They have definite naming conventions in the Mega Man games. Well, theme names aren't a rare touch in Japanese media, but it helps when coming up with random names to be able to pick something that fits the theme/cultural setting, to avoid ruining the immersion.

In this case, I decided on Meadow because it's part of the name progression (Meadowlark), and it's probably a nice-sounding concept in Neo Arcadia. A lush, green land, which is how people picture Arcadia itself, actually. Soft grass to play on, etc.

Whispers, human and not. It was easy for someone with a superior hearing system to tell the difference between sound produced by moving air over an organic mechanism and digitally generated sound coming from a speaker. Humans produced sounds that weren't in the frequency range they could hear, and reploid voice programs normally didn't bother to produce those.

"Is she…" She wasn't sure if the reploid's voice faded out of hearing or if he'd left off speaking at that point, not to wake her or because he'd substituted a shrug or something for the rest of the words. Some of the older reploids used the human nonverbal shorthand, especially for dicey situations or awkward discussions. Fortunately, the humans knew better than to assume reploids spoke much of that language, and ignored it when reploids made gestures like folding their arms in front of their chest and clearly didn't know what they were saying.

That was a scary concept, wasn't it? Imagine people 'hearing' you say, 'I hate you and want to kill you,' when you hadn't meant to say that and didn't know they'd heard it.

For anyone, but especially her.

"Medically, she's fine," a human voice reassured him. "We'll need to keep her for observation… Unless you'd prefer something else?" The first part of that was spoken authoritatively, then the man had backpedaled, embarrassed, and the other half was apologetic willingness to be obedient.

"Shh," she heard next. Oh, so that was why the human's voice had been clearer: So the reploid was trying not to wake her.

The human was probably a mechanic, because he knew, "Don't worry; she's locked in sleep mode." Or so he thought, anyway.

What had happened?

Her recent memory data was foggy, but not the normal fog.

She'd been, yes, she'd been in Soliel's room. Soliel was a little bit bigger than her now, although in terms of total volume she was smaller. So thin.

Sometimes that just happened. Every human's DNA was gone over before they were born, looking for problems, but there were also the modifications, and human DNA was under attack all the time. If something went wrong? And they were so complicated. Her parents had gotten the doctors to look at her, but they didn't know what was wrong. What tests they'd been able to afford didn't reveal anything. There were things wrong with her, yes, new symptoms kept showing up, but the variety of types and locations of symptoms, multiple organ decay, indicated that the mostly explanation was a genetic failure somewhere, and those couldn't be helped without knowing what to target.

Her parents were both reploid engineers: they'd been able to pay for multiple doctor visits, and some tests, and they'd insisted on paying for Meadow's ration because she was such a help and Soliel liked her. Since Soliel was sick, she wasn't allowed around other children. What if it was contagious?

Meadow was a new-model crèche nurse reploid: Soliel's uncle had asked them to let her stay with them and interact with their daughter as a test. To learn about human children and how to look after them in a controlled setting, one on one, instead of being dumped in the crèche and being surrounded by them. The city had approved the experiment, but since she was still technically working for an individual instead of the city, someone other than the city had to pay her ration out of their own ration. They didn't pay for citizens to have servants.

It had been easy for the two of them to afford Meadow then, since scientists got a larger ration so they could use it to obtain what they needed for their experiments. Once Soliel had gotten ill, things had changed. At first she had been able to keep up with her coursework even working from home, but first she'd fallen behind and then started failing tests and not completing assignments. Since everyone had to work, and the work of human children was learning, Soliel had first been fined and then her ration had been cut off after a full month had passed since the last assignment was turned in. Her parents had used up their savings trying to find what was wrong with her, and now Soliel's share of the rent, water, electricity and everything was coming out of their rations. Not to mention the disease transmission fines.

For a human to stay around a sick person was exposing themselves and the people they interacted with to that sickness. If a human in the database was labeled sick, they couldn't cohabitate with another human for the duration without both of them paying a fine. That was why most humans had reploid roommates, that and the fact reploids couldn't eat food, so they were less likely to raid someone's emergency stash.

