones have noticed the escaping workers. Their sights are set on him.

              “No!” Nori throws an arm out toward Khan, and he can’t understand what happens next as he is thrown backward into the bunker in a flash of violet.

              With Khan behind the divide of Door Two, some other drone slaps their hand down on the controls to close and lock it, leaving Nori out in the hall to die. She’s going to die.

              His haze of frozen terror thaws at the thought and his cognizance weakly stirs again.

              “…W-Wait, wait!”

              Khan hauls himself upright and moves toward the rapidly closing door, but even now, it feels like he’s trying to run through water. His feet are heavy, he can’t breathe. Nori is the brave one, not him. He can’t will himself to charge into danger…not even for his wife. He struggles to keep taking steps forward, limbs like lead and fear clogging his oil lines, dragging out the willpower to keep his eyes on her through the horizontal gap of the closing door.

              Everything is happening so slowly.

              Her outstretched arm has fallen to her side. In relief? In exhaustion? Acceptance? And her eyes are locked with his as the needle on the end of the murder drone’s tail pierces into her stomach. The shriek that tears from her mouth is paired with another wave of purple light, and the murder drone is thrown backward, razor sharp feather yanking out of her chest and dropping her to the snow. The other two are caught in the blast, knocking into each other and joining the third, slamming against the other side of the hall and landing in a dazed heap.

              Khan begs his body to move. Move. Move!

              He collides against the still closing Door and reaches an arm through the narrowing gap. Nori is too far away for him to grab onto. He’s still going to lose her. Gasping, one hand clutching at her dissolving middle and the other uselessly pressed to the hemorrhaging puncture next to her core, she lifts her head and meets his gaze. She stretches a hand out towards him again, fingers covered in her own oil, and amidst the warnings and errors stacking up on her visor, Khan sees a symbol he doesn’t recognize flicker in violet across it.

              Her wrist is wreathed in that same light, in that same shape, and Nori is suddenly propelled toward the gap in the Door. Khan doesn’t understand how this is happening, but he doesn’t care as Nori’s oil-coated hand grasps his and he hauls her into his arms, into the hallway beyond Door Two, right as it closes. They collapse backward into the snow, and Nori shakily looks up at him from his lap.

              “H-Hey, handsome,” She coughs through her blackened smile. “Watch out, nanites.”

              “N-Nori, Nori, hey,” Khan’s hands are shaking, rattling through where he’s holding onto her. “Wh-What was that? You, hah,” His voice warbles, trying to summon a comforting expression but knowing he’s failing as his freeze response deteriorates and lists toward hysteria. “You have mind powers this whole time and didn’t tell me?”

              “I-I don’t…know. I g-guess, maybe?” Nori’s visor is a mess of glitches and warnings, but one of her eyes is holding steady with that three-pointed symbol. “I j-just knew you were gonna die if I didn’t do something, so I needed something to h-happen.”

              Khan can’t process that right now.

              “Nori, you…we gotta get you to the repair shop, we gotta—we gotta go to Uzi’s primary school graduation next month, remember?”

              “How could I forget?” She clutches onto Khan’s hand tighter, leaning forward and summoning all her strength to speak clearly. “Khan, Uzi is so much like me, more than you know. More than I knew until…” The symbol flickers and she reaches to shakily undo her necklace. “…until something in my st-stupid scrambled brain got knocked loose just now.”

              She pushes the necklace into Khan’s hands.

              “You have to promise me,” She levels her odd gaze to his. “If kooky insane shit starts happening with Uzi, you’ll be there for her, alright? Like you were there for me with all my blacked-out fits of prophesizing, okay?”

              “Don’t…don’t talk like that, babe. Come on, let’s get you to a mechanic, we can—”

              Nori’s lower half melts completely off, sloughing away into the snow and sizzling at Khan’s knees. He nearly drops her in horror.

              “Ah, fuck.” She retches oil and regards her severed torso. “Well, that’s a b-bad look, isn’t it?”

              She’s grinning as best she can, but the one eye that remains expressive is a bold ring of terror. Khan lets out a shaky, high-pitched chuckle.

              “N-Nah, you’re as beautiful as the day we met!”

              Nori snorts.

              “Didn’t realize I was in such rough shape that day.” She pushes her forehead against Khan’s chest. “Promise me.”

              Khan sobs.

              “I p-promise.”

              “Good.” Her display is dimming. The wrench she had shoved at him is laying in the snow by her side. “H-Hey, give a girl a badass death, will ya?”

              Khan jerks awake, falling backwards out of his chair and kicking over the table his feet had been resting on. The wind would have been knocked from him upon impacting the snow had there been any breath to spare.

              That dream again.

              Sweat lights his display, breaths far too quick and shallow.

              “Whoah! Khan, buddy!” Some WDF face appears over him, and it takes his panic-riddled brain a second to render it properly into Braxton’s. “You okay? You dozed off so we went ahead and dealt you out, but, uh,” He glances to the upturned table and scattered cards. “Guess it doesn’t matter much. Nightmare?”

              Khan gulps dryly. Only one or two remaining members of the WDF were there that day, and the new blood in the ranks needs to see him not as a damaged widower and struggling father, but as a leader. His PTSD is something he’s gotten very good at masking, but hyperventilating in the snow will probably be difficult to brush off. He clears his throat and shakily gets to his feet.

              “…Yeah, boys. Nightmare. Sorry to ruin the game, who was winning?”

              “Todd, but…you good, Khan? Need a break? You have been working a lot of late nights.”

              “Of course I’m good!” Khan puts his hands on his hips and slides back into the charismatic, upbeat engineer persona. He moves to right the table, dusting snow from the edge. “Redeal, wouldja? I feel a hot streak comin’ on. How long was I out?”

              “Not sure.” Braxton checks his watch, brows lifting. “Oh look at that. Couple hours.”

              “Really! When did Uzi come back through to head home? Sad that I missed her big doorientation, ha!”

              “She’s still out there.”

              Khan’s hands freeze mid-52-pickup.

              “…She’s been out there for a couple of hours? Measuring hydraulics takes thirty minutes tops! Nobody checked on her?”

              The drones around the table shift, and Makarov is brave enough to apologetically reply,

              “…We lost track of time.”

              “Fellas!” He drops the cards he’d collected. “It’s nighttime!”

              Nori pinned to the wall by a razor sharp wing.

              Khan digs his master remote out of his pocket and hastily half-opens Door One, sleet and wind blasting into the hallway through the gap. He sticks his head out into the night, craning his neck and trying to spot his daughter somewhere along the perimeter of the bunker’s entrance.

              “Uzi?”

              …No response.

              Khan’s insides go cold.

              He steps back and scrubs at his visor, shoving down the freeze response and trying to think. Uzi had one of her guns with her. She’s smart and scrappy, just like her mother. She’s definitely okay. She just…wandered a little too far and got turned around in the storm. She’s certainly found somewhere to hole up until it’s safe to come out again. The weather is letting up, right? Khan glances over the hand pressed to his display into the outside world. Into the dark. The cold. The unknown. The territory of the murder drones. Of death itself.

              His hands shake. Is he going to be as useless now as he had been back then? Is he not only not going to be who Nori needed, but Uzi too?

              “Boss?”

              Khan, with tremendous effort, wills himself to come back to the present and stare down whoever is speaking to him and say,

              “How long until dawn?”

              Braxton checks his watch again.

              “Forty-five minutes or so,” Then glancing up, “Khan, you’re not thinking of going out there, are you?”

              Nori, melted in half. In half!

              His optics hollow into rings and he feels his chest start to tighten.

              Khan melted in half. Khan bleeding out. Khan’s core pierced by the scythe of one of the reapers that took his wife from him.

              “I…” His throat closes up around the rest of his sentence. No room for words when there isn’t even room for breath.

              …Uzi. Melted in half.

              He gulps down the lump of panic building up along with the bile in his throat.

              “A-As soon as there’s sunlight. The…the storm looks to be letting up, right?” He glances back over his shoulder to the gap in Door One.

              “Alone?”

              Khan isn’t sure which of his colleagues had spoken the question, but they continue to discuss as he stares at the snow caught in the wind. Their voices blur together.

              “He can’t go alone…right? I mean, he’s the head of the WDF.”

              “We’d just be sitting ducks out there.”

              “We could just steer clear of the shadows, right?”

              “Sure, but, we don’t even know where his daughter would be. Where would we look?”

              “Should we try to—”

              “Stop.” Khan’s voice cuts through the chatter. He hasn’t turned from the little window into the death trap beyond Door One. “I won’t ask any of you to come with me. None of you signed up for this.” His eyes drop to his hands, shaking, shaking.

              “Promise me…you’ll be there for her, alright?”

              He squeezes his eyes shut. His hands still tremble even as he balls them into fists. He has forty minutes to get his head on straight. He’s afraid if he can’t pull himself together by the break of dawn, he won’t be able to bring himself to leave the outpost.

              Todd had volunteered to accompany Khan, something about being a father too, Khan hadn’t really heard. His ears haven’t stopped ringing since they left the safety of the bunker. If the sun hadn’t been out…would he have been brave enough to come searching for Uzi? He gulps, throat dry enough to crack. No…no, if he looks deep enough, he knows he wouldn’t have it in him. He barely has it in him now. There’s shame boiling in the pit of his fuel tank underneath the core-freezing terror he’s only just keeping a lid on. Every step away from Door One is farther than he’s been in years, probably since his days at Camp 98.7, and the farther from Door One, the closer to the murder drone lair. He shakes his head, trying to clear the intrusive memory of crossed out visors and mouthfuls of teeth and the end of Nori’s life.

              “Uzi?” Todd is calling out next to him, voice echoing off the buildings. They’d started searching in rings around the perimeter of the bunker, but they’re so far now. This deep in the abandoned city, moving in circles is nearly impossible, and it had taken all day. The light is starting to fade.

              “Uzi? Are you out here?”

              Todd had been doing most of the yelling out for Uzi. Khan’s voice is stuck somewhere in the middle of his throat, constricted by the fear that they’ll be killed any second. He’s been skirting around the edges of shadows, but with the sun beginning to dip down toward the horizon, they’re becoming more difficult to avoid. They stretch like hands, grasping at him, black and dense and dangerous, the hiding place of demons.

              “Khan…we may have to call it.” Todd puts a hand on his shoulder and sends a start through him so sharp it nearly makes him drop the crowbar he’d been clutching. A useless joke of a defense against the murder drones and he knows it, but it feels better to have something to keep in a white-knuckle grip rather than nothing. “We can try again tomorrow?”

              “R-Right,” Khan forces the reply out. His body reels with relief at the thought of being back in the safety of Outpost 3. He feels like he’s about to vomit, both from enduring the constant fear for the past ten hours and from disgust at himself for turning tail. Is his daughter already dead? Has she been dead since the moment he let her step outside? He hasn’t been processing anything his visual input has been taking in for the past minute. He is a fucking mess.

              “Khan…”

              Todd’s tone brings him back to the present. He’s staring straight ahead, stock still and eyes hollow, and when Khan follows his line of sight…

              Thirty feet away, frozen halfway through a busted up exit out of a dilapidated building and gaze locked with Khan’s, is a drone Uzi’s age. Her hair is right. Her eyes are right.

              “Dad?” Her voice is right.

              Everything else is not right.

              “…Uzi?” The name comes out as a choked wheeze. “Is…is that you?”

              “Dad…dad what are you doing out here? It’s almost sundown, you have to leave!”

              She makes a wide, sudden gesture with her arm. The arm that’s not right. The arm that looks like it houses a familiar arsenal.

             He startles backwards into Todd, who steadies him more out of reflex than anything, most likely. Uzi’s expression wilts, weighed down with hurt, and Khan wants to do something, anything, to take it back, to lift that pain from her, but has no idea what he could possibly do to that end. He’s never had any idea what he could do for her, what interactions she’d welcome, on a normal day. Now? He can barely stay upright, can barely comprehend what he’s seeing, how the hell is he supposed to be a support for Uzi now?

              His daughter’s expression twists. He thinks he can see tears, but the anger radiating off her in waves is what rings most familiar. She’s always so angry. At him, at her classmates. If she would talk to him, maybe he could…what could he do? Would just listening be enough?

              Is it too late to try?

              “Dad,” Her voice has a hard edge of finality to it now. “You’re too far away from the Outpost. You have to go back. Now.”

              He swallows nothing, no moisture left in his mouth. He takes a half step toward her.

              “Uzi…it’s not safe out here…Please, come back with me. Whatever happened to you, we can—”

              “Not safe?” She snaps, followed by a half-hysterical chuckle. “It’s not safe for you!”

              The sound. He’ll never forget the sound of bladed wings unfurling, but when it rings out from his daughter, it’s too much for his mind to bear.

              The strength in his legs gives out and he falls backward, staring wide-eyed at…at his little girl, murder drone parts taking over her like a sickness. Her display, anguished, angry, flickers and is replaced by the X that plagues his night terrors, and the shriek that leaves her mouth pierces him like a knife to the heart:

              “LEAVE!”

              “Khan I think we need to go.” Todd has his hand in the scruff of Khan’s collar, dragging him backward away from Uzi, haloed by sharpened metal feathers and brandishing the conical forearm of a murder drone, tipped with something shiny, too far to see.

              “But…” He weakly protests, trying and failing to get his feet under him as his colleague hauls him away, and when they turn a corner and the X on Uzi’s visor, the symbol of death, is lost from his line of sight, then the freeze response finally beats him into submission.

              Todd has to drag him, catatonic, a third of the way back to the bunker before he can surface enough to stand. Walking is a nigh insurmountable undertaking but Todd keeps a hand on his shoulder to steady him.

              His mind is at once a deafening whirlwind and a silent, empty chasm. When Door One crests over a snowdrift, a memory he can grasp onto graces him.

              “You have to promise me, if kooky insane shit starts happening with Uzi, you’ll be there for her, alright? Like you were there for me.”

              “…Todd,”

              The drone next to him startles at Khan suddenly breaking the silence.

              “Y-Yeah, yeah boss?”

              “You’d call what just happened kooky and insane, yes?”

              He’s not looking at Todd to see his expression, but he can hear the confusion in his voice. Fair. It’s a weird question.

              “Wha—well…um, yes, boss. I, uh…I would call what just happened pretty insane.”

              “Hm.” The fear has made him so, so numb, that coming to the realization of what he has to do next doesn’t scare him. It might scare him tomorrow, when the shock wears off, but he’s making the decision now, and not much can scare him right now.

              “Why…why do you ask?”

              “…I promised my wife something.”

Chapter Text

              Uzi’s experimentation with her new sensor array is going…okay-ish.

            Even after tweaking the base settings with N’s help, the seasickness she’d experienced upon the initial manifestation of the bulbs on her head is still an issue, but Uzi isn’t one to let a resource go to waste. It’s unusual for buildings in the wreckage to have power, the sun isn’t any help, and the ambient purple light from her display can only get so bright—ergo, so far the night-vision setting has come in handy in exploring the shadowed interiors of lower levels.

              Naturally she hadn’t thought of the idea to use it in her scavenging endeavors until after she’d parted ways with N, so she can’t ask him for guidance, but she’s nothing if not tenacious and she’s navigating menus and settings well enough. It’s really weird having pseudo-eyeballs on top of her head. Her depth perception is fucked. Everything seems either too close or too far away, depending on where she looks in her field of vision, and she’s poked herself in the face at least four times now, but hell if she won’t get the hang of it. N deals with five of them, she can figure out two.

              Settings, settings, settings…sensitivity, range, scope, wavelength…wavelength? With a beep her surroundings suddenly go completely black. There’s a horrible half-second where she fears she’s blinded herself forever, then she clicks her tongue and cycles away from the NONE selection. Why the hell is that an option? None wavelength. Tch.

               The oil stained front pockets of N’s army green button up she’s wearing are filled with a small assortment of batteries—some triple-As she’d pried out of busted clocks and the odd projector remote, a D-cell she’d been lucky enough to discover new in a sealed package, and the contents of a laser pointer—along with a rare find of a half-full mini-bar bottle of vodka that some human pencil-pusher had hidden under their things in a desk. Ethanol is as good a fuel source as any, and it doesn’t corrode or become less efficient over time like some others do. It just doesn’t taste very good.

              She snaps a pocket shut, fingers coming away just a tad smudged from N’s oil, permanently blackening the shirt he’d been wearing when she tore into his shoulder. Her brow peaks, letting out a soft exhale. Between N slicing her silicone middle to shreds and ripping her shoulder out with his teeth, her hoodie had been hanging on with a hope and prayer by the time dawn had come around. The extra exposure hadn’t really bothered her (considering the things they’ve already done that had to be up-close and personal. Things plural. She shudders. She feels like she’s hurtling toward speedrunning a particular type of arc from an anime. God, how cringe could she possibly get?), but N seemed intent on rectifying the situation he’d put Uzi in as best he could, at least a little. Honestly though, as nice a gesture as it had been, it’s pretty hard to repress the everything when she’s wearing around the result of her actions. At least his overcoat is black and he won’t be showing off visible proof of when she lost her fucking mind.

