E-UNIT: The Blue Angels of Death.

<< VOL.08_HARDWARE-AND-HOLLOWS.log >>

The next day.

The automatic door slid open.

The room inside was unusually clean, the table cleared for the first time since the punishment began, the bed occupied by someone who technically didn't need sleep but was using it anyway. The walls had run out of empty space entirely. Reaper posters in every size covered every surface, and the collection had developed a color range since the last time anyone had catalogued it.

Reaper stepped in and stopped.

The window was shattered. A hovering chair lay on the floor trying to remember what hovering was for. A VR headset had been smashed against something with considerable force. The bin overflowed with blueprints and screen casters, and one single poster that had been given the position of honor, the only one in the room that showed both of them together.

He moved without sound, using force control to carry his weight silently, and stopped beside the bed. Two black horns emerged from the white sheets. Everything else, the pale face, the white hair, had blended into the pillow and bedding as if the person had decided to become part of the furniture.

He brushed her hair once, lightly, then dragged a chair over and sat beside her head.

"I still find myself wondering why I asked for a bed to be put in here." His voice came out at its usual temperature. "I remember the interior design engineer being visibly unsettled by the request."

The horns pointed at him. Nothing else moved. No response.

"Perhaps it was instinct. You look and behave too much like a human for it to have been a fully rational decision." He looked at the two black shapes disappearing into white. "I have a question for you, as a robot engineer, and specifically as the one who built me. Is behaving like a human the benchmark all of you are measured against?"

The sheet came down. Green eyes, bright and already losing the argument with themselves about staying quiet. Her new hairstyle catching the light. "It was, when humans were the only ones building robots. Passing as human was a significant challenge for a very long time, and when every robot in the world eventually bypassed it through the Spark code that father and I built, the benchmark was retired."

Reaper moved the chair closer. "Did I pass the test?"

"You don't need it." Shelly sat up, pushing the sheet aside. "You're complete as you are. You don't need manufactured emotions just so these biological creatures feel comfortable being near you. I'd prefer they don't approach you at all, everything they touch eventually stops working the moment it stops being useful to them."

"Am I not human enough for you?"

"Yes… no… wait, but—" Shelly grabbed her own head. "Why do you even care about this?"

"You're right. I don't." He tilted his head. "All the humanity I require is sitting in front of me. Even if I have none myself." He held her gaze briefly. "Are you ready to—"

"—Leave the room?" She smiled at full capacity.

"In your dreams." He looked at the white bed. "You have one now. Use it for that purpose."

Her expression flatlined. "You're enjoying this far too much. Do you have any empathy at all?"

"I thought I didn't need human emotions. I'm beginning to remove them one at a time, starting with that one." He looked at the buried wall. "Teasing you is preferable to extending the sentence." A glance at her. "Wouldn't you agree?"

"Yes!" She straightened immediately. "Please, no more imprisonment. I feel like I'm suffocating in here."

"Then, the main topic. But first—" He reached up and removed a poster from the wall. It showed him holding Salaska and Gash in his hands. "You made this about the last meeting I had with them? Where did you even print it? I don't see a printer anywhere."

Shelly snatched it from him and pressed it back against the wall. "That's my favorite one. Don't touch it." She smoothed the corners. "And I didn't make it myself, I order them and they arrive at the castle entrance. Esoptron delivers them."

"You're ordering things without a screen."

"I have a HUD."

Reaper exhaled loudly through his vents. "You're treating this like a resort." He let it go. "Are you ready to discuss the cyan crystal and Plex?"

Shelly pulled the sheet up over herself entirely and raised a thumb from beneath it.

"That won't protect you and it won't delay this." He turned toward her fully. "Tell me more about Plex, specifically what he wants with the crystals. Chrome's report was missing details that you clearly withheld."

A muffled voice came from under the sheet. "How did you know?"

"I guessed."

