45's presence in the network made 9 hyper-aware- paranoid even. It was understandable, after all 45 had put an immense amount of stress upon her sister, so any tap on the neural-network was met with a sudden nervousness from 9's emotion module.
It made 45 all the more aware of how she simply could not stop herself from harming her sister.
She let 9 lead the way until they had come to the target cabin. Damaged, burnt out on one side, clear signs of conflict. Their approach was swift and silent, slipping into the shattered remains of someone's home. 9 bounced with curiosity as she moved to clear the decrepit cabin, slipping in and out of the bedrooms and side rooms before joining 45 in the remains of the den. A decaying carpet had long been pulled aside to reveal a large secured hatch set into the floor. Signs of a forced entry- energy burns through the bolting and lock. 45 hefted the thing aside, revealing a ladder-shaft into the dark.
"This wasn't in the mission specifications." 45 hesitated, combing the data that was given to her. Smash and grab from a Sangvis facility was what had been expected, but this was a G&K secured command bunker.
"Do we have any map data?" 9 frowned as well, though 45 knew it was more because her sister hated going underground. To answer her sister, 45 pulled her weapon-light free from its rail mounting, clicking it on as she descended.
It was clear that this bunker had been compromised just from the emergency escape tunnel's damaged hatch, but as 45 moved through the inky dark of the hall it bottomed out into, there were clear signs of combat- scorch marks, bullet holes, the occasional shattered remains of Sangvis or Griffin doll.
And blood. Dried, dated to a year or two ago. It trailed back the way 45 had come- to the escape hatch. Signs from when Sangvis Ferri had begun to step up their attacks.
"Sis. I found something."
45 turned back to see that 9 had pulled a secured panel free, revealing an automated power control unit.
"Cover the hall." 45 ordered as she inspected it. It was a a post-war design, old, but it had use still. 45 mused at the irony of her statement as she flicked the power switch back and forth with little effect.
"Either the backups are dead, or the breakers were tripped." 45 sighed as she picked up the panel that 9 had threw on the ground. On the inside of it was the circuitry map, and rapidly she deciphered where the lines lead to the circuit breaker.
"Sit tight here and hold the entrance. I'll ping you to flip the APC's backups when I've got them."
"We should go together." 9 frowned, reattaching her flashlight to her weapon rail.
"It will be faster if we split up once we have some light."
"But-"
"No buts. Honestly Nine, you've been questioning orders a lot lately."
That accusation made 9 lock up, her eyes wide in fear despite 45 not showing any outwards signs of being upset about it. 45 shook her head while trying to reassure her sister, "Just sit tight, and flip the switch when I say so."
"I don't like this." 9 mumbled, shrinking down into a readied crouch by the power unit, but she stayed. That was all 45 could ask for, right now.
In her head, 45 pulled the circuitry map up, matching it against what she was seeing as she traced the lines through the hallways. The silence, normally something 45 took solace in, held an eerie, almost crushing stillness to it. Like everything had frozen in time when the power went out. The occasional doll body laying within the hall didn't help that feeling, either.
45 paused for only a second to run a quick inspection scan on one of a unit face-first in the hall. Vespid. Old model like the Rippers outside, some of the first generation ones from the Butterfly Incident.
No outward sign of damage, powered down. Most likely abandoned down here once their mission had been accomplished. It must have been a surprise attack, considering the bunker hadn't been locked down fully. None of the blast-doors in the main halls were closed, and the amount of resistance put up by the bunker's T-dolls seemed meager at best with how few damaged Vespids were in the hallways. There was an urge to try and hack the thing, figure out just what exactly had happened down here when the sudden realization struck her-
This reeked of a Sangvis Ringleader attack. Best leave it lay, lest she trip the attentions of whoever had done this.
The lines took her past a sealed armory door, a dormitory wing, the cafe entrance…
All hauntingly familiar.
She wasn't even checking the circuit map anymore, operating off pure memory as she made for the stairwell down to the bunker's lower facilities.
It was almost exactly the same. Down to the placement of the security blast-doors.
