The Digital Plague (A Murder Drones AU)

Chapter 10

"Remind me again where we're going?" Uzi asked V, trailing a few paces behind the murder drone.

"There's no 'we'. I'm going back to the landing pod to find... something." She growled.

"Is it something that will help N?" She asked.

V sighed, clenching her fists. "I hope."

Uzi grumbled a bit, frustrated at her lack of answers.

V continued to walk, albeit a little faster once she realized Uzi was still following her. After a few more minutes, V groaned and half turned around, giving Uzi the side eye before unfurling her wings and flying off.

After a minute of astonishment, Uzi groaned. She had no clue where she was or how to get back. Stupid stupid I shouldn't have let down my guard I can't believe I was so stupid-

She kicked a rock and started stamping off in the direction V had flown. Stupid she's so stupid that's so stupid arg why does everything have to be so difficult with her-

Pain slammed into her head like her father's precious doors had slammed shut on it. She clapped a hand over her flashing eye, wincing.

"Easy, robo-Satan, chill." She whispered, gently removing her hand from her eye.

The pain in her head had started to dissipate but was replaced by a sense of dread. These painful flashes of what she assumed to be her mother's glyph... or Cyn's, as V had remembered. The connection between the two still remained as frustratingly murky as ever. Had her mother worked at the mansion N, V, and J had? If so, how had she gotten to Copper 9 without being a murder drone or being killed immediately?

Something caught her eye up ahead of her. An old dusty mirror lay in pieces about a hundred feet in front of her. Blinking experimentally, she deemed her eye to be normal and jogged forward to the shattered mirror.

It was a fancy mirror, with a delicately carved wooden frame that had been slashed by what looked like claws in a couple of spots, and what looked like old worker oil splattered the broken face of it.

She picked up a large piece of it, wiped the crusted oil off, and looked at her reflection in it. She didn't look great, her beanie crooked and her purple hair a mess, but that wasn't what caught her attention. A symbol, Cyn's symbol that she had seen drawn in blood and oil in V's grotesque memories she had hacked into, broke through her reflection. The long stems that ended in points were curved instead of straight, and dripped with oil and what looked like blood. It cut through her reflection, gradually becoming more and more opaque. Finally, she couldn't see her own reflection in the glass, just the curved glyph.

She squinted at it, watching as the glyph faded away again.

She yelped and tossed the shard away as a face, bearing a similar resemblance to her own, flashed across the face of it. After her initial shock passed, she reached for it, her breathing unsteady.

The shard had returned to being a simple shard of mirror, reflective as normal.

She wan't sure if she had imagined the whole thing or if her eye had caused her to go nuts. However, since it was the second mirror-related incident to happen to her, she decided to take it back with her. As she wrapped her arms around the largest piece of the mirror, someone whispered in her ear.

"Look at me." Uzi whipped her head around, looking for the whisperer.

"Look at me." It whispered again.

"I can't look at you if I don't know where to look!" She retorted snippily.

A gentle laugh. Uzi blinked, then slowly pulled the shard of mirror from her chest. A blurred face was reflected in the mirror. Uzi couldn't make out who it was, or any distinguishing features besides the face's eye color. On disassembly drone yellow, another purple, not too far off from her own.

"Who are you?" Uzi asked it, frustration tinging her voice as she propped the mirror up against the remains of an old car.

"You don't need to know that, not yet. What you do need to know is that you are in danger. You-"

"Are you going to tell me something useful?" Uzi asked incredulously. "Maybe tell me why N is going holo-spooky-snake-crab and why my eye keeps glitching. Or who Cyn is."

The voice sighed. "I can't. If I tell you why Cyn is, you'll rush off and do something rash. Same with just about anything else I tell you. So, the only thing I can tell you without causing you to do something stupid is this: remember who the enemy is. Remember who you can trust and you can't trust. Don't waste time and energy fighting with drones who, in the end, are on your side."

"Are you referring to V?" Uzi groaned. "Pretty sure we don't have the same goal. Plus, she deserves everything she gets."

Uzi could barely make out the drone raising an eyebrow. "And you don't? If you don't mind me saying, you aren't the easiest drone to get along with."

Uzi kicked the mirror over. It landed face down in the snow.

"Guess what! You're just a mirror! I don't have to listen to you!" She kicked a bunch of gravelly snow over the shard and stomped away, mulling over the mirror's unoriginal warning. 

{Hehe... I do still exist, I promise. I'm starting at a new school, so I haven't much time for extra work, plus burnout, depression, and a loss of motivation all ganged up on me. Luckily, my passion has been somewhat restored after the release of Dead End! Holy cow, that episode was quite something. NGL, I was an emotional wreck for a few days after it premiered and TBH I'm still smarting from the ending (no spoilers here!) 

Just a few notes about this work, a) this is a hobby. I really want to get good quality, comprehensive chapters out but life comes first. And I'm not really doing an extensive editing phase, or any editing besides spelling and grammar. and b) I'm trying to take each episode into account as they come out while still making it original. As you may notice in upcoming chapters, plenty of canon events still happen, but the order is all screwed up. Also, plans change in light of new lore, so be on the lookout in case I change something major! Most likely, I'll make a note in the bottom like this note right now!

Have a blessed day/night!}