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The Essential Laws of Human Robotics
Part Four
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Fred
Mario's Pizza and Arcade is lamentably short on the "arcade" bit, at least in Fred's mind. A couple of old-school gaming stations are wedged into a tiny room in the back: an old hologram dance machine, a set of virtual hovercar racing sims, and some ridiculously retro pinball machines which are basically the only reason the arcade is worth a visit. If it weren't for how close the place is to SFIT's campus—close enough to cultivate a college-y hipster vibe that appeals to university students—it might not have survived the two decades it now counts under its belt.
But there's one other thing the place has going for it, and that's the pizza. Fred's pretty sure it's the combo of the classic wood-fired ovens and the fact that they drop some serious cheese bombs onto their homemade dough. The resulting gooey masterpiece is enough to feature in any kid's midnight-snack-dreams, especially a kid with as little parental intervention in his dietary decisions as Fred. He's been coming here at least once a week since he was ten years old and Heathcliff started trusting him enough to make the trip here on his own (though not without being discreetly tailed by the family limo driver the first few times). He knows the guys who work here, has watched them come and go, and they're cool enough to let him hog a whole table in the back while he works on his thesis or, more recently, tweaks his applications for every Master's in English program on the west coast.
So it probably surprises exactly no one when Fred gathered them all from their separate abodes to herd them there earlier this morning. He doesn't mention that they probably just need a place to talk things over and cool down, to think through the events of the past day or so.
Tony Stark, genius that he is, did it with shawarma. Fred's more of a pizza guy himself.
None of his efforts keep Gogo and Wasabi from arguing about every little detail of everything ever, but there's not much he can do about that. In private, Fred thinks of himself as the group's neutral party, the buffer. It's an important job, not one he takes lightly—sort of a slightly less badass but still nonetheless pacifistic version of Storm from the X-Men (if you want to believe that). There's always the one neutral party who cools everyone down. Once upon a time, of course, there were two—Tadashi used to help. Sure, he'd occasionally get into small spats with Wasabi, whom he'd known the longest, but they were more like sibling rivalries than anything else.
Still, Fred's not sure even Tadashi could have helped rein in the stony glares Wasabi and Gogo keep passing back and forth.
It's been happening the whole time, starting from when they argued over pizza toppings like old men arguing politics and continuing 'till now, when they argue over the Master Plan (TM). Again.
"C'mon, we're all on the same page," Fred tells them. His timing isn't the best, because he's just taken a bite of the steaming hot pie, and the cheese boils across his tongue. At his side, Hiro snickers as he fans his face. Fred kicks his foot under the table. Wasabi and Gogo are pointedly not looking at each other. "And also on the same team, which you might have forgotten."
"I'm just saying that you two are not going together when we split up tonight," Wasabi says, gesturing to Hiro and Gogo. Hiro doesn't seem to mind, hasn't objected the three other times Wasabi's brought this up, but the words kick Gogo back into gear.
"Why the hell not? We work well together—"
"I'd just rather you were separate. Between the two of you, bad ideas amplify like constructive interference."
Gogo grits her teeth. "You're not actually our leader, you know."
"Gogo," Honey Lemon starts, glancing at Wasabi, but Gogo waves her arm in a dismissive gesture.
"He's probably right," Hiro begins before she can continue.
Gogo groans. "Not you too—"
"Hiro's a sneak," Fred says. It's enough of a non sequitur that it shuts them all up, and they turn to stare. "He's the quietest out of all of us. Scares the heck out of me all the time, just popping up behind me out of the blue when I'm working. If we need someone to grab the docs and go, he's our guy."
"Not like scaring you's that hard to do," Hiro retorts, but he looks pleased. Since he's trying to be diplomatic, Fred doesn't mention the other reason he wants Hiro to do the grab-and-go part: the person ransacking the documents will be out of harm's way, or at least as far from it as they can manage.
Gogo stares at Fred for a beat, then shrugs. "Yeah, guess that makes sense. But he'll need backup—"
"Do you need to go with Hiro for some reason, or are you just trying to fight with me?" Wasabi asks, exasperated. The stubborn look on Gogo's face says it all.
Fred jumps in. "Baymax'll be with him for obvious reasons. They can take care of themselves," he adds casually, slinging an arm across Hiro's shoulders.
Gogo grumbles something under her breath, but Fred can't make it out.
"Anyway," Honey Lemon says, turning to Hiro. "If we're going to get all this out in the open, we're going to need some serious evidence. Medical paperwork, lab reports—anything to do with the mind transfer process, and especially anything you can find where the average person would freak out once we go public with it."
"And the rest of us can look for anything while we're 'saving the day' from Technotage," Fred adds, taking a slice of pizza. The cheese trails as he pulls it away from the tray, and Gogo swipes one ribbon of it before he can get it onto his plate.
"Sure," she retorts sarcastically, twisting her mouth around the hot cheese. "With all the extra time we'll have in between dodging their explosions of doom."
"Hey, some of us can multitask." Fred grins at her cheekily, mostly to distract from the strangled sound Wasabi makes as he slouches against the back of his seat.
"Please no one say the word explosions in front of Wasabi," Gogo says in a stage whisper. "It hurts his little heart."
Wasabi looks away before Gogo can see the irritation in his expression, before she knows she's won. Hiro and Honey Lemon take a sudden interest in their food, Hiro scarfing his down as Honey Lemon delicately picks the peppers off of her slice.