Air filtration, water and waste recycling, generator room, all of the facility's life support systems were laid out the same as before- albeit they had a lot less damage than the ones 45 was observing now. Scorch marks pocked the turbines, some sections melted through completely. Grumbling, she checked the backup batteries to find that they still had some power left.
Flip the breakers, make sure power is only being routed to where they needed it.
'Get the hallway's power now.'
With a low, droning electric hum the hallways lit with the deep, rusty red of the emergency backup. Bright enough to see on low-light settings, but not enough to cast away the haunting feeling in the back of her digimind. Eeriness, unease, fear... those were all emotions meant for humans- to caution them of potential danger to their frail, fleshy bodies.
It made no sense for a weapon to have such paranoid self-preservation instincts. It made equally less sense why she had this haunting feeling- an echo in her digimind built up from countless memory fragments. It made her emotion module pulse and spark with guilt. 45 found that her grip on her weapon had tightened so hard that it was shaking.
Passing the dormitories, 45 found herself standing before the door labeled "Three"; the monitor that would have displayed the occupants long dead.
They had to conduct a search, after all there was no telling exactly where the objective was. With trembling hand, 45 reached out for the door's manual latch.
Their dorm room- every member of the team had added furniture that the commander had ordered for them. It was mismatched jumble of conflicting aesthetic taste, but it was theirs. Everything earned from their missions. Comfort. Ease. Safety. Ho-[redacted]
45 twitched slightly, her thought process under control once again as she placed both hands on the latch and yanked.
The door roughly slid open, trying to resist 45 throwing her full weight into it.
A dusty, concrete grey room. Ammo tins and cardboard boxes stacked to form makeshift tables and beds.
What was she expecting? Of course this wasn't that base. Of course this wasn't-
'Sis, I think I found the command room!'
45 turned without batting an eye, making for where she guessed 9 was, and sure enough, the layout of this bunker was similar. 9 was poking about a heavy blast door that undoubtedly lead to one of the most secure rooms in the facility.
The thing was sealed tight, security bolting having been activated from the inside; the only significantly locked door they had seen so far. Surface damage from Sangvis energy weapons- as well as what appeared to be an attempt to burn through the bolts, but none had done much besides superficial marring.
"The backup power is on." 9's curious expression was lit by the dull glow of the emergency monitor, "Want me to double check the base's systems?"
"No." The last thing 45 wanted was for 9 to poke around. Sure, 45 had extracted those memories from her during the reset and subsequent digimind maintenance, but she certainly had her suspicions that the wipe had not cut everything from 9.
45 pulled her neural jack out, making sure to run it through her external firewall first. Just because it was a Griffin system didn't mean that Sangvis Ferri hadn't left some devious presents behind. 45 ran through all of the Griffin security keys she had, taking what she knew of the operating system and the security programs to simply brute-force the password. 45 resisted the urge to tap 9 for more processing power, instead concentrating what spare she had. The desire to speed this up stemmed from an emotion, not because it was the most efficient option. It was a feeling of vulnerability that 45 hated- sitting there on the floor in meatspace with systems stuttering and freezing up as she moved about in her digimind like a firefighter trying to put out sparks. It always was a constant reminder just how old her hardware was.
The pressure in her digimind let up the instant the bolts in the door gave way with an echoing thud. Gears within the door struggled to move the massive metal plates with what little power was left, but 9 wedged a crowbar into the gap, leveraging the thing open as 45 packed away her gear.
Her sister moved into the dark first, weapon-light sweeping throughout the room before freezing, gun trained on two dark silhouettes. It was the sense of alarm that had 45 raise her weapon in an instant as well.
Two Griffin T-dolls sat collapsed side-by-side against the back wall, hands held with one another in a final sign of empathy. They were powered down, awaiting a command unit to wake them up- assuming they had any power left. They must have been trapped down in complex when the SF presence had been stronger.
"A PPK and a MP-forty." 9 wondered aloud, "More of our German cousins."
"Leave them." 45 commanded. It wasn't like 9 could wake them, anyways- only 45 had the command line for it…
But she didn't need 9 guilt-tripping her into waking them. Besides, they could only serve to compromise the mission. In fact-
45's hands clenched her weapon, automatically sweeping over the deactivated dolls when 9's back turned.
