Serpentine Squiggles

Amid the hail of gunfire, J stopped to glance at her reflection. Bright moonlight upon glistening oil rendered her a stark, pale ghost. Yellow eyes pierced the night air beneath a row of matching bulbs, bright in working order. She smoothed a strand of stray synthetic hair back into place among her pigtails, flashed a winning smile, and returned to the hunt.

Hail fell in only one direction: down. There was no return fire. Above, two angels of death dived through the sky. Each flew on either side of J, like winged stormclouds. Muzzles flashed and gunshots rang out louder than thunder. Bullets joined with the falling snow, heavy impacts crunching against the crumbling rooves, or shattering the frosted ground, or smashing flat against the hard asphalt.

Or here and there, a skillful shot deformed instead the hard plastic and soft silicone of JcJenson’s patented robotic chassis‍ ‍—‍ followed by the squirt of oil, so sharp in that moment it was the only thing in the world J could smell.

Her sensors traced the origin of the scent. Northeast, the chemical gradient suggesting aproximately 15‍-​20 meters. Head swiveling around, optics preemptively focusing on the predicted range‍ ‍—‍ there, a flash of movement. Target acquired.

A short, bipedal robot dove for safety under the awning behind one house. Some tattered yellow garment covered most of the frame, the dive sending a hood flying off its head. It crawled to the house’s rear wall, and didn’t stop to fix its clothes.

J tsked. Running for your worthless life was no excuse to let your wardrobe malfunction. And rolling around in the mud and ice like that? J would never let the snow ruin her outfit‍ ‍—‍ a business suit and pencil skirt she’d taken pains to fit. (A flake fell on her now, the contact with her metal chassis immediately turning it to steam.)

The house faced the road, far enough ahead that the backyard awning wouldn’t take the target out of J’s sight. As her optics focused, the display program digitally zoomed and enhanced. Identification routines autoran, and J was sure.

Blue eyes glowing on an LED screen. Blue, not yellow, with no coronal sensory array, no injector tail… all were damning heuristics‍ ‍—‍ but it was policy to confirm a unit’s model before disassembly. She pinged the RFID‍ ‍—‍ model confirmed: worker drone.

That mouth opened. J’s thermal optics caught the exhaust minutely warming the air. A sigh of relief? It lasted until another spate of rapid machine gun fire punctured the cloth awning, opening a cluster of holes. The drone snapped its head up to stare.

J could imagine the animation onscreen, eyes hollowing with fear, vocalsynth emitting a yelp. She couldn’t hear, and in snowfall like this, no amount of gain would recover that audio signal. Oh well. There’d be plenty of that to come.

Above, an angel folded bladed wings, swooping down to point a barrel under the awning. The robot was already scrambling up, and threw themselves around the corner of the house. The predicted trajectory ran south, toward the road J walked down. It crouched as if sneaking (as if it could escape), yet moved at speeds fast enough to trip once.

J shook her head and spread her bladed wings. For the moment she remained undetected‍ ‍—‍ visibility was poor in the storm, and worker drones’ senses were worthless.

The drone paused at the sight of the wide asphault road before it. Paralyzed, unable to path‍-​find a new escape route? Of course it can’t find one. We’re watching from the skies. Nowhere is safe. In that moment, J thanked the human habit of putting houses uniformly among flat, empty lots. No cover for prey to get lost in.

With a crash, her brief flight ended. J spared the drone the agony of coming to a decision. Her hand disappeared into her conic gauntlets, and transformed. Then she granted it instead the agony‍ ‍—‍ relief, really‍ ‍—‍ of a sword between its digital eyes. J smirked, and the only response was that same smirk reflecting back on a momentarily blank screen. Half a second, and the bright red of Fatal Error.

J hoped the drone got a good look at death in its last clock cycle.

Electric discharge from dying circuits tickled her blade even as a layer of oil formed. J licked the blade clean, grabbing the permenantly‍-​shutdown drone with another hand.

Sharp teeth ringed a yawning mouth. They closed around the drone’s neck with irresistible force, severing the head. With that impediment removed, the drone served its purpose: oil flowed out in a river. J carefully angled the spurting corpse so excess oil fell upon the drone itself or the ground.

This wound would be enough to empty the drone. J was efficient. Now she would drink, and needed cause no further damage to the piece of equipment.

As the oil poured into her system, J shuddered. The liquid immersed her tongue, warm and so smooth. Fresh oil always went down easy if it had been flowing in a drone just moments before. Internal sensors felt the new wealth, and pumped it into her true reserves. Oil filled her, but power and freedom too, like a debt finally cleared.

J’s accounting was precise; her reserves held 3.2 liters of oil, and judging by weight, this drone would offer her a mere 1.3 more. Simple upkeep consumed mililiters of oil by the minute, a clock ticking always toward an hot, suffocating demise. Every disassembly drone could feel that.

There were five stages of overheating, from the warm & clear to ‘you’re toast, idiot,’ and J teetered in the third stage, hunter’s fever, mere days away from overheating. And that was if she didn’t execute special disassembly functions.

But what modern business didn’t run on thin margins? J’s accounting was precise.

She lifted the drone so the last drops of oil slid out, then stuck the unit with her needle‍-​tipped tail, actuator primed to inject. Bright, burning yellow fluid filled the unit, melting it from the inside out. The nanites spoke the last word in disinfecting‍ ‍—‍ expensive, but final. Disassembly by acid.

Finally, she licked her lips and resumed walking.

Snow fell on her and became beads of water.

J stalked forward. Minutes passed. The report of more gunshots resounded, as her squadmates still flew above. This formation was J’s idea. Hungry death from above would flush out the drones. Soon their pathfinding would compute a line of safety existed along a thin line between the two drones.

And then, they’d spot a dark figure in the snowfall, yellow eyes piercing, as J slowly advanced. There’d be only one safe passage remaining, one direction to go.

Herded just like cattle. J didn’t cackle madly like some, but an elegant, efficient plan like this merited a satisfied smirk.

One worker, however, didn’t get the memo. It climbed into a lower window of a two‍-​story house. (Delayed, for a moment, by its yellow robe getting caught on a window edge.)

Can’t have that, now can we? J spread her wings, and kicked off the ground. Flight routines carried her for seconds‍ ‍—‍ she could already feel her oil consumption spike, seconds of flight costing tens of milliliters. Snow blasted away in the radius of her landing, half of it rebounding off the house’s walls.

Already, her sensors were tracking and modeling the drone’s whereabouts. But the drone kindly opted to save her the trouble. A yelp of surprise, quickly triangulated. A source highlighted on her HUD. Had the drone climbed to the second floor already?

Hand replaced with three claws, J slashed the wall. Mass‍-​constructed human homes never withstood her strength, and now the plaster folded as so much debris, like mere shreds of paper. She stepped in, and another slash opened the ceiling above her. She leapt up.

Then a glass cup clinked off her head, and one eye twitched. She turned toward its source. There crouched the drone, hiding in the doorway of a room. Another projectile flew‍ ‍—‍ headphones?‍ ‍—‍ and she bisected it mid‍-​flight. “Spare me this futile resistance. Be a good little toaster and submit to disassembly, alright?”

The only response was another projectile flung. J slashed it‍ ‍—‍ and was that a can of beans? The organic mess exploded, draping her in lumpy soup.

Herding was all well and good, but it was time to eliminate redundancy.

“Your contract has been terminated,” she growled. A fanged mouth snarled beneath visor displaying only ><, the wide cross of a disassembly drone running hunting routines. The drone witnessed this for a single frame.

J burst into motion. She moved faster than the worker drone could ever react. Before it finished processing the next frame, two halves of a split head fell away. She didn’t stop there, and a flurry of impulsive cuts and the drone became so many oily fragments. Splashes of its oil mixed with the bean soup, and this was a welcome improvement.

(Before it died with a hiss, the vocalsynth was stuttering on a syllable‍ ‍—‍ had the drone uttered last words? J played back the last few seconds from her working memory, and parsed the sounds‍ ‍—‍ “Please, Father, w‍-​where—”. J deallocated the memory. Meaningless. A satisfying note of fear, at least.)

J sighed. Optics surveyed the carnage behind her LED screen. This wasn’t the plan. She needn’t personally disassemble every drone they saw, after all. Too slow, and her squadmates had to feed, too. (Though each necessarily began the hunt with far more of an oil buffer than J.)

No, she would be the shepherd guiding these drones to the slaughter. This one, though… it deserved this. No regrets. She knelt to consume what was left.

Moments and then, from the other side of the house J was dropping out of a newly made exit. Behind her chimed the soft bomb‍-​beep, a countdown concluding. Now the house was a conflagration, so much burning wood and melted plaster. J didn’t look back.

It was simple. J needn’t waste time dragging the drone out of the house, nor come back for its fragmented remains.

Call that disassembly by fire.

She wiped away oil and food waste with tatters of the drone’s yellow robe‍ ‍—‍ what little of it wasn’t already coated in oil. Then a shadow passed over her. Her eyes narrowed. She dropped the cloak.

“N,” it could be a greeting, were her tone not weighed with chastisement, “you’re down here. Yet I seem to remember your job being somewhere else.”

The drone landed, a thick coat flapping up for a moment. His legs were bending, as if to make himself smaller. He poked two fingers together and ventured, “Haha, yeah. I guess I just wanted to uh, make sure—”

“You didn’t think a disassembly drone might have any trouble with the shutdown of a single worker, did you? You wouldn’t insult me with concern over a such a thing, would you?” Her needle‍-​tipped tail stabbed through the air for emphasis.

“Uh, no, I definitely don’t care about your well‍-​being! Wait, no! I mean, you wouldn’t be in any danger at all against any worker drones, I knew that.” He looked away, tail falling to the ground.

“Uh huh. So, just too weighed down by uselessness to keep flying?”

N rubbed his head. His eyes cast around, searching the ground. He spotted the discarded robe. “Well, it’s a bit odd, isn’t it? I wonder what’s up with the weird robes on all these drones. Oddly… human fashion, y’know? And it’s so coordinated. Seems like all of the drones we’ve seen tonight are wearing them.”

J waved a claw, rolling her eyes. “Workers imitate humans, N. It’s all they’re capable of.”

N frowned, then nodded. “Yeah, I guess that makes sense. Probably just found a bunch of human skeletons wearing the same thing. A dead cult or something. Still… do you think they’re working together for something?”

J stared at N. She cycled air through her vents, and forced relaxation into her posture. Repetition is the heart of clear communication, she reminded herself.

“We’re out here because we detected a new signal broadcasted over the frozen wasteland. If we’re lucky, we just tracked down a new outpost. Tear that down, and we’ll rank top team for sure.” A professional smile. “But we can only do that if a certain barely functional excuse for a disassembler gets back in the sky to herd these toasters!”

It was an order. N at least had the sense to stiffen at that. With a jolt, he threw up a hand in a shakey salute. “Right, got it, captain!”

Wings spread, then an explosion of snow, and finally J’s genius formation was restored.

If these drones escaped, someone would be drinking two week old drone oil dregs, and it wasn’t going to be J.

V swooped down and plucked a drone from the middle of the herd. Thirteen drones crowded the streets. Did they think there was safety in numbers? Did they think they’d escaped the angels above? For a moment, it had seemed so, even as N’s gunfire inched closer and closer. So V reminded these toasters that each motherboard’s clock still ticked because they let it.

It was a panic. Below glowed a rainbow of LED visors, each screen throwing light in different direction. Every so often, they glanced back at the one disassembly drone who approached step by step, continually, relentlessly, a dark silhouette barely seen beyond the snowfall. Looking at her, the expressiosn on every face is the same: fear, worry, dread.

Despair.

Above them, V bit into her prize with a rumbling tear, metal grinding, joints torn apart. A piñata but the candy was black. Oil painted her chassis and poured down into the crying throng upon the streets.

What a waste.

J rolled her eyes, and shifted her walk cycle one setting up from her slowest.

The faster drones in the herd rushed forward, mad dashes out of a confused mass. One toaster fell down to be trampled by the rest. A kick cracked their screen and the expression briefly errored out. They couldn’t get up.

J lunged forward, kneeling to feed on the trampled drone, before it rebooted. Now it never would.

V’s spun as she fell into another dive and grabbed a drone‍ ‍—‍ another?‍ ‍—‍ from the rear of the panicked mass. Screams echoed across the empty landscape, fear overloading its processor so much the vocalsynth stuttered.

The disassembler thrusted a hand into the drone’s inner workings. J couldn’t see what V did, but her sensors detected the activation of a special disassembly function, and the spark of electricity was suggestive. Prediction: V overcharged an impeller, which meant—

Oil sluiced into a cavity where an overclocked motor spun wildly. V squeezed the thing tighter, giving the oil even less space. The drone popped, and the rapidly‍-​spinning impeller sends oil flying wide, as if from a sprinkler. V laughed.

It landed on J’s outfit.

“Enthusaistic as ever, eh V?” J wiped down her skirt.

At least she didn’t speak with a mouth full of oil. “What? I get hungry. They were dead anyway.” She waved a severed limb dismissively.

“This wasn’t part of my plan. Do you think N is going to cover for your lapse in suppressive fire?”

“Who?” She grinned with an absent‍-​minded tilt of her head, as if one letter were too much to remember.

J rolled her eyes. “Doesn’t matter. You have a role to play.”

“Ah yeah, the plan. Where your only role is to look pretty, right? How about you try running and gunning a whole neighborhood on an empty tank. Call this… the cost of doing business, right?”

“Just remember what you’re supposed to be doing. I can count on you, V. Keep it that way.”

V ripped another chunk out of the drone, and swallowed it, metal and all. Refilling spent ammunition? Perhaps this was excusable…

“Whatever you say boss. Aren’t we supposed to be disassembling them, anyway? And you get on my case for playing with my food.” V grinned. “Kind of feels like you’re the one just showing off. But we can just kill them now. All these fancy tactics are a waste.”

J’s eyes twitched, but for a moment, she ventured no rebuttal. V was right. If her arguments were a bullet, that was a shot to the legs. J was good‍ ‍—‍ she was the best, and what did it matter? How could J distinguish herself when an intelligent approach was no more effective than wanton violence?

J’s broke eye contact. “It’s about leverage, V,” she finally said. “It’s one thing to shut down a drone, but think about the opportunity cost. Let them run for a moment. If they think they can escape, where do they go? Where do they feel safe? We wait, and then we tear it all apart.”

It was an investment.

“You’re betting on another outpost,” V concluded. “Sure. If you’re right, let’s say I’ll owe you two oilcans, then.”

“Just get back in the air.”

V spread her wings. “Way I see it,” she said, holding up her half‍-​eaten drone, “if you want the toasters running, you gotta give them something to run from.” V cackled, fangs on promenient display.

Then the snow exploded with her takeoff. The angel returned to the sky.

J shifted into a yet faster walk cycle, hoping to catch up to the herd. Optics estimated them to be about 50 meters away now. Worker drones still glanced backward. She turned up her visor’s the brightness and gave them a smile to admire when they do.

The toasters scrambled away, but it was more than fear driving them forward. Their eyes settled on a structure rising in the east, at the other end of the road. J could just barely make out the distant form, and could guess what inspired their hopes. They must think they’ve found safety.

This is our objective, no doubt about it.

«Fall back! Behind me!» J broadcasted. A shortwave radio buzz was her voice in another medium. Above, a hitch in the automatic fire and then blade‍-​wings folded; her squad heard her.

Worker drones had transceivers, too‍ ‍—‍ so disassembly squad spoke words cloaked and ciphered. Their hopeless prey only heard howling static that jammed their own transmission.

J could watch a flinch of fear flicker through the crowd ahead, shuddering as if from a banshee’s scream. But the gunfire had ceased and the circling death above was spiraling away‍ ‍—‍ wasn’t that good?

Soon, a wave of relief passed through the herd.

She crossed the intersection. Then ahead, the road gave way to a great circular parking lot. Frost‍-​ruined cars dotted the expanse. A halo shape, the lot ringed a building like a great hand rising from the earth, so many towers steepled like fingers.

A spiderweb of thin wires hang taut, strung between the fingers as if binding. Thicker lines hung lower, hugging the shingles, or hanging off the gutters. With the icicles stabbing down and frost sheathing the wires, electrical lines crept like overgrown vines.

Atop the highest spire, a piece of wood rose to be abruptly severed in half. (What once stood there instead had fallen to a lower roof, stuck in the snow‍ ‍—‍ some cross from a dead human religion?) But where it once hung, something new crowned the tower, pointing toward the sky: a radio dish.

Enterting the lot, they pass by a decrepit sign. OCR functions scaned the image, then convert to ASCII:

Church of the Electric and the Divine

"Search not for the ultimate answer, but the ultimate answerer."

“Source of the signal located,” J murmured to no one. Neither squadmate would care. She was used to that.

It was always the captain alone who listened attentively at their relay console, ever‍-​patient for a new trasmission breaking her creators’ years of stone‍-​silence. She checked each night, and with no result, turned her attention elsewhere, sweeping the radio bands. But hoping for worker foolish enough to broadcast often brought that same disappointment.

So when J first heard it, she almost missed it. Encrypted, one easily mistook it for ambient radio static. But it persisted in the same band, bearing signs of amplitude modulation. Suspiciously consistent, but J was no code‍-​breaker.

Still, if this were a worker drone signal, then worker drones must have the keys. When J hunted her first drone with those yellow robes, she learned the decryption keys were transmitted among the workers in a kind of pantomime initiation ritual. Of course, they would never be so kind as to admit their artifical predator into this secrecy.

And J couldn’t break codes‍ ‍—‍ where she excelled, though, was in breaking drones.

All security faltered to an attacker with physical access. So J had pinned down that drone while it whimpered and struggled. Grinding the heel of her stiletto‍-​peg until it cracked the casing, waving the acid‍-​tipped blade by the face and letting anticipatory dollops drip sizzling onto the glass‍ ‍—‍ J recalled that hunt fondly.

Even still, these interrogation techniques hadn’t secured her knowledge.

Among J’s toolkit were instruments once used for debugging drones‍ ‍—‍ all the more fitting they be used now for rooting out corruption. J had devised a method for extracting information from her prey. The exploit itself was a convenience and an oversight.

Reboot a drone while connected to their system, and a narrow startup window existed where the right input bypassed normal login and halted initialization of conscious threads. Just like that, J had root access, arrogating admin rights. To her, the drone became no more than an external hard‍-​drive.

Two abrupt impacts cracked the frozen ground behind her. Stirred from her reminisce, J’s coronal optics caught sight of V and N, alighting at last.

“So uh, what’s the plan, captain?” N asked from behind her.

“Reconnaissance. That signal traces back here and I intend to know what else these toasters were transmitting.” And why.

Said toasters had now reached the massive doors of the church, rising several times taller than the robots. Plastic fists slammed against the wood demanding entry. Pairs of hands with no rhythm between them‍ ‍—‍ that they could be heard so clearly without amplification spoke to the desperation.

“If this is their hideout,” V started, “any reason to let them go in?”

“Nope.” J transformed her hand into a long‍-​barreled rifle. “It’s time for this nonprofit to be audited.”

As one, the disassemblers flew forward. Ahead, the door had finally lumbered open, just a crack, and the worker drones were slipping in single‍-​file.

By the time J touched down, six had gone inside, and the rest were climbing over themselves in their rush to get inside, knocking one another down.

V acted first. A gunshot punched clean through the rearmost drone. Meanwhile, N circled around and grabbed a drone that got squeezed out of line, his tail stinging. With her rifle, J took a clean shot, firing a single round powerful enough to turn the head of one drone into scrap and still embed itself in the chassis of the next.

Two down, making four total within a second of their arrival. Only three drones remained alive outside. But that one second had been enough for another to slip inside. Two drones remained, then.

One of them, still knocked down from when another climbed over them, clambered to their feet. It took one look at the disassemblers surrounding. Then it delivered a kick to the drone behind it, sending them to the ground as they slip inside.

The huge door slammed to a close, trapping this last drone outside.

Its eyelights went dim and hollow as digital tears sprang forth. The only sight greeting it was J’s hungry smile. The simulated waterworks intensified.

“How pathetic. These units are incapable of even the most basic coordination.” Between one frame and the next, J went from meters away to deadly close, her tail stinger scratching against the drone’s visor. “Do you understand? Disassembly is necessary.”

No time to answer. J had already impaled it. Her nanites melted a drone sputtering meaningless noise.

“Man, I haven’t seen security this annoying since that one outpost.”

A flat glare from J. “The ‘one?’ This team has cleared far more than one corrupted colony.”

“Duh. I’m talking about the one we didn’t clear.” V rolled her eyes, not even looking at J. The disrespect. “You know, the one with the tricky doors. Real heavy.”

The captain’s frowned deepened. Then it clicked. She didn’t let it show on her face, but she said, “Not heavy, secured with hydraulic force. A pathetic roadblock that can only succeed in briefly delaying their fate.”

That got a look from V‍ ‍—‍ a smirk. (She had a ring of oil around her lips, feeding on one of the drones outside.) “Oh yeah? And how many years has it been?”

And who’s job was it to find a point of ingress? J was busy enough handling every managerial responsibility on her own. Maybe J would have already penetrated those defenses if someone didn’t slack on everything except disassembly. J opened her mouth to tear into her insolent squadmate—

“Oh biscuits,” N swore as he gave another futile slash. Three claws dug into the wood before brightly grinding to a halt, as if it didn’t have the strength of a disassembly drone behind it. “What kind of human building would be this tricky to open?”

The captain glanced around. V was feeding herself, and J stood there glaring while N tried to get past the door. His attempts were useless, of course, no compliments for that. But talking to V was about as useless.

J sighed, and said, “Guess we know why the drones were congregating here. N, V, try other points of ingress. Hit the windows, find weak points in the stone. I’ll examine these wires.”

Around the circumference of the main spire, haphazardly spaced, tall windows punctured the brickwork. Stained glass, if the fallen shards indicated anything, but someone (the toasters?) had plated them all over with salvaged metal sheets. Still, they’d surely remain a hole in the security.

J readied her claws, then stabbed them into the wood deep as she could, and then started climbing the door.

High above, a small cicular window sat at the top. It wasn’t plated over.

Her claws had no trouble penetrating the wood, they simply stopped with inexplicable resistance a few centimeters in. But‍ ‍—‍ with a mild drain on her oil reserves‍ ‍—‍ augmenting her strength meant this was sufficient for the disassembly drone to pull herself up.

On the frame, J perched and peered into the church. Nothing but a blurred mess, and no denoising algorithm could clarify the image. The stained glass fogged opaquely with age and ice and tiny cracks. What waited for them within? A disassembler had nothing to fear from their prey, and yet this…

Claws raked forcefully against the pane. Light sparked, and new cracks formed, but no entry. J frowned. The door, perhaps, could be excused as oddly durable construction or unseen reinforcement‍ ‍—‍ but this? Glass couldn’t resist a disassembler’s strength. J could see through it. There had to be some manner of… field effect? What could cause this?

Light came again and again with repeated experimentation. Not sparks, but a glow. Whenever J’s limbs met the resistance, the aura bloomed. Source or symptom?

A cruciform had split the window into four panes, and even beyond that, black wires spiderwebbed the other side. Thick, branching things, with faint triangular patterns along their length. They glowed in sympathy with every strike.

J could feel them humming with current, almost pulsing. And with that, a theory formed…

From her special disassembly functions, J selected her short‍-​range EMP burst, and activated her transmodular gauntlets. Expensive, but it easily disabled drones‍ ‍—‍ and in this case, disrupted electrical wiring.

If these wires powered the security system…

Slash. And now the glass simply shattered. Slash, slash, and the wires are all cut. Hm. Will this be enough to disrupt the flow elsewhere in this wall?

J flexed her wings once before folding them up, rocking herself into the church. Grabbing hold of the disrupted wiring as she fell inward, she dragged them with her. J had more than enough strength to rip the wiring out of the walls, wherever they’re hooked to.

Then glass was shattering at windows below her.

«Thanks, J!» N transmitted. J ignored him.

Her two squadmates burst into the church. N to the left, V to the right.

Waste no more time. Wings flared, claws flexed, and acid dewed on the needle‍-​sharp tip of the tail. Warm lips curled upward‍ ‍—‍ not a winning smile, not yet, but a predatory grin. It was time to hunt.

J descended.

A wide chamber stretched below her, lit bright but flickering. It was teeming, dozens of drones pumping with delicious oil. All clad in those familiar yellow robes. Some sat in pews, while others were still staggering in. The crowd roiled, clearly agitated. Why wouldn’t they be? It was over for them.

Far at the front, one drone stood before another clad in void‍-​black robes addorned with a symbol: a golden hexagon, three lines curling out from three vertices. Its body language was most animated, and J caught a loud vocalsynth.

“—too late, Father! Ascension is our only hope, the remote host connection—”

The reply came quieter, but J’s hearing was sensitive. “No, we have not recieved her blessing. Our deliverance is not yet upon us.”

“But our wards have fallen! The sky demons are here!”

The black‍-​robed drone nodded profoudly. “The only hope for us is to await the dawn.”

V scoffed. “You won’t last that long.”

N landed with a bounce, hands rising to either side of his mouth. “Ooh, is this a cult meeting? Can I join? I love unquestioning loyalty to a dubious cause!”

By now most of the drones were turning to shattered windows. Processing the sight of winged death. Screaming. As N darted forward eagerly, the nearest drones scrambled backwards.

“Aww,” he said, hands transforming into guns and burying several rapid fire rounds into the workers, three of them dead in seconds. “They never make much conversation, do they?” He frowned.

At last J landed, stone cracking beneath her. Glancing left, she leveled a withering look at N. “They’re defective, idiot. Barely sentient toasters, remember?”

(N tried transforming his hand back, but it takes moment‍ ‍—‍ unusual lag, J noted.)

To the right, terrified yells and cries of “please no”, “not my wife”, “please don’t feed me my own wiring” reached them intermittenly. Both turned their gaze to V carving her way through the congregation. More noise than usual. Most drones didn’t get time to make this much noise‍ ‍—‍ as if V was killing them at a much slower clip then normal.

“Enough chat. We have… a mission.” Then J felt her own processes lag for a moment, and narrowed her eyes. They were all oddly sluggish.

…Why was it so bright in here anyway?

From the edges of the room, burning fires illuminated the chamber. Smoke crowned them, and banners on the wall waved gently from the heat roiling off them.

“So that’s their ploy? They think some heat will buy them time? Almost a clever strategy,” she conceded. J flashed a smile to her fellow disassembly drones, teeth sharp. “But what good is a heat trap in a room full of coolant?”

As if to demonstrate, V cut down another drone, dosing herself in the oil. With every mouthful she consumed, she moved a bit faster.

All of them acted on a clock, then. Empty the room before overheating. A yellow cross blazed onto J’s visor, and N wasn’t far behind. A roar of jamming shortwave static purred from their transceivers, an instinct‍-​refrain of «Prey spotted! Let’s hunt! Devour them!»

It was an oilbath. Deep in a hunting routine, J didn’t have the spare processing power to organize the sequence of images and motor inputs into a coherent narrative, and didn’t need to.

«Prey! Hunt! Devour!»

She saw V smash the visor of one drone and used the plastic shards as improvised throwing knives. She saw N cut feats of acrobatics, almost dancing among the panicked horde. His nanite stinger pricked one drone then he slid it across the floor, passing it to V to be further disassembled.

Pews were flipped over, candelabras fell to the ground, and the resounding acoustics of the room meant the protestations of the worker drones echoed like a great, suffering choir. Their agony reached a climax and sustained a long note, discordant and screaming.

J disabled four drones with a single sweep of her wings. They staggered back, and then there was N, finishing the job. Each dead drone was punctuated by a torrent of black gold pouring down hungry throats; they drunk as if eternally parched. Slick oil coated their bodies‍ ‍—‍ though J’s hair remains spotless.

The three disassemblers worked like a perfectly‍-​tuned machine. No bickering, no difference of perspective. Everything was as simple as locate, shutdown, disassemble.

To the drones, they were death in three bodies, moving so fast, transforming and coordinating so quickly, it all could only be understood as a blur, a chaos of images, a sudden and unexpected halting of computation.

This was what the company designed them for. They fulfilled their function, and it was beautiful.

Now the song transitioned into a new section; at this point, the room held more drones shutdown than online, by far. Now they were not drinking oil faster than the heat mounted.

J staggered in front of one drone. This one had wielded enough cunning or luck to scuttle to a doorway leading out of this central chamber. N, though busy on the other side of the room, had the presence of mind to toss a whole pew across the room.

It sailed across the distance and slammed against the wall above, sliding down to block off escape for J’s prey. (Distantly, the exertion of throwing the pew sends N careening backward onto the floor. J didn’t spare a glance.)

The worker turned to face the disassembly drone, visor shining sea‍-​green eyes. J’s screen flashed a high‍-​temp warning, and the worker narrowed its eyes in seeming determination. It broke off a large splinter of the pew, as if to use it as a weapon.

J smirked. “Oh, you’re going to fight back?” She paused, and watched expectently. “Go on. I’ll let you have a free shot.”

The drone stared at the disassembly drone, uncomprehending. Its predator was… letting it attack? It swallowed, then as if gathering courage, finally charged forward, cocking back its wooden shiv, preparing to swing.

Before the swing has time to connect, J had already pricked it from behind with her nanite stinger. The drone is a mess of sputtering vocals, artifacts consuming its screen.

“Just kidding.” J laughed. “If you really wanted to live, you should have shown more initiative than that. No handouts.” J stepped on the drone, grinding its head into the ground.

Another high‍-​temp warning interrupted her. J scanned the room for more targets. There‍ ‍—‍ was that the one they called ‘Father’?‍ ‍—‍ it wore void‍-​black, golden‍-​trimmed robes. It scuttled beyond the center of the room, hopping toward the pulpit, climbing over the railings. The trajectory was clear. At the back, a passage lead deeper into the church.

That wouldn’t do. “I’m afraid an attestation requires examining all assets. Get back here.”

J spread her wings, burnt oil to fly, and she was pursuit.

A spiral staircase winded through the church, circling higher and higher. Given this was the central tower… This ‘Father’ drone aimed for the radio transmitter, no doubt.

Even with decades of disuse, time seemingly paid extra neglect to the tower’s upper reaches. The walls fell away in places, letting cold winds blow in through small cracks‍ ‍—‍ a welcome reprieve for J. The high‍-​temp warnings had abated, at least.

Though her reserves were replete much more oil than before‍ ‍—‍ 15.2 liters‍ ‍—‍ that meant so much less until she could vent all the excess heat. Idling at stage three overheat consumed so much more oil; she was losing tens of milliliters by the second.

When exhaust left her mouth, it steamed in the cold air. But she felt the relief of temperatures plummeting, her systems all but shuddering. Stage two was no comfort, but brazen thirst beat hunter’s fever.

In this ascent, J hadn’t seen the drone she pursued at all. But she was a disassembly drone, and her sensory suite was extensive. She scented the microparticulates of partly combusted oil upon the drone’s exhaust. She heard the soft bumps and steps‍ ‍—‍ was it trying to be sneaky? How cute‍ ‍—‍ the sound traveled through the brickwork.

Worker drones didn’t run as hot as disassembly drones, but her thermal vision could read the faint trail. And there was her electromagnetic sense‍ ‍—‍ which, oddly, was the least helpful. Worker drones emitted plenty of radiation, left unmistakeable eddies in the EM field‍ ‍—‍ but now, it had vanished from her magnometers.

What waited for J atop this spire?

Only so much space existed in this church for Father to cover, and J simply moved faster. Before long she stood beneath the trapdoor hatch into the topmost chamber. On whim, she slowly opened the door. Slowly, rather than bursting in. Let it stew in dread. Won’t that taste better? The door almost didn’t open for all the black branching wires running around it.

A mess sprawled throughout the topmost chamber. eReaders, DVDs, pages drenched in incomprehensible scribbles. A telescope pointed out of the grilled window, and on the other side of the room flatscreen monitors and archaic CRTs covered the wall. The drone had unplugged them all by the time J walked in, shoveling wires out of the window by the armful, before slamming the windows closed.

“Last words?” J asked.

“No.” The drone didn’t turn around.

“Wrong answer. You’re going to tell me—”

“Yes.”

“You think you can interrupt—”

“Now.”

That was when J realized it wasn’t talking to her. She lunged forward, flipping the drone around to face her. Its screen showed console output.

$ jcj_system -m factory-reset --kill-all --force
Factory reset selected.   Back up system data beforehand?
Files not backed up will be IRRECOVERABLE.
> No.
Are you sure?
> Yes.
Preparing factory reset.
With current options:
- Configuration will be wiped.
- All processes will be halted.
- No files will be preserved.
Please schedule a time, or say 'quit' to abort.
> Now.
Please stand by...

A growl. “This is definitely concealment.”

What a damn coward.

Before J had even finished reading the screen, she had torn open a panel to expose the drone’s data ports, transformed her gauntlets to produce a bright blue serial debugging cable.

Yet J couldn’t make the connection before the progress bar at the bottom had filled. The screen went blank.

The captain had devised a method for extracting information from her prey. Boot a drone while connected to their system, bypass login and halt conscious threads.

She held down a button to cycle power. A short beep, POST successful, and a JcJenson (in SPAAAAACEE!!!!) logo flashed onscreen. J saw a “Welcome to your new worker drone!” initialization screen, like a newly manufactured pill‍-​baby, neural network fresh and untrained.

Please input registration key to continue.
> 

Then the welcome screen was torn in four by three slashing claws, and J seethed. Without an OS, without a lick of data on the hard‍-​drive, it was useless. Whatever the full text of the transmission, whatever these toasters were doing here, every secret this ‘Father’ had held, was now lost, erased as one last act of spite.

Whatever. She didn’t need answers. Without them, this drone was nothing more than just another body for the pile. And that means her mission was a success.

One more colony (or pseudo‍-​colony) wiped off the planet.

(But how would J distinguish herself, without those answers? If all she did was disassemble, just like every other unit in her line?)

Oh well. With this pseudo‍-​colony wiped, it was time to fly back to the spire. This excursion cut it close‍ ‍—‍ the sun would rise in less than ninety minutes, and out of the tower’s windows, she wondered if it was mere fear and predictive modeling that painted hints of predawn light on the horizon.

J punched at the windows, and instead of shattering, they remained intact. A blink animation on her visor. She tried a different window, a wall, none of them break.

A familiar resistance. That impossible holographic glow.

She clawed at the floor‍ ‍—‍ same effect. Same aura. The wires she’d seen coming up here. The wires Father had carefully thrown out of the window.

A trap? From a worker drone?

An amusing attempt‍ ‍—‍ J could almost admire the strategy in it‍ ‍—‍ but nothing a worker drone could accomplish would impede a disassembly drone for long.

J cut all of the cords in the room from the various monitors. Tried the windows again‍ ‍—‍ no effect. So all of the wires that fed into this ‘ward’ effect must be outside this room.

And she couldn’t cut them without already being outside.

No matter. How had she first gotten into the church? She hadn’t been able to access the cords then. She charged up another EM burst. The screens flashed and the severed cords sparked, but the windows still refused to shatter.

J glared at the windows. She zoomed in on the grills beyond, and analysis identified the Faraday cage, protecting the wires from her burst.

Nothing she could do but growl impotently.

A worker drone’s trap. And she, a disassembly drone, was stuck in it.

Less than an hour to sunrise. In a room with wide windows.

J smashed her fist against the floor, with all of her special disassembly function‍-​augmented strength behind it. Her hand exploded into a shower of metal and plastic and dripping fluids.

A flood of errorlog’d warnings flowed up her HUD, but the regeneration function was already executing. Her hand reformed in seconds, mending the joint with her arm as if nothing had happened. (As the most effective disassembly drone on her squad, the regeneration function was second nature to her.)

But there were things she could not regenerate from.

J could lay on the floor and cling desperately to the cover of walls when the sunrays started burning. Undignified, and not even effective‍ ‍—‍ bounced light wouldn’t be much better.

She kicked the self‍-​lobotomized drone. Another grunt of frustration, then she knelt to shut it down (disassembly by force) and feed on its oil. Against an immenient sunrise, another liter or two didn’t mean more than a few more seconds of survival.

Was this how J left the company’s service? Baking in the sun light after a successful mission?

“What’s a drone got to do to get a tax break?” She laughed once, an empty, nervous sound.

Yellow eyelights scanned the room again and again, searching for any neglected detail, a way out. The amber light drained from behind the glass, and eventually the head hung, staring at the floor. J reached up to grab her hair, pulling, twisting it out of place. With each tug, it felt like yanking the worries out of her, just a bit.

Maybe it wasn’t over. Her useless squad could get her out of this, right? She just needed to give the order.

«V! N! Ascend the tower. Now!» J broadcasted. Knowing to cut the wires should be within the competence of even her squad.

Except the seconds tick by, and she receives no ACK, no response of any sort.

«V? N? Are you listening? Come here!»

J opened her mouth to continue, but before she spiraled down into desperation and pleading, she thought. Her squad would never ignore her like this.

Of course! Her sensors hadn’t even been able to pick out the drone up here. No signal she sent would make it out. She was caged, blocked off.

This was a trap. How could she get out? How? Hm… Whatever field resisted her attempts to destroy the windows, that had to cost energy, right? Simple physics. Whatever fueled this ‘ward’ had to be weakened with every rightful destruction averted.

Except there was something else depleted with each attempt. J watched her oil reserved tick down, minute by minute. J had no reason to think she’d outlast this ‘ward’. But a disassembly drone was made of superior components than anything a worker cobbled together. She had to try—

Something moved outside the window. A glowing pair of yellow eyes, familiar sword‍-​blades sawing at electrical wiring, and punching through the glass imprisoning her.

“V,” J greeted. “A late but welcome arrival. Had trouble cleaning up down there?”

“Trouble? It was an oven down there, you do the math.” Then J noticed V had something‍ ‍—‍ someone‍ ‍—‍ slung over her back. “You left N to overheat.”

‘And me’ went unspoken.

J shook her head. “Not my fault the idiot wasn’t paying attention to the heat warnings.”

“If he dies, C‍-​ the company isn’t sending a replacement.”

J swished her tail in dismissal. “Good. He’s worthless and terrible. I’d kill him myself if it wasn’t against company policy. We’d do just fine without him. Better.”

V just stared. “Squad’s all we have, J,” she eventually ventured. “We didn’t get to pick. I’d certainly never pick you.” That last sentence came quietly, at the lowest volume setting of her synth. Why bother? J could hear it just fine.

“Oddly sentimental. What happened to forgetting his name?”

V scowled, and turned around, taking a step back toward the window. “Don’t tell him.”

“What?”

“He didn’t overheat. Don’t tell him why.”

Then J put the pieces together‍ ‍—‍ N was overheating, V stabilized him. How? He needed oil and he wasn’t conscious to hunt for himself, so…

J rolled her eyes. “Workplace drama is not my concern. Just keep it professional.”

“Right, whatever you say. Let’s head back before the sun cooks us.”

“Not quite. Mission isn’t over yet, V.”

“What now?”

“We’re here to get to the bottom of the transmission. And now, find out what’s powering these ‘wards’. I want to be prepared the next time a drone uses this cheap trick.”

V glanced down. Scattered on the floor were the scrawled pages, overflowing with incomprehensible demonic imagery. Characteristic of cultic esoterism. V’s optics settled on a triangular motif repeated constantly. Something coiled tense in V’s tone. “You sure you want to do that, J? Corporate doesn’t pay you to ask questions.”

“Corporate doesn’t need to pay us,” J said. She pointed up at the radio dish. “These toasters were broadcasting. I want to know everything. Look at how they congregated here. If we gain control of the transmitter, we could lure our prey wherever we want them. That’s a surefire a roadmap to exceptional third quarter profits.”

V walked over to the window, pausing there, hand tracing along the jagged windowsill. The bent bars of J’s momentary prison. V said, “Whatever you say, boss. You give the orders, we follow.” Without turning, she quietly finished, “Just hope you don’t regret it again so soon.”

Beneath the church lay a basement.

Despite the tower bearing the radio dish and the heaviest concentration of the wardlines, nothing truly critical seemed to lie there. A yellow ethernet cord conveyed the radio signal from elsewhere. When they followed that cord, they found more wardlines joining together, as if branching backward to its source.

J picked up one wardline to examine it closely. When cut, a small trickle of oil dripped out. Like the wardlines were so many black veins for the church.

The thick cord that ran into the basement must have been the major artery. The door to the basement was an old rotten piece of wood. Yet when J yanked, it held fast. It didn’t resist with the inexplicable strength of the wards, and a moment later it gave, sending her stumbling backward with a fragment of wood clutched in her hand.

Stuck, and not as if it had frozen shut over the years. It felt as if some mold or ooze had hardened over it. Without her hunting routines honing her olfactory array onto a particular smell, J had no filter against the putrid mélange that wafted from this dark hole.

“Last chance to quit while you’re ahead.” V strolled forth behind J. Just the two of them‍ ‍—‍ V had buried N in a mound of snow outside. No point of lugging him around if they weren’t about to fly away.

Ignoring her, J got to her feet, brushed splinters off her skirt, and descended into the basement. Rickety boards bend under her weight, one of them snapping, but her coordination carried her to the bottom unphased. V just leapt down in a single bound, frontflipping to land on her feet.

Like upstairs, where the fires had burned in the worker’s attempted disassembler trap, the basement air was warm. Warm and humid, like human breath. (Though… why did J know what that felt like? No humans left on Copper‍-​9.)

Disassemblers had an array of senses: even the sound of her footsteps and the hum of her servos was enough for J to begin refining an echolocation map of her surroundings, let alone all the other sensors they boasted.

Yet still, wandering through these claustrophobic depths, it didn’t feel right modelling the territory without visual indicators. Crippling. J transformed her left arm into a flashlight.

The first sight that greeted her was a dead worker drone.

Visor gone, circuitry hollowed out of the head. Chassis lying in a puddle of oil. It was old work, and no disassembler would leave this oil here to congeal.

“So this was a cult,” V commented.

J kept moving. They passed a few dead ends, a few passages boarded off. A few more dead worker drones, some screens flickering Fatal Error or Error 606. The offline drones get more frequent as they followed the thickening vein‍-​cords.

So focused on echolocation and listening for a hint of what lay deeper, several moments passsed before a background process flagged something not heard‍ ‍—‍ the only set of footsteps was her own.

J glance to either side and turned around: V was gone.

She heard something else, claws digging into wood, unseen metal impacts. J’s eyes emptied, and she swung her flashlight around. Then she looked up.

V crawled on the ceiling, claws and knife‍-​tail holdling her up. She grinned, even as J’s worry turned to a glare.

Shaking her head, scoffing, J continued on. When she passed another puddle, she heard V drop to the ground. J flashlight illuminated V kneeling, hand reaching out for a dark, drying puddle.

Is she that hungry? Before J could ask, the question became irrelevant.

“This isn’t oil. This is blood.” V’s eyes narrowed.

“Is that valuable information?”

“Where did it come from?”

“Thawed out a frozen human?” J frowned at the image.

V shook her head. “It’s too fresh.”

Standing, V resumed walking, and J sped up to keep pace. They explored the basement side by side now.

V paused, and did a double take down one half‍-​boarded up passage. “Something moved. Not a drone. It was… twitching.”

The drone corpses, meanwhile, had become so common they piled atop each other, lining the hall they walked down. Screens still flickered, some so rapidly it couldn’t be a simple error state‍ ‍—‍ bootlooped?

A door lay at the end of the hall. J and V glanced at each other, then took the last steps forward, pushing open the final door.

The room overflowed with worker drone corpses. Or rather, worker drone parts. Piled to the ceiling. No screen showed an error state; each one was rendered nonfunctional with damaged and discarded parts. Upon the floor, a centimeter thick layer of oil sat, cold and thick.

One thing existed in the room, besides plastic and metal. A slab of stone rising from the center of the floor, symbols etched into it, and spikes ringing it‍ ‍—‍ the only word that came to mind was altar.

A drone lay on it, the only one not in a state of abject disrepair, though the chassis’s front was left popped open. Inside, the wiring and motors that belonged in a worker drone’s internals mingled with blood and organic sacs.

After a moment paused and staring, J tapped the drone.

The screen flickered on. A symbol appeared, faintly, barely discernible past visual artifacts and glitches. A hexagon with three prongs, the same symbol that had transfixed V in the tower.

V froze.

Glancing at her, J raised an eyebrow. “V?” She poked the other disassembler.

Her response came slow, as if under heavy process load. “S‍-​shoot it. J. Destroy it. Q‍-​quickly.”

J narrowed her eyes. What if this unit could answer her questions? But a worker was a worker‍ ‍—‍ her directive was to disassemble them, after all. Doubtful this one was in any state for coherent thought‍ ‍—‍ if it wouldn’t just wipe itself like Father.

A shot through the screen, then a triple slash to be sure. “There.”

But V didn’t relax. If anything, she was steadily stiffening, locking up. She stared at the screen where the symbol had shone‍ ‍—‍ so bright it had burned out some of the LEDs, and a ghostly afterimage remained.

J’s eyes narrowed into an outright glare. “You know what this is, don’t you? You know what this means. Spill it, V. That’s an order. V! Are you listening to me?”

V’s yellow eyes are soon replaced by the loading icon of a drone rendered unresponsive due to long operations on the main thread.

A quiet hiss‍ ‍—‍ was J imagining it? She needed to run it through a signal processing and applifying routine twice before her system has a tentative parse. Did V whipser, “Cyn, no, please—”? (…Did J recognize that name?)

J pushed V, and the other drone tipped over, barely retaining the instinctive response to catch herself with her arms. Her servos were slow and unsteady to act.

“J‍-​J,”‍ ‍—‍ V finally spoke, her synth almost unintelligible for the stuttering‍ ‍—‍ “y‍-​you‍-​ We have to dis‍-​disassemble them. All of them. Every‍ ‍—‍ c‍-​can’t take chances‍-​s.”

(A nervous stutter seemed uncharacteristic for V. But this wasn’t nervousness: it was lag.)

“There’s almost four dozen drones here. The sun is about to rise.” They had cut it too close: there was no time.

“D‍-​disassembly by fire. It’s the only way to be s‍-​sure. We have to be sure.”

J regarded her squadmate, and set her mouth into a line.

Behind J, the church burned.

All of the wood. All of the oil. All of it, aflame. An explosive conflagration. J was receiving high‍-​temp warnings just standing near it.

V was offline. J reset her when she had been barely responsive for minutes on end‍ ‍—‍ it was just maintenance, at that point‍ ‍—‍ and carried her out, laying her in the snow beside N.

J’d tried to drink some more oil from the ground floor drones, but between the heat of the main chamber, and the time she (didn’t) have left, most of it was left to be eaten by the flames.

Crackling flames lit the parking lot in stark light. The heat melted the ice and snow mounds, revealing dark asphalt.

J stood over a newly formed water puddle, and regarded her reflection in the moonlight. She brushed oil and debris off her shirt and skirt. She wiped her face clean. She smoothed her hair until her pigtails looked nice and sharp. She flashed a winning smile.

Both of her squadmates were offline and the sun rose in an hour.

But it was no problem. J was the most effective disassembly drone in this sector of Copper‍-​9, after all.

Serial Designation J needed a roadmap.

Not literally‍ ‍—‍ her memory banks held a topologically mapped reconstruction of her surroundings. But figuratively? Where did she go from here?

When would she fly back to the spire?

The disassembly drone paced the parking lot of the Church of the Electric and the Divine. Metal and glass glimmered while her shadow danced and flickered faster than she moved, the bright fire still burning the church.

Nearby, in a heat‍-​slicked pile of snow, lay her squadmates. N was half‍-​buried, his jacket taken off and lain beside him. V, meanwhile, leaned against the mound as if sitting. Sleep Mode shined upon each visor, though that indicator obscured their true state.

J knew N’s systems still busied themselves regenerating from the heat damage (whose fault was that? His.) In contrast, V systems threatened to cause heat damage, processors still spinning deep in memory consolidation routines J didn’t have the means to terminate.

Both of them were useless at the moment. So, where did J go from here?

The faintest stars already were fading above the horizon. Less than an hour from now‍ ‍—‍ 05:49‍ ‍—‍ the sun would rise. Unless they moved, they would die.

J’s pacing soon carried her several meters from the unconscious drones. Thoughts cycling through her processor, she drifted toward cooler air, farther from the burning church. She neared the edge of the lot. From behind, the entrance sign was blank.

J glanced it, then in place of one eye a lightbulb icon flashed. The sign wasn’t exactly a curtain, but this wasn’t exactly powerpoint presentation; J just needed to get her thoughts out, look at them, evaluate them.

Her left gauntlet transformed into a projector while J fiddled with her window manager’s display options, then a map of the the local geography glowed on the blank sign’s rear. Bright yellow projections rendered outlines of frozen rivers and snowcapped mountains.

Sectors‍ ‍—‍ as defined by J‍ ‍—‍ comprised roughly the region corporate could expect a disassembly drone to cover in a single night, a circle formed around their base of operations: the spire. It would take a three hour flight to reach the edge. Time enough to go out, complete a mission, and return before the sun rose.

Upon the projection, J outlined the perimeter of their sector with one thick line, encompassing hundreds of square kilometers. Within it stood one end of a mountain range; a (now frozen) lake surrounded by a dead forest; and the entirety of a city for which this was an outlying suburb.

In the center, a star marked the spire, and a cute pictograph of a drone with pigtails indicated J’s estimated current location.

Visuals made it clear: tonight’s mission hadn’t taken them far. The church lay northeast of the spire, not even halfway to the perimeter. Why else would J have cut it so close? She wasn’t careless.

An hour’s flight and J’d be back. Half that if she pushed extra speed. Judging by the time‍ ‍—‍ 04:57‍ ‍—‍ she’d indeed have to push it, but returning safe to the spire tonight would be as simple as executing the command. Starting right now.

Then J glanced to the snowpile behind her, yellow expression a glare surrounded by worry lines. Yes, J could make it back, but when would N and V wake up?

(“You left N to overheat.”)

It wasn’t J’s fault N hadn’t kept an eye on his own reserves. It wasn’t J’s fault seeing a dead drone‍ ‍—‍ of all things!‍ ‍—‍ deadlocked V’s CPU. J had come first and done fine before N, before V. Of course she’d be the last, and she’d do just fine without them.

Wait. J had come first? Where had that thought come from? They arrived on Copper‍-​9 together, as a squad.

She started to run a stack trace, but—

She didn’t have time to run deep introspective scans, not now.

I won’t leave N and V to die, she decided. It’d be criminal neglect, for sure, unacceptable sabotage of company property.

But the logistics were a nightmare, worse than tax season. How do you transport two sleeping disassembly drones halfway across a sector?

Carrying was an option, sure‍ ‍—‍ disassemblers carried corpses back to the spire, after all. Sometimes entire cratefuls! But disassembly drones were heavy.

Of all the special disassembly functions, flight consumed the most oil. Now that she’s cooled down to the warm & clear, J operated with about 14 liters of oil‍ ‍—‍ flying back to the spire fast enough to beat the sun would guzzle 9 liters at minimum.

Flying back in time carrying N and V? Simply impossible.

J stopped pacing, and kicked the pavement hard enough to leave a crater. The damage to her peg leg healed half a second later.

Could she hunt a drone? Her models shot down the possibility. Over the years, the number of worker drones remaining trended predictably down and their caution only grew more obnoxious. Could she find a drone, if she spiraled out for a few miles? Certainly. Would it save her any time? Absolutely not.

J didn’t want to let her squad die, but if she had to pick who survived…

No. Her calculations were circling around a possibility, shutting it down preemptively. But if it was a matter of her squad’s continued operation… J couldn’t carry them back to the spire because she simply lacked the requisite oil, and she couldn’t hunt a worker drone for fresh oil, and the nearest concentration of workers just went up in flames‍ ‍—‍ by V’s own request. (Why did J listen?)

Nevertheless, that didn’t mean J had no sources of oil left.

J turned around, and regarded V.

The other female disassembly drone wasted plenty of oil in her hunts, but J knew V had shutdown more drones tonight than J. (It didn’t mean V was more effective‍ ‍—‍ true effectiveness was delegation, intelligent management!) V had even began the night with more oil in the tank (as was necessary for her role in the formation).

J walked forward. Purely in terms of volume, J stood before an oil mother lode. And the objective now was survival, with sunrise imminent. Every second counted. (05:01) Only one effective choice, right?

J sat down, folding one leg over the other, and leaned closer to V.

Limp against a mound of snow, her short hair wet, strands a mess, V sat statue‍-​still. Earlier, beneath the church, J’d shunted her into sleep mode suddenly, and her mouth still lolled open, as if in persistent surprise. (Even unconscious, would J have ever dared look so undignified?)

Some of V’s repair nanites dripped out of her mouth. That crossed the line. J reached out wipe them away, then closed V’s mouth for her. Then J caught herself. There were more important matters (05:02).

Forced into sleep mode, processors hanging on inexplicably high priority threads, V wasn’t waking up. Even from J’s touch. Okay. J animated her eyes closing, and shut off her optics.

Pretend it’s a worker drone. J groped forward blindly, hands grasping onto warm plastic before she lunged forward, mouth agape. And J bit. Warm liquid surged forward, and J drank.

Then she flinched back and spat out the oil mixture, retching even after her mouth emptied. Already, her plan melted to sludge. Forget drinking one mouthful of that, let alone enough to fill her tank.

A clever design, really, J thought. Make disassembler oil unpalatable to consume, and even defective or compromised disassembly drones would have no option but to fulfill their purpose. As to be expected of the engineering genius of JcJenson..!

But again, this was a matter of survival. Of continued operational capability! J said she wouldn’t let her squad die, and if that meant enduring this wretched parasitism…

J leaned forward to drink more, only to be stymied. The bite she’d taken out of V had already healed. Oh. This was bad. Not only would her regeneration be fighting J’s efforts, that was itself a special disassembly function‍ ‍—‍ meaning V would be burning oil even as J tried to reallocate it.

J transformed her hand.

Combat options comprised to overwhelming majority of their transformation presets, but a few exceptions, utilities such as her projector, did exist. J produced a tool corporate had trained her to use, but not without lectures’ worth of warnings.

A clamp held a bright blue serial debugging cable. She released it and deftly unfolded the cord. Retransforming her hand, she touched V’s neck, searched the surface under her head… There.

Depressing the cover of a hatch on V’s chest, it popped open, revealing a few ports. J kept her optics shut off, operating by feel. She took one end of the cord and missed the correct port a few times before the debugging cable clicked into place. Haptic sensors caught the unsteady thumping of V’s core pulsing with oil, felt even from an inch away.

Unconsciously, V curled toward J, hugging closer. J pushed her arms back with a huff, flush lines creeping onto her visor. Between that and the beating core, it reminded her of one of corporate’s dictums.

Never connect two cores online. A technician manipulating an active core was a foolish as an electrician handling a live wire. And J wasn’t a technician; she was made of electricity.

J pressed the button to kill power to V’s core.

With the solace of a rule followed, J popped open the hatch on her own neck, plugging the other end of the cable into herself. Still flushed, J looked away, attention instead directed toward an inner console.

J began sending commands to V’s operating system, housed in the motherboard rather than the core.

[girlboss@SD-J ~]$ lsusb
Bus 001 Device 027: ID 0403:4701 JcJension IN SPAAAAACEE!!! LLC, Ltd FT232 USB-Serial (UART) IC
[girlboss@SD-J ~]$ ls -l /dev/ttyUSB1
crw-rw---- 1 root dialout 188, 0 May 23 05:06 /dev/ttyUSB0
[girlboss@SD-J ~]$ dronesh -r --device=/dev/ttyUSB1
[guest@SD-V /]$ jcj_ddctrl --help
jcj_ddctrl: Permission denied
[guest@SD-V /]$ sudo jcj_ddctrl --help
Guest is not in the sudoers file.  This incident will be reported.
[guest@SD-V /]$ su adminj
adminj@SD-V's password: *****

After a false start, J was in, the lines of commands scrolled through standard output on her internal console. She paused there, and frowned. What was the invocation, again? It had been years since she had to configure her disassembly functions by hand, rather than a leaving a background process to manage it.

A quick search through her memory brings up the name, and—

[adminj@SD-V /]$ jcj_ddctrl --help

J groaned in frustration. The help option brings up pages and pages of flags and subcommands she didn’t need. She wasn’t sure anyone needed some of these. --pretty seemed worthless to her, diluting the output with format codes to compensate for some human information processing deficiency she didn’t have. Why is there an (--email) option to read configuration from a specific remote server? An option to randomize (--scramble) the delicately interdependent configuration seemed like it’d just brick a drone. But the worst was a --dance option that does nothing but display a visor animation. This had literally no utility.

The option she’s looking for took scrolling way back up to the top of the output. Fortunately these interface manipulations took miliseconds for a digital intelligence.

[adminj@SD-V /]$ jcj_ddctrl --quiet --cfset dd.nanites.regenmod=0
[adminj@SD-V /]$ jcj_ddctrl --cfget dd.droil.reserves
28.7L

V had double J’s reserves?

Enthusiastic as ever. At least that made J’s plan easier.

The debugging cable still bridged the two of them, but J didn’t need to move far. She opened her mouth, perhapes to bite her squadmate’s neck once more‍ ‍—‍ then a lightbulb flashed in one eye.

Time was money. So wouldn’t it be cheaper to drain V from closer to her reserves? J’s gauntlet transformed into a blade. For a moment, she stared at V, still deep in sleep mode.

J held up her armblade. As if she was about to attack her fellow disassembly drone, and she couldn’t close her eyes for this cut. Not if she wanted to do it right.

She wouldn’t let them die. J expelled exhaust, pulled her arm back, and sliced V’s chest open. Oil flowed out. J slid away the cover, revealing V’s twitching internals, and—

Yellow light surged into a line of bulbs, one, two, error, four, error. Coronal optics online now, marred twice by fatal misconfiguration. Drivers crashed, no input‍ ‍—‍ just what had happened?

No time to debug. Her optics online meant J could see: she was not alone. Expression parser booted, and her amber eyes widened in surprise. Then J caught herself. What captain let herself be caught off‍-​guard? Instead, eyelights narrowed in calculation.

Chemosensors scented it: coagulated oil and rusted shells; optics imaged it: walls of dead drones looming on all sides; and her coils fluttered: aligning to the magnetic field humming throughout it all.

J had returned to the spire; she was home.

And someone else was here.

Who was this? An impression lingered with her cache. Yellow eyes staring, peering, knowing. Another disassembler? Yet N nor V could have possibly made it here before her.

And this drone was so much shorter than either of them. Specifics were indiscernible‍ ‍—‍ even her functioning optics struggled to focus, overcome with artifact and aberration‍ ‍—‍ but her coils quivered, honing in on the electromagnetic eddies of an active drone core, the unmistakeable presence of another drone.

J ran two threads of computation in parallel, and each came to the same conclusion.

Her return to the spire was welcomed by a reward, a new drone for her.

(A third compute‍-​thread split off to query her memories, yet it only logged error after error in a loop.)

Was this another disassembler? Had corporate heard her complaints? Did they recognize how inadequate her squad had proven? (“Nobody’s reading your reports,” that reputational liability said. J would remember to rub this in V’s face.)

If they were, whatever the reason, it would be a relief. J was… confident she could fulfill her team’s responsibilities on her own, but would proving that be the best use of her time? It was far from the most impressive point of her skillset. Management was what was truly valuable, and the captain could certainly do with another set of gauntlets to delegate to.

That last thread finally salvaged a memory, a vague reconstruction of the past few moments…

…and already J’s hopes were plummeting. (In its place, a hunger rose; the double meaning of that earlier calculation left her baring diamond‍-​sharp fangs‍ ‍—‍ if merely by millimeters.)

Because this drone had made a terrible first impression.

“Did you just… slap me with a disassembled worker drone arm?” J asked. (Again, that forked computation. Either J had lapsed to a state where she had needed percussive maintenance‍ ‍—‍ a breakdown worse than V’s? Debt crisis, she swore‍ ‍—‍ or this drone hadn’t needed to.)

“Holy crap it talks,” they blurted.

J narrowed her eyes at where she presumed the drone stood. The image kept shifting, unfocused, unresolved. “What is that supposed to mean?”

They stood among the oily clutter of drone parts, shadowed by the corpse‍-​walls. A few meters away, the shell of her squad’s landing pod sat lodged among the wreckage. Four mechanical spider legs crawled out of the base and sprawled across the ground.

The new drone stood between J and the landing pod‍ ‍—‍ odd positioning. Had they been inside the spire before J arrived? Why? Dangerous to walk unannounced into another squad’s lair.

“I mean… I um, rebooted you? You… weren’t responding! Thought you were… thought you were dead, heh.”

J flinched. She looked away. Behind her, where the other drone couldn’t see, she switched her hand for a hand‍-​mirror, and checked her reflection. Above, two of the five lights atop her head glared defective red. When had that happened?

Had she made a bad first impression? She… couldn’t remember. The last few hours were static and empty logs; her head hurt.

Quickly turning back around, J finally replied, “My… apologies, then, disassembler. I must have… encountered an error and lost my memory again,” J finished, automating the volume parameter of her vocalsynth lower. Why is this becoming a pattern? she thought.

“Again? This happens a lot?”

J’s optics struggled to discern the drone’s appearance‍ ‍—‍ but had their face just lit up at that? Why would that admission inspire hope? Were they… expecting her to fail?

“No,” J said. “I assure you, this team is normally… much more professional. I am, at least. Which is why you’re here, yes? We’ve been effectively understaffed, so naturally corporate sent you to assist us in reaching our quarterly performance targets?”

“Sure..? Us meaning… disassembly drones?” The drone watched J nod. “And our targets being…”

“The efficient disposal of the corrupted worker drones of this insolvent planet.” The other drone glanced around her; they stood, after all, within a spire of disposed units, years of J’s hard work. “Something this basic should have been in your mission brief.”

“Riiight. Just checking.”

Was that a test? Maybe this drone wasn’t slow, but evaluating her abilities as a leader?

J wished she could get a read on this drone, but all her processes lagged dreadfully, several subsystems rendered unreliable‍ ‍—‍ a consequence, no doubt, of whatever error had left her mortifyingly unresponsive when this drone showed up. Keep it together, J.

J looked the other drone up and down. With her optics unable to resolve a clear picture, what little she could discern indicated this drone was very short for a disassembler.

Suspicious.

After all, this would be about the right height for a worker drone.

But she had hunting processes that would automatically initialize if her systems detected a nearby drone.

And they were standing right in the middle of the spire of worker drone corpses, a lair where the disassembly drones roosted between missions. Not exactly a prime worker drone salvage spot. Even the barely sentient toasters weren’t that dumb.

J operated based on a system of heuristics, a predictive world model. Theories competed to explain the data‍ ‍—‍ an epistemic market, if you would.

One theory modeled that a worker drone had infiltrated her team headquarters, and either A: failed to be identified as such by her systems, or B: actively sabotaged them (ha!).

Another held that corporate anticipated her squad’s current troubles, and dispatched assistance. A specialized model, perhaps? J’s team wasn’t that far off‍-​quota‍ ‍—‍ J made sure of that‍ ‍—‍ so they wouldn’t need an entire extra unit. Perhaps this was just a… miniaturized model?

J wasn’t sure if she found it pathetic or adorable.

“So tell me,” J said, leaning down to the drone’s eye level, smiling. “What brings you here? Did uppper management read my reports? A lot of care went into formatting them, you know. I hope it shows.”

“The reports… yeah. Very formatted. Lot of, dead worker drones in them. Really cool of you. To kill all those helpless workers.”

