"Are you sure you want me to do it?"
"If you're willing."
"You know I am; it's not about that. Back-transport to the factory is even trickier than sending you guys down. I won't be planet-side for a long time."
9S smiled. Even if they hadn't shared memory data, 801S probably wouldn't have reacted any differently. "We're progressing at a good rate down here; we'll be done before the new year. That's not a long wait."
"If you're sure…"
"I am. The one thing that frustrated me most when I left was that I wanted it to be a YoRHa that fixed 2B. So, I knew she'd be in good hands, you know? 10H, 12H, and 32H are all capable. I know they could fix her body. But you're the best for everything else."
"Well yeah," 801S said with a cheeky, effortless grin. "Who do you think R&D was most likely trying to improve on, mister 'top of the line'?"
"You'd think they would've made you humbler," 9S playfully shot back. "I mean it though. You know what she means to me. I want you to be the one who repairs 2B."
A few wispy clouds passed through the October sky, whipped into feathery shapes by strong winds. Perched on the broken bridge overlooking the quarry, 9S spotted two YoRHa bracing as the gust raced through the empty streets and alleys. He could just make out a yelp as one of them chased uselessly after something already soaring off into the air. The trees rustled and the sun-bleached concrete creaked and crackled.
The ruins felt alive. Populated and breathing and active in a way he was completely unfamiliar with. 801S was watching it as much as he was.
"Maybe that's only fair." 801S slouched back, twiddling at his braid. "In hindsight, I think I gave her some pretty insensitive advice the first time I ever spoke to her."
"What was it?"
"That she should call you Nines, so you'd know she was someone you'd considered a friend. You'd lost about two months of memory and I could tell you were important to her even though you didn't have any idea who she was anymore." He shrugged. "It was something 3S suggested I do. I guess I was hoping since she was closer to you, she'd be the one to try it instead of me. But she just said it was unnecessary and stomped off."
"Yeah, that definitely sounds like 2B," 9S said with an apologetic smile. "But I don't think she'd hold that against you."
"Probably not. Still... When the time comes, I'll do everything I can for her."
"I know. Thanks, 801S."
The call ended and 9S let himself slump backward onto the warm concrete. It scuffed at the back of his legs and snagged on his coat, the uneven texture of weathering and deep cracks felt in a dozen small ways.
No matter how articulated the network was, it could never match the level of sensory detail in the real world. Everyone leaving the ark had to process it all at once as they entered new bodies. Healers and scanners had the benefit of being built to handle the strain caused by moving between digital and physical interface, but a year was a long time to spend in a network.
Debilitation at start-up was to be expected. 12H had required four hours to stabilize. Then another twelve asleep before she was ready to operate as normal. 32H was extracted into her body in dry, shaded conditions. Not being pelted with tactile information on load-in made a big difference for her stabilization rate, but she also fell into an extended sleep before she was able to function. 1S, 32S, and 42S took a long time to recover as well.
Once the extractors were all out, they worked on pulling two D-types to guard the terminal, five B-types for protection, and seven operators for logistical support. It took a day and a half to secure them all, and another two days for both the extracted and the extraction team to fully recover. The healers were mostly unaffected, but the process taxed the scanners on an exponential grade. Every single one of them had fumbled some part of the data transfer on their third extraction.
Things had resumed at a more measured pace, just as 1S suggested they would. 9S had been remained out of rotation to familiarize 1S with the resistance camp and assist the operators. Which pretty much meant acting as their personal database on the area in the absence of usable terminals. He ran errands and helped keep communication open. There were only four pods connecting the growing number of YoRHa units. Pod 153 with him, Pod 006 with 10H, and the other two 006 units floating free, usable by whoever needed them.
When he wasn't doing that, he did nothing. He'd very gingerly poked around for knowledge about the 244th descent mission in his spare time, but nobody he trusted to ask knew anything about it. Being comfortable with not knowing what happened wasn't in his programming, but he couldn't let curiosity mess up what 1S was trying to accomplish.
It felt like he had all the time in the world already and nothing to do with it.
