Chapter Text
J rebooted and took stock of her situation. The last thing she remembered was the entrance to Cabin Fever Labs, where she had tried to get them to kill her, and apparently only gotten them to take her prisoner.
She was tied to a table. Straps held down her wrists, tight enough to prevent her from retracting her hands and deploying any weapons. Her tail was in a complex knot around something underneath the table. A set of straps identical to those around her wrists held down her ankles. These morons must have only ever captured male disassembly drones before, but J wasn't going to think about that. Not if she wanted to avoid escaping.
Having taken stock of herself, J looked around the room. She was positioned directly underneath the ceiling light, which she assumed was to give their engineers a good look when they got around to taking her apart; it wasn’t like any amount of light would blind a disassembly drone’s optics. Maybe it was security, and could send out a flash like the ones outside? A simple steel chair next to her was the only furnishing. ‘Behind’ her (meaning, in the direction of the crown of her head), the wall held a one-way mirror and a door. The one-way mirror did nothing to stop J’s expanded sensor array; she could tell that three people stood behind it, two staying behind when one opened the door.
It was… probably a man? Not too tall, either short haired or bald, and wearing a long jacket of some sort, maybe a labcoat? Like with all humans, J’s software redacted it into a fuzzy black silhouette. The fact that it only had one white eye was the main distinguishing feature she could see. When it talked, it was with a man’s voice, at least.
“I’m told you can talk, so talk,” he said coldly.
J was, once again, helpless (definitely, completely helpless, with no chance of escape) at the mercy of someone who, at best, disliked her. It was almost comfortable, in a way. A situation that she had been in before, with the Elliots and with the Absolute Solver, and knew how to deal with. Do whatever corporate wants, try to anticipate those desires ahead of time to keep them happy, and don’t let them know what you’re doing or they’ll get upset- or ask for even more.
“I’m Serial Designation J-00X11001, but I mostly go by J” she said. “And what should I call you?”
“I’m the head researcher here, and not falling for that,” the man sneered. “Since you’re talking, let’s start with that. Why are you different from the other murder drones?”
J rolled her eyes internally. Either they hadn’t asked Theresa the right questions, or they hadn’t believed her; either way, for people J was depending on to kill her, it was disappointing. “I’m just built different,” she said.
The man pressed a button on the side of the table J was strapped to, and its surface coursed with electricity for a second. “Elaborate,” he growled.
“Well, I’m not an engineer,” J said. “But I was one of the first disassembly drones made, and unlike most of the other first-gens I was made from a working drone. So maybe that’s it. Or maybe the Solver thought we were friends and my team should keep our personalities, or something.”
Behind the one-way mirror, one of the two observers made notes on a clipboard.
“What are your goals here? Why protect McAllister?” her captor continued.
“My goals were to let the local disassembly drones know about the Solver's destruction, or failing that, starve to death. I helped your janitor out because… I'm not sure, actually.” J hummed. “I guess I figured it was something to do, and I didn't have any achievable goals.”
“The Solver was destroyed? How?”
“It got in a fight, it lost,” J said. “I took the opportunity to leave when I saw it was losing the fight, so I don't know precisely what killed it.”
The man stared at her, his expression unreadably invisible. “If it’s destroyed, then why do your kind and our infected drones still have their powers?” he asked.
“Your guess is as good as mine,” J replied.
The table was electrified again. Oh, was this supposed to be torture? J realized. Wow, they’re soft on their prisoners around here. But I’m sure if I point that out it’ll change. “I don’t know how it works and I didn’t see how it died,” she said aloud. “There was a huge sphere of darkness, and a few days later I saw the numbskulls who had been fighting it acting like they’d won the fight. You have the scientists studying the thing, I’m sure you know more about how it works than I do.”
The man seemed to consider this for a second, then nodded. "Don't get too comfortable, I'll be back,” he said brusquely. And then he walked back out the door, leaving J to wait alone.
The debriefing had lasted for hours, and after being nocturnal for days, Theresa was exhausted. But she had also been wearing the same space suit for several days straight, so the first thing she did upon being released was throw it in the laundry chute (although she thought it should have gone to an incinerator) and take a shower. Only once she felt clean again, for the first time in too long, did she stumble into bed.
She was out cold in seconds.
