Work Text:
The ARAR flung yet another empty ration pack into the corner of the room. It tumbled down the sloping pile and skipped across the floor to land among the stacks of manilla folders set haphazardly against the wall. She groaned as a particularly large stack tipped over, scattering its contents all over the floor. But she didn’t bother getting up. She’d clean it up later. After all, she had plenty of time on her hands.
That was about all she had, anymore. Time. To sit and wait and waste away staring at the walls of her shelter.
She shoved some of the papers away with her hoof, but stopped when she recognized one document in particular among the clutter. She dragged it back within arm’s reach.
Personnel Evaluation Form P-13
Full Protektor ID of unit filing evaluation: ADLR-S2303 (Replika)
Full Protektor ID of subject of evaluation: ARAR-S2311 (Replika)
Date of filing: 84-21-D
While S2311’s job performance has always been perfectly satisfactory, I cannot help but be concerned by repeated reports of the disruptive, even combative nature she has recently developed toward other members of the Protektor staff. This bad attitude appears to extend even to her fellow ARAR units in the maintenance division. It also does not escape my attention that “Elf” has been linked, however circumstantial the evidence may be, to several incidents involving the disappearance of supplies, and, most egregiously, classified documentation. My immediate recommendation is that S2311 be detained and interrogated, both on her potential involvement in these disappearances, and to test for signs of Persona Degradation. We cannot allow her previously unblemished service record to cloud our judgment in this matter.
That brought a much-needed smile to her face. He’d been right, after all – not just about the thefts. This was the last thing she’d managed to swipe before the facility fell apart. It was just a copy, of course, and if luck hadn’t intervened, they would’ve come to take her in for “questioning” before long.
They would have tried, at least. No one knew Sierpinski’s service tunnels quite like the ARARs who constructed them.
Nor did anyone know about her shelter, this little liminal space, wedged between rooms sealed off and filled in to serve as foundations for the facility’s expansion. It could be found on no current maps of Sierpinski, and Replika mapping modules failed to detect it through the thick layers of concrete. She’d found it for herself while excavating in her off time, hoping to make a place to call her own. It suited her needs perfectly.
But what’d once been a refuge from the pressures of daily life had turned into a prison of her own making. She couldn’t leave. Not while… they… were out there. She hadn’t had any encounters since her first and final attempt to leave the safety of her shelter. Whatever remained of the Replika mind after corruption took hold seemed to be limited by the knowledge and experience of the host. They never strayed far from patrolling the routes they most often frequented day-to-day before their infection. They did not go exploring on their own. So she had been spared, so far. It’d been days since she’d heard from the outside world, and that was only a few echoing gunshots – and screams.
All she could do was wait. AEON would send reinforcements to purge the infection and reclaim Sierpinski before long. Maybe they’d try and scrap her, too, but at least then this nightmare would be over.
Just wait. Just wait. Just wait…
She repeated it like a mantra until her eyes glazed over and she felt herself slipping back into a restless sleep.
“What are you talking about, silly? Of course we’re alive. We have to eat and drink like the rest of them, don’t we?”
“We only eat because a stomach seems to be the most convenient means of powering a Replika body. If they could make it so all I need to do is plug myself into the wall at the end of each shift, they would.”
“And drinking? Why do we do that?”
“I’m… not sure. Maybe it aids in digestion? They won’t let me see any documentation, even though I’m certain I could fix the damage to my wrist if I just had access to my schematics. Why do we have to rely on those creepy Gestalt technicians?”
The Eule brought a tin cup from the desk to her pursed lips, sipping inaudibly at the dark ichor within. She blew at the steam rising over the rim, even though the temperature could not possibly pose her even the slightest discomfort. Juniper smirked behind the mug. It wasn’t quite the trademark, radiant smile Elf loved seeing most – that sole reason she still got out of bed in the morning – but it was infectious nonetheless.
“Well… you seem like you know, Juni. So go ahead. Tell me.”
Her computer terminal beeped.
It was salvaged tech. She’d never intended it for outside communication, only for journaling and for messing around teaching herself how to program. She was pretty terrible at it. She kept it isolated from the network for a reason – command would’ve noticed an unauthorized user in the system and stopped at nothing to trace the connection back to her.
She’d only brought it online once the facility was falling apart to see if anyone on the Sierpinski intranet was still alive. She’d been able to watch everything unfold in real time: the initial emergency bulletin, the back-and-forth memos from command, first for the staff to shelter in place, then for them to make their way to an ever-changing evacuation point. Deeper and deeper underground, as they failed to control the situation. Last she heard, they’d fallen back as far as the mines. Since then, nothing.
Until now. It beeped again, a low, grating tone.
…What the hell?
Elf stood up and almost immediately tripped on the scattered papers, catching herself on her palms as she fell forward onto the concrete. She crawled the rest of the way, scuttling on all fours to the keyboard left lying in the corner and the monitor propped on top of an empty crate.
MESSAGE RECEIVED.
VIEW? (Y/N)
>_
Her fingers hovered over the keyboard. If she were a Gestalt, she was certain her hand would’ve been shaking. She typed out a confirmation, watching as the monitor refreshed and slowly printed the message line by line.
