"Weapon down."
"What?"
"Weapon down. Hands up. Walk in front of me."
Midas chuckled, but slung Resplendence back into its strap and raised both hands. "You still don't trust me, do you?"
"Shut up and walk."
Caspian again felt solid ground beneath his boots, and he stepped into the city's neon shadow. Midas led them off the Speedliner, and disappeared after Lazula before they could protest. He'd at least left his location open to them. And Caspian hoped if he was about to plunge a second knife in their back, he wouldn't broadcast where it came from. He watched as the golden dot blinked away from the ferry terminal, skirted the edge of Port Cyrreine International, and into the Southern fringe of the city's downtown core. Faster than any human should be able to travel. Midas's golden dot closed in on Lazula's blue. Both stood still for several seconds. Then they inched toward Empyrean Tower, one after the other.
Empyrean Tower. The glass titan impaling daylight. Black wings beat around the taller twin's summit. Caspian recalled the visions from the night before. But those wings spanned wider– much wider.
Port Cyrreine's Southern ferry terminal made a wide "U" shape off the city's South shore– upside down, if seen on a map. Two piers made up the prongs, each a forty foot wide slab of wood and steel that jabbed a couple hundred feet into the ocean. The other Speedliner docked at the pier opposite, and Caspian counted the silhouettes disembarking. It looked like everyone made it. The squirrel-tailed shadow waved from across the water, and Caspian returned it. When they met in the grand glass building making up the base of the U, she threw her arms around his neck.
His head on her shoulder, holding her, he wanted more than anything to kiss her again. But he wondered if it would be too much, or too soon, or if 'too much' and 'too soon' had any place at the end of the world. But as her arms slackened around his neck she leaned back in to answer each question.
"It's good to see you two made it okay," Lilly greeted.
Rowan was next. "What happened, anyway?"
Caspian ran it through from the beginning. How Snow refused to leave Atlas, which led to them encountering the Prototype Grimm, which led to Snow overheating, which led to the reboot station. Then, his encounter with Midas. The uneasy truce between himself and The Ambassador. Douglas Hudson's killer.
"Midas was part of it too?" Rowan questioned. "I guess if Frontline's behind it all, it makes sense. But still. Kinda surprising."
"I didn't trust him from the start," Moka asserted. "But I got more… manipulative, fake-nice player vibes than corporate assassin. Just the kinda guy who expects it on the first date, y'know?"
Noxis scoffed. "Shit smeared behind a pretty mask. Color me surprised." His eyes flicked to both sides, and snapped to Caspian. "You didn't let him go, did you?"
"No– not really, I mean. Lazula needed backup, so he went to meet up with her. She's not far."
"Lazula needed backup? Somehow I doubt that."
"We have his location. He's with her."
Ichigo raised Hack n' Slash, folded up into a steel briefcase. "Need a live audio feed from his Holo, say the word."
"No time," Caspian decided. At the center of the terminal, the Hologram model of Atlas hovering above the abandoned crescent-moon reception desk melded into Port Cyrreine. "We need to get moving. We don't have an exact time on The Apoptosis Project, but we need to be near Empyrean Tower when it happens."
A coffee stand flanked the entrance to one side, a gift shop to the other. Caspian's finger rested on Undertow's trigger, and he scanned each for androids. Empty. But straight out from the entrance, on the skybridge over the silent expressway, Headmaster Skye stood.
"Headmaster?" Caspian asked. It felt more natural than "dad."
"The Apoptosis Project is going to begin in a matter of minutes," he began. "It is no exaggeration to say that the fate of the entire world rests squarely on the shoulders of the ones standing before me."
Caspian shook his head, stepped forward. "It's not going to–"
The Headmaster's raised hand paused him. "Please, I need to explain our plan before it begins. We will rendezvous with Lazula shortly. And I've been told you've managed to pull Midas onto our side. A surprise, surely, but a welcome one."
