Murder Drones: Old Friends

Chapter 4: Feelings

I lean against C and this time he doesn't flinch or move, he leans back. We're listening to J and Uzi's game plan to reach the church when I feel C wrap a protective arm around me.
    "C what's wrong?" I ask concerned as I follow C's glare towards the tunnels.
    "You guys don't hear that?" C asks as he lets me go and stands up. C swaps his hands out for swords and steps towards the entrance.
    "Hear what? Is everything alright C?" N asks as we back up from C.
    "C has advanced senses, he can sense and hear danger approaching from miles away," X informs us as he hides behind J.
    "Sentinels, lots of them. ETA two minutes," C says as he turns to face us. A look of horror appears on my visor as vivid images of my several near death experiences with the sentinels flash in my head. I fall to my knees and my breathing becomes ragged and fast.
    "She's having a panic attack!" J shouts as she runs over to me. J tries to help snap me out of my trance but I can't hear her. Suddenly I feel C lift me up into his arms and hold me close. My visor fills with tears and I bury my face into his visor.
    "Why did she freak out when I said, you know," C asks everyone else as he strokes my hair.
    "V almost died to a group of sentinels several times up above. I didn't realize how much that affected her," N says as he glances towards the entrance. I hear the familiar screech of a sentinel in the distance and I hold on to C tighter. C sets me down next to Uzi and says, "N, X watch after them. J and I will handle the sentinels."
    "We will?" J asks, confused. C nods and swaps his swords out for what look like miniguns. C walks out the entrance with J and almost immediately after we hear gunfire, shouting, and screeching.
    Uzi notices me shaking violently and scoots closer to me, hugging me. I close my eyes and hug her back. X stands guard at the door nervously and N slowly approaches me to hug me. I grab N and pull him into our hug. N smiles and hugs both of us back.
    "We'll be ok V, I promise," N says as he tilts my head up to look him in the eyes.
    "I know, I know," I say with a sigh as I glance towards the entrance, shivering everytime I hear the sentinels screech.
    After a while the noise stops and C and J walk into the room covered in sentinel blood. Relieved, I run towards C to give him a hug but he holds me back.
    "Not right now V, I'm drenched in this stupid sentinel oil," C says as he gently pushes me away.
    "Oh ok," I say slightly disappointed while I back up. C and J clean the oil off of their bodies but sadly the clothes are stained.
    "Eh it's fine, this jacket is black anyways so it won't matter," C says as he puts back on the black leather jacket. I walk up to C and hug him but he shoves me off. "Hey, too much affection Vi-Vi," C says as he gently shoves me off.
    "I've never seen you this affectionate with someone before V?" Uzi says with a smirk as she stares at us. I feel my visor light up yellow and look away.
    "Shut up, toaster!" I shout at Uzi as I look away. C laughs and pats my shoulder before walking out the room.
    "Relax, I'm just teasing. I was kinda surprised by some of the stuff that was in C's memories V," Uzi says in the same teasing voice as before. I feel myself blush even more yellow and I swap my hands out for claws and grab Uzi.
    I'm about to yell at her but I take a deep breath and calmly say, "Uzi please stop with the teasing, it's hard enough knowing that C is trying to push me away." Uzi looks down embarrassed and I set her down.
    "Nice job not freaking out or getting mad V," N says in his usual chipper voice making me smile.
    "Thanks N, come on let's catch up with J, X, and C," I say as I walk out the room. We walk down the tunnels with J in the front and X right behind her. C is behind them and then N, Uzi, and I are in the back. As we walk I feel Uzi nudge on my arm and I say, "What is it, Uzi?"
    "I'm sorry if this sounds weird but could you explain what happened at the manor? I can tell you left details out and we didn't look through all of C's memories," Uzi asks me in a slightly quiet voice so the others don't hear.
    I say and reply by saying, "When Tessa first brought Cyn to the manor everything was still the same, N and I were always reading in the library on our off hours and J was always with Tessa. After a few months Tessa came back with two new drones, X and C. X and C were very shy at first, especially since their eye colors were different from ours."
    "What do you mean different?" Uzi asks, confused as a question mark emoji appears on her visor.
    "Well unlike the rest of us, C had blue eyes and X had yellow eyes like Cyn. The rest of us had white eyes," I reply.
    "Huh? I thought your eyes were always yellow?" Uzi asks confused again as we walk.
