Chapter 4 - Discoveries...

Leaders require followers. Followers require a purpose to believe in. However, there are instances where the purpose a leader invents can be a made up story to excuse the actions of his followers. Such is the case with influential men from ancient conquerors to modern day madmen. -Dr. James Cain, 'On the Topic of Uprisings'

"SIGMA!" My warp beam touched down directly in the control room of Sigma's latest base and I was now scouring it for his unique presence.

I didn't have to look far. Sigma emerged from a door in the back of the room and walked over to me. "Ah Vile, I was wondering when you would return from your excursion to the MHHQ. Was it fruitful?"

Damn, he knew about that. I should have figured Axl would tell him. "Actually yes. I've managed to get myself close to X and Zero in one day. However, some information I have just uncovered is disturbing me. Zero doesn't know who his creator is, and you plan on somehow reuniting them. Why? What will Zero do when he knows Dr. Wily was the man who created him?"

Sigma grinned. "Are you saying that Zero is far too much of an upstanding, noble, and law-abiding reploid to embrace the destruction that he was created for?"

I stayed quiet. The less Sigma knew about what I was thinking, the better for me.

Sigma grunted and turned his back towards me. He was now heading for his other room. I hastily followed. "Unfortunately you'd be right. Zero is no X, but he still has lines he won't cross, and all the time spent with X as his friend is probably what created those lines in the first place. No, merely knowing his true purpose will only cause him to distance himself from it, the last thing I want. He must be reverted to his true identity, the Zero that existed before our fight. He must become the red demon once again."

As I followed Sigma into his private quarters, I was puzzled. 'Our fight?' Sigma had never mentioned this to me. "Once again? What does that mean?"

"I never told you where the Maverick Virus originated, did I? Most everyone would have you believe that I was the one who created it. That it was designed as a means of spreading my influence to every reploid on the planet, and as an insurance policy were my body ever to be destroyed. But no, while it has certainly served those purposes, that was not it's true origin." Sigma turned around and started advancing towards me. "You've never experienced it have you? The feelings it causes, how it slowly chips away at ones sanity until you are nothing but a slave to the three commands it gives: destroy, infect, survive. Nothing but destroy, infect, survive. Over and over again: destroy, infect, survive."

I backed up quickly and noticed the door was closed and locked. I couldn't see any way of opening it from this side. I looked back at Sigma and saw that his hands had a black aura around them. Sigma laughed, and for the first time, I truly feared for my life.

"You don't want it do you? You are strong now, but this would empower you, enough to kill X perhaps. You should be grateful that I'm even offering it to you. You really don't have a choice in the matter, I could force it on you."

Sigma then abruptly turned away and the aura around his hands disappeared. "However, if I were to do that, I would lose you to the blood lust that the virus bestows. I still need you, so you are safe from the virus for now." The lights in the room came on and I could see Sigma walking towards what looked like a stasis capsule.

I let out a sigh of relief as I realized Sigma was probably not lying about needing me sane. "The thing about the maverick virus is that it is generally considered foreign programming in reploids. Doppler was on the right track with his anti-virus, but it was not a permanent cure. It merely caused the virus to lie dormant in the reploids systems for a period of time, until the code was able to reassert itself. Now the hunters have scanners that detect the presence of the code in a mavericks systems making it impossible to get an ordinary maverick inside as an infiltration agent."

"There is one reploid, however, in which the code does not present as abnormal or foreign; Zero. You remember that 'crazy red maverick' that destroyed a whole unit of hunters decades ago, right Vile?"

I had to think hard. It had been a very long time since I was one of the hunters. "Yeah…I think so. You had to go in and take it out personally right?"

"Well, it was no ordinary maverick. It was none other than our friend Zero, but he was not hampered by any sense of morality. He was pure, the virus was almost totally in control. He very nearly destroyed me. But then his dormant personality, the one that became the hunter and who befriended X, tried to stop it and I managed to disable him. What I didn't know at the time, was that by breaking his control chip covering, I initiated transfer of the virus to myself. Zero was reactivated, with his developed personality now in control, and I became a maverick, the very thing I fought to destroy."

