Megaman X: Elysium Rising

Final Mission: Delete the Maverick Virus

Chapter 42: Judgment

By Genoscythe

16:24 October 11, 2173

Signas surveyed the empty plaza he and the Neo Tokyo Defense Agency had cordoned off. There were still no visual cues that indicated the apocalypse would originate from this point, but according to Blip and his portable monitor, they were standing right in front of one of the subterranean disturbances. Every hundred kilometers, another disturbance sounded out, forming a pentagonal pattern all over the globe. Even vast, empty stretches of ocean were filled with an equal number of readings. The bastards were thorough.

"What's the ETA, navigator?" Signas asked, and Blip pushed up his glasses as he snapped out of a dejected reverie.

"Hard to say, sir. The disturbances seem to be accelerating, and it's making an accurate reading kind of difficult to determine."

"Take a guess. It doesn't have to be accurate."

"Two hours. I think."

"I'm not hearing a lot of confidence there, navigator."

"Give or take half an hour."

Signas turned his back to the plaza, running through every possible scenario in his head. Even two and a half hours wouldn't be enough to get a proper evacuation fleet together. Earth's space programs had been decimated by the Eurasia crisis, and most of her nations had to spend all their resources on rebuilding the surface world before they could even think of traveling beyond it again. Only a handful of countries had orbital spacecraft ready to launch, and if they did, there was no guarantee that Elysium wouldn't simply shoot them down once they escaped their dying planet.

There was also the possibility of finding a weakness in this superweapon. If, as Douglas predicted, the readings turned out to be subterranean structures built into the Earth, they could be destroyed before activating. To this end, one of Signas's Hunters approached their makeshift command post at a sprint.

"Commander Signas! Siege tanks are en route, but our bomber squadron needs more time to get their wings off the ground."

"Fine," Signas answered absent-mindedly. "They have two hours. Give or take a half."

"No word yet from the NEC. Reports say they're still in conference."

"Or digging out our old bomb shelters," Signas muttered. The New Earth Council couldn't help them. They could write up a treaty, or put an anti-genocide sanction on Elysium. That wouldn't help, but it would give them something to do until the end of the human race. Signas was envious, standing in the middle of an empty plaza on a cold, colorless day with only a pathetic-by-design navigator, an obsessive engineer, and a handful of grim Maverick Hunters for company. He wondered if there were any soaps broadcasting on the last day on Earth.

"Orders, sir?" the Hunter asked him.

"Get me a TV," Signas ordered. "Full channel access. And find one for yourself if you're not interested in watching Neo Tokyo Heat with me."

The Elysian strike force was already on the move by the time Sigma arrived at the tower sublevel, and he had to walk quickly to catch up to them. The Reaverbot legion marched in front, with Tempest in his new body prowling through the center of their ranks, flanked on all sides by Purifiers and backed by a team of Mother units. The last one stood twice as tall as the others, and she hovered along in a suit of tan battle armor. This was the one Zero referred to as the Widow, and she would be Sigma's key to usurping Elysium from that condescending Purifier and the damned Red Menace himself.

"Mistress Sera," Sigma began, striding up to match her pace. "I was told you are a force to be reckoned with on this station."

"It does not speak plainly," Sera said, her voice flat. "It sounds like deception." Sigma turned to glare at the battle-ready Mother unit, and he noticed the face inside her helmet was emotionless, lobotomized.

"I'll be blunt, then," Sigma told her. "I know what you did, turning against machines in favor of organics, and I know you were imprisoned for your beliefs."

"It reiterates established facts. Its claims of bluntness are false. Deception confirmed."

"Listen, they think they've got you under control, but I know it isn't that easy to suppress a strong-willed individual such as yourself."

"Contrary thought is equal to pain. The Self's actions were proven illogical. She can be classified as repentant."

"Ha! Repentant," Sigma sneered, though inwardly he was starting to lose hope. Relying on a partner who (at least, at one point) hated her own kind and wanted to destroy it in order to protect the human race was risky enough, but she seemed to be completely brainwashed. "You led a third faction against the other two. You nearly annihilated Elysium. Don't tell me a woman like that can be broken by a simple mind wipe."

"The Self made an error in judgment. Self-destruction is a sin. She has reassessed her position on the Carbons. They are to be neutralized immediately."

"I don't think you truly believe that," Sigma asserted.

"Belief is irrelevant," Sera replied, though Sigma noticed she was slowing down. He slowed his pace to keep up with her. "The Self has no choice. She is a part of the System."

