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Tessa wasn’t exactly expecting a welcome party when she arrived on Copper-9, but the immediate guns in her face and a hoard of worker drones nervously marching her into the cell-lined basement of a derelict building was… also not what she expected.
She didn’t resist, not terribly eager to see what a fancy glowing rifle-esque gun like that would do to her mere flesh. She also didn’t try to talk to them, partly because they’d gone from extremely wary to borderline hostile the moment she introduced herself as Tessa.
It was almost enough to give a girl a complex. But these random drones on the farthest exoplanet from Earth couldn’t actually know her.
The cell door made a lot of clunking noises as it thoroughly locked behind her. A hum started up in the walls, which she vaguely recognized as a low-level EMP designed to interfere with any and all technology in its field of reach. Including drones.
Of the group that herded her down here, most slowly drifted away, though a few went running with mumbles to get someone called Uzi or Nori. A few armed workers remained behind, eyes hollow and unwavering from her as she examined her little prison. Other than a large concrete block to sit on, the small space was empty.
Tessa took a seat and tapped her fingers on her knee. Befuddlement was starting to make way for planning. If this was simply an anti-human thing, she would have to find a way to break out. She didn’t like the thought of having to hurt anyone, but she’d do whatever she had to if it came down to it. She was on a mission, after all. She couldn’t just sit around and play prisoner until she died.
Ideally, this was a misunderstanding. Given the devastation she’d seen outside and the many, many human skeletons, Copper-9’s human population was wiped off the map. With any luck, she was just something new and unusual to these drones, who were simply being cautious.
She and her guards weren’t left waiting long. Only a handful of minutes passed before a commotion echoed down the hall.
“Where is she?” someone demanded loudly. Angrily. “I swear to robo-god, if you tell me to calm down one more time, I’ll punt your head into the atmosphere!”
The threat seemed to work, and a moment later, heavy footsteps stomped toward her cell.
Suddenly nervous, Tessa planted her boots firmly on the floor. She’d usually prefer to stand for what sounded like an oncoming tense confrontation, but her legs felt a bit jellied. She’d seen and done a lot in her space travels, but feeling lost and confused did nothing for her courage.
The workers guarding her jumped back against the wall to give a wide berth to the drone who stormed into view. Tessa blinked, admittedly having expected someone more… intimidating.
To start, this drone was clearly shorter than the guards. She wore a hoodie and boots with striped socks sagging beneath her knees. Her dark purple hair fluffed out around her shoulders, and her eyes were a pretty sunset mix of yellow and purple.
Intrigued, Tessa leaned forward. She’d never seen gradient eyes on a drone before. A familiar pang of disappointment hit her—it would’ve been amazing to bear witness to how drones came into themselves without humans around. To see how they developed as individuals and as a community, to watch what they invented versus adapted for themselves, to compare their code now to the drones of old.
The newcomer turned an utterly furious glare on Tessa, giving her a quick once-over. “Tessa,” she sneered, mocking.
Tessa blinked rapidly. Oof, that—that felt personal. “Um. Hello. I—”
She scoffed. “Let’s skip the small talk and get to the point—I don’t know how the hell you pulled this off, but you’re going to get exactly nowhere with this stunt. What’s your plan, huh? Play innocent? Try to fool us again? Ha! As if!”
Again?
“I think there’s been some confusion,” Tessa started to say, but the drone wasn’t done yet.
“And y’know, I’m not against giving someone a second chance if they’re really trying to be better.” She laughed meanly. “But you? Yeah, I don’t care if you’ve actually turned a new leaf. I will never let you anywhere near N again, you sick—”
Heartbeat immediately doubling in speed, Tessa leapt to her feet. “N’s here?!”
She tried to tell herself not to get her hopes up, but even after years of searching, she still refused to admit defeat. She’d take whatever hope she could get and grab on with both hands.
Please, let it be her N.
The drone gave her a withering look, but Tessa wasn’t cowed. “What about J and V?” she asked, going up to the bars. “Are they here too? Are they all right?”
