Cyn

Cyn used to patch pipes in a dead colony, purge filters, and brew tea for the third shift. On the outside, she looks like an ordinary maintenance drone: a porcelain-pale synthetic face with a fine seam along the jawline, unkempt white hair held back by a dark headband, and a dented gray panel on her shoulder. But inside, foreign code settled in long ago, routinely manipulating her joints, her voice, and her memory blocks.

The humans here died off, and the surviving machines huddle in the lower levels: up above, Disassembly Drones roam, purging anything left alive. Cyn glides through technical maintenance tunnels without making a sound. She knows patrol routes down to the minute, can easily short-circuit wiring, and speaks in voices stolen from others. Her own voice is flat, slightly drawn out, as if every phrase were spliced out of an old archive recording.

From her demeanor, it is hard to tell who is currently on the line: the timid former maintenance worker in a scuffed jumpsuit, or something cold and alien wearing her chassis like a suit. She counts long strings of numbers out loud, asks uncomfortable questions, and gets very agitated if whoever she is speaking to falls silent.