* * *

“I’m not a slave.”

Felix watched the face of the strange drone (he meets a lot of weirdos these days) fall yet again.

“B-b-but we found you in that slave transport!” The drone exclaimed, thrusting his hands up in the air. “You were trapped and stuff, so we saved you!”

Felix looked out onto the crowd that was gathered around the stage that he was on. They had replaced his arm, sure (albeit with a bulkier, hand-me-down version), but he was really getting bad vibes from the people.

“No.” He stated.

“Whatever, okay!?” The drone held up a hand as Felix tried to protest. “We saved you, you’re the first guy that we’ve retrieved alive, so-”

“Wait wait wait, first guy that you’ve gotten ALIVE!?” Felix frowned. “What happened to everyone that came before me?”

The drone seemed embarrassed. “Well uh, we would go in there, the slavers would hold their slaves hostage, and uh, they usually died in the . . . crossfire . . .”

“You killed them by accident, didn’t you?”

“It wasn’t me!” The drone exclaimed. “Not specifically.”

Felix facepalmed. These guys were idiots.

“Um, anyway, I hereby proclaim you,” The drone drew some sort of strange symbol that looked like an A mixed with an upside-down Y on Felix’s chestplate with a yellow marker. “The first Free Man!”

Cheers erupted from the crowd, though Felix was just absolutely dumbfounded.

“But my name’s Felix!” He cried out.

The drone blinked. “Well uh, how about Felix Freeman then?”

More cheers.

“Freeman! Freeman! Freeman!” A chant came up.

Felix was guided off-stage into the roiling crowd, being pushed this way and that by the fifty or so members gathered in the large room. Everything felt surreal. Why was this happening to him? Why did things always end up being super weird and complicated around him?

“My god, he’s so brave!”

“I am rather looking forward to this analysis.”

“More like Feetman, hehe.”

“He looks kinda lost, I think somebody should help him- LOOK GORDON A ROPE!”

“This is stupid, this whole thing is stupid, that guy looks stupid, like I’m a physicist, okay? Don’t call me Ross, that totally isn’t my name, you may address me as Dr. Freeman.”

Felix was sat down onto a bench, a microphone being pressed into his face.

“Tell the crowd your story, you brave soul!”

Grabbing the device away from the outstretched hand with a glare, Felix cleared his throat and began.

“Ahem, uh, I don’t really know what’s going on, I kinda just got here.”

Silence, then murmurs.

“He just got here?”

“But that would mean . . .”

“We must KILL him! Take his skin, laddies!”

Felix dropped the mic and ran.

Shouts of anger followed him as he dashed down a random hallway that went . . . okay, that’s just an endless pit. Taking a sudden left down ANOTHER hallway, he-

Why’re there so many endless pits!?

Felix ducked behind a small barricade, not knowing that it was an ENDLESS PIT- oh wait no, scratch that, it’s just a small one foot drop.

He cowered as the sounds of angry drones got closer and closer. How had things gone so wrong so quickly? Why does this only happen to him? He looked around for something, anything to use as a weapon to defend himself, which was when he spotted something laying on the ground next to him.

It appeared to be a metal bar, a crowbar some would call it, painted with flaking red paint that coated its surface. The buck-teeth that were present on the curved end of the implement were chipped, while the sharp wedge on the other side was dented and slightly bent. However, it was all he had, so he picked it up.

Raising the bar, it sang a soft note that slowly wavered out of existence, the metal vibrating slightly underneath his grip. Bringing it to bear, he watched as the first two drones rounded the corner.

One was weaponless, the other had a broken bottle, both were wearing the white-and-brown sash. The weaponless one kept sprinting at him while his compatriot stopped in his tracks once he spotted the weapon.

Felix dodged to the left, the fist that came at him flying by his face. Bringing up the crowbar, he smashed the end into the drone’s head like a bat. The helmet dented slightly, and the drone dropped like a bag of bricks.

The other drone was a bit smarter, adopting a wide stance as he came at him and slashing the bottle back and forth. However, the drone didn’t seem to realize that glass didn’t really do too well against metal, so the object just shattered when it came into contact with Felix’s armor.

Felix stabbed the sharp end through the drone’s visor.

A group of four rounded the corner. Two had some sort of scrap blade, one had a baseball bat, and the fourth had a primitive firearm. The one wielding the baseball bat slowly began to approach him, holding the bat diagonally. However, when the blade wielders saw the two bodies at his feet, they yelled and charged at him, throwing off the aim of the fourth drone who had begun to point the gun at him.

Felix held up the crowbar as a blade came down, stopping the weapon in its tracks. He kicked out a leg, crumpling the knee joint of the drone. His cry of pain was silenced by the prongs of the crowbar digging into his neck. The other one tried to catch his fellow drone as he fell, though that was a mistake. Exploiting the moment of weakness, Felix hit the side of the drone’s head as hard as he could. His target dropped to the floor with a yelp of pain as the side of his helmet came apart in pieces.

Looking up, Felix saw just in time the barrel of the gun from the fourth drone pointing directly at him. Diving to the side, he just barely managed to avoid the bullet as it whizzed by his head. He heard a curse, along with some odd mechanical noises as the drone attempted to open the breech and load in a new round.

However, Felix wasn’t going to give him that opportunity. Hopping to his feet and sprinting forwards, he swung madly at the drone. His strike was seen just in time, so the gun-wielder managed to fall backwards to avoid it out of shock, though he dropped his weapon in the process. He was about to finish off the hapless drone when he heard shouting from around the corner, along with the waving beams of flashlights.

Felix cursed, sprinting further down the hallway. He turned a corner to find . . . why is he surprised, yet another endless pit. Unfortunately for him, it was a dead-end, nowhere to go.

Looking behind him, he shrugged, and jumped.

Suspended into air yet again, Felix quickly hit a steep, sloped surface that he began to slide down. He made sure to keep a tight grip on his crowbar as he slid, though the near-pitch black darkness made it a bit difficult to see. Second-hand night vision could only go so far, especially when you were running on the same overused battery that powered you more than a decade ago.

As suddenly as before, the ground appeared in his vision, rapidly approaching. He barely had any time to brace his legs before he was knocked right back onto the dusty, concrete floor.

Groaning, Felix snatched up his crowbar from the ground and got back up. He could hardly see his own hands in front of his face, much less five feet ahead of him. The passageway that he had dropped into was thin, so small that he wasn’t even sure if he could drag himself through it. Walls on either side of him stretched at least twenty feet above, though he couldn’t be sure due to the lack of visibility.

“Hello?” Felix called out. The only thing that he heard was his own voice echoing back at him.

Gulping, he began to slowly inch his way through the passage. He had to turn sideways to get through it, and the sound of metal plating scraping against concrete filled the air. He grunted, his shoulder getting caught on a particularly strong bump in the wall. Luckily, he managed to get it free with a tug. He didn’t know what he would do if he got stuck down in this place, though he had a feeling that he wouldn’t be alive for long to figure it out in that scenario.

Finally, the walls opened up to a more expansive space. Pulling himself out of the corridor, Felix looked around the room. It was larger than what he could see, so it had the appearance of being an endless void that looked like it could swallow him whole.

Taking a step forward, his foot nudged against something with a light clatter. He nearly jumped out of his armor at the fright, though it seemed to be just a normal flashlight upon further inspection.

Raising it up, Felix pressed a small button on it and . . . nothing happened.

Great.

He smacked it hard against his forearm, and the bulb inside finally flickered to life. While the beam was dim and kept changing its light level, it was the best he had.

The light revealed that the room was, thankfully, not that large. At most, it probably reached twenty or fifteen feet in diameter. Moving to the center of the room, Felix began to observe his surroundings. Across from him, a slightly wider passageway lay. The light wasn’t able to fully illuminate the interior of the corridor, so it remained a haunting specter for now. The case was the same for the places on either side of him, hallways that looked similar to the one he had just come out of just sitting there, looking menacing. Together, all four corridors formed something of a plus sign, or a cross, though he didn’t really care too much about that.

Suddenly, a grating sound emanated through the space. Felix hurriedly glanced between the three passageways that he had yet to go down. However, he realized then that he had lost track of which one he had come out of, making things slightly nerve-wracking.

A second noise echoed throughout the chamber, this time sounding closer to a gurgling growl. HUD targeting indicators flashed as he turned around, pulling nonsensical shapes from all around his vision before dismissing them due to the inconsistency. His targeting suite was practically useless in the dark since the powers-that-be decided to have a feature that automatically produced a being to target, regardless if it was real or not.

Felix caught sight of something moving down one of the hallways. From his perspective, it looked to be some sort of collection of moving lights, all a light shade of blue.

“Is someone there?” He called out again.

His only response was the ever-increasing sound of heavy shuffling.

He brought his crowbar up, though he wasn’t sure how effective it would be with only one hand. All around him, growls and groans came from the passageways. More lights appeared out of nowhere, leaving only one corridor blank.

Backing up to that one hallway, Felix whipped the flashlight between the three open ones. However, with a buzz and a whine, the light finally gave out.

As he was busy trying to beat the device into submission, the groans reached a deafening volume.

“Come on, come on, come on, come on-” The light flickered back on. “YES!”

Felix flicked the beam over to the corridor on his right, only to see the blank visor of a worker drone peeking out from around the wall, staring at him. It stood like that for a moment, before its lower jaw split into two halves and opened up wide.

Felix screamed.

Dropping the flashlight, he gripped the crowbar with both hands as he took a step forward and raised it above his head. The beam dimmed and rolled away from him, obscuring the thing that had popped up. With a guttural cry, he saw the small lights that were attached to it charge at him at a frightening speed.

As the darkened visor came into his vision, he brought the crowbar down. It impacted solidly with the head of the worker, creating a sizable crater in the thing’s head. It fell to the ground, skidding a moment before stilling.

A second and a third shriek drew his attention back up. He raised his crowbar just as yet another one came at him, jaw open and filled with small tentacle-like metal feelers with small lights on them. However, a sudden burst of pain from his right boot distracted him. A slight glance down revealed that the creature he thought he had killed was, in fact, not dead, and was instead gnawing on his foot. He kicked it repeatedly until it let go, but the damage had been done.

The one that had charged at him tackled Felix, throwing him backwards and knocking his head against a wall. Alarms blared in his head as lines of static burst into his vision, and he was pretty sure that a new dent was present on the back of his head now.

