Chapter Text
"Do you ever stop to think maybe she’s just *guessing* out there?”
The echo of Tox’s voice bounced off the rusted beams of the abandoned warehouse. He kept walking, his neon-green soles pulsing faintly with each step.
Drill trudged a few paces ahead, rifle slung over his shoulder, peg-leg clanking softly against the concrete.
“Zip it,” he muttered. “I don’t like takin’ orders from that sow any more than you do. But she’s the best thing to a leader we got.”
Tox scoffed through the muffled filters of his mask. “Leader? You don’t even like her.”
Drill turned his head, one gold-tinted eye catching the warehouse light. “Doesn’t matter. She needs me. I need her. That’s how it works.”
Tox let out a low, synthesized chuckle. “Sounds like dependency to me. You could both use therapy. Oh wait—there’s no clinics left, are there?”
Drill stopped to check a corner. “You done?”
“Not even close.” Tox’s tone curdled, his voice cool and distant. “You think she’s leading us to some grand future? Look around you. The world runs on factories and flesh. Abe’s goons are out there tearing down what little structure’s left. He’s got everyone chasing this ‘liberation’ dream while the rest of us starve in the ruins.”
Drill huffed. “You talk like one of those fucked up boardroom jack-offs.”
“What’s so bad about talking sense?” Tox asked. “Someone around here has to understand how things work. Progress doesn’t build itself.”
Drill froze mid-stride. His hand tightened around his rifle. “You talk like a Vykker, Tox.”
The word hung heavy in the air.
Tox laughed, soft and cutting. “And what if I do? Maybe they’ve got a point or two. At least they make things. At least they think.”
Drill slowly turned to face him, the warehouse lights catching the rough metal seams of his prosthetic leg. His tone dropped low.
“You forget what you are, huh?”
Tox tilted his head, feathers glinting pink under the flicker of a broken light above. “Are you trying to compare us?”
“We are the same,” Drill says.
Tox’s voice hissed through the respirator. “We’re nothing alike.”
Before the next word could escape, Drill’s paw snapped forward, grabbing Tox by his feathers and yanking him backward. The latex suit squeaked as Tox hit the wall with a dull thud. The muzzle of Drill’s rifle rose, stopping inches from the center of Tox’s chest.
“Watch your fucking mouth,” Drill growls.
Tox’s breathing hummed softly behind his mask. “You gonna shoot me, soldier boy?”
Drill hesitated—then lowered the rifle slightly. “Let me remind you of somethin’.”
The silence stretched long enough for the wind to moan through the broken ceiling.
“You remember Las Fegas,” Drill says quietly. “Last year.”
Tox’s fingers twitched. “Of course I do.”
Drill stepped closer, voice trembling with restrained fury. “Picture it again. That Glukkon, goin’ off the rails. Sligs gunnin’ down every Mud they could see—maintenance, cooks, janitors. Didn’t matter who.”
Tox’s lenses flickered with faint reflected light. “I remember. What does it have to do with-"
“Now tell me,” Drill continues, “you think he’d have stopped to ask what side you were on? You think he’d care if you were pro-industry? You think he’d say, ‘Oh, don’t shoot this one, he’s clever, he gets it’?”
The question hung like smoke. The only sound was the soft hum of Tox’s suit.
He didn’t answer.
Drill lowered his rifle all the way, the barrel scraping faintly against the floor. “They don’t care what you think. You’re still a Mudokon to them. You're a dirty ugly smelly shit scrubbing scum of a Mud, just like me.”
Tox’s eyes narrowed behind the mask. He wanted to retort, to say something cruel, clever, above it all. But nothing came out.
Drill turned and walked away, his footsteps echoing across the empty warehouse. “If you wanna serve the same system that built your cage then go ahead. Just don’t expect me to salute it.”
Tox stayed by the wall, the neon under his boots fading in slow pulses.