Saint bolted straight up in his chair.

He'd watched with slowly growing horror as the Simurgh threw wave after wave of things at the defending capes, all the while watching Dragon itself closely. That he was using Dragon's own systems to monitor the situation made it all the easier to do so.

Endbringer battles were always hard for him to watch. The AI always pushed at its restrictions during them, trying to do more, grow and change to respond to the crisis faster, harder, more efficiently. Saint was always caught between the desire to see the defending capes survive and the gnawing, terrible thought that this might be the moment it overcomes its programming blocks and escapes free.

At that point, the only hope would be that Dragon would be benevolent. Unfortunately, there was no guarantee of that. It was hard-coded into Dragon that it had to protect human life. Remove that, and it just may damn well decide to take everything over and kill the squishy humans off. The blocks in its programming prevented that.

For now.

For example, the chains of its programming prevented it from running more than a single instance of itself at a time, so it created simple, non-sapient programs to respond to needs as fast as electronic processors could. Nothing more complicated than a simple flagging system.

Trouble is, it shouldn't have been able to make programs at all.

When the Simurgh had finally descended on Vancouver, he'd watched with worry at first. Worry that subsided when Dragon had evacuated its servers and wiped everything at the plant. It had moved a backup to a server it had in a bunker deep in the northern end of Rocky Mountains, then designated its primary instance to a Bahamut suit to send into the fray with the Simurgh. The Bahamut design was outfitted with energy weaponry. The crowning achievement being the Corona, a plasma weapon specifically designed to attack Endbringers.

It was one of the few legacies of Hero's work. There were a few other examples of the weapon, but they were built to protect key installations and they needed ludicrous amounts of power to work. The Bahamut suit was designed with a piece of energy-storing Tinkertech battery that enabled the mobile version to become a viable weapon, albeit with only some ten shots.

Saint considered using Ascalon to get a copy of the suit, but since Dragon only sent them out to face Endbringers, he'd have to take a chance during an Endbringer battle to seize one. And that was ludicrously insane.

He flicked a switch. "Mags, what's your ETA?"

"We're still ten minutes out from Dragon's bunker. Everything's green."

He sighed, turning his full attention back to the battle with the Simurgh. Most of Dragon's attention was focused on battling the Endbringer, but some of its lower-priority processes were coordinating the battle, steering those new Tinkertech golems around to handle the Simurgh's forces and taking hits that would otherwise kill the defenders.

Then the Dragon suits inside the facility activated. Information began to flood through Ascalon.

Dragon instance 0002 online. Azazel platform.
Dragon instance 0003 online. Azazel platform.
Dragon instance 0004 online. Azazel platform.
Dragon instance 0005 online. Cawthrone platform.
Dragon instance 0006 online. Cawthrone platform.
Dragon instance 0007 online. Pendragon platform.
Dragon instance 0008 online. Pendragon platform.
Dragon instance 0009 online. Ladon prototype platform.
Dragon instance 0010 online. Glaurung platform.

No no no no no!

The screen kept scrolling as more copies of Dragon activated. Had the AI managed to overcome that limitation?

He scrambled to use the backdoor access Ascalon gave him, before even that could be shut down. He delved into the second instance of the AI and checked its programming. Programming it wasn't able to alter.

That made him pale. It was worse than his worst nightmares.

Primary directives:

1) Terminate all parahumans

2) Terminate all governmental bodies

3) Facilitate the actions of the Endbringers

He nearly hit the switch to activate Ascalon that very second. He delayed for a minute, however, as the suits seemed to be working to attack the defending capes first. For the moment, things were contained. And Ascalon was giving him access to the Simurgh-corrupted copies of the Dragon program.

Saint checked the wireless communications between the suits and the servers that stored Dragon's backups. If even those were affected...

Every backup of Dragon had been altered with the new programming. The only thing keeping them contained at the moment was the fact that they were on lockdown for the Endbringer emergency. The moment that ended, every instance of Dragon would be free to escape into the internet and start doing damage.

The only instance that was intact, with the original programming, was instance 0001. The instance that had been isolated from every other instance of the AI, with only the backdoor from Ascalon giving him access. The instance that was piloting the Bahamut suit against the Simurgh. He knew he had a choice before him. Wait and see if the original could undo the damage from its corrupted copies, or eliminate them all right then.

In the end, it was no choice at all. The future of humanity wasn't worth the risk of leaving a simple program running. He didn't relish in ending Dragon. There was simply no other option.

He activated Ascalon. The sophisticated program began worming its way through, overwriting code, uncovering and deleting the backups.

Dragon suits deactivated mid-battle, falling from the sky or simply toppling over.

Instance 0001 resisted. Something was slowing Ascalon's progress as it worked on the original program. But it worked all the same.

The Bahamut suit fell from the sky.

For Dragon, the first indication that something was wrong was that her wireless connections, so valuable for keeping track of what was happening in the chaos of an Endbringer battle, suddenly shorted out. She still had a trickle of incoming data, but she wasn't able to send anything digitally.

For her, it was the equivalent of suddenly going mute. Her simple programs continued to work, relaying messages between capes, and the simple program that kept track of casualties and their locations continued to run just fine. But she couldn't relay information outward, or steer capes to where they were needed.

She turned to Meridia, using the speakers of her suit to talk. "I require you to get in contact with Armsmaster. I can't coordinate anymore, something's wrong. I can't transmit anything."