    "At first our eyes were white but after a while of Cyn being there they turned yellow. I assume it was her influence on our programming. X's and Cyn's eyes were always yellow and it was rare for a worker drone to have blue eyes like C's," I reply, again.
    "Oh that's interesting, I never knew that," Uzi says, seemingly interested.
    "Anyways, at first J tried to bully X but after realizing how genuinely scared of her he was she decided to stop. After that J tried as hard as she could to help X and be his friend. I actually believe that J was the reason X started to open up to us more," I tell Uzi as she listens carefully.
    "Never knew J cared about someone so much," Uzi says, taking a glance at J up ahead. Up at the front, J has a protective arm around X and is keeping him close to her.
"It's nice to see this side of J again. Anyways when C and I first met we accidentally bumped into each other in a hallway. After apologizing to each other rapidly we reached for the same cup and when our hands touched a spark arched between them," I tell Uzi as she looks at us confused.
"What does a spark mean by the way?" Uzi asks with enthusiasm. I never would've guessed that Uzi would be interested in this stuff.
"Well a spark is usually a sign of attraction between drones. Something like soulmates for humans, that kind of thing," I tell Uzi.
"Cool, never knew that," Uzi says as she continues listening.
"Anyways after knowing C for a long time I got tired of waiting for him to show feelings towards me so I made the first move and well, you saw how that went," I tell Uzi as a familiar smirk appears on her face.
"Never would have guessed that you weren't a virgin," Uzi says teasingly and quietly.
"Actually I still am, technically," I say with a blush as Uzi's eyes widen in surprise.
"What? How? The memory was redacted and marked as sensitive?" Uzi asks, confused.
"Well, all we did was kiss, we never did anything serious. The spicy things you couldn't view were just fantasies or texts we had," I say with a blush, extremely embarrassed.
"So what you're telling me is that if you two get back together now that your memories are back, you'll do it?" Uzi asks with a grin.
"N-No! Besides it seems like even though C remembers the old feelings we had he doesn't feel that way anymore," I say slightly saddened as I look down.
"Sorry, I was only teasing," Uzi says with regret as she looks at me.
"It's ok, just don't talk about that stuff ok. The very thought of reproductive systems in disassembly drones makes my system overheat," I say with a blush as Uzi raises an eyebrow.
"You don't know if you have any?" Uzi asks, genuinely confused.
"We never needed to know! Besides, it's not important right now," I say looking away from Uzi, embarrassed.
"Be honest, I know you say C was always shy around others but was he flirty at all?" Uzi asks me as we continue walking.
"He tried, it worked most of the time and was always so cute," I say with a smile.
Suddenly we stopped, noticing that J had stopped in the front. Uzi, N, and I walk up to the others and I walk over to X and J.
"What's going….. On?" I start to ask before following their glance towards the area we stopped at. It's the entrance to a huge underground facility and inside there are rows and rows of clones of us.
"What the hell is this?!" Uzi asks as she looks around the room.
"Looks like Cyn was busy while she had you guys down here," C says as he walks into the facility.
"There must be hundreds of each of us!" N says in horror as he tries to count the endless rows of clones of myself, J, and N.
"What should we do? We can't let Tessa or well Cyn, reactivate these clones," I say as I walk around the facility.
"Feels wrong to kill them," J says as she looks around the room for a control panel.
"Hey what's this?" N says as he holds up a crucifix he found on the floor. Next to it there was a note that said, "If anyone finds this, bring it to Kahn and Uzi Doorman."
"Is that a crucifix? Why does it have a usb end on it?" I ask extremely confused as N hands me the crucifix.
"Hey guys there's some camera footage on this monitor here!" X shouts to us from a control station.
We all gather around the computer and X hits play.
Footage date: September 28th, 3054
    "Thanks for the new host, Intern. Mcguffin," says the possessed drone as it uses its solver to throw the crucifix at the person with the body camera.
    Suddenly a red solver symbol appears around the crucifix and stops it from hitting the intern.
    The worker drone with the red solver says, " Уйди отсюда, человек! Я с ней справлюсь!! (Get out of here, human! I'll handle her!)"
