A War for Three

by caryalaciniosa

Two years after the Butterfly Incident, the struggle between Griffin & Kryuger and Sangvis Ferri continues unabated. To many, the countless IOP androids employed by Griffin are merely a tool. But even T-dolls have true warriors, worthy of the highest praise. The stories told here are but a few of such individuals.

23. Makarov Chapter 2

When she came to, the hallway was a mess of rubble, dust, and fire. The lights had been knocked out, the emergency PA system broken and spewing unintelligible rubbish. Everything was washed in a red-orange glow from the alert lights and fire, making the entire hallway uncomfortably hellish. Bodies, both Griffin and Sangvis, lay strewn across the corridor, periodic weapons fire echoing around them.

Makarov slowly climbed to her feet, chunks of concrete dust falling away from her once-bright blue clothes. The explosion had come suddenly, loudly, rippling towards where Makarov had been and knocking loose a piece of stone that put her out of the fight. Anyone who had been with her at the time was either fled or killed by Sangvis, which had flooded the corridor like insects, gunning down any doll or human they saw. Makarov picked her pistol up from the ground and checked to make sure it was in working order.

She was largely uninjured, thankfully, save for some cuts and bruises. The doll immediately started down the corridor. It was imperative that she determine if Commander Kerr was still alive, still able to command – that was her prime directive. The comms system was down, she discovered, and Makarov was on the Doll Services level, three levels below where she could get to the command wing. The elevators would be just down the hallway and around the corner.

Doll Services was not just one level, but three – one for neural cloud storage, doll dossiers, and cores, a second for batteries, coolant vats, and clothes, and a third for the combat simulation bays and accompanying infrastructure. Makarov was on the second level, below neural cloud storage and above the combat simulators. She had been performing a routine inspection of the storage rooms, checking in with their doll managers and the contents itself.

Makarov took her scarf and wrapped it around her mouth and nose, covering them from the dust and soot particles floating in the air. She was not nearly as severely affected by them as humans, but the particulates still impeded her performance, and Makarov wouldn't have that.

"...three, two, one… pull harder!"

"I'm pulling as hard as I bloody can!"

Makarov turned into the alcove that the elevator banks were in to see two dolls straining at one of the elevator doors, trying to force an opening into the shaft. Rubble had been hurriedly shoved out of the way, and their weapons lay discarded on the floor.

"Forget it!" said the first one, stepping away from the door and shaking her hands. "It's sealed tight. We're stuck down here…" She turned away from the elevator as the other doll kept trying the door, and her eyes lighted upon Makarov. "Oh!"

"Sangvis?!" cried the other doll

"No…" The first doll hurriedly picked up her gun from the ground and approached Makarov, briefly removing her green hat. "F1 at your service, commie!"

"I beg your pardon?" Makarov asked, not believing her audio input equipment.

"I said, those Sangvis hit us like a tsunami." F1 brushed some dust off her cap and set it back on her head. "We're the only ones left on this side of the level. Everyone's fled, or…"

"All the elevators are non-functioning?" Makarov asked, looking over to where the other doll, Bren, was hefting her own weapon up and coming up behind F1. "I need to get off this floor."

"Yeah, well, so did the others," said Bren, and Makarov looked back at the bodies for a moment. "Anyone who lived went farther down to the stairwell."

"And you stayed?" Makarov asked evenly. F1 shrugged.

"We wanted to try our luck on the elevator. Maybe wait out this attack, whatever it is."

"'Whatever it is?'" scoffed Bren. "It's Sangvis, don't play dumb."

"How did you two survive without following the others?" Makarov asked.

"We did follow the others, at first. Then we hid and came back this way when… when it passed us." F1 adjusted her bag so it sat more comfortably on her shoulder, simultaneously averting her gaze.

"Well," said Makarov. "I'm going down to the stairwell, and you'll be much more useful coming with me than you will at this elevator."

"When you put it like that," muttered Bren, but the two of them followed her anyway.

