Right on schedule, nine days later, I was dismissed from the medical wing. If I could walk, I could work. I returned to the laboratory to begin my work again. Sure enough, the A3 units were showing resistance to their orders. They wanted to obey none of the critical orders we gave them. They instead seemed far more concerned with their own safety, disobeying orders out of fear. The Administration was not pleased. There was no point in selling a soldier if it refused to enter the battlefield. Vulcan, Minerva, and I had gathered in the isolation booth to figure out how to solve the solution, as we had just been given an order: get A3 working by the next set of simulations in twenty days, or scrap them. I spoke up first.

"Vulcan, is there any way we might be able to get them working?"
"We could use the backdoors, but that would let them know about them. Additionally, the end result wouldn't be something they like - it wouldn't be able to think for itself. Sorta defeats the point of an autonomous weapons platform."
"So we need to get back to square one then. Why are they not following orders?"
"That is the million-dollar question. I would tell you if I knew for sure, and I made the damn consciousness of each and every one myself."
"Can they remember things?"

Vulcan and I looked over at Minerva. Her question felt out of place to me, but knowing her, it had to have a purpose.

"Well, yeah, I suppose. It would probably be part of their training map. They learn, so they have to remember things." Vulcan was obviously as confused as I was.
"Why don't we make them remember good things then?" Minerva glanced around the room. "Like that obeying what we say leads to good things?"
"You mean fake their memories?" Vulcan was intrigued by the idea.
"Yeah."
"I guess. Have you tried that yet, Lazarus?"
"Nope." the idea never crossed my mind. I didn't even know that their learning algorithm was that complex. "How would we fake it anyway?"
"Leave that to me. I just need you guys to figure out what they like to do and record it."
"Sure thing, Vulcan!" Minerva was excited at the prospect of her idea helping out, despite the fact that she wasn't really aware of how AI really worked yet. It was all one big black box to her, and all she knew how to do for now was put it into a box that she made and controlled.

A few days later, the memory units of A3 were requested and came back after about two hours. Vulcan had slaved over the false memories to be linked into the existing ones. It wasn't as clean as having them there from the start, but it was going to have to be good enough to satisfy administration. They showed promise - they were obeying our orders. No longer did they refuse to run into battle, instead they seemed eager to go where we lead them. The demonstration would be soon, and hopefully, the trio of IRON, VEGAS, and MESA would pass.

The testing had gone better. IRON was now instead suicidally running into gunfire when not ordered to. This, however, presented a major problem: in the administration's eyes, IRON failing to follow orders meant that there was a good chance that the other units would follow suit. They wanted to see IRON working, or none of the units would pass. We had ten days left and had exhausted all options. We met again in the Isolation booth to figure out what we could salvage from the situation.

"Maybe we could give them more good memories?"
"Minerva, that's not the problem. The problem is that we now have to figure out why they are doing this instead of just mitigating it."
"I mean, we could use the backdoors, Vulcan. Make them do what we need."
"That's out of the question. It would reveal our escape attempt. We aren't going to be able to fix this in ten days. No way in hell."
"So what do we do then?"
More silence.
"We could save them for when we get out. AI tech is worth a lot of money these days." My suggestion was simple, but lacked a critical point - how would we get out of here without A3. Vulcan noticed immediately.
"And what do we do for the machines due for the deadline?"
"Make new ones? Are you crazy?" Minerva agreed.
"They were probably expecting these to fail. That's why they told us to get these working sooner, so that we could work on newer models for the next while. Can you get new AI consciousness made in time?"
"I don't know. Maybe. We would need like twelve, right?"
"Correct."
"With a bit of luck I might be able to."
"Then it's settled. Make backups of A3. We'll carry them on our person. Never put the drive away when we get it. Nobody can know."
Minerva spoke up. "Who gets who? I want IRON."
"You can have IRON, Minerva. Which one do you want, Vulcan?"
"I'm not picky."
"VEGAS it is then. I'll keep MESA. Start working on those units right now. We have no time to lose. I'll inform Administration that we're scrapping A3 early."
"You sure? They won't be happy."
"I'll handle it."

About thirty days later, after Vulcan was done constantly slaving over his work, the twelve AI were ready. We started with the first three, ALPHA, BRAVO, and JOHN. ALPHA was quickly outfitted with and old - but still functional - PSG-1 rifle, and was made to be a long distance sniper, given a hand that had a dedicated lever for shooting that didn't move the gun when you fired, purpose built for accuracy. BRAVO was put into an extensively modified chassis that utilized a flamethrower, however, he was designed to work well with most heavy weapons. JOHN was set up as a scout unit, having an additional sensor suite and an AR-10 that I had helped to hot-rod a bit into quite the precise shooter. Chrome lined barrel and everything. My years as working to arm the older Archaea walkers with four inch cannons gave me a deep love for guns, along for a sharp eye for good ones. I was getting six inch groups at three hundred yards. JOHN could probably get better groups than that, given he had similar programing to ALPHA. I was proud of that gun, and even prouder to give it to him. I had also requested that JOHN be given higher parameters for leadership and

