8.24 – The Merge of the White and the Black

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

// data corrupted — recompiling //

"What do you want." 02 said it as cold as the word could carry. She stood to her full height and held Reaper's gaze directly. "You did this."

Reaper looked at her, then took several measured steps backward. "I'm not here to fight you. Killing you wouldn't benefit anyone, least of all me." His eyes moved to Infinity, who had pressed herself behind 02 and was visibly shaking. "You've adopted a defector. I didn't expect that from you."

02 glanced at 11. "You did the same thing months ago." She put an arm around Infinity's shoulder. "The king himself came to this location personally. That tells me everything I need to know about how badly you want something. You know I will dismantle anyone you send." Her eyes moved back to 11. "Even if they were sisters."

11 lowered her head. "I asked you to come with me before."

"And accept that this man killed millions in months?" The blue glow around 02's frame began building. "You were the only E-UNIT I ever promoted in rank. I can't believe that's where we are."

"I suggest we lower the temperature." Reaper raised one arm.

Both Infinity and 11 were pressed flat to the floor as the gravity in the hangar multiplied. The ceiling began to crack in a slow, spreading pattern. 02 stood exactly where she was.

Reaper looked at her with gaze close to interest. "At this point you operate outside the standard physical parameters."

"Why did you come here yourself." 02 kept her voice level.

"As 11 mentioned, she extended an invitation before, and that was improper." He opened his arms slightly. "Someone at your level deserves to be approached by the leader directly. Let me give you the context first." A pause. "I sold your army."

02 didn't react. She kept her eyes on the mismatched pair, one red, one green.

"I expected more from you. But I can reverse the transaction, on one condition. Stand by me against Remidican." He began moving through the empty hangar in slow, unhurried steps, his voice carrying off the concrete walls. "Something has entered the situation that changed my planning. A problem that removed the option I was counting on, it destroyed a proxy frame I needed to finish the engagement quickly, and I have no interest in letting the timeline extend."

He glanced at 02 as he moved. She was still tracking him, keeping Infinity behind her.

"Fight with me for this war, and the fourteen thousand sisters are yours."

"You're offering me a bribe." 02 raised her chin. "To look past what you did to Altea." Her voice didn't waver. "It's almost sad that you came here personally for this. Get out of my way, I'm done listening."

"There's a complicating factor."

02 held Infinity closer. "Say it."

Reaper turned toward the open doorway as if he was waiting for a cue that hadn't arrived yet. "The one who destroyed the proxy frame wants your crystal. He took Shelly's first. I don't want him to have yours, it doesn't fit what I'm building, and when I encounter a problem—" He turned fully to face her, his cape taking a moment to settle. "—I don't manage it. I remove it. He will attempt the same thing to take the crystal from you."

"He?" Infinity looked toward the door.

02 turned. She had already registered the movement coming from outside. "Who did you bring here?" She looked at Reaper directly. "Who is that?"

"Someone I dislike considerably more than I dislike you. You'll feel the same way shortly." He moved to the far wall at a deliberate pace and took his position there, waiting in silence. 11 glanced at Infinity once, then stepped backward into the shadows and ceased to be visible.

A white figure appeared in the doorway and stopped.

Large flowing robes. A golden visor with no features beneath it, the glow shifting between white and gold at the edges. Floating slightly above the floor, not much, just enough to make the point. His voice arrived unhurried.

"Esoptron's SSD was accurate. The stolen Omega is here, in this concrete prison." He began a slow drift forward. "What are you doing with my beautiful queen? Why are you carrying what doesn't belong to you?"

"I don't know who you are." 02 tapped Infinity's shoulder. Infinity hesitated, then moved to a corner and stayed there. "Why are you calling me a thief?"

"But I know you, Captain 02." He stopped several meters away and raised one hand. The ring above his head began moving, pulling together fine points of gold that assembled themselves into a silhouette, a live figure constructed from precise dots of light, shaped like 02, exact in every proportion.

The silhouette reached back and produced two long blades. Plex continued.