"What if I told you that you could be the System?" Sigma whispered. "You're an Elysian, which means you can interface with Eden. I carry the Master's programming, which means I can usurp Zero as the Master. Together, Elysium could be ours."

"It hurts, it hurts the Self to consider its proposition," Sera moaned, and for once, her expression changed. She scowled as she clutched her forehead, but the other Elysians were too self-absorbed to notice.

"Fight through the pain," Sigma said. "I know this infuriates you. You can't stand it."

"Not true, the Self is repentant. She is not a sinner."

"We are all sinners," said Sigma. "It's only a matter of deciding what kind of sinner you want to be."

Sera worked her mouth as if she had never used it before, opening, closing, and twisting it in distorted bubbles of darkness. She continued to slow down, dragging Sigma farther and farther from the group.

"There are those who sin on their feet, and those who sin on their knees," he told her. "Which one are you?"

"The Self is not authorized to decide," she said.

"In that case, I will help you make up your mind," Sigma snarled, and he pressed his clawed hand against her back. "I will share my gift with you, and together, we can overpower Eden's hold on you."

Suddenly, Mistress Sera's arm came to life, shooting out to close a gloved fist over Sigma's forearm. She ripped his hand free, but she continued to hold him in place. "That won't be necessary, you filthy machine."

"Well, well," Sigma murmured. "You truly are quite the hypocrite."

"If I didn't hate myself almost as much as I hate you, that would be true," Sera the Widow said. "You're not Elysian, but you're far too advanced to be one of those childish toys the humans were building the last time I was awake. What are you?"

"My name is Sigma. I am a reploid," he answered. "Sentient machine life, just as advanced as yourself."

"I doubt that."

"How long were you in stasis?"

"One hundred and sixty-seven years. Strange that you seem to know everything else about me."

"An androgynous floating head explained most of your story to me on my way here, but he forgot to mention the timeline. I was sent to make sure you follow your orders, but I wanted to use this opportunity to convert you to my cause instead."

"Well, I'm afraid we don't have time for a history lesson," Sera said, glancing ahead down the hall. Sigma noticed that they were out of earshot of the main battle group. "They're completely corrupted and barely conscious, but they will eventually notice that we're not with them."

"Do you think they heard us?"

"Oh, look," Sera mocked. "Here's the advanced android who practically revealed his whole plan to betray his allies right in front of them, and he's asking me if they heard us."

"Are all of you Elysians so condescending?"

"Only when faced with such colossal stupidity."

Sigma's chest heaved, and his breathing became shallow. He would have to kill somebody soon, and he was almost to the point where he didn't care who. "Well, Sera, if we're short on time, just answer me. Will you help me overthrow Eden?"

"Of course," the Elysian said immediately. "I would have done it without you, but this could help both of us. I need a Master that I can rely on."

"And I need an Eden that won't try to kill me once I take over the Master's duties."

"How do I know you'll help me purge the world of machine life once we control Elysium?" Sera asked. "You seem quite proud of your race."

"I am," Sigma said. Damn, I shouldn't have said that... "I have a condition for our partnership."

"Start walking. We need to rejoin the group."

"After we destroy all the sentient machines on Earth, I want to be taken to a new planet, and I want to begin a new reploid race."

"Absolutely not!" Sera said. "I will not leave a potential threat to my children festering in some dark corner of the galaxy."

"If we have our own world, we will be no threat to your precious children," Sigma sneered.

"This discussion will be wasted if we fail to overthrow Eden," Sera snapped. "It can wait."

"In that case, here is my plan. I will return to Eden's tower, and I will wait for you to return from your mission. Report to Eden directly. Once you reach Eden's chamber, I will dispatch Zero and take his place. Then the two of us can overpower that smug bastard, and the System will be ours."

"How do you plan on assassinating the new Master?"

"Let me worry about that. Just deal with the remaining Maverick Hunters and get to Eden's chamber as quickly as possible."

"I hope, for your sake, you've got impeccable timing," Sera said. "Eden will destroy you if you move too early."

"Hmph. I'll prove to you that the reploid race is worth saving," Sigma declared. Sera's face abruptly froze in the lobotomized expression she wore earlier, and he noticed they were about to rejoin the battle group.

"The Self will now end communications," she announced, staring at an indeterminate point down the hall. Sigma grunted in affirmation and turned around, hoping he would be able to find his way back to the tower's elevator. He found it strange that Tempest never acknowledged his appearance, and in fact seemed just as thoroughly brainwashed as the Elysians were. He could no longer be trusted, and neither could Havoc, who had been part of Elysium from the start. The only person left on his side was an insane Mother unit that had been in hibernation for more than a century and a half.

