9S existed at the center of a gasoline haze with thoughts that refused to spark.

V wasn't the first person he cared for who had died in front of him. But he was the first who wasn't killed. The first who died quietly and of their own volition in his company. Anger was a pointless beast scratching beneath heavy grief piled up into a burial site 9S couldn't make himself stand at. Active processing came and went, like clouds passing in front of the unmoving sun of consciousness. Invariably, he came back to his own body sitting on the uncomfortable cot. It seemed to him that he hadn't breathed in days. Like if he disturbed himself even that much, he would go up in flames.

Empty tension was better than any reaction could be. Reacting would make it real in a way that went beyond fact. Reacting would make it personal. Painful. And there was no one to blame. No one who could even understand. Only one thread extended out into the promise that he did not have to sit alone in suspension forever.

2B.

If he sat there and didn't let it sink in until 2B arrived, maybe he would be alright.

Sensory nerves triggered along the back of his legs. He blinked, slowly at first and then with the rapid, bleary flutter of stepping out into full sunshine after a long time asleep. Noise appeared as sudden spikes in his audiograph, too far away for him to identify as anything more than an intermittent rumble.

One definitive crash snapped him fully awake.

He stood on legs full of clumsy, uncoordinated signals. Lethargy lingered over him, but the suspicion that a devil may have gotten in sharpened both his mind and body.

This building was not a perfect circle like the last one. It was segmented, full of corners and smaller rooms and sliding glass decontamination chambers. The R&D units had told him that Roswell was an alien research center preserved from human times. This must have also been a research site, but it was built with the same maze-like quality that had bothered him at the lunar server. If not for the abundance of signature, it would have been easy to get lost and feel trapped. As it was, it was merely disorienting.

Footsteps bounced off cold walls and polished glass, beating drums that refused to be triangulated back to any single source. Someone shouted. The noisier it became, the lighter 9S made his steps. The NFCS tingled in his fingertips as he considered whether a spear or a sword would be better in such a narrow space. Rounding a corner, he found Theta standing in the center of the hall with her head cocked to the noise. Her hands hovered over a hip that had no weapon on it.

Before he could call out, the nearest pane of reflective glass shattered. Something blurred through. He pulled back around the corner just as it rammed Theta against the far wall.

"You have ten seconds to tell me where 9S is."

9S' eyes widened.

"Eight," Theta choked. "E?"

"Seven seconds."

He rounded the corner mechanically, lost within his own body. The android gripping Theta looked like Fern and didn't. It wasn't her hair or the unexpected redness of her clothes or anything physical. She just didn't look the same. Even though she was identical. In the same way his uniform no longer seemed to fit his unchanged body, something about her wasn't as he remembered.

"Fern…?"

Both of them looked his way.

"9S!" Fern didn't let go of Theta, but her body slumped, and it took a long exhale before she could right herself. "Goddamit, are you okay?"

"Yes." The answer was a numb reflex. An easy query to process and return results for.

"Are you sure?"

He wasn't. His mouth flapped uselessly, and eventually, a whisper fell out: "You're alive…?"

"Sure am. Went to hell and still couldn't die in peace without some busybody interfering." She smiled and shrugged like it couldn't be helped. "I can't beat you two, so I'll see how joining you works."

You two.

You two.

9S' heart swelled, but with what he couldn't say. The gasoline haze was condensing. Running down his insides like heavy sweat as he closed the distance between them. Fern had spoken the first spark he'd seen in days, and it found a mark on the tip of his tongue.

"V is alive…?"

Her eyes hardened, and her grip on Theta tightened. "Did someone tell you otherwise?"

"He came back. Without you." Each word burned a little farther back on 9S' tongue, giving off smoke in the shape of memories. "I saw him die."

"No." Theta wheezed and pushed at Fern's grip until she had the space to speak. "Accord was the one who closed the gate, 9S. You were there. Do you not remember?"

"I remember running-" And looking for something in the sky that was not there. "-and V reciting an incantation-" The exact same one he heard V recite in Fern's memory. "-and he apologized-" In the same tight way he once did in the courtyard of a ruined castle. "-and told me not to die-" The same as he had outside of Normandy when they had all eaten together and were watching the half-moon rise. "-and he crumbled…" To dust. Because that was what V said happened when his power was depleted, even though 9S had never seen it happen himself.

