From that point on Siren and Mieus continued the search for the ID code together. The girl did not know much about Zelan and its functions but what she did know was quite useful. Siren was under the impression that Mieus did not have a specific purpose for being alive, that she was some kind of pet android who had been spoiled and pampered until the result was obvious. When they stepped outside of her tiny cell Mieus seemed to be overwhelmed by the everything that existed outside of her restrained world. She paused and stood in the threshold for a few moments, looking up and down the corridor with awe.
"Is something the matter, Mieus?" Siren asked coolly as he watched his new servant hesitate from coming out of her prison cell. She was like a little bird who had discovered the door to her cage open one day, but realized fear when she considered the boundless freedom now available to her. The cage was familiar, Siren and his offer of protection and purpose was not.
She could tell that Siren was making an effort to be patient with her, but if she tested that patience any further it would not last. Mieus checked her internal clock for the umpteenth time since coming into consciousness and calming down. "It's been twenty four years since they put me to sleep." She stated absently as she folded her arms. "Things might have changed since I was alive. I might not know where everything is now."
Twenty four years was a heartbeat when compared to the thousand years of cryogenic sleep under Siren's belt. In comparison it didn't really matter; time did not rate the measure of a person while unconscious. "I have already mapped the area of this space station. I want you to help me find another workable android bearing the knowledge that you lack. He or she must have reasonable intelligence and the willingness to become my servant. There are hundreds of cells to investigate and it will be quicker with some assistance. Come along, Mieus." He ordered.
"Yes Master." Mieus replied readily and lightly stepped towards the other android, taking her place at his side. Siren was about to lead the way and leave for the other cells when he halted suddenly, Mieus wrapping both her arms around his and clinging to his side like a young girl being taken for a date. She smiled cheekily. "Go ahead, I'll follow you. Let me tell you about myself while we walk, and you can tell me why you're here and why Zelan is so quiet."
Siren didn't feel very comfortable with Mieus clinging so close to him but he tolerated it silently. When he thought 'servant' this wasn't exactly what he had had in mind. "Very well." He said quietly and off they went, deeper into the graveyard that doubled as a prison.
The red-haired girl's history was very short, basic, and omitted of some personal details. She had been brought to life in the shell of a mieu-type on Motavia twenty seven years ago with no specific purpose in mind, but she had spent quite a lot of time alternating between Zelan and Nurvus. She spoke of how her mother had loved her so much and she had only been able to return that love fractionally and cluelessly, and how her grandfather had always dealt with her with a quiescent, grudging coldness.
One day she had gotten bored of the monotony in Nurvus, went for wander about the surface of the wasteland planet, and something had happened to her. Mieus became hesitant, with a sly smile from origins unknown as she recanted this. She would not say what that something was, only that it inevitably resulted in her shutdown and abandonment in the bowels of Zelan's graveyard. She seemed extremely bitter when it came to the concept of what had happened to her. It was fresh and bloody in her mind, much like how Siren felt about the layan scum who had put him in an unnatural sleep. In that sense they were more alike than he had initially guessed.
In turn, in his own neutral and impartial voice he told Mieus about the conflict between the Orakians and the Layans, about how the layans had chosen to worship a forbidden being known as Dark Force and how the orakians had risen up to stop them. The war had been short and furious aboard the Alisa Three and Dark Force was soon sealed away, but the layan servants of the deity still remained and ultimately Siren had been imprisoned before he could kill the rest.
All that was really clear to him was that as long as there were still layans in Algo there was always a chance Dark Force could come back. Black magicians could not be tolerated, would not be tolerated as long as he were alive. As the last true servant of Orakio that was his duty. The last lot of people living on Zelan had been confirmed layans or layan sympathizers, so they had needed to go. Whether they came back or not didn't matter, Siren wanted Zelan running under his sole command so he could use it as his base.
Mieus was thrilled by Siren's story. Her grasp of history was vague at best because all the stuff she found boring she didn't care a whit about. She knew that there had been a huge war a very long time ago, but that was the thing; it had happened too far back to have any real relevance to her. They checked a few more cells in block A without much success because after all, the mindless robots that they found were more likely to lead quiet, meaningless lives before they fell into simple disrepair.
The long-haired girl guided Siren through block A and pulled him childishly through block B, sometimes walking and sometimes even dancing because she was so happy to be alive again. She listed the purpose and structure of the storage area with a hand, counting down one block for each slim little finger. Block A they had already been through and it was full of natural deaths and robots, block B was mostly empty and stored the individual spare parts and peripherals of dead androids for future use, sort of like an organ bank. Mieus was taking him to block C, her favorite place, the most interesting place of them all.