This is gonna be a fun time, Fred thinks to himself, just as Gogo starts on the subject of whose turn it is to pay the bill this time to pull Wasabi into another argument. The worst fireworks aren't going to be the literal ones.
.
"Sooooo...We're gonna die in the literal fires of hell," Gogo complains.
A ghoulish red light has engulfed one of the outbuildings of Krei lab, a flicker of orange glowing from within. The light makes the structure's windows look eerily like eyes, at least when Fred's vision isn't partially obscured by a thick veil of ashes. Up above, the evening sky is so dark that it's hard to tell where the smoke ends and the clouds begin.
"No one's dying, don't be dramatic," Wasabi grumbles. They sit crouching on the landscaped grass that slopes toward the string of pavement and cement structures, half-hidden behind a trio of perfectly cubic bushes. The ashes swirl and settle around them, and Wasabi shifts uneasily in place. "We're not even getting that close."
"And it's not literal," Fred grunts under his breath.
"At least it's slightly more controlled than the last time I was in this hellhole," Gogo mutters, wiping sweat from her neck.
"Yeah, let's not repeat that one," Wasabi says, clearing his throat as a breath of hot, dry air sweeps ashes into their faces. "Alright. Time to go in?"
Fred blinks furiously. Cinders cling to his eyelashes, but he's not about to swipe them away with the claws of his outfit. "Sure, leave it to me. We can have some flamethrower on flame action."
"Or I can go in first and clear the way," Honey Lemon says, gently nudging Fred aside. In one hand is a light blue globe; the other clutches her purse.
"Or that."
Gogo jerks her head in the direction of the lab proper. "Looks like Krei's people coming to check it out. I'll roll around the place and do a sweep to make sure we're clear, but you guys should hold 'em off."
By some small miracle, Wasabi has no argument. Honey Lemon is off before he could have made one anyway, lean limbs springing forward. After a beat, Gogo slips after her, clambering down the grass and rolling onto the pavement below. She sweeps effortlessly toward the flames like a dart, the orange glow casting long shadows at her back. For a moment, she and Gogo are the only things moving, insects dancing near candlelight, until Honey Lemon's ice bombs destroy the illusion, crackling across the worst of the fire as the flames sputter and hiss.
Figures move out of the corner of Fred's eye, just as Gogo had mentioned. "Lab peeps at ten o'clock," Fred warns. Wasabi has already started forward, and Fred trails behind. "This is a good time for the theme song, yeah?"
"It's real life, Fred. There's never a good time for a theme song," Wasabi retorts without looking back. He sounds amused anyway.
"Everyone loves theme songs! Gotta give the people what they want. Hey, people," he calls out as they approach the lab workers, a trio smothered in ash and soot. "Hey, we're helping with—" He stops short. They aren't people. It had taken a moment, considering their pale and humanoid faces, streaked with ash and soot and still somehow flawless, to realize that their bodies are bare. Naked, or they would be if they were human. Instead, a clear torso reveals wires and circuitry where organs should have been.
Where organs had been. These robots were once people, only now they'd...well, died, in a way. Their consciousness and memories destroyed to implant efficient processors into these things.
"You guys are even more terrifying than what I got from the descriptions," Fred blurts. Wasabi must be taken aback as well, because he doesn't even roll his eyes at the rudeness.
"You're trespassing," one of them says pointedly.
Fred cringes, not because of the words but because he half-expected—or maybe half-hoped—they were only statues. Weren't the robots forbidden from coming outside, according to Hiro and Gogo?
"Not trespassing," Wasabi croaks. He clears his throat. "Or—yes, we are, but in a case where trespassing may save a life or property—"
"You're Big Hero 6," another says, facing away from them. It looks to the fire, dark eyes glittering in the lingering red glow. Fred follows its gaze. The fire is mostly gone, with nearby swaths of ice glinting in the last glowing patches. Honey Lemon prances around one corner, swiveling on her toes to swing another ball through an open window. Gogo hangs back, arms folded as she looks on. Even from afar, her expression looks grimly satisfied.
"That's us," Fred says lamely, pulling his hands up for floppy jazz hands. Or claws.
"Heard you were going to be keeping an eye out, according to Alistair Krei," the first says. "Awful fast for a patrol, though. You must have been real close by." Somehow, its plastic expression turns shrewd.
In fact, they'd been on the premises when Fujita's people had set the explosives and fled. Not that the robot could have known. Not that anyone could have known. None of them had counted on anyone being around fast enough to notice how quickly their team was responding to the explosives.
Maybe it's the darkness from the dimming flames, or maybe it's the humanoid faces—weirdly hard to read, in a way—but Fred thinks they seem more wary than he'd have expected from robots. Baymax is the only robot Fred's ever really gotten to know, and unless Baymax knows for a fact that your statement is incorrect, he can't usually tell if you're lying. Maybe these robots, with whatever Krei has done to them, can detect lies more efficiently, catch the awkward pauses and microexpressions that give it away.
"You knowwww," Fred begins thoughtfully, drawing out the sound, because maybe the best way to mask their lies is by making all of the conversation sound awkward. Awkward is something Fred is good at. "You know, there's seriously no telling what other stuff could be going on around here. I mean look at this—random fire...thing. So maybe it would be cool, since we're out here on patrol anyway, to do a perimeter check. All of us. Together. More eyes, right?"