"Point of entry – best assessment?" Makarov asked Bren as they walked along. She certainly seemed the more experienced between her and F1, so Makarov was inclined to hear her thoughts.

"Explosives, digging through the mountain, maybe using old Soviet passageways," Bren offered. "We stopped trying to map all the abandoned hallways after the last cave-in."

"Agreed." Makarov had not yet seen a hole or forced entrypoint of any kind just yet.

All the rooms they passed on their walk down the hallway were either sealed shut or blackened by Sangvis weapons fire, their contents melted and any dolls inside thoroughly dead. Most of them had been killed by plasma weaponry, but a few had been stabbed or mauled, missing limbs and leaking coolant. Makarov recalled the strategy meeting two weeks ago, and what Schuhart had said about SV-98's corpse, or how Ingram had met her end. Her stomach twisted at the knowledge of what must have done such a thing to the dolls in front of her now. The curse of knowing everything.

"Crikey, look at that," said F1, toeing m45 over so she faced up. "Something really got at her. If I didn't know better, it's like she was… gored."

"Guards have bayonets on their weapons," Bren observed. "Maybe things got so close they started using those instead of shooting. Just Vespids laying around, though…"

Makarov looked ahead and saw a Ripper attempted to lift itself up, but its legs were unresponsive. Like a dumb, paralyzed animal, it weakly crawled through a puddle of its own coolant, eyes staring ahead blankly through its cracked visor. Makarov aimed her pistol and pulled the trigger, and in the resultant crack the Ripper sank to the floor.

At that moment, F1 shrieked, and Makarov whipped around to see her trying to pull her leg free from the Vespid that had taken it in a tight grip. "GETITOFFGETITOFFGETITOFF BREN DOSOMETHINGDOSOMETHINGDOSOMETHING–"

The machine gun doll responded by landing a mighty kick on the Sangvis doll, but the tenacious enemy was only mildly perturbed by the attack and kept its grip. By now, several more Sangvis had come to life, all of them wounded, yet active on a feral level. Bren's gun discharged as she fired into the head of the Vespid holding F1, and the submachine gun jumped free. "Thanks, mate!"

"Focus," Bren said, having also taken notice of the Sangvis dolls crawling towards them. In the crimson red of the emergency lights, it was a disturbing scene, but Bren and F1 acted admirably well, following Makarov's lead as she aimed and fired at any Sangvis that moved. Aim, fire, aim, fire, until her gun clicked empty and she dropped the magazine. Bren was having trouble swinging her gun around fast enough and she was always backing up to have time to aim, while F1 was busy dancing away from Sangvis hands and fiddling with new magazines.

"To me!" said Makarov, running to the end of the hallway. More Sangvis had woken, grasping for purchase on the smooth rock floor. Bren's weapon discharged once more before she broke away from the Sangvis dolls and started after Makarov, F1 close on her heels. The three paused to gun down any Vespids or Rippers who had gotten too close, continuing to back towards the doorway at the end of the hallway. Some of the Sangvis had staggered upright, shambling toward the three startlingly fast.

Footsteps sounded behind Makarov and another doll entered the fray, raising her wood-furnished rifle and squeezing off several rounds square into the heads of the standing Sangvis, toppling them back to the ground to block their comrades' progress. "Come though and I'll seal the doors!" she said between shots.

As the four withdrew past the threshold, the new doll hurried to the control panel and flung the lever, triggering the metal door to slide across and lock with a muffled scrape of metal.

"I had no idea there were still dolls on that end of the hallway," said the doll, dressed in a simple green dress. "You're lucky I was here to help you guys out!"

"We had it handled," huffed Bren, rearing up to her full height. F1 punched her on the arm.

"Sure we did. I'm F1, and this is Bren," she said to the new doll.

"Type 63," she replied. "Makarov, right? Type 59 talks about you a lot, I could recognize that hat anywhere…"

"I see," Makarov said carefully, thinking about her weird, quasi-relative. "Are you with anyone down here?"

