Disclaimer: characters and situations in this story are copyright Capcom.

"Well?"

X blinked green eyes at the sudden question. His face—which seemed simultaneously youthful and mature—bore a slightly pensive look. "Well what?" he asked cautiously.

"Well, do you have one ready for me?"

Oh, that. X nodded slowly, composed himself, and then struck up a cheesy grin. "You know, most people say they just want a computer, but what they really want is a cogitator!"

Dr. Cain had to think about that one. "Ah," he said. "You mean something to do their thinking for them."

The grin evaporated as quickly as it had come. "How was it?" asked X. If his face was any indication, X viewed his attempt at a joke the same light as a man trying to build a concrete glider.

"Better," Dr. Cain admitted, remembering X's first attempts at humor. "This one was clever. Clever's not the same as funny, but they're first cousins."

X's frown deepened. Dr. Cain almost smiled at that. Part of X's problem with humor might have been how seriously he took it, but that was par for the course for X. Were it possible, Dr. Cain was sure X would have furrows in his brow before long, as often as he wore that expression.

But it wasn't possible, for X was a robot, the design of his face was set, and his desire to learn humor was part of what made him so remarkable.

Only part, Dr. Cain noted to himself. That desire was a manifestation of X's unique status. He was the last creation of the late, great Dr. Light, the roboticist par excellence, who, in his dying days, had sought to create a robot that had all the emotions and thoughts and flaws of a human being. As far as Dr. Cain was concerned, the experiment had been a complete success. X's mind was as complex and unknowable as any human's.

But that was only half of the equation, because that mind—that sensitive, vulnerable, extraordinary mind—was married to the chassis of arguably the most powerful combat robot ever designed. His baby blue carapace was actually thick, robust armor. His hands could withdraw his fingers to make way for plasma bolt emitters. His helmet, which provided both protection and augmented senses, hung on a hook nearby; taking it off freed X's mop of unruly black hair. (Dr. Cain found Dr. Light's whimsy a source of constant frustration.)

He was a puzzle, X was. No more or less than the average human, Dr. Cain supposed. It certainly kept things interesting.

"So high marks for cleverness," X said, mostly to himself, "but low on absurdity and spontaneity…"

"Don't try to analyze it like that," Dr. Cain chided. "Humor is highly situational and extremely social. Let me describe it to you with another joke. A journalist goes to a prison while writing a story. While the warden's showing him around they drop by the cafeteria. As they watch, one of the prisoners stands up and shouts, "TWELVE!" The prisoners all laugh. Another stands up and shouts, "EIGHTY-THREE!" More laughter.

"The journalist turns to the warden in confusion and asks, "What's going on?" The warden answers, "There's only one joke book in this prison, so everyone's read it a couple times. At this point, instead of needing to tell a joke, the prisoners can just shout out the numbers, and everyone knows which joke they mean."

""Can I try?" asks the journalist. "Sure," the warden replies. So the journalist bucks up his courage and hollers, "TWENTY-ONE!" And he's greeted by silence. He turns to the warden in confusion and asks what happened. The warden replies, "Some people just don't know how to tell a joke.""

A smile stole across X's face. "I see," he said, and Dr. Cain wondered if he did.

"Humor's tricky even for humans," Dr. Cain added. "If you master it there won't be much left to teach you. But enough about that. What have you determined about our guest?"

X's face immediately became serious again. "Do you want certainties or probabilities?"

"Certainties are easy and few. I've looked at his schematics and Sigma's report and drawn my own conclusions. I want to know what you think."

X nodded. "I think he was designed from the core out to be a combat robot, I think he's mentally unstable, and I think he's as sophisticated as I am."

"Interesting," Dr. Cain said. He walked past X. In front of him was a glass window overlooking a well-appointed robotics lab. Much of the equipment there was relatively new, the fruits of a windfall of cash and interest in the subject. Dr. Cain had done more with less, back in the days when he'd toiled thanklessly against the prevailing opinions of his discipline, but that didn't mean he'd turn down such offerings today just out of spite. He was far too practical for that. Besides, with age creeping up on him, anything that made his work go faster was to be welcomed.

On the primary work table was a red humanoid robot. Long blonde hair splayed down behind him. For the moment, his eyes were shut.