Droplets of oil splattered onto Felix’s helmet visor, coming from the snapping mouth of the creature that was currently on top of him. He barely managed to hold it back by pressing the crowbar into its neck, though he was quickly losing ground.

Suddenly, the head of the creature was jerked backwards. It scrabbled and jerked around until it was thrown on the ground by a figure standing behind it. It tried to get up, but a sledgehammer came down and completely crushed its head, and a similar fate befell the other one on the ground.

Felix gaped up at the military drone standing above him.

“You good?” The drone said, a hand reaching down.

Felix took the hand, grunting.

“Uh, I guess.” Felix glanced at a worker drone standing off to the side, pointing the flashlight he had dropped at the corridors. “I’ve got a question, actually.”

“I think I can guess.”

“What in the actual HELL are these things!?” Felix gesticulated wildly in the air. “I didn’t sign up for goddamn zombies! Why do these even exist!?”

The military drone shushed him. “Quiet down, you’ll attract more, and in greater numbers. We should probably get out of here, but we can explain everything later.”

Felix sighed.

* * *

“This here is as far as I’m gonna take ya fellers.” The cowboy said, turning around in his seat. “We’re in Cohort territory now, and I ain’t reckoning to get shot on sight again.”

“What happened the first time?” Damina asked, purely out of curiosity.

The cowboy shrugged. “Hell if I know. I s’pose that they just weren’t in the mood.”

“Anyway, y’all git on off now, I gotta get movin’ to my next customer.”

Damina got off first, with E1 and E4 following soon after. She waved a little goodbye to the driver, though he simply rolled his eyes.

“Now you kind fellers don’t stay in this here place for too long, I would hate to see y’all strung up like the last drones.” With that, the cowboy whipped the reins, and his weird robot-raptor-thing trotted off back the way they had come.

“He seemed like a nice guy.” Damina stated.

“Eh,” E1 made an iffy-motion with his hand. “Kinda gruff if you ask me.”

E4 made a series of elaborate gestures and pantomimes that Damina, for the life of her, couldn’t decipher.

“What?” E1 said, probably unable to tell either.

E4 hung his head in exasperation before just sitting down on a mag-track.

Damina did a full 360°. “So uh, mind telling me why we’re sitting in the middle of what is probably an active tram line?”

Seemingly ignoring her question for the moment, E1 instead opted to kneel down next to a rusty maintenance hatch that was protruding slightly from between the tracks. Gripping the small handle, he yanked on it to no avail.

E1 sighed, looking back up. “Mind helping me with this?”

E4, who had been standing next to Damina, closed the distance and knelt down next to his partner. However, E1 then gestured towards Damina.

“C’mon, you too.”

Scurrying over, Damina grabbed the handle (which didn’t really have a lot of room left to grab onto due to all the hands crowding the surface) and looked back at E1.

“On three, alright?” He said, getting nods of confirmation from the other two.

After a short countdown, Damina, with her two compatriots, yanked on the dome-like hatch hard. With a shriek of protesting metal, the hatch was flung outwards and open. She fell backwards from the sheer inertia of the heavy thing, but she quickly dusted herself off and sprang to her feet.

“To answer your question,” E1 began, peering down into the darkened hole. “These hatches were installed here around the time when this facility was being constructed. Due to abnormal amounts of groundwater being present, the humans put these things here for a type of manual emergency flood countermeasure. These lead all the way down to the bottom of the facility where the water would be dumped to be dealt with later.”

Damina stared at him. “I don’t see-”

“Just- bear with me here, alright?”

“Anyway, when I was reviewing the blueprints of this particular section, I noticed that there was a suspicious lack of a tunnel between lines OA035 and OA037, so if my theories are correct, then there should probably be some sort of secret tram line here reserved for-”

“This is starting to get into conspiracy theory territory here.” Damina stated with a dry of a tone as she could manage.

E1 sighed. “Just remember to activate your magnet-locks and jump when I tell you to, okay?”

“I have magnets?” Damina raised her hands, turning them over and staring at them in wonder.

“Yes, you do.” Came the exasperated reply.

Damina rolled her eyes and sat next to the hole in the ground. She was silent for a moment, with the only thing that could be heard being the occasional drip of a droplet of water falling into a puddle.

“How do we even know if this ‘secret tram’ is gonna come by here, anyway?” Damina asked, whispering for some reason.

“Because of that.” E1 pointed a finger at a blinking alarm light that suddenly presented itself from the darkness, illuminating a small section of the wall that it was on.

More light began to stream into the tunnel below, the source becoming increasingly brighter as it approached.

E1 held up a hand, and Damina felt a jolt of false adrenaline shoot through her systems.

“Wait, wait, wait, wait, waaaaaiiiit, JUMP!”

Damina, without waiting for any other prodding, leapt into the small hole. Vaguely remembering the instructions from earlier, she turned on the magnets embedded in her . . . wrists? Hands? It was then that she realized that she didn’t know how to even turn them on, which-

She hit a metal surface hard, rolling along it as it raced forward beneath her. The tram was going too fast for her to gain any sort of proper hold on it, so she rapidly approached the edge of the speeding vehicle with reckless abandon.

Damina gasped as she felt her torso meet open air. Scrambling for a hold, she just barely managed to grip the edge of the roof just in time, However, the speed at which the tram was moving combined with the slippery surface of the metal made it difficult to hold on, and she began to feel her grip falter.

Suddenly, an armored hand came down, clamped on her wrist, and hauled her up back onto the roof. She collapsed on top of her savior with an oomph, though she was quickly shoved off.

Turning over, she was met with the nearly opaque visor of E1.

“Go slow. Don’t go too far away from me, alright?” He yelled out, the words hard to make out from the rushing wind.

Damina did her best to nod enthusiastically.

E1’s hand came down on her upper back, and she felt it tug slightly as it magnetized. Crawling forwards to where E4 was placing some sort of device on the roof, Damina stopped.

“Are those explosives!?” She yelled out, though she could barely hear her own voice.

E1 shoved her slightly, not enough to knock her off.

“Of course!” He exclaimed. “How else would we get in, by using the back door!?”

“What!?”

“NOTHING!?”

“WHAT!?”

No reply came back this time, as E1 nodded to E4, who nodded back. Opening up some sort of holographic display on his wrist that Damina didn’t know about, the silent operative raised his finger over a large red icon.

“Don’t worry about getting your face blown off!” E1 yelled in Damina’s face. “These are specially shaped-charges, just make sure to not get too close!”

“What did you say!? Something about a phone charger!?”

An explosion rattled the tram as the charge detonated. A few pieces of slow shrapnel bounced off her helmet visor, though that was the extent of any damage.

E1 crawled forwards, yanking his hand off of Damina’s back and shoving her into the new hole. She yelped as she fell, though she was beginning to get used to the constant surprise-falling that she was always going through.

Twisting in the air, she managed to land on her feet as she impacted against a surprisingly lush carpet floor, though she did fall forwards after the fact. She heard the impacts of E1 and E4 landing as well, probably doing a perfect landing as well. Smug jerks.

Ignoring the proffered hand that appeared out of the corner of her vision, she got to her feet by herself. Dusting off her thigh plating, she straightened to see a single military drone sitting on a very comfortable looking chair with some sort of drink in hand, mouth agape. The drone’s eyes, a lighter color, seemed oddly familiar to Damina in a way that she hadn’t seen since.

“Alana!?” Damina gasped.

The drone’s eyes got even wider.

“Wait, do you know this person?” E1 asked, hand halfway to his holster.

Damina jerked her hand out and grabbed his wrist, trying to pull it away from his gun.

“Uh, yeah!” She exclaimed. “She used to be in my unit before I got transferred, and- what movie is that?”

Suddenly, a door on the opposite side of the tram car burst open. A pair of brightly adorned military drones stepped through, with one of them being far more fancily dressed (and taller) than the other.

Both parties stared at each other for a moment, silence pervading the space.

E1 went for his gun, hand moving at a speed that could only be hard-coded in. However, instead of diving for cover or going for his own gun, the taller drone did something that even Damina found unexpected. He dashed forward, and tackled E1.

Both drones hit the ground, the gun skittering across the floor. E4 moved to yank the drone off of his brother, but the OTHER drone came at him from behind and put him in a headlock.

Was E1 . . . losing?

“Uh oh.” Damina stated.

* * *

A laser streaked towards my face, only being avoided by a split-second move on my part.

“I could use a little help here, you know.” I stated, gritting my teeth as I fought to maintain control over the environment. “Didn’t you say you had a ‘vessel’ or whatever it was somewhere near me?”

A trio of bullets were returned to their sender, while the missile that accompanied them was dodged in the nick of time. I growled, clenching my fists and shattering the concrete beneath me.

[Frustrated Expression] Cannot-communicate. Preoccupied.

“Preoccupied!? What the hell could keep an omnipotent AI preoccupied!?” I exclaimed, backpedaling as a series of quick blade strikes threatened to shatter my visor. X was really angry about the whole mind-controlling thing.

Talk-later.

Scoffing, I dashed to the side and grabbed the elbow of the disassembly drone as he passed me by. I grinned, yanking on the appendage and twisting my body around to throw the drone into the neighboring wall.

However, my efforts were stopped by a band of rusty meal constricting around my right shoulder, and then my left. Following that, about half a dozen spikes shot through my abdomen and caused me to gasp in pain.

Instinctually, I let go of the arm that I had been holding onto, which proved to be a mistake. Claws scraped against my torso, the only effect being the shredding of the tape there due to me pushing myself further into the spikes. That action, unfortunately, proved to only make moving even more difficult, worsening my situation.

Making a hard decision, I moved my left arm up to sock X in the face while my right arm went to snap off the spikes that were currently stuck in my gut. The punch only stunned the killing machine for a moment, and I paid the price dearly as a jaw bit down on my wrist and cleanly sliced it off at the base.

Luckily, this bought me enough time to break through the last spike, so I quickly extended my now-free wings and flapped them once.

I was lifted off the ground by about an inch, managed to get out from under X, and fell back to the ground.

I kept repeating the motions, learning on the fly and remembering the tips that my friend told me oh-so long ago. It was then that I realized that I . . . was losing. Not good. Something needed to change, and fast.

Taking the offensive, I dove down at the form of X who had just jetted upwards to meet me. Mostly metal and mostly flesh met, and surprisingly, flesh won.

