When the airlock had finished cycling, Zero fell to his knees.

"Are you alright?" X asked. "Let me check your damage…"

"The damage is fine," Zero said, putting a hand to his chest. Already the furrows and cracks and scars were filling in. "I'm still near one hundred percent capacity."

Weariness swept over X. "I'm glad," he said, "but that's not… I mean, I feel like…"

"What?" said Zero, whipping his head around.

X closed his eyes. He felt like he could barely retain his balance. "We've both been through a lot. I'm… here for you."

Zero looked forward. "Thank you," he mumbled.

A small spark of happiness came up in X. It didn't last long. "We still have work to do here."

"Everyone's dead," said Zero, voice strangely neutral.

"Yes, but that's not the end of it. I…"

X looked at Zero. The sharpness was gone. The focus was gone. Zero seemed… hollow. Spent. Every part of X was fried from exertion and emotional wash, but he could recognize this. He knew it intimately, as an old friend.

Regret.

So strange, to see it on Zero. Even when discussing his own death, Zero had been more embarrassed than regretful. Regret didn't belong there. X realized he'd been counting on Zero's steadiness, perhaps too much… and now matters were worse. Reversed. Zero couldn't help X, not when he was feeling like this. He needed X's help.

X hoped he had enough within him left to offer. He had little hope for the rest. He didn't know how to give Zero what he needed.

He was so tired…

He shook his head. "I have things to do," he said, "but they can wait. You're more important."

Zero stared, eyes unfocused. "I told Iris she was important. I told her that her life mattered."

X nodded, despairing. "I know how hard it is for you to care about others."

"But… I didn't care, did I?"

"You're still caring now," X pointed out.

Zero's hair whipped back and forth as he denied it. "How can I say I cared when I killed her?"

"She wasn't the same person," X said. "She'd changed—"

"You can't say that," said Zero venomously. He looked to X with fire in his eyes. "I'm the one who knew her best, not you. I say she was my Iris when I killed her!"

X flinched. He could barely look at Zero. "That scar across your chest," he said. "That's not from Sigma. That's a Z-saber wound."

"Because I betrayed her first," Zero said, sinking down again.

"Iris killed one of our medics back in Hunter Base."

"You keep bringing that up," said Zero irritably.

"Because it matters. The Iris you knew—the Iris you loved—she wouldn't have done that. When Colonel died, she shattered. The thing you fought… whatever it was, it wasn't Iris."

"Why do you hate her so much?"

"I don't, Zero," X insisted. "Really I don't. I just want you to realize… you weren't wrong."

It took Zero a moment to soak that in; then he turned his head with a huff. "I knew you'd say that," he huffed.

The clock was still ticking. X had to get this news out, before something drastic happened…

"We can talk more," X said, "but I will always listen to you. And I believe in you. Always."

Zero was returning to his hollow self. "I don't know what you mean by that."

X's chronometer was ringing. Now. You need to go now.

"I wish I could take up more of your pain," X said.

"I can give you some," Zero replied, clenching his teeth and screwing shut his eyes.

X was taken aback. "I didn't mean like…" he paused, gathered himself. "If that's what you need, do it. I can take it."

"It wouldn't work. I don't want to… tempt myself."

At another time X might have plumbed that statement for its deeper meanings. At that time, he couldn't bring himself to do it. "I hope you feel better," he said lamely, inadequately.

"You have things to do, don't you?" accused Zero.

X winced. "Yes," he said.

"I'll be fine. Go."

X closed his eyes. "You're not fine," he protested weakly. "You're using your anger to—"

"I said go!"

X felt the pain in Zero's voice. He felt the loss and confusion. He'd felt them in others before. He'd never been able to console people well—not as much as he felt they needed. With Zero, who'd never felt these things before, and whose pain and loss and confusion were so much deeper…

Tick, tick, tick.

"I'll be back," X promised for the second time. He hoped Zero, the Zero he knew, would still be there when he returned.

Blat blat, boom.

"Hey, Altern!"

"Yeah?"

Boom.

"Didja hear?"

"What?"

Sizzle, blat.

"They just announced the end of major combat operations."

"Fancy that!"

Blat sizzle boom.