There was an area with very small rooms near the hospital for people to crash in while taking sick leave, but Soliel's parents hadn't wanted to leave her there and not visit her, even if Meadow could stay with her.

Since whatever Soliel had didn't seem contagious, the fine wasn't much, but since they didn't know what it is, that meant it could be contagious, so there was still a fine. Per day. It added up.

A lot of reploids thought humans had it easy, since they could get good rations without having to do the heavy lifting or dangerous stuff, unless they volunteered. Human children were born into training programs, while a reploid needed a good work record to even consider applying to one, unless they wanted to join the armies, and once you were in the armies, you didn't get to choose what you did at all.

They still had to work for that ration, and right now the poor girl's parents had to prove that they still deserved it. The ration they got was to fund their work, not their daughter, so if they didn't produce? The two of them hadn't been able to afford contracting some of the work out to other people for over three weeks now, so they were putting in extra hours and were barely ever home. They'd let Palette's maker take over paying her ration a month before that, and he was helping them with their work, too.

Meadow wasn't supposed to tell Soliel things like that, but Soliel had asked. They couldn't keep this up for very much longer. If it came before the city, Soliel would be taken away from her parents, since they were spending city resources on her and this was adversely affecting their ability to get their work done. Someone had to be looking the other way, or else the fine wouldn't be so low, and they wouldn't have been able to keep paying it for ten months without the Zan'ei asking questions about why two scientists were violating regulations. Still, they couldn't keep this up forever, and Soliel knew it, and her parents knew she knew it.

If she was taken away, the city would put her in the hospital and try to see if she could be cured, but if she couldn't? The city, even Master X, could not pay a ration to anyone who didn't work. Especially a human, because of laws left over from when the city was founded and everyone was suspicious of each other. Anyone who tried to take over Soliel's expenses would first have to pay off, or at least arrange a payment plan for all the energy, resources and time that were spent in the hospital. They could appeal to Judge Childre, but even the Judges couldn't make expenses like that vanish. Couldn't make exceptions like that. Her parents had tried to approach him six months ago, only to be told by a secretary they'd explained the problem to that almost the Judge's entire personal ration was already helping people.

Meanwhile, she kept getting worse and worse. Last week it had been vomiting. This week it was fevers and chills. All three of them knew she was dying: her parents were just trying to keep this going long enough for her to pass away in her own home, with her family there, instead of in some lonely room somewhere. They wanted her to be comfortable and die as happy as she could, but how could she rest comfortably while people she loved ruined themselves? How could that make her happy?

In hindsight, no one would be very surprised that she'd walked just outside and jumped down off the balcony, into the atrium. They'd cry and blame themselves and each other. They might dissolve the partnership, unable to bear the sight of each other, thinking of what they'd lost.

That was what Meadow's builder was counting on.

Meadow hadn't thought anything of her specs when she was turned on, and it was soon clear from how everyone acted that children were very important, so a model meant to look after them should be able to fight, yes. The trouble was that she didn't have a buster, or weapons meant to hurt reploids. She'd meant to ask her maker about that, when she was still with him, but the words wouldn't come out.

He'd taken her for what he'd said was combat training a week before she was given to Soliel. That was when she discovered that her data on the human body was to assist her in performing ambushes and inflicting maximum pain before death. That her outer construction wasn't just meant to be hypoallergenic, but to avoid leaving any traces forensic analysis might find. She was small and nimble to be able to catch up to a fleeing human without using dash boots, although she'd still have a problem in broken terrain. Being small would help her hide, though, and wait to strike.

He'd been very angry when his 'partner' snared the woman he wanted. Very angry. For the seven years since Soliel was conceived he'd seethed and worked on his special project and saved up resources.

It was clear to Meadow that this was wrong. The base ethical programming inherited from Master X said that hurting people was wrong, and she knew she wouldn't like being made to scream. Making someone scream also wasn't very fun. But her maker had saved up his ration.

