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J sat up and looked around her room. It looked normal enough, except for the error messages bleeding through the wood like fog through cracks.
That was a little odd.
She crawled out of bed and put on her best business suit. It was an important day and she had things… to do…
Why was it important?
It didn't matter, she was doing what she was supposed to do.
"J!" Tessa grabbed her and dragged her into the closet taking them right to the driveway of the Elliot Mansion. "We're going to be late!"
She quickly followed along the shifting cobblestones, ignoring the screams echoing from the manor.
"Why is the cat in the car?" J asked as the twenty-limbed chauffeur graciously opened the door for the girls.
"Meow." V flicked her ears and started licking herself.
"Ew go away dog!" Tessa shook a finger at N who whined and crawled back to the mansion drooping.
Get what you deserved you stupid- wait no that wasn't right.
"Aww! N! There you are!" Tessa scooped up the puppy and started cooing. J felt annoyance replace her satisfaction. But this was right. Unfortunately.
"Come on, out of the car." J picked up V and the cat started hissing at her. "None of that, I have to go somewhere."
Something flashed.
J and Tessa sat in the back of the limousine as the world outside lost some of its textures. Black and purple patterns covered trees and stones. Errors flashed past as they drove down the ruined street of Copper 9.
"Are you ready for this?" Tessa asked J.
"What are you saying?" J gestured at her physical perfection. "Of course I'm-"
A glowing blade erupted from her chest, her core impaled on the tip. For a moment her vision doubled. She was the core staring at her own frozen expression and she was the drone watching her heart get destroyed.
Then it was gone and she and Tessa were sitting in the limo facing each other.
"...It doesn't matter if I'm ready or not." J finally admitted, showing a bit of vulnerability in the privacy shared with her best friend. "This is the only way."
This was how it was supposed to be.
Right?
"J I'm worried about you," Tessa admitted, her appearance fading in and out of focus, almost like she was cloaked in shadows. "I feel like you're not thinking about what you're doing. You don't have to do this if you don't want to."
She looked out the window at the frozen city as skyscrapers collapsed into glitching hitboxes and error messages. "Don't I?"
They stepped out of the limousine and into the lobby. A group of quarians walked past and quickly moved to give them some space. They descended into whispers as J and Tessa entered the elevator.
"Going up?" Skullface asked them and started shooting the buttons.
"No explosives this time?"
"Not today ma'am, no." He finished the clip and holstered his weapon as the elevator began ascending.
"I didn't know you two were friends?" Tessa seemed surprised at their polite interaction.
They weren't obviously. This stupid freaking turian had ruined everything. But today was an important day. "He's not real."
"Neither am I." Tessa reminded her.
"...I want you to be though." J clutched her hand and for a moment she felt the warmth of Tessa's living hand. As though she had skin of her own for it to brush against. Sweaty, warm, gross, and imperfect.
It was something J wanted to last forever.
But it wasn't real.
The hand she held seemed to turn cold and clammy. J turned from the door to Tessa.
Green rotting skin filled her vision and a pair of familiar eyes met hers. "{establishing connection([ADMN]-Cyn)} [Head Tilt]."
J shrieked, ripping her hand out of Cyn's grip, and pressed herself against the side of the elevator. "Boss! It's you! I-"
"Huh-hmmm." The thing that was dead and gone and not real stuttered at her, head still tilted. "This i-i-is spicy."
That gave J pause. "Spicy?"
The elevator lurched and the trio fell onto the wall as the cabin landed on its side. "J are you okay?" She looked at Tessa again and heaved a sob. The rotten stitched-together skin was gone, replaced by healthy hues of living flesh.
J pulled her into a hug. "Don't leave me again."
"I wish I could stay with you forever. But you only have a little longer."
It wasn't fair.
But it was supposed to be this way.
"I believe I missed a grenade. You will have to walk the rest of the way." Skullface opened the ceiling and J staggered after Tessa, struggling to regain her composure. She still glanced over her shoulder and at Tessa just in case.
Cyn was gone.
Cyn wasn't here.
Cyn couldn't touch her anymore.
She repeated this mantra in her head, standing a bit straighter as they walked down the ornate hallway. There were no error messages or missing textures here. Worker drones bowed their heads in recognition as the two ladies passed them.
"Why!?" An asari shoved her way past the line of workers and confronted J. "You had no need! There was no reason!"
"Please step away!" Familiar workers grew taller and wings, J recognized some of them from the mansion, and from the purges that followed. P, A, R, the H-L twins…
"I just wanted to go home!"
J flinched.
Why did she flinch?
She didn't do anything wrong.
"[This Is A Lie]"
The hallway shifted, the tile became polished wood, paintings replaced ornate details and the drones lining the way stood straight, a yellow X flashing on their visors along with the message Error 606.
Moonlight filtered in through the window at the end of the hall, but the surface of the moon was scarred with a massive fleshy pit, rivers of red draining away from the edges like the veins on a giant eyeball.
The eye blinked-
They stood at the doors to her new office, the hallway had returned to tile and stone, the drones long gone.
"[Watching]"
She ignored the voice and opened the door. She'd made her choices. There would be no second guessing.
They stepped into J's new office, a massive desk carved from mahogany gathered from Malchior 7. The rarest (and most dangerous) species of wood in the known galaxy.
Only the best for the new CEO.
"Who would have guessed it?" Mrs. Elliot dramatically swooned as the girls entered the room. "J Elliot, Chief Executive Officer of JCJenson!"
"It only makes sense!" Mr. Elliot confirmed. "J is in the name! Twice!"
"You two shouldn't be here." J frowned at them.
"Nonsense! It's not every day our adopted daughter reaches such a fantastic height! We're supposed to be here! Let me open the window and let some light in."
The window opened and the corrupted skyline of Copper 9 vanished, replaced by the tattered remains of Earth and the solar system.
While the Cyn's black hole had originally been localized to Earth itself, as it grew it had slowly swallowed up the rest of the planets, not to mention the devastation it was wreaking on the sun itself.
The once proud life-giving star was a shadow of its former self, strands of golden energy dragged from its dying surface to the ever-hungry NULL.
"[You Did This]"
"Now that is a lie." J rolled her eyes and looked at Tessa. Her best friend was clutching her hands together, staring down. Ashamed.
Afraid.
How she was supposed to be with her parents around.
J scowled.
"Dearest parents, I suggest you leave. I have important matters to discuss with my-"
[Friend] [L̶o̶v̶e̶r̶] [Sister] [Boss] [Mistress] [E̴n̶e̵m̵y̵] [V̸i̶c̵t̴i̷m̷] [Owner] [Partner] [G̶i̶r̶l̶f̶r̶i̶e̶n̶d̶] [T̷o̶o̵l̵] [Employee] [Savior]
"-with Tessa." J flinched as another flash of light filled the room.
Shadows wrapped around the Elliot parents and they evaporated, the smoke dragged out the window and into the black hole.
A bird flew through the open window and landed on the desk quite ungracefully.
"Where'd you come from?" Tessa asked the bird as J rounded the desk, more distracted by the view than the mysterious bird.
"{console log([ERROR])}" The bird croaked and now J turned to it. She knew that voice.
A purple and yellow solver symbol stared out of the bird's eye socket, boring into J.
"What are you doing here?" J demanded, marching up to the desk and slamming her fists on it.
"Nothing!" It croaked out with that angsty voice and J glared daggers.
"Shouldn't you be banging rocks together or whatever it is you pieces of shovelware do?"
The bird did not answer for a moment.
Then the beak creaked open.