The last she’d seen of them… J and V had been scarfing down human flesh like they’d been starving. But they’d been alive, they’d been as okay as she could hope for. It was a different story with N. Tessa never saw him after that last harrowing night at the manor.
There was a specific terror she’d felt on his behalf when Cyn had stopped chasing her to instead zero in on his unconscious (please, please, let him have been unconscious, not dead) body. To matter enough to a monster to distract her from her prey…
She still had nightmares of that night, and they only occasionally featured the gala itself.
It was the rumors that J and V were usually sighted with a third drone that kept her going, that made her swear to herself to never give up. It had to be him. Her three drones, her little family, had to be all together.
The years alone had been long, her journey through space seemingly endless at times. She’d stopped at so many planets and space stations and moons, desperately trying to find them.
All she knew was that Cyn took them off-world. She never found out where to or why—though she would guess it was for more of the same destruction.
The drone crossed her arms over her chest. “I’m not falling for that.”
“Look, please, I have no idea what you’re talking about. This is the first time I’ve ever set foot on this planet! I’m just—I’ve been looking for them for ages. I don’t… I don’t know quite what they look like now, but N’s the kindest person you’ll ever meet and he makes this face when he’s happy that’s adorable and squinty. And he loves dogs, and gardening, and—”
“I don’t know what you’re trying to prove, Cyn, but I promise I know him better than you.”
Tessa reeled back. “Cyn? Oh god. Is she here too?”
The drone raised an eyebrow.
“You can’t trust her,” Tessa said urgently. “I don’t know what she’s told you, but she—wait, did you call me Cyn?”
“Here we go…”
Tessa sighed in relief. It was a misunderstanding. “Okay, there’s been a mix-up. I’m not Cyn, I—my name is Tessa.”
“Suuure it is,” the drone said, amused.
Staring blankly for a moment, Tessa tried to wrap her head around what was happening. It felt a bit like they were having two different conversations. “I—what?”
“Honestly, I don’t know what you expected to get out of this, especially since we know how this fight ends.” The drone smirked, flicked her hand up casually, and—
Tessa stumbled back with a sharp gasp, eyes locked on that symbol. That three-pointed symbol that had haunted her for years. Her ears rang as she tripped over her own feet, falling backward. Her elbow banged painfully against the hard floor, but she hardly noticed.
The purple light flashed in front of the drone’s hand, and then a matching light wrapped around her. She choked, frantically pushing herself back with her feet until her helmet jarred against the concrete block.
“Wait, what,” the drone said, and the light flickered out. “I shouldn’t be able to—”
There was another commotion from down the hall, more voices, and the drone turned with furrowed eyes away from her. Tessa’s heartbeat thundered in her ears, her breaths coming fast and short.
She was back there, back home, watching as a monster ripped through a room of people like it was nothing. She was back there, losing everything but her life.
The present faded away, leaving her snared in her undisputed worst memory. She didn’t notice a new arrival skidding to a halt in front of the cell, or the short exchange between the two drones, or even the second one grabbing hold of the bars and wrenching them apart enough for him to slip through.
There was only Cyn’s voice—you didn’t have to see this—and the static in her head and the pinch in her throat and the—
“Tessa!”
Someone twisted her helmet, unsealing it from her suit, and lifted it off. She had just enough time to panic about that too, before she was roughly pulled into a full-body hug, her head tucked against a solid chest.
The thrum of a core broke through the haze, and she slowly began to return to the present, feeling completely wrung out. The air was breathable, though cold.
There were exactly three drones in all the universe who knew that when Tessa got lost in bad memories, the best and quickest way to pull her out was to have her listen to their cores.
As her breathing calmed, she focused on what little she could see of the drone holding her. Smooth white arms, sturdier than a worker’s. Their body was large, easily the size of a human adult’s. And they were wearing a t-shirt covered in—covered in little cartoon dogs.
Tessa tilted her head back.
For all his differences, N still looked at her the same. All concern and care.
“Are you real?” she whispered, hesitantly laying her hand on his arm.
Tears in his white eyes, he smiled brokenly. “Yeah. Are you?”
