8.1 – Waking to the Verdict.

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

// data corrupted — recompiling //

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"You died again?" E-UNIT 49 said it with the flattest possible delivery, standing beside 43's revival tube. The bay held its usual cold white, the light refusing to acknowledge the existence of other colors. Every tube was full, bodies being updated in real time, SSDs receiving memory transfers, the system running its continuous background work of keeping the E-UNIT alive.

"I can't stop it." 43 stepped out of the tube and moved aside to let the E-Medics in. A new body began receiving its connection to the flooring, eyes pulsing blue as the link established. "They keep detonating near me. The moment any of them spot me, they launch themselves directly at my position. I can't even put them down cleanly, if a body hits the ground in an urban area, it goes off. I've rerouted every patrol I have to outside the city."

"But why you specifically?"

"I have no idea." 43 sat on the floor. 49 leaned against the wall beside the tube. "They've been targeting me exclusively for a week. I thought I was going to lose my mind, but at this point it's gone past frightening into something I don't have a word for."

She pulled at the hoodie she was wearing. "I even borrowed 03's hoodie since she's on mission with the captain and probably won't need it. I walked around in it and they immediately knew it was me and attacked anyway. Do I have some kind of signal above my head? Some kind of marker that tells them this one is worth blowing yourself up for?"

"Did you do something to draw this?" 49 kept her hands in her pockets.

"Not that I can identify. I'm not on the investigation team, I'm not running anti-terrorist operations, I don't defuse bombs. My assignment is street-level, small criminal activity, support for the local police. That's it." 43 lowered her head. "Unless I have hidden potential I'm not aware of."

"Sure. Obviously."

"I might be the next captain." 43's eyes caught the idea and ran with it. "Or a general. Imagine me giving orders to 02 herself, or—"

"I'm stopping you before 01 hears any of this and takes your head off as a preventive measure—" 49 looked past her at 03's tube. It was hissing open. "What?"

Both of them were on their feet and moving before 49 finished the word. 03 stepped out of the tube. Her hoodie was torn halfway off, burn marks and blast damage across the fabric, the residue of something green and specific visible in the pattern of it. The nearby E-Medics moved in instinctively, hovering at the edges.

03 stood in the bay with her eyes wide, turning her hands over in front of her face like she was checking they were still the right ones.

"Did I actually die?" She looked at 43. "I actually died." She said it again with more weight. "I left 02 there with one leg, fighting that green nightmare." She stopped. "I need 05."

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03 moved through the E-Police facility at speed with 43 and 49 behind her. The E-UNITs she passed went through the same visible sequence, confusion at seeing her here, in Veridian Coast, when she was supposed to be on mission, followed by the second realization arriving a few moments later. She didn't slow down for any of it.

The Development Lab was a few minutes away. Through the transparent door she could see Albert and 05 sharing a screen covered in design specifications for new units in colors she hadn't seen before. They both tilted their heads out past the edge of the screen at the same moment.

"03?" Both of them.

The lab had settled into the particular state that comes from sustained work, blueprints covering every wall, floating tables buried under layers of documentation that had overtaken the surfaces, prototype bodies in various states of completion standing or lying at intervals. Dave was asleep at his desk with his coffee mug still in his grip, which meant either the coffee was cold or he hadn't moved in a while.

19 was beside him in rest mode, her head having found his shoulder without either of them apparently deciding it. The windows were open toward the training range outside.

05 stood and laughed briefly. "Whoever borrowed 03's hoodie, she needs it back. We don’t need half stripped 03 walking around when she gets revived. Also it's in a state. Why is it in a state?"

"That's me, you walking library." 03 threw both hands up. "And why are you wearing a lab coat?"

"I'm finishing the structural report on… no! that's not the question! Why are you here." 05 dismissed her screens and came around the desk. "Did you actually die."

"02 was fighting Shelly at the hospital, we saved 24, the mission worked, but I still don't know how Shelly found us. Probably Esoptron, he's their distributed communication system, so—" 03 was already moving in tight circles. "We barely had time to reach the hospital before—"

"Stop." 05 raised both hands.

Then she stepped in and held 03.

03 went still. "05. I didn't know you—"

05 pulled back and was already reviewing memory footage in her HUD. "I see it. You put yourself in the path of a lethal strike from Shelly to push the captain clear. The green energy, that's the green crystal, but the output is abnormal for a standard user. It's the suit amplifying the channeling." She turned and walked back toward her desk. "Albert. Here's the data directly from her memories. Is the new G-Bot hardware rated for this output level?"

03 lowered her arms. "I thought that you were—"

A notification appeared in her HUD from 19, who had not moved from Dave's shoulder. [She didn't need the hug to read your SSD. She can do it wirelessly.]

03's mouth moved into something small. [Obviously.]

"Possibly," Albert said, pulling up the data. "But four crystals operating together against a single crystal user isn't a clean calculation, not when the two most powerful crystals currently active are the green and the blue. Power scaling across different crystal types doesn't reduce to simple arithmetic."

05 nodded. "And we can't establish anything without a direct comparison." She leaned closer to the screen. "What's concerning is that even 02 struggled significantly against Shelly, and 02 went in with the full memory set restored. That's too many variables for a single predictive model." She pulled up the image of Shelly's face from 03's memory. "White hair. New body. That's new information. "

The glass door slid open.

