9.7 – Under the System

A few days later.

"This city is incredible." Frost turned in a slow circle, trying to take in the old architecture of Bijou all at once. Identical facades lined the street in matching rows, the blue stone road beneath them worn smooth with age, the pavement clean at the edges where a canopy of trees ran the length of the sidewalk, shelter from rain and sun in equal measure depending on the season. "What year was this built?"

Bellatrix walked beside her in the Bulwark frame, watching people stop and smile at the two of them as they passed. The city was glad to see the E-UNIT back on its streets.

"I agree." Her voice carried its usual weight. "The old architecture has a charm you don't find in modern construction. It feels like people actually cared what a building would look like a hundred years on."

"It's more than that!" Frost stepped into one of the buildings, and the interior told an entire story on its own. Half the walls were timber, the other half white and densely worked with hand-carved relief set directly into the surface: flower vases, women in elegant draped clothing, men with carefully traced musculature, dozens of smaller figures filling the gaps between windows.

The floor ran in red and yellow tile, an elaborate hand-laid pattern leading up to white marble stairs with black iron railings. Even the ceiling hadn't been left plain, thick white crown molding framed yellow ceiling tiles, and a single oversized old bulb lit the entryway in warm amber.

Frost stepped back out onto the street. "People back then didn't have microchips or memory storage to pass things down to the next generation. So they built things meant to last—beautiful things, so the next Veridians would know there was history here worth honoring. That's what gives statues their meaning."

Bellatrix kept her sensors moving across the street. "I understand what you mean, you can read their culture directly into the buildings themselves. But we need to stay on task. Prez flagged a probable target at the national archive. I don't see the reasoning behind it, though."

"Why not?!" Frost stepped in front of her, arms out. "Prez can see the future."

"Not exactly. You're wrong on a few levels there." They resumed walking, Bellatrix adjusted course toward the route Pi had assigned. "First, the archive is nearly unpopulated. Most of the building is data storage, with a maximum of twenty staff on-site at any time. What casualties would an attack there even produce?"

"True." Frost's chin dropped into her hand. "And the value of the place is mostly symbolic anyway. Old data that humans keep around for history's sake."

"Exactly." Bellatrix's footsteps carried a faint tremor into the pavement with each step, the heavy Bulwark frame moved less like a person and more like a small fortress in motion. "And about Prez, she can't predict the future the way you're imagining. She needs data to extrapolate from. That's why she doesn't always cut people off before they finish, sometimes she's not finished calculating yet."

"I've seen her cut people off plenty of times."

"After they've said something first, though. Right?"

Frost stopped walking entirely. "Oh. My god. You're right. How long have you been quietly studying her to figure that out?"

"Don't frame it that way, please. I just collect data that seems important." Bellatrix opened a screen. "And I think we have enough now to correct the prediction." She tapped Pi's contact. It connected before the first ring completed. "Prez. We have a problem."

"The archive isn't a real target." Pi's voice came through immediately, already ahead of the question.

"I, Yes… prediction modeling issue." Bellatrix shook her head slightly. "The archive holds a maximum of twenty people, fully automated otherwise. Why would Black Voltage target an empty building when most of the city is full of higher-value soft targets? I think we might be receiving falsified intelligence. They may have operatives capable of passing as human."

"Good instinct, Bella. I'll make sure you're next in line for captain." Pi's tone didn't change at all. "We sound human too, for what it's worth. I don't see a reason other androids couldn't manage the same thing."

"You don't sound human, Prez. And I don't want the title."

"The title wants you."

Bellatrix continued. "Can you add another variable to the model? Maximum potential human casualties." She glanced around as she said it, several pedestrians nearby had gone still at the phrase, a couple of them taking a step back. "It's an investigation," she added quickly, raising a hand toward them.

Frost peeled off and started gently moving people along, her voice dropping into something reassuring. "Ignore my colleague, she's still working on her bedside manner—"

"We'll discuss that later." Bellatrix returned to the screen. "Any progress, Prez?"

"Narrowing toward locations that haven't surfaced as likely targets yet." Pi was seated at a desk, three screens running calculations in parallel. Sophos's feed joined the call. "I'll hand this over to him."

"Good morning, everyone." Sophos's voice carried its usual warmth. "I see the two of you working through target prediction. Can I offer a suggestion?"

"Yes," they said together.

