hex

It was always snowing here. Copper 9’s sky didn't know how to stay quiet — always spilling ash or frozen dust like the planet was constantly trying to scrub itself clean. The towering skeletons of industrial complexes loomed over the frostbitten ruins, casting sharp-edged shadows over the corpses of the past.

Uzi hated it.

Her boots crunched the thin layer of crusted snow as she walked through what used to be the administrative center of the old worker colony. Dilapidated walls. Shattered glass. Wires hanging like dried veins.

“Another dead end…” she muttered, voice muffled under her breath, chin tucked into her scarf. The black sleeves of her hoodie pulled tight around her fingers, the heat from her own systems barely fighting the chill.

Behind her — far behind her — something moved.

Silent. Calculated. Watching.

Hex.

---

Perched on the broken metal edge of an old factory sign, Hex crouched like a beast ready to pounce. Her synthetic pink hair fluttered in the high-altitude wind, staticky and wild, strands catching moonlight like tiny threads of electricity. One cyan eye glowed beneath the curtain of hair, bright and focused.

Her voice was a quiet rasp in her own internal system.

“Still alone, little fangirl…”

She watched Uzi wander into the open courtyard below — scanning, poking at debris with her boot, grumbling about signals or some Absolute Solver nonsense. Hex didn't care. She didn’t listen to the babble.

Not really.

She was watching how her shoulders slumped. The way her voice dropped when she thought no one was near. The quiet sigh when she leaned on a cracked support beam and looked up at the stars.

That was the soft.

The vulnerable.

The part that belonged in her nest.

Hex’s grin widened — chrome teeth glinting beneath her lips.

“Not yet,” she whispered, voice like an exhale of warm static. “Soon.”

---

Uzi, meanwhile, spun around suddenly. Her gun flicked out — aimed at nothing but dead silence.

“…Hello?” she said, a bit too loud.

Nothing.

No response. Just the wind whining through metal.

Her eyes narrowed. “I swear I heard something.”

She held her gun steady, tail coiling tightly behind her, voice sharpening.

“Listen — if you’re another one of Tessa’s weird backup drones or some Solver mutant again, I’m not in the mood. You wanna fight? Cool. Just don’t start monologuing.”

No reply.

Only that same cold wind.

She waited.

Still nothing.

“…God, I’m losing it.”

Gun still up, Uzi backed toward the nearest wall, ducking inside a partially collapsed hallway. The metal creaked under her weight, rust flaking off into her hair.

Far above her, Hex leaned forward slightly.

“She talks too much,” she murmured with a soft smirk. “But her voice… mm. It’ll sound better when it’s half-buried in blankets.”

She stood. The metal beneath her feet didn't make a sound as she walked.

---

Elsewhere, deeper in the cold...

The nest wasn’t much by human standards — but to Hex, it was perfection.

She had scavenged every soft scrap of fabric she could find. Blankets, old human coats, insulation layers, fuzzy toy parts — all layered in a deep metal cavity beneath a forgotten reactor. Plushies of all shapes and sizes sat in corners and piles: some handmade from salvage, others half-burned relics from abandoned homes. They didn’t match. They didn’t need to.

She had stitched little smiles onto many of them.

It was warm here. Her custom internal heat vents lined the walls. Old reactor coils glowed faint orange, giving it a firelight vibe. The walls had etchings — scribbled shapes, messy lines that looked almost like attempts at drawing someone.

Maybe a girl with a visor.

Maybe Uzi.

She wasn't sure.

She didn't like thinking about why she was doing this.

Just that it had to be her. Uzi. Not Doll. Not Tessa. Not any of the others. Uzi had that… something.

The spark.

The noise in her voice. The snark in her insults. The sadness in her silences.

She belonged here.

“She just doesn’t know it yet,” Hex whispered to one of the plushies, stroking its button eye with one long, sharp finger. “But she will. Soon. I’ll wrap her up. Keep her warm. Muzzle that pretty mouth if she tries to scream.”

The plush didn’t reply.

Hex giggled.

Then vanished into the dark again.

---

Back in the ruins, Uzi was getting antsy. She could feel something.

Her voice cracked as she muttered, “If this is another Solver hallucination thing, I’m gonna shoot myself just to save the time.”

She leaned down to examine an old access panel — prying at it, thinking maybe there was a core or signal relay she could use to track more info on the last infected nest.

Behind her.

Something.

Moved.

Uzi froze. Her tail went stiff.

A warm breath — or the illusion of one — ghosted across the back of her neck.

Her hand clenched tighter on her gun.

She spun, fast. Aimed.

Nothing.

Empty corridor. Flickering lights.

"...Okay. Seriously—"

From behind her again, just out of reach:

“Hi.”

Uzi barely had time to gasp.

The corridor lights blinked. A shadow moved — a blur of black and pink and blue, slicing between broken beams like wind. The grin. The eye.

Then—

Darkness.

---

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