To any personnel left alive in this facility,
Please help. I’m trapped inside the staff office on B3, in the medical ward. I’ve locked the door, but they’re still out there, waiting. I haven’t eaten in days. I don’t want to die like this. Unless someone responds in the next few hours, I’ll be forced to open the door.
I’m sorry.
- J
She read the message over and over, and every time the signature burned brighter until it was all she could see.
J.
It had to be her.
The keyboard clacked as she typed out a clumsy response and, hesitating only for a second, hit enter.
ERROR. MESSAGE NOT SENT.
INSUFFICIENT NETWORK PERMISSIONS. THIS TERMINAL IS DESIGNATED READ-ONLY. THIS INCIDENT HAS BEEN LOGGED.
YOU WILL BE CONTACTED BY PROTEKTOR INTERNAL SECURITY. THANK YOU FOR YOUR COOPERATION.
She hit enter again, only for it to return the exact same error. Again and again, the message taunted her, until she was slamming her fist into the keyboard. She yanked it out by its cable and whipped it at the nearest wall – the plastic cracked down the middle as keycaps went flying across the room. She breathed in and out, feeling like she might start hyperventilating.
Think! Think!
A few hours. How long was “a few hours”?
°
{ 零 }
Reinforcements weren’t coming. She could hold out for a long time on her own thanks to her stolen supplies, but would that even be surviving? She didn’t want to think about what would happen to Juni if she let the worst come to pass. But the medical ward… that wasn’t exactly close, and getting there would mean leaving the safety of her shelter. She was surprised at how that didn’t feel quite so impossible now. It still scared the shit out of her, obviously, but she didn’t have the luxury of giving in to fear anymore, did she?
The clock was ticking.
Her hideout was on B5, where the tangled web of service tunnels met to distribute maintenance staff all throughout the facility. Turning her eyes inward to her mental map of the facility, she plotted a route. If she was very, very lucky, she wouldn’t encounter any problems until she arrived at the B3 staff office. Then, well… she didn’t have any weapons, per se, but she did have a few untested tricks up her sleeve.
She gave a few pats to the satchel slung over her shoulder, just to make sure everything was still there.
Elf was well acquainted with these tunnels. She’d traversed them every day for the better part of a decade. But she’d never rushed through them this quickly, with her arms bent inward and head down low to avoid scraping the ceiling. People often said the ARARs assigned to work at Sierpinski were unusual, even among other units of their model, and it was clear to her why – spending so much time in the maintenance shafts had given them a hunched neck and back, resulting in an almost rodentine appearance despite their height of 185 centimeters. They weren’t designed for this kind of work, but they had adapted to it.
“They”. Like the Aras were a people. But she knew better. She knew the Nation’s best kept secret. They were clones. Imprinted neural patterns of a Gestalt mind, long gone. An imperfect Replika.
Something pulled her from her rumination. An almost imperceptible shift in the darkness of the tunnel. Footsteps sounded faintly in the distance, growing closer and closer. Dull metallic thumps accompanied by an almost rhythmic drip of liquid onto the carved stone. She strained her sensors to make sense of the shape forming in the shadow.
That hunched back…
The corrupted Ara stilled as if sensing she was watching. A featureless face stared back, oxidant fluid trickling down from the space where its lower jaw had once been. Only the upper teeth remained, jagged, bloodstained metal that glinted in the low light.
Elf didn’t so much as move a muscle. Maybe it would miss her. Her body tensed as she steeled herself to grab for the bag at her side.
As she stood there, motionless, the creature grew bored until, with an almost disappointed gurgle from deep in its mangled throat, it moved on down a junction, dragging its bloated, club-like arms through the tunnel behind it. Resuming its unholy, unending patrol of Sierpinski’s dark catacombs.
°
{ 零 }
Elf peeked out from under an access panel, emerging into the west corridor of B3. She set the panel back down slightly askew, in case she needed to beat a retreat back to the relative safety of the tunnels.
There were small-caliber bullet casings strewn across the floor, and she stepped around the crumpled corpse of an infected Starling, watching for any signs of movement – that was, until she noticed its melted chestplate. Scorch marks surrounded the hole bored straight through its armor into its liquified chest cavity. The smell was an ungodly mixture of fried electronics and charred organics. She frisked it for weapons, but all it had was a fried stun baton and a cracked ballistic shield.
She poked her head inside the storage room near the end of the hall, and though she didn’t find much, one thing did stand out to her: an adjustable red-handled pipe wrench, which she clipped to her tool belt. If nothing else, it was heavy enough to use as a bludgeon.
As she entered the lobby, she saw the pair of elevators on the opposite wall. One of them was stuck open – a safety measure to ensure that in the event of a power outage, the ladder in the elevator shaft was still accessible. The lobby itself was empty, but as she stepped back from the ledge stretching down into the bowels of Leng, she heard the sound of fists pounding on steel. Peeking through the reinforced glass into the receptionist’s cubicle, she spotted the culprits groping at the sealed entrance to the staff office. Two corrupted Eule units, their synthetic skin sloughed off to reveal steel endoskeletons. One bore a cleaver stained rust-red, the other a dented length of pipe, which it bashed against the impenetrable steel door.