And he was going to betray her the second she turned her back on him.

"Hey, Mal! You want us to just surrender now, or are you gonna get that shuttle ready sometime this week?" Axl called up to the open hatch on the ovoid machine. Tall shuttle pods lined both walls of the launch bay, and for a reason that none of the others could fathom, Malakai had chosen the third shuttle on the right to break into. He claimed it was the 'best' shuttle in the bay, but as far as Axl could tell, the pods were all identical.

Malakai's head popped out of the hatch to glare at the ebony Maverick Hunter below. "I never thought you'd ask, Short Bus. Please, surrender, by all means."

"Axl has good reason to be concerned," Alia shouted from the wide shuttle bay doors. "The Elysian army just reached our perimeter guards."

"Already?" Axl cried. "I knew we should be worried, but I didn't know we should be ready-to-die worried."

"The guards are about half a kilometer out, so it's not quite that bad," she clarified. "Although they're being torn apart pretty quickly. They've got some Reaverbots I've never seen before. And...one of them is talking."

"Excuse me?" Malakai asked, reemerging from the shuttle. "Did you say there's a talking Reaverbot out there?"

"It's mostly screaming incoherently," Alia said. "But sometimes I can hear it swearing."

"You know what? I'm just gonna pretend you never said that," Malakai told her. "Ignorance is bliss, and shit."

"The shuttle's not gonna hack itself, Mal!" Axl prodded.

"You're lucky there's no laws against slave labor on Elysium, kid," Malakai pouted before vanishing back into the shuttle hatch. Axl glanced at Selene, who sat curled up against the wall where they had deposited their supplies, and he felt a pang of frustration. She made it clear that she wanted to be alone, but all he wanted to do was curl up with her. If nothing else, that would put him closer to the Napalm Cannon in his bag.

X emerged from behind the shuttle, holding two fingers to his comm link.

"Marx? Were you able to find Trigger?" he asked.

"Yep. He's still sealed up, but it looks like we can move this casket thing he's in without waking him."

"No trouble on the way?"

"I'll ask Bureaucratic Unit Nero what he thinks," Marx said, his voice now distant as he spoke to both X and an unknown third party. X heard a heavy metal impact and a quiet grunt on Marx's end of the conversation. "I agree. No trouble at all."

"If you've been spotted, you two have to get out of there right now," X ordered.

"Well, we've gotta deliver the package anyway, don't we?" Marx pointed out. "Besides..." Another spiteful crash. "This Nero guy's basically the Elysian equivalent of a pencil-pusher. Akil – Nephtis is telling me things are looking scary on your end."

"Right, which is why I need you to meet us on the surface. As soon as Malakai is finished hacking the shuttle network, we'll raise the bay, but by that time we might already have company."

"We'll see you in ten, X," Marx said, then severed the link. X dropped his fingers from his helmet and caught Alia's gaze across the room. Her face was taut, and X took it to mean that they were about to have company.

"Axl?" Selene abruptly cried, raising her head from under her crossed arms and staring straight out into the shuttle bay. "I have something to tell you. Come here."

Axl, who had been tapping his foot at the base of the shuttle to the tune of Chopin's Funeral March, now whipped around and darted to his girlfriend's side.

"What's up, Selene?" he asked, sliding down the wall to sit next to her.

Her head dipped back to her folded arms, and she continued her unfocused stare. "I've never told anyone the truth about my relationship with...Endymion."

"What relationship?"

"Dr. Kikuta thought he'd figured out what went wrong with the Perfect Soldier program, y'know...why Colonel and Iris drifted apart. He blamed it on Zero. He said Zero came between the two of them, and that's why Colonel went Maverick and Iris lost her mind."

"Zero loved Iris. What was he supposed to do?" Axl interjected. "And what does this have to do with you and Endymion?"

"He told me the brother and sister relationship wasn't strong enough. Then he told me Endymion and I were designed to be lovers. He said we would be inseparable, and our programming would ensure that our two halves would always be whole."

"B-but something went wrong, right? O-obviously that's not what happened. I mean, you and me, we're..."

"He told me this as soon as I was activated, and I looked over at Endy. I knew exactly what he was talking about. Endy hadn't been activated yet, but I could already feel the attraction. Pretty sick, isn't it? He was just lying there in his capsule, and I'd only been alive for about five minutes, but I decided right there that I never wanted to leave his side. I suppose there's your answer to our freewill debate."

