You Can't Save Everyone, But You Can Try

by JustAnotherGuest

Summary:

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.

(Providence's EVO killer is just a specialized Pawn... right? Agent Six, Agent Haha and Doctor Holiday aren't so sure anymore.)

Chapter 1: Promises, Promises

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.

Chapter 2: Mixed Signals

The shockwave from the Asset’s collapse crashes against the helicopter. Bobo manoeuvres the cargo chopper through the debris field, the rotors sweeping clouds of dust up and away. He aims for a flat spot where one of the Asset’s feet had been while punching in the prep sequence for the nanite offloading procedure.

Onload and offload, that’s his job. The whole schtick and shebang. 

Shame Six had to tranq the thing, although this has been the most efficient Asset take-down Bobo has ever seen. The last time the Asset had to be put down after wigging out, its little robot form – bristling with wires and chitinous metal exoskeleton – had lain curled up in the fetal position across from Bobo’s adjoining cell for two days. 

Bobo sets the chopper down next to the clean-up party. The EVO is gone, accidentally killed by the Asset probably. It happens sometimes. Better that than being experimented on by Providence indefinitely , he thinks, kicking his feet up on the dashboard. 

Through the lower windshield below his legs, Bobo can see some sort of commotion around the Providence ER vehicle, with medics and Black Pawns clustering around a civilian in a shock blanket. Bobo scratches his cheek. Whatever. Idiot humans that don’t know what ‘evacuate’ means are above his pay grade.

Behind them, a line of Pawns winds deeper into the rubble. There’s no sign of Six scarpering over the collapsed machines, so they probably haven’t found the Asset’s core yet. 

This presents itself as the perfect opportunity to sit back, relax, and– the collar sitting just a little too snug on his neck reminds him what a problem that could be. Nevermind. He has to look busy, at least. It used to be that he’d be out there helping cut the core out with the Pawns and grunt EVOs. The coppery smelling engine oil lingering in his fur for weeks. 

Lucky the Asset likes him. What can he say? The Asset’s last pilot had been pulped when the nanite upload began, the Asset freaking out and going full postal. And who could blame it? Bobo knew the rigamarole of experiments these Providence freaks ran on their EVOs. Guy in black body armour starts throwing levers on the machine you're hooked up to and it hurts? No thank you. Bobo still has patches of skin that don't grow fur right from batteries of invasive experiments trying to figure out what makes him tick. There's a reason he wears a hat and jacket. 

When the troop of Pawns returns pushing a stretcher dripping with all sorts of fluids, Bobo drops the loading ramp and starts prepping the Asset’s offload pod, unbuckling and rolling it out of its little cupboard, making sure the hose valves are tight and undamaged. The casket lid hisses open and Bobo coughs on the stale remnants of nose-burning chemicals and cloying vacuum dust from the Asset’s last offloading process. 

A malformed, grey organ sprouting limbs and valves and teeming with rivets and wires is wheeled up the chopper’s ramp. 

The inactive nanites are gross, but the Asset’s active ones are in league of their own. 

Bobo wipes his suddenly clammy hands on his trousers. The Asset looks like it's gone into full nanite overload, and if it’s Bobo’s fault, he’ll be in deep chimp chips.

Bobo’s onboarded nanites plenty of times before. The process is calibrated to give the Asset just enough of its nanites to grow into its mecha size, and then extracted so it can't go wildin’ around HQ. Usually they just pop the Asset in its pod until it can get a full offload at one of Providence’s nanite storage facilities. He doesn't know if the chopper pod will be enough to deal with those weird growths.

The Pawns lift the Asset up and into the offload pod. Splatters from its many, many leaking tubes and nozzles and the gashes where fuel lines and sparking wires were cut away drip all over the chopper floor. Ugh. Someones gonna have to clean that up. And it’s probably gonna end up being Bobo. Figures. At least it’ll be a chance to get out of his cell in between missions. 

Maybe he can talk the higher ups into letting the Asset tag along. It’s not much of a talker, but it’s a great listener. It’s kept Bobo from many a lonely night going slowly insane. 

If it makes it through this, that is.

Six is hovering close behind the Pawns. His neck is doing a whole ‘not-bobbing-his-head-while-trying-to-look-over-their-shoulders’ thing as he circumnavigates the room.  

He ends up next to the offload panel between Bobo and the Asset, and Bobo refuses to peer around him to see what’s going on.

‟Come to see the freaks?” asks Bobo. ‟Take a photo, it'll last longer.” He doesn’t quite keep himself from bracing for a collar shock that never comes.

Six raises an eyebrow and steps to the side. Huh. This handler might actually last longer than the old one.

The Pawns have closed the lid in preparation for the nitrous oxide to be piped in. It’ll give the Asset’s engines a little boost and the strain will help break up the nanites. Plus, it keeps the Asset calm while locked in the pod.

Bobo keys in the prompt that'll start the system commands that'll tell the Asset's nanites to disengage and split off. Having active, unstable nanites in a chopper like this isn’t the safest thing, but EVO lives are cheap, and it’s a heckuva lot easier than hauling around a robot the size of a skyscraper. 

Six steps back to let the Pawns file back down the loading ramp. The cargo bay is silent except for the hiss of gas and the hum of the machine. Bobo waits for Six to follow them out. 

‟How long have you worked with the Asset?” asks Six. 

Oh. Is this how it’s going to be. 

Paranoid warning bells go off in Bobo’s head. He couldn’t care less about Providence’s NDAs, and the Asset’s handlers tend to need higher clearance by default. But Bobo needs to make it very clear that he’s not a walking information kiosk. Otherwise these questions could get real invasive real fast. 

‟Long enough to know that if something goes wrong with this offload we’ll all be dead.”

Six raises an eyebrow. ‟Good to know that Black Knight is so transparent with her intentions to finish me off.” 

Bobo snorts. ‟Join the club.”

‟Would Providence really risk the Asset like that, considering?”

‟It'll be done cooking in half an hour, you can ask it yourself.” The Asset will sometimes chatter to itself in some sort of code language that only a few of the scientists can understand, and the thought of Six dealing with that makes him grin. 

Bobo doesn’t expect Six to have any better luck than him in getting the Asset to speak. He doesn’t know if any of the agents even know it’s something the Asset is capable of. 

Bobo only knows that the Asset can speak because for some reason, the Asset seems to like him. Which is silly. It’s just a machine. But he’d always treated the Asset like any of his vehicles during his time as a getaway driver, and after he'd been sold to Providence. Treat it right and it’ll treat you right. 

Bobo runs a thumb along his control collar.

Providence instated him as the Asset’s pilot right as Black Knight’s division had perfected the control collars and started to reorganise the human employees. 

Plenty of time for the Asset to get fed up and move on like everyone else. 

But it seemed to enjoy the long hours spent watching crummy Spanish melodramas on the old tube television Salazar had wheeled in once as a reward for good behaviour after a particularly intense experiment that had the Asset making painful scraping sounds everytime it moved. 

If Six manages to get into the Asset’s good graces as well, Bobo is going to have to be extra careful to keep Six from cottoning on to the part where Bobo’s collar doesn’t entirely work anymore.

He doesn’t want the Asset punished for that too. 

---

They’d gotten back from a mission several months ago where the Asset had accidentally blasted the EVO into tiny, continuously duplicating pieces. It had taken Providence the next day and a half to round them all up. 

Bobo had returned to their cell several hours before the Asset. Bobo knows enough about how Providence punishes its EVOs to worry. The Pawns that make mistakes are usually ground up for parts, and in the eyes of Providence, the Asset has parts to spare.

Bobo and the Asset sit next to the bars that divide their rooms. The Asset bounces a small ball off the floor and against the wall. Floor, wall, hand. Floor, wall, hand.

‟You wanna sneak into the kitchens for some grape soda?” asks Bobo. The Pawns can’t eat, but the Asset likes the expired stuff and Bobo wouldn’t be surprised if it shares properties with WD-40. It sure smells like it.

The ball stops, held in the smaller excavator fingers that the Asset manifests in the privacy of the EVO wing, rather than its full construction equipment build that it wears in the hallways.

Sometimes the robot starts to feel like an actual person, and who knows. Maybe Salazar’s AI tech had just gotten that good. It was nice to be around something that didn’t treat him like dirt, at least. 

The Asset looks down at the ball for a moment before continuing to bounce it. 

‟You know what I'm in the mood for?” says Bobo. ‟Some of that. ‟Amor de Passion'' show. Gotta see if that Beatriz broad finally dumps the walking six pack.” The Asset pauses the ball bouncing again. Then it mutters a string of programming code words – less of an actual sentence and more of a listening acknowledgement – and reaches up a hand to touch the side of the small tv.

