Chapter 2: In which Alia learns a secret.

/adamupgrade/readme..txt

Son, in light of the startling changes this upgrade will bring upon you, I feel it necessary to include a personal message along with the usual technical notes.

I am, as always, tremendously proud of you and your outstanding love for the people around you, reploid and human. I still envisage a day when humans and man-made intelligences can live together in peace and equality. The Maverick virus may put off the realization of that dream for awhile longer, but I remain confident we can overcome every obstacle even if I personally don't live to see the day.

Yes, X, even I cannot put off death forever. Recent events have warned me that I might not have long to finish your design. To that end, the upgrade contained in my next capsule will crown and complete the creation of intelligent robots as a life-form all their own.

I'm sorry that I couldn't make these changes more gradual; if not for the risks and limitations that accompany me in my present form I would most certainly find a way to introduce you to the Adam upgrade more slowly. I will have to rely on your indomitable will and your love for your friends to master the powerful new feelings awakening inside you. I warn you that in the first few months they will be even more intense for you than for a human adolescent because of the suddenness of the transition. Despite all the bumps along the road, however, I know you will find the power to control your instincts and use them for good.

You are my son. Always remember that.

/endfile

Even after reading that file, unanswered questions had bothered me. What recent events did my father mean? The war with Repliforce? Or something else? What could possibly hurt my father, who had the power to travel from one of his capsules to another apparently at will?

In short, the readme file for the upgrade had opened up almost as many questions as it answered. Now, as I waited for Alia to come into my office, I fought internally over what to do. Did I dare go forward with what Dr. Light expected of me, and if so, how?

Silent in spite of the hopes and doubts that tormented me, I waited patiently as Alia turned the doorknob and stepped inside.

AXAXA

I knocked gently on Commander X's door, listening for any movement inside. My heart jumped when I heard the scrape of his chair on the floor and his high tenor voice called me in. I'd had a hard time getting a hold of the Commander recently, and in the face of my outburst earlier, I half-expected him to avoid me again. Thinking of that, I grimaced and rested one hand behind my head in a self-conscious gesture.

Fortunately, though, he had answered after all. Dressed in my nice pink shorts, white v-neck blouse, and a strained smile, I opened the door and stepped inside. X stood waiting for me behind his desk. As usual, his incredible office took a moment for me to absorb; I can't come into this place without feeling a little awe at the man who works here.

First, the bookshelves. X reads more widely and deeply than anyone I've met. Scientific journals, philosophic treatises, mystery novels, literature in many different languages, religious texts, instructional books for children and more line the bookcase by the desk. I don't understand why he reads all those things, but I try to at least follow along when he talks to me. In the hard sciences, in my specialties of programming and reploid design, I can just about hold a conversation with him, and I cling to that when he's making connections and describing patterns outside of my field.

His appreciation for art is ahead of mine, too. The copy of Van Gogh's "Starry Night" hangs on the wall opposite a Japanese bonsai tree and its cute little sunlamp. Once, in thanks for an incredible rescue of their president, the Chinese government gave him an ancient Hung dynasty vase for safekeeping; first he put it in the corner next to the bonsai tree, and then later he moved it to stand sentinel by the door to his quarters in the back. It joined the bust of Caesar in that respect. Meanwhile, a piece of modern art dangled precariously from the ceiling, inviting the eyes upward into a hypnotic swirl of dark and shaded colors. I can't put my finger on why he values it all; it's like I'm missing something inside that he's always had.

As for the desk, its polished wood bulk took up nearly half the room. Ordinarily I'd call that a tremendous waste of space, but he keeps the surface of it covered with the most fascinating array of science toys. He switches them out occasionally, to keep people interested; my favorites are the Van de Graff dust cannon and the oscilloscope that measures heart rate and breathing instead of voltages. As usual, I only barely resisted the impulse to take them apart and figure out how they work.

More permanent than the toys and placed with more care than his own nameplate, X kept a couple of pictures on a corner of the desk by themselves. In the first, an old photo of Dr. Thomas Light, the grandfather of modern robotics and architect of the first true artificial intelligence smiled back at us from an old-fasioned cherrywood frame. X has told me before how he treasures his relationship with his father.

