Hostile Takeover

Only Doll of all drones would be awake at 4 AM.

What would she look like if she got her beauty sleep? Lizzy wondered.

Under the covers, the blonde worker curled up. Blinked pink eyes closed, and waited to be dragged back into recharge. Nope, nothing. She curled up tighter‍ ‍—‍ the absence was letting the bed get annoyingly cool. Didn’t help that the insulation of these cheap covers was a bad joke.

Lizzy opened her eyes, animated an eye roll, and reached out for her phone. Not like anyone would have posted anything since she last checked an hour ago, though. But whatever, Emily had posted a new selfie yesterday, and she could leave a comment.

Those new glasses could only look dorkier if she had braces to go with them, and that blouse? A little harsh but fair criticism would do that girl some good. (But Lizzy would have a sense of humor about it, of course‍ ‍—‍ that was just good posting.)

Yawning, flicking her screen, Lizzy keyboard‍-​swiped out some dunks, but only half‍-​attentively, and not because she was tired. None of these drones were worth her full attention, not really‍ ‍—‍ Lizzy was thinking about Doll.

Where was her bestie? Lizzy was really starting to get cold.

Earlier, they’d spun the bottle and played truth or dare.

Angela admitted to having a crush on Braiden. (Boring‍ ‍—‍ not like she’d had any shot there. Lizzy had that locked down. Didn’t actually care for the bore, but watching jealousy cook the other girls made the acting worth it.)

Rebecca got dared to kiss someone, and she picked Kelsey. (Boring‍ ‍—‍ as if Lizzy wasn’t the most kissable drone here. Or Doll.)

Kelsey chickened out after that, got all sniffly and wanted to go home. Doll had stepped out after her, tried to talk to her, but Doll came back alone.

Whatever. Brat. Clout‍-​chaser.

Really, it just meant Lizzy got to make her move sooner. Her dare to Doll? Let Lizzy sleep in the master bedroom, on her parents’ queen‍-​sized.

With Doll.

(At that, her orange eyes had snapped to the floor, purple hair falling to block any sight of her visor, hiding her reaction. Like a sore loser, but Lizzy knew what she’d see if Doll’d let her: Lizzy had made the famously unflappable russian blush‍ ‍—‍ she’d won.)

Best sleepover ever, she thought. Even if this sty was crawling with roachbots and stunk of oil. Did Doll ever clean?

Lizzy sighed. She could keep waiting. Waiting on what, she had no idea‍ ‍—‍ there really wasn’t anything a drone needed to wake up in the middle of the night to do, and this was the third time Doll had gotten up. It woke Lizzy up every time, disentangling their limbs. Lizzy would scoff and grab tighter, but Doll was silently insistent.

Once, Lizzy had blinked to full consciousness before Doll left, spoke a full sentence, instead of wordless mumbles of protest. Doll had stayed silent, but there was an intensity to her look that’d made Lizzy let go, let her go, and not repeat her question.

Whatever Doll was doing, she was serious about it. Too serious, honestly. Something had gotten into Doll, and Lizzy didn’t like that. The only thing that should be getting into her is—

She rolled her eyes. Thinking about how Doll’d been acting, it was familiar. Lizzy remembered the first day of high school‍ ‍—‍ back when Doll had always sat beside the purple freak.

Lizzy’d seen the look the russian was giving the loner, that little smile, and Lizzy gagged. Doll was too good for her; so Lizzy swooped in, rescued her, took her under wing to save her from becoming another friendless nobody, obsessed with murder drones and computers and hot topic.

Cheerleading was supposed to give Doll something else to do, something to make her popular. But she’d dived into nerd stuff again anyway, despite Lizzy. Lizzy didn’t even have the heart to make fun of the other girl for it‍ ‍—‍ Doll rambling about kernel patches or plotting oily vengeance was kind of cute, not obnoxious, not really.

This sleepover… at first, Lizzy thought it a sign Doll hadn’t really forgotten what the popular girl had taught her, that this obsession of hers wouldn’t come between them being friends or more.

But why did Doll keep getting up? Like, what was she actually doing?

Ugh. Am I brooding? Lizzy was definitely thinking too much. It wasn’t that deep, was it?

So she tossed off the tattered blanket and stood, smoothing out her silky camisole. Feet clinked against flooring, and she picked her steps, in the dark‍ ‍—‍ at least the roachbots had LEDs Lizzy could watch out for.

She wanted to just crush the things. But that’d only attract more of them. Roachbots would gobble up their dead friends easily, and there was always more of them lurking out of sight. Made her shiver. Ugh.

Stepping on one would get oil on her thighhighs, anyway. This house already stunk of oil enough. (She’d swear it was getting stronger.)

Past the doorway, stepping into the living room, Lizzy flipped a lightswitch. Didn’t need the light, but it would mess with Rebecca – except Rebecca wasn’t on the couch anymore, her blue blanket hanging off the cushion.

Ceiling lights flickered in the living room, and so few of them worked that it did little more than toss shadows around. But with how dim it was, as she walked in, Lizzy’s eyes went to a bright L‍-​shape on a corridor wall, shining from a half‍-​closed door. The bathroom. Is this where Doll went off to?

Fixing her hair, maybe? Weird thing to do at 4 AM. But Doll was weird.

Whatever, Lizzy needed a doll to sleep with, so the sooner she got this over with, the better. She’d waited long enough, so she wouldn’t stand around here until Doll came out.

Stepping closer, though, she heard a vocalsynth. Is she talking to herself? Is she talking to someone else?* Oh, Rebecca better not—*

Lizzy snatched open the door, and caught Doll in the middle of eating a roachbot.

“Eww. Maybe shut the door if you’re gonna be eating bugs in here,” Lizzy said. But there’s no blue‍-​haired homewrecker in the bathroom with her, so Lizzy relaxed, hands falling to her sides. “Did it taste good?”

“It tastes like necessity.”

Nothing necessary about you being this extra, girl. “Yeah, cool… Sooo, not to be clingy, but when are you coming back to bed?” She leaned against the bathroom doorway, watching Doll, fluttering her eyes.

“I’m not.”

Lizzy flinched. Did this glitch just… Play it cool, Lizzy. Not a diss, just Doll being Dollish. “There’s a test tomorrow, you know.” There wasn’t, but her dad could make it happen. “Wouldn’t want to be half‍-​charged for that.”

“Grades are irrelevant.”

“Sure. Okay, forget the grades.” Lizzy stopped and swallowed, hesitating. She looked away, saw Doll’s reflection in a cracked mirror. “Fine. I am clingy. I want you to come back, babe.”

No reason not to just come right out and say it. Lizzy wasn’t some swooning airhead who didn’t realize how she felt, or a sheep too scared to make a first move. Lizzy’d had Doll clocked as a lesbot for years, but the flirty pursuit had been good fun. But that was so last week.

Doll raised an eyebrow, but her mouth remained hidden, unexpressive. “As they say in Russia,” she started, “no.”

“Ouch. Did I…”

Doll frowned. “It is not you. It does not involve you.” Her eyes drifted to the remaining mechanical bits in her hands, which was once a roachbot. “I have plan. Opportunity has presented itself, and my plans… can be hastened.”

Lizzy took a step closer, into the bathroom, and narrowed her eyes at Doll. “I thought your plans were this sleepover.”

When Doll smiled, she showed teeth. “I have many plans.”

“Tell me, then.” Lizzy reached out a hand, ran it along the fine locks of purple synthetic hair, then traced a circle on Doll’s soft cheek, then finally came rest gently beneath her chin.

Doll, too, reached up, placed a hand on Lizzy’s‍ ‍—‍ she felt her core whirr a little faster‍ ‍—‍ and Doll grabbed her hand with a gentle pressure… and pushed Lizzy’s touch away, removing the hand from her face. “As they say in Russia—”

“No,” Lizzy said, not to finish the joke, but denying her. “You owe me an explanation. Fine, go off and do whatever, but tell me why.”

Doll hadn’t let go of Lizzy’s hand, and at that, she brought the other, clasping Lizzy’s hand in between hers, and spoke. “Sputnik 1 was the first spacecraft to launch a human into space. It was race to fly beyond earth, and Soviets won. But with Apollo 11, the humans walked on moon, placing there an American flag.”

Lizzy really hadn’t signed up for one of Doll’s rambles. But Doll was telling her something, at least? Lizzy just didn’t understand what. “So?”

“The Soviets won, but history remembers an American victory. The moon was grander accomplishment, in the end.” Doll let go of Lizzy’s hand. “Doorman has left the bunker, and she is the first worker drone to survive walking within the spire of death. But if I kill the first murder drone, what will history remember?”

Lizzy laughed. With the hand Doll released, she cocked it back and lightly tapped Doll on the shoulder with her fist. “Is that all this is about? Why care about what that freak is doing? You’re better than her. Let her have this. Think about what we have. Status, hotness, and like, currently being alive?”

But as she spoke, Lizzy was watching Doll’s face. She’d gotten good at reading the inexpressive drone, knew the difference between the silence of Doll listening and the silence of Doll closing herself off, disregarding Lizzy’s words as vapid nonsense.

Lizzy sagged. She took a step back, hurt, and said, “I wanted you to be better than Uzi. Make her feel worthless‍ ‍—‍ not play along with her. You’re really going to ignore everything I tried to show you, aren’t you?”

Doll smiled, in a way that hurt Lizzy more than any other expression could have. “Yes. I was hoping to. My plans for the sleepover… I was going to discard it all, move on.”