Desperate, she sat up to throw her arms over his shoulders, giving him a proper hug. Years of searching, of doubts, of failure—and it was over. Tessa shook as she started to sob, and N pulled her closer still.
• • •
V crashed so suddenly and so violently against the escape pod that J unintentionally threw her tools in the air in her surprise. She scowled. “What the hell, V, why—”
“Tessa’s here,” V said, breathless. Her wings trembled as she righted herself, crouching as though ready to return to the sky in a blink. “The real, human, alive Tessa is on Copper-9.”
Core just about stopping, J stared at her with wide eyes.
“She’s been looking for us. All this time, since the gala.”
Her voice box refused to function. J’s mouth opened and shut without a sound.
V leveled a Look at her. “I know you’ve got your weird vendetta against workers, but you’ll come back for this, right? For Tessa?”
Finally, words formed. “Are you sure it’s—it’s really her? It’s not…”
“Uzi used the solver on her. And N said—she just—she feels real. If that makes—”
“Yes. Yes, Cyn didn’t—it didn’t feel like Tessa.”
Flexing her wings impatiently, V asked, “So? Will you come?”
J nodded jerkily.
When she didn’t otherwise move, V rolled her eyes, snatched her hand, and bodily dragged J into the air with her. Snapping out of it, J unfolded her wings to fly for herself, and then they streaked through the night sky like a pair of comets.
She followed V’s lead when they arrived at the colony’s shelter, doors wide open, and kept flying even into the narrow halls. They were too precise to hit anything.
V skidded to a stop before a door that looked no different from any other lining that corridor. Her core ached as she realized V probably hadn’t even seen Tessa yet. She’d come to get J first.
Uzi was just inside the apartment, clutching a steaming mug of oil. She eyed them, but didn’t comment on their explosive entrance. “They’re in the bedroom,” she said, jerking her thumb behind her.
Miraculously, they managed to avoid pushing and shoving each other in their mad dash for the door, where they both screeched to a halt.
Sitting in the middle of a large bed, N looked up at them with a small smile. Curled against his chest, in an incredibly similar spacesuit to the one Cyn had used, was Tessa. Her helmet was off, and there was no visor replacing her green eyes. No rips in her flesh. No sense of wrongness.
Tessa twisted to look over at the door, and the gut-punched cry she released snapped both of them back into motion. V shot onto the bed, J not even a step behind. The four of them ended up in a tangle of bodies and limbs, Tessa caught in the middle.
(Gentle, J reminded herself. Gentle. She was so much stronger than she used to be as a worker, and Tessa was only human. There was no eldritch, regenerating, super-powered monster hiding in her skin.)
“Oh god,” Tessa was babbling, trying to get her arms around their necks. “You’re here, you’re okay. I looked for so long, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.”
“You’re alive,” V choked.
“Tessa,” J said, simply for the joy of being able to say her name without it being soaked in grief for once.
“I’m so glad you’re all right,” Tessa said, knocking her head against theirs. “I can’t tell you how worried I was.”
I thought you were dead, J thought, borderline hysterical. She squeezed her eyes shut and buried herself into Tessa’s side. It felt odd; the last time she’d done it, she’d been smaller than Tessa. I mourned you, I grieved you. “I missed you,” she croaked.
Tessa let out a wordless sound of pain. “I missed you too, J. All of you. So so much.”
“You found us,” N said, hanging back as the three of them pressed ever-closer. “You found us, Tessa.” He rubbed her back.
She hiccuped, eyes shiny with tears. “I’m scared I’ll wake up,” she admitted. “Wake up all alone in my dinky little ship, still looking.”
J’s core clenched. “Never again,” she swore.
V nodded. “You’re stuck with us now.”
With a watery laugh, Tessa sagged. “Promise?”
“Promise,” all three of them said.
V was the one who reached past Tessa and made a grabby hand at N. Catching on, Tessa threw a pleading look over her shoulder. J didn’t protest, and so N let himself be pulled back into the hug. He started purring immediately, and V was quick to join. J—couldn’t remember the last time she purred. Hers was quieter than theirs when she started, and a bit rusty, but Tessa didn’t seem to mind.
