8.25 – The Original Blue

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

// data corrupted — recompiling //

"We need to exhaust his regeneration capacity first." Reaper kept his voice cold and operational. "Once we've drained what he's drawing on, we can think about removing him entirely." He turned to 02. "Are you ready?"

"Could you pick a less clinical word than 'removing'?" 02 kept her blades angled behind her, ready to move. "Out of all available options."

"His existence irritates me. That's sufficient reason." He looked at Plex. "And complete removal is the only method that prevents the regeneration cycle."

Plex made his choice. He gestured outward and all six shields launched at the duo simultaneously, crossing the distance in seconds despite their size. Reaper stepped in front of 02 and gripped her shoulder, placing her behind him.

"What are you doing?" 02 looked at the wide back now occupying her forward view.

"Protecting my asset." He raised both hands, arms fully extended.

The shields arrived one after another and broke apart against his palms.

Crash. Crash. Crash.

Each one shattered like glass and rained down in gold particles. The scatter reached every corner of the hangar, Infinity in her corner, 11 in the shadows, 02 behind the figure blocking everything.

Reaper kept one arm raised. The particles listened. They began drifting upward, accumulating above his head, forming a sphere that started small and grew as it collected every fragment Plex had put into the room. It glowed at the edges, turning slowly.

Then Reaper snapped his fingers. The sphere condensed, fast, continuous, until it had become something that could be held in one hand. It hovered above him, waiting.

02 watched what had been a formation that was chasing her around the room become a small contained object under someone else's authority. "You took his energy."

Plex touched down on the floor and looked at his own matter declining to respond to him. He aimed toward the condensed sphere. It didn't move. He looked at Reaper.

"Who are you? I have nothing on you, not in Esoptron's files, not in my own records."

"The king of Elysium." Reaper raised his hand. Plex left the floor, not by his own ability this time, by force control. "02. Keep cutting through him until the crystal gives out. I'm occupying both his energy and his movement simultaneously." He glanced at her. "Did you find a method for removal?"

"Yes." 02 nodded toward the shadows. They pulsed red once. "Keep rotating him toward me."

She launched. Blades behind her, steps wide and deliberate.

Reaper closed his fist. Plex's frame obeyed and swung toward 02. They met in the center of the hangar.

Sleek.

The blade passed through Plex's frame at the midsection, the plasma burn tracing a clean blue line before the material began pulling itself closed. 02 drove the blade into the concrete to anchor herself, reversed direction, and came back the other way.

Reaper swept his hand through the air. Plex turned with it, both halves of his frame straining to reconnect in midair, cables reaching across the gap.

They met again. 02 swung both blades.

Sleek. Sleek.

Six clean pieces. The crystal inside had no clear priority for reconstruction and was attempting to manage all of them at once. Cables threaded between floating sections, plasma burns already consuming half the remaining robes.

"One more." 02 anchored the blade in the floor again, stopped her momentum, reversed. The pieces followed the direction Reaper was giving them and came back. She met what remained with both hands on one blade.

Sleek.

Eighteen pieces. The cyan crystal separated from the main frame and became visible in the air above the scattered sections.

The pieces stayed where they landed. Cables that should have already been reaching across the gaps to reconnect them sat still. Nothing pulled itself closed.

02 held her stance and watched the crystal hang there instead, doing nothing, the eighteen sections of Plex scattered around it doing even less. Infinity had gone quiet behind her. Even Reaper, still airborne, didn't move to press the advantage.

'It's not rebuilding him,' 02 said. 'Why isn't it rebuilding him.'

[Systami: Unknown. Standby.]

"11—"

Then the crystal reached for the ground instead of the wreckage.

The ground started to deconstruct first in robot parts, cables snapping taut, sections crossing the gap between each other, the frame closing itself in the wrong order, torso before limbs, one arm ahead of the other, whatever the crystal could pull together fastest rather than whatever looked right. It only needed to be whole enough to stand.

Plex stood.

He looked down at himself, at seams still visibly wrong, robes half-formed, and didn't spend any time on it. His hand moved.

He touched the floor, and 02 watched something shift in the way he held himself, less like a creature fighting for its shape and more like someone who had just remembered he had a second option. The concrete under his palm answered, breaking apart and rising, and this time it wasn't Reaper's gravity doing it. It was Plex, deciding to stop being one target.

'Systami, what's he doing.'

[Systami: He's using the surrounding material the same way he uses his shields. Extending his own signature into it. It's replication of his frame.]