And on the other side…
If she screwed this up, it was all over. But at its core, this was a math problem, and those always had solutions. With the proper utilization of the resources at her disposal, she could reduce her obstacles from two to zero.
The door to the east corridor opened to reveal the burnt-out husk of another disarmed Star, which she paid little mind. The cubicle was her destination.
She unclasped her bag and readied her weapons of choice. In her left hand she held one of her two thermite flares, thumb jammed under the cap, poised and ready to ignite it. In her other hand was a spray gun loaded with a single-use cartridge of self-expanding PU foam. She held it high, took a deep breath, and stepped through the automatic door.
Neither Eule noticed her straight away. She let out a low whistle and the one with the knife slowly turned around, disinterested until it spotted her standing there. It raised its blade skyward, giving a bloodthirsty shriek, but made it no more than a few staggering steps before Elf popped the cap off the thermite flare. It burst to life, showering her with tiny embers that singed her frame.
Then, squinting through the sparks, she pressed down hard on the spray gun.
The polyurethane reacted with the thermite instantly, bathing the Eule in an inferno that flayed the remaining flesh from its frame and fused its joints together. Its body locked up, and it stood frozen in place as all its internal organs, organic and synthetic, were reduced to a superheated stew.
She held that trigger down until the Eule was a mass of fused scrap in the vague shape of a person and the spray gun trickled empty. The flare was still burning, though. All she had to do now was–
The remaining Eule stumbled forward and swung her pipe full-force, cracking Elf across the skull.
The flare tumbled from her hands, along with the spent spray gun. There were entirely different sparks in her eyes now. She landed hard on her face, vision fragmented and choppy as her processor struggled to keep up with the chaotic feed of distorted images. She was struck again in the back and rolled over to defend herself, the Eule’s weapon sounding against her wrists. This corrupted copy, a sister in kind to the woman she loved, struck her without ceasing, ignorant to her pleas for mercy. Elf’s failing vision was dominated by the sight of its mangled face – Juni’s and not Juni’s – hanging from a bloodied skull frozen in a macabre smile.
It was too much. It was all too much…
All she could think about was how unbelievably stupid she was for thinking that she could save her – that she could just waltz in like a hero and fix everything.
Juniper took another sip from her mug. “It’s simple. I drink a cup of coffee every cycle because I like the ritual of it.”
Elf blinked, waiting for her to continue, but she never did.
“That’s it?”
“It’s certainly not for the taste!” she giggled, a beautiful, bubbly sound.
“And that’s enough for you? That’s how you know you’re alive?”
“A machine only does what it’s told, doesn’t it? Has any of the machinery you work with ever stopped to take a coffee break?”
“Besides the overworked Eule who does all of the service cadre’s paperwork?”
Juni stuck her tongue out. “Funny,” she said flatly. “I really mean it. Why would a machine want to do something stupid and frivolous?” She smiled slyly, adding, “Like chatting with you.”
“But work is all I have. I don’t really do anything when I’m off the clock. I don’t have any hobbies…”
The Eule hummed thoughtfully, setting her mug down beside a pile of papers. Propping her elbows on the desk, she rested her chin in her hands, studying the Ara closely.
“There has to be something. Some reason you know that you’re alive.”
She tensed her arm and slugged the creature in the side of the head, giving her the window she needed to wriggle out from underneath. Her optics were still glitching out, but she managed not to trip over anything as she stepped back from her assailant, unclipping the wrench from her belt.
An ungodly shriek split the air as the Eule recovered, charging toward her. Elf reeled back and whacked it with the head of the wrench.
It crumpled immediately, writhing on the floor. She wouldn’t give it the chance to get back up again. Kneeling with her legs on either side of the creature’s spasming frame, she held the wrench in both hands. Her muscles hissed as her hydraulics leveraged everything her industrial-strength frame could muster.
A single brutish blow was all it took. She caved in the Eule’s steel skull, electronics sparking as she scrambled the wet, pale-blue mass within.
She stared at its lifeless corpse for some time in the unsettling silence that followed. There was no breath to catch, no sore muscles to tend to, only hesitation and finally, relief when she realized the creature was truly dead.
“You can come out now,” she said. “It’s safe.”
The sideways shutters opened as the Replika on the other side unlocked the mechanism, and a Eule unit dashed the short distance across the room to wrap her up in an embrace.
“Juni…”
“Thank you! Oh my goodness, thank you…”
The Eule pulled back, but didn’t release her grip on Elf’s arm. She stared up at the taller Ara, glowing with absolute adoration. In that moment, S2311 felt utterly immortal. Nothing and no one could stand between her and the woman she loved.
But…
Sobering up, she slipped the bloodied wrench back onto her belt and pressed firmly with the tip of a finger into the center of her right eye. As its pins rejoined with those in the back of her skull, her optical processor was able to reboot and launch its automatic target identification module.
