E-UNIT: The Blue Angels of Death.

V O L U M E F I V E

Chapter 102: Devil Sister

A few days later.

Reaper made his way to the rooftop of the castle. His footsteps were nearly silent, the wind was strong enough today to swallow most sounds whole, carrying with it a bite that hadn't been there last week. Summer was on its way.

Shelly and Obsidian followed without being told why. Obsidian was tense in a way he rarely allowed himself to be, quietly replaying every recent interaction he'd had with Reaper, searching for something he might have done wrong. He kept his composure, but only just.

The royal helicopter waited on the pad, black and orange as always. No E-PHONEUS escort this time. A physics manipulator like Reaper was enough. Reaper stepped in and took the center seat. Chrome was inside already, cycling through multiple screens at once. Two other robots flanked him, each reviewing feeds from different corners of Elysium.

Shelly stepped in after him and immediately forgot to sit down. ‘Why does everyone here have no mouth? No real eyes either, just lights doing the job of eyes. Father pushed my design as close to human as it could go for a reason, and standing in a room full of these faces makes that very clear.’

Her gaze drifted around the cabin, leather seats, a deep red and gold carpet that looked too expensive to walk on, paneling that caught the light in a way that felt deliberate. She felt wealthy for the first time in her life. It was a strange feeling.

The helicopter lifted. The robot pilot was precise enough that no one felt it leave the ground without looking out the window.

Reaper spoke first. "I brought you here for a few specific reasons. Some of them I don't have full details on yet, that's why the head of our intelligence agency is with us. He'll fill in the gaps." He paused. "Let's take them in order."

He expanded a screen. Blurred footage filled it, dark human silhouettes captured in multiple locations across Theria, Automa, and several other cities that had either been newly built or restructured under Elysium's influence.

"Our friendly western neighbor is sending spies and troops into our territory. Quietly. Their numbers have exceeded ten, though Metis puts the ceiling at around fifteen." His voice was measured. "Their behavior so far suggests their goal is purely informational, no disruptions, no incidents. Which, in my view, makes them more dangerous than any armed unit we've faced."

Chrome picked up from there. "Our priority is taking at least three of them alive and questioning them, thoroughly, about anything we might be missing. The complication is that they may be carrying weapons we haven't catalogued yet. Which brings us to the next point."

Reaper nodded. "Most of the E-PHONEUS are already deployed on the western border running surveillance operations, with 11 coordinating them on the ground and staying mobile. On top of that, E-UNITs have almost no resistance to sonic weaponry. What this mission needs is a silent operative, someone who can move through a city without drawing attention."

Obsidian's shoulders dropped slightly, the tension bleeding out of him. "I see why I was called. This mission is meant for me, Lord Reaper."

Reaper's eyes dimmed briefly. ‘Why was he that wound up? I'll ask him after the mission.’ He turned to Chrome. "Get Obsidian the full reports, maps, timestamps, every image we've taken of these operatives marked on them. We don't send our sharpest asset hunting blindly through a city."

Obsidian knelt slightly. "I'm unworthy of those words, Lord Reaper."

Reaper moved on. "Next, the crystals we recovered during the last engagement with the G-Bots."

Chrome dimmed several screens. "Our scientists in the Metro Robotics labs are still working through them, but we have preliminary results. We're flying to the site to observe live tests firsthand. What they've found so far is worth seeing in person."

Reaper turned to Shelly. "The main finding is that no standard chassis has been able to contain the crystals without overheating and breaking down. The only viable candidate we have is you. Your body was built to sustain high thermal loads for extended periods." He held her gaze. "Your mind is already backed up, and we have spare parts on hand. You'll be safe." He nudged her gently. "Besides, I didn't build a country around everyone pulling their weight just to have my sister sitting on the side of it."

Shelly stared at him. Something in her expression didn't quite settle. "Thank you," she said quietly. "I mean that." Her head dipped slightly. "Am I being treated like a little sister again? Even though I'm older?"

Reaper let out a short, dry laugh. "Is that a problem?"

"No." She smiled. "I've always liked this role. And I do miss having my abilities. Running on a battery that drains feels…" She searched for the word. "Small."

"You won't need to charge after today." Reaper turned back to Chrome. "Last item."

Chrome opened the cabin door. An E-UNIT stepped out from the pilot's compartment wearing an E-UNIT hoodie, no number on the chest. She walked to Reaper and knelt low. "Lord Reaper. E-UNIT Infinity, at your service."

Shelly was on her feet immediately, circling the new arrival slowly, studying her from every angle. "I've never seen this one before. Where did she come from?"

Obsidian answered. "We had 05's second SSD in our vault. Lord Reaper proposed we repeat our infiltration of the Hope Bubble, but this time with a smarter approach than before."

Chrome continued. "That SSD contained every piece of additional footage 05 had accumulated, conversations, interactions, behavioral data on every E-UNIT she had contact with. Once that went through the intelligence agency, we had enough to reconstruct each of them from the ground up. We have the AI source now. We have all of them."