We still had more work to do. SIM, AND, ZEB, PHIL, NATHAN, TOM, MATT, JDE, ZEAL, and JUDAS still needed to be done and we only had little more than forty days to finish them. The next few weeks were going to be a race to the finish. Each one would take around 3-5 days to complete the process. SIM, AND, ZEB, and PHIL were quickly turned into standard run of the mill soldiers, equipped with FN FNCs. NATHAN was set up as a heavy weapons platform geared for machine gun use, similar to BRAVO's, but with a focus on speed versus being able to carry massive weapons. TOM and MATT were set up as close quarters combat troops, being given in-house made PDWs made from extensively modified Steyr AUGs, designed to shoot 300 blackout from a suppressor, making them nearly dead silent. JDE and ZEAL had been set up as breacher units, being given more armor and shotguns built into their forearms. They had been given modified AUGs as well. JUDAS was something never really tried - an electronics countermeasures unit. He could jam every radio transmission in an area while keeping his squadmates channels free with frequency hopping. It was quite the achievement.

The last few weeks had been pure chaos. We had managed to somehow get all thirteen working just before the holiday started. The Administration hadn't confirmed if any of A4 were going to be placed on post, of course, but what little footage Vulcan could scrounge up showed that at least ALPHA, BRAVO, and JOHN were serving as guard units along the tunnel areas. Far more than enough to work with. I went to bed that night, knowing that I would wake up in the middle of a new kind of storm, one where I would have to begin the process of preparing for the escape. I had ten days until I died.

Today, the situation had changed. Minerva had come running down the hall with a fervent look in her eyes. She dragged me and Vulcan into her laboratory, and closed the isolation booth door frantically.

"Someone found out."
"You have to be shitting me." Vulcan was aghast at this new information.
"I'm not joking. Eris came and told me. She wants in."
"What did you tell her?"
"I said 'I don't know what you're talking about.' and walked off, then went to find you guys right after. You think she's telling the truth?"
"Truth or not, how can we trust her?"
Vulcan began fidgeting at my point.
"I guarantee that working with her is bad news. We can't afford to bring another on."
"That's not the point Lazarus. The point is that someone else somehow knows."
Oh god. He was right. Perhaps even Administration knew.
"So what do we do Vulcan?" Minerva was the most worried I had seen her since my time in the medical center. "Do we postpone it, stop it, go through with it…"
"We can't drop the plan. If we were to give up entirely, our backdoors would eventually be found out and we would be screwed."
"But what if they expect us coming? What if they trap us?"

Vulcan sat there while me and Minerva quarreled over the information. He looked away from both of us, thinking about what to do.
"We can't waste all the energy we've put into our plans! A delay now would mean the process of putting everything in place would start all over again!"
"We certainly can't risk walking into a trap!"

Vulcan looked up.
"That's fair Minerva, but none of have any more time we can lose. We've put off this plan for far too long as it is. If I hadn't broken my leg, we would have left without Lazarus long ago."
"What?"
"He never told you? Vulcan, you Asshole! Why didn't you tell him!"

Vulcan stumbled as he tried to stand up using his cane. He did everything he could to look away from me. Slowly, he got to his feet.
"I…"
His eyes look to me and then darted away.
"I don't trust you."

"Clearly not." I was furious. Why had he kept this from me?

"I never wanted to involve you with any of this. I thought you would tell someone about our plans, and clearly I was right. You had to have been the person that told Eris." He clutched the notebook that he kept close to him at all times, and inhaled deeply. "I didn't do it, and clearly Minerva had nothing to do with it. As far as I'm concerned, you're the suspect, and you need to explain why the hell you told Eris about this."

Was he joking? I couldn't tell at this point. It felt like he was serious, but there was no way that Vulcan actually was nuts enough to believe something like that, right? I didn't even know Eris. We had dorms next to each other, yes, but our labs were in opposite directions. We hardly ever saw each other, much less talked.

"Explain yourself, Lazarus."
"You're out of your fucking mind. I've got a good idea to up and leave this plan entirely."
"You won't."
"Fucking watch me Vulcan. Because the second I leave, this all comes crumbling down."
"I…"
"What? You expected me to take that kind of an accusation lightly? Do you really know what you just said? It's bullshit and you know it, so you better not have meant it."

Vulcan was silent. He gripped his notebook even tighter.
"I… I'm sorry. I was clearly mistaken. It doesn't change anything though."
Well what I learned about him sure as hell changed something. I was furious.
"We start two days before the holiday is over. No sooner, no later." I stated as I stood up.

I walked out to let Minerva and Vulcan fight about him keeping this secret. I hope she tore him to shreds about all of this.