Lovable N || N x Harem

Chapter 5

The crunch of snow beneath her feet was the only sound that could be heard for miles. No howl of the wind, no terrified screaming, just the soft pitter patter of her steady walk. It was one of the few rare hours where there was no radioactive storm, the special days where she got her way with her father, and those blessed hours where those...things were off patrolling somewhere else. She had memorized their patterns, when they came out to hunt, where they hunted and their rotations. She had a few hours at best to get what she needed, lest she join the pile of corpses stacked outside the bunker doors.

Uzi tightened her grip on her bag straps, her nerves on a hair-trigger reaction. She had spent weeks planning her escape outside the bunker doors to get the parts she needed, but planning the whole thing was entirely different from being face to face with the outside world. In the bunker, danger was non-existent. The workers had no fear, because inside, there was nothing to fear. Workers were safe, victim only to the passage of time. Danger was outside, amongst the corpses of their former human masters, where they too were mortal to the monsters that lurked about.

Uzi stopped her trek, standing in front of the fabled spire of corpses that she had heard only from bedtime stories that parents told their children to scare them. But it was more than just a scary story, it was real. Survivors from outside told tales of how the monsters who wore the yellow cross of fear built towers from the bodies of their victims. Uzi, being the edgy teen that she was, used to think that such a thing was cool, but actually bearing witness to such a horror made her knees weak and her core crackle with terror.

She swallowed the lump that formed in her throat and began her mission: scavenging for parts to finish her weapon. It wasn't just any weapon she was building, it was a weapon that would allow the workers a chance at survival. No longer would they need to hide away in the shadows of a broken world ruled by oil drinking devils. With a weapon like this, they could fight back against the dark and finally see the light.

A faint green glow emitted from the snow beneath her foot. She leaned down, hands digging and pulling the object of intrigue from the ground. She eyed the item with great interest. It was an Ion capacitor, the exact item she needed to charge her railgun. It was slightly worn down from the years of being buried in the snow, but it was still in relatively good condition. With glee, she brushed it off and pocketed the item.

She was intent on searching more, but her audio receptors perked up at the sound of cutting wind. Quickly, she ducked behind a piece of debris that was large enough just to hide her. She already knew what was coming. After all, only the monsters and memories lurked about out here.

She held her breath, trying to make herself seem as small as possible as something slammed down into the side of some sort of pod at the side of the spire. Seconds later, the eerie silence was filled with sloppy slurping. To her side, Uzi lifted a piece of glass, glancing at the newcomer, and felt her core cease all function.

"They shouldn't be patrolling here yet," Uzi thought to herself. "Why is it here!?"

The spreading of metal wings, the sound of dripping oil. She knew exactly what it was and all of a sudden the world seemed to close in on her. She was trapped, with death a mere few feet away. But underneath the layers of terror that Uzi showed on her face, lay curiosity and fascination. This was her first time ever seeing a murder drone in person (and probably her last if she wasn't careful) and her interest was piqued. The bunker had no photos of these mechanical harbingers of demise, just tales from the older drones and the nightmarish sketches her mother had drawn.

It was majestic in a way—the spread of its wings, the sleek design, the flashy neon lights on the top of its head. If she wasn't frightened for her life right now and rooted to the spot by fear, she would've liked to get a closer look. She tried to take a peek at the monster with her own two eyes, but the creature's deep, guttural growl reminded her that it was not a mere spectacle to admire. It was a predator, a murder of metal, and she needed to find a way to escape the situation.