Wasabi is looking at Fred as if he's grown another head, which isn't that far off from how most people normally look at him. Fred tries to communicate through a mild, open expression that everything is fine. It doesn't seem to work.
"That's our job at the moment," one of the robots volunteers. "We're on an external patrol."
"There aren't six of you," another observes, maybe the one who'd noted that they were Big Hero 6.
"Ah, no," Wasabi says. He frowns, eyes flitting back to Gogo and Honey Lemon, who have wrapped the outbuilding in a shimmering layer of frost, which steams faintly in the night. The girls are walking this way. "We're—the others are—"
"On patrol!" Fred interjects. "Either checking the perimeter, or maybe they headed into the woods a little, or even just down the road." Everyone stares at Fred, the robots with mild annoyance, Wasabi in resignation, and Honey Lemon and Gogo, approaching the conversation slowly, with bemusement. "Really. All of you should go check them out. Bet they wouldn't be gone this long unless they found something."
"Who?" Honey Lemon asks, frowning at the strange robots.
"The other two members of Big Hero 6," Fred replies pointedly, wiggling his eyebrows a little. Fortunately, Honey Lemon is obviously much better with Fred's brand of silent communication, because she gets the idea at once, nodding grimly. "They're probably around," Fred continues. "Definitely out here somewhere. So off with you now." He steps back, giving a sharp wave of one claw.
"Where are you going?" one of the robots interjects.
"Check the car. I mean, you really never know—just in case. There's no telling what's going on around here."
"Your car?" another robot asks skeptically.
"How'd you think we got here?" Fred asks, laughing as he turns his back on them all.
The funny thing is that we did come by car, Fred thinks as he ignores the murmur of confused conversation behind him, trudging in the direction from which they'd come. Wasabi had insisted that they travel here together, and it wasn't like they exactly had options for transportation that didn't involve a public bus, like those were going to come this far out. And traveling via the family limo in superhero outfits was so lame it was completely out of the question.
Just for show, Fred takes a few minutes to tromp across the lawn and toward the treeline, getting partway to where Wasabi's car is parked in the front parking lot (why bother being secret if they were supposed to be patrolling, after all). When he turns to find that the others have gone, probably having rounded the corner of the building for their perimeter check, he doubles back toward the labs.
The doors are locked, of course, especially at this hour. But this is the way Hiro had come earlier, breaking in using the code Fujita had passed along. Fred doesn't have the brains of Hiro when it comes to actually hacking electronics, but his mind's a steel trap (sometimes), and he can remember the passcode Hiro mentioned to unlock the door well enough.
This whole thing would be easier if we could just radio each other like normal, Fred thinks as he steps across the threshold and into the building. It feels weirdly spooky being so detached from the others, unable to either call for help or hear their positions. (Or, more likely, make stupid jokes over their private channel.) It doesn't help that the rooms he passes are wide and sterile, lights dimmed as they might be during the sleeping leg of an overseas flight, open and abandoned when there are desks and chairs and tables to be filled.
Fred has a general idea of where Hiro might be, only because they'd all studied the blueprint to understand the most likely places where the team might find the kinds of documentation they needed. He sets off through the maze of silent laboratories, turning about at dead ends and wondering if he's doomed to wander this place forever like the mythical wandering Jew. He doubles back in an empty hall, rounding a corner, when he thinks he hears something. A shout.
As he gets closer, the corridor opens up into a larger lab space with clusters of tables and shelves scattered throughout, machines and monitors linked by glittering circuitry and cords. He can hear movement on the other end beyond the shelving, banging and muttering. He hurries over (more slowly than he would have liked given his bulky costume) and pushes a wheeled whiteboard out of his path.
Hiro jumps as Fred appears, and then relief crosses his face. "Thought you were another one," he mutters, grabbing Fred's upper arm and pulling him around to face the way he'd come. "Come on!"
Fred opens his mouth to protest as Hiro starts dragging him off, but he's interrupted by a booming thud that seems to resonate in the empty space. Through the nearby lab door, a robot peers through the window, irate.
"That door won't hold," Hiro calls to Baymax, stopping to peer around the shelves. The robot is pushing a heavy metal table to join a set of chairs that currently blocks the threshold. "Or else they'll just find another way."
Baymax obediently waddle-runs behind them, and Hiro pushes Fred forward. Fred's mind rattles to take all of this in. "Did you get the stuff?"
"Couldn't," Hiro replies shortly. "They found us too fast—and I guess they realized we weren't supposed to be there, 'cause they started attacking."
"Attacking?"
"Yeah, color me surprised too." Hiro has darted toward the open doorway faster than Fred can keep up, one of the benefits of wearing light armor.
"C'mon, Baymax, buddy," Fred grumbles as his spiked tail catches on something. "Hey, Hiro," he yanking it free. "Can we actually get out this way?"
"It's the way we came in, isn't it?" Hiro's voice echoes from the corridor.
"Yeah, but I mean do you know the way out."
"Uhhhh…" When Fred rounds the corner, Hiro is standing at a T junction, peering one way and then the other. "No. But we need to move before they get through that door."
"Righto," Fred replies. "This way."
The direction he picks is random, but Hiro follows alongside him anyway, and the squeak of Baymax's latex isn't far behind. The corridor isn't totally dark, but with only the emergency lights on, it's eerie. As they race onward, Fred finds himself imagining the plot points of every horror movie ever—flashlights skipping across shadowed walls as the heroes run, potential jump-scares at every fork in the hall. For about twenty seconds, they're on their way to an actual racing-through-labyrinths sort of action scene, and then a door opens right in front of Fred's face too fast for him to stop.
