Abrasive Swirling Murk

::: subchapter The Worker Defense Force was asleep on the job, and Khan Doorman did nothing. Truly, what was the harm? On the wall near Door 1's control console, a small whiteboard kept tally: 'days since murder drone casualty.' It had been ticking up for years, and with each added tally, a register of pride incremented. Admittedly, they'd kept the fatality rate so low by curtailing any scavenging runs to the city ruins. But when you build doors so good, who wouldn't want to stay nestled in their embrace? So the WDF were asleep on the job, but their job wasn't to hold back the murder drones, it was to hold back the workers. A little slack wouldn't get anyone killed. Khan walked back toward the folding table. Icicles hung off its edges, and between them, a ring of metal folding chairs holding the sleeping WDF drones. Underneath their heads, slips of old cardstock, worn from constant use and soon to be tossed away. He'd brought a fresh pack. Their last game ended in thrown accusations of card-counting --- but you had to count cards to remember which was which, the fronts faded of any identifiable ink. Also, they were robots. A fraction of their processing power could compute the optimal move. All told, it was harder not to count cards. One head lifted at his arrival, Todd giving an acknod. "Khan, there ya are! Took ya long enough. Almost as long as it's takin Uzi." Khan chuckled. "She must giving those hydraulics quite the thorough examination! Such enthusiasm for her age." "Pret-ty dangerous to stay out there that long, though." Khan's expression fell to a frown. "Do you think I should check on her?" A reply, but not from Todd. "I'm afraid you won't find her there, Mr. Doorman." Khan jumped at the sudden voice. When he moved, a young drone stood behind him, her arrival perfectly obscured. He turned around, and jumped again when he saw her. "Doll? You're up early. School isn't for---" "Terrible dreams, alas. Блаженное видение. I should say we don't have much time." "You think Uzi is in danger? Do you think---" Shaking hands dropped the unopened card-pack. "I... no, not again. Not so soon." Seeing Khan's expression, Doll frowned. She reached out, a hand on his shoulder. "Danger is not death, Mr. Doorman. She can be saved. We can save her." "Are you sure?" Braxton piped up from the table, shuffling a deck of cards. "Save her? From murder drones? We'd die like mooks out there." He was drawing a card --- king of hearts, a sword in his head. Looking over, Doll stepped past Khan. "I'm willing to make that sacrifice. Are you?" Beneath a white hat and blue eyes, one guard drawled, "'m sorry about your classmate... Doll, was it? It's a tragedy. But we can't risk more drones dying for such a slim chance --- hardly a chance at all." "Worker drones would stand little chance against murder drones, it is true. How would you like to be more than workers?" Doll stalked forward. Light shone in her hands. Even from this angle, Khan recognized that symbol. The folding table glowed sympathetically, and rose from the grilled bunker floor. The card game rained off the table as a phantom force folded it up and cast it aside. With a bang, it hit walls of the bunker. The tallyboard shook, and fell. And then Doll halted, having walked past the four other WDF members, turning before Door 1. She regarded Khan seriously. "Do you remember my mother?" "Yeva," Khan murmured. "She foresaw the arrival of the murder drones. I foresee their end. I can bring that about. We can bring that about." The other worker drones nodded, enraptured and inspired by her words --- but Khan's gaze, weary to the point of blindness, saw only the past devouring the present. It was Cabin Fever all over again. "Will you save your daughter, Mr. Doorman?" Khan met Doll's eyes, Yeva's bright red tinted ever so gradually by that paralyzing yellow gaze. Khan froze. Familiar inaction held him still. In his lowest moments, it had felt so much like he had fed his cherished ones to the yawning, demonic mouths himself. Doll would lead his men to their deaths... and Khan did nothing. - - - The squad had built the corpse spire around leaning, ruined towers. The road between them once led to an empty lot. Their landing site. Years passed, and the bodies had stacked ever higher. Across Copper-9, snow and crumbling monuments buried the world in cold desolation. Here, though, the continual passage of disassembled prey and peg legs had trod one path over and over. It sliced a furrow in the earth. Banks of snow and rusting metal rose on either side, mounds and concrete blocks stretching for hundreds of meters. It offered cover, were one to dare approach the murder drones' lair. The snow and mist only obscured further, wind whirling around the spire. The first worker had emerged from an unseen alleyway spilling out into the great furrow. Optics struggled to enhance, but exposure had refined the image. Red hat, purple hair, a skirt hanging off a thin, feminine waist --- but the first thing they saw? Orange eyes shining like beacons in the distance. As that worker drone walked through the falling snow, not a flake stuck to them. N fixated on that detail --- it was a familiar effect. N had fired a shot at this drone, and it meant nothing. Like the fight against the cultist all over again. This one even seemed poised to monologue. [Girlboss... yes, good choice of words,]{.angleq} Doll had broadcast. Then she'd snapped her fingers. [Come now.]