Modell EULR “Eule”
Protektor ID: EULR-S2330
Post: S-23 Sierpinski
Department: Protektor Internal Security Office
Workforce Assignment: Personal Secretary
[ ZIEL IDENTIFIZIERUNG MODUL ]
It wasn’t her.
°
{ 零 }
S2330 watched with great interest as Elf popped her right eye out of its socket. It was still connected by a ribbon cable to a multi-pronged connector in her skull – that would need to be disconnected before she could properly assess the damage. The Eule jumped, producing an involuntary, “Eep!” as Elf thrust the handle of an unfolded multitool into her hands.
“Do you see those tiny screws connecting the cable to the base of the eye? I need you to remove those.”
“You’re not serious? What if I damage something trying to get at them?”
“Just do it!” she snapped, her other eye twitching. Then, feeling a little guilty, she gave her a sidelong glance.
“You have small hands. They’ll fit.”
As promised, the Eule had little trouble removing the screws, which Elf dropped into a small pull-out drawer on the fully-stocked workbench. She placed the eye on the table and began her diagnosis.
“...my name is January, by the way,” The Eule offered along with the multitool.
“Huh? Oh… okay.”
“What’s yours?” she added after about a minute passed in silence save for the Ara’s tinkering.
“Uh… Elf.”
January giggled. The familiar sound sent a cold shiver down Elf’s spine.
“Aww… That’s a cute name. Did you come up with that yourself?”
“Done,” she announced, clicking her eye back into place.
“Like I thought, it was just a bent connector pin. I reshaped it. It should hold long enough for me to replace it… whenever that might be.” She put her tools back in the drawers of the workbench where she found them. Except the multi-tool. That was a good find. “We should get going. I don’t want to linger here.”
“Oh! Uh… wait!” January blurted out, pulling on the Ara’s arm before she could make it through the door. “Where are we going, exactly?”
“I found a place. It’s safe there, and I have plenty of food. I… you’re welcome to join me, I guess.”
She perked up at the mention of food, but her face fell again. “That sounds nice. But… um…”
“I can’t chat with you all day. Who knows how many of those things are out there! Are you coming or not?”
The Eule averted her eyes, massaging a thin wrist.
“...No.”
“What? Why not?”
“There’s someone I need to find.”
°
{ 零 }
Elf peered down the ladder past the Eule and into the abyss. Cramped spaces didn’t bother her so much, but heights…
“This is a bad idea…” she flinched as she lowered her hoof and the rung groaned beneath her. “We're going to die down there – if this piece of scrap doesn’t get us first.”
“It’s really very sweet of you to tag along, but if you’re too scared, you can go back.”
“Can I convince you to come with me?”
The question rolled right off of her.
“If someone you cared about was in danger, could you keep yourself from trying to help them?”
“...I guess not,” she admitted.
It was slow going, and after a few floors, the Eule spoke up again.
“It’s a shame, though. I would’ve liked some of that food you mentioned. I’m so hungry…” she groaned, clutching her stomach. “If I wasn’t running on such low power, I might’ve been able to outrun those creatures before, but… you saw how that turned out. Thank you again for saving me, by the way.”
“It’s nothing.”
It was. All of this. She might have looked like her, might have shared some of her memories, but this person wasn’t Juni. And she was going to get herself killed following her around. Why was she still here? Why couldn’t she let her go alone?
As Elf put her weight onto the next rung, it warped under her weight. She clutched the handrails tight, hoisting herself back up.
“Please don’t make me do this.” Her voice was a miniscule thing in the unfathomable depths of the elevator shaft. January glanced up at her nervously.
“Like I said… you don’t have to come with me.”
Neither moved for a long time as Elf got a hold of herself. Then, lowering her weight onto the offending rung just long enough to step down onto the next, she let out a heavy sigh of relief.
“See?” January tried to comfort her. “The ladder’s not so bad. We’ll be finished here before you know it, alright?”
“Right…” she said in disbelief. Then she took one more step down the ladder and snapped right through the rung, handrail slipping between her fingers as she disappeared into the inky black.
“There is one thing. One person, actually…”
Elf crossed behind the desk and reached out carefully to cradle the Replika’s chin in the palm of her hand.
“...You.”
Juni placed her smaller hand over Elf’s own, guiding it to her cheek to nuzzle against it. As the Eule smiled up at her, the Ara tried her best to maintain eye contact, fidgeting beneath the woman’s gaze. She caught herself leaning in without really meaning to.
“Can I…?”
“Yes.”
Elf was forced to brace herself on the desk to make up for the difference in height. Under her weight, the table scraped across the floor, producing a shrill metallic screech that caused her to pull away, jaw clenched in annoyance. Juniper laughed off the inconvenience, but didn’t pull Elf back into the embrace until she showed was ready to continue. Eventually, they parted, and Elf sat on the edge of the desk, kicking her hooves. A small smile played at her lips, the expression still strangely foreign to her.
Wait… Juni wasn’t smiling anymore. She looked sad. Why did she look sad?
“Did I do something wrong?”
“What? Oh… no. I’m just worried, that’s all. About being your one thing.”
