A/N:

The thunder before the storm.

Not the moment you've been dreading yet, though.


Written to the musical score of…

'Recognizer', Daft Punk (TRON Legacy)


[Interview Log: Capt R. Grimes, B-DP]

[Passcode: _######]

[Authorizing Playback]

Skyscraper Command Encrypted Archive..

File Code: GATUS...

5/13/2071..

10:32

Rick's hands were shaking.

His knuckles were bruised and stained with drying blood. Not all his. Some of it was Mike's.

He was in the Skyscraper Command bunkers, twenty city blocks away from the blast zone.

They kept it extra cold in the holding cells down here, three levels underground. But that wasn't why Rick was shaking. The hot, unrelenting adrenaline of rage was still pumping through him. The cold was the only thing keeping the fury from erupting. Turning his body to ash. Like the pile of ashes where they found Michonne's sword.

Rick sat there, staring, but his glistening blue eyes couldn't really see the room he was in.

He couldn't stop picturing Michonne's face. Right before she jumped from Tyrese's armored flyer.

Disobeying his orders. As usual.

She had been smiling brightly. She had said the words, finally. His heart had soared with her.

Now, she was gone. And Rick's heart was destroyed.

All he wanted now was to keep fighting. To punch something until he broke his hand or broke whatever it was he was lashing at. Less than half an hour ago it had been Mike's face and rib cage, in the hallway of the critical care ward at T-District Memorial. Where they'd all been waiting around for news on Abraham.

Then it was the hybrids they sent to subdue Rick until they finally managed to drag him here and left him alone to crumble in silence. The last of his people he'd seen before they basically hogtied him after pulling him off of Mike was Lori, Sasha, 'Drea and Shane. All looking as though they pitied him.

Except Lori. She looked furious. Of course she was. She had a right to be.

But none of that mattered to Rick. It was all a blur. They were all merely echoes in the ether.

Michonne's face was the only thing that kept reappearing over and over in his mind on a loop as he sat there staring at his blood-stained, trembling hands. His wedding band that was wrapped around his ring finger was no longer burning him like a cattle brand. It was cold now. Everything was cold.

Except the fury. It remained, scalding him from the inside out.

Michonne. She had been smiling. So beautifully. She had said the words. He would never hear her smooth voice say them again. Say anything again.

The room seemed as though it had turned to liquid. A freezing, crushing tide that was going to drown him at any second. He welcomed the imaginary oblivion as his grief nearly choked off his air supply.

The auto door to the holding cell suddenly slid open and Skyscraper Command Chief Dallas Watson came in, looking tired and stern but still quite young for someone in her position.

She was the Skyscraper's chief of security and Monroe's personal strong arm of 'the law'. Rick and his people were technically mercenaries for hire, even though they operated under deputization and funding from Skyscraper Command. It was a tenuous alliance, at best. But it worked in everyone's favor. Peace was the name of the game in the Alexandria Safe Zone.

At any cost. Both Rick and Dallas knew this, as did everyone. It was the unspoken rule here.

Rick barely lifted his head to acknowledge her as she sighed, watching him with an uncommon mixture of empathy and forbidding authority creasing her normally smooth face. Watson was petite, and shorter than most, but she wasn't someone to fuck with.

Rick remembered Michonne following her career as she rose in rank at Command.

There weren't many black women in positions of authority in Safe Zone City (some things never changed, Michonne sometimes said while rolling her eyes). The chief held the highest, third to the mayor. And likewise, Dallas had been watching the fierce samurai's achievements from afar as well. Whenever they crossed paths, Rick always noticed, she'd been particularly friendly with Michonne. Despite them working on opposite sides of the political spectrum.

One didn't exactly come across too many 'friendlies' among the Powers That Be in this day and age.

Dallas had been impressed by and respected Michonne Snow. The loss of such a formidable defender of their world was devastating, especially for those women and children out there whom Michonne had always looked out for, protected. The ramifications of her death would be felt throughout the levels.

But the worst of that tectonic shift in the Safe Zone's sense of security was still silently occurring right here in this chilly, sterile holding cell.

The Command chief knew how difficult it was for this captain of peacekeepers to sit there quietly without exploding.

She knew that Michonne had been his partner. His best friend. Perhaps even more, if one followed their history together with any speck of shrewdness. Coming up through Command training, Dallas had heard many stories about Rick Grimes and Michonne Snow. She'd always thought of Rick as a good man, despite his near-legendary brutality. Even in the middle of all this gory mess he was currently caught up in, he was still a family man. That was rare in this day and age.

And anyone that held Michonne Snow's skills and authority on the same level as (and many times above) his own was worth the benefit of the doubt.

She'd gotten word that a peacekeeper had lost it right outside the operating room where they were working to save what was left of Sgt. Abraham Ford's arm. He almost beat a man into a coma, they reported. She had insisted on handling this case herself when she heard it was Rick Grimes. She owed it to Michonne. To them both.

So here she was.

She kept her distance, for now. The quiet in the room was so thick one could cut into it with a knife.

Rick just sat there, his curls hanging damply in his eyes from all the sweat he'd accumulated beating a guy senseless and resisting arrest. He looked dazed. Trapped somewhere that wasn't here.

She could imagine where.

Dallas cleared her throat, running a hand through her wavy, shoulder-length bob. She ignored Rick ignoring her and reached up to touch the invisible holoscreen that separated her side of the steel table from his. Skyscraper Command's COMPANION™ program was down, of course, so everything would have to be manually accessed and run until further notice.

Four sections of the holoscreen appeared - one of which showed footage taken by the cloud beacons of the battle between every peacekeepers' precinct in the city and one corrupt COMPANION™.

GATUS.

