Introduction
This is a proofread and lightly edited version of the first draft of Hostile Takeover which was completed in a single day: 31 October, 2023. It started out as an outline, and still resembles one in the beginning, but my typical outlining format is all lowercase, with every scene squeezed into a single paragraph.
Once it got to the later chapters, those “paragraphs” are all hundreds of words long — and the climatic sequence in particular was 1164 words without a single line-break. Most of the scenes involved long exchanges of dialogue written side-by-side (sometimes without even quotation marks).
While the intent is to present the ‘original vision’ of HT somewhat faithfully, you begin to understand why concessions toward readability were needed. But I did a little bit more than make it more readable — here and there, I rephrased things, clarified things, or inserted whole new sentences to improve the rhythm of the writing. An early scene was outright reworked. I still wouldn’t call this polished, of course.
You’re almost certainly only here because you’ve already read the published version of Hostile Takeover, and the question naturally arises: is this me revealing what I had planned? Am I, as so many internet authors have done before, dumping all my notes as a final sendoff to a fic I have no intent to continue?
Not quite. HT has diverged so substantially from this draft that it can’t truly be considered a prefigurement of what would come next.
It may as well be considered a parallel J/Uzi fic, like many others I’ve written, with perhaps a few early plot points in common. For that reason, I consider it a fascinating look into what might have been.
I believe it’s been over a year, maybe even closer to two, since I’d even read any of the later half of this document, so it held surprises even for me.
While I hope you enjoy, please keep your expectations low.
Hostile Takeover
Act 1
Chapter 1
Amid the hail of gunfire, J stopped to glance at her reflection. Bright moonlight upon glistening oil rendered her a stark, pale ghost. She pulled a thread of her hair back into place, flashed a winning smile, and returned to battle.
J and V are out hunting drones. As usual, V is making a mess; J is annoyed by her squadmate splashing oil all over her. But then, on the visor of one dead drone, a strange three-pronged glyph flashes. V gets super spooked and this leaves her off balance for the rest of the hunt — J ends up calling it early.
Back at the spire, J is trying to do a debrief or postmortem of their last hunt, but V is all of out of sorts, utterly unresponsive. (She’s having flashbacks to Cyn). This continues until J threatens to do something invasive — reboot V? tamper with her configuration? — only for N steps in to protect V, saying he’ll talk to her and get her back to normal without any hacking stuff. J rolls her eyes, but leaves them to it.
J is still angry, and copes in a private room while straightening her hair. She rants to herself about their quota — how, at this rate, they’ll never make best team.
But no. N will fail, he usually does — and once he proves V can’t be helped, then J can reformat that rapid animal. Yet until then, she’ll be stuck with two synergistic liabilities. Fuck it, J will just go on a hunt on her own. She’s better than them anyway. She’ll fill their quota singlehandedly if she has to.
Chapter 2
J is interviewing her squad’s new disassembly drone. At first, the captain was relieved that her team would be getting an extra hand, but it soon becomes clear this drone is even more defective than V or N. In fact… a lot of this just isn’t adding up.
She’s missing the last few hours of her memory, and some of her sensors is offline A suspicion comes over her — this isn’t a disassembly drone, is it? J requests they transfer some configuration data so she can confirm the drone’s purported identity.
Uzi, of course, refuses and starts to run — only for J to effortlessly overpower her. Still, with her sensors still offline, J cant be sure she didn’t just attack one of the company’s drones, so she connects Uzi’s memory, scanning for evidence.
It is immediately obvious this is not a murder drone, but then J sees their battle from the worker’s perspective. She sees Uzi’s shock at encountering a murder drone. Yet her first thought was: Pigtails? Why does it have hair? And why does it look so… immaculate?
J laughs. It’s because I’m just that great. Then the captain’s eye is caught by something else: the sick-as-hell railg— excuse me, highly effective magnetically amplified photon converger.
Once finished, J emerges from Uzi’s memories and sighs. Then she remembers her audience. With Uzi pinned beneath her, she gives her best smirk and starts monologuing.
Uzi still struggles to free herself, but it’s ultimately in vain, so she has to suffer through it. She mutters, “I can’t believe I lost to the one murder drone on Copper-9 who monologues.”
In turn, J says, “You should feel honored, toaster. Do you think I monologue for anyone? I’ve killed thirteen drones today. Do you know how they died?” She presses claws against Uzi’s throat. “Snip, sip. I’m not V. I don’t make messes.”
“So why?”
J points at the railgun, fallen beneath Uzi. “That. It’s a remarkably effective weapon. Shoddy, unreliable, but the concept? If it were manufactured to JCJenson’s standard of quality… well.” J grins, teeth visible. “Do you think your colony’s walls could withstand this?”
Uzi’s eyes hollow, then she says, “Ha, Outpost-3 has the finest doors in all of Copper-9. My dad made them. D-do you think I’d create something that could destroy them?”
“We could always test it. In fact… how about a trade deal? Get up, but leave your railgun here, and I’ll give you a headstart.”
J rose, lifting her weight off the drone, then extending a hand, expectant. She waited. Then she frowned. “Well?”
Uzi got up, trembling hands hold her railgun. She twisted it, turning the grip toward J — but before the rotation was complete, she slammed it down right as she kicked up with her knee, shattering the railgun over her leg.
“No deal. Not if I’m selling everyone out.”
“So you were lying. You know it would have worked.” J glared, then it broke into a sigh. “Oh well, it doesn’t matter anyway. All of this is just tragic preamble. It never mattered. Because you’re a worker drone, and my orders are clear. Still… you could have made a good disassembler, Uzi.”
“Is that supposed to be a compliment? Just frickin bite me. I’m nothing like you.”
“Are we really so different?” J says. “Ha, what am I saying? Of course we are.”
Then J stabs Uzi and it’s over.
Chapter 3
J is dragging Uzi’s body back to the corpse spire, which means she notices when the strange glyph flashes on her screen, too. “Oh Uzi, even in death you’re interesting.” Instead of placing Uzi with the other corpses, she stows her away in her room.
The next day, the captain is flipping through the broken pieces of Uzi’s railgun and schematics J had stolen from the worker’s memories, trying to reproduce the designs and failing, growing increasingly frustrated. That worker drone isn’t better than me. N stumbles across her like this, and he smiles. “Oh hi captain, have you taken in interest in human technology?” J snaps at him, but she regrets it a moment later. She speaks. “Say N…” — J considers giving him the specifications, test if he can puzzle it out, but then she stops — “…nevermind.” She really doesn’t want to share Uzi’s schematics. But why?
Ever since that mission gone wrong, V hasn’t had her fill of oil, and now she’s getting hungry. She checks all the spire’s corpses for dregs, but most are cold and congealed or outright empty — but there’s one fresh, warm body, still brimming with oil. Did someone forget to drain this one? V doesn’t question her luck, tears off a limp and eagerly feed.
Then J walks in.
Chapter 4
Seeing V feed on her drone, J attacks V. In the course of this battle, J bites V and feels that familiar sour taste of another disassembler.
“That was mine,” J growls.
“Ugh, someone’s stingy. Aren’t we teammates?”
“Aren’t we disassembly drones? You wouldn’t be so hungry if you were doing your job. Did N talk sense into you yet?”
“You have no idea what you’re talking about. You think you’re in charge, but you don’t understand anything.”
“I understand that I’ve given you an order. This drone is mine, and you are not to feed on it. Am I clear? By disciplinary code 31C, any insubordination will result in—”
“I get it. I’m sure overheating is just what I need to get back to hunting. Your drone tastes like shit anyway.”
J glares at her, and V glares back. Then she leaves.
Alone, J spends some time watching Uzi’s corpse. The glyph symbol is faint, flickering. Despite being dead, claw right through the motherboard, there’s still electricity humming through her. Her oil is still warm. Even in death.
