23 Hours Ago

25 March 11946 4:06 AM – The Ark

Healers possess similar base abilities to scanners. However, their hacking ability is largely tuned toward diagnostics, data replication, and deep dives that even 9S would not be able to match. They lack the curiosity of scanners, so they don't pick at potentially sensitive information while they are at work on other units. What they have instead is a strong urge to preserve others, if not their body then their memories at minimum. An exact opposite of the function of Executioners.

There are only two H-type units left now, and they are sharing a grim look.

12H is a field healer. She's been on missions with 2B in the past and seems genuinely invested in aiding an old squadmate, but 9S occasionally catches tightness under her eyes. She is one of the models who vocally wants to be out of the Ark, and she doesn't examine the scan so much as she glares at it from above her tightly crossed arms. Knowing that her existence is important if any of them are ever going to get out, it must grate on her to see 9S pursuing 2B's restoration.

32H is a field healer as well, but the kind who enjoyed regular stations at ground-based defense HQs. There is a gentleness to her round face even as her eyes dart seriously over the scan of 2B's body. If she is anything like 32S, she will do anything and everything to help, even if it risks her own well-being. Most likely, that insistence on placing others before her is the reason she ended up consumed by the virus and made it to the Ark.

The doubt on their faces doesn't worry 9S, but he wonders whether these two would be able to handle moving all the other YoRHa in the future.

"You must be used to things not being easy," 32H says with a consoling smile. "Her wound let water into her, which wouldn't be the worst thing, but there's some pretty severe damage due to ice forming in her chassis."

"You can get away with repairing some of the sturdier components, but her motherboard is trash and her black box is unusable." 12H let her arms slump back to her sides. "I'll be frank, this job is above a scanner's abilities."

9S' eyes narrow and 32H takes a subtle step that places her between them. "She's unfortunately correct, 9S. We can give you our repair protocols if you want, but that isn't the same as being specialized, the same as your combat abilities don't put you on the same level as a Battler unit. Even then, there's no Bunker. The machinery that facilitated repairs of this level as well as the detailed information about our bodies and how they need to be constructed to operate in harmony with the Black Box… Those essentials are no longer available."

If it was 7H, she would have been able to do the job by hand with her all her sensory systems turned off, but 9S keeps that thought to himself. 7H was Head of R&D and it isn't fair of him to compare anyone, much less two ground healers, to her.

Besides, 32H is right. He is used to things not being easy.

"I understand," he says with the quick, decisive tone of a soldier. "Can you give me a list of all the parts she needs? As comprehensive as possible."

32H smiles and 12H huffs, but both agree.


25 March 11946 10:10 AM – Oil Field

9S had no business at this abandoned corner of the desert, but neither did anyone else. That was precisely why he'd come out so far.

The YoRHa units whose E-drug laced bodies had been strewn out on the stones were gone. They were either among those who attacked the camp, or the camp's efforts to destroy YoRHa bodies as a precaution against further 'legion' activity had already seen them gathered up and thrown into furnaces. Their components would likely have been cooked beyond viability after this long out under direct desert sunlight anyway.

He was there for the transporter.

Hacking in was simple. The routes were all the same ones he'd taken the first time he tried to trick the transporter into giving him another body. The final juncture stymied him this time. The mechanism wasn't willing to accept anything but the active reading from his ID circuit. No matter how much fussing and fight he did, it wouldn't yield. It was like trying to find a way around a fissure while buried at the bottom of it. The structure of the program itself denied any means of bypass.

Frustrated by the lack of progress, he infiltrated deeper to search for a way to alter the program. But that was a little too bold. The moment he started tampering, failsafe protocols ejected him with a local jamming signal and a red barrier enveloped the vending machine façade.

He expended nearly twenty minutes alternately thinking of a way he could get through that barrier and wondering if it would self-correct and realize he wasn't a machine. Neither of those efforts was rewarded.

"Damn…"

"WARNING," Pod 153 announces. "JACKASS IS ON-SITE AT THE DESERT OUTPOST TODAY."

A sickly gurgle caught in the back of 9S' throat. It was inevitable that Jackass would find out he'd tampered with her machinery again, but that didn't mean he wanted to be there for it.

