V O L U M E F I V E
Chapter 104: New Layer
Court House. 08:10.
Reaper settled into his throne. One eye burned red, the other cast a steady green. He scanned the room, chs moving in formation along the courtroom periter, Shelly standing at his side with her eyes still glowing green from the earlier test, and Infinity kneeling before him, waiting without a word.
The automatic doors opened before he spoke. 11 ca through, two E-PHONEUS flanking her, several screens trailing in her wake. She nodded once to the right without breaking stride. The E-PHONEUS stepped back and dissolved into the shadows.
She reached the throne and knelt as deeply as Infinity, then raised her head, a small, restrained smile crossing her face at the sight of him. "Lord Reaper. Full reports on the internal situation in the Western State are ready."
"Good, 11." He leaned back. "Hold them for a mont. Our newest mber needs her orders first."
11 glanced to her left. A new E-UNIT was kneeling there, unfamiliar, the finish on her armor still sharp. "Did we pull another one from the Hope Bubble?"
"No," Shelly said. "She's a chaleon. She can take on the face of any E-UNIT she wants, at any point." Her eyes went flat. "Any E-UNIT."
11 straightened. "Interesting. That's a significant step up from our original approach. How does she operate?"
Shelly looked away. "You'll wish you hadn't asked."
"What? Why?"
Infinity rose to her feet and turned to face 11. When she spoke, her voice carried no inflection whatsoever, clean, systemized, empty. "Designation: E-UNIT 11. Primary Role: E-PHONEUS Leader. Current ntal Status: Highly Unstable."
11 took a small step back. "What exactly did you build, Lord Reaper?"
Reaper let out a short, dry laugh. "This is Infinity. She can replicate any E-UNIT 05 has had contact with, including you, apparently. Do you want to see it?"
Infinity's expression shifted. The blankness gave way to sothing precise and controlled, posture straightening, eyes sharpening, the easy looseness in her fra replaced with the exact bearing 11 carried into every room she entered. "E-UNIT 11, at your service." The salute was perfect. The number 11 materialized on her hoodie.
11 began circling her. She made a habit of checking her subordinates' form, it was practically routine at this point. But this was different.
"Not even a milliter off." Her steps slow, but she kept circling, no longer inspecting, just looking. "Unbelievable." She stopped again and pulled Infinity into a hug before the thought had fully ford. "I want to keep her." She looked up at Reaper. "Can I? No one has ever been this precise. Not since 02—"
ZZZT.
A violent spike of static ripped through 11’s audio receptors. Her optics flashed blinding white, and she crumpled to the polished floor, her fra twitching as the firewall punished her for brushing against the deleted data. One hand pressed to her head. "What, what was that? It's coming from inside—"
Infinity crouched and extended a hand to help her up. "What just happened? You were about to ntion 02, and then you collapsed. I don't have anything about you like that in your file." She sounded surprisingly normal.
Reaper and 11 both looked at Infinity at the sa mont. "Who's 02?"
Shelly turned her head. "Brother. You genuinely don't rember her?" Her voice dropped slightly. "Why do you think I deleted myself back at tro Robotics?"
Reaper held her gaze. "No recollection. Nothing."
Shelly stood slightly still, just for a mont. Her mind catching up to what that ant.
Infinity's eyes dimd. "I know what this is. I have footage, 05 witnessed Nick do sothing similar to 03. He accessed 03's mories directly and removed the mont the heat-seeking rocket nearly destroyed her. He repaired her afterward, but her ntal state was too fragile at the ti, so he told 02 that budget constraints made fixing her impossible."
She paused. "During that sa period, he was developing a remote access tool, a terminal connected that could reach any creation he'd built if they are close by. The process takes ti to apply cleanly, otherwise the gaps cause the android to glitch. He must have used it across the board. All of you. To protect 02 from being found."
Shelly's voice tightened. "Can it be reversed? What if he blocked more than just her?"
Infinity gave a short nod. "I'll check."
The room went still. Every head turned toward her.
Ten seconds, her eyes shining blue, screens appearing around her, her eyes moving from left to right. Then,
"Found it. I can see that a terminal was used by 05 at so point. The sa terminal should still work, if you enter the correct password, you'd have full access to whatever he put in place. It's almost certainly 02's birthday."
Reaper stood. "Suspend the infiltration mission. This takes priority." He turned to Shelly. "We're going to the Warehouse. We left everything where it was." He looked toward the doors, his voice settling into sothing colder and quieter.
"Even from beyond the grave, you keep playing your little ownership gas."
The Warehouse. 08:40.
Reaper lay back on the dical bed in Shelly's old warehouse. The space had been stripped down since he'd ordered the E-UNIT parts and weapons transferred to the courtroom castle, cleared out for ergencies, leaving the warehouse with almost nothing. A few machines remained, and the wall of large cara screens still ran a live feed across the entire city, every one of them still active. He'd kept those deliberately.
What was left was bare bones, concrete walls, an old tal roof, a handful of LED strips doing their best against the size of the room.
