"Sir! They're coming!"
General already knew the answer, but he had to ask the question. "Who's coming?"
"X and Zero! They'll be here soon!"
"Will Final Weapon be ready to fire by then?"
The soldier shook his head. "Not quite. It needs a little more time to finish arming. Their shuttle will get here before it's done."
General sighed. "We left Earth completely, but they can't just let us go. They can't abide us escaping. Even when we just want peace!"
"They're the Hunters. Genocide is their profession," Iris said, not looking at anyone. She smiled. "We'll go."
Double's head whipped towards her. General frowned at her. She seemed immune to both reactions. "What do you mean?" General asked.
"Yeah, what do you mean?" said Double, visibly nervous.
She sighed contentedly. "The fear is so thick here…" After a happy hum, she looked at General. "Double and I will go see X and Zero first. I want to see Zero again, and he can't refuse me. For his part, Double has history with X. We'll go."
"And do what?"
"Talk, of course. And we'll see where it goes from there."
"Let me get this straight," General said dubiously. "You want to be alone against Zero, and you're willing to throw Double in front of X, when they're on the warpath."
She laughed. "It's not like there's anywhere to go. This will be our way of saying 'thank you' for taking us in. And you'll get to protect what's left of Repliforce, risk-free. It's no loss to you whatever happens."
"I've failed so many already," General replied. "I don't want to fail Colonel again by letting you die."
"Oooother peeeeople maaaatteeeer," Iris sang. She smiled. "We're dead, didn't you know? Well, Colonel is dead, anyway. You can't fail him. He died happily. So don't worry."
"I'm not dead," said Double resentfully.
"Yes you are," she replied, turning to give him a piercing look. "You know it, too. You died the moment Rekir exposed you. You've been swimming in denial ever since, but that won't last much longer."
Double's eyes darted back and forth, as if he was doing math in his head. General noticed. "Shall I dispose of him, my lady?" he growled.
"No," she said. "Without him, we wouldn't have gotten to space. We'll give him a chance to earn his place here. We'll have him face X, just like I said."
Double seemed to finish his calculations with disappointment. He visibly deflated. "Fine," he said resignedly. "I'll do it. But why, Iris? Why are you doing this to me?"
The smile that came across her face was like a crack in a pane of glass: all jagged, irregular edges spreading every which way. "Having opinions is fun," she said with a jangling purr. "I wish I'd had more while I was alive."
She started walking. "Come on, Double. Let's go meet our friends."
"Tee-minus thirty. Remember, when you release from the shuttle, your suit will do a short controlled burn. You'll have to course correct on your own."
X nodded, though Alia was literally a world away. "Thanks for everything."
"You can thank me when you get back. Tee-minus ten."
She knew her business, X reflected. Both her mathematics, which he'd double-checked from sheer nerves, and her counsel. He could use a little infusion of faith at a time like this…
He glanced to his left. Zero was with him. It made him feel better.
X's internal chronometer unerringly marked the time. His suit's mag-boots disengaged and, at nearly the same moment, its thrusters jolted him.
He sailed out into infinity.
It was a lot like sensory deprivation. The thrust in his suit turned off, taking away feeling. There was no sound whatsoever. He could see, but out here there was nothing, just the vastness of things too far away to comprehend. He couldn't see his target, not yet.
He had a sudden impression, an intrusion of past on present. Experiments. The studies done on him when reploids were a dream, studies of his unprecedented brain, studies that more than once had separated that brain from his senses in order to study it in isolation and incidentally scared him stupid until he'd found the courage to say something about it…
He fought down the memory. He needed all his focus. He resisted the urge to look back and try to find the shuttle. Even if he found it, what good would it do?
There. That dot wasn't moving, and it was growing. Final Weapon. His exquisite targeting routines locked on. Good as they were, they needed data. He had to wait.
