Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The sound of metallic wings filled the air as a disassembly drone soared by. Its wings slowed, allowing for a smooth landing on the ground. The drone’s gaze locked onto the pod ship it had arrived in—damaged, nonfunctional, but in the process of being repaired. The company had sent them to Copper-9 to wipe out the planet's worker drones, and this was their base of operations.

The disassembly drone stepped into the pod, scanning the dim interior. A worker drone cowered under a table, oblivious to the towering figure now looming within the pod. The disassembly drone saw an opportunity. Its claws activated with a menacing click, and its mouth stretched into a nightmarish grin, revealing razor-sharp teeth that could shame a shark. The sight alone could make an entire room tremble.

Carefully, silently, the disassembly drone crept toward its prey. Step by step, inch by inch, it drew closer and closer, savoring the anticipation of an easy prey.

But just as the disassembly drone was within reach, the worker drone slipped out from beneath the table. With a knowing smirk, it grabbed a green-glowing weapon that had been strategically placed beside it. The disassembly drone froze, its eyes widening in shock.

The smug expression on the worker drone's face told the disassembly drone everything it needed to know. The worker's next words only confirmed its suspicion.

"Gotcha," the worker drone said, taking a leisurely look at its would-be attacker. The smirk widened as the disassembly drone muttered in defeat.

"You're no fun," it grumbled, deactivating its claws and allowing its shark-like maw to close. The worker drone laughed—a mocking, triumphant sound.

"If you're going to try to scare me," the worker said with a teasing tone, "maybe don't be so loud while flying next time, huh?" The disassembly drone rolled its eyes, exasperated.

"So... Uzi," the drone began, using the worker’s name for the first time. "How was school?"

"Oh, you know... the usual crap," Uzi replied dryly. "But hey, it’s Friday. You know what that means, right, V?" she asked, addressing the disassembly drone by her name.

"Yeah, it means you’ll be hanging around us more—oh." V’s reply was cut short by a sound coming from behind the pod. She immediately recognized its meaning. "The others are back," she announced as her partners returned from patrol.

Spotting the worker and V, the taller of the two new arrivals—a male disassembly drone—greeted them in his typical goofy tone. "Oh, hey Uzi! Hey V!" he called out enthusiastically.

"Hey, N. Hey, J," Uzi replied, acknowledging the duo. J, the leader of the group, merely nodded with a curt "Sup" in response.

It was finally Friday, which meant Uzi had the weekend to do whatever she wanted. She could spend the rest of the day with the disassembly drones. Grabbing her bag from her bedroom, she filled it with snacks, games, and other essentials—things she could use to pass the time with the drones or repair the ship.

She didn’t bother leaving a note for her father to let him know she wouldn’t be at home tonight and would be staying with her friends instead. She knew he wouldn’t notice her absence, too consumed by work and his endless grief over her late mother.

Uzi wasn’t dumb; quite the opposite. She’d once had some of the best grades in school. But being mocked as a “nerd” for earning a single high grade—and not even receiving a simple “Congratulations on getting the best grade in the whole school!”—had drained any enthusiasm she had for academics. Her sharp mind wasn’t just limited to schoolwork, though. Uzi also had the insight to see through her father, Khan. She understood that the reason he seemed so distant wasn’t just his grief—it was because he saw her as a painful reminder of his late wife. Their similarities in both appearance and personality were undeniable, and while Uzi missed her mother as well, she wished her father could see her for who she truly was, rather than the shadow of someone he had lost.

So, Uzi channeled her focus into what she loved most: mechanical work. It gave her purpose and independence, something that school and her father’s grief could never provide.

She had to be exceptionally skilled for the disassembly drones—including V and J—to trust her enough to tinker with their ship without issue. In fact, without her mechanical expertise, she would’ve never even met the drones.

With everything packed, Uzi only had one more step: sneaking out the door and into the night. It was something she’d been doing for over a year without being noticed—or even suspected.

With the keycard she had stolen years ago, Uzi had just unlocked the door in front of her. The moment it swung open, the sight waiting behind it made her jump.

“OH ROBO-JESUS!” she blurted, startled by what—or rather, who —she saw.

"And just where are you going?" asked her father, Khan, standing there with a tablet in hand. Uzi noticed it was displaying security camera footage—explaining exactly how he’d known she was behind the door.

“Uhm…” Uzi stammered, her mind racing. She hadn’t anticipated bumping into her father, much less him interrogating her. Crap. What was she supposed to say? She was caught red-handed sneaking out! “I was... uh…” She hesitated, and then, in a panic, grasped for the first excuse that came to mind. “…going to sneak out to make out with my... boyfriend? That I definitely have?” she finished awkwardly.

Yeah, that wasn’t going to work. Judging by the way her father burst out laughing, it definitely didn’t.

“Seriously, where are you going at this hour—and on a Sunday?” he pressed, clearly not buying her excuse.

“Okay, okay, you caught me!” Uzi exclaimed, throwing her hands up in defeat. She scrambled to come up with something better . “I, uh… I need to measure the exterior hydraulic mechanisms of Door One. For a school project! Yeah! I’m working on… big ol’ doors. Just like my old man builds!” she said with an awkward grin. Her father’s expression shifted slightly—he seemed to believe this one a little more, but she could tell she wasn’t quite in the clear.

“I want to join the WDF and hide behind doors like cowards, playing cards all day…” she muttered under her breath. Her father chuckled.

“We don’t just play cards—” Khan started, but was promptly interrupted as the door behind him opened, revealing a group of WDF members doing exactly that. One of them, Braxton, glanced over.

“Hey, Khan! Can you grab a fresh pack? We’ve been playing so much that the numbers have faded!” he called out, before noticing Uzi’s presence. “Oh, hey, Uzi!”

Her father quickly shut the door. “You were saying?” Uzi said, smirking.

“Well…” he began, taking a moment to compose himself. “When you build doors this good—” Khan turned to the door and hugged it as though it were a beloved pet. “Good door. Good door,” he whispered dreamily. Uzi couldn’t help but cringe; her father was clearly a bit too attached to his work.

“There’s no need to fight! Uzi, this is great news!” he declared, turning his attention back to her. “Here!” He handed her a wrench, his tone growing oddly sentimental. “The wrench I used to tighten bolts on my first door prototypes,” he said, his expression darkening momentarily. “And… to put your mother out of her misery when the Murder Drones got to her with that nanite acid…”

Uzi stiffened. Her father’s sudden tonal shift was unsettling, even for her. And she wasn’t exactly easy to scare—she was friends with the Disassembly Drones and planned to crash with them that night, after all! But this was… something else . Thankfully, Khan’s tone quickly returned to normal as he placed the wrench in her hands. “I want you to have it!” he said cheerfully.

“Neat. Therapy’s fun,” Uzi muttered, eyeing her father warily.

Khan threw the door open again and called out to the WDF members, “Guys! My daughter is into doors!” A chorus of cheers erupted from the group. Unfortunately, another door opened moments later, allowing snow and a bitterly cold breeze to swirl into the room. The cheers quickly turned to grumbles.

“She’s gonna be outside for a bit, examining the exterior of Door One!” Khan announced, before turning back to Uzi. “Your door-specific destiny awaits!” he said with a proud smile.

Uzi blinked. “Uh… go doors!” she said weakly as she stepped outside. The door closed behind her, but not before she caught a glimpse of her father tearing up and exclaiming, “They grow up so fast!”

Finally, she was free. She let out a sigh of relief and made a mental note: next time she tried to sneak out, she definitely needed to disable the security cameras first.

"Hey guys," Uzi started, still slightly nervous after her recent encounter. "I brought DVDs," she said.

"Yay!" N exclaimed in his usual overexcited tone.

"Cool," J said with a smirk on her lips.

"Finally, something fun to do!" V added. "I was getting bored out of my mind."

"And before I forget," Uzi began again, "I got caught sneaking out."

The disassembly drones' eyes widened in shock. Uzi couldn't blame them—after sneaking away effortlessly for a year, the thought of getting caught was unsettling.

"But I came up with an excuse and managed to get away," she continued, giving them a thumbs up. Relief washed over their faces as they collectively exhaled the air they’d been holding.

"Oh, thank God," J muttered. "You need to be more careful next time."

"I know," Uzi replied. "Those cameras are such a pain. I should deactivate them next time... but that might look suspicious. Cameras suddenly going offline without any reason?" She trailed off, frowning.

"You got caught because of the cameras?" J asked. Uzi nodded.

"This could be a huge problem," Uzi murmured.

"Don't you know how to hack?" V asked. Uzi's eyes flashed with offense.

"Of course I do! What do you think I am?" she snapped. She'd just been considering hacking the cameras earlier but dismissed it because it might arouse suspicion and jeopardize their plans. And now V had the audacity to ask such a question? Uzi was one of the most skilled hackers on all of Copper-9!

"So," V continued, "you could hack into the system, figure out the blind spots, and use them to your advantage while sneaking out, right? As a bonus, you could even monitor the workers' movements."

J blinked in surprise. V wasn't stupid—far from it—but she usually relied on brute strength and sheer aggression. Seeing her suggest a clever, well-thought-out solution was... unexpected, to say the least.

"Wow, V..." J began with a smirk. "I always knew you had a brain, but I never thought you knew how to use it."

"Oh, bite me!" V snapped, clearly offended.

"Hey!" Uzi interjected, even more offended. "What did I say about stealing my catchphrase?"

"That was a smart plan, V!" N chimed in cheerfully.

"Shut up, idiot!" V retorted, though her voice softened as she added, almost inaudibly, "...Thanks."

A faint blush crept across her face. Stupid emotions. Stupid crushes. They always made her feel ridiculous. To her utter dismay, she caught Uzi and J's smirks widening.

She glared at them, her blush deepening even further.

As it was Friday, the only thing they needed to do was get the couch ready, set up the DVDs, and hit play. The movie began—a human horror classic from 1996, Scream.

Uzi's dislike of humans hadn’t lessened in the slightest, but she couldn’t deny it: humans made some really cool stuff. Shows, movies, and—most importantly—anime.

As the thought of her disdain for humans crossed her mind, Uzi couldn't help but recall the arguments she’d had with J. And not just J—there were heated discussions with V, and even N. The memories of those exchanges surfaced uninvited.

Change was happening to all of them, slowly but surely, ever since they’d made their deal.

Uzi still remembered every argument they’d shared... and she was certain they hadn’t forgotten either.

V had a knack for spotting psychopaths, and this time was no exception—she had identified the killer, or rather, the two killers.

"Wow, V, how do you always guess right?" N asked, genuine curiosity in their voice.

V only shrugged in response.

"One psycho recognizes another," Uzi teased, earning herself a middle finger from V.

The shrill wail of alarms shattered the moment, signaling the approach of something—or someone. J bolted to the console, her eyes widening in horror at the sensor readings.

"Uzi, you need to get out..." J's voice trembled, the shock palpable.

Uzi whipped her head toward J. "Get out? Why?"

She didn’t need to ask again. One glance at the sensors and her heart sank. Three figures loomed in the display.

"Shit..." Uzi whispered, her voice barely audible over the pounding in her ears.

X landed on the snow, followed by Z, M, Y, who landed on his side. X glanced at the ship pod in front of him, spotting the squad's leader crawling atop it.

“And what are YOU doing here?” J hissed, glaring at X and his squad.

“I was sent here because of your sheer incompetence, that’s why,” X sneered, cutting straight to the point.

J raised an eyebrow, clearly offended. “Excuse me?” she demanded. X and a few of his teammates rolled their eyes as the other two squad members wandered off to the outside of the ship.

“For months—almost a year now—your kill count has been at zero,” X said, causing the three disassemblers to frown in confusion.

‘Zero kills?’ V wondered. Sure, their kill count had significantly decreased since their deal with Uzi, but they still took down worker drones that weren’t from Outpost-3 or Uzi’s outpost. They knew that if their kill count were truly zero, they’d have unwanted guests by now. Their kill count might no longer top the ranks, but it wasn’t remotely close to zero. So, how could this be?

“What kind of drug are you on, pal?” V sneered. She might have been spending more time with her squad, which now essentially included Uzi, but her kill count was still comfortably above average. X scowled, clearly irritated by her remark.

“The company sent us here,” X stated firmly. “So you’d better choose your words carefully, pal,” he added, prompting V to burst into laughter.

“I decide what I’m careful with, pal.” X rolled his eyes as his teammate, Z, interjected.

“Then let us give you an example of what you should fear, punk!” Z declared. V jumped, landing gracefully in front of him.

“Go ahead and try,” V hissed, as N tried to pull her back, attempting to prevent a fight.

J glanced behind her and saw Uzi still on the move, quick on her feet. They just needed to buy more time or, if lucky, make the intruders leave entirely. Turning back to the disassemblers, J sneered.

“We’ve been killing drones every day at an above-average rate,” J said. “Congratulations—someone’s made a fool of you,” she added venomously. X rolled his eyes.

Groaning, X exclaimed, “Why don’t you see for yourself, idiot?!” He pressed his watch, projecting a hologram with a message:

‘Hello, Squad X. I would like to inform you that, due to Squad J’s lack of kills over the past nine months, you are tasked with confirming whether they and their squad are fulfilling their duties. Their current kill count stands at zero for precisely nine months, twenty hours, forty-two minutes, and thirty-nine seconds.’

The message left Squad J utterly stunned.

First of all, since when were these watches issued to disassembler drones? Second, how could their kill count be zero when they’d killed at least 20 worker drones just yesterday? Sure, it was below the 50-per-day average, but zero? No way. Clearly, this was either a prank or a case of mistaken data.

J sighed, rolling her eyes. “Look, pal, if my kill count had been zero for that long, I’d have overheated and died by now, wouldn’t I?” she retorted, lying through her teeth. Most of the oil she consumed didn’t come from deceased worker drones.

Lie or not, J’s point was hard for X to ignore, though he tried. “Then how do you explain this message?” he hissed.

“Someone probably sent it as a prank or something—simple as that,” J said.

“It CAN’T be that simple!” X shouted. “Have you never even touched these watches?” he demanded.

“Why the actual hell would I even have one of those watches?!” J snapped, her reply clearly shocking the newcomers.

“Did you receive the message?” X pressed. J’s frown was answer enough.

X groaned, facepalming, as M, one of his teammates, asked, “When’s the last time you got a message from the company?”

“I don’t know…a year, maybe a little more?” J replied nonchalantly.

“Are you all just going to keep arguing, or can I kill that worker running?” Z interrupted, causing N, V, and J’s hearts to skip a beat. Uzi was the only worker they could think of.

“Worker?” Y asked, turning in time to spot the fleeing figure

'Fuck' echoed repeatedly as N, V, and J confirmed that the fleeing drone was, indeed, Uzi.

Uzi was racing toward the outpost, her railgun slung over her shoulder—a fortunate decision, given how far the outpost was. No matter how fast she ran, she might not make it in time. The snow crunched beneath her boots as she pushed herself harder, her steps pounding with determination. She wouldn’t stop until she reached the doors, threw them open, and got the hell inside.

As she approached, her keycard was already in hand, ready to swipe. The doors slid open with a hiss, and the drones inside groaned in unison as the icy wind invaded their card game.

“BITE ME!” Uzi shouted, storming in and frantically trying to close the door. “Close it, close it, close it!” she pleaded, her hands moving faster and faster, desperate for the door to obey her command and slide shut. She prayed no disassembly drones—other than N, V, or J—had followed her inside. The worker drones stared at her, bewildered. She’d been outside for two hours, and now she was barging in like this?

Her hopes soared as the doors began to close. But then, her heart plummeted. Claws appeared between the narrowing gap, prying the doors open. Her pulse froze—no, it wasn’t just her pulse. She felt nothing beating inside her, only a primal instinct screaming at her to run.

“They were here for over a year, and they couldn’t accomplish what we did in less than five minutes,” X sneered, his thoughts dripping with disdain. Pathetic, he mused. Can’t believe those idiots were at the top of the company rankings a year ago.

X’s tail slithered through the door, stabbing the scanner and shattering it. The door slid open, granting him and his squad entry.

“Nice game you’ve got going,” M remarked coldly. “We’ll be taking it.” As the worker drones scattered in panic, one hesitated.

“Uh… we have others for you—” The worker’s words were cut short as M’s claw impaled him, slamming him against the wall. M raised his claw higher.

“I wasn’t asking,” he growled, slashing downward. The worker’s head exploded, leaving a splatter of oil staining the wall.

Meanwhile, Y opened fire on the fleeing drones, one bullet punching clean through a worker’s chassis. Z pounced on another, tearing them apart.

One worker managed to catch up to the shorter drone who had led them inside. “Hey, Uzi, I just realized—no one’s said my name out loud, so I’m just letting you know that I’m—” Whatever he was about to say remained unheard as Z sliced him clean in half.

A door slid open nearby. “Pretty nice hydraulics, huh?” a drone commented, stepping inside—only to freeze at the carnage. Bodies were strewn across the hallway, oil pooling everywhere.

The drone’s gaze darted to the disassembly squad, then to Uzi. X recalled the name from the sliced-in-half worker’s final words.

“Oh god, what have you done?” the worker gasped. But X had no time for drama. He landed in front of Uzi and another worker drone, the impact blowing them backward. Uzi, the purple one, recovered quickly, her balance impeccable. She raised a gun—at him? Ha!

X chuckled, his amusement growing as V, N, and J arrived, their expressions dumbfounded.

“Thanks for leading us in,” X mocked. “I’ll make sure to credit you to your comrades and to the company.”

“Bite me! Dad, get down!” Uzi shouted, her finger tightening on the trigger, ready to blow their cores.

“Uzi, you led a murder drone in?” Khan wailed. “My beautiful doors!”

“Not the fucking time, Dad! Get d—” Uzi’s words turned into a gasp as X’s wing impaled her shoulder, slamming her against the wall. Oil sprayed from the wound.

X chuckled darkly, watching Khan spiral into panic. But much to his surprise, Uzi punched the yellow light on his wing—the weak spot of the disassembly drones’ wings. The light flickered off, and X’s grip faltered, forcing him to release her.

Uzi tackled X, knocking him to the ground and into a pile of oil-filled metallic barrels. X yelped in pain.

“Fuck!” he snarled, watching Uzi lead her father away. His wings refused to move until the yellow light flickered back on. X’s head snapped toward his teammates, who stood frozen in shock. Above them, N, V, and J burst through the ceiling, ready to claim their kills.

“What are you all waiting for?!” X roared at his squad.

Uzi ran, pulling her father away from the carnage they had just escaped. Her father was even more dumbfounded than she was—his mouth hung open in shock, his eyes trembling, frozen in place. Her steps quickened, faster and faster, as she silently prayed that N, V, or J would find a solution to all of this.

For a year—an entire year—since she had secretly struck a deal with the disassembly drones, things had been relatively smooth. Sure, there were arguments here and there, but nothing like this. This disaster threatened to undo everything they had worked so hard to achieve, flushing it all down the drain.