They’re interrupted by the bang of a door at the end of the hall slamming open. The Asset startles hard, dropping the ball and dropping back to its heels. 

‟They think that monkey can take MY spot as pilot?”

‟Come on Wynn, it’s not a big deal. They just want something expendable in case the EVOs blow up the plane or something.”

‟I spent years jumping through hoops to get promoted to Black Knight's division, and they're going to send me back to White?!” 

The pilot flunkies peer through the bars of Bobo’s cell. They trigger the motion sensor lights and the room is suddenly very very bright. Bobo shades his eyes. ‟Hey, what’s a guy gotta do to get a little sleep around here?”

‟Shut up” says the woman with a scar across her eye, and Bobo’s collar twinges, locking his jaw shut.

A bead of fear rolls up Bobo’s back and lodges in his throat.

One of them pulls out a cage. Something growls from within and Bobo can just catch a glimpse of sharp teeth and salivating jaws.

‟Let’s see if the monkey can fly after a few rounds with this.”

‟I dunno, my money’s on the monkey. Chimps will like tear people's faces off.”

‟Ladies, ladies, no need to fight over me, there’s enough to go around.”

Bobo gets to his feet. They come to his home? His turf? The one place within this cesspool that he can have just a little privacy? He gathers his fingers into fists.

The EVO in the cage looks positively feral, bashing its head against the bars. Bobo doesn’t want to get his hopes up that it'll knock itself out. 

The ex-pilot releases it through the food slot and Bobo lunges to the left, too slow, claws coming at his face. 

Muscle memory has him grabbing for guns that aren’t there, confiscated after every mission.

A long branching arm spirals through the bars from the adjacent cage and skewers the thing on a fist of bristling spikes.

The agents startle and look at the Asset. Bobo does too, forcing himself to breathe through the knot in his throat.

The Asset is standing, staring down the agents.

Circuits glow blue across its armoured skin, its orange goggled eyes shining like headlamps.

The lights overhead flicker as circuits spread into the floor like termite trails. The barred door to its cell swings open and the agents scrabble back.

The Asset flings the EVO out the door, it whizzes past the agents’ faces and cleaves a crater in the wall; a smear with bits of bone and hair embedded in the cinderblock.

Then the door slams shut. The overhead and emergency lights go out. 

A steady thud,

Thud,

Thud,

Thud,

Builds and echoes in the hallway.

Bobo tenses, the hair along his nape rising. Oh geez. Is the asset gonna take the whole corner of this building out? 

The agents pull out little flashlights, their beams swinging wildly until they focus and reflect off the Asset's goggles. Flat and blank and staring. 

The Asset looms, bouncing its small rubber ball straight from ground to hand.

The agents back up, a game of chicken held for an indefinite minute. 

The agents blink first and leave. 

It’s a while before the lights reverse dim to their previous night setting, just a faint glow from the low spaced outlets. 

The ball stops bouncing and Bobo finds the Asset has moved directly to the edge of their bars, one hand held face up between the gap and reaching.

Bobo doesn't move. He tries out his jaw and finds that the paralysis is enforced only by his own fear.

‟Um. Thanks for that back there. What do you want?” Bobo expects the Asset to point or bring up words on the television screen.

‟Collar.”

‟What?” Bobo must not have heard right. It sounds more like the voice module used to direct traffic in the cafeteria than an actual voice.

The fingers waggle and Bobo scoots forward to hear better. He's not too concerned about being within grabbing distance. If the Asset was going to hurt him he would have done it already. 

The asset's fingers jerk forward and grab the control collar. Bobo backpedals, but the Asset has a vice grip. 

‟What the-”

The collar and hand light up with a blur of circuits and there's a faint click. The constant low pressure migraine that Bobo hadn't even realised was still there is gone.

He takes a deep breath. 

And another.

The Asset's hand retreats and Bobo runs a hand against his neck. The buzz of it isn't so strong, Less like the burn of a live wire and more like the needle prick of static.

Bobo jumps up on the small dresser, something that would have given him a strong shock, now produces just a subtle pinch. He opens the door, which isn't locked by anything more than the collar stopping him from getting close unless an agent or the Asset is there to override it.

Bobo puts a hand on the knob. 

There's a buzzing in the back of his brain that this is a bad idea, and he doesn't know if it's his own common sense or the faintest of commands from the collar.

He turns to the Asset. ‟Hey. Thanks man. Really.”

The Asset ignores him, still bouncing the ball, but leaning against the cage bars. Bobo walks over. He sits down and leans back too, the Asset's metal warm against his fur. 

‟Agent Haha?'' The voice is soft and doesn't have as much mechanical distortion. Bobo looks around, because that can't be the Asset talking to him. It's just a robot.

‟Yeah?”

‟I think. That sometimes it feels like you're being punished for doing something good, and that it means you did it wrong. But sometimes people are just mean.”

‟Oh. Uh. Yeah, don't sweat it. Bozos like that are a dime a dozen.” 

‟Oh. Yeah. Agent Haha?”

‟You can call me Bobo.”

‟Oh. Okay. I'm glad you're my pilot, Bobo. And my roomate.”

Bobo wouldn't really call them roommates, more like cell neighbours at the most. But.

‟Yeah, me too.”

---

Missions since then have gone relatively well. The Asset is much less a terrifying death machine and to Bobo at least, it’s a friendly and companionable death machine.

The Asset still doesn’t speak much, but sometimes, if Bobo says a particularly insightful comment under his breath, the Asset will laugh.

Bobo bets Six has never gotten anyone to laugh in his whole life.

Six is still looking at the Asset beneath the fogged over chamber lid. 

‟Anything you want to share with the class?”

Six doesn’t respond.

‟Careful hotshot, if you keep up the gabbering, people ain't gonna notice when you actually have something important to say.” 

Six raises an eyebrow. ‟I thought that the Asset was like the Pawns, that César had modified a robot to work with nanites. An organic machine. But it's an EVO. He's an EVO. There's a kid under there.”

‟What do you mean 'kid'. Do you usually make up nicknames for the big guns? Sounds like you're getting attached.”

Like Bobo’s one to talk. If Providence finds out he actually cares about the machine, there’s no doubt they’ll find a different pilot and cellmate and Bobo’ll be out, bob’s your uncle. 

‟I mean kid. The Asset’s an EVO.”

‟Come off it.” Bobo turns on the autopilot and lopes over to Six. Might as well see what’s got Six all twisted. 

The Asset is still mostly a mass of bulbous pipes and malformed hinges and gears, but the machines that have shrunk aren’t turning back into their regular broad orange plates and silver gears. Instead, they’re leaving behind brown flesh and the black undershirt and leggings that the human agents wear under their body armour. 

White streaked, black hair and a closed eye and mouth peek out from behind broken orange goggles and an uncomfortable looking growth that wraps from temple to collar bone.

Bobo has to catch his jaw. He can’t. ‟That. That is not a robot. They’re really out here using a kid to kill giant EVOs?”

‟The Asset didn’t kill the last one. It cured it.”

‟It did WHAT.”

‟Don’t know how. It reached in and reprogrammed the nanites. Could be why it- he- had that overload.”

The growths are rapidly disappearing now, leaving more and more of the kid exposed. He looks frail- closed eyes in deep sockets. Skin creased in faint circuit patterns.

‟Does he eat?” Bobo is babbling, but he can’t stop. ‟I’ve never seen him eat. Just hooked up to tubes sometimes. Maybe they feed him during maintenance?”

Six raises an eyebrow. ‟Like you said. We can ask him when the offload cycle completes.”

By the time the chopper makes it back to base, the machines coating the boy have fully disappeared- valves reverting into joints, and vein-like wires slipping under battered skin.

He could be any kid, sleeping and- Oh wait. Those are surgical scars criss crossing his wrists and neck. They look a lot like Bobo's own. Hmm. There’s something about the shape of his jaw and nose that reminds Bobo of someone he knows, but until now, Bobo thought Providence only experimented on animal EVOs.

Bobo keeps an eye on the loading bay camera, and the ranks of pawns and scientists waiting to board. The offload lid hisses open. The Asset shifts, eyes scrunching and blinking. He takes a deep breath, eyes darting around until he locks eyes with them. 

‟You okay?” says Six.

The Asset nods, stretching out his shoulders. He freezes, swinging one arm. Then looks down at himself and jolts, squishing his arms protectively to his chest.