He strained and strained. He was hoping it was getting bigger. He couldn't tell. It didn't look like it was moving, but that could be for two reasons—either he was heading straight at it, or it was still too far away…
Where was Zero?
He broke his eyelock on the dot to look for Zero. His circuits frazzled when Zero wasn't there. Where? Where—there? There!
Moving away!
Math raced through X. Zero had changed course—his targeting subroutines and optics were, in all likelihood, better than X's. If he'd gotten good data on Final Weapon before X had, made a correction—
Leap of faith. X never questioned. He matched Zero's course. At this range, he could judge his motion against Zero's much more accurately than he could against Final Weapon.
A glance back at the space station. It stubbornly wasn't growing, but it also wasn't moving. Had they nailed the course correctly? How big was this thing?
He looked to Zero again. Made a minor adjustment to close the distance to Zero. Drift… drift… another small one, even out. There. Range to Zero restored, having matched his course correction.
Oh! He had a radio, didn't he? In as bizarre circumstances as these, normal things got lost in the shuffle. He focused down his embarrassment. "You altered your course," he said to Zero.
He waited for an answer.
He waited for a long time.
"You couldn't tell we needed it?" Zero said at last.
"Not yet," X said. "I was still evaluating."
"It was a small change," Zero said after an interminable wait.
"Yes." X smiled. "You will tell me if you make another one, won't you?"
"Yes."
"That's how it's supposed to be," X said firmly. "When one of us goes off-course, we help each other stay on track."
"You know I hate metaphor."
That shut X up.
At last he could see Final Weapon show some sign of getting closer. It was growing in his sight. With Zero steady to his side, and nothing else around but stars, the growth of Final Weapon was the only true sign that he was moving at all.
There was a metaphor there, too, but Zero had it right, maybe. There was no time for that here.
Closer… closer…
X was getting good data now. One more slight adjustment. "One degree left," he radioed Zero.
"Half a degree."
X frowned, recalculated. "One degree is correct."
Zero moved. "It is now because we wasted time talking about it."
X mirrored the adjustment. "So long as we get it right."
Zero didn't reply.
Bigger, bigger—how far away had they been when they bailed on the shuttle? How long had this taken? Surely they could have gotten closer… but no, the shuttle would have been seen, and that would have given Repliforce a chance to rig some sort of defense, or send some soldiers out to contest their arrival. X and Zero would have been helpless to fight back when their own weapons fire would have skewed their course and sent them spiraling into deep space…
It occurred to X that he'd faced any number of violent, grisly deaths. Just in this war he'd been faced with attempted incineration, explosion, mutilation, skewering, dismemberment, and more besides. All very immediate and traumatic. Dying a slow death drifting out into infinity… that was a new one.
More peaceful, maybe, but more disturbing. More… helpless.
He really didn't know why he thought about things like that at times like these.
At least he wouldn't be alone. If he missed, Zero would too. Heat death wouldn't be so bad if he had company. It was a selfish thought, one that embarrassed him- what, and deprive the world of its two best Hunters, just so he wouldn't be lonely as he wasted away? And doom his dearest friend for his own sake? No. He would rather die alone, given the choice.
He wondered what Zero's choice would be.
And stopped wondering. Zero was built unloved. Now he was so aching for companionship he was holding out hope that an insane Maverick would love him back. For all the trouble that Zero had in making connections, he held on to the ones he made with fanatical desperation.
If he were cut loose from them...
There was a metaphor here, too. The worst one yet.
X shook his head. His attention had wandered from survival- a potentially fatal mistake, here in space. Time to refocus. Final Weapon had gotten noticeably bigger. He checked his math. "Retro-burn in ten seconds," he said.
"Roger," Zero agreed.
X queued up the command for his thrusters to fire against his current course. Final Weapon was a few kilometers away, still—practically on top of them, in orbital terms. But without a retro burn to kill their momentum, they'd shoot right past the thing without being able to maneuver onto it.