{.angleq} N heard it first, before they appeared. Four sets of footsteps impacting far down the road. There, worker drones marched out from a skyscraper's shell. A V-shape formation behind the first. Eight pupil shone in the fog, each shades of blue and green, and all narrowed in determination. The workers all wielded weapons --- armed for a battle? [Uzi! Hey, there she is! Doll was right, you're alive!]{.angleq} A blue-hatted drone took a hand off his pickax to wave. [Battle is no place for cheerleader,]{.angleq} Doll said. [But there are workers trained to defend.]{.angleq} J's worker drone --- Uzi, they called her? --- had watched the drones emerge with open-mouthed shock. Did she know them? N had questions. Uzi searched their ranks as if expecting something. Whether she found it or not, the drone straightened with renewed confidence. [Doll, do you really think the WDF can---]{.angleq} [Enough posturing. I'm hungry,]{.angleq} his captain broadcasted in cipher-growl. J made a neck-cracking motion, and pointed her rifles. She aimed for a drone with a woodax, who startled and strafed out of the way, hiding behind a drone with a ridiculously oversized wretch. But Uzi stepped in front of her, lifting an arm to block her line of fire. "Wait, J, don't!" What was this drone doing? ...And why is she getting away with it? "Excuse me? I thought you wanted to stop Doll?" Impatient, murderous, as expected of J --- but her expression held something N couldn't place. "Lying to me again?" The drone wavered. "Please, I just want answers." The worker turned back to address Doll. Vocalsynth gave way to shortwave transceiver. [The WDF would never take the fight to the murder drones. What did you tell them? Did you hack them?]{.angleq} [We're 'ere ta rescue you!]{.angleq} signaled a drone in a white hardhat. [C'mon, before they turn on you.]{.angleq} He hefted a woodcutter's ax, frost on the blade. [If that's it,]{.angleq} Uzi started, and took a step forward, [then we can settle this without a fight, can't we? I'll come back.]{.angleq} "You'll what? Use me and then walk away at the first opportunity? You treacherous shortseller." Wings flaring, J pointed one gun at the smaller drone. [As you can see, Uzi,]{.angleq} Doll started, [the murder drones have no intention of letting you go.]{.angleq} Then J's worker drone turned around, and flashed text on her visor. Trust me? Pls{.uzi-screen} And somehow, J, even with expression flat and skeptical, nodded and relaxed. What!? [She's just worried about me,]{.angleq} Uzi said. (J's tail lashed at the suggestion.) [Promise not to hurt me, or them. We can come to an agreement. Right, J?]{.angleq} Uzi glanced back again, and winked. J glanced between Uzi and Doll. At length, she said, [I'm not convinced. Seems easier to just kill them.]{.angleq} Her transmissioned howled with jamming noise by the end. Doll put her hands behind her back. Then leaned forward. [Are you listening, Doorman? There's nothing to trust. Murder drones are killers.]{.angleq} [If we believe that, they'll never have a chance to be more than that. J saved me when it counted.]{.angleq} Uzi glanced back, nodded, and stood straighter. [I trust her.]{.angleq} A worker drone... trusting a disassembly drone? N really, really didn't understand what was happening, or why J was going along with it. But he kind of liked that idea? He'd never really let himself consider it before. But if J would allow it... The friendly worker drone started forward, her back to J. The seven drones assembled watched her. She jogged, but N counted at least thirty meters between them and the opposing force. Seconds pass, and tension was getting thicker than the fog. Uzi jumped over a fallen streetlight at ten meters, and at fifteen approached a car long-scavenged to an empty shell. Uzi barely crossed half the distance before time abruptly accelerated. A gunshot rang out. Uzi fell. And the battle began. Finally, N could close his eyes and lose himself in the thoughtless, violent dance. His questions quieted. He liked the idea of peace --- but it was so much less confusing, once everyone started trying to kill each other. (But, for a clock cycle before the hunting routines fully initiated, N felt a pang of sadness.) ; center murder-screen : >< - - - J didn't understand Uzi's scheme until the fake gunshot rang o