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August 6, 11945: The tower, created by the machine lifeforms, was destroyed. On its collapse, all my functions ceased.
September 19, 11945: I woke up. 2B was next to me. I had apparently been asleep for a long time. It seems it was 2B that woke me, but she didn’t say either way.
October 22, 11945: With the Bunker fallen, there was no way to conduct maintenance on YoRHa units. We aren't compatible with the parts used by members of the Resistance. So, we needed to find another solution. I told 2B we should try tracking down every transporter we could find. YoRha parts should be stored in them after all.
October 25, 11945: After investigating the surrounding areas, we gathered our things. The future looks dark. But hey, at least I got to travel with 2B. And that was more than enough for me.
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—
Dust unsettles and ash falls as 9S and 2B make their way through a concrete jungle on foot.
9S still doesn't know how he or 2B had managed to be revived, but whatever managed to pull them back had only pieced their bodies together to a barely functional point. Therefore, the acquisition of spare parts for maintenance was necessary. Spare parts that had never been touched by the Logic Virus. Spare parts that could only be found in abandoned YoRHa Transporters.
They had only managed to find three so far.
Three Transporters, each with strange files buried deep within their coding that 9S had found when he hacked in to unlock them.
He had shared them with 2B. She didn’t recognize them either but was just as suspicious of them as him. 2B had suggested they go find A2 and ask if she had ever found something similar in her travels.
9S didn’t like that idea so much. The files held Old World secrets. They made 9S feel tight in his throat like he should hide them so as to not be discovered knowing things by the Commander. But the Commander is dead, everyone is dead. There is no more YoRHa to keep secrets from, so why does he still feel eyes watching him?
Instead, 9S suggests that he and 2B don’t specifically go looking for A2. That could waste time if she doesn’t know. But, if they come across her while looking for parts they should ask. Afterall, she is probably looking to stockpile parts too, so they might run into her.
9S knows that 2B probably also knows just how unlikely it is for that to happen but she doesn't fight him on it. She just agrees and continues.
9S doesn't think she knows exactly what happened after she… so he doesn't think she just didn’t want to deal with the fallout of his fuckup regarding A2.
“Hey, look. That building over there.” 2B said. She pointed a little bit ahead of them. “It’s surprisingly intact.”
9S looked up. Jutting high out of the broken concrete and collapsed buildings surrounding it was the remains of a manor. It extended across the landscape and threw shade on everything surrounding it. The gray stone, weathered by the elements, had plantlife clinging to its walls. The vines and leaves had forced themselves through the mortar to escape the perimeter of shadow that cloaked the building in hope of reaching distant slivers of light. In a way, the manor itself looked like an empty shell, only being held standing by those vines wearing the husk like a skin. 9S thought that if the plants were to be removed, the building would collapse.
“Let’s go.” 2B said as she started towards it. “The roof would be a good place to recalibrate the maps.”
9S just nodded and began to follow after her. He noticed, then, the irregularity in 2B’s steps. He logged the same, slight inconsistency a little earlier and had bothered her so he could check the gyros in her hips to recalibrate them. The irregularity had disappeared after the recalibration. It shouldn’t have been back so soon. Her hip itself hadn’t been damaged.
It was then he realized why she didn’t argue with him earlier on finding A2. If her gyro had destabilized again but it wasn't from problems with her hip hardwear, then the issue was coming from something else. She hadn’t asked him to take a look at her coding, she knows that he would be able to fix anything like that. He’s done it before for her.
The only possibility left; Her Black Box must be damaged. She must have known even back when they were trying to figure out what to do. Finding A2 would have been a waste of time, especially if her’s is limited.
—
Time marched on and the pair traveled farther, only now with a destination pinned on the shared hub.
They had found four more Transporters, seven total. All had more hidden files filled with junk data and miscellaneous notes, seemingly about the Old World. At the Transporter they had found after the dilapidated manor, 9S had noticed an encryption on one the files. Reinvestigating the rest they had collected, he was able to see the same encryption was common throughout the files. At that time he hadn’t been able to solve it completely but he had managed to get some coordinates to a location labeled Eden .