Dr. Blanc had no intention of letting his tool betray him. Reploids had free will: he'd tried to program her, but he'd known it might not stick.

There was something that would.

It had taken him seven years to get the city to give him a cyber elf carte blanche. Normally the city took care of the elves and their lives. Only people doing very important work, where lives, data or resources might be lost if something went wrong and there was no elf to instantly fix it, were allowed to keep one on hand to use as needed.

Meadow couldn't blame the cyber-elf. It was probably even younger and more foolish than she had been: it probably hadn't known that altering a reploid so it had to obey someone was wrong. So it had to slip things into someone's food and drink. No matter how much it didn't want to.

So it had to pick someone up, carry her to the rim, lift her up and drop her. Even though it wanted to cry or scream for help or even kill herself. She didn't want to die, she didn't want anyone to die, it was too horrible a thing. She'd lived with the thought of Soliel's death for months, she'd lived with that poor man's blood in her hands, and she couldn't stand it. She didn't want anyone else to die because of what her creator had done to her, not even herself. She wanted to stop this but she couldn't even stop her own arms.

Couldn't stop her internal clock from ticking along to the time she'd have to kill a human. The word for that was maverick, the old monsters in the stories that ate reploid souls and took over their dead bodies and killed innocent people. She was one, and she'd prayed for Master X to kill her, to protect Soliel and her parents from this, but no one had come, just doctors that hadn't found anything and Dr. Blanc with more orders and there were no hunters anymore.

Now her arms were wrapped around Soliel like she was hugging her friend, and she wished she could comfort her, wished she could apologize, wished she could make the clock stop ticking. Wished this wasn't happening, not yet, not yet, Soliel had tried so hard to hang in there, day after day of pain and Meadow couldn't even buy her a single minute. She couldn't stop the internal clock, not when her systems used it for random number generation, called up the time hundreds of times a second.

But… there were other ways of generating random numbers, weren't there?

Error messages took priority over everything else, because she wasn't allowed to die. So, even if she messed up, she might buy Soliel another night? Until they found her here in the morning and Dr. Blanc came to fix her?

Warning: This is a base function. Do not attempt to alter it without consulting a technician. Do you still want to alter it?

The prompt appeared, and Meadow felt her arms return to her control for almost half a second before the geas made her systems select no, because this was an attempt to get out of what she was fated to do, bound to do.

That might have dashed her hopes, if she hadn't done this before. If she hadn't tried to many things to try to keep herself from hurting Soliel.

Warning.

There was a lot she could do with half a second, like jerk her arms away from Soliel.

They crept forward again, but…

Warning.

Yes, she could do this… But maybe not, because each time her arms moved forward faster, body altering its speed to obey the deadline. She could hope that Soliel might wake up? That the drug might wear off?

Warning.

Again, and again, knowing there was no hope for that, and jostling Soliel like this wasn't good for her, but a half-second more, that was all she asked of Master X, Guardian Leviathan, anyone who would listen! Even Master Zero, even though Meadow was so used to failing, it was hard to believe that she might win, that she might deserve his blessing when she'd failed her friend for so long, but just one half-second, and one half-second more.

Warning.

She didn't want to be a murderer! Not again!

Meadow fell forward onto the bed as something pierced through her skin, an arrowhead attached to a cable, holding the cable in her body as she jerked again, this time because she was cold, so cold, processor racing until it was forced into hibernation.

Her audio receptors continued to function after her conscious mind shut down.

"Ten seconds." The human sounded mildly impressed. "How long do you estimate she'd have lasted?"

A reploid replied, "If she kept it up long enough, it would have broken some of that poor girl's bones, and that might have been more than she could take. If she let despair take over and she lost her will to fight, the elf programming would have taken over."

"So it was willpower?" For the record.

"Yes, sir."

"Then that indicates that she's not a willing accomplice, and that the elf wasn't used for virus-type will alteration." She'd been geased, not brainwashed.

"In my expert opinion, no, sir."

"Then shut down all peripherals and put her core into full hibernation."

