Murder Drones: Reflections

I don't own the MD franchise. Just in case you were wondering

Reflections

Chapter 2: Reflections

At the landing pod the disassembly drones had called "home" for so long: V, quite securely tied, had been placed in a small holding room adjacent to what would have been the control room if any of it had still been able to actually control anything. She struggled and strained at her bonds, but got nowhere; they'd taken her greater strength into account, and tied her in such a way as to deprive her of any leverage.

During a lull in her struggles, she tried to comprehend what had happened. Evidently, that ridiculous drone had turned on them, turning traitor, betraying everything they—which was to say, the Company—stood for, and somehow done what she'd thought was impossible: he'd actually bested her in combat. She didn't know what had happened to J, but she'd seen no sign of her, and that boded ill.

That little minx of a worker drone, the one called Uzi, must've sweet-talked him into rebelling against them. And after all she'd done for him! Unbelievable!

She'd probably bribed him with oil. That had always been his weakness. Well, let his usefulness to her diminish, and the oil supply would no doubt dry up, too. Then he'd see! Yes, he'd come crawling back to her…

A horrible thought occurred to her: maybe that little minx of a worker drone hadn't bribed him with oil, after all. Maybe she'd used... something else altogether. After all, V knew something else he was fond of…and was really really good at...

In the control room: N was showing Uzi the wrecked panels, and how they connected to the rest of the ship. "N," she began, "I don't see where any work at all's been done here. I thought you said the others had designated you for repairs."

"Well, yeah, but not here, not on the controls." Something about the way he hesitated raised a flag in her mind.

"But...but what else is there to repair? The power core?"

"No, actually, the power core is largely intact. It mostly just needs fuel. What few repairs it does need are gonna require parts we don't have. They'd have to be salvaged from other pods...and the only other pods I ever found were in worse shape than this one. I mean, it'll work, but I don't think it'd be something we'd want to entrust our lives to."

"Sooo...what, exactly, have you repaired?" Maybe she could get an idea as to where to start from what he'd already done.

"Mostly V and J. V, especially. She always seemed to get hurt, or take damage in some way, during their raids. Sometimes J, but mostly V. Tell you the truth," he continued, in a conspiratorial whisper, casting a glance at the doorway leading to the room where V was secured, "I think she's a little accident-prone. But don't tell her I said that!" His eye LEDs became exclamation marks, and he waved his hands in front of his face, as though to erase the words out of the air before they could travel across the room to the compartment where V was being kept.

"Take damage? How? What kind of damage?" Uzi knew the worker drones were too weak, physically, to inflict any significant damage on a disassembly drone, and, as far as she knew, she was the only drone that had ever even experimented with weapons of any sort. All the others were content to hide behind their massively-reinforced doors, doors her own father had designed, when the sun went down. The notion of actually fighting was foreign to them.

"Well," he said, scratching his head. One of his eyes morphed into a question mark. "I'm not exactly sure. I never could see any damage, but she swore it hurt, and that she needed my help to heal it, since it was, er, in a place she couldn't reach by herself. Funny," he mused, staring off into space, remembering, fingers tapping on his chin, "it was always in the same spot. But it was an easy fix. My saliva always healed her right up, with no problems."

But by now the flags were starting to unfurl in Uzi's mind. "Uh, N? Come over here." And she led him into another compartment, away from the wrecked controls—and further away from the compartment where V was still struggling with her ties. A purely psychological move, maybe, but important. She sat him down on a box, and sat beside him. Close beside him. "Now, N, this is important. I want you to tell me exactly where she always seemed to take this 'damage'...and how often." Inspiration, horrible inspiration, but inspiration nonetheless, occurred to her. "Was it, like, right after a battle?"

"Uh, yeah. I mean, it was battle damage, at least that's what she said…"

"And just exactly where was this 'battle damage'?"

"Well, uhm…" Some latent instinct, perhaps a stray line of coding, was making him hesitant. Somehow, this just wasn't something he was comfortable sharing with Uzi. She saw blush marks appearing below his eye LEDs.

