E-UNIT: The Blue Angels of Death.

Chapter 103: The Ghost in the Code.

V O L U M E F I V EChapter 103: The Ghost in the CodeGreen Pocket Forest. 11:30."Captain, when do we start the questioning?" 02 asked, dragging the unconscious soldier through the undergrowth by his collar. "He's losing blood at a significant rate. We have roughly thirty-six hours before we lose our hostage entirely."

Tau stopped walking and turned around. "I-I am not your captain! A-And stop dragging that poor man across the dirt!" She pressed both hands over her own face. "W-What have I done. I somehow took an already annoying 02 and turned her into an even more annoying, lifeless, deadpan 02."

02 dropped the soldier, stepped over him, and crouched down to Tau's eye level. "Captain." She held Tau's head gently between both hands.

"W-W-What are you doing?" Tau's eyes shot in every direction except directly at 02.

"We need intelligence," 02 said evenly. "This soldier is a container of useful information waiting to be opened. If we get him to talk, we gain a direct path toward ending the conflict against our kind. But we need to move quickly, he's going cold."

Tau pulled 02's hands off her head and kept walking. "W-Why are you so fixated on collecting information?"

02 grabbed the soldier by the collar again and fell back into step. "Enemy intelligence gives us the clearest route to our objective. It allows us to plan ahead and avoid unnecessary casualties."

"H-How can you say casualties with a straight face after the action sequence you just performed back there?" Tau glanced back at her. "Y-Y-You killed one of them and insulted his soldiering skills while doing it. Aren't you supposed to be emotionless?"

02 slowed slightly, then kept walking. "Am I that cold?"

"YES." Tau stopped and faced her. "You are so cold that penguins wear jackets around you. You killed two men and dragged a third one along to bleed out beside us." She resumed the walk.

02 went quiet.

Tau looked back at her. 02's expression had shifted, just slightly, just enough. ‘She's trying to hide it. I built a cold-blooded killer with the emotional range of a twelve-year-old.’ Tau folded her arms and exhaled. "I didn't mean it like that, alright?"

02 lifted her head. "What did you mean, ma'am?"

"I mean—" Tau dropped her voice to a mutter. "I am going to regret this." Then louder: "You are cold, yes. But back there, it actually helped. Those soldiers had their weapons charged and pointed at us. They weren't going to stand down." She turned around to face 02 fully saluting. "Thank you for your service."

02 let go of the soldier. She stood completely still, watching Tau for a moment, then snapped a sharp salute, her voice cracking just slightly at the edges. "Thank you, Captain Tau!"

Tau turned back around and kept walking. "Right. As your reward, we'll question the hostage at our next stop. But we need to use the daylight while we have it, the forest at night is worse than usual. Apparently the soldiers out here move like shadows."

"Understood, Sergeant!" 02 replied, hoisting the man back up by his collar and following with noticeably more energy than before. "I have several interrogation methods I'd like to test. At least three. Each one should bring us closer to our objective."

Tau shook her head. "F-First, wasn't I just a captain? Second, please keep your methods within human limits, I've seen enough blood today. T-Third, you don't even know what our objective is."

02's expression drifted inward for a moment, scanning. "...That's accurate."

Tau sighed. "P-Pull yourself together. You're a soldier, supposedly. Our goal is reaching Theria, locating the G-Bots lab, and then retrieving the crystals, wherever they've ended up."

"Crystals. G-Bots." 02 processed this. "What about the war between humans and robots?"

Tau let out a short, hollow laugh. "Both sides are our enemies right now. We are completely on our own."

"Then why are we bringing the soldier with us?"

Tau threw her hands up. "Ask yourself that!"

"But you said we would question him, General Tau."

"B-B-Because you looked at me with the saddest eyes I have ever seen on a machine! And why do you keep changing my rank every few sentences?"

02 reached back and drew one blade. "Then I'll eliminate him. He's seen our route."

"Wait, he hasn't done anything!" Tau grabbed the flat of the blade before it could move toward the soldier's neck. "We'll find another solution."

02 tilted her head slightly and smiled. She crouched beside the unconscious man. "I've got this, Captain."

"Oh no. What are you planning?"

02 wrapped both arms around the soldier, pulled back, and launched him in a long, sweeping arc back in the direction they'd come from, roughly toward where the spies had originally been.

Tau sat down in the grass and watched the man shrink to a small dot against the treeline, then disappear entirely.

A long silence passed.

“Let’s stop for a moment.”

"I thought moving during daylight was important?" 02 tilted her head.

Tau lay back flat against the ground. "Where's the terminal again?"

The Hope Bubble. 14:23.

Dave was sitting with his back against the wall of the giant storage room beneath the Hope Bubble, the same room where ten thousand E-UNITs had been standing motionless for longer than anyone liked to think about. Each unit had a small square lamp mounted above it, almost all of them glowing white, with only a handful lit red.

His beard had come in over the last few days. He'd more or less stopped taking care of himself, too deep in the problem Nick had left him with to notice. Password after password. Hack attempt after hack attempt. Nothing.

05 arrived with 04 and 19, each carrying boxes of equipment. The room was large enough and quiet enough that their footsteps rang off the walls and refused to fade. 05 sat down across from Dave while 04 started unpacking and setting up the devices.

