E-UNIT: The Blue Angels of Death.

V O L U M E . S E V E N - P H A N T O M S . A N D . P R E D A T O R S

Chapter 170: In the Minus (Part 2)

The hum coming off it was not welcoming, a low, constant vibration that sat somewhere between a mechanical idle and a warning. Its segments rotated in different directions at different velocities, the whole body in perpetual motion, except the top section, which had stopped entirely and was pointed at the blue and white android below.

02 stared back at it.

Inside the Omega link, Infinity felt both her own systems and 02's drop nearly to a standstill as the captain concentrated. 02's focus had shifted entirely outward, her eyes free for once to move on their own, Infinity found herself looking up at the captain's face from below.

'That level of concentration. I can only aim at something close to it.'

02 spoke without moving her eyes from the worm. "Gamma, can you lift 03 and run?"

"Negative." Gamma's voice came through the comms. "I wasn't built to carry weight at full speed, I can jump high, but sustained carrying kills my pace. Especially now that 03 is carrying about three of herself in that frame."

"Understood. Take her east, run hard, don't look back. I need to study this thing up close and hold its attention, and we're fortunate it's fixed on me. Go now."

A pause. "Captain—"

"Direct order, Gamma. I'll catch up." A brief warmth entered 02's voice. "Try to hold 03 in place, she'll fight you to come back."

"Roger! Stay safe!"

03's voice broke in immediately. "Wait—"

02 cut the channel.

She glanced right. Gamma was already moving, 03 over her shoulder, the yellow glow shrinking fast across the plateau until it was a faint point in the distance.

02 turned back. "Just us now."

Her HUD screamed the warning before she'd finished the thought. She ran left immediately.

The ground sank behind her, and then rose. A second worm, emerging exactly as the first had. 02 reversed direction, holding Infinity tight, putting distance between herself and Gamma's path. Both worms went underground and tracked her movement. She could feel the earthquakes following in her wake.

She stopped.

At the tip of her foot, millimeters, the teeth appeared in the grass. The earth sank again and the worm rose from the new hole like a spring-loaded trap. 02 went backward as Infinity's weight pulled her off balance, landing hard on her back.

She looked up. The second worm was already descending toward her from a distance, it had gone up, arced, and was coming back down. Fifty-eight meters of mass and flexibility, able to strike anywhere within reach of its tunnels.

02 rolled as it landed where she'd been sitting. She was on her feet and running before the dust cleared, trying to break her movement into something unpredictable. The worms surfaced and dove behind her in wide arcs, hole to hole, always close.

'Why won't you fly?'

"They're tracking energy consumption." 02 kept moving, her voice level between breaths. "If I go airborne they'll follow underground and converge on Gamma or 03 instead. And we're inside enemy territory, if these worms aren't under your father's control, flying could push us into two threats at once."

'You processed all of that this quickly? I could barely register the danger before you moved.'

"Don't be hard on yourself." 02 jumped a fraction of a second before the mouth reached her, landed clean, kept running. "You're inside a link with no proper sensory input. You couldn't run before being shredded regardless due to E-UNIT frame limitation. How are these things this fast?"

'I like when you lose composure. More of that.'

"This isn't for your entertainment." 02 took a short burst upward to clear an attack, a worm came from the opposite angle and clipped her, the force throwing her into the ground. She skidded until her head met something metallic. As she landed, a third mouth was already falling toward her from above.

"There are three of them." She fired her thrusters to break clear, a worm caught her left side mid-flight.

Clack.

Her left leg below the knee came off. She crashed, one thruster useless. She dragged across the grass. She found Infinity and pulled her close.

02 looked at the damage. Sparks from the stump, the leg gone cleanly from the knee down.

'Let me go. I'll be revived. I'm holding you back.'

02 formed a foot of compressed energy and tested her weight on it. It held, for a moment, then shattered into particles. She formed another immediately, the second held fractionally longer before the grass came up fast. "That's going to be a problem."

“You look exactly like my sisters.” She held infinity at close level to her face for a moment. “And I hate seeing my sisters die. And you need to value your life more.” She placed Infinity on her shoulders. Infinity, under the link, gripped her forehead with both hands.

