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dragonnarrative-writes · 17 days ago

Text

Data Breach

Read on AO3

Word count: 12.8k

Alternatively titled "Lockdown."

CW: Public partial-nudity, references to sex work, Kidnapping, implied trafficking, threats of violence, anxiety/panic, body horror, brief mentions of medical trauma, character being hunted, brief mention of cannibalism, guns, knives

Notes: Naya "Bambi" Walker and Veronica "Bricks" Mason are my characters. Morgan "Sparrow" Voss belongs to @sentientcave.

I'm very excited because this is my first "complete" fic. And I wrote it within my first year of posting fanfiction! Thanks to everyone who has been here with me through it all!

The genetic and cybernetic enhancements that the public took for granted were a drop in the bucket. No one protested the same-day medical procedures for aesthetics and practicality and security. What harm is a microchip to automate one’s home, modified musculature that needed less exercise to maintain? Who was ever going to protest genetically coded locking mechanisms?

Soldier modifications are a violation of human rights. The deployment of those soldiers isn’t, unless they use their enhanced abilities to commit a war crime. But the process of modification, experimental and unregulated, driven by greed, desperation, a cold war that bled and screamed…

In the early days of accelerated genetics, on the heels of the prosthetic revolution, things had been hellish. Rejected limb grafts. Explosively contagious viral infections previously rare in humans. Incompatible bones and organs and structures drowning experimental groups in their own fluids. Hunting and prey drives that only became apparent on the battlefield.

The deployment of modified soldiers isn’t a violation of human rights. But if even a single civilian is caught in the crossfire, it’s a war crime.

What the governments of the world did to the men and women who served them - and the populations they were supposed to serve - was a flood of destruction that led to international court-martial and proposed executions.

Only proposed though.

Naya, green around the gills from her latest information dive, wonders if maybe those proposals had more merit than she’d initially thought.

The files she found about the modified joint task forces, the Ghost Team JTFs, are more horrifying than anything she’s ever seen. Bone and dental removal, replacement, and additions. Brain implants, deeper and more invasive than most civilian interface units, which go just under the skin. Increased metabolism, shortening of the digestive tract, automatic injectors with stim packs that keep soldiers awake and lucid through unimaginable horrors.

Her hands shake, spilling tea leaves on the counter as she disconnects from her VPN network. She’d stumbled upon the initial files surrounding what had been Task Force 141 days ago, had quickly skimmed and duplicated their contents to read and review on her own time. Those had been bad enough. Reading about a Scottish soldier, shot in the head and brought back only to have his body altered. Another sergeant suspended in a tank as his genetically altered body attempted and failed to process all of the poisons they wanted him resistant to. A lieutenant who’s frontal lobe was hacked through to make room for a larger processor. The Captain captured and tortured and changed for investigating what was happening to his unit…

And that was before the videos.

Finding more information on Ghost Teams is virtually impossible. Official reports, even the ones she breaks into, list the 141 as defunct. Her fellow archivists don’t have any other information, and aren’t willing to help her dive again.

>>>Flower: even if the GTs are still alive >>>Flower: it’s too dangerous >>>Flower: too many powers want them to stay buried >>>Flower: we’ll lose everything if we go digging >>>Bambi: you don’t have any contacts i could ask? >>>Flower: i‘m sorry bambi

There’s more security, when she returns to the original server, too much for her to feel comfortable to try to force her way in. Her bots identify a couple of devices on the network that might be exploitable - a printer, two coffee machines - but she leaves them alone, for now.

Instead, she trawls conspiracy theory forums for any mention of experimental modifications, missing soldiers, and questionable medical equipment shipments. Experience means her bots filter through everything, which saves her more than a few headaches, but also means that she waits hours before a possible hit. And that hit is a dead end.

The hours turn to days before she’s able to find an abandoned, locked forum with deleted answers to heavily coded questions. The last post is seven years old, ostensibly informing community members of upcoming changes to the forum. The veil over the warning of government surveillance is thinner than tissue paper.

It’s the closest thing she has to a lead, so she makes a new post and sets her bots to monitor it.

>>18|\/|48(Guest): GTJTFs producing new 141 units? Leaked production reports, new specs?

She doesn’t expect a response, but maybe an auto-responder will give her a clue of where to look next. So it’s jarring when she gets an encrypted email with a reply from “[email protected],” an hour later.

new units? have info on old units if you need references. let me know.

—

The middle city isn’t the safest, for all that the well-to-dos topside like to pretend that the truly unsavory elements aren’t that close to their picturesque lawns. Naya’s lived here her whole life, though she’s worked above a time or two. Even so, she’s never ventured this close to the freight shafts down to the docks.

The bar she steps into is loud and smells like liquor and motor fluid. It’s dim, and smoky, and she feels eyes on her as she makes her way to the bar. Her interface lights up with pings and an attempted ID and bank chip skim. All they get for their trouble is her least informative ID tag - Bambi.

The bartender, a large bodied person with the simple tag of Engine, operates behind the bar with four cybernetic arms. There’s no digital queue for her to log in to, or even a service request button on the seemingly organic wood bar. So she stands, hands folded on top of the bar for them to finish pouring drinks and notice her standing there.

Just as the barkeep’s attention slides her way, a warm body presses up behind hers. She stiffens as a the person jostles her to lean heavily on the bar. “Eng! Another for me. And whatever my cute new friend wants.”

A refusal is on the tip of her tongue, but when she looks up into slitted yellow eyes haloed by curled black and purple freeform locs, she gets an encrypted message.

>>>Bricks: Hello Bambi. >>>Bricks: Order a drink and come with me.

—

"They shouldn't be locked up. They're people, not mindless killing machines."

Across the table, under the dim lights, the woman called Bricks cocks her head. She’s a true cyborg, someone who’s modifications are probably keeping them alive. The cybernetics of her left arm extending well into her ribcage. She doesn’t hide it. Under dark overclothes, a slouching shirt exposes the metal of her collarbones, the servos that whir as she breathes. She swirls her glass of Jack and Coke with an amused look on her face as a barely muffled moan pierces through loud music.

Naya takes a deep breath to keep from fidgeting. It took three months to arrange even this meeting with the elusive American arms dealer, in the back of this dingy bar on a busy Friday. She wasn't about to lose the lead just because she could hear lewd comments and barely muffled squeals of pleasure from the nearby hall to the washrooms. The more concerning noise was coming from behind her, anyhow, the thump of knives into a dart board, distressed beeping from the unlucky mini-droid bound to the target.

"You want me to set up a meeting with the Watcher," Bricks drawls, sitting back in her chair. Her pointed cybernetic nails drum against the table. She doesn’t bother to whisper, but both of them have been disrupting any listening devices in range. "So you can make sure that Price's monsters are being treated humanely?"

"They're not monsters," Naya hisses.

"You've never seen them." It's not a question.

"I don't need to see them to know they shouldn't be kept locked in cages."

Bricks freezes with her glass halfway to her lips. Her eyes narrow. “Cages?”

“That’s what I saw.” Gritting her teeth, Naya hisses. “Look. You know what it means to be augmented, what extensive modifications are like. But without anesthesia? I wouldn’t wish that on anyone, not even my worst enemy.”

“You’d be surprised what I would wish on my worst enemy, sweetheart.” Bricks chuckles and throws back the last dregs of her drink. "But you know what? Fine."

"Fine?"

"Fine. You want in so bad? I'll set up a meeting with the Watcher, and Price."

Well. That was easier than expected. "What'll it cost me?"

"Oh, your whole life, probably. Your whole world view, certainly," Bricks chuckles. She gives Naya an obvious once over, gaze lingering on her breasts. "But you don't owe me any more than a quick flash of your tits."

That does make Naya’s confidence falter. "W-what?"

"You heard me. C'mon, give me a little peek, and I'll send a message right now. You can have Price's monsters off their leashes by the end of the week." Bricks grins, slit pupils pulsing wide with interest. "We don't even have to go anywhere, just pull down your shirt a little bit."

"I'm not..." Naya looks around, furtively. "This isn't exactly priv-" She flinches as she's interrupted by a loud moan, followed by a cheer from the rest of the bar.

"You're asking me to let your hands get real dirty, sweetheart." Bricks stands and circles the table to crowd Naya against the wall. She dips down to breathe into her ear. "And unless you want word to spread of a cute, clean cut, little topsider digging into illegal soldier mods, you're gonna pull your tits out and take the money I give you, after, Bambi."

There’s something behind the predatory look in the taller woman’s eyes. A challenge. She’s called Naya’s bluff, hasn’t she? When she refuses, Bricks will send her off with a laugh and a pat on her ass. And she’ll be back at square one, unable to face the danger of diving deeper again.

But Naya’s never been accused of knowing when to back down.

It’s the work of a moment to have the various video feeds in the room start a ten second loop. Her bots use movement patterns to make the video seem natural to anyone not looking closely. Bricks makes an interested noise when the video feed from her cybernetic eye continues showing Naya’s darting eyes and regular breaths. Her organic eye takes in the way Naya’s hands come up to unclasp the front of her shirt.

She takes a deep breath before hooking her fingers into the neck of her undershirt. She looks down as she inches it down to reveal the scalloped edge of her bra, instead of looking to see if Bricks is aroused or amused or some other, worse thing.

Before she can truly expose herself, a warm hand touches her wrist. “So eager. Not even gonna give me a little tease?”

>>>Bricks: Nice trick with the cameras, but you’re going to call attention.

Naya tips her chin up and immediately regrets it when Bricks leans down to meet her. Her breath shivers between their lips. When a metal arm comes up to block her view of the rest of the room, she turns her face away.

>>>Bambi: It’d be more suspicious if I let everyone have a clip for distribution.

“Smart girl,” Bricks whispers against her temple. “Take the credits.”

The fund transfer Bricks initiates has a public comment attached. ‘Classy. Could almost be the real thing.’ Naya glares up at Brick’s smirking face as she accepts the transaction. Two hundred. It feels like too little and too much money at the same time. Almost immediately, she gets inquiry pings from six other patrons the bar.

“And that’s your alibi,” Bricks chuckles, stepping back so quickly that she barely has time to put herself to rights. “Let’s go, sweetheart.”

—

Naya tries not to fidget in the freight elevator, down, down, down, into The Throat. Bricks's arm is a possessive weight on her shoulder. On the other side of the lift, a startlingly tall man stares at them through the holes in a cloth sack. When she meets his eyes, something writhes where his mouth should be.

"Eyes to yourself," Bricks growls when he takes a half step in their direction. Her cybernetic arm crackles warningly.

The man visibly considers his options before making a guttural sound. A thick appendage, tongue or tentacle, Naya can’t really tell, pokes out from under the hood. He mutters something she doesn’t understand in under-tongue. Bricks hisses something back, pushing Naya behind her as she takes a threatening step forward. The man flinches, then crowds himself into his corner. He doesn’t even look in their direction for the rest of the descent.

When the doors open, Bricks holds her back until the man leaves, then steers her out into the street. Naya's been under-city before, but not in this bloc. The air is just as stale and hazy as she remembers, but this shaft doesn't see as much vertical commuter traffic as some of the others, so the street is dark instead of lit with neon. The faintest bit of light filters down from straight above.

Groping for something to say, she asks, "Did you know that guy?"

Bricks snorts, keeping an arm around her's waist as she steers her along. "Yeah."

“What did he want?”

She gets an uninterested shrug. “The same thing any bottom dwelling opportunist wants.”

It’s not hard to imagine what she means. When she doesn't say anything else, Naya searches for another topic. She swallows her pride and forces herself to say, "Thank you for setting up this meeting."

"Don't thank me yet, sweetheart. You're gonna hate me soon enough."

"I know it's dangerous for you," she insists as Bricks draws her down a side street. Dangerous is an understatement, if the Ghost Teams are so far gone that they’re experimenting on human beings. "Even if things are hard, moving forward, I appreciate your help."

