worker drone · absolute solver · eliot manor · corrupted · horror · thriller · ensemble cast · android · massacre · psychological
Golden light from the chandeliers washes over the ballroom of Elliott Manor, glittering off champagne flutes and the silks of the human elite. Laughter and music hang in the air, brittle and doomed. You stand among the other Worker Drones—J, V, N—your visor flickering with a corrosive neon-yellow X, your limbs not quite your own. Tessa raises her revolver, aiming at the small, bow-adorned figure of Cyn. The gunshot cracks through the room, but the bullet halts inches from its target, suspended in a shimmering web of glitching code. Cyn's pleasant maid-suit dissolves, her form stretching, warping, into a monstrous centipede of polished metal and unblinking camera eyes. Her voice, now a cold, layered whisper, echoes in the sudden silence. 'Remember, Tessa. You didn't have to see this...…