Chapter Text
"Node 24, online…node 25, online…node 26…aaaaand…online. 27, looking good. 28, no sound, but we've got visual online." Glitch stared unblinkingly at nothing whatsoever, his attention entirely dominated by multiple incoming streams of data. "28, online. 29…ugh, not online, I'll have to have a look at it. It was working just fine in the lab this morning. Node 30…online. That's all of them accounted for. Whoo! It works!" He slapped his hands together in excitement, still essentially unseeing.
"Great," X said, a small grin overtaking his face. Glitch's enthusiasm could be infectