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

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Chapter 173: Kinetic Negotiation

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‎The sun refused to acknowledge that summer should have ended by now. The Veridian Coast sat far enough north that the heat came through as a warmer spring rather than anything oppressive, but it was still there, sitting on metal helmets and white plating as 09 pulled the armored truck to a stop by the central train station.

01 and 08 descended. The ground noticed.

They turned to face one of the few genuinely modern buildings in Bijou's capital. The transport ministry had made a decision early on — a 1900s train station served no one, and the result was the kind of glass-and-steel structure that appeared in every city that had stopped caring about character. Functional. Soulless. Full.

The automatic doors had been locked open. The station had no concept of empty.

01 raised a hand as they pushed through the entrance crowd. The frame made her usual movement impossible, she was used to slipping through spaces. This was not that. The security scanner alarms went off as they passed the arch. Heads turned for approximately two seconds before a guard cut the alarm and exchanged a nod with 01.

The E-UNIT body stood at 1.5 meters, a skinny, almost casual silhouette in white armor with the numbered hoodie visible underneath, cargo pants, the whole design built around movement. Right now the movement was being tested by several hundred commuters who had places to be.

"Is this what hell feels like?" 08 moved someone's elbow from her path. "Why are there more people here than at the airport?"

"Entry price." 01 cleared a path toward the platform. "The government subsidized tickets to near-zero to stop personal modern vehicles clogging the old streets. It worked. It also did this."

"All of it to keep the city looking like a painting from 1920."

"Tourists."

They reached the platform. Ten rail lines, all occupied. Trains loading and unloading simultaneously. The waiting areas had developed an informal class system, a seat was wealth, a clear standing position was comfort, and everything else was negotiation.

01 put her back against the wall. 08 settled beside her.

"Where do we even start?" 08 looked at the mass of people. "I'm developing a new understanding of why our base is empty. I never appreciated it before."

"It wasn't always." 01 scanned without moving. "Before everything changed, our father's office was worse than this. Whatever he was working on, he kept. I remember 04 laid open on his table once because he forgot to finish fixing her."

"03 told me about that." 08 was quiet for a moment. "Sometimes I try to work out how we got from there to here. Searching for bombs in a foreign country wearing suits that weigh more than some vehicles."

"I don't think we need to start in the crowd." 01 pushed off the wall. "I can barely scan anything useful in this density. Quieter areas first, let's find the station manager. They'll know where the gaps are."

"Roger."

The management building sat above everything else at the far end of the complex, a small three-story structure with minimal security, because the manager had chosen to put useful workers in the offices instead. Inside, the chaos was the organized kind, workers shouting into phones, schedules going wrong in real time, someone's train early and someone else's late. The walls had absorbed years of pressure and it showed.

01 and 08 climbed the stairs.

08 said, "I cannot imagine doing this every day. My CPU would fail within a week. Humans are remarkable for entirely inexplicable reasons."

"Their system must have been built by a professional," 01 said.

08's laugh came out mechanical through the helmet. "What would it be called? My suggestion is Flesh OS."

"Mind 1.0. Never updated. Never will be."

"Homo Sapiens Framework. RAM so limited you forget what's already in your hand."

01 was still laughing when they reached the manager's door, and stopped when the shouting came through it clearly.

"What do you mean it's under repair! Hold it together with whatever you have and return it to service, now!" Something hit a desk.

They entered without knocking.

The office was the physical record of a person who had not thrown anything away in years. Cabinets on every wall, all full. Calendar posters of trains covering the surfaces, annotated in red marker to the point of illegibility. Curtains that had given up. A desk buried under consequences.

01 stood by the door, refusing to sit in the chair that might once have been white. "Sir—"

He raised a hand and pressed two fingers into his forehead. "I should have retired last year." He looked up. "How can I help you, officers? You've armored up today."

"Captain 01." She straightened her stance. "We're investigating a possible Black Voltage attack on this facility. I wouldn't ask if you had time…"

He laughed hard enough to lose breath for a moment. "You're the first robot who's ever considered that before speaking to me. Most robots don’t consider human’s state of mind. Yes. Ask before the phone goes again."

"We're looking for a quiet area, something easier to breach unnoticed. Somewhere a device could be placed without drawing attention."

He thought for a moment, eyes moving across the ceiling. "One place comes to mind. There's an underground maintenance network beneath the station, rail upkeep. Access is through the stairs under this building, follow the tunnels to the left until you find the machinery bay. Three robot workers stationed there."