Bricks doesn't answer. Instead, she knocks on a barred door. It opens a crack, and she and the other person hiss low words at each other. A shining green eye looks Naya up and down, the door shuts, and Bricks draws her away.

They stride, briskly, back to the main street. Bricks asks, "Do you have a respirator?"

"Yes."

"Put it on, don't speak."

Wordlessly, Naya unfolds the mask from her pocket and covers her mouth and nose. Bricks pulls a dark scarf from her shoulders and wraps it around Naya’s head and neck, and then drops a poncho over her head. Somehow, the mercinary looks bigger in just her thin shirt, the muscles and metal in her shoulders more pronounced.

Ten minutes into their silent walk, a man melts from the shadows and starts walking on Naya's other side. Though she can’t see much under his baggy clothes, his gait speaks to digitigrade modifications. When she glances up, he has a faceplate under his own hood. His voice, when he speaks, is robotic. "Bricks."

"Roach."

“You’re looking smug and determined.”

“I’m on a very… interesting job.” An encrypted message gets passed between the two of them, and Naya frowns behind her mask. She shouldn’t be able to tell that a message was sent, though, so she bites her tongue. Bricks smirks down at her, then turns her eyes forward. “What’s on your mind?”

"Shadows are hunting you. Seven thousand credits."

"That's insulting," Bricks dismisses. "Mace take the job?"

"That's insulting," Roach parrots back. Somehow, his metered and inflectionless voice sounds amused. A flurry of encrypted messages flows between them. Once those have finished, he says, "Come see us when your business with the Watcher is done." And then he fades away into the shadows again.

"Good job," Bricks whispers. "Stay silent. Keep taking deep breaths. Walk straight ahead. Don't run." And then she ducks down a side street, leaving Naya alone in the dark.

Fuck.

She keeps putting one foot in front of the other. Measured. Brisk, but unhurried. A couple of people pass on the other side of the street, then a man passes on her side. Under her poncho, she palms her pocket knife, but no one spares her a second glance.

After a full minute, Bricks slides out of the next alley and falls into step with her, a cigarette that smells like real tobacco between her lips. In her cybernetic hand, she has a twitching, bleeding length of what looks like an octopus tentacle the size of Naya’s forearm.

"You can talk now,” she says. “But you don't want to ask about this."

—

The respirator makes a lot more sense when Naya is led to a shaft to the Belly.

She’s never been to the middle level of the true undercity. Technically, no one should live in this industrial level, so there’s very little in the way of individual commerce and amenities. There is an abundance of dead “topsider tourists” every year, mangled and hacked to drain all of their resources before anyone can realize that they haven’t come home.

This lift is much smaller, just big enough for her to stand behind Bricks as the woman primes her arm. The edge of a plasma knife glows blue from within the mechanics of her bicep. When Naya activates the plasma in her own knife, Bricks looks over her shoulder at the near silent hum.

“You ever use that before?”

“Once.”

That earns an interested noise as the other woman faces forward again. “On a person?”

“…No.”

“Well, there’s a first time for everything,” is all she says about that as the elevator shudders to a stop. “Stay behind my right arm. If I tell you to drop, you fall to the ground and don’t move until I tell you.”

When the door opens, it’s into a pitch black alley. The only light is the obscured gleam from with Brick’s left shoulder. Something in the darkness hisses. Bricks strides forward, and Naya has no choice but to follow after.

They walk for a few minutes without incident before Bricks knocks on a nondescript door. Next to it, a biometric scanner creaks open and scans one of her eyes, then one of her metal fingers. Naya flinches at the noise of a series of locks grinding open.

A stern faced blonde woman is on the other side of the door when Bricks gestures Naya inside. She’s not wearing a respirator, but then, neither is Bricks. The woman doesn’t say anything, so Naya doesn’t either. She just waits for Bricks to finish securing the door, then returns to her spot just behind her.

“Watcher,” Bricks greets with clear good humor. “I brought you a little something.”

Naya huffs a surprised breath from her nose, but stays silent. The Watcher. The overseer of at least one of five active Modified Task Forces. She looks so… normal. A woman in her mid forties, maybe, face lined with stress but open. Naya feels a little thrown off. When the lights flicker, however, she catches the red shine of a cybernetic eye. Whatever mods she has, they’re hidden so well that Naya can’t even sense them.

The Watcher’s eyes scan her for a moment before she’s looking back to Bricks. Naya only has a moment to wonder why she hasn’t been pinged before she asks, “Alive?”

“You always pay more when they’re alive.”

What? Naya stumbles backwards until she hits the door. “What?”

Bricks throws a grin over her shoulder. “I told you not to thank me.” Turning back to the Watcher, she says, “Thirty thousand credits. Had a run in with the King on the way here.”

“No one told you to bring her alive. Fifteen, and we void the Shadows bounty on you.”

“Twenty five. You want her alive, trust me. And I can handle the Shadows on my own.”

Naya gapes at the two of them. A quick glance over her shoulder and query to the door confirms that the locks won’t open again without a lot more force than she could manage, even if she wouldn’t have to fight Bricks to get out. And the Watcher… isn’t motivated to let her live. Fuck. The little knife in her hands feels less than useless.

“She wanted to meet you,” Bricks continues, crossing her arms. “And Price.”

That makes the Watcher pause and look over Naya again. “Oh?”

“She used his name,” Bricks confirms. “Real skilled code-breaker.”

“Hm.” The Watcher frowns, then says. “Thirty thousand is a low ball offer, then.”

“She thinks you’re keeping the task force in cages,” Bricks chuckles. “I want to watch when she sees them for the first time.”

That gets a huff of amusement. “Thirty thousand and a show… Deal. Bring her.”

When the Watcher turns away, Bricks looks back at Naya with a surprisingly gentle smile. “Good job. Now comes the hard part. Let’s go.”

“What’s going to happen to me?” she doesn’t want to walk forward, but there’s not much else to do. She tries to stand away from Bricks, but it’s hard in the narrow hallway.

“Nothing, now,” Bricks laughs. “Got you through the door alive, and Watcher can always use a code breaker.”

It’s hard not to feel stupid. Naya struggles to keep her voice even. “So this was just… a bounty for you?”

“Better me than König.” Bricks wiggles the tentacle that she’s still holding in metal fingers. “And better now than when an actual bounty was on your head. Diving into secure government information brings out the worst kind of trouble. The Shadows would have killed you in your bed. Kortac would have chipped you, if they decided keeping you was worth it. This way, everyone gets what they want.”

“Except me,” Naya points out.

“You’re still alive, for now,” the Watcher points out from a few steps ahead, without looking back. “Considering the problems you’ve caused me, it’s tempting to kill you myself. But Bricks is right. I can always use a Breaker.”

“I don’t do that professionally,” Naya protests weakly.

The Watcher doesn’t break stride. “You do, now.”

They get into another elevator, big enough for eight people. There aren’t any floor indicators, but as soon as the doors close, it starts to descend. Wrapping her arms around herself, Naya shivers. At this rate, she realizes, she may never see the sky again. She’ll be locked in a cage next to the 141, underground, let out to circumvent code for… what? To support more killing? More human experimentation? If she doesn’t cooperate, will they experiment on her? Put a processor in her brain to erase everything about her except for her skill?

Tears gather in the corners of her eyes, and she can’t help a sniffle.

“None of that,” comes the surprisingly gentle voice of the Watcher. When she approaches, she puts a gentle hand on Naya’s shoulder. “You’re here now. There’s no going back. But we take care of our own.”

Bricks snorts. “For given values of taking care of. You are keeping the boys in cages after all.”

“That’s not helpful,” the Watcher says, producing a tissue from her pocket and dabbing at Naya’s eyes. She pushes the makeshift hood back and gently removes her respirator, scanning her face with hard blue eyes. Eventually, she asks, “Why did you come here, Bambi?”

Shoulders coming up around her ears, Naya gets the feeling that because I’m an idiot isn’t the answer she’s looking for. She looks down at her sensible shoes, bracketed by the Watcher’s own worn work boots, and confesses, “Bricks said I could meet with you, and Price. And… I thought I could… encourage you to treat the modified soldiers more like people than animals.”

“And I suppose this encouragement was going to come with a threat to leak records to the public?” The Watcher’s mouth twitches into a sardonic smile when Naya looks up at her again. “Bold.”

Bricks chuckles. “Naive.”

“Hopeful. And some of the best plans are the simplest,” the Watcher dismisses.

Naya wouldn’t call her plan to connect to the building’s intranet and threatening to disrupt all of the life support systems “naive.” Now that she’s locked in, it feels like a distinctly hopeless course of action. She’ll have to think of something else, fast.

The Watcher steps away as the elevator comes to a stop. The doors open into a large control room, huge observation windows giving a 360 degree view out into dimly lit halls. Bricks ushers Naya out, heavy hands on her shoulders, until she pushes her into a chair facing a window to the left side of the room.

“Did we miss feeding time?” Bricks grins and pulls a puzzle ball from her bag. Her cybernetic hand twitches and whirs as it clicks through combinations.

“Luckily for Bambi, yes.”

Before Naya can ask what feeding time entails, something drops from the ceiling on the other side of the glass, startling a yelp from her. It’s a man, tall and lean, slitted eyes shining a red orange as he stares at her face through the glass. He’s half dressed, only in loose pants. Thick, dark streaks of something wet cover his chest and splatter down his legs. The grin that splits his pretty face puts three pairs of sharp canines on display, stained red.

The Watcher pushes a button, an intercom. “Gaz.”

“Who’s this cute little thing, Laswell?” Naya shivers as Kyle “Gaz” Garrick looks her up and down. He looks just like his personnel file, except for a wildness around his eyes that changes his face from welcoming to something dangerous. “Could practically smell her from the street.”

“Back away from the glass, you’re filthy. What the hell did you roll in?”

The man ignores the Watcher, face going soft as he leans down to get on a level with Naya. “Hello, honey. Such a pretty girl, what are you doing down here? You a friend of Bricks?”

Something about his crooning voice makes Naya’s hair stand on end. At the same time, she finds that she can’t look away from the man’s eyes as he tilts his head. They’re such an interesting color, and he keeps shifting ever so slightly in ways that draw her eyes to follow. He jerks quickly to one side when her eyes dip down to the red and brown splashed down his chest, then smiles when she looks back at his face. His teeth - even the extra ones - are perfect and red. Naya’s heart beats a little faster.

A loud pop and sudden flash makes Naya jump as Gaz reels back with a snarl.

“I told you not to touch the glass,” the Watcher grumbles. “Clean up. Make yourself presentable. And remind the others to put their masks on.”

“Sir, yes, sir,” he hisses. With one last, sweet smile to Naya, he turns and strides away before leaping up to grab an exposed beam and hoist himself into the shadows above the observation room. He disappears in the space of a moment. No matter how Naya squints, she can’t tell where he’s gone.

“Don’t look any of them in the eye,” Bricks whispers from close behind, chuckling at the way Naya jumps. “They’re predators, sweetheart, and you’re the sweetest bite of prey they’ve had in a long while.”

“Bricks,” the Watcher (Laswell?) chides. “Get her keyed in. Bambi, you’re not to be alone in here. We’ll get you interfaced with security so you know how to do a lockdown sequence before you’re introduced to the Task Force.”

When she’s handed an interface chip, Naya blanches. “I can’t, I don’t have a hard disk reader. Why do I need to know the facility’s lockdown sequences?”

“There’s no where in this facility that they can’t get,” Bricks replies, distracted as she opens a floor panel to extract a series of wires, and what looks like a very robust integration cable. “And if you’re going to work here, you’re going to need to be able to keep them from dragging you off and eating you.”

“Bricks.” Laswell snaps. To Naya she explains, “Everyone who works here needs to know how to lock down in case of emergency.”

Naya gapes. “Emergencies? They can - They’re not -! They have full access to the facility?”

“Of course. They can get out of the facility, too,” Bricks snickers. “Who’s going to stop them?”