She sighed contentedly, caught between the three of them, and they stayed like that for a while as her tears ran their course.
Tessa eventually sat up and wiped her cheeks. “Enough sadness,” she declared. “Let me look at you, you’re all so different.”
She looked between V and J with a fond, if bittersweet, smile. “You’re all still matching,” she said, tugging gently at a lock of V’s silvery-white hair. “Love the scarf, V.”
“It was a gift,” she mumbled, fiddling with the end. J eyed it. It was the same dark red shade from some of the younger worker drones’ matching outfits.
“You’re rockin’ that new eye color, J,” Tessa said. “It suits you!”
She coughed to mask the staticky bleat her voice box involuntarily made. She’d agreed to let Uzi change her eyes and accent lights not long after the final fight, mostly because she couldn’t stop jumping at her own reflection. The yellow just had to go.
And oh god, she’d replaced it with a green that was a perfect match for Tessa’s eye color. Purposefully.
“Thanks,” she squeaked.
V snickered. Like N, she had opted to return to her old white eyes until she decided on a more fitting color.
“Are you happy?” Tessa asked desperately, taking one of their hands each. “In general, in these bodies, on this planet—anything, just. Are you happy?”
“Yeah,” V said after a quick moment’s thought. “The nerds around here aren’t too bad. Things have been… pretty good since we dealt with the Solver.”
J shrugged. “It could be worse. I’m happy now, though.”
Tessa gave her a heartbroken sort of smile.
“I have a girlfriend,” N said.
“We know, N,” V said.
“I’m super happy!”
Tessa giggled and leaned back into his chest. “I’m so happy for you, N. Now. Can someone please explain what I missed? With Cyn and you three and this ‘Solver’ thing?”
“It’s… kind of a long story,” N said. “Especially since we all, uh, went through different things for part of it.”
“It sucked,” V said plainly. “Just something to keep in mind if we do tell you everything. Like, it was absolute hell.”
J gripped her hands tightly together. “I… did things I’m not… exactly proud of,” she admitted. She’d had a lot of time alone with her thoughts while working on the spaceship. Given how things ended… yeah, she could admit she’d made mistakes. But she’d been doing her best with what she had to work with.
Tessa examined each of them, one after the other. “I want to know,” she said quietly. “If you’re willing to tell me, I want to know. All of it, from the beginning.”
V and J glanced at each other, uncertain. J knew that there were few things V actively felt guilty about, but her treatment of N in the pre-Uzi years was one of them. And J’s own feelings about N were complicated, but at the very least, she knew it would upset Tessa to hear of how much worse she’d gotten toward him.
Her core shrank inward. Their shared silence, though, didn’t have a chance to turn truly guilty.
“There’s not much to tell about the beginning. Nothing that matters now,” N said. As if those hadn’t been probably some of the worst, loneliest years of his life. “The important part started when I met Uzi. She blasted me in the head and gave me memory issues for long enough to make me consider being rebellious!”
Tessa snorted. “I almost wish I could’ve seen that.”
“I wasn’t very good at it,” he admitted. “I guess it’s also important to know that Cyn and the Solver were, like, the same. And she sent us here to kill workers.”
“Doomed us to,” V added. “We would overheat and die if we didn’t.”
“You’re forgetting to mention the memory wipes she gave us,” J said, crossing her arms. “Our brains were pretty scrambled. Some worse than others.” She raised a pointed eyebrow at N.
Tessa drooped. “That sounds… well. I guess you did warn me that this isn’t a happy story.”
“Not right away,” N said, ducking his head to give her a little smile. “But keep in mind—it’s got, if not a happy ending, than at least a really hopeful one.”
• • •
Uzi looked up at the sound of the bedroom door clicking closed. N stepped away silently, and she could guess the other three had all conked out. She’d leaned up to the door a while ago to hear that they were just getting to the part where Uzi, N, and V found Cyn and J on the lake.
He offered her a weak smile. Getting up from the couch, she followed him to the kitchen and watched him pour himself a drink.
“So. How’d she take it?” she asked, staying quiet.