"No. Type 64… well, she and 59 were down here with me, but they didn't make it. I was moving with the main force towards the stairwell, but I got left behind and decided to come back and see if anyone else was alive. And you guys were here, so…" Type 63 smiled despite the mood, which made F1 grin too. Makarov nodded.

"So the fighting is upstairs now?"

"Yes, on the next level. Sangvis is pushing towards the main level, I think, at least that's what Type 92 was saying. I'm not sure right now."

That would make sense, if they knew how the base worked, Makarov realized. "We three are headed toward the fight, if you care to join us."

"Sure!" said Type 63. "I don't really know how well I'll do, but I'll try my best!"

"That's the spirit!" F1 said, but Makarov did not share her optimistic tone.

"We need to get moving before Sangvis leaves the next level. We might be able to stop them before any serious damage is done to the rest of the base." Not that there hasn't been any serious damage already, Makarov thought, but she declined to share that. "Let's go, quick as you can."

Far fewer Sangvis corpses lay on the ground on this side of the door. It was mostly Griffin dolls that lay slumped on the ground or against the wall, cartridge casings littering the floor and skittering away from Makarov's feet as she stepped through the battlefield. Only a few Sangvis dolls had been slain, it appeared, and Makarov grew worried. Maybe – she hoped – the Griffin dolls simply hadn't had time to set up an effective defense, or there weren't many on the level. The doll didn't like the idea of being totally outmatched by Sangvis. She tried the comms again, but still nothing.

"F1?" Bren asked suddenly.

"Yeah?" replied the doll.

"What exactly happened earlier? You said you were awake for most of it, right?"

"All of it, actually." Makarov started listening more attentively. "I was in battery storage when I heard the explosion, and then the fighting broke out… we managed to push them back at first, but when Sangvis started coming at us and winning I ducked into a side room the first chance I got. I found you on the floor, fainted–"

"Whoa, wait, I did not faint. Something knocked me out," Bren excused, sounding quite offended.

"Fine, just keep lying to yourself," F1 replied. "Whatever helps you sleep at night."

"You guys were back by battery storage?" Type 63 joined in. "I was in the coolant vats. Type 92 was with me, she was directing the defense."

"Yes, she said she was going to try to set up a redoubt further ahead…"

"It didn't work out, obviously."

A few tables and shelves had been dragged out of rooms and turned over to make barricades. All of them were full of holes, some bent out of shape or turned aside entirely. Makarov saw SSG 69 draped over a table, rifle dangling from her dead hands as coolant slowly ran down her back. Makarov pushed her over with a booted foot, revealing a large chest wound. The doll peered into it. "This is a large caliber bullet wound, from close range."

"Sangvis uses plasma weapons," Bren said. "Friendly fire?"

"Or a Ringleader," said Makarov, thinking back to the debriefing Grizzly had given the command team on her engagement with the Sangvis Ringleader in the hangar. They had decided on a codename for it – "Gestalt" – for how it took other dolls' parts and used them on itself. Gestalt, they knew, had at the very least a very large handgun with an equally enormous bore, not to mention its propensity for melee and stealth. Its unpredictability alone made it terrifically difficult to plan for, nevermind its uncanny ability in close-quarters combat. Or any combat, mused Makarov, since no one was quite sure of what Gestalt couldn't do. It had yet to engage Griffin in an open field, that was for sure, but perhaps it was just waiting for a chance. If that handgun wound on SSG 69 was from Gestalt – ditto for the dolls with slash and stab wounds – Makarov wondered what it would really take to repel this Sangvis attack. At least they were not sure of Gestalt's command ability, but it was quite solid so far.

It. Assigning female pronouns to the Ringleader was beyond anything Makarov, or the rest of the command team, was comfortable doing. Yes, it shared the female form, but that was really where the similarities ended. It had no personality to speak of, no facial features, no skin, synthetic or otherwise. It didn't even try to pretend to be human, from what they knew. So precious little. Makarov hated an enemy like this, they could be powerful or weak and she would never know. It fed her paranoia, worked like a bug through her digimind, worrying at her sanity and making her question every decision she made. A Commander must always make sound judgements, Kerr had told her when she first joined the command team. How could Makarov make sound judgements about an enemy such as this?

