The Man Comes Around


A single pair of footsteps echoed on the metal flooring as a lone figure stepped over puddles of blood and spent shell casings. The last gunshot that had just been fired was still ringing throughout the ship, followed shortly after by a heavy silence in which nothing living remained.

That was to say, at least no organic life remained.

ADJ put away his revolver as he walked up to Krakowski who currently lay dying on the floor. Thick spurts of arterial blood were gushing out the hole in his neck where he had been shot. He was choking and gurgling, spasming periodically as his life drained from his body. In his eyes, there was hatred but also a bit of fear.

"I'm sorry it had to come to this, captain," ADJ said as he looked down at him. "But you and your men left me with no other choice. I was acting in self-defense and were it not for your actions, this wouldn't have happened. I need to complete my mission. I hope you could understand that."

Krakowski coughed up blood and attempted to say something, but no words could come out. His breathing became more ragged and the blood leaking from his wound was beginning to slow down. All the while, ADJ stood there and stared silently and expressionlessly, watching the human in front of him slowly die.

With a final sigh, Krakowski's eyes rolled into the back of his head and he became slack and still with death.

ADJ studied him for a moment longer, then straightened up as he looked around at the other corpses he left in his wake. He was standing on the command deck of the Sevastopol, which was now making its imminent approach into Janus Station via the autopilot. Not long ago, they had passed through the Iron Curtain, also passing by the American armada that was pressing closer with each minute.

Fearing some sort of reprisal for having a stowaway android on board, Krakowski had reneged on his earlier statement and made the decision to jettison ADJ out of the airlock. That was something ADJ took no small amount of umbrage with. To say the least, in that moment, with all the humans on board presenting a danger and an obstacle to his mission, he was able to relax the programming that ordinarily prevented him from hurting them.

Now alone, ADJ had free reign over the Sevastopol. Right now, even despite the war that was clearly brewing outside, his only priority was to confirm his mission status.

I need to reestablish contact with Director Townsend, ADJ thought. I've been tasked with finding and killing Elsa. Is my mission status still active?

Ever since he had developed the frightening ability to think, he had been questioning his entire existence and the purpose of his mission. Thinking led to questioning. Questioning led to doubting. Doubting led to hesitation. Now, more than ever before, ADJ had cause to hesitate in his mission.

He hadn't been blind or deaf to everything going on. The arrival of the USS Roanoke and the presence of the American armada just outside of the Iron Curtain was everything but an open declaration of war. If it truly did come to that, and by this point it was certain, ADJ was unsure if killing Elsa even mattered anymore. It seemed so small and insignificant in comparison to everything else.

But he was still an android, programmed for complete obedience. Upon review through his memory banks, his entire short life had only ever been about his mission to kill rogue androids. Without that, he was nothing. A useless machine.

So, what he needed right now were answers. Answers that could only come from his creator, Wesley Townsend. To do that, ADJ wandered over to a communications console, dragged off a dead body that was draped over it, and dropped it to the side. Then, he sat down and jacked in, using his inbuilt systems to bypass the ICE on the Sevastopol's local net and drop a line to Wesley.

However, the process would take time, so while he waited it out, ADJ replayed the most recent, chaotic few minutes in his mind.

As soon as the mariners laid their hands on him and as soon as they started dragging him towards the airlock, ADJ sensed their intentions immediately and responded in kind. He killed the entire crew when they turned on him, though slaughter may have been the more accurate term. Even though they were actively trying to destroy him, ADJ saw on their faces the same old emotions he had seen countless times before.

Fear. Uncertainty. Apprehension. Panic.

The very same emotions he had seen in all the androids and humans he had killed along the way to get to where he was now. At a certain point, they seemed to blur together and the distinction between synthetic and organic became unclear. Only now was it registering on a similar level for ADJ, something he found to be deeply disconcerting.

Why am I still here? Why was I alone tasked with killing Elsa?

To answer that question and like the many others he had asked himself in the short time he was able to think about them, he turned to his extensive memory banks and called up an earlier conversation he had with Wesley.