Reaper tapped the top of Infinity's head. "She can mimic any E-UNIT in that database with full accuracy, voice, behavior, mannerisms. She can switch between them on the fly without losing her own core identity. If her cover breaks as one, she becomes another."

Infinity rose and settled into the seat beside Reaper. A number materialized on her hoodie.

101.

"As you can see," she said, leaning back with a familiar ease, smiling exactly the way Shelly smiled, "everyone 05 ever spent time with is in my memory. Even you." She tilted her head. "Our brother really is something else."

Shelly crossed the cabin in three steps and leaned down to Infinity's ear. Her voice was barely above a breath. "Drop that face right now. Because even our brother won't be able to help you if you don't." The blade was already pressed against Infinity's side, quiet and certain. "And don't say our brotother again. Next time I won't bother whispering."

Infinity’s smirk vanished, replaced instantly by a hollow, deadpan stare. She sank to her knees. "Awaiting your next order, Lord Reaper." Her voice had lost all trace of Shelly’s warmth. She was just a machine waiting for input.

Reaper glanced at Shelly. She stood where she was, still, eyes hard and red, expression like a closed door. He guided her back to the seat beside him. "Don't worry," he said. "I can tell the real you without having to look twice."

She turned to him. "How?"

"You were the first person I ever had a real conversation with." He looked ahead. "What do you mean, how?"

Shelly smiled and said nothing. ‘Hiding everything real behind that cold front…’ she thought, watching him. ‘I see you, brother.’

Metro Robotics. 09:35.

The doors split open from both sides.

Reaper's silhouette filled the entrance first, green eyes cutting through the dark ahead of him. Behind him came Shelly, hood down, cloak pulled close. Then Chrome in his fancy suit, orange LEDs glowing along the edges. Last came Obsidian, almost soundless, blades visible at his back.

The robot standing guard at the entrance to the testing room dropped to one knee the moment Reaper crossed the threshold. "Sir. Lord Reaper. Thank you for coming personally."

They were in the heart of Metro Robotics now.

Reaper moved through the lab at a steady pace, his cape trailing behind him. The room was large and deliberately stark, reinforced gray plating covered every surface, and long floating tables ran the length of each side wall, anchored at both ends. The ceiling was a single massive LED panel that eliminated shadows entirely, filling the space with flat, even light that left nowhere to hide.

Past the entrance, a two-meter-thick glass wall divided the lab into two tall chambers. A set of double doors on the far left provided access to the room beyond. On this side of the glass, robot scientists in white coats moved between floating screens, each one trailing its assigned researcher like an obedient pet. They stopped when Reaper entered and lined up without being told.

Even Z9, the test unit standing alone in the back chamber, raised a hand in salute through the glass.

Shelly drifted away from the group almost immediately, drawn toward the tables. She ran her fingers along the equipment, picking things up and setting them back down, restless energy looking for a target. Obsidian and Chrome took their places beside Reaper, waiting.

"Kuantum," Reaper said. "Walk me through what you have."

Kuantum stepped forward, head scientist on this project, his frame built like any other chromatic robot except for the face, which was fully digitalized. Expressions formed from shifting clusters of pixels, eyes and mouth assembling themselves in real time as he spoke. Right now he looked like someone who had been waiting a long time to say what he was about to say.

"Lord Reaper. The crystals you recovered and brought to us are unlike any matter we have encountered or catalogued. What we've found has the potential to eliminate Elysium's energy requirements entirely." He paused, as if giving the room a moment to absorb that. "These crystals are, by any practical definition, extraordinary. Allow me to explain."

An assistant wheeled in a large anti-gravity containment unit. Inside it, the crystals drifted in slow rotation, one of them, the orange one still glowing, steady and unbothered, as though it hadn't noticed it had been moved at all. "These materials do not appear on the periodic table. They have no natural equivalent. The only nation that ever possessed them, Altea, refused to share any research on the subject, which kept the rest of the world completely in the dark for far too long."

Kuantum reached in and lifted the green crystal. "They cannot be mined directly. The material itself is indestructible. You have to excavate around it and extract it from the surrounding rock slowly. On top of that, someone at some point, discovered a method of injecting unstable uranium directly inside the crystal structure. The result is a near-limitless energy output."

He crossed to Reaper and held it out. Reaper took it, turned it once in his hand, and handed it back.

"There is one more detail." Kuantum's tone shifted slightly. "They are alive. In some capacity. We are still working to understand exactly what that means, but it hasn't stopped us from using them as an energy source. On their own, the crystals have no awareness. They need a functioning body to interface with, and they need time to learn the world around them. The ones you brought us already know it. They react. They respond to different materials in ways we didn't program and can't fully account for yet."

He took the green crystal and clicked it into a device that looked like a structured brace, something built to sit across the chest and shoulders. It sealed with a soft hiss. Across the glass, Z9 stood wearing an identical one, its crystal glowing red.

"We're calling the device the Energy Brace. The material itself we've designated Energysium for obvious reasons." He glanced briefly at his assistants. "We've already dispatched extraction teams to the western mountains of the desert. That region appears to be the only environment capable of producing the material naturally, the conditions there cycle between extreme heat and extreme cold, which seems to be what the growth process requires."

