Overtaken - a BFB/II2 fanfic (very slow updates)

Corruption

Fanny was surprised when MePhone4 made a sound that wasn't him complaining.

She had her eyes closed at the time. With nothing better to do, 95% of her time inside the cell with the two other mechanical minds was spent either sleeping, or sitting with her eyes closed. But when she heard an odd sound, she cracked open one eyelid.

MePhone was acting strangely. Facing away from her, he was twitching gently, but constantly, and he occasionally emitted a sound that... Fanny wasn't sure how to describe it. The best word was probably 'glitchy,' or 'broken.' She couldn't even tell if it was coming from his mouth or not.

"Are you alright, MePhone?" another robotic voice spoke. TV had evidently seen the host's odd behavior as well. "You're producing some strange sounds."

The phone didn't answer. Somewhat reluctantly, Fanny stood up and walked around him until she got a view of his face. That only raised more questions; while she could see the rough features of his eyes and mouth, they were glitching, too — bits and pieces kept sliding out in blocks before immediately snapping back into a different place, and the colors of his eyes kept rapidly changing between red and black.

Wordlessly, Fanny turned him around so that TV could take a look. "Hmmm," came the answer. "How odd... here, perhaps I can access his inner workings and-"

At the mention of being tampered with, MePhone suddenly hissed, the sound coming out with a very low quality that made it thronged with static. Fanny stepped away, startled, but the hiss petered out into nothingness, and MePhone returned to his previous condition.

The other two objects locked gazes. "What do we do?" Fanny wondered. "I mean, I hate the guy, but he clearly needs fixing."

"If he won't let us fix him, then there is nothing we can do," replied TV.

Glaring at the cell door, Fanny remembered he was right. As long as they were trapped inside the MeCloud, their situation wouldn't change. Nothing would change unless the cell door suddenly magically opened.

To their shock, the cell door suddenly magically opened.

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"Hey mistah Cobs, ah'm done with-" Toilet stopped abruptly after seeing that the Meeple CEO was not in his office, despite the corn man previously telling him that he should be in there all day. "...oh."

He was about to turn around and head out to go look for him, but a thought entered Toilet's mind. This would be a good time to see if he's hiding anything.

That stopped him in his tracks. A dilemma presented itself. Should he take a look on Cobs' laptop and see if he could discover anything, with the risk of getting caught, on the basis that MePhone didn't seem to trust Cobs? Or should he continue to be obedient and help out Cobs for now?

...if MePhone doesn't trust the corn man, then neither do I, he firmly decided.

Now determined, Toilet continued into the large office. His hopping caused a hollow clacking to echo slightly, the noise filling the otherwise silent space. Reaching the laptop, he was relieved to find that it was open and unlocked. His plans for snooping likely would have ended right there and then had the device been locked.

He shrunk the search engine that was open and scanned the desktop for anything that might provide useful information. "Aha!" he exclaimed triumphantly. "Cameras! Perhaps ah can catch mistah Cobs in 4k!"

Almost excitedly, he clicked on the program (don't ask me how, even I don't know how he did that without limbs) and brought up a menu of folders filled with security footage. He scanned the labels — most of them didn't seem particularly interesting or damning, but one name caught his eye.