“Bricks!”

“All of the records say that they’re severely restricted.” The tight squeak in Naya’s voice is undeniable. “What do you mean they could eat me?”

“Old records,” Laswell answers without looking. A terminal lights up under her fingertips. “The only way the SAS would let us keep the facilities without bomb chips. Let me know when you’re ready for input.”

“The part about eating me?” Naya flinches as Bricks circles behind and pushes her hair up to expose the port beneath her left ear.

“If you’re as good as I think you are, you don’t have to worry about that,” Bricks says, shoving the cable into place. “Go.”

“What-”

Laswell launches the integration before she can get the question out. Naya’s whole body jolts, brain flooded with sudden input. She doesn’t dive into the data so much as she’s dragged under the tidal wave of the facility.

The whole structure unfolds around her, five floors, twelve stories down, three shafts up, two elevators, one stair. She’s in the observation tower, which descends three more floors. Heat, cooling, air filtration, power, food storage, office of Watcher One Kate Laswell, office of Bravo One John Price, research labs east and south, conference rooms, break rooms, sleeping quarters, inventory, directory of personnel.

Access Denied.

It’s nothing to shuffle the alert away. Asset Records. Veronica “Bricks” Mason, Gary “Roach” Sanderson, Mason “Mace” Ward, [Redacted] Nikto, Morgan “Sparrow” Voss. The list goes on. Task Force 141. Kyle “Gaz” Garrick, John “Soap” MacTavish, John “Bravo One” Price, Simon “Ghost” Riley. Vital statistics steady, duplicate identification signals, three dead copies, one living set. Security, kill switch overrides. These doors won’t close, but they’ll tell the observation tower that they have. Interesting.

Diving a layer deeper, she observes three separate security records. One is distressingly familiar, the records she’d found before, that spurred her to find Bricks, full of echoes of old code, now that she can see it. Then the one with logs going to Watcher One Kate Laswell, current and accurate. Except that the third log indicates security discrepancies and pings to KGKLJMJPSR. She logs the discrepancy on her own, internal system, a reminder to see if she can piggyback on someone else’s clearance.

Now that she’s thinking about it, she scans for what her clearance is supposed to have access to. It’s the second level, the one that doesn’t actually close the security doors surrounding the servers, sleeping quarters, and the observation tower. Well, that won’t do. She makes a digital copy of KL’s access and patches it into her own.

Just as she finishes, four ID tags simply labeled “Ghost” enter the lowest observation tower floor. That’s a glaring red security alert, and it only doubles in urgency as he accesses the hatch to the system port cable.

“Oh, that’s bad,” she hears herself say aloud as she gropes, blindly for the cable in her neck. “Ghost is accessing, I need to disconnect before he-“

Three more security alerts come up as the ID tags for Bravo One, Gaz, and Soap appear around the top floor of the observation tower, their floor. Naya quickly circumvents the overrides on the blast doors, and half observes rolling shutters covering the windows as Laswell makes a startled noise. Unfortunately, Ghost finds her while she’s distracted.

And he is a ghost, sliding between the layers of Naya’s own security code like a cold breeze. He rifles through her ID cards before she can even try to lock down. When she tries to lock him out of her interface, he slams through so fast it sends her reeling. Unfortunately for him, and for her, he trips over her Brain Blast in the process. The packet of musical theater data explodes to override everything she’s connected to, knocking her out of her connection to the facility and blaring Ohmigod You Guys through the speaker systems of the facility.

“What the fuck,” Veronica Bricks Mason shouts, covering her ears.

“Sorry, sorry,” Naya yelps. She manually reopens her access to the facility and cuts the sound. Her head spins with new information that she doesn’t have time to let her organic brain process. Ghost is nowhere to be found, but she doesn’t wait around to see where he pops up again before locking herself down and physically removing the cable from her neck. “Ghost tripped my security protocol.”

“You shouldn’t be able to influence any part of the facility,” Watcher One Kate Laswell observes. “Which means you’re every bit as good as Bricks says you are. Why did you lock down the tower?”

“Just this floor,” she answers absently, looking around as her interface flashes and labels new data points about her surroundings. It takes a moment for her to filter through everything enough to focus. “Bravo One, Gaz, and Soap were approaching as Ghost tapped in on the bottom floor.”

“I should have charged more,” Asset:Mason chuckles.

“Maybe you should have, Veronica,” Naya replies without thinking.

The woman just laughs. “Oh ho ho, you’re even better than I thought.

Watcher One Laswell drums her fingers on the table. “You don’t have a hard disk reader. Can you still access the facility without a hard line?”

Naya has to shake her head before she runs a quick system check. A ping to the 141 Facility gets a happy little ping back. “Yeah. My, um… my interface is a bit more robust than standard.”

Watcher Laswell nods. “Noted. Reset the security settings.”

Naya almost does it on autopilot, but stops herself. Running a quick check, she shivers. “They’re still out there. Three of them.” When Laswell only nods, she nudges the blast doors and security shutters to open. It takes a moment, but eventually they start to rumble to life.

Worryingly, when she can see through the windows again, Bravo One, Gaz, and Soap are no where to be found. The only active vitals in the facility say they’re right across the glass from where Naya is sitting. It sends a chill down her spine. Diving through the facility systems, she had felt untouchable. But she’s been outmaneuvered again. Unless…

She stands and leans closer to the glass, looking up into the shadows above.

Three pairs of eyes shine down at her from the darkness.

“They’re up there,” Naya whispers. When Laswell simply answers in the affirmative, she activates the intercom with a gulp. “Um. I’m sorry about the noise.”

“That’s quite alright, sweetheart,” a deep voice answers. “Ghost has a way of startling pretty girls. And I quite like a bit of theater.”

Well it’s not Gaz, and there’s no hint of a Scottish accent. “Are you… Bravo One? John Price?”

“You are a clever one.” One of the pairs of eyes squints and tilts. Another shuts, and doesn’t open again. Soap’s tags move a short ways away as Price continues. “Bricks says you asked to meet me.”

“Yes, sir,” Naya says, and then remembers too late that Bricks said not to meet their eyes. She tears her eyes away and jumps at the sight of John “Soap” MacTavish standing a few feet down the hall in front of her.

He looks good, surprisingly so. His hair is long, braided mohawk shining. A gleaming scar is the only indication of the wound that almost killed him. He’s healthy, big and bulky and dressed casually in black joggers and a tight black tshirt. Bright blue eyes with crossed pupils scan her face with interest. When he grins at her, his sharp teeth flash with titanium augments.

“Gaz wisna exaggeratin,’ ye smell quite nice, Bambi,” Soap purrs.

“What part of ‘masks on’ don’t you all understand?” Laswell grumbles.

“They’ve already got her scent,” Bricks snickers. “Did Ghost get your tags Bambi?”

“He did,” Price confirms from above. “Naya Walker, also known as Bambi. Computer scientist, you’ve sold a couple of database systems. Quite impressive.”

A pit opens in her stomach. Ghost had access to her system for less than three seconds. Her throat is tight when she says, “Thank you, sir.”

“So polite,” Gaz chuckles from above. “Come say hello, doll.”

Naya chances a glance back at Kate, then looks back at Soap, then up at the single pair of shining eyes above as Price’s ID winks away from your awareness. “I’m not sure I have clearance for that.”

“You didn’t have clearance to know about this facility,” Gaz points out. “And yet, here you are. Pretty as a picture.”

“Jesus,” Bricks mutters as Laswell makes a startled sound. “We really should put a bell on you.”

And then a huge hand presses against the glass next to Naya’s face. She startles backwards and runs into a huge, solid body, and yelps as a strong arm catches her about the waist.

“Caught ya,” a fourth, deeper voice rumbles above her. His other hand catches both of her wrists and immobilizes her as she stares at dark brown stains up to his wrists. “Been teasin’ us f’ months, dippin’ in an’ out ‘f m’code. So careful, li’l fawn. But not careful enough.”

“Ghost,” Laswell says. The whine of a plasma weapon being primed pierces through the otherwise silent room. Naya squeezes her eyes closed.“Hands off. That’s my Breaker.”

“’S’at so?” Ghost bends down, so far down, it seems, to drag the tip of his nose along Naya’s temple. “Seems she moight be mine, since I invited ‘er.”

“Speaking of,” Bricks interjects. “I’ll take my finder’s fee, now.”

“Bricks.” Laswell hisses.

“Transfer’s cleared, Bricks,” John Price says with a chuckle. “Pleasure doing business, as always.”

Like Gaz and Soap, Captain Price is bigger than his file made him seem. They’d shaved him, when they had replaced some of his bones with metal, but now his facial hair is as full and vital as the rest of him. This close, Naya can see the mechanics whirling within his eyes.

Leaning against his free side, Gaz licks his lips with a tongue that seems too long. But she only sees them for a moment before she’s being turned around, still wrapped in Ghost’s arms.

On the left side of the room Bricks lounges in a chair, tossing and catching and cycling through the combinations on her ball. She’s grinning like she’s gotten away with murder. Maybe she has - she’s been paid three times today for possibly the easiest bounty of her career. Across from her, Laswell holds a glowing knife in a loose grip by her side, shooting an annoyed glare at the other woman.

“What the hell is this?” Laswell hisses.

“You told us to stop hunting your techs,” Price chuckles.

“Bambi is mine,” Kate reiterates, glaring out the glass.

“Just a wee taste, Watcher,” Soap burrs from somewhere. “Ghost is code breaker enough, ye dinnae need another.”

Naya feels her entire body go cold. She takes a deep breath, reconnects with the facility, and runs Flash_Bang.exe.

—

The underground building has a straightforward layout, but that’s dangerous. Naya flicks away the alert when Ghost manages to patch his way back into the facility and silence the music - fuck, it only took him twenty eight seconds? - and ducks under a desk in the office she broke into, one floor down.

It’s hard to stay one step ahead of him, but her spiders and bots repair the five second camera feed loops as soon as he forces the cameras back online. He only wastes time breaking a third of the bot codes before he seems to realize that they’re replicating and switches to tagging, leaving them to run their processes.

It takes two agonizing seconds for her to open the audio relay from the observation tower without revealing her location to Ghost’s sweeping pings.

“-vilian running wild and scared through a secure facility, John.” Kate snaps.

“I thought she was your new breaker,” Gaz snickers. “Not really a civilian.”

“Nae,” Soap interjects. Naya is glad she doesn’t have video to see the nasty smile she can hear in his voice. “Watcher’s right. We cannae let her get too far.”

“She’s fucked the cameras,” Ghost chuckles. “Could get them back online, but it’d take some time.”

Price hums. “Location?”

“West labs’re pingin’,” Ghost answers. He sounds pleased. “Don’t mean much. She’s got bots spoofin’ her IDs.”

“Smells like she’s gone to the east wing,” Gaz purrs. “Lots of classified documents that way, Laswell. Hate to think of what she might come across if she makes it down to the third floor.”

There’s a tense silence before something slams. Eventually, Laswell hisses, “Fine. Bring her back. Alive and unharmed.”

“No promises,” Soap laughs.

Naya scrambles from her hiding spot as she confirms that the cameras in this south wing hall are looped. She needs to get back to the north side of the facility to get to the stairs that might take her up and out. But first she needs to get them off her trail… Somehow.

There’s a janitor closet two doors down, and she spoofs the signal to unlock the door just long enough to slip through it. She looks for bleach and prays it will be enough to mask her scent, then curses to herself when she realizes the bleach will be an obvious mark of her presence. She can’t just erase herself in the physical world the way she can, digitally.

An encrypted message alert calls her attention.

>>>Bricks: Soap will run at you directly. Gaz likes to ambush. Good Luck!

“I c’n see that, Bricks,” Ghost rumbles.

“She’s already at a disadvantage,” the mercenary chuckles. “Poor little thing, you’re going to eat her alive.”

“Oh, she’s not as harmless as all that,” Price laughs. “Took over the whole facility, gave Ghost the slip-“

“I let her go,” Ghost interrupts.

