Thump, thump.

Oil rushed through this body. She could hear the surge, the pressure. It never stopped. But it only got this loud when this body wanted to attack.

She just wished it realized it couldn’t. When this body itched, she scratched. When this body thirsted, she drank. When this body pined for violence, when the need to sink claws in and shred bristled like a coat, she struck.

Except when the target was her, and she had to refrain.

“She’s mine. And I think I’ll start by reformatting that bloated memory file of hers.”

Maybe her oil still pumped because she could hear those fucking words just as clearly as when she’d first uttered them. Could still see the smirk. The look of pity.

“So uh, V–”

Serial Designation V flinched. V stood in the bunker, and it was just her and N. No one else.

N, still in that butler’s suit and tie, gently curling hair framing a round face, bright yellow eyes angled in uncertainty.

“What?” She didn’t snap, but she kept her tone sharp. He needed to keep his distance.

N frowned. He sat where the leader had sat, in the swivel chair. Tapping on the keyboard buttons. A text editor on screen filled with random characters.

At V’s words, he stopped, pushing off the desk gently. He turned the chair to face her, but the angle and momentum meant chair kept spinning him around.

“Well, about what J said. I think–”

“Drop it.”

“But… I kind of promised her I’d talk to you?” He poked two fingers together as the chair continued to spin him.

“So what? You want to find the magic words you can say to fix everything?”

In between spins, his eyes widened. “Oh, there are magic words?”

“No.” V reached out to grab the back of the chair and finally stop the spinning. She looked in N’s eyes. “And if the topic is J, the only thing I want to talk about right now is mutiny. So you’d be doing her a favor by keeping me distracted.” V grinned with her teeth. The teeth gave everyone pause, even the predators.

Though N wasn’t much of one.

She stood up and turned toward the door. Flicked the light-switch off and left him in the dark. But she heard him getting up, his footsteps coming up behind her, couldn’t turn off the HUD that turned every audio input into a reconstruction of all the surroundings she couldn’t see. Still, she walked away.

N said, “V, I don’t want to push you away from the team.”

And V paused. And waited.

“But?” she finally asked, tired of waiting for the blade to drop.

“Huh?”

“You don’t want to push me away, but…”

Limbs made different sounds when they contracted than when they flexed. V could hear N curling up slightly. She’d heard it often enough, remembered each time. She could picture the subtle defensive posture.

He said, “That’s not, no. There is no ‘but’. I don’t want to push you away from the team. So I won’t make you talk about it, not if it’s gonna make things worse. We can talk about other things.”

V expelled exhaust. It’s N. Of course it would be that simple.

“And if I don’t want to talk?”

“Then we can talk nothing! I can be quiet. I think?”

V heard him take a step closer, so she started walking again, moving through the bunker. She stepped into a work room. In here, a laptop, a technician’s toolbox, an inactive drone. Exactly what J wants to do to you.

She clenched a fist.   But there was a way to stop that from happening.

N continued, “You seem like you’re not doing too great. And I want to help, somehow. If I can.”

“And if I told you to get lost, fly back to the spire and leave me alone?” V turned around, because she wanted to see the conflict on his face.

But N just said, “Then I’d leave.”

V frowned.

He lifted a hand, rubbed the back of his head. “Don’t know what I’d tell J though. I get the feeling she wouldn’t be very happy. I’d figure something out, though!”

V shook her head and looked away.

“So, should I…?” N asked. He made a walking gesturing with two fingers which then rose up, turning to hand-flapping.

V rolled her eyes, because it was that or laugh, and she didn’t want to smile.

“No, you’re right. J would go throw another fit. So stay here.” V started walking again. N did too, and she matched his pace. “I don’t know how you do it.”

“Do what?”

“I can stand J on a good day. You never get good days.”

“Today was a pretty good day, I think.” Behind her, V heard his body language open up.

V continued, “But you just keep trying. Still optimistic, even when–”

When just this morning, J told her that she’d have killed him if the company allowed it. But V couldn’t tell him that.

“J can be harsh,” N said, “but she wants what’s best for us.”

She couldn’t tell him.

Nothing new there, though.

“You’ve got it backwards,” is all V said.

J’s game of harsh encouragement was a pretense – even N could see that – but the pretense wasn’t the harshness. N’s performance always struck V as an excuse, not a motivation. V had thought only she remembered, but…

J had always disliked N.

N followed V to the entrance room, the lights there still flickering. “Go get your jacket. And get out of that.” V indicated N’s butler uniform with a claw. She didn’t finish her sentence.

Stepping in the airlock, V contemplated tearing her way out of here. She itched to. But no, magic forcefield oil wires meant her strength was nothing here. What did J call them, ‘wards’? Meh.

The minute in the airlock was long, and the itch got worse. V dragged her claws along the wall, carving grooves in what the centimeter or so the magic forcefields didn’t protect.

Stuck in a box where she couldn’t escape… Why didn’t J use her magic EMP blast to take the forcefields down? To fuck with her?

When the other door opened, V leapt into the house. One swipe of her claws tore down the wall of the kitchen. There. It was good to have that kind of power again.

V dug her claws in, climbing over the walls and ceiling. She poked around the wires that snaked through the house, cutting this one and that. Appliance lights winked out in the kitchen as she cut them off from the backup generators. Each bit of power cut was welcome – it meant one less electromagnetic annoyance tickling her senses – but she was really looking for the wire that would bleed oil, and shut down the magic forcefield for good.

“Oh, you waited for me!”

N found her before V found the wires. Jacket fluttering behind him, and he adjusted his hat. She perched on the ceiling, so they looked upside down to each other.

V shrugged. “Didn’t have anywhere else to be.”

“So… is there anything you wanted to talk about, maybe?”

“Nope.” Dropping down, flipping midair, wings out. “Let’s go hunting.”