"Process complete in three, t-"

That was when the memory ended. According to her internal clock, once she undid what she'd done to keep herself from looking at it, that was two days ago.

"Really?" the human wondered, the same human as that night. "Check the monitors."

A second's silence as the reploid stared.

"She's Dr. Blanc's masterpiece. The grea-second greatest... He used to be considered the greatest living reploid builder in Neo Arcadia."

Used to be? Meadow wondered. Hoped.

"There's a defense against the system we use to keep reploids in sleep mode, which is the reason we use that method." It was safer than others. "It was installed into you… You did study the tech specs of everything before it was installed into you, surely?"

"Of course, General Phantom sir. But she's…" So harmless-seeming, and yet, "Designed from the ground up to be an assassin," the reploid continued ruefully.

General Phantom? "Guardian Phantom?" she blurted out, opening her eyes. He'd come to save Soliel, right? That was what Guardians did! But, "Why didn't you stop me before?"

"Because we didn't notice anything was off with Dr. Blanc until last week." Sorry to disappoint a believer in his omniscience, but, "If I hadn't ordered a resource requisition audit of every single technician capable of building a reploid to see what side projects they were working on, I would have missed this. Or if Blanc had activated you earlier and taken the time to corrupt you, a child would be dead, Blanc would be in a position to comfort his brother's grieving wife and you would have had your personality wiped." So tragic, the poor girl must have blamed herself for failing in her duties. Wiped the personality and habits that had failed her charge, erased those terrible memories. The months of illness, the shattered body on the concrete below. "So I would say it's someone else you owe your life to, for giving me a wake-up call."

"Who?"

Phantom examined her thoughtfully. "I can't tell you, but perhaps I will put you in a position to return the favor. Someday."

Another reploid standing in the corner coughed. "Sir?" Is that advisable?

"You were the first to see her specs, Tech Kraken."

What seemed like a decoration on the reploid's arms were actually cables. Four of them were attached at the joint where the fingers of his hand were connected to his palm, and they were wound around his arms to keep them out of the way. Meadow gasped. "You're the reploid from last night! And… I thought you were a human, Guardian." She would have bowed a little, but she was strapped in.

"Voice analysis program," Tech Kraken told the other reploid present, the one who had been talking with General Phantom when she woke up. "General Phantom has a functioning voice box, as well as a speaker system. Am I right?" he asked Meadow.

"Spotting the difference at a young age is impressive. Unless you were told about it?" Phantom considered her.

Meadow frowned. "It was a difference. Like how reploids usually have armor and helmets and humans usually don't."

Phantom and Kraken looked at her with very similar expressions. Yes, it would be a criminal waste to let this one remain a civilian.

Perhaps, if they kept her busy enough, she wouldn't ask to see the Berg family until they had calmed down and were willing to be fair to her. Yet despite the fact researchers of their status could review the evidence and see that Meadow was innocent for themselves, they were not going to invite someone that had poisoned their daughter, an assassin-type built by a vengeful madman, into their home.

Well, their loss was the Zan'ei's gain.

Yet he wondered if Harpuia was right to be angry with him for not having Meadow brought in the instant they found Dr. Blanc had done extensive research on toxic substances before his niece became ill. Schilt had insisted on observing her, giving her a chance to demonstrate some sign that there was a person in there worth saving, before beginning the judgment. Once she knew she was observed, and on trial, they wouldn't have been able to trust what she said. Phantom had agreed, and pointed out to Harpuia that they weren't going to see her resisting the use of nonleathal poisons, because she would already have tried what she could and Blanc would have closed those loopholes months ago. The girl's death, now: if she had any conscience at all, that would motivate her to try once again, and he'd been right.

Clearly they needed better oversight on researchers, despite some people's complaints about makework. Ciel's Copy-X was a well-intentioned project: this was not. Until they'd hit Blanc, the worst they'd found was untaxed alcohol production, mostly for personal consumption. Still, they needed to keep a lookout.

Who was another once-respected scientist with a secret project? Weil. It was time for Phantom to remind the Zan'ei of that.