Distantly, Theta's boots crunched on glass as Fern lowered her. "What the hell, Theta?"

"I assure you I'm as lost as he is. The version of events he's recounting is just the story command decided would be released to the forces outside. That report hasn't even been made public yet. There's no reason—"

The sentence didn't need completing. Above his head, Theta and Fern locked up in a shared moment of illumination while 9S fell further and further into a cloud of dark smoke.

"Briar tampered with his memories."

"How? 9S isn't connected to any of the manufacturing sites and tampering with android memories post-boot is too dangerous. And every android knows their false memories are false; consciousness data is sensitive—"

"For you," Fern snapped. "We're YoRHa, remember? Our memories are compartmentalized and mobile. And Briar had Tau for help. The particulars don't matter much when you've got someone who can and will use viral packets."

"Briar had…Tau?"

"She's dead now. Worry about it later." Fern abandoned Theta to set her hands on 9S' shoulders. "Listen to me, 9S. V is alright and so am I. But we need to get out of here. Something is wrong with Briar—the computer that controls this whole place and the woods around it."

He barely heard her.

He was used to his memories being taken. He had never had memories added.

Weakly, he pushed her away. His skin crawled with the touch. His temperature was rising. Everything felt too close, too dense, all of it wrong. "I… have to go."

"What the hell are you talking about? I'm getting you out of here, you have no idea what you got yourself into."

"No. I have." His thoughts were breaking down. Separating. Disconnecting. "Something to do."

She reached for him. "9S—"

Terror bloomed as a pincushion of thorns in his chest, and he slapped her hand away hard enough that his own hand was left stinging. "Don't touch me!"

She spread her hands diplomatically and slowly let them drop back to her sides. The strike didn't hurt her. It wouldn't have. The consternation that drew her brow down and stretched a frown across her mouth was more concerned than injured. "Theta," she called evenly. "We're gonna have a long talk you and I, but I'll concede this looks like it's way above your head. Truce?"

"I'll agree to that." She crossed her arms. "Seeing it was intended that I be decommissioned once V's death was announced anyway."

"Just keeps getting better and better… 9S, is finding Shadow what you need to do? Pod 153?"

"The pod is in the inner hall," Theta offered. "Past the east side decontaminant rooms. It's been out of power for weeks…allegedly."

Fern glanced at 9S. "I'm not sure we're going that way. Can you grab it?"

The words meant something. But 9S was far away from where they were. Far from concerns about whether Pod 153 was really charging or not and from where Shadow had gotten to. The world was falling out from under him and smoke clouded his way.

"Theta," he managed. She knew. She knew where people were. She knew where he had to go. "Where's Hamelin."

Again, their faces blanked. Theta floundered, her eyes darkening even as her optic lights flared bright. "Hamelin is supposed to be on Satellite Lizhin."

Fern ran a hand over her face. "Doesn't sound like that's where she is now. Get Pod and get to V. I have a feeling this is going to be bad."

9S stumbled past them. No answer. He would have to find it himself. "I. Have to go."

"Okay," Fern said gently. "I'll be right beside you."

The meaning of those words vanished like dust between blown between his fingers and so did she. Unreality rolled over him. Detached him from himself until only one thread remained to guide his way.

"I advise you to talk quickly. Journeying through hell hasn't left me in the best mood."

"This magics of your hell... A fair substitute for maso, a new poison to this world. We celebrants work to correct it, but the battle is already lost. Briar has absorbed much. Surpassed Sleeping Beauty. Changed."

"You mentioned the gods."

"I feel them," Scheherazade said darkly. "Close, now."

"I don't hear bells."

[Because no voice has been raised.] the dragon whispered with rising fire. [This child knows the presence of the gods' playthings in ways that you do not. You should listen with care.]

"How close?"

She gestured to the writing mass of branches and wires humming behind her. "Within. Briar keeps my mission from me, knowing the danger. Now I keep you from Briar."