The feeling of having work to do dragged her out of blessed unconsciousness just a few hours later The higher ups had insisted she take the day off to rest, so she officially had no work to do- but she unofficially still had work she considered her responsibility. So she put on her uniform- her indoor uniform, the regular denim janitorial coveralls, finally something other than a space suit that had been worn for far too long- and set out to solve some of the problems her absence had no doubt created.
After collecting some supplies, Theresa's first stop was the memorial: a small room on the edge of the compound where the names of dead Cabin Fever employees from this planet were recorded. Officially, it was a storage closet, but it hadn’t stored anything but memories since the disassembly drones had first arrived.
The walls were only half-covered with names, which put them better than any of JCJenson's other subsidiaries or branches. Theresa could see, at the bottom right corner of the written section, her own name.
A man stood in front of her name, head bowed in mourning. She stepped quietly behind him and whispered slowly, “Eddie…”
He jumped, but did not turn. “Eddie Valesco…” Theresa continued.
“Wha-” Eddie turned, and his eyes went wide as saucers.
“I bring you a message from beyond the veil, Eddie…”
“Gh-gh-GHOST!!” Eddie shrieked, and Theresa doubled over in laughter. It was mean playing on a friend's phobias like that, but damn if his reaction hadn’t been hilarious.
“I'm just joshing ya bud! I'm alive, got back last night! How ya been?”
“I-uh-you-” Eddie swallowed. “You’re alive? How?”
“It’s a long story, I’ll let ya know once I’m done wrapping everything up from that.” She held up a spray bottle of cleaning fluid and a rag. “Here, you mind taking my name off of this list of the dead while I do that?”
“Oh! Yeah, sure, I…” Eddie swallowed hard once more. Tears were welling up in his eyes. “We thought you were dead when Stevie came back without you.”
“Ah, well,” Theresa shrugged. She had a mission to complete, not time to stand around and chat. “Speaking of, where is Stevie? I wanna let her know she didn’t get me killed.”
“She’s been in testing pretty much since she got back,” Eddie said. “I don’t know where.”
She’d been in testing for… it must be more than two full days now? That wasn’t safe! Well, at least that was information she could use.
“Thanks, Ed!” she said, clapping him on the shoulder. “I’mma go see if the docs can tell me where ta find her. Catch up later!”
The one-eyed man consulted with his colleagues for long enough that J had begun to get bored before he returned. But eventually he did return, sitting down next to J again and immediately returning to the interrogation.
“If the Solver is dead, then who do you work for now?” he asked.
“I guess right now, that’s you,” J said.
The table lit up with electricity again. “Cute,” he growled. “Answer the actual question,”
J rolled her eyes openly this time. “Come on, I’m having to explain every answer, and you should be able to figure this stuff out,” she said, letting a little bit of exasperation into her voice. “It’s gone, and my owners back when I was a worker are long dead. It could be argued that as a JCJenson in Spaaace product I am answerable to duly appointed company representatives, i.e. you, but otherwise I’m my own manager. Made the decision to come here all on my own.”
He didn’t take the implicit offer. “Then who did you work for, before?”
“The Elliot family.”
He paused, so J continued: “James, Louisa, and Tessa Elliot. High-ranking JCJenson in SPaaaace executives and their daughter.”
The interrogator nodded. “Of course, you did say that you were one of the first. You must have been there at the beginning, when the Absolute Solver first attacked. How did this all start?”
J groaned internally. She didn’t like talking about this, or thinking about it for that matter- reliving the worst day of her life in any way. But corporate (as J still thought of any authority figure, since pretending to still be working for the company had been better than admitting to what the real boss was, and pretending to be an employee felt better than being property) had told her to, and J was nothing if not a good worker.
“It started when Tessa brought home another drone,” J began. “The girl pulled broken drones out of the dump and fixed them up, as a hobby. They didn’t usually work, but every so often drones aren’t deactivated properly, and they reactivate on their own. Tessa fixed those ones up.
“Anyways, the last drone she took home was… more damaged than usual, and Tessa couldn’t repair her properly. Motor function problems. The drone tried to make up for it with what was probably about the same telekinetic Solver powers that your drones here have, though none of us knew what they were at the time. This drone- her name was Cyn- was… off-putting, but never actually hurt anyone until the night it all went down.
J paused, waiting to see if her interrogator had any questions, but he just waved a hand at her and said, “Continue.”
