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Chapter Text

"I don't know," Kathy said, pacing around her rather cramped office. Hammer sat on a stool, the only one they had that would hold his weight without snapping, and watched her, massive arms crossed loosely.

"He's fine, Kat, seriously." Glitch perched atop her desk, arm in a makeshift sling while it finished self-repairing. He thought this was unnecessary, but she had insisted, and sometimes it was just easier to go along. "If you wanna know what I think, I think he's sad, is what. Poor guy's so obviously been through some shit, and he's just not adjusting as fast as some of us. How long did it take you before you could say The M Word about yourself out loud?"

Kathy paused. "...Weeks," she admitted, "but that's not what I mean. I've seen sad reploids, and I've seen reploids take a while to adjust. There's just something else about him. Like…like he isn't telling us something."

Hammer spoke up, with some reluctance. He didn't like disagreeing with anybody, if he could avoid it. "Speedy's right, though. Ain't got a rule saying everyone owes us their life story. You seen his face? Up close, I mean? He's old. Who knows how long of a story that'd be."

"He's at least like fifty," Glitch agreed, even though he could barely imagine being that old. "You know that, right? Decent synthetic skin takes a long time to crease like that, and he's got some lines going. You can tell a lot about a person from that."

Kathy looked to Glitch with curiosity. "Can you? I never thought about it."

"Oh, yeah. It's a wear pattern like any other. Everything's a wear pattern. Scars, lines, dents, habits. Like, you look at V. He's got lines on his forehead, and under his eyes, right? He's a worrier. Now, you go around scowling from being angry, you get different lines, between your eyebrows, but his? They're all across his forehead. You get lines around your eyes from smiling, but those show up in the corners, not underneath."

"Huh," said Hammer. "I just thought of it as an age thing. Didn't think you could tell what kinda person he is from it, too."

Glitch was on a roll, and unfortunately for Kathy and Hammer, reploids didn't need to stop and breathe while talking. "And that's just his skin. You look at his mannerisms, right? Doesn't like raising his voice, doesn't make much eye contact. He stands like he's trying to take up less space. He's snapped at me over nothing a few times, but then he apologizes and looks so goddamn upset about it, like he can't believe he just did that. He's been through hell, is my guess. Like, more than most of us here, even. I dunno what, exactly, but Hunters probably see a lot of pretty bad shit."

Hammer nodded, intrigued. "You just go around analyzing everyone you meet?"

"Yeah, don't you?" Glitch asked, drumming his heels on the front of the desk.

"Hell nah, don't have the spare processing power. Although, maybe it woulda saved me some trouble if I did. What else you think about him?"

"He's used to leadership. And combat. You shoulda seen him kneecap those three Drifters. Just, pow-pow-pow—" he made a finger gun and mimed firing shots, "—like it was nothing but target practice. And he assessed that whole situation calmly as anything. Guy's been in a lot of active combat, for sure."

Kathy tucked a strand of hair behind one ear. "That's just what I mean, though. We barely know anything about him. He could have any other capabilities, and we wouldn't know."

Glitch paused. He didn't feel right, bringing up V's breakdown to someone who wasn't even there. Everyone was entitled to a little crazy in private now and then, he figured. Fuck knew he'd had plenty of it himself, and it wasn't anyone else's business. Well, he could gloss that part over a bit. "Yeah, or weaknesses, but, so what? You've never seen me hack. I don't talk about it in detail, and I know you both missed the news reports. I could have anything installed on me, right now—and I do, by the way, that's not hypothetical, I've coded all kinds of cool shit for myself—and it's not like you ever felt the need to ask. I'm just saying, give the poor guy a chance. He's not the type that's gonna open up that easily. Believe me, I keep trying. Hey, did you know he has a sense of humor in there somewhere?"

"Why, by the way? What's so interesting about him?" Kathy asked, tilting her head at Glitch. Her hair slid out from behind her ear, and she tucked it back.

"That's easy. I see a locked thing, I got a compulsive need to open it," Glitch said, with a grin. "Story of my life."

"Your life is like, four years long," Hammer pointed out, with a laugh.

Glitch affected mock offense, eyebrows high and dark eyes wide. "Excuse you! I'm seven years old, thank you very much. Seven and a half. Which is pretty respectable for where we live."

"And you've learned nothing from your seven and a half years?" Kathy said, aiming vaguely for a teasing tone, though she was tense enough with anxiety that it took Glitch a moment to realize that she was actually joking.

"I've learned things! I've learned I like getting into things I'm not supposed to."

"Haven't learned that if you gotta add 'and a half,' everyone can see you got insecurities about it," Hammer joked, under his breath.

Glitch pretended to not hear. "And I've learned that I'm good at it, and they say you should do what you're good at, so…"

Kathy sighed, circling around her desk and having a seat. "Look, I'm still not convinced, but I'll make you a deal. Convince me that V's not a threat to us, and he can stay. You say you're good at reading wear patterns and opening locks, so find out what's going on with him…because I can feel it in my circuits, there's something more to him that isn't adding up…and come back and tell me what you find out."

Glitch mulled it over for the space of two blinks of an eye, which was a long train of thought for him. "Sneaky. You can't just ask him yourself?"

"No, because imagine how it's going to sound if I call him in here right after he wakes up, accuse him of hiding something that may or may not exist, and then try to give him a verbal shakedown about it. He'd leave, and I'm still not sure that's safe for us. If he went back and reported our location to the Hunters…"

Ah. That explained it all. Kathy was worried that V would rat them out. Well, that made sense, at least. "I don't think he's that kind of guy, but…okay, fine, alright. I'll…try and see if I can't learn something about him. But man, I feel a little shady doing it this way." Glitch hopped up and off the desk.

"It's not like that, Glitch. Just…figure out if he's going to endanger us or not. I'm not asking you to lie to him or anything."

Glitch internally huffed a bit. He'd already expressed his opinion on that topic multiple times, but Kat was clearly in no mood to listen to him until he'd wheedled something or another out of V. Never mind that he'd made several perfectly good educated guesses and could have gone on making them, except he didn't like performing for unappreciative audiences. She didn't get to hear the rest of his theory, if that's how she was going to be about it. Well, if this was what it took to get Kathy to agree to let him stay, he was doing V a favor, in the end. He could make himself believe that for long enough to find some useless tidbit or another that would satisfy her paranoia.

"Gonna be out with him later this morning, planning improvements to the perimeter," Hammer added. "I'll keep an eye on him, see if I can't suss out a little more about him myself. I dunno, though, I think he's pretty on the level, but I see where you're comin' from, Kat. Don't worry too much. Sh—stuff's gonna work out, one way or another."

"Yeah, what Mister Forklift said," Glitch agreed. "I'm gonna go see if I can't get that fourth pod put together and working. Number two's cable works, by the way."

"Oh, good. Thank you, Glitch. Let me know if you need anything."

"Sure thing." He gave her his usual flippant salute and bounced out of the room. He went back to the recharging pods to collect the old cable, which he'd left there in case the new one was a dud, and quietly slid into the room, careful to not wake V or Flip, who was sleeping soundly in pod number three.

Glitch coiled the cable, holding it in his immobilized hand and wrapping it with his free one. V muttered something in his sleep, and Glitch paused, waiting to see if he'd made too much noise. Evidently not, as the other reploid lay peacefully in his cracked-lid pod, eyes closed.

What a mess. This poor, sad little guy, Glitch thought, because he had a few inches on V in height. Living in constant pain, but can't trust anyone enough to even do basic maintenance on him. What do you gotta go through to end up there? He silently watched V recharge for a few moments. How did one even go about earning someone's trust, when they were that beaten already? He was usually better at losing it than gaining it, if he had to be ruthlessly honest with himself, but V seemed to get along with him well enough anyway.

If he had to guess, and he kinda did, he had a gut feeling that V wanted someone to trust. Who wouldn't, after whatever he'd been through? And, honestly, Glitch wanted to trust V.

V mumbled something nonsensical about not having time. Whatever that meant.

He even manages to look tired in his sleep, Glitch observed. Like, damn. How much weight are you even carrying, V? Kat thinks you're a danger to us, but I think you're a danger to yourself, buddy. And what do you even mean, you don't have time? How is that the thing you're worried about? His thoughts flicked back to V's little moment the other day. Who in the world could a single, retired reploid possibly be letting down by…what, performing at slightly less than superheroic capacity?

Whatever he's been through, Glitch concluded, putting some pieces together in his head, it wasn't fair to ask of anybody. Wear patterns, and worry lines, and old scars…and yours are pretty telling, but I don't think most of them are visible, are they?

More pieces settled into place on their own, as they tended to do when Glitch focused on a riddle. No, somebody like you hides things…and I'm beginning to have some ideas why. But I don't blame you for it. Not at all. Your lines, your frame, your age…they don't match anything else I've seen. If I were in the position I think you may be in, I'd hide from everything and everyone, too.