“Ah. More murder? Well, if it’s together.”

“Hey, last night proved you can force J to say something nice about you, much as she hates to. Would be funny if she had to do it again.”

“When you put it like that… Maybe we shouldn’t be antagonizing her? When she’s already mad at you?”

“Meh. Give her the night to get over it. Pretty soon she’ll forget and move on,” she said. Then quietly, “It’s what always happens.”

Thump-thump.

The core beat faster in the air. Didn’t make sense, when she didn’t move the wings. This body moved less in the air than on the ground.

But since when did this body ever make sense?

V followed N. V couldn’t see the ground, especially not with this many clouds. The clouds never really went away, only ever clearing by degrees.

A misty sky hung over a dead planet. With the core collapse, these clouds had poured out, the last breaths lingering.

Perfect weather for killing.

N descended. From this distance, the impression of the city was the impression of its skyscrapers. Dark fingers grasping toward heaven, falling short and falling. They splayed, because between the tectonics and the weather, all the supports were on a timer till they decayed. More towers leaned than lay straight.

Could V go in and knock out the bottom floor of one of them? Would it bring the monoliths tumbling down? She had the strength to do it. It’d be immensely destructive, cathartic.

If any worker drones were inside, you wouldn’t have serial numbers to give to J.

Of course, if it’d be remotely satisfying, what would be the point in it?

Ahead, N spiraled down. V mirrored for a bit, then cut across the center of the spiral.

“Yo, are we flying in circles or do you actually know where we’re going?”

“Give me a second, I know it’s around here… somewhere.”

“‘It’ being…”

“J was talking about factories, right? Saying the worker drones were… multiplying? It reminded me of something I saw on patrol. If we took one of them down, I think she’d like that.”

With nothing but a thoughtful noise, V fell back into his undertow, keeping him a distance ahead. He descended faster, and the fog of a cloudbank obscuring him.

Thump-thump.

If V lost track of him…

She could fly back to the spire on her own. They both could. Why even follow him? To do him a favor. And then… he’d just start leaning on V more and more, and V couldn’t bear that weight. She should just leave now.

And face J alone?

V descended faster.

Where the suburb had sprawled, the inner city clustered tight. Every building was a wall imprisoning those around it. Windows shone throughout the night, beacons to nothing. Years into their scavenging, the distant cityscape looked darker than she remembered (V remembered each night), but somehow a few backup generators eternally burned. Oil, nuclear, geothermal? V could find out, if she blew one of them up, but that’d be for satisfaction.

Gridlines traced the perimeters of every block – the streetlights click on the same schedule they had for years. Of course, V had never seen the streets in sunlight. Maybe they never went off. Didn’t matter.

N flew over a street, banking a left and weaving among the towers. V started to wonder if this was just a sightseeing tour, and then she heard the call.

“There it is!” N gave a whoop. “Sorry for the delay.”

Not every building in the inner city towered as high as the skyscrapers. A few squatted in between, shrubs to the tallest oaks, and some lacked buildings entirely: plenty of big flat parking lots broke up the space. Their destination lay between a multitiered parking lot and a hotel tower without signage.

In life, the factory would not have attracted much attention – it bore the same rounded, pill shaped roof that styled the skyscrapers, though it had stood less tall. Now, in ruin, the factory is shorter still. V scanned around for the incessant JcJenson branding and couldn’t find it – though given its state, that didn’t say much. The upper floors had collapsed, leaving only the supports, stained black from chemical smoke.

It looked a ribcage cracked open, hardly protecting the architectural organs anymore. Beneath the upper floor supports, the exterior bore familiar ornamentation. Haphazard scrap adorned – car doors, street signs, metal fencing – that all but announced the current inhabitants. Most tellingly of all, power lines cut and stitched together, and feeding into bundles by the dozen.

These constructions weren’t, after all, human additions.

N landed a block away from the factory, in the shadow of a skyscraper.

When he saw V landing, he asked, “So, what do you think our approach should be?” He tapped his chin. He waited for a response, didn’t get one, and said, “Oh, how about this. I run in first to scare them, while you creep up from the back. That way none of them get away–”

“Why are you trying to do this like J? It’s just toasters, we don’t need any tactics.”

“So, just run in guns blazing?”

“Duh.” V transformed her hands into assault rifles, letting anticipation light a smirk on her face. “Lowest body count eats a missile~” Toothy grin, a wink, and she broke into a run toward the factory. A fifty meter stretch she could cover in a few seconds.

From this distance, anything inside the factory was blurry, indistinct, unseen. V moves quickly, and even quicker when her run becomes half-flight on outstretched wings. She didn’t see it.

No, first she heard, then she felt, then she thought, then she saw – something was wrong.

Asphalt exploded on the street around her. V skidded to a stop about ten meters out. Then something whizzed past her head, wind-wake shifting her hair.

A disassembler is thoroughly used to the sound of gunfire. From this side, though? That was a bit rarer.

Thump, thump. She expected a fight, but now this body was primed to begin.

V rained suppressive fire down over the factory. Some of the sheet metal, not bolted tightly enough, was knocked free and clattered to the ground. Between the cover, she saw the flashes of the enemy weapons, but they were moving, hiding.

Then N caught up.

“Looks like they’re biting back today,” V said. “Think their aim’s gonna be any better this time?”

“So… time for tactics?” he asked, hopeful.

“Nah,” V said.

If anything, it made their job easier. Disassembler ammunition had to come from somewhere – every shot that hit would have the damage regenerated in seconds, gifting them with another bullet they could fire without pausing to chew chassis.

N said, “I think I wanna hit them with a smoke bomb. Throw off their aim.”

Mid-crouch, V rolled her eyes. “You do you, just stay out of my way.” With her leap, the pavement cracked as if another gunshot had hit.