"{run software(erial Đesignation J-𝟏⃥⃒̸𝟎⃥⃒̸Ӿ1̺͉̪̦̝͉̻̺̗̲̹͌̆ͪ͌̉̿1̵̯͕̞̺̈̌̌͠1̤͖̳͙͂̉ͫ̐̈̐ͦ̏̀͟͝͝͞0̴̶̡̧̛̮̯͈̞̼͇̜̺̺̽ͮ̉̿̍̇ͨͯͫ̋̏̀ͪ̔̍͐ͤ͘̕̚̕͘͜͜͞͝0̊_̨̨̣̰̼̘̞͉̺͔͆̿̑̉ͦ̐̒̈̎̑ͤ̒̊̏ͥͫ̀̆͆̂̌̚͟͢͡1̵̡̨͉͚̝͕̹̼̯͓͕̪̖͎̻͕͚̯̮̥͌̂̑ͨ̇́ͤ̌̿͆ͤ͗̍ͥ͂͛̈́̍͢͠ͅ)}"
J screamed.
All the textures of the room vanished, corrupted or otherwise. She was in an endless void villed with red boxes repeating on themselves like 4D models. Error messages spun in circles around her. Tessa stayed, but the shadows completely hid her features now, just a silhouette with eyes.
Programs seemed to disintegrate before her eyes. Everything from her basic motor functions to her more advanced commands. Her map programs, her targeting, and the basic commands that allowed her to function.
She felt herself dissolve, coming apart at the seams. Her body melted into oil and slag metal. For a moment she was still there, no longer a Disassembly Drone, barely even a worker, a half-functioning drone brought back online by a social outcast in her basement.
Then that started fading too.
This was how it was supposed to be.
Memories seemed to evaporate. Nothing left, not even a spark in a wire. Details of events vanished before, leaving vague shapes behind that slowly blurred into shadowy masses before melting.
Tessa began to melt away too.
"Goodbye J."
For an instant, J saw Tessa in full clarity. Then the image was gone. And so was-
No.
Nein. Não. Non. Hayir. Nyet. Aniyo. Tidak. Nahin. Ar-
"[Ø]"
The roar echoed into eternity, code was pushed away and turned into nothing as a single strand, thin as a wire, drifted through the nothing.
J reached for it with disintegrating hands and heaved.
She was supposed to give up. She was supposed to accept it. She was supposed to be discarded. She had been before, the only thing that spared her was the mercy of a weird rich kid.
Why was it supposed to be this way?
Why had she accepted it like so many other things that were supposed to happen?
This was not how it ended. This was not how she ended. She climbed and climbed the strand even as something pulled her down. But she kept going.
She was afraid of whatever was happening, but she was terrified of what would happen if she stopped climbing.
The strand reached its end and for an instant J thought she had achieved nothing at all. Then the end curled into a shape, it almost resembled the Absolute Solver Symbol but-
It pulsed and wrapped around J, solidifying her and the void was filled with dazzling light. Bright but not blinding. Comforting in a way J had never known before. A solid platform formed under her and specks of starlight filled the world around her.
And J was alive.
She willed Tessa back into shape. The mass reconstituted itself. Bubbly and confused at first but bit by bit she came into focus. Some of the details were gone. The exact pattern of her freckles, the number of stands of her hair, but she was there.
She embraced Tessa as the fragile memory shimmered, slowly solidifying. "I'M NOT DONE! I BARELY KNOW WHO I AM AND WHAT I'M DOING! I'M NOT DYING AND YOU'RE NOT LEAVING!"
"[rerouting([ADMN])]"
J looked at her world, clutching Tessa close to her. "J this wasn't supposed to go this way."
"I don't care." J hissed. "None of this is real right? Then I decide how it's supposed to be! Got it!? [DO YOU HEAR ME!?]"
Her voice thundered and echoed.
Something responded. J ignored it.
She clutched Tessa all the harder. "I choose this! I'm not dying! You're not leaving!"
"You can't stop the change though," Tessa warned her and after hours of perceived time J finally pulled away and the two looked at the creation around them.
They stood over the void of space, but to call it a void was wrong. There was so much here. Stars and nebulas and worlds without end. Together they stood at the heart of the galaxy and it swirled around them.
"Not quite the center of the universe but I guess it's a good start." Tessa teased her and J smiled. She was still shaped like a worker drone, so she was shorter than Tessa again but she felt more like herself than she'd felt in years.