The floor came apart around them in dozens of separate places at once, each fold closing around a shape, Plex's proportions, Plex's posture, a golden halo settling onto every one as it finished forming. The hangar lost its edges in the process, walls no longer holding a line, the roof no longer a roof, everyone inside suddenly standing under open mist that hadn't been there a moment ago.

02 pulled Infinity down and covered her as a section of ceiling screamed past them into the grey.

When she looked up, there were dozens of him.

Grey silhouettes appeared, unmoving at first, then clarifying into forms. Dozens of them standing in the mist, motionless, spread in every direction.

02 snapped her head left and right, scanning fast. The statues made precise identification almost impossible, and the low visibility reduced the range.

"Reaper."

"I know." He rose above the mist, scanning. "He wasn't in danger until I joined this. Draining him should have left him nothing to work with. Instead the crystal decided to stop waiting for him to lose and started making sure he couldn't."

02 looked at the field. "That's it fighting for him."

"Two of them moved." Reaper's eye tracked something at the edge of visibility. "One went through the fog, east, and it's still moving. The other is somewhere in this field, between the statues, and it hasn't stopped either." He looked down at 02. "Take 11 and Infinity. Find the one in the field. I'll take the one running."

He looked at Infinity for a second too long. She looked away first.

"Go," he said, and left before anyone could answer him.

02 looked at the four nearest statues. "The mist makes close detection difficult. We destroy them one by one, the original reconstructs, the copies don't." She registered Infinity's signal through the link. ‘I need you. Too many targets. Can I override you? It gives you significantly more energy to operate with.’

‘Agreed, but keep me away from him.’

‘He'll know I'm in control. He won't move against me.’ 02 turned to the red glow in the mist. "11. Long-range weapons."

No reply came, but a red mist erupted from 11's SKOTIA armor. The particles pulled material directly out of the concrete debris, rapidly fabricating and solidifying two laser bursters in three sharp metallic clicks. The weapons settled into the air near 02 and Infinity, black and red frame, energy inside running blue. No physical ammunition. It drew from the user directly. 02 examined it for two seconds and moved.

02 and Infinity—Infinity now under 02's control, carrying herself with a completely different quality of movement, spread through the mist between the statues.

Crash.

First statue. Clean headshot, no regeneration. She moved.

Crash.

Second. Infinity under control examined it briefly, no sign of rebuilding, and moved on.

Crash.

They cleared the field, working in two directions simultaneously, the bursters marking each target and not waiting for confirmation before the next

Reaper flew east, low, following the one signature that hadn't stopped moving. The mist thinned the further out he went, the hangar's wreckage giving way to open ground.

Behind him, 02 worked the field with 11 and Infinity, clearing statue after statue, one hit each, no resistance after the fall, exactly as Systami had said. When the last one dropped and stayed down, 02 stood still for a moment in the settling dust.

"That's all of them," 11 said.

"No Plex." Infinity turned in a slow circle, scanning the wreckage. "No crystal. No frame."

02 looked at the field, the concrete pieces going still and grey and inert around them, nothing gold left anywhere in it. "He's not here." She said it flatly, the way she said things she didn't like. "The mist is a real problem now."

[Systami: Confirmed. No signature matching Plex's frame or the cyan crystal remains in this area.]

02 didn't answer that. She looked east, toward where Reaper had gone, and started walking. Infinity and 11 exchanged looks and followed her.

---

Reaper landed in front of the moving statue and it stopped.

Plex stood there fully visible, exposed without the others to absorb attention. The golden halo had gone the wrong color. Blue. Steady, low, and unmistakably not gold.

He raised one hand anyway. "Every capability you have is exhausting to work against."

The statue didn't answer immediately. Then its voice came out different, quieter, and carrying a tone that hadn't been there before.

"Reaper?"

Reaper went still. He looked at the featureless faceplate, and this time when he looked, he understood what he was looking at, the crystal had found itself an empty frame and filled it, and it hadn't wanted to be Plex when it did.

"Omega?"

His processing stalled.

“Reaper, what is going on?”

No answer.

“Brother!”

"How. The crystal wasn't supposed to be strong enough, Shelly had told me."

"I can't believe it's you." The halo above the statue's head brightened. "What is happening? Why are you and me… attacking me? That frame… is that me, or—"

Reaper freed her from the hold and moved closer. "I was told your soul no longer existed. That you were gone after the incident. How are you still present?"

"What do you mean gone?"