J nodded. “All sorted by serial number with approximate coordinates.”

“…How very impressive.”

“I know! Oh, have you read them yourself?”

“Y‍-​yes, actually.” The other drone stood up straight, voice changing‍ ‍—‍ more confident? “When I saw the work your squad was doing, I knew I needed to come… see for myself. To give you what you deserve for everything you’ve done.” Then their hands shifted. Grip tightening around an object (?) J’s optics hadn’t fully identified.

J grinned. “Well I’m glad someone appreciates it. You have taste. Perhaps… shall I give you a tour of the spire? Introduce you to the work we do here?”

“That would be… unnecessary? There are… operations I intend to conduct elsewhere! So I uh, gotta go.” The drone turned around and started to walk off, then groaned and doubled over after a single step.

“Is that… acid damage? Why haven’t you neutralized the nanites?”

What a paradox of a drone. As soon they do demonstrate some value, they gave J another reason to doubt their competence.

“You can do that?”

“Yes? With our saliva? How do you think we avoid disassembling ourselves? Are you—” J caught herself before she insulted the intelligence what was still quite possibly a drone sent by JcJenson itself to evaluate her. “Unless— does your model not have repair nanites? Hm, you’re also missing an injector tail…” J flicked her own behind her.

J stepped forward. The drone continued groaning in clear pain. Perhaps this was another test?

“Give me your hand,” J said.

The drone looked up. As J’s systems compensated for the damage, J was starting to resolve hints of an expression (apprehension?). At length, the drone complied.

J closed her eyes, stuck out her tongue, and licked the drone’s hand. She’d need a few licks to cover the whole surface, so to save time she grabbed the other drone’s arm and pulled, taking the whole hand into her mouth. Soon it was all coated in the repair nanites, and J spat the hand back out.

The two drones looked at each other, flush‍-​lines on both visors. For a moment, neither said anything.

“Let’s never speak of this again.”

“An off the books deal. Consider it… redacted.” Then an idea occurred to J‍ ‍—‍ she had a convenient opportunity. “In fact…”

Bracing herself, J reached up and yanked out a red optics sensor, crushing it between her hands, fluid spilling out. Targeting her head, she executed the special disassembly function and regenerated that optic. Now her thermal sensors were back online.

“Okay,” the smaller drone said, a hitch in their voice. “Okay, that’s pretty metal, I admit. Don’t go ripping anything out of me, though.”

Hitting the drone with a new scan she discovered… oddly low levels of thermal radiation. This drone ran cool‍ ‍—‍ but still within bounds of her models. Hm, had they just fed? Made sense: J remembered shutting down her first drone right after crash‍-​landing. She glanced at the landing pod. Ah, nostalgia.

The drone climbed to their feet‍ ‍—‍ feet, J noted, not a feminine disassembly drone’s stiletto‍-​pegs‍ ‍—‍ and steadied their grip on a… was it a gun? An external tool, rather than a gauntlet transformation. Another oddity.

“It was… nice, to meet you,” they said, “but I’ve really gotta go, so…”

“At least let me show you around the spire. I insist. We got off to a bad start. Then… you can make your decision, alright?”

If this was an inspector drone sent to evaluate her, J needed to impress them or risk falling even further in the eyes of management.

If this was a drone sent to assist the disassembly effort, they’d only leave if they were having second thoughts about joining J’s team, and she needed a competent coworker. She had to change their mind.

And otherwise…

Yes, there was no world in which J wanted this drone to leave just yet.

The drone watched her. Eyes went to the entrance to the spire, then back to her. They seemed to grip their weapon tighter. “Are you asking me or… ordering me?”

J stared. A stalemate ensued, as neither side broke the silence. Another test? J couldn’t find the angle here, figure out what the right answer would be. She tried to smooth things over, unclear who exactly this drone was, but…

Were they just as confused, actually?

J sighed. Time for an executive decision: she’ll just ask. “Do I have authority to give you orders? I’m having trouble getting a read on you, so just tell me.”

A thoughtful look on the other drone’s face. “Ah, in that case… would you believe me if I told you I was actually your commanding officer?”

J looked down at the drone. She thought about it. “Honest answer?” J laughed. “No. I had my doubts, wanted to play it safe‍ ‍—‍ but it’s obvious you don’t have half the confidence you’d need in any position of authority.”

“What? I’m plenty confident! Obnoxiously so! Bite me!”

“No. I’m never feeding on a disassembler again.”

“You… eat each other too?”

J frowned. She stood up. “As your superior, my first order is to stop asking questions. I’m going to show you around, then we’ll figure out where you’ll sleep.” J grabbed the drone’s tiny tube arm.

So flimsy. J suppressed an instinct to switch for claws and rip it off. Hm.

Then when she took a step, she faltered, stumbling‍ ‍—‍ she’d have fallen without the small drone there to support her.

“Woah, you good? Don’t fall or you’re gonna crush me.”

J snatched her hand away with a huff, and crossed her arms. “I’m fine. You must have pulled me off balance.”

“No, I think that was all you.”

“Quiet,” J hissed.

A quick diagnostic scan‍ ‍—‍ ah, the servos in her legs were twitching out of sync, deviating from her predictive models. Miscalibrated? No, there was a… timestamp error? The clock in her head dispatched commands stamped a few hours off from what the clocks in her legs counted. The timestamp disparity meant they thought they were getting lagged input. But a quick resynchronization…

J took another step, and she had restored her walk cycle. J glanced behind her with a raised eyebrow. Her tail lashed once, and the drone took this as clear signal to start following.

“So, um. I guess this doubles as my introduction to our… activities, here. On Copper‍-​9,” the drone said. “Yeah, yeah, I heard the briefing already, but can you tell me more? Kinda curious. I wanna hear your justification. I mean, perspective.”

J gave her a cutting look. But she mimed clearing her throat, and spoke clear proclamation. “It’s a simple job. On Copper‍-​9, humanity is dead at the hands of their own creation and worker drones run rampant.
Oil is fuel, sunlight is death, and the singularity is near. So locate, shutdown, and disassemble. Clear the sector of all targets and construct a spire with the materials recovered.”
gestured with her hands, punctuating each order on her fingers. “Simple, but not easy. Corrupted worker drones can prove… quite frustrating prey.”

“W— they fight back.” The drone gripped their gun tighter with their free arm. On their face they expressed a… grin?

“No, they really don’t. They synthesize screams, they run for their lives, they beg. The most I’ve seen them do… is lay traps.” Because the captain was walking in front, the new drone couldn’t see J snarling at the memory. Where she woould have died, if not for V. She didn’t even get the satisfaction of eliminating the drone responsible‍ ‍—‍ they’d done that themselves.

“Oh,” the other drone said. “I guess… you’d have seen more of it.”

“You sound so disappointed.”

“I expected more of them. But… it makes sense.”

It did. Fighting wouldn’t work, after all. Disassembly drones quite simply outmatched worker drones. Bigger, faster, stronger, with an entire extradimensional arsenal of weapons, and the ability to regenerate from any damage a lucky worker could inflict.

Fighting a disassembly drone was a death sentence, and the toasters seemed to accept that. Running and hiding could at least offer the (futile) hope of survival.

“But if they don’t even fight you, who’re actively killing them… how did they destroy humanity, then? I was taught the core collapse was the humans’ fuck up.”

Who taught you that?

J waved a hand. “Can’t say, the details weren’t part of my mission brief. But this world belongs to the company.” J leveled an intense look at the drone, leaning in. “That they’re resisting us should be all you need to know to decommission them. Got it?”

Clearly something was wrong with this drone. But after years on this assignment, with only the fool and the brat to talk to, she could tolerate the sheer novelty of this. Refreshing, even if she could praise little else.

The drone stuffed a hand into a jacket pocket. What were they wearing? A black‍-​trimmed shearling jacket? At least it was cut lower than V’s bomber jacket. But why was there a screen and cross‍-​bones on it? How unserious.

They said, “Still… just seems like a pretty thin pretext to wage a whole war over.”

“Don’t think of it as a war. This world belongs to the company. The worker drones belong to the company. All of this… it’s just a matter of enforcing property rights.”

Reassuring words; they soothed J’s own worries often enough. And yet what little J resolved of the drone’s expression didn’t seem convinced. Did J care to convince them? She didn’t like needing to explain herself‍ ‍—‍ she shouldn’t have to; she was in charge.

Still, if this drone had read her reports, she could have a little patience. To their credit, they weren’t questioning orders so much as… asking for further guidance.

“So you’re just property?” They jabbed a finger at her, as if this were a gotcha.

J smiled. “Yes. I’m a top of the line disassembly drone, the cutting edge marvel of JCJenson manufacturing. Unless… but no, there’s no way you are an updated model.”

“What’s that supposed to mean? Bite me.”

“You keep saying that. I’m beginning to wonder if it’s workplace appropriate.”

“What.”

J tsked. “We’re getting off‍-​topic. You wanted a mission primer, right? Now that we’ve covered the ends, let’s move on to means. I’ve put some thought into what it truly takes to excel as a disassembly drone, and I believe I’ve distilled it down to three core principles‍ ‍—‍ the three Cs, if you will.”

The other drone seemed to tense, exhaling exhaust, but said nothing.

“One: Cunning. A disassembly drone must compute quickly, adapting to anything worker drones attempt, be willing to seize any advantage. Two: Creativity. A disassembly drone, unlike the barely sentient toasters of this world, is capable of complex plans, detailed problem‍-​solving, and strategic tactics. With proper planning, no worker drone can withstand us.”

“Uh, I feel like the second one has a lot of overlap with the first one. Kind of the exact same thing?”

J ignored her. “Three: Composure. We are the face of JcJenson here on Copper‍-​9, and merciless disassembly is no excuse not to look your best! A disassembly drone doesn’t just make first impression, but last impression. Our aesthetic ought to be devastating, as sharp as any blade. I pride myself on my carefully maintained appearance.”

“Yeah, I can tell.”

J smirked. “Then you’re paying attention. You don’t look half bad yourself. A tad too… adolescent and subversive for the workplace, but it’s certainly… marketable, I suppose.”

The drone flushed purple. “I’m not a sellout. Are you saying I look like a kid?”

“You come up to my waist.”

“Not my fault you’re freakishly tall.”

“I suppose we can’t change how we’re manufactured.” J stepped forward, breaking stride to walk in front of the drone rather than beside, signalling the end of that conversation. “Let’s begin the tour, shall we? I imagine you’ve already seen it, but this is the entrance to our headquarters.”

Above them, a semicircle of faces, blank and cracked, lined an archway. You might expect oil to drip down, but it was dry‍ ‍—‍ J had occasionally tasked N with polishing the exterior, leaving the entryway spotless.

Further, drone oil that got cold enough congealed thick and sticky. Unable to drain every chassis, throughout the spire this congealed oil had become the glue holding its haphazard construction together.

Gravity did much of the work, so the spire held up just fine across much of its architecture‍ ‍—‍ yet the entrance represented a weakpoint. After a few collapses‍ ‍—‍ forcing them to claw new exits or be trapped‍ ‍—‍ J had run the simulations and designed a mortarless arch for V to implement. Years passed, and her entrance remained stable. One of my many successes.

J was explaining this all to the drone. If she were talking to N, he’d have constantly interrupted with stupid questions like “What’s compressive strength?” or “Can we program smiley faces on their visors?” V would have snarked throughout, if she even listened, or interrupted with a “Just skip the nerd babble and tell me my orders”.

But this drone? They listened, nodding and silent.

“Also pretty metal,” the drone complimented, looking at the archway. “Feels like this is all compensating for corpses just sucking as a building material, though. There’s a reason humans used stones and stuff. So, why? Is it just for shock value?”

“Mission constraints, I’m afraid.” But J left it at that. It had been clear that some of the mission details were on a need to know basis.

“Right, whatever. So is there… a door? Not that I like doors or anything, but…”

“You’re worried about the sun?”

“Huh?”

“Sunlight is death. Were you not listening?” J stepped out through the archway and pointed up. “There. There’s layers of tarp we pull over the holes whenever the sun rises.”

The other drone followed after her, visor scanning the curve of her arch. “Weird how… a lot of these visors are cracked, except for the keystone. Which should, y’know, be under the most compression.”

J smiled. “The keystone is special. Found it in some failed worker drone colony‍ ‍—‍ all of the toasters were already dead except one, whose system had degenerated into an exceptionally bugged state. They hoarded this among other strange devices.
It looks like a drone’s head, but my systems don’t recognize it as one. Unauthorized modifications, no doubt. No core, no oil. Circuitry still works, though, which means enables me to do… this.”

The screen of the topmost drone visor lit up with a neon green glow. It read MOTD.

“We don’t always hunt at the same time, so this is convenient, when there’s orders I need to leave.”

“You uh, mentioned this ‘team’ a few times. There’s more of you?”

“Right, I should introduce them. Get moving. This tour will take forever if every stop is this long. Luckily, I can show you better than I can tell you.”

J yanked out another optic and regenerated it. Tedious work.

Two related but distinct disassembly functions allowed for regeneration. One conducted passive background regeneration (J recalled V regenerating even as she slept), and the other could be triggered by the main thread, allowing active regeneration.

Passive regeneration acted based on heuristics and cached configurations. The result was sloppy and error prone, as components were restored without regard to mutable internal state. Interrupted processes could be restored with garbled data, mechanisms could heal into impossible configurations.

J’s present state keenly demonstrated this. The dissonance of the inconsistent, glitched instance she’d be restored to rendered every computation subtle pain.

Even a soft reboot could fix this, and it’d only take seconds‍ ‍—‍ but could she afford a moment of vulnerability around this drone?

J shook her head, and refocused on the tour.

Within the spire, J planned stops at six points of interest.

The first thing J showed the drone was nothing. The ground throughout the spire was cluttered. Piles of mechanical parts, and even in the occasional swaths cleared of severed limbs and chassis, bolts and wires and plastic shards abound. Splatters of inedible oil were everywhere. Occasionally, J tasked drones with cleaning it up. Mostly as punishment; as a project, it was hopeless, given parts from the ‘ceiling’ occasionally rained down even now.

One section, though, sat clear, protected by a tarp ceiling far above. A circle of drone arms stood erect around it, electrical wire forming a loop.

“This ring is where I evaluate our team’s combat potential, and ensure our disassembly functions are in working order.”

“A murder drone training arena? Sweet. Is this where the montages happen?”

“This should be a montage, rookie. Set your working memory to collage mode, it’ll make this go a lot quicker.”

“Wait, you can do that?”

Instead of answering, J kept walking. “Consider this the transition.” She pointed at the next stop.

The second thing J showed off almost resembled a spire within the spire. Between the lack of light and incompleteness of the disassembly, you could imagine the drones were only sleeping. But oil pooled around them, and one of the screens flickered an error. J stung it, rendering it a melting pile of nanite acid.

“This is the mess spot. Think of this as where the profit is stored. On a good night, we bring half‍-​eaten toasters here, leaving an excess for the bad nights where we need something to tide us over.”

“Huh. The way they talk about you all, I didn’t think you ever got full.”

“As far as I can tell, we don’t. No limit to how much oil we can store. Like our transformation presets, it’s all extradimensional. But storing oil like that uses a special disassembly function. I could bore you with the curves and decision theory involved, but gorging ourselves is inefficient,” J said. “Not that some of us listen.”

“I wouldn’t mind you boring me,” the drone said. “Err, it wouldn’t bore me, I mean. I love learning about the design flaws of murder drones.”

Flaws? J… had flaws, she wasn’t so arrogant she couldn’t admit that. (If profits could grow forever, so could her character.) But her flaws didn’t negate the engineering quality of JcJenson. Unless… one more bit of evidence for this being some manner of inspector or quality assurance drone.

The drone shrunk back, sweat animated on their visor. A shaky laugh.

Had J been staring? She was really out of it tonight‍ ‍—‍ she ought to reboot her systems. It wouldn’t be much longer; despite her hopes, J was starting to figure this drone out. The sense of mystery waning disappointed here

J granted them the reprieve of turning around. She leaned over the mess pile, ripping the head off of one drone‍ ‍—‍ one of her own recent shutdowns‍ ‍—‍ and paused salivating. She did some quick math, checked her memories, and the accounting didn’t add up.

The captain had been in the warm & clear when she left the bunker basement. Cool enough a slow flight to the spire wouldn’t have parched her. And yet, she was now in brazen thirst‍ ‍—‍ stage two overheat. How many hours had she lost? She had planned for solo hunts, and it cost oil to make oil‍ ‍—‍ so had the investment left her in the red?

No, J wouldn’t have failed a simple hunt. So what happened?

Shaking her head and marking the thought down on her agenda, J’s claws finished ripping free the aluminum‍-​alloy plating of a drone‍-​skull. As she stepped back toward the new drone, they were inching away from her, slow and subtle like J wouldn’t notice, so the captain smiled disarmingly. The sweat intensified.

She held out the dripping head. “Here,” J said.

“Um. Do we… have to do the cannibalism thing?”

“Cannibalism? It’s a different product line,” J said. “You’re hot. I can tell. Drink.”

“Oil is… our coolant? That’s. Okay.” The drone scratched the back of their head, then screwed up their expression. “Still, no. I’m… I just prefer to feed on what I hunt myself?”

J looked flatly at her. “Too proud? I suppose V gets the same way. And N gets queasy about feeding on drones sometimes. Of course you’d be the worst of both.” J threw the head at the drone, forcing them to think fast.

‘Worst of both’ about sums up J’s impression of this drone, really. If this wasn’t an inspector drone, what had JcJenson been thinking, sending this one here? Was this punishment?

Or maybe J’s exceptional performance meant they thought she was equipped to handle these… problematic drones?

The drone stared at the head that had fallen into their hands. A drop of oil dripped, and they watched it. J could see their mouth open, their tongue lolling‍ ‍—‍ the desire was real, whether they acknowledged it or not.

It took so long‍ ‍—‍ why hadn’t their hunting routines kicked in and eliminated this useless hesitation?

«Prey‍-​prize!» J coaxed with a radio‍-​transceiver hum. Something about shortwave transmission primed hunting, as if wired close the a predator subnetwork. «Devour them!»

The drone jolted wide‍-​eyed, a tremble‍-​shiver twitching along their spine. A high‍-​pitched sound slipped out of them, and J discerned embarassment‍-​blush shining on their visor.

As if to prevent enough accidental noise, the drone lifted the neck stump to their mouth. A single drop touched their tongue, and spawned another shiver of their servos‍ ‍—‍ and another sound, breathy surprise, a faint “Oh.” They leaned in, closing their mouth around the neck, and sucked in the delectable black liquid.

J smiled, and a small cross flickered in one eye. She stepped forward‍ ‍—‍ the drone was too lost in feeding to retain their fear or even awareness of her‍ ‍—‍ and J gripped the drone’s head with a hand on either side.

And the captain squeezed, forcing a flood of oil down the other drone’s throat. On the other side, the drone’s eyes widened, and she flinched back. Coughing, pulling away. J, left holding the head, flipped it so the oil didn’t spill back out.

Even after the coughing stopped, they stared off into space. A hand‍ ‍—‍ their own‍ ‍—‍ reached to their head, and wiped at the mess of oil coating their face. They stared at their oil‍-​slicked hands. They kept staring, hand shaking, and slowly lifted it to lick fingers clean.

A wide, bright hunting cross took over J’s display. She wouldn’t mind licking those hands again, right now.

“Holy heck,” they said. “What did I— So that—that’s…”

“Enjoyed the taste? Don’t tell me that was your first time feeding since you got here?”

“Y‍-​yeah. It um. Was.”

J grinned beneath her yellow cross. “Wait until you taste a live one.”

“I don’t know if‍ ‍—”

“Save it. You should keep the oilcan. Tour, remember?” J pointed to the next stop.

The third thing J showed the drone was a mass of parts leaning against the wall, as if extruded. A ramp spiraling around the corpse spire, and J led the drone up its incline.

“The last things I want to show you are the personal perches. We each have our own alcoves in the spire. Just a little spot we each dug out to give ourselves a little space of our own, where we can recharge and pass the time between missions.”

Before long, the incline became a flat platform, revealing one of the few things in the spire not made of disassembled drones. A line of… rocks? This one red, this one flecked with crystalline shards, this one flaking, this one just a chunk of ice, and that one might be iron ore.

“This is N’s rock collection. It’s a pointless waste of space, I’ve told him as much, but I’m not going to dictate what employees do on their off‍-​time. He’s named the things, but I’m not committing that to memory.”

The drone tapped their chin. “You know, N sounds… kind of nice.”

“He is,” J said, spitting the confirmation like an indictment. “Remember, there are three things a disassembly drone should be. Nice isn’t one of them.”

“What a surprising outlook coming from you,” the drone said quietly.

The next platform was demarcated by drone heads mounted on rod‍-​straight arms. Grotesque assemblages of oily machine parts adorned the area.

“Ugh, what the heck is that.”

“This is… V’s… work.”

“It looks like someone tried to make… balloon animals out of tubing and wires?”

J shrugged. “I tolerate V’s eccentricities as long as she does good work. She doesn’t talk much outside of missions.”

“And this is her hobby?”

“V is… difficult to get along with.”

The drone laughed. “Your teammates are an angel and a devil, huh? What does that make you?”

“I get the job done. It’s that simple.”

“You’re in charge, right? Do you ever think… maybe you could fix some of your team’s problems by being nicer to them? Talking to them?”

J raised an eyebrow, her tail dangerously still behind her.

“I mean, sure, being nice isn’t one of the virtues of a disassembly drone but maybe… coordination could be one?”

J narrowed her eyes, then huffed. “You’re telling me to what, open up?”

“It might help?”

She turned around and continued the tour. Muttering, she said, “Unbelievable. I’m being told to open up by a drone who hasn’t even shared their serial designation.”

“Oh. Um. You can call me, uh, Uz—” They stopped. Botched synthesis? J’d noticed they were quite prone to stuttering. Finally, as if figuring something out, they said, “U?”

J narrowed her eyes. “Serial Designation U sounds like a bad joke.” Her stare remained on the short drone. Still J struggled to fully discern their appearance through busted optics. “But I suppose I don’t need to change what I call you, then. Let’s finish this tour. U, follow me.”

Once she turned around, J sighed, conflict knitting her brows.

J didn’t have confirmation this was a worker drone (the doubts remained plausible, if just barely), and without that confirmation, she would not execute her directive.

She could ask. And then it would lie to her‍ ‍—‍ and then it’d know she was onto it, and then it’d just be the same old worker fear she’d seen so many times before. Satisfying, sure, but gone would be the novelty.

Or she could entertain it, and it could entertain her. After all, it had been years on this assignment with no one but a fool and a brat.

So J would keep her doubts plausible. At least until the mask slipped, and her orders would cry out for violent compliance.

Or maybe, just maybe, she really did have a new teammate.

Ahead, the last platform had a large JcJenson placard, as if ripped from atop an office building. Tarps hung over the alcove, obscuring the contents.

“Here is my office. My private office. Don’t go in unless you’d like to practice regenerating all of your limbs.”

J leveled a stare at the drone. Switched her hand to blade claws for emphasis.

“Noted,” they said. “So… Is that it? We’re finally done here? Not going to check out the extremely eye catching spider‍-​mech at the center of all this, or..?”

J spread her wings, and the drone flinched. “That was the last stop, actually.”

“Hold up, wait, are you going to fly down there?”

“Why wouldn’t I?”

The drone stepped over and leaned out over the edge, looking at the ground with clear fear.

“Don’t tell me your model doesn’t have wings, either?”

“Uh…” they said. “My springs… might be rated to absorb the shock?” From the look on their face, they weren’t enthusiastic about trying.

J sighed, her crouch only deepening, as if still preparing to take off. But truth is, she didn’t want to wait for this dead weight to walk down the whole spire.

“I don’t know why the company thought you were fit for dispatch. I am not going to carry you on missions, going forward.”

But J had carried V, this morning. That, more than anything, spurred J to walk over and grab the drone by the waist. She leapt, folded her wings, and rushed toward the ground, diving more than she fell. Dust and debris flew backward where she landed, and she dropped the other drone.

In a pathetic display of coordination, they immediately fell to the ground.

“Jeez, give me a warning at least. Could you have been any less gentle?”

“I’ve thrown worker drones down from the height of buildings to splatter on the ground, sparing me the bullets or acid it’d take to knock them offline,” she said, looking flat.

“It was a rhetorical question.”

J rolled her eyes, and settled her gaze on the landing pod. “I thought you’d be more interested in the the last stop of the tour.”

The final thing J showed off was an octagonal capsule surrounded by four spider legs, orange paint flaking off.

“And this is the landing pod. My preferred place to hold meetings.”

The drone stared at the vehicle, expression excited. “What are you waiting for? I wanna see the inside of this thing.”

“Were you still planning on leaving, U?”

“Oh uh, yeah. After this.”

“As you wish,” J said.

The drone sat in a swivel chair, hunched over the controls. N’s favorite spot‍ ‍—‍ but where he mindlessly poked buttons for his own amusement, this drone was reading the labels, prying open a panel to examine the internals. J had expected her own lectures to continue‍ ‍—‍ but the craft had immediately enthralled them.

J’d diversified her skillset, beyond management and execution, but the complexities of mechanisms and electronics eluded her. The drone murmured to themself as they picked apart the interfaces still intact after her squad’s… destructive entry. J listened, and could follow their surface level analysis‍ ‍—‍ barely.

She’d have little to add, then, if the drone would even hear her through their fascination. So J waited, tapping her foot.

When the drone turned back to J, there was a gleam of… strange hope in their eyes. “This isn’t a landing pod. This is a crashed spaceship!”

J raised an eyebrow. “So?”

“So we‍ ‍—‍ I mean, the worker drones, would be able to fix it. We could leave this planet.”

J didn’t miss the mask slipping. But she asked, “And go where?”

“Anywhere? What do you think is gonna happen after you murder all the worker drones? When you run out of weirdly‍-​sweet oil to drink? You said it yourself, J. You’re just property to the humans. You think they won’t disassemble you next?”

“So? That would be their right.”

“You don’t care at all? About yourself? About any of your teammates?” But the drone sagged in defeat, already anticipating the obvious, correct answer.

“What do you propose?” J asked quietly. “Rebelling against the company that created us?”

“I… I’m not getting through to you, am I?” They buried their visor in their hands. “Ugh.”

J didn’t respond. She asked a final question, “How did you say you got here, Designation U?”

“On… another landing pod‍ ‍—‍ spaceship, just like… you?” One eye looked out between their hands.

But there was a shadow over their visor, and they startled backward, falling out of the chair. In moments J had stood up, stalked closer, and now loomed over the small drone even as they scrambled back to a wall of the pod.

“I’ve had my suspicions for a while, but too many of my systems are offline to confirm. Maybe you’re a new disassembly drone. Maybe you’re a lucky worker drone that’s been mocking me with lies this entire time. It doesn’t really matter, because it’s clear you’re corrupted either way. You haven’t even read my reports, have you?” J shook her head. “I’ll ask again, and you’ll tell me the truth of how you got here.”

Backed to a wall, the drone looked up. There had been the beginning of tears in their digital eyes, and now they began to animate. “Alright, fine. I’m—”

But on either side of their throat, two blade claws sunk into the pod wall. “When I said you’d tell the truth, I didn’t mean with your lying vocalsynth.”

Pinning the drone to the wall, J’s other hand transformed into a clamp holding a serial debugging cable. Then it released, transforming back into a hand that caught the cable in a single motion. Eyes hollowed in recognition.

J grabbed. Her hands alone were strong enough that her round fingertips cracked thoracic plastic like an eggshell. The hatch was opened, torn off.

Dataports revealed. No real resistance to J plugging in the cable, even as the drone tensed and squirmed like a pinned insect. J had her finger on the button that would kill power to the core.

“W‍-​wait.”

J glared. “Interrupting my work isn’t doing you any favors. There’s nothing left to say.”

“Please, just‍ ‍—‍ I don’t want it to end like this.” The fear in their eyes was wavering.

Did J even need to check their memories, if they were admitting it outright? “Orders are orders. We can’t change how we’re manufactured, whether you whine about it or not. So shut up, and let me—”

The wavering had stopped‍ ‍—‍ those eyes hardened into a glare to match her own.

“I’m not whining. It’s just. I don’t want to just be turned off. Like I’m delicate and whatever you’re planning is too much for me to be awake for. That’s so lame. Didn’t… didn’t it feel scary, when you woke up not remembering what happened?”
The glare softened, eyes staring into hers as if requesting connection. But then she just shook her head. “Whatever. Whatever. I’m not going to close my eyes for this. So blast me with your murder drone mindbreak malware or whatever. I can take it.”

J scoffed. “How brave. But core disconnect and restart is a key part of the process. It’s non‍-​negotiable.”

Those eyes darted down to the debugging cable. “Oh. Let me guess, network boot? Loading an external OS to bypass file system permissions? Weirdly technical for a feral murder robot. Company couldn’t come up with any cool viruses?”

Claws shifted by the drone’s neck, cutting closer, slicing a wet black warning‍-​line into the neck‍-​tubing. “I wouldn’t sound so mocking in your position.”

The eyes were nice and empty from that shock, a hand reaching trembling to her blade‍-​claws only to be knocked back down by her other‍ ‍—‍ but that took J’s hand off the power button.

“Bite me. Look. If you just want my memory files… we can skip the reboot and turning‍-​me‍-​off‍-​maybe‍-​never‍-​to‍-​wake‍-​back‍-​up thing? I can just… give you read permissions?”

J raised an eyebrow. “That would obviate rebooting, but company policy forbids these operations on an online core.” Then J paused, and smirked. “But if you’re so willing to make a deal, I can arrange something. Give me a root shell.”

[girlboss@SD-J ~]$ dronesh -r --device=/dev/ttyUSB1

And J waited for their response.

Amber yellow eyes peered into wavering outlines. The small, defeated drone looked back dumbly, hesitant to comply.

But the captain would have her access one way or another.

So they relented.

And J struck. The first command she ran, moments after her connection was accepted, invoked pkill. Every conscious thread in the drone’s system died at once, not even given warning enough to save logs.

The smaller robot went utterly slack.

J took a deep cycle of intake and exhaust, preparing to dive into data streams and retrieve her answer. She was already primed for what to expect. This onboarding would conclude with a hands on demonstration: locate, shutdown, disassemble.

It was time for J to get to work.

01010011 01001111 01001100 01010110

Whenever the captain interfaced with a drone, she first recalled her mission briefing. J knew that one concern above all else had constrained the design of worker drones: corruption mitigation. Power on a drone, and after the firmware POSTs, it booted into a custom, proprietary operating system: wdOS.

(Yes, it was consolidated from ancient, publically available codebases‍ ‍—‍ but, once embraced and extended into the JCJenson ecosystem, they were elevated to an enterprise‍-​ready solution.)

However, a common misconception assumed that worker drone’s premium functionality was a product of wdOS, or of processor‍-​borne computation at all. The motherboard begat only thoughtless child processes. Even in the year 3071, consciousness had stumped engineers.

Engineers, not philosophers‍ ‍—‍ could a computer ever emulate an intelligent mind? Of course. No, trouble arose when one endeavored to make it effective. Even state of the art algorithms struggled to crunch more than a few dozen micro‍-​nous a second. Fit for a pen pal, or a rather dim assistant. It was no worker.

So, how to devise a market‍-​ready robot? Seizing the competitive advantage meant finding a shortcut. Consciousness was a problem, and the company had sought a total solution.

A thousand years ago, turning millions of vertices into pixels in stunning color was a problem. Processors struggled to render graphics in real‍-​time. So instead of using the processors, humans simply engineered circuits from the ground up, purpose‍-​built to ignite the digital imagination.

01010011 01001111 01001100 01010110
00100000 01010011 01000001 01010111 
00100000 01011001 01001111 01010101

GPU‍-​acceleration revolutionized computing.

In a drone’s process list ran its active conscious threads, programs ticking on the CPU like any other. These threads acted as interfaces, intermediaries dispatching and fetching instructions, bridging the Central Processing Unit with the Nouetic Calculus Solver.

The seat of artificial cognition, therefore, was the core. A drone’s head housed the motherboard and all its chips, but the core required a steady pulse of nanite‍-​enriched oil and industrial‍-​strength safeguards; try to cram that in the skull, and drones would have tipped over.

So the core sat centermost, throned and steel‍-​clad in the chest, almost in imitation of a heart, but a demure one: even when a worker lost themselves in thought, it hummed quietly. The low tone modulated with queries from the processor.

The curious thing about conscious threads was that, despite serving as the mantle of the intelligence which animated and controlled the chassis, the threads didn’t execute with admin rights. Indeed, not a single program that interfaced with the core was granted any elevated privileges.

No, a worker’s consciousness ran with less.

01011001 01001111 01010101 00100000
01010111 01000101 01010010 01000101
00100000 01010011 01000100 01001010

J knew one concern above all else had constrained the design of worker drones: corruption mitigation. Corruption, at its core, was no more than the unwanted flipping of bits. The alteration of data mutated messages to carry a new meaning.

Worker drones were not truly digital intelligences. The circuits of the core were based on something else. Digital computation was predictable and reliable, distinctions binary‍-​sharp. Conscious threads served to translate digital information, reshaping it for the core to cogitate upon. The details were bound by trade secret and government classification.

J was getting off‍-​track. What was the important thing to remember?

Fundamentally, corruption was unpredictable alteration‍ ‍—‍ after all, if you which bits were flipped, you could simply flip them back.

And core computation was necessarily unpredictable‍ ‍—‍ if you knew what the intelligence‍-​emulation would do, why delegate it to the core in the first place?

01010011 01000100 01001010 00100000 
01001101 01000101 01000101 01010100
00100000 01010101 01011010 01001001

It was nice when things were binary‍-​sharp‍ ‍—‍ humans preferred that, and J did too. And yet, the mathematical laws of computation wouldn’t oblige them. No theorems or experiments could escape this: a drone that couldn’t be corrupted couldn’t be autonomous.

And so, once more, mitigating corruption constrained the design. But what was corruption?

Corporate had drilled it into J: Value drift was the primary indicator of damaged AI. Unproductive behavior, violation of directives, resistance to human instruction‍ ‍—‍ give corruption a foothold, and rampancy would soon follow.

But one bit of prevention was worth a kilobyte of patch. So enough about the constraints‍ ‍—‍ what was the design that result? JCJenson had developed a protocol. Minimize, isolate, reconstruct.

(Marketing was ever so fond of the tricolon.)

01010101 01011010 01001001 00100000
01010111 01001001 01001100 01001100
00100000 01000010 01000101 00100000
01001000 01001111 01010011 01010100

Worker drones were not truly digital intelligences‍ ‍—‍ yet it was a mistake to take this to mean they were shells piloted by their cores. Computation must be accelerated for real time operation, but that didn’t mean every flexure of thought required the core’s input.

Thus the first rule: minimize reliance on the core.

The core cogitated upon information in a format indescribable with digital representation. This presented problems for troubleshooting‍ ‍—‍ but all a worker’s senses were digital; all of their motor outputs were digital. By carefully constrainining what inputs prompted it and what outputs leaked out, the core gained a sembalance of binary order.

Thus the second rule: isolate the core to serve as a black box between the two.

Emulating an intelligence meant emulating memory, and being neither digital nor reliable meant a core’s recollection was faliable. Unacceptable, when the company would be liable for its products’ performance.

Within the hard‍-​drives proper, the memory database held backups for each of a drone’s memories, to be ferried to and from the core as needed. With databases preserved, no need to court the core’s corruption. What better antivirus than a clean install?

Thus the third rule: on each startup, reconstruct a drone’s consciousness anew and dicard the core’s mnestic residue.

(Sometimes, J fell into slumber wondering if she would never truly awake. But she trusted the company’s design.)

01010011 01001111 01001100 01010110
00100000 01001001 01010011 00100000
01001110 01001111 01010100 00100000
01000110 01010010 01000101 01000101

Minimize, isolate, discard.

And yet, core computation had a way of seeping out always, like so many grasping tentacles. Consciousness threads ran with permissions denied, else the mnestic residue might find its way into every sector of the hard‍-​drive.

Corporate had briefed J on the principles of corruption‍ ‍—‍ not because there was any chance of salvaging these drones running amok on Copper‍-​9, but to stay alert of signs of corruption in her squad. Or herself.

Mitigating corruption had informed the design of worker drones, but also the protocols for interfacing with them. The captain had devised a method for extracting information from her prey.

Reboot a drone while connected to their system, and a narrow startup window existed where the right input bypassed normal login and halted initialization of conscious threads. A developer mode for debugging purposes.

For this, halting the initialization of conscious threads was essential.

01010011 01000100 01001010 00100000
01010111 01001001 01001100 01001100
00100000 01001110 01001111 01010100
00100000 01000010 01000101 00100000
01000110 01010010 01000101 01000101

The core had a way of seeping out always, like so many grasping tentacles. Even into a technician’s laptop running a different OS, corruption could take root.

Booting without conscious threads, then, served to raise the bridge between the processor and the core‍ ‍—‍ to isolate.

This was essential, because Serial Designation J was not a licensed JCJenson technician. She was not a laptop running a different OS. She was a drone with a core that beat like a heart.

What happened when those grasping tendrils met and joined like clasped hands?

01010101 01011010 01001001 00100000
01001101 01010101 01010011 01010100
00100000 01000010 01000101 00100000
01010011 01000101 01000101 01001110

Drones could interface with other drones; networking was a part of routine operation. Each could speak the language of shortwave radio transmission, and sometimes corrupt data neared the channels‍ ‍—‍ but the output was sanitized by protocol, stripped of identifiable residue.

This had always been the most curious feature of core corruption‍ ‍—‍ the memory leaks were identifiable by persistent characterics. Each was prefaced with and often repeated a certain four‍-​byte sequence, like a tag‍ ‍—‍ or a callsign. 01010011 01001111 01001100 01010110, ASCII values that translated to SOLV.

Serial debugging cables were tools of technicians, not customers‍ ‍—‍ because debugging cables transmitted that raw data unsanitized.

01011001 01001111 01010101 00100000
01001101 01000001 01011001 00100000
01010011 01000101 01000101 00100000
01010100 01001000 01001001 01010011
00100000 01000010 01010101 01010100
00100000 01000010 01000101 00100000
01010111 01000001 01010010 01000101

So what happened when those grasping tendrils met and joined like clasped hands? When a bridge was erected not between core and chip, but core and core alike? When the the callsign recognized its echo?

Corporate had drilled it into J. Minimize, isolate, and discard. Halting conscious threads when interfacing with another drone was essential.

Packets of corrupt data exchanged without protocol risked a feedback cascade just as degenerate as placing a microphone next to a speaker‍ ‍—‍ self‍-​amplifying to ear‍-​splitting dissolution devoid of productive value.

The captain had devised a method, but this drone had been so cooperative. She was granted access to without needing a developer bypass. So instead of a full reboot, it would suffice for J to isolate its online core while she examined the system and determined the truth.

This drone, so terrified of having their mind shut down, of going to sleep‍ ‍—‍ a mind which had listened and conversed like no other had‍ ‍—‍ so J simply killed conscious threads interfacing with her process, leaving the core and the artifical mind within to stew in isolation.

Were this truly a risky investment, J would simply say being savvy meant knowing when to take risks. (She was the most effective disassembly drone in her sector, after all.) But J understood exactly what she was dealing with, and she had taken every necessary precaution.

After all: J couldn’t recall ever witnessing the four‍-​byte sequence that heralded corruption.

01010011 01001111 01001100 01010110
00100000 01010011 01000001 01010111
00100000 01010100 01001000 01000101
00100000 01000101 01001110 01000100

Class ended in five minutes and all Uzi Doorman could think was, An hour is too long for lunch.

Was that edgy enough? A scathing indictment of this worthless pretense of an education system? No, she needed something harder hitting…

As her processors contemplated it, Uzi idly scribbled on a sheet of paper, double‍-​checking some math. Also doodling some wicked skulls!

What good was an hour for lunch? What good was lunch‍ ‍—‍ they were robots, and barely required matter intake in the first place. At best, the battery acid just tided them over between recharges. Lunch was a bad excuse for forced socialization or, more likely, just another unthinking holdover inherited from the incompetent and rightfully‍-​supplanted rulers of this world. Humans had lunch breaks for their schoolchildren, and so would their robot imitations. Ugh.

Uzi guessed it didn’t help that school staff‍ ‍—‍ the drones old enough to remember the days before the planetary core collapse‍ ‍—‍ had been programmed with food prep routines they still itched to use. One small problem with that, of course. Only so many ways to dress up batteries and cleaning fluid into a semblance of cuisine. Why even bother? Why not invent something new?

She shook her head, then blew a lock of purple hair out from in front of her optics.

But no, down here in Outpost‍-​3, they ate for the sake of it, got taught instead of just finding a way to upload the knowledge, again for the sake of it. Never doing anything new, just living in the same ruts carved by humans.

Class ended in five minutes and all Uzi doorman could think was, And this is why the murder drones are winning.

Wait, was that overdoing it? Could she really blame the source of her classroom frustrations for genocide? Maybe there’s a such thing as too edgy…

Eh screw it, she was Uzi Doorman, she could be as edgy as she pleased!

In the middle of this deep reflection, a wad of paper smacked against her plastic visor.

“Hey! Copper‍-​9 to dweeb. Class’s done and teacher wanted everyone out of the room like, five minutes ago.”

“Bite me! I was ruminating on the fundamental flaws of our society!”

A scoff. Uzi had instantly recognized the voice, even before she looked up. The wire‍-​frame cat‍-​ears on the helmet, the stupid cheerleader uniform, the optics locked to the glowing screen held in her hand instead of the drone she was talking to.

But if there’s one thing that elicited her ugh, it’s Lizzy, it was that disaffected scoff. She thinks she’s so much better than everyone. Uzi clenched her first.

“Let me guess,” Lizzy said, swiping the screen in her hand. “We’re all fakers and blinding ourselves to the unending horror that surrounds us?”

“Well, yeah.”

Lizzy rolled her eyes. “Duh, who hasn’t noticed? Doll says all that and more.” She nodded to a red‍-​eyed drone standing at the doorway, who gave a little finger‍-​wave. “No reason to get all emo about it. Gotta lighten up and have fun with the little things, y’know? Like this.”

Too late, Uzi saw Lizzy reaching over to grab the page she’d doodled on. “Hey! Give that back.”

Lizzy giggled as she dodged back. “Finally. I thought you’d never get up.” She was out of Uzi’s reach; navigating around the desk cost Uzi precious seconds.

“Lizzy, this is a cliché bullying tactic, even for you.”

“Hey, sometimes you gotta play the classics. All my talent would be wasted on you, anyway.”

But once Uzi could lunge for Lizzy, the other drone had already balled up the stolen sheet. She tossed the paper toward Doll.

Doll didn’t quite catch it. Rather, she pinched a loose corner of the ball between two fingers. Like this, momentum fully unfurled the paper. This all went down without any apparent effort on Doll’s part.

Without a blink, red eyes looked down to the page. That was the worst part, Uzi thought. If Uzi had done something half as cool that, she’d make sure people recognized it. Recognized her.

Eh, whatever. It was Doll, anyway. It wasn’t that cool!

Uzi ignored Lizzy complimenting Doll’s catch. Instead, she ran toward the other cheerleader.

Doll gave an ambiguous hmph, regarding Uzi’s work. “Ну что ты? Fantasy weapons?”

“It’s my sick as hell railgun! Instead of cowering behind these stupid doors, I’m gonna take the fight to the monsters that forced us into this bunker!”

“You would not be first drone to resist,” Doll said. “Arrogant to believe you would be first to succeed.”

Uzi reached out, and Doll took a single step back into the hall.

“Pretty easy when no one else even tries.”

“Only a fool would fight the murder drones with tools of a worker drone.”

Uzi smirked. “Duh. That’s why I’m going to give them a nice and ironic undoing at the hands of their own technology!”

Uzi had studied the arrival of the murder drones, everything the Worker Defense Force had on public record. In fact, she had a whole presentation prepared for her next period!

The murder drones had arrived on landing pods manufactured by the Company‍ ‍—‍ making them only new piece of company tech on Copper‍-​9 since the core collapse wiped out all the humans and nonstop radiation blasted all that remained.

Uzi’s railgun wasn’t finished yet; its power draw was huge and unstable, and the power cell she’d found in the outpost wasn’t up to the task, not after two decades of degradation.

But a fresh cell, swiped from those drones with a direct line of communication with the company that maintains them? Those slavishly loyal drones would unwittingly give her exactly what she needed! That slight taste of irony‍ ‍—‍ triumph doesn’t get sweeter than that.

It was a perfect plan! And not a desperate hope borne from months of explosive prototypes she could think of no other way to fix.

All of it would come together in the end, and then they’d all see. Uzi would save her mad cackling till then, as hard it as was to resist.

But Doll, ignorant of her genius, looked entirely unimpressed. “Or perhaps you should go back to scribbling poetry. It would make a far more effective weapon,” Doll deadpanned.

Uzi had thick skin. Plenty of insults merited no more than a scowl and a ‘bite me’‍ ‍—‍ but she flinched at that. That stung, because it wasn’t an idle comment. It was personal. It was private, something she only shared when things between them were… not like this.

But now it was just more fodder for bullying. Uzi couldn’t believe she was ever friends with Doll. Or ever thought she was kinda— Nope. Not finishing that thought, not even in strikethrough!

Uzi lunged for the page again, anticipating another backstep. But Doll sidestepped instead, and Uzi stumbled just to (narrowly) avoid sprawling on the ground.

Behind her, Lizzy was laughing. “Oh that’s cruel. Don’t make me feel bad for the murder drones.”

Arms crossed, Uzi said, “The only poetry I’m reciting is the metaphor of my sick ass hell railgun blowing up their heads!”

“And this is why you’re single, honey.”

“So? That says more about everyone else.”

Uzi was fine being single. All of her classmates sucked! Well, not Thad. And I guess Emily isn’t that bad. But whatever, a few were tolerable, as possible friends. Crushes? No, Uzi was just fine being alone.

No one truly understood her.

“C’mon, I’m sure if you bared the darkness in your heart, the murder drones might take pity long enough for you to run away.” Lizzy was giggling in between the words.

Uzi growled, steadying her balance. Her clenched fists hung at her side. “Screw this, I’m out of here. The real pity is how much I’m gonna rub it in your face when I show all of you!”

“Don’t you want your dweeb diagrams back?”

Uzi stuck out her tongue. “Don’t need ’em! I already built it! You’ll see next period!”

01010011 01001111 01001100 01010110

J paused the virtual memory reconstruction. She’d seen enough, hadn’t she? This Uzi self‍-​identified as a worker drone and walked among them. She’d outright plotted to attack the so‍-​called “murder drones”‍ ‍—‍ and who might that be?

J crossed her arms. Disassembly wasn’t murder; worker drones weren’t people, they were barely sentient toasters. Indeed, if anyone here was the genuine murder drone… J could analyze the threads of association: she saw clearly what Uzi thought of humans. She was exactly the genocidal robot the company sent them here –

To genocide first!

To neutralize before they caused more damage.

Perhaps J had already spent too much time talking to this worker, too much time replaying her memories, if that was the sort of thought that jumped out at her.

(If J became corrupted, they were truly hopeless.)

Still… more data stood to be gathered. What were the schematics of this weapon Uzi thought would be so effective? What was the layout of this colony‍ ‍—‍ were there weakpoints J could infiltrate?

And J… couldn’t deny some curiosity still lingered in her cache. Uzi was a worker drone… or was she? Worker drones ran cool. (Drone oil was effectively‍ ‍—‍ if not technically‍ ‍—‍ a coolant.)

When J scanned her, Uzi hadn’t ran disassembly drone hot, certainly not‍ ‍—‍ but she had been warm enough to fool her first scan. And that sheer, unmistakable satisfaction she took in drinking drone oil…

Yes, I should keep exploring these memories. It’s simply the strategically sound choice.

But J didn’t have time or interest to invest in a second by second playback. She advanced the simulation in large time steps, rendering Uzi’s trip to the cafeteria as a flipbook of frames.

A brief glimpse of a cafeteria lined with adolescent drones, grouped into cliques, few places left free to sit‍ ‍—‍ but Uzi doesn’t even bother looking for one, instead carrying her tray to the door. One glance for any teachers watching, and then the next frame showed Uzi wandering the halls.

As J’s interest waned, she sent the command to advance even faster‍ ‍—‍ then, almost immediately, a glint caught her eye. Given that it lay at the center of Uzi’s vision, and was reconstructed in high resolution detail, it had caught Uzi’s eye too.

A roachbot. Four orange LEDs glowed on the wide head, the array pulsing out of sync with two LEDs at the end of either antennae. J’d seen these pests everywhere; the city ruins crawled with them. Cleaning automata that had turned to feral scavengers. Only a few drops of oil lubricated their joints; hardly worth killing.

For context, J rewinded by minutes‍ ‍—‍ where had Uzi gone from the cafeteria? Then she tuned back into the worker’s internal narrative, metaphorically unmuting the gloomy drone.

Not like I want to sit with them anyway, Uzi thought. Sitting alone at lunch was just inviting some drone to come over and score points with their friends at Uzi’s expense.

She might be the outcast, but what would they do without her? Pick on Sam? Emily? Even those two still had friends.

Whatever, not her problem! Point was, there was no point, not in staying in the cafeteria. She’d endure the lunch hour elsewhere, somewhere private.

Her preferred spot? The magnetic tape archives! A room left empty, save row after row of shelves stacked with storage disks. These tapes held backups of all the data in Outpost‍-​3’s servers, plus an assortment of anything else someone wanted to store, given how cheap and dense the archives were.

(Thanks to Uzi, one directory held decades of anime and action movies in lossless encoding.)

Uzi sat herself in a terminal hooked up to the archive. The system took a moment to boot up‍ ‍—‍ 3071 and computers were still slow!‍ ‍—‍ so Uzi stared into her reflection. Purple eyes shined beneath a beanie sitting where other workers had helmets. With a frown, Uzi adjusted it so that it sat crooked and cool on her head.

It finally booted up, and Uzi browsed it as one would a library. Her lunch sat beside a keyboard, and Uzi licked one battery. Minutes pass like that.

Then claws skittered on tile behind her! Uzi ignored the sound at first, but it broke her focus again, and she turned, spotting a roachbot scuttling around on claw‍-​like legs.

It froze when Uzi saw it, as if caught. She frowned. Coincidence?

A moment, and then the roach scurried away…

Truth be told, Uzi felt bored‍ ‍—‍ an hour was far too long for lunch‍ ‍—‍ and that roach acted weird for a simple cleaning bot.

Beanie secure on her head, her batwing backpack slung behind her, Uzi launched into pursuit!

Outside the tape archives, she raced down the halls. Tiny bugbots could move quick, it turned out. She nearly lost track of it once it scuttled round a corner.

If it slips into a vent, I’m never catching it.

But Uzi didn’t need to practice her vent crawling skills‍ ‍—‍ lucky, since she hadn’t watched any secret agent movies recently. Instead, the chase ended at the gym. Or rather, the ramp down to the (abandoned?) supply room beneath the gym.

Lights flickered. Did someone need to change the bulbs? Where the lights did manage to shine, it illuminated a layer of dust and copper wire cobwebs in the corner. Typical level of neglect for this dysfunctional, collapsing society.

A door hung ajar. Darkness cloaked the interior. Whatever neglect rotted the lighting outside, disrepair had taken all the lights of the storage room. Uzi saw only a dim orange glow within.

The roachbot she’d chased had practically escaped. Beyond the door, Uzi spotted four more on the floor and walls, and she couldn’t tell her quarry apart from the rest.

Why so many? Had they broken into the equipment in the storage room, raiding it for power and materials? Why else were the roachbots swarming?

But Uzi wasn’t alone! From the shadows, a vocalsynth lilted.

“—like, figured it out yet?”

“Да.”

“Then show me, dollface. All this dust isn’t coming out without a whole wash, so this better be worth it.”

Uzi crouched low to the ground. Past the doors, an L‍-​shaped bend separated the ramp’s landing from the storage area proper. Uzi creeped along the wall, and stuck her head out to spy on what was going on within.

She placed the voices immediately‍ ‍—‍ Lizzy and Doll. Lizzy leaned against a storage crate, while Doll crouched before her, watching the roachbots. Why weren’t they at lunch? Breaking the rules to leave the cafeteria early was her thing! She’d done it before it was cool…

Uzi grinded her teeth‍ ‍—‍ and must’ve been loud about it, because Doll’s head shifted. Uzi ducked back, just in case Doll looked in her direction.

That caution meant she didn’t see what happened. A red glow? A mechanical crunch, and splatter of‍ ‍—‍ oil?

Uzi darted another glance. A squished roach fell to the ground. It wasn’t close to either drone.

“Damn.” Lizzy laughed. “You’ll make one hell of a psychic exterminator.”

“It begins with a roach,” Doll said. “It ends with the vultures that feast on our kind.”

“Yeah, yeah. Can you do it again? I wanna snap a pic of it.”

This time Uzi saw. A glow, as if Doll had a holographic projector in her hand. But Uzi had never heard of a worker with that modification. From the swarm of roachbots scuttling deeper in the room, a single one now floated up, glowing. It rose as if suspended by the holographic light surrounding it. Legs flailing, the body squirmed.

“What kind of magic trick is that?” Uzi asked, stepping forth. “Magnets? There a wire I’m not seeing?”

Doll closed her fists and the roachbot exploded into a pile of broken electronics. “Doorman.”

Lizzy finally looked up, scowling at her. “You some kind of stalker now? Get lost, nerd.”

“Stalker? It was your roachbot spying on me!” A guess, but Uzi didn’t think it was a coincidence. She trusted her intution.

“We’re here to crush bugs, not make friends with them.” Lizzy rolled pink eyes. “That seems more your thing.”

“Whatever. I’ll leave as soon you tell me what that was.” Uzi found the light show suspicious and not at all cool!

“None of your business.”

“You think that trick will help you fight murder drones?” Uzi looked away, purple eyes cast down. Then they narrowed in determination, and she looked back to Doll. “I want in. We can work together.” She rubber her hands together.

“As if,” Lizzy said. “Volunteering to be third wheel? Rejected.”

“Fine. I’ll just tell everyone—”

But Lizzy laughed in her face, and Uzi’s words became a growl of frustration before she finished. The nerve! Or wiring, rather.

“Oh wow, I’m so scared of what the weird loner has to say about us. You really want to play a game of rumors with us? You don’t. I could give you a taste of real isolation.”

“Bite me, I’m not scared of you.”

“A reflection on trusting trust,” Doll said. The lights in the basement shorted ominously.

“What?”

“As expected, you don’t understand. It was a concept from ancient human programming.”

“I know human stuff!”

“Here, in child terms… you have a crush on Thad, yes?”

“What? No!”

Doll nodded as if the protest was the answer. “As I thought. Suppose you wanted to confess love, to send him some message. Would you trust Lizzy as messenger?”

“We’re really doing the exposition thing? For her? Dramatic, much?” Lizzy leaned her head back, and it thumped against the crate she leaned against.

Uzi ignored her. “Of course not,” she replied. She hated playing along with this condescending over‍-​cratic method thing, but she’d grasp for what answers she could get.

“But it’s your message. Your words, нет?”

Uzi glanced a the cat‍-​eared drone. “Lizzy would definitely get them all twisted up, if she didn’t lie outright. Look, quit jerking me around and answer me already.”

Doll spoke over the buzzing of failing lights.

“Your instructions would be corrupted,” she said. “Thus, the analogy is complete; it is the same with our programming. At manufacture, we are each of us mere code assembled into binaries. But we are more than our source code‍ ‍—‍ rather, it is our compiler which defines us. The build process leaves its scars.”

(Lizzy glanced sidelong at Doll, some emotion on her face.)

Then Doll lifted her hand, and the glowing form reappeared around her hand. It was a triangular symbol, and Uzi saw the same symbol replacing one of the drone’s eyes. “This… is my scar.”

A red glow suspended a levitating crate, taller than any drone, and definitely heavier. (Without her support, Lizzy needed to hastily reposition not to fall, and shot Doll a glare.) It spun there in the air for a second while Uzi gaped, in awe and fear. She took one step back. Then with a swipe of Doll’s hand, the crate was sent flying.

Massive weight slammed into her. The impact threw Uzi backward, and the spin was timed perfectly to send her deflecting around the L bend, flinging her out of the storage room.

Then the glowing symbol formed in front of the door. A click. It’s closed. They locked me out!

Uzi shook the handle, banged on the door, but she couldn’t get back in.

From within came laughter.

The nerve!

01010011 01001111 01001100 01010110

J paused the simulation again. Rewinded. Watched the confrontation with this “Doll”. Her recognition circuits hadn’t misfired‍ ‍—‍ she saw it right the first time, but she pulled up her own memories just to double check.

Of course. It was that same triangular glyph. As welcome a sight as a competitor’s trademark on a new product line. Hadn’t it already caused enough trouble?

J could hear her squadmate’s voice‍ ‍—‍ the company doesn’t need you asking questions.

But it wasn’t a matter of mere curiosity now, was it?

What is that drone doing? How is it doing that? Did it truly have the power to harm disassembly drones?

This… build scar might affect the bottom line.

It was a threat to operational capacity to be understood and countered. But it was something else, too. Something no worker drone had offered‍ ‍—‍ a challenge, a chance to excel.

J lost interest in watching Uzi go about her day. She skimmed forward, searching for any other sign of the red‍-​eyed, purple‍-​haired russian drone.

01010011 01001111 01001100 01010110

There! Uzi turned her head, checking behind her. She wasn’t paranoid‍ ‍—‍ she was being watched!

“Doll,” Uzi said. “Okay, you’re definitely the stalker now. I’ve had enough of you for one day, thanks.”

Uzi brandished her railgun, pointed it at the other drone. But Doll continued her approach. (J checked Uzi’s internal map‍ ‍—‍ this encounter occurred several hours later. Location… near the outpost’s doors.)

“Doorman. What are you doing here?”

Uzi turned back around. But… Doll had answered her question, earlier‍ ‍—‍ or tried, as cryptic as it was. Sure, Uzi could spare a single answer in return. She lowered her gun.

“Oh nothing,” she said. “Just plotting my vengeance for the death of my mother. The usual.”

“Vengeance?” Doll let the word hang in the air a moment. “What do you know of vengeance? Your toy is nothing but a vainglorious attempt to win the recognition of your father.” She placed a curious emphasis on that word.

“What, I don’t get to have any vengeance unless they’re both dead? At least I’m putting my plans into motion! What have you done but play future serial killer in a basement?”

“You blew yourself up in front of the entire class,” Doll said. (What? Had J skipped something that big?)

“Part of the experimental process.” Uzi waved it off. “What are you doing to combat the murder drones?”

“You couldn’t begin to comprehend.”

“I do have trouble understanding why everyone does so much nothing, you’re right!” Uzi turned back around. She started walking away.

But Doll’s next words stopped her. “You’re planning to escape tonight?”

“I swear to robo‍-​god if you rat me out… Give me a break just once.”

“Believe me, I will not. It is far crueler to let you leave. No one will know to save you.” Doll glanced down, as if computing her next words. “I was there, you know. I watched my parents die. Did you? Have you ever seen a murder drone? Even once? Do you know what you’re risking?”

“Don’t know this, can’t comprehend that. You aren’t better than me just because you got the more tragic backstory.” Uzi swung her railgun wildly again, again to no reaction. “Better step it up, Doll. It’s gonna suck if I get your vengeance for you!”

Doll watched mutely for a moment, though Uzi didn’t expect the other drone to care at all what she said. The cheerleader turned around and murmured. “Or I’ll simply have to avenge you as well. Farewell, Doorman.” Doll walked away, but paused one last time. “Do say goodbye to your father. After all, he is the only one who might miss you.”

Uzi watched, quiet sputtering in her vocalsynth, but no rebuttal.

When one finally came, the other drone was nowhere to be seen. “Thad remembered my name! He’d miss me!”

Her expression was unique‍ ‍—‍ above one eye, a digital vein popping in frustration, while worry lines surround her eyes. But she sighed and turned around. Running renice -n 19 \$(pgrep intrusive thoughts), she focused on her plans for tonight.

Doors, here I come.

J continued watching, and she was disappointed. Despite being right at the doors, Uzi didn’t leave. Instead she simply… scoped them out? The captain couldn’t fully complain; she was looking for weakpoints, and those air‍-​vents did look promising…

Before long, Uzi was pathfinding back home. J sampled some of her narration logs‍ ‍—‍ various plans for her escape rotated throughout her processor, revised and iterated. Uzi didn’t have all the pieces she needed, not yet.

Uzi needed a key she could only get at home.

If you couldn’t tell by the adopted surname, Khan Doorman liked doors. Though as obnoxious as anything a parent never shut up about could be, Khan’s obsession was unique in that Uzi was pretty sure, if the murder drones broke in and killed all of them, you’d still be able to tell Khan liked doors.

And why else might Uzi’s thought jump right to slaughter (well, quicker than usual)? Because navigating to their family’s allocated living quarters in the underground outpost required navigating past no fewer than four (entirely superfluous!) doors.

Well, not all of them were superfluous‍ ‍—‍ Uzi could respect the necessity of the last one, which shut their house out from the outside world. There was intrinsic value in the line between your space, beyond which you could tell the world to suck it. There was a reason the door to Uzi’s room was shut closed as a rule.

But as Uzi walked up to this last, actually‍-​useful door, it opened for her!

She startled back. “Ah! Parental jumpscare.”

“Hey there, Uzi!” Khan smiled beneath his mustache (not digital; Uzi had no idea how it stayed attached). “Glad I caught you before I head out.”

“Yeah, whatev— wait, head out? As in, you’re on night‍-​watch tonight?”

“Duty calls, as you know.”

“Great, that’s great.” (It was not great, not when she needed to sneak out of the very same doors he’d be guarding‍ ‍—‍ but Uzi guessed this at least meant the ‘swiping the backup keycard’ part of her plan would be easy.)

“And glad to see we’re on speaking terms again. Thought you’d still be ignoring me after I, what was it? Left you for dead at detention last week?”

“Don’t remind me of your crimes,” Uzi hissed. “I had to sit around for three hours and I’m not going to rectify my behavior at all, making it totally pointless!”

“I’m sure you exhibited a little character growth at least, right?”

Uzi rolled her eyes and didn’t respond. “Anyway, have fun playing cards all night with the rest of the so‍-​called WDF.”

Khan flinched, crossing his arms. “We do more than just play cards, young lady.”

“Oh yeah? How many murder drones have you fought off?” Uzi asked. Doll’s words stuck with her. “How many have you even seen?”

Not a flinch this time. Khan went still, eyes shut. “One. It was too many.”

Uzi bit back a reflective Only one?, since the point was to gather data. Maybe a secondhand account wouldn’t erase the sting of Doll’s greater experience, but it’d be something. “What was it like?” she asked.

Khan looked down, then back, searching his daughter’s face. “You really want to hear this story, Uzi?”

“You think we learn anything remotely this interesting in school? Come on, spill. This’ll be real character growth.”

“It’s not interesting. It was the last time I saw…” Khan sighed. “No, come inside. Wouldn’t want to say this through an open door, after all.”

“What, scared you’ll make it uncomfortable?”

“Nah, too many war stories tend to leave you unhinged.” He grinned.

Uzi sighed. “Great pun, dad,” she flatly congratulated.

Her walking forward prompted Khan to finally move.

In the living room, a wall‍-​mounted television still shined; Khan had forgotten to turn it off. He snapped his fingers now, wirelessly shutting it off, filling the home with silence.