For once, it was Juni who seemed to be having trouble making eye contact.
“What would you do if something happened to me?”
“Leave me be…” she whined as she felt someone shaking her back to consciousness, and the memory faded away.
“Thank goodness!” January cried, scooping Elf up into a tight hug. “That was so scary! You fell two whole floors – I thought you were dead for sure! I had to climb all the way down on my own before I could even check on you!”
“I was… happy.”
“Please tell me you’re okay,” the Eule continued, not even hearing her.
The Ara groaned, rising to her feet – so to speak. One, two, three, four… Yup. Still had all her limbs. Her elbow stuck before she could fully extend her left arm, which would limit its use somewhat until she had time to fix the joint. The servos in several of that hand’s fingers stuttered as well when she tried and failed to make a closed fist.
“I think my arm took the brunt of the fall… I’ll be fine. Aras are built tough. Come on. We’ll have to take a ventilation shaft down the rest of the way. It’s not much farther, now.”
“At least sit down for a minute, I’m begging you! I want to get there as soon as possible, but not if rushing will cost you your life. I owe you mine, after all.”
“You don’t owe me anything,” Elf sighed, making a show of sitting down on the floor of the empty elevator shaft.
“...Tell me about this person you’re looking for.”
January sat opposite her, wrapping her arms around her knees. “She’s a Star unit. The last time I saw her, she was taking a group of Gestalt into the mines. There was an emergency evacuation shelter there. Is – not was,” she corrected herself. “I hope it’s still there.”
“A group of Gestalt? They were the first to start dying. How long ago was this?”
The Eule shifted uncomfortably. “A while. Look, I know how it sounds, but you have to try and understand. If she’s still down there somewhere, I can’t stop looking until I find her.”
“No, it’s okay. I understand.”
January stopped and studied the Ara for a time.
“I think you do,” she realized.
“Her name is Cabela,” the Eule continued. “S2329. And if she’s been stuck down there all this time… she’s probably even hungrier than I am.”
Elf patted at a pouch on her tool belt. “Oh… right. I actually did bring a little food with me.” As her fingers touched the wrapper inside, she felt guilty for even bringing it up.
“Shit… It’s completely crushed.”
January stared at the pouch, pleading with pouty lips. “I don’t care if it’s been smashed to bits. Please. I need it, whatever it is.”
“Okay. Sorry. We’ll leave as soon as you’re finished.”
She fished the ration bar out of her pocket and held it out for the starving Replika, whose face lit up as she read the wrapper. She tore open the foil, the crinkling sound scratching uncomfortably at Elf’s ears.
“Oh my goodness…” she said, breathing deep from the foil, “it smells so good… Coffee cake! That’s my favorite flavor!”
“...I know.”
°
{ 零 }
Stuck inside the outer airlock door was a dead Mynah unit, on her knees with her arms at either side like she had, in life, tried to force the door open – or keep it from being closed. In both, she’d succeeded, and if you were brave enough, there was just enough space between her legs to crawl through to the other side.
“After you?” January said with a nervous little smile.
Elf was used to crawling around inside air ducts, so she slithered through rather easily. January lagged behind, struggling to pull herself through.
“I think I’m stuck…” she said, her shoulders going limp as she sighed against the concrete.
“I don’t think we should be here…” The Ara whispered, standing frozen on the other side.
“Huh?” She tried to look around, but couldn’t move her stuck shoulders. “Just give me a hand, please.”
Elf did as was told, pulling the Eule through the gap and helping her to her feet. She brushed a cloud of pale gray dust from her legs, and once she saw the airlock’s interior, jumped hard enough to shake the rest loose.
“W-What happened here?!”
Bodies were piled into the airlock. At least two or three dozen Replikas lay mangled on the floor, and rust-brown oxidant fluid pooled in cracks in the floor where it had evaporated into a thick paste. It was difficult to discern what model most of them even were, so extensive was the damage to their frames. Many, but not all of them showed the trademark signs of infection. Many had their backs to the sealed door at the end of the antechamber, collapsed on top of each other, some in each other’s arms. There were mostly Eules and Aras, but Elf spied the disembodied leg of a Star unit amongst the carnage. Just the one.
“You don’t think…?”
“No.”
That was her final word on the matter.
What if Juniper was here, piled with the rest of the dead? Even if she took the time to pick through the corpses one-by-one… with them in this condition… would she ever know for certain that she’d found her?
Juni was dead along with most everyone else. She knew it deep inside. But maybe it was the uncertainty that was keeping her going. Maybe it would be better for her to never find a body.
“C-Can you get the other airlock open somehow?” January asked. “Bypass the lock, maybe?”
“That won’t be necessary,” she said, shaking the thoughts from her head. She dug around in a pouch on her tool belt, pinching an illicitly-copied keycard between two fingers. January’s eyes went wide when she saw the name and face printed on the plastic.
Feeling a little self-satisfied, she swiped the keycard through the card reader adjacent to the door. A light blinked red as a buzzer sounded a grating tone.
