There was a light, timid knock at the motel room door. In an instant, Revenant had the pistol aimed, safety off, and Crypto had set his laptop off to the side and jumped to his feet. The hacker ran to the door to check the peephole.
"Put the gun down," he said firmly over his shoulder. He unlocked the door and opened it. A familiar slender figure, wearing a puffy jacket and carrying a backpack that was much too large for her small frame, stepped inside the room and pulled Crypto into a brief hug.
"Oh, I was worried when you didn't come back to the complex last night," Wattson said fervently. "Nobody knew what happened to you- or they wouldn't tell me. I'm not sure."
She let go of him and took a small step back, laughing softly as she looked over his newfound fashion. "I like what you did with your hair! It looks like it's on fire. Here-"
The engineer thrust a paper bag into Crypto's arms. "I brought you some lunch from that Chinese restaurant you like. You barely remember to eat on a typical day… I'm sure you aren't eating well while you're in hiding."
A quick glance around the room informed her that she was correct in her assumption- she saw only salty snacks and protein bars.
"This is the friend you contacted?" Revenant growled in a low tone from the far side of the room. "How stupid are you? She works for the Syndicate!"
Wattson frowned at the assassin. "Technically, all three of us do, with the contracts that we have as competitors," she said, "but I understand what you mean. Crypto already told me that the two of you need to lay low for a while. Your secrets are safe with me!"
She mimed the action of a zipper across her lips. Revenant was not impressed.
"I killed you in yesterday's Game."
"You did?" The engineer shrugged. "I haven't had a chance to watch the replays yet. Congratulations on the win! Next Game, I'm going to get you back."
She looked up at him with a wide grin. The assassin responded by tilting his head up toward the ceiling, a gesture meant to mimic the human expression of rolling one's eyes. Wattson's face fell, and her overall expression changed dramatically, as she focused on the damage.
"They really hurt you, didn't they?" She took a step toward him. He hissed at her and stepped back.
"Who did this?"
"Your kind," he snarled in response. "Humans."
From his position near the door, Crypto gave the assassin an annoyed look. Some of Revenant's frustrations were legitimate… Others were unfounded, and simply irritating.
"Your 'humans are bad' rhetoric carries little weight, when one considers that you don't get along with Pathfinder, either…"
"Crypto, shhh!"
Wattson turned toward the hacker just long enough to put a finger to her lips, after which her attention returned to Revenant. Moving slowly, she sat down cross-legged on the floor, folded her hands neatly in her lap, and looked up at him from this… much more vulnerable position.
"I get it," she said in a soft tone. "You don't like humans because they think you're disposable, and you don't like Pathfinder because he's okay with that… Am I right?"
"How cute," Revenant replied sarcastically. "Going to tell me how you love all the one-eyed, three-legged kitties and puppies that the rest of your kind despise?"
"Nope!" Wattson made an exaggerated face, as though she'd tasted something nasty. "Kitties and puppies are too messy. They like to chew on wires, too… I love them, but only when they belong to someone else."
The assassin stared her down silently, surprised at her answer and entirely unsure of how to respond to it. Crypto sat down on the corner of the bed to eat his lunch as he watched them. It seemed that Wattson had the situation well under control- better than he had, in fact.
She unfastened one of the clasps on her backpack and pulled out a rectangular device. It was about the size of a television remote, but with a large antenna attached to it, a coil of wire around the base. Revenant watched her warily.
"May I try something?" The engineer looked up at him with bright eyes and an excited smile. "I don't need to come any closer than this."
"What is that- some kind of EMP?"
He regarded her with a guarded stance. Typically an electromagnetic pulse wouldn't be a problem for him. He'd been designed with shielding, as they were often the first countermeasure used against military robots. Damaged as he was at the moment, however, it would almost certainly 'kill' him- that was; send him back to his factory to upload into a new body.
"No! No- nothing like that." Wattson quickly and vigorously shook her head.
"It's a type of signal disruptor," she explained. "When I turn it on, it'll transmit some background noise through your sensor system. You'll feel better."
"And then," Revenant responded, "I assume it will incapacitate me."
"It won't," she insisted. "It doesn't have enough power, even if I turn it to the highest setting. I'll set the output very low to start with, and if you don't like it, I'll switch it off- oui?"
