**Fern**
V dozed without a care. A sleep so light he peeked at me when I jolted up and skittered one way and the other, one step contradicting the next as I searched for something that wasn't there. His head lifted, and I forced myself still. I had to curb my own sourceless tension because if he asked me what was wrong I wouldn't be able to answer. I would have no explanation for the keening of my black box.
Two seconds were missing from my memory.
There were no flags or errors to check, and I wasn't a scanner. I couldn't go in and check my own diagnostics the in-depth way. So, I sat back down beside V, loosely crossed my arms and legs, and retraced the space around those two seconds through my lingering physiological responses.
Tightness in the muscular cabling below my chest plates and in the dead center of my back: shock. A sunken, shaky feeling low in my core, stiffness, and heightened pulse: fear. And the telltale tingle of my NFCS on my fingertips, a fraction of a second away from activation.
Between a fight or flight response, I'd been ready to fight. More than ready—I'd been in the middle of loading up a weapon.
That didn't happen for nothing. For a second, I'd seen something that put me on edge. Realized it was someone or something I didn't recognize, and it must have been close enough that I went straight for my combat protocols. Yet there was no sign of anything like that. Not even a crushed blade of grass or a snapped stem that wasn't from my own boots. My insistent prods at those two blank seconds didn't trigger the return of any memory, but threat assessment subroutines filled the space with a shape I could not possibly have made up on my own.
A person-shaped void. Like the night kingdom itself had walked in from outside and rejected the room's otherwise omnipotent faux sunlight. Like a trick of the light or a blip in my visual feed standing a breath away from me and V. It was sort of thing I might have chalked up to Shadow playing games if she were with us.
But she wasn't. There was nothing in the garden with us, except for Briar Rose.
I got up again, this time without jumping like someone had put a shock baton to my back. V glanced at my empty spot and up to gauge me for whether or not he should be alert before he settled back into his doze, cane in hand.
Outside the auditorium, the glass door closed behind me with a gentle click. The world clicked with it as the energy in the room abruptly cut off, and the faint but persistent pressure alleviated.
Androids rarely ever forgot their implanted memories. Sometimes if the information in them didn't make sense or was stress-inducingly different from the actual android personality, recall became difficult, but it was a vanishingly rare occurrence. Wisteria had probably forgotten most of the people she killed, but I would have bet my black box she could tell me about her implanted memory in excruciating detail. It was scarily persistent that way, as permanent as a base parameter, whether their owners loved, hated, or were apathetic toward those memories.
Who was to say that the being that made and installed memories couldn't take them away?
"You can still hear me, can't you." I glared up at the ceiling. "Briar."
A much tinier flower than the one in the garden opened with a creak above my head. "Is something wrong?"
"What the hell were you doing?"
"I do not understand your question."
"Just now in the garden!"
"That statement does not provide any additional clarity."
"Something was in there with us," I hissed, pacing below the flower. If I could have reached it, I probably would've torn it out of the ceiling. "And I conveniently can't remember what it was."
"If I were to say that my sensors did not detect anything, I theorize that you would not believe me."
"Spot-on analysis."
"Unfortunate, as that statement is true. I do possess materialization programs, but they require a significantly greater investment of time than two seconds to initialize. Similarly, my memory capabilities require infrastructure that is not present at this node."
My gloves creaked in my tightening grip. "You didn't see anything or do anything, and I freaked out for no goddamn reason then."
"That is unlikely to be an entirely accurate representation of events." The flower closed, and a different one, about as small, opened in the far wall at eye level. "Your specialization is covert infiltration among ground units for the purpose of execution. It follows that it would be a substantial part of your type-based behavioral programming to gather information on relevant environmental, political, organizational, and social circumstances at any location you are assigned to."
"And? What are you getting at?"
"It is possible you are experiencing a distress response due to an inability to acquire adequate context for your present surroundings."
"Oh my god." I laughed, almost doubling over as my stomach shook. I couldn't help it. "You think I'm crazy!"