"I don't need your protection," he said icily. "Only Briar's intentions are my concern. If it's changed as much as you say, that's enough for it to become unpredictable. Does it even still serve its masters?"

"Briar's mission is unchanged." Her lips pressed together, and her eyes narrowed as she stared at the impenetrable woods. "But it may have learned impatience."

9S had been here before.

The path to the tower had been wide. Branching, though he couldn't have acknowledged it at the time. He'd willed it to be every bit as narrow as his focus on 2B. Willed it to offer him a barrier between himself and every painful truth he might have avoided if only he could stop. Until the road was tight enough to crush him and burning under his feet. The red thread that might have led him back to safety trailed cut and fraying at the end in his wake so that only thing he could do was walk forward and feel himself break and promise to strangle the entire world with the remains.

9S had never been here before.

The path to Hamelin was narrow, but it was not by any will of 9S'. He couldn't tell if there was any path but that one. Couldn't trust the smoke that obscured everything but the way that would take him to where Hamelin was. He couldn't stop, but there was no particular desire or impulse to 'go' either. Hamelin was just the only solid object in a world that had gone hazy and gray.

Thought and sensation found him only occasionally. Drops of rain from a storm somewhere far, far away from where he was, evaporating in the heat creeping through him He wasn't damaged. Motor control operated as intended, though he wasn't thinking about any of the steps he was taking. Visual and aural systems were online, though their feed was all noise and nonsense when he tried to process it. His processing cortex might be the part that was malfunctioning.

While he couldn't find a seam, he could feel iterations of the past three weeks stacked one on top of the other. Bits and pieces of versions of events that didn't happen played from his point of view as if they did. None more or less real to him than the other. His entire system was buckling under the pressure of reconciling which ones were real. Damage spreading out into a spiral through his other memories in an audit that failed to find any of them factual and/or sequential against the new reality that things could be added and overwritten.

His memory was all he had. It was all he was. If he could be made to remember so clearly seeing and experiencing things which did not occur…

Somewhere his black box keened. He breathed out and out and out without managing to dispel the scream building like water behind a dam in a body that did not seem to be his anymore. The figure '60 kb' blinked in the back of his mind like a living thing that had begun to rot, and he boiled with fresh sickness over a violation he was supposed to have grown past.

But that was alright.

None of those things were his right now. They were only ghosts in a world more alone than mere rain had ever made him feel. Bugs to bother a body disconnected from the blurry question mark over his consciousness. All that he was, all that was his, was the fact that 2B's name had been spoken. That whether any of this was real or not that, Hamelin knew who 2B was and had invoked her intentionally. Offered to bring her to yet another place where one's body, mind, and memories were not sacrosanct. Another altar for YoRHa to be sacrificed on.

Fuse met gas, and 9S was one burning thought in motion.

I won't let you. I won't let you. I won't let you. I won't let you. I won't let you. I won't let you. I won't let you. I won't let you. I won't let you. I won't let you. I won't let you. I won't let you. I won't let you. I won't let you. I won't let you. I won't let you. I won't let you. I won't let you. I won't let you. I won't let you. I won't let you. I won't let you. I won't let you. I won't let you. I won't let you. I won't let you. I won't let you. I won't let you. I won't let you. I won't let you. I won't let you. I won't let you. I won't let you. I won't let you. I won't let you. I won't let you.

He wouldn't let anyone hurt 2B.

If nothing else was real, that one feeling was enough to pull him forward.

The point of V's cane sparked against Scheherazade's shield.

Part of what incensed him about 8E's ransom had been the insult of it. The forcing of his hand with a choice that was never really a choice. But 8E knew what she was getting. Her tactic inherently acknowledged that 9S was of value to him. Scheherazade could not seem to grasp this easy lesson. She stood on the other side of her shield and radiated silent, pleading displeasure. As if he could simply stop and walk away.

Feathers erupted from his arm. Electricity and hot violet light flowed down the blade and the air thrummed and thundered as one magic beat against the other. Neither yielded and the blowback cleared the snow in a wide circle before the repellant force knocked both of them away from each other. Griffon caught V, and he landed lightly on her feet.