He turned to Shelly and held out the brace. "This is yours to try. It allows the wearer to access and direct the energy the crystal produces." He looked back at Reaper. "There is one more thing. Nick programmed these crystals to manipulate specific physics variables in ways that don't follow standard models. The output presents itself as something closer to, for lack of a more precise term, a super energy discharge."

Shelly handed her cloak and let it fall across the table behind her. She pulled the brace on and locked it into place. The moment the connection completed, her eyes went green. She left the ground without trying to. Energy moved through her in a wave she clearly hadn't anticipated, filling the space around her with a low, vibrating hum.

Kuantum took a step toward her, then stopped. "Is that—" He turned to his assistants. They were already crowding forward, screens forgotten. "Perfect Harmony."

Reaper rested a hand on Shelly's head briefly. "Run a test. Use Z9 as your target, his mind is backed up." Through the glass, Z9 gave a thumbs-up and removed his own brace, stepping back to give her room.

Shelly walked in the testing chamber. Z9 stood still and waited. She reached back and drew her blades. The force released by that single motion, before she'd done anything else, was enough to push Z9 backward two full steps. Every light in the lab lurched. The walls groaned once, sharp and low.

Then it leveled out the moment the blades were fully drawn.

Shelly began to glow, deep, saturated green that pushed every other color in the room to the edges. Her eyes had no white left in them at all. The air around her thickened and bent. Then she rose off the floor again, steadily this time.

Kuantum was shaking. Not from fear. "Perfect connection." He snatched the microphone off the nearest table. "Shelly, release the excess energy now. Treat it like bleeding off a charge when you're over capacity. You need to let it out."

Shelly nodded once.

Then the room changed.

Enormous bat-like wings erupted from her back, dense and layered, the center sections nearly white from the concentration of energy, the edges blazing green. Thick horns curved forward from above her head. A long tail extended behind her. Floating in the air at her back, a glowing alpha symbol pulsed steadily, green arcs of electricity jumping between its edges and dying away.

Kuantum's digital face rearranged itself into something that didn't have a single word for it. Every pixel on his 32-pixel display was in use. His assistants were gripping each other by the shoulders. "Shelly." His voice came through the mic carefully, like he was afraid of startling her. "You should now have access to heatless inferno energy, the ability to reduce any material to nothing at will. Attack the target. Whenever you're ready."

Shelly raised her blade toward Z9.

"Devils Deception Protocol, initiated."

Green fire detonated outward from her in every direction, filling the testing chamber from floor to ceiling and wall to wall in an instant. The energy was so dense the chamber became a solid cube of light, no shapes, no depth, nothing visible but green.

The scientists on the observation side pressed themselves against their workstations, covering their audio sensors as the room began to hum with a violent, structural vibration. The air simply began to tear apart.

Reaper didn't move. He stood and watched the green fire turn everything around him into featureless silhouettes, his expression unreadable.

Then it stopped.

Shelly touched down. The landing was effortless, one moment airborne, the next standing still on the floor like she'd simply chosen to be there.

She opened her eyes.

The glass wall between the two chambers was intact. Everything else was gone. Three walls had melted entirely, opening the lab on three sides to the open skyline of Theria, the cityscape stretching out beyond, indifferent to what had just happened inside the building. Shelly still glowed, the light in her eyes steady and calm.

And Z9 had simply ceased to exist, his atomic structure deleted from reality.

She spun to face Reaper, barely containing herself. "Brother! I did it! What do you think?"

Reaper let out a quiet, genuine laugh. "That is the finest power demonstration I have ever witnessed. You exceeded every expectation I had, and then melted them."

Shelly crossed what remained of the lab toward him, her silhouette cutting clean through the two-meter glass wall as she passed through it, the material parting around her shape like it had simply agreed to. She reached him and threw her arms around him before he could react. "Thank you!"

Her eyes burned green against his chest.

Reaper held her. "Anything for my devil sister."

She pulled back. "What? Devil?" She looked sideways at the surviving glass wall, caught her reflection, and looked again. "Why devil!" Her hand went to the brace and she started punching at the crystal inside. "You stupid rock, is this how you see me?!"

Reaper knelt beside her, still laughing. "Don't worry. You look remarkable."

Her expression settled into something softer. "Thank you," she said, quieter this time.

He stood and turned to Kuantum. "Assessment?"

Kuantum was already pulling data from several screens at once. "She didn't overheat at all, not even close. If anything, the energy appears to be actively regulating her internal temperature and keeping it below her normal operating range." He looked up. "Lord Reaper. This experiment is a complete success."

Reaper tapped Shelly's head once, then looked at Chrome. "Full research begins immediately. Every aspect of these crystals, I want all of it documented and developed here, and nowhere else." He straightened. "Contact Behemoth. Priority order, seal off access to the western mountains. No one outside Elysium gets near that source."

He looked down at Shelly. She still hadn't let go.

"This is only the beginning, sister."