I withdrew my left hand from behind my back, revealing a long, slender blade with ribbed protrusions dotted along its length. As quick as I could manage, I shoved the blade as hard as I could into X’s head. The sharp bone went in almost perfectly, sliding forward until it hit the base of my wrist. I took my chance to rip off both of his wings as well as his forearm, which was when I was body slammed by a chunk of concrete.

I hit the wall at lightning speed, the concrete pinning me to it. Cracks appeared on the side, and rumbles echoed throughout the recesses of the facility. Looking back up with fuzzy vision, I saw the outline of the diminutive figure of a worker drone approaching, cloak billowing from the wind that was traveling from up above. X seemed to have gotten up as well, though he was still heavily injured. Good.

Wait, those rumbles weren’t from the failing structural stability of the wall, those came from . . . below.

Gravity seemed to cry in protest, and a warbling cry that only I could hear reached my ears. It was here, and it . . . was beautiful.

“Enough.” I growled out, gripping both sides of the concrete. Pressing on both sides, I pancaked the piece of debris with no small amount of effort.

I zoomed into the middle of the room, marshaling my willpower. Neon-colored holographic symbols appeared all around the room, lighting the area up in a colorful display. With a grand flourish, I brought my hands together and watched the room shatter.

Pillars turned into infinitesimally small fragments, objects became deadly weapons, and the floor shook. Alarms that I didn’t know existed blared in my head, but I ignored them. With a flick of my wrist, I sent a dozen pieces of brass piping that I ripped out from the wall towards Ren, which quickly multiplied.

She dodged this way and that, trying to get out of the way of the ones that she couldn’t grab, but it was too much. One caught her on the shoulder, and she was suddenly pinned to the back of the room like a Post-It note.

With a straining and great tearing, I flickered into being behind X and put a fist through his lower torso. I lifted him up, spun him, and dropped him on my knee. A crack rang out, along with the first cry of pain I had heard from the drone. I ignored it, however, as I saw that Ren had ripped the pipe from her shoulder and was now looking at me with barely-contained anger.

I smirked.

She vanished from my sight, though not from my senses. The sudden displacement of matter behind my back was stopped by a claw-like appendage that had ripped itself free from my upper arm. I reached around, grabbed the squirming drone, and brought her visor close to my own visor. I didn’t say anything, instead watching as crimson eyes darted around their available vision, panicked. I brought the blade up to bear, angled it at her face, and-

An impact from behind lifted me off my feet and tore Ren from my grasp, leaving me helpless to watch as she teleported to the other side of the room. A pair of white, black-and-yellow embroidered arms wrapped themselves around my neck and squeezed, though it did little more than restrict my head movement.

Despite that, muscle memory kicked in, and I desperately began to grasp at the arms around my neck as I gasped for air that I didn’t need. I stupidly ignored the fact that I was being twisted around so a visor filled with a glowing X could come face-to-face with mine.

All of a sudden, I was on the ground, and the disassembly drone was whaling on me from on top of me. Claws tore at my helmet and torso, and bringing my arms up to block them was all I could do. However, there was no getting X off of me, not without something unexpected.

Well, I had something unexpected for him.

As quick as I could, I began to unbind the metal plating from the bones and pseudo-cloth fibers that covered me. Just as I felt a claw plunge down and rip through my sternum, I ejected the torso plating along with the thighs, the former of which smacking X on the face as it flew upward with what little pneumatic pressure I was able to generate.

Capitalizing on the moment, I kneed X in the stomach area and jumped upwards. Now with extra room, three long appendages with medium-sized claws at the end extended from a wound in my back, settling in right next to my . . . wings, still weird to think about that.

I saw Ren glancing back and forth between the raptors battling with the remaining military drones and the still-recovering disassembly drone, and I grinned.

Round two.

* * *

E1 blocked another fist. Just barely.

How was he so strong? From his scans, the soldier appeared to be just the standard model of a military drone, albeit with more than a few inches on the top. Hell, it was nearly enough to be more than his own height, which was engineered to include several modifications that were supposed to give him an edge over anything that normal production could offer.

Apparently not, he guessed.

Seeing the drone on top of him stop for a moment that would’ve been unnoticeable to a normal drone, E1 took his chance. Raising his legs up, he kicked the drone so hard that he hit the ceiling of the tram car and made it dent outwards. As the drone was falling down, E1 swung a fist and hit the drone right on the face, cracking the visor.

E1 frowned. That hit should’ve pulverized the drone’s head.

Surprisingly, the drone recovered quickly and hit E1 with a flurry of chaotic punches that forced him to retreat a few steps and put himself on the backfoot. This didn’t make sense, none of this made any goddamn sense. He was supposed to be winning, it didn’t make sense.

He thought back to the opening encounter. Any normal person, upon seeing a gun pointed at them, SHOULD have ducked for cover which would give them time to pull out their own firearm, but instead the mad-drone had decided to tackle E1! He had been so caught off-guard that he barely had time to brace himself against the charge, much less time to dodge. Even then, he had still been knocked off of his feet and pinned to the floor, which shouldn’t have been possible.

Again, it was physically impossible for a normal military drone to be stronger than one of E1’s kind. It wasn’t a matter of genetic lottery like it was for humans, they were made one way, and one way ONLY. He had scanned every inch of his attacker, inside and out, and he had seen nothing that would indicate any modifications or abnormal designs.

Impossible. E1 concluded that he was somehow being fooled by a scrambling signal of some kind and left it at that. Case closed.

Subroutines identified a feint to his gut that was being fully committed to, so E1 made to block it. However, the drone instead wrapped his arms around E1’s back and lifted him up into the air, subsequently flipping him over his back and dropping him to the floor. From there, E1 was back to being pummeled from above. However, this time he wasn’t willing to let that slide.

The drone, however strong he was, wasn’t more skilled. He moved more like a brawler who had figured out how to fight on the fly instead of having hundreds of years of virtual training like E1 did. He had a weakness.

E1 snapped his hand out and gripped the drone’s wrist with a hand like a vise. He quickly pushed the elbow over and around the back of the drone’s neck, slightly tangling the drone with his own limb. The drone jerked backwards, surprised, and tried to yank his arm away.

E1 sprang up, kneeing the drone under the chin as he rose. As the head was still recovering, the strike was followed up by a quick elbow to the center of the visor that was supported by E1 pushing his own hand and somewhat leveraging his limbs to the greatest effect. Unlike last time, this strike put a clear spiderweb of cracks into the opaque visor, and the drone went down.

E1 wasn’t afraid to kick a man while he was down. A boot met the drone’s side, drawing a muffled groan from the drone. It was clear that his pain threshold wasn’t as high as E1’s.

The scuffle to his left drew his attention. E4 was repeatedly smashing the second drone’s head into the side of a cupholder, the visor close to shattering. It seemed that the door had been locked by E4 as well, and judging by the sounds coming from it, people wanted to get in.

A hand grabbed E1’s ankle. He didn’t have time to react or express his surprise, however, as he was quickly yanked off of his feet and brought down to the ground for a third time.

A fist swung at him as the drone tried to leap on top of him, but E1 moved his head to the side and it impacted harmlessly onto the plush carpet. He abandoned any notion of complicated, skillful maneuvers, and instead opted to try and get as many punches in as fast as he could.

A slap here, a kick there. It was a tangle of limbs that would’ve only been made more cartoonish if stereotypical scuffling noises and a big cloud of dust that obscured the bodies popped up, which obviously wasn’t gonna happen. E1 palmed the drone’s face and pushed it away, only to feel a set of teeth clamp down on his thumb.

“OW!” He yelped, more surprised than hurt.

The drone purposefully fell backwards, getting a small amount of distance away from E1. The drone scrambled away on all fours, his gaze seemingly set on E1’s heavy pistol that was lying near a chair leg.

E1’s eyes widened, and he set off after the drone. However, it was too late. He watched as a hand grabbed the handle, and the barrel whipped up towards his head.

It was right then that the drone’s head flicked slightly towards his companion, whose helmet was now thoroughly shattered and oil leaking out. It was a gruesome sight, but somehow the drone was still alive and kicking, albeit weakly. E4 moved to smash the head he was holding against the cupholder one last time, which seemingly made E1’s attacker’s decision for him.

Fear that he had only felt one other time filled E1’s chest as the pistol turned towards E4, the finger of the drone poised to press down. E1 was jarred into motion, dashing forward with his arm outstretched. Just as the trigger was pressed, his hand came down on the drone’s arm.

A bullet went straight through E4’s leg, sending him toppling to the ground. The drone that was near-death fell limply, though he did his best to crawl away.

E1 breathed a sigh of relief. His brother was safe.

It was then that he was pistol-whipped in the side of the head. Normally it wouldn’t have done a thing, but he had intentionally modified his weapon with shock-reflectors that were designed to send shockwaves through anything it hit. Military drone’s helmets were notoriously sensitive in the jawline area, making it a weak spot that could be exploited.

E1 went down, clutching the area where he had been hit. It hadn’t been broken, but his sensors were screaming at him from the strike and his CPU was getting overwhelmed.

The drone kneeled in front of him, gun raising.

“I don’t know who you are or where you’re from,” The drone began in a shaky voice. “But today, you’ve messed with-”

CLANG

The drone toppled to the side, head lolling. Behind him stood Damina, her having struck him with the stock of her rifle. E1 grinned, though the smile quickly disappeared from his face when she pointed the barrel at him.

“Listen to me!” She exclaimed, eyes narrowed. “How about we all just . . calm down, right?”

The normal military drone that had been sitting down in a chair when E1 had busted through the roof walked up and snatched the heavy pistol from the ground, proceeding to point it at E4 and gesturing for him to get up.

“Hey, that’s mine.” He called out weakly.

Damina rolled her eyes, keeping the gun trained on him. “We’ll give it back to you when we think you can be responsible enough with it, alright?”

E1 didn’t answer, being too busy having his mind blown from the sheer stupidity that was occuring right in front of him.

“Are you kidding me?”

“No.”

* * *

Felix nodded along, only half listening to the worker drone in front of him. He had tuned out the long-winded explanation about twenty minutes prior, which was around the time the worker had started talking about how his little group had gotten down there. Apparently, they were all either drones forgotten by High Command after being lost in the system, or outcasts that had been running from a faction that formed after the evacuation that found themselves down here.

Fun.

“ . . . and honestly, I was as surprised as you when we found the proxies, they were really-”

“Proxies?” Felix blurted out, leaning forward quickly.

The tiny box he was in shook from the motion, metal creaking as it wavered.