Gestalt was more dangerous than any Ringleader she had fought before. Area S17 had seen its fair share of those elite Sangvis dolls over the years, and defeated them all. Makarov had heard tell of Ringleaders even more fearsome from out of the sector – Executioner, Alchemist, Dreamer, Judge, Gager – but they, at least, were in the open. Sangvis had rarely been ones for stealth, so no one in Griffin, aside from some dolls more experienced than others, were prepared.

This information had not been officially disseminated to S17's doll populace outside of the need-to-know members of the command team, so Makarov merely said "But I doubt it was. Sangvis would never bring a command unit this close to Griffin, not with so many friendly dolls here." Not that I believe it. It was a way to reassure her teammates, making them think that they were too good for Sangvis to risk approaching them. Which could be true, she admitted, but the more dead dolls she saw in the hallway, the less she believed it was.

The background weapons fire was getting louder as the four approached the stairwell. Bren and F1 whispered amongst themselves, Makarov catching bits of their conversation.

"...you can't even suppress Sangvis dolls, use single shots to save ammo…"

"...are you going to be okay without dummies?"

"I'll be fine, I've still got a few smoke grenades…"

Type 63 came up on Makarov's left. "Miss, what's your plan for when we get up there?"

"Support the dolls however we can. If we can come up behind Sangvis… well, we try our best. I don't know what their numbers are. What sort of dolls are up there?"

"We didn't have a lot down here when the attack happened," Type 63 said dejectedly. "I honestly don't know who might be left. I think Type 92 was leading the retreat, but she might be gone by now. RMB-93 was there last, I think, Galil too…"

The B-team, Makarov thought. Low in IOP's commercial rating system, like her. It's just a metric for marketing, nothing more, she reminded herself. Still, there was a reason why five-stars were so often called the elite T-dolls. Makarov knew she was working with one hand tied behind her back with the team she had now. But she would get along.

They reached the stairwell and starting climbing, single file. Makarov kept her pistol at the ready, prepared to dump the mag into any Sangvis that appeared. None did, though plenty of dead dolls had been pushed against the walls of the stairwell. A blast mark and shards of shrapnel on the landing denoted a grenade impact. Everyone quieted as they stepped through the door onto the first floor.

This was a battlefield. This hallway was much wider, with smaller corridors branching off at regular intervals. The junction, far ahead, was a wide square area populated with T-dolls from both sides. Sangvis had somehow maneuvered in front of the Griffin force, which was slow pursuing Sangvis as the enemy continued moving away from the GnK dolls. Despite their clearly thinned numbers, Griffin was fighting ferociously, constantly harassing the Sangvis troops with bullets and the occasional grenade. They had thrown up more makeshift barricades from furniture, using it as cover against Sangvis fire.

The emergency lights continued to douse the entire floor in its murky light, making it exceedingly difficult to focus on anything too dark or too far away. The four ran to the Griffin line, one of the dolls there noticing them as she ducked down to reload.

"What's going on here?" Makarov shouted over the weapons fire. She identified the doll as M1 Garand based on her weapon and outfit. The blonde doll shoved a clip into her rifle and released the bolt.

"Sangvis blew straight through our line and forced us to start following them! They've been moving way slower now, but we can't tell why…"

Makarov peered over the cover. Sangvis dolls were standing in rank about twenty meters away, slowly stepping back through the junction. There was no Ringleader in sight, only Vespids and Rippers. Makarov crouched back down. "Who's in command?"

"Type 92! She went ahead with a team on a flanking attack through the data center, we haven't heard back yet. M99 is putting together a team to go after her, they're to the left!"

M99. That was an elite doll. Not like NTW-20, granted, but she had a powerful gun and knew how to use it, and she lead an echelon. Makarov nodded to Garand. "Got it. Are we still taking losses?"