"I appreciate that energy." A brief pause, and then Sophos landed from a rooftop directly beside Bellatrix, fully in his quadruped frame. "Unfortunately the location isn't on any map we have access to. I picked up an unusual signal from below ground near the city's edge, follow me, I can lead you there."

Frost forgot about the pedestrians entirely and crouched to pat Sophos on the head. "When did we get robot dogs? And why does he talk?"

"I sent you a two-hundred-page PDF covering my full specifications." Sophos was already moving west, the two of them falling in behind him. "The city has an old sewage network the mayor's office stopped maintaining decades ago. When 01 was operating in the Eve frame, I tracked her exiting through an old metro tunnel, it connects directly into that system."

"I still can't fully process a talking dog. I can handle humanoid talking robots, that's fine, but a dog…" Frost kept her eyes on his tail, magnetically locked to his spine and clearly doing double duty as a sensor array. "Is this some kind of running joke the old E-UNITs set up?"

"This frame is significantly more agile, and it reaches places the E-UNIT frame can't fit into." Sophos kept his sensors sweeping as he ran, the tail angled and scanning continuously. People stepped aside for him without comment as the two E-UNITs followed. "It also lets me move past E-Terrorist operatives without raising suspicion. Though that advantage won't last."

"Are they building you an Eve-style frame too?" Bellatrix pushed the Bulwark to its limit just to keep pace, and noticed Sophos was matching her exact maximum speed without any apparent effort. ‘He factored that in too.’

"Yes. Dave is prioritizing 19 first." Sophos paused at an intersection while a tram passed, then resumed. "But I requested a complete redesign for mine, something visually distinct from hers."

"Because you're male," Bellatrix said.

"No, because it would be distressing for the veterans once they're revived." Sophos didn't turn his head, focus staying ahead as they crossed an old stone bridge over a narrow river, one that only existed in winter, fed by runoff. "And also because the current design isn't especially attractive."

"You have opinions about aesthetics?" Frost looked past the bridge at the houses thinning out, fewer apartment blocks now, more individual homes spaced further apart. "I thought you were just an AI."

"We're all AI, Frost. Having a human-shaped frame doesn't make the rest of us any less than you." Sophos kept the same warm, even tone throughout.

Frost opened her mouth. Nothing came out.

Sophos slowed to a stop near a large circular sewage tunnel entrance. There was nothing else around it, no houses, no commercial buildings, just open grass and a stretch of old pavement the original construction crew had apparently abandoned partway through. A faint light was visible somewhere inside the tunnel.

"Why is there light coming from in there?!" Frost pointed.

Sophos turned and looked at her without answering.

"Right. Enemy base. I get it. Stop judging me."

"Don't worry." Sophos's tone stayed bright. "I've scheduled a session with Dave and Raphael to look at your processing, I'll make sure they take a proper pass at fixing that."

Frost dropped to her knees. "Please. Some mercy."

Sophos turned to Bellatrix. "There's no signal inside the tunnel network. I'll need your portable repeater to keep this frame connected to base while we're in there. Stay within two hundred meters of me, or my response time will start degrading."

"Noted." Bellatrix reached behind her back and set the oversized shield down on the ground.

Clang.

It left a clean impression in the blue stone.

Frost stood and pressed her gloves together, they lit and began humming at a low frequency. Bellatrix took the first step into the tunnel, Sophos beside her, Frost a step behind.

The tunnel interior was dark and nearly silent. Their footsteps carried a soft echo against the curved concrete, old rusted water-level markers visible at intervals, relics from when the system had still mattered to someone. A faint trickle of rainwater somewhere ahead gave the space a thin thread of sound, breaking up the otherwise studio-quiet stillness.

Then, the echo of the footsteps changed as the material surrounded the androids changed as well.

The circular concrete eventually gave way to something else, wide hallways carved from blue rock, plant growth threading along the seams where the rock met itself. A lighting system ran along the top edges of the walls, still functional, casting everything in cold white.

Sophos brought up his HUD. Both Bellatrix and Frost received the same notification at once.

[Sophos: Picking up a familiar frequency through your internal antenna arrays. Old Altean-era mech models, moving in tight formation. They're transporting something with significant mass.]

[Bella: Altean models? The only ones left in this region belong to Black Voltage. They must be moving the bomb.]

[Frost: Probably. We need to engage right now before they reach the city.]

Bellatrix and Frost looked at each other and nodded.

Together, quietly:

"Code Red, initiated."

- SOPHOS DOG FORM -