Whatever Tau and Briar had done to 9S was done on the presumption V wouldn't be back to do anything about it. What was it but dumb luck that they were wrong?

[If it galls you so, why do you fight this way? Do you enjoy being made to look the fool?]

"If you know something you'd like to share?" V growled impatiently.

[I know that your opponent has a tome which allows her to raise a shield and you didn't finish your food before you went to hell.]

V tilted his head. Scheherazade refused to draw her axe, so the grimoire occupied her hands to act as her focus. "So that's the source…"

He advanced again, and the red pages flipped as Scheherazade spoke Sound into the air. The shield met V, but it did nothing to stop Griffon from flying over it. The axe appeared in a blue blur, glowing under the light of the stars to keep back the threat of electricity that even she had to treat as a serious threat. It made to difference to V. He snatched the book from her hand, and his tattoos slipped hungrily down his arm to consume it.

Curiously, nothing crossed his mind this time. No memory of blood. No fragmented vision of a room filled with other grimoires and devastated silence.

[Oh, yes…] The book spun free of his hand, its pages flipping through from end to end once, as if it to stretch itself before it closed. "That's more like it."

Scheherazade stared at the grimoire as though it had transformed into a demon right in front of her eyes. "Rubrum…?"

"Mm… no," it said. "Not really. But I've no name, so if you must."

V snatched the book from where it hovered at his side. "You are the dragon?"

"I haven't been a dragon in ten thousand years. I am only bones, and this book…" It shook free of his hand, spinning freely in the air. "Is a mind and mouth, unoccupied. And a Verse, unspoken…"

"You seem to be helping yourself more than you're helping me."

"I have not been able to experience the world through any lens but yours, nor think a thought that didn't rely on your mind until you touched this tome. Is it really a wonder if I behave like you?"

V stared at it, wondering if it might save him trouble to simply burn the thing.

"You lack humor. Worry not, there is much more to this book than a means for me to speak. There is power too, born from what I once was. Our pact holds, and I am still yours to command. If it is the boy you wish… then the boy you shall have." It danced over his shoulder and laughed. "However, you must have a little more imagination from now on."

He spun his cane once, experimentally, and turned to face Scheherazade. "…I'm listening."

Finding Hamelin made 9S exist.

The sight of her gave him a body and a mind and made him aware of the sword already in his hand that could be used by both. It extended the grace of existence to the space between the blade and Hamelin's throat. A steel rose sat on a pedestal big enough to enclose him. There was something about it. There was something about the room. But curiosity was not a function at the moment. It existed but only peripherally. As immaterial to him as the shape of Fern standing at his side like a ghost.

Only he, and Hamelin, and that one all-consuming thought were truly there as far as he was concerned.

"What the hell is that thing…?" He could not process the question. Not the subject, the speaker, nor the cause for the apprehension in her voice.

Hamelin looked up from a comfortable perch atop a steel trolley covered in components. "I see you've brought a friend, 9S."

"You." 9S stalked toward her, sword raised and every nerve sensor scorching. "You manipulated my memories…!"

"Me? Perish the thought. Briar Rose manipulated your memories."

"And Tau." Fern's far-away voice. Clinging to existence in 9S' world and slipping away every time. "You the same as her?"

Hamelin flipped her fingers carelessly through the hair at the back of her neck. "Briar and I are in a cooperative relationship, not a parasitic one."

"How many times," 9S spat. "How many times did it take."

"A hundred."

"You're lying."

"Two hundred." She smiled frostily. "Or maybe five hundred. A thousand if you like. It doesn't really matter, does it? Whatever you are made to remember as the truth will be the truth… won't it, 9S?"

Fear splashed cold over the fire in his body. Waves of red rolled over his vision, tinting the room in intermittent bursts as his focus tunneled down to Hamelin. She knew what she had done and she would do it again. She would do it to 2B. If he let her. If he let her.

His legs moved. A scream from his mouth spiked through his aural sensor and reverberated in his bared teeth. Hamelin made only one move. To kick a rigged containment case with an ichor-covered red orb inside out between them and plant her foot on it. 9S didn't recognize it. Didn't care. Hamelin was so close, so close, so close—

Something knocked him to the floor.