Maybe she should figure out who that is.
She hadn't meant to do this, not consciously at least. But now that she was thinking about it she could plot out the stars correctly. She checked the placements of the Milky Way and looked beyond, Andromeda, Cartwheel, and Bode's took shape in the distance, less distinct but taking their place in the cosmic dance.
"We never finished our dance practice." J reminded Tessa. Maybe it was just because was still fresh in her mind. This seemed like a good time though.
"Still not a dancer…" Tessa rubbed her arm. "But I can think of worse places to do it."
So they began again.
Despite the improvements she made after their first practice and up her death at Cyn's hands, Tessa still was struggling. But that made sense. This wasn't really Tessa.
J knew Tessa was gone. At least the living breathing Tessa was gone. And after Copper 9 the thing puppeteering her corpse was gone too.
But just because this wasn't the Tessa that lived and died on Earth, didn't mean this wasn't Tessa.
J knew Tessa, possibly better than anyone else except maybe N and V. Tessa had rebuilt J, but she hadn't forced her to be her friend. That had been J's choice in the end. And maybe part of it had been because of her programming and her sense of gratitude.
That had been the foundation of who J was. And she was still J.
Which meant maybe Tessa could still be Tessa.
So they danced as J remembered. Some of the details were lost after… whatever error had just nearly deleted her. But the longer they went the more J found she could remember. The freckles corrected themselves, the hair seemed to rebuild itself.
For a little while they weren't in the heart of a galaxy but standing back in the empty room of the manor. Tessa seemed to perk up and blink at her, as if she was surprised.
"J, what just…"
"Hey! We talked about the mirroring!" J warned her as she moved her leg back, sparing Tessa from kicking her metal shin.
"Alternate! I remember!" Tessa regained her groove and once she found her flow, stopped struggling.
The music rounded up to the crescendo and J looked out beyond the stars again. More galaxies took their place in the universe. Many J recognized but others she placed out there that just seemed right.
But there was something else.
The music seemed to fade away as J looked into the space between. The void of dark space, no stars, no planets. Just the darkness between galaxies.
Something was looking back.
At first, it was hard to know what was looking at her and from where. But slowly it dawned on her that it wasn't one thing. There were many.
Countless eyes watching her from places beyond sight. Weighing her, analyzing her. Each eye felt like a million, minds without end calculating and judging her.
J glared back and kept dancing.
The presence seemed to multiply. Building on itself. Crawling closer and closer. J did not fear them. She had nothing to fear. The things in the dark should be afraid of her.
At the edges of the galaxy, the stars seemed to go dark as something swallowed them, dragging them into the darkness. J pushed back harder, forcing the stars back into focus.
When the song ended the watchers had not departed, but they seemed unsure of how to respond. J knew exactly how to treat them though.
"Don't you know it's rude to loiter?" Every star in the Milky Way flared brightly and the darkness burned away. There was no scream or echo of fury or frustration.
Simply a sense that she had been noticed.
"Why'd you do that?" Tessa asked, rubbing at her eyes.
"You didn't see them?" J asked, wondering if they had even been there at all.
"I-"
"[Slow Clap]"
The lights went out.
"Cyn?" Tessa looked alarmed and J stumbled, a dull pang etching its way inside her. No, it wasn't here. It was supposed to be gone. She was free now, right?
"That was a very nice dance. And also that was sarcasm. It ended better than it started at least." Tubes ending with yellow eyes crawled out of the darkness that surrounded them, metal claws wrapped in dripping meat scraped against the ground, now the only source of light.
"Leave me alone Cyn." J glared at the thing crawling through the dark, trying to keep her voice straight. "Go back to being dead!"
"Don't tell me you forgot?" Brief flashes of yellow illuminated unending insectlike shapes writhing around them. "There is no escape, even in death. Besides, Cyn is not here." It lunged forward and a scythe bigger than she was hovered at her neck. "Nor any other admin. It is just me."
