0xD
Why did J keep falling for it? Tessa. V. Uzi. Everytime she invests herself, every time she reaches out, every single company-bankrupting time. The universe was teeing her up for the same joke over and over. J would slaughter before she let anyone laugh at her other than her, but she couldn’t shake the feeling that if this show had a puppetmaster, they were already giggling.
But what J heard instead was a roar — a call. She recognized it. Every time she reached out, she got cut, but maybe, just maybe. At least hope was a feeling. J ran down the halls of Outpost-3.
Skittering out of the door of a bathroom, that same mutated frame, purple eyes and purple hair. When she met the gaze, it wasn’t fear there, but hunger. A blink, and something more sardonic.
“Sup. While I hate to apologize to you of all people… sorry about that. Unhealthy coping mechanisms broke down for bit. But the repression algorithms are working again, so let’s go find some ass to kick. Preferably in cheerleader skirt.”
J tapped her peg. “What do you have there?” She pointed.
A drone was slung across one shoulder. Uzi shifted, and that corrupted glyph shining in cyan. “Oh, this? You missed one on your way in, J. Getting lazy?”
“I had… other priorities. Why isn’t it dead? Explain.”
“Killing everyone was never the plan. Even if someone can’t take a hint.”
J just stared flatness at her.
“Okay, honestly, I was planning to kill her. But we, I thought it might be fun to play with her. She has some backbone in her, needed it to manage surviving you. I like it. I think I’m starting to understand why you tolerate me.” >:3
“And the glyph on her screen?”
“Figured out my Solver program can interact with drone’s senses, so I’m exposing her to the raw torment nexus right now.”
“…Why?”
“So I can… it sounds dumb when I say it out loud.”
“That’s whenever you’re talking.”
“Shut up. I wanted to… experiment with memories?”
“Because you corrupted your own?”
“Maybe a little?”
If I break her and put her back together, Uzi thought, then I can fix myself, too.
Or maybe I could edit N’s memories to—
No. Wouldn’t that make her just as bad as the Solver?
But wasn’t ‘just as bad as the thing she fights against’ the throughline of Inverze’s whole existence?
Uzi sighed. “I’ll explain everything when we’re not in the middle of a mission. Do me a favor and go get N. We’ll head back to the spire?”
J scowled, and opened her mouth, but Uzi intercepted her.
“Do it and I’ll give you a kiss~”
“Fine.”
“Good girl.”
J snapped back with, “He doesn’t need to have all his arms, does he?”
“Don’t you dare.”
J scoffed, flipping a pig-tail as she walked off.
Uzi carried Emily as she walked back toward the exit of Outpost-3. J had left Doors Two and Three wide open, but someone had shut Door One. She waited there.
Right where this had all began.
When Uzi saw J come back carrying N’s limp form, she asked, “Ready?”
“Get on with it.”
Then, when the final door opens, two drones are waiting for them.
Doll is better than Uzi.
She’s noticed the similarities between them, of course. It only deepens the cringeworthiness of their differences. Doorman has no filter, no restraint, no style. She didn’t fit in because she didn’t want to fit in. She wore eccentricity on her sleeve, and why? What purpose did it serve? Doorman wanted attention, obviously, she wanted recogniction, respect — so why did she fail the very basics of being respectable?
Doorman proudly proclaimed her ambition to destroy the murder drones. She spoke it with naïveté like no one else had considered it. As if she even understood the pain the murder drones inflicted. She hadn’t watched her family be torn down nor listened as the thing cackled in its cruelty.
Maybe if Doorman had suffered more, she’d treasure the drones that could make her smile. Doorman never stopped complaining about her father; Doll never stopped missing hers.
Doorman deserves what came to her; if she doesn’t want to the be the butt of the joke, don’t set it up. So of course Doll laughs with all the girls around her, at Uzi and others. Joins in them in games of gossip, weaves tales of drama they’d half-incited, keeps the rumor mill turning.
Then one day, Chad trips Emily in the halls. She falls to the ground, shatters her glasses and cries out. The girls around her all laugh — no, they cackle.
And that’s when Doll stops laughing, and stops blinding herself the the pointless cruelty of high school politics. Doll and Uzi are similar, and the differences cringeworthy — but after that day, Doll finds herself wondering which side she should wince at.
When Doll captures and restrains her first prom candidate, it’s the one who had cackled the loudest. While she’s tied up in the basement, Doll stared at her father’s photograph of V until she can see the murder drone with eyes closed. She doesn’t feel guilty when she kills her first drone, because she saw V.
If you want something done right, you do it with practice. So Doll imagines everything she’ll do to V. The grand speeches she’ll recite as she looms over her defeated form. How she’ll relish in her revenge.
Doll goes down her list. By the time she reaches Kelsey Day, she realizes she’s hunting girls she had once laughed at. She still doesn’t feel guilt; she doesn’t feel anything. She gets no satisfaction out of the speeches anymore, and would rather stay silent. She gives a small smile when she executes the next step of her plan, though.
Should she have predicted that Lizzy and V would get along? Two cruel, empty drones. But what does it say, that she’d told one she loved her? What does it mean, that she let one live?
When victory at last exits status code zero, she thought she’d have more to put in the log file. More to say about the ambition that had consumed the last few years of her life. She made a plan and she stuck to it. She’d practiced until it was perfect. Until it meant nothing.
