Ode to the Doorman

“Call her damaged again, and I will install a DOOR on your FACE”

And with that, he stormed out of the parent teacher conference and headed towards the bunker doors.

Khan Doorman, head of the WDF, unofficial leader of the colony, sighed as he let his head ‘thunk’ against the door. Five times he had tried to go check on his daughter, and five times he couldn't bring himself to leave the safe embrace of his own creations.

… Uzi was right, he really was a coward.

Khan made his way back through the bunker, navigating the labyrinthine structure with mechanical precision; he knew this structure well enough that he’d be able to find his way blind, He was practically doing it now with how lost in his own head he was.

‘Nori wouldn't have backed out, hell, Nori wouldn't have even let her banish herself in the first place. She would have blown those murder drones to pieces and dragged their daughter back kicking and screaming if she had to’.

…. ‘Oh robo-god, what if she saw you now?’’.

Khan’s spiralling was interrupted when he heard a conversation filter in from down the hall.

“Did you hear about the murder drone?”

“Which one? The big golden retriever guy, or the sexy nutcase?”

“Neither, I mean the dead one”

“Oh yeah, what about it? It’s still in the warehouse, yeah?”

“That's just it though, it's gone!”

“Gone?, like someone moved it or something?”

“Well, yeah, probably, but people have been saying it ate the guy who went to fix the roof and crawled away!!”

“You're joking!”

“Not even kinda!”

“Well, it's not like it matters too much anyway, if that thing’s still alive somehow we can just sic Khan’s crazy kid on it again”

“Ha!, yeah, and maybe she can feed it to her murder pets while she’s at it!”

And then the conversation faded as they moved down the hall, and Khan’s hands clenched so tightly that he felt the metal in his fingers creak, he took a moment to steady himself.

He turned around and started making his way towards the warehouse.

--⚠️--

His daughter's railgun was a solid weight in his arms.

Its design was sleek and streamlined, the stock fit comfortably against his shoulder, his hand came to rest on the pistol grip. It was so well-designed, he wouldn't have even known it was a prototype unless he had already known so.

…and he had brushed it off.

Khan rose to his feet and finally looked around the warehouse, his attention had been grabbed by his daughter's creation when he arrived, and he had gone to collect it immediately. 

The old Khan would have ignored it. The old Khan would have gone back to the parent teacher conference instead of here.

…the old Khan was someone he knew that both his wife and daughter couldn't stand.

So Khan took in the warehouse, he saw the strange slithering trail that led away towards cryostorage, it was far wider than the disassembly drone that had supposedly made it, longer too. He placed his hand against a wall as he inspected the trail, and felt his oil run cold as he traced a familiar shape. He turned to the wall and came face to face with the symbol that had haunted his family for years.

A triangle made by three rods, with a hexagon in the centre, with two words printed next to it.

Absolute Solver.

… Khan never really knew what happened to Nori before he dug her out of the snow, only small details. Getting Nori to tell him anything was like pulling teeth, and he had stopped trying as her mental health started to decline, he thought the stress would be too much for her. And the things she said during her fits and nightmares were either unintelligible babbling or just her begging for them to stop, to let her go, to just kill her already you bastards -  

Khan’s grip tightened on the gun.

Khan didn't know everything that happened to his wife, but he knew the Solver.

He saw it flashing across his wife’s visor as she screamed about demons falling from the sky and the ground opening up to swallow them whole, he saw it scrawled across countless pages as she tried to show him what was haunting her, to prove to him that she wasn't crazy like everyone else said (as if that being true could make him love her any less).

…he saw it flickering across her hands as she writhed on the ground, nanite acid eating through her torso, tears in her optics as she kissed him goodbye one last time, those beautiful violet lights shutting closed as he grabbed his wrench from his belt.

Khan was able to tear his optics away from the wall and back to the tracks on the ground. Uzi’s railgun felt impossibly heavy in his arms.

‘ We can just sic Khan’s crazy kid on it again’

Khan started walking down the trail towards cryostorage, like hell he’d sit back and let his daughter be stuck dealing with the Colonies's problems, when the entire reason he founded the WDF was to make sure she never had to feel the burden on her shoulders like he did.

He may have failed her in pretty much every way a father could, and in doing so desecrated the memory of his wife, but he could at least do this.

After all, being a guard was what he was built for.

--⚠️--

Khan ducked as he heard footsteps approaching, they weren't the signature hollow ‘clack’ of a female murder drone’s ballerina pointe legs, but that didn’t necessarily mean it was safe.

He readied the railgun, his finger hovered over the safety switch, all he needed was one clear shot.

…all he had was one clear shot.

The footsteps stopped, this was it.

“...dad? Are you here?”

Khan's core shuddered in his chest. That was Uzi’s voice. But how was she here?

His finger stayed hovering over the safety switch as he stood himself up and turned the corner.

And there, standing at the other side of the hallway with her back turned to him, was his little girl. She turned, her face lit up when she saw him, Khan's hand tightened on the barrel of the gun.

“Dad! There you are, I was worried!”

She started making her way towards him, her steps were normal, but the sound was off, just slightly out of sync.

His finger itched.

“Uzi…” he began slowly. “Why are you here?”

She stopped, the lights above her flicked briefly. She smiled at him.

“I'm here because you were right, dad”. Small tears gathered at the corners of her optics. “You were right, we are safer behind the doors, there was no way staying with the disassembly drones would have worked out, it was a stupid idea”.

There was a low ‘creak’ from somewhere above them, Khan kept his optics trained on what he was starting to believe was not his daughter.