"Hey, Altern!"

"Yeah?"

Blat blat, boom, blat.

"Are you deader if you die in major combat operations, or in mop-up duties?"

"I hate you so much."

Blat blat.

X watched the engineering readouts for the mass driver. Like any other piece of machinery, it had standard bands it was supposed to operate within. So many volts, so much gauss, so many RPMs, and so on.

He'd made it so that absolutely none of those parameters were in band.

The safeties had stopped him at first, but there are always bypasses around safeties. Magma Dragoon had known that truth. X certainly did.

Such a fragile thing Final Weapon was, to command such attention. Each of its shots could pulverize a building, yet its only defense was being very far away from anything that might hurt it. Someone who was close to it could ruin it with something as trifling as, say, the press of a button.

X pressed several buttons. The numbers rose a little further. He watched a bit until they stabilized, then pushed them one more time.

Abruptly the numbers swung wildly. The overhead lights flickered. Most of the numbers fell to zero, while others hit their high pegs. The camera feed at the station, set up to monitor Final Weapon's physical condition, showed small bits of something-or-other detaching from the mass driver. There seemed to be a lot less mass driver than there had been.

X nodded in satisfaction. He took a step backwards, raised an arm, and fired into the control consoles.

"Destroyed as a result of combat operations," he said, as if making a report.

If anyone asked directly, he would of course say that it was his shots that destroyed the consoles. He couldn't lie. Without the consoles, though, piecing together exactly what had happened to the mass driver would be a tricky affair. Even X didn't know the exact chain of events—what pieces or parts had failed—and that would allow him to be truthful on that front, too.

"They should never have built this," X said to himself. "People agreed not to weaponize space a hundred and fifty years ago. We don't need this. Not so long as we have…"

There, he stopped.

History might have turned out very differently if he'd brought himself to complete that sentence. If he'd been able to do something so outrageous as take credit for his own role in the world.

He was tired. He was drained. He was dreading the return trip to Earth with Zero, to say nothing of what he would have to do after. The senselessness of the war was overwhelming. The inability to kill Sigma, or even deny him his goals, was demoralizing. X was wrung out.

Much like Final Weapon, he too had his limits.

Sighing to himself, X checked his to-do list. He'd reported the end of the war, which would make sure no one tried anything stupid; he'd disabled the mass driver; he'd tallied Repliforce casualties to ensure accountability (which had been heartbreaking by itself). He wracked his buzzing circuits, trying to think of anything else that needed doing. He came up with nothing. All that was left was...

He wanted to put it off, but he couldn't. He headed back towards the shuttle.

Zero took care to have his spacesuit back on, helmet down, before X returned to him.

X stopped when he saw Zero. Zero could see him trying to talk—trying to think of the right thing to say. He knew X was trying to think of 'the right words'.

There were no right words. Zero was certain X was searching in vain.

"Ready to go, then?" X said, and even Zero knew a cop-out when he heard one. Zero's prediction had been right, but this didn't make him happy.

"Ready," Zero replied. On one level it was true. He was dressed to go at any time. Part of him, though, would never leave this station. In a sense, he'd be here forever.

He didn't want to talk about it. He didn't want to talk about it more than he'd ever wanted to not-talk about something before.

X seemed to sense this, and it sapped him of whatever presence he'd had. Before Zero's eyes, he diminished. It made Zero wonder. Had X always been so little, so frail? In Zero's mind, he was a giant, but here, now, he was just a small, lost, wounded robot. "I'll get dressed, then," said X lamely. "Are you sure…"

"No," Zero said firmly.

X grimaced. "I was going to say, "Are you sure you're alright"."

"In that case, yes. I'm sure."

It was a lie. Zero knew it. He was sure X knew it, even with Zero concealing his face with the helmet and filtering his voice through the suit to give X's empathy nothing to read. No, Zero wasn't fine. It wasn't as if there was anything X could do about it, though.

It was partly X's fault, after all. Maybe… maybe more than partly.

"I'm going out," said Zero, heading for the airlock.

"I'll be right behind you," X said, but Zero barely heard it. There were too many other voices echoing in his head. Living in the moment had long been one of Zero's strengths. He was incapable of it now.