"And Midas told me–"
Headmaster Skye turned around. "Everything you've heard up until this point is true. Griswold Baine has figured out the quantification of the human soul. And, in a few minutes' time, will digitize and archive the body and soul of every living person on Remnant, with only a few exceptions. These exceptions will 'inherit the world,' so to speak. And the souls of the less fortunate will be used like currency."
They continued on over the bridge, through a few blocks of mid-rise buildings, then the rolling, near-treeless green hills of a city park. All because Frontline owned half the city, and wouldn't let anything taller than seven stories between Empyrean Tower and the sea.
"The first step in our plan is to allow The Apoptosis Project to occur. This will likely be alarming. But it is imperative that you stay calm. There's no telling what you will experience once archived. But do note that it is only temporary. Once we rendezvous with Lazula, she will escort Snow to the machine hosting these souls, and reverse the process. You will be returned to your bodies and souls. And from there, it is up to you to force a reversal for the millions who have been archived."
"It isn't going to work!" Caspian snapped.
"Excuse me?"
"I talked to Midas. The second Snow steps foot in there, she'll self-destruct. Our minds, our consciousness– we'll all be erased."
Headmaster Skye froze in place. His mouth was slack, cracked open. But he stiffened his lip, clinched his jaw. In the park, dwarfed beneath Empyrean Tower, the downtown core was half a mile East. But still its light reflected on his glasses. He let a breath free. And shook his head subtly.
"Alright. What's plan B?" Noxis suggested.
The Headmaster's silence persisted.
Caspian raised an eyebrow. "There is a plan B, right?"
In the silence, Snow stepped forward. She stood at Headmaster Skye's side, looked to the sky somewhere over the ocean, then bowed her head.
"Now initiating The Apoptosis Project. Please remain calm, and allow for passage into the next phase of humanity."
A couple dozen miles out of town, on the stoop of a cottage nestled in green, soft evening light fell on the pages of the book spread on Professor Corvis-Braun's lap. Her husband sat in the chair beside her. He'd put on a few pounds with time, and lost his hairline. But kept his humor and easy smile. One worked up as he nodded past their picket fence.
"Looks like they're right on time," Mr. Braun noted.
Professor Corvis slid a bookmark into place about halfway into her novel. She folded the book on her lap, and watched a procession of Organic Androids down the street. One stopped two houses down, across the street. One stopped to their right. Another stopped at the gate of their grown-out yard, and on a sharp turn, faced them. The rest of the homes on their street must have already owned androids.
"I sure hope Greyson's plan works out."
"They always do, don't they?"
And the android stepped forward. "Now initiating The Apoptosis Project. Please remain calm, and allow for passage into the next phase of humanity."
Professor Corvis laid her hand on her husband's lap. She closed her eyes, and the edges of her body blurred. Starting at her shoulders, her knees, her skin became light. It spread like a flame eating away at paper, emitting a purple-tinged smoke the android sucked into its core.
Nothing remained, but a book resting in a straw chair.
.
In a 9' by 8' box of drab concrete and fluorescent light, footsteps echoed from down the corridor. Guards? No. Too many. Sable hoisted his legs off the cot made for someone a foot shorter and thinner, found his crutch and hobbled to the bars of his cell. He grabbed them. Pressed his forehead into them. But couldn't yet see the source. A shout from the same direction rattled into his cell. Sanderson? He wasn't one of the usual screamers. Then Moss running from the other direction. That fresh-faced CO that probably wouldn't last six months. His keys clattered as he ran.
"H-Hey! What's going on, did anyone authorize this?"
"Special orders. Please step aside."
"O-Oh," Moss allowed. And the androids proceeded past him. Sable's eyes narrowed. He shook his head.
A dozen, single file. They spaced out down the corridor, three or four cells apart. They stopped in unison, the even-numbered faced left, the odd-numbered faced right.
"Shit."
"Now initiating The Apoptosis Project. Please remain calm, and allow for passage into the next phase of humanity."
.
Mauve pushed the handcart into place next to the therapy office's window, pushed up against a box a couple feet taller than themself to hold it steady as they laid it down lengthwise. They caught their breath. Fished in their pockets for a boxcutter, and knelt beside their work. The door opened behind them.