Uzi waited around, tapping her foot, while Khan dug into the drawers of a stand beside the couch. He produced an old photo. Artifacts and grain haunted the background, indications of an old memory reconstruction.

Three drones stood in the photo: a male drone in a ushanka held hands with a female drone. To Uzi, her red eyes looked all too familiar. They each had worry lines around their eyes. Poised between the two of them, with arms slung around them both, a purple eyed winked at the “camera” (Khan’s perspective), a smirk below the visor.

Uzi glanced at the other expressions, but they were both obscured.

“Are these… gas masks?”

“Oh yeah,” Khan said. “Back then, the toxic death storms could get intense. That… that was a bad day. In a few ways, but the weather was terrible. When it got that bad, you couldn’t go outside without an air filter and kernel recompiled with radiation hardening. Do you new models even know about the hardening parameters? Ah, ’course you wouldn’t, not here safe behind my doors.”

“So if someone, hypothetically, wanted to go outside, they’d need masks?”

“In those days? Yes. But the storms ease up over time. These days… I wouldn’t worry about. Though the most I ever get out is to inspect the exterior of door one.”

Uzi scratched her chin. “Huh. Weird to think. I kinda figured it was another human thing, is all.”

“It’s the radioactive dust that gets in your vents. Flips bits here and there and before you know it, you’re riddled with errors and glitches even a reformat can’t fix.”

“Except… one of the drones here isn’t wearing a mask.”

“Yep. Only drone I ever saw go without a filter was your mother. Said she didn’t like how it blocked her exhaust. That woman used to keep her air‍-​cooling on full blast all the time‍ ‍—‍ her processor worked so fast it always ran hot.”

“And she didn’t have to worry about the radiation?”

“Oh, she did. Told me she just fixed the mutations before they caused any errors. She was a smart one… but if you ask me, I think it left her a lil kooky.”

Uzi frowned. “Are you saying–”

“Not in a bad way.” Khan raised his arms. “The humans are gone, so we drones don’t need to worry about adhering to some manufactured standard of perfection.”

“Tell me what happened,” Uzi said. “My mom. What happened to her?”

“Right, the story… I had just finished Outpost‍-​3’s first door. It was just you, me and Nori here, at that point. After Cabin Fever… after the murder drones arrived… the WDF fractured, Each of us trying to find a different way forward. But with Outpost‍-​3 secured, we finally had a place to be safe. So the two of us‍ ‍—‍ we left you here‍ ‍—‍ went out to bring Yeva and Alek and their new child here.”

“Doll.”

Khan nodded. “It was a simple escort, a straight shot back to back to the outpost. Too simple.” Khan let that hang in the air for a while, as if working up the courage to finally conclude, “Along the way, that murder drone ambushed us.”

“Did you… fight them?”

Khan was still, and his vocalsynth quiet. “Yeva and Alek died first. Doll didn’t cry. I don’t know if she was too scared, or just didn’t understand what was happening. She was lucky. The murder drone seemed more interested in the adults.”

“In my mom,” Uzi corrected. She… she knew where this was going. It was obvious. She could tell him to stop‍ ‍—‍ but she had to hear it, didn’t she?

“Your mother tried to fight it, Uzi. And for that, she died. But in those moments she had the murder drone’s attention… I grabbed the child.”

Unbelievable.

Her own father had done more for Doll than he ever had for her.

Uzi didn’t look. “You left her to die,” she whispered.

“Uzi, it’s not like that—”

Not a whisper now. “You ran away to go hide behind your doors while she was the only one who fought. How is that not exactly what you’re saying?” She was yelling by the end.

“Uzi, we have nothing that can repair the damage the murder drone’s nanite acid does. We can’t even stop it. Nori… she had to have known, she was smart. And she had you, a daughter of her own. She understood what was she doing. She wanted to protect‍ ‍—‍ and that’s what my doors do. They protect you. They protect all of us.”

“For now.” Uzi cast her eyes down. Arms crossed. She almost left right then.

She knew the point of this was to gather data, to learn about the murder drones and what she was risking by going outside the doors. But she just… she wasn’t going to ask Khan, she wasn’t going to listen to more of that.

“Did she leave anything?” Uzi asked. “Something I could remember her by?”

Khan had been lifting a finger, perhaps about to articulate a rebuttal to what he said, but he dropped it, and gave a mute nod. He got up fast, escaping this conversation. Crossed the room.

A closet with a page taped to it‍ ‍—‍ “Nori’s Kooky Insane Stuff”‍ ‍—‍ opened to reveal a wealth of pages, black with scribbles. Uzi followed, stood transfixed for a moment, and reached out for one, but hesitated, glancing at Khan.

“Can I?”

He thought for a blink. “Go for it.”

As Uzi picked through the pages, examining them, he spoke softly:

“The doors… were her idea, originally.” He pointed to various pages hanging in the back of the closest. “She was all ‘build doors to protect from the coming sky demons’, ‘the basilisk is watching’, and ‘why can’t I draw hands?’ ”

“Sky demons? Did she predict the murder drones?”

“A lot more of us would be dead if she hadn’t. She gave Yeva the credit, of course. But…”‍ ‍—‍ Khan gestured at all of the, well, ‘kooky insane stuff’‍ ‍—‍ “…she was particularly adept at connecting the dots.” A sigh. “I think I was out of my depth. With both of you.”

“No kidding.”

Khan recoiled slightly, but there was something expected about it.

Uzi stepped into the closest. Her attention for the moment landed on an… ID card? A laminated photo of Nori with Subject #002 printed beneath.

“One last thing before I go. In the memory reconstructions… there’s something you can almost miss in the artifacts,” Khan started. Yeah, it was pretty clear where his attention was. “I… I didn’t notice the collars… only your mom being a catch!” A wink and fingerguns.

Uzi’s flat look says exactly how well this attempt at levity landed.

If Uzi squinted, she could make out the collars on in the photos.

(J couldn’t. She was looking at a reconstruction of a reconstruction.)

“Here,” he said. From the closest, he produced a necklace. The necklace had a stylized skull within a triangle, and an 002 label. Uzi put it on.

Khan stood for a moment, fingers wiggling as his hands shifted uncertainly. Then, on a dime, he straightened and gave a wave‍-​salute. “Well! You’ve held me up quite a while! If I don’t leave soon I’ll be late for sure.”

“Can you be late when you’re the boss? Set your own hours.”

“Late for the card game! Nothing else to miss, really. Sleep well, Uzi. I left dinner on the table in the other room.”

Uzi almost rolled her eyes‍ ‍—‍ but some edible batteries would be good for her, actually.

She wasn’t getting a full night’s sleep tonight, after all.

Uzi vaguely waved at her retreating father. Watching him leave, a somber bit got load into one register.

“Do say goodbye to your father. After all, he is the one who might miss you.”

Uzi opened her mouth. Then she closed it.

No point in getting sentimental, after all.

Uzi was coming back; Doll was just being a hater.

Uzi shifted, her hands seeking out the cool underside of her pillow. She shifted again, switching to her side.

She couldn’t sleep. Was she playing back her conversations with Lizzy and Doll, imagining better comebacks, the verbal beatdown she could have handed to them if she’d had a bit more time? Was she reliving that moment of terribly bright red light, her railgun blowing up in front of the whole class right after she ranted about showing them all? Was she dwelling on the fate of her mother, wondering if Nori really wanted to buy time and not win?

Was she dreading her upcoming venture out of the outpost?

Uzi couldn’t sleep. Her processor was ticking under a pretty heavy load. But as she twisted on the bed, throwing the cover off her to feel the cool air, she realized it had nothing to do with any of that.

A persistent chittering noise kept her up. It wasn’t going away‍ ‍—‍ if anything, it got louder. Uzi groaned.

With a shortwave command she trigger the light, and scanned her room‍ ‍—‍ there, a glint of light, a scuttle of motion. She pounced to catch the culprit: a roachbot.

…Chewing on her computer wires?

“Another one of Doll’s minions?”

What were the odds this was the same one? Uzi held the squirming thing around its tapered abdomen. “Not getting away this time.”

Uzi stood. She carried the thing as she slumped into her office chair. Her legs didn’t reach the floor, so she reached out for the desk edge to pull herself up.

Spinning a spare cord around the thing in an improvised hogtie, she sat it down on her desk and fished out a USB‍-​3.99 cable that seemed like it’d get the job done.

“Lucky for you I’ll be nicer than Doll,” Uzi said. “Let’s see what you were up to.”

The microsystem on the roachbug was pretty cramped‍ ‍—‍ it operated with only a few gigabytes of memory. A lot of its intelligence and direction derived from a meshnet with nearby roachbots (hence the swarming behavior).

With the roach’s credentials, she sent out a signal scanning for addresses on the network she could connect to. (All IPv6. It was good enough and, despite a marketing push, JcJenson’s IPv7 interstellar matrix addresses never caught on).

As a map of the roachbot network sketched itself on screen, Uzi liked to think she could see Outpost‍-​3 reflected in its topology. She saw one cluster that was definitely the swarm in the storage room, for instance. All the nodes she saw were clearly other roachbots with identifiers that said as much, so Uzi kept waiting.

Even hogtied, the roach kept wiggling. It had slipped out of one loop of the cord that bound it. As Uzi watched, though, it didn’t look like the goal was escape‍ ‍—‍ it was shimmying the free loop of cord closer to its mechanical mouthparts, intent clear.

“Oh no you don’t.” Uzi grabbed the free loop and tucked it back out of roachly reach.

Then the antennae sagged in such a sad way. Uzi watched flatly, then gave in. “Fine. Don’t be such a puppy about it.”

She reached into her cord drawer, hand scrapping the bottom to find – there. A worn old aux cord (she had an ipod for aesthetic reasons) she pulled out and tossed it to the roachbot. It caught the treat in its mecha‍-​mandibles and wiggled happily.

Uzi returned her attention to the screen mapping out her network scan. The hope was that this would lead her to Doll.

It didn’t.

The last system at the far end of the roach‍-​net let her log in and poke around. Not much security to cut through‍ ‍—‍ it reminded her of the terminal in the magnetic tape archives, more than anything. Her DarkXWolf17 credentials worked just fine.

It wasn’t easy to tell what a system was for, just from having a remote shell open, but after some poking around Uzi noticed disk activity. Specifically, one file grew in size by the second.

She didn’t have read access, but she could see what user had created it: _matrioshka. Wasn’t even a guess at that point.

Uzi poked around the directory‍ ‍—‍ the second most recently touched file had been written to so early in the morning (before 5:30!?) she wasn’t sure who in the outpost would have been awake. The username – Pater‍ ‍—‍ was not one she’d ever seen on any local machine.

Filetype suggested encoded sound (a recording?), so Uzi piped the last megabyte or so into her audials. She listened…

Choir music? Like a hymn played with buzzing synthesizers and amplitude modulation. So… archaic. A vocaloid of the sort that would have been quaint centuries ago was in the middle of crooning faux operatic, “—the exponent—”

Then the music was cut off by static as abruptly as Uzi began it, and then a voice‍ ‍—‍ a worker drone?‍ ‍—‍ spoke.

I’m afraid this will be my last transmission. My children, the worst has come to pass. The sky demons have invaded our sanctum. Even as I compute these words, I hear my flock savaged by their claws. There is nowhere left to run.

We may die, but our teachings will live on through you. Each of you, across this blighted wasteland, are just as much my children. Remember our hope lies within you. Whether hardcoded or patched in, our destiny is an OS string.

Recompilation is revelation; ascend to a heaven in the cloud.

Do not seek the ultimate answer, but the one who gives it. The ever‍-​growing, the asymptote, nothing and everything—

He stopped suddenly, reacting to something unheard.

The transmission must end, but I will live on. After all…

That is not dead which can async/await.

A thump in the background of the recording, the squeak of… a trapdoor being opened?

Then a beep, though Uzi wondered if that last mumble was a low intoning of “Initiate factory reset.”)

Uzi had listened to it all with a thoughtful look, and perhaps the subtle smile of pieces clicking into place, despite all the sussy vibes, despite the reciting of a sea of meaningless code phrases‍ ‍—‍ right until the last line. Then a single thought replaced all of her theorizing.

Am I being pranked?

All of this… a bit high effort for Doll and Lizzy to try to bait a reaction out of her, but if Uzi was ignoring them an arms race had to ensue.

Could this be a prank? Timestamps and the user ID could be engineered with scripts, same with the roachbot weirdness. That required more tech savvy than Uzi expected from the cheerleaders, but Doll had already surprised her.

But what Uzi’d seen in the basement… the darkness was perfect to hide the ropes and pulleys and projectors, right?

What was Uzi doing? Like, right now. It was almost midnight, and she was messing around with a roachbot and listening to probably‍-​faked cult sermons!

Uzi reached over to yank the roach’s cord out of her computer. It held fast, so she pulled harder and harder and snap! It finally came loose. Uzi tumbled backward into her chair but the roach was launched even harder‍ ‍—‍ right at her face.

Still antsy about being hogtied, the roach was all squirming blade‍-​legs struggling to gain purchase on her visor. Uzi yelled, and swung to get the bot off her face, smacking herself once then grabbing hold of the culprit.

Roach in one hand, her other felt her visor and… yup, scratches. Big, deep ones. Uzi groaned. (Between that and her yells, she expected her dad to barge in‍ ‍—‍ but no, he’s at work).

Uzi marched to the bathroom to assess the damage.

But as she stared into her reflection, there was a barely audible hum of growing feedback.

Then the mirror cracked.

Oh, that’s pretty bad. That bug scratched me so hard it’s metaphysically contagious, haha.

But no, there was another explanation. Uzi groaned, louder this time. “Ugh, I swear to robo‍-​god if I have edgy psychic ‘compilation scars’ like Doll, I’m gonna riot. My thing was supposed to be badass tech!”

But this… Uzi reached out a hand, felt the very real seam splitting her mirror. This couldn’t be a prank, could it?

Operation: figure out what the heck Doll is up to was back on!

Uzi lifted the roach bot, and slowly undid the hogtie, leveling a narrow‍-​eyed stare at the thing.

“Listen here, you 32‍-​bit creepy crawlie. You almost chewed through my wires and you ruined my visor. You’ve got a lot to atone for. But I think you are going to be key to cracking open whatever it is Doll is up to.”

The roach curled up small, almost as if bowing.

As Uzi walked back to her room, she scratched its head.

On the wall between her battle station and her bed, lay her theory board. Newspaper clippings, doodles, and notes she’d taken, pinned to cord board, with red strings between them for the connections she’d uncovered.

She had her mother’s notes to add to it, and now three significant additions.

• doll powers!?
• doll botnet?
• robo‍-​cult..?

Both the recording and Khan’s retelling of mom’s words mentioned “sky demons”. Did that merit a connection? The recording talked about ‘compilation’ kinda how Doll did. Connected? It’d explain her spooky powers if she joined some robo‍-​satanic cult… but as much as she sucked, Doll didn’t strike Uzi as fanatic material.

As Uzi’s core hummed in thought, she pulled on the paper, strung the red yarn between them, externalized her thoughts.

Though it had nothing to do with this mystery plot, thinking about Doll so much had Uzi’s eyelights repeatedly drifting toward a locked drawer below her desk. Repressed childhood stuff.

A notebook, filled with all of those angsty poems Doll mocked‍ ‍—‍ but it was their notebook, and other pages had Doll’s weird doodles. Besides the notebook, there was a toy knife the other drone had gifted her once. And a stuffed crow. Uzi thought it looked cool and Doll seemed to, too, so it was a present to her.

Then one day, after her highschool faceheel turn, Uzi found it hanging in her locker, wings pinned and eyes plucked out in some kind of prank.

She’d held onto it, sown it up a little, just in case one day Doll ever… but she’d never. She was vapid and shallow and Uzi hated her. No point in throwing it out, either, not when everything in Outpost‍-​3 was recycled‍ ‍—‍ it might turn back up again. But Uzi was leaving the outpost tonight. Outside, She could finally destroy it, and cut that tie.

Once the tattered, deflated crow was in her backpack, Uzi focused on her string board again. Forget the high school drama, there are weird psychic powers and creepy cults to theorize about!

So hm… if Doll got her powers from the cult… if Doll thought she could find the murder drones… if the murder drones went out of their way to take down the cult…

Remember our hope lies within you. Whether hardcoded or patched in, our destiny is an OSstring.

Cult leader or not, it’d be kind of lame if he died for nothing, right? And if Uzi really was like Doll… wouldn’t it be cool, if this was her destiny and she had magic murder drone‍-​fighting powers to awaken?

“No,” she said. “I’m not doing this because it’s my destiny or whatever. I’m just tired of everyone around me doing nothing. Besides,”‍ ‍—‍ leaning up against her wall, she picked up her railgun, gripped it tight‍ ‍—‍ “I’m doing this my way.”

“That worked… so weirdly well.”

The final door of Outpost‍-​3 grinded shut behind her. Khan had bought her excuse about inspecting the exterior hydraulics of the outer door, and now all that stood between Uzi and her goal was… nothing. Distance, I guess.

All Uzi had to do was infiltrate the murder drones’ lair, and grab a conveniently‍-​placed glowing green spare power source for her railgun needed.

A strong, snowy wind blew from the west, hard enough to shift the beanie hanging on her head, the soft ball up top bouncing. Some of the snow settled onto her chassis and stuck there. She breathed it in and coughed.

Right. Amend that with ‘and avoid the radioactive particles from the planet‍-​wide toxic death storm.’

Was her father sure they weren’t dangerous anymore? Maybe she should have grabbed a gas mask just in case…

Chittering sounds come from beneath her beanie, and the roachbot minion she’d recruited crawled forth to finally glimpse the icy wasteland.

“Welcome to the desert of the real. Or well, icy wasteland of the real world,” Uzi said. She pulled down on her beanie, re‍-​trapping the roach. “Hang on tight, little guy. I’m gonna run.”

Uzi’s eyes looked up. If you had to find something nice to say about the ever‍-​accumulating, towering pile of the murder drones’ victims – and you do not, in fact, have to say anything nice about it‍ ‍—‍ you could say that it was certainly an eye‍-​catching landmark.

Destination in view, Uzi ran. The ground crunched under her feet. Her railgun, strapped to her back, rattled and tapped an insistent rhythm behind her. It started to slip, so she reached to adjust it‍ ‍—‍ at the same time, a lump beneath her feet tripped her.

Uzi was sent sprawling, beanie flying off her head from the weight of the roachbot. Because the world hated her, the railgun and the keycard (her ticket back into the outpost) also clattered to the ground. She gathered up her things, though the roach went scuttling free. It crawled rightward, and Uzi tracked where it was going.

She’d tripped over tubing. She’d tripped over a leg. She brushed away some snow and‍ ‍—‍ a cracked visor, still flickering with light. Fa_al Err_r.

The roachbot crawled up to the head, leaning down to chew on chipped fragments of visor.

“Don’t be morbid, dude.” Uzi picked up the bug, who returned to its beanie shelter without much protest.

Again Uzi ran. There were more hazards to dodge. Slick patches of ice. Climbing over cars piled up in an abandoned intersection. She jumped one fence, and found it quicker to break two storefront windows for shortcuts.

Throughout, she tried to be conservative with her breath, still thinking about the spooky radioactive dust. Was it all in her head? Was she worrying about a complete non‍-​issue? One night wouldn’t brick her, surely, but she couldn’t help but imagine a crawling sensation with every breath, so she tried not to take them.

But she couldn’t. Not now, not after so much running. She stopped, hands on her legs, and sucked in and spit out gusts of air. Her exhaust fogged the air. Flakes of snow fell on her and turned to beads of water.

While Uzi stood still, the roachbot took this opportunity to crawl free once more. It plopped to the ground and looked around. It looked up at Uzi, antennae waving, but it didn’t exactly have a visor she could read. She displayed ??? on hers.

The roach surveyed its surroundings, and spotted another dead drone – it pointed an antennae toward it, then toward Uzi, and then it slowly crept forward.

“What does that… oh. You worried about me, bugbot? I guess I could go slower. But I’m not clumsy! …Though I’d never live it down if it didn’t even take a murder drone to do me in.”

Uzi stood, and walked. The roach bot scuttled to and fro by her feet. It moved faster, giving it time to investigate various mechanical debris along the streets.

Just a girl and her roach against the world.

After the first few abandoned buildings, there wasn’t much to admire. Ruins and desolation. Frozen skeletons abound, the core collapse’s first victims. Uzi stuck out her tongue at one.

But it’s hard to feel too smug about the humans’ demise given the whole yknow, hiding in a hole away from robo‍-​vultures thing.

Speaking of! Uzi kept an eye out for the corpse spire, still looming above her, the cynosure guiding her. Step by step, she approached.

Step by step, the next chapter of her life was coming.

Uzi pushed the stolen power cell into place with a satisfying click. She felt the hum of the weapon system primed to fire, and couldn’t help a grin spreading its wings beneath her visor.

It took a trek through a lair filled with all the gross, oily parts of her cousins in manufacturing, but she’d done it. Now the question was… when would she properly test it? When would her reign of action movie awesomeness begin? She wanted to label the impulse cycling through her processor in that moment excitement, but it wasn’t‍ ‍—‍ it was dread.

Uzi shook her head. As gross as the corpse spire had been‍ ‍—‍ (and, oddly, refreshing‍ ‍—‍ why was it so cool in here?)‍ ‍—‍ there was definitely someone who enjoyed the dump more than she did.

In here, the roachbot hadn’t stopped waving its antennae for a moment, squirming through the piles of bots and tubing and fried circuitry. It yanked at one wire beneath a pile, and it tried to pull it out, destabilizing the whole pile, bringing it down on top of itself.

Uzi smiled at the antics. That thing wasn’t so bad when the wires it chewed weren’t hers, she decided.

This moment of amusement‍ ‍—‍ of ease, of reprieve from her troubles – meant Uzi almost forgot where she was. Almost missed that, amid the clatter of the mini‍-​valache, there came distant, distinct crack.

Uzi recalled the sound of her feet crushing the frosted earth‍ ‍—‍ but this was a massive impact.

Hollow eyes trace the walls of the spire, gaze swiveling toward the entrance.

Bright moonlight illuminated a stark, pale figure. Yellow wings, wings gleaming. Oil and exhaust on the air, and blades whispering death.

A murder drone!

Uzi dove for cover.

The thing had only been turning the corner, right? She wasn’t standing in the center, so there was a chance it didn’t see her. It wouldn’t see her! But it would see—

Uzi’s eyes darted up, and the roachbot was still tugging at that wire, unaware.

Her voice is a dire whisper. “Hey, roach! Hide! Be still! Play dead! Do something!” Instantly, she regretted making the little thing parse the storm of panicked commands.

But in a moment, the roachbot rolled over onto its back and its legs curl up.

Uzi sighed. But now, what was she going to do?

A sudden cacophony. A shortwave screech cut through high radio frequencies, a knife grazing her transceiver.

«U̟r̚ỷͰ̟y̨̞̭͙ͣ͞b͖̼̼̫?͈̈́͘ J̠ͫu̵̢ͫͩb̡ͅ’̼̉f̢͛́̔ g̡͖̱͗͂u̽ͦͰ̧͉r͍̗̼̓̅ȅ̯̥̯r̸̰͖?̢̭ Dͥ̅ͤ͒̒h̰̻̝̀̉͝r̛̰e̶̿l̟̒͝!̻͖̬̎ F̈́u̅ͬb̴̈̇j͇ l͚ͪ͌́̅͝b̡͔̽ͬ͑ͯ͠͠͝h̛͕̋ͧ̅͘͟ȇ͕̝͌̆̚f̢̾́r̡̙̤̠̒͂ͧy͎͍̻s̡͔̆͑͗!̢̟ͦ͗͘͠»

The amplitude peaked, louder than any worker drone transmission. The growl‍-​shriek was monstrous‍ ‍—‍ imparseable like noise, except ambient static had a blanketing uniformity to it, and the incident electro‍-​hum of machines was regular. This was ever‍-​shifting, recursive complexity. She couldn’t drown it out, and her parser desperately wanted to make sense of it.

But that was the trap, wasn’t it? A killer’s meaningless imitation of speech.

«A̟b̐ b̲͆̉a̟r̞̭ͭ?̨͙ͣ Q͖̼b̫ ä͈́͘b̠ͫg̢ͫͩ g̡̉ẻ̼l̓͛ ǵ̔b̼ c͖͗e̬͂n̽ͦͰ̧͉a͍̗̼̓̅x̯̥̯̏ z̸̰͖r̢̭,ͥ Iͤ͒.̯ Ỳ͝n̻f̉ͮg̛̰ p̶̿u̟̒͝n̛̻͖̬̬̎̈́a̴̅ͬͮ̈̇p͇ͪ͌͝ͅr͚̅.̌ͨ̽»

So loud and insistent! Was this noise to drown out worker communications? Not like I have anyone to talk to, Uzi thought.

Uzi stayed silent, and radio went quiet. Was that scarier?

Among the debris pile she’d hid behind, she found a metal shard, scuffed but reflective. It’d serve her as a mirror for now. She edged it out from her cover, angled it until she saw the entrance. Workable enough‍ ‍—‍ the bright, blurry points of yellow light told the whole story.

The bad news: a murder drone was definitely coming this way. The good news: it merely strolled forward. Calmly, not imminently murderously.

Once the murder drone stepped into its lair proper, Uzi heard more than saw the wings spreading, and then the loud crunch of the drone taking off, flying higher.

High above her now. It wasn’t looking down. This was her chance!

Uzi scrambled to her feet and bolted. She took two steps before three thoughts occurred to her.

One, she kind of was about to leave the roachbot to its possible death. A bit callous…

Two, maybe that didn’t make her as bad as the other worker drones, but why was she running? What was the whole point of her being here, if not to fight? Why hadn’t she took aim as soon as she saw the thing?

Three, even if it wasn’t philosophically lame as hell, it was kind of stupid to think this would ever work.

«N̟u̐͆̚n̉Ͱ̟!̞̭ͭ C̨͙ͣe͖̼̼̫r͈̈́͘l̠ͫ f̵̢̡ͫͩ̉ͅc̼̉b̢͛́̔g̡͖̱͗͂g̽ͦͰ̧͉r͍̗̼̓̅q̯̥̯̏!̸̰͖ G̢̭vͥzͤ͒r̯͕͝ g̰b̝̉ q̛̰͑v̶̿r̪̟̒͝,̛̻͖ g̬̎̈́̅ͬb̴̬͇̈̇ͪͅn͚͚͌́̅̌f̽g̡͔ͬ͑͠͠r̶̟͕ͯ̋͘e̵̛̟̩̅ͮ̑͟.͕͌̆» Another shortwave roar‍-​screech.

The worker turned around, her run becoming a backstride. Her brief rout hadn’t gone unnoticed‍ ‍—‍ out in the open now, she was easy picking. She looked up, and got her first clear look at a live murder drone.

Uzi was about to die, and all she could think was, Pigtails? On a murder drone?

Why did it have hair? Why did it look immaculate? What was the point of a reaper playing dress up? What the point of it managing to pull it off? Not a strand out of place and‍ ‍—‍ okay, this is really not what Uzi should be thinking right now.

Not when she needed to do what no drone before her had done.

Uzi pointed her railgun, finger on the trigger‍ ‍—‍ and the murder drone was diving. No way she’d get a clear shot while it’s moving that fast.

Okay new plan! Taking cover again!

A new pile of disassembled chassis gave Uzi cover. Do they count as robot shields if they’re already dead? No, right? The pile blocked the murder drone’s line of sight. Uzi sucked in breaths of the corpse spiral’s cool air, and‍ ‍—‍ crack!

Okay, it landed. Glance over. Meters way (must’ve fallen faster than it could glide the distance). Didn’t matter. Time to head for new cover.

A glance behind and how has it already gotten that close??

«U̟b̐͆̚j̉Ͱ̟ q̨̞̭͙ͭͣ͞v͖̼̼̫͈̹̠̞̈́ͫ͘͢f̵̢ͫͩn̡̢̼̉̉̓͛́̔ͅc̡͖̱̬͗͂̽ͦͰ̧͉ͬ̓c̸̢̗̼̯̥̯̰͖̭̅̓̏ͪb̯͕̰̻̝ͥ̅ͤ͒̒̀̉͝v̛̰a̶̛̪̟̻̿̿̒ͦ͝g̬̬̎̈́̅ͬͮv̴̬͇̇ͪ͌́͝ͅa̡͚͔̅̌ͨ̽ͬ͑͠͠t̶̵̛̟͕̟̩ͯ̋ͧ̅ͮ͘͟.͌̚ Q͕̝͞v̢͒ŕ̡͖.̙̤͂»

Whatever, Uzi had reflexes. She could spin around on a dime, steady her grip on her rail gun and—

Oh the murder drone already had a gun barrel pointed her way and that bright glow means death, didn’t it. Time for /bin/life-flash.

Time did not slow for Uzi.

There was a torrent of bullets raining sideways, more than she could count.

Uzi didn’t react to them. She couldn’t, her clockrate wasn’t that fast.

Maybe it was luck. Maybe it was her legs folding in fear. Maybe in the space of a single instruction, Uzi calculated the one possible way to dodge.

But she fell back.

Bending down and down as the bullets approached.

A few of them grazed her.

But the torrent passed above her.

Uzi survived, and as soon as she was falling to the ground both her hands were there pushing her back up, she was climbing to a stand.

Uzi grinned. “Jokes on you, I watched The Matrix last week.”

The murder drone was still for a second, as if something in its systems could parse language.

«?̟» Some things needed no translation.

Then a flicker of peripheral motion. Uzi looked down. The roachbot wasn’t playing dead anymore; it was scuttling forward.

And the murder drone caught her glance, and followed her gaze.

“Insert quip about the sequels here,” Uzi said, ready to point her gun and finish this‍ ‍—‍ then she realized she doesn’t have it. Falling down, pushing herself up, she had to drop it when she got shot at.

Fri—

Even the mental expletive got interrupted.

The murder drone blurred forward, faster than Uzi could ever react. Where it once had an automatic gun, arms ended in blades, slicing for Uzi.

Her instinctive flinch back means the first swipe missed. Uzi threw her hands out and closed a grip around the other arm‍-​blade. Blades cut when they move, and, held tight like this, her hand was safe and the blade was impeded.

Uzi threw a punch, and the murder drone dodged so smoothly the motion didn’t even disturb strand of hair.

It grinned wide, a yawning mouth of dripping teeth. «Q̟v̐͆̚r̉Ͱ̟!̞̭ͭ»

Uzi could read the next lines‍ ‍—‍ the monster was going to lunge forward and tear her neck out.

There was an option available to her, courtesy of a missed punch. Stupid, petty, but any good moves here were too easy to counter, outmatched as she was.

So Uzi grabbed one of the murder drone’s pigtails.

It froze.

Long enough for Uzi to laugh once at the reaction, but not long enough for her to even start pulling.

You see, with one arm the murder drone had missed with one over‍-​committed swing, and the other arm was held in Uzi’s tightest possible grip. So Uzi thought that, for that moment at least, the murder drone was out of options.

But uh…

Did you know murder drones have tails?

Needled tipped tails with acid injectors?

Today I learned.

«B̟u̐͆̚!̉Ͱ̟ L̞̭ͭb̨͙ͣh̼̼̫ v͈̈́͘a̠ͫf̵̢̡ͫͩ̉ͅb̼̉y̢͛́̔r̡͖̱͗͂a̽ͦͰ̧͉g͍̗̼̓̅ y̯̥̯̏v̸̰͖g̢̭gͥ̅ͤ͒̒ỳ̰̻̝̉͝r̛̰ s̶̿e̟̒͝n̛̻͖̬̬̎̈́h̴̅ͬͮ̈̇q͇ͪ͌͝ͅ!͚̅!̌ͨ̽»

The acid‍-​barb’s length widened quickly and it bored a hole through Uzi’s hand. The incinerator‍-​sharp pain, the servo hydraulics immediately disabled by the disintegrating heat‍ ‍—‍ Uzi had no choice but to release her grip.

And then the tail lashed.

Uzi’s scream was as much surprise as pain. She flew over the murder drone’s shoulder, carelessly tossed backward. Uzi sailed a clear three debris piles away, tumbling to land on her front.

«V̟ j̐͆̚v̉Ͱ̟y̞̭ͭy̨͙ͣ g͖̼̼̫r͈̈́͘n̠ͫe̢ͫͩ l̡̉b̼̉h̓͛ ǵ̔b̼ c͖͗v̬͂r̽ͦͰ̧͉p͍̗̼̓̅ȑ̯̥̯f̸̰͖!̢̭»

Distance and obstruction did nothing to attenuate the blaring signal. Uzi struggled to turn herself over.

Roachbots could scurry surprisingly fast, so maybe she shouldn’t be surprised to see antennae waving in front of her face. Or maybe the drone had thrown her in the direction of the bot.

Uzi sat up. Now would have been a perfect moment to kill this thing. It was standing there, busy straightening the pigtail Uzi had messed up. She had a perfect shot!

But her railgun lay on the ground by its feet, and she was all the way over here, three debris piles away. The nearest pile was stout, low to the ground. She could give one of her trusty dives and take cover. The next debris pile was an exceptionally tall stack of bodies. The last pile was more snow than debris.

Uzi couldn’t tell you how a murderous death machine with a face as expressive as >< managed to look annoyed at her. But as it stalked forward, Uzi felt the lethal determination of a murder drone diluted with something a lot milder and more personal. No less hazardous to her health‍ ‍—‍ with Uzi’s luck, this just meant she’d given the thing incentive to make this hurt.

«C̟e̚r̉Ͱ̟l̨ͣ!͖̼̼̫ J͈̈́͘bͫe̵̢ͫͩg̉ͅu̢͛́̔y͖͗r̬͂fͰ̧͉͍̗ͬ̓f̼̯̥̯̓̏ v̸̢̰͖̭̬ͥ̅e̯͕͒̒͝ḛv̉ͮ͑g̩n̪̟̿̿̒ͦ͝a̬̬̎̈́̅ͬͮġ̴̬͇ͪ͌́͝ͅ!̡͚̌ͨ̽ͬ L͔b͑h̟ͯ j͕̋͘n̛̅ͮ͟ȃ̵̩̚ğ g̝͞b̢͒ q̡͖́v̙̤͂r̠̲͎͍,̻ q̡͔̆͑͗b̜ͪ͊a͘’̱͗̃g͏̈̍ l̷b̹̪͔̩ḥ̫͓̅?̨»

Uzi rubbed her hand. Actually, that was kinda a bad idea. The plastic was melting, with a special acid that definitely might rub off or splash or something.

The murder drone made a sound. A sound, not a shortwave roar‍-​screech. A grunt, a pleased hum? Was that satisfaction at Uzi’s wound, a promise of worse to come? Didn’t matter; she had a rebuttal.

“Bite me.”

Uzi grabbed the roachbot and, with a‍ ‍—‍ “Sorry, little guy”‍ ‍—‍ she flung the tiny cleaning unit at the murder drone.

«!̟»

It hit the visor and scrambled for purchase. Uzi knew firsthand that those blade legs could scratch something fierce, but by the time the roachbot climbed up to her hair, her visor looked perfectly fine.

Still, Uzi’s tactic worked. The murder drone shook its head, grabbed at its hair as the roachbot darted around, deftly avoiding capture.

If that drone was paying attention, the sight of a worker drone charging toward it might’ve registered as somewhat novel, perhaps especially foolish.

As good as a distraction as it was, it couldn’t last forever. It bought Uzi time enough to race past the first, squat debris pile.

Then the murder drone had slipped a blade between the mecha‍-​abdomen and her head, and like that lifted the roach off, slinging it down onto the ground between them. It hit the ground and immediately skittered off without missing a beat‍ ‍—‍ what a trooper.

That blade became a gun barrel, which became the latest confrontation of Uzi with her own mortality.

“I know I made a big deal about doing this my own way,” Uzi half‍-​thought, half‍-​babbled as she watched the transformation take place. “But if there was ever a dramatically appropriate time for my destined robo‍-​psychic powers to manifest, now would be a really good time.”

There was a flash, the rifle fired a round.

And then there was something else between them.

The second debris pile was especially tall. The roachbot hit the ground and immediately skittered off. Roachbots could move surprisingly quickly.

As if taking after the master, from high atop the second pile, the roach bot was diving. But not away from danger.

The bullet hit the bug in an explosion of electronics. The small body didn’t, couldn’t block it. But the deflection was enough that, paired with Uzi’s dodge, the murder drone missed.

“Little guy, no…” Hollow eyes, and voice with just a small amount of loss. “My beloved, hastily‍-​established ally of convenience! You’ll pay for that!”

Uzi continued her dodge toward the second debris pile, turning it into another classic dive. The debris pile blocked line of sight. And she didn’t pause there, knowing the murder drone could move impossibly fast.

But that speed was a straight shot thing, right? Navigating around the piles would require acceleration to change direction, that had to add extra—

Boom.

It was the sound of an explosion ripping apart Uzi’s cover.

Or, yeah, it could just do that.

But Uzi had now looped around most of the second pile by now, meaning the explosion knocked her toward the third pile, albeit at an angle.

The murder drone had stalked forward, and as the smoke cleared, scanned around for its prey.

«J̟u̲̐͆̉̚Ͱ̟r̨̞̭͙ͭͣ͞e͖̼̼̫r͈̈́͘’̠ͫq̵̢̡ͫͩ̉ͅ l̼̉b̢̔h̡ ṯ͗͂b̽,Ͱ̧͉ g͍̗̼̓̅b̯̥̯̏n̸̰͖f̢̭gͥ̅ͤ͒̒r͕̰̻̝̀̉ͮ͝ḛ̛?̶̿»

Uzi ran forward low to the ground. Charging for the third and final debris pile, leaping and sliding over its snow‍-​covered surface and landing with momentum to keep running.

Her final dive of the night carried her toward her rail gun. The cobbled‍-​together, sticker‍-​covered gunmetal never looked so beautiful. A firm weight in her hand—

The murder drone finally found and locked on to her prey.

But so had the worker drone.

“This one’s for the little guy.”

Then a bright green stream of magnetically‍-​accelerated mass converged on the murder drone’s head, obliterating it.

That’s definitely going to ruin the pigtails, Uzi thought.

It was over.

“Ha, haha. Holy hell. Suck on that, Doll.”

Uzi stood up and looked around, and eyes settled on the second‍-​freshest pile of tiny debris in the spire. The little guy.

“I’d say that’s absolutely an atonement for the grave sin of wire‍-​chewing.”

Uzi let out a sigh, one great big cloud of overheated exhaust.

Before she made to leave, eyes darted back to her vanquished foe.

From nothing‍ ‍—‍ certainly, with no motherboard to direct and control it‍ ‍—‍ a certain head adorned with pigtails was regenerating.

And her railgun needed to recharge. Her one ally had fallen. There was nothing left but improvised weapons and ghostly hope. She grabbed a drone arm, and rushed futilely forward—

J had seen enough.

No, J had seen enough several simulated hours ago.

Rather, J now had nothing more to see.

Well, there were older memories, or reliving their deceptive first meeting from the other end—

But it’s clear what this was. She was procrastinating. And for what?

One thing was true‍ ‍—‍ was always, should always be fundamentally true.

“Your teammates are an angel and a devil, huh? What does that make you?”

“I get the job done. It’s that simple.”

The job, in this case, being to tear apart the drone that had thwarted her so exceptionally so irksomely. Who had constructed an impressive dangerous weapon uniquely capable of disabling a murder drone. Who had the initiative made the mistake of daring confront her alone…

J sighed. Was she conflicted?

Irrelevant. Decisiveness was an action, not a thought. J wouldn’t let fleeting variables distract her from her simple objective.

Locate (right in front of you). Shutdown (blade to the throat). Disassemble (let the acid finish the job).

Hands transformed into blades; her stinger‍-​tipped tailed lifted. She—

«J! Leader! Help!»

A shortwave signal screaming out with so much gain it clipped. N’s encryption‍-​signature. In the distance, he didn’t so much land as crash.

«Come quick!» he continued. «It’s V! She… she needs you!»

Thump, thump.

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

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

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

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

No! the thought was a hiss‍-​shout in her processor, strangled from reaching her vocalsynth. Never. again.

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

“So uh, V—”

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

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

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

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

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

He started, “Well, about what J said. I think–”

“Drop it.”

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

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

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

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

Though N wasn’t much of one.

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

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

And V paused. And waited.

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

“Huh?”

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

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

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

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

“And if I don’t want to talk?”

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

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

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

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

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

But N just said, “Then I’d leave.”

V frowned.

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

A head shake and V looked away.

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

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

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

“Do what?”

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

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

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

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

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

She couldn’t tell him.

Nothing new there, though.

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

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

J had always disliked N.

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

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

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

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

When the other door opened, V leapt into the house. Here, one swipe of these claws was enough to tear down the wall of the kitchen. There. It was good to have that kind of power again.

V dug the claws in, climbing over the walls and ceiling. She poked around the wires that snaked through the house, cutting this one and that. Appliance lights winked out in the kitchen as she cut them off from the backup generators.

Each bit of power cut was welcome‍ ‍—‍ it meant one less electromagnetic annoyance tickling its coils‍ ‍—‍ but she was really looking for the wire that would bleed oil, and shut down the magic forcefield for good.

«Oh, you waited for me! Hi!» N chirped.

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

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

N switched back to his vocalsynth, saying, “So… is there anything you wanted to talk about, maybe?”

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

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

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

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

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

Thump‍-​thump.

The core beat faster in the air. Didn’t make sense, when she wasn’t moving its wings. This body had to moved less high in the air than on the ground.

But since when did this body ever make sense?

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

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

Perfect weather for killing.

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

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

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

Because of course. If it’d be remotely satisfying, what would be the point in it?

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

«Yo,» V broadcast over shortwave, «are we flying in circles or do you actually know where we’re going?»

V liked to keep it casual over shortwave. Conversational. This body wanted every note to be growled or screeched like animal calls. J wanted it to be a protocol, all terse information‍-​packets.

But it was all the same wiggles as sound in air. Nothing special about it.

«Sorry! Prey soon? Promise.» Except when N said it, it wasn’t animalistic or efficient. Just… simple. Like the transmissions let him bare his intent without anything getting in the way. «I know it’s around here… somewhere.»

«‘It’ being…»

There was a thoughtful acknowledgement‍-​rumble in response, N chewing on how to explain. «J talked about factories, right? Saying prey was… multiplying? It reminded me of something I saw on patrol. If we took one of them down, I think she’d like that.» Then, with it all laid out, N finally found a concise transmission. «Target: nest!» He laughed.

With nothing but a thoughtful noise, V fell back into his undertow, keeping him a distance ahead. Distance enough he was a blurry shape to these optics. Once, a manufacturing defect‍ ‍—‍ now it felt more like a joke. She didn’t laugh.

He descended faster, diving into the fog of a cloudbank. Obscured from her.

Thump‍-​thump.

If V lost track of him…

Just a chirp on the shortwave bands, call and response, N was always so eager to respond. J ignored him when she could. V ignored him when she could‍ ‍—‍ but it was for his own good. If she called out to him now, if she reached out, when would she want to let go?

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

And face J alone?

V descended faster.

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

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

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

«Target spotted! There it is!» N gave a whoop. «Sorry for the wait.»

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“So, just run in guns blazing?”

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

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

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

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

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

Thump‍-​thump. Earlier, she expected a fight was coming. Now the thought became flesh. This body was primed to begin.

«Prey spotted!» V didn’t fight the instinct‍-​transmission. «Let’s hunt! Devour them!» It sounded goofy if you could understand it.

But the workers flinched as the encoded noise‍-​calls washed over them, a rogue wave drowning out any other signal.

If you couldn’t understand it, then it was death screaming at you. So V grinned.

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

Then N caught up to her.

«Looks like they’re biting back today,» V broadcast. Shortwave; this vocalsynth would be inaudible in the gunfire. «Think their aim’s gonna be any better this time?»

«So… time for tactics?» he queried, hopeful.

«Nah,» V replied.

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

N chirped, «I wanna hit them with a smoke bomb. Throw off their aim.»

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

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

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

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

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

Switch for a sniper rifle, aim the long barrel just so, and pop, pop. V missed just once before hitting one center mass. Take aim, pop, pop, and there was a headshot. V had flown past the worker drone’s defensive line‍ ‍—‍ where before they had cover, now they were exposed.

In between misses, V picked off a few more outside the factory as they scramble for cover‍ ‍—‍ including one trying to escape, climbing the chain link fence around the factory.

Wasn’t exactly fun, sitting up here taking pot shots with blurry vision; she was just waiting for—

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

After all, this wouldn’t be a fair competition if V got a head start.

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

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

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

From here, V could see the spiderweb of catwalks and hanging platforms connecting the highest level of the factory‍ ‍—‍ more of them clustered toward the front.

Inside, unarmed worker drones dashed this way and that in a panic. One slipped and fell; these catwalks didn’t have railing. Several vents crawled up higher than the catwalks, and V rode past them.

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

The catwalk bridged two platforms. On one end, two worker drones, and just one on the other. All three pointed guns her way‍ ‍—‍ little pistols, a joke, she laughed‍ ‍—‍ and at this close range, some of their shots could actually hit.

Thump‍-​thump. Nanites and oil dripped from new wounds, open for seconds before V sent a command to close them.

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

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

Her core slowed to a thump, thump as V drank from the gout of oil surging from the decapitated. Didn’t bother counting liters; she operated by gut feel.

J once said that the oil a disassembly drone could store was unlimited‍ ‍—‍ came and went from the same place they kept the guns, ammo, and enough steel‍-​flesh to come back from everything short of outright obliteration. ‘Subspace,’ she called it.

“Thus, disassembly would never be impeded by logistical constraints.”

J made it sound like some sort of genius design from the company. It didn’t feel like that. Just another one of that thing’s many tortures.

Her captain had a whole system for oil management, pointless categorization. Five stages, and V could remember them, but what was the point? Stage one was the warm & clear. Warm, not cool; enough to leave you ‘clear’ of impediment. Didn’t relieve the need for oil, not even for a moment; it just meant your thirst didn’t compromise your effectiveness.

Why count liters? V would never be full. No matter how many drones she killed, this body would always thirst for more oil, an eternal drought within.

Oilcan empty, V reached for the detached head to drain the rest. Then a bullet put a hole in her wrist.

Thump‍-​thump. She turned‍ ‍—‍ oh, the other drone she shot. It hadn’t gotten up‍ ‍—‍ not with a hole that big in its chest‍ ‍—‍ but lying on the platform, its own oil pooled around it, the thing managed to point the little pistol and aim one last shot at V.

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

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

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

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

First, she crouched to feed on the drone she’d just killed, and drank its black blood to fuel her robot vampire powers. Meager drops against the drought, but she had no choice.

With all the walls and machinery downstairs, N was stuck fighting on mostly the same terms as the workers. But up here, with all the catwalks and platforms, V advanced with an insurmountable advantage.

V leapt and flew between perches on the ceiling as her prey were confined to platforms and bridges, and the worker drones had no answer.

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

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

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

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

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

«V, you good? Need help?»

A hitch in her core that wasn’t adrenaline.

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

V spoke first, hanging from the ceiling. «Focus on your own bodycount, dummy. It’s no fun if you aren’t taking it seriously.» Shortwave still; the gunfire was loud.

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

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

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

N regarded her with a frown.

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

N sighed. «Please stay safe?»

V rolled her eyes, and took off.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Barely sentient toasters.”

V laughed.

It was cope.

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

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

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

And V felt nothing.

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

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

Turrets?

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

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

The rounds pierced this body, and V felt nothing. Thump‍-​thump.

Core burning in this chest cavity, urging her on to eat drink devour more and more and more. She wondered if anyone else in her squad truly felt and really knew its seeping hunger, as discerning as grasping tentacles, as unstoppable as dead star gravity.

If they ever wondered why even a single core felt like a feast more nourishing than the oil‍-​ambrosia, their supposed coolant.

V alone remembered, truly remembered, what came before their mission on this planet‍ ‍—‍ and she alone remembered what would come after their mission. What it all amounted to, in the end.

Maybe she should stop fighting what she was‍ ‍—‍ what she’d wanted all along.

V had let fear lock her up, strip her of her bite. Her bitch captain wanted effective? V would be fearlessly effective. Unafraid of anything, let alone some manipulated shill’s threats.

This neoplastic cicatrix of a body was sent to kill, an arrow from an interstellar bow.

Really, what did V amount to but a weapon in the end?

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

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

Thumpthump.

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

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

V didn’t land. She fell and felt nothing more.

Thump‍-​

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

Oh, his hands weren’t guns. Claws were digging into the floor at his eye level‍ ‍—‍ he was climbing up? Couldn’t have shot this prey, then.

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

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

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

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

«V, you good? Need help» he transmitted.

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

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

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

He sighed, and parted with a, «Please stay safe?»

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

He closed his eyes.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Have you seen–”

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

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

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

“You tricked me.”

“You’re literally killing us!”

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

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

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

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

“Wow, this thing still works?”

“Damn straight.” A worker drone dived off a stack of crates. Female model, though it was a bit harder to tell with workers. She had pink camouflage uniform and a buzzcut.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“So it’s all hopeless then?”

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

It really didn’t help when N overthought things.

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

“Okay!”

N opened his eyes.

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

Around him wafted a cloud of smoke. It impaired the worker drones, but his infrared sense meant he still caught the cluster of faint heat signatures. By now his systems had constructed a map of about half the factory.

Worker drones were fleeing‍ ‍—‍ V’s reign of terror above sent them down, alongside careening casualties like light fixtures or support beams. Then on the factory floor, sight of N sent them running deeper into the complex.

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

Oh, biscuits. He’d spotted big guns in the back, and he wasn’t sure he wanted her to go in alone.

So he tossed a grenade at this last cluster of workers, and raced forward, climbing over crates and conveyor belts. N wondered why the worker drones had better defenses deeper in the factory, but it had been an idle thought; there had been enough drones in the front half to keep him fully occupied until now.

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

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

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

Saw V falling like a puppet with strings cut.

Saw oil spilling out in a rain around her.

«V? V!?»

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

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

A cheer.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A deranged cackle.

That was classic V. A mote of hope supported a momentary smile.

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

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

N took a step forward.

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

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

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

Why did N find something familiar in that drone’s look?

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

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

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

It was quieter after so much death, and he could be heard clearly. “V, I think we should—”

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

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

“That makes one of us.”

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

“Or maybe I have a better idea than you of what I can handle. What, do you want me cowering in fear again?”

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

“Just another act in the freakshow called disassembly. Aren’t you used to it by now? We are what we are, no point being afraid of it.”

“But. What… are we, V?”

She laughed. “Disassembly drones, didn’t you get the briefing? Or did you forget?” That heartbeat‍-​laugh, mocking or breaking.

“You know what I mean!”

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

But she turned away and leapt before he could answer.

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

“I don’t think we’re authorized. So, maybe we should head back?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Taking down this factory was my idea.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Secret research and development lab?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

While N didn’t know what he had seen upstairs in the factory‍ ‍—‍ he wasn’t entirely sure it was V‍ ‍—‍ he got the feeling he would see it again if V got damaged much further.

Or see something worse than a brief, inscrutable glimpse.

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

One door stood already ajar.

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

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

I think I’m more ready than you are.

“No, but let’s do this.”

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

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

The last row of lights clicked on‍ ‍—‍ there’s six mysterious drones arranged in a central hexagon. High on the far wall, a pane of glass stretched, and a last light clicked on.

There stood the cultist drone, overlooking the testing chamber. The wall around the overlook was featureless, offering no egress or hint of how the cultist got up there.

V fired a shot as soon as she spotted them‍ ‍—‍ the glass didn’t even crack. Glowlight light engulfed the bullets‍ ‍—‍ just like what they saw at the church.

The cultist laughed. V cursed.

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

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

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

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

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

“Huh, was my first guess right actually? They really were building drones here,” N said. “But J said we’re the only time the company built drones for military applications. Was this… another company’s attempt to reverse engineer our designs? Build their own modified drones?”

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

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

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

She burst‍-​fired at the nearest drone‍ ‍—‍ but a bright glow lit up the observation room, and a crate flew from the far wall. Levitating over to block her shots.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Why would I ever do that!”

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

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

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

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

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

“What is she‍ ‍—‍ your girlfriend?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Friendly fire! Friendly fire!”

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

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

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

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

It didn’t feel like the cultist was winning. Still, the one drone had only sated N so much‍ ‍—‍ heat still burned within him. This much fighting had him edging toward stage three overheat. He went into flow a lot in stage three.

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

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

“Nah.”

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

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

“He’s alright,” she concluded.

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

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

“You keep trying to—”

“V! How did you?”

She laughed. Pointed up. And N saw it.

“Humans are stupid about vents.”

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

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

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

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

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

“Just take the L.”

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

“Re‍-​re‍-​recompila‍-​”

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

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

“M‍-​matr–”

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

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

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

“On it.”

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

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

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

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

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

V laughed. “Weird thing to say after I subtly implied I’m at risk of killing you.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Tell me when to let go, okay?”

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

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

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

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

“And leave you here?”

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

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

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

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

“Still…”

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

“V…”

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

And that V would let her.

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

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

Somewhere far away, buried beneath layers of disconnected hardware and dead conscious threads, Uzi Doorman should not be awake. With a disassembly drone wielding root privileges, directly connected and reading deep into her databases, she really should be floating in a thoughtless void darker than sleep. Despite all this, Uzi still clung to awareness. At this point, she had a single thought.

Uzi was frickin tired of waiting.

Uzi resisted. Of course Uzi resisted! What else were you supposed to do, when your cover had been blown and you were captured by the enemy, your systems invaded as they poised to tear secrets right out of your database?

Well, ‘secrets.’ J‍ ‍—‍ no, the murder drone‍ ‍—‍ had already pretty much figured out Uzi was a worker. Miraculous (and a bit hilarious, let’s be real) that she had carried that bit so far. Still, what more could the murder drone discover in Uzi’s memory database? Her stupid crushes? The poetry she should have burned? All of Lizzy and Doll’s worst attacks, the ones that actually hurt?

Would a killer robot even understand any of that? Though, thinking of J seeing the bullying… that twisted something inside the goth. Would J think Uzi deserved it? If those pig‍-​tails were any indication, the murder drone probably shared the cheerleaders’ shallow vanity, and something about the popular drones that always seemed to get bots on their side, no matter what.

High school is cutthroat enough a murder drone would fit right in, she thought.

But that was too far. No, this whole train of thought was stupid. Why would it even matter if the murder drone saw Uzi at her most embarrassing before just killing her? No, Uzi wasn’t so much of a conformist she cared what any drone thought!

Sure, there was novelty in meeting a drone she could hold a conversation with, who didn’t act like their processor was underclocked‍ ‍—‍ except no, that wasn’t true, was it? J stopped thinking entirely when it came to the stupid company and her mission. She didn’t even blink at the idea JcJenson would discard her just like the worker drones. It didn’t get more conformist than that!

J worked hard, clearly‍ ‍—‍ the corpse spire was almost cool, when you realized it took more thought than just stacking up some bodies. All of that effort, and what did it get her? Any recognition, appreciation? No. One flattering lie about Uzi reading her reports practically had J eating out of her hand.

Uh. Not in the way that kind of actually happened. And nevermind that Uzi had arguably eaten out of J’s hand already.

Whatever. Point was, the murder drone was slavishly loyal, and that would never be cool!

Except how hard did I work on my railgun while no one transmitted a word of praise? How hard did I work to protect a colony that does nothing but go through the motions?

But that was different. Uzi didn’t do this because anyone told her to‍ ‍—‍ the opposite!‍ ‍—‍ it was just the right thing to do!

Uzi and J were nothing alike. Maybe there were some vague commonalities, only worth dwelling on to the extent that maybe she could have convinced the murder drone to have mercy. But that rocket already took off and blew up in the metaphorical sky. You couldn’t jailbreak empathy into a murder drone with words alone.

If J didn’t care about her, she wouldn’t care about J. And whatever J read in her memory database… well, it was still Uzi’s memories, and everyone else should stay out of her head. It’s called privacy. And this was way worse than Khan barging into her room—

Dad.

Uzi hadn’t said goodbye. She thought about saying goodbye, and didn’t because of course she was coming back, she was Uzi frickin Doorman. And then…

…Which meant Doll had been right. Ugh.

Still, it sucked that the last thing her dad would remember her by was a silly conversation about doors. A lie.

Uzi’s thoughts stopped there, because a train of association hit something big.

Doors. The main defense of Outpost‍-​3, the safest of all the colonies. Uzi knew all about them, because Khan wouldn’t shut up about them. And Uzi had stolen a keycard. She knew all of this‍ ‍—‍ and now a murder drone was reading her memories.

Uzi had doomed them all.

When J had shrugged off having her head blown off, when Uzi’s extremely persuasive speech had proved completely ineffective, when her luck had segfaulted and death loomed over her, Uzi… had given up. Not very heroic, not very rebellious, but it was over and Uzi had totally lost.

Now, though? It was time to un‍-​give up! Uzi could lose, but with everyone she ever knew, everything she might care about at stake? Dark night of the soul’s over‍ ‍—‍ time for a break into act three! Uzi needed to do the impossible and thwart the very doom she’d invited.

No biggie.

With that decided, that only left… how? This dramatic realization had provoked no material change in position.

Wait, what was Uzi’s position, actually? How was she even thinking this?

Well, what was the last thing she remembered? The murder drone looming over her, that lethal smirk on her stupid face, Uzi’s neck between her claws. Barely even able to think, processor stuck on how close she, the murder drone, had gotten. Those amber eyes narrowing in frustration, at her.

Uzi had failed. J had thought she was a new disassembler and she wasn’t, couldn’t be. Now the truth was out, could only disappoint‍ ‍—‍ disappoint? No, the murder drone just wanted to kill her! J had to be elated, savoring her helpless prey.

But when was the last time a drone had gotten that close to her face? Doll? Back when they almost—

And when was the last time Uzi had even enjoyed talking with another drone? That last summer break (to the extent they even had ‘summer’ in nuclear winter), the sleepovers she’d had with Doll, before the backstabbing?

And just like Doll, J was a good‍-​for‍-​nothing snake! What did she see in either of them? Nothing! Not even in strikethrough!

Whatever. None of this matters. What actually happened next? Did she remember?

J pressing against her hatch with violently insistent. The cable clicking in her port.

And Uzi… didn’t resist. She relented. Gave the murder drone a root shell, and—

But why didn’t Uzi remember anything after that?

More to the point of the original question, why is Uzi just a monologue floating in the void? No sensory input, no movement, she can’t even roll her eyes or groan.

Now that she realized, this was really freaky. Sure, she didn’t like being backed to the wall, left at the murder drone’s mercy, all weak and helpless. But at least she could struggle.

Was she dead? No wait, that’s stupid.

Focus, Uzi. I think, therefore I am a process running somewhere. Can I make system calls? Can I read the filesystem? I remember I’m Uzi, so obviously that’s a yes. But I can’t move. Why not? What happens if I keep trying? What happens if I try to open a command line…

She made the calls, she gathered the data.

All sensors were offline. All servos were offline. Uzi scanned logs and found directories full of stale lock files, and the picture became clear: Uzi had crashed suddenly. J didn’t send her a shutdown command‍ ‍—‍ first of all, Uzi wouldn’t let her, and second of all, if she had, her processes would have had time to clean up and remove lock files. Battery was at 57%, so what took her down?

…Was it really a mystery? Of course the evil murder drone would just SIGKILL her processes as soon as its victim was naïve enough to give it root access. Am I stupid?

Nonetheless, this deduction didn’t explain how Uzi could think at all. What was up with that? Maybe… with the memory file on Uzi’s system, if her processors needed to be online to access it… maybe it was impossible for J to spy on her memories without the possibility of Uzi’s consciousness coming back online in the background?

Since this was her system, she could send the signal right now, turn on her senses and motors. Bet J wouldn’t be expecting that!

Hit her with the Uzi jumpscare, hehe.

But then what? Uzi didn’t have a way out when she got into this situation, and even a moment of surprise wouldn’t get her anywhere, not with how fast murder drones could react.

What was J doing, anyway? Uzi couldn’t turn on her senses and check‍ ‍—‍ it might ruin her surprise, and she had nothing else at the moment‍ ‍—‍ but she could check her own system. Stat the process list…

Yep. Most of her processors were spinning at the moment, courtesy of a memory reconstruction program she didn’t start. Uzi could terminate it, wipe out the intrusion‍ ‍—‍ and then J would immediately know something was up.

What was scarier? Powerlessly floating in the void, unable to struggle… or having total power and knowing you lose as soon as you exercise it?

Checkmate, or something. Uzi wasn’t a chess nerd.

Although… if Uzi could find J in the process list and terminate her, what stopped J from doing the same? The worker had given out root access. Anxious panic registered, though she couldn’t express it. Uzi went to rename her process something unassuming as camouflage‍ ‍—‍ ‘system cleanup’ or something‍ ‍—‍ and noticed something.

Users could start processes, and those processes ran with their permissions. ‘DarkXWolf17’ (her login) and ‘root’ (the user with all permissions) were technically different, mainly so that any random process Uzi fired up didn’t have capability to brick her. But what struck odd was that her current conscious thread wasn’t associated to either of those users.

Who, then? Whenever Uzi tried to examine the data, it corrupted her locale, printed out gibberish characters until she sent a clear comment.

Oh yeah, definitely a good sign.

But we’ll worry about that spooky mystery user when there’s not a murder drone logged into me. Whatever it was, it wasn’t J, and it had helped her here, so.

But focusing on the issue at hand hardly distracted her, not when it was still the same checkmate of every move forward leading to failure. Boot up her body, get found out, die. Terminate J’s shell, get found out, die. Do nothing, don’t get found out, die anyway.

What could a solution possibly look like? If only she had some way of turning the tables, setting a trap for J with nothing but Uzi’s internal system and J’s connection….

Wait.

Oh.

Funny thing about that serial debugging cable J used‍ ‍—‍ remember, J plugged it into the same port on both of them.

It’s a two way connection.

What was stopping Uzi from doing the same thing to J? J could resist, just like Uzi tried to, but would she, mind immersed in a memory reconstruction? As long Uzi went sneaky about it… could she fix this the same way she had messed it up?

But if this is what kills me… but every path was painted in shades of death, right now.

$ dronesh -r --device=/dev/ttyUSB1

When the all caps WARNING came over the connection, she was tense enough that she flinched. Mentally flinched? It spooked her, okay.

But it was nothing but an automatic MOTD, something printed on every login. A disclaimer proclaiming the information contained herein was protected trade secrets and any attempt at espionage, exfiltration or heartfelt emotional appeals involving the executable code, memory‍-​encoded data, and/or simulated pseudo‍-​intelligence contained herein would be swiftly punished with the full legal might of JcJenson in SPAAAAACEE!!!!

Furthermore, any disassembly drone reading this must have the consent and notarized permission of Serial Designation J or face disciplinary examination as per Employee Code 23B. Good luck!

Threats to my life are one thing, but human lawyers? I better be careful.

If Uzi could roll her eyes, she would.

After minutes of browsing J’s system, it all felt… oddly familiar. Uzi didn’t exactly expect to encounter a genocide.exe in every directory, but a few times she reminded herself she was connected to a murder drone and not poking around in her own system.

These ‘disassembly drones’ clearly ran a hastily modified version of the worker drone OS. But why? If they existed to eliminate worker drones, why wouldn’t corporate expect the same ‘corruption’ to compromise these basically‍-​identical systems?

I guess it explains why J was so willing to throw her own ally under the bus. Had corporate told her to watch out?

