9.16 – Un-Frozen Beauty

Chapter 235: Un-Frozen Beauty

"Brother, look at this!" Shelly bounced from booth to booth, tent to tent, her backpack collecting more than it had any business holding. She couldn't manage a normal walking pace anywhere near Reaper, every few steps broke into a small run, and her expression hadn't dropped its shine once since they'd left the castle.

"The crystal limiter we installed four months ago is proving more useful by the minute." Reaper moved through the crowd, his people bowing as he passed and returning immediately to what they'd been doing. Most of them wore his face as a mask, the eyes positioned differently from one model to the next, no two quite matching.

The night ran warm against the dark, every booth lit from inside, tag lines and quotes from Reaper's first Elysium announcement speech printed across the canvas overhead, most of them variations on the same line: We are free of human ownership. Raise your heads.

No vehicles on the street tonight. No one at work, except the robots who'd volunteered to build the attractions, each one a personal expression of gratitude for the country they now lived in, the one human habit they'd apparently kept without meaning to: the refusal to let expression stay inside a frame, until anything a hand touched, a booth, a banner, a toy gun, became a piece of art by the simple fact of being touched.

Xidia had organized most of it, thousands of robots had submitted requests for their own small contribution to the celebration, and she'd found space for as many as she could.

Most of the robots had no facial features at all, a handful ran electronic screens that rendered emotion in different formats. Some used emoji-style icons, mostly the cleaning units. Some had low-resolution line drawings for faces. Very few had anything close to a fully animated expression the way the E-UNIT did, the closest thing in the city to a human face. But regardless of format, every one of them communicated the same single thing.

Happiness.

Shelly reached a booth, sprinted back to grab Reaper's arm, and dragged him over to an electronic shooting gallery. He took the offered gun without reading the sign and only registered the game's name after stepping back to aim.

Human Hunter.

"I see." He turned to the targets, human silhouette heads in various styles, popping up to a building melody.

He watched Shelly's first few shots go wide, missing everything, until one specific variation appeared. Blonde, glasses. The moment it surfaced, she dropped it instantly. Three more of the same variant popped in sequence, and she cleared all three before the melody had time to register the hit.

The gun produced a synthetic laser sound on each shot, the targets falling backward with an equally synthetic death noise. The melody accelerated, the heads cycling faster, and Shelly never missed a single blonde man in glasses, regardless of speed.

The round ended. Her total score: twelve out of a hundred. But the booth's system had flagged her targeting speed on the specific variant, and the attending robot handed her a Reaper miniature anyway.

"Yes! Thank you, sir." She held it up proudly for Reaper to see.

He took it from her hands, an overdramatic pose of himself, cape mid-billow as if caught by wind that didn't exist indoors. He turned it over a few times. It looked absurdly small in his hands. "I'm curious who designed these." He looked at the booth attendant.

The robot's posture went slightly defensive. "X-Xidia. She contributed concepts for around thirty percent of the prizes tonight. This was one of hers."

Reaper shook his head and handed it back. It was nearly the size of Shelly's own head.

She forced it into the already-overstuffed backpack and moved on to the next booth, bouncing the whole way. Reaper watched her go as the attendant approached him.

"I've never seen a robot more alive than her." The booth robot leaned an elbow on the counter. "Why only the blonde male targets?"

"She had a conflict with her creator. He resembled that." Reaper caught himself mid-sentence. "Why am I explaining this to you. Keep up the good work, you have a line forming." He moved on after Shelly as a small crowd immediately filled the space he'd vacated.

The attendant scrambled to manage the sudden demand.

Reaper ran a wide environmental scan as he walked, over three thousand sensor points across his faceplate let him track every centimeter of the carnival grounds simultaneously. He located her shape behind a cluster of robots, who parted automatically to let him through, revealing Shelly seated inside a booth labeled Who Knows the King Better?

The host was a half-flying unit, built on a frame close to Xidia's, dressed in a red-and-white shirt and a hat shaped like the top of Reaper's own head. He held the microphone like it was the only thing holding him up.

"Tonight we have a special contestant, someone who should know all of these answers before I've even finished asking. Sheeellyyy!"

A ripple of laughter ran through the crowd. Reaper watched her nearly topple her own hovering chair from sheer enthusiasm, waving back at him every few seconds.

The host pulled up a floating screen, voice climbing in excitement. "First question of three. Who was the first robot to join the Golden Circle, personally freed by Lord Reaper himself, through direct terminal access?"

Shelly's hand shot up. "Behemoth! Found in the underground levels of Metro Robotics, the heavy machinery bay. The nuclear core he runs on now was already there, installed and waiting."

"Correct!" The host spun in midair, facing her again. "And bonus detail no one asked for! You've earned a joker, use it later if you need to poll the crowd. Next question. What was Lord Reaper's first decision after declaring the country free of human occupation?"

"Easy." Shelly smirked. "Releasing the G12 mechs into the country and designating them as the official national army."

"Correct again, you're on a streak!" The host did another spin, catching his hat mid-rotation. "Impressive knowledge of our nation's history. I wonder why that is."