Tick, tick, thrust. The first burst of feeling since beginning the spacewalk jolted X. Reminded him that sensations were possible.
He double-checked his fuel. The suits were good and maneuverable, and they hadn't had to use much fuel thus far—the course had been good enough that only the two adjustments had brought them through. Good thing: no one knew how much fuel it would take to do their final maneuvers, and that kind of finesse work was very expensive, especially aiming at a moving target…
And with a laugh X saw the solution. "Aim for the cargo bay," he said.
"Why?"
"It's a bigger target. Much more room for error. We can go from there to the outer ring with lower speed and finer control."
"Good plan."
X felt a glimmer of pride at that. It soured quickly. He wasn't supposed to have to prove his value to Zero…
He shook his head. Focus. Focus or it's heat death.
He targeted the cargo bay—a grandiose name for an open platform behind the shuttle dock. "Retro burn is complete. One more adjustment. Two degrees left. One degree up."
"One point five left, one up."
Close enough. "Okay. Three seconds."
He and Zero maneuvered as one. Synchronized swimmers would have blushed with envy. They economized every drop of fuel.
"Ell-zee looks clear," he said.
"Confirmed."
"Good. Last thing we needed was a mid-orbit firefight."
Relative velocity to Final Weapon was still fifty meters a second—practically backwards for a satellite, racecar speeds on Earth. They'd have barely a second over the cargo bay, and if they missed, they'd have to try and get the far side of the cylinder… miss that and it would be time for philosophy.
Wow, Zero's math had been good. "We're coming right at it. Retro burst, no offset."
"Roger."
Once more they twisted (more precious fuel), aimed their feet at the cargo bay, fired off the shortest possible burst of thrusters which cut their incoming velocity, engaged mag boots-
K-chunk. K-chunk.
X shuddered in his suit as he touched down. It wasn't that he thought they'd miss, honestly, it was just that the consequences of missing…
But now his feet were on something solid. Much better. Almost there. He looked 'up' at the cylinder of final weapon; he could see the ring spinning, but there was no relative motion. An easy target. He released his mag boots, feathered his thrusters, and floated gently for the ring.
Not quickly. It was controlled. But X still had to reorient himself mid-flight in hard vacuum while flying at a huge piece of spinning metal, which was disorienting and uncomfortable and terrifying at any speed.
His mag-boots engaged with a satisfying k-chunk, binding him to the surface of the ring. X finally allowed himself to relax, just a little. He'd made it. This was an incredibly stupid, dangerous op, and they were making it work. Just another day at the office.
He patted his body down to try and shed the sense of unreality—to ensure he was still all there. Sailing, sensation-less, through the void, seeing Final Weapon approach but feeling as if he was stationary, and aware that even a small math error would send him shooting hopelessly into deep space…
It wasn't the worst he'd ever felt, but it was probably in the top three.
There would be time for exact rankings later. For now, he needed to orient himself. He looked around. There, above him, was the weapon core and the cargo bay, with a shuttle parked at the front, just as he'd left them. It looked like it was rotating—X felt like the ring was stationary. He knew it was an illusion, but it was a convincing one.
His eyes wandered further, down the barrel of the weapon, and there was the blazing blue ball of Earth. Now his eyes could tell that he was spinning, not the whole Earth—but that went directly against what his gyros were telling him. His gyros were saying he wasn't moving, but he could see…
Violent disorientation swept through X. He turned away in pain. No wonder Final Weapon was designed with no windows!
There. The airlock. Focus.
Wait. Zero. They needed to decide who was going where. He looked around. Where was—
"Zero!" he called over the radio.
"…I hear her, X."
X looked around, frantically—hard with this helmet blocking so much of his field of view—there! Zero was moving downspin towards the other airlock. "I hear her," he said again. There was no question who "her" was.
"Zero!"
"…yes?"
Words failed him. He'd had an entire shuttle ride to try and help Zero. If he'd failed then, what could he possibly say now? "Be careful."