"9S stop! That's Shadow!"

There was no connectivity to that statement. It fell into the fire, into the red swell, and it was only noise. As her body was only weight pressing down on him, keeping him from where he had to go.

"I'll tell you a story of something that happened before you were made," Hamelin said, rolling the case around with idle nudges of her foot. "Once upon a time, a prototype android development project was granted clearance to proceed. Among all my subordinates, a head-in-the-clouds type who didn't have a drop of common sense was chosen. One of my best. I named him Zinnia." She tilted her head, her eyes meandering toward the ceiling in careless confusion. "Can't really remember why. I think flowers were popular for names at the time."

"Are you going somewhere with this?!"

"You're really impatient for an E type, aren't you? …Zinnia was the father of YoRHa model design. I left my machine core research in his very capable hands and he made you from it. And then he was killed." Her eyes fell to 9S, smooth and black and dangerous as drops of burning oil. "By Prototype No. 9."

"If you want to kill me for that," 9S snarled from the floor. "I'll gladly kill you too."

"Don't be silly. Briar wouldn't let me kill you, you're extremely valuable to its little reincarnation project."

"Then why mess with his memories at all?!"

"I told you, that was Briar. From the start, the No. 9 personality has always been unreasonable and destructive. When he had the truth, he was inconsolable. Briar constructed a version of the truth that would leave him a little more manageable."

9S writhed, a rumble growing to a roar growing in his chest. "Shut up…!"

"I would have liked a situation in which I could provide No. 9 with the exact memories I wanted, but unfortunately an android who has already been booted and compiled experiences is hard to construct memories for. The overwriting process has rejection potential which increases if the memory does not align with pre-existing biases. It must be 'believable'. Unfortunately, Briar's never had to deal with that concept before. It's as alien to it as the matter of 'morale' that birthed the YoRHa plan in the first place. It took us a whole month just to find something that worked."

He yanked an arm from beneath him and elbowed back into the shape that pinned him down. It grunted and he slipped from beneath them and dashed forward at Hamelin. She kicked off and the trolley rolled mostly out of the way. The tip of his sword nicked across her stomach, but she didn't bother to get up.

"Ahhhh," she said flatly as she rolled to a stop. "Or something? Is that how it goes? I can't remember all that well. I removed a number of unnecessary things after Zinnia died. Pain sensors. Emotional matrices. But you know, it was the damnedest thing… No matter what, I never stopped being angry."

Wires looped around his body, emerging from beyond the foggy limit of what he could process to bind him. There was noise behind him. Somewhere, a sound of combat. Of wires shredding and boots on stone and the rush of rapid impact.

"9S!"

Hamelin strolled up to him, mere centimeters away. Her voice harsh and biting as fang as his neck. "Do you know, No. 9? Planned obsolescence in YoRHa was not actually an idea androids came up with. It was an idea so terribly cruel only a monster could come up with it. Prototype No. 9 to be specific."

She gripped his head, fingers splayed into claws. "You were the one who set YoRHa up to be sacrificed. She might have mattered in the end, that No.2 you're so fond of, if not for you."

9S' world blurred out.

"You are an unbearably cautious man. Let it flow more."

"I don't need you to hold my hand."

"If that were true, you wouldn't have needed my advice to begin with."

"Give it up, Bones. You'll be lucky if princess ever even says thanks."

He rolled his eyes and flicked up the very same shield that Scheherazade once used. It bought him only a second. Every time she came in contact with the shield, her skin strobed with strange letters and it shattered before her. Without use of Rubrum, she relied on a range of speed and motion and that made it easy to understand how she'd so easily put Fern in her place. Scheherazade was thousands of years deep in combat with gods and it showed in how easily she kept sight of her goal while juggling Griffon, the shield, V's attacks, and even his attempts to feint around her.

Imagination, hm…

"V!"

He paused, cocking his ear to the wind. Over the hum in the trees, he heard it again. A familiar voice, though not one he'd ever heard so frantic. "…Theta?"

