9.17 – Buried Father, Buried Truth

The same night settled over the other side of the capital, where the Hope Bubble sat above the sea, an island, soon to be connected to the mainland by a bridge already taking shape beneath the construction crews—a poor attempt to negotiate with geography after the sea had already settled the matter.

The robotic workforce was building faster than any human crew ever could, the white wave-form bridge nearly finished, attention now fully shifted to the Hope Bubble structure itself.

Reaper had ordered the facility upgraded beyond its old life hiding under an abandoned factory shell, the same shell 02 and 11 had partially destroyed in a fight months earlier. What stood there now was a half-dome of glass, set into a white base that softened its outline against the water. Reaper himself had spent time here with Nick, and with Omega.

02 walked the renovated halls with Omega, E-Medic M03, and Infinity, surrounded by construction robots and cranes working at speed. Orders from the king didn't get deprioritized. High-resolution oval screens were being mounted into the ceiling overhead, transparent from outside, fully immersive from within.

"I still remember the E-Medics I used to joke with, sitting right here, arguing over whether I needed an update or not." Omega laughed quietly. "Tau and I spent more years in this building than most of you have been alive."

Infinity raised an eyebrow. "Being older doesn't make you better at anything. It just puts you closer to your expiration date than the rest of us. Honestly, listening to you talk makes me feel younger by comparison." She stretched theatrically. "Being young is fantastic."

Clank.

Omega tapped her lightly on the head, the cyan visor catching the light. "I'm not that old. A few decades, total. And the year I spent dormant as a crystal felt more eventful, somehow, than everything before it combined. When I talk to you, or 02, or Reaper, every sentence carries actual weight now."

She looked down at her own frame, the proxy body, repurposed now into something fully autonomous. "And I've only recently been upgraded into this. It's a considerable improvement over being a literal walking statue. Though I can't shake the feeling that this frame runs a bit heavier than—" Her eyes went to 02's new body. "—hers. Or the old one."

"I erased the old one from existence. No need to communicate that through implication." 02 entered one of the main buildings, the others following. "I want to test your new crystal's properties too, once we're settled, Albert tried replicating father's crystal process and couldn't get it to work."

"Meaning no one managed a few straightforward steps?" M03 tilted her head, then pointed at herself with full confidence. "I can produce crystals indefinitely. I run on one myself, and I personally built Alpha and Delta by hand, I assisted father directly on the G-Bot program. He left some documentation, though I'd bet half of it was deliberately deleted afterward. I didn't—"

Everyone stopped at once.

M03's hand closed around 02's arm, the confidence draining out of her voice in the same second the words finished leaving it. "Why the sudden—"

Every head had turned toward her, 02, Infinity, Omega, all at once.

"Oh. Everyone here is building superpowered weapons." She didn't let go of 02's arm. "Sorry, Omega. We've known each other for years, but I cannot look at you anymore without seeing something off underneath it. You crossed over to the other side."

Omega's expression went still and flat. "Brother's path is the correct one. I don't understand why no one looks past the negative framing. We were just in Theria, every robot there is happy."

They resumed walking. 02 glanced back at her. "And the people who used to live there? Didn't they deserve a measure of happiness too?"

"You don't have standing to make that argument." Omega's tone shifted, her head dropping slightly. "You've killed millions in a single sitting yourself. Brother had an actual objective behind his."

"I killed the ones who raised weapons at me. Military personnel, and male civilians who'd been conscripted and trained to fight." 02 didn't turn around. "Your beloved king killed civilians who lived in the same apartments that are now filled with all those 'happy' robots you're so taken with."

Omega rolled her eyes and went quiet.

Infinity registered all of it with a small private smile. 'You ran Omega's systems before 02 took the frame over. Honestly, which one was the better host for you?'

Systami: 02, without question. Omega never used the frame anywhere close to its full capacity, and I enjoyed running more of the available functions. 02 also has direction. Omega mostly existed alongside Dr. Nicholas, trying to present well in front of him, trying to outperform 02 without a clear reason for it.

'I'd agree with that read. Even now I'm not entirely sure what Omega's actual purpose is. I should ask 02 about it directly.'

Systami: You've connected to 02 on enough levels now that you're starting to think in her patterns. I don't love that development.

'Wonder why.'

02 reached the management room, robots actively installing prefabricated wall panels and finishing the office layout around them. Hovering chairs, a few energy drinks left out. She'd worked here before, it was the only space in the building with functional workstations so far.