Her eyes darted behind her, scanning for any pursuers. No one. But it was a shame she couldn’t see through the ceiling. Something burst through it, landing gracefully on the ground with a force that shook the earth. The impact sent Khan tumbling onto his backside and caused Uzi to stumble. She turned to face the attacker, only to be met with a familiar face.

It was N.

For a brief moment, their eyes locked. Uzi’s gaze flickered to Khan, then back to N. Not knowing what else to do, she tackled N against a wall, eliciting a startled yelp from him. Seeing his expression, she leaned in and whispered urgently, “Pretend.” Her voice carried the weight of her fears—how badly things could spiral if they made even one wrong move.

N understood. He pushed her off gently, pinning her to the ground in a mock struggle. Suddenly, two more disassemblers crashed through the ceiling with a deafening noise. Thankfully, it was J and V. Like N, their eyes locked with Uzi’s, understanding passing silently between them.

Uzi scrambled to her feet, adopting a fighting stance. N moved to J and V’s side, whispering something to them. Without hesitation, V lunged at Uzi, pinning her to the ground. Uzi let out a fake yelp as V slammed her down, careful not to hurt her. J, however, stood awkwardly, unsure of what to do. Luckily, Khan was too stunned by the staged fight to notice J’s lackluster acting.

Uzi glanced at J, signaling with her eyes—first to J’s acid tail, then to her own hand. It took J a moment to understand. Hesitantly, she followed Uzi’s silent command, stabbing a hole through Uzi’s hand with her tail. Uzi screamed in genuine pain, causing J to flinch, immediately regretting her compliance.

V and Uzi continued their fake struggle. Uzi kicked V lightly in the stomach—not hard enough to hurt, but enough to push her off. She turned to her father, shouting, “Dad, go!” as N pinned her against the wall with his wings. Khan froze, paralyzed by indecision.

“Go!” Uzi yelled again, her voice trembling under the weight of their crumbling world. “I’ll hold them off. Just go!”

Khan took a step back, his breath knocked out of him. With a shaking hand, he pressed a button, closing the door that separated him from his daughter and the disassembly drones.

As the door sealed shut, Uzi exhaled in relief, finally dropping her act. At least her father had listened to her, just this once. But her friends didn’t share her relief.

“He just left her,” J muttered in disbelief, as though seeking confirmation from the others.

“He did,” V replied, her hollow eyes mirroring J’s.

All of them were relieved to finally drop the act—though some were less at ease than others after witnessing Khan’s decision to close the door on his own daughter. He had left her behind to "fight" against three disassembly drones alone, a decision that didn’t seem to bother Uzi at all. However, they had no time to dwell on it; they needed to find a solution and fast.

Uzi pushed herself to her feet with N’s help, wincing as pain radiated from the hole in her hand. J hesitated before stepping closer.

“S-Sorry…” she muttered, gently taking Uzi’s injured hand and pressing it to her mouth. Her saliva worked to neutralize the acid left behind and mend the stab wound—an action she had only done because Uzi had silently ordered her to.

“It’s fine,” Uzi reassured her, brushing the incident off. “We needed to get out of my father’s view so we could figure this out.”

As Uzi spoke, N, V, and J joined her, their minds racing to come up with a plan. Once J was done and released Uzi’s hand, now completely healed, Uzi brought up one immediate problem.

“My railgun. I dropped it when they attacked me.”

“I’ll go get it,” N volunteered, launching into the air to search for the lost weapon.

Turning back to the others, Uzi’s expression sharpened. “Now… how sharp are those pens again?” she asked, a glint of determination flashing in her eyes.

Both V and J exchanged knowing smirks. Their friend had a plan.

“So, they found our evacuation spot,” Khan said, watching Lizzy and Doll help Thad to his feet after he’d been thrown across the floor by one of the disassemblers. “But if we build a door really quick—”

“Are you kidding me?!” Thad snapped, interrupting Khan with a grunt. “You’re the WDF, right? Defend!” He spat the words out, groaning as he noticed the workers hesitating, taking a step back.

“For real?” Thad muttered, disappointed. Suddenly, a laugh echoed through the room. Thad jumped, his eyes darting to the disassemblers—just in time to see one drop from above, stabbing him through the shoulder.

Thad yelped, clutching his wound as the disassembly drone stared him down.

“Finally! I thought you three would never arrive!” one of the disassembly drones said—the leader, Thad guessed—just as three more drones appeared.

“We were just having our own fun somewhere,” one of the newcomers shot back, holding someone. Thad squinted. Was that Uzi?!

The purple-haired drone dangled in the grasp of a disassembly drone that looked like a girl wearing a jacket. Without ceremony, the drone threw Uzi to the ground, her body sprawling across the floor.

“So, I guess we can kill everybody and save the chit-chat for later?” the drone holding Thad suggested. Much to everyone’s surprise, the disassembler who had thrown Uzi started cackling at the idea.

“Aw, did you hear that, J?” she said, shoving a pigtailed drone lightly. “She thinks we’re going to kill everyone!” Her tone was mocking.

“Aw, I heard it, V,” ‘J’ replied, smirking. “I’m sorry, but the ones who are going to die here…”

“It’s you!” a voice shouted, cutting her off. Thad recognized it just as a pen was shoved through the disassembly drone’s headband, causing her to drop him to the ground.

Thad yelped as he hit the floor, quickly dragging himself closer to the others. The disassembly drone yanked the pen out of her headband, staring at it in surprise. Before she could react, a worker drone leapt forward, drop kicking the pen back into her headband—this time through a different light.

The worker drone vaulted off the disassembler, soaring across the room and landing smoothly beside the other disassemblers: ‘J,’ ‘V,’ and one whose name Thad didn’t know yet.

To everyone’s shock, the worker drone was Uzi—very alive and definitely not dead. She fist-bumped the disassemblers she stood alongside, smirking.

“The fuck?!” the leader shouted, staring at Uzi in disbelief. She was alive—and acting friendly with the disassembly drones?!

Was Uzi happy that their deal had to be revealed? Not at all. The problems it could bring her later were endless.

But were the workers’ and newcomers’ faces worth it? Absolutely. The shock was priceless—the way their jaws practically hit the floor after the reveal was hilarious.

Sadly, Uzi didn’t have time to savor their reactions. One of the newcomers—the one she’d thrown the pen at, Z, if she remembered J’s briefing correctly—was already snapping the pen in half and lunging at her. Before Z could reach her, V’s fist slammed into her visor mid-air, sending her flying into a wall.

Y leapt to Z’s defense, and the two of them—Z now back on her feet—prepared to charge at V.

“Come on, fuckers!” V shouted, drawing her swords. “I can take both of you on, alone!” she roared.

Meanwhile, X aimed at J, his hand morphing into a glock. That left Uzi and N to deal with M.

M was shorter than N, but with slicked-back hair and clad in a JCJenson uniform instead of a pilot’s suit, didn’t stand a chance. Against Uzi and N together? He was as good as dead.

V’s sword clashed against Z’s, sending Z stumbling. Y readied a punch, but V ducked just in time, slamming her elbow into Y’s stomach. He gasped, staggered, and yelped as V’s fist smashed into his visor, sending him sprawling to the ground.

Z’s fist struck V’s back, forcing her forward. She spun around just in time to see Z’s next punch hurtling toward her visor. The impact made her yelp and stumble. Clutching her face in pain, V caught sight of a third punch coming her way. She ducked, narrowly avoiding it, and retaliated with a punch to Z’s chest, knocking the wind out of her. Seizing the moment, V grabbed Z’s arm, twisted behind her, and locked her in an armlock, eliciting a sharp cry.

Still gasping for air, Z attempted to sweep V’s legs, but V anticipated the move. She lifted her left leg and drove her knee into Z’s waist, drawing a pained shout. Spotting Y rising to his feet, V flipped Z over, slamming her hard against a wall. The impact cracked Z’s visor, and she crumpled to the ground.

Y lunged forward, aiming a punch at V’s chest, but she sidestepped, causing him to miss. He swung again, this time at her visor, but V blocked it with her forearm. With a swift counter, she drove her fist into Y’s core, knocking the wind out of him.

V followed up with a powerful uppercut to Y’s chin, sending him flying several feet into the air before he crashed onto the metallic ground below.

V surveyed the scene: Z lay sprawled on the ground, and Y was still gasping for air.

“Is that all you’ve got?” V teased, a smirk playing on her lips. “I’m disappointed.”

J and X, unlike V versus Z and Y, were far closer in terms of power, making their battle much more evenly matched.

X swung his sword in a sharp arc, but J ducked just in time, causing the blade to miss its mark. Seizing the moment, J attempted an uppercut, but X sidestepped her strike. Her fist grazed past him as he grabbed her arm, pulling her off her feet and sending her soaring through the air. She landed hard, sprawling across the ground.

X wasted no time and lunged forward, aiming to plunge his sword into J's chest. But J blocked the attack, gripping the blade tightly. She planted her legs against X's stomach and, with all her strength, pushed upward, sending him hurtling through the air.

X crashed into the ceiling, cracking it upon impact. J launched herself toward him, her sword poised for a decisive strike. She thrust it forward, aiming for X's core, but he swiped to the side, causing her blade to pierce the ceiling instead.

"Traitor!" X roared, his sword clashing against J's. "Siding with the worker drones!" he hissed, his fury palpable.

J clenched her fist and drove it into X's stomach, knocking him backward. Without hesitation, she activated her submachine gun, ready to unleash a hail of bullets.

"My motives are my own, and they don't concern you!" J declared as her gunfire lit up the room in flashes of yellow. X dodged and weaved, narrowly avoiding the onslaught.

While J’s battle was evenly matched, the same couldn’t be said for N and Uzi’s. Their opponent, M, had few advantages against them.

M was overwhelmed—not just by the smaller worker drone’s agility and combat skills, but also by the towering disassembly drone’s sheer strength and advanced weaponry. Even worse, their coordinated teamwork made the fight nearly impossible for him to manage.

N fired a missile at M, who successfully ducked as it passed inches above his hair. What he didn’t expect was their next move.

His eyes hollowed as the purple-haired worker drone soared toward him, landing a powerful kick across his face that sent him staggering back. Before he could recover, N’s fist collided with his chin in a vicious uppercut, launching him into the air.

M barely had time to gasp before another blow struck him—this time, a brutal kick to his core that sent him hurtling across the room.

His situation only worsened when N stepped down hard on his core, slamming him against the metal ground with enough force to leave a deep dent shaped like the disassembler drone. N hunched, legs tensed, preparing to launch himself back into the air. M, trapped under his opponent’s foot, was pressed even deeper into the dent as N leaped.

M’s breath came in ragged gasps from the relentless beating. He barely had time to react when something small—sharp—struck his wing’s weak spot: the yellow light.

As the wing fell, its yellow glow flickered before dimming to black. It wouldn’t function again until reset.

M realized then—it wasn’t just luck. The worker drone hadn't hit X’s weak spot by accident. She knew exactly what she was doing. She had targeted it deliberately, fully aware of the consequences.

There were only two explanations: Either the workers had somehow gained knowledge about their weaknesses—unlikely, considering they were always too busy hiding like cowards to study their enemies.

The other explanation was clearly the right one. She knew—because the others had told her. They trusted her enough to reveal their weaknesses, their fragile spots…

This hadn’t just begun in the last few minutes, had it? No—this had been festering for much longer. That betrayal, that recklessness—it had likely been unfolding for months. And those fools hadn’t merely sided with the worker drone; they had handed her their vulnerabilities.

M yanked the pen from his wing. With no better use for it, he snapped it in half.

His fury ignited. He launched himself toward the worker drone. She barely had time for her eyes to hollow before his body slammed into hers, knocking her off her feet and shoving her roughly backward until she crashed onto the ground.

He readied his rifle. This time, he wouldn’t hesitate. He would tear holes through her head—

The deafening boom of a shotgun cut through his thoughts.

Pain exploded through him as his lower arm—and his rifle—were blown apart.

M’s head snapped toward the source of the shot, just in time to see N barreling toward him at high speed. He barely registered the punch before it smashed into his visor, cracking it.

M was knocked backward. Before he could even hit the ground, something seized his legs.

N.

The disassembler drone’s grip tightened around his legs, yanking him back with brutal strength. And then, before M could process what was happening—he was spinning.

N hurled M into the air, sending him tumbling. He barely had time to register the holes being torn through his chassis as shot after shot from N’s shotgun blasted into him, propelling him higher with each hit.

Then N flew toward him, positioning himself above.

A crushing kick slammed against M’s back.

He plummeted.

Metal screamed as he crashed into the ground, leaving another deep dent in his wake.

M lay there for a moment, mind dazed from the impact.

When he finally turned his head, he saw the worker drone grinning smugly, injured but defiant. With her uninjured arm, she leveled a gun at him.

Her expression darkened.

“Fuck you,” she muttered.

M had no time to react—no time to perceive what happened next.

The entire room ignited in green.

Blinding emerald light engulfed M’s visor, its searing intensity ripping through him in an instant. In less than a second, the heat all but erased him—his form dissolving into near nothingness before he even had a chance to react.

Before the green light bathed the room in emerald, J and X’s battle had been evenly matched. J threw a punch—X dodged. X retaliated—J evaded. She managed to land a hit, but X countered effortlessly.

J staggered as X’s right hook smashed across her face.
“Fucker!” he roared, throwing another punch—J ducked, his fist slicing through the air just above her head.

J’s knee met X’s stomach, knocking him back, gasping for breath.

X drew his sword, swinging for her neck—but J met his blade with her own, steel clashing in a fierce grind.

J launched her left fist forward, but X blocked with his wrist, grabbing her arm. Her eyes went hollow as he lifted and tossed her effortlessly, sending her airborne before she crashed to the ground.

"You and your squad were at the top a year ago!" X shouted. "And yet, you—"

He never finished. J spun, her leg smashing against his visor. X was sent flying, crashing hard onto the floor.

"Shut it!" J snarled, springing to her feet. She swapped her sword for an SMG and opened fire, attempting to tear holes into X’s chassis—but he took flight, evading every shot.

J followed him, chasing through the air. But X was already ahead, raising his own SMG. Their shots collided midair, nullifying each other in bursts of energy.

They exchanged fire, dodging and weaving—until an emerald flash consumed the room.

Both fighters turned instinctively toward the blinding light. When it faded, there was nothing left of M except a corpse. Uzi stood over the remains, victorious, with N by her side.

Uzi spat at the remnants.

J snapped her attention back to X, who hovered, dumbfounded. A worker had reduced a disassembly to ashes. X’s hollow eyes flicked to J.

J smirked and rocketed forward, stopping inches above his head before her leg slammed into his skull. X tumbled from the air, crashing hard into the ground.

Groaning, he limped to his feet and looked upward—but J was already gone. When he turned forward, her blade was inches from his throat.

J pressed down hard, forcing X to hunch over the ground as she pushed him back.

His eyes, hollow with realization, locked onto hers.

J’s sword overpowered his, slashing clean through X’s shoulder, severing his left arm. A second strike carved off his other limb.

X staggered backward. J swung again, slicing through his knees and cutting him down entirely. He collapsed, broken.

J took a moment to observe V’s battle—N joined her. X’s teammates were losing fast.

“Sorry,” a voice called.

J turned sharply—Uzi stood there, smirking at X’s mangled state.

“Guess I showed up late to help, huh?” she quipped. “Go on. Finish it.”

She handed J an uncharged railgun, its display showing 29 minutes left for a full recharge—but J wouldn’t need to wait.

She grabbed it without hesitation, switching her hand to an open wrist.

Uzi’s railgun aligned with J’s arm, scanning briefly before she handed it back.

J flexed her wrist.

“You wanna know the difference between you and me, X?”

Her railgun materialized—gold and black, unlike Uzi’s green and black.

Unlike hers, J’s was already loaded.

“Unlike you,” she said, aiming at X’s core.

His hollow eyes trembled, knowing exactly what was about to happen.

“I’m not the company’s dog.”

She pulled the trigger.

The room erupted in blinding gold light.

As golden light bathed the room, V sent Z stumbling with a punch, sending him crashing to the floor. N struck Y’s core with his fist, knocking the wind out of him. The two adversaries collapsed, overwhelmed by the unrelenting force of N and V.

It didn’t take long for Uzi and J to step into formation beside their squad, their gazes locked on Y and Z, whose hollowed eyes betrayed their impending doom. N and J brandished their swords while Uzi, still needing to wait 28 minutes, grabbed the nearest pen. J swiftly plucked it from her grasp and handed her the retractable sword instead. V, however, had no interest in blades—claws were her weapon of choice.

Y and Z barely stood a chance. Uzi took the first step, sword raised, prepared to strike, just as N and J positioned themselves to slash, while V readied to tear apart.

V charged forward, shoving her hand into Z’s core, ripping through it and tearing it from his body. Meanwhile, J and Uzi’s blades forced Y into submission, slicing through his limbs until only his head remained attached to his torso.

J smirked at her fallen opponent before turning to N. “All yours,” she said.

Uzi glanced at her, memories rushing back—J’s words when she had taken X down: “I’m not a dog,” J had said. Uzi recalled their exchange, a battle of sharp words before friendship had emerged from the ashes.

“That’s some big talk coming from a barely sentient toaster!”
“Well, I’d rather be barely sentient than not sentient at all!”
“And what’s that supposed to mean?!”
“It means I’m not a dog like you—the company’s obedient little pet!”

In the present, Uzi turned to J, giving her a nod of approval. J smirked, and both directed their attention to N.

N’s sword carved across Y’s chassis, exposing the core within. Without hesitation, he reached in, yanked it free, and began stabbing it mercilessly with his acid tail.

V, meanwhile, chose a different method to end Z. She tightened her grip, harder and harder, crushing the core in her grasp until it exploded into a thick puddle of ink.

With N’s final stab, Y’s core met its demise. Their fight was over. Their enemies had been slain.

...And if the fight was over, that meant—

Uzi stood frozen, their plan had worked. The workers knew. Their deal, their actions—everything was out in the open. They had fought without hesitation, without thinking of the consequences, but now...

She had told herself she was ready—for the hatred, the exile, the harsh words. She had lied. She wasn’t ready for any of it.

Least of all—for the unexpected sound of cheering.

The cheering only grew louder, but so did Uzi’s and her friends’ confusion.

They had braced for the worst—cans hurled at them, insults spat in their direction. Yet, they weren’t prepared for the worst… much less for the best.

And still, as Uzi took in the sound, the sight of the workers celebrating, she felt a small smile tug at her lips.

She stepped forward—only for J’s sword to flash in front of her, making her instinctively jump back.

Uzi turned to J, startled, only to find her glare fixed on her father.

“Why?” J demanded, her tone sharp, unforgiving.

Khan remained silent, but J pressed on. “You had no idea about our deal, so why did you leave her—your own daughter—for what could have been her death?!”

