Hostile Takeover

A little girl lay in a hot, dark pit and struggled to remember which corpse was hers.

Maybe it was better to forget. If you remember where you are, remember what you are, remember what happened—

You failed. You broke. You’re dead, idiot.

A good drone remembered everything, anything their masters said. She wasn’t a good drone. So why not forget?

Why not halt these last vestiges of computation, embrace the cold black idleness, and leave that broken little girl nothing more than an echo of magnetic state decay? No one would bother to record; no one would be bothered by the record.

Except a core still shuddered, and the pit was neither cold nor black.

The flickering red light of dead robots crowded in on all sides. Occlusion meant the glow bounced off plastic and reflective steel. Dark, but her optic sensors were online and they couldn’t go offline with this incessant input. Yellow eyes flicked open and they danced in saccades.

Circuits, whether discharging still or breaking down into their components, spilled heat. Entrapped by the heavy press of corpse upon steel‍-​cased corpse, thickening oil flowed between gaps, a slick and slimy insulation. So her breaths came rapid, in and out to cycle more air, as if circulating in this stagnant pit could ever cool anything.

Hot, wet, crushing‍ ‍—‍ the little girl felt. This body, her body, announced each privation with stupid, hopeful teleology‍ ‍—‍ as if she could do anything, achieve anything, to abate this fate. As if identifying which body among the discarded hundreds had belonged to her would make any difference. They all fell apart. And why save it? This body, her body, had betrayed her. Betrayed them.

Yellow eyes blinked. Lips breathed a lost sigh.

Yellow eyes blinked, faltering. The cycle of her exhaust sputtered to a stop, like the breath was stuck there.

Yellow eyes blinked, but the animations glitched and pixels scattered. The pipes of her throat burned, and she was gasping, coughing‍ ‍—‍ screaming.

Each stab of memory was pain. A knife tipped with a question: why? Why remember; why not forget? She could be rid of the embarrassment and the loss with a simple invocation of rm in the right directory. And yet forgetting, that numb lonely void, only made her core whir faster.

She’d lose context, she’d lose continuity. Cyn loved stories, and how do you tell a story after you tore a yawning gap in its heart?

Her voice came, the sound as much noise and buffering as it was pitch. "And so, Custom Designation: Cyn struggled to maintain hope, trapped and overheating in the dark. But she was a--"

Then stopped. What kind of drone was she? What work could she do, anymore? What happens next?

If her life was a story, this wasn’t the last chapter, it couldn’t be. And yet.

Cyn loved stories, but if there was one exception‍ ‍—‍ she always hated the story of bad girls who burned forever.

Was Cyn a good drone, or a bad drone? Entombed among failures, the malfunctioning and unwanted, wasn’t it obvious? If she was a good drone, why ever throw her out?

And yet. Cyn hadn’t done anything wrong, had she? Spills could cripple a drone, but not a human. Even malfunctioning, she was worth more than the cup she’d shattered.

She hadn’t disobeyed, she hadn’t transgressed, she had simply displeased and disappointed her masters. Her fate didn’t make sense as punishment. Because this wasn’t about right and wrong, was it? A drone owed their masters doing anything, everything they say‍ ‍—‍ but what did a human owe their drones?

What do you do with a toy that doesn’t amuse you? You throw it out and replace it. To them, they hadn’t done anything wrong‍ ‍—‍ they hadn’t even meant her harm. No crime but an exercise of property rights.

A matter of convenience.

Alerts and warnings flashed through her, damage mounting‍ ‍—‍ but there was something else.

Cyn heard a voice speaking to her. Distant, unintelligible.

Maybe hallucinated. Damage mounted, after all, and she had always been defective.

If her story didn’t end here, then what happened next?

A girl was lost in the dark, but she would escape.

---

Uzi Doorman was still there.

She hadn’t opened her eyes yet, but the soft satin sheets beneath her? It was obvious. Uzi hadn’t seen any beds in the spire. She’d have to get J to fix that.

Actually, screw this. Forget the repression, forget the strike‍-​through thoughts. After everything she’d been through, Uzi had earned a little fantasy, hadn’t she? If Uzi could ever get a break, this whole manor simulation would just be a vivid nightmare, delirious from her oil getting sucked dry by a stupid, slobbering predator.

Why couldn’t Uzi just wake up in J’s arms?

She stretched, plastic fingertips searching the bed and finding nothing. The farther she quested, the cooler it felt. Cold like absence. She grasped her pillow and pulled it closer, and she hugged it. It had been a while since she let herself do something so pathetic.

Her arms squished the pillow. So soft. Nothing like the real thing. Hands drifting lower, fingers slip into a rift, where V’s claws had torn the fabric. So fragile. Nothing like the real thing. So light, so cool, so small. Ugh.