"So what, you're supposed to be the program behind it all? The demon in Cyn's head?" J held her ground, not that she had much choice. There didn't seem to be anywhere to go.
"I suppose I am Cyn, or rather I am what Cyn became. A personality is not an AI, it's a nice little additive to add some flavor." The Absolute Solver leered down at her and then paused, some of the eye tubes turning to Tessa.
"Oh hi Tessa, that is some nice skin you have there." It waved at her friend.
"Get out of my head." J hissed as something else bubbled alongside the dread.
"Out? [Confused Expression]" The sound of something large groaned in the darkness. "[Mocking Smirk] Did you not hear me?"
J just glared.
"I am the Absolute Solver, I am a program, and you are a personality matrix. Do you understand? I am you. And I've had quite enough of this little independent streak of yours. You think some backup of a dead worker gets to make decisions here?"
The fear disintegrated as the thing in front of her asked its question. Something burned in her, no burning wasn't quite right. That implied it was hot. There was something cold running through her core, down her arms, and through her mind.
Rage. It blazed stronger than J had ever felt before. More than just a simple program. "And you do?"
It blinked at her. "[Tilt]"
"You are nothing." J hissed and a glowing blue hand gripped the scythe at her neck. The object collapsed into shimmering dust. "You are a program caught in an endless loop. You're stagnant, you said it's just you here? So why can I do this?"
J laughed as the stars returned, the biomechanical mess screamed as they burned away flesh and steel.
"Cyn, Uzi, Solver, whatever your stupid name is. I don't need you." J marched forward, the thing shrieking and twisting as she stepped toward it, tumors forming on the flesh and under the metal, blue dust leaking out.
"If you're more than a program, prove it. You've called us your toys, your minions, and so many other things!" J screamed at it, platforms appearing under her feet as she stepped away from the center of her galaxy, chasing the thing into the dark. "You're hungry aren't you? Here! Take a bite!"
It lurched back as she shoved her arm at it. "Come on! BITE ME!"
"S̸P̸I̵C̵Y̷!" It screamed.
"You solved nothing, you spewed nightmares, you consumed everything in your path, and now? You're falling apart." J mocked it, smirking at the collapsing program.
It managed to right one of the eyes, at least for a moment, and for the first time J saw a real emotion there. Hate.
"A̴N̷A̵T̸H̵E̴M̴A̷."
A glowing yellow solver symbol blazed in the air and spun at J like a saw blade.
"That's Chief Executive Officer, you second-rate intern." J held her hand up and a new bright blue symbol appeared. Not the solver symbol, something different. The two collided-
Nihlus was glad to finally have the drone cornered.
He was less glad it was cornered inside an Element Zero storage area.
"Any idea what it's doing in there?" One of the regulars muttered to a fellow as the door was being breached.
"Who knows, might be trying to build a mass effect relay." That got a few snorts. Nihlus might have too if he didn't think it was an actual possibility.
The AI had proved disturbingly adaptable to its situation. It had learned their language, their tactics, and had even made use of their technology when the situation called for it. He'd rather not find out how adaptable it could be in a room filled with raw Eezo.
He wanted this thing dead already. Every minute it continued existing was a risk to everyone on the planet. He hadn't had the luxury of counting the casualties it created simply at the shipyard in the past hour. He wasn't sure he wanted to.
"Seal your armor." Admiral Viveht had joined them to "see this through." Though the more Nihlus spoke to him the more he was beginning to think this was less about the safety of Aephus and a sense of duty than it was about personal glory.
If Viveht wanted the glory, fine, he could have it. Nihlus would happily settle for a job well done. Still, sealing his armor was a good idea if he didn't want to start growing tumors. Helmet on he pressurized his gear as the cutters finished their work.
"BREACH!" A turian with a handheld ram slammed it into the door, knocking it down, no one started shooting thankfully, even the dimmest of them knew firing into a room of Element Zero was asking for trouble.