It wasn't until he was safely alone in vacuum, completely out of X's sight, that Zero doubled over in pain.

"I couldn't save any of them!"

His hands wrapped completely around himself, as if a form of self-restraint, like he had to be his own straightjacket.

"Are we…" he said to himself. "Are we all just Mavericks waiting to happen? Have we all been Mavericks all along? Then… who am I supposed to kill?"

He wanted to say it again, but he couldn't manage it. And if he couldn't even ask the question, he had no hope of knowing the answer.

"Why did we go to space?"

X's head whipped to the side. Zero's faceplate was still down; there was no way to read his expression. His voice, though...

"What did we expect to happen?" Zero went on. "Was there any good thing that could happen?"

You thought there was, X wanted to respond at first impulse. He rejected it. It was a pointless, petty thing to say, no matter how accurate. "I went to space to stop Final Weapon," X said. "That's not a good thing, exactly, but it would have stopped a bad thing."

Zero made a derisive noise. "Hunters doing our duty. Is that all we are? Is that all we can do? No matter the cost? No matter what we want?"

X couldn't speak. He wanted to protest that he'd handled Final Weapon his own way. The words never got out of his vocal processors.

"I couldn't save them!" Zero exclaimed. "I couldn't save any of them! Any of the people I cared about! They're all dead!"

The pain was sharp in X's chest. "I know how you feel, Zero- that's how I feel all the time. I know your pain. I hope I can help you feel better." They were good words. Maybe even the right words. But as X started to say them, the shuttle hit the outer edges of the atmosphere. In moments the noise had built up to a cataclysmic roar.

The rest of the trip back was silent, but not restful. There is no restful atmospheric reentry. But the deafening racket outside the shuttle was nothing compared to the deafening silence within it.

The phone rang.

It had been still for so long, and there was so little competing noise in the room, that the ringing filled every nook and cranny. It qualified, by itself, as a commotion. Nothing alive in the room could have missed it.

There wasn't anything alive in the room.

The fan, it turned out, was plenty sturdy enough.

The androids returned to what both felt was a thoroughly undeserved hero's welcome.

It was an abbreviated one, though, much more so than the one that had followed the Third War. X had called ahead and asked Alia and Grant to keep things low-key. They had little trouble complying. The residents of Abel City were, on the whole, slow in emerging from their bunkers. The on-going mop-up operations justified this reluctance.

There was still time for a few of the braver politicians to arrive with their retinues. Outstanding, simply outstanding photo ops resulted. Zero was unusually pliable. That was another way of saying he was completely unresisting. Like a jellyfish, he flowed with the current from one picture to the next.

Both X and Zero received medals, again, some of which X was sure were invented on the spot. They didn't mind.

It was all just noise, anyway. Pictures and noise. Pictures and noise and scraps of metal. Useless things neither would have asked for, that neither could use for anything. It was so far away from anything that mattered.

What mattered…

…couldn't be discussed.

No one else had been there. No one else understood.

X knew he'd have to talk with Zero about it sooner or later. He wasn't sure whether he despised or needed the delays.

Finally it all came to an end, and they were bundled up and sent back to Hunter Base for desperately needed recharges. War, politics by other means, was coming to a close, and politics by more conventional means were going to roar back to the forefront. Combat wasn't all there was to war, after all.

X knew that. He wondered if Zero did.

No, Zero wouldn't care. Zero had other things on his mind. Things…

He was so scatter-brained, X thought with embarrassment. So hard to focus on anything. Look at him! He was practically entering sleep mode just here in the van.

He needed to talk…

…to Zero…

…before…

One more switch. Dr. Cain flipped it, noted dispassionately as the last lights came on, and turned back to the computers. Their boot was complete. He signed in, and noted they were behaving properly. As expected.

He looked down at his checklist and made two more ticks. "That just about settles that," he said. Next was the phone.

"Facilities Central," was the answer on the first ring.

"Central, labs," Cain said. "Labs have secured from the rig for combat."

"Labs, Central, roger."

As brusque as ever, Cain noted. He didn't know why. The war was basically over, wasn't it? That's why they ordered an end to the rig for combat.

