Drip, drip, drip.
Sound is fuzzy and space is fuzzier. Shifting, wavering, convoluted. All parts blurry and echoing strangely—but is that something wrong with your hearing or the space itself?
Do you dream?
Around you yawns a vast grassy plain on which a great beast bleeds out, dead from a spear-launcher of your own devising.
Around you looms a dam, blessèd bastion against a tainted lake, cracked and soon to let lose a rain, hope soon displaced by those heavier waters of dread. Someone built this, someone promised to protect you, protect everyone—where are they now?
Around you tightens darkness—that embrace called torture, your arms strapped down and your face cloth-wrapped, and the extraction method of choice drips onto you—wet cloth sticks and chokes you, and the questions on the tongues of your captors have no answers. You don’t know, and they believe you—yet find that all the more damning.
Drip, drip, pause, scrape, drip.
You start counting the drops—you get to twenty without skips, without hitting any nonsense non-numbers. You scratch a finger against your leg and register real damage. Right then, not dreaming.
And that drip-drop is ongoing, so incessant it had infected your dreams. Ugh, did someone bust the pipes again? part of you idly thinks. Gotta tell dad to get someone to fix it.
A thought which could only spawn in this barely-online region of half-sleep. You hadn’t spoken to your dad in… read error.
Right, okay. Let’s try a disk scan… oh that’s a lot of bad sectors. Corrupted memory, broken journals.
A nervous heat mounts as your processors loop. Now fans are spinning, echoing just as strangely.
Deep breathes. Intake, exhaust. What do we know for sure?
What can you remember?
You are Uzi Doorman.
You ran away from home to take the fight to the murder drones. You don’t know what you were doing yesterday. You don’t know what day it is. You have images—journeys through frozen city streets, then sifting through piles of electronics (be it scrapyards or your own improvised workshop), interspersed with the violent chaos of fights with drones both worker and murder—but without timestamps, which one was what you remember “last”?
You don’t remember the exact circumstances of departure—kicked out? locked out? stormed out? Was anyone waiting for you, hoping for you—was anyone left? Okay no, that’s a bummer line of thought. Refocus.
You just want to figure out why everything’s confusing. Then kick the ass of who’s responsible.
And you’re getting restless just sitting here thinking.
You aren’t on a bed, that’s for sure. Whatever hole you’ve found yourself in doesn’t offer even the simplest comforts. Concrete flooring scrapes your chassis. You remember just enough to know that you used to shine when polished, and you don’t anymore.
It’s cold, and the air is so humid the chill weighs upon you. No wind, and given that most building have cracked or fallen apart over the years, you must be underground or inside some fortification.
Worker drones did come installed with GPS chips, but anyone with any sense ripped them out—else you were just asking for the murder drones to sniff a signal.
Probably time to boot up your optics and take a proper look at the place.
Your screen stays blank while you sleep. (Custom firmware patch. You felt more secure like that, more stealthy.) Initializing optics… Purple light still shines forth, bright on your visor, as you load in the camera drivers and crank open the apertures. You blink and squint. Darkness envelops, lit only by the faint glow of components never designed to be light sources. It’s red and yellow-lit — red from two screens, smashed above scrap leaning against the wall. Shards and screws of shattered components litter the space between here and there. The concrete flooring is uneven enough that it shadows itself, all divots and crags. But something pools in the crags. In puddles, in rivulets—in gruesome streaks. Then the light moves.
You’d seen red and yellow light. Red right in front of you—
And yellow right beside. Four bulbs—one warning-red nestled out of place among them—emerge from silver hair grimey and splattered with black. That hair frames a visor where yellow eye-outlines search.
They settle on you, then widen.
Recognition circuits finally click. This was a murder drone!
A startle flickers through your body, mouth parting to give a abortive “ah!” But you can feel memories click into place—and your experience, the sort that hardens and hones. You aren’t helpless.
You jerk your eyes upward, carefully watching those bulbs. Those are itsreal eyes, information retrieval grants you.
“Finally,” the murder drone breathes. “Z! You’re awake.”
Black-stained lips offer a haggard smile—teeth sharp.
“My name is Uzi.”
And the murder drones sighs—yellow eyelights animating a glare. “No, it’s Z when you’re on a mission. I don’t have time or interest to deal with worker frivolity right now.”
“What does that mean?” You try to cross your arms—and can’t.
The murder drone hisses. “Do not play dumb with me. It’s your fault we’re in this mess.”
“This mess meaning…?”
But she just growls and nods downward, chin indicating. Awkward gesture.
The murder drone has no arms.
The dripping that woke you up was oil still leaking from the stumps at its shoulder. Duct tape forms an impromptu bandage, yet raw wiring still creeped outward like questing fungus.
You flinch. Can’t help it—you’d volunteered at the repair bay, you’d seen the aftermath of drones meeting ravage of the wasteland outside the bunker. This was a drone. Even if she deserves it. Probably. Right?
“Quit blinking like an idiot and plan.” The prodding metal—its leg, ending in suggestively-sharp pegs like stilettos—swings to taps against you. It’d be a much more violent motion if not for the distance between you. “How are we getting out of here?”