“Well,” J said, “One night the bosses were holding a grand gala. I honestly don’t remember what for. Cyn wanted to attend, but they didn’t like her, so we had to lock her up to keep her away. She got out somehow, during the gala preparations, and when the bosses saw her they got real mad. Threatening to throw away all of Tessa’s drones mad. Another one managed to get them placated in the immediate term, but he had to sacrifice himself to do so.
“Cyn… I don’t know what she was thinking. Maybe it was self defense, maybe she wanted to protect her friends, maybe she was just angry. But she asked Tessa to stay away from the gala, and that was all the warning any of us got before she turned into the Absolute Solver.
“It,” J still couldn’t bring herself to think of the Solver, of that thing, as a her, much less as her little sister Cyn, “Was a giant centipede-robot, with Cyn’s upper body as a head. But it didn’t do too much itself; it took control of the drones that Tessa had failed to fully restore, and turned them into the prototypes of disassembly drones, and delegated the work to them.
“Tessa and I went looking for it to try and stop it, but it hacked all the working drones in the mansion as well. Used them and its own powers to slaughter all of the humans, then upgraded the mansion’s drones into disassembly drones, and you know the rest.”
The man hummed thoughtfully, then stood and exited the room without saying anything else. The mirror muffled whatever he said to the other two, but J hoped they would decide to stop interrogating her and take her apart soon. It was becoming tedious.
After several minutes of their discussion, another human entered the room behind the mirror. Its voice was louder and angry. As the now four argued, their voices raised enough that J could catch a few words and phrases. “Where is,” “Lab 4,” “J,” and “No” came up a few times.
Then the pushed past the first three and into the room with J. The two who had stayed there the whole time held J’s usual interrogator back. Did they think that this new person would be more successful somehow?
It was slightly shorter than the others, and much skinnier- its ribs probably showed through its sides. It was short-haired or bald, like the first interrogator, but J would guess it was a female.
“J, what the hell?” she yelled as she entered. J might not have been able to see the face, but she recognized the voice.
“Hey Theresa,” J said innocently, and waved as much as she could with her hands strapped down. “You’re looking well.”
“J, what is this?” Theresa yelled, and stomped over to her. “What are they doing to you?” She sounded furious.
“Just what you said they’d do!” J replied, and grinned. “I assume, at least. They’ve decided to interrogate me first.”
“Oh for–” Theresa visibly fumed with anger. “Why haven’t you escaped yet?”
“I’m strapped to a table,” J wiggled her hands as demonstration. “I can’t get out.”
Theresa’s eyes dropped to J’s lower legs. “I’m strapped to a table,” J repeated, more forcefully. “I can not get out, no matter how hard I try. So even if I do go berserk from hunger I won’t try because I know it won’t work.”
Theresa sighed heavily and slumped into the chair. “Why are you insisting on doing this to yourself, J?” she asked. “No, wait, I know why. You think that you’re a horrible person and can never get any better and the world would be better off without you.”
“Got it in one! I’d give you a raise.” J flashed her a thumbs-up.
Theresa stared at her for a long moment, with the lower edges of her eyes wavering like she was on the verge of tears. Then she took a deep, steadying breath, and began to talk.
“Your plan might not be doomed, you know. You said that the drone yesterday learned to be smarter, didn’t you?”
“Yeah, we went over that. But I didn’t really consider how to do plan A at all, so I’m giving up on it anyways.”
“Sure, sure,” Theresa said placatingly. “But! If they can change, then that means disassembly drones in general can, doesn’t it?”
J considered this. She had seen both N and V change, after all; V lost her good will, while N grew a spine. “Sure.”
“And if disassembly drones can change, then surely you can as well! So, ya don’t try and get killed, you can find a way to become better!”
J groaned. This again. “And the people I killed? I don’t get to just walk away from that, remember?”
Tessa’s face appeared in her imagination: screaming as the other gala-goers were torn to pieces, and struggling against J’s arms as J held her still, keeping her from fighting or escaping.
Theresa’s voice jarred her out of her thoughts. “What would they want? The ones you cared about. Would they want you to live in guilt and off yourself over something you didn’t have any choice over?”
Tessa wouldn’t, J knew. The girl had been too nice for her own good- she probably wouldn’t even have held a grudge against the monster who killed her family and wore her as a disguise. She hadn’t given Cyn any worse than the occasional time-out before then, after all.
But then, that had given it the chance to prepare. Tessa’s kindness had gotten her killed. Just because Tessa would have forgiven her, didn’t mean that J could forgive herself.