02 sat first and gestured for the rest to take seats. M03 crossed to her without asking and settled into her lap, tapping twice against her side, low, where Omega wouldn't easily see the motion.

2 didn't ask what it meant. She'd known M03 long enough to recognize a request wearing the shape of something casual. Her arm came around M03's shoulders and stayed there, easy to anyone watching, immovable to anyone who tried.

"Infinity, stay out of this part. This is a history lesson between me and Omega. I have a specific set of questions and I need direct answers." 02 kept her eyes on Omega the entire time. "And I brought M03 to fact-check what comes out. I inherited some of Omega's memory when I took the frame, but not all of it."

Omega smiled. "If you don't trust me, perhaps I should leave."

"If you're not hiding anything, M03 sitting in as judge shouldn't bother you at all." 02 smiled back, running a hand through M03's pink hair. "And I want to trust you. This is the test for that."

"Why test it at all?" Omega tilted her head.

02 mirrored the gesture. "You chose Reaper's side. And given that you and I were once the same person, I know exactly what your lies sound like."

Omega let the smile drop. "Fine. Ask."

"You absolute empty thread, what a disaster of a wall placement—" A worker's voice rose in the background, aimed at a colleague. "I told you that section is structural grey, not for the offices." A muttered reply, and both of them snapped back into a convincing impression of focused labor.

02 pulled up her HUD notes. "Why did you stop Shelly from running away, beyond simple loyalty to father? You still resent her over it, from what I can read. Was there more to it?"

"How is that relevant to anything."

"This is the test. M03 confirmed that already."

Omega worked to keep her composure, though her face had gone colder than she likely intended. "When we decided to send Reaper out into the world despite the risk, Shelly opposed it, she believed he wasn't equipped to function outside a controlled environment the way the E-UNIT had spent a year inside a simulation first. So she tried repeatedly to slip out of the Hope Bubble and reach him on her own, to free him the same way she eventually tried with you. I stopped her every time."

Infinity's eyes sharpened. "Human's loyal servant."

"Says the Omega link's property," Omega replied, smiling brightly through it.

"Correct. Thank you for the honesty." 02 checked her HUD again, then returned her attention to Omega. "Father claimed the E-UNIT were deactivated because the military tortured him into it over three days. How much of that is fabricated?"

Every set of eyes in the room turned toward Omega. Even the workers in the background slowed down.

Omega kept the smile, eyes calculating behind it. "How do you already know to ask this… I don't follow."

She shook her head and answered, gentle and even. "All of it was fabricated. He deactivated you to reduce maintenance overhead. The military believed the E-UNIT had been destroyed until he told them otherwise, and then offered to keep all of you offline in exchange for staying on and continuing his work in the lab. He was never held prisoner."

M03 felt 02's grip tighten around her shoulders.

02 nodded once and went back to her HUD. "Every E-UNIT runs at the same functional tier I do. But none of them carry the classification of Free AI, no wall against being reached, no protection from a system delete. I don't have that gap. Father let the whole team believe otherwise. Including Dave and Albert. Why?"

Omega looked away. "I can't believe this. Where did you even—"

"Answer."

Omega exhaled, nothing to actually expel through it, just the gesture, and looked back at 02, the smile returning. "Because an army you can reason with is safer than one you can't reach at all. Your tier, Reaper's, Shelly's, that gets built once and sealed shut. No way back in if it turns on you. He wasn't willing to make that decision at scale, not for a standing army. So the E-UNIT sit right at the ceiling of what they can do, and stop one step short of what protects it." A pause. "It let him sleep.”

Infinity glanced slowly toward 02. 'How is she holding up under this?'

Systami: She requested reduced emotional residue ahead of this conversation. As preparation.

'And once it wears off?'

Systami: She'll have processed the truth by then. Don't underestimate her capacity for that.

02 produced a very small smile. "That clarifies a great deal." She paused. "Last question, I already have a working theory on the rest. Who are Reflex, Hex, and Plex?"

"This one's straightforward." Omega kept the same cheerful register. "Plex was the guardian assigned to father's original lab, built to be my counter, or yours, in case either of us went outside acceptable parameters. A failsafe. Hex was assigned to the old E-Police facility at the capital's edge, calm, protective by nature, meant to safeguard the E-UNIT and E-Medics stationed there."