Thump-thump. Now that they were here. V was ready. She needed this.

From high in the air, V dived, but her bullets landed first. Her guns fired twice as fast as the beating of her core. In the air, she was even harder to hit. V heard bullet after bullet sail past her.

Guess worker drones hadn’t gotten any better at aiming.

V front-flipped and fell upon one of the curved supports that once upheld the factory’s height ceiling. She perched there, shielded from most of the gunfire, though she could feel the impacts vibrating the support underneath her.

Switch for a sniper rifle, aim the long barrel just so, and pop, pop. V missed once before hitting one center mass. Take aim, pop, pop, and there was a headshot. V had flown past the worker drone’s defensive line – where before they had cover, now they were exposed. In between misses, V picked off a few more outside the factory as they scramble for cover – including one trying to escape, climbing the chain link fence around the factory.

Wasn’t exactly fun, sitting up here taking pot shots; she was just waiting for–

There. The sound of the front door getting blown down, and, cloaked in a cloud of smoke, N breached the factory.

Wouldn’t be a fair competition if V got a head start, after all.

V switched her rifle for a laser and melted the other end of her (already unsteady) support beam. It fell, and V rode it down.

Let’s get this party started. She laughed, and another beam melted – the floor? ceiling? both? – whatever formed the de facto roof of the factory.

Between the falling weight and the weakening, the ceiling caved.

From here, V could see the spiderweb of catwalks and hanging platforms connecting the highest level of the factory – more of them toward the front, she noticed. Inside, unarmed worker drones dashed this way and that in a panic. One slipped and fell; these catwalks didn’t have railing. Several vents crawled up higher than the catwalks, and V rode past them.

As the support fell to the level of the catwalks, V jumped ship, catching the edge of one bridge and pulling herself up with one hand.

The catwalk bridged two platforms. On one end, two worker drones, and only one on the opposite. All three pointed guns her way – little pistols, a joke – and at this close range, some of their shots actually hit.

Thump-thump.

V dashed for the platform with two drones, moving quickly enough to weave around the bullets. She fired one rifle shot behind her, hit the lone worker drone with a 45mm round dead in the chest, and switched to swords.

From their perspective, it must’ve been a quick death. One drone was beheaded, and the other got a blade through the chest, dragged upward to bisect the head.

V drank from the gout of oil surging from the decapitated. V didn’t count liters; she operated by gut feel.

She recalled J once said that the amount of oil a disassembly drone could store was unlimited – it came and went from the same place as their guns, their ammo, and the mass they used to regenerate from everything short of total obliteration.

“Thus, disassembly would never be impeded by logistical constraints.” J made it sound like some sort of genius design from the company. It didn’t feel like that. One of that thing’s many tortures.

Because it meant V would never be full. No matter how many drones she killed, V would always thirst for more oil; a drought that would never end.

Body empty, V reached for the head to drain it of its oil. Then a bullet put a hole in her wrist. She turned – saw the other drone she shot. It hadn’t gotten up – not with a hole that massive in its chest – but lying on the platform, in a pool of its own oil, it’d managed to point the little pistol and aim one last shot at V.

She rolled her eyes. A surge of this body’s freakish strength, and V rushed forward. She transformed her right hand back into – and it didn’t transform.

So she transformed her left hand instead, cut down the drone, then glanced at her right arm. Still had the hole in it. V focused, activating her robot vampire powers.

J had spent several training drills making sure both of them could ‘execute the active regeneration function’ – i.e., heal their freakish bodies. V’s wrist reset back to the specification in her memory banks. She transformed it and it worked.

Around her, bullets still fired, and V could see N carving a path through the workers down on the factory floor. She needed to get back to work.

First, she crouched to feed on the drone she’d just killed, drink its black blood to fuel her robot vampire powers. Meager drops against the never ending drought, but she had no choice.

With all the walls and machinery downstairs, N was stuck fighting on mostly the same terms as the workers. But up here, with all the catwalks and platforms, V advanced with an insurmountable advantage. V leapt and flew between perches on the ceiling as her prey were confined to platforms and bridges, and the worker drones had no answer.

Not a bad feeling, crawling up here, above everything, oil rushing to her head.

Some of the platforms on the upper floor had been fortified, granting cover the workers fire from behind. A far corner held one such barrier. Between the walls and the layers of scrap metal – enough to outfit multiple cars – it frustrated V enough to fire a rocket launcher at it, and she laughed at the three worker drones sent sailing by the explosion.

Worker after worker died to her, and if she took extra satisfaction in it, if she imagined some of them with pigtails as she carved them up… it wouldn’t go on her after action report.

V was a moon for the tide of oil, pulling it forth with each kill. Shot through the head. Sliced to bits. Exploded with a shrapnel grenade. Melted in two with a laser. She even hit one drone with a harpoon-hand and reeled it in to feast.

Throughout it all, V waited for the worker drone’s defenses to falter and turn to a rout. A disassembler’s advance was inevitable, and all their bullets were no more than errant bee stings. Why were they still firing on her?

“V, you good?”

N had chased after a drone that climbed up to escape. V shot it, and once it was dead, he’d turned his attention to her.

V spoke first, hanging from the ceiling. “Focus on your own bodycount, dummy. It’s no fun if you aren’t taking it seriously.”

“V, you’re covered in oil. And… it doesn’t look like all of it’s from workers?”

V looked down (up?) on herself, flinched, and brought up some internal diagnostics. She was riddled with bullet holes.

V laughed, waving it off. “I’m more menacing this way. But if you’re going to be a worrywort.” She did the freak body healing thing, shoring up the holes.

N regarded her with a frown.

“C’mon. I’m up to thirteen, how about you? Hopelessly far behind?”

N sighed. “Please stay safe?”

V rolled her eyes, and took off.

After that much healing, she felt parched. A heat burned inside her, and it was time to douse the flame.