Another showed a running roster of this morning's casualties with archival 3-D imagery of them from head to shoulders. The small three-dimensional busts turned this way and that, staring straight ahead sightlessly as they floated mid-air over the table. Michonne's was last, preceded by Glenn, Tara, Tobin, Gabriel. Then the critically injured, including Abraham and a few others from the precincts scattered across the levels. Abe was gonna get his wish after all. They'd had to take his arm. It was mangled beyond repair by the fully-armored, virtually unstoppable sentinel tank GATUS had ambushed them with.

Rick refused to look at the images, nor the maps or the write-ups in the case file that she had put on display in the air above his head.

He just sat there. His world had stopped as far as he was concerned. His mind was trapped in an infinite loop of anguish. And the burning fury persisted, just under the surface.

Chief Watson decided not to force him to speak just yet. She would simply debrief him, first - show him at least that much respect. Then she'd have to start the interrogation.

She knew in time he'd understand. It was better for her to be doing it than the mayor. Or one of her recently acquired henchmen. These were hybrids of the nastiest caliber. Brand new technologies were being developed, tested and implemented every day, and Monroe was pushing through more. The latest results in her experimental machine army were virtually identical protection hybrids - made from the donated DNA of the same man, a renowned peacekeeper from what used to be Chicago. Smith.

Well, now an army of Smiths. Cloned. Uplinked to everything like GATUS had been. Thorough. And deadly. So far only a handful of them had been made, over the chief's head. But if the beta testing was successful out here in the real world, who knew how many more would be grown in those test tubes in Monroe's secret labs.

Today's huge catastrophe would no doubt push the mayor's paranoia over the edge. The cyborgs she'd had shipped in and the GATUS program she'd installed had all gone rogue in less than thirty-two hours. The diplomatic repercussions would be massive. This whole thing was a huge mess. She had a million things on her plate; she should be holding press conferences, she had meetings to arrange with the other chiefs from the outer colonies. Not to mention answering to do to Mayor Monroe, whom she was currently avoiding.

Instead of all that, Dallas was here. Trying to get somewhere with a broken madman.

She started with the easy stuff.

"You fractured six bones in Mike Gaston's face, captain. Bruised two of his ribs. Pretty impressive for a full human, the hybrids would say. I'd agree." Rick flinched at the sound of her low, soft voice. His blue eyes shifted across the table surface, but he said nothing in return. She kept on: "He had to have emergency surgery in the hybrid ward, but he'll be good as new in no time."

She raised a perfectly arched eyebrow at his bowed head, her hand resting against the high-velocity weapon holstered at her jutted hip.

"I dunno if I can say the same for his ego..." Rick didn't respond to her jokes. Instead he simply sniffed and finally lifted his head, an electrical storm raging in his blue eyes. "He wants to press charges." Dallas got serious with him again. "Now, I did a bit of smooth talkin', but you're real, real lucky. You almost put that man in a coma."

Rick's jaw hardened as he glared at her. He didn't speak, but he may as well have uttered 'I should have'.

Dallas set her jaw in defiant answer. Right. It was this kinda bullshit that was gonna get him thrown onto The Grid if he weren't careful. She was trying to help him and he still couldn't see past his own anger.

And grief, she had to remember. His unimaginable grief. The chief softened.

"Look. At the very least I should be givin' you time in Max, workin' in the factories - thirty weeks hard labor, that ain't no shit to scoff at, Rick."

She had to take a deep breath to calm her temper. She hated when smug assholes got testy with her, but Rick wasn't just any asshole and this wasn't just any situation. He was a good guy, she had to remember. He meant a lot to Michonne. Michonne meant a lot to him. He was hurting.

"It's gonna be okay. Under the circumstances, I get it. I smoothed it over. Gaston gets transferred to another precinct as soon as he recovers. You get no charges. I owed you one."

She had really owed Michonne one, but there was no way she was going to mention that name at this moment. Not yet. He clearly wasn't ready. She'd have to keep cooling his molten ire as best she could so they could really talk.

"You just gotta...you know, take some time off. Go home. Spend some QT with your wife and kids."

Rick stared at her. Looking as though the last thing he wanted was to try to live a normal life now that a huge chunk of it was missing. Ripped out by its roots.

More easy stuff. Just to get him to calm that active volcano inside of him.

"Abraham Ford is gonna be okay, too. He's stable. Recovering. He's got himself a new battle arm. Word on the cloud comm is he's already grinning in his sleep."

Rick finally scoffed, his lips twitching into a ghost of a smile.

Another deep breath, and the chief surged ahead. Now the hard stuff.

She raised her hand and swiped it across the holoscreen, pushing everything to the side where it rearranged itself to line up like a sidebar. Ready for her to pluck out info streams to expand and view at will. Dallas pulled out a chair and sat down across from him, folding her hands across the table and meeting his gaze head on.

"Now we need to talk about what happened back there. About GATUS."

His eyes remained fixed on hers. His very brief, very faint relief at hearing that his friend was going to be okay had vanished in an instant. His jaw was clenched so hard, it felt like he could break it at any second.

The heartbroken peacekeeper gave an almost imperceptible nod for her to ask her damn questions.

"Why don't we start from the beginning? When you got the APB." Dallas surged on, ignoring his bloody hands and reaching up to pluck out a narrow video stream of footage from the attack. It was taken by the cloud beacons posted all over the city towers. The time and location stamp on the footage read: '02:56:15 | File Code: GATUS | Level 3' - of the Skyscraper tower. The garage. Where the tank ambushed them.

"Your unit arrived on the scene before you and Captain Snow, correct?"

Rick's throat was bone dry. He swallowed hard, shifting in his chair.

"That's right," he drawled hoarsely.

They had been late because they'd been coming from Michonne's place. Because they had finally been together. A single tear escaped his right eye as he tried to adopt a professional demeanor. This was important to him, she could plainly see.

"You and what - three other precincts engaged in direct contact?"

"Yes."

He wanted to add: 'and where were you?' But he knew where shed'd been. In Monroe's bunker.

