Chapter Text
Winter Rains Down on the Ashes.
Mother Makes Fuel from the Bones.
Murder Rips Gods from the Masses.
Murder Brings. Murder Brings.
Those were the words that were endlessly cycling through Serial Designation K’s head.
Bereft of will. Of conscious thought. There was only enough understanding in the feral disassembly drone’s head to do his job, and no more.
Wake when the sun set. Heed the instinct to hunt. To kill. To feed.
Claws ripped apart his prey. Bullets brought it down to be processed and disassembled. Wings spread out to bring the corpses over where they were to be stored. Oil was drunk messily to satiate his thirst.
Finally, when the sun starts rising, go to sleep.
Rinse and repeat.
Again and again and again and again.
He might have found it tedious, had he had any true will or thought of his own beyond the mantra that never stopped repeating itself in his animalistic mind.
Years had passed since he had landed on Copper 9 with his “squad”, and not once had he deviated from what his instincts told him to do. He couldn’t, lacking the necessary sapience to question or even hesitate.
By his internal clock, it had been exactly ten years, two months, one week, five days, four hours, thirty-six minutes and fifteen seconds since he landed on the planet. Not that he had the mental capability to check that clock.
But things had changed in the last six months.
There was no more prey to be found.
Where once scores of worker drones hid amongst the ruined buildings, now there was nothing but the howls of the empty wind and the creaking of rusty metal.
K and his squad had kept hunting for strays anyway. But day after day, month and month, they all came back empty-handed. Instead of drinking the warm oil of freshly slaughtered prey, they had to settle for the cold oil from the pantry of corpses they had created around their crashed ship.
They might have complained about drinking the old, coagulated oil, but in their feral minds; food was food.
All that was left was continue the hunt, until something happened.
When his internal clock struck precisely six months since his most recent kill, a subroutine activated. A secondary set of orders was activated, now that the primary extermination ones had been completed.
A signal was sent to the others of his squad, activating their own subroutines.
> Activating Phase 2
> Objectives:
> Investigate Cabin Fever Labs.
> Find Underground Cathedral.
> Descend Tunnel into Planet’s Core.
> Giggle =)
> Uploading Lab location…
> Upload complete.
Three expressionless faces turned simultaneously towards a single direction.
Three feral hunting hounds began their flight towards their new objective.
They descended down where their instincts had told them their objective was located.
The light in the labs was only enough to bath the area in an eerie glow, but they could feel no fear. Most of the halls were cloaked in shadow, but their sensors made that irrelevant.
As they walked in, they spotted the corpses of other disassemblers strewn about. Ripped apart and covered in their own nanite-oil. Words of warning were scratched into the walls.
The corpses and words went ignored, for it was neither part of their mission nor did they have the capability to comprehend what was written.
The squad found themselves at a crossroads. No words were exchanged between them. K and L went to the left, M continued straight.
The two-drone squad continued deeper into the labs.
A movement in the corner. Two visors snapped to it. Claws and guns replaced hands.
A three-toed claw was poking out. A claw that was followed by a mechanical reptilian body resembling a raptor, three eyes on each side of its head and two in the front, with a larger emitter built into its forehead.
It didn’t have enough time to make a noise of surprise before all its lenses were blown out by bullets, the emitter on top likewise shattering under the precise fire of the feral drones as they rushed into melee range.
From then it was a short butchery of metal and oil as the disassemblers tore into the screeching sentinel with claws and teeth, yellow exes flaring brightly on their visors.
Any wounds it managed to score on their chassis were quickly undone by their nanites.
Unfortunately, the guardian’s death sent a signal to all the other ones in the labs that intruders were present, putting the rest of the pack in high alert.
More screeches resounded all throughout the underground laboratory. In the process, the only non-sentinel inhabitants were alerted that there were more intruders coming into their home.
The disassemblers ignored the screeches echoing in the hallways as they fed on their kill. Before they could finish, the signal coming from their third teammate cut out.
They froze for a moment at that.
The squad of disassemblers was connected by an autonomous signal emitted by their internal radios, allowing them to communicate wordlessly and soundlessly with each other. This made them function with great synergy and efficiency despite their animalistic minds; for anything that alerted one drone would alert the others.
A signal cutting out only meant one thing: Their squadmate was dead.
But they were still feral. There wasn’t anything resembling “affection” or “emotional connection” within their CPUs.
They had not frozen in grief, they had frozen for a single moment because their brains were processing the elevated threat level that the death of a disassembler meant, and responding accordingly by keeping their combat protocols active until the threat was resolved.