Gasps rippled through the crowd. The words hit like a storm.

Uzi froze. She had never thought of it that way. The weight of countless stares bore down on her—from the disassembly drones to Khan, then back to her.

Murmurs swelled in the air.

“Deal?”
“Left for dead?”
“Uzi made a deal with them?”

Uzi barely had time to react before J grabbed hold of her, pulling her onto the taller drone’s back.

“Wha—J—What are you doing?!”

“We’re leaving, Uzi,” J said firmly. “None of them cared enough to even realize you’ve spent more time with their sworn enemies than them.”

She took flight, N and V following suit, each briefly shooting a glare at Khan before ascending.

The disassemblers crashed through the fragile ceiling, escaping into the open sky. As they ascended, Uzi hesitated—glancing back one last time while still clinging to J’s back.

Back at their shipping pod, exhaustion weighed too heavily on them to celebrate their victory. Instead, they surrendered to sleep.

N and V drifted off quickly, curled together in their sleeping bag.

Uzi, however, wasn’t so lucky. J’s words echoed in her mind: "None of them cared enough to even realize you’ve spent more time with their sworn enemies than them."

What was she supposed to feel about that?

Part of her agreed—J was right. Thad was the only one who had never turned his back on her when she needed him. The rest? Just a collection of idiots, bullies too blind to even notice that Uzi vanished every weekend.

And yet… another part of her hesitated. J had been brutal. Maybe too brutal.

"J, are you awake?" Uzi whispered.

"Yep… Can’t sleep?" J responded, keeping her voice low so as not to wake N and V.

Uzi couldn’t deny that J’s words had truth to them—but doubt still gnawed at her. She chose to ignore it, just for a moment, to ask the question lingering in her mind.

"Don’t you think you were too… harsh, back there?" she murmured weakly.

J was silent for a beat before answering.

"Not at all," she said. "They ignored you for years. Your father never even bothered to check if you were home after school. He didn’t care enough to be in the same house as you."

J’s voice softened slightly, but her conviction remained. "You deserve better than them, Uzi… You just haven’t realized it yet."

Uzi turned to J, searching for something in her expression.

"...J," she whispered.

"Yeah?"

"...Thank you."

J smirked. "No problem, purple toaster."

She pulled Uzi closer, offering silent comfort. Uzi felt herself relax as she rested against J, who placed her head atop Uzi’s. In their quiet embrace, sleep finally came.

Chapter Text

"We've got to curb her trips to the dump." Thunder rumbled as the man spoke.

N listened to both sounds while holding the waiter's glass.

"And where is she even getting the hair to play dress-up with you all?" the man muttered. "Creepy…" He tossed his glass.

N caught it effortlessly with his trait, then instinctively bowed before walking off.

As he made his way through the hallway, he heard a familiar voice. A female drone—not the tallest of the bunch—joined him.

"Hello, big brother!" she said cheerfully. "Curious tone—where are you headed?"

"Oh, just taking this tray of glasses to the kitchen," N replied. "Master’s orders..."

She scoffed. She had never been one to follow orders, often clashing with J’s workaholic nature. It never escalated to physical fights, but every drone in the mansion had long lost count of the times the two argued when no humans were around. Though, N suspected the real reason for the ‘no humans nearby’ rule was their master's daughter’s dislike for their discussions.

Technically, N hadn’t received an actual order from the master. But he had been in the mansion long enough to know exactly what to do when given a glass.

As they walked, someone bumped into N, knocking him off balance. He yelped as he stumbled and looked up to see who he'd run into—V, a maid drone who lived in the mansion.

"Oh—I'm so sorry!" N apologized immediately.

"It's fine, I wasn't looking," V dismissed just as quickly.

Their hands brushed against each other, causing a small spark to flicker between them. Both drones’ visors flashed with a faint blush.

Cyn could’ve helped them break the awkward silence, but instead, she merely watched with an amused expression, raising a suggestive eyebrow.

"MOVE IT, YOU MORON!"

Suddenly, J arrived, kicking N’s head and knocking him to the ground once more. She ignored V’s shocked expression and Cyn’s glare as her gaze landed on someone in the hallway.

"Oh—HI, TESSA!" she said, voice sickly sweet.

Behind Tessa stood a small drone—no hair, cyan-colored eyes, wearing a random uniform.

"Ugh, another one?" J groaned as everyone turned to stare at the newcomer.

Suddenly, the entire vision glitched into black.

N woke up.

N’s eyes flashed open inside his visor as he scanned his surroundings. Relief washed over him—he was with his friends again. V slept soundly right beside him, her presence reassuring. Turning slightly, he saw Uzi and J nestled together, resting peacefully next to him and V.

As he gazed at the two sleeping figures, memories of the previous night flooded his mind. Every detail played back—long before the movie, the arrival of the newcomers, Uzi’s plan, the fight, their departure from the outpost with Uzi, and, of course, the quiet conversation they shared before everyone finally settled in for sleep.

Everything felt awkward after leaving the outpost. No one knew what to do now. A year of secrecy, hiding this whole ordeal from everyone, only for it to be exposed an hour ago. Silence hung heavy in the air—until Uzi, who hadn't even made the sound of breathing for the past few minutes, was the one to break it.

"So…" she started, her voice awkward, almost fragile. "I brought movies, sleeping bags for all of us, some snacks for me, and tools to fix the ship—"

"You can throw it away if you want to," J said flatly.

Uzi blinked, momentarily stunned. "What?" Her voice was weak, tinged with shock and lingering unease.

"We don’t have any reason to go back," J continued. "So why should we?"

"... R-Really?" Uzi asked, still unsure.

"She’s right," V chimed in. "Why would we even go back? Here, we have movies, TV shows, books, games… The only thing we need is, uh…" He trailed off awkwardly. "Better ways to feed ourselves?"

The group collectively cringed. Uzi had started wearing hoodies with wrist-length sleeves for a reason.

Despite the uncomfortable reminder of their flawed food supply—none of them, especially Uzi, were fond of the way they were fed—they had everything else they could want.

"So… we’re staying?" N asked, his mouth forming the hint of a smile, happiness flickering in his eyes. "With Uzi?"

"Yes," J confirmed.

Uzi couldn’t hold back the reaction. A soft smile spread across her face, her expression gentle as digital happy tears threatened to form in her eyes.

N was pulled back to reality as Uzi's eyes flashed open.
"Oh, hi, Uzi," N whispered, careful not to wake the others.
"Sup, N," Uzi mumbled, still half-asleep.

She carefully shifted away from J, ensuring she didn’t wake the taller drone. N did the same, mindful not to disturb V.

"Want to get some fresh air?" Uzi asked, already heading toward the door.

N simply nodded and followed.

Outside, Uzi took a seat on a nearby rock, stretching slightly—until she suddenly grimaced.
"Ugh," she groaned, "I'm sweaty. Who programmed that ?!"

"You okay?" N asked, but Uzi let out a chuckle instead.

"Oh, totally, " she said, her tone dripping with sarcasm. "Why wouldn't I be?"

N wasn't liking where this was going.

"We just had our deal —one year’s worth of secrets—exposed to every single worker drone at that damn outpost in an hour !" Uzi said, voice rising slightly. "A deal between me, a worker drone, and you three—literally the sworn enemies of worker drones! And I still don’t know how to cope with that! What does that mean for me? For you? For V? For J? For all of us?"

She barely took a breath before gasping for air.

"Well, at least they don’t know about the... bite marks ."

Both Uzi and N cringed at that thought. Yeah, really good that no one knew about—

"Bite marks?"

A voice made them both jump, their eyes widening in horror.

They spun around to see Thad standing there—holding Uzi’s railgun.

"NOTHING!" Uzi and N blurted out in perfect sync, faces flushed in panic.

"...Okay?" Thad said, clearly suspicious. N had a sinking feeling that Thad had been standing there longer than either of them realized.

Uzi finally registered what Thad was holding. "Hi, Thad."

Thad handed over the railgun.

"Thank you…" she said, a little uneasy.

"No problem!" Thad said. "You guys saved my life yesterday, and I noticed you dropped this—so consider it a thank-you gift."

"No problem, Ted! " N chimed in, mispronouncing Thad’s name. His goofy personality was always threatening to break through.

Thad smirked. "So… Uzi, are you going to the school prom next week?"

"PROM?!" N shouted. "I didn’t know you were having a prom, Uzi!" His excitement skyrocketed. " Oh, can we go too!? Please, please, please! " He was already pulling out the puppy eyes—that damn golden retriever energy.

"Uh…" Uzi hesitated. "I’m not going, and—no offense—you know I love you, but I really don’t think disassembly drones are allowed."

N's face instantly fell. Uzi immediately regretted saying it.

"Oh, I wouldn’t be so sure about that," Thad said, catching their curiosity.

"A discussion started after that insane battle yesterday—about you…. four?" he continued.

"Yeah," N nodded eagerly. "I’m N! V and J are sleeping inside!" His silly tone never wavered—he was far too eager to make a new friend.

Thad chuckled. "Right. Anyway, after that, people started reconsidering their views on disassembly drones."

"...Really?" Uzi asked, still doubtful.

"Yeah! So, I think you four are officially invited to prom."

N's entire mood shifted to pure joy.

Thad added, " Buuut ... I wouldn't recommend signing up for prom queen this year."

Uzi narrowed her eyes. " Why ?" Suspicion crept into her tone.

"Well…" Thad hesitated. "Everyone who did… is, um… missing. "

"Oh."

Uzi and N exchanged a quick look—one that clearly said, something’s up.

"You know…" Uzi said thoughtfully. "I really don’t have a reason to go back but—"

"I think a little look wouldn’t hurt." She stood up, now determined.

"We just need to wait for V and J to wake up, and then—"

"A little look on what ?"

A new voice made them turn, revealing V and J standing in the doorway—both looking mildly exhausted.

"Perfect," Uzi smirked. "C’mon. I'll explain on the way."

“Mr. Doorman, your daughter has been absent,” the teacher started.

“With all due respect, I think you know what’s happening… don’t you?” Khan countered, only for the teacher to shrug.

“Well, I don’t really care. Just doing basic work,” the teacher said, his tone of boredom obvious to anyone overhearing their exchange at the parent-teacher conference.

“Well… speaking of her behavior—”

“Oh, well. Precocious, popular, and possessing a supernatural understanding of doors—of course, she’s taken after her old man in that!” Khan interrupted.

The teacher chose silence as his answer.

Uzi was definitely precocious—a gremlin, but a smart one. After the last big fight, she had become popular; the teacher had overheard students—mainly Doll, with Lizzy tagging along—talking about her all the time. As for the ‘supernatural understanding of doors’... well, if it were about guns or mechanics, the teacher might have agreed.

“We suspect there might be something wrong with her coding,” the teacher said. “How has she been acting at home lately?”

Khan’s eyes went hollow.

“A-And… by lately, you m-mean?” he stuttered.

“For the past few weeks? Or months, whatever…” the teacher replied, boredom never leaving his tone.

“I-I-I…” Khan stumbled over his words, trying to form an answer. “I only saw her yesterday for the first time in months. She wanted to leave the doors, said it was for a school project, but…”

“Now that explains a lot,” the teacher muttered, as Khan struggled to process the realization that he hadn’t been present in Uzi’s life for months.

“I mean… damaged?” Khan finally managed to say, the last word barely coming out.

“One of our few suspects for why she’s so…” The teacher searched for a better word but ultimately settled on, “... different.”

“Mr. Doorman, sir?” A WDF worker called over to Khan.

“Yes?” he responded.

“We have a new missing student—Kelsey Day.”

N led Uzi to the first door, while V took charge of Thad—J, however, remained alone, mostly due to her complete distrust of Thad. V, as always, seemed intent on unsettling the poor worker, taking flight at an alarming speed.

Thad tumbled upon landing, clearly unaccustomed to such abrupt movement, but he quickly scrambled to his feet. They advanced together toward the entrance when Ron, the new guard, called out to Thad.

“Welcome back, Thad!” His tone was friendly, but his expression quickly shifted as his gaze landed on Uzi. “Isn’t she grounded?”

Uzi froze for a moment, an eerie silence hanging in the air. Then, barely audible, she muttered, “...grounded?” The squad immediately knew where this was going.

“GROUNDED?!”

Her hushed voice exploded into an enraged shout, sending everyone reeling.

“WHY THE ACTUAL FLYING FUCK HAS DAD BEEN TELLING PEOPLE I’M GROUNDED?!” Uzi roared, fury crackling in her tone, as if she had the power to rip someone apart with sheer rage alone.

Ron’s eyes darted between the squad members before finally settling on the group of drones accompanying Uzi.

“Genocide robots?” he asked flatly.

J scoffed. “Yeah—the same ones that saved your asses yesterday. Remember? Or is Uzi the only worker around here with decent memory?”

Ron opened his mouth as if to argue, but soon admitted defeat with a resigned sigh.

“...Fair point,” he conceded. “Come in, then.”

All four—no, wait, five, since Thad was with them—moved stealthily through the hallways.

They came to a stop around a corner, ears pricked as they overheard a conversation near what was clearly a crime scene. WDF members stood nearby, their voices carrying just enough to make out.

“Where’s Khan?” one of them asked. Uzi didn’t know his name—and didn’t care to. “Because this looks… ew. Not ideal,” he muttered, glancing at a nearby detective.

The detective, whose name was also a mystery to Uzi, rolled her eyes. “Parent-teacher conference,” she replied. “Something about his daughter being more important than building a door in this hallway. Kinda cringe.”

The disassemblers all gave her a look.

“Fuck you too, will ya?” V muttered under her breath.

But Uzi’s focus had already shifted to something stranger.

A security camera.

Except it wasn’t monitoring the hallway like it should’ve been. Instead, its lens was locked—staring at a blank section of wall.

Weird.

And weirder still, a strange red symbol flickered across the feed. It distorted the camera’s view, subtly but unmistakably shifting its focus from the corridor to the empty wall.

Uzi almost didn’t catch it. Almost.

But there was something written in the symbol.

“The Absolute Solver?” she whispered.

The second the words left her lips, V went rigid. Her posture locked in place, frozen like she’d just heard something she wasn’t supposed to.

Uzi noticed instantly.

A thought clicked into place.

“Does that have something to do with your head regenerating or something?” she asked, voice low and deliberate.

Silence.

No one said a word.

Then Thad, clearly confused, broke the tension. “Heads regenerating?” he echoed, blinking at them.

Still, no one answered.

After a long moment, Uzi replied quietly, “It’s a long story, Thad.”

Friendship hadn’t come easily for them. It hadn’t been instant. They’d fought. Argued. Clashed more times than she could count before finally learning to trust one another.

Their first meeting?

Complete chaos.

And yet, Uzi wouldn’t trade it for anything.

Because without that mess, she never would’ve become their friend.

And she remembered every. single. detail.

She was certain the others did too.

Uzi’s decision might have been the most reckless idea ever pursued by a worker drone:
Go outside. Beyond the doors.

“This is stupid!” the others warned. “You’re going to get yourself killed!” they insisted—as if Uzi cared.

She had slipped past the doors unnoticed, just as always. The story of her life, wasn’t it?

Outside, she found the power source she needed to stabilize her railgun and prevent it from blowing up in her face. That was when she heard it—wings slicing through the air above her, sending her hair whipping around.

Looking up, she saw the silhouettes of three figures she would later know as N, V, and J. Back then, they had no names for her. And frankly, she didn’t care back then.

What caught her attention was the worker drone corpse, torn apart as the disassembly drones fed on it.

They noticed her almost immediately. And that part—Uzi remembered every single movement, every burst of pain, every fleeting moment…

She caught sight of their golden, neon-like Xs displayed across their visors. She had been spotted. The realization settled in as she examined their reflection in a shard of glass at her feet.

Next thing she knew, all three disassemblers jumped. Instinctively, she took a step back, hastily discarding the unstable power source and slotting in the stable one as fast as she could.

It didn’t matter. The sheer force of their landing sent her stumbling, knocking her railgun from her grasp just as N’s tail impaled her hand.

Then—she was airborne.

Uzi was yanked off her feet, N’s grip unforgiving as he carried her high into the air.

Then, suddenly, he stopped flying—just long enough to hurl her away.

Against all odds, Uzi managed to land smoothly, but she didn’t have time to revel in her success before V tackled her.

She was lucky—it was V, after all. The one who toyed with her victims, who preferred slow, painful methods. It could’ve been J—the one who killed without hesitation. Even N, the goofy one of the trio, could have killed her right then and there if he’d been closer.

V took her time, savoring Uzi’s fear.

Bad move.

Uzi’s fist connected with V’s face, sending her stumbling backward and landing hard on her rear. She stayed there longer than she should have, later admitting it was pure shock—no worker drone had ever dared to throw a punch.

Uzi wasted no time taking advantage. She bolted toward the railgun, wrapping her fingers around it—only for J’s backfist to send her flying several dozen feet.

She hit the ground hard, but her grip remained firm.

N, V, and J stood close—too close.

She saw her chance.

Finger on the trigger. One shot.

All three heads exploded.

Uzi barely had time to appreciate her own handiwork before the impossible happened—they got up.

And their heads?

They started regenerating. Inch by inch, piece by piece. Within seconds, they were whole again.

But not before Uzi managed to slap all three with one sweeping arm swing.

One of their headband lights flickered—turning red.

“...Did you just slap us with that arm?”

That was the first thing N had ever said to her.

And what a ridiculous way to find out that disassemblers could talk.

Even funnier, it was the beginning of a deal that would eventually lead to a genuine friendship—between a worker drone and three disassembly drones.

Uzi’s brief flashback—everything had happened in a second before she snapped herself back to reality.

“I don’t think we have much to do here,” she sighed, turning to her friends. “Hey, Thad, I need to talk to them for a second. Would you mind?”

“Nope, go ahead!” he said, walking out of earshot.

Uzi turned to the disassemblers. “Guys, I have an idea… but it’s not a good one.”

“When has this group ever had good ideas?” V cackled.

“That killer… it has to be someone from my school. How else would they know the prom queen’s list?” she pointed out. J and V nodded in agreement, and after a beat, N followed suit.

Uzi took a deep breath. “To get more information, I think I’ll have to…” She sighed, knowing just how reckless it sounded. “Go back to school.”

V snorted. “Forget ‘bad’—this is just a stupid idea.”

“I know, I know,” Uzi said tiredly. “But it’s only for a week. Plus, I have a few things in my old room I want to get back. And you all know I don’t back down from a fight if anyone tries anything, right?”

Being at school was bad enough, but the constant whispering that followed Uzi everywhere made it even worse.

“Allied with murder drones,” they murmured, as if Uzi weren’t standing just inches away.

“Traitor,” some of the more outspoken students hissed. Hypocrites , all of them! They had just stood by when she and her squad were fighting off the ones trying to kill them. Thad had been the only one who actually tried to fight back, despite his physical disadvantage—where was the disdain back then?