"Yes, and we're starting to run low on ammunition. I didn't know there was anyone left alive down there…"

The metal table they crouched behind rattled from renewed Sangvis fire, and Garand broke off talking to get on a knee and put her rifle over the edge, returning fire. Makarov turned to her companions. "We need to join M99. I've got to talk to Type 92!"

"Roger that," Bren said, and F1 and Type 63 nodded in agreement, suddenly serious. Makarov looked to the left, where a couple of dolls were running through a doorway into the adjacent rooms.

"Let's go!"

The side rooms were, thankfully, much less active. Tag teams of SMGs and ARs were working together to advance, one taking point while the other covered them. Sten and L85 were advancing side by side, methodically clearing rooms. These were mostly rooms full of filing cabinet for all of the paper data kept in S17 – dossiers for dolls, physical blueprints, backups in case the computer system went down. Sangvis apparently wasn't interested, because there was no evidence of even a single attempt to gain entry to the area. Makarov followed in the footsteps of the clearing teams, keeping an eye out for M99 anywhere.

"Макарова?" asked a familiar voice, and the doll looked to see AK-47 approaching her, rifle shouldered. Makarov blinked in surprise.

"AK-47?"

"That's me," said the doll, grinning at Makarov. PP-19 came up beside her, face as neutral as ever. AK-47 shouldered her rifle. "I didn't expect to see you. Figured you'd be up in the command center with Kerr."

"I was down here when the attack happened," Makarov replied, still feeling a little shocked. "How's the fight going for you?"

"Great. PP-19 and I have killed too many Sangvis to count. Hopefully we can keep them down here, away from the rest of the base. Away from the…"

Humans, Makarov finished, thinking of the organic troops in the upper levels. Disciplined, competent, but not capable of picking up the slack if the dolls failed to contain the Sangvis incursion. "Yeah. Have you seen M99?"

"Right here," M99 said, emerging from another room with several dolls in tow. Her voice was small, much like herself – the doll's namesake weapon was huge in her arms, and she was at least a head shorter than Makarov, if not more. Bren covered a smile, F1 elbowed her friend. "I didn't expect you here, Makarov."

"I need to talk to Type 92," Makarov repeated. "Garand said you were headed after her."

"That would be correct. You're welcome to come, I'll take all the dolls who want to and who I can spare. I've already got–" she looked over her shoulder– "two, so another four will make it a good number."

"I'll come," said AK-47. M99 nodded.

"Eight. Makarov, I… well, I don't know exactly what's standing between us and Type 92, if she's even still alive. She could be surrounded, captured, dead, hacked, so this could just be a suicide run."

"It's a risk I'm willing to take." It was a risk – but was it a worthy one? Yes. Type 92 probably knew the most about the attack out of any doll here. She could be the key to getting communications with Kerr, to stopping Sangvis here. And if not, than they could still drive towards the stairwell and escape to Kerr.

"Right. Well, we ought to head out." M99 looked around one last, then started through the doorway. "Good luck, everyone."

They proceeded through the first few rooms without incident, but eventually they came upon one of the side hallways. A detachment of Griffin dolls had set up a defense at the far end, which Sangvis was suppressing with a continuous hail of plasma fire that made the hallway impossible to cross. AK-47 stepped forward.

"I've got this," she said, loading her underbarrel grenade launcher. The doll leaned against the wall and peered out the doorway at an angle. After a split second of aiming, the grenade flew from the barrel with a loud crack, followed by an explosion that resounded through the narrow hallway.

"Move!" shouted M99, and AK-47 dashed across to the doorway on the other side, Makarov close behind. She glanced sideways in the direction of the Sangvis, glimpsing a pile of bodies with more Vespids running in to continue the firefight. "Weapons up," said the diminutive doll. "We're the first ones going through this area since Type 92."

An explosion had broken the doorway into the next room, so F1 had to crouch if she were to get through. The doll grumbled as she got down on her hands and knees. "Sangvis buggers, making it so much harder to do my job…"

"Don't tell me you joined Griffin thinking it'd be easy." Bren tapped F1's behind with her boot. "Just get through and look around."

