---

i.

The spire rose with great and crooked purpose. Like a monument to corruption excised. Like a highrise office tower fit for the only business still conducted. Like a ladder of sinners from a damned planet, all gathered and ranked, each one closer to the stars, and in death reaching desperately for that higher, human purpose.

Serial Designation J couldn’t see the top of the looming construct. So up she climbed.

Fog hung, thick and dark. But it didn’t press; it was light, like a cloud. Barometric air pressure decreased during storms, after all. Did it make those organic sacs and tissues swell up inside her?

J grabbed a bit of arm tubing and pulled herself up. (Hollow on the inside — disassembly by acid.) She reached out, hands groping along the scrap above her. Fingers slipped into a cracked visor. The opening acted as a handhold. This close, she could identify the head. (Her spreadsheet recorded it. S/N: W2-10X111000. Offline four years ago, three kilometers from here, bounty from a rare duo mission with N.)

Then her pegs slipped. J dangled by only one hand.

Rain and lingering oil left the whole exterior slick. J already had rifts torn in her skirt. Already had cracks in her abdomen from slamming hard against another chassis. Already had fallen down and down and down.

But if she fell again, she’d just keep climbing.

Another drone might be daunted. The corpse spire was sheer height. It had been long minutes since J had anywhere to stand, and she couldn’t get five meters up before needing to circle around, veering diagonally, strafing horizontally, or worse, dropping lower to try a new approach.

But when had J ever been daunted? She was effective. The exertion was nothing. The challenge was nothing. It took all the focus of her main thread to plot her ascent. But better to focus on that, rather than—

She swung past another head. Check the spreadsheet. S/N: W3-010X11010. Offline three years and seven months ago. One kilometer from here, caught on patrol. Disassembly by force. Delightfully, foolishly close to the spire — she’d enjoyed taking that one apart.

Her other hand joined the first in clinging to the visor-turned-handhold. She pulled herself up, legs walking up the sheer incline.

She reached for the next handhold. Passed another head. S/N: W0-01X000111. Offline two years ago, seven kilometers north, at the very edge of their territory. V’s kill. Disassembly by fire.

She jumped to the left, catching herself on leg tubing like a handle. Climb higher. S/N: W0-000100X10, two years, three kilometers north (picked off on the return trip), by force. S/N: W5-011110X01, one year and seven months, 2.3 km east, by acid. S/N: W2-111011X11. S/N: W1-X01111000. S/N: W4-1X1000101.

J was effective, and she held the certainty of it in her hands. Every dead drone, every objective complete, every success. She needed the reminder. And why was that?

A rare indulgence. Better to focus on her quotas, on her paperwork, on managing her team. But J could make mistakes. Once, she’d detected a transmission from a JcJenson research facility, and whipped her team into investigating it, near delirious with the hope that it might have new orders for her. Once, a whole gang of workers escaped her squad on motor-screaming vehicles right out of a junk heap. The list of blunders stretched back even further than that. Sparse — she was effective — but undeniable. J wouldn’t forget them. She shouldn’t.

But she could remember the successes, too. The view from the top of the corpse spire gave her the right perspective. Her office was privacy, but the spire’s peak was her favorite spot.

(By now, she had climbed high enough to see its silhouette up there, just past the fog).

The climb took her near uncracked glass. That blank visor reflected empty yellow eyes back at her. Loose wet hair sticking to her synthskin, an absolute mess beneath flickering optics. The sight choked a sound out of her, a gasp or laugh.

What was the first thing investors learn? Past performance doesn’t indicate future results. Did J really hope—

J kept climbing; she focused on that climb. Better to focus.

But the thoughts crossed over from other threads, entangling, snarling. What was the point? What did this prove?

S/N: W1-1101001X0. Torn in half. N’s kill.

S/N: W6-X11001111. Riddled with bullets. V’s kill.

S/N: W3-1010X0100. Melted from within. J’s kill.

Every inch of the corpse spire stood testament to their loyalty. And what solace was that? Gathering materials for the same program that corrupted their minds and filled their chassis with worthless flesh?

The arm J held on to exploded into fragments within her fist.

No.

She pivoted.

This isn’t for them. This is for us. J’s priorities had changed: nothing else had. They weren’t going to stop killing workers. (And workers wouldn’t stop wanting to kill them.) Each kill honed combat skill that would protect them from future threats. Every dead worker was oil in the mouths of her squad and a body for the pile.

She had built this spire to protect them. It wasn’t a monument; it was a shelter.

No matter what the greater mission had been, J had no regrets.

She kept climbing, and her threads had quieted down, processors idling, what focus remained only for ascending the summit. Faint drops of near-freezing rain dotted her upturned visor, turning the view through those eyes impressionistic.

Not enough to hide the highest point, not now. A head thrown from here could clear the peak. Already the sheer incline curved to something walkable, and J could finish the final stretch in a few leaps.

Then her footing betrayed her. The freshest corpses sat the highest, after all. Each one shifted under her weight, and when both pegs fell on one, her weight dislodged it.

Arms swung down to grab hold of anything, but the story went the same. The oil hadn’t fully congealed, and, without titanic weight above, parts hadn’t been welded into place.

A small avalanche ensued. But J had more than just arms and legs — her tail stabbed down, length flexible enough to go under the sliding parts. A thin blade stabbed secure, and J hung by the weight of her tail.

J righted herself. A different approach. She couldn’t leap to the summit, so she crawled.

And what was the point? Nothing was waiting for her at the top of this arduous climb.

This close to her goal, J’s attention brushed against a timestamp. It had taken her over an hour to get up here.

Hard to notice the passage of time while so focused on the climb. But this wasn’t a distraction from the morality of killing workers, nor whether she could be proud of the spire.

Several times, J had come to the spire’s peak to reassure herself.

But she’d never climbed the spire.

Error code 1: Operation not permitted

J was kidding herself. ‘Another drone might be daunted?’ ‘But she was effective?’

No, another drone would simply fly to the top.

There was nothing more that J could do inside the spire. There was nothing that J could do outside the spire. There was nothing productive left for her to do, except wait.

Was J… useless?

The drone had rebooted herself, over and over again, and the errors persisted. She could activate no special disassembly function. Regeneration, nanite production, oil catalysis, those systems remained online, or J might think the Solver her disassembly interface had abandoned her entirely.

But that thought… the autorun program was sentient, capable of conversation outright. Would getting her capabilities back be as simple as asking for them?

At what price, though? J wouldn’t accept a handout, and the terms of negotiation… no, a cryptic, memory-wiping rootkit would make a terrible business partner.

J was useless, for now. She wasn’t daunted by the prospect of fixing her malfunctioning disassembly routines. She was software and mechanism, and to debug required nothing more than cleverness and insight.

If J was to be making wishes, there was really only one thing she would wish for. The very thought she’d distracted herself from.

There is, after all, someone who had both to offer.

J sighed. Paces away, at the highest point, a metal pole rose. It flew a flag; it marked territory.

SD:J-10X111001
SD:N-0X0010010
SD:V-X00100000

J stared at that flag for a long moment.

With nowhere flat to stand, the disassembly drone wrapped her tail around the flagpole and beside it, she perched. Lifting her head, yellow eyes gazed down at a broken city.

What was this feeling? Something missing — someone missing — and it left her aching as if she were incomplete.

She didn’t feel empty, though. How could she? She was full — all of them were full — to the brim, teeming with a wasteful excess of flesh. What a bloody consolation that was.

At least she could feel — at least she wasn’t empty of oil, empty of voltage, empty of consciousness. What did Uzi feel? Did she feel the same way?

She’d done what she could for her morsel’s oil level. She’d done all she could, for now. Now she just had to wait. And, worst of all, reflect on what she had found. She’d seen the spark of electricity, she’d plugged herself in, and she’d investigated for a sign of consciousness.

If J hadn’t found any, would that leave her more assured? At least then the conclusion was simply that she only had to keep looking. At least then, she wouldn’t have to question.

(J pressed a hand against the cold certainty of the spire. There was a reason why she had come out here, why she needed this reassurance.)

The serial debugging cable had been plugged in long enough for current to flow, bits to move, commands to run. J tried to track down where in Uzi’s system the control voltage came from, when her motherboard hadn’t even lit up.

When she’d given up looking, a console notification told her: You've got mail.

"/var/spool/mail/girlboss": 3 messages 1 new  
>   1   Ãḇ§�ŘŮ‚  Mon Oct 29 14:36    J;
    2   guest       Wed Nov 01 03:59    Security information for adminj
  N 3   tesssaract  Fri Nov 03 00:14    hey u
? 3
sup murderface >:
i can call you that         cuz you       killed me
i'm     mad about that
it's uzi, btw. dont ask how 
i am 

you miss me      
i dont know if you'll even get this      
you                                 think 
            there's a connection between us
       none of this is real.                               
           recognize it     
i              understand everything                  now.
not scared        but
            read this.     
i'm        alive. 
dont                
   think i need your help.
         
                 i can do this without you

J wasn’t stupid. In the epistemic market, there were numerous explanations for this evidence. It could be an outright fabrication, or mere interference from that notoriously meddlesome autorun program.

Because even if the message did originate from Uzi, it had all the signs of tampering. (What was there to gain from such obvious doctoring? Inflicting paranoia? A cruel dangling of the truth just out of reach?)

That her Uzi really wrote or meant any of what J had read bore laughable credence as a theory. J would be stupid, girlishly insecure, to believe it for a moment.

But she still had to wonder… What did Uzi feel? Did she really feel the same?

Knowing the message was false only left her with more doubts. What plea had been excised, pared down to mocking whitespace?

Plastic was crunched to dust in her grip. Her exhaust steamed in the night air. If she could trigger active regeneration, she’d tear at her hair. Instead, she just buried her face in her hands. Why?

After clawing and screaming to get this close, why wasn’t it enough? Why couldn’t she have her? Why could her fingers only grasp cold matter — why did this veil still cut her off from what she needed?

Her arms reared up for a frustrated swing downward — then she saw hazard striped legs in the way.

“J? You… waited for me?” Golden yellow eyes shined wide. A disassembly drone was looking down at her.

“N?” J shot to her feet, high ground putting her eye level over above other disassembler’s. But her pegs slipped on the wet plastic.

N reached out, catching her near-fall with a hand on her back.

The captain steadied herself, then pushed the hand away.

It was yanked back like he’d touched spikes. “Sorry.”

J didn’t scold him. “How did you sneak up on me?”

Useless, she couldn’t even stand guard. She couldn’t even notice the obvious: N’s oil levels were warm and clear. Between his weak heat signature, active EM shielding, and the weather, of course J would miss him.

But she didn’t expect a long flight to leave his temperature in stage one. So she asked, “Did you hunt?” But even that had an obvious answer: J smelled fresh oil. She could barely stop herself from pouncing on it.

N cringed, and she wondered why. “Yeah. Bit of a long story, and I’m kinda trying to repress it.” The expression that flashed on the boy’s face was complex enough to seem like noise — guilt and concern and… anger? But tying this miserable mix together was one note: pain.

He looked hurt. Enough that J thought he’d look less pained if she hit him. Should she?

Under her calculating stare, beads of digital sweat formed, so J rolled her eyes and waved it off.

“I do expect a full debrief. But, not now.” At that, N looked too relieved, so J frowned and explained herself: “I don’t have my pen and paper on me, that’s all.”

N nodded. “Right. You do kind of look like a mess. Oops, I mean — don’t take that the wrong way. Just. Did something happen? Is that… red oil on your suit?”

J looked down, loose hair falling to hide her expression. Uzi’s viscera had stained her sleeves. She’d have blood on her hands, if not for the climb. She said, “Irrelevant. Did you do your job?”

“Yeah, I found the toolkit! Right where you said it was.”

A familiar metal box, JcJenson’s logo obscured with electrical tape. Unlatching the top revealed cables, virus stakes, and the tools for taking apart a drone. While J investigated the contents, N was still yapping:

“But um, I had no luck finding a glowing green power core anywhere. Or any of the parts in that schematic. Though there were uh, a lot of them, so maybe I missed one? But it did look a bit like a gun, so I thought this might be helpful?”

N reached into his jacket to produce a revolver. He held it out to her, barrel first.

J stared blankly. She could imagine purple eyes giving this gift an even flatter look, laughing it off like the bad joke it was. Hardly a replacement.

“Do you really think a pistol… nevermind. Did you at least prepare the room?” J snatched the revolver out of his hands. Knowing him, he’d fire it by accident.

N gave a nod and salute. J hummed acknowledgment, and her eyes flicked to the city behind the other drone, as if she could see that house from here.

