Divine Singularity || Reader x Murder Drones

I

"Mother, look! It's a drone!"

"I see that, dear. And for very cheap too."

"Mother, can we please get a drone? Can we?"

The voices rang out like echoes in a deep cavern, bouncing off unseen walls, threading themselves through the fabric of something not quite real. Soft, yet distant. Faint, yet piercing. They vibrated through your core like an old radio transmission struggling to tune into a forgotten station.

You were in the dreamscape again.

It had been a while since you'd drifted into memories instead of nightmares. Lately, your dreams had been filled with gnashing teeth and flickering eyes—horrors of what you had become. But this... this was different.

This was warmth.

Pain still rippled through you, of course—it always did. The sensation of a thousand needles stabbing into every inch of your being was as familiar as breathing by now, but it was almost secondary. Like static in the background of something more important. Something that mattered more.

This time, there was more than just sound.

A hand reached out from the void, drifting toward you. It was soft, hesitant, trembling slightly before it met your cold, metal cheek. A thumb ran along the edge of your faceplate, brushing over optics that were not your own.

A woman's voice—gentle, assured, made her decision there and then.

"Well... I don't see why not. I've been needing an extra hand around the house, anyway."

A pause. A breath. And then, from the abyss of shadow and half-formed recollections, something else emerged. A smile.

Warm.

Welcoming.

The kind of expression that made the pain momentarily fade, if only for a second.

"Welcome to the family, dear."

The words wrapped around you like a lullaby, seeping into your very being, planting something deep in the cavity where a heart might have been. Something close to belonging. Something close to purpose.

And then—

You woke up.

——————————

The sensation of that hand, of that warmth, was gone in an instant, leaving behind only the ghost of a touch that had long since faded from reality. Your thousand eyes opened, adjusting to the light of the rising sun filtering through the trees. The stream murmured beside you, its voice soft and steady, as if nothing had happened. As if the world hadn't shifted beneath your feet.

You exhaled, your massive form shifting slightly.

Another memory. Another scrap of something you couldn't quite hold onto.

Who was she?

Who was the child?

Who were you?

A groan slipped past your lips as you rolled onto your side, your body curling slightly as exhaustion weighed down on you like an iron shroud. The night had been long, stretching endlessly into a tangle of problems you weren't sure how to unravel. One of them of course being the fact you were experiencing what it was like to sleep as a living being, and not as a drone. There were many sounds that had made you anxious in the night. You were scared Cyn might have come back, or maybe a human would stumble upon you. There were many things to worry over.