Dr. Cain remembered the images he'd seen, recorded in the optics of the red robot's victims. Those eyes had been filled, not long ago, with what was unmistakably bloodlust. Dr. Cain frowned at the thought. Okay, robots didn't have blood, per se. But he was fairly sure oil-lust was not an actual expression, and it didn't capture the essence of his meaning, so bloodlust would have to do.

He tapped his bearded face thoughtfully. "Interesting," he repeated. "Explain yourself."

X didn't speak immediately. Dr. Cain knew him to be marshaling his thoughts, and waited patiently for the process to complete. "He bears strong armor," he began. "And it's clearly armor, not just thick skin—notice the pauldron-like shoulderpads. He has plasma busters in his arms with firepower equivalent to mine. Maybe higher. The ports over his left and right shoulders seem to be made to house energy weapons. He's also relatively light. To carry equipment like that and have those capabilities and still have low weight means very high-quality materials were used. That suggests that cost was no object. There was no question about getting a return on investment. Capabilities alone were what mattered. That's a characteristic of combat robots."

"I could say the same thing about you," Dr. Cain objected.

"Maybe. But I can take my helmet off. Even from my design alone you can tell that I don't have to be a combat robot."

Dr. Cain grunted. He hadn't thought about that. "Continue."

"He also felt disorientation when we brought him to basic functioning earlier. He reached over his shoulder, near where the ports are. He was looking for something that wasn't there. If weapons are supposed to be there, and his base instinct is to reach for his weapons, then it's not just his physical design that's combat-oriented. It's his programming, too."

That was something else from the reports. Two of the red robot's victims were found with cylinders buried in their chests. Apparently the cylinders were a type of beam saber. The red robot had plunged them so far into his victims that he'd fused the sabers to the wounds they'd inflicted. The feeling was that the red robot either didn't know his own strength, or was programmed to seek total annihilation, rather than simple victory. Both were unsettling propositions. "Well reasoned."

X inclined his head at the compliment. "The second point doesn't require much proving. Just look at how he acted when he woke up. He didn't know how to communicate, but he knew how to fight. Hand-eye coordination is much harder than vocal processing, yet came online first. His targeting system clearly worked, but his ability to determine who or what should be a target clearly didn't."

"Unless he was programmed to regard all non-friendly robots as threats," Dr. Cain interjected.

"I suppose that's possible, but it seems pointless. Why build a masterpiece robot, then tell it to kill the first thing it finds? You could do that just as easily with a bomb. But the biggest clue is the way that he lost the fight. He suffered a serious system crash mid-battle. I know that when I've done combat simulations, my combat subroutines have had total system priority. But he was so scatterbrained that other programs were able to intrude. He couldn't handle the multiple inputs, locked up, and surrendered his advantage."

"Good thing, too," Dr. Cain said. "By that time he'd taken down a whole squad of Hunters and pushed Sigma to the brink. Sigma's still undergoing repairs for that—the damage was extensive. And he did it without even using his busters… just his body, and whatever weapons he could improvise from his surroundings."

"That's another clue. There's no damage I can find that would prevent him from using his busters. But he didn't use them. That has to be a software issue. And if he didn't use his busters when he could tell he was in a life-or-death battle, then his combat subroutines weren't interfacing properly with the rest of his system." X appeared to take a breath while he paused. Dr. Cain knew it was an artificial gesture, but nonetheless marveled at how convincing it was. He could appreciate Dr. Light's expertise without being taken in by it.

"I suspect he's the victim of a failed second stage initialization."

Dr. Cain's finger had been tapping away against his face. At X's words, it stilled. "A failed second stage initialization," he repeated. "That has a lot of weighty implications. Foremost of which is that he has a second stage initialization."

"I can't prove it with the information we have, but it fits the facts."

"So this is your suspicion that he's as sophisticated as you."

"Yes. The quality of construction is there. Some of his parts seem antiquated, but their arrangement is impeccable. I've worked on a lot of robots with you, Dr. Cain, and I've never seen anything like this… except when looking at myself."

"And if you have a second stage initialization, then he must?"

X shook his head. "I wouldn't put it like that. But if his body is that well constructed, his mind might be, too. We have to admit it's possible."

Dr. Cain put his hands behind his back and peered in closer to the window, as if that gave him some extra insight into the dilemma of the red robot. "Yes," he agreed. "And that possibility, incidentally, is why I asked your opinion. Sometimes we see things we want to see whether they're there or not. I feel a bit more assured now."