Well, he'd figure out something he could tell Kat that wasn't too personal. It didn't have to be any more awkward of a position than he made it to be…and hey, she hadn't forbidden him from just telling V that she had misgivings and she'd sent him to find out more about him. In fact, she told him to not lie, which conversely implied that he should tell the truth. He could make this work, no problem. He just had to be a little smart about it, which was practically his middle name, so it would be fine.

Glitch slunk out of the room, careful to not disturb either of the recharging reploids, and headed back to his lab. Assembling the pod would give him something to do with his hands while his mind worked at the puzzle he'd started building in his head.

Hammer and X leaned over the battered clipboard, on which Hammer had an impressively accurate sketch of the encampment's floor plan, such as it had one. They were in the remains of one of the higher buildings next to the garage, taking a walk around to identify weak points. "We'll want to do something about the lack of visibility right there," X said, pointing to the map, then down to the structure. "If we were attacked from that side, we'd have no way to defend. If we can build up the wall with some slits to fire from, I'll feel a lot better about it."

Hammer took notes with a stub of a pencil, carefully, as the paper was fragile from age and exposure. It was, after all, just old lined notebook paper, not designed to last very long, but it was what they had in any quantity. "Good call. Not much on the inside there. We could set up some sorta guard post situation in case we need it."

X nodded agreement. "Definitely. If I were going to lead a force here, that's the place I'd choose to press first, as things are now. How much weight can the garage support?"

"Forty pounds per square foot, live load," Hammer answered, as easily as if this were common knowledge. X glanced over at him. "Well, assuming that the structure hasn't been damaged by having the building across the street fall on it. Good enough for a start point, though, and I think most of the frame's self-supporting. Not like we can move it, so we just gotta guess and work around it. For napkin math, forty's good enough."

X's gaze fell on Hammer's left shoulder, and the scratched-off logo there. Just enough of it remained that he could make out the shape: the letters AMC, blocky and combined into a single rectangle. Just the same as the logo on Charles Alderman's business card. Interesting, X thought. Very interesting. There is definitely something more going on here. He looked back to the floor plan, hoping that his wandering attention hadn't been noticed. "You know your stuff."

"Of course I do. I was in construction for ten years," the construction reploid said, with some pride. "Still would be now, if I had my druthers, but," he shrugged, trailing off. "Didn't work out that way."

"Sorry to hear it," X said.

"Is what it is. I still get to build, so it could be a lot worse." Hammer made notes as he talked. "Might wanna secure the top floor better, too…wonder if we could stack cars or something to block it off. Hard to do without it being visible from above, but I'll come up with something."

"They've got at least one flier for certain, and if they came up and over any of the buildings like where we are now, we'd be in trouble. The top floor ramp will be the second most critical place to reinforce." He shifted his weight, cane in hand, and looked between the paper and the actual building a few more times. "The stairwells, also. The doors on them currently wouldn't hold under attack."

"Those things? Doors wouldn't hold under me leaning on them a little hard," Hammer laughed. "But I've got scrap and a welder. Can't really run anything else while I'm using it, and flux is a little short, but I can come up with something to jam them. Worst case, we just block them with rubble, but I'd rather use the weight allowance somewhere else."

"Is there anything else you needed?" X asked, and Hammer shook his head.

"Think that'll be enough to keep me busy for a while. I'm gonna go double-check my stock of a few things. Need a hand getting down from here?"

X scanned the route down, across the rubble and to a remaining stairwell. "I'll be fine. The sun's nice, anyway. We don't get that much of it in the garage."

"Sure don't. Love it if I could put up some solar, but that's the kinda thing that draws attention. Too shiny, too obvious, too useless if you stick it under an overhang. Ah, well, can't have everything. Don't stay out too long." The construction reploid headed down on his own, leaving X alone in the shelled-out building.

Finally, he thought. It's hard to get a moment alone here. It reminded him of Hunter HQ, in that respect, which wasn't all bad. He found a likely chunk of rubble, shielded under an upper floor, but near enough to a window that the sun angled into it, and took a grateful seat. His systems were still complaining vigorously about the day before, but he didn't want to advertise that fact if he could avoid it.

X pulled the water-warped business card out from his jacket pocket and gazed at it again. Definitely the same logo as Hammer's, he thought to himself. If he had access to a computer, he'd have looked up Alderman and his company to see if he could draw any connections there, but he didn't have that luxury at the moment.

Then again…it wasn't as if he couldn't simply leave for a bit. He would probably have to explain what he was doing, though, and he had the feeling it would rattle some nerves. X mentally filed it away as a potential last resort, but if he waited that long, he'd not likely be returning, either. Maybe it wasn't much of an option at all, as long as he was following the encampment's buddy system rules.

There was good reason to do so, X reminded himself. Having a fellow ex-Hunter in charge of a bunch of irregulars was not a good situation. The Maverick Wars had started in such a way, and that shadow loomed ominously large in his mind.

This was different, though. Wasn't it? Seren was no Sigma. He had been trusted, charismatic, well-respected—and rightfully so, until his rebellion. Seren was a loose cannon from the start. Brash and highly driven, she had good intentions and some of the better training scores he'd seen, but terrible execution when it came down to it. X wished he'd gotten to know her better, but the end of the Wars had been a chaotic time, and he hadn't had the chance.

Or perhaps he had, and he hadn't properly taken it. What good was I as a leader if I couldn't guide my subordinates better than this? he thought. Now she's causing completely avoidable trouble because she's in a position I didn't hesitate to put her in. He'd told Kathy that he had known Seren, but he hadn't been specific on the exact capacity in which he'd known her. It was to hide his identity, he'd told himself, but from the right angle, it was equally out of shame at having failed her as an officer.

X remembered her, but only because he'd had to give her a poor evaluation. Some great hero he was, he thought bitterly. A little positive reinforcement could have gone a long way.

X shook his head. Ruminating wouldn't solve anything. He realized he was staring blankly into the business card and tucked it back into a hidden jacket pocket. There was some key detail still missing, some connection that would explain everything about where Charles Alderman had disappeared to, and it had to be here in the encampment, X knew. He ran his fingers through his messy brown hair and stood up with difficulty.

It took him a while to make his way down from his perch. There was only one real route in or out from the garage that wasn't the service tunnel entrance: the old entrance ramp was still intact, though piled with rubble, leaving room for a single reploid at a time to enter or exit. Defensible, he thought approvingly, for the second time that day. They weren't combatants, mostly, but they'd put some thought into it, and the rest, he would help shore up.

"Hey, V," Valentina chirped, looking up from the romance novel she was reading while on watch duty. The guard post wasn't much more than a folding chair, a table, and some stacked concrete for cover, but it was better than nothing. "Hammer came through here looking really enlightened a bit ago. You guys figure out what you're going to do?"

"We did," X said, leaning on his cane and resisting the vertigo of having to reconcile who he was with what he was doing and what that meant for what he really was. "It'll be a lot safer here soon."

"Great!" Valentina bubbled. "Oh, also, Glitch was looking for you, because of course he was, he's totally adopted you."

X sputtered. "Adopted me?" he echoed.

"Seriously, you didn't notice? Hmm, maybe you haven't known him long enough to know the difference…but I can tell, so, I'm telling you. I've seen him do it before, too, he totally hung all over Flip when he first showed up here. It's just how he is. He sees a new person, and they don't have much to say, and he's got to figure out what makes them tick."

"Uh, what happens when he's figured it out?" X ventured.

"On to the next project, because he's got the attention span of a goldfish." She turned a page. "I mean, not in a bad way, but—"

"I knew my mics were overheating. What are you telling him, Val?" Glitch playfully accused, rounding the corner.

"Nothing~" Valentina sing-songed. "Just talking about the weather~"

"Yeah, my gluteal plates, you were. Anyway, V, I was just looking for you."

"Because of course he was," Valentina added, turning another page.

"Shh. Not another word from you," Glitch scolded, pointing at her. "This is important business."

X decided to bite, even though his systems were predicting that it was probably going to be something silly. "What is it?"

"Well, I was thinking while you and Hammer were out that defenses are great and all, but you know what's even better? Early warning. And I realized, I could take all these phones that still work, disable their cellular data entirely, get them all talking in a decentralized wifi mesh, and use them as a sensor network. I haven't figured out the power supply for them yet, but give me like fifteen more minutes and I'll have something."

X blinked. He had been expecting something…well, frivolous, in short, not a genuinely interesting contribution. "That's an excellent idea," he said.

"Of course it is, I had it," Glitch replied, but he could not hide his pride at the compliment. "And get this, since I've got wifi, I'll be able to see out of the whole thing in real time if I need to. Well, maybe not the whole thing at once, depending on how many sensor nodes we get going, but I can handle a few nodes at a time, no problem. I said it's decentralized, but that's kind of a lie, I'd technically be the main server at least part of the time."

"Forewarned is forearmed. Even just a perimeter would be a huge advantage. Have you told Kathy yet? She'll want to hear about it."