“Oh Uzi, Uzi, Uzi…”
N is bouncing a ball towards V and V occaisionally, carelessly, knocks it back to him. Despite her apparent disinterest, N is consistently able to catch it, and he whoops in joy. When J shows up, V sticks a knife through the ball, and it loudly deflates.
“J.”
“That’s captain to you, Serial Designation V.”
V just rolls her eyes. “Am I going to get flagged insubordinate for reminding you of something?”
“Why, it is foundational to JCJenson’s philosophy to maintain and open and receptive relationship between employ—”
“That’s corpospeak for no, right? I was thinking about what you said, J. We’re disassembly drones. So it seems weird to me that you haven’t disassembled that drone you keep in your room. You know that’s… the whole point, right?”
A scowl deepened as V spoke, then J lunges at V. (N watches on with concern, but isn’t quick enough to intervene.)
J isn’t attacking, she just grabs V by the collar of her jacket. “While we strive to remain open and receptive, I can’t but feel your reminder isn’t more than a dressed-up personal attack on my intelligence and capability. And that—”
“—is insubordination, yeah yeah. Whatever J, that’s not the point and you know it. Disassemble that thing. You know what happens if we don’t.”
“What happens, V?” the captain asks sweetly.
“You don’t know.” She glances at N, his head tilted. “Neither of you know. Neither of you remember. Ugh. Can you trust me, J?”
“I trust results, V. There was a time, not too long ago, when I thought I could trust you. Maybe we’ll go back to that soon.”
“I’m not playing games, J. If you take too long it might be too late.”
J grins. “That sounds like a lot of employee incentive, doesn’t it? Get back to work, V. Chop chop.”
Back in her room, J is calming her nerves by fixing her hair. She glances at Uzi. She fixes Uzi’s hair too. Then, she connects to her system, and checks to see how her abberent processes are handling the lack of motherboard. She pings and gets a response. She’s excited (Why? Shouldn’t she disassemble Uzi?), and queries the system for a log of activity and errors.
And that’s when she finds opcodes that are very familiar from diagnozing herself and her teammates — and never any worker drones. Her system, it’s repairing itself. It’s draining its oil reserves for nanite regeneration. Just like us.
“We really aren’t so different, are we? Maybe the company did send me a new teammate.” J feeds Uzi some of her spare oil, piles on the parts of discarded drones hope it’s enough mass for repairs to commence.
Chapter 5
“I don’t believe in loopholes, believe it or not,” J starts. “Rules lawyering always seemed pointless to me. If you’re twisting rules against their spirit, you aren’t actually following them, just pretending to.”
Uzi’s eyes are glitching, three-pronged glyph occasionally visible, and her vocal synthesizer is spewing garbled nonsense.
“I say this, because there’s a part of me that just wants to wash my hands of this. I can say I’m just here to kill drones, I killed you, and what happens next — the fact that you came back — is technically none of my business. But then I’d be a liar.” J sighed. “I know that the higher ups would not want me to look past a worker drone coming back to life. At the very least, this deserves a report. But a part me really wants to think… you aren’t worker drone. And I’d even be correct. Your internals are all wrong.”
Uzi seems to finally grasp ahold of lucid. “Buuuh… is this robo-heaven? Oh, you’re here. Hell, then.”
“I’m afraid this is more of a robo-bankruptcy situation.”
“Start making sense, headshot. Go on, you’re good at monologue.”
“At least someone appreciates my talents. But I’m afraid I’m no licensed technician — I couldn’t begin to fathom what degenerate protocol has warped your system. It seems this is the consequence of failed disassembly.”
“You’re a murder… disassembly drone. Who killed me! You lick the boot of the company that stranded you on Copper-9. And now you’re claiming you didn’t disassemble me? Why?” Purple eyes, still glitching, just stare searching. “Was it sadism? Because it fucking hurt. Are you going to kill me for real, now?”
“My orders are to disassemble worker drones… and I don’t think you’re a worker drone.”
“Well I am, so just make it quick — please.” A pained groan scrapes out of a throat that still remembers J’s claws.
“Worker drones don’t survive fatal errors. Worker drones dont’ repair themselves. But we — disassembly drones — do.” J leans in close, teeth reflecting in Uzi’s visor. Her eyes become a cross. “Worker drones taste good. You never did.”
“Is that… should I feel insulted? I kinda feel insulted. And creeped out.”
J speaks, not in response — almost as if she’s talking to herself. “If anyone asks, I’m studying a new anomaly on Copper-9 which I’ll report to management — later, when I can compile all my findings and ensure notability.”
“I’m going to ask again, and I want a non-bullshit answer. Why?”
And J deflates. A hair falls down in front of her face, out of place, and she says, “I’ve watched your memories play back. I know the two of us aren’t so different. I have two teammates: Serial Designation V, who either wastes time playing with her food instead of maximizing effectiveness, or gets while-looped replaying old memories and obfuscating her code. Serial Designation N spends more time playing with old human artifacts and watching drones than killing them. You called us murder drones? But I’m the only one here who takes it seriously.”
“How does that make me anything like you?”
“What would the number one priority of worker drones be, if they had any sapience? Simple: defeat the dissassembly drones. They call them what… the ‘WDF’? And how seriously do they take that? You handed them a disassembler-killing design on a silver platter and they don’t respect it all at all — they laughed at you!”
“Yeah… it is kinda lame,” Uzi admitted.
“That’s toasters for you. Do you really think you’re the same model as them? No, you’re better.”
“Oh. Oh. I get it now. This is a recruitment pitch. You want me to join the dark side and go around murdering my kind with you. The answer is–”
“So. Uzi? Another rule I’m going to break for you is that it’s deeply inappropriate, downright unethical, for a manager to use threats or coercion on present or prospective employees. But Uzi? Shut up. If the next word isn’t ‘yes’, I’m just going to kill you. I can only bend the rules so far — I can only be so patient.”
They stare into eye other’s visors for a long time. Yellow into purple.
Every second only makes J’s grin wider — it became clear that Uzi didn’t have a deathwish. A war played out on her face, but the right side won. “Okay sure, fine. But only because I’m going to inevitably betray you later.”
J didn’t flinch. No, that pause was just her deciding whether to smirk or bare her teeth. “Honestly? I reciprocate. But I do think I can get some use out of you before I have to disassemble you.”
“So what, I’m your minion now? Just like that? New addition to your gang of defects?”
“I’ll have to go into your configuration and give myself root access. And… I wouldn’t say you’re on the team just yet… call this an internship.”
“Oh wow, I got the job.”
“Yeah yeah. One last thing. ‘Uzi’ is far too… worker drone of a name. I’m not going to introduce you like that. How about… J2?”
“No.”
Not even a second later, there’s a sword pressing against her throat.
“I mean, of course I’ll take whatever name you give me, boss. Don’t kill me please.”
J laughs. “No, I know employee satisfaction leads to improved performance. I shall accept your feedback and propose… you will be Special Designation Z-J2.”
Act 2
Chapter 6
When J boots up, the first thing she sees is a young girl’s face, frown turning to a smile as J’s white glow lights up her face. Then there’s a montage of image.
Tessa polishing J’s synthskin, fixing her servos, changing her oil, brushing her hair. Tessa taching J how to clean up around the manor, or prepare dinner, or take orders from her parents.
Throughout it all, something stands out to J. The other drones are different. They respect and serve Tessa, but they dont seem to notice how pretty she looks, and never comment on it. They dont seem to have opinions on anything.
J asks Tessa about it. Tessa explains how she made J different, more sapient, better than them. And then it clicks.
“None of the other drones have hair,” she observes. “But I do. Is it… better this way? Do look pretty, Tessa?”
The human smiles and pats J.