It was one of her primary directives, after all: follow all [redacted] mission parameters.
Though…
The convenient gap in her programming gave her the flexibility to deny a client's more… ruthless objectives.
45 fought her programming, lowering her weapon back down before an unchecked impulse forced her to pull the trigger. She was in charge of herself. No one else could force her otherwise- and if they did, they would be the first ones that 45 would test her autonomy on once she regained herself.
"Was this supposed to be a command center?" 9's curiosity had her poking through some of the debris, lifting up a G&K branded clipboard to what dim light the emergency systems had sparked.
"Probably." 45 ran a quick tertiary scan of the room and all of it's frightening similarities to what she knew. Still, curiosity drove her to investigate further. Apparently G&K liked to build their bunkers and bases in a standardized pattern.
"The emergency backups are missing." 9 pointed to where the the bank of external drives would have been in a normal command center. The rack was, of course, empty.
"The drive we need might be in here somewhere. We'll thorough search here and if nothing turns up we'll move on."
"Wouldn't be easier if we-"
45's sharp glare cut her sister off. She knew what 9 was going to say even without the thought-process tap.
'Wouldn't be easier if we ask those dolls?'
It certainly would be easier. It would also create a loose end. Then 45 would have to pull the trigger on them.
The sisters shifted through the clutter, each taking a different section of the room. 9 was being timid now, trying to avoid having 45 snap at her again, and for some reason it was making 45's emotion module pulse uncomfortably. A line traced from something behind that censored firewall in her digimind was sending signals through. With each dull throb, it drove 45 closer and closer to what she wanted to say but her programming kept her from.
"I'm sorry, Nine." It felt like the words had be preprogrammed into her voice modulator, ready to leap out despite all of 45's attempts to curtail them. 9's sulking had stopped as she turned her curiosity to 45's surprise declaration.
"What for?"
For many things that you will never know.
"For snapping at you." A tiny bit relief cooled some of 45's systems… but not nearly enough.
"It's okay." 9 turned back to checking filing cabinets.
Is it okay?
"..." 45 could only turn back to the search. It felt as if 9 was casting her glances, but every time 45 looked up, it was clear her sister was deep in the search.
"Think we can rip out the RAM from this console for our other systems?"
"Nine, no impact-"
"We just make it look like scavengers came through. No big deal." The logic that 9 spun was very… unlike 9… but she had made an excellent point. This was an opportunity to scavenge the more… proprietary repair components they needed. Still, 45 welcomed the small talk, taking the opportunity to ease the tension she felt.
"Fine. We'll do the armory afterwards."
"What about the kitchen?" 9 had already downed one of her ration packs earlier, and she seemed eager for another already, "Expired rations are no problem for us, after all."
"We'd never hear the end of it from Four-sixteen." 45 shrugged at her sister. Spoiled food was still biomatter that could be broken down for caloric energy- but for some reason dolls had been programmed with human sensibilities.
"Oh, I know! 'The caloric intake is inefficient to run my energy conversions.'" 9 mimicked 416 as best as she could, perhaps delighting in the levity she clearly missed.
"She has a point, expired food is less efficient." 45 shrugged, inspecting the command console. Back at the old base, it was where G36 did most of the base's data-management. If there was no external backup drive that they could make away with, diving the base's systems could work as well- it was just far more difficult. Especially considering there was very limited power in which to even run the damn computer.
45 sighed, a breathlessly deep and irritable one at that. Data extraction missions were always such a pain. Even worse were mission objectives that made 45 a hypocrite to her own standard operating procedure.
"Nine, find the room's APC and route power here."
"What? O-okay." The change of 45's mind certainly took 9 by surprise, but she leapt to it anyways while 45 muddled with her console's settings. The little notebook of a computer was puny in comparison to the power of her digimind, but she could at least shunt programs over to it and lessen the stress on her own processors. She tapped away, the more variables she could cut from the cracking program, the quicker it could work- perhaps if it were efficient enough, she could even run it off of her console instead of herself.
"Sis… um." 9 hovered by the power unit, hand reaching out for it as she spoke, "Are you sure? We still have time."