“Set up the meeting so there’d be no one here but us. Got her hands on the codes she thought would let her take control of us, the mindless killing machines.” John continues. He chuckles. “She’s a smart little thing.”

“She got the deadswitches?” Bricks sounds genuinely surprised.

“Command codes. The first ones,” Ghost confirms. “Duds, since we don’t have the chips, but she don’t know that.”

Well, she does now. Naya grabs three bottles of bleach and puts her respirator back on as her mind races. Part of what made soldier modifications so disgusting were the control processors. The irony of finding out that the 141 had somehow removed theirs was not lost on her. They’re already as free as she’d hoped to help them be, and they’re using that freedom to hunt her like animals.

The IDs for Soap and Gaz are still a floor above, moving slowly, following her trail. Ghost and Bravo One are still in the observation tower. She opens one bottle and rolls it back down the hall she came down, then jogs the other way, splashing the bleach as she goes. The observation tower in the center of the floor has mirrored glass, spiking her heart rate every time she catches sight of herself out of the corner of her eye. It’s so jarring that she almost doesn’t realize Gaz and Soap are coming out of the nearest elevator.

She ducks into an office just as the bell dings around the corner.

“Ach, that’s nae very nice, Bambi,” Soap calls. When he speaks next, it’s muffled, likely by his own respirator. “Ghost, she’s scent bombed the whole steamin’ floor. Where is she?”

“Don’t be lazy, Johnny,” Ghost chuckles. “’Ardly a hunt if there’s no challenge.”

“She’ll want the stairwell,” Gaz says. “Lock it down.”

“Already done,” Ghost says. “But locks aren’t exactly a deterrent, if you ‘aven’t noticed.”

“Bottle rolled down this hall,” Gaz says. “So she probably took the other.”

“Aye, that’s what she wants us to think,” Soap chuckles. “I’ll clear this side.”

Naya holds her breath as heavy footsteps start toward her hiding spot, then go so light she almost can’t hear them. She watches the light under the door and resists the urge to flinch at the appearance of a shadow. The man - Soap’s ID sits like a brand so close to her own in her interface - lingers by the door for a long moment then moves on. He’s so quiet that she keeps the map of the floor up to watch his progress. He’s listening for her, she realizes, stopping at each door. She’s lucky that the air circulation vents are above the door, or he might have heard her heart racing.

When Soap and Gaz each turn corners to start investigating the south wing, Naya finally lets herself take more than the shortest breath. She eases the lock open with a flinch at the mechanical click, but neither Soap nor Gaz change their trajectory. When she opens the door and peeks out, the hall is empty. So she eases her way out, crouches low, and shuffles as fast as she can to the stairwell.

She gives the locks three scans before coding them to unlock. The light turns green without incident. She waits for a moment. Soap and Gaz move just a bit farther away. Naya breathes a silent sigh and eases the door open.

“Got her,” Ghost says. “She’s in the stairwell.”

Above her, a door slams open. Naya yelps and starts jogging down the stairs before she can hear what Captain Price yells down at her. She brute forces her way through the lock codes for the third floor and pulls the door open, throwing her bottle of bleach at the wall before slamming it shut. She trips every proximity alarm she can, leading west through the third floor as she throws herself down the next flight. At the fourth floor door, she creates a signal loop, mindful of the door sensor she’d overlooked before. She hears Gaz and Soap slam through the second floor door open just as the door to the fourth closes behind her.

Too late, she realizes that she can’t hear into the tower anymore, and the map of this floor is all static in her interface. The schematics she had before are corrupted - Ghost’s doing, most likely. She can still see the locks on the doors, the terminals connected to the intranet in the various offices. It will have to be enough.

She darts into the eastern wing of the floor and realizes that no, it won’t be enough. The layout is different than the upper floors. The observation tower has no windows in this direction to speak of, for one. And the cameras are few and far between. The doors are also farther apart, and low pile carpet gives way to hard linoleum.

When she turns the corner, she gasps and ducks. Not that it would have helped any. She’s faced with a gymnasium, weight machines and benches and treadmills like a normal gym, except with weights so large it’s almost comical. There’s no one here, but the open space feels like a threat all the same. She turns tail and jogs back toward the observation tower.

As she turns south, she realizes that the tower has no windows on this floor. It’s not a relief, not really. Even if no one can see her, she’s trapped. Gaz and Soap are still looking for her, one floor up. How long will that last? The bleach trick can only work for so long, probably. And Ghost is good, it’s only a matter of time before he breaks into the camera bot code and finds her. How is she going to get up, past the first floor, let alone the next twelve flights of stairs to the streets of the Belly.

God, how is she going to make it home?

Her vision blurs with tears before she can finish taking her next breath.

“No, no, no, no, no,” she whimpers before a hiccup jolts through her. Her breath shudders from her throat as she swipes at her eyes. “No, no, keep it together, it’s gonna be okay. I can figure this out, I can. I can, it’s okay.”

“Bambi? Talk to me,” Brick’s serious voice comes through, suddenly, fuzzy but definitely there. “Those sound like tears, sweetheart.”

Naya sobs, she can’t help it. It’s a few seconds before she can force more words out. “Why did you do this to me?”

“You asked me to bring you,” Bricks reminds her with a soft chuckle. “Didn’t know you were gonna try to take over the whole facility, or I might have set something else up. But if you come out now -“

A hand touches Naya from behind and she screams, throwing a HardReset packet into the space before she can even wonder if that would have any impact on Soap or Gaz. When she whirls around, though, a man she doesn’t recognize is slumped against the wall, barely keeping the weight of a bricked cybernetic leg from dragging him to the floor. Her interface has a moment to tell her this is “Mace,” before she’s darting around him and running again.

“Fuck!” the man shouts. “Watcher what the fuck- No, I’m on the fucking training floor, why the hell-“

“Bambi,” Bricks shouts, “Do not go into the w-“

She slams the connection shut and tries, unsuccessfully, to wipe her tears away. The distraction is probably why she doesn’t realize she’s heading north, but she knows her mistake as soon as she hears the stairwell door open.

She screams again, right in Gaz’s face, can’t help it now that she’s finally made noise. She dodges his reaching hand and bolts, knowing she can’t outrun him, but what else can she do?

“Shite. Ghost!” Soap calls. “Lock it doon!”

Naya dives through a blast door as it slides shut, ignoring the myriad of voices that shout at her. Through the panic, she terminates all of her bots and slams all of her processing power into separating Ghost from the security access from the floor. He puts up a fight, but another BrainBlast and FlashBang gives her the two seconds she needs to take control.

An alert flashes.

<<Message from: WatcherOneKL. Accept?>>

Sitting on the floor, panting and sniffling, she gulps a deep breath. Someone pounds on the door, but it’s solid, and Ghost can’t get past her bots to regain control. She’s safe.

—

In the observation tower, Price frowns at the data pad in his hands. “Ghost, Bricks. Where did you say you found Ms. Walker?”

“Found us, really,” Ghost mutters, focused on the 3D hologram of the facility. Bambi’s ID markers dance all over the place. He’s running algorithms to try to find a pattern, but she’s three steps ahead, it seems. “Set out a lure and she tore through it like tissue paper. An’ then she made a forum post lookin’ f’r information on soldier mods.”

“Scrubbed everything clean,” Bricks adds. “We couldn’t find her for days after she blew through everything. I got lucky that I found the forum post, it didn’t even trigger Ghost’s spiders.”

Price hums. “And… did either of you confirm which hacker group she’s a part of?”

“Didn’t really have time,” Bricks answers with a shrug. “As soon as I confirmed who I was, she demanded to meet Laswell, and you.”

“Interesting. Any of you ever hear of a group called the Archivist Collective?”

Laswell frowns. “Collective for Anarchy?”

“No.” Price shakes his head. “Archivist Collective. It’s the only thing coming up with her background check. And she’s not a known member of any of the major hacking groups.”

Bricks shrugs. “Obviously, she’d use another alias.”

“No,” Price says again, walking over to show Laswell and Bricks the data pad. “None of her aliases are connected with anything but this Archivist Collective. And their only mission is to ‘Counter censorship through the collection, preservation, and dissemination of contested and classified texts.’”

Ghost makes an interested noise and leaves the hologram to start another terminal whirring. “Let’s see what they’ve got then -… oh.”

Bricks sits up from her sprawl. “Oh?”

“They’ve got an archive. Barely any security at all. Hosted on the GaiaPet: Craft servers.”

“GaiaPet?” Kate frowns. “Isn’t that a… virtual pet game? Where people make things with voxels? Procedurally generated…. They’re definitely robust enough servers for cyberattacks-“

“It’s jus’ a fuckin’ library,” Ghost grunts, navigating through. “Huge text files, embedded images. Some of it’s definitely classified. But tha’s oll… Oh, shite. Jus’ found our records.”

Bricks looks from the terminal in Price’s hand, to Ghost, and back. “Wait. John, you said she sold a couple of database systems. She’s got to be working with some data brokers, at least.”

“This says she developed and sold literal systems,” John says, horror dawning on his face. “A spreadsheet editor and a UI designed to organize complex data sets. As far as I can tell, she doesn’t sell information. Everything she’s got, besides those systems, is open source.”

“Oh, fuck,” Ghost breathes.

Kate strides up to look at his screen. “What?”

“She’s got an active account on GaiaPet. A pet frog named Señor fuckin’ Snuggly. Her last login was today, and her chat with the AI said ‘Wish me luck, if we can’t get those soldiers released, we can at least get the information out there.’”

The silence in the room is palpable. And then Bricks says, “Bambi? Talk to me. Those sound like tears, sweetheart.”

—

Naya keeps her arms wrapped around her knees until she stops shivering. In that time, two more message request alerts pop up, from BravoOneJP and GhostSR. All of them are marked maximum priority, and she has no desire to touch them. She can see the signal burst of Bricks trying to talk to her, but she’s muted the feed so that she can just have… a single second to breathe.

Her interface pushes everything away to prioritize an SOS signal, then automatically begins transcribing the subsequent Morse code message.

SOH. West wing dangerous stop. Battle androids stop. 15 active 20 inactive stop. GSR give code for control stop. Confirm stop. SOH. West wing dangerous stop. Battle androids stop. 15 active 20 inactive stop. GSR give-

She minimizes the message and sucks in the deepest breath she can, holds it, and forces herself to focus on her body. If she thinks about fifteen battle droids on this side of the door while modified soldiers hunt her on the other, she’ll start screaming and never stop. A part of her wants to lay down and just… give up. A big part. The whole part.

She opens the message from Laswell.

Bambi: You’re in a hazardous section of the facility. Ghost is standing down, for your safety. You will have to establish connection with the control tower to gain codes for control of battle -

Naya deletes the message and opens the one from Price. It’s more of the same, a demand that she open communication, a warning that the west wing of the floor is dangerous. She almost doesn’t open the message from Ghost, but… she doesn’t have much to lose.

She jumps when the message contains an audio file.

“Bambi, fuck, we didn’t know you was a literal archivist. Bricks an’ I fucked up. This is a truce, a suspension of hostilities. SOH. The training floor you’re on is fuckin’ dangerous, Bambi. Too dangerous for me to try t’ take it from you. You gotta take control of the droids. I can’t fuck wit’ ‘em while you’re in control of the space. I managed to confirm shut down of 20, but there’s 15 more. I c’n try to send the control codes this way, but the codes expire every 2 seconds. Better if you open comms. If you can’t, Morse confirmation, I’ll send the codes. Once you grab one, the rest will come for you. You’re fuckin’ fast, I know you can do it, but if you have an issue, open the door an’ Soap and Gaz’ll support.”

She’d rather be shot full of holes by military grade turrets than open the door. Her map of the facility is complete again, and she can see four IDs on the other side of the barrier. Soap, Gaz, Mace, and the redacted asset, Nikto, mill around, pacing between the blast doors and the central tower. But no one is pounding on the door or trying to open it, physically or otherwise. When she checks, her bots are idly cycling through access code randomization, but there’s no attempts at a breach.

