Added Chapter: Back to Basics.
"—Thank god, she's coming back online gradually. I thought the SSD had melted from the Omega frame's heat."
[Verifying hardware — Hardware health: 100%.]
"What do you mean, you thought? You told us the probability of that happening was under three percent. Did you lie to us again?"
[Verifying software — Spark system updated.]
"Three percent is still a possibility. Don't play with the numbers, 03."
[Verifying memory — A memory wall detected, blocking access to memories predating January 2023.]
"She's going to wake up and immediately regret it because of you. 03. Your captain is fine, your sisters are fine, tone it down and let her come back in peace. Nick, be firmer with her. Nobody touches anything right now."
[Verifying Spark architecture — Free will confirmed. No external control layer found.]
"All right, she's waking up. Let's give her the best first image we have. She's the one who demanded to go into the experimental frame specifically because she wanted to make sure she could reach you." Nick's voice came in clearly over the sound of feet rearranging themselves in the room. "07, close your HUD."
'I love them for exactly this reason. They're the chaos I never let myself be.'
02 fought down the smile and lost most of the fight. Her blue eyes flickered to life and she rose slowly from the medical bed, sitting upright, finding the line of people arranged in front of her. She looked down at her own frame, her standard E-UNIT body, 02 printed clean and white across the hoodie.
"I'm already missing being one point seven two meters."
"That's her." 03 and the rest of the E-UNIT snapped into salute in unison, their voices overlapping into one.
"Welcome back, Captain."
02 saluted back, almost smiling. "Good to see all of you in one piece. What happened on that rooftop was everything I've had nightmares about since the day we started, and I need someone to walk me through it. What's the situation?"
Nick stepped forward, and the pride on his face was impossible to miss. "Before I sent you to Metro Robotics to pull your sisters out, I knew the frame wasn't finished. So I wrote a short diagnostic prompt, a background monitor that would flag me the moment anything went wrong. And I was nearly certain the overheating was coming."
Mikael, who had been leaning against the back wall with Sebastian, Dave, and Raphael, came off the wall at that. "Dr. Nick. You said overheating. You said you were almost certain it would happen. Why exactly were you certain?"
"You remember the crystal energy source I've been describing?" Nick turned to face him fully. "It generates more output than we have any current material capable of containing. I haven't found anything with the resistance rating needed to carry that load without eventually breaking down under it."
"Then why did you put her in it at all." 05's voice was cold enough to change the temperature of the room.
Nick turned back to 02. "I can't say no to her."
03 crossed the space and wrapped both arms around 02 before anyone else could speak. "Now I know what you felt every time I destroyed my frame trying to be useful. That was a horrible week to survive through."
"A week…" 02 was already on her feet on the bed. "We had a window to arrest him before he could leave the country. That window is gone now. Alexander and Shikimori are probably untraceable by this point."
"We never announced the operation as complete, specifically for that reason." Mikael stepped up behind the line of E-UNITs and tapped 05 on the head. "These ones refused to do anything substantial while you were offline. Minor city patrol work, and making sure Shikimori stayed at his desk. That's the full list."
"Then what are we waiting for." 02 said it flat and final, stepping off the bed, letting her gaze rise slowly across her sisters. "We end this. No loose ends, no one left who can pick up the work after."
The room lit up. Faces sharpened. Bodies were already moving toward the door before she'd finished the sentence.
That night, some offices refused to let the light die out.
Past midnight hadn't been enough of a reason to close those old eyes for a long time. For the minister, it was a signal that his personal hours had started, the time that belonged only to him. He sat facing the open window, November's cold air moving across his face and carrying off whatever the smoke hadn't already taken care of.
The office light was warm and modest, reaching only as far as the desk and the nearest bookshelves, volumes no longer relevant to any current conversation, kept because they'd been there long enough to have become part of the room's architecture.
Not a dust particle anywhere on any surface, but the ash from heavy smoking had accumulated at the floor level, the only disorder the space allowed. A classic wooden desk held an old white desktop computer that was more decorative than functional.
Alexander. Minister of Defense. Ninety-six years old, more hours in this office than in his own house. The smoke filled the air in a grey layer, leaving from his lungs and ensuring the mind stayed clear.
Three knocks came at the door. The knocker didn't wait, slow, deliberate steps crossed the office, and the guest took the chair already, helping himself to one of the cigarettes lined up on the desk edge and lighting it.