And just when Uzi thought her mood couldn’t get worse, Rebecca kicked away the book she was using as a support to reach her locker, making Uzi growl in frustration.

“Yeah, meeting Brad in an hour,” Rebecca said, just as a book flew in her direction. Unfortunately—or maybe not—the book struck Braidon instead, knocking him over.

Braidon was an asshole, so it wasn’t much of a loss. There was a reason Uzi kept beating him down when he pushed her too far. Still, missing her intended target was disappointing.

“Can you imagine going to prom alone?” Rebecca sneered, her taunt barely veiled.

“Ha!” Trevor laughed, twisting his fingers into puppet shapes. “I’d be all like, ‘I don’t deserve happiness.’”

Uzi clenched her fists tighter, forcing herself to resist the urge to lunge at the two.

She sighed to herself. ‘I’m too tired to deal with this shit’. Her eyes landed on the board displaying the missing drones.

If she weren’t under so many watchful eyes, she might have cackled outright as she grabbed the papers to add to her and the disassembly drones’ billboard. But after the fight? Too many eyes. The best she could do was take photos.

Uzi pushed open the door to her bedroom, exhaustion from school weighing on her. So far, her search for evidence on the prom queens' murder had yielded little.

At this moment, all she wanted was to retrieve her documents, head to the disassemblers, and begin her investigation there . But as she set down her empty blackboard, a chilling realization settled in—only one person had access to her bedroom.

‘Angry’ didn’t even begin to describe what she was feeling.

Khan shuffled through the papers Uzi had written, carefully placing them on a shelf before letting out a tired sigh. As he turned to leave the room, his eyes lingered on a sign he had put up himself: "NORI'S KOOKY INSANE STUFF."

He closed the door behind him, whistling absentmindedly as he walked—until he turned into the hallway and nearly jumped. Uzi stood there, glaring.

“Didn’t I already tell you to STAY OUT OF MY FUCKING ROOM?!”

Khan instinctively reached for her shoulder, but Uzi slapped his hand away before he could even make contact. She was in no mood for this.

“Personal space for a very alarming coping mechanism isn’t covered under a…” He faltered, fumbling for words. Pulling out his guide booklet, he flipped through it until he found the line he needed. “...non-optional… family support… structure!”

“Fuck you!” she snapped, scoffing. The sting of her words left Khan momentarily speechless.

“J was right,” Uzi continued, her voice sharp. “You were never there for me. If you wanna help now, stay distant .”

Khan’s frown deepened.

“Now, if you don’t mind," she said, brushing past him. "I need my papers back—because I’m going to solve this shit your WDF failed to, with the ones who wouldn’t leave me for dead.”

She strode toward the room where Khan had placed her papers—until she nearly tripped over something. A frozen human skeleton.

“WwwhaAAt is this?” she stammered.

“Prom dress!” Khan called back casually, blatantly ignoring everything she had just said. “Child-small sized!”

Uzi refused to dignify that with a response.

“You’re grounded from seeing those bad-influencing murder drones.”

Wait, what? Did he actually think that would stop her?

“But," he continued, "I talked to your teacher and found you CLASSMATES to go with tonight!”

“Huh?”

The door slid open.

Lizzy and Doll stood behind it.

“Sup, freak,” Lizzy greeted, smug as ever. Doll gave a silent wave, before Lizzy leaned in slightly and whispering—just loud enough for everyone to hear—“Prepare to be popular.” She gestured oddly.

“I’M CHAPERONING!” Khan announced proudly, straightening his ridiculous bowtie.

Uzi’s scream was loud enough to shake the entire colony. And frankly, that was justified.

Z: Ugh, bad news...
Z: My dad’s forcing me to go to prom.
V: Wow, that sucks 😛
Z: Shut up.
J: Did you find anything important?
Z: I’m fine. Nice to know you care.
J: I don’t.
Z: sad emoji
N: Aw, J!
N: You made Z sad!
J: She’s not important.
J: Just the info is.
V: LMAO. C’mon, Uzi.
V: Tell us the one thing you are important for.
Z: You guys are meanies 😤

Z: Anyway, I took photos of the missing posters.
Z: We might learn more about the killer’s M.O. by comparing victim patterns.
Z: [4 Photos]
Z: Let me know if you spot anything.

V: WAIT

V: I have an idea.
J: Should I prep the apocalypse bunker?
V: Shut up, J 😒
V: Listen.
V: If the killer’s from Uzi’s school, and we’re somehow invited to prom too...
V: Why not go along?
V: Four brains are better than one.
V: Or 3.5. N’s with us 😏
N: V! That’s rude ☹️
J: I’ll go reinforce the bunker.

Z: LOL
Z: Actually, that’s a good idea.
Z: You’ll need dresses, though
Z: Still kinda worried... three disassembly drones at a party? That can’t go well.
Z: But if the killer shows up, we’ll be there too, and we can stop them if they try anything.
Z: …Why’d everyone go quiet?
Z: Guys?
Z: Seriously, say something. You’re freaking me out.
N: Sorry, ‘Zi—V tackled J. Breaking them up now 😅
Z: Oh…

Uzi slipped her phone into her pocket, quietly ending her secret conversation as the car pulled up to Doll’s house. She sat still, watching Khan as he left—off to the school already, abandoning Uzi, her dress, and the two ( bitches ) girls.

Inside, Lizzy flicked the switch, flooding the messy room with light. She took one look around and groaned.

“Ugh, Doll,” she said, wrinkling her nose. “Do you ever clean?”

“[I put a sheet up,] ” Doll answered, her Russian translating automatically for Uzi. She pointed toward the sheet in question. “ [They’re sleeping.]”

Uzi nearly crushed a robotic bug under her boot before catching herself, yanking her foot back at the last second. She hated herself for agreeing—but she had to admit, Lizzy had a point.

Doll’s house was the definition of a mess. V would probably love it. J, on the other hand...

As she glanced up, tiny red spots drifted lazily across the ceiling.

“Hey, so…” Uzi started, forcing herself to sound polite. “Thanks for having me.” The thanks tasted bitter. She wasn’t grateful. Not even a little. “But now that Khan thinks I’m here, I’m actually gonna—”

She turned to leave. The door slid shut abruptly in her face by itself, as her eyes hollowed in reaction.

Lizzy snorted. “You’re hilarious.” She said, causing Uzi to glare. Lizzy turned to Doll. “She’s hilarious.” Then, back to Uzi. “You should get ready! You’re gonna look so cute. In a… brave way.”

...Yeah. Uzi didn’t have a choice, did she?

“[Bathroom is down the hall to the left.] ”

Uzi stood in Doll’s bathroom, scrolling through her phone, reviewing the messages she had exchanged with the disassemblers—messages sent before she realized there was no way out.

Z: Sup guys
Z: Brought more bad news ;(
Z: Couldn’t escape, wait for me at prom!
V: Oof, okay though
J: Okay.
N: Aww… okay then!
Z: See you all there
Z: Also, who won the fight?
J: Me
V: Nuh-uh, I did!
Z: N?
N: I’d rather not put myself in danger, if that’s alright.
Z: Smart decision, pal.
Z: Our boy is growing a brain, guys!
V: Lol
J: … Perhaps he isn’t useless anymore?
N: Hey!!! Why are you all so mean to me? What did I do?
J: We’re just kidding, stud.
Z: Also, did you guys get your dresses already?
N: Yep! I did it all by myself!
N: Do you want photos? :D
Z: Nah, I’ll wait for prom to see them :P
Z: Also, why didn’t V or J help you?
V: He wanted to do it himself!
V: Not our fault V:(

That was the last conversation before she had put on her dress.

She wasn’t exactly on good terms with Khan, but she had to admit—the dress fit her well. A short, strapless dark purple dress paired with her usual black lace-up boots. She’d also been given long, dark purple gloves, slightly lighter in shade than her dress.

A muffled voice filtered through the wall.

"Dude, no one will care if she’s missing, everyone thinks she’s still living with the murder drones."

Lizzy’s voice.

"Just do your thing, I turn V into the prom queen, and your plan will work. We’ll see you there!"

Uzi’s eyes widened as she backed away from the wall.

Plan? If she goes missing?

"What the fu—" she muttered, but the words never fully escaped her lips.

She had been cut off.

Cut off by the sound of… dripping.

Slowly, she turned, searching for the source. Her gaze locked onto the shower. Oil leaked out in sluggish streams, staining the pristine tiles below.

She stepped forward, peering inside—and fought to suppress the gasp rising in her throat.

The remains of numerous Worker Drones lay mangled, their lifeless forms twisted among shattered mirrors.

Then, it clicked.

"No one will care if she goes missing." Just like no one had cared about the disappearing Worker Drones vying for prom queen. "Your plan will work." Lizzy’s words echoed in her mind. A single phrase revealed everything. The mastermind behind the killings, was Doll — And Lizzy was Doll’s little accomplice.

They had planned it all. Executed every single prom queen candidate. And now, for some reason, Uzi was next.

Uzi panted, her breath fogging the frigid air as she sprinted forward, each step pushing her body harder. The sight of the pile of corpses had jolted her into action—her mind racing as she hastily used shattered mirrors to construct a makeshift ladder, climbing through the vent and escaping into the raging blizzard outside.

She ran, knowing only one place where she might find help: the disassembly drones.

The moment N and J landed in front of her, she nearly stumbled from the force of their arrival.

“Uzi? Why are you here? I thought—” J started, but Uzi cut her off.

“I know who killed the prom queen candidates!” she blurted out, barely pausing to take a breath.

J and N’s eyes widened, hollowing with shock. Then the questions came flying.

“What—” “Who—” “How did you—” “Who is it?” They spoke over each other, their reactions sharp, frantic—even J didn’t pause to smack N for talking over her.

“It’s Doll… and Lizzy is her accomplice!” Uzi gasped, still catching her breath from sprinting so fast for a re

“Shit,” J muttered.

Only then did Uzi register the absence of their fourth member.

“Where’s V?” she asked sharply.

“She went ahead of us,” N explained quickly. “We needed to grab a few things before heading to prom, and J told her to go ahead in case the killer struck early. That way, at least V would be there to fight before we arrived!”

Uzi’s stomach twisted. “Oh, fuck.” Her voice barely carried over the howling wind. “Then what are we waiting for?!—”

Before she could move, N’s wings folded around her, lifting her off the ground in a firm grip. She saw J readying her wings to take flight.

That only meant one thing.

They were stopping Doll’s plan—before she even had the chance to realize what was coming.

The students were all gathered in the gym, where the prom was taking place.
Everyone was partying. Thad—if V remembered correctly—was doing a one-armed push-up that turned into a handstand, then gestured toward his teacher from across the room in some bizarre interpretive dance. The teacher wasn’t impressed.

Khan—Uzi’s "father," though that title felt undeserved—stood off to the side. After leaving her for dead and putting up those posters (one of which read, "Doors are my real daughter" ), V couldn't stand him. The man was pathetic. Disgustingly so. Thinking of him as Uzi’s father felt bitter, almost insulting.
Still, he glanced around the party nervously, then up at the clock.

V could relate. Uzi, N, and J were supposed to be here already… Where were they?

Being the only disassembly drone among so many worker drones was awkward enough. But being treated normally ? That was even more unsettling. Like she belonged. Like she wasn’t dangerous. It made her nervous. Anxious. Maybe even paranoid.

The stage lights flipped on. A girl—‘Lizzy,’ maybe? V only knew her through Uzi’s random stories—stepped onto the platform.

“Okay, listen up, nerds,” she called, grabbing everyone’s attention. “We’re doing this a little early, but since the entire prom court mysteriously disappeared—” her tone shifted dramatically as she flailed her hands for emphasis, “your queen by forfeit is, uh…”

She scanned the crowd, eyes darting, before finally pointing.

“Her!”

All eyes snapped to V.

“Me?” V whispered, mortified. Her gaze flicked around the gym, panic bubbling up beneath her stiff smile.

Moments ago, the crowd had ignored her. Now, every eye was locked on her. V shrank slightly under their gaze.

“Queen? Like… prom queen?” she asked, still stunned.

“Yeah! Come over here, girl!” Lizzy grinned. Applause erupted as V, visibly uncomfortable, made her way to the stage.

“Clap harder, losers! Or I’ll get my dad to dock your freakin’ grades! ”

A worker drone approached with a crown. “Your dress is so cute!” she squeaked, placing it carefully on V’s head.

V glanced down at her dress: velvet red, sleeveless, glittering slightly, with a slit on the right side.

“She’s kinda cute, though,” someone murmured from the crowd.

That single comment made her cheeks flush, a warm pink brush blooming faintly across her visor. She couldn’t even tell who said it.

Unsure what to do, she gave the world’s most awkward wave.

“Speech! Speech! Speech!” the crowd chanted.

V froze.
Wasn’t this enough humiliation?

She didn’t even know what to say. As she stepped toward the microphone, she tapped it a few times before opening her mouth.

“Uhm…” No words came out.

“On second thought,” Lizzy spoke up, drawing V’s attention, “you're way hotter than Doll.”

...Wha—

“RUN, idiot!” Lizzy’s warning barely registered before everything happened at once.

Without warning, a metallic pole shot up from the ground, piercing through V's wrists. A sharp yelp escaped her lips as it pinned her in place.

The brief agony snapped her back to reality. A worker drone was marching toward her—slowly, deliberately.

“[Hello, V.]”

The Russian-speaking drone stood out from the chaos. Unlike the others, her movements were calm, methodical—an eerie contrast to the bedlam engulfing the room.

A sickening crunch echoed as a worker’s neck twisted 180 degrees before her limp form was smashed into a pool of oil.

For just a second, V caught sight of the symbol.

'The Absolute Solver.'

Then, she looked closer at the Russian girl—finally seeing her for who she was.

The Russian had been just a child when it happened. Back then, V was only a teenager in the body of a disassembly drone. A memory struck her like a blade.

Yeva.

V had once researched the worker drone before killing her. She’d learned that Yeva had been married for a few years pre-death.

But V had almost forgotten the girl.

The closet door had been left partly open. A mistake. A cruel accident. V hadn’t known Yeva had a daughter, but it hadn’t mattered. The job needed to be done.

So, she had ignored the child—pretending she hadn’t seen her—and left.

Yeva’s corpse had remained where it fell, beside her husband’s. He had fought bravely. But he had been far too much trouble. He had needed to die alongside her.

And now—standing before her, unmistakable—was Yeva’s daughter.

She had a name now. A name V had heard Uzi mention a few times while talking about her classmates.

Doll.

“[Anyway, you get it.]” Doll spoke as recognition dawned on V’s face.

She tilted her head—then another pole was driven straight through V's stomach.

Gritting her teeth, V forced one of her hands free, swapping it for an SMG to fire at Doll.

With a flick of her wrist, Doll conjured a shield. The bullets ricocheted harmlessly off the shimmering barrier.

Then—suddenly—she pulled a cleaver.

It sliced through the air and struck V's shoulder.

A clean cut.

Her arm severed from the joint with a grotesque metallic tear. Oil poured from the wound.

Doll raised her hand toward the ceiling. The Solver obeyed.

With an unnatural force, the ceiling fan was ripped free from its post.

Doll hurled it at V—

But before the metal blades could tear into her, a voice rang out:

“NOW!”

“NOW! ”
Uzi’s command echoed across the room like a gunshot—it was time to move.

The remaining Disassemblers smashed through the ceiling, debris crashing to the ground as the three missing drones landed smoothly on their feet.

N had kicked the fan away from V, who squeezed her eyes shut, bracing for the worst—only to hear the violent shatter of the ceiling giving way to the allies of the red-dressed disassembler.

J kicked Doll’s cleaver, which had been buried in the ground until that moment, launching it into the air. Uzi leapt and landed a precision kick to the handle, sending the blade hurtling straight toward Doll.

The weapon ricocheted off her shield. The Russian drone’s eyes locked on Uzi. She tilted her head, her voice calm but pointed.
“[Uzi, you really sided with the murder drones—]”

“FUCK YOU!” Uzi’s roar thundered across the space, overpowering the question before it could finish.

“I don’t know who started this,” she seethed, “but they wanted us to fight!”
V smiled softly at the sight of the small drone standing guard in front of her.

“I never handled anything well on my own. But I wasn’t alone when I was with them.”
The three Disassemblers smiled in unison at her words.

“And if you think I’m going to sit back while you try to kill them— after everything you and your little ‘girlfriend’ put me through—then you’re no better than the very people you claim to despise,” she growled, voice trembling with rage.

“[… How am I the same as them?]” Doll scoffed. The words alone made Uzi’s blood boil.

“Who’s the psycho with dead workers in the shower?” she shot back. The room rippled with gasps.

She stepped forward. “Who’s the bitch who slaughtered half her own classmates, just to avenge one death with more killing?”

More shocked stares turned toward Doll.

“You’re a hypocrite. That’s what you are,” Uzi spat, her glare unwavering.

“[Cute…] ” Doll muttered, expression hardening. “ [But I don’t need any help!]”

Suddenly, two steel poles shot up from the ground—impaling N’s leg and piercing J’s stomach. Both yelped in pain as Uzi froze, her eyes wide with shock.

In that instant, N spotted a pair of ceiling fans flying straight toward the squad. Without hesitation, he glanced at the only uninjured member and shoved Uzi out of the way.

Time slowed.

As Uzi was hurled to safety, her hollowed eyes locked with N’s. He gave her a thumbs-up mid-push, nodding calmly before vanishing from her sight.

She hit the ground hard. And then— metal screamed .

The sound of slicing blades tore through the air as her friends’ limbs were severed, their bodies thrown violently across the backstage. A collective cry of pain echoed through the room.

Her eyes darted to the gym’s entrance just in time to catch the door lock disengaging. Students and spectators bolted in a frantic rush to escape the chaos—and to Uzi’s disgust, her father was among them.

She pushed herself up.

Doll seized a knife, tossing it into the air before catching it mid-spin with her solver. In one smooth motion, she hurled it toward Uzi.

Reflex took over—Uzi raised her hand to shield her face. The blade punched through her palm.

But there was no scream.

Uzi stared at the blade embedded in her hand, blinking slowly. The pain was... negligible . Distant. Nowhere near what she expected.

She yanked the knife free without flinching—and then, to her own surprise, she laughed . A cold, hollow cackle. Doll’s visor flickered in alarm at the unsettling sight.

When she attempted to activate the solver, Doll's HUD spat out a cryptic error:
--/ ERROR: absoluteSolver_trn | [like object non interactive]

Whatever she tried— it didn’t work .

Panicking, Doll grabbed another knife and threw it. But Uzi raised the very weapon that had stabbed her and used it to deflect the attack.

And then she advanced.

Step by step, slow and deliberate, she marched toward Doll. Her posture radiated a singular, chilling purpose.

Doll began backing away, her nerves cracking with each step Uzi took.