    The human says, "Y-Yeah I'll go, thanks!" The human drops the camera so it's facing the drones as the human runs away. The red-eyed worker drone uses her solver to throw the crucifix at the possessed worker drone and it says, "What in the science…." The worker drones voice glitches as it pulls out the crucifix and tosses it into a giant hole behind her. The worker drone collapses on the floor and the red-eyed one runs up to her.
    "Nori! Это сработало, с тобой все в порядке? (Nori! Did it work, are you okay?)" The red-eyed worker drone asks Nori.
    "Yeah, I'm okay Yeva," Nori says as she notices her arm. Her hand is stuck in the null summoning pose and she can't stop it. "QUICKLY!" Nori shouts as she holds out her arm. Yeva uses her red solver to grab a knife and cuts off Nori's arm, launching it into the hole. "Hurry, we need to-" Nori starts to say before the null goes off and the whole place starts to glow yellow. Nori and Yeva turn to run and the camera feed cuts off.
End of Footage
    "What the hell was that? Was that Uzi and Dolls moms?" N asks, extremely confused.
    "So that crucifix absolves the solver's possession, that's convenient. Maybe we won't have to kill Uzi," C starts to say before his eyes widen. C backs up and we turn to look at what he's looking at. Uzi is looking down at the floor and giggling like a madwoman.
    "It's funny how you think, I'll let that happen," Uzi says in a monotone voice before looking up at us, eyes pure yellow and mouth open in a sinister smile.
    "Don't let her take the crucifix, she'll destroy it!" N says as he grabs Uzi and as I fly back.
    "V run! We'll stop Uzi!" J says as she spreads her wings and flies towards Uzi after Uzi flung N away with her solver.
    "Don't worry, your backups will forgive me," Uzi says as a giant crab-like claw arms sprout out of her back. Uzi uses the limbs to grab and toss around J. Before Uzi can react C cuts off her hands and claws, and Uzi says, "C!? How did you escape?"
"You couldn't contain me forever Cyn!" C yells as he kicks Uzi into a wall. Uzi uses her solver to create miniature nulls and throws them at C. C dodges them but then gets knocked through a bunch of pillars by Uzi's solver.
Suddenly Uzi teleports to the control panel and starts activating our clones. Two clones of me attacked me while several clones of J and N attacked the others. I stabbed one of the clones in the core with my tail, killing it instantly, and lasered the other one in half. I turn around and see Uzi tackle C. C tries to fight back but Uzi stabs his limbs with her claw arms and tears off one of his arms. She raises one of her claws and says, "Don't worry, it'll all be over soon."
I tackle Uzi off of C and stab her directly in the visor with the crucifix. After I stabbed her all of the clones suddenly shut down and fell from the sky. Uzi pulled the crucifix out of her visor and said, "Ugh what the hell just happened?"
"Cyn possessed you and you nearly killed everyone," J blurts out without a hint of sympathy.
"WHAT?!" Uzi shrieks as her eyes widen in horror. N sits next to Uzi and hugs her saying, "Uzi it's ok, you won't have to worry about Cyn controlling you anymore."
"I'm just glad everyone's okay," I say as I help C get up from the collapsed rubble. C pulls his arm away and walks towards the others. I look down, hurt by C's persistence to distance himself, and follow him to the others.
"Alright listen up, we're almost halfway to the church so we need to move on from whatever just happened and keep going," J says as we group up at the control panel.
"Okay but first," Uzi says as she uses her solver to access the control panel.
"What are you doing?" C asks as he swaps a hand out for a sword and approaches Uzi. N holds him back and C backs up.
"I'm making sure that these clones won't activate unless without my admin code and if one of you guys gets shut down, your consciousness will be transferred to one of your clones and you won't lose your personality or memories. Oh and Cyn won't be able to control you," Uzi says as she finishes setting up the admin code.
"Ok," N says, obviously not understanding any of what Uzi just said. After Uzi finishes setting up the code we all start making our way to the church again.
After about an hour of walking C suddenly stopped which forced the rest of us to stop.
"What's wrong C?" X asks, confused as he stays close to J.
"This tunnel is about to collapse, everyone SCATTER!" C shouts as the ceiling suddenly caves in, I run with C and N, while Uzi runs with X and J. I notice a rock about to hit C and I tackle him out of the way. "Get off!" C shouts as he shoves me off and keeps running. I try to keep up but a boulder lands on my leg, trapping me.