After talking it over with 2B and without any goal, other than raiding the Transporters, the pair started heading to the location of the coordinates to get some answers.
Now, with all the files decrypted, 9S and 2B were traveling to the middle of a sandy valley where the location pin sat. The files had described Eden to be an underground YoRHa facility where the latest technological developments and classified information was being stored. 9S called bullshit.
He and 2B both agreed it was most likely a trap. Whoever planted the cipher wanted to draw them to Eden . For what reason? They would find out.
And hey, the worst case is that Eden is a trap and 2B and him shut that shit down and either neutralize a threat or get a solid lead to one.
Best case: maybe Eden’s legit. Maybe there really is a super duper top secret YoRHa facility that neither had heard about, that wasn’t on any of the classified documents 9S recovered after the fall, that possibly holds all the solutions to their problems. 2B’s fingers had started twitching abnormally.
It was worth a shot.
—
The pin blips closer and closer and still 9S can’t see anything more than the sloping waves of sand in front of them.
“Hey, 2B, hold on.” he calls to where she is walking in front of him, stopping in place.
She slows herself and turns to face him. “I’m not seeing anything and it’s starting to creep me out.” He sees her smile a bit at him, “I’m going to send my Pod ahead to do in depth location scans. See if it can pick anything up.”
“Do you want us to stay here until it’s finished?” she asks.
“That’s what I wanted to ask you.” He walks up beside her and pings his radar layout to her. “I’m not picking up any signals around so it’s a possibility that whatever’s at Eden is underground. The sand would disrupt any signals if that’s the case.”
“An underground ambush?” she clarifies.
“That’s a possibility.”
She turns to look back at the sands. Then back to him. “Send Pod153 to do the scan. We’ll continue ourselves, just keep close.”
9S nods, pinging his Pod to go ahead as 2B readies her long sword and gestures at him to do the same.
—
“Well, here we are.”
The two had finally come to the location pin. Directly where the cipher indicated Eden would be was a gaping black pit, about 2 meters across, and a staircase descending to blackness.
9S looked over the lip of the edge into the dark below. Sand scuffed by his boots fell down the hole, landing onto the already sand dusted stairs that hugged the pit's edges before being swallowed by the darkness.
He looked back to 2B, “That goes down for a while.”
She just gave him one of her Looks. His Pod had already reported on its scan of the area. No hostiles sighted but the ground penetrating scan indicated the existence of a grand complex under the sand, disk shaped and around 3 kilometers in diameter. Any further exploration would have to be done from inside. Whatever this was blocked scans past its surface.
“Let’s be careful.” 2B states as she marches to the top of the staircase.
She looks at him, 9S nods at her, and she starts descending into the consuming darkness. 9S takes one more look around the empty sandy wastes around them, then starts in after her.
The stairwell darkened the farther they descended from the natural light of the surface. Each step had less and less sand coating it. The enclosed space echoed each step either of them took and highlighted the whirring of the pods' flight units that normally blended into the background of his senses as their headlights swept idly across the stairs in front of them.
9S’s heart lurched as 2B’s leg jittered as she took another step down causing her to reach out and steady herself against the metal wall.
“You ok?” he gasped. 2B just nodded at him in affirmation before turning her attention back to the wall.
“Pod, lights here.”
Pod042 turned its headlight to 2B and lit up the wall next to her. DIfficult to notice in the darkness, strange carvings ran up and down the walls. Small grooves snaked and bled together before splitting again at random.
“It looks kinda like tree bark.” 2B turns to look at him, ‘continue that observation’ her eyes say. He just shrugs at her, “I donno, it just does.”
2B huffs and shakers her head at him. Her Pod shines its lights back to the stairs in front of her and she continues down.
9S rolled his shoulders once then followed. He now had his fingers tracing along the wall as they descended. The further down, the more tight the grooves got in density while the individual strands got thinner. It was strange.
A while after, and about two hundred feet deeper into the pit, the stairs ended and opened into a large hall. The Pods headlights darted down the middle and to the edges of the hall. Dark shapes with bulbous tops and branching bottoms lined the walls.
