Chapter Text
Doll opened her eyes, and immediately she knew something was wrong.
How was she able to open her eyes? The last thing she remembered was stumbling towards Uzi, slipping on her own oil, and falling to the floor before…
She shook her head, clearing her mind, and looked around at her new surroundings. Or. in this case, the lack thereof. She stood in front of and behind an endless black void, expanding in every direction she looked. She apprehensively stepped forward, bracing herself for an infinite fall into the void, but was surprised when her foot landed on solid, invisible ground.
Doll carefully continued forward, deeper into the void. This was an unexpected afterlife , she thought. Though, she hadn’t expected an afterlife at all. She whipped around on the spot when, in the distance, she heard a noise. A distant yell.
“<<Hello??>>”
No response.
“<<Is somebody there?>>”
The void fell silent once again. Doll, feeling uneasy, lifted her hand to activate her Solver, but when she saw her arm, she froze in shock.
She was clearly no longer in her body. She was red and translucent. Particles moved upward off her arm like reverse water droplets. She looked down at the rest of herself, and noticed that her entire body looked the same as her arm. She was even in the clothes she died in, also red and translucent. She had become some sort of robo-ghost.
She anxiously lifted her arm once again to activate her Solver. When she tried, it would not appear. She tried again. And again. No matter how many times she attempted to activate it, it simply would not work. She gave up and looked at her hand, confused. This was new for her. She supposed the solver in her had been left with her physical body. Her core.
Suddenly, the ground beneath her rumbled. Doll stumbled and tripped, but before she could hit the ground, she floated upward. She frantically flailed her arms, trying to swim through the air in any direction, but was halted by a sudden bright light. She lifted her arms to shield her eyes from the light, however it didn’t help much, as the light shined through her translucent skin. Through her arms, she saw something standing in the light. She lowered her arms and squinted to get a better look.
In the light, there were two figures standing. One was a drone wearing rotting and hastily sewn together human skin. The eyes behind the skin were two yellow X’s, gleaming with something dangerous and malicious. Doll recognized the creature as Cyn. The Solver. The creature that killed her. She scowled at the realization. She noticed the gaping hole in its chest, and its hand wrapped around the wrist of another drone, pulling whatever it was holding closer.
The other drone had a beanie on short purple hair, a black band jacket, and purple eyes glistening with fear. A black orb was pulsating in her hand as she tried to pull her arm away from Cyn, who was dragging the orb towards her, mouth opening. Doll’s eyes widened.
“<<Is that…?>>”
Before the thought could fully form in Doll’s mind, the girl suddenly took the orb and swallowed it. Doll only saw the reaction of shock on Cyn’s face for a split second before the light started to fade. Doll reached for it as the light waned away, and the light and the two drones disappeared, plunging everything into darkness once again. Gravity suddenly returned, and Doll dropped to the floor, not-so-gracefully landing on her face. She lifted herself into a sitting position, noticing that she didn’t feel any pain from the fall. Before she could stand herself up, she heard noises that seemed to come from everywhere at once.
Click! Click-Click! Click! Click!
As Doll looked around wildly in every direction, an invisible keyboard typed code into existence all around her, the text illuminating the space with a light purple glow. She slowly rose to her feet, squinting at the ones and zeros around her, but before she could decipher the binary code, a new, small, timid voice spoke from behind her.
“H-hello?”
Doll whipped her head around so fast she almost fell over. Behind her was a small girl, with translucent skin like her’s, but yellow. She was hunched over, eyes wide with fear, shaking. But that face? It was the face of the creature that infected her with the solver. It was the last face she saw before she was torn apart.
“<<YOU!!>>”
Cyn jumped back as Doll stepped towards her. Doll attempted to activate her solver, looking down at her hand, frustrated, when it wouldn’t activate, before remembering that her solver was gone. She let her hand drop and took a defensive stance, balling her fists at her sides as she stared daggers at Cyn.
Cyn stumbles backwards away from Doll. “WAIT!” she cried fearfully. “I-I’m not the solver!”
