Character Note: X goes by Xander Light, Zero goes by Zachary 'Zach' Weidlich.
The lock released with a soft beep, and Xander reached in to pull out one of the canisters, ignoring the red-bordered alert that cropped up in his peripheral as he checked the seal on the container and the small digital display on the side. Nodding to himself, he shut the small door to the containment unit, and turned to leave the maintenance room.
A quarter-meter in height and only as big around as a typical coffee mug, the canister held enough nanites to see Zach through another two weeks of testing.
Another proximity alert prompted, and Xander took a moment to finally code an exception rule for the Virus scanning program. Yes, the nanites he was carrying were infected, but only on a technicality—once they'd figured out the cure for the Maverick Virus, they'd developed a variant that was specific to Zach's systems, one that would immediately render the nanites inert should they be injected into any other unit.
The Virus had never been a weakness for the blond, didn't make him sick, but rather served as a power source and the closest a unit would ever get to 'performance enhancers'. It had still taken a couple instances of him having absorbed far too many Viral nanites in the field before he'd been able to rein in how violent he was while 'dosed', though.
So when he'd decided to go back into stasis, running Xander's original tests to ensure he'd never pose the threat he'd been meant to, he suggested they put him through 60 years while consistently flooding his systems with the Virus.
Leto had initially voted against putting Zach into 60 years of virus-hazed stasis. It'd seemed like an easy 'no'. Sixty years of ethical testing? When his time active eclipsed that? Sixty years of ethical testing while totally viral, when there was a cure bobbing around the nursery?
It'd felt like an easy 'no'. She'd been soundly overruled. The debate between her and Zach went well beyond when Zach and Xander considered the decision final, and she still wasn't entirely happy with everything.
She was also biased, and in a way she'd openly acknowledge. Sometimes, though, biases needed to be weighed.
Regardless, here they were: decades later, Xander preparing to give Zach his latest dose and Zach quiet in his pod, his systems still giving the go-ahead. She didn't know the scope of the testing, didn't know what kind of decisions he'd be faced with or how much of a stress test it'd be. Compared to the hell they'd been living in, though, it's entirely possible that reality surpassed Dr. Light's darkest predictions, and whatever Zach was going through was in no way equivalent to living in the real world during these times.
That was honestly a cold comfort.
She watched Xander come back into the room with Zach's pod, carrying the canister of nanites. She had to admit, the Virus was still incredibly unsettling, even in a form that was formulated to be compatible with no one but Zach.
Shifting the canister into his right hand, Xander stopped next to Leto and gave her shoulder a comforting squeeze. As much as he knew she still disagreed with this stasis period, as much as he acknowledged that she wanted it over and done with, he'd also understood Zach's logic in wanting to subject himself to the ethical testing cycle Xander himself had undergone. Zach had, to some degree, learned to control himself while dosed and could remain cognizant of what he was doing, but he'd still needed to be somewhat directed while in that state.
In many ways, Xander and Leto had been more his handlers than his friends during those times.
So to train himself to be aware, to be able to think through the haze of every system running in overdrive? He was already a force to be reckoned with when exposed to the Virus. Like this, should it ever be needed to defend the City, to protect what was left of the world? He'd be unstoppable.
Moving over to the head of the pod, Xander slid a panel aside, turning the older canister enough to check its display, and nodded at the reading that the last of the nanites had been discharged into Zach's system only five minutes prior. Pulling that free and setting it down on the floor, he took only a few seconds to align the new canister and get it locked into place.
It was strange every time he'd needed to load one of these, always the slightest bit on edge given how the filled canisters gave off a warm, yellow glow. The Virus, originally, had manifested with a sick, purplish hue that seemed to tint everything around it. This wasn't as bright, didn't seem to flood an area, and even if it felt more like looking at candlelight than the miasma from before, it didn't feel right.
Replacing the canister always served as a reminder to Xander of something he'd been wanting to ask Leto, but the longer things went, the less it felt like the 'right time' to broach the topic. Now, though, with the Judges actively in development and other plans on the drawing board, he was running out of time to talk with her.
"Leto, I…" and he stopped, sliding the cover back into place over the canister.