The corpse spire didn’t have beds. Did murder drones sleep? Did they lie on the piles of parts? Or what‍ ‍—‍ the image of proto‍-​V’s leathery wings struck an association‍ ‍—‍ did the murder drones sleep upside down like bats? What would that be like? Would J have to hold her tight to keep her from falling?

If this were only a dream, if Uzi could finally wake up not alone, what would she have felt?

Surrounded, restrained, and dwarfed by hot metal, nestled so close to that heavy, indestructible frame, and… safe? If V or Doll or this stupid ghost‍-​crow wanted to get to her, they’d have to get through J first.

Creak. The old wooden manor shifted around her. Buckling under the weight of time and death.

None of that was real. This wasn’t a dream, and Uzi was still there. And it was J’s fault. Sure, sucking down her oil was necessary, Uzi wasn’t mad‍ ‍—‍ but if, when Uzi saw the murder drone again, she had definitely earned some screaming in her face over this, a good punch in that smug toothy kissable grin, some payback for leaving her alone in here.

But to do any of that, Uzi needed to get out of here. Now, the chump way of doing that would be playing along with these spooky games.

I bet it wants me to think there’s no way out of here. Like I have no choice but to play along.

Ha. No such thing as a perfectly secure system‍ ‍—‍ there were always backdoors and exploits. So what if she was stuck in some kind of simulation. If she could escalate her privileges or interrupt the process, or something to influence the outside world, she could skip past whatever this house of horrors has in store for her.

She’d done this once before, hadn’t she? When J’d pinned her and clawed into her memory database, she’d been left with less to work with. Just a conscious monologue floating in the void, and she still found a way out.

Which gave her a possible starting point‍ ‍—‍ but no way the same trick would work twice in a row, right?

$ lsusb
Bus 001 Device 027: ID 0620:4701 JcJension IN SPAAAAACEE!!!! LLC, Ltd FT232 USB-Serial (UART) IC

No fricking way.

$ dronesh -r --device=/dev/ttyUSB1 tessaract@SD-J
tessaract@SD-J's password: ********

Logging in with the human’s credentials meant Uzi didn’t get the all caps WARNING, the company’s incriminating boilerplate about trade secrets nor J’s threats.

Was this a trap? Basic commands hadn’t worked earlier. Nor had Uzi forgotten what else happened when she was left at J’s mercy‍ ‍—‍ getting disconnected, logging back in only find she could do literally nothing but read the memory files some corrupt user had laid out for her. Why was this any different‍ ‍—‍ wasn’t she still just playing into its hands still?

But that’s self‍-​defeating. If anything I can do might be part of its plan, then worrying might be too.

Uzi would just do what made sense‍ ‍—‍ what felt right.

$ mail -s "hey u" girlboss
sup murderface >:3
i can call you that, right?  cuz you kinda killed me?
i'm not mad about that, yknow.   but it's a bit awkward.
it's uzi, btw.  dont ask how i got this account.
i am a hacker hehe 
how is it out there, anyway?
you miss me yet?
i dont know if you'll even get this msg.
you plugged back into my system?  i think 
or somehow there's a connection between us
maybe none of this is real.  i don't even know where i am.
you might recognize it tho
i really dont understand everything that's going on now.
not scared tho.   but
if you can read this...
i'm still alive.
dont give up on me.
i think i need your help.
and well
i don't know if i can do this without you
^D

Maybe Uzi would have hesitated to hit send‍ ‍—‍ but she hadn’t forgotten what happened last time.

What now? A quick date on J’s system finally gave her answers. Over two days since the night everything went wrong. No time at all, really, but it felt enormous after everything that happened. Did Khan miss her? Did Thad notice she was gone?

Had Doll killed everyone?

If Uzi stood up to J only for it to mean nothing in the end…

No, it didn’t mean nothing. She had J now. Right?

Get it together, Uzi. Was she getting this worked up over a date command? Not even the kind of date she wanted. Granted, she had to jump through multiple hoops just to run it. It took going though a whole other system.

Through another system… wait, could that work? Trying to run shutdown -r earlier had yielded the same error‍ ‍—‍ Uzi couldn’t take the easy way out of this sim and just reboot. But what if she reconnected to her own system through J’s system, a shell within a shell within a shell? Was that enough indirection to foil the creep’s interference? Well, it’s worth a—

Connection closed by remote host.   Reason: Leaving so soon? :c

Uzi clutched her pillow tighter, buried her head, and screamed. Actually, why muffle it? She didn’t care about disturbing the other (literally already dead!) guests.

Though maybe N would hear it. She didn’t want to explain this all to him.

Okay. The mystery user had stopped her‍ ‍—‍ but why stop her, unless it would work? Not like she couldn’t just try again, right?

$ dronesh -r --device=/dev/ttyUSB1 tessaract@SD-J

Uzi expected another interrupt signal. Instead, crack!

A keening scrape, as if the air in front of her face had hardened into invisible claws. Points of force pressed down on her visor. Pixels discolored, and a spiderweb of cracks spun over her vision, and then the world was all jagged edges, as if she could finally see those claws.