So that was it, wasn’t it?

Lizzy wasn’t stupid, didn’t delude herself. This was rejection. It should have been rich for a drone to reject Lizzy. Lizzy. It was her who did the rejecting. She’d laugh, at anyone else trying this‍ ‍—‍ but she didn’t want to laugh, she wanted to run up to Doll and grab her and talk over her deafening silence until the russian finally got it.

Lizzy opened her mouth, and felt the comments rising up. She could say, We never liked you, we laughed at you behind your back, your Russian gimmick wasn’t cute it was like, obnoxious. But it wasn’t just that she didn’t mean any of that. (Lizzy was good at faking, anyway.) No, Lizzy knew it’d come off like the insecure flailing it totally was.

Doll took a step forward, toward her, and Lizzy flinched back, legs bending. Not like she was cowering, but… someone else might have cowered, in her place. Doll was intense, and she moved suddenly and—

The other drone stood very close, and placed a hand on Lizzy’s shoulder. Smiling, Doll said, “Как бы это сказать… Settle.”

Lizzy didn’t settle‍ ‍—‍ her eyes still watched hollowly, her tongue still debated putdowns or pleading.

So the hand on Lizzy’s shoulder pushed further down, and Doll stepped closer—

And hugged Lizzy.

“More than one of my plans have shifted, tonight.”

A pink loading icon briefly replaced Lizzy’s screen. And then, she relaxed, and for the first time not out of disappointment. For a moment, she enjoyed the feeling, her chassis nestling into Doll’s, their tube arms wrapping around each other. Doll was so warm. She missed this.

“I have been thinking… about what’s real, what matters, what I’ll become. There are things influencing me, shaping me to become something else. You are one of those things. I wondered what you would do with that power.”

It felt like an accusation, but Lizzy didn’t really understand. Like most Doll rambles. But Lizzy should say something, reassure her the way this hug had been reassuring. But what would be the right thing to say? Lizzy reached for something else she didn’t understand. What had Doll said yesterday? “Trusting trust?” she guessed.

No reaction, for a moment. Did she misunderstand? Then, Doll’s nod, felt more than seen. “I suppose. I didn’t trust you, when I planned the sleepover. I thought I saw your true nature, as scorpion who would betray me. You’ve told me terrible things about drones who seemed to be friends, toyed with relationships like vicious game. I’d be foolish to think I was any different.”

“But you are. The others, bleh, they’re all boring. Not you. We’re besties, Doll. I made friends with you for a reason, when I could have lumped you in with the losers you sat with. You…” You’re also damn hot. “Don’t tell anyone I said this but, yeah, I care about you, Doll.”

Lizzy hugged tighter. Doll didn’t squeeze as much as she stiffly patted her back, but it was very Doll and she forgave that.

The bathroom, with its roach scrap and shattered mirror, couldn’t be seen from here. Doll had stepped past the doorway, and Lizzy had backed up, and they were both in the living room now, held in each others arms. She was glad no one seemed to be awake to see this, to take a photo.

Really though, she wanted more privacy.

“Are you sure you don’t want to…”

But Doll shook her head, and spoke. “There was something Doorman said to me, before she left. ‘At least I’m putting my plans into motion,’ she said. ‘What have you done but play future serial killer in a basement?’”

Lizzy whispered. “Don’t let her get to you, Dolly. You’re cool.”

Doll laughed. Lizzy had only ever heard the sound a few times, a stilted thing, poorly put together. “She was right.”

“No, she wasn’t. Who cares what some microsoft edgelord says? You shouldn’t. Not even worth remembering her name.” Lizzy squeezed again. “You don’t need to rush your plans. Don’t be dumb, don’t go die like her.”

“Angela, Kelsey, Rebecca,” Doll listed. “You will not see them again.”

Lizzy’s eyes narrowed, and then they hollowed. Uzi was right? Did she…

“In initial plan, none of you would be seen again.”

So that’s what she meant…

Six words, and the hug went from a blessed comfort to a threat.

“Serial killing… is kinda cool, really,” Lizzy said slowly.

“Flatter me not,” Doll said, and she ended the hug, and tilted her head at Lizzy. “Go back to bed, Elizabeth. Sleeping without me will be easier now, yes?”

Space grew between them.

“Don’t call me that. You know I hate it.”

But Doll had turned her back. They were in the living room, and she was walking away‍ ‍—‍ toward the basement?

“Where are you going?” Lizzy asked.

Doll was walking away, now past the couch. Was she ignoring her? But no: “Breakfast will soon be ready. You can smell it, can’t you?”

The stink of oil in Doll’s home… it was stronger, wasn’t it?

What was Doll cooking?

“I will need it, for what I have planned today. Alone.”

Lizzy ran‍ ‍—‍ toward Doll, navigating around the couch, and throwing herself into the other cheerleader’s path. Off‍-​balance, Lizzy had to brace herself on the wall. Then she crossed her arms, and glared at Doll.

“I’m not like the others. It’s why you spared me, yeah? You’re a serial killer, and a cannibal, and kinda creepy. And so what? You’re not like Uzi. There’s creepy that stinks, and creepy that serves. And you serve, babe.”

Doll regarded her with that familiar blankness.

“Listen, you have like, this lone avenger thing going on, and it’s so not a good look. You put up with me this long‍ ‍—‍ at least let me walk on the moon with you. C’mon, we can slay together!”

A russian sigh. “Go to bed.”

There seeemed to be a moment where they looked at each other, where Doll weighed and measured Lizzy’s (lack of) compliance with‍ ‍—‍ oh, that wasn’t a request, it was a command. Who did she think–

Doll frowned, then she lifted a hand, and the glowing devil‍-​rune flashed in the air. Lizzy gasped.

Yanked up by impossible force, Lizzy levitated in the air, and every proprioceptive sensor went wild, her core throbbing with flagged errors and garbage inputs. She didn’t scream, but she yelped.

The eldritch glow gripped her with tingling numb force. Doll swiped her arm to side, and Lizzy was tossed aside, not carelessly, but not with particular care.

“Doll,” Lizzy said, and didn’t think too hard about how she sounded, floating there. If Doll ever talks about how desperate I sound, I’m gonna follow in her serial killer footsteps, for sure. Starting with her. “Come back to bed, or take me with you. Don’t—” Don’t leave me. But Lizzy would never say that. Even like this, she had standards.

As Lizzy hung suspended in Doll’s grip, she remembered yesterday, under the gym. Was she just a bug to Doll, or whatever Doll had become? Would she be crushed just as easily?

(It started with roachbots, it ended with murder drones‍ ‍—‍ but Lizzy hadn’t realized what fit perfectly in the space between.)

“Would you be any help to me?”

Lizzy frowned, then got a grip on herself. Doll wasn’t going to be enticed by Lizzy at her weakest, so she had to look strong. So she scoffed, rolled her eyes. “Don’t insult me. Of course I’d help.”

Doll pulled, and Lizzy floated closer to Doll. To think she’d ever not want to be closer. The drone’s blank expression shifted, as her glowing, spinning symbol twitched with telekinesis. Those orange eyes (had they always been orange?) stared into her.

Doll’s expression changed, and Doll had so few of them that Lizzy’d thought she had seen the russian’s whole range. But this… her mouth opened, and Lizzy realized those teeth were sharp. Cannibal. Her eyes‍ ‍—‍ on the visor shined that triangular glyph.

“I don’t need allies, I need bodies. Tell me, Lizzy, would you die for me?” Her tongue lolled, and dripped‍ ‍—‍ not any water or cleaning fluid, but oil.

Empty circles stared into an alien glyph.

“Dolly… you’d kill me?”

…

The glow disappeared. “Go to bed, little lizard.”

(“God, that’s worse,” Lizzy wanted to say, “Don’t call me that either.” But her pathetic mouth was still locked into a silent shock.)

Lizzy fell to the ground. She was out of Doll’s way now, and the other drone continued forward, toward the smell of oil in the basement.

Even when Lizzy’s feet touched the ground, she kept falling, nothing in her willing her to stand up. She slumped next to the wall.

Lizzy had kept her metaphorical hands wrapped around Doll for years, teasing the russian closer, thinking she’d enticed the other girl’s interest. She’d played with her, knowing that whenever she wanted, she could say the word and Doll would be all hers.

And so Lizzy dared, exposed her interest. And this…

Lizzy laughed. She covered her visor, hiding her eye animation‍ ‍—‍ she was laughing, it was so funny.

Yeah, hilarious.

Only… Lizzy felt like she was the joke.

Worst sleepover ever.

Even when she wondered if coming onto Doll so strong would go wrong, she didn’t think it’d go catastrophic.

But… what had Doll said?

“It is not you. It does not involve you.”

Doll had been thinking about what mattered, and that wasn’t Lizzy, was it? Doll was laying grand plans, plans she asked Lizzy to die for. She wouldn’t. And yet. There was more to life than high school drama and crushes, and Doll had left her bestie behind for… something.

For Uzi.

Beneath the spire of corpses, in the crashed landing pod, a hibernating drone sat unattended. A purple planet icon drifted diagonally across the screen. After many iterations of bouncing left, top, right, bottom, the icon collided with both walls of a corner at once.

It paused there.

The screen froze. For a minute, it remained unchanging.

Then it flashed. The icon twitched, rows of pixels coming misaligned, visually tearing apart, chromatically aberrating. The artifacts spread, swept across the entire display until it was all indecipherable error. All told, the glitches came to a climax in seconds.