In a flash, a chitinous shell of metal panels and oxidised plates cover his body. Large, three-fingered hands and the housing for its back props erupt through the nanite soluble fabric.

The goggles look up at them, flat and expressionless. He swings his feet over the lip of the table and walks over to the wall where he had been bolted earlier. He wraps some of the cables around his shoulders and crouches back down.

Six takes a step towards him, but the bay door hisses open and the cargo space is suddenly swarming with men and women with clipboards, a handful of pawns, and the head of AI himself.

With the Asset’s face fresh in his mind, Bobo can see exactly who he reminds him of.

The Asset looks a lot like Salazar.

Chapter 3: Black and White

Rexʼs feat of curing the EVO instead of destroying it has taken the R&D department by storm.

The bio-engineers’ routine inspection of Rex goes longer than normal – twice as many samples and extra care to note any discrepancies in Rex’s nanite composition and performance. They finally hand him over for code analysis when the cured EVO is brought in and their attention is diverted.

César leads his little brother into the supply closet off of his lab, the one place he knows that the cameras are not monitored unless he reports something as missing, and the place where Rex feels safest – since itʼs where he housed himself when merging with the lab during the nanite event in a bid to save Césarʼs life. Rex collapses his builds to fit in as well, keeping his exoskeleton and the smaller versions of his excavator hands and boots active. His goggles are firmly in place like always. 

First things first, César pulls Rex into a hug, running his fingers over the seams of his machines, searching for flaws or weak points. 

He finds none and holds his brother at armʼs-length.

‟Were you useful?”

A nod.

‟Were you obedient?”

A slight hesitation, then a half-hearted shrug.

‟Were you successful?”

A firmer nod.

Curious. Did Rex consider his mission successful because the EVO was neutralised, despite the change in execution? Even if Rex thinks heʼs following Black Knight’s three rules, itʼs ultimately still up to her to decide if itʼs worth keeping Rex around. ‟Good. Debrief from point of contact.”

Rex’s goggles glow white. 

‟Datastring archived. Function, retrieve and relay.

‟Function variable.”  Rex’s voice is matter of fact.

‟If type, EVO array, found; return function, delete EVO.”

‟Function disrupted. Electromagnetic surge; script refresh. 

‟Input detect. Audiovisual, found.

‟Throw error. 

‟Function pause.

‟Input relay. If type, audiovisual, found; return function, open.

‟EVO array audiovisual transcript.” There’s a pause as Rex’s soft monotone takes on the mechanical edge of a grainy recording. ‟Help me. Help me. Hurts. It hurts! It hurts!

‟Return function. Assist.

‟Throw error. Cannot find. Throw error. Cannot find.

‟Function variable. If type, EVO array, found; return function, assist array.

‟New throw error. Additional instance required.

‟Function pause.

‟Processing. Relay estimated time to recalibrate function database zero zero zero zero zero zero four five zero two S. 

‟Function variable. If type, EVO array, found; return function, cure all.

‟Relay result; success.”

Rex’s goggles dim and he looks up at César expectantly. 

‟Fascinating. You found a cure function to be as effective as the usual terminate path. Hmmm.” César holds out his hand. ‟Glove.”

Rex lifts both of the metal monstrosities he has for fingers as the metal curls up on itself like flakes of rust. It leaves a sandy residue on Rex’s gloved hands and the floor between them. Rex peels off one of his gloves and hands it to César. César places the glove on a nearby shelf and pulls his small tablet and its paired drive from a large vest pocket. 

‟Port.”

Circuits running across Rex’s flesh glow blue and a small port is constructed in the back of his hand where an IV would normally be inserted. Céser plugs in his drive and opens several apps in quick succession.

The readout of Rex’s nanites show the new ‘cure’ function to be attaching itself to all instances of the terminate order. 

He digs a little further and finds remnants of the EVO’s code, like bits of confetti stuck in the corners of the paper shredder from the post-party sweep of the offloading process. 

‟Now this is interesting. There appears to be quite a lot of residual cortisol-like feedback loops all over the place. Perhaps the size and aggression of the EVO directly correlates to the amount of stress the nanites exert on the host. When the EVO was calling out for help, was it because you sliced it, or because of the nanites’ strain on its body?” César smiles. This is a wonderful development! Plenty for Providence R&D to mull over. Perhaps he will send a compiled list of his findings to Dr Holiday. She is one of the new scientists sent over from White’s division and has a good eye for biometrics. Plus, she isn’t willing to terminate her subjects as quickly as Dr Fell.

‟Um, I could hear it calling out as soon as we landed. It was scared and angry. It wanted everything to stop.”

César barely hears him. ‟That’s good, mijo . We will have to find another EVO to test out your new programming on.”

Rex tilts his head up, the light from César’s tablet flashing against his plates. 

‟Will those growths appear again? I lost control over my machines when they started to show up. It hurt. I was worried Providence was going to put me down. The last time they shot me-” Rex shakes his head.

Yes. The last time Providence shot at Rex was a very stressful time. Rex had bundled César up in a cocoon of heat shields and insulating baffle panels during the initial nanite event, hot-wiring himself into the lab and building his largest machines around it. Providence had come to investigate and Rex had retaliated. It had been very touch and go trying to contact the Providence forces from within Rex to get them to stand down, and to persuade them that Rex was not a liability but an asset.   

‟I do not know. Perhaps we can add some more machines to your large build as a way to direct the excess nanites.” 

César brings up a folder of potential schematics and uploads them to Rex's port. 

Rex's goggles go white as he sorts through them, a few half-formed beams and hand wheels and augers erupting from his shoulders and back.

The tablet receives a notification ping as one of the apps finishes compiling a diagnostic of the bioengineers’ tests. 

Ah. It appears they have tried grafting organic, mutated material to Rex as a way to circumnavigate his nanites disassembling any introduced tech as well as to see if the nanites will try to cure or reject the foreign flesh. Hmm.

César activates Rex's full nanite shutdown protocol, a button on his tablet's pulldown menu right next to the options for wifi and dark mode. 

Rex's builds collapse around him, the metal clanging to the floor. A few jagged pieces nick his exposed legs and prompt a swarm of circuits and tiny machines unaffected by the protocol to knit him back together.

‟Oh.” Rex pulls his goggles to the top of his head, pushing a chunk of white streaked hair out of his eyes. ‟Did I do something wrong?”

‟No, I just need to check something.” César turns Rex around and lifts his shirt. 

Ah. There is a variety of insectoid and amphibious eyes grafted into the muscles just above Rex's kidneys. A web of circuits and swollen processors surround the site of each graft. Some of them have eyelash puckered eyelids and white sclera, which seems to indicate that the nanites are prioritising curing and integration over full rejection.

The space between Rex's accident and the nanite event was so full of experiments, it is a good thing that Rex cannot remember them. César wonders if the scientists are planning on wiping this from Rex's memory as well. 

Wait. No... 

The scientists who scrubbed Rex's memories before are no longer around to do so now. 

So probably not.

‟Hey Rex can you see me?” Rex starts to turn and César places both hands on either side of his head. ‟Without turning around.”

‟Um. Maybe? I think I can see parts of you, but it’s super blurry. That’s weird. Did the scientists put eyes on the back of my head or something?” Rex’s attempt at levity is belied by the tense tone in his voice.

‟Do not worry about it.” César pulls Rex’s shirt back down.

---

The bioengineers continue their experiments on Rex, bringing him to the holding cells of a variety of EVOs.

They quickly discover that some EVOs are easier to cure than others. César wonders how they can fix that, especially as Rex’s grafting experiments progress. 

César is made doubly curious when one incurable EVO in particular has been added to the cure list with each updated round of Rex’s progress – especially when he starts to be able to cure the more animalistic EVOs. César does some digging and finds that the EVO belongs to Dr Holiday. 

César sends a high priority email for several technicians to come assist at the max security cells.

---

Dr Holiday’s EVO is a large, spider-type creature. César can only see its glowing red eyes and the outline of its legs through the bulletproof glass.

The containment cell has a bio lock on it. No matter. César leaves the technicians to set up their temporary lab space and gather the appropriate restraining tools while he heads back into the offices to make a strategic cup of coffee. He detours to Dr Holiday’s office on the way back. 

‟Hello, Dr Holiday.”

She startles, dropping the pen she had been chewing on while staring intently at her monitor. She turns to find him standing in the middle of her office.

‟Dr Salazar! Hi, I must not have heard you come in, sorry.”

‟That is my fault. I was just on my way back from the break room, and I was wondering if you might assist me with a problem that has been on my mind.”

A gleam appears in her eyes. 

