9.27 – Inside Out

246

Inside Out

‘E-UNIT 02 at your service. Current captain of the E-UNIT, police chief of the capital Bijou. Born as an experiment in 2023, after father met Mikael Wilson at a science exhibit and decided the world needed me, needed us, the E-UNIT. Were they right? Were we enough?’

I stood facing my dead sisters, the ones who, not long ago, had been alive and filling every room they entered with blue light and noise. After my systems froze them in that salute pose, I got the idea of making a statue of them rather than for them. They stand at the back of the E-Police now, frames forever mid-salute on top of a marble block in the center of the grass.

The SSDs are buried beneath them. They needed to be.

‘After seeing that, I remembered I'm not in the same E-UNIT frame anymore. Why am I still an E-UNIT? Is it because I'm still 02, or because I'm nothing but a number? If it's the second, anyone could be. Even Infinity became one, no. I'm an E-UNIT because I believe I am. That's the only answer that holds.’

I turned to face what was left standing. 01, 03, 04, 05, 06, 07, 08, 11, 19, and the Navy Unit, all of them lined up holding their bursters like the guards of something worth guarding, waiting for my signal. We decided to do what every military force does when it loses people.

I raised my voice, even though I didn't want to. "Fire."

They aimed at the sky and released in unison, a sharp electric report rising into the white-blue above, for the white and blue standing behind me.

"Fire."

They fired again. I watched their faces and found the level of composure there that I rarely see from them. ‘Pi is absent. She's in her office, door closed, sealing herself off from everything. Reminds me of 05 when she found out Infinity was impersonating me and carried that alone for weeks because she missed having me back.’

"Fire."

Another round to the sky. A ritual that changes nothing for the sisters behind me, but gives the living something to do with their hands and their grief for a few seconds. ‘I'll bet 05 and Delta already know it's a dance for the dead. They're too precise not to know.’

"Fire."

‘I wanted to fire the exact count of the broken SSDs. I decided against it. Nobody here needs to be reminded of the number at this particular moment. Not today. Not ever, if I can help it. 12 would understand that logic.’

"Stand down." I moved to the glass lectern facing the team.

In the front row stood the E-UNIT sisters, with Infinity beside them now. ‘She kept asking for a number. I told her that Infinity is a number in itself. She wants to join badly enough that she'd accept anything. I would have given her 00, but apparently that designation was taken by someone. 05 is still working out the details on that.’

Behind the sisters stood the G-Bots, Delta, Gamma, Tau. Pi's crystal was registering somewhere above me, but she wasn't here. Beta would be joining us soon. ‘I still need 11 to agree to hand over the red crystal. I know Albert will do something exceptional with it.’

At the back, the Navy Unit. Bellatrix reminds me of myself in the early days, fresh, serious, still discovering that laughter exists, and carrying more care than she knows how to wear yet. I'm still most of those things, just with a layer of dry humor on top to keep myself from shattering. ‘I wonder if we have the same taste in jokes.’

Sophos in his dog frame, the one I haven't met in person until now, stood to the right, beside Albert, Raphael, and a Dave who looked like he'd left something of himself somewhere on the floor of Pi's office and hadn't gone back to collect it. ‘I thought Albert would be the one who broke first. Dave was hiding this version of himself. Physical strength doesn't translate.’

I placed my hands on the lectern and ran a quick read of the faces in front of me. The next words needed to carry weight without collapsing under it. "Sisters. And brothers." I paused. "I said brothers because we have Sophos now, and he has done more than enough to earn the title. Welcome to the team, brother."

Sophos gave one nod. I can't read him easily yet, but I know Albert is building him a humanoid frame. He deserves one. Reducing him to an animal shape is not respectful to what he actually is.

"Today is a day that stays. A day that lives in our memories even after we've cleared everything else from them." I tightened my grip on the lectern and felt it push back against my hands. ‘I need to regulate this better. Systami, hyperventilation, silent mode.’

[Systami: Activated. Silent configuration applied.]

‘Thank you.’

I pressed through the silence before it had time to become something else. "A day the world used to remind us that being on the right side of history doesn't guarantee what history does to you. History isn't a book where the good ending is written in from the start. It follows its own logic, and its logic decided we weren't worth keeping our sisters today."