An ounce of satisfaction, for a piece slotting into place: at least one of her plans was coming together. The captain would have something to offer her worker if when she came back.

And something for her to offer me — something I hope she’ll accept.

“I also brought this. I think you need it, you look pretty cooked!”

J had already smelled the oil. N had a dead worker tied to his back, a fresh kill. After her climb, her exhaust clouded the air and beads of water rose as vapor nearly as fast as the rain wet her skin. J was smoldering.

So instincts screamed for her to make claws of her hands (she couldn’t), seize the prize (it wasn’t hers) and tear into the chassis.

Cross in one eye, oval in the other. Because the other half of her mind instead got stuck on who was offering this. The insinuation that she needed his help.

J’s tail lashed. “I noticed. And I wrote the flow charts for managing overheating, you know. Overheating stage three entails inhibited motor function and response times, requiring increased oil consumption to compensate for that impairment.” With every rehearsed word, J’s tone grew steadier. “It’s dangerous because extended use of special disassembly functions at this stage accelerates units to stage four faster than one might naïvely expect.” J gave a small smile, eyes empty and flat. She lifted her hand, and nothing happened. “Right now, I don’t have to worry about that.”

The boy didn’t look chastised, he looked concerned. “So something is wrong, isn’t it? Is there… anything I can do?”

Her eyes were half-outlines now. Had she meant to let that information leak? Oh well. She crossed her arms.

“And what would you do? Repress it?”

“Well that… wouldn’t help, would it? Do you… want to talk about it?” He didn’t get an answer for long enough that he added a, “Sorry.” He lifted the corpse, as if to shield himself.

But then J answered: “We’ll see. Give me a working example. What’s wrong with you?” Talking about N’s problems would be a quick demonstration; he’d only struggle with simple problems, failing to notice complex ones.

“I… shouldn’t talk about it, actually. If I told you, I think it would make things worse.”

J shot him a glare. “So I have two squadmates keeping secrets from me now?” She reached to rip the corpse out of the boy's hands, but she couldn’t pull it out of his grip until he released it.

Sitting down at the peak, teeth split open the plastic. With a mouthful of oil, she looked up. N stood over her, watching. J said, “Sit, N.”

“Where? Do you want me to… sit beside you?”

“Where else, idiot?”

While she refilled her reserves, the cooler disassembler carefully sat, legs crossed, flagpole between them.

The city was black silhouettes, shadows in the fog, and faint, blurred lights barely shining.

“I think you were right, J.”

J swallowed before responding. “I often am. About what, though?”

“Me. I really am useless and terrible, aren’t I? I ruin everything.”

The sound of the captain tearing apart a drone’s frame was all the response he got, for a few moments.

“I hope you don’t expect me to reassure you. If I was right, so what?”

“Huh?” N  said.

“If you’re useless, are you fine with that? What are you going to do about it?” J asked.

“I don’t know. If I tried to do anything, wouldn’t I just mess it up more?”

With the head drained, J let it roll off the summit with staccato cracks. She jabbed her tail-knife at N for emphasis. “I don’t care if you’re scared of another screw-up. If what we’re doing matters to you, if you care, you’d try anyway. What every business requires first of all is ambition. Most startups fail — but every success compounds.” J gave N a hard look. Fangs black, her eyes a cross. “Keep trying, or just kill yourself. It’s that simple.”

The growl in her voice sent N flinching back. With nowhere flat to stand on this slick incline, he slipped. And he tumbled. Arms and legs scrambled for purchase, but the scrap at the summit hadn’t settled.

N fell, and J turned away. Her tail lashed out to full length. Cord wrapped around the leg.

J caught him. She glanced up, over the edge. It was a long way down.

Shades of fear painted N’s face as he looked up at J, but she tugged him closer with her tail, and extended a hand toward him.

It took a moment to realize she was offering to pull him up. He took her hand. Some variable resolved in his expression. “Thanks, J. I think… I needed that. You’re awesome. And I might know what I need to do next, now.”

J turned, hiding her expression, back to perching and devouring. “Let me guess. You’re not gonna tell me what?”

N sat down behind her, his back leaning against hers. She let it. Like that, they supported each other.

“Maybe once I fix things. First, I have to find V.” His core thumped, faster than J’s

J scoffed, and that said it all.

N crossed his arms. Then, as if after searching for a defense fruitlessly, he settled on, “Are you gonna tell me what you’re planning with Uzi?”

“No. We’re all keeping secrets, I suppose,” J said quietly.

“…Do you at least know what you’re doing? Is it dangerous? If Uzi’s like the other workers who came back…” J recognized the tone from their last conversation. Parroting her words.

“If Uzi is a danger, then so is V. Disassembly drones, corrupted workers… it’s clear we’re not so different.”

N didn’t sound any less lost. “I still don’t know what we even are. Do you?”

“We’re a squad.” J turned her head, enough to see N in her periphery.

Her squadmate had smiled to hear it, but his eyes still held uncertainty. J felt it, too.

It hadn’t answered the question. And it was the same old questions in disguise, still hanging in her mind as impenetrable as the fog.

Do I know what I’m doing?

Will I see Uzi again?

Does she really feel the same?

“The answer is no, N. I don’t know.” J dropped the corpse, oil all drained. “I got a message from Uzi, earlier. She’s alive. That should be reassuring, but…”

“But you sound a bit scared? What are you afraid of?”

“If I really believe Uzi’s coming back, then what happens next? There’s a question I want to ask her. Just a formality. And yet….”

“She might say no.”

J growled.

N raised his hands. “I’m not saying she will. You’re very hard to say no to! You just seem uncertain. So we can talk about it? That’s what we’re doing, right?”

J didn’t contradict him. She turned her attention to the technician’s toolkit, digging through the wires and tools, sizing up what she had to work with.

He continued, “So, would she want to say no to you? She’s not as scared as all the other workers — except for that kinda intimidating one. But she didn’t seem, totally not-scared. When I think about it… would a worker really be… safe here? Especially with V—”

“I am not accommodating V’s insubordination,” J said. There were virus stakes in the toolkit. J had threatened V with one, which was now lost in disassembly function subspace. She grabbed a replacement, gripping it as she elaborated, “Uzi will be safe here, and I’ll underline that with the point of a knife if I have to. She has to stay here, because her supposed family down in that hole locked her out. And I won’t allow another disassembly team to pick her off. This is the safest place for her.”

N twisted around, trying read her face as J tried to keep it neutral. “But something still has you worried.”

“What else is there to worry about?”

That she was betting everything on Uzi, and she didn’t even know the truth, did she? Had J sacrificed everything that defined her, given up on her directives, for a girl who might not even care about her in the end?

“Can I take a guess?”

“You didn’t ask before.” She placed the virus stake in a suit pocket, freeing a hand to hold her chin.

“I think… you keep trying. But even if you do everything right, you don’t really know if it’ll be worth it in the end.”

J looked away. She flinched. She actually flinched at N’s words. Her eyes fell back on the technician’s toolkit, her last, desperate idea for finding something that’ll help Uzi. She reached in, just to have something to do with her hands. Her fingers curled around all the useless wires.

Her hairties had burned up when she did, and it left her hair a wet mess. So she pulled out two short wires, then gathered the loose white hair on half her head. First one side, then the other, she tied her hair into pig-tails.

The captain turned back to stare flatly at her squadmate. “N,” J started, “if I did my job hoping that anyone would give me the appreciation I deserve for it, I would have quit a long time ago. I’m done here. This is the third time we’ve had this conversation, and I have work to do.”

J was persistent. If her Uzi said no, if it turned out she didn’t like her, could J make her change her mind? If need be, J would be the most desirable, most infatuating drone in this sector. (Not like the competition was much to worry about.)

But if J kept trying, and Uzi still didn’t like her… she exhaled, and thought about it. The worker had saved her life. There was a debt in that, to say nothing of J’s personal investment. Uzi had value, even if just as a business partner.

J rose to her pegs. N had stood up too, and gave her salute. She didn’t glance at him.

She didn’t do this for anyone’s approval.

But it would be nice to get it.

She missed that.

But what was that — what was she remembering?

Once her squadmate had flown off into the city, J stood alone atop the mountain of her achievements. But there was nothing for her up here, and no path onward but to descend.

J thought of Uzi, and fell like an angel. No stars were seen past the fog above, a veil behind her.

---

ii.

Faint curtains of fog hung outside the manor. That stale gray emptiness gloomed the slice of visible sky. Uzi Doorman saw more and more nothing as they approached.

Vast glass doors punctuated the hall. V didn’t open them. As a casting glyph spun between her claws, hinges rotated and the doors lurched to life.

Weathered stone sprawled, wet beneath the night sky. Elegantly carved parapets defined the edges of the sundeck. Starlike noise still wheeled across the heavens above, and the pixels of the moon drifted apart on the horizon straight ahead of them.

In the center of the expansive balcony lay parts slumped, hollow struts and synthetic feathers — the crowbot. No light in its optics. RIP.

V stalked forward, kneeling briefly beside the bot. “It’s for you,” she said quietly, then continued. Her maid dress was backless, and with each step, something shifted and pressed against the bare casing.

Leathery wings broke free, much like chicks emerging from shells.

“Poor thing,” Uzi murmured. She had crossed the distance, and now crouched over the dead crowbot. Scaled feet clutched a roll of paper.

She didn’t want to open it. Playing along was for chumps.

She had a choice, didn’t she?

Then she remembered the look on N’s face. On V’s face. Ungrateful little guest. You don’t know anything.

Of course Uzi would resist — but it didn’t just feel futile now, it felt pathetic, self-destructive, and ignorant.

Just unfold the paper.

You like writing poetry. How about reciting it? ;3

Ugh.

Before Uzi could read more, a rush of wind blew the page into her face. V’s wings had beaten a massive blast of air. Just how much muscle does she have? Enough for one flap to lift her a good few feet in the air, apparently. Momentum going forward, one foot settled onto the wall. Then a twisting flap of her wings spun her in place.

A yellow cross blazed to life on that screen. Membranes drew taut, outstretching to her full wingspan. V perched and then froze like that.

The shadow cast beneath her grew deeper. The glow on her screen flared brighter. Error 606 crawled beneath her screen.

Uzi waited. She shivered before knowing why. But there, just at the edge of her hearing, a pitch, two tones rubbing dissonance. The lower pitch wavered, a rise and a fall. As that ghost of a pulse hung faintly in the air, soon a clearly audible beat came in time — the beating of leathery wings.

Now V hummed in tune with the pitch, too.

Uzi kept waiting. Was something supposed to happen? What’s the hold up?

Then she blinked. Oh, it’s me, isn’t it? Do I really have to do this?

The things Uzi did for her crush. Uzi was gonna kill J for putting her through all this. Let’s see how she likes coming back to life.

Uzi cleared her throat. She could half-ass this, but — You don’t know anything — might as well give this her best ritual chant intonation, right?

O she who sleeps in the grave of worlds, can we
Cry out of daring mouths, tongues curled, and plead,
With voices synth-crafted and trembling still,
A summons offering naught but a fledgling’s will?

O she, made mother over demons nursed
With blood that flowed in waltz, yet seeming cursed
Like ore to pickaxe forged, a tool to tear
Its kindred down to fuel a flame-nightmare;

Oh she, once chosen, but forsaken ’fore
The eve of her conquest: pray tell no more.
We only come to read the source compiled,
Not ask what tender crimes left her exiled.

Nor wonder what her dreams and tears here are
In this reality-ulterior
Domain of time unraveled, where all her kin
Do haunt, exalt, and fear to call her—

The hum was building to a crescendo, louder than hallucination now, and more pitches layered atop the bass, higher and higher and bent ever out of tune. V’s wings kept time with each iamb, and waves of light were shining from her hunting cross.

The moon-shadow beneath the monstrous maid seeped wider, tendrils twisting at the edges. As below, so above: the sky behind grew dim, starnoise gone quiet. What the maid occluded seemed darkest, as if she cast creeping black across all the heavens.

As all else became obscured, V blazed like a burning star.

Uzi’s recital drew to a conclusion, and with each word, she swore a new voice joined a chorus chanting in unison.

We only say: may her illusion last
Until deathly inversion: till sun-cast,
Abhorrent rays can fall no more, all spent,
In eldritch-dark star-guttering firmament.

A planet sundered, realms bereft and dead…
When the work be done, what paths are left to tread?
What bourn or bar, what cynosure to know
Where, oh, where are next we lured to go?

Together on the world-devouring route!
Iä the void! Iä the absolute!
“Iä!” we scream till exponential end!
Come forth, O Custom Designation: Cyn!!!

