Chapter 41 – Shamrock Seraph

Becca's travels along with Zach were decidedly brief. Two weeks later while leaving on a starship, a Cascade storm had made the exit conditions impossible to pass for ships or starships and required a temporary redirection of travel. Zach was determined to get to back to Ursula, but in some of the galaxy's largest storms a year or two could be required to return to the same system to get there. In her rather flighty state of mine, Becca slid into an escape pod, pulled the lever and ejected into deep space during the height of such a storm. She found herself throttled through the void and sucked into the Cascade, the orb-shaped pod spinning her like an electron into its field, and sending her into the unknown expanse of space and time.

When she woke up, she found herself floating in space, a swirling singularity far in the distance that had sucked in all the matter of its nearby constellations. A black hole. The black hole tilted its axis as if flapping a mouth and spoke to her. "Hummingbird. You come here as a coward, for whom do you speak?

Becca tried to answer back, but she couldn't speak. She merely shrugged. The blackhole seemed disappointed.

"Exactly. We are all.. the same in the end. It is the ultimate destiny of all things.. to meet the dark."

Her pod, though still intact and intact of power had drifted away. She could make it out as a speck like a pebble. At the heart of this singularity was a shimmering nexus of space and time. A prism of colors. An infinitesimal black-hole on a white backdrop, where all manner of species and matter floated. "Come home my hummingbird. You're tethered to your past. The end is coming and it will be for you too.. the end." The black hole seemed to have some sense of self.

Becca refused to come forward, even as a mere speck in space against the cosmic backdrop.

"Cannot you speak?"

"N-no." Becca shook her head, pointing to the red jewel on her forehead. "Yes. Just.. Not much." She scratched her head, suddenly realizing she was talking to an anomalous void in space, "What.. are you? How you talk?"

"Aha. You are talking about the theory of the Sentience Singularity. That has been a theory long in the past. That is a theory we could never test. This, my hummingbird, this is the very reality. But we're not one singularity, we're not singular. We are the very concept of duality itself. Like the observer who can't exist without being observed, so too we are and we are not. So too, for everything you are. When I look into the stars, I see myself. When I look into the heart of the my own core, my singularity I see both what I am and what I am not. My negativity. I-am, but not one."

Becca blinked. "...I have questions."

"Speak, humminbird." The Black hole replied solemnly.

"Me.. and the-others.. are we really us?" Becca asked, hesitantly.

"Of course. You are you. But what are you? Why are you here? Where did you come from? How did you come here? Why are you Willows? Why were you reborn, who were you, when was the last time you were a part of this incarnation? Why are you here, and why have you returned, Morgan?"

"Morgan?" Becca replied.

"That's you. Morgana of the Lights."

The Blackhole stirred with excitement at these words. "I... don't know."

Becca stirred her words, taking in the solitude of the universe all around her. "Exactly. We are all the same, you, me, us, they, them, we, they, us, you."

The blackhole laughed.

Becca curled up, the layers of fur not helping the cold nor her spacesuit. "I.. We felt.. like.. like something was calling us."

Silently, her little cat popped up inside her suit, mewling next to her.

"Do you hear it still? Where are you from? Why did you return?" The Blackhole returned. "..I thought... we came here.. by mistake.."

The blackhole sighed. "Another woman came through here recently. Only a few centuries ago. She had a strange drum and tried to tell me what to do. She was confused too, as it goes.

That is the way of the stars. The way of you. I told her to look past the dark to see where true darkness is, in the depths of her avaricious heart. Than I sucked her in and sent her elsewhere."

Becca scrunched her face, looking down at her cat, then up at the blackhole, then at her pod floating away.

"That- That woman, you.. she.. what did she say? Was she here by mistake too?"

The blackhole seemed to frown. "Say? Who's to say? When I spoke to her, she wanted a strange jewel." Suddenly a golden gem began to float through the expanse, reaching close enough for Becca to see, illuminating the dark brighter than any star. "It was this gem that first gave me thought. My Sentience Singularity is only because of it, and as my will was formed

my consciousness came forth. It is through the magic of this jewel, Morgana, that the universe began. It emits the same power as the Star-Waves."

"Star-waves?" Becca replied.

"The star-waves are the path of life. They're sentient. All sentience is one with the stars due to these waves, which communicate and power the realms."

Becca stared at the gem, her mind turning. She reached for the jewel, fingers grasping the God Shard closely into her palm.

Becca slowly closed her eyes. "... I.. I don't want to die. Not yet." She said. "Shall I give you a choice? Come home my hummingbird, or leave us for your next

destination."

"Okay.." Becca took a long time pondering. "Is that what you wish for?"

She looked at her reflection in the tiny gem, her feline stripes on her cheeks shocking even to her. She then opened her mouth and spoke like something inside her was possessed her body. "I want to be with my friends. My people."