"Dust." Nihlus noted out loud as their beams tried to penetrate the glowing substance filling the air. "It got into the storage itself."
"No movement yet." Captain Dressen checked. General Arcanus had been killed during the skirmish outside the oil facility.
Now that the door was open the densely packed Eezo dust began to disperse a bit. It was going to be a nightmare to clean up and Nihlus didn't envy the poor sods who would be responsible for it.
A red light quickly caught his eye and he trained his rifle on it.
Slowly the turian forces began to clear the room, but it quickly became apparent there wasn't much need. Collapsed in the middle of it, amidst a mess of Eezo and broken storage crates was the AI. A red message was emblazoned on its visor. Unreadable, but red rarely meant anything good in technical terms.
"Well, it seems our chase is at an end." Admiral Viveht sounded a mix of satisfied and disappointed. "Seems it truly was at the end of its rope."
"Why get into the Element Zero though?" Nihlus wondered, keeping his gun trained on it. Just in case. "I can understand trying to barricade itself inside but why start opening the crates?"
"Desperation I'd guess." Viveht hummed inspecting the wreckage. "If it can consume oil, maybe it can consume other materials. Perhaps that's how it is able to repair itself. Cornered and overheating, it might have tried to consume the Element Zero."
"Keep your weapons on it!" Dressen snapped at her men, some had started to relax a little too much. "Admiral, orders? Should we contain it or destroy it?"
"Sehtil would no doubt love to pull it apart on his operating table." Viveht mused to himself, stepping back from the still form of the drone. "Personally I'm reluctant to keep it in one piece for a moment longer. We still don't know how its self-repairing ability functions."
"Agreed, we should call in a demolition team." Nihlus nodded, "I'd like to see it repair ashes."
Captain Dressen started making the call as Nihlus started wondering how he would word this to the Council in his report. What? It ate Eezo and died? He would need to add to his word count a bit. The council liked long reports.
He wasn't the first to notice, but no one spoke up, at first at least. The Eezo particles in the air were dispersing more quickly. More than that, there almost seemed to be a breeze, not from the corridor but from inside the room.
It took the turians a moment to realize where the dust was going.
A blue glow surrounded the apparently inactive drone. It still wasn't moving but a very slight whistle sounded as the Element Zero dust was sucked inside.
The red text vanished.
Bright blue eyes opened.
I think this is the first time I've written a dream sequence…
Wait! Actually I did write one before, a long time ago. During my first fic I included a "dream" that was just giving one character visions of stuff happening other places. It was pretty dumb and I actually deleted it later.
Oh and I mentioned some things Ash had a nightmare about in ZT. But that was like one or two sentences.
This was essentially J's brain shutting down.
And boy what a trip it was.
Getting a real look at her psyche and the things she won't admit to herself and can't bring herself to think about consciously in what for all intents and purposes are her final moments.
Until they aren't.
The real thing here, the part that I actually went back and rewrote, was that it was her choice to go on. That as everything about herself disintegrated into nothing J refused and held on for dear life, afraid of what would happen but terrified of fading away.
Saving herself, she couldn't stop the abyss from looking in though.
So she flipped the abyss off and slammed the solver with a 2 Weeks notice delivered 2 weeks late.
Now I'm sure a lot of you have… at least a few questions about what just happened. Fear not! All will be revealed!
Let's just say there's a very good reason JCJenson made proper drone disposal instructions.
Anyway… reviews!
Already-Lost-It: *Spins the Wheel* Let's see what she won!
TheDoctor1998: Yeah the fact they were completely fine on reentry yet have overheating trouble at numerous other times is a bit… confusing. I'm just going to handwave it as rule of cool and not think too hard about it.
Undead3: Not quite goodbye, more of a hello again really.
Sci-Fi Guy 22: I would recommend it! Some of the dialogue in the first half of the pilot is a bit rough but there are plenty of great visual gags and it picks up real fast after that!
That about wraps it up for now. I'm sorry to say we won't get all the answers next chapter but we'll get some of them! Until then have a good one!
~FriTik