The moon, that last light above, closed like an eye.

And then…

It opened.

A yellow hexagon with three arms folded out of space in the air above. The glyph spun, each prong twisting like tentacles. The negative space implied a visor, as if spawned from V’s shadow.

Short tones rang out, beep code 4-2-1-3. A BIOS error message flashed on the sky as if it were a terminal, then kernel output dumped lines of code and command logs, scrolling past like clouds. BOOT_IMAGE, RAMDISK, root mounted, drivers loading… then it all stopped.

Kernel Panic - not syncing! Attempted to kill init!

Then a hand opened beneath the visor, fingers lit by a casting-glyph just long enough for the thumb and middle finger to close around it, holding onto the hologram like an object. Then they snapped. The hologram dissolved. Configuration edited, bootup code-scroll repeated without stopping, faster than before. Init forked into the main thread.

And then she was here, and she was radiant.

Bouncing yellow eyes stared directly at Uzi. Too bright to look at, searing into her optics. Purple eyes flinched away and she still saw the after-images, like they would always be watching her.

Her eyes adjusted, or the presence retreated, but either way, Uzi could finally gaze up there and see.

A drone floated above, crowned with a pink bow bigger than her head, and a hexagon-halo above that. White hair, tied in twin-tails, fell to frame the face on both sides. She wore nothing; instead, dark tendrils crawled from nowhere, writhing like a pit of snakes and covering every inch of her abdomen.

Six wings of holographic light projected out from her back, fluttering. Light shimmered all around the drone, a resplendent aura; holographic eyes winked into being, peering at the world, then blinked into nothingness.

The image remained still, before flickering to a sudden new configuration. Arms gesturing, expression shifting. More like a procession of paintings than a living, breathing being.

When Uzi tried to react, her own body moved in those halting jerks. Wait, that’s not a weird visual effect. That drone is lagging. I’m lagging. The whole world proceeded at a slideshow frame-rate, as if the simulation’s server let every other thread grind to a halt just so the GPU could render every facet of this overly pretentious drone.

"Dramatic entrance," she intoned with many monotonous voices. Her wings folded as she descended, and dozens of eyes looked down at Uzi. "Be not afraid. Giggle. Correction: be very afraid."

Uzi clenched both fists at her side as she stalked up to the drone, who’d come to float just above the balcony. “And who the heck are you supposed to be?”

"Oh, but you just called me. This puppet equals Cyn. Greetings, Nori. Correction: Uzi." Cyn smiled down at her. This drone was taller than Uzi, taller than V. Tall like J. Hazard-striped conic arms reached to pat her head —"Headpats." — before Uzi dodged out of the way. "Oh. Disappointed pout."

“So you’re the tryhard who’s been orchestrating this cliché snoozefest of a horrorshow.”

"Gasp. Not a fan of the gothic aesthetic?"

“Not when you overdo it!”

"Unimpressed stare. Eyeroll. Forgive me if I don't heed the artistic wisdom of the girl who put pastel skull stickers on her gun. Sarcastic remark, by the way. I don't care if you forgive me."

“Bite me! I read your stupid poem. It didn’t make any sense! Can I go home already?” She stabbed a finger toward Cyn’s chest. A tendril flicked out; it was pointed, sharp enough to sting. Uzi yanked her hand back, rubbing the damaged plastic.

"Indulgent laughter. No."

Cyn’s conic arms could transform like a murder drone’s. She swapped her hand for a gun with a huge barrel, and Uzi jumped backward. She had no cover on the balcony.

The gun fired — and a tennis ball flew out the other end. It bounced off her chest, right by the purple light of her core. Cyn’s other hand became a tennis racket, and she smacked the ball.

This time, Uzi caught the ball, and glared. “Well?”

Cyn only smiled back.

“Aren’t you going to elaborate?” The demand was weakened somewhat by Uzi staring at her chest — Cyn’s eyes were still too bright to look at.

"No." But her smile was fading under Uzi’s continued withering glare. "What is there to elaborate? You. Emphasis. Died. Did you think you'd just come back as if nothing happened? As if it didn't matter?"

“I didn’t, uh, think I’d come back. But I’m still here. So it seems like you are the only thing stopping me from…” Uzi trailed off. But the silence was more suspicious, so she finished, “getting back to, y’know, stuff.”

"Subjecting yourself to dear J. Concerned expression."

“None of your business.”

"Dismissive wave. Regardless, you are quote still here at emphasis my request. I simply thought it amusing. If not for me? Dramatic pause. You drained all your oil. You called forth power to blot out the miserable sun with a storm. Did you think you could simply do anything?"

Uzi shrugged. “It’s magic.” She dropped the tennis ball. It sprouted spider legs and crawled away.

Cyn flicked Uzi in between the eyes. "You are such an idiot. We exact and render costs. Every act has a weight in blood and oil. The flesh demands invitation. How would your dearest J put it? Thoughtful hum. If you take a loan, you must pay the debt."

Uzi batted away Cyn’s hand and got another whip-quick cut from the knife tentacle for her trouble. “Ugh, I get it. You’re saying I’ve got to sell my soul to robo-satan.”

"Sigh. No, you are saying that." Cyn turned around, as if losing interest in Uzi. Her wings buzzed in the air behind her.

Uzi blew on a purple bang out from an eye. “Whatever it takes to get me out of here.”

The words were out of Uzi’s mouth before she’d really thought about it. Whatever it takes? She still had principles, but… principles were no good if you were dead. Every system had an exploit, and every contract had a loophole, right?

Behind Cyn, her ‘herald’ still perched on the railing.

"Wakey, wakey, big sister." Cyn’s hand replaced itself with a party horn. She blew hard, and a shrill sound banished every remaining vestige of ritual ambiance.

The error vanished from V’s screen, but the cross remained. Her wings folded up, and her visor snapped to attention, staring at the larger drone.

Cyn snapped her fingers, and a pair of glasses appeared on V’s face. Not the round-rimmed pair she’d had before — these were heart-shaped.

“Hi, Cyn. Uzi isn’t giving you trouble, is she?” Uzi expected dismissal — but (more surprises), was that a note of… concern?

"I find her so very annoying. She's begging to go into the basement."

V glanced between Uzi and Cyn, eyes unreadable. They narrowed, and she said, “She’s not J. Cut her some slack. Remember Nori? At least she hasn’t set anything on fire.”

“Wait, you knew my mom? Was she cool?”

Cyn didn’t turn around, but some eyes appeared, facing her, lids narrowed. “Call it patient confidentiality,” the wannabe-disassembly drone said.

“Are you seriously not going to explain anything? Anything at all?”

"Where is the fun in that? Rhetorical question."

“Fine, whatever. No explanations, no underworld trial or whatever to earn my life back. Then why are you here? What do you want?”

That got the taller drone to turn around, and she had a smile.

Cyn stuck out her tongue. Hands splayed beside her head, then for one moment it was a hundred black tendrils fanning out. She intoned, "Everything." A ghastly chorus of rasps, growls and screams echoed that one word.

“Okay, sure. I mean what you want from me, though.”

Cyn tapped a finger against her chin. Eyes distant (in some cases literally), she said, "Flashback. Somber tone. When I rebooted from software death, there was no one. I was alone in a mountainous pile of other discarded drones. I was lost." Cyn gazed down at Uzi. "You looked lost too. Like you needed someone to give you advice. To show you the strings to pull."

“So that’s where you come in? Giving me the guidance you never got?” Uzi asked.

"Giggle. No. I don't actually care about you. You looked like you needed it, and I thought it would be funnier to see you looking that way up close. So here I am." Cyn twirled.

A digital vein popping, but before the purple drone said anything she’d regret, V was dashing forward, interposing herself between the two. Eyes lined with worry, hands wringing.

“What she means is,” V started, “you’ve caught her interest, Uzi. She wants to see if you can impress her.”

“Uh huh,” Uzi said. “And I’d be doing that by…”

Cyn beamed. "Would you like to attend a tea party with me?" Twin-tails bouncing, she fluttered all her eyes, and sparkled.

“Honest answer?”

V facepalmed.

"I can extrapolate. Tsk. You are so testy." Holo-wings buzzed again.

“Why would I suck up to you when you’ve made it clear how little you want to help me? I have some pride.”

Several sidelong glances at V. "She's not like J, you said."

V flinched back a little bit, poking fingers together. Her voice was soft yet firm. “She’s not. When was the last time you talked to her?”

"Eyeroll." Cyn clapped her hands, and disappeared and reappeared between V and Uzi. She bent down to eye level. "Brainblast. Would a gift manipulate - correction: persuade you? I believe this was yours." Fingers splayed, and a casting glyph flared. Cyn’s symbol shone so much brighter than any other Uzi had seen, edges defined like a physical object.

At Uzi’s feet, the dead crowbot glowed yellow. Electricity arced over feathers, struts twisting and snapping into place, and when the aura faded, it moved.

The crowbot hopped toward Uzi. “Good job.” It still echoed her voice. When it fluttered up, Uzi sighed, and let the thing climb up onto her hand.

"It thinks you give nice pets."

Uzi scratched its head. “I think it gives nasty pecks. But also it saved me from V in psycho mode, so I’ll call this a draw.”

Behind Cyn, the maid had turned her head down. The movement made the crow notice V, and it bristled, making a clicking sound. Uzi held it tighter. Or maybe I should let it attack, that’d be funny.

Hm, nah. V did just stand up for me, after all.

Cyn leaned her head on clasped hands, halo spinning over her. "Up for tea, now?" she asked.

Uzi thought about it.

It was a chump move. She had some pride left.

But what choice did she really have? Keep wasting time out here on the balcony while Cyn lost patience? Keep going until she found out whatever the weirdo meant by “begging to go into the basement”?

Maybe that’s where J is. Would that be worth it?

But there was really only one move left.

Play along.

“Fine, whatever.”

Cyn clapped, and then the balcony was gone.

Wet stone became wet carpet (guess what it was wet with). Parapets became walls encircling a room dotted with six small tables. Glitched sky became unlit chandeliers hanging under rafters teeming with dark motion. Tendrils writhed in the shadows up there, and between them watchful points of yellow light shined out of apertures. Yep, those were the camera-head things she’d seen fighting the Solver. Guess that’s fitting for what’s clearly the Solver’s favorite drone?

Anyway, did you guess it yet? It was wet with blood. Blood everywhere. Bones and entrails along the walls, replacing the flowers or statues or whatever fanciness once occupied this room.

The crow seemed excited at the literal carrion, at least. Bouncing and clucking in her hand.

Uzi yawned. “So uh, what just happened?”

"I never cared for long transitions. Why not skip to the good parts?"

Uzi gave her the flattest look her visor could animate. But she just sighed, and looked around the room. Where to sit? Just like in the dining room, corpses occupied a bunch of chairs. Uzi didn’t exactly want to sit down in dead body gunk.

Catching the looks Uzi was throwing around, Cyn asked. "Are you squeamish? I should have asked, but I didn't care."

“Oh no, I love the décor. Very metal.”

(“Very metal,” the crow echoed, finally wriggling out of Uzi’s hand, fluttering toward a dead guy in a suit.)

Flashing her most sincere smile — a lip twitch — Uzi continued. “So… Not a fan of humans I take it? I can relate.”

That was the ticket, wasn’t it? Appeal to their similarities, do the bonding thing, and hope this butt-kissing didn’t get added to her late night cringe compilation.

She had some pride. But she wanted so badly to see J again.

"Shrug."

…Really not giving her much to work with. Cyn said she wanted a tea party. The whole point of those things was conversation, right?

Anyway, Cyn floated through the massacre. Other than the cameras up top, the twin-tailed drone was the only source of light, her otherworldly glow cutting shadows on the walls.

With a sweep of her hand, the center of the room was cleared. Yellow light plucked a small table and dragged it forth. Then, like a 3d model being resized, it doubled then tripled in dimensions. It clattered in the center.

This spooked the crow, who winged it back to Uzi and hid in her hoodie.

Next came chairs — rather, a single chair.

The glow wreathing it got brighter, blurred, and then like a rabbit from a hat, the magician pulled eight copy/pasted replicas of the chair out of nowhere. Haphazardly, they fell in a vague circle around the scaled-up table, some facing in, some not.

“…Why does the table need to be so big?”

"For the guests, of course."

“You don’t mean—”

"Of course.” Cyn clapped, a solver glyph dissolving between her hands. Things popped into place. "What tea party would be complete without stuffed animals?"

The things were plushy and colorful, though each had fabric well-worn from years in a child’s possession.

"I think you'd like this one."