I was shocked. Sigma had never revealed this information to me. I almost felt pity for him. But I knew that the real Sigma had died long ago, and that this was merely the virus' sick and twisted incarnation of him. "So, you are planning on re-infecting him with the virus?"

Sigma smirked at me. "Very good Vile, you are quick. From what Axl has been telling me, Zero is having nightmares about his past. Just the other day, in fact, after an attack on the hunter's base, Zero violently attacked X and almost killed him. Of course, X and the other hunters think that Zero merely mistook X for one of the copy-reploids disguised as him, but that is not the case. Zero held back during most of the attack because he feared he might fatally injure the real X, but just before he himself would have been killed, he suddenly went into a blood frenzy and brutally killed most of the attacking reploids. This was the virus' doing, but it was not strong enough and Zero managed to stop it from taking over."

"So, if you lure him away from X and all of his other supports to meet with Wily, then inundate him with the virus, he'll revert to his original programming; the way he was when he fought you?"

"Precisely, and then he will destroy X, along with everything else. You see Vile, Zero won't stop with X's death, nor will the deaths of the humans placate him. Everything on this planet will be destroyed; reploids, humans, everything."

"But, why? What about your ambition to raise the reploids to dominance? What about all the reploids who believed in you?"

"They were all fools. It was never going to happen. Even when I first started these rebellions, I knew it would be too much, but followers need a cause to rally behind. At least, as long as it took for the virus to override their systems. So I gave them one, albeit, a false one. The virus would not be satisfied with the deaths of the humans and their sympathizers, eventually the mavericks would turn on one another for the sake of destruction. There would be no winners, no champions of reploid superiority, there would only be death. But then, you suspected that from the beginning didn't you?"

My gaze turned to the floor. "I didn't know you would go this far. I only wanted to prove myself. I only wanted X. To destroy him and prove that he wasn't the one who would change the world. I didn't want this! This damned existence that you've given me!"

Sigma's grin of malice got wider. "It's too late for that now. Where would you go? Back to Maverick Hunter Headquarters? That's a laugh. As soon as you reveal yourself, you'd be shot on sight. Axl told me that you were making friends with X, and I…"

"No! I was just…just trying to get in close to him. Then I would…I'd…" I trailed off. Truthfully, I wasn't sure what I'd do now that I had started getting to know X again. He was so different now then he was before.

Sigma glared at me then turned his back towards me, signaling an end to the conversation. "I think you had better find where your true loyalties lie Vile. You are dismissed."

The door behind me opened and I hastily walked out. I managed to retain my composure until I was about half way through the control room. I broke out into a run as I tried to put as much distance between myself and Sigma as I possibly could. I stopped running when I reached the training room, and I realized that I still had no idea where I was going. Then I hesitated. "I know you're there Axl. You watched the whole thing didn't you?"

The voice seemed to echo from around the room, making it impossible to pinpoint it's exact location. "I certainly did. Your behavior is certainly enigmatic, and I wonder what Sigma is thinking by leaving you in this state."

"Well, as long as he is leaving me this way, I would say it's in your best interest to leave me alone."

"Heh, very well. I don't want Sigma angry with me, so I will do as you ask. Just remember, after your use has ended, I'll still be around." I heard footsteps receding from me and then the door I had just come through opening and closing.