For block C certainly put the prisonish feeling back into the graveyard. It was home to androids who had succumbed to madness, suicide, or had been ordered into execution. Mieus' original resting place had been right here, resting in block C, although she did not know it. When she had been alive and living on Zelan happily she had spent many hours going over case files and crime reports, trying to understand why these machines had wound up like they had.
Why had they gone bad? Why did they kill themselves? She didn't care about them personally, but she cared about them in the same sense that a child would feel for a character in their storybook.
"You wish for me to revive a criminal?" Siren asked Mieus softly, slightly raising an eyebrow as he spoke. Block C seemed older and shabbier, less like a storage and more like a neglected mental institution. Siren may have had rather fundamentalist ways in which to deal with life but never had he knowingly broken the rules laid out by his master's race. Criminals weren't intelligent, weren't rational and logical, and it was their poor choices which had brought them here in the first place.
Mieus stood in the hallway with her arms folded, propping up her rather ample cleavage. They were in her storybook now, her dollhouse. "Think about it carefully for a moment, Master Siren." She said sweetly, enjoying the taste that the word 'master' left in her mouth. "There are many intelligent androids here who can be restored, as their lives were willfully cut short instead of just burning out and expiring. I've gone over every case file here in the past so I can lead you to exactly what you need. Finally, if you wish to kill layans for the evils they've committed what better servant can you have than a murderer?"
"Indiscriminate murder is not what I want. It solves nothing." Siren answered stonily, but he could see merit in her words. If they could revive a raving madman and extract the code from him without harm, then there was nothing stopping them from shutting him down again. If they could find a relatively sane criminal then that would just be an added bonus.
What Siren had just said ruffled Mieus' feathers a lot more than he realised. She huffed and tossed her long red hair over one shoulder. He was one to talk for wanting to wipe out an entire race of people. "I'll lead you anywhere you'd like to go, Master, but I thought you'd want a servant crafty enough to warrant the death penalty." She also didn't want the next servant Siren found to outshine herself, either. She'd look like an angel when compared to a criminal.
"I will not argue with you. I care not about the requisition of the code, only that we can find it. Let's separate and search for a candidate. Come and get me if you find somebody suitable." The wren-type instructed impartially.
This greatly pleased Mieus. She smiled cheerily and half-bowed, half-curtsied to him. As she straightened up again she clapped her hands once in pleasure. Deep inside of her there was a kind of zeal reminiscent of Demi, her supposed mother. "I already have several units in mind!" She announced. "I'll bring you their case files once I go check up on them."
They split up. Siren took one side of the corridor while Mieus took the other. The older android could hear Mieus' excited footsteps as she darted from room to room. She was a good orakian girl, if a little oddly eccentric. Truth be told she reminded him all too much of his old partner Mium who had served with him by Orakio's side. Sometimes he found himself thinking about her, wondering where she might be now. It hadn't really consciously occurred to him that he missed her. It was too palman of an emotion, but it had manifested in his eagerness to reactivate Mieus.
The cells were slightly smaller in block C, barer, but the doors were a centimeter or so thicker to prevent escape. The inmates were usually left stretched out on a long metal table, and unlike the other blocks there lay beside the bodies a small handheld computer for each of them, like a tombstone. The first room Siren strode into contained a shirren android clamped down to the table, the half sized wren-type visible missing some of its parts. Siren picked up the computer and activated it, discovering that it was a tiny data storage device with a screen.
The computer contained personal details and a complete history of the dead android in question, including crime reports and a brief recording of an interrogation session. Siren wasn't particularly pleased with what he saw. This wren had gone a little loopy once his master had been killed in the Collapse Wars, and he had murdered a Paseo agent intent on wiping his memory and starting his AI from scratch again. Before the Motavia authorities could prosecute him properly he had killed himself. It all seemed so cowardly.
This shirren was nowhere near good enough to be his servant. Siren moved on. When he stepped out of the cell he could see that Mieus was already a good six cells ahead of him. She knew where everybody was and exactly what she was doing. She leaned against the wall momentarily and smirked. "So you've met old Weepy, huh? That's the funny thing about wren-types, they can be as emotive as any palman but after so many hundred of years of it they just give it up. Happened to my grandfather way before I was even thought up. Has that happened to you too, Master?"
