A/N: This is my bad—Mids began posting this to AO3 a couple weeks ago, and when I updated Zoetrope today, I had a moment like wait...why isn't this on fanfic dot net, too? I'm uploading all the current chapters at once, and then we'll be updating concurrently between the two sites.
Character Info: X goes by Xander Light, Zero goes by Zachary (Zach) Weidlich.
Almost 90 years ago, the Hunters made a pin. Well, scratch that—Lieutenant Commander Weidlich made a pin. It was active capture, a game they'd agreed to, even if she'd been under a bit of duress.
Almost 90 years ago, a well-known hacker and information broker got ahold of some alarming information around a Reploid from Red Alert that'd been picked up by the Hunters. In this case, this young Reploid had crossed a few too many people. Inadvertently, of course. In this case, the Federation was set to look very bad if a few heads didn't roll, and Axl's was convenient. Would have been convenient.
Who'd have guessed that Red Alert, despite being an unruly mercenary gang, had managed to hit and demolish a Fed-funded think tank researching the virus? Who'd have guessed that the Federation was willing to break its own laws around safe viral research and containment? Who'd have guessed that Axl was the single, lingering witness?
Who'd have guessed that expendable Reploids were, well, expendable? To the Federation, anyway.
Leto would have guessed, and did guess. She'd preferred to slide under the radar, surreptitiously accessing locked databases, servers, emails, anything. She'd do it on commission, or on her own free time to sate her own curiosity. She'd take that data and sell it. Well, usually.
There was something incredibly distasteful about illegal execution orders against adolescents. This bit of data was a powder keg, and sharing it was equivalent to lighting it. She'd be the one caught in the blast, but the child would almost certainly survive.
Determining the right thing to do wasn't the hard part. The hard part was her own survival instincts.
Almost 90 years ago, that infamous hacker, Leto, had forwarded that powder keg to the Hunters. Almost 90 years ago, she was the source of one of the biggest scandals in Federation history. The press had a field day, there were protests in the streets. High-ranking officials resigned ahead of the torches and pitchforks, and others were led away in handcuffs.
The entire debacle had landed her in handcuffs; even as a whistleblower, she'd accessed data illegally. She was given ten years of probation—in Hunter custody, of course.
Yeah, Lieutenant Commander Weidlich made a pin, all right. And she made one in turn. The game between them continued, even to this day. Or rather, it'd resume once his stasis concluded.
Reploids playing a game like theirs were linked to one another, bonded, if you wanted to add the innuendo. Maybe that was why marriage between Reploids was referred to as such. Even with him in stasis, both halves considered that bond immutable.
They'd come a long, long way since then. The hell of the Maverick Wars, followed by the hell of the Elf Wars. Everyone was still cringing, not quite trusting this peace that'd settled. Some mornings, it felt like the calm before the storm, something electric in the atmosphere. Other mornings, she could feel herself beginning to trust that some semblance of stability was returning to them. Maybe it'd stay. Maybe it wouldn't. But either way, she needed to believe they'd be okay.
There was a consistency to Xander, something that felt unchanging, even as the world continued to carve into him. She smiled back to him as she stepped onto the roof deck of Neo Arcadia Tower, her gaze scrutinizing him for a moment before she turned her attention beyond him, to the airlock he'd been looking at only moments before. "Have they started?"
"Not yet," he answered, his grip on the rail relaxing at her approach. "First ship's set to dock in just under an hour, though the crews are already good to go." Nearly half of the Gates were staffed today, several dozen ships due to arrive, but there was something almost ceremonial about Neo Arcadia to be the first district to open their doors. Then, knowing that she'd been in the medical bay in his apartment before arriving, "How's he doing?"
The smile on her face didn't shift at his question, and her steps didn't falter. Internally, she knew his question was twofold; yes, how was Zach doing, but also, how was she doing? He'd asked with the air of someone who wasn't doing daily checks himself, with the air of someone who didn't know that she checked on him at least a half dozen times a day.
"The same as before," she answered as she arrived at the rail beside him, her gaze still trained outward, to the edge of the Dome. "He's proceeding apace."
"That's good," and he knew as well as she did that there was far more depth to her answer than it seemed. With Zach in stasis, alive but locked both in the pod and inside his own mind, their bond-link was little more than an emotional echo chamber, compounding a loneliness Xander could only begin to understand. That was, in large part, why Leto was offered one of the guest rooms despite her and Zach having the two floors below his in the Tower to call their own.
Even if there wasn't much he could do to ease the solitude inside her mind, he could at least offer her some form of companionship to help keep her stable.
He'd need her stable in the coming months. She was, after all, part of the team that would serve as a judicial check to his own power.
He had every intention of maintaining individual freedom within Beacon City, in allowing people to live out their lives without constant governmental oversight, but it was still made clear to those in the shelter colonies and to those working on the City itself that they would be citizens of a military democracy. With the immediate exception of Neo Arcadia, each district would, in time, be self-governing, the residents of each voting their District Vicars into office after the candidates had passed a rigorous background check. With Beacon City yet in her infancy, military officials would be temporarily instated in those positions and answer back to the Arcadian High Council.
If all went as he hoped, they'd transition to having elected officials within a decade.
He wondered, given how he'd been considered, if he'd eventually be running for technical re-election to the Arcadian High Council, or if the people would view it better if he simply maintained the role.
"Technically off-topic," he said, breaking the silence that had fallen between them, "but what do you think about having the general judiciary facility and the Neo Arcadian Vicar's office set up somewhere other than the Tower?"
Leto's gaze (and attention) were drawn from the edges of the Dome and back to the Tower at that. "I think it would be wise not to have everyone in a big, tall tower that's an easy target for troublemakers."
Xander hummed in agreement. "I should probably have Arcadia Design and Engineering set up with a couple satellite facilities, too." The bulk of the military was housed in the district, but they weren't set up in-house either. "Oh, on that note," and he was a little surprised he'd forgotten until now, "Prata Robotics put in a formal request for consideration to handle the development of the units we'll be assigning to the covert ops division. Did you want to tag along for the visit?"
"Prata…" Leto repeated slowly, doing a quick lookup of the company to refresh her memory. "Are they coming with a project plan, or are they just petitioning for consideration based on past work?"
"From what their rep told me, they had a few mock-ups to present, but the bulk of it was consideration given the work they've already put in with the PRIU line that's being added to the police forces." While they would still be a military police force, it was more on the technicality that had made the Federation police fall under the same designation. "I said they had two hours to impress me, but it won't be until next Wednesday at 1000, so you've got time to decide."