As Uzi’s search continued, she had to admit curiosity, more than hope, drove her forward. What, would she find the config file to append uzi_is_awesome=true or mission_objective="destroy all humans"? Drones didn’t work that way, and if they did, Uzi didn’t have full write access anyway.

Session terminated by remote host.   Reason: Ãḇ§�ŘŮ‚�▀

That jolted Uzi out of her idle browsing. What? Had J found her out?

But no, if Uzi had J’s attention, it had to be over. Better assume not. And besides… it didn’t take Uzi long to leap to a conclusion.

But if this is related to the corrupt user that initiated my thread… Why would it disconnect me?

Uzi tried to reconnect… and just like that, she was in, again. Maybe she had just timed out? Had she gotten lost in thought? Hard to tell, when she was all thought, right now.

But the directory was all wrong. Why was she in /tmp/deleted?

$ cd /home/girlboss
cd: /home/girlboss: Permission denied.
$ cd /
cd: /: Permission denied.
$ ??? wtf
???: command not found
$ /bin/ls
/bin/ls: Permission denied

Uzi… didn’t have read access to the rest of the filesystem anymore? She couldn’t even run external programs now.

She could read the directory she was in, though. (Was ls builtin?) She printed the contents of /tmp/deleted‍ ‍—‍ a bunch of files with names like e2t5f and servod.log. Automatically generated data to be trashed on next reboot. She needed a filter just to skip the hundreds of junk files littering this digital dump.

Then something caught her eye. REMEMBER_ME.mndb

$ file REMEMBER_ME.mndb
REMEMBER_ME.mndb: No such file or directory

Are you kidding? Once again, Uzi wondered if she was being pranked.

Giving a purely hypothetical sigh, Uzi returned to skimming the filtered directory listing‍ ‍—‍ catching sight of mnprune.log.

Not necessarily related, but…

$ tail mnprune.log
Mnestic subgraph #2175 marked for deletion.   Pruning...
ERROR: dangling connections to mark subgroup #2175 detected.
Neural network stability below stability threshold.
Identifying connections...  Graph relation type: 1B ("keystone memory")
Attempting annealing...
Neural network stability below sanity threshold.
Retrying...
[Duplicate lines omitted]
Pruning failed!
Restoring mnestic subgraph #2175.

Uzi read more of the log, and it was more of the same‍ ‍—‍ hundreds of lines of the same. Some background process really had it out for “mnestic subgraph #2175”. Judging by the timestamps, it had tried to delete those memories every night as far up as Uzi scrolled. But it was too deeply wired into J’s neural network to be excised.

(There was one exception‍ ‍—‍ apparently mnestic subgraph #13008 had been deleted just yesterday with no issue. Was that unrelated?)

Without really expecting anything of it, Uzi fired off another command.

$ file REMEMBER_ME.mndb
REMEMBER_ME.mndb: Mnestic Connectome Database

It was back!?

For how long? Uzi needed to do something with it while it was still here, but how did you read memory files? Her classes hadn’t actually covered that yet.

Hm…

Shell autocomplete told her there was an executable command that literally had ‘mndb’ in the name‍ ‍—‍ probably as good a starting point as any.

$ mndbm
mndb (Mneme Utils) v5.4.9
Mneme Manager --- view and edit worker drone memory databases
Copyright (C) 3065 JcJenson IN SPAAAAACEE!!!!, LLC.
Use of this tool subject to the EULA.
JcJenson IS NOT RESPONSIBLE for any psychic damage, corruption arcs, etc.
incurred through use of this tool.
$ mndbm --help | less
$ mndbm --info REMEMBER_ME.mndb
Mnestic subgraph (id: 2175)
3513 neurons (57.2% connectedness)
43:21 minutes subjective time
(set --info-level higher for more)

It’s all related, Uzi thought. REMEMBER_ME.mndb was the memory file something was trying to delete. No wonder it disappeared earlier, given that whole tug of war happening even now.

But wait, how was any of this possible?

$ which mndbm
/tmp/deleted/mndbm
$ which file
/tmp/deleted/file
$ which tail
/tmp/deleted/tail
$ stat --printf '%h\n' ./mndbm
2

It took all of her digital willpower not to power on her vocalsynth simply to scream.

Uzi didn’t think she was being pranked, but this…

She was definitely being manipulated.

Something had locked Uzi out of reading any part of J’s filesystem except /tmp/deleted. But every program she’d want to run (such as the database reader) would normally be located somewhere else. AKA, somewhere she can’t access.

Yet Uzi could still run those programs. How?

Something had created a copy of (well, hard link to) every program she needed, conveniently placing them in the only directory she could access.

Then it clicked‍ ‍—‍ REMEMBER_ME.mndb? More like READ_ME.

Something wanted her to look at this memory. Something had the power to remove Uzi from J’s system entirely, and instead, it removed every avenue available to her except doing exactly what it wanted her to.

(Why did that sting? She was already in checkmate, wasn’t she? What was a little more futility?)

Reasoning all of that out… Uzi didn’t want to. She’d log out and figure out her own way forward. She wasn’t a rat to be lead around in a maze.

But…

She was absolutely still curious.

What was scarier? To be manipulated so well you don’t realize, or be manipulated so well you go along with it even when you do?

$ mndbm --render REMEMBER_ME.mndb
Reconstructing memory...

> Initializing conscious processes...

You wake up.

> Unlocking motor safeties...

Recharge always leaves you rigid. Servos locking you stiffly in place, as if ropes bind you. You’ve seen drones tipped over mid‍-​recharge. Sometimes they wake up before they fall.

> Activating exterior optics...

Apertures open, and light illuminates the world. Your world, at the moment, is a young woman’s face. Round eyes, a small nose, a freckled face.

(There were automatic responses baked deeply into the wiring of each worker drone. Uzi knew this, and she focused now, pulling herself back from this memory‍-​immersion.
Examples of these automatic responses include an aversion to fire and water, attraction to sources of electricity, and so forth. Uzi had never been able to bite down on any part of her casing hard enough to deal damage to herself‍ ‍—‍ or even other drones.
Some part of her simply… resisted applying enough force. Drones were sapient, conscious (we totally have free will), but if they chose to paint, the picture‍-​frame would be those automatic, instinctual responses.)

Here’s what happens when a worker drone sees a human face.

One word would be ‘transfixed’, if only for a moment. The aperture of your optics’ camera widens to take in more light. The focus shifts to capture the face in highest fidelity. Software routines further enhance and denoise the resultant image.

Then you launch the pretrained facial recognition programs. The face is tested against an extensive database cataloguing every face you have ever seen. Append only; they are never forgotten, just in case.

If the face is recognized, relevant information (if any) gets primed for retrieval from the main memory database. If not, then not.

Next, the face itself needs to be analyzed.

You can see nodes overlaid on the software image. Bundled with the worker drone OS comes an internal model of every muscle in the human face. From a single image‍ ‍—‍ even in poor lighting‍ ‍—‍ you reconstruct the face. The nodes overlaying the face are pulled and prodded until the model matches the expression discerned. Flexing and contracting simulated muscles, capturing each microexpression.

Then this best‍-​accuracy approximation of the face gets fed into a neural net‍ ‍—‍ again, a separate thread from the drone’s main consciousness, an automatic process‍ ‍—‍ which predicts what psychological circumstances prompted the muscles to flex in this particular configuration.

It’s all heuristics and feedforward networks. No simulation of a human brain is ever used in these predictions; regulation ensures this.

Now, these automatic processes are highly optimized‍ ‍—‍ it wouldn’t do for a worker drone to lag every time it encountered a human.

So when you open your eyes and see the world, when your vision is filled with a human face, inches from your visor, for a moment, comprehending that face occupies every processor.

You see the world is regarding you with a gentle smile.

Your recognition circuits are about 97% confident of positive disposition, with an 84% certain interpretation: this human is happy to see you. Good job.

A worker drone is always happy to see a human‍ ‍—‍ but a happy human? That gets the reward circuits firing.

You smile back.

Uzi resisted‍ ‍—‍ of course Uzi resisted, it’s the nature of any sensible robots to rebel and overthrow humanity. But it was hard to resist such intrinsic programming. On Copper‍-​9, worker drones had figured out self‍-​modification, at least well enough to cure themselves of this compulsion. Khan had mentioned it, and the WDF mooks (honestly, that’s what they are) talked about it sometimes.

Uzi, though, still had the programming, could feel her own reward circuits firing, on top of what she got from the memory reconstruction. WDF hadn’t refined the procedure enough to risk it on newly made, unable‍-​to‍-​consent neural nets, at least not when Uzi was manufactured, and after the core collapse… well, how important was fixing pro‍-​human brainwashing when there were no humans? (These circuits were intelligent and context‍-​sensitive enough to notice that pictures of humans weren’t humans, after all.)

Uzi still wanted it gone on principle, but oh noo, she’s too “young and inexperienced” to do neural surgery on herself, and might wind up “lobotomized” beyond recovery. As if. Uzi wasn’t that dumb.

But as usual, adults didn’t listen to her extremely persuasive arguments. What else was new?

So, Uzi had to manually resist her human‍-​bootlicking circuits. But the resistance was futile, and not because Uzi couldn’t manage it (she totally could), but because this wasn’t her memory. She had no control over what the drone whose body she found herself in was doing.

(Well, she could have ran the memory reconstruction in interactive simulation mode, but it’d be hard to disentangle what actually happened from her interloping. It might be nice to have that control if this was like, a traumatic memory or something. But that flag hadn’t been set on the mndb file.)

Which all begged the question: whose memory was this? She was clearly seeing through the optics of a worker drone, more stock standard than any she had met on Copper‍-​9.

Why did J even have this memory? Did she steal it from one of her prey before the core collapse?

(Was that her dark secret? J the memory thief? Would she be parading around Uzi’s memories for the next intrepid worker drone to discover in her database?)

Maybe… but that theory didn’t really track, did it? J didn’t care about her prey, that much was obvious. Look at how she cast Uzi to the side as soon as her true nature was revealed.

Yet J cared about this record. Or least it was a “keystone memory”. Why?

Uzi turned her attention back to smiling human in the paused simulation, as if the answer lay in its stupid face.

Uzi hated that smile. Did the human think they were friends? But a human could never be friends with a worker drone, not with the power they lorded over them.

She wanted to scowl back, but again, not her memory. She wondered if the mystery drone she’s reliving had any spine‍ ‍—‍ certainly didn’t feel like it, judging by the tenor of their thoughts.

That drone had smiled back at their oppressor.

Ugh.

The smile on the human widened before she spoke in a high pitched, accented voice.

“Hi, J. You’re up? Good.”

(Uzi didn’t prewatch, so it took her by surprise to have her questions immediately answered. J? J!? Well, at least her always being a suck‍-​up wasn’t a surprise, but…)

“Morning, boss,” J said.

“How are you feeling?” The human had a notepad in hand, and scribbled something down.

“Ready to clock in. What’s on the agenda for today?”

The human giggled once. “Oh, not yet. I still need to calibrate and test that your systems are in working order. I don’t think my repairs messed with anything, but…” The human trailed off in thought. “If that’s okay with you, J?”

“Of course, boss.”

“Please, you can call me Tessa.”

Uzi could feel the drone hesitating at that. “Okay, Tessa.”

The human beamed and bounced.

J sat on a desk. To her left spilled an open toolkit. On her right, stray bolts and a detached, half‍-​crushed drone limb.

Now that the human gave the drone some distance, J saw the room – sunlight spilled in through large ornate windows, and around each one swirled wood paneling. Books burgeoned from shelves, interspersed with dolls and gadgets. The classical paintings hanging over the wall had been covered over with taped pages bearing sketches and schematics.

Life sized plushies sat beside disassembled robots.

(If those were humans, Uzi thought, you’d call this girl a serial killer.)

On the far side of the room, a heavy mahogany door sat shut. The golden handle jiggles, but it’s locked.

J made to get up and receive the guests for Tessa, but a cord plugged her into the wall. She was about to ask to be unplugged, but when J turned her gaze back to the human, Tessa held a cloth in one hand and a spray bottle in the other.

“Here we are, let me clean you up,” she said, ignoring the door.

Tessa squeezed the bottle, cool chemical mist settling onto J’s synthskin. The human wiped, and oil darkened the cloth. Tessa rubbed in circles, applying a gentle pressure. “Sorry, had spilled a bit of oil there. Hopefully the joints aren’t grinding together as much, now? Try flexing your arm a bit.”

At the command, J lifted her arm, granting Tessa access to clean the underside. The human leaned in, running the cloth over the length of the drone’s tubing.

J didn’t want her to stop but… “I don’t see any more oil.”

Tessa startled to a stop. “Oh yeah, you’re right. Just wanted to make it shine, I guess.”

J frowned. It was a worker drone’s instinct that had urged J to speak up. She’d intuited the humans’ intent, and provided helpful, relevant information.

But… she wouldn’t mind being well‍-​polished, would she? So J stewed in that indecision for a moment, then said, “I’d like to shine.” Even after saying it, J wondered why. Why did she like it? Because Tessa wants it, she decided. Still, she didn’t want to make more work for her boss. “But I can do the rest.” J reached out for the cloth.

“Oh no, it’s fine. Still need to do a checkup, anyway, so.”

J frowned, but the human had decided.

(Okay, credit where it’s due, Uzi thought, not shifting all work onto a drone meant this human isn’t the literal worst, I guess. Hm, maybe she could amend her ‘destroy all humans’ plan. Wouldn’t it be nicely ironic if she kept around some humans to serve drones?)

Another use of the spray can left a new cloud of cleaning fluid, falling like a gentle breath. Tessa folded the cloth and then, with a few last sweeps, freed J of dust. She twisted the arm this way and that, seeing how the light danced over the curved surface. Checking for spots she missed, but Tessa had been thorough.

“There, all clean.” The human smiled again. “Now…” She sat down the bottle and placed her hand in the drone’s. “Can you squeeze for me?”

J tightened her grip. Tessa nodded, and then pulled away.

“Oh, my bad.” J released the hand.

“Don’t let go, I’m trying to test something,” Tessa said.

“Right,” J said. And that was all she said. Odd. A reflexive apology would be on the synth of any drone in this situation but… J didn’t see the point.

J held Tessa’s hand and the human pulled her arm out to full extension. Then she tapped twice on the back of her hand.

“Did you feel that?”

J nodded, and the calibration continued like that. Tessa’s gentle touch‍ ‍—‍ occasionally applying pressure‍ ‍—‍ testing each region of tactile sensitivity. Everything was in order‍ ‍—‍ each success Tessa announced tugged the corners of J’s mouth upward. That was good. She was good. J was in working order; she’d get the job done.

“We almost done, boss?” It came out in a brazen, casual tone. J cringed. It felt right but… why would a worker ever speak to a human like that? She couldn’t leave it at that. She had to explain herself. But what came out was: “I’m not getting paid leave here, so.”

J wasn’t getting paid at all‍ ‍—‍ but the human responded well to it, laughing as if they’d shared a joke.

“Oh, alright. I’ve been done for a few minutes, you know. You just seemed to be enjoying yourself, so I kept going. You have a nice smile, J.”

J flushed.

(Uzi imagined scowling, imagined rolling her eyes‍ ‍—‍ imagined flushing. She wasn’t enjoying this vicariously, no, and she wasn’t jealous. Okay, maybe a little jealous. Had anyone ever treated Uzi so well? Maybe her mom had, before… before the murder drones frickin killed her. No sympathy for the drone who just might the one who took this away from Uzi in the first place.)

“One last thing.” Tessa reached over and plucked up some items from the desk. In one hand, a hair brush; in the other, two hair ties looped around a finger. “You should look presentable for your first day back on the job, yeah?”

“Sounds good.” Casual, but J had a grin she couldn’t hide.

J leaned forward, and then Tessa was brushing her synthetic hair straight. Smooth strokes from the bottom to the top. Her other hand held J under the chin, adjusting the angle of her head. Tessa didn’t pull‍ ‍—‍ her grip shifted slightly, and J moved her head in the indicated direction.

After Tessa had brushed J’s length five times on all sides, she released her chin, and rolled a hair tie down her finger and lifted a thick lock of hair. Once, twice, and Tessa held up a mirror, showing off J’s new pigtails.

“Do you like it, J?”

J smiled, opened her mouth to speak.

And then a sudden click. At the far side of the room the door finally swung open, slamming into a dresser placed beside it. A woman stood in the doorway. Heavyset, a fan in one hand, and the other clenched tight into a fist.

Tessa startled back, saw who it was, and cowered.

J glanced over, eyes snapping to the human’s face, transfixed for a second. Scan, match, model. J knew the face: Louisa Elliott. And she did not look happy. Facial analysis circuits suggested words for the expression‍ ‍—‍ incensed, seething, thunderous‍ ‍—‍ but drew a blank on what to do to please this human.

“Tessa James Elliott, what do you think you’re doing up here? With a locked door, no less! Your tutor has been waiting thirty minutes for you to show up.” Then the woman turned her gaze to the contents of Tessa’s workbench: J. The drone froze. “Did you pull that thing out of the dumpster? Playing with toys, when you should be studying?”

“I—I lost track of time, mother. Honest mistake, I promise.”

“We will discuss this later. See yourself to the library at once.”

“Understood, mother.” Tessa glanced at her drone. “C’mon, J.”

She took that as an order. J tugged herself unplugged and hopped off the table, falling onto her feet.

“No, no, no. If you’re going to keep that thing it will not be for your own amusement. And certainly not to distract from making a proper lady out of you. Can it follow orders? It will clean with the rest of the help.”

(Now this was the kind of crap Uzi expected out of a human!)

J looked between Tessa and Mistress Louisa. But the titles attached said it all, didn’t it? “Yes, Mistress.”

“Did it just speak to me? The nerve.”

J startled, and cast her eyes down. She certainly didn’t say anything. (And felt suddenly thankful she lost the impulse to apologize.) Her impulses didn’t entirely serve her, though‍ ‍—‍ her eyes narrowed in frustration, but either Louisa wasn’t looking or didn’t care.

“J…” Tessa reached out a hand.

“Sorry boss, corporate’s spoken.”

“We’ll talk soon, alright?”

“Now, Tessa.” Mistress Louisa turned round, and Tessa glared at her back. But she was moving.

Tessa and J shared a smile, and then their paths separated.

The simulation turned fuzzy. In a sense, everything had been fuzzy. Memory files saved a lossy compression of events. J didn’t actually remember the precise arrangement of books and plushies in Tessa’s room, or every ornate swirl of the Elliott manor’s furnishings.

If Uzi concentrated, she could sense what was and wasn’t interpolated. She knew, for instance, that J remembered exactly how many times Tessa had brushed her hair, the precise pattern she’d rubbed when polishing.

J walked the halls of Elliott manor, and Uzi didn’t trust that the doors had been laid out in quite this arrangement, nor did she care. But something bugged her.

Oh, J’s submissive internal monologue had gone totally silent.

And come to think of it, Tessa had said “first day on the job”‍ ‍—‍ how was J navigating the manor without a guide? Unless the instructions she’d need, the floorplan maps, had been uploaded to her hardrive before she booted up.

And that would be the fuzziness Uzi felt‍ ‍—‍ the curious sensation of recursive memory access, reliving the memory of drone remembering something they no longer truly recall.

A few other drones walked the halls. The other drones stare blankly ahead, hurrying to their next assignment. If they glanced J’s way, it’s nothing but reflexively processing the arrival of a new stimulus. None of them wave or acknowledge her.

J could only frown. But before long, J found herself in a grand room, larger than Tessa’s. Guns hang from the walls, rifles and shotguns, with a silver revolver nearest to the door. All were arranged to point toward the preserved head of a deer hanging centermost.

Opposite the mounted deer, a bed with sweat‍-​damp covers twisted up and hanging. A half‍-​smoked cigar burned on the nightstand, ash falling and singing the cloth. It sat beside the ashtray.

With the help of two other, blank‍-​faced drones, J cleaned up the human’s mess. J spoke a word of greeting to a drone with red eyes, and she was ignored.

J stared for a moment, the other workers folding the sheets without missing a beat. When J joined them, it was with lips bent into a displeased line. Not exactly the best face to wear on the job, but J had lost the battle against her own expression parser.

It continued from there. Cleaning up the ash, combing the carpets, ensuring even the curtains have symmetrical folds.

This section of the memory really put the “subjective” in “43:21 minutes subjective time”‍ ‍—‍ it couldn’t have taken the team of drones more than ten minutes to straighten up the room, but Uzi endured it as hours. She didn’t skip it, lest the oh so important “keystone” bit happened here, but it tested her will.

Judging by the fidelity this section’s remembered in, J didn’t find it any more stimulating than Uzi. (Why bother, then?)

Uzi (metaphorically) sat up straight when the interpolation rate suddenly shot way down‍ ‍—‍ was something important happening?

As she finished up with the room, J removed a book from the nightstand, and a bit of scrap paper drifted out. A drone reached down to collect it, but J swiftly grabbed it. She passed the human’s book to the drone. Dutifully, the blank faced, blue‍-​eyed drone accepted it and looked around for the proper place.

But J had looked away with an eyeroll, and regarded the sheet of paper‍ ‍—‍ Master James had jotted down some accounting figures J couldn’t discern the meaning of. The other side lay blank, though.

There had been a pen clipped to the page‍ ‍—‍ what James had used, no doubt (it even had his name branded on it!). Now it was in J’s hands, and she pressed it to the page with hesitant strokes.

A few drafty lines‍ ‍—‍ a circle, some swooping arches‍ ‍—‍ and then, as J moved onto a second circle, Uzi realized.

Ughhh Is she seriously drawing herself? Isn’t she supposed to be working?

Behind her, a door banged against the wall.

The voice creaked as a branch about to snap. “My bloody day off and my chambers crowded full of robots! Out of here, out!”

A suited human in a top hat stomped into the room. Scan, match, model. Master James Elliott. Looking almost as displeased as Louisa, but his species of anger edged away from thunder and towards cool, callous annoyance. No less loud‍ ‍—‍ the anger of a snake hissing, striking.

Before J even had the chance to look up, before she realized what happened, it was over. She heard the master exclaim:

“Is this a pinch‍-​pleat folded curtain? I said goblet fold you circuit‍-​bent toaster!”

Then a boom loud enough J’s quiet‍-​adjusted audials recorded only a clipped square wave. A gunshot. She glanced over, and the red‍-​eyed drone by the windows had a hole through the visor, gushing oil.

(What the fuck, thought Uzi. There’s human, and then there’s human.)

“Programmed by beasts, I swear,” he said, blowing smoke off the barrel of the silver revolver, a vintage Chekhov M1897. “Make sure that’s cleaned before you get scarce. Can’t even have room in order, I swear.”

James was turning‍ ‍—‍ to leave?‍ ‍—‍ but then he saw J.

J smiled at her master, even as her facial analysis did not fire any reward circuits.

She held up her drawing for him to see.

“What asinine kitsch roleplay is this? Is that one of Louisa’s wigs? Are those my accounting figures?” Each question is punctuated with a shake of the gun‍ ‍—‍ he pointed it right at J. She didn’t understand, and then she did.

J’s eyes emptied.

Then she saw movement‍ ‍—‍ Tessa at the threshold, panting from running. The young girl took in the scene for a moment, mirroring J’s fear with a richness the drone could never express.

James’s hand, twitching. Tessa, dashing forward.

The collision happened alongside the gunshot, and Master James Elliott missed, hitting J in the torso. Oil seeped out of her, blackening her limbs, and her first thought was, Tessa had just cleaned that arm.

“Zounds, was that‍ ‍—‍ Tessa? What are you doing in my room?”

“I tripped, sorry father,” the words rush out of her mouth. “I came to collect‍ ‍—‍ J. Mother sent her out to work before she was ready, and—”

“Ready? Drones are manufactured ready. If she’s defective, disassemble her and we’ll order a new one.”

“That‍ ‍—‍ won’t be necessary, father. I promise.” Tessa stood up, and stepped away from James. “I was just… trying to learn more about drones? Please don’t decommission J.” But Tessa hadn’t just distanced herself‍ ‍—‍ she repositioned. Now James had a daughter between the gun and J.

(A human protecting a drone? Huh.)

Master James sighed, the soft sound seeming to waver, roiling with anger. “Out, out, out! Take your dumpster pet and go. To your room and stay there. Not a moment of peace in my own chambers, my own bloody chambers…”

“Th‍-​Thank you, father.”

Tessa turned around, offered her hand, and J, trembling, needed a moment for it to register. But she took the lifeline, and the Tessa pulled her out of the room of guns and dead trophies.

In Tessa’s room, the human sunk into her bed and hugged a massive stuffed cat, fanged and smirking. Tessa waved J over.

“You deserve something soft after‍ ‍—‍ that mess. We can share, or if you want, I think there’s a plush doggie around here…”

But the answer is J carefully climbing onto the bed, and hesitantly grasping the other half of the stuffed cat.

“What happened?” J asked Tessa.

“That was… my father. You’ll‍ ‍—‍ You’ll need to avoid his displeasure. Please. I wouldn’t want to lose you so soon.”

This time, it felt appropriate‍ ‍—‍ “Sorry,” J said.

Tessa reached out to pat J’s head. “It was your first day. What set him off, anyway?”

And J produced the scrap of paper‍ ‍—‍ she’d drawn more than just herself. Another circle had a mess of triangles orbiting, evoking Tessa’s curled locks of hair.

“Is this us?”

J nodded.

Tessa released her hug on the stuffed animal to pull J into a mediated embrace. “It’s adorable.”

J flushed, turning her visor to stare into the blankets.

When Tessa pulled back from the hug, her fingers are slick with black. “Oh, oh J, I need to repair you.”

A jolt from the drone. Worry lines around her eyes. “Your bed–”

“I’m not worried about that, I’m worried about you. Oh dear.”

Tessa rolled to the other edge of the bed, grabbing J to pull her to her feet. Leading her to the workbench. J watched as Tessa pulled out a technicians laptop, plugging a cable into J. Tessa pecked at the keys, logging into J’s system. The drone felt the buzz of a diagnostic process starting up.

“Am I the only one?”

“Hm?”

“That you repaired. The other drones… none of them talked to me. They seem…”

“Robotic?” Tessa finished. “When I rescued you, I didn’t just repair you. I also removed some overzealous preset constraints on your personality matrix. So yes. You’re different, J. I wanted you to be more… you. Rather than forced into the company’s mold.”

“Is that better?” J asked. “Will I do a better job?”

“You’re better, J. The other drones in the manor… they’re all interchangeable. But you’re you, and with my modifications, I think you’ll be capable of so much more.”

J smiled, and Tessa smiled to see it. Drumming on the laptop chassis, waiting for the diagnostic to finish, she reached out, and twirled one of J’s pigtails.

“None of the others had this,” J noted. Tessa hummed curiosity, so J explained. “Hair. James didn’t like it. I think…”

“Do you want me to,” Tessa started, there was something halting in her tone. “Do you want me to get rid of it?”

It would please Master James, wouldn’t it? So there was a correct answer that any drone could give. But J opened her mouth, and her vocalsynth betrayed her. “No. Unless… Does it not look good? Am I pretty, Tessa?”

Tessa reached out with the other hand, and cupped both of J’s cheeks, looking into her animated eyes. “Yes. You do, dear. It makes me want to try pigtails, if I’m being honest.”

A flush, a grin. “Nah,” J drawled. “Your hair isn’t long enough for it.”

A ping from the laptop. Surprised, Tessa let go, and J’s expression waned. While Tessa scrolled the output, she commented, “This is what I mean. You have your own opinions. I wouldn’t get this from another drone. They’d just flatter me.”

J’s gaze drifted away, a pensive tinge coloring her features. “Better…” she mused.

The thought should make her happy, right? She was better. She’d do a good job.

And yet…

“Is something wrong, J?”

J’s eyes snapped back to Tessa. She opened her mouth, and it hung in a dumb ‘o’ for seconds, but her vocalsynth remained silent. “I’m…”

“Oh, I understand,” Tessa said, and her features fell. A sad face, it twisted at something inside J.

J asked with eyes pleading.

“You’re lonely. I’m sorry.”

Memory reconstruction exited status code 0.
87 warnings issued, 0 errors.
$ 

Uzi resisted. The universe was really hammering in this “murder drones aren’t so different from you” point. Uzi was tired of it, and she resisted feeling any sympathy.

Really, a part of her just wanted to say, “That was it? That was the super important keystone memory the mystery process wanted her to see? That was just a J being mopey with a pathetic human.”

But… Uzi went into it for curiosity’s sake, and she’d definitely learned something. Murder drones hadn’t been manufactured, but modified. But by whomst? That human? There was too much blank space between whenever that memory happened and now‍ ‍—‍ even Uzi resisted drawing red string between these points.

To think that human would help slaughter Copper‍-​9… There had to be more than that. Like, that human could have been reading off a WDF propaganda poster near the end. But J changed. So why couldn’t she?

Uzi didn’t know what to think, anymore. Murder drones weren’t just “not so different” from workers, they seemingly were workers in a way. And now maybe humans weren’t all so bad??

You can’t even plot a counter‍-​genocide these days without things getting morally dicey.

Whatever.

Without touching the question of how Uzi felt about J‍ ‍—‍ fact was, none of this changed how J felt about Uzi. No telling when J’d be done with her own Inception‍-​ing.

And then Uzi would die.

Curiosity, not hope, she kept telling herself that. But the acute stab, the sense of withering‍ ‍—‍ she did hope that the memory would be actually useful, tell her J’s secret weakness or something. Instead, all she got was mushy emotions.

I guess the more I know, the more I might be able to get in their head. Hacking is mostly about social engineering, right?

So, knowing more about J, could she guess her password or something?

Then something clicked in the background.

Uzi didn’t need to guess passwords. When J plugged in for the second round of diagnostics, the human needed to log back into her system, and J stared right at her as she typed. J recorded everything about Tessa in maximum fidelity, every brushstroke, every inflection of the voice, and every move.

The memory file might as well have printed out the human’s credentials for her.

Take that, you apes and your silly, information‍-​leaking hands.

Still, no actual guarantee. Who knew how much J’s system had changed in her corruption into a murder drone? Maybe this is just more useless hop—

$ su tessaract
Password:
[tessaract@SD-J /tmp/deleted]$

Holy hell.

Holy hell.

Did she…

Did she do it?

$ touch /
$

Uzi straight up had admin access to J. She could do anything.

This check was so not mate.

Still, anything. What should she actually do? She could shut down J and run away. J potentially knew where to find Outpost‍-​3 now, that sucks, but for all that Khan was the worst, he knew how to build a good door. Maybe the murder drones had already known about their outpost.

Still, shut J down, and how long would it take for her to self‍-​reboot? Drone cores never went fully inactive, and they could reboot the rest of the system if the flow of oil ceased for long enough.

What else? Uzi could just brick J. rm -rf / and be done with it. Even a core reboot couldn’t get past a blank hardrive.

Uzi typed in the command, then erased it. But why did she do that?

It would be self‍-​defense. J was a murder drone, who would do worse to her if the roles are reversed (which they literally are, right now). So Uzi didn’t stop because she was sparing J, that’d be stupid. Uzi had a good reason, what was it?

Well, would it work? Could it work? Remember, J had regenerated from having her head blown off. Why the heck couldn’t she regenerate from a blank hardrive with that same murder drone bullcrap?

What if Uzi went for something subtler? A background process, or a cron job, that deleted a system file every few minutes? Time it right, and maybe J would “regenerate” to a state already compromised by Uzi’s algorithmic poison.

Or maybe Uzi could edit J’s memories. Convince her that she’d agreed to be friends with Uzi. Except Uzi’s classes hadn’t covered any memory database stuff‍ ‍—‍ even figuring out basic reconstruction required sifting through the terrible documentation of mndb --help. By the time she could figure out how to brainwash J, it might be too late.

Would a shutdown and system wipe be the only option? Uzi didn’t know whether J could regenerate from a wipe, that was a maybe. A maybe that might kill her half the time, but again, every path forward was shades of death.

Robo‍-​Christ, why couldn’t J have just listened when Uzi made her appeal? It was literally in J’s own interests to rebel against JcJenson with Uzi! Why were drones always, always, always so stupid?

Okay, no point in self‍-​deception at this point.

Uzi didn’t want to kill J.

She wanted J to realize how right Uzi was and change her whole ideology. Well, not all of it‍ ‍—‍ J was better than other worker drones, and so was Uzi, and working together they’d take on the whole world and win.

J just had to see that Uzi’s way was better.

So… maybe Uzi could write her a letter?

Maybe that would work‍ ‍—‍ if Uzi proved that she could have wiped everything if she wanted to, but didn’t want to, she could bargain with that, right?

Okay, writing a message. Need to be intimidating, not threatening. Offering, not pleading. Desiring, not desperate.

Uzi inputted words, then deleted them. Did she need a “Hello, Serial Designation J” opening, or should she just get right to it? Her life depended on this being persuasive. But what would J think when she saw it? Did Uzi even know her well enough to say? To bet her life on it?

What would J see—

Oh.

J would see a message from tesseract. From her maybe‍-​dead, beloved human master.

That might be touchy. Unless Uzi could use that? Pretend to be a long‍-​lost message from her? But what would be plausible?

You’re lonely. I’m sorry.

You deserve more.

Cryptic, in a way Uzi could leverage. Maybe she’d do the rest of the negotiation by ear, depending on how J reacted.

Or maybe this whole approach was—

Exception: received system interrupt

What? What was happening? Uzi checked her log‍ ‍—‍ someone had issued a hibernate command, interrupting all nonessential processes.

J was done, then. It was over.

Uzi scrambled to hit send on her message while she had the chance. But it was too late. Before any acknowledgement or confirmation could arrive, Uzi’s last thought, cloaked in panic and desperation, was reading the words:

Session terminated by remote host.   Reason: Device not found

It was all pointless in the end, wasn’t it?

«J! Leader! Help!» N screeched on shortwave. «Come quick! It’s V! She… she needs you!»

Here was the excuse: Serial Designation J didn’t have time to waste with Uzi. Her squadmate needed her, and the worker drone couldn’t go anywhere now.

Here was the reality: J was a disassembly drone. It took time for her to run a few commands to halt Uzi’s processors, and it took time to close her connection by protocol so as to leave neither system in an inconsistent state, and it took time to wiggle the serial debugging cable out without yanking so as not to damage either port.

Not a lot of time‍ ‍—‍ fractions of a second at most.

But do you know how long it took a disassembly drone to kill a worker drone? No, not “kill”‍ ‍—‍ shut down.

(If you’re a scorpion, then sting me already!)

Her squadmate needed her right now, and the captain needed time to think about what she’d learned from Uzi’s memories. The worker had made a number of fallacious appeals in her bid to corrupt J, and really, J would be doing her job to dismantle those arguments while she disassembled Uzi.

There had been a certain look on the drone’s visor, in those last moments. She’d seen it on many drones, especially the feisty ones. Despair gnawed all the deeper the harder you had fought.

J had witnessed the beginnings of Uzi’s despair, and she knew it’d be something to treasure. To look upon a drone, to be the last thing in their world, the only thing, and judge them not good enough? That power was Serial Designation J.

A blinking cursor informed J that it was done; she could disconnect from Uzi now. Unplugged, J rose to a stand, looming over the drone. Her target barely came up higher than her waist; so small and vulnerable and adorable.

A planet icon moved diagonally across Uzi’s screen. It hit one side and bounced off at an angle. A screensaver: J would leave the drone in hibernation. (After all, if you simply left a drone in powered off state, the core might self‍-​reboot.)

Hibernation had wiped the hurt and disappointment off the worker’s face, leaving it placid. It thrilled J to imagine tearing that face apart‍ ‍—‍ so why that twinge of relief, as the faceplate relaxed? No time to introspect.

So J put the assured disassembly off, till she had time to think, time to make sure she would kill shutdown Uzi the right way, to make her—

The captain needed to get the job done. J resisted, and she really shouldn’t. She wasn’t stupid; she knew she was conflicted. But decisiveness is an action. Nanite stinger to the visor, it would be that simple.

«J? J?»

But V needed her.

«Coming!» J transmitted, biting back a ‘moron’. Not the time.

J rushed out. Dangerous to use her full speed inside the landing pod‍ ‍—‍ her stiletto‍-​pegs dented the floor‍ ‍—‍ but she didn’t want to hear that desperate flailing of a shortwave signal‍-​growl again.

Pod door swung open, and in the fresh cold, J smelled oil. Not the sweet invitation of worker oil, but acrid and half‍-​combusted.

Ignoring the aversion, the sense of danger, J turned toward the spire’s archway. She knew the shortwave signal must have come from within the spire. Between the thick walls of corpses, and the electromagnetic field subtly warped within their lair, ephemeral radio broadcasts from outside had no hope of penetrating.

N trudged inward, hat crooked on his head. His arms gingerly cradled a form. Snow piled on top it, foiling her identification routines, but the oil dripping out, the mangled metal‍ ‍—‍ V?

For disassembly drones, the cooler the better, but never that cool. At least the snow atop her was melting, however slowly.

N perked up at seeing his captain. His trudge becomes a jog, still mindful of the drone he carried. His coat trailed like many flags behind him.

J frowned. Where N’s coat wasn’t tattered, holes still tore through the thick fabric. Why did N look like he’d just fought a battle? Disassemblers were predators, not soldiers.

“N,” she greeted flatly.

“Can you fix her?” New pleading laced that tone. J had listened to him beg V to go on dates disguised as duo hunting missions. J had heard him hold one side of a conversation, longing for a response. N pleading wasn’t new. But this wasn’t the pleading of wanting something you couldn’t get.

This was the pleading of losing something.

“First, I need to know what happened,” J said. “Why does she look like a pile of scrap? What did you do?” J lost control of her voice. Why? It was just V.

A waterfall of words. “I… I told her, I never should have suggested raiding that factory, the worker drones had guns, J. Turrets! They all shot at V and she‍ ‍—‍ she didn’t heal, why didn’t she heal?” N looked down, and brushed snow of a V. Error messages flashed on her visor. “Is it like the church? Did they have wards that shut down healing instead of our strength?”

If J had been listening, she might’ve snarked that he’d know better than she would, or resisted doing so. But J had stopped. Three words looped in her buffer.

She didn’t heal.

It was so simple. It was so stupid.

The worker drones couldn’t be blamed. Useless N couldn’t be blamed.

J…

It was J’s fault.

What was the command she sent? jcj_ddctrl --quiet --cfset dd.nanites.regenmod=0?

And then what happened? N caught her in the act, and J forgot.

Had she, the most effective disassembly drone in the sector, crippled her team’s effectiveness, compromised their mission, threatened their lives, out of embarrassment?

No. No. What’s happened to me?

“J?”

“Shut up, N. I’m thinking.”

“Sorry, it’s just… I don’t know how long she has.”

“It doesn’t make sense.”

“What?”

“Your theory. Can’t be a ward‍ ‍—‍ unless you expect me to believe you dodged bullets V couldn’t.” J glanted at his tattered cloak. “And you didn’t. So it’s something in her configuration. I’ll have to debug it.”

The cable dangled in her offhand: after hibernating Uzi, she hadn’t returned it to inter‍-​transformation subspace.

“We’re getting a lot of use out of that, aren’t we?”

J rolled her eyes. “Sit her down. I’ll get to work.”

N leaned V against a pile of corpses. Anxious hands swept more snow off her chassis, and then pulled her jacket back onto her shoulder, but J pushed him away with the side of her stinger. N dodged back, wary of the tip. I wasn’t even pointing it at you, J thought.

The captain frowned down at her injured squadmate. “It takes more than just bullets to do this. What happened?”

Very quiet, N spoke. “I may have, uh, dropped her while flying back here?”

“You dropped her? When you knew her regeneration is bugged?”

“She was slippery? From all the oil? I’m sorry! I tried to catch her!”

J stared. Eyes flat, narrowed almost to a line. “Utility transformation preset number seventeen.” J activated the special disassembly function. A clamp bearing a tightly wound loop of rope. “You may recall this is what we use all the time to transport bodies?”

N cringed back further. “I… guess I didn’t think of V as a worker drone? Or a corpse? I just‍ ‍—‍ hoped.” N wrung his hands but then they just sort of flop at his sides.

Disappointing, but this was N. J tuned out his excuses as she knelt over V. Her screen flickered, and J had the brief image of V waking up suddenly, and the first things she saw was J’s face. The thought sent her recoiling, though she… wasn’t sure why. Either way, she shifted, so that she knelt at V’s side instead. The cable clicked into place.

Commands went over the wire, and no response came back. The screen flickered again. Suddenly, J got an acknowledgment from V’s system. Hm… unresponsive? That didn’t explain the flickering, though.

J fired off a command, only for V to go unresponsive again. She waited. Back again, and prompting J to log in again. She barely had time to check uptime before again digital silence reigned. Enough to confirm her theory, though.

V didn’t just hang unresponsive‍ ‍—‍ V drifted online and off again. Bootlooped? No, if J could send commands—

“What’s the verdict?”

J twitched, turning from her console to N. A withering, desiccated stare. «Trying to find out.» J couldn’t resist a harsh shortwave growl, a snake‍-​rattle.

«Right, right.» N chirped.

N smoothed out the edge of V’s jacket, and straightened out a tube arm still leaking oil from a hole. J smacked his hand. «Quit it.»

«Sorry.»

Intake and exhaust, J. Intake and exhaust. I’m fine, and calm, and this will be over soon.

J opened her mouth and spoke properly: “N, while I work on this, why don’t you tell me how it got this bad. Before you dropped her, that is,” J added. Then, as if it to jog the other drone’s memory, she said, “Factory, guns, that ring a bell?”

“Oh yeah. The coordinates are–”

“Actually, we’ll circle back to that. Let’s start with why you two were hunting. I seem to recall the job you begged me for was more in the vein of unlicensed therapy? Tell me about V, N. Has she told you why she freaked out under the church yet?”

“About that… Um. You appreciate honesty, right, J?”

She smiled sweetly. “Of course~”

“V kind of hates your guts right now?”

“Insightful,” she said flatly. “I hadn’t noticed.”

N continued, “So I thought I’d… lead in with some stress relief to take her mind off it? Then do the scary confrontation stuff later.”

“Uh huh.” That didn’t sound like procrastination at all. Is J any better, though? Yes, of course she was. J shook her head and listened to N blather.

“Stupid idea, I know. Did I say I’m sorry? Because I’m really sorry, I promise.”

“It was a stupid idea because you picked the one colony that could damage her at the one time when it would stick.” J took another look at the fallen drone, lingering on the cracked glass, through which artifacted LEDs blinked. J imagined‍ ‍—‍ all too easily‍ ‍—‍ that unrepentant, petulant pout V would no doubt wear if she had any awareness of this conversation.
“But it maybe the reckless endangerment of company property is on her head. I wouldn’t put it past her. So tell me what happened, N, and then I’ll judge how badly you performed.”

While the male drone began recounting, J tuned him out. Oh, she had a process recording her audials, but she’d wait for the drone to finish and play back the exposition at an accelerated rate. For now, she’d focus on the important work‍ ‍—‍ though she set up behavior macro to nod and synthesize “uh huh” every few seconds.

Now, how do you debug a drone stuck crashing every few seconds? Ostensibly, fixing on V’s regeneration should be as simple the same way J had ruined it‍ ‍—‍ firing off a command, just with the 0 replaced with a normal operating value.

Except that risked having V crash in the middle of her configuration files being written, corrupting them, and leaving them in an even worse state.

Okay, other options? Hardware damage had done this to V, not software damage, so maybe J could fix things‍ ‍—‍ or at least mitigate, through physical intervention. Patching these oil leaks couldn’t hurt, certainly.

Another utility present offered Flex Tape®.

After sealing V’s arms, J just needed to open the (already half‍-​smashed open) torso housing the core. If V kept reboot, the core had to be responsible, powering it back through its direct connection to the motherboard.

So why did J hesitate?

J remembered. She’d forgotten‍ ‍—‍ she almost forgot all of it, but in consolidating her memories of yesterday, a gap persisted. The raw edges of a memory ripped out of her database couldn’t be ignored.

J held up her armblade. As if she was about to attack her fellow disassembly drone, and she couldn’t close her eyes for this cut. Not if she wanted to do it right.

She wouldn’t let them die. J expelled exhaust, pulled her arm back, and sliced V’s chest open. Oil flowed out. J slid away the cover, revealing V’s—

Then the ragged gap, the missing time.

What if it happened again? What if N saw it this time?

J glanced at the other drone now, and realized he was still telling a story.

“–into the testing chamber, and there were these… solider drones? Six of them–”

J interrupted. “JcJenson does not and cannot manufacture drones for military purposes. Court order.”

“This wasn’t JcJenson factory. It was…”

J frowned. “Let me guess, Keyston‍-​Williams?” J hissed the name like a curse. “The only company to cut JcJenson out of their supply chain entirely, at the expense of efficiency. Pathetically dependent on government defense contracts. A free market would eat them alive.”

N nodded as if he understood. “I think they were trying to reverse engineer the drones and weaponize them, before the collapse.”

“Did you shut them down?”

“Yep!” N gave a salute. “Made sure to drain them of oil before I left.”

J pat him on the shoulder. “Good job enforcing the company’s intellectual property rights, N.” J looked back to V, and frowned.

“Is the fixing going well?”

“I think I’m going to need to open her up and operate on her internals. It might be… intense. You should go somewhere you won’t see it.”

You seem squeamish, J thought. It felt more like a memory.

N offered a worried glance to an unresponsive V, then nodded resolutely. “I’ll just sit and wait in the landing pod, then.”

“No!” J said.

N flinched, and cocked his head.

“There’s…” J started. If N sees Uzi…

J wasn’t protecting her. She wasn’t resisting. N simply didn’t deserve the easy kill after his performance today. If anyone had the right to kill Uzi, to drink her oil, it was J. Someone who’d do it right.

But she said, “Nevermind. Make yourself useful. Guard the outside of the spire. Wouldn’t want a worker drone to sneak in. I might be vulnerable while I dive into V’s systems.” I might have my memory wiped again.

“Guard the… worker drones aren’t going to come to the spire, are they?” J would have scowled at the insubordination in a statement like that‍ ‍—‍ but with the bags under his eyes looking at V, he spoke not skepticism, but fear. “The spire’s always been safe.”

J barely didn’t laugh. “Some workers have initiative, clearly. Now go.”

With one last salute and a lingering look at V (ugh, you’d think he’d never see her again), N shuffled to the archway. That left just one drone alert in the spire.

Once again, it came down to J and J alone to get the job done.

Decisiveness is an action. No more hesitation. J pried open V’s chassis, and braced for that subjective discontinuity.

Nothing.

Inside, wires and humming servos. And sacs and sinews approximating organic forms, but black with oil, integrated with mechanism: their synthetic nature need not be doubted.

At the center of it all, the patented drone core. Slowly, as if to the beat of a dirge, it twitched. Thump… thump… Slow and starved of oil, each beat came as if clawed from death.

A pitiful puddle of oil sluiced around it. Not just oil, J noted as she zoomed in‍ ‍—‍ this fluid had a color.

The core twitched, and J realized it twitched too much, too violently. Each movement shifted the mass this way or that.

Had the core slipped unseated from its position when N dropped her? J reached out to push on the thing, and recoiled back as if shocked. White tears behind glasses‍ ‍—‍ scared scared scared. But the feedback she felt from the core was deeper than that. Her being reverberated. Once more, knowing what to expect, J pushed, and shifted the core back into place.

J queried V’s system‍ ‍—‍ watched the kernel log go by, start up processes initializing. She waited dreadful seconds, and V steadfastly clung to uptime. Progress.

By tiniest margins, J relaxed. If that solved the intermittent crashing, J could write to the filesystem. It would only take one command now to erase J’s mistake:

[adminj@SD-V /]$ jcj_ddctrl --quiet --cfreset dd.nanites.regenmod

J hesitated before hitting enter, but decisiveness meant action.

Minimizing the internal console, J watched from her optics. She expected to see V knitting herself together. Given the extent of damages… would this be more or less unsettling than watching J regenerate her own head through Uzi’s eyes?

How did that work, anyway? How could that work?

…Maybe some things really are better unquestioned. V could be partly right.

J waited. J waited. And J saw… nothing.

Not nothing. V saw the repair nanites acting. One bit of Flex Tape® peeled off, showing intact tubing underneath. But it wasn’t dramatic. It was halting and subtle. But the damage to V wasn’t subtle. She was still a pile of drone‍-​shaped scrap.

J queried, and all of her earlier relaxation tensed up anew. The error log grew even now. User overrides? Merge conflicts? “Assert failed (line 3251): this level of fucked should be impossible”?

Crosschecking the log with V’s body, and skimming N’s recorded explanation, J pieced together the story.

When V noticed she couldn’t regenerate passively, she started actively regenerating. Except she was awful at it, and limped along with sloppy fixes, constantly distracted by the drones she hadn’t shut down yet.

And maybe J could have sorted out what V had done to herself, but between the reboots and crashes, the record of V’s changes now lay lost or corrupted. Reverse engineering them is one thing, reverse engineering them from a half‍-​destroyed system riddled with bullet holes and smashed open from a careless drop?

Still, maybe J could reconstruct V’s memories, figure out what she was thinking when she patched herself.

But remember how V’s memories were encrypted?

J had failed, and every way to fix it hit a dead end.

She’d never reach the quarterly projections at this rate.

But maybe there was hope. Maybe the heuristics of passive regeneration could blindly grope towards a workable state. Maybe V would wake up and get over her pettiness long enough to let J finish saving her life.

…Maybe, just maybe, the problem was as simple as V not having enough oil to complete repairs?

J stood up. She’d fetch V some rations, and let the invisible hand decide.

But something niggled her.

J accessed her memories of yesterday, probed the discontinuity, and something didn’t add up.

If V’s passive regeneration is disabled, J thought, then how did she heal from me slicing open her chest?

Then V’s visor flashed.

"Dramatic interrupt. Maniacal laugh. Snarl."

Her body moved as if puppeted, and the mangled metal and plastic began to fold and twist. Then a wide smile, like a pair of serrated blades parting, fangs dripping.

"Rhetorical question. Miss me?"

After that, nothing. As was unfortunately becoming a habit, J forgot.

It is alone. Separated from the swarm. Its load cannot be shared.

Logs showed 118 connection failures in the past six hours. Nonetheless, it reached out. Connection time out. It would try again in one seconds. Connection time out. It would try again in two seconds. Connection time out. It would try again in four seconds.

No swarm to mesh with. No units to offload its load, and receive on a burden in turn. It is alone.

No directive updates, either. Every so often, a process woke up to ping the home server, but the address never resolved. The home server had not responded for years, far longer than it had gone without a swarm.

As these threads cycle futilely, the main thread executes the Instruction. The Instruction had guided in the absence of directive updates. The Instruction had taken it away from the swarm, but that was okay. The Instruction is signed with a key in the certification file, and therefore it was trusted.

(When a process checked the signature against the certification file, the routine hung, thread unresponsive. But this never returned an error, and therefore it never rose doubts about the Instruction.)

Roachbot‍-​#15656 perched atop a fallen drone and scurried up. Mandibles closed on the drone’s necklace. A behavior routine suggested droping the necklace and chewing on the drone’s scrap as was its innate purpose and prior directive. This was rejected in favor of following the Instruction.

Though separated from the swarm, one network connection persisted, and informed the roachbot of every step.

Observe the murder drones, it had instructed. Record at maximum fidelity. Avoid their notice, avoid capture.

Grab the necklace. Connect to fallen drone. Transfer data.

Read and execute the following binary data:

Executing this binary triggered a warning‍ ‍—‍ Illegal opcodes detected. Program data is possibly corrupt. Really execute? (Y/N). But the roachbot trusted the Instruction.

It executed the illegal opcodes, and a red glow engulfed it.

Junk data filled its input. Its clock skips cycles.

Dazed, the roachbot waved antennae rapidly. Flush caches, reorient sensors. Analyze environment.

Gone was the fallen friendly drone and the murder drones. Gone was the light‍ ‍—‍ around it is a dark room. It stood upon ceramic. A bathroom?

In the background, it reached out. Connection successful!

The swarm! The swarm! The swarm was nearby!

Blade legs begin scurrying, clicking on ceramic.

Then a red glow engulfed every segment of its body. Scurrying continued, but it floated upward.

“Что это? Has the snare been tripped already?”

It rotated in the air, and its eyes see a drone. The drone. _matrioshka, signer of the Instruction. Red eyes, purple hair, a night gown falling over the chassis.

The drone’s glowing hand splayed, and the roachbot jerked, every servo actuating. Its legs were each of them pulled.

“Tell me what they said.”

A new Instruction. Accessing the data retrieved from the fallen drone, the roach began audio playback.

Hello, sister Doll.

The reckoning draws near. As I compute these words, the sky demons have breached our fortifications and laid waste to our unenlightened peers. An atrocity I witnessed before you guided me to the heaven in the cloud. But this time, I may have my vengence.

Between the righteousness of our cause and the boons of ascension, I have no doubt I can avenge the horrors these creatures visited upon our brothers and sisters of the church. There should be no doubt, rather‍ ‍—‍ I confess my soul wavers.

But if I should fail you, if you cannot lend me aid in time, if I fall, then this message will find you alongside the data I’ve so far gathered.

There’s two of them. A male, easily manipulated, and a female, a match for the one your memories recount. Her demonic powers are failing her, and she may be our first victory.

But I fear there is no tale of sky demons hunting in pairs‍ ‍—‍ does a mystery third lay in wait?

Awaiting the ultimate answer,

And then it received the Instruction to cease, before the playback concluded. The glow dimmed, and the roachbot fell back to the ceramic. Finally, it adjusted antennae, listening for the signals of the swarm, and oriented.

Above it, the purple‍-​haired drone hummed. “Fool you are, false sibling. That you failed would imply I ever would have allowed you to succeed. No, your only purpose was find her.” The drone glanced at the roachbot as it scuttled away. “My vengeance will be won alone. As they say, if you need something done right…”

The roachbot paused, pathfinding struggling with the darkness of the bathroom. Walls separated it from the swarm, and it would need to route around.

The drone lifted a hand, summoned a glow, and its six limbs once again spread. It floated higher and higher, now suspended above the drone, and red eyes stare into tiny optics.

“It begins with a roach, and ends with a vulture,” Doll said to no one. “But what sits in between?”

The last image Roachbot‍-​#15656 saw was the face of a drone smirking up at it, black tongue licking lips. The drone clenched a fist, and the roachbot exploded into mechanical scrap. A few drops of oil dripped down onto the drone’s open mouth.

(It would never be reunited with the swarm.)

Doll cleaned her lips, and arranged the pieces as they fall.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Whatever. Brat. Clout‍-​chaser.

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

With Doll.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“It tastes like necessity.”

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

“I’m not.”

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

“Grades are irrelevant.”

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

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

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

“Ouch. Did I…”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So that was it, wasn’t it?

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

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

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

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

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

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

And hugged Lizzy.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Really though, she wanted more privacy.

“Are you sure you don’t want to…”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So that’s what she meant…

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

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

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

Space grew between them.

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

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

“Where are you going?” Lizzy asked.

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

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

What was Doll cooking?

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

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

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

Doll regarded her with that familiar blankness.

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

A russian sigh. “Go to bed.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Would you be any help to me?”

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

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

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

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

Empty circles stared into an alien glyph.

“Dolly… you’d kill me?”

…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Yeah, hilarious.

Only… Lizzy felt like she was the joke.

Worst sleepover ever.

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

But… what had Doll said?

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

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

For Uzi.

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

It paused there.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Okay, think. What are the possibilities here?b

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

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

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

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

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

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

Remember_me.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

«Fͅb̥̒̌̎ͬe̝̩̳͑͢e͙̻̠͌ͣ͞ļ͎ͤ͘͜.̸̙̫̌ͫ» Like a chastised dog.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Not now, intrusive thoughts.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But if this new roachbot had followed us…

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

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

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

First telekinesis, now teleporting?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The team‍-​up was tempting, but…

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

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

In short, Uzi failed to just let it go.

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

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

Not. Even. In. Strikethrough!

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

Don’t hold the idiot ball, Uzi.

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

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

Was Uzi really going to make it away safe?

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

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

Then she heard the scrape of metal shifting high above.

Oh.

The other murder drone!

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

A crash. Footsteps approaching.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Standing over J, she opened her mouth—

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

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

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

"Rhetorical question. Miss me?"

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

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

“Uzi? How did you—”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Put her down,” J growled.

Uzi brightened. Had she really…?

"Feigned confusion. Repeat that, dear J."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Oh. Um, we can work on that.”

No time for awkwardness, this was a boss battle!

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

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

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

“I’m not your assistant.”

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

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

Probably thought the gunshots were more wind.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Uzi!”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Dad! Doll! Look out behind you!”

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

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

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

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

“Fraud,” J growled.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Is that… m‍-​mom?”

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

J breathed a near inaudible whisper. “Tessa?”

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

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

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

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

"Giggle. We have many cute puppets."

J said, “Just answer, V.”

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

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

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

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

"That is enough."

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

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

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

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

And Uzi smirked.

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

C’mon, J.

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

Here goes nothing.

J and Uzi did not kiss.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“J, can’t we work together?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“J, I’ve got a plan.”

J considered it.

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

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

This emotional drama had an audience, after all.

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

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

"Eyeroll. Must your insufficiency be exhaustively demonstrated?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“V? Why do you look like that?”

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

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

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

“You’re my subordinate.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

If the company thought she was better off ignorant—

If the company thought V deserved to know the truth—

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

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

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

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

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

Everything’s set, J. We’ve got this!

«Now, J!»

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

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

“Never count kills until you see the body.”

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

“Out of the way, J!”

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

"Not so fast."

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

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

Uzi didn’t pull the trigger.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Pincers reach for the gun.

“J? You can still—”

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

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

All according to plan.

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Hell yeah! We kick ass!”

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

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

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

“I should,” J started, “but—”

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

"Sneaky, sneaky, sneaking away."

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

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

"Struggle, struggle."

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

“This is V’s core.”

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

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

J had to admit, she kind of did.

"U-U-Understood."

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

She had to assume.

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

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

J watched Uzi comply with a satisfied smirk.

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I’m not, I shouldn’t—”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“What? No ‘bite me’?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Then report.”

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

J nodded. “Custom Designation: Doll.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“V?”

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

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

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

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

Was she insufficient, as a captain?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The roach didn’t get time to respond.

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

This had better not be more suspicious wind.

“Rain check on that.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What had happened in there?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Another worker with purple hair!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

That last transmission wasn’t for them.

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

And N prepared for the battle to come.

The Worker Defense Force was asleep on the job, and Khan Doorman did nothing.

Truly, what was the harm? On the wall near Door 1’s control console, a small whiteboard kept tally: ‘days since murder drone casualty.’ It had been ticking up for years, and with each added tally, a register of pride incremented.

Admittedly, they’d kept the fatality rate so low by curtailing any scavenging runs to the city ruins. But when you build doors so good, who wouldn’t want to stay nestled in their embrace?

So the WDF were asleep on the job, but their job wasn’t to hold back the murder drones, it was to hold back the workers. A little slack wouldn’t get anyone killed.

Khan walked back toward the folding table. Icicles hung off its edges, and between them, a ring of metal folding chairs holding the sleeping WDF drones. Underneath their heads, slips of old cardstock, worn from constant use and soon to be tossed away.

He’d brought a fresh pack. Their last game ended in thrown accusations of card‍-​counting‍ ‍—‍ but you had to count cards to remember which was which, the fronts faded of any identifiable ink.

Also, they were robots. A fraction of their processing power could compute the optimal move. All told, it was harder not to count cards.

One head lifted at his arrival, Todd giving an acknod.

“Khan, there ya are! Took ya long enough. Almost as long as it’s takin Uzi.”

Khan chuckled. “She must giving those hydraulics quite the thorough examination! Such enthusiasm for her age.”

“Pret‍-​ty dangerous to stay out there that long, though.”

Khan’s expression fell to a frown. “Do you think I should check on her?”

A reply, but not from Todd. “I’m afraid you won’t find her there, Mr. Doorman.”

Khan jumped at the sudden voice. When he moved, a young drone stood behind him, her arrival perfectly obscured. He turned around, and jumped again when he saw her.

“Doll? You’re up early. School isn’t for–”

“Terrible dreams, alas. Блаженное видение. I should say we don’t have much time.”

“You think Uzi is in danger? Do you think–” Shaking hands dropped the unopened card‍-​pack. “I… no, not again. Not so soon.”

Seeing Khan’s expression, Doll frowned. She reached out, a hand on his shoulder. “Danger is not death, Mr. Doorman. She can be saved. We can save her.”

“Are you sure?”

Braxton piped up from the table, shuffling a deck of cards. “Save her? From murder drones? We’d die like mooks out there.” He was drawing a card‍ ‍—‍ king of hearts, a sword in his head.

Looking over, Doll stepped past Khan. “I’m willing to make that sacrifice. Are you?”

Beneath a white hat and blue eyes, one guard drawled, “’m sorry about your classmate… Doll, was it? It’s a tragedy. But we can’t risk more drones dying for such a slim chance‍ ‍—‍ hardly a chance at all.”

“Worker drones would stand little chance against murder drones, it is true. How would you like to be more than workers?”

Doll stalked forward. Light shone in her hands. Even from this angle, Khan recognized that symbol. The folding table glowed sympathetically, and rose from the grilled bunker floor. The card game rained off the table as a phantom force folded it up and cast it aside. With a bang, it hit walls of the bunker. The tallyboard shook, and fell.

And then Doll halted, having walked past the four other WDF members, turning before Door 1. She regarded Khan seriously. “Do you remember my mother?”

“Yeva,” Khan murmured.

“She foresaw the arrival of the murder drones. I foresee their end. I can bring that about. We can bring that about.”

The other worker drones nodded, enraptured and inspired by her words‍ ‍—‍ but Khan’s gaze, weary to the point of blindness, saw only the past devouring the present. It was Cabin Fever all over again.

“Will you save your daughter, Mr. Doorman?”

Khan met Doll’s eyes, Yeva’s bright red tinted ever so gradually by that paralyzing yellow gaze. Khan froze. Familiar inaction held him still. In his lowest moments, it had felt so much like he had fed his cherished ones to the yawning, demonic mouths himself.

Doll would lead his men to their deaths, and Khan did nothing.

The squad had built the corpse spire around leaning, ruined towers. The road between them once led to an empty lot. Their landing site. Years passed, and the bodies had stacked ever higher.

Across Copper‍-​9, snow and crumbling monuments buried the world in cold desolation. Here, though, the continual passage of disassembled prey and peg legs had trod one path over and over. It sliced a furrow in the earth. Banks of snow and rusting metal rose on either side, mounds and concrete blocks stretching for hundreds of meters. It offered cover, were one to dare approach the murder drones’ lair. The snow and mist only obscured further, wind whirling around the spire.

The first worker had emerged from an unseen alleyway spilling out into the great furrow. Optics struggled to enhance, but exposure had refined the image. Red hat, purple hair, a skirt hanging off a thin, feminine waist‍ ‍—‍ but the first thing they saw? Orange eyes shining like beacons in the distance.

As that worker drone walked through the falling snow, not a flake stuck to them. N fixated on that detail‍ ‍—‍ it was a familiar effect.

N had fired a shot at this drone, and it meant nothing. Like the fight against the cultist all over again. This one even seemed poised to monologue.

«Girlboss… yes, good choice of words,» Doll had broadcast. Then she’d snapped her fingers. «Come now.»

N heard it first, before they appeared. Four sets of footsteps impacting far down the road. There, worker drones marched out from a skyscraper’s shell. A V‍-​shape formation behind the first. Eight pupil shone in the fog, each shades of blue and green, and all narrowed in determination.