She had hurt Uzi’s friends. And Uzi... did not like that .
Not one bit.

An arm dragged itself across the floor, twitching feebly—until N grabbed it.

“Is this—?”

“MINE!” V snapped, biting down and yanking it from his hands with her mouth. Both of her own arms had been severed by the Russian drone. J gave her a sideways look, clearly judging.

“…Eww.”

A voice rang out, snapping all their necks in its direction. “You all look like garbage.”

It was Lizzy.

The three fallen Disassemblers glared in unison at the cheerleader. J raised her sword with her one remaining arm, but it was V—mumbling around the stolen limb—who spoke first.

“You little, lying, manipulative, narcissistic, daddy’s-girl bitch .”

“Hey!” Lizzy barked, feigning offense. “Ouch. Do you want help or not?”

They all narrowed their eyes.

“Where does this go?” Lizzy asked, tugging the arm from V’s mouth.

“We don’t need your help,” J growled. As she spoke, her severed leg began to regenerate—metal knitting itself together, reshaping back into a fully functional limb.

“Oh. Didn’t know you could do that,” Lizzy murmured, eyes wide at the revelation.

V’s limbs began reforming as well. One arm was reattached to her shoulder joint while the other regenerated from scratch. N’s right arm sparked back to life.

Lizzy turned her attention back to the gym floor, where Uzi and Doll’s battle raged on. But when she looked back—

She didn’t have time to react.

J’s blade sliced across her neck in one clean, seamless motion.

Lizzy choked. Her body slumped forward, staggering briefly before crashing to the floor with a heavy thud. Her head detached a second later.

The three Disassemblers stood over her remains, glaring.

Helping Doll hadn’t earned Lizzy a shred of forgiveness.

Not after everything she did to Uzi.

As Doll hurled another knife at Uzi, she backflipped into the air and landed a sharp kick against the handle, deflecting it into the stereo. The blade pierced its casing, causing the music to remix and swell in intensity.

Without hesitation, the crimson-tinged Solver drone snatched the knife and flung it again. Uzi leapt back, landing on the stage just in time. Her foot slammed down on the knife's handle, pinning it into the floor and stabbing a jagged hole through it. She grabbed the microphone stand with one foot and kicked it toward Doll.

Doll stopped it mid-air with her telekinetic grip. Meanwhile, Uzi dropped to the ground, laughing—until her eyes widened as she saw the very same stand flying back at her. It impaled her shoulder, pinning her to the stage floor.

The knife slid across the ground, stopping just within Doll’s reach. She picked it up and, with a flick of her wrist, multiplied it into seven identical blades. All seven launched toward Uzi.

Uzi clenched her eyes shut, bracing for the worst.

CLANG.

Metal struck metal— but not hers.

She opened her eyes to see N standing protectively in front of her, wings spread wide, blades embedded in them. He reached out a hand.

“Ugh...” Uzi groaned, grabbing it. “Didn’t you save me enough for today?”

As he pulled her up, a blurred object flew through the air—Doll had tossed it not at Uzi, but at J, who had rejoined the fight from above. J fired bursts from an SMG mid-flight, but Doll blocked the shots with energy shields. A well-aimed chair smashed into J’s head, sending her crashing to the ground in a heap of metal and debris.

Doll turned her attention back to Uzi and N. Debris rained toward them, and N spun Uzi around mid-dodge. In the air, Uzi caught one of the knives and—still clinging to N—flung it at Doll. At the same moment, N launched a missile.

The knife carved a narrow line across Doll’s visor, slicing through a lock of her hair. Her eyes went hollow with shock—just as the explosion hurled her across the room, crashing her into a pile of chairs.

Uzi blushed and looked at N. “Seriously, N…” she muttered. “Don’t do that again.”

N blinked, a faint blush spreading across his visor. “Uzi…” Then he screamed, “AH! OKAY YOUR TURN—” and flung her aside, just before a table smashed into him, dragging him to the floor.

Doll lifted every table she could find, launching them one after another. Uzi broke free from the telekinetic pull and began leaping from tabletop to tabletop, closing the distance. Doll hurled more blades. Uzi kicked one back—and it sliced clean through Doll’s wristband.

Doll was caught off guard. That’s when J struck—an uppercut straight to the jaw, launching her skyward. Uzi didn’t wait. One swift power kick, and Doll plummeted.

N regrouped beside J and Uzi as Doll struggled back up. She was wounded, outnumbered, but still defiant.

J raised her weapon. The golden neon X in her vision locked on—until it suddenly glitched. Her expression froze.

Someone was behind Doll.

Doll spun just in time to dodge a bullet.

“Damn it, J!” V shouted. Her sneak attack had been ruined.

“Sorry!” J called back, flustered.

Surrounded by the squad—Uzi, N, V, and J—Doll’s eyes darted. She was out of tricks, out of time.

Her teeth clenched. “This isn’t over,” she snarled.

She began to glitch.

Uzi’s eyes widened. “DON’T YOU—”

But it was too late. Doll vanished into static.

“...Dare,” Uzi finished, her words echoing in the empty space

After the key dangled from Doll’s wristband, there wasn’t a moment to waste.

They stormed straight to her house—still dressed from the chaos.
Uzi, in her tattered dark purple gown.
V, her red dress still stained with who-knows-what.
N, prim and proper in his black-gray three-piece suit.
And J, elegant as ever in her sweeping, laced black-and-yellow one-shoulder dress.

The door creaked open into a disaster zone. Junk. Scattered parts. Oil smears. The scent of dust and something… meatier.

J’s face contorted into pure judgment. Uzi could almost hear her inner monologue: “Such disorder in a single room? Extermination-worthy. Unsanitary. Disgraceful.”

V, on the other hand—“Hehe,” she giggled. “Nice.”

J gave her a side-eye so sharp it could slice cable.

Of course, V went straight for a dismembered arm, sucking at the oil like it was a soda bottle. J slapped it out of her hands.
“Ugh, have some self-respect,” J snapped.

“Oi! I’m starving, okay? Gimme it back!”
V pouted, reaching out again—

“Don’t we already have Uzi for those occasi—”

“SHUT UP, N.” All three girls snapped in perfect unison.

Every one of them blushed—including N, once he realized what he was implying.
J crossed her arms. “It’s a miracle no one’s seen that bite mark under your arm, ‘Zi.”

Uzi ignored her. She wanted this topic dead and buried.

“Why would a Worker…” she muttered, narrowing her eyes, “was she eating them?”

“I think we found her folks…” N murmured, catching their attention.

V’s expression dropped for half a second before she forced a giggle. “Literally didn’t even taste that good.”

J raised an eyebrow at her reaction. She’d noticed it too.

“V…” N said gently, “you kinda suck.”

“Yeah,” V said, her giggles turning quiet and shaky. “I’m not doing okay.”

Silence.

J stepped beside her, placing a hand on her shoulder. Both girls flushed faintly, but J gave a small, reassuring nod. V looked away, biting her lip.

No one noticed Uzi drooling slightly at the trace of oil on the floor. Not until J called, “Hey, Uzi? Do you know this woman?”

Snapped out of it, Uzi wiped her mouth and crawled across the cluttered counter. Around the neck of one mangled body was an ID badge:

YEVA – 048

The face on it—staring back with haunting familiarity—hit Uzi like a freight train. Doll’s mother. Yeva.

A flicker of memory stirred. Long ago. Short visits. Laughter with Uzi’s own mother.

Uzi didn’t get time to think.

“[Just in time for dinner~]”

A sing-song voice floated in behind them.

They turned.

Doll stood in the threshold, wearing a sickly smile. Four knives hovered by her side. And before anyone could react—she threw them.

Uzi flinched, shutting her eyes. No pain. No screams. Just silence.

She opened them.

Floating in the air was a purple sigil—the seal of the Absolute Solver—catching all four knives midair.

Not Doll’s work.

Hers.

Everyone stared.

V stood frozen, trembling, finger pointed at Doll—but eyes locked on Uzi.
N and J’s mouths hung open in shock.
Doll’s expression collapsed.

Her eyes hollowed as the truth sank in. Uzi had it too. The same power.
The same curse.

“[I... I’m sorry for you,] ” Doll whispered. “ [If I find what I’m looking for... I’ll help you too.]”

“What?” Uzi breathed.

“[I’m sorry…]”

Doll flickered—glitching—again.

“Hey!” Uzi shouted, lunging forward. “ YOU —”

But she was gone.

Uzi stood frozen in place. Her outstretched hand clenched into a fist. Her friends were still staring, stunned.

Finally, she muttered through clenched teeth—

“ Fucking bitch! ”

“Oh, that’s where I left my excuse to be outside right now!” Reid said, retrieving his glasses, conventionally buried beneath a snowdrift—conventionally outside the outpost.

The moment he slipped them on— BOOM.

A pod slammed into the ground ahead, sending snow and debris rocketing into the air. Reid dove aside just as another flaming object hurtled down behind him. He scrambled up, sprinting through the whiteout, dodging whatever else was falling from the sky.

A final explosion erupted behind him—brief silence—then a single teddy bear landed softly with a thud.

He looked up in time to see another pod descending—this one smooth, controlled, intentional.

Its hatch opened with a hiss.

And out stepped… a human?

Reid blinked.

Not a drone. Not Worker. Not Corp meat.

Human.

Before he could process the impossible, a disassembly drone dropped beside her—slim, quiet, lethal.

Reid didn’t wait for introductions. He bolted.

Behind him, the drone shifted, preparing to pursue—but a gloved hand gently touched her shoulder.

“No,” the human said calmly. “Let him go.”

Reid didn’t glance back. He was already gone.

The woman turned, addressing the short disassembler beside her. “We have work to do, don’t we, C?”

The drone— C —nodded, casting a glance upward toward her partner.

The human’s face was hidden beneath a tinted helmet, a rainbow-and-smiley sticker decorating one corner like a twisted joke. A JCJenson cap was clipped over the dome, and a black bow curved like a ribbon of shadow behind her head.

She wore a sleek, short-sleeved white jacket over a silver leotard that shimmered with static as she moved. Her gloves stretched to the elbows, fading from white to golden yellow at the fingertips. Silver pants tucked into high, strapped boots, and a broadsword hung from her back, its hilt secured by gleaming silver bands. At her hip: a holstered revolver.

Her name tag, polished to a corporate shine, read:

Tessa J. Elliot
Certified Technician

She looked back at the drone, voice soft—almost too soft.

“Or,” she asked, “do you still prefer to be called Cyn ?”

Chapter Text

Hell.
Hell was a pretty fitting definition for what was going on.

Right after prom, Doll had simply vanished—teleporting away without a trace. In the aftermath, Uzi, V, N, and J were ambushed by a Russian drone, which hurled four perfectly aimed blades at them. But not even the tip of one managed to pierce their metal.

The Solver—whatever that was, the same thing Doll had used to attack them and to kill the prom candidates—was somehow being channeled by Uzi now, suspending the knives in the air, stopping them mid-flight.

Since then, something between V and Uzi had shifted. V’s avoidance wasn’t overt, but it was there—quiet, persistent. She still hung out with Uzi, just less often than before. And Uzi could feel the distance growing with every excuse V gave to skip movie nights, or dodge a simple game.

Uzi wasn’t dumb. She saw it coming from a mile away. The others didn’t—not because they weren’t paying attention, but because V’s excuses always came when Uzi was around.

And V’s acting? That didn’t help. You wouldn’t expect someone so... psychopathic?—Uzi figured that was the nicest word she could come up with—to be that good at faking it. But she was. V could give the best actresses on TV a run for their money.

Her smiles. Her smirks. Her laughter—whether teasing, mocking, or real—looked no different from the genuine ones.

If Uzi hadn’t picked up on the subtle distance, she never would’ve noticed.
And once she did, she began to wonder just how long V had been pretending.

Uzi was working on a certain project when a familiar presence approached.

“Hey Uzi!”

She didn’t need to turn—she knew that voice too well.

“Oh,” she began, “Hey, N.” She flashed him finger guns, and he mirrored the gesture with a grin.

“What are you up to?” he asked, smiling ear-to-ear.

“Just working on a project,” she replied. “Hoping it works… might save me from certain bites…” Both of them flushed.

“Oh…” He fumbled awkwardly for a moment. “Well, if it spares us from that , then it’s already an improvement.” He quickly brightened. “So, what is it?” he asked, peering closer. “Wait—is that a modified oil can?”

“Yeah. Still a work in progress,” she said, grabbing a syringe nearby. “But I think it’s finished enough for you to try it.”

Rolling up her sleeve, she pierced her wrist gently with the needle. Her oil turned black as it filled the chamber. When it was ready, she poured the thick liquid into the can.

“Here,” she said, handing it over to N. “I don’t drink Worker Drone oil, so I can’t say if it actually works…”

N got the hint. He took a cautious sip—then, without a word, brought the can to his lips and began chugging the rest.

“…So I’m guessing the can works?” Uzi asked.

N gave a wordless thumbs-up, still drinking until he emptied it.

Wiping his mouth, he asked, “Hey, what’s missing? Tastes good enough to me.”

“The can’s not finished,” Uzi said. “Even with our storage mods, the effect only lasts an hour before it becomes useless.”

“Oh,” N murmured. “At least we don’t have to—”

“Don’t,” Uzi snapped.

He stopped. He knew what she meant. He always slipped on that topic—and they all hated talking about it.

Uzi hated how her catchphrase— Bite me —was taken far too literally these days.

With a sigh, she gripped Yeva’s keycard tightly in her hand.

“I need to go to Khan’s house,” she said.

N frowned. “Why?”

“Because I need to get to the bottom of this, N,” she sighed. “Just… one more time.”

“After the core collapsed…” Khan began as his eyes were fixed on an old photograph. In it, he stood alongside his friends — among them was Nori, Uzi’s mother..

“I... didn't notice the collars.” He explained, “Only your mom being a catch!”

… Uzi blinked. Deadpanned. Unamused.

Khan let out a tired sigh.. “She was always all, ‘Build doors against the coming sky demons!’ ‘The singularity awakens.’ ‘Look at this cool S I can draw!’ Khan sighed again.

“Turns out, I'm not who either of you needed,” he added, closing the door behind him.

Uzi could agree. He wasn’t who she needed, but she didn’t give voice to her thoughts.

She struggled not to change her expressions, trying to keep herself composed and calm.

Pretty out of character for her? Maybe…. but bite her !

She was attempting to gather information here.

“ Just... Be safe, okay?” Khan said as he handed Uzi the collars over.

Uzi snapped out of her thoughts, the weight of memory fading as she looked down at the collars in her hand.

One was labeled 048 —Yeva’s number. Her aunt’s. That one she tucked into her pocket. The other, marked 002 , unmistakably her mother’s, was already fastened around her neck.

“Uh, teacher?” Braidon’s voice pierced her reverie. “What kind of field trip is this?”

“Uzi’s idea,” the teacher shrugged. “Ask her.”

Braidon scoffed. “Who?”

“I’ve sat next to you for years,” Uzi said flatly.

The entire group jumped at her sudden presence, as if she’d materialized from thin air.

“Bite me,” she snapped. “I wanted to go alone.”

She jabbed a finger at the teacher. “He’s just salty about your test scores.”

“No year-end bonus, no motivation to teach,” the teacher muttered.

“So we’re just... unsupervised—” Braidon began, but something cut him off before he could finish

Three disassembly drones crashed down from the sky, sending the campers into a frenzy of screams and panic.

“What the—!?” Braidon shouted, eyes wide as N turned toward them with a slow, menacing grin.

His razor-sharp teeth gleamed beneath the glowing X on his face, his posture radiating danger.

V wasn’t any less terrifying—her low, eerie chuckle added a layer of auditory horror to the scene.

J, more composed, still looked ready to tear someone apart. Her claws flexed, her teeth bared, and her wings flared to make her seem even larger. The intimidation was palpable.

Until—

“Welcome, campers!” N shouted cheerfully, snapping from killer mode to dork mode in less than a second. That whiplash shift? Classic N.

“Let’s sound off!” he announced, preparing for roll call—but instead started counting the students manually. J’s expression screamed idiot as she watched him.

“One, two, three…” N pointed to himself, then to V, and finally to J. He paused, pointing to the fourth student—who didn’t respond.

BANG!

The student dropped to the ground as the echo of the shot rang out. V casually blew the smoke from her gun.

The remaining students, now synchronized in fear, shouted their numbers in perfect unison—shockingly coordinated for a group that had just met.

“That’s everyone!” N chirped. “Minus one…” he added in a low whisper to V and J.

Turning back to the campers, he beamed. “We’ve got so many distracting activities planned, so no sneaking off to investigate stuff!” He shot a sly glance at Uzi, who flushed purple, clearly catching the reference.

“To the bunks!” N declared, bounding forward.

No one moved.

He turned back, confused, glancing between Uzi and the frozen crowd.

“Sounds good, N,” Thad called out, stepping forward to follow. His calm demeanor helped ease the tension, keeping the rest from bolting.

J muttered under her breath, “Barely sentient toasters who can’t even remember being saved twice in one month.”
Uzi didn’t hear her—but yeah, she agreed.

Still blushing, Uzi stammered, “Y-Yeah, we’ve been friends for, like, a year, so… yeah. They’re cool.”

Cue everyone fleeing from Uzi’s mere existence.

“You can be our friend, little guy!” Emily said to N, trying to lighten the mood.

Meanwhile, Sam—the school addict—approached J, whose stance screamed zero tolerance.

“Poor thing’s defective,” Darren muttered, tapping V’s visor.

V was definitely not not annoyed. Yes, double negative. You read that right.

Suddenly, she gripped Darren’s wrist like she was about to snap it in half. A mechanical crunch nearly followed.

Uzi watched. Yep. Her instincts? Spot on.

Then V turned to her.

“Hmph.” She smirked. “Nah, just full of love.” Her tail curled into the shape of a heart before she motioned toward N. “This one’s a pilot.”

“Oh!” Rebecca gasped, clearly intrigued. “Wow, a pilot.”

J giggled at N’s puzzled expression as he glanced back at Uzi.

Uzi began gesturing—her hands saying she’d go her own way, and that N and the others should head to the campsite. She gave a thumbs up.

N hesitated, then nodded, watching as Uzi disappeared into the forest alone.

Her trek through the woods had led her to an abandoned building, its crumbling facade barely visible through the thick canopy. With a flick of her newfound powers, she unlocked the door from the inside, sending the rusted lock skittering across the room as she stepped into the long-forgotten interior.

Inside, dust hung heavy in the air. She spotted a hat lying on the floor and lifted it with her powers, inspecting it closely. After a moment, she tossed it aside—nothing useful. Her attention shifted to the room itself.

Books littered the ground, mingled with shattered bottles, broken mannequins, and all manner of human debris. As she explored, she noticed a wall that had been smashed open, revealing a jagged hole leading into darkness.