“Don’t shake the damn carriage!” The worker yelled, panicking as he clutched the paper-thin sides. “I’ve told you this before!”

Felix held his hands up in surrender. “Sorry, sorry.”

The worker gulped. “So uh, what were you asking.”

“Proxies.” Felix made a circling gesture with his hand. “Those’re the . . . shambling glowy things, right?”

“You got it, but we chose that name over the other option.”

“Which was?”

“Zombie drones.” The worker replied.

“Oh.”

Clearing his throat, the worker continued on.

“Anyway, they’ve supposedly been down here before anybody came down that we know of, so they aren’t exactly a new thing.” The worker made a shrugging motion. “My best idea is that it was something that Command either didn’t know about or didn’t want to- couldn’t deal with.”

“YOUR best idea?” Felix asked. “What’re you, the resident theorist?”

The worker grinned, grabbing the edges of his surprisingly clean red leather jacket. “Yup, I’m a pretty important person around these parts.”

Awkward silence followed that statement, with both parties averting their eyes to look over the edge. Felix, personally, couldn’t see anything other than the occasional flash from a sparking wire on one of the walls that were maybe forty, fifty feet away. The long metal cable that his little box was trundling along on stretched both ways into the abyss, looking awfully thin and fragile from his perspective. There wasn’t really any visible bottom to the cavern, with the only thing down there being a fog that got thicker the farther down it went.

“I seriously doubt that.” Felix stated in a dry tone.

“Whatever, okay!?” The drone huffed, crossing his arms. “Doesn’t matter.”

“You’re right, it doesn’t matter.” Felix gestured to the area around him. “What I want is to get out of this place as soon as I can.”

The drone cocked his head. “I mean, there are a few maintenance tunnels that lead back to the upper facility dotted here and there, but they’re crawling with proxies, so-”

Felix shook his head profusely. “Nuh-uh, I meant the facility.”

“Oh . . .” The worker trailed off. “How do you not know?”

“Know what?”

The worker waved on arm, leaning back slightly.

Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.

“Oh you know, the whole, ‘we’re-trapped-in-this-place-because-the-people-we-entrusted-our-safety-to-blocked-all-exits-to-this-hellhole’?”

Felix blinked. “Huh?”

“Okay, seriously, didn’t you know this?” The worker frowned.

“I uh, kinda just got here.” Felix sheepishly rubbed the back of his head. “You aren’t gonna try and kill me for that, right?”

“What!? No, of course not!” The worker exclaimed. “Also, are you saying that you came from outside?”

“Yes, yes I am, and all I want is a way back to the entrance that we all left by. Got a map?”

The worker chuckled, rolling his eyes. “Yeah, you aren’t gonna make it past the cultists. Those guys have been guarding the entrance sector ever since they formed, they don’t want anybody getting out because of their weird prophecy or whatever.”

“Yeah, I’ve met them.” Felix said, grimacing.

“Command sealed all exits when they left, and those boys in the Overseer Command Hub haven’t been able to crack open the only other viable route no matter how hard they try.” The worker continued.

Felix’s eyes widened. “Wait, are you talking about-”

“The vehicle bay? Yep, it’s the only thing big enough to let out the factions members or just everybody all at once, unless a few thousand drones decide they want to go through a several-hundred mile long tunnel single file.”

“I honestly don’t know why the area exists in the first place, we don’t have any vehicles . . .” Felix was suddenly brought back to the weird battle and those weird drones with the coats. “Huh.”

“What?”

“Nothing, forget I said anything.” Felix leaned to the side to peek over the worker drone’s shoulder. “Oh hey, we’re here.”

The small box let out a loud clang as it impacted against a solid wall with an inset alcove. The worker let out a small noise of happiness as he stood up and grabbed a small railing that was placed near him.

Felix followed the worker as he stepped off the small box, placing his hand on the railing and using it to haul himself off. However, just as he stepped off, the cable let out a shriek of protest and snapped at the small pulley that connected it to the wall. The cable, box, and almost Felix himself fell into the dark abyss, never to be seen again.

Both Felix and the worker stared at it in silence as it vanished into the fog.

“Welp, good thing we got off of that in time.” The worker stated.

“Yeah . . .”

A noise drew both of their attention behind them, where a dented door had just opened up. Standing in the doorway was a pair of military drones, armor dented and scuffed in several places.

“Hey.” One of them called out.

“Hey.” The worker replied.

“This the guy?”

“Yeah.”

“You sure?”

“I am.”

“He doesn’t look like much.”

“I know.”

Felix jerked his gaze to the worker, taken aback. “Excuse me?”

“He has a weird drawing on his chest.” The other military drone stated, ignoring Felix.

“I dunno what it is.”

“Fashion statement, maybe?”

“Probably.”

“At least he doesn’t look like those cultists or the cowboys.”

“Thank robo-god for that, right?”

All three drones laughed in complete synchronization.

“Yeah, c’mon in, Menisten’s waiting for you.” The first military drone gestured for the worker to follow him. “You too, weirdo.”

“I’m not weird.” Felix said in a defeated tone, dragging his boots as he followed the three drones ahead of him.

He was led into a long hallway, planks of wood and metal plating boarding up two doorways on the right. The one closest to Felix was pitch-black as he passed, though the second was almost completely covered. He managed to catch a glimpse of what was inside the room through a small opening, though he quickly sped his pace up as he caught sight of several thick tentacle-like cables with glowing blue pustules on them wrapped around what looked to be human corpses.

At the end of the hallway lay an open doorway that glowed with light, and Felix caught sight of several figures moving around inside of it. He walked through the doorway, nudging past the worker as he did.

“Hey!” The worker exclaimed, though Felix ignored him.

The room was circular, with an equally circular table laying in the center of it. Electronic lanterns lit up the area, though for some reason they mimicked the flickering nature of fire. A collection of about six or seven drones stood around the table, all in various states of arguing.

“We barely have enough rations to maintain ourselves, let alone yet another refugee from the above!” One military drone shouted, slamming his fist down on the table.

A second military drone scoffed. “Oh please, just one drone won’t make a difference in our stocks, stop exaggerating-”

“I stand with Menisten on this one, if we let this one in, it’s gonna be a series of ‘just one more person’ that will eventually balloon our numbers to something beyond what we can handle.” A worker spoke up, leaning on the table slightly. “We need to set the line here and now, before it is too late.”

Another worker drone yawned. “I don’t understand why we can’t just send him on a suicide mission to do something for us if he wants to get out, so-”

The room went silent as they noticed the newcomers.

“Jarret, Mat, . . . I forgot the other one’s name.” The military drone that had been called Menisten said. “Welcome back. I see that you have the new refugee.”

The two military drones nodded and walked back into the hallway behind them. The worker drone, Mat apparently, raised a hand as if he was asking permission to speak.

“No Mat, you can’t stay for the meeting.” One of the other worker drones at the table said with no small amount of exasperation.

“Oh, fooey.” Mat slumped and shambled into an adjoining room.

Silence followed, the drones at the table staring at Felix as if they were waiting for him to say something.

“We need to decide what to do with him now, you know.” The first worker drone whispered, though it was loud enough for Felix to hear.

“I mean, I just wanna leave.” Felix stated simply, shrugging as he did.

Silence.

“Door’s right there.” One of the unnamed military drones spoke up.

Felix facepalmed. “No, I want to get out of this PLACE and back to SAFETY.”

“Maintenance tunnels are always open, if you wanna fight through a horde of proxies.” Menisten replied, still not getting it.

“Jesus-freaking-robo-christ, okay,” Felix muttered under his breath before looking back up. “I want to LEAVE the facility, OKAY!?”

More silence.

“Uh,” The worker from earlier who had been calling for Felix to be sent on a mission or forts. “That’s not possible.”

A military drone nodded his head. “Well, if we sent him down to the lower levels, there is the possibility he could open up one of the sealed sectors.”

“Even if the electronics down there still worked after all the interference from the OSEU, which I doubt, there’s no telling if any overrides exist or are capable of unlocking anything.” The first worker argued, gesticulating wildly.

“There is a chance though.” Menisten added, a thoughtful expression on his display.

“Even if we were to account all of that and the dozens of coincidences that need to happen for them to work, it would still be a suicide mission that-” The drone Felix had dubbed Sociodrone paused.

Almost in unison, the entire group of drones that were standing around the table turned to look at Felix, with their expressions varying from vaguely interested to something he could only describe as shark-like.

He gulped.

* * *

He blocked. Again. And again. And again.

Ren gritted her teeth. Somehow, the combined efforts of her, the disassembly drone, and even those three- oh wait, just two now- military drones that were currently beating the raptors to a pulp failed to stagger or sway the ‘human’. She called him that because she was about ninety-eight percent sure that Jacob wasn’t running the show anymore, though she supposed that there was always the chance that he was just pulling one big prank on her.

Damnit. What if he was doing that? Stupid idiot, first one to talk to her in months and it’s a mentally inept fool that is- was- barely literate.

The ‘human’ dashed across the ceiling, diving down onto the form of the murder drone that was too slow to dodge. They slashed at each other mindlessly for a few seconds, though it was the robot that pulled away with a dozen new wounds coating him.

Ren cursed. She didn’t like being relegated to little more than a support unit, but she couldn’t fight well enough alongside the disassembler to help out in any meaningful way. Plus, she didn’t want to end up looking like one of those guys that got rejected on the one day they decided to be genuine in school for once, so she just let the brute take the heavy hits for her.

Tiny shards that she tried to sharpen to impossible amounts simply stuck in the unarmored sections of the human’s body and sank into it, doing absolutely no damage at all. The thing was that the closer an object got to the human, the harder it was to maintain a semblance of control over it. It didn’t matter where she approached from either, ever since that strange burst of ‘waves’ that came from below happened it was almost like the human had eyes in the back of his head.

She blinked closer, yanking a section of concrete from the ground and standing on top of it. A sharp ring flew at her neck, but it was quickly deflected by a piece of rebar that she whipped around in time. However, it proved to be just a distraction, as the rebar that she had just used was duplicated and sent shooting towards her.

Ren dropped the concrete and let herself fall, but it was too late. For what she was pretty sure was the second time, she was sent flying. She came to a sudden stop when the rebar stuck itself into the wall behind her, leaving her impaled by the abdomen.

And it hurt.

“Ow.” Ren said as much.