Along with all the rest of the inexpendable force.

The footage showed the flashes of HV bullets flying back and forth between peacekeepers, cyborgs, and that goddamned tank. Some guys from other precincts had perished. Everyone suffered heavy injuries. They had to pull back. Then Glenn. Tara. T-Dog. It was all right there, replaying over and over on a loop. Why Dallas needed Rick to confirm all this horror verbally was beyond him.

Of course he knew why, for the official record. Everything was computerized, but good old fashioned eye-witness testimony was still a staple in law enforcement. It had to be. Humans were still supposed to be the ones on top of the food chain, after all.

While Rick had no desire to have his heart ripped out again, he also knew that he was lucky it was Dallas doing this and not someone (or some hybrid) else.

Rick adjusted himself in the stiff chair again, ignoring the looping footage on the holoscreen.

"First reports outta the gate were that GATUS had taken over the entire cyborg fleet. The shiny new ones." He began, his throaty drawl ragged from all the crying and fighting he'd done in the last few hours. "They were crawlin' all over the damn place. Hard to break through, no matter how many of 'em we took down. We had the tower surrounded - but it made no difference."

Rick shrugged, slowly. His eyes wide, his body stiff, fighting off the pain. The memories played before his vision like a movie reel he couldn't switch off. He reached up to rub a bloody hand down across his face, over his beard. The blood was dry, so it didn't leave a streak, but Rick looked like he'd been through hell and back. He didn't seem to notice or care at all that he was a mess.

He kept talking, now reliving the last eight hours.

"So we went for a ground operation. Tried to infiltrate from the garage level up." He had to pause, losing his voice for a moment. Dallas watched patiently. Finally, he continued: "We figured we at least had a chance to get the hostages out, even if we couldn't save the Skyscraper. But...GATUS had that covered, too. He had us. He had everything."

He jerked his chin at the footage he still refused to look at directly. Instead he continued to glare at Dallas.

"Give the report, captain." She urged.

So he did. Rick braced himself, trying with all his might to get through this without breaking down.

"The only thing left after that was an areal approach. Our debug program failed. Our ground operation was a disaster. We lost too many people." He shook his head, now staring sightlessly again at the steel table surface, fighting back tears. "She was right…Michonne. She'd been right all along."

He fortified himself against the trauma as best he could as he recounted the worst morning of his entire life. The one that had directly followed one of the best nights he'd ever experienced.


Rick and Michonne stood under the dim orange glow of the lights in her building's elevator, going down.

The illuminated levels passed them steadily in pale beams as the contraption hummed against the silence.

Rick was standing close to her, his head bowed slightly, his hand resting on his hip. He still smelled of his grown man's cologne, now mingled with faint, intoxicating traces of her cum. There was a very small smirk playing at his plush lips.

Lips that had been attached to her quivering, dripping pussy less than an hour ago.

Michonne finally turned to look at him, raising an eyebrow as she crossed her arms. "What's on your mind, Grimes?"

They would usually be rattling off battle plans at each other before anything else. Abe and Shane jokingly called them the Wonder Twins for how they zoned out together in their own little tactical world. When they had a solid plan formed with mutual agreement (for the most part), they'd let everyone else in on the action. But they were late to the game tonight.

Rick shrugged, sniffing with fake nonchalance. He glanced over at her but returned his eyes to the holoscreen floor counter quickly, shifting on his feet a bit.

"Nothin', Captain Snow. Just...puttin' my mental warpaint on. Abe has his road music, I have my moment of silence."

"Bullshit." She whispered, studying the cut of his handsome profile.

This 'moment of silence' was loaded with a lot more than just his mental mantras, which she knew perfectly well didn't exist. There was something else on his mind. And she could guess what. She had heard what he'd said - what he'd whispered passionately against her panting lips as he thrust his enormous cock inside of her thoroughly pampered sex.

She hadn't been prepared for it, even though she'd secretly been waiting to hear it for quite a while.

It was nothing but the truth, she knew. Rick was an honest man. It was one of the things she loved about him. When it came to saying it back, however...she knew there was something else she wanted. Another time. A different kind of feeling in her gut. Another place. Not on a night when she should be nursing the wounds of her old relationship, a night that found them sneaking away from a dive bar that was like a second home to them to go cheat on his wife in her apartment.

Those words belonged to Rick in that moment. She wanted them not just to be his, but hers too. They were there, hovering just inside of her. They'd been growing from seedlings since those first weeks when The Family took her in. When Rick was still learning to trust her, and she him. When she got to know his kids and saw how good he was.

Rick Grimes. Father. Peacekeeper. Maniac. And hers now, after all this time. "Hey. Look at me."

He finally turned to look at her again as they came within a couple of levels of the lobby, immediately softening under the spell of her gaze. They stared at each other in tense, electric silence. Michonne searched for a way to explain all this to him in the few precious seconds they had before those elevator doors slid open and they had to go to work.

"I heard what you said. And I wanted to - "

"It's alright, Michonne." Rick cut her off, his heart skipping a beat and his gaze suddenly becoming guarded. He dropped those gorgeous blues of his just as the elevator slid to a smooth halt on the second floor. "You don't have to say anythin' back."

He breathed through his nostrils, unsure how to maintain his composure in this small, orange space. With her looking so beautiful and the dead weight of their amazing evening together slipping through his fingers like sand through an hourglass.

So he decided to make a joke. He turned back to her, scrunching his handsome, fuzzy face up. "'Shut up and fuck me, Grimes'...? Really? Three years and that's the best you could come up with?"

The doors slid open and Michonne laughed as they sauntered out together. She swatted at him, relieved to hear him joking as she passed him into the hollowed out brownstone facade. He shook his head at her, believing her to be the most beautiful thing his eyes had ever landed on.