"She won't hurt me."
"Please," X said, but he didn't transmit. Something inside of him was withering with every step Zero took. "Please."
Floating for Final Weapon had been horrific. In a different way, this was worse.
He couldn't bear it. He turned for the other airlock.
The heavy doors clanged shut behind him. There was a hiss as the station began to pump air into the lock to equalize with the occupied spaces. Double was there, X suddenly knew.
It was a property that had caught many a Maverick by surprise. X didn't need eyes to see. Double was there, waiting for him. Expecting him. No rest for the weary…
The airlock opened. Double was, indeed, right outside the airlock.
"X!" he cried, running forward. "Thank goodness you're-"
"Stop right there," X said.
Double complied with a puzzled look. "But sir, why?"
He was affecting innocence. Very well. X undid the first straps of his spacesuit. "Why did you come here, Double?"
"It's Iris!" said Double. "She's crazy! Colonel's death has made her completely mad. She forced me into the shuttle and took me here!"
"I see," said X in sterile tones. He undid another strap.
"I can help with that," offered Double, but when he took a step, he found himself staring at X's hand. He could well imagine what that hand could become.
"Don't," said X.
Double's face twisted. "But… I can help you," he said. "Won't you let me help you?"
With his other hand, X continued to divest himself. "No. You're a traitor."
"How could I be? I helped you out before!"
"Yes," said X sadly. "I did trust you. I trusted you with my life, and you served me well as an Operator."
"So why not trust me one more time?" said Double. "We Hunters have to protect each other—that's what you told me before. 'Teamwork is a survival trait.'"
"Distrust is also a survival trait," X parried.
"You're right," said Double, hanging his head. "I didn't have enough. That's how Iris was able to snare me. I wouldn't have run away on my own! I'm a rookie who just wants to help, and she took advantage of… what is it?"
X hadn't realized he'd sighed aloud. "Nothing," he said. "You're just making this harder than it needs to be."
"You're really going to kill me, aren't you?"
"You're a Hunter," said X. "You know how this goes. You killed another Hunter and ran away…"
"I told you, I was forced to do that!" Double said pleadingly. "I didn't want to, but Iris made me!"
"She made you taunt Rekir before you killed him?" X said flatly. "She made you laugh at the Hunters? She made you revel in your Maverickism?"
"You don't know what it's like," babbled Double. "You don't know what it's like when she's forcing you to—controlling… she's scary, so scary. She didn't used to be, but she's crazy now, and it lets her control people. She's going to try it on Zero, too, so she can kill him!"
"Thanks for the warning," X said. There was no avoiding it any more. The helmet piece had to come off, and it would obscure his vision when it did.
Moment of truth.
He knew for certain that Zero didn't feel this need. He would have struck already. Or would he have? If it was Iris…
Double was looking at him expectantly. Pleadingly. Exactly how someone scraping for his life would look. Which was the problem, after all. It was a face that had to be trusted.
X sighed and removed his helmet.
As it came over his head there was a screech of energy and a bloodthirsty stab.
"Is the evacuation complete?" General asked Adjutant.
"Yes, sir," answered Adjutant. "Everyone is in the forward compartments past em-three. This—" he pointed to the forward door, "—is the only way to get to them."
"Good," said General. "Go join them. I'm leaving you in charge."
Adjutant looked down morosely. "Yes, sir."
"Don't look like that," said General. "We're so close now, closer than ever. Once the mass driver is ready, we can force X and Zero to stop. They're Maverick Hunters. They have the Three Laws. If we threaten targets on Earth, they'll have to stop. We can negotiate, then."
Adjutant still looked gloomy, so General continued, "I understand it doesn't seem… honorable, to pin our survival on holding humans hostage. But X told me himself, in our first conversation together, that this will work. 'Entire armies have been built just for deterrence', he said. And he's the one we can talk to. All we have to do is convince him that this is a deterrence situation. The humans will understand that logic. It will work."