He ignored her question. "Do you know who else is along this corridor?"
"Yeah. You've picked the side with the most suicides, and some of the cells are empty, but there are a few interesting cases. I used to give them names. There's the strangler, the sniper, the hacker, the traitor, and the unknown soldier. Then there are just a few dozen crazies and scumbags. Every scumbag is crazy, but not every crazy is a scumbag, if you get my meaning. " Mieus laid a finger on her chin as she remembered them, like old friends. In some way she felt like they belonged to her.
"Mieus?"
"Yes Master?"
"Why don't you show me your most 'interesting' criminal?" Siren finally suggested. The girl seemed like she knew her way around here far better than he did. He had chosen her to be revived, now she could choose her own little doll to come back to life. Mieus was in many ways like a child despite her rather comely form. There was nothing wrong with spoiling a girl who was already rather spoilt, and she was the only real ally that he had.
Mieus cocked her head cutely for a moment, trying to decipher what he meant, but she got it easily and showed Siren a smile. He was giving the choice for the second servant to her. It was her one chance to reach into the history or the fiction of all the case reports she had loved to read and bring the person within those reports back to life. It was like giving a little girl the opportunity to turn her favorite toy from a dolly into a living being. "Of course. Let me show you the one!" She declared after a few moments of thought.
She took off down the corridor in a hurry and Siren followed her at his usual pace. Mieus looked like she knew exactly where she was going. About two dozen cells into block C she turned to one of the rooms and paused suddenly, a little surprised. The door had been jammed open. It certainly wasn't like that the last time she had been here. Was the android left inside still there? She had sort of had her figurative heart set on this one…
It was dark inside. The lights in there had stopped working, but Mieus could vaguely see a shadowy figure in the darkness without even having to switch on her night vision. How lucky, he was still there. Her toy soldier. "I've always liked this one a lot." Mieus confessed as Siren walked up to stand behind her. "He's a little bit of everything, instead of every extreme. The unknown soldier."
Siren wordlessly went inside, attended to the wall near the doorframe and lock and did something that Mieus couldn't see. There was a brief crackle of electricity and the lights popped back on, dimly. Siren removed his hand from the lighting circuit and turned to inspect the inmate of room three hundred and twenty three. It was what he had expected, but at the same time, it wasn't. "It is another wren-type." He murmured softly.
Unbeknownst to both Siren and Mieus, it was also the original owner of the Waizz Star. The girl stood beside the dead shell and very gently ran her fingers through his short brown hair. "Yeah." She replied with pride. "He's a war hero and served for many years in that war we had a long time ago. The computer over there said he was a doctor before the war broke out. Honestly, I've always wanted to talk to him when he was alive, ask him why he did all the terrible things that he did. He's the only crazy scumbag here who doesn't seem," she searched her memory for the appropriate word, "…bad?"
She took the case files from off the metal table and offered it to her master. The girl had already read through the computer many, many times. "Please take a look at these. They're very interesting. If you think he'll make a good servant can we bring him back to life?"
"In a moment." Siren reassured her as he took the computer from her outstretched hand and immediately set it back down on the table again. He was a pragmatist and he wasn't going to get himself interested in a potential servant unless he was certain that servant could be revived. He gently nudged Mieus aside and took the other wren-type by the chin, lifting his head up so he could inspect his face. It wasn't a very pretty sight. A good third of the android's face had been blown away, by an old fashioned slug he reckoned, a single precise shot in the left eye.
There were no burn marks on his face so that ruled out an attack by a plasma or energy weapon. Honestly, if that had been the case there wouldn't have been much left of the android to store. Even a thousand years ago the Motavian government had only ever allowed metal slugs for one circumstance, for execution via a firing squad. But something was wrong, something was out of place. It caused Siren to pause in perplexity for a moment.
"Whoever it was that executed him didn't seem to know what they were doing. They were either very inept, or they actually intended on reviving this wren someday." He commented quietly as he released the wren and inspected the rest of his armor and body. Fortunately due to the way he was dead sitting up instead of lying down it was easy to do. Mieus stood on her tiptoes and peeked over Siren's shoulder as he leant down to examine the wren's chest and side.
"What makes you say that?" Mieus inquired from behind. She couldn't tell, she had as much knowledge and skill regarding android repair as the average palman. What could he see that she couldn't see?