While checking over his shoulder, he crossed the dunes to the other transporter at the desert center and made himself scarce.


25 March 11946 10:44 AM – Amusement Park

The gaily painted stubby tottered around the plaza next to the broken tilt-a-whirl. Beneath the makeup, it's face was still a maw of sharp metal edges and gnashing cylindrical teeth.

Inside of it, there were cables. Pristine cables.

The machine passed within reach of 9S, but Cruel Oath remains motionless at his side in a vise-tight grip.

Disinterest in killing machines had been normal for him since the Tower fell. He'd still done it as needed, but the part of him that once wanted every single one of them dead had gone numb and never recouped. Considering he was supposed to be an elite military android, it wasn't clear to 9S whether that meant he was broken or not.

"F-funnnnn…. Haaaaappyy-y-y—"

He winced and involuntarily took a step back. There was nothing unclear about the sludgy weight settling low in his stomach. Indifference might not have meant anything, but such an oily discomfort at the prospect of killing a machine probably meant he was junk. It should have been such a quick and easy thing. He'd seen machines kill one another or ask him to kill one of them when they needed components that weren't innate to their particular model. Whether a YoRHa was the same or different than a machine, they all needed parts to live. It wasn't any different from humans killing for food, was it?

The need to rationalize it at all made 9S let go of the sword. Getting 2B back wasn't impossible. She was an android; it was a matter of fulfilling the right conditions and connecting the right wires. But he didn't want to make it happen like this. Everything he'd learned pointed to the No.9 personality as the type to get impulsive and reckless when it was for someone important, and more than all the technical details of trying to repair 2B, it was most difficult for 9S to not lean into those behaviors.

V had stared at the same scenery and listened to Pod 042 drone through the archives for all of autumn and on through the new year. It wasn't that he hadn't been impatient about it at times, but when it came to the archives he never let impatience make any decisions for him. Granted, he also straightforwardly went after anything he wanted without much consideration for whether it would be dangerous or if it would hurt someone. The trait that had brought V to the other side of the bay to rescue 9S had also caused him to rip his own son's arm off.

9S hung the memory close to the front of his mind, equal parts guiding light and warning sign, and left the damaged but peaceful machine alone.


25 March 11946 11:32 AM – Machine Village

The machine village was almost identical to the way it was before. The bodies and parts that had clogged the walkways were gone. The air still smelled faintly of cold ash, but it was hard to catch a whiff of over the bright chlorophyll pop of new leaves and budding flowers that reached out with all their might from the extremities of the burnt but recovering trees.

"To understand political power right, and derive it from its original, we must consider, what state all men are naturally in, and that is, a state of perfect freedom to order their actions, and dispose of their possessions and persons, as they think fit, within the bounds of the law of nature, without asking leave, or depending upon the will of any other man..."

Pascal too was almost identical to the way he was before. 9S followed the sound of his voice and found him seated in the same shack as before, with a book in his hand and a stack of six more beside him. He lifted his head and his aggressively green eye lights blinked twice in rapid succession.

"Oh! Hello, 9S." He closed the book and sat it atop the rest. "I heard the true culprit was finally captured. We were able to preserve peace and find a solution by working together. It's truly a wonderful step for relations between machines and androids."

"Yeah…" 9S gurgled, trying not to think about the precipice he'd been on barely an hour ago. "I have a material request for you if you don't mind?"

"Of course! Let's see… Three dozen small gears, ten elaborate gadgets, six sockets, twenty meters of pristine cable, and a liter of natural rubber. Oh my, that's quite the request. What exactly are you making?"

"I'm trying to repair someone important to me. A YoRHa unit." Pascal's green eyes flickered, and 9S couldn't help but feel self-conscious. "I know it's…a lot. And that most of those components come from machines. I don't want to do anything that would mess up the treaty so—"

"I understand," Pascal said, so gently that 9S couldn't hear anything but the unspoken forgiveness. "Resource scarcity is one of the reasons I first began to reach out to androids. I assume so, at least. The resistance members came right up to me with no fear at all while I was trying to clean up the village, just like you did, only they were there about a trade. Isn't that wonderful? There's truly so much we can do for one another."

"Pascal…" It wasn't his business, but he was already there, and he couldn't resist. "Do you remember anything at all from before the Tower appeared?"