The disassemblers shivered as their minds went into high alert.
Their eyes were once more replaced by exes and they assumed a more animalistic posture. Heads hunched forwards, knees bent, tails slowly swishing back and forth, like an animal ready to pounce at the slightest provocation. A set of claws extended from one hand, and a gun was pointed forwards from the other. Their sensors went into active scanning mode, utilising the full extent of their potential to create a self-updating 3D map of their surroundings.
The remaining drones stalked forward, L taking point and K acting as rearguard. By the time they reached a blast door leading to a large room full of cubicles, the sentinels had gone silent.
The feral drones were ambushed the moment they entered.
The sentinels knew the labs better than the disassemblers, and unlike the minions of the Solver, the guardians could learn.
This wasn’t the first time they had dealt with intruders like these ones. Although it had been a while since they lost one of their own to them.
Before L could even react, several bright flashes came from the emitters on their heads, one after the other. The ex on his visor was instantly replaced by a loading symbol as he collapsed to the ground, stiff as a stone statue.
K was spared the boot-looping flashes by being directly behind L when it happened, and his squadmate’s paralysed body did not deter him from opening fire and charging at the sentinels.
But the guardians were ready. The other disassemblers had done the same if they weren’t caught by the paralysing flash. They only needed to wait for the cooldown to finish.
6.
Those who felt the bullets impact them turned their heads to the side as they scattered, the disassembler charging right through and jumped up over the cubicle walls and into one of the square-shaped offices.
5.
Replacing his submachine gun with a plasma gun, K charged up the weapon, using his sensors to pinpoint the prey/predator’s location to take them out.
4.
He was stopped however, as he felt the signal from L cut out as well. The other drone was dead too.
He was alone against the guardians.
3.
K froze for a second as his brain once more processed the death of his squadmate, reorganising priorities and once more upping the threat level of his enemy.
This enabled him to take more drastic measures than he would normally be able to.
New weapon configurations were made available to him, previously locked away to prevent feral disassemblers from burning through their oil too fast through overkilling, such as firing a rain of missiles against an untrained neural network.
2.
His feral mind took note of the enemies and their elevated threat level made him automatically select the best thing he had available for dealing with large groups.
His hand swapped to a different weapon, which started to glow blue as it charged.
1.
If he had his mind available to him, he would have said something along the lines of “I’ve always wanted to use this.”
As it was, he was silent as the weapon finished it’s charging cycle, ready to be unleashed.
0.
The sentinels felt their emitters finish their cooldown, and quickly stalked toward the cubicle that the disassembler had hidden himself in, which was sending crackles of electricity and bright light towards the ceiling.
This was the first time that a single one had survived the death of its packmates. Usually, they killed them in sets of two or three, rarely taking out one that wondered alone, which was usually the first death of an intruding pack.
Apparently, killing all but one of them caused them to emit some kind of electrical discharge and a bright, glowing blue light.
Nonetheless, the sentinels pounced.
But before they could flash their emitters and make their next kill, an electro-magnetic pulse flooded out from the cubicle.
The sentinels felt the pulse pass through them, knocking out their internal circuitry and CPUs. Without a sound, the lights in their eyes shut off and they fell limp to the floor.
K jumped out of the cubicle, replacing his arms with swords and decapitating the three sentinels in his immediate vicinity.
Oil flooded out of the stumps, on which he pounced to feed, replenishing what he had rapidly burned through to generate that EMP.
When he was done, he rose back to his feet and mapped out the locations of the fallen guardians. In his haste, he didn’t notice a blast door on the other side of the complex sliding open.
He jumped to the next one, sword raised like a guillotine to take out the comatose mechanical raptor.
His execution was halted by a voice coming from behind him.
“Well hello there, surface slicker!”
The disassembler whirled around, spotting the open blast door from which a worker drone was waving at him with hollowed eyes and a big, crazy smile.
Dressed in a worn grey dress, antlers made of scrap and scavenged objects on her head, and a disassembler’s tail ending in a kitchen knife, the drone stopped waving and gestured to herself with her hands.
“Looking for lil’ol me?” her smile grew wider as if to taunt him.
The primary orders in his brain reasserted themselves.
> Find And Kill All Worker Drones in Assigned Area.
> Place Worker Drone Corpses Around Arrival Ship.
K’s wings sprouted from his back.
He leapt forwards towards her, activating the flight mechanism to soar over the cubicles and towards his new prey. His swords were replaced by claws, his mouth wide open to feast.