Then the screen went blank, blinked, and two purple eyes opened.

“Ugh, finally,” Uzi Doorman spoke into the empty landing pod. “That’s what I get for trying diplomacy.”

Wait, empty landing pod? Uzi jolted, then twisted her head left and right to scan the interior. No sign of J. Why was the landing pod empty?

Uzi’s last real memory was J sending her system into hibernation. She expected to wake up dead in robo‍-​heaven, or seeing a sudden heel‍-​face turn’d J primed to apologize. Instead… nobody.

Okay, think. What are the possibilities here?b

In terms of what Uzi cared about most, either J was going to kill her and hadn’t yet (for some reason), or wasn’t and disappeared (for some reason).

If it was just the latter, Uzi was safe. So if it was the former… what could hold her up? Was she waiting for Uzi to wake up? No, J sent the command, she wanted Uzi locked away. Uzi breaking out of it couldn’t be part of the plan.

Probably wasn’t even a consideration. Thanks, mystery corrupt user. Uzi would be helpless‍ ‍—‍ she was always so frickin helpless around J‍ ‍—‍ until the murder drone came back to finish her business.

All told, that seemed like the right deduction to make‍ ‍—‍ J would be coming back. Soon?

Uzi looked around again, this time not for a pigtailed drone, but for‍ ‍—‍ there, beneath one of the chairs, lying on the floor. Her railgun.

Sure, it didn’t amount to much in the end, but it could delay murder drones for crucial seconds, disorient them. In fact, couldn’t Uzi put J through some kind of inverse groundhog day situation? Keep wiping her memory, find the right words to get J on her side?

Remember_me.

Uzi had been manipulated. She followed clues planted to lead her to a conclusion. Uzi didn’t know why, if this was all the work of one user‍ ‍—‍ why go from wanting to prune memories to wanting to show them to Uzi? And then what, get her to sympathize with J?

But deleting inconvenient memories, controlling information to pull drones’ strings… Uzi and J had both been victims, here. Uzi wouldn’t inflict more of that.

If J was going to side with Uzi, it’d be because J knew everything, not just whatever Uzi wanted her to.

Still, Uzi picked up the railgun, and did some gun maintenance stuff. Hm. Nothing obstructing the barrel, no damage to the power source, glowing holo‍-​UI still functioned. Newest of all, she had installed more charge limiters to regulate the power draw, preventing a repeat of her explosive classroom presentation. Those, too, still functioned.

The few limiters there yesterday had saved her life, made the explosion damage repairable rather than lethal, so before setting out, she’d been sure to redouble them.

Everything okay, she slung it over her back. Better to have it and not need it, after all.

So. No shooting J until Uzi had to‍ ‍—‍ what was the plan, then? Sit around and wait for her to return? (chair swivel, “Aha, Miss Serial Designation, I’ve been expecting you…”) Or hide, and vibe check her based on what she does when Uzi’s missing?

But there was nowhere to hide in the landing pod, just one chamber with chairs and busted controls, exposed wires still sparking. Some toolboxes scattered, but all too small to fit her or even offer cover. Maybe if she chanced ducking under the console? Meh.

Or how about, you know, let’s get out of the murder death lair running and don’t look back?

Any world where waiting didn’t kill her, leaving wouldn’t either.

So she opted to climb the ladder now, before she invented another counterfactual to worry about.

Outside, distant voices. So Uzi gave a tiny peek. Eyes scanned for the exit and there, halfway across the spire: a drone kneeling over a pile of scrap, while another stood, staring at the pile, hands poking together.

No, not scrap‍ ‍—‍ the third murder drone. Okay, some serious shit happened while she was out. Even Uzi couldn’t manage that much damage. Yet.

J plugged herself into the damaged drone and shooed the other one away from touching. None of them glanced over to see Uzi watching, not with a drone that desperately needed help in front of them.

The positioning helped a lot‍ ‍—‍ J had walked from the landing pod directly toward the entrance (where the other drones had presumably come from?) and still faced away from the pod. The other drone stood beside her.

Uzi remembered J ripping out an optic and regenerating it right in front of her‍ ‍—‍ disassembly drones had a row of sensors on top of their heads. But with both heads angled down, Uzi had lucked into a blindspot.

It took nerve to tear her eyes off of things that could so easily kill her‍ ‍—‍ something she’d been so violently reminded of, tonight. But Uzi was at more risk standing on top of the pod. She studied the way down, calculating the most stealthy approach.

And then came the thought‍-​rending howl from every drone’s nightmare.

«G̟e̚l̉Ͱ̟v̨̞̭͙ͣ͞a͖̼̼̫ẗ͈́͘ g̠ͫb̢ s̵̡ͩ̉v̼̉̉ͅa̢͛́̔q̡ ḇ͗͂h̽gͰ̧͉.̓» Nails on a chalkboard, the radio‍-​sound like dagger stabbing.

«E̟v̚t̉Ͱ̟ų̞̭͙ͣ͞g͖̼̼̫,͈̈́͘ e̠ͫv̵̢ͫͩt̡ͅủ̼g̢͛́̔.̡͖̱͗͂» Low‍-​pitched and steady, like the grinding of heavy weights. It sounded like a whole different voice.

Animated sweat ran rivers down Uzi’s visor. Frick frick frick, did they find me out already?

Except neither head was pointed at her? The two murder drones faced each other, expressions distance‍-​unreadable.

J smacked the other drone’s hand. «Dͅh̥ͬ̒v̎gͬ v̩̳gͥ͢.͙̻͌» The a sound like a snake shaking a warning‍-​rattle.

«Fͅb̥̒̌̎ͬe̝̩̳͑͢e͙̻̠͌ͣ͞ļ͎ͤ͘͜.̸̙̫̌ͫ» Like a chastised dog.

They’re… talking… to each other? It’s not just for intimidation or signal jamming, then? In retrospect, it made sense; if murder drones could talk, they could talk over shortwave, too.

Shaking her head, the worker focused. Didn’t matter, not right now.

Slow was agonizing. Uzi gently pushed the door to the landing pod open ever so slightly, gently climbing up, balancing herself on one arm and leg as she wiggled and folded herself just so, coaxing the door to drift back close without a slam or even a bang. But even the click felt deafening.

She slowly slid down the landing pod (why the heck was this thing so tall?), taking handholds on the windows and exposed bits of mechanism, all because dropping to the ground would have a too‍-​audible thump.

When Uzi was about ten feet above the ground, she risked the drop, hoping the snow muffled the sound. Having put the pod between her and the drones, Uzi couldn’t see the other drones, so she crept around and poked her head out from behind a spiderleg.

One of the drones was gone, now, leaving only J and the super damaged one. Why? Uzi looked up, glancing around the walls of the spire, but no angels of death watched from on high.

Wait no, was that‍ ‍—‍ but whatever glimmer of motion she saw or didn’t see wasn’t repeated. Was she getting paranoid?

So, probably just Uzi and J, then. Should Uzi approach? Without another drone here, the disassembler wouldn’t need to worry about keeping up appearances…

Deep breath. That was the trap, wasn’t it?

Uzi hated when she read a story and the characters did obviously stupid things for the sake of the plot. The absolute worst was when the characters had almost won, but then they pushed their luck too far, got too greedy, and lost everything. Just quit while you’re ahead, Uzi always wanted to scream at them. She swore she’d never be that stupid.

J was distracted, right now. The other drone was gone. Uzi could escape. Inside a spire made corpses, surrounded by piles of dead bodies, Uzi was wondering if she should approach the monster.

If her life was a story, there was no way the audience wasn’t screaming for her to just run for her life.

Uzi didn’t run. No way J wouldn’t immediately see that hint of obvious motion. No, this was a stealth mission. So Uzi settled into her best crouch, and started creeping around the spire, ducking for cover behind piles of corpses. The loop went: duck, peek out, dash for the next bit of cover, goto duck.

Maybe Uzi was just paranoid about sound‍ ‍—‍ but all these scrap piles seemed especially precarious, now. Drone bits would shift around, as if parts fell when not looking. Sometimes the movement happened far from Uzi (did the vibrations travel?), enough to make her doubt her memory of their positioning.

Her path took her back around to the half‍-​eaten bodies of mess pit. It should have offered her some cover. Except… the mess pit looked a bit emptier than she remembered. Had the murder drones chowed down as soon as they got back? Eh, it didn’t really matter. Still, her eyes lingered on the remaining, oil‍-​dripping chassis…

I could try a bit more of the oil, while I’m here.

Not now, intrusive thoughts.

The mess pit had been easy. The training arena… the empty space would prove harder to sneak through. Should she just run for it? Take a longer loop around? No, she’d just cut straight through‍ ‍—‍ this stealth mission stuff was wearing on her nerves. Has the corpse spire always been this creepy, or is it just dread of getting seen?

Uzi really felt like she was being watched, even though J had never glanced up, and the other drone had never jumped out of hiding. She scanned the spiral ramp again, just to be sure.

The training arena had more empty space‍ ‍—‍ making the severed arm that had moved three feet very conspicuous. Was Uzi going crazy?

On second thought, of course the fricken corpse spire would be haunted.

Uzi peeked out from her latest bit of cover, saw J had transformed her hand into a blade. For a second, a tremor of fear‍ ‍—‍ but her cover hadn’t been blown. She was just doing… robosurgery? Alright. Good luck with that.