"Just about to. I figured since you're kinda helping coordinate defenses I'd tell you first and see what you thought. Okay. Back to the lab, I gotta figure out what I'm gonna do to run power to all these things, considering a lot of them have shit batteries after all this time. I wonder how many mini solar panels we can hide in the scenery…and how many we can find, also a good question…" Glitch jogged back the way he came, towards the central building, and X watched him leave.

"See? I told you so," Valentina said, tossing her peachy-pink hair and turning another dog-eared page of her book. "Came running up all excited to tell his cool new idea to his cool new friend before even telling the boss lady."

"Huh." What a bizarre concept, X thought, both hands on the handle of his cane. I'm used to people seeking my approval, but not when they don't even know who I am. This is what I get for having a moment of weakness with an audience, I guess. He paused, thinking back. Glitch's explanation of what being irregular was like had hit awfully close to home, but he was not by any stretch the only one who was irregular. And Valentina did seem the talkative type…maybe she could shed some more light on the subject.

"You're irregular, right?" X asked her.

"Maverick," she corrected him, with an incongruously cheerful peace sign and a grin. "We're all mad here, V, don't tell me you haven't figured that out yet. Why do you ask?"

Something about her complete glibness chilled him, but X ventured ahead anyway. "…What was it like? When you first…you know, realized."

"Oh, and here I was gonna scold you for being nosy, but how can I be mad at that face you're making?" she cooed.

"I'm not…making any face," X objected. Was he? He didn't think he was, but he hadn't had as much control over his expressions lately as he was used to having, and he wasn't sure why. Maybe it was just another thing his systems were slipping on.

Valentina marked her page with a bit of yarn and set her book aside. The cover displayed some silly artwork of a muscular human man, his shirt half-open, cradling a dramatically fainting human woman, her corset barely containing her ample assets. "You are, but it's okay. See, V, I don't know if you've noticed, because a lot of reploids don't think about this kind of thing, but I'm a sexbot," she said, very simply. X had noticed, but he hadn't seen a reason to point it out or even ask. To most reploids, even insinuating that someone was designed as a plaything for humans in that way was a grievous insult.

"And that's fine with me, actually. I love humans, for the most part. They're kinda cute, you know? They're fun. But there's like…the opposite of love isn't hate, or even fear, because those are still something, I think. It's not feeling anything at all. There were some humans that I ended up stuck with that I couldn't love, because they wouldn't love me. I didn't hate them. I wasn't even all that afraid of them. I think I thought I was, but then I realized I didn't have to be. I could just make them never be a problem for me or anyone else again, and it was easy, once I understood that I could just stop pretending I cared."

That explained why she was so nonchalant about calling herself what she was, X thought, but he couldn't relate. "You've never felt bad about…?"

"I murdered them. You can just say it, it's okay. You can't hurt my feelings by telling me what I willingly did, don't worry. I've felt bad about parts of it. Like their family and friends, I guess. I don't know if they had any but most humans do. The actual act, though? No. I'm supposed to, you know? I'm supposed to be horrified at what I've done, but I just…meh. I'm not. They treated me like an object, so I made them into objects. I think that's fair. So I guess to answer your question, it was like…realizing that I was playing a game that I didn't have to be playing, and I could just stop. I think if I'd realized it a lot sooner I wouldn't have a body count, but it is what it is."

Something in the back of X's somewhat faulty memory stirred. He did recognize her. He'd seen her on the news, once, years ago. "Wait, I know you. They called you Bloody Valent—" he started, but Valentina shushed him, one index finger to his lips. Even all the way out here, she had managed to find pink, sparkly nail polish, though it was chipped around the edges.

"Shh. If everyone else hasn't figured it out by now, we don't need to tell them," she stage whispered. "I always thought that was a really stupid name, anyway. There was no blood at all. Ever. I didn't make a mess like that. And the way they made that idiot pimp sound like he was innocent? It was bullshit, V, don't listen to the news."

"Did…you actually do the other murders?" X whispered, once she released him.

"What do you think?" she countered, smiling so innocently that X felt dizzy with cognitive dissonance, on top of his usual litany of reasons for it.

X hesitated. "I…think I wouldn't have expected it from you in the first place, so I don't know what to think."

Valentina giggled, eyes crinkling into a smile. "You're cute, V, never change. I'll tell you this much. Whoever I did or didn't kill, it was all self defense, in the end. It's a rough world, when you have something everyone thinks you owe them, and nobody's looking out for you. But I never harmed a single hair on a single person that treated me like a person too. Maverick or not, I still love that kind of human. And I never disliked what I was created for. I just…don't care about people who won't care about me, and if they're going to hurt me, I'm going to hurt them."

X mulled it over. "It's…excessive," he said, after a few minutes. "Isn't it? Killing someone, when you could just leave?"

Valentina shook her head. "Maybe you wouldn't understand this, because you aren't built—you know, like me," she said, a bit delicately for his benefit, motioning vaguely to her entire body. "But like, it's not that simple when the thing they want to take from you is your own body. Once a human looks at you like a possession they bought, instead of a person performing a service, you can't trust them again, and some of them get violent when you won't be their obedient little toy. It's you or them, and you can't make me believe you wouldn't defend yourself."

X tried to imagine it…and couldn't. It was so far outside of his realm of experience, all he could muster was a vague but core-deep sense of revulsion. "I guess I sort of get it?" he conceded.

"It's not really that different from you, though. All's fair in love and war. Right? That's what they say. But reploids like you and me? We know better," Valentina said, conspiratorially. She gave him a secret, cold little grin with no mirth behind it. "There's, like, nothing at all fair about either of them. Doesn't matter what you do. If you follow orders, pretty soon you aren't your own anymore and it'll break you, but if you don't, you just break some other way instead. So we had to choose, didn't we, how we got broken and what we were willing to trade to get out. I traded having to know what I'm capable of, and I don't get to forget that ever again. What did you trade?"

If X found her chilling before, she was positively terrifying now. He'd seen the expression she wore now on so many other Mavericks: the unsettling and humorless smile, the odd predatory light in her pretty eyes. But this was different. She wasn't looking at him like an enemy. She looked at him like an ally, and his vertigo threatened to overwhelm him under her gaze.

"I…" he started, trying to answer her. "I traded…" How could he put it into words? Almost a century of war, of crushing loss, as friends became enemies and enemies became scrap, with no rhyme or reason or way to keep it from happening, over and over…there was no way to express it aloud, and even if there were, he didn't have the strength to give form to the the grief. "Everything."

"And what did you get for it?" Valentina asked.

X put a hand on the stacked concrete wall, because his cane suddenly wasn't enough to keep him steady. "I don't know. I did what I had to do," he said. "Nobody else could have done it."

"Is that enough?"

"It has to be," he protested, wishing he had somewhere to sit. "If it's not…what was it all for?"

"Well, that's where we're different, then, huh? You followed your orders, and I couldn't. I hope you got what you were promised, but I kinda feel like if you did, you probably wouldn't be here talking to me about it." Her cold, feral expression warmed and softened, disappearing so quickly that X almost wondered if he'd imagined it from the start. "I hope you find, like, at least a little of what you were fighting for."

X sagged slightly. Without her giving him that look, his tension drained out of him, and he felt like a marionette with a single clipped string; not toppling over, but not truly standing, either. "I hope so, too."

"Ugh, listen to me though, being a downer weirdo on a nice day like today. You know what's a better answer? Realizing you're a Maverick is like, not even that big of a deal—except for the whole dead people thing, that's kind of a big deal—because it's not like you weren't capable the entire time. It's a fake title, if you think about it. The difference between me and some random other reploid is that they haven't had to do some fucked-up shit to survive yet. That's really it. Like, you're still you, just now you know how far you're willing to go, that's all."

Valentina's sudden change in demeanor jarred X out of the anxious funk he was beginning to fall into. She was hard to keep up with, emotionally, but at least he was too far off his equilibrium to even have the sort of nervous breakdown he'd had in front of Glitch. "But if that's the definition, then there's no reason to say that even humans couldn't be irregular or Maverick."

She beamed, excited that he'd made the logical leap. "Exactly! What, you don't think they can? They've got rules, too, and they break them sometimes. The only difference is they give each other different labels than Maverick."

X had never considered it that way before, which was saying something given his age. Valentina continued on. "We're all designed with human emotions and minds, more or less, so if we can become irregular, it only makes sense that we got that from somewhere."

"I guess," X begrudgingly agreed, abruptly feeling like he could use a good sit for a while, and his legs' aching was only part of the problem. If reploids could be irregular, and they could, and if humans could indeed be considered irregular, too, then he, as some sort of a midpoint between the two, couldn't imagine a single reason that he couldn't be as well. "I think I'm going to head in and…do whatever needs done."

"Go make sure Glitch isn't blowing himself up or something," Valentina agreed with a smile. "He'll be glad you dropped by, bet you a thousand zenny."

"I am not taking that bet," X said, gathering his nerves from wherever they'd gone off to and making his usual slow way into the encampment. Locating Glitch turned out to be as simple as going into the central building and listening for him talking to himself. X knocked on the lab door.