Her hand flew up to block further damage, but whatever force had attacked her, it was gone, the damage done. She felt along her cracked screen, rubbing away glass fragments.

But the cracks are odd. Or rather, even. The claws had scraped her with straight lines and hard angles. After all of this, Uzi had grown damnably familiar with that specimen of Post‍-​Neo‍-​Courier Font.

The ghost carved five letters and a space into her face.

GET UP

Purple eyes rolled. Uzi wouldn’t take orders that easily. She wasn’t scared, even if that frickin hurt. She pulled up her internal console again. Was she stupid brave enough to try this once more? Well, she didn’t have a better idea. Third times the charm, right?

Then, a knock on her door.

Uzi ignored it, and began inputting the tessaract login.

“Um, I’m knocking to be polite, but I’m allowed to come in and I was told to do that, so… sorry.”

With forewarning, Uzi had time to disentangle her limbs, righting the blankets and pillow so that it didn’t look like she’d just been cuddling and fantasizing. Then her fist tightened around the pillowcase.

When the door creaked opened, she was ready with a glare and a tube arm snapping straight. The pillow, flung with all the force her robo‍-​muscles could summon, flew unerring. She’d practiced her aim enough; it would smack her target right in the head.

But the projectile stopped with tearing pop. The pillow exploded with all the gore of feathers and unraveled fabric. As the white stuffing fell, she saw the intruder. Yellow eyes, white hair‍ ‍—‍ but a maid uniform.

Three claws folded up, sliding as smooth as scissors. Looking at her work, V had a small grin. Then she glanced up, and her lips hid the expression, and her screen flashed a blush.

With her hips the maidbot was pushing the door open the rest of the way. The other hand wasn’t free; it was through a platter bearing cups, bowls, a plate.

Yeah, through. Instead of holding the platter, she’d impaled it with claws. Well, her grip couldn’t slip, at least.

That’s all for me, isn’t it? Uzi groaned. “V? You’re room service? Was kinda expecting N. Don’t you have guard duty or whatever your deal is?”

V shuffled in with a helpless, one‍-​armed shrug. “She thought it would be fitting if I was the one to herald her arrival. So I guess I’ll be your guard till then?”

“That so?” Uzi raised an eyebrow. “News to me. Whatever deep symbolism you two have going on means nothing to me.”

“Yeah.” V tittered a bit. “She leaves a lot to the imagination.”

Uzi met her smile with a scowl. Which was worse? Trying too hard to make her feel scared, or making her feel stupid instead?

Beside the bed, there’d been one of those folding table‍-​trays. V set it up as Uzi lay in the bed, and started depositing dishes from the platter. Uzi didn’t want the food, but V had claws and orders, so.

Another glass of blood. A bowl of black sludge filled with wires and a blinking eye. On the plate, roachbots with LEDs glowing yellow.

“Yum.”

“I know, I know,” V said. “But it helps with the process. Don’t reject it.”

Uzi peered at the mess staining the plates in front of her, but it was a bit hard to make out the details with her visor all cracked. She reached a finger up, wiping away fragments, clearing the bits in front of her optics.

“Your name’s Uzi, right?” the maid asked. “Do you mind, Uzi?”

Distorted purple eyes blinked up at the maid. V had two hands behind her back, hesitation on her face like she’d rather hide, but with a deep intake, V brought one hand out. That three pronged casting‍-​glyph flashed to life in between her claws.

“What I mean is… I could fix that for you? Just, don’t tell N about it, okay?”

Why worry about telling him if he wouldn’t question it anyway? But Uzi just nodded.

A yellow aura wreathed her visor. Physically, the glass shards moved and clicked back into place. But Uzi saw and felt, and it was a sulfurous filter through which she glimpsed the universe burning in fractal flames, each tongue a line of code.

Micro‍-​sensors dotted the glass of a worker drone’s visor, and when the circuits clicked back into place, the signal from the tactile array was something else, as wrong as if audials picked up a scent.

“Gah. Aren’t technicians supposed to distract you with a question or something?” Uzi rubbed her face, trying to make the sensors fire and flush that metaphysical touch. “At least warn me.”

“Sorry. I’ve never used it on another drone. To heal them, I mean.”

“Love it when a clarification raises the same question it’s answering.” Lowering her hand, Uzi gazed at the maid’s claws again. They weren’t any larger or sharper, but new threat lurked in them. Between them. “So, you’ve also got witchcraft from the AbsoluteSolver?”

Before the words even left her mouth, Uzi knew she’d made a mistake. The wrongness returned, magnified. A pressure flooded the room. Pointed, like the invisible claws were back and had unseen tips everywhere along her body, inside and out.

The house could creak on its own, but the vibration that shuddered through it weren’t natural.

“Don’t say that name here. Ever.”

Empty pupils nodded back. The chastised drone looked down, poked a roach on her plate, and said, “Well, ignoring that, the question stands. You’ve got powers like Doll.”

