When Alpha was transported back out of the diagnostic bay, he seemed even more absent than he had in the house. His movements were slower, his gaze distant, as if he were trapped in thoughts too heavy for words. I couldn’t help but remember what Dr. Graves had said—“He’s confused.”
Confused? Alpha? It didn’t make sense.
Alpha was never confused. Hesitant, maybe. Cautious? Always. But never lost. He was sharp, precise, always three steps ahead. To see him like this—adrift—was unsettling. The weight of whatever had happened inside that diagnostic bay was pressing down on him, and I couldn’t shake the feeling that it was pressing down on the entire facility, too.
I mulled it over, my feet moving on their own as I wandered through the facility. The familiar paths felt unchanged, yet something about the space felt different. I’d only been gone a week—barely enough time for any real change—but the atmosphere felt heavier, as if the walls themselves were holding onto tension. There was an unspoken energy in the air, a quiet hum of uncertainty threading through the halls.
When I finally pulled myself out of my thoughts, I found I had walked to the observation deck overlooking the common room. The room below had grown larger—much larger. I knew it could be expanded by almost double its original size by removing wall panels, but seeing it in person was different.
It must have taken hours to get all those panels removed.
I leaned against the glass, my eyes scanning the room below. The space stretched out before me, bustling with movement. Drones—dozens of them, no, hundreds—filled the expanded area, their mechanical precision in stark contrast to the chaos that had been my mind recently.
A monitor to my left flickered, drawing my attention. It was cycling through the list of active drones.
Active Units: 203.
I froze. Two hundred and three.
That was a massive number, far more than I’d expected. The facility hadn’t housed this many drones in… ever. The sheer scale of it was unsettling. More drones meant more resources, more control, more eyes. Someone had increased production, but for what purpose?
After staring at the monitor for a while, I let my gaze drift around the observation room. Chairs lined the walls, monitors flickered with streams of data, and a central console stood in the middle of the observation deck, humming faintly.
On the far side of the room, a small table stood near the wall. A coffee maker sat on it, surrounded by a few mugs, some clean, others abandoned in haphazard positions.
One mug caught my attention.
Dust had settled on it, forming a thin, undisturbed layer. My mug.
A small smile tugged at the corners of my mouth. My mug had been left untouched and unmoved for a whole week. In a place where everything was in constant flux, it was a small, strangely comforting reminder that some things stayed the same.
This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
I turned back toward the window, my smile fading as my gaze returned to the common room. The drones moved below, their actions precise and purposeful, yet something about them felt different.
They were interacting.
Some moved in pairs, gesturing at one another in their strange, mechanical language. Others stood in clusters, their gestures and clicks weaving into what I could only describe as conversation. It was a normal sight among the drones in the common room but also outside of it sometimes in shared missions.
I let my eyes sweep through the room, searching for the only black shape among the sea of gray plating.
Alpha.
It didn’t take long to spot him. His black fur stood out like a shadow among the lighter drones. He was standing near a small group communicating with a Ronin model—two other drones, an Epsilon and what I recognized as a Yotta model were off to the side also conversing with each other, but a bit more intimately than the others. The Epsilon was holding the almost-hand of the Yotta unit—a six-digit appendage equipped with medical tools. They were conversing, their movements fluid and deliberate.
I watched them for a while, my focus shifting from Alpha to the two drones, noting the subtle differences in how they carried themselves compared to the others. The height difference between them made the Yotta unit crank its head up to meet the gaze of the Epsilon, only for the Epsilon to crouch to level. There was a weight to the Epsilon’s movements, a heaviness that almost looked like caution. I was fascinated—so much so that I touched the glass, but the sound I made broke the illusion. The Epsilon unit shifted to look up, seeing me, and then moved away from the Yotta drone without looking back.
Something was bothering me. I felt it inside me.
I had the urge to leave the observation deck and go check on Alpha. But I stayed where I was, watching instead.
Alpha didn’t need me rushing in. Not now.
Still, I couldn’t shake the feeling that something had shifted. Not just in Alpha, but also in some of the drones themselves. The room was larger, the number of drones was greater, and there was a quiet hum of tension that I couldn’t quite place.
----------------------------------------
Later, in the break room, I met Ellis sitting at a corner table, drinking an energy drink.
“Where were you, Marcus?” he asked. “You just vanished after that run-in with Graves.”
“I was inside the observation room,” I replied, taking a sip of my coffee. “I was looking at some interesting interactions between an Epsilon unit and a Yotta unit.”
Ellis looked at me, tilting his head slightly as he processed what I’d said. “You were watching some Epsilon and Yotta units, huh?”
“Yeah,” I nodded. “It wasn’t just interaction, Ellis. It was... different. The Epsilon crouched down to meet the Yotta at eye level, and there was this... weight to its movements. It felt deliberate, cautious even. Like it wasn’t just communication but something deeper.”
Ellis leaned back, a small, knowing smirk appearing on his face. “Those two. We’ve been watching them for a while. They don’t interact like that with anyone else. And when they notice they’re being observed, they stop immediately.”
I frowned. “What are you saying?”
He took a sip from his drink. “Dr. Patel is studying them and not just those two but most of them trying to decode Their language, their strange behavior. He’s even managed to decode a few words like hello and You, but till now no breakthrough and epilision and Yotta are good examples of strange behaviour but they’re careful. Too careful sometimes.”
I didn’t like the way this was going. then he reminded me of something I had tried hard to forget.
Ellis sighed. “They remind me of the Lovebirds.”
My stomach clenched.
I didn’t want to remember. But the image came back unbidden—Tau and Delta, forced into a combat test. A bond formed through time, shattered in a single, horrific moment. I could still hear the sound of metal rending, the wet splatter of synthetic blood deltas core had been irreparable after the battle then Tau’s last act in the commonroom—tearing out its own core crushing it.
Ellis’s voice was softer now. “The higher-ups won’t do it again, Marcus. Yotta models aren’t fighters. Even if they wanted to test them, it wouldn’t be the same.”
I nodded, but the unease didn’t leave. Something was shifting, something fragile. something that could break with a single mistake.