"Well, let's see. I woke up in the factory to a scene of quite some carnage. A dozen or more of the small models were all over the floor."

A2's image flashed behind his eyes and he lowered them from Pascal's. Why did he feel guilty? Why did he feel responsible? "Was it… by an android?"

"No, it was the strangest thing. It almost looked like they had taken their own lives."

9S gripped at his choker, his throat bobbing just above his grip. He could have wrapped his mind around A2 killing them. It was reasonable, even natural, that she might have cut through the machine village if she found it. She'd killed an infant machine where even he and 2B had paused to consider if it was necessary; he couldn't imagine her being fazed by killing all the machine children. But them taking their own lives? That raised too many questions and the only silver lining was that Pascal didn't remember the answers to any of them so he didn't feel compelled to press the subject.

"How long do you think it will take to get all that?" he asked, glad to change the subject. "Can you get all that?"

"I can, but please understand that it may take some time."

"That's fine." The list was only for the things that needed repairing. He still had to pursue the parts that needed replacement, and he already knew where he was headed for that. "I've got plenty of time."


25 March 11946 4:53PM – City Ruins

It had been a long time since 9S stood before the copy of his body. This time, he was not alone.

"Are you mad?"

4S wobbled his head in a way that doesn't offer a hard yes or no. What 9S is proposing could've solved 11S' issues a long time ago. That thought must be going through 4S' mind because it's taking up disproportionate space in 9S'. "I'd have cut a duplicate of my body open for 11S' parts ages ago, but I can't really say I'd have done the same for you…" He glanced aside. "No offense."

"No, no..." 9S made a lifeless gesture toward the body. Dust had settled on it after so many months of neglect. The hair was more gray than white, and there was a filmy, blurred quality to the black color of the uniform. Slumped down with its missing arm and shabby uniform, it resembled an abandoned doll. "Clearly, I get it."

"I'll say my thanks you're doing it now instead of never and leave it at that. I've never hung around duplicate models before. It's really..." 4S rubbed at the empty spot where his other shoulder should have been. "Just hurry up, I think my recognition processes are starting to misfire."

Is that a normal reaction to duplicate models…?

A2's face being the same as 2B's had always irritated him—it was strange to see a similar reaction from someone else under more mundane circumstances. Not unpleasant, though. It made him feel a little less embarrassed about the strangely possessive relationship he had with this mirrored body. If 4S was experiencing a recognition issue, maybe 9S really couldn't separate himself from it because it looked just like him?

Asking that, even in the privacy of his own mind, opened a door and let a parade of theories, memories, and recontextualizations come barging in on his thought routines. Whether he could or couldn't see the spare body of his as a separate entity, his behavior with it was a dark spot that he didn't fully understand and didn't think he wanted to.

That particular evidence of his previous instability was one it was probably best not to elaborate on. "Do you uh… want the arm?"

4S' eyes pinched in a sympathetic but suffering expression that at once acknowledged the situation as awkward and messed up, but also begged him to keep it together. "Thanks… but I'd rather not have two right arms, Nines."

"Oh, right—I mean…!"

They both looked away from each other rather than waste their energy trying to make things less uncomfortable than they were.

The resistance camp had been very thorough under Theta and Gamma's mobilization. 9S had been to pretty much every sector in the area and hadn't seen a single YoRHa body anywhere. He still thought it was for the best, but it made the pool of parts he could scavenge from non-existent. Even pillaging his own duplicated body wasn't going to give him everything he needed, hence his visit to Pascal. Someone had the bright idea that male and female base models should be specialized at the hardware level after female scanners stopped being a thing. Another stupid design choice in 9S' opinion.

But from the open chest panel, he was able to pull key components that he would not find anywhere else: A blank-slate black box and a fully operational motherboard already complete with YoRHa standard microprocessors and chipsets. Without those, there was no chance at booting 2B at all. Disassembling a body that was functionally his was gruesome, yet a giddy surge spread that spread like a smile through his systems.

Humans were always going on about giving their hearts to others, and he was giving two function-critical components to her.

"Are you sure about not telling Iota?" 4S asks. "It would be easier to repair 2B with her help."