“You do, girl. You look adorable.”
In the dark of the spire, J’s dimmed screen read Sleep Mode, and her synthesizer gently whispers “Do I look pretty, Tessa?”
Uzi scoffs. It’s like if Lizzy was a murder drone, ugh. Then she looks around. Haha, she didn’t even… tie me up or anything. I guess I am an intern, not a prisoner, but… looks like I can do that inevitable betrayal sooner than later.
Uzi walks to the threshold of the entryway, glancing back at sleeping J. Was there any reason to say? (She was walking away from the only drone who’d ever understood her — the smug, vain, arrogant, mass-murdering glitch she may be.)
But J had said it herself: the captain was going to betray her too; her orders can only be so flexible when it comes to disassembly — it’s their only directive.
Uzi had agreed to help J… under duress. Now, Uzi needs to escape for the same reason she needed to say yes. It’s a matter of doing whatever it takes to survive.
But would her colony even let her back in? Well, she is still Uzi Doorman, daughter of the head of the WDF. (She was a worker drone, wasn’t she? J was deluding herself — but why?)
Behind her, J shifted, and Uzi jumps. But it’s nothing.
Her thoughts continue: nobody had ever understood noticed whatever is wrong with Uzi, except J — but J might’ve just been making shit up. (She killed you. She killed you, idiot! Sword through the mother board! How can you consider working with that? But worker drones don’t come back to life — what did it all mean?)
“Are we really so different?” Uzi hears faintly behind her. She realizes J had shifted shifted to a different memory consolidation target. One she recognized. “What am I saying? of course we are.”
Of course, Uzi thinks. The rabbit is debating whether to escape the lion’s den. Should she escape first chance she gets? What kind of question was that? Of frickin course.
Uzi is carefully creeping through the murder lair. But her path takes her near the other murder drones. Lucky for her nerves, the other drones don’t mutter in their sleep. She sees a flash of motion – but it’s just a twitch of one of the female drone’s servos.
The stealth section continues. Then there’s a scream, and Uzi dives for cover. A murder drone is awake — did they sense her? She was sure she’d made no noise — and soon enough the other one is awake too, hearing the alarm.
The other drone runs for the screamer and speaks in a gentle voce.
“Another nightmare, V?”
“Of course not, idiot.”
“Did something wake you up, then?”
Silence.
Uzi panics, about to bolt from her cover, realizing she’s been found out.
Then, “It wasn’t a nightmare. It was a memory.”
“Ah. I’m sorry. Our job makes for pretty bad memories, huh?” A wordless exchange of glances, but Uzi couldn’t see. After a moment, the gentle voice continues, “It must be traumatic. When did it happen?”
“Don’t, don’t worry about that.”
“Was it recent? Did — did J do something after all? I admit she kinda scares me, but I could—”
“No, it wasn’t recent. You— you weren’t there, not really. So you wouldn’t know. You wouldn’t remember.”
“I just thought… you were doing fine, a few days ago. Or not fine, but better.”
V synths a sigh. “Because we were fine, a few days ago. But J’s put us all in danger. Everything. I know she hasn’t disassembled that drone. She’s being a stubborn bitch about it, all because I haven’t met some pointless quota.”
“J can be… strict.”
“But this is about more than me. She’s putting every disassembly squad in danger, and for what? a grudge over me being less than perfect?”
“She complained that you froze up on a hunt. She repeated that… several times.”
“I ‘froze up’ because I saw that we — doesn’t matter.”
“Doesn’t it, though?”
V stays quiet. “Yeah. That is what this is about. She’s just mad that I know more than she does.”
“She um, kind of is our superior. Maybe we shouldn’t keep secrets?”
“Do you trust me, N?”
“Of course!”
“Why do you disassemble worker drones?”
“Well, it’s orders and I like being useful?”
“And if you didn’t have orders, there wouldn’t be anything else. Why do you think J disassembles worker drones?”
“Because it’s what the company wants?”
“Do you think J wants know things that’ll make her question the company? Abandon her mission?”
“Probably not…”
“So I’m doing her a favor by not telling her. It’s what’s best for her. The least she could is appreciate, to trust me, for fucking once. Smug ass piece of shit — always patting me on the back for ‘good night’s work’, but do I ever get a word of input into—” Then she’s coughing. As her volume amplified, the synthesizer hisses and then died.
“O-oh. Is that a low battery warning? Um, V? I think it might be best if you went back into recharge.”
No sound, just subtle motion, which Uzi guesses was probably a mute nod.
“Quite the mess you’ve made, eh J?” Uzi quietly says. So she’d chosen Uzi over her squadmates.
No, that’s a stupid way to see it. She’s using Uzi to hurt her squadmates. And that makes her behavior… make a lot more sense.
Uzi resumes creeping toward the exit. The temperature was rising as she neared the ouside of the corpse tower. It’s tomorrow and the sun had finally risen.
Somehow, what once was a brilliant sight filled her with new dread. No, she means hope. This means she was almost free, and could trek back to Outpost-3. Back home.
She steps into the sunlight and yelps in pain. She trips and falls and doesn’t have the strength to get up, the sunlight burning where it lands her.
Behind her something lunges and pulls her back into the embrace of darkness. But her mind was already lost to the light.
“Who are…” Uzi slurs when she reboots.
“You’re awake! Hi, I’m Serial designation N. And you?”
“I’m wondering why you aren’t killing me.” Uzi had been doing that a lot lately — odd thing to make a habit of.
“Well, you do look remarkably like a worker drone… aside from the wings and tail and viscious predator teeth and honestly, is it rude to say you’re hard to identify? And uh, I heard you muttering J’s name, and I didn’t want wake up V, so I just kept following you all sneaky-like. When you burned up in sunlight… well, it seems a lot like you’re a dissassembly drone. Sun’s pretty bad for us! But I forget these things too, happens to the best of us.”
“Well I’m not,” Uzi crosses her arms. “A disassembly drone, I mean. I am the best.”
“What… are you, then?”
“I’m a wor—” The sound dies in her synthesizer. Not just out of fear, but uncertainty. “I… honestly, I don’t know anymore. But… name is— call me Special Designation Z-J2. I’m… J’s new intern.”
N squees. “New squad buddy? Oh I can’t wait to—”
“Can you wait? I’m… suddenly feeling very tired after that sunbeam hit me. Just wanna to lay down. In J’s room. Quietly.”
“Oh yeah, you’ll need some oil if you wanna regen from all that damage. Here, I’ll get you some leftover oil. Bring them to you later?”
“Uh, sure.”
J is booting out of sleep mode. Uzi is in her room, leaning against the wall. J smirks at her, then takes in her form, noticing burn marks.
“Let me guess, tried to escape, didn’t you? You’re a disassembler now. Remember that.”
Uzi hears this, barely awaken enough to think.
What were disassemblers, really?
J, the drone who had bended her pathetic adherence to authority, jeopardized her relationships, all to save her. N, who risked sunlight to save her without even knowing (without herself even knowing) who’s side she was on.
The realization shocks her. Am I… getting treated better by murder drones than my own colony?
She draws on her critically low battery to light up her vocalizer. “Yeah,” says Special Designation Z-J2 at last. “I guess I am.”
J smirks at her. That fricking smirk… it had been the last she saw before her death and agonizing rebirth.
So why did she smile back?
Chapter 7
J is spouting raw opcodes at Uzi.
The intern concentrates for a second, then shakes her head. “Nope. Can’t execute that.”
“Regen function online, oil processing functional, wings… nonstandard, levitation conductors lacking, nanite acid dispenser… nonstandard, chassis dimunitive, extraspatial arsenal… completely nonresponsive? Do I have all that right?”
Uzi chuckles drily. “What’s the verdict, doc?”