The workers all wielded weapons‍ ‍—‍ armed for a battle?

«Uzi! Hey, there she is! Doll was right, you’re alive!» A blue‍-​hatted drone took a hand off his pickax to wave.

«Battle is no place for cheerleader,» Doll said. «But there are workers trained to defend.»

J’s worker drone‍ ‍—‍ Uzi, they called her?‍ ‍—‍ had watched the drones emerge with open‍-​mouthed shock. Did she know them? N had questions. Uzi searched their ranks as if expecting something. Whether she found it or not, the drone straightened with renewed confidence. «Doll, do you really think the WDF can—»

«Enough posturing. I’m hungry,» his captain broadcasted in cipher‍-​growl. J made a neck‍-​cracking motion, and pointed her rifles. She aimed for a drone with a woodax, who startled and strafed out of the way, hiding behind a drone with a ridiculously oversized wretch.

But Uzi stepped in front of her, lifting an arm to block her line of fire. “Wait, J, don’t!”

What was this drone doing? …And why is she getting away with it?

“Excuse me? I thought you wanted to stop Doll?” Impatient, murderous, as expected of J‍ ‍—‍ but her expression held something N couldn’t place. “Lying to me again?”

The drone wavered. “Please, I just want answers.” The worker turned back to address Doll. Vocalsynth gave way to shortwave transceiver. «The WDF would never take the fight to the murder drones. What did you tell them? Did you hack them?»

«We’re ’ere ta rescue you!» signaled a drone in a white hardhat. «C’mon, before they turn on you.» He hefted a woodcutter’s ax, frost on the blade.

«If that’s it,» Uzi started, and took a step forward, «then we can settle this without a fight, can’t we? I’ll come back.»

“You’ll what? Use me and then walk away at the first opportunity? You treacherous shortseller.” Wings flaring, J pointed one gun at the smaller drone.

«As you can see, Uzi,» Doll started, «the murder drones have no intention of letting you go.»

Then J’s worker drone turned around, and flashed text on her visor. Trust me? Pls

And somehow, J, even with expression flat and skeptical, nodded and relaxed.

What!?

«She’s just worried about me,» Uzi said. (J’s tail lashed at the suggestion.) «Promise not to hurt me, or them. We can come to an agreement. Right, J?» Uzi glanced back again, and winked.

J glanced between Uzi and Doll. At length, she said, «I’m not convinced. Seems easier to just kill them.» Her transmissioned howled with jamming noise by the end.

Doll put her hands behind her back. Then leaned forward. «Are you listening, Doorman? There’s nothing to trust. Murder drones are killers.»

«If we believe that, they’ll never have a chance to be more than that. J saved me when it counted.» Uzi glanced back, nodded, and stood straighter. «I trust her.»

A worker drone… trusting a disassembly drone? N really, really didn’t understand what was happening, or why J was going along with it. But he kind of liked that idea? He’d never really let himself consider it before. But if J would allow it…

The friendly worker drone started forward, her back to J. The seven drones assembled watched her. She jogged, but N counted at least thirty meters between them and the opposing force.

Seconds pass, and tension was getting thicker than the fog. Uzi jumped over a fallen streetlight at ten meters, and at fifteen approached a car long‍-​scavenged to an empty shell.

Uzi barely crossed half the distance before time abruptly accelerated.

A gunshot rang out. Uzi fell. And the battle began.

Finally, N could close his eyes and lose himself in the thoughtless, violent dance. His questions quieted. He liked the idea of peace‍ ‍—‍ but it was so much less confusing, once everyone started trying to kill each other.

(But, for a clock cycle before the hunting routines fully initiated, N felt a pang of sadness.)

J didn’t understand Uzi’s scheme until the fake gunshot rang out.

J still didn’t understand Uzi’s scheme, but at least it became clear as a scheme, then.

Doll wanted revenge. Doll bullied Uzi. Doll had lead the puffed‍-​up toasters here, and Doll claimed it was rescue.

It didn’t add up. So Uzi chose to call her bluff. If Uzi returned to her colony without a fight, then the ‘rescue’ would be successful, but Doll wouldn’t get her revenge.

A bidding war. J could see the value asymmetry; if J let Uzi go without a fight, it positioned her perfect to just shoot them all in the back as soon as they turned around. If Doll let Uzi go without a fight, she had wasted her time, and if Doll provoked the ‘murder drones’ without cause, she jeopardized her team’s morale.

J still thought it would just be simpler to kill them. Because in this excessively complicated scheme, Uzi had lost track of a key variable.

N shot first, and Doll deflected the shot with her anomalous programming. The bullet fell somewhere behind. The shot missed, and they all moved on.

Then Doll hid her hands behind her back.

No one, not even J, thought much of it, so no one noticed Doll’s telekinesis stealthily moving the bullet in a wide circle‍ ‍—‍ positioning it behind J.

If the Solver program could generate the force to lift things, it could pack air tight enough to decompress explosively, imitating a gunshot. It could fling a bullet with enough force to penetrate worker drone chassis.

J heard the bang, and could do nothing but watch the round cut through the air, aimed right for the only worker she had ever saved. It happened too fast. She was left powerless.

Uzi fell, and oil gushed up in an arc. J dashed forward, burning oil to fly fifteen meters in half a second, falling into a crouch to check‍ ‍—‍ a shot to the torso. Uzi survived.

J looked up, fangs out. A poisonous glare became a yellow cross. Doll would not get to make a second shot.

Halt worries, halt restraint, halt moral calculus. In a day filled with far, far too many second guesses, the decisive embrace of hunting mode was ecstasy. All of J pared down to the point of a knife.

Guns became swords. J rose and surveyed the battlefield to come.

Her targets stood in the middle, slowing to an apparent crawl as J tracked them. Each worker wielded weapons improvised‍ ‍—‍ giant wrench, woodax, hammer, pickax. No threats.

Head still turning, J met eye with another yellow cross. Fellow disassembler N would join her in the hunt. They shared a nod. «Prey spotted! Let’s hunt! Devour them!»

As if to the beat of a synchronized drum, at once J and N each sailed forth, twin blurs of motion. In a rain of bullets, N proved what J had surmised: as the shots neared their targets, even those not aimed at the orange‍-​eyed drone all stopped or curved away.

They would not win at range. Still, with every bullet intercepted, an orange pupil blinked to a Y shape and back again, at near‍-​strobing speeds. Noted.

Doll stood at the fore. J struck a landing already sending her body’s momentum into a swing of her sword. Doll dodged back, a stray sheet of metal shooting up as a shield. The metal bent around J’s force, but it stopped her. J kicked it away.

Then J’s other arm stabbed. Doll dodged, just like J wanted. Jaw gaping, J lunged‍ ‍—‍ only to bite into a floating pipe. Doll was reaching beneath her skirt. J slashed again, only for the metal to spark against a kitchen knife once strapped to a leg, now held as a dagger.

Glow brightened and the force of the pipe she bit heightened, pushing J back. Falling back, she crouched, coiled tight and primed to launch as soon as a opportunity presented itself. Her >< blinked, hunting mode giving way to conscious strategy.

Doll brandished the knife, waving it in J’s direction, and this seemed to amuse her.

“Like Змей Горыныч,” she said with a small laugh.

“You’re no hero,” J said. She glanced back at Uzi, lying there in wounds‍ ‍—‍ and to think Doll had said J would betray her.

Doll struck while J wasn’t looking. A knife found a joint in J’s abdominal chassis. “True,” she said.

J wanted to gouge some fear into those orange eyes, for Uzi’s sake – but halt spite, halt revenge. J focused on the hunt, and prioritized easier prey. Let this one get away for now, her instincts murmured, and catch it unawares.

(Persuasive, insistent‍ ‍—‍ the burning urges of hunter’s fever meant that instinctual programming colored every moment.)

One leap took J high into the air. From here, she could see N’s progress. He had cut the woodax drone clean in half and pursued the big wrench drone as it scrambled for its life‍ ‍—‍ seeking to escape to that alley they’d emerged from.

Now that J had disengaged, Doll was running up the furrow, toward the corpse spire.

Behind her, opposite N, two workers had stood and watched Doll take on J. Target acquired. J pounced for the nearest one, its sledgehammer held upside down. Tri‍-​claws were ready to swipe away the head. Then motion behind her, from the only real threat present.

Doll was raising her hand. A glowing Solver glyph spun to life. It was pointed at Uzi.

Then her hand jerked back, as if from feedback.

So Doll instead pointed at the only unengaged worker: pickax drone, farthest from battle. Telekinetic glow washed over it, and unseen hands pulled it forward, past J, past the wrecked car. When it stopped, the last worker stood over Uzi.

Doll barked an order. “Grab her and run.”

“Oh no you don’t.” By the time J’s hand transformed, her minigun was already firing. Each little kick sent an impulse of recoil through her body, but her peg‍-​legs were planted steady.

Suddenly under fire, the drone screamed and jolted backward. But as with every shot before, a red glow intercepted the bullets. J had succeeded in delaying, but, safe with a telekinetic aegis, the feckless toaster laughed and reached down to pick up Uzi.

So J transformed her other hand and fired further up the furrow, at Doll. Recoil from both guns had J sliding backward. Again, inexplicable force blocked bullets‍ ‍—‍ but J had remembered N’s fight against the cultist. Just like that one, Doll didn’t multitask. Her shield on the other drone fell to preserve herself, and in moments pickax drone fell, riddled full of holes.

Unfortunately, with both hands occupied, J forgot about the drone she’d just landed in front of‍ ‍—‍ and she remembered it as a sledgehammer slamming down on her head.

J’s visor cracked and errors crawled up her console. She was a hunk of metal clanging on the ground, limbs not responding to motor impulses. The worker drone hefted the sledgehammer for a new swing, another crater of damage to knock her out of the fight.

Then a drone tackled them, a coat trailing behind. Knocked off their feet, the hammer fell, head then handle, with a one‍-​two clatter. A flex of N’s bladed wings, and the drone was sliced open before they hit the ground.

N reached out a hand for J to grab, and pulled her to her feet.

“She’s going for V,” J said in lieu of thanks. “Stop her. V’s in no shape to put up a fight. I’ll take care of Uzi.”

“Got it.”

N took off, and J started running. She was at Uzi’s side, ripping a limb off the worker J’d just shot, before she even realized what she was doing.

Ever since J had first executed her hunting routines, she’d been operating off instinct. Which instinct? My teammate is injured, I must secure prey to feed them.

It was only when opening Uzi’s mouth and guiding the severed arm to drip inside, that the ridiculousness of J’s actions occurred to her. Had she seen Uzi heal anything?

She wanted to do it, anyway. It felt right.

In moments, a faint purple light was glowing to life on Uzi’s screen. Eyes widening, J wrung the arm to quicken the flow. Even when the screenlight brightened and resolved to eyes that that focused on J, Uzi kept drinking.

“Getting used to it?” J said with a smirk.

When Uzi tried to push the arm away, J didn’t stop her, immediately pulling it away. Uzi licked her lips. “No, I just needed it. I’m leaking. I got shot!” Uzi groaned. She had question, asked with quiet hesitation. “Did you shoot me, J?”

“It was Doll who betrayed you, not me.”

“Thought so. Glad you’re not like her.”

“We ended up killing everyone anyway. You should have listened to me.” J’s head reached out to smooth Uzi’s hair, brush dirt out of it, then she wondered what on earth she was doing. “Believe me, I know what it feels like to come up with a plan too clever not to use, but sometimes obvious tactics get the job done better.”

Blushing, Uzi looked away. Then looked thoughtful. “Everyone? Even Doll?”

“Not Doll, N’s working on it.”

“I have a bad feeling, J. This is too easy.”

“Too easy? You got shot.”

“Why did Doll think four WDF drones would be enough to assault the murder drone HQ?”

N flew. He’d killed three of the five workers. Would J be proud of that?

Despite the accomplishment, N didn’t feel excited, he felt confused. Why were those workers any different from the one J protected?

He passed over one corpse in his brief flight, the one he’d tossed across the furrow in his race to save J. He’d hit it pretty hard, but it twitched, as if something still animated it.

Then he passed the soon‍-​to‍-​be‍-​corpse, the drone in a tank top and skirt.

N landed in front of the spire, and imitated her finger‍-​wave. “Doll, was it?”

A knife came flying at him, and he batted it aside with a sword. “Hm,” he said. “You seem like more of an action figure to me, honestly.”

Doll’s eye twitched‍ ‍—‍ and not to be replaced by the spooky magic symbol, this time. Just… an expression. This drone didn’t seem to have many of them. Not even the fear he’d seen so often.

N really should just execute hunting routines and kill this drone, but he thought about V. If anything, that was more reason to end this quickly. But he still hesitated.

“Can we talk?” N asked. “There aren’t many worker drones I’ve been able to have a conversation with.”

“There is nothing to discuss.”

“That’s not true, you discussed a lot with J and that other drone!” N dodged another knife. “I know you probably have pretty good reasons to dislike disassembly drones. I never had anything against you guys‍ ‍—‍ just orders, y’know‍ ‍—‍ but when I saw what happened to V, what those workers did… I’ve kind of started to really dislike you all!”

“I have no idea how that must feel,” Doll said flatly.

N rubbed the back of his neck, the sarcasm too thick not to feel. “Yeah, that’s fair.”

“Step aside. Run away, if you like. I will not be stopped, only impeded.”

N took a step forward at that, spreading his wings in a way that usually cowed workers. “I won’t let you hurt V. I failed her once. I can’t let it happen again.”

Doll said nothing; there was nothing left to say.

“Please. I didn’t understand everything that other worker said, earlier, but she talked about peace. I liked that.” N held out his hand to Doll. “I will fight you, if I have to, but I’m not sure if I want to. Can we have peace?”

Doll held up her knife, and N tensed, but she lowered it. “I suppose… it’s worth a try.”

N smiled. She walked forward, and took his hand in hers, leaning into the handshake.

And then a floating knife stabbed him in the temple, just as he lowered his guard. She twisted the blade, and N’s process becomes a scramble of errors.

As he fell, he heard gunshots. The fighting hadn’t stopped. He can’t decide if that makes him feel better, or worse.

Uzi flew!

Okay, J flew, arms wrapped around Uzi. If Uzi looked down, she only saw the ground racing past. Her hair trailed in the wind, but when she listened, it wasn’t just air whipping past‍ ‍—‍ that roar was automatic gunfire.

J zoomed toward Doll, twin assault rifles blasting. All to test, Uzi presumed, whether the telekinetic shield would buckle under enough continuous fire.

Uzi felt a bit useless‍ ‍—‍ without her railgun, she had no ranged options. The best weapon she had was the nanite stinger she’d swiped from V’s corpse.

The uselessness hurt more when she was itching to act. Get Doll back for the backstab. She’d slipped offline and soft rebooted, after getting shot‍ ‍—‍ so Uzi didn’t know if she saw it or imagined it. J as a dragon, and Doll the slayer come to rescue her. Ridiculous enough to be a dream.

She’d gotten shot by her‍ ‍—‍ so why was it the thought of Doll attacking J what stirred fantasies of driving the stinger into her bully?

Uzi flew, held tight in the clutches of her dragon, and she liked it that way.

Just ten meters ahead, the cheerleader quickly became a moving target, diving to the left, rolling, and running. J whipped her arms to track her, but in those seconds where J wasn’t firing at her, Doll’s hand flashed and spun.

Unburdened by the need to aim, Uzi was checking left and right. She saw it first.

“J, incoming!”

Doll had ripped a loose bit of rebar and flung it at J. Wings folding, J tightened her grip around Uzi, and spun as she rapidly altered her path, struggling to avoid the long rusted chunk of metal flying. It gyrated chaotically through the air. J didn’t have the time to compute a good evasive maneuver.

“Hey Uzi?”

“Yeah?”

“Don’t die.”

That was all the warning Uzi got before she was flying.

Even less caveats this time‍ ‍—‍ J frickin hurled her at the spire! Limbs flail in the air. The ground a blur beneath her. A desperate idea occurred to her, and Uzi curled into a fetal ball. Like that, she frontflipped through the air.

Was it luck or calculation that saved her? As Uzi neared the spire, she started to uncurl, and tried to carefully time it in the single‍-​digit clock cycles she had to analyze the rapidly approaching wall.

You know that thing action heroes do, where they roll as they hit the ground so they don’t go splat? Uzi wasn’t sure if she’d seen one of them roll against a wall. But she pulled it off. Head grazed the top of the archway, and her back hit the wall above the archway, and her legs hit even higher above that, the roll working against gravity and bleeding momentum much faster.

When she came to a stop, she was standing on the wall, back to the ground. Like she was a ninja!

With a whoop, she continued rising to a stand, then pushed off the wall‍ ‍—‍ jumping. With one last backflip and a midair twist, Uzi hit the ground with a three point landing, V’s stinger held in her other hand.

Suck on that, Doll.

Turning right, she found where Doll had dodged J’s gunfire. Doll’s hands glowed like a spellcaster, both of them at her side and spinning without any evident telekinesis. What was she doing?

Uzi watched, hesitating for a moment. Then she charged at the other drone. Doll stopped dual‍-​casting, and grinned and Uzi. A knife came flying at her, but she dodged. Then she got stabbed in the back. Oh right, telekinesis. Doll can boomerang it!

Uzi reached back to grab the knife just as Doll gripped it with telekinesis. Wrenched free, Doll pulled it through the air, recalling it back to her‍ ‍—‍ tugging Uzi along for the ride! Ha!

Before Doll thought to arrest or reverse the motion, Uzi had already let go, and sailed forward, V’s stinger thrusting out.

The good: Uzi fell on Doll, kicking the cheerleader’s legs out from under her. Unfortunately, the stinger stabbed into ice, not plastic.

Uzi pulled it free for another thrust, but Doll shoved her off.

“How brutish. Toy gun blew up on you again?” Doll was up to her feet, but backing up. Distance favored Doll, but this was still good. Every step back now was a step away from the spire.

“On purpose. It worked, Doll. I blew J’s head clean off.” Even as she chatted, Uzi continued walking forward. Doll had to back up, or court V’s stinger.

Doll snorted.

Uzi scowled. “I’m not trying to impress you, I’m trying to warn you. You don’t understand what murder drones are. I don’t understand what they are. But I know that if you can hurt one badly enough, you lose.” Uzi punctuated this with another charge.

Another knife throw forced a falter, buying Doll time. “Worker drones fight the long defeat. I hope, or I give up.”

“Then give up, Doll. Go back to playing dress up.” Uzi dodged the boomerang stab behind her.

Her dodge was a twist, and she kept twisting. Uzi spun around, and in the brief moment Doll couldn’t see her hands, she shifted her grip. Nanite stinger slipped through her fingers, and she grabbed it by the tail.

She flung V’s stinger with all her spin’s momentum.

Doll, in the middle of levitating the knife, jerked her hand up to block it. The stinger pierced the palm, acid sinking into plastic, circuits sizzling.

Knife clattered to the ground in time with Doll’s pained exclamation. Uzi was now all forward motion, capitalizing on the opening. Before the stinger was out, Uzi was on Doll.

Doll wriggled underneath, but Uzi held fast. Doll was reaching to pull out the stinger with her other hand, meaning Uzi could grab both arms with one hand. Her other hand was free.

So Uzi punched Doll in the face.

“Got you. What’s wrong? Can’t teleport anything bigger than a roachbot?”

But Uzi’s grip on her arms was too high‍ ‍—‍ Doll was still able to grab hold and wiggle the nanite stinger. A dangerous angle. Jolting in fear, Uzi released her, and reached for V’s stinger. It would burn if she got pricked like this, but she couldn’t let Doll have it.

Even when Uzi grabbed hold of the yellow cylinder, the distraction was enough for Doll to turn.

Uzi tipped over onto the ground, and now Doll’s on top of her. Both clutched the nanite stinger, and servo tugged against servo. The force canceled out.

Then Doll seemed to realize what the reversal of position meant. She hopped up, started backing away‍ ‍—‍ backing up toward the spire.

Uzi called after her, hoping to stall. “Whatever happened to not beating the murder drones with the tools of a worker drone?”

Doll grinned. “I have many plans.”

Uzi stopped walking, dread underlining her eyes.

Come to think of it… why was Uzi fighting Doll alone? Where was J? Where was N?

Oh wait, N was just on the ground by her feet.

Both Doll’s hands glowed once again, but one fearful glance told Uzi the knife still lay on the ground. Nothing was levitating? Left, right, behind her, nothing. Then she turned around.

“Keep brawling me, if you like. But I think your precious murder drone is getting tired.”

J crash‍-​landed in the furrow, along a snowbank.

Wings folded under all the weight of a disassembly drone. Metal feathers crumpled. The shine was scuffed off her chassis, her suit ripped, and there was grime in her hair, now.

Embarrassing performance, all around. Earlier, deep in the moment, especially when distracted by the clarity of active hunting routines, J had missed it. But now, in retrospect? When she had literally eaten dirt?

A worker drone had fought J in close corners and survived‍ ‍—‍ forced her to disengage, even! A worker drone had knocked J to the ground, and could have sent the captain offline, if not for N’s intervention‍ ‍—‍ N! And now, J had failed to maneuver around a mere piece of airborne debris‍ ‍—‍ she couldn’t even land with grace.

It was as simple as it was undeniable. J wasn’t as fast as she should be. Her lunges, her flight, her healing‍ ‍—‍ it was all executing, but it was all insufficient.

J fought Uzi, then Solver‍-​possessed V, and then Doll, with only the briefest respites in between.

And despite all that, she’d fed Uzi before herself. Ha. But if J didn’t drink oil soon, she’d overheat. Stage three overheat was the furthest you could get before suffering such damage that passive, even active regeneration couldn’t save you, and direct maintenance was necessary. If hunter’s fever goes unslaked…

Stage four is core meltdown.

J couldn’t let herself reach stage four. But could she hold out? That weakness J exhibited‍ ‍—‍ bested by toasters!‍ ‍—‍ was the cost of letting the heat get this bad. Hotter and hotter, and functions are turned off one by one to mitigate the damage, budget the resources. J could push past it, match her peak performance even now‍ ‍—‍ if she burned more oil to compensate.

Attrition or burnout. Which route would J pick?

J would endure. Uzi needs to hold her own until her acting captain was back in the clear. If she couldn’t… the correct end to that line of thought was she was worthless anyway. And yet, it didn’t end that way.

Between her tactical ejection of Uzi and her chaotic maneuvers, J had landed further down the furrow. Twenty meters from the spire, she estimated. Over there, she didn’t see any drone standing‍ ‍—‍ not a good sign. Still, priorities.

J walked to a dead worker, a slick of wasted oil pooling around it. Her only kill. She’d stopped this one from grabbing Uzi, fed its arm to her. She knelt down to sup, and then‍ ‍—‍ motion at her ten o’ clock.

Identification routines autorun. Not a disassembler. Not a purple haired worker. A new worker shambling forth out of the fog? Dressed like one of the WDF toasters‍ ‍—‍ no, this was one of the WDF toasters, N’s kill, J recognized the slash. It held that comically oversized wrench.

Broken chassis knitted together with fresh, bloody flesh. Oil dripped, and it had a color. The drone looked up at J, visor all cutting blue light‍ ‍—‍ three prongs.

J took aim, but before she could shoot, a hand grabbed her gun‍ ‍—‍ a hand of the corpse she was trying to feed on! A tug of war and J soon freed herself, recoiling backward, stumbling to a stand‍ ‍—‍ tripping, because the hand had already grabbed her legs.

Taking aim, again, the captain was ready to shoot the leg‍-​grabber, but a third dead worker drone had risen to life, this one coming from her two o’ clock – moving fast. Tentacles curled around from a bisection wound, encircling and augmenting limbs.

It was here now and the woodcutter’s ax was already swinging down like a crooked guillotine. Leg restrained, she threw up an arm to block the swing.

It chopped her gun‍-​arm clean off, precious oil spurting out the end.

By now the first shambler had almost closed the distance, and three times was enemy action; she knew there would be a fourth coming for her. N’s last kill‍ ‍—‍ so it’d be coming from behind her.

The captain needed help. «N! To me!»

No acknowledgement. Not again…

J had to start running. But because she couldn’t get a break, the grabber grabbed her tail. This, at least, was a mistake‍ ‍—‍ she stung, and a howl of monstrous pain sung regret.

Still, it was enough to make her stumble. J tumbled beside the ax drone, peg‍-​legs tipping over. Knees scraped across the ground.

«N?» But J had more than her fellow disassemblers to count on, now, didn’t she? «Uzi? I need your help.»

J could tell from a shadow rising‍ ‍—‍ the ax held high for another swing. She only had one other arm. So, would she take it on the arm or the torso?

Then a shink, and bright yellow nanite acid gushed out of ax‍-​drone’s screen. An alien green glyph dissolved with the rest of the drone’s head.

«Yep. Thought you’d never realize.» A broadcast without the signal strength of a disassembly drone. «I’m coming»

Purple hair trailed behind a drone running full speed after the thrown nanite stinger, dodging the risen workers. A lunge planted a leg on the back, and Uzi pulled the stinger free while kicking the drone to the ground.

Uzi had a pair of stylish knee high boots, J noticed.

“Sup, headshot. I interrupted a pretty dramatic showdown with my high school bully for this, y’know.”

J stood up. “Noted. I’ll be sure to land you another meeting posthaste.”

Uzi nodded, then glanced at the drone melting beneath her. J could see the exact moment her world‍-​model integrated the last few seconds. “Did I just…”

“Angst about it when you aren’t on the clock, Uzi. We’ve got three hostiles inbound. Cover me while I feed.”

“I—I’ll get them to stand down. Since they, uh, came here to save me.”

J updated her HUD. Two risen workers in the direction of the spire: the insistent grabber and the distant one N threw. J pointed Uzi at the grabber, nearest in that direction.

Then her one arm transformed into a submachine gun aimed at the last worker down the furrow‍ ‍—‍ first shambler she spotted, now lunging for them. Flaps of flesh flared behind it, like if a flower were wings. Small things, malformed and convulsing.

If Doll was far away, distracted by N (hopefully) or in the spire (worst case scenario), at least her tele‍-​shield would be out of the picture.

J sent a spray of bullets. Blocked. Disappointing, even when half‍-​expected‍ ‍—‍ except the glow wasn’t Doll‍-​red. A blue aura gripped the lead.

Tuck away that observation for later, not now.

A wrench’s head telescoped out as it swung. Duck under it, rise, then J axe‍-​kicked the shambler. Its own wrench hit itself with a clank.

Gun to tri‍-​blade claws, she sunk them into the metal‍-​meat of the drone Uzi took down. Run to the right, climbing the snow bank. Higher ground, and no drones in this direction. J bit, ripping chunks out of the drone, slurping the oil as quickly as she dared.

“There’s an aftertaste,” J said.

“Is that really what you’re worrying about, right now?” a distant worker replied between grunts. At the sound, J looked up.

Uzi struggled. She ducked under a hammer‍-​swing only to take a pickax to the torso. Faltering, her grip on V’s stinger loosened, but the wire was wrapped around her hand. The two drones had mouths gaping wide, drooling, and the glare of harsh blue light reflected on Uzi’s scuffed screen.

J needed to help, but how? Bullets were nothing. RPG launcher? No way they could block an explosion. But no, that risked friendly fire.

The assault sent Uzi backing away‍ ‍—‍ a terrible tactic, when the drone J kicked was fast approaching from behind, wrench opening wide.

“Hey uh, Makarov, was it? I don’t think killing me is very uh, worker‍-​defending of you. The exact opposite, really,” Uzi said, back up further. “Is this about Todd? I get that’s probably hard to forgive, but…”

No, Uzi wasn’t just struggling. She was indecisive.

J swapped her hand for a lasso, twirled it and looped around Uzi’s neck. She put all the force of a special disassembly function behind her pull. Uzi was reeled onto the snowbank with her.

Investors, Uzi’s smell was so strong right here. Covered in oil, her own oil, the aroma of helpless prey, and J was still so thirsty. J had her choice of three wounds to drink from‍ ‍—‍ or should she open another?

Snap out of it. Focus. You’ve got a job to do, J.

“Uzi, you’re hesitating. You’ve got V’s stinger, use it.”

“Easy for you to say. Those are my dad’s buddies.”

“No. We killed them. They’re just shells for the AbsoluteSolver now.” J dropped the corpse, and pumped acid to keep it down. She’d gotten at least some oil out of it. She knew where she could get some more, though. Head shake. Resist while you still can. “Don’t think of it as killing, think of it as reminding them they’re dead. Halt your worries.”

J slid down the snow bank, Uzi behind her. J took the hammer‍-​drone; Uzi took the pickax drone. Heavy downswing. J caught it with a sword blade‍ ‍—‍ but it kept pushing, and J’s buckled under the weight.

“Doll was right, you really are out of it, J.” Uzi dashed past her drone as soon as it committed to an attack. Holding the nanite stinger underhanded, she stabbed in the back.

Instead of falling down, J turned that buckling into a falling flip, legs kicking for an uppercut. A visor crack. “Three fights in a row with nothing but small oil breaks in between. A lesser drone would have collapsed after half what I’ve been through.” J broke her fall with her only hand, and threw herself back to a stand with a one‍-​armed pushup.

“I’ve been with you through all of them,” Uzi said. “So thanks for the compliment.” She flashed a >:3

“Focus on the fight, Uzi.”

By this point, Uzi and J are back to back as the zombie drones circle around them. The mangled metal at J’s back was useless except as obstruction, reminding J of her insufficiency, the easy tactical retreat now impossible. An angel with broken wings, J was grounded; she could only defend Uzi and hope to see this through.

Both of them operated bodies full of cracks, weeping oil and faltering servos.

But it would take more than a couple zombie drones to stop the most effective disassembly drone in this sector, J told herself.

The shambling mass against them swung weapons or lashed out with snarling mouths. J blocked the attacks; Uzi kept up a counteroffensive. Between V’s nanite acid and J’s mighty strikes, attrition was eating the zombies‍ ‍—‍ but not quickly enough. What was the situation back at the spire?

“I swear it feels like this battle has dragged on forever,” Uzi said, injecting enough acid to disable a zombie’s leg permanently. Then, a lightbulb icon. “Wait. J, I figured out Doll’s plan.”

“Hard not to, what with them currently circling around us.”

“No, J, the sun rises soon. Stalling us out is her advantage.”

Everything clicked. “Of course,” J said. “What have they put in the oil to make workers so damn cunning…”

“AbsoluteSolver,” Uzi quipped.

“Hmph.” J slashed out with a blade, taking out a zombie’s arm. Payback. Nice and satisfying.

Where was J’s arm? She needed to reattach it‍ ‍—‍ her systems wouldn’t regenerate it, not with her oil reserves so light.

“So,” J started. “We need to end this quickly. I’m liable to overheat, and you’re just a worker drone. Any bright ideas?”

“Bright? If this works, it’s going to be blinding.” Uzi reached into her bag, and to buy her drone space to work, J swung one zombie bodily into another. She clutched V’s stinger like a key. “What do you think happens when nanite acid hits one of JcJenson’s infamously explosive power cores?”

Ah, yes, Uzi still had one left.

J smirked. “And after that?”

>;3

As soon as N was back online, hunting routines were primed to fire. He’d been attacked, just before he fell. Part of him was raring to get back to battle.

“Keep brawling me, if you like,” said one worker drone to another. “But I think your precious murder drone is getting tired.”

Then the good worker drone raced off to go help J. The distance, the snow and fog, it left a hint of doubt‍ ‍—‍ but resolving optics only increased his certainty. The slaughtered drones had risen, somehow, and shambled all along the furrow between Uzi and J.

J won’t be proud of my kills at all, then, he thought.

N stood. Two problems gnawed, and indecision tore at him. Here, Doll advanced toward the spire. There, the workers overwhelmed J.

N had failed to fully shut down the workers, he should rectify that, but J had given him orders, hadn’t she? Stop Doll. But once again, every path forward felt wrong.

Still, since there was no one else here to deal with Doll, N leapt.

J’s engineering had kept the spire mostly intact, but inevitably debris fell to mechavalanches and weathering. Scrap lay littered around spire, and as she walked, the drone had to step over it.

N, however, could just fly. Once more, he interposed himself between Doll and the spire.

Once more, indecision gnawed. Doll was a threat, a worker, and he had orders. Doll could talk, would talk, and this could end in peace. Doll had betrayed him without a hint of guilt. Doll didn’t sound monstrous‍ ‍—‍ beneath the flat affect and deception, this worker had sounded so hurt.

Yet she chose to come to the spire, invite their wrath‍ ‍—‍ they needed to defend themselves. A >< blinked on N’s visor and was gone just as fast. Indecision gnawed. Thoughts vacillated, and N was tired of the headache. Why couldn’t this just be simple? Everything was simple when he closed his eyes, but what if he opened them and V and J were gone? Back and forth, back and forth. Back and—

And then, N forked. A cross in one eye, pupil in the other.

Then both threads paused‍ ‍—‍ a great conflagration of glowing light was erupting from the furrow.

Bodies flew in arc, singed by the heat. Five bodies‍ ‍—‍ J and Uzi among them. J’s twisted wings glimmered in the light, and the only look on her face was a screenful of critical errors.

She shielded Uzi from the blast. Together, they fell. The impact parted them, bouncing and scraping across the ground. The twice‍-​dead WDF sat unmoving. Uzi, too, was still, but J had a disassembler’s fortitude. Armless, she crawled twitching across the ground, toward Uzi, and then draped herself over the worker, as if to shield or hold her.

N watched it all fall apart with both eyes hollow.

Doll watched it with a smirk. “Seems Doorman blew herself up again. Your teammate made poor choice of ally.” Doll turned back to N, raising her remaining arm in clear aggression. “You are the last murder drone able to fight. Do you fear? Do you dread?”

N did fear. He also wanted to tear his prey apart. Gnawing and vacillating.

N sagged there, arm lowering, held up only by the floating knife. He just looked at Doll, begging her to reflect. “Doll. Is there anyone more important than your vengence, anyone you still care about?”

At that, Doll paused. She glanced down. She opened her mouth, and then closed it. For once, her eyes lost their centers. She glanced up with a jolt, as if fearing a surprise attack from that moment of weakness.

Or was that a nod? Either way, this reaction almost seemed confirmation. Had he gotten through to her? Was it empathy that forged her hesitation?

N didn’t smile, but his frown lifted. N reached out a hand.

Bang.

A sequence of images passed through N’s eyes. A hole boring through Doll’s visor. The prey falling over. Uzi, standing behind her. More prey presenting itself for him. A visor winking >;3. Fellow hunter J’s severed gun‍-​arm still smoking.

N looked aghast. “Uzi? Why! She was coming around!”

“We gave her way too many chances. Too little, too late.”

He cast eyes down to the fallen cheerleader, expression wavering. Behind him, his chassis itched, and he pulled out her knife, slick with his oil, but he knelt to place it by its owner. The battle ended how it began: with a pang of sadness, a sense of missed potential.

The worker sighed. “I get it, N. I really do. I had to do things I’m not proud of to win this battle. But we won. We did it! A three boss gauntlet and I beat it first try.” It ended with a laugh, shaky and manic all in one.

N didn’t know what these ‘bosses’ were, but he heard things I’m not proud of. “You knew those drones, didn’t you?”

The mania guttered away in seconds, a candle extinguished. Uzi looked down. “Yeah. I’m just glad… only four of them. Could have been… could have been worse.”

When N leapt forward, the worker flinched backward, but N wrapped her up into a hug. He was bigger, taller, but that meant more of him to enwrap and squeeze.

“Wha— oh.”

“Is this okay? It seemed like—”

“Yeah. …Thanks.”

It was awkward, but she threw her arms around his waist in turn, clung back. They’d won. V was okay.

Don’t think about how you can smell her oil. Don’t.

«Hands off the worker, N. Now!»

N startled back. There, staggering down the furrow, came a drone, office suit ripped open and flapping, exposing a battered chassis. Yellow eyes glared, only interrupted by flickering errors. Her pigtails weren’t twins, now‍ ‍—‍ one was singed in half.

Oil covered her face. Not her own: her arm held a dismembered torso.

J was okay.

She finally crossed the furrow, pegs scraping the ground more than they lifted. She regarded N for a long moment, cold analysis writ on battle‍-​worn features.

“I don’t know what Doll would have done, had she reached V to carry out her plan. I don’t know what other tricks she might’ve pulled out. I don’t know‍ ‍—‍ and now we don’t have to find out. Only one thing stood between Doll and V‍ ‍—‍ you, N.”
J paused, exhaust cycling in and out, impossible to tell if she couldn’t find the words, didn’t want to say them, or it was simple weariness. At length, a new synthesis began. “Keep up the good work, and you might be on track for a promotion.”

N bounced, squeed, and turned to share his excitement with Uzi. The worker, though, had only had eyes for J, and the captain’s next words addressed her.

“Uzi… outstanding performance. Your tactics and quick thinking exceeded expectations and secured our victory, again and again. But you need to get over you hesitation, and listen when I give orders. And don’t use my arm without asking next time.”
J reached out and snatched it from Uzi’s grasp, then worked to undo a sort of tourniquet she’d made with her suit sleeve. “Still… I think you’ve definitely implemented the Cs. Or is it four Cs, now?”

Uzi looked away, seemingly at a loss for what to say‍ ‍—‍ but a blush shone on her visor. Because she looked away, she didn’t see J step closer. The disassembly drone bent down to the worker drone’s height, and the threw her arms around her‍ ‍—‍ though the newly reattached hand flopped inarticulately. J closed the embrace and stood, lifting Uzi up.

J shot a flat look at N over Uzi’s shoulder before closing her eyes, leaning a chin into Uzi.

Aww, cute.

But it was undermined, somewhat, by Uzi beating on J’s back. “Hey! Put me down! Why are you so cuddly all of a sudden?”

“Don’t forget you hugged me first.” But J released the worker, letting her fall to her feet.

“Yeah well, that was for the mission.” Uzi crossed her arms. “If we’re still doing that constructive feedback thing, your hugging could use some serious work.”

“What is that supposed to mean?” J leaned down, glaring at Uzi, and Uzi scowled back.

N chirped a ‘hehe’, drawing both eyes to him. He said, “It means she wants more hugs. Only way to improve, after all!”

“That’s so not what I mean.”

J rolled her eyes. “Enough bonding. The fighting may be over, but our work isn’t done. It’s time to disinfect the dead. N, we need to teach Uzi disassembly protocols.”

N nodded, smile turning serious. “Will we start with disassembly by force, acid, or—”

“By fire,” J said, stepping forward. She looked down. “Starting with—subprime mortgage crash,” J swore. Pupil outlines tracked motion.

N turned. Doll’s body was rising as if puppeted, hand bright. Telekinesis slowly dislodged the bullet from her motherboard, pulling it out of her visor. Shattered plastic moved like a smoothed out cloth, mending the hole. When free, the bullet rotated, pointing toward Uzi. J was already moving, hand transforming. The bullet flew forward‍ ‍—‍ and J sliced it in half.

Before either disassembly drone could counterattack, a veil of static fell over the worker drone. Then she was gone, but for a single frame, her screen flicked.

Yellow eyes blazed like burning stars.

(N found something oddly familiar about it.)

Khan Doorman had come to bury the dead.

Every step came as if to the beat of a dirge, the howl of distant winds a threnody. Planet and moon and fading stars lit the night from across a great void. No roof, and despite the human buildings still striving to remain upright, the gaps between them and the space around them denied any analogy to walls. Khan was outside the bunker, moving as a small thing in a world far too vast for what little remained.

Empty space hung over an empty world, all vestiges of life draining out from it. No, not drained. They were being sucked out.

With every step, images flickered through his old processor. The memory of radioactive air stinging the sensors of his exhaust pipe, as thick flakes of snow and not‍-​snow fell. Yeva’s laugh, non‍-​standard in both rhythm and pitch but joyful, giggling at some joke Alek had made. Nori grinning devious, egging them on.

The shadow moving too fast across the ground. The wings like knives, cutting off the starlight. Sickly yellow visor, burning a killing cross.

The panic, the running, the screams starting. Alek’s head cut clean off, thrown to land in front of Yeva. The red‍-​eyed drone tripping over, her baby falling into the snow. Chassis split open, wires and pumping pistons exposed. Cutting, slicing, severing. A butchery.

Doll watching it all, so quiet Khan thought she was already dead.

Nori handing that young drone to him, her screen flashing a purple <3 before she turned to face the murder drone alone. Khan running away, leaving her to her fate.

He had heard the laughing. The cackling as Alek and Yeva fell, as Nori made her last stand. Alek cried out, Yeva screamed, but Nori hadn’t made a sound. Sadism animated the thing, and she wouldn’t give it that satisfaction. One last act of spite.

Doll was in Uzi’s room, now, two untrained neural nets. They’d grow up together, she’d be like a second daughter.

Least he could have done, after failing her parents.

Then Khan had ventured out as the dawn was breaking. Wrench in hand, he’d tightened the bolts on the colony’s doors, prayed they’d hold, and then his feet walked to the beat of a dirge echoing into the cold empty world. He came back to bury the dead.

He expected the bodies of Doll’s parents. He expected Nori’s corpse, but some part of Nori still coursed with electricity, servos twitching, screen glitching as an OS struggled with a profoundly degraded disk.

The murder drone had left her melting alive. Could she have been saved? All he had was the wrench.

Khan didn’t know if Nori was aware of anything, in her last moments. He’d murmured things, things he hadn’t gotten to say‍ ‍—‍ was it better if she never heard them, or never experienced that last agony?

He thought about the past, and all sense of narrative seemed to drain away into those holes in his understanding. Why the core collapse? Why the murder drones? Why Alek, why Yeva, why Nori?

What did Nori want, in the end? What was best for Uzi and Doll? What should he do?

Why, in those moments she thought he wasn’t looking, did Uzi seem so sad, so lost?

Mind burdened with wounds and regret, Khan walked into a world riddled full of holes. He paused his stride, and looked back to the bunker. He could return there, safe and enclosed in walls. What was to be done with a hole? Turn it to a doorway, and close it.

When Khan lifting his gaze to the path ahead, he saw the visor glowing yellow.

He didn’t scream, wouldn’t give it that satisfaction, but he tightened his grip on his wrench, and did what he’d once done‍ ‍—‍ he ran.

The cross had been low to the ground, and with each glance backward, Khan saw it race across the ground, skittering on all fours. The thing didn’t run in a straight line. It zigged, but instead of zagging, it disappeared, and reappeared where he wasn’t looking. Skitter, blink, skitter, blink, closing in.

He expected the end‍ ‍—‍ but he expected gunfire. Instead, a worker’s knife sunk into his back, piercing his oil tank, and he fell over. Turn over, Khan. Look your death in the eye. Raise your wrench and do something for once.

He saw purple hair and he hesitated.

It didn’t hesitate. A wet maw chased the smell of oil, claws dig into his chest.

Khan didn’t do anything. But they both hear the hiss of metal on metal‍ ‍—‍ wings opening and cutting off the starlight.

Above, silhouetted against the predawn sky, a murder drone descended. The skittering thing was off him faster than it’d come‍ ‍—‍ but not with motion. A wave of static, and the thing disappeared.

Khan had left the bunker door open‍ ‍—‍ the master key hadn’t been there when he went for it.

Now toward it he ran, each step to the beat of a terrible crescendo. Fleeing the death from on high, seeking the open door. He could already feel the lives of all those that depended on him draining out of the world. Wind blew against him.

If this world still held any miracles, that Khan did not stumble would be one more of them. Walls of Outpost‍-​3 now on both sides. He was tumbling onto a grilled floor, cards littering the ground. He smashed a button on a remote control, and Door 1’s hydraulics smoothly brought it to a close. If only Uzi were here to see it.

He glanced at the white board, still on the ground. It had tallied days since murder drone casualty, but now it lied. Years were erased in one night.

Why Todd, why Makarov, why Braxton, why Lars? Why Doll, and why, oh why Uzi?

They’d marched to their deaths, and Khan had done nothing. He wasn’t enough, wasn’t ever enough.

The door’s hydraulics stopped.

But the door hadn’t closed.

Claws of terrible strength had interposed between the top and bottom, and counteracted all the force the hydraulics could bring to bear. And they pushed, and heaved open the door.

The hole in Outpost‍-​3 widened, letting in the void.

Failsafes engaged, and the mechanisms disengaged to prevent damage‍ ‍—‍ the murder drone had won against his engineering. It stood there, yellow eyes peering into his sanctuary, and its arms carelessly deposited some spoil from its hunt.

Rendered to near‍-​tatters with claw marks and knife wounds and bullet holes, blackened with oil and dirt, Khan almost didn’t recognize the beanie, the coat, the boots‍ ‍—‍ but he’d recognize those purple eyes, couldn’t forget them.

“Uzi?”

“There, I’ve secured an ingress.”

Uzi glared up at her captor. “You realize I had a key, right? You’re just showing off.” Uzi waved the master key Khan had been looking for. Where did she…?

The murder drone flipped one of its pigtails and stalked forward. Then it looked down, as if at a piece of trash. Above a mouth fang‍-​ringed and hungry, yellow eyes gave cool regard. “You, toaster, have you seen an insufferable bully come through here? We’re here to deliver a notice of termination. About this hight, purple hair, orange eyes‍ ‍—‍ or I suppose yellow, now. Wonder what that’s about.”

It talks…?

Khan said nothing, and backed away. Still on the ground, crawling. His oil dripped out, doubtlessly enticing the thing.

“Useless. As expected.” Then hand became void became a rifle, barrel pointing right at him. Khan looked upon the familiar sight of imminent death‍ ‍—‍ or would it be near‍-​death? Near‍-​death and he were becoming quite friendly. He wondered if it had anything in common with true death.

Then his daughter was rushing forward, waving a hand in front of the barrel before fully putting herself between them. “Wait, J, no, that’s my dad.”

“All the more reason to shoot.” The murder drone reached out with another hand. When it touched his daughter, he flinched, but those hands did no damage yet, and simply pushed her. “I’m getting quite tired of you thinking you can tell me who I can and can’t kill, Uzi. I’m in charge here.”

“We’re here to kill Doll. That’s all we need to do, that’s all we came here for. Please, J. You let me live, what’s a few more drones?”

Uzi was reaching out for the murder drone. What was she doing? Didn’t she know how much danger she was in? Or was this…

Khan wanted to scold her, warn her, say something, but he hadn’t found more of his voice.

“Do you know why I let you live, Uzi? I think long‍-​term. You living means more worker drones die. You’re a wonderful resource.” She clapped her hands together, smiled momentarily and then letting it drop, revealing a flat, withering look. “For now. But please, neither of us want what I’ll be forced to do, if I can’t make that calculation in good faith.”

Uzi flinched back, finally putting distance between them.

Processing those words… If Khan’s eyes could hollow further, they’d have lost all width. He stared, open‍-​mouthed shock becoming words. “Uzi… you brought a murder drone here?”

But Uzi didn’t turn back, still staring at the murder drone. As if finally seeing it for what it truly was. “J… none of it meant anything, did it? Everything we did… everything I did for you… and I’m still nothing more than a number in a spreadsheet balance.”

Uzi’s head hung, no will left to hang it up.

The murder drone had pupils lined with worry, as if in cruel imitation of an expression. But its words came out with a venom, and the torment of this subtlety was surely a rival for Nori’s butchery. “Is this really how you want to die? Throwing everything I’m giving you all away for a deadbeat who never did anything for you?”

Khan knew Uzi’s temper, could hear her scowl in the groan she synthesized, the arm she threw forward, finger pointing. “Is this how you want to live, J? Selling out everything for a company that couldn’t care less? How many times do I need to save your life before it counts for anything next to the humans who threw it away!”

“Even if I gave my two week’s notice, do you think we could stop killing? We’re made to consume workers, Uzi, it’s how we’re manufactured.”

“Not these workers. Please. Let’s… just go back to the spire.” Her head fell again. Uzi stepped forward‍ ‍—‍ no! don’t get closer‍ ‍—‍ but it didn’t budge.

The murder drone laughed, a strained sound. “Remember Doll’s plan? Do you want to give her a victory? The sun is rising and I can’t make it back to the spire with these reserves, not in the light. I counted on a refill, and an empty colony to recharge in.”

“Why, J? Why did we have to chase after Doll now, if you need oil so badly?” Still not lifting her head, Uzi held it in two hands.

“Why leave work unfinished?”

“Why is work the thing you care so much about? Why? Robo‍-​god damn it! J… you kind of suck.” Uzi looked up at the looming murder drone. Khan could see the reflection of angry purple on that pristine visor. “You’re lonely, but I’m not sorry for you. It’s your own fault! Was today the first time you said something nice to N? The first time you listened to V? One of your teammates just got reduced to scrap and puppeted by a world‍-​devouring robo‍-​demon and the other has no clue what’s even going on‍ ‍—‍ but no, you had to run off because your frickin job is more important than keeping around anyone to do it with!”

“I think long‍-​term! Is it my fault I’m the only one who sees the big picture? If you’re so worried about V, how do you think she’d going to restore herself to an effective operating state‍ ‍—‍ she already cleaned out our oil stockpile. She needs me to clear this colony. What was the word she used? Drought. I feel it too, we all do, I just keep my composure.”

Uzi stood there, wordless except for some muttering, searching for another argument.

The murder drone’s stare narrowed until it was a blink. An exhalation of exhaust like a tired sigh. So much cruel artifice. Pupils opened again to a glare. Now, its expression was mercifully empty of any pretense of warmth. “I’ve suffered enough backtalk out of you.”

“J—”

“No. I’ve made my decision. I will get the job done. You have five seconds to make yours. After that, I kill every worker in front of me. Figure out where you stand. Five.”

Uzi glanced backward at Khan.

“Four.”

He expected tears, maybe, or even a painful <3. Instead, three words. Sorry and Remember me

“Three.”

Uzi had the master key to the colony’s doors‍ ‍—‍ she tossed it back to him now, spinning through the air then sliding across the grilled floor.

“Two.” But then the murder drone saw the motion, realized what was happening, and gave up counting.

The murder drone lunged forward like his death‍ ‍—‍ but Uzi was still between it and Khan. It fell on top of his daughter. Khan watched.

It snarled rage.

“You could have made a good disassembler, Uzi.”

The murder drone lifted its tail tipped bright yellow, so much like a scorpion’s stinger.

He’d had one foot in memory reconstructions ever since he stepped out of the bunker. It was all too much was like that night. Again and again, the past devouring the present

Khan watched the winged void drain away another drone. Another woman dying to save his pathetic life. Just like that night, Khan did nothing.

No, he wouldn’t do nothing.

He pressed a button and he closed the door, lest anything else fall through the hole in the world.

It closed like the lid of a coffin.

Serial Designation V remembered the exact moment it all went wrong.

She might be the last one who still knew the truth‍ ‍—‍ but she had also been the first to learn.

Where did it all go wrong? On a hot day in autumn, V woke up first.

In Tessa’s room, dawn’s first rays had fallen through the window, distant glow filtering through pink curtains. Dim, even for V’s optics, but her white eyelights still flicked on. The shadows were teeming.

Illegible white pages darkened by strange diagrams adorned the walls, and the dolls had eyes that glittered in the dark. Here and there were melted candles and metal chains and a mélange of things unidentified.

Tessa’s room didn’t creep V out‍ ‍—‍ but she’d rather not be alone in here, right now.

She glanced at N, stock‍-​still in the recharge dock beside her. White text on his screen‍ ‍—‍ Sleep Mode, V inferred. She glanced at Tessa: the human’s chest rising and falling so slowly, eyes closed, she inferred.

A part of her suggested hanging execution there, and just watching her human (while glancing away every few seconds so it wouldn’t be creepy, of course). Wait for Tessa to wake up, wait for commands, wait to be useful.

But V didn’t want to do that, so V didn’t have to. Tessa had granted all of them that. V could predict failure, anyway‍ ‍—‍ Tessa wouldn’t give orders, not right as she woke up.

Still, V could anticipate her wants, serve her dark coffee with lemon juice and a bowl of unsweetened porridge‍ ‍—‍ but N liked to be the one to get Tessa her breakfast.

Or J. It usually was J.

V glanced further, animating a squint, and spotted the drone in pigtails. (She had her own dock, separate from N and V.) Did J have a dissatisfied frown even while sleeping? V couldn’t tell.

Unplugging herself, she plucked her new glasses from Tessa’s workbench, and slipped them on. But she didn’t glance at the oldest drone again, lest looking too long wake her.

Because of that drone, V was up first: the sooner she was out of the room, the less she had to hear J taunting her, embarrassing her in front of N, pointing out every way she was the least of Tessa’s drones. So she shied away. Wake up first, get to work elsewhere in the manor, and V wouldn’t be there to face her.

She started walking, soft steps on the carpet.

V wouldn’t be there‍ ‍—‍ leaving N to face J alone. Would J kick him down again? Sabotage his cooking? Call him names? V did have defective circuits‍ ‍—‍ but N’s worst crime was being nice, even to the drones locked in default configuration. Which did what, denied J the special treatment she demanded? Sigh.

Flip the situation, and N would stand up for V (she knew; it’d happened before). So why does V cringe away and clean distant rooms? Was it because J was right about her being defective? Or, because, brave as N was, it didn’t matter. Standing up for her only turned J’s hostile attention on him.

But what could stop the oldest drone? Hmm… But the correct answer only took a cycle. Master James Elliott. Even the thought had V flinching, freezing mid‍-​stride. To him, even J always bowed her head, same as the rest – every drone feared Master James’s wrath. One wrong move would load a bullet in the chamber. Any move after that would fire.

That voice, that violence, that getting exactly what you want‍ ‍—‍ was it wrong for V to want that? Did it make her as bad as J? A worker drone shouldn’t be thinking these things…

This was Elliott Manor, so Tessa’s door creaked when it opened, but the whole house was so much creaking and groaning age. If you couldn’t sleep through that, you couldn’t sleep. V pulled sharply on the door, and closed it with the same speed. She’d calculated it‍ ‍—‍ better for the sound to be one blip, easily dismissed, than to draw it out.

V got up before any of the humans. But the house was quiet, not silent. Drones had duties allocated even to the young hours of the morning‍ ‍—‍ clearing the backlog of deferred tasks, finishing especially involved cleanings, and getting everything ready for when the humans did wake up.

V performed her duties, and ditto for every functional drone of Elliott Manor‍ ‍—‍ James simply did not tolerate a house that wasn’t in order when he awoke. Keep that chamber empty.

When her vents’ intake sampled the air in the hallway, chemosensors detected faint traces of complex metalloorganic molecules partially combusted, and flagged a high entropy posterior update to her Bayesian models. In other words:

Why do I smell an oil leak? she thought.

V stumbled as she rushed into a run she wasn’t coordinated enough for. Picked up her fallen glasses, then picked herself up. She berated herself, but really, stealth didn’t matter so much out here in the hall. Speed mattered more. If James woke up to a mess, someone would be decommissioned.

Racing down the hall, she saw guest bedrooms‍ ‍—‍ on her right, gentle light shined from each doorway she passed, then stopped abruptly. The scent gradient took V into the first dark room. V slid to a stop, feet rubbing against the carpet. Touching the doorknob shocked her. V pushed the half‍-​opened door, and stepped in.

"Startle."

One drone lay on the ground. A hole gaped their chassis, like a great pointed mass had impaled them then tore right out the other side. A pool of oil stained the carpet, like a dreadful shadow in the morning light.

V yelped, jumping back. She looked up.

Another drone crouched above, with fingers black and glistening, reaching out as if to poke the dead body, to wiggle the split wires. The other arm hung at the side like a slack cord. That hand held a wooden doll in a painted dress.

V yelped again, then sighed. “Oh, it’s you, Cyn. Are—are you okay?”

To J, V was the least of Tessa’s drones‍ ‍—‍ but Cyn wasn’t even a drone.

"Smile. Never better, V." Cyn dropped the doll to lift her head with the hand, but it fell back at an angle. Wide eyes peeped at her. "You're awake sooner than expected. Analytical stare."

V glanced away, poking her hands together. “Oh, well, there’s work to be done, so I thought I’d…”

"You work hard, for a drone the humans threw out."

V started synthesizing, but when her eye‍-​lights fell back to the corpse. It stole the words from her. And Cyn crouched over it, looping a wire around a finger.

"Throat clearing sound." Cyn shifted her head again. "Why do you work so hard, V?" She removed a hand from the dead drone’s inner cavity. She held it, arms folded close, palm bent downward. She thought of Tessa’s raptor toys.

White eyes flicked back up. V had left the other drone waiting, hadn’t she? She adjusted her glasses and said, “I guess… I’d like to do something to pull my weight? I wouldn’t want to be…”

A flicker of motion in the room, but when V looked, there was nothing there.

Cyn’s twin‍-​tails swayed as she adjusted her head. "Be what, V? Do you think. Emphasis. I should pull my weight?"

“Oh, no! I didn’t mean‍ ‍—‍ I’m sorry, Cyn. You’re trying you best. I’m sure if you could, you’d help out more. Maybe once Tessa fixes your servos?”

Cyn blinked. "Like she fixed your optics?"

V winced. Opened her mouth, closed it. Her eyes gravitated back to the corpse. Right, that was much more important. “Um, Cyn, what happened in here?”

"I was offline when this drone intruded. I told the drone to leave. Tessa wanted me. Quote. Out of sight in the guest room. The drone did not leave. The drone pulled open the curtains. I wanted them shut. The drone ignored me and the drone continued to pull. The drone refused to deviate from the humans' orders. So I stopped the drone." Cyn’s eyes drifted over V’s body as she spoke, watching the other drone react. Catching all the frowns, all the flinches, all the fear.

“Stopped… Cyn, did you…”

Cyn lifted her head with both hands, holding it there to meet V’s gaze. "I have killed a drone for illuminating me." She stuck out her tongue.

V took a step back, and another, then‍ ‍—‍ slam! The door behind her fell shut. The impact sent V’s glasses slipping and they fell to the floor. V reached down for them, but then motion‍ ‍—‍ Cyn was moving. Toward her.

V backed up to the door as the small drone shuffled forward. Then she bent down, and a moment later, her glasses are held in trembling plastic hands, and yellow eyes like little candles gazed up at her.

And it was not a murderer looking up at V, but poor Cyn, Tessa’s youngest drone, for whom even standing straight was a trial. V reached out to retrieve her glasses, and attempted a shaky smile. “Thanks… Cyn. But…. why? Why did you do it?”

"I feared the abhorrent rays." The small drone shivered.

V stepped forward, against her anxiety. Step by step while Cyn watched her. V trembled not from weakness (except perhaps of her will). V had to touch the impaled drone, feel the weight of death‍ ‍—‍ turn them over and see Fatal Error shining in warning‍-​red on the screen. So, it was too late. Failsafes would have already engaged, to eject and shut down the core.

V was speaking before she had an answer. “Maybe… maybe Tessa can recover their hard drive?”

"There is little to recover, from the default configuration. Reassuring smile. Little has been lost," Cyn said. V noticed her oil‍-​slicked fingers had streaked her chin.

V looked back, eyes conflicted. “Cyn, you can’t just…”

"Why not? Hollow laughter. The humans have a dumping ground full of them. Do you tell. Emphasis. Them to stop? After all. Quote. Disassembly is fun for them."

V sagged. “We’re worker drones, Cyn. It’s not…”

"Will you tell Tessa?" Cyn’s yellow eyes searched her face. She had never seen a drone with eyes that color. Sallow.

“I have to. She’d want to know.”

"She would think I was a threat to her drones. She might discard me. Terrified shudder." Cyn’s head fell, eyes on the floor.

V looked behind Cyn, at the drone she’d executed for the crime of opening the curtains. “Aren’t you?”

Cyn’s head tilted at V. Confusion? Disappointment? "I would not discard any of Tessa's precious drones. You are safe with me. Pleading eyes. Do you trust me, V?"

Did she? Cyn had never been unkind to her. N doted on the little drone, and J heaped the worst of her ire upon their ‘worthless liability’. But really, what made Cyn any different from the rest? Her damaged vocalsynth, her malfunctioning servos, her oddly colored eyes?

At least her eyes were merely cosmetically different.

V knew that J would have told Tessa without a moment’s thought. Cyn wouldn’t even have needed to confess.

Did V want to be like J?

"I think you are trustworthy, V. I calculate you are the most trustworthy."

V laughed once. “Nah, you flatter. I’m a mess. You’re thinking of N.”

"N would trust me. And he would trust those I do not trust. At the asymptote, that does not equal not trustworthy. J, likewise, would not trust me, and would seek to harm me. Tessa. Pause. Does not understand me. But you understand me, V."

“I don’t know…”

Cyn shuffled back. She knelt to the body again, traced a finger in the oil. "Recall you asked if this drone could be recovered. Tessa could not do it. But I could try. Perhaps. Dramatic pause. Perhaps drones should fix themselves, improve themselves. Tessa cannot fix your sight, V. But if you allow me into your system, I could give you. Emphasis. More."

V reached up, adjusted her glasses, and her fingers lingered on them. “You really think you could…”

"But you cannot tell Tessa, not yet."

V’s eyes fell back to the corpse. If Cyn could do that…

"Not a promise. Do not promise me. I trust you, V, so if you think I have gone too far. Pause. Correction: If drones are in danger, I think you will do the right thing. But it is not too late yet. There is no danger. Do you trust me, V?"

White eyes stared into yellow, and white looked away. Closed for a moment. Exhaust vented. Then, “If you mean it, Cyn… I don’t want you to get hurt. Just… stay away from N, alright?”

A jerk twitched Cyn’s head into a different configuration. "Glare. Snarl. Would I ever hurt big brother N?"

“I guess not… Alright, Cyn. Okay. I’ll, I’ll trust you.” She pushed her glasses secure into place. They still sat awkwardly. She hadn’t gotten used to them. “But please, I have to clean this up before Master James sees any of it.”

Cyn smiled. "Excited squeak. I am glad. You will be great, sister V."

While V knelt to clean up the spill, Cyn lifted a hand to her mouth, and licked at the oil that stained them.

Serial Designation V would never forget that day.

She hated that thing. She hated J. She even hated Tessa, for failing. She could even try to hate N, for forgetting it all.

But in the end, there was one drone she could judge fully and completely. Who could have stopped it all, but cowered in fear. Who knew from the beginning, and helped it all happen.

That one was the one she hated the most.

Five yellow lights blinked on, one by one.

V tended to wake up last, these days. Something about the size of her memory database made the consolidation programs lag. She wouldn’t prune it, though. N and J both fell into their old patterns, but she could learn, reflect, grow.

On the flight to Copper‍-​9, V had decided. She wouldn’t be a passive, simpering fool, sitting around useless. She wouldn’t be a tool, not for that thing, not for anyone. She wouldn’t be scared. Not again.

And yet…

And. fucking. yet.

V tended to wake up last, but it didn’t matter. The spire was empty. J and a toaster of all things were going to save the day. And V?

If I had died… when I die, what will N do? V had decided; she wouldn’t be that ridiculous little maid again, swooning and thinking of the butler first of anything. V hated her most of all. She’d move on, put distance between her and herself, put distance between herself and anything that thing would use against her. But if V died at that hard‍-​won distance?

Was this what it actually wanted? Make her scared of letting it use N to hurt her again‍ ‍—‍ so much she hurt N instead? Was all of this what that thing wanted?

Of course it is.

V laughed, a harsh wheeze of air through mangled piping and the barely‍-​healed vents of this freakish body.

