It wasn't that I didn't expect to wake up; I'd heard 9S put me in maintenance mode. I just didn't expect him to still be there, crouched next to me with his readouts all opened so he could personally make sure I was operational.
V was still there too. Perched on a root and spinning his cane with his left hand with slow deliberation and a tight scowl. Good to know he was as unhappy about me being alive as I was.
Sitting up, I immediately hissed through my teeth. The battle fever was gone and the damage to my body had cozied up to my pain receptors. All my lacerations had been cleaned and patched with staunching gel, but it had no numbing properties. The most it was doing for the open puncture in my shoulder was keeping the extra agitation of flowing air out of the wound.
"Whoa, take it easy."
9S' voice was like a rude alarm buzzing me further into the unfortunate reality that I wasn't dead and it was his fault. 'Take it easy' was already a stupid thing to say to somebody who had abducted him, but for him to say it when he was the one who was responsible for my current state made my fists quake. I'd have punched him on principle if I wasn't relying on my good arm to stay upright. "I didn't ask for you to save me. I told you to mind your fucking business."
"I'm a scanner," he said matter-of-factly.
My head fell back and glared at the ceiling as I vented a sigh through my nose. Arguing that point was a dead end. 'Nosy asshole' was probably in the scanner base code, and the machine research report was more than enough evidence that 9S could be self-destructively beholden to his design imperatives. "That doesn't mean you had to interfere. It was my choice to make."
"I know." He dropped down and properly sat on his knees so he could look me in the eyes. "I'm sorry."
9S had the rare talent of speaking kindly in the wrong tone. He was trying to comfort me, but all I heard was that he knew I'd lost, that he knew he had control of this situation because he knew he had taken it from me. And he was sorry, he really was. It was in his voice. All over his face. V had said the same freeing words to him, and he had made his own choice in the full knowledge that it meant getting in the way of mine. Tears gathered in my eyes, but I scrunched up my face and blinked them away. Frustration was a pale word for the iron-heavy coldness that dragged my black box toward my navel the longer I looked at him.
I hated him more than ever, but he didn't have any hard feelings toward me. That wasn't why he was doing this.
"If you're so damn sorry, let V finish the job."
He didn't smile, because that would've been patronizing at this point, but his expression softened. "That's up to him. I won't get in the way a second time if you really insist, but… Will you hear me out at least?"
"For what?!" I lurched forward and dug my fingers into his lapels, hauling him toward me. "Do you not get it or something?! I killed everyone I ever cared about, and it was all for fucking nothing. No amount of preaching from you is going to change that, or the nature of what I am as an executioner. There is nothing here to save. Nothing worth saving. I deserve to die. It's the only kind of justice that will make all this any kind of right and that's the bottom fucking line."
On his hands and knees, staring at his reflection in my eyes, he was the most helpless creature I had ever seen. Yet he didn't make any attempt to extract himself or restrain me. Instead, he pulled his legs in closer, so he could continue to sit with me.
"I don't intend to come off preachy," he said gently. "And I don't want to act like I know you just because I saw your memories. I don't know you. I only know what you're saying, and I'm only comparing it to what I've seen. You intentionally avoided killing anyone in the camp even though it should have been easy for you. And you left 4S and 11S alone even though I'm sure you knew I would have defended them."
"They didn't do anything to deserve this. I want to die, not just casually go around killing other androids just because I'm an executioner."
"In other words, you chose not to." My grip on his coat tightened, but he sat there without resistance, rubbing his fingers at the edges of his shorts. "I think you and 2B probably have similar ways of thinking beneath the differences in your circumstances. The camp was good for you because people like Cypress would have been there. Then you went straight for me, because you knew it would make V mad. You want to die hated and cursed because that was the only way it felt like you could atone, right? That's the kind of justice you want to get for the ones you executed?"
"So, you do get it." I shoved him away and leaned back on my good arm with an annoyed snarl. "Are you done then? Satisfied you said your last words and tried to do the right thing?"
"I just wanted to know so I could ask you properly..." He righted himself and smoothed his coat down. "Are you willing to try a different kind of atonement?"
"There is no other kind, 9S. Not for me."
"There's V."
The words rattled around in my and tumbled down into my black box like a rain of small, stray gears that had been shocked loose. I shook my head and blinked to re-orient myself. "V has you; he doesn't need me. I'm a criminal remember?"
"Here, yes." 9S glanced over at V. A wave of the cane left the matter to him, not as permission but an extension of tacit trust that made my stomach clench with envy. "We're leaving the ruins. And we want you to come with us."
I stared at him and lurched until I was fully upright, cradling my arm and trying to ignore out the sizzling in my shoulder. My mouth opened for a handful of false starts before I switched targets to V. "Are you included in that 'we'?"