"Son of a Scarlet Witch," he cries, cradling his nose in his claws and lying on the cold floor. "What—"
Above him looms a ghost face, menacing and pale in the light from the doorway. Two more robots join the first as Hiro grabs Fred by the shoulder to pull him to his feet.
"Heyyy, we were just—"
"You're coming with us."
One of the robots reaches out to grab Hiro's forearm, but Hiro darts back. He and Fred turn to run, making it a few paces forward until something pulls at the back of Fred's armor and he lurches forward in the suit. Ahead of him, Hiro cries out, stopping short to get back to Fred. A robot appears to one side of Fred, and before he can fully face it, Baymax uses one rubbery arm to block a punch that would have landed on Fred's stomach.
"Get off of him," Hiro shouts, lunging back before Fred can say something properly heroic like go on, leave me behind.
Something hits the back of his head and Fred is lost in the scramble for a few moments. Distantly, Hiro cries out in pain, and Fred swipes one of his massive claws at the robot who'd done it; using his flamethrower in the close quarters of the darkened corridor, though awesome, is way too risky. The robots match them blow for blow, Fred and Baymax covering Hiro as much as possible. (No, who's he kidding? If it weren't for Baymax's armored strikes, they'd be a lot worse off.) But the enemy has backup: adding to their original numbers, robot after robot piles into the hallway, packing in as tightly as a rush hour subway crowd. And the space isn't narrow enough to keep them from being surrounded—one minute, Fred turns his head to see the path to their escape, and in the next minute, after wrestling a robot from his back and finding Hiro kicking one onto the floor, their window of opportunity is barricaded by more of the eerily calm robots.
With his huge bulk, Baymax sweeps a pair of them aside, but there are too many. Fred's arms are pinned behind his back, the hood of his costume sliding off his head and a sour tang of blood in his mouth. Hiro is somewhere beside him, pressed against the wall hard enough to make him groan.
"We have the other two," one of the robots says to Baymax, backing away from an armored fist. "Come quietly and we won't hurt them."
But then Fred sees the light. Literally. Over the sea of robot heads and farther down the darkened hall is a bluish glow, an orb that seems to levitate in the air until it comes close enough for Fred to make out Honey Lemon, one of her chemical balls held high in the air. Gogo and Wasabi are behind her, armor glinting as they rush in, and then it's a flat-out war.
Fred does a lot of damage, he thinks—it's hard to tell in the blur of punches and kicks—but his blood is rushing in his ears and everything feels so real, so definite. It's the adrenaline, he realizes, taking another punch to the gut. He can barely feel anything at all, just focusing on target after target after target, until it creeps up on him. Washes of pain, bruises under unyielding steel fists, one arm yanked behind him.
He catches glimpses of the others, just brief flashes. Nearby, Honey Lemon is dragged by her rope of blonde hair, arm swinging around to fuse one of her globes to a robot's ankle. A minute later, there's the glow of Wasabi's plasma blades against his cracked eyeshield, three or four robots clambering onto his back to press him to the ground. Gogo skates past almost too quickly to see, but she spits blood onto the lab floor beside him as she passes. Baymax is pulling one of the robots off of Hiro, one massive fist swinging down onto its head. It's all too much, and in between dodging Fred has a moment to think they're in way over their heads, more than they've ever been before.
Then, it stops all at once. Quiets all at once.
Fred looks around, ears ringing and nearly dizzy with the sudden stop. Someone must have shouted a command. Gogo and Wasabi and the others continue to struggle, almost comically, against the hold of the robots, all of whom have suddenly stilled. Their positions are odd—paused in mid-stride, or metallic arms pulled back for another blow, all of their heads turned in the direction of the door at the far end of the hallway. It's almost like the ending of some impromptu game of freeze tag—with Krei as the last one standing. The CEO strides down the hallway toward them, his face contorted out of its normal benign humor and into something darker.
"Do you have any idea what you might have done?" he asks coldly, and his voice is easily audible in the quiet, even bookended by a few dozen robots. It's hard to tell who he's addressing. "Do you have any idea how much work we've put into this project, and all of you are fighting each other like—" He cuts himself off, taking a long breath. It seems to calm him, because he slowly draws himself to full height, eyes wandering around the room. "You were asked to patrol, but trespassing without reason isn't a patrol."
"We had reason," Gogo retorts, frowning. There's blood at the corner of her mouth. One of the robots holds her left arm in a vice grip above her head, but she's stopped struggling, only pressing her free hand defiantly against its chest. "There were explosions, and a fire—"
"All outside. No reason for you to come in," one of the robots retorts. It holds Hiro in a headlock and shakes him a little. "But we found this one at one of the computers."
Krei turns to Hiro, eyebrows raised. "Looking for anything in particular?"
Hiro's a terrible liar. His eyes, one already pillowed in a blue bruise, grow wide. "Uh…"
"Right," Krei says after a moment. "What do you know?"
"Everything," Gogo spits, "and we have proof of it—it's all with Technotage, they're going to be—"
"We don't have anything," Wasabi is saying frantically. "Actually—"
"You have nothing," Krei says coldly. "And no one will believe you."
