He took stock of the room. Memories. So many memories. He made his way over to the record player in the corner, holding up a record to the light. The faded label read Bing Crosby's Greatest Hits Vol. 1. "His favorite record..." He muttered to himself as he put it on, His sensors greeted to the familiar tune of "Pistol Packin' Mama." He hummed along as he went over to the bed, taking a seat on it. Not just his bed. THEIR bed.
It felt so incredibly huge without Bandstand in it. Vacant... empty. It hurt. He was gone... but sorrow wasn't going to bring him back.... the best he could do is see that those who did this.... this terrible thing to him went to... wherever they go when they're deactivated.
He slowly got up, moving over to the porthole—surprisingly intact—wiping away a thick film of dust with the side of his hand.
Beyond the smeared glass, the Rockies stretched out below him, stoic and snowcapped, punching through clouds like ancient gods.
But it wasn’t the mountains that caught his breath.
It was Denver.
Or what was left of it.
A city long dead—bombed to ruin in one of the opening salvos of the Bloc’s invasion into the Entente’s western holdings… or what little was left of them by then.
Its once-proud skyscrapers jutted up like broken teeth, jagged and skeletal, piercing the skyline in silent accusation.
Streets, stadiums, entire districts—reduced to bone dust and shadows.
But this was the world now.
Trench lines stretching from Arctic tundra to Mexican desert.
The rainforests of South America burned down to blackened stumps.
Europe—a moonscape, cratered and dead from decades of shelling.
This was the inheritance humanity left behind.
He remembered the last time they flew over it.
Bandstand had laughed—said the whole place looked like it had been chewed up and spit out by God. Tex had called dibs on looting the radio station. It was stupid. It was real.
Now it was a tomb.
Their world. Their jokes. Their everything.
Gone.
He rested a hand against the glass.
Bandstand was gone.
But sorrow wouldn’t bring him back.
All Tex could do now... was bury the ones who did this.
Bury them deep.
So deep, the only thing that’d ever find them is a Geiger counter.
He turned around to look away before his circuits got overloaded. Just settling back as he took a deep breath, refocusing.
So this was what he thought that crazy bastard was talking about. Was he wrong? Perhaps he meant the chow hall or the room Bandstand and them had used for post mission quickies.... but no, that was unlikely. He had to mean here.
The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.
He rested a hand against the glass.
Bandstand was gone.
But sorrow wouldn’t bring him back.
All Tex could do now... was bury the ones who did this.
Bury them deep.
So deep, the only thing that’d ever find them is a Geiger counter.
So this was what that crazy bastard meant.
Tex glanced around the room again. Every shadow. Every scent. Every echo.
Maybe he was wrong. Maybe Dollface meant the chow hall. Or that backroom Bandstand used to drag him into after a rough sortie, when adrenaline hadn’t worn off and privacy was just a locked door away.
But no.
That didn’t feel right.
Dollface meant here.
Where grief still stained the sheets. Where Bandstand’s memory lived in the dust, the warmth, the ache.
This was their place.
Tex froze.
There it was again.
A high-pitched whirr, light and quick—just above him. He tracked the sound instinctively, gun hand twitching.
"...In the damn vents," he muttered, eyes scanning the seams in the ceiling.
Then—movement.
Something peeked out. Small. Plastic.
A doll’s face.
Wide porcelain grin. Painted lashes. Innocent. Dead.
Mounted on a cheap quadcopter.
That was it?
That creepy little gremlin was the one crawling through his systems, puppeting his grief like a stage show?
His rage didn’t spike—it snapped.
No hesitation. No breath. Just action.
Tex raised his sidearm and fired.
The round punched through the doll’s forehead, splitting the mask clean in two. Shards spun through the air like teeth. The casing clattered, and what remained dropped into the open.
Beneath the mask:
A single, unblinking lens.
Buried in a mass of tangled wires, exposed solder, heat-warped plastic, and battery packs bloated like tumors.
He stared at it. Disgusted.
"Bro..." Tex drawled, venom curling around the word, "...I get needing a facelift..."
He holstered his gun with a click.
"...But this ain’t it."
The quadcopter fluttered—wobbled mid-air like it had been hit in the spine.
Then, from the speakers overhead, came a scream.
Raw. Guttural. Human in tone, but wrong. Distorted by broken code and frayed wiring.
It tore through the room like a blade across metal.
Tex winced. His hand clenched into a fist on instinct.
And just like that—
The drone spun, slipped back into the shadows of the vent, and vanished.
Gone.
But not gone.
Tex checked his uplink.
The static cleared.
Signal: reestablished.
He blinked, momentarily caught off guard. The jamming had stopped.
Guess losing that mask meant more to the little freak than he thought.
Pulled its whole focus. Switched priorities like flicking a kill switch.
The whirring receded—higher now, quieter. Retreating into the Ark’s bones.
Then nothing.
Just the faint hum of systems coming back online.
Just Tex, standing in the stillness, pistol still raised.
He could’ve sworn he heard Bandstand’s voice in the back of his mind.
Soft. Low. Just for him.
“Good work... now sic 'em.”
Tex redrew his pistol, before reaching up into the vent to grab that little porcelin mask's pieces, and placing them in his skirt pocket.
Time to hunt.
Tex flipped his comms back to the usual station, fingers moving with mechanical precision. A soft chirp followed—the decryption update from R/CO had landed.
A few seconds of patchwork code filtered through. Reconnection complete.
"Hey, big guy," R/CO’s voice crackled in. "You hear me? Your core temperature's through the roof. Everything okay?"
Silence.
"...Oookay, I’ll take that as a no. Not gonna pry. But something small and fast just lit up my sensors. Damn thing's moving like a feral tick through the Ark."
Tex finally replied, his voice low and flinty as he rose to his feet. “Dollface. Put a bullet in him. Now he’s running scared.”
He stretched, servos whining as tension bled from his limbs. He checked the magazine—still topped off.
Good.
Before he could say more, a voice howled through the speakers above him.
"I’LL / SEE / YOU / IN / THE / CORE!"
It was Bandstand’s voice again—but stretched, gutted, tortured. A recorded fragment cut to shreds.
Then—snap.
The data connection died.
Silence returned.
Tex exhaled through gritted teeth and killed the uplink with a thumb-tap. Hard. Final.
“No more doorways for you to crawl through,” he muttered.
Back to analog.
Back to the familiar.
Radio only.
Let the bastard scream at the void.
He wasn’t getting in again.
He was going to take pleasure in clipping his little rotors.
Let him run. Let him skitter through vents and hide behind faces he didn’t earn.
Tex would find him.
And when he did?
No tricks.
No masks.
No mercy.