Then again, everyone would be reporting in about now, so they were bound to still be busy. Besides, just because the shooting had stopped, that didn't mean things were really over, did it? He wasn't sure, and from his prison in the labs, he couldn't know.

How had the war gone? Did Repliforce really rebel? Where was Colonel in all of this? And Iris? What had happened to Zero, or X? "I really wish someone would tell me about these things," he grumbled.

He hobbled over to the wall and put the checklist back onto its hanger. When he turned, he got an unwelcome surprise.

One computer's monitor was displaying Colonel's schematics.

Cain had been working on how to integrate Hunter and Repliforce comms tech, the better to support joint ops. Someone had to try and bring those two groups together, when everyone else seemed to want to tear them apart.

But now…

Now…

"Never mind," he snarled, wiping the schematics off the monitor. "I don't want to know."

The Maverick only began to relax when Sigma's head began to move.

It looked around, clearly reorienting. Its last circumstances had been different. Finally, it spoke. "Ha ha ha, back again."

"Welcome home, master," said the Maverick.

"Home? No," snapped Sigma. "Home is Above. Home is Abel City proper. This is just our in-between. Our purgatory."

"Apologies, master," groveled the Maverick, but inside the tension was leaving him. So Sigma's escape from death hadn't cost him anything. Anything more, at least. Good.

It was impossible to conceive of Maverickism without Sigma.

"Ha ha," said Sigma, looking over his form. "I'd forgotten how limited this body was."

The Maverick was almost embarrassed. Sigma's body? No, it was Sigma's prison. It was only vaguely humanoid, a disgraceful amalgam of ruined and barely-functioning parts.

Sigma would have it no other way. When he couldn't have a top-end body, he would have something like this—something that no one would ever confuse for his real form. Something clearly temporary, unworthy.

His head remained constant. It was the head that had to remain perfect, no matter what, even when he would allow all other parts of himself to be garbage.

The Maverick didn't dare raise his eyes. He didn't trust where they might go. And Sigma's mood… who knew what that could be? Caution was the order of the day.

"Ha ha ha," said Sigma. "Someday they'll realize death has no hold on me. Until then… ha ha… let them think they've won. In reality, this war did everything I could have hoped for, and more."

"And m…" the Maverick started in confusion, unable to control himself. He rallied to kowtow once more. "Forgive me, master."

"What?" said Sigma. "Did you think we were defeated?"

"We lost our spies in the Hunters," the Maverick said, "and another one of your bodies." And what a loss that had been—that body was more than just a body. It was the sum of months of work, a small mountain of stolen components, and a dozen Maverick lives. Some were lost thieving or smuggling materials; others were sacrificed in suicide attacks to distract from the thieving and smuggling. It had been, in short, a monumental expression of Maverick effort.

"Trivial," said Sigma, dismissively. The Maverick's shoulders slumped; Sigma didn't notice. "One body, one spy, and one traitor... that's a minor loss for what we've gained."

"What did we gain? Master," the Maverick added in a panic. "Repliforce was destroyed, we didn't get Final Weapon, and the Hunters are intact. There was little collateral damage, and only a handful of human deaths."

"We wanted Repliforce destroyed," said Sigma. "They were on the Hunters' side, and even when they went Maverick, they weren't ours. They weren't committed. They were still human-lovers. They were not true Mavericks—just rebels. We have no use for their kind. They bled the Hunters a little… that was the best we could have hoped from them. Now they're out of the way, as if they never existed. Perfect.

"And the Hunters… I tell you, the Hunters are doomed," Sigma insisted. "Ha ha… what are the Hunters to you? Hunter Base? Patrols? Squads? Commanders? I've destroyed all of those before, and they've returned. If we did again, they'd just grow back again. They're a distraction. They're just extra layers around the real core. The Hunters, at their very bottom, are X and Zero. Nothing more.

"And those survived this war, yes. That means the Hunters are intact—is that what you think? Ha ha, the Hunters only look intact." Sigma laughed more, as if at some joke only he could hear. "But that's an illusion, an illusion with a finite lifespan. Are you ready for a secret? I used the weapon on Zero."