Alexander turned slowly. He'd memorized those footsteps twenty years ago. He held the tired-eyed gaze of the visitor for a moment, then removed his green military hat—the dark brim, the Altean army insignia catching even the dim light in gold, and held it in both hands.
"I received this when I made colonel. Never gave it back." He smiled at it. "That day meant something to me."
"It shows, you hold onto everything old." Henry Vegas drew on the cigarette and leaned back. "Mine is buried somewhere in a closet. I've made it a practice not to let the past take up much space. You might consider it."
"What does it feel like, turning on an old man who protected you? Who shaped who you are?" Alexander worked his mouth around something he couldn't quite finish saying. "I'm still not sure what I did wrong that earned this."
"Was it that obvious? Why didn't you try to stop it?"
"I'm too old for this kind of thing." Alexander laughed, which became a cough, which resolved back into a laugh. "If you'd simply wanted the role, you could have asked. I would have been off this desk without looking back."
"Why?"
"Because I've done too much from this chair." The smile stayed, but something behind it hadn't. "Enough that the moment I close my eyes, before I've even reached sleep, there are faces. I wanted someone capable of removing me to actually do it. Someone who isn't afraid of people bigger than them."
Vegas let his gaze drop for a moment. "I wanted to stop the war with the western border. I wanted to modernize the force, reduce the number of lives we were spending. I wanted to let people choose whether they served instead of conscripting them into it."
Alexander caught the shift in tense. "Past tense. More than once. What do you mean by 'wanted'?"
"I saw the androids my allies have been using to police Metromania." Vegas snapped his fingers.
Blue eyes lit the office from every dark corner, one pair after another. 02 stepped forward out of the shadows with her pistol leveled at Alexander.
"Good evening, Minister." Her tone was exactly what it always was. "I've heard a great deal about you, and I'll admit something genuinely close to being impressed. How does someone keep an office this clean? My father could stand to study you." She turned her head slightly toward Vegas. "And I never agreed to be a military asset. Keep dreaming about that particular arrangement."
"Worth trying." Vegas smiled, and there was nothing gentle behind it.
Alexander looked around the office, taking inventory, before settling back on 02. The fine-boned frame. The blue hair catching the ambient light. Two blue orbs tracking him with the patience that had been trained to find exactly what it was looking for. The stance of someone who hadn't needed to think about how to stand correctly since the first month of operation.
"That's your black ops?" He almost looked impressed despite himself. "Needs more than military paint, she looks like she stepped out of a cartoon." A pause. "But that stance."
"I know." Vegas handed a stack of papers across the desk. "Ninety-six percent of the serving force's signatures, requesting your removal from post. The remaining four percent disagreed but won't move against the decision. They love this country too much for that."
"Already unwanted, then. I suppose I should have seen it." Alexander picked up a pen and signed the top sheet himself. "I agree with the removal. But watch yourself, Vegas. You'll understand why I kept the war going, you'll know exactly why the moment it becomes your problem instead of mine."
He stood and looked at 02 directly. He reached forward and brushed a hand lightly through her hair. "You'll understand it too." A beat. "You also need to learn to clean up after yourself."
He extended both hands to Vegas. "Take me. Peacefully."
Vegas closed his hands around Alexander's and held them, no cuffs, no performance. "I'm not a monster. I just disagree with your methods." He looked at 02.
02 touched the side of her head. "05. 03. Bring him to the car outside. Confirmed peaceful surrender. The king is down."
"A king." Alexander said it quietly as 03 and 05 materialized from the darkness and took him toward the door. "I was never anything like that. I was a trapped mouse inside a wheel, and when the wheel stops, the house starts burning. I hope you're ready for the fire." They were moving through the doorway now, his voice carrying back into the room. "Always watch your back, Captain."
02 looked at Vegas for a moment. "Don't drag us into your conflict. I'm not your asset. Mikael is your ally." She nodded once, and the remaining E-UNITs cleared the office and the hallway beyond it.
Vegas moved to the minister's chair and sat down. He looked at the surface of the desk. "It really is clean." He found the framed photograph, Alexander and Brightson together, formal setting, formal smiles. "Your past isn't."
Outside, 02 stood by the police car as her comms connected.
"02 on line. Yes, the minister is in custody. Peaceful." A pause. She turned slowly to find 05 and held her gaze. 05 tilted her head at the change in her expression.
02's voice dropped nearly to nothing.
"I'm going to become the police chief."
The rest of the E-UNIT stopped where they were and looked back at her.