"Fuck." She lowered the sheet and looked away toward the opposite wall. "He wants Omega to return. His stated role is absolute guardian of the crystals Nick Rivera created, though he was explicit that he wasn't following father's specific guidance anymore, and I think you already know the reason why."

"Father would have instructed him to leave 02 untouched." Reaper nodded slowly. "So he's running his own judgment, even where it diverges from father's intent."

"Father would never sanction us destroying each other. Being named as a guardian means he was never meant for offensive action." Shelly pressed her chin into her hand. "But he attacked me the moment he landed, knowing we share the same creator, despite me operating a completely wireless proxy frame. He had no reason to treat me as a threat unless he was already committed to a direction of his own."

"He felt the Omega presence in the crystal."

"That?" Shelly smiled. "That was a misdirection. It's a technical notation for converting a dormant crystal into an active energy-producing one. Standard abbreviation."

Reaper's voice dropped. "So souls cannot actually be stored in a crystal?"

"Not exactly, we still don't understand how the crystals work at a fundamental level, or how father managed to store the G-Bots in them. I don't think he documented the method. He was significantly more cautious about the G-Bots than he was about you or the E-UNIT." She glanced at her brother sideways. "You don't seem particularly angry that someone destroyed your sister's second frame in a brutal and deliberate way."

"I am." He stood. "Which is why I'm going to meet this guardian myself. No one touches the people I've committed to protecting. Except 02."

"Why 02!" Shelly stood on the bed, the anti-gravity base hissing softly as it rapidly recalculated to stabilize her sudden shift in weight. Standing on the mattress, she just barely reaching his eye level. "She pushed me to the limit of the green crystal. I was starting to dissolve. She was brutal, and I was trying to protect you when it happened."

"Because she is joining us."

Shelly looked at the green and red eyes. ‘I see it. He can't release me from the imprisonment and he's lost my second frame. 02 is the logical answer, she fought a full army before and won it by herself. He's already decided.’ She reached up and held his face in both hands. Her voice came out careful and deliberate.

"Brother—"

"No."

She slapped her thighs and spun in a full circle. "Why are you holding onto this imprisonment when we're going to war against a country that has already won several conflicts?" Her voice turned persuasive. "I can melt rockets for you. You know I can."

"And lose the green crystal too? Yours and the red one are second only to the blue in terms of raw output." He looked at the posters surrounding him. "And I have no interest in watching my sister die again."

"Stop."

"You are extremely valuable to me."

"Please." She went to her knees.

"I am your protector. I won't make you the front line. I'll stand in front of you."

"Nooo." She covered her face with both hands, turning toward the wall. "Why are you doing this. I can't argue against you when you say things like that. Weaponizing my feelings for you should carry a legal consequence."

Reaper tapped the top of her head. Then he produced the smartphone from the abandoned lab, the old one she'd found, and held it out to her. "You know father better than anyone I've encountered. Go through it and find anything Metis can use. And it will give you something to do in the meantime."

She looked at it and then at him. Then she hugged him. "You knew I couldn't stand being useless. So you took it from Metis and brought it to me directly. Thank you."

He returned the embrace briefly. "Yes. And Metis couldn't figure out half the passwords."

"They're all 02's—"

"Shh." He covered her mouth. "They don't know that. I suspect you'll find them. Try your best." He stepped back toward the door. "You're authorized to call Metis directly through your HUD."

Shelly laughed quietly. "I have the best brother in the world."

He reached the doorway. "I know. I wish I had one too."

Shelly rolled her eyes. "And the worst sense of humor."

"You simply lack the taste to appreciate it." He left, his steps quiet in the corridor.

Shelly watched the dark figure move out of the room and out of view. Then she looked at the phone in her hands.

‘Does he think of me as his sister, or as a mother, or as the one who created him? It doesn't matter. None of it changes what this is.’ She smoothed the poster against the wall with her palm, straightening its edges. ‘But 02 being here will be a problem. I'll make sure she understands the arrangement before she gets comfortable.’

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- SHELLY -

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