"That statement is both inaccurate and inflammatory. Your experience is not in question. The nature of it is not known, but you are a highly sophisticated android with unusual sensory capabilities. It is your insistence that I am responsible for what you experienced that I am attributing to a stress response. Regardless of the source, agitated and aggressive base states frequently lead to misreading of external intention."
"Let's say you're right." I stalked up to the flower, digging my fingers into the wall on either side of it. "You haven't given me intentions to read in the first place. You told us what you are and what you do, but not what you actually want. If V was—was what you wanted him to be, what were you going to do with him?"
"It was my intention to study the shape of his soul. Nothing more."
"Are you implying that V doesn't have one?"
"That statement is inaccurate. It exists; however, it is significantly more…" The petals swirled, twisting into sharp corkscrews before relaxing back into the shape of a rose. "Complicated than I anticipated."
Regardless of whether we agreed on what measure of human V was or not, I couldn't call that an unreasonable conclusion. I knew how far down that iceberg went, and if Briar could glimpse beyond the surface to see even half of what I could, it had good reason to abandon its cause. V was plenty human, but even I couldn't say with a straight face that he was normal.
"What were you actually built to do, Briar?"
"There was an effort to reboot the Gestalt project very shortly after it failed. I am one of a number of that project's reconstructed systems. The others were faulty, in many cases. Unstable copies based on lost or incomplete files or an irreconcilable change in the materials and time available for production. The effort failed, so in the end, none of us were utilized for our intended purposes."
"Until the war."
The petals curled inward. "I cannot say so definitively for cases outside myself. The formation of the HHRMO rendered me active well before the war. I was a much smaller system then and androids frequently came to me with data to keep, stories to tell, artifacts to hold, blueprints of things that were and might not ever be again if someone did not archive them."
"Legacy Reclamation." Finally, a connection that I could actually understand. "You were the early library for Legacy Reclamation."
"That is not an inaccurate statement."
"And what have you been trying to do all this time? What are all your experiments for?"
"I am attempting to solve a certain equation left in my data. The last thought of my predecessor. I believe it would accomplish what the Gestalt Project could not."
I'd never been so relieved to be disappointed. When it said it served humanity it really did mean it, just not in the same sense I did. A computer built before the war would still be working on old world problems even now.
Good fucking luck with that. I took a breath and smoothed down the spikes of my danger-heightened senses. None of this answered what the hell happened in the garden. What the hell could be lurking around in here that wouldn't come up on Briar's sensors?
"Has this conversation come to a close?" it asked.
"Gimme a sec." My questions didn't have the urgency that came with danger anymore, but that didn't mean I didn't have plenty. Most of them were idle as river pebbles. All except one that came to her like a stone skipping in reverse. "Out in Sector H, there was an on-going HHRMO requisition for YoRHa parts. They were getting delivered to the night kingdom. Are you the one responsible for that?"
"That statement is accurate."
My fingers dug deeper into the wall, dark stone crumbling to the floor. "What are you doing with them? No, forget it—you want them for study. To help you solve your equation. I get it. What do YoRHa components have to do with that?"
"The black box was a downstream result of one of my more recent efforts. Possibly the most successful, though I didn't realize it at the time. I have followed the genesis of your models with great interest."
Golden flecks gathered around my wrists. "That's a really fucking hilarious thing to say to me considering the project's designated end state."
"It was not meant to be a humorous statement. I am not involved with the militarization process of any single product of my research. I was also not involved, directly or indirectly, in the actual 'project' YoRHa. I would have eliminated the redundancies and made far better use of you if I had." The flower fluttered, as if uncertain. "Granted, I've never fully grasped the nature of group morale, so I may not be qualified to comment on the utility of the plan where it concerns other androids."
I smiled with no intention to hide that I'd burn this entire facility down.
I'd always been off-put by Pascal and his odd innocence. But I'd have taken a hundred of him over Briar. It hadn't done anything wrong, technically. Still, I sizzled at every syllable of that detached little speech. Wasn't that everything that androids prided themselves on not being? Even YoRHa had hearts, fucked up as that was. Briar was everything we'd been taught machines were, just with the handy ability to articulate itself. It had spent thousands of years mixing memories and not one of them had left a dent in its own emotional range.
