Murder Drones: Born from ashes

Chapter 15 : Political Corruption

Uzi walked through the familiar floors of the Bunker. What she remembered as home had all but alienated her. The blue lights and white tiling along the walls didn't evoke the hostility she had fallen in love within the outside world. The enclosed concrete construction threatened to strip her of her power. Small infantile doodles decorated a few tiles, accompanied by new names she didn't recognize. It was currently the dead of night, so the hallways of the bunker had very little foot traffic. The occasional night shift engineer or miner passed through with urgency, but that was it.

–

The other boys were begging the bartender to give them stimulants, they were not familiar with age limits and were insisting on getting what they wanted. The mercenaries were graced with questions from every drone. From what Uzi could gather, the doors hadn't opened since she left. Yet she could barely recognize anyone.

"How many did you kill?"

"Kill? Killing is a pretty harsh word. We're decommissioning these machines. It's probably in the double digits."

"Girls are gross!"

"I Never hesitated to decom. You know they pretend to surrender, but it's better for them to be offline."

"Friends?"

"Do you have any parents?"

"I don't know what those are." Willard said.

"Your mom and dad? The guys who gave birth to you?"

"They never told me that, but I guess the Directors are our parents! They take care of us, they teach us how to do our jobs, and they're always in control!" Willard said.

"Control?" Jupiter scoffed, "A bunch of insurgents have control? The way I see it, you're the ones dying."

"That's not what the Directors told us, we're making progress. One day, we'll win."

"And what happens after that?" Jupiter questions, a smug snare hissed with hate in her voice.

"We- We'll do something... let the Directors figure it out."

"You can't even think for yourselves. How adorable."

"Hey lady, they kept us alive for this long, maybe you're just jealous!"

"Watch your manners young man." Said the bartender, "If you think you're a man, act like one."

"I think I'm man enough! I've decommissioned dozens of those robots! You can't say that, can you?"

–

"This," She exclaimed, holding another stimulant in the air, "Is for...for...for Vivian," gesturing towards Uzi, "The best fucking sister a trooper could have!"

Venus blushed.

The strangers drowned their doubts and psychotic breaks with stimulants. V2 did it to drown herself and the memories of her humiliation.

"Hey, Uzi? Could you walk with me?" Venus commanded. They marched through the crowd and through the doors.

The windows along each living quarter seemed hollower than ever. The yellow traffic markings along the floor had chipped and worn along the edges but had never been walked on. In the ULU outposts, these markings would have been repainted, but there was no need for this. A few worker drones passed through the doors, taking care of maintenance jobs, but there was an aura of leisure yet motivation to their walk. Uzi realized she had forgotten what it was like to settle down and clear her mind of all present happenings.

She recognized the path, where she and Vivian would go to study. Uzi felt uncomfortable noticing the visible differences from the last time she took this path. The ceiling closer to her head, the clicking feet of her higher commanding officer, the maintenance worker absent from that one panel that "kept malfunctioning" (he went missing in the first attack), and lack of other students who took the elevator to their living quarters (ditto).