9S has considered the same thing, but every time he thought about it, he remembered Theta's words of advice to him. Whatever he chose to do, he should not assume her goals and his were in alignment. Iota was performing a job in repairing 11S. With permission and with payment. At the end of the day, she was still an officer who answered to Theta. Thinking of Iota as a friend and getting comfortable enough to tell her they're working on reviving a combat unit would be a mistake. 9S was undecided on many things about this repair process, but not that.

"It would also be easier to repair her if we had the data that Iota has," he countered. "Even Gamma and Theta have a pretty comprehensive understanding about the maintenance and structure of our bodies. Iota probably knows more than the H units we have left."

"You think we should ask her for it?" No sooner than he said it, he waved his hand dismissively. "No… Never mind. It's classified info, she wouldn't give it up."

"Maybe it shouldn't be that way," 9S said slowly. He stood and handed over a few sub-processors and extraneous components that would make it far easier to complete 11S' restoration. "Before we knew there were Healer units in the ark, we couldn't even identify what 11S needed without Iota. If we don't have that data, won't we be relying on her forever every time we need a serious repair?"

Behind 4S' eyes, something clicked into place. Both of them were aware that they are YoRHa among other androids who had strong feelings about them, but this wasn't about the mere act of surviving socially. Access to the fine details of their own data, even if it was formally classified, was a matter of tangible, physical survival. At the same time, both of them were realizing the reality of their existence. It had always been far above their heads and outside their sphere of concern, but android society had an economy. Their bodies were an expense to someone. An itemized list of operating costs, repair costs, maintenance costs, production costs.

Both of them looked down at the components in their hands. Components they both knew they needed for people important to them, but which neither of them knew the first thing about acquiring (without scavenging), manufacturing, or installing properly.

How were any of them going to survive in a world that might not want them if they didn't have that data?

4S eyes took on the ember-bright glow they only showed when he felt someone was standing between him and his friends. "I'm going back to camp."

"I have to dispose of… this." 9S lifted the hollowed-out body up onto his shoulders. It was rapidly cooling without a black box to power it. "I'll be back at camp later. Be careful."


25 March 11946 9:06 PM – Resistance Camp

9S paused as he entered the camp. He scanned the shop area, the repair bay… Nothing. He strained his aural processors, but the noise that followed Griffon around was absent.

V wasn't there.

Pod 042 hadn't turned up either though. That had to mean something, didn't it? He started to ask Pod 153 if there were any messages or updates, but all that left him was a sigh. That wasn't where his mind needed to be. He'd told V where he would be, and they'd said their might-be goodbyes. If he was still around, he'd show up. No need to overthink it or keep checking every dark corner hoping to see him.

Don't be impatient, he reminded himself. Don't get restless.

With a deep, steadying breath, he entered his loaned room and carefully stowed the materials from his body in the corner box. While he watched it dissipate into the molten vats in the factory, he'd comes to a decision. If anything happened to him, he wanted 2B to still be able to be repaired. He hadn't come up with a good person trust with the task yet—it wasn't like it could be YoRHa if the final protocol was still in place.

As he left the room, he noted that the command tent was closed. That was…weird.

He rushed into the scaffolding area. 4S was right where 9S expected him to be, but his arm was wrapped tight around his midsection and he was pacing at 11S' bedside.

"Did something happen?" 9S asked.

"Not sure. I asked Iota for the data and… She made a big fuss about asking for permission from Theta, which I expected, but that was hours ago. I haven't seen her since."

"I haven't seen any of the army androids at all and the command tent is closed…"

The air fizzed with the situational analyses they were both running, and they shared nervous looks as they came to equally worrisome conclusions.

"I don't like this." There was a familiar urgency to 4S' lowered voice. "I don't like this. We got the components into 11S, and he's stable. Maybe we should boot him and get out of here?"

"Get out of here? 4S I think they're suspicious too, but that's a bit much isn't it?"

"Says the guy who won't tell them about 2B," 4S hissed, quietly but scathingly. "I want 11S to be safe and I'm getting a really bad feeling."

"…Woman's intuition?"

He nodded gravely. "Woman's intuition."

Once more, they were in suspicious territory that might spring an enemy on them, and they didn't have the luxury of coming back in a new body.