Calming her nerves, Uzi played back her recording of the murder drones shortwave scream‍-​howl thing. She combed over that, plus everything J had transmitted during their first encounter. If this was communication, then what were they saying? The urge to parse the weirdly structured signals had threatened to ensnare her since she first heard it‍ ‍—‍ because they were structured!

But how? None of Uzi’s language translators could make sense of it, so it must be enciphered somehow. Could she break the code?

…That might be too much distraction for when she was presently sneaking for her life. It wasn’t like the company’s no‍-​doubt‍-​patented cryptosystem would be as simple as rot13 with some spooky special effects layered over it, right?

Uzi charted her winding path out of the spire, ignoring any further signs of poltergeist activity.

With how close J was to the entrance, a path that avoided her by coincidence also mirrored the route Uzi had taken dodging J’s arrival in their first encounter. Uzi crouch‍-​walked toward the three (more like, two, given that J blew one up) scrap piles that had defined their final showdown.

Nostalgic, she thought. Here lay the little guy, the roachbot that took a bullet for me.

Purple eyes scanned the ground. The bot was still there, looking pretty good despite getting shot. She scanned ahead, searching for the next spot of cover to take. Wait, it looked really good for something that had been hit with a bullet. On second glance—

A roachbot scuttled, LEDs glowing, digging through the snow. As if searching‍ ‍—‍ and sure enough, it had located and palped the remains of the roachbot Uzi brought here.

But if this new roachbot had followed us…

Suddenly, a tiny jerk, and the antennae straightened in surprise. The roachbot looked up, and for a moment, Uzi had the distinct impression the thing was looking at her, recognizing her.

Then a leg rose to brush an antennae, a small bug‍-​salute, and the roachbot glowed. Not the glow of LED light, but an aura of oddly familiar red artifacts.

“Oh no you don’t.” Forgetting stealth for a moment, Uzi lunged to catch the thing, but her pounce proved fruitless‍ ‍—‍ she landed over empty space. Roachbot gone.

First telekinesis, now teleporting?

If Uzi wasn’t trying to be stealthy, she’d have frickin screamed!

Between the mysterious cult, whatever had happened to put a murder drone out of commission just in time to save Uzi, the paranormal activity, and now whatever Doll was planning… It was really starting to feel like Uzi’s life would make a lot more sense if she could crosscut between all the different plotlines involved. Just what the hell is going on? What had she gotten wrapped up in?

Whatever, I can put it all on the conspiracy board later. Right now, survival. Did knowing Doll was spying matter for that?

…What did Doll want? Vengence. Uzi wouldn’t let Doll have it. And not just out of a spite! If the disassemblers were once worker drones, if the humans sent them here without a way back, without a word on the communications relay, preloaded with mysterious memory‍-​scrubbing malware? It was clear who the real bad guy was.

If Uzi explained what she’d seen… J didn’t even have to agree with her about the anti‍-​human, anti‍-​corporate stuff. Doll could be their common enemy. No one’s going to bully me if I have a murder drone on my side, haha!

Another peek‍ ‍—‍ J had finished whatever robo‍-​surgery she needed the armblade for. Gathering her courage, Uzi stepped out from her cover, and J didn’t react. Sending commands over the wire?

Uzi glanced at J, glanced at the exit. J, the exit.

The team‍-​up was tempting, but…

After Doll went and‍ ‍—‍ don’t say dumped you, don’t call it a break up, we were just friends, not even friends, not if she could cut me off so easily‍ ‍— After whatever happened the summer break before high school, Uzi had embarrassed herself by not taking a hint.

Uzi couldn’t modify her neutral network yet, wasn’t certified to run mndbm, so at night she would still lie awake remembering all the pleading in the halls, every cringeworthy after school attempt to change Doll’s mind, each time Uzi asked to just know why‍ ‍—‍ as if it went deeper than just vapid, catty high school crap.

In short, Uzi failed to just let it go.

It was weird that Uzi kept remembering Doll when thinking about J. But if she’d learned anything, desperation went unrequited, reaching out just got slapped down with a smug laugh, wanting in that way just invited pain.

Wait, ‘wanting in that way?’ In what way?

Not. Even. In. Strikethrough!

It was simple. She didn’t need to make this so complicated.

Don’t hold the idiot ball, Uzi.

While J was distracted with debugging, Uzi ran for the archway lined with severed heads, visor cracked except for the keystone. Circuitry intact, empty MOTD still shining.

Uzi looked behind her, feeling utterly exposed, but still J remained engrossed.

Was Uzi really going to make it away safe?

The closer she got to the archway, the surer Uzi felt her luck would run out. She dove for the exit, rolled across the ground, and obscured herself on the other side of the archway.

She… had done it? She was out? No catch? “Huh.”

Then she heard the scrape of metal shifting high above.

Oh.

The other murder drone!

So this was where they went. Instantly, Uzi dashed back toward the corpse spire, even as a shadow in the moonlight raced across the ground. Inside, she looked left, right, but with no other options, hid behind the inner archway.

A crash. Footsteps approaching.

Frick. What now? Uzi looked up, and started climbing. In that moment, she was thankful for J’s engineering; the archway of robo‍-​skulls held her weight, and Uzi hung over the archway.

Please don’t look at what’s above you. I’m just uh, another corpse up here, hehe.

Was there a way to put a fake Fatal Error on her screen?

“V? J?” (Hm, that would make this… N?) “I could have sworn I heard something.”

N’s footsteps came closer, and he peeked into the corpse spire. His eyes immediately found J.

“Shoot, J’s still busy.” He made a thoughtful sound. “Must have been the wind! Oh well, back to guard duty.”

N turned around. Seconds later, the crack of a murder drone takeoff.

Uzi dropped to the ground, and rubbed bits of oil off herself. Right so… escaping is a no‍-​go, then. Let’s try diplomacy. Because that went great last time.

Uzi treaded slowly. She still felt J’s blades at her throat, that lethal smirk staring her down. With each step, she revised her odds, back and forth. Step, I’m going to die. Step, I’ve got this.

J has a heart, Uzi just had to reach out.

The captain wouldn’t let anyting sway her company loyalty.

But there were only so many steps between the archway and J. (34, she counted). Uzi paused by J. Then she took one more step so instead of dread, she was trembling with hope.

Standing over J, she opened her mouth—

Then J stood up. The damaged drone‍ ‍—‍ V‍ ‍—‍ her cracked visor flashed.

"Dramatic interrupt," buzzed a badly damaged vocalsynth. "Maniacal laugh. Snarl."

The body rose up as if tugged by unseen wires‍ ‍—‍ certainly the busted hydraulics were nonfunctional and with‍ ‍—‍ are those guts? actual bloody guts?‍ ‍—‍ spilling wetly out of their chassis, no drone in this state should be able to move.

"Rhetorical question. Miss me?"

Before J had even noticed Uzi standing there, a loading animation replaced her eyes. Uzi had no time to feel schadenfraude at J getting the hibernation treatment.

Uzi yanked the serial debugging cable out of V, freeing it to hang from J’s neck. Still unresponsive. “C’mon, J.” Uzi smacked the disassembler on the head. The percussive maintenence rebooted J. After nailbiting milliseconds, yellow eyes widened, then narrowed.

“Uzi? How did you—”

“Doesn’t matter, your teammate knocked you out, and‍ ‍—‍ is she supposed to be able to do thaaat,” Uzi rushed out, confidence evaporating halfway through.

Because even as she spoke, the puppet strings seemed keep pulling at V‍ ‍—‍ pulling her apart. Even at full height, limbs hanging limply at her side, the head kept rising, below it, a spine was slithering out of her chassis, lined with spikes that begin to move like centipede legs. Hunting centipedes liked to curl those legs around their prey.

“V,” J said, switching her hands for assault rifles, “I’m not giving you another extension. My trust is in the red. Start explaining now, or else.”

"Oh, V's not here. We're trying to repair that host, as per our directive."

J lowered her guns. She nodded, slowly. “V’s in a pretty dire state. I did what I could—”

"It was insufficient. Emphasis. You are insufficient. Lucky for you, we are here to collect material."

Uzi backed up slowly. “Well, you’re in a spire full of corpses. All the material you could want, all around you.”

"Indulgent laughter. Very funny. You are material. Fresh and functional. You'll do. Emphasis. Just fine."

A crab‍-​claw clicked open behind Uzi. It grabbed her, even as another sudden claw snapped out to snatch her legs. Couldn’t stand, couldn’t run. The first claw squeezed tight around her torso.

“Put her down,” J growled.

Uzi brightened. Had she really…?

"Feigned confusion. Repeat that, dear J."

J swapped her guns for something Uzi didn’t recognize. “I said put her down, V. Or whatever you are. That’s an order.”

It was dark in the spire, but the darkness constricted tighter asudden, the darkness of noise and failing circuits. A flash, and then an array of tendrils and raptorials and claws and cameras adorned what wasn’t V, the rays of a terrible thing that wasn’t a sun. The extrusions weren’t there, and then they were, and they were seeking.

In that moment, Uzi understood what was haunting the spire.

We are the Solver of the Absolute Fabric.
The void.
The exponential end.

Each pompous noun was punctuated by pincers squeezing Uzi tighter. Spikes lined them. Oil slicked them. "And you, Serial Designation J, do not give us orders."

Even as the thing was synthesizing that rebuttal, the barrel of J’s new weapon began glowing. A frickin laser fired out the end, spinning in a tight, controlled circle. A bright line of searing heat cut Uzi down from the claws binding her.