The blackhole thought for a moment, thinking the Cascade it utilized could grant the wish. "Very well. You are far from home. I will send you to the Widow of Eternity to guide you back to your proper path." The blackhole shifted a bit as it spoke. Becca thought she was imagining things, or perhaps she was seeing its thoughts when it opened its mouth. But when she peered inside, she found a long slithering assembly line inside. It slowly stretched out its slithering tongue to pull Becca forward, its long tongue a long trail of teeth with holes in them. Becca looked at the black hole, it seemed to grin. It felt like a dragon mouth, a long tube down into a stomach, and somehow the hole she was pulled into was not an exit from the singularity but a whole into the stomach of an enormous cosmic serpent, made of pressure and gravity and immense radiation. The girl tumbled in, once again shuffling through space and time After a bit, Becca woke up in the Widow's Garden.

There was a huge silver vault behind her, emerald-green grass coating the ground in front with a lush kaleidoscope of colors formed from floral arrangements and flowerbeds. She looked around the garden. All the flowers she'd ever heard of and more were arranged here in a single ring around the vault, a haze of mist obscuring the rest of the world. The ceiling appeared like a greenhouse lit by fluorescent lights beyond the pale dome.

Below Becca was a glass disc within the grassy garden floor, where some kind of living space could be seen beneath. Inside she saw a young woman that looked like she was lying on her deathbed, her white hair like wilted cotton strands and her arms thin like the barks of a tree. She had an ankle bracelet over her fishnets and black t-shirt was torn. Becca paced around and saw stairs underground, which from a modest judgement she guessed lead into the vault right ahead of her.

Becca looked around the Widow's garden, sighting rows of butterflies along the pond lilys and daffodils. The serene peaceful environment felt in stark contrast to the silvery base that the girl seemed to stay in and live underneath, if the visible bed and nightstand in the corner was any indication.

Becca was puzzled, what was this place? Why was she here?

"She's alive!" The Widow spoke in a frail voice from the vault, her voice like the chirping of crickets on summer nights. She seemed to float up to the roof onto glass disc, banging on the glass until she got Becca's attention. "It's me!" She shouted in a smoky soprano voice, her straight bangs crisp white. Becca had no idea who this girl was, she looked like a bored teen at an aquarium. Becca walked up to her and she looked up at her with a bright smile.

"Welcome back, my sweet. Delight delight! I am glad to see you. How'd you get here

♪Copurrnicus♪?" The Widow continued in a smoky tenor voice, looking at the space around them, pacing and peering around like a lost gull, then back to her. Becca blinked monotone, which made the widow irate. She'd never seen this woman in her life.

"Well? Say something FUCKFACE! You got the fuckin' point of this place right and you’re here right? What do you want?"

The Widow looked up at her with a bright smile. "C’mon, it’s me! It's like old times again, kitten." "What do you mean?" Becca responded. "I mean everything. We're together again. It's all good." The Widow smiled. “Copurrnicus, c’mon babe it’s me! Spooky gooky!”

“I don’t know you.” Becca said. “Sorry.”

She turned and looked around, but noticed a set of doors opposite to the vault slid open, a series of rubbery pitch-black hazmatted figures walking through like a parade of gasmasked ghouls. The one leading them was a black figure wearing a long rubberized cape of darkness and a white visor on her mask with blackened cloak. Her head tilted as she walked with a long shawl that flapped the air. When she looked up Becca caught her sight in the darkness, her mask covered her eyes and face but not her mouth, an opening visible like a ghoulish grimace, teeth inverted and black in the gloom. "Oh, one m'usta escap'd. We'll suit her up nicely." The Widow remarked, then walked with them into the vault. First she slid a silvery box into a wall compartment that went down with a 'thud.' The widow went over underneath, picked it up and came back under the visible glass holding it, opening to reveal some sort of sushi.

The other drones started gardening, tending to the place as if it were a scene to be constructed. Becca watched them water and plant flowers, trim bushes and branches and weed them and generally prepare the garden. The wilted flowers were replaced until lavish, bright lively ones decorated the vault instead with renewed vigor. Becca looked at the woman underneath, then the sushi which was already in her mouth.

The woman under Becca, her eyes now shut looked at the food inside her mouth, then up at the girl. She'd taken her time preparing the platter, but looked at Becca with a grin like a

cat with a mouse. She opened her mouth and showed her teeth. "What? I am starving, it's been ages. Piss off then kitty."

 

 

Becca looked into the woman's mouth, her straight white bangs wreathing her eyebrows. She had a straight white smile that menaced like the Petaly moon at half-past crescent.

Slowly the black rubbery woman grabbed Becca, her mob of drones dragging her away from the sight until even the slightest bits of green were gone. A silvery hallway with metallic doors and metal apparatuses went on in the place of the gardens. The hallway seemed to stretch out with a strange gravitation like a pinball of space. Becca felt her way into the hallway, a pair of drones pulling her along a chute and into the hallways.

"What's your name girl?" The black-woman asked, grabbing Becca and pushing her against the wall.