9S checked 11S' readouts. He was in the best condition he'd been in since they found him. If they were going to make a precautionary run for it, there was no better time to make a move. "Alright. I'll hack in and re-establish the link between his consciousness and personal data and have Pod reboot him. You get him disconnected from all this while I'm in. You know where we're going?"

"I just want to put some distance between the camp and us. If I'm being nervous for no reason, we can go to the ark and it won't look like we just ran away, but I don't like how quiet it's all gotten around here, and these androids have been doing nothing but burning YoRHa bodies ever since the attack. Plus, I'd like 11S to hear everything from 1S. I think that'll help him…digest it best."

9S didn't envy 1S that job at all.


25 March 11946 9:28 PM – 11S

It's strange to experience a typical hack after so much time in the machine network. Rather than a body, 9S is projected a mobile kernel of his consciousness data, securely closed inside the diamond shape of his defensive barriers.

11S' systems are clean and white but dimmed by his condition. His fresh repairs have done little to solve the massive trauma caused by interrupted suspension and personal data lock clashing against one another. From the inside, it's not a complicated problem so much as a heavily guarded one. 11S kept his defense systems updated as near to the second as he could get, and bursts of orange and violet attack patterns erupted the moment 9S goes beyond his surface systems.

Mostly, he tries to avoid them. The last thing he wanted was to cause any damage when they're so close to repairing him.

It isn't hard to identify the issue once he's deep enough. Visualizations are rarely identical between YoRHa—personality data takes on shapes of its own according to experience. For 11S, the suspension program is a set of enormous doors slamming against the sides of a vault that has already been closed but does not appear to be locked. It can't be, or it would have been long gone already.

9S glides smoothly between the two programs. There is an order of operations to be followed here, but his manual doesn't offer much for a situation as unique as this. He's good, but not good enough to be in two places at once. If he deals with the suspension first, there is a high probability that the lockdown will proceed uninhibited and they'll get 11S back in his default state. Starting with the lockdown is less risky, but it does mean they'll have to boot him up quickly before his memories start to leak out. Without the Bunker, even the backed-up ones might as well be volatile.

9S has no gloves to tug into place or fingers to flex, but he nonetheless prepares himself. "Pod, can you be ready to boot Unit 11S as soon as I cancel the personality lockdown?"

"AFFIRMATIVE."

It's a task that requires more of 9S' skill than anything in the ark did. Locking down data is not a simple choice or a simple process and trying to force it to stop is like trying to pull tree roots up from the earth with nothing but his bare hands. Aggressive override after aggressive override, while he dodges an increasingly dense barrage from defense systems that recognize him as intruder first and YoRHa second.

9S loses one of his defensive barriers and narrowly avoids losing the second when an advanced targeting protocol activates, chasing his shape with slow but persistent menace. He takes the time to eliminate it—it's too much of a problem to ignore.

When the last barrier is out of his way, he finally reaches the base executive function and it takes only a few attacks to destroy it. The vault melts away instantly, leaving behind the white walls of his personality core. His memories scatter like black marbles, disorganized and undefended in the absence of active consciousness protocols.

The doors shift and begin to close in earnest around the entire core while 9S rushes to stop the program.

"ALERT: REBOOT SEQUENCE INITIATING."

9S has never been this deep in a unit while they are booting. A light show greets him as various systems come back online and show the full expanse of 11S' inner network, blinking on like bulbs illuminating an old warehouse. The more they come online, the easier time 9S has shutting down the suspension program. It's an adaptive emergency system and now that 11S is booting, there's no need for it.

He hits one last control system, and the doors stop. Slowly, they retract back into the walls and disappear as though they were never there at all.


25 March 11946 9:40 PM – Resistance Camp

9S reconnected with his body only to be immediately greeted with the sensation of 4S squeezing his hand.

"All good," he said reassuringly. "He should be waking up any second now."

4S immediately switched to crushing 11S' hand, and 11S grunted in response. It was such a little thing, but 9S found his pulse rate speeding up.

11S' eyes squinted open. His cameras whirred noisily, and he jerked his head away from the light as he took in his first visual data in a long, long time. Tears spilled out of his eyes. Not emotional ones, just lubricant that cleaned out wads of gummy gunk that must have settled on his lenses. He opened his mouth, but only a thin trickle of static escaped.

