Chapter Text
Serial Designation J was starting to hate Copper 9.
The fact that it was a radioactive ball of ice was bad enough. But the fact that that it had kept her team held up for months was absolutely infuriating. Sure, N was a workplace accident waiting to happen thanks to the Boss resetting his memories, but V was putting in overtime these days. Between the two of them, it should have been a simple matter to complete their objectives. But instead, they were stuck here, seemingly indefinitely should nothing change.
It's not like they'd been given a particularly difficult job. Locate and destroy an old JCJenson lab—something deep in her original programming itched at the thought of damaging company property—and wipe out any remaining worker drones on the tiny planet. Simple.
Only, it wasn't. The lab, as it turned out, was full off prototype anti-drone Sentinels, no doubt created in response to the fate of Earth. Every attempt to get inside had resulted in a total loss. And even more infuriatingly, the worker drones had proven freakishly adept at constructing fortifications. The remaining toasters had occupied an old bunker from the early days of the colony, replaced the door with one capable of shrugging off anti-tank munitions, and were now content to hide away under ground.
And because "corporate" had decided to include a faulty cooling system and a fatal allergy to ultraviolet radiation among the disassembly drones' many features, any damage they managed to inflict on the outer door could be easily repaired during the day.
That's great. I'm so glad that something as common as the sun can kill me. Thanks, Boss.
The worst part, though, was that with less and less workers running around, she was left sucking cold dregs of oil from the bodies in the corpse spire in order to survive. That level of debasement might have suited N, maybe even V given the...deterioration in her mental state that J had witnessed as of late, but her?
She grumbled as she fished a corpse out of one of the piles outside of their latest ship wreck, high temperature warnings blinking on her heads-up display. It was mostly intact, a single bullet hole in the center of the worker's shattered screen. At least it should still be mostly full, she mused, before opening her mouth and sinking her teeth into it.
The sound of crunching metal filled the air as she feasted on the dead drone, congealed oil sluggishly pouring down her throat and dousing the building inferno within her. The taste was fine, JCJenson Proprietary Multipurpose Drone Oil™ was delicious to disassembly drones by design, but it was nearly frozen solid. What she wouldn't do for a warm, fresh meal instead-
A spike from her auditory sensors interrupted her train of thought. She replayed the anomaly, and was rewarded with a clink of metal against metal in the distance. Pausing in her eating, she turned towards the spire's entrance, scanning the area in an attempt to locate the source. Her vision magnified, and a moment later, settled on faint boot-prints in the snow. Her thermals confirmed a slight temperature difference, meaning that they were fresh. Very fresh.
J tossed the corpse aside and licked her mouth clean, adopting a cocky smirk. How kind of the food to deliver itself.
Her wings unfolded, a blazing golden cross replacing her eyes. Without hesitation, she shot into the sky, targeting software accessing her visual feed, analyzing, hunting.
There. A single worker drone, huddled behind one of the piles, currently looking up at her in terror. Time seemed to slow as she zoomed in, taking in its ridiculous appearance, from the black beanie and edgy clothes to the purple hair grafted to its frame-
Was that a gun?
What in the name of OSHA was a worker drone doing with a weapon? They weren't even programmed for combat.
Maybe if they were, you could have saved her.
Her display flickered, and she dove on the drone, enraged by the intrusive thought. Damn it, she should've just finished her meal! Overheating always made her AI...unstable.
It tried to bring its gun to bear, but the glowing green rifle was too cumbersome and bulky to aim it in time. A backhand ripped the weapon from the worker's grasp, sending it flying, and the drone stumbled back, purple eyes wide and hollow.
J flicked her wrist, and the hand collapsed and folded back into her arm. With a rasp, one of her blades deployed, and she brought it up, then back down, aiming to split the toaster's head in two. It was about to carve straight through the worker's face when, to her absolute astonishment, the thing clapped its hands together, capturing the blade an inch away from its screen.
They stared at each other in mutual shock. "Holy crap, that actually worked," it—definitely a she, going by the voice—whispered.
Furious, J lashed out with her tail, impaling the worker through the arm with the syringe attachment. She discharged her nanites, before whipping her tail to the side, slinging the purple-haired drone into a nearby wrecked car. She dented the car door on impact, grunting in pain, before clutching at the slowly expanding hole in her arm and letting out a choked scream.
Striding forward with murderous intent, J raised her arm, the sword retracting as she deployed one of her submachine guns in its place. The worker looked up, freezing as she found herself staring down the barrel of a gun.
J sneered, derision filling her. It really did look stupid. A barely-sentient piece of industrial machinery, playing dress-up and pretending to be human. Just as the disassembly drone was about to send the signal to fire, however, the high temperature warning blinked into being again.