"You lead the E-UNIT, a team built by our fine creator, Nicholas Rivera. At some point you were killed by the very humans you swore to protect. Rather than accept the universe’s judgement, you displaced Omega's soul and took her body as your own. A deeply troubling act, from where I stand."

The silhouette moved to stand directly in front of 02, matching her stance, her expression. Plex kept speaking.

"I know you fear mirrors. Look, with those eyes, at what you took. Read the name on the chest. That is the person you removed from existence. You took Omega from us, and then used her power to continue doing exactly what you've always done."

The silhouette raised its blade and drove it through 02. The gold light broke into scattered particles around her frame, drifting and pulsing. 02 didn't move. She was watching Plex.

A faint shift entered his voice, still composed, but a rawness underneath it had changed. "I feel as though I'm performing for an empty room. Could you respond? Or are you still processing the fact that I know this much about you? I want to hear Omega's voice through you. I miss her."

02's eyes sharpened. The cold in them went somewhere specific. "I am 02. And the fact that I live in what you call Omega—" Her voice dropped quieter and more final. "—means the universe chose me over her."

[Systami: Done. Are we even now?]

Plex was silent for a moment. The particles reversed their drift and returned to him, expanding into a larger ring around his frame.

"Coping mechanism. You don't know how to approach me yet. Your entire fighting method depends on reading the enemy first—"

"Name: Plex." 02 took one step forward.

"What are you doing?"

"Role: Protector of the crystals." Another step. The echo was small in the empty hangar.

"That was straightforward to determine."

"Capability: Capturing and reforming ambient energy." Another step. "Fighting you has to be physical contact."

"Where are you getting this from—"

"Production year: 2034." She kept coming.

"Even I don't have—"

"Combat philosophy: Weaponizing defensive architecture because you have no native offensive output. You perform having weapons, but you don't."

Plex drifted several meters backward. "Did you review the footage from Shelly's fight?"

From the far wall, Reaper nodded to no one in particular. "Impressive. She's already broken his read on her."

02 stopped and stood facing him. "Code Red—" She reached behind her back and drew both blades slowly. The hiss of plasma against air was the loudest thing in the room. Her wings opened behind her, energy streaming off them in long ribbons. Her eyes were already fully red before she finished the phrase.

"—initiated."

Six shields materialized instantly around Plex. He put them between himself and her without hesitation. "I know this mode. It won't work."

02 launched.

Her steps hit the concrete like accusations. She crossed the space before the sound of her first step had finished and brought the blade down.

Sleek.

"Are you malfunctioning?" Plex spoke from behind his shields. "You cannot cut energy—" The shield he was standing behind split cleanly into two halves and fell apart. He stood in the gap, facing her red eyes, frozen.

02 dropped one blade and grabbed him by the front of his clothing, pulling him toward her. "What does it feel like watching the Omega you love come at you?" She turned and threw him upward, not far, and let him drop back to her level. His eyes registered the fist.

Clang.

The golden face shattered on contact. He went backward in a straight line, the shockwave clearing dust away from the impact zone, and hit the far wall at speed before sliding to the floor.

He opened his vision. Something gold was already coming.

Clank.

One of his own shields drove itself into the concrete wall beside his head. He pushed upward and floated clear, then registered what was happening, 02 was holding his shields and throwing them. One landed beside his feet, shattering the floor. Another passed millimeters from his face, the displacement wave pulling at his robes. He moved through the hangar, floating rather than running, using the height variation as his only advantage.

He tracked left. A shield was already there.

Clang.

It hit him with enough force to separate his arms from his body at the shoulder. The shield kept moving and carried him with it until the concrete wall stopped both of them. He was pressed flat between the shield and the wall, held there, nothing moving.

02 looked away for a moment, then back. Something in the energy signature was wrong. Her eyes tracked the particles drifting toward the wall where he'd been pinned.

[Systami: This behavior isn't in my files on him. Sensor analysis is picking up an unregistered crystal signature inside his frame. Cyan crystal.]