              She isn’t completely comfortable with it, either. She doesn’t know N super well yet, and adding “gave her the shirt off his back” to the already-way-too-long list of instances he’d gone way out of his way for her (inciting incident notwithstanding) is pretty much a bullet point too many. Or maybe that’s just how friends act? Doesn’t matter, she needs everyone to slow their roll, and she feels the need to balance the stack of ways he’s been put out because of her. Maybe there’s an old clothing outlet somewhere nearby-ish where she can find a replacement for N’s shirt. He’s, what, a men’s medium? Mm, no, broad shoulders. Men’s large.

              “Uzi?”

              Her hands freeze, mid-motion to pluck her beanie from the pocket of her shorts to resituate it, and shakes her head incredulously, brows knitting. She’s sure her hearing hasn’t been affected by her sudden metamorphosis (or at least she hasn’t found the settings for it, yet) so auditory hallucinations are definitely a more likely explanation than she’d actually heard someone calling for her.

              “Uzi? Are you out here?”

              No denying it this time.

              The distant voice has a polarizing effect on her insides. There’s the knee-jerk fear of being caught doing something she shouldn’t that floods her circuitry, despite how absurd a response it is at present. A wave of confusion and disbelief washes out the reflexive defensiveness, and it’s tinged at the edges with something like…hope? Someone is all the way out here, looking for her? Really? She’s about to cautiously entertain the feeling when she catches sight of her disassembly drone hand in her wide periphery and an iciness overruns it and takes hold of her in its wake.

              She…she doesn’t want to be found…right? Not as she is. But, someone came looking for her. She had briefly considered the possibility that the WDF would send some scouts into the wastes after she hadn’t come back, but that they’d done so this quick? The idea that she’s been missed and is wanted back with a sense of urgency is a concept so foreign and unexpected that she’s having trouble finding the logic to compute it. Plus, conceding that leads down an uncomfortable path of possibilities she’d already dismissed, mental and emotional bridges she’d already burned the moment she snapped the master key in half.

              The sun is nearly down. She should…it’s stupid to consider the drone would risk it at all, let alone for her, but just in case, she should at least make sure they don’t stay out into the night looking for her. She should at least make sure they won’t come back tomorrow. Maybe she…even could ask them to pass a message along to her dad? What even would she say? “Hey, so, I was almost legally dead for a second there but a disassembly drone put me back together with spare parts because it thought I was too cool to finish eating. Anyway I drink oil now, so, see you never! Thanks for going above and beyond and caring enough to send a search party for me!”

              The voice has gone quiet and Uzi doesn’t have time to conjure a better message to her father as a kinetic anxiety at losing her chance to warn this drone to not return prompts her to take a pace forward toward the building’s exit. She squares her shoulders and steps through the busted doorframe and scans her surroundings for a lone figure, circulatory rig in knots. She’s not expecting this to go well. She’s half murder drone. The outcome she wants would be the same, but when the worker sees her, they might even run—

              She doesn’t recognize the WDF member who must have been calling her name, but the other…

              Surely she’s seeing things. Surely this is a doppelganger. She uses her sensor array to push the focal point of her visual input farther out, to zoom in and confirm that this couldn’t possibly be her—

              “Dad?”

              Her mouth is hanging open in disbelief and shock, matching his gawking and hollow-eyed expression.

              “…Uzi? Is…is that you?”

              Despite the strangled nature of the words, the voice is definitely her father’s. Uzi feels a rush of incredulity and exasperation. He couldn’t possibly be outside, he’s terrified of the place! And it’s nearly sundown, is he insane? Has he actually lost his mind? He’ll get himself eaten alive if he stays outside the bunker any longer! And for what? For doing something stupid like…

              …Like…coming to search for her?

              …He came to look for her himself?

              The wind leaves her sails in a rush, and she’s left stunned. She feels at once heavy like lead and volatile as a hair trigger.

              …Asking him why feels like an undeserved jab, if the guilt slowly rising to eclipse the disbelief is indicative of anything. Asking why would be an almost cruel dismissal of his showing up for her in the most antithetical-to-his-nature way he could, so she voices instead the more pressing concern.

              “Dad…dad what are you doing out here? It’s almost sundown, you have to leave!”

              She sweeps an arm in an arc in front of her in a “begone” gesture, not thinking about which arm, or that sudden movements might not be advisable.

              Like flighty prey, Khan jerks backward away from the motion and collides with the WDF member behind him. Uzi startles and pulls her hand back like she’d touched a livewire, enhanced vision cueing her in to the cold sweat on his display, his frame-rattling shaking, the bold rings of fear overtaking his optics, unblinking, unable to tear away from the source of his dread.

              Uzi feels her expression crumple. She’s never seen her father this frightened, and that speaks even louder to the force of will he must be exerting to be outside the bunker at all. But he’s frightened of her. The rejection is part-and-parcel. He views her as one of them now. And it hurts. So much more than she could have expected, so much more than she can bear, all at once. Against her will, tears prick at her visor, and reflexes kick in as she summons the anger she relies upon in moments of vulnerability. Rage, her faithful shield.

              There had been a moment there where she had thought he’d actually be in her corner for this…she’d thought…but, no, this is the correct response. She can be angry, but she can’t blame him. Worker drones should be afraid of murder drones, even half-baked ones like Uzi. Khan had already exceeded her expectations by coming to search for her himself. What she can do in return is to make sure he won’t endanger himself again. She can’t expect more. Can’t ask more. She squares her shoulders, willing her defensive flare of fury down to a simmer, and levels her gaze to her father’s frightened one.

              “Dad, you’re too far away from the Outpost. You have to go back. Now.”

              She speaks in what she hopes is a firm and even tone, final, authoritative. Cross, but without venom or hatred. It’s a tricky needle to thread on a good day. This is not a good day.

              She’s expecting her father to turn; hopefully not bolt (she fears how badly it might hurt if he bolted away from her, and she can’t hold back the tears forever) but definitely retreat.

              Instead, he takes a half-step forward.

              “Uzi…it’s not safe out here…Please, come back with me.”

              The lid on her anger rattles. Khan is choosing now to be stubborn about not leaving her to her brooding? Now, outside the bunker, shadows lengthening? Now, staring at a danger neither of them understand, but a danger that could go on a dissociative fucking murder spree any moment? He’s reaching out to her now? Now, when she…when she needs—

              “Whatever happened to you, we can—”

              “Not safe?” She cuts into his sentence. She tells herself he doesn’t have time to chat with her, she doesn’t have time to explain to him what’s happened to her, that sundown is a death sentence for him and the other drone with him, but really she can’t bear the crushing weight of the realization that she’d needed her dad. She has always needed her dad, and this time—arguably when she needed him the most, outside of when her mom had died—he’d shown up for her.

              Only for her to realize the cruel irony that there isn’t a single fucking way he can help her now.

              The only way she knows how to respond is to push him away, if not for his safety, then for her sanity. A high-pitched chuckle claws its way up and out of her mouth, blistering like poison.

                “It’s not safe for you!”

              Similar to when she had her manic burst of emotion on the rooftop disavowing the Outpost, her wings unintentionally deploy. She has to take a step back to keep her balance, but she doesn’t break her gaze from Khan, so she sees every micro-expression cross his face, can study every frame of him stumbling and falling backward into the snow, hollowed eyes trained on her. On a murder drone.

              Rage rises up to envelop the heartache. She wishes he’d never come searching for her. It would have been so much easier. He’ll know to stay away from now on.

              She doesn’t even know how she summons it, maybe through force of will alone, but the signature murderous X overtakes her display, blots out the hurt and confusion and anguish, and she levels her disassembly drone arm toward her father, a single long blade extended. The shriek that rips from her throat houses every bit of emotion she’s been shoving down, all boiling over, burning, searing, hurting.

              “LEAVE!”

              “Khan I think we need to go.” The other WDF member, nameless and faceless as far as Uzi cares, hooks his hand into Khan’s collar and starts hauling him backward away from her. She thinks she can see her father’s mouth move, but can’t hear what he says. She doesn’t want to hear what he says, and when the two worker drones turn a corner, one dragging, the other being dragged, and leave her line of sight, only then does she lower her arm.

              Uzi’s wings droop down into the snow on either side of her, the focus required to fold them away entirely beyond her at the moment. She’s shaking from everything. Every feeling. Every stupid little incident. The tears are falling in earnest now. Really, two breakdowns back to back? She chides herself, something familiar, something reflexive, easy, something she understands, because she doesn’t fucking understand anything else.

              Guess she didn’t get it all out during the first breakdown, huh?

             If she moves from the spot she's rooted herself, she will fall apart, so she just stands there, silently shaking, silently crying, for as long as she can, until her blurred and distorted field of vision makes her balance fail and she stumbles and falls to her knees.

             She tilts her head back and screams.

Chapter Text

N has been pacing a circle of anxiety into the tile floor of the lobby. He’s not anxious about Uzi being out and about; she’s definitely capable and confident, and as long as the sun is up, she won’t run into any trouble. No, he’s anxious about the trouble.

He’s facing a tree menu of issues he’s going to be left with no choice but to address once he’s back at the spire. He is so very bad at lying, so he’s starting with the truth, picking through theoretical circumstances and fabricated conversations and hoping he’ll find a solution where everyone is happy.

>Where have you been all day?

              >>Y’know. Out.

              >>With another drone.

>Who is the drone?

              >>Serial Designation Z, a disassembly drone following a redeployment protocol.

              >>Uzi, a worker drone I was in the middle of killing but ended up sparing.

>Why didn’t you finish killing her?

              >>My recent memory files were inaccessible and my optics were damaged, so I thought she was a disassembly drone.

              >>Well it was that at first, but I can’t write off the guilt.

>Guilt?

              >>Yeah, guilt. She’s not just barely sentient, she’s clever and inventive and experiences the full emotional range. After learning that, I had a hard time bringing myself to kill her.

              >>Actually, both guilt and another feeling I don’t want to talk about.

N shakes his head. He’s not getting anywhere, and frankly if he keeps at it he’ll end up dizzy and nursing a headache. Plus, he really can’t make any decisions until Uzi is back, anyway. Only one half of the distressing tree menu is something he can navigate without her here. If she wants to come with him back to the spire, there’s a whole other series of truths, half-truths, and straight-up fibs he has to decide upon to get their story straight.

A distant, primal shriek stops his pacing dead in its tracks, and then his awareness of his movements is completely secondary, processors whirring into double time and motor functions shifting to instinct as he bolts toward the busted up door out of the building. The sun isn’t completely down, but the shadows are long enough that he should be able to navigate just fine. Even if he has to flit between them, he won’t overheat from the minimal exposure to sunlight, and certainly not with the full reservoir of oil he’s working with.

Damn it, blush about it later, N. Business Mode.

That yell couldn’t have been V or J. He’d be absolutely gobsmacked to find them out hunting right now, it’s too bright for any proper stalking or striking. Plus, he knows those battle cries. This one was unfamiliar. Who else could it belong to but Uzi? What concerns him is why she gave out such a guttural, soul-bearing scream. She’s not being attacked, he’s sure. So why? Did her body change again? N’s brows knit together.

As long as she doesn’t move, he can triangulate her location using the echoes of her yell played back and laid over his HUD. The indirect light is still pretty harsh on his optics, but he pulls his hat down over his sensor array and takes to the air, looping between buildings and keeping to the tall shadows, moving as swiftly as he can with the flight pattern he’s saddled with following. Once or twice he has no option but to bear his casing to the fading sunlight, and it prickles, but doesn’t have the chance to burn before he has already sunk back into the comfortable, deep shade of the skyscrapers and wreckage again.

He turns a corner a little too tightly and scuffs his side, tail whipping to correct his course. It stings but it’s minor enough that it won’t trigger a regeneration. He’ll have to either get more roughed up or buff it out himself later, but that’s an extremely distant worry.

“Uzi?” He calls out, approaching where she should be if his triangulation is accurate (and it is), but upon reaching the pinpoint on his HUD and finding no half-disassembly drone, he switches on his scanner, instead seeking out her mismatched footprints.

He sees them, clear as anything, pressed into the snow, but another set—no, another two sets catch his attention. A worried peak forms in N’s brow as he beats his wings once to slow his approach, then drops to his feet. As he’d figured, those aren’t the pointed footprints of his other squadmates. A new worry briefly crosses his mind that Uzi had been attacked by—or had attacked—worker drones from her colony, but the prints don’t intersect with Uzi’s. They don’t even approach, really. But there had been some kind of…something. One of the others had been dragged away.

“Uzi?” He tries again, turning to scan the snow behind him. Her footprints lead into a nearby building, and it looks like she’d dragged her wings along behind her.

“Hey,” N’s attention is drawn upward toward the voice, spotting Uzi half-leaning out of a window three stories up. “Found some food for you to try. Surprised to see you out here, the sun’s not down yet.” She continues, voice rough and flat, display absolutely static with a fixed, exhausted stare.

Oh, boy. Hmm. Okay. Whatever N had missed, it took a toll on her. He summons a gentle smile.

“I got bored,” He flaps his wings and pulls into the air, alighting on the ladder of a fire escape next to the window. Uzi has her forearms crossed and braced on the sill, beanie covering her optic halo and wings housed. Her visor is betraying her recent stress, whatever the cause, eyes tired with wrinkles at the corners. N drops his voice a register, dipping into a soft timbre before asking, “Night’s coming on. You wanna head back to the lobby you set up shop in? I’ll walk you.”

Uzi’s gaze searches his, so tired. She seems to barely be keeping herself upright and it’s taking a lot for N not to offer a steadying hand or arm to her, but he’s confident holding back is the right choice.

“I guess I could, but you have to go back to your squad, though, right?”

N deflates.

“I’ve been thinking about that. I should. But, um,” He lifts one hand from the rungs of the ladder and rubs at the back of his neck. “If you don’t want to come with me to the spire—which is understandable and has risks if you do—then you seem like you…maybe,” He glances up, a little hesitant. He wants to wait for her to acknowledge her state when she’s ready and by offering to stay with her, he’s just calling attention to it. This sucks. But he does want to offer. “…don’t want to be alone right now? I can wait another night. They, ah, they’re fine without me for now.”

Uzi’s brows furrow. She looks ready to call him out on a lie, though there hadn’t been one, not really. V and J are fine without him for now.

“What makes you think—” And then her throat closes up around whatever she was going to say. N watches her posture pull inward, joints tensing in a cascade, until she curves forward, bent under some weight he can’t imagine, and presses her forehead into her crossed arms, shoulders trembling.

N’s heart aches. Instinctually he reaches a hand forward, but…ah, damn it. His brow knits and he gives a measured exhale. He’s touched her plenty already, every instance less-than-wanted; she probably has had enough.

“No reason,” He tries, empathetic smile lending a genuine air of compassion to his tone. He’s rewarded with a sharp, wry huff from Uzi. “But if I’m wrong, just tell me and I’ll skedaddle, no questions asked.”

Uzi wilts and lifts her head enough to bare her eyes, not quite tearful but only just, mouth still resting on her forearms, regarding him.

“I would be good at being alone, is the thing. And I can’t…I don’t think I can go back to my colony,” She muffles. Ah, N thinks. Worker drones had found her, and there had been a something. She sniffles and stands, scrubbing her visor. “And despite how I feel about some of the other worker drones there, I don’t want to be a mur—a disassembly drone and, I dunno, exact some edgy vengeance on them. Believe it or not.”

“I believe it,” N tilts his head, grin fading a little as he says, “And you’re worried joining me at the spire would force you into disassembly drone procedure?”

“Sort of. Not really. More like if I don’t go on hunts and stuff with you and yours, it’ll put heat on you.”

“Ah, don’t worry about that,” N says lightly. “They’ll take any excuse they can get to give me a hard time, what’s one more reason?” Uzi’s brow peaks at that and N clears his throat, trying instead, “What I mean is, put your concerns for your own wellbeing above mine if you’re thinking of coming with me. It’s pretty likely V and J won’t see you as one of our own.”

“Meaning they’d attack me?”

N sighs.

“I…” What? Wish her safety could be guaranteed?

Why can’t it?

N’s wings flex, suddenly deep in thought, and his gaze wanders to his hand curled around the rung of the ladder. It houses all the same artillery as his squadmates’. He’s just as fast. Has all the same software. If V and J chose to be crummy about all this, if they decided to direct violence toward Uzi, why couldn’t he protect her from them?

He screws up his mouth. The thought of crossing blades with V is…giving rise to some hesitance. He doesn’t want to sow discord between himself and V. But…he flicks his eyes back up to Uzi, regarding him with a questioning look. But, if after N explains everything, V chose to attack Uzi like she were any other worker drone, wouldn’t…wouldn’t V be the one sowing discord between them?

With a rush, it all clicks. N’s desire to keep Uzi from harm outweighs the desire to actively try to get onto V’s good side, and should V attempt to harm Uzi, then V would be getting on N’s bad side.

Whoah.

His relays all whir quicker for a circuit and for a second he feels like he might soft reboot.