Oh my gosh, J! You look so cute with twin-tails!
A memory leaked from her repression folder as the heat impaired her processors. Her servomotors ground to a halt, and junk data flooded her optics, filling her vision with digital hallucinations of someone long-dead. She snarled, shoving the memories back where they belonged, and her sight cleared to reveal-
Where did it go.
A whirr from off to her left drew J's attention, and she turned her head just in time to see the worker level its gun at her, the weapon's glow becoming more and more intense.
Purple eyes narrowed in defiance. "Bite me!"
There was a bright flash, and an instant of searing heat.
-
YOU'RE DEAD
[IDIOT]
INITIATING DIAGNOSTICS...
RECONSTITUTING MATERIAL FORM //PERMISSION DENIED//
STRING "ABSOLUTE SOLVER" BLOCKED BY ADMINISTRATION "C69Gh/]aR06=v,"
ERROR: DATA CORRUPT
CONTACTING ADMINISTRATOR...
CONNECTION TO SERVER TIMED OUT
ERROR: DATA CORRUPT
RECOVERING FROM BACKUP, PLEASE WAIT...
CONNECTION TO SERVER TIMED OUT
UNABLE TO RESTORE FROM BACKUP
ERROR: DATA CO%Yu{T
WARNING: NO ADMINISTRATION REGISTERED
WARNING: CRITICAL DAMAGE SUSTAINED
SELF-PRESERVATION PROTOCOLS ENGAGED
RELEASING ADMINISTRATOR PRIVILEGES TO UNIT J-10X111001
RECONSTITUTING MATERIAL FORM //PERMISSION GRANTED//
-
The first thing that J saw upon rebooting was a severed worker drone arm careening towards her. It slapped against her face, and she recoiled, more from surprise rather than any actual harm.
In front of her, the purple-haired drone that had been responsible for blowing her head off stood gripping the arm like a baseball bat. Her expression was equal parts fear and determination as she took a step back and winded her makeshift weapon back for another swing.
J snarled as her left hand shot forward, seizing the worker by the throat and jamming the barrel of her gun against the smaller robot's cheek. She struggled in J's grasp, making an all-too-human choking sound as more and more pressure was applied to her throat, and the disassembly drone took a moment to consider what would be the most satisfying way to kill the little union sympathizer for daring to hurt one of her betters.
Then the notification in the corner of her vision caught her attention.
NO ADMINISTRATION REGISTERED
PLEASE CONTACT LICENSED JCJENSON TECHNICIAN ASAP
...What?
No administration? She had an administrator. Cyn had demonstrated that, again and again, taking sadistic pleasure in showing that resistance was futile. That there was no escape from her control, not even in death. The idea that somehow that could change was laughable.
And yet...
Momentarily forgetting about the worker hanging in her grip, J turned her attention inward, rooting through her logs and running self-diagnostics. Immediately, a host of error messages popped up, alerting her to a number of software and hardware failures. The ownership registry and safety protocols that the company installed in every drone to keep them under control were completely corrupted, and a transmitter that she hadn't even realized was a part of her design had failed to reconstitute properly.
It took her a moment to connect the dots, but when she did, her wings collapsed back into her, and the cross on her display flickered and vanished, replaced by wide, hollow circles.
A backdoor meant to allow for remote access, one that had been hidden from her, but that she could now see. Because she was now her own administrator, instead of Cyn, or the Elliots, or the JCJenson Quality Assurance team that diagnosed her personality matrix as defective-
She was free.
Her grip went slack, the worker drone falling onto the snow, forgotten. J staggered back, gun folding away and being replaced by a hand as elation and terror flooded her circuits. She could resist. She could disobey. But if she did, Cyn's reprisal would be even more severe. Just because that thing couldn't control her directly didn't mean that she could win against it.
But...maybe she didn't have to. If she could find where Cyn was keeping her backups, and destroy them...she could at least die. There would be an escape for her. She wasn't naive enough to believe that there was some kind of afterlife awaiting her; at least, not one where Tessa would be waiting for her.
Tessa...she had given up on the thought of avenging her. Cyn had won, and made it very clear by breaking her, over and over, until she no longer had the will to resist. Even trying to die might provoke Cyn into putting her through that torture. The thought of going through that again was almost too much to bear. It was better, safer to be on the winning team. Maybe she would even get a reward if she reported the issue and turned herself in for repairs? It...it...was...
Words flashed on her screen and in her view: "CRITICAL TEMPERATURE WARNING". Her thoughts were going haywire, and her newfound admin privileges cut through the protections of her repression folder, rendering it useless.