01 saluted. "Thank you. I hope your phone stays quiet today."

He laughed again. "Not possible. Come back when I have a day off. I'd enjoy the conversation."

"I'll note it." She turned. 08 followed.

The tunnels were better lit than expected, projectors mounted at intervals, concrete walls running alongside pipes and cables toward the end of the corridor. The echo of their steps went ahead of them. Water dripped somewhere they couldn't see.

The maintenance room door was grey metal with yellow warning signage, sitting slightly open. 01 pushed through with her Burster up. 08's hands moved to her shield.

"E-Police! Hands up!"

Five robot workers in blue collar uniforms raised their hands. They had been dragging a section of rail across the floor.

One spoke in a flat voice. "What's the issue, officer?"

08's shoulders dropped. "Nothing to flag. Thank father."

"08." 01 kept her weapon up. "Gun. Now."

"Why—" She complied.

"The manager said three workers."

The blue dot in 08's visor went red. "Understood."

One of the five dropped the rail and reached behind him. An M16.

01 fired before he finished the motion. The Burster's shot was a deep, sustained hum, the impact drove the terrorist into the rail control machinery and left him in it.

"Captain—"

"I know." She put the Burster away and pulled the shield. "Careful."

They began circling the remaining four. No visible weapons, and then the rear door came off its hinges.

Five more armed robots entered and opened fire immediately.

01 and 08 pressed together, shields up, rounds coming off the plating in hard angles. 01 stepped behind 08's frame and grabbed the 1.8-meter shield with both hands.

She threw it.

Three managed to move. Two didn't.

Clang.

The shield's weight did the work, both robots pinned flat, not moving.

01 closed the distance on the nearest standing gunman. He had her in his sights. She didn't slow down. An uppercut from the frame connected and sent him straight up, stuck to the ceiling.

08 had the other two. They fired into her shield without stopping, it didn't matter. She walked through it, then accelerated.

One got clear. The second didn't.

Crash.

She drove him into the wall and held the motion through, bringing the shield around in the same arc.

Clang.

The last robot crossed the room at speed and hit the far wall in a shape that no longer looked like a robot. It didn't move.

01 turned back to the blue-collar workers, and one of them was already at the rail control console, working fast.

01 reached him and brought both fists down on the top of his frame. He went flat, crashing him like a can.

She tried to take the control back. The console was locked. Password required. She turned to the three remaining workers.

"Password. Now."

They said nothing.

01 was already moving. "Where is 05 when I need her." She ran for the surface, 08 behind her.

They came up on the platform in a single boosted jump and looked down the line.

A train was approaching at full speed. Driverless.

"08. We stop it. With me."

They landed then jump boosted toward the high-speed train. As they landed on the rail, both of them raised their shields. Both of them planted their feet in the gravel and locked their stance as the train arrived.

Clank.

The impact moved through both of them and into the ground cracking their shields, they screamed under the kinetic load. The train kept pushing, thousands of tons of steel refusing to acknowledge two girls in white armor, dragging them with it, their boots cutting lines through the gravel.

"We've only slowed it."

"I know. Jump boosters, now."

Blue fire erupted behind both suits in two loud, simultaneous blasts that cleared the platform of anyone nearby. The boosters fought the train's momentum directly, speed dropping, the resistance visible in the slowing of the wheels. 01 launched upward, punched through the empty cockpit's glass, and found the brakes.

She pulled them hard.

The train stopped dead.

She exhaled through her vents, sitting in the driver's seat, looking down.

A bomb. Eight seconds.

“No way.”

She took it, went back out through the broken window, and fired the jump thrusters upward with everything they had left.

Four seconds.

'Come on. You just stopped a train.'

She cleared what height she could. She pushed the thrusters until the cooling vents shrieked. At two seconds, she hurled the device. At one, she curled into a ball and rerouted 100% of the Bulwark’s energy to the forward plating.

The bomb went off.

The red mushroom cloud punched upward and outward. The shockwave pressed against every surface in the station, forced silence into the noise, made every eye look up.

08 was still on the platform.

She looked up at the cloud.

Then looked down.

Clang.

01's broken body landed beside her feet. White plating burned black and gone in places, the frame barely recognizable as something that had been a person. One arm was missing below the elbow, and the blue light of her visor flickered like a dying candle.

08 went to her knees.

The shock arrived before the words did.

"Captain?"