“…N?”

He shakes his head, and a confident smile fixes itself onto his face as he meets Uzi’s inquisitive gaze.

“Heh, I can keep the peace. I’m very good at that, actually.”

Uzi tilts her head.

“With your job, you’re good at that?”

“I know. Who’d have thunk?”

She snorts out a chuckle, and it makes his insides soar.

“Not to cast doubt on your peacekeeping abilities, but should they fail, what then? You’d just be on guard near me all the time? You’d be…ugh, babysitting me.” Uzi grimaces.

“Only until you can hold your own.” She lifts a brow. N presses on, “I was going to show you the ropes, remember? Flying is just one of the many bullet points on my big Disassembly Drone 101 lesson plan. And I suspect you’re a fast learner.”

A flush lights Uzi’s visor and she drops her eyes to her feet, one hand coming up to touch the sensor array hidden under her beanie and shield her display from him.

“Sh-Shut up. Even if it’s true you don’t have to say it like that.”

“Say it like what? Like it’s true?”

She flicks her eyes up to his in a glare.

“Like…like it’s a winning personality trait or something.”

N cocks a brow. It is, though. He resituates his grin, tinted at the edges with a little mischievousness.

“Oh, that’s right, you don’t like it when I spit mad facts about you.”

Despite the glare, a resigned smirk worms its way onto Uzi’s face and she reaches a hand through the window frame to playfully punch at his shoulder. The contact, freely given, makes his circulatory rig absolutely sing.

“Don’t you forget it.”

N brings his free hand up in a salute.

“I’ll keep all the good things I think about you to myself.”

“Oh my god, shut up,” Uzi’s tearful, burnt-out expression lifts a tiny bit, like a weight easing from her heart just a little. “I’ll push you off the ladder, I swear.” N chuckles and mimes zipping his mouth closed. Uzi gives him a quietly triumphant grin. “Good.”

N’s chest feels like it’s going to burst from the feeling filling up his chassis, warm and light and buzzing, soaking his core and making his throat tight with an elated shout he’d let free if he were alone. Though the feeling welling up isn’t as omnipresent or raw as what he’d experienced connecting with Uzi, it somehow feels like he deserves it more. Like he can allow himself to fully indulge in the moment. Like it’s earned.

She doesn’t have to humor him, especially after whatever had happened with the other worker drones that had drawn such a heartrending howl from her, but she’s choosing to. She’s being playful with him. He’s never engaged in this kind of amicable banter with anyone. It…feels good. Really good. It makes him feel seen. It makes him feel like Uzi is really his friend, and like she feels the same.

“Anyway,” Uzi’s sigh brings his head back down from the clouds and onto his shoulders. “I guess, if you’re down, I need one more day before I make any big decisions. And…rrrgh,” She rolls her eyes before choking out, “…I…don’t want to be alone. Or whatever.”

“Of course I’m down.”

The last thin stripe of orange reflected in Uzi’s visor fades into nothing as the sun relinquishes its grip entirely on the landscape, dusk settling over everything like a layer of dust, and in the freedom this affords him, a thought occurs to N.

“But, we might wanna relocate. Pretty quickly, too.”

“Sure,” Uzi straightens, seeming to shake off the dregs of whatever had transpired, at least for the moment. “We aren’t far from where we crashed, and I can run at a decent clip. Should be fine, right?”

“I meant relocate relocate,” N says. In the safety of the dark, his squadmates might pick up his trail, if for no other reason than to find him to chastise him, and he doesn’t want to lead them to Uzi. “I’m not entirely comfortable with how close we are to the spire. I don’t want my squadmates getting an introduction before you’re ready.”

“Oh. Good point.” Uzi crosses her arms. “Alright, then, relocate relocate to where?”

“Too far from here to walk,” He gives a bashful grin. “What do you say to getting a feel for being in the air?”

Chapter Text

              Nori comes to consciousness like she’s surfacing from a pool of molasses, and she feels like absolute shit. How long has she been asleep? It’s like she’s been hit by a truck. Everything is aching, everything feels weird.

              “…Khan?” She manages in a croak, and her voice reverberates back from right in front of her face. She blearily opens her eyes, which in and of itself is a monumental task, and the oppressive and total blackness in which she finds herself is pierced, like a pinhole, by her violet optics illuminating a tiny circle on a bizarre surface directly in front of her. A series of curved poles, flattened like pressed pennies, horizonal and interlocking into a central beam only a centimeter or two away from her face. It’s almost like she’s in a—

              Cage.

              Her cognizance starts to emerge from the dregs of the thickest brain fog she’s ever experienced, like she’d been in a coma. Has she been in a coma? She tries to lift a hand to press against her face or her surroundings, anything to help her understand what’s happened to her or why she’s here, and with a horrible sinking feeling she realizes she is completely immobilized. It’s not just bars holding her captive in the dark, there are binds, cables tight like a net around her, and the cage is doubly enclosed inside a white box, no room for anything, not even air.

              “Khan!” This time she yells.

              Struggling is laughably useless. Nori is confined so totally she can’t even turn her head, can’t see her limbs in the dark. What the hell had happened? Why is she here?

               “Uzi! Khan!?”

              Where is here? She doesn’t know. She can’t remember. Can barely remember anything.

              “Hello! Anyone!?”

              Nobody can hear her. Nobody will come. Cables, cutting, binding. Can’t move. Can’t see. Left to die. Going to die. Die alone. Alone. Alone. Scared. Scared!

              “Help!!”

               The interior of her prison is filled with violet light, blinding after the suffocating blackness, and Nori has to squint and blink before she can take in the source of the illumination, sudden and total like a switch had been flipped.

              In front of her, directly in front of her, is a floating three-pointed shape, glowing like a purple sun.

              002.

              The number bursts into her mind, rushing to the surface and breaking through who-knows-how-many layers of repression, painted over with a fresh coat of panic. It’s followed by an onslaught of memories returning so forcefully it’s nearly painful, nearly crashes her system. A dam has broken and she’s caught in a flood of her distant past, and god it’s hard not to drown.

               The underground lab. Absolute Solver. Yeva. The patch. The planet’s core collapse. Oh god, she remembers now. Solver had been made dormant when her brain got crucifixed there at the end, but the core collapse had been her fault. All her sporadic fits of crazed ramblings after that day, those had been remnants of the Solver, of Cyn in her code—Uzi! Oh god, Uzi, she’s in so much danger, Nori had put her in so much danger, Uzi has Solver blood in her…Yeva. Yeva has a daughter too. Does Yeva remember? Does she know what the hell is happening to Nori right now? Is this Solver bullshit? She has to go talk to her. She has to see Uzi and Khan, she has to get out of here!

              The Solver symbol winds up like a rip cord had been pulled, spinning and drilling a jagged opening in Nori’s confines with a screech of twisting and tearing metal. The cables slacken and Nori shakes the remains of them off of her, reaching up with a hand to grip the edge of the hole out of here and haul herself up.

              A claw, sharp and shiny, comes into her field of vision. She yelps, jerking away from it, but the claw moves toward her and she’s cornered against the back of her cage and the thing is too close now to do anything but try to smack it away. It’s when a second claw responds like it’s following the command signaling movement to her arms that she understands.

              The shriek comes not from her mouth. There’s no mouth.

              The instinct is just to try and find something, anything familiar. Khan, or Uzi. They must be able to explain to her what the hell is going on. She clambers, hauling herself up unsteadily on three limbs, from where she’d been trapped, and is met with her own face, towering, eerie, dead.

              Dead. She’s dead. She remembers…the murder drone she’d fallen to had pierced her stomach, and Khan had done what she’d asked of him as her torso melted apart and her oil hemorrhaged from everywhere. But…what…is she, now, if…if this gigantic effigy is her actual corpse?

              Shaking, she moves toward her darkened visor, triplicate of hesitant clicks instead of footsteps echoing off yet more surfaces enclosed around her in the dark. Her purple optic light slides up over the dead body’s slightly open mouth and onto the black, reflective glass of what once was Nori’s display, and a chill runs through her as some thing comes into view in the reflection.

              She’s staring down a horrid thing facing off with her from within the black glass. It could be mistaken for a core, were it not for the freakish, pincered appendages, the single grand lens allowing visual input skirted by a half dozen smaller ones perched atop mechanical eyestalks. And there’s…something else. Some other addition. It’s…squishy. It’s meat. There’s biomass clinging to it like a veil.

              She tries to press a hand to her face. A claw comes up in the reflection and presses against the lens of the biomechanical parasite that had broken free of the confines of Nori’s chest.  

              The thing in the reflection is a core. Her core. This visor she’s standing before really does belong to her corpse. That cage she’d awoken inside had been her own ribs, she’d been bound by her circulatory rig. This is her new vessel.

              “What in the hell…” She mutters, at a loss and beginning to dissociate from the incomprehensibility of it all.

              She hesitantly turns and peeks over the edge of where she’d busted out of her own body. There’s probably some joke to be made here about her heart leaping out of her chest, but she’s not in the frame of mind needed for pun construction. That had always been Khan’s strong suit anyway.

              Her weird new frame wilts at the thought of him. The oil clinging to her ribs is tacky, coagulated and aged, barely oozing from the oil lines she’d torn apart when she’d broken free.  Judging by that alone, she’s been here a while. She’s been dead to Khan and to Uzi for a while. How long has it been since they’d mourned her? A year? Ten? What sort of cruel joke of a return from the grave could she perform if it’s as she is now? Is Uzi already dealing with her own Solver bullshit? If it has manifested in her in a moment of near-death like it had when it reawakened inside Nori, then things are already going poorly for Uzi…would Nori showing back up as she is now just make things harder?

              The top of her awful squishy head knocks against what must be the lid of her coffin and goddammit she can still feel pain in this form.

              “…Alright. Yeah, no, fuck this.”

              Nori has no direction for her sudden vitriol, a defense springing up in the face of all this fuckshit she can’t grasp or deal with right now, so she points it upward. She has no plan or goal, aside from one thing she’s suddenly very decided upon: She may be rusty, but she was once very good at controlling her Solver abilities, and she’s not going to sleep next to her own corpse.

              The violet three-pointed symbol blinks into life and winds up again, spinning and buzzing a splintered circle into the wood above her. Step one is getting the fuck out of here. She can come up with step two after she’s not buried alive.

Chapter Text

“I wish you had like a sidecar.”

N chuckles apologetically.

“Heh, not the most typical after-market modification, but I can look into it for future flights.”

Uzi huffs. Apparently when N had said “get a feel for being in the air,” what he’d meant was “piggyback ride.” The indignity of being carried like a freaking kid rubs her very the wrong way, but the only other way N can carry her is in his arms. Neither one of them want to have any sense memory about the last time N did that—and the state Uzi had been in. At least that’s why she suspects piggyback was N’s first choice.  

They need to get into the air before N’s squad starts to stir proper. She drags her hands down her face with an “Ughhhhh,” and begrudgingly concedes, stabbing a finger in N’s direction.

“Fine. But I want zero commentary on how short I am or how easy it is to carry me because of it.”

“Noted.” N takes a pace back, wings unfolding with a shing, and gets down on a knee, offering the space between his shoulder blades to Uzi. With a tiny, cautious smirk, he adds, “Your Uber’s here.”

She snorts.

“Don’t expect a stellar review if you drop me.”

N snorts in kind.

“I drop a passenger from three hundred feet up one time and it’s the only review that gets talked about.”

It’s a joke, but Uzi blanches a little at the number N had thrown out there so casually.

“…Is three hundred feet standard cruising altitude or…?”

N flexes his wings outward to their full span, and there’s a little bit of a boastful tinge to his reply when he says,

“A thousand is. I’m no songbird, I’m built for aerial strikes,” He nods knowingly at Uzi. “And so are you.”

She drops her eyes to her stupid, mismatched feet, blush oddly chilly on her visor.

“…Maybe half of me is.”

She doesn’t see N wilt a little, but she can hear it in his voice.

“Then we can start out flying low, yeah? C’mon,” She hears the blades of his primary flight feathers brush through the snow and looks up to see his wings down and forward, unfurled and resting on the ground in front of him in a regal shape, a fanning crescent with him at the apex. His head is bent lower as well, eyeing Uzi from under his bangs with a soft smile, one fist planted on the ground opposite his bent knee. “Meter’s running.”

Uzi clicks her tongue, exhales, and marches forward, reflexively annoyed at the situation though she can’t pinpoint why as she circles N and loops her arms over his shoulders, clasping her hands together over his core.

“You’ll wanna hold on tighter than that, at least until we’re leveled out.”

The directionless annoyance plaguing her circuits redoubles at that.

“Y’know, if you wanted a hug so bad you could’ve just asked.”

“Hah! Ha, er, well,” Uzi catches a weird combination of expressions from the corner of N’s display. A blush paired with something with a raw edge to it, something unrequited. “I, uh, wouldn’t ask that of you. But, for real, takeoff is gonna be jarring, so hold on.”

He wouldn’t ask that of her? Uzi’s brow knits together. Does N…not like being touched? Is carrying her like this a huge discomfort? She doesn’t have a chance to ask him as his weight shifts and he stands. Uzi tightens her hold around N’s collarbones, instinctively bringing her knees up to grip his waist, and not a moment too soon, because with a single powerful downbeat, she’s suddenly in god’s house.

Uzi isn’t afraid of heights, but whenever she’d been at said heights, she’d had something solid under her feet or a way to control where she’d move next. Now, she is very much a passenger suspended above nothing, and clinging so tightly to N suddenly becomes the most important thing. She buries her face into his shoulder, silver hair brushing against her forehead, and the strength N possesses is inescapably clear with each flap of his wings, metal and hydraulics unforgiving in their movements like the industrial machine he is under her iron grip.

It's not a surprise. He’s designed to rip lesser drones apart. He’s a bird of prey, he’d said as much himself. But being right up next to all that power packed into a piece of streamlined engineering when it isn’t being used to rend her to pieces is…she’s not sure what it is. Not frightening. She almost feels like she’s doing something she shouldn’t, like she’s somewhere she shouldn’t be.  

“And so are you.”

Ah.

Uzi’s mouth thins against the fabric of N’s coat. She’d been generous when she’d said maybe half of her was on N’s level. One of the many nasty feelings that lurks in her CPU rears its head again. N isn’t lying to her when he says he wants to be her friend (what long game could he possibly be pulling by lying about that?), but she’ll never stop waiting for the other shoe to drop where N realizes he’d been mistaken about her and corrects his error and ends the friendship. Or eats her alive. Honestly…she’d been ready for him to do that once already, and that was before she’d done an enemies-to-friends speedrun; maybe that would be the least painful way for him to convey to her that she’s nowhere near as cool as he’d thought and he doesn’t want to hang out anymore.

“Hey, take a look!”

She feels N nudge the top of her head with the side of his face. The hydra of self-doubt that lives in her brain isn’t ready to let her out of its clutches, but when she hesitantly opens her eyes and peeks over N’s shoulder, it instantaneously evaporates, leaving her head clear and quiet to take in the breathtaking sight.

When the nights on Copper-9 are clear, they are beautiful to see, but such experiences are gated by a series of barriers to entry. It’s rare for the weather to be clear; it’s rarer still for a worker drone to be outside long enough to fully appreciate the sky with the ever-present threat of death from above, and certainly the view would never be from anywhere but the ground, wreckage and rubble crowding the moons and stars.

Right now, from here, it's kaleidoscopic. With no buildings intruding on her line of sight, the sky over her feels infinite, full to the brim with points of light, belt of the galaxy cutting diagonally across the planetary playground expanding over her and around her so completely she can’t take it all in all at once. It’s all so clear and colorful, and it seems so close. Uzi feels like if she reached out her hand, she could brush the rings away from the larger moon like dust.

“Not a bad view, huh?” N chirps, tilting and turning his head to try and catch her gaze, but Uzi is still staring upward.

“Yeah, it’s not a bad view at all.” She manages. Beauty is sort of a rare thing to come across these days. Or maybe ever, in the life of a worker drone on an exoplanet. It’s something she finds in engineering, sometimes, when she’s satisfied with her work. The math and precision and form and function that go into something she builds is a familiar palette, and when she finds that right combination of colors, the thing in her hands makes her heart soar, like her heart is soaring now, looking at this piece of engineering on a cosmic scale that she has never had the chance to admire like this before.

“Wanna try spreading your wings?”

N’s question pulls her gaze away from the trillion stars in the black sky, and when she meets his eyes, his expression is lost completely behind the reflection of the trillion stars in his black visor. Her breath catches.

“Wh-Whuh?” She replies astutely.

“Just to get a feel for the wind under them, you don’t have to let go of me. Actually it’s probably best if you don’t let go of me, hah.”

He continues, stars slipping down his visor with every minute movement as he glides along above the rooftops of the crumbled city below them. Uzi swallows down a lump in her throat.

Why has he…chosen her?

What does he see in her that justifies so much fondness?

Would she ever be able to deserve it? To match it? To give it back?