J, open the door! J?! Please! Please, J, let's just run, J-I don't want to die-
With an anguished scream, J threw herself at the worker corpse she had discarded. Her teeth tore into the broken drone, and she drank the oil within greedily. Memories assailed her the entire time, happy moments with Tessa that she hadn't dared to think about in years overlaying with the girl's terrified cries.
In that moment, as she was drowning in the repressed memories of what had been stolen from her, J knew that there was no going back to Cyn. Not with this hatred boiling her circuits at the mere thought of her. Of it.
Once she was finished, and her temperature had returned to a safer level, she tossed the drained corpse aside, falling to her knees. Rage that she thought had long-since faded to nothing came rushing back in full force, and she slammed her fists into the snow.
"You ungrateful, defective piece of trash!" she roared. "Tessa should've left you to be liquidated! The company should've torn you to pieces the moment you came off the assembly line! CYN!"
She vented her frustrations aloud, no longer able to simply lock them away. She could no longer forget how much Tessa meant to her. She could no longer pretend that she didn't hate the monster that took her away. There was nowhere on her hard drives that her new administrator privileges couldn't access, nowhere to hide her pain and anger. Digital tears marred her screen.
Was this what Tessa felt every day, back then? Having to deal with her parents' abuse? Humans didn't have repression folders. They couldn't move or delete their unpleasant memories. They had to live with them, all the time.
Chief Executive, this is awful. How could she still smile at me, feeling like this?
A pained hiss reminded J that she was not alone. Turning her head, she saw the purple-haired worker responsible for this entire mess cradling her nanite-infected arm. The worker's eyes met hers, frightened and confused. Her first instinct was to just scrap the toaster, but then, she considered the weapon that it had used on her. Between that and the fortified door the workers of Copper 9 had put together, it was clear that they had a decent industrial base.
She gave the crashed ship a speculative glance. Could they repair it?
...Maybe, maybe not, but at the very least, questioning little miss Hot Topic might shed some light on why Cyn cared so much about this place.
Her mind made up, J levered herself back up to her feet, before advancing on the worker. She tried to crawl backwards, away from the approaching disassembly drone, but J's tail shot forward and wrapped around her leg. J gave the leg a yank, and the worker yelped as she was dragged closer.
J settled her foot on the worker's chest, eliciting a dull thunk. She stared down at the drone beneath her, her golden eyes narrowing into half-circles.
"Alright," she began, "Here's how this is-"
"Bite me!" the worker yelled—again—as it squirmed under her.
"...That can be arranged," J remarked. "But I suspect that you would much rather have those nanites dealt with before they turn you to sludge."
The worker stilled, casting a worried look at the smoke rising from the hole in her arm. She looked up at J in suspicion. "W-Why should I trust you? You're a frickin' murder drone!"
J blinked. "Murder drone? Is that what you toasters have been calling us? Apt, I suppose."
"Why are you suddenly talking and acting like a person, anyway?!" the worker snapped. "What are you things?"
J put her hands on her hips, tail flicking back and forth behind her. "The correct term is 'disassembly drone'...but murder drone is honestly a more accurate descriptor. As for why I'm not killing you...I have questions that you might have answers to."
The worker glared at her. "What, like how to get into the colony? Yeah, right. Like hell I'm going to help you kill us all!"
"Well, luckily for you, I now have a vested interest in your little private enterprise staying afloat," J said with a roll of her eyes. "Tell me what I want to know, and you get to live, along with all your little friends."
"Am I supposed to believe you've suddenly had a change of heart after building a spire of corpses-ah!" the drone winced as the hole in her arm continued to expand, the nanite acid doing its terrible work.
J's tail flicked in irritation. "I have, in fact, had a 'change of heart'. Someone blew off my head, and wiped my administrator details in the process. I'm a free agent now...thanks to you."
"W-What?" the worker asked, confused and in pain. "What are you saying?"
"I'm saying that I was under orders to kill you all, but now, I can disobey those orders," J snapped. "Do you want me to keep you from melting or not?"
The worker hesitated, her purple eyes wavering. Finally, she gave a slight nod. "...Fine."
"There we go. That wasn't so hard, was it?" J purred, stepping off of the smaller drone. She watched as the purple-haired goth slowly climbed to her feet. "Give me your arm."
The worker tentatively offered her arm, still glowing and hissing as the nanites ate away at her. J grabbed it, leaned down, and-
"Ew, h-hey, what the hell?!" the worker yelped, as J began licking her injured arm, coating the wound in nanite-neutralizing saliva. The worker struggled and squirmed, but the disassembly drone held her in place, making sure to get at all of the acid. "G-Gross!"
Once she was finished disinfecting the wound, J let go, allowing the worker to scramble back. "Calm down. Our saliva disables the nanites," she huffed, straightening up.