"Oh, please, old man. You should've considered that before you made me wait to cum. What about all that 'shut up and turn over' gumbo you were growling at me?"

Rick rubbed his chin and followed her bouncing katana through her dark, cavernous apartment building.

"Shut up," he drawled, doubling down, his eyes now glued to her backside. "You were purrin' at me like a cat in heat. You loved it. " Even though you couldn't say you love me, he thought as disappointment ricocheted through him again.

Before they reached the stairs leading down to the foyer landing (just as they were passing by the marble railing where he'd fucked her into submission the first time), Michonne stopped and turned to face him.

He exhaled, struck by her beauty, even in the dark.

Her eyes beseeching, their time running short, Michonne leaned into Rick and kissed him hard.

Her divinely cut body melted against his as he slid an arm around her waist underneath her katana, the fingers of his other hand lacing through her dreads at the nape of her neck. He held her tightly, sucking tenderly on her bottom lip, his big dick getting hard in his snug jeans. Michonne melted that tense disappointment right out of his body with her sweet lips and quiet little breaths, uttered into his mouth and against his chin. Her fingers prowled gently through his beard as his hand roamed to give her thick ass a firm, possessive squeeze.

When they finally let go of each other's mouths, panting in the dark like before, he sighed hard. He was gone. They both were. No turning back, now.

"I will say it back, Rick." Michonne promised him quietly. "When the time is right. For me. Got it?"

He nodded slowly. Of course he would wait for her. He'd been waiting for her all this time. He would wait for her forever if she asked him to. What else was he gonna do? He was in love with her.

Rick Grimes had fallen into a deep spiral of hard, heavy, intense, irrevocable love with Michonne Snow. She was his, whether the words came out of her mouth right this moment or a hundred years from now.

She gave him a poke in the shoulder. "And I'm gonna mean it."

"I know you will." Rick growled, taking another kiss. Then he smacked her ass, pushing his eagerness to be with her for years and years to come down into his belly.

He could wait, just a little longer. One more night, maybe two. He had to. It was time to head into battle, now. They were already late and they would face scrutiny despite the circumstances, they both knew.

"Come on, princess. The guys are probably gettin' themselves fitted for shiny new assholes by now. " Rick rolled his eyes at the concept of an impatient computer, adding: "And you know damn well LIZZY's wires are shootin' off sparks, waitin' on us. We gotta jet."

"Is everything outta your mouth from the Looney Toons archive?" His partner in (soon to be) all things gave a little shriek when he smacked her, but followed it up with one of her trademark quips.

He ignored her jab for now, having been down the road of making the mistake of comparing his parenting skills with hers. Rick got to sit up on Saturday mornings and watch cartoons on the cloud archive with his kids. She didn't. There was never any appropriate response to something like that. She sometimes didn't realize what she was saying until the pain hit her. Rick had learned never to point it out to her.

Michonne went silent, like he knew she would, as they made their way down the marble stairs.

He was just happy they were on the same page again about moving forward. They had an understanding. And as it always was with them, once they were in agreement on something, there was no need to bring it up again. Until there was a need to bring it up again.

Rick and Michonne sauntered out of her building side-by-side, where Rick's flyer was already powered up and waiting for them.

"Pfft. Gumbo…" Rick scoffed, changing the subject as the trunk automatically popped open when LIZZY sensed their approach. "That shit was necessary, you ask me. You're a wildcat, anybody ever tell you that?"

The partners reached into the pelican cases installed into the body of the Charger flyer. They had identical grins on their faces, preparing to do what they did best as they began pulling out souped up weapons, checking their ammo, and holstering them to various parts of their bodies. Rick picked up his red-handled machete last and hooked it in place on his hip, watching Michonne stand back with her shapely hip jutted out, tying her locs back partially from her face with one of her colorful bandanas.

"Besides, you think Mike coulda made you cum like that?" He uttered slyly, getting her back for Lori earlier. "Multiple times?" He seriously doubted it, feeling cocky again.

"Don't get glib on me, old man." Michonne avoided his questions, fixing him with a sexy, forbidding gaze as she checked the clip on her HV glock and holstered it. "Especially since you're clearly the girl in this forbidden love affair."

He shook his head defiantly, his grin spreading wide at her little 'love' slip as the trunk closed and they separated to climb into their respective sides of the flyer. "How the hell do you figure that, Snow?"

"Who says the Big Three first? Come on, man." Her big brown eyes were sparkling wickedly.

Damn, she was beautiful. Even when she was giving him shit.

"You're gonna pay for that one." Rick growled, his shiney blues heating over with lust. "I'm comin' after your kill count on this thing. And then I'm comin' after you..." he added, his dick jumping with the realization that he was free to do that now.

Michonne bit her bottom lip, catching his meaning. Her pussy gave a little shudder, remembering how goddamned big he was inside her.

"Hate to break up the love fest, but we need to shift, you two!"

LIZZY interrupted urgently as they reluctantly broke eye contact and slid into the worn-in bucket seats. She practically choked them, strapping their seatbelts on so fast. Rick and Michonne got serious, the easygoing levity fading from their spirits as Rick got the flyer prepared for a fast flight upward.

"Okay, LIZZY, set course for the action up Top and gimme the bullet. Cliff's Notes version, if you can." Rick instructed their trusted COMPANION™ as the holoscreen zoomed in on the tower coordinates and mapped a digitized flight path up to the T-District.

"Yep. Preparing for takeoff…stand by."

LIZZY was already a step ahead of him.

The flyer began to make a sharp ascent toward the upper levels. The air would become less dense, the night sky less dark, as they climbed to the very top of the city of towers. The lights up there were more brilliant and colorful, the commerce and entertainment was more neveau, more decadent.

