E-UNIT: The Blue Angels of Death.

Chapter 115: Mask-off.

V O L U M E F I V E

Chapter 115: Mask-OffThe Highway. 19:45.

‎The sun had finally decided to act like April. The sky ran orange and red at the edges, the light catching the highway ahead in long warm strips, the season showing up late but committing to it. The glow fell across both of them as they walked, 02 moving at a steady pace down the road, Tau sitting on her shoulder whether she'd agreed to it or not.

"Could you please put me down?" Tau asked, keeping her voice civil about it.

"No." 02 kept walking. They had been threading between cities for days now, using the empty stretches of road and open land that separated each one. The security presence had been climbing since yesterday. Sparing the E-PHONEUS units was starting to look like a miscalculation.

"I'm sorry I kept it from you, alright?" Tau looked down at her from the shoulder. "I didn't want to add to what you were already carrying. You're essentially a newborn, a newborn with plasma blades and the ability to tear people apart, but still."

"Banned." 02 said. "From now on, you don't do anything without my clearance. Arguing with me is included."

"Just hear me out—"

02 stepped off the road, set Tau down in the grass, and crouched to her level. "Let me be clear." Her voice was even, which somehow made it more serious. "I may not be the best at expressing how I feel. But the fact that you hid that your energy, the thing keeping you alive, is burning out with every move you make, that hurt. It hurts more than I expected." She paused. "You weren't even going to tell me. Were you."

She reached out and took Tau's right arm. The surface had deteriorated badly, eaten away almost to nothing, internals visible through the casing. "I was the one who noticed. Do you have any idea how terrifying it is to think you might just disappear?" Her voice caught, just slightly, at the edge. "You’re the only one I know. I don't want that."

Tau stared at her for a long moment. "02, do you actually—"

"Yes." She stood up. "And I respect you. For the record, I wasn't off when you accessed my locked memories. I was awake. I heard everything. You are a terrible coder, by the way. You didn't even verify I was shut down before you started."

"Why didn't you say anything? You could have been corrupted—" Tau tried to get up. 02 pressed her back down with one hand on top of her head.

"Because I wanted to see what you'd choose to do." A faint smile crossed her face. "And I don't regret it. Did you wonder why I hugged you?"

Tau's processor skipped a beat. "W-Wait. Where did the soldier go? Why are you being normal right now?"

"Nobody wakes up a soldier, Tau." 02 sat down across from her. "Not even me. I may not have my memories, and I may not know who built me or why, the wall keeps pushing me back anyway. But I know you. That's what I have."

Tau turned away to hide the fact that her face was doing something she didn't have words for. Then something else surfaced. "Hold on, were you performing? The flat responses, the deadpan stare, throwing a human being into the horizon, that was an act?"

02 looked to the side. "…Maybe." The smile came back, close to a laugh this time. "It was a little funny though. And I didn't know how to handle you yet. The soldier thing gave me structure while I figured it out—"

Tau launched herself at her, both hands around her neck. "You absolute empty drive! How can you be that cold and that warm at the same time? Do you enjoy watching me struggle to explain everything to you?"

02 moved her hands off with minimal effort. "For the last time, I don't breathe, Tau. The neck thing does nothing."

Tau stood up and started doing jumping jacks.

02 watched her. "What are you doing?"

"Burning... my energy... faster." Tau's vents started screaming. "I don't want to exist anymore. Living with you is a nightmare."

02's expression went flat. She stood, gathered Tau mid-jump, tucked her under one arm, and resumed walking. "There's a building ahead. Large lit letters. E-Police."

Tau stopped struggling and looked. "Since when do the old guard have their own building? We never had one."

"Old guard?"

"A unit of older models that were protecting the cities before we existed."

02's eyes sharpened. "Mechs are deploying toward the city. Several of them."

"BECAUSE OF YOU." Tau twisted in her grip. "You wanted to look composed so you spared those E-PHONEUS and delivered a speech about mercy. 'Let me show you what mercy looks like', who talks like that? You announced yourself to the entire country. I guarantee Reaper is already warming up."

"He's a robot. He doesn't warm up."

"Do not." Tau freed herself and landed on her feet. "I am developing a physical reaction to the way you speak. It's becoming a health concern."

02 kept walking. "I can't believe you fell for all of it."

Tau caught up. "Because it was my first time blocking someone's memories. I'm not our father, I can't just reach into anyone's head whenever I feel like it. I have a conscience. Unlike him."

"Is he really that bad? Our creator?"

Tau's voice quieted. "I don't know. He might have had reasons for putting walls on all of us. But even with reasons, it sounds like control."

"What about you?" 02's voice dropped into something steady and direct. "Do you have a reason for blocking my memories that doesn't sound like control?"

Tau went silent.

"Your conscience is quiet now," 02 said. "You can't hold our creator responsible for something you also chose to do. That's not a principle, that's a convenience."

"S-Stop analyzing me." Tau covered her face. "Maybe what I did wasn't that bad. No one got hurt."

"Maybe my friends got hurt." 02 said. "My family. You have sisters and a father. I must have had people too. And I vanished from their lives. Weren't they hurt by that?" She looked at Tau. "You also still haven't told me why you built the wall."

Tau exhaled. "Alright... You are not the original host of the crystal that powers you. Someone else was living in it, my sister. You were destroyed and placed into her body against your will. She decided you deserved it more than she did, and she deleted herself so you could stay."

"Was she wonderful? What was her name?"

"Omega." Tau smiled, the kind that came with old weight behind it. "The most innocent person I have ever met. We spent years together after father was imprisoned. I discovered my ability early, while I was still dormant in a testing tube, I copied myself out and left the original in place. She was the first person I found."

"That sounds like a fairy tale."

"It was my fairy tale." Tau's voice softened further. "I still think about the days in the garden. I would multiply copies of myself and send them running through the facility, the E-Medics would lose their minds trying to keep track of us. Omega would watch the chaos and then calmly convince them that their own systems needed updating. Completely straight-faced."

"That sounds wonderful. Keep going."

Tau reached up and tapped the top of 02's arm, repeatedly, lightly. "Stop trying to be my therapist."

"We're robots, we don't—"

"Stop."

They were both laughing by the time the E-Police building came into view.

02 ran a quick scan. "The building is empty. We could use it to rest."

"We're robots, 02. We don't need rest." Tau smirked.

02 set her down and studied her torso, the deterioration had reached further than she'd last checked, the edges of Tau's frame beginning to fade at the core now, not just the arm. She turned toward the last mech disappearing into a helicopter on the far side of the lot. "You are a special case." A pause. "We need to plan the next move."