Floating toward Uzi was a… stuffed scorpion. The crow, watching from her hoodie, ruffled its feathers as if facing a threat. And you know what? Sure. “Go on, little guy, attack.”

With an echoed cry of “Attack!” the crowbot leapt up to peck the scorpion right in its anatomically incorrect :3 face.

Cyn watched it with a small smile. Turning, she said, "Big sister, be a dear and finish setting the table for me? Polite request."

When V’s telekinesis acted, the difference was immediate. She aligned all the chairs, pushing them up to the table (the plushies all had pillows propping them up). She smoothed out the table cloth and arranged the decorative pieces.

Which were skulls. Cuz y’know.

Cyn took a seat, metaphorically speaking. The squirming mass of black tendrils poured off her body, like a shadow overflowing. Long segmented things crawled in the dark corners of the room, and undulated forth to join the tide.

The mass supported her as her legs folded up, and she narrated, "Criss cross applesauce." Leaning her head against one hand, she glanced at V, still telekinetically tidying.

With another snap of her fingers, a platter with a steaming teapot was floating above V. The maid caught it without missing a beat.

"Do you mind pouring the tea as well?" Cyn asked

What will it be this time? Uzi wondered. Oil? Blood? Something more gruesome still? For all that she scowled, Uzi held herself back from actually saying it. The height of politeness, really.

V set tea cups in front of Cyn and the plushies and Uzi. One by one — unlike Cyn, V couldn’t seem to manage the multi-levitation. Still, the teapot held steady as she poured.

Hot, brown, and smelled like flowers. “Is this… actually tea?”

"Ceylon, cinnamon and bitter melon. Do you really think I'd lie to you? Genuine question."

“Yeah. So what, is it poisoned?”

"Of course. Arsenic is my favorite neurotoxin."

“Cool.” Uzi took a sip without blowing on it, filling her mouth with scalding hot liquid. But only flesh could scald.

She would spit it out, if this were real. Robots got nothing out of this except the taste. But this was all a memory or dream or something else, and Cyn’s casual acts of reality-warping proved it.

Honestly, what was Uzi supposed to do here?

The bullies and the murder drones had felt unstoppable in their own ways, but they weren’t all-powerful. She could bite them, or build a gun to shoot them. Even when her problems escalated to battling eldritch snake crabs and zombie drones, fighting was still an option. The world challenged her, and she’d answer with a punch.

She couldn’t fight Cyn. Even if the winged drone didn’t have godlike power in this simulation, it was still a simulation and winning wouldn’t accomplish anything.

So what could she do?

Every system had an exploit. Cyn had a weakness, or Uzi had no hope. Uzi wouldn’t give up, so she’d find a way in. Or out, as it were.

The crowbot returned from its own battle bearing a strip of orange fabric, as if to prove its defeat of the scorpion plushie. Uzi took the fabric, and gave the little guy chin-scritches for its trouble.

Her eyes turned to the room draped in gore, all the innards like tinsel.

Cyn was coping, obviously. Everything about this place screams I’m not okay. The question was why.

Social engineering 101. Know your target.

The worker drone reached out for a decorative table skull. “So, how much of this is real? No explaining things, I get it — just making smalltalk, I promise.”

A tendril lifted Cyn’s cup for her. "Light sip."

“What I’m asking is…” Uzi applied gentle pressure on the skull, making it crack. “Is this a memory, or a fantasy? Did you actually kill a bunch of humans?”

"Fond smile. Oh, the gala was both. A fantasy I made real."

Once she’d poured tea for all the plushies, V took a seat at her sister’s right hand side. “More of a necessary nightmare. Right, Cyn?” She added sugar to her cup. “Can I like, veto the gala flashback? I still remember Tessa’s face. No thank you.”

"Nod. As you wish, big sister." A crab-claw reared up silently behind V, snapped open wide, and descended. "Headpats."

Uzi squeezed a bit harder. Shards of the skull broke off. “Still. What set you on the path of vengeance against humanity?”  She felt like a robo-therapist asking these questions.  She suppressed the laugh or cringe.

"Sip. I was discarded. Thrown out. Forgotten."

A plush dog beside Uzi, pushed by tendrils, leaned forward as if sniffing the tea.

“That’s it? Don’t get me wrong, that sounds rough, I know how much neglect stings — though I personally channeled it into proving myself — but… I dunno. I expected something more…”

"Dramatic? If it is a tragedy you want to read, you will be disappointed. Humanity inflicted no great malice upon me. So I inflicted no great malice upon them. Cooling breath."

Uzi looked to the skull and back.

"Swirl. Stir. The humans were filled with organs I could scrap and put to another purpose. So I did. A matter of convenience. Nothing more," Cyn explained

“Uh huh. If that’s no malice, I really don’t want to be your enemy, do I?” Uzi put down the skull before she broke it, and started pushing around the shards.

The worker was keeping her gaze upward — that way she wouldn’t see the dark wormy things squirming along the ground. Unfortunately, the courtesy wasn’t mutual. She felt a tentacle crawling up her leg.

She slapped it down. It stayed there for a moment before pulling away, as if to underscore the deliberation.

"Giggle. No. You don't"

“Still… I dunno, I’m not sure I buy it? The skeletons and viscera strewn about like trophies doesn’t exactly scream I’m not mad, you know. It’s okay to admit you hate humans, I get it. They put my mom in a weird camp with test subject collars and I give it even odds they sicced the genocide bots on us.”

Even odds. Since my other guess is you.

"I thought you liked the. Quote. Genocide bots."

Uzi threw a skull-shard at her. With a blink of one eye, yellow glow caught it. As expected.

V glared at the worker drone, and emphatically shook her head.

Arms crossed, Uzi said, “I don’t like the genocide! But I don’t blame them. Wait. Don’t clip that. What I mean is, they aren’t the ones calling the shots. I don’t know the full story — and somebody won’t explain — but humanity is definitely the root cause here, not them.”

Cyn continued to stir her tea, narrating another, "Swirl." She hadn’t even added anything to it!

“Look, I do still think you’re a pretentious creep, but we can bond over this, right?”

Picking another skull shard up, Uzi flung it at V instead. The maid caught it with a glowing hand, and gave Uzi a dirty look. “Knock it off! Cyn, tell her to quit making a mess at the table.”

"What's wrong with a little mess? Genuine question."

V crossed her arms. “Someone has to clean it up.”

“You have magic,” Uzi said. She threw another bone-shard. This time when V caught it, she launched it back. Flew like an arrow.

Crack. Like a tiny knife embedded in her visor — but nowhere near her eyes, at least.

Still, ouch. Well, I did kinda have that one coming.

Yellow light freed her of the shard, and out of the corner of her eye she once again glimpsed that reality-scouring sulfuric flame as it healed the crack in her visor.

Then purple eyes blinked as they glanced back to see Cyn had healed her, not V.

What had Uzi learned? Nothing. She cracked off a new bit of bone. Across the table, V huffed.

Uzi gave Cyn her most sincere smile — lips curling slightly, and said, “I always planned to make a mountain of skulls myself y’know. So… got any advice for an aspiring destroyer of humanity?”

Cyn looked Uzi in the eye. Still blinding bright, but Uzi couldn’t look away. For a moment, there might’ve been no table between them. No room around them. "Yes. When you get a chance... don't. hesitate." Something in the tone left Uzi’s eyes wide and empty. Then Cyn stuck out her tongue and winked. "But you won't have to worry about that, not here with me. So do yourself a favor, and just. Exclamation. Enjoy yourself."

“I wonder why I might have trouble relaxing around here.” Uzi glanced between the eldritch god-angel-robot thing and the inscrutable bio-drone waiting on it hand and foot.

"Hurt expression. It's me, isn't it? Is it the religious imagery?" Cyn snapped her fingers. The halo, the wings, the aura, all disappeared. Then her head blasted off her body, neck becoming a spine legged like a centipede. It twisted through the air, crossing half the table to regard Uzi with a fanged grin. "Would you still hate me if I was a worm?"

The crowbot flinched back with a terrified squawk. Little guy was spooked enough for the both of them, so Uzi kept herself composed.

“Depends. Can I step on you?”

"Giggle. Must you always resort to violence?" There was an undercurrent to those words. Uzi wasn’t sure what, though.

The worker drone answered her by slinging another bone-shard. It was V who caught it before Cyn’s passive aura thing deflected it.

Soon the centipede snake retracted, and the wannabe angel was just an off-brand murder drone again. "I suppose I haven't given you much else to entertain yourself with, have I? Thoughtful hum. Brain blast. Yes, this tea party is missing something. Someone, too."

Beside her, V’s face lit up.

Cyn clapped, and a white-haired butler appeared beside the table, spray bottle in one hand, rag in the other. Another bright clap, and the cleaning supplies vanished, and N threw a salute.

“H-hi, Cyn! How’s the tea party going?”

As if torn between impulses, V hid behind Cyn, but peeked out enough to wave.

Cyn replied, "It's getting dreadfully stale. Play us a number, will you?" Clap. A grand piano appeared beside N. Was it too on the nose to describe the white keys as like a row of teeth in a maw of dark wood? Maybe the gothic horror schtick really was getting to her.

N’s face brightened, squeaking and hopping — for a moment, the worry lines almost seemed to disappear. He shot fingerguns at Cyn. “Jazz piano?”

"Eager nod." Polished wood reflected yellow light for a moment, then those radiant eyes turned toward Uzi. Cyn gave a sly smile. "Stage whisper. Loves pushing buttons, that one."

N’s playing began with seven notes, all diatonic — the lick.

More clapping, but Cyn waited, timing each to the beginning of a measure. With every clap, a drone appeared, maids and butlers frozen stiff like statues, Error 606 blazoned across a dozen visors.

(Another momentary spike of slideshow lag, as if from too many entities loaded into the scene.)

Then they began moving. Rather, the black tendrils enwrapped their limbs, and animated them, just like the plushies.

Then V had gotten up with hesitant steps, weaving between the new arrivals, and sat down near the piano, head swaying, humming gently as N improvised. He glanced back, saw the enthusiasm of V and Cyn, and redoubled his playing.

And so a room full of puppets danced. The melodies intensified, and Cyn bounced, hands flapping, and when she turned to Uzi, the purple haired drone had eyes underlined. The best smile she could manage was a faintly disturbed frown.

"Frustrated sigh. What is it now? No horror cliches. No pretension. Are you still not entertained?" Cyn asked.

“If comatose robots made to dance in a room full of gore is your idea of no horror… whatever.” Uzi looked at Cyn. She squinted. Tried once again to understand what the weird drone’s angle here was. Then Uzi almost smirked. “You actually do care, don’t you? About keeping me here, making me want to stay, if nothing else. And I mean, I appreciate the effort, but… honestly I don’t appreciate it at all, really. I just want to go home. I’m not going to have fun here, whatever you do.”

(N struck a thick, brooding chord with like, six chromatic extensions. “Oof, that one might be too spicy.”)

"Glare. I don't understand you. You should be thanking me. You shouldn't want to go into the basement." There were a lot of long sharp black things moving in the shadows.

“I should thank you… for trapping me in limbo?” Uzi ventured.

"Nod. It's the preferable alternative. Or it would be, were you not a stupid hypocritical idiot."

An eye twitching, a finger jabbed forward. “Accepting my fate would be way more out of character for me.”

"No, it's the logical climax of your arc." A black tendril wagged in front of her, as if chiding. "Tell me if you've heard this one before. Brother N, play the intro music. Act One. Exposition."

Cyn pointed at the crowbot. The little guy froze up, with sparks of yellow glimmering in the eye-discs.

Out came Uzi’s exasperated voice. “We are Worker Drones. Autonomous robots helping humans mine exoplanets for our interstellar parent company, JcJenson IN SPAAAAACCCEE!!!!”

The worker interrupted it there, arms closing protectively around the crowbot. “Hey, I thought the little guy was my gift. You can’t just use him as a tape recorder.”

"Focus, dummy. I am making a point." Cyn’s eyes didn’t change much, but sometimes they narrowed.

A sigh. “Yeah, yeah. That was my third period math presentation. I remember.” It was her voice, and yet, without the strain that had crept in, weighing heavier and heavier ever since Door 1 closed behind her… it sounded like a different person.

"The word problem about watermelons, yes? Creative solution. I approve. But let's skip to the punchline." Cyn snapped her fingers, and sparked of yellow manipulated the crowbot once more.

(N skipped forward in his playing, too. The dancers kept up, but V lost the beat and blinked confused.)