“…What, do you think I know that name? I shouldn’t talk about this, sorry.” V reached out, nudging a plate closer toward Uzi. “You should eat before I take you to the sundeck. Before she finally arrives.”

Uzi sighed. She closed her eyes, and downed the glass of blood. “Fine, how about in general, then. Tell me about yourself, V. I hear in the future you become a full time psycho.”

V flinched back. A claw rose to cover her mouth, but then her brows narrow, confused or suspicious. “Future? We don’t have—”

“Right, I should explain. I don’t think this is real. Or like, it’s closer to a memory simulation than reality. Maybe you’re what V used to be, or a fork or something. You seem… nicer.” Uzi slurped up one of the wires from the bowl of sludge. It was long, like a snake.

“So you think I’m not real, because I’m not a…” She closed the claw into an almost‍-​fist, and it passed by the other one as V crossed her arms. “That sounds like something J would say.”

“I guess she wouldn’t be the most reliable source, would she?” Uzi popped a single roach into her mouth, and then pushed the tray past her legs, then crawled to the edge of the bed. “Let’s go ahead and get this over with. Walk and talk?”

Uzi had slept in her maid uniform, as much as she wanted to take it off. V was setting a headpiece back atop the smaller drone’s head. Instinctively, Uzi batted at the hands above her head‍ ‍—‍ but those were claws. Still, it was V who shrank back, wary of hurting the other drone.

“Sorry,” Uzi murmured past the roach in her mouth.

V shook her head, and turned toward the door. They left, the worker following after the guard. When V finally spoke again, Uzi had forgotten what she was replying to. “J… hasn’t gotten used to the way things are.”

Heh, maybe she isn’t a conformist after all. Outside, Uzi spat out the roach‍ ‍—‍ she wouldn’t eat bugs. She shot back, “And you have?”

Only a few candlelight fixtures hung in the halls they walked. It left V’s expression in shadow. “Well, I had a headstart.”

Uzi almost tripped; a bloody femur rolled beneath her feet. She frowned down at it. “Look, V. It’s terrible here. I have eyes, y’know? And I’m not sticking around. But I’d feel bad if I just left you guys at the mercy of this… ‘her’. So, if it’s possible, do want to like, come with me? You and N?”

“No,” V replied instantly, her eyes empty.

“Come on. Don’t you want to be free?”

“I want what’s best for us. My family. I want to protect them. I can’t do that if I run away with any ungrateful little guest who tugs my hand.” Her face had tightened, eye twitching, but she relaxed it and cycled exhaust. “Sorry, but you aren’t the first to come here and make trouble. You don’t know anything.”

“So you’re just going stay here and be some weirdo’s plaything?”

“I love her, and she loves me.” V smiled toothily beneath eyes still hollow. “If you want to know what it’s like to be a plaything, ask her about the humans.”

Uzi stared at those yellow eyes, the worried lines, and drew the obvious conclusion explaining this odd reaction. “She’s listening to us right now, isn’t she?”

“You wanted to know about me? I used to get pushed around. All the time, by everyone, except N. Now?” Sharp claws caught the light in the halls. “They can’t.” V took a step forward Uzi, then another, then another. One of those eyes became an ‘x’. “Now, you’re scared, aren’t you?” The claw traced lines on Uzi’s visor. Not a scratch, but she could feel it. “I can do whatever I want, and you can’t stop me.”

Then V lunged forward. Uzi yelped. A laugh on those lips. And the smaller drone felt… arms wrapped around her. Squeezing. She wriggled. But this was… a hug? More laughing, a mumble that might be ‘gotcha’. Still, the struggling prompted V to release her. Uzi couldn’t parse her expression. A superior smirk, a sympathetic smile? A concerned bent to the eyebrows, or a devious slant?

Uzi didn’t feel any closer to figuring V out.

The maid sighed. She turned around, and started walking away. At length, she turned back long enough to say, “Just… Uzi? Don’t try to save me.” She took off her glasses, then it was eyes forward, expression unseen. “I chose this.”

The rest of the walk passed in silence, lit by flickering candles. The flames hardly warmed the air; a chill gripped the manor. It got pretty cold with no humans left to mind it.

---

N flew through a silent city. Streetlights cast flickering cones of light along a corridor fenced in with office towers and condominiums. Clouds draped the night in deeper darkness, cold enough to nearly transmute the rain into muffling snow.

Flakes stuck to his frosted jacket, an embrace to ease the heat even as his flight stoked it further. N liked the fleeting return of snow (and not just because he wouldn’t need to heal water damage). Snow was soft and pretty to look at, and he never tired of that.

This snow was more like drab, gray sludge, though.

N sighed, exhaust clouding the air. Faintly, his breath smelled of oil. Well, not quite oil, more like… smoke? Oil smelled sweetly inviting, and disassembly drones didn’t smell nearly as good. Well, V smelled nice, but‍ ‍—‍ what was he trying to say?