Siren straightened up and turned to look at his servant. She was watching him like she was expecting him to work a miracle, revive the android just as he had revived her. "Not many people know this," he began to explain as he gestured to the dead android's face, "but the core of a wren-type lies not in the head where the palman brain should be. When you consider how much space sensory equipment like optics and auditory sensors, the lingual unit and other such things take up it seems impractical to store the neural matrix in the head as well."
"There simply is not enough room. Roboticists were quite savvy during the time of Mother Brain but they could not miniaturize to the same degree that nature was capable of." His hand moved from the wren's face to a different area. "Instead, Mieus, where is the most reinforced and protected area on a wren series android?"
Mieus didn't even have to guess as he was already indicating to the area in question. It made sense. "It's in the chest, behind that coloured gem set in the armor?" The girl suddenly had a flash of wit and used it freely. "So you wren-types think with your hearts instead of your heads?" She giggled openly. It made sense when Siren explained it in that manner.
"Hardly." He replied. "Whoever it was who organized the execution must not have known this, or else they would have aimed for the chest rather than the face. You could completely decapitate a wren and they would not die unless their core was destroyed, and they would remain senseless and completely paralyzed. This unit here in addition to the wound has had approximately thirty five percent of its parts removed. Possibly its operating system too. It can be repaired, but it will take many hours and plenty of materials."
"Should we find somebody else?" Mieus asked him. If the effort was greater than the reward it might be wiser to continue their search elsewhere. "I really do like this one. If I'm going to have a partner to serve you with then I'd rather it be him." She placed her hands on the dead android's shoulders and gave him a loose hug. The appearance was oddly disturbing.
"Most standard android repairs take many hours. If you want this one so much then let us get to work on him. Mieus, I would like you to gather me some tools and assorted parts. I will dictate them to you and while you are gone I will prep him for surgery and examine the case files." After he issued the order Siren listed about a dozen tools and at least twenty five different spare parts. As he did this he took hold of the other wren's arms and laid him out carefully on the table.
"I don't know what half of those things are." The girl frowned as she reflected on the list recorded in her memory. The tools she had a good idea of, but the parts were a different story. She left anyway. Even if she couldn't find all the parts right away she had many hours to narrow everything down. Siren last saw her flying down the corridor on the way back to block B, trying not to not waste a second of her master's time.
And now he was alone again. Well, not really. He still had his new corpselike friend beside him to keep him company. Siren glanced at the machine for a moment, but until he could start the repair work the other wren was not so much a person as he was an object. His armor was an odd colour, a dark burnished gold instead of the usual steely silver. Siren assumed that as this unit was a soldier the colour of his armor denoted his military rank. Size, shape and design noted his series type too.
This wren was a warren-type. The light brown hair colour easily gave it away. Siren picked up the computer and casually switched it on, looking for the android's basic details. If any information in here made the repair process any easier then it was a worthy read, like about the parts this android once had which were now missing, possibly salvaged. Just because a unit had been killed it didn't mean that their spare parts should go to waste. Somebody else had already worked over this one long ago.
The basic details were as follows; / "Warren-type number six hundred and eighty three. Major Warren McCulloch of the third branch, general palman infantry. Enlisted in the year AW 1284. Transferred to medical field support after eighteen months, then a second transfer to Oputa surgical hospital approved six months later. Saw combat in Piata, Zema, Arima before and after the reclamation, and Paseo. Granted the Purple Heart in the spring of AW 1285 for the loss of limb. Granted the honor of the Waizz Star in the summer of AW 1288 for saving the life of Lieutenant-General Laidley. Received honorable discharge in AW 1289." /
Ah, gold was the colour of a soldier bearing a major-rank. This first part was a brief history of this warren's military record. The unknown soldier indeed, he even had a surname. That was practically unheard of during the time of Mother Brain and Palma. There was also a picture of him in the military record, but it was slightly dated as he was back in silver steel again, smiling and saluting, with a small plasma rifle and captain's bars etched into his armor.
So he was a fighter. That was all well and good, but Siren was not very interested in that. It was the post-war history that would catch his fancy. He read on. Here it was, the crime report.