Something on the far wall caught her eye—a calendar. She pulled it toward her with a subtle gesture. The top half featured a cheerful image of a dog, but the bottom revealed the calendar hadn’t been updated since the month of Seramorris . Scrawled across it in bold handwriting was a note:

"EVACUATE ALL DOGS! Just in case something bad happens, idk."

Beneath it, two additional scribbles read:

• "Cool, we did that. That's canon."
• "ALSO, ALL DOGS ARE IMMORTAL NOW! THANKS TO SCIENCE!"

Uzi couldn’t help but sigh in relief—mostly because N wasn’t there to squeak with joy at the news.

Suddenly, the sharp clang of metal startled her. She spun around, heart racing, but saw nothing… CORPSE, SUIT …. until something that looked awfully like a human hand slowly curled around the corner of the hallway. She jumped again, fumbling with her flashlight.

Before she could investigate further, a scream pierced the silence from outside. She rushed to the window, trying to locate the source of the sound.

When she looked through the window, relief washed over her. The other campers were out on the frozen lake, paddling their canoes, their laughter and screams echoing with joy.

“So,” Rebecca said, turning to N, “my friend wants to know if you killed her family.” She paused, then shifted to a poor imitation of a seductive tone. “And... if you're single.”

“Make way for the canoe train!” Darren called out as he and Thad carried a canoe over, with V and J perched on top.

V opened her mouth to issue a command, but J beat her to it.

“Sabotage, minions!” J declared with such commanding flair that V's eyes went hollow with shock. Without a word, V slinked back into her seat, resigned to observing the impending chaos. A certain twin-tailed drone was clearly having more fun than she’d ever publicly admit. “Plan X!”

At J’s command, Thad and Darren gave N’s canoe a light kick, setting it wobbling on the ice.

They turned to leave, laughing at their mischief, but one of them slipped and crashed to the ground, dropping the canoe.

V and J were launched into the air, but they avoided impact with a graceful midair hover.

“Useless!” J roared, realizing the canoe had been dropped. “All of you!”

“J,” V muttered, “can you please chill the fuck out?”

“I can’t swim!” Rebecca shrieked as Emily toppled from the canoe—another casualty of Thad and Darren’s kick. Before Rebecca could hit the ice, N lunged and caught her.

“Oh,” she breathed, cheeks tinged blue with blush. “Thank you,” she giggled, her flustered smile lingering.

N saluted with a playful grin. “Close one!”

Uzi turned away, visibly cringing with secondhand embarrassment.

Still giggling, Rebecca glanced over N’s shoulder.

Uzi's eyes went hollow, and she ducked low, desperately trying to stay out of sight from anyone she didn't trust. She kept herself crouched, breathing shallow, then finally decided it was safe to rise—just one last check on her friends before—

CRACK.

The solver had picked a terrible moment to emerge.

Ever since prom night, when Uzi first activated the solver, it had been showing up randomly. That first time, she'd glanced into a mirror—and watched it crack instantly. For a split second, she glimpsed the symbol glowing faintly in her right eye.

Now, she placed her bag down, reaching for her backpack. With a flick of her powers, the zipper slid open. But then—

ALERT: HIGH TEMP!

Her visor flared with the warning, and the unbearable heat forced her to clutch her head, groaning as her metal body radiated with intensity.

She rifled through her backpack, unable to resist the temptation. At the doll’s house, she had drooled over that severed hand. She hadn’t just taken it—she’d stolen it.

And now? She used it.

Whenever no one was watching, she drank from it. The residual oil. It wasn't glamorous—it was survival.

N, V, and J hadn’t noticed. That was for the best. Uzi didn’t want to imagine their reactions.

Still panting, skin practically steaming, she gripped the severed limb and crushed it to her mouth, letting the oil seep across her lips.

TEMP LOWERING.
TEMP LOWERING.
TEMP LOWERING.
TEMP REACHING HIGH LEVELS!

Well... better peaking than frying at the bottom, right?

She shoved the hand back into the backpack. The investigation— that was what mattered now.

“AHA!” someone shouted, the sudden cry slicing through the silence, causing Uzi to nearly eject her core from sheer adrenaline as she jumped.

Looking toward the source of the cry, Uzi spotted Rebecca standing smugly in the doorway, pointing an accusatory finger at her.

"I knew it was you I saw at the window!" Rebecca declared.

"Rebecca?!" Uzi jumped to her feet. "What are you doing here?!"

"I saw someone duck down at the window and came to check," Rebecca replied coolly.

"And how did you get here so fast?!" Uzi demanded.

"Details," Rebecca said, dismissively.

Uzi groaned.

"So," Rebecca began, suddenly adopting the tone of a TV detective, "why were you watching me from the window?"

"Excuse me?"

"I saw you stalking me!" Rebecca accused.

"I wasn't stalking you, you idiot!" Uzi snapped. "Why would I be stalking you , of all people?!"

"Uh..." Rebecca hesitated. "I don't know—you tell me, stalker!"

"For fuck's sake," Uzi growled. "I wasn’t watching you, I was watching my—" She stopped herself with another groan.

"Why am I even bothering to explain myself to you of all people?" she continued, voice sharp. "I don’t owe you anything!"

"Well, if you’re stalking me, then you do !" Rebecca shot back.

"I already said I wasn’t stalking you!"

"Then if it wasn’t me..." Rebecca trailed off. Her eyes narrowed. "Oh..."

Uzi groaned again. "Now what..."

"You were stalking that disassembly drone!"

Uzi choked, a purple blush blooming on her visor. "What?!"

"Aha! I caught you!" Rebecca announced triumphantly. "You were watching that hot disassembly drone!"

"Ugh," Uzi groaned. "The 'hot disassembly drone' is named N ," she spat.

"And I don’t need to stalk him— I see him every day , you dumbass!"

Rebecca crossed her arms with a huff. "Not like you stand a chance anyway."

Uzi raised a digital eyebrow. "Excuse me?"

“C’mon, it’s obvious they have way better choices than you,” Rebecca said smugly, the implication clear—she fancied herself the superior option. Uzi’s glare sharpened, her jaw tightening with restrained fury.

“I mean,” Rebecca went on, rolling her eyes dramatically, “why anyone would choose to be your friend is beyond me. You’re completely outclassed.”

Uzi clenched her fist.

She was one cutting remark away from snapping. Straightening to her full—albeit unimpressive—height, she tried to hold steady.

Rebecca, utterly unfazed, peered out the window Uzi had been watching earlier. “See?” she said, gesturing toward the frozen lake.

Outside, N, V, and J were still racing across the ice. N had surged ahead, much to J’s silent dismay. He was quickly becoming a favorite among the students, charming and approachable. Meanwhile, V and J were making minor strides simply by not actively murdering anyone.

“Even they’re starting to notice!” Rebecca smirked as she turned to exit.

Uzi’s eyes widened. Her hand instinctively reached out—grabbing the nearest object.

The Solver.

SMASH!

Glass shattered in a vicious burst as the bottle slammed into Rebecca’s head.

She staggered forward and collapsed with a heavy thud.

Uzi inhaled sharply, realizing what she'd done.

Rebecca lay motionless on the ground. Her visor was cracked, glass shards glinting across her faceplate. Half the broken bottle lay nearby, a silent witness to the violence.

That’s when Uzi noticed the crushed bug beneath her boot.

She sighed and knelt down beside it.

“Sorry, buddy,” she muttered softly. “Gotcha good.”

Channeling the Solver’s energy, she lifted the limp body into the air. Her recent practice paid off. Bit by bit, its mechanical limbs reassembled, twisting and locking into place.

Once restored, she gently set the bug back on its feet.

It wandered away—but before disappearing, it gave a strange little salute. A thank-you?

It vanished under the wooden floorboards.

Uzi frowned. That space shouldn’t have existed—there was no gap beneath the floor.

Raising her hand again, she tapped into the Solver’s power, lifting the wooden panels like puzzle pieces.

Hidden beneath was something else entirely.

A decayed worker drone, long gone. Scattered beside its body were oil-soaked papers: two childlike drawings, and a JCJenson Program Admission Notice.

Uzi stared.

She picked the papers up with her solver — trying to get a better glance.

She took a quick look at the creepy-looking drawings before flipping the last one over, revealing a piece of a disassembled drone claw stuck to the back of it.

The back of the page had been left blank, deliberately so — according to the top of the page.

She removed the piece of the claw by yanking it free from the back of the paper.

She felt something skittering on her hand, a green version of the bug she had fixed earlier.

She attempted to squeeze it, but it dodged narrowly before climbing over to her other hand.

V:(

A holographic message flickered to life above the insect, comic book-style speech balloon and all.
Then it began scanning her.

WELCOME BACK [ 002 ]. HOW CAN I HELP YOU TODAY?

The bug displayed.

The options are: Submit time card, PTO request, register torture chamber complaint, end my suffering (PROMO OFFER DISCONTINUED), and call elevator.

“Elevator?” Uzi muttered in confusion, squinting at the option.

PLEASE PLACE ME ON PROXIMITY READER (CABIN FEVER LABS).

“Where’s that?” Uzi asked, “What are you?”

misinterpreted her questions as: “Wear his hat,” and “What argue?”

INVALID RESPONSE

BEHIND YOU. BEHIND YOU. SHE IS BEHIND YOU

While Uzi was deep in her investigations—uncovering secrets that mattered to her and her friends, searching for answers that could change everything—N, V, and J were engaged in a task of utmost importance.

Physical, mental, emotional, and psychological effort was being poured into…

Playing with the campers.

N’s arrows struck the bullseye with such speed and force that they ignited on impact, leaving the target smoldering with a cluster of flaming shafts.

“Ah, sorry!” N called out, sheepishly. “Did I… cheat?”

He turned to the campers, who stared blankly. Not a single reaction—even when one arrow pierced straight through a camper’s head, dropping him to the ground with a thud.

V scoffed. “You didn’t even kill everyone ,” she said, stepping over the fallen student without a second glance. She readied her bow with a smirk. “Watch this.”

With a dramatic backflip off the roof, she landed gracefully, bow already aimed at the target. But instead of firing at the bullseye, she spun and pointed the arrow directly at the campers.

They clapped. Nervously.

J rolled her eyes at the display, muttering something under her breath that no one caught. Her expression was pure disdain.

“Let me show you how it’s done,” she said smugly, gripping her bow. “Watch and learn…”

She drew the string back with precision, eyes locked on the center of the target. The arrow was perfectly positioned.

She released.

V’s hand shot to her mouth in what looked like genuine shock at the outcome.

J’s eyes went blank, hollowed by disbelief, as her confident posture crumbled into stunned silence.

She hadn’t missed the bullseye—she’d missed the entire target by several inches.

V’s laughter was cut short by a subtle elbow from N.

J tossed the bow aside with dramatic flair. “It’s clearly the bow,” she declared, already reaching for N’s.

The newly discovered bug crawled along Uzi’s arm as she made her way toward the camp, where her friends mingled with the other campers. Her steps were cautious—more than necessary—but still enough to catch N’s attention. He turned, spotting her instantly.

Uzi waved, deliberately showing off the vibrant green bug skittering across her metal.

N lit up with excitement. “Uzi, get on out here!” he called, waving her over with exaggerated enthusiasm—far more attention than she wanted. V and J turned toward her immediately.

“This troop’s a team!” N declared proudly.

V and J smiled at the sight of her, a stark contrast to the campers, who gasped in unison.

“‘Zi!” J beamed—just as her fingers slipped.

The bowstring snapped forward.

The arrow launched.

V and Uzi gasped in sync as they watched it fly—straight toward Uzi.

Reflex took over. Uzi raised her hand.

A burst of purple energy enveloped the arrow mid-air, halting it inches from her face. The sudden stop sent a gust of wind through the camp, scattering snow and silence alike.

Her powers had saved her—but they triggered something else.

HIGH TEMP!
HIGH TEMP!
INCREASING FAST!

Warnings flashed across her vision, overriding everything. She barely noticed the arrow morphing into a grotesque, fleshy mass that dropped to the ground with a wet thud. Blood pooled beneath it. Eyes—real, blinking eyes—stared up at her from the twisted remains.

She chose to ignore it.

She was burning up. Everyone was staring. Her senses were scrambled.

“Uh…” she tried to speak, but the heat clouded her thoughts. Panic clawed at her chest.

She stepped back, trembling. Right now, the woods seemed like a much safer place.

Living surrounded by nothing seemed like a better choice.

She wished she could disappear. Just vanish.

And then… everything glitched.

Reality warped around her. The air shimmered. Her surroundings distorted.

And suddenly, she realized—

She wasn’t at the camp anymore.

Uzi had been lucky—if luck even applied anymore—to reappear near an abandoned cabin.

Her body temperature was climbing with every nanosecond, and she didn’t dare check it. She was terrified of confirming what she already suspected: that it was reaching fatal levels.

Her powers marked the door she’d use to enter, and with a burst of purple energy, it shattered into splinters.

She stumbled inside, claiming the space as her retreat.

Her solver responded to her unspoken commands, dragging a stool and an armchair across the floor with rough force, barricading the entrance. Then, with a wave of her hand, every window slammed shut, every door sealed tight. No one would see her like this. No one would know what she was becoming.

She tossed her backpack to the ground and reached for it—

TICK. TOCK. TICK. TOCK.

The sound was deafening. Louder than it had any right to be.

Why was the room so bright?
Why were the clocks so fucking loud?

TICK. TOCK. TICK. TOCK.

Her head throbbed. Her eyes squinted against the harsh light.

TICK. TOCK. TICK. TOCK.

She couldn’t take it anymore. Her solver lashed out, obliterating every clock in the cabin with violent precision.

The lights shattered alongside them, dimming the room just enough to ease the pain behind her eyes.

Only one light remained.

Maybe… maybe if she destroyed that last one, everything would stop.

She activated her solver again.

But the moment she did, the room flashed red—an unnatural, pulsing red—and the final light exploded.

From its shattered remains, something emerged.

Tentacles. Fleshy, writhing, unnatural.

One. Then another. Then more.

They slithered toward her, reaching, grasping.

Was this real? A hallucination? Had the noise and light driven her further than she realized?

She couldn’t keep her eyes open long enough to know.

Then came the screams.

Not hers— theirs . The tentacles screamed.

She stumbled backward, misstepping, collapsing to the floor with a heavy thud.

And then—

Silence.

Too much silence.

She forced her eyes open.

The red was gone. The brightness had faded. The noise had vanished.

She exhaled, finally releasing the breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding.

A shaky sigh of relief.

She dragged herself to her feet, whimpers still echoing through the room.
One step toward the backpack—

SCREECH.

The sound tore through the air as pain ripped across her back. She collapsed again, the thud heavier than before, reverberating through the entire room.

Uzi trembled, her metallic spine screaming in agony. Her whimpers rose, sharp and uneven, as she felt something carving into her back. Not a knife—no, something far worse.

It wasn’t just one blade cutting her. It was many .
Something was tearing through her spine from the inside out.

Make it stop! she screamed silently. Her body convulsed, shrieking with every nerve that could still fire.

It didn’t stop. If anything, the pain doubled.

Not just her back—everywhere.

Her mouth—why was it stretching so far? Why did her own teeth slice into her lips the moment they touched? Why were they so sharp that oil dripped from the wounds?

Her vision glitched.
ERROR.
ERROR.
REACHING FATAL LEVELS.
OIL LOSS DETECTED.

Crimson text flashed across her visor as dark oil streamed down her back. Her wrists burned, her feet ached, her head throbbed—and her back felt like it was being shredded alive. Her teeth bit down again, splitting her lips open.

Her sight began to fade, glitching into static, when the final, damning message appeared:

FATAL ERROR

When that warning appeared in a drone’s visor, it meant only one thing—death. Permanent. Inescapable.

And yet…
Despite the agony, despite the hallucinations, despite the blades raking through every inch of her body… despite the message that stripped away all hope of survival…

Uzi laughed.

“V, we can’t hurt Uzi!” he insisted, planting himself in V’s path, trying to form an unshakable wall between her and her target.

The keyword was trying.

V still forced her way forward, dragging him along with every determined step.

J landed lightly behind N, gauging her stance.
V didn’t even acknowledge her—just pushed on, ignoring the glare that earned her.

“We do our jobs, and that thing leaves us alone!” V snapped.

At that, N finally lost his patience. He yanked out his sword.
“I don’t even know what you’re talking about—because you won’t tell us!”

CLASH.

Steel rang as N’s blade met hers, the impact forcing V back a step.

She frowned, momentarily thrown off.

“What are you so afraid of?!” N demanded.

“I’m not afraid…” V shot back—though her voice, and the way she said it, sounded more like she was trying to convince herself.

“I am!” J cut in sharply. “N is!”
N didn’t argue—if anything, he nodded.
“And so is Uzi!” J added.

“Uzi’s a kid, V—just like us!” N pressed. “What is wrong with you?!”

For a second, her mask cracked—just a flicker of something vulnerable—before the empty glare returned.

When she didn’t answer, N exhaled heavily.
He tossed her the clipboard of activities. “Look after the campers.”

His wings spread, catching the light before he shot upward, disappearing into the clouds in search of Uzi.

J lingered for a heartbeat, blades ready, stepping toward V.
“And Uzi is not a thing, V,” she said firmly, pointing one sword at her.

V batted it away with a sharp slap.

J growled low in her throat but turned away, launching into the air to follow N.

V stood watching them vanish into the cloud cover, leaving her alone.
She turned to the campers, who stared wide-eyed at the tense exchange.

“Do whatever you want!” she snapped, stomping off.

The campers exchanged uneasy glances—until a loud groan broke the silence.
They jumped, then rushed toward the source.

It was Rebecca—who’d vanished from the trip over an hour ago, maybe longer.
Now she was back, half-buried under shards of broken glass, rubbing her head.

“…Hey there,” she said with a weak wave. “What’d I miss?”

V kept walking through the woods. It had been several minutes already—still alone.
The snow sank deeper beneath each of her steps, crunching harder as her anger grew.
For fuck’s sake, when did Uzi learn to teleport in the first place?!
And now N and J had abandoned her to side with Uzi. They don’t understand… none of them do.

Eventually, she slumped against a tree, exhausted—though more emotionally than physically.
Disassembly drones weren’t built to tire easily— it ensured they could endure for ages.
She slid down to the ground with a weary sigh.

None of them understands, V thought bitterly.
Her arms wrapped around her legs, tension radiating through her frame.
Angry sounds escaped her throat—curses, groans, fragments of frustration.

The tree behind her trembled as she lightly knocked the back of her head against it.
Her neck kept tossing her head back, again and again, until—
BANG.

This time, the tree shook harder.
The impact left a dent in her skull, already beginning to regenerate.
She cursed again—not from pain. She’d long since learned to ignore that.

Her head dropped softly into her knees as she curled into herself.

A fetal position.
And then, she began to sob.
Not for the pain.
Never for the pain.
Always for the loss.

