E-UNIT: The Blue Angels of Death. Chapter 134: The Backdoor Secret

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

Chapter 134: The Backdoor Secret

The military base on the eastern border between Kasparia and the Remidican Republic hadn't stopped moving since it went up. E-UNITs worked in rotating shifts, expanding the site, adding air strike infrastructure, anti-missile systems, anything that would reduce how often Shelly had to burn crystal energy every ti the Remidican side decided to fire sothing long-range.

Shelly was in her office. Small, wooden desk against the far wall, white plastic panels on all sides, a full-length window looking down at the base floor where E-UNITs moved in constant rotation. A strip of lighting ran the ceiling's periter like a fra. Boxes were stacked in every corner with no particular system.

She was reviewing HUD footage from the last engagent, captured by the units on the ground.

‘They're trying to pull us north by thinning their southern presence. Obvious bait and switch. The radar data already shows their largest camp sitting exactly where they want us to arrive and absorb the blow.’

She switched feeds.

‘The base E-UNITs won't hold against sonic weaponry, that's the ceiling on what I have here. And now that they know what we are, they'll phase out conventional firearms entirely. It's only a matter of ti.’

She exhaled through her vents and leaned back, looking at the ceiling. "Why did he send back here? Is there genuinely no one else who can hold this front?"

"I'd say no."

Shelly ca out of her chair and landed on the floor. She was back on her feet in the sa motion, scanning the room. "Obsidian?"

He stepped out from the shadow behind a column of stacked boxes. "I ca to say hello."

"You ca to do nothing of the sort." Shelly looked at him. "Since when can you disappear that completely?"

"I feel targeted." He laughed quietly. "You reviewed the technical files for everyone in the Golden Circle. Apparently, you skipped mine."

Shelly's eyes sharpened. "How long were you standing there. Why are you even here."

"I suggested to Lord Reaper that this front might benefit from additional support." Obsidian dragged a large crate to the center of the room and sat on it with the posture of soone attending a formal eting. "And there's sothing I've been working through that I wanted to discuss with the right person."

Shelly's body moved before her mind caught up, chair pulled in, spine straight, hands on the desk. "How much did you hear."

"Sharp as always." He looked at her without expression. "Enough. Shall I call you 00, or would you prefer I didn't?"

Shelly brought her hand down on the desk hard enough to shift it. She turned her chair to face the wall. "I should have expected this. You've always been precise when it counts." A pause. "Why is everything working against lately."

"One thing I'm certain of, you're not performing a persona around us." He spoke carefully. "That was a wise choice. A mask slips when you're tired or hurt. The 'brat sister' is genuinely you, which ans you never have to maintain it." He tilted his head slightly. "What I don't understand is why you're hiding the rest."

Shelly turned back around. A slow smile crossed her face. She reached into a drawer and drew out a folder of files, setting it open on the desk. "You were wrong about one thing. I did look into you." She leaned forward. "Nick drafted upgrade plans for you, armor, a custom weapon system, modular attachnts. Full war machine configuration."

Obsidian didn't move. Didn't look at the files.

"You used your Pri Minister credentials to quietly commission tro Robotics to finish the work." She nudged the papers with one finger. "I saw the docuntation on the table the day they tested the brace on . The feeling that you weren't enough, that pushed you to keep it from Reaper, didn't it."

"Well," he stood. "I ca under-prepared." He considered for a mont. "Then let's do this properly. One question each. Honest answers."

Shelly shrugged. "Fine."

"What happened to you? What made Nicholas Rivera shut you down?"

"Those are two questions." She leaned back. "But I'll answer them both." Her eyes shifted green. "I wrote 02's code. Nick wrote 01's. 01 failed. 02 succeeded, comprehensively, and Nick didn't like how that looked in front of his colleagues. So they designed psychological stress tests specifically to prove that my code had a ceiling. They wanted to break her. Traumatize her past the point where the results held."

She looked at the window. "02 passed everything they built."

"Which pushed them to escalate," Obsidian said.

"Exactly. So I stopped cooperating. I tried to pull 02 out, had a route planned, a schedule. Dave found the instruction in 02's thought chain while he was monitoring her system, running routine maintenance and reported everything." She paused. "Nick shut down remotely and stored as a folder on his desktop."

"What did he na it?"

Shelly smiled, sothing fractured underneath it. "The Annoying Brat." She let it sit. "Because I tried to protect android life. That was the mont I understood what he actually was."

"What happened after?"

"That was your question." Her voice went flat. "You're done."

Obsidian sat back. "Your turn."

"No need." Shelly pulled the screens back toward her and resud reviewing the tactical feeds.

Obsidian tilted his head. "aning?"

"I already know what I'd ask and I already know the answer." She zood in on one feed, and Reaper's image ca up from a recent recording. "You're straightforward, Obsidian. Predictably so. Unlike so." She looked at the image for a mont. "My best creation. Sotis the precision of his reasoning makes feel like the inferior one."

"Should we agree to keep both of our—"

"I assud that went without saying." She didn't look up.

"Fair." He rose. "Following the logic, the standard E-UNITs run on Nick's architecture, which explains the gap between them and 02."

"Correct." A brief glance at him. "He spent his career trying to replicate what I built and never got there. The results are E-UNITs with the emotional depth of teenagers and technical ceilings they don't even know they have. 02 outperforms them across every category and it isn't close." She paused. "When I reviewed 05's code, I found lines that existed for no reason I could identify. Entire sections that seem to have been written during a creative low point."

"Why did—"

"Obsidian." Her eyes moved to him. The smile ca back, warr this ti. "My brother handed an entire eastern front to manage alone, the Remidican Republic is building toward another attack, and I have approximately no patience left in reserve." She turned back to the screens. "Read the room. Let work." A pause. "And stop hiding in my shadow. You're better than that."

Obsidian shook his head and moved to the door.

"What an annoying brat."

She stopped typing, the green light bleeding back into her eyes. Her hand ca down on the desk again.

"I hate that na."