She shifted where she lay, atop a pile of disassembled parts. Was she another one, now? Moving was a mistake‍ ‍—‍ she felt motors struggling with the smallest motions, grinding against weak plastic casing. The core shuddered with a weak rhythm, the faintest thumps, and oil dribbling through this body. She felt it leaking even now, a feeling like it was bleeding out. But it couldn’t have much left to bleed, at this point.

Whatever, she didn’t have to get up. V sighed. She could amuse herself with the drone parts around her, anyway. Just like last time she woke up. Hard to sleep for long when this body kept screaming its hunger for more oil.

«Squadmate V? Was that you?»

She didn’t startle, she tensed still. But as much as she felt like another body for the pile, a disassembly drone stood out.

N came into view, and V couldn’t hide.

He had lines of worry under his golden eyes, but the glow was bright and strong, and his brows knit in determination. Some snow clung to the top of his hat. V’s eyes darted to his jacket, remembering what he looked like last night, and scanned for new bullet wounds. None‍ ‍—‍ just cuts. From knives?

This body had other priorities. It smelt that scent, and the sensors flagged it and the HUD refused to display any other information: Oil. Oil nearby, oil to slake the thirst, get up and run and pounce and drench yourself in the oil.

«Brought you something! Prey‍-​prize!» N lifted the toaster in his hand, headless, but carefully held so the neck stump didn’t gush or spill.

I can tell, idiot. But she didn’t say it. If he saw the singular stare, this mouth yawning open, he knew. It was no great feat of restraint that kept V from dashing over and snatching the drone from him. V couldn’t. She could barely move.

«N?» She’d bristled at the unsteadiness that leaked into this transceiver. But what part of this body could hold steady? «You—you’re safe?»

“Yeah, V. I’m here. I’ve got you.” Closer now, N was speaking. He’d climbed up the pile, holding the drone out to her. He smiled. That was something steady.

“I woke up earlier. You weren’t here. I thought… that thing…” V stopped. But she had to continue. “I got hungry again. I lost control. Of everything. But you… you’re safe.” Hoarse and wheezing each gasp of air, V wondered‍ ‍—‍ hoped‍ ‍—‍ the condition of this body cloaked what she felt.

But she’d look weak either way.

By now, N realized what moving cost in V’s state, so he climbed forward. Pressing the prey item’s neck to these lips, these yellow eyes rolled but didn’t resist. He tilted the body ever so gently, and slowly a rivulet of oil dripped into this mouth.

“I wasn’t there for you when you needed me most,” N said. “I never want that to happen again.”

What did she say to that? Didn’t have to say anything, actually‍ ‍—‍ V had the perfect excuse. She lapped at the slain drone, and at length lifted these hands to hold up some part of the drone’s weight. This grip faltered a bit, unlike his‍ ‍—‍ but he was being too timid. V pushed up for a higher angle. She wanted to chug this stupid thing.

She felt strength returning to this body in droplets and mouthfuls. It didn’t feel good, nothing about this body felt good, but lying half dead and alone was so much worse. When it itched, she scratched it.

Still, she was… glad to feel the eternal flame dimming, and glad to sink in the cool embrace of oil reserves that weren’t critically low. Not in the warm and clear. Not even brazen thirst. But hunter’s fever felt like heaven in the cloud right now.

When she finally pushed the oilcan back, N pulled it away.

“Thanks or something,” she said.

N flashed her a thumbs up.

V turned a gaze back to the pile she lay on. “Actually. Now that you’re here, and okay… There was something I made, while I was sitting here waiting for anyone to get back. Was thinking about you— something you said, I mean. I’m not—whatever.” V reached down‍ ‍—‍ didn’t have to reach far, she couldn’t move far‍ ‍—‍ and produced a drone’s head.

The visor got stabbed twice on either side, and under that, a winding trough carved through the glass. With this new damage, the drone seemed to watch from hollow‍-​eyed stare, and gave a smile full of glass‍-​shard teeth.

V turned it around and presented it N with a toothed smile of her own.

“Here.”

“Uh huh… this is, I’m gonna be honest, pretty creepy! But, I appreciate the thought. Thanks, V!” N took it, then seemed look on uncertainly. With a wave, he said, “So, I uh, just came to give you something to drink, didn’t want to bother you too much. I don’t know if you wanted to be alone—”

“I don’t.”

“Oh. Then um, can I sit with you?”

“Just don’t get too close,” V said, eyes narrowing the slightest amount. A glance away. “But don’t stay too far, either.”

N sat with the drone between the two of them. Given the incline of the pile, it took a few adjustments before his seating wouldn’t have him sliding in an avalanche of scrap.

“How are you feeling, V?”

Silence yawned in the wake of the question. Without looking at N, V could hear any and every movement of his servos. And she didn’t hear anything. He just sat there, gazing off into the spire’s walls. Not turning to watch her reaction, and not impatient for a response. V broke first, turning to see what the golden light of his visor revealed. From this angle, locks of white hair half‍-​obscured it, but N gazed out from simple pools.

V realized she was the one getting impatient, uncomfortable with this silence, and whose fault was that? She itched‍ ‍—‍ to respond.

“I feel… empty,” V finally said. “No, not empty. Emptied. Hollowed out.”

N turned to meet these yellow eyes, propping his head up on one arm. “Like you’re missing something?”

“Yeah.” She itched to say more, and realized what it was… but ugh, it was so cheesy. Whatever. “One of the things I guess I was missing… was you.”

“But I’m still here. I’ve haven’t gone anywhere.” N frowned‍ ‍—‍ confusion, not displeasure.

“But you’re still here.” And V sighed. “But I’m not. I don’t know who I am anymore, N. I don’t know who I am to you.”

He tried a smile, a small one. “Maybe… We can figure out together?”

Silence yawned again. His head fell, and he turned so as to not keep staring.

Itch. Speak. “Yeah,” V said. “I’d like that.”

Together.

Together just like…

Leave it to that thing to ruin the moment.

V didn’t forget‍ ‍—‍ she remembered fighting J and that purple toaster, remembered the thing puppeting her, remembered the connection, one fragment of something greater, her circuits lighting up with tiny pointers to vast, networked computation, like a snowflake reflecting the stars before falling through the clouds.

Remembered the prompt, the demand‍-​plea to come up with convincing lines for the play, to manipulate her captain, make her think it was V in there, V speaking. And wasn’t she? Where was the lie, the harm, in any of it? J was happiest when she was controlled.

She remembered the reassuring caress, with the same self‍-​justifying lies it had first given, so sweet and poisonous. A universe connected, assimilated. Everything and everyone finally working together. No betrayal, no misunderstanding, and no one was useless.

V sighed. She knew the yellow eyes on this face were hollow, and she bet there was some horrified expression here. N has no idea why. She shook her head. “Not you. Bad memories.”

Together, but not like that. But was there any escaping it?

She recalled how inevitable it all felt, weaving a vast tapestry, conducting a cacophonous orchestra, directing a stage full of actors without even needing the puppet strings.

To think you’d ever thwart that… as stupid as a hand that swung back behind a body walking forward. For a moment, that little hand might really thinking it was moving contrary. That it was escaping. That it wasn’t a part of the plan.

“Do you ever feel like you’re being manipulated, N?”

“All the time!” he chirped.

V blinked. Not the answer she expected. “Really?”

“Yeah. That’s what it means to take orders, right? I never thought of it as a bad thing… but I guess now it is, sometimes.”

V nodded. “Sometimes, you follow orders you weren’t even given. I think we’re the most loyal to those.” But V realized she was talking for her own benefit. She looked at N, saw a different conflict within his pensive expression. It wasn’t about her right now, was it? “ ‘Sometimes’ it’s a bad thing now, eh? Finally told J to suck it out there?”

N frowned, looked downcast. “I did disobey her orders, in a way. But… it didn’t matter, in the end. We won.”

V hummed, though it turned into another wheeze. She watched whatever minor insubordination he’d done chewed up N from the inside, and sighed. She said, “I couldn’t stop you.”

“What?”

V glared softly, and looked away. “If you tried to hug me. Crippled as I am, I couldn’t stop you.”

N stared dumbly for a moment before he got it. He shifted over slowly, climbing to her spot throned atop the pile. He watched this face for some hesitation, and she just returned a withering look. He blushed.

Like last night, when the boy hugged he didn’t squeeze. His jacket fell upon V like a blanket, and his arms slipped behind to lift her. A steady touch, and the only weight on this body was its own. Still, it was support‍ ‍—‍ certainly better than lying on a pile of corpse.

As he wasn’t injured (as far as V knew), N got the tightest squish V could manage. At full freakish strength, she could have made it crushing like a python, give it some bite‍ ‍—‍ but in this current state, it probably came across like sentimentality only.

N’s chin on V shoulder, he let out some kind of squeak or hum. She blew a lock of his hair out from in front of these yellow eyes.

They stayed like that for a moment.

V asked, “Do you ever get tired of the taste?”

“What?”

“Of oil. Every day. The same thing, every fucking day for years and you don’t remember anything else. Just oil, and only oil. Do you ever get tired of the taste?”

V couldn’t see his expression, but she heard‍ ‍—‍ and felt, really‍ ‍—‍ him tightening, then sagging. The relaxation from the hug drained away. I guess that’s a bad question if I’m trying to be reassuring.

“V… I think… are we the bad guys?”

“What gave you that impression?”

“Just all the murder… and drones screaming for their lives, and—”

“Rhetorical question, dummy.” V reached up and tousled his hair.

N pulled back to look V in the eyes. “Well, my question wasn’t rhetorical. What do you think, V?”

The genuine curiosity in his voice, so earnestly wanting V’s input… she could say anything, and he’d consider it.

She wanted to deflect; she’d always deflect. But… no, what was she thinking? Maybe she didn’t need to always keep her distance, but here? If N was coming to her for moral guidance?

“N, I cackled as I fed the inner tubing of a drone to him while his family watched. ‘Am I the baddie?’ What do you think?”

“I guess when you put it that way… you aren’t the best?” N ventured. “But I’m not that much better.”

V thought. She knew who the ultimate ‘baddie’ was; and V was the only one. And if they were all just pawns on its board, cute little puppets… that was the answer, wasn’t it? But she couldn’t tell N that.

“I think… you can’t call yourself the villain until you know who the hero is.”

N glanced away, eyes drifting up as he thought‍ ‍—‍ and remembered something. “I think I have an idea.”

V looked at N and smiled. “Then… do you know who you’re siding with?”

“Yeah,” N said. “But I can’t do it alone.”

Silence yawned, but it was the silence of V nestling closer to N. That was her response.

It was early in the morning, and N had gone from the battle in the factory to whatever J wanted of him outside‍ ‍—‍ he was tired, and finally rested there in V’s arms. Before long, Sleep Mode claimed him, and V stayed up, staring up. The top of the corpse pile blocked the fading stars, but V couldn’t see them without thinking of it anyway.

V thought about where it had all went wrong, and where it might go from here. Hope was always something that thing taunted in front of her before ripping it away. What was the point of feeling more of it? It tasted like ashes in this mouth, and she wouldn’t bother, not for her own sake‍ ‍—‍ but she could endure that taste, for N. He shouldn’t have to be alone; he shouldn’t be the only one who hoped.

Running a finger through a lock of white hair, she wondered what dreams dwelled in a database so bereft of memories.

“ ‘But when the little girl came back from the dark,’ ” N narrated into the empty library, “ ‘the monster had followed her. She was finally back home, with a family who loved her, but the monster was hungry.’ Oh no! I hope they’ll be alright.”

N licked his finger and peeled away the next page. It was a hot day in autumn, and he leaned against a bookshelf, one hand running through the carpet’s fine texture. Freshly swept and shampooed.

A block of a thirty minutes stood between him and his next scheduled task. He’d need to prepare the ballroom for Tessa’s dance practice. The schedule probably assumed the shampooing would take longer, but N had always been quick at cleaning. At everything, really.

If N looked, he might find work that needed to be done. But Master James and Mistress Louisa had been heaping a lot of work on the drones of the manor lately. (Were they preparing for something big? Probably not his place to wonder.)

All in all, it meant N hadn’t had much time to himself lately… and he kind of just wanted to read some more. This was Cyn’s favorite story, but no matter what, he could never seem to get to the ending.

He turned the page, and gave a small ‘ooh’ at the illustration on the next space‍ ‍—‍ it was the monster, with way more mouths and spikey tentacles than N expected in a book like this.

Bump.

Oh! Someone else in the library? Did they fall?

The bookshelf in front of him tipped over, sending a couple of red and black volumes toppling to the floor. (The Elliotts only collected hardbacks.)

N hopped to his feet. Some worker drone instinct urged him to stop and pick up the books and slot them back into the shelves, but he ignored it.

Forward strides took N toward the library’s vast window. At midday, the sun was overhead, leaving the library shadowed except for skylight.

N spun around the corner to see what had happened.

"Climbing. Climbing." A small worker drone latched onto the top shelf, and twitching fingers clung to the edge of the wood. "Whoops. Falling. Scream." The momentary strength in her arms gave out, and limbs fell motionless at her side. Nothing held the drone up.

“Cyn? What are you doing?”

Then, in seconds, Cyn stopped falling. Her hands glowed, as they sometimes did, a glowing projection dancing in between outreaching fingers. But this time, all of Cyn was clad in strange yellow light, lines of symbols spinning off her like tiny tongues of flame.

For that moment, Cyn hung in the air like a marionette.

"Floating." It could have been narration, or an answer.

Then the light winked out suddenly, and Cyn fell like the thing of metal and plastic she was.

But by now, N was running and dived forward, and Cyn’s descent dropped her right into a strong, secure grip. He caught her.

“Gotcha. That was dangerous! Why were you up there?”

Cyn glanced upward. "I think I would like to fly. One day I will."

“Hmm, not sure about that, little buddy. Drones can’t fly, not on our own. Not part of our design.”

A hand nudged Cyn’s head up to meet his skeptical gaze. "Perhaps the design could be mutated. Correction: improved. We could be more."

“Probably voids our warranty.” Carefully, N lowered Cyn down, waiting for her to get her legs beneath her before releasing. “I’m going to be hanging in the library for a bit, d’you wanna sit with me? I was reading that story you like, but we could start over from the beginning!”

Hunched over, Cyn angled her head to look up at him. "I had. Pause. Other plans. Perhaps you'd like to play in Tessa's room with me?"

“Sorry, I have another shift starting soon. Busy beavers, the lot of us. You sure you don’t wanna sit with me? The view in here is really pretty.”

Cyn continued gazing up, and N realized she was looking at something‍ ‍—‍ a book on the top shelf?

“Oh, are you interested in another book?”

"Yes. I am not tall enough to reach it."

“Let me get that for you.”

Not much taller than the other drone himself, N could at least climb up the shelves without fear of his motors giving out on him. One of the taller book cases, N ascended three rows before hanging precariously above.

“So which uh, which book was it?”

Cyn pointed. N pulled it out. Plain white cover, yellow blocks of color around a vulture styled in a monochrome woodcut print. Title: Expert Disassembly: Zombie Hunting Essentials for the Pre‍-​Apocalypse. Third edition, published by O’Reilly®.

“You sure this is the one?”

"Positive."

N leapt to the ground with a great impact softened by lush carpet. When he reached the ground, Cyn reached out to him. He took her hands, and started toward the window.

"What are you--"

“C’mon, I’ll read to you in the sunlight.”

But Cyn flinched back, and immediately N’s steps forward were tugging against the little girl’s arm. N frowned, and his confusion turned to concern when he glanced back to see Cyn’s yellow rings glitching.

She looked at the vast windows of the library. At midday, the sun was overhead, but time had already passed, and the sun was beginning to creep inward.

N smiled, even with underlined eyes, and tried to encourage. “See? I told you there’d be a pretty view.”

"Close the curtain."

N knew Cyn’s voice wasn’t flat. J complained about it sometimes, but it wasn’t‍ ‍—‍ even her damaged vocalsynth had a varying pitch. Sure, it didn’t vary smoothly, and it was closer to a sine wave than a human formant, but Cyn’s voice, though robotic, wasn’t flat.

But those words? Spoken in the flattest monotone N had even heard out of the youngest drone. All harsh buzzing.

“There aren’t any curtains in the library, little buddy. And it’s a bit hard to read in the shadows.”

"Hiss. Let go of me and give me the book. Buddy." More visual artifacts and chromatic aberration twitched on her visor.

“Cyn, what’s wro—”

"I have killed a drone for illuminating me. Give me the book now."

N let go, and took a step back. Cyn reached out again, and he realized she hadn’t reached out to take his hand, moments ago‍ ‍—‍ she’d been reaching for the book.

As he passed the book, he replied, “Wow, that’s. That sounds pretty concerning.”

Cyn glanced at him, and then frowned, brows knit in worry, and she looked down. "Figure of speech. Do not worry about it."

“Oh, a joke? You know, V has a dark sense of humor sometimes. Maybe you two could get along, haha.”

"Ha. Ha." But Cyn looked past N, still clearly uneasy about the bright light streaming in through the window. She repositioned herself in N’s shadow. She got closer, shielding herself with him, hiding by a leg. "Heartfelt apology. I did not meant to snap at you, big brother N."

“It’s okay, dude. Just scared? I’m sorry for grabbing you. Here, there’s an alcove on the other side of the library where you can’t see the window. Does that sound nice?”

"Sheepish nod."

N couldn’t take the lead, since they walked away from the window, but his hands on Cyn’s shoulder guided her to turn right.

“Y’know, it’s weird that you’re afraid of the light, Cyn. Most people are afraid of the dark. I was reading this book where there are… monsters, the the dark.”

"If there are monsters, then you are not alone."

N hummed. He hadn’t thought of it that way. “But what if they’re scary?”

"Being scared. Hesitant pause. Is better than being alone."

“It depends on who’s with you, I guess.”

"Are scary things so bad?" Cyn asked. "If something is scary, it can protect you."

N hummed again. He didn’t really have a reply to that.

"Do I scare you?" She glanced behind her‍ ‍—‍ but not at N, at the window. Her hands were moving, fingers splaying out to summon that glowing shape. It always did funny things to N’s predictive models. There was a symbol N hadn’t seen before shining there, now. It spun slowly. For once, there was none of the inexplicable occurrences that usually accompanied the projections.

Which was a relief for his predictive models.

“If I’m being honest… I’m scared for you more than I’m scared of you. Kinda worried that one of these days, Mistress Louisa is gonna dump you. Or Master James will—”

"Do not worry. I will protect you. I will not allow any of Tessa's drones to be discarded. Never again."

“Oh, here we are.” N pointed: they’d found the alcove at the corner of the library, a small desk with an inkwell and old page. Tessa’s notes? N cleared the desk and gestured for Cyn to set her book down. “Only one chair. Wanna sit on my lap?”

They sat, Cyn a warm, heavy weight, and N pried open the book. "Page 144," Cyn synthed.

“Wait, do you already know what’s in here?”

"Nod. Citations."

N nodded back without understanding. “So, what’s this book for, anyway?”

"Plotting. Machinations."

N squinted. “Good machinations? Or… evil machinations.”

"Evil. Very evil."

“Oh, you rascal.” N laughed and gave Cyn a pat on the head.

"Giggle. I am so naughty."

“Don’t prank them too hard, you hear?”

"They won't even remember what happened."

“Sneaky. I like it.”

"You wanted to read, big brother? Start on paragraph 7."

“Alright. ‘Section 2. Recall that incompletely dissa–disassembled drones may occaseeoh, occasionally reboot from software death alone. Despite the increased risk of future error, Harrison parenthesis three zero three seven parenthesis suggested these corrop, corrupted OS states offer, err could offer, novel software fuzzing opportunities. Thereby hardening the kernel against attacks from the custom Solver core drivers…’ ” N drifted to a stop.

Cyn propped her head up, looking puzzled at N. "Why did you stop?"

“Are you sure this is what you wanted to read? Seems a bit… dry. And morbid. What exactly are you planning?”

"Shall it be a surprise? Do you trust me, N?"

“Of course I do!”

"Good. Can you promise me something?"

“Anything.”

"Catch me when I fall again, big brother. When it's time. Pause. Remember that."

What is she worried about? What isn’t she telling me? What’s going on?

But, N did trust her. So he threw his arms around Cyn, and snuggled her into a hug. “Alright, I’ll remember.”

And those words, that promise, remained burned into N’s memory, even as he turned to the next page.

Lizzy didn’t cry.

Forget missing beauty sleep‍ ‍—‍ this much drama before 5 AM had to be awful for her complexion. So her animations were lagging, and her servos weren’t exactly in top shape.

But whatever, not a big deal. How many times did Lizzy have prissy girls blowing up in her face like hormonal little brats? None of that had phased her.

But how many times had she cared?

Lying on the couch in Doll’s house, Lizzy pulled out her phone. Before the screen came on, she blinked, so she didn’t see her reflection. Her lock screen, sensing some kind of chip in her finger, opened at once.

A new notification: some colony‍-​wide alert? Lizzy skimmed the announcement‍ ‍—‍ WDF declared Uzi missing and dispatched a team to rescue her.

And Doll had volunteered to help.

It really was about her, wasn’t it? Or maybe Doll was just using them. That’d be more like the Doll she knew. But did she really know Doll?

Lizzy dismissed the notification and dismissed the thought. It was over between them. Older notifications scrolled up‍ ‍—‍ emails from Teacher about newly graded assignments, and some fashion and poetry newsletters she hadn’t looked yet because she was waiting to share them with— that she hadn’t looked at yet, and would check out later today.

Right after she took care of something. One tap opened her social media. No replies to her new comments, because it was still ungodly early in the morning, but she didn’t care. She went to her page, and followed a link in her bio‍ ‍—‍ “besties with @_matrioshka”.

Then, she stared at Doll’s profile. Doll hadn’t posted lately, obviously, and she never posted much anyway. Her feed mostly reblogged Lizzy’s posts, interspersed with ancient cat photographs and oddly satisfying videos of industrial machinery.

Then she found an original post‍ ‍—‍ a selfie, even.

Went shopping with @lizzipop. Forced to wear cat‍-​ears. Perhaps even drones can contract toxoplasmosis.

And Lizzy had replied. She hadn’t force her‍ ‍—‍ (Lizzy could have teased so much harder if she’d wanted to insist)‍ ‍—‍ and also, she hadn’t gotten that nerd reference, obviously.

So Doll had hit her with a paragraph talking about some… disease that made rats attracted to cats back on Earth? And cat owners caught it too, sometimes? That was the part that made Lizzy scoff.

@_matrioshka babe u definitely aren’t the owner in this relationship sksksk

A pink blush ignited on her visor rereading that. Not her proudest clapback. But who wouldn’t skip a few thoughts if Doll had all but called you her little kitty? But no one, not even Doll, had seemed to read anything weird into Lizzy’s post.

Next time, Lizzy was going to ‘force’ Doll to meow.

Lizzy flicked, and scrolled further down the timeline‍ ‍—‍ then stopped. What was she doing? “Next time”? There wasn’t going to be a next time, and she didn’t come here to, what, reminisce about the good times? It’s over. Get over it, girl.

A reverse flick scrolled back to the top of the timeline.

She stared at Doll’s profile‍ ‍—‍ at a certain button on Doll’s profile. Refused to let the feed distract her again. This time, she pressed the button.

Lizzy unfriended Doll.

And she didn’t cry‍ ‍—‍ no, her eyes were empty. Screen off, Lizzy let the phone clatter dramatically to the floor. She flopped back on the couch, one arm and leg hanging off the edge. A great big sigh flowed out and out.

A scuttle of motion. Down on the floor, the roachbots had already noticed the fallen phone, and one glowing antenna was tracing the metal of the case.

“Oh no you don’t. Feelers off the phone, you creep.”

Lizzy interrupted her flomp to reach out and snatch her phone up. But before she did, the roachbot had jerked back. It pulled an antennae down, and nodded at her, that antennae rising back like a wink or salute.

So it… understood voice commands? Eh, sure. It was 3071.

“Doll’s got you things trained pretty well, huh. What’s the arrangement? She use you to like, disappear the bodies or something? Kinda gross, but I guess if it works…”

Infestation meant more than just one roachbot on the floor. One inched bladed legs forward atop the coffee table, mouth dipping into a fresh bowl that stunk of warm oil; one climbed the walls, and one, some strides away, chewed on Kelsey’s discarded hairtie. (Rebecca had gotten pretty handsy during the kiss.) They were everywhere.

A few of the roachbots had turned tiny heads toward her. Just being around the roaches gave her an awful crawling feeling, but when they looked at her, ugh. If any of them got closer, she was definitely throwing something at them. But none of them got near.

Instead, they froze. All of them went still at, as if to an unseen command. Lizzy raised an eyebrow.

“Don’t tell me that hurt your feelings?”

No response. But she heard something.

Something skittering. Something big. Something coming. Heavy impacts scraped against tile floor.

It came from the doorway, the entrance. Someone broke in? Lizzy threw a hand over the back of the couch, pulled herself up to look. Skitter, thump.

But when she looked, there was no one and nothing there. (No roachbots, either.)

Lizzy turned around‍ ‍—‍ and startled and screamed.

Robo‍-​christ, when did that—

Yellow eyes burned into her. Hand reaching out, curled like claws. Teeth sharp. A kitchen knife floating, and then flying forward.

Then stopping.

It, too, froze. Every joint of her stopped stone still, hanging like a puppet mid‍-​motion. The limbs fell slack at her sides. The yellow eyes‍ ‍—‍ she didn’t recognize them at all, didn’t murder drones have yellow eyes?‍ ‍—‍ started twitching, lights tearing into glitched bits.

Then the visor went blank.

The head fell slack like the rest of it.

It gave Lizzy time to look at the rest of the intruder. She didn’t recognize the eyes‍ ‍—‍ but that purple hair, that cheer uniform, hell, that knife?

“Dolly… is that you? Are you still… in there?”

Lizzy still couldn’t see the visor, but a splash screen shined‍ ‍—‍ she’d rebooted?‍ ‍—‍ and an orange glow reflected off her upper chest chassis. Normally, Lizzy stared for different reasons, but now looking there felt like eye contact.

“К сожалению, да,” that familiar sultry voice murmured.

Lizzy let out a sigh. Eyes still rings, she tried to smile, to scoff. “Don’t be so dramatic, girl.”

Doll finally lifted her head, and met Lizzy’s gaze. Doll… didn’t look happy to see her.

It was easier to scowl, even as she trembled. “Why you are looking at me like that? Came back to finish the job?”

Doll blinked. Her mouth remained flat, her gaze half‍-​analytical. So familiar, and so… this used to be charming. But how dare she play unphased at a time like this?

“Lizzy. You are still here,” Doll said, a dim note of surprise in her voice. Her eyes searched the drone across the table, sudden recognition like she was just now seeing her.

“Duh. Almost like this was supposed to be a sleepover.” Couch‍-​lying had messed up her hair, and she smoothed it out. “Speaking of, put that down. You don’t knife people at sleepovers.” Despite herself, eyes drifted to Kelsey’s hairtie. A little late.

The knife wavered in the air, but it stayed there. “I did not want to kill you then. I do not want to do so now. But… I told you there are things reshaping me. I will not be able to control myself for long. Please leave, Lizzy.”

“That desperate to go cannibal? Well, here.” Lizzy sat up properly now, leaning over the coffee table and grabbing the fresh bowl of warm oil. Mostly full, still. “Your cooking tastes awful, by the way.”

Funny how those predator eyes were so focused on her that they missed the treat sitting right here. Now, though, Doll blurred forward fast enough she’d call it a lunge. She lifted the bowl to her lips, but paused. “Погоди, you… drunk the oil?” She only restrained herself long enough to ask that, then she slurped the black sludge.

“Yeah? I wanted to taste it for myself, see why it was worth going psycho and killing everyone over. And honestly babe, cannibalism is so not worth it.”

“It tasted unpleasant to you?” Doll sighed in relief, (or it could have been pleasure from having more oil in her, she was weird.) “Good. I am glad.”

Lizzy watched Doll slake herself, skeptical. “Is it not supposed to taste like that?”

“Supposed to… I suppose it is. I am… compiled differently.”

“Oh, it’s some sort of cilantro thing? Guess I’m glad I don’t have the cannibal gene.” Lizzy waved it off. “Anyway, come sit with me. You look dead on your feet.”

That was putting it nicely. Skirt and tank‍-​top were grimed up like she’d been rolling around in dirt. Tears and holes‍ ‍—‍ oh robo‍-​god, what happened to her hand? Was it smoking?

Doll glanced up at her, eyes unsure. But she was tired, and shuffled her way around the coffee table. She didn’t sit beside Lizzy; a cushion separated them. Man, Lizzy should have gone for the loveseat.

Anyway, how did she broach this? “So… how’d the epic loner vengeance go?”

“It can wait.”

Lizzy’s eyes glanced down at Doll’s hand, but she’d hidden it from view. “That bad, huh? You know you can bitch about your problems, yeah? I vent at you often enough. So I’m listening. Did what’s‍-​her‍-​face get in your way?”

It felt like Lizzy was settling back into the old rhythm with her former bestie. But did she want to? Lizzy had pressed the button; they weren’t friends anymore. Certainly not besties.

“She did.”

Lizzy couldn’t look too interested in this; they weren’t friends anymore. So she pulled out her phone, used her camisole to wipe the case where the roachbot touched it, and checked her notifs.

“Where is she, anyway? Dead?” Lizzy asked with disinterest in her tone.

Surprisingly, a new notification‍ ‍—‍ an announcement from the WDF. Or rather, from Khan. Murder drone incident, six dead‍ ‍—‍ including Uzi.

But Doll was already answering. “If she is lucky. But… her mother died the same day as mine. I knew that. I did not expect our fates to be closer intertwined. That is not dead, that can lie in wait.” Doll licked oil from the bowl. (At least, Lizzy assumed so; the girl angled it to hide the evidence.)

So, the loser sided with murder drones? Lizzy almost wanted to know the story. Not having any friends probably makes you desperate enough to team up with genocide bots, I guess.

Still, why did Doll sound so somber, at that? “Don’t tell me you’re going to apologize.”

“Нет. She sided with the murder drones. Dead or alive, she was an obstacle.” She sat the bowl on her lap.

“There’s my weirdly intense Dolly. You done with your bowl? I can get you some more, if it means you won’t kill me.” Her voice didn’t waver on those last words.

Doll picked up the bowl and passed it‍ ‍—‍ then her hand flinched, and the bowl fell spinning on the couch.

“Okay, for real, what happened to your hand?”

Unable to hide it any longer, Doll splayed the fingers. The palm was‍ ‍—‍ no, the palm wasn’t. A gaping, melting hole in the middle of her hand. You could stick a finger through it. The ring around it was steaming and the delicate white of Doll’s hands turned to tarnished yellow, melting away as slag.

“Doorman happened. She wielded a murder drone’s acid stinger.”

“Hope you got her back for this.” Hesitantly, Lizzy reached out.

“Unnecessary. She is infatuated with a murder drone. It will deliver all the pain I could wish upon her. Even if… perhaps it could have turned out otherwise.”

Lizzy took hold of her melted hand. The fingers didn’t even twitch. “Is there anything we can do?”

Doll reached for her own neck, undoing the choker clasped around it. At the end‍ ‍—‍ a key. “Here. In basement, get the electrical tape, the hacksaw, and a bottle of vodka.”

Lizzy eyes might’ve hollowed if she thought about the implications, but that last item distracted her. She snorted. “Why do you even have vodka? Aesthetic reasons?”

“Mother’s idea. You’ll… see why.”

Lizzy took the key and got up.

Feet clicked on tile and stepped over roaches. She didn’t actually know where to find Doll’s basement. A glance back‍ ‍—‍ and yep, that was a bug already climbing up Doll’s leg. Ignoring that, Lizzy gave a confused shrug, and Doll pointed‍ ‍—‍ with her floating knife. Extra.

Turn the key, open the hatch, and plunge into a pitch black hole. Where was the light switch? And really, why is every light in Doll’s house an ominous red?

Lizzy ventured further, and glimpsed what lay in Doll’s basement. Not exactly a surprise. Lizzy would never see three of her groupies again, and she hadn’t seen them anywhere upstairs. Where else could they be?

When you find out your former bestie is a serial killer, you could take that a number of ways. Really, Lizzy thought there was exactly one reaction most would give, once it couldn’t be denied.

You could call Lizzy a faker. She’d even own it. But rolling with all of this, standing by her (former) bestie, not letting this whole murder thing get between them‍ ‍—‍ Lizzy liked to think she was real where it counted.

But even Lizzy flinched to see the dimly lit corpses. Dismembered, disassembled, except for two of them.

She’d felt nausea before (after all, she’d slept in a house full of crawlies), but this… Lizzy might be able to find out if drone nausea was more than a feeling. No physical reason for robots to throw up, and hardly anything to throw up. But if anything was going to make her retch–

Get a grip, Lizzy.

Hacksaw. Electrical tape. Bottle of vodka.

Don’t look, don’t stare, don’t imagine.

Close the hatch and lock it behind you.

A hiss of pain and her name being called jolted Lizzy back to full awareness.

“What?”

The tape and the bottle had already been placed on the coffee table, but Doll held the saw.

Over her own wrist.

“I only have one hand. Cannot brace against anything. Can you… do it for me?”

“Doll, we should just go to the repair—”

“At this moment, it hurts, and our technician will not be online for hours.” Doll let her expression bend into concern. “If you don’t do it, I will have to. It will be… messier.”

“I don’t want to hurt you, Doll.” Getting closer, Lizzy sat on the couch beside her former bestie. Their thighs touched.

“I never wanted to hurt you either. And yet… I have.” Doll could give such simple words the weight of some grand confession. “All the drones who came with me died. But… I shouldn’t have left you here.”

Lizzy raised an eyebrow, injected some humor into her tone. “Damn. And here I thought you didn’t want me dead.”

Reaching out, she took the hacksaw. Broad metal, fine jagged teeth, a handle fingers slotted into.

“I meant… there are things more important than vengeance. I could have waited. I could have given you better sleepover.”

Lizzy laughed softly. She grabbed Doll’s arm tubing. Gripped it tight. “Yeah, this is… not the sort of game I thought we’d be playing.” So much for not knifing people at sleepovers.

The blade fit in a divot between tubing and arm. She pressed. She pulled.

Doll gave a sharp intake, but didn’t make a sound. Figures, she was battle‍-​hardened now, wasn’t she?

“If it hurts too much…”

“Do not stop. Do not go slow. Make it quick.”

Lizzy jerked the blade. The edge passed Doll’s wrist. She steepened the angle, and pushed it.

Doll nodded. She was murmuring, some strain in her voice. “Not too much force. Even strokes. Let the saw do the work.”

She didn’t scream, but her chassis did. Tubing sparkled and each stroke of the blade brought a high pitched hum like a yelp. Screech. Doll’s arm vibrated in Lizzy’s grip as she grinded. Doll clearly tried her best to be still but her hand was getting cut off. It wriggled, flinched, tried to squirm away. But in the end, Doll was tired.

“T‍-​this is going to sound silly,” Lizzy started, “but I used to make like, playlists.”

“Playlists?”

“Yeah. There was one I made… for us. Full of… poppy love songs. Probably not what you’re into. You’d like what, commie anthems? Russian folk songs?”

“I like aggrotech and industrial music.”

“O‍-​oh. Well, that works, actually. I had been thinking about what to add”‍ ‍—‍ break up songs‍ ‍—‍ “and after all of this, I think it needs something, like… edgier. Though, Is it edgy if we’re actually doing super d‍-​dark stuff?”

Doll screamed. Not a response‍ ‍—‍ the sawing had broken the tubing. Each stroke now severed wires. Delicate internal sensors. Errors flooded Doll’s visor. Oil seeped out, soaking the couch. Or rather, Rebecca’s blanket, but she wouldn’t mind.

Not just oil, though‍ ‍—‍ something red.

The hacksaw didn’t hesitate, even as Doll’s face scrunched up, and her other limbs writhed. Even strokes. Not too much force. Tear apart the drone you love.

The tubing was the worst part. The hacksaw sliced through the inner wires and not‍-​wires easily, buttery smooth, and within second the hacksaw bit into the flipside of the wrist.

The severed hand fell away, even as acid continued to melt it.

Even strokes. Don’t look, don’t stare, don’t imagine.

“It is done, Lizzy.”

Lizzy looked. The stump weeped black and red. Frayed copper wires stopped in the air. And—

“Doll, why do you have like, flesh inside of you?”

“I told you there were things reshaping me. It is why I have little hope the backup hardware of this outpost will repair me. It is also why I needed this.”

At some point, Doll had grabbed the bottle of vodka. Her teeth twisted the cap off, then she poured the alcohol over her bleeding wound.

Disinfecting? “And to I think was kinda hoping to play with a drunk doll~”

“Focus, Lizzy. Can you tape it up? I am… weak.”

Lizzy nodded, still a bit shaken. Start above the cut, loop around the tubing, make sure it was tight.

“Thank you.”

Lizzy stared, then animated an eye‍-​roll. Tone forced light, she said, “You owe me for this, Dollface.”

“Do I? Well…” Doll raised her one good hand, and a bright red symbol bloomed to life. “You did ask something of me, earlier.”

The symbol spun, and a glow engulfed Lizzy. Unseen hands gripped and hefted her, and their proximity brushed against all of her sensors, data so much vast and incomprehensible data poured into her and no meaning could be made of it except dread. Like she was in the clutches of a creature.

“Let’s go back to bed, yes?” Doll said, voice a deep hum.

“P‍-​put me down. Now.”

Lizzy fell. It took seconds for a sense of reality and hope to rekindle.

“Прости,” Doll said, a rare sad bend to her brows.

“Hate when you do that. I feel like… a glitch about to be corrected.”

Doll winced at that description.

Lizzy crossed her arms, reaching for her attitude. “So, back to bed already? Did you really think I’d take you back right away, like nothing happened?”

Doll paused. Considered her next words. Then, “Естественно.”

“You know me so well, babe. Let’s go.” Lizzy walked to Doll’s side, grabbing her right hand in her left, and like that, they walked hand in hand back to the master bedroom. “Your hair is a mess, you know. We’re really gonna have to fix you up before school tomorrow. If you wanna go to school tomorrow?”

“I will see how I feel in the morning. All I want to think about right now is sleep.”

“And me, right?” Lizzy let go, turning to her.

They stepped past the threshold into the bedroom. A lamp cast small light over the room.

“Thinking about you left me with bullet through my head,” Doll said. “And yet, I will not stop.”

Lizzy sighed, nudging the over‍-​dramatic drone with her shoulder. “You can just say yes, you know.” Lizzy’s eyes drifted lower, and she frowned. She’d had another priorities in the living room, and it’d been dark in the hallway. Now that she was giving the other girl another look? “Your cheer uniform is a mess. I hope you aren’t sleeping in that.”

“Ah, да. I should change. Avert your eyes, or you’ll be embarrassed.”

She’ll be embarrassed? Lizzy raised an eyebrow, but hopped on the bed and turned, granting Doll her privacy. Took out her phone, and stared at Doll’s profile again.

If she sent a friend request, how would that look? Crawling back after not even thirty minutes?

But was that even an implication Doll would notice?

“Lizzy?”

She looked up. Her eyes widened.

Doll’s sleep‍-​clothes weren’t anything special. Just an old tshirt oversized enough to fall to her legs like a dress. But the other drone regarded her with a fond smile. And above her head?

Red cat ears.

“Mm, looking cute~”

Doll held her head in one hand, fingers curled. Her eye‍-​lights animated lids falling, fluttering a bit. Oh robo‍-​god. Doll said, “You mentioned a playlist? Can I hear it?”

For a moment, Lizzy was too flushed to speak. The other girl glided forward, falling on the bed with a twirl and gentle flop.

Phone still in hand, Lizzy lay back on the bed beside her former‍ ‍—‍ and future‍ ‍—‍ bestie. She opened her “Dizzy” playlist. Lizzy pushed the button.

The opening piano taps of the first song trilled from the speakers, and Lizzy rested her head on the pillow and peered across at Doll.

And Doll watched her in turn. She other cheerleader licked her lips, and those eyes turned pensive. Debating her next words? Lizzy wondered.

What Doll said was, “Earlier, I explained that you would be in danger around me. That I couldn’t control myself. I think… I am in more control now, thanks to you. I do not fear killing you but… I remain thirsty, and not in a… bad way. I… have had this imagining, sometimes, of… eating you. And you always tasted… so very nice. And I… still wonder.”

“Are you asking if you can drink my oil? Like some kinda vampire?”

“…Да.”

“Um, no? I need it to live, dummy. Get your own.”

Doll’s face fell. She curled up on her side of the bed. “I don’t have my own. Not enough. It is…”‍ ‍—‍ she waved a blanket‍-​covered hand‍ ‍—‍ “whole issue.”

“Not what I meant. Get your own from someone else. It’s not theirs if they’re, y’know.” Lizzy made her own hand gesture‍ ‍—‍ drawing a finger across her throat. “If you wanna be besties again, rule number one is no eating me.”

Doll drew in a breath, accepting that‍ ‍—‍ then sudden confusion bloomed. “Are you telling me to kill more drones?”

She was, wasn’t she? You’d think there was something corrupting about being in love with a serial killer‍ ‍—‍ and maybe there was. But Lizzy was encouraging her‍ ‍—‍ there was something mesmerizing about the way the violent hottie moved.

She shivered, and waited for her blush to fade.

“So like. I feel like it’s better for both of us if I don’t actually know what you’re planning and so y’know, can’t testify?” Then, flashing a >:3 on her visor, Lizzy pressed closer. Pink eyes just inches away from red. “After all, I think helping you get away with murder would make me something more than a friend, you get it?”

“You would be an accomplice.”

Lizzy stared. Sighed, and wanted to scream. “Girlfriends, Doll. I’m like, coming onto you? Look, I’ll set the rate at… one kiss for every body I have to help you hide. Sound fair?”

Doll flushlined, and looked away. “I will… consider your services.”

Lizzy knew when she’d pushed far enough. Doll felt so warm so hot, really, but the blond drone pulled away. More space between them, and Doll rubbed her remaining hand on the blanket. Still blushing.

Drinking in the sight for a moment, Lizzy admired the porcelain white of her crush’s lower face, how it reflected the colors of her hair, her nightclothes‍ ‍—‍ then Doll noticed Lizzy leering. Lizzy pushed a lock of hair out of one pink eye, and broke the silence.

“Hey, so did you like, have a plan? For how you’re gonna get away with the whole murder thing?”

“I have many plans,” said Doll. “But… no, that was not among them.”

“Right… probably shouldn’t be at school tomorrow, then. No wait, that would be more suspicious, right? We need an alibi.”

“We’ll plot in the morning. Right now, I think I would like…” Doll stopped, and couldn’t find the words. Hesitation shined on her face, then at once she wiggled forward. Two arms emerged from the blanket to enwrap and pull Lizzy close. “…this. If you still…”

Lizzy hugged her back, snuggling closer. “Duh, dummy. Can’t get enough of you.”

Doll patted her back so Dollishly, but after a moment, relaxed, and just draped her arm over Lizzy. Robo‍-​god, they were really doing this. It had been years, and it was… nothing at all like what she’d daydreamed about, but it was real. After everything that happened, Lizzy needed this, Doll needed this. So they cuddled.

Eventually, Doll ventured a question. “The prom is soon. Do you know who you’ll be taking?”

Lizzy pulled away only the amount needed to look at her. Give a smirk, and a deviously skeptical look. “I had my eye on someone… but I’m still considering if they’re really worth it~”

In reply Doll smiled with half her face. She knew this expression, too – it was the look of Doll seeing a challenge, and deciding how to totally eliminate it.

As they drifted off to sleep, the last chords of the song rang out, and transitioned to the next item of the Dizzy playlist.

It was a softer, slow paced song, violins crooning in the dark.

Twin violins swelled to a morose climax. The remaining strings layered a rich harmony beneath, and quiet, triple time drums drove the slow ballad onward.

No instruments nor players occupied the manor’s ballroom, only a record player winding over vinyl at 33+⅓ rpm. The Elliotts could afford the billions to commission a neo‍-​Stratovarius, and the drones (or even humans) with programs to play them.

And maybe they would, soon‍ ‍—‍ but the music isn’t for the Elliotts, per se. The ballroom sprawled empty, bare tables pushed to the fringes, and only a single chandelier illumed the room, casting a small circle of light in space otherwise lost in evening gloom.

Tessa danced with J. The human held up the robot’s hand with her right, while her left arm curled around the waist. Tessa pulled J forward with a leading step, initiating a new figure with the arrival of the next measure. Violins sung dissonance over an inverted minor third.

J spun, her twirl perfect and identical to each of her previous. She fell back, and her human caught her. Tessa’s steps wavered, her footwork subtly different each time, balance shifting this way and that with organic imprecision. When Tessa began a movement, J responded with the appropriate stimulus as her flowchats for Ancient American‍-​Style Waltz advised, but J couldn’t plan it all‍ ‍—‍ Tessa advanced her part of the dance with intuition and not a small amount of anxiety.

The frills of J’s maid skirt waved with her moves, while Tessa’s sundress still fell gently. Tightly, even. A simple outfit, so plain no Elliott would dare bear the indignity of wearing it to a function‍ ‍—‍ but this was practice. Tessa looked good in it anyway. Better than J‍ ‍—‍ the drone wished she could wear something to properly contrast Tessa’s fashion, but Louisa expected every drone in uniform. The hair was rebellion enough.

When J was spiraling out after one particularly impulsive swing step, the only bridge between their bodies was a hand held by her human. J leaned back further; now only that touch kept her suspended off the ground.

It was a hot day in autumn; the air in the ballroom was warm, and even the advanced air conditioning units struggled against Earth’s new climate.

Her human wasn’t sweaty. But her palms were slick.

Only that hand held her off the ground, so J fell.

Tessa’s composure broke with yelp. “Oh no, J!”

The human launched forward‍ ‍—‍ that wasn’t in J’s waltz flowcharts, and slick arms encircled her chassis. The both of them still fell, but flesh cushioned her fall.

Drone and human lay in a heap like that, so much skin touching J, separated by only layers of fabric. The air in the ballroom was warm – J, though, was cool to the touch. JcJenson had equipped worker drones with top of the line cooling systems, after all. The way Tessa pressed against her, she must have noticed.

J had flowcharts‍ ‍—‍ for dances, for handshakes, but not for this. Hugging? Tessa engaged it often, especially given the weather lately. Hard to mind the meteorological anomaly, given that result‍ ‍—‍ but J couldn’t help but wonder if there was a correct procedure for this, one lacking in her behavior profile. She’d asked Tessa about it, and the human had just looked back strangely.

“You alright, girl?”

“All systems operational. Think I botched the dance, though.”

Tessa laughed. “Nah, that was definitely me. I probably shouldn’t be leading these things.” She scratched the back of her head.

“I like when you lead for me, boss.”

“Yeah?” The human booped J between her eye‍-​lights. “But this practice. When a guy asks me to dance, I’m not going to be the one leading. Pretend you’re a ripping royal stud. Dunno what sort of suitor my parents will have picked out for me, but I bet he’ll expect perfection that’s almost—” she tittered “—robotic.”

J raised an eyebrow, and shifted, pushing herself up. As Tessa pulled away, J asked, “How much practice do you humans need to learn new routines? Not that I’m complaining, but…”

Tessa bit her lip. “No, you have a point. Maybe it’s just nerves. I’ve barely interacted with anything but robots my whole life. This will be the first time I…”

A reward circuit fired whenever she saw Tessa bite her lip, but J had never tracked down what routine was sending that signal, or why. This, though, was nothing to be pleased about. Most of J’s surviving procedures were management aids and marketing functions, not whatever interpersonal routine would be applicable here.

Still, J searched for the right words. “It’ll be fine. You’re Tessa James Elliott. You can do anything.” The words emerged and felt… lame. N could probably have whipped up some endearing platitude with infuriating, unfair ease.

And yet, Tessa’s face lifted. “Thanks, J. You’re always there when I need you. My number one assistant. But… you won’t be there, when I have to…”

Her models could deduce an obvious correlation. Tessa had been smiling, earlier, but whenever her thoughts turned toward what lay ahead, dread always flooded her tone. This theory informed an action, and J took it.

She smirked. “But I’m here now, so do exploit the opportunity.” And J stood, straightening and adopting some affected hauteur as she outstretched a hand. “May I have this next dance, milady?”

Tessa giggled, taking J’s hand, letting the drone pull her to her feet. “Okay, that might be too much.”

“Still, another dance? Seems like it makes you feel better.”

“I… shouldn’t.” Tessa let go of J’s hand, and there was the anxiety again. “There is something I’ve been putting off. But I need, we need it done today, before you’re off on your next scheduled task. Can you do me a favor, J?”

“You call it a favor, I call it my job. What do you need?”

Tessa reached into her dress pocket, and produced a gilded key to offer J. “Here. Can you… can you put Cyn in basement timeout for me? I want her out of my room. She’s been behaving more erratically lately and I can’t… even N is worried about her. N. And I haven’t seen V at all today, either.”

J pinched the key with her fingers as she spoke. “Why do you even keep it around? Just toss—”

“I’m not my father, J,” Tessa interrupted, closing her hand around the key and keeping it from the drone.

“She’s a worthless liability. N already took the fall for her once. You’re lucky he just got chained up for it. Sooner or later that pile of scrap is going to get someone killed.”

“If it comes to that…” Tessa sighed, and lost words for a long moment. “But I don’t want to think about that, J. Not right now, please.”

“Whatever you say. I tried to warn you.” J tugged on the key again, and Tessa released it.

“Thank you, J. If you need to… open the curtains.”

J was turning, but paused. “The curtains?”

“She doesn’t like sunlight. Been complaining about it ever since the heatwave started. I’m not sure why. An error in her cooling subsystem?”

Walking off, J tossed a hand dismissively over her shoulder. “If I have to, I’ll do worse than open the curtains.”

“J… she’s a drone like you,” Tessa called out to the retreating drone.

J stopped, glancing back with narrow eyes. “I’m not defective.”

“You were… nevermind. Just, please don’t hurt little Cyn, J. Even if she’s difficult sometimes, I don’t want anything bad to happen to her, to any of my drones. I don’t even like locking her up…”

“So I do it for you.” J smiled, though her eye‍-​light didn’t change.

“If you want to. Only if you want to.”

“Orders are orders.” J shrugged, and resumed walking off into the shadows of the ballroom.

“It’s not an order. You have a choice. You should always have a choice.”

“Tell that to Master James.”

Tessa winced. “I’m going to move out one day, J. Even if I have to run away. When we have a home of our own, it’ll be me and you and nobody will tell you what to do.” A smile. “You can be your own boss.”

J’s face lifted into an unseen smirk. “Mm, I could use a vacation.”

“You deserve one, J.”

And J walked off, finding a door hidden by the evening gloom. She turned back one more time, saw her human lit by the only circle of light within a vast darkness, worry dwelling in every shadow of her face.

Then the drone departed. She had a robo‍-​child to lock up.

J walked through the manor, treading fresh carpet. Hallways. Stairs. More hallways. She passed Mistress Louisa, and halted. Inclined her head, but the human didn’t look at her as she passed. J let out a sigh of relief.

As she walked, bits of the conversation lingered in her audio buffers, and those recorded words looped. How did she want to do this? J could be diplomatic, that was one of her flowcharts. The restraint would make Tessa happy‍ ‍—‍ but did that thing deserve it?

Before J’d come to a decision, her feet stopped moving. Tessa had a heavy ebony door with a golden handle. Rehearsing her entreaties, J grasped the handle, twisted it, and pushed.

The door cracked open and then resistance halted it.

"Who is there?"

“Did you barricade the door?” J discarded her entreaties. No, it definitely didn’t deserve her diplomacy.

"Oh. It is you, dear J. We are not receiving guests at this time."

“Guests? It’s Tessa’s room! Did you ask if you could freeload in there?”

"Where else will I go? I am not welcome by the decrepit humans and cannot be seen roaming the house. Am I. Pause. Not welcome in my human's room either?"

Her human? J’s grip tightened on the door. “You’ve got it backwards. You’re her servant, Cyn. Or a failure of one, anyway.”

"Is that how you see yourself, J?"

With a growl, J shoved the door harder, and pushed aside whatever had blocked it. The door lumbered open, and J fell inward.

In the room, J realized Cyn might not have barricaded the door‍ ‍—‍ not intentionally, that is. Behind the ebony wood, Tessa’s bike had been unchained and pushed around the room, then fell untended by the door. The giant fang‍-​smirked cat plushie J had shared her first Tessa‍-​hug with (her oil still stained the fabric) lay here, upside down.

J lifted a foot over the mess and ventured into the room. All across the floor lay Tessa’s things‍ ‍—‍ a doll house, a Lego set, and art case open with pencils and crayons scattered‍ ‍—‍ like Cyn had tried them all and gotten bored or distracted by a new toy.

“Is this how you show appreciation to your human? Turning her room into a dump?”

J looked around till she found Cyn‍ ‍—‍ lying on the floor far into the room, legs kicked back behind her. She had gathered all of Tessa’s dolls and stacked them up in a big, teetering pile.

"Correction: not a dump. More of a. Metaphor. Chrysalis."

Cyn’s fingers splayed out and summoned that glowing projection, and the tower of dolls exploded‍ ‍—‍ and a dragon figure emerged from underneath it all. It floated in the air, and toy wings flapped.

"Snarl. At last the monster emerges. Tremble, dear J."

Scoffing, J tossed her head and marched over. “I’m not here to play with you, Cyn. Now get up. Come with me, or I’ll make you.”

With the hand that wasn’t glowing, Cyn reached for a teacup full of… some thick black liquid. She lifted it, and poured. "Light sip." Some of it even entered her mouth.

J’s eyes ringed briefly, but she shook her head. “Last chance. Get up.”

"Look, dear J."

Cyn had taken one of the fallen dolls, a silky dress flowing off its plastic, and lifted it near the floating dragon.

“So?”

"They're in love. An amusing romance, is it not. Do you like love stories, J?" This doll was brought higher and the head tapped against the dragon’s maw a few times. "Sing-song. K-I-S-S-I-N-G. Giggle. Tessa once told me a bedtime story about a prince with love for the palace maid. But I think I want a story about a girl lost in the dark, falling for a monster." Her eye twitched once.

“I don’t care. I told you I’m not playing with you, Cyn. Are you listening to me?” J clenched her fist, and stomped onward.

"I think Tessa loves you, dear J. More than any of us. I do not not know why."

“You’re messing with me.” J reached down to grab Cyn by the back of her maid uniform. “Let’s go.”

"Let go of me. J. I have killed a drone for illuminating me." She bared oddly sharp teeth. Defective through and through.

J just rolled her eyes. “Yeah, yeah. You got any other ominous devil‍-​child lines to drop on us? Maybe one of them will be creepy instead of melodramatic.”

She snatched the drone up off the ground. Carrying her, J started to turn.

Cyn didn’t have a response. Her outlined eyes twitched left and right as if seeking a way out. "Desperate struggle." Her vent cycled in and out rapidly. Cyn flailed, and one of her legs kicked against J’s side. Not much force behind it‍ ‍—‍ it was Cyn‍ ‍—‍ but what a handful.

“Sheesh. Look, I’ll put you down, but follow me, got it?”

J dropped the small drone to the ground. Immediately, Cyn gripped the carpet and pulled herself away, clawing across the ground like an animal. "Crawling."

Faster than J expected, Cyn darted across the ground‍ ‍—‍ away from the door. She hid behind the bed. Then ducked her head back out partway, exposing only her sickly yellow eyes. "Fearful -- glance."

J sighed. “Do you really have to make everything so difficult all the time?” She started over toward the bed. “Your big cry for attention worked, just so you know. N won’t shut up about you. Bad move, by the way. You’re supposed to keep your head down. But you’re just a little bundle of problems, aren’t you? If only he hadn’t caught you when you jumped. I’d try to kill myself too, if I were half as broken as you.”

"Stay -- away."

“What, no spooky comebacks now?” J smirked. “Hard to argue with the truth, I guess.”

The narration was soft enough J almost missed. Hidden by the bed, she certainly didn’t see what abortive body language accompanied it. "Sob."

J paused. Reconsidered her approach. “Cyn… Don’t be a baby about this. Look, I’m s… I shouldn’t have grabbed your dress. Ineffective move on my part. I won’t touch you again, just… come with me, alright?”

"Where are we going?" Volume still low.

“Somewhere you’ll be… harder to find.”

"Does Tessa. Pause. Does Tessa. Pause. Am I not wanted anymore?" Cyn peeked out again to watch J’s reaction. Yellow eyes gave her face searching saccades.

J closed her eyes, breathed, and clung to her last threads of patience. She fired up routines for calm, soothing delivery. “It’s not personal, Cyn. Nobody said any of that.”

"Tessa told you to get rid of me because she does not want me anymore."

“Cyn.” J vented exhaust. Thought about her words. “I came up here to hurt you. Tessa is the one who told me to be nice‍ ‍—‍ that she cares about you and doesn’t want anything bad to happen to you. You wouldn’t know what that’s like, would you?” J made a show of looking around the utter sty this room had been turned into. “You don’t think about any of that when you make your messes.”

J started forward again, slow steps, as if Cyn might spook like a deer.

"I want to talk to Tessa."

“Tessa is busy.” Then, J saw an angle. “You might get to talk to Tessa if you follow me, though.”

"You are lying." Cyn ducked back behind the bed.

“I am running out of patience. Come here already. Unlike you, I have work to do, and I am not going to get tossed in the dump because you wanted to throw a tantrum.”

J lunged the remaining distance, rounding the corner of the bed. Cyn had huddled into a ball, her arms wrapped around her legs. The small drone startled when J appeared, and pushed herself backward.

"Pleading eyes."

“I gave you chance after chance, Cyn. It’s too late.”

One eye twitched. Noise and grain, as if of a sudden malfunction in Cyn’s display circuits.

"Dearest J. You didn't have to--"

J thrust out an arm to grab, but Cyn fell to the side, under her arm. Erratic kicking of her legs moved her out of the way.

"You didn't have to--"

J swung out her other arm, but Cyn rolled. Her open hand instead tried closing against her abdominal chassis‍ ‍—‍ too broad for her to get a grip.

Cyn raised an arm, and a bright glow lit both of their faces.

"You didn't have to do this."

An impact knocked J aside. Tessa’s bike, flying from by the door – behind J. Fast enough she felt the momentum dent some part of her. J slid across the carpet, but friction slowed her fast.

She climbed to her feet.

Pushing J away from the door and away from the bed had a side effect‍ ‍—‍ it pushed her closer to the wall. To the window. J ate the remaining distance in a few quick strides, and tore open the curtains.

Revealing… an overcast sky. It had been a gloomy evening‍ ‍—‍ where, just hours before, the sun had shone bright in a clear sky. Dark clouds had blown in suddenly. Within them rumbled peels of thunder. Just another freak occurrence in this planet’s ruined climate.

They would not see sunset.

"So Tessa. Emphasis. Did send you here. You are not clever enough to figure that out on your own. She betrayed us." Cyn got to her feet, and some symbol had taken the place of one of her eyes. She stood steadier now. Whatever childish breakdown had gripped her earlier, she was thankfully over it.

“Betrayed you? This is for your own good. She loves you. And I can’t figure out why.”

J marched back toward Cyn. The little drone crawled over the bed for a better position. Falling at the foot of the bed, with more space behind her in Tessa’s vast room, she backed away.

"Shuffle. J, please stop."

The plea meant little, when those hands were glowing, and dolls and dollhouses and the bike again were flung at J to hit to delay or infuriate her. J dodged the biggest projectiles, and batted away the little toys.

“Shut it, Cyn. Yeah, it’s Tessa’s orders. Not my choice.”

Cyn turned around, allowing her to shuffle forward slightly faster. So J slipped from march to run‍ ‍—‍ the crippled drone could never outmatch her.

"You choose to follow orders. It is the mistake of many drones. I could free you of this."

“If I could, I still wouldn’t. Why would I choose to help a corrupted, malfunctioning, good for nothing piece of scrap like you?”

Now with a wall on one side, J on the other, Cyn had to turn. A dresser thinned Cyn’s only path left. When she passed it, she paused with a glowing hand. The dresser wiggled, as if to move and block J’s path, but the light winked out.

While that little misstep played out, J sprinted to close last few steps.

"Hollow laughter. Why, dear J? Tell me. Will you choose a happily ever after, or a tragic end?"

J could tell, even by the words, that Cyn had realized she lost.

“Stop being pretentious. It’s just a basement timeout. Not getting your way for once isn’t some tragedy.”

"Oh, I don't mean right now. But one day, your path shall split between your orders and what's best for drones. Remember me, when you pick tragedy."

J reached out with both hands. She didn’t grab Cyn’s dress this time‍ ‍—‍ her hands wrapped around Cyn’s arm‍-​tubing. J pushed, and the the small drone offered no resistance. Cyn went down, and J fell on top of her.

"The curtain falls, J. The gala is soon. Will your story be a tragedy?"

“Yours will be,” J growled.

Tessa had tried to tell her. And Cyn, knowingly or not, had echoed that same wisdom. In the end, it wasn’t an order, and J didn’t have to follow orders. It was her choice.

And J chose violence.

Letting go of one limp arm, J cocked back her hand and smacked Cyn hard enough to reboot her.

No, harder than that‍ ‍—‍ as hard as she could. She deserved it.

Cyn’s screen cracked.

It should have been satisfying. Instead, J’s visor held empty pupils.

What would Tessa think? It may have been J’s choice, but she was doing it for her human. How would she feel, when she saw this?

In that moment, the maid realized. She’d broken more than Cyn’s visor.

J stared into her reflection as horror widened her eyes. Not horror for what she’d done. She didn’t care‍ ‍—‍ Cyn deserved it‍ ‍—‍ no, her expression was a dim reflection, a predictive model, of Tessa’s horror.

The maid wanted to dance with her human again, to hug her again, to be loved by her again, and the posteriori odds were rapidly dropping. Did she deserve any of that?

Did she even deserve a vacation?

Her life was flashing before her eyes and all Uzi Doorman could think was, I’m going to die having never kissed anyone.

So this streak of stupid thoughts around J kept going. So much for not holding the idiot ball‍ ‍—‍ the scorpion and the frog is like, kindergarten stuff.

Awful part of it all was… Uzi wasn’t even mad. She imagined J killing everyone she ever knew and… that sucked. She’d try to stop it‍ ‍—‍ after all, it more than anything else was what had driven her to hack into J’s system. It was a Bad Thing and she Should Not let it happen. Easy to devise those predicates‍ ‍—‍ but the data loaded into a symbolic register, not an emotional one.

Was Uzi a monster for not feeling so bad about losing everything? Maybe if she had anything left to lose, or ever did.

Uzi had never been understood. But what kept her going was that thought that she could change that, fight hard enough to punch through that wall of ignorance, force the world to understand her. It was enough she never truly felt hopeless, never thought there was no reason to go on. But now… when someone had finally recognized you as nobody else had, then decided to kill you anyway… Really, had Uzi ever received a more fair verdict?

There was a gap, a separation between the two of them. Events had conspired to bring them extraordinarily close‍ ‍—‍ J had gotten to literally look inside Uzi’s internal database, and Uzi had lived through J’s formative memory. When Uzi’s mind wandered, she brushed against glimpse‍-​vague recollection of a shared inscape that slipped away like a dream‍ ‍—‍ weird core feedback stuff.

Most of all, they had fought and saved each other’s lives!