She burst through the tangle of wiring and skidded across the road. Pod 153 was clutched in her arms. She was disheveled, but her sense of focus was immaculate as ever. She ignored Scheherazade and spared barely a glance at the body of her one-time subordinate.

"Report," she said officiously. "Unit 9S' memory has been compromised and he has destabilized, Unit Shadow is missing, and there's evidence Hamelin was involved."

V's eyes narrowed. "And Fern?"

"She told me to take Pod 153 and find you. She stayed with 9S."

"I see. Thank you for the message." He waved his cane absently toward the truck. "Stay here. We'll reconvene soon. Pod 042, with me."

She stammered but didn't end up saying anything as she got out of his way. If only Scheherazade had similar grace. But she stood ready as ever. Her eyes saying clearly that she refused to let him pass.

He laughed lightly. Forgivingly.

"Between you and this mouthy book, I'm beginning to feel underestimated. I was hoping to conserve my strength and rely on Fern with my next step unclear. But if the circumstances are such that she cannot get him out…" The demonic energy saturating the ambient drew in, condensing around his body and providing him all the power he needed to fold Griffon's being over his own. Fully. Completely. "Don't think you can stop me going in."

"I do not wish to harm a human."

"Then get lost," he said over triplicate tongues, spreading wings of ichor that crawled with electricity which belonged to him, belonged to Griffon, belonged to them. "Or fall to a demon."

Was it possible to be good when all needs were met, and nothing was wrong? Wasn't it the case that any time anything got in his way, goodness became secondary? The moment his temper was aroused, it was too late for goodness. He ended up right back in that place of rage, revenge, and resentment. Blinded by pain and guided by hate.

And he had always been that way. Every bit as ugly as Adam told him he was. From the start. From the prototype.

"9S, don't you—agh!"

"Ah, did that hurt? It looked like it hurt."

Noise. Noise. Noise. 9S could feel the thread that connected him to the world beyond the smoke and static, but he could not see it.

"You're the little bastard who told me to remember I could change my mind," that vague voice shouted. "You're supposed—shit! You're supposed to be the one who meets 2B again! isn't that why you chose that stupid name?! You're supposed to be 49, remember?!"

49…?

That…was real. That had meaning.

The thread shone, and he existed.

"I have to go," he mumbled, struggling in his restraints as if they were his own body and he could get loose of it. "None of this matters. I have to go to 2B…!"

"What makes you think she's coming?"

Hamelin. "You…!"

"Me? I was lying. A little, anyway. I do know all about the ark, and your trip to the moon… And that charming New Year's date you had in mind. You're surprisingly romantic, Unit 9S." She grinned and patted his cheek. "Is that the memory you would like next? I'm sure Briar would be happy to construct the perfect memory for you."

"Stay the hell out…OF MY MEMORIES!"

His jaw parted, and his teeth snapped shut on the cables around his neck. A burst of static and feedback erupted from unseen speakers and he sagged as the grip of the cables faltered. He bit harder, twisting and thrashing, thoughts of fighting like a soldier gone. He fought like a cornered animal, wires snapping in his mouth as struggled, oil and grease and a mercurial fluid that tasted the way fresh animal blood smelled spilling drown his chin and over his throat.

The cables yanked again, and this time there was a gasp. The ceiling caved in a blue-violet pulse. Something was in the room with them. A mass like oil and black feathers that moved too quickly to make sense of. Briar lashed out. It lashed back and 9S felt who was the stronger in the reverberating impact before it whipped through the wires and yanked him along. The thrum of a pod program slammed through the room like an earthquake, and 9S found himself suddenly flung free.

His eyes locked onto Hamelin's.

Faith materialized in his hand, and a gun appeared in hers.

She fired, once. Then the gun was gone, and her hand was wrong. Bent and crushed by a black tendril tightening like a tourniquet around her entire arm and a snarling, disembodied mouth brimming with sharp, feline teeth. It raised a recognition flag, but memory was not 9S' priority for processing at the moment. Hamelin was. Hamelin, who had toyed with his memories. Hamelin, who had snatched away the trust 9S had in his memories—in the things he perceived even at this very moment. Hamelin, whose intentions were obvious. She would tamper with 2B's memories too. To spite him. To spite a version of him that hadn't existed in seven years. Whether any of this was real or not, whether Hamelin was lying or not—

He wouldn't let her live to hurt 2B.