Perfect. ‟What is this EVO you keep sending through to be tested in the curing process?”

‟Oh. It’s… a bit of a personal project.” 

César tenses as her face shutters, hard lines appearing against her forehead and around her mouth. 

Hmm. The file had said it was a close relative. Someone she is trying to keep safe. César can use that.

She stands up and continues. ‟I have authorization from Black Knight to send EVO-0057-beta through repeated curing attempts. If there is a problem, we can take it up with Black Knight directly.”

He holds up a hand. ‟It is no problem at all. In fact, we have developed a procedure that may accelerate the Asset’s curing capabilities, and we would like to option EVO-0057-beta for the final phase.”

Dr Holiday’s stoic expression starts to retract. ‟What's the risk threshold in regards to other incurables?”

‟It has a 95 percent success rate so far, with no unexpected adverse effects,” César says proudly. 

‟And the remaining 5 percent?”

César thinks back to the chimpanzee EVO who refused to give up its remaining eye. ‟We've only run into issues with a few sapient incurables, and those were related to matters of autonomy, rather than the procedure itself.

A small war fights in the corner of her mouth between scepticism and hope. 

‟What is the procedure, exactly?”

César beams. He has her. ‟I’ll tell you on the way!”

Dr Holiday leads him back to the secure EVO holding cells. They pass rows of incurables who are too feral to benefit Providence by being fitted with a collar- previous attempts resulted in lethargy to the point of death. 

‟We have found a way to slowly introduce the Asset to the genetic material and unique nanite codes of previously incurable EVOs. This has lowered the curing threshold significantly for every feral EVO we’ve tested so far.” César opens the voice memo recorder on his tablet.

‟So are you going to leave the Asset in my EVO’s cell for a few days, or-” Dr Holiday stops in the middle of the hallway when she sees all the technicians. ‟What’s all this?” 

Her walls are back up, but that’s okay. 

‟My team is ready to operate, we just need your verbal consent and permission to access the cell.” 

‟Operate?!” Holiday’s eyes widen as she spots the tray of scalpels. 

‟We require a small tissue sample from this EVO. Nothing that the body doesn’t have redundancies for.”

‟No. No no no. My contract explicitly states that no invasive experimentation is allowed.”

César tilts his head. ‟Do you want us to cure it or not?”

Dr Holiday takes a deep breath, her hand partially covering her mouth and trembling. 

When she brings her arm back to her side, her voice is resigned but full of teeth. ‟Will the procedure… hurt her?” 

‟We will be tranquilising it- her- while collection is underway.”

‟And what happens to the tissue sample afterwards?”

‟The Asset will begin processing it within the next few days. With luck, EVO-0057-beta will be cured by the end of the month.”

Chapter 4: Double Vision

Rex realises he has eyes growing out of his back when he reports to the warehouse-converted-to-med-bay for his monthly checkup.

César cancels his machines like he always does and they clatter to the floor, dragging and snapping like blackberry brambles. The technicians hose him down with an antibacterial spray before allowing him to change into the standard examination smock. 

His machines twitch under his skin, itching to reform, but the constant buzz from César’s app makes it hard to concentrate.

In the little eye-irritant flush stall, Rex pulls off his shirt and winces at the sudden brightness and the disorientating stacks of visual input. His back twitches with what feels like muscle spasms, and he throws out an arm to steady himself. He can see the mostly opaque curtain and shadows behind him, the peeling ‘Flush System’ instructions on the wall in front of him, and the grimy tile and backs of his legs below him, all at the same time. 

He looks down. Circuits run across his belly to his back and the shattered glass views coalesce into a wide panorama. He blinks a few times and starts to construct a branching web of mirrors out of his shoulder to see what’s going on, but stops when the buzzing grows painful. Instead, he carefully reaches a hand back to feel what’s there and winces as he pokes himself in the eye.

No, That's. Not right. 

He holds a hand over his lower back and can very clearly see his fingers. He brings his hand closer and his eyes flinch shut.

Seven. Half. Of his eyes shut. 

Rex stumbles out of the station, fighting back the curtain. 

‟César! César- there's something- my back it's-”

César glances at Rex before turning his attention back to his tablet. ‟Ah yes. Those have been in for a while now. Fully integrated by the looks of them. And you can see out of them too? Very promising.” 

‟Promising? For what?! César, I-”

César taps something else on his tablet and Rex's nanites lock up, freezing him in place. César walks behind Rex, and Rex can see him pointing at a spot just to the left of his spine.

‟I think we will have to remove… these three to make room.”

Two technicians join him to take notes, both on notepads and on Rex himself. The felt tip pens are cold and ticklish against his skin, and he is unable to move away as they get close to his eyes.

It grows harder to breath with the nanites in his ribs resisting flex and bend. His breaths quicken as he forces air through his nose. 

‟Who has the sample from EVO-0057-beta?”

One of the technicians next to the operating table raises a hand in the affirmative, still prepping a solution and arranging equipment on a metal cart. The technicians swarming Rex retreat to finish organising their own work stations.

‟Excellent.” 

César releases the nanite hold and Rex stumbles forward, dragging air into chest. He full body shivers, shaking the claustrophobia out through his fingers and toes.

‟Okay, Asset. Go lay down.”

Walking is like shaking the needles out of sleeping limbs, the points exiting through the soles of his feet. César has explained to him before why he has to call him ‘Asset’ around the rest of Providence. As far as they are concerned, Rex is a tool, first and foremost. 

It makes it easier to justify the nonchalant way César treats him. Rex has a job to do and so does his brother. 

Rex hopes that eventually that belief will heal the cracks in his heart. 

Rex lays down on the table, the paper crinkling beneath him is cold between the gaps in his gown.

‟Lay on your front,” says one of the scientists. Rex rolls over, moving his cheek and jaw against the table, trying to get comfortable.

He’s used to the prod and pinch and slide of the needle. He knows that it’s much smaller than a meat thermometer, but that’s what it feels like, pressed against his spine. The cold tube is taped to his skin, and the cold fluid becomes a steady stream of anaesthetic to the area. The clatter of metal rings just behind his ear as the scientists wait for the numbing to take effect. 

Rex has to try not to fight it. If he fights it, his nanites will attack the chemical and break it down before it can do its job. And it’ll hurt.

It hurts anyway.

It’s like they’re drawing on his back with pencils, the cheap kind that don’t sharpen correctly and the wood creeps up the side to scratch scratch scratch.

It turns into erasers worn down to nubs and the metal is all that’s left dragging across his skin.

César appears at Rex's side. ‟The gas is ready.”

Rex shifts his head in acknowledgement. Corrugated tubing and components for a filter erupt from his neck and wrap themselves over and around his mouth and nose. A scientist fastens a hose to the end of it, and nitrous oxide is pumped into Rex's lungs. His machines will convert it to oxygen by the time the procedure is over, but for now he welcomes the stutter of his thoughts. 

Rex constructs a rudimentary com and speaker into the gas mask. ‟What're the eyes for?” he asks. His check-ups are the one time he can talk to his brother about whatever's on his mind, the gas helping ease his inhibitions.

César’s experiments are the one thing that scares him more than doing or saying something that’ll make Providence retire him.

The last time he was cut open, Providence had tested whether he could regrow his limbs, and if the removed limbs would remain viable.

They had spent a full week cutting off his arms and legs. 

The removed pieces crumbled to dust just like his machines, and the missing limbs grew back, sort of. They were mechanical parodies, with organic material threaded throughout the circuits, just like his other builds. 

After a few days, the metal and plastic had started to fall away, replaced with bone and tendons. 

The process was exactly the same as when Rex leaves his builds active for a few days; his shoulder cannons growing muscle and teeth, carefully tucked away under carapace.

‟The eyes have been one of the reasons you've been able to cure so many EVOs. Your nanites have a chance to recognize the unique nanite sequences and create countermeasures for them, a bit like a vaccine.”

‟So the eyes are good? I can help more people?”

‟Yes. It has been an extremely productive experiment. We are implanting the eye of an EVO that has been here at HQ for a long time. Its family will be very happy if you can cure it.”

Rex smiles under the mask. Good. That makes him feel good. It sounds like the EVO's family cares about it as much as César cares about Rex. He wants to help. 

Several eyes are removed with a flash of light and then darkness. Circuits squirm under his skin until he loses them with another wave of anaesthetic. The scientists’ hands are a faint pressure that Rex can feel distantly in his spine.