Pulling out the impromptu weapon, it fell to the side with a clatter. Oil sluiced freely out of the new hole in her body, and she hadn’t eaten in a while. High temp alarms had been sounding in her head for about five minutes now, and they were getting louder and louder with each passing second. If she didn’t do something fast, then . . . well, she didn’t exactly know WHAT was gonna happen, but it probably wasn’t good.

It was at that moment when her optics alighted on a pile of glowing things off to the side of the darkened room. About ten feet to the right of the area where that once-armed drone was holding down a raptor while his friend beat it down with his bare hands were the countless corpses of dead disassembly drones that had presumably met a gruesome fate, if one were to judge it by their copious amounts of wounds. Many were ripped apart, limbs strewn about across the floor. They weren’t in very good condition, but it gave her an idea that made the mad scientist in her grin a little.

It was the greatest plan.

Ripping copper wiring out from the walls, Ren retrieved the small diagnostics device that she had forgotten to take out of her pocket before she left on this bizarre adventure. She blinked over to the corpse pile and knelt by the side of one of them, a crimson holographic symbol appearing around the length of copper wiring that she had brought along with her. A few intertwined and twisted around, winding themselves into the small socket that was on the exterior of the diagnostic machine, while a few others began to stretch and snake their way into the exposed circuitry of the murder drones.

What she was doing technically wasn’t directly trying to manipulate the disassembling machine with her solver, it was . . . more by proxy? She didn’t care for the proper wordplay, all she knew was that she hadn’t been stopped yet.

The small screen of the device hovering in front of her face filled up with lines of code that made absolutely no sense to her, many of the subroutines and redundant processes corrupted by the state that the bodies were in. Luckily, she was able to activate something that did something else considering how the finger of the one in front of her twitched.

Slowly, one by one, the bodies began to move. Stiff, twitching, occasionally falling over due to lack of solid legs, the dead rose one last time to serve the needs of the very thing they were built to kill. Ren prioritized the ones with at least one arm since she didn’t think a robot mindlessly biting at the human would do anything in particular, but even that was taxing her concentration.

As she got up, she was taken aback by the sight in front of her. About twelve disassemblers stood in front of her in varying states of disrepair. While the missing limbs and gaping wounds were creepy, they just didn’t strike the same chord that those blank displays did. She didn’t know, something about the darkened screens just piercing straight into your soul just didn’t sit right with her.

The human smashed the still-alive disassembly drone into the ground once again, his arm coming down to bisect his opponent. This time, Ren’s unlikely ally was too weak to stop the blade, and his torso was cut in half around the waist. The human was raising his arm once again to deal a finishing blow, but it was then that a flurry of bullets slammed into his chest.

The human staggered, but there was little effect other than that. He jerked his fishbowl-like helmet upwards to see a hunched over disassembler corpse standing up with a smoking submachine gun poking out of its one remaining hand.

“What in the actual f-” The human cut himself off, hanging his head. “Ugh, sorry- frick is that!?”

Ren rolled her eyes, mentally pressing the built-in subroutine that was clearly labeled [act_form//MINDLESS_CHARGE.comm].

And so they did.

* * *

K wasn’t moving.

She had been on her way to the temporary base that those military drones had set up, being about halfway there and going over what she would tell those commanders, when she stopped. Her actions, the scenes were replaying in her head on repeat. She didn’t know which programmer had decided it was a necessary measure to have emotions built into JCJenson bots, but K was really cursing the name of that idiot desk jockey who had done so.

She shouldn’t feel bad. She really shouldn’t. It just didn’t make sense, that’s all it was. They had been constantly rude to her, insulted her to her face, and the weird red one had literally left her for dead! She had been able to fight her way out of the situation due to her very obvious superior fighting prowess, but she was most definitely justified in the whole ‘abandoning-them’ thing.

Right?

Well then again, it wasn’t like those specific military drones had left her behind, b-but they were being super mean, they honestly deserved much worse. It wasn’t like they were just following orders or anything or had any valid reason to be actually angry at her, they were just a whole bunch of assholes!

K grimaced. Hadn’t she been bragging about slaughtering scores of other military drones just like him a few hours ago?

Robo-Christ, was she the mean one? Nah, that couldn’t be the case, she was sure that she would know it if she was the one in the wrong, she knew that for sure. So, case closed! Just leave them behind while they are killed off one-by-one by things that only she really knew how to avoid.

. . .

K groaned, dropping down and alighting on top of a tilted lightning rod. The skyscraper she was on was one of the few still standing that rose above the clouds. It was . . . actually fairly calm up here, with the moonlight reflecting off of her perfectly polished visor, the matte-black of the screen making for a great surface to light up in the darkness of night. Strangely enough, it made her want to both stay in that spot forever, but also find a nice small nook to curl up in for the rest of time.

She had to go back. Hell, they basically worked for the same people, she was sure that company policy had some sort of clause that would allow her to do . . . whatever she planned to do, she wasn’t exactly sure of the specifics yet. Like, what if they were all already dead? That wouldn’t really be good.

Her peg-like legs wobbled slightly, the wind disrupting the careful balance that she had adopted to stand on the small rod. It didn’t tear her away from her thoughts, though.

She had just been following orders, really. She was literally BUILT to disassemble the drones left on the planet, how was she supposed to know that a group of loyalists had holed themselves up in some military bunker under the ice? It wasn’t her fault that all those peop- workers and soldiers had died, they had just been in the wrong place at the wrong time.

It. Wasn’t. Her. Fault.

The accusing face of that soldier- Sterl, his name was, the disgusted looks that she was given by the others during the journey, the occasional attempt at reconciliation only to be met with derision from K, they all flashed in her mind. It didn’t take a genius like her to figure out just how much they hated her.

Had she been cruel? Drones like her were supposed to be cool, calm, and efficient killers. After all, they were MACHINES, not people. Had she maybe taken things too far during her and X’s rampage through the underground facility, done things that weren’t necessary?

Was . . . she defective?

K didn’t really have a reference to go off of, considering how meeting another disassembly drone wasn’t very common. She thought back to the singular time that she had encountered another one of her own kind while patrolling a sector about eighteen miles west of the spire. They had been feasting on a fresh kill, the oil still uncovered by snowfall.

She had called out to them, though they didn’t answer. Yelling for a second time did have results, though, as the head jerked up with a glowing neon X on their display paired with a wide, toothy smile. They cocked their head in a strange manner, and then flew off.

And that was that.

She remembered telling the others about the strange occurrence, but both X and A blew it off for their own reasons. A thought it was just one of their comrades with faulty programming that caused them to be socially inept, or as he put it, “an autistic idiot”, while X said that he simply didn’t care and reiterated that it would be a great thing for K to do if she jumped off the nearest skyscraper and never returned.

She wasn’t defective. She couldn’t be.

K nodded her head, absentmindedly pulling at her ponytail. Decision set in her mind, she stretched herself to her full height, balancing atop the bent rod with only a single leg. With a flap of her wings, she took off into the air, back the way she had come. They wanted to hate her? Fine, let them do what they want. But she was anything else but defective, and she would prove it.

* * *

The two military drones glared at each other, not saying a word. On one side of the ring sat the colorfully-embroidered Lev, the supposed leader of an up-and-coming faction that may or may not be Rome. The various patches and medals that dotted his armor dented and ruffled from the fight, and he was definitely not too happy about it. Fixing the drone opposite him with a glare that was matched by his opposition, he was seemingly locked in a competition to see who could out-glare one another.

His opponent, the ever-stoic operative who was apparently named E1. Matte-black . . . everything, actually. From his opaque visor to his scratched boots, it was a shade of darkness that seemed to suck the light away from its surroundings. He seemed equally frustrated at his current predicament, obviously trying his best to be the first ever drone to kill somebody with a look. While it currently wasn’t yielding any results, Alana was sure that he would get it eventually, just like he did with everything else, as-

“Are you doing another one of your dramatic internal dialogues again?” A voice drew Alana out of her thoughts and back into reality.

“Uh, um, maybe?” Alana sheepishly scratched the back of her head, ignoring the light-blue eyes that were giving her an accusatory look.

Damina gave her a look that oozed exasperation.

“You do know we have both an audience and something to do, right?” She gestured towards the two bound and gagged drones sitting in chairs across from each other.

Alana frowned. “Considering what you’ve told me of your new boss and what I know of Lev, I really doubt we can convince either of these guys to do anything that isn’t ripping each other’s throats out.”

“Still worth a shot.” Damina shrugged before kneeling down next to the drone with dark armor. “I’m gonna let you talk now, okay, just don’t-”

“You let me go, NOW!” A shout echoed through the room. “How did you even find ropes strong enough to hold me!? These things are basically just twine- mmmpgh mpgh mphfg!”

Damina shoved the gag back into his mouth, muffling his voice.

“Told you so.” Alana adopted a smug grin, pointing the barrel of her rifle up into the air and letting the stock rest on her hip.

“Shut up.” Damina straightened up and scanned the two captives. “How agreeable do you think your new boss is?”

Alana visibly cringed. “First of all, he’s not my boss, and secondly, I hardly know him.”

“Just met and stuff like that?” Damina stated with an odd tone in her voice.

“. . . yes?”

Damina strode between the two mortal enemies, crossing her arms and puffing out her chest confidently.

“Now listen, I know both of you just met, but I personally think everybody-” Damina cut herself off, frowning at the murderous expressions on her audiences’ displays. “-erm, MOST of you are tired of all the death and destruction that’s been happening as of late.”

Lev grunted something that gave Alana the impression it was a dismissal.

“I’m gonna take that as a, ‘Oh yes Damina, you are completely and totally correct!’.” Damina said after a moment of consideration. “So, I’m gonna ungag the both of you and let you guys talk things out, m’kay?”

Silence, from both parties.

Not acknowledging the lack of affirmation, Damina reached out and tossed away the gags at roughly the same time.

“I would’ve won.” The one Damina had called E1 blurted out.

“You were on the ground and about to be shot in the head, I don’t really think that’s considered ‘almost winning’ in most places.” Lev said smugly, his head hanging slightly.

E1 scoffed, and Alana thought she saw his fists ball up.

“Is that so?” He asked in a mocking tone. “I wouldn’t really credit a standard grunt with knowledge like that, but you believe what you want to believe.”

“Cut the elitist bull, we got left behind just like everyone else down here.” Lev growled out, surprisingly Alana with the vehemence in his voice.

A laugh burst out from E1, seemingly putting his counterpart on edge.

“What’s so funny?”

E1 cut his own laughter off, shaking his head.

