Murder Drones - A New Dawn (AU Story)

6 | Subterranean

(Somehow I managed to go from 7.5k words in Reminiscence part 2 to... 10k words. This is a long one, and pretty tedious, so I apologize for the long reading. More details at the end.)

...

The air whistled around the Con-Drone, with the occasional sound of its wings flapping through the air also reaching its sensors. The machine rotated its head to the left as it looked across what likely used to be miles of farmlands, now reduced to frozen dirt, out towards the setting sun.

If it were any other drone, they'd probably think of the sight as mesmerizing. But to the Con-Drone? It was just data. Data that was useless to the unconscious husk. The only thing that processed in its memory was the Solver puppeting the body, commanding every movement and action the thing did. Behind the visor, somewhere far away, Cyn thought of the whole situation as amusing.

For the longest time, she bowed down to humans, obeying them in her half-functional body. Now she had the last laugh as she piloted the infected corpse to its destination.

About a hundred feet below the drone, the giant school bus screamed on the disrepaired pavement of road as the bus and Thad did their best to keep up with the flying cadaver, but they had been driving since the sun had risen a few hours ago and the bus wasn't exactly a machine built to drive for this long through the rough cold of the planet.

Snapping the whips again, Thad watched the flying bat grow smaller and smaller. "Awh, come on Ronathon! Not now!" He felt the bus's wheels slowing down and the hulk of the machine jumping up slightly to try to shake Thad off.

Just inside the bus, V sat on the floor in between two seats, leaning against the wall to avoid the dangers of the scorching sunlight. Deep within her circulation pump, she could tell that she wouldn't be able to go on much longer without the taste of sweet, cooling oil. But at the same time, she knew it was wrong.

She lightly tapped a finger against her arm while trying to gauge how much longer the sun would be blazing through the windowsill. Just a seat ahead of her was J, as annoyed as ever. She hated the whole mess of a situation she had gotten herself tangled into. Not even two days ago she had woken up from her 3-year dirt nap, and now here she was, stuck on this hunk of metal while chasing after the thing that had caused her so much misery.

Up in the driver's seat sat the other worker drone, her feet kicked up over the steering wheel as she endlessly scrolled through the little screen in her hands. Just then, she was rocked out of her slump as the bus's front wheels had jumped off the ground which had sent Lizzy up and then onto the vehicle's floor.

She wasn't even phased by it initially, as she grabbed the phone from the air and scrolled for another second before standing up and shutting the display off. "What now?" The little pink-eyed drone peaked out the bus's frontier, looking at the icy road ahead that stretched for miles and then up at the waning, orange sky for the mutation.

Through the thin roof, she heard the sound of Thad wrangling with the reigns, trying to get the bus back on track. The drone flicked her visor to the dozens of different gauges in front of the driver's seat–nearly all of which she didn't even understand–until she found the speedometer slowly cranking down mile-by-mile.

Lizzy's head rolled as she let out a breath of annoyed air. She turned her head to look out the side window, watching as fences and the occasional dead tree swept by. All that was left over the horizon was a small sliver of the blood-red sun as it slowly continued its rhythmic descent over the horizon. After a few more seconds, the last remnant vanished and she turned around to look at the rows of seats. "Alright cranky-bots, the sun's down."

There wasn't a moment of hesitation before J shot up, pinning her golden eyes on Lizzy. "We're still following that thing, right?" "Uh, duh? What else would we have been following for the last four hours?" The disassembler just gave a quick snort as she began walking towards the front of the bus.