In T-District, politicians, scientists and a cornucopia of Powers That Be hoarded diplomatic immunity over virtually everything going on down on the Bottom. The higher you went into the city, the snottier the peacekeepers became, too. Most hybrids had a bit of a superiority complex. Or they acted like jacked up celebrity athletes from back in the day when a good old fashioned game of football was enough to satisfy the public's bloodlust.

This was gonna be a fun morning.

LIZZY rattled off her Cliff's Notes of their situation:

"Pulling updated reports on COMPANION™ GATUS...Eugene is right, this one is a nasty piece of work, Rick. He has control of: Tower junctions one through nine, including life support, internal and external comms, cloud archives, defense grid, and now - hang on, pulling report..."

Michonne opened the compartment that used to be a thing that stored gloves once upon a time, but was now a thing that housed her computer console. She pulled it out to start coordinating with Heath and Eugene back at headquarters while Rick got them up to the scene and LIZZY got them up to speed.

"GATUS has now assumed one-hundred percent control of the cyborg sentinels patrolling the perimeter at junctions Four, Eight, and Three…"

LIZZY informed them matter-of-factly as they zoomed upward.

Footage and stats on the deadly fuckers were being displayed on the holoscreen while a 3-D blueprint of the Skyscraper tower identified the areas they patrolled. They were metal skeletons in form, with gleaming infrared eyes and big HV shooters. The blasts from those babies looked like they could incinerate you if all you were made of was flesh and bone.

"Titanium alloy exoskeleton, made in Former Korea. Calibur X-9 hyper-velocity shooters. Semi-autonomous, operating on direct orders uploaded from Command Center comms, which GATUS also controls. Tactical learning capabilities at ninety-eight-point-oh-three percent and rising…"

"Holy shit." Rick grunted, his hand gripping the wheel hard. He exchanged glances with Michonne as her fingers flew across the keys of her computer. She was uploading the debugging program from Heath.

"Don't put a call in to the Trinity just yet, boss…" She tried to reassure him, but she was beginning to get the same sinking feeling in her gut that he was. It had nothing to do with their rapid ascent.

The last cyborg models they'd ever encountered hadn't been learning machines. That had been two years ago. Times had changed, apparently, and these were. That meant they could anticipate offensive moves and they'd get better at counteracting them every time. Ninety-eight percent and rising was no fuckin' joke. Being plugged into both Command Center comms and the cloud through GATUS also meant that they could learn to pilot any flyer, operate any shooter, and blueprint any building or layout within seconds. Or find anyone, anywhere - and they did not stop to sleep, eat, have a conscience, nothing.

They did three things: murder death kill.

Rick hated these new bastards even more than the old models, right off the bat.

"What's everyone else's twenty?" He demanded, sitting up straighter in his seat and clenching his jaw in hesitant agreement with Michonne. He couldn't start thinking that negatively now. They hadn't even gotten there yet. They didn't know the whole story.

"All six precincts have armored flyers surrounding the tower. We've evacuated the area of civilians. There is a ground operation underway. Heath and Eugene are uploading the debugger now."

"Yeah, I'm getting it." Michonne confirmed for LIZZY. She watched the uploading symbol on her dusty little computer screen impatiently as Rick flew like a skilled lunatic.

"Standing by for roll call, Rick."

LIZZY informed, aiding him in zipping successfully through traffic as they got closer and closer to the Top. She was all business when they went to work, and that was something he could respect about the sassy jumble of wires and manufactured synapses that they called teammate.

"Put 'em through." Rick granted her without hesitation.

If he knew his crew, they were already in the thick of it. And if those reports about the cyborgs were true, he needed to know about injuries or potential casualties. Even Mike was a precious asset and teammate, despite what a brat he could be. Rick also needed to get a plain English handle on what he and Michonne were about to land in.

LIZZY patched the first in the anxious queue of comms channels through on the bottom corner of the holoscreen.

It was Tyrese, from the M-DP on level six. He was in his armored flyer with his baby sister Sasha at his side and a couple of his teammates moving around in the background. His tough but kind face was glistening with sweat as he rumbled and tumbled, navigating his flyer around the tower. His booming voice sounded out to them:

"Yo - big boss, it's about damn time y'all joined us out c'here."

"Talk to me, guys. You're my eyes and ears." Rick got down to business.

He and Michonne could see the melee in the distance, now. The Skyscraper was finally visible, and it was surrounded by flyers.

Streaks of bright blues, reds, and golds were flying back and forth through the pitch black, early morning sky. The dazzling, spiraling tower loomed high at the center of the standoff, plumes of fire and smoke erupting from its insides every now and then as the cyborgs defended some of its levels.

Michonne sat back, ignoring her computer and Tyreese for a moment, taking it all in. They were about to land in a fuckin' war zone.

Rick's cold blues darted between the vision he saw of the fight in the distance and Tyreese and Sasha's serious faces on the holoscreen. "I don't like what the fuck I'm lookin' at out there, Ty. Sasha?"

"You ain't gonna like hearing it either, boss." Sasha informed them grimly, looking pale, blood running down her face from a small gash in her brow. "We've got eight COMPANION's trying to hack this fucker, but it is state-of-the-art. And it is crazy as hell."

"What the fuck does that mean, Sash?" Rick barked, his chest tightening as he gunned it toward his friends. His thrusters jetted them forward in a flash.

"It means that not only is COMPANION™ GATUS untethered from the Three Laws, he is also two steps ahead of us and well-prepared, Rick."

LIZZY cut in to clarify.

Rick and Michonne exchanged looks again. This was getting worse and worse.

"His firewalls are inexplicably complex jumbles of billions of streams of data. He has breached netspace that is beyond our capabilities to decode completely."

"And if you and the other District COMPANION's get too bogged down in data decoding, you risk being corrupted by that bug, whatever the fuck it is." Michonne finished for her, her mind putting the pieces together as she now glared at the holoscreen.

"Affirmative, Michonne. As of now, we can only slow GATUS down, but not by much. I am sorry."