'Your principles are going to get you killed. Literally.'

"Not dead yet." She lowered herself to the ground, pressed both hands flat against it, and closed her eyes. When she opened them, they were fully red. "Four of them now. They rotate courses constantly."

She drew her blades slowly.

"Code Red, initiated."

'The world just slowed. What is this?'

"Borrowing your eyes for a moment." 02 turned Infinity's gaze behind them, then bent forward.

She ran.

One step made sound. The second was completely silent. She followed the vibrations, the pattern she'd already memorized in the seconds she'd spent on the ground.

A worm rose to her left, climbing toward the sky. 02 dropped low and ran up its body, feet finding purchase on the rotating surface, and when she reached the top she planted both blades into the casing and rode it back down, carving as she descended.

She looked toward the other worms. They held back. They wouldn't risk hitting each other.

'I can see what you're thinking. How did you know they were sentient?'

"They have patterns. And they keep changing them, which means they're choosing to change them." 02 freed Infinity's head. "Look at the ground."

Infinity looked down.

The holes left in the plateau were perfectly spaced, dark pits in the grass forming a pattern, not random scatter. Arranged like traps waiting for something to step into the right position.

"They set the pattern up first. Then they wait for you to commit to a location."

"I need to keep you after we recover 24. You're sharper than half the team." 02 reached the end of the worm and finished the cut as it tried to retreat underground.

When it touched the surface,

Crash.

The outer casing cracked and broke apart, segments raining across the grass in heavy metallic pieces.

"They're large, so their tunnels are large. They maintain them carefully to prevent collapse, they're not digging in real time, they're navigating networks they already built."

02 put one blade away and held the other. The remaining three worms began shifting course in the distance, making new lines to remove her ability to predict them.

Infinity watched them move. 'They're slow now. You were right, they behave like metro lines. Fixed routing.'

02's eyes shifted to full blue.

"Guardians of the Abyss, initiated."

Blue energy erupted outward. Infinity snapped her eyes closed on instinct. When she opened them, two enormous silhouettes were assembling on either side of 02, Roman warriors, kneeling, full armor, one holding a spear and one holding an axe. Eight meters tall. The light coming off them pressed against the grass and the sky equally.

02 rose off the ground as the energy built beneath her.

"Wait for one to surface," she said, and her voice carried the weight of something much older than the voice she usually used. "Then hold it."

Both warriors stood.

A worm broke the surface and rose to its full height. One warrior drove the spear through it from side to side, the point emerging with a sound like tearing machinery. The worm screamed, a high motorized pitch that rolled across the plateau, and held in place.

The second warrior moved forward and brought the axe down.

Chop.

Each hit bent the worm further. Parts came away in pieces, the impacts echoing through the ground beneath them. The sound of it continued until the worm stopped resisting.

The top section came down like a felled tree. The impact sent a shockwave through the field, a wave of dust and debris spreading outward across the grass.

The two remaining worms had been watching from a distance. The moment the spear warrior turned its eyeless gaze toward them, they went underground and didn't come back up.

The guardians looked at 02.

She raised her hand. "That's enough."

They knelt. They dissolved into small energy particles.

02 came down hard on both feet, on one real foot and one made of energy, and the energy foot gave on impact. She went down onto the grass and stayed there, looking at the sky.

Beside her, Infinity was looking up too, her head resting where 02 had placed it.

"You are not from this world," Infinity said. No affect in it, just the statement. "I find myself wanting to stay near you. Not for the mission. To see what else you've got hidden in there."

"To report back."

"No." A breath through her vents. "Curiosity. And the particular satisfaction of watching large things get destroyed by something small." She paused. "Your mind is genuinely refreshing."

"It wasn't pleasant from my end. But I know the feeling you're describing." 02's cooling vents ran loud as her heat came down. She shifted to sitting, crossing her legs, adjusting Infinity beside her. "It wasn't as bad as you were expecting. Was it."

“I hate that you're right. And lying is pointless given your particular access to my thoughts. Yes. Taking apart 03's logic in real time is the most fun I've had in weeks.”

"Agreed."

Clang.

They fist bumped.

A pause.

"Did you just use me to fist bump yourself?"