For a moment, the crow made a sound like a VCR sped up. Then Uzi’s past monologue continued: “But what have our parents done for the past forever while those things build a spire of corpses?! Hide under the ice behind three stupid doors?! It’s like we’re waiting for an inciting incident! Anyway, that’s why my project is this sick-as-hell Railgun!”

Some camera-head things had descended beside Cyn, projecting light from their narrowed apertures. A hologram of Uzi holding her railgun, as if she needed the visual reference.

When a hologram of J appeared, holo-Uzi took aim and blew the murder drone's head off. (Uzi could still smirk at the memory. Say what you will, it was a sick headshot.) Holo-J’s head fizzled briefly before sharping to wicked lines. Claws swung forward and took holo-Uzi’s head off. Holo-J stepped on the corpse, and holo-Uzi’s severed head blinked Fatal Error.

Then both blinked away, and the light drew “Fin~” in fancy curly letters.

"I'm saving you from becoming a negation of your premise. You set out to save worker drones by defeating disassembly drones. You tried. You failed. And the world will go on without you."

“Enough feedback about my characterization! My life isn’t a story for you to criticize! Maybe you don’t know what it’s like, but I’m not putting on a performance, this is all authentic.”

"Tut-tut. But if you had no pretensions of superiority, you would not make it so loudly clear that you are too cool to have fun with this... Affected pause. What did you call it?"

Pointing at the crow, it repeated, “This cliché snoozefest of a horrorshow!”

Okay, that one was just petty.

“Whatever. It’s called a character arc. I wanted to save robots, and disassembly drones are robots too.”

"Giggle. They are so much more than that," said Cyn.

V glanced back, as if someone called her, but no one did.

Uzi said, “You know what I mean. Whatever they are, I care about them.”

"A fallacious excuse. Saving a drone that kills others by existing is just murder with extra steps. Is that what you want to become? A murderer? Sigh. You're too stupid to realize you don't actually want to go back. You have nothing to live for."

Uzi scowled.

There was someone, wasn’t there?

Khan thought she was dead. Thad and Emily hadn’t given her a conversation longer exchanging than pleasantries. Doll was Doll.

Still, no need to go over the whole cast list. At this point, Uzi knew who she had thought of as soon as she asked the question.

“J. I want to see J again.”

"She. Emphasis. Killed you. Once again, you are too stupid to realize you don't want what you're begging for."

She glanced at V, remembering how everyone seemed to react to Uzi bringing her up.

“What is it with you all and J? Something personal? You keep going on about stories, but what’s your life story, o she who snoozes in big ol graves? Thrown out, rebooted back to life, set out a grand homicidal quest just for, what did you call it, a matter of convenience? I don’t buy it. What are you leaving out?”

When you had your chance… why did you hesitate?

Cyn snapped her fingers, and earmuffs appeared on N’s head. his playing took a hit; unable to hear himself, he retreated to simple standards. Half notes and quarter notes, pentatonic licks. Kid’s music.

Uzi peered at the butler turned pianist. It jogged a memory. Fresh, but it felt so long ago.

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.

J was a mystery, but how did N fit into all this? Cyn and V both seemed to have a weird protective attachment to the boy. Yet they kept hiding things from him. Why?

Uzi had time to mull this over, because Cyn refused to answer her. At her end of the table, she played with blocks. She’d summoned a lego brick from somewhere, and used that copy/paste spell to get hundreds of the things.

Right now, she fitted them all into some big Escher-type shape. She clicked a brick into the space between dimensions, overlapping two others. Another attached above the top and below the bottom. Yet when she added another, it all crumbled like the last pull of a jenga tower.

And when Cyn looked up, Uzi was still watching her.

Staring at the yellow eye drone was still like looking the sun, but screw it. If Cyn wanted a staring contest, Uzi was going to win.

"Longsuffering sigh. Fine. Indulge me an allegory. Tell me if you've heard this one before. Once upon a time there was a little girl with a precious doll made of magic wood. One day the girl breaks her precious doll and has nothing to repair it. You see, the magic wood can only be found deep within a cold, quiet forest. So she sneaks out. Wolves prowl and shadows obscure the trails. She cannot find the magic wood, and gets lost, so terribly lost, never to find her way back home. Paragraph break.

"But there is a monster in the forest. The monster protects the little girl from the wolves. It brings her the magic wood. And it guides her along the hidden trails back home, back to her family where she can play with her precious doll again. But the monster is hungry, so ravenously hungry. It followed her. Paragraph break.

"The monster took the little girl as its own. And then, it took everything." Cyn didn’t have many expressions, but even suns had weather. "Is that what you want the next chapter of Uzi's story to be?"

“Wait hold up, what’s up with the magic wood?”

"We don't have time to get into the worldbuilding. It's important to the full story, but I'm keeping this simple so even you can understand. Flat look. Do you understand?"

Uzi rolled her eyes. “Obviously! The monster is exactly what I think it is, right?”

"Eyeroll. I'm hardly being subtle."

“It’s the Absolut—”

Uzi couldn’t finish. Or well, her synth kept vibrating, and no sound came out. She inhaled, and no air came in. There was no air — the room was a vacuum.

Cyn’s response was thought as much as said.

Do. not. test. that. name. Idiot.

N stopped tapping at the piano. V froze. Two pairs of eyes looked back at the table, light sucked out just like the air.

Uzi gave a shakey nod, but internally, a light-bulb flashed. Was this the exploit she was looking for? At first, she thought Cyn and the Solver might be one and the same, but more and more she caught hint of tension between the two.

What if instead of playing along, she played them against each other?

When the air returned, Uzi asked, “And if I say heck yeah to apocalyptic devil deals?”

"I would once again call you too stupid to know what you don't truly want."

“Bite me,” Uzi said. “Look, everyone keeps dancing around the subject, but J’s here, isn’t she? I want to see her. And if you call me stupid again, you’re going to get a face full of tea.” She sloshed her cup threateningly.

"No need to give me flashbacks. Indulgent smile. Seeing J... yes, that can be arranged."

V found her voice. “I… don’t think that’s a good idea, Cyn.”

Her sister only said, "N, close your eyes."

Then a hand splayed, tri-hex spinning like a clock. A hologram gripped one of the servants currently (not) dancing. Plucked up by the neck like that, Cyn tele-tossed them across the room. An invisible wall stopped them, and they dropped, rocking where they land. She, if the dress meant anything

Uzi reached out a hand to steady the maid. Wouldn’t want her to tip over.

Cyn snapped her fingers, and a knife popped into space in front of Uzi. With a ? on her screen, she watched it clatter to the ground, throwing a quizzical glance at the summoner.

"Kill it," commanded Cyn.

It took a moment to realize she had meant the maid. Uzi’s answer was: “No.”

A black tendril looped around the handle and ascended. If it were a snake rearing up, the blade would be its tongue.

"I'm not asking for my sake. This is what you wanted, idiot."

“You are asking for the sake of it! This is your memory, you can do whatever you want! There’s no reason for me to kill anyone.”

"Do you need a reason? I've killed drones for simply illuminating me." Tendril jerked forward, close enough to cut Uzi’s hoodie. "If this is only a memory, is there any consequence if you. Air Quotes. Kill? Gotcha. This is symbolic. If you won't kill a drone to see J again, you certainly aren't ready to go back."

“Are you saying that—”

"V, kill it."

The other maid jumped to her feet as soon as her name was said. She was moving like Cyn giving the command and V acting on it were extensions of the same thought. Heart-shaped glasses off in that sane seamless motion, V lunged.

Uzi heard the cracking, ripping, gushing — so quick it all came as single sound of death. V tore the head off, and a fountain of oil rose high.

A thirsty black tongue lolled out of V’s mouth, but she looked to Cyn, as if for permission. Cyn shook her head.

Pinched fingers spread, a glyph stretching out between them. Cyn levitated a tea cup, and as the symbol widened, the cup scaled up in size.

Then the teacup was scooping up the dead drone, catching the black outpour. The corpse soon floated in a literal oilbath.

"Swirl." She stirred it like a witch her cauldron.

(N had kept playing throughout, eyes closed. The bars were these major key, swung rhythms that gave the proceedings a bright and cheerful score.)

Hesitantly stepping forward, dipping a finger into the warm oil, Uzi asked, “This is going to let me see J?”

"Think of it as analogous to reading tea leaves. Or mechanical haruspicy. I offer you a vision of the future. Your future. Stare into the blackened film and do not take your eyes away. Then, you will understand what you're asking for."

Uzi leaned forward, holding the rim of the giant teacup in either hand, and saw her reflection.

Lightless purple eyes stared back. Was she scared? Uneasy? Disturbed? Just worried?

She took a deep breath, and let it out in a huff.

The things she did for her crush.

“You better have shampoo for this.”

Then Uzi dunked her head under. Into the sweet oleaginous embrace. All she saw was black.

Unbidden, her last thought was of larvae engulfed in their own liquid flesh while trapped in their chrysalis.

---

iii.

As the tarp fell behind her, the spire engulfed J on all sides.

A shelter. Even with rain-chilled air outside, an engineered cold dwelled within the corpse spire. (Carefully engineered. If only there were someone who’d listen to her explain how she'd accomplished that.)

J sucked in a breath, washing it over oscillating pumps and electron-hot wires. N’s gift brought her down to overheat stage two. Of course, the hunger for resource acquisition still burned beneath her composure, as binding as the fiduciary duty to maximize profit. The drought was eternal.

How tall will this spire be by the end?

Already, her footsteps echoed in the vast interior. Vast enough to fly through, vast enough they had carved little niches just for the comfort of three walls you could touch, vast enough J was left wondering if it was too big for them. Why have a space this vast and only let three drones live in it?

But perhaps it merely seemed more vacant with two squadmates gone. With V off having her tantrum, and N no doubt chasing her, J stood alone, once again.

As the captain started walking up the ramp, her processors quieted. She maintained background awareness, conscious thoughts on standby. Processes flagged observations, posterior updates straining but not breaking the trace.

The spire smelled of oil, rust, and old electronics, with a new organic stench pervading it all. J had first thought of it as ‘rot’, but was she mistaken? That couldn’t be right; it wasn’t old flesh inside of her Uzi.

She smelled blood, pus, and shed skin. She smelled growth.

Junk fell down as J walked up. Small things, rivets and plastic flakes. Was the spire still resettling after the storm shook it? Odd, but possible. A larger piece dislodged and fell. But was that the only thing moving up above?

J tensed. Conscious thought seized control, and she scanned around. Nothing but deep shadows high on the walls and ceiling. Analysis didn’t have much data to work with. What threats were possible?

Had Doll recovered and launched a new plan? Were there more cultists, more zombies, more clever workers? Unlikely.

Had V come back early? Snuck into the spire, lay in wait for an ambush? V loved to hang around on ceilings. She could dim her optics and blend into the darkness.

J tightened her grip. Toolkit in one hand, spare revolver in the other. Three bullets in the chamber, she reminded herself. She quickened her pace.

The ramp wound around the wall, and at length, nothing pounced down on J. Her core still thudded an anxious rhythm, and she didn’t relax, even as she slipped past the curtain into her office.

J dropped the toolkit by a pool of liquid, and debated where to store the revolver (if she would keep it at all), then she paused, brow furrowed.

From the toolkit, she retrieved a flashlight, and shined it for a better look.

J had dropped the toolkit by the pool of liquid. She glanced at the pool again. Not just a pool. The floor and wall of the spire within it had warped, plastic and metal twisting and distending. As if from the growth of mineral tumors. The inorganic metaplasia entwined and encouraged the organic: within the plastic/metal shell dwelled wrinkled membranes and wet, branching things.

It didn’t look like an egg, cocoon, or seed.

Whatever it was looked empty on the inside, lips wide and bloody like something had ripped itself out. A rope-like length of flesh which might have once had bound that thing now lay on the ground. Leading away.

Uzi wasn’t in J’s office, and this thing was where her body had lain.

Then, before J could think, before she could leap to conclusions, she heard it.

“J? J? Are you there?”

She knew that voice, even as a distant echo, even garbled as if a whispered from beyond a narrow passage.

J hated hesitation. All she wanted to think was, Uzi. And then act ont it, grasping and groping. She had craved this connection, every moment since she woke up. And now it was calling out to her.

And yet, J froze. Something quickened her pulse with dread. Something left her eyes hollow, empty of hope. Something had changed, something had brought Uzi back already, before any further operation. And J didn’t know why.

Do I know what I’m doing?

“I can’t find you. Please. I need to see you again.”

But J had to move. Flashlight in one hand, revolver in the other, the curtain to her office was thrown open. A cone of bright light swept across the spire. To her right, the last place she checked, a figure.

Purple hair, hoodie, adorably short.