Next to the old photo sits a holocube with a huge memory file of pictures. Its three-dimensional images cycle from one to the next every few seconds, displaying a continuous parade of the grateful living: Humans, reploids, men, women and children, working class and intellectuals of every race and design looked up with tender expressions to the person taking the photo. When I asked X about the holocube during the third war, years ago, he told me with a happy smile that those were all the people he's saved. I've never seen the holocube repeat a picture in all the time I've spent here.

Megaman X, savior of a world on the brink of destruction. I don't know how he survives that kind of pressure. How can anyone?

My eyes returned to the man at the center of it all. Stronger than a human, all-around smarter than a reploid, and kinder than anyone I've ever met; I could never stand to let him down. My eyebrows quirked as I took in his tense expression and, more importantly, his clothes.

He was wearing the shirt with the yellow duck on it.

Maverick hunters made the connection between the yellow duck shirt and X's stress level long before I arrived on base. Legend has it he wore it under his armor his first day in the field. I personally doubt that, but he put it on every night during the weeks before Repliforce rebelled for good. Why did he wear it tonight? To help him deal with me?

Closing the office door behind me, I looked off to the side with an apologetic frown. "Commander. I'm sorry I got upset at you earlier today. Have you been to see Lifesaver yet?"

I met his gaze, and the sorrowful cast of the clear green eyes told me "no" long before he shook his head. "I'm sorry, but Lifesaver can't help me with this one. It's more complicated than that."

"Then get a specialist!" I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, willing myself to control my temper. At least he had finally admitted to having a problem. "We can't afford to lose you, X. I can't let you ignore your own needs like this."

He stared at me a long moment before answering. I sensed a lot going on behind his carefully neutral expression, but that's another thing about X: if he really doesn't want me to know what he's thinking, I can't. He turns into a brick wall. What was he hiding back there?

"Alia, I promise we'll talk about my issues later. For now, please come back here and sit down. We need to focus on Zero. All right?"

I nodded carefully, watching his eyes as I came back to sit in one of the chairs behind his desk. A certain amount of relief followed the move; X in an office chair in front of me makes me much less nervous than X standing behind his imposing wooden desk. "Thank you, sir. What do you think is wrong with him? He won't go on patrol or train his unit anymore, no matter what General Signas says or does. What's his problem?"

"I don't know for sure yet." X shook his head. "I've seen Zero torn to pieces, twice, and he never gave up in spite of all that. Fighting Iris on the final weapon…I think that hurt him worse than anything. Maybe we can help him work through it if we can get him talking, but he won't sit still long enough to listen."

I pondered the problem for a moment and sighed. Zero's impossible for me to quantify. "So basically, we have to lock him in a room and hold him down until he talks? We'd still have to take away his Z-Saber to keep him from cutting a way out."

I stopped when I saw X's expression. His eyes shone and his processors must have been running at maximum speed. My head shook left to right without my conscious control.

"No. Commander X, you can't seriously be considering that. Can you imagine what he might do if we forced him to talk?"

X smiled and cocked his head, still thinking. I pursed my lips at his reaction and ticked off items on my fingers.

"First, there's taking away his Z-Saber. That's impossible without killing him. Second, he'll still have his Z-Buster, and that's powerful enough to blow holes in most normal walls. Third, we've seen him tear apart metal floors and ceilings with his bare hands before now. Finally, he has teleport codes for nearly anywhere on Earth.

"That leaves three choices for places to confine him. One, a training room on base. Half of them are under renovations and the other half are booked twenty-four seven. Two, the brig. That's still full with criminals from the war. Other places with strong walls and teleport jamming are either too dangerous or too sensitive to use. Even training rooms and prisons are iffy places to talk anyway. Commander, this is a terrible idea."

"You said anywhere on Earth." X's eyes flashed and he scribbled furiously on the notepad on his desk. "Alia, how would you like to take a long-distance teleport with the two of us?"

I regarded him carefully. "What do you mean by long-distance?"

"About an atom's width in eleven-dimensional space." He laughed and stood, laying the paper down on the desk. "You're a genius, Alia. We'll get Gate and sort out the particulars tomorrow. Wonderful work."

XAXAX

With that, I threw an arm around the blonde's shoulders and ushered her towards the door to the hall. "I'm really tired now, so I'd better take a sleep cycle, but we can talk more in the morning, okay? I just got a new wafflemaker, so it'll be great."