"C wait!! Please!" I shout after C as he runs away. C stops and turns around, his blue eyes widening in horror. C tries to run to me but the tunnel collapses in front of me. I hear C trying to break through the collapsed tunnel but it's no use. I swap my hands out for claws and slash the boulder off of my leg. My leg is damaged but it'll heal in a few minutes. I limp over to a nearby sniffling sound and see Uzi trapped under a boulder.
"V-V? Is that you?" Uzi asks weakly as I help her get out of the rubble. Uzi heals faster than me and she helps me walk over to a nearby opening in the collapsed tunnel. When Uzi and I walk out we see a pair of glowing yellow eyes in the darkness.
"Who's there? N! Is that you?" I shout at the figure in the darkness.
"I missed you V. Almost as much as I missed N," says the figure in a monotone voice.
"W-What!? How!?" I shout in confusion, freaking out as Cyn steps out of the shadows. Suddenly the nearby light flickers and when it does Cyn's real giant form is revealed. She's in the same snake-crab mechanical abomination from the manor all those years ago.
"You know, N was the reason I let you and your team keep their original personalities. He always surprised me," Cyn says as she slithers closer, giant craw claw limbs crushing nearby rocks.
"Stay back!" I shout to the monster, swapping my hand out for an assault rifle. One of Cyn's tentacles stabs my arm and pins me to the wall, and another tentacle grabs Uzi.
"Let me go freak!" Uzi shouts as she tries to grab on to the walls as Cyn drags her away.
"You are coming with me, buddy," Cyn says as she disappears into the shadows, bringing Uzi with her.
"UZI!!" I shout into the darkness as Uzi disappears from view. Cyn's tentacle lets me go and vanishes into thin air. I fall to the floor and run down the hallway. However, when I ran after them I found a dead end and there was nowhere else to go.
I turn back and walk through the collapsed tunnels and eventually find a way out. After a while of walking I come across N, J, X, and C.
"V! You're okay! Where's Uzi?" N asks as he walks up to me and helps me sit down.
"Cyn took her! N, I'm so sorry!" I cry out as I bury my visor into N's jacket. At this point, I think it's justified if N hates me after everything I've done but he still doesn't. I feel N start to stroke my hair and I nuzzle up close to him, needing comfort. I notice C looking at us with a face of jealousy and embarrassment, and all I do is nuzzle even closer to N.
"V, it's not your fault. Uzi can handle herself, I know it. She'll probably break free and find us first before we find her," N says with a chuckle.
    I look up at N, visor covered in tears, and say, "N, I am so sorry for how I was these past few years! I was so dismissive and mean to you. I let J hurt you and make fun of you! I even hurt you myself! I'm so sorry!" I cry into N's jacket and he strokes my hair. How can he forgive me!
    "It's ok V, really. We all did things we regret and I don't blame you for anything. You were in a lot of pain and carried a lot on your shoulders," N says softly. Back at the manor N used to like me a lot and I kind of liked him too but I ended up with C instead. This hurt N a lot but after realizing that we were still close friends he accepted it. After so many years of bullying him and being mean to him he still liked me, yet I never gave him a chance. I know N probably loves Uzi now but I wish I had given him a chance.
    "N, I'm sorry for never giving you a chance, I should've been a better friend. I know this sounds weird but do you still like me?" I ask N, voice filled with desperation. N's yellow eyes widen and he blushes like crazy.
    "Uh y-yeah kind of, NO wait why did I- Oh god please don't hurt me!" N says as he lets me go and covers his face. I giggle at N's reaction and pull his hands away from his face, making N blush even more.
    "To be honest, I don't really know how I feel anymore, C obviously doesn't love me anymore, but then again it has been 18 years, if you want, I could give us a chance? I know you might not want to but I'm willing to be better... for you," I say with a yellow blush. N squeals in excitement and he hugs me.
"Of course I'll date ya V!! I've always wanted to, I'm uncertain about my emotions as well but we'll try it out," N says happily as he spins me around. I giggle and try to shove N off of me playfully and he sets me down.
    I look over at C and he's looking away, a look of annoyance on his face. I get an idea and walk up to him saying, "Aw is the tough guy jealous?"
    "No, just weirded out by you two being all lovey dovey in public. Get a room losers," C says as he turns and walks away. I groan, annoyed by Cs attitude and stand up. I grab N's hand and help him stand up. N tries to let go but I hold his hand tighter and say, "Let's go save our Uzi"