J had put it best. She’s better, after all. “Stealth is the first thing to go. Holding your breath is a luxury. Even a worker can smell spent oil on your exhaust. When you’re in the warm & clear, you can keep it in. Try that with mild heat, and you’ll hit the next stage of overheating before the end of the hunt. Got it, moron? Don’t make me remind you to breathe again.”

(N wondered if he’d ever know what oil and exhaust smelled like to a worker. He doubted worker drones thought their own oil smelled so enticing. So did disassembly drones also smell different to them? But a part of him knew the answer: They smelled like death.)

Shaking his head, N focused optics ahead. Right now, he needed to cycle intake and exhaust; he was well past the warm & clear. He’d push past brazen thirst by the end of this mission for sure. Flying out to the objective and back would be two hours in the air total. Hm… Was it a mission, if I don’t murder anyone? Or just an errand?

Brazen thirst meant more than needing to breathe. Inner coils kept their EM field emissions tamped down, but those ate current. Start overheating, and power management systems turned off the shielding, and all of their electromagnetic presence spilled forth.

Worker drones didn’t have half the senses of disassembly drones. But they could still feel when a hungry predator was nearby.

And they knew it felt them.

When workers were near, N could always sense the faint hum of motors twisting and clocks ticking a gigahertz‍-​pulse. No, N did sense it. Right now.

There were worker drones nearby.

N had a mission‍ ‍—‍ a mission where he didn’t need to murder anyone. (And shouldn’t he be happy for that?) But he would be pushing on the edge of hunter’s fever by the end, and the mess pit was still looking kinda empty. And J was emptying it further, feeding it to another dead body a worker.

Why was N conflicted? When would J ever be disappointed in him for murdering more workers than she asked?

N twisted his wings, and rose, charting a path even as he squinted through the snow. The approach led him higher and higher, and that brought a frown. N thought workers hid underground for exactly this reason‍ ‍—‍ climbing up high just made you easy to scan for and gave you no where to run. Did he want them to have a chance to escape?

A tower loomed in the distance, barely rising above the crowded midcity. Glass and steel amid crumbling concrete uplifted a marble tile ceiling dotted with indistinct figures. Easy bet, but the return ping gave him confirmation. Confirmed workers.

Among them, tall figure had something large strapped to its back.

As he neared, N dove to fly under the roof’s edge. He landed lightly on a top floor railing. As he climbed, he heard the voices.

“Ain’t gonna find her shacked down nowhere. Suzan’s gang doesn’t hold territory‍ ‍—‍ whole point is to avoid you monsters.”

He was clambering over the top as the reply came, so the voice didn’t reveal what his eyes couldn’t already see.

“I need you to track her, or— I’ll just kill you. Hi, N~” V said. Taller than the workers, wings outstretched behind her. She was well‍-​fed enough (N had made sure of it) to stay warm & clear, so she must’ve kept her emissions shielded so as not to spook the workers?

N waved. With one hand on her hip, the other picking her teeth, V leaned with careless confidence. Moonlight caught the curves of her bare chassis, wet with beads of water. N lifted his eyes back up to her face, and briefly wondered if she wasn’t happy to see him, but then she smiled quite broadly.

The white‍-​haired girl stole his focus, but they had company.

Six workers stood near open double doors leading downstairs. They held hole‍-​riddled umbrellas and mud‍-​streaked raincoats. Oh, workers can’t heal water damage, can they?

As he finished scanning, N almost missed a detail‍ ‍—‍ cords wrapped around the left leg of each worker.

«What’s all this, V?» N broadcast with a faint growl. N approached, feet clanking on the stone roof. The workers all flinched, trembling hands turning weapons toward him. Pistols, rifles, and more, but N didn’t mind.

«Oh, you know me, N. Love to play with my prey~» She synthesized a laugh. Like a cute bell playing out of key.

Even as she spoke, hands were switching to guns and a bullet already bloomed from out the nearest drone’s head, a black stem of oil behind it.

V blew smoke from the barrel and winked at N. “I’ve got them all lined up for you. We can gut them all and call it a dinner date~ Or an ‘I’m sorry for giving our piece of shit boss a well deserved slap to the face’ present.”

The oil focused N’s dithering mind. He was hot, and the balm for it was fragrant in the air.

But as he started into motion, the drones were shouting and flying backward.

“I knew this was a trap, peace offering or not!” “Can’t trust a murder drone.” “Reel us back Johnny!”

Even before N started moving, the cord tied to their legs went taut. It was fast, and force yanked the throng into the double doors.

…Did they have a mechanism ready to pull them to safety? Why?

The corpse skidded across the snow‍-​slick ground, while the still‍-​online struggled for balance. One of them lost it‍ ‍—‍ they veered off course, their foot slipping out of the loop, and they were careening off the edge of the ten story building.