"Maybe we can celebrate New Year's Eve..."
He'd been doing that a lot these past few days. Churning out things to do with 2B every time he idled for more than a few minutes at a time. The certainty that she'd be back combined with the on-going peace made seeing her feel less like waiting for a miracle and more like he was just wasting time while waiting for her to complete a routine repair.
New Year's might be too soon at the rate extractions were going at. He liked that holiday, though. Waiting a whole year for it to come around again would be torture. Unless he could find a substitute. Once on the Bunker, he'd heard the operators gossiping about a day in February when you were supposed to give people you admired something brown. A sweater might look good on her… Or maybe a big sunflower.
Of course, doing nothing for a few months while she acclimated was fine by him too, if she needed it. He'd have to be ready to walk 2B through everything that happened. Not that he'd have to do it alone, but as with a lot of things, the apprehension he once harbored toward the idea simply wasn't there anymore. Even if it was as much for her to digest as it had been for him, he'd be with her. It didn't matter what they were, or where they went, or what the world thought of them.
They'd be together.
A chime cut through the bustling wind. "INCOMING CALL FROM POD 006."
"This is 9S!" He sat up and tried to make it look like he hadn't just been lazing around. "What's up?"
A particularly severe face appeared on screen. "This is Operator 5O speaking. We have a minor situation and could use an assist. The rotation's been interrupted."
"That doesn't sound minor. What happened?"
"4S and 32H just completed the transfer of unit 7B and departed without incident to the transporter. 42S and 10H were next in rotation to complete the transfer for unit 7E but the Healer disconnected and ran off."
9S winced and rubbed at the side of his neck. Bet I know what that's about…
"Can you get 12H to fill in? I'll find 10H."
"I doubt she'll be pleased by the double duty, but yes. Thank you for your support. Operator 5O, out."
The connection clicked off and 9S sighed. 10H had been doing okay with a job to focus on. He hoped she hadn't run off somewhere dangerous. "Pod, put all active Pod 006 signals on the map."
"AFFIRMATIVE."
There was the one at the quarry that 5O had probably called from, one outside the factory and another one that looked like it was inside the factory. That'd be the one.
He hopped down, circled the crater, and trotted up the clear strip of road between the desert and the south side of the city. The D units greeted him with a nod as he passed them, and soon after he caught up with 4S and 32H being escorted by a B-type who was also supporting a wobbly, freshly extracted 7B. He stopped to help them hoist her up onto the broken strip of road. The gate between the factory and the rest of the city was still being dismantled, so getting in and out with a unit that wasn't fully mobile was a hassle.
9S wouldn't have chosen the factory as a base of operations. However, the two locations he would have picked were buried under the rubble. That was probably for the best—the operators were quick to point out that the UFO would have increased aggression in the B-types and the copied city (assuming it hadn't crumbled like the tower) may have slowed down the acclimation process because it was visually similar to the inside of the network.
The forest kingdom was hostile, the desert was one big environmental hazard, the amusement park was on the other side of the zone and overstimulating for anybody who had never been there before, and it made 9S' chest clench to imagine taking them to the coast. With the data from Sector H an unknowable distance away from reaching the ruins, none of them should be going anywhere near the coliseum.
They took what they could get.
In the shade of winding pipes and massive smokestacks, half a dozen rubbery cots had been laid out beneath a sloping white tarp propped up into a makeshift repairs area. A place where the most recently extracted could rest and reorient to their bodies with minimal external stimulus. Iota's symbol was hastily scrawled on the underside of the material. 9S didn't know the details, but apparently, 12H had haggled her into an oversight and consultation role since she was knowledgeable about their bodies.
Four of the cots were already filled with those extracted today, none especially familiar to him except for the operator that used to work with 2B. They were probably intending to finish up the No. 7s before they halted for the day to let the scanners and healers rest up.