“The others told me that you ran off here, and I came looking for you” she held her hands out in front of her. “Now c’mon dad, give me the gun and let's go home” 

He did not give her the gun.

Khan started walking backwards towards the other end of the hallway, never once taking his optics off of the thing that was wearing his daughter's face.

The creaking was louder now, he still didn't look up.

Not yet .

‘Uzi’ glared at him. “Dad, what are you doing?! Just hand it over!” 

Part of the metal ceiling screeched as she came closer, the lights were flickering wildly, Khan’s core was trying to beat its way out of his chest.

Even though he knew this thing couldn't be Uzi (she would never admit to being wrong like that, she was as stubborn as her mother) it still looked like her, sounded like her. And that made what he was about to do that much harder.

He flicked the safety off, the railgun whirred in his hands as it primed itself, the doppelgänger looked at him in fear.

“Dad?! What are you doing?” 

Khan looked into the optics of the fake, and found that beyond a surface layer of artificial terror, they were as cold and dead as the planet they lived on.

“...something I should have done the moment I saw you”

And with a grunt of effort, he pointed the railgun at the roof and fired.

Khan winced as the stock of the gun slammed into his shoulder, the beam of energy fired from the gun was blinding and very nearly rendered him deaf, but he still heard the creature screech as he obliterated most of its body.

He struggled as his feet started sliding against the floor, but it was no use, and he was sent hurtling backwards. The beam fizzled out and died as he landed, the railgun’s barrel melting into a pile of warped slag in his hands, it hurt. 

What was left of the monster fell to the ground with a meaty ‘thunk’ . It started to rise up in front of him, the top half of its head was the only part of it that resembled the murder drone it once was, everything below that was all teeth and claws and meat .

It slumped towards him, mouthparts clicking in eager anticipation. Its visor was alight in searing yellow:

[MATERIAL COLLECTION]

[If you can read this, YOU ARE IN RANGE.]

Khan could read it perfectly.

He staggered to his feet and ran, sprinting through the dark corridors as a warped version of his daughter's voice screeched behind him, even now it was still trying to trick him.

Khan took a sharp left turn and slammed into the wall as he kept moving forward. This momentary slip was all the monster needed, it rushed forward and slammed into his back, sending him flying into a storage room.

Khan grunted and pulled himself up onto his knees, spitting oil and feeling his plating dent and crack in a few places, he turned around, ready to face the monster.

Only to come face to face with her . 

She was as beautiful as the day he lost her, her bright violet optics shone in the darkness, free of the fear and exhaustion that dogged her every step in her last days, she was giving him that small mischievous smile that made his heart melt when they first met. She said nothing, merely opening her arms wide in invitation, the fabric of her immaculately clean dress looked soft and inviting, her hair spilled down her shoulder just so, practically begging him to run his fingers through it like he used to.

It was perfect. Which is why he knew it could never be his Nori.

The hologram image of his wife began to flicker as the beast behind it hauled itself up higher, using its insect-like limbs to grip the door frame. It reared its head back, ready to devour him whole…

…and was immediately crushed by 10,000 Psi as the bulkhead door slammed down on it from above, sending a spray of oily viscera in all directions.

Khan took a shaky breath as he watched the pile of gore give a few pitiful twitches as it died, fingers still tight around the universal door controller in his hand. He shakily got to his knees as the door opened at the press of a button, finally, it was over.

“Sneaky, sneaking, sneaking away. Get snuck upon”

Or so he thought. He whipped his head around to the source of the voice, seeing a fleshy thing scuttling away from the mass.

Without thinking, he ran over and stomped it with his boot, and then he stomped it again, and again, and several more times until he was certain it was dead.

Khan looked at the railgun, it was completely unusable, his daughter's first successful invention, and he’d destroyed it.

‘Nori would kill you for that if she was here’ 

Khan rubbed his thumb along what remained of the railgun, he hummed in thought as he started to walk back towards the surface.

The gun itself was totalled, but Khan had a pretty solid idea of its design from handling it, and almost everything Uzi knew about engineering she learned from him. Back when he still made time for her. He pulled a quickly created blueprint of the gun up on his HUD, he could see areas where it could be improved, picking out microscopic flaws in the design only years of experience could reveal, years of experience he could have imparted onto his daughter if he was a better drone.

…but he was a better drone, once, back when he still had Nori to be his rock.

He didn’t have Nori there anymore, but that didn’t change the fact that their daughter needed him to be better, and Robo-God damn it all, he wanted to be better for her. Especially now that he was beginning to realise that his and Uzi’s goals aligned much more than either of them knew.

The humans forced the Solver onto his wife, the Humans had also made the Murder Drones, and they had the Solver just like Nori did. It didn't take a genius to put two and two together.

Khan picked up the pace, a fire having been lit in his core, if he was right about this, then it would change everything. He bolted through the warehouse doors like a bat out of robo-hell, bowling over a very startled and confused Thad in the process, and made for his workshop.

For the first time in years, he wanted to design something that wasn’t a door.

End notes

Khan doorman, the man that I'm going to make you become.

Does it really make sense that Khan could solo eldritch J? Probably not, am I writing that anyway because it establishes his character and sets up plot details for later? Yes. But aside from him weaponizing his doors, the only difference I've made to Khan's character is that he's, like, WAY more overtly depressed about loosing Nori.

Also wow, as of posting this chapter AFWFF has been read by 262 people! That's a lot! I'm glad you all like it, i'll see you guys again in two weeks!