"Yeah… there's no link between this room, it just goes straight ahead," the doll reported, voice muffled from behind the wall.

"There's another doorway next to it," said AK-47, pointing to the right.

"We split up," M99 decided. "Type 63, M21, M500, go with F1. I'll take the others and head down the other set of rooms, and we should meet up at the end. Make noise if you see anything."

"Copy that," said Type 63, crawling through the broken doorway. The others started down the parallel hallway. They were on the actual data side of the level now, but the expedition had only passed through the interface area so far. This was where technicians could draw information from the databanks and restore dolls' neural clouds. Every room had a certain number of computer terminals and corresponding "couches" for dolls to rest on. The "couch" was really a contoured surface set at a steep angle that a doll could lie on whenever moving into different levels of consciousness was needed.

Some of the terminals and couches had been destroyed, but many lay untouched, leading Makarov to believe that any damage was collateral on the part of Sangvis. They had busted through any security doors with overwhelming firepower, any Griffin dolls left in the rooms quickly gunned down. Makarov constantly strained her ears, searching for anything – how the other team was faring, if Sangvis was ahead, a sign of Type 92 – but only the constant firework explosion and crackle of the ongoing battle behind them reached her ears. Looking behind her – AK-47 grinned reassuredly, but Bren was wide eyed, keeping a tight grip on her weapon. Makarov wondered what exactly she was thinking.

They came upon a security door that had not been busted through and was in fact still locked. M99 approached it, eyeing the magnetic lock and security interface. "Sangvis found a way through?"

"Or they had a Griffin doll with clearance," Bren said.

"Only designated security dolls, technicians, and select members of the command staff had clearance," M99 said. "And Sangvis killed them all."

"Unless they managed to pull security codes from somewhere else," said Makarov. "I have clearance to open the lock. The databanks are on the other side."

"Bren, behind me," said M99. "Makarov, you step aside once you open the door. We'll lead the way, and hopefully F1 and the others are on the other side. AK-47, please stay here and guard our backs."

Makarov nodded and approached the keypad. It was mechanical, Soviet vintage, but her fingers worked with automated precision. Vasily pavel zero eight eight olga nikolai six three four fyodor niner. The keypad chimed and the door began to swing open. M99 advanced as quick as she could with her unwieldy weapon, Bren close behind. "All clear…" said the doll. Makarov made to follow Bren through the doorway.

"No, wait, contact!" Bren shouldered her weapon and was ready to fire at the movement when M99 held up a hand.

"It's Type 92!"

It was Type 92, but not in any condition to talk. Makarov caught a glimpse of her tattered clothing and torn hair as the doll stumbled from inside the server stacks and against the wall, raising her pistol to point at something inside. Gestalt. Makarov's stomach twisted in fear as it emerged – a lithe black shadow in the emergency red half-light, Type 92's shots bouncing off its armor.

"G-g-get away from me," the doll managed to say before Gestalt raised an arm and thrust forward, driving the point of its long, thin spike straight through Type 92's core. The body went limp instantly.

"What the hell–"

"Shoot it!" M99 ordered, but before anyone could so much as pull their trigger, something leapt from one of the server stacks at Gestalt, a green blur.

"F1!" Bren shouted as the doll let rip with her submachine gun, clinging to the Ringleader's back. Gestalt twisted around for a moment before bending its joints backward and reaching behind it to yank the Griffin doll off it and hurl her to the ground. With a loud groan of protesting metal, the Sangvis raised a foot and stomped down hard on F1's head. "NO!"

"Bren–" Makarov tried to grab the machine gun doll, but it was useless. She had already stepped forward and let loose with a burst of .303 before running at Gestalt, ready to strike at it with her weapon. One of her bullets struck the Ringleader, staggering it, but the black-armored doll recovered quickly enough to grab Bren by the neck and lift her kicking off the ground. Makarov resisted the urge to rush in with her pistol, knew it would do no good, that it was tactically unsound – Bren choked at the Ringleader's grip, struggled – she had to do something –

A thunderclap rattled the entire room, and Gestalt suddenly released Bren and dropped low. M99 had sighted and fired her weapon, and now the doll looked back at Makarov. "Stay here with Bren. The other three who were with F1 must be in here, I've got to go look for them. Just–" She glanced at Bren, who was slowly getting up from the floor and crawling towards her gun. "That'll do an okay job at keeping it away."