He knew he needed to ask. He had copies of the code he needed to use, but to do so without Leto at least giving the go-ahead? He couldn't do that to someone he saw as his sister.
Xander wasn't someone who often trailed off or was lost for words, and her gaze moved from what he was doing at the pod to Xander himself, frowning when she realized he suddenly looked lost at sea. "What's wrong?"
He looked up to her, took in her worried countenance, and shook his head. "Not wrong, really. It's just something I've been fighting with myself on how to ask." He wanted to just avoid this now, find some way to redirect her attention, but he'd already opened his mouth. "Habicht and Queensland sent messages asking about the system defense and security programming that I wanted set up for the Judges, and it just kind of brought this back to the fore. Given the role the Judges will have in the City, and some work I'll likely be starting in the next few years, I wanted to know if you'd be okay with me using Cora's data as the base framework for a stronger program."
The current version of the program being used on Reploids still provided resistance, if not outright immunity, to most mental and system attacks, but he knew that the Judges would need more, just to be safe. He knew the units he was planning on his own, too, would have to be more than just safe.
Leto could be hard to read. Was hard to read for most people. She was a master of deflection, and of keeping her own thoughts and feelings as private as she needed them to be. Xander, however, had known her for nearly a century and so knew that her countenance shifting from worried to neutral wasn't necessarily a good thing. She did that by default when she didn't want people to know what she was thinking.
The long span of silence that followed also was not necessarily a good sign.
She knew, somewhere in the static of her mind, that what Xander was asking was not only reasonable, but also completely sensible. Of course Cora's data might be useful in building new units who were made to be incredibly immune.
She worked her jaw for a moment before asking, her voice the kind of even that was entirely forced. "What kind of program?"
"Just their system defenses," Xander assured. "The typical setup: security system maintenance, attack response protocols, mental protections and access firewalls. We need to make sure that nothing can get through, and something adaptive, something that works to respond to new data sets and variant attack forms would be the best course of action." He looked away then, not necessarily ashamed but uneasy at the admission. "It'd be especially important to me, not just because of how close the Judges will be to us, but also because of the…the units I'm planning."
Cora's data was more advanced than "standard" Reploid defensive systems, and it didn't sound like Xander was intending to include the portion that allowed Cora to mutate to respond to new viral strains, so the units with the data wouldn't be susceptible to corruption the way she was. Leto's hand was over her mouth, an overt tell as she absorbed what Xander was telling her...and what he wasn't telling her.
She felt raw with something almost like nausea roiling in her, and she took a steadying breath. To say that the loss of the Mother Elf was a raw spot for her would be a severe understatement of truth. Even though the blame wasn't solely with her, Leto still carried a deep, agonizing guilt with her, even all these years later. That was her daughter. Zach had gone into stasis, and it'd been left to her to protect their new, small family. It'd been hers.
That Xander was asking this wasn't what upset her—it made sense. It made sense. But everything around Cora rent through Leto and left her quaking. She couldn't blame Xander for that. Didn't.
Her own emotional turmoil was why it took a half minute or so for Xander's final admission to catch up with her, and she took a steadying breath before asking, "You have kids on the board?"
He didn't answer immediately, instead moving over to where she was sitting and leaning some into her back, his arms wrapping over her shoulders. He knew this was a sensitive topic, that even an indirect mention of her daughter was enough to send her thoughts down darker paths some days, and he gave her a loose but reassuring hug. "You don't have to help with the programming if you're not comfortable," he said, "but I wanted the blessing of at least one of her parents before I used her data. I didn't want to jump the gun and then have you and Zach angry at me down the line for keeping a secret of it."
He straightened up a moment later, giving her shoulders another comforting squeeze. "And yeah, to answer your question. I don't have anything solid yet, but I knew I'd be asking for them too."
Was it rude of him to plan out the build of his own kids when hers was still out there, somewhere, lost and still warped by what Stefan Weil had done to her?
Leto took another breath, leaning some into Xander's touch before reaching up and taking one of his hands in hers. Her voice was still soft, still strained, but he could hear the smile in her voice as she replied, "I'd be happy to help you, Xander."