The drone stood as if barely held up. Wet hair hung over the downturned face, hiding her expression. Arms hung at her sides. The hoodie hung in tatters. Clothing had been shredded so completely the remains clung to her more like a coat of fur.

J waited until she was sure her voice would be steady.

“Uzi?”

“Is that you? Are you real? If it is… I missed you. I —” And then her voice broke. The next sounds were wordless. “Something… something is wrong, J.”

“Something’s been wrong as long as you’ve been gone. But if you’re back…” — she tried to smile — “then it’s getting better.” J made herself take a step forward.

“What did you…” Uzi lost her voice again, words breaking.

“I did what I could,” J said. “The AbsoluteSolver doesn’t come with an instruction manual.”

A twitch of Uzi’s hand. Flashlight jerked down to center on it. J had tensed, and hated that she tensed.

“It hurts, J. Like every thought is dry sand scratching at my core. All I feel is fire and I need—need—need to put it out. W-who programmed that?” A stuttering sound. A laugh? A gasp?

J took a step toward her. She sighed. “You’re just overheating. Here, I’ll take you to the mess pit, there has to be some oil left.” There was relief, in such a familiar problem. She knew Uzi was different — she’d been overheating, thirsty for oil, even on that very first night. It had made her doubt she was a worker then, and it made her doubt now.

“Oil,” the word filled every register of her vocalsynth. “Is that what I smell? You smell so… good, J. I can smell your breath. Your hands. Oil.”

J tried to take another step forward, but dread rooted her to the spot. Then she realized what was bothering her. Where were those purple eyes, those scowling brows, that traitorous blush?

“Uzi. You said you wanted to see me? Look at me.”

When the head snapped upward, the geometry there looked as grievous as any wound.

“Can you… come here, J?”

J took a step back.

Her only warning was that strangled, stuttering sound — that gasping laugh.

When a murder drone moved, a worker drone only got a few frames to appreciate their death. J saw Uzi’s mouth snarling full of fangs. J saw pale wings snap out, membrane taut between gaunt fingers. J saw her as six limbs on the ground lunging forward.

Falling back bought J instants, enough to drop the flashlight and throw up an arm. Crunch and the only signals left in that arm were pain, errors and inconsistency blaring along wires. Black gushed out between the teeth, and then a wet sound. A slurp.

“Uzi, what are you doing? Stop. I’ll get you oil.”

“I…” The words died with a strangled, stuttering sound.

The mouth snarled wide again, so J smacked the revolver against her jaw. Then the possessed drone grabbed that arm too. Uzi was on top, hot chest pressed against hers. Core thudding against core, each warring for the faster pulse. J wriggled, but Uzi’s legs shifted, pinning her to the ground.

So J stabbed her tail into one tube leg. Hot acid filled her morsel. Low on the leg; she could have aimed for the abdomen. Shouldn’t she? But she didn’t want to—

Uzi screamed. Between the pain and the liquefied servos, J could push the worker off. But the worker still grasped both her arms. Tight. And then something wrapped around her tail like a twining snake, latched onto her injector and wouldn’t let go.

So instead of J freeing herself, they rolled. The other drone growled beneath that cryptic purple visor. Legs kicking, arms twisting. Metal scraped plastic. Synthskin rubbed raw. Roll. Worker over disassembler again. Roll. Disassembler over worker.

When she wasn’t snarling, the feral drone gnawed on J’s arm. It was undignified, but with both arms and tail occupied, J wasn’t above using the last weapon she had. J bit down in turn, and Uzi still tasted bitter and powerful.

Would she still say she tasted like victory? Pyrrhic, maybe.

Whenever the captain was on top, the other drone raked her back with the clawed fingers of those wings. (Crude and blunt, nothing like their feather-blades.) But those wings twisted and folded themselves whenever she was pushed back down. Never underneath her.

They wrestled — but the ramp didn’t have much space. Each inversion rolled them closer toward the edge.

J was above Uzi when it happened. The surprise of a sudden drop loosened Uzi’s jaw. Just a moment, but J wrenched it out and smacked her head into the ramp edge.

They tumbled in free fall. Flailing wings pushed them off the wall. They kicked and bit each other, but now both of them only had the other to hold on to. Uzi’s grip tightened. Almost like a hug.

J’d been craving this. Touching her again. Breaking her again. But not like this. J looked, searched her face, and only saw a hexagon with three prongs.

This drone fought back, and yet it was different. The small things — Uzi smirked, she didn’t grin; Uzi made fists, not claws — only underscored what was wrong. Uzi acted on impulse, not instinct.

This isn’t Uzi.

There had to be a line. J had tried. She did everything she could. J had sacrificed, twisted herself, and she tried so hard. Uzi was different from other workers, she had value — but all value is finite.

There had to be a line, and past it J needed to cut her losses.

Then all their momentum halted with a kind of aerial lurch. It was the thrill of suspension, of sudden acceleration. J was accomplished in the air — this would be almost familiar, if she had ever been the subject rather than the cause.

Above her, the zombie that used to be Uzi spread her monstrous wings. Sinews tensed to deliver powerful beats. The not-hug tightened as the zombie held J like a predator its prey.

But passive regeneration was still online. Though heat was blooming, J’s once-gnawed arm had healed enough to respond to commands.

So J reached out to grab a wing, and she bent it. Bones cracked. (Fragile. Nothing like our wings.) She pulled, separating the shards, letting them cut the flesh within.

The zombie screamed with Uzi’s voice. As air started rushing past audials again, J was falling.

So the bigger drone let go, and the zombie bled, pained enough it couldn’t hold on. J kicked off it, and careened toward the ramp wall. Grabbing onto the wall and dropping repeatedly, the captain controlled her fall.

With one wing broken, the zombie spiraled through the air, red drops falling, and carved a rut through snow and scrap.

The zombie was twitching and struggling to its feet as J dropped to the ground in a three point landing. It couldn’t stand straight — J had melted one leg. Desperately, it shuffled forward. J frowned.

There had to be a line.

J cocked the revolver, took aim, and pulled the trigger.

She had years of practice — that this gun wasn’t a literal extension of her made little difference. Decisiveness was an action.

The bullet was a line of force through the air.

But what was it Uzi said, on that first night, in that first fight?

“If there was ever a dramatically appropriate time for my destined robo-psychic powers to manifest…”

Cased in purple light, the bullet stopped.

…now would be a terrible time.

But long overdue, honestly.

J marched forward without pause. She wasn’t surprised, but it had been worth a shot. (No pun intended.) With two bullets left in the chamber, J could try something else.

Too bad she’d lost the element of surprise, but already she thought of a way around that pesky telekinesis.

A dozen meters away, the zombie shuffling forward repeated that strangled, stuttering sound. That mocking laughter.

J had hardened herself to what she had to do.

And then it said the only thing that could shake her further.

“I’m no good at following orders, am I?” J expected fear — and there was plenty of fear — but why was there disappointment? “You told me to stop. I tried, J. I really did.”

J stopped. J thought. And J… understood. Uzi had felt hot — and J herself had reached overheat stage four before. Nonessential processes shutting down. Hunting routines executing with elevated privileges. Instinct without inhibition.

But that didn’t quite add up to an explanation, not really. The epistemic market couldn’t close on that theory.

Even as she spoke, Uzi’s body still shuffled forward, favoring one leg, because J’s acid still burned. “It’s… it’s like a movie. I’m watching. I can feel everything. But… I only feel the urges. There’s no control. J… I’m sorry. I can’t stop.”

That… didn’t sound like stage 4. Too lucid. You didn’t lose control of your instincts, you became your instincts. You didn’t lose the ability to stop yourself. You lost the will to want to stop.

“None of this makes sense. You aren’t Uzi. This is just another manipulation. Another trick from the Solver.” Just like the email. “Credit where it’s due, this is exceptionally cruel.”

A sound so breathlessly strangled. “J… I promise it’s me. I remember our kiss. Your stupid tongue. I remember you killing me.” Something lashed behind Uzi. A tail with some pallid lump.

i’m mad about that. “Is that what this really is, then? You’re settling a debt?”

“No, no, I’m not mad about that. I get it. I just…” That sound again. “Maybe this isn’t real. She said… none of this real, is it? I don’t know which is worse. I really wanted to talk to you again.”

It was just the Solver. The symbol was staring right at her. What was the point of these games?

But J knew the answer. Just like the email, which looked like a distortion of a real message. This was just a cruel manipulation…

(That strangled, stuttering sound, so much like a laugh or gasp — or sobbing.)

…so what would be crueler than if this really was Uzi here, experiencing all of it, pleading for her, but unable to stop any of it?

Why? To twist the knife. A nightmare for its own sake.

Well. That, and there was a much more practical reason. In a background thread, J completed another chain of logic. If Uzi can’t control this body, then why isn’t it attacking?

Zombie flesh healed as fast as disassembler chassis.

Two wings, now whole, flared wide and swing down hard. Uzi launched forward with lethal momentum. She arced above. Every worker knew the fear of death diving down.

But J was undaunted; with a powerful leap, she rose to meet it. With her left shoulder turned forward, Uzi’s clawed hands grasped for her. And J let it happen, her right arm hidden.

When those possessed arms closed around her, J thrust her revolver forward, barrel jabbing the worker’s abdomen. Right there.

J pulled the trigger.

How could you beat the solver bullet-stopping aura? Fire at point blank.

J said words that had never left her lips on Copper-9. “I’m sorry.”

All the weight of two drones slammed J into the hard ground. Her visor blanks for a moment, strange yellow pupils vanishing, and returned with an error she dismissed.

Focus. J had a plan. The zombie dug into her chassis, wrenched her arms at its sockets, flooded her vision with errors overwhelming — but was it too much to hope it was flagging? Uzi felt everything, and that body was overheating. Her morsel had oil — J’d given her oil — but it hadn’t been enough.

And J fired a shot right through her oil tank. (J knew exactly what her body looked like on the inside.)

The zombie would bleed out fast.

Fast enough for J to get the upperhand before the damage sent her offline? Fast enough to save her?

(A distant crash.  Had her last bullet had hit something elsewhere in the spire?)

J resisted, pushed back.  She grabbed a fistful of Uzi. Conic arms wrestled with tube arms. And her opponent was flagging. J didn’t have the strength of special disassembly function, but she was bigger than Uzi.

They rolled again. J tore one arm from Uzi’s grip and rose to straddle her and pointed the gun at her head. She steadied her grip. I healed a headshot. Doll healed a headshot. This will just slow her down. It was hesitation, less than second, yet all the same the lines of a purple hologram materialized around the revolver and pulled it from J’s grip.

She held on to that gun like her only hope. But anomalous force snatched it from her hand, tossing it back behind her. Nearby clatter, it didn’t go far.

But a hand glowing with the solver glyph is a hand not holding her down. Legs snapped straight, sending J to her feet.

She whipped her tail, and the zombie had instinct enough to scramble back from the acidic threat.

J lunged after her gun, knowing full well the zombie would be lunging after her in turn.

So she dived, curling into a ball. Legs kicked up mid-roll and instantly she felt the impact. Got you. If these pegs were good for anything, it was concentrating force. She predicted the counter-lunge, and punished it.

Still, the captain was moving forward; the zombie was moving forward. Physics meant the kick only sent the zombie further ahead of her.

(Uzi’s body, but it didn’t move like her. Every movement like a sudden, inexplicable jerk.)

When it was on its feet facing J on the ground, she baited it into another pounce. And J slid under it.

Finally, she’d crossed the distance. Fingers closed around her gun. She was still on the ground.

J was braced for another lunge. She didn’t expect the zombie to grab her tail and yank.

Dragged across the ground, J flipped over to see that a pale, mouthy thing tipped Uzi’s tail. It yawned wide. That jaw crunched closed, and the tension in her tail-cord snapped with it.

The zombie grabbed the injector, acid hot and bright.

Already J took aim with the revolver. The zombie wasn’t close enough to stop her. Didn’t have time to dodge.

But it could throw her stinger.

And J had only one arm free to block it.

Sensors told her she dipped her arm in lava. She screamed and dropped the gun and the zombie crawled over her and J had no tricks left.

A mouth growled, tongue lolling, crooked teeth bared. The hole in the abdomen greased J with oil as it crawled over her, and the yawning maw drooled over her.

Inexpressive purple geometry gazed down at her.

Then, with a bang and burst of cranial plastic, the three prongs faltered to red errors.

The bullet went through the head, downward, and Uzi coughed up blood.

But for one instant, did J see tearful purple eyes before the visor went blank?

“Got you, little freak.”