All four G-Bots came in, and not in the frames that had gone into the Hope Bubble. Tau and Pi were revived, new bodies, all four of them rebuilt into something that looked like it had been designed with the current situation in mind.

Form-fitting combat bodysuits in layered materials, flexible black base with segmented hard armor on shoulders, arms, torso, hips, and thighs. A white armored plate running the center line of each frame, hexagonal composite paneling on the sides, articulated limb plating with visible mechanical segmentation. Same heights as before. Hair still matching their crystals.

05 looked at them and finished her sentence. "—They heard."

The grey Pi moved first. "Where is 03." Not quite a question. Almost at her usual volume, which made the almost worse.

03 turned. "I'm right here. Are you Pi? The captain talked about you a lot—"

Pi walked in and slapped her.

"You idiot." Her voice stayed level, which made the words carry further. "Why did you decide to play the hero? She is in a worse position because of your decision. Is your logic processor running at capacity? You left her alone with one leg and an enemy directly connected to her. Explain your reasoning."

03 moved to respond physically. Pi had the predictive modeling crystal. She could see ten seconds ahead in real time.

Clang.

Pi caught the fist without looking for it. "I don't know you yet. This response tells me a significant amount though."

"She was going to be erased!" 03 didn't drop the volume. "What was I supposed to do? Watch her dissolve and stop existing while I stood there?"

"Isn't that exactly what she experienced when you decided to die in her place?" Pi pulled 03 closer by the fist she was still holding. "You did save her from ceasing to exist but you made her watch it happen. And then you added the weight of your death on top of a fight she was already losing. You made her situation worse." She held the eye contact. "That was selfish."

03's volume dropped. Her head went with it. "I was trying to help."

The orange Tau came around from behind the group. She and Pi were the two shortest people in the room, which had no bearing on anything. "T-Think it through. Even if 02's body was destroyed, you retrieve the crystal and bring her back. That's always the path. Instead, now, if they take her down, the blue crystal goes with her. I-Into their hands." Her voice was quieter than Pi's but not gentler. "W-Why didn't you find the better answer while you had the seconds to find it?"

"We can't revive her." 05 cut across the room. Everyone turned. "What 03 did may have been the correct call even if it didn't look like one from the outside. The green crystal's primary advantage is hardware dissolution, it destroys the physical architecture rather than simply overwhelming it. By the time 03 made that decision, 02 had already taken significant damage, including the lost leg from a previous engagement with Mecha-worms."

She pulled the still from 03's memory onto the screen. "And Shelly is in a new body with white hair, which I haven't seen before and don't have existing data on."

Tau's eyes went wide. "Mecha-worms. What exactly has been happening out there?"

Gamma stepped up beside her. "We saw them too. There wasn't time to process any of it. Esoptron alone, using your orange crystal, took real effort, and everything was happening simultaneously. 02 was managing Infinity as a prisoner on top of all of it." She shook her head. "I'm genuinely surprised she held together mentally through the whole mission."

Pi nodded once. "That's the captain. But we need to move now if there's anything to move toward. Finding her at all might not be guaranteed."

"I'm coming with you—" 03 started.

"Don’t even think about it." Pi pushed her back with two fingers to the chest. "Your decision process is impaired. You'd become another liability to manage."

"Says the one who spent months being used as a power conduit!" 03 shot back.

“Careless action junkie.” Tau took 03 by the neck and lifted. "You still think you're in a story where the heroic moment justifies the cost." She looked up at 03 from below. "How does the heroic moment feel now, from inside the revival tube? Abandoning your captain for cheap morality."

"The only thing cheap around here is needing a full new frame to get back in the conversation." 03 looked down at her.

"You got dissolved, drama queen—"

Delta moved between them, separating all parties with the particular efficiency of someone who has processed that this conversation already. "Stop. Fighting here costs morale we don't have to spare." She looked at both sides. "03 was just revived. She came out of that tube having watched her captain in the worst state she's ever seen her in. Give her a moment before you take the next run at her decision-making."

Tau let 03 down. "She used dying as an exit from a situation that needed a solution as usual, and now the problem is larger." She glanced at 05. "Throwing everything at the captain as usual. Your words."

03 turned slowly to 05. "What exactly did you say about me while I was gone."

05 made a small gesture with her hand. "Irrelevant. We've lost time. The mission was a month ago."

"What?" 03 pulled up the date in her HUD. "How long was I in the tube?"

"Recovery time increases with the severity of what caused the revival." Albert looked up from his screen. "How long have you been just sitting there?"

"I needed time to recover mentally. But not a month."

Pi said it quietly. "Predictable."

Tau added hers. "Weak."

Delta had them by the arms and was already walking them out. "We finish running the new hardware, then we move. You can continue evaluating 03's life choices afterward if you still have energy for it." Her voice faded down the corridor. Gamma followed without comment. "She's been through as much as any of you. Be considerate of that..."

03 stared at 05 for a long moment, then left in wide, loud steps that the floor had no choice but to register.

Dave lifted the brim of his E-UNIT hat and looked at the space where everyone had been. "Hitting each other like residents of a care home." He dropped the hat back down. "Let me rest. That's all I'm asking."

19 smiled. "Rest, king."

Dave tilted his head under the hat until one eye was visible. "I know what you're doing and the answer is no."

19 rolled her eyes and went back to rest mode.

<< end_of_file : E-UNIT >>