/ "Charged with sedition, treason, theft of classified information, identity fraud, and the murder of a commanding officer. After honorable discharge from the Motavian military became informant and spy for the rebel liberation army. Leaked confidential documents and aided the activity and escape of a squadron led by rebel leader Riketz Sa Ruik. Did so willingly and knowingly murder commanding officer Colonel Finley through a single shot to the throat. Captured, pled guilty to all charges, and executed in the year AW 1290." /
Siren stopped reading at that point. What came after was a written confession by the warren-type and some video files of an assumed interrogation. Those were a lot of crimes for one single unit to commit immediately after an honorable discharge. It was just like biting the hand which had fed him and given him life. Perhaps the war had caused this warren to lose it, just as excessive stress had done to similar units hundreds of times before. He had indeed earned the death penalty two or three times over, especially for that murder.
The killing of the CO nearly convinced Siren to give up on the warren and look for somebody else. If his respect for authority was that low what kind of a servant would he make with Siren in command? Only one thing convinced him to rethink his impulse, combated the murder charge and intrigued the red-haired android more than anything else. It was the name of the rebel leader this warren had supported.
Riketz Sa Ruik.
Otherwise known as Orakio Sa Ruik's father.
If he had been willing to die to help the Sa Ruik clan then that made him nearly as loyal a servant as Siren himself. He looked up from the computer as Mieus came back into the room with a heap of tools in her arms. She dumped them unceremoniously on the floor of the cell, then smiled at the older wren-type. "How's it going, Master? Are we going to keep him?" She asked.
"Please take greater care of those tools, Mieus. Many of them are delicate and cannot be replaced." Siren said in a firm, neutral tone. He walked over to the girl and sorted through all the stuff she had found. Of everything about seventy percent were the things he had specifically asked for, which was not bad. He could start work with all these tools now. "This warren is a good servant of Orakio and we are going to bring him back to life. Find me more of those parts. I will begin."
"Right away!" Mieus chirped as she spun around to leave again. She had left a whole lot of stuff in block B because she could only carry so much in her arms.
Siren laid out some of the tools for easy access during the surgery, near the dead warren's torso. In his close proximity to it something hit him softly, like somebody seeing the trick to an optical illusion for the first time. "One last thing." He interrupted before she could go.
"Yes?"
"I have just noticed something." Siren said mysteriously as he looked to their patient lying on the table. As an android he would not be able to sense it, but as an esper he could just feel it, like somebody breathing softly in a room full of stagnant air. It was the same method of sensing that had allowed Rune to locate him in his cryogenic chamber. Without explanation he leant over the warren and pressed the side of his face against his chest, as if listening for a heartbeat. Mieus watched him with curiosity. "This warren is not only not dead, he is not completely shut down either."
"Is that so?" Mieus replied politely before actually processing what he had said. Upon reflection her pretty blue eyes widened slightly. "What? He's not shut down? You must be mistaken! Just look at him, nobody would be able to function properly with a hole that big in their head! I mean, I know you said that stuff about where the core is within a wren android, but surely one couldn't be actively functional like that! Paralyzed, senseless…"
"But alive." He finished off for her. "I would not have heard it if I had not sensed it first. It is just a slight electrical vibration in the core. This warren is in the most advanced state of emergency hibernation. Even if he is senseless and paralyzed, as long as he is running at one percent capacity there is a good chance that he may still be conscious." Siren closed his eyes for a moment. "Senseless yet conscious for a thousand years, lost in the dark. At least we had the luxury of unconsciousness."
Mieus seemed sad. She could barely even comprehend what Siren was trying to suggest to her; it was too cruel. If this was a mistake then it was an unimaginable turn of bad luck, but if it was intentional then somebody had sentenced this warren to a fate far worse than death. He was her solider, to think of all the occasions she had come in here to read and kill time and she hadn't even known he was not dead. Maybe she could have done something sooner if she knew.
"That's evil." She said at last.
"Layans are evil. It is only a possibility." Siren reassured her blankly, as if this were unshakable factual information. Unexpectedly, he smiled in mechanical kindness. "Do not dwell upon it. We have the ability to change things now, for this warren, and for Algo who appears to be choking under the layans influence. Bring me those parts, I need that code. We will save him together at the same time."
"Master." Mieus bowed to him obediently and left the room without another word.
They had a long operation and jigsaw puzzle ahead of them. It had started as a search for a servant and an ID code, now it was turning into somewhat of a rescue mission. Siren knew that he was cruel deep down in his mock-soul, he would never deny that, but he was not so cruel as to do to any android what somebody had done to this warren. He was pretty certain the wound had been inflected intentionally, the chances of it being an accident were utterly improbable. However, it was also entirely probable that the warren was still alive.
He did not care personally about the warren-type, but somehow, for some illogical reason, he hoped he was wrong.