0x4
Outpost-11 was built within the storm drains and subway tunnels beneath the city. Collapses — some deliberately triggered — had left the city’s underground a confusing, disconnected thing. Outpost-11 didn’t have doors, but to get in, you needed to know the specific place in the city that access it, then follow a series of twists and turns in the dark to before you were home free.
Uzi’s first impression of the outpost was that the drones were… the kind word is rugged. But her true first impression was ‘scuffed’. Everyone looked rusted, or cracked, or soldered. Half the drones had something broken or mismatched or nonfunctional. In Outpost-3, there were always smiles to be found, even for an outcast like Uzi.
That a new face had appeared wasn’t a cause for any celebration. If anything, it deepened the worry and mistrust.
Her name sparks some interest. Few haven’t heard of Khan and his doors. How the best of the WDF sat on their asses in effective retirement. How they took in the refuges after the massacre at Outpost-6. How they’ll be the last ones left.
Some had heard of Nori. The prophetess who tried to warn them all. The bitch who abandoned us. The humans’ failed experiment.
Her head swirls with the stories, the mixed opinions, the cacophany of so many voices after so long with only one — desperately pleasant — companion. She missed N. She needed N. Could he have helped her make sense of this? Overwhelming, to so suddenly go from having no answers to too many, blindingly like sunlight after living in a cave.
She didn’t plan to stay in Outpost-11. She’d just ask around, find some leads, then leave. But there’s drones who need help. She has a more skilled hand with repairs than anyone else; she’s the only one here who knows her way around the administrator commands needed to unfuck the more pathological of misconfigurations. Can she share her railgun design? Does she know half of what Khan does about doors? How can we protect ourselves from the murder drones?
She didn’t come here to do odd jobs, but drones soon learn you can pique Uzi’s interest with a story about her parents. She starts to wonder if half these drones are lying to her. She misses N. She needs N. Why did she let him stay behind? Why did he let her go?
There’s always more to do, more evidence to gather and piece to her corkboard.
There’s always more fucking bullcrap.
Uzi wants to scream. She wants to grab her plastic and tear herself open. (Maybe she wouldn’t have resisted that urge, if she still had both hands.)
Slipping into recharge one night, she thinks about how drones smelled the same whether they were alive or dead.
V had gone from having no path forward to too many.
J didn’t apologize, but she didn’t bring up that V had attacked, either. She kept her distance. Physically, that is; she still contrived every excuse to interact with V. She was so obviously lonely. V was too. If V let herself, she could forget everything, let herself hold onto the only other thing she had in this world.
Except it wasn’t the only thing V had. N was out there. He’d run away, and V could run away too. Escape J and her constricting demands or cloying attempted affection. No point in chasing after N, not when he’d already replaced her, but if N could find a drone to play friendship with, couldn’t V?
Except V didn’t need to find one, she already had. She had Lizzy’s number, told the drone she’d be down to hang out some more. The girl was annoying, obsessed with appearances and gossip. She was so fake. Manufacturing aloof superiority. But then, why would a fake reach out to a drone that needed someone to talk to? Why offer to do their hair? There was an ounce of caring underneath the facade — and didn’t that sound so familiar to V. A polished mirror.
Except V was parched; disassembly drones always were. Why befriend an oilcan when you could drink from it? Because if V played her cards right, pretend (pretend) to become friends with Lizzy, she could finally make it past the doors of Outpost-3 and feast on the drones inside. J would be so proud.
Except that was reason not to bother, wasn’t it? J would love it, she’d sing V’s praises and then look so disappointed when V didn’t act like J’s smile was humanity’s gift to robotkind. Then the insults would come.
After a few days, J had lost the singleminded focus on everything short of apologizing for years of being bitch; now she’d sensed N’s EM signature out there, and every night J was flying out, waiting for it to pop up again. V’s eyes hollowed to hear this, but if N was going to be stupid, well, V’d done all she could.
With her leader preoccupied, V opts to have a sleepover with Lizzy. She lets the other girl play with her hair again, and leans into the touch. Late into the night, Lizzy hesitantly floats the suggestion that there’s a prom soon, and V should come.
“It sounds crazy, but I think you might have like, a real shot at being prom queen.”
V hums, but it sounds lame, and she’ll leave the dumb clout games to the toasters. Lizzy snorts. For some reason, she doesn’t look disappointed V refused.
When she gets back, J is flipping between bridled fury and sweetly demanding to know where exactly V’s been. It’s here that it finally clicks. V’s so tired of this shit — why did she even come back? It’s not like she needs to.
So she turns right back around and leaves, even as J demands to know where she thinks she’s going. She calls Lizzy, and says she changed her mind.
Prom sounds perfect.
Something about the Uzi story didn’t add up, and Thad thought he was the only one who cared. Most of his classmates didn’t even remember the purple girl, and half the ones who did — his sister and her girlfriend — snorted at his concern.
He had listened intently when the head of the WDF recounted what had happened that night — and hid his outrage in clenched fists when he revealed he’d left her to her fate. They never found a body — and apparently the murder drone had spoken to her, apologized for his actions.
Looking back, that must have been when the world stopped making sense. Then, though, Thad thought that these things, this thorned thread through the throes, threatened theater, not thunder. They’d resolve themselves, and then…
But no. Uzi disappeared. Then other girls started disappearing.
The WDF was supposed to defend. Murder drones were supposed to be mindless, demonic predators. Drones were supposed to be safe in Outpost-3.
Thad was supposed to go with the flow. Play ball, peak in high school, be the guy people thought of fondly, but not highly.
But how was he supposed to stay chill when there’s a hole in every classroom? He spends his days cheering drones up — because now he has to; he can see the fear behind the eyes of so many.
He had to get to the bottom of it.
Thad might not be able to put all the piece together, but he was willing to pick up the pieces, carry them to someone who could: a detective poking around the case. Every victim was a young girl on the school prom court. No bodies had been found, but here and there, drops of spilled oil pop up. Nearby cameras are always damaged or disabled.
One day, they find a shattered pair of glasses. No one would think much of it, but Braiden had snuck into the girls’ bathroom the other day, and came out with a shard of glass stuck to his boot. Thad would feel a bit awkward barging into the girl’s bathroom, but someone else had taken interest in the case.
Emily was friends with the latest disappearance case, Kelsey Day. She remembered Uzi, too, and thought class seemed so… shallow without her. (And with Uzi and so many other girls gone, bullies’ attention was concentrated on the brown-haired girl).
Emily’s first contribution to the investigation is as simple as checking thad’s hunch — the mirror in the second floor girls’ bathroom was broken.
No one, certainly not Thad, would have thought much of it. But it was the sort of connection Uzi would draw, wasn’t it? And if anyone could figure this out, it’d be ’Zi.
But if the drone behind this was a girl in his class, who? Why?
Lizzy had been sneaking out at night, which now seems a bit suspicious. His sister could be mean, but a killer? He could just ask… but if he’s wrong, that’s a wild thing to ask, and if he’s right, would he be next?
Emily suggests Doll — but Thad knew Doll had the meanest things to say about the nerdy girl and her taste in reading. They competed bitterly for the top grades and couldn’t stand each other. Thad can concede it’s possible, but again, what’s the motive?
He’s still thinking about why. The detective suggests the motive might be related to prom. It has to be, the pattern is too tight to be coincidence. But Lizzy wasn’t on the prom court, she’d dropped out. He thought it strange then, and now it seemed like a smoking gun.
Then the killings stop there, and they never piece it together. Thad goes to prom with dread hanging over his head, but maybe it was a glitch in reality that had corrected itself.
Thad gets to dance with Rebecca, and briefly, the worries melt away into music and flow. He smiles, he makes people smile, and it’s not to correct for anything; it’s just because he’s having fun.
And then the screams start.
A murder drone is on the stage, blade-feathers splayed out, guns akimbo, and… it doesn’t kill anyone. It wears the prom queen crown, Lizzy is there grinning and shaming the terrified students, and urging the monster to give a speech.
And then there’s only one drone screaming. Doors locked, and Doll had rushed forward with hands glowing, tossing drones aside as she stalked forward. Lizzy watches the murder drone be impaled, her pink gaze bearing something almost like regret, meeting a sulphurous gaze bearing something almost like betrayal. Or resignation.
Lizzy reaches out, as if her weak frame could do anything about the rebar rods, then Doll’s red light magic is flinging her out of her room. And that’s Thad’s cue to act. Any drone in Doll’s way got turned to so much wasted oil, and his sister needs him.
The doors unlock, and Thad’s the first one out. He glances back at the murder drone as he’s leaving. The world definitely doesn’t make sense anymore — why, when some kind of justice is finally being unleashed, does this feel like one more dead girl he failed to save?
He shakes his head, and searches for Lizzy. Finds her, hugs her, comforts her and she cries. He’s there, and he listens and he finally hears the truth. Lizzy had befriended V. Lizzy was supposed to pretend, because V was supposed to be pretending, that’s what Doll told her. Lizzy got attached despite herself, but Doll promised V would show her true colors at the prom, and Doll would be there to stop her. But that’s not how it happened.
Doll was the one behind it all — but after what he’d seen, the confirmation wasn’t much more than a formality. Another formality: the disappeared girls were really, unsavably dead.
Except for Uzi. She might be out there somewhere still: V had seen her. She had a murder drone boyfriend to protect her, and another murder drone hunting her. (When Lizzy had first heard V say that, that was when the cheerleader really started to consider that maybe she and V could have had something real and lasting. Lizzy sobs again.)
“It wasn’t supposed to turn out like this.”
No, it wasn’t. Something had gone wrong. Thad needed fix it, but he didn’t know how.
Maybe if ’Zi was here. She was smart enough to figure it out.