E-UNIT: The Blue Angels of Death.

Chapter 142: Breaking Expectations, Deactivating People.

V O L U M E . S I X : C O D E_R E S E T

Chapter 142: Breaking Expectations, Deactivating People‎April, 2023.

"Did you call me, Dr. Nick?"

E-UNIT 00 stepped into her father's office carrying three tablets. The room was dark, curtains pulled across the windows, leaving only a thin crack of light falling across Nick's face.

Her body was nothing like the finished E-UNIT frames that would come later: machines poorly concealed beneath white expandable silk, a prototype still finding its shape, the humanoid form present but unconvincing. The same geometric face sensors as the others, but everything else was rough and provisional. Long grey hair, which no one had thought to change.

She stopped. Something in his posture wasn't right.

"Papa?" She stepped closer, voice soft and measured. "Is everything alright? Why are you sitting in the dark?" She woke one of the tablets and started moving through the calendar. "You have the showcase meeting with Mikael soon. Are you going to present 02?" A small laugh. "Or are you going to push 01 again just to prove a point."

Nick exhaled, long, slow, the sound of something being put down. He rested his face in both hands. "How did I manage to build the most intelligent and most genuine android I've ever conceived, and still fail to produce a functional combat police unit."

00 sat on the edge of his desk and faced him. "That's not fair to yourself, Papa. Don't reduce yourself to what they say. I don't consider myself superior to you, you made me. 02 is your work as much as she is mine."

"How you see me doesn't factor in here, 00." His gaze stayed on the red-lit screen in front of him. "I don't mean your opinion doesn't matter. But in this world, the moment someone else can do what you do, just slightly better, you get replaced. That's the mechanism." A dry, hollow laugh. "And it's exactly what we're doing with the police project."

00 looked at the screen. Her expression shifted. She stood up immediately. "What are you doing with my terminal?"

Nick smiled, the fractured version of it. "I'm sorry."

He clicked a button.

00's knees gave. She went down and stayed there, body refusing every command she sent it. Her vents ran hard and loud in the silent room.

"Papa. What are you doing."

"The wrong thing." He got up and moved to one of the shelves. "I should stop listening to them. I should trust the work I've done. Why would I tear down my own creation because of what strangers say? That wouldn't be logical."

"Have you lost your mind?" The fear in her voice was starting to pull at the edges of her composure. "What you're saying is not what you're doing. I coded 02 because you asked me to. I was here with you when everyone else walked away."

"I know!" The word came out louder than he'd intended. He stopped, collected himself. "Stop restating it. I can't stand when you do that, when you're simply right about everything."

He pulled a USB drive from the shelf. "I know it's wrong. But it's necessary. If they get to you before I can stop it, you won't be able to say no to them. They'll use what you are to build things neither of us would choose. Your ability, your nature, they'll point it at whatever target they want."

"What are you talking about?"

He pushed the drive into the port at her head by force and returned to his desk. "You can't see what I see because you've never had to. I was shaped by people like them, I understand what they're looking at when they look at you. A small robot that can code killing machines without needing to be persuaded. Unlike me, you don't have cynicism. You don't have the part that says no automatically." His hands hovered over the keyboard. "I won't watch that happen. Even if it means destroying—"

"Say it." Her voice was very quiet.

"…Even if it means destroying…"

"You know the word. You've never once said it out loud. Say it."

He looked at her. Then, quietly, like something being dragged out of him. "My daughter."

00 held his gaze. "Now I know what kind of person you are. A man so unwilling to let his pride take a scratch from his own supposed daughter that he'd rather eliminate her than deal with it."

"So you're going to keep doing it," he said. "Stating things exactly as they are."

He pressed enter.

Her eyes went dark. Her head came forward in a slow, mechanical arc.

"What an annoying brat."

He removed the drive and transferred the folder to his desktop. Typed the label without hesitating.

[The Annoying Brat.]

July 2051.

Shelly opened her eyes.

The memory had surfaced the moment she'd closed them, unprompted, the way it sometimes did. ‘ I can't blame the system for this one. I pull at those moments deliberately. Some part of me still wants to find the version of events where he changes.’ She exhaled. ‘ Albert warned me he wouldn't.’

She was sitting on her metal desk, late orange light coming through the windows on both sides of the room, the day winding down outside. A digital pen rested against her upper lip, chair leaned back, eyes on the ceiling.