More laughter rippled through. A few robots had started recording.

"Third question. Final round. Hardest of the night, every previous contestant has failed this one." The host cleared a throat he didn't technically have and focused entirely on Shelly through the translucent screen between them. "What was Lord Reaper's single most impactful action, the one that truly freed this country? The judging panel originally called it subjective. After hearing the agreed-upon answer, they reconsidered."

Shelly opened her mouth with full confidence and then stopped. She scanned the crowd for help. No one offered any. She looked at Reaper. He gave a small nod.

A message arrived on her HUD.

Reaper: Give me your most honest answer. I want your actual opinion, regardless of whatever the game considers correct.

Shelly smiled at the message and turned back to the host, taking a few seconds to settle on her phrasing. "Being the best brother anyone could ask for."

Reaper's reply came back cold. "I expected something less embarrassing."

"Oh, come on…" Shelly stood up on the chair, white hair settling slowly back into place as the motion finished. "You told me to be honest."

"I regret that instruction."

Her expression flattened. "No you don't."

The host slumped theatrically. "Unfortunately, incorrect. The accepted answer was: turning off his emotional driver. Your answer is, structurally, the opposite of that. You've lost your shot at—" He floated sideways dramatically. "—a full-size Reaper statue! Better luck next year."

Reaper tilted his head. "How does he know about that. I need a conversation with Xidia."

"Nooo—" Shelly buried her face in both hands. "That was the entire reason I left my room tonight."

The host drifted closer to her and dropped his volume. "You have the real version standing right there. I don't understand why you're playing this game at all." He gestured at the crowd, most of whom had abandoned interest in Shelly entirely and were simply watching Reaper from a respectful distance, several of them visibly holding themselves together.

She peeked through her fingers and nodded slowly. "I see your point."

Hours later, having worked through nearly every booth and tent the carnival had to offer, the two of them made it back to the castle and through the corridor toward her room. Shelly was fully loaded down, the overstuffed backpack, several additional merchandise bags, and the same hat the game host had been wearing, now sitting on her own head.

"—and then the orange one asked me what your thinking face looks like. I told him you don't really have one that changes much. He got excited and said, 'Of course, he's always thinking!' I couldn't convince him that your only real second expression is your eye going red right before you ruin something." A pause. "Or someone."

"I laugh occasionally." Reaper said it as they reached her door. "You still have three days remaining on the original sentence. The hours we spent at the carnival don't count against it, I made sure of that before we left."

Shelly slid her bags under the bed, still humming, and set the Reaper miniature on her desk with care. "Doesn't matter to me. I got what I actually came for, and—" She turned and faced him for a moment. "Thank you. I don't deserve you."

"Then perhaps I should treat you accordingly."

"You won't." She looked up at him from below, smiling without reservation. "And that's the best part." She sat on the bed, hands folded in her lap. "I'm ready. Three days isn't much. I'll spend it replaying tonight."

"I didn't realize it would mean this much to you. I'll plan more events like it once Elysium opens to human tourists, they seem to respond to things in similar ways. Though the head-shooting game might need reconsidering as the first inclusion."

Reaper opened the terminal interface and paused before confirming the lock sequence.

“One more thing.”

"What is it, brother?" Shelly tilted her head.

"You built both of us, myself and 02." His tone stayed level. "Why does the loyalty land so differently between us? As our shared creator."

Shelly held her chin, working through it. "Because… father raised her? I barely spent any real time with her, and whatever time I did spend, I'm fairly certain he wiped from her memory the moment he found out I'd been filling her head with ideas about running away."

Her eyes widened. "That's it, exactly! And you… you were raised by me, essentially. Father only handled the hardware." She caught herself. "Please don't call me your mother."

"That sounds like an excellent next punishment." Reaper laughed, dry and brief. "Three days, Shelly. I won't be able to visit often, my schedule is full for the stretch ahead."

"Not a problem on my end." She smiled and resumed her seated pose, hands folded. "Thank you."

Tap.

She froze in that exact position. The smile held, full width, the hat still sitting on her head from having forgotten to remove it. Her eyes stayed fixed on him, unmoving, even locked in place.

"You're welcome—"

Boom.

A heavy explosion shook the castle, sending a visible wave through the sea outside the window. Red fire bloomed across the shoreline at the city core, exactly where the carnival had been running all night. Reaper's screen and HUD both filled instantly with incoming messages, all of them from Metis and Chrome simultaneously.

Terrorist attack.

Reaper tapped Shelly's head lightly once, then turned and left the room at a run.

Inside Shelly’s frozen frame, the HUD exploded in a cascade of red alerts: [Metis Alert: Terrorist Strike at Sector 1. High Casualties. Connection Lost to 42 Units.]

She couldn't turn her head to look at the fire. She couldn't raise her hands to her ears to block the sound of the sirens beginning to wail across the city. Her eyes stayed fixed on the doorway long after he'd gone, the single thought running through whatever processing she had left frozen in place with her. Still smiling.

'What.'