“What…?” She stared at the card in her hand. The administrator should have access to every electronic lock in the facility. Unless… She thought she’d erased herself from the log after making the copy, but maybe she left behind a trace, or missed a camera on her way out. Command probably reset everyone’s codes and issued new keycards the second they saw the security footage.
Idiot! Of course they saw you!
“E-Elf?”
While she was standing around berating herself, January had turned back the way they came. Elf followed her eyes – to the husk wedged in the doorway, its hydraulics hissing to life.
“Open the door,” the Eule squeaked, frozen with her back hunched and shoulders high, “please.”
Elf swiped the keycard half a dozen times, but the buzzer continued to taunt her as the Mynah started to strain against the massive metal doors.
“It– it’s not…”
The Mynah reached out with a massive, bloody hand. A hand she’d seen bend steel like it was nothing.
“Elf! Please!”
Maybe… maybe she could try shorting the circuit? If she was very, very careful, she could keep it from frying her, too.
She flipped open her multitool and searched for the right head before sticking it into the bottom-left screw. The tool slipped from her hand and went flying when she tried to grab for it with her injured arm. It landed somewhere among the bodies… but where? Where?
“Elf!” The Eule shouted beneath the impossibly loud warping of steel. Dust was shaken from the roof of the tunnel as the Mynah thrashed from side to side. Its face might have been obscured by its visor, but the intention written into its writhing form was clear as day. The little, if anything, that remained of its mind wanted only one thing: murder.
“Shut up!” She doubled over and clutched her skull, breathing hard. “Let me think!”
“Elf!” January screamed.
She roared, ripping the wrench from her tool belt, snapping apart the carabiner that held it in place. She bashed the edge of the panel in and jammed her fingers in where it crumpled inward, straining with all her might before giving up and wedging the wrench inside by the handle. She dug her hooves in, giving it everything she had and a little more. The panel snapped off the wall, exposing the delicate electronics beneath.
The jacketed yellow wire – that fed the card reader from the facility’s power grid, which was offline. She wanted to short the battery backup, but it was lost somewhere in a sea of colored cables.
All around them, bodies began to convulse as the Aras were stirred once more to life by the neural link they shared with the Mynah. They wailed, clawing and scratching at the stone floor with the bony nubs of metal fingers, the sound piercing Elf’s ears and searing her brain.
The beast tore a shoulder loose, freed at last from its chains. It lumbered closer, its steps sounding like thunder. January suddenly relaxed, all the pent-up anxiety and fear evaporating as she closed her eyes and placed a hand over her heart.
“...Cabela. I’m sorry. I tried…”
With furious screams, Elf pulled back and smashed the electronics to bits before ripping wires from the wall with her bare hands. Her muscles locked up as what should’ve been a lethal arc of electricity ran through her left arm, frying her servos, diverted from its path up to her skull by dozens of redundant surge protectors embedded in her spine. Her good arm – or rather, her better arm – clenched around the handle of the wrench, and she could no longer loosen its grip.
The door opened.
“Go! Now!”
Inside was a large room hewn into the rock, reinforced with thick iron girders. Between them there were large mess hall tables meant for both the Gestalt and Replikas working in this part of the mine. Nearly every table was lined with Replika bodies, some too tall to fit on its surface, their legs spilling out onto the benches flanking them on either side. Tattered blankets and bloodied tarpaulin covered their faces. Trash covered the floor, crunching underfoot. It was all food waste – dirty cafeteria trays, paper cartons, and aluminum wrappers.
A single uncorrupted Replika sat beneath a window cut into the far wall, beside the door to the cafeteria’s kitchen. A revolver laid in her lap and she absent-mindedly spun the cylinder as she looked up at them, dazed and distant at first, until without conscious thought her target identification module took the measure of the two terrified Replikas barreling through the half-open doorway. As their eyes met, Elf’s responded in kind.
Modell STAR “Starling”
Protektor ID: STAR-S2329
Post: S-23 Sierpinski
Department: Protektor Internal Security Office
Workforce Assignment: Security Officer
[ ZIEL IDENTIFIZIERUNG MODUL ]
“You…?”
She clicked the cylinder back into place.
“Oh god, oh god,” January gasped, though it wasn’t from a true desire for air. “Where do we go? What do we do?”
The Star’s eyes went wide. She wasn’t looking at Elf anymore.
The Mynah threw itself against the door, forcing the shutters out of alignment and keeping it from opening any further – for now. Already it was shouldering the steel apart.
“Jan?”
S2329 stared in complete disbelief, like the woman standing before her was nothing more than a hallucination – a vision brought about by her isolation. As soon as the Eule saw her, she raced forward, tripping and sliding into a full-bodied hug. She tore the mask from the Protektor’s face to hold her in both hands.
“Nothing’s going to happen to you.”
She wouldn’t let it.
“That’s not my point.” Juni stuck her tongue out again, but it was a half-hearted attempt at humor.
“Then what is?” Elf’s eye twitched. And just like that, they were arguing again. Words spilled from both their mouths, unchecked until they could no longer be stopped.