"Now initiating The Apoptosis Project."
"What?" Their words rode on nervous laughter, and they clicked their boxcutter out two tabs further. "What the hell are you talking about?"
"Now initiating The Apoptosis Project. Please remain calm, and allow for passage into the next phase of humanity."
"Doctor Riesling?" Mauve called. "I think the android's broken!"
The doctor appeared behind the android in the doorway. She still tapped away at her Holoband. Before she could look up to the android, her fingers became golden light. She dropped her stylus, and light burned past her wrist as she stared in horror.
Mauve stood. Backed away slowly with a hand over their slack jaw. But it too became light, and their mouth was taken halfway through their scream. A boxcutter clattered on the hardwood floor.
.
With Atlas Academy's infirmary overflowing and the hospital three miles away nearing capacity, students and staff had worked through the night to convert the central commons of a neighboring classroom building into a pop-up hospital. Amid cloth-and-fiberglass partitions, two members of ASHN stood, two members filled beds. Shyamal lay in one, arm in a cast and bandages across his cheek. Hala's blankets covered the bandages wrapping his thighs to his ankles.
Three dozen androids stopped tending to the injured. And in a chorus, their voices echoed in the hall. "Now initiating The Apoptosis Project. Please remain calm, and allow for passage into the next phase of humanity."
"This is it," Noriko spat. "Ashe, COME ON!" Her hand shot down to the kama sheathed at her hip, and she flung it into the core of the nearest android. She wrenched it toward herself with the hand still clutching its chain, flipped onto its back and into the throat of another android. Something cracked in its neck, and it crumpled.
"Please remain calm. Resistance may lead to serious injury, or death."
Ashe drew her bow, lined a smoking arrow up with the android's throat. It fired early, drew up a haze of static electricity across the side of the android's knee instead. A slight noise of confusion escaped– then a scream when she saw the fingers that tugged at her bowstring burning away.
Sparks leapt from an android's back as Noriko wrenched her kama free. She saw Ashe's hand. Hala and Shyamal behind her, burning away into wisps of orange and deep blue.
"What the f–" but her mouth was taken, and her weapon fell in time with Ashe's.
Sterling leaned on the outside of the building– the building he took his final in a week before. A family of three ran down the far side of the street. The father tried the door of some administrative building, found it unlocked, and waved his wife and young son inside. Sterling's eyes narrowed, a blade twisted into his hand and he watched where they came from. Nothing. He trained his ears for the shriek of Grimm, but tilted his head over his shoulder and toward the muffled commotion beyond the door.
"The hell's going on in there?" he muttered. A muffled scream, a clashing of steel. Silence. He put his hand on the door and looked to his faunus teammate. "Stay out here for now. Gonna check what's up."
And as he entered he saw androids with heads bowed and fingers intertwined. And light, rising up from dissolving bodies, swirling like smoke through the air and into their cores. A bow of grey steel lay on the ground beside an empty bed. A few feet away, a black-and-green kama. Those first-years from Sentinel, gone. He steadied the grasp on his blade.
Two more shot out from his hips, skewering the android's sides and knitting the two together. A flash of steel as they came close, and he cleared the Organd's head from its shoulders. He blinked to another, severed a hand that came up in protest and skewered a core. Another came in from his left. It started to speak. Still fighting his blade out of an android's chest he fired another blade from his elbow to silence it.
And from behind him; "Now initiating The Apoptosis Project." He turned, but his blade fell on slackened cord. The tips of his fingers, his palm, his wrist and forearm, burned away into silver light. He fell to his knees, as his feet too had vanished. "Please remain calm, and allow for passage into the next phase of humanity."
.
"Latei. We're flying out in the morning. Can't you put the game down for a second?"
Moka's brother, parked in a chair across from his mother, kept his nose in the screen of the handheld console. "And? We video call mom all the time."
"But that's different!" Mr. Chino protested. He reached for Latei's headphones, but the almost-teenager caught them without batting an eye. "Fine, have it your way," the elder faunus conceded. The door slid open.