“Pod,” 2B said, pointing to one of the figures “Over here.”
It turned the beam of light to the figures.
“What!” 9S gasped. 2B took a slight step back.
The beam illuminated tentacled creatures. Large, bumpy heads with hollowed sockets were scrunched above white, bared teeth. The rest of their bodies hung limply from that awkward connection at the base of their head. The Pods light moved further along the wall at 2B’s direction. There were dozens, tacked to the supports of the hall with spears. It was like some kind of macabre trophy gallery.
“Aliens?” 2B guessed.
9S nodded in agreement. These things did look a lot like the Alien remnants they had seen when fighting Adam and Eve at the Alien Mothership crash site.
“Do you think this place is another of their ships?” he asked.
“It doesn’t exactly match the others then. Perhaps this was a command hub?” She walked farther down the hall. Her Pod kept its light on the Alien corpses.
9S sighed, “It would be a pretty strange one then.” and followed after her, pinggang Pod153 to keep its light scanning forward.
After a couple minutes of walking 2B spoke up. “Here is the end.”
They both walked to the obvious door that was now lit up by both Pods. Looking over the door and the panel next to it, 9S muttered “No way this is another fucking Transporter.”
“Hopefully just a repurposed door to one.” 2B replied, “But it is strange that a Transporter door design would have been used in an Alien ship.”
“Maybe the Machines repurposed it?” 9S suggested.
“But then why would it be so cleanly installed into the wall. I don’t see any obvious welding marks, do you?” 9S didn’t, she was right. It was like there was just suddenly a larger than average YoRHa Transporter right in front of them. Like it had always been part of the ship.
“Maybe this was the design inspiration for the YoRHa Transporter?” A ridiculous notion, they both knew that. Androids would have never taken design inspiration from the Machines, let alone their creators. Besides, there was no chance YoRHa had found this exact ship, this exact door, and then just chose to build an important support resource off of it.
“Well, here’s to it opening like the others!” 9S gives a partially enthusiastic cheer and steps up to the control panel.
Beep!
Startled, 9S and 2B flinch back as the panel chimes to open and blinks red. A grinding noise fills the hall. Like heavy stones against itself or gears cannibalizing each other from misuse. The center of the door jolts open a crack, bright light streaming through to blind them both.
9S retreats further from the panel, to stand next to 2B, as the door lurches further open to let in more of the blinding light on the other side. He and 2B are forced to squint in the harsh white light as the door finally shudders fully open. Their eyes adjust from the dim bark of the hallway and they both look up to see what the door had opened to. 9S gasps.
Beyond that door lay the pure, bleached white ruins of a human city.
“Stay here.” 2B commanded him. She took a couple careful steps through the door and into the white.
A couple seconds passed with nothing happening so she pinged him to follow, and he did.
This white place, he would not call it a room; it was simply too big, was even more strange then everything before it. The stairs and the hall at least vaguely looked to partially resemble the Alien architecture at bit, even though it took some liberties. This White, was completely new. He had simply never seen anything like this. Even the Ark’s Tower, for all its blank white and rigid geometry, didn’t feel nearly as foreign.
9S attempted to get visual reading for the White, but kept getting errors from his systems. With a startling jolt, 9S realized that he couldn’t use echoing sound as a crutch. It was completely silent. Not even their footsteps against the ground made any noise. It was like the White absorbed it all. Deading it to nothing.
9S turned his gaze to the ruins. He could possibly used the size and amount of those to attempt to get some kind of reading on the White’s size.
Past the first couple of pristine buildings, gutted with nothing inside, the city quickly showed more and more damage to the outside facades. Broken windows, damaged walls; deeper into the city still and chunks then entire walls were missing. The damage left only skelton husks and the crumbled walls attached to the foundation.
It was when they had reached what had possibly been a city square that 2B thrust her arm out in front of him. He looked at her in surprise. 2B’s breath hung in the air, visible like icy clouds. 9S was so distracted by the White he hadn't recognized the drop in temperature. With that, 9S could now visually see how 2B’s breathing had increased, become more shallow.