19 settled beside Dave and watched him work, she couldn't code, had nothing else to contribute, and had apparently decided that was fine.

05 straightened her posture. Three screens fanned out around her, her fingers moving across them at speed as she worked on cracking Nick's security layer. "Dave, any luck with the password? You spent years working alongside our father. Is there anything specific about him we could use?"

Dave let his head fall back against the wall. "Not one successful attempt. I know the type of password he'd choose, I just can't remember his favorite E-UNIT's birthday."

The room went still. Every head turned toward him.

"Favorite?" they said, in unison.

"Yeah." Dave kept typing. "02 was his phone wallpaper. He had a habit of forgetting things, so he put her there to remind himself of his own password. Used it for everything, knowing him. That near-amnesia of his is responsible for half of what you're dealing with out there."

05 didn't look up. "You and your imaginary E-UNIT."

04 walked over to Dave and studied him with calm, steady concern. "Dave, you have our full permission to rest. You sound exhausted. And with the amount of time you've been at this, maybe—" She reached out and held a bit of his beard between her fingers. "—you're just seeing things that aren't there. I know how demanding 05 can be with humans."

05 rolled her eyes. "04, come on."

Dave moved 04's hand away, gently but firmly, and kept typing. "Human memory has one advantage and one flaw, it holds onto anything that repeated itself long enough. I am not going to forget a captain I repaired for years just because you can't find her in your files." He glanced at 04. "And I don't need anyone's permission to rest. I work how I want now." A pause. "Besides, I think I know why Nick removed her from your memories."

19 tilted her head. "Why? I don't have a single image of her in my storage."

Dave stopped typing. He put his arm around 19's shoulders. "Because Nick knew exactly how much you all cared about her. You respected her more than you ever respected him, and he knew that the moment you got out of this bubble, you'd go looking for her, regardless of the risk." He softened slightly. "He didn't erase her. He built a wall over the access point. Temporary, I think, just until he sorted things out on his end." He turned toward 19. "Nick was a bad decision-maker. I talked him out of installing a laser launcher in your palm more than once."

A sharp sound came from around the corner. "What?!"

05 glanced sideways. "07, you're aware we have motion sensors, right?"

07 stepped out from behind the corner, head down, and dropped onto the floor on the other side of Dave. "Why did you stop him. That would've been incredible."

Dave smiled at her. "You would have shot every dog that barked at you within the first week. I know you, 07."

She folded her arms. "You really can read SSDs too."

05 resumed typing. "Alright, if we want to verify any of this, we should look for gaps in our own storage. Pick a specific scene, somewhere her involvement would be too central to cut cleanly, and see what we can and can't access. That way we'll know if you've lost your mind or not."

Dave's expression shifted into something quiet and knowing. "I'm sorry in advance."

04 stepped back. "Why are you apologizing before anything's happened?"

Dave gathered his equipment carefully and set it to one side. The apologetic look had already stretched into something else, a slow, deliberate smirk that didn't quite fit the room. He stood up and started moving around the group in a slow circuit. The atmosphere shifted. Their processors registered it before any of them consciously did.

"05. 04." He stopped behind them. "The factory raid on Metro Robotics. Your first operation there. 03 took a direct hit from a heat-seeking rocket, it broke her completely."

"Right…" 05 let her screens dissolve.

Dave crouched behind them. "Why?"

04's hand went up immediately. "Oh, because she was trying to save—"

ZZZT.

A sharp electrical pulse hit her from the inside. Her hands flew to her head, eyes wide. "What was that?"

Dave stood and resumed his circuit. "That's the wall, pushing back. 05, who pulled 03 through the city to get her repaired?"

05 smiled, already confident. "Easy. It was—"

ZZZT.

"Ow!" She pressed a hand to the side of her head. "What kind of wall shocks people for getting close to it?"

"One that takes its job seriously." Dave clasped his hands behind his back. "Who dismantled a hundred black medics in thirteen minutes?"

ZZZT.

04, 05, and 07 all dropped at the same moment, reeling. 07 pushed herself back up and turned on Dave, one finger pointed at him. "Stop! That hurts, next time I'll—"

Dave stepped past her. "Who gave the order to hit four Metro Robotics sites simultaneously?"

ZZZT.

07 hit the floor again, curling slightly. "Please, just stop!"

05 gripped the floor, her optics flickering as the gap in her logic widened into a crater. "There's a hole," she whispered, her voice tight. "A massive, structural hole right in the center of our operational history."

Dave turned around. 19 was frozen against the wall, both hands clamped over her head, eyes wide. "Please don't. Please."

Dave sat down beside her, perfectly calm. "Then carry my equipment back to my room. Do that, and I won't say another event."

19 was on her feet before he finished the sentence, arms full of his PC and devices, already halfway to the door.

Dave looked at 04. Tears were running down her face, quiet and steady. "Take the week off," she managed. "And I promise, I won't say you were hallucinating again."

Dave walked over, bent down to her height, and tapped her head twice. "That's exactly why I don't take orders from you, 04." He straightened up and looked at 05. "Don't worry. I won't use this against you again."

"Probably."

05 turned her head away, jaw tight. "He gets on my nerves every single day."