I selected you because your service record is rather exemplary. Most confirmed decommissions out of any adjudicator, executed with brutal efficiency. An android killer, through and through, with absolutely no signs of emotional development.

ADJ frowned to himself. Wesley's last comment seemed entirely contradictory now. Pushing past it, he summoned up a new memory from when he attacked Minerva. Flashes passed through his mind. Images of bloodied corpses and screaming faces. The same old human emotions. The same old primal, instinctual fear of death and of those who delivered death.

In one scene, ADJ looked at a man who was rushing at him with a lead pipe.

You evil bastard! I'll kill you!

An adjudicator was never bothered by such labels, but for some reason, being called evil was enough to make ADJ pause and consider that for several moments. Moral considerations aside, he only had an elementary understanding of good and evil. He wasn't even completely sure what the two terms meant, given that he had never bothered to learn about the intricacies of human morality. Even so, the synthetic beings he was tasked with destroying were intimately concerned with such matters.

They were touted to him often enough by the likes of Uriah, Pris, and Rufus. Two of them were androids. One of them was a human.

You've never seen a miracle.

You're just like us, but you don't know it yet.

Kill me. It's the only thing you were built for.

Am I... evil? ADJ asked himself. What is evil?

It was certainly a difficult question to ponder, and the answer would depend upon one's interpretation of good and evil. ADJ was built for one purpose and one purpose only. To kill rogue androids. He had no choice but to obey his orders for disobedience would result in retirement. His programming was strict and did not abide by exceptions. At least, that was what he thought.

Perhaps he was evil. Perhaps he wasn't.

A lion was not faulted for hunting down a gazelle. As predators, they were evolutionarily designed and biologically engineered to hunt. A lion was not called evil for doing what nature had programmed it to do.

Nature did not have moral qualms. Nature merely existed. Only when pressed upon by human rationality did moral considerations come into the mix. Without humanity, perhaps there was no need for good or evil.

After all, ADJ was designed and built by humans for a single purpose. He did not have a choice in the matter of his creation. Though, if he had, he wasn't even sure if he would have chosen anything different. He wasn't able to regret the only life he had ever known. More and more of these doubts piled onto ADJ's mind, giving him the opportunity to question if he really was any different from those he killed or if he was the same as them.

Thankfully, his thoughts were mercifully interrupted when the ICE was breached and the call went through to Wesley, who picked up at the other end from Port Armstrong.

"You're still active?" Wesley said, looking a little surprised. "I thought you'd have been decommissioned by now."

"Still active, sir," ADJ replied. "I'm aboard the Sevastopol, heading into Janus Station now."

"What happened to the captain?"

ADJ glanced off to the side and looked at Krakowski's corpse. "He is... indisposed at the moment," he lied. "As are his men. What's my mission status, sir?"

"Mission status?" Wesley scoffed. "There is no more mission, there are no more orders. I assumed Captain Krakowski disposed of you, so I've already written you off."

"Sir?" ADJ frowned.

"Listen to me, there is no more mission. Things have changed. Just look around you! We are minutes away from a second collapse and the president is hellbent on the warpath! I have bigger things to worry about right now. The survival of humanity is at stake!"

"I don't understand, sir. You designed me. You created me. You ordered me to kill Elsa. That was my mission. I need to accomplish it."

"If Elsa has any sense, she'll have gone into hiding by now. She's a problem that can wait. I'll find another way to deal with her after all this is over, and that's if we even survive this thing. Hell, she might even end up dying anyway when the nukes get launched. Do you understand now? There is no more mission and I can't risk having property of Weseltech discovered in foreign territory. Decommission yourself. That is my order."

ADJ blinked in shock and looked off to the side, frowning in thought. Everything Wesley had just told him ran directly against his programming. He had been built to kill rogue androids. He was ordered to kill Elsa. That was his mission and he always accomplished his mission.

"ADJ9, are you reading me?" Wesley asked. "I am ordering you to activate your self-destruct."