By now, the upper floor had been cleared of workers, but there was a caveat. The catwalks and upper platforms only covered half the factory. V didn’t think the humans laid it out like that – on the far side of the factory, V saw catwalks that had been cut in half, the severed bridges hanging from the walls.

Time to see what the other half of the factory held.

So V flew, passing over N stinging a drone, crossing over the middle point, and into the space of no bridges.

Beneath her, a herd of workers ran deeper into the factory, fleeing N. Panicked faces, hollow eyed and lined with worry, look up in horror at the disassembler above them.

Bearing rifles at the end of her arms, V fired into the crowd, spurts of oil shoot up with each well-aimed bullet. When they needed to reload, she simply switched them for other guns.

One by one, Fatal Error overtook the faces – the futility dimmed the remaining visors, underscored their terror.

V suspected that of the three of them, she alone remembered that worker drones weren’t always prey. To J or N, they had been created to fulfill a purpose, and that was all they ever were.

“Barely sentient toasters” V laughed.

It was cope.

She wondered if J knew. She never said ‘kill’ or ‘murder’, always ‘shutdown’ and ‘disassemble’. Would you try that hard to euphemize without some guilt?

Then V would wonder if J trying so hard to be clean and efficient was an expression of that same guilt, and whoops, too much sympathy for a drone who definitely doesn’t give that much of a shit about anyone else, and never did.

V didn’t have a stone to throw. Beneath her, worker drones died crying, holding each other, calculating what deity to pray to.

And V felt nothing.

But not all of the drones this far back in the factory were defenseless. Barrels pointed her way as soon as she was spotted. A symphony gunshots filled the air, her movement through the air serving the role of the conductor.

The players at the back of the symphony hit louder notes than expected. Guns the size of worker drones, installed and mounted rather than wielded.

Turrets?

N was far behind her, she realized. Of course, the crowds below said as much – if they were alive, he hadn’t reached this part of the factory yet.

All of the enemy’s attention was focused on her, now. Every gun, every bullet. V weaved through the air, robot vampire powers giving her exceptional speed. More bullets miss than hit, but there were a lot of bullets flying.

The rounds pierced this body, and V felt nothing.

But as she flew, for the third time V noticed she was riddled full of holes. This body wasn’t healing itself. She could heal herself with her powers, but she’d never had to do this many times in a fight. She barely had to do it at all – almost always just when J tested them. She thought it maintenance trivia.

It took until then for V to understand something was wrong. Why wasn’t she healing? But she couldn’t poke around her internals, not in the middle of a fight.

And, flying high above a room of workers she’d killed and workers trying to kill her, V calculated. She had noticed the drain – she was always thirsty – but between the flight, the healing, and the bleeding holes in this body, V lost oil faster than she could replenish it.

Then V saw a bullet. Close enough she could count the bands – two, near the base. And then the bullet cracked her visor.

V didn’t land. She fell.

Thump-

N opened his eyes in surprise. A body lay flat in front of him. He frowned. Identification circuits fired, and it was a worker drone. Right, the mission was still going, then. But what was surprising about that?

Oh, his hands weren’t guns. Claws dug into the floor at his eye level – he was climbing up? Couldn’t have shot it, then.

He traced a trajectory back from the bullet wound, and saw her.

Hair was striped, with wet streaks sticking it to her head. The same blackness coated her lips, and you almost could mistake it for lipstick. Those lips were drawn back in a grin or grimace. Nothing unusual for V in a mission.

But holes pockmarked her crop-top jacket, and N watched her sway where she stood. He climbed up, she noticed him, and in between her >< becoming a pair of narrow eyes, a high temp warning flashed on her screen. She scowled at him.

That familiar scowl almost felt like a greeting at this point. He would smile – it was good to see her – but he had even less to smile about, right now.

“V, you good?” he asked.

She told him to focus on his own body count – even as she spoke, an errant bullet hit her, and she didn’t react. Which, fair, he didn’t react when he got shot either – but N stared at the bullet wound and it didn’t go away.

Even as they talk, N saw more high temp warnings, and V was swaying hard enough she staggered once. He should call off the mission – wasn’t he kind of in charge? It was his idea. But… you weren’t really in charge if no one listened to you, and he knew V wouldn’t listen.

His concern got her to heal herself, at least. That was something? He’d have to be content with that.

He sighed, and parted with a, “Please stay safe?”

He’d just have to work extra hard to finish this mission before V could get more hurt.

He closed his eyes.

><

N had observed pretty early on that he did better work the less he thought about what he was doing. J had talked about flow states, about how worries and doubts and over-analysis could get in the way of productivity. But it was possible to think too much about why you shouldn’t think too much, too.

N opened his eyes. More dead bodies lay around him, with a short-lived fullness in his core and the aftertaste of warm, sweet oil. He wondered what had interrupted his flow this time. He had the frustrating itch of something… forgotten?

He looked to the ground, post-processed the image. Subtle footprints are isolated, and a Target Missing? pop-up showed up. Ah, one of the worker drones got away. He started after the trail.

He’d never seen the other two talk about these popups. After he mentioned one particularly direct prompt (It looks like you're trying to commit mass slaughter. Would you like help? Y/N), V and J shared a laugh about ‘tutorial mode’. But N thought it was pretty helpful!

N’s path wove among the industrial wreckage and support beams. N was sure this place would have been cluttered with machinery and racks of material without the mess created by years of disuse and accumulated debris.

N ran straight into a wall where the path forked, and his tracking algorithm was less than 50% confident the target went down either trail.

N looked either way before noticing a worker drone coming around the bend farther down the right. As they spotted each other, it froze. This wasn’t the worker drone N was looking for – it’d be running away, right? So he cocked his head.

“Have you seen–”

“He went that way!” the drone blurted out, pointing down the other fork. The drone had green eyes, and a worker’s overalls.