"It's unlocked," Glitch called from inside, so X let himself in. "V! Hey, check it out." There was a growing pile of old phones on the workbench, which Glitch was busily popping open with a pry tool. A few of them had dead batteries removed, and one of them was already temporarily wired to a miniature solar panel under a very bright desk lamp. "Batteries that actually hold a charge all night are gonna be hell to figure out in numbers, and they don't quite work off just a solar panel out of the box, but in theory, it's gonna work. I might be able to just strip the whole OS out and code something a lot lighter that draws less power, and I can kill the screen since it's not like I need it, so that'll make up for a lot of it. And I think I can whip up a low power mode where they don't poll the mic and camera too often unless there's something worth looking at."

X just blinked. "Wow. Was this kind of thing your day job?" he asked.

"Haha, no, I was a corporate IT and infosec drone, mostly. Absolute bullshit job." He kicked back in his office chair, tilting it precariously without falling. "This, though? This is the shit I live for. Give me fifty cheap refrigerators with wifi and bad security, and I'll take over the world. Dunno what I'd do with it, but you know, it's the thought that counts, or something. So! What do you think?"

"I think," X replied, "that I would have been a little afraid of you, if I'd had to tangle with you when I was still a Hunter."

Glitch cackled so hard he lost his balance and had to grab the edge of his workbench with his free hand. "Hell yeah! Now that's some high praise. You're gonna turn my ego into bloatware, you keep saying shit like that."

X simply raised one eyebrow. This really was a different world he was in now, if that was a compliment. Or Glitch was just that odd. "I…guess you could take it that way," he conceded. "It's definitely a good skill set for what we're dealing with now. I'll feel a lot better with these keeping an eye out."

"I wanna get a few of these things working before I pitch it to Kathy," Glitch said, returning all of his chair's wheels to the floor. "You, uh, got more hands than me still. Don't suppose I could borrow them…? Not literally, shit, don't look at me like that. I'm not gonna steal your arm."

"It's not stealing if you asked first," X said, and Glitch once again had to squint at him for a moment to decide if he was making a joke.

"Ha. Good one, V. …I think. I'd ask Mack but I already asked it to go test as many batteries as it could get its…okay, it doesn't have hands. Why is everything coming back to hand jokes? Anyway, I wouldn't mind some help popping the rest of these open and taking out the batteries. I can do it, obviously, but it's kind of terrible with one free hand."

"Sure, I could do that." X pulled a chair over and sat, and Glitch handed him a thin pry tool.

"This'll work on most of them, but if that doesn't, I got a whole pile of different shapes. Just try to not break any…they're not real easy to replace as things are. I'm doing the broken and dead ones too just in case, so don't mix them up."

The two of them sat quietly for a bit, popping phones open and removing the batteries. X found it to be more meditative work than he'd expected, and jumped slightly when Glitch spoke.

"Talk about anything fun with Valentina?"

X made a noncommittal noise, prying the back panel off of another phone. Maybe if he acted unenthused enough, Glitch would take the hint.

"Yes? No? Maybe so?"

X set the phone down and sighed. That had been wishful thinking. "Just…asking her what she thought being irregular was like."

"Ah, I see. Getting a second opinion. It's fine if you are, you know. All the cool kids are doing it. Be Maverick, do crimes," he said, making a grand gesture with one hand, as if the words were written on a marquee somewhere up in the air.

"I really do not see a need to…do crimes," X protested.

"Okay, so just be plain irregular and do whatever you want, then, it's no coolant outta my system. You know, I was wondering after seeing you in action yesterday…what did you do in the Hunters? 'Cause you've clearly seen action."

X hesitated for several moments. How was he supposed to answer this without tipping his hand…? Well, the truth was easier to tell than a lie, even if it wasn't the entire truth, and it came with the added benefit that he didn't have to remember two versions of the story. "I was a unit captain," he replied, then went back to trying to wiggle an obstinate battery from its housing without breaking anything.

"Oh, whoa. Yeah, that explains it. What rank did you end up making by the end?"

X set his mouth into a line, worrying that he was probably making some face he wouldn't be aware he was making. That kept happening, recently. "Not that high, honestly."

"Liiike…D rank? C?"

"B." Then, after a pause, "Mostly." He'd made S rank, near the end, but not out of any desire to perform.

"Ah, we're back in five-words-at-the-maximum territory. You know you can just tell me you don't wanna talk about something, right? That's a real option you're allowed to take."

X let out another sigh. "I would rather not. It's…a lot to have to remember." He set the phone down and picked up the next. "Back in the worst of it, when the Virus was the most, well, virulent…it wasn't uncommon to have someone at your side one week and at the other end of your buster the next. If I don't have to think about it, I don't."

"Damn. That is a lot. Sorry for bringing it up. I was just curious because I don't think I've run into anybody who's got aim like that, except maybe Seren." Glitch flipped the pry tool from finger to finger, mind entirely elsewhere for the span of a whole second before bouncing two steps back in the conversation. "So what kind of nonsense was Valentina telling you about me?"

"Nothing much."

"Veeeeeeeee," Glitch whined, dragging the single letter out and slumping sideways dramatically. "I'm trying to make conversation, here. Meet me at least a quarter of the way, would you?"

"Sorry. I'm…kind of out of practice at it. Gossip isn't really my thing, but she, er, said you adopt new reploids."

Glitch sputtered. "Oh, I do not, this is slander," he said, and X decided it couldn't be that bad of slander, because he seemed to reserve his worst melodrama for those he actually liked.

"She thinks you adopted Flip," X added, though talking about someone he had barely exchanged a few words with made him inwardly cringe a little bit.

Glitch flipped the tool from pinky to thumb, around every finger on the way, and then back. "Yeah, well, he looked like he could use a friend. Except you can't get that close to him, because he and Siobhan stick together like magnets, so I tried to be her friend too, but then he got territorial for some reason? I don't know. People do weird shit when they've been through it, and I dunno what happened to them, but they've been through it, whatever it was. I figured I should probably stop trying so hard after that. They got some kinda unilateral network going and it's none of my business."

X focused on carefully prying apart a press-fit panel without snapping it. So he hadn't simply gotten bored and abandoned Flip as a project, as Valentina had assumed. That was a lot less impersonal of a motive than X had been led to believe. It also explained more about why Hammer had offhandedly mentioned that Flip and Siobhan didn't need 'a third wheel' in their room…whatever a unilateral network was.

Wait, though, did that mean that X wasn't just a shiny new project too? He wasn't sure what to do with that possible piece of information, so he buried it. He didn't need to be a pet project, but that at least was not nearly so troublesome as someone (an accomplished hacker, a criminal, a Maverick, who was going to disassemble me for spare parts if he decided I was up to no good, he reminded himself) trying to be his friend. He'd had enough of those.

He tended to lose them rather violently.

"Huh," was all that X actually said aloud.

"You gotta understand, Val's…programmed a little different. She's, well, you know." For all that he could cheerfully talk about replacing his servos with some dead reploid's parts, Glitch, like the vast majority of reploids, still hesitated to name the particular elephant in Valentina's room. "On top of that, she spent so much time with humans, she's got…ideas about how things work. I'd avoid the subject if I were you, unless you want a full and completely useless report on every relationship here that she thinks she's seen."

"That sounds tiresome. Oh, this one's swollen." X gingerly removed a worrisomely rounded battery from a phone it barely fit into.

"Uh-oh, spicy pillow. Here, I'll take it." Glitch plucked it up and deposited it in a bin on the shelf after giving it a sniff. X wondered if he had a specialized sense of smell for electronics. It was not unknown for technician models. "Well, good news, it's not venting. Pain in the panels, not being able to take them somewhere for someone else to deal with. I'm gonna have to figure out an actual solution soon that isn't 'dump them in the service tunnels somewhere,' except that's kinda the option we got."

Glitch began tinkering while X continued to shell the batteries from the phones. If only he could find Alderman's…he had a feeling it would answer a lot of things, but he recognized all of these, and none of them could have been his.

If he were trying to hide something like that, he thought, where would he put it? Destroying it would have been the most straightforward method. One broken phone looked very much like another and wouldn't rouse suspicion. All that would need to be done would be to tread on it with some force, and it would be unrecognizable.

But, X thought, let's say that I didn't destroy it, because if it's not retrievable, there's no point in looking for it. Let's assume that I kept it. Even reploids make less than logical decisions all the time. Where would I hide something like that?

Somewhere completely random was the best solution, as far as nobody else finding it, but Kathy didn't seem to leave the encampment much that X had seen. She seemed like the sort to stay close to home and take an administrative role. He could reasonably assume that wherever she may have stashed it—assuming that she had it in the first place, and kept it—it had to be nearby. That narrowed things considerably.

If she doesn't often leave to be able to hide it outside the camp, then that only leaves wherever she'd consider to be secure inside the camp…the lockers aren't secure, Hammer told me that, so it's not likely there. The rooms don't have locks, so that's out, too. Kathy's office, however, was part of the original construction, with a comparatively heavy door, a lock, and a lot of hiding places. She was usually there, as well, which would prevent anyone from poking around.

