An Opaque Heart

0xB

Outpost‍-​11 was built within storm drains. It was built to flow. Though perhaps it wasn’t quite built for the thick, viscous black liquid, chunky with cracked chassis and loops of copper wire.

Uzi was dreaming black.

Still, oil poured through the tunnels. It was dammed intermittenly by new doors that blocked off different districts and buildings. Those doors lasted until every weakpoint glowed bright with purple light, and impossible force exploded them all to splinters and shrapnel.

Uzi grinned, hoping to stay on knife’s edge of lucidity. Don’t wake up, don’t let this end just yet. Tearing down the doors she’d been asked to renovate is certainly the sort of thing she’d fantasize about. Equally cathartic to silence the the endless lies about her parent and demands for her skills. In their place came lies about how she ‘didn’t have to do this’ and pleading for their lives.

Her dreams were rarely this fun. Lately they were all nightmares and flashbacks. What if N attacked her again? What if the basement torture never ended? What if diablus ex machina didn’t save her from the bandits?

She didn’t question her fortune, she would just enjoy this till she woke up and needed to tear down her barricades and face the joys of her new waking life. But here in the dream, she didn’t have to repress how much joy she took in drinking the black lifeblood of drones, even when it came from corpses that still moved.

Then some drone shot her, and it hurt terribly before she instinctively yanked the bullet out and closed the wound with a swipe of her hand. But still, ouch.

Wait, how? Could you even feel pain in a dream? Humans pinched themselves to wake up, but maybe robots dreamed in unfiltered fidelity? But no, whenever dream‍-​N attacks her, she feels betrayed. When she’s tortured or extorted, she feels powerless. Pain in a dream would make for an awful trauma loop, anyway.

Which meant this was…

But how?

Why?

So what?

If this was real… she didn’t know these drones, and they kinda sucked and they were sorta sitting ducks for the murder drones anyway, and she’s so so so thirsty, and listen to how their bodies crack, how the electricity arced out of severed wires to tingle against her skin, and how they run and run but only live until she clicks on them like this is a video game and she can almost count up her score.

They’re calculating what deity to pray to, but Uzi only sees one god down here.

So Uzi laughs and cackles and giggles and cries and sobs because what if someone sees her like this, what is she going to tell N, what is she going to do if she loses control like this again—

What is she going to do if she can’t let loose like this again?

Oil spends so long trapped and circulating inside of a drone and she’s finally letting all of it flow free. Uzi has spent so long holding on this anger and angst and powerlessness and despair and pain and loneliness and confusion and entitlement and curiosity and hunger and hunger and hunger and need.

Uzi dances and enjoys the unchallenged power‍ ‍—‍ right up until it’s challenged.

There was something else in the world other than her power and the screaming corpses she exacted it on.

A purple cross meets a yellow gaze; then the spell breaks and she is free of the dream.

N stared. So close, yet too distant. The most powerful thing there, yet powerless where it counted.

Behind Khan stood Thad, body falling, chasing after its head. Behind Thad stood J, a grin rimmed by sweet oil, slick clawed hands at her hips.

(Why was J here? Why now? How did she know? Who let her in? Shouldn’t Uzi’s jammer have distracted her? How could N stand against her alone?)

But there, behind J, another drone staggered into view, stepping into the auditorium, and his core soared. The head tilted up.

Purple eyes met yellow.

“Uzi! There you are!”

She looked sad. He expected Uzi to brightened up immediately on hearing his voice, seeing that he’s alright‍ ‍—‍ but she flinched. Something was wrong. Her eyes were odd‍ ‍—‍ her right eye was a cross, like a disassembly drone’s.

Like her face when she had looked down on those bandits.

J was glaring at him. “Shut up, traitor. The sheer insult of thinking you have a right to speak to her almost rivals your slander against the company.”

“J, what are you talking about?”

But there’s a beep. The cooldown on Khan’s railgun had elapsed. It was ready to fire again. Khan closed one eye and took aim.

But behind J stood Uzi.

“Get down, Uzi!”

“What do you think you’re doing?”

“My daughter, listen, I know I failed you where it mattered most. But let me make up for that now. Please. Move, Uzi.”

Uzi laughed. “No. That’s my design.” She lifted a hand, and her light latched onto the imitation gun. Maybe Khan had seen that program used before‍ ‍—‍ so he held on tighter against the coming telekinetic pull. But Uzi wrote the blueprint: she knew it inside and out.

The green light of the interface turned red and flashing. Khan looked down, eyes paled, but he only gets a moment’s glimpse. Then the gun is exploding at his side, sending him flying into a wall. J looks down at him, licks her lips, and gets cross‍-​eyed.

“Nuh uh. J, back off. That’s my dad.”

J grunted, then turns her eyes to N. Her glare isn’t any less lethal.

“Uzi…” N starts.

“I didn’t want you to see this,” Uzi tells him.

“I know you’re keeping secrets, Uzi. But whatever it is, you can tell me. I’ll accept anything, it’s you. I love you. You’re everything to me. Whatever happened in Outpost‍-​11, whatever J did to you, we can make it through this together!”

“Sorry, N.”

“Don’t say that to me. Please! Not you too.”

“Fine. How about this? Die mad.”

N frowns, but the next words out of her mouth are:

“Activate admin override. Enter hibernation mode.”