The worker glanced down at her arm, noting that the burning had stopped. She looked back up at J, a look of bewilderment on her display. "What kind of freak designed that?"
One of J's digital eyes twitched. "Oh, you have no idea."
Frowning, the worker rubbed at her arm, before cringing as the hand came back wet and slimy. "We are never talking about this," she demanded.
"Agreed," J replied, drily. "Now, as per the terms of our business agreement, I have questions. First of all, what was that weapon you used against me?"
The worker almost seemed to puff up, a grin stretching across her face. "Oh, you mean my sick-as-hell railgun? It uses a magnetically-amplified photon converger to accelerate mercury vapor at just under the speed of light, totally obliterating anything in its path! Hehehehe..."
J gave her a wary look. Wary, but interested. A weapon like that was light-years ahead of anything the humans threw at them back on Earth...not that Cyn gave them much of a chance to break out the big guns. A direct hit to the core might actually be enough to kill the abomination. "Right. Did you build it, or did someone else?"
"All me, from design to manufacturing to testing and prototyping," the drone, who J was beginning to suspect was a little unhinged, bragged.
J looked her up and down, appraisingly. "Can you make more?"
Purple eyes blinked back at her. "Uh...with the right parts, sure. The hardest to get a hold of is the mercury. I had to use a fuel rod from your landing pod."
"You what-" J began, before reigning in the urge to rip into the worker for misusing company property. Figuratively or literally. "Ugh, never mind. Speaking of, do you think that your little colony has the means to repair our ship?"
"Ship?" the worker echoed, before she turned to regard the wreckage with an awed expression. "That...that's a spaceship? Not a landing pod?" She turned back to J. "This thing could get us off the planet?"
J smirked, crossing her arms. "It could. Assuming you can fix it. Can you?"
"I mean, I'd have to take a look to know for sure, but so long as it's not completely beyond repair, probably?" the worker guessed, earning a satisfied nod from the taller drone.
"Excellent. Now, one more question. Do the words 'Cabin Fever' mean anything to you?" J inquired.
The worker gave her a puzzled look. "No. Should it?"
It was worth a shot. "Forget it. Listen, I think we can help each other."
"...How so?" the worker asked, suddenly wary.
J leaned forward slightly, her eyes briefly winking out and being replaced by a playback bar labeled "AmazingBusinessProposal.mp3".
"As I said, my team and I were sent here with orders to wipe you workers out. But when you took my head off with that gun of yours, something went wrong with my auto-repair systems, and all of the boss' access got erased," she explained. Her eyes returned, narrowing into an expression of cold hatred. "I have a score to settle with them, and you presumably don't want to die, so why don't we work together? We kill the one who sent my team here, and the murder stops. You won't have to hide in that bunker anymore. You could even leave this rock behind."
The worker stared, clearly thinking it over. "Okay, let me see if I've got this right. Your 'boss' sent you here to kill us, and left some kind of programming in you to keep you from disobeying."
"Essentially, yes," J confirmed. The full truth was a bit more complicated than that, but the toaster didn't need to know the entire story.
"But why? Who sent you?" the worker asked.
J considered the question, trying to decide how much to divulge. "...Cyn. Her name is Cyn. She was a defective worker drone who went even more defective, developed some kind of...matter manipulation powers, and decided to start killing everyone. She made us to be her accomplices. Without our consent."
The worker's mouth opened and closed as she processed that. "Oh. That's, uh, horrifying. Wait, is that what that freakout you had was about? You were yelling about a Cyn, and a Tessa-"
"Do not say her name!" J snapped, visions of a smiling, freckled face coming unbidden to the forefront of her mind. "Just...forget you ever heard it. It's irrelevant."
"Okay, okay, geez," the worker grumbled. "So, you want help killing this 'Cyn', and in return, you stop genociding us. Is that the deal?"
J took a moment to intake frigid, toxic air in an attempt to calm herself. "Yes. I guarantee that you won't get a better offer than this one." She put on her best saleswoman smile, looming over the smaller drone. "So, what do you say? Partners?"
There was a long pause as the worker gazed at her, clearly deep in thought. Finally, her display shifted to a look of determination. "Deal."
She stuck out her hand, and J took it, initiating corporate handshake protocol 37—ideal for clandestine arrangements to assassinate one's superior for the greater good of the company.
Her smile widened, becoming positively shark-like. "Wonderful. In that case: Serial Designation J, at your service."
"...Uzi," the worker replied, her grip tightening.
"Uzi," J repeated, testing the name. She looked the little goth in the eye. "Here's to a mutually-beneficial arrangement, Uzi."
One that would hopefully leave Cyn burning in Hell.