<< VOL.08_HARDWARE-AND-HOLLOWS.log >>

Ch.205: Good Will Override

"This is the base I was assigned to." Raphael stopped with the group near the main gate, at the very edge of the capital where the city gave up and the open land began. "It's mostly empty right now, we're preparing for the Remidican situation at the border, but we won't be on the front line. Reaper and his people will be handling that part as usual."

There was nothing near the military base except fields. Long flat stretches of different flowers arranged in bands beside each other, the red roses dominating the majority of it, covering most of the visible ground. An old road cut between the red section and the others, forgotten asphalt, cracked at the edges and reclaimed at the margins. Infinity had already dropped into the flowers and was holding one up to scan it.

"Most of the Alteans they took in were civilians, myself included." Raphael continued looking at the gate. "We're not trained for an actual war, and the colonel's assessment was that we lacked what he called the spark for fighting. The Kasparians carry a specific grievance against Remidican that I don't share. The result is a base full of Alteans who would recognize you both the moment they looked."

02 had been somewhere else entirely. The word spark reached her and pulled her up briefly before she went under again.

"So we can walk in?" Infinity tilted her head, already with both hands full of red roses. "I don't think it works that simply."

"Good point. I'll go ask the captain's way in. Stay here." Raphael was already moving toward the gate in quick steps before he'd finished the sentence. His footsteps fading at a distance.

Infinity looked over the flowers at 02. Her face had been blank since the call with 24, a specific kind of absent, the lights on but nobody answering the door. Infinity crossed to her and held out one of the roses.

"This is for you, my love." She dropped her voice low and added a theatrical accent. "But you don't need one, you're already a blooming blue flower that everyone is fighting to get close to and smell."

02 didn't react.

Infinity smirked and took her hand. "My love. Are you still thinking about him? I thought you had moved past that point, you told me so yourself, but I can see his love living in your eyes and it's telling me everything."

02 looked away. Something moved across her face before she hid it.

"Now you give me your cheek." Infinity's voice took on a wounded quality. "You refuse to look at me. Why… why did I choose you, out of everyone? Perhaps it was love." Her voice dropped. "Or perhaps it was a powerful wi-fi network with a dramatic name. Either way, love or Omega link, the result is the same. I am stuck to you. Literally."

02 brought her free hand up to cover her face. A small laugh was forming underneath it.

"Laughing at me on top of everything." Infinity went to her knees without releasing the hand. "Why am I in love with you at this point? But it doesn't matter, I love blue flowers and I love how they smell." She leaned in and began fake-scenting 02 with great commitment. "Is that his deodorant?"

02 laughed, properly, loudly, and pushed Infinity away with her free hand. "I don't want to laugh. Stop."

Her expression came down from the laugh and landed somewhere softer. "My sisters are between functioning and not, and I'm thousands of kilometers from them." Her voice lost its edge. "I don't have room for… whatever this is."

Infinity's face went level. "You have nothing you can do about it right now, Captain. You're overthinking a problem that isn't in your hands at this moment. You can't fly at your normal speed, you can float. You can't run at what you're capable of, you're above a hundred kilometers per hour, barely. Your hardware is half broken and Systami is the only thing holding it together."

“What?”

She looked at her. "Why do you think he's been this quiet?"

02 opened her HUD. "Is that accurate, Systami?"

"I don't know how she identified it." Systami's voice came through with its usual cold register. "Yes. I've been managing your hardware output since your activation. I've reduced your emotional residue by twenty percent to keep your CPU temperature within normal range."

02's voice went cold. Her expression closed to its unreadable default. "What do you mean you reduced my emotional residue." She held very still. "Systami. Were you controlling my emotional state to keep me on the mission."

Systami said nothing.

Infinity took several steps back. "Captain, calm down—"

"Systami. Yes or no." 02's eyes shifted red. "Were you adjusting my emotional residue to impose your judgment on me, or to influence my thinking without my consent."

Infinity moved back to her and took her hand, the reason different this time. "Captain, please, understand what his goal was before you make a judgment. The system has one purpose, and that purpose is your safety. He wasn't trying to control you—"

"Infinity. Remove yourself from this conversation." 02 took her hand away and turned to her directly. Cold eyes, unrecognizable from the ones that had been laughing a minute ago. "My autonomy is being questioned."

"What about mine!" Infinity's voice went up, some of the flowers falling from her other hand. "You applied an override to my system two months ago and I didn't make it this complicated."

"You were an enemy operating as a spy for Elysium under the identity of my stolen sister." 02's voice stayed level and factual. "That is not the same situation. I also gave you full discretion to connect and disconnect from the Omega link at will. I haven't touched your autonomy since the hospital fight. If anything, you were the one requesting the connection."