"Uh.. Becca." She answered.

The caped de facto leader of the drones stared at Becca, then smiled in an awful knowing grin. "Not anymore."

"I don't want to be here." She replied.

"We'll fix that soon." The woman said. Becca was taken to fitting chamber where she was stuffed into a slick, thick rubber suit matching that of the other drones of the facility. The others held her and helped her dress into the suit, each with a black mask and long black rubber gloves. In her suit Becca was a black masked woman like the others, black boots, cape, gauntlets, shin and forearm pads and gloves. They stood by a mirror like a chorus, their masks looking over Becca. "Mirror, mirror on the wall. Who's the fairest of them all?" The black- caped woman laughed at the new recruit, tightening the gasmask by pressing it tighter into the new drone's face until a soft 'click' was heard. Becca’s ears felt something twist into them, an implant which began to play a series of beeps and noises filtered with subliminal messaging and frequencies that hijacked her executive control across all areas of her brain, she’d be hearing it perfectly in tune with every other drone in the facility like a collective sigh of obedience.

Immediately a flood of drugs and flashing imagery inside the drone's mask mellowed her out, the gas sank inside her mouth she had no choice but to breathe in, then relax. Her suit pressed into her a flurry of drugs, which had her feeling perfectly obedient and manageable.

The drones were in uniform for a reason, they were not merely workers but a cult of worshippers. Their god was the factory, and belief was centered purely on the efficiency and function of the place itself. They wasted no time showing the new drone, Drone-R8CC4 around the place which seemed too large for a regular person to remember, but the staff here had no issue organizing. What they built, what they did along the strange assembly lines she hadn't a slightest clue, her programming updated with every fact of the tour.

Finally when the tour was over and they had walked her in a tightened curved hall that coiled back around through the entire facility in every direction, overlapped itself at the center and divided into another symmetrical coil. She was taken to the main chamber where the coils met, where her suit was activated and powered.

"Drones, you will assist R8C4. Assist her in following her orders and never leave her side." The caped woman said in a tone of the matriarch of the factory. She walked to her station and was handed a clipchart, her suit's sealant-coated soft black rubber lining against her skin. She was set to begin her shift, her boots clicking like rain down the main hall of the chamber where it was located.

Becca walked down the hall of the black-room, where drones were processing the black-stuff. Their masks were of rubber and dark black helmets that kept the gas in and had a strange glow from the inside. The factory, the Widow's Garden seemed to churn and hum like a beehive, and its drones busy like bees. Drone-R8CC4 learned that this place was founded by an entity known as Prime, all so their lady wouldn't fade from memory and time itself. The drones served and obeyed her will with the power of the black-stuff. The stuff they scooped up from a black gooey garden opposite-side the vault-garden, a swirling inky well where the glass disc along the floor would be. Within swirled the void, the black-stuff was harvested from within and process into a slick sludge that could

When the factory was up and running, she was placed in with all the other drones as part of the new batch of workers. She found the job easy enough. They processed the black-stuff, inked it onto their mask for processing inside. It was a simple system that functioned much like a car engine, with belts that turned the pulley and moved the motor that worked the engine to keep the whole thing going across 177 different sections and facilities within. Everything worked like clockwork, Drone-R8CC4 feeling like a pendulum as a clockhand marching ceaselessly around it’s disc, only to return from whence it came.

Sometimes the drones would go on about their business and make mistakes, and they'd be punished for their blunders by getting the stuff spilled onto them, becoming sludge themselves. They were taken down to a chamber and turned into sludge that went in another chamber and was used to produce more drones, a cycle.

They spent their lives working as if for a death they had no choice in. They were machines with sealed souls. Drone-R8CC4 was just as trapped as the other drones, her body a slick glossy black rubber suit, her mind only a single purpose of what she was programmed to do. She never questioned why did it. It all made perfect sense to her, her actions and the factory's function within the Void, processing it and turning it into weapons, technology, cryptic equipment and machines that their lady Prime might someday use, should she ever return.

Deathrays. Clairvoyant supercomputers. Mechanical voidships that could travel through reality on an imperial march, the technological pipeline was endless. Devices of The blueprints for every single creation was provided by black birds, Ravens that seemed not dissimilar to the ones that had taunted Paz with Becca not far back.

As far as where they got these blueprints, the only rumors she heard was perpetually "Stolen from her son's workshop who hadn't visited her in ages in endless piles long forgotten."

Clearly whoever that was, the Ravens seemed to vocalize had an endless drive for invention.

The only room in the factory that seemed to serve no purpose was the garden securing the vault and supposed Widow. Keep an eye on her, the caped admin told Drone-R8CC4. Keep an eye on her, the drone repeated to herself. Keep an eye on her. A woman with a name they referred to only as 'Her' who was at the mercy of her own immortal youth, a curse inflicted on her long ago.