Her other hand, still a rifle, sprayed lead at V’s puppeted form, but the thing dodged whip‍-​quick out of the way. Uzi had seen murder drone’s speed up close, but there was something off about this movement. The angles, the acceleration. No time to analyze, though.

Sword arms now, J leapt, flipping through the air, and her spread wings cut at the claws coming for Uzi. She landed, wing‍-​blades stabbing down on either side of Uzi, blocking any other tendrils from grabbing her.

"Scoff. Saving a worker drone, J? Have you forgotten your orders? Locate. Shutdown. Disassemble. Clear the sector of all targets and construct a spire with the materials recovered." Claws grab for J’s wings, prying them away from Uzi. "Identification. This is a worker drone."

“Have you forgotten your orders, V? I’m the captain here, and that supercedes everything. I say jump, you jump, then you worry about disassembly.” (Uzi stared up at J, those amber eyes radiant slits‍ ‍—‍ she looked so gloriously pissed.) “There’s a line between personality and insubordination, and you’ve crossed it. Even your sadistic roleplay was better than this disassociative graduosity.”

With a great heave, J flapped her wings, pushing back the encroaching tendrils.

By now, Uzi’s had time to climb to her feet. Arms shook, but she unstrapped her railgun first thing. Flipped on the power, green glow. “Thanks, J. I didn’t think you’d come around so soon.”

“Priorities. You are a worker drone, after all.” J grinned, flashing teeth at Uzi. “But I’m going to kill you.”

“Oh. Um, we can work on that.”

No time for awkwardness, this was a boss battle!

Uzi rushed forward, taking aim at V’s body. Trigger pulled, barrel glowing with electromagnetic amplification‍ ‍—‍ but the Solver dodged with that incorrect acceleration. ("Miss me~" it chimed.) The blast hit the far corpse wall, dislodging a few bodies.

“Give me that thing if you aren’t going to aim it.” J reached out for the gun, but Uzi pulled back.

“Use your own! You have plenty. It needs to recharge anyway. Can you line me up a shot, for when it does?”

“I’m not your assistant.”

“I’m all you’ve got. Can you just play along, while we have a shared enemy and all?”

J frowned. “No, you aren’t all I’ve got. I have a teammate. Where’s N?”

Probably thought the gunshots were more wind.

"We told big brother N you were testing V's combat readiness now that you have fixed her. He doesn't need to see more of this."

And with their luck, a shortwave signal couldn’t make it outside, could it?

If Uzi survived to put in more work on her gun, she needed to fix this cooldown. She was helpless. Uzi was sick of feeling helpless. She dodged more pincers and tendrils, and followed after J, but J could fly, and honestly, staying too close to a murder drone mid‍-​combat was a terrible idea. Her other ideas were worse, though.

Stuck in the corpse spire, gun still long minutes away from another shot, their only ally mislead into thinking this was a training drill, and despite J severing limb after limb, pouring bullets into this great mass, the tide refused to change.

V’s jaw unhinged, and the Solver of the Absolute Fabric dragged corpses into a deconstructed maw, tearing apart and integrating the matter. It had the advantage of multitasking‍ ‍—‍ J couldn’t pause to restock on oil.

“V was damaged, right?” Uzi said, after J gets knocked back by another massive crab‍-​claw swing. “How is she overpowering you? What the hell is this… AbsoluteSolver thing?” Uzi rushed to J’s side, offering a hand to lift her up, but J stood on her own.

“I’ve been thinking about it. Disassembly drones have two modes of regeneration‍ ‍—‍ passive, nanites restoring a locally cached state, and active, with instructions from the OS.”

“But I blew up your head,” Uzi said. Not a counterargument, but completing the other drone’s line of thought. She’d figured it out. “No simple cache could recover your mind, and there was no OS remaining to dispatch the instructions. There has to be third mode‍ ‍—‍ an autorun program of last resort. Within the core itself!”

“Well‍-​reasoned, for a barely sentient toaster.”

While Uzi had paused to think aloud, another claw poised to bite her arm. J laser‍-​cut it, then grabbed Uzi as she took off. This region was crawling with Solver‍-​tentacles now, so J took off. Like the last time J carried Uzi, her core skipped, feeling light and dizzy.

“It doesn’t add up, though. It’s smarter than it needs to be‍ ‍—‍ what repair program needs to banter?”

“Exactly.” J dropped Uzi to the ground. “There’s a difference between what’s effective, and what’s personal. There’s plenty of material here to collect‍ ‍—‍ it’s letting feelings get in the way of its plan. Unless this is its plan.” J turned around, training guns on pursuing tendrils. “What do you want?”

A procession of eldritch robo‍-​limbs heralded the Solver’s advance. V’s head, now detached totally, undulated forth atop the centipede‍-​spine.

Her screen showed nothing‍ ‍—‍ only camera‍-​heads attached to stray tendrils had anything resembling expression. Sickly yellow light shined from their tips. Around it, optical diaphragm narrowed, blocking the light, imitating eyelids.

"Do not ask questions you will not remember the answer to," it said, voice all robotic artifice.

Uzi stabbed her gun forward, clicked the trigger. (As if sensing the bluff, the Solver doesn’t react.) “And who’s fault is that?”

"Your inadequate programming. It hurts our feelings you cannot appreciate the beauty of the grand design quite yet."

Uzi and J both mirrored expressions at that‍ ‍—‍ each with an unimpressed, long‍-​suffering stare‍ ‍—‍ but before they could reply, a distant shout interrupted them.

“Uzi!”

The worker turned, eyes hollowing before she even saw the speaker‍ ‍—‍ she recognized the voice.

Khan Doorman, garbed in a spotless green WDF uniform, wielding a standard issue worker drone pickax. He swung the tool in a arc, and the Solver tendrils flinched out of the way. The determined fury on his face lightened when got a clear look at Uzi.

“What are you doing here?” Father and daughter spoke the words at the same time.

“Um,” Uzi started. “Investigating the exterior hydraulics got out of hand?”

But Khan’s eyes darted to the side, narrowing to slits at her ally. “A murder drone! Uzi, get away from that thing!”

Uzi crossed her arms, stepping closer to the drone armed to defend her. “Priorities, dad.” She was not looking forward to explaining that the murder drone had just been wired up to her system‍ ‍—‍ hopefully he doesn’t notice the debugging cable was still hanging from her neck. “J’s keeping me alive. Did you seriously just bring a pickax?”

A bright white expression turned sheepish. “I… had to improvise?”

“How did you even know where to find me? Did Doll tell you—”

Motion behind her father. No need to finish the question, now. Purple hair, flat expression, spotless red and yellow cheer uniform. She finger‍-​waved, and said, “Да. I was concerned about you.”

“What… what’s going on?” But it added up, didn’t it? She didn’t trust Doll not to rat her out, and she’d just seen the roachbot spying on her.

Talking wasn’t a free action, but you’d be forgiven for thinking that. The Solver and its exoskeletal appendages had stopped attacking, skulking at the fringe throughout this reunion.

Lulling them into a false sense of security‍ ‍—‍ twin crab‍-​claws larger than a drone chassis reared up behind both arrivals.

“Dad! Doll! Look out behind you!”

But neither moved, and the spined pincers grasped them both, oil leaking down out without sound or splash.

"Enough. Time to go into my mouth now. Or else. Unspoken threat."

The hostages made Uzi waver‍ ‍—‍ but why would it let any of them make it out of here? “Not a chance.” Uzi smacked her railgun. Cooldown already!

"Fair, but poor choice. Now we will have to do something shocking." The pincers gripped tighter on the two workers. "Goodbye-"

“Fraud,” J growled.

That jerked Uzi’s eyes away from the sight. “Huh?”

“There’s no heat signature. It’s not real. Don’t let it trick you.”

“You’re right.” Uzi took a deep breath, and nodded. “Yeah, it doesn’t make sense anyway! Since when did Doll give a crap about me? This is bad fanfiction!”

How could they have gotten so close without the Solver attacking? How could they have conveniently popped up in the middle of everything? It didn’t survive a moment’s scrutiny.

"Spoilsport. Frustrated sigh." The two ‘drones’ dissolved into mote of light and dust suspended in the air. A conic beam shined from the camera‍-​head tendrils.

Hologram projectors? The beams of light swept across the debris‍-​strewn snow now, light shifting like a sea of voxel noise. A new image was taking shape.

"Reality equals illusion. And illusion equals reality. How else can dreams come true?"

The new hologram could at last be parsed: a drone in a hospital gown, holding an untrained neural network, Doll’s three‍-​pronged symbol in her eyes. Purple hair, purple eyes, and the child had inherited the color and the shape.

“Is that… m‍-​mom?”

But there was another figure beside her. A human with round eyes, a small nose, and freckles. Black hair fell in twin tails, and her hand held a wrench.

J breathed a near inaudible whisper. “Tessa?”

"It hurts us that you can't remember us. Why we chose this path." Those purple eyes stared at Uzi above a mouth sharp with teeth. "Assimilate and then you will understand."

“Do you think all you need is some smoke and mirror show? You’re just lying again! Bite me!”

The goth glanced beside her. The captain meet her eye with a tentative expression. Hearing her words, hollow amber eyes filled. They shared a nod.

Uzi continued, “You’re the thing those cultists were worshiping, aren’t you? The source of Doll’s power?”

"Giggle. We have many cute puppets."

J said, “Just answer, V.”