“We have to sneak this far just to make out?”
“It’s about the mood, Darren,” Rebecca said with a grin, tugging him through the snowy forest.

They trudged on until, through the trees, an old cabin emerged—small, abandoned, and undeniably creepy.
Thunder cracked across the sky, lightning tearing it open with a roar.

Rebecca and Darren froze, staring at the eerie silhouette.
Their expressions shifted from hesitation to delight.

“… Nice!”
“I get it now!”

They spoke in perfect sync, eyes gleaming with mischief.

In flight, J quickly noticed something unsettling—N’s frown hadn’t budged.
Ever since their talk with V, he’d been silent. Too silent. And that wasn’t like him.

When J had taken off and tried to catch up, it hadn’t been easy.
She almost wanted to congratulate him for his focus—he hadn’t even noticed her until she called out.
He’d been locked in on finding Uzi, and that kind of tunnel vision was rare for him.

But now, J had a question. One that needed an answer.

“Hey, N?” she called.

“Yes?” he replied, bluntly.

“…Are you alright?”

It wasn’t a question J ever expected to ask—especially not to N.
Her past self would’ve been hurling insults at her for even thinking it.

“…I’m fine. Let’s keep moving,” he dismissed, eyes forward. “Not like you’d care anyway.”

J frowned at that, but still spoke. “I do,” she said quietly.

N’s expression shifted—just slightly. A flicker of surprise.
J could see the question forming in his eyes: Was she really interested?
But instead, he brushed it off again. “I’m fine, J.”

“N…” she murmured, disappointed.

Funny, how she’d expected him to open up.
After everything—the months that turned into years of her tearing him down, calling him worthless, telling him to suck it up because his problems weren’t hers.

She’d been cruel. And she knew it.

Honestly, she didn’t even understand why she’d been such an asshole to him before Uzi came along.

Uzi changed them. All of them.
It hit J hardest when she found herself shouting “Bite me” at her crew—Uzi’s influence was undeniable to them.

Well… maybe not all of them. V was still being a bitch.

But J had never apologized. And that needed to change.

“N, look…” she began, swallowing her pride. “I know I was a horrible leader to you.”

N’s eyes widened slightly, the shock clear on his face.

“I know I have no right to ask you to open up to me,” J continued. “Especially after everything I said—how I made you feel worthless…”

She paused, voice faltering. “…You know the rest.”

“I never apologized. Mostly because I suck at it,” she added with a dry chuckle.

“…But I was wrong. I was a bitch to you. Plain and simple.”

She looked at him, eyes pleading. “But I know there’s more going on than you’re letting on. Please…”

J knew she was a hypocrite.

All those times she told him to shut up, to keep his problems to himself.
And now here she was—begging him to share them.

N took a moment to collect himself. Then, finally—

“…Fine,” he muttered.

J wasn’t sure if he’d simply given up on bottling it all up, or if her pathetically pleading eyes had cracked through his defenses.

“I…” he sighed, voice heavy with exhaustion. “I don’t even know where to start.”

“Start at the beginning,” J offered gently. “Why are you mad?”

“I… I’m mad at V,” he admitted, hesitantly.

Coming from N—the guy who used to be so hopelessly infatuated with V that he couldn’t focus during coordinated attacks—this was huge.

J stayed quiet, letting him speak.

“She’s… ugh!” N groaned, frustration bubbling. “She’s always had been hiding something from us!”

J nodded. She’d noticed it too. V’s behavior had shifted—drastically.

She hadn’t always been this psychotic killer. A year ago, V was one of the reasons they dominated the rankings.
But back then, she was quiet. Shy, even. Barely killed anyone.

J was sure she’d heard V crying in her sleep once, whispering two names she hadn’t bothered to catch at the time.
Some leader she was. Why had she even been chosen?

“I thought she was finally opening up to us after Uzi arrived,” N continued, voice rising. “But no!”

He rolled his eyes, the bitterness clear. “Now she’s trying to kill the one person who saved us from being just… tools!”

His voice cracked as he snapped, “What the fuck is wrong with her?!”

J’s eyes widened. N never swore. He was always the soft-spoken one.

Without a word, she reached out and took his hand. Her grip was gentle, but steady.

“We’re going to find out,” she said softly. “Together.”

N blinked, surprised by the gesture. But slowly, his expression softened.
He smiled back at her—tentative, but real.

Their visors glowed faintly yellow.

And they kept flying. Side by side.

The door creaked open, but only slightly—something was blocking it from the inside. A heavy piece of furniture, perhaps.
Darren leaned in, bracing himself, and shoved harder. The door groaned under the pressure before finally giving way just enough for him and Rebecca to squeeze into the cabin.

Darren attempted to turn the lights on, without avail— the lights didn’t flicker to life, causing him to grunt.

The cabin remained clocked into the darkness

As they stepped further inside, a sudden clatter made them freeze. A flashlight dropped from the ceiling, landing with a thud before rolling eerily across the floor. It flickered erratically, casting stuttering shadows across the room, and came to a stop in front of a dusty backpack.

Darren bent down and picked it up. With a grin, he gave the flashlight a light tap against his forehead. The beam steadied.

SLAM

Both he and Rebecca jumped, spinning around. The door had slammed shut behind them—on its own.

Locked.

Then, from the darkness behind them, a low, guttural chuckle echoed through the cabin.

“Hehehehe…”

A demonic laugh, dripping with malice.

“What was that?!” Rebecca shouted, her voice sharp with panic as the eerie cackling echoed through the cabin.

“I don’t know,” Darren muttered, pulling her close as she clung tightly to him. “Could be just the door creaking, or—”

The laughter returned, louder this time. It wasn’t just a sound—it was a presence.

They froze.

Then, slowly, their eyes drifted upward.

Their expressions were priceless—wide-eyed, mouths slightly agape. If only someone had a camera.

Hovering above them was a tail. Sleek, twitching, and unmistakably alive.

It vanished into the shadows.

But the darkness didn’t hide everything. A glowing neon-purple X shimmered faintly in the gloom, and beneath it, a row of razor-sharp teeth gleamed like polished blades.

She was watching them.

From the ceiling.

And then—with a deafening roar—she lunged.

N and J’s wings sliced through the air as they landed with precision.

They’d spotted a cabin—the third building they’d searched so far. Still no sign of Uzi.

But they weren’t giving up.

The door creaked open as N pushed it with a cautious hand.

A control desk sat against the far wall, a monitor overhead flickering with static.

They approached.

J reached for a second monitor, trying to power it on—only for it to spark violently and die.

EYES. BEHIND YOU TWO. TURN AROUND, IT’S NEAR!

N spun around, heart pounding, but saw nothing—except a VHS tape lying beneath the monitor.
Its label read: Zombie Drones.

“Hey, J,” N called, voice low. “Come take a look at this…”

J glanced at him, then walked over.
She picked up the tape, reading the faded warning beneath the title:
“Do not play for robots. They will not like it?”
Her brow furrowed. “What does that even mean?”

They exchanged a wary glance. N reached for the tape—

DEATH. SISTER.

N recoiled, eyes wide with sudden terror.

“What?” J asked, startled by the horror etched across his face. “Are you okay?”

“…Yeah,” N lied, voice barely above a whisper.
But what had he seen? No—what had he remembered?

A worker drone. Her chest was torn open.
And that word—sister—echoing in his mind like a scream.

J, sensing something was wrong, reached for the tape herself—

SHE’S ALIVE. JUST HER REMAINED.

J staggered back, the same dread gripping her.
A vision flashed before her eyes—humans gathered at a party.

All of them mutilated. Torn apart.

… This tape…. there had something more to it.

Darren’s insides squeaked as she continued cramming the remains voraciously into her mouth.
Her teeth—sharper than ever—had torn open her former classmate’s chest.
New limbs made it easier to rip the wound wider with terrifying ease.

Suddenly, she began to cough.
She doubled over, retching violently, praying the phrase “throwing up her insides” wouldn’t become literal.
Chunks of Darren splattered onto the floor as sobs overtook her.

She scanned the room, eyes landing on Rebecca’s severed waist.
The memory of how she’d done it clawed at her mind.

She had lunged—aiming at Darren again.
In a blink, a fatal error flashed across Darren’s visor.
Her teeth had already torn him open.

Rebecca tried to shield her dead boyfriend, but Uzi grabbed her wrist.
A metallic crunch echoed as she snapped the girl’s wrist.
Her newly formed tail coiled around Rebecca’s torso—

And yanked.

Rebecca’s lower half tore free from the upper, a wet, mechanical rip.
She dragged herself away from the cabin, leaving a trail of oil behind.
Uzi didn’t notice—too consumed with feeding on Darren’s remains.

The programming took over.
Uzi cackled.

“I told you we would get lost!” Poppy snapped, her tone sharp and accusing.

Her boyfriend, Mark, shook his head. “We aren’t lost!”

“Then tell me—where’s the way back?”

“Uhm…” Mark stammered, glancing around. “This way!”

Poppy frowned. “Mark… you’re pointing to the place we just came from.”

“Exactly!”

“We’re going this way because we came from the wrong path, you idiot!”

Poppy sighed, rubbing her temples. “Great. Because of you, we’re lost and we don’t know how to get back to the bus…”

“Oh, don’t be dramatic—”

“Mark, how are we supposed to go home without the bus?!” she snapped, cutting him off. Mark flinched.

Snap.

Both of them jumped, spinning around.

A stick lay behind them—snapped clean in half.

It looked too deliberate. Too cliché. Like something out of a horror movie: the kind of branch a lurking monster might step on to alert its prey. Oddly, there were no other sticks nearby.

Like two idiots, they ignored it.

Poppy slumped against a tree, exhausted. “I need to rest. What about you?” she asked, closing her eyes and leaning her head back.

…

No answer.

“…Mark?” She opened her eyes.

“Mark?!”

He was gone.

Poppy scrambled to her feet, heart pounding. She scanned the area, searching for any sign of him…Wait—footprints. In the snow.

Why hadn’t she thought of that before?

Drip… drip…

A cold liquid trickled down her face. She recoiled.

It wasn’t raining.

She wiped her cheek. The liquid was black. Thick. Oily.

Her gaze slowly lifted to the tree above.

She screamed.

Mark’s body hung from the branches, limbs twisted and severed.

She had no idea how she hadn’t heard it happen.

“Grrrr…”

The animalistic growl made her spin around.

Nothing.

Then—movement. A shadow between the leaves.

She barely had time to react before the creature roared and lunged.

V kept walking through the forest, her attempts to locate her fri—no, her target —utterly unsuccessful.
It felt like she’d been wandering for days, but her internal clock told a different story: only about two hours had passed since they arrived at the camp, and precisely 1 hour, 12 minutes, and 54 seconds since she last spoke with the others.

How?
How did Uzi have access to the Solver?!

She had hunted down every last one of them—the cursed hosts.
Each one had been eliminated, methodically and without mercy. She’d made sure none could return.

It was during those rampages that she realized something—the lack of emotions; the numbness inside, nothing .

Nothing, she had felt nothing when she had slaughtered innocent, peaceful, harmless worker drones.

Still lost in thought, V stumbled upon the corpses of two campers whose names she didn’t know.
One lay on the ground, torn apart. The thick smear of oil on a nearby tree branch suggested he’d been placed there deliberately—until the branch snapped beneath his weight, leaving him crumpled below.
The other drone had her lower jaw torn from the upper, her stomach ripped open and hollow. No insides remained—nothing nearby, either. A knife blade pinned her torso to the tree, like a grotesque trophy.

…Things were getting far more serious than V had ever imagined.

“Man, there’s nothing to do,” Trevor complained, trudging through the forest in a futile attempt to find something—anything—to occupy himself.

Things had only gotten worse once he realized he was lost.

He groaned. “ Why did that purple freak even want to come here in the first place?” he muttered. “Wasn’t this her idea to begin with…?”

Hehehehe.

Trevor froze and spun around.

Nothing. No one. Just the echo of a low, maniacal cackle fading into the trees.

He shrugged uneasily. “Well, I guess this is the cliché part of a horror movie where I pretend that creepy sound was just a door creaking... even though I’m in the middle of a forest.”

He kept walking, aimlessly, until a sound from above made him stop—a faint rustling, something crawling through the leaves of the tree directly overhead.

Then—

ROAR.

A monstrous figure lunged from the canopy, crashing into Trevor and slamming him to the ground. It pinned him with one arm, as effortlessly as one might hold down a flailing fish.

Trevor screamed. “You are no door—”

The creature cackled. Her hand gripped one side of Trevor’s face.

The other reached for the opposite side.

Hehehehehe.

She kept laughing, wild and unhinged, as her hands began to pull. The sound of tearing flesh filled the air, drowning out Trevor’s final screams.

His head split open.

Then, with a sickening punch, her hand drove into his stomach—and the feeding began.

N and J kept searching, though their efforts were no more fruitful than V’s.
The tape they’d found earlier remained tucked safely in N’s pocket—J had trusted him enough to keep it secure.
They were tracing Uzi’s trail, but her sudden teleportation complicated things. If she’d truly mastered that ability, who could say whether she was still anywhere near the camp?

They took too long to find anything—and when they finally did, they wished they hadn’t.
A student whom neither of them recognized had been mutilated.
His head was torn open, and his insides were nowhere nearby.
He lay in a pool of oil, his visor flashing an error that made one thing painfully clear: he wouldn’t be going home.

N and J exchanged uneasy glances.
No words were spoken, but the same question echoed in both their minds, laced with a fragile hope:
Where is Uzi? Is she okay?

“…but her warranty wasn’t expired…” Braidon said, attempting a spooky voice with questionable success. “IT NEVER EXISTEEEEED!”

The others stared at him, unimpressed.

“That’s supposed to be scary?” Sam asked, visibly disappointed. “Because it’s like—”

“Aren’t you guys worried about Darren and Rebecca?” Emily interrupted, holding her book up like a shield as she prepared to read.

“—real,” Sam finished, unfazed.

“They should’ve been back from their…” Emily paused, choosing her words carefully, “immoral make-out session by now—”

She was cut off mid-sentence by a sudden grip on her ankle. Emily screamed, leaping from her chair and knocking it over in the process.

When she looked down, her breath caught.

Rebecca—ripped in half—was dragging her upper body across the ground, leaving a trail of thick, black oil behind her. Somehow, impossibly, she was still alive.

“Rebecca?!” Braidon shouted, panic rising in his voice.

“Who did this to you?” Emily asked, crouching down but keeping her distance.

“Don’t… remember the name…” Rebecca coughed violently. “Super unpopular…”

“Descriptive clues, man!” Sam urged.

“Purple… eyes… Hot Topic…” Rebecca wheezed, gesturing weakly with one trembling hand.

“Uh…” Braidon wracked his brain, coming up empty.

“I think I remember someone like that…” Emily murmured.

“From our class?” Sam asked.

Suddenly, the campfire extinguished with a hiss, plunging them into darkness. They spun around, hearts pounding.

A chilling laugh echoed through the trees.

“Hehehehe…”

It kept cackling madly as they turned around, the sound jagged and unnatural.

From her back, new features began to emerge—twisted, mechanical, and glistening with oil.

“Ohhh... You...?” Braidon asked, squinting.

The campers shrugged in unison, confused—until the air shifted.

Suddenly, a shriek tore through the clearing as her ability activated. In an instant, Braidon's head exploded into a splatter of oil, his body crumpling lifelessly to the ground.

“S-S-SPLIT UP!” Sam stammered, eyes wide with terror.

“I think I read that’s good!” Emily replied, already sprinting in the opposite direction.

Hah. Splitting up only made the hunt more thrilling.

She began marching toward the campfire, unfinished business burning in her mind.

“N-No, please!” Rebecca whimpered, dragging herself backward.

But Uzi’s foot came down—

SMASH.

Rebecca’s skull was crushed beneath it, reduced to a pulpy mess of oil.

Uzi scanned the campfire area. No signs of another person—just the book Emily had dropped in her panic.

She picked it up slowly, flipping through the pages with eerie calm.

One glance at the book was all it took to realize: it explicitly warned against splitting up.

Sam ran fast—faster than he ever had before. His feet pounded against the forest floor, propelling him deeper into the woods.

Then a misstep.

He tripped, tumbling down a steep hill, crashing into one… two… three trees on the way down. Each impact stole more breath from his lungs until he finally landed hard beneath a crooked trunk.

Groaning, he tried to move. The fall had knocked him headfirst into the dirt, and now his vision blurred with pain and panic.

Then he saw it.

The thing that had killed Rebecca and Darren—leaping from tree to tree like a predator in a twisted jungle gym. Its landing was so violent it nearly uprooted the tree, leaving it tilted and groaning under the strain.

Sam whimpered, dragging himself behind the collapsed trunk, panting and trembling.

He glanced back.

No sign of Uzi.

He exhaled shakily, relief washing over him—completely unaware of the tail hovering inches from his shoulder.

A rustle.

He turned his head, but whatever had been there was already gone.

“Huh?” he muttered, just as something thudded onto his head.

Emily’s book.

He picked it up, confused—then froze.

Hehehehe…

The cackling. That damned cackling.

It echoed through the trees, chilling his spine. Sam looked up slowly, dread tightening every muscle.

“Does it at least have pictures…?” he asked, voice trembling, clinging to one last shred of hope.

“It doesn’t,” the voice replied coldly. “I checked.”

“Noooooooooooo!”

Sam’s final scream rang through the forest. Whether it was for the horror looming above him—or the crushing disappointment of a pictureless book—remains a mystery best left unsolved.

Elsewhere, Emily had heard Sam’s screams.

She kept running, heart pounding, but eventually skidded to a halt. Trembling, she turned in circles, scanning the shadows—until her eyes locked onto a figure.

Sam?

Something was wrong with his neck. It hung at an unnatural angle, twisted as if broken.

But hadn’t he been screaming from far away just moments ago?

“Sam?…” she whispered, voice barely audible.

The figure raised a hand and flashed a peace sign.

“Oh, thank God…” she breathed. Maybe she’d mistaken the source of the scream.

Still… his neck. Why was it so grotesquely tilted?

Hehehehe…

A low, chilling laugh echoed from behind Sam.

Emily froze.

And then she saw it.

That wasn’t Sam.

The darkness had masked the tail coiled around his neck.

With terrifying ease, Sam’s lifeless body was hoisted into the air, revealing the creature lurking behind him.

In one brutal motion, Sam was torn in half. His remains landed with a sickening thud near Emily.

She didn’t even have time to scream before it lunged.

V’s search had yielded nothing but corpses.

She’d followed a trail of oil, only to find another body—bisected, its head smashed beyond recognition. Before that, one had its skull blown apart into a pool of oil, later ignited into flames.

So far, she’d found the two campers first. Then came the one with his head split clean in two. Another had been punched straight through—likely from behind, V guessed.

One was strung up in a tree, suspended by its own entrails.

