Epilogue: City of Hollows

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

// data corrupted — recompiling //

One week later.

The sun came up over Bijou and committed to it, every corner of the city lit, nothing left in the dark. People were back in their routines. The terrorist attack frequency had dropped to the x-axis on every chart 05 had running, the intelligence network she'd built through Sophos predicting and dismantling each operation before it could materialize. The E-UNIT and the Bulwark-framed units worked the intercepts together, and the system held.

The E-Police was running at Sunday pace. Most of the unit was out on shift, working the streets. Pi had arrived and restructured everything, the old program that had been running for months replaced, more units on foot patrol, the attack rate that had already been low taken the rest of the way to zero.

A small figure moved through the corridor at a purposeful pace, walking beside 12. Pi, grey, compact, the shortest G-Bot by a significant margin, checked offices as she went, confirming that everyone was either at a desk or outside where they were supposed to be.

"I still cannot believe she's in the repair bay treating it as a recovery ward." Pi spoke without inflection and without directing the comment at anyone specifically. "I expressed in a respectful and honest way why 01's leadership role was no longer appropriate. That's all."

12 attempted her contribution for approximately the tenth time. "She loves 02 and her decision—"

"We all love 02 and respect her." Pi stopped and caught 12's face in both hands, redirecting it downward to her own eye level. "Do you love the captain?"

"Y—"

"Then the point is settled." She released 12 and resumed her speed-walking pace. "And to be direct, 01's performance as acting captain was an insult to the confidence 02 placed in her. She was given a responsibility and she didn't meet it."

12 raised a hand. "She did her best—"

"And her best wasn't sufficient." Pi reached Albert's office and opened the door with her foot in a way that communicated more than knocking would have. She entered and looked at the space.

Albert was buried in Eve's frame, the office having long since abandoned any pretense of being an office. The white curtains were streaked with oil. Paper had been repurposed from printing to hand-cleaning. The frame itself lay open across the main workspace like a patient in surgery.

"What a state." Pi looked at it without particular emotion. "You're excused. You're human." She stepped around the frame and picked up the nearest report.

Albert removed his glasses and settled into the hovering chair. The top of Pi's head was barely visible above Eve's frame. "I have a question."

"No, it needs to be finished by end of month." Pi read without looking up. "Why is a robot designed by someone other than father this architecturally complex?"

Albert sighed at length. "That's what I'm fighting against. She was originally designed for basic system installation, connecting to robots and transferring software packages. That's a lightweight job. But to use that ability offensively against an E-UNIT at the level she demonstrated, someone built a great deal of additional infrastructure on top of the original frame. Layer over layer."

12 rested her elbows on top of Pi's head. "So longer than we thought."

"I could build a simplified version from the ground up, but even the design phase alone takes months." Albert let his head fall back against the chair and looked at the ceiling. "I hate where we are. I keep hoping that—"

"Your hopes have been addressed." Pi put the report down and stood on her toes to bring herself level with Albert's face. "02 is sending us an engineer from the original E-Police era. Someone who worked on the units at that time, including rebuilds. He arrives tomorrow at the latest, assuming human inefficiency doesn't complicate the travel."

Albert raised an eyebrow. "Why do you sound like Reaper?"

"I don't. If I did, the E-UNIT here would shoot me on sight." She left without further ceremony. 12, who had been resting her elbows on Pi's head, lost her support and caught the desk with her face.

"Come on, 12. The other human is probably behind on work too."

12 tapped her temple, resetting her HUD. "You mean Dave?"

Albert lowered his voice to a register only 12 could hear. "How are you tolerating her?"

Pi's voice arrived from the corridor without effort. "Because she watched the crime charts and saw the bar refuse to lift from zero. You're welcome, human." Her head appeared in the doorway. "12. We don't have time to spare."

12 waved at Albert on her way out and fell into step beside Pi in the corridor.

"Did you speak with 02?"

"Yes."

"What's the situation?"

"She joined Reaper's side."

12's feet stopped working. She looked at Pi's profile, the same expressionless grey face, unchanged. "You're being serious."

"Am I known for other purposes?" Pi kept walking. "02 aligned with Reaper. She will fight beside him in the Remidican war to protect Kasparia's borders from the advance. A legitimate objective. He provided critical assistance against a threat that nearly ended her."

"Reaper helped 02." 12 found the wall and leaned on it. "And 02 joined him." She looked at Pi. "Say that again slowly."

"Reaper saved 02. Move, we need to check on the human with the connection to 19."

12 turned sharply. "You need to work on how you phrase things."

Pi's eyes went wide, her vision fractured, the next ten seconds bleeding into her mind.

She moved fast, faster than the sentence, and caught 12's face in both hands. "No, why is this happening?" Her voice had shifted, the monotone cracking around the edge of something that might have been alarm. "Are you glitching? What are you feeling?"

"What happened to you?" 12 looked at the hands on her face.

"How did they reach us? Which direction—I need tau on this, is she already running intercepts? No, 08 was on cameras, that's accounted for." Pi's grip tightened slightly. "I'm going to fix this. That's my responsibility. I will save you."

12 hugged her back without fully processing why. "I don't know what's happening to you but I — I—" Her voice cut out. The frame locked into the hugging position as if time had stopped while she was mid-motion. Her eyes cycled, loading, resetting, loading, and stopped partway through. The expression that had been responding to everything Pi said was gone, replaced by nothing.

Boot loop.

