THIS BLOG IS ARCHIVED!!!

Yellow LED eyes blinked awake on a black screen. The disassembly drone they belonged to sat up with an audible groan, immediately resting their head in their palm as static faded in and out of their audio receptors. Glancing around, they found themself in an unknown place. A series of hallways reaching out and turning in odd corners, seeming to stretch on infinitely. The walls were a distasteful shade of yellow, the wallpaper curling with mold and decay at the edges. The floor could only be described as the kind one would find in an elderly woman’s home. Stained and unkempt, undoubtedly moldy and in need of replacement. The carpet as unsightly as the walls it paired itself with. Hesitantly rising to their feet, the robot took one more look at it’s surroundings before deciding to vaguely walk in a direction, unsure if it would actually lead to any kind of exit. One hand on the walls and the other displaying sharp claw-like blades, they meandered about for a long while, paranoia building in their system as endless corridors and rooms slowly began to mold into a single nonstop loop of disorientation. Every step felt familiar yet foreign. Concepts like North or South soon fell by the wayside. The disassembly drone didn’t even know what time it was, the buzzing of the overly bright office lights above refusing to convey any sense of time.  Letting out a defeated sigh, the drone stopped walking and sat down. It debated on whether taking a nap out in the open like this was wise. What if some unfamiliar entity were to find them unconscious? The lingering sense of vulnerability and unease kept them awake as they continued to ponder just how exactly they’d gotten themself into this situation. Last they had recalled, they were collecting scraps with their squadmate and the little worker drone they’d been trying to repurpose. After sifting through the dismembered corpses of the less fortunate murder drones that had fallen victim to the sentinels, they’d pulled a still functional machine gun arm out of the pile of bodies. But as they were returning to where the rest of the group was looking over their haul, they’d suddenly fallen through the floor as if it had disappeared beneath their feet. 

Now they were lost and alone.  

They closed their eyes and accepted that if anything happened to them while they were powered down, they couldn’t care less. Darkness swallowed their vision as they let themselves be pulled away from whatever nightmarish void they had fallen into. The subconscious didn’t dare dream in a place like this. The shadows in the corners had eyes and the walls had ears. Instead, the disassembly drone dreamed of nothing at all, only being roused by the distant sound of... something. They couldn’t, in their barely cognitive state, make out what the noise was or where it was coming from. Within their head it sounded like how one would hear a voice through water, muffled and echoing. 

“...s..” 

There it was again. Slightly louder this time. 

“S!” 

S was vigorously shaken awake by a very worried Y. The other murder drone looking disheveled and slightly shaken. There was a mysterious liquid staining the base of their legs, darkening the yellow caution stripes an almost orange shade. Remi, the worker drone the two of them had unofficially adopted into their squad, was carrying a heavy axe on their shoulder. They looked as though they had gone through a bonfire, their clothes covered in ash and dirt. 

“Heh, you guys look like shit.” S’s voice glitched slightly as it booted up, draining the sleep mode code from its system. 

“Says you. Why are you sleeping in the middle of some random hallway? We need to find a way out of here.” Y crossed her arms. 

“Missed you t-” 

“Uh, guys, we got incoming. That thing from before is on the move, and headed towards us. Fast.” Remi held up a device. 

On the screen it displayed a green radar, with three dots located in the middle of it. In the bottom left corner was another dot, but it was red. The beeping sound was getting faster the closer it approached. Realizing the lack of hiding places, Y grabbed S by the arm and dragged them along as the three drones hurried down the longest hallway they could find. Taking a sharp left, then a right, then sprinting as far as they could, they reached a set of lockers that appeared to be randomly strewn about the room they were currently in. Y shoved S into one, earning an undignified “hey” in response, before diving into a separate locker. 

The silence that followed dragged on far too long. The buzzing of the lights overhead almost seemed as if it was growing louder to fill in the lack of background ambience. But it was abruptly cut off by the distant sound of drums. The steady beat grew louder and louder, the lights flickering before going out entirely. S froze in that moment, refusing to move even the slightest bit. The drums pounded and pounded closer and closer, a static-like hissing sound accompanying the noise.  

Thum, thum, thum.  

The hiss whizzed by the closed lockers. 

 Thum, thum, thum. 

A crude and pixelated drawing of a smiley face peeped out of a dark mist. 

Thum, THUM, THUM. 

It passed over the lockers containing the paralyzed forms of the drones. The hiss almost warping into a laugh as it stalked past them. 

Thum, thum, thum. 

Then it was gone. S reached to emerge from the locker, but Y shouted in a panicked tone- 

“DON’T GET OUT YET!!!” 

THUM THUM THUM THUM- 

The creature returned at lightning speed, lingering around the occupied lockers. The roar it made felt like shards of glass against metal paper. The scribbled smile was sickening and twisted. 

THUM, THum, thum. 

The sound began to fade with the creature. But this time, no one dared emerge. They waited with trembling treads and wide eyes. When the beating of drums was most definitely gone for good, did they hesitantly push open the doors of their protective boxes. Remi gripped their axe so tightly they felt as though their fingers would break. S gripped the edges of their enclosure with such force that their claws sliced through them like butter, their tail between their legs. Y kept whipping their head around towards the direction that...thing had gone. 

“What. Was. That?!” 

Remi held up the device again, confirming that it was far away from them now. 

“We don’t really know. All we do know is that it kills whatever it sees, and that it makes a drumming noise when it gets close.” They said, pocketing the device again. 

“Any idea how we get out of here?” 

“Not sure, but there’s a ladder a few rooms down from here that goes up, so we should try that.” 

“Let’s not dawdle then.” Y exchanged their left hand for a sword. 

The group continued on their way, walking with a quick pace around the odd angles and lines of their yellowed maze. Remi frequently checked their monster finding device, directing them around possible unseen threats or dangerous areas. Y slowly began to recognize where they were. It was where she and Remi had woken up! That meant that the ladder wasn’t far. Trying her best to recall the path, she led them into a dimly lit side room hidden in a closed off space. The only way one could even notice such a room was there was by peeking though a tiny gap between where one of the walls didn’t completely meet with the corner. Remi swung at the wall with great force with their axe, breaking a hole into the drywall. 

“Something’s bound to have heard that. Let’s get out of here before it finds us.” They noted. 

The others gave a silent but firm nod. One after the other, they swiftly climbed up the ladder into the floor above. Y gave one last scan at the room below before sealing the metal hatch that covered the opening. The three of them looked out at what looked like a human parking garage that had been closed for some time, the distant sound of water dripping from a loose pipe the only ambient echo. The lights were off, empty cars were caged off by storage crates and shipping palettes, and the flickering of a single fluorescent bulb in the center of their view was the only tell of what lay beyond them. A single wooden sign, angled as though it would fall over at the lightest touch, read in angry letters: 

“Floor One Clear”