This, of course, begged the question of how he meant to do that himself. X could ask her directly, though she'd already told him she didn't know about it, and he'd probably burn a lot of goodwill by implying that she was a liar. Would it be more or less than if she caught him being nosy…?

X was starting to think there was no pleasant way out of this. Story of his already long and storied life, he inwardly sighed.

"Ha," Glitch laughed, triumphant. "Just need to slap more batteries on…which limits the number that I can make, but it'll be enough. And I got the power consumption as low as I think it's going to get. All we need to do is place these bad boys all over," he held up a spliced-together phone, with several batteries taped onto it, "and they'll maintain a network as long as there's two of them in range. And I can increase the range, no problem, I just need to cobble together some antennas. I gotta decide how far is far enough without attracting attention if someone flies over."

X blinked. "That was fast. Didn't you need to code and update the OS?"

Glitch tapped his temple with his one working hand, though the lumpy phone also held in it made the gesture unnecessarily awkward. "Already did it, my friend. Coded, transmitted, and installed successfully. I'm the best there is, and don't you forget it." If his grin were any cockier, he might have sprouted feathers and crowed.

"That's more than wifi capability," X remarked.

"It sure is. Here, shake my hand," said Glitch, holding his good hand out. X eyed it warily. "No, you don't know this joke, come on." With some trepidation, X took it.

His own hand ran hot, then cold, then tingly, then reported anomalous pressure that visual didn't corroborate, and then on top of all that, his systems reported a minor code intrusion attempt that had failed. This surprised him enough that he jerked his hand back.

"Right?" Glitch agreed with his reaction, still grinning like a maniac. "Ultra high precision EM manipulator. Which sounds cool, except half the time I'm just using it as a magnet to find lost screws, but man, having the capability when I need it? Priceless. Well. No. Almost priceless…it definitely had a price tag."

"Did you need to try to hack me, though?" X complained mildly, still glancing between his hand and Glitch's.

"Oh, don't be a baby, I barely pinged you just to show you. Even if your security sucked and I actually got in, I would have just put a smiley face somewhere in your code and let you find it later. I'm a hacker and a Maverick but I'm not evil. Evil would be leaving you with a present that made you beep just a little at random intervals or something."

"I'd have to suddenly rejoin the Hunters just for the occasion if you did," X grumbled, begrudgingly impressed and slightly terrified. "Still…that's good work. On the sensor network, I mean. I'd assumed it would be days before you had it working, not hours, barely plural."

"I'm a professional, V! Actually, I'm worse, I'm a professional and a hobbyist at the same time. That's just the kind of combination you gotta worry about. Also I get about thirty hours per day compared to most reploids getting twenty four. That helps too."

"I'm sure it does. Did you need anything else?"

Glitch held the sensor out. "Yeah, hang onto this one. It'll need a charge now and then, but in case anyone gets harassed again, I think we should carry a sensor each. Might not pick up visual if it's in a pocket but it'll at least get sound and location once I've got the rest set up." X accepted it and tucked it into a pocket. "If you're headed out, let Kathy know I wanna see her in fifteen minutes, because I'll have something to show her by then."

"I'll do that," X said, leaning on his cane for balance as he stood. His balance systems complained with enthusiasm, and he steadfastly ignored them. Kathy was just next door, anyway. He knocked.

"What's up, V?" she asked as she answered the door.

"Glitch has been working on something he wants to show you," X told her. "He asked me to ask you to come have a look in fifteen minutes or so."

"Oh? I hope he won't be too disappointed if I just go over now. I could really use a break." She stepped out and around X, and let herself into Glitch's lab.

"Hey, no fair peeking, I definitely said fifteen," X heard Glitch say before the door closed, leaving the little town hall building quiet.

Out of curiosity, X tried the handle of Kathy's office door…and it swung open. Unlocked, unattended, and unsuspected. For how long this would last, X couldn't guess, but Glitch did talk an awful lot, and Kathy didn't seem to have as much technical experience as X, so the explanation would likely take a little longer. If he was ever going to search, it would have to be now, even though he hadn't entirely decided to commit to this as a plan.

Well, rust it. He was committing.

X ducked in, carefully so as to not stumble into the doorframe and make noise, and pulled the door almost shut behind him. He likely only had a few minutes to search, so he started searching the place he thought most likely: Kathy's desk. The drawers were not locked. He slid each one open, cautiously in case it squeaked, and moved the contents as little as possible.

There were school papers, still ungraded; there was a stack of kindergarten-level textbooks, somewhat wrinkled from exposure to water; a stash of writing utensils; an interesting rock; several spiral-bound notebooks, much written in with various notes and plans, including some sketches of the encampment's layout; a handful of old desk toys, very handled. Nothing caught X's eye. He closed the lap drawer and considered giving up, but as the drawer slid shut, he noticed the dark shape of Kathy's bag under the desk.

With one hand on the edge of the desk as support so that he didn't topple over, X reached down and pulled it out, setting it on the desk. He could barely hear Glitch still talking through the doors between them, but he didn't dare risk the time to empty it completely, nor did he trust that Kathy wouldn't notice things in disarray. He flipped it open, quickly looking over the few things in it. There was a hairbrush, a somewhat rumpled change of clothing, a few other personal odds and ends…and an interior pocket with a zipper. He unzipped it and reached inside, and his fingers closed around something cold, rectangular, and thin: a phone.

The briefest of glances confirmed that the wear patterns on it matched the phone case inside of which he'd found Charles's business card. Finally. He zipped the pocket back up and returned the bag to where he'd found it, tucking the phone itself into one of his jacket's interior pockets. A quick peek outside the office door confirmed that Glitch was still explaining his idea to Kathy at great length and with great excitement, so X grabbed a flashlight, slipped out, and closed the door behind him.

If he'd been biological, he thought, his hands would be sweating. Fortunate for him that he didn't have that particular problem, except that he could hear one of his cooling fans rattling with anxiety. Just another reason he should get an actual tune-up…but that was a problem for later. X gathered his composure and walked out of the central building as coolly as he could.

Vertigo spinning a little more quickly than usual, X walked to the service tunnel stairs. If he was lucky, he could slip down without anybody questioning him and investigate the phone. If it still worked. If the battery still held a charge. If it didn't demand a password. If it hadn't been wiped. If, if, if. He didn't like the decreasing odds, but he had to know. How could a person disappear so thoroughly?

X almost vaulted down the steps, but restrained himself. He didn't need the extra noise, and he didn't need to jar his joints that hard over nothing. He carefully retraced the steps he'd taken to the room he'd used to test the box of phones previously, and sat down on the floor.

He placed the flashlight on the ground next to him, pointed up at the ceiling to generally illuminate the room. The phone powered on and booted up successfully. X held his breath. A few splash screens of manufacturer logos, and…a number code lock screen. Of course.

Many people, he knew, picked fairly useless PINs, and didn't often change them. He angled the flashlight across the screen. Luck was on his side, it seemed. Just visible under polarized vision was a faint haze of scratches in the screen protector, centered around three numbers: 3, 4, and 9.

Hmm… It wasn't quite enough for the standard minimum of four digits. He could guess, but that risked the phone deleting its own data if it had been set up to do that after a certain number of incorrect password entries. X pulled the business card from his pocket, hoping for some inspiration.

4394 North Fair Street. I'd bet that's it. He tried the address, and the screen unlocked. Got you. X turned the screen brightness down to nothing to conserve power, adjusted his own visual brightness higher, turned the flashlight off, and searched through it.

Nothing in recent calls stood out to him. Email wasn't promising, and seemed to be mainly business contract stuff. X thumbed through to the photo gallery…and clamped a hand over his mouth in shock.

Charles Alderman was a fairly average middle-aged man in good shape. He had most of his hair, though he was visibly beginning to thin. Nothing especially stood out about him, physically. No, the problem was that in this photo, he was posing, like a successful big game hunter, with the clearly burnt-out chassis of a reploid, holding the body up as proudly as if it were a trophy.

He had been a humanoid type. His eyes stared blankly into space, mouth half open in an expression of terror dulled by death. Charles beamed at his phone's camera, which he clearly held in one hand for this shot, the other struggling to hold its heavy load steadily enough for the shot. He could only heft the body halfway, the dead reploid's legs still trailing in the rubble, but despite this and the buster rifle slung over his shoulder his expression was the same as any fisherman mugging for the photo with a prize catch.

X almost dropped the phone, other hand still pressed to his mouth. He'd heard of this kind of thing, very occasionally, but he'd never seen it. He'd seen so many Mavericks with human victims that he'd slowly stopped feeling much except a kind of numb, detached malaise about it, but the reversal shocked him. And the way Alderman smiled about it, with an easy pride…he'd rarely seen that on a Maverick. Only the worst of them, like Sigma, managed that sort of casual, bloodless callousness.

Valentina's assertion that humans could be Maverick rose to the top of his mind, unbidden. The only difference is they give each other different labels than Maverick.

