Chapter Text
V was dusting in the library.
It was 4:37 on a Tuesday afternoon, of course she was dusting in the library.
It was going far slower than it should have, thanks to her being practically blind at the moment. Her glasses had mysteriously gone missing (again) this morning, so she was left squinting at each and every shelf to ensure not a speck of dust remained.
Not that anyone would ever notice a speck if it were there. She couldn't remember the last time one of the humans had entered this room.
The library was never a bright place, but it was especially dim at this hour. The lamps lining the walls did little to offset the gloom, leaving V to navigate mostly blind. She was nearly blind either way, a fact that only seemed to be getting worse as she moved deeper through the labyrinth of bookshelves.
The whole place stank of rot and mildew. She was doing her best to ignore it, but after she spotted an entire colony of tiny mushroom caps just hanging out in the middle of her path, she knew she was going to have to do something about it.
That wasn’t even her job! She was not the drone responsible for keeping the lesser traveled places maintained. She was just a maid, a maid that was not equipped for this. They would have to get a whole crew of workers down here, and if it got any worse they would likely need to call in a professional.
And wouldn’t that just be great? It’s not enough she was stuck cleaning this creepy crusty library when she should very much be charging right now, there was the gala c̴ó̸̝m̴͈̍i̴̮͎̠͊̕n̵̜̥͈̼͋g̶̙̍̑̈́͐ ̵̨̱͉̍͠ͅü̷̬͕̫̹̐͗͆̈́̇́͜p̸̱̩̮͉̖͖̰̀̑̂̔̽̈́̏͠,
No, wait. The gala had- it was-
It was in a month, right?
Or… did it already happen?
Why did she feel so scared, thinking about it?
…
Anyway, someone would be in trouble, and someone would have to deal with the mess.
V realized she had been staring at those little mushrooms for over a minute. Great. Another minute chipped off her break tonight. At least there were only a few more rows to do, and then she could be done.
She didn’t have a good feeling about tonight.
It ended up taking nearly half an hour, but V finally finished. Every shelf in reach had been dusted within an inch of its life, and the books lining them shone like new. Maybe if anyone ever worked up the courage to try reading they could find something amiss, but V had done the best her poorly-calibrated optics would allow, and she was ready to be done.
As she turned to leave, V noticed something in the corner of her vision. Something skulking in the shadows between the shelves, something that vanished the moment she turned to face it.
All she’d registered was an elongated blob, but if there was an animal infestation along with the fungal one, she had to find out what kind of animal it was before reporting it. So with a great heaving sigh, V abandoned her path out, and turned to follow.
Whatever it was had vanished completely, leaving only a thin trail of reddish slime on the polished floor (great, another mess to report). It ran in a winding pattern towards the back end of the library, sometimes jumping up onto the side of a shelf for a moment before dropping back down.
The trail disappeared suddenly, leaving V standing blankly near the back of the library. There was no sign of another trail, so unless she was dealing with really slimy birds the only option was that it had been picked up by someone.
Her gaze drifted upwards.
Crawling in the shadows above her was a monster.
It was so big her processor refused to do its job and process the whole thing. She was left to pick out the pieces as her eyes hollowed slowly, as her body began to tremble.
The hundreds of spindly legs.
The bloody, crackling spine.
The cameras piercing into her mechanical soul.
And then she blinked. And it was gone.
There was just a little drone standing awkwardly in its place.
“Cyn?”
Her little sister tilted her head to rest on her other shoulder, blinking owlishly at V.
“Hello. Big Sister V. I am, looking for a book. Would you like to help me?”
V relaxed her frame, very slowly, and let out a soft chuckle, “geez Cyn, you scared me."
She sighed lightly, then smiled, "sure, I’ll help you look for a book. Do you know what you want?”
“Hmm, no, I am not sure yet,” she replied, turning towards a shelf cloaked in shadows, “I have been searching for several minutes, and have not found anything of use.”
That faint dread was back.
She walked over to where Cyn was peering into the shadows, “I think I see your problem here.”
Cyn took the bait, cocking her head to look V in the eyes, “what do you mean, V?”
“Cyn, there are no books on this shelf,” V laughed, reaching out to ruffle Cyn’s hair.