X tore his gaze away from Dr. Cain and looked at the red robot. "So… you think he's got a second stage initialization, too?"

"I do." In fact, Dr. Cain had an all-encompassing hypothesis of the red robot's origins. It was tenuous, he lacked solid data, and parts were pure guesswork—but it explained a lot. And whatever his scientist-mind might say about standards of proof, his gut believed the hypothesis completely. Which was why he could never tell X what it was.

"We've already brought him to stage one successfully," Dr. Cain said. "But waking him up… bringing him to stage two, that is… without knowing how he's programmed, how can we figure out what he'll respond to? What inputs would be seen as valid? And we can't just power him down and bring him back up. If he does have a damaged boot sequence, a hard reset might scramble his brain for good."

"I have an idea," X said. Dr. Cain smiled. X was innovative as no robot before him could have been, and few robots after him were. Dr. Cain liked to think he'd fostered the trait, but it was probably a built-in part of X's personality.

"Tell me, X," he said.

"He's a combat robot. So some form of combat-related stimulation should help his higher consciousness engage."

"You mean start a firefight in the lab and hope he wakes up? That could get expensive in a hurry."

X knew Dr. Cain well enough by now not to be threatened by the man's dry humor. Dr. Cain saw the tiniest bit of exasperation touch the robot's countenance. "No, not anything like that. Remember how I said he was reaching for his beam sabers?"

"There's zero chance Sigma lets him have those."

"Right, and I agree with that, but maybe we can put something there in place of beam sabers. A mock-up of some kind. Enough to make him think about it, and have to respond. It would be a change in his tactical situation, and his combat subroutines would demand he reevaluate his position. That might help us reach him."

"That's good thinking, X," he said, and felt second-hand gratification when X basked in the compliment. "I'll leave it to you."

"Huh? What do you mean?"

"Do the research and build a mock-up. We'll try it as soon as I get back."

"Get… oh. You have to go to the council meeting, don't you?"

"Regretfully. I'm torn. If I go, there's very little chance I can influence the agenda, and it looks like I'm legitimating the process. If I boycott on principle, there's exactly zero chance I can influence the agenda."

"Empty chairs don't get a vote."

Dr. Cain looked at X, caught the robot's hopeful expression, and smiled. "Better still. Yes, I'll go. I trust you'll be ready by the time I get back."

"I'll do my best."

"I know you will. You're a good man, X." He walked past X, knowing the way his face would be screwing up now as he chewed on the expression. It gave him mischievous delight to know how he could get X's mind tied up in knots so casually. And it gave him great satisfaction that X seemed to be finding his way through such matters.

Compared to the humans Dr. Cain was about to go meet, X was a better man by far.

Amongst the corporations to embrace robots, LLCC was a front-runner. Construction was hazardous business, and making it safe was expensive. The company's executives longed for the days before liability and worker's comp and unions, when buildings shot up like bamboo at a minimum of cost and reasonable losses of human lives. Bringing down the latter just killed the former.

Luckily, no one cared if robots were harmed in construction. There were expenses involved in replacing robots, but at least there weren't lawsuits. And the robots, such as the ubiquitous Met, proved hardy enough. LLCC bought them with abandon, used them to displace humans on the construction sites, and sent the rest of the humans to supervisor roles, robot maintenance, or (mostly) the unemployment office. The profits that resulted swelled the company's coffers and egos alike.

Dr. Cain's replica androids took matters a step further. Now, LLCC realized, they could have intelligent supervision of their robots on the build site, while still avoiding legal liability and the frailties of human flesh. They were amongst the first in line to buy into the new technology.

The company's investment was substantial; the benefits, immediately realized. But there were… quirks. And hiccoughs. Compared to the hopelessly obedient and subservient Mets, reploids were headstrong, independent, and had bad attitudes. (To the typical LLCC foreman, those adjectives were synonymous.) The very qualities that made reploids valuable also made them difficult.

And, every so often, one of them would go insane.

So when Magnus failed to show up to the job site on time, his supervisor feared the worst. He made a few calls, sent a few messages, and was on the verge of alerting the Maverick Hunters when Magnus sent a message back.

Suffered unexpected damage on my way to the job site. Had to evade a reckless driver and damaged self. Reported to repair shop; expect to be on-site by noon.