The E-PHONEUS had no shadows to disappear into here, so they stood posted at the heavy tal door instead. A few more had gathered up on the catwalk, talking quietly among themselves. That sa catwalk where Oga's shells had once been stored, lined up and waiting. Shelly noticed it the mont she walked in and hadn't fully shaken the feeling since. Those sa E-PHONEUS were those shells.
She opened the terminal and linked it to Reaper's. Lines of code surged up across every screen in the room, cascading faster than any of them could comfortably follow, filling the displays edge to edge.
Shelly, Infinity, and 11 stood and stared.
Infinity pulled one screen toward her and tried to read as the code stread past. "So this is the True AI your father built." Her voice carried sothing close to genuine reverence. "The complexity is on another level entirely. Every single action has at least a hundred more branching off it. My own build looks primitive by comparison, the difference between a full computer and a microwave."
11 glanced at her. "When you say 'your father'—"
Infinity was speaking as herself now, no imitation layered over it. When she spoke, her voice was smooth, synthetic, and wholly her own. "I'm not Nicolas Rivera's creation. I'm Lord Reaper's. He spent his ti in the new office restructuring the original AI frawork, altering the base code everyone else runs on, reshaping it to be as close to his own as he could get. That's what I'm built from."
She looked toward him. "He is, in every sense that matters, my father."
11 went quiet, eyes dropping to the floor. Shelly pressed her hand flat against the nearest floating screen until it flickered and glitched.
Reaper raised one hand. "I value each of you the sa. You all bring sothing to Elysium that no one else does." His gaze rested on Infinity for a mont. "You may all look alike on the outside. But the differences between each of you are the one thing I still find myself grateful to our father for."
The room settled into a quiet, shared smile.
Then,
Dadam.
The code finished loading. The screens locked into place, ready to be altered. Shelly's hands trembled, just slightly. ‘One wrong command and I loses him entirely. I don't want to be the one holding this.’
"Do it." Reaper's voice was even. "I trust you. And if sothing goes wrong, I already have a backup."
Shelly nodded, exhaled, and began typing. The sa clean interface that had faced Tau in the forest now faced her. A password prompt appeared. She typed 02's birthday without hesitating.
[Password correct. Welco, Nick Rivera.]
Her internal vents wouldn't settle. The button appeared in bold, centered on the screen.
[Build mory Blocker Wall]
She clicked through.
Her expression shifted, confusion first, then sothing heavier. "What is this?"
"What?" 11 moved closer.
"There are two walls. The recent one makes sense, but there's an older one underneath it. It goes back to 2049." Shelly turned to Reaper. "Did he block sothing before that? Do you have anything in your storage from before that date?"
Reaper’s internal diagnostics ran a deep-root sweep, returning a cold, empty void where his origin should be. "Nothing," he said, his voice dropping an octave. "I am missing years of my own existence."
"That idiot!" 11 reached past Shelly and grabbed the screen. "What else is he hiding?"
Shelly took it back. "We're not digging further into my brother's code without knowing what we're touching. We could break sothing."
11 imdiately pulled her hand back and dropped to one knee. "You're right. I'm sorry, Lord Reaper."
Reaper nodded, watching them. ‘It never stops being strange. These sa people can tear through a room full of ard soldiers without flinching, and then treat a simple apology like it might cost them sothing. Either they've seen too much, or they genuinely care. Either way, I'll keep protecting them.’
Shelly turned back to the screen and worked through the commands at speed. "Done. It'll take a few seconds to process. You're going to restart, just stay with us."
Reaper laughed, short and cold. "I'm not going anywhere, Shelly. Not like this."
She gave him a flat look. "You're doing that on purpose, aren't you."
He didn't answer.
His eyes went white, both of them, fully and all at once. His system began updating, pulling at the blocked threads, reconnecting everything that had been sitting severed and isolated for years, finding the shape of what had been missing.
11 sank to the floor and started praying under her breath, hands folded. Infinity fixed her gaze on his face, fingers rolling against each other in a restless loop. Shelly locked onto the loading bar and didn't look away.
The minutes stretched. Longer than expected. Shelly began pacing the length of the room. 11 kept praying. Infinity turned to face the wall, bracing herself against the sound of an error tone that hadn't co yet.
Then,
"System updated successfully."
The voice ca from the screen, clean and automated. Everyone moved at once, closing in around the bed, the E-PHONEUS included, the indifference they usually carried nowhere in sight.
Reaper's eyes shifted back, green and red, the familiar split. He rose from the bed in a single fluid motion and scanned the room. Every android around him had gone completely still, like the room itself had stopped. "I rember." His voice was deliberate, asured, as though he was testing each word before he let it out. "Everything."
The tension broke all at once. Shoulders dropped, expressions softened, the held breath finally released. Shelly stepped forward and placed her hand on his shoulder. "Are you alright?"
"Yes." He stood fully. "Now I can see them clearly."
"Who?" Infinity stepped in.
His eyes bled fully red.
"Our next targets." A pause. "Jason and Albert. The last two pieces left on the board."
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