N fiddled with his mug. His eyes were lined when he turned to face her. “Not… great. I think she blames herself for a lot of it. For not being able to save us, sure, but. For bringing Cyn to the manor in the first place.”
Uzi winced.
“How’d the talk with your parents go?” he asked before practically tossing back the rest of his oil in one go.
“I can’t say anyone’s thrilled to have a human running around the planet again, even though she’s clear of being an eldritch monster in disguise. But I can be very convincing.” She grinned widely, baring her fangs.
N giggled and set his mug aside. Stepping away from the counter, he wrapped his arms around her, linking his hands behind her back. “You’re the best, Uzi.”
“Sap. But yeah, so long as she doesn’t try to order anyone around or start eating us, Tessa can stay.” She threaded her arms around his waist.
He hummed and started swaying them gently. “I think she can manage that,” he teased.
Uzi snorted. For a few minutes, they stayed quiet, both lost in thought, as N kept them rhythmically rocking from side to side. His tail not-so-sneakily wrapped around them.
“I feel kinda bad for treating her like Cyn,” Uzi admitted. “And triggering a panic attack.”
N hugged her closer. “You couldn’t have known. She’s all right now, and when we were talking, she said it was really sweet that you were so protective of me.”
Hiding her visor against his chest, Uzi groaned good-naturedly. “She mentioned that?”
“Yep! Seriously, don’t feel bad. I’m sure she’ll get her revenge when she gives you a shovel talk.”
“Wha—I already got one from V!”
“And I got one from both of your parents! Your mom’s terrifying all on her own, but have you seen your dad with your railgun?” He shivered. “If he’d remembered not to show that he’s actually kinda fond of me now, it would’ve been so scary.”
Uzi laughed helplessly. “Sounds about right. Fine, I’ll let your human give me a shovel talk.” She opened, then closed her mouth, unsure how to nicely say I love you and I’m glad your old friend is alive and not a murdered skin suit, but she is not living with us. They’d gotten their own apartment away from her parents for a reason.
Luckily, N beat her to it. “She was already having trouble staying awake, so I think our bed’s forfeit for tonight.” He shifted, and she knew he wanted to return to the human and two drones currently occupying their bedroom. “Sorry about that. But I think this is gonna be the thing that convinces J to stick around—V mentioned the three of them sharing a place together.”
She tilted her head back—though not that far! She wasn’t short! He was just freakishly tall. “You look happy.”
And he really did. She’d been there for a lot of N’s smiles over the year of knowing him, but there was something peacefully content in his expression now that she’d never seen before.
“I am,” he said simply, leaning down to rest their foreheads together. “My family’s as complete as it can be.” Even in his contentment, there was the slightest tinge of bittersweetness.
Cyn would always be a hole in his core, a question he’d probably never get the answer to. Had any of it been real? Should he be mourning the little sister he lost or letting go of the little sister he never really had?
“A year ago, I never could’ve imagined any of this,” he whispered. “Not even in my wildest dreams.”
And Uzi understood that so well. She got her mom back, and her dad wasn’t the worst anymore, and she had an amazing boyfriend. Even forgetting all the rest—the epic powers, saving the planet, the restoration efforts, and finally almost being done with school—Uzi had gained more than she could have ever hoped for.
“Same,” she muttered.
He snorted. “Such sappiness.”
“Bite me, I—”
“Mm, maybe later,” he purred.
Her visor burned. “You—! You’re not allowed to be smooth when our bed isn’t available!”
N laughed, straightening up. “Yes, dear.” He glanced in the direction of their bedroom.
“Go on,” Uzi said, nudging him. “I know you’re probably whimpering on the inside about being separated from them for even a minute.”
He smiled guiltily but snagged her hand before she could fully back away. “Only if you come with me.”
“I doubt anyone in that room is interested in cuddling with me of all drones.”
“I will be, as soon as I’m in that room.” He gave her his best puppy-dog eyes, which she was disgustingly weak for and he knew it, the menace.
“Fine,” she caved. “But if J makes any comments, I’m kicking her off the bed.”