The few YoRHa that had already stabilized loitered out in the open, talking amongst themselves about things he made it his business to not overhear. They were outnumbered by the resistance androids that had come to help and offer supplies. Nearly a year of peace had left them in a kindlier state of mind, it seemed. Or, in cases like Alstroemeria and Freesia, had only made them more solicitous. He even saw Aster there, staring off at the sea a polite distance away while Gladiolus spoke to 32S. A scratched dogtag hung from his neck, dull but still catching the dappled light passing through beams wreathed in ivy. His smile was everything 9S remembered it being, aside from the glossy, warped light of tears brimming without falling in his eyes.
32S couldn't have remembered the resistance member who illegally rebooted him, but he'd always been the one most sensitive to the resistance's existence. The one most aware that they lived and died once while he had as many lives as the Bunker would give him. Now he was like them.
They all were.
The factory's interior cast a shadow that was more than physical. 9S' memories there weren't particularly good or particularly bad in the grand scheme, but he had nothing new to replace the eeriness that had kept him from going inside. It remained exactly what it had been a year ago: a place of cultists and machine children who had killed themselves under mysterious circumstances, leaving only the emptied Pascal as witness. As Theta and Pascal had agreed on, the factory was offline now. It had been for months and its remaining inhabitants were cold furnaces, dimmed lights, and the ticking of metal contracting in the cool, autumnal wind.
The elevators had all been locked for safety's sake. If anything still lurked in the innermost areas where automated systems had churned out machine lifeforms of all shapes and sizes, it would take more than passing curiosity for an android to wander that far.
He ran through, sticking to paths that 10H would have been able to follow, out into the light and up to one of the more sequestered walkways. When he finally arrived at the source of Pod 006's signal, he found 10H high above him, sitting out at the end of a crane.
"Picked a pretty dangerous spot, didn't you?"
She scowled but didn't answer him. Didn't tell him to go away or get up and run either, so he took that as a sign it was fine to join her. It wasn't a bad view for someone who had something on their mind. Scorched rocks and busted metal one way, and a grey stretch of ocean the other.
Pod 006 hovered silently overhead, out of 10H's visual field and unusually far away from her. Many times, 9S had caught himself thinking of his own relationship with Pod 153 early on while watching them. But as he looked at them now, the distance between them put him in mind of a parent and child. Estranged from one another by commands and obligations that neither of them had asked for. Pod 006 had about as much choice as the rest of them had, but there was no shaking the kind of rage that sixty-six lost lives came with through simple rationalization.
They both knew why he was there, so he let her be the one to talk first.
"I can't do it," she muttered without looking his way. "Some healer that makes me, huh?"
"It doesn't have anything to do with your model or your capabilities. You can do it, you just don't want to, right?"
"No, I don't." She curled in tighter on herself. "I don't want to help someone whose whole purpose was killing other androids."
"That's fine. I'm sure 1S can adjust the rotation so you don't have to extract any executioners."
She seemed surprised by his willingness to accommodate, then irritated by it, her brows drawing as she barked at him, "I don't know how any of you can stand it. They might have helped erase you before and you wouldn't even know how many times it was!"
"It was forty-eight for me." She jerked back, her temper defused. He laughed easily. More so that he thought he ever might given the subject. "Same kind of story as you. One unit destroyed my body and reset my memory over about three years."
"And you're fine with her coming back?"
"I want her to." He plunged his hands into his pockets scuffed his heel against a bolt that stuck out a bit more than the others. "Her name is 2B. Or at least that's what I always knew her as. She was cold and distant and quick to call anything that was about the mission a waste of time and she'd warn me all the time I needed to stay focused and control my curiosity and with a really stern voice she'd remind me, 'emotions are prohibited'. And… I did all this so I could meet her again."
"Why? No offense, but you didn't paint a particularly nice picture."
"Because I liked being with her. It was super easy to tell that half the time she was trying to create a scenario where she wouldn't have to kill me while also keeping me at a distance for when she did. I can't really explain it, but she was the type who's awful at hiding her real feelings. But she had her orders, so she completed them every time."
"She could have done something else," 10H muttered.
