Author's note: I'm posting this in place of this week's chapter of my M-rated AU longfic, "Abyssal". "Abyssal" will resume posting next week.
Characters and situations in this story are copyright Capcom.
"...hold on, Zero!"
"You've got it backwards," Zero said. "You have to come with me."
X knew they were making a scene- even more of a scene. It had been bedlam when X had come back, barely alive, from the Eurasia crash site. It had been mourning when X had filed the after-action report that listed Zero as slain. It had been panic, then despair, when the extent of the Eurasia catastrophe began to become clear.
Those had been calm and collected affairs compared to what went down when Zero reappeared alive and well- again!- at Hunter Base.
Zero had gone to medical just long enough to be scanned and confirmed as definitely alive. Immediately thereafter, he'd come looking for X.
"You've got to come with me," Zero said. "There's something I need to show you."
"Like you..." X glanced around. People were staring. He dropped his voice when he answered. "Like you needed me to go back during the last mission?"
X's after-action reports were usually scrupulously clean and meticulously compiled. This particular one was missing a little detail: X and Zero arguing over infection risks and dangers, there in the reality-rent nightmare of the crash zone. They'd come to blows over that issue... which had been a direct contributor to Zero dying a second time.
Now he was alive a third time...
Perhaps it was X's guilt. Perhaps it was the desire to see his friend remembered as a self-sacrificing hero, which he was, rather than as the font of the Maverick virus, which he possibly also was. But Zero just wouldn't stick to the narrative, would he? He'd always been like that.
"Sort of," Zero replied. "That time, I was worried about the risks to you. This time, I'm worried about possible risk to me. That's why I need your help."
"Risk to you?" X said, having trouble believing his ears. Zero's disdain for his own well-being was the stuff of legends.
"Yes," Zero replied. "I know you're surprised that I'm back. This is about that."
X hesitated. It wasn't like he wanted to discourage this, but...
"Can you tell me more?" X asked.
"No," Zero said, before switching over to his radio. "Not here. Not like this. You're the only one I can trust with this."
"Surely you can tell Signas..."
"No!" Zero said. "Only you."
X paused, then, "This is about the virus then, isn't it?"
"Yes."
X really had to think about this. "Talk to me, Zero. Tell me about..."
"I told you, I need us to go there first. We can't discuss it here. People are staring, remember? And they'll crack our comms channels eventually."
X started and looked around. Zero was definitely right about that. "Where are we going?"
"That's part of the problem. I have coordinates, but I'm not one hundred percent sure what I'll find when we get there."
"Going in blind? That doesn't make sense. Have Alia..."
"She's already looked at them, X. All the normal systems show nothing there. Except... I know that's bogus. I know it is. Before you ask, no I can't tell you why... not here."
Even the location was related to the virus, then... "So that's why you need me and only me? Because I'm immune to the virus?"
"Yes."
The virus... the enemy...
"X, if I'm right, we might be able to wipe the virus out. We might finally end this. But I need your help."
That plea was irresistible. "Feed me the coordinates."
X's senses resolved, along with his physical form, in an enclosed metal space shaped like a half-moon. The only light came from X and Zero's running lights. The flat side of the space was a pair of metal doors that met in the middle. None of X's sensors could penetrate to see what was beyond. "Shielded," he said aloud.
"That explains why the teleport coordinates were for here," Zero said. "We wouldn't be able to drop in any closer. Just need to get through these doors..."
X was ready to lift a buster, but Zero was calmly stepping forward. Before X's eyes, a purple aura began to surround his friend.
What... was that?
The scan results caused X's buster arm to instinctively lurch in Zero's direction; X caught it, shoved it down before he drew a bead on his friend. "What is that around you, Zero?" he demanded.
"What do you think?" said Zero, still looking at the door. "What's the very worst thing it could possibly be?"
"Virus," X breathed.
"That's right. Our worst fears confirmed. The virus was inside me all along. I was supposed to command it, and use it as a weapon. It didn't quite work out like that... ah." He waved a purple-sheathed hand. The doors split down the middle and opened for him. There was a corridor beyond, as dark as the one before. Zero stepped into it. X found himself following. His buster was still active.
"You know," Zero said, "the place where I was found? That wasn't my home. That wasn't where I came from. That's where one of me happened to be, and happened to be found."
"One of you?" said X.
"This," Zero said, snapping his fingers, "is home."
The lights came on then. X realized instantly that he wasn't in a corridor. He was in an aisle. To his right and left weren't walls. They were tanks- dozens of individual-sized tanks.
In every tank but two floated Zero.
It was an absurd thing to say when Zero was there in front of him. Yet in each one of these tanks was a robot that looked just like Zero, serenely suspended in yellow fluid. The blonde hair splayed behind, the eyes were closed, the armor was the same... what else could you call these things but Zeroes?