He drifts during the rest of the procedure. César asks him to activate a series of his machines, and the scientists remove and replace parts, hooking him up to nanite-infused fluids and biomarkers. Most of the procedures on his machines have the same sensitivity as someone tugging on his hair. But when they remove the protective outer panels and César tinkers with the code to test out different, more efficient upgrades, it has the tenderness of the scientists tugging the fine hairs on his arms and legs, sometimes braiding, sometimes plucking, and sometimes applying a carpet burn to an entire forearm or calf. 

The scientists let Rex keep his builds out so that they’ll heal properly. If he collapses them too soon, his nanites will overwrite the new changes. 

César instructs him to build and build, layers and layers. Scaffolding is rolled in to support some of his larger builds while he lays limp and still. He feels adrift in an ocean, his limbs sprawled and draped into every corner of the room. 

His nanites begin breaking down the sedatives as the scientists start cleaning up, wiping down surfaces dripping with Rex’s fluids and the piles of sand from failed constructs.

It’s like many many fists are squeezing every exposed part of Rex at once and he winces, his builds retracting slightly to cover the three hearts and five lungs he’s built out to supply coolants and oil-like blood to every part of his body. 

The room starts to spin and he’s glad he’s lying down. He shuts his eyes and turns his external imaging devices and motion sensors inward, cocooning himself in the darkness and warm hum of his machines.

The only part of himself that he allows himself to interface with is the blades in his shoulder copters turning slowly in time with the slight draft in the room. He drapes his mind around them, giving the spinning, dizzy feeling a place to exist that isn’t his stomach. His louvres flutter like gills, directing his exhaust-filled breaths away from his fuel lines and processors.

It brings up his earliest memories of protecting César, way back during the nanite explosion. Rex had dived into César’s lab, grabbing control of its computers and life support systems, bundling his brother up against the loss, the deep axe cut of his parents’ deaths, still lodged in his sternum and twisting. Rex had wrapped them both in cold wires, while with his arms and throat and fists he burned burned burned everyone and everything around them.

Rex sniffles. He knows he’s not a good person, otherwise the threat of Providence retiring him wouldn’t hang around his neck every mission. But he did his job! He is still useful, and now he doesn’t have to terminate every EVO he comes across.

Bobo has mentioned in his late night musings how working for Providence is the pits, but he doesn’t want to be retired either. Even if it's an exercise in finding something to live for, neither of them want to be disposed of like all the others. 

There’s a small tap tap tapping on the back of Rex’s skull and he tries to mentally brush it away. 

Incoming transcript detected, high priority. Convert to audiovisual.

Input relay. If type, audiovisual, found; return function, open.

César’s voice filters into Rex’s brain. 

‟Hello, Rex. You can wake up now. Diagnostics say that your upgrades have finished installing and you are safe to retract your machines.”

Rex doesn’t want to. It’s like everything is held together with gum and bandaids, and one shift in position will re-open every seeping wound.

‟We can’t fit you into your room like this.”

Rex peeks through his cameras and the many, many rings of examination light bulbs stab through his wires. He pulls his builds tighter like a heavy blanket. His dark room sounds very good right now. 

‟We can perhaps move you to the EVO processing centre for storage until you are feeling better, but we will need to send in another operative to supervise.”

Rex doesn't want to be locked up with the uncooperative EVOs just because he's too weak. It's not that far to his room, really. Just down the hall to the elevator and then the basement. Easy. It's fine.

Dropping his machines is like pulling off a glove, his nerves retract and disconnect, and his limbs pull back like snail eyes through a straw one by one. 

A technician is there with a vacuum hose to collect the loose sand as César helps Rex up and off the table. César hands him his goggles, one of the few pieces of his kit that’s not built from his nanites.

Rex’s old exoskeleton just had a porthole in the front and either side much like César’s hazard suit, but during checkups when control of his nanites was taken away, the helmet would be lost and he’d have to avoid eye contact as the new technicians realised he wasn’t just a machine, and then when his active nanites would make his eyes glow they would realise he wasn’t just a human either. 

Rex had stolen a pair of César’s welding goggles, and that was the end of that.

Rex regrows the builds that he usually wears around the compound– shoulder cannons, excavator arms and spring boots. His copter blades are tucked neatly into the small of his back. It’s a familiar and comforting pressure, like a blanket worn over the shoulders when the compound has to divert power and heat during an emergency. 

‟Dr Holiday wants to watch you cure one of the EVOs next week. We can check on the integration progress of EVO-0057-beta’s sample then.”

The agents divert to the opposite wall as Rex makes his way back down to his room. He passes agent Six, who does a slight double take, watching him over his shoulder. 

Bobo is leaning against the wall of his cell, legs crossed, flipping through a magazine. He raises a hand in a wave, head still hidden behind glossy paper. Sometimes there’ll be tv guide snippets of people pieces in the old magazines Bobo grabs from the break rooms. Rex likes to look through to see if there’s anyone he recognises from his shows. 

Rex opens the little dresser next to his sleeping shelf and pulls out one of his nanite-permeable suits. The examination gown had been twisted and torn by his machines, and what’s left of it is pinched in the seams of his exoskeleton. 

Rex goes into their small, shared bathroom, one of the perks of being Providence’s Asset. The other sapient EVOs on this floor share a locker room down the hall.

He shivers as he lifts his machines up and away, not quite dismissing them. They hover above and around his body like wings as he manoeuvres them into the tiny shower and drops them. Bobo used to complain about how dusty it got in here and Rex would make a point to be a little obnoxious about it to make up for the chimp hair stuck to the walls and clogged in the drain. But in the past month, Bobo hasn’t been as aggressive in his detritus leavings, and Rex had started to clean up after himself in kind. 

He peels off the gown scraps and switches them for the clean undershorts, pants, and shirt, ignoring the pitiful figure he must strike in the polished metal mirror.

As he reaches to turn on the shower to wash the dust down the drain, his back spasms and light pierces the eyes through his shirt. 

Rex reaches out a hand to cover them and slips, buckling in pain. He falls hard to his side, his goggles cracking against the tile and cutting his head. Blood gums his eye.

He turns over, boils erupting from his back and long legs bursting from his sides as the newest eye’s nanites take control of his own. 

There’s a knock on the door. There isn’t a lock, but Bobo and he don’t have much privacy so this is the one thing they try to adhere to. ‟You okay in there?”

Rex scrabbles on the floor, taking deep breaths. 

‟Report error” he mutters. The extra legs scratch against the floor, clawing for purchase. Rex wriggles an arm out and throws it to the side, shuffling through his blueprints. Cutting the legs off will hurt, but he’ll manage. 

The nanites in his arm spiral outward, pulling out the bones to create a scaffold for the metal and motors. He moves his other arm to grab the handle at his wrist for leverage, but a flailing, insectoid leg knocks his elbow and the half-formed battle saw shrieks into the floor, grinding to a halt in the concrete.

The door cracks open and Bobo’s head sticks in. ‟I sure hope you’re decent, because no one needs that burned in their- Oh. What?” 

‟Report error. EVO onload, unknown. EVO array, unknown.

‟Recalibrating.”

Rex seizes as the nanites all throughout his body freeze up. 

‟Oh, geeze, kid are you-” Bobo steps fully into the room, side-stepping the saw and the claw tipped legs curled in the air like an upside down spider. ‟I don’t know- Hey, do I need to get Salazar, or that new handler of yours, or- ?” 

Rex’s body convulses, his head shattering his goggles further against the tile. 

Bobo grabs a stack of towels from the bench against the wall, spilling them across the floor as he shoves them under Rex’s head.

‟Hey, um. You’re okay, you’re gonna be okay?” Bobo says it almost like a question, glancing at the open door.

The eye in his back throbs in time with the lines of troubleshooting code pumping into it. One of the boils bursts as Rex's side hits the ground. Insulation and wire bubble up from the hole, quarantining the rogue nanites. 

‟Asset- kid, I’m going to get you some help. Do you have like, a panic button? I can go get someone, but-”

Rex’s vision goes white. ‟EVO onboard resolved. Override, complete.”

The segmented legs, battle saw, and inflamed, metal coated boils fall away and Rex goes limp, deep grooves from fading circuits sinking back into his arms and back.

His eyes are open and unseeing, gasping shallow breaths.

‟Here kid, let's get some fluids in you, okay?” 

The tap turns on and there is the clatter of his toothbrush hitting the sink and then the gurgling of water against one of their tin mugs.

Bobo manoeuvres Rex's head up and coaxes him into drinking two long sips of water. The water is cold and real and fills Rex with a sense of calm. He coughs before getting his breathing under control.

Bobo pulls the cup away and Rex clutches Bobo’s hands like a lifeline, the hairy knuckles warm and so different from the metal tools and latex gloves of everyone else that has touched him. 