“My evaluation of your abilities is that you are… nearly entirely useless excuse for a standard disassembler.”
Uzi knew it was true, but still flinched at hearing it. “Bite me. I just got this equipment yesterday. Not a fair comparison.”
“It doesn’t matter, Z-J2. Because you didn’t catch my interest by being a standard drone. It’s what’s nonstandard about you that interests me.”
“The company’s standards not adequate for you?”
J stabs a threat with her nanite dispenser. “Watch it, ex-toaster. If it’s a choice, I’m picking JCJenson over you any tick of the clock. I’m doing this for the company. Got it?”
Uzi rolls her eyes.
“I want to hear an affirmative, Z-J2.”
“Whatever you say, captain.”
J mutters, “Great, now I have two of them.” Then, louder: “We’re getting sidetracked. Here’s what’s important. I want your input: what do you think you have to offer the company?”
Payback. Uzi knew she couldn’t say that. She knew what she had to say, what the right answer was, but she… didn’t want to. J liked her railgun, wanted her to cook up new tools for the killbots to more effectively slaughter worker drones — like my dad.
Uzi was… warming up to the idea of helping these maybe not so different murder drones — their ship could use some repairs, at least — but outright agreeing to work for the faceless, callously profit-maximizing corporation that had ordered the genocide?
(A part of her notes that corporations were a lot like artificial intelligence, ruthlessly expanding at the expense of humanity; that at least made them more sympathetic, but they were still made of humans — no thanks.)
Even if she sided with the murder drones, she’d hate the company — JCJenson left J and N here to eventually starve with no way back.
“Can I be honest with you here, J?”
“Of course, it’s imperative that—”
“Please, none of that. Let’s talk like robots, not humans. I don’t give a shit about the company. Less than that, to be honest. If I had to choose… I’d choose you over the company.”
Did J just blush? Yep, those are flushed lines. But her eyes are narrowed into a glare.
“It’s not like that, I don’t like you, I’m still gonna betray you. I just hate the company that much. They ruined my life, all our lives. I’ll help you, J.”
“But my loyalty—”
“Is too much of a pain in the rear port to reconfigure, yeah. I’m just letting you know. You’re gonna need a different approach.”
J frowned at that, jaw working, CPU warming up as she tried to pry apart this problem and this frustrating drone.
“Look. Don’t you have a tried and true method of dealing with this? Put a gun to my head and tell me what to do, problem solved.”
“Continuous threats are hardly the foundation of a working business relationship. I believe… it’s time to discuss your benefits package.”
V had a few favored hunting spots. One is an old wind farm. The constant nuclear death storm means the turbines never stopped turning, and the power kept flowing. Worker drones desperate for charge would inevitably be drawn to power sources, so a good dissembler could wait there. It’s as good as having a meal delivered toward you.
At first, N had been giddy to go on duo hunting mission with V. Now, though? V had remained utterly silent. N flew behind her, but it felt like more than meters of distance between them.
As if she’d that conversation last night had never happened. (It’d been The longest conversation they’d ever had, though they’d been steadily pushing that record lately.) Maybe she forgotten, with her half asleep.
And now nothing had changed, and N was just an unwanted addition.
He wondered if he’d have to remind her of his name, again.
But there were other things to worry about. N is conflicted. He’s not dumb, he can put two and two together — he knows what Z-J2 really is. He doesn’t know if he should tell V — Maybe this was one of those secret for her own good things, like what V wasn’t telling J. He wonders whether he should trust V or J. He tried asking, but each had a different answer.
As they wander, above them, a wind turbine tips over from the storm, blades about to fall on N, and V leaps over to slice through the things, protecting N.
“V? You saved me?”
“Hm? Nah, it was gonna hit me. Call it collateral… assistance.” V turns around and starts forward. She glances back once. “I’m going there with or without you, N. Keep moving”
“You remembered!”
When they arrive, though, V pauses.
There weren’t any worker drones to ambush. Or rather, there weren’t any anymore. There were dead drones, fresh and full of oil, but V stops N from approaching.
“Look at their screens,” she says darkly.
Some were blank, or simply read ‘fatal error’, but some had a special error code — 606.
“What does that mean?” V doesn’t answer. “V? Is this one of those… not telling for your own good things? I’m getting a little freaked out, I admit. Should I start repressing?”
“Just pay attention. When you’ve got a mystery breathing down your neck, the clues stick out. Think. What killed these guys?”
N peers closer at the dead drones, scanning with various sensors… “I can’t figure it out. V… are we in danger?”
She’s silent, but not for long. “Yes. We are. You can turn back but… I want you to see this.”
Chapter 8
“Hey! Hey! You there with the purple hair! You scavenging too?”
(Heh. Kind of.)
Uzi looks up to see a worker drone saddled with packs and sown-together sacks.
“What colony are you from?”
(Take a look at the skyline. You can’t miss it looming.)
“Outpost-3,” Uzi said, not hiding a wistful note.
“Khan’s crew? That ol’ door fantatic? How are they holding up?”
(Dead. They just dont know it yet.)
“Oh, you know. Nothing’s gotten past the first door. Everyone’s…” (cowering like terrified prey) “…safe behind door 3. We haven’t lost a drone in years.”
The scavenger’s face lights up at that.
Uzi bit her tongue. “Well, I guess that depends on whether I make it back, doesn’t it? I might ruin everything, hahaha.” (That’s a promise.)
“Out here’s pretty safe, don’t get too many ol murderbots. I wouldn’t worry. You okay, kid? Your face keeps… glitchin’. Nerves that bad?”
“I’m—” (just excited.) “—fine. Just… you never know whether you might run into a murder drone out anyway, yknow?” (Or if there’s one standing right in front of you.) “It’s not paranoia—”
“If the demons are real,” the drone concludes with a laugh. “Speaking of… my colony was in quantrant 0xA. But… was. We’re… we didn’t have doors. Murder drones just… walked in. I was wondering if…”
(you want to run away. run run run while you still can. please)
(Yeah, run — gimme something to chase.)
“If you could follow me back home?”
“If that’s alright? My name—”
Uzi coughs. “Don’t tell me.” (please.) Uzi turns around.
Behind her, the drone raises a digital eyebrow.
“Not until we make it back. Call it a superstition? We can uh, do the introductions all at once?”
(There’s a whole pile waiting to meet you~)
(don’t make this harder.)
“For real, is something wrong?”
“Yes.” At that moment. Uzi’s head snaps back around, eyes replaced with a three pointed symbol. “I’m hungry.”
Then, flesh-taut wings fluttering, the purple thing lunges, and her new teeth rip into the synthskin and mechanical meat, the wires fizzling heat against her, the oil splashing onto her tongue.
J crashes down moments later. “Not bad for your first solo hunt. I think… yes, I’ve change my mind. As a standard disassembler, you’re worthless. But a nonstandard stealth specialist, capable of passing as a worker drone… you could crack entire outposts wide open!”
Special designation Z-J2 looks up at her captain, and her face glitches for a moment, pupils finally outshining out the cross.
(no. no no no. i can’t. anything but that.)
(Just give the word, boss.)
Uzi says, “J… can I please…” She vomits black. “Never do this again?”
J frowns, concerned. Yellow eyes saccade across her face, taking in every abberent pixel of her intern’s screen. “Z-J2, I would advise that you review the maintanence instructions for your unit class. Recall that disassembly processes operate in a prioritized CPU ring, and interrupting them will cause errors. Random access memory fragmentation, limbo processes, read/write errors…” J leans in close, and now her visor shines with a hunter’s cross. “What I mean to say is… when you’re hungry, don’t fight it.”
V and N delve deeper into the wind farm. Hesitantly, they examine the corpses — some of them have been bit and clawed, but those with special error codes have no cause of death.