He didn't recognize the sound he made as he drove the sword through Hamelin the first time. Nor the second. Or the third, when that red haze came back, and he drove the sword in so hard the blade snapped clean in half. He didn't care. It inebriated him. Not with hate but with violent elation that no machine's death had ever granted him.

Nothing had felt good after 2B died. Killing machines. Killing infected YoRHa. Killing the 2B models in the tower. Not a single thing. Not until V came along. But killing Hamelin?

That felt good.

He might never be certain of his memories again, but for now it was everything he needed that the one who did this to him was drowning as their reserved tanks ruptured and spilled into other systems. 9S stood over her, brand new kinds of satisfaction shaking through him. He almost hoped this wasn't real, so he could do it again.

Hamelin managed a ravaged smile back, and a thick, wet laugh. "You're… a monster… No. 9."

"My name is 9S." He set his foot on the remains of the blade and put all his weight behind it. "The 49th."

Her optic lights went out with a spitting buzz.

For a long time, he simply stared at the body. Until movement behind him raised a threat flag, and he swung what remained of Faith out, arresting the demon at its shattered point. It was calm now. And he was calm enough to let recognition do its work on the wing-shaped tendrils holding the generalized shape of tattoos, and the familiar blue-black feathers and the claws he'd been allowed to examine while a storm passed over a castle on the other side of the world. Only the eyes were unfamiliar. Slatted and glowing in gradients of bright blue and gold. He flinched as the demon tossed aside some component torn from the wall.

The room processed for the first time. They were in a terminal area that looked upsettingly like the underbelly of the last facility he'd been in, a jungle of thick cables and pseudo-organic structures made entirely from inorganic parts. It was mostly torn to shreds. A number of bright green nodes sputtered on the floor, and a strange white sphere with familiar but untranslatable letters scrawled in red all over it occupied a nook as snug as a closed altar. The steel rose was sitting on top it, not the pedestal his mind had auto-filled in.

"Getting into trouble again?"

That voice was far from human and so were the tongues it moved around, but it was V's. Unmistakably.

The familiarity snapped 9S from the thin tether that had led him to Hamelin. Everything she'd said sank in at once. He wanted to believe he'd called the name of the devil (only he never really did that did he?) and that V had arrived dramatically late like he always did, but wasn't that too perfect? Wasn't it just the kind of thing that would make a really good memory? Briar was better at imitating V than N2 had ever been. It didn't play fair. It used more than raw memory. It used what he felt about those memories, how he processed them. Used their comforting light to burn him.

He lunged. V stepped back, the remains of the blade catching a mere fraction from his face, tangled in the web of his disembodied tattoos. His blue-gold gaze remained opaque. He spoke, but 9S didn't hear him. All he knew was his painfully tight grip on the broken pieces of Faith, and the infinite uncertainty yawing through him, swallowing fire, swallowing hate, swallowing everything.

All the satisfaction of killing Hamelin leaked out of the dozen cracks that opened in him, and he felt lost and desperate all over again. Like all of this might disappear, his good memories whatever Briar wanted them to be. And Hamelin ready to take them away.

If he couldn't know when any of this might be taken away from him, he would simply trust none of it, and destroy it himself.

V wasn't fast, because V was never fast. But Fern was fast. She shouted static, and 9S screamed the remains of smoke back. His decaying ability to process the world around him removed V from his sight immediately, and he focused on her. He was weak. His weapon was broken, and he could not even think to change it. He could not think of anything that wasn't the next swing.

"Fern."

She receded, and again, there was only V. Right in front of him—and he swung.

V caught the blade with his bare hand. His right. His transformation gave him strength, but the blade still cut. Blood ran warm and red down the blade, down his palm, and dripped from the bracelet at his wrist. If it hurt, there was no way to tell. He regarded 9S with calm, almost compassionate recognition. Like he knew. As if he could possibly know.

V reached his clawed fingers into the bundle of blue-black feathers at his neck. A rattling chain popped free. He threw it, and 9S snatched it out of the air without breaking eye contact.