‟Easy there, kid. You're okay. It's okay.” 

Rex curls up on his side panting, his eyes finally closing. 

Bobo sits with him quietly. 

Rex’s skin prickles with vulnerability, but it’s okay. He’s okay. 

The pain in Rex's back is gone, and keeping the eyes in his head closed prompts the eyes on his back to do the same. 

His breathing evens out.

‟You want me to get someone to help?” Bobo finally asks.

Rex shakes his head, the remains of his goggles crackling. ‟M’srry.”

‟What was that?”

‟I’m sorry. I made a mess.” Rex struggles to sit. There’s a sticky pool of blood from the cut above his eye. Piles of slowly decaying dust cover the floor. ‟I’ll get the broom, and some rags.”

‟Hey hey. Here, if you can get up, you just go sit on your. Hmm. You don’t really have a bed, huh. On your shelf, okay? I can handle this.” 

Bobo guides Rex into his room, and Rex sits, slightly bemused as Bobo splashes some water on the floor and pushes all of Rex’s gunk down the shower drain. ‟Man, I always thought you just used this room for oil changes and switching out damaged builds for fresh ones. Didn’t realise we have a 24/7 car wash.” Bobo mutters.

Without César here, Rex can finally build out a limb full of mirrors to get a good look at his back. He raises his arm and grows several intricately placed lights and chromed panels. With the other arm, he lifts his shirt.

Seven identical brown eyes look up at him from his left side, four from his right. One eye has a red pupil. They all blink in unison, and through them, Rex can see his own, startled face. 

Rex twitches and the eyes crinkle and wince. Small circuits pulse around each one. Rex cringes and drops his shirt. 

He shifts his mirror build into his regular exoskeleton and sighs as his weight is distributed comfortably between heating coils and sealing foam.

His helmet cradles his cheeks and chin, supported at the neck joint. 

He folds his limbs into a sitting box shape and relaxes, filling his cubby with the quiet hum of his machines and the creak of his copter blades. 

Rex's skull doesn't allow for concussions, and his nanites are already dealing with the pressure from smacking his head.

He's glad that EVO-0057-beta's eye took. Its family will be so happy to see it.

Chapter 5: Lockdown

Rebecca paces in the hallway outside Beverly’s cell. Salazar is always hit or miss when it comes to schedules. Either he’s super early, or very late with very little in between.

Her expectations are not high. They're NOT. This experiment has just as much of a chance of failing as all the ones before, no matter what Salazar says. She has spent the past five years working on a cure, and now Salazar's pet Asset just 'happens' to be able to cure EVOs? No.

She doesn't buy it.

And if that’s because the Asset has tried multiple times to cure her sister and failed, well. Maybe she’s justified.

Six had asked her some weird questions about the latest experiment when they had spoken last. She had needed someone to vent to about why Salazar would take an eye of all things, and Six had looked appropriately disgusted, but then he had just asked if she knew how long Providence had been using the Asset, and if she knew where it had come from.

Rebecca had looked into it, but like all of Black Knights property, everything is kept locked in her personal servers. It doesn’t help that ever since an incident where some pilots had been harassed by the chimp EVO, the EVO storage wings where the Asset is housed have been restricted to essential personnel only.

The only reason Rebecca has access to Beverly is because she's listed as Rebecca's property, which is a system that she hates, but she only has to live with it until Bev is cured.

Which might be today. 

But maybe not. 

She flips the clasp on her clipboard nervously a few times, each tap cementing that this is going to be fine fine FINE.

‟Rebecca.” The voice is familiar and welcome. 

‟Six!” Six is striding down the hallway, the Asset in tow, its steps surprisingly quiet and light. She looks behind it but Salazar isn't there. However, the chimp EVO is, which is. Interesting. Is he there to spy in Salazar's place?

‟I didn't realise you would be here.” 

‟I insisted,” he says. ‟Any word from Salazar?”

‟He's not here yet. He might actually be on time, but you know how he is.”

Six turns to look through the cell glass, the Asset and EVO standing together a little further off. They appear to be chatting softly, but that’s absurd. She's heard the Asset speak, but it's the same canned, automatic responses as Black Knights's pawns. 

‟Beverly is still under your guardianship, right? Providence hasn’t taken her?”

‟Yes,” It warms Rebecca more than she can say that Six hadn't called her EVO-0057 like the other scientists all insist upon.

It also reminds her that she'll lose guardianship of Beverly as soon as she turns 18, and Black Knight will be able to collar Bev and throw her into the Providence fodder machine. Rebecca shoves down a wave of rising panic. They still have a year. It'll be okay.

‟Do you know what you're going to do once she's cured? Will you leave Providence?”

Rebecca gathers her hopeful thoughts for the future and shoves them back in the corner where they belong, shaping them into the sharp arrow that drives her sole purpose for being.

She knows that none of the cured EVOs have been released yet, and are still being subject to experiments.

‟Well, the Asset has cured more EVOs than I have ever been able to. I have my research, for what it’s worth, and I can hand it off to the other scientists if I need to.” She doesn’t like or trust most of the other scientists, but she's going to leave. Providence might let her go quietly, but none of the scientists are allowed to leave the base except for missions, so maybe not. She took a training course in driving the EVO transport box trucks a few months ago in case she has to take matters into her own hands. 

She almost wants to ask Six how long he plans to stay on at Providence. He's been even more cagey than normal now that he's been assigned the Asset's handler. But in the end it won't matter. After Beverly is cured, Providence and everyone attached to it will be out of her life for good.

The creak of the Asset standing at attention is the only warning they get as Salazar turns the corner. 

He's looking at his tablet and almost walks right past them. 

The chimp coughs and Salazar looks up, startled. ‟Oh! Are we ready to proceed?”

Rebecca's confidence in this endeavour is hovering very close to the floor. 

Salazar motions for Rebecca to open the airlock between the hall and the cell. 

‟We'll send the Asset in, and observe from out here.” 

Rebecca watches Salazar out of the corner of her eye as she activates the biolock. Salazar is walking around the Asset. Prodding and inspecting it. He lifts some of the panelling in its back and she wonders if it has an access panel there to check if Beverly's genetic code has been processed. 

Rebecca's heart is in her neck and her pulse is in her ears as the door slides open and the Asset steps forward. 

The Asset forms its battle sword and trepidation spikes through Rebecca.

‟Wait, are you going to tranquillise her before the Asset cures her?”

The Asset looks down at her with its flat eyes. This is the closest she's been to it, and she wonders, not for the first time, how a weapon like this is capable of curing anything at all.

‟Not to worry! That is just in case your EVO tries to put him in her nest. The Asset has dulled the edges, see.” The Asset brandishes its sword helpfully and Rebecca steps back. ‟It will cause severe bruising at the most!”

‟Um, that's not-”

The Asset steps through the door and the airlock is triggered. The hallway door slides shut and a moment later, Beverly's dark cell is flooded with light and the inner door opens. 

Beverly scuttles backwards up the wall. Her single eye glints and her pedipalps twitch beside hissing jaws. 

The Asset holds its arms to the side, ducking as Beverley swings a claw at it, the incomplete wing of her outer fingers whistling through the air. 

The Asset drives its sword into the wall to her left, then forms another sword from its right arm to pen her in. 

She screeches, legs bristling, trying to manoeuvre out of her corner.

The Asset stands directly below her, legs braced and sword raised, then its chest opens up and a wiry arm reaches out and snags her ankle. The gloved hand and Beverly’s claw disappear back into the Asset’s body and the armour reforms around Beverly’s leg, holding her in place.

She thrashes, tugging away from the branching circuits that spiral over her knees, worming into her hip and chest.

The Asset’s weird chest hand looked oddly human, almost like it could have belonged to any of the Pawns, but Rebecca is far more concerned with Beverly’s skin shrivelling and collapsing around her.

It’s going wrong. It’s going wrong, she thinks to herself, barely letting herself believe it as Beverly’s hair grows longer around a face that is becoming less skull-like by the second. The legs and arms splinter like a hundred toothpicks, pale fingers and arms reaching for something to stop her fall from the ceiling. 

The Asset’s chest opens again, its swords falling to the sides and its shoulder canons and back props curl and fold into a humanoid upper body that lunges forward to catch her.

Rebecca is already smacking the control for the airlock doors, sprinting forward into the cell.

Pulling Beverly down and into her arms, tucking her head into her neck and holding her shoulders between her own. They slide to the floor and she holds Beverly- warm, soft, human Beverly- and is never NEVER going to let go.