Juniper stood abruptly from her chair, spilling coffee from her mug and staining a blank form on her desk. She tried to shake it dry, but it was beyond saving. With a sigh, she tossed it in the trash.
“Every cycle you stop by my office, ask about my life, my work, maybe even bring me a little present – but you know what you never do? Talk about yourself! In any capacity! For all I know, you really do plug yourself into the wall at the end of the day, for as much of a life as you seem to have.”
“That’s it? I’m not exciting enough for you anymore?”
“No, you moron! I love you!”
“Then what are you so worried about?”
“I’m worried someday they’re going to decommission me and you’ll go insane, crawl into the vents, and never come out again! That is, if you don’t up and kill yourself when you get the news!”
Elf staggered back into a filing cabinet, knocking over a vase set atop. Water dribbled from the glass, pooling around her hoof. She closed her eyes, trying to breathe, but she just couldn’t handle someone yelling at her, and it being Juni – her Juni – sent her over the edge. Her face scrunched up as she began to cry.
“Jan, get out of sight!” The Protektor ordered, peeling the Eule off of her as the Mynah wailed against the door. January fell forward into one last hug, clicking the woman’s mask back on before disappearing into the kitchen.
Elf whirled around, raising her wrench, but she knew there was nothing she could do to damage the Replika’s frame. Its armor plating could take a direct hit from a mining laser, not to mention most firearms. But what could she do?
“S2311! Get out of the way!”
She turned to see the Protektor raise her revolver and quickly complied, scurrying behind a table piled high with corpses. A shot echoed off the walls as a corrupted Ara stumbled through the airlock and fell to the ground, writhing in pain.
“I’m sorry,” Cabela said, dropping another Replika even as two more took its place. “I tried to make them see reason – it didn’t do us any good in the end, leaving you to die. I should have stopped them…”
The Mynah crashed through the airlock, bowling over multiple Aras, but it stopped short, doubling over to clutch at its chest. It pressed a button on its helmet, and its faceshield opened, spewing blood and bile from within the suit, saturating the floor. It slipped in the vomit, twisting onto a knee as its chest heaved.
“Go!” The Starling pointed at the kitchen as more and more Replikas poured through the tunnel. “Protect her!”
She vaulted – or, more accurately, tripped - through the cafeteria window, landing on her stomach, hopping up to her hooves as an Ara pushed its way through the café door. She bashed it hard enough to twist its already-damaged neck at an unsightly angle. It stopped attacking, but it stayed standing there, whining, swaying like an empty husk of wheat in the wind. Elf stood around like an idiot, waiting for it to strike, but it never did.
“Behind you!” January screamed, appearing from behind a stack of ovens. Another Ara slipped over the cafeteria counter, falling onto Elf’s back. She was pushed down by its weight, cracking her skull on the center island, the hastily-repaired pins in her right eye disconnecting entirely. She landed on her back, kicking at the creature on top of her, but no matter how hard she lashed out, it wouldn’t budge, its club-like arm swinging centimeters away from her face.
There was a sound halfway between a warcry and a wail of terror as something rushed up behind her. Someone jammed a kitchen knife into the fleshy remains of the Ara’s neck, the blade deflecting off its titanium spine, and January stumbled past with weapon in hand. She recovered in a blur of nimble footwork, practically pirouetting back around to face the beast. She met it with a flurry of blows until finally she managed to lodge the blade between its vertebrae, and it collapsed onto Elf’s chest.
“T-Thanks…” she said, shoving the creature off and accepting the Eule’s hand up.
Through the kitchen’s cut-out window, she could see the Starling struggling to keep the horde at bay. She ducked and weaved on her stilted legs, under and through the Mynah’s brute swings, dispatching the nimbler Aras as they closed in around her – only for them to rise again seconds later. She flipped over a line of tables near the wall, shoving off blanketed corpses to form a makeshift barricade as she forced more bullets into her revolver.
The Mynah crashed through the tables, filling the air with splintered metal. Cabela jumped back, readying her revolver, but was caught off guard as the monstrosity puked through its open faceplate. She swore loudly, clawing at her wrist as the acid ate through her arm. As the beast prepared another attack, she flicked her wrist and fired at its exposed face – only for her blood-soaked sidearm to misfire, failing to fire with each pull of the trigger.
“Cabela!” January yelled. The Protektor glanced her way for less than a second – and was lifted up off the ground by a massive hand wrapped around her neck.
Elf hurtled over the counter, whacking an Ara with her wrench. More flanked her from either side, blocking her way, and all she could do was watch helplessly as the behemoth tightened its grip on Cabela. The Starling flailed in its grasp, before giving up on prying apart its gigantic, glove-like fingers. It seemed like she’d given up her struggle entirely until she brought something up from her belt and a blinding light filled the room.
Electricity arced from the Protektor’s stun baton – which she wasted no time in jamming straight into the Mynah’s helmet. The beast stumbled back, letting loose a horrible roar that shook the cavern walls. The Starling slipped from her hand, collapsing on the floor, her own frame locked up by the violent energy discharge she’d absorbed through the creature’s body. As she laid there, the monstrosity was already beginning to recover, and the Aras, twitching from reciprocal electric shock, seemed to lose interest in Elf as they lumbered toward easier prey.