It made sense, the supervisor thought. Robots—reploids or not—had to avoid harming humans above all other things. When humans did unsafe things in a robot's presence, oftentimes the robots would end up having to take extreme measures to compensate.

At that point, another reploid came up to the supervisor with a sequencing problem, and the supervisor let the matter drop. And that's where he made his mistake.

He never called the repair shop.

The room held several CEOs, a couple of researchers, a handful of government officials, and a platoon of aides, assistants, deputies, and hangers-on. Most of the latter stood around the edges of the room, while others dawdled outside, marking time until the Important People finished.

Dr. Cain ignored them all. He was intently focused elsewhere.

Around him, people spoke in grave terms with great urgency. Maverick incidents were ticking up, month-upon-month. Programs were being delayed, property was being damaged, people were getting hurt, and—most importantly—a lot of money was being lost.

Dr. Cain was hearing only enough to be aware of the general direction of the conversation. The specifics… well, they were as important as the colors of the speakers' ties. He tuned it out until it was little more than a buzzing in the background. It allowed him to focus more closely on the lines he was drawing across two pieces of paper.

They were, he knew, recapitulating all the same arguments. More testing versus more cost. The economic advantages of reploids versus their unreliability. Customers accusing the manufacturers of lousy product, manufacturers accusing customers of voiding their warrantees.

And all of them, Dr. Cain knew, mistaking features for bugs.

The sound of his name drew him back. He looked up to see a tableful of impatient faces staring at him. He realized they thought he was wasting time with his drawings, and shortly thereafter realized he didn't care what they thought. "Sorry?" he said disingenuously.

"Dr. Cain," said An Important Person, "you haven't said anything in a long time. You're the foremost expert on reploids—"

"You invented the damn reploids!" another Important Person said.

"—and now we're in a crisis caused by reploids. What do you have to say about this?"

With a sigh, Dr. Cain looked back down at the two pieces of paper he'd drawn on. He began folding them, carefully, with hard, precise presses. "Saying it like that only reveals you don't know what's really going on."

"What's really going on is that reploids are malfunctioning, going berserk, and undoing everything they were built to do!"

"Thank you for confirming what I said earlier," Dr. Cain said coolly. "You and I are talking past each other because we're speaking of different problems. Most of you," he waved vaguely around the table, "are concerned with the damage the Mavericks are inflicting. All well and good. I'm all for protecting humans. I'm sure there are things you can do along those lines, like beefing up the Maverick Hunters. But because you're thinking about reploids wrong, you'll never actually solve the problem."

"Would you care to enlighten us as to how we should be thinking?" The words were caustic, the titters that followed them unkind.

"Sure. You persist in thinking of reploids as robots. That's wrong. The current practice is to buy and sell reploids like chattel. That's wrong. All of you assume that the problem is a problem with reploids. That's wrong."

The silence that followed was deep and hostile. It was almost enough to get Dr. Cain to look up from his papers. Almost. He went over a crease two more times. He needed it sharp.

"Is that a fact?" said A Different Important Person with an audible sneer. "Listen to yourself. You're telling us robots aren't robots. If that's a joke, I'm not laughing."

"There's a flaw in your thinking right there. You may see reploids only as robots, but they see themselves as people. Until you come to terms with that, you will never understand Mavericks."

"I thought you were a doctor of robotics, not a doctor of philosophy." More tittering.

"If you brought in even a single Maverick without frying its brain I'd gladly show you what I mean. But there is something I can point out from here. Can we go back a few slides, please? A few more. That one. Gentlemen, you'll notice here that humans are being harmed in these incidents, with ever-increasing frequency. But remember, by the Three Laws, robots aren't supposed to be able to harm a human being.

"Without this data, you can almost believe the malfunction argument. Reploids are incredibly complex, with truly labyrinthine computer cores. A glitch could throw things off-kilter in a hurry. The trouble is, for humans to be harmed, each malfunction would also have to affect the reploid's Three Laws gates. That's a very specific requirement. Too specific.

"So that gives us two possibilities. First, every one of the Maverick reploids is suffering an independent malfunction that shorts its Three Laws gates. That would seem unlikely in the extreme. Second, these reploids have a grievance so powerful that it's more important to them than the Three Laws they were born with. Think about that for a moment."