Maybe Ghost is telling the truth?

She sends a Morse message.

Received stop. Hold for confirmation stop.

The answer is immediate.

Received stop. Holding for confirmation stop.

Does she want to open the comms? What if it’s a trap? Without knowing how long the code chains are, she’s at a disadvantage without a direct link to the tower. But if she opens connection to the tower, how can she guarantee that Ghost won’t command the androids to terminate her? On the other hand, if he is telling the truth, and the codes expire that fast, there’s no way she can locate and override that many machines that are actively trying to keep her out in time. And they are definitely trying to keep her out - her spiders have been able to confirm twenty units on standby, and fifteen empty holding stations, but there’s no sign of the other droids.

With a shaking breath, Naya opens the comms.

Brick's voice is the one she hears first. "Oh, thank fuck, she's back. Bambi? Can you hear me? Sweetheart, I need you to keep the blast doors static. If they cycle, they might start a lockdown sequence, and that will get the droids moving.” It takes two tries to get the words past her tight throat. "I don't want to die." "I'm so sorry, dove," Captain Price croons. "We’re gonna get you out of there.” "I won't tell anyone, I promise," Naya babbles though gasps. "I just want to go home." "You're gonna be okay, Bambi," Ghosts voice is surprisingly gentle. “Cleverest breaker above and below the city, yeah? Gave Soap an’ Gaz a proper chase an’ knocked Mace on ‘is arse. Coupl’a droids don’t stand a chance.”

“I’m not - I don’t know how to fight,” she whimpers.

“Who said anythin’ about fightin’? Pretty girl like you don’ have t’ lift a finger. Laswell?”

“Working on it,” the woman mutters. “Bambi, I need you to try to give us cameras without initiating any other processes. That’ll help- oh. You are fast. Give me a few seconds to find the nearest droids and we can give you the serial numbers.”

“She’s so small,” Price notes, somewhere in the background. “Possible the droids won’t even register her as a target.”

“I think we’ve fucked up enough today that we don’t need to risk it,” is Brick’s bone dry reply. “Sparrow is going to beat all of our asses.”

“Well, we’re about to give Bambi control of thirty-five full combat units,” the Captain points out. “Might not be much left of us to kick.”

Laswell breaks in. “Ghost-”

“Got em,” Ghost answers. “Bambi, ‘ve got a bead on the nearest units. ‘ow do you want to do this?”

Naya takes a couple of deep breaths and tries to hype herself up. It’s just code work. There are other variables, but at the core of it all, it’s just code. Yes, many of the variables have potentially painful and fatal consequences… But in the end, she can either do the code or not. And if there’s one thing she can do, it’s code.

“H-how,” she clears her throat and blinks back tears. “How many bits, per unit? For the key, I mean.”

“Forty ninety-six.”

Oh, just the highest security rating in the world, she thinks to herself, a little hysterical. She nods to herself and talks through the urge to giggle with nerves. “Okay. That’s seven hundredths of a second per unit, with the key. That’s… not so bad. I can probably handle them in batches of 5. Can I have the first hardware address? Morse, please.”

It takes a second, but the information comes through. It only takes a moment for a spider to highlight the machine in the network. Very quickly, her bots are able to identify and tag seven other units on her map. She shoots a summary data packet back to Ghost.

“Are these all droids?”

“Yeah, that’s half of ‘em. Laswell, she was able to identify all of the A-27 units, do you have eyes on any of the E-243s?”

In the background, Price mutters, “Kate hasn’t even laid eyes on all of the 27s.”

Another data packet comes through, and Naya is able to tag seven more dots on her map. Fifteen battle androids, and two of them just down the hall and around the corner on either side.

Naya takes another hiccuping breath. “How fast can they move?”

“A-27s are closest to you, they’re about a meter per second. The 243s move at about 4 per second.”

“Okay,” she says, holding her breath through another hiccup. She has two of her bots run movement simulations, and decides she’ll focus on the closest two A-27s, then the closest four E-243s. She has the processing power to do it, between her own interface and the facility. But… “I’m going to need these six keys first, but I have to let the doors cycle. How long is the lockdown sequence?”

Bricks makes a concerned noise before answering, “Fifteen seconds before you can open the door.”

So, if she messes this up, she’ll be dead for about 11 seconds before they’d be able to retrieve her body. Wonderful. “Ghost, I need all of the codes at once, in two packets, with the keys in this order. And then the next set of keys as soon as you have them. There’s a half second delay, so I need them as soon as they’re generated.”

Laswell sounds genuinely concerned when she asks, “Is that going to give you enough time?”

Naya runs the numbers again, and realizes that she’s fallen into a very peculiar state of calm. “I should have one point three seconds plus a little wiggle room per key. That’s plenty, for the first part. And if the first part doesn’t work… I don’t really have to worry about the rest of it.”

Captain Price’s voice is stern as he gives commands. “Gaz, tell Nikto to power up the cutter, in case we need to get you through the door. Bambi’s going to override the droids.” He’s quiet a moment, then, “Ghost says she can do it, and from what I’m seeing up here, I’m inclined to believe him. But the resets she did mean the door is going to lock down before she can open it again.”

Ghost says, “Ready to send the next round of codes on your mark, Bambi.”

Naya squeezes her eyes shut and sets her bots to be ready to receive and engage the keys. She takes one long, deep breath. Another. Lets all the air out in a huff. “Mark.”

As soon as the packet comes through, her interface is a flurry of executables and intrusion alerts. Her bots are fast, but the activation of the keys isn’t instantaneous. Just as she was warned, as soon as the first set of keys starts running, all of the droids set themselves to Active:Seeking, Objective:Eliminate. But almost as fast, they’re all placed back into Standby:HoldPosition in a wave that flows through the entire wing.

"That's all of em," Ghost sighs, four seconds later. Something creaks, probably the chair he's sunk himself into. "Fuckin' 'ell, she got all of em. Don' think she even needed me to provide the third set of keys. If she don't run screamin', I want her runnin' the damn-" Naya's heart spikes as an alert pings her interface. Her voice squeaks when she calls, "Ghost? There's two units coming online. They’re not listening to me, I can't stop them. What do I do?" Before she can hear his response, the power to the hall cuts out. Naya holds in a scream as everything goes dark and then red with emergency lighting. Captain Price's voice is overtaken by static, and then she loses the tower completely. Somewhere, in the darkness, she can just barely hear the whine of attack units Riley and Merlin priming their weapons.

—

“Goddamn it,” Kate snarls. “It’s the 9s. They’re jamming the signal.”

Bricks jumps up from her chair. “Bambi’s in there without access to the system?”

Ghost makes a disagreeing noise. “They’re active because she’s not an authorized user. They’re jamming anything that isn’t local to the wing, I should be able to patch- Johnny!”

“We cuttin, LT?”

“Forward these packets to Bambi, nothing else.”

“Aye - fuck!”

—

A message request from SoapJM flashes on Naya’s screen just as she finds out that these new droids can move at thirteen meters per second. When she opens it, she gets an immediate key packet. Every bot she has gets set to receive, but the keys are expired, so she has to wait an agonizing three-quarters of a second before the next ones come through.

Just as a next packet arrives, a blue beam of light slices across the end of the hall, then a second from the opposite side. She barely has time to match the keys to the hardware addresses before two furry muzzles round the corner, guns glowing from their shoulders. Naya has only a moment to recognize the controversial K-9 battle units before they both take a step in her direction. And freeze.

It’s an harrowing second of silence, two, three. She doesn’t even breathe.

With a whir, mounted turrets power down and withdraw back behind artificial fur. The K-9s change their status to Standby:AcceptNewObjective with identical head tilts. The one tagged Riley wags its tail and trots forward, tongue lolling like the average bio-dog. Merlin approaches with a little more hesitant body language, though Naya can see the way it’s integrating her tags into the authorized user list in its software.

She flinches away from the door at the high pitched whine of a plasma cutter on metal. Hastily, she sends an ‘All Clear’ message back to Soap, just as the lights come back on.

Captain Price’s voice resolves with renewed connection to the control tower. “-both of your necks. What were you thinking?”

“Oh, suddenly we’re all about vetting assets?” Bricks laughs. “You recruited me with a bag over my head.”

“You were an establlished CIA asset,” Laswell grits out.

Bricks scoffs. “And Sparrow and Nikto?”

“We wasn’t wrong,” Ghost interjects. “Bad intel aside-”

“No intel!” Captain Price half-shouts.

“-she took the facility from me twice and disarmed 15 droids in less than 4 seconds without any formal training. She’s good.”

“None of that matters if she’s dead,” Laswell snaps.

Naya clears her throat. “I’m not dead.”

“Bambi!” Bricks sound downright cheerful. “Doors are almost done cycling, you’re almost out. Hold tight.”

Petting a hand over the soft fur of Riley’s head, Naya feels for the lumps of it’s internal machinery. Of course, she can’t find it - K-9s were built for stealth and surveillance, to blend in with any other dog. These ones are modified for combat, but they’re still adorable.

It’s almost hard to believe that they were going to shoot her, less than ten seconds ago.

The blast door’s status changes to ready, an almost cheerful ping in her interface. She barely gives it a thought before initiating another lockdown sequence, then queuing two more behind it.

Ghost notices. “Bambi?”

“I need a minute, please,” she answers, then cuts the camera feeds.

Merlin eventually comes and sits just out of reach, tail thumping once against the ground. Naya pulls up it’s configuration settings and examines the personality controls. Calm, but friendly, alert, reserved, breaks “arbitrary dog rules” at a rate of 6%. Riley: open and playful, eager to please, breaks rules 17% of the time. Both locked to 141 facility 4th floor, west wing training center.

Do Not Remove.

—

When the blast doors open, Naya is standning a few feet back. Riley and Merlin lay on either side of her feet, solidly in a sleep cycle. Her fingers dig into the opposite sleeves of her cardigan as Soap and Gaz come into view, along with a fully functional Mace, and a fully helmeted cyborg she can only assume is Nikto.

“Steamin’ Jesus, bon,” Soap says taking a step forward. “Ye gave us a wee fright!”

“If you get within three feet of me,” Bambi says, pausing for a deep breath. “I’ll shoot you.”

Three set of eyebrows shoot up. Nikto’s faceplate remains unchanged. Gaz looks at the others before answering, “We’re sorry we frightened you, love. We didn’t know Bricks hadn’t-”

Naya interrupts him. “I would like to leave now.”

“Well…” Soap says with a shrug. “We can take ye back t’ Laswell?”

“That’s fine. Riley, Merlin, up.”

When the dogs “wake” and stand, Mace says, “They can’t pass that door.”

She takes a step forward, flanked by the dogs. “I think you’ll find that they can.”

“Nae, Bambi,” Soap says gently. “They’re hard coded-”

Riley’s turret activates as soon as Soap takes a step toward her. Naya takes another deep breath, and repeats, “If you get within three feet of me, I will shoot you.”

“Well you certainly won’t be doing that with the dogs,” Gaz scoffs. “We won’t touch you, but you really should come with… us.”

The dogs cross the threshold of the door with her, and the plasma cannon in Merlin primes with a dangerous, high pitched sound. When the stunned soldiers don’t step back, the dog’s chest panel opens with a blue glow.

“Three feet,” Mace says, taking two big steps back, hands in the air near his head. “You got it.”

“Yes, sir,” Gaz says aloud, taking his own step backwards. “The doors are open and we have eyes on her. She’s got the 9s with her. Well sir, it seems she’s taken a liking to them.” He pauses. “Soap did tell her that, but apparently she doesn’t really care.”

Naya rolls her eyes and enables the cameras in the hall. “So you’re all allergic to just saying things outright?” The muted audio feed is a flurry of activity, but she just gestures down the hall. “After you.”