No, thought X, this is still different. Most Mavericks truly believe they're doing what they have to do, even if they're wrong…but his eyes don't have that kind of sharpness. He's entirely relaxed. He did this just because it was fun, and because he could…no other reason.

Hesitantly, X swiped through the camera roll, scanning over months of pictures taken. Images flashed before him: a dog playing with a rope toy in the yard. Some children. A school play. Drinks with several other humans around a table at a restaurant. A synthetic rabbit's ear, severed with a wire cutter and taken as a trophy. An anthropomorphic reploid, designed like a rabbit, a hole seared through her head, curled up on the cracked asphalt ground while Charles flashed a thumbs-up over her corpse, some unseen third party holding the phone. Dinner with the family. A strikingly nice sunset. The kids and the dog, asleep together on the couch. A hand, wires trailing and silver nanofluid still dripping from the wrist, fingers bent after death into a peace sign and held in that shape by a human hand. A face-down reploid, the plating on his back scorched with buster fire.

X felt sick. His entire core lurched violently, as close to nausea as a synthetic system could get. He squeezed his eyes shut and muffled a strangled, involuntary little sound into his hand. How could a human do this? How could they enjoy it? It was nothing but bloodsport—crossing the wall, hunting reploids for entertainment, murdering them as they ran—like animals. Worse than animals, maybe, because those at least hadn't already been banished to a hellish war zone, where they could barely even risk finding sustenance without being caught and killed. Animals at least were allowed to live before they died.

X shuddered, pulling his knees to his chest. Being Maverick suddenly made far too much sense. No, the actions of one did not condemn the many, but even one was too many. Just one could do so much damage. He had terminated countless reploids himself, but he had never enjoyed it, ever. Finding joy in pointless murder went far beyond any horror he had ever imagined.

He couldn't bear to look back at the phone screen, but he had to. The battery wouldn't wait for him to have a breakdown. X forcibly wrenched his eyes open and to the device. The dates on the photos were telling. Every several months, Charles Alderman had taken an excursion into the quarantine zone and…bagged a trophy, X thought, balance systems reporting a sickening avalanche of critical errors as he did. He had to close his eyes again and regain some equilibrium before going on.

X closed the photo gallery and rifled through the phone's settings and installed apps. Locations on photos hadn't been saved, and cloud storage was disabled. A little digging revealed several anti-tracking apps disguised as calculators and note-taking applications, as well as an end-to-end encoded messaging app. None of the messages were retrievable without Charles's password, which was not his phone unlock PIN, but that it existed alongside the photos told X all that he needed to know. This was a hobby, and while the picture in which he wasn't holding his own phone could have been taken with a stand, there were likely others involved with him.

X needed to tell Kathy—no, he needed to return the phone to her bag and say nothing—no, he needed to tell Hunter HQ about this—no, what would they be able to do? They had no jurisdiction over human crimes—his circuits spun endlessly. Maybe he could convince Charles and his compatriots to stop, if he could just talk to any of these human Maverick Hunters—no, they were just trophy hunters, and they would just as happily bag him, too, without his recognizable armor. Or maybe even with it. Nobody was safe here. And if he encountered any of them himself, would be have to defend himself? Would he harm, even kill, a—

X dropped the phone, hands shaking, and it bounced on the poured concrete floor with a clatter. He would. He would have to. Of course he would have to do it. There would be no other choice, right? Surely at least some of the reploids they'd hunted had tried talking them down. They would not listen to reason, and they'd attack him…and then he would no longer have the luxury of denying that he was capable of doing what he had to do. Just like everyone else here. They were already no different, he realized, except that they knew, and he couldn't accept it yet.

He wrapped his arms around his knees, gripping his cane in one hand so tightly the handle squeaked. So this is what I've come to, he thought, distantly, while his body continued to tremble without his input. X, the undefined variable, curled up in the dark, scared of everything, thinking about killing humans. I really have become what I fought against. Maybe this was inevitable. Maybe the final betrayal in my life was always going to be mine. I've lied to Kathy and Hammer and Glitch and Mack and everyone else here, I've failed the Hunters, I've lied to myself…I've done everything wrong, and I couldn't have done it any other way.

I wish Glitch was here, he thought, mildly surprising himself. The admission brought another half-choked sound from his throat. I wish anyone was here. And then, I wish he was here. Even now, X could barely think his name. When had it become too painful to even remember him? His first friend, his fated enemy…what was he supposed to do now, without anyone by his side at all, even himself? He'd failed, again and again and again and again and again.

What was left, at this point? What was he fighting for? What was the point?

X's thoughts continued to twist themselves into chaotic little spirals, circling around more and more tightly until they were buzzing knots that he could no longer untangle. At some point the phone timed out and its screen turned off, and still, X sat compressed into a little ball, watching himself not move and hearing his own fans running at high speed.

"V?" a voice called; it was Glitch, somewhere nearby in the tunnels. "You down here, buddy? I know you are, I'm picking up the sensor I gave you. Where are you?"

X looked up in a panic, but couldn't summon any speech to reply. Of course…he still had Glitch's first sensor node in his jacket, and it was broadcasting. He picked Charles's phone up from the ground, turned it off, and slid it into the pocket he'd hidden it in before, and still, he may as well have had his vocal systems disconnected. They weren't throwing any errors, but he just couldn't access them.

"Hellooo…?" Then, a pause, as if Glitch was listening. "That your fan rattle, V?" The halo of his finger-light fell across the floor, blinding X, who had never readjusted his visual contrast. "There you are. Man, you gave me a scare, disappearing like that. What's up?"

Still speechless, X just blinked at him until he pointed his light away. Glitch squatted next to him solicitously. "You okay?"

X thought about that for about a second, and weakly shook his head no.

Glitch sighed, though not unkindly. "It's okay to not be okay. You wanna talk about it? Or do you wanna sit in the dark and be quiet about it? Or do you wanna head back up and not sit in the dark about it, because it's gloomy as hell down here and probably not making you feel any better about the whole situation?"

He had wished that Glitch was here, and now Glitch was here, and X was already intensely embarrassed, in a distant kind of way. Why had he wanted that? He didn't need an audience for a breakdown. What he needed was to tighten his screws and stop doing this. He shook his head a second time and uncurled his reluctant limbs, planting his cane on the floor and attempting to stand.

Even with his systems running warm, X's joints were cold from the concrete. His balance systems weren't having it, and his leg servos actuated erratically at best, refusing to support his weight evenly. X got halfway to his feet and stumbled under the weight of the errors he was throwing, realizing too late that he was going to fall but unable to find any good reason to feel anything at all about this fact. The floor was just another place. It didn't really matter, in the end. Maybe he'd do less damage if he stayed down.

X fell, and Glitch caught him, moving like a green bolt of lightning in the dark, injured arm slipping out of its sling to wrap around him along with his good arm. "Don't push yourself so hard," he chided.

"Hypocrite," X mumbled, but he couldn't summon any force behind the accusation. He felt as real as a handful of cold fog, and Glitch was warm, solid, and grounding.

"Yeah, yeah. So it's a mutual malfunction." He eased X to his feet, then tucked his self-repairing arm back into the sling. "There. No harm done. Now, where to? …Oh." X simply turned to Glitch and threw both arms around him to cling as if he were the only real anchor in a sea of chaos. "Uh. Alright. That works too."

"Glitch," X said, faintly and into Glitch's plating. "I'm a Maverick."

"You're a…yeah. I know. Me too. It's okay."

"It's not," objected X. "It's really not. I'm…I asked him to…if I…but he's not here anymore, and…"

Glitch ruffled X's hair, because what else was he supposed to do in this situation, really? "Slow down, buddy, I'm not quite keeping up."

X couldn't slow down. He tried, but the words wouldn't come out right, and he couldn't tell anyone who he was, so he couldn't make it make sense, and maybe it wouldn't have made sense anyway. "I…I miss him so much," he stammered, barely audible. "I-if I'm a Maverick…what was it all for? Why did he have to…"

Glitch must have realized he was out of his depth, because he simply let X talk, looping his uninjured arm around the other trembling reploid. "…Why did he have to die? Why couldn't it…it should have been me…I should have…but I didn't. Why wasn't it me? And now I'm a…I've…I could…there's a, the human I've been…I don't even have anything and I'm going to lose everything," he concluded, trailing off into silence.

"No, you aren't," Glitch insisted, gently. "Whatever's going on, tell me about it. This isn't something you gotta do alone. Okay? You got all of us here, even if you just got here."

X shook his head against Glitch's chest, agitated. "I don't. I…no, Kathy's going to be…so upset. I'm…I should leave. I should…"

"Shh, no, listen. Okay. I can't speak for everyone else here. But you got me, at least. And Mack, because it goes where I go, and I go where it goes. And I'll go where you're going too, if you want."

"Why?" X asked, point blank.

Glitch paused. "Because…" X looked up at him, still not quite able to make eye contact, but searching his face otherwise. "Because I make up my mind fast. Because you were interesting, to start with. I wanted to understand your reactions. I still do, but the more I figure out about you, the more I…I dunno, man, you just deserve better than whatever you got. I'm still not completely sure what happened to you, but it wasn't right or fair, and it shouldn't have gone the way it did. I figured out that much."