Within her arms, Pi felt 12’s entire frame instantly go rigid. The soft hum of her internal cooling fans died, her joint locking with a heavy, metallic click that nearly pinned Pi against her chest. 12’s optics went a dull, vacant blue-white.

Pi removed herself quietly.

She looked at 12's face. The same face that had been reacting to every word a moment ago was now frozen, mid-expression, mid-motion. The same state the veterans were in. She held it for a moment.

Then she ran.

The main lobby, E-UNITs frozen mid-step, locked into whatever posture they'd been in when it reached them. The charging bay, same, every unit on station frozen in contact position. She accelerated into the security room, where 08 sat exactly as she had been minutes earlier, eyes fixed on her screen, not blinking, not registering anything.

Pi moved 08 and her chair aside in one motion and took the controls. She cycled through cameras.

Streets of Bijou, E-UNITs across the city, frozen in position on the pavement, some mid-step, some mid-gesture. Citizens approaching them and waving, trying to prompt a response. Nothing. She watched a Tau copy walking toward the building from the camera feed.

She left the room.

They met in the corridor near Dave's office.

"Pi." Tau's automatic mask came down. "Captain. Report: every E-UNIT in the facility and throughout the city has been forced into the same boot loop state as the veterans."

"The E-Terrorist who did this, was it Eve?"

"Someone new." Tau lowered her head. "HUD screenshot incoming." She sent it. "White frame with a space-pattern section across the midsection, face, and hands. White long hair, white eyes, whiter than the sclera. No footwear. Speed was extraordinary, she accessed the E-UNIT's own telecommunication tower to reach every unit on the network simultaneously. I've passed everything to Sophos for analysis."

Pi nodded. "I knew we'd get a response for shutting down their operations. But why hold this attack until now?"

"Delta stopped E.V.E. mid-reset last time, that probably demonstrated how effective the boot loop state actually was." Tau looked toward Dave's office. "There's a sound coming from there."

Pi opened the door at normal speed this time and entered without announcement. "Dave. Is everything intact?"

Dave was at his desk with his head down in his arms. 19 was leaning against his shoulder in full boot loop, mid-lean, mid-whatever she'd been saying, frozen at the contact point. He raised his head when they came in. His expression covered several things at once.

"She didn't even finish the sentence." He looked at 19's frozen face. "How did they reach her? She has a different architecture from the standard units."

"Bulk network hack through the tower." Pi moved to 19 and examined the state. "Same effects across the board."

Sophos arrived at a run and skidded to a stop in the doorway, his dog frame's claws leaving small marks in the floor. "Emergency update. Full analysis complete on the attacker identified by Tau."

Everyone looked at him.

"The attacker is classified as E-Terrorist level. No official name appears in any accessible record, the data is sealed for security reasons. Elysium's internal designation for her is SourceCode."

He projected a screen, blurred images, nothing usable. "These are the only available visuals. She is known for her speed, which allowed her to reach and install systems in every robot her company produced within short timeframes. Her working relationship with E.V.E. and OverDose comes from the same company: Human Assist Corp. E.V.E. handled installation. SourceCode wrote the systems that E.V.E. installed." He paused. "Threat classification: Double S."

Tau tilted her head. "Not Triple S?"

"Because—" Sophos hesitated. "This information was meant to be held until the captain returned. The situation moved faster than expected." He looked at Pi. "Authorization to continue?"

"Granted." Pi looked at the wall.

Tau glanced at her.

Sophos continued. "When Shelly made contact with the E-Medics' concealed facility, she triggered a dormant security protocol. That protocol released three guardian units designed to protect the G-Bots, the crystals, and the E-Medics themselves." He projected three images. "You've encountered the first."

Tau and Pi both nodded.

"02 living inside the blue crystal created an anomaly in the guardians' threat assessment system. One of them raised the alarm internally and alerted the others before it could be resolved." He let the weight of the next part arrive on its own. "02 and Reaper successfully neutralized the first guardian, Plex, in the field. Two remain undetected and unlocated."

He projected the classification breakdown.

"Plex: S-threat. He was the weakest of the three. Hex: SS-threat. Reflex: Triple S."

The room was quiet for a moment.

Tau looked at her own hands. "Why did father build things like that? Aren't we enough?"

"The relevant problem now is that the remaining two guardians will target 02 directly, Plex's alarm changed their priority." Pi turned to Sophos. "Any files on Hex or Reflex? Any signal of their location?"

"Neither."

"Then I need you to understand something clearly." Pi looked at all of them. "The probability that one or both of them locates Black Voltage and uses them to attack the E-UNIT, to weaken 02 from a distance, is not something we can assume away. Sophos, what's your estimate?"

"Ninety-eight percent."

Pi turned to Dave. "Ignore anything I've told you about pace. Help Albert finish the E.V.E. prototype. We need the E-UNIT operational as fast as physically possible." She held his gaze for a moment. "Take care of them."

Dave looked at Pi's face, small, grey, completely unreadable, for exactly one second. Then he was out the door. His footsteps carried down the hallway of the dead-silent E-Police station and faded.

Pi turned to Tau. "Collect every unit from the streets and bring them to their charging stations. Leave one copy with me."

"Where are we going?"

Pi moved to the window and settled onto the frame, looking down at the hangar.

The space was entirely silent. Dozens of E-UNITs stood frozen in mid-stride across the polished floor, their unblinking, half-lit eyes casting long, cold shadows against the white walls. They looked less like sisters and more like the empty mannequins in a department store.

A city of hollows.

"To the president." She looked at the silence below. "We need more E-UNITs."

---

End of Volume 08: Hardware and Hollows.