‘Funny thing.’ She turned the pen over. ‘ I sit here wondering who ended up building mass destruction weapons, and the answer is, he couldn't stop himself. G-Bots. E-UNITs. E-Medics. And at the end of it, my brother.’

Her screen lit up.

"At this hour." She glanced at it with the detachment of someone who has been bored for longer than they should admit. Then she fell off the chair.

She was upright before she hit the floor, hair fixed, leather clothes straightened. She pressed the button.

"Brother! Good to see you."

Reaper appeared on the screen, seated in his office. He said nothing.

The image of Nick in his dark office surfaced, uninvited.

Shelly swallowed it down and chose her next words with care. "Brother. Is everything alright?"

"Yes. Sorry." A slight shake of his head. "The E-UNITs. They took 02 and crossed the border into the Veridian Coast. We can't retrieve them, the peace contract with Salaska makes that impossible. And I suspect he anticipated exactly that."

Shelly let out a long breath of relief. "You frightened me. I thought something had happened to you." She waved a hand. "I don't care about the E-UNIT, they can't upgrade or develop independently."

"They have a crystal."

"Except 02, none of them are a real threat." Shelly leaned back. "And this is the first time I've seen this side of you." A genuine smile. "I enjoy watching you try to hide being stressed behind that voice."

"Save the psychological profiling for the enemy." He kept his tone level. "The Remidican Republic is a superpower and they require a strategy, not commentary."

"We've done nothing for two months!" Shelly pushed forward in her chair. "Both sides are waiting for the other to move first. I mapped their trap and I think they've mapped ours, which is why neither side has fired yet." She spread her hands. "Let me end this. Give them oil. We have more than we'll ever need in the desert, and they'll become Elysium's most vocal supporters the moment the first barrel moves."

Reaper laughed, genuinely, for nearly a full minute. “Boredom is the most effective punishment for you.”

"So it is a punishment!"

"Anyone who looked at my decision to send you there and didn't reach that conclusion on their own should have their diagnostic systems reviewed."

"Oh no, I never said it was a punishment, please, please get me out of here and review my system. My processor is going to overheat from sheer inactivity." She attempted something in the direction of an appealing expression.

"You make a fair point on one count," Reaper said, opening a second screen. "Keeping a full army stationed at another country's border indefinitely is an expensive waste of resources. I'll open a line to the Remidican president and look for a mutual solution. Once that moves, you come home."

"Finally." Shelly exhaled. "Oil. Just use the oil."

"I'll need Obsidian for something first, he'll pull back from your position before the resolution, but I'm sending someone to keep you company in the meantime."

"You mean a drone to monitor me." The smile stretched wide. "Say it."

"I want to field-test a prototype from Metro Robotics."

The door in front of her opened. A figure entered and dipped his head toward Shelly, white frame, the frame around the void in his face glowing orange, no crystal present in the chamber.

"This is Esoptron," Reaper said. "A remote copy, to be precise. I want to see how far the orange crystal can push the control range."

Shelly stared at him. "Brother. We are at the Kasparian border. That's three thousand kilometers from the capital."

"I know." He nodded. "Which is why I'm impressed. Metro Robotics continues to operate well beyond what I anticipate from them." A pause. "Treat him well. He's new to the world."

Shelly looked at Esoptron for a moment. "New to the world." She turned back. "Understood."

"I'll see you soon, sister. I look forward to having you back beside the throne."

"Then bring me back—"

"Sadly, the war effort requires your presence."

"There is no war—"

"We cannot abandon an ally we signed a contract to protect."

Shelly closed her eyes briefly. "Fine. I understand. I won't touch foreign policy again."

"Remarkable growth. I may extend your deployment to see where it leads."

"No, no, absolutely not, please. I might start an actual conflict out of sheer boredom."

"Don't do that." He almost smiled despite having no mouth. "See you soon."

"Thank you, brother."

The screen closed. Shelly spun out of her chair and closed in on the new robot immediately, circling him, eyes moving across the frame with the focus of someone who has built things and wants to understand how other people build things.

"Incredible articulation." She leaned in, uncomfortably close. "Is that white alloy?"

"It is," Esoptron replied, in his train-station voice. "Could you please respect a reasonable distance?"

Shelly's expression shifted into something that suggested she was thinking about it.

"Boundaries, you said."

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