"It's not that," said Adjutant.
"Then what?"
"It's just… So many of our best have sacrificed themselves, and each one thought he'd be the hero that saved Repliforce. Frost Walrus thought that. Cyber Peacock thought that. Slash Beast thought that. They all made you promises… Colonel promised me, to my face, that his sacrifice would be the one to save Repliforce. But even he couldn't do it.
"And now you're promising your sacrifice will finally save Repliforce. I've heard that before, and… I know how it ends."
General's eyes closed. "I understand how you feel," he said quietly.
"Do you?" said Adjutant. "Do you get how it feels to see all of your heroes die, one by one? And watch it all mean nothing?"
"It hasn't meant nothing," General countered with conviction he didn't feel. "We're here, aren't we?"
"Yes, sir," mumbled Adjutant.
General gathered himself. Adjutant, knowingly or not, was talking directly to General's private anxieties. It would take everything he had to remain General in the face of that. "When Repliforce was declared Maverick," he said, "we knew we only had one chance. It was a slim chance. Perilous. But any other course was guaranteed destruction. Forty escapees may not sound like much—it isn't much," he admitted. "But it's better than extermination, isn't it?"
Adjutant nodded.
"I wish I could have done better," General confided. "I wish we hadn't had to stoop to this, or lose so many, or…" he shook his head.
"But that doesn't mean you have to die now," protested Adjutant. "We followed you because we wanted to. You're our leader! Our General! You don't have to die just because your soldiers did!"
General smiled. "Thank you, Adjutant."
"We need you," Adjutant went on. "We need a leader, or we're just a mob."
"And Repliforce will have a leader," General said meaningfully.
Adjutant's eyes widened. "Oh, no sir," he said. "Not me."
"It's harder than it looks, isn't it?" General whispered with a grin.
"Sir, please!" Adjutant said, on the verge of tears.
"I might not die," General said, patting his chest. "This body is very robust. My builders worried I might be assassinated, so they made me extremely durable. It's a good body for buying time. But there's another reason this is as far as I go. There's another, more important reason that em-three is where I stay."
"What?" sniffed Adjutant.
General pointed. "How would I fit through that door?"
Adjutant blinked, and looked behind him at the door. Now that he looked, it was smaller than the ones closer to the airlock. General had barely squeezed in to get this far. He had no hope of going further forward barring disassembly.
"I'll admit to this oversight," General said. "I didn't realize how tightly space systems are built when I came up with this plan. I thought our last difficulty would be fitting me on the shuttle." He gave a wry smile. "My original plan was to send Colonel here, and stay behind myself. The 'heroic last stand at the spaceport' bit was going to be my destiny, if not for that fatal link of his. Alas."
Adjutant seemed to rally, at least a little bit. "He did say not to mourn him."
"That is what he'd say," General agreed. "So let's not mourn him. If you all can survive, this was all worth it, and then we can celebrate him like the hero he was. So go on—rejoin the rest of Repliforce, prepare the mass driver, and seal the door behind me. If I can buy a few minutes, Repliforce will live on."
"Yes, sir," said Adjutant crisply. He saluted, then exited through the door.
General wished he'd felt half as much determination as he'd projected. With all the destruction X had wrought thus far, General would have been a fool to believe he'd be the one to somehow stop him. Still… if he could survive long enough, and then appeal to the Father of All Reploids… maybe this would work. Even if it didn't, surviving for a few minutes would be just as effective.
Bob Anderson had promised that General would find clarity if he survived long enough in space. He liked to believe that he had.
For Repliforce—for his last command—General would give his all.
X went stiff as a pink blade of energy penetrated his spacesuit. "Traitor," he grunted.