I had her almost to the door before Alia resisted my gentle pressure. The blonde dug in her heels and pushed back, forcing me to a halt. Her unarmored body felt soft and strong and warm. "Wait. X, you told me we'd talk about your issues now. You aren't going to go back on that, are you?"

"Of course not." I shifted my weight and jerked the reploid's supple body off balance. As she started to flail for support, the strength gone from her stance, I pivoted and whirled the blonde around to throw her out the door. "Whoops."

She caught herself by the doorframe and held on like a starfish. "Commander, what are you doing?"

Her stance had too little strength to resist another push. I lowered my shoulders and prepared to bull rush her into the hallway. "I'll see you in the morning."

By the end of that statement, I needed to have shoved her out the door and rebounded back in order to close it. I hadn't. Why not?

My bull rush came a moment too late. Alia turned reflexively as I made contact. One hand caught on my shoulder, her feet tangled up in mine, and we went down in a confusion of arms and legs. I had to close my legs and throw myself to the side to avoid an unintentional knee to the crotch; the new equipment is incredibly sensitive. As we hit the ground, I shifted to get the reploid in an armlock.

"X, what are you doing? Are you going crazy?" Alia twisted to avoid my move and tried kicking to get away. I pinned her anyway, threw us into a roll, and kicked off her midsection to throw the blonde across the hall. "Why—oof."

Before she reached the apex of her flight I switched to Bubble Crab's weapon and fired off a fat pile of metal-oil hybrid bubbles. The blonde fell into them like a mattress, breaking her fall; the bubbles burst underneath her with a high-pitched series of pings before she smacked prone on her back. I still don't know how I ever used those as an offensive weapon. While Alia recovered her breath, I got to my feet with a sigh.

"What a mess. I'm sorry, Alia, it looks like I got a little carried away." I walked towards her in as nonthreatening a way as possible. "Here, let me help you up."

Refusing to meet my gaze, Alia glared at my chest instead. Her skin and clothes were wet with the inflammable oil of Bubble Crab's signature weapon, and my coolant pump pounded with the sight. Her expression fell.

"If you were testing me, I know I failed. I didn't expect an attack from you."

I forced a grin. At the time, I even avoided wondering why I hadn't forced the blonde out of my office more efficiently from the beginning. Since then I've come to terms with the fact that I didn't really want Alia to leave.

In the moment, I leaned down, held out my hand to help her to her feet, and spouted the first excuse for my behavior that came to mind. "Well, you know, be ready for anything, like Zero says. We're going to take good care of him tomorrow."

All reploids have their limits, not just physically, but mentally. With the right intonations, emphasis, and body language I can trick even Alia or Lifesaver into forgetting the previous line of a conversation. If I had delivered those last two sentences of dialogue without a flaw, Alia might have gone a full three minutes before realizing how I had dodged talking about my problems.

I messed up the delivery. Alia grabbed my hand and heaved herself up at me with knee leading. "You're not getting off that easy!"

Her knee struck my chest hard enough to bruise bones and blast the breath from my lungs; my autonomic systems told me to curl up and protect my internals from another blow. I ignored them. Instead, I brought my arms down around my opponent and heaved her to the side, using the blonde's own momentum to thwart her attempt at a grapple. My feet worked furiously to pivot with the motion and I sucked in another breath to speak. "Then take this!"

She scrabbled for a hold on my arms, but my martial arts experience gave me too much of an edge. I flung the reploid down the hallway like a shot put at the Reploid Olympics.

I don't normally do this kind of thing. General Signas frowns on people fighting outside the training rooms, and besides a certain red-armored blond, the rest of the Maverick Hunter Commanders don't pride themselves on personally ambushing their rookies to "keep them in shape." Fortunately, we had plenty of empty hallway to work with tonight, and no apparent onlookers. I don't need people thinking Commander X considers himself above Signas' rules. If even robots won't follow rules, people like Alia will never have peace from fighting.

Alia twisted in the air and landed on her feet with sinuous grace. Her designer built her to last, which in our world means surviving the occasional scrap with Mavericks. Beyond that, we had trained her for combat as a Hunter. Maybe no one meant for her to face off against Maverick Hunter X, but as her commander I had full confidence in the blonde's fighting ability.

Dear, sweet goodness, though. Watching her move like that now made me need a quick ice bath.