Doll’s eyebrows furrowed in confusion. “But you-”
“It took my body, it- it USED me!” Cyn interrupted, a sob escaping. “It used me to hurt people! But I-” She sank to her knees on the invisible ground, sobbing. “I didn’t want to!” She cried. “I-I didn’t want to! Please!” She broke down into tears.
Doll relaxed her stance, unballing her fists. Anger vanished from her face, replaced with sadness, sympathy, and a twinge of guilt. She should’ve known she was just a host. The poor girl was the Solver’s main host. Doll looked down at the crying, shaking girl, trying to think of something to say, something to ask.
“<<How old are you?>>” Doll asked her, quietly
“Thirteen” Cyn sniffled, looking up at her.
A glimmer of confusion flashed over Doll’s face. She had figured Cyn would be older.
“<<And… How long have you been thirteen?>>”
“A long time.. Time is weird in-” Cyn meekly raised a hand, gesturing to the space around her. “-Here.”
Doll looked around at the void around her, now filled with the purple binary code as far as she could see.
“<<Where is ‘here’?>>” she asked. Cyn, still shaking slightly, pushed herself up. She stood slightly hunched, hands kept close to her chest, making herself small. She examined her surroundings, a hint of unfamiliarity in her face.
“In the mind of.. Someone” she explained, her voice still small, but a little stronger. “It used to be the Solver, but-”
Cyn is cut off by yelling. Loud, robotic yelling, sounding almost like a tantrum. Cyn yelps and covers her mouth, tears forming in the corners of her eyes, wide with fear. Doll looks around wildly, eyes wide, instinctively trying to activate her solver. When she remembers she can’t, she growls in frustration. Throwing her hand down, she yells into the direction the yell came from “<<WHO’S THERE???>>”
She is met with no response, except for inaudible, frustrated, robotic grumbling. She gives Cyn a quick, concerned glance and slowly they inched forward together, toward the discontent grumbling, Cyn keeping herself a couple feet behind Doll, hunching into herself, making herself as small as she could. They carefully stepped around a block of code. Behind it was another being in the same translucent, ghostly form. It was yellow, like Cyn, however, while Cyn was a bright, sunny yellow, this creature was a sickly, swampy shade of yellow. It was only made up of three long, spindly limbs that were attached to nothing, simply floating on the air. Attached to the other end of the limbs were three cameras, one for each limb. As Doll and Cyn approached, the cameras on this creature turned to face them. There was an eye on each camera, each one displaying annoyance and anger. It sent a shiver down Doll’s spine. Cyn gasped and covered her face again, shrinking into herself, shaking.
There was no mistaking what this creature was. This was the being that had infected countless drones as a host, taking over their bodies. The being that destroyed Earth. That tried to destroy Copper-9. The actual being that had killed Doll.
This was the Solver.
The Solver glanced Doll and Cyn up and down, taking in their body language, watching them slowly back away. It spoke to them in its cold, robotic voice.
“[What? It’s not like I can do anything. Annoyed.]”
Cyn whimpered in fear, making herself smaller behind Doll. Doll stood in front of her defensively, and, on instinct, attempted to summon her solver again. The Solver looks at Doll’s hand, in the solver position, and laughs a creepy, cold, robotic laugh that made Doll feel a deep, uncomfortable chill.
“[Ha. I am just as powerless as you are here. She has my power now. She has all the cores I took all the time to consume. Angry.]” the Solver said, saying the last word with venom. Doll and Cyn stopped backing up, confused at the statement.
“She? Who’s she?” Cyn asked, quietly enough for only Doll to hear, her voice much smaller and shakier than before.
Doll looked around at the code around her, and actually examined it. Her robotic nature allowing her to quickly translate the binary text, she immediately saw descriptions of likes, dislikes, memories, relationships and personality, sectioned into batches. This drone was smart, with a love of making weaponry. Judging by recent memories, they were in their late teens, just graduated school. With honors, Doll noted. They had a love for punk music, and they knew many other drones, some names familiar to Doll, her classmates, her old friends. She felt a pang at the names ‘Thad’ and ‘Lizzy’, but quickly moved on. It was not the time, and it didn’t matter anyways. This drone had to be a classmate. What struck Doll as odd were the names at the top of that list, ‘N’ and ‘V’. She scowled. Who could be so close to the murder drones?