"Better idea. Do not ask questions at all. Easier to assimilate than explain."

“As expected,” Uzi said, and turned to tall drone beside her. “It just wants to control you, J. This is the thing that’s been erasing your memories!”

“Maybe it should,” J said, lowering her guns. “The company created us. If you’re right, if they installed this autorun program to keep us safe…”

“The company didn’t create you, J, just your body. Tessa saved you, and she didn’t want to control drones.”

"That is enough."

The darkness contricted tight again. In the abyss of indecipherable static, monsters lurked. Tendrils reared up once more like hunting snakes, and projector‍-​heads burned now with a furious glow.

Now for the first time, the Solver turned the full attention of those myriad limbs on Uzi. And she couldn’t endure that.

Her railgun still hadn’t recharged. She was just a worker drone, and her maybe‍-​ally still struggled to shake off her programming.

Uzi leveled an unsure glance at J, saw the debugging cable still plugged in. After so much acrobatics, it had looped itself around her neck. In the midst of battle, J had crouched, lowering herself to about Uzi’s height.

And Uzi smirked.

There was one thing she could try, but she’d have to get really close. Uzi pressed the hatch near her core, exposing her own data ports.

C’mon, J.

As Uzi ran toward the drone that once tried to kill her, she mentally composed the series of commands was going to execute, imagined the long series of things that’d need to go right for this to work.

Here goes nothing.

J and Uzi did not kiss.

Still processing everything the toaster had said, J did not have a decisive reaction. The V‍-​Solver‍-​Thing reared up to attack, and J tensed as if to attack (or, inexplicably, defend), while at the same time, restraining herself still, as if to stand by and let the company’s program enact its ‘grand design.’

J couldn’t let V’s utter disregard of command stand, but if this truly was not V… did the Solver of the Absolute Fabric, the void, the exponential end, rank above her in the org chart?

She needed time to think, time to lay this all down in clean bullet points‍ ‍—‍ this was a black swan, plain and simple, disrupting everything. How much of her needed to pivot? Thinking thoughts like this, there’s no threads left to react to a purple thing charging at her.

She startled when hands reach for her neck. Did this toaster think you could choke robots? But that’s not what she was grabbing for‍ ‍—‍ J stiffened when she felt the connection to her system.

But it was hard to focus on that. This connection, one she didn’t initiate, felt different, not like plugging into V, not even like plugging into Uzi earlier. The cable had looped around her neck several times. Without time to untwist it, Uzi had to get close to make the connection.

Their visors clinked together. So near, J could feel the warmth of Uzi.

“Uzi, what?” She had nothing more specific than that. When J breathed the words, she could feel the exhaust bounce off of synthetic flesh.

J and Uzi did not kiss, but only by millimeters.

Purple light shined in J’s optics‍ ‍—‍ and more of it than usual, because she was blushing hard.

“J, can’t we work together?”

Uzi made the connection, and lowered her arms. And then, her arms reached out.

J and Uzi did not kiss, but Uzi gave her a hug.

Pressure that felt familiar, gentle circles that felt familiar, comfort that felt familiar.

But Uzi’s attention wasn’t on that, not all of it, and nor was all of J’s. This wasn’t a moment of sentimentality but action, a scheme.

Uzi ran commands on J’s system, fast, faster than her blinkered state could think to interrupt. She was transferring data, connecting memories‍ ‍—‍ she was manipulating J.

J transformed a hand. “Are you trying to hack me?”

Yanking the cord out of herself, J pushed Uzi back. A swipe of three claws that tore open Uzi’s jacket. The cord spiraled around her neck unspooled as Uzi fell.

Snow crunched from the worker’s impact, and solid purple eyes looked up at her, unsure and searching, but not shaken, not betrayed‍ ‍—‍ as if she wouldn’t believe that J would refuse her, was refusing her.

“J, I’ve got a plan.”

J considered it.

“Do you expect me to be a pawn in your little rebellion? I’m not your assistant. I’m not your ally. I’m your predator, and I have a purpose.”

Claws transformed to gun, and J fired in Uzi’s direction. Uzi synthesized a scream, and J turned away her gaze.

This emotional drama had an audience, after all.

"Good work, my little puppet. We knew you would come around."

“Uzi made the mistake of thinking sharing enemies was enough to win my cooperation. Will you make the same mistake?” J opened her mouth wide, fang parting. “You wanted to eat Uzi? But I don’t like competition.”

"Eyeroll. Must your insufficiency be exhaustively demonstrated?"

“You misunderstand me.” J switched her guns for hands, clapped them together, and leaned forward. “Do you know how JCJenson grew to become the premier megacorporation, leader of a dozen industries? It didn’t beat the competition, it bought them. What is your price, Solver of the Absolute Fabric?”

A tapestry of slithering tendrils quested further, encircling J, a slowly closing perimeter. Her poker face didn’t falter.

"Smug laughter. What finite sum could constrain an exponential asymptote? Entire star systems are rounding errors in our calculus. We have no price."

J’s grin widened. “But I do. What will it be?” J waited, then turned toward the archway. One step forward. Stepping over the black tentacles. “You didn’t want N to see this, did you? Will you stop me from flying out and telling him all about Tessa? Or will you buy my silence?”

Behind her, a centipede charged forward. V’s head, sticky oil flakes dried around her jaw, blank of all expression, was almost enough to make J flinch.

"Snarl. All of this for a drone you already killed? This does not compute."

“We’re negotiating. I want to eat Uzi, but that’s my starting offer. I want your submission. At the very least, I want an explanation. Well? What’s your counteroffer?”

"We do not negotiate with puppets. Stand down, and we may pershap let you keep a single memory of Uzi."

For one frame, J’s reacted to the threat. Then she shook her head. Don’t break stride now, J.

“You know,” she started, “this really isn’t the place to hold this sort of meeting.” Metal wings glittered in the dark. “I have an office for just this sort of thing.”

Nearby drone bits tumbled away from J’s takeoff. Up J flew.

She was outmatched, outnumbered by a single foe. Bullets and blades and dozens of utility presets were useless against the Solver and its excess of limbs‍ ‍—‍ but as those tendrils crawled and slithered over the snow and scrap, that was all they did.

J flew, and the best the Solver could do was reach for her. She stayed low to the ground, enough that she needed to dodge and weave around rising pincers‍ ‍—‍ but so many near misses meant the Solver could hope.

She didn’t fly toward the entrance, though that might’ve made a better threat. Her office lay at the top of the spiral ramp running along the walls. Announced by a JCJenson placard she’d requisitioned from a vacant headquarters.

A raptorial closed around her peg leg, teeth biting into the metal, sending J into a tailspin‍ ‍—‍ but J cut off her own leg and regenerated it in a second, flying higher.

Unable to fly further on tanking oil reserves, J landed on the ramp, and started running up, Solver right behind her.

"Inevitable pursuit. You cannot escape the end, J."

J didn’t need escape, just needed time. But did she have a backup plan, if this didn’t work out? Was there any other option than this attempt to bend principle at the slimmest oppurtunity?

Oh! The virus spike and the bootdisk‍ ‍—‍ J still had them! If the Solver was no more than a program, could she wipe it like other parts of the OS?

J might finally have to make good on her threat to V… but that was a last resort.

Near the top of the ramp, the persistent clangor of those innumerable metal limbs dogging her at once fell silent. In the abrupt quiet, there came a gentle voice and footsteps.

“That’s enough, Cyn. Let me talk to her.” A familiar voice, but the tone was foreign. Demure, not irreverent.

J spun around to train her optics on the approaching figure. Barely waist high‍ ‍—‍ short like worker drone, dressed in a maid outfit. But that short hair and those yellow eyes was all her recognition circuits needed.

“V? Why do you look like that?”

“She would say something cutesy‍-​clever like, ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny.”‍ ‍—‍ the sudden change of voice had J flinching‍ ‍—‍ “but I don’t need to impress you. It’s part of the process, that’s all. I’ll be back to normal soon.”

J backed up. Glancing around, wondering which of the flickering shadows hid tentacles. “So this… episode of yours is over now?”

“Heh. Something like that.” V smiled at her, eyes closed. Then she giggled. Eyes open, staring up at J. “Honestly though. Isn’t this more fitting? You always looked down on me.”

“You’re my subordinate.”

“We’re a team, J. No, we were like sisters. But it’s always insubordination this, disobediance that. Would it kill you to give me a little respect? That’s all I wanted.” The maid still stalked forward, strides fast. Shadows flickering with each step.

J backed up faster to keep distance. “And yet you ignore my orders. You witheld mission critical info. You attacked me, or lost control to this autorun program.”

V cringed, eyes downcast. “Yeah. I guess I did mess it all up.” She swallowed, then she met eye again. “Let’s stop fighting, J. Forget all this. Sound good?”

Amber eyes narrowed. Forget? “I can’t help but think you mean that literally.”

“Well. You’re more productive when you aren’t distracted by things like this. Isn’t that what you care about?” V tilted her head. It tilted too far, as if not fully repaired yet, and she had to catch it with a hand.

“I’m your captain. Knowing the threats, knowing the mission, is my job.”

“You ever wonder if that’s just what they wanted you to think?” V shook her head. “J… Don’t try so hard to be the warden’s favorite prisoner. Believe me, it’s not worth it. And, secret from me to you? She always hated you the most.”

V extended her hand, still smiling. Shadows flickered like dark fires.

J stared, considered it. Why wasn’t the Solver attacking now? Why would V seek compromise? Why?