He tilted his palm, glancing quizzically at the contents. Shiny plates of metal that had been scoured clean and engraved with the same mildly stylized shape.

"A parting gift," said V. "From Seaglass and Hibiscus."

9S stared numbly at them.

It was him. As Hibiscus and Seagrass would have remembered him. A Morse code pattern for '4' and '9', carved in immaculate metal that reflected his oil-stained face. It was… stupid. And sweet. And abstract. The exact kind of thing Hibiscus would do, but new. An artifact of a personality that 9S hadn't thought about in months, extrapolated into an item he never expected to exist.

He looked up, bewildered. Fern held up a slightly scuffed set around her own neck. And beneath the receding tattoos, he saw another full set around V's neck as well.

9S swallowed and struggled with words that felt like cold ash in his chest. "You carried mine, too…?"

V made a face. That one he knew so well, halfway to a roll of the eyes when he didn't think something should be fussed over. And then, to 9S' surprise, he abandoned it. Dropped that instinctive reaction and stood there with the obvious without avoiding it.

"It is a dog tag," he explained. 9S strained to hear what was being said to him, to reconcile it and accept it was true without uncertainty overriding the process. "You carry the ones that aren't yours as mementos, do you not?"

9S hoped.

Against all his better judgment.

As the first touch of relief loosened his body, he found that there was no part of him that didn't ache. He didn't move as V pried his fingers loose from the hilt of Faith and tossed the broken sword aside.

His voice was small. Weak. "I watched you die…"

"It wasn't real."

"I remember it. I have sensory data. Your skin. The smell. The way you crumbled. And there's…nothing else. Whatever really happened doesn't exist for me. There's only the way it happened for ne and if I can't call my memories real… If anything can be added and overwritten then...!"

V's calloused fingers were rough and cold and just as unexpectedly gentle as the last and only other time he'd touched 9S' face. Among all the patterns of V's movements and gestures and habits, none of them were like this one. Touch was awkward and guarded and rare from him, except for this one. 9S had assumed the first time was simply because V was drunk. Now he wondered if V was instinctively repeating something he was used to.

Maybe his mother used to comfort him this way.

"To forget one's bad dreams is an elusive mercy," he said with melancholy confidence. "You are awake now, Nines. It was only a nightmare."

Androids didn't dream. The only times 9S had ever experienced anything similar were after interfacing with Beepy and after his first dive in the ark. While his body was broken. While his mind was freshly exposed to systems far too big for him. What Briar had done was just one more case of the same. Dreams he was never supposed to have in the first place. Experiences manufactured to hurt him and left within him against his will. Vivid enough to be real. Sequenced in his memory to appear real.

A nightmare.

It sounded so childish that way. So minor. But remembering what didn't happen as though it was the truth was a new territory to tread. If it made him childish to be afraid and uncertain and desperate for reassurance, he didn't care. "You're really back…? You're here? Both of you?"

"We are."

He looked back. At Hamelin and the broken remains of Faith, already coated in dust and snow. His shoulders went rigid, and he shied back.

"I… Prototype No. 9 he… I…"

"I know. Pod 042's personality is based on Zinnia's. He was able to access a little of the related memory data when we were conducting our review of his archives." V shrugged. "He did not believe the prototype had anything to do with you. Neither do I."

"I don't think you should brag about thinking like a pod." Fern grabbed the dog tags from his hand and looped them around 9S neck with a relieved smile. "They're right though. You're prototype's not you at all. It's probably more like having a really shitty dad, wouldn't you say, V~?"

V's glare clashed harmlessly against Fern's mischievous but unusually vibrant smile. It wasn't exactly as though they'd never left each other. Little things had changed, and eventually 9S would be glad to count them all. But for now, he let all the emotion he'd put off take him. Grief and loss that wasn't real but still felt real and relief that melted into every crevice that fear had opened.

He wept as if from a wound that would've rotted and killed him left alone, threw his arms around them, and clutched them close until he disappeared into their warmth. Overjoyed to have not lost them, and unable to shake the terror that they would disappear again if he didn't hold on as tightly as he could.