Her head jerked up, “9S, they’re coming!” she announced.
He looked up after her.
There, on the distance defying ceiling, was a couple of faint red blinking lights. 2B drew her sword and got into stance, 9S reflexively following her action.
Still looking up, he saw the red lights getting larger. Larger. Brighter. Growing in number, until the white sky was blanketed in hundreds of flashing red lights.
Oh, 9S thought, those are Machines.
He heard 2B hiss. Frustration, anger? Then she shouted, “Pods! Cover fire!”
The Pods pinged Affirmative then the Machines were on top of them.
The chaos started with the Pods hailing the heavens with their guns and 2B impaling the Machine on top of her with Cruel Blood Oath as it fell. Sweeping the sword to the side to fling at another Machine that landed to her right to free herself to cut down the Machine that just landed to her left.
9S let Fate whirl around to his defense, getting in periodic strategic stabs to open joints and cut unprotected wires as he desperately quick-hacked as many Machines to self-destruct as he was able to in such close quarters. This was not going to work.
Bringing up his protective shield, he pinged his Pod to provide extra covering for 2B. “I’m getting to higher ground!” he shouted to her and took off running to one of the ruined buildings, ducking and dodging feral swipes and slashes from the deranged Machines.
When he finally was able to get close to one of the more intact buildings in the area, he took a running leap and sprung off the head of a Machine to desperately grab at the remaining wall. It attempts to disintegrate under his fingertips and throw him back to the ravenous horde but he scrambles up the rest of the way and spreads out to distribute his weight better so what’s left doesn’t crumble even more.
With a higher vantage point, finally, 9S sees that the Machines have formed two groups. One around 2B, she has made a pocket of space around herself, cutting down anything that gets close brutally while the Pods thin out the edges of the circled mass of metal. The other has followed 9S. They surround the ruined building he has perched on and desperately claw over themselves in a pile to attempt to reach him. If given enough time and bodies, they will. Or they would just cause the building to fall apart completely, either way they need to go.
Able to focus better out of the frey, 9S quick-hacks the lot of them to self-destruct once he is a certain distance then clambers onto his feet and makes a running jump onto the ruined building next to the one he was just on.
He runs along that one then jumps to the next. The Machine pile had collapsed to the ground as they had desperately tried to follow his quick movement. Too bad for them. The distance requirement now fulfilled, one by one a low whine begins to emanate from that group of machines. It grows to a crescendo of distressed parts then erupts in flames as the self-destruct complets and the Machines become just flying parts of molten scrap.
9S returns all of his focus onto 2B. The pocket of space around her has only grown. The split and mangled remains of the horde litter the ground. The grey of their bodies almost completely taking over the white floor.
He starts at the outside edges. Those Machines are lucky enough to be pushed too far back by their fellows so that it’s impossible for them to even try to attempt an attack on 2B. They explode wonderfully, taking out all those nearby in the blast of flame and shrapnel.
He continues that pattern, until there are too few to risk accidentally getting 2B in the blast radius, but by then the battle is pretty much done anyway. 9S recalls his Pod to hover him back to the ground as 2B makes one final, triumphant stab through the last Machine.
He touches down as the White returns to its silence.
“Are you okay?” 9S asks. She looks more tired than she would after fighting, they’ve fought worse than mindless machine hordes before. He can see her hand shake as she puts back her sword. It takes her longer than it should to straighten her back from her fighting stance and bring herself back to baseline.
“Yes. Let’s continue.” she nods to him. At least her voice is still steady.
So, they press on. The dilapidated buildings grow even more eroded until there is just an empty landscape of white rocks and sand ahead. It is in that transition that the pair come across yet another Transporter.
“And here I thought we’d finally been done with these.” 2B had muttered to him once they had spotted it. It was much smaller than the Transporters from the surface. It even had some irregularities in the construction that distinctly made it look like a bad copy of a standard YoRHa Transporter rather than the real thing.
Hacking it to open, 2B and 9S stared inside the now obviously empty Transporter. Confusion marred both of their faces and caused 9S’s to scrunch in renewed concentration as he turned back to the software of the electronic interface. 2B stepped in to inspect it from the inside, then exited to take a better look at the exterior shell.