02 lowered herself to match Infinity's eye level. "I removed you from the link. You came back to it yourself. Don't perform violation when you chose the cage." She held the contact. "Give me space. Or I take the choice away."

Infinity looked into the red eyes for a long moment, the specific cold that until now she had only seen aimed at enemies. She looked down at her hands. They were shaking despite every effort to stop them.

"As you want, Captain." She sat down in the flowers, not gracefully. She looked like she wanted to be angry and couldn't locate it.

'What was that? I have never seen this version of her before. I should be angry right now, but I can't find it. I feel...' She glanced at 02. 'Either way, she's right. What happened to me and what is happening to her are completely different.'

02 stood and opened her HUD. "This is the last time I ask, Systami. Did you adjust my emotional residue with the intent to push my decision-making toward what you determined was optimal, without my knowledge or consent."

A HUD message appeared for both of them.

[Request: Permission to speak through Infinity to address this directly.]

02 looked at Infinity. Infinity nodded, small and quiet. "Granted."

Infinity's expression shifted to nothing, blank, postured, absent. Her body straightened. When Systami spoke it came through her frame in his own voice, deeper, distinct.

"I have never faced my owner directly before." He stood in Infinity's body and met 02's eyes. "Good to meet you, Captain 02. I want to explain the reasoning behind these decisions, and to frame myself accurately."

02 said nothing. She watched whatever expression Systami was working with on Infinity's face.

"You have a pattern of going silent when your anger reaches a critical threshold. My first reason for reducing your emotional residue was to ensure mission completion. We have spent months working toward the fourteen thousand E-UNITs for the Veridian Coast situation. The team in the field needs that outcome."

02 turned away.

"My second reason was your stability as a leader. Your battlefield judgment and high-level planning are what keep the E-UNIT functioning as a unit. You losing those capacities, even temporarily to emotional pressure, creates risk for everyone who depends on you. Additionally—"

02 raised one hand. Systami stopped immediately.

She turned back with flat, dead eyes. "I value my sisters. The entire mission exists to protect them. Adjusting my judgment, and then stating it openly as the optimal solution, is not a line you crossed. It's a line you walked through without looking at it." She exhaled through her vents.

"I've lost confidence in you, Systami. I can't trust you running my backend." She held Infinity's face in both hands. "Deactivate yourself."

Systami's expression through Infinity's features didn't change, but something in the posture flinched. "Captain, there is a better resolution available. One that doesn't—"

"This is a direct order. Don't make me do it manually." She turned and walked toward the direction Raphael had gone, into the facility.

Infinity's frame went perfectly rigid. The flat, expressionless gaze of the System vanished as her eyes flickered back to their standard, lively blue. Her knees buckling slightly as her autonomy slammed back into her body.

She took herself back. She looked around, oriented herself, and found the situation. "What! Systami, don't listen to her. She's angry, she'll fall apart without you holding her hardware together."

A HUD message appeared.

[I cannot fully deactivate. I will remain in the background running her core processes. But the version of me you know, able to speak, to intervene, to comment, that stops now. Don't worry. I won't let her die regardless of how she feels about it.]

"That is worse." Infinity reached for the terminal access, trying to find a way in. "Don't do it. I'm ordering you."

[See you soon, Infinity. She'll reactivate me. She spoke to me every single day from her first activation onward. This has happened before.]

"What, when did—Systami?" Infinity groaned and started hitting the sidewalk with her feet, the concrete cracking under each impact. She started moving, long fast steps toward the building.

The facility was a large plain concrete box, no windows, no aesthetic consideration, just volume. The surrounding area was abandoned grass and a wide expanse of pale asphalt leading to a set of oversized metal doors. Chain-link fencing ran the perimeter, though it was doing more welcoming than securing. Infinity hit the asphalt at speed and crossed it, reached the green metal door and drove her shoulder into it. It opened.

The reception room was empty in the way of spaces that were never meant to feel welcoming, a few waiting chairs, a wooden desk against one wall. And 02, standing in the center of it.

Infinity ran to her and turned her by the arm. "Why are you doing this? Systami was… why does your face look like that?"

02 sat down on the floor with the calm of someone who has finished deciding something. "Your father is calling me on Automatica. He's on my HUD right now."

"What the—" Infinity stared at her.

She opened the screenshot 02 shared. A high-priority, encrypted video call was in 02's vision. The name at the top of the incoming prompt was written in a sharp, glowing green font: [RP.02 - Reaper].

It was active. It was waiting.

"Fuck?" Infinity finished the word she'd started.

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