"Ha! Leave it to the Hunters to be blind to an obvious name like 'Double'," the Maverick said with a grin. His form had changed, X noticed. More athletic, threatening, and combat-ready. Special systems were needed to accomplish it, no doubt…
Academic curiosity was somewhat deflected by the energy beam protruding from Double's right wrist. Double's change had given him just enough reach to get to X with a standing lunge. Now his energy blade had impaled the left torso of X's suit.
"Were all your words lies?" X said through gritted teeth.
"Not all. Very few, in fact. The art of deception is telling as much truth as possible so the lies have somewhere to hide. Iris is crazy. She did make me come here. She is killing Zero—or trying to, anyway. And I do want to help you." The grin broadened. "The only lie was what I wanted to help you with."
He tore the blade to the side, eviscerating the suit; X spun along with the blade, robbing it of its worst effects. Double followed up immediately, slashing and lunging faster than nearly any combat reploid could match. The Mavericks had invested a lot in Double, and it showed; X couldn't escape melee range. The room was too small, Double was too fast, they were already in tight, and most of X's weapons were unavailable.
Soon the spacesuit was in tatters, shredded by the energy blade which was no less ravenous for it. And still X couldn't find an opening, couldn't find a way...
"What's wrong?" cackled Double. "Too shocked and dismayed to fight back?"
"You've got it all wrong—agh!" X dodged again, incompletely; the blade licked up X's arm, splitting the suit open from wrist to elbow. X wanted to dodge left, but couldn't, only right—because to his left was the airlock, and bringing that into danger could be fatal.
X knew how powerful he was. He knew how thin Final Weapon's skin was. He knew how close to hard vacuum he was. For most of his weapons, any miss—or even some hits—would dump the whole compartment into space. Back into the void.
A slow, cold, lonely death...
No. He'd sooner embrace the heat of Double's betrayal.
"You were my operator," X grunted as he fell back and fell around. "You guided me through."
"Of course I did- this war was what I wanted!"
"You befriended Iris and the others- you helped us fight- what were we to you?"
"Morons," Double said with relish. "I was right to hold you in contempt."
Something in X twisted. "You... Maverick," he spat.
Double just laughed and stabbed.
X wanted nothing more than to charge a shot and blow Double to stardust... but he couldn't. Not here. Not with Double a blur in X's vision and the emptiness of space just beyond. He needed, for the first time, a firepower downgrade.
"Take this—and this—you naïve fool, die!" A daring lunge, emboldened by X's passivity—and X took advantage. He stepped forward and around enough that he could trap Double's arm against X's left arm and torso; he wrapped his arm underneath to pin Double's elbow.
It wasn't a strong hold, and Double immediately began thrashing and bucking to free himself. Even at this range, shooting wasn't safe, not with so much motion and the both of them being jerked around—
Oh, so don't shoot.
X smashed his free hand against Double in an uppercut empowered with Dragoon's Rising Flame. There was a burst of fire at the contact; the force of it sent Double reeling backwards, creating separation for the first time.
X didn't relent. He fired a Lightning Web to ensnare Double's legs; the Maverick stumbled. Double growled in pain and readied his energy blade to cut himself free. X read his movements and hit Double's arm with a Web, then another.
Double yowled with pain as he struggled against the webs, but for each Web he tore through, two more ensnared him. Every move he made was slower and slower, more and more resisted. Lightning Webs could immobilize and they were safe to use, but immobilization was not the goal… now what?
Inspired, X swapped weapons and shot.
The projectile was slow; Double saw it coming in advance. But he could do little about it, and when it got close it suddenly burst forward. A sharp spike embedded itself in Double's chest and served as the conduit for a shaped charge.
The projectile detonated, funneling all of its energy through the spike, directly into and through the traitor's armor. Double screamed and fell.
X watched in fascination. He looked at his arm as if surprised it was there. "Rust me," he breathed, "so Parasite Bomb has a use after all."