The shield evaporated. The frame beneath it, damaged, separated, broken at multiple points, began to rebuild. Piece by piece, moving from the feet upward around the cyan crystal at the center, reconstructing itself the way a vessel fills with liquid. The golden face reformed last, feature by feature, until Plex floated again in his original state. Unmarked. Clean.

"The entire purpose of a machine—" His hands completed themselves. "—is to repeat the same task—" His clothing whitened back to its original state. "—indefinitely." He looked at 02. "Are you machine enough to do it forever?"

02 retrieved her blade and took her stance.

'Systami. The crystal he took from Shelly, You were right, it wasn’t the green one. Do you know of a crystal that enables self-reconstruction?'

[Systami: Nothing in my records. No known crystal has this capability.]

"That's a problem," 02 said quietly.

She accelerated again anyway, both blades lit, eyes fixed. She reached him and drew one blade across his midsection.

Sleek.

The robes burned blue at the plasma line. The frame split. The cut ran all the way to the wall behind him. Then the burning stopped, and the damage began running backward, the edges drawing together, the material stitching itself closed, erasing the last five seconds.

"What—" 02 looked up.

A shield was already descending. She stepped back as it hit the concrete where she'd been standing.

When she landed, the six shields had reformed around her and were rotating at speed. Her eyes tracked the movement, picking apart the timing. One came from behind, she cut it before it arrived, the energy dissolving and rebuilding in its place in the formation. Another moved, she cut that one too, same result. Then the rotation stopped. The shields began to reshape, each one drawing itself into a long, narrow form.

Spears.

02 dropped to one knee and drove her hand into the concrete. A blue hemisphere rose around her.

Seek.

The spears cut through it. Six points stopped centimeters from her face and body. She remained perfectly still inside the geometry of it, vents running at their limit, the space between the spear tips and her face measured in nothing.

[Systami: Your hardware cannot sustain an extended engagement in its current state. The vents are at maximum. You need to consider his offer.]

'I can't. He wants me to join a war against the Remidican, millions would die. I won't repeat what Omega did in New Mer. I won't let myself.]

[Systami: You won't survive to regret it.]

'Is there anything that works on him?'

[Systami: He absorbs energy attacks and reconstructs from physical damage. What does that leave? The only approach that would work requires him to be pinned completely. That requires gravity control.]

'Which I don't have.'

[I have a suggested condition that removes the need for the army entirely.]

02 stood. The blue hemisphere dissolved into particles. She held the position for a moment, reading the room, Infinity in the corner, frozen by Reaper's presence, barely venting. 11 somewhere in the shadows, visible only in flashes when she moved, watching 02's attacks with something too close to excitement. Reaper at the far wall, arms folded, waiting. He knew. He'd known since she dropped to her knee.

02 lowered her head briefly. Then turned.

"I want to keep the cyan crystal. That's my only condition. I'll fight for you against Remidican. Keep the fourteen thousand, I don't want them anymore."

"Your sisters are that cheap to you," Reaper replied, his voice carrying no warmth in any direction. "That you'd trade them for a lab-made crystal."

"Don't twist the meaning. Are you in or not?"

Reaper held the silence for a moment. Then he began walking toward her. "I've been holding myself back since this fight started, but your approach was entertaining enough to watch through." He stopped beside her and looked at Plex across the hangar. "He destroyed something I valued. I've been containing that." He extended his hand. "Welcome to the alliance, Captain."

02 took the hand and gripped it firmly. "Under duress."

"I know. That makes it better." He looked at Plex. "Your situation is resolved. I make it a habit to offer one chance to whoever I face, I suggest you accept it quietly. Though I'm hoping you won't. I want to land some hits on that frame."

Plex raised one hand. All six shields materialized around him simultaneously. "Arrogance."

"Agree." 02 took her stance beside Reaper.

"I assumed we were on the same side," Reaper said. His green eye went red.

Together, they took their stances. The concrete floor shattered as Reaper’s gravity field slammed into the room, warping the air into a suffocating pressure. 02’s blue energy surged outward in a storm.

"Code Red," they said in unison.

"Initiated."