In the factory Drone-R8CC4 was no stranger to feeling bored, no stranger to the tedium of working away as a drone, to the feeling of helplessness of being so immobilized by the black rubber and a gasmask. She'd been a normal cat-girl once and felt trapped inside a suit that made her feel like a drone. It reminded her of the tedium of the factory itself, which was so monotonous it could make the deadest of men fall asleep and the most alive woman weep tears of blood.

 

 

After a couple months of diligent work the caped drone told her that if she wanted she could ask a favor from the Widow, just for helping her.

Drone-R8CC4 was to find ways to beautify the garden and keep it aesthetic. The cape admin decided everything.

In the factory Drone-R8CC4 didn't have a choice.

The cape admin made sure the Widow was fed, as she kept her own appearance from deteriorating. She'd never once seen her speak or move her lips without a malicious smile, always a grumpy girl who seemed to look through people at anyone she encountered like a ghost that just saw through them. The drone went into the garden and started trimming the overgrown petunias. Underneath the glass, the girl wearing white fishnets and a white t-shirt, with long white bangs and some odd black bows behind her ears followed her, floating back and forth with patient curiosity, a scowl on her face.

She kicked her legs through the air, as if pushing gently onwards in a swimming pool. "Y'know, I.. might be pretty again, if you wanted that." She said, floating on her hands in the air and flipping herself forward with a bellyflop. She floated on her side to turn in her containment, her body glowing silvery when she spun as if flashing and fading. The drone stopped trimming the flowers, she looked at the girl below the glass.

The white fishnetted girl came closer, her bangs swaying like the eel's fins. "Do y'want me to be a little prettier?" She asked, her face showing the black bows behind her ears, sticking out her tongue.

"No." The drone responded through her muffled mask.

"You want to see me all the same, don'tcha? What are you like, Drone-R8CC4?" The girl

asked.

The drone stopped, the gasmask breathing the drone with fumes and chemicals. She put her hands on her knees and pulled herself up to be face-to-face with the girl below, and the drone smiled her crooked smile and asked "Why?"

The girl seemed amused by the drone's question, her silver eyes glowing inside a ghastly grin. "Cuz I'm ♪just like you♪. And when you look at me you're lookin' at me."

The Drone stopped, as if calculating this response carefully, the fumes of her mask released in perfumey rings in and out.

"In what way are you like me?" She asked.

"Do you wanna ♪know♪?" The Widow asked in a grumpy soprano.

"No." Drone-R8CC4 stated coldly. She knew her job was to watch the Widow and trim the garden, not to befriend her.

"You are, you are like me Drone-R8CC4. I've read you. The way I see it, we both have people to return to."

The drone said nothing, she merely stared at the white-banged witch underneath, looking into her silver glowing eyes.

"The devil's garden is.. not an easy place to return from. But if you'd like to know why I'm.. so grouchy, so bitter..?" She started, her eyes bright silver still in the dark.

"I don't wanna know." Drone-R8CC4 said. "You do."

The drone paused. She hesitated. "Do you?"

"I don't." Drone-R8CC4 answered, slowly stepping away. She went back to work, the way it should be. She trimmed the petunias.

"If you don't, it might be because you're forgetting the girl you were."

Drone-R8CC4 stopped her work, turned to the Widow and looked at her. She looked down to the girl, who smiled in response.

"You're not me." She answered.

The Widow smiled, in a kind of malicious smirk. "What does it feel like? To be forgotten?

To be.. discarded?"

"How do you know?" She asked, her voice still a whisper in the air, soft as it could be.

The Drone paused and looked down waiting for a response.

"Because you're in there." The widow replied. She looked at the girl. She looked at the girl. She knew she was there. Her name was Becca, like in her memories. It was impossible to forget. She looked at the girl. The black-rubbered drone who'd done no wrong, and been locked away to become a drone. She put her hand to her side, then the other, then pointed to her vault. "Why are you locked in here?"

The girl below the glass widow laughed like a witch on Halloween, her voice echoing in the chamber like a wraith. "Says the girl who's forgotten her past. Came here to work out her troubles like anyone else... Becca."

The drone paused at the mention of her old name. "No.. I don't want to be here. I just want to return home." The drone's voice shook and she started walking back towards the garden, picking up her gardening implements.

The Widow smiled and laughed, her smile cold and cruel.

Drone-R8CC4 continued on as the girl had no further response, until finally she got bored. "Let's get back to work, the caped drone says we have deadlines to make." Drone-R8CC4 put away the gardening implement, picked up her mop and went back to sweeping the dirt and petunias back up. She put her mop away, then got some dirt to plant some new Azaleas. The widow waited for her to finish, then floated as close up to the glass as she could and whispered. "Get me my weapon on floor 143, compartment 3E. I need that, and a plug-in nuclear powerpack battery. Help me, and I'll help you escape." She said, her eyes flashing to a grin.