"Under duress." A hint of dimple appeared in his cheek. "He made a rather compelling case for you."
"You…" My face was slack as I turned back to the kid. "You did?"
"I'm a scanner..." he repeated, more self-effacingly than last time. "I saw everything about why Theta's interested in me. I can fight, but I'm not a combat model. You are. It might even be for the best that you're an infiltration-type executioner."
Steam began to vent from beneath my clothes. I closed my eyes and savored a moment alone with nothing but the sound of the persistent rain and the unreality of what was being offered to me. Penance, punishment, and destruction were all synonyms to me at this point. Living to atone was as alien as…well, the aliens. If anything other than V had been on the table, I wouldn't have been able to parse why 9S thought I would accept this.
"So you need me to kill androids?"
"No. I need you to protect V."
I wasn't stupid enough to be swept away in thinking that meant I would never end up killing androids at all, but what a world of difference that phrasing made.
"Alright…" I said slowly. "I'll hear you out."
The kid took a lot of unnecessary twists and turns when he talked. Either he was overstimulated by the fact that I was bothering to entertain him or being a scanner didn't actually account for any ability to concisely convey the data he stuck his nose into. But the story unfolded into a sensible order the longer he went on.
As my eyes wandered aside to V, a picture began to form in my head.
His plan with the gods had obviously fallen through. He needed to get to the kingdom of night and search for the rest of his dragon. There were two ways to do that: Go east or go west. East was the more immediately viable option, given the close-at-hand coastline. 9S was on good enough terms with Anemone to make a passage request that she probably wouldn't scrutinize too closely.
Theta complicated that option.
The Army didn't mind what 9S did in the ruins. Even when he went outside the common zones, there was no cause for concern because they were on an island. There was nowhere he could go. Knowing Theta wanted his data for Legacy Reclamation, it was safe to assume that she would become a problem if she caught wind that he was leaving the sector entirely. 9S didn't have to tell anyone he intended to go to the moon, but if they knew any part of his course, there was a high chance he would be followed or find his way forward blocked. Never mind that whoever was responsible for the YoRHa plan was still out there in orbit. If he made a request with Anemone, Theta would know and she would report it to Legacy Reclamation, and that report would reach the one(s) who considered 9S a loose end.
On a more down-on-Earth level, Theta had to be kept in the dark because of V. His lie did a stellar job at accomplishing his goals, but it was told under the assumption he might not come back from the woods. Under the new circumstances 9S was outlining, it made a huge problem of Theta. She was never going to sit still and allow what she believed to be an active anti-legion weapon to slip through her fingers. The moment she put together that V and 9S were both gone, she'd be after them. They were the two most valuable existences on Earth to Legacy Reclamation's goals.
West it was.
According to 9S, there were lots of ways to go that way that an android could manage by themselves if they had the appropriate materials. They could disappear down to the southern coast and be across the sea to the mainland before anyone caught wind of they were gone or figured out they weren't coming back. From there they could make their way across Asia and Europe to find a way to the Night Kingdom from the far west coast.
The story suddenly stopped. 9S was watching my face expectantly, and I felt my temperature rise. "Is that it? Does your entire plan just boil down to 'go west'?"
"I'm still figuring out the rest," said 9S. "We're missing a lot of data. I'm going to head back to the ark to ask the operators for some help with our course and how best to get to the moon, but—"
I interrupted him with a chest-deep groan and rubbed my hand over my face. "Are you going to tell the operators you're traveling with a human?"
"I don't think that would be a good idea. News travels and it would put 4S and 11S at risk."
"Good, your processors aren't completely full of shit. What kind of route do you think the operators will suggest? We're androids. V isn't. Are you really considering what it means to try and march him all the way across the continent?"
"I am no stranger to harsh travel," said V. "And my body is no longer quite so weak as you remember it."
The dozen aches and blinking error messages let me know that just fine. "There's more to it than just the locomotive aspect."
9S sat up straight, suddenly every inch the attention student. "Your expertise would be really invaluable to us. I got a lot of memories of my old lives back, but I'm still a scanner. I spent most of my time alone deep in machine territory or up on the Bunker. I don't really know what it's like on the ground outside this sector."
It occurred to me that when he said it was for the best that I was an infiltrator type, this is what he was referring to. Most YoRHa were sheltered, in a way. A life of fighting, dying, and rising to fight again with only occasional contact with non-YoRHa ground forces did not make for especially savvy androids.
"There are a lot of unknowns," 9S said eagerly. "V doesn't know where in the night kingdom he needs to go, and my only lead is to go somewhere they're still doing material shipments to the orbital bases and try to sneak on. I was hoping we could use your expertise. I have a feeling we'll have to gather information the old-fashioned way once we're away from here."