He looked up, surveyed the faces around the room, and sighed. Oh well. He'd tried. He picked up the two paper airplanes he'd made, one in each hand, and flicked them forwards. One veered off to the right, hitting the wall between a staffer and a sycophant. The other immediately nose-dived onto the table with a smack. Dr. Cain frowned at it. "Huh," he said. "Another failure to launch."

X worked diligently. He didn't know any other way to work. He could, he supposed, divert more of his brainpower away from the task at hand, but why would he? He was responsible to a fault.

He was done with measurements, and now was working on the fake beam sabers. He'd pulled dimensions from the reports on the red robot, as Sigma wasn't allowing the real deal to be in the same building as their wielder; he'd estimated their electrical characteristics based on the red robot's sockets. It might not be perfect, but if it was close, it might be enough stimulation to bring the red robot around.

X took a moment to look at his subject. X had taken to calling the red robot Z, after the stylized emblem emblazoned on each shoulder. Z was larger overall than X, with blonde, almost yellow hair that reached down to his abdomen. His facial features were sharp and well-defined. His color scheme was mostly red, but yellow and white played prominent parts. A green jewel rested at the leading edge of an elaborate, sharply angled helmet. The jewel had been shattered by Sigma during their desperate battle, but Z's obviously functioning (and just as obviously amazing) self-repair system had restored it. It was hard, with eyes alone, to tell certain physical traits with robots, since internal construction and quality was so variable. X had seen Z's capabilities, though. With that in mind, he could see equal parts grace and power in Z's form. It was a terrifying prospect.

Who knew what would happen when Z reached full consciousness?

Because he hadn't, before—not really. That was the working theory X had.

Most robots—at least, most robots before X's discovery—were limited to on/off modes of operation. The boot sequence might take some time, and go through some intermediate steps, but it was purely a transitional state. The robot was either in torpor, with no brain activity, or it was on, aware, and functioning.

Not X. X's marvelously complex brain was built to be almost human-like. He still had "off", with power secured, and fully awake, but he also had an in-between stage. There, power was on and his brain was functioning, but he was not awake, not aware of his surroundings. In other words, he was like an asleep human in that place.

This meant he had two stages of initialization—going from powered down to asleep, and from asleep to awake. He'd floated there for decades after his construction, drifting along in a dreamstate, until Dr. Cain found and woke him fully. These days he never powered all the way down. There was virtually no maintenance that couldn't be done with him asleep, so going the extra step to "off" was just a bother. There was a touch of danger, there, too. The boot-up sequence was so complicated, so delicate, that there was a non-zero risk of something going wrong.

Very small, but non-zero.

That, X suspected, was what had happened to Z. Something had distorted his boot sequence; something had tried to go to stage two early, or some prerequisite hadn't been met, and cascading system failures had thrown the whole mess into disarray.

There was no guaranteeing Z would ever wake up, especially when Z's shutdown had come at the end of Sigma's fist. But X was willing to give it a try.

Because there was something… fascinating, something intriguing about this red robot. Reploids had a two stage initialization, but they were all based off of X's design, so of course they would. But no robot before X had. And now here was Z, with a potentially two stage initialization, and he was definitely not a reploid.

Fascinating and frightening both. Insane or not, Z had killed, had killed with skill and brutality. X was fairly sure that he could beat such a creature if it came down to it, but that was only because his weapons were active and Z's were disabled. And even that might not matter, if Z caught him up close.

But if risk were to be avoided at all costs, Dr. Cain would never have woken X up in the first place. X was willing to pass that favor on and give Z a chance.

The fabricators beeped at him. X picked up the mock-up. It was simple, really, just a cylinder and a few electrical components to complete the circuit. He hoped it would be enough. He couldn't wait to hear Z's story.

He gave Dr. Cain a call.

Dr. Cain sighed as the seat he was looking at filled. The youngster who'd sat in it shot Dr. Cain a look as if to say, "You got a problem with that, gramps?" Dr. Cain gave him a thin smile, then assumed a wide stance. The youngster's eyebrows twitched in confusion.

When the subway started moving, Dr. Cain spread his arms like a surfer and rode through the acceleration, swaying slightly to absorb the forward thrust. He wanted to laugh for a moment. Balance based on inertia and eyes alone was one of the harder skills to implement in robots, and most designs ended up giving the robots disproportionately large feet and low centers of gravity and calling it a day. Yet he could do it, easily, and have it be fun.