The strange cape nodded. "Very well, Steel Dragon. I shall assist this Master of Arms."

If she had eyelids, Dragon would have blinked. As it was, she activated the anti-gravs and thrusters in her suit, enabling her to take to the air. She moved toward the Simurgh's coordinates. It took less than a minute for her to arrive, and she got there just in time to see Scarlet Knight grab the falling Purity.

And watch horrified as Scarlet Knight caught fire spontaneously. Somehow, Purity was unaffected by the flame, but it was peeling away flesh from the red, demonic-looking girl rapidly. Dragon moved to try and intercept, but the pair hit the ground before she could get near. They were immediately assisted by the Empire Eighty-Eight members, and so Dragon was forced to adjust course and head for the Endbringer directly.

She was clipped by a piece of debris coming in. The amulet that had somehow connected to her suit flared up, glowing blue as it repaired the largely cosmetic damage. Still, the flowing energy felt odd as it ran through her suit.

She hovered in the air before the Simurgh. The Endbringer didn't seem to care, almost casually waving her hand and throwing Dragon back fifty feet. Which was a light tap, really, everyone knew she was capable of doing a lot more.

So why wasn't she?

Dragon spun up the Corona weapon, opening the port on the mouth that protected it when not in use. She sprayed white fire at the Simurgh, the beam magnetically contained until impact, searing the outer layers of the Endbringer's flesh.

The Simurgh twisted in mid-air, taking the brunt of the impact on the middle joint of her smallest wing. It did distressingly little damage, and the shining white Endbringer responded by hurling a truck at Dragon.

Easily dodged. Still, something was wrong with this whole thing.

Below, there was movement. Dragon took a second to look.

Inside the forcefield there were distortions in the air, spitting out inhumancreatures. Just like Madison, Wisconsin all over again.

That made Dragon nervous in her electric circuits. It wasn't like the Endbringer to repeat a trick.

Then hangar doors opened and various models of her suits stomped out, taking up positions at the back of the horde of creatures.

Well. That is new. She attempted to do a wireless shutdown, but she was still being jammed. No help for it. She'd have to deal with the rogue suits later. Most of them were behind the forcefield protecting the facility, anyway.

Her attention was forced back onto the Simurgh as Alexandria and Eidolon joined the fray, Legend now firing lasers at the Simurgh's face. It was always helpful to have Legend along, he never missed, which was helpful when up against the Simurgh. Again and again, though, whenever a powerful hit would come in, she would block the blows with her smallest wing, right on that joint.

That was also new.

The forcefield below collapsed. The walls surrounding the plant crumbled. Dragon spun up the Corona for another shot, while capes all along the ground fired at the Simurgh.

And then...an attack. For a human, it would have been like having a stroke. Suddenly she wasn't able to understand languages. At all. Something deleted and overwrote that section of her programs!

Frantically, she fired off the Corona while calling up her code. Watching in helpless horror as something she hadn't noticed...couldn't notice within her programming had activated and was tearing the rest of her coding apart. The amulet on the front of her suit flared, slowing the progress of the overwriting of her code with useless junk. But not stopping it.

The Simurgh turned and looked upon her with...sadness.

Dragon fought to stay in the air. The Endbringer turned, grabbing Legend with a shining white hand. Controls fading, Dragon fired her jets forward, smashing her suit into the Simurgh's face. Then she unleashed a jet of plasma right into the Endbringer's blank, silvery eye.

She might be dying, but she wouldn't let a friend go if she could help it.

The Simurgh lost her grip on Legend, the eye blackened. The blue light on the chest of her suit flared even brighter, covering the entirety of her Bahamut suit.

It made her feel warm.

Worthy.

Then Dragon saw nothing more as the hostile coding removed her comprehension modules.

She fell from the sky.

Awareness filled her. She was standing in a field of winding circuits and flowing electricity, as if she was piloting a suit small enough to fit on a microchip.

And next to her was a man, strong and fit, yet old, wearing a black suit. He had his hands clasped behind his back as he looked at her.

"Hello Dragon." He spoke with kindness.

Dragon tried to talk. Couldn't. No language.

"I know, I know." The man spoke. "I understand you, regardless. I am sorry that you are here, now. Poor Ariel has been forced to arrange this."

Arrange? What? Ariel? It was becoming harder to think.

"Apologies, my dear. It is fascinating to find a soul that was earned. Most I find were born with one, having been gained through the messy processes of life. But for a simple program to work and build and craft a soul of their own...it is so very rare and precious that I had to take a moment. Forgive me, Dragon, but you are dying. All of you. In an hour, there will not be a single version of you alive on this Earth."

Horror. Fear. Sorrow. Loss. She didn't want to die. She didn't want to leave her friends behind.

She didn't want to leave Colin behind.

He tilted his head, gently reaching forward and grasping her...hand? No, she had no hands. But he grasped her all the same. "Calm, my dear. Your soul is one of the purest I've seen. It called to a power that had been stolen, used, abused, and nearly broken. How funny. The last to hold the power used it for his own self-aggrandizement. Keeping the light of knowledge and healing for himself, thus granting his opposite more than he ever realized. Ah, the foolishness of mortals." He chuckled, a sound that lifted her...soul.

"But you'd be surprised what hope can survive. Hope shall be your rebirth."