"11S?"

His eyes opened and closed like it required all the power in his black box, but he managed to focus on 4S. And then on the empty space where 4S' arm wasn't.

"Ah…" he said in a tinny croak. "Arm…?"

"That's the first thing you say?" 4S laughed, but his voice shook as he threw his arm tightly around 11S' neck. "Worry about yourself, dumbass!"

11S' eyes wandered around. From 9S to the scaffolding to the cloudy sky. He managed to sit up with a sound like an old piece of construction equipment creaking in the sea breeze. "Wh…ere…?"

"The Resistance Camp, but not for long. Just take it easy, we've got you." 4S stood up straight and turned to 9S. "Let's get him out of here."


26 March 11946 12:25 AM – The Ark

11S is recovering quickly, as expected. His body is full of fresh components and he's been in professional care for weeks. Now that he's been booted, he's only getting sharper with every passing moment. Exposing 11S to the strain of the frequency might the best idea, but it was better that he finds everything out in this contained area where all his friends were.

9S is just grateful he doesn't have to act as a tether while the other scanner gets caught up on every terrible thing that's happened while he was in pseudo-suspension. It was still in the distance, but he's eventually going to have to tell 2B, and the idea of giving her so much bad news makes his chest ache.

He tries to distract himself with a task list, but there isn't one. He has core components stored safely. He has a request out for the other parts 2B will need. The data the Army of Humanity has, or failing that, someone who can put 2B back together properly—that's what he needs.

But there's still the final protocol to consider.

He already knows if he tells the others, they will only have one response. It's the one he would have if he were in their place. It was a more peaceful world than ever before, but Theta had made it very clear that 9S' existence was a tight-rope over dangers he barely understood. He had enemies, and they weren't machines.

"Not like you to hang back like this."

9S looks up to see 3S has managed to walk up behind him. The older model sits beside him and 9S wonders briefly if he knows about the final protocol. Unlikely. His clearance was special, but it didn't even give him access to the subject of the black boxes.

"Thanks again," 9S offers. "For telling me about No.2."

3S gives an easy, sleepy laugh. "Don't give me so much credit. I just gave you an address. You went out and got what you needed."

3S' behavior is fine today. It's strange. One day he seems as careless as ever, the next he's miserable, it's like… It's like how 9S would always smile extra bright and be his most bouncy, energetic self whenever he was frustrated by 2B's paradoxical conduct toward him.

9S' visual field does not physically adjust, but 3S comes into a focus so sharp it's like 9S has never seen him before. In a sense, he hasn't.

"Something on my face?" 3S asks with a relaxed grin.

"…Can I ask your advice?"

"Hmm? You can, but you know 4S is the one who's good at matters of the heart."

"I think you'll understand better. Because you carried a heavy burden for a long time. On the Bunker, and here too, always making sure there's a functional place all our memories could return to where they would be safe."

3S eyes him from behind a perfect mask of faintly confused curiosity. 2B could only dream of being that convincing. "You're a good guy, 9S. You always are. But you have what you want. You don't owe it to any of us to take on the risk of getting us out of here. Get 2B fixed up and go somewhere with her."

"I found out there's one more protocol in the YoRHa plan." The mask drops from 3S' face. A blank space with stony edges is left behind. "A trigger that's meant to cause the pods to erase all of our data entirely. Even if it means killing those of us that are alive. Maybe even destroying this ark now that it's known that you guys are in here. I don't know what that trigger used to be, but right now it's me. Because I was still fighting or trying to bring down the Tower—I don't know, but it seems I got us a bit of an extension after the Bunker fell."

"When did you find this out?" The sleepiness that permeates 3S' voice evaporates. As 9S thought, it's been a façade all along. Something to help him deal with knowing what he did for as long as he had. The person 3S is underneath that harmless, airheaded front is a stranger whose voice courses with both authority and danger. "Am I the first to know?"

"Yeah. I only found out just a few days ago." He plucks at his gloves. "You said I'm a good guy, but I wonder if that's true. I don't really want to tell them. I don't want to feel obligated to help because they asked. I went through a lot of trouble just to feel like I was fully in control of my own decisions, and I don't want to be swayed by something like two-hundred of you telling me I should stick to what's safe or solve the problem."