At the tail end of her lap around the Transporter 9S called out to her, “Hey! 2B, I’m going to send you some of the files from this thing! Take a look!”
9S saw her come back around to stand next to him. “More Old World data?” she asked.
“Yep, and a lot of it.” He detached himself fully from the Transporter. “Some of it is really corrupted though, so I just sent you the most intelligible out of the bunch.”
She pinged him back a file that she highlighted. “This matches some of the log dates we found in the files from the Transporters on the surface.”
“Yeah,” he said, sending her even more documents back. “I think that’s an excerpt from this corrupted section. They have the same names at the bottom in the sign-off section so at least the same person wrote them.”
She agreed with him on that and they continued forward, past the Transporter, working together to piece the broken files back together.
In the endless blank landscape of fine white sand that eventually turned to dust they would come across two more transporters. These two were identical to the first found in the white. Both would hold even more information on the Old World that pieced together with the previous files found to form a tragic narrative told by scientific letters and government inquiry. The Red Dragon, White Chlorination Syndrome, Project Gestalt, Replicants, Yonah.
The Old World fell apart in bits and pieces as the Humans that lived then desperately clawed for any form of salvation. One they found, but was then ripped from their grasp by their own creations and assumptions.
9S and 2B took a break after finding that last Transporter and its remaining puzzle pieces.
Still, they continued. There was still the question of why they had been led here and the beating hope that some salvation could be found for 2B. Vaguely 9S wondered if the cruel hope that had taunted the humans had now moved to haunt them.
They went on as the white dust faded to smooth, speckless floors and the growing persistence of claustrophobia as 9S could swear that the walls and ceiling were slowly getting closer and closer but still his proximity sensors came back with nothing.
All that stopped when finally, 2B and 9S came to stand in front of a singular circular, grey bulkhead door.
A blue glow lit up the center of the door, then spread through lines and cracks until the circumference of the door also glowed a calm blue. The center hinge spun and the door slowly grinded open.
Inside was a uncanny replica of the Command Center of the YoRHa Bunker. That was impossible. Besides the fact that the only YoRHa Bunker ever to exist now did so in smithereens after YoRHa’s destruction, why the hell would one be on an Alien ship?
It seems 2B thought all this had gotten just too strange to comment on, so she didn’t and simply walked in. Probably a smart choice given everything that has happened. 9S followed.
The Command Center’s walls inside were lined with dead black wires, occasionally one would pulse a sickly yellow but that was it. The overhead balcony that White Commander would use to supervise the Operators seemed to be one of the origin points of said wires. They sprung up from the floor where she would have stood at attention then snaked past empty consoles on the deck before spilling off to drape themselves and creep elsewhere.
2B was walking off down one of the offshoot corridors that lead to the dormitories. 9S followed her, noticing that the corridors held even more wires. They covered the walls and ceiling, attempting to trip him up as they sprawled on the floor. 9S even stopped to inspect one in particular that had caught his eye.
“Hey, 2B! Look!” he called, grabbing her attention. He was crouched next to a bundle of wires rolled like snakes in a ball next to one of the dormitory doors. “These are damaged. Looks like something with claws stepped on it. You can see the grooves here where some of these were cut. Doesn’t seem intentional though because it didn’t go deep.”
“Or, something just attacked it badly.” He snorted at her joke.
“Just means we're not the only one’s here.”
Down a hall further, on the other side of the Bunker, 2B finally stopped in front of her destination. If was where her room would have been on their Bunker, his right next door. The amount of wires had at this point nearly doubled, there was no place to step other than on loose wires, it made 9S nervous.
“Here?” he asked her. She just looked at him once then turned and opened the door.
Over her shoulder he could see inside. It was a large atrium, one that should have not existed in this location if this was anything like their old Bunker.
He followed her inside and got a better view of what could be called walls generously. There wasn’t anything solid really, just thick knots and bunches of wires and cables in the vague approximation of such. They spun themselves from, not even a ceiling but, more cables and wires. Tracing themselves down until a couple from the bunch split and trailed along the relatively clear floor to the middle of the room.