LIZZY confirmed.

"Alright, alright, let's hold our horses and think of somethin', then." Rick interrupted, determined to figure a way out of this without losing too many people.

They were approaching the scene now, coming up on Level 3. Tyrese's flyer was there, attempting to break through the cyborg blockade so they could scoop up Maggie and the other guys from the B-DP.

Mike, Daryl, 'Drea, Shane and the others were still unaccounted for.

"You had better think quickly, mate."

LIZZY countered Rick, her disembodied voice sounding quite grave now.

"GATUS has engaged a self-destruct countdown. Fifty human and human-cybernetic hybrids remain trapped inside, Lower Level B. The mainframe archives."


[Reversing Playback]

Safe Zone City Cloud Archives..

Bottom District Precinct, Level 12..

File Code: GATUS...

01:24

Heath and Eugene were nodding off in the bullpen while Mike sat with his feet propped up on a cluttered desk, staring at the holoscreen.

He was fuming. So furious, his smooth brown skin was glistening with a light sheen of sweat. He listened to Eugene snoring and ignored Heath's head bobbing precariously against his chest. He just stared at the carnage playing out before him. He had gotten drunk enough to finally move past replaying his breakup with Michonne outside Rovia's over and over again in his head.

Her finally admitting it. The motherfuckin' words came right outta her pretty mouth.

She didn't want him anymore. She wanted Rick. It was over. Just like that. Heartless bitch.

Mike now watched Negan's maniacal face as he grinned and hammed it up for the crowd - swinging his baseball bat wrapped in always-bloody barbed wire around like a maniac. "Isn't she sexy? Ohhh Lucille is her name and bashin' skulls is her gaaaame, people!" he would sing for the throngs of degenerate crowds.

Sometimes he would go on a bashing spree, taking out thirty walkers at a time. Sometimes he bashed in the heads of humans. Lowlives that got thrown onto The Grid for one tragic reason or another. Criminals. Fugitives. Exiled resistance fighters, the kidnapped offspring of safe zone lords and diplomats from all over what was left of the world, hybrid runaways - and the hits just kept on coming.

"And what have we here for you tonight, boys and girls?" Negan drawled flirtatiously on the holoscreen, and Mike pictured his hybrid henchmen dragging Rick motherfuckin' Grimes into The Grid's bloody arena. "We got ourselves a reeeeaaallll liiiiiive PEACEKEEPER! The only peacekeeper worth a single damn, in my humble-oh. Rick 'The Savage', Grimes!" The thunderous crowd surrounding him would erupt into deafening applause as he hammed it up. "Do I not get you the best shit or do I not. Get. You. THE. BEST. SHIT!"

Mike let himself fall into a furious fantasy, in which he and Rick were pitted against each other on the bloody Grid. He pictured himself using every dirty trick in his disposal to break Rick down, inch by inch, cut by cut, blow by blow, until there was nothing left of his smug fuckin' face for Michonne to love.

A shrill beeping alarm interrupted his malicious thoughts, causing the two geeks sleeping near him to jerk violently awake.

"Incoming APB! Wake up, Sleeping Beauties. It's Skyscraper Command, Bunker Two."

LIZZY chirped, causing Mike to wince in annoyance.

He hated her attitude sometimes. He always had a mind to convince Heath to give him the passcode to her settings so he could turn her into a docile little lamb, out of spite. Eugene thought he was a fuckin' genius, with the way he programmed her and fucked with shit around the B-DP, but he was really just a little boy playing with his dick and a bunch of childish nonsense, as far as Mike was concerned.

The three of them listened to the report about GATUS' rampage at Skyscraper Command.

"What the fuck does it want?" Mike groaned, frowning hard. He was too drunk for this shit. A friggin' psycho COMPANION™? Great. He wondered bitterly if Rick's patrol tonight had failed to nab all those black market tech dealers lurking around the lower levels.

"The sporadic behavior, the lockdown, the hostages - that zero-sum-game type-shit? Sounds like a bug in the defense programming. That part is always the most unstable. Dr. Jones is my hero, be he still hasn't figured that shit out." Heath shrugged, studying the reports on the holoscreen. "Maybe I can whip somethin' up to reverse the damage while y'all charge in guns blazing."

It was a flimsy plan, but it would have to do for now.

Then Eugene managed to raise the entire team on alert and send them to rendezvous with the other precincts. Well - they had managed to reach everyone but Rick and Michonne.

Mike stood glaring at the holoscreen as Eugene tried and failed to raise Rick on his Charger flyer's comms system for a third, unnecessary time. Mike wasn't stupid. The mullet wearing dough boy was stalling. He slid his eyes to Eugene's nervous face as they listened to the line beep indefinitely.

"Why don't you just call Michonne, man?"

Eugene looked like he would rather eat paint chips.

Heath paused his research into GATUS to watch Mike's standoff with Eugene, a stylus pen hanging from his gaping mouth. "Uhhh...her home...number?"

"Yeah, Eugene." Mike gritted, his jaw flexing and his fists clenched. "Her home number."

As if on cue, LIZZY chimed in again, saving Eugene a heart attack from the hugely awkward situation he had just narrowly avoided.

"Incoming call from Lori Grimes. Shall I put her through?"

"Sure. I'll take it. In the arms closet. I gotta suit up and meet the rest of the guys. Thanks, LIZZY." Mike spoke up firmly and confidently as he began to back out of the bullpen.

"Okaaaay…? Standby."

Eugene and Heath exchanged looks at the somewhat chilly tone underlying the other man's polite choice of words. Mike flipped them both off and turned on his heel, now jogging around the corner and down the dark tunnels towards the arms lockup to get his weapons - and take a personal call.

Inside the arms lockup, Mike waited patiently for Lori Grimes' pale, plain face to appear on the holoscreen projected before him. He pulled on his black henley, tucking his dog tags down inside as she finally appeared. She frowned at him through the screen.