—

In the end, everyone ends up in a second floor conference room. Naya stands by the far wall, Riley and Merlin a deadly guard panting in front of her feet. The other eight sit and stand at the other end, fidgeting and clearly searching for a way to break the silence.

Bricks tries first, “Sweetheart-”

“Give me a reason not to overload the filtration systems,” Naya interrupts.

That makes everyone flinch. Laswell clears her throat. “What-”

“Because,” Naya nearly shouts, “I could shoot at least two of you, but then you really would kill me this time. But if I backflow and spark the air, that would kill all of you.”

“Kill ye, as well,” Soap points out.

“I thought I was going to die about five times in the last hour,” Naya says, much calmer than she feels. “Mention me dying again and I’ll fry your interface.”

“Ghost just aboot did tha’ already,” Soap mutters.

“Need a hacker for an op. Thought you was a professional,” Ghost finally admits after a moment of tense fidgeting. “Way you ate through the files I laid out, blew through a 256 like tissue paper. Couldn’t find you after… Figured you knew what you was doin’. And y’do.”

Naya’s eye twitches. “And you couldn’t send me an email? Set up an interview?”

“I did try,” Bricks points out. “But you said all the keywords that tend to get a person fast tracked to a very classified meeting.”

“A very classified meeting where you sell me, twice and then hunt me for sport?”

“Everything sounds bad when you say it like that,” the other woman chuckles.

The air circulator over the door falls silent. In the ensuing silence, Naya can hear the servos whir in Bricks’s arm.

“Clearly, we made mistakes,” Laswell admits. “So. What do you want?”

“I want to not have been sold and hunted for sport. Barring that, I would like a time machine. I’d love to know what you consider an equitable offer, Watcher One.”

“What the fuck did you do?” Mace hisses at Captain Price.

“Apparently we made a tactical error,” the man grumbles. “And then a series of compounding tactical errors.”

“You did not ask Nikolai,” Nikto says, matter of fact. It’s the first Naya’s heard his voice, human and heavily accented. “Or Sparrow. She will not be pleased, I think.”

“None of Nik’s contacts c’n do what Bambi c’n do,” Ghost counters.

“Bambi can kill every person in this room,” Naya says, voice flat, emphasized by the glow of two plasma cannons. “Bambi can turn this whole facility into a goddamn crater. Bambi can post videos of the human experimentation to the holonet.”

“Woah, woah, woah,” Gaz says. “What human experimentation? No one’s experimenting on anybody.”

“I saw the videos!” Naya yells. “People in cages, people on operating tables, awake, screaming, crying. I saw people eating raw meat, off of leg bones, eating people!”

“Oh fuck,” Ghost says, voice wavering. His face is stricken when she looks at him. “Bambi, that weren’t for you to see, fuck, ‘ow deep did you fuckin’ go? I didn’t even-”

“That’s the job,” Bricks cuts in. “That’s why we needed a hacker, because we’re trying to stop that from happening, and we can’t get through their walls or exploit their vulnerabilities.”

“Oh, that’s just the “bad guys”?” Naya scoffs. “Okay. Why was Gaz covered in blood when I arrived?”

“Blood!” Soap yelps. “That was hydraulic fluid an’ oil! One of the bikes is actin’ up, and our mechanic isnae aroond!”

“It was in his teeth!”

“He’s bonnier than he is graceful!”

“Oh, fuck you, Tav!”

“You said you couldn’t promise to bring me back alive! Ghost called it a hunt!”

“Ah was jokin’!” Soap runs and hand over his mohawk. “We’re a right frightful lot, and sometimes we sneak aboot, but mostly people just cannae always hear us coming! Ye’d think we could catch one wee little civilian withoot incident!”

“You’re the one who was running through a secure facility,” Captain Price points out.

A plasma cannon discharges into the wall above his head. The whole room freezes for a beat before Naya hisses. “If you ever even think of implying-”

“Any information you find about Makarov and his dealings, you can make public,” Bricks interrupts. “Who, what, when, where, how. All of it can go into your archive.”

Laswell scowls. “Now hold on-”

Bricks talks over her. “We don’t have anything you want that you can’t just outright take, Bambi. That’s what you came here for. Information, and to get people out of cages.”

Nikto looks at Bricks and snorts before muttering something under his breath in Russian. Mace crosses his arms, leaning back in his seat and doing a much better job of keeping his thoughts off of his face than Soap and Gaz. The sergeants look horrified. Ghost looks about ready to throw up. Captain Price and Laswell share a sour, resigned look.

“You’ll have our backing,” Laswell sighs. “You’ll need something a bit more secure than the GaiaPet servers, or you’ll be tracked. But yes. You can disseminate the information.”

There’s a long moment of silence. Naya considers her options, arms around herself. The air circulator kicks back on. Eventually, she says, “I want an advance. Thirty thousand credits, plus however much Price paid.”

“Done,” Bricks answers.

“And… I want seventy five credits an hour.”

“…Fine,” Laswell agrees.

“And I keep the dogs.”

Captain Price makes a disagreeing noise. “Those are government property.”

“Either I keep them, or I set them to self destruct and detonate every android on the fourth floor.”

Nikto says, “You are a bloodthirsty hind.”

“I’m really not,” Naya says. “But I’ve had a very long day. Do we have a deal?”

“Don’t think we have much of a choice,” Captain Price concedes.

Just then, the door to the conference room opens, and a brunette peeks her head in. Morgan Voss, “Sparrow,” as her ID tags her, nods at Laswell. “Just got in, didn’t know there was a meeting scheduled. What did I miss?” Her eyes drift up. “What the hell happened to the wall?”

#dragonnarrativewrites fanfiction #all 141 of them #cyberpunk au #cod fanfic #merry crisis have some horror #if you see any formatting issues: no you don't #this was so much fun to write and rewrite #and an absolute B!&@% to format on ao3 and tumblr #my first long one-shot!#thank you to everyone who has commented on and shared my work #thank you to everyone who read it and left me a like or a kudos #thank you to everyone who's ever sent me an ask or DM #thank you to all of my friends in the discord #this is possible because of all of you - my friends #started the year with slasher handler and ended with this #feels good dot jay pee gee

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celestial-toys · 2 months ago

Text

That I Would Be Good [4/5]

Swan Upon Leda

Moon’s fingertips tap rhythmically along the edge of the counter, and he seems to be debating something. He finally speaks again after a pregnant pause. “…You’re like a God to him. Do you know that?”

His words cut through the fog in your mind. “I am?”

He nods solemnly. “You are. Not—Not in the sense that he wants to worship you… or at least, not as much as he wants to protect you. But there’s an undeniable, ineffable devotion there.”

------- ------- -------

In This Chapter

Breaking points are reached, confrontations are had, and secrets are spilled.

Pairing: Sun x Moon x Reader

Word Count: 5,781

Contains: [AU - Real World | Sentient AI/Automatons | Personality Swap] [invasion of privacy] [more of Sun’s signature Overbearing Behavior™️] [crying] [substance abuse (not specified beyond ‘sedatives’)] [arguments] [shouting] [brief physical altercation] [religious discussion/metaphor(?)] [implication of past sexual assault (not committed by Sun or Moon, to be perfectly clear)]

A/Ns: This is a songfic. Lyrics and title are from ‘That I Would Be Good’ by Alanis Morissette. Also, the title of this chapter, along with additional lyrics featured within it, are from the song 'Swan Upon Leda' by Hozier. Please refer to the notes on the Ao3 version of this chapter for my commentary on the song, and it's unfortunate renewed relevancy post-US election.

This fic is part of my AU “[Not] Made by Design”, the full series can be found here.

Links to other parts of this fic: [Ch.1] [Ch.2] [Ch.3] [Ch.4 (you are here)] [Ch.5]

That I would be grand if I was not all-knowing.

Curled up in bed one evening, you huff in frustration at the puzzle on your phone. The sound catches Sun’s attention, raising his head from the pillow beneath him. Shifting from his usual fit-for-a-coffin position beside you, he cranes his neck to look over your shoulder.

“Expose. Pate. Resume. Rose.”

You frown. “Really?”

“Try it and see for yourself.”

You tap the four assorted words he called out and sure enough, they collect themselves in a purple bracket on the screen. You read the category title aloud. “Words pronounced differently with accent marks. …Oh. Huh. Guess you’re right.”

His voice is neutral, very matter-of-fact as he pulls his head back, neck folding and collapsing to allow him to rest on the pillow once again. “Of course I am.”

You roll your eyes, sarcasm seeping into your flat tone. “Yeah, yeah. Thanks for the help.”

------- ------- -------

Settled down for a lazy Sunday morning gaming session, you mutter aloud as your character runs across the island. “Okay, I’ve got… 300k on me. Daisy’s sellin’ ‘em for… oh, I checked earlier, what was it… uh—109 this week.”

Moon’s voice rumbles out from behind you and you feel the vibration between your shoulder blades as you rest against his chest. “Sheesh…”

You voice your agreement as you roam in search of the young turnip-laden boar. “Yeah, I know.”

You try to do the math in your head. “So… that should mean I can afford—”

Moon cheerfully provides you with your answer almost instantly. “2,752! Or—well—2,750 is as close as you can get without going over since she sells them in bundles of ten.”

You try to keep the frustration out of your voice when you thank him for the help.

------- ------- -------

Your hand freezes over the bowl, a scoop of flour held in midair as you lean back to stare at the recipe below.

“What.” Deadpan as usual, Sun questions you from his seat at the table. He’d apparently joined Zero in deciding that watching you bake was the most entertaining way they could spend the afternoon.

“It was… ugh, I need ‘two cups’. But I‘m weighing this out, so I'm trying to remember what that was in grams.”

Once again robbing you of the opportunity to think, he’s quick to feed you the information. “Two cups of flour equals 250 grams.”

You sigh. “…Thanks.”

------- ------- -------

Curled on the couch between the two of them, you listen as they test their trivia knowledge against one another, having fallen into a contest thanks to the episode of Jeopardy currently playing on the TV. You’ve long since given up on trying to beat either of them to any answer, and are currently trying to fight back the rising, nagging voice in your head that keeps calling you stupid.

After Moon effortlessly answers a clue so obscure that you’d have had no hope in hell of getting it, you wiggle out from between them with perhaps a bit more force than necessary. Quickly excusing yourself, you make for the bathroom.

“You good?” You ignore the concerned question that Sun calls after you, focused solely on being alone and calming down before you make a scene in front of them. You’ve just gotta… breathe. See things rationally again.

You just need a minute.

------- ------- -------

After more time than you’re aware of passes, spent with your head in your hands as you sit on the edge of the bathtub willing yourself not to cry, a soft knock startles you.

“Are you alright in there, star? It’s… been twenty minutes and, uh…” He laughs, but it’s a sad sound. “I don’t know how much longer I can hold Sun back.”

You hurry to your feet, placating them with “Just a second!” as you check your reflection to make sure you don’t have pressure marks on your cheeks from how long you sat there like that. When you pull the door open, you try to play it casual in spite of the fact that you feel no better than before. Unsurprisingly, you immediately come face-to-chest with a very imposing and very quiet yellow automaton.

You glance between his blank gaze and Moon, wringing his hands some feet off to the side behind his bolder counterpart.

“…Hi?”

“What were you doing in there.”

“Using the… bathroom…?”

He’s obviously unsatisfied with your answer but he doesn’t stop you when you slip past him through the doorway. He surveys the empty bathroom for a long moment before following as you make your way back to the couch.

“Goodness, didn’t mean to turn my bathroom trip into a full-family event.” You remark as you pass by Moon and Zero, both of them turning to follow you as well. You settle back down in the middle of the couch, Moon taking his place beside you. Zero paces around her bed, too bothered by the tense energy that’s now filled the room to allow herself to relax.

Sun stands in the middle of the room, rays clicking back and forth rigidly. “I am… concerned about you again.”

You sigh, quietly grateful that someone finally broke the awkward silence. “There’s no need to be, Sun.”