I could see the faces starting to strain at the edges. I softened slightly, deliberately. "I won't tell you our sisters died honorably in the field. They were taken when they were nothing but SSDs, waiting, defenseless, unable to defend themselves. They were betrayed not by a human, not by an animal, but by another robot. Someone who shares more with us than anything else in the world does."

Then I shifted.

"So. We do what we were made to do. We protect lives by taking lives. The people of Metromania named us something specific, back in those first months, and the name has never left me. They called us the Blue Angels of Death. Angels who don't care what stands between them and justice. Angels who kill when the killing is needed."

I held every face in the row. "And today, the killing is needed. We take back what was taken from us. We go after whoever removed our angel sisters from this world."

Their eyes lit up in sequence. Even the G-Bots, even the Navy Unit. Good.

"All of you are E-UNITs now. Delta, you're an E-UNIT. Tau, you're an E-UNIT." I turned right. "Sophos, you're an E-UNIT. Albert and the rest of you, you're what makes us an E-UNIT. Stand beside us until this is done."

Albert reached up and removed his glasses. I could see the fog on the lenses from here. I need to end this before he loses it.

I turned back to the full team. "We were made with blades for a reason. We were given weapons for a reason. We were born for the same reason, to protect the vulnerable, or to avenge them. Today we avenge. E-UNIT, dismissed."

The clapping hit hard and all at once, which surprised me a little. My speeches have been better. Something in those specific words triggered them though, I could see it. I could also see 03 fighting her entire body to avoid running up to the lectern. ‘You know you don't have to fight it anymore. We passed the point of personal space a long time ago.’

As the team dispersed to their assignments, I went to the main building and stopped at 05's office the way I always do. She was submerged, screens everywhere, only her ponytail visible above the edge of them, bouncing with each movement. She noticed me and performed not noticing. That means come in.

I entered the dark office and stopped at her desk. "Long time." I extended a fist. She returned it before I'd fully committed to the gesture.

"Did you manage it?"

"I managed several things. Specify." Her eyes stayed on the screens, standard register.

‘You want a thank you and you won't say it.’ "I generally avoid saying thank you and sorry, they both flatten what was actually worth something. So instead, I'll give you a proper reward."

"What category of reward. If it involves a higher screen limit that would be useful." She refused to look away from her work. "If something else…"

"I can do that, I'll ask Raphael to expand your workstation's RAM." I leaned in and tried to read what she was working through. She was already parsing 11's SSD, cross-referencing data the way she does. "Though that feels too cheap. What if I simply come by more often so you stop looking like a solitary researcher who forgot other people exist."

‘She's going to find a way to use this against me.’

"Four times a day would be perfect."

"What."

"You said you'd visit more often." She turned and looked at me directly for the first time, smiling. "I'd like four visits per day, minimum five minutes each. I do better work when my breaks have some meaning to them."

‘Is it Raphael changing her, or is it the loss?’ "Done." I looked at her screens more openly this time, changing the subject. "You've already read 11's SSD. What's in there?"

"Organizing it for your next visit." She turned back to the screens, already treating my answer as an established fact of her day. "And I think I've found who E-UNIT 00 is, but I won't tease it yet. I need to cross-reference more before I'll stand behind the conclusion fully." She gestured toward the door. "You focus on getting Beta back, and on Pi. Go see Pi."

"Is she that bad?"

"Yes. Go."

‘I thought we were past her dismissing me like I'm behind on my rounds.’ I tapped the top of her head once, I'll never stop doing that, and turned toward the hallway. "You're one of the few people in this unit I actually trust completely."

"More than 03?" She closed one screen to look at me properly.

"Don't aim that high, 05." I walked out, knowing precisely what that will do to her processing. ‘Don't make me feel like I have to leave next time.’

I reached Pi's office and stopped in the doorway. My new frame regulates the ambient energy bleed better than the old one ever managed, so the entrance was quiet.

Pi was face-down on the desk, entirely broken. An orange locker in the corner was dented and cracked open in a way that told me everything I needed to know about how the past few days had been processed. I took the guest chair.