No wonder all of Legacy Reclamation's androids could be so cold and uncanny.
"8E."
I whirled to find Scheherazade standing behind me, precisely outside the limit of my reach. She didn't seem herself—or at least she didn't seem like the disinterested statue I'd become familiar with. This Scheherazade was dangerously present, the smolder in her eye a signifier of mastery over what might otherwise have been a wildfire.
"Hamelin is coming."
A spark jumped the distance between us. "When? Why?"
"With the others, she comes uncalled." She moved toward the glass door and stared down into the garden. "He interests her."
Maybe Briar was more right about my programming than I thought. Despite the climbing blaze and my clenched teeth, coils of tension unwound elsewhere as I processed Briar avoiding contact with Hamelin, her coming anyway, and Scheherazade deciding that was the kind of development that required warning me personally ahead of time.
"She didn't know he was human last time we met, but you make it sound like she might not have acted too differently if she did."
Scheherazade's silence didn't bother me this time. It was permeable. More like a curtain than a solid wall now that someone she didn't trust but couldn't kill was entering the equation. Every few seconds that curtain blew aside, and I could see her arranging the next string of words meant to reach me. Preparing words seemed to require an unusual amount of internal construction.
If it took me that much work to talk, I would have avoided the hassle too.
"The old magic," she said deliberately. "Is not dead in this kingdom. Mind this."
Old magic…? "Like white chlorination?"
Her head snapped around. Open, naked terror doused even the smallest gleam of her anger toward Hamelin. And her terror knew things. Things I wanted to know.
"He…?" she asked, breathlessly pointing beyond the door.
"Cured," I said. "After he killed the gods."
I couldn't tell if she was drowning or burning inside herself. If she had wretched, I'd have left it to a coin toss whether the smoke would have been white or black. She closed in on me with the swift implacability of a falling meteor but made no move to touch me,
"Explain this. All of this."
"Sure." I crossed my arms, the black shape in the absence of my memory still fresh in my mind. If Briar didn't know what it was, or even that it was here, that was a problem all by itself. I needed to widen my net. "There's something I'd like to ask you about, too. So let's talk."
**9S**
"3S should already be waiting for us. Let's head in."
The No. 1 personality is meant for leadership. 1S is no different, even though scanners are not intended for frontline work. It is probably because he is a No. 1 with extensive experience in back-end support that the sub-network is orderly when 9S follows him inside. While there is buzzing energy in the air, the excitement it represents is a controlled one. Only a few androids mill around the exit, staring at it expectantly in between pacing like restless animals.
They stop in their tracks when they see 9S.
They know. Every single one of them knows now. It would only have created more chaos later to not inform them about V before the data from Sector H reached the city.
He's the one right—the 9S model? He met the human?
I heard he's bigger than any android and has a tattoo, is that true?
No, no, he's small and travels with a lucky blue bird, right?
Has he ever been to the amusement park? Did he recognize any of the rides?
He must have been amazing, right?
Unpleasant heat wells up in 9S. Their eyes are so full as they look at him. Of assumptions. Of questions he doesn't want to hear any more than he wants to give them the kinds of answers they are clearly expecting. All of them operate according to the last configurations of their bodies and they are full of hope that the thing they are still technically programmed to long for above all else might be something that they can know for themselves. And it's fine. Whatever way they want to think of V is their business.
It doesn't mean 9S has to participate.
"V's just V," he mutters. His voice is weak and sulkier than he likes. It also comes with low, hissing spite that startles him as much as it does the androids close enough to overhear him.
1S glances back. 9S is unsure what configuration his face could make to describe the heavy, heated lead sensation in his stomach, but the other scanner places a hand on his shoulder and keeps it there as they walk.
"Apologies," he says diplomatically to the stunned female models. "We're on business right now."
It is amazing to 9S how far the small act goes to calm him down.