N flashed a smile. “Thanks!” He darted down the path.

Wait a minute. N turned around, and as he did, a bullet flew past his head, narrowly missing a lock of silver hair. N frowned and crossed his arms and he regarded the worker drone in overalls.

“You tricked me.”

“You’re literally killing us!”

“You know what, that’s fair,” he conceded. “Though I should probably get back to that.”

N closed his eyes. Those green eyes became Fatal Error.

><

N had passed a lot of wrecked and overturned machinery in this abandoned factory. Robotic arms for assembly line manufacturing, one giant spinning gear-wheel, and a several Assorted Things (fans? computers? lights?) rusted beyond recognition. Piled among them all was crate after smashed open crate spilling out mechanical parts. It was all fascinating, and N found himself repeatedly pulled out of hunting mode to look at the human stuff.

But this was the coolest sight by far. There had been a few conveyor belts in the rooms he’d cleared so far, but this one moved.

“Wow, this thing still works?”

“Damn straight.” A worker drone dived off a stack of crates. Female model, with pink camouflage uniform and a buzzcut.

She landed with a roll on the conveyor belt, and grabbed one of the – guns? – off the assembly line mid-roll. She slammed a new clip into place and was ready to fire as soon as she got to her feet.

As the worker drone emptied a clip into him, N laughed. “Haha, that tickles.”

She growled in frustration. Grabbing another gun from the conveyor belt, but the result was unchanging. It was what was supposed to happen when disassembly drones got shot. But thinking that just made him think about V, and what might be wrong with her.

N sighed. He needed to focus on the mission. But… (still under fire), he leveled a thoughtful stare at the assembly line. Had he made a mistake?

“This isn’t a worker drone factory at all, is it? It’s… a firearms manufacture?”

Another, louder growl of frustration. “Robo-god damn it! This was supposed to work. All of our plans…”

“Well, in my experience, nothing worker drones ever do works.”

“So it’s all hopeless then?”

“Pretty much!” N chirped. “I’d feel pretty bad about it, but my boss says you’re just barely sentient toasters which… does make me question how I’m able to have a conversation with you.”

It really didn’t help when N overthought things.

“Look, I don’t do the banter thing. If you’re going to kill me, just made it quick.”

“Okay!”

><

N opened his eyes.

He wasn’t unable to remember what happened when he stopped thinking, though there usually wasn’t much value in reliving it, except when J requested her reports.

Around him wafted a cloud of smoke. It impaired the worker drones, but his infrared sense meant he still caught the cluster of faint heat signatures. By now his systems had constructed a map of about half the factory. Worker drones were fleeing – V’s reign of terror above sent them down, alongside a casualties like light fixtures or support beams. Then on the factory floor, N sent them running deeper into the complex.

N turned his attention upward – if the worker drones were faint light in his infrared sense, a sun now passed above: V, flying toward the back of the factory.

Oh, biscuits. N wasn’t sure he wanted her to go in alone.

So he tossed a grenade at this last cluster of workers, and raced forward, climbing over crates and conveyor belts. N wondered what the worker drones had kept sectioned off from the rest of the factory. There had been enough drones in the front half to keep him fully occupied until now.

V soared ahead of him. Clear of his smoke cloud, he could see her.

So he saw the new eruption of gunfire, heard the roar of more powerful guns than had ever been trained on them until now.

Saw the lucky rifle round pierce through her head and come out the other side.

V falling like a puppet with strings cut.

Oil spilling out in a rain around her.

“V? V!?”

N pushed himself to move even faster. Unheeding of how much oil he burned, accelerating his body to the limit. He stopped climbing over the obstacles in his path, and just tore through them.

Then, as he burst into the back half of the factory, N heard it.

A cheer.

Plenty of the worker drones – even this far back – were shut down, but the still-online were united in joy. Against all odds, a disassembly drone had been shot down.

Guns replaced N’s hands. He prepared to close his eyes – but did he really want to stop thinking, when V might be –

By the time N burst through internal wall separating him from V, the screams had started.

He didn’t quite understand what he saw. Too many limbs.

Don't look.

N blinked, and took a moment to review the last few frames.

Instinctively, he had first scanned around for bearings. The back half of the factory… was the worker drone’s living quarters. Along the walls, the biggest crates collected and stacked with one side open, a bed inside each. Some of the drones hid inside, but a few had ventured forth to investigate the fallen disassembler.

V landed in a central clearing all of the residential crates were arrayed around. To reach her, the worker drones stepped over screen after screen showing Fatal Error, her earlier kills.

Then every curious worker drone around V’s fallen form was dead before N could process what happened.

N had raw images, but nothing in his systems could identify what he was looking at, as if cloaked in adversarial noise.

Disassembly drones had a number of limb transformation presets, all of them tools. Disassembly drones, also – he couldn’t believe he had to remind himself this – had two arms. It had been years; he was sure by now he’d seen everything in his partner’s arsenal.

As the worker drones died, he tried to catalogue what he could see – mechanical tentacles? crab claws? raptorial arms? – each one a single tendril emerging from the epicenter. A swirling maelstrom, inescapable. Worker drones grabbed, dragged into a toothed maw.

This impossible sight instantly silenced the cheers. Then, in the quiet, at length, N heard a familiar sound.

A deranged cackle.

Classic V. A mote of hope supported a momentary smile.

In the next moment, though, he was struck with the unprompted thought – that V’s laugh had the same rhythm as a terrified heartbeat.

Still, relief cooled his burning core at the sound, and when N looked, the new image took no special processing to understand. V, wings outspread, gun akimbo, and bathing in a river of oil.

N took a step forward.

“Stay back, idiot,” V said, completely undermined by a voice as steady as a string snapping.