All three fell silent, heeding the uniformed figure in the doorway.
Mrs. Chino's tail stiffened. "We didn't call."
"Now initiating The Apoptosis Project. Please remain calm, and allow for passage into the next phase of humanity."
Mrs. Chino's eyes settled toward her bedsheets. "It was the truth, then," she said. She closed her eyes, and took a deep breath to prepare for whatever lay ahead. "Good luck, sweetheart."
As if the words were the incantation to some black magic, the catalyst to some chemical reaction, Caspian felt something stir inside of him. Not painful– not quite uncomfortable. But he felt as though every cell in his body began to vibrate, each one knocking around out of tune with its neighbors. Like the static of a glitched-out Holoscreen on his skin, in his veins, in his bones. He turned over his hand, and saw the edges of his body burning away.
Noxis cried out in confusion and rage– not that Caspian could blame him. He sprinted until his legs dissolved, crawled forward until both arms vanished, spat curses until he was nothing. The light had grown around Caspian, too. His arms had been taken, and the light burned painlessly past his shoulders. He looked at Snow. Even as she digitized the bodies and souls of those around her, Caspian couldn't bring himself to see an android. Only the anguish of a woman condemned.
The final boundaries of his body, the feeling of the world around him, dissolved. His boots on the ground, the clothes on his skin, the glasses on his nose and the warmth and light of the sun upon him. Gone.
In a moment impossible to define, all became nothing.
His entire consciousness, confined to a singularity. Somewhere behind where his eyes would have been. But at the same time, limitless, endless. Everything and nothing, in perfect synchrony. It was dark. That was the only way he knew how to explain it. But more accurate, it was nothing. The absence of light, the absence of darkness. He somehow felt others in the non-darkness. Beside him– perhaps a mile a way, or perhaps within him.
He wondered why it didn't concern him. Why he didn't fear. Why he no longer cursed all he'd never do, all the people he'd never be. But Griswold Baine's own words were his reminder.
A world without suffering.
Lazula thought Midas was her biggest threat. But past the tip of her blade, over his shoulder, she discovered she was wrong. Her father– the Headmaster. And Snow, beside him. Head bowed, fingers entwined. Lilly, Caspian, reduced to lumps scattered across white concrete. A shoe and an ankle to Snow's left, half a torso to her right. And in a second more, they were gone. Just wisps of light, rising into the air, twisting together and into Snow's core. Snow raised her head to meet her gaze.
"What the hell did you DO?" she didn't know if she questioned Snow or her father.
"It's not just her," Midas warned. "Every android. Across Remnant, all at once. This is The Apoptosis Project."
He backed off when she unsheathed Impetus. Concern flashed behind the Headmaster's glasses, and he raised a hand to her.
"You're going to tell me everything. Now. No more half-truths, no more 'I'll tell you later.' This is your last chance."
He took a ginger step forward. "Lazula, please–" but her step matched his, and her blade begged at his throat.
"Not. Another. Step. Closer." Her eyes flicked to Snow. Her head was bowed still, eyes closed. Unmoving, like a too-realistic statue. Back to her target. "I don't want to do this, but you know I can."
The Headmaster took a breath. Didn't falter from the cold steel resting beneath his chin. The light on his glasses shifted, and she saw behind them. He looked sad. Defeated. "Please, put your blade down. I'll tell you everything."
Detecting abnormalities in Apoptosis Protocol. Terminating...
Termination unsuccessful. Re-attempting...
My name is Snow Hudson.
Frontline Biomedical Technologies' Third Generation Prototype Unit-04.
An artificial human girl.
Eyes: White. Hair: White. Height: Five feet, two inches tall.
Eyes: Blue. The color of the sky. The sea.
My father. Caspian, and Lazula.
The change in my eyes was an anomaly.
Nothing in my code, nothing in my body's structure, should have allowed it.
Though I suppose my existence itself can be considered an anomaly.
Detecting abnormalities in Apoptosis Protocol. Re-attempting termination...