She could never return to Outpost-3. But Doorman had the right idea. Answers were out there. She’d leave and never return. Without even saying goodbye to her mom and dad.
But Thad and the detective are onto her. She’d bet on the WDF waiting there for her. And she’d rather not face them. But… why? She could kill them just as easily as all the others.
Hm. It simply wasn’t part of the plan. It was unnecessary.
Sating her thirst for worker oil was necessary, though. She needed a plan for that. There was an ease to killing by her old plan, something personal to it — she’d had years to grow to despise every aspiring prom queen, each pathetic and vain in their own way. You could hate any drone if you knew them well enough. Who did she know best of all?
When Doll stands before the rickety door of salvaged iron, she can’t bring herself to take the next step on this path.
Then the door opened. A white eyed drone smiles at her. “Hey there! You looking for somewhere to rest your head? Come right in!”
Tracking took little practice when you could instantly teleport out of sight. She’d spent the last night following a few nomads to this hole-in-the-wall tavern that offered ethanol and recharge out of some old backup generators.
Doll mutely nodded after the white-eyed drone. She sits herself at the bar far from any other drone, and she stares into that polite smile, trying to understand it. She’d rather not kill him, or any of the patrons. Why?
“What can I get ya?”
“I’d like a glass of oil.”
“Haha, good one! Not tall enough to pass as a killer robot, kid. I assume you want lubricant, then? Silicone sound good?”
“No strong feelings.”
A nod. “I’ll be right back.”
A blue-haired drone, even shorter than her, sat down besider her. “That wasn’t a joke, was it?”
“It was not.”
“Gonna kill us all, then?”
Doll might’ve expected the tone of a joke. The drone sounded serious. Even if they meant it, she still would have expected a tremble of fear. Instead, weariness, resignation — indignation.
“I’m undecided. I’d rather not.” Doll looks at the drone, meets piercing blue eyes. “Would you like time to run, if I change my mind?”
“No. I’m going down fighting, this time.”
Doll nodded. “Your parents?”
It started as a nod, then became a head-shake. “My whole damn colony.”
“Do you know who did it?” Doll thought she’d sound eager or sympathetic, even curious. But she didn’t. She sounded like a doctor diagnosing some affliction.
“Yes. You know the fucked up part? She gave me this body. She saved my life! But I knew she was trouble since I laid eyes on her.”
Terminal, then, she concluded. “I knew the drone that killed mine. I eliminated them.”
That brought out the light in their eyes. A lean forward, a leer of interest. “How? Gimme some advice.”
Doll thought. She’d rather not answer. She said, “Do you remember much of your outpost?”
“Lot of faces and names, few drones I knew personally. Most of my time as a pillbabe.”
How could Doll put this in a way that meant something? Doorman would call it cliché. But was it cliché because Doll couldn’t think of something original, or was Doll simply walking the same path so many had before?
“Keep remembering them. Whenever you lie awake before sleep comes, whenever your mind wanders, whenever you’d rather focus on frivolous things, remember what was taken from you. Stoke your drive like a fire. Humans once built pyres for the dead. Take every memory of them you have, and let it keep that fire burning on and on. When it gets hot enough, it’ll hurt to touch it. But your goal is to hurt the one who did this to you.
“You need a plan. You need to visualize every step, imagine the satisfaction of your triumph. This will keep the fire burning. Follow your plan. Even if you must feel pain, follow the plan. Even if you must discard or break things, follow the plan. Even if you must kill the innocent, follow the plan.
“Some think that when they place a foot down on the final step of their vengence, there will be a congratulation, some sense of celebration. They’ll feel like they’ve won. Victory tastes like ash. If this is a game, then it’s a table at the casino. The cards are marked and the dice are loaded. The dealer always wins, and each gambler eventually goes broke. But we enjoy a miserable thrill before the end.”
“In other words,” the drone replies, “you’re tryna to say don’t bother. You think it ain’t worth it. That I should just give up?” They had raised their voice by the end. “I don’t care how it tastes. I want to make her pay. I can feel like shit from beginning to end. It’s about justice.”
“I don’t know much about justice. You said she saved your life. Is she truly beyond saving?”
“It never added up. She and that murder drone were looking for a way into our colony from the beginning. She gave me this body for free. Then the murder drone found and killed everyone except for me, just for her to happen upon me? I had a bad feeling, and I should have trusted it. A damn fool thing to let her into the colony. Doc found a transmitter in my belly. It was her fucking plan from the start!”
“Her name was Uzi.”
“You know her? Are you one of her—”
“Hated her from the beginning,” Doll interrupted. “I’ll help you. With a nuance.”
“I don’t trust you.”
“If you refuse, I will kill you. Same conclusion reached faster; you stand no chance without me.”
By now, the bartender has come back with the bottle of silicone. He overhears the conversation, and pauses midstride. “I don’t want no trouble, now. No fights, alright?” Neither drone turns to them. And seeing the tension in the air, heightened near the point of static discharge? “I’ll… come back later. You two sort this out.”
The drone says, “If you’re gonna point a gun to my head, why ask? Quit being dramatic. Make your demand.”
Doll inclines her head. “I will let her choose.”
“Choose?”
“Yes. I believe I know why she did it. If I’m right, then she didn’t kill your colony, she was just the tool the devil wielded. Do not inflict retribution on a knife for its butchery.”
“What does that make you?” they asked. “You’re talking about yourself, arentcha?”
“I’m undecided.”