He didn't like this girl. She was strange, unpredictable, and highly intelligent- a dangerous combination. She knew enough about machines and technology to cause him serious harm, if she was so inclined. Here she was, trying to persuade him to trust her… That raised a red flag.
The assassin glanced at Crypto, who glared back. These two were conspiring against him, ensuring that all three of them remained at a standoff until he agreed to do things their way… It was infuriating, and it was effective.
"Have at it, skin-suit. If you betray me, I'll break each of your limbs, one at a time."
Wattson frowned at him. "That's not a very nice thing to say- or to do."
Revenant reacted with a dismissive grunt, which the engineer didn't bother to reply to. She turned the dial to the lowest power and flipped the switch to the ON position.
The change in Revenant's posture was obvious right away. He was noticeably less tense and less guarded. He carried himself with a more relaxed demeanor, and regarded Wattson with surprise, maybe even curiosity- head tilted, arms at his sides with elbows slightly bent. A wide grin flashed across the engineer's face.
"I told you! That's better, isn't it?"
She turned up the power. To Crypto's astonishment, he could now feel it, too- the device must also affect the neural uplink that allowed him to receive visual feedback from his drone. It started as a gentle, warming buzz that reminded him of the late nights when Mila's cat curled up on his lap and purred while he worked on code. That silly cat- he hadn't been happy, at first, when his sister brought it home, but they'd both managed to change his attitude rather quickly. He wondered what had happened to it after the Syndicate forced him to run.
Seconds later, the sensation had changed. Now he felt a sort of distance from his body and the world around him- he was still clearly aware of everything happening, but it was as though he could select what he wanted to ignore, and what he wanted his brain to actively process. He was able to leave the aches, pains, and intrusive thoughts of yesterday's events in the background and focus on something else, of his choosing.
"Natalie," the hacker said in awe, "you're a genius."
He'd done plenty of work with signal disruptors, often using them to shut down or bypass security systems, and he'd never thought of anything remotely similar to this. It would never have occurred to him that the devices could be used for this purpose, he thought, if Wattson hadn't come up with the idea and showed it to him. What she had accomplished was beautiful as well as incredible- she'd taken an invention typically used with destructive intent, and found a way to bring about a sense of calm and peace with it.
Wattson smiled at the remark, though her attention was entirely focused on Revenant. She set her signal disruptor on the floor and stood up. Cautiously, she took a step toward him. When he didn't react aggressively, she approached, and reached up to put one hand on his shoulder.
The assassin didn't resist as she guided him to lay down on the floor. For the first time that he could remember, those awful human memories and sensations… weren't there. No, they still were- but they weren't nearly as intense. Even the warnings and sharp, tearing static that alerted him to system damage weren't as harsh as they'd been a moment ago. He felt a sense of calm that he couldn't recall ever experiencing before.
Revenant knew better than to trust it- she was still capable of inflicting serious harm on him, and he was vulnerable to her. He was still aware of that, and able to react to it if needed; true to her word, she hadn't incapacitated him.
She carefully pried open the access panels at his chest and shoulders and assessed the damage. The assassin hissed at her- his hands clenched into fists at his sides, but he didn't fight it. Wattson watched his reaction and nodded.
"I hate going to the doctor, too."
Crypto snorted and nearly spit out his food.
"What do you think you're trying to accomplish here?" Revenant growled at her. What did she want with this act- to manipulate him into a false sense of security? To coerce him into serving her interests? Neither was going to happen.
"Well," she said earnestly, "the first thing I need to do is make sure these connections are secure. They're the main ones that keep you going, you know, so we want to be extra careful with them. Then I'll reroute your power around any sensors that were damaged, so you don't have to deal with the glitchy feedback from them. After that-"
"Shut up."
The assassin cut her off mid-sentence. She'd managed to answer the question, and yet give him no useful information, at the same time.
"That's kind of mean," the engineer scolded. "You shouldn't be mean to the person who's repairing you. Really, you should try not to be mean to anyone."
"I didn't ask you to repair me," he snarled furiously.
"True. Hmmm…" Wattson looked up toward the ceiling thoughtfully. "I guess you can be mean if you want. Just this one time, though."
Revenant only glared at her in silence. Now that she'd given permission - what the hell was that about, anyway? - the prospect had lost its appeal. It was useless now- wouldn't have the intended impact… Across the room, Crypto pressed a hand over his mouth to keep from laughing. This wasn't at all how he'd expected a meeting between the two of them to go- it was satisfying to watch. Wattson was thoroughly defeating the simulacrum in this battle of wits.