He advanced towards Double warily, covering the Maverick as he approached, but he needn't have bothered. The spy could do little more than moan and smoke. X shook his head. "Typical assassin configuration," he observed. "All speed, lethality, and camouflage, at the expense of armor and self-repair. You came into this fight with damage you couldn't fix. Your master didn't expect you to survive, Double."
Double laughed, but his body jerked as he did so it came off like a cough. "I had to kill my way to survival. Victory would be life, if I could manage it."
"The odds were stacked impossibly against you."
"At least I knew that going in," Double said, grinning maliciously. "Unlike you… you too-trusting fool."
"Your master trusted you to fight to the death," X said pointedly.
Double managed a chuckle. "You think he trusts anyone the way you trust everyone? You're an idiot!"
"Am I?" X wondered.
"It'll be the death of you soon enough… heh… see you in hell, X!"
A larger-than-usual explosion, unfettered by Double's light armor, blew the Maverick's charred innards about the room. X watched impassively, more concerned with the threat of a hull breach than Double's demise. The hull held. X shook his head. "Didn't you know, Double? Hell is empty. The devils are all here."
A flick of one last restraint, and what was left of the spacesuit came apart completely, sloughed off of X's body like water. What it revealed was a form far less damaged than Double would have thought, had he lived. Scoring and blackening marked Double's best attacks; but his first two treacherous strikes had left almost no impression at all.
Everyone was always remarking on how they thought X would be bigger than he was. The bulky, oversized spacesuit had encouraged that mistake.
X had trusted Double, after all—had trusted him to act like a traitor and assassin. Analysis subroutines and extra senses had done the rest. The sneak attack had been expected, monitored by sight-beyond-sight, and countered.
Or was that trust at all? You didn't have to trust something when you took away its will. X didn't trust doors, he just expected them to open because he knew how doors worked. They were such simple machines. That's what he'd reduced Double to, in the end—just a machine, a machine he could reduce still further to a broken corpse.
That power was too terrible to wield lightly or loosely. No. Trust was the opposite—trust was when he chose not to do that. When he didn't compute the different outcomes, weigh them, and decide what the other person was probably going to do—when he just took them at their words.
Trust was really stupid.
He looked at the corpse with a shake of his head. "Even if it is stupid, I'd still rather live in a world of trusting fools than a world of fearful cynics. That means I have to trust first. No matter how… frustrating, how…"
He felt the anger rising again. "But I had to hear it from your own mouth. If I don't trust, I can't save anyone, can I? So I had to give you a chance. And with that chance, you... you..."
Without his noticing his fist had tightened. His eyes caught on Double's body. He felt a sudden, overwhelming urge to shove the body into the airlock and cycle it. To think that a Maverick spy would dare to be so arrogant! His entire purpose was to pervert trust, when without trust the world couldn't function at all...
X blushed as embarrassment claimed him. "I'm usually not this melodramatic," he mumbled. This, he recognized, was a warning. He knew what was happening.
Fatigue.
It was to be expected, after this much combat, this many stresses. He'd experienced it before. There'd been more killing in other wars, to be sure—but then, the other wars hadn't been quite so pointless. He'd done so much modeling, too. It wasn't just resource-intensive; it made it easier to kill his targets and more painful at the same time. To know someone so well you could predict their next move, and use that knowledge to end them…
So the fatigue was no surprise. Still. It was dangerous. It sapped his drive, made him less reasonable. It made him both more and less emotional: more prone to outbursts, but also more prone to emotional wash and exhaustion.
"Just a little more," he promised himself. "Just a little more…"
He saw Double's body again, and felt a renewed urge to space the spy. "No," he said. "That would be littering, and the universe deserves better than to have you dumped upon it."
Warning. Fatigue. He was wasting time—looking at Double again and again to force an emotional response from an exhausted mind. He half-smiled. "What would Dragoon say if he saw me standing around like this? What would... what would Zero think?" What remained of his smile died. He gathered himself enough to say, "It's time to end this war."