The Maverick's eyes widened. "You told him the truth of his origins?"

"I led him to the truth," Sigma said with relish. "You can't just tell Zero—the more you try the more he thinks it's about you, and rejects you. No, I showed him what must be. I showed him how to find the truth. And when he comes to the truth, he will be a Hunter no more.

"Ha ha ha… you will see, brother. The Hunters are divided. When they are divided, they will split. When they split, they are doomed."

The Maverick didn't see it. He didn't understand. But he did believe.

"Thy will be done," he said to Sigma.

"As ever," Sigma replied. "Ha ha ha."

Zero didn't understand.

Being in the armory usually made him feel content. To be surrounded by weapons, weapons he knew and could use… it made tactical buzz with the possibilities and made him feel more secure. Today, though…

He wondered if there was anything that would comfort him.

If this didn't do it… what could?

His peripheral vision seemed blurry and his head felt static-y as he left the armory. Things weren't right. They were wrong. He'd been like this ever since returning… from…

He hated having a functional memory.

A Zeroth squad Hunter was waiting for him outside the armory door. "There you are, sir," said Lux. "We've been looking for you."

Zero blinked. He tried to get his mind to engage. It wouldn't. "Why?" he said dumbly.

"Reports," said Lux, holding up a datapad, "requisitions," another pad, "recommendations," another, "proposed citations," another, "and more reports," a final one.

"Couldn't they be on the same datapad?" Zero said, looking warily at the array in Lux's hands.

"Separate, mutually exclusive systems. Government procurement at its finest. You know how it is."

Zero didn't. "I thought… doesn't Rekir…"

His frown deepened.

"Sir," said Lux, gently, "don't you remember?"

Zero didn't want to remember. Now, though… now his accursed memory was inflicting the opposite pain that it usually did. Now he couldn't forget.

"Rekir is dead," Zero said. "Killed by the traitor, Double."

"That's right," said Lux.

The wrongness intensified. There was a landslide all around Zero; he was tumbling, uncontrolled, through the worst of it. Rekir was supposed to be there.

"I'll… take these," he said with difficulty. At least they would give him something to hold on to. "And… I'll look at them."

"And pass them on to admin when you're done," Lux said helpfully.

"And pass them on to admin when I'm done," Zero repeated.

"Except for the requisitions, which go to supply."

"Except for the… right," said Zero, fumbling.

Lux gave Zero a pitying look, but fled before Zero could change his mind. Smart Hunter.

Zero looked down at the datapads. He was used to just signing them. But that was because Rekir had always already looked at them. He… supposed he'd have to look at them, too, but… what was he looking for?

He absently made his way back to squad leader territory. He laid out the five datapads on the table in front of him, thumbed on the first, and started reading.

After two grueling minutes, he put that datapad aside and took up the next. Thirty seconds later, he picked up the next.

Ten seconds later he took a step back and glared at the five datapads, each arrogantly lit for him to read. Each one challenging him.

He knew what to do when challenged.

He took all five datapads and arranged them into a scrupulously neat vertical pile. Then he drove his saber through the whole pile in one go.

Leaving the ruined datapads on the table for someone else to clean up, he left squad leaders' country and headed for where he could be alone.

"Thirty seconds of silence."

The chatter on the Hunter watch floor ceased immediately at Alia's words. Most of the operators mimicked her, and stood quietly at their consoles. Not all of them had the same discipline, though, especially one who was working with an armorer. "Who is it this time?" the armorer whispered.

"Let me look," replied the operator. He scrolled through the Hunter casualty list from the latest war, organized by time of death. (Double was not on the list.) A glance at the time told him where to look. It was later than he'd expected, later than he remembered any Hunters dying…

"Iris," he said in surprise.

"What? Iris?" said the armorer, disbelieving. "Are you sure?"

"That's the name on the list," the operator said.

"But who'd want to mourn Iris…"

"Shhhh!"

The two looked nervously at Alia, but Alia was determinedly staring at the main monitor. Precisely thirty seconds after her first announcement, she spoke again. "Resume."

And went about her business. There was, after all, so very much to do.

But not so much to do that compassion was out of order.

Rest in peace, she thought.

Next time: Evolution