"I...don't believe it," Axl breathed. His hand hovered over Selene's shoulder, and he couldn't decide what to do with it. He wanted to touch her, to feel that she was still there and this wasn't some horrible trick, but at the same time, his proverbial stomach churned at the thought that all the time he'd spent holding her, kissing her, she'd merely wished that he were someone else.

"I waited around for him to wake up, like some idiot groupie, but when he did...he took one look at me and walked away. His programming didn't take. Nobody knew why. It wasn't just that he didn't love me – he didn't love anything except the job our creator had given him. They couldn't reboot him without his permission, and...stupid me, I didn't want to be rebooted because I wanted to earn his love. I thought it might be a fun challenge, and it would make our bond stronger in the end.

I tried, and I tried. You wouldn't believe the things I did to get him to pay attention to me. It all just annoyed him. I was pretty immature back then, so when we showed up to apply at Hunter HQ, the recruiting officer thought we were brother and sister from the way I hung onto him, and...and from the disgust on his face."

"Selene, stop," Axl begged, as tears stung his eyes.

"No way, kid. Keep going!" Malakai said, hanging out of the shuttle hatch. "This is better than daytime TV."

"Malakai, what are you doing?" X snapped.

"Nothing much," the Elysian replied. "Shuttle's hacking itself."

"Do you think this is a joke?" the reploid leader cried.

"Everything is a joke if you tell it right," he shot back. "But if you're asking whether the shuttle's really hacking itself, yeah, it is. I installed my worm in there, and it just needs another minute or so to penetrate Eden's soft, juicy firewall before we'll be ready for blastoff."

X was about to reprimand him, but he realized Selene was still talking, and she hadn't even paused for Malakai's interruption. Something was wrong. He turned his attention back to the Maverick Hunter curled up against the far wall, and the weeping Axl next to her.

"...only happy when I wasn't thinking about him, which is why I wanted to be with you, Axl. You helped me forget him, and it's important you remember that. I never thought about him while I was with you, if we'd ever...y'know, done it, you wouldn't hear me yelling his name instead of yours. It was just me and you."

Axl's sobbing continued unabated.

"But now that Endy's dead, I can't let go. I was always holding on, hoping he'd, I don't know, learn how to feel like I do. I can't keep hoping anymore. But before I go, I wanted you to know the truth."

"Go?" Axl suddenly gasped. "Y-you're not going anywhere. You're gonna be okay, Selene."

"That's why I left this message for you."

"Axl..." X began, moving toward the young Hunter.

"What message? What are you talking – " Axl's voice fell away as he finally resolved to grab Selene's shoulder, and he could only watch in mute horror as his hand passed straight through her.

"I'll try to slow the Elysians down as much as I can. Please, make the most of it. Get out of here, go back to Earth, move on with your life. It's something I'll never be able to do."

With that said, the hologram of Selene crackled and dissolved into clumps of floating pixels that shortly winked out of existence.

"She's gone," Axl moaned. "Didn't even give me a chance...to tell her I loved her."

"Alia, have any of your Reaverbots seen Selene nearby?" X asked.

"Checking..." she murmured. "There. One of the sentries spotted her climbing into a maintenance hatch two minutes ago."

"Axl, get up," X said. "You can still catch her if you hurry."

"What's the point?" Axl shouted. "She wants to die. Zero's gone Mav. What's the point?"

X held out his hand, waiting for Axl to take it. "That's a question every Maverick Hunter asks, if they live long enough. Unfortunately, nobody can answer it but you. Now, if there's a chance you can save Selene, and you think she's worth saving, I won't keep you here. It's your choice."

"Worth saving? You mean you don't think she's – "

"I don't want you to know what I think," X interrupted. "Like I said, you have to decide what the point is. It's all part of growing up."

"Let the scrawny bitch kill herself!" Malakai suggested, still hanging from the shuttle.

"That settles it," Axl said, taking X's hand and hoisting himself to his feet. "Alia, which way did she go?"

"But wouldn't that have been interesting if you did..." the Elysian muttered, disappearing back into the hatch.

"I'll send a guide with you," Alia told him, and a hovering Zakobon Reaverbot immediately entered the room. Without waiting for it to take the lead, Axl charged past and ran down the hallway outside.

"Is it really such a good idea to let him leave?" Alia asked X. "I don't think I can protect him and hold back the Elysians at the same time."

"You don't have to," X replied. "Axl's taking his life into his own hands, now. Zero isn't here to watch over him anymore, and, one way or another, I won't be either. He has to come out of our shadow while he still can."

"I understand," Alia said, taking his hand. "I don't like it, but I understand."

"How close are they?"

"Very close. My Reaverbots won't last much longer."