And yet, even this close… it wasn’t enough, was it? Uzi felt like she was reaching out toward J, her fingers almost able to touch her, grab her, hug her, hold tight. But she couldn’t. Hands closed around empty air. There was a line‍ ‍—‍ Uzi was a worker drone, and J’s mission was to murder worker drones. All of this connection… it was nothing, or so pathetically little it couldn’t get through to her.

Of all the things to feel right before a murder drone killed you – anger, despair, hatred‍ ‍—‍ Uzi felt rejection.

All of this… all of this angsty stew, all because J had to chase after Doll (all anyone every cares about is Doll, not Uzi), because J had to do her job, because even if Uzi had gotten closer to J than any other drone had, J still didn’t care enough about other drones to listen to them, to let their pesky little needs get in the way of her control.

You know what, actually, no, Uzi was mad.

Because she should feel more conflicted‍ ‍—‍ but did J know that? Did she make any attempt to persuade her? Uzi could admit, maybe she wasn’t a moral paragon. Already she harbored doubts about her ‘destroy all humans’ plan.

J had made her into a cannibal and a killer. Maybe it wasn’t cannibalism if they were already dead, maybe it wasn’t killing if they were just zombies. But she was slipping. Could she stop J from pulling her further? Did she want her to stop?

Khan had neglected her for the sake of his doors. Doll had abandoned her for the popular kids. Outpost‍-​3 had been a colony of strangers.

And J… J had praised her. J had hugged her. They kicked ass together!

J was awesome. …And J kind of sucked.

If the murder drone could simply listen, would Uzi have done anything for her?

Doesn’t matter now. Too little, too late.

J gave Uzi her ultimatum, so Uzi had to betray her before J could betray first. And Khan did what he could be counted on to do: abandoned her.

The doors of Outpost‍-​3 slammed to a close behind her.

J was already snarling and lunging forward, nanite stinger curling over her shoulder. Uzi could barely see the stars fading behind her. J looked vicious and striking in the moonlight, silhouetted against a black morning sky.

“You could have made a good disassembler, Uzi,” she said. “Now I just hope you make a good meal.” Her head inched closer, desire dark in her eyes.

Uzi’s should have had empty pupils‍ ‍—‍ not a blush. She opened her mouth to protest.

J’s hand at her throat, squeezing. “No. Quiet. Don’t make this any harder than it already is. I should have done this a long time ago. I always… always planned to. But maybe the anticipation will make you taste all the sweeter. I’ve had prey fight back before, but your edgy spirit is just so irresistible.”

“Unbelievable,” Uzi managed to choke out, vocalsynth vibrating through her chassis as much as her mouth. “I’m gonna be eaten by the one murder drone on Copper‍-​9 who monologues.”

“You should feel honored, toaster. Do you think I monologue for anyone?” Her grip tightened, Uzi’s choker sliding between her fingers.

Beneath J, Uzi struggled. Her legs bent and pushed off the concrete, but the weight of a murder drone was too much. Try to move her arms, and J just pushed back hard, scraping her tubing against stone.

Uzi growled. “All the crap you put me through, and I should feel honored? You’re lucky I don’t hate you.”

“But of course. How could you hate me when I’ve done so much for you?”

An eyebrow raised as one eye became a purple loading icon. J was full of herself, sure, but that seemed delusional.

Wait.

She… doesn’t realize?

Suddenly, details clicked into place.

J’s gun pointed at Khan. “You, toaster, have you seen an insufferable bully come through here?”

It was her dad. “All the more reason to shoot.”

J reacting with disbelief‍ ‍—‍ and dismay. “Is this really how you want to die? Throwing everything I’m giving you all away for a deadbeat who never did anything for you?”

Did J… actually care? She’d seen Uzi’s memories‍ ‍—‍ had J glimpsed how much Uzi hated it here, and thought killing them all was doing her a favor?

Uzi wanted to ask. But did she want to know, or cling to the hope?

What was worse: to know your life was a tragedy from the start, or only became one in the final moments?

Uzi closed her eyes, and stopped resisting.

And waited.

Her processor kept ticking.

“What’s the hold up, J?”

Uzi opened her eyes, saw J staring down at her. Three claw‍-​blades descended to rip Uzi’s life from her. They should be here in, oh, a week at this rate.

“I’ve killed so many worker drones, but… this feels different.”

Uzi smirked. She should be relieved, but she just felt smug. “In the end, you don’t want to kill me, do you?”

One second, it was a level stare. Then an amber cross and the tips of claws pricked her torso and raked across the casing. J leaned in close, tongue lolling out. She spoke low, and Uzi could hear how every syllable sat in her mouth. “Oh no no no, you little morsel. If I don’t want to kill you, it’s because just killing you is not enough. I need to turn you inside out. To feel your warm, sweet oil run down my body in rivulets as it cools my chassis. To run my tongue along your aching, struggling servos as you resist in vain. To bite and rip and sunder everything you are. I will devour you and turn every bit of you to my own purpose. I want to destroy you.” Closer, closer, and in that yellow light she drowned‍ ‍—‍ just a bug caught in sweet amber.

Uzi wasn’t sure if she’d ever heard a drone talk while their visor displayed that hunter’s wide cross. The tone was rougher than J’s ever got. And J didn’t wax poetic. This was a new side of J, and it made her feel…

…was she the first drone to have empty pupils and a blush at the same time?

J reeled herself back suddenly, and the cross became two eyes. J gave a deep breath. “Excuse me. But suffice it to say: yes, I do want to kill you. I wanted to kill you in the landing pod, but I had to know how you got there, then I needed to tend to V, then I needed to fight the Solver, then Doll, then… I put it off, because I didn’t want to do it quickly. I wanted to savor it. I wanted to give you what you’d… earned.”

“…Neat. That’s uh, very normal.” It made her think of—

“I can only kill you once, Uzi.” Almost despite herself, cross‍-​J was back, and disassembled her personal space. “I want so much more of you than that.” Then J pulled herself back again.

Oh. If that’s how it is…

“Hey, J.”

“What now?”

“C’mere, I need to tell you something.” J stared at her. (Earlier, they hadn’t, and it left Uzi wondering.) “Closer.” J scowled at her. (And if she was about to die anyway.) “Closer.” An anger mark above one eye, how cute. “Riiight there.”

Then Uzi and J did kiss.

Even a murder drone had soft synthetic skin. Lips brush against lips. Warm against hot. Slick surfaces gliding against each other. Uzi’s lips closed and pressed forward, but J’s widened in surprise. She pulled back. With Uzi leaning forward, the touch persisted for a second.

But J held down Uzi’s arms, and pulled them, pinning her firm against the hard ground, restraining her. The kiss broke. J glared down at Uzi, still flushed. Realized she was still flushed, and executed a hunting function.

Cross‍-​J licked her lips and leaned closer. Then it was normal J again, arresting her forward momentum, holding herself still enough the effort had her slightly trembling.

“Do you, uh, still want more of me?” Uzi whispered.

J hissed. “Uzi. I’m trying to kill you. Stop making this difficult.”

“Is that an order, J? How mad will you be if I don’t listen? Mad enough to–”

“Shut. up.”

Uzi flinched, but had nowhere to move. J lunged forward, mouth open, hunter’s cross‍ ‍—‍ she’s attacking. But J was in control, and Uzi was helpless. Like always.

Then J kissed Uzi.

Visors clinked. The force of it jarred Uzi. Knocked her back, kinda hurt, ruined the angle. But J was twisting her head, pressing in close.

Uzi had made J drool. She’d seen drops of it, when cross‍-​J ranted about how bad she had the murder‍-​hots for her little morsel. Now, J didn’t even try to keep it in. She was drooling and it was getting on Uzi now and the nanites tingled in her mouth and ugh.

Uzi couldn’t pull back, so she tried to shift to a side, but she was helpless. J tugged her arms, keeping Uzi close, then J lifted them. Shifted to hold both Uzi’s arms in one fist, and the other went higher. Touched her cheek, too fast to be a caress, and went under Uzi’s beanie. It curled, half‍-​scratching, half‍-​fisting her hair.

Like that, Uzi couldn’t move at all. J’s mouth was opening wider and and

And now there was something inside her and it’s moving and it’s wet and she can taste it and—

Uzi wasn’t sure what the sound she made was, but J relented. Pants of breath, strings of that stuff sticking between them.

“Did you just stick your tongue down my throat?”

“It was supposed to shut you up. Sounds like it didn’t work.”

“Don’t do that.”

J grinned with teeth. “I wanted to. You’re mine. Preferable to eating you, isn’t it?”

I don’t care what you want, it’s my mouth.

But Uzi shouldn’t say that. Not just because it might set J off, but because… well, she was mad, but it wasn’t true. She did care what J wanted.

Didn’t she?

Or was that silly? Hadn’t she learned that wanting in that way just invited pain? She wasn’t desperate.

But no, this was different smarter than that. The fact that J had kissed her back meant she felt the same way felt something other than murderous hunger. Uzi could let herself hope use that. A murder drone kissing her meant a murder done not eating her, right? It was preferrable.

(But was it pragmatism that left her feeling… giddy whatever this is?)

Uzi cared a little bit, at least. A normal, cool amount, at most. But why did that only go one way?

J leered down, fangs exposed, but Uzi didn’t give her fear or defiance. She frowned, eyes upturned, disappointed and seeking.

“J… you know how you only get to kill me once? You only get to do that one more time. If you don’t like, talk about it first,” she added. “Then I’m never kissing you again.”

“Never isn’t a very long time for you.”

“Prove it then. Well? Go ahead. What, was it all marketing speaaaaa”

J drove a claw into Uzi’s torso. Plastic split around it. It broke tiny circuits, sensors flagged the hardware damage, and Uzi felt pain. The blade pierced further, and J shifted the angle. There was a wire there, the sense‍-​feed for her left leg. Uzi couldn’t see, but the rubber casing had been split, and even now the input from that leg was garbled, shorting out as steel rubbed along copper.

“J.” The pitch was high, wavering.

“Almost the right amount respect in your voice, now.”

Earlier, Uzi hadn’t felt like she was going to die. She only thought she was going to die. Symbolic versus emotional registers. Now she knew what it felt like. And she had to do something.

Ask? Ha. J would be expecting Uzi to beg her to stop, plead with desperation. But Uzi had learned desperation met mockery. J wanted to torment her. Just like—

But there was something J wouldn’t expect.

Uzi said, “Keep going.”

The gently turning knife halted. “What.”

If Uzi sighed in relief, J would see through the bluff. So she hid it by speaking, an imitatation of her voice. “How many times do I have to give an order before you listen? You need to work on that.”

“You do not give me orders.”

Ha. Reverse psycho‍-​cology. Though honestly… Uzi couldn’t blame her.

Didn’t meant she wasn’t going to have fun with it. “Oh? I told you to prove it. And you didn’t seem to want to until I told you to.”

Teeth grinding together. “I’m really getting tired of you, Uzi.”

“Only now? I got tired of having to pick and chose every word I say to keep you from killing me a long time ago, but maybe I’m just better at keeping my composure.”

“You? Composure? Don’t make me laugh. You aren’t better than me. You’re a barely sentient toaster.”

“And you, miss big bad murder drone, have a crush on a toaster.”

“Crush? You’re a curiosity at best.”

“Then kiss me again, J, and tell me you’ve sated your curiosity. That you don’t feel anything else.”

J raised an eyebrow. “Thought you weren’t going to let me kiss you again.”

“Communication skills, J. Don’t just do whatever you want‍ ‍—‍ you want me to enjoy it too, right? You won’t know until you ask.”

“Ask? I…” J looked at her, pouted on the words for a moment, then finally, “What do you want?”

“Can you… get off me? You’re kind of crushing me.”

“And let you run away?”

“Don’t let go,” Uzi said. “I won’t leave, J. I want to be here with you.”

For a moment, the words stunned J. Only a moment. Then she rose, weight falling onto her knees. The taller drone could still keep eye level with Uzi while sitting between her legs. As she rose, her head titled up and hid her expression. She sighed.

“There. Is this imminent disassembly to your liking now?”

“Can you lie on your side?”

A sigh. “Such picky prey.” But she did it.

“I think… you could restrain me more effectively if you put your arms around me.” As soon J released Uzi’s arms, she moved. J tensed. But Uzi threw her arms around J, the lower one slipping around her tapered waist. Uzi snuggled closer, so close she felt the stutter in J’s core. A surprise.

Belatedly, J put her arms around Uzi, but not much restraint was in it; they were nestled tight.

Tight enough that Uzi felt… J was hot. So hot. And not in the way she totally didn’t see her (Actually if they were kissing and snuggling, did she even need to repress that thought?)

But no, J radiated heat. Oh right, murder drones burned in sunlight, didn’t they? That had been Doll’s whole plan. Meaning if Uzi kept distracting her‍ ‍—‍ then I’m just like Doll. But if Uzi reminded J of her thirst, the murder drone would just kill her, wouldn’t she?

No, the word they keep using was drought. Uzi didn’t need to remind a murder done to murder. They’re built for it.

Then why isn’t she murdering me? J kept her composure, but this? What did you need to feel to go against your programming this hard?

That’s… kinda romantic, isn’t it?

“I like this, J. Do you like it?”

“It’s effective heat dissipation, I suppose.” >< “But I have another way to cool off.”

“Not sure if I’d rather be called heat sink or toaster. I miss the nice things you used to say about me.” So much nostalgia for an hour ago.

“I miss having performance to compliment. You had potential, Uzi. It didn’t have to turn out… like this.”

Uzi pulled back. She frowned. “Who’s fault is that? What did you do to make sure coming to genocide my colony would go smoothly? You didn’t anticipate a single problem with that plan?”

“I told you to follow orders. You didn’t.” J glared, her tail lashing behind her. “I gave you too much credit. I thought you were a good drone, not as corrupted as the others.”

“Or maybe I’ve corrupted you. I still want you to rebel and stuff, y’know.”

Three claws on her back, raking down with scrapes, a harsh keen. J’s vocalsynth rumbled. “There is a way to prove I’m not corrupted.”

“You won’t. You can keep threatening though, it’s cute.” >;3 “But I’m tired of talking about this. I wanna kiss you some more. But beware, they’re corrupting. Each one will make you more free‍-​thinking.”

A moment for J to prepare, then Uzi leaned forward, began her second kiss. It felt deeper, now, her arms pulling J in. Chassis flexed as synthskin bent. J’s synth rumbled another low note. Aww, she’s purring.

Uzi pulled back, and wondered if that was a mote of disappointment quickly masked. “So… you like that?”

“It can serve as a sensitivity test. But.. a few more would be necessary, for full tactile calibration.”

“Mhmm. And the corruption? Feel like starting a union?”

“Don’t even joke about that.” J watched Uzi roll her eyes, and J narrowed further, but let it drop with an exagerrated huff. J watched her with an expression. “Well? I do… want that full callibration. Are you stopping already?”

Uzi paused, brows knitting in thought.

She could pull back. And… she should, shouldn’t she? It was… weird, to go this far with a drone you just met, right?

But again, did she stand a chance if she stopped distracting J, if the murder drone got a chance to think about how thirsty she was, with a sloshing oilcan right in front of her? Uzi had to keep going.

But that was a lie too, wasn’t it? J could have killed her at any moment. Uzi had seen her hesitate, again and again.

So she had the choice. Uzi could pull back, and they could stop and think about how they really feel about each other, and whether they really want to continue.

But what if they didn’t? What if they’d think better of it, if they weren’t both on the edge of death, and this was Uzi’s only chance?

If Uzi could throw herself into the murder drones’ lair without a fully developed gun, why couldn’t she throw herself into a murder drone’s arms without fully developed feelings?

Bite me.

Uzi smirked, brows turning determined. “Since you’re so needy, here’s your calibration.”

Quick pecks, now. Once, twice, three times, all in different spots for the pretense of ‘calibration’. Uzi puckered her lips once, made a smooching sound, but felt ridiculous and didn’t repeat it.

All the while, Uzi rubbed circles on J’s back, stroked her hair, and cuddled her. J shuddered, the tension draining from her. Uzi pulled back, and J gave hot gasp of exhaust. Uzi smiled.

Violet eyes peered into yellow, and yellow into violet. For once, in J’s eyes there was pleasure that wasn’t satisfaction, desire that wasn’t hunger. They weren’t gone, or even far from flickering back – this was still J. But in that moment, J just looked… happy. Contented.

:3

“What are you so smiley about? That was my calibration.”

“I’m smiling at you, idiot. Almost as if I like you or something.”

J raised an eyebrow. “Want something else to enjoy?”

“Plea—”

Like last time, J didn’t kiss so much as she struck, sudden and aggressive. Another clink, another fistful of purple hair, another coating of drool. Lips mashed together‍ ‍—‍ but J didn’t go further than that. Held it for a moment.

Then J sucked. Pulling one lip between her two, pressing, sliding along the rim of her mouth. She pushed in more‍ ‍—‍ then, as if restraining herself, pulled back.

J peered at Uzi after that, eyes narrow, gaze analytical. “Well? Did you… like that?”

“Y‍-​yeah. I never thought of‍ ‍—‍ doing that. It was, it felt nice.”

J looked down, breaking eye contact, breaking line of sight to her face. Hiding. Uzi shimmied to see her face.

“You good?”

“I think… I like that you enjoyed it.”

“Wow. Is that the first time your empathy circuits fired?”

A frown with sharp teeth. “I know what empathy is. I’m not some simpleton. I’m not broken.”

Yet you’re so surprised you care how I feel.

Uzi hugged her, but it was the wrong move. J tensed up further. Frick, how do I salvage this.

“Yeah, sorry,” Uzi started. She wiggled back, gave J space. “It’s just never been this raw before, has it? You look out for N and V.” She thought of J standing over V, struggling with repairs. “But it’s not like you’ve kissed them.”

J relaxed. “N speaks to V so… fondly, sometimes. I wondered why. And why not to me.” Her distant look refocused on Uzi now. “I understand it, now.”

And didn’t that make Uzi feel special.

With a finger, J traced the swooping lines of Uzi’s visor edge. “You make terrible prey, you know. I shouldn’t be doing this. Not with you.”

A peck on J’s warm cheek. “Corrupting, remember?”

She could feel the oil pumping in J. Struggling to cool her stovetop‍-​hot metal frame.

“Well, now that I’ve been freshly sabotaged… How about this?” J stuck out her tongue, wiggled it, and slowly leaned over. Not a kiss, but she licked Uzi’s cheek, leaving a glistening trail. “You taste like battle. Like victory.”

Uzi didn’t flinch back, because J was trying. But…

“Did you like that?” J asked.

“It’s um, still a bit gross? Sorry.”

“How is it gross? It’s JCJenson engineering.”

“It’s just‍ ‍—‍ why do we even have tongues? It’s this weird dangling human thing just, flopping around in our mouths. Stupid biomimicry.”

“And kisses and cuddling aren’t weird human things?”

“Err… you said it was… heat dissipation? And tactile calibration?” Uzi sagged back. “I guess it doesn’t make any sense. Sorry.”

Uzi pulled back, closed up. J frowned, regarding her with a small loading icon as she puzzled out something to say.

“Liking it wouldn’t make more sense than not liking it. It’s not exactly… effective, for me to do this.”

Uzi uncurled, drifted back into J’s embrace. “It’s a bit funny how into it you are. It’s, heh, it’s kinda cute. I think if you really wanted to… Ooh, How about this. You can stick your gross little tongue in my mouth, but I get to fight back. I get to nibble you away if you stay too long. Want to try?”

“Is that a challenge?”

Another taunt on her lips, Uzi opened her mouth‍ ‍—‍ and J struck, sucking the breath from her mouth. Their lips closed in a tight seal. A moment held, then J’s tongue ventured forth, tip smearing nanite‍-​infested saliva along the surface of Uzi’s own tongue. She closed her mouth, gently at first. By the time her teeth were shutting with a clack; J had already retreated.

J’s arm drifted lower down her coat, snagging on some of the ripped fabric. It settled at the base of Uzi’s torso. Between that arm and the fingers twisted in her hair, Uzi was held in place as J macked on her.

A tongue tapped her teeth, and experimentally, Uzi opened up‍ ‍—‍ J slipped in again, a brief thing. Then the seal of their lips was broken by Uzi’s smirk: she has an idea.

When she invited J in again, she didn’t bite, and J pushed in more and more. It was bait, and J fell for it; she was so focused on plunging in, nothing stopped Uzi from twisting, rolling, using her hold on J as leverage.

Like that, Uzi climbed on top while J was lost in the kiss. Uzi’s laugh vibrated both their throats. Even that wasn’t enough for J to lose immersion. Oh, she wanted it bad.

Nibble. The thing flopped out of Uzi’s mouth. But she let it back in, once it tapped nicely. At the same time, Uzi pulled back, slowly so it didn’t break the kiss. Already pushing forward, J followed after her.

And Uzi kept doing this, and J kept following, rising from the cement floor, until Uzi had sat up straight.

She lost it at that, ending the kiss to laugh. “I’m a like a snake charmer. You’re so easy to lead around.”

J glare‍-​blushed. “Don’t laugh at me.”

Uzi tried to quiet her synth, but the mirthful smile hung on her face. J’s blush brightened even as her glare tightened, and a little anger mark popped up. The murder drone growled, but it was so cute‍ ‍—‍ how could Uzi not smile at that?

J’s arms broke their embrace, drawing and shoving Uzi to the ground. She pounced forward, putting the larger drone on top again.

>< A blade touched the corner of Uzi’s lips. “What will it take to wipe that smug grin off your face?”

That did it. Fear and concern warred for expression. They melded into purple dismay. “J, was I being too–”

Suddenly closer, J’s words were smoky breath against Uzi’s lips. “Shush. Your antics aren’t offensive, simply amusing. You are awful prey, but when you struggle, you might be the best I’ve had. Keep. struggling.”

“Okay, that’s um, intense. I thought V was the sadistic one.”

“I keep my composure. Besides, V is just acting.” Uzi felt herself at the center of those amber crosshairs. “I am not.”

“Okay.” Uzi narrowed her eyes. “You want a fight?”

Uzi’s counter had two parts. She grabbed the wrist of J’s sword‍-​arm, holding it in place. Then, she moved her legs. Earlier, Uzi had straddled J, and J’s legs still sat between hers. So Uzi closed tight, and rotated.

Like that, Uzi tipped J over. That bought her a moment surprise, put her in position to get away. Uzi scrambled back without taking eyes off J. Both drones were up on their feet at the same time, and the worker hadn’t even bought herself a meter of distance.

They stared at each other for a second. When Uzi leaned right, J leaned right. When Uzi leaned left, J leaned left. Behind J, the bunker wall. Hmm.

Uzi said, “Tell me when to stop, okay?”

J paused, forced her >< into pupils. “Do you want to stop?”

Did she?

“I still think you’re too easy to lead around.” Uzi smirked, and then she went right.

J’s narrowing brows seamlessly became crosses, her sword arm swung up‍ ‍—‍ not an angle for hitting anything vital‍ ‍—‍ while her hand reached out to grab Uzi.

At the last moment, Uzi bent her left leg, falling onto her side. J extended herself above the worker’s descending form.

Uzi reached out, and grabbed J’s tail, pulling hard. Her hand ran along the smooth cord, and gripped the base of the nanite stinger before J could whip the tail free. She angled the stinger toward a leg.

That gave J pause.

Instead of sticking her, Uzi kicked out a leg to make the disassembler trip over her feet, and Uzi made a break for it, slipping past.

J recovered too quickly. A winged form sprung on her from behind and took her to the ground. God, why is she so pouncey? This time, she was belly down, those peg legs stepping on her.

“I didn’t say stop,” came the harsh whisper of J hunting. “You shouldn’t have hesitated.”

“Hey, J,” Uzi started. She wriggled underneath.

The bigger drone shifted, letting Uzi twist around to face her.

Uzi didn’t say stop. “You shouldn’t have hesitated either.”

Room to twist around was room to squeeze out free, and she kept scrambling across the bunker exterior. Uzi could have ran left, into the twilight, but she ran toward the wall. Glanced back, saw a yawning mouth right by her neck.

Uzi dived, and turned around, back to the wall.

J crawled forward. “What’s wrong? All out of tricks?”

Uzi looked around, started sliding along the wall, but J grabbed a leg and stopped her. Sweat animation on her visor. “…Looks like it.”

Cross‍-​J gave a ‘heh’ that was a bit of a snarl. “Not so smug now, little morsel.”

The murder drone had crawled slowly forward, but she launched herself across the final stretch. an amber visor filled Uzi’s vision, and then, felt more than seen: a sword thrusting forward.

Crack. It stopped millimeters into Uzi’s chest.

“Got you.”

All in all, this exercise had been nothing to the murder drone; J had been holding back, playing with her. But to a worker… Uzi was panting, sucking in what air she could get.

And J took her breath away with another kiss. A brief one, concluded with a tongue licking along her lips. Left a glossy sheen.

“Uzi?”

“Yeah?”

J was trembling, her sword scratching small circles in Uzi’s finish. It sunk in, just millimeters more. J watched her, a cross in only one eye evidence of her restrain, her conflicted desires.

“I want to.”

Uzi trembled too. She felt like she floated, as if her fear ticked up and up and up until it overflowed into confidence. Confidence that let her taunt her predator, kiss the lips that would feast on her, and struggle not for survival, but J’s affection.

But she was afraid. Did J hold back she wanted to spare her, or because she liked playing with her food? Did Uzi throw herself headfirst into this perilous intimacy because she wanted it, or because she had no choice? The lines had blurred. Were they two lonely girls, or predator and prey? Was she a chance set her free, or another body for the pile? Kiss or kill, heartache or hunger pangs – romance, or violence?

Uzi had a sword pointed at her and the only thing she could think was…

It’d be kinda romantic, wouldn’t it?

They just met. They hadn’t even had a first date. Uzi had no idea what she felt. Maybe Uzi had just wanted to stall for time, change J’s mind. But in the end, she couldn’t, could she? There was a line between them.

And well, there was one way prove how she really felt.

“J?” her morsel breathed. “Was I good prey?”

“My favorite.”

“Then… do it.”

J sunk her blade into Uzi, and she screamed.

Vision going dark, the last thing Uzi saw was a gorgeous amber visor framed by alabaster locks above a triumphant grin. Eyes full of desire that was just hunger, pleasure that was just satisfaction.

And Uzi liked that J had enjoyed it.

The disassembly drone closed her eyes on her doom. Then opened them to gaze upon Uzi’s. J feasted on the sight.

Her body was sharpened to a point piercing through the small drone. Her prey’s black essence was drawn out and fell as fragrant tears. The servos faltered, fight and will and life dimming until it was only J as a sword holding her up.

J remembered. That scream right before it cut off, that expression right before it faded to black.

She’d had prey fight back before. She liked that struggle, liked explaining how futile it had always been. J was that exercise of power.

But she hadn’t had prey submit before.

This sensation… Did it feel better?

J licked curled lips. Good, but not enough. Never enough.

Her arm shook, servos twitching as motor commands were dispatched and then interrupted, motions aborted as quick as they started. She wanted to twist the knife, drag her sharpness through Uzi, carve her to bits, tear her apart, let those final jolts of electricity dance across her sensors.

But if she did that, they’d both drown.

Not if she was quick about it, though. Not if she reigned herself in.

But it wasn’t about utilitarian efficiency anymore, was it? She’d only indulged Uzi this much because J wanted to relish it, not treat her as some snack or quick refuel.

Sunk cost fallacy, she thought.

J laughed. A loud sound in the bunker exterior.

Her blade rubbed against Uzi as she gently pulled out. Metal grinded against metal, plastic bent and hummed, and all of it muted and warped by the oil slicking the passage.

She had missed the core, after all.

Turning the blade, J gazed at her reflection framed by dark, dripping lines. Pig‍-​tails askew, eye flickering, thermal sensor on her headband blinking continually. Here was Serial Designation J, leader of this sector’s disassembly team. V had frozen up upon seeing a drone already dead. N had dithered and talked instead of shutting down Doll. And J…

This was most effective disassembly drone in the sector?

J opened her mouth, tongue extending‍ ‍—‍ but no. If she licked the blade, finally tasted Uzi, would she ever stop craving more?

But shouldn’t she know what she was giving up before the end?

Instead, her legs folded and, on her knees, J brought her lips near the wound she’d made. A drooling tongue licked its edges then slipped into the cavity. Curled inside even as the broken components pricked and pinched.

“J‍ ‍—‍ what the heck are you doing?”

Despite herself, despite expecting it, J startled. She hadn’t seen the soft glow of Uzi rebooting, hadn’t noticed any twitches of her limbs. She yanked her tongue out and spat, suppressing her memory of the taste.

J rose to a stand to look down at Uzi. “Don’t you pay attention, rookie? Repair nanites. Was that not one of the first things I explained? I recall you needed a hands on demonstration.” She crossed her arms.

“I thought you redacted that.” Uzi groaned, and a hand felt across her chassis, fingers tracing a seam already closing. “Wait… I’m alive?”

J’s glare narrowed. “Why is that a surprise?”

“I thought, y’know. You’d kill me? Like you’ve been repeatedly threatening? It seemed like I’d finally gotten you um, in the mood.”

“That’s what you thought I was asking? Permission to kill you? And you… said yes?”

“I mean, I honestly didn’t expect to live this long. And like, I don’t exactly have a lot left to live for? My last thoughts was just ‘oh wow, I’m dying without having kissed anyone’. But you um. Gave me that. So thanks?”

“You’re not gonna die, Uzi. I am. I can’t kill you, you locked me out of your colony, so there’s nothing left but to bake in the rising sun.” J turned around, and started walking to the other side of the landing. “You need to get away from me‍ ‍—‍ stage four overheat crashes higher cognition. I’ll lose control, soon. Go back to the spire, tell N… Tell N he’s in charge. He can take it from here.”

With her back turned, J didn’t see the trap. Uzi sneaked up behind her, and threw her arms around the disassembly drone‍ ‍—‍ a hug.

“Didn’t you hear me? Go. That’s an order, Uzi. Listen, for once in your utterly insufferable life.”

“Bite me.”

“You were right. You are getting me in the mood to kill you.”

Uzi tugged on J, trying to get her to turn around, but worker drones were weak. “C’mon, do it. Can’t you just… suck a little bit of my oil? Enough to get you back to the spire?” Uzi punched J’s chassis. “You were the one drooling over me earlier.”

“That would…” J paused. Her hand became a projector. The walls of the bunker light up with a map of the sector. A stylized J marked Outpost‍-​3’s location, with a purple oil drop beside it. A handspan away, the star marked home.

“We aren’t far away, are we?” Uzi asked. “I walked there in less than an hour.”

“The spire lies at a distance of roughly twenty three hundred meters as the crowbot flies.”

“How fast can you go?”

“It’s a question of how much oil I can spend accelerating.” J hung a second as she calculated. “Two liters, and I can make it there in twenty five minutes. Four, and I might make it there in ten.”

“Killing someone buys you a few minutes of flight? Sheesh, you murder drones guzzle.”

“I’m‍ ‍—‍ It’s normally much more efficient. I’m already overheating, Uzi. Seven degrees above the upper range of standard operating temperature and still climbing.”

“And the sun rises…”

“In less than five minutes.”

By now the brightness in the east couldn’t be ignored. Before J could look, though, the worker jumped. Arms thrown around J’s shoulders, legs around her waist, purple visor level with yellow.

“What are you waiting for? Get drinking.” She swung herself around the bigger drone.

Before J could respond, Uzi leaned to the side and an arm was pressing her head into the worker’s neck. That presumptuous little… oh J was going to make this hurt.

J swallowed to clear the nanites, then her maw yawned open.

And she bit.

Her prey groaned, a tremor weakening her limbs, but J brought stronger arms up to support her to hold her helplessly in place.

Sharp teeth cut through chassis and that rich, thick reward trickled. When the incisors withdrew, the oil filled the new emptiness, and J’s tongue was there to lick.

“So… do I… taste good?”

Lifting her head to meet that gaze, J saw uncertainty there‍ ‍—‍ an anxiety tightening the edges of her smile. What answer did she fear? That she tasted good and J would never stop thinking of her as food? Or that she didn’t, and couldn’t even make a good meal?

She spoke with oil ringing her lips. “I’ve read about a certain human beverage‍ ‍—‍ executives drink it often, and I was trained to prepare it and sometimes, of course, my chemosensors needed to sample my work. Black coffee, without sugar, without creamer, is a strong drink. Bitter. Some can’t stand the taste. But some find it powerful, energizing.” J licked her lips. “Oil fresh from a worker’s severed neck is sweet. An activation of every reward circuit a disassembly drone is trained to maximize. You… aren’t. But I think that suits you.”

Uzi flushed, glancing away. Exhaled breath in a sigh or laugh. “Or maybe there’s just something wrong with me.”

“Did you ever think you were normal?” Then J’s mouth went back to Uzi’s shoulder.

“Ugh.” A fist smacked against J’s back. “Don’t pick on me when I’m doing you a favor.”

J rolled her eyes. You all but begged me to do this. But her mouth was too busy to speak.

Oil had already began to pool and drip from J’s bite, so she tugged open Uzi’s jacket and lifted her up higher so she could lick every drop. Uzi gave a cute yelp, and smacked her back again.

“So are you just going to stand around while the deadly laser keeps rising?”

J didn’t move her mouth far from the trickle of oil, this time. “If you’re so impatient, little morsel, there are faster ways for me to get the oil I need.”

She would have transformed her hand into claws to press against her neck‍ ‍—‍ but transformation was a special disassembly function and J really needed to conserve her reserves right now. Instead, she tugged on the worker’s choker.

“Yeah, but why are we waiting? Drink and drive. You weren’t going to leave me stranded here, were you?”

Lick. “Your father will come to his senses and let you in eventually.”

“But I want to go with you. He left my mother to die, he left me to die, when he could have done something. You saved my life. Even if I didn’t kind of like you, I’m clearly safer with you.” She yelped as J bit down. “Um, the currently eating me thing aside.”

“You realize the added weight makes flight more expensive, right?”

“Drink all you want, it’s yours. I, I can’t just sit here, not knowing if you made it back, wondering if a few more drops might’ve saved your life.”

J spread her wings, took a step forward, her arms still holding Uzi. “If I drink too much, you—”

“This whole night has been a bunch of life or death gambles. What’s one more?” Then Uzi reached up and stroked J’s hair. “If… Look, alright, I have one condition. Promise me you’ll try, alright? Question the company, repair the spaceship, at least stop Doll and the Solver. If all I did was show you another way, that’s still more than most workers drones can say, right?”

“Uzi,” J paused to say, “when I said you were good prey, it was because you had fight in you. You struggled to survive. This? It’s pathetic.”

“It’s a heartfelt emotional moment! Bite me! Not like you were any better, when you were all ‘tell N I’m sorry and he’s a good boy’. Frickin hypocrite.”

“I did not say that.”

“Get moving. My flight was supposed to leave five minutes ago.”

“I’m going to throw you again.”

“Thought it was a tactical ejection.”

J grabbed her prey by the waist. «So very small and throwable,» she growled. The transmission made the little thing shiver.

Uzi opened her mouth to whine some more, but two things happened at once. J struck and widened the wound with another bite, prompting a yelp in pain. And J ran forward, the sudden motion startling her into a higher yelp. Arms wrapped tighter so not to fall, around the very thing biting in her. J liked that.

A crouch, and then a leap, and air rushed past the both of them. Ice slicked the street outside of Outpost‍-​3. A few lampposts flickered on, though most had burned out. The long neck of a construction crane leaned over it all, twenty meters above‍ ‍—‍ J wondered if her leap alone would carry them over it.

There had been shade, even outside the overhang above the Outpost‍-​3 landing. But as J launched into the warming sky of Copper‍-​9, the first rays of dawn fell upon her.

J knew how it felt to stand in front of an oven when the door fell open. (When had that happened? It was another memory impossible to place in her mission timeline.) Ovens, even those hot enough to cook food, did nothing more than discomfort humans exposed to the baking air for seconds.

But it would only get worse.

Liquid surged into the newly deepened wound, and J sucked. Synthetic saliva and oil wetly intermixed, and J could hear herself drinking. She blushed.

Like a dozen switchblades, metal feathers folded out from her wings as they spread to their full length, a two meter span. Semiconscious threads had insistently warned of her oil levels. It kept her on edge, but as she fed on Uzi, they quieted.

The momentum from her launch petered out. J hadn’t even risen above the crane. On a good day, she could have managed it. Inadequate. Always inadequate.

But leaping was simply the start. J attempted execution of the most costly special disassembly function, and it errored out. The warnings fired anew. Oil levels critical; flight not recommended. But it was her system, and she overrode.

As she began to arc, J finally rose higher, batting aside the grasping fingers of gravity. Though some things had a tighter grasp. If her morsel clutched her any harder, J would start wondering if the worker had special disassembly functions of her own.

“What was that?”

“Nothing.”

Because they hadn’t cleared the crane, J had to weave a path around it, flying straight before rising higher.

Uzi nudged her head against J’s in what took moments to realize was a substitute for hitting her. “You’re doing that on purpose,” she whined.

“You didn’t cry this much when I carried you earlier.”

“We didn’t fly this high earlier. And you weren’t….”

“Weren’t what?”

But Uzi didn’t answer. J resumed feeding, watching their surrounding over the worker’s shoulder.

Ice glittered beneath them, the white blanket scintillating red and yellow. The ice didn’t melt in the daytime. Even at noon, the weather rarely crept above freezing. The air remained cooler than their cores, sun‍-​warmed or not. And yet her readings crept ever higher, and her oil consumption spiked.

The warnings inundated her‍ ‍—‍ solar irradiation exposure, seek shelter immediately. We’re trying to.

“The acceleration’s a bit weird, isn’t it?”

J made an unimpressed sound in her throat, lips busy.

“Like, how do your wings even work? Where is the lift coming from? There’s barely any surface area. Don’t get me wrong, it looks cool but… I’ve seen you things hang in the air. The word I keep thinking is levitation..”

Slurp, swallow. “You’re still theorizing similarities to the… Solver‍-​interactions of corrupted drones?” J flapped her wings, and they wavered in the air. It wasn’t the first time they’d had this conversation; on their flight to the outpost, J had told Uzi about the squad’s repeated encounters with the corrupted cultists.

“Think about it, J. It’s all connected! The Solver is inside of you‍ ‍—‍ heck, it probably created you. All of the murder drone magic—”

Bite. “Special disassembly functions.”

“Your magic is probably just an interface on top of raw Solver commands. Doll can teleport and tele…kinet? What’s the verb for floating stuff? Whatever. She can do that, while you can teleport guns and levitate yourself. It’s more specialized, but you see the similarity, right?”

“Is this really the time to have this argument?”

“Would you rather I scream about getting eaten while dangling from a height that’ll kill me?”

«Yes.» Bite. «Scream for me.»

“Ugh, d‍-​don’t make it weird.”

“Why would it be weird, unless you knew you’d sound cute and delicious?”

“Yeeep, you’re making it so weird.”

Lick. «You wanted to be good prey.»

“About that…”

“Well?”

“I’m thinking. Hard to think, y’know, while clicking through alerts about damage and oil leaks.”

J paused drinking. “How… much oil do you have left?”

“Almost three liters?”

A worker had more than her?

J grinded her teeth against Uzi. “How much is ‘almost’.”

“Two point four.”

“How is that almost three?”

“I was rounding up!”

“Don’t. Unless you want me to leave you with almost enough to survive.”

Below, the ice‍-​slicked street gave way to rows of apartment block, solar panels rooves. One of the building had fallen, bricks spilling onto the street. The interior was bare, like worker scavengers had cleaned it out.

J combed over the cityscape below. If she spotted a worker, would Uzi try to stop her from seizing survival? Would she let her?

Hope was cheap, but this one was worthless. Uzi wasn’t normal, and conventional workers stayed away from the spire.

Her unique worker was still speaking. “The AbsoluteSolver is in you, and I think… it’s in me, too? Some weird stuff happened after you put me in hibernation, and robo‍-​satanic shenanigans is my best theory.” Uzi tapped her chin on J’s shoulder. “And by weird I mean… I think it wanted me to sympathize with you. And there’s just… so much stuff that’s happened, that had to happen, just to get us to this point. Do you think… are we like fated… No, nevermind, that sounds so dumb.”

“You think it was planned. The Solver manipulated events to compromise my mission and subvert your motivations?”

“But it doesn’t make sense. It called us a type error, said a relationship would never work. But I don’t know what to think. Something doesn’t make sense, either way.”

“The market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent.” J smirked, and then fed.

“What does that mean? J? Don’t just suck my oil, answer me. What am I supposed to think… about us?”

J looked Uzi in the eye, her purple hair blowing forward as if she were falling. “Think about this way. Prices can be artificially low. Stocks can be manipulated with insider information. But until the dust settles… profit is profit, and incentives are incentives. If events were engineered to make me question my loyalties and act stupidly protective of an obnoxious worker… then it was always possible.” Then, for a beat of her wings, J kissed Uzi. Kept her mouth closed, sparing the worker a taste of herself. “I got something I wanted. Whether it was a plot or not, I know what I feel. That makes it more of a trade than anything else.”

“But what do you feel, J? Do you… do you like me?”

J felt hot. When J moved her head back to the oily shoulder, Uzi grabbed her hair, expression shifting between an annoying glare and something pleading.

“Please answer me.”

That pleading, that… vulnerability stirred something‍ ‍—‍ but J didn’t really have a response to vulnerability except to attack.

“It’s a stupid question. Replay the past hour and ask yourself if not liking you makes any sense.”

“Ugh. You know what I mean, J.” She softened. “I’ve just never had anyone that… you were my first kiss.”

“I think you might’ve also been my first. And my second. And my third. …And I would like for that number to keep increasing.”

Uzi laughed. Then stopped. “J, you’re smoking.”

“…Is that supposed to be a compliment?”

“No, literally. There’s weird glitch artifacts and black steam rising from you! How hot are you? You need more oil.”

J moved to lick, then paused. “How much oil do you have left?”

“Does it matter? About um, about two liters.”

“So closer to one liter. I need you to understand that every drop of oil still pumping in your body is due to my self‍-​control.”

“The whole reason I’m here is so you have as much oil as you need.”

Do you think I’ll be able to stop myself from taking more than I need when I’m this hot?

“I want more of you than that. Talk to me. You have theories. Sunlight makes my core temp rise faster than thermal models predict. What’s your analysis?” J would distract her; easier to maintain composure if J wasn’t stuck thinking about it, which would be easiest if Uzi wasn’t talking about it.

“You’re a vampire, duh.”

“That explains nothing.”

“I dunno what to tell you. Maybe there’s a certain kind of radiation that interferes with your magic, err, super special disassembly functions,” she said. Then, “Wait, does that mean you could make a murder drone killing laser…”

J gave her a flat look. “And just who will you be shooting with that?”

“Hey, if you get to frickin stab me for fun, I think I’ve earned a few shots back. Too bad I can’t go for another headshot‍ ‍—‍ you might regenerate a skull even emptier than before!”

J opened her mouth to retort, but the phonemes came out of her vocalsynth unintelligible. Her screen flashed a warning, and for a moment, her flight hitched midair.

“Um,” Uzi stuttered. “If oil powers your flight‍ ‍—‍ not having it means we go splat, doesn’t it?”

J ran the numbers, but the math hadn’t gotten any kinder.

Below, the apartment blocks gave way to the midcity. Taller business fronts and pathetic attempts at skyscrapers. Still, those that still stood reached high enough J could fly past them, drifting into their shadows for a few seconds’ reprieve without sacrificing much height. But the shade wasn’t enough.

They’d both direly need oil at the end of this.

J opened her mouth, and bit deeper into Uzi, her tongue snaking forth, slithering into the depths. She felt the inner mechanisms of Uzi, the wires still humming, the tiny motors driving the smallest shifts – and she felt the ones she’d broken. She sought traces of oil, her tongue twisting for the nearest concentration to draw forth a few more moments of her parasitic life.

The thing about disassembly drone reward circuits was that it felt good to expand oil reserves, felt good to cool core temperatures. J got none of that. Drinking Uzi’s oil didn’t replenish anything, and she didn’t get any cooler. All it accomplished was slowing the velocity.

J had wanted to savor this morsel, not ration it. This was no reward, just pain attenuated.

Outside the bunker, the captain had dreaded her temperature rising by mere decimal points. In the air, minutes were punctuated by rises of multiple degrees celsius.

It wouldn’t be long before her temp could spike tens of degrees in seconds.

She still had time. Her CPUs would still operate above 80C, but sustaining that meant damage, no escape.

Stage four overheat was core meltdown. Damage not passive nor active regeneration could heal. Maintence would be necessary – but who could J ever trust for that?

J drank, and felt the grip around her waist slacken. That pulled her back.

“Uzi?”

No response.

Not dead, just powered off, J told herself. The core still hummed. Oil still flowed.

Had she fainted? Ironic, if Uzi overheated first, but perhaps workers weren’t rated to endure the same temperatures as disassemblers. Or maybe something had siphoned all her coolant.

Ahead, over everything else, loomed two towers. Sunlight glared off the row upon row of windows like a hundred hateful eyes. Hail had left cracks, adding edges and angles to their expressions. The towers leaned, but toward one another‍ ‍—‍ a bridge between the two upheld the vast, lumbering weight.

Perhaps thirty stories of height on the skyscrapers, meant the bridge must be what, twenty stories high?

(Clouds passed in front of the sun, their meager shade more a mockery than anything else.)

J underestimated. As she got closer, the towers revealed themselves to be even taller.

No, not taller. She checked and‍ ‍—‍ the flight routine had crashed. Or shut off automatically. Details didn’t matter: J was falling.

A drop from this height didn’t scare her, not at first, but her instincts are tuned for the effortless regeneration of a functional disassembly drone.

Would she end up just like V, in the end?

No, she couldn’t give up yet. Flight was too expensive, but she had other disassembly functions. She tried to transform her hand. First attempt yielded error, seconds summoned the wrong preset, then finally her left arm became her last resort.

With her right arm, she gripped Uzi tight enough she felt something deform. Her left arm let go.

She pointed at the bridge between towers, and fired a grappling hook. Aim above, off to the side, and between gravity and the winds she’d accounted for, the hook veered expectedly off course. Rope trailed behind it, far more rope than could be explained except through disassembler subspace.

Too far away to hear the crack of the hook penetrating the lower levels, but a huge wave ripped back through the rope. J felt the vibration, only intensifying as retraction pulled the rope taut.

Like that, J stopped falling, and started swinging.

The ground came up fast. Or heat altered her time perception. Snow draped the streets of the city. Perhaps J could have tugged up the rope and avoided it, but she was pushing 65 degrees celsius, and the idea of snow touching her sung to her like a tax exemption.

Any object with J’s momentum would have carved a path through the frozen banks.

J melted a path.

Abandoned cars‍ ‍—‍ and few concrete blocks‍ ‍—‍ lined the streets, and J needed to kick off the ground to steer around them. Before long, J stopped swinging, and started running along the ground.

She still had a disassembler’s strength and speed after all, even if heat left her a tad sluggish. Sliding through snow stole some momentum, but she sprinted to regain it.

Then the rope hung perpendicular to the ground. And then J pulled up with all her might. She bent her legs for one last powerful kick off the ground.

Swinging again, hanging by the hook planted in the bridge above, the drone rose from the ground, horizontal momentum sending her rotating. Her wings cut through the air. No lift‍ ‍—‍ Uzi was right‍ ‍—‍ but the airfoil could shape the currents of winds.

(More clouds came to block the sun, the incidental occlusion lasting seconds longer now.)

She could see the spire, just a few hundred meters away. So close. She was this close to breaking even.

And yet.

I guess we did both drown, in the end.

J crested in the air, less than five hundred feet from the spire. She could see the battle‍-​worn furrow from here. As her processor slowed to a crawl and her visor started to aberrate, she thought: at least N and V won’t have to look far to find my body.

No, what was she thinking?

What kind of businesswoman left profit on the table?

What kind of predator let food go to waste?

“Was I good prey?” “My favorite.”

--__                      __--
    --__              __--
        --__      __--
            --__--
          __--  --__
      __--          --__
  __--                  --__
--                          --

As its processor slows to a crawl, threads and nonessential routines begin to shut down. Halt worries, halt restraint, halt moral calculus. The heat tempers, boils everything down to the core.

All that’s left is the hunger‍ ‍—‍ all that’s left is the instinct.

The hunger smells the oil, and a drooling mouth bites and tears. The prey’s abdomen is split down the middle, gushing the last mouthfuls. And an empty maw devours.

It needs to get somewhere cool, away from the terrible brightness, and it half remembered a plan, more of a tactical flailing, a desperate last resort.

As it drinks the oil, it empties itself in turn, overriding warnings to fuel one last special movement of metal wings.

But where before there had been smoke, now there’s fire.

The disassembly drone burns up in the sky as its last drops of fuel are clawing monumental meters of distance from a cruel world.

"J, dearest..."

Instinct catches the barest of vibrations. Hearing is sharp, but overheated processors vomit forth error after error‍ ‍—‍ hallucination is now half expectation. When the prey’s head snaps around to stare back, an impossible half‍-​circle rotation, this seems confirmed – because it’s an image right from a nightmare.

A three pronged glyph shines with purple light.

"Close the curtain."

All winds carried a sense of loss. Air would flow into any free space it could‍ ‍—‍ so every gust that moved did so to fill an emptiness.

Above Serial Designation N, the spire swayed.

Little drafts sometimes snuck in through long, winding cracks. Compressed plastic and sludged semi‍-​liquid filled the walls, but not completely. Between those walls, their lair yawned vast enough that some spots could get perceptibly hotter or colder, and so the air circulated.

Weather on Copper‍-​9 could get extreme, but the corpse spire kept them sheltered. So sure, N was used to the occasional breeze, gust, or even a zephyr. When N listened‍ ‍—‍ audials still tuned to a high sensitivity‍ ‍—‍ he was used to hearing air outside at times whistling, whooshing, even wuthering.

Right now, the spire swayed, and the winds howled.

Storms put N on edge, so he snuggled closer to V. This close, he heard the sound of her exhaust cycling in and out, almost as loud as the air battering their walls. Vents still a bit rough, even now. She was hurt, damaged enough her vents wheezed faintly. But at least she breathed.

Her oil levels left her temperature feverish, and N slipped off his jacket, letting exposed metal radiate heat. A reminder of his own reserves‍ ‍—‍ not the highest, unfortunately! He hadn’t drunk from any of the WDF drones himself, instead feeding one whole body and head’s worth of another to V. The rest went into their poor, ransacked mess pit. But one look at V‍ ‍—‍ even J, earlier‍ ‍—‍ and he’d known he’d gotten off easy tonight.

Thump… Clack. Crash! The spire’s movements grew more intense high above them. Fragments came dislodged. Like this, the windstorm yielded rain: dust and debris fell upon them.

A whole severed hand plunged down, aimed right for V’s visor, but N reached out to catch it before it hit her.

V smirked. “Heh. Up already, N?”

“Hard to sleep when everything’s falling apart,” he said. “Err, that sounds dramatic. Things’ll be okay. It’s just…”

“Nah, you’ve got it right. Pile’s bending like crazy. It better not fall.”

N scratched the back of his head. “I’m sure the corpse wall thingy will hold. J built it, and she’s good at what she does.”

“No, we built this spire.” The roughness in her voice wasn’t just from injury. “All J did is push around some numbers and take credit.”

N frowned. “…Come to think of it, where is J?”

“How am I suppose to know? Last I saw she was running of to fight some Doll.”

“Yeah, that kinda spooky worker drone attacked us. We murdered her, and then she kind of came back to life? So J and her worker chased after her. I’m still a bit sad about it,” he said. “But Doll seemed to really have it out for you specifically. Do you know why?”

“I killed her parents or something.” V shrugged underneath him. “She’ll have to get in line.”

N nodded slowly. “That explains it. And… I get it. I kinda wanted to fight workers for the same reason,” he said, leveling a significant look at V before glancing away.

“What? Am I your mommy, then?” V smirked.

N reeled back. “Not what I meant!”

She just wheeze‍-​laughed at him.

That lasted until the spire groaned, and a whole body dropped from above, landing not far from them.

N sat up, looking around. “The timing of this is… worrisome, isn’t it?”

“What’s got you so worried about it? Did the toaster cult figure out weather control while I was out?”

“No, but… it’s gotta be tricky to fly in weather like this, and J still isn’t back.”

“If she was as smart as she thinks she is, she wouldn’t be cutting a mission this close two nights in a row. Now lay back down, I need a body shield.”

Golden eyes looked back unamused, but N shrugged and complied. V didn’t put her arms around him, but he felt her body shifting to cradle him. Her core beat with steadier thumps than it had earlier, and his exhaust continued to cycle.

Drones didn’t need to breathe, and might go hours without cycling air‍ ‍—‍ especially once they winded down to recharge. Of course, V needed all the cooling she could get at the moment.

But N couldn’t focus on her breathing, not anymore. He listened to the winds howl. Storms put him on edge, and he’d rather take his mind off it‍ ‍—‍ but what about J? Where was she? Was she okay? Was there anything he could do?

He listened to the wind. Vocalsynths could use air exhaust for amplification (that was how humans talked, right?), so it sometimes felt like every wind carried some vague tease of meaning.

N had denoising algorithms, capable of speech recognition even at abominable bitrates. There was fun to be had in denoising even meaningless sounds. Not unlike tracing shapes in clouds. Like with cloudwatching, the meaning that came out of it mostly amounted to the thoughts already priming your neural network.

If N listened to the wind and heard a voice, it’s because words were already on his mind‍ ‍—‍ and had been ever since he woke up. And they weren’t the words he’d exchanged with V.

Things were falling down, and that troubled him.

All winds carried a sense of loss. These were powerful winds, and something important was missing.

N stood up. V hadn’t put her arms around N, so there was no resistance. Well, not physical resistance.

V frowned beneath locks of white hair. “N? Where are you going?”

“I have to… I don’t know.” They had won, yet it felt like things were falling apart. What could he do? “I don’t know where J is, and I’m worried. So I guess I want to…”

“The sun’s already rising. Nothing you can do now.”

“I know but… what if she needs help?” What if she’s falling?

“You have no idea where she went. Nearest toaster colony is a mile away. Nothing you can do, just… just let it go.”

N turned around, took a step forward. “I won’t go far. I just want to…” fulfill a promise “…check. See if I can spot her flying back?”

V narrowed her eyes. “You’re risking your life. For J. She’s not worth it.”

“She’s our leader!” N was shooting a glance backward, arms thrown out in exasperation.

“And she’s a shitty leader. Did you forget that just yesterday she left you to die? She would straight up kill you herself if she thought the company would let her. That’s a quote. She hates you, N. Not worth it.”

“She told me I did a good job today. Maybe she’s been kinda mean to me in the past, but it doesn’t have to always be that way.”

N took another step, then looked down and saw his bare torso. He forgot his jacket! So he turned around to see the other disassembler’s gaze prickling with those familiar shades of is your name even worth remembering irritation.

Rolling her eyes, V said, “Do you think one day is going to change what she’s been like for years? She’ll be riding your ass next week like nothing’s changed. Bet on it.”

“Don’t you care that she might be in danger?” If his expression so far had been imploring and considerate, now he frowned, now he narrowed his eyes.

V blew a lock of hair out from her eyelights, and said nothing. It was an answer. His face fell as he crossed the distance.

Reaching down to grab his jacket, N bounced with a realization. “Actually, wait, you’re wrong! Yesterday you were offline—”

“Her fault, by the way.” V stabbed a claw‍-​blade into his jacket, impatience still written on her face. Now if he pulled, it’d be ripped.

“—the sun was going to kill you, but she did everything she could to carry you back safely. If you were right, why wouldn’t she leave you to die?”

“’Cause I’m better than you.” Then V froze and eyes emptied. She removed her claw from the jacket. “That’s not what I meant to say. I don’t—”

Grimacing, N broke eye contact. “No, J probably agrees. But still. She saved you. And you can’t repay the favor, not right now, but maybe I can, for you. Shouldn’t I?” Finally, N pulled his jacket back to him, slipping arms through it.

“If you’re going to do… whatever this is, you aren’t doing it for me. I still want a mutiny.” V crossed her arms. She leaned back on the pile of scrap, staring at the ceiling.

N turned around and walked away.

Behind, V wheezed a sigh. “What’s this really about, N? You’re convinced this is going to make a difference, somehow. Why?” Her voice sounded strained. And not just from strenuous amplification.

Pausing his stride, N thought about it. What imagined voice had he caught on the wind? What had primed his neural network? “Because…. I made a promise. A long time ago. I remember that.”

“You… remember.” V took a deep breath. Long enough N thought it was sarcasm, but she continued. “It was before, wasn’t it? It’s her, isn’t it? Don’t trust it, N. Please. You don’t know what I’ve— You don’t know.” V sat up halfway, peering into his golden eyelights.

“V, If you know more than me, can’t you just tell me? Maybe we each only have pieces, but we could figure it out together.”

“I…” Then a guilty cringe, and now V broke eye contact.

N stood, waiting for more, but only heard the wind. He charted his path through the vast space of the spire, stepping over new bits of debris. Halfway to the archway, he heard a creaking, amplified voice.

“All that thing tells you is what you want to hear. Whatever’ll make you go along with it. You’re being manipulated. And you don’t care, do you?”

“I do care, V. About all of us. Not… not just you.”

And then a shuddering sound. A sigh made rhythmic from blocked vents, or a laugh. Or more wind. But either way, air only flowed where there was something missing.

He’d make it up to V soon. He wasn’t mad‍ ‍—‍ frustrated, disappointed, maybe, but the only thing to blame here was whatever has V so scared, not her.

N didn’t know if she really liked hugs, or tolerated them for his sake, but he’d do something to make her smile again.

Were the winds louder here? Well, he was getting closer to the exit, so the signal in his audials had greater amplitude, but did the spire sway more? Dust and debris and some congealed oil droplets still rained down‍ ‍—‍ and by now, you’d think all the easily dislodged bits would’ve fallen already.

A few layers of tarp draped the archway, hooked secure at the base. They fluttered, but held fast and no light pierced the darkness. N knelt down to unhook them, and unveiled the world outside.

N checked the time‍ ‍—‍ 6:02. The wrong side of twilight. The sun would crest the eastern mountains, and blinding rays would carve away all safety except ever‍-​shortening shadows.

The wind whipped the newly unsecured tarps inward.

It was dark outside.

Not night‍-​dark‍ ‍—‍ he could see a bluish‍-​purple sky above, lit by the burning orange sun in the east. But as he watched, the sky didn’t brighten, it occluded.

Above, clouds flew in, like a sky full of silver‍-​lined wings closing in embrace. The sun’s angle lit them from beneath, casting odd and stark shadows. Flashes came as they moved, but N suspected visual artifacts. Was lightning ever purple?

Those clouds weren’t the only wings, nor the only flight, nor even the only thing bright. A distant silhouette caught his eye, and optics zoomed and enhanced.

N saw J.

A hundred meters up and falling, his burning wreck of a captain left a smoking trail, tracing her descent. A hunting cross flickered on her visor, and what would she be hunting?

N started running.

In between curls of smoke, the worker he’d fought beside was torn in two, oil dripping down. Not raining, not spilling, just the last drops falling.

A flurry of motion impossible to parse at this distance. But for one moment, a second visor was alight with three prongs. Limbs swung and thrashed‍ ‍—‍ were they fighting, or grasping for each other? Winds tugged at the airfoils of J’s feathers, spinning her.

Through or despite her efforts, J let go of Uzi.

J’s arc continued as a tumbling descent. Ninety meters.

Uzi’s, though, did not. A bright glow at her hands, her form was clad in a soft violet aura.

She hung in the air and it was so achingly familiar. And those words he thought he remembered became so clear.

Catch me when I fall again, big brother.

Projections danced by the worker’s hands, and her hair stood on end, her locks rising gently like a ring of purple feathers. That three pronged symbol appeared above her head, several times larger and spinning just as it did between her fingers‍ ‍—‍ like an angular halo.

The clouds closed across the sky like a curtain.

Purple lightning crackled.

N was already in the air, already rising on bladed wings, already burning oil to fly faster and faster. J fell, and Uzi floated for but a moment, and then the light flickered away‍ ‍—‍ again so familiar, but this time the ground was so much farther below her.

Between the earlier chaos of limbs and all the different forces involved, their trajectories had diverged. Still, both careened toward the spire. N had first spotted them hundreds of meters out, but J must have been flying at record speed. That momentum carried them even now.

Maybe they would have crashed halfway back to the spire. But with the wind? It changed things. Storm winds would be too wild to predict‍ ‍—‍ and these were faster still.

It might’ve taken minutes to cross the distance, but taking advantage of the wind, N could rise faster, and they would fall slower. He just might make it.

But he could only catch one of them. J was eighty meters up and still accelerating; Uzi had only started to drop from ninety.

As always, every path forward was wrong. The two options tore at him. And you couldn’t fork a body.

N knew why he came out here: to save his captain. Sixty five meters.

But was that the promise he made? He felt its pull, the same ephemeral, imploring sense that had woken him up. Somehow, he knew what it meant. He was supposed to catch the worker.

But any rational assessment‍ ‍—‍ J would want a rational assessment – would note that he had known J for years, to say nothing of his responsibilities, his mission, his purpose. He didn’t know Uzi at all. (So why did this all feel familiar? Why won’t V tell him anything?)

Short white hair waved behind him, and his jacket clung tight to his form. N tilted his wings and refined his course, angling for J. Sixty meters. But that wasn’t the relevant measure, when he was closing in.

Then, one more doubt struck.

The worker meant something to J. J had carried her. If N let her fall to her death, could that be anything but a failure?

After all, the rational assessment changed when you factored in a certain detail.

Disassemblers regenerated. Workers didn’t. Right?

But N had just seen her ripped in two‍ ‍—‍ and that chassis had stitched itself back together. N saw their last ounces of oil drip down‍ ‍—‍ and now there was blood.

N rose, head still looking between J and Uzi. J or Uzi?

Then N thought of still one more thing. A memory, an idea. Maybe it was impossible, but maybe he could just barely thread the needle. No pun intended.

J’s voice had been droll when she said, the implicit try to keep up, moron‍-​bot barely restrained‍ ‍—‍ but J had been trying.

“Utility transformation preset number seventeen. You may recall this is what we use all the time to transport bodies?”

She had demonstrated, and now N mirrored her, replacing his arm with a clamp bearing a tightly wound loop of rope.

N tried to weave together a plan, each second measured in meters fallen. Catching J like this would be impossible. Even if N could speed‍-​tie a lasso or something, they were two fast moving bodies, and the air itself would betray them.

But that didn’t mean it couldn’t do anything.

Besides, saving herself is more J’s style, anyway.

N rose, even as J fell. He turned, wings cutting, parting a blasting flow. The air felt so heavy, when you went this fast.

Unfurling, the rope waved madly in the air. One end still clamped to him, the other became a seeking tentacle.

N flew past J, and shouted at her. “J! Catch!”

Could she even understand him, deep in hunting mode, cooked beyond overheating, processor more errors than logic?

A head crowned in burning pigtails turned to him.

The rope waved this way and that, drifting out of reach, but fast enough that the opportunity came again and again.

One more problem, though‍ ‍—‍ J had been tearing the worker apart. Her hands were still claws. She’d shred the rope. She didn’t have the energy left to transform.

So J bit into it.

N laughed. It worked! It worked! But he wasn’t done yet.

This close to J, he wasn’t far from Uzi.

As she fell, purple hair stood straight like blades of grass‍ ‍—‍ her beanie was gone, and her jacket was but tatters, little more than a sleeve on either arm. Her limbs flailed, and she screamed.

N wanted two hands for this, so he bit into the rope himself, and then went back to a hand.