The words did nothing to bolster his enthusiasm. But he did move. That had to count for something.
"So you've come…"
"Yes, Iris, yes!"
"Are you here to kill me, Zero?"
He stumbled. "Of course not."
"But I'm Maverick, aren't I? And you're the one who kills Mavericks. Just like Colonel was a Maverick, and you killed him."
"I don't care about that," said Zero. "If you think that I was wrong, fine—I won't do it with you."
"…strange…"
"I don't know what I'm doing, Iris. Nothing makes sense anymore. I just know I have to find you."
"Perfect. Turn right up ahead."
Zero complied. "I didn't want you to go away, and you did," he said, voice straining. "Please don't do that again."
"I won't. I promise. Everything's over anyway, so I'll never leave you now."
"What do you mean, everything's over?"
She laughed. Zero had used to think of her laugh as a tinkling sound. This wasn't. "I've always liked how sincere you are, Zero. How… intensely you feel things. It's always made you easy and comfortable to read. That's how I can tell… You really don't want to kill me."
"That's what I've been saying!"
"Did you know there are no humans here? It's a place just for reploids, just like I always wanted."
"But it's not," Zero said, though it hurt him. "There is no place just for reploids, not even here. This place is a weapon. The humans won't let you keep it. That's why they sent X."
"And you."
"No one tells me what to do. I came for my own reason: to find you."
"You'll find me through this door."
Zero realized, belatedly, that he'd been staring at the door and not moving it for some time. He grasped the handle. Like most doors on the station, it was a pressure door, rated for atmosphere; opening and closing it was non-trivial. Even so, he shouldn't be having this much trouble with it.
It wasn't, he realized, a lack of physical strength that was the problem.
That unwelcome, hated emotion was rising up in him again. It froze him in place like Frost Walrus could never have achieved.
"Come on, Zero," she called. "Come to me."
He wanted to. Rust, he wanted to, more than anything. So why couldn't he?
Tactical was silent. It was bizarre to Zero; tactical was never silent. He queried tactical to try and understand. It was because it was Iris on the other side of that door. He didn't know what to make of Iris any more. Tactical couldn't assign her any values; it didn't know what to do. Zero was well outside of tactical's depth.
And his own depth, for that matter.
Zero couldn't find much more strength, but he was able to put his body weight into the handle, and it turned. Even though the pressure difference between the rooms was slight, there was still a slight pop as the door cleared its seal. Once it got moving, it was much easier.
The room was a human bunkroom, with beds stacked in columns three-high on both sides along the whole length of the room. A narrow alley was in between.
Iris stood in the alley, half-turned, head down. Her red and blue should have been bright against the industrial gray all around her. Instead, the room was so dark even her colors were muted. Her bangs were like a veil.
"You are the one who kills Mavericks," she said. "And Repliforce is Maverick. Simple. But what if we're Repliforce? What then?"
Zero struggled to speak. "Who's 'we'?"
"Colonel and I, of course."
"Iris… I… I killed Colonel."
"We know. Of course we know. And, as I promised, we're broken now. It's all over."
"It's not over," Zero said heatedly. "You're alive. That's enough."
"That's sweet of you to say, Zero," she said, and hummed.
"Don't go away from me," Zero said, voice growing desperate. "I feel like you're going away. Don't…" Memory, like a thunderbolt. "I love you. That means 'don't go away', right? I love you, Iris."
"Give me a hug, then."
A test? Fine, Zero knew how to pass tests. She was seeing if he meant it, if he could go past his warbot instincts. He'd show her.
He approached her, unhesitating, in bold strides.
He'd trained her very well.
As he got close, arms wide to pull her into an embrace, her head popped up. She met his longing gaze with something very different.
Her eyes were oceans; he drowned in them. Her smile was a crack in thin ice. Her saber-
Draw-strike.
Gobbets of molten metal from Zero's armor geysered into the air.
Next time: Shattered