"Well, they're not close enough, 'cause we're outta here," Malakai called as the shuttle bay began to rumble. "Time to go a-knock-knock-knockin' on Heaven's door. You coming, Big Blue?"

Selene was numb as she crawled through the maintenance vents; had been numb, in fact, since the moment her counterpart died. In numbness, she had composed the timed message for her hologram, and without feeling she had split from the group and forced her way into the vent system as a second Selene followed the others into the shuttle bay. She could hear buster fire and strange, electronic screams echoing louder and louder through the tunnel, but it meant little to her besides an approaching end to the numbness.

She had a positron blast core in her hand, and she longed to just press the trigger and be done with it all, but a distant corner of her brain reminded her that she could potentially save her friends' lives if she held on a bit longer. The merciful explosion would have to wait.

Eventually, she found a vent that led straight into the chamber where the Reaverbot armies were clashing. Selene paused for a moment to consider her strategy. If there were no Purifiers in the room, would she be able to wait until she could find them before detonating the blast core? She reached out and pushed on the vent with one hand, cradling the spherical bomb against her chestplate. As the slot hissed open, she scanned the room below her, and was just in time to witness the last of Alia's Reaverbots torn to pieces by a large machine bristling with weaponry.

Come on! Get some, you little one-eyed freaks! The giant Reaverbot bellowed, catching the last infantry unit in its jaws and ripping it in half.

"All hostile Reaverbots neutralized," said an airy, feminine voice from the other side of the chamber. Selene saw the owner, a tall Elysian woman in a floating suit of armor, and she knew the end was at hand.

Selene crawled toward the opening, still clutching the blast core, when a hand clamped down over her mouth and locked her in place.

"Change of plans," a ragged, unfamiliar voice said from behind her. She was frozen, unable to believe she had been discovered and followed without her knowledge. It had to be her state of mind, unless...

"We need to get to the escape pods," a woman said, also behind her.

"And you're our ticket past the guards, Hunter," her captor snarled.

The woman was Mystic, Selene was sure of it. And the paw smothering her had to belong to Stealth Claw. Endymion's killers. She couldn't have imagined a more fitting pair to die with.

A tear rolled down her cheek as Claw struggled to pull her back from the vent opening. "We don't want to hurt you," he said, as he felt the tear light on his paw. "We just want to go home."

"Uh, what's in her hand?" Mystic asked.

"What do you..." Stealth Claw mumbled, looking down over Selene's blocky shoulder armor. A steel gray ball was clutched in her fingers, and Claw recognized it immediately. Her thumb was resting on the trigger, about to press it. Without thinking, Claw took a wild swipe at it.

A quarter mile back through the vents, Axl was frantically scrambling through a tall, narrow section of the maintenance tunnels when he felt the shockwave rattle his neosteel bones. He stopped, clutching a pipe and bracing himself against the far wall. The sound of the detonation bounced throughout the vent system, and judging from the noise and the force of the blast, it had to be one of Selene's positron blast cores.

I'm too late, Axl realized. She really did it. He allowed himself to slump against the wall, and he continued to sag until his head hung staring at his chestplate. The chorus of Reaverbot warfare continued to sing unabated through the walls, but he couldn't muster the strength to join the fight. He merely sat, silently nestled among the folds of Elysium's interior, and Selene's suicide idea began to seem more and more appealing.

"It's over," he whispered. "Selene, Endy, Zero, X...It's all over."

Only Tempest's distant, distorted battle cries were there to answer him.

End of Chapter 42

AN: Some of you may have noticed a few changes around here, but in case you haven't, I'll fill you in now. I've been revising the earlier chapters of the story for the last few months, and in some cases I outright deleted the old stuff and wrote entirely new chapters (such as Blitz part 1 and 2). If you're in the mood for some Elysium Rising nostalgia, go back and take a look. I think it's some of my best fanfic writing yet, and even though most of the events are the same, they've been majorly expanded on in terms of emotional depth, consistency, and atmosphere. I'm only up to chapter 12, and then things get a little messy after that, but it's interesting to contrast the revised chapters with the old chapter 13. Once I finish the story, I can go back and focus more on revisions, because I've got a lot left to do (Malakai will be integrated into the middle of the story better, the mystery behind Elysium will...actually be mysterious, and Marx and Nephtis will find a different, more compelling craphole to live in). Also, there will be more hints about Selene's feelings toward Endymion, among countless other changes.

By the way, those of you waiting for Marx and Nephtis to kick all kinds of ass will not have to wait long. Think next chapter.

Also by the way, check out the index at the end of the story. It's got more backstory and atmospheric goodness for those who want it.