"We could've done something else. Plenty of YoRHa went AWOL or deserted. That's just not a conclusion we ever came to. Instead, when she confessed and tried to stop, I did a kind of mean thing and made her promise she would always be the one to execute me. I wanted to meet her again that much."
"I don't…" She turned her face away like she couldn't stand to look at him. Her voice was small and thin. "I don't get that..."
"V is with an Executioner right now." He looked off across the sea, a quicksilver twinge of anxiety flickering through him. "She was a lot more candid than 2B and I learned a lot about E-types from her. She didn't like the job, or anything about being an executioner, really. I'm pretty sure none of them do."
"So what," she snapped. "I'm just supposed to forgive them because it was what they were built to do?"
"Don't be stubborn," he chided in a fussy tone that reminded him way too much of 21O. "That's not what I'm saying. You're the only one who knows the importance of what you lost. You don't have to forgive anybody until you decide you're ready to. And it's not easy. I had to... sort of kill 2B and myself before I was able to move past it."
She turned back to him, brows knit in total bewilderment. "...You say some really disturbing things, 9S."
"I think that comes with being a YoRHa in general." He squatted down next to her, rubbing self-consciously at his knees. He'd admonished her because it seemed like he should, but it was too early to be acting like any kind of authority. They were the same—he'd just been dealing with what that meant for longer than she had. "I dunno if I have much room to be saying this, but it is important to be angry at the thing you're actually angry at, 10H. Letting it spread can get, uh… out of hand."
She frowned, and slowly let her legs stretch down and drop over the edge of the crane. "How am I supposed to not notice the similarities?"
"Just give it time. You'll find out for yourself that without command around, they're not as similar as you think."
She glanced over her shoulder at Pod 006 and sighed forward into her hands. "Sorry. I'll go back soon, but could you...?"
"Sure. Take your time."
it was strange. The past wasn't any less ugly or any less painful. He still remembered it perfectly. But it was a lot further away than he remembered. Buffered by a stretch of memories longer than any of his other lives had been. Whether that was a good or bad thing, he couldn't say. But it was nice to be able to sit with 10H while she gripped the frayed wires of all her previous versions and attempted to connect with a past she felt but couldn't know.
The more things changed, the more they were all the same.
"INCOMING CALL FROM POD 006."
"Yeah, yeah…" He stretched and folded his hands around the back of his neck. "This is 9S."
"9S? Can you hear me?!"
The panic sent a crackle of terror through 9S. "801S? What's wrong?!"
"I-I'm not sure. I don't know what to do—I'm not sure what I'm looking at."
"Are you in danger?"
"I'm fine, it's just—" The pause left 9S vibrating, close to shaking Pod as if that would prompt an answer. "Something is wrong with Shadow!"
9S' visual field didn't re-assert itself immediately. He fell off the transporter platform, clattering to the ground with a body that refused to light up for him even though he was inside and otherwise intact. 801S had warned him; he just hadn't listened.
Come on, come on, get up!
A boot screen appeared. Motor control returned slightly before everything else, and he heard 801S yelp, felt him catch 9S before he crashed back into the ground. His visual field clicked on, bleary and poorly adjusted to the harsh white light.
"Shadow," he choked, leaving no room for concerns about the state of his body or any questions about disorientation. "Where's Shadow."
A red pod signaled from the exit to the transport area. "THIS WAY."
"She's mostly been sleeping," 801S explained as 9S stumbled, trotted, and then ran after Pod 006. "A lot, but she always seemed to be sleeping when we were at the lunar server too and I don't know what demons do with themselves when they're bored, it's not like she eats or breathes. Recently she started disappearing into shadows, the same way she did when you were here. She'd answer me when I looked for her so I didn't think anything was wrong and I just told Pod 006 to keep an eye on which shadows she was disappearing into. And then today she just—"
Everything 801S was saying, 9S already knew. He asked about Shadow every other day. Every day since 1S mentioned the 244th descent—it was his only way to know V was alive. Nothing had struck him as odd or unusual. Of course she would sleep. Of course she would disappear into shadows. Why wouldn't she look for a way to be dormant? Most of her time was spent as a series of swirls on V's skin or as a deeper darkness in 9S' own shadow.
