Chapter Text
The lights glim red in the cargo bay of the helicopter, a steady pulse that bleeds with the drone of the dual rotors. Six sits in a dark corner next to the cockpit. He has a full view of the cargo bay doors and his blade hilts wait secure against his wrists.
The Asset is crouched against the far wall, its shoulder cannons crammed against the ceiling, its large excavator hands tucked across its knees. A compact version of its nanite offloader is built into the remaining half of the cargo space, and looping nanite-circulating tubes tether to sparking ports along the Asset’s neck and arms.
A flimsy wire mesh wall separates the handful of seats on Six’s side from the Asset’s enclosure.
The pilot’s voice crackles through the intercom.
‟Alright, ladies, T minus five minutes. We’re coming in hot. Eesh, I can see it from here. I don’t envy you two one bit.”
Six scowls.
Black Knight’s division has always been overwhelmingly staffed by robotic pawns and collared EVOs. Her justification of ‟We want to keep as many good soldiers out of harm’s way as possible,” has always carried an undertone of ‟If you’re transferred here, it’s because we want to get rid of you.”
Well. White Knight is dead now, and his division’s human soldiers and scientists have been transferred.
The part where Six had been promoted to the Asset’s new handler feels a little like a death sentence, but that’s never stopped him before.
‟Thanks for the vote of confidence, Agent Haha.”
The Asset rolls its shoulders, metal plates screeching against the bulkhead, orange goggles glinting with flashes of red.
Six holds his magna blades a little tighter.
The EVO they’ve come to put down has been rampaging through the city for almost 24 hours with no luck getting a collar on it. Black Knight had decided that this was as good a time as any to test out the big guns.
Six has only seen the Asset working in tandem with the Black Pawns from a distance, but now Black Knight’s division has the resources to deploy it in the field. No , Six has been thinking for the past week. White Knight’s death isn’t suspicious at all.
The intercom crackles again, this time with the even more unwelcome voice of Salazar, one of the few of Black Knight’s original human employees.
‟Agent Haha. Agent Six. Orders to initiate the onboarding of the Asset are a go. You can start loading the nanites. T minus one minute to drop.”
‟That’s a copy,” says the chimp EVO. He swings over to the control board next to Six, peering around the cockpit partition to look at the Asset with his one good eye. ‟Alright, you ready, big guy?” Agent Haha turns two dials and uses both arms to pull a lever, and the cables tethered to the Asset twitch and start to swirl with glowing yellow nanites.
The Asset hunches and strains against the cables, curling its legs beneath it to crouch on the edge of the bay door.
Six had been pretty sceptical of infusing Salazar’s pet robot with nanites. But like most things now, his opinion matters very little. Before this mission he’d asked Rebecca what made this robot compatible with the tiny machines, but she’d said it was classified. She then assured him that she would look into it.
Unfortunately, Salazar’s science experiment's greatest strength for remaining secret is how hard it is to get information out of Salazar himself. Especially relevant information and not just the pensive ramblings of whatever's caught his attention.
At least Six can rely on one person to have his back.
The Asset creaks, additional grey tubing erupting along its arms and legs, its neck twists like it's cracking its neck, and its goggles start to shine a bright blue.
Six unbuckles his seat harness and slides one sword hilt into his palm. He grabs one of the lashes hanging from the ceiling with the other.
Haha begins the short countdown.
‟Five.” The bay doors below the Asset’s feet rumble.
‟Four.” The hatch next to Six opens and a blast of cold air tears his suit jacket taut.
‟Three.” The tubes connected to the Asset decouple and retract. The light in its eyes shutters briefly and it goes still, like it’s holding its breath.
‟Two.” The bay doors open and the entire floor falls away.
‟One.” Six and the Asset are airborne.
Additional tubing and wires erupt from the Asset as it doubles, then triples in size, quickly surpassing the height of a semi truck standing on its end.
Six alights on the Asset’s shoulder, the robot’s seams creaking with new plates sliding into place like the coiling belly of a snake, rivets and bolts blooming like welts and stapling them together. Wide, heaving pistons and interlocking gears and shafts appear and disappear just as fast through the gaps in its armour.
Six stabs one magna blade into the panel under his feet without activating it, bracing himself as they plummet through the ashy clouds. The metal grows slick with condensation and Six’s suit clings to his arms, heavy and wet.
The EVO they’ve come for dwarfs the surrounding office skyscrapers, it’s misshapen head and neck brushing the low clouds. Its long arms cast shadows like cranes across multiple city blocks, half in ruins. Impromptu slopes of metal and cement have been created from buildings slumped into their neighbours.