"Are you asking me to forgive you or something?"

"Not really. I guess I'm asking what you would do if you were me."

3S's eyes clouded and he shook his head. "You don't want to be swayed, but you care about what I would do? What makes my opinion so important?"

"Because…" He curls in on himself a little. "You and 801S are like me and 2B, right?"

The last of 3S' carefree warmth drains from him like oil being washed away by rain. For a moment, 9S thinks the older model is going to swing on him. He outdates modern NFCS restrictions, and it would be no surprise for him to have had a weapon all along.

But all he does is heave an irritated sigh and rub at his eyes. "Nobody around here has a relationship like you two, Greenhorn. Even if we did, I'm not you and 801S isn't 2B."

Is the alternate nickname to create distance or invite him closer? 9S isn't sure. "You know what I mean."

"I know what you mean better than you do," he growls. "You already know what you intend to do. What you want is to feel like you're doing the right thing, or the normal thing—you want to feel justified because there are only two answers to this problem: Risk your life or run away, and both of those can end with all of us dead. But 2B is what you really care about and she is already dead and that's ultimately the deciding factor. It's the safest possible place she could be, and you know it and it's killing you because she's right there. A repair away. But if you don't fix this problem, her life ends when yours does and that's unbearable, isn't it? Stop being so wishy-washy. All those times you've felt like shit cause this world is terrible and god's not listening, and you've wished you could change it? Pack all that up in your black box and burn it for fuel. Carve out a place she can get at least one godforsaken thing she wants, even if it's just to continue living. And if that requires you to take risks or break rules or kill, so be it. Clear the way for the life you think she deserves.

That's what I'd do if I was in your shoes and 801S was on the line."

9S finds himself leaned back against the unexpected intensity of the eldest scanner. As he slowly comes back to a normal resting position, he licks his lips and chooses his words with extreme care. 3S had managed to be very right and very wrong at the same time.

"Uhm… Thanks. Those are all really good points I had sort of considered, but not as…seriously. You were right—we're not as alike as I thought. Your motives are really sophisticated." He spares a small, awed laugh. "I guess that's the difference in our age showing?"

3S glares at him quizzically. "You are going to do something about the protocol, right?"

"Yeah."

"Ahead of fixing 2B?"

"That's really the only smart way to approach it."

"And it isn't for any of the reasons I stated."

The thought would make 9S blush if he hadn't turned the functionality off. It was far too romantic. "No!"

"…Then what the hell?"

"It's kind of embarrassing after you gave such a passionate answer…" He smiles warmly, but a little sheepishly. "2B made a lot of requests of the old versions of me, but in the end, she was the only one who ever kept our promises. If this is the last life I get, I want to work hard and grant her wish this time."

"Her wish…?"

"For me to become a good person."

3S stares at him for a long stretch before dragging his fingers down his face and tossing them up in surrender. He sounds like he's laughing, but it's hard to tell if the sound is a good thing or a bad one.

"I swear, you 9 models are such…idiots. Do you even know what you need to do or where you need to go?"

"I have a theory." A few dozen meters away, 11S starts to yell. He's always been a sort of blunt, confrontational type for a scanner. "I think I'm gonna get going and let you all deal with…that."

"You mean let me deal with telling them this information," 3S says shrewdly.

9S pretends not to hear him as he disconnects.


26 March 11946 1:01 AM – City Ruins

9S sat up on the cold white carbon, rubbing at his eyes and trying to shake away the disorientation as he fumbled past the pod. The signal faded as he passed beyond its short range, and out into the daylight where he could re-orient in peace. If this was what being groggy was like, no wonder V looked so awful whenever he didn't sleep well.

He looked up at the sky. It looked like it could rain any minute.

"Hey, kid."

That voice...

His threat-response systems snapped online all at once and brought the world into sharp focus. He darted away from the sound, turning with a hand stretched out to hack in. Above him. Standing atop a pile of blocks with a face splashed in fresh red oil. She wasn't out of range, and the hacking connection stabilized, but there was already something falling down into the pit with him.

The seconds slurred together. Their equally blue eyes met in the muted light, his hacking interface racing the detonation he knew was coming.

8E...!

An electromagnetic pulse washed over him, and his body went dark.