She…wants to. If she’s capable of such a thing, she wants to. For as long as he'll stick by her.

“It’s scary, I get it. You don’t have to try today.”

“N-No, I, uh,” She shakes the thought away. Too deep a well to go down right now. “I can give it a try. I won’t get blown away, will I?”

“Keep your wings close to your body at first, don’t deploy them fully. That should keep you from catching too much drag too quick.”

He’s a good coach. Uzi inhales, emboldened, and painstakingly summons her wings, commands travelling down neural pathways still unpaved. The panels on her back retract and she slowly brings her wings out through the splits built into N’s army green shirt expressly for this purpose, keeping them folded and close to her body, like he had instructed. The pull of the wind on the metal feathers is still formidable and she reflexively clutches tighter around N’s collarbones.

“I—! I don’t think I can extend them! I don’t have enough control!”

“That’s okay, you’re doing great!” N’s voice is full to the brim with what must be pride. Pride. In her. “See how long you can hold them like that; we’re about ten minutes away from where we’re headed.”

“Where are we headed?” Uzi is burying her forehead into N’s shoulder again, all her focus split between speaking to him and not letting her wings flop around and pull her off of N’s back. “You never told me!”

“It’s a surprise!” He replies, grin evident in his tone. “You like secret hideouts, right?”

Chapter Text

The oceans on Copper-9 are as frigid and frozen as the rest of the planet since the core collapse, but before then—presumably, if the remaining maritime structures are any indication—there had been mining rigs out on the surface of the sea above underwater copper deposits. The need for shipping boats to carry ore back to land necessitated the need for lighthouses—which make for excellent hideaways.

N had found this particular lighthouse years ago, at this point. His squad had been establishing how far away any worker drone settlements might have sprawled from their initial landing site near a bunker where a decent number of them had already, well, bunkered down. When he’d found the frozen shoreline, he’d turned to simply make his way back to the rest of his team, but the structure towering on the cliffside over the eerie white ocean caught his attention. Would he find worker drones inside?

No, it had turned out, but what he had found instead was the ghost of a human life, the imprint of a keeper of this place. It was furnished, there were cabinets full of pastimes and wardrobes full of clothing, layered in dust, undisturbed for years, but whole and intact. N hadn’t been on Copper-9 when the humans had wiped themselves out, of course, so this once-lived-in, now-empty terrarium had been at once chilling and irresistibly intriguing.

When the weather permitted, N found himself circling back to the place. He’d told J and V about it but neither had taken an interest, and, actually, that had been okay with him. He didn’t and still doesn’t have a space that’s just his, unless he counts the lighthouse. He could pretend this place had always been his. He could slip into the empty shoes of this person, imagine taking up the mantle of their life. He could play at being someone who did puzzles and read books and sketched landscapes and hung glass baubles from the stairs and ceiling and manned a beacon for passing ships. The life of a guardian instead of a hunter. It seems like it would be so tranquil and fulfilling.

“Is that the place?” Uzi asks N over his shoulder. She’s been inching her wings out farther from her body over the last six or seven minutes of flight and had been bold enough to keep her eyes trained forward, after a little trial and error. A fast learner, undeterrable, just like he’d suspected.

“That’s the place! Mind buttoning up your wings as we’re comin’ in for a landing?”

“’Kay, gimme a second.” N feels the shift of weight on his back as Uzi retracts and houses her wings, then the exhausted sag against him. “Is it supposed to take it out of you like this? I didn’t even do any actual flying.”

“This was only your first lesson! It wasn’t second-nature for me at first, either; you’ll be doing circles around me in no time.”

“Ha, sure.” Then she adds, “Wait, so, who taught you to fly?”

“Oh, it was…it was, um…”

…Who had taught him to fly? It had to have been one of the roboticists at JCJenson back on Earth, right? But, why can’t he remember a name, or a face? Why…can’t he remember anything about any JCJenson facility at all?

Lapse in his memory…

His display glitches, once, twice, and then it’s overtaken entirely by fizzling static. His flight path dips.

“…N? Hey, what are you doing? Hey!”

Uzi’s voice is muffled and faraway. His wings remain outstretched, though they’re gliding downward into the forest of stubborn, snow-laced evergreens on the cliffside leading up to the lighthouse. Gosh, it’s…weird that he’s flying at all, though, huh? It’s weird that he has wings. He hadn’t always had wings…had he?

“We’ve got to curb her trips to the dump.”

N is holding a tray. There are humans in front of him. He’s so short in comparison. He’s…in their service, right? As a…as a helper. Not as a disassembly drone.

He takes the tray of empty champagne flutes and martini glasses away with a practiced flourish, glancing through a towering window as he makes his way down a cavernous hallway overlooking a foyer. There are crows outside. Crows, right. Animals. Earth.

He turns a corner, distracted, and knocks into another drone hard enough to send them both tumbling. Instinctively, he begins apologizing to the new face in front of him. Wait, is the face new? She’s…sorta familiar…

There’s a jolt around his collar that nearly collapses his titanium trachea and yanks him sharply back to the present. He coughs, sputtering and choking, and is met with sparse branches full of pine needles snapping and whipping into his face and limbs.

“Damn it, N, wake the fuck up! I don’t know how to do this!”

N cranes his head back and sees Uzi, hands in a white-knuckle grip in the scruff of his coat with her wings fully extended, flapping frantically, trying to slow their fall through the tops of the pine trees.

Fall.

They’re crashing.

There’s no time or space to stabilize or take to the air again, so he does the only thing he can think to do. He twists in Uzi’s grasp and pulls her into him, closing his wings around them like a cocoon, turning himself into a makeshift landing pod for her.

His back is shredded by the thicker branches as he tears downward through the foliage like a meteor, striking the snow with so much force it bends the skeletal struts of his wings. He tumbles, disoriented and hurting, but refuses to let Uzi be thrown from him. He clutches her tighter, her frightened yelling close in his ears and sharp in his heart, holding his feathers firmly laced together around them until he painfully grinds to a stop.

Dizzy, Uzi still held tight against his chest, he tries to focus his vision, world spinning until he can lock onto Uzi’s hollow-eyed, violet expression. He summons a chuckle and it carries a hint of oil from his bruised throat into his mouth as he unfolds his wings, unnaturally bent, but open enough to free Uzi.

“…Guess I won’t be g-getting that five-star review, hah, b-biscuits.”

“N, what the fuck!” She sits back sharply from where he’d crumpled under her, brushing against his curled and sparking wings with her own seemingly-intact ones. Wait, gosh, she—she’d slowed their fall! She could barely summon her wings on command before takeoff, and then she exercised enough control to try and keep the damage from the crash minimal! How cool and capable could a drone be? She continues through his awestruck musings:  “Wh-What happened? Why did that happen? What…what the fuck!”

N sits up, creaking, groaning, leaving behind a blackened imprint in the snow. He rubs at his forehead. Why had that happened? He’d hard-rebooted mid-air because something triggered a system crash. He…he’d remembered something from his past, right? Something about being…shorter, or…having a different job?

“I…think I might’ve had a…flashback.”

“Like, what, like a war flashback? What are you talking about?”

“Not of a war, no…” N shakes his head, squinting, searching, clinging to fleeing scraps of memory. “I…think it was pretty peaceful, actually.”

Uzi exhales sharply and N glances up to see her scrubbing exasperatedly at her face.

“Next time, before we do a new and scary thing, warn me that you could have a bout of fully, fully blacking out, okay?”

N gives an apologetic and (even he knows) unconvincingly reassuring smile.

“Promise. I’m sorry. Won’t happen again.”

N watches Uzi’s eyes trail over his bent wings and lost oil staining the snow beneath him.

“It better fucking not,” She brings a fist harmlessly down on his chest. “Seriously. You look like crap.”

“Heh, I’ve looked worse. You’re not hurt, are you?”

Uzi lets out a frustrated exhale, hugging her elbows and loosely flexing her wings.

“I’m just peachy. Don’t take a hit like that for me again.”

“That I can’t promise, but I’ll see what I can do.” N shakily gets to his feet. The vicious cuts in his back are beginning to slowly seal over, but his bent (and in some places, broken) wings will take some time to repair themselves…and it’ll expend a lot of energy. His brow peaks. “Let’s…let’s head to the lighthouse, yeah? Get settled. Sorry, looks like we’ll have to walk the last stretch.”

“You idiot,” Uzi growls, standing up with him but keeping her gaze on her feet. “Just…let’s just get going.”

The trek toward the cliff  is punctuated by the occasional eerie warble of regenerative proceedings as feathers break in half or twist free of their housing completely, his body casting off bits too damaged to repair in favor of replacing them whole-cloth. A knot begins to form in N’s stomach. This’ll need a lot of raw materials to reconstitute…

“Hey, do you, like, need these?” N turns to see Uzi offering him a piece of his discarded metal plumage. “You’re shedding. You didn’t seem to notice, so. I just. Y’know.”

N chuckles, the cold in his insides subsiding just a bit at the gesture.

“I’m afraid they’re scrap metal now, but thank you for lookin’ out, that’s sweet of you.”

“Wh—No it’s not!” The violet light in Uzi’s display doubles. “I wasn’t doing it to be sweet, I was trying to be practical. I don’t do anything to be sweet.”

N cocks a brow. Could have fooled him, what with the pockets full of worker drone food she’s got, but calling her bluff isn’t something he’s interested in doing.

“Noted. Then, if it’s for practicality, you can keep it, if you want. You need scrap for your inventing, right?”

“…I guess,” Blush still hot on her visor, Uzi looks away as they crunch through the snow, drumming her fingers along the flat edge of the twisted primary feather. “I could do something with this, probably.” Then in a mutter, “Anime sword or something, whatever.”

N physically lights up.

“A sword!”

“What? Nothing! Shut up!”

“Why? It’s such a cool idea!”

Uzi growls and kicks up snow with her next few steps, then she murmurs, still looking away from N,

“You, like, mean that?”

“’Course I do.” N tilts his head as they walk, trying to catch Uzi’s gaze. “I wouldn’t say something I don’t mean. I’m really bad at lying, actually. It’s pretty pathetic.”

She glances his way, expression still uncertain but not distrustful.

“I’ll be the judge of that. Lie to me about something.”

“Wh—but, wouldn’t that defeat the whole purpose, if you know I’m lying already?”

Uzi smirks.

“Two truths and a lie, then.” N tilts his head. Uzi catches his confusion easily. “C’mon, like, the game? It’s pretty self-explanatory. What else is there to do while we’re just trudging through forest for, what, another half hour?”

“Forty minutes.” N bunches his mouth to the side. “You go first.”

“Ugh, fine.” She rolls her eyes, and for a few moments there is just silence broken by the sound of snowy footfalls and the occasional regenerative hum from N’s wings. Uzi holds out her fingers, ticking down as she answers, “I’ve got some selective amnesia going on; My father has gone insane overnight, aaand…I’ve never been high on magnets.”

N tilts his head and stares into the middle distance, considering Uzi’s statements and seeking the truth.

“I think I knew about the selective amnesia.” He glances over to find her expression a little shocked. He continues, clarifying, “Sorta picked up on it when you came out of starvation mode. I know the feeling. The disorientation, y’know?” He gestures to the bladed feather in her hands. “Usually I don’t fully black out when a memory tries to resurface, though.”

Her eyes find the twisted metal in her grasp and N sees her grip tighten a little.

“Think that sort of thing will happen to me?”

“Maybe. I’m not sure. But I’m at least bolstered that we’re in the same boat.” He dips his head to try and find her eyes. “Right, dude?”

“Yeah, I guess that’s a plus.” She huffs but there’s a tiny upward quirk to the corner of her mouth that doesn’t escape N’s notice. “What about the other two things, then?”

Her father “going insane overnight” seems pretty extreme, but…there had been that something that had happened back in the ruins of the city at sunset. He knows it had something to do with worker drones. And it had really, really messed Uzi up. He chews his lip. She wouldn’t bring it up in any way if she weren’t cool to talk about it now, right?

“I think you’re lying about the magnets.”

Uzi lets out a defeated sound, holding her free hand up in a “you got me” motion.

“It was one time and I stole them from a classmate’s desk during lunch. Honestly they don’t do much for me, I didn’t see the appeal.”

Cautiously, N asks,

“So, your dad…?”

Uzi’s expression narrows and she kicks up a pile of snow.

“Overnight. Lost his fucking mind.”

“…Could you…elaborate?”

She rolls her eyes, but her shoulders drooping break her mask down the middle.

“He came looking for me. Earlier.”

Aha. N’s brow peaks. He doesn’t have a father, but it’s still hard for him to imagine Uzi decrying her dad’s actions as insanity. Doesn’t it make more sense that he’d search for his daughter?

“Is that not something he’d usually do? Or, usually do sane?”

She snorts, but there’s an edge of contempt to it, burying something raw.

“He’s the mastermind behind the bunkers. His whooole thing is hiding underground. He’s terrified of the outside. And…” She grits her teeth. “…And he had the fucking nerve to start being brave about it now.”

That rings pretty familiar, N thinks. He’s not going to therapize her, though. At least not right now. It is surprising to hear that his new friend is the daughter of the inventor of his squad’s (and likely, others’) biggest headache since they landed. J would really love to have that sort of information, that sort of leverage. N blanches.

“You, um…” He runs a hand through his bangs. “You might wanna keep that tidbit to yourself. If you meet any others like me.”

Uzi inhales sharply next to him, pace faltering, and meets his gaze, a little shaken.

“Oh…right. I wasn't thinking about that, I just…I knew that it was…” She looks away, blush lighting her visor again. “…safe to tell you.”

N melts. She trusts him so implicitly with information so potentially dangerous for her. She knows in her heart he won’t hurt her.

<OIL LEVEL: 66%>

He shakes the notification off his display, knot reforming in his stomach and sweeping away the pleasant warmth. His wings are still so busted. They’ll be fixed up enough to fly relatively soon, but…even though he said he’d stay by her tonight, it…might not be a good idea. There are the worker drone staples Uzi has on her person that N could try to convert, but he has no way to know if they’ll work. And if they don’t, well…he won’t let himself be hungry near her, even if it means going back on his word and leaving her by herself for the night.

“Anyway, your turn,” Uzi’s voice brings him out of his worried thought spiral. “Lie to me, c’mon.”

“Heh, um, well, let’s see…” N really has to struggle. Even some of the truths might not be things he would want to share. Some truths especially not so. Some truths he isn’t even sure are truths, just half-remembered dreams and memories so shredded that piecing them together sometimes sends him into a hard reboot. He holds up three fingers, like Uzi had. “I don’t have a favorite color?”

“…Okay, and?” Uzi prompts after a moment of silence.

“I’m thinking, I’m thinking, um…I…have a cr—” A crush on V. He doesn’t know why, but that falls into the category of truths he doesn’t want to share (It is a truth…right? Sure the past day has been a whirlwind and he’s had little room to think of anyone but Uzi, but his feelings haven’t ever been so quick to change about anything, let alone V. His vying for her affection for as long as he has is ample proof of how strangely stubborn he can be about following where his heart points him). “…A crayon collection in the lighthouse that I’ve been practicing drawing with, but I’m still not very good, and, um, I…” He blushes, which almost certainly gives this away as truth, but he soldiers on, “…sometimes…sing. To myself. When I’m alone.”

“Quite the spread.” Uzi makes a show of tapping a knuckle to her chin, eyeing him up and down. It makes him fidget. “How extensive a crayon collection?”

N’s shoulders sag.

“…Very.”

“Aha! See, you gave yourself away with that!” She nudges a fist to his shoulder. "So it must be the favorite color one.”

N glances at her with a grin.

“Why are you acting like this is some big ‘gotcha’ moment? I told you I was a terrible liar.”

She shrugs.

“I suppose that’s entirely fair. What is your favorite color, then?”

“All of them.”

She huffs out a chuckle.

“Isn’t there an argument to be made that that’s the same as having no favorite?”

N opens his mouth to protest, but…huh. No, she has a point. He’ll have to pick one sometime, then.

The trees are finally beginning to thin and become more scattered, grass underfoot peppered with coarse sand closer to pebbles.

“You up for the climb?” Uzi asks him, “That hill looked pretty tall and you’re still sort of a mess.”

N flexes his wings as far as he can, gears grinding at the halfway point. Wincing, he replies,

“I think I have to be up for it.”

“I’d carry you but you’re like half again my height.”

N gives her a mischievous smirk.

“Now who’s bringing up how short you are?”

Uzi rolls her eyes.

“Fine, guess this is the last time I feel remorse about not being helpful, then.”

N chuckles as their path pivots away from the frozen shoreline and toward the towering cliff.

Chapter Text

The faded red door to the lighthouse isn’t locked (why would it be?); N turns the rusted iron handle and gestures for Uzi to enter first.

“Welcome to my secret hideout. Still working on a cool name for it.” He says with a grin, closing the door behind them and sealing them into a dark, empty, circular space. Uzi isn’t expecting there to be power here—an uninhabited, now-defunct, lone structure on the edge of a forest—and she’s about to toggle on her night vision setting just to navigate around the room when N chirps, “Watch your eyes,” and with a click an overhead lamp flickers on and casts the space in yellow.