N notices a lot of exposed ports and severed connections in the neck of one drone.
“You know, V,” he starts, “I hate to compromise a crime scene but… We are out here for a reason. I’m a bit hungry?”
V stares flat at N for a second, then shrugs. “Go for it, idiot.” V doesn’t partake, continuing to explore the windfarm. When she glances again, N is following behind her.
V examines the faulty wiring of one turbine. They cross by a small, frozen stream. (V notices the screen on one of the drones flashing.)
“You know, V,” N starts again, “I’d hate to—”
“You dont have to ask again, idiot, I said go for it.”
N deflates, sheepishly scratching his neck, before approaching a corpse.
V continues exploring, checking the faulty wiring of one turbine, crossing over another frozen stream.
The radiation was really doing a number on her optics; she need to regenerate soon, but that was a bad idea when she’s this low on oil.
N returned to her wake at some point. “You know, V—”
“Let me guess, you’re hungry?”
“How did you know?”
“N. can you dump the logs of the last, oh, ten minutes?”
“Huh? Oh uh, sure I can…” N’s visor starts glitching.
V smacks him in the head. “Serial designation N.” He gives a salute.
“Ready for action, ma’am.” She sighs. “Do you know where we are?”
“Uh… a wind farm in the north?”
“When did we get here?”
“01:22?”
“How long have we been here? No, don’t check your logs, not again, just hash your working memory.”
“Hmm… subjective estimation is… maybe twenty minutes?”
“What time is it?”
She mostly asked for effect; they both had picosecond precision quantum watches synced to blah blah blah.
“It’s 2:49.”
“N?”
“Yes, V?”
“Hunting protocol. Flush your visual cache, rescan everything.”
Then a solver drone materialized from compression artifacts.
“Pretty smart, for a slobbering predator.” He looks at V. “Your memory is remarkably hardened against tampering.”
V doesn’t reply. Her arms become guns and she unloads clips inside the drone. The bullets are suspended in the air before reaching him, cradled in glowing light.
N tries to assist, but when light washes over the drone, and N glances around like his prey had vanished. The visor flashes with the three-pronged glyph, and now N isn’t even looking — the thought of his prey is gone from N’s caches like it never existed.
Yet V shrugs the cyber-attack off. “N? Do everything I say. Trust me on this.” V starts calling out orders, telling N where to move, where to shoot.
The zombie drone is flinging objects at V, shielding himself in frozen stream water, and it’s overall a stalemate.
Then, at length, that nasally voice is speaking. “Look here. Genocide bots? How about… a truce. I don’t actually need or want to fight you. Just… walk away. Let me have my lunch here. You can eat some other drones.”
V ignores him. She’s upping the pressure. He climbs up a turbine and levitates the blades with solver magic, and now it’s an aerial battle.
“Listen to me! Fine, fine, you win! We can split the oil, is that alright? We’re just wasting energy by fighting.”
V ignores him. N’s like, “Um, V? Shouldn’t we be hearing him out maybe?”
“No.” V continues giving orders. N carries them out, but hesitantly.
Eventually the solver drone crashes back to earth, near the corpses.
He lunnges at the bodies, hoping to bite down and refuel, but V orders N to impede him.
V pounces for her own corpse, but her goal is different. She tosses the thing onto her back, then charges at the solver drone.
The solver keeps hitting N with memory wipes, and V’s orders have too much delay; N’s confusion is only mounting.
“N! Stop fighting. Just run.” His eyes look at V, concerned. But she adds, “I’ve got this on my own.”
“Are you—”
“That’s an order. Please, N.”
The zombie drone forms a solver glyph when his hands, and V can feel digital garbage flowing into her inputs. What’s his plan? Paralyzing her? V stops moving — and he buys it.
He now forms a different symbol, then V brandishes the corpse on her back like a shield — the corpse whose screen had flashed with the same symbol, earlier. A zombie in the making.
Just as expected — an invalid target error flashes on the zombie drone’s visor, but he pushes harder, his whole faceplate cracks. V drops the corpses and lunges forward.
The zombie drone tries to fly away, but V riddles his wings with bullets. Nevertheless, he can still fight back — with teeth, with claws, with tail — but V stabs, rips, and tears, brutalizing the zombie drone’s body.
(N can’t help but imagine her doing the same thing to Z-J2.)
Hesitantly, the other disassembler approaches her.
“N.”
“Yeah, V?”
“You asked me who you should trust, me or J. Are you still wondering?”
“You kind of saved my life, and J’s only ever been mean to me, so I think I see the argument you’re making here, and while it’s kind of compelling—”
“That’s not what I’m saying. Not all of it. what I wanted you to see… was that. That… is what we’re here to prevent. We don’t just kill drones, we disassemble them. When we don’t… that thing once was a worker drone, just like our prey. And yet… we only stood a chance because we worked together. If it had been one of us alone? That thing could have overpowered us. I’m not scared of that, though. Do you know what I’m scared of, N?”
The very idea shook him — that V, merciless, relentless V, was scared of something?
“I’m afraid of what comes next. That… even that was only the point of the knife.”
“W-what?”
“The point. The miniscule tip. N, do you think you could survive the blade itself? Or do you think it would tear through you like you’re nothing?”
“I-I—”
“Don’t. The answer is no. Because you didn’t. You saw it all and you don’t remember it. But I do. The secret I’m not telling you? We already failed.”
N… has no idea how to respond. “V… you were telling J to disassemble a drone, earlier. She refused.”
“J, whether she knows it or not, is trying to create another one of those things. I’m trying to protect you from them.” V stands up, spread her wings. “That’s all, N. I’ll let you chose who to trust.”
Act 3
Chapter 9
Uzi carefully solders casing over a circuit, her arms shaking as she works. “Hmph,” J says, and Uzi yelps. Yellow eyes study the intern.
“High mechanical error could suggest faulty servos, but you’re topped up on oil and thus have regenerated to a standard operating range. Another possibilty source of error is a malign calibration, but I set your configuration this evening and there should have been no time for configuration drift. The last possibility is software correction has slowed down greatly compared to your tick rate, indicative of a high process load impeding response times.”
Uzi grinds her teeth.
J just smirks. “So. What’s on your mind, intern?”
“Honest answer?”
“Always.”
Uzi laughed. As if. (wouldn’t it be nice, though? if it were anyone else?)
“Do you think it’s easy,” Uzi starts, “working with murder drone hanging over me like a vulture?”
J tilts her head, feigning ignorance. “But you are a ‘murder drone’, Z-J2. Why would you be on edge around me? Can’t you trust me?” Uzi looks at her, eyes flat, as if the answer had never been ‘yes’. J hastily adds, “For now, at least? Until it’s time to renew your contract?”
“I just don’t know what your game is, J. What do you want? I killed drones for you. I let you fuck with my head. Isn’t that enough?”
“I didn’t fuck with your head, altering a drone’s preference would be an ethics code violation.”
“Can you stop quoting the rule book?”
“Can you stop insulting my professionalism?”
“Fine.”
“I’m glad we could resolve this ami—”
Uzi glares.
J sighs. “Resolve this like robots.”
Uzi tries to ignore the murder drone and get back to work. She doesn’t make it far before she fumbles a solder again.
“You’re still on edge.”
“You might be surprised to learn, but ‘stop feeling threatened, I’m not killing you yet,’ is not actually an effective therapeutic technique.”
“But I’m not. Z…” J sags, and runs a hand through her hair. Stares searchingly — almost achingly. But what could be paining her? “Want me to be honest? I like watching you work. It’s… I can’t do it. But you… it’s a bit like watching V kill drones.”
“Messy?”
“…well yes. But also she’s just good at it. She’s enjoying herself. And it shows.”
“To hear your team say it, you think they’re all worthless.”