"Mike? Um...sorry, I was looking for Rick."

Mike smiled politely at her, opening a locker to grab a shooter and some ammo. "I know. He's not here. We're being called out on an APB. All precincts need to report to - "

"The Skyscraper, I know." She cut him off, sounding worried and annoyed at the same time. "I just got home from work but it's all over the news on the holoscreen. What the hell's goin' on, Mike? Where's Rick?"

Mike smirked, coldly. "Oh, don't you know?"

Lori's frown deepened. She never much liked Mike. Aside from the fact that he was shacked up with Michonne - whom Lori couldn't stand on a good day - he was too cocky, and she always got the feeling that he didn't respect her husband very much. That always rubbed her the wrong way. Rick was a pain in the ass for her, but he was a good guy, deep down. There was no way this arrogant kid knew more than Rick Grimes out there on the battlefield.

And his tone right now wasn't helping her warm up to him. Not one little bit. "What are you talkin' about? Know what?"

"About what's happening up there." Mike shrugged nonchalantly, holstering his weapon and reaching for another one. He hit her with his most convincing look of innocent curiosity. "I thought you worked at Skyscraper Command, Mrs. Grimes?"

Lori blinked, taken aback, but then decided to move on to why she was calling. She didn't have time to entertain him. "I do, but I'm just a dispatch officer, Mike. My shift is over. I don't get to look inside Pandora's Box, despite what y'all think of me down there at the B-DP."

"Ohhh, we think the world of you, Mrs. G." He grinned, sliding on his HV bullet-proof vest and zipping it up with a flourish.

"Where is Rick? Is he with you? God, is he up at the Skyscraper already? I can't reach him."

"Well, it's funny you should mention it, because we can't reach him, either."

Lori's heart started to race as she studied the look on Mike's face. What the hell was he trying to say to her? If Rick was dead or injured, they'd have told her right away. So why was he being so weird and cryptic? And where the fuck was Mike's girlfriend?

"Where's Michonne, Mike?"

A heavy, oppressive feeling of dread began to crush Lori into their threadbare couch as Mike looked down and sighed hard.

"I hate to do this do you, Lori. But I think there's somethin' you should know."


A few minutes later, Mike was gone. He left without a word to meet up with the others.

Eugene studied the architectural makeup of the Skyscraper, trying to piece together a plan for getting their team inside and past GATUS' defenses. The mainframe was at the bottom of the tower, where GATUS was keeping the hostages. Smart. Keeping them there meant keeping himself safe. But maybe, if they could reach the hostages, they could use a distraction to manually shut down the mainframe.

They'd need a big distraction.

Heath was working on building a debugging program to upload through the watchtower. The watchtower ran on an independent server that GATUS couldn't reach from his end at Command. But someone in one of the flyers could upload the debugger and send it through cloaked. They'd need all the other COMPANION's working on decoding the firewalls. Maybe GATUS would be too busy fighting them and all the peacekeepers to notice the debugger being planted under his nose. Maybe.

The two men went about their work, jotting down notes on the holoscreen and bouncing ideas off each other as they did so. They were both trying really hard not to acknowledge the tiny domestic bomb that had just gone off in their midst.

And then LIZZY, that monster, interrupted their flow again.

"Er...I've located and raised Rick. He's still at Michonne's, apparently. Patching them...through?"

Heath and Eugene looked up at each other in an instant panic, then back at the door where Mike had disappeared just a few minutes earlier.

Just as they'd both feared, Rick and Michonne appeared on the holoscreen. In Michonne's bedroom, having jumped up from her bed where they were lying together. Naked as jaybirds. Heath disappeared from view, backing up to hide in a corner of the room with his computer.

When that awkwardness was over, Heath came back to Eugene's side.

"You think I shoulda told him about Mike and Lori back there?" Eugene asked, sweat collecting on his brow.

Heath shook his head. "Man, do yourself a favor and take Rick's advice. Stay out of it."

"Agreed. I do not want Rick makin' my throat into jerky. Not to mention gettin' my head sliced off by Michonne." Eugene shuddered. "No sir. I'd rather take The Grid."

Heath cleared his throat. "Okay. I think we got a plan. Let's raise the APB."

Eugene snapped his fingers and LIZZY opened an ALL CALL on the citywide comm channel.

Every flyer and precinct intercom system rang out with his twangy southern drawl as he gave them the lowdown on what was what.

"Alright, circus freaks and geeks, we're movin' in hot and heavy on Skyscraper Command Tower in t-minus ten minutes starting...now."

He read from the list of unit assignments running like a ticker across the holoscreen as the 3-D blueprint of the tower pinpointed the corresponding locations.

"Levels two through six, you're on flyer patrol. Seven through twelve, you're goin' ground up. GATUS has tower junctions four, eight, and three locked down with cyborgs. He is extremely armed, calculated, and dangerous."

….and all around Safe Zone city, peacekeepers suited up and moved out as Eugene's voice guided them through their orders…


"Two weeks pay says Rick and Michonne are out there fuckin'. Right now." Shane piped up, chewing on his toothpick.

Abraham, Shane, Glenn, Maggie, 'Drea, Sasha and Rosita lumbered out of Rovia's and spread out to their respective vehicles. Daryl took up the rear, headed for his souped up motorcycle parked in an alley behind the bar.

"That ain't no bet worth winnin'." Daryl rasped, shrugging into his jacket and slinging his bow over his shoulder. "They been eye-fuckin' each other all night. Hell, for three years. We all knew where that one was gonna up."

"Yeah, no thanks to Shane's big mouth." Rosita rolled her eyes.

"Damn it, 'Drea!" Shane complained, frowning down at his girlfriend while giving her little ass a squeeze. "You told her what I said?"