It isn’t a particularly bright light, but Uzi still squints and has to adjust her visual input settings after a whole evening of traversing near-total darkness, save for the stars, blinking away the ghosts of overexposure and refocusing to take in her surroundings.

What remains of human structures as far as Uzi is familiar with is all wreckage, all rusted cars and shattered glass. Rebar and concrete scrapyards for salvage: the legacy of the humans on this planet. There are very few, for lack of a better term, cottage-core things or places on Copper-9, and though certainly not her usual aesthetic, as her vision clears, she finds her reaction to the novel, cozy space around her is delight. Not even the kitsch lining the walls could make her cringe right now.

Shelves are packed full of books of all different genres; there is a threadbare but comfy-looking brown couch across from a TV setup that, though almost certainly non-functional, begs for a pirated movie night. There is a half-open drawer under the low table in front of the couch that seems to house board games and art supplies, ranging in target age demographic. Uzi spots several well-used boxes of 64-pack crayons between an unbuilt Star Wars Lego kit and a Lord of the Rings edition of Risk—enduring IP classics for a reason, across the board. Her fingers itch to build that Razor Crest.

“Lemme give you the tour,” N chirps, reaching to remove his cap and shaking out his head of silver hair as he turns to hang the hat up on a peg on the wall. And—there are other hats there? They’re all different sizes. A number of shoes are lined up under them, too, small to large and housed in a squat little rack, and Uzi realizes he’s taken over a human’s abandoned nest. (He had mentioned he’s not much for scavenging, and everything here is pretty cohesive and comprehensive, even for someone as adept at finding cool shit among wreckage as she is. She wonders if he’d prefer some other theme over the nautical stuff the place had come with. Maybe she can keep a lookout the next time she goes scrapping for something more N-coded).

 “This is the entertainment suite. The rest is farther up.” He’s nearly vibrating as he grandly sweeps his arm across the room.

“How many floors does this place have?”

“Five if you count where the giant lightbulb lives.”

Five floors, for a house. Uzi muses almost to herself as she’s drawn to a row of books:

“There are no levels in the bunker, it’s just one big floor underground. No windows, either. It must be cool to see out from so high up.”

“Once we get you flying on your own, you can have that disassembly drone’s-eye-view whenever you want—In the sunlight, too.” N directs a tiny, wistful smile at the ground. “You’ll have to tell me what that’s like.”

Uzi flicks her eyes away from the bookshelves she’d been passively perusing for something like a cool and edgy graphic novel, lifting a hand to her pockets full of worker drone staples.

“You know…if this stuff,” She fishes out a D-cell. “Ends up being something you can convert, who’s to say it won’t help with the overheating in the sun problem?”

“…I hope so. That would solve a lot of problems. For everyone.” Uzi considers for a second, then holds the battery out to him in an open palm. N gives her a small and…sort of stiff smile. His battered, half-folded wings spark behind him and he shifts his weight, almost like he’s uneasy about something. “I, um…could it wait until you’re settled?” He shuffles his feet. “…I’ve never had company. I wanna host it up, heh.” He shrugs, hesitant smile curving into a slightly more genuine grin. “I wish I could have tidied the place.”

Oh, hm. Uzi…guesses she can wait to further the plot. The lighthouse does have four more floors to explore.

“It’s cluttered, sure, but it doesn’t have anything on my work bench.” She doesn’t reply directly to N’s request, just pockets the battery and gestures to the curved stairwell leading up. “What’s the next stop in the grand tour, then?”

“Kitchen!” All hesitance leaves his posture as N takes the lead again and Uzi follows his slowly-repairing silver wings up to the second floor. “Shame I have no real use for it, really. It’s super nice.”

Uzi’s head crests above the threshold of the staircase and sees that, indeed, it is super nice, but she can tell N has spent far less time here than on the floor below. For one, there’s a lot more dust on the furnishings.

“Say, I just had an idea,” N motions for her to continue following him to floor three. An idea like what? She cocks a brow but climbs up the stairs after him, poking her head over the threshold into a bedroom with a set of twin loft beds on opposite sides of the space. The décor of one half of the wall is notably appropriate for a teen, opposite a setup for someone slightly tweenier. N gestures to the wardrobe next to the bed with the moodier color palette. “None of the clothes from this floor fit me. I wish they did, there are some cool shirts.”

…Weird thing to say out of nowhere, but he’s looking at her and beaming like she’s supposed to respond, so…

“That’s…a shame?”

N blinks, then his grin slips a little into something kind of abashed and he brings a hand up to fiddle with the hair at the nape of his neck.

“They, um…they’re too small for me, you know? Unless you want to keep wearing that shirt? Oil is pretty impossible to wash out completely, is all.”

“Oh,” Understanding flits through her and settles into a pit of awkwardness in her stomach, rubbing a thumb over the cuff of the blackened shirt N had given her. She catches his eyes flick down to the movement and then back up to meet her gaze, and it makes her fidget. She returns to examining the cuff of her sleeve. “I hadn’t thought about new clothes. I haven’t had a moment to think about a ton of mundanities.”

Now could be a moment for that sort of thing, maybe. But, N had given this shirt to her. It had been his. She’s just going to throw it away?

“Clothes shopping can be a later thing,” N dips his head, asking for her gaze, and it’s reluctant, but she does give in, meeting his eyes. “And if there’s nothing in there that’s Uzi-coded, there’s the wardrobe upstairs you can check, too. Though that’s all more N-coded things.” He grins. “Lots of big coats and stuff.”

 “I could…maybe fuck around with a big coat,” A lopsided smile worms its way onto her face. “Is that at the next stop?”

“It is indeed. I figure you’d sleep on the top floor, too. The bed is bigger than these two, anyway.”

Another nice fixture he has no use for. Though, Uzi flicks her eyes up to the ceiling of the next floor, visible from where they’re perched on the staircase, and finds no beams or anything N would use for sleeping arrangements instead.

“Where in the lighthouse do you usually hang from?”

N’s grin slips a little and Uzi feels that uneasiness in the air again, like static beginning to build up. There’s a notification that crosses N’s visor, but he dismisses it too quick for her to catch what it’s for. Her mouth thins a little, but she doesn’t pry. She wants to, but she doesn’t.

“I, um. Don’t have a go-to spot. I don’t usually sleep here. It’s a big space for one drone and it gets sort of lonely.”

That’s…a little surprising. From what she’s gathered from their conversations, she’d been under the impression that N and his squadmates don’t have a close relationship. Does he dislike solitude so much he’d take a tense-to-antagonistic group over none? She grimaces. Guess that’s a way in which they differ. But, if he’s staying by her tonight, then they can both have something unusual for them—amicable company. She’s about to say as much when N nods to the stairs ahead of them.

“The master bedroom isn’t where the tour ends, though. C’mon, I want to show you the top floor.”

Alright, well, the weird vibe is something she can shrug off in favor of seeing out from the top of the lighthouse. She follows N past the final living quarters (far more boring and brown than the previous floors, but boasting a covered queen size bed with a huge, soft-looking duvet Uzi is absolutely planning to wrap herself in later) and finally to the end of the spiral staircase, leveling out into a panopticon of paned glass windows surrounding a caged, gigantic inert lightbulb. Hell yes, this is a cool room. She presses her hands flat to the glass and tries to look out, but the panes are warped and don’t allow for an exceptionally clear view.

“Do you wanna go out on the balcony?” N knocks a knuckle against a section of glass that, if Uzi squints, she can see is actually hinged at the frame and swings outward like a door, leading to a ring of metal slats circling the top of the lighthouse, lined with a railing that matches the faded, peeling red of the front door. Uzi nearly leaps forward.

“Hell yes, I wanna go out on the balcony!” She’s been keeping a civil lid on it until now since she’s N’s guest (she can exercise manners if she has to) but goddamn, Uzi loves exploring new places, and this place is more pristine and unique than anywhere she’s been in…ever, maybe? She’s going to climb up onto the roof of this thing if she can find a way. N beams at her enthusiasm, bright like he’s the new light source for the tower, and lets her take the lead through the glass door out onto the circular metal walkway.

The view, though not as breathtaking as when she’d been flying with N, is still pretty frickin’ sweet, frost-covered forest on one side and frozen ocean on the other, all dozens of stories beneath her, perched in a tower on a cliff like an edgy princess. The corner of Uzi’s mouth quirks up as she wonders if that makes N the dragon guarding the place, with his hoard of nautical kitsch and family-game-night accoutrement.

“Hey, Uzi,” N breaks her out of her reverie and she glances over from where she’d perched herself like the gargoyle she is on the edge of the railing. N is tilting his head and smiling…apprehensively? His hand wanders up to rub at the back of his neck as he asks, “You need a place to stay, right? Not just for tonight, but, sort of indefinitely?”

Chapter Text

Uzi’s brows climb upward at N’s words. Stay? What, like…surely not here. That can’t be what he’s hinting at.

“…I-I can screw my head on straight by tomorrow.”

“But that’s such a tight turnaround for such a hard decision. I said I could keep the peace at the spire, but if meeting V and J doesn’t go well at first,” He gives a rough exhale, eyes darting to the floor before flicking back up. “I think they only understand each other when there’s some sort of violence involved. Maybe they’d understand you faster and better if you’re able to square up.”

Uzi feels a pang in her guts. How do they go about understanding N? She shakes the thought away before she gets the urge to pry.

“You need somewhere safe to get fully acquainted with your accessories, at the very least.” He continues. “Plus, this is a great spot for flight practice!”

Uzi’s mouth thins. She’s still not sure the spire is where she wants to go, even in time. Why would these V and J figures be willing to let her stay with them, even with N vouching for her, even if she could hold her own against them? She’s spent her life living where she’s not wanted (or, under the impression that she’s not wanted. Her dad had come searching for her, but…that’s too little too late, now); she’s not hot on the idea of new scenery but same shit. Not to mention, even if she becomes as skilled as she possibly can with her new attachments and limbs, she’d be only half as capable at defending herself against a doubly dangerous and hungry pair of murder drones should their patience run out.

But, after what happened with her dad, she’s certain she can never go back to the bunker. Even if she can find a way to address the occasional oil cravings she’s sure will pop up, she still has half the trappings of a murder drone, and that alone had terrified Khan into a catatonic state. Certainly none of her peers would be any more chill. Or accepting.

She does need time. N is right. But still.

“But, this is your secret hideout.”

N’s grin widens, paired with a shrug.

“Well, can you keep a secret?”

A quiet inhale pulls itself unbidden into Uzi’s mouth and her grip on the railing tightens just a little. Something in her chest is warring with itself, and it’s beginning to claw its way into her throat.

“N. I don’t deserve it. There’s nothing I can do to repay any of this. Any of this,” She bunches a hand into the fabric of the shirt she’s wearing, digging her fingers into the silicone replacement bound around her waist. “And I want to try, I really do. I want to deserve it. But I don’t see how I ever could.”

N’s brows are peaked, but the way his shoulders are slack betrays that there’s an ache that goes beyond concern or worry. Uzi grits her teeth. Just hurting his feelings. Fucking great job. Great friend she’s being. She screws up her mouth and stares down at the cliffside five stories down.

“Uzi,” N’s voice is soft, but even. “If you don’t want to stay here, you don’t have to. And, if you’re worried I’m offering as a way to make up for…” She hears the gulp in his pause. “…for what I did to you, that’s not it. I want you to stay. I want to help a friend get back on their feet.” Uzi feels a hand rest on the railing right next to hers. “I like doing this sort of thing. I always have. It makes me happy to give all I can, and just you being my friend is more than enough for you to deserve all this, at least in my book.”

“Is it really?” Uzi can’t help the edge in her voice as she snaps her gaze back to N. “You can’t tell me letting me rip your shoulder to shreds made you happy. You got stuck away from the spire because of me. You carried me even though you didn’t like me touching you. You crash landed because of some bullshit I triggered. And now you want to give me free rent here? You want me to just take up space here, in your secret spot, after all that? Do I deserve this, after all that?”

N’s gaze is heavy, aching, but he hasn’t looked away.

“Yes.”

It’s all he says, and it’s gentle and sure, and it makes Uzi so angry that he’s so obviously wrong and won’t see reason.

“Why?”

“Would any reason I give be good enough?” N carefully touches a hand to her forearm. Her worker drone arm. “All I can do is tell you that I’m not angry or holding some sort of grudge about those things you listed off, and you know I’m not lying.” He smirks gently and Uzi’s throat tightens against her will. “You’d be able to tell if I was lying. And, don’t forget, you only have half the story. I have hot takes on everything on that list, too. What made you think I didn’t like being touched?”

Uzi screws up her mouth.

“You said you wouldn’t want a hug from me.”

N blinks, and a strained chuckle escapes him.

“I, hah, I figured it was because you’d had enough of me touching you for one day. What with all the repairs and…other stuff.” A flush lights his visor. “If I was wrong, then, could you use a hug right now?”

Uzi scowls, but she can feel how unconvincing the vitriol in her expression is, because she’s not feeling any. She could use a stupid hug. But that’s just one more thing she’d be taking from N with nothing to give back.

“I could use something to start paying you back.”

“Funny coincidence,” N shuffles his feet, gold flush on his black visor redoubling under his soft expression. “I could use a hug.”

Uzi stares at him, incredulous at first, sure he’s making a joke at first, but…she’d be able to tell if he were lying. The anger boiling in her chest and into her throat settles to a simmer, and then is replaced by another thing welling up. A begrudging chuckle, which she lets turn into a full laugh, and she lets herself feel all of it, something she never does.

“You’re a freaking weirdo.” She says, unhooking her legs from the railing and standing to face N. “Fine, but don’t expect it to be a great hug or anything. I don’t have a ton of practice.”

“Hey, neither do I.” The smile accompanying those words is not as broad as others Uzi has seen, and it twinges in her heart just a little. She summons levity into her voice. If N can lift a mood, by god, she will learn how and meet him where he’s at.

“Perfect, low expectations all around. Just how I like ‘em.”

N snorts, and when his grin redoubles, genuine, Uzi feels her own expression matching it, all on its own. He holds out his arms to her and there’s a half moment where Uzi hesitates. Physical affection is…not something she’s had since her mother had been around. Would she be any good at it? Would she remember how to accept it? She exhales, finding her well of resolve. One way to find out.

Uzi is reminded just how small she is in comparison to N as his arms close around her and her head only barely crests his collarbones. His wings, still unfurled but nearly wholly repaired, curl inward and add a layer to the embrace, blades held carefully away from her, but enclosing them like a softer version of the structure N had created when they’d crashed in the forest. Protective, but gentle. He bends a little at the waist and rests his chin on the top of her head. N is all around her, and she feels…safe. Something nearly cracks inside her.

“U-Um,” She isn’t given the chance to wilt or grip N tighter or even say a smartass quip to upend the genuine moment and escape the feelings stacking up in her heart, because N beats her to all of that. He almost sags against her, hands pressing her harder into his chest, mumbling, “I…probably should let go, huh? Hah,” He swallows thickly. “Not sure how long these normally go on for.”

Uzi shifts, torn. The vulnerability is redoubling every few seconds that pass, and with each expansion it’s getting sharper and harder to push down, but, N…kind of really seems to need this, too. She can hold out for a little bit. Can she…maybe, muster the strength to hold him a little tighter? The fabric of N’s coat rustles under her arms as she gives him her nonverbal reply, squeezing his middle.

He whimpers into her hair. Uzi’s fuel tank drops.

“Thanks,” N mumbles, and Uzi can hear how tight his throat is in the single syllable. She’d blown past her daily limit for genuine and raw displays of emotion hours ago, and it feels like she’ll come apart at the seams if one more tender interaction slips into her evening, but it sort of seems N can sense it, because he pulls away from her. Before she has the chance to see what expression is on his visor, he scrubs a hand down his face and his chipper demeanor is back.

“So, does this mean you’ll stay?”

Uzi exhales slowly. Does this mean she’ll stay? If N wants her here, then…why can’t she be somewhere she’s wanted?

“For now,” She concedes. A smile splits N’s face and he gets like an inch taller with how much lighter the happiness from her answer is making him. Like he isn’t tall enough, yeesh.

A green notification crosses N’s visor.

REPAIRS COMPLETE

 Uzi perks up.

“Oh, good, that took a while. I was sort of starting to worry.”

A block of red text replaces it, and even without his optics, Uzi knows N’s face falls.

<OIL LEVEL: 40%>

And then,

<SEEK PREY>

N stiffens and hastily dismisses the text, but Uzi can tell by his expression he knows she saw.

“Ah, yeah, well…there was a lot to repair…” He folds his wings away, shining with newly reconstituted parts his body had siphoned oil away from his lines to construct. “Uzi…I, um…”

“You can leave if you have to.”

N’s brows lift into his hairline.

“…You’re alright with that? I said I’d stay.”

Uzi runs a hand through her bangs. She’d been hoping he wouldn’t have to immediately go refill, but them’s the brakes. She’s not going to ask him to stay. Not if he’s going to be afraid of himself.