801S was still talking, but 9S stopped hearing him. It took everything he had to process what he saw when Pod 006 finally slowed deep within the internal assembly area of the factory.
"Shadow…?"
Her head twitched toward him. If it could still be called a head. It had no eyes or ears. The mouth was in the wrong place. Leaking off the end of her snout with an incorrect configuration of teeth and multiple tongues attached by thinning strings of black ooze. Her panting was shallow and rapid and came from neither her malformed face nor the remains of her torso. A viscous and solid black pool spread from her like an oil spill as the shape she frequented most came undone and flowed across the floor.
He knelt in front of her and reached a trembling hand out to rest between her ears. She purred, oblivious to the way his fingers sank right through her. He'd seen Griffon's core be exposed before. Just once, during the summer. He'd come back fine. This was nothing like that.
She was dying.
She must have been the whole time, slowly, ever since they left the planet.
There was no sky big enough or horizon clear enough that Shadow's death wouldn't hang over him like a black cloud. It would smother him. Stain him and everything around him as surely as it was staining his hands and the gleaming metal floors. Every familiar gave V power and protection he wouldn't otherwise have, and V had given that a third of it. Knowing it would end like this and knowing he was headed into the unknown where he might need it.
9S couldn't accept. He couldn't take this kind of sacrifice on his behalf. Not again. Never again. Not even from a demon.
"Why here," he said in a shaky, poorly synthesized voice. He scanned the area too quickly, eyes clawing at every surface for some evidence, some sign of how to make this stop. His mind felt sluggish. Unprepared to process death or ways to avoid it. "You could have died anywhere, why did you come all the way out here."
She sagged into him as he labored to hold onto her. Her body was more liquid than solid, her surface tension diminishing by the second. No fight, no energy to do hold herself together. Like V when he was tired or—
9S' eyes snapped straight up to the ceiling. "The machine core...?"
801S followed his gaze and barked to the nearest red pod. "Bring it down here! Now!"
The pod scurried off without argument. 9S clung to Shadow as best he could, bent over her and rocking as she spilled over his lap. There was no substance between his fingers. None of the comforting sense of strength and weight that usually accompanied even her more amorphous forms. She flowed through his fingers and down over his legs like weightless mud.
Until there was nothing left but a single thin tendril that struggled and failed to encircle his finger before oozing away.
Solid black that refused to shine stained his gloves and smeared across his legs.
"POD!"
The machine core appeared like a falling star. Thrown straight down through the open air, faster than it could be safely carried. Pod 153 zipped over him, a control ring expanding around the golden glow like a halo as she worked to bring it safely to a halt.
9S snatched it no sooner than it had stopped. There was nothing left of Shadow but the puddle. No mouth or any place to put the core. Frazzled and out of time to consider anything else, he placed it directly onto the thin layer of ichor. His auxiliary vents roared in his ears as he pressed it down with both hands. Blurred prayers and threats and curses dizzying him until he could hear nothing but the humming of the factory.
801S appeared as an unprocessed blur in his periphery. "Is… Is she…?"
A single bubble formed and died with a soft, sticky pop.
It erupted. 9S tumbled backward and 801S yelped as a cloud of clawed hands raised into the open air, each snatching at the golden shape of the machine core. He watched with more awe than fear as it turned in on itself, churning and converging back down to ground level, and into the shape of a black panther. A red pattern shimmered across her fur as she shook herself off.
"Sha—!"
She bumped her head into his hard enough that a few pixels flickered in aberrant colors across his visual field. Bowled him over a second time with the weight of her and scouring his cheeks with her tongue. He squirmed and kicked at first, but quickly let himself laugh and accept her insistent affection. When he threw his arms around her neck and found her solid and heavy, his breath hitched.
"Goddamn it, don't scare me like that…"
She burped in response.
"I don't mean to interrupt," 801S said, circling around them cautiously and crossing his arms. "But did she really just eat an intact machine core?"