Honey Lemon begins to protest as Fred's head swims. The robot gripping his arm is bearing most of his weight now.
"Take them to lab 5C and seal the doors," Krei says, ignoring the rest of them. "I'll figure out what to do with them later."
"That makes no sense."
Fred shakes himself out of it at this, only because the preposterous statement comes from the one of the robots. It—her? the voice sounds vaguely feminine—stares pointedly at Krei. "Keeping them alive at this point is more trouble than it's worth. If you take care of them now, the rest of the work is over. There's no need for guarding them, buying their silence after their release, or monitoring them afterwards."
She says this so coolly, like it's just a business decision and not six lives at stake. Krei is staring at her like an insect underfoot. "We will place them in 5C. No one dies until that decision has been made. For the time being, we operate as though the legal department will nail them with something that will make them look crazy enough not to be believed. If and when that isn't the case, it's my say."
The robot nods her head slowly, looking unconvinced. All of the others still have their eyes fixed upon Krei with the same cool, considering gaze.
Maybe that's the real difference, he thinks as the robots move to obey, pressing in on all sides. They strategically pin Wasabi's and Honey Lemon's arms so they have no access to their fighting strengths. Gogo is practically being carried, and with Hiro in an awkward headlock, Baymax moves along as quietly as expected, minus the occasional directive about keeping his charge's airflow clear. The difference between Baymax and a robot with human flexibility is that these guys might have enough human in them to reconsider the rules if it suits them—which is obviously a terrible idea. One of the robots elbows him in the gut when he stumbles, but he picks himself up. Krei meant to create an army of robots to order around, but instead he accidentally made an army with its own opinions about how to handle stuff. Which is maybe fine.
As long as they don't think it's more logical to kill us off.
.
It figures that the first time all night that Fred's had enough space to use his flamethrower is when there's no danger at all and they literally just need the heat.
"Kind of a shame about the computers, though," Wasabi says lamely. He moves a little closer to the flames, where a couple of state-of-the-art consoles lay smouldering in a blackened pile.
Fred guesses that short of some kind of jail or holding cell, Lab 5C was chosen as their prison because it must be the room with the least expensive equipment on the premises. Krei had rightly feared damage to his equipment, and he'd only given them access to two neat rows of desktop computers that are probably used for lighter work over serious experimentation. The real downside is that computer labs have to stay cool, and this one is freezing, either by design or because the stupid robots are using this as some kind of petty revenge.
None of their usual tricks seem to be effective in the room: Fred's flamethrower has no effect on the steel doors, nor do Wasabi's plasma blades. Honey Lemon's chem-balls might have helped if she hadn't used her new acid ones up earlier, and the foaming, ice, and smokescreen options don't seem particularly useful now.
"Who gives a crap about the freaking computers? Krei can eat me," Gogo says with a scowl. Her chattering teeth take some of the bite out of the statement.
"Burning plastics often release highly toxic chemicals called dioxins," Baymax notes. After proclaiming that there's not much he can do for the rest of them without additional tools, he is bent over Honey Lemon to apply some sort of mist to a swath of shallow cuts on the side of her neck. "They are persistent carcinogens, and their consumption should be limited."
"We know, big guy," Hiro says tiredly. "It's just until we figure out what to do next."
"We can't stay here too long. It's freezing," Honey Lemon says. She presses her arms, covered only in thin spandex, tightly against her stomach.
The rest of them face the fire, but Wasabi is still peering around the room as though an exit might abruptly spring into existence. The light glints against his visor as he scans the far wall. "No one's got a signal from Abigail or Fujita?"
"Nothing since we were outside."
"Maybe they'll explode their way in?"
"Fat chance they'll actually help us at this point," Wasabi says, still staring away. "They just needed a set of suckers willing to give it a shot. Now we get to take the fall for them. Smart move."
"Hey, it's not like that," Hiro retorts, turning to face Wasabi.
"Well, what is it like? Do you know? Because from what I've seen, you guys have known them for point two seconds, same as the rest of us."
Fred's head throbs. He doesn't really want to deal with this right now, but the last thing they need is to be fighting at this point. "Whoa, now, Wasabi—"
"I don't think it's intentional is all," Hiro says placatingly. "Not like it helps them to abandon us or something."
"Still, they could be a little more aggressive with a rescue here," Gogo grumbles. "Seriously, if it's their fault we end up sleeping in this icebox—"
"Their fault nothing," Wasabi retorts irritably. "You guys were the ones who got us into this." He doesn't clarify who. Hiro looks wounded as Fred cringes, and to Wasabi's credit, he instantly shuts up, a regretful look on his face. It doesn't stop Gogo from looking over at him with a scowl.
"Are you serious?" she asks. "You're really throwing blame at us now?" Wasabi opens his mouth to interrupt, but Gogo continues. "So we went on patrol without you. We're goddamn sorry. We went over that part, and the punishment was practically hacking out our lungs. And I apologized. So freaking drop it, okay?
"Can we just not?" Honey Lemon asks. She looks as tired as Fred feels.
Wasabi grumbles. Hiro and Gogo exchange a meaningful glance. "You're gonna do that guilt thing, aren't you?" Hiro asks.
"I don't do a guilt thing."
"Look. Guys. Let's focus on what we can actually do right now. Like getting out of here? Remember that?" Fred interjects.