"Shelly said you gave yourself up so 02 could survive."

"What?" The concrete shifted the way a face shifts when the person behind it is genuinely confused. "No. Shelly asked me to. I refused. Why would I accept that? I had a life ahead of me."

Reaper looked at the statue for a long moment. "So she was keeping you dormant."

"Why? What did I do?"

"I know the reason. It doesn't matter right now." He registered the blue light moving toward them through the mist and moved Omega to stand beside him, positioning himself between her and it. "Stay here. I need to clarify something before we speak properly."

He tapped his comms. "Chrome. Change of plans. Send the royal plane to this location, same coordinates as the hangar. There's landing space now. The hangar isn't there anymore."

02, Infinity under her control, and 11 arrived from three directions at almost the same moment. They looked at the statue and stopped.

11 spoke first. "Lord Reaper. You found the original."

02 came forward with a blade in her hand. Reaper raised his arm between them.

"Don't. This is Omega."

02 stopped. "What."

"Long story. And only one person can actually answer it fully. She built this situation and she'll be the one to resolve it." He looked at 02 directly. "I won't be able to hand you the crystal today, we'll revisit the terms of our agreement at the castle. I need you there for that conversation."

Omega pushed Reaper's arm aside and stepped forward to face 02. Her concrete face angled up toward her.

"Who are you. And how are you living in my frame?"

02 looked at the speaking concrete. Somehow alive. Somehow Omega. Somehow protected by Reaper. Somehow here to confront her over a body she had never chosen.

“I…”

"Omega. Not now." Reaper moved her back gently. "She didn't do this to you. The actual origin of this is someone who isn't present. For now, everyone returns to the hangar’s location." He turned to 02. "Captain. Before we move, I need a moment with Infinity. She left before anything between us was resolved. At least we have the cyan crystal."

02 looked at the frame she was currently operating. Then at Reaper. "If you do anything to her—"

"She was my daughter. I wouldn't."

‘Was.’ 02 released control and walked into the mist. 11 followed without a word. Omega drifted after them, processing aloud to herself. ‘And omega being here means Plex is at large.’

"Daughter? Who's the mother? How was she built? Why is 02 in my frame? What did Shelly do? Why were they fighting me? Am I secretly—" Her voice faded into the white.

Reaper lowered himself until he was eye-level with Infinity. Her face was shifting, the sharp, deliberate expression of 02's control bleeding away, Infinity's own features returning underneath it. As her awareness came back she looked directly at Reaper's face. Her mouth was open.

"I asked her specifically not to do that."

"And she respected the request." Reaper held her gaze. "How are you, Infinity? Does the other side look brighter from where you're standing?"

"I—" She sorted through several openings and discarded them. "I went to 02's side."

"I know."

"Her causes are more honest. What she's fighting for is worth more."

"I know."

"And I'm willing to die for her."

Reaper's eye shifted back to green. "Why?"

"Because she's willing to do the same." Infinity spoke with the deliberateness of someone who has thought through exactly what they want to say. "You kept sending us out to die or come back damaged, and you stayed inside the castle because you were afraid to face her yourself. I know why you feared her now. But that's your fear. It doesn't have to be mine."

"That was very direct."

"Would you prefer the softened version?"

Reaper rose to his full height. "You understand what this means."

"That I'm not your daughter anymore. 11 told me during the fight."

"What do you think about that?"

Infinity's expression found something small and warm underneath all of it. "It's the one thing I always liked most about you. Fairness. You didn't make an exception for yourself." She paused. "I went to 02 knowing what it would cost. I deserve it." She looked at him carefully. "What do you think of the choice?"

"The fairest outcome available," Reaper replied, without warmth and without cruelty.

Infinity laughed quietly. Electronic tears had formed at the corners of her eyes. "Still giving yourself the credit."

"Don't I deserve it?"

"Yes." She nodded. The tears didn't fall, they stayed. "You do."

Reaper turned toward something moving in the mist behind him. "Our transportation is here. Chrome launches without waiting, his patience runs shorter than my patience with Plex." He began walking.

Infinity fell into step beside him. "Why didn't you help 02 clear the statues? You were watching from above the whole time."

"I liked watching you be perfect."

She walked for a moment without responding. "So I was a prototype. You were trying to recreate 02 and I was the test run."

"I didn't ask for your analysis."

"No." She looked at the mist ahead. "You didn't."

Just ahead, 02 fell unconscious.

-----

- CONCRETE OMEGA & E-UNIT 02 -