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 SecretThe 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 time the Remidican side decided to fire something 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 perimeter like a frame. Boxes were stacked in every corner with no particular system.

She was reviewing HUD footage from the last engagement, 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 time.’

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

"I'd say no."

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

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

"You came 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 someone attending a formal meeting. "And there's something 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 me 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 means 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 attachments. Full war machine configuration."

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

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

"Well," he stood. "I came under-prepared." He considered for a moment. "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 me down remotely and stored me as a folder on his desktop."

"What did he name it?"

Shelly smiled, something fractured underneath it. "The Annoying Brat." She let it sit. "Because I tried to protect android life. That was the moment 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 resumed reviewing the tactical feeds.

Obsidian tilted his head. "Meaning?"

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

"Should we agree to keep both of our—"

"I assumed 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 came back, warmer this time. "My brother handed me 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 me 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 came down on the desk again.

"I hate that name."