She moved off. Makarov heaved a sigh of relief as Bren stood and walked toward her, massaging her throat. The doll was silent, staring forlornly at F1's corpse, too scared to approach it if Gestalt was still nearby. Makarov ordered herself to stay calm, to think rationally. It was the only way she could approach this situation without breaking down. This is what happens when I stop doing field work.

"I… I pushed her through that hole," Bren mumbled. "I should've… made her stay…"

It wasn't Makarov's job to reassure dolls like this. She opened her mouth, but for a little bit no words came out. "She was–"

"Doing her duty. And so was I. It doesn't make me feel any better. And now all that's left of her is whatever's in there–" Bren pointed to the databanks full of neural cloud data. "But it's missing this. We were in it together… we've always been… and she won't remember."

Makarov said nothing. She could say nothing.

Bren started as the sounds of a fight reached their ears. M99's weapon fired once, twice, thrice, closer each time. On the third, one of the server stacks sparked went dark, and just as M99 ran back out into the open, Gestalt emerged a few seconds after. The doll turned around and lifted her rifle in a defensive posture before the Sangvis raised its spiked arm and thrust forward, bending the rifle effortlessly and driving the point straight into M99's shoulder.

Gestalt straightened up and reached out to yank the rifle off the end of its spike, tossing it aside and turning its masked stare toward Makarov and Bren. M99 had apparently managed to hit the Ringleader, since two holes spotted its torso and abdomen. Curiously enough, no coolant leaked from them. Self-healing? Makarov wondered, simultaneously cursing herself for not focusing on the matter at hand.

Bren stepped forward as close as she dared before firing. At first, Gestalt tried to stand its ground, bullets ricocheting off the armor, but when one of Bren's shots found its mark at Gestalt's shoulder joint, the Ringleader broke off and entered the server stacks again.

"M99! Bren, keep an eye out!" Makarov found herself saying, stepping forward and kneeling next to the doll. "How bad is it?"

"Not good," said M99. "Nailed the shoulder… I can't move the arm. Look, you… you have to leave. Type 92 is dead, you won't get anything from her. That Sangvis is still in here. You've only got so much time."

"The databanks," Makarov said fiercely. It was ridiculous to even consider condoning and action that would leave such valuable information open for Sangvis to access.

"No time to secure, if we even could. It's Sangvis, it'll hack in no matter what we do, if it hasn't already. Just get out of the room, and lock the door." M99 raised her head to peer at Type 92's corpse against the wall, looking back to Makarov. "You're in command now."

Makarov nodded slowly. She had a command module, yes, and the dolls would need direction with M99 and Type 92 out of the picture. "Bren?"

The doll was gone from her position. Makarov hurriedly stood and swung her gaze around – there, by the end of one of the stacks. F1, of course. She stood and approached the other doll. "Bren, we've got to go now."

"Not without her," the red-uniformed doll insisted. Makarov looked back and forth between the two for a second.

"No. I'm sorry, but–"

"No!" Bren shouted. "Never!"

Makarov grabbed Bren's collar and wrenched back. "Get on your feet, damnit! We'll come back for her!" She shoved Bren towards the door and marched back toward M99. "You'll get yourself killed, and the rest of us to boot!"

"Go to hell," Bren muttered, but she lifted her gun and followed Makarov anyway. The Russian doll seized M99 by the armpits and walked back towards the door as quickly as she could, dropping the weight as soon as she could and waving Bren inside before getting the door closed. Another go at the keypad, and the door began closing painfully slow. Makarov looked until the last second at the bodies of Type 92 and F1, then the door shut and the magnetic locks slid into place.