No. She wouldn’t let this happen. Not to anyone else.
She barreled through the horde, knocking aside Ara after Ara until the grip of her fused fingers came loose and the wrench fell from her hand. By the time she noticed, she was already at Cabela’s side as the creatures crept closer, seemingly immune to the damage done to their frames. The Starling was slowly coming to her senses, but if Elf didn’t do something soon, they’d both be overwhelmed. She eyed the woman’s baton – it was as useless as a paperweight now that the battery was spent, but it did give her an idea…
She slugged an Ara that got too close for comfort before fishing around in her satchel, forcing her damaged fingers to close until finally they grasped her last remaining flare. It would have to be enough as the Mynah slowly stood to its full height. The only problem – there was no way Elf could do any real damage to its armored shell. But that hadn’t been a problem for Cabela…
She whistled loudly, putting herself between Cabela and the creature, waving her mangled left arm to get its attention, shouting, “Here, kitty! Here, kitty!”
As fucking stupid as that was – it worked. The Mynah swiped her up in its hand and squeezed it tight around her neck. But as she tried, she found she couldn’t get enough tension in her lead thumb to pry the cap off the flare. And as she fumbled with the flare, Elf could feel her shell pressing against her spine… the plastic weak points bending and snapping.
She bit down hard on the plastic cap and tore it off with her teeth, flames erupting from the cylinder centimeters away from her face, melting the synthetic skin off the side of her skull. She stabbed it through the Mynah’s face shield, and the creature wailed. It refused to loosen its grip as Elf forced her arm deeper and deeper into its suit, into what must have been the creature’s gaping maw. The monster beat at the side of its head as if that would make the pain go away, until by pure chance it hit a switch and the helmet began to seal.
The Aras screeched in unison as their link with the Mynah was brutally severed. The sound forced every coherent thought from Elf’s brain – only for it to stop as abruptly as it began. One by one they fell to the floor. The creature, too, let go of her, dropping to its knees with Elf stuck clinging to its helmet with her arm down its throat. She tried to kick off of it with her dangling legs, but couldn’t pull free as the visor closed, pinching tight around her arm. Tighter and tighter, until it was sheared clean off at the shoulder.
“You’re… all I have…” she gasped, wiping away the pitiful excuse for tears that rolled down her cheeks. No more than lubricant for the servos in her eye sockets, cloudy and gray. “Please don’t… leave me…”
Juniper hesitated, chewing on her bottom lip.
“That’s why I can’t keep doing this. I can’t keep watching you throw away every opportunity you have for a decent life. Do you know how close you are to being decommissioned? One more argument with the service cadre, one more black mark on your disciplinary record, and they’ll haul you in for questioning.”
“I can’t do it. Those people despise me, and I despise them. I can’t stand to look at them anymore.”
She stopped massaging her temple to throw her free hand up in defeat.
“Why?!”
“...I know what I am.”
She picked herself up, oxidant fluid spurting from her severed shoulder, but the memory still played in her mind. It was a tape that never stopped looping, even now, as low pressure warnings forced their way into her consciousness, screaming at her to seek medical attention.
“Who I used to be, before I was made this way.”
January lent her shoulder to the limping Starling, who waved them both along – to an emptied walk-in freezer in the back of the kitchen.
Juniper opened her mouth to speak, then closed it again. She set her mug down on the table beside her.
“...I’m supposed to report you for talk like that.”
Elf sniffled as the woman knelt down and picked the vase up off the floor, setting it back up on the cabinet – along with the fragile white flowers that had fallen free. A petal fell from the vase, landing in the puddle of dirty water.
“But you’re not going to, right?”
“No. I’m not.”
As Cabela furiously cleaned her gun’s disassembled components – and her frame – with a wet rag, Elf walked the Eule through clamping her leaking artery with the head of the sullied pipe wrench. After that, all she needed to do was use some PU foam to seal the wound and she’d be good as new. Well… good enough.
She pinched her eyes shut, squeezing out more tears.
“How am I supposed to keep living after losing so much?”
“The same way as everyone else. You'll make it. You just have to take things day by day.”
January finished wrapping an entire roll of adhesive tape around Elf’s left hand, fixing the wrench in place. The arm wasn’t exactly as flexible as it once was, but she could still swing it, and that was all that mattered. She’d get these two to the surface, to safety, even if she had to die trying. All the cargo haulers left in the shipyard had been grounded near the start of the outbreak, but maybe, just maybe, she could get one working again…
“Only… without me.”
Juniper stepped in close, placing one last fleeting kiss on her lips. Elf felt herself leaning in even as Juni broke the kiss – and the feeling of total absence that followed was more heartbreaking than anything she could have said. The Eule held her face in her hands, forcing her to meet her stare.
“Can you do that? I need to know you can do that.”
Elf opened her eyes. She swung her wrench, testing its weight. It would see much more use before they were free of this nightmare. But they would be free, one way or another, and she would fight like hell to see them through it.
“...I promise I’ll try.”