If one were to ask Tessa when things went so horribly wrong, she wouldn't be able to pinpoint the exact starting point.
Was it when she brought the possessed drone into her mansion, giving it access to her friends and family?
Was it when she'd first started going into the pile of discarded drones, pushed by loneliness and despair, wishing for nothing more than a friend?
Or was it even before that, when she realised she had a talent with machines and programming?
Perhaps it was even all doomed from the start, and no matter what she did things would have unfolded the way they did… but that was hard to accept.
It didn't matter in the end. The Gala had been the end of all that she had loved; Her friends turned against her, her family slaughtered (even if some part of her had breathed a sigh of relief at that, and oh how she hated herself for it…) and Cyn free to rampage as she pleased.
And rampage she did. She did not harm Tessa at the time as she unleashed the first disassembly drones upon Earth. She'd never lied about her reasons either; It was partly about revenge, but also partly out of a desire for entertainment. After all, she could end the charade at any time by simply consuming earth… but she wanted the humans to fight. To struggle, to desperately attempt to live, to survive. To do their best, and realise it didn't matter.
Perhaps that had been how she'd felt, when she'd been but a worker drone, prior to being discarded.
Regardless, Tessa was forced to march through the emptied streets of Earth as disassembly drones devoured survivors alive, tearing through buildings with impossible strength and speed, annihilating militaries through overwhelming, unnatural power and in many cases sheer numbers. Technology would turn against their former overlords, nuclear weapons prevented from even leaving their silos if not outright detonating in them. Informatics systems were compromised as the strange power that had taken over Cyn corrupted them.
It had never been a fair fight, but Cyn had wanted them to think it was one. And all it resulted in was humanity growing more and more desperate, resorting to measures ever more extreme to ensure their continued survival. Colonies cut off the homeworld, quarantining it as it descended into anarchy and madness.
She saw families turn on each other, desperately scrounging for the last of the supplies left in devastated malls; Parents sacrifice themselves to buy their children time to escape only for the speed of the disassembly drones to allow them to cut them down, only living long enough to see those they loved torn to pieces.
She even was made to watch as her beloved friends, the worker drones that had made the life at the manor somewhat tolerable, were turned into Cyn's favored weapons of destruction. Her heart had broken all over again the first time she was forced to witness N slaughter through hordes of fleeing civilians, his mind and programming shackled to what he had once lovingly called his "little buddy." She'd tried to kill Cyn then and there, only for the drone to effortlessly rip the wrench she'd scavenged from her hands and mock her for the attempt. Then, for good measure, she'd had J and V join in the slaughter.
Tessa had screamed. She'd cried. And like everything else she did, it hadn't mattered.
Eventually, Cyn grew bored and destroyed the planet before moving on to the others. Tessa did note she seemed to grow… not quite lazy, but Cyn seemed to fall into somewhat of a slump. The human colonies fell one by one, until all but one remained. As they did, the number of disassembly drones she could call upon fell more and more as the humans adapted and learned new ways to defend herself, only for Cyn to fail to create more. She seemed like she was merely going through the motions; Slaughtering the population of a planet before consuming it.
And then…
Then she started to get creative.
She began to erase N's memories, bringing back the loving and kind drone he'd been before so she could enjoy the presence of her "Big Brother" once more. She tormented J with her powerlessness and V with her inability to do anything to help N. And she tormented Tessa with visions of mankind as it slowly died out at her hand.
She was getting sloppy.
Tessa thought there was an opening. An opportunity.
She sent out all the information she'd managed to gather in secret, all that she had worked on, out to any colony that remained and could receive them. She knew they were working on experiments on the Solver; Stupid, of course, but desperation made fools of the greatest men. She knew she had succeeded when Cyn mentioned that humans were working on a Patch for the Solver.
That kernel of hope had turned into an ocean of dread when Cyn had turned to her, and Tessa knew that she knew.
The humans had failed in the end. And with that failure did mankind end. There was only one human left in the vast universe; Tessa. And she had failed the hardest of them all.
The worker drones survived the collapse of Copper 9's core somehow. Cyn ended up sending out her disassembly drones; The ones that were left. Including N, J and V. It had been painful seeing them leave… almost as painful as it was to see them day by day, twisted as they were.
And yet, the worst was yet to come.
For somehow, someway, N rebelled. He killed J (and that was one of the few times Tessa found herself grateful for Cyn's backups), must have convinced V to go along with his little revolution, and allied himself with the worker drones. It had been… entertaining watching Cyn get angry.
And then Cyn had looked at her, and Tessa knew.
It was the end of the line for her.
The process hadn't been gentle. It wasn't like Cyn was intentionally torturing her, not this time at least. She wasn't going out of her way to inflict pain.
She just didn't care to prevent it.
Cyn ripped the skin off of her, peeled it like she was some overripe fruit. Blood, blood everywhere. Tessa had screamed until her lungs gave out, until her vocal chords grew too strained to produce anything more than an agonized wheeze. She was certain that this was to be her end; A slow, painful death at the hands of her former servant. A fitting punishment for her, who had doomed all of mankind in her selfishness. All because she had craved friends so deeply.
But Cyn had another idea in mind.
She'd been… experimenting, it seems. Melding flesh with metal, testing human minds to their limits. Things Tessa hadn't known, hadn't seen. Working towards something. Building towards a goal.
And she'd finally reached it.
Cognition transfer.
She moved Tessa's mind out of her body, her consciousness transferred to a synthetic system. Her brain was preserved near perfectly, implanted into a modified worker drone body in her likeness and enhanced with cybernetic augments to connect to the sensors of the frame.
But she couldn't move. Couldn't control her body. Couldn't do anything but sit there and watch.
She tried to blink, but had no eyes to do so; Only a visor that would not respond to her mental commands.
She tried to walk, but her legs wouldn't obey her, remaining locked and unmoving.
She tried to speak, but her vocal digitizer would not allow itself to be used.
She was missing pieces. Cyn hadn't finished her when she left for Copper 9 herself, intent on bringing the rebellious disassembly drones to heel and solving the problem herself.
Tessa had tried to call out to her, begging her to not leave her like this. Trapped within a body that wasn't her own, without anyone else around to keep her company; Alone with thoughts she could not escape.
She was left incomplete. Forced to wait until Cyn would return and finish her. Torn between hoping Cyn would be defeated and destroyed, leaving Tessa trapped in a body that would never die forever, or return to finish her and continue the torment her and the others were stuck in together.
She hated herself and her weakness for hoping for the latter.
But she couldn't do this. She never could stand to be left alone. It was why she had gone to the scrapyard in the first place.
And now here she was. Alone again in the darkness of Cyn's laboratory, built in one of the huge transport ships she'd repossessed.
Unable to breathe.
Unable to die.
Unable to move.
Unable to scream.