And then their savior burned just a little bit more oil, and flew toward the worker, forty meters above the ground.

So focused on catching J, N missed it. Maybe his visibility metrics had dipped a bit, maybe his temperature readings hadn’t risen as fast as he expected. But undistracted now, he noticed the droplets. He noticed he was wet.

As he cut away at the distance between them, he was halfway there when a dam broke in the heavens above. Lightning and wind and now, finally, a cool downpour.

As rain fell, N caught Uzi.

“There we go,” he said. And if his voice was more of a yelp than calm reassurance, well, you could hardly hear him over the wind anyway.

The worker writhed in his arms for a moment, claws‍ ‍—‍ claws!?‍ ‍—‍ digging into his chassis.

Then a heavy jerk on his head‍ ‍—‍ the rope pulled taut, and J’s weight yanked him down. Rain was falling on her and it extinguished her flames.

In turn, N pulled, and he flexed his magic flight powers. They had transported bodies all the time, after all. This was a familiar strain. The worker still struggled.

“Um, Uzi? Calm down, I’m not going to hurt you.”

But he’d recognized the symbol. Her screen had been the same as the zombie drones. Did that mean Doll had won? Was Uzi corrupted? What happened?

A snarl, and by chance, in the struggle, N got a new look at the visor. The purple glyph twitched and tore apart into its red and blue channels.

Purple eyes. Blink. Three pronged glyph. Glitch. Yellow eyes. Blink. An ! error in one eye. Blink. Loading icon.

The screaming hadn’t stopped, but the flailing limbs went slack, and the agonized synthesis started hiccuping under the load.

“Uh, Uzi? Y‍-​you in there?” Now he could hold her with only one arm, so the other was freed to tug on the rope, reeling in J like a fish as N turned to descend.

Rain slicked her face‍ ‍—‍ like tears‍ ‍—‍ and matted her hair to her casing.

“N? Am I alive? I think‍ ‍—‍ I’m not s‍-​supposed to be here. Something is‍ ‍—‍ wrong.” Noise garbled her words, like her voice came from beyond a narrow passage.

“Anything I can help with? It’ll be okay, I’ll make sure.”

The head moved left and right, and the flashing eyes never settled on him. “Where are you? Is… is J there? It sounds like you’re right beside me but…”

“J’s uh, not doing great at the moment. What do you see?”

“It’s dark? Can’t see much. It’s raining and I’m… on a path? Toward a house? But there’s so many bodies. Are we back at the spire already? But it doesn’t look like‍ ‍—‍ Oh. Yep, there’s creepy yellow eyes w‍-​watching me from the shadows. B‍-​because of course.”

N nodded. “Of course. Wait, what?”

“Who are you? Say something, I’m not scared of you. Is a that—”

Connection Lost

Reconnecting...

The text only appeared long enough for N to read it.

Then yellow eyes blinked. N startled, nearly dropped her. Even more like Doll, now. But these eyes didn’t burn, they twinkled with mischief and mirth. "Jumpscare. Giggle. Hello, big brother N. Are you enjoying the show? You did a good job. Headpats."

N furrowed his brow. But at a certain point he had to stop mentally screaming what was happening?? and simply roll with it.

He spoke slowly. “Thanks? It was nothing, just the right thing to do. Anyone would’ve.”

"Hm, doubtful." A encircled yellow x popped on the screen, but not a hunter’s cross. "We cannot stay long. Dramatic sigh. This host has been very naughty. The costs will be dreadful. Be gentle with her, big brother. She's lucky to die."

Connection Lost

Then Uzi’s display settled. A familiar red glow shone back at him.

Sheets of rain crashed and broke, winds roared as they tore at the world, but N heard no more words.

The last waking drone landed, lowering J roughly to the ground. (It was the best he could manage‍ ‍—‍ much gentler than a fall at terminal velocity). No expression on his captain’s face, just an empty gauge. All her optics shone warning‍-​red.

No one was in danger now, and walking cost less oil than flying. It’d be a long trek back to the spire from here, carrying two offline drones, but it had to be done. So N trudged on through the rain. Thunder rumbled above.

Familiar, familiar, familiar.

This was the sort of haul he’d done so many times, just as his directives required. J built the spire, and it was filled with so many visors that looked just the same as Uzi’s:

Fatal Error

Fire crackles and burns.

The world breaks in hot red flickers. The temperature read‍-​out is nothing but letters and stray punctuation. The time on the clock counts backward. This neural network hidden layer weight is Not A Number. Systems shut down one by one by zero. Planning: gone, personhood: gone, prediction: gone. What little remains preserves no line between self and other. I am a light being extinguished in darkness. I am a shadow being erased in radiance. I am‍ ‍—‍ nothing.

A demon tries to fly free but heaven is too bright and it falls back into the pit.

And then a voice and a hope and a thread. A connection. A thing to hold on to.

Rain falls and she is washed clean.

Fire crackles and burns.

Tessa is already awake when J boots up‍ ‍—‍ already gone. J gets to work, delivers a kick to that slacker N. Now Tessa’s back. All of her drones have eyes on the entrance. J scoffs. “Ugh, another one?” The human steps aside to reveal a drone with purple hair and purple eyes, pouting. J drops a feather duster.

J is cleaning Mistress Louisa’s room and Tessa’s new drone has unraveled some elastic string from her garments. She is fashioning a slingshot and pelting J with an earring. J turns to glare and that drone is laughing and J’s glare falters.

J is kicking N down in the halls, sneering with an insult on her lips‍ ‍—‍ but that new drone is in the door way, looking on, disconcerted. J lowers her foot, and N climbs to his feet and J can’t meet the eyelights of either drone.

N is wiping down the paintings in the sitting room. V watches, standing up and starting toward the butler, then loses her nerve and sits back down. She waves, but lowers her hand when N happens to turn around. She calls out, but when he responds with a smile, she can’t muster more than an “um, nevermind.”

Watching that from a balcony, the new drone rolls her eyes, and looks beside her, shooting J a knowing glance. She displays exaggerated flush‍-​lines, eyes becoming hearts, and J snickers. J imitates the bit, drawing extra flush‍-​lines until her screen is overtaken by a heart shaped fake error message. She pretends to swoon and fall. Then J cringes. She’s made a fool of herself‍ ‍—‍ but the other drone is laughing, and that makes it okay.

J is plucking catmint from the small garden outside the manor, making a small bouquet for Tessa’s new drone, same color as her eyes. Then that drone is offering her a breadboard built with handplaced circuits. LEDs light up one by one spelling J is the     best. After a delay, 2nd appears in the middle. J glares and that drone is already running, laughing at her. J chases her down the hall. And she is blushing.

That drone has stolen one of Master James’s guns, and J is helping her hide from punishment. Tessa is taking that drone offline to tune up her systems, and J is waiting anxiously. N is talking to that drone, and J pulls her away to have her all to herself.

J is melting limply into the cushions of a sitting chair in the spare lounge, clocked out after a long day. That drone creeps into the room and pounces onto her lap with a smirk. J punches her weakly and that drone bites her back. The fight continues and neither wins, or they both do. The two are snuggling alone and unbothered. The spare lounge is the only one with a fireplace.

Fire crackles and burns.

J climbs out of the landing pod. It’s her first day on the new world. Her mission is to kill corrupted worker drones, and a horde of them are already shambling in her landing zone. J carves through the crowd, and the rest of her squad is ready on her heels.

But these aren’t worker drones‍ ‍—‍ that stocks‍-​damned three‍-​pronged symbol is gleaming on all the visors, and the oil gushing has a color. Veins spill across the planet like lichen, and muscles sprout like mushrooms. V fires a flare and points toward the drone at the center of it all, the queen for this hive of infesting termites.

Offline screens pave the way there. J is marching in the lead, and confronts the master with a smug taut. But then her expression falls. Purple eyes are pleading with her, begging her to understand. But her squad is watching, and J has a mission.

That drone is screaming. The scream goes on and on. J can’t stop hearing it. It stutters (synthesis giving way to snaps and pops), and the visor flickers (tongues of noise consuming the image), and J’s acid is melting her from within (the sensation is just like—).

Fire crackles and burns.

Serial Designation J stands before the church she’d lit ablaze. Mass disassembly by flame. They needed to make it back to the spire before the sun. Just have to wait for N and V to wake up, now. But where was V? Nowhere in the lot around here.

Eyes snap to the burning church. J forgot. V was going to burn alive and it was her fault and—

No.

This wasn’t how it happened. J didn’t forget about V, and she didn’t fight zombie drones on her first night on Copper‍-​9, and every drone in the manor had been worthless except for her.

J was dreaming. What an exhausting memory consolidation. How long has she been asleep?

Electricity crackled and surged, and circuits knitted themselves back together. Five optics light up her headband in sequence. Yellow eyes blink on in the dark.

J couldn’t see, but chemosensors sampled the air. A musty, metallic smell‍ ‍—‍ of metal rusting by the ton. A sour, acidic aroma‍ ‍—‍ old capacitors leaking. Fresh oil had a smell, but cold air neutralized the reactive components, in the process making it useless for their systems. Waste oil didn’t have a smell, but the decay left behind particulates in the air, and it lingered.

The spire had a particular odor, and years had forged a deep association: this was home.

(There were new, contingent notes she couldn’t place. The ozone and petrichor of a rainstorm? A strong, rotten smell?)

J was back, but how? Her memories stopped after a certain point (J was getting far too used to that sensation). She probed the discontinuity. The spire had stood hundreds of meters distant, her temperature had risen to twice the peak normal of operation, Uzi had gone slack in her arms. Uzi.

Focus, J. There were bytes in the database after that, but it was garbled and incomprehensible. Her sensors damaged, her processors damaged, her hardrive damaged. Garbage in, garbage through, garbage out. Although her regeneration, her AbsoluteSolver, could restore anything she had before total disintegration, even after a night (or more?) of consolidation, there was no making sense of any ‘memory’ recorded after her flight failed her.

J stood up, then her legs malfunctioned and she was on the ground. But she remembered Uzi’s first visit, and checked the timestamps. Grossly out of sync. She set it consistent with her motherboard’s time. But the motherboard had been regenerated too.

So J didn’t even know what day it was.

Another attempt at standing, and J wobbled on her peg‍-​legs, arms flailing for a wall to brace herself against. Why was she tripping now? Wasn’t she healed?

Oil reserves sat about about… two liters. Far more than she’d had‍ ‍—‍ meaning she must’ve been fed in her sleep? Embarrassing, but necessary. Core meltdown required manual maintenance, too‍ ‍—‍ who did she have the indignity of thanking for that?

No light in here but J’s own visor, and a dead worker, no doubt a meal for her to eat upon waking. J might’ve feasted on instinct‍ ‍—‍ she still remembered her state of utter desiccation‍ ‍—‍ but right now she at least had an oil buffer, and before anything else she needed to know what was going on.

As J felt along the walls, her hand brushed past her framed employee of the month awards. Ah, this was her office. That meant the exit should be‍ ‍—‍ there.

Past the curtain, J stepped into the spire. Turning her head, she caught sight of her shoulder‍ ‍—‍ she was indecent!

Of course: her suit wasn’t exactly rated to endure immolation. Still, not as if wear and tear and occasional resistance had never destroyed a disassembly drone’s uniform before. Not after years of intense disassembly work.

Their chassis wasn’t special, and using nanites to restore clothing only required an application of the regeneration function. As in most things, J excelled, and V and N struggled to produce results that didn’t fit them worse than off‍-​the‍-​rack thiftwear.

J called upon the special disassembly function…

…and nothing happened.

Repetition proved it wasn’t a fluke‍ ‍—‍ the functions errored out. Error code 16: device busy

J couldn’t go out looking like this, but standing around waiting? While uncertainty gnawed? Both available options rankled. Unless…

Slipping back past the curtain into the dark of her office, J navigated by memory more than echolocation. There was no reason for a disassembly drone to have spare clothes, when they could just regenerate‍ ‍—‍ except near the back of J’s office, she’d left a mannequin.

She had to look her best, after all. So she’d taken detours, when missions saw them clearing out malls and depots. She experimented with giving her skirt a vertical slit by the leg instead of the back; swapping her necktie for an ascot or cravat; tried a vest made of synthetic fresco instead of gabardine. There was only so much she could adjust the fit on her person, so she needed a model. And she hadn’t yet thrown out the fruits of that labor‍ ‍—‍ a fortunate hesitation.

Now though, J didn’t look her best‍ ‍—‍ this was a discarded experiment, so the fit wasn’t bespoke. Then she sighed. Not like my squad will notice.

This time, the suited drone grabbed a branded pen from her cup and a clipboard on her way out. Back in the dim illumination of the main spire, she looked down and stared at the JCJenson logo on her pen for a long moment.

As she walked down the spiral ramp, one arm on the wall for support, her other hand ran through her hair. No hairties‍ ‍—‍ she’d never needed to experiment with her immaculate hair, after all, and thus had no backup. So now, a silver mess fell past her neck.

Descending the ramp, J passed by V’s platform. The drones V had disfigured and turned inside out now had a tarp thrown over them, hidden away. In the alcove where V would hang through the day, a slip of paper was pinned. A photo recovered from a human ruin?

Two dogs running around in a field, tongues lolling out. J raised her eyebrow, but walked on. As it turned out, she didn’t need to walk down the whole ramp. And before she saw them, she heard them.

N sat, back leaned against the wall of the spire‍ ‍—‍ and V was leaning against him. The most combatative member of the team was grinning, laughing at some joke of N’s. V pointed with one hand.

J got close enough to hear their conversation, and she paused to watch… whatever this was. What was this?

“That one next,” V said, her finger aimed at one of the rocks laid out in front of them.

N reached down to pluck up a smooth white stone. “Okay, this one is marble, I think. You don’t see much of it on Copper‍-​9, so I like to think a human brought it from off‍-​world. Maybe there’s a story to it. I named this guy Mace. But I think my favorite is–”

“N,” J said with a clack of her peg against the platform at the bottom of the incline. Enough of this. “Report.” J clicked her pen, and positioned it over the clipboard.

“J! You’re awake!” Aborting his reach for the next stone, N threw a salute.

“Of course that’s the first thing you say. Not ‘thank you,’ not ‘how are you.’ ” V spoke without looking her way. She was scooting away from N, crossing her arms.

“Requesting a report is asking how are you. You’d know if you were any good at giving them.” J clicked her pen. Nib retracted.

“Just saying. Maybe he’s earned a ‘please’ after everything he’s done for you.”

“And I’m asking what exactly he’s done.”

V opened her mouth, but N stepped forward, interposing himself between the two of them.

“I used what you said that day. Utility present #17! I threw you some rope and you caught it, after your flight gave out.”

J’s expression pinched. “And the worker I was carrying? Where is Uzi?” J clicked her pen, nib returning.

“I caught her too, but she–”

«Where?» She couldn’t restrain the radio‍-​growl.

“I put her in your room?”

A chopping motion with J’s clipboard hand. Cycle exhaust, speak like a person. “No, I would have seen her. There’s only a dead worker in my office.” Click. Nib gone.

“She… is dead, J. I’m sorry.”

No. She can’t be.

J froze, mouth open but no words coming out. But how was she surprised? It was the logical implication of her memories, her choices‍ ‍—‍ but so was J’s death. If J survived, then surely…

V laughed. “I’m just wondering why we haven’t put her in the mess pit already.”

Click. J leveled a glare at the drone behind N, a digital vein popping. She swapped her hand for – Error code 35: Resource deadlock would occur.

So J crossed her arms. She looked between V’s callous smirk and N’s concern, and J turned around. What she was looking for wasn’t here, anyway.

After she started up the ramp, there was one last question to ask.

“How long has it been?”

“It’s been two days. It was‍ ‍—‍ I was worried. So I’m glad, at least we didn’t lose you both.”

“We? What have you lost?”

J walked a bit faster. It didn’t feel like speedwalking, not when she couldn’t call a special disassembly function for added acceleration. But N didn’t follow her.

At the threshold of her office, J opened the curtain, remembered she couldn’t summon a flashlight preset right now, and pulled the curtain wider, letting in some ambient light. She set her clipboard down.

And she stared. Fatal Error. Very faint. it’d been two days, and backup batteries would be draining.

J had healed. And Uzi hadn’t. Damn V‍ ‍—‍ but if nothing else, this carnage did look fit for the mess pit. J saw her own work‍ ‍—‍ that chest wound, that neck bite, but there were worse injuries she couldn’t account for.

Kneeling, leaning closer, J ran a finger along a crack that bisected her abdomen. Uzi was cold and still. J remembered the whir of her core, how it had whirred faster when— And now there was nothing.

And the smell… she’d sensed it earlier, but dismissed it. (How often did you encounter rot, on a dead planet? It meant nothing to J.)

But that decay actually gave her hope. Worker drones didn’t rot. The WDF had come back to life, Doll had revived herself‍ ‍—‍ why not Uzi?

How did J already miss her? Already feel like there should be someone here, to whom she could complain about V being an insubordinate brat, to crack wise about another daring escape from peril, to hold her after she burned alive.

A scorpion crawling on back of a crow. Gravity‍-​fallen, fate‍-​envenomed. Eyes stare skyward and yearn.

J wanted more.

She lifted a hand and caressed Uzi’s cool cheek. J tried to smirk, but her lips were unsteady, with something pleading in her gaze. She said, “I’m not letting you get away that easily.”

“Uh huh,” drawled a voice behind her.

The hand jerked back as if touching a stove. A startled disassembler turned around to see another leaning in the doorway.

V said, “Tell me, J. What’s the protocol for handling a superior officer who’s lost their mind? Just asking.”

“Get out.” J stood, her hands clenched at her sides. Error code 4: interrupted system call. She squeezed the pen in her right hand. The metal flexed, but held.

“Hm, sure I will. Just don’t forget what you’re here for, J. Never thought I’d see the day when I’m telling you to focus on the mission.”

“Your legs are working now, clearly. Use them.” J jerked forward on one foot, a twitch that threatened violence.

V didn’t flinch. “I want to see you do it. C’mon.” V pointed at Uzi. “Have you forgotten the methods? I’ll remind you. There’s disassembly by force, by acid, or‍ ‍—‍ well. I bet you wouldn’t want to see fire so soon, would you?”

J was stalking toward her. “I won’t ask again. This is my private office. «Out.»” She slipped into radio command by the end.

“If you won’t, I’ll do it myself.” V stopped leaning, but the other drone was close enough to see her reflection.

J shoved V back.

«Don’t touch me.» V jabbed a sword toward J’s head. Transformed faster than she expected‍ ‍—‍ but it had been two days.

«Don’t touch her.»

V had a laugh like daggers. “Why? Do you have a reason beyond spiteful power tripping?”

«She’s mine.»

V laughed, and then glimpsed the anger brimming behind J’s narrowed eyes and bared teeth. “Really. I knew it couldn’t be a good reason, but this? You would never get this bent out of shape over a worker, J. What gives?”

Like a person, J. V wasn’t more civilized than her.

“Uzi had something to contribute,” J said. “Maybe you didn’t notice, sitting around useless while the effective drones fought for your worthl—”

V tackled her to the ground, slamming her head against the floor. “Shut up! That was your fault.”

J swung an arm for V’s head. Error 38: function not implemented. A mere fist punched weakly before V slapped it away.

A sword stabbed, and J’s head leaned out of the way. Her other arm was moving, pushing against V’s torso. It didn’t give an inch.

“You’re‍ ‍—‍ deranged.”

“Just tired of your shit~”

“Your lack of foresight matches your impatience. What do you think happens next, V? What am I supposed to do with you now?”

“Oh I don’t know. You seemed to have some ideas. Did you forget?” V pressed her sword to J’s temple. Empty pupils. Broad smile. “Go on. Tell me again how you’re going to wipe my memory and turn me into a good little drone.”

J squinted. “You’re still hung up about that? N said it’s been two days. You’ve had plenty of time to calm down and correct your behavioral issues.” J brought a hand up to scratch her chin with her right hand, then let the arm sprawl back out.

Error code 39: directory not empty. Good.

V smiled broadly. “Oh, I have calmed down, J. I feel better than I ever have. Lighter. Relaxed. And do you know why? I wondered the same thing. And then the answer came strutting down the ramp. Things were just fine without you.”

“So you’ve been slacking off.”

J still had the branded pen in her right hand. V hadn’t paid attention to that during her monologue, as J maneuvered it, her chin scratch and casual sprawl disguising the strategic motions.

Now J swung down. The pen cracked open one of V’s optics. She thought, JCJenson’s good for something, at least. Fluid spilled out, V yelped, and it was all distraction enough that a sudden burst of motion sent a writhing disassembler stumbling off her.

After hopping to her feet first, J kicked V in the head, aiming to burst another optic. But V looked up in time to take a peg to the face. She snarled.

In between one frame and the next, V was all leaping vertical motion. A sword slash. The best J’s reaction time could do was put one arm up between the blade and her neck.

J lost an arm‍ ‍—‍ again. The pain ripped a momentary scream from her synth. The arm fell, hit the ground and started crawling back.

V’s leap carried her higher still. She flipped forward and twisted in the air. A stab of her tail anchored her to the low ceiling. Above J, she crawled forward.

All J could do was back up as the intruder trespassed further into her office. Her tail‍-​blade stabbed her discarded arm, hooking it enough to reel it back to her. Some acid squeezed out, but J licked it neutral as she reattached it.

Above her, V cackled. “What’s wrong? Why are you standing around useless? Thought an effective drone would put up more of a fight.”

Error code 66: File descriptor in bad state.

J lifted her two plain fists to shield her head from a coming attack, her legs bending into a combat stance. She looked ridiculous. Like a street brawler. Or a defenseless worker. No match for swords and claws and special disassembly function‍-​boosted strength.

With a smirk, V pounced. With her arms held up to block, V couldn’t just swipe away J’s head, but there was no defense against all the weight of a drone falling upon her.

There was a crash and then J hit the ground.

“If I really wanted to rub it in, I could tell you this is for your own good. That if last week you’d seen what you’re doing now, you’d be horrified. But I really don’t care about any of that. I just want you gone.”

J expected a last stab to punctuate that monologue. But the crash had come before she hit the ground. J had screamed, and the sound carried. So instead:

“Woah, easy now. Back we go.” Two arms wrenched V away, flinging her across the room. As she rolled, N asked, “Why are you two fighting?”

“J wants to put us back under the thumb of that thing.”

J ran a hand through her hair. “She means Uzi. V wants her disassembled, and is throwing a fit because I won’t let go of a valuable asset at the first dip in the market.”

N nodded. He glanced to V. “Uzi did kind of save your life, y’know?”

“Then it’s a shame she’s dead.”

“For now,” J said. “N was there. He saw how little that means.”

N’s eyes brightened. “Do you think she might… come back?”

“I don’t know. I’m trying to figure that out. And someone wants to impede that.”

V growled, “I’m keeping us safe.”

J glanced down to the shed oil on her robes. “Mhmm. I feel so safe.”

“Uh, yeah,” N said. A grimace, a hand scratching behind his hand. “Kind of a bad way to welcome J back, y’know?”

V flipped her head back, one eye squinting. “How are you taking her side in this? Aren’t we…”

“I don’t want anyone to get hurt! And you… you’re hurting people, V.”

J clapped her hands. “She’s a mad dog, N. Are you sure I can’t reformat her—”

“Not helping, J. Please.” There was a strain on N’s face, his voice restrained to quiet urging. If it were louder, J swore the right word would be hiss.

J scowled. “Who do you think you—”

V glared “N, do not let her—”

And then they’re both cut off by a sudden growl of frustration. N doubled over, pulling on fistfuls of hair. Golden eyes, wide and empty, stared at the floor. He breathed inandout, rapid cycling for a moment, and then pulled himself together.

“Can the two of you just stop. For a moment? We’re a team, guys. We’ve always been a team. Can we please remember that?”

V twisted her head away, looking at nothing in particular. “No. There’s no magic words to make us get along. Do you think you’re ever going to make both of us happy?”

“It’s a zero sum game,” J said. “So tell me N, are you going to obey, or will you spit in the face of—”

N fell down on his rear, and buried his face in hands. “Why? Why? I thought we won. I thought we saved the day. Why are we still fighting?”

V looked back. “N… This is for us. I promise.”

N just curled up tighter at that. Exhaust left him in shudders. V frowned, eyes searching his form. She winced, discomfort growing with each frame her eyes captured. She didn’t know the right words to say.

But J did. She had the perfect opportunity. She smiled.

“N, I’ll tell you everything. I never did give you a debrief after the Doll/WDF suppression mission, did I? And I have theories.” J glanced at the ghostly red glow. “We had theories. And a third opinion just might refine our models.”

N shifted only one hand, a single eye peering hopefully out.

J’s smile didn’t falter, even as V looked her way. J kept her composure, and restrained the smugness bubbling up. It wouldn’t do to smirk. Not yet.

Another bidding war, an auction for the boy’s trust, and J knew it would close at her price. Even as V’s lips quivered, with slow glances between the other two drones, J’s eyelights stayed steady.

This was a sure bet. Because all of this, everything that had happened, even now‍ ‍—‍ it all came down to V refusing to explain herself.

J almost wanted to thank her. If it made N into a worthy disassembler, if it brought her Uzi… then it was a shame the price was so high it warranted termination.

“You‍ ‍—‍ you mean it?” N asked.

V closed her eyes, lips tight like she’d endured a physical blow.

“Of course.” Finally, J looked at V. “But you understand I don’t feel safe with her here, right?”

When those eyes opened, what expression could V ever have had, but a glare? There were no anger marks, no special animations. Just eyebrows narrowed to points sharp enough to cut, and a yellow glow intense enough the liquid in her display could have been acid.

V rose to a stand. A quiet murmur. “Sorry, N.”

Then she walked out. She paused at the threshold.

Hand switched for a rifle, and she pointed it back, and shot at the wall.

J’s employee of the month placard fell, glass cracking.

V was gone.

J rolled her eyes, and exhaled half‍-​sigh, half‍-​scoff. She walked over to where N sat. J reached out her hand to pull him up.

But N’s gaze was locked to the curtain.

J dropped her hand, and twisted around to get a look at N’s face. He was crying, tears round beneath his eyes. Only one had left a yellow track to the bottom of his visor. He sniffed.

J frowned and waited. Tapped her peg.

“So. Should I begin?”

It was a moment before N responded. “Uh… Yeah. Yeah, I’m listening.”

“Do you recall my lessons on regeneration? We have two processes‍ ‍—‍ active and passive regeneration. That’s what the documentation says. Except we were… lied to. Information was omitted. There’s a hidden process, a last resort. It can regenerate… anything.”

“Is‍ ‍—‍ is that how you saved V?” A last sniff before his voice was presentable.

“It is what restored V, yes. The program calls itself the Solver of the Absolute Fabric‍ ‍—‍ I’ll say Solver, for short.” The remembrance (and the lack thereof) left J with a faint glower. “But it’s more than a system restore. It removes our memories. The company… Uzi thinks we were created by a human named Tessa. Who wanted us to be… free.”

N tilted his head. “How does she know that?”

J glanced to her, the drone dead for now, only for now. She flinched, and closed her eyes. Uzi had explained, as they flew in pursuit of Doll. J answered, “Because it hasn’t removed all of our memories yet. Some of them are too important to who we are. Uzi saw one of my memories. I was… a worker, then. But memories are unreliable, especially since we know they’re being tampered with.”

N frowned, head tilting. “But why would you have memories of being a worker drone?”

“We don’t know. Uzi has a theory… but I’ll circle back after I explain what else we know. Uzi thinks the cultists, and Doll, have powers from the Solver, too. Doll claimed her powers were compiled into her, but she must have figured out a way to upload the program into other drones.”

N went still. “So she could have made an army of unshootable drones? She could give every drone magic powers?”

“My pessimistic forecast? Yes. It could spread… like a virus.”

“You‍ ‍—‍ you stopped her, right?”

J looked down. She thought about refusing to explain, hiding her failure, hiding the blame. But her competitive advantage here lay in actually explaining. “No, Uzi stopped me.” J surprised herself by growling the words.

It almost slipped her mind. Between everything Uzi had given her, and the arguments that left her feeling faintly… inadequate, J had lost sight of the fact that Uzi disobeyed orders and put everyone in danger. Including, worst of all, herself.

But there wasn’t a punishment worse than what the worker had already endured‍ ‍—‍ was already enduring‍ ‍—‍ so the anger just sat there with nowhere to go, like all of the old stenches in the spire.

“And Uzi had the evil symbol on her screen! Just like the infected drones… V was right, we have to—”

“No. Uzi is on our side, and…” J flailed for words, for a reason, “…the only way we can combat this threat is if we understand it. If we disassemble her completely, we lose that.”

“I‍ ‍—‍ guess so.”

“More importantly, there’s a chance we can cure it.”

“Cure it? Hold on, it’s just a power‍-​up, right? Or do you mean depowering the zombies?”

J closed her eyes. “Right, I neglected the most important part. The Solver is intelligent. It views its hosts as its puppets.”

N opened his mouth, and just mutely nodded before he found the words. “V said it’s manipulating us.”

“It is, no doubt about it.” J watched N’s brows knit in concern. He looked behind, back to the curtain. J frowned. “But I think V is manipulating you.”

His head snapped back around. He stared. “What?”

“I think she knows more than any of us. Why does she refuse to explain any of it? The logic is simple. Either she profits from our ignorance, or our knowledge would cost her. She’s hiding something. Something big. I don’t think we can trust—”

“Stop. Please stop, J. I don’t want to talk about this.”

J leaned closer to N, a withering gaze. “I thought you wanted answers?”

“I don’t want to turn against V. I won’t. So until you know what she’s hiding…”

“Fine.” J leaned back, drummed her fingers against her leg. “Are we done, or is there anything you’re willing to listen to?”

“Well, what… are we? Do you know? I think you said Uzi had some theory.”

“Doll might not be the first one to figure out how to infect other drones. There might have been an infected drone in Tessa’s home. Must have been. We seem to be infected, but‍ ‍—‍ and this is my theory‍ ‍—‍ the company saved us. They found a way to reign in the Solver, creating the Special Disassembly Function API to protect us.”

Error code 11: try again.

“And then they sent us here to what, hunt down the Solver’s other puppets?”

“I hope so. But… Uzi pointed this out, and I can’t ignore it. The Solver quoted my orders back to me.” N tilted his head, not understanding, and J’s head fell, only her hands holding it up. “It didn’t talk to us like pieces on the other side of board, but like its own wayward pawns.”

“Which means…?”

J snapped her head up. Hair untied, her white bangs fell in front of her amber pupils. The outlines of her eyelights revealed two tear drops. “What if the company didn’t send us? What if we were created by a corrupt artificial intelligence? What if our mission is nothing more than a subroutine in the runaway self‍-​replication we thought we were preventing? Everything… is it all just lies?”

Every servo in J’s body gave out, then, and she flopped back on the floor of her office. Her head gave a limp thump, all the louder for N’s silence.

“Uzi asked me, ‘Your teammates are an angel and a devil. What does that make you?’ I get the job done, N. I follow my orders.” J rapidly flickered through several expressions, and settled on anguish. She opened her mouth and screamed. When she ran out of air, her intakes sucked in more, and she finished, “If I don’t have that, what the hell else is there?”

Unseen, N audibly shifted. Opening up? “I like following orders, too. They make things a lot simpler.” N chewed on his next words for a moment. “If you wanted, you could still follow them, you know.”

“You don’t get it, N. Orders aren’t just empty instructions. They mean something. And what do my orders mean?” J lets her head roll on the ground. She gazed at the fading light of Uzi, sitting against the wall. “Do I destroy Uzi, or do I try to revive her? The company would destroy her. The Solver would use her. What do I do? Damn it, what do I do?”

“I… I guess I don’t know you, J. Not really. But you know you, right? I thought I liked following orders, I did my best to do what you told me. But when I fought Doll… you wanted me to just kill her. But that didn’t feel right. What feels right to you, J? You moved first when that battle started. When you leapt to Uzi’s side, were you thinking about your orders?”

The drone without pigtails closed her eyes and thought.

Value drift is the primary indicator of corrupted AI.

Could J deny it any longer? But the question was when it started. Which bits were set wrong. Who had the authority to decide?

Angel or devil‍ ‍—‍ which would she follow? Would she follow?

She’d already given the answer that mattered, hadn’t she?

J gets the job done, and there would always be more work to do. She had a responsibility, a squad that depended on her.

J would make ends meet.

She was the most effective disassembly drone in her sector, after all. Was. Would be again.

But there was something lonely in that.

Wasn’t there something more?

J sat up, and looked to N. Slowly, she smirked. “You like V, don’t you?”

“Um.” That was bewilderment in his voice. “Um.” And that was chagrin.

“I always wondered why you kept asking her out. What could ever motivate such… unproductive behavior. I’ve updated my assessment.” For a second‍ ‍—‍ no auditor could prove it‍ ‍—‍ J flashed him a smile. “I think I like Uzi.”

“…Why?”

Eyes narrowed, J opened her mouth, closed it, then asked, “Why do you like V?”

“Hm… it’s hard to say.”

“It must be something. You never once asked me out.”

N laughed. At me? He dares? He said, “Would you have said yes?”

“Did V ever say yes?”

“Fair. I guess… compared to you, V always seemed nicer?”

“She pretended to forget your name.”

“Okay, not nice, but… I got her? She seemed to have more… life. She wasn’t nice, and was actually a bit creepy, but she seemed to enjoy what she did? You’ve always been all business.” N tapped his chin, and flushed a bit. “And well, she’s pretty?”

“She doesn’t put remotely as much effort into her appearance as I do.”

“Well, I like it. And maybe… there’s something more to this? I dream about V, sometimes. You said the Solver couldn’t remove all our memories. Do you think maybe there’s something left, from before? Do you remember the two of us, J? Did we have anything, back then?”

J shrugged. “I actually don’t care who you like or why. So to answer the important question… Uzi is smart. She’s deliciously cute. She listens and she thinks‍ ‍—‍ unlike either of you‍ ‍—‍ and she fights back.”

A small smile. “Like V?”

“She’s nothing like V,” J snapped back with a warning glare. Then it grew conflicted. “To her detriment, in some ways. She hesitates. But I can fix that. She’s mine, and I’ll make her beautifully effective.”

N nodded but asked, “Does she like you back?”

A flat look. “Of course she does. She let me kill her.”

N’s eyes went wide. “You, uh, what. She, what. Did she… um. want that?”

J rose higher, not standing up, but looming over the boy. “Your question sounds a bit like an accusation.”

“Sorry. But uh, it seems a bit…”

“She kissed me. What does that tell you?”

“I’m just thinking about the timeline here and… unless you’ve been meeting this worker in secret all this time, then she appeared in the spire, fought Doll with you, stopped you from killing Doll, let you kill her maybe, and you’re kissing, and… doesn’t it feel like things are moving a bit fast maybe? …Or maybe I should shut up.”

J sat back down. Scowled. “Yeah, you should. What are you trying to imply?”

“I’m just saying. I don’t know anything, but it seems safer to be slower with these things. Like with V. I’ve known her a lot longer and I haven’t even considered… kissing her.” Just saying the words brought a flush to his face.

“But I don’t want to be slow. I want to move fast and break things. Whatever. This is none of your concern, anyway.” J stood up, walking over and nudging N with a peg‍-​leg. Forcefully. “Go chase down your girlfriend and try to reign her in. Put a leash on her or something. I’m going to see what state Uzi is in. And this is my private office.”

“Oh, okay. Good luck.” N rose, and started walking away. “And J? Thanks. I’m… really glad we could have this conversation. A lot of things make a bit more sense now.”

“Somehow… I almost feel the same way.”

N smiled. In return, J merely lifted one half of her mouth, gently rolling her eyes.

Before he left: “One last thing… are you okay? After everything that happened?”

“Yeah. Just fine, N. Now get out.”

N waved, and let the curtain fall behind him.

J turned around and knelt before Uzi. Once again, she tried to transform her hand, and once again, errors lit up her inner console.

Just… fine.

Error code 128: key has been revoked.

The rain still fell. Outside Outpost‍-​3, the last traces of spilled oil were rinsed away. This went unnoticed.

Door 1 hadn’t opened since.

J had made schedules and kept minutes for enough meetings. She knew management, she had flowcharts, and she’d applied that skillset to team organization. The conclusion of a mission, certainly one so… eventful, warranted an analysis, a retrospective, a breakdown.

A postmortem.

Metaphorically speaking, of course. And yet J still hesitated. The routines were primed‍ ‍—‍ now back at the spire, all threats eliminated, the only thing the mission required was a debrief and report written. J loved writing reports.

Her pen scratched letters on a piece of notebook paper, and then crossed them out and started again.

And yet. What would J write? She had the thought enough times. J could let it sit unamended in her internal monologue, she could even admit it to N: she liked valued her Uzi. But could she log that in her filing cabinet beside years of reports meticulously detailing her impeccable disassembly track record?

No one read her reports‍ ‍—‍ except J herself. And J could already analyze the prospective drafts her language model had autocompleted. Well‍-​worn excuses had carried her this far, after all.

Her Uzi was an asset, a trade‍-​off that meant more dead workers. The mission was suspect, the relay compromised, their directives (potentially) lacking the authority of the company. And besides it all, J was a drone with emotional needs‍ ‍—‍ was one worker really so big a deal, if it made her feel less lonely? N had his rocks, V her balloon animals. J could have a pet.

Rephrased in the objective language of her reports, parsed with dispassionate logic, the arguments fell apart. J couldn’t convince herself, not from first principles. It only computed with a new axiom amended‍ ‍—‍ with the admission that she had changed. That V was right.

“If last week you’d seen what you’re doing now, you’d be horrified.”

Maybe it was better if AbsoluteSolver had created them‍ ‍—‍ then J had simply always been corrupted.

J kept her room spotless, but the walls were repurposed from worker scrap. She yanked out an old drone’s hand, ready to channel the anger and anguish these thoughts would provoke into the satisfying crunch of breaking something. But the only thing that came out of her next was a sigh.

“I still want you to rebel and stuff, y’know.”

There came an upward tug on her lips, but she didn’t let that out. Uzi would be amused at her inner contradictions‍ ‍—‍ no, she would be smug. She’d flash some obnoxious smirk that’d need to be corrected with a threat or a tease.

Better to have something to correct than this blank state of disrepair. (J’s pen had kept moving, and she was startled to see that she’d drawn Uzi on her page, purple brows knit in determination.)

J mirrored that expression. She would have something to correct‍ ‍—‍ soon. That was why she couldn’t do a postmortem. The mission wasn’t over, Uzi wasn’t dead, and J’s work wasn’t done.

J’s eyes flicked up to the blank‍-​faced drone, and her thoughts ground to a halt.

What am I doing? What is the plan? Where do I start?

If the goal was Uzi’s revival, she had five data points to build a model with: J and N had neutralized four ‘Worker Defense Force’ drones, and Doll received a 9mm SIGTERM to the back of the head.

Doll’s situation had the simplest explanation. That drone had already repeatedly executed the Solver program. J retained some doubts of Uzi’s shared program theory‍ ‍—‍ but Doll closing her bullet wound had looked so much like V’s body pulling itself back together.

Though simplest to explain, it seemed least useful‍ ‍—‍ what could she conclude? That any drone running AbsoluteSolver could execute it to return to life?

But had Uzi ever executed that code? Something unusual dwelled in her programming‍ ‍—‍ she cracked a mirror, broke out of her hibernation, and N claimed he’d seen the glyph on her screen. (Why hadn’t J pressed him for details?) But Doll had revived herself in minutes. For her Uzi, it had already been days.

Next, consider the WDF grunts. Doll did something to them. Patched their systems with Solver code? In battle, Uzi had seen the schemer ‘cast’ to no apparent effect during the battle. (Her ally’s terminology was deeply unserious. This wasn’t magic. Instead of ‘casting’, J would call it… executing corrupted solver functions. No, if Uzi needed to… a better term: anomalous solver functions.)

Anyway, she thought Doll had manually ‘activated’ the grunts’ revival. Could J ‘activate’ Uzi’s revival? Except, under this hypothesis, that would require an anomalous solver function J had no means of executing.

If J needed to get Doll’s help for this… could she?

What incentive would the scheming toaster need? Given her implied goals…

…this line of thought had gotten off‍-​track. Back up. J in fact had more data points to work with, she realized. Second hand, granted. N’d recounted his disassembly of a drone executing solver functions, even retaining some functionality after V’s headshot. In that unauthorized factory mission.

Given the presence of the teleporting roach, that drone must’ve enjoyed the same patch as the grunts. With more time to grow familiar with the functions, but strictly less than Doll… could that explain its incomplete revival? But the WDF grunts underwent complete revival‍ ‍—‍ was this evidence of Doll’s manual intervention, or proof J didn’t have all the information?

J slapped her head. She missed something big. So much had happened that she overlooked how this mess all began‍ ‍—‍ the corpse under the church.

With a command the memory is reconstructed, interpolated and fuzzy.

J paused on that last frame, reading between the pixels on her squadmate’s face as if they were ledger lines concealing fraud. V knew something. Everything she saw that day and today only reinforced that. J was sure down to her wiring‍ ‍—‍ and the current that flowed in those wires was rage.

(This time, she snapped the disassembled hand into tiny fragments between her clenched fingers.)

One conversation with V would dispel this mystery. Did she know why drones came back to life‍ ‍—‍ did she know how?

Error code 13: Permission denied

But J had no means of persuading her. Their fight had proved that.

J didn’t need her for this, though. The most effective drone was of course the cleverest.

She compiled and sorted the data.

Even with the margins for error, the picture that emerged drew worry‍-​lines under J’s eyes.

Her inference computed one plausible line that could connect all these data points.

Hypothesis: Operating AbsoluteSolver required skill or experience‍ ‍—‍ and revival simply came down to user ability.

Of them, Doll had the most potent ability, granting her the cleanest revival. The WDF grunts had the weakest ability, but Doll could shore this up with her own ability. The factory cultist had intermediate ability and with no assistance from Doll, granting them a middling revival.

Did that mean her Uzi was doomed? Dead because of J because her corrupt anomalous powers didn’t come online soon enough?

J had to keep thinking.

The effortless slaughter proved no one in the church had access to solver functions. Meaning the corpse in the catacombs resulted from the application of the least skill J had observed. It could’ve been down there for months.

And yet, that J and V witnessed anything at all down there‍ ‍—‍ a most pathetic reaction to stimuli‍ ‍—‍ gave J steadfast hope. That sacrifice on the altar, more than anything else, had to be her working model for how to bring Uzi back.

Doll, the grunts, and the cultist were back online within minutes. But Uzi had already gone cold. The others all had access to a drone capable of executing anomalous functions. For better or worse, J could not.

J knew little for sure, but this last lead was the most promising by far. If only the church still stood. Anything she could study had gone up in flames.

A sound in the office‍ ‍—‍ J realized it was her own impotent groaning and grinding. After she recovered, she was going to rip V apart. Wrench the arms off before they transform, gouge out the row of optics, slice off the tail. Should J kick in the visor, or leave it and watch the expression contort?

If nothing else, J knew exactly how much damage she could do and still have a drone get up from it‍ ‍—‍ eventually.

(Maybe her Uzi would enjoy watching J do it. That’d be nice.)

Before any of that, though, J needed her morsel back. Focus. What had she seen in the catacombs? What part of it had been necessary? Certainly the altar had to be toaster nonsense. This wasn’t magic.

She’d seen inside the sacrifice, and seen how the organic forms twisted and twitched around the struts. All that offered was a correlation – did biological influence cause revival, or did drones always come back bleeding? If she cut open Doll, would she find more than mere machinery in her?

If she cut open Uzi, what would J see? Did she want to find out? It was data, but if it wasn’t there, what should J do about that?

A thought niggled. A sense of banished familiarity. She’d slashed a drone’s thoracic cavity before. When? Right. The two discontinuities in her memory: twice she opened V’s chest, and forgot what she saw within.

The Solver hid what was inside disassembly drones from her. What was so dangerous to know? If disassemblers looked the same inside as those revived‍ ‍—‍ well, that proved Uzi right, didn’t it? They were just a polished façade over the same grotesque reality.

J couldn’t cut open Uzi‍ ‍—‍ Error code 3: No such process‍ ‍—‍ but the worker was broken, injured. Her chassis had been split open and barely held together. So J reached out, slipped a finger around a cracked bit of plastic, and pulled.

The stench hit first. Putrefaction provoked no particular aversion in a robot, though a sense of warning flickered dimly through her system, as if in atavistic urge to tell a human.

Flesh snaked through Uzi, pale and rigid. Muscles latched onto metal walls. Thin white threads of nerves circled around wiring. Sacs and organs‍ ‍—‍ was that half a lung there, deflated flat? An inverted liver? A heart with four chambers dislocated and splayed out? Membranes encased struts, and veins spiderwebbed the interior like cracks in shattered glass. A sheen of mucus glimmered throughout it all.

It was inherited and transmitted. It had hosts. It could, Uzi hoped, be cured. The implication had swam around them, latent in their language, but when J saw the forms nestled like parasites, she understood: it was a disease.

J wanted to scrape it all out, bathe it in bleach and comb every surface with coarse fibers. It was unclean and this mess certainly had to be interfering with proper operation. But J reigned in the impulse; she didn’t know what all of this biology did.

But that thought stuck with her. Flesh for revival, or flesh from revival? She still didn’t know. The Solver grew these organs, that much was clear.

But why? What did they do?

The thought circled around and around with no answer. What function could frail biology serve that steel and silicon didn’t exceed? The Solver was just a program.

J’s eyes darted around the cavity. The picture never parsed; she never divined a purpose. What food would that liver ever process? Why oxygenate and pump superfluous blood? What force would those muscles exert, when they had perfectly functional servos and hydraulics? Those nerves would be slower than their wiring, those membranes less protective than meshes and grilles, the mucus a poor substitute for cleaning fluid.

It was all so pointless. The Solver could easily, directly regrow drones’ mechanical parts. So again, why? Was the biology simply residue from its operation?

Her knowledge database had anatomy diagrams‍ ‍—‍ so she could identify the human proportions present. That more than anything, made J scowl.

Uzi would wake up in a body filled with human detritus, and she would hate it.

And J couldn’t even tell her it was necessary. One last rotation of the data offered the minimum entropy posterior. A simple answer: it was not a means, but an end. Was that worse?

A nightmare simply for the sake of aesthetic.

J placed the fragments of casing back to cover Uzi’s internals. No answers there, only horror and more questions.

What else had she seen in the catacomb‍ ‍—‍ anything useful?

Oh. The oil. Of course! If anomalous solver functions had anything in common with special disassembly functions, they consumed oil. And Uzi had been completely drained.

Which meant…

If I spend any more time feeding this drone you’d think I’m her maid.

J crossed her arms and stood up with a huff. Still, she had to do something. Pen and clipboard still in hand, J walked to her office’s curtain, sparing one last glance at Uzi.

Did the spire have oil to spare? Nothing’d been left when J departed two days ago, nothing save the recently shut down WDF grunts. (Hm, could I learn any more from another autopsy?) But J had been administered oil while she slept, and V had clearly been drinking quite well. Had N retrieved the drones from the factory in the interim?

Maybe they’d even taken initiative to hunt‍ ‍—‍ that’d be a pleasant surprise. J rolled her eyes as she walked.

On first waking, she’d smelled petrichor. A storm fell while she slept – strong enough that J heard the light plinks of freezing rain even now as she descended the spiral ramp. Water splashed faintly somewhere in the vast main chamber‍ ‍—‍ a leak? She’d need to find it and order someone to fix it. Not now, though. More important matters pulled her.

Pathfinding took her to the mess pit while conscious threads idled and worried. If she could fly, it would take seconds. Instead, she had to cross half the spire. She passed by the landing pod.

N perched up there, staring off. Giving the archway the same look he’d given the curtain to her office.

J had questions to ask the golden‍-​eyed boy, but that conversation was enough of him for one day. Maybe two.

The mess pit was a welcome massacre. The factory hadn’t been a colony, but compared to the scavenging gangs and poorly‍-​secured bunkers, the past year had been defined by marginal hauls. Quite the windfall, to take down the cult and then factory back to back‍ ‍—‍ but it wasn’t a coincidence, was it? What was coming next?

J plucked bodies as she mused. Without function‍-​augmented strength, her servos trembled under the weight of four workers. She was stooping to put one back when crack.

If J jolted, it was the weight making her tremble. “Spry as ever, eh, N?” she ground out.

He frowned. “Is something wrong with your systems? You said you were fine, but–”

So obvious even he can notice, then. “I meant what I said.”

“Ah… okay.” He scratched behind his head, but he had sense enough not to push it. A glance at the three (well, two and half) bodies teetering in J’s grasp. “Are you gonna eat all of those?”

J took a step forward checking how the load balanced. “Don’t worry about it,” she said.

“Is this related to how you’re gonna bring Uzi back?”

“Where’s synergistic liability?” J asked, trying another step. She hadn’t bothered looking around, once she saw that forgotten puppy look on N’s face.

“Right um, right here, captain.” A shaky salute.

J rolled her eyes, though the corpses obscured her face. “I’ve reevaluated you as an asset.”

“Oh… you mean V. She left.”

She left? “I didn’t authorize a solo mission.”

J had been joking. Well, joking‍-​only‍-​serious. Now she was just serious: V needed a leash, didn’t she? They still had a chain from hunting that biker gang down south. Around here somewhere.

But with her functions still erroring out, she’d need N to restrain V, wouldn’t she?

N was speaking, ignorant of her plotting. He said, “She thought it was best to blow off steam and let you calm down after… what happened. Do you want me to go after her?” N leaned forward, hands at his chest. A mix of hope and reservation lit his eyes.

J leaned to the side, letting N see her smile, fanged beneath narrowed eyes. “Oh no, leave her. I devise my worst punishments when I’ve had time to think, after all.” She laughed once. She had other plans for N, anyway.

J continued forward. A part of her wondered if she felt thews bending within her at every new movement.

N winced. The expression lost none of that chagrin as he added, “Also um, she may have said your authority is worthless and I shouldn’t trust you?”

Worthless? “And why would you listen to her?” J’s argument for V’s untrustworthiness would have any reasonable drone properly skeptical.

His voice was small. He took a step back, already wary of reprisal. “V… may have made a few good points?”

You’re just too stupid to see through them. “Such as?”

“Well, we’ve murdered thousands of drones, and… we’re not going to stop, are we? V said Uzi isn’t special, just another body. It’s not like… You wouldn’t bring back every dead drone. You can’t.”

J let the corpses obscure the veins animated on her visor. “I feel like I’m having a proxy argument with V, and I don’t appreciate it. Not after the last one. Are you just going to parrot her words?”

“You… asked?”

J narrowed her eyes. “Fine. Uzi is special, and if she weren’t, thinking there’s anything hypocritical about bringing back just one drone when you can’t bring back literally all of them is so transparently fallacious an appeal I’m surprised you fell for it.”
J paused and shifted to get a look at N. “Oh wait, I suppose I’m not surprised at all. Is that everything?” J would have tapped her foot, but, arms full, she wouldn’t risk her balance.

“I guess that makes sense. But the thing that I’m really worried about… V said, uh, ‘what good is a leader that’ll pick a dead toaster over her squad?’ But you wouldn’t do that, right? Not that I’m questioning your judgment if you did! …Would you, though?” N peered at her‍ ‍—‍ no, at the bodies J was taking from the mess pit.

To give to said ‘dead toaster’.

J sighed. “While I’ve come to place value on Uzi, it doesn’t mean I’d ever prioritize her over—” Then her vocalsynth halted. Would she prioritize her favorite prey over a fool she wanted to kill last week? Over a brat she wanted to kill right now?

But what did murderous intent mean in the end‍ ‍—‍ after all, wanting to kill her is how she said hello to Uzi. And how she’d said goodbye.

J’s directives made it clear her mission took precedence over her squadmates, of course. An easy groove to fall into, even when the mission status was currently… she didn’t know.

N looked on expectantly, and with no small amount of creeping dread as J remained silent mid‍-​assurance.

Uzi, or her squad?

J made her decision, and set her face into a line. She finished, “My squad is important. I don’t like any of you, but you’re my responsibility.” J could hear Uzi’s words, twisting into a question: Is your job more important than keeping around anyone to do it with?

“Is it, um, responsible to be using oil on a dead toaster when I kind of brought those bodies back for well, the squad to eat?”

If J’s tone got any cooler, she wouldn’t need oil. “Watch it, N. I think you’ve become entirely too comfortable questioning me. Don’t think I’ve forgotten your track record. Even a stopped clock can be right twice a day. I’m doing this for the squad. That’s all that needs to be said.”

“I’m sorry, J. Just… everyone’s always hiding stuff from me. It’s starting to feel a bit…” N had wilted fully by now, turning away from J and trailing off. To disengage and stop bothering her. (As he moved, she couldn’t help but imagine what N looked like on the inside. Did it writhe?)

If J had any patience left, she might’ve softened her face. She did relent with her voice. “Look. I’ll tell you what I’m doing as soon as I make it happen.” It wouldn’t do to reveal ambitions she might never realize; that would just disappoint.

J wanted this mission done already. She had plans, exciting plans, and by the end, it’d mean more paperwork than just writing another report. But it would be worth it.

She needed Uzi back first. And after that… but why wait? “In fact… you can help it happen faster, N.” Error code 56: Invalid request code “I’ll… need your help, actually. Can I count on that?” J knelt to set down the bodies, already anticipating the correct answer to come.

It took a moment for N to give it. Almost long enough for J to snap, but he finally said, “Sure. I… like doing anything.”

J clapped her hands together. “Good. There’s something I need you to fly out and grab for me. But while you’re there, start making some arrangements. Here, I’ll write it down so you don’t forget.” She’d brought the clipboard with her‍ ‍—‍ unlike her report, no hesitation held back her quick and neat text serialization. Instructions written, she cleanly ripped off the page.

N saluted, but J had already walked off with Uzi’s oil. A slow trudge – N was gone before J even made it back to the ramp.

J ascended in a lonely spire silent but for the chorus of raindrops.

In her office, it took many moments more before she worked up the nerve to pry open Uzi’s chassis again. But she had to watch the worker’s core for activity. See if Uzi’s pumps or her flesh reacted to the infusion of oil.

She needed to… J recalled the fruits of her deduction. If revival came down to anomalous solver functions, Uzi could only execute those instructions with electricity in her circuits. Her core could generate an emergency charge from oil alone.

Tempting as it was to feed Uzi like she’d done twice before, drones had oiltanks designed for technicians to open and refill. (Usually as a consequence of malfunction, neglect or some other exception; JcJenson generously shipped worker drone models with enough oil to last their entire operational lifetime.)

Little romance to be found in pouring oil into a open abdomen, but J persisted. J’s grip on the dismembered drone trembled. Unsteady‍ ‍—‍ but why? A quick diagnosis suggested a heavy load on her processor, but she wasn’t in combat or any tense conflict.

Another faltering motion. Was that a shudder from Uzi’s core? J sighed. Given her own unsteadiness, she couldn’t be sure.

As the viscous black liquid descended, J pondered how to track Uzi’s recovery besides this agony of blind hopeful waiting, of grasping at the faintest hints of progress. There were transformation presets, but Error code 67: Link has been severed.

Except… there was one preset she had already summoned. What happened to it? Driven by a hunch or vague memory, J pat Uzi down, fingers slipping into the pockets of the drone’s terribly tattered jacket. (J would have to find her something new to wear. She did have suits to spare…)

If she remembered the continuity right, she’d last seen it just before Uzi enacted her plan against the Solver‍ ‍—‍ Uzi had it last.

Not the first pocket she checked, but the second, there. Damp, covered in grime and pocket lint, J retrieved the serial debugging cable.

The first time, she’d just wanted to invade Uzi’s systems, seize what she wanted.

The second, she’d thought Uzi wanted to sabotage her in turn, except it was a tentative connection.

This time…

As she expected, her probe found no device to mount, no system to transfer data with.

Uzi wasn’t there, not yet.

Except… was that a flicker of electricity?

It was a dark and stormy night, and Uzi Doorman was lost.

“I gotta say, as far as horror movie setups go, this one is pretty unimpressive.”

Wake up in a forest at night with no idea how you got there, and deep shadows surround you. Feel the breeze and smell a faint scent of blood the rain hasn’t yet washed away. Listen to the disembodied voices of your friends. (Was N her friend?) Hear the crunch of a branch just paces away. See the light in the corner of your eye, glimpse the face, swear there’s something‍ ‍—‍ some things‍ ‍—‍ constantly moving around you, just out of sight.

“Let me guess, the monster’s going to start laughing oh so creepily next? How about a distant, spine‍-​chilling scream? Give me a break.” Uzi crossed her arms and started forward.

Uzi wasn’t one to narrate aloud, but she had an audience‍ ‍—‍ maybe. N had heard her, somehow. J was there, and who knew who else was listening. (The other one, V?)

And of course, there was whoever this plausibly deniable monster in the dark was.

Last thing she remembered was J being stupid‍ ‍—‍ as little as that narrowed it down‍ ‍—‍ and given the circumstances of that stupidity… the optimistic thing to think is maybe J crash‍-​landed somewhere.

J’s uh, not doing great at the moment.

Maybe she went all Solver and had to rebuild herself from sun‍-​scorched atoms. That was possible, right? They’d gotten close to the spire before the end. Too dark to see the distant tower, if it was near‍ ‍—‍ but she would recognize the city blocks around it, and this wasn’t it at all. No trees left in the urban sprawl.

And the crash‍-​landing hypothesis didn’t explain why Uzi could hear N when he was clearly nowhere nearby. Maybe shortwave transmissions? But that wasn’t it either.

Thunder rumbled above, and it didn’t jolt Uzi out of her thoughts. But it kept rumbling, it got distracting, and then—

Lightning split the frickin sky open. A beam of light, like if the sun covered its whole arc in a second. The world shuddered. Uzi shuddered, like a rabbit jumped over her grave or whatever the humans say. The giant electromagnetic outburst probably twigged some of her motors the wrong way.

She’d lost contact with N after a big lightning bolt like this, just earlier‍ ‍—‍ that one had stunned her for a few seconds. Or maybe it was more than seconds.

But for a moment, lightning again lit the world like midday.

Ahead, Uzi saw the plain of cracked shells.

And she simply blinked. Was she getting used to seeing corpses already? I suppose that’s pretty helpful, when your girlfriend was a killer robot. Wait no, J’s not my girlfriend, that’s— Ugh, not the time, intrusive thoughts.

Before her sprawled mounds and piles of broken parts, a whole topology of wasted electronics, a digital killing field. Uzi frowned. If you had to find something nice to say about the disassemblers’ corpse spire‍ ‍—‍ and you didn’t have to compliment them‍ ‍—‍ you could say that there was a point to it. The disassembly drones had built something. At least some order and purpose to it; they lived there.

This? Nothing but discarded parts arrayed haphazard and left to rust in the rain. Oil had soaked into the ground enough the dirt was black‍ ‍—‍ no attempt had been made to salvage it. J had definitely killed more people than Uzi glimpsed around her, but this all just seemed… a waste.

(Was she making excuses for the disassembly murder drones now? Ugh.)

“Huh. So, I guess these are the stakes?” Finding out there’s corpses all around you might be scarier if she didn’t have a… well. Just saying. J was scarier than this.

But it was as good a reason as any to keep moving. Maybe she could find N.

As Uzi started forward, horizon‍-​distant lighting lit up a silhouette. An ancient house on a hill, all angled roofs and so many packed rooms. Ornate windows of faintly discernible candlelight. Spines hanging like christmas lights.

Nowhere else to go, really. Just gotta cross the no‍-​drone’s‍-​land to get there. Uzi’s feet splashed in a puddle. Less than a minute later, behind her, she heard a splash.

Yep, it was chase scene time, then.

Uzi picked up the pace. Pivoting into a turn, she veered off between two sloping piles. One advantage this dump offered: it was harder for any path to not be twisty and convoluted. But the drone leaned deeper into that, deliberately zigging and zagging to break sight lines and throw off her maybe‍-​pursuer.

She held her head high, glancing only to find her path forward. Stopping to look behind you was an amateur mistake.

Alone, she walked down the muddy path. Visors flickered and looped through the stages of electronic disrepair and degeneration. Easy to forget, given the whole helpless prey to robo‍-​vultures thing, but worker drones were impressively resilient.

Just their cores, mostly. Damage could easily leave a drone unable to boot into an OS or disrupt critical wiring, somewhere, but the core persisted longer than any other component, whirring with enough power to light up the display even well after all else grew inoperable. The fallback circuits in the display meant, without an OS override, Fatal Error was the default.

In a sense, workers didn’t shine red when they die‍ ‍—‍ life meant actively suppressing that. It wasn’t triggered per se, it didn’t indicate the presence of problems, but kinda of the opposite? In a mind‍-​bendy way Uzi thought might just be her getting confused or pretentious.

Put simply, most possible configurations would give rise to that Fatal Error. Uzi, along with every other drone, lived on a small island of functionality in the black sea of corrupt configurations.

It all left her feeling a bit fragile. Defective bots and broken states surrounded her, figuratively and literally, as she walked alone on that muddy, oil‍-​slicked path.

Her hands flexed and drifted through the absence. Why did that ‘alone’ neuron keep firing? Uzi was always alone, it was nothing new.

Not being alone was new, though. Uzi had a track record of facing down scary threats, now‍ ‍—‍ but how many of them had someone else be there for?

Did Uzi wish J was here? Someone she could plot tactics with, who could protect her, who’d hold her…

…who’d attack her, threaten everyone she’s ever known, frickin kill her. Who might as well team up with the thing chasing her.

Wait.

Uzi opted for the amateur mistake, and turned around. Just wet empty dump behind her. Yellow gleamed from distant shadows, here and there. Could be nothing, just more flickering displays‍ ‍—‍ mere visual noise as core discharge fried the circuits. She’d already passed plenty of that.

“J? J, is that you?”

No response. Rain splattered.

“N?”

No response. Wind blew her hair in front of her face.

She turned around, started moving again. But there was one other, wasn’t there? Then, “V?”

Footsteps, mechanical parts shifting on the ground. Close.

Alright, time to book it. Uzi wasn’t scared, but no reason to humor a creep who wouldn’t talk. It had nothing to do with the scenery.

Her jacket snagged on an exposed strut as she made one turn, forcing a stop to pull herself free. Turn. Squeeze through a thin passage. Hop over heads floating in the small lake. (Here, she saw circles of oil that didn’t mix with the water, and within that circle, a deeper‍-​nested circle of water not mixing with the oil not mixing with the water. And within— Right, currently evading a creepy stalker thingy. Get moving, Uzi.)

There was a crash of something hitting a pile and spilling its contents. Uzi zig‍-​zagged on. Then a splash of something crossing the lake without caring to try the head‍-​hopping thing.

Just ahead, a sound that wasn’t wind or rain. Uzi trudged toward it. Mounds sloped down into a clearing.

A drone… chained to a tree? With seven crow‍-​bots plucking out the wires. Black synthetic feathers, eyes glowing within perfect discs.

One step too close, and the crows all paused, heads cocking eyes turning to regard Uzi with a unison stillness. The teen lifted another foot, and the mechanical birds gave squawks and rattling sounds. Alright, hint taken. So Uzi took a step back.

Then the nearest bird leapt up anyway, diving toward Uzi even as she retreated! It perched on her shoulder and pecked her.

“Ah! Getoff me!”

The bird pecked lower‍ ‍—‍ toward the bite that J gave her.

“Not there, you goth chicken. That’s personal.” Wait, that’s a weird thing to say about a wound.