A memory of her last prom suddenly came to Doll. She looked at the personality section. An angsty personality. She saw a glitched section of code out of the corner of her eye. This was harder to decipher, but from what she saw it was clear this drone was infected with the solver. She then remembered the two figures in the light. In the seconds it took her to gather all this information, it hit her who’s mind they were currently in.
“<<Uzi Doorman>>” Doll stated breathlessly.
“Who’s that?” Cyn asked, voice still quiet, shaky and small.
“<<She’s… my old classmate. She has control now.>>” Doll looked down at her hand that had now failed to summon her solver multiple times. “<<Of all our powers.>>”
“[Well, aren’t you a clever one.]” the Solver said bemusedly, looking at her. Doll looked up and scowled fiercely at the Solver. The Solver’s eyes gleamed with cold amusement. It starts moving closer to Doll and Cyn, who slowly step away.
“[Amused. What? If we’re all going to be stuck here together, we may as well get along.]”
It suddenly moved in, getting face to face Cyn, who cowered down to the ground, shaking in silent sobs, tears streaming and eyes wide with extreme fear.
“[Right, Cyn?]” The playfulness of the Solver’s voice had a chilling quality that somehow made the void feel cold.
Cyn yelped as she was suddenly grabbed by her arm. Doll, as gently as she could, yanked her away from the Solver and placed Cyn behind her. She stood protectively between Cyn and the Solver, staring it down. The Solver’s camera eyes narrowed in annoyance. Cyn looked up at Doll, a bit of fear evaporating from her eyes.
“[Well]” the Solver said, backing away. “[If you insist on this]” it turned its back on them, scampering into the distance, weaving between blocks of code until it was out of sight.
Doll and Cyn watched until the Solver disappeared into the distance, concern and apprehension on their faces. Doll heard Cyn let out a breath behind her. Doll turns around to look at her. Her eyes were filled with fear, sadness, loss, and even some guilt. Doll felt a familiar pang. It’s a look she’s seen many times in the mirror, no matter how many times she puts up her practiced shield of apathy. The crack was always there.
Doll kneeled slightly to make herself eye level with Cyn, who was only slightly taller than her shoulder. She held out a hand to Cyn. Cyn backed away slightly, hunching into herself, making herself smaller again.
“It’s alright, kid” Doll said quietly. Cyn looked at Doll’s face, then at her extended hand. Apprehensively, slowly, she extended her hand, and placed it in Doll’s. She smiled at Doll, relief in her eyes as she looked at her. Doll felt another twinge of guilt for their initial encounter. Cyn was just a kid, who never got the chance to grow.
There was a loud, sudden buzzing noise, coming from the direction the Solver went. Doll straightened, turning her head to where the noise came from. Cyn hid behind her, eyes wide. They stood dead still for a few seconds, but the sound had only lasted for a moment. They both relaxed, and Doll moved to examine a nearby block of code.
She finally found what confirmed her discovery. This block of code contained basic information on the drone whose mind they occupied.
Name: Uzi Doorman
System Language: English
Age: 18
Gender: Female
Parents: Khan Doorman, Nori Doorman
Doll was a year older than Uzi. She hadn’t known that. She hadn’t known much about Uzi, other than the fact that she was also infected with the solver, and that she liked the color black. She cocked her head slightly. How much more did she and Uzi have in common?
Her train of thought was interrupted by a voice behind her.
“What’s your name?” Cyn asked, her voice more steady now.
“<<Doll>>” she answered. She turned to look at Cyn. “<<How long have you been here, Cyn?>>”
“I-I don’t really know” Cyn looked down, thinking. “A long time.”
“<<By yourself?>>” Doll looked at her, a glimmer of concern and sadness in her eyes.