The wires congregated in the center where the idea of a single flight unit was waiting.
It was an obvious fake. Completely white, lacking definition, it seemed to be made out of a kind of plaster more than anything else. A far cry from the sturdy grey planes of interlocking pieces that made up actual YoRHa flight units.
Suddenly, a low tone rang throughout the room and a mechanical whirring began to emanate from the false flight unit. It shuddered violently and a low murmur filled the room.
“Repent. Repent for your sins.”
“2B.” 9S cautioned, this was getting dicey quickly and both Pods wired as they brought their systems to ready.
“Yes.” she agreed, drawing Cruel Blood Oath from its keep.
“Repent. Repent. Repent. Repent. ” the voice chanted, growing louder and louder. With each utterance it filled the room and shook the loose wires with its growl and in return they pulsed yellow faster and faster until some just stayed fully lit and writhing. The wires bulged in place, undulating like some living thing as more clumped together in mass and pulled themselves together into a congealed mass behind the flight unit.
Silence rang through the air as, for just a moment, everything stopped except the pulsing of yellow in the wires.
Knobby, clawed fingers slithered their way around the top inner wing of the fake flight unit. A blunt black head, pulsing yellow, rose above the main body of the plaster suit and one last call of “ Repent!” echoed in one voice through the room.
It turned its blunted head to look at them despite its lack of eyes and 9S felt a stab of keen judgment that saw his everything but found it lacking.
Its hand on the plaster unit tightened, easily cracking its surface then flung it violently to the side. The Plaster unit exploded against the write walls as the beast reared its head. Cracking, like joints popping or bone breaking, filled the room as the beast used its own two hands to split itself a mouth from its own body to let loose a guttural roar that seemed to take up its entire being.
Mechanical arms bust from the wired walls, seemingly in response to the beast's cry. They grabbed and clawed at the wire prisons containing them until the Machines were finally able to squeeze their misshapen bodies from their cocoon prisons to tumble loosely to the ground, weapons drawn.
At that moment, the Pods began their barrage on the Machines. 2B launched herself at the beast. No, the Colossus. 9S wouldn’t have known what this thing was before but with the new data acquired from the Transporters and pieced together by himself and 2B, he could now identify this creature as a type of Shade. Colossus’ were formed from the remnants of human souls held together only from their burning hatred. But there were no more shades. Human souls had died out ages ago along with the final Replicants. There should be no way for there to be a Colossus, made of human souls, to be currently in front of them fighting to kill them. But there was.
“Damn it!” 2B grunts as the Colossus deflects her attack with its hardened claws and 2B uses the momentum to roll to safety from its counter attack.
9S hacks a Machine to fling itself at the Colossus and self-destruct. The blast causes it to roar in anger and swipe at everything around it that got too close, sending Machine parts hurtling through the room. 9S had to doge out of the way of a flying head that then cratered into the Machine behind him, sending it crashing into the wall.
“9S! Focus on the Machines! We’ll get overwhelmed if we ignore them!” 2B shouts to him.
“Ok!” he calls back. Already, even more Machines were crawling their way from the wired walls to replace the fallen. Even more would most-likely come soon to take up even more space in this already cramped room and make things even more difficult.
9S had already caused some to self-destruct but it was the hoard problem from earlier, only amplified. The even smaller space ment he had to be just that more careful not to unintentionally endanger himself or 2B. Welp, he thought, we’ll just have to do this the hard way then as he stabbed his sword into the head on one machine, skewing the one behind it as well.
He made his way systematically through the horde but it was slow going and more just kept squeezing their way from the walls so it felt like he never made actual progress.
Damn them! There’s so many and he couldn’t just hack the Colossus, it was organic! 9S just hoped 2B didn’t get hurt in this chaos. He trusted her abilities, unlike him she was made for combat, but with her deteriorating state and her slow recovery after the last hoard, he was worried that the longer this went on…
Die!
Just die already!
Die faster! He slashed and stabbed frantically at the Machines.