“Oh, nothing. It’s just what you said, or unjustly claimed I should say.” E1 cocked his head, something in his voice worming its way out.

Lev didn’t reply.

“Got nothing to say, huh?”

“You . . .” Lev trailed off, fury evident in his tone.

“Yeah, sorry to say, but I’m not the one here who got abandoned. Surprise.”

Damina stepped in, literally moving her body in between the two drones before they could argue for any longer.

“Okay, uh, I’m not hearing anything productive coming from this conversation, so-”

“You came from the surface!?” Alana exclaimed, moving towards Damina.

Damina jerked her head towards her friend, shock evident in her face.

“Uh, yeah!? Where else did you think I came from!?” Damina shot back.

Alana threw her hands up in the air, dropping the rifle. “I dunno, I just figured you got scooped up by some random warlord or died like so many others!”

Damina blinked. “Is that what happened to Nathan?”

“D-don’t change the subject!” Alana stuttered, caught off-guard from the question. “What’re you even doing back here in the first place!?”

“This idiot here-” Damina kicked E1 in the leg, causing her to pull her leg back in pain. “-wanted to find some unit that he managed to convince to build a long-range amplifier of some kind, or something like that. I wasn’t really listening to him.”

Alana blinked rapidly, her turn to be shocked.

A chuckle emanated from Lev, drawing everyone’s attention.

“Oh, that? I raided the place with a few of my boys and took that device, it’s basically useless though.” Lev said nonchalantly.

“Excuse me!?” E1 exclaimed, jumping in his chair. “Do you know how many years of planning you’ve just screwed up!?”

Lev shrugged. “Oopsies?”

Alana looked away from the ensuing argument, instead turning her attention to the two other drones that were tied up off to the side. While they had just been trying to kill each other a few minutes ago, they were seemingly more focused on watching the drones that were probably their respective bosses yell and scream at each other than doing the same to each other.

“OKAY STOP!” Alana yelled, pressing her fingers to her forehead.

Surprisingly, the shouting ceased.

“Okay, so this guy,” Alana gestured towards E1. “Apparently has something important he needs to build but doesn’t have the resources to do so. Augustine here has plenty of resources but is lacking direction. How about you two help each other out before the reactor goes kablooey and kills us all anyway?”

The two drones looked at her for a second, then at each other. Silence pervaded the room.

“I’m open to a temporary truce.” E1 was the first to acquiesce.

“Only so we can find our footing, and then we can do whatever we want.” Lev replied, his head not wavering an inch.

The two drones nodded at each other.

“I’ll untie, uh, Augustine I guess since I don’t want his guys at the door to bust in here and kill us all.” Damina took out a pair of comically-oversized clippers and strode towards Lev.

Alana looked at the door to the compartment, which was currently being cut open by a blowtorch.

Lev got up and strode towards the door, stopping about a few feet in front of it and starting to make hand gestures at the military drones on the other side. Damina walked back over to Alana and leaned in to say something to her quietly.

“You do know that E1’s trying to start a rebellion against High Command, right?” She whispered.

“What!?”

* * *

“ . . . stupid refugees, sending me on a suicide mission, putting their own people first, acting all high and mighty, stupid stupid stupid . . .”

Felix continued to grumble as he crouched low in the small tunnel. Armed only with a faulty flashlight (they had probably given him the worst kind) and a surprisingly useful crowbar, he was constantly being startled by the occasional spark and flash of electricity from the countless cables that hung from the ceiling and walls. If it did anything, it certainly didn’t improve his mood.

It also didn’t help that he had to look out for those proxy things or whatever they were called at basically all times. After all, anyone will tell you that getting your body parts ripped to shreds and your mind replaced by a supposedly malfunctioning overseer intelligence that just didn’t know when to quit is a terrible experience. If you were to also ask them how they knew it was a terrible experience, they would probably start sprinting away due to their cover being blown.

Fun stuff.

Apparently he had to go all the way down into the local power station to reboot the power, and from there he had to go string along a series of uplinks until it met the “thingy painted with yellow stuff” and when he asked for elaboration he received “you’ll know it when you see it” as an answer.

He cursed the name of that weird worker who had brought him to the little hideout. What was his name again? Mark, Mat, something like that, he couldn’t remember. Like, who in their right mind would actually work for someone who’s willing to just throw away the lives of anyone they don’t like the look of?

Couldn’t be Felix, at the very least.

He came upon a small panel set into the side of the wall. It looked exactly as the access port he supposedly needed to find looked like, though it was a bit . . . smaller . . . than what he had originally expected.

Crouching down, he gripped the small handle that had lettering beneath it that read, “PULL HERE” and pulled. After it failed, he gave it a few more yanks for good measure, but it was rusted shut. He frowned and sighed, pulling out his crowbar. Things never had to be simple, couldn’t they? Literally everything in the universe was devoting their entire lives (half-lives, if the resident physicist back at base was to be believed) to making sure that he never had an easy time doing anything at all.

Like, stars themselves would be crashing into each other, the cosmos boiling itself alive JUST so that Felix would somehow fumble pulling open a zipper several times, only for the bag to fall over. And, since he would be sitting in a chair, he would have to scoot the chair over a little bit to reach it. However, the chair had decided to get stuck on a small crevasse or whatever the plot of the galaxy required, so all he did was make himself look stupid in his interview for the higher-ranking HBDP (Harmful Biome Detainment Platoon) unit. To make matters worse, he had somehow lost his ID card that day, which ended up with him being shipped over to a backwater border position that barely gave him any social merits.

Huh. Now that he thought about it, him getting put in a secondary border patrol unit, one that was AWAY from the actual border, was probably the thing that led to him not getting cut down by those hunter drones. Then he met Sterl, went on a few new assignments outside of the facility, got mixed up in all the weird rebellion business, fell back into the facility, and now he was . . . here.

Stuck in a pit full of creatures that he was sure weren’t supposed to exist and having to reroute power to open a sealed section of the facility, all so he could escape and get back to those sweet Gin Rummy games back at base. Oh wait, they banned games, that’s right. Wasn’t he also like, super wanted as well?

Great.

Felix finally managed to pry open the panel after wiggling it back and forth for a good few moments, and the thing just fell off of the hinges. The clatter was loud, even more so since the complete silence of the small, cramped space he was in was so, well, silent.

Felix grimaced and shone the flashlight into the small gap. However, it was then that he realized the small power meter on the side was blinking red, which was right when the light promptly went out. However, it didn’t go out before he caught a glimpse of some sort of red lever off to the side marked with lettering that was marred with rust.

He smacked the side of the flashlight against the vent wall, getting absolutely zero results. Hitting it with the palm of his hand also proved to be next-to-useless, though he didn’t quite know what to do. He wasn’t a mechanic or someone good with kooky gadgets and whatnot, how was he supposed to fix a cheap flashlight?

However, it was then that a large bang rang out through the vent, causing the sides to reverberate. It startled Felix, and he went to shaking the flashlight really, REALLY hard in an effort to get it working again. It failed to do anything, though, so he just resorted to turning back around and crawling towards the opening. He was about five feet away when, inexplicably, what seemed to be a pair of thin legs walked into view, wearing oddly-proportioned blue dress pants and black shined shoes. He hardly had time to comprehend the fact that somebody had apparently followed him into a dark corridor before the exit to his freedom was sealed, despite the fact that the metal panel had still been laying on the ground.

Felix gaped at what had just unfolded before his eyes before dismissing it. No time, he never had any time.

Whipping back around, Felix continued to do his best to get the flashlight to do its job. After whacking the base of it against the side of his own head, the bulb finally flickered back to life with the beam facing forwards. He breathed a sigh of relief, only to stop when he saw . . . something farther out into the vent. The only thing he could make out at this distance was the blank display and the string of glowing blue pustules that circled the outline of its visor.

Then it rushed at him.

Felic yelped, scrambling backwards. The thing seemed to be spearing large scythe-like appendages that had replaced its forearms into the vent and dragging itself forward like that, though at an incredibly high speed.

Panicking, he moved his hand back and pushed himself backwards, bumping into something as he did so. It gave way with a clunk, and the entire floor just dropped beneath him.

Felix screamed as he fell, though it was only for a few moments. He fell face first into some sort of liquid, the mystery substance splashing all around him. However, he quickly jumped to his feet when the ‘water’ began to sizzle and pop at his face and armor, pain blossoming on almost all of his surfaces.

His legs stayed in the seemingly corrosive liquid, and his right one smoked profusely when he brought it up. He didn’t know how long his armor would hold against the acidic liquid, though he wasn’t gonna bet his life on its longevity.

A noise pulled Felix from his thoughts, causing him to freeze up. Turning around as slow as he could, he saw a figure- no, a CROWD of figures all standing around.

He couldn’t quite make out all of them due to a large amount of hanging cables and darkness of the area, though a spark of electricity from the nearby wall lit them up enough for him to see the disfigured walking corpses of several worker and military drones alike. Blue, bubbly growths coated the majority of their surfaces, with some of them having such a bad infestation that their entire upper body was wrapped in that strange material that looked like a combination of bloated flesh, keratin, and darkened plastic.

One by one, their heads lifted up to look at him, with dozens of blank displays fixing him with a gaze that penetrated his soul.

He ran.

Liquid hissed and splashed around Felix’s heels and up onto his thigh plating as he did his best to sprint in knee-height water, made even worse with the burning pain that creeped up his legs. It was made worse by the fact that he was already tired from trekking across what seemed like miles of monotonic concrete corridors blanketed in darkness and silence.

Ungodly shrieks came from behind him, echoing throughout the expansive chamber. The sounds of more splashing made its way to his ears as the proxies gave chase, seemingly intent on tearing him apart, limb from limb. He heard a few letting out pained cries as the acid ate away at some of their weakened limbs, and a quick glance back showed that the worker variants were collapsing into the pool as their own legs gave way and broke apart in a gruesome display.

A proxy charged at Felix from a passageway that lay ahead, though he almost thought it was a normal drone due to the almost-complete lack of outward defects that would’ve normally marred its black armor. He waited until it was a few feet in front of him before putting his crowbar out in front of himself, holding both ends by each hand so that the bar was acting as a barrier.

Felix jumped forward, catching the proxy by the neck and tackling it. It scrabbled at his face as it landed in the pool (though it was practically a river) and he did his best to keep it at bay. However, he quickly jumped off of it as his hands came into contact with the acidic liquid. He sprinted forward as smoky trails wisped off of his fingers and palms, with the cries of the proxies right behind him.

