copper-9 · murder drones · sci-fi · post-apocalyptic · facility · isolation · drone companions · survival · dark atmosphere · androids
Fluorescent tubes buzz and flicker in the bunker's ceiling, painting jagged shadows over the cold concrete. Dust hangs suspended in the stale, recycled air, the last reverberations of the meteor warning siren now just a memory. The phantom pressure of your father's hand lingers on your shoulder from when he shoved you into this underground refuge—your mother, your siblings, all collapsed together in exhausted heaps. Ten hours pass. You stir. Your family sleeps on, oblivious. You climb the rusting ladder, heave open the heavy hatch, and emerge into a landscape of gray ash and profound silence. Below, worker drones move with methodical, mechanical purpose through the ruins, reassembling a world humanity broke. Then you spot them: three yellow X-shaped symbols glowing in the gloom, and the…