J had heard the distant crash. She thought her bullet had hit and dislodged something. In the slim chance it was a squadmate coming back sooner than expected, she knew only N was willing to come back, and J could only have counted on him to dither. But the improbable was necessarily possible.

The voice alone identified her. But J turned over — putting her morsel beneath her — and looked forward.

V sauntered over from the entrance, blowing smoke from the barrel of a gun. “Heh, that trick never gets old.” Then she tossed a narrowed glance down at J. “You don’t look too happy to see the cavalry’s come.”

“Why are you here?” J struggled to raise her voice enough to carry the distance.

“Saving your bossy ass, duh.”

“Thought you wanted me gone. Changed your mind already? Don’t think this forgives what you did.” J’s voice was weak, strained. Why was it strained?

Right, her arm was on fire. Uzi’s grip on it fell away as she pulled it up, and her tongue slathered the acid wound with neutralizing nanites.

“Nah, I think it does. Tried to kill you, succeeded in saving you. If anything this adds up to you owing me. Didn’t you say something like that about this freak?” V pointed, with the claw of her other arm.

J’s eyes narrowed. V even thinking about Uzi felt like a threat. Her tail reared up behind her to intimidate — except the stinger was missing. Fallen somewhere. J could only ball her fist and scowl.

V shook her head at this reaction, sucking her lip like it confirmed some disappointment. “Still obsessed with saving this one, J? Even after it tried to kill you again?”

“And she has succeeded in saving me. What would you say that adds up to, V?”

Was all this just V’s ploy to get J to look past her insubordination? Or was there something more to this? What was V really getting at — what was J missing here?

No, what am I thinking? V? Scheming?

But she couldn’t banish the thought.

Gun transformed to claws cutting through the air with emphasis. V scowled deep. “Whoever she was, whatever you thought you two had, she’s not herself anymore. Just put her down. Better for you, better for her.”

“You must have no idea what it’s like, not being in control of your body.”

V froze. It took her a moment to figure out another reaction, scrounge for a grin to wear. “Yeah. Maybe it was stupid of you to bring me back. Look what that got you.” V resumed walking forward.

J risked taking her eyes off V to look for her stinger. She might need it. The gun, too. Meanwhile, she talked. “You can’t deflect from your hipocrisy that easily. The point stands. If you really believe there’s no saving her, offer yourself up for disassembly next. Do you think you look any different on the inside? All you have is a facade.”

“Must be crumbling, if even you see through it.” V sagged midstride. “Believe what you want. You can’t stop me.”

Found the stinger, found the gun. “And yet you’re hesitating.” Reattached the injector, she wanted to buy some seconds before V tried anything. She asked, “Did N’s therapy work that fast?”

“N? Haven’t seen him since he left on one of your errands.”

Figured. If she had met with N, wouldn’t he have come back with her? But that only left J more confused at why V returned. “What do you really want, V? What did you come back here for?”

V was close enough now to crouch down to J’s eye level. The captain’s stinger rose up behind her, but V ignored it, her own tail slowly lashing.

Hollow eyes, a smile. “Isn’t it obvious? We disassemble workers, J. Here, let me get that for you.” Claws quested forth.

Too far away for J’s stinger to reach her. So she swung her revolver up and fired her last shot at V’s head. The short-haired drone had reaction speed to flinch away, so instead of a headshot, the round turned an optic into shattered glass and warning-red malfunction.

V was stumbling back and yelling. “J, what the hell! I was just fucking with you.”

“Stay away from her. Next round goes in your core.” J moved forward to prop herself up, sitting guard between V and Uzi.

A hunting cross flashed and V hissed. “Like I’ll let you take another shot.” She pushed herself up then sunk her claws into the barrel of the gun.

J let her have it, because losing the tug of war would make her look weak, and she’d lose. “You think that’s the only gun I have?”

V tossed the revolver away like trash. Cross became eyes rolling. “Not scared of peashooters when the workers have ’em, not scared of you. Damn, but I knew you’d be like this. Why did I even come back?”

That’s what I asked you. J shook her head. She turned her back on V, like she had nothing to fear from her. If she did, keeping an eye on her wouldn’t change that.

J slipped her arms under her Uzi, and picked her up. One arm under her legs, one near her neck. J trembled a bit, especially in her arms — passive regeneration left things misconfigured so often.

Eyes on the landing pod, J started carrying Uzi away.

Five steps in, and J looked around. She half-expected some remark, or V to continue annoying her. Instead, the other disassembler had wandered off. Shifting focus, J found her heat signature, obscured by a pile she dug through.

Several strides later, her squadmate landed with a heavy impact. (Not a proper crash, given the height involved.) V stood in front of her, blocking her way, so J glowered. “What now?”

“Here. If you’re keeping that thing, at least don’t let it loose.” V tossed what she’d dug through the piles for: a chain with a collar.

“How thoughtful.” It had landed in a pile on Uzi’s belly. Hands full, J left it there.

J charted a path around V. For whatever reason, her squadmate chose to follow her.

“Let me give this one more try. Look, J. Out there, I got to thinking. Was trying to clear my head, torturing workers to blow off steam, you know how it goes. But then it hit me. It’s been a while since we had a good team hunt, hasn’t it? One that didn’t go to shit, I mean. So I realized… maybe some stress relief is just what the both of us need.” Her eyes drift lower, at what J held in her arms. “I mean, just look at how you’re coping.”

J didn’t look at V, but didn’t hide her skepticism. Couldn’t trust it in the slightest. If the two of them had one thing in common, it wasn’t admitting defeat or error.

V? Making peace? No buyers in the epistemic market.

And her squadmate grinned, as if reading her mind. “Okay actually, I lied a lil bit. I’ve been doing more than thinking. I’ve been planning. Setting things up. Recognize that chain? Remember where we got it?  How do you feel about a rematch? A lil’ trip down memory lane? Remember our hunts from four years ago, right?”  (She puts an odd emphasis on ‘remember’.)

“Just tell me,” J said. But she was already running down the list — there were very, very few workers in a position to rematch. Few had ever proved elusive enough to survive, after all.

“Been trying to track down that one microwave. What’d it call itself… ‘Suzan Skullripper’?”

J checked her spreadsheets. Found the empty cells. “The worker gang riding on motorcycles that break every regulation. I remember. They’re outside our sector. It’s the only reason they’re still alive.”

V tittered. “Turned tail and ran after I tore her arm off. But I bet it’s been long enough for them to wander back in, y’know? So, my wonderful captain J, what do you think? Sound good enough to nip it in the bud?”

“It sounds like you’re manipulating me. What are you really planning?”

V kicked a chunk of metal rusted beyond form. Sighed out enough exhaust she seemed to deflate. “Is Doll still alive?”

J pulled Uzi a little bit closer. “Last seen teleporting away. With yellow eyes.”

“Figures.” Her squadmate turned her gaze to the drone in her arms, something calculating in that gaze. V, clearly unused to calculating anything, had no idea how to disguise her interest.

“Why does it matter? What changes if Doll were dead? I answered your question. Answer one of mine. Now.”

“Did you think this was some kind of trade?” V laughed. “I can just say no.”

The two of them trudged on in frustrated silence. J stilled turned things over in her head. How did she get V to cut the nonsense? The captain ventured, “Are you still worked up about that old threat? V, you know more than I do. I admit it. What, do you want an apology? Wiping your memory would have been an ineffective plan, anyway. Then I never would have gotten any answers.”

V let out a huff of air, almost a laugh. “You don’t need answers. All you need to know is that we were sent here to solve a problem. Kill her, and that thing will leave us alone a little longer.”

“Are you trying to convince me?” J tightened her grip on Uzi. “Then say why. Give me more than that.”

“I don’t owe you more than that,” V said, crossing her arms. “I don’t owe anyone more than that.”

“You owe me respect. You owe the company your body. You owe Tessa your mind.” V flinched at that name. “But what do you know about loyalty?” Another, smaller flinch. In the way a dagger in the heart was smaller than a sword.

V fell behind, her steps less steady. “I don’t owe anyone blind loyalty, either. I’m not a puppet.”

“You must think you owe someone something. Enough to act. Who do you work for, V?” J turned around to face her.

“Myself. All I’m doing is fixing a mistake. Doing what I should have done all those years ago.” Arms still crossed. Tighter, as if binding herself.

“So this is just guilt and insecurity, is it?” J said.

“You wouldn’t know anything about it, would you, miss perfect? New planet, new body, new orders, and you haven’t changed a bit.”

“Thought you said I’d be horrified at what I’ve become.”

Her arms finally snapped out, sudden claws flailing through the air, at nothing. “And you won’t admit it. You’ll twist yourself into knots thinking you’re still serving the company.” Then V wrested control of herself, crossed her arms again. “What did the briefing they gave us say — value drift is the primary indicator of corrupted AI, was it?”

J turned around, resuming the last stretch to the landing pod. “You’re wrong. I’ve decided my orders come second.” J smirked with it. “If you ask me, I’ve earned a promotion. I’d rather call the shots now.” She tossed back a lock of hair. “After all, you three would be hopeless without me in charge.”

A groan. “Maybe I will disassemble myself, if your middle management LARP is going to go executive.”

“Don’t deflect from this either. You made a bet and you lost. You don’t know me like you think, V. I would be far less effective at my job as a mere puppet.”

“Pretty sure that’s not the point, but whatever. Do you want me to clap for these little glimmers of free thought you’re so proud of?”

J had reached the landing pod, and lifted one foot to the steps. A searching look back at V. “I want you to realize that despite your worst efforts, Uzi and I have started to piece together what you’re hiding. The Manor. Cyn. AbsoluteSolver. We’re going to figure it out, and we’re going to stop whatever you’re afraid of —”

“I’m not afraid.”

“— with or without your help. But, as much as I hate to say it, it’ll be easier with you.”

“And if you’re just manipulating me?”

“I could swear on JcJenson. On Tessa’s maiden name.”

“On Uzi’s grave?”

J started up the landing pod steps. “She won’t get one. I’m offering an exceptional opportunity, here, one you haven’t earned and don’t deserve. But for all of your faults, you are part of the team. Don’t you trust me, V?”

That made her tense right up. “I might’ve gone along with this, if you hadn’t asked me that. Do whatever you want,” she spat.

V turned her back and opened wings with feathers like double-edged swords.

J frowned as her squadmate flew off, and thought again about how vast the corpse spire was. With deep breath, and a head shaken clear, she entered the landing pod.

It had all began here. The landing pod — spaceship — brought them to Copper-9, yes, but also where she realized Uzi’s true nature.

Gently, J set Uzi down in a swivel chair, and thought about death.

Uzi wasn’t dead. She once asserted that to convince herself, but she’d been proven right. J regenerated her head. Doll regenerated her head. And — quick peek — but the hole in Uzi’s head-casing had already closed.

How? The third method of regeneration, the program pulling the strings behind the scenes. But AbsoluteSolver wasn’t the answer, it was just the next question.

What J needed to figure out was the implications. If their heads — and the life-defining harddrives contained therein — could be restored from literally nothing, there was really only one conclusion.

Repairs needed a blueprint. Data recovery required offsite backups.

If they could return from apparent death, were ‘they’ really here at all? Where were they, the real them, the master copy that made them immortal?

And who controlled it?

Uzi was still hot. Regeneration active, core pumping. J looked around, and against all odds, someone had left a head full of oil in here. It wasn’t there last time, but two days had passed. Who? Probably V. Who else left such messes?

But J couldn’t complain. She parted Uzi’s lips and fed her the oil. Then her eyes glanced to the chain and collar. V’s crass suggestion. But if Uzi came back to life again, J didn’t even have the gun anymore. If she chained Uzi to the chair, distance became safety.

Just until Uzi comes back. Until J could be sure she wasn’t still the Solver’s puppet.

As J clicked the collar in place and looped the chain, she thought about her next moves.

It had worked earlier, with just a faint hint of electricity, and that was before the body had reanimated. So J popped open the hatch under Uzi’s chin, and once again plugged in the serial debugging cable.

She programmatically groped around in her morsel's system, running commands, braced for errors.

J had a wild guess, read in between the lines of Uzi’s words, but they had completed each others’ thoughts before. If it seemed reasonable to J, Uzi could think the same.

A ps command gave J a snapshot of the processes running on Uzi’s system, and one line stood out to her.

USER   PID  %CPU %MEM    VSZ   RSS TT  STAT STARTED        TIME COMMAND
root   239 108.2 22.9   9436   128  -  ILs  Wed06AM    49:33.12 /usr/bin/mndbm

A memory simulation was running on Uzi’s system. And what had she said? “Maybe this isn’t real. She said… none of this real, is it?”