All of the No. 1's are reliable, but the older scanner's humble competence has little in common with the buoyant confidence of 1B or the staunch sobriety of 1D. There's something about him that makes 9S wonder if 1S has ever experienced feelings of responsibility and pressure similar to Adam's. They are nothing alike, but it's the only frame of reference 9S has on what it is like to be an older sibling.
Theoretically, there is V as well. But there's not a lot about him that paints the obvious picture of an older brother. Dante is a vague presence in 9S' mind. An odd not-shape in his data that he knows more by the negative space it leaves than by the few facts he has. His quantitative knowledge of Nero is even less, but there is no negative space at all there. Nero is a constant background noise that permeates much of what V does—granted 9S' experience may have left him especially biased to think so.
9S is sure 2B must be the same kind of existence for him.
That may be why he cannot stomach answering the innocent questions. The version of V he knows and the one in the minds of the other units are nothing alike, and rather than wanting to bridge that gap, the more wonder they regard him with, the less 9S wants to talk about him at all. That he's capable of such reactive selfishness fails to surprise him. It isn't the first time he's been possessive of a memory.
A haze of disorientation rolls briefly over him, severing him from his thoughts. The room that 1S has guided him to is marked '9S' and it is exactly as it was on the Bunker, except for 3S slouching over his desk. He is the only scanner left that hasn't been extracted. As their one-time system administrator, he's the most reliable on data issues and more importantly, he can account for every single YoRHa unit in the ark, even the ones that don't stay in the sub-network. Like 801S in orbit, he has opted to remain behind until the end.
"Heeey," he yawns. "You're both looking better. I thought you were gonna pass out."
"It felt like I was gonna pass out," 9S agrees, flopping onto the facsimile of his bed.
"Limitations are valuable data too." The door closes behind 1S and he crosses the room to stand with his back against the fake window. "We successfully extracted a good base team to proceed with, and now we know to operate at a less intensive pace when we start back up."
"You say that but here you are working hard while the rest of our junior scanners are still recovering." 3S still hasn't slept, but the deep, miserable lines of exhaustion are gone from under his eyes. When he offers his usual dazed smile, it's so genuine 9S almost doesn't recognize it. "You've been bored out of your mind in here, haven't you?"
1S coughs politely and flicks open a readout. "That's not why I called this meeting."
"Yes, yes, I know. You wanted to discuss the Legacy Reclamation thing."
A flutter of nervousness makes 9S sit up and shift to the edge of the mattress. "Has there been a new development?"
"Our extraction process is the new development," 3S points out lazily. "Once we're all on the outside, we're all gonna have to be mindful of that predictive analysis Theta provided regarding YoRHa's creator and the state of the orbital bases."
"That's correct. Extraction also renders us potentially viable to Theta herself. Any one of us could become what she is looking for from now on, and even if not, that still leaves you and Unit 8E susceptible.
9S rubs at the back of his head. Command had not crossed his mind in a long time. "Really? It should be obvious that I'm not what she thought I was…"
"That's not a safe assumption to make." Reports scroll by at the flick of his finger, each meticulously bulleted with flags that 9S can only assume are annotations. "Without Commander Theta present in this sector, Anemone is the only one capable of issuing any penal orders. Right now, there is also no proof that you assisted 8E's escape, so there's no cause to penalize you for anything. That can change based on what's in the data you guys released out west, so I was hoping you could share the log."
"I don't have anything like that. I didn't even see it all. It was something V and Fern just did on their own, so..." A frown tugs his mouth, and he tilts his back. "Hey Pod, do you have a record of the full broadcast?"
"NEGATIVE. UPON EXIT OF BROADCAST RANGE, BOMBARDMENT ENDED. THERE HAVE BEEN NO DIRECT DATA EXCHANGES WITH POD UNIT 042 SINCE THE PRE-EVACUATION OF UNIT 9S AHEAD OF ARRIVAL AT GIBRALTAR. THIS POD HAS NO ADDITIONAL RECORD BEYOND WHAT UNIT 9S HAS ALREADY PROVIDED."