"N," she soothed, "it's alright." She stood up, barely coming up over his head. "Show me on me. Just...point to the, uhm, place. Don't be embarrassed, N. It's okay. Just show me."

It proved to be the very place she'd feared it would be.

A few minutes later: Uzi was pacing back and forth in the small compartment, muttering under her breath. She didn't trust herself to speak right then. N, for his part, was cowering against the wall, watching her, and wondering what he'd done wrong this time.

Uzi continued to pace, eyes yellow danger signs, her hands balling up into fists occasionally. Yep, thought N, this was bad. Any second now she'd lash out at him with those fists (and feet), just like J had, so often...and, just like with J, he had absolutely no idea why. "U-Uzi? Wh-what's wrong? What did I do?" Even though he knew Uzi, a worker drone, was not physically strong enough to do him any damage, he still remembered other beatings he received, mostly from J, and dreaded what was coming. Just the psychological fear of getting beaten, the shame, was bad enough.

And he knew that, even though she was weaker than him, he'd never raise a finger against her, no matter what. He had before, back at the worker drones' hive, but somehow things had changed. He couldn't imagine doing that now. He didn't really understand why that was, but he knew it was true.

His question broke through her fury, and she snapped back to the here-and-now. She glanced over to him, and her expression softened, her eyes turning back to their normal purple, as she realized she was scaring him. She fought down her own anger and went over and sat by him again. He was pressed up against the wall so he couldn't flinch away.

But she noticed his involuntary attempt to, and realized its source. Oh, N. What did they do to you?

She hesitantly put her arm around him in a gentle hug. Uzi herself had her own issues, stemming from years of parental neglect, and knew she had a lot to learn about comforting others. But she could barely imagine what N had gone through. "Oh, N! You didn't do anything wrong!" She laid her head against his arm, being too short to reach his shoulder. "I'm not mad at you!" She squeezed him lightly, trying for a comforting move, something she herself was totally unfamiliar with. Her father...her own father had never hugged her. "It's just… Look, we'll, we'll talk about, about...things later, okay? But you didn't do anything wrong, and I'm not mad at you. Okay? So...don't be...scared, alright? Everything's okay. I'm just...well, we'll talk about it later, okay? Don't worry. It's just...me being teenage angsty me, right now, okay?"

"O-okay, but, but is there something I can do to help?" Something was clearly bothering her.

Again a supportive hug. That was N all over, she thought. All the classical marks of long-term abuse: everything was always his fault, and it was always his responsibility to make it better. "No. But I'm gonna go have a little talk with V—" she thought she'd calmed down enough now, at least, she hoped she had, "—and, and maybe then, we can see about these control panels, okay? We can probably find parts for those easily enough in one of the other pods. You...just stay here an' don't come out 'till I come back for you, okay?" He still looked nervous. "It's okay, N. Everything's okay," she said softly. She got up to go…and, acting purely on some latent instinct, maybe some forgotten line of code in her core software, impulsively reached over and pecked him on the cheek, causing blush-lines to appear below both their eye LEDs. "I'll be right back." At the door, she turned back to him. "Just...ignore anything you might hear coming from there, okay?" He looked puzzled but nodded.

V's holding cell: Uzi burst in, literally trembling in anger. "You...absolute...robo-whore!"

"Funny," replied a tied-up V, "I was about to say the same thing to you."

Uzi was so mad she didn't even hear the disassembly drone's acid retort. "You used him, all this time! Like, like a living sex doll! Used him for your own perverted sexual needs!"

"Oh, and like you haven't? At least I'm one of his own kind! What're you? A barely sentient monkey wench! Besides," she said, turning her head to the side, not looking at Uzi, "I, I took care of him. Brought him oil every time we went out."

"Yeah, I guess that makes everything all better, huh? Tell me, slut, did you ever do for him what he did for you?"

"What!? No! Of course not!"

"And why not?"

"Because...because that, that would've been disgusting!"

"But it wasn't disgusting when you forced him to, to service you? In exchange for oil?"

"I didn't force him! He...he enjoyed it!"