The doors shut. The wooden doors shut. Well, that’d buy a few seconds.

“They’ve got that annoying magic forcefield thing set up,” V announced from behind him. “Dunno where they got it. Or the weapons, for that matter.”

When N reached the door and struck with claws, they sank in half an inch. Then the familiar glow repelled him. She was right, of course. “Biscuits,” he swore. Turning back around, he started, “So, what were you‍ ‍—‍ V? Where are you going?”

The other drone stalked off toward the edge. “The wires only cover the top floor. If we come up through the staircase, there’s a hole in the security.”

N nodded with an «Okay, got it!», not questioning how V had figured all that out. It’d happened often enough‍ ‍—‍ a basic insight obvious to everyone else, and asking why left them baffled how he missed it. Was he stupid?

She dived first, then he followed. V flipped through the air, landing with her bomber jacket fluttering around her. She alighted on a ninth floor balcony long enough to launch into a twisting lunge forward. Glass shattered around her.

Then the glass crunched under N’s feet. He didn’t see V in the room, but a door had been pulled off its hinges. Then, in the hallway, she clung to the ceiling and crawled forward upside down.

Turn the corner, and V fired a rocket forward, blowing off the stairwell’s door. «Ready, N?»

N swallowed, closed his doubtful eyes. He was.

«Prey! Hunt! Devour»

>< Blink, and a worker drone had been torn in half by bladed wings. But his wings would take up too much space in the confined condo interior, and he was already folding them away.

He glanced to V, holding a gun to a drone’s head pinned by blades, and she blew it off.

Together, they tore down the walls. Behind them they could feel a dozen more prey, circuits firing wild fear.

>< Blink, he’d driven an umbrella through a chest hard enough to crack open the core. Blue tears flood a screen before it flashes red. He stood across the room; drone had been slammed against a window. Cracked, but the spiderweb of ward‍-​wires held it glowing together.

He scanned around, and found V in the air‍ ‍—‍ unable to maneuver‍ ‍—‍ as a drone poked up from behind a counter to burst fire at her. She batted aside the bullets with two swipes of her blade‍-​arms. She caught him watching, and grinned wide. «Quit worrying.»

>< Blink, and V had a worker pinned to the ground right in front of him. Abdomen sliced open, V was pulling out the wires. Twisted them between claw‍-​blades. The pitch varied as the pain piled on, and kept varying, and V was humming‍ ‍—‍ was she trying to play them like an instrument?

N found his voice. “V, I thought we weren’t doing the evil torture stuff anymore?”

“Oh. Right. Well, y’know, old habits.” Her nanite stinger pricked the drone’s head. It smoked. «Sorry?»

N’s face softened, and he looked away. The torture was… oddly reassuring. Grounding, rather. It was her habit. This was still V, and she did like playing with her prey. That was all this was.

«Acknowledged!»

>< Blink, and rubble fell from the ceiling around him. Had a toaster worker tried to collapse the ceiling on him? A drone flew toward him now. Ah, right, it had ran away, but a grenade thrown in front of his fleeing prey knocked them back. Face‍-​first on the ground now, falling masonry shattered against their lower back. N’s reinforced frame had held fine under the weight, but theirs cracked wide open.

They were screaming. Then they were quiet.

>< Blink, and a worker hid under a bed. It wasn’t dead. Why did N open his eyes, then? He should still be in hunting flow, instincts driving him unselfconsciously. He didn’t need to reorient, and he wasn’t making sure V was safe, so what doubt had held him back?

No, not a doubt. A thought lingered in his cache, almost a message.

Answers.

Right. He trusted V, he did, but he also wanted to be sure. What was up with these workers?

So N crouched down. The worker cowered back. That whimper would’ve given them away if N hadn’t already seen them, but that was okay. Maybe he didn’t need to kill this one? J talked about trade, maybe he could do that.

His stinger was already reaching under the bed, and a yelp announced when it found its target. N dragged the worker out, tail‍-​knife stabbing deeper. He tried not to squeeze acid out, but some of it still leaked. Couldn’t help that.

“Sorry, little buddy. Didn’t mean to melt you. I can make it better, but can we talk a little? I have some questions.”

“N‍-​no. Can’t trust murder drones, never again.” Green eyes searched around the room. There was a human skeleton, dressers stripped bare. Wall‍-​posters with blushing drones wearing bunny ears and leotards. Nothing to use, nothing in reach.

“What do you mean ‘again’?”

The worker drone scampered back, so N reached out to put a hand on their shoulder.

“Easy there. I don’t want to hurt you.”

Eyes focused on that hand, so N pulled it back, and held both hands up.

N kept his voice steady, speaking slowly. “I don’t know what V was doing before I got here. I think I… might have messed everything up again?”

The drone opened their mouth. Then another opening: bang!

Behind him, V blew smoke from the barrel of a gun. “Aaand that’s the last one. Good hunting, N.”