I scooted myself back against a nearby root and tried to relax. "There probably aren't a lot of materials being shipped these days. Android manufacture has been halted in a lot of places. The only place I know of where they might still be reliably launching supplies is out past Normandy."
"The H sectors?"
"You ever been?" He shook his head and I was not surprised. A high-end model like him would have no business in that area. "I don't know anything about dragons, but I'm sure there's plenty of night kingdom gossip in the scavenger cities out that way."
"Scavenger cities?" asked V.
"Secured locations with low machine presence," I clarified. "Large groups of androids intermittently use them as bases of operation for material hunts, or as hubs for supply collection. The ones past Normandy are pretty refined as I remember. And if you're trying to cross the ocean, you'll have to go that way anyway…"
9S leaned close to me with an excitable expression of eagerness that made me want to push him again. "You're full of useful info, 8E. Come with us. We need you. Especially if I really do get to the moon, I can't leave V alone out there."
My legs started to jitter and the unpleasant vibrations the motion caused in my damaged plates only made me angrier. "I don't really have a choice."
Low blow, but it was worth the wounded face he made. "You do. You can say no."
"I sure can, and then you will run off west and get V killed." Despite the stabbing pain it caused, I crossed my arms. "The optimal operational temperature of an android is forty degrees Celsius. You know what that is for a human?" His mouth slackened with surprise but no words came out. "It's death. He'd cook in his own skin. The lowest temperature we can tolerate before we have to take steps to regulate is 10 degrees Celsius. The floor before we can't regulate enough to keep our filtration system from freezing is about negative ten Celsius. What happens to V at that temperature?"
"Hypothermia?"
V made a face on the edge of my visual field. I tried not to relish it too obviously. "This trip has to account for constant proximity to drinkable water, viable food, temperatures that won't kill him. You can mitigate that last one with clothes, but have you thought about what it's going to look like to other androids? The questions that carrying around human necessities is going to raise? Have you thought about the reality of V's body vs ours? Not even the arm and the tattoo, I mean the basic shit. We can feel hot and cold, but we have been able to self-regulate for all but the most extreme temperatures for thousands of years. His body does things ours would never do. Shivering, sweating, flushing—hell, he's either going to have to bathe religiously or take up being absolutely fucking filthy because otherwise, someone's going to notice he has a scent. You want to get information the old-fashioned way, and that means going into close quarters with other androids. Places that might not have ventilation, places that might not have light. What are you going to say the first time someone asks why he doesn't have optic lights?
And that's not even starting on you, scanner boy."
He flinched. "Me?! What about me?!"
"White hair isn't common on the ground. Neither are fancy clothes. You walk into a scavenger city dressed like that, no less than a dozen people will know you're YoRHa on sight. Same for V. This is ground zero and Anemone is a good leader, but once you leave? That black leather look isn't going to do you any favors. Mixed feelings might as well be bad blood when you're dealing with a stranger."
9S dropped his eyes and his hand wandered up to his chin. Hiding V in the ruins where the android presence was sparse was easy. Where they wanted to go, the density of androids would be much higher and if the plan was to keep V a secret and sneak 9S off to the moon, they'd need to blend in.
It was definitely what I was good at.
While 9S got lost in whatever unfathomable routines went on in a scanner's mind, I snuck a look at V. Neither of them said it, but I knew what was being asked of me. While 9S was on the moon, he was leaving V in my hands. The scanner trusted me to protect him, and if it came down to needing to fight, he knew I was better for the job than him. If anything happened to 9S, my life was forfeit. How the final protocol activated was unclear, but it would be my job to fight off whatever came. I would be the one responsible for getting V to the kingdom of night.
Dying at V's hands was the only choice that had presented itself to me, but continuing to protect him…
"I have a condition."
9S and V glanced at one another. "What is it?"
"Don't call me 8E. Call me Fern." V chuckled under his breath and I saw 9S load one of those over-bright smiles of his into the chamber. I flicked his forehead to discourage it. "Don't get the wrong idea. You need a name that's not 9S too. You're probably bordering on infamous outside here."
9S rubbed at his forehead, but the brilliance of his cheer took more than minor contact damage to ward off. "Does that mean you'll really do it? You're gonna come with us?"
"You'll definitely get shot if I don't," I sighed. "Neither of you know anything about how to act around normal androids… What kind of timeline are we looking at?"
"Time enough for 9S to consult with the other scanners within the ark," said V. "And for the appropriate preparations to occur."
"Ah, V... You're still vague and useless, just how I remember you." It wasn't so bad. In a way, I hoped he never changed. "Well, if you're going to haphazardly get yourselves together for a few days, I'm gonna lay low while the nanomachines finish patching me up… Let me know which way you want to head, and I'll leave the city to arrange transport."
"You still have those kinds of connections?"
"Nope." A smile came to my face and I closed my eyes. "I just have a talent for acquisition."