‟Beck?” Beverly’s voice is scratchy and barely a voice at all. But it’s real. It’s so, so real.

Beverly starts to wriggle free and Rebecca lets her, slowly, reluctantly. Hands still holding as much of her as they can.

Beverly crouches, her inner fingers splayed, her outer fingers curled. Pressed to the floor, elbows twisted up behind her hunched back. Her head tilts to the side to look up at Rebecca with her one good eye. 

Rebecca’s phone vibrates but she silences it, pushing it away across the floor. 

‟I had the strangest dream,” says Beverly, looking back down at her hands. ‟I was a human, like you. There was a bright room, and it didn’t hurt, and maybe it was the sun.” She flexes her hands, turning them over and Rebbeca shifts her grip to cup them gently. ‟But maybe that part wasn’t the dream. And it was the hiding and hunting that wasn’t real.”   

Rebecca pulls Beverly back against her and heaves silent sobs into Beverly’s hair. 

Salazar’s tablet dings from behind her and his voice reaches long fingers to scratch uncomfortably at this small bubble of hope.

‟Ah. Black Knight requests that the Asset bring 0057-alpha to her new cell since the curing session was a success.”

The relief wars with the suddenly very present task of leaving Providence with Beverly. Cutting all ties and disappearing from the Black Knight’s radar. She really wishes that she could have found a way to cure Beverly when White Knight was still alive and in charge. He was blunt and horrible, and always prioritised the greater good. But Black Knight is just ruthless and manipulative and will dispose of anything that isn’t of use to her or her plans. 

‟No. NO.” Rebecca sees red, one hand digging into Beverly like claws, the other reaching for the concealed tranq pistol she keeps in her back holster for EVO emergencies. She pulls it on Salazar. ‟Don’t you dare. Don’t you DARE.”

There’s suddenly a teenage boy standing between them. He’s wearing the black undersuit that all the pawns wear, but he also has a pair of orange welder’s goggles pushed up on his head, pinning a chunk of white hair in place.

It’s distinctive but Rebecca doesn’t recognize him, or know how he got down here. Only a few people are allowed in these cell blocks, and she knows them all. It’s weird though. He looks a bit like Salazar, but not in the ways that matter. He doesn’t have Salazar’s shark eyes. 

His eyes are kind and so, so sad.

The chimp moves first. ‟Woah woah woah, lady. Let’s put down the piece, okay? No one’s taking anyone anywhere or shooting anyone. Let’s talk this out like civilised people.” He side-eyes the kid. ‟Jeez. And humans call themselves the sapient bunch.”

The kid looks between the chimp and Salazar. 

‟Rebecca.” Six is at her side. ‟I won't let them take Beverely.” He stands, blades slipping into his hands, a wall between her and Salazar. 

She looks to where the Asset had cured Beverly a moment ago and only sees dust and sand piled in the corner. Alarm bells go off in her head. Something isn't adding up here. Something is wrong, something terrible. 

The kid shifts on his feet. 

‟Function, defend. Throw error. Type, humans. 

‟Throw error.

‟Function, protect.”

The kid's voice is soft and monotone and he sounds lost. 

‟César,” he says. ‟Dr Holiday is crying.”

Salazar looks down at his tablet. ‟It's okay Rex. Why don't you go sit over there for a bit.” He types something and the kid, Rex, goes limp, the life leaving his face as he robotically marches over to the wall. 

It's wrong. It reminds Rebecca of Black Knight ordering one of the collared EVOs around. 

Salazar's tablet dings and Black Knight's voice echoes through the intercom system. 

‟Dr Salazar, status report. Dr Holiday isn't answering her phone and I'm getting a lot of interference over the security feeds.”

‟Everything is on schedule. 0057-alpha is just very weak and uncoordinated, so we are assessing the best way to move her.”

‟I will send some Pawns to assist right away. They'll take it from there.”

Salazar scowls, but keeps his voice light. ‟Thank you for the offer, but we are already on the way.”

‟It's no trouble at all! This must be such a stressful time for Dr Holiday, and I'm happy to help wherever I can!”

The intercom crackles into silence.

Rebecca bundles Beverly in her arms, Beverly has always been the taller of the two, but Beverly’s ribs are sharp and her breaths shallow from her time in the cage.

Rebecca gets her legs under her, ready to run.

Beverly's head twitches. ‟Someone is coming.” 

They all turn to face the cell door as a platoon of Black Pawns spill in, pushing a large, wheeled containment cart with them. Rebecca looks to Six, his expression stoic behind his glasses. 

The leader's robotic voice module hisses. ‟Function, retrieve 0057-alpha.” The containment cart's door slides open and two of the Pawns advance. 

Rebecca shifts Beverly onto her hip, freeing up the hand holding the pistol, and clicks off the safety. Six drums his fingers across his sword hilts. 

There's a brief moment where Rebecca and Six move in sync, Rebecca taking aim over Six's shoulder while Six sweeps his swords out, his body coiling to strike.

Salazar steps forward. 

‟Asset, protocol sub-section Hide-and-Seek.

The boy takes a few steps to the right and places a hand on the wall. Long, organic circuits spurt out through his skin and worm through the cinder blocks and into the corner mounted security cameras. Each camera sparks and dies, red lights blinking out.

One of the Pawns raises its gun. ‟Error. Feed lost. Initiating lockdown of wing 2B.” 

Salazar holds up his tablet. ‟No no no no,” and presses a button. The Pawns all fall to the floor like their joints have all been severed. 

The lights turn off with a thunk, leaving everything illuminated by the red emergency lights. 

‟I thought we were trying to avoid a lockdown?!” says Six.

‟I am aware. Unfortunately, I did not put them into standby fast enough.”

Rebecca hardly hears them. The cart is there and the Pawns are down. Rebecca opens the door and carefully eases Bev into the cart. Beverly braces her arms against the doorframe, elbows hitched, twisting to see back into the room. ‟Wait, the boy, what about him?” 

Rebecca hesitates just long enough for the flashing lights above the door to start spinning. An alarm blares as the doors slide shut. 

Rebecca pulls Beverly back out and shoves the empty cart forward, the doors slamming into it with a crunch.

Six appears at her side. ‟At least we can still get out.” He leaps onto the warped metal and holds out his arms for Beverly. Rebecca squeezes Beverly a little tighter before handing her off.

‟Wait!” says Salazar.

Rebecca’s tranq pistol is in her hands and aimed at Salazar before she can think, her finger hovering over the trigger. ‟I’m NOT going to just sit here and wait for Black Knight to take Beverly for more experiments. I won’t leave her again.”

‟On the contrary, if we show signs of resisting, it is likely Black Knight will keep us all for experimentation. I very much doubt we will be allowed to leave at all. Which is why-” he taps something into his tablet before holding it out to her.

‟All of the Asset’s codes, his medical history, it's all in there. I'm promoting you to chief bio-engineer.” 

The boy lets go of the wall, circuits snapping off like withered vines. He blinks away the flat blue light from his eyes. ‟You’re what?”

‟Dr Holiday has been planning to leave for a while, and-” Salazar glances at Rebecca. ‟Hopefully drop off Providence’s radar. I want you to go with her.” 

‟Wait, no. I can’t take your science project.” The boy- Rex, the Asset, looks human, but there are faintly glowing circuits like veins running under the thin skin around its eyes. It blinks twice and brings a gloved hand up to its head. An EVO? Or a machine? She thinks that she can understand Dr-Barely-Tolerates-People-Salazar imprinting on this life-like looking android-thing, but not enough to risk Beverly’s life over. With the Asset, all of Providence will be hunting for their heads. ‟Beverly is my sister. I know it's hard for you to understand but-”

‟I understand very well. I would do anything to protect Rex. Anything.” 

There’s a thud against the door, and then a screech like the grinding of truck breaks.

The emergency lights flicker, and a giant form appears in the cell door gap. 

Six jumps off the crushed cart, dodging the serrated claw that tears through. Beverly hisses at it and tries to wriggle free, swiping back with her curled fingers.

The EVO behind the door snarls and drags its long arm through the opening in the door. A talon snags on Salazar’s arm. Salazar grimaces as blood drips down onto Rex.

Another talon grabs Six’s arm and twists, cracking the limb like a glow stick. 

Six stifles a cry and Beverly rolls out of his grip.

The EVO lunges, both hands reaching for Beverly.

Rebecca screams, blasting the EVO with round after round of tranquilisers, but is easily batted aside.

The Asset’s pupils narrow to pinpricks, and it steps between the EVO and the humans.