"This is how you were able to keep coming back from the dead?" X asked, mind blown.
"I think so," said Zero. "I don't know if this happened the first time, but... when I was there, in Eurasia, dying, where the virus was so thick, I got some bleed-over in my systems. The parts of me that interact with the virus have been dormant. I didn't know what they were at first, and when I started to suspect I deliberately closed them off. The damage of that battle changed that. So for the first time I was aware of what was happening as I died. The virus... saved me."
"Saved you?" X's understanding reached his face. "Of course- if you were its master, it needed to do what it could to preserve you. So it... what, recorded your "I" through itself, and sent it back here, to be deposited in a new body?"
"And the new body was sent to the approximate location of the old- one-for-one replacement," Zero said. "Because of the bleed-over, I was aware of the virus doing that. I got the coordinates out of it, and a guess of what this place was all about."
"This must be how Sigma keeps coming back," X said. "The virus has absorbed him into itself, so it can recreate his "I" in a new body... wait, so what are we doing here?" X said. "And what does this have to do with destroying the virus? This must be its ground zero- its strongest point!"
"It should be," Zero said. "But it isn't. We know what happens when the virus replicates too much in one place."
"Reality itself changes." Thousands of virus-infected reploids, and the virus-ridden systems of Eurasia, compressed and let wild on the Earth in a single location- that location had become some sort of alternate reality. Twisted beyond recognition by the power of the virus.
This place was nothing like that. "So... the virus is dormant?" X asked.
"Or controlled," Zero replied. "It's not spreading. It's staying confined in the systems of these other Zeroes."
"Either that," X said, "or the other Zeroes are clean." Did one of them move when he said that? No, he'd imagined it. Some of them were bobbing slightly in their tanks, which made little sense, but his eyes weren't wrong about it.
"They're not clean. Every single one of them is infected. Worse than infected. Don't you get it? I am the virus. It's integral to my design. You're powerful, X, because you're a motivated soul with the finest combat hardware and software ever developed and the legacy of the great hero Mega Man pre-installed. I'm powerful because I am the virus. I can do the things I do, things no one else can- not even you- because I'm subconsciously using the virus to hack reality. X, I can jump on air. That's not physically possible, but I do it anyway, because the virus edits physics until it is possible."
"How do you know all of this?" whispered X.
"I don't know it all," Zero admitted. "But I am learning. And this is why I need you." Zero sucked in air for effect, released it. "Why haven't we beaten the virus yet, even when we keep destroying its hosts?"
"It's out there in the wild," X said. "It passes from reploid to reploid... and from you to reploid," X said, forced to acknowledge what his partner was saying.
"Yes and yes," Zero said.
"But we can't spare you," X went on, "because we need all the immune Hunters we can get. You're able to destroy more virus than you spread, which is why the virus hasn't won already, even with it spreading on its own."
"I'm glad you're starting to accept that," Zero said. "But what if we could change the odds a bit? X, why do we need the Maverick Hunters?"
That answer should have been self-evident. "To destroy Mavericks," X said simply.
"Right. But repeat exposure to the virus all but guarantees infection, and turned Maverick Hunters are always the worst Mavericks. Okay, I asked that question wrong. Why do we need other Maverick Hunters?"
"Other? Oh... other than you and me, you mean? Because we can't be everywhere at once. We need help."
Zero nodded. "It's a numbers game, pure and simple. But what if we change the odds in our favor? What if it's you and me... and me... and me?"
X's eyes widened. "You mean... use these other Zeroes as Maverick Hunters?"
"Exactly," Zero said. "Because I don't need a support staff."
X considered that. "Because your self-repair is so good, you mean?"
"Yes. The normal Hunters need a support staff for their care and feeding, for repairs and socialization. I don't, any more than you do. All we need is parts. Not even parts- materials. Our self-repair systems are good enough to do the rest. The reason the Hunters are always getting torn apart is that the field Hunters take the virus home. From there it spreads to the support staff. Then, back out from the support staff to other field Hunters, and from infected field Hunters back out to the wild. Let's change that. If it was just you and the Zeroes, you would call in the help you'd need, and then we'd all return here, to recover on our own. Give me deposits of raw materials and my self-repair- and the virus- would let me survive virtually anything."
"Hold on Zero, this is- if you are the virus, and we wake up more Zeroes- you're talking about dozens of sources of virus! How can we hope to stop its spread then?"
"That's what we're going to find out," Zero said as he knelt. "If the virus is contained in these Zeroes, then that's good. If it's not, but I can control them, that's also good- that will work well enough."
"Control them? How..."
"Through the virus," Zero said impatiently. "I'll imprint myself on these other Zeroes- we know it works because that's how I keep coming back. If I can do that to one Zero, and have it wake up like me, then we know it won't be consciously spreading the virus. That means we can limit it when we go out, and make a new group of Hunters with no vulnerability to inside threats."