V leapt, spinning in the air, firing her guns, and finding targets in the few remaining worker drones.

They all fall – except for one, watching from the highest platforms.

Why did N find something familiar in the sight?

The last drone started running, and V kept firing. By all means, the bullets should have hit home – then came a red flash, and the bullets froze, suspended in mid-air by their own red glow.

The drone’s dash took it to a ladder downward, and it slid down the length, falling fast enough to outpace another spate of bullets. Its yellow robes fluttered around it, and that was when N placed it – the same robes he’d seen yesterday.

Landing, the lone cultist threw up a glowing hand, and a tower of crates was sent clattering to the ground, cutting off V’s sight lines. She stopped firing – by now she was falling back to the ground anyway. She gave a feral snarl.

“V, I think we should–”

“Chase down that thing? Yeah, good idea.”

V started running, and N ran to keep pace. “V, I’m worried about you.”

“That makes one of us.”

“That’s the problem, V! You need to be more careful.”

“Or maybe I have a better idea than you of what I can handle.”

“Do you even know why you weren’t healing? Do you even know what that was?” N leaped forward, and tried to interpose himself between V and the fallen tower of crates. V kept moving, though, calling his bluff, and he stepped out of the way. “What are we, V?”

She laughed. “Disassembly drones, didn’t you get the brief? Or did you forget.”

“You know what I mean.”

V sighed. She crouched, prepared to leap over the fallen crates, but glanced back at N. “Ever feel like this body isn’t your own?”

But she turned away and leapt before he could answer.

A metal door blazoned with yellow hazard symbols sat beneath a sign reading: “AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY!”

“I don’t think we’re authorized. Maybe we should head back?”

V gave the door a solid punch – hard enough he can hear it reverberate throughout the whole building – and it held.

“Huh, guess the humans can build a door when they want to. Annoying.”

N sighed. If she wasn’t going to listen to his suggestion of leaving… He noticed a glowing keypad beside the door. “Maybe there’s a keycard around here somewhere? On a human skeleton, maybe, or one of the worker drones already found one? I’ll look.”

N turned around and surveyed the landscape of carnage V’s… whatever that was, had left. A few steps forward, and he leaned down to search the first body. He wished he could just close his eyes and open them to find the search complete – but this wasn’t a hunt, he had no instincts to guide him.

He moved on to the next body. And the next. And–

The sound of a hydraulic door sliding up. N turned around, and V was already on the other side of the door? V waved.

“Bet the architects thought fitting inside a vent counted as authorization,” she said. “That, or they’re idiots.”

N stood from the pile of bodies, and dashed over toward V.

“Anyway, tag along if you want. If you wanna run back, go ahead. But I’m ending this.”

V moved forward, into the dimly-lit hallways of the authorized zone.

“And leave you to face this on your own?” N shook his head. “We’re in this together.” He tried to take a spot by V’s side, but she quickened her pace. Then spread her wings, preventing him from overtaking her

“Nah, I’m in this. You’re just tagging along.”

“Taking down this factory was my idea.”

“Oh yeah,” she said. She closed her wings. “Fine, we’re together. But separate. We’re competing, remember? Though after that, there’s no way you’re catching up, right?” She laughed, but her eyes were still rings.

N opened his mouth, but before his vocalsynth made a sound, a burst of rapidfire gunshots. Bullets caught V in the chest. He looked around desperately.

Automatic turrets? V was transforming her hand, but N shot first. It died in a static burst of compromised electronics – and oil?

“Getting real tired of how much firepower these toasters are sitting on.”

“Yeah uh, about that. I think I misidentified this place? It doesn’t seem like they make drones here at all. Just weapons.”

“And all this?” V gestured at the decrepit tunnel they walked down.

“Secret research and development lab?”

V scoffed. “Getting real tired of secret basements, too.”

The corridor sloped downward. Doors dot the walls they pass, all of them closed and locked. Peeking through the windows, N saw testing dummies, some long-deactivated drones, and plenty of frozen human skeletons.

The main path turned left three times, spiraling down into a level built underneath the sprawling complex above.

Security turrets surprised them at the first turn, and N threw himself in front of V before they could shoot her.

“Stop trying to save me, idiot. Or I’ll start taking it personally.”

It wasn't a surprise at the next turn, and the last one saw them shoot down the turrets before they even emerged from hatches in the floor and ceiling.

“So uh,” N started as they passed more doors. “Where are we going?” He was following V, but he wasn’t sure V knew any more than he did.

“Either that thing is running away, and these dead-end rooms have no way to escape, or it thinks there’s something down here that gives it a chance. Something big.”

“Um, if it thinks that, maybe we shouldn’t risk it?” N could tell the tenor of her response by the look on her face. “V, you still haven’t healed from the first turret that shot you. I don’t think you’re in any state for another fight.”

N didn’t know what he had seen upstairs in the factory – he wasn’t sure it was V – but he got the feeling he would see it again if V got damaged.

Or worse.

V paused. Ahead were two thick, blast-proof steel doors. The sign above read “TESTING CHAMBER”, bracketed on either side by hazard symbols.

One door stood already ajar.

“What are the odds this is a coincidence, and we don’t have to find out what’s behind the big spooky doors?”

V kept walking toward them, but did glance back at N. “You ready?”

I think I’m more ready than you are.

“No, but let’s do this.”

Beyond the doors, the chamber lay dark, but as if awaiting their arrival, lights clicked on. Big circular lamps hanging from the ceiling that pour down cones of illumination. The row nearest came on first, then a row of lights beyond it.

Along the walls lay crates, but in the center of the room stood figures N couldn’t quite identify. Bipedal, metal chassis, it suggested an identification – but worker drones weren’t nearly as tall as a disassembly drone, and didn’t have torsos as wide as a barrel.

