Red kneels on the cold metal of the ground, sobbing noiselessly into the sky. Tears stream down her face, but not a sound escapes her body.
I'm sorry, Red.
A bright-green display hovers above Boxer's inert figure. "Error: Subject background data corrupted during integration. Trace data is unrecoverable. Eject() will simply delete this function file. Would you like to proceed? Y/N."
Red clenches her fists so tightly that her carefully manicured nails leave bloody, crescent-shaped indents on her palms. She dragged that godforsaken hunk of metal across the entire City and back. She fought wave after wave of Processed creatures. She restored several of the trapped Traces back to their former bodies. She beat down the Camerata, unveiled the ugly truth of their sins against the city. And all this for what? She holds the power to reshape all of Cloudbank in her hands, but still, she is helpless, unable to do the one thing that she wishes to do.
Her thoughts flash back to what she had first thought of doing, back when everything was over and the Camerata had finally been defeated.
Red, I know what you're thinking. Don't do it.
She smiles wanly to herself. He could always tell what she was thinking.
But she refuses to take the coward's way out, not now, not after what she has gone through to make Cloudbank alive once more. And besides, he is still here, she rationalizes to herself. Sure, maybe he doesn't have a material form, and maybe he's eternally imprisoned within the Transistor. Still, things aren't so bad. So long as she doesn't eject him, they can stay together - forever.
That's the spirit. She can hear him smiling.
A few minutes later, Platt shows up with Bracket in tow.
"Red, Royce tells me that a trace cannot be ejected without an appropriate body to receive it. For some reason," she says, casting a scathing glance at Bracket, "the body of my dear friend, Maximilias Darzi, was never found."
Bracket speaks softly, contrasting Platt's harsh and thinly veiled accusation with a bit of necessary explanation. "The additional function files that you no doubt have accessed by now were absorbed prior to your acquisition of the Transistor. These files required a higher user level, and as such, were unavailable to you when you first acquired it. However, the bodies for these Traces were deleted from the server by one of my superiors…there's nothing left for their Traces to return to."
She breathes a sigh of understanding. Grant. Of course. A member of the Camerata with administrative access meant that any and all evidence against them could be erased with a few simple commands.
"Of course, you could still check in the archives. Though I know that Asher and Grant tend to be very thorough…"
Lillian Platt's steely voice cuts straight through Bracket's explanation, interrupting him. "Then we'll go to the Archives. I swear that will tear down every block of this city to restore my friend once more."
"After all the hard work Red spent putting it back together?" Boxer remarks. "Sheesh, lady. Calm down a bit. You're not the only one who's lost a friend."
"That won't be necessary," Bracket replies. "Either they will be in the archives, or they won't be. Nothing in your power can change that."
"For your sake as well as the Kendrell's," Lillian retorts, "you had better hope that they're in there."
Secretly, guiltily, Red hoped otherwise.
A/N: Decided to upload two chapters at once, since they're both so short!