My mind continued processing the battle as a sort of sideline. I released my weapons charge an instant before Alia converted her hand to the Alia Buster, and metal-oil bubbles swirled up in front of me just in time to refract her electromagnetic pulse into a wash of static. The reploid's expression of determination never wavered.

"Don't underestimate me, Commander!" She drew a phaser pistol from a hidden sheath in her clothes and started gunning down my bubble shield. My buster was already moving, firing a fountain of Bubble Crab bubbles into the air to keep an EMP-blocking screen between the two of us. The shimmering spheres blurred the details of the reploid's curvy frame, but in reality, that simply removed a lot of the distractions from fighting her. I fired another spray of bubbles and waited for the blonde's next move.

AXAXA

I gritted my teeth at how fast he fired those bubbles. By aiming upwards at a 45° degree angle and keeping up a continuous spray, X kept a wall of protection from my weapons constantly floating down in front of him. I could barely detect his yellow-duck-shirted frame behind the interference.

That may have been for the best, though. I didn't want to risk looking in his eyes right then.

Frowning, I glanced up at the metal ceiling and dashed forwards with an EMP charge at the ready. The wall of bubbles didn't extend all the way to the top of our battlefield; a properly aimed pulse had the potential to partially reflect off the ceiling and bounce down onto the Commander's unprotected head. I raised my Alia Buster and let off a maximum-power blast, enough to fry a mechaniloid or knock out an unarmored reploid for long enough to drag him into custody. If the Commander meant to go all Zero and ambush me, I wasn't about to disappoint him by going down easy.

The fount of bubbles cut off the instant I released the EMP. Feet working hard to avoid slipping on the oily surface of the floor, I wove my way through the still-falling screen of bubbles to where X lay comatose on the hard ceramic tile.

His yellow duck shirt lay on him in disarray from the fall, and the man's unconscious, innocent expression gave me a pang of remorse. Ignoring my suddenly scrambled feelings, I lifted the Alia Buster and fired on the Commander's apparently insensible form. Zero's played possum-bot one too many times for his best friend to catch me with the same trick.

X's body vanished the instant I fired.

Or rather, his Split Mushroom-style electrical clone disappeared when my EMP disrupted it.

Looking back on what happened, why was I surprised that he outwitted me? I'm a reploid—a replicated android. Deep down, all sensible reploids know we're only cheap knockoffs of the original. I suspect that man knows us better than we know ourselves. Light knows, I'd give up every last dollar of research funding to understand him in return.

In the instant before I overcame the shock, a heavy metal claw caught me by the shoulder and jerked me off my feet. X had used the bubble screen to hide just inside his office, then ambushed me with the Strike Chain, a weapon he liberated from a plant-based Maverick in the second war. I flailed helplessly against the weapon's pull; in spite of anything I could do, though, the armored chain dragged me across the slippery floor toward its owner.

He had me. I managed to reorient myself and fire a low-power pulse from the Alia Buster, but X tugged on the chain at just the wrong moment, and the EMP careened uselessly down the hallway instead of hitting its duckshirted target. I threw a punch when he got in close but he grabbed my wrist and waist and threw me to the floor of his office, quickly following to pin me. Still, at least I avoided meeting his gaze.

I struggled another moment, and the man's hold simply tightened further. I wanted to curse but he doesn't like cursing, and besides, that's not polite to do in front of a superior officer, even if they have gone all Zero on you. Finally, almost unavoidably with his face right in front of me, my eyes locked on the Commander's.

That ended the battle. Only a Maverick can keep fighting after looking into those powerful eyes, filled with that incomprehensible emotion. My body went slack as I stared up at him.

He kept his teenager-looking face tense and unreadable. What does he think about when he looks like that at me? Does Commander X think of me as a friend, or just another spotter? I thought I knew the answer a month ago, but the way he had been acting made me wonder. What made him attack me like this when he's been avoiding the sight of me for weeks? Why here, why now?

I opened my mouth to ask, but the man shook his head and turned away. I remained silent and he read my mind. What else can I call it? He answered my thoughts before I gave them a voice.

"I'm sorry for the confusion, Alia. I haven't been myself these last few weeks." He rolled off me and sat with his back to his desk. His eyes strayed slowly up to mine, then back to the floor. "I've been trying to come to terms with myself. Ordinary humans get years to deal with this; but I guess I've never been ordinary."

I sat up and stared at him wordlessly, my forehead wrinkling in a pained effort to understand. He looked at me, and his expression of fear mixed with something stronger I didn't recognize.