The chair squeaked despite being a hovering model, apparently announcing me anyway. I watched Pi flinch slightly, she'd known I was coming, had been waiting.

"Who ever said leading was uncomplicated?"

Something came out from under the desk, barely audible. Her vents climbed in volume.

"I can't read crystals the way 05 reads SSDs, Pi. I need actual words." I tapped the desk. "Pi." I tapped her head. "Pi." I shook it gently. "Pi."

She came up slowly and tried to hold my gaze without shaking. Nothing about what was in front of me resembled the Pi I knew. Even with the automatic mask up, a new addition Albert had retrofitted into their frames, I could feel everything underneath it in pieces.

"I'm sorry, Captain." Same flat register, just hollowed out at the center of it. "I removed someone you placed in that role and then watched everything collapse the moment I sat at this desk. 01 still won't speak to me. Most of the E-UNITs are keeping distance. Delta is the only one in my corner, and Tau is trying her best to exist near me without tension. I want you to deactivate me."

You can't be this dramatic with the flattest delivery in the world. It doesn't suit you." I made myself stay close to her, even though what she'd done sat heavy in my head while I did it. "And you don't own all of this alone. 01's leadership had real problems. Choosing her as acting captain might have been a mistake on my end too, I was trying to push her out of a certain religion shell she'd built for herself."

"Religion shell?"

'Right, she doesn't know about the cult.' "Don't worry about the phrasing. What I mean is, I believed that given enough time, she would have improved gradually. From what I heard, she managed to bring the Eve frame back to base intact, nobody pulls that off without significant risk."

Pi nodded once, small. "I know. But my prediction models showed me what continued leadership from 01 would produce, and neither outcome was acceptable. One of them was significantly worse than what we're dealing with now."

"Is that one of the dark visions you described when Reaper was coming?" I held the memory of those exact words.

"Yes." Her voice went quieter. "And they both disappeared the moment you landed back at the base." She looked up. "That doesn't excuse what I did. I need a consequence. Something concrete. Otherwise I spend the rest of my existence knowing I contributed to killing our sisters and answered for none of it."

"I hate that thinking."

"Sorry?"

I stood and moved to the window looking over the backyard, where the statues stood mid-salute in a row. ‘You've been watching from in here. Of course you have.’ "I hate the currency of apology. Hate thank-yous that substitute for action. Hate punishment as a way of resolving something that can't be resolved that way." I turned back to her, folding my arms. "I don't want your consequence. I want your proof."

Pi's eyes widened. I watched her catch the meaning slowly. "Proof. Then I help you get to Black Voltage. I give everything I have to this, for real this time."

‘First time she's panicked in front of me. She can't predict me. That's the most like a person I've ever seen her.’

I walked to her side and dropped to her eye level. "Pi." My voice dropped with it. "You don't ignore my orders. You don't go weeks without updating me on what's happening in my own home while you're actively working against what I put in place. This time I'm passing it as inexperience. The next time you make that choice, I will not be this quiet about it."

I stood and left toward the door. Stopped there. Needed to say one more thing.

"I won't soften this. You are directly responsible for why my sisters are dead. Sit with that a while before you decide to stand up straight again." I gave one short look back.

Her expression had already begun to come apart again.

‘It needed to be said.’

03 was in the hallway, leaning against the wall right outside the door.

"You heard all of it."

"Every word." She turned to me with a smile. "I almost came in, I thought you were going to be gentle with her. I keep forgetting that as warm as you actually are, you run colder than anyone when it needs to happen."

"People died because of her. She needs to sit with it the same way I did."

"Is that the New Mer thing?"

My face went flat without my asking it to. "Lovely, reducing the deaths of millions of people to 'the New Mer thing.'"

"You did it for me, though." She put both hands on her hips with a confidence that had no business being that solid. "And I'd do the same for you if I ever had a crystal powerful enough to delete an army."

I tried to hold it. Her stance was too much. I laughed quietly and pulled her into a hug on the way past. "Sometimes all a person needs is one stupid sister who never learned how to behave properly."

She didn't move for a second, clearly not expecting it. "I should be annoyed right now."

"Probably, my 03." I glanced at Pi's closed office door on the way down the hall. ‘So am I.’