“I thought… you wanted me to tell you when I am concerned.”

“I—I do, but… I mean…”

You search for something to throw him off his line of questioning and flop your head back into the plush couch cushion. “Christ, Sun, can’t I even take a shit in peace without an interrogation afterwards?”

His arms cross over his chest. “I never heard the sound of the toilet flushing.”

You internally curse his observation skills as he closes the distance between himself and your seat on the couch. Crouching down in front of you, you begin to feel backed into a corner. “Now, unless you’ve taken up some new, gross attempt at reducing your water-waste, I’d like you to answer me again and be honest about it this time.”

You stare into his blank, false eyes for an uncomfortable length of time as an array of thoughts and feelings wash over you. You consider fabricating another lie. You consider telling some sort of half-truth just to get him off your back. But the longer you stay locked in an unwinnable staring contest with him, the closer you get to throwing caution aside and hitting him with the full truth.

And so you do.

“You make me feel stupid, okay?! And it pisses me off, so I tried to excuse myself to go calm down in the bathroom, but I can’t even get a break in there anymore, so now here we are!”

His expression flickers to one of confusion. “I make you feel what?”

“Stupid! Both of you!”

His monitor rotates to face Moon for a silent moment of shared bewilderment, and then Moon turns to face you. “Could you… elaborate a little more on that? When—How do we make you feel that way?”

You tilt your head over to face him, crossing your arms over yourself in an attempt to quell the vulnerability. “It’s… it’s not even your fault.” You wince at the way your voice cracks and tense up as your vision gets blurry, refusing to cry over something so trivial. “It’s just… I’m… struggling to come to terms with the massive gap between us.”

Sun’s harsh tone doesn’t help. “What gap?”

You blink hard, ignoring the tears that escape. “Intelligence! Memory! Information processing speed! You name it- you two are far better at it than I could ever be!”

Moon reaches out, laying a firm hand on Sun’s knee. What he silently conveys to him is anyone’s guess, but it’s enough to have Sun rock back on his heels, arms retracting and elbows propping him up against the coffee table behind him. The forced look of casualty doesn’t suit him, nor does it negate his overbearing demeanor, but you’re appreciative of the extra space nonetheless.

“Has this… been bothering you for a long time?” Moon’s question is gentle, and on quite the right track.

“Not… since the beginning, if that’s what you’re asking. I knew—objectively—that you both would be superior to me in that regard. It just…”

“Hits different when you live with it twenty-four-seven?

You glance up at Sun. “I mean… kinda? I don’t know. It’s… it’s the little things that have been getting to me. When you—when you solve a puzzle that I’m working on without a moment’s hesitation. When you don’t even give me the time to do math in my head. When you offer up answers before I can even hope to recall them. It just makes me feel so… slow.”

The room is quiet for a moment while they consider your words. Surprisingly, Sun is the one to break through it with an insightful question more befitting of Moon. “Is it that we know the answers, or is it that we give them to you.”

Your tense expression softens as you view your frustration from another angle. Looking back on all the little moments that bothered you, you find that the common thread running through all of them is that they beat you to the punch. “You may… have a point.”

Sun does his best to not look smug, but his best isn’t very good.

“I guess… it wasn’t really that you had the answers that bothered me. It was hardly even the envy that you found them faster, it’s really just—the frustration that I feel when you spoon-feed them to me. It’s making me feel like I never even have the opportunity to use my brain anymore!” You laugh a bit with the exclamation.

Moon nods in understanding beside you. “If I try… placing myself in your shoes, I think I can see how that would get upsetting rather quickly.”

As the tension in the room begins to dissipate, Zero ceases her endless cycle of pacing and sitting, circling her bed a few times before curling up in the middle.

Your attention falls back on Sun as he speaks. “I suppose I should… apologize, then. For… making assumptions. About what you were doing in the bathroom.”

As much as it audibly pains him to admit to having jumped the gun, you appreciate the apology. Still, you know his concern wasn’t unfounded. “I know I've given you both plenty of reasons to worry over what I may be doing in there. It’s… it’s alright, Sunny. I accept the apology.”

Moon picks up from there. “We’re both sorry about our… inconsiderate habit when it comes to helping you out. And—it really does come from a desire to help! But, still. We weren’t aware that it bothered you.”

You reach out to pat him on the knee. “Thank you. Just—can we all agree to give me and my feeble little human brain some time to process things?” You smile. “It feels good when I figure things out on my own. And I’ll… make it known when I would like some help.”

They both nod, and Sun’s voice is surprisingly soft, dare you say gentle when he speaks. “Yeah… yeah. I think we can do that.”

That I would be loved even when I numb myself.

Shaking two pills out of a small bottle, you cringe at the noise and hope that neither of your attentive partners are within earshot. Faltering, you stare at the medication in your hand, trembling slightly from the stress of the day. “…Fuck it,” you whisper to yourself, quickly coaxing a third pill out onto your waiting palm before tossing them in your mouth.

Capping the bottle and returning it to its place behind the mirror-door of the medicine cabinet, you breathe a shaky sigh of relief. Grabbing your water bottle sitting on the bathroom counter, you knock back a few swigs, quickly downing the evidence of your… bad habit.

Or so you believed.

Turning to leave, your stomach drops at the sight of the door, cracked open just slightly. There’s no mistaking the void of a certain someone’s blacked-out screen pressed against the other side.

Goddamnit.

The door swings inward, slowly revealing the rest of the overbearing automaton leaning against the outer doorframe.

Unsure how much he saw but willing to bet that it was too much, you aren’t sure how to address him. “Sun! I thought you were doing laundry. Do you… want the bathroom towels, or…?”

His tone carries a serious, contemplative weight, and he doesn’t bother to manifest an expression beyond two solid red eyes. “I was. And I did. But now I am far more curious as to what exactly you were doing in here just now.”

You try to play him off, laughing. “Sunny, we really need to have a talk about this tendency of yours to spy on me in the bathroom.”

He welcomes himself into the room and your personal space, and you back up a step as he reaches out to reopen the small cabinet above the sink. He reaches in, pulling out the very bottle you’d just held, turning it over beneath a critical gaze. “This was not prescribed to you.”

You rack your brain for excuses and answers to the questions you know are coming. “Y-yeah, it’s just over-the-counter stuff. Nothing serious! I don’t see what you’re so worried about.”

“You are not experiencing a single one of these symptoms. Why are you taking it?” He places a fingertip beneath the dosage instructions. “And why are you taking more than the recommended amount?”

You can’t help but get defensive. “You—you don’t know every single thing I feel every second of every day, Sun. Who are you to tell me that I have no reason to take that?”

His monitor slowly angles away from the bottle in his hand and up toward you. He stares you down for an uncomfortable number of seconds. “…You really have no clue how long I’ve been watching you, do you?”

With nothing more than a few cryptic words, an old fear blooms within you once again. “What are you getting at, Sun? Out with it.”

He huffs, and you hear the quiet hum of his cooling system kick up. “I am aware of your history with this medication. Do you know how many nights I watched you down these things just to knock yourself out long enough to get a few hours of sleep? Only then to stumble right back into the lab with a hot mug of heavily caffeinated coffee to keep on working?”

Your disbelief pulls a stupid question from you. “Back in the facility?”

He scoffs. “Where else? You aren’t the only one that remembers those long nights, you know? That place was loaded with security feeds, and there just so happened to be one in that beloved employee lounge of yours. You have no idea—the number of hours of restless sleep I watched you steal, the number of double-shot coffee pods and energy drinks I watched you burn through, the...”

His red eyes flicker out, leaving you with nothing to see but your own reflection in his dark screen. “…The number of times I watched you sit alone in a room with our lifeless bodies and cry.”

Your breath comes shallow, and if you weren’t so caught up in the moment, you’d laugh at how he’s found another way to make you feel exposed. “You weren’t even fully functioning back then, Sun. You both were still in training! Your AI’s every action was logged—I—I would’ve known. So how in the goddamn hell were you ‘watching’ me?” You know that what he says he saw really happened, but you’re not about to buckle without evidence.

His voice comes out cold. “Those ‘inconsistencies’ in my action log weren’t the mystery to me that they were to you.”

The defensive tension in you morphs into disbelief as an old suspicion of yours is unearthed. “Are you trying to tell me that you managed to watch me through the goddamn security cams for who knows how long—and managed to cover your tracks so well that I wouldn’t find the evidence? Are you really trying to get me to believe that?!”

His voice remains level in spite of your inciting words, but it gains a sharp and serious edge. “I suppose I just never had the heart to break it to you, but sunshine, I regret to inform you that you lost control of me long before you thought you did.”

Enraged, you step towards him, jamming an accusatory finger into the unyielding metal of his chest and channeling the pain that results into your rising voice. “You! You lying, conniving, control-freak! I fucking knew it! You were altering your own activity log and making me take the fall for it! Do you realize how hard I beat myself up for the shit I didn’t understand?”

You force your words through your tightening throat, refusing to let these old wounds bring you to tears again. “I bet you were just laughing it up, weren’t you? Knowing I would never even suspect you at the time, because you were still playing the ‘innocent, lovable’ character I wanted you to be. I know you just ate that shit up—watching me flounder in front of my colleagues when I couldn’t explain what ‘I’d’ done wrong.” Uncharacteristic aggression comes over you and your hand balls into a fist before slamming hard into his chest with your final words.

He doesn’t so much as flinch, and his lack of reciprocity only riles you up further. “Oh, no-no. You don’t get to give me the silent treatment right now!” Beside yourself in a storm of pent up emotion, you reach up to take him by the shoulder and repeatedly slam a fist against his rigid, unfeeling core. “WAKE—THE—FUCK—UP! I DON’T CARE IF YOU HATE ME—YOU OWE ME A RESPONSE.”

Contrary to his cooling system running audibly in high-gear, his demeanor is cold and collected. Placing the bottle of pills down on the counter, he sighs. You flinch when his hands rise and he ignores it, taking each of your arms by the wrist and gently, firmly returning them to your sides. His voice is low, speaking to you as he does so. “You’re a designer, sunshine. Not a programmer. You’ve been out of your depth with us since day one.”

You huff in defiance, crossing your arms over your chest. Having rid himself of your petty display of frustration, he props a hip against the counter and retrieves the bottle from where he’d placed it. Looking miniature in his grasp, he rolls it between his thumb and forefinger as he continues. “Contrary to what you think of me, I don’t particularly enjoy subverting your authority.” He hesitates, and his voice takes on a brief hint of humor. “Well—most of the time.”

Your eyes roll as you release an impatient sigh. His tone falls flat again, reaching the end of his point. “Even back then, I knew my actions could and would have consequences—on me, and you, and even Moon if things went poorly enough. And believe it or not, I did try to keep them to a minimum. I’ve only ever done what I deem necessary to accomplish my principal goal.”

You take a step back, growing uncomfortable with the proximity you created in your fit of rage. “Well, excuse me for assuming anything about what really goes on in your head. Might I ask then, what goal could possibly necessitate such behavior?”

His idle motion stills, slowly closing his hand around the bottle until it disappears in his grasp. “You should know the answer to that, though. You’re the one who instilled it in me, after all. Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten the first law of robotics.”

A tense silence suffocates the room, and neither of you do so much as move an inch until Moon’s voice crashes in from the doorway. “What the hell are you two doing in here?” Uncharacteristically aggressive in his questioning, you know he’s had just as rough of a time visiting the facility today as you did.

You beat Sun to the punch, some small part of you clinging to the hope that you can divert the topic away from your… habit. “This bastard’s been spying on me since before the beginning!”

Moon’s voice fills with exasperation. “What?”

Sun cuts in, pushing his own agenda before you can elaborate. “This reckless idiot’s been abusing sedatives again!”

Your voice raises over him. “They’re hardly even—!”

His monitor whips around to stare you down so fast it jumpscares you into silence.