The engineer cut away the frayed edges of the severed wires, then stripped the insulation off the ends. Once that was done, she twisted the exposed ends of the wires back together. Revenant put up with it until she was about halfway done- then he abruptly pulled away, claws leaving noticeable gouges in the floor.
"It's okay," said Wattson. She set the pliers down and held her hands up in front of her. "We can take a break. I know this isn't easy…"
The assassin stared at her. This time it was less with rage, and more with incredulity. "What's wrong with you, skin-suit?"
"Hmmm. Well…" She lifted a finger to her chin, eyes glancing up at the ceiling as she considered how to answer that. "I'm organic. That's what you want to hear, right? I'm 'wrong' because I'm human."
Once again, Revenant was at a loss as to how to respond to her. He couldn't argue with that statement. There was a tense silence between them for several seconds, during which Crypto was uncomfortably aware of his own loud typing as he worked on the code for Kimura's computer virus. Thanks to the effects of the signal disruptor, he was easily able to push that aside and focus on what he was doing. He was making steady progress, fear and distractions having been distorted around him.
"Let's keep going," Wattson finally suggested.
When Revenant didn't react, she cautiously picked her pliers back up and continued reconnecting the damaged wires. He glared at her, arms and hands tense at his sides - ready to strike at any moment - but he let her work. This experience was… significantly less harrowing than what he was used to. He still hated it - the sense of weakness, of having someone digging through his insides - but she'd managed to make it tolerable. The bursts of static and meaningless data, the system warnings that cut through his senses when he was damaged or his components were handled, weren't as intense as he'd come to expect. He had only that to contend with, as well; the false human interpretation of his physical form that overlapped with reality was - for once - distant enough for him to ignore.
She sat back on her heels and set her tools down for a moment. The assassin watched the movement of her hands.
"Finished?"
Somehow, he doubted that. It had all been too easy. Sure enough, the engineer shook her head. She reached out and gently touched his upper arm- a human gesture that Revenant didn't understand, and she performed it awkwardly, copying an expected behavior that wasn't quite natural to her.
"This will… probably be uncomfortable, for a moment," she said cautiously. "I need to disconnect some sensors, and a couple of relay switches. Once it's done, though, you should feel a lot better."
"Why are you doing this?"
"Well, they'll need to be replaced eventually, but I don't have the replacements here…" Wattson answered thoughtfully with a slight edge of excitement to her voice, as she often had when she talked about a project she was working on. "So for now-"
"No," the assassin interrupted her. "Why would you even want to repair me, much less care what I feel?"
Wattson tilted her head.
"Your design is- well, from an engineer's standpoint, it's really interesting," she explained. "Such simple solutions to complicated problems… It's beautiful, really. I've never seen anything quite like it before."
She'd always had a fascination with older, outdated machines and technology- more sensible, more practical designs, before mankind found a way to ruin things with redundant complications. Sometimes engineers did so on purpose; added unnecessary elements to a machine to create more opportunities for something to go wrong or break down… Planned obsolescence, constructed by designers and manufacturers to ensure that customers kept coming back to buy the newest product. Wattson despised that. She saw it as a cruelty, particularly as sentient machines became more and more prevalent among society.
Revenant's control system accomplished so much with so little. Any other engineer would likely have called the technology primitive- newer robots had ever more complex systems with which to orient themselves in their environment. When something went wrong with those newer builds, it was a long and complicated process to identify the problem, never mind fixing it.
In contrast, Revenant's entire feedback system was linked through a mesh of conductive and semiconductive fibers that ran along the inner surfaces of his frame. Through a single circuit, without the need for multiple, separate systems or redundancies, he was able to detect changes in pressure, temperature, position, electric flux, and the compromise of the system itself when damaged. It was ingenious, and Wattson felt a slight sense of disappointment that some nameless engineer had come up with the idea centuries before she was born. If that had been her design…
The engineer smiled as she looked up at the ceiling in thought. "It's an honor and a privilege to work with you."
A soft beep from Crypto's laptop prompted them both to look in his direction abruptly. Out of habit to protect his privacy, the hacker quickly closed the lid.
"That was a message from Cade," he said. "His people are arranging a secure location. We'll meet with them in an hour."