The little maid giggled, eyes flickering to a lighter shade of yellow just for a moment. Then she went still, and her eyes went blank, staring at some point over V’s shoulder.
“Cyn..? Are you alright there?”
“How about you help me with, something else. I have need of your abilities.” she stated blankly.
V started to back away uneasily. That faint dread had snowballed into a mountain, why was Cyn acting like this? Why did she a̸̹̔l̴̫̿r̴͇͗e̸͔̅à̴̞d̴̤̅y̸̲͠ ̶̪͌k̴̯͌n̴̟̎o̶̝͠w̴̪͝ ̶̜̀ẅ̶̘́h̸͍̿y̸̱̔?
“Cyn… you’re scaring me again.”
“That is okay, Big Sister V. I will not be discarding you, like I have been discarded.”
The monster from before was rising out of Cyn’s back, appearing from the shadows that had fallen over the two, reaching for V, human hands grasping at her uniform, sinewy tendrils circling her legs as she stumbled backwards, away from the beast, away from her, away from Cyn.
Cyn’s face split into an unnaturally wide, toothy grin, her head falling sideways again.
“Do not worry. Your backups, will forgive me.”
And the world went black.
V jolted suddenly into consciousness, servos seizing for a moment as the shock of sleep mode wore off. Her optics weren’t coming online for some reason, and her charging cubby felt like ice-cold steel instead of plain hardwood. But she was alive, at least. She wasn’t being torn apart by some eldritch monster in the shape of her little sister. That was all a dream.
Apparently.
But… why would that be a dream? Where did her processor cook up the idea of Cyn- Cyn, the little goober- being that horrific monster?
Why did she still feel so scared?
…
And why were her eyes still offline? Her HUD too, she couldn’t see or sense anything. It left her conscience floating in a digital void, thinking randomly and feeling vaguely uncomfortable.
Maybe she should just get some more rest. It really felt like she needed it.
The next time V surfaced to consciousness, it was to someone kicking her leg.
Her HUD still refused to open, so all she could really do was groan and wave her attacker away.
Predictably, J did not accept this as an answer, kicking her again, a little harder this time.
“Come on, get up. We have a job to do, and I swear to Corporate I am not going to do it myself.”
“J… just give me a minute. I can’t even open my eyes right now, okay? ” V mumbled in response.
“Great, thanks… V,” J spat, “we have been deployed for all of five minutes and I’m already down a member. And if this idiot doesn’t wake up,” followed by a light clang, “then I’m going to be down two.”
Something wasn’t right. V sat up against the wall, blinding reaching behind herself to stay upright. Her processor felt like mush, at the moment, and it took a few seconds to get the words she wanted to go in proper order.
“J, what are you talking about? Where have we been ‘deployed?’ What does that even mean?”
Silence, except for a sharp and exasperated exhale and the ruffling of pages.
“J, you’re scaring me.” Why did it feel like she had said that already? And not that long ago.
“I am looking in the JCJenson In Spaaaaacee™ Disassembly Drone® Handbook to see what we can do about your optics, because believe it or not, V, those are pretty important.”
“Dis- disassembly drone!? What does that mean?”
J ignored her, reading aloud from the book she apparently held, “here it is, 'What To Do If Your Squadmate Is Broken On Activation. Step One: Have You Tried Turning Them Off And On Again?'”
V couldn’t hear anything else over the roaring in her ears. Turn her off? What did that mean, they didn’t have off switches! She tried propping herself further against the wall, tried to get in a standing position, but her feet wouldn’t catch on the floor. She still couldn’t see, J was quoting some guidebook she’d never read, and threatening to turn her off!
Before she could spiral much further though, she heard a growing hum fill the air. It started faint, then grew and grew until it was a dull roar and the metal beneath V was shaking almost as much as she was.
J’s voice cut through the noise, “if you had paid any attention to the briefings, you’d know we’re essentially immortal, thanks to JCJenson In Spaaaaacee™’s superior drone engineering, so you should stop fussing so much.”
V whimpered, pressing further into the crook of the wall she still couldn’t see. Immortal!? What was she talking about!? What di-
“You’d better be functional when you wake up.”
Then a searing pain.
Then V was gone.