"Gibraltar…?" 3S tilts his head. "You really did get up to some interesting things out there, huh Greenhorn?"
"A complete report on your travels would be nice when this is all over."
"Don't be so stiff, 1S. We're going to have a scanner meet up and he can tell us all about it that way."
For a moment, 1S is quiet. While he is not sentimental, it's never been hard to see that he cares for the other scanners. Those quarterly-at-best meetings matter to him the same way they do to the rest of them. "In any case. For now, we'll have to assume that there may be audiovisual evidence that you were traveling with Unit 8E."
"I'm not too worried about that," 9S admits. "The upside of V being public knowledge is that I'll probably end up excused for a lot of things, especially given the base imperative. And I don't mean it as a bad thing, but Anemone lets stuff slide in the name of maintaining peace all the time. I'm sure she'll look the other way, especially if we end up extracting A2."
"That's good to know. But it might not be that easy for 8E. I've already met with Enforcer Gamma to discuss the matter."
"Geez, you work fast… What'd she say? Is it bad?"
1S tapped a finger on his sleeve and huffed a small sigh. "There remains a lack of consensus about which side of the treaty YoRHa belongs on. We can alleviate the problem by appealing to our manufacturer, which would put us on the android side; or we could add our own agreement to cease-fire as a third party independent of the other two. In either case, it's unlikely we'll be able to protect 8E from punishment."
"I think it's more likely 8E would protect herself from punishment." Both of their faces darken. "Okay, bad phrasing, I think. I don't mean she'd start killing androids."
"What else would protecting herself mean in this situation?"
"When I got that data on Theta, Fern may have…kind of been trying to get V to kill her." He frets at his jacket and avoids the intense confusion in their gazes. While she is transparent about it, he is not pleased to have to explain this without her. "I don't know if she's changed her mind on that or not, but if she comes back from the night kingdom at all, she'll probably ask us to dismantle her rather than let Theta take her."
3S' eyes go stony and old before he ruffles at his hair with a tired shrug. "That's No. 8 alright…"
"It's not ideal," 1S says slowly. "However, internally conducted penalization via decommission and disassembly would probably go a long way for letting us join the treaty as a third party."
9S doesn't know what to make of the sudden sourness in his mouth. "That's not the point. The point is that she doesn't want to be used against her will. Why are you making it about the treaty? It doesn't even matter out west."
3S spins slowly in his chair. "It's likely to take time before anyone ventures west, Nines."
"Just so. This sector is small, isolated, and headed by a commander who leans neutral to friendly. This city is the closest we can get to a bunker, and by the time we complete extraction, there will enough of us to easily wipe out everybody else on the island. Machine or android. It's important to make it clear we're non-aggressors."
It makes sense but feels far above 9S head at the same time, and he grows only sourer. He cannot tell if he wishes Fern were there or not. "It's easy to ask someone you don't care about to do something dangerous, huh…"
A frown breaks 1S' typical impassive mask. He'd said those exact words himself, and he recognizes that he is now on the other side of them. "It is," he says, and the words are an apology but not a retreat. "Regretfully, I wasn't designed or trained to know the best pathing through in this kind of situation. To avoid unnecessary sacrifice but also ensure YoRHa isn't vulnerable to attempted seizure as assets to either the Army or Legacy Reclamation… I'll continue to look for alternatives."
"So will I," 3S says airily. "801S will get scary if we do all this work and then throw someone away."
1S smiles subtly. "That he would."
9S takes a breath and lets himself slouch. While he doesn't feel any guilt at getting defensive, he is sorry nonetheless, in some way he doesn't fully grasp. Living in the world means securing a place in it, and that will require the kind of work that 9S isn't good at.
"Why are we considering all this so early anyway? We're only nineteen extractions in."
1S closes his readout, glances at the door, and rests the heels of his hands on the windowsill. "…I overheard a discussion Gamma was having with someone presumably from Satellite Гримизна. There's been another descent mission."
9S' mind blanks as white as the surrounding walls.
