E-UNIT: The Blue Angels of Death.

Chapter 122: Temporary Devotion.

V O L U M E F I V E

Chapter 122: Temporary Devotion‎The tunnels under Theria had never been this quiet. The sewage system usually carried the constant sound of moving water, distant machinery, workers somewhere along the line fixing something. Now it was just dark and still and closed, unsettling in the particular way that empty places with histories tend to be. These were the same tunnels where 11 had left 17 behind.

01 and 12 had been navigating them for two days. 03 had refused to let them fly through the system despite 01's sensors being perfectly suited for it, no more accidents, no exceptions. This deep underground, communications had dropped out entirely. They moved by flashlight and memory.

"You really do commit to this," 12 said, sweeping the light left and right across the curved walls. "I thought it was harmless at first, a bit dramatic, but harmless. But accusing the captain of being a fake isn't an eccentric opinion anymore. That's something else. You'll turn the whole team against you if you keep pulling at the one person everyone holds onto."

01 didn't look at her. "I don't care what the others think—"

"Obviously." Quick, quiet.

"—and I never have. I trust my own instinct over any report any of you could give me. I watched the captain constantly—"

"Concerning."

"—and followed her movements. I have photographs of her expressions and posture across different times of day, catalogued over—"

"Obsessive."

"—an entire year. And it wasn't without reason. Giving thanks to the Omega soul for bringing us the captain, for handing—"

"Lost cause."

"—us the most complete E-UNIT we have ever had. The one who led us right, who guided the younger ones, who sacrificed herself for—"

"You're borrowing from a religion at this point."

01 stopped walking. "Could you stop interrupting me for one minute?"

"Why would I?" 12 didn't slow down. "Do you hear what you're saying? What did worshipping 02 actually solve? Did it reduce our suffering by one degree? Did it save her from being torn apart in that chamber while her closest sister stood on the other side of the glass and watched?"

01's voice came down. "But it—"

"It did nothing." 12 said it plainly, not cruelly. "It will continue to do nothing. It's a drain on whatever free time you have, and from where I'm standing it's become something that isn't healthy for you or for the captain herself. Reducing her to a single image that can be replicated and replaced, that's not devotion. That's something else."

"I didn't mean it to be—"

"Your actions say otherwise." 12 kept moving. 01 fell back into step behind her, head down. "The captain let it go because it seemed harmless. That doesn't mean you should push her patience past its limit. Nobody enjoys being watched. Not even her."

01 walked in silence, running 12's words on a quiet loop.

"I'm not trying to hurt you," 12 said after a moment. "Do whatever you want with your devotion. But don't pull others into the dark with you. If you've chosen to sit in an empty hole, don't tell everyone it's comfortable just so you don't have to sit there alone."

"I understand!" 01's voice cracked off the tunnel walls, the echo swallowing itself in the dark. "Stop telling me things I already know. Stop stating the obvious."

12 slowed. "The… obvious?"

"You think I don't know how hollow it is?" 01's voice broke open, not loudly, but completely. "Believing in some imaginary soul inside a body we're mass-producing by the thousands below our own feet? I know what it looks like. I know what the others' faces say when they see me. I know 09 was just playing along." She stopped. "But it's the only thing that's kept me functional."

12 went still. "What do you mean?"

"You have no idea what the original five of us saw." 01's voice hardened, word by word, like something tightening under pressure. "I watched 03 get destroyed in front of me. White metal going black, dented and lifeless. I watched the captain die twice, one time worse than the other. I stood in front of soldiers begging for mercy, and that's why I asked for a longer blade, because I couldn't stand watching them suffer through a short one."

She stopped walking and faced 12 in the dark. "You saw nothing. You lived through nothing. They kept you in a clean station in a city we had already stabilized, handling minor offenses, while they sent us into actual war. You don't have the standing to judge me."

12 stared at her. In two years of living alongside 01, she had never seen her come apart like this. "Where is all of this coming from? We've known each other long enough that—"

"No." 01 turned and kept walking. "You haven't." A pause. "And now I have to hide her too."

12 caught up. "What? Who?"

"Forget it."

"I'm asking. You said 'her.' Who else are you hiding?"

"I thought we were respecting boundaries." 01 glanced sideways. "Fine. I'm done with the devotion. I hope that makes you happy. You can be my therapist now. I'm apparently creepy and obsessed and you've fixed me."

12 walked without answering.

Something was shifting in her expression, unreadable at first, then settling into something that might have been regret. ‘ What did I do.’ She watched 01 move ahead of her through the dark. ‘ I destroyed the one thing she was using to keep it together.’

She thought about the others. 05 disappearing into screens for hours, forgetting the team exists. 03 standing at her window with a sniper aimed at nothing, supposedly practicing. 04 documenting her life for an internet audience who had no idea what she was. 07 rewiring her energy gloves to fire laser beams for reasons she had never adequately explained. All of them with something, some private ritual, some chosen distance, that kept the weight from becoming too much. 01 had found hers in the captain. That didn't sound as strange as it had twenty minutes ago.

Clank.

12 walked right into 01's metal back. 01 had stopped dead.

They had reached the end of the tunnels. Sunlight hit their frames for the first time in two days, thin and real after the dark, falling into a wide courtyard that had once been a small park. Thousands upon thousands of robot parts filled it now, stacked and scattered across every surface, the exits sealed behind energy walls that had turned the whole space into an open-air graveyard.

"What are you doing?"

"The captain."

12 steadied herself and brushed the dust from her clothes. "I thought you were done with all of that."

"The captain." 01's knees hit the ground.

"Is this a new ritual, or—no way." 12 stepped up beside her and looked.

"Did I finally lose it?" 01's voice had gone completely quiet. "Because I'm looking at the captain. In the Omega body. Right in front of me."

02 was sitting on a pile of parts her posture slumped, an orange and white sphere held in both hands clutching it like a lifeline.

01 was already moving, running toward her before the thought had finished forming. "Captain! It's you-I can't—"

02 rose in one motion, eyes bleeding red. E-PHONEUS detected.

"Code Red, initiated."

12 stopped where she stood. "What?"