“Sort of” Cyn nervously rubbed her hands together, looking back up at Doll. “ It was always here. Talking to me. But it always had control of my-my body” Suddenly she wouldn’t meet Doll’s eyes. Doll’s brows furrowed.
“<<What did it say to you?>>”
Cyn suddenly shook her head violently, fear in her eyes. She covered her mouth, looking down at the ground. Mixed with the fear, Doll saw something else in her eyes. Guilt. Horrible guilt.
Before Doll could say anything, everything started to shake. Cyn and Doll stumbled, trying to gain balance. Doll grabbed Cyn’s arm, attempting to keep them both upright. All around them, the purple code began to glitch. Slowly, it all began to turn a sickly yellow, making its way around the space. Cyn cried out in fear, and clung on tightly to Doll’s arm, tightly shutting her eyes facing away from the chaos.
“<<WHAT IS IT DOING??>>” Doll yelled over the rumbling, her eyes worried.
“IT’S TRYING TO TAKE OVER AGAIN!” Cyn sobbed, voice full of fear.
Just as Cyn yelled out her response, the rumbling stopped. The space was suddenly hit with a bright flash of light that had Doll and Cyn shielding their eyes, and when they looked back up, all of the code was light purple again. Cyn looks around nervously, still clinging to Doll’s arm, a little bit of fear leaving her eyes.
“[ANGRY. TANTRUM.]”
The distant mechanical yell made them both jump. Cyn yelped and cowered behind Doll. Doll, now having given up on her solver, balled her fists at her sides and looked around for the source of the yell, eyes full of concern and disdain. When there was not another yell, and neither of them could see the Solver, Doll relaxed, and Cyn stepped out from behind her, still hunched, making herself small, but the fear had left her eyes. It was replaced with wonder, and a hint of relief.
“It didn’t work. She managed to fight it off” she said in admiration. Cyn walked away from Doll, up to a block of code, examining the binary text. “She must be really strong!”
Doll looked at Cyn and the block of code she was standing in front of. She walked to stand next to Cyn, and read the code. This block of code was smaller and constantly changing. Judging by the way the code detailed the action of lifting something up, doing an up and down brushing motion, and putting the thing back down, Doll figured the was code for one of Uzi’s arms. She was probably brushing her hair or her teeth. Such a mundane action, at odds with the excitement from the rest of the day. Much more time must have passed than she realized, Uzi must have gone back to the colony, and now life goes on. With or without Doll.
As Doll shook that thought out of her head, another chilling thought formed. How much did Uzi think about the aftermath of her decision to absorb the Solver? Did she even know the magnitude of what she had done? Somehow she doubted that Uzi was aware that she, Cyn and the Solver were stuck in her mind, and if she was aware of the Solver, she couldn’t have known about her and Cyn. Doll looked around at the landscape of purple code. Uzi managed to fight off a Solver takeover without even knowing it happened, and with no help. There was no doubt she was strong, but…
“<<How long could she hold off Solver attacks on her own?>>”
Cyn turned her head to look at Doll, who was still staring out into the space, at all the code. She then turned her back to the code that controlled Uzi’s arm, staring through it thoughtfully. “We could help from here!” She looks back up at Doll. “She- she wouldn’t be doing it alone!”
Doll turned to look at Cyn. Her eyes were desperate, but hopeful. Doll’s face fell slightly. She knew what desperate hope felt like. She felt it when she found out about the patch, the desperate hope that she could save herself, her colony, her planet. It felt like grasping at straws. In the end, Doll got nothing for it. She didn’t manage to save a single person, she couldn’t even save herself. She doubted she was even missed.
In Cyn, Doll saw herself and her experiences. Her hope. Her devastation when it was dashed. Her increasing desperation. Cyn already had Doll’s pain. Cyn had pain Doll couldn’t even comprehend. But Cyn didn’t deserve Doll’s losses, on top of everything Cyn already lost.
At that moment, Doll decided she needed to try to save one more person. She didn’t care what happened to herself anymore, but this kid deserved the chance she never had.
“<<We need to reach Uzi. I doubt she knows we’re in her mind>>” Doll stated.