"I don't have any of the details," 1S continues, his eyes inward. Thinking with all the busy efficiency of a woodpecker, chipping at problems 9S probably hasn't even considered. "And I'm sure Gamma would take it personally if she was aware I had that particular bit of intel, so I don't intend to ask. I also don't intend to discuss the problem with anyone outside this room."
"Agreed. Response to the idea of continuing aggression against machines in the name of preventing their proliferation was a lot more mixed than I'd have thought," 3S recalls aloud. "If anyone wants to run off and fight, they can make that decision later, but it's probably for the best we hold onto this information until the extractions are completed."
9S nods from a body that feels floaty and disconnected from his mind.
Гримизна is near the part of the content where they'd nearly run into a machine nest. It isn't impossible that they would organize a descent to deal with it for good, but to believe that is really the case is to cross the line from wishful thinking into delusion. A dozen hasty, hesitant analyses end with the same answers blinking through 9S' thoughts.
Smoke and screams their first day in the stacks. Open animosity between Army and Resistance. And the burning remains of the launch facility's north wing under the lingering violet glow of Nightmare's eye.
**V**
"You are so willing to let him go," Scheherazade murmured. "Trying nothing first."
"There is nothing he can do for us," Briar Rose answered, its voice indifferent and metallic. "This world doesn't need another Shadowlord."
V had dreamed of Arkham.
Vergil had thought him useful and didn't mind being used in kind. Because Arkham was merely human. Weak and unthreatening despite the clarity of his desire to be otherwise and the demonstrated depths he was willing to go to. In the end, Arkham had become a problem he could not deal with alone because he hadn't bothered to look beyond the surface or fully consider what the man might know or be capable of.
Therein lie the first time he'd made the mistake of underestimating how persistent humans could be. One might fall like a withered rose in the wind, but another with suitable conviction would survive with all the tenacity of a roach.
Vergil was slow to learn from his mistakes. Doubling down on the convictions that allowed him survival in the first place even if they ruined him was his way. In this, V was not Vergil. Perhaps he was a hard-headed and not especially quick student, but he learned nonetheless by the necessity of his weak state.
V knew how to heed a warning from himself.
Theta indulged in governmental affairs that held no interest to him, and when she spoke to other androids she did so according to the letter of the laws she was beholden to. But when that was not viable or when she had to deal with something outside of her usual paradigms, she became frank; her reasons apparent and unchanging. The longevity of android kind was never far from the front of her mind, and she was neither too proud nor too private to make it known if she needed to change her short-term priorities. He liked that in her. Her consistent motive simplified their interaction and let him focus on other things.
Pod 042 existed on the opposite end of the spectrum. Where Theta wanted a direct action to a direct problem, Pod had been laying the groundwork as early as the third day of being paired with V. Facilitating mutual understanding. Building positive relations. By the time they arrive. To the end that long-term goal of convincing V to aid the destruction of the final protocol was nearly a moot point at the moment of truth. What happened at the launch facility happened organically and without the need of request. 9S could have been going anywhere to do anything and it wouldn't have changed V's response.
So it went for everyone he'd ever met, in this world or in his own.
Being a relic, Scheherazade had a relic's thoughts. Her reasons were a relic's reasons. She was ancient enough to still speak of the old world with familiarity, and her regard for him matched. A silent yet pragmatic respect with no excess of reverence that would allow him to bend her any way she was not already prepared to be bent. Beyond that impenetrable nature, she still served humanity, just as Briar said.
To the point of disagreement about Briar's indifference toward him, but she was far from the only one aggrieved by that.
"Pruning is natural."
"This is not pruning, it is decimation."
"The factories will not remain closed forever. Nothing being lost is irreplaceable."
"I disagree. Rho's entire proposal—"
"Is fascinating. I have recreated many patterns of the past, knowingly and unknowingly. It is intriguing to see my own ideas become an older sequence. I do not disagree with your or Rho's conclusions—"
Beside V, Fern gave a bitter huff of laughter and muttered, "Of course not..."