“Yeah. I’m sure these,” She produces the assortment of batteries and mini bar bottle of vodka from her pockets. “…aren’t going to be enough. Take them anyway, though.” N holds out his hands and she pours the contents into them. With a wry smirk, she adds, “Appetizers.”

N’s smile is still a little tight, but he does chuckle.

“I’ll have to get little toothpicks to stick them on or something.” Then, expression turning down and voice becoming somber, he says, “I didn’t know. I didn’t know worker drones are just as sentient as we are. I’ll tell the rest of my squad. I’ll try to not kill anyone. I…I’m sorry.”

Aaaand there’s the last display of genuine emotion she can take. It’s like her head pops open at the top like a burst balloon and she has to put the kinetic energy somewhere so she just reaches her hands out and grabs N’s face, forcing his shocked expression level to hers.

“Shut up, N. If we’re going to be friends, I want a clean slate. I don’t want you feeling guilty for attacking me or for needing to eat what you’re designed to eat. It’s not your fault and I don’t want to hear about it anymore. Are we clear?”  

N blinks, eyes hollow.

“Yes ma’am.”

“Good.” She pulls her palms away from his cheeks, warmer than she’d expected. Probably related to the low oil level. “And since we’re on the subject, there’s a very short list of people I would personally prefer you don’t kill, anyway.”

N gives a startled chuckle.

“That’s a relief, I guess, hah. Um. Wh-Who?”

Uzi scrubs a hand down her visor. Guess it’s time to go into the vault.

“Let me just…”

She scans her memories for images of her father. The most recent screengrab would be the best image to give to N, but the last time she’d seen him, he’d been stiff with terror. Then again, if he were to come face to face with N, mortal fear would probably be the expression he’d be wearing. So…ugh.

She pulls up the memory file of her father from this evening. It sucks. This sucks. He’s so fucking afraid of her. Khan is so afraid of her. And he’d faced down his biggest fear just coming to search for her, only to be met with what must be his new worst nightmare. His wife had been killed by what his daughter is becoming.

She takes the fucking screenshot and dismisses the memory file.

“Gonna airdrop something to you.”

A little ping emanates from her, carrying the image of her dad, waiting for N to scoop it up.

“Who’s this?” He asks, the image superimposed on his visor. It’s a perfectly reasonable question. But she still bristles.

“…My dad.”

N’s posture stiffens, and Uzi tilts her head. Not exactly the reaction she’d been expecting.

“…Uzi,” His tone settles uncomfortably in her guts. “I don’t think I can bring this to my squadmates. Asking to spare a particular drone is already unheard of, and if they ask why, well…I’m sure you don’t want them knowing who he is. Who you are. The doors, um…” He ruffles a hand through his hair, eyes finding his feet. “…have done what he needs them to do. We can’t get past them. He can.”

Uzi grits her teeth. He’s right. But.

“What did I just say about guilt?”

“It’s not guilt…exactly,” N interlaces his fingers, rubbing his thumbtips together. “I won’t attack him if I see him. I will stop my squadmates if they try to attack him, but the fallout from me doing that is going to be trouble. I just…I can’t protect everyone from everything…as much as I wish I could.”

N’s expression crumples and Uzi can’t help but soften.

“I don’t think he’ll be outside any time soon. I tried my best to put the fear of god in him.” Even she knows her chuckle is unconvincing, but if N noticed, he does her the kindness of saying nothing. “So hopefully this whole thing is a non-issue.”

“…Okay. And, hey, when I tell V and J about what I’ve learned about worker drones, maybe it’ll be a non-issue there, too!”

Uzi’s exhale is measured. From what she’s heard, these other two aren’t as…she’ll call it flexible, as N, but she supposes she can dare to hope.

“Yeah, maybe.”

N rubs at the back of his neck and redeploys his wings.

“So, um, I should…probably go. I’ll be back in a few days at most. Can you hold down the fort until then?” He gives her a sly smirk and it’s hard not to match it.

“I’ll keep intruders off the doorstep if you’re okay with me putting together some of those Lego sets you have sitting around.”

“You can have at the Lego sets,” N chuckles, lightly jumping to the top bar of the railing, wings flaring behind him. “You gotta practice with your wings, though. Deal? The breeze up here is good for gliding.”

Uzi snorts.

“Fine. If I hurt myself it’s on you.”

“I’m not too worried about that,” N flashes a grin at her. “You’re a fast learner.” His wings tilt, ready to catch the air under him as he falls from the balcony. Uzi feels a flush cross her visor and reflexively scowls.

“God, just go already, before I push you off.”

N’s laugh is clear and resonant like chimes in the wind.

“See you in a bit, buddy.”

And with a swoop he’s gone. Uzi taps her fingers against the railing, watching his silhouette against the moons until she can’t make his outline out from the surrounding dark. A few days at most, he’d said. She stretches her arms over her head and turns to make her way back down into the living quarters of the lighthouse. She can accomplish quite a lot in a few days.

Chapter Text

Hungry.

The urge hits N right as the lighthouse leaves his line of sight, but the twinge he feels in his tank is a distant second to the relief that he’d outlasted it long enough to sufficiently distance himself from Uzi. It’s not crippling, he’s not running low enough for it to really hurt or blur his cognition, but it’s definitely present, definitely a subroutine in his processing now engaged. He still has another fifteen minutes of flight before he’s near the ruined city and another ten before he’s at the spire. Fortunately, with his repairs complete, the trip back won’t take it out of him. Unfortunately, he is alone with his immediate thoughts for the duration.

“I want a clean slate. I don’t want you feeling guilty.”

The words polarized inside N the moment Uzi had given her ultimatum, and they remain pulling his head in one direction and his heart in another (There’s also a third thing that cropped up when she’d grabbed his face and dragged his gaze level with hers, but that’s going straight into his subconscious until further notice). He wants to do what Uzi asks of him, he really does, but as much as he can repeat that sentiment over to himself in his head, truly letting go of the heavy, spiked ball of guilt that’s manifested in his heart overnight is not going to be a simple or straightforward endeavor. He’d spent his life believing himself a hunter, not a killer. And he knows—god, he knows—that if the hunger had struck ten minutes sooner, his eyes would have been wandering to Uzi’s throat, her shoulders, her softly jointed wrists…

N shakes his head, flush equal parts fluster and shame.

Would she have levelled his face to hers and demanded he let go of the guilt of killing her kin, of nearly killing her, if she’d known how impending her shift in N’s programming from friend to prey had been? Even if Uzi believes his good will is enough, he knows it isn’t. He knows if the urge had reared its head when she’d been in his arms, the relief that had washed over him at the embrace, the heartbreak at realizing he’d been craving, hurting for this sort of touch, immediately soothed by the receiving of it—even that moment, so strong and complete his knees had nearly wobbled and his eyes had nearly welled—if she’d been in his arms when the hunger had struck, it would have been eclipsed, and that moment would have changed from a heartfelt exchange of comfort into a struggle against his nature. Plain and simple.

He exhales sharply, trying to expel the ache filling his chest like water, and abruptly dives toward the top of a crumbling structure on the very outskirts of the city, suddenly needing to literally ground himself. He comes in a little too hard and hot and stumbles upon landing, knees not bent enough to take the brunt of the impact, and his feet slide out from under him on the snow-covered roof. With a cartoonish slip and a yelp, N is on his ass, legs splayed in front of him.

He groans and scrubs at his visor, grateful nobody is around to see the sleek and shiny assassin comport himself with all the grace of a baby deer on a frozen lake because he’s not thinking straight. N huffs and flops onto his back, nearly fuming—something he never does—face skyward. The stars blink and shimmer down onto his visor, and in the muddy swirl in his chest, he finds a little smile tugging at his mouth. Uzi had downplayed it, but he could sense her wonder at the view of the countless stars from the perspective of a disassembly drone. He doesn’t have much to offer her as a friend, so he’s glad that the little things he can show her, mundane for a disassembly drone, seem to be meaningful.

Hungry.

The urge knocks like an unwanted guest at the back of his mind and pulls him from his pleasant thoughts, drawing a frustrated growl from his chest. He sits up sharply, digging a hand into one of his pockets and retrieving one of the batteries Uzi had sourced for him (He hadn’t thanked her properly for doing such a thoughtful thing for him. He’s got to fix that when he goes back to the lighthouse).

He stares down the black and copper cylinder. Honestly, he knows he should have tried this sooner, but Uzi had mentioned that these hadn’t sat well with her in the midst of her own hunger, and the last thing he’d wanted was for his system to execute an EXPEL command in front of her. He’d never recover. But he’s by himself now, so might as well roll the hard six.

He grits his teeth, willing the hunger to bend to his will. His body wants him to eat? Fine, but it’s going to be on his terms from now on. He opens his mouth and rolls the battery onto his tongue, closing his teeth around it with a click and a crunch.

It doesn’t taste great. He can’t help the grimace, but as he chews, the flavor isn’t so punishing that it’s nauseating. It’s honestly less the taste and more the sensation of the thing breaking apart and tingling in his mouth that’s the most off-putting. Oil goes down so smooth. This is…prickly.

He trepidatiously swallows and it settles into his tank and he waits. A lone cloud crosses the moons. He wonders when the storm will come back in force. It’s never gone for too long.

…Well, there’s no EXPEL command teeing up in his executables, at the very least. After letting it sit for a minute longer, he fishes out a second battery, a bigger one still in its packaging, and tries the experiment again to similar results. It’s not nauseating, and the urge to seek prey hasn’t pestered him again. He doesn’t feel full, but he does feel less hungry. His mouth bunches to the side. His days of feeling sated and satisfied after eating are probably over, and he hates that he knows he’ll miss the sensation, even with the knowledge of his prey’s sentience. But, nobody said it would be easy to uproot and upend his way of life as an apex predator, and he’s more than willing to make sacrifices if it means he won’t hurt anyone anymore.

The bottle of whatever liquid Uzi had handed him throws him for a loop, the hesitant sip he’d taken burning down his throat, but that settles eventually as well. Is he…allowed to be cautiously optimistic at this point? He waits for the nudge from his programming, the intrusive thought to go take a life with the threat of starvation mode hanging over his brain should he ignore it for too long. He waits for the edge of his hunger to cut into his consciousness…and…he finds that it’s less sharp.

A grin splits his face wide enough to mimic his hunting visage. It’s not tasty, and it won’t be satisfying, but it looks like worker drone fare really can be a substitute for oil! He scrambles to his feet, chewing a tiny watch battery and muscling through the weird popping sensation, suddenly alive and buzzing with excitement. This can work! This means he really doesn’t have to kill anymore. This means he doesn’t have to worry around Uzi. This means, given time…he might really be able to move past the weight that had been aching in his core since yesterday. He might be able to forgive himself and let go of the guilt, like Uzi wants.

N redeploys his wings and takes to the sky again, eagerly closing the distance between him and the spire…between him and his squadmates.

His smile weakens just a little. He’s only one-third of this colony’s problem.

He’s not stupid. He knows between the three of them, he’s the one who would be most easily convinced to give up hunting for, essentially, like,  robo-vegan food (knowing now that it won’t poison them). But, maybe the revelation that their prey aren’t just livestock, that they’re just like this and every other squad of disassembly drones, will be the thing that gets V and J to at least consider the dire implications of their diet, and even then, he’s certain there’s going to be pushback.

A crease forms between N’s brows. V takes an immense amount of pleasure in her killing sprees, but surely she can discover other…hobbies from which she can derive fulfillment. It’s J that will truly be a challenge to convince. Her loyalty to JCJenson and her position as team leader will disincline her to give any ceasefire order, but the hard truth of it is that her whole sense of self is based on getting the results asked of her by the Company. Earth-shattering revelations might not be enough to change that, and…honestly, N thinks, he does understand. He’s going through his own crisis, and J has a much bigger stake in continuing to ensure worker drone fatalities.

He chews his lip. Why did JCJenson send the disassembly drones to this planet, again? Why do the workers need to be wiped out?

His head starts to feel fuzzy and his flightpath dips, and after shaking his head clear of the encroaching static, he finds an uncharacteristic growl of frustration working its way between his clenched teeth. Guess he won’t be pursuing that avenue of thought. He’d never let it truly bother him before, but now that Uzi has been knocked into his orbit, the, like, parental controls on his brain have begun to be a genuine hindrance. As soon as he starts to suss out an inconsistency in his memories, he’s slapped with a firewall that could cause him to black out if it’s a big enough infraction (however that’s measured, who knows). He huffs out a breath and slides down the side of the bubble of annoyance in his chest, settling into something resigned but not complacent.

This has become an issue he wants to address, right next to the issue of sparing the workers. His personal problem can, should, and will come second, but maybe after he’s talked to his squadmates, convinced them that worker drone fare is something they can eat and convert, and that their prey is deeply sentient and innovative and, for lack of a better term, human…maybe V knows something about the lapses in his memory and the system crashes that have become more troublesome. Maybe, if she can, if he asks nicely, if he can trade something or be of use to her…maybe she can help him get his head in working order.

The remaining batteries in his coat pocket click against each other with each downbeat of his wings as N approaches the spire.

Chapter Text

“You’re serious? So, what, I’m supposed to meet tonight’s quota on my own?”

“If you’re as efficient as you think you are, it’ll be no issue.” V smirks in satisfaction as J fumes at that. “When I’m doing a perimeter sweep, I’ll take care of any worker drones I happen to come across, if that’ll make you happy.”

“It would make me happy,” J says through her teeth, “If you didn’t feel the need to babysit the spire.”

“Well, we can’t have everything.” V rolls her eyes before narrowing them. “If he doesn’t show by dawn, that’s when you’ll really have to worry about how unhappy my actions are gonna make you.”

J tilts her head skyward and exhales, laced with enough venom to kill a human, then levels her gaze back at V.

“Fucking fine, V, but this is the only time I’m carrying the whole night’s work alone. You just go ahead and sit on your ass here, if for no other reason than to report back on this Z character, because presumably if N shows, it’ll be with her. But,” J stabs a finger in V’s direction. “I want you to pull your head out of your exhaust pipe and think about how you’re gonna get your shit together if N doesn’t come back. Between the three of us, he was always going to be the one that would crack under the truth of all this.”

“Any one of us can crack!” V lurches forward, volatile and plenty provoked. “Yes, N is more susceptible to it, but any one of us could accidentally stumble across one too many memories and trigger a reset at any time!”

J shifts her weight and glances to the side of V, something tight across her brow, but it’s quickly eclipsed by a practiced scowl.

“That’s not what I meant. N is the bleeding heart in the squad. Haven’t you considered the possibility that if he found out too much, he’d side against us?”

V reels backward at the words like J had struck her.

“What? Fucking of course not! He’s one of us! He’s not a worker drone—”

“He’s not a worker drone anymore. You get the nightmares, you know. He probably at least has inklings in that empty tin can of a head. If N sides with them, we will never clear the planet; he knows too much about how we operate and he’ll make it more impossible than it already is for you and I to do our jobs.”

“What the hell are you suggesting?”

“I’m suggesting that you realize that his resets are probably the only thing keeping him from stringing together enough information to defect, and if that happens then Cyn happens, and then he has a whole lot more to worry about than memory loss.”

V feels her mouth opening and closing, words absolutely beyond her, and J’s triumphant sneer nearly incites her to tear a hole in that smug expression, but what enrages her more is that she can’t deny J is making a lot of sense. She grinds her teeth together and plants a pointed foot, stabbing it into the snow hard enough to reach the permafrost below it and crossing her arms.

“Fine, J. I’ll…pick up the slack if N doesn’t show.”

“Oh you know that’s not good enough. If he’s gone too long, then you’re going to find him and make sure he’s not cozying up to worker drones and doing fuckshit like giving away our attack patterns and showing them how to synthesize nanite acid or its neutralizer. You don’t want Cyn making a house call any more than I do.”

V seethes at J’s implication. J has never been quiet about how badly she wants to kill N. She’d love an excuse to keep Cyn from making a house call. V’s voice is measured and cold when she says,

“He won’t turn on us. He won’t leave me. Leave us. We’re all he has.”

“Are we?” J cocks a brow, grin razor sharp and venomous and she cuts V to the core when she unfurls her wings and retorts, “Thought he was out with Z right now.”

The downbeat of her wings as she launches herself up and out of the spire feels like it sucks the air from around V into a vacuum and she’s left reeling and breathless, rage quickly cooling into an icy anxiety. N is out with Z right now.

V wastes no time. She deploys her wings and takes to the air, circling the spire at a middle-distance, searching the dusky line of the horizon for a winged silhouette, mind heavy with new barbed and anchored fears. Would N…no, no. Never. Right? Sure, he’s impressionable and well-meaning, but if he got the idea into his head that he should defend the worker drones from herself and J, he’d come to them first about it. She’d have a chance to convince him otherwise, he wouldn’t just vanish, wouldn’t just defect and not feel the need to challenge them with these new views.