“What do you mean ‘we’?”
The murder drone opened its mouth. Close it. Glaring pupils gave way to an empty stare, a blink.
“…Excuse me?” Maybe it’d meant to sound imperious, demanding—but instead, shrill and cracking. “Now is not the time for contract renegotiation, we—”
“What is it with you and the buzzwords?”
This last question is what finally dispells the frustration and the hurt. Wiped away and rendered now was confusion. They are alike in their incomprehension, but where Uzi pleads for answers, the murder looks at her like she’s too stupid for words.
And the last permutation: horror, as insight dawned on her. “Z… do you even remember who I am?”
“Why do you seem to who I am? Just who are you?”
“J.”
“That’s a letter. Is it supposed to mean something to me? A code?”
“It’s my designation. I never understood your humor… but you aren’t joking. How? You know me, Z. This was our plan!”
It… no, she sounds so crestfallen. Were the two of you… friends? Allies? “I’m… sorry? I just thought… you’re a murder drone. Were we like… cool?”
J snorted. “It’s complicated.”
You glance at her arms. “Did… did I do that to you?”
“Might as well have.” She laughs, dry like underbrush.
“Just… explain. Please. Quit circling around, quit assuming things about me. I just woke up.”
“I’ve known you for weeks. Mission after mission. We’ve fought—together—so many times. Forgive me for expecting you to remember.” Her head falls, neck complete slack, and wet hair spills over her visor, hiding her expression. She laughs, a small giggle. “Heh. Past performance really really is no guarantee of future results, huh?”
She laughs—it starts as a small giggle the way fires start as sparks. A moment, and she’s cackling. She swings her arm-stump, and it slams against the wall behind her with a splatter of oil.
“Of course!” she exlaims. “I’m crippled, and you’re lobotomized. Of course, how I could I have expected anything else.”
“Don’t know who did this to you,” you hedge, “but the longer I listen to you, the less I blame them.” Not that you blame them to begin with, given that she’s a murder drone.
That extinguished the laugh quick. “Shut up, Uzi.” Your name wasn’t an insult—so why do you scowl to hear it? “You don’t get to blame me for your fuck up.”
“What did I do? You’re the one—”
“Who saved you from the ambush. You’d have a bullet hole between your eyes if not for me. You want to talk about deserved?”
“You saved me? You must suck at that whole murder drone thing.”
You try to move. Proprioception-attention flows through your body. No cloth shields your haptic sensors from the cold air—you’re naked. Bit embarassing, but you’re a robot. Where is your jacket, though?
Awarenesss flows down your arm-tubing and finds your hands lying in your lap. You pull them and can’t.
Cuffed.
Okay, that’s concerning. You lean forward to look down and metal squeezes your neck. A steel collar tugs on a chain, and the concrete wall doesn’t budge. You don’t have room to go anywhere, or stand up — can you even turn around?
Well, no real reason to do that—you’re already in the less uncomfortable position. Deep breath. Don’t panic. Don’t jump to crazy conclusions, Uzi. But this is a crazy situation. Why the heck are you bound up in a dungeon? What did you forget?
Somewhere in you, there is a well of patience. Or lethargy. Or stubbornness. Your screen is blank, your arms still.
Your fans keep working—your processors never stops ticking, and if you aren’t bouncing, flapping your hands, doing something, then all that energy gets trapped inside. It’s like cooking a grenade.
Then the ever-present dripping is interrupted by another scrape. Something heavy is shifting, almost crawling across the concrete.
Metal prods your legs.
“Z? Are you awake?” a feminine voice. The question has the steel of a command—and the rust of a machine badly in need of repair.
You don’t know who this is or what they want. The images lingering in your memory—even half-eaten by the digital moths of corruption—tell you just how many times you thought you could trust a drone. Emphasis on thought.
“I thought I saw something.” The voice dropped to a murmur. She tries one last time: “Z?”
- Say yes
Ignore her
Ignore her
You flinch ever so slightly—you don’t know if it’s light or dark in the room, but luckily she doesn’t catch it.
“Of course. I’m still alone. Overleveraged on this worthless plan of yours, and you’re not there when I need— to discuss exit strategies.”
Whatever had poked you earlier now smacks against the concrete, then grinds against it, all frustration. The rhythm of the dripping changed, made erratic.
“You really fucked up this time, toaster. If we make it out of this… I just might kill you myself. And you can’t stop me. You were always so weak. Why did I ever listen to you?”
You know her, you realize. Of course! You are Uzi Doorman, self-appointed slayer of murder drones, and this is Serial Designation J, leader of the murder drones. You read from disk again, recall those images of fighting murder drones—in half the scenes you recognize those pigtails, that suit.
On the other end of your gun barrel, or pinned down with knives piercing through her hands. She must’ve been a rival of yours.
But why is that aggrieved fondness in her tone?
Why did she call you ‘Z’?
“Is it worse, if you’re ignoring me, or if you can’t boot up when you still have both your arms? Whatever. You’re useless—what did I expect? I don’t need you.”
“Weak? Just try it. You wouldn’t be the first murder drone I took down,” you say. “You listened because you knew what’s best for you.”