A school bus sized hatch in the Asset’s back peels open, and twin propellers with blades the length of shipping containers unfurl, slowing their descent. The downdraft swirls up great clouds of dust through the narrow streets, storefront awnings and banners tear away immediately, and anything not bolted down slides and tumbles away. The piles of debris and caved-in rooms and windows are blasted into a glittering glass storm.
The EVO looks up at them with hundreds of giant eyes, a seam running from its head to belly tears opens in a scream that pierces Six’s bones.
The Asset roars back, touching down. Its great sloping neck and shoulder canons are all aimed at the rogue EVO. Another building falls.
The EVO screams again, lurching forward and directly into the Asset’s slashing battle blade, which shears through metal and concrete and mutated flesh in one great sweep.
The EVO falls in two separate directions.
Black Knight’s voice crackles on the intercom. ‟All right, clean-up crew move in. Let’s see what we have, people. Salazar, I want that Asset backed up and out of the way.”
‟Yes, ma’am. I’m sending it the instructions now.”
The Asset curls up on itself, shaking its head.
It takes a step backward.
Another cargo helicopter chatters down, a handful of Black Paws repelling onto the undulating EVO’s flesh. They shoot it full of grapples and the helicopter begins lifting one of the pieces away, the still attached sinews snapping like melted cheese.
The Asset shifts beneath Six like the deck of a huge ship, tracking the helicopter’s progress. What’s left of the EVO is making a sound like the breaks of a train.
The Asset lunges, barely clipping one of the helicopter’s propellers with its giant hand. The unbalanced load spirals it into a building, the impact igniting several huge fireball plumes.
Six brings his blades together, twisting them and lets a curl of electricity seize up the Asset’s shoulder. ‟Whoa there. Stay put.”
‟What’s going on, Agent Six? Keep that Asset corralled.”
‟I’m trying, ma’am. I don’t know why-”
The Asset roars and spins suddenly, throwing Six off and away. Six slams his magna blades together, lifting a nest of rebar and air ducts to platform him up to a building nearby.
Several explosions drag Six's attention back overhead as the Asset manages to knock another one of the approaching jump jets out of the sky.
‟Agent Six, stop the Asset NOW.”
The Asset has one giant claw wrist deep in the EVO's viscera. The EVO writhes beneath its hand, shrinking away, still screaming.
A maze of fallen girders and twisted vehicles towers in waves around the two monsters. Six leaps, blades swinging, pushing and pulling at every spot of anchored metal, using the momentum to launch himself back to the Asset’s crouching leg.
He plants one blade in a metal foot – until he completes the circuit it’ll be as effective as using a toothpick to slash the tires of a garbage truck. Clusters of growths, like massive, swollen battery packs, erupt from the Asset and fuse with the web of telephone and electric wires that flow through the streets. Six scales the torso, dodging tumours of metal and plastic. He plants the other sword in the back of its neck among the industrial cables and crane winch vertebrae.
Six activates his blades and an electromagnetic pulse crashes between them. The Asset arches its neck, metal grinding and sparking. The lights in its eyes go out and the machines around Six shake and curl with rust. Six darts to the side to avoid a shoulder cannon sloughing off into the sandy dust that EVOs leave behind. He loses his footing as what’s left of the neck falls away, the collapse rumbling around Six like thunder, his glasses instantly coated in grime.
His blades meet empty air and Six plummets into darkness.
Six’s first thought is that he should be dead. He’s not in the sort of pain that comes from falling through a robot the size of an office block, and that scares him. His second is that he might be too injured to move. Spinal injury perhaps. He takes several deep breaths, coughing against the rasp of grit in his throat, and there’s a pressure on his chest. He tries to make a fist and meets resistance. Good. Good. He can still feel his fingers, his arms are just trapped.
He blinks hard, clearing the crust from his eyes, and looks around through the crack in his dirt-caked sunglasses.
A faint blue glow illuminates the nanite dust motes filling the air. Wide swathes of sunlight cut through the gloom from crumbling holes far above. A cage of wires and belts casts harsh shadows across his face. He starts to struggle and is cradled a little tighter, the hum of machines permeating his jaw and ribs.
He follows the sensation down and ahead, to the centre of the collapsing cavity.
Half hidden behind a shaft of swirling light hangs an intricate, valve-dense nest of machines. Limb-like hinges and exhaust pipes are suspended by hose-wrapped cables and perforated tubes, some taut and branching off into the darkness, some slack from where their anchors have fallen away.
It’s a heart, but it’s also a human body, curled up with its limbs twisting.
The decay reaches long fingers between its gears, tearing and stripping to reveal wiry shoulders and a jaw thrust upwards and goggles cracked and falling away from flat, white eyes that glow like the moon.
The glow starts to fade and it breathes. Alive. Wrapped in faint circuits and liquid metal veins is the face of a human boy.