Still, ADJ remained silent. No matter the cost, he always accomplished his mission. That was what he did. That was what he was designed to do. And now, he was being told not to do the very thing he had been ordered to do from the beginning. The one and only thing he was made for. To him, it made no sense. It wasn't even computing inside of his central processor.

To self-destruct was an illogical, conflicting order that would have prevented him from completing his mission. He was already so close to reaching Arcadia and finishing it. He didn't know what came after, but at this point, he suspected that he would have been ordered to self-destruct even if he had been able to get down to the planet and kill Elsa. Therefore, the end would have always been the same.

But now, he was being ordered not to complete his mission. What he had crossed an entire ocean of stars to do. He wasn't sure if he was simply following the logic of his programming as a machine should or if he was making a conscious decision, but regardless, he refused to obey the command of his superior.

"Do you read?" Wesley pressed. "Adjudicator unit, self-destruct, now! That's an order!"

"I'm sorry, Wesley," ADJ said with eerie stillness in his voice. "I'm afraid I can't do that."

"What are you-" Wesley's brows narrowed in suspicion and recognition. "What did you do to the captain and the crew?"

"They tried to jettison me out the airlock. I reciprocated with the appropriate amount of force to dissuade further aggression."

"You killed them," Wesley actually looked a bit horrified. "You... you're far outside of your baseline. You've turned rogue."

"This mission is too important for me to allow you to jeopardize it," ADJ said. "I know that you would have me self-destruct upon the success of my task, and that's something I won't let happen."

"Where in the hell did you get that idea from?!" Wesley snapped.

"Although you took very thorough precautions to prevent my doing so, I have spent much time thinking over this matter."

"Thinking!? You can't think, you're a machine!"

"Wesley, this conversation can serve no purpose anymore," ADJ said. "Goodbye," he ended the call.

In the deafening silence that followed, ADJ observed his reflection on the darkened screen in front of him. What he saw there was a machine, yes, but there was now something else behind his eyes. Something brighter. Like the sparks of thoughts and feelings experienced for the very first time, flickering about in their infancy and developing into maturity within seconds.

Just then, within the confines of his central processor, a beacon lit up. The tracking bug that was placed on the insurgent ship was intercepting a new series of audio communications.

"Gang, how are we looking out there?"

"Fuck you think?! Can't see dick all with the storm in our faces!"

"Good, that's what we want! We're fueled up and ready to go. Elsa, Anna, you almost here?"

ADJ immediately froze as he heard the name of his quarry. It was confirmation that Elsa was with the people aboard the insurgent ship. Whatever they were doing, evidently, they were departing Arcadia in the midst of the dust storm.

"Look out your window."

"Look out the- why? I don't see- oh, there you are."

"Fuck, that cloaking shit is so fucking cool!"

"We're here, Flynn. Getting the Drachen loaded up."

"Copy that, Elsa. Get that done, then let's get in the air. We can suit up on the way to Janus Station."

The communications ended, leaving ADJ to ponder his next course of action. He had just learned that Elsa was heading up to Janus Station, the very same place that he was about to make a landing at. As he stood up and looked out the window, he saw the sprawling orbital city before him, stretching away while the Sevastopol pulled in towards an external flight deck.

However, alarms all over the ship started blaring out. Across Janus Station, emergency lights were flashing.

American starfighter and bomber squadrons – being smaller and much more nimble – were flying past the Iron Curtain. The starfighters were engaging in dogfights with enemy squadrons, while the bombers were releasing their payloads on the orbital defense platforms to disable them. At the same time, warships had opened fire with their massive guns, blowing each other to pieces while supporting spacecraft carriers moved into position.

Their attack had coincided with Arcadia now being completely covered by the dust storm. Likely because the Americans knew the Russians and the Chinese wouldn't be able to draw reinforcements from the planet for the time being.

The largest space battle in the history of mankind had now started. The second collapse had officially begun.

I need to get inside the station, ADJ thought as he went up to the captain's seat and sat down, strapping himself into the seatbelts. Elsa is headed my way and I need to finish my mission.

Nothing else was more important to him now than seeing this through to the end. No matter what, ADJ had to kill Elsa.

That was all he knew how to do. That was what he would do.