THE TALES FROM COPPER 9! Volume 1 (Murder Drones)

Echo - Chapter 013

I have been relaxing for the past few minutes, leaning against the outside of the escape pod, until N is suddenly startled from his sleep, causing him to drop to the ground.

"N, you alright?"

N: "Yeah, ow, just a rough landing."
Uzi: "N, Nick, we found something in here!"

I walk inside and see Uzi staring at herself in a broken mirror, with a peculiar symbol replacing her right eye momentarily, suddenly her face glitches again and the symbol is gone.

V, in a teasing tone, says: "That's weird and concerning."

Uzi: "Bite me! This is probably you weirdos' fault!"

V: "I've never seen that symbol before... *grins widely* wanna do an autopsy and find out?"

"Yeah, no, no autopsies are required, or will be performed."

N, climbing into the pod, began to converse with us.
N: "Watcha find?"

Uzi: "Did you know you're wearing a Pilot's hat?"
N: "I was the pilot!? That's aweso- I crashed and ruined everything. Spaceship Pilot: Origin story."

V then hissed aggressively whilst poised to attack, before sitting back down and continuing to blow bubbles from her toy.

N: "...Speaking of piloting, especially to earth, are we sure 'murder all humans' is morality?"
"Wait, hold-on, not me right?"

Uzi: "Firstly, no Nick I won't be killing you. Second, The humans sent you here without a communication relay, and reformatted your memories into soup. Covering their tracks means their past negotiating, not like they tried negotiating with my mom."

V, leaning far forwards in her seat: "Or, you missed the negotiations! The humans programmed us to solve a problem, where's proof of your backstory?; the one where your kind are so conveniently innocent?"
N then moved Uzi behind her protectively, before continuing to speak.

N: "J was getting orders from someone, if not the company through that relay, then who, and how?"
"Perhaps J was being tasked by someone who faked being part of JCJenson's company?"

Uzi: "The lot of you, quit complicating my murder plan."
N then attempted to comfort Uzi by patting her on the head, only for his hand to be swiped away.

Meanwhile in the drone colony

Two drones conversed underneath the hole in the roof that N had left earlier.
1st drone: "Yeah, just fix her up cause, whoops, pretty big security risk in mind see? You got this, uh, ladder-bot 5000?"

The 2nd bot, who wore a name-tag called 'frank' groaned and said: "Please just leave the lights-."

Suddenly first drone left and turned all the lights off, leaving Frank alone in the dark, or so he thought. Suddenly, numerous noises were heard nearby causing him to be startled, he then heard a rhythmic thumping from nearby in single direction, causing his curiosity to get the better of him.

Frank approached J's corpse, which seemed to be emitting the beating sound, only to see the insides of J were grotesquely organic. A small, heart-shaped machine with tumours of blood red flesh, crawled out and began to scream and roar, lighting up the entire nearby area with yellow projections, which soon changed into a blood red. Alarms blared as the creature grew into a titanic beast that would then kill Frank.

Back with the main cast

Uzi: "Ugh! I'm sweaty! Who programmed that?!"

N: "You good Uzi?"

Uzi: "IM GOOD, IM BETTER THAN GOOD, I AM GOD!!"

Uzi then turned around to see Thad staring at her, carrying her gun, which she forgot to carry back to the spire after the fight.

Uzi: "Oh, uh, h-hi Thad. Uh, t-thank you?"

Thad: "Of course 'Zi! You saved my life! I don't think the colony's even serious about all this banishment stuff? They're probably more just confused, especially with-."

Uzi: "the fact I'm too rogue to enter society now? I can never return...."

Thad: "...The recent disappearances, and your murder friend's corpse? When I went to grab your gun, I kind of looked like it... crawled away?"

Everyone standing there was unnerved when hearing that, especially N, as he was frantically looking around.

Uzi: "We can return a little..?"

Later

?: "Welcome back Thad! Wait, isn't she grounded or something?"

Uzi: "Banished!! Has my dad been saying I'm grounded?!"

?: "...Genocide bot?"

N then passed the security drone a note, saying 'I'm sorry.' And the security drone was instantly relieved.

?: "Oh alright, just don't do it again, get in here you goobs!"

A few minutes later and we are looking at a crime scene with multiple drones inspecting the scene. Some drones then said how Khan being more concerned with her daughter than building another door was quote "Cringe" causing Uzi to be nervous and upset.

N: "You good?"

Uzi: "I'm good! Stop asking!"

We then ran deeper into the facility, later finding numerous oil spatters on the walls.

Uzi: "You guys... Do that often?"

N: "Haha, no, I'm very concerned, but also pretty frightened a little bit."

Thad: "Hey Zi, what's this thing?"

We walked over to the wall, which seemed to have a projection burnt into it, almost like a laser cutter. With a symbol similar to what I say appear on Uzi's monitor.

N: "Hey, isn't that your special eye?"

Uzi, enraged and embarrassed: "Don't call it that!.... Absolute Solver? Reboot?....  Does this have something to do with how you grew your head back?"

N: "Hehe, I actively avoid unpacking how that works."

"Osiris, scan that image please?"

Osiris: "Of course sir....  Peculiar, my program cannot process the- error, unknown external program detected, vir-rus detected-ed-etect-tected, Er-rorrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr-."

"Osiris? Osiris?! Osiris program, do you copy?! Dammit, I just lost contact with Osiris, we should figure out what's going on and leave."

Uzi: "...New material can't be pulled from thin air, if the wound is severe enough, this... 'Solver' might be some sort of Auto-run program to collect more ma-."

N then suddenly and quietly shut her mouth, and Thad remained completely still. I turned and saw a human hand crawling towards us from the darkness.

(Whispering): "What the hell was that..."