He batted aside a swinging cable out of his way, slowing slightly when he saw the sight in front of him.

Ahead of him lay something that eerily reminded him of the spire that those hunters had constructed. Countless bodies formed a hill of the dead, many of them fused together by the same blatant corruption of the OSEU, or whatever it was called. He even caught sight of a few human-shaped cadavers amongst the pile, including one in some sort of bulky, ivory-colored diving suit.

However, it was what was on top of the about fifteen-feet high hill that interested him the most. A large box, maybe about two or three times the size of Felix himself (in terms of width, only half of himself in height), lay at the very top of the pile, a flickering flare bathing the bos and the area around it in a crimson light. Even more promising, the side of the crate was titled with faded, boxy lettering that read “MUNITIONS”.

Felix practically cheered in delight, wading over to the side of the pile and rapidly scrambling up its fairly steep slope. As he got there, however, it was revealed that a tarnished chain was wrapped around all six sides of the crate, a rusted padlock securing it in place.

He groaned, bringing out his crowbar. Looking back, he saw that the proxies were seemingly having a hard time figuring out how to climb, so he figured that he had a bit of time to work.

He hit the lock once, and then twice. It failed to give, and the only thing that gave way on the third swing was himself.

Felix’s arm erupted into a burning sensation that caused him to cry out and nearly drop his crowbar. A quick inspection told him that one of the acid droplets had, somehow, eaten all the way through his inner elbow plating and touched the internal mechanisms of his actual arm, and it hurt like hell. However, he quickly shook himself out of the pain and set his jaw. He didn’t have time to hurt, he had to act.

He kept smashing the butt of his crowbar against the padlock, though he stopped once he saw a section of the chain that looked noticeably slimmer than the rest. Raising his arm for a strike, he jabbed down at it and watched it snap.

Using the new freedom that the lid had, Felix managed to slide the top away enough so that the contents were visible to the outside world. He began rooting through the assorted weapons inside, pulling out more than a few firearms.

Bent. Corroded. Rusty. Snapped in two. Missing grip. Hole in the barrel. Nothing, not one of them were in any good condition. The ammo inside the boxes themselves were fine, but the weapons themselves were all in too much disrepair to be of any use.

His hope curdled inside of him. He tossed away any weapon that obscured something he wanted to inspect, searching with a frenzy. He couldn’t be left defenseless against the entire damn horde behind him, speaking of which-

A hand gripped Felix’s shoulder, causing him to whip around and land a solid punch in the center of a collection of growths that had overtaken the proxy’s display. It tumbled back down into the heap that was growing worryingly close to him, so he returned to his search with renewed vigor.

Finally, at the very bottom of the crate lay a singular gun. Stock folded up, pump with several scratches in it, and the barrel marked with some sort of long scar. He gripped the shotgun by its handle, not bothering to move the stock back. He made note of the only letters on the side that signified its identity.

A SPAS-12.

With a sigh, Felix grabbed a box of about forty shells and loaded a few in. He also grabbed a roll of duct-tape that was somehow immaculate despite its surroundings, securing the box to his hip with a generous helping of tape.

With a shotgun in one hand and a crowbar in the other, Felix faced the horde as one, then four, and finally a dozen of them found their footing and half crawled, half sprinted at him.

He leapt into the air, aiming at the nearest collection of proxies, raising his crowbar simultaneously, and pulled the trigger.

* * *

A rain of sparks fell as my blade met with the zombie’s, the latter of which snapping in two from the impact. The disassembly-whatever-you-call-it-now stumbled backwards, its balance clearly not up to par. Whatever black magic that Ren had used to get these things up-and-running again obviously hadn’t been enough to make them not appear, you know, zombie-like.

It was at that moment that a second drone stepped forwards, catching me off-guard as it recklessly swung its own sword directly at my face. I managed to catch it, though it took both of my hands and it was held in an awkward position relative to me.

I held the blade tightly as it slowly pressed downwards towards my face, though a swarm of hands surrounded me a moment later. There were, what, a dozen of them and only one of me? Contrary to what a certain smuggler would say, I did NOT like those odds.

Tee-hee. You-would-be-jealous-of-our-current-host-at-the-moment

“Shut up, let me concentrate.” I growled out between clenched teeth, trying to sort out the countless alerts that were filling the HUD of my helmet.

I made the split-second decision to let go of the blade and roll to the side, letting it harmlessly impact the concrete to the side of my head.

Getting up, I quickly hopped back on one foot while keeping my gaze trained on the practical horde of zombie drones that were now shambling towards me mindlessly. I wanted to take all of them out with a well-timed compression of matter, but yadda yadda yadda restrictions and whatnot kept me from doing so, thanks to somebody.

Instead, I opted to yank on a cable that was hanging from the ceiling that looked somewhat strong. I proceeded to run the rubbery tool all around two of my attackers, trussing them up like a pig for Thanksgiving. This didn’t deter them, however, as they began to gnaw at the cable in an attempt to get free. No time to finish the job, just gotta keep playing defense.

Okay, maybe a little bit of offense.

I dashed forwards, running at the group of shamblers at full speed. One of them raised a submachine gun while the rest reached out with their tarnished claws (they probably weren’t smart enough to just let out a hellfire of missiles at me), though I dove under all the blades and tackled the legs of at least two.

Several toppled like bowling pins, though I was prepared. As fast as I could, I got to my knees and slashed my blade at the neck of one of them. Without much resistance, the blade passed through and easily decapitated the thing, causing it to go limp.

I didn’t want to press my luck after that strike, so I quickly extended my wings and took to the air, though probably not for long as one of them was still damaged. I felt that if I could continue to whittle down their numbers for long enough, maybe then I could directly combat Ren, mop up the military drones, and finish off X (who was currently trying to put his dismembered limbs back together in a corner).

Raising my hand, I ripped a section of paneling from the roof and divided it into several strips. With a flick of the wrist, I sent them hurtling down towards the still-tangled collection of zombies and impaled several. Out of the five that I got, only two of them were still moving after it, somehow.

I sensed a few projectiles coming at me from the back of my head, so I simply raised a hand to stop them. My headache worsened and my vision flickered with static for a moment, but I quickly shook it off.

It was at that moment that a figure out of the corner of my eye descended from the bright hole in the roof. As I was turning my attention towards it, I thought I saw wings, strangely geometrical legs, and something that looked like and oddly familiar firearm in its hands-

[emer_contact.//CRITICAL//reset_software]

[CANCEL]

I let out a gasp of shock as my senses came back into full. A quick survey of my immediate surroundings showed that I was still in the air, albeit falling. Blood was sluicing out of a massive hole in the center of my chest, and I could clearly make out the open air on the other side of it. The concussive boom that I felt had just occurred was still ringing out through the chamber, my ears struggling to make out any other noise.

I was dimly aware of my body hitting the floor limply, though I was still too numb to do anything about it. I urged my body to move, however, as I saw several figures that I couldn’t quite make out from my blurry vision and position on the floor start to approach me.

A few bullets slammed into my chest, my right hand was being slowly crushed by a metal foot, and I felt the scrape of claws against my helmet. All I could make out were the various weapons that surrounded me and hurt me, leaving me slightly confused as to how I had gotten here.

All I was doing was . . . trying to get back what was mine.

Would be nice to have s-some help here, I subvocalized.

Hmm. We-are-surprised-to-see-you, “still-kicking” as-you-humans-put-it

Listen. I don’t have time. Please, HELP. For the first time in my life, I begged.

[Contemplative Expression] Let-us-think . . .

No

[CONNECTION TERMINATED]

. . .

. . .

That fucking bitch.

Faster than even I could see, I thrust a fist up and completely pulverized the head of one of my attackers. Oil splashed down on my face, and a bullet went straight through my helmet in response.

After so long, so long.

In quick succession, I threw the various drones that were around me like dolls, easily tossing them a few feet away from me as I sat up.

One. Thousand. Years.

I saw through bleary eyes a bright light emerge from an outstretched arm that most notably wasn’t zombie-like.

All I had done, all the things I had done.

I blinked, both literally and figuratively, behind the figure and calmly sliced their arm off. I noticed the weapon from earlier laying on the ground a few feet away from me, but I didn’t bother to go for it.

It wouldn’t have gotten to where it is without me. I did this.

A zombie staggered up to me, placing a hand on my arm as it attempted to bite down. I gripped both sides of its head with my hands, squeezed, and let it pop like a balloon. Easy as that.

It- no, WE did this. Together.

I turned towards the open hole in the roof, teleporting back up to the top with a thought. The cold wasteland awaited me, and I heard the shouts from below as I left. I simply failed to care about what I had left behind, with the only thing in my mind being that I, MYSELF, was left behind.

A plan began to form in my head. Well, more like half of a plan, but that was really all you needed when you only had a half-life. Mapping out the rough coordinates and a route there, I took to the skies and started to make my way to the one place that had the resources that I could use to get back at it: the facility.

It. Will. Regret. That.

* * *

Ren trotted over to the curled up form of K on the ground.

“You don’t look so good.” She stated matter-of-factly.

K, despite her situation, still had the energy to turn and glare up at Ren.

“You would be dead if I hadn’t come back and picked up that stupid gun.” K hissed, fangs bared with a half-wince. “Be grateful.”

Ren grimaced. Her first inclination was to poke at the wounded and helpless disassembly drone before her, but she had a feeling that, maybe, she shouldn’t do that.

“Okay.” She simply replied, mimicking a motion that Jacob- the REAL one- had done earlier.

K stared at the outstretched hand with more than a little shock in her eyes, though it took her a moment to speak.

“I, uh, gotta hold this.” K waved her severed arm in the air in emphasis, getting to her feet on her own.

Ren blinked. “Oh . . .”

“Hot diggity-dog, now that tussle there sure was something, ain’t that right pardners?” That military drone- goddamnit, she kept forgetting that his name was Sterl, showed up, toting one extra companion with him.

“Did you . . .?” K trailed off, gaping at the sight before her.

Sterl gave a confident grin, tugging at the rope that was now tied around the neck of the raptor-thingy with colorful eyes. It seemed more curious about the crowd before it than its previous murderous state, though Ren still didn’t feel that comforted.

“Yessiree I did!” Sterl chuckled. “Darned thing put up a fight, but me and Carl managed to teach it the error of its ways and, uh, domesticate it, I believe the term is.”

“Uh-huh . . .” Ren wasn’t convinced.

