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 176: Rims in the Grey

The silence was total. No cars, no voices, no children, no one on the benches that lined the pavements. Concrete buildings stood in rows like trees in a jungle that had forgotten what it was for. Fog sat in the streets thick enough to swallow anything more than thirty meters out.

"Reaper got here first." 03 scanned quietly, her voice finding its usual register again after everything that had happened in the field. "But this is a different scale. This city had twenty-five million people."

02 kept her eyes forward. "The fact that we're using past tense now says enough on its own. I ran operations here for years, protecting these streets from the black medics. All of that work, all those people, dispersed across multiple countries."

"Multiple?" Gamma tilted her head.

"Yes." 02 pulled up her screen. "Good, infrastructure's still running—"

02 and 03 looked at each other.

"What!" Gamma's head went back and forth between them.

02 took Infinity and went up in a single jump, landing on the rooftop of the nearest skyscraper. Gamma caught 03 and ran the face of the building vertically until they reached the same level. "What is it? You're frightening me."

Infinity spoke before 02 could. "I understand why my father stays cautious around you." She turned to Gamma. "The city isn't abandoned, it's under Elysium's control. Behemoth's military specifically, for the past three months. That's why the infrastructure is still running properly."

02 looked at her. "You had that information and waited. I gave you freedom of expression, are you choosing not to use it, or do you want it revoked again?"

"No! sorry." Immediately. "I wanted to observe what Chrome had prepared for you. He designed this encounter carefully. And honestly, he frightens me more than Lord Reaper does, in terms of pure calculation."

03 pressed both hands together. "Wonderful. Another unhinged one on the list. And this Behemoth, please tell me he's a reasonable, moderate-sized robot with a calm personality."

Infinity looked at her steadily. "That's the least accurate description of him I can imagine."

03 looked up at the foggy sky. "Thank you, universe. The games are very fun. Please just stop for one second, I am getting tired of the continuous playing."

"Girls." Gamma pointed toward the rooftop entrance.

They turned.

A white figure stood at the threshold. Perfectly simple frame, the face a black void with an orange rim running its perimeter. He stood without moving a millimeter, watching them from across the rooftop.

02 brought Infinity's blade out and spoke through her. "Esoptron. the holder of Tau’s orange crystal." She raised the blade and dragged it slowly through the air at the figure's center, a horizontal pull, cutting through nothing visible.

At the far end of the roof, Esoptron began to vibrate. A blue plasma line appeared across his middle, opening in synchronization with the blade's movement. When the arc finished, the cut was complete. The top section separated, not revealing internals, just orange energy filling the space inside, and both halves dissolved into orange particles.

Infinity's jaw came loose.

03 and Gamma looked at 02. Her gaze hadn't moved from where the figure had been.

"Target down."

03 took a step back. "We understand. You cut him in half from across a rooftop through the air. When did that become something you can do, and why are you accelerating at this rate?"

02's eyes moved left, right, down. "There are many of them." She crossed to the edge and looked into the street below. "There is no way."

The team moved to the edge at once. Infinity pulled at the control. "Can you bring me over to see? I've never seen him mass-produced." 02 moved her to the parapet.

Below, Esoptron copies moved through Frostholm's empty streets in slow, spreading patterns, appearing between buildings, vanishing into fog, reappearing. Orange rims in the grey. Then, without signal or sound, every visible copy turned and faced the rooftop.

03 stepped back. "What is this. Why are there so many of him?"

"Not produced, the crystal is doing it." 02 pulled Infinity back from the edge. "When I cut the copy, there was almost no friction. That happens when the original has extended so far that the peripheral copies are running on almost nothing. And since we're not seeing the original, he is hidden somewhere. This started with the copy Tau left with me."

She took Infinity fully back under control. "Where is the original? And why are the copies moving without apparent direction?"

Infinity straightened. Her voice shifted to something more automated when 02 used her this way, and she knew it, and she hated it. "Esoptron was designed with minimum material requirement to allow high-volume duplication. His current role in this city is likely human detection, his thin frame moves through narrow spaces the mechs can't access, and he reports positions to the surrounding military perimeter. The original is at the hospital holding 24. He's connected to a large server that gives the copies enough compute support to maintain coherence at five thousand instances."

Gamma nodded. "Infinite drones with distributed processing."

02 released Infinity's face. Her expression went flat the moment it was hers again. "02. I would answer your questions without being put into information-retrieval mode. It feels disrespectful."

Gamma laughed. "Where's the fun in that."

"C-C-Captain—" 03's voice was doing something unusual. "The copies, they're coming—"

The group went back to the edge.

The Esoptron copies were moving on the building, not climbing, but massing at its base and flowing up from all sides in synchronized formation, sonic weapons visible. More emerged from neighboring buildings, materializing out of the fog in large groups and converging. They moved like a single thing because they were.

02 turned to Infinity directly. "I'll ask the way you prefer. There has to be a server or signal amplifier in this city helping the original maintain control at this range. Where is it?"

Infinity paused. 'Treason is not permitted in Elysium.' She exhaled through her vents. "The Net-Extra internet company building near the mayor's office, at the center of the city. It was converted into a multi-service server tower after the takeover."

02 drew her blades. "Gamma, secure the roof with 03. The Bulwark Frame absorbs sonic fire, not completely, but enough to hold position. I'll go down and cut their numbers. I'll use Infinity to destroy the server."

"No!" Infinity's protest was immediate. "They'll flag me as a defector."

02 looked at the number on Infinity's hoodie. 24, flickering at the edges. She used the link to change it.

02.

03 stared at it. Something moved behind her eyes. "I missed seeing that number."

Infinity's posture changed without being directed to change. Something in her stance sharpened, the way a person stands differently when they feel like themselves again. She bent her knees, launched off the rooftop, and was gone over the city in a second, 02's control at the front, but something else present too. She stopped fighting the link.

02 nodded to the rest of the cell and stepped off the rooftop edge.

She landed on the street below without a sound, the fog closing around her, eyes finding the mass of Esoptron copies ahead.

"Code Red, initiated."

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