“Pod! Go support 2B.” he grunted. That probably wasn’t the best idea for his own safety but 2B needed support. The Colossus needed to be felled. This Machine hoard had arrived at its call and no matter what damage he did to destroy the wires they came from to prevent more from spawning, it just didn’t work. They kept coming.
He couldn't help her himself this time. He wasn’t capable enough physically to go toe to toe with that juggernaut like she was, flipping and parrying all of it blunt attacks, striking openings she made with precision. He was already strained enough just with these grunts.
“Affirmative.” His Pod responded and moved to join hers in its barrage of bullets and small missiles that pelted the Colossus. It screamed in anger at the new attacker, distracting itself enough for 2B to cut deeply into its calf. It stumbled, and 2B was quick to take advantage to stab into the opposite leg’s thigh and slice upward into the groin.
The Colossus desperately swiped at her but with all the previous damage she had done to it, her lameing of its legs, and the two Pods air support. It only succeeded in flaily back into the mangled body of a machine, impaling its lower torso and setting itself up for 2B’s final attack.
She delivered a flurry of slashes to its body, flaying its chest and arms and knocking out a chunk of its blackened oozing flesh.
With one last slash, she cleaved the head from the body. It spun through the air, crushing the Machine it landed on. At once, the blackened body twitched, went limp, then started to dissolve into blackened particles into the air.
The remaining Machines went limp, then clattered lifeless to the ground.
9S stares for a moment at their fallen bodies as he pants to collect himself and cool off, before running off to 2B. She’s bent over, breathing heavily and leaning her weight onto her sword that’s embedded into the ground. He grabs her shoulder, looking her over for serious damage. The tremors have gotten worse. He hadn’t noticed.
He pushes up her Visor and rests his hand on her forehead. She’s hot, overheating. Her eyelids are fluttering and the pupils are rolled up. He grabs her arm to pull over his shoulder to support her but she just shakes her head in denial so he stops and just keeps holding her shoulder.
2B takes some time to suck in a couple more deep breaths before grabbing his shoulder in return to stabilize herself as she straightens and pries her sword from the ground.
He lets go of her as she does the same to him in order to take a couple steps back. Stability reconfirmed, she jerks her head to the far side of the room. “Come on.”
She walks in that direction and 9S follows closely behind. The cables along the wall she was walking towards had been battered, some even cut off, revealing a door that had been hidden underneath.
She went up to it, putting her weight onto the door. It creaks a little, but doesn’t move much so 9S comes up next to her. Together they heave the door, pushing it in against its screeching protests, until it finally gives in, tipping forward and slamming onto the stone floor on the other side.
Bathed in the light streaming in from behind them lays a grand room. Far walls and a high ceiling highlighting the strange darkness that was so different from everything they had seen since entering the White Ruins past the macabre hall.
“What is this?” 9S gasped.
In the middle of the room, over a hundred YoRHa models lay strewn about. All were clearly dead, blank eyes and pale mouths agape. Stark white spilled from under most, spreading out from their ink back clothing and mixing with their fellows puddles of blood. Some had cunks ripped from their chests. Faces caved in. Libs torn and thrown away like a toy to the other side of this grand room.
All were facing a black sphere in the center of the room.
The sphere stood ten meters in height. Its once smooth surface was now cracked, broken. The Pods moved about the room scanning everything, taking special care with the fallen YoRHa. Attempting to identify fallen comrades.
“This is either the alien ship’s power source or some kind of control mechanism.” 9S stated after the Pods sent their reports and getting a good look himself, making sure to delicately step around the fallen so as not to disturb them. “Whatever it is, it’s completely inoperative.”
“It’s a graveyard,” 2B said “It might have even existed before the bunker collapsed. YoRHa soldiers on the verge of death came here seeking salvation. They turned the crumbling husk of this alien ship into their church, a place where they could cling to something.”
“But that doesn’t even make sense.” 9S muttered and turned back to look at her.
Her head hung, the tremor back greater than ever. White life blood splattered to the dark floor, falling from her mouth as she collapsed to her knees.
“2B!” he shouted, sprinting from the other side of the room he had wondered to in his exploration.