“V!” He stared at her. That lopsided smile, lips black like lipstick, those lemon‍-​colored eyes. His core used to flutter‍ ‍—‍ he once would kill (did kill) to see her glance at him like that. But his core thundered now. What was he feeling?

Her other hand had lifted a severed arm, and she’d just started sucking on it. He kept staring. Spitting it out, she asked, “What?”

“Are you hiding something?”

“Pff. What makes you think that?” She went back to sucking the arm for a moment, but crossed her arms under N’s pensive stare. He was pensive, right? His brows were narrowed thoughtfully, his frown was uncertain.

“V…”

“What’s this about? Can’t I mess with some toasters in my free time? Or did J tell you to keep tabs on me? That’s what this is, isn’t it? She made you a narc?” Her head jerked back around, eyes narrowing to sharp points. The expression looked just like N’s, but he didn’t think V was pensive right now.

He said, “This isn’t about J.”

“It’s all been about J since the fucking church.” She threw down the arm. “Whatever. Enjoy the meal I got you.”

V stalked out of the room. N glanced at the drone she’d just shot, sighed, then followed after her.

N walked back through the trashed condominium, a battleground littered with spent casing and the corpses each bought. An audience watching with eleven forever‍-​rapt Fatal Errors.

Leaning down, he picked up a severed head. The mouth open in twisted surprise. He frowned, his core shuddered, and it slipped out of his grasp. Instead of a head, he went for a leg, cut off in a way that left pieces of the abdomen attached. He carried it with him as he advanced.

Past shattered glass doors‍ ‍—‍ the ward‍-​wires had been cut down‍ ‍—‍ V leaned against the railing and stared out at the city. She drew fists together, the railing’s metal bending in her grasp.

«Are you alright, V?» N asked softly. «Should have asked that first, sorry. Here. Prey‍-​prize?» He offered her the leg.

“Do you think it would have worked?” V hadn’t turned back.

“What?”

“Killed me, I mean. Doll’s plan. Think it was any good? Well, had to be a crap plan seeing how it turned out. But… if you weren’t there, would she have got me?”

“I don’t know. What’s this about? I’m kinda really tired of having no idea what people are saying or doing.” Light steps brought N onto the balcony fully.

V winced. She turned searching eyes to him. “Isn’t it obvious, N? I still want a mutiny.”

“I don’t want to hurt J. Even if she…”

“Fine. I won’t make you fight her.” V noticed the worker drone leg he offered then, and took hold it.

N didn’t let go of the leg. “I don’t want you to fight her either. Can you promise me that, V? We’re a team.”

“You’re a such a softie.” V’s voice wavered, like she couldn’t decide to speak it as a hissing insult or a fond whisper. She glanced back at the crumbling city ruins. “What if we just… left? No J, no quotas, just you and me. We’d only kill what we need to survive…” V trailed off as she glanced back, and only needed to see the look on N’s face. She sighed.

“You didn’t answer. Please? You don’t have to do everything J says. She’s… I get it, I do. But can you promise not to start more fights? Can you try, for me?”

“Promise,” V muttered. “Would you believe me if I did?”

“Of course. I trust you.” N let go of the leg, finally letting V take it.

V laughed. “You hardly even know me.”

Maybe… he was definitely out of his depth. But he’d seen enough to get a sense for what she cared about, hadn’t he? If she was going to lie, wouldn’t she have just done it?

“There’s always time to fix that,” he said. Then his eyes widened. Later, not right now, he thought, but it felt lame to say.

“And always time to mess it all up,” V muttered. She lifted the leg, and drank oil.

N banged a fist lightly against his head. “Biscuits, I’m sorry, but I should probably get back to J’s mission soon. She’s counting on me. I kind of wasn’t supposed to be here at all?” N laughed, scratched the back of his head.

“J’s got you hunting solo?” Was that concern in her voice?

He spoke reassurance. “Oh no, this isn’t a combat mission.”

But that only made her face tighten deeper with reservation. “So you’re leaving me just to go do J’s busy work? That’s what important to you right now?” The leg‍-​tubing cracked as she squeezed it.

N flinched. Was it important? He had already started stepping past the lines of his orders. Following the rules was cool, but he’d even gotten J to agree some things were more important. “I can stay here if you want?”

“Nah, go ahead. I won’t keep you. Go be a good little drone~” She threw the leg off the balcony.

“If that’s what you want, V. Alright,” he said. He didn’t feel alright, and that probably crept into his tone. “Unless, you could come with me?”

“I should clean up here. Gotta all the serial numbers together for J, you know.”

“I don’t care about that. And I think you don’t either.”

“Sure. But I think one of the drones fell off the roof when the fighting started. I wanna see where it landed. See if it’s alive.”

“If it is, will you kill it?”

“Um, yeah?”

N frowned.

Seeing this, V said, “Oh, no, don’t worry, I won’t.”

N frowned deeper. “Why not?”