At the last moment, the worker drone ducked.
K’s momentum brought him past the blast doors and into the room she was in. He couldn’t stop himself in time and hit the wall head first with a massive *BANG*, collapsing to the floor.
Getting up immediately, the head injury already starting to heal, he turned back towards his prey. His knees bent to pounce-
And was interrupted by a massive surge of electricity running through his system.
In his tunnel vision to attack Alice, the disassembler had failed to notice Beau was in the room as well, holding a large, loose cable with his disassembler hand. A cable that was hooked up to the facility’s reactor, and was now pumping a significant amount of the generator’s output directly into the disassembler drone’s body.
His movement was paralysed instantly, his regeneration was disabled shortly afterwards, and finally his CPU shut down as it was overloaded.
He fell once again, and this time he did not get up.
Walking into the room with a large smile as she pressed a button to close the blast door behind her, Alice looked down at the twitching, disabled disassembler. Her smile grew larger and gained an insane edge to it as she rubbed her hands together in glee.
“Oooh, I can’t wait to get the parts outta this one. Beau, help me strap ‘im down. I want this one conscious when I rip out his livin’ guts!”
> Status of Serial Designation K: Offline.
> Rebooting…
> Restarting Central Processing Unit…Complete.
> Initialising Operating System…Complete.
> Reactivating Sub-Systems…
> Reconstructive Nanites…Complete.
> Sensor Headband…Complete.
> Weapon Systems…Complete.
> Flight Mechanism…Complete.
> Acid-Stinger Tail…Complete.
> All Sub-Systems Online.
> Booting Core Processes…Error.
> Memory Storage Corrupted. Source: Damaged CPU from Electrical Overload.
> Restoration Possible?
> Analysing Corrupted Data…Complete.
> Amount of Data Recoverable: 100%.
> Initialising Memory Recovery.
> Estimated Time to Completion: 1 Month.
> All Other Core Processes Online.
> Reactivating Subroutines…Error.
> Mental Suppression Subroutine Unable to Reactivate. Source: External Magnetic Interference Around Previously Unrepaired CPU.
> Retrying:
> Attempt 1…Failed.
> Attempt 2…Failed.
> Attempt 3…Failed.
> Maximum Subroutine Reactivation Attempt Limit Reached. Ceasing All Further Attempts.
> Mental Suppression Subroutine Reactivation Failed. Please Contact Primary Administrator “Cyn” For Manual Reactivation.
> All Other Subroutines Online.
> Booting Primary Consciousness…Complete.
>Reboot Complete.
K blinked as he came back online.
Where was he? Who was he? He couldn’t remember.
All he knew is that he was currently strapped down tight to a medical table and his sensors indicated there was a magnet stuck to his head, which made his movements sluggish and weak, preventing him from breaking out of the elastic straps through strength alone.
His claws were still out, but they had been padded so they couldn’t cut through anything anymore.
He was stuck. Helpless.
Oh, and there was also a worker drone standing over him, holding a scalpel over his naked chest. There was a maniac grin in her yellow eyes as their visors met.
He felt the core in his chest start heating up.
“ey, you’re awake. Good, ben’ waitin’ a while,” she said in an accent he couldn’t decipher. He felt like that he should know it, but he couldn’t figure it out.
On looking deeper into those hollow, insane eyes and maniac grin, he felt his core become even warmer.
There was something about her grin, her eyes, the insanity that seemed to emanate from her every action, from the way she twitched in place from seemingly nothing, to her menacingly moving the scalpel across his chest, to the trophies festooned on her mechanical antlers.
Something that pulled him in, that made him want to be closer to her than he already was.
Some part of him that said “This one. This is The One.”
His introspection was interrupted by her finger poking his visor. “Anyone home in there? Usually, they’re little more than rabid mutts when they wake up, why’re you different?”
K remained silent as he kept staring.
Some part of what he could recognise as his instincts was also telling him that he should be doing…something to her. He couldn’t tell what it was, his brain was too fried for that, only that it had to do with getting closer to the worker drone.
His mind chose a very specific way to interpret those instincts.
Because getting closer to her?
That might not be so bad.
Not if it meant getting closer to the vision of perfection standing over him.
The mad worker shrugged as she poked his chest with the scalpel. “Ah well, it don’t matter anyway. I just wanted you awake for your ineffective struggles. Those are always good fer’ a hoot!”
She lifted her arm, scalpel in hand, ready to plunge it down.
Unbidden, the words slipped past his mouth.
“I love you. Please marry me.”
…Silence.