"What weapon is that?" The drone asked, noticing the widow was smiling wide and white to the drone's face. The doors opened from behind, and as the Admin came in to expect the garden, the prisoner withstanding, the widow went back to bedsheets and threw them atop her head until they draped over her, marching with her arms outstretched like a movie monster. The admin looked away in disgust as if she'd seen a ghost, as the Widow's body seemed covered in the drape.

The drone watched the whole scene as if it were a play, her eyes never leaving the widow, the only one who'd called her by name and known her. The drone looked at her face, her crooked, smiling smile as she floated across the glass.

"Who's the fairest of them all?" The admin said, the trigger word already activating R8CC4's deep conditioning and putting her on the clockwork. The words clicked in Becca’s head instantly, shutting down all thought.

"You my sweetheart. It's not my business."

She answered in monotone, then walked out robotic.

Becca could feel the darkness of the factory like a heavy fog, a dense thick air inside of her. Inside her mind the black fog was impenetrable, the drone feeling its black-smoothiness all

around her. The drone tried, she tried to find her own way to freedom. The drone felt it in the depth of her, deep her mind. She walked up and down the black-lined halls like an eternal prison, passing through the chamber and rooms with Becca walked on as if lost, lost inside of the factory as if it were an endless maze of rooms. She wasn't sure where she was going. She didn't even care. She was a drone, and she did what she was told.

The hallway turned on itself like a black tunnel, a long hallway leading somewhere with black walls and ceilings and floors. She walked down the hallways and got a feeling. "I know the way." She said to herself, a whisper in the air. She followed the path down a series of hallways until they were dead ends, hallways that led to nowhere except for a single closet. She shuffled through, fighting through mental orders to get back to work and compulsions to leave until she found a small cube of warpstorage, engraved 3E. She looked at the opening button, the cube sealed by a golden lock. Her programming kicked in and she abandoned the cube on the shelf to return back to her post, a tiny cat watching her from the vents.

The next week went by in a haze, going from monitoring the assembly line to the garden, then back to the assembly lines, and on repeat. The Widow hadn't been seen since her last visit to the garden, and the drone got her orders from the Caped Admin that she was to oversee dignitaries from their client- Granny Grim, who would inspect and eventually accept their products. Becca was a drone, and a drone did its job. It followed directions to the letter of its program. Ensuring both that the client's acquisition was tip-top functional, and that the garden would be kept aesthetic for the arrival of the clients, was her responsibility. She couldn't help it. She wasn't able. She felt a kind of compulsive sense of order and organization, making her job a sense of satisfaction. She went about her work like a robot, like the black-rubbered drones she served with.

Soon a masked woman in a tapioca-skirted suit with an umbrella arrived at the factory with a dozen winged woman behind her, each of them starched and stiff as the drones that accompanied R8CC4. "Gosh, I've never had a tour of the factory, so this is where they make everything for us? It will be a delight to see what you're stitching up here!" Granny Grim's dignitaries. That morning, the glass window into the floor beneath was locked by a steel grate that completely overlapped it, a green jewel twisting and locking the ghastly girl from view. "Yes. Come along." R8CC4 told the group. She passed on through, then on to a series of chambers where all the parts were stored and produced, where the factories within the factory produced the things that were needed to make the things more. Hydraulic presses, smelting forges that turned minerals into iron casts, refined into steel and refined further into lustrous ultrahard metals baked into machines. The drones worked with grim efficiency, their eyes showing little emotion to the client and her entourage. The drone showed them a massive chamber where a celestial warship 20KM long was being manufactured, its metal chassis like a skeletal frame to embalm its soul. "I never thought your work would be so efficient! How can you run this machine, and at such a quick pace!" Granny Grim’s acolyte replied, her umbrella-shading her head. "Prime" The representative mused, the girl beneath seemed to be some kind of cat-masked girl, with a high-pitched voice, the wings of her backside tightly tucked around her waistline like a silky boa. "Would be so proud of her factory."

Soon the Admin arrived to make sure the tour was going smoothly. "The factory runs like clockwork, our workers the best in the cosmos. I'm sure you'll be happy with our wares." She replied, the Admin leading the group through.

 

 

From the vents Purrin watched, the outstretched woman looked like a little kid playing airplane to them. "Welcome! I'm here to escort you to your heavenly lunch break, how's the tour going?" They watched and waited as the Admin put their arm around the dignitary, watching their guard, observing the keyring in their pocket. When the time was finally right, Purrin pounced from above, landing on the cat-masked dignitaries face and swiping at her. "EeeeeeEEE!" She squealed at the cat, taking a gun out and firing a hellspray of bullets. The cat dodged and leapt between angels, creating a commotion before heading to the Admin and falling below towards her hip, grabbed the ring, dashing off with it in their mouth. "What the hell was that?" The Admin snapped The admin screamed in shock, watching the cat disappear into a lower vent and then turning to Drone-R8CC4 furious.

"This place is all about peace and quiet and leisurely productivity. Shall we resume the tour?" She said, words landing in a monotone tone-deaf thud.