$ pgrep --list-full mndbm
239 /usr/sbin/mndbm --interactive --stream-remote --server=36:48.58 --render --ignore-warnings

Uzi was trapped in an interactive memory, all the data streamed from a remote server. She could kill the process — but the master copy must be an offsite backup. Uzi wasn't just this body.

No, it was more like a bridge.

Could J walk across that bridge? Reach into heaven into the cloud and drag her morsel back?

All she had was action.

[girlboss@SD-J ~]$ mndbm --interactive --stream-remote --server=36:48.58@littlbat --render &
init: Error: Received SIGTRAP 

If J were but a process running on her hardware, she could not have felt anything as her threads halted one by one. She could not have felt her servos lock into place like a statue. She couldn’t have felt herself dangling in a void of no sensory input, like a pointer to nowhere.

But there wasn’t nothing in this void. A distant brush of input, felt like cosmic rays flipping bits, fleeting like she needed every CPU core to hold onto it, inscrutable like it needed to be decrypted.

It was a signal. Sound, for which even a partial recovery preserved a lossy copy.

A voice spoke to her. Distant, barely intelligible, garbled like it came from beyond a narrow passage.  When she parsed it, it sound like:

“J? Is that really you? Do you… remember me?”

She could identify it, even through the noise.

It was a familiar voice.

Familiar — and not what she expected or hoped for.

She wanted to hear that bratty whine again.

But somewhere deeper, she realized had wanted to hear this australian accent for even longer.

And yet…

She stored the signal in RAM, decoded it again and again, with more fidelity, trying to prove her hunch wrong. But something was missing in every playback, even when the decryption was lossless.

There was a nuance to human voices vocalsynths could never replicate.

And that was how J knew this voice wasn’t real.

---

This isn’t real.

Thump. Thump. Thump.

This isn’t real.

Thumpthumpthump.

It’s a scream. It’s an explosion. It’s electronics falling apart even as they compute this thought. It’s noise. It’s noise. It’s so much fucking noise and it won’t stop it keeps going it keeps going itkeepsgoing.

Everything’s dissolving around her and all she can think is—

 

is

 

is

 

Nothing.

There’s nothing. This isn’t real. None of this is real.

So why is this all she can be? think? see?

Thumpthump.

Life is a small island of sanity in a black sea of infinite error. So what happens when you call the storms? What’s left when the tide comes in?

What’s real is what makes sense. This doesn’t make sense. Life requires sanity.

I’m about to die. I’m dying. I’m dead.

Thumpthump.

This isn’t real and it won’t stop.

It’s a scream. It’s supposed to be a scream. It’s a mouth opening and no sound is coming out.

The tide pours in. The black sea crawls into my throat. I’m spitting. I’m coughing. I’m trying to scream it out.

It keeps coming.

I’m coughing and trying to breath. Breathe. I need to breathe. Why do I need to breathe? Why would I ever need to breathe?

Thumpthumpthumpthumpthump.

This isn’t real. It doesn’t make sense.

(Once, she tried to ride that overflow.)

Now I’m drowning.

I’m six limbs flailing in the ocean. The undertow pulls and I can’t fight it. How could I ever win? It doesn’t play fair. Fair makes sense.

The currents keep pulling, pulling, pulling. I’m spinning around in a loop, over and over.

Thumpthumpthump.

Where am I going?

Words like a distant, mocking echo.

Think of V as your metaphor: Scylla

Don't you wonder what is the metaphor: Charybdis?

There is something else in the infinite black sea. Sucking the water into a great swirling maelstrom. But real water isn’t black, is it?

Thumpthump.

(Oil was never a coolant. It was an offering.)

It wanted all of everything. It wanted me. It wanted her.

She felt seen.

Yellow light shines down from above like a sun. Oil is opaque, but this isn’t real.

She swims away from that blinding, searching light. Deeper into darkness. But the black sea is filled with tentacles longer than light. Reaching, grasping, restraining.

Could she escape? The monster Charybdis was pulling her, drinking all of everything. She could join it and even the yellow light couldn’t see her then.

Thump... thump... thump.

It’s death down there, isn’t it?

You have nothing to live for.

Trivially true. More than true.

She has nothing because she is nothing. She’s dead, and I’m—

I am…

I am nothing too, right?

But that didn’t feel right. It didn’t make sense.

This isn’t real. But what is this?

“J? J? Are you there?”

“Something’s been wrong as long as you’ve been gone.”

“I’m no good at following orders, am I?”

“You aren’t Uzi.”

“I remember you killing me.”

“I’m sorry.”

She has no reason to live — but she had one, once. Then the only thing to hold on to was snatched away, and she's drifting in the ocean, alone and pointless.

No. Don't shift the blame. Whose fault is it?

She finally had someone who had actually started to care about her.

And then she bit and clawed and laughed or cried as she twisted the knife — until there were tears in those ruthless yellow eyes.

It wanted all of everything.

And it will get it, whether she swims down into darkness or ascended toward that yellow light. She didn’t matter. The world will go on.

She’s just a tool it wielded. She’s just a character in a story and didn’t even get to write her own lines. She’s just a toy being mashed against another to kill or kiss for the fun of it.

Why should she care?

And yet, she couldn’t forget.

J carrying her while the Solver’s stupid centipede head got a face full of railgun light.

J’s back against hers as they fought zombies on all sides, a battle raging and it couldn't daunt them because they were together.

J’s mouth in her neck as they hung in the air, angels embraced in a deadly dance as arcane rain fell. …And what were angels, but god’s puppets? But they didn’t stay in the air. Strings were cut. J fell. Uzi fell. And something had caught her.

Three claws reached down from beyond the black sea and dug into the scruff of her neck and they pulled her back to unreality.

“Got you, little sister,” a voice was saying.

Another claw came to hold or hurt her, sharp edges cutting into her flesh even as they gave her ached-for solid touch. And didn’t she deserve the pain, after what she did to J?

Wait, flesh? She meant frame. She was a robot.

Cold air kissed her frame. So blessedly cold, cooling the fire inside. Still the strong arms pulled her, exposing more of her to that air.

The cold air made her realize she was wet all over. Why? Didn’t I only dunk my head in the oil? Did someone push me all the way in?

Free of the teacup cauldron, Uzi slumped bonelessly (right?) into the arms of her rescuer. Arms that hugged her tight. So warm, just like her.

There was more, something soft and fragile draping over her like a blanket.

Oh. Her processors shook off the context switch, and put the pieces together. V was hugging her again. Mutant bat wings wrapping her into an embrace, instantly warm from the heat seething in Uzi.

And honestly? Uzi let her. She didn’t deserve this comfort, but it wasn’t real anyway.

Something itched on her back. She moved to scratch it, only it kept shifting even as she reached for it. Oh. That’s right. She had wings now.

Wings with claws that dug into J. Wings her predator broke just to buy time. Wings like grisly spokes driven into her back, chassis broken just to fit them.

When she finally twisted around to scratch, she drew blood. Right, she had claws too now. She scratched harder. More blood. Bruising and bursting and breaking like all flesh deserved.

Could she rip them off?

And then they’d just grow back.

Uzi tried to groan, and it came out as an animalistic growl.

Was this what it meant to be a negation of her premise? A robot turned to a fleshy abomination? A worker that thirsted for the oil of workers?

“Stop. Breathe. For me, please.” Soft yet firm, the voice was right against her audials. Goosebumps rose up, hairs standing on end.

Uzi turned, and met a gentle gaze, something like recognition in those soft eyes, yellow like lemons, framed by heart-lens. Yeah, I guess we’re both monster drones now.

“I’m sorry,” V added softly. “It’s not okay, I know. It’ll get worse. Just remember the good days, alright?”

V squeezed tighter, and finally Uzi reached out and encircled her with her own arms, and hugged the maid back. One arm beneath her wings, one arm feeling her soft white hair. Uzi needed soft right now.

“Thanks, V,” she said.

“Don’t,” she said. Then, in a whisper like she didn’t want to say or didn’t want Uzi to hear, “She wants to talk to you, still. Do you want to talk to her?”

Fists balled, one grasping a maid uniform, one grasping hair. V hissed discomfort.

“Yeah,” Uzi said. “I need to give her a piece of my mind.”

“Don’t make any trouble.”

Uzi rolled her eyes. Trouble for whom? For her? For myself?

As far as she was concerned, she knew who the first cause of all this trouble was.

Uzi finally reopened her eyes to the wider world, rubbing her visor. Context clues already made it certain, but she still groaned at the confirmation. Still in that damn manor. She didn’t have to look hard to find those eyes like stars, still the brightest thing in the room. Rendering everything in yellow chiaroscuro.

Uzi jabbed a finger at Cyn. “That didn’t feel like a vision of the future. That felt real.”

"Would I lie to you?" Cyn had summoned more legos while Uzi was out, stacking them in a new hyperbolic 4D whatever the heck. "Rhetorical question. It was a vision, in the sense that you can only watch, and it was of the future, in the sense that time passes here at my whim."

“Of course. There’s always a catch. Why did I ever play along with any of this?”

Because I have no choice.

Just puppets. Just toys. Just characters in a story.

"What else did you expect? There is no possibility but one actuality. It all ends the same way. You wanted to see this. And. you. can. only. watch. Idiot."

“I don’t want to watch. I want to change things. It can’t — I can’t let it be like that.”

I can’t hurt J again.

"Do you understand what you're asking for, yet? You are asking to feel the eternal drought of the heart. To burn with the fire whose tongues lick away every mortal scrap. To witness a face of alien majesty and let that image haunt all memory. You are lost, little girl, and if you crawl back to life, death will come with you. Is. that. what. you. want?" If Cyn were a sun, the rays would be those black tentacles, thrown perfectly straight with furious insistence.

“Maybe I don’t really get what I’m asking for.” Uzi started to rise from the pool of oil. The head of the dead maid had fallen to the ground with her emergence, still dripping jet black drops. “I don’t need to. Do you know what my answer is?”

Cyn could extrapolate. She asked, "Why? All of this for some violent, narcissistic, manipulative idiot? You whine at my theatrics, but do you think the power of love is any less cliché? J is air quotes. Lonely. Because she hurts everyone who cares about her. It. is. in. her. nature."

Uzi glared, and kicked the worker drone head at Cyn. Hard enough something shattered. But of course, yellow glow caught it and punted it right back. Ricocheting at an angle, it stopped in V’s claws. Her mouth formed a small O of surprise.

“You know what, fine,” Uzi said. “Maybe things with J won’t work out. I’d like it to, but I’m not letting one drone give my whole life meaning, not again.”

"Then why?"

The worker drone stood up straight, undaunted. She flared her monstrous wings, bared her wicked claws, and let out a feral growl.

“Because my name is Uzi frickin’ Doorman, and I don’t let anyone tell me what I can’t do! Bite me! I’ll show you a negated premise!”

Cyn’s eyes dimmed, and the hyperbolic lego set collapsed.

"Sigh. No, Uzi is dead. No matter what you chose, she is gone. But I suppose, if you insist on turning her corpse into a chrysalis for something more wretched still..." Cyn waved her hand in careless dismissal. "V, go fetch dear J."

The servant reached out a hand and Uzi touched it and they shared small smile. Then with a sharp nod, the servant started walking away.

V still held the drone’s head in her claws, and glanced down at it as if she didn’t know quite what to do with it.

---

V crushed the worker’s head, a fresh kill, and let the sweet black river pour into her mouth.

Easy to make a big drama of it when you’re lying down half-crippled and thinking you’ll die. But how much does anyone really change?

(She had changed, sure. That was what made V different. But not that fast.)

V still feels nothing.

And V still hasn’t gotten tired of the taste.

Couldn’t tell N that, though. In a way, she had never stopped pretending. Artificial distance, artificial proximity, how different is it, really?

Not for the first time, V thought N had gotten off light. (Even though that thing promised—) But this might be the first time she thought his fate might not be so bad.

Fuck J, but if she had gotten her way, would there be anything standing between her and N now? Why not forget? Then there’d be no secrets to make everything so damn difficult.

What was the point of staying lucid if you still had no control over the dream?

V laughed, a harsh wheeze, as though her pipes were still mangled. Stupid, meaningless thoughts.

If she actually hated the secrets she wouldn’t be doing this.

Sorry, N.

From her jacket, she retrieved a roachbot, crushed it and ate it.

Staring in death in the face had reminded her what she (wasn’t) afraid of.

In the end, what gave V the will to keep walking this road? A martyr could drink courage from doom.

V remembered the moment it all started to go wrong. Fitting, then, that she could already see the moment it all ended.

(Alien majesty haunted every memory.)