I continued waking through the base until I found an elevator that took me to the surface. "Snow? Huh, wonder where this place is." I left my helmet near the elevator's entrance so I wouldn't get lost and began to walk. I needed to find a place where I wouldn't be disturbed so I could think and plan my next move. "Ok, what do I know for sure? This is obviously not typical thinking on Sigma's part. He's going to destroy the whole world if it comes to it. I wish I knew where he was going to lure Zero. Then I might have a chance to stop this. Damn him, he devised this to torture me. I know that he knows I want to stop him, but I can't do anything about it without getting myself killed. If only I could…"

My monologue ended as I noticed the wind that had been blowing snow in my face had abruptly stopped. I looked around, puzzled and thought I saw a faint shimmer in front of me. I looked closer and noticed that the other side of the valley seemed closer then I remembered it being. 'No way I've been walking that long.' I kept walking forward and suddenly I was face to face with an enormous castle. 'What the? It must have been cloaked. I've heard about cloaking things, but a whole castle?' It looked Russian from what I could see. There was an entry way stylized like an old wooden door directly in front of me. When I went to open it however, I could tell immediately that it was made of metal, and furthermore, it required a password. I pressed a few buttons on a panel next to it when I heard a voice come through the panel.

"Who are you?" The voice sounded like a human, but it was slightly metallic. 'Must be a robot of some kind.'

"I'm…my name is Vava." I had no idea who the voice on the other side belonged to and I didn't want to give up my identity that quickly.

"Are you a friend or a foe?"

"That depends on who your friends are."

There was a slight pause on the other end as the voice thought about this. "Do you serve the mavericks."

"No I do not." A maverick would have said 'Lord Sigma,' or something to that effect, so I knew that whoever lived or operated out of here considered the mavericks a foe.

This time there was a longer pause. Finally, the door opened and I made my way inside. "Enter, but go no further."

I walked in and stopped to wait as the door closed behind me. I waited for a few minutes until I could hear footsteps draw near. The figure stepped into the dim light and I could make out it's physical features. It was short, at least a head shorter then me, fully colored in yellow and black, and had a headdress that looked like something out of King Tut's tomb. 'Why does this thing look so familiar?'

It stopped a few feet away from me and looked me over from head to toe. It's arms crossed it asked, "what are you doing here?"

"I was just wandering around when I stumbled on this place."

"Wandering around? In the middle of the Siberian wastelands? Even for a reploid, that's absurd."

"Why do you assume I'm a reploid?"

"You'd have to be to have made it through as sane as you are. Cloaking devices are similar to warp generators in that both are known for their deleterious effects on the human brain."

"Fair enough. But I know that cloaking devices are meant to hide things. I just never knew they could hide something of this size. That begs the question; what is so important here that would require hiding using the largest cloaking field on the planet?"

The other robot, it must have been that for it was true what it said about humans and cloaking fields, let out what could be considered a sigh and lowered it's eyes."It's obvious that you are not a maverick, but I can't say you have good intentions solely on that. You must give me more then that. How can I trust you?"

I thought hard about this question before finally coming up with the perfect answer. "I'm a maverick hunter and friends with X."

The robot looked intrigued. "Hmmm…there's no way I can substantiate your claim without exposing this complex. However, if you really are a maverick hunter, I can trust you with information that I am privy to. If you are not what you claim, well, at least you don't seem the type that would leak the existence of this place against my wishes."

"Don't worry about that. I haven't even seen anything worth blabbing about to anyone yet."

"That may be so, but trust me, by the time you leave here, you will know a great deal more about the world then you could have ever guessed. But I forget my manners, please allow me to introduce myself; my name is Pharaoh Man."

My eyes shot open in shock. "What?"

End Chapter 4

Author's Note: Well this certainly took alot longer then I'd expected. Although with classes and other social obligations, it's getting tough finding enough spare time to flesh this beast out. Don't worry Rock Raider, Vile isn't going good yet, he just has a vested interest in making sure Sigma and Zero don't destroy the entire world. So, I read the interview with Inafune wherein he states that Zero did not kill the Classic series characters because, and I quote, "According to the way I created him, Zero is not such a person--it is not in his profile."

...

Damn. Well, he is the boss and his word is the final one in any arguement, however, in defense of Zero killing everybody (and my stories in a way), the Zero that brutally maimed and nearly killed Sigma in the cutscene from X4, and whom it was stated in X3 that X would eventually have to destroy, is such a person.