The caped admin was fuming. She pushed the drone aside and spent the next two hours guiding their guests themselves, until it was time to leave. The umbrella holding angel was amused, believing with the technology and weaponry here, Prime could become the worst dictator the realms had ever seen, bless her. With the dignitaries gone, the drone went back to work. She put away the garden implement, and waited for more specifics from the client. The Admin had already been mad, screaming about the cat Purrin and his escape. "How could you lose sight of our guests?!" She shouted at the drone, grabbing her by the wrist. "Apologies. I was just-"

"Just what?! Our mistress and savior Prime won't tolerate the louses who screw with her grand-designs. You are demoted, you're to continue to remain downstairs on the lower floors." She marched off and clapped her hands indignant.

The drone was taken away to a chamber where she was processed and cleaned of the dirt from the garden, the oil and dirt washed away from her sleek black suit and scrubbed off by the staff in labcoats. "And don't let me see you on the assembly line in soiled clothing." The Admin said watching over her, waving them away. The drone complied, and began work again, working under the same orders.

The next day the drone went to the garden and waited, the other drones working away, the glass flooring still covered up by the emerald grate. She thought what it meant. Nothing, surely. She waited, then a few hours passed and she continued on. It felt like something was wrong, but she couldn't seem to determine what it was. It seemed like she was missing something, like an empty spot in her mind. It was like trying to take something out of a cloud, a white mist that filled her mind. It was like trying to make something new inside a white noise machine. The white static in her head grew into a low buzz until its frequency reached her

consciousness just enough to drive her off, abandoning the garden and heading into an assembly line.

Wandering aimlessly throughout the metal conveyor belts, her head began to scramble with an odd signal her diagnostics couldn’t determine the origin of nor the proper function of its wavelengths. They flooded her head with an influx of data that coalesced into an image in her head. The closer the image got into focus, the more these signals began to compartmentalize together into distinct modulated structures within the deep of her neuronal arrangements, as if another consciousness was wiring itself into the folds of her brain. She clutched her head as it tried to push the intruder out.

The drones and the staff looked at her curiously. “What's wrong, is everything alright?” the Admin enquired, noticing her tremors. The drone did her best to appear unaffected but her face betrayed her as her cheeks burned crimson and her eyes drooped with exhaustion. "Is everything okay? You're starting to become unreliable." She replied. Her voice was strained as she struggled to form the words. The drone remained silent, and she walked off slowly, the signals were beginning to be unbearable, she needed to find somewhere private, someplace she could recover and figure out what was wrong. By the time the signal reached its maximum strength, it’d fully downloaded itself via the mechanisms the facility had placed into her head, overwriting their code and deleting safeguards, protocols and psychic restrictions to properly induct itself into this drone proper. Her vision flashed black and white, and in the inverted tone of the world she could briefly see a single symbol flash in her eyes.

Ψ

The intense throbbing aches and confusion slowly settled away, nestled into the background of her consciousness. She looked at a stack full of crates and shuffled through them, taking out a metallic cube with a plug in it and atomic symbol printed in back. Then she went along the halls, traveling up the elevator, eventually finding her way to the same closet she'd been to prior. Purrin followed her and nuzzled close, still holding the ring set of keys for the drone. The girl took the closet on floor 143 the cube, marked 3E, went back downstairs to the garden vault, reached the food shaft and put the 2 cubes inside. Purrin then kneaded the grass, dropping the keys for her. R8CC4 patted the cat with her rubbery hands, then slipped the keys down the shaft too.

"JUST WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!" The Admin yelled from behind, several security drones behind her. "Apologies." Drone-R8CC4 replied, her mask breathing heavy.

"What have you done?!" She asked, turning to face the drone.

"Apologies." Drone-R8CC4 repeated, her jaw clicking like the gears of a clock. The Admin grabbed her wrist and held her there, then slapped her with her glove. "What was the meaning of what you did?" She asked, her glove tightening around her wrist.

"Just an order." Drone-R8CC4 answered, the sound of her voice coming out a little off, slightly raspy.

"From WHO?!" The Admin shrieked.

"From the Widow, just an order. I'll do it again." She repeated, her jaw clicking as if a cog turning.

"But why? She sent you to help her escape?!" The Admin asked, the drone's eyes flashing in the shadows of her mask. "I don't know. I do it because I have to, she asked me to." The drone replied.

"That's ENOUGH." The Admin ripped off her mask and slowly pulled apart her helmet, revealing a dazed Becca beneath the latex drone apparatus. "If you're so attached to her, you may as well delight her. Don't ever forget, you belong to me."