The last row of lights clicked on – there’s six mysterious drones arranged in a central hexagon. High on the far wall, a pane of glass stretched, and a last light clicked on. There stood the cultist drone, overlooking the testing chamber. The wall around the overlook was featureless, offering no egress or hint of how the cultist got up there.

V fired a shot as soon as she spotted them – the glass didn’t even crack. Glowlight light engulfed the bullets — had they seen that at the church?

The cultist laughed. V cursed.

“Thank you for your cooperation. You two will make an excellent demonstration.”

N glanced down, and saw visors lighting up. The startup beeps, a drone coming to life. Instead of the JcJenson splash screen, though, it’s a different company. (Keyston-Williams Technologies, a sans serif logo abjectly starved of style.)

Servos hummed to life, and a line of optics lit up along the oversized drone heads. (N found something comical about their proportions – they had no neck!)

Then the nearest drone caught sight of the pair. A warning siren blared. Visor showing Threat Detected became a >:D.

The first drone moved – and these definitely weren’t worker drones. Worker drones didn’t have four arms – and each of them ended in the barrel of a minigun. Rotors began spinning.

“Huh, was my first guess right? They really were building drones here,” N said. “But JcJenson never built drones for military applications. Was this… another company’s attempt to reverse engineer the designs? Build their own modified drones?”

“I really couldn’t care less about the lore behind this place,” V said. “Let’s just blow them up.”

The cultist narrowed orange eyes. “Don’t tell me. This genocide is sponsored by JcJenson in Space?”

“It’s more personal than that,” V replied.

She burst-fired at the nearest drone – but a bright glow lit up the observation room, and a crate flew from the far wall. Levitating, it blocked her shots.

N, claws out, started charging. Then – “Escalating threat level. Lethal force authorized.” – four gun barrels pointed their way and start firing.

N threw out a wing to block the shots from hitting V.

“N, Stop protecting me! I know how to dodge.” V took up into the air, angling her flight toward the observation deck. Several streams of rounds from the soldier drones trace her path, but she was faster. The shots landed among support beams and ventilation shafts.

But V wasn’t faster than the cultist could swing crates through the air. One intercepted her path, and she slowed not to collide with it – which positioned her perfect to be smacked with another. The crate’s metal rung like a bell, and V fell.

N would have ran to catch her, but there were six soldier drones. Not all of them focused on V. He weaved left and right, closing the distance. But with V down, the cultist was freed to harass him with crates.

Between the crates and the soldier drone’s fire, N couldn’t dodge both. He took hits and he regenerated, but he knew every bit of regeneration cost oil and mass.

With a last leap, N pulled back. V had the same idea; they regrouped by the blast-proof doors. They weren’t liable to find better cover anywhere inside. So both duck back outside.

The voice came muffled, distant. “Running away so soon? No, none of that.”

The glowing symbol illuminated the two doors, and with a sustained tearing sound, began ripping them away, hard steel bending.

“We don’t have to fight,” N said, but it sounded lame even to him.

“Where was that mercy when you were slaughtering us by the dozen, just upstairs? Scared now, sky demon? I wonder if you’re even capable of feeling one millionth of the terror and despair you’ve inflicted.”

N got ahead of their vanishing cover, rushing back into the testing chamber. He fired a rocket – blocked by a crate, but it blew up the crate, giving the cultist one less to work with. Who would run out first?

“I’m not scared of you,” N said, fear in his voice. “I just don’t want you shooting V with those things. Either I stop you, or you let us go.”

“How chivalrous. Counter-proposition: you leave the other one here, and I let you go. I’m only offering once.”

“Why would I ever do that!”

“Why would you do any of this, demon? What’s the point of this slaughter?”

A soldier’s drone minigun spun as it fired, and N dodged another gout of bullets.

“Orders? I was made for a purpose, so I just… want to feel useful, I guess.”

“If that’s all that matters, then your partner wouldn’t be worth more than fulfilling your orders, no? More important that you get to live, carry out your purpose, no matter the sacrifice, yeah?”

N shook his head. “No. I’m not abandoning V.”

“What is she, your girlfriend?”

N paused, blushing, and the hesitation made him an easy target. More hits, more regeneration.

“Is your kind even capable of love, of loyalty?” A careless toss of their hand sent five crates flying at N at once – he sliced them in half with lasers. “What a showing from the menacing sky demons – no, you’re hardly a demon, are you? More like a pathetic dog, a snarling puppy.”

N set his face in a determined frown, and focused on trying to take down one of the soldier drones. The crates were getting thinner, now.

“But look at what your loyalty got you! Where is your girlfriend now?”

N looked around. Back at the since-removed doors. Checked the ceiling. He’d been fighting alone for a while now.

“You wouldn’t abandon her, but she had no compunctions about doing the same.”

N decided that maybe he didn’t like talking to worker drones, actually.

Forward he charged, letting his momentum carrying him through a crate, and jumped to bring a sword arm down in a great arc, cutting into the soldier drone’s reinforced chassis. He stung it with his acid tail before backflipping off it.

“Officer down!” A brief >:c overcame the other visors.

N looked for the next target. “If she left me alone, it wasn’t to die. It must be because she’s counting on me, and I won’t let her down!”

He'd have faith that she had faith — but faith in what? What was she counting on N to do? What was his role in this?

Interruption became before realization: the drones opened fire. But N had an idea. He strafed across the room, staying ahead of the gunfire. The drones, steadily shooting, followed his path unerringly – so closely the farthest drone shot at one of the others.

“Friendly fire! Friendly fire!”

The cultist cursed. “What are you doing, you idiots!”

A glow, more intense than the ones before. A telekinetic push sent the injured soldier out of the line of fire, before the glow engulfed every soldier – the >:| on the visors was replaced with a three pronged symbol.

But only four screens were transformed – the drone N had stuck with acid was down for the count, the victim of friendly fire couldn’t move, and he dashed over to drink oil from a downed unit.