She lowered her head slightly. "Reflex… I really don't know much. Only that he was the Hope Bubble's guardian, and that he became too unstable, too possessive of father, to the point father deactivated him directly. The other two deferred to Reflex for reasons I never understood."

02 stood, holding M03 against her. "Thank you for cooperating. I'll have more once I connect the rest of this, something is starting to line up."

Infinity stood as well. "It is. Why did father never deploy any of the guardians while he was alive? And what's their objective now, operating without his instructions?"

"I'm not lying to either of you." Omega rested an arm across the top of Infinity's head, she stood close to two meters, taller than everyone else in the room.

Infinity shook her head free of the arm. "I believe you're not lying. I think father might have lied to you too."

"He would never."

02 looked around the room once, then snapped her fingers.

11 and the full E-PHONEUS unit materialized out of the shadows and lined up in front of her, 11 at the front of the formation, every face concealed behind a mask and hood, a living wall of shadow.

“Eavesdroppers.” 02 laughed quietly. "I nearly didn't catch you. You're improving at this." She tapped her own temple. "But I have someone who senses you regardless of whether I do."

Systami: Just don't deactivate me again for this.

[Welcome, E-UNIT 11, P100, P102, P103, P104, P105…]

Infinity laughed out loud, looking at 02. "This is going to take a while."

02 smiled and lowered herself to her level. "The funny part is—"

A call came through. 05.

02 opened it carefully. "05? You're fixed already from the boot loop? How—" She went quiet, listening. Her expression changed mid-sentence, dropping into something cold and unreadable.

"Wait. Slow down." A pause, longer this time. "How did that happen."

Infinity's head turned toward her, the laugh from a moment ago not fully gone from her face yet.

"What?" 02's voice climbed, just once, just enough that everyone in the room felt it. "Every E-UNIT is boot looped now, Since when?"

M03 sat up straight against her. "That shouldn't be possible. Failures like that don't synchronize. Something would have to hit all of them at once."

02 held up a hand without looking at her, still listening. "How many." She sat listening. Whatever answer came back, shook her voice at the upcoming words. "All of them."

"All—" Infinity's vents caught. "She means all of them? The entire team?"

02's voice had gone flat, the kind of flat that takes effort to hold. "I see. I'll be there by—"

Boom.

The entire facility shuddered violently, the massive glass plates of the new half-dome groaning under the pressure wave. Out on the dark, restless sea, the horizon erupted into a towering column of red-green fire, the water reflecting the explosion's light until the entire glass ceiling shined in a luminous glow. Workers around them grabbed for anything solid and held on through the aftershock.

02 and the group ran for the main garden, the see-through ceiling overhead, and through it, fire visible across the shoreline, exactly where the anniversary celebrations had been happening all night.

02 stood, M03 still held against her, and didn't put her down. Her eyes moved to Omega, slow, and held there a beat longer than the room needed. Omega met it without flinching. Something in her settled lower anyway.

She pressed two fingers against the bridge of her nose, processing fast. "We can't leave civilians out there in that state." She glanced down at M03. "And you're not staying in this building tonight. Not after what just came out of your mouth, and not with her still in it."

She tapped the side of her head. "05, I'll call you back. Emergency in progress. I'll be there as soon as I can, apparently nothing holds together when I'm not physically present."

She snapped her fingers. The E-PHONEUS unit broke from formation instantly, freed from the link. "Get to as many civilians as possible, that's the priority. If you catch the attackers along the way, fine, but don't let that become the focus."

They nodded, taking the order without question, and dissolved back into the shadows.

02 turned to 11. "Run a fast perimeter of the city. Find whoever did this. You won't have trouble handling robot opposition, I know your range."

11 smiled under the mask and broke for the exit at a run.

02 turned to Infinity. "We run a full scan of the blast site. I'll handle evidence collection, you talk to civilians, find out exactly what detonated. I already have a strong guess whose signature this is."

Infinity saluted. "Roger!" 'So this is what it feels like to actually be an E-UNIT. I just let her do all the thinking for me.' She ran for the northern exit, toward the smoke. 02 followed close behind, M03's hand still locked around her wrist.

Omega remained behind, watching everyone scatter. She lowered herself to the floor and sat cross-legged, looking up through the glass at the dark sky above, the artificial stars set into the ceiling catching the light strangely against the real smoke rising in the distance.

'Why did 11 simply accept her orders without question? Am I really that different from the rest of them—or has 11 just spent too long under her to know any other way to respond?'

-----

M03

AN E-MEDIC