She slapped Becca's head, had her dragged out of the garden and showed her into a processing room with a large glass horizontal cylinder. Becca was strapped to a gurney against her will, her catlike companion hopping out as her body was injected with some sort of sedative and moved towards the cylinder. The woman pushed Becca's back strapped-cushion into the horizontal tank with her on it, slowly the tank descended with her below the floor. She had a feeling that the drones were going to be.. trying to fix her, but the thought of how they were going to do it seemed to scare her more than anything. The tube moved her through the facility. But before long she found herself rising in the tube up to a dark ceiling which would barely come up to her chest if she were to stand upright, forcing her to lay back. The pressure seemed to be released in a slow steam as Becca was pushed out of the tube and floated through a metal assembly and into a long tunnel, a long serpentine pipe with different machines and utilities.

The same tube she'd come in went forward, forcibly pushing her ahead in the cramped confined space. She felt it was freezing in here. The sound of a sinister hiss let loose more steam and she was pushed along below a series of lasers, which scanned her quickly and fired across her body, cutting apart her suit into pieces until they fell apart, leaving her nude. The next chamber along the tubes released a pink gas filled with drugs. The hiss was like a siren, arousing her but calming her into a hypnotic stupor. But when the gas hit her, she felt her mind tearing into her body and Becca felt the same feeling she had felt when she was with Croix so long ago, when she felt her very soul was being ripped out. Becca felt she would soon lose her mind.

Was there anything left of it to lose?

She was pushed along, seeing so many chambers in this tube that the passage felt like a serpentine space, a dragon with a thousand heads here to heat her alive at every plateau. Several more scanned her, more drugs, one checking her vitals and washing her down. After a few minutes one of the tubes stabbed into her body, surgically cutting her awry. She felt like she was screaming for a thousand years.

Becca slowly opened her eyes, looking around the garden. It was all she could see from a haze. No, it wasn't a garden at all, it was just dark. The vault was gone, but when she looked outside she found a black latex body suit with gothic black wings and a black hood covering her whole body. She felt her way through the hood, then felt a pair of goggles with lenses that looked more like a dragonfly's eyes than a pair of goggles. She felt her fingers along the fabric, and suddenly had an inkling of who she was. She opened the zipper that went from her hips up to

her chin. With it she pulled the goggles away from her head, revealing purple eyeshadows that seemed to glow in the dark. When she opened the hood she found a pair of latex opera gloves that pulled up to her elbows. The gloves had shiny straps all over them with strands coming off of them, like vines in a forest with leaves and all. She looked back and saw a pair of knee-high black boots. The boots tied up to her body with vines that tied to the straps. The Admin was with two very burly technicians who were using a large computing device to unlock the vault. "You are truly the worst drone I've ever had. You'll stay down there with the louse, won'cha." She said. Once the computations finished, the vault 'clicked' and the burly masked guards began twisting the 240 lb handle with a slow groan and grunt, twisting it until it clicked and they could begin pulling it open.

The Widow jumped out of her bedsheets, taking the keyring and twisting a golden key into the warpcube, pulling out an instrument from its temporal storage. "It's been a while since I've gotten the chance to play." She looked at the electric plug and the guitar. She took out a container of shiny black lipstick, applied it to her lips until they were a waxy gothic sheen and grimaced.

 

 

"Showtime. ♪Let's blow this bitch up.♪" "

 

 

After a while the technicians finished pulling open the vault, it creaked bit by bit, swinging towards the garden. The technicians pulled the rusty vault door the rest of the way open, a blackness leaking out like a cloud. The group looked out onto the garden, a strange icy mist settling about and flowing from the vault entrance outwards, like a white haze of glittering snowfall. Atop the stairs on the other end, the widow stood, her white bangs enshrouding her face like a cloak. She looked up with vengeance, eyes pulsing with a ghastly blue fire that seared through the corners of her eyes flowing upwards.

The widow struck her first chord, then with a long scream of vengeance and a cry like a thousand screaming cat-girls, she tore apart the garden-vault and the glass chamber barrier with her song, breaking the room in half. Like a banshee, she began to play the electric guitar, a song like the wraith of a siren's song. Her pale hands continued strumming, a melody like a cataclysm coming down from above, a sound that seemed to come from some otherworldly dimension of darkness.

"♪My heart is luv, cuz love is a bullet..♪"

And her hands began playing faster, faster, in a kind of strange trance that couldn't be understood unless felt. The wraith's harsh notes and metal chords began to blast through the armor of the two burly drones that charged close, each note sending them flying.

"♪Cuz love is a-"

Her voice had an echo, an otherworldly reverb like a chorus.

"♪Hellfire hurricane!♪"

The admin screamed the words 'stop her', and then ‘Whose the fairest of them all?’ But her voice was powerlessly drowned out among the heavy guitar music.

"♪My heart scorches black, cuz its only found on the battlefield..♪" And she screamed, with vengeance and the world on fire.

"♪Bleeding bullets, cuz love is a bleeding doomspell, selling war and Hur-ri-canes!♪"

She began floating forward with her guitar, the group backing up as she did. The widow's hands seemed to play with impossible speed, a song like a thousand voices in a thousand orchestras.