Its arms unfurl like mushroom caps, machines and armour sprouting like a fast-growing fungus. It scoops up Beverly, its excavator hands gentle, and hands her to Rebecca. Providence's EVO killer holds the EVO immobile, a web of circuits syringing into the EVO’s arms. The EVO shrinks and unfolds into a woman wearing a tattered jersey. 

The door to the cell falls in and dozens of slavering EVOs spill in from the airlock. 

Six snaps his swords together and sticks the magnetised blade into the wall while he half-slips out of his jacket and uses his good hand to bind his limp arm against his side. He leaps over a tentacle to send arcs of electricity through a chain of EVOs pressed up against each other. Several of the collars smoke and spark, their EVOs either fleeing or attacking the others. 

The Asset sprouts another arm to grab the next EVO, and the next and the next. Human and animal bodies fall to the floor with wet smacks. 

It darts into the places that Six had filled, pushing back the EVO tide in places, just to have them surge forward in others. 

The chimp manoeuvres next to Rebecca and Beverly and, using a pair of discarded Pawn guns, joins her in blasting any EVOs that get too close. ‟This sucks,” snarls Beverly. ‟I want to fight. I need to fight. They’re in my space.” 

‟Cool your jets,” says the chimp. ‟Hopefully this won’t be your space much longer. We just need to stay out of the Asset’s way for now. Hey Salazar,” he yells over. ‟What’s our plan for blowin’ this joint?” 

The Asset forms its battle saw and swings it in an arc. The remaining EVOs scramble back as the saw carves into the ceiling. Rebecca coughs as a cloud of drywall and cement fills the air, the ground cratering around the Asset’s feet. Six steps back into view through the debris, blood caked with dust streaking across his cheeks and gashes in his white shirt.

Salazar looks up from where he’s typing furiously at his tablet. ‟Black Knight must have modified these EVO collars to operate on closed circuits. We will have to make our escape from in here.” He opens what’s left of the crushed cart. ‟Rex, can you secure the airlock?”

Braided wires unspool from the Asset’s legs and chest and grapple into the control computer bank next to the airlock doors. Reinforced walls begin growing from the damaged door frame into the hallway, layering one on top of the other, pushing the EVOS back even further. 

Steam billows off of the Asset’s shoulders, great gusts of white smoke hissing through the vents in its face plate. Condensation drips from the frost-crackled regulators at its elbow joints. 

‟Alright,” says Salazar. ‟It will be a bit of a tight squeeze, but we should all be able to fit in here.” He gestures to the cart.

‟Excuse me?” says Rebecca. The bars are bent, and the top has long, sharp runnels from EVO talons. 

‟Rex, can you move this cart into the cell?” Salazar ignores her.

The Asset braces a shoulder cannon against the door gap and extends its collection jaw to shove the doors apart. It rolls the cart out on misaligned wheels. 

It starts to head back into the hallway, but hesitates. 

‟Six. Your arm.” It says in its mechanical voice. 

Salazar puts a hand on its side. ‟I will assist him. But we need more time. Black Knight will not let Beverly or Dr Holiday go. I need you to save them like you saved me.”

The Asset- Rex- recoils. ‟But- I can’t. If I do it in here-. So many will d-. No. I can’t. I don’t want to kill EVOs anymore. I want to cure them. I don’t want to kill anyone ever again.” 

‟Providence’s EVOs are lost. They’ve been through too much. Destroying this place will be a mercy.”

Rex looks back at his thrown-together barrier. ‟But they’re like me,” he whispers.

‟You can’t save everyone, Rex.” 

‟I can try.”

Salazar doesn’t say anything to that. He just nods and helps Six into the cart. Then starts making a proper splint out of what’s left of Six’s jacket and some loose rebar on the floor. Rebecca reaches out to help but Six gently catches her fingers and just holds her hand. ‟I’m okay.” He gives her a soft smile.

The cart is a tight fit, large enough to transport a medium sized EVO, but not large enough to comfortably hold three adults, a teenager and a sapient chimpanzee. 

The ceiling cracks and gives out completely as the attacking EVO mass pushes the walls and load bearing pylons too far out of alignment. Rex cradles the cart to his chest, shielding them from a barrage of acid that splatters across his hull. He layers more and more plates around the cart, forming walls that buckle and warp into a cage around them. 

Screams and blasts echo outside of the sudden darkness. Salazar pulls a penlight out of one of his many pockets and shines it directly into each of their faces. Rebecca turns away and blinks out the spots. ‟Everyone is here? Good. This phase of my plan has gone a little sideways, but do not worry. Providence is no longer our greatest concern.”

‟Oh really.” Rebecca’s voice is dry. ‟Which part of this was your plan, exactly? The part where Black Knight captures us, or the part where the EVOs accidently kill us? Because I’m having a hard time telling the difference.” 

The chimp chuckles.

‟Rex will keep us safe. I had hoped that we could escape on one of the jump jets. Agent Haha is quite adept at flying those craft. But this will work too.”

The cart rocks and they fall into each other.

Salazar checks his tablet, his elbow jabbing into Rebecca's shoulder. 

‟Hmm. Rex took out the cameras across the entire complex, but based on our current GPS coordinates, We are moving towards the loading docks. That should give us… four minutes to figure out where we should hide from Providence. Eight if Rex insists on curing every EVO he comes across before then.” He looks at Rebecca expectantly.

No. No way is she telling Salazar where her safe house is. Rex is a liability. Salazar attracts bad luck like fleas on a dog. But… Rex did save them. And he might actually be able to get them out of here. 

The frankensteined cart rumbles with the growl of horsepower. Everyone is forced to the right, Rebecca getting a faceful of hairy chimp arm, before they rock back to the left and settle. 

“Ah. Make that one minute.”

‟Six has some connections in Hong Kong. We can get new IDs there,” She blurts out. Not an actual lie, since she was planning on stopping there on the way to their safehouse to collect supplies. 

“Excellent! You all sit tight while I give Rex the coordinates.” Salazar pulls out a multi-tool and begins prying at the walls. “I just need him to give us an access port… ah. There we go.” Lines of blues circuits lift from the wall in a wave. They form a ring, and then something else that Rebecca can’t see because Salazar recoils back into her. “Oh. That’s new,” he says. 

Rebecca elbows him off of her. There is a cluster of brown, human eyes growing out of the metal. They twist in sync, tracking her movement.

“What-”

“Is everyone okay?” The voice comes from everywhere and echoes tinnily. 

“Yes, we are fine. Why did you not just build a camera if you wanted to see us?”

“But I did?” The voice sounds slightly unsure, and a few more eyes appear, twisting out of the metal like the sharp ends of screws. “Why? Is it too small to see? I just made it bigger, if that helps.”

“No, it’s fine. I have some coordinates for you. Can you make a port?”

“Oh yeah, sure.” A tiny, glowing slot opens in the wall. “I’ve got my bike out. Is it very far?” 

Rex’s voice sounds so young. About Beverly’s age. Not a Pawn, but an EVO like her.

Rebecca pictures the boy from earlier riding a regular motorcycle. Free from Providence. But with just Salazar for company. Still alone. 

“It’s pretty far,” says Salazar. “You’ll need to fly.”

“Okay.” There’s a rumble and the steady beat of propellers gaining speed.

Maybe they do have a chance. If Rex is with them, they won’t have to worry about limited resources right away. She glances at Beverly's altered face. She can focus on a cure that gives more than it takes. 

“Hey Rex,” says Beverly. Everyone turns to look at her. “If you could do anything, what would it be?” 

Gravity seems to shift, and the cart shoots up like one of Providence’s express cargo elevators. Rebecca can feel her heart in her shoulder blades, and her stomach in her spine. 

“Oh! We’re out!” says Rex. A wall panel slides back and a screen appears. A pillar of black smoke hangs over Providence headquarters far below them, the handful of jump jets in the sky are circling close to the ground, ferrying the remaining human staff to safety. 

It’s the highest Rebecca has ever been, the earth’s horizon curving away in the distance. 

For now, they’re free.

“If I could do anything?” says Rex. “I’ve had César and Bobo, and you've had Dr Holiday, but not all EVOs are that lucky. I don’t want to break things anymore. I want to help. And-” He pauses. Thinking. “And maybe get some pizza.” 

Bobo grins. Beverly nods. “I can’t remember the last time I had pizza,” she says.

Salazar smiles then, and it's the first open, genuine expression she's seen from him. The resemblance to Rex is unmistakable. 

“I think that can be arranged.”

Notes:

I watched Generator Rex for the first time two months ago. It has consumed my thoughts.