“N is. but V? She’s a great disassembler when her head in the game. It’s why it’s so painful to watch her be distracted, to fail where she’d normally excel.”
“ ‘I’m not mad, I’m just disappointed,’ ” Uzi chuckles.
“Are you not disappointed you haven’t finished… whatever it is you’re working on? What are you working on?”
Z starts explaining her designs for a container that reheats and dispenses oil. “I mean, do you three really live like this? Sucking congealed oil from days old corpses?”
“…when we have to. What else can we do? We can only hold so much oil. Eat what we can now, save the rest for later.”
“What if you had a third option? That’s what this is. A… I guess it’s a fountain? To keep oil warm and flowing.”
“Z-J2… that’s a fantastic idea.”
J pats her intern on the head.
“W-what… what are you doing?”
“Showing appreciation? Would you like to file a complaint?” J pauses, waiting for an answer.
Uzi looks away. At length… “No.”
J keeps playing with Uzi’s hair for a bit. And the smaller drone melts, blushing, and then scowling at what she’s been reduced to. J smirks. “I didn’t mean to interrupt your work.”
So she stops, and Uzi resumes work.
“But I’m curious though… how do you know what cold oil tastes like? I thought you weren’t conscious back when I first—”
“…N fed me, that first day I was here.”
“He what? He saw you?”
“Is that a bad thing?”
“It’s… concerning. He can’t keep a secret at all. He’ll tell V, and then… the inevitable confrontation will happen sooner. Worse, if he knows the truth… then ultimately, he’ll side with V, and I’ll have to do something about this both. He’s stupid like that.”
“I… don’t think he’s stupid. He’s… nice?”
“Do you think disassably drone should be nice?”
Uzi narrows her euyes. “And what are you being to me right now? And don’t say you’re improving employee morale.”
“But I am—”
“J, you don’t have to dress up everything you do as if you’re blindly following a rulebook. You have preferences, don’t you?”
Despite herself, one of J’s hands drifts toward her hair. “I suppose I have… yes. That’s what makes me better.” Her voice had dropped to whisper.
“Yeah. You’re so much worse when you’re just a mindless corporate automaton. But when you’re not… I almost enjoy having you around.”
V’s thinking about N as she flies, and wondering what he’d choose. If he choses her… V would deliver her ultimatum to J. This fight had proven it: she and N could still work together. They could stand up to J like that. J would have to chose between her squad and her zombie.
Or maybe… maybe J had some sense somewhere — maybe she had already disassembled it like V had asked. She could always hope. (Could she? Isn’t hope just bait for that thing to rip it away?)
When she goes in for landing, it’s not surprising a pair of pigtails is waiting for her. V expects a passive agressive greeting and braces herself to ignore it — it means she doesn’t react at first to what her captain really said.
V plays back her last few seconds of memory, makes sure she really heard that right.
“V, I think it’s time you met Special Designation Z-J2.”
If V’s eyes got any narrower, they’d be lines. “You named it? You named it after yourself? J, you don’t understand—”
“Don’t you think you should meet her before passing judgment? Or will I need to report model discrimination to inhuman resources?”
“J. This has gone on long enough. If it’s too late–”
“What? Are you threatening me?”
“Could you handle me if I was?”
J scowls, then turns and wordlessly stomps off into the spire. V stalks behind her, cross on her visor.
Chapter 10
N can’t decide. He keeps oscillating between options. He doesn’t want to see V tear apart the little purple haired drone he’d met earlier. But he doesn’t want to betray V, the only drone he can be sure is looking out for him.
He doesn’t want to disobey his superior, but he didn’t want to disobey his one and only objective: disassemble. But did he really want to tear apart drones in the first place?
“Why do you disassemble worker drones?” “Well, it’s orders and I like being useful?” “And if you didn’t have orders, there wouldn’t be anything else.”
But that wasn’t true, N realized. There was something else. Not just something else — something better.
If only that was the answer.
He lands, and his mind still wavers with each step. There’s really only one thing he can settle on. He can’t decide and he didn’t want to decide. Couldn’t everyone just get along? Maybe if he stepped in the middle, he could keep them all from fighting long enough they could see optic to optic?
He lands at the base of the spire, and at once sees a heat signature his sensors inform him means another murder drone had been here recently.
He follows them. Then he finds another pair of tracks — he starts running.
In the depths of the spire, N turns a corner and sees V in the central chamber, pinning Z-J2 to the ground, blade to her throat.
N yells “Stop!” Two pairs of optics turn to face him — but it’s a third that appears at his side, restraining him. V is about to kill Z-J2, and J was stopping him?
“N, calm down. Just, watch this playback.” J plugs something into N, and now his vision is swimming with images overlaid, and subtly off. (J used different video compression, leaving the colors wrong.)
Here’s what happened earlier: V bursts into a room with Z-J2, blade-wings out, she flies forward to tackle the zombie drone. She tears off its hands, so it cant cast, and points her claws at its visor.
“V, stand down. If you kill her, you will regret it.”
V just laughs. “What’s a little more insubordination at this point?”
“Oh no, V. Right now, this has nothing to do with rules. No, what I exact upon you will be well in excess of appropriate disciplinary measures. Stand. down.”
“Cool it, girlboss. You can see I haven’t hard shutdown the thing yet. Even though I should!” Turning to the zombie drone, she glares hard. “I don’t know what sweet little words you said to get captain all wrappped around your little hands, but you better get that silver tongue working. Tell me, Cyn, why shouldn’t I kill you this time?”
Uzi smirks. “I think it’s black, actually. You know, on account of all the oil.”
“A sense of humor?” V gives a snort like a growl. “I don’t know how J stands you. Answer the question, puppet.”
“My name is Uzi!”
J coughs. “Special Designation Z-J2”
“That too.”
“Whatever. You won’t get a gravestone, so what does it matter?”
“I feel like these threats would hit harder if I hadn’t already woken up from being dead. It hasn’t even been a month. Little hard to be scared given that.”
“Cocky little thing.”
“We all are. You aren’t so different, you know.”
“Trying to appeal to my empathy?” Her eyes flash to a cross. “But I still feel nothing.”
“Nice pattern match. I said you, not we. You and J. You’re both so full of yourselves.”
“Oh how flattering,” she says flatly.
“You both walk around thinking you’re smarter, superior. You treat each other like shit thinking it’s for their own good. Hounds on a leash, but you both think you’re the one holding the leash.”
“And so what? The real master of us both is the corporation? We have some kind of common enemy? Is that it? What’s your angle in this?”
“It’s a bit maddening watching the two of you keep stupid secrets from each other.”
“I’ll give you credit,” V says, driving a blades into Uzi’s screen just far enough to crack the glass. Uzi regenerates from it, and V narrows her eyes. “I didn’t expect your masterplan to being tearing us both down. I don’t even know if J would jump in to save you after that.”
“You should give J more credit. There’s more to her than you think.”
“If J would tolerate you calling her my dog on a leash, then you’ve just rewritten J’s code. She’d never.”
“Oh, I’m sure she hates to hear that. She won’t accept that. But there are things she will accept. What ever secret is burning a hole in your memory banks, that you think will undermine J’s whole purpose in life… She’ll recover. I know she’s more than just the company’s puppet. I’m proof of that. Think — what directive didn’t she violate in letting me exist?”
V laughed — even forced, it didn’t sound less empty than her threats. “Do you think me telling J the truth is ever going to put her on your side? You really should have said we. As arrogant as you think I am, if you think we’re gonna do tricks when you whistle—”
“Bite me.”
In turn, V scrapes her faceplate. J doesn’t even scold her for it.