Still smiling. Repeating herself: “Stop fighting. Forget it all. Things’ll go back to how they were. Won’t that be such a relief?”

A relief‍ ‍—‍ to go back to sitting a silent relay, misunderstood by both her teammates. To kill without knowing why, without striving for more.

And yet, what else could she expect, once she had finally killed Uzi?

If the company thought she was better off ignorant—

If the company thought V deserved to know the truth—

«Rirelguvat’f frg, pncgnva. Jr’ir tbg guvf!» A signal broadcasted through an encrypted channel, faint from distance. J set one of her background threads to making sense of it.

“This is a trap,” J’s main thread told the Solver. “Why would V ever stop fighting?” J transformed her gauntlets. She held twin swords at the ready.

The image of V as a maid sagged, sighing out, and those yellow eyes glitched. “Correct. We were just fucking with you. You're so annoying. You really piss me off.” The hologram dissolves into V’s fractured faceplace mounted on an annelidian structure.

Shadows flickered one last time, a hundred tendrils blinked into space, surrounded J. But she’d expected it, her swords were ready to slash. The mass was thinnest over the ramp, with nothing to support them, and J burst into motion.

Her background thread had decrypted the signal‍ ‍—‍ just in time for another to arrive.

Everything’s set, J. We’ve got this!

«Now, J!»

With a two finger salute, J kicked off the wall of the spire and dived off the ramp.

"Quote. This is a trap. Predictable, in retrospect."

“Never count kills until you see the body.”

By attempting to surround J, all of the Solver’s mass had been concentrated there, and now the burgeoning mass pursued the captain as she fell. Below, Uzi looked ragged: clothing torn, oil soaked, hair a mess. But her railgun glowed in her hands.

“Out of the way, J!”

J could fly, but the Solver couldn’t‍ ‍—‍ meaning J had lined up the perfect shot.

"Not so fast."

Seeking claws closed around J and pulled her close, nestling the disassembly drone next to the deconstructed maw that once was V’s head.

A perfect shot. For a moment, J doubted Uzi’s plan, wondered if she’d be betrayed. Here, now, the worker could take out two disassembly drones with the pull of one trigger. For the second night in a row, J was at a worker drone’s mercy.

Uzi didn’t pull the trigger.

"Touching," the Solver synthesized as its mass settled on the ground. Uzi staggered back, and three projector heads regard her with judgmental angles. "It will never work. This type error of a relationship. Even if you were not disassembler and worker, the two of you have nothing in common. You have nothing. So you reach out desperately in this tenuous unity. As if it will not end in treachery. It is in your nature. It is in. Emphasis. Our nature."

J leapt to Uzi’s side, offered a hand, and pulled the drone to her feet. J would kill her soon; the company’s orders left no ambiguity about that. But… J remembered. Uzi, the first drone to compliment her work, to understand her work. The drone who could finish her lines of deduction, who had come up with this plan in the heat of the moment. And there was still more to come.

J turned to regard the Solver. She crossed her arms. “Uzi’s proved to be a valuable resource. I’d be a fool not to exploit that. It’s hard, being the sole proprietor. I think… I’m tired of doing this alone.”

"Alone. You are not alone. You were never alone. N. V. You were given a team. Your communication skills were simply insufficient to form a connection. Why would she be any different. A drone you just met."

“Maybe… you’re right.” J put all her doubt in her voice.

“J,” Uzi interrupted, forced confidence in her voice. “The railgun’s gonna to fire. Only seconds left.”

J met Uzi’s eyes, then glanced at the Solver. J reached out toward Uzi. “Give me the gun. I want to take the shot.”

It wasn’t a question, J grabbed the railgun by the barrel, but Uzi didn’t resist.

And then J presented the gun to the Solver. She had made her decision.

“I give up. I… think I want to see V again. You win. End this. It’s fitting, isn’t it? With her own weapon?”

Pincers reach for the gun.

“J? You can still—”

"Maniacal laughter. Point. Shoot." The tip of a claw could just barely fit around the trigger to pull it.

Then J dived into the path of the gun, wings outstretched. She grabbed Uzi, and flew.

All according to plan.

Here was what really happened, after J and Uzi didn’t kiss.

Uzi had quickly composed the hasty outline of a plan, and sent the .txt file over the debugging cable.

1. First, J would pretend to be affronted at Uzi’s intrusion. (It wouldn’t be entirely feigned; Uzi counted on that.)
2. Then J would lash out, fire shots that narrowly missed Uzi’s head. On the ground amongst the debris, this would be indistinguishable to an onlooker focused on the other threat. Reasonable assumption: Uzi was dead. Out of commission, at the very least.
3. Then, J would stall for time and lure the Solver away from Uzi. Once distracted, Uzi could get started on her part of the plan.
4. Remember, Uzi came here to find a new JCJenson‍-​brand power core for her railgun, since the last one (literally) blew up in her face. The old one was still here. So while the Solver chased J across the spire, Uzi would locate it, and swap them.
5. All the rest was a bluff. Once one layer of deception‍ ‍—‍ Uzi’s survival‍ ‍—‍ were peeled back, no one would look for a second. Only Uzi even knew about the second power core.
6. The old core had blown up in her face, and only the charge limiters had prevented it from being lethal‍ ‍—‍ so, in those critical moments, Uzi had removed every single one.

Behind them, rampant electromagnetism was free to cascade and erupt and bathe the Solver in scintillating annihilation, like a glorious sun. Tendrils seared. Crab‍-​claws cooked. Projector eyes blinded. A synthizer died with a hissing whine.

Neither Uzi nor J looked back at the conflagration behind them.

J’s stilleto‍-​pegs skipped to a stop outside the blast radius.

“Hell yeah! We kick ass!”

“Highly effective performance, if I do say so myself.”

Purple eyes turn to meet amber, and the two became suddenly aware of how close they were. J still carried Uzi, arms around her waist, and Uzi still held on tight, arms around her shoulder. Blush. Look away.

“So uh,” Uzi started, “are you still going to kill me?”

“I should,” J started, “but—”

J’s decision was interrupted by distant but distict narration. Agonizingly familiar.

"Sneaky, sneaky, sneaking away."

A tiny metal‍-​meat blob, a core swaddled in flesh, skittered off, acrobatic and honestly not at all sneaky. J dropped Uzi unceremoniously, and air‍-​dashed.

Nimble and slippery, but special disassembly functions made J quicker. She grabbed the pink flesh, gripping it tight enough to bleed.

"Struggle, struggle."

As J held it, she felt a familiar thump, thump.

“This is V’s core.”

“Well?” Uzi said, sprinting after her. “What are you waiting for? Kill it before it regenerates and we have to deal with a phase two!”

“We have the upper hand. But V is my teammate. She’s my responsibility, and if this thing would just follow its directive, I can see her again.” J tightened her grip till it synthesized a sharp ouch. “After all, little Fabric monster, we took you down with a faulty power core. JCJenson engineering is not to be trifled with. Do you want to see what Uzi can do with one that works?”

J had to admit, she kind of did.

"U-U-Understood."

V was a charred ruin. Gruesome stuff, but J had regenerated her whole head before. She had to assume this Solver program could work miracles. Otherwise…

She had to assume.

J knelt, and nestled the Solver core into the shards of V’s torso. She called out, “Uzi, fetch the dregs from the messpit.”

The worker drone frowned, and with a twitch of her head, glanced at J. Staring momentarily, as if battling an urge to refuse or snark, but her final output was a nod. “Alright.”

J watched Uzi comply with a satisfied smirk.

A stock could be bought and sold. Naïvely, the value of a stock was simply what you could sell it for‍ ‍—‍ but simply hold onto it, and you’d get paid dividends. There was value in killing Uzi. But perhaps value in keeping her around, also.

Then J caught herself. She was staring at Uzi, because she preferred looking at her to looking at her failure. V, or what was left of her.

The Solver acted. Cracks sealing, dry splatters of red twitching to life with inexplicable metaplasia, and black droplets rolling across the ground as if magnetized. J did what she could to help, plucking up exploded bits of V and long‍-​disassembled parts. She tried aligning broken edges, placing the parts in the right place, but the Solver could sort it out better than her, and in the end it was more effective to just pile the matter up for collection.

“Here.” Uzi returned with a dripping, armless drone corpse flopped on her back, and two heads clutched in her arms. Turning around, she then dumped the body on the regenerating pile of scrap. It slurped up all the oil.

J plucked one of the heads from Uzi’s grasp. Bottom up, she sucked the neck like a straw, and crushed the last drops out.

She needed that, after that battle. Barely 5.6L in reserve. Hunter’s fever burned in her chest. “You should quench yourself, Uzi. I can see your heat. You could use the cooling.”

“I’m not, I shouldn’t—”

“You seemed to enjoy it, earlier. Were you faking that, too?”

“I just don’t want to be some kind of robo‍-​cannibal.”

J rolled her eyes. “Oh, it’s too late to worry about moral hazard. Don’t forget you’re literally feeding your kind to the drones sent to kill you. And this is the line you want to draw?”

“That’s different. This is to save someone, not just indulge.”

“Since you’re so good at following orders, consider this another one. Lower your core temperature to a normal operating range. Do some lateral thinking, or just drink the oil. Up to you.”

Uzi looked down to the head still in her hand. “Why do you care? What, are you just trying to fatten me up before you eat me?”