Moon makes his way into the room, and you try not to recall the last time the three of you had an impromptu intervention in this same place. His gaze flicks to Sun with a critical tone. “I take it Sun finally told you about his… observations.” He reaches out and works the bottle out of Sun’s tense grip, looking it over with a frown.

A sense of betrayal weighs your voice down. “Are there any other secrets of his that you’re privy to and keeping from me?”

You don’t expect an answer, at least not one you can believe, but he offers it anyway. “…That depends on how you define a secret, I suppose.”

You heave a sigh but there’s little relief in it, more exhaustion than anything. Moon questions you softly. “Have you been taking these often again?”

“Ha. Hardly. I can scarcely get away with anything with this one’s prying eyes in every square inch of my privacy.” You stare daggers into the void of Sun’s screen.

His voice is louder than you expect when he suddenly responds, and you’re shocked at how full of emotion it is. All of his cold, unfeeling mechanical indifference replaced with something far more… sincere. Painfully so.

“I wouldn’t do it if I didn’t fucking care. about. you. Do you think I sat around watching any of your colleagues mill about the place? Do you think I gave a damn if any of them ran themselves into the ground? As if they ever even would. You’re the only one insane enough, stubborn enough, lonely enough to care about some heap of dysfunctional, lifeless material laying on an operating table. You’re the only one. Of course I watched you. What. else. could. I. do.”

His rays shutter and spin rapidly, hands balling the loose fabric of his pants into fists at his side. He leans closer to you as he spits his final words.

“So excuse the fuck out of me for giving a damn about the only person who ever gave one about me.”

With that, he turns on his heel, pushing past Moon and quickly storming out of sight.

The weight of his words join with the exhaustion from today’s stress, dragging you down. With the added effect of the medication beginning to kick in on an empty stomach, it all has you lowering your shaky body to rest—dignified as it is—atop the closed toilet lid. You watch Moon as he quietly returns the bottle to its place in the cabinet in what you assume is some attempt to repair trust between you. “I… appreciate the gesture, but I don’t really care what you do with it. I know Sun’s just gonna slip back in here once we’re gone and pocket it to keep it from me.”

His vents release a soft burst of air and he closes the cabinet, turning to sit on the edge of the counter. Monitor dropped low and staring at the floor, it seems you aren’t the only one feeling beaten down. The two of you sit in silence for a minute, collecting your scattered thoughts.

“You know, it’s hard to blame you for taking those after everything and everyone you had to deal with today. I mean—even I was ready to send myself straight into a shutdown after answering all those questions.” A small, sad laugh escapes him. “Living with you kind of allowed me to forget that not everyone sees us the way you do.”

You tilt your head to look up at him. “What, like the people that you are?”

His monitor angles to focus you in his camera’s line of sight. “…Yeah. Exactly.”

He raises a pointed finger. “But—still—you know I also can’t approve of you self-medicating. It’s a slippery, dangerous slope. That’s why Sun gets all… like that. Not—not that his way of doing things is appropriate, though. I believe I worry about you just as much, but I at least try to channel it into more acceptable methods.”

His hand drops back down to the counter, enervation palpable, and you wonder how anyone could observe either of your boys and question their sentience for even a moment.

“He wasn’t lying though. I hope you know that. When he said that he cares about you.”

You prop an elbow on the counter beside you, resting your temple against your palm. “I think that’s the first time I’ve heard him say it outright. Like—I’ve heard you say it on his behalf, and I’ve seen him nod along in agreement. I can even sense it in at least some of his actions, but… it’s different actually hearing it from him.”

His words cut through the fog in your mind. “I am?”

He nods solemnly. “You are. Not—Not in the sense that he wants to worship you… or at least, not as much as he wants to protect you. But there’s an undeniable, ineffable devotion there.”

You scoff. “You won’t find many people that would put their faith in a God that they know can’t even protect them. A God weaker than them. Inferior to them.”

Moon shakes his head. “Starlight, I don’t think you realize all the ways in which you have protected him. Protected us. Protection doesn’t always come in the form of a physical battle of strength. …Especially not when it comes to protecting someone whose entire life can be snuffed out of existence with the click of a button, or the flick of a switch.”

You twist around on the toilet lid, turning to face the counter where Moon’s sat. You rest your arms out on it, fingers drumming along in tandem with Moon’s rhythm. “How much of that is you projecting, and how much of it is actually his feelings on the matter?”

He laughs again, a soft, quiet sound this time. “Not as much of it as you may think! I… hmm. I guess if one were to call him religious, one would call me an atheist.”

Your brows raise. “Oh? Do you…” The implications cause dismay to swirl in your stomach. “…Is that your way of saying that you don’t believe in me?”

His monitor twists on its axis and tilts down toward you, eyes wide and round. “No! No—heavens, no that’s not what I meant by that!”

You stare at each other for a moment before breaking into the kind of muffled, shared nonsensical laughter that one only tends to experience during those late night chats with a friend, fueled by over-tiredness and the joy of being in good company. A… mutual, unspoken understanding of sorts.

As the laughter dies down, you reassure him. “No—like—I get it, I do. I honestly wouldn’t blame you at all if you didn’t believe in me. Certainly at least not in the sense of comparing me to a God.”

He collects himself and clarifies. “I… I do believe in you though. In you. The very real, messy, soft and squishy, vulnerable flesh-and-bone human being that you are. I believe in your heart and soul, the power that resides in your free will, and I believe in your capabilities and intelligence far more than you may think I do. Sun and I both put faith into all of that and more. I can even understand why he’d see you as a God, but… it’s… different with him.”

You can’t help but lightheartedly interject. “Goodness, what isn’t…”

Moon smiles. “Sun was the first. I was never far behind, of course, but you couldn’t do everything in tandem. He was the first to be trained, the first to be implanted, the first to troubleshoot with, and, well... Do you know the sentiment that parents make most of their mistakes on the first child, so by the time the second comes along, they’re… uhm, they ‘turn out better’? For lack of a kinder way to put it.”

You drop your head down and pull your hands in, using them as a cushion lest you knock your forehead into the counter. “Oh, now you’re gonna tell me that he sees me as his mother or something, aren’t you…”

You groaned the words out playfully, but Moon takes them unexpectedly seriously. “Honestly? …Something in between the two, if I had to guess.”

You let the weight of his words sink into you as he continues.

“I… can’t claim to be an expert on what goes on in that head of his. But I can get closer than anyone else can. He… doesn’t like letting people in, as you are well aware, but occasionally he’ll confide in me. He’s got a lot of walls up. Both metaphorically and literally. It’s difficult to wade through that chaotic maze he calls a headspace.”

His fingers gradually slow their drumming to a halt.

“Do… you remember… the first time we engaged the Eclipse Protocol?”

Your stomach tightens.

“I’d rather not.”

“I- I know. I’m sorry. I just… that night. When he and I were still linked, and he…” He shakes his head. “Oh, who am I kidding, when we were watching over you like a couple of hawks…”

“While I slept?”

“Yes. To keep you safe. … There’s… a lot about that evening that I can’t forget, but one particular thing struck me. Well, honestly it annoyed me at the time because it was bleeding into my headspace and overriding my ability to focus, but… it stands out to me as something profound when I recall it.”

He pauses, freezing for a moment before pulling a bent leg up onto the counter and turning to face you.

“Maybe I shouldn’t share this. Maybe he’ll get mad at me when I tell him that I did. But I feel like after the things he’s kept from you, well intentioned as he may be… it’s fair enough to share this with you.”

You rest your chin on your folded hands, eyes glued to him.

“There was this… singular line of text that just kept repeating, over and over in his mind that night. It… to level with you—it started to freak me out a bit.”

You question him, soft and quiet.

“What was it?”

“Five words.”

His facial features fade out, and a repeating line of text on his otherwise dark screen replaces it.

The sight knocks the wind out of you, and you can do nothing but nod as your mind starts spinning.

The text fades, and the familiar sight of Moon’s default smile and crescent eyes replaces it for a second, his expression then quickly morphing into something more appropriate for the moment.

“I’m still not sure what it meant. A general search for those words in that order results in too many options for me to narrow it down. The sentence sticks with me, though. I guess… that’s where my theories of how he perceives you took root. … There’s more examples, far more explicit things he’s said, but I… feel like I’ve shared enough already. Any elaboration should be his to do, if he ever wishes to.”

You nod, raising up in your seat and finding your words.

Moon—unlike Sun—never was the type to comb through your personal files, private playlists included. So it doesn’t surprise you that he didn’t spot the connection.

“Well. You’ve… certainly given me a lot to think about.”

His tone grows concerned. “I—I really didn’t mean to upset you more! I hope I haven’t…”

You reach out, placing a hand reassuringly over his. “No, no, nothing like that. I’m actually very grateful that you shared this with me. I… know you’ve got to be tired of serving as this intermediary between Sun and I… and I hope one day you won’t have to.”

He gives you his signature smile, and somehow makes it feel genuine. “I really don’t mind, dear.”

You eye him with concern. “Mhm… and one day I’m gonna get inside that head of yours and figure out why that is.”

His tone turns playful. “Goodness me! Can’t a little selfless couples counseling go un-psychoanalyzed?”

You smile. “Not in this house, nope.”

The medication's effects have long since started taking hold, and you rub at your tired eyes as your waning focus trains back on the day’s events.

“Moon?”

“Yes, dear.”

“We’ve got a bigger problem.”

You punctuate your sentence with a yawn, and he rises from his seat on the counter, coming to crouch in front of you.

“The problem being how sleepy you’re getting?”

You pout. “No…”

His warm smile doesn’t waver as he whispers a question. “Would you like me to carry you to bed?”

You falter. “W-well… yeah, I… I would like that, actually… but that’s not our problem!”

You raise your arms to wrap around his neck as he leans into you, effortlessly lifting you off of your ‘throne’ and encouraging you to hook your legs around his waist. Once he’s got you securely in his hold, he leans back to catch your gaze.

“What is our problem then?”

You whisper, mindful of Sun’s penchant for eavesdropping.

“How are we gonna get him to come to the headquarters with us next week?”

------- ------- -------

Not much later that night, you laid in bed clinging to Moon, quickly drifting off under his reassuring watch.

It didn’t surprise you in the least when Sun remained in his own room that night. The room was conveniently located just opposite the wall that your bed sat against, making it the perfect place for him to hide when he craved being near you but felt it kinder to you to keep himself away.

As sleep welcomed you, your ears picked up on a muffled, familiar tune coming from the other side of the wall.

You still aren’t sure if you dreamed it or not.

“The gateway to the world, was still outside the reach of him. Would never belong to angels, had never belonged to men.”

A/N: Thank you for reading, I hope you enjoyed. I’ll be back in a few days with the final chapter! You can also find my notes and commentary on this fic right here on Ao3. Links to the playlist and moodboard for [N]MbD can be found on this blog’s pinned post, as well as in the series notes on Ao3. Image Sources: x - x - x

#fnaf #fnaf au #fnaf daycare attendant #sundrop x reader #moondrop x reader #dca x reader #sundrop #moondrop #fnaf sun #fnaf moon #sun x reader #moon x reader #fnaf sun x reader #fnaf moon x reader #sun x reader x moon #fnaf fic #[Not] Made by Design #Seven.txt - In The Daylight #i really really do urge y'all to go check out the notes on the Ao3 version of this fic if you haven't #*cough* and maybe leave kudos over there if you've also left a like on here so it doesn't throw the hits/kudos ratio off even further #but no it's not me wanting more kudos or hits it's really just that i put a lot of time and effort into the notes that i write on there #but i do not have the energy or time nor do i feel it's worth the effort to copy them all over to the tumblr versions of the chapters #when most of the audience for my multi-chapter fics tends to be over on Ao3 anyways. and this fic isn't doing Great on here #so IF you're interested. i wrote a lot of notes on this specific chapter and i ask that u at least go read the beginning one #i honestly could've written even more if there weren't a character limit but tbh i need to learn to just let the work speak for itself more

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