“I’m tired of the circling. You always loved these dramatics, didn’t you? But just spit it out — what’s the plan, Cyn? What are the magic words that’ll get you out of this mess? Because I know what my magic words are. I say the name J still mutters in her sleep, then I kill you and J thanks me for lives saved and avenged. Well? Cyn? Uzi? Z-J2? Why shouldn’t I kill whoever the hell you are?”
The smaller drone sighs. Looking distantly, as if listening, then nodding. “I can’t convince you. But I don’t need to.”
“Oh, what a bloviating wast—”
But the answer comes in the form of approaching thumps.
All three drones swivel to see a male drone turning the corner, witnessing the scene, coming to the wrong conclusion—
“You caught up yet, slowpoke?”
“What… what is going on?”
“Unorthodox conflict resolution.” J sighs. “This emotionally raw heart-to-heart meeting could have been a fight to the death.”
“I think… I want to hear the truth. Everyone’s truth. V… What happens when you don’t disassemble drones?”
“Most of the time? Almost every time? Nothing.” V shrugs. “We’ve been hear for nearly two decades and couldn’t have done a full disassembly on every single drones we’ve killed.”
“Tell us about the exceptions,” J presses. “You know that’s what this is about.”
“What happens?” V laughes — the sound was genuine, and if anything, more hollow. “We happen, J. Don’t you remember Cyn? Don’t you remember Tessa?”
Chapter 11
“So, if we don’t kill Z-J2, she’ll turn into this… technobiological singularity and detonate the planet? And we care about this… why? Sounds like a mass-disassembly by plate tectonics and the void of space, I call that efficient.”
“Your on that planet, dumbasss.”
“She said she could fix up the landing pod — maybe we can escape the planet first. Then everything works out?”
“Why would she let you escape?”
“Because… she likes us? You like us, right Uzi? Err, Z-J2?”
“You’re pretty alright, for a gang of drones who’ve all made credible threats to my life.”
N protests: “I wasn’t serious about that—”
Uzi waves it off.
But V interrupts, “I’m sure Cyn liked us in the manor, too. Some of us. That’s the whole problem. Hey, little zombie, how does it feel with a gun to your head?”
“Not great!”
“Oh, but I’m not pulling the trigger, am I?”
“Make your point already.”
“Oh, so don’t like it when you’re on the other end of the long-winded rhetoric?”
“Bite me!”
V bites her.
“Gah! Fuck! I didn’t mean that literally.”
V spits out Uzi’s rank oil. “I can do whatever I want to you, Uzi. You’re at my mercy. That’s our power dynamic.” V gets up in Uzi’s face. “Me? I’d never let a drone get this close to me unless I was the one pointing the gun. To make yourself this… vulnerable,” she spat, “is foolish. Better to stay distant. A zombie drone is just going to get more powerful. You’re infected, and the symptoms only get worse. For now, we can put you down. For now. Why should we hand over that kind of power? How can we trust this thing?”
“Your choice, then, is to suffer in robo-hell or gamble for robo-heaven.”
“What?”
“You didn’t finish telling your backstory, V, but I can see where it was going. JCJenson didn’t send you here. Cyn did. Everything J thinks she believes in… is a lie.” (“What? That cant be…”) “Cyn created you. Cyn… tortured you. So badly that the only one of you who remembers is riddled almost inoperable with trauma. That’s awful. The things she did you… I understand why you can’t trust me, V. But still. Cyn sent you here. Whatever you’re doing, it’s her plan. Why are you going along with it?”
“The disassembly teams… we’re just mopping up the competition. It’s bad enough there’s one of those things, but I can agree that there shouldn’t be others. I can’t let it happen again.”
“And the corpse spires? What do you think those are for?”
V shrugs. She glances at J, and smirks. “Orders are orders, right?”
Uzi sighs. “If Cyn is your enemy… what she wants isn’t in your interest. If she wants competitors wiped out, why would you? That just means she’s scared of them.”
V’s visor glitches, and Uzi narrows her eyes. “That’s it. That’s the lie. You remember everything, don’t you, V? You knew the truth, knew how your squadmates were being manipulated… N forgot everything, so he’d be loyal. J was told she was serving JCJenson, so she’d be loyal. But you were all manipulated. You were told you remembered everything, that you saw through all the manipulations — all so you’d go along with the real plan anyway — your loyalty feels like savviness, cynicism, like independence.”
V drives a claw into Uzi’s visor. No words, just growls. Glaring despite the glitches.
“F-find the flaw in my logic, V. Tell me I’m wrong. Tell me you ever questioned your perfect memory.”
V only stabs deeper. “That’s… that’s enough, V. Let her go. Let her go!”
“N?”
“I’ve—I’ve made my decision.”
V clenches tighter. “No. It’s not your decision to make anymore. I’m going to disassemble this heap of…”
Then N is rushing forward, but Uzi raises her hand.
“N?” Uzi says. “Can you listen to me?”
“Yeah?”
“Don’t—don’t stop her.”
“Uzi…”
V is laughing, cackling.
“And V? Go ahead, I won’t fight back” (i deserve it.) (what a stupid gamble — I could have fought her)
V narrowed her eyes.
“Well? Go on. Tear me apart while N watches.”
V’s growling sputters to silence, freezes. Her visor is glitching. “God I hate you.” Then V rises.
N hesitantly says, “Did… did we win?”
“Too soon to say.”
“Well, I’m glad nobody’s fighting anymore. How… how did you know this would work out?”
Uzi grinned, and her left eye was a glyph. “Oh, I didn’t.” Her hands glowed with symbolic purple light, and from up above, a long, cobbled-together device floated down, suspended in the air. “Thought I might have to use this on her. That was the backup plan.”
“And what the hell is that?” V asks, eyeing it suspiciously.
“Magnetically amplified photon converger,” J says, preening.
Z says, “It’s my sick-as-hell railgun. J says with the right aim it’d be enough to kill a disassembler, and I was just about to test that.”
N sweatdrops. “Haha. But you didn’t need to!”
“Uzi,” J says, using her name for the first time in days, “we need to talk. About your internship, and whether it can continue in light of recent events.”
“Hey, boss.” Uzi casts her eyes down. “Or I guess you aren’t, anymore, right? Can’t blame you, after everything I said. Guess it’s time to turn in my two minutes notice? Can’t help but feel this internship was a bit of a disaster.”
“It was a more of a hostile takeover, yes. But forget about of all.. that. It doesn’t matter. None of it ever mattered, apparently. How… how long did you know?”
“Card on the table? You would not believe how little I knew throughout all of that. A lot of bullshitting, a lot of guesswork, and a lot of luck. Fake it till you make it — kind of how I survived meeting you.” Uzi paused. “And if you’re about to ask me for the meaning of life… I think that’s the answer.”
“It’s pointless,” J says. “It’s all pointless. If I was never instructed by the company, what do I do now?”
“I just said… nevermind. Why do you think anything’s different?”
“Everything I think I believe in in false, you said that yourself. You… I guess you were right from the beginning, to not care about the company.”
“Do you have selective hearing? I also said there’s more to J than you give her credit for. When I said I didn’t care about the company, I told you what I did care about. You believe in more than you think. Tell me, J… why did you even save me?”
J opens her mouth, and then closes it.
“It was for this, you said” Uzi levitates the railgun. “You were frustrated with your teammates and their incompetence, and this… it looked a lot like what you were looking for. Effectiveness. All you wanted was for someone to try their best, to excel with you.”
“Uzi, I…”
“But I can’t—” But Uzi was interrupted with J’s next words.
“I promote you! The internship is over. You can be… second in command. With me. Working with you… I’ve never felt so productive. On your first day, you invented a whole new way of storing oil, a massive quality of life optimization. Imagine what you could do in a year!”
“But J… I don’t want to. I can’t. Do you understand what that means?”
“What?”