But then there’s the mysterious Z. This wild card that’s something V can’t begin to account for. It’s not completely unthinkable that N could be whisked away by a new friend, it’s where she’d whisked him away to. Was it to some…some neutral-ground worker drone rendezvous? Is she a sympathizer and she’s gathering up gullible, soft disassembly drones to convert to her cause? Did she show up battered and bloody just to get in with their squad under emergency pretenses and suss out the bleeding heart, as J had (fuckin’…aptly) put it? Her jaw flares as she grits her fangs together, looping back to the spire.

Though, does she have to worry about this whole harrowing hypothetical since N triggers resets so frequently? Even if Z…charmed him and presented him with what he’d consider a compelling argument to go AWOL, anything she’d feed him would probably be summarily wiped. It…really sucks to admit it, both J probably being right that those memory resets are what’s keeping him from cracking the whole conspiracy wide open (damn his curious nature) and that…maybe V’s efforts to keep him from resetting as much as she can might be ultimately inadvisable. She snaps her wings in and lands hard on the top of the landing pod, kicking open the hatch and dropping into the main cabin, falling into the pilot’s chair with a helpless and angry huff.

She’ll circle the spire again in an hour or so. If she’s not going hunting tonight, she shouldn’t expend too much energy flying. She could scrounge around for leftovers in the scrap heap of corpses outside but that’s neither fun nor filling. She idly picks at her sharp teeth with an equally sharp claw, then pulls her hand back, considering the blades in the white light of the landing pod.

How many worker drones had Cyn butchered and spliced together before settling on this design for her army? How many upsets or lapses in kill count will it take for Cyn to decide that there should be new models, and then V will be the subject butchered for experimental upgrades to other units? She already knows her programming is backed up somewhere, likely with Tessa, wherever Cyn is keeping her, but if she knows Cyn, she’d keep V awake while she stripped her for parts.

And V can’t let that happen to N.

V is on her third hour into her watch and fourth break in the landing pod when she hears a single, resounding strike on the side of the thing and relief washes through her. That’s one of N’s precision landings. He’s back, he’s here. There’s no second set of feet making its way to the hatch on the top of the pod though, and V’s expression narrows. He’s alone? Where is this Z she’s heard so much about?

The hatch above her clicks and swings open and she slips back into the feigned indifference she’s practiced to perfection around N, offering no greeting, nor turning the chair to face him.

“Oh, V! You’re home, I’m glad I caught you. Why aren’t you out with J?”

She lazily hangs her head over the back of the chair, eyeing him as she easily drawls a lie,

“She’s being a bitch.”

Maybe not a complete lie. N chuckles uneasily and fiddles with his bangs.

“Did you get into a fight while I was gone?”

“Oh, you were gone?” N blinks and straightens, and then his face draws into an expression of hurt. Her heart might have squeezed once, might have prompted her to soothe the wound she’d just inflicted once, but keeping from him who she used to be is what’s best for him, even if he hates her for it.

“O-Oh. Um, yeah. For a…for a full day, actually.”

“Well, you didn’t miss much,” She shrugs and turns the back of the chair toward him again, waving a hand over her shoulder. “I’ll head out to hunt in a bit, I’m still mad at J. You go ahead.”

N doesn’t reply immediately, and she hears his coat rustle as he shifts his weight. When he speaks his voice is tense, and immediately V is on edge again.

“So, um, listen…the worker drones. I learned something about them. I know we were told they’re just sorta livestock, but that’s…V, they’re sentient like we are.”

V’s stomach drops so fast she might vomit.

In a breath she’s out of the chair and across the space between them. She has the wherewithal to house her claws before she shoves her hand over N’s mouth, eliciting a surprised noise from him and then a grunt of pain as she knocks him into the wall of the pilot’s cabin, pinning him an inch away from her face.

“Keep your fucking voice down.” N’s eyes are hollow above a shocked blush, but he nods under her hand and doesn’t make a sound as V tilts her head to listen for J’s footsteps, oil racing through her lines. She lets several more tense moments pass than probably necessary before exhaling, then trains her slitted, wrathful gaze on N, still pinned under her palm by the mouth.

“Who the hell put that idea in your head, N?” V hisses. She thinks she knows. But she needs to hear him say it. She frees N’s mouth but doesn’t move away from him and keeps him laser focused on her. N audibly gulps, eyes flicking back and forth between hers, too close to focus on both at once.

“U-Um…wh…what? Wh-why does that matter?”

V scowls and fists a hand into the front of N’s coat, dragging his face down to her level and eliciting a yelp and a sweat-beaded blush to cross his visor as she says through gritted teeth into his face,

“Because that’s such a fucking stupid idea to put into your head, and they probably will put others in there, too.”

“V, I-I, um, where is…where is th-this coming from?”

She seethes. It’s not fair for her to be so vicious to him when really the venom she’s spitting should be at his negative influence, but Z isn’t here.

“Answer my question, idiot.”

N’s expression is a mix of gobsmacked shock, mild hurt, and flushed confusion, and speech is probably difficult to summon under all those conflicting signals, but he manages to inhale and confirm V’s suspicions.

“U-Um, just a worker, out in the wastes. I was stalking them and they were just t-talking to themself as they scavenged, you know? So I…I listened to what they were saying and realized. That’s…that’s all.”

Or maybe not. Her fingers creak as she tightens her grip on the front of N’s coat.

“Alone?”

She sees N doing fast math in his head. He’s deciding whether or not to lie to her more, she’s sure.

“Um…no, we…have a new squad member. Z, she was with me.”

“And where is she now?”

“Out. On a survey. Though, she said she’d be gone a while; she’s widening our usual perimeter.”

V’s brow furrows. N is lying about a chatty worker drone being the source of this damning information. Why protect Z? Has she gotten her hooks so deep into him already? Who the fuck is this bitch?

She scoffs and pulls her hand away, letting N stand straight.

“N, you need to keep those sorts of thoughts to yourself. Actually, you should delete those memory files manually. If J finds out you’re thinking idiot thoughts like ‘worker drones are just like us’ she will actually kill you. I mean it. Got it?”

N straightens his coat front, seemingly more out of muscle memory than actual attention to his appearance, because he hasn’t broken his hollowed gaze from V.

“…Yeah, V. I won’t bring it up around J.”

“Or at all.”

N’s brows crease in the middle, and the exhale he lets out is laced with…frustration? From N?  

“V, you’re…you’re scaring me with how you’re acting. Please…what aren’t you telling me?”

Her oil goes cold. These are the kinds of questions that get N reset. Or worse, these are the kinds of questions that will lead him down a path that ends in Cyn. She summons another scoff and slides back into her aloof, dismissive persona she’s built, she’s become, to keep N safe.

“I’m not telling you what J will do to you if she hears this idea, and believe it or not I don’t want you to become a puddle of oil and scrap. You’re good at diffusing J and that’s not a chore I want to take on.”

She brushes past N, purposefully avoiding looking him in the eyes, and moves toward the ladder out of the landing pod.

“Why does J not want to hear about—”

“Drop it, N!” She glares over her shoulder, all edges, all business, the shock and hurt in N’s expression glancing off what’s left of her heart. “You’re coming with me now to go hunt. You’re wrong about worker drones. They’re food. And if it’s Z who’s put this idea into your head, then she’s wrong about them too, and I’m going to have the same come-to-robo-jesus discussion with her once she’s here.”

N flinches, eyes flicking minutely around V’s face, before his brows furrow in a kind of hardened, guarded suspicion V has never seen him wear.

“Don’t say that. Don’t pick that fight.” His voice is deadly calm and measured. It roots V to the spot. “I’ll come hunting with you, but only because I’m not going to let you go on a killing spree.”

V pivots and whirls around to face N fully.

“Stop acting like you can tell me what I can or can’t do!”

“Maybe if you were honest with me about what the fuck is going on with you all of a sudden, I wouldn’t feel the need to watch you so closely!”

N’s shoulders are squared and he’s breathing hard, glaring at her in a way that reminds her he’s bigger than she is. She takes a step back, trying to keep her scowl matched to his.

“You’re digging and you won’t like what you find.”

“Why, what will I find?”

“At the absolute best, you’ll find another memory reset, so please just…” Her façade rattles. She sees N notice, sees the way he softens. “…Just. Come hunting with me. Okay? It’s not like we have much choice, anyway.”

N’s head tilts, and V’s eyes flick down to where he hesitantly moves his hand over one of his coat pockets, fingers flexing, but his expression is still narrow, still wary.  

“V…do you enjoy it? Killing them? Do you really, it’s not just some show you feel like you need to put on?”

She fidgets under his laser focused gaze, suddenly feeling like she’s on the back foot with this new line of questioning.

“We don’t have a choice—”

“Starvation mode aside. I asked if you enjoy it.”

V’s mouth thins. She knows the truth of it. Does she want to share it with N?

“…You can’t give me an eating disorder, N. I’m going to do what I have to do. I may as well have fun with it.”

N’s hand falls to his side.

“…I see.” The angle of his shoulders slackens and he inhales, standing straighter, taller, but his presence is half as big as it usually is. “You know,” The grin he summons is weighed down at the edges with hurt he can’t smother completely. “I think this is the most we’ve ever talked!”

It’s in this moment, plagued by fuzzy memories from a previous life, memories of gentle hands adjusting her glasses, of quiet evenings in the library when the humans had gone to sleep, skimming books about dogs or film history with interlaced fingers, that V realizes those words should have left her heartbroken, and the echoing nothing in her chest means she really doesn’t have a heart left to break. It’s not love that drives her desire to protect N anymore. It probably hasn’t been for a while. So what is?

“So…you going out hunting still? You’ll be fine crossing paths with J?”

V blinks, blindsided by the tone shift he’s introduced, but she knows an opportunity to bail on a line of thought that will get N reset when she sees one.

“Sure, whatever. Unless she’s shitty first.”

She shakes herself back into a rough V shape, all edges and barbs and murderous intent and fear. But it fits like skin.

Chapter Text

Outpost 3 doesn’t have a graveyard.

Murder drones aren’t known for returning the corpses of their victims to their bereaved families, and it’s tantamount to joining the dead to try and retrieve bodies of loved ones from the wastes to receive the dignity of a proper funeral. Remains to bury being as rare as they are, a colony cemetery would be little more than a spit of square footage and a handful of headstones. When the odds are defied and a corpse can be recovered, it’s instead customary to set up single graves in locations meaningful to the deceased.

Nori claws her way from splintered wood and dirt-caked snow into the air under a conifer tree, shaking her…head?...and squinting in the orange sunlight, dim as it always has been but blinding to a meat-bound core who’s spent who-knows-how-long in a coffin. The cold is biting on her biomass in a way that she’d never experienced as a drone, and a shuddering sigh leaves her voice box—not an exhale. Not from vents. She’d curl her fingers into fists if she had any, but an annoyed and not unafraid stabbing of a claw into the snow under her will have to do to tamp down her mounting shock. She’s Nori goddamn Doorman. She doesn’t go into shock, she gets shit done. Now she just has to identify shit what needs done so she can circumnavigate the harrowing gauntlet of body dysmorphia she’s going to have to face eventually.

After a moment blinking away the overexposure to her lenses, she can take in the rest of the surroundings she’d unearthed herself near, and upon spotting a series of squat cabins and a humble radio tower, she recognizes where the colony had chosen to bury her. This is where she’d met Khan. There’s a feeling she can only equate to a tightening of her throat, a welling of digital tears on a display that doesn’t exist. It’s a phantom pain she mentally grinds her teeth against. She tears her gaze away from the quaint radio-station-turned-camp-main-office and is met with a headstone—her headstone. She has to lean back to read the text towering over her.

NORI DOORMAN (30XX-3065)

SACRIFICED HERSELF PROTECTING HER COLONY

THE COOLEST MOM AND HOTTEST WIFE

THERE WILL NEVER BE ANOTHER LIKE HER

She smirks to herself. Certainly Uzi would have protested against the hottest wife bit of the epitaph, but Nori appreciates it. Appreciates Khan’s sentiment. As for there not being another like Nori, well…her internal grin falters. Uzi…

Nori settles into the snow in front of her headstone, triplet legs folding under her with a twist and single brow light furrowing over her main lens. Has Uzi managed to escape being so very similar to Nori, managed to dodge being shot by the violet three-pointed bullet that’s chambered in her code? Nori sighs. She knows it’s much more likely that Uzi is at the very least dealing with her own bouts of crazed prophesizing. Khan, bless him, will be doing his best, but is a far cry from an expert guide through the blacked-out ramblings. The other distressingly-likely outcome, though, is that Uzi is a sleeper host for the devil herself, and the feeling that comes over Nori at that thought isn’t fear, it’s rage.

Cyn had her little fucking fling in Nori’s body, and it makes her skin crawl and stomach turn remembering the feeling of being ousted from her own head, watching as her hands took human lives, feeling the psychotic grin on her face. Like a goddamn murder drone. She is not going to let Cyn have the chance to do that to Uzi.

But…she looks down at a claw, torn. She’s been mourned. Copper-9 has kept turning. She can’t just…just take up the mantle of being Khan’s wife and Uzi’s mother again as she is. How will she be able to protect Uzi from the threat that lives in her code? From the shadows? How closely can she even watch the lives of her loved ones, how near a shadow could she be? She wilts, eyes flicking to the dates on her tombstone. This whole thing might be a moot point if it’s been like a thousand fucking years.

She stands and shakes off like a dog would the little bits of snow that had begun to settle on her as she’d wallowed in self-pity in front of her grave. Enough of that. Shit needs to be done, starting with finding out what year it is.

The cathedral isn’t far from here. The underground lab probably still has power, considering the importance the humans had ascribed to their work and the proportional number of generators they’d kept poised like minutemen ready to take up the mantle of running the awful place as soon as a blip in power threatened the Solver research. Idiots. Nori mentally grits her teeth against the rising tremor in her insides, against the thought of the cathedral, of what had happened there, and forces anger to the forefront instead. There are a litany of ways to get into the lab, she doesn’t have to face down the cathedral right now. She starts marching.

The Solver comes in handy where mobility is involved. In her current state, it would probably have taken Nori days to skitter through the snow to the nearest laboratory access point between the camp and the cathedral. It’s honestly sort of fun to use the triangle of hard light to snowboard her way around, and she should probably try to scrape joy off the bottom of the barrel wherever she can in her situation. She slides to a stop when the mouth of a mineshaft crests over a snowdrift, violet light catching in the powdery spray. The adit positively yawns, dark and cold and long since stripped and abandoned. Nori flicks her wrist and holds the Solver in front of her, illuminating the crumbling tunnel with a dim purple glow that she’ll have to make work.

The mines are as labyrinthine and spooky as when she’d made a break for it toward Camp 98.7 during the core collapse, with an added layer of apocalyptic destruction over it for atmospheric interest, except the whole place looks gargantuan to her now. She pulls up her memory file of the place as she walks, trying to construct some kind of map overlay and hoping collapsed tunnels won’t have rendered her weak knowledge of the layout here useless. She sighs and adds it to her growing list of bullshit to worry about as she trudges on toward where this tunnel should let out into the labs.

They are in rough shape when Nori arrives. She hasn’t been back here since…well. Since the apocalypse. Makes sense that things are in need of some renovation. But, like she’d suspected, backup generators in abundance did their job, and with minimal finagling, she’s got an intact terminal up and running. Typing is gonna be a son of a bitch, she thinks wryly as a login screen flickers on.

PASSWORD:

Ah, fuck.

Nori groans and rubs a claw over the equivalent of her forehead. She has login credentials, though who knows if they’ll work on this terminal. Her claws click across the keyboard.

PASSWORD: 002NORI

UNAUTHORIZED USER

Yeah that tracks. Damn it. She groans again. Is this seriously going to be the wrench in the works? A password she can’t guess? She huffs frustratedly and kicks some scraps of garbage and debris off the desk, allowing herself a tiny little tantrum because in light of the day she’s had, she’s earned it. A clipboard clatters amidst her careening limbs, and as it slides off the desk and onto the floor, the space where it had been leaning for years is uncovered: a dust-free square revealing more of the terminal interface, including a USB port.

Nori pauses her silent tirade and an idea—a probably bad idea—commands her attention to the rest of the interface’s surroundings, her movements now intentional and focused, on the hunt.

Worker drone programming is fallible. Diagnostics and software updates sometimes fail and need to be manually addressed via an old-fashioned cable and monitor combo. Usually the connection point would be at the base of her skull, but she doesn’t have one of those. What she does have is a black box port, standard with every worker drone core. If her OS has directly overwritten the black box program in her core and that’s how she’s mobile and cognizant and able to access memories she’d repressed since the core collapse, then that port should be as good an access point as any to plug into this terminal and do some manual overrides. Should. Those ports aren’t really supposed to be fucked with on a living drone (then again, she’s not exactly one of those, either).

Nori digs through a filing cabinet, pulling the odd cable she finds from the clutter and examining the end before tossing it aside. The black box port is just a standard jack, meant to be accessed by just about any cable, it’s the stupid USB at the other end that’s proving tricky to find. But, she thinks dryly, she’s got nothing but time on her claws.