Gogo doesn't even look at him. "Okay, that's really stupid. Because you're such a hypocrite. For real." Her expression is suddenly less resigned, more fierce. Her back is straight, tensed for a fight. Fred and Honey Lemon, sensing the danger, lean in to try and deflect whatever's going to happen, but Gogo's furious gaze rounds on them as well. "Fuck! No. No, you all are. You, too."
Flabbergasted, Fred opens his mouth to speak but can't get a word in edgewise.
"All of you are always laying down rules and trying to take the higher ground to preach about teamwork, and it's like Hiro and I are rebellious children that need to learn the rules of freaking life, like we need to include you in everything we do for approval like we're actually a functioning team, but we're not. This isn't a democracy. The lines of communication go down from Wasabi to you two and then just cut off, and Hiro and I are just supposed to blindly be ok with whatever you decide? Nuh uh. And on top of it, you—" Gogo cuts herself off, frustrated.
Fred feels uneasy.
"The hell are you talking about?" Wasabi asks uncertainly.
Strangely enough, now that Gogo has said this much, her righteous indignation leaves her deflated all at once. Her back hunches as if she's going to curl in on herself, and she glares down at the floor. It's Hiro who finally picks up where she left off. "She's talking about you. Leaving. All of you," he says quietly. "Grad school. And Fred's internship starts in June, just a couple weeks." The room goes silent except the sound of Fred's heart drumming in his ears. "We know. I mean you guys knew for months, and we're just like, waiting for you to clue us in and you never do…and when we started asking pointed questions about what your plans were all of you lied and acted like everything was staying the same. It's just…" at this, he too breaks off with a frustrated grunt.
Fred looks at Wasabi, then at Honey Lemon. Sees his own surprise mirrored back on their faces. Idiotically, for just a few seconds, Fred's half crushed and half irritated. Leaving has been this private thing for so long—not that he's trying to run away from this, from his friends, but it's been his secret to clutch at, to hide and worry over. All along, he's felt this weird rush of fear from being in this all alone, taking the time to make sure of his decision, feeling how it fits on him like trying on new clothes, before he feels comfortable telling the group.
It's a scary thing, but one of the rewards has always been this conversation, his chance to pull back the curtain, to talk about his decision—and now, not only is this moment shared, but it's all spilled out in a way he can't control.
But the next thought that hits is I'm not alone in this. Not that they're all in it together, exactly—in fact, they'll be going their separate ways—but it won't be just him pulling away, him reshaping the dynamic of the group, his fault alone. Wasabi and Honey Lemon are now just as much to blame, and somehow that feels less frightening.
"How'd you know?" Wasabi asks stupidly.
Gogo shrugs in an attempt at nonchalance, but her fists are still clenched. "I mean, you guys have been sneaking around since the fall getting all your crap together, you didn't think we'd wonder? You guys are such hypocrites—"
"Also, I dug into student records," Hiro adds, glancing at Gogo, who nods.
After a moment, Honey Lemon bites her lip. "Fred, you're leaving for an internship?"
"Yeah, I...I didn't know you were going to grad school," Fred tells her defensively, and then he stops himself. "I- Sorry, guys. I'm still figuring out this whole thing, and it just felt weird, so..."
"Where are you going?" Her voice is calm, but she wrings her hands in her lap.
"I...you guys know I wanna get my MFA one day. But when you apply, it pays to have actual life experience outside of school, you know? Stuff you can write about that matters. And...well, I can't exactly write about secret patrols and stuff, so I might as well have no life experience." he adds wryly. "I'm gonna intern with this startup based out of East Fujian. They're creating this app to encourage independent graphic novel writers, and it's...you know. Kind of me."
"I didn't know," Wasabi says gravely. "We didn't know. Why didn't you say something?"
He doesn't say it in a challenging way. His voice is somber. But Fred still bounces the question back to him. "Why didn't you?"
Wasabi looks away. "I didn't want it to be a big thing."
"Well, now it's a big thing," Gogo bites out.
"You didn't tell each other?" Hiro asks. "We thought you guys were just, like, communicating with each other the whole time."
"Wasabi and I talked," Honey Lemon admits. "But I didn't know about Fred." She glances at Wasabi, who shakes his head. Fred feels a little torn, halfway between the betrayal of Hiro and Gogo and the guilt of Honey Lemon and Wasabi.
Hiro stands, ignoring the eyes that fall upon him, and starts walking restlessly back and forth across the aisle in front of them.
"It's not…like it's the end of the world." Wasabi says quietly, watching Hiro pace. "Nothing's going to change."
"Everything's going to change, you asshole," Gogo says lowly. "You're leaving. There's no—no stupid briefings after patrols, or Fred making everyone compare five different pretzel places, or studying for finals in the lab at two a.m. Soon, you guys are literally going to be scattered around the world. And you've been hiding this since—I mean, you don't just pack your shit and decide to go to grad school one day. You have to apply like a decade in advance, so you knew and just kept us in the dark, even after it was a sure thing. And—maybe this sounds stupid or like I'm blowing it out of proportion, but it's just a big freaking decision for you to—" Again, she stops. Turns away. Fred wonders if she's tearing up, but Gogo doesn't do that. "So don't baby us. If that's how it's gonna be, I'd almost rather you cut and run."
"You don't mean that."
"Maybe I do."
Honey Lemon leans forward a little, maybe to try and catch Gogo's eye. "This is why you guys have been so mad? And not talking to us?"