The remaining four drones moved with a singular coordination – controlled by the cultist? – and this took enough focus that there were no more crates flying. But not many remained; the walls looked bare. The cultist had gone quiet, too.

It didn’t feel like the cultist was winning. Still, the one drone had only sated N so much – heat burned within him.

“You’re a bit mean, but I’m still willing to let you go if you let us go,” N offered.

The cultist sighed. “All this dialogue is wasted on you, isn’t it? There’s no satisfaction to be had in confronting someone as dogmatically loyal as you. Nothing but admonishment. So be it. You’ve been a bad dog, N.”

“Nah.”

Between the monologue and puppeting four drones, the cultist neither saw it coming nor could block it. A bullet erupted, the exit wound like a third eye, and the cultist fell.

Behind them stood V, a toothy grin on her face even as she swayed on her peg-legs. She blew the still-smoking barrel.

“He’s alright,” she concluded.

Whatever the cultist had done to control the soldiers – did it fry their circuits? – their visors were now blank. N tossed a grenade in their ranks to be sure, then he flew to the observation chamber. V had staggered, about to fall over.

The glass was bulletproof, but N hit harder than a bullet. It shattered around him, and he was there to catch V.

“You keep trying to –”

“V! How did you?”

She laughed. Pointed up. And N saw it.

“Humans are stupid about vents.”

Around the hatch opened in the ceiling, wires hung. Where they crossed in front of the vent, V had shred her way through — and the cut cords dripped deliciously fragrant oil. He had seen this before, at the church! So the glass wasn't bulletproof, it had a magic forcefield in front of it?

“Of course,” he said, with a smile and nod. “We should–”

But there was a stuttering sound, a vocalsynth skipping phonemes.

“You really should have died when I shot you,” V drawled.

“W-won’t f-fail–” Limbs twitched, the cultist struggling to move.

“Just take the L.”

“Before you go, though,” N started, “I’m kind of curious – how did you do the freaky telekinesis stuff? Or the magic forcefield?”

“Re-re-recompila-”

But before V or N could do anything, they saw a movement – there was something else in the observation room, small enough to go unnoticed. It could have fallen out of the cultist’s robes, somewhere in the confusion. Legs tapped on the tile floor as it scurried.

A roachbot. They watched it crawl over the cultist, climbing up to the neck, and biting onto a collar. A hexagonal chip at the front bearing skull in a triangle and #048.

“M-matr–”

The roach bot ripped off the collar. It turned back to look at the disassemblers. One antennae folded down, almost as if in salute.

Then it glowed. Visual artifacts consumed the image, as if N’s optics were failing – the cloud of red noise engulfed the roachbot, and then it was gone. The necklace with it.

“Well that’s weird and concerning,” V said. She looked up to N, still holding her. “N? Disassembly by acid.”

“On it.”

When N gently settled V down to the ground, he noticed fresh oil had stained his jacket. “V? You’re still leaking. Can’t you heal–”

“I patched up the biggest holes. Healing’s not free, and figured it better to conserve so I don’t, y’know.” V gestured vaguely, helplessly.

“Yeah.” N got to work injecting acid into the cultist, head first.

“I still think about what J said, yesterday. Disassembly drones taste awful. What did she mean by that?” V leveled a look at N, her eyes empty circles. “I think that if I get too low on oil right now, I’m going to find out.”

“V…” N hesitated for a long moment, weighing his words. “Do you need a hug?”

V laughed. “Weird thing to say after I subtly alluded to being at risk of killing you.”

“I feel like that definitely means you need a hug,” he replied. “But it’s your call.”

“If you tried, I wouldn’t be able to stop you.” She shrugged.

“I’m not going to do it if you don’t want it, V.”

She rolled her eyes. “Just get it out of your system already.”

N sagged, and went back to dissolving the drone in acid. Then he thought… the odd insistence in her voice – V was absolutely not afraid to tell him ‘no’ or ‘get lost’. N was very familiar with that fact.

Arguably, this is as close to a yes as he was going to get.

He turned to where the female dissassembly drone lay on the floor, staring into the ceiling with eyes that occasionally flicked with warnings. Slowly, he slid one hand under her back to lift her up.

“Tell me when to let go, okay?”

And then N put his other arm around her and pulled her into an embrace. He wanted to squeeze her tight, but didn’t know if that would aggravate her injuries. He settled for applying pressure to her back, rubbing circles.

(A small victory is that he doesn’t start blushing until he’s sure his visor is out of view.)

It took a while for V to return the hug, but eventually she lifted a hand, her touch ghostly and deniable, and she tapped fingers against N’s back. There was a nuance – she chose to do this with her claw hands.

“Maybe you should fly back to the spire on your own,” she said.

“And leave you here?”

“Not like sun’s gonna be a problem down here. I’ll be fine. Plenty of workers left to eat.”

N tightened his hug a bit. “What are we going to tell J?”

V pulled back at that. “Way to ruin the moment.”

At the resistance, he released her, and she crossed her arms.

“Still…”

“Why is this a question? We list our kills, give her the location for corpse retrieval, and then we go to sleep.”

“V…”

There was something off with his teammate’s configuration. It was clear at this point. He just hoped J knew how to fix it.

And that V would let her.

N reached out. “I’m going to carry you back, if you don’t mind?”

V sighed. “Fine.” She looked away while he picked her up. At length, she added, “N? I meant it. You’re alright.”

Somewhere far away, buried beneath layers of standby mode and disabled processes, Uzi Doorman should not be awake. With a disassembly drone wielding debugging privileges, directly connected and reading deep into her databases, she should be floating in a thoughtless void darker than sleep. Despite all this, Uzi clung to awareness. At this point, she had a single thought.

Uzi was frickin tired of waiting.