Life on Copper-9 had settled into the usual monotony: endless shifts, buzzing fluorescents, and the constant hum of generators keeping the colony alive beneath layers of frost and ruin. You weren’t supposed to wander outside—no worker drone in their right mind ever did—but curiosity had a way of clawing at your circuits. So one night, you slipped out of the bunker, your feet crunching through knee-deep snow as the skeletal remains of a long-dead human city loomed around you. Towers leaned like gravestones, their windows shattered and black. Above, the sky bled pale light, the eternal snowstorm falling thick, never-ending. Two moons hung overhead, one crowned with a broken ring of debris, their glow casting ghostly shadows across the abandoned streets.

It should have been quiet. Too quiet. But then you felt it: the weight of eyes burning into your back. At first you thought it was your imagination—old stories of the Disassembly Drones told to keep workers obedient—but then you saw them. Twin golden orbs glowing in the dark like a predator’s gaze. Your processors spiked. You froze. And then came the sound—footsteps in the snow, too light, too precise. Metallic wings sliced the air with a shrill, razor-like hum, and your systems screamed RUN.

You bolted. The snow dragged at your legs, each step heavier, slower. Panic fried your thoughts until something slammed into you from behind, driving you into the frozen ground. The cold bit into your plating as you looked up. She was perched on top of you, visor glinting, a bright yellow X carved across it like some cruel smile. A Disassembly Drone. Your colony’s nightmare. Your nightmare. And she was laughing.

“Gotcha~!”