Gogo shrugs. "It started out easy, like we were just going to give you the silent treatment and bitch about you behind your back until you figured it out and told us. I guess it got out of control because...you never did."
Fred can't really wrap his head around how surreal this moment is, and not just because his head is still swimming a bit from the pounding he'd taken. He can't remember the last time any of them fought like this. Maybe not since they'd first formed the group and Hiro went batshit crazy trying to have Baymax kill Callaghan. It feels scary. Something like standing over a ledge and looking down.
The fire's dying down to embers, spitting a few last angry sparks. Honey Lemon heaves a slow sigh, and Fred thinks he can make out her breath in the chill air.
"I think I can fit in there," Hiro says abruptly. Fred turns to look. Hiro is staring up at a grate on the wall, one that's half again as wide as the kid's narrow shoulders. He turns back to the group, scans their faces, and Fred's not sure what he sees—anxiety, apathy, irritation—but his expression tightens. "This whole thing sucks. And we're going to argue about it later. But if we have a way out, we have to use it. Otherwise, there's no telling if we're getting out at all, especially if they find somewhere to keep us that's actually secure, and if Krei decides to let the robots have their way…"
He doesn't need to finish the thought. Wasabi tiredly pushes himself to his feet. "You're not going out there alone."
"Well, you're not going with me. No way you'd fit."
"Thanks, man," Wasabi says sarcastically, a hint of a smile on his face. "But I meant one of the others…" He looks back at the vent and then at the team. Hiro's the smallest of them, and even with Gogo's slight frame, she probably won't fit either.
"Baymax'll come too," Hiro says, raising his eyebrow at the robot in question. "We've done it before."
Baymax inclines his head. "I will make my deflation as quiet as possible this time."
"Well, what, do the rest of us just sit here while you guys are taking on robots outside?" Gogo asks, folding her arms.
"Just for a minute. They can't have a heavy guard on us, right? We're not supposed to be able to get out, and they probably think we all have hypothermia or something. So Baymax and I—okay, mostly Baymax—can take care of the guard and let you out."
"It's a better plan than anything else we've come up with," Honey Lemon says, probably before Wasabi or Gogo can argue. "And we do need to move fast."
Somehow, having a plan in place helps them to snap back to themselves, shedding the argument as they move over to the vent. Wasabi slices the hinges off with his plasma blades, then crouches down, fingers wound together, to give Hiro a leg up. Once Hiro has clambered carefully into the vent, Baymax, stripped of his armor and deflated, is pushed up as well. The robot holds onto Hiro's leg to be dragged inside.
The waiting part is hard. The quiet sound of knees and elbows sliding across metal fades away, and then they're back to silence. Fred almost expects the argument to resume, but Gogo and Honey Lemon and Wasabi can barely look at each other. They wander about the room, peering at the vent and then the door, over and over, with the same wary hopefulness they might show when checking the clock the last five minutes of class.
It takes an age, but the steel door of the lab finally slides open. Fred glances up, stomach in his throat, to find Hiro half-smirking at them. Baymax, behind him, stands guard over two motionless robots on the ground.
Wasabi rushes forward, looks at Gogo, closes his mouth. Fred picks up the slack. "Back in business," he says, thumping Hiro on the back as Gogo and Honey Lemon help Baymax into his armor.
"Alright. We still doing this?" Gogo asks, voice hushed as she looks down the corridor.
"Doing—wait, what? We should just get out of here, forget the plan. We're way out of our league with these robots," Honey Lemon protests.
"But we're not getting another shot at this," Hiro argues. "We get the data on the way out, just like we planned. We're already here."
"Let's just go," Fred whispers, grabbing Hiro's arm. There's grumbling from behind them, but Fred's pretty sure everyone's following, if only so they won't be left behind. As best they can, they double back the way they came, slinking through the hallways toward the mainframe. Without Baymax, it might have been a harder journey—Fred's all turned around, but Baymax wordlessly keeps them on track.
They meet only three pairs of robots on the way, but between the six of them they're easily dispatched.
"Fred, you're with Hiro and Baymax." Wasabi whispers as they creep over the threshold and back toward the computer. Since they've been gone, the screen has been shut off, but there are no signs of life nearby. "Get whatever you can find and be quick about it. Everyone else is with me, on watch."
There's no argument, to Fred's surprise. Honey Lemon and Gogo follow Wasabi through the doorway and out into the hall; after a moment's hesitation, Fred closes the door behind them.
Hiro and Baymax get straight to work. The monitor whirrs to life, Hiro sliding his fingers across the touchscreen almost too fast for Fred to catch the intention behind each gesture. Baymax hums in place. It's hard to tell with the robot's typical impassive gesture, but Fred thinks he's more still than usual, lacking his usual movements to observe his surroundings. Hiro's feeding him information, whatever data he can collect.
It's funny, because there's no reason for them to talk; it's to their advantage to remain silent in this situation. Hiro's probably focusing on the information on screen, pulling whatever he can, analyzing and discarding each folder and document, and Fred's supposed to be backup lookout or whatever Wasabi intended. It's probably all in Fred's head, just another case of him reading too much into a situation, but he feels a tension in the air that isn't usually there with Hiro.
Part of it's probably the whole "sneaking in and stealing files thing"—not their usual M.O. by any stretch of the imagination. But as Hiro leans back, watching the upload screen slowly climbing toward completed status, Fred can't help but feel a need to fill the silence.