"I'm sure." 45's words were blunt as she continued to tap away. She had had enough of this place and the echoes it constantly pounded into her head. It felt like every minute longer she spent in this bunker, the more invisible hands kept pounding away at the partition in the back of her mind. They could not get out of this place any sooner.
The console's motherboard let out a beep as power to the room was restored. 45 quietly connected her console before running her neural jack through her dummy firewall, all the while 9 stared at her with a mix of concern and… if 45's empathy program wasn't glitching again, what appeared to be frustration? 9 certainly had something on her mind but refused to voice it, and right now 45 didn't have the memory to spare in cracking 9's permissions again to see. She bristled slightly under her sister's gaze until, finally, she had enough.
"Nine, go check the armory and see if there's anything we can use left. If it's locked just wait there until I get into the systems to unlock it."
"Wait… what?"
"Down the hall, left at the third intersection then past the cafe. I marked it." 45 shared the bunker's map data with her sister, making sure to highlight the armory bright and bold- to distract 9 from poking her nose anywhere else. 45 refrained from slaving the order with the command module, for now at least.
"But you'll be vulnerable here." 9 planted herself further.
"I'll be fine." 45 grumbled, trying to recall every last string of G&K security code she could, "Go salvage what we can, because there might not be time afterwards to do so. It's just a waste of time if you're sitting here."
Clearly 9 did not agree with the downplaying of 45's safety, her cheeks puffed in a defiant frown- she was daring 45 to use the command module on her. What 9 got instead, was a deep sigh and a pained smile as 45 turned towards her.
"Please, Nine. Trust me, I don't like sitting catatonic either." 45 spun her console's screen to 9, showing her sister the program that she was cooking up. "If it'll make you feel better, I'll try to make it so I can offload it to the console as soon as possible and join you. Okay?"
The way that 9 glared at the small computer felt like she didn't trust the thing- a silly notion given that it was a tool that couldn't react to her scrutiny.
Also a silly thing, considering how alike a doll was to a computer.
Except a computer didn't have to deal with annoying add-ons such as an emotion module, or preservation programming, or primary digimind directives. No, sometimes it felt like 45 would simply have enjoyed life as a computer.
"But that isn't life, is it?" 45 mumbled to herself, running through lines and lines of code, "But what is life for a T-doll?"
It was an argument that she could never answer. Her self-preservation programming would state that 'life' is the opposite of 'death'- death being a final state of no backups, no dummies to place her mindmap into.
But even then- if dummies of her exact model existed, could one not pose that since they existed, UMP-45 would not be 'dead'? The logic in her digimind proposed that she, this UMP-45, would indeed be dead, her memory fragments and individual unit quirks that made her a unique model
The final death- the death that dolls rarely suffered- was the complete loss of both frame and mindmap. If the digimind had not been backed up, or there were no backups that existed, then effectively the doll had died. What, then, was-
[Do not think about it]
[for us, our body and our thoughts, that's all the treasures we have]
[DO NOT THINK ABOUT IT]
45 winced, a sharp pain stabbing from her emotion module that made even her epidermal sensors short-out and tingle. Something was battering on the partition in her long-term memory, wanting out into her digimind.
She snapped her console closed for a second, shaking herself down. Coding under pressure always did this to her digimind. The stresses to her systems 'springing leaks' so to speak.
'Sis. The door to the armory is unlocked. I'm going to check it out.'
'I'm about to start. Be careful, Nine.'
Her sister sent a pulse that felt like a quizzical giggle, like 9 didn't understand why 45 was being kind all of a sudden. Existential thoughts tended to remind the older twin of how horrible of a sister she really truly was.
45 sat cross-legged, leaning back against the command console before pulling her computer back onto her lap. Her connections were ready, the program was as best as she could do on the fly, the only thing she could do now was start it up.
She readied herself for the static, for the flood of data she would experience. Deep breaths did nothing for her physically, but for some reason, it eased her digimind as she began to settle in.
[even if it's a low life -a hated life- as long as you live, there are meanings.]
She ignored the ghost whispering from beyond the partition. She ignored the spasm that wracked her systems. She hit the enter key on the console.
And cast her world into static.