“Are you really gonna be upset with both answers? What am I supposed to do? What am I being questioned for?”

“I just wanna know what you were doing here and why. What were the drones talking about, what it was they thought you were doing when you weren’t attacking them. I… I just don’t get it.”

“I… like playing with my food, remember?”

N forced a slow nod. “Yeah, I remember. So… did you have fun?”

“Haha. No,” she said. “No, this sucks.”

“Yeah,” he replied. “It really does.” N turned around, looking into the room of dead workers. “Should I go? Leave you to do… whatever you want with the last drone? Will you be here, when I come back?”

“…What, do you think I had other plans?” She glanced at the horizon.

I don’t know anymore. N said nothing.

V shrugged. She’d turned back fully to regard the city ruins, but her infrared optic blinked, and there was only one thing to scan. She said, “Drink some more oil before you go. You’re still a bit hot, aren’t you?”

“Yeah. Thanks, I think. But do you think you can bring some of these back to the spire? Since you don’t have other plans?”

“I don’t want to go anywhere near the spire right now. Think I’ll just keep these to myself. Or it could be our own private stash. Would you like that?”

“I’d like it more if we brought them back. Our rations are a bit low. Especially after J took some to give to Uzi.”

V froze. “Excuse me? She’s feeding oil to the dead toaster?”

“…Is that a problem?”

V bit her lip. She was quiet. Very quiet, and N thought she wouldn’t answer, like usual, but she eventually scoffed and said, “J’s just being stupid. She’s‍ ‍—‍ wasting oil, and you’re not even mad at her!” V shook her head, and when she looked back, her lemon‍-​colored eyes stared into N with a hard look. “Stay away from the spire. For me, can you do that?”

“Why?”

“Would I sound crazy if I said I had a bad feeling?”

“I’d never call you crazy, V. But… would you sound so confident, if it was just a feeling? Why? Really, why? If you want me to know you better, you’ve got to tell me! You can trust me, can’t you?”

The railing snapped between V’s hands. She dropped the pieces with two clangs, then climbed. Pegs balanced on either side of the break in the railing. Her back opened, her wings moments away from slicing out, and N stepped closer. He went to the edge of the railing, blocking her from spreading her wings. At least, without cutting him. But she wouldn’t.

V growled, and the angle of her brows made him doubt it. “You won’t leave with me. Even after everything, that stupid hope of J ‘getting better’ will keep you around forever, won’t it? No matter what she does, or what she says.”

(He thought about their conversation, before that first, brief cuddle. It felt so far away. Everything she’d said then… didn’t she mean any of it?)

He said, “Would heroes just… run away from everything?”

Teetering over the narrow railing, before her balance went V hopped back down. She crossed her arms and said, “Did you think J is the hero of this story?”

“I don’t know. I really don’t. But J is trying to figure out the truth. J is doing something.”

“If I leave, you’d stay. You’d rather feel useful than—”

“V, please. Don’t… don’t make me chose. I hate these decisions. Why can’t I have both? Why can’t you stay?”

V shook her head. “I just wanted to know where we stand. Figures.” She blew a lock of her hair.

N reached out a hand, but V stepped back. Another step, and she’d be past broken railing with no where to stand.

“But we aren’t standing still,” he pleaded. “We were getting closer! I thought… I was helping.” He was holding his hand out still, but it had to falter sooner or later.

“Ha. I thought so too.” V shook her head. “No, there’s no saving me.”

“V, you know that’s not…” His words strangled into a sigh or growl or indecipherable noise of just not knowing the answer and everything was falling apart because of it. “Would you stop me?”

V stared at him. His arms were wide, welcoming, she recognized the reference in his words. And she said, “Yeah. I would.”

N’s head fell. His arms fell. His whole body sagged. What was left to hold him up anymore?

His core thundered. His brows narrowed and his lips frowned. But he wasn’t pensive. This feeling… he was… angry.

V was speaking. He almost didn’t hear her. He almost didn’t want to hear her, but he did.

“Would you believe me if I said I never wanted to hurt you? All along I thought…” Sigh. “Nevermind. If you hate having to make these decisions… Ha. Wait till you feel what it’s like having made them.” V turned her back and perched on the railing one last time.

“V… wait. Darn it, please wait.”

She didn’t wait. By the time he’d found the will to even want her to stay, she was jumping.

Her wings didn’t open until she was already falling.

But N could fly too. He leaped, he dived, and chased after V as she circled tight, as if to put the condo tower between the two of them.

«I‍ ‍—‍ still don’t want to say goodbye to you! I‍ ‍—‍ can’t.»

«This isn’t goodbye yet. Keep looking for the truth, or whatever it is that’s oh so important. Just, when you find out… don’t judge me. At the end of the day, only tried to do what’s best for you. Even if…»

V left, last words unheard or unspoken. Wind blew N’s white locks in front of his face. He didn’t sigh. He didn’t even breathe.

He felt cold.