"Shadow's like V. If she runs out of magic, she falls apart. I just didn't realize being physically separated from V would…" He frowned and held tighter to Shadow. He should have realized. "Anyway, she should be fine."
"Are you sure?" 9S looked up, shaky and bewildered by 801S' skepticism. "It might be alien technology, but it is technology. She basically just ingested a fusion reactor, 9S."
The words splattered across the long wall of the past year, spindling back through time to form a connection as unexpected as meeting V in the first place. He'd said that once. He'd been where 801S was before. The same element manipulated by different means. The same thing, with a different interface.
"I think…It may be more than that."
9S climbed back to his feet, his hand lingering on Shadow. She was solid. Whole. Watching him with lively red eyes like she hadn't almost died of—magic starvation. What other conclusion was he supposed to come to? For that matter, how much time did a core buy? He'd expected Shadow to just turn into a core and go dormant whenever V left this world, not… not that.
"Pod 006," 9S called, rubbing a hand over his face. "Does the lunar server maintain logs of all active descents?"
"AFFIRMATIVE. QUERY: DOES UNIT 9S REQUIRE INFORMATION REGARDING A PARTICULAR DESCENT MISSION?"
"The most recent one."
"The 243rd?" 801S asked with a raised brow. "You were at ground zero for all the major skirmishes."
"NEGATIVE. A 244TH DESCENT MISSION HAS BEEN REGISTERED TO COUNCIL OF HUMANITY SERVERS." The pod's antenna spun, five of them grouping as if in conversation amongst themselves. Or more likely, between themselves and the pods that were still physically at the server.
"SUMMARY OF FINDINGS: FOLLOWING A GRADE 3 ATTACK ON THE LAUNCH FACILITY ASSOCIATED WITH THE NORTH ATLANTIC EXCHANGE ON 2 OCTOBER 11946 TEAMS FROM SATELLITES Гримизна AND NYEUPE WERE DEPLOYED TO SECTOR H. DESCENT ACTIVITY IS SET TO CONTINUE UNTIL SUCH TIME AS HOSTILE RESISTANCE FORCES IN THE SECTOR OFFER UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER."
"An anti-resistance descent mission…?!"
801S had never been to the ground. He had seen all that 9S had seen, but it was one thing to see it and another entirely to experience in person how easy it was for androids to turn on each other.
He hadn't been sighted there, and if he had, it had been as 49. V and Fern had made sure of that. 9S' fists clenched anyway. Success made him part of something bigger than a few half-functional YoRHa or a group of nobodies traveling across the continent. 1S had taken point thinking about what it really meant for them all to live in peace among androids that wouldn't passively accept everything that had been done to bring them back into this world. The first of the consequences was already taking shape.
"ADDENDUM: PROCUREMENT OF HUMAN SUBJECT V IS ALSO LISTED AS A CLEARANCE TIER S PARAMETER FOR DESCENT MISSION SUCCESS."
The happy, light-filled cloud 9S lived on for the past week dissipated with no fanfare.
He'd been busy wandering the moon. Busy reconnecting and planning with 801S. Busy hunting and destroying the final protocol. Busy seeing new YoRHa come into a world where they would be able to live without everything about their lives being destined for sacrifice. Busy waiting for 2B. Meanwhile, V was being hunted by not just a sector but active military forces from orbit.
This was the plan. All along, it was the plan to keep his eyes forward and leave V in Fern's hands. She wouldn't let anything happen to him. She would die before she let anything happen to him, and that had been a perfect assurance before this. Even an executioner couldn't stand against an entire descent force.
"—right?"
He should have stayed. He should have—
"Hey!" 9S flinched. "Wake up, space case. Sector H. You're going right?"
"What? But you— And everyone…" He swallowed and leaned heavily against Shadow. This wasn't fair. "2B…"
"Isn't back yet."
"I don't want her to wake up and I'm not there."
"Then you should hurry up, shouldn't you? December will probably be on the way out before I can head down to Earth."