Before his thoughts ground to a halt, N had a clock cycle for one last plaintive paroxysm: Where could it have possibly gone wrong? Why didn’t he see it?

N froze, screensaver on his screen.

For just a moment, purple ovals stare with horror and disbelief. Then Uzi smacks herself, and a cross appears in one eye, and her game face returns.

Meanwhile, J closed the distance, producing a virus stake and driving it into N’s core once again. But she frowns. “It’s not as satisfying if he’s not awake to thank me for it.”

“I didn’t want to hurt him and I still don’t.”

A snort. “Then you have a very narrow skillset.” J glanced over and pouted. “Are you sure I can’t kill him?”

“That wasn’t part of the deal and you know it.”

A cough from the side. “Uzi… I think you’re falling in with a bad crowd. N was a fine boy, far better for you than this—”

“Careful you end that sentence, blue‍-​collar.”

“I won’t be condescended to by a human‍-​sympathizing, bootlicking genocidal karenbot.”

J scoffed. “The boot rests on the bottom rung. I climbed my way up the ladder a long time ago. After all, I’d rather not get dirt on my suit.”

Khan laughed or coughed. “Oh, promoted to kissing ass, then? You’re plenty polished, but so is any toilet.”

“Uzi, can you end this miserable toaster already?” But when J turns, she sees the look on Uzi’s face. “Are you enjoying this?”

“It is a little funny that you lost a battle of wits against my‍ ‍—‍ against Khan. What was it you said… A very narrow skillset?” An imitation snort.

A yellow anger mark, and a threatening step toward the shorter drone. J could loom over the shorter drone.

But when Khan turned his eyes from J to Uzi, the mirth he’d clawed out of this situation evaporated, and he just looked sad. “You don’t have to do this.”

“I always wanted to know what it felt like, standing on the other side. And I think you need to learn too.”

The sound of joints popping, a chassis flexing and distorting in ways it was never meant to. Wet, leathery wings slide free of her tattered hoodie. A mawed tail snaking from beneath the fuzzy lining.

Uzi’s fangs were out, and she threw back her head and gave a roaring, hissing, clicking sound, the pleasure of finally not squeezing herself inside a frame far too small to fit all of her. She was free.

Khan looked up at his daughter, and there were the beginning of tears.

Uzi grinned down at him. She had an idea. She glanced at her packmate. Her voice was guttural, silibant. “Hey J… give him something to cry about.” She lashed her tail, even as it yawned in excitement.

J understood. She lunged forward, and Khan, even with a chest burst open, leaned away, tried to grasp for even inched of distance.

But disassembly drone tails were long. A knife finds purchase, and then there is fire beneath Khan’s skin.

With the damage to his ventilation, there isn’t much air left for screaming, just the quiet vibration of a vocalsynth spitting noise.

Uzi crawled forth, zig‍-​zaging cross the distance, and then her drooling mouth was filling his vision. She laughed.

It felt like she was clearing the final level of a video game.

Khan gasped for air with awful sound of suction. Just enough for a few last words. “You don’t even sound like yourself.”

“You let Uzi die,” growls the voice. “What’d you expect?”

“I… wasn’t what you needed. But I love you. Even now.”

“Did you love mom?”

His last words: “With my whole core.”

Uzi’s grin only got broader. From her jacket pocket, she produced the wrench he used to tighten his first door prototype.

“Then let me say it back in a way you can understand.”

Uzi lifted the wrench, and brought it down. Again. And again. And again.

Until Khan was dead.

This was power she was feeling, right?

“Not bad, for a toaster. But you’re gonna need to pick up the pace if we’re going to clear out the rest of this colony.”

“That wasn’t what we agreed to, J.”

“Oh, is that what you thought? Ha. You should have gotten it in writing.”

“You bitch.”

Uzi lunges forward, claws out, and she tackles J to the ground. A stinger tail rears up, stabbing wildly, but Uzi rolls over, pinning the cannister beneath her weight. J’s wings stab the hands of Uzi’s wings into the ground, then so many blade‍-​feathers scrape across the delicate membrane. It barely bleeds.

Then Thad’s pipe clocks J in the head, lifted by purple light. Enough for Uzi to kick J up off her. Uzi is summoning debris far ahead of J, flinging it at her face and optics, forcing her to bring up blade‍-​wings to protect herself‍ ‍—‍ freeing Uzi to rise.

She grabs J by the neck and slams her to the ground. Acid tail is trying to strike again, but Uzi catches it with her own tail, the drives it into her own thigh. J yells out in sudden pain.

And with J’s mouth open, Uzi strikes.

Kissing her.

The struggle doesn’t stop. J’s claws still rake Uzi’s back, digging into her chassis, spreading open the oily wounds. The murder drone gets hot, and only hotter as Uzi’s suffocating grip blocks her vents. Her other clawed hand fists silver hair, and pulls hard. There’s a ripping sound, and J growls back with fury.

They melt into each others’ thorned grasp, core against core, two throbbing pulses racing faster and faster. There’s a language to pain, and a whole conversation plays out as they claw and clench and wrestle and wrench and writhe.

Finally J needs air, and whines into Uzi’s mouth to be free. Thick streams of liquid bridge their mouths, and J’s breath is steaming the air.

In between gasps, J says the words.

“I hate you.”

“I hate you too.”