That corpse was the only one with any organs left.

The rest had been hollowed out.

V couldn’t help but wonder why.

And then there was the assumed first victim, the one who had tapped on her visor earlier. That encounter had led her to the trail she used to find the last two.

Still, she needed to find her fri— target . Focus, V. Stay composed.

She was getting nowhere—until she heard it.

Munching.

Devouring.

She jumped at the sound, shotgun snapping into position.

The chewing stopped the instant her weapon clicked.

She crept forward, each step deliberate, toward the source of the noise.

And found two more bodies.

One was torn in half. The other had her head ripped clean off. Both had gaping chest wounds, their insides barely intact.

Then V noticed the tree moving.

Something rustled in the leaves above.

And then she saw it.

A glowing purple neon X. It flickered—briefly shifting to the Solver’s symbol—then back to the X.

It was the only thing visible in the darkness… aside from the rows of razor-sharp teeth.

Hehehehe…

V froze.

She knew that giggle.

“...U-Uzi?” she stammered, lowering her weapon, hands trembling.

“Hello, V!”

It lunged.

V barely had time to react.

Her wing shot forward like a shield, barely holding Uzi back.
V’s claws readied—then she… hesitated.
But instinct took over. Her claws swiped, desperate to gain some kind of grip.
Uzi’s hand met hers.

CRUNCH.

A metallic snap echoed through the air as V’s wrist twisted unnaturally. She screamed.
Uzi seized her by the neck, wrenching her forward with brutal force.
Then, with strength that didn’t belong to her, Uzi hurled V into the snow. The impact was unforgiving—the snow offered no cushion.

V whimpered, pain radiating through her body. Her wrist began to realign, easing the agony.
As she dragged herself upright, her eyes locked onto the figure before her.

That couldn’t be Uzi.

Uzi had always been more than just your average worker drone. She was strong—physically capable—but not like that thing.

Uzi was short; it wasn’t.

It towered over V with ease, maybe even over N—no, definitely over N. Uzi had never been tall, not even by worker drone standards. That had always been a running joke among her squad, something they teased her about constantly. She was the shortest of them all. But now? Now she was the tallest—by far.

Worker drones didn’t have wings. Or tails. But Uzi now had both—and more than the disassembly drones ever did.

She hadn’t just gained a pair of wings—she had two. One pair resembled the sharp, metallic wings of a disassembly drone, designed to slice through air and victims alike.

The other pair, however, was something else entirely: large, bat-like wings with claws protruding from their sides. They didn’t belong to any drone she knew.

And just as she had outmatched them in wings, she did so in tails.

One was the classic disassembly drone tail, but the liquid it carried wasn’t the usual yellowish nanite acid. It glowed with a purplish neon hue—deadlier, more corrosive, she could feel it.

The second tail was even stranger. Like the second pair of wings, it didn’t belong to a disassembly drone.

It resembled the head of a dark purple raptor, lined with small spikes, a crocodile-like mouth, and glowing violet eyes.

Uzi hadn’t just gained strength and weaponry—her entire body had transformed.

Her arms were now white, her forearms broader.

Her shins tapered to sharp points, like those of a female disassembly drone.

Her torso had the same elegant curve, the same black leg markings.

Her thighs no longer looked skeletal—they now resembled thigh-highs.

But the hazard stripes? They weren’t the standard yellow and black.

They were black and purple—Uzi’s colors.

But that wasn’t her Uzi anymore…

Uzi cackled, her steps deliberate and menacing as she marched toward V.

“I’m not afraid,” V had told N and J.

She was wrong .

Her body betrayed her—trembling, retreating. Each step backward was a silent confession. She wasn’t just afraid. She was terrified.

Then she tripped—a jagged rock beneath the snow sent her sprawling. Cold bit into her back as she landed hard.

Before she could react, Uzi was already above her. A hand gripped the back of V’s head.

Uzi slammed her skull into the ground. Again. Again. Until V’s visor cracked and the metal of her head dented.

Then—silence. Uzi paused, her grip still firm, but the assault stopped. V’s systems flickered. Her visor repaired itself. The metal undented.

A breath. A moment.

Then—pain. Uzi yanked V up by her hair. V’s fists flailed weakly, bumping against Uzi’s wrist in a futile attempt to break free.

“Let me go!” V attempted to shout, but it came out broken as her voice betrayed her—less a command, like she had wanted to, but more of a plea.

Another thud echoed through the forest as Uzi slammed her into a tree trunk. V cried out, but Uzi’s laughter drowned her voice.

Uzi dragged her upright, only to deliver a brutal uppercut to her chin. V crumpled.

She tried to rise—but Uzi was faster.

Her tail lashed forward, reptilian and precise. V dodged, barely—but Uzi had anticipated it. The tail’s jaw snapped open and clamped onto V’s wrist.

She stifled a groan.

The tail yanked her forward, straight into Uzi’s grasp. Fingers closed around her throat. Another slam—this time into a tree so hard it bent backward.

Uzi’s grip tightened. V choked, gasping, her lungs screaming for air.

Her shotgun—forgotten in the haze of panic—was suddenly in her hands. She fired.

Uzi deflected it. The blast lit up the forest, harmlessly distant. She ripped the weapon away.

Another slam. V hit the ground hard, dragged across the snow like a ragdoll.

Finally, Uzi released her throat. V gasped, vision swimming, lungs desperate.

She barely had time to think before she saw Uzi looming over her—watching, savoring her struggle.

V reached for a missile. Uzi snatched it away and tossed it aside. The explosion was distant, irrelevant.

Uzi pinned her arms down, straddling her. Her tail emerged, gleaming and deadly.

V’s eyes widened. She knew what was coming.

Uzi raised the tail.

V shut her eyes.

Silence.

Then—shaking.

V opened her eyes.

Uzi’s visor flickered. The X was gone. Purple eyes stared back—wide, terrified. The tail hesitated.

A sob escaped Uzi’s lips.

“U-Uzi?” V whispered, hope trembling in her voice.

But the moment shattered. The X returned. The cackle resumed.

The tail hovered—one inch from her chest when…

The sound of metal being punctured rang in V’s ears—but there was no pain.

It wasn’t her metal that had been stabbed. When she opened her eyes, she saw N’s hand…

His fingers trembled as he yanked them out of the syringe, clutching his injured hand with the other.

That’s when V realized she’d been right: N had grown so accustomed to nanite acid, it no longer hurt him.

But this—this new type—made his hand shake.

J tackled Uzi off her perch, the two drones crashing into a chaotic grapple.

V exchanged a quick glance with N, his earlier words still echoing in her mind:

“What is wrong with you?!”

He’d shouted at her like it was her fault.

Maybe it was. Maybe she was just too weak to do what needed to be done.

She shifted her focus to Uzi. As expected, J was quickly overpowered by the now taller drone.

N raised his shotgun toward Uzi… but hesitated.

It was V who acted. Her hands morphed into a pistol, and she fired.

The sharp crack of a Glock echoed through the forest.

Uzi reacted instantly, leaping to a tree branch. Her tail lashed out, grabbing J and yanking her upward.

The shot missed—tearing a hole through J’s stomach instead.

J dropped to the snow with a heavy thud.

Uzi’s laughter rang out—manic and unrelenting—as she raised her wrist.

Her transformation had brought features V should’ve anticipated.

Like a true disassembly drone, Uzi’s hands morphed into twin chainsaws.

“Shit,” V muttered, bracing herself as Uzi lunged.

V’s arms shifted into sword blades, meeting the chainsaws mid-swing.

The clash sent vibrations through her frame as Uzi pressed harder, grinding the blades toward her neck.

“Uzi, stop!” N shouted, his gunfire lighting up the forest.

But Uzi was already gone before the first shot landed.

V’s eyes widened in horror—Uzi was behind N.

“N, behind you!” she cried.

Too late.

The reptilian tail seized his neck, biting down with brutal force.

N gasped as Uzi lifted him into the air.

V sprinted toward them—

Crunch.

Too late again.

Uzi’s tail twisted N’s neck 180 degrees with a sickening snap.

V tackled Uzi to the ground, trying to land a punch—

But Uzi’s bat-like wings pierced a hole through her head.

With a savage kick, Uzi drove her foot into V’s stomach, launching her backward.

She crashed near N’s fallen body, dragging herself upright as oil dripped from the wound.

J stepped beside her, visor cracked from the earlier impact.

N’s neck was still twisted—but disassembly drones could survive worse.

Uzi rose again, cackling at the sight of her weakened prey.

Hehehehehe -....

Then it stopped.

Her visor glitched, revealing hollowed eyes scanning the scene.

Her friends were injured because of her .

She stepped back, trembling.

J saw the fear behind the monstrous facade.

“Uzi?” J whispered, hope flickering.

Uzi’s tear-filled eyes snapped to her.

“J?” she asked, voice broken and afraid.

J lowered her stance.

V hated to admit it—she did too.

But the moment was shattered.

The Solver’s symbol surged forward, hijacking her mind.

The neon X returned.

J and V saw the real Uzi beneath the abomination—but only for a second. Then the monster lunged at them with claws that belonged to a disassembly drone.

J’s chest was slashed brutally from end to end, sending her flying.

Uzi, too focused on J, didn’t see the punch V threw at the corner of her face.

She stumbled backward, but her laughter didn’t stop.

V seized the collar of Uzi’s shirt, yanking her closer, ready to slam her fist into the abomination’s face.

Her punch landed squarely on Uzi’s visor, knocking her to the ground.

Still, the laughter echoed.

V climbed on top of her, smashing her fist into the visor again—hard enough to hear a subtle crack.

She froze. Hesitated.

Even as Uzi kept laughing, the crack across her visor shimmered… and vanished. It had repaired itself.

Uzi had never shown this ability before.

Had she gained it after the transformation?

Or had it always been there, unnoticed?

The power to fix her own body—like the disassembly drones?

It didn’t matter now.

Not when the syringe tail stabbed into the side of V’s stomach, puncturing her waist.

She choked, collapsing in agony.

Now she understood why N’s hand had trembled in pain.

The liquid was burning her—like her body might ignite from the inside.

V writhed on the ground, wincing.

Uzi climbed on top of her, laughing—then froze.

The sight of V in pain snapped Uzi out of her monstrous trance.

Just briefly.

That’s when V began to understand.

There was a pattern.

Every time Uzi hurt them too much—or was about to deliver a fatal blow—

She snapped back.

Her visor revealed hollow, shaken purple eyes.

The real Uzi.

The one filled with regret. With fear.

V had a stupid idea.

But it was the only one she had.

Her hand shot toward the syringe tail, gripping it tightly.

Uzi’s eyes widened, hollowing even more.

V’s eyes burned with determination.

The syringe wasn’t going to be used against Uzi.

No—V was going to use it on herself.

She drove it into her own neck, injecting the corrosive purple liquid.

It was a stupid idea, she knew that.

But when she made the deal, she promised herself she’d save what was left—

She’d save N and J.

No matter the cost.

The price. Doesn’t . Matter.

And if that meant her death—so be it.

She just wanted them to be safe.

Her vision was already blurring.

Someone was calling her name.

Was it Uzi? She didn’t know.

She didn’t know if the liquid would be too fatal, even for her.

But she didn’t care.

Not if it meant they’d survive.

“V, p-please stop joking!” Uzi sobbed. “...V!”

V’s eyes were still open—but lifeless.
They didn’t move. Her expression hadn’t changed. That same blank, vacant stare.

Uzi was so focused on V that she barely registered the drone grabbing her shirt from behind.
By the time she snapped out of it, N was already holding her up by the collar.

“Sorry, Uzi,” he said gently, “I’m sorry, Uzi… but we need to talk—up there.”

“Wait, wha—” she began, her voice cracking. But before she could finish, she was hurled skyward.

And then—she was above the clouds.

With Uzi gone, N finally turned his attention to V lying on the ground.
The syringe’s contents were leaking from her neck and waist. Her eyes were void of emotion.

He stepped forward, reaching for her—
But J blocked him.

“No,” she said firmly, as N snapped his gaze toward her. “Go talk to Uzi. I’ll stay here and check on her.”

N hesitated, then nodded. He took flight, leaving J alone with the motionless V.

Uzi was being hurled all across the sky, she tried using her new… wings to fly and not going any higher, but she was unstable in flying

She was always took flight on N, V or J… never by herself, she had no skills.

She began a high fall, whimpering and panting all the way as she tried to keep her cool.

When she had realized, N appeared next to her.

“Uzi, you want to tell me what's the matter?”

“No!” She flinched, backing away from N as she hidden herself in her new wing, “...don't look….” She whispered in a low whisper, almost a plea for N, and that had made him internally break, seeing Uzi so… distressed, so scared…. so fragile….

 “I'm…. gross and-and… eating people and stuff…” Her voice broke in sobs.

“Yeah,” N said casually, “we'll figure that part out…” He approached, his hands opening her wings gently, just enough space open to see her face, “but… you know that's not what I mean.”

Uzi teared up, breaking in sobs “Are you all…” She hesitated, her sobs not helping the thing, “gonna leave me?” She asked, a subtle pleading for a positive answer to her.

“What?”

Uzi just teared up again, her sobs getting louder as her wings close again.

N sighed softly, “Uzi, before we met, scary stuff was actually…” he stopped for a second, “pretty scary,” he chuckled dryly, “and tonight too,” he added, “'cause you weren't with us to make it fun, somehow.”

Uzi’s face was revealed, but her body still remained hidden, N continued “You changed us all ‘Zi,” He said, “for the better!” He assured, “I mean, just look at us, J got nicer, she even apologized today!”

Uzi’s eyes hollowed a bit of surprise, before a weak chuckle left her lips, “She did?”

“Yeah!” N said excitedly, “and V also became a bit softer!” Uzi darkened.

N hesitated a bit “... or, I thought she had become softer,” he said unsure.

“Is she fine? …” Uzi asked with her voice cracking even before she began.

“V? Pfft…” He gestured, “I bet you she’ll be as good as new by tomorrow!”

Uzi allowed herself to smile a bit…

“Until there….” N started, as his hand seized the reptilian tail of Uzi, “we'll stick together!” he used her tail as a puppet as he changed his accent to create a goofy voice to it.

Uzi chuckled, pulling her tail back, “Don't freaking touch it!” She laughed, before she…. “Plus my voice is more like-” She changed her own accent and used her tail as a puppet too.

She never got to finish it when they crashed on the ground.

V’s eyes snapped open.

She gasped, choking on her own breath.

“There you are…” came J’s familiar scolding tone.

And then—

Smack.

“Ouch!” V yelped. “What was that for—”

“WHAT WERE YOU THINKING, YOU IDIOT?”

V’s ears rang from the shout. Maybe it was the aftermath of the earlier chaos messing with her senses—but oddly enough, the yelling helped ground her.

She sighed, exhausted, letting her head sink into the snow. Everything hurt.

“...I’m waiting,” J muttered.

“Give me a moment, J!” V snapped, rubbing her temple. “Just… ugh, my head hurts!”

“It would hurt less if you hadn’t injected that crap into your neck—and didn’t force me to slash your neck and waist off!”

“J, for fuck’s sake, I need a moment here!”

“You’d have your damn moment if you weren’t so stupid!”

V groaned, her head falling back into the snow again. “Where’s Uzi and N—”

Her question was answered instantly as the two crashed into the ground nearby, sending a burst of snow flying.

“Never mind…” she muttered, watching N cradle Uzi in his arms.

“Hiya, hiya!”

The bus rumbled to life, pulling away as the guy perched on top—Ronathon, if V remembered right—gave the signal.

Meanwhile, the teacher stood at the front, scanning the list of students.

He turned to V. “So… missing some campers here,” he said, the question hanging in the air, waiting to be asked.

V didn’t respond.
She knew exactly what had happened to the missing students.

She glanced over her shoulder and spotted Uzi, J, and N—sound asleep.
Uzi’s head rested on N’s lap, her legs stretched across J’s.

They’d claimed the entire back row, which was just wide enough to fit all three. Uzi’s new form had forced N and J to leave a gap between them just so she could fit comfortably.

Funny. Just a few hours ago, Uzi had been the shortest one in their squad.

Her little green companion—new and insect-like—hid inside her hat.

V turned back to the teacher, sighing. Her voice shifted from weary to menacing in an instant.

“Look here, you little piece of shit. I’m getting hungry again,” she growled. “Do you want to be next on the li—”

“No name-calling,” the teacher interrupted, raising his arms in mock surrender. His face remained as bored as ever—just like Uzi had described more than once.

“Just a question,” he added, turning back to his seat.

V slumped into hers, casting one last glance at the trio in the back.

A pool of sunlight spilled across their row. Uzi’s hand began to smoke under the rays—just like a disassembly drone’s would.

J noticed and gently moved Uzi’s hand out of the light.

V turned her gaze to the road ahead.

They had a long journey in front of them.

She wished she was only talking about the road.
But she’d be lying if she said that was all.

Chapter Text

GOT HACKED. IDIOT.

Uzi’s hallowed eyes snapped wide open—she sat up, gripping her beanie tightly.

Her shouting in horror had already left her lips.

Her breathing is uneven.

Uzi paused in confusion.

She started inspecting her palms, which are now clean—normal worker drone hands.

Her eyes turned to her peaceful room.

No sound—just the pure silence filled it.

J and N hung upside down like bats from a beam installed over the spaceship.

The text ‘Sleep Mode’ labelled across their visors.

Uzi couldn’t restrain the frustration rising.

“Oh come on!” She complained with a shout. “Again?!” she groaned as she plopped back onto her pillow.

Virus Removal In Progress

Had been read across her visor with a loading bar below it.

“Well, now that I’ve had my daily dose of nightmare fuel” She started disgruntledly, “bye-bye Robo-Satan.”

Virus Removal In Progress Failed

Her eyes would go hollow if they were visible, but the message was the only thing visible in her visor.

Lmao

“I’m going to blow a fucking fuse-” her shaking voice started glitching due to her anger.

“Are you kidding me?!”

Uzi lets out a long melodramatic “UGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGH”....

Unaware that it had woken N up.

N’s eyes softly opened, as he looked over at her from where he hung, worried.

Uzi grabbed her pillow and used it to sandwich it around her head, as she turned onto her side.

“Screw this, I’ll install a stupid firewall tomorrow…” She grumbled, “Hnnngh... It’s too

late for this…”

N’s expression changed into a frown, contemplating quietly to himself.

Ever since the cabin, Uzi started to have nightmares….

A lot of them, and V became…. even more distant.

She decided to go to sleep outside, ever since the cabin—picking a safe place because of the sun.

She said the cold of the night wasn’t affecting her that much.

Bullshit—N saw her shaking in the cold one day after waking up.

And Uzi’s nightmares were getting worse….

N felt so useless, he couldn’t do anything to help….

Unless….

He then, smiled and giggled to himself when his mind came to an idea that might just be the solution to their problem!