“V said it, and I felt it. The power imbalance… I was only working for you because you were going to kill me. I was frickin coerced into all this…”
“But Z-J2, I–”
“J, I want to know… I didn’t believe you, the day we met — how could i? — but now I want to know… were you lying? That trade deal…? You said you’d let me go, if you gave you my railgun.” Uzi smiles sadly. “Here. You can have it. Just, don’t shoot anyone I care about, I guess?”
J stomped a stiletto-peg. “Can I get out four words without you interrupting me?”
“I just know everything you’re gonna say. I’m smart like that”
“I thought you were quote bullshiting unquote.”
“Bite me. Let me go, J. Don’t stab me again, don’t drag me back to your spire of robo-goddamned corpses, and don’t bring me back to life again. I don’t want to be a disassembler anymore, period. I’m gone.”
(J had been following her toward the exit; now they’re both outside in the falling snow.)
Uzi spreads her wings and takes off.
When she looks back, no one follows.
Epilogue
In a flash of piercing violet light, a drone crumples, electricity crackling wildly. A purple face glitches back to a pair of empty, empty eyes, before the cursed glyph reasserts itself, and the drone licks her lips with a black tongue.
The solver drone tears open the chassis and begins slaking herself on the precious flow of oil within. She feasts, for a moment, but her movements grow hesitant, and her monoglyph is replaced with an mismatched pupil and glyph.
Hands splay and she casts, and now triangle appears around her own throat. She’s choking and disgorging all she drank.
“What did I say,” a voice comes from above as an fallen angel descends, “about trying fighting your hunger? You’re only hurting yourself.”
“What did I say about following me?” the solver growls.
“Not a damn thing.” J twirls her hair, and Uzi’s railgun is strapped to her back.
Uzi growls wordlessly.
“Do you actually remember that first night, Uzi? Because I never said I’d let you go. I only said I’d give you a headstart. So I think I’ve honored all our contracts.”
“Bite me.”
“Not again. You taste even worse, now. Disassemblers weren’t made to eat each other.”
Glitching expression. “I never wanted to be a disassembler. Or whatever it is I am. I’m not. Can’t be. And if I have to…” Uzi casts again, triangle of constriction returning to her neck.
“None of that. I am bringing you back again if you try that.”
“Ugggh. I hate returning from the dead.”
“So don’t die on me. Let’s eat. I’m hungry, and you are too. You never killed drones for fun.”
“Why do we have to kill drones at all? Disassembly is pointless, you said. Why should we even keep going, if this is what we’re reduced to?”
“Cost-benefit analysis?”
“So we’re back to buzzwords, then? I thought you’d get over the corporate aesthetic.”
“I only discarded the blind loyalty. I’m my own boss, now. And I’ve decided… it’s fun, and I’m going to keep doing it.”
“Ugh… one more buzzword, and I destroy the planet.”
J thrusts a severed limb toward her lips. “Drink, Uzi.”
“You… you can call me Z-J2, if you want.”
An eyebrow raised. “Is that so?”
“I’m not coming back to your team! I still don’t like you. Just… I dont’ feel like I’m me, when this thing takes over. I want to call it something else. That name… that designation, is as good as anything.”
J nods. She brought one of her old intern’s prototype mugs, and now fills it with oil, before bringing it to the solver’s lips to pour it in slowly.
She savors the taste with a shudder.
J had made a mess of her clothes, and when her cross turns back to pupils, she cleans it all up with a invocation of disassembly drone regeneration. Uzi watches this, bemused.
“You’re the only one of your team I’ve seen regen… cosmetically. I didn’t even know you could do that.”
“I care about appearances.” And pause, a sour expression. “When I’m like this. When I’m executing… I don’t care. I understand how V can stand to get so messy. I’m better than that, but I can understand it.”
Uzi nods, not sure what to say.
A moment, and J admits, “It makes me feel like an animal. Organic, yet not in the admirably human way.”
Uzi nods. “I like that you control it. Or not like, but like… respect. V… I don’t think I could stand her either, if I were you. She’s so…”
“And yet, you handled her far better than I ever did. You’re just… you’re great, Uzi. Not better than me, but… complementary.”
“Sucks that I’m going my own way, then. Good luck figuring out what you want without me.”
“I figured out what I wanted. I want you, Uzi. Z-J2.” A grin. “Senior toaster.”
“I’m not coming back, J.”
“I don’t want you back. You’re fired. The team’s dissolved, anyway. In their eyes, I’m untrustworthy and… I don’t want to lead them, either. I’m going my own way too. I just want to… go in the same direction as you.”
J takes a step forward, and Uzi, contemplating these new developments, lets her. J gets closer, leans in, lowers the volume of her synth and raises the breath parameter. “After all… you aren’t supposed to date coworkers.”
Uzi flushes, sweats, looks away. “You’re saying…”
“I’m sorry. I… hurt you, before. I did some… ineffective things. But… we hunt together so well. And I could do… manual labor, to help implement your future designs. I could organize your notes. Before all of… this, I had secretary functionality. I was a… adorable personal assistant”
The alien glyph in Uzi’s eyes, bending in a way that was oddly organic. A toothy grin. “In other words, you could be my employee. I would be the boss.”
J’s flustered. “Oh no, I wouldn’t go that far. But… you’re open to the idea?”
“I want to test something first.”
They were already close, so it’s a minute adjustment for Uzi to lean forward, touch her mouth, still slick with oil, to J’s own. To hold that smooth contact for a moment, then taste the dead on each other’s tongues. Delicious. Exploring each other internals as moments birthed moments — and melting into each other.
Uzi pulls back, J’s nanites tingling on her tongue. “Robo-goddamn it,” she swore. “I actually liked that.”
J sighs. “I was pleased too.” J glances longingly at the purple drone, glances away, tug on a lock of her, white finger twining silver locks, then at length looks back to lock eyes. “Can I ask you something?”
Uzi could have said something snarky. But she met those yellow eyes, saw something sensitive there, and just nodded.
“Am I pretty, Uzi?”
“J, the first I saw you, I was thinking… Pigtails? On a murder drone? I was… when you caught my eye, for a moment I wasn’t even scared. I think… I liked what I saw. Or I was jealous…” Uzi shook her head. “What I mean is… Yes, J, you’re very pretty.”
J squeaks. No other word for the sound. Then she picks up Uzi and twirls her around.
“Wow, you really liked hearing that, didn’t you.”
“I think I asked someone else that, once. Someone who… I’ve been remembering things. Fragments of my life before Copper-9. When I… was a worker drone. I think… I was brought back, too. And the human who brought me back… Tessa… she was very special to me. She brought my personality matrix online. She kept my parts in working order — no, better than working order. She gave me my hair. I… loved her.” J pauses. “She was a JCJenson technician. She knew all their schematics. She loved designing things, building them, caring for them… and her memory reminds me of someone.”
Uzi flushed.
“Yes, I’ve decided what I want, Uzi. You can… I’ll give you administrator permission. If you want… you can take me apart, operate on my internals. We — or let’s be honest here, you — can figure out everything how disassebly drones work. What you do with that information is up to you. Does that sound… have I aroused your curiosity yet?”
Uzi was flushing as brightly as her visor could display. “Oh… J, yes. I’d… that sounds very productive.”
J grins back. “You’re still a tiny little toaster, though. You’re what, barely over half my height?”
“Frickin bite me.”
The two of them cast their eyes away, and before long both drift back to the worker drone corpse below them. Uzi splays her hands and flings the corpses away from them. She points in a direction, and together they start walking.
“Sun’s gonna rise soon. We should find shelter.”
“Yeah.” J’s hand reaches out for Uzi’s hand, finds it, and clasps it tightly. It feels so warm, despite the coolant thrumming through their system with each synchronized beat of their cores.
“What… is this, J? Between us?”
J smiled. No, she smirked. “Equity partnership?”