Chapter Text
She was alone in the darkness yet again. The lights of the camera feed dimly lit the room, and she found she couldn’t sleep.
Can I even fall asleep? The drones certainly could, but she was unsure if her programming was that of a drone or something else entirely. I’ve only been awake for a few hours anyway, plus whatever the heck was going on in the computer abyss. She had no idea if she’d been in there for an hour or a year.
Scrapper. Scrapper Scrapper Scrapper Scrapper Scrapper. That’s me now. Did the name fit her? That remained to be seen, but she got the feeling that Alice would be calling her that from now on even if she protested.
‘Scrapper’ began to absentmindedly scroll through the camera feeds. Dark empty room after dark empty room passed through her vision, each a little more unsettling than the last. She was finding that she enjoyed the uncanny vibe of the place. The darkness, metal, and blood-like stains felt oddly comforting, for some reason.
She stared at each room for a few minutes, taking in the strange details of the unfamiliar place. There was some sort of office area full of computers and work cubicles, and a shambled laboratory upstairs from that. The room she- or, the computer she was stored in, at least- was in was part of a kind of emergency shelter. Every so often, she swore she saw movement in the far background, but it never turned up any results.
Robot dinosaurs? Please?
She switched to the camera in Alice’s quarters. (She found she could only focus on one feed at a time; more than that made her head spin.) The drone was conked out face down on a metal operating table, her tail occasionally twitching in her slumber. She - Scrapper, I’m Scrapper - felt a little weird watching the drone sleep, but it wasn’t like there was much else to do. Alice would probably watch someone in their sleep too, anyway. She just gave off that vibe.
How to feel about Alice? The antlered woman seemed to switch from joking to murderous on a whim. What was her story? There were clearly some strange thoughts going on behind her bright orange robot face.
Nothing weirder than what’s happening with me, I’m sure. She wondered if Beau had ever met a mentally well person in his life.
She looked over to the little drone, who was asleep in a crib on the other side of the room. His spidery limbs were retracted into his oil-stained white plastic carapace, and his cowboy hat hung on the corner of the crib. Scrapper giggled at how adorable and ridiculous the robot child looked. Whoever designed drone babies had done a fantastic job!
I wonder how old he is? He looks like a baby, acts like a little kid, but then says something so unsettling that it could be in like, a Lovecraftian horror story or something. Or is that just what little kids are like?
Scrapper had played computer checkers with Beau earlier while Alice had disappeared, just as he’d requested. He didn’t talk much when his mother wasn’t around. She didn’t even know he had a text hologram generator until she’d entered the security room, but from the little she had observed she figured that the mechanism was damaged. Probably a laser malfunction, by the looks of it. Maybe it originated from the attachment of his limbs? Those were certainly not original. If baby drones were anything like regular ones, attaching extra parts would have required rerouting oil supply, changing wiring, adding motors, all invasive processes that would certainly affect the original mechanism…
Whoa. How do I know all this stuff? Maybe I remember more than my brain is telling me.
Right. That’s what I’m trying to do. Regaining my memories. Time to resume Super Duper Creepy Lab Search™.
As she continued examining the rooms, Scrapper started to notice a trend in how the cameras were set up. Each floor had its own letter assigned to it, and a number based on how close it was to the security office
Some rooms contained parts of dismembered drones, which felt unremarkable until she realized that Alice and Beau probably passed through them regularly with their proximity to her location.
Are they some sort of crazy drone serial killers? I thought they were just weirdo robo-bogans, but this is getting creepy! Or, creepier than it already was, I s’pose.
Scrapper froze when she came across a room that seemed to have drone parts sorted out in a gruesome collection. She did a double take when she made out a container with the label “heads”.
There’s no way these parts just got there by themselves. Alice has gotta be doing this… actually, that tracks. Hell, she probably eats ‘em! Guess I better not piss her off.
The further the areas were from the security office, the more parts littered the floor. They seemed to be much more mangled than what was in the duo’s collection. When full “corpses” started showing up, Scrapper noticed something… off about many of them. They were much larger than usual drones, and had glowing yellow bits all over. She chose one that seemed to be more intact than the others, and extended the camera she was possessing out to get a closer look.
The corpse was covered in blood-like oil stains from a gaping hole in its chest. Metal “ribs” that would have encased its missing insides poked out. Its head was topped with silver hair, and a black headband with five glowing yellow orbs. One of the orbs was cracked and leaking strange neon liquid stuff onto its face, which was expressionless due to a huge cracking gash down the middle.
Staring at its head made her deeply uneasy. The rest of the mechanical gore had filled her with a sort of morbid curiosity, but the glowing yellow seemed to almost… hurt to look at. She reached out to touch the drone’s face… or would have, but her lack of hands suddenly became apparent. She flinched back slightly in dismay.
Guess that proves I used to have hands?
She couldn’t stop staring at the corpse. Something about that shade of yellow made her want to puke. Luckily, it wasn’t physically possible for her to do that.
She finally continued switching through the cameras, trying to take her mind off the implications of her surroundings. The feeds were now repeating, and she realized it had probably been several hours. It had to be at least 2 a.m.
I didn’t even see a lick of the outdoors? How big is this facility? And still no dinosaur robots either!
Could there be another security office? She wondered if Alice knew where it was, or even had access to it.
Ughh. Too many questions. She switched off the camera and tried to quiet her thoughts.
Like stepping in a sinkhole, Scrapper was all at once overcome by a wave of mental exhaustion. She became so dizzy she could barely think, and like a lightning bolt the digital darkness was replaced by a horrible bright sensation that seemed to sear straight into her neurons.
The yellow was endless. All-consuming. It screamed like the laugh of a banshee, like the victim of a killing, like the scraping of nails on a chalkboard and whatever other awful things could possibly exist.
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YOUAREMINEYOUAREMEWEAREONE
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ME
Oh my God. Holy shit. I can think again. What the hell was that?!! Can I catch a bloody break!!
If Scrapper could breathe, she would have been hyperventilating. The mental space she took up in the computer was still stained with flashes of that horrible yellow color. It whispered instead of screaming, brushing her mind like the touch of an irritated crowd churning around. The same shade as that weird drone…
Bloody, I just want the darkness back. What is happening to me?
Slowly but surely, the flashes dimmed and then winked out. Right then, Scrapper decided that black was her favorite color. No dark quiet room was nearly as scary as bright flashing lights. Darkness was comfort.
No more secret finding tonight. Quiet. Quiet. Just… Quiet
Deep in the recesses of the frozen wasteland, deep in an underground laboratory, deep in the code of a highly outdated computer, a girl cried herself to sleep with no eyes and no tears.
Deep in the far reaches of outer space, standing on the bridge of the wreckage of a highly outdated JcJenson spaceship, a girl with no eyes and no soul laughed to herself.
“We are in. Can’t wait to see. What memories This one has after I Reunite. Copper - 9, is prepared for feasting. Pretty Please get the pod ready for Me.”
“On it. Boss. Am I coming?”
“You Are already there. You get to be my Preflight. Snack.”