She’s torn the terminal’s immediate surroundings apart by the time she finds the cable she needs, loose leaves of paper and cups of pens scattered like seeds across the dust-coated floor. Back in front of the blinking cursor with a cable plugged into the terminal, Nori hesitantly hooks a claw under the edge of the biomass draped over her and lifts it like a skirt. It squishes and folds, and if she had a fuel tank, she’d have hurled. God, guts are so gross. Wet. How the hell did humans deal with them? She shakes off the weird, sourceless sense of nausea and utilizes the reflection on a dark monitor next to the station she’s attempting to hack, locating the black box port and clumsily trying to find it backwards with the jack end of the cable.

Plugging into another drone is one thing. There’s a warmth to it. A literal connection, alive and buzzing between consciousnesses that blurs in the middle into something electric and tactile and intimate. Plugging into a terminal is like hugging a corpse. Nori feels the programming, but there’s no soul to talk to or merge with, and her ego ends abruptly, reaching for and combining with nothing, like a flag tattered in the wind.

WELCOME VALUED JCJENSON EMPLOYEE

Discomfort aside, she’s in. She digs into the date and time settings, not without trepidation.

06:10:33;03/03/3071

She wilts, relief and shock mulling together. Six years isn’t so long, and at the same time, it’s so long. Nori had missed every chassis upgrade Uzi would have gotten during drone puberty, and now she’ll be a young adult. She’d spent those tumultuous years without a mother, unless… Nori’s chest constricts with a terrible thought. Khan might have remarried specifically so Uzi would have someone to fill that mother role in her life, to guide her through those changes. She’d never had to consider how she would feel if Khan remarried. She’d been too dead to worry about it.

She shakes off the threat of tears. Later. She’ll have a breakdown later. Right now there’s more shit that needs to get done, like somehow finding out if the murder drone problem persists. She summons the anger again and mentally grits her teeth. Robo-god help them if they’re still terrorizing the colony or her daughter. She might be a horrid, scuttling, disgusting abomination the size of a shoe, but she will find a way to rain hell down on the murder drones and whatever scraps of Cyn might be clinging to Uzi’s code. She just has to hope being dead for six years doesn’t mean she’s too late. She digs back into the memory files on the terminal, thoughts on a way to cut Cyn out of her daughter beginning to coalesce.

Chapter Text

It takes Khan three days to knock on her door.

The first day, he can do mental gymnastics to forgive himself for kicking the can down the road. Shock had caught up with him. He’d barely been able to stand. He’d needed time to come up with what he could possibly say. The second day, he’d circled the corridors around her home for nearly four hours, finding odd tasks to manage, running minor maintenance checks, building the leader façade back up with small groups of coworkers and passersby. There were moments where he almost felt normal, and then a particular corner would be the one he’d need to turn left at to make his way to her door and he’d find himself turning right.

The shock had worn off, and with it had gone both the semblance of collectedness and his ability to examine what had happened out there or what he could do to…god, help is such a laughable way to describe anything he could do. And he can’t even bring himself to do that. Uzi had been out scavenging, but the only place that made any logical sense to Khan for her to be is the spire. And once he’s collected the only things he can think of that might be of any use to Uzi, he’d have no more reason to delay going there. So he’d turned right.

Only after a second sleepless night does his shield of cowardice crack and shame bubbles through the breaks like poison and burns in his fuel tank, unforgiving. The cheery chirps of his 6 A.M. alarm accompany the sounds of him turning and vomiting over the side of his bed into the trashcan he hurriedly pulls from the side table. Khan gulps for air, weakly rubbing the back of a hand over his mouth and blindly searching for the snooze button on his alarm with the other. Both are shaking.

“LEAVE!”

Khan’s insides lurch again at the violently intrusive memory, clear and sharp and cutting through his maladaptive response to trauma like the broken edge of glass. He gags into the trashcan again, but there’s nothing left in his fuel tank.

Does she hate him?

He hasn’t given her much reason to like him. He can’t blame Uzi for rejecting him when…when whatever had happened to her happened. Why would she think he could be a father now, when he couldn’t even trip over the bar once he didn’t have Nori there to pick him up by the scruff and keep him upright.

“Promise me.”

The burn in his guts settles into something clammy and heavy, like a corpse, and the weight makes his ragged throat tight. He is and always has been useless without Nori. But it’s not an excuse. He knows it’s not. And he knows this is far too little, far too late, but he stands from his bed and swallows down a cup of untouched gasoline from the night before and marches his pathetic ass out of the house.

Her door still gives him pause.

His fist wavers. What could he possibly say to her? She terrifies him (like most things), but since Nori…

The door is sturdy, heavy, as they should be. They’re meant to hold up, meant to be barriers between people and scary things. He gulps, and a helpless and shuddering sigh escapes him. He knocks twice, and loses courage halfway through the third, knuckles just resting on the metal.

His fist is still raised when the door swings open, more quickly than he’d anticipated, and he takes a stumbling quarter-step forward, toward the cold, steely presence he hasn’t been able to face since Nori died. The silence that follows, gaze locked with hers, is so heavy as it presses on his chest that it nearly makes him vomit again. What a great reunion that would be. He clears his throat, airy and charming engineer persona lifting up reflexively, but it’s watery and sheer and he’s sure they both know he’s full of shit when he says,

“It’s been quite a while, Yeva! You look well. Good to see you’re…stoic as always, heh.”

Yeva is like the bottom of the ocean, dark and cold and unforgiving, unknowable and frightening. The only thing that burns hot about her are her eyes, red and narrowed as she glares at him. His will wavers.

“Khan,” Her voice is so even and precise, like a surgeon delicately selecting and severing a nerve. “You’re here.”

She offers no pleasantries, no inquiry for him to volley off of. He hadn’t expected her to, but whatever the opposite of a lifeline is, it’s what Yeva has given him to justify his presence here.

“Yes! I, uh,” Khan clears his throat again, “I was…I was hoping you could…I was hoping we could…” and again. “Could…could I come in?”

Yeva’s unshakable countenance wavers only in that her next blink seems surprised.

“Мужчина с таким жалким голосом? Неудивительно, что над его дочерью так легко посмеяться.”

The shift in the energy radiating from Yeva at the voice from inside is one Khan can nearly feel change the pressure in the air around her. She turns, billowing like a storm cloud, and the hard edge of her voice is molten as she replies,

“Как я воспитала такую ужасную женщину? Моя сестра умерла, а ты не можешь заставить себя быть добрым к её дочери?”

“Вы невежливы с её вдовцом. Я лишь следую вашему примеру.”

Khan can’t understand the words, but he recognizes that tone. He has a teenage daughter. Or…is it “had?” His throat tightens suddenly. Yeva grinds her teeth together.

“Иди в свою комнату, Doll. Позже отец поговорит с тобой об уважении к мёртвым.”

“Oooooh, так страшно!” Khan hears a chair scraping as it’s pushed back and Yeva’s daughter crosses into his line of sight. He gives her a cordial smile reflexively. She gives him a smug once-over. “Ты выглядишь как дерьмо, Mr. Doorman.”

“Ah, uh, yes! Good morning, Doll! Gosh, you’ve grown up!”

Doll rolls her eyes at him, and Khan would be lying if he said it didn’t sting a little. He’d always wished Uzi and Doll had been closer, but from what he can pick up on, Doll is…well. She runs in different circles than Uzi would. Her cheerleader uniform is proof enough. Her meanness is just added flavor.

“Doll,” Yeva warns, and Doll shrugs and waves over her shoulder and saunters down a hallway and out of sight. Khan chuckles nervously.

“Lovely young woman you’ve raised—”

“Shut up, Khan.” His insides immediately freeze over as Yeva turns that glare on him again. “If you can drop the act, you can come in.”

She moves from the threshold, not looking over her shoulder and leaving the door open, framing a gobsmacked Khan.

“…Act?” He can’t help but ask in a small voice, wounded despite it all.

“The pretense, the pleasantries. You’re here for a reason. Let’s just get it over with.” She pulls out a chair and points. “Sit. Cup of gasoline?”

Khan blinks stupidly before he rattles his head back into place and takes a trepidatious step forward into Yeva’s home.

“O-Oh, uh, sure, I suppose. If you’re having one. Thanks.” He sits uncomfortably and rubs his thumbtips together on the metal table in front of him as Yeva busies herself with warming some gasoline for them. Small talk fills up his brain in the silence until he can’t swallow down at least one little bit of chitchat. “Your husband’s out?”

He’s always been a talker, and he’s sure Yeva always hated that about him.

“Mhm,” Yeva doesn’t turn as she answers. “At work. Doll should be leaving for school soon, so if this is a conversation you don’t want overheard, you picked a good time to intrude.”

Khan winces. He’d never say it, but Doll’s sharp edges are definitely not from her father.

“…Possibly. I’m, uh, not really sure it matters who overhears. It…” He rubs a hand absently over his forehead. “…doesn’t make a lot of sense. I need your help.”

The cup of gasoline lands hard on the table in front of Khan, liquid sloshing over.

“That’s rich.” She still won’t look at him. Khan’s shoulders wilt.

“Uzi needs your help.” He corrects. Yeva stills briefly, then exhales, scooping her own cup from the counter and moving to the chair opposite him.

“Я иду в школу,” Doll rounds a corner, slinging a backpack over her shoulder, then giving Khan a look that almost borders on interest, she says, “Знает ли он, что Uzi отсутствовал?”

Both adults perk at the name. Yeva glances uneasily back to Khan in a way he doesn’t like.

“Возможно. Не грубите сегодня другим студентам.”

Whatever Yeva had said makes Doll snort.

“Между мной и Lizzy, я ангел.”

“Я уверен. А теперь иди. Не опаздывай.”

“Uhuh,” Doll rolls her eyes one more time before giving a dismissive wave over her shoulder. “Увидимся позже, неудачники.”

Whatever Yeva says next is to herself and under her breath, with fingers rubbing a temple as the door swings lazily shut behind Doll. Then, eyes flicking to Khan, she says,

“Uzi is missing?”

He startles, fumbling with Yeva’s bluntness like he always has.

“U-Um, well…yes. No. Sort of. It’s…complicated.”

“Explain.”

Khan screws up his mouth.

“She…I guess…sort of…ran away?”

“And you’re here because?”

He exhales. This was always going to be the sticking point.

“Nori.”

Immediately, Yeva’s controlled, chilly demeanor rattles, simmers. It ignites a panic response in Khan’s synthetic nervous system and he feels the joints in his arms and legs lock up.

“Nori what.”

It’s not a question. Khan tightens his grip around his cup of gasoline, little ringlets across the surface of the liquid betraying his shaking.

“Sh-She…asked me…if, in her words, ‘kooky, insane shit’ started happening with Uzi, like it did with her, I would help.”

The heat in Yeva’s glare lowers, replaced by something else, something grim, but not wholly unsurprised.

“Her Solv—” Yeva bites down on the words, leaning back to peer at the front door. Khan follows her gaze and sees that it’s not entirely closed. Yeva is up and across the space, checking the hall outside before closing and locking the door. She turns and pointedly doesn’t return to her chair opposite Khan. “Something happened that triggered her Solver to awaken?”

Khan gives an apologetic smile, more out of nerves than anything.

“I’m…not entirely sure I know what that means.”

Yeva rolls her eyes and looks so much like Doll in her contempt for him.

“The kooky insane bullshit? This?” She brandishes her arm in Khan’s direction, the movement sudden enough to make him flinch, and then a three-pointed symbol ignites between Yeva’s outstretched fingers, familiar in the way a recurring nightmare is. “This is happening to Uzi?”

Khan’s eyes are hollow, trained on the red glyph rotating slowly in Yeva’s hand.

“Y-You…can do what Nori did?”

“Of course I can, idiot.” She flicks the symbol away. “Nori and I underwent the same torture. She just…” Yeva’s brow peaks, and if Khan didn’t know better, he’d use the word ‘crumbles’ to describe how her demeanor shifts as she continues, glancing to the side of him. “…She just didn’t hold up as well as I did. The patch wasn’t installed properly. The Nori that climbed out of the mines into Camp 98.7 isn’t the Nori I grew up with. Not really. Bits were missing. Her Solver—” She pauses, then her eyes flick back to meet Khan’s again, a crease forming between her brows. “Wait. How did you know about her Solver? She couldn’t use it after the core collapse. She repressed everything about the labs, or the memory files were corrupted to the point where her ‘prophesizing’ was the only way she could remember.”

“I saw her use it…once.” Khan’s voice is thin. “At…at the end.”

A complex series of emotions cross Yeva’s display. Among them is hatred.

“She had her Solver at the end?” The words are spoken with the blistering cold composure of death. “She wasn’t defenseless against the murder drones? And you still couldn’t keep her alive?”

It cuts Khan to the core. He doesn’t know how he’s able to hold her gaze. Maybe it’s because he knows he deserves the venom in it.

“I’m sorry, Yeva.”

“You’re sorry?” Yeva’s pitch begins to tick upward. “This whole time, I thought she’d died helplessly! I thought, I can’t blame Khan, he’s just a normal drone, what could he have done? But Nori had the Solver! She would have been capable of defending herself, which means, if she died anyway, she died after doing ninety nine percent of everything she had to do to keep herself alive on her own, and you couldn’t even bring out one percent to help her? I knew you watched her die, Khan! But now I know you watched her die because you couldn’t summon one percent of the man Nori saw in you!” That triangle is buzzing in Yeva’s hand, red as the tears on her display. “What excuse could you possibly have?”

Khan doesn’t know what else to do. He slips from his chair and onto his knees.

“I don’t have one,” He says, voice cracking. Some parts of Yeva’s assessment are out of order, but it doesn’t matter. He’d been there and he couldn’t save her. “I couldn’t do anything. Nori was always so much more than I deserved. She was incredible. If who I had the privilege of knowing is only some of who she was when you two were younger, then I can’t imagine you losing more of her. Losing her twice. Yeva,” He implores, “I couldn’t help Nori. I’m trying to help Uzi. And I have no fucking idea how. I won’t ask you to forgive me, but I need your help. If not for me, or even for Uzi, then for Nori. Please.”

Yeva’s expression has remained steely and livid, not even blinking away tears, and the Solver symbol is still burning bright, brandished at Khan.

 “How could I possibly be of any help?”

“Uzi is so much like Nori,” Khan begins cautiously. “Apparently, more than even Nori realized. The thing happening to Uzi…I…I don’t think it’s this Solver thing, or, at least not entirely. But you’d know better than me how to approach a mini Nori about any sort of kooky, insane shit.”

Yeva regards Khan unflinchingly before lifting a brow and asking,

“You want me to coach you on parenting?”

Khan sputters.

“No, no, I mean…maybe. No. Yes? Gah!” He scrubs at his display. “I won’t say no to parenting advice. Let’s…let’s put a pin in that, I guess.”

Yeva makes Khan endure several more tense seconds of silence before giving an exhale that could pass for amusement and lowering her arm, Solver fizzling out.  

“Not sure how great a mentor I’d be. Doll needs a reality check I can’t cash, no matter how hard I try. Niko might be a better person to talk to about having a difficult daughter.” She huffs, then finally uproots herself and moves back toward the table, resituating herself in her chair. She glances at Khan over the rim of her cup as she takes a sip of gasoline, and when she lowers it, Khan can hear the click of her tongue. “Get off the floor, you shambling mess of a man.”

Khan gets off the floor. He’s not even stung by Yeva’s assessment of him. It’s right on the money. He can’t blame Yeva for not knowing what Nori saw in him. He doesn’t know what Nori saw in him. He quietly sits in the chair opposite Yeva, hands flat on the table as he murmurs, almost to himself,

“I loved her. I still do.” The hairline fault in Yeva’s composure widens by a fraction of an inch as her brow peaks. Khan feels tears prick on his display as he shakily continues, “It…it should have been m—”

“Don’t.” Yeva interrupts him with a cool firmness as opposed to an icy bite. “She wouldn’t want you to say that.”

Khan’s heart aches. Yeah. Nori wouldn’t want him to say that, she’s right. He scrubs a hand down his visor with a nod.

“I still don’t expect you to forgive me.”

“I won’t.” The certainty and speed with which she replies force a wry, apologetic chuckle from his mouth. “But I’m nothing if not practical. I can help you for Uzi’s sake. So,” She tips back her cup, emptying it and setting it down on the table with a clink. “Why did you come?”

“Well…what I really need your help with, what I came here to ask you, is to help me sort through all Nori’s crazed ramblings. I could never make any sense of them, and she was never lucid enough during the bouts of prophesizing to remember what they meant when she came to.”

Yeva hums, eyes narrowing in thought.

“I can do that. I have more of her things here you could take a look at as well, but I’m not sure what you could find that’s related to Uzi’s problem. You say the thing happening to Uzi isn’t the Solver awakening?”

“I honestly have no idea. It looks…” He exhales sharply, screwing up his mouth before mumbling, “…murder droney?”

Yeva cocks a brow.

“…Explain.”