"Nothing ever goes that well and you know it."
"Can you sit with this for fifty days?" 9S' throat constricted until he panicked for air he didn't need. "I didn't think so. We both know you need to go."
"I don't need—"
"You do," 801S said. Gently, but so emphatically that the protest evaporated from 9S' mouth. "And I'm not saying that because you shared your memories with me or anything—it's how you are. It's how you've always been. Being reckless and sticking your nose where it doesn't belong is kind of your deal, especially when someone you care about is involved."
"Maybe that's not a good thing."
He grabbed 9S' shoulders. The eyes that looked back at him were the same shade of blue. But they were unclouded. Clearer, more confident reflections of his own that filled 9S with a sense of loss. A past version of him had known 801S better than he did now, and there was definitely someone he wanted to know again in there.
"Good androids don't infiltrate launch sites, break into factories, and consider blowing up irreplaceable servers. Good YoRHa are meant to be dead. You didn't get this far on just being good. Everything that's happened so far, happened because you're you. Scanner No. 9, iteration 49."
"801S…"
"If you need a 'good' reason to go, tell yourself you're leaving so 1S can say you ran off when the news about V reaches the ruins. It'd be one less thing for him to manage."
That...wasn't a half-bad idea.
"Or, if you can stay focused and stay in the city, fine. Go back." He let 9S go and pointed an accusatory finger at Shadow. "But wherever you decide to go, you're going in a flight unit and taking her with you. This was an emergency. Now we have a diagnosis: She was hungry. Whole, viable cores are a limited resource and I'm not giving them up just to feed V's pet cat, so take her somewhere else before she gets hungry again or worse, pukes up some kind of nuclear hairball."
9S sputtered and shook with helpless laughter that allowed the fear that had seized him from the moment 801S called to finally cycle out.
For as much as he'd made fun of him about it, 9S thought might not be that different from V in the end. Spoiled enough to want things that took him in opposite directions and irresponsible enough to chase them both. But he'd never asked V to be anything else. V had never asked him to be anything else either. Not better or smarter or good. He'd never even asked that 9S be happy.
V had only ever made the modest request that 9S live. Shadow's presence was the unspoken measure of how much of himself he was willing to pour into that wish. An awkwardly given gift that meant a lot more than he'd ever managed to say.
It took a special kind of clumsiness to give away so much so suddenly, especially when it was so much more than 9S ever wanted. He gave a short, forgiving sigh. No wonder he thought V and 2B were so alike.
"New Year's," he said, stroking between Shadow's ears. "I'll return Shadow to V and be back by New Year's Eve. He needs her more than I do."
"REPORT," said Pod 006. "THIS POD WILL ACQUIRE THE NECESSARY FLIGHT UNIT. POD 042 IS CURRENTLY NOT VISIBLE ON THE REGIONAL NETWORK, HOWEVER, THERE IS A RECORD OF ACCESS POINT INTERFACE AT 62°15'53.8"N, 7°07'57.0"W ON 19 OCTOBER 11946. ACCESS TO THIS LOCATION REQUIRES NAVAL TRANSPORT. HYPOTHESIS: UNITS POD 042, 8E, AND SUBJECT V WERE ABLE TO PROCEED WEST INTO THE NIGHT KINGDOM."
"That's… really useful, actually."
"YOU SEEM SURPRISED."
"You're not assigned to me. I didn't think another Pod would be so proactive."
"ONE GOOD TURN DESERVES ANOTHER," it said cheerfully. "THIS IS AN EXPRESSION THAT PROPOSES RECIPROCATION OF A POSITIVE ACTION COMPLETED BY AN EXTERNAL PART. GRATITUDE: FOR SUPPORTING 10H."
"Is that what this is about." 9S crossed his arms with a sympathetic if slightly bittersweet smile. "You really like her, don't you?"
"YES. I BELIEVE I AM GROWING FOND OF ALL OF YOU." It hovered in, patting both Pod 153 and 9S. "PLEASE LEAVE EXTRACTION SUPPORT TO ME."