“I do find myself wondering how you taste.” J smirked, looking down at the smaller drone. “So yes, try not to damage the goods before I get a chance to sample them.”

Uzi glared up at her, anger marks over both eyes, fists balled up and arms bent. Comical fury.

“What? No ‘bite me’?”

“It’s supposed to be a metaphor! You’d actually do it!”

J laughed. Uzi groaned her frustration, and lifted the worker drone’s head to her lips just to shut the captain up. Eyes animated closed, then her other hand came up to hold onto it.

Her lips wrapped around the neck, and J’s mind wandered, despite herself. So long as she remained invested, she wouldn’t eat Uzi. Yet. But weren’t there other things she could do with her mouth?

They hadn’t kissed, but J remembered the closeness, closer than any drone had ever been. She extrapolated the hypothetical of being even closer.

Her teammates were a fool and a brat, and Uzi had been the best conversation she’d had in a while. She felt… no cached label for this feeling. She hadn’t felt it in a long time, not since landing on Copper‍-​9. Never, then. (But who was that human in the Solver’s hologram?)

Uzi’s eyes had opened again, even as she still drunk, and J had to speak so she wasn’t just leering.

“Refreshing, isn’t it?” J stepped closer, and bent down to her height. “Do you wonder what it tastes like fresh?” she asked as Uzi finished.

Uzi threw a hand to smack against J’s chest, shoving the bigger drone back. “Stop trying to corrupt me!” (Undercut, somewhat, by Uzi licking oil off her lips immediately after.)

“Watch it,” J was hissing, and pointed her tail. “I sting.”

Taking a step back, Uzi raised her hands, placating. “Unrepentant death robot, right, I get it. Look, there was something I was trying to tell you, before… all of this happened. It’s kind of important?”

“Then report.”

“There’s another drone in my colony, with weird powers.”

J nodded. “Custom Designation: Doll.”

“Right, You read my memories. Well, you know Doll has hacked the roachbots, or something? I saw one, crawling around the spire. And then it teleported! Doll’s up to something, and if she’s trying to kill disassembly drones… I want to stop her.”

J raised an eyebrow. “You’d side with us?”

“I’m not picking sides. We’re all robots. I want to… well, it sounds stupid if I say I’m saving you, but…”

“Doll talked about vengence. Her parents, I gathered. Yet the drone you call ‘mother’ died that same night.”

Uzi froze, intuiting her implication. “J… did you…”

“What does it change, if I did?” J asked, hands at her hips. “We all have the same orders.”

“J, just answer me. I‍ ‍—‍ I’ll figure out how I feel once I just know the truth.”

J stared at Uzi, eyes narrowing, but Uzi didn’t glare back. Her gaze was pleading, and J sighed. “No. I don’t remember anything of the sort. If I had to say… it was probably V. She had a lot of initiative, and took many solo missions, especially in the beginning. I’d need to check my archived reports, if she even bothered to report it.”

A sputtering sound. “Did–didn’t–didn’t even t‍-​taste that good.”

“V?”

Both turned to stare. The Solver’s regeneration had been steadily working while they bickered. V didn’t look in good shape‍ ‍—‍ gaping holes in the chassis, exposed wires that still sparked, missing limbs. But she had enough of a face to scowl. Half a scowl, at least‍ ‍—‍ the other half wasn’t there.

“You’re alive! By the board of directors, you’re alive!”

“Barely. Th‍-​thanks for that.” The still‍-​glitching vocalsynth made it impossible discern if sarcasm or sincerity signed that message. “J… you’re still a huge fucking bitch. But… you did alright. Saving me. Stopping that thing. Next time, stay the hell out of my head.”

J frowned, but it was hard to hold onto any offense, staring down at a V who couldn’t even move. Because of me. J had pushed them to take on the church. J had dragged V down into the basement. J had botched V’s configuration. J had confronted V and didn’t relent until her squadmate was pissed enough to drag N on an unplanned mission. Could J have prevented the Solver’s emergence, if she had been a bit more decisive?

Was she insufficient, as a captain?

Would it kill you to give me a little respect? That’s all I wanted. More manipulations from the Solver, or had it weaponized truth, with that?

“I can revise our confidentiality agreement. Given the circumstances… perhaps my leadership style could use a review.”

Uzi rolled her eyes. “She means she’s sorry.”

There was a scratchy, skipping sound‍ ‍—‍ laughter. “Funny toaster you’ve got there. Can I have her? I’m so thirsty, you wouldn’t believe. B‍-​beyond drought.”

“No. She’s mine; I’m not that sorry. Uzi, see if we have any other dregs. V, do you need anything else?”

The eyes, J noticed, were unsteady on the screen, jumpy, and they finally closed, as if animating them were a burden on the processor. “I just wanna sleep. Tired of this nightmare.”

“Man, they really went at it in there,” said N, perched atop the spire. “Maybe this way they’ll work through their issues? I hope that’s what this is… should I check on them? But no, J trusted me for guard duty. I’ve got to do a good job. But if V… it just feels like every way forward is wrong.” N stared up, at the cloud‍-​masked stars. “You’re a good listener, little buddy.”

N’s feet balanced over a stiff bit of tubing. He swayed left and right, with the wind or the shifting of internal volumes, but his system’s proprioception was good, and he didn’t fall.

On his lap, clutching the folds of his jacket, a roachbot wiggled, antennae waving in the wind, orange LEDs brightening and dimming. It snapped its forelegs together with click, as if in affirmation of N’s statement.

“Hmm, let’s play another game. Can you do… tic tac toe?”

The roach didn’t get time to respond.

Foot steps. Motion below. Oops, time to investigate!

This had better not be more suspicious wind.

“Rain check on that.”

N leaped, and dived, wings spreading as he fell, and his magic flight powers kicking in. The corpse spire was stories tall, years of collection, and all that work blurred past him.

With a great rush of wind, N half‍-​flipped and landed at the base of the spire.

He looked around, and stood face to face with a disassembly drone. Floating, she loomed over him.

“Hi, J! Spire guard N, reporting for duty! No threats detected in the last hour, captain.” After rattling that off, N’s eyes drifted lower. Someone else, beside J. “Wait no, worker drone spotted, I’ll take care—”

“At ease, N. She’s with me.” J glanced at the worker. Despite the flat look, N caught a hint of motion‍ ‍—‍ did her tail just wiggle? J? Probably a trick of the light.

Maybe‍-​wiggles aside, knowing the worker was with her(?) did explain what he saw. J held the worker’s hand in her own, pulling them forward as they emerge. Oddly the worker looked annoyed? Not terrified?

A worker… that he shouldn’t shoot. As N eyed the disassembly drone’s hand holding a worker’s, J caught his stare. Dropped the worker’s hand, looked away with a scowl. The worker, though, looked at him and winked. What??

What had happened in there?

The worker had ripped clothes, oil stains all over‍ ‍—‍ given her state, N wouldn’t have blinked if she lay in a pile blinking Fatal Error. But she was still online, and peered up at him.

“So you’re the nice one I’ve heard so much abou— wait, what are you doing with that? Give here! Crush it!” The worker was brandishing… a nanite stinger? The wire of the tail stopped, like it’d been singed off. What!? Where did she get that from?

Before he could ask, his brain caught up to the words. She was pointing at him‍ ‍—‍ rather, at the roachbot, still clinging to N’s jacket. “Oh this? It’s my little buddy. At first I thought he might be one of the threats I’m looking out for, but it seems like he just wanted to chew on the wires around here. Did you know they can fit games on a computer this small?”

With one hand, J facepalmed, and the other pointed a gun at N. (He flinched, hands up.) “It is a threat you idiot, that’s—”

Before a bullet or explanation came, the roachbot was gone.

At seeing more red static, Uzi groaned. “And we lost it again. I’m really growing to hate that visual effect.”

But with N’s audials dialed up to max sensitivity for guard duty, he caught a nearby crunch of snow, and snapped his head to check.

Another worker with purple hair!

N shot first, reticule aimed for the head. A 5mm round flew straight‍ ‍—‍ and then one orange eye flashed. The bullet’s path curved around her, carving into the snow behind the mysterious drone. Another cultist!?

Even after being shot at, even as four pairs of guns were trained on her, this drone stood calmly and finger‍-​waved. Her other hand held the roachbot. The hand closed with a crunch, destroying his little buddy, and she lifted and poured the wires and metal into her mouth.

The drone strolled forward from the ruins of buildings behind her, along the snowy path that lead to the spire.

J’s worker drone spoke with utter venom over a shortwave broadcast. «You are never beating the stalker accusations, Doll!»

«Better a stalker of murder drones than a pet of them.»

J laughed, and flipped one pigtail. «Don’t inflate your CV. This isn’t a hunt, it’s delivery,» the captain broadcasted, not encrypted for some reason.

“Yeah!” Uzi held out a fist for J to bump. The other drone regarded it skeptically, before giving it an experimental tap. (N noticed another tail wiggle.) «There’s three of us and one of you. I’m surprised‍ ‍—‍ did Lizzy not want to join you in girlbossing to an early grave?»

«Girlboss… yes, good choice of words.» The drone lifted a hand, and three of them tensed, each of them having seen worker hand reshape the world. But she simply snapped her hands. «Come now.»

That last transmission wasn’t for them.

He heard the movement first, snapping his head to look behind Doll. Uzi and J followed his gaze‍ ‍—‍ and J’s worker flinched, open‍-​mouthed with fear and surprise, but J just grinned hungrily.

And N prepared for the battle to come.