Uzi put her hands on her hips. "Didn't force him, huh? What if he'd refused? Would you have still brought him oil?" V was silent. "I didn't think it was possible to have a lower opinion of you, V, but you've proven me wrong.

"You're a rapist, V. You coerced him into giving you sex in exchange for the bare minimum for his survival. The only reason you didn't stick your wick into him is because you don't have one." V winced at Uzi's language but remained silent. "And you and J beat him up every time you got the urge. For what? What did he actually do to deserve all that?! Anything? Anything at all?

"What if things had been reversed, V? What if a male drone had required you to fuck him in exchange for oil? Huh? How would you like that?"

"I—"

"Because that's exactly what you did to him. And you know the really sad part?" V looked up in surprise. There was a sad part to all this? "He loves you, thinks the world of you, even now. Even after using him like that. Even after all the beatings. Even after not even remembering his damn name. Except when you needed him, that is.

"Did you 'remember' his name while you and J were beating on him? Was that fun?" She turned to go. "N's too nice a guy for a whore like you. You don't deserve him."

V finally found her voice. "Oh, and I suppose you do?"

At the door, Uzi turned back, a half-smile on her face. "You know what?

"Maybe I do."

Outside V's holding cell: Uzi took a moment to compose herself. The revelation of what N, her friend, had gone through had shaken her to her core bios software.

She still had a hard time with it. All this time—she didn't know how long it had been going on, but it didn't matter—that robo-slut V had used him to pleasure herself. And the bad part was, he didn't even see it.

Uzi knew zip about drone psychology. She knew she had gone hunting disassembly drones largely in an effort to win her father's approval and, yes, his love—but N had been required to sexually service V (and, from what he'd said, on a couple of occasions, the vicious J, as well), as the price of survival. He'd been forced to give them oral sex in exchange for oil, the bare minimum of a disassembly drone's survival. In the back of her positronic mind, she underlined the note she'd made to herself, to find him some more easily replenishable source of oil. So far, she'd been able to scavenge enough to keep him going, but that wouldn't last forever.

She knew the worker drones had a processing plant for their own use. Maybe she could figure out a way to steal some. That'd be fun.

Thinking about that took her mind off...things.

…..

V's holding cell: for the first time in her memory, the disassembly drone known as "Serial Designation V" was actually feeling something for once. However, it was something she'd rather not have felt.

Despondency. Maybe mixed with a little guilt.

For so long, the "party line," as laid down by J, had been that Ken—that was his name, wasn't it?—was useless and terrible. Well, she'd given him a use, a job to do. Just like the other two had to go hunting for their oil, so, too, did Yen have to do...what he did, for her...to earn his. And so she hunted for them both. That just made sense, didn't it? Win-win, all around.

But now, she was remembering what that little worker drone had said. What if things had been the other way around? What if she'd been the one saddled with the job of "recreational drone" by others, as the price of her life?

But that would never happen! Unlike Jen, she was good at what she did! Her kill-count exceeded J's, in most cases.

Then she remembered that Ren's frequently exceeded hers, back in those days when J had allowed him to hunt with them. Why had J decided to hold him back, anyway?

She remembered J saying, "He could make the rest of us look bad, given half a chance. The Company might decide we're superfluous."

Had it been...jealousy? Insecurity, on J's part?

She'd honestly never given it much thought. But looking back…

But why was she "looking back" now? Why did Uzi's words affect her so?

Ultimately, she decided, it didn't matter. She redoubled her efforts to free herself, concentrating on the knots holding her tail. If she could just free that, the corrosive nanites in her stinger would free the rest of her.

And she had to get free. No doubt that sly little worker drone was banging What's-his-name every chance she got—surely that had to be the only reason he'd turned on her—wait, on them. Yes, she'd completely brainwashed him, reprogrammed him, with her body. It was the only explanation. And he was way too naive to see what she was doing. She had to get free and make him see the truth. Because if this kept up, she—make that they, the Company, of course—stood a good chance of losing him forever.

She couldn't let that happen. Em, or whatever his name was, was one of them. He belonged to heruh, the Company. She had to save him.

She felt a tie, binding her tail, loosening…