Not much fun. His back ached and his knees complained and his balance wasn't actually that good. But he could dismiss such things to make a point. If he couldn't succor his flaws then he would embrace them.

When the subway reached a steady speed, Dr. Cain stood straight again. Looking directly at the young man, he said, "Fun times." The young man made a rude gesture. Dr. Cain smiled and turned away.

The phone in Dr. Cain's pocket rang. He reached up to grab a ceiling bar before answering—no reason to push his luck. "Hello?"

"Dr. Cain," said X's voice, "the mock-up is ready to go."

"Good, good," Dr. Cain answered. "We'll begin as soon as I get there."

"I understand."

X disconnected, then, and Dr. Cain had to wonder if this was really a good idea.

Because the more he thought about this, the more the dots connected, and made a line, and that line pointed in a hazardous direction.

A red robot appears out of nowhere. His combat capabilities are tremendous, his construction immaculate. But he's crazy.

Why is he crazy? Answer: improper boot-up sequence.

What kind of boot-up sequence? Answer: two stage.

Who had the wherewithal and knowledge to design a robot that sophisticated? Answer: you can count the suspects on one hand. One is you, and you didn't do it. One is Dr. Light, and he didn't do it. You proved that X was Dr. Light's final project. There was definitely not enough time for Dr. Light, drowning in sorrow and dying from tuberculosis, to make X and something else before he croaked. Besides which, this robot has none of Dr. Light's signature design elements. So, not him. Dr. Cossack? In his dreams.

That leaves two possibilities. One is a rogue scientist heretofore unknown. Conceivable. Not likely. The other possibility…

What if he knew that X was under construction? What if he made his own super robot to match X? And what if the timeframe for X's wakening was known to him?

X was supposed to sleep for thirty years and then be woken up. But the plan failed, somehow. Something that was supposed to happen didn't, and no one knew about X's hibernation capsule until I found it a hundred years later.

So if the red robot was built to counter the blue, and was set to wake up in a similar timeframe… well, was it timeframe or some condition? Ah, that's the problem, contradiction of inputs. Different requirements for the capsule and its cargo. Whatever criteria were supposed to wake X up failed, and the same thing happens to the red… but his boot sequence is programmed differently. X's boot sequence is managed by the capsule, since the capsule was testing X's ethics while he slept. So when the capsule doesn't get the input it needs to wake X up, it doesn't, and keeps him asleep. Not so with the red. The red robot tries to wake up, but his capsule won't let him. His brain tries to come around, and the capsule tries to suppress him. So he hovers in an incomplete state for seventy years, experiencing massive memory leaks that overwrite some of his programming, while his boot sequence is hopelessly confused.

Even that shouldn't have been enough to drive him that insane… except for the time factor. Over and over the failed boot sequence recapitulates itself. Seventy years! Seventy years of doing the same thing would drive anyone mad regardless of what it was. When his activity was an endless cycle of broken consciousness, it would have been a miracle if he'd come out lucid.

And then some idiot triggers the capsule to open up. The awake-asleep red robot rises, knowing only fragments of his programming. He falls back on the most deeply programmed, most basic functions, which for him are the combat subroutines, and he engages the robots that find him.

No, not robots. Reploids. Replica androids. Replicas… of X.

Targets.

But the inputs don't make sense. When he kills, he's able to determine that he's not killing X, or if he is there's somehow many Xs. Cognitive dissonance. He doesn't understand, and that steals away some of his combat ability. So he begins to make ever more urgent calls to his analysis subroutines… ah, which are only partially functioning. When he tries to reinitialize them, it causes cascading failures of his already mangled boot sequence, his mind becomes useless, and he's vulnerable to attack for the one moment Sigma needs.

And Sigma—ego bruised, body savaged—brings the unconscious red robot to me for analysis.

The subway decelerated. Dr. Cain swayed bonelessly while he held the bar above, his contest of wills over the seat forgotten. This wasn't his stop, so he could allow himself to drift in the realm of thought while people pressed and flowed around him like a rock in a stream. It would amuse him, later, to look back and marvel at the import of his thoughts, and how the people around him were blissfully unaware of how his actions might affect their futures. But at the time he was too focused on The Problem to indulge himself so.

Conclusions.

One. Red may or may not remember, upon waking, that X is his target.