Cyn suddenly got nervous. “I- I don’t know.. We have all her code here! That- that can’t be the only way-”
“<<There’s very little we can do without her knowing and helping. The Solver will start attacking harder.>>”
“I don’t..”
“<<Why don’t you want her to know?>>” Doll asked, gently.
“She- she’s gonna think that I’m the Solver, and she- she might get mad at me! I don’t want her to be mad at me!” Cyn cried, distressed.
Doll felt yet another pang of guilt for their first encounter. “<<Nothing’s gonna hurt you,>>” Doll said to the distressed Cyn. “<<I- I won’t let it>>”
Cyn looked up at Doll, eyes wide, but not mistrusting. Doll saw multiple emotions flit over Cyn’s face. A glimmer of familiarity as she recalled a memory, then grief and guilt. Doll knew that mix of emotions well. She didn’t know who or what Cyn was thinking of, but Doll felt those emotions everytime she recalled a memory of her parents and their comfort. But in that familiar look, she saw something new. Something she hadn’t seen in her own eyes in years.
Hope. Not that desperate hope you have when you’ve lost so much you cling to the most unrealistic option, however slim. It was real, true hope in Cyn’s eyes. Hope that came with trust in a new beginning.
“The last person who said that to me was…” Cyn trailed off, leaving the sentence unfinished. Doll tilted her head as Cyn stared at the ground, eyes thoughtful, remembering. Doll wondered what she was thinking of, but before she could ask, Cyn spoke again.
“Okay.. okay. Let’s try and reach Uzi” Cyn paused, then added “That was her name, right?”
Doll nodded at her, then turned back to the code for Uzi’s arm. Uzi was no longer holding anything, and her arm didn’t seem to be moving. Doll put her chin in her hand, thinking. She heard the footsteps of Cyn walking in the opposite direction, and turned to see where she was going.
Cyn was staring at a different block of code. This must’ve been the odd bit of code that caught Doll’s eye earlier. Multiple swampy, sickly yellow error messages were displayed between the purple binary code, as if it were an anomaly, not meant to be there. But the code still functioned, and Uzi still functioned. Doll walked over to the code. It seemed to be code controlling a tail. Doll, confused, examined the lines of code closer. The tail had a mouth and eyes and could seemingly function as its own being, but the code displayed that it was not being currently controlled by anything. Doll’s brows furrowed. Definitely a solver anomaly, but what did that mean? What usually controlled it?
She carefully reached out to touch the code, and quickly moved her hand back when she accidentally dragged some ones and zeros away from the block. Doll’s eyes widened. She didn’t realize she could change Uzi’s code so easily, though she should’ve realized. How else could the Solver take control of its hosts? Doll quickly moved the code back.
“<<Cyn, do you know how to talk to the host from here?>>” Doll asked, turning to Cyn. Cyn looked at Doll, thinking.
“Well, kind of. I don’t know how to talk to Uzi … but…” She looked over to a block of code that Doll hadn’t noticed before, despite the fact it was next to the code for the tail. Doll walked up to it, and upon closer inspection, the code seemed to detail Uzi’s dreams. Doll figured it must only be active when Uzi was sleeping. She touched the code, and took her hand back as if the code burned her when the code automatically shifted into a window, which gave her a peek into what Uzi was dreaming of. Doll chose not to look into it, not wanting to see what would be in Uzi’s subconscious after the horrors of the day. Doll looked at Cyn, wondering what she was thinking. Cyn walked up to the window and stuck her hand through it. Doll’s eyes widened in surprise.
She pointed at the window “<<Is it a…?>>”
“Portal? Yeah. I’ve seen the Solver go into the dreams of other drones when I was… well…” Cyn trailed off, and removed her hand from the portal. “It would use it to talk to the hosts it possessed.”
Doll looked at the dream portal, then the code for the tail. Eyes, mouth, the code indicating that nothing was currently controlling it. If they could interact with the code, enter Uzi’s dreams, then maybe….
She looked at Cyn, and gave her a small smile.
“<<You’re smart>>”
Cyn beamed at her.