Hiro sifts through the documents as they wait, pulling up a detailed schematic on a field of blue. It takes a moment for Fred to mentally rearrange the labelled pieces, IKEA-style, in his mind. It's one of the robots, labelled and separated into discrete components as easily as Fred might categorize the parts of his alarm clock. Except that Fred's pretty sure this particular diagram doesn't go into detail about where the mental programming comes from.
"They're supposed to do as they're told," Hiro says suddenly. "And...I guess they do, really. Except that they get hot-headed. And they argue."
"Well, yeah," Fred says slowly. He glances at Baymax, whose eyes are half-lidded, sleepy. "That's the human part of them. Makes it kind of hard for the whole place to run smoothly when the robots you work with think they're smarter than you are."
Hiro heaves out a slow breath. "Gogo and me are kind of like that, though. Aren't we?"
"What?" Fred frowns, trying to keep up with his friend's line of thought. "Well, I guess, but…no one expects you guys to be robots."
"Yeah, but—okay, you know what I mean. We're the hotheaded, arguing people who get the team into trouble because we can't be...you, know, objective." He rolls his eyes self-deprecatingly. "I guess…I just mean this was a crappy way for all this to come out. I didn't mean—and Gogo wouldn't either—for it to come out like this, right now, in the middle of all this." He makes a gesture with his hand that Fred interprets to mean this-stupid-robot-situation. "We kinda blew up, didn't we?"
"Um, again: no one expects you guys to be robots. You're human, and it's hard to just, like...box everything up for the greater good. If you could do that, you'd actually be robots, and we don't want that, so…" Fred finishes lamely. "I guess superheroes do that in the comics sometimes. They're supposed to...do what's best. Without thinking of themselves. But we can't always do that, and no one expects you guys to."
Hiro rests his jaw on his palm, grimacing down at the keyboard.
"For...and, uh...I should have told you," Fred adds after a beat, rubbing at the back of his neck. "I mean all of you guys, but probably at least you."
"Yeah, you should've," Hiro replies. He doesn't say anything else, just gives Fred the chance to continue.
"I know you would've kept it a secret from everyone if I asked you to, and you probably wouldn't have messed with me while I was sorting through what I thought, deciding whether I should go or not."
"I'm surprised you were even able to keep it a secret," Hiro says, his tone deceptively light. "You never keep secrets. I mean, you know everything about everyone, and you talk so much that I could probably know what you ate for breakfast on any given day."
"Yeah, but that's not a secret. I keep secrets when they're the kind of thing that's...hurtful. Or hard to talk about. The guilty kind, I guess. Like…" Fred folds his arms over his chest, wrapping the claws of his outfit around his forearms. "So I'm supposed to be the neutral guy, right? The peacemaker. Because otherwise we all end up biting each other's heads off, and by we I mostly mean you, Gogo, and Wasabi. But talking about something like this just felt like throwing a wrench into everything. So it was almost better just not to say anything."
Hiro frowns, looking at him squarely for the first time. "Yeah. But Fred, it's not your job to keep the peace. We're grown college students!" He takes a beat to reconsider what he's said. Then he snorts. "Well, okay. I take it back. That's totally your job. But…even comic book superheroes aren't peacemakers all the time. We've all got our moments, just like everyone else, where things have to change. We have to change. And just because you usually keep the peace doesn't mean you're not entitled to your own life and whatever, outside of the group."
The bar on the upload screen ticks closer and closer. Fred can feel the tension building inside of him, a coiled spring ready to snap.
"I didn't mean for it to come out like your actual decision to leave was wrong," Hiro says softly. "It's just you should have told us. It really sucks...it hurt that you didn't, because it felt like you just didn't trust us, or like you just...it didn't matter to you if you up and left all of a sudden without letting us know."
Fred grimaces. "I didn't mean—"
"I know. We both know it wasn't like that. I guess we just...well, it's one thing to know something in theory and another thing to know it. And really, it's cool that you want things outside of the group, that there's stuff you want to do. The program sounds amazing, and I think it's awesome that you're chasing after something like that." He bites his lip, scuffing his heels on the floor below the desk. "I'm still mad at you. I'm probably going to be mad for a while. And it's gonna be hard for us to change the group, or to decide what things'll be like."
The uploader bar fills and gives a little chime. Hiro swipes a hand over the screen to quiet it and then pauses, his hand in midair as if he can't remember the next step.
"The upload is complete," Baymax informs them after a beat. Fred glances over to see the robot is back to himself, pulling up to his full height and waddling closer. "We are ready to move to the others."
"Yeah," Hiro says, dropping his hand. He stares at the screen for another moment and then looks at Fred. His expression is tight, but his mouth twists upward in a smile. "You have to tell us everything from now on. Especially me. Promise."
Fred takes the statement for the forgiveness it is. He raises an eyebrow. "You don't want to hear everything about me. Some of my secrets are pretty dumb. But I promise."
"Okay, not the dumb secrets. But anything bigger than, like, winning candy in a contest. Especially winning candy in a contest."
"I would definitely not tell you that. Because you would steal my candy."
"Fred."
"Okay, okay," Fred relents, and Hiro stands, turning to the door. "Hey. We're okay?"
"We," Hiro says, frowning as he taps the keypad near the door to open it, "are on probation. But you can get time off for good behavior," he adds.
Fred smiles. "I can live with that."
.
.
.
whew