"This is crazy, Zero," said X. "Why are you kneeling?"
"Because I'm going to try right now," Zero said, closing his eyes.
"Zero, no!"
"Hush. I need you to help watch my body- and if the imprinting doesn't work, you'll help me put it down. Two against one. We'll win, and we'll know what not to do."
"You're rushing this, Zero," said X. "You need to stop and think..."
"I've thought too much already!" cried Zero, eyes flashing open in anger. "These wars have to stop! We've got to win, and waking up the Zeroes is how to do it!"
"Zero, wait- wait!"
Too late. His friend's eyes were already closed. X saw motion in the corner of his eye. He whirled around, buster up.
One of the Zeroes was looking at him appraisingly. X had the distinct feeling he was being targeted.
"Okay, Zero, you did it," said X without breaking eye contact. The liquid in the Zero's tank was draining away; it was drifting gently towards the floor.
"That's enough. You got one up. Zero?"
There was no answer as the Zero's feet touched the ground. Its gaze was hard. X recognized that- combat mode. It registered him as enemy. Had Zero failed, then?
"Zero, this one's not imprinted, it's looking at me like an enemy..."
The Zero shook its head slightly. Liquid dripped from its ponytail. X let his buster begin to charge. That definitely got the Zero's attention. Its hand went for its saber.
"Zero, stop it! You've got to stop it, Zero!"
The glass front of the tank dropped into the floor. The Zero was unleashed, uncaged. It went for X immediately.
But X had not survived five wars and countless skirmishes by being caught flat-footed. By the time the Zero was fully bent into its lunge, X was already in front of it, inside saber range. He swung his buster arm directly into the Zero's chest and unleashed a fully-charged buster shot with the muzzle of the buster pressed against the Zero's skin. Even Zero's armor couldn't withstand a blast like that. The shot tore through the Zero's far side. It fell, limp, over X's body.
"Argh!" X cried as his hand spasmed. Zero virus, he thought to himself- concentrated virus, directly from Zero, discharging onto his body. It had damaged him before, and this was far more potent. He reverted that buster back to hand; his fingers twitched rapidly. That arm was, for combat purposes, inoperable.
He shucked the corpse off of his body and turned back to his Zero. The Hunter was slumped over on his side. "Zero!" X shouted as he rushed to kneel by his friend. "Wake up! Come on, wake up, Zero. It's all gone wrong, you've got to stop..."
Movement.
X looked to his side. Another one of the Zeroes had opened its eyes. The fluid was draining from its tube. X turned his other arm to buster mode and leveled it at the Zero- and as he did, he saw the Zero next to it start to move.
And the Zero next to it.
And the Zero next to it.
Every Zero in every tank was shaking into wakefulness, and every tank was draining. Dozens of Zeroes were giving X the lethal stare he'd seen his partner give Mavericks moments before their termination.
And X realized what had just happened. When Zero had died before, he'd replicated his personality through the virus. The signal was sent back to this facility, which loaded the data into one- but only one!- new body. But killing a Zero inside the facility? The signal was incredibly strong, and at this range, it had triggered the waking of every Zero all at once.
What data were they imprinted with? Not the whole of Zero's personality, no...
Maybe only the last bit he'd gotten out.
"These wars have to stop! We've got to win, and waking these Zeroes is the way to do it!"
Waking the Zeroes would win the war, alright. But not for X, not for the Hunters, not for humanity. For the virus.
"Zero!" X said, helplessly shaking his friend. "Wake up! Wake up, Zero, you've got to..."
There was nothing for it, tactical warned-no hope of victory. Time to fall back, revive Zero, lick their wounds, and try to muster some sort of resistance, even though that would certainly be impossible, not against this much virus in this many bodies-
The doors shut before X could make a break for it. Purple glowed around the edges of the doors, which flickered as some other space intruded upon them.
His eyes were wide with fear as he turned. The doors to the tanks were coming down. One after the other they stepped into the aisle, dozens of them, each built with all of Zero's strength and power and reality-altering virus ability. The only Zero that wasn't awake was what X would call the real one, the one limp in X's arms.
"Give Zero back!" X spat.
The Zeroes drew their sabers. The air crackled with heat and ozone and virus.
The Zero in his arms looked up at him. Its eyes were the same as those of the other models.
In that moment X saw what had happened. The real Zero had been subsumed by the other Zeros, his mind a candle and theirs a bonfire. His virus was reabsorbed into the whole, and now belonged to those with no friendships, no histories, no heroics... just the virus.
"My name is not Zero," it said. As every other model's voice joined its, X could only quiver in horror.
"My name is Legion, for we are many."
End