X came crawling over, using his chin to maneuver himself towards the rest of his companions.

“What is up my fellow monkeys!?” Despite having no arms attached, X threw up what Ren could only be described as some sort of . . gang sign. “We are back here today to throw coffee at somebody who is clearly stronger than us, but we will post it on InstaReels so it’ll be fine!”

K shook her head before reaching around with her right hand, sticking the socket of her left arm back into her shoulder like she was some sort of action figure.

“I think we should get going. The . . . whatever it is, is gonna get away if we don’t hunt it down and end it once and for all.” K slammed a fist down in her open palm, though it quickly fell back off when she exerted her force on it.

Ren nodded in agreement, stepping forward. “Agreed, we-”

She stopped suddenly, something coming to her mind after she had nearly forgotten about it.

“Uh, missy, you cut yerself off there.” Sterl took a step towards her.

Not bothering to answer, Ren teleported away without any warning. Appearing back in the strange medical lab from earlier, she carefully stepped over a pool of oil that looked particularly gross. Being reminded of her hat, she patted her head to make sure her newest prized possession was safe, which it was.

She tip-toed up to the glowing-hot oven that was set off to the side, pressing her face up to the side of the glass and making sure that the jar labeled “NOT JACOB” was still in there.

Ren stuck her hand out and yanked open the oven door, snatching the jar from the interior and quickly shutting it again. The heat . . . she didn’t like it.

Speaking of . . .

“Ow ow ow ow-” Ren bounced the hot jar around both of her hands, forgetting that she could use what was basically magic in the heat of the moment. After it slipped away from her fingers, the jar spun away and shattered against the ground.

She went still.

The contents of the jar were some sort of fleshy . . . metal . . . crab . . . thingy? It had three legs with an arrow-shaped (foot?) at the end, a central body that looked suspiciously like a human heart, and something glowing inside. It looked weird to say the least, though Ren was quickly pulled from her thoughts when it twitched slightly.

“Ughhhh,” A small LED light opened up, looking like an eye with no pupil. “Man, weird nap- oh holy shoot you’re tall why’re you so TALL!?”

Ren didn’t answer, too busy staring dumbly at . . . Jacob . . . on the floor.

The thing flopped around on its three little legs, turning slightly so it could look at itself.

“Wait, what!? I’m small!? And- oh, that stupid little- HE DID THIS!” It seemingly tried to shout, but due to its small size, the results were less-than-exemplary.

Swallowing her confusion, Ren bent over and promptly grabbed Jacob- still weird- by the top of its ‘head’ and brought him up to eye level. His ‘eye’ shrank at the sight of what probably seemed looming to him, and he went limp.

“Oh uh, hi?”

“Can I ask . . . why’re you like this?” Ren met Jacob’s gaze with her best deadpan.

Jacob looked back and forth, his eye darting around.

“Well, I would say a life that was primarily influenced by popular online trends led my personality for the latter half of my life back then, and I guess my parents-” He began on what sounded awfully a lot like a rant.

“No, not that! I mean- robogod, I forgot how stupid you can be.” Ren shook her head, though she also shook Jacob a little, before lifting her head back up to look at him. “I mean why do you look all weird? Like in this current moment of time?”

“Oh.” Jacob blinked. “Yeah, that uh, that makes a whole lot more sense.”

“Can you answer the question already?” Ren growled out through gritted teeth.

“Uh, I think that weird voice-in-my-head took over, and like, pulled out my heart out of my chest, which also had . . . me in it?”

“You say that as if you aren’t sure.” Ren didn’t quite glare at Jacob, but she definitely wasn’t happy.

Jacob seemed to do his best impression of rolling his eyes, albeit with some difficulty.

“I dunno man, I’m as weirded out by this as you are.” Jacob suddenly seemed to perk up. “Oh, what happened to that guy!? Did you get him!? PLEASE don’t tell me you, like, drew something stupid on my forehead after you killed him!”

Ren scoffed, resisting the urge to toss Jacob across the room like one of the old human baseball people.

“He got away, idiot. Ran off after he destroyed my puppets.” She replied.

Jacob flicked a leg-thingy. “Wait, whaddya mean by ‘your puppets’?”

“Don’t worry about it.” Ren turned towards the door and took a step forward. “Let’s just get out of here already.”

“Wait wait wait, I can’t leave here without a body!” Jacob cried out. “I don’t wanna stay as a weird meatball forever!”

“Well, what do you suggest then? Because I don’t see any convenient mindless clones of yourself anywhere around here that have an equally convenient heart-shaped hole in their chest.” Ren sarcastically remarked.

“As a matter-of-fact, I do see something.” Jacob wiggled in Ren’s grip. “Lemme go.”

Ren, rolling her eyes, obliged, tossing Jacob onto the nearest gurney that just-so-happened to have a disassembly drone corpse laying next to it. However, it proved to end up helping him as he leapt down onto the chest of the murder drone and began poking at it.

“Wait, are you . . .?” Ren trailed off, for fear of actually uttering the words she was thinking.

“Uh yeah, duh. What else am I supposed to do, have you carry me around like some sort of Macguffin?” Jacob said with noo small amount of snark.

“What’s that?”

Jacob’s form paused for a second before continuing.

“How do you know what a raptor is but not a Macguffin?” Jacob questioned while he began to dig away at the chest of the cadaver. “I mean, the two are such cinema plot favorites that they intertwine basically half the time.”

“What?” Ren cocked her head, mouth opening slightly “Listen, I have no idea half of what you just said, like genuinely.”

Jacob waved a small leg-hand-thingy in the air towards a bucket labeled “HEADS”.

“Mind if you grab that head in there?” He called out, voice slightly muffled. “Not the worker one, the one with the headband on it with all the little lights-”

“I know what a murder drone head looks like, idiot.” Ren, despite her tone, still went and retrieved the requested item from the bucket, though she did wonder how several heads were able to fit in a bucket that, from the outside, looked like it could only fit one.

“Just line it up with the neck, please and thank you.”

Ren did just that, taking a few steps back after she took a glance of the interior of the body’s chest. Safe to say, it was not pretty.

“What were you saying earlier, by the way?” She asked, swallowing down her uneasiness.

“Eh, whatever.” Jacob poked his little head out of the oily hole he had just created. “By the way, I’ve got a question.”

“I’m not gonna answer it if it’s dumb.”

“Nononono, like a real one, you know?” Jacob’s eye looked down slightly, and he shifted. “I mean, I just thought that you would’ve . . .”

Ren frowned. “Yeah?”

“-just left me behind, that’s all.” Jacob ducked back into the chest of the disassembler, the sounds of something clicking inside there making its way over to Ren.

Ren didn’t answer for a moment, thinking.

“No, I don’t think so.” She stated after a moment.

No response.

“Jacob?” She called out, eyes narrowing.

The fingers of the ‘corpse’ on the ground twitched, and a flurry of sparks erupted from the hole in its chest. On guard, Ren watched as a flurry of neon-yellow code flashed across the cracked display of the murder drone, which quickly glitched and turned into what looked like a lighter shade of blue. The same was the case for the five lights on the drone’s head, all turning to that same color one after another. The chest wound closed up, with Ren watching as a silvery-liquid stretched across the hole, then morphed into smooth metal and plastic.

The drone gripped the side of the gurney, bringing itself to its feet. Its head hung for a moment as a final admin message displayed itself on the display before vanishing entirely, being replaced by two light-blue eyes that darted around the room. They fixed themselves on Ren’s form before a grin spread across its face.

“Oh, we are so back.”

* * *

EPILOGUE (for episode nine lol)

X watched as his arms slowly regrew themselves, and groaned.

They had just left him behind, a cripple like him! Ableists! He kept asking for them to carry him, but even Sterl (for context, was X’s besty-best friend) didn’t care! The audacity!

He . . . didn’t know what ‘audacity’ meant.

After an agonizing fifteen seconds, his legs and arms were finally back in somewhat working condition. He had been forced to eat the remains of some of Sterl’s friends, but he was sure it was all good. After all, he heard from one of his other friends named Henrique that it was better to ask for forgiveness than for permission, which was all good by X! But then again, Henrique also used that term in reference to doing stuff like “getting some false documents” or “stealing from the people that hired him to be a janitor” or even “smuggling illegal immigrants into the States” whatever the ‘States’ were anyway.

Whatever, stupid stuff doesn’t matter.

X extended his wings, preparing to fly off after his super-duper-best-friends. However, that was when he received . . . a ping. Not just any ping, but one that signaled a fellow disassembly drone was broadcasting some sort of transmission. He didn’t recognize it, which instantly put him on edge.

He was aware that he and his squad were probably the only disassembly drones with ‘real’ personalities due to the interference from the Outsider, or maybe they were all made that way BY the Outsider, he didn’t know. What he did know was that interaction with any other member of his kind usually ended up in a fight.

X backed up against the far side of the room, away from the large hole in the roof. He didn’t want to get into a second fight, not in the shape he was currently in. He just needed to find some sort of way out, and-

A strange warbling sound came from behind him, causing him to turn around. A greenish glow lit up the wall, with something that seemed to defy reality just standing right before him.

A small sliver of green light, one that slowly opened up to reveal a swirling patch in existence, stood right in front of him. Stars, people, odd organisms, even an odd drone with purple hair that he didn’t recognize flashed in the emerald maelstrom. A human-shaped diving suit with red glowing eyes, a massive boat that read “BOREALIS” on the side, a human strapped to a chair surrounded by screens that flicked between nonsensical numbers, and a rapidly approaching human in a remarkably clean blue suit and carrying a dark briefcase with him.

“Ah, I,” The ‘human’ took a shaky breath, his voice already sounding oddly snake-like. “Apologize, you had to see that, that is . . . not your business, so to speak, hmm?”

X didn’t answer.

The human adjusted his tie, focusing his confident gaze on the seemingly frozen drone before him.

“Well, it seems that you have found yourself in a bit of a . . . predicament at the moment, one that me and my employers have deliberated to-”

“IT’S THE GUY FROM SKIBIDI TOILET!” X shrieked, jumping up and down from joy.

The smirk vanished from the human's face.

“I . . . believe that the other candidate will be more suitable.” The strange human turned back around, walked into his portal, and it closed behind him.

However, X saw a flash of green light appear around his vision, and he suddenly found himself in the middle of the forest from earlier. He jerked his gaze back and forth, seemingly looking for something.

“. . . but . . . it was Mr. Skibidi Toilet . . .”

* * *