She tried to steady herself with her arm against the floor, but even that shook too much to hold her and she sprawled onto her side as her body started to seize.
“2B! No!” 9S cried as he desperately rushed to her side.
He grabbed her from the floor, cradling her head and shoulders in his arms. She became limp, control of her body finally slipping from her grasp. Her eyes stayed locked ahead, looking past his face. Her lips moved one final time, a torrent of their vital white ichor spilled down her lips, then everything stopped. She stopped. 9S stopped, only his shaky breath remaining.
9S couldn’t sense her black box.
9S
couldn’t
sense
her
black
box .
“No!
NO !
NO!NO! NO !NO!NO!NO! NO ! NO !NO!NO!NO!NO!NO!NO!NO! NO !NO!NO!NO!NO!NO! NO !NO!NO!NO! NO !NO!NO!NO!NO!NO!NO!NO!NO! NO ! NO !NO!NO!NO!NO!NO!NO! NO !NO!NO!NO!NO!NO!NO!NO!NO! NO ! NO !NO!NO!NO!NO! NO !NO!NO!NO!NO!NO! NO !NO!NO!NO!NO!NO! NO ! NO !
NOT AGAIN !
DON’T TAKE HER FROM ME AGAIN !
NOT AGAIN! NOT AGAIN! NOT AGAIN! NOT AGAIN!
I CAN’T DO THIS AGAIN!
ANYTHING BUT THIS ! ”
9S couldn’t breathe.
9S couldn’t think.
9S’s eyes shook. His teeth grit. He desperately clutched the lifeless corpse of 2B to his chest.
He cursed the machines. He cursed YoRHa. He cursed humans. He cursed the gods. He cursed the universe. But, most importantly, he cursed himself.
How could he let this happen!
How could he be this weak!
The second time! This is the second time this has happened!
That she has died right in front of him, and he was just too fucking powerless to stop it!
It should have been him. Why couldn’t it have been him.
He screamed. He yelled. His throat ripped but he continued anyway.
Tears poured from his eyes. They clogged his nose and mouth until all he could do was just sit there, trying to breathe. Gasping for air as for a second time the world ripped 2B away from him.
“please.” he gasped. Curled up, his face pressed into her lifeless neck, wetting the fabric of her dress with his tears. He held her so tight it was like they could meld bodies.
“please.please.please.please.please.please.please.please.please.please.please.please.Please!
please don’t take her away from me again. i can’t be here without her again.
anything. i’ll do anything. i’ll give anything.
Just, please, don’t let this be her end.”
—
A whine filled the room.
9S looked up, startled by the sudden noise.
He scrambled back, still clutching 2B to his chest, only to trip under her weight and fall back. Her white blood smeared into a trail from where he dragged her.
The sphere. That broken black sphere in the center of the holy grave whined and sputtered as it flashed with light, the bodies laying in heaps around it lifted into the air like the strung up bodies that Singing Machine kept as weapons. Their chests emanate light the same as the sphere.
“Report: Sensing anomalous signals. Energy spike recorded.” His Pod chimed. 9S quickly glanced at the pod from the corner of his eye. Both Pods had gotten closer, hovering less than a meter away from him and 2B.
Anomalous signals was correct. 9S’s sensors were scrambled as a sudden and uncontrolled influx of reading burst through. His head rang with the noise of them going off in warning before he had to shut them off to prevent damage to himself from mental fry.
The sphere glowed and glowed, the bodies doing the same, until it wasn't black anymore but shining with the brightest of lights as they all lit up the room. The glowing centers of the YoRHa corpses raised from their chests, condensing into one mass. Together they formed a tight ball the size of 9S’s fist before shooting past his arms, directly into 2B’s back. 9S gasped. He frantically looked over where the ball had entered her but saw nothing.
The whining had only gotten louder. The light emitted from the sphere became all encompassing. It hurt 9S’s eyes to even look at it anymore. He shut them tightly and thrust his face back into 2B’s neck.
Then, like a bomb going off, something burst and 9S was struck with an all encompassing white and a deafening noise,
before
everything
went
black.