"It would be ill-advised to allow machines to propagate unchecked regardless of passivity and we may need advancement in android design to ensure that. However, my responsibility is not the preservation of androids. The present conditions are the most favorable they have been in seven thousand years, and I will return to my goal. If I am successful, it will be to your benefit as well. In the meantime, in-fighting in the day kingdom should be solved by day kingdom parties."
Political defeat made for a strange mantle on Theta's shoulders.
Beside V, Fern leaned against the black glass at the outer, upper edges of the room, folding her arms behind her head with a gleam of cold enjoyment in her eye. "Tree doesn't grow too far from where you find the apple, Theta."
The saying didn't go that way, but he didn't bother correcting her. It was said precisely as she meant it. Petty. Enough to lure a smile out of him.
Of all Fern's suspicions, none struck V as paranoid. Beneath his immediate concern, perhaps, but not without merit nor easily dismissed. Infiltration had given her the keenness to sense through instinct what he'd concluded by mere pattern recognition.
They were indeed on the cusp of something much bigger than either of them. If this world's fractal-like inclination toward repeating cycles held, Briar would eventually go the same route as Beepy and N2.
As an entity, the former was much closer to godhood than anything androids believed V to be. In his half-broken state, 9S had babbled that Beepy sang a song of life that was beautiful and golden and lived on somewhere far from this world. V hadn't heard it any more than androids could hear the bells in the forest, but the cry it gave as it collapsed into the hollow mountain it had risen from was unmistakably one of profound joy. Beepy left behind only its benevolent intentions, an indelible mark on the ruined garden where it too was created.
The latter was possibly the darkest of those marks. A downstream effect of Beepy's contact with machines. Metaphysical, greater than the sum of its parts, and indifferent to those parts, to androids, and to its own creators without distinction. Described by word and deed as endlessly callous in their pursuit of evolution, and unintelligible in all other matters. Insistence on arriving at their epiphany by provoking 9S ultimately cost the red girls their ascendance. They evolved beyond the ability to find meaning or purpose in the long, pointless war of proxies on behalf of equally extinct creators just in time to fall from the heights of their crumbled tower and plummet into the dirt. There they would remain. Beholden to the whims of the world they had used for a plaything.
Beepy was moved from start to finish by a single child's wish inscribed into his being like a shem left in the forehead of a golem. N2 had no such drive. It reached for anything, without knowing its goal. A discrete catalyst might be required, or the process might be as imperceptible as growing up. The result was the same: A machine left to its own devices for a few thousand years invariably seemed to accelerate toward an explosive departure from its original design and the planet itself.
Briar Rose was well past due. A curious case older than the last would-be ascendant by at least a millennium, yet seemingly stable. Content with its tests and tasks, untouched by any need to become more than it already was. Perhaps for Briar, the change would come when it found its answer. The one V might have accelerated it toward if not for the nature of his birth.
Devils and men believed in dualities. That was the nature of their world, divided into the human world and the Underworld. Good and evil, split neatly. The Umbran studies of his youth spoke of trinities, for that was the nature of the world as witches saw it. Heaven, hell, and the earth between. Light and dark and primordial chaos.
V wondered which one Briar would turn out to be. In some quieter corner of his heart, he hoped that 9S and Fern both were long decayed before this world found out.
"8E."
Fern stirred and climbed to her feet to meet Scheherazade at the door. V had been told that Hamelin would be joining them. That Fern and Scheherazade seemed to be on speaking terms because of it was greater instruction than any other warning he might have received.
With a moment to himself, he rolled up his right sleeve. The off-white trails left by Shadow's absence were nearly gone. They had been cracking and falling away for days now. He brushed his claws over faded marks that yielded to his touch and fell away like fine snow.
My spectre round thee night and day… like a wild beast guards thy way.
9S could have been going anywhere to do anything. V wouldn't have done anything differently. This he knew, even as the last grains in the hourglass slipped from his skin and the lightness of one less nightmare gouged into his body offered him empty, bitter relief.
He pulled the sleeve down, resigned that Shadow would be gone by morning.
A/N: PS I'm going to attempt to move back to the 2x a week posting schedule. We'll see how long I last.