“Why are you so determined to stop me from doing this, anyways?” J asked out loud to change the subject.
“Because…” Theresa shrugged. “You’re a person, and there’s so few of us around that we gotta all look after one another?”
J rolled her eyes. Morality.
Theresa continued, “Because you saved my life and kept me safe for these last few days? Got me home safe?”
“I’m done with that now, and you’re better off for it” J said. “Every time I’ve worked for or tried to help someone has failed. Leave me alone before I get you killed too.”
“Yeah?” Theresa crossed her arms and leaned forwards, like a shark preparing for the killing blow. “You ain’t gotten every single one of ‘em killed.”
“No?” J said. “I couldn’t save Tessa from the Solver, and it even made me help kill her; I couldn’t keep N and V in line enough to protect them from it either; I couldn’t even help it eat the universe. And hey, Tessa pulled me out of the trash- I must have been thrown out for some reason even before all that. Have I somehow missed something?”
“Yep!” Theresa said triumphantly. “Me.”
“Ugh, shut up about that,” J replied. “Just because I was able to help you doesn’t mean-”
“That your resume isn’t just longer a bunch of failures? That you’re very capable when you ain’t up against eldritch god junk? That you’re measurably improving?”
J was too tired to come up with a good counter-argument to that. So she tried switching tactics again. “What would you have me do, then?” she asked. “Work for your bunch of morons? I don’t think they’d like that very much.”
“If that’s what strikes your fancy?” Theresa said. “But, have you ever taken a vacation in your life? You should do whatever you think would make you happy, instead of other people.”
J sighed. “I… guess you might have a point,” she said. Theresa pumped a fist in the air.
“But!” J continued. “I don’t think I could get out of here without going through your people. You want me to do that?”
Theresa’s happiness visibly drained out of her.
“Plus,” J continued, “that sounds like a lot of work, and I’ve almost got this plan finished, so… nah. I’m sticking with this.”
“But- you just- you’re impossible!” Theresa yelled, and stormed out of the room.
Even through the fake mirror, in the other room, J could hear her yell “Lab four! Checking on Stevie!” in response to something one of the researchers said as she pushed past them.
Am I still doing the right thing, trying to get myself killed? J thought. She wasn’t sure anymore. Theresa was… probably right about this, but. I’ve come too far to back out now, right? Right?
J was still thinking about this when the researchers finished their discussion, and her usual interrogator returned. She didn’t hear what he said, and barely registered when he electrified the table and repeated it. Oh well, she decided, let’s get on with it.
“What now?” She said out loud. “Look, I’ve told you basically everything I can. You should probably just take me apart and study the pieces, it’ll give you more-” Yet another person ran into the other room. Both observers ran out of the room. “Your friends behind the mirror just abandoned you.”
The man looked up a second before another human ran in, hyperventilating. “Doctor Frederics!” This one yelled. A young man?
J’s interrogator- Dr. Frederics?- stood up and glared at the intruder. “Seriously?” he growled. “This had better be good.”
“We have an S-E event in lab four!” the young man yelled. “All unrelated personnel have to get to the panic room!”
Dr. Frederics asked no questions, said nothing; he fled with the boy, if at a slightly calmer pace. And J was left alone.
An S-E event? Huh, I wonder what that is. J wiggled her shoulders, trying to get comfortable against the hard table. Wait, in lab 4? That’s where Theresa was headed, wasn’t it? J groaned. And I guess I’m doing this now. I was so close!
Her footless leg pegs slid easily out of the ankle restraints, and from there it was the work of seconds to get the rest of the way free. The door had not been locked, and a disassembly drone was free in Cabin Fever Labs in under a minute. J would have strong words for whoever was in charge of security around here.
Finding lab 4 turned out to be easy. J just headed in the direction that people were running away from, climbing along the ceiling to avoid the crowd. And once she was in a place people had already fled, she followed the screams.
Lab 4 was clearly labeled, and had a human sprawled in the doorway, keeping the door open. They could have been unconscious or dead; as long as they weren’t Theresa, J didn’t care enough about them to check. The scene she found inside was all too familiar, made up of things that J had seen before.
Familiar unmoving humans. Familiar Theresa, choking and struggling as she was held in the air by a familiar claw around her throat. Slightly familiar drone- J had seen it from a distance, with Theresa, days ago, but she had a good memory- at the other end of that claw. Horribly familiar program inside of that drone.
The Absolute Solver.
It was back.