Two. If he doesn't remember now, there's no guarantee he won't remember later.

Three. Whether he remembers or not, fighting is written into the core of his existence.

Four. Sigma, who admires and desires perfection in all things, is probably jealous of the red robot. He surely resents being roughed up by a madman.

Five. If we can get the red robot pointed at the Mavericks, we can probably address all of problems one through four in one fell swoop.

Six. If we can't get the red robot pointed at the Mavericks, he might kill us all.

Again the subway picked up speed. Dr. Cain took a break from his reasoning to appreciate the subway. It gave him the opportunity to think in transit without taking too much of his attention, in a way driving never could. Besides, owning a car in the depths of the city was a futile gesture. Abel City traffic made Dr. Cain want to murder someone.

He considered his position for a bit, then added two more conclusions.

Seven. X has all the personal properties to bring out the best in the red robot, if there's any 'best' to be found in him.

Eight. If X knows the red robot's provenance or purpose, it will distort their interactions, potentially thwarting their relationship.

He hesitated, knowing what the next step would be, knowing just as much how distasteful it was. But he proceeded, as he knew he must.

Nine. Because of eight, I must not tell X any of this.

If X figured it out on his own, well, more power to him. But the delay would allow events to run their course.

None of this would matter if they couldn't get the red robot to wake up. That was the first thing to do, then. Thankful for the diversion, Dr. Cain sent his thoughts down the new track. He decidedly did not think about how easily the two robots could be in opposite positions—about how a quirk of fate could have reversed which of them was sane and which was mad.

He pushed such thoughts from his mind.

Several times.

Zero opened his eyes.

"Magnificent," said a voice. "You really are the best fighter ever built. Heh. Thank that old fool—our rivalry gave me the motivation I needed to build you. Now, go. Destroy him!"

Disorientation swept through Zero. He could see the outline of a humanoid figure, but no more, as the figure was backlit by a bright light. Zero didn't know where he was, who the man was, what 'him' he was supposed to destroy, or anything. "But… who are…" he tried to say, but before he could put the thoughts together he felt a stabbing pain in his mind. Clutching his head, crying out in pain, he closed his eyes as he tried to diagnose the problem. But it was too much, he couldn't even begin, none of his processors were reporting anything useful, just agony echoing through his head…

And then he saw images—fragments of them, like stained glass windows colliding with each other. Images of dismembered corpses, of some kind of fluid on his hands, of second-hand terror. He felt death in them, but couldn't tell if he was the instrument or the witness. Seeing them made him feel compulsion. There was something he needed to be doing, if he could only remember it. But trying to remember caused the pain to come a second time. This time there was no stopping it, it was going to grind him into nothingness, it obliterated everything else as his mind collapsed in on itself…

Zero opened his eyes.

"Magnificent," the voice said again. And again, and again. Each time Zero thought he'd woken up, he instead encountered another layer of dream. He could never reach reality; he was trapped in endless nightmare.

Again.

"How'd it go?" X asked Dr. Cain.

"Oh, you know," Dr. Cain said vaguely. "Same as usual."

"What does that mean?"

"It's easier to believe preconceived notions than to listen to an alternative hypothesis."

X shook his head with a smile. "Dr. Cain, I think you take perverse pleasure in being contrary. At this point, you only believe you're right if you think other people will disagree with you."

Dr. Cain laughed at that. "That's the story of my life, X."

"Did anything come out of the meeting?"

"We agreed that the Maverick Hunters should have the right to terminate Mavericks on sight."

"I thought that was already in place," X said cautiously.

"It was."

"So someone disagreed? Why? If a reploid malfunctions and violates the Three Laws… don't get me wrong, it's sad, but what more is there to say?"

Plenty, Dr. Cain wanted to say, but his voice caught in his throat. So even X didn't understand. Dr. Cain felt himself deflate. "Well… in any event, whatever the justice of the situation, it's awfully hard to do analysis when the Hunters frag my would-be test subjects. But that's enough of that. Is this subject prepared?"

"As prepared as he's going to be." X had decided not to press, and Dr. Cain was grateful to let it go. The whole meeting had left him feeling embarrassed on behalf of the human race, but gloomy about the future of reploids. That X didn't seem to get it just made things worse.

"Then get in there. We need to take this delicately. We might not get another chance."

"I'll take care of it."

Coming next week: the second half of Red Awakening.