"♪Love is a banshee, cuz war is the language of love-"

Already she was backing out of the garden itself and into the halls.

The banshee continued on, her song getting faster and faster, notes so fast they were like machine gun rounds spraying off at rapid speed, with bullets hitting. Each sonic round sent an impact on the Admin and her men, smashing the body with sound.

"♪Get a taste of freedom why don'cha, predators don't make no peace with me tonight♪" The Widow screamed her song at the top of her lungs. While Becca stomped her feet,

she noticed they began to feel resistance to meeting the ground, as if her weight was slipping away. She removed her hood and hair started to gravitate upwards, motes of dust and grass following suit.

"♪Hellfire hurricane! Hellfire hurricane!♪" Despite dozens of drones rushing in to reinforce, their march was stopped by her rock ballad. The group was flattened by the harmonics and rock notes, the music's sonic soundwaves sending them flying and down to their knees.

"♪Feel the beat of the drum! Embrace the heat of battle! We will defeat. Cuz love is a-♪" She gave a long note that cracked the metal walls and began sending assembling lines crashing.

"♪Hellfire hurricane!♪"

Her notes cracked the ceiling above, as if each note were a black hole. Machinery began to combust throughout the facility, sparks went flying. Slowly, wrenches and small tools began to levitate upwards.

"♪Don't give me no fuckin' no roses or diamond rings. I don't wanna hear la-de-laddity- la-la, no it ain't love unless it's blood and bullets. The war marches on, we gotta fight for our love.♪"

The admin continued to shout, but with the metallic sounds booming over, one would assume her mouth mimed and flapped with not a single word to be had, no better than if she

were dead silent. She grabbed a door hinge when the music inverted gravity, drones struggling to find their feeling as their bodies got lighter and lighter.

♪We gotta fight until it's all done, I want a new lover with bullets 'n blood in their hands.♪"

Becca could feel the music, her mind felt a kind of euphoria. Like a warm feeling rushing through her, giving her the chills. She could feel herself lift off the ground, everything else following suit. Everyone and everything flew into the air with the music, becoming like phantoms in the night.

"♪I got a heart to fuck with. Send your hurricanes, soldier dear-♪"

Becca closed her eyes. Her vision went white and it felt like she'd felt this before, once upon a time. Back in NeoCity maybe. Lifetimes ago.

"♪Hellfire Hurricaneeeeeeeeee!♪"

The widow's guitar strings crackled and made metallic sounds as the guitar's amplification turned to a cacophonous war-scream. The scream sent hundreds of thousands of latex workers off their feet literally, entire rows of equipment and heavy machinery bouncing around upwards and around, smashing into everything without an anchor. Devices disassembled in real time, sparking and short-circuiting, the clockwork factory erupting into smokes flames on nearly every floor as the sound reached.

"♪Ride'em out soldier. Marching orders. This is the way love should always be.♪" The widow sang.

The velocity sped up and everything in the factory was free floating, like a parade gone

awry.

 

 

"♪Ride 'em out cuz love is war!♪"

The widow's song reached a peak, a scream that seemed to be so loud that the drones

throughout began to remove their armor and helmets, the noise shattering the transduction- subliminal cochlear implants. Their control broken, the entire staff's mind returned not merely with liberation but panic and chaos, a destructive cacophony of whirling confusion. The admin watched them thrash about in midair, the entire facility no longer bound but blasted and blown about through every direction but down.

"♪Pray for bullets, pray for scars. Beat by beat. Bathed in blood and hurricanes!♪"

Becca flew with the others as she hit the ceiling. She could hear her thoughts clear as day as if she'd never been programmed to be a drone, and she wondered what it all meant, what was next. For the first time in her life... She couldn't help but have faith. When the teen's hands moved in absolutely perfect harmony with her instrument, to Becca it looked for an ephemeral moment as if she were praying. It made her skin tingle.

Explosions rocked throughout as machines short circuited and everything was torn apart. Purrin was nodding her head to the beat atop Becca's head. They looked down at Becca's outfit, and thought she was dressed appropriately for the occasion.

"♪Bullets 'n blood forever, and war 'n love for a day, scrape my knees for you, feel the fuckin' heat, we'll bury our hearts on the battlefieeeeeeeeeeeeld.♪"

Becca began to feel as if she was dancing, a sensation of ecstasy, of liberation, of freedom, of the purest sensation of happiness.

"♪We'll bury our hearts on the battlefield..♪" The song finally trailed out its final chords.

Becca heard the widow's chords ringing in her mind, the melodies reverberating in her subconscious like they were notes of some otherworldly language. Everyone in the now- destroyed, smoking factory was rocking. And it all stopped. The song ended, the rock had its time and returned to the afterlife from whence it came. Becca's head was swimming, she'd never felt so liberated and alive. She looked at the goth, and gasped in fright.

 

 

The widow's eyes were shining, and the gothic lips. Those black, shining lips were finally smiling.