"I love you, Alia. I want to be yours in a way I have no experience explaining."

My jaw slackened as the thought came across. I tried to keep a level tone. "Love? You mean…romantically? Like a human?"

The eagerness in his eyes faltered, and the lines of anxiety deepened on his expression, but the man determinedly kept my gaze. "Yes."

For several seconds I barely saw him as possibilities flashed before my mind. "Dr. Light's last upgrade? He added sexual capability?"

X nodded. "He wants me to bring back a friend next time I visit one of his capsules. He says my upgrade isn't complete until he can give someone else the counterpart upgrade. I think…"

He trailed off, and my mind raced. Certain physical details I had noticed during the fight made much more sense now. I had to restrain myself from lunging forward and ripping off his clothes to see for myself. How had anyone made this kind of technological advancement, even the ghost of Dr. Light? Reploid—reploid reproduction?

While my eyes trailed down his frame, X looked away and sat there in silence. Abruptly he stood and stepped past me to close the door. His tone changed. "I didn't tell anyone before because I didn't know what to do. I'd still prefer to keep it quiet for now, until I know for sure what I am going to do."

He glanced at me, and finally I came out of my reverie enough to notice the expression on his face. With a sudden stab of guilt I jumped to my feet.

XAXAX

I closed the door with a gentle motion. Glancing at Alia, I guessed she hadn't heard the quiet noise from the hall outside. My own audio sensors had barely picked it up.

The intrusion of an eavesdropper threw my own perspective into sharp relief. Alia had no way to understand what I meant; I had no right to ask her for a response, certainly not so soon. How did Dr. Light expect me to deal with this new upgrade? How did he expect me to justify an attraction to someone who couldn't begin to understand it?

Alia got to her feet with a start, lips parted to speak but unable to find words. I smiled a little and shrugged. "Would you like to sing some karaoke? I have my machine all set up in the back."

She stared at me for another second, her expression astounded, and then nodded mutely. I led her back into my quarters and wandered over to the karaoke machine I keep on the mock stage I built. MHHQ Maintenance moved me into this office with its noise-absorbent walls when I first made the rank of Captain. To this day, I suspect they promoted me just to get my "danged noise machine" into a soundproofed room.

My hands went to the controls for the machine. Alia likes to sing, but she doesn't think she's very good, and so she won't do it in any kind of public setting. I had started looking down the list of songs for one she liked when the reploid's hand touched my shoulder.

I turned in response, and found her regarding me with a determined frown. Before I knew what to do, she put her hands on my cheeks and kissed me. Possibilities surged through my brain like molten honey. I swooned.

She couldn't—why would she—how?

At that moment she kissed me again, and a realization overrode my questions as surely as Alia had overridden my objections.

Babies! We're gonna have babies!

AXAXA

X's legs nearly gave out under him. Shifting his weight onto me to keep him upright, I changed my grip and kissed him again. Certainly I couldn't fail my friend when he most needed my help.

I resolved then to go through with Dr. Light's plan for his son. I owed it to myself, to science, and to Dr. Light who had made our creation possible.

Most of all, though, I decided to do it for Megaman X.

GAGAG

Madness.

I remained carefully silent, my back flat to the wall, as the android rose and closed the door to his office from the inside. His voice came clearly through the centimeters of wood.

"I didn't tell anyone before because I didn't know what to do. I'd still prefer to keep it quiet for now, until I know for sure what I am going to do."

So that's how it was? How childish.

His conversation with the spotter Alia trailed off into his quarters. Having originally come to see X about the earlier experiment and without the intention of eavesdropping, I lacked any surveillance equipment, which the android must have guessed. He had apparently detected my presence and chose not to reveal me.

Fool. If he only knew how much Signas' funding for my research had furthered my plans; how his and Zero's travel through subspace had weakened the lining of subspace around me, the fulcrum point for the technology; how close I was to becoming a gateway in more than name—his trivial mind would quail at the darkness lurking at the fringes of this world.

I turned and stepped quietly back down the hallway. I saw little reason to listen further anyway. Alia had made her choice to serve the Maverick Hunters; as for X, why bother with him and his pretensions of humanity? My own plans certainly included no such idle foolishness.

I chuckled, and the voice from subspace breathed sweet comfort to my mind. No, no such foolishness at all.