"It slipped! Funny how that works. Let's go to work, big mouth." She kissed him, stealing his flight gloves so she could pilot. "I'm ready to blow some shit up!"

"Now we're talking." Rosita gave Andrea a high five, feeling equally amped. Fuckin' cyborgs. She couldn't wait to grease every single one of those tin can motherfuckers.

Abe lit a cigar as he powered up his armored flyer and flipped on the holoscreen. Eugene was giving his APB on the situation while everyone loaded up. Sasha hopped up from the ground to give her big boo a smooch through his pilot's side window.

"Stay in one piece, you hear me?" She winked at him as she backed up to join Maggie and Rosita in their prowler. Maggie would drop Sasha off with Tyreese so she could join him in the sky patrol.

"Just keep that cute little ass of yours ready for a good lickin' later, cupcake." Abraham rumbled with his Hummer flyer engine, wiggling his fluffy handlebars at her.

Of course he hadn't forgotten Maggie's naughty little rant earlier.

Sasha laughed and flipped him the peace sign, love all up in her sparkling eyes. Eugene was still giving out orders as he watched her jog away to catch up with Maggie. Glenn mouthed 'I love you' to his girl, and she did the same in return before wrapping an arm around Sasha and pulling her toward the big black prowler.

"...Do not engage the mainframe through the cloud, I repeat, do not engage through the cloud unless your COMPANION™ goes down. See if you can take GATUS' defense posts out in the sky first..."

"Hey LIZZY!" Abe called over Eugene's run on sentences.

"Yes, love, I know. Which track shall it be?"

LIZZY answered as they began their ascent.

"Put on the Chambers Brothers, for me, darlin'..." Abraham crooned appreciatively as Glenn rolled his eyes and strapped himself into the passenger seat. "And crank 'em allll the way up!"

LIZZY complied. Seconds later the surround sound in Abe's flyer BOOMED with the opening drum and guitar crescendo of one of his favorite road songs, 'Time Has Come Today', a rock and roll classic.

TIME HAS COME TODAY!

MY LOVE HAS FLOWN AWAY!

MY TEARS HAVE COME AND GONE!

OH LORD, I'VE GOT TO RUN!

Glenn winced as Eugene's voice was drowned out by the roaring music, and Abe gunned it - zipping past all the other slow pokes to the levels above.

"I hate you!" The young Korean called resentfully, holding on to the dash for dear life.

"Life's too short for that amigo!" Abe returned, grinning. "Let's go kick some cyborg ass!"

He turned the music up louder.

I'VE BEEN LOVED AND PUT ASIDE! (TIME!)

I'VE BEEN CRUSHED BY A TUMBLING TIDE! (TIME!)

AND MY SOUL HAS BEEN PSYCHEDELICIZED! (TIME!)


While Rick and Michonne were dancing around the Big Three in an elevator halfway across the city…

Jax, T-Dog, and Buck from Tyreese's M-DP unit on level six barely listened to Eugene as they polished and loaded their gigantic, brand new HV-machine guns.

"Oh my goood, I can't wait to shoot my load, motherfuckers!" Moaned Jax, a short, sexy, tough as nails lesbian with a cybernetic spine and an ass so tight you could use it to smash rocks. She pumped her gun with her rippled biceps like she was splooging all over her teammates. "I'm gonna fuckin' lose it on those cyborg pussies!"

"Damn, Jax, do you have to be such a dude all the time?" Buck, a gap-toothed good old boy from the area that used to be Texas rolled his eyes at her. He tossed on his old army helmet and stuck a cigarette in the strap wrapped around it.

"You know, your mother asked me the same thing while I was fuckin' her last night, bitch." Jax tossed back coolly, to the locker room's immense amusement, hoisting her weapon onto her muscular shoulder. "You gonna keep your balls on out there, or what?"

"Yeah you know it." Buck moved on, grinning like a gap-toothed clown. "I am COMIN' for Captain Snow's kill count!"

"No one gets close to her kill count, fuckboy, forget it." T-Dog scoffed, strapping on his boots and grabbing his own souped up shooters.

"Enough bullshit talk, let's move out!" Tyrese barked as they left their precinct and headed for their flyers.

Heath cut in over the ALL CALL to add his own orders.

"We'll need all precinct COMPANIONS™ linked up and decoding firewalls ASAP, guys. This one will take every single pair of eyes and ears on the ground, in the sky, and in the cloud. Hold onto your butts. And good luck. B-PD out."

Heath gave a salute to the holoscreens broadcasting their message through everyone's flyers and then Abraham's face appeared over the ALL CALL.

"This one's for Alexandria, direct from The Family! Fuck you, GATUS! Your time has come, boy!"

The music swelled across Safe Zone City from the flyers zooming through the night air. Peacekeepers of all makes and sizes flew, drove, and marched out to their fate.

An epic clash of man and machine was about to begin. With much more devastating consequences than any of them ever imagined. All in a matter of precious little time.

TIME HAS COME TODAY! (TIME!)

YOUNG HEARTS CAN GO THEIR WAY! (TIME!)

NOW THE TIME HAS COME!

THERE AIN'T NO PLACE TO RUN!

MIGHT GET BURNED UP BY THE SUN!

BUT I'LL HAVE MY FUN!

TIME!

To be continued...


A/N:

This was only part one, part two is coming really soon...

There is more action, more sci-fi goodies, and waaay more plot coming.

Next up:

Rick and Michonne face GATUS.

Michonne finds her moment...and then the fall.

Smith One makes a threat that Rick cannot ignore.

Monroe steps so far over the line that she pushes Rick over the edge, and Dallas into a tight spot.

Almost there, guys. Brace yourselves. I can only promise that it will be get so, so, soo much better!

As always, you'll find visuals and soundtrack on my tumblr (kendrawriter).

THANK YOU FOR YOUR AMAZING REVIEWS AND FOR READING THIS CRAZINESS.

-Kendra