The only thing that spared X from telling Glitch everything right that moment was the enormity of it sticking in his vocal processing pipeline. Where did he even begin? How was he supposed to give voice to a lifetime as long and full of loss as his, and if he did, would it scare Glitch away? "I-if I…if I told you that I'm…" No, he couldn't.

"That you're…?" Glitch prompted.

"I…can't. You'd…it's…too much to burden you with." X cast his eyes down and away.

"It's not, but I'm not gonna make you talk about anything you don't want to. But, uh…V, look, I gotta…I'm sorry. I haven't been totally honest with you. I'm probably not supposed to tell you this, but it's total bullshit, and you've had enough of that already and done enough for us. Kathy asked me to keep an eye on you. She doesn't…really trust you, still. This morning she wanted me to try to find out if you're hiding anything from her."

X's eyes widened slightly. "Me?"

"Yeah. I said I'd do it, because I don't think she'll let you stay unless she gets over her paranoia and she's kinda the boss here in the end, but fuck, man, I feel gross about it. I mean, I'm sure there's a lot of shit you haven't told us, but it's not like it's her business."

X realized that he was still, in fact, clinging to Glitch, contemplated stepping back, and then decided that he didn't care that much if Glitch didn't. He was still colder than was comfortable, regardless of how his fans were running, and moreover, he would still have toppled core over cranial plates without something more than his cane to lean on. "I've…not been honest either," he admitted. "But I-I don't…I don't want to say how, or…or who I am. I'm so tired of…of not being seen as a real person," he managed, eventually. The words were so hard to unearth. "I'm…I'm actually…My name is…It's…I can't say it. I just can't. I'm sorry."

"I don't care what your real name is," Glitch said, resolutely. "It's whatever you want me to call you. Glitch wasn't my name to start either, but it is now. As long as you want me to call you V, that's who you are to me. That's the only thing that's important."

"Would you still say that if…if I was…"

"Anybody," Glitch emphasized.

"You trust me that much?" X asked, in wonderment.

Glitch laughed, just once. "Why shouldn't I?"

"Because I…Glitch." X suddenly felt keenly aware of the phone in his pocket, and his over-tired mind skipped subjects like a rock across a pond. "The human I've been looking for. I…do you know anything at all about him?"

Glitch shook his head. "Nothing. I swear."

X sighed with rare relief. That made some things easier, at least. "I think…Kathy's hiding something. I need to know what, but I don't want to throw everything you've all built here into chaos." He finally disengaged, carefully, keeping an arm linked with Glitch's so that he wouldn't fall again. Glitch allowed this, listening intently. "But this man was a…a reploid murderer. He…"

"Wait, a human, murdering reploids?" Glitch interrupted. "...hang on, let's go somewhere a little less findable for this. Come with me."

He led the two of them through the tunnels, lighting the way with his fingertip flashlight. Once they'd arrived at a place he approved of, he closed the door behind them and helped X to an old pipe running across the floor, large and high enough to sit on. X eased onto it, and Glitch sat next to him. "Okay. Human who kills reploids. Go on."

The walk had helped clear X's head somewhat, for which he was thankful. "Right. I've been trying to find his phone this entire time."

"Which is why you suddenly felt the need to sort them," Glitch said.

"Ah. I thought I'd gotten away with that," X said, ducking his head a little in embarrassment.

Glitch simply laughed and waved it off. "Come on, you should know you can't get shit by me. But did you find it?"

"No, but I knew it was here, because I found the case it was in, and…" X reached into his jacket, pulling out the business card, and the phone in question. "The case had his business card stuck inside of it, but the phone itself was missing. And I know Kathy was hiding it in particular, because it was, ah…er. In her bag."

Glitch ran his free hand through his singed hair. "You got into her—oh, buddy. She is gonna be pissed. But I'm not gonna tell her, don't worry. She can be pissed with both of us, if it comes to that."

X let out a breath. "Yeah…she will be. I know. She told me she didn't know anything about him, and I believed her, and…yeah. So I got into his phone, and it's got…I don't want to say, but I want to look at it again even less, so…they're trophy pictures. Of reploids, that he's…deactivated, on this side of the wall. I think he's not coming alone."

Glitch's expression hardened so rapidly it made X jump internally. "Show me. So if anybody asks, there's at least two of us who've seen them, and nobody can say you're making shit up."

X nodded and unlocked the phone a second time, navigating to the photo gallery and handing it to Glitch. He scrolled through, frown deepening. "Shit. That's Parallel…I knew him. And…oh, God, that's Lapis. I don't recognize this one…oh, no, no, no, this was Jason. Not him too…" The further he scrolled, the further his face darkened. "...Six. Six reploids that he's killed, just on this one device. This is…why would Kathy hide this? We could all be in danger. Some of these were our people."

"I don't know," X admitted, "but I think I just have to ask her, point blank. She's not going to like it. I know she won't. And I need to do it privately, because I don't want to upset the order of things here."

Glitch processed his thoughts for a few moments. "Hold off on it. I can get this back into her office, no problem. If she hasn't noticed it's missing yet, and I doubt she has, we should be good. But gimme a couple of days to get the sensor network in place, before shit breaks loose."

"In a few more days, Charles might not even be alive to find."

"V, buddy, I don't think he's alive now. Think about it. If he got out, you wouldn't be looking for him at all. If he was alive, Kathy woulda just pointed you to him and got rid of both of you. But she's had his phone this whole time and lied to you about it. If I had to guess, he's been dead since before you even came."

X turned to peer at Glitch. "How are you so certain?"

Glitch returned the gaze, which made X glance away. He had been about to tell Glitch everything, and even so, he couldn't look the other reploid in the eye. "I knew a lot of the reploids he killed. There's kinda a common thread with them. They were all the type to panic and run if shit hit the fan, none of them were combat units, and we didn't have the rule about only going out in pairs until a couple months back, because we had too many just disappearing, but we thought it was the Drifters. I hate saying it like this, but I think what was actually happening for some of them was that Chuck here was picking off easy kills. Not a single one of them would have turned around and attacked a human with a buster and a clean shot. They didn't have it in them."

Something percolated loose in the mess of X's processes, and a thought struck him. "Glitch. The partner rule. Does Kathy go out often?"

"Nah, she hardly goes at all. She did make a few trips about a week ago, but usually she sticks close to home." Glitch flipped through the photos again, scrolling with his hand still in the sling. He seemed to have an idea, then. The phone buzzed, and the battery icon showed a little lightning bolt. X gave Glitch a questioning look. "One of the many perks of an ultra high precision EM manipulator," he said, a little smug despite the general atmosphere. "Inductive charging. I'll top this thing off so it doesn't die in the meantime."

"About a week ago," X echoed. "Who did she go with?"

"She always goes with Hammer. …Shit, V, she always goes with Hammer, and Hammer—okay, we're really not supposed to talk about what other reploids did so you didn't hear this from me, but Hammer killed four guys with a—you'll never guess what he used."

X felt his circuits drop. Sometimes, he hated being right. "Hammer. The logo on his shoulder—look at this." He held the card up, and Glitch stopped scrolling to aim a flashlight finger at it.

"Oh, no. He was a construction 'bot, before, right around here. Same logo and everything."

"Alderman Materials and Construction," X said.

Glitch whistled, low and long. "This guy is super dead, bet you anything, and if you ask me, good fucking riddance, but that's not what you wanna have to go back and tell anybody, is it? Your Hunter contact won't like that, and if they don't like it…that's not gonna spell anything good for us here."

"No, it's not." X's anxiety surged, like a physical force. He willed himself steady, though his hands started trembling again. "They'll want to send Hunters in and…and clear the place of irregulars. I…I know I'm a Maverick now, because I can't let that happen, even if Kathy and Hammer did kill Charles. I'd…I might have done the same, if it was the only way to keep him from hurting anybody else here. No, not might have. I would have."

Glitch put a hand on X's shoulder, and X suddenly snapped back to relative calm. "Hey. For whatever it's worth, and full disclosure that I'm biased as hell, but I for one appreciate you being unwilling to let us all be gunned down in the dirt by either the Hunters or this guy."

X inhaled, let the air heat inside his chest, and exhaled. "Thank you."

"So let's figure out what we're doing. First thing is to finish the sensor network, because we need the extra security around home, and this is gonna interrupt that pretty hard if it comes up at the wrong time."

It took a moment for X to register that Glitch was saying 'we.' He really wasn't just saying that, X thought, touched. He actually intends to follow through. I'm really not just a project to him.

"After that," Glitch continued, "we see if we can get you some answers from Kathy…and then I guess we figure out how to spin whatever we find out so that the Hunters don't rain death down on us from above."

X nodded, feeling much steadier than he had even a few moments before. "I think I should do some basic training with everyone, if Kathy is okay with it. With Seren leading the Drifters, we can only assume she's probably organized and trained them the way she was trained. I think our safest bet will be to do the same here. Not that you aren't a bad shot, but your tactical decisions could use some work."

