E-UNIT: The Blue Angels of Death.

Chapter 114: Rationed Power.

V O L U M E F I V E

Chapter 114: Rationed PowerThrone Room, Court House. Theria. 13:10.

"Lord Reaper." Obsidian bowed as Reaper returned to the throne room. "I have news worth hearing. I think you'll be pleased."

Reaper settled into his throne. Holographic screens materialized the moment his back touched the seat, pulling up live feeds of human leaders across the globe. "This is regarding the UNG."

"Precisely." Obsidian stepped forward. "Twenty countries out of eighty have extended their blessing. They want to open official embassies in Elysium, with at least half the staff being robots. They want to meet you personally, they want to visit. All of it arranged in complete secrecy."

Reaper's eyes brightened slightly. "Withholding the technology export made the entire world desperate over a single processor, and they managed to overlook the fact that we erased twenty million of their kind to get here. Cheap morality." He leaned back. "How are the major powers reacting?"

"The four current superpowers are displeased. They've threatened sanctions against any country that opens relations with us or adopts our currency for trade." Obsidian expanded one of the screens. "Which means our plan is working. If enough countries move to our currency—"

"—the global economy answers to us." Reaper stood and began moving through the throne room, passing the mechs posted at each pillar without a glance. Obsidian fell into step behind him. "The day after tomorrow, Elysium announces itself to the world. Our flag goes up at the UNG headquarters."

They walked out of the courthouse, expanded considerably since the machines had started working on it, tireless and around the clock, and onto the beach. Reaper's steps pressed into the wet sand at the waterline. The sea was calm, the horizon flat and clear.

"The human relocation, how is it progressing?"

Obsidian's tone carried something close to satisfaction. "Better than projected. Twenty percent of the hundred million population moved in a month and a half. The Veridian Coast is absorbing another twenty, and they've provided aircraft to accelerate the pace." A brief pause. "Shelly handled that negotiation herself. She arranged a direct meeting with both the Kasparian and Veridian Coast ministers."

Reaper slowed. He turned to look at Obsidian, not the quick glance of someone processing information, but the full attention of someone who wanted to be sure they'd heard correctly.

"You're serious."

Obsidian allowed himself a short laugh. "I had the same reaction. She arranged the meeting hoping you'd be back from the border in time to join her. You took three days. So she handled it herself. The ministers left satisfied."

Reaper placed both hands on Obsidian's shoulders. The metal creaked under the grip. "What exactly did she promise them."

Obsidian kept his voice even. "Your personal protection in any war brought against them. And that you would fight in at least one of those conflicts yourself."

Reaper's eyes bled red. "They left that room with guaranteed total security of their countries underwritten by us, personally by me, in exchange for relocating humans who are already in our custody, that Kasparia had already agreed to take." His voice climbed, just slightly. "They must have thought they'd won something extraordinary."

Obsidian knelt. "We fell short of your expectations, Lord Reaper. We apologize."

Reaper exhaled. The red faded back to green. "Stand up, Obsidian. You did nothing wrong." He looked toward the palm trees lining the beach. "The little devil, on the other hand."

Obsidian tilted his head toward one of them, where a faint green glow was attempting to stay hidden behind the trunk. "She's not easy to conceal with that crystal on her."

Reaper looked at the glow. It looked back. Then it tried to run.

He caught her with gravity before she made it two steps, pulling her back across the sand, her feet dangling inches above the beach toward him against her best efforts. She fought it the whole way.

"Please." Shelly covered her face with both hands, words coming out in a rush before she'd fully stopped moving. "I won't do it again, I swear. They kept making jokes and I got pulled in. Behemoth agreed to it too, he wanted to watch you fight. The ministers were friendly and they offered some funding, which we do need. I was trying to be useful for once instead of sitting in a test chamber being a lab specimen."

She came to a stop in front of him. She could feel him looking at her through her hands. Reaper reached out and pulled her hands down from her face, holding them there.

"Why." Three letters. Temperature of deep space.

She couldn't look away. Her head wasn't going anywhere. "I... 11 showed me the pictures she took on your fun visit to Frostholm. She was standing on a frozen leaf." Her voice began to shrink. "I wanted to do something. I wanted to be... I wanted to matter—"

She ran out of words. Reaper stayed quiet.

"You want to be useful," he said, after a moment. Careful now.

"Yes," she said. Small.

"Then." He turned to face the sea. "You'll be in the frontline when Kasparia needs protecting. Training starts tomorrow under 11. I'll pull her in from the border specifically for this."

"What? No, please, she is unhinged—"

Reaper glanced at her. One eye, fully red.

"Yes. My brother. The machine king. Lord Reaper." She dropped her head, the green of her eyes and the crystal's glow mixing together in a way that couldn't decide if it was reverence or panic.

Reaper turned to Obsidian. "You're my Prime Minister from this point forward. When I'm away from the throne room, the country answers to you."

Obsidian raised his head. "As you wish, Lord Reaper.

A short beep was heard from obsidian’s system. "There is one urgent matter. The E-PHONEUS unit in Raisin Heights encountered Omega, the G-Bot we believed contained, alongside a small orange unit. Tau. The one we believed was neutralized."

Reaper and Shelly looked at each other at the same moment.

"02." They said it together.

Reaper took Obsidian by the shoulder. "Order Infinity to complete her mission and get out of the Hope Bubble now. Order Behemoth to raise Theria's security to maximum. This cannot wait."

He let go of shelly and set her down on the sand, carefully. "We're accelerating your training. 11 gets a brace too." He looked toward the horizon. "That android is not something we can afford to underestimate."

The Western State. 08:17.

Two days later.

"What do you mean he just walked straight through everything?" General Zeek was at his limit. The office was lit entirely by daylight, they were rationing power wherever they could. The cities were stretched past capacity, and the external dome was pulling hard on whatever reserves remained.

"He walked in and froze everyone in his path." Jason sat in the guest chair across from him, elbows on his knees. "Anything and anyone that came within five hundred meters of him just... stopped. Just paralyzed where they stood."

Beside him sat Colonel Kabaschta, former soldier in the New Mer army, a man who had done time in prison courtesy of 02 herself, and who had since fought both alongside and against robots. Released when the political situation made holding him pointless. He shook his head. "Why would anyone build something like that? What kind of war requires that level of control over a battlefield?"

Zeek let his head fall back against the chair, staring at the ceiling. "Ask the brilliant mind sitting next to you. We have a close personal friend of that unhinged engineer Nick right here in this room." He looked back at Jason. "What was the actual goal? The E-UNITs were already outperforming anything we could field against them. We wanted them in our own military, they were that good. So why does the Reaper exist?"

Jason spread his hands. "I didn't design him and I didn't commission him. That was Tamer's vision, a machine that ends a fight the moment it arrives. I know you don't want to hear this, but the budget had nine zeroes attached to it."

Kabaschta's jaw went slack. "Nine."

Zeek nodded tiredly. "We threw more than that developing the Behemoth back in the day. New Mer never stood a real chance, if we're being honest."

Kabaschta's expression darkened. "Let's not go down that road."

Jason pressed forward. "He breached our shield. That's the point. We need to accelerate the weapons program, we can't let him stroll in whenever he decides to—"

Zeek's hand came down on the desk. "If you're about to ask for more resources, the answer is no. We have a hundred and twenty million people to keep alive, half of them sleeping on pavement. The aid coming from the UNG and the Remidican Republic isn't close to sufficient." His voice dropped. "Don't ask me that again."

Kabaschta looked up. "The Remidican Republic is backing us?"

"For now." Zeek leaned back. "They're playing friendly neighbor to Kasparia while feeding us intelligence. And some of what they've passed along could genuinely shift things."

"Tell me."

Zeek stood, crossed to the wooden windows, and pushed them shut firmly. "This stays in this room."

Both men nodded.

"We have confirmed intelligence that Elysium has guaranteed military protection to Kasparia. Full protection, they'll fight Kasparia's wars, supply logistics, supply resources." Zeek returned to his chair. "I'll be honest. I don't understand the decision."

Kabaschta sat with it for a moment. "Are they genuinely that confident? Protecting a human nation works against everything they've built their image on. Isn't watching us fall apart the ideal outcome for them?"

"That's what I can't work out." Zeek turned to Jason. "But that kind of confidence doesn't come from nowhere. If they have something in development that lets them make promises like that and mean it, this is a calculated move. A smart one." He leaned forward. "Jason. We need options."

Jason pressed two fingers to his forehead, working at it. "We're running tests on multiple prototypes. But we lost our test subjects."

Zeek frowned. "The powered-down E-UNITs, you mean the captured assassin units, what happened to them?"

"He took them." Jason said it quietly, like he was still processing it himself. "He knew their exact location. He walked in, collected them, and left. Didn't freeze a single person on his way out. Just moved through our territory with those E-UNITs floating above him, calm as anything. Not one soldier raised a weapon."

Three knocks at the door cut through the room.

Zeek turned, patience fully depleted. "What is it?"

A soldier stepped in. "Sir. The UNG aircraft is standing by at the main airport. Several presidents are on board. We need to depart."

Zeek swept the papers from his desk into a pile and grabbed his laptop. "My apologies, I lost track of it entirely." He stood. "We'll pick this up after the meeting, pointless as it'll be."

The soldier cleared his throat.

Everyone stopped.

"Sir." His voice had dropped to something careful. "The Reaper is already inside."

Everything in Zeek's hands hit the floor. He lowered himself back into the chair, both hands gripping the desk's edge.

"What."