Termination unsuccessful. Re-attempting…
Some say when a human dies, their entire life flashes before their eyes.
Perhaps this moment is something akin to that.
I'd like to think so.
I woke up to a world of white. I was tested. Tortured. And eventually, spared by the one who became my father.
I leave the only place I had ever known. The only color I had ever known.
My father explains I am to meet more humans. Unaffiliated with Frontline. Students, all of approximately the same age as my design.
He introduces me to them. They have many questions, so I answer to the best of my ability.
They're all a little bit strange.
But they seem like good people.
I am told to pretend I'm a human being. Become one of them. Become their friend.
At first, I find it difficult. Human beings are... complicated. Emotional. Irrational. Creatures of flesh and blood, born with a soul.
Despite appearances, we are very different. But in time, I begin to feel I am one of them.
In time, I wish I didn't have to pretend.
Forty days after leaving the Tower, Mr Skye invites my father over.
Mr. Skye states I can be used to reverse something called "The Apoptosis Project."
The Apoptosis Project. It sounds familiar, somehow. Like something I had heard long before.
I search my memory databases, but find no relevant results.
They argue for some time. I had never seen my father so upset.
But in the end, he agrees. Because I'm 'special,' somehow. The only one who can fulfill this duty.
"When the failsafe activates, your internal code will be wiped," the Headmaster tells me. "Your consciousness will cease to exist. In plainest terms, you will die. I need to know you understand before we proceed."
"I understand," I claimed.
I thought I did. But now,
I'm sad.
I'm scared.
I don't want to die.
Detecting abnormalities in Apoptosis Protocol. Re-attempting termination...
Termination unsuccessful. Re-attempting...
...
But to die means I have lived.
At first, I found little reason in each day.
My purpose was to masquerade as human, then reverse The Apoptosis Project. Any distractions from my assignment were a waste of time.
And once I fulfilled my purpose, I would die.
But then, I learned.
I learned what a "friend" was.
I gained them. I became one.
I learned what "love" is.
I loved, and felt love in return.
I learned life is more than any predetermined purpose. More than birth, and death.
All that falls between is what makes our lives.
And all that falls between, we are free to choose.
I remember holidays spent around a fireplace, giving and receiving gifts.
I remember attending school with friends. Dinner in The Roots. Attending classes. Doing homework. Studying for and taking exams.
Even all those things my friends complained about, I treasured.
I remember our Summer vacation. Warm nights on the lake. Days so hot I needed popsicles to avoid overheating. I remember their taste.
And I remember fighting beside my friends. Representing Vale as Lazula's partner, or protecting the ones I love.
Detecting abnormalities in Apoptosis Protocol. Re-attempting termination...
I can feel my memory drives depleting. Pain, sorrow, joy, love.
My best days, and my worst days, disappearing one at a time.
Friends. Family. When I try to picture their faces, the edges are hazy. The colors are washed out. The details begin to disappear.
Perhaps that is the cruelest part about this.
I can't hold out for much longer. My purpose is complete.
I woke up to a world of white.
And now I'll sleep, having fallen in love with a world of infinite color.
Thank you for making this short life worth living.
Good luck, Caspian.
And goodbye.
As if he started out of a dream, Caspian blinked his eyes open. Back to reality. A lack of nothingness once again became something– the sound of the sea, the call of seagulls, a gentle wind on the side of his face. Smooth concrete beneath his hands and his feet. The Headmaster still stood before him. And Snow by his side. They were in a garden now, tropical flowers of a thousand hues held in white marble planters, beside white marble fountains, under white marble statues. A pocket of paradise, nestled between the two peaks of Empyrean Tower and the shell that encased it all.
Caspian stood. And as he did Snow limped toward him on shaking legs. The ghost of a pained whimper rode her labored breaths. And beneath it Caspian heard something else– high-pitched and grating, like a crack spreading deep in glass. She lost her footing the last step before him, and he caught her.
He held Snow in his arms. And in a garden awash in color, she closed blue eyes.