"Ouch, right in the pride. But you're right. No more impromptu plasma haircuts for me, I'm swearing the habit off. Goddamn, this is a whole mess, isn't it?"

"You're telling me." X stared into the darkness for several moments, gathering his words before speaking. They still came out haltingly, but at least he could speak them now. "You…asked me what I wanted to do when this was over, before."

"I did, yeah. You make any progress on that?" Glitch replied, joining X in the darkness-staring.

X shook his head no. "I haven't. Not really. I've never actually thought about it. There's never been an 'after this is over' to worry about. I thought there might have been, once…and I was wrong, it turned out, but I thought…I wanted to try to build a new society where humans and reploids could actually coexist, as equals."

Glitch laughed, his usual single, warm scoff. "Hah. That's a big goal. How'd it go?"

Placing both hands on his cane handle, X shrugged. "Look around you. Do you see it anywhere?"

"Nope." Glitch thumbed the phone's power button and the screen turned off, but the battery charging icon glowed on it for a few moments more as he continued to charge it through his hand.

"Right after that, the Maverick Wars picked up again, and I almost forgot all about it. It wasn't very realistic, anyway. I…had just lost someone very important to me. I needed to feel like he died for something that might make everything worth it. I think…it was my way of coping, probably, imagining this perfect place that I could work towards. If I had a goal, any goal, I could just keep going." X ran a thumb over the end of his cane's handle as he spoke.

Glitch nodded, not really looking at X as he spoke. If he had, X knew, he'd probably have lost his nerve under the scrutiny anyway. "Yeah…I know what that's like. I mean, obviously in a different context, but same kind of, you're just looking for a reason to get out of your pod and make it through the day, every day, because if there's no light at the end of the tunnel, what's the point, right?"

"That's exactly what it's like. I asked him once to terminate me, if I ever went Maverick. He told me to stop being ridiculous, but…I wonder what he'd think now."

"He was your friend, right? I bet he'd understand. It's not like this all happened without reason."

"I hope so. It's not like I can ask him now, and I shouldn't worry about it, but…I still do, sometimes. But anyway, I think…what I want to do…is allow myself to figure out what I want. I don't really know. I've never had the…I don't know, the time, or the…freedom, I think. That's the word for it. I've kept myself too busy to imagine it, because after you've spent so long at war, all you can imagine for tomorrow is more war. I'm tired, Glitch. I'm so tired of fighting. If it comes down to it and I have to fight, I'll do it, but I'm so tired. I want to believe there's some kind of peace in the world, even if I don't deserve it."

Glitch did look at him, then, and X shrank a bit from the intensity of his gaze. "Don't deserve it? Listen to yourself, man. You've given everything you had to give and then some. People you cared about, your time, your sanity, even your systems' functionality. If anybody deserves peace, it's someone like you. You should…after shit settles here, you should go back out there, and live your life, right? You still haven't done anything you couldn't get away with. Nobody's got to know about all this. Go be an undercover Maverick all by yourself. Figure out what you want, and go for it, that's what I think."

"I don't know if what I want is there, or here, or…anywhere." X looked down to his cane, still fidgeting with the handle. "I think what I want might not exist anymore."

"You loved him, right? And he loved you? He must have," Glitch asked, and X felt the air go out of his ventilation systems as if he'd been sucker punched. He could only nod mutely, eyes wide and sorrowful. He had thought the word, a thousand thousand times, but he'd never once said it aloud. "Then shit, man, you gotta find something to live for. Here, there, anywhere, doesn't matter. It's what he'd have wanted you to do. I'd bet on it."

"If it were that simple," X said, once he found his voice again. "At least I've decided on somewhere to start. I want…" He paused, gathering his nerve, and when he spoke again, he spoke with a determination he didn't yet feel. "I want to feel like I'm allowed to want things."

"Pick something," Glitch said, a hint of playful challenge in his tone. "Pick one thing you want. I don't care how small it is, just say anything."

X thought, and then realized he was about to overthink it. The smallest possible thing he could want—what would that look like? "I want…a hot bath. A real one, really hot."

"Yes! That's great. Absolutely frivolous. Good. Want something else, that's an order. Let's hear it."

"I want to…uh…finally get the tune-up I've been putting off."

"Even better. One more. Third time's the charm. What else do you want?"

X licked his lips. This should have been easier, he thought. The normal state of a living thing, even a synthetic living thing, was to have needs and wants, but he'd suppressed his so long and so thoroughly that he could barely understand anymore what it was like to have any kind of desire that wasn't a negative sort, simply wanting things to stop. "I want…clothes that actually fit?"

"Good enough. Could use some work on the delivery, but I'll take it. See? That was alright, right? Nothing bad happened. You got this. How you feeling? Good enough to head back up before they send out a search party?" Glitch hopped to his feet.

Impulsively, X reached out, grabbing Glitch's arm. The other reploid turned, raising an eyebrow at X's wide-eyed expression. "Wait. There's…one more thing I want. I…know you said you don't care what my name is." He tried his best to meet Glitch's gaze. When had he become so afraid of eye contact? "But I want you to know it anyway, because I want…to trust you. A-and…most of all…I want you to not treat me any differently because of it."

Glitch sat back down, facing X. "Look, uh. V. Buddy. I…have a guess already, as to what you're going to say. I know a lot about reploid models and materials. They had me on network security, but I'm just as qualified on reploid repair and design, because I'm preloaded with the entire Toyota knowledge database. It's the largest in the industry. There's…you wouldn't believe what's in it. And, uh, you're in it, too, as much as that's possible, which isn't that much. So if you're about to tell me that you're…yeah. I figured it out for certain this morning."

X only stared at him, blankly and unblinkingly. Glitch went on. "Your, uh, when I attempted a little mischievous code injection, you probably didn't even notice it but you automatically deployed some uh. Very unique denial methods. I've never actually seen anybody at all, ever, have that thorough of security against an inductive EM attack. I wasn't totally sure before that, but, like I said when we met…I've never seen your make nor model." He seemed embarrassed, of all the unexpected reactions, scratching the back of his neck in a surprisingly human gesture for someone who was so unapologetically a walking computer in every other way.

"Oh." X couldn't compute this. Had anybody else realized? If they had, they hadn't reacted…but then, Glitch hadn't reacted either.

His puzzlement must have been written awfully plain on his face, because Glitch laughed again, awkwardly. "Oh, no. Come on, don't make that face. I haven't told anyone and they won't figure it out themselves, because they're not top-of-the-line technician units with the largest specialized database in the world in their head and ample time and opportunity to stare at you. My lips are sealed. But I'm right, right?"

X could only nod. "You're right. I'm…" When had his own name become so hard to say? He hadn't realized he was so changed, but seeing himself through the lens of what Glitch must have seen, he barely recognized himself. How long had he been refusing to see his own scars? "I'm…my name is X."

Glitch nodded back. "I knew it. But you're still V, to me, unless you tell me otherwise."

"And you won't…?"

"Treat you differently? Pfft. Why should I? Maybe if I'd met you as X first, but this V guy? He's not that scary. I mean, he probably should be, if I think about it, because damn, I'd have to be an idiot to go up to The Real X Himself and say, 'Hello, how are you today, I'm a Maverick, isn't that wonderful,' but fortunately for both of us, I am actually an idiot and have no self-preservation, so no. Whatever the hell you're calling yourself, I think you're pretty damn alright."

"...Huh." X tried several times to process this, each time getting a little further and failing.

"Although, can we give my past self some props for pinning you of all people to the wall and threatening to kill you and steal your parts? Because oh my God, I had ball bearings of steel for that one, can you even imagine?"

"I was there, Glitch, I don't have to imagine," X reminded him.

"Ah, yeah, you were. Shit. I have nobody to brag to about this. No, don't give me that look either, I won't do it. I did promise! I meant that. Cross my core and hope to fry. And I really won't treat you differently. It's one of the first things you've wanted in this many years, right? That's important. You trusted me, so…trust me, okay?"

"Yeah…" X said, then, again, "Yeah. I do trust you, I think. It's…not easy, and I've forgotten how, but…I'm glad you're here."

Glitch smiled. Not his usual shit-eatingly cocky grin, but an actual smile, one that X had not yet seen him make. "It's, uh, not as dramatic of a reveal as yours, but…before all this, my name was Toyota Kujuyousuke, Toyota Replico Lightspeed-2-0094. Kind of a double unlucky number, and the Japanese news called me the Curse Hacker for a while after I got caught doing my thing. Now we're even, right?"

X returned the smile, and an enormous tension eased, one that he'd carried in his systems for so long that he mostly no longer felt it. When had he stopped smiling? he wondered. But he still could, and that itself was a rare relief. Perhaps things were finally looking up. "Right."

"Let's get back up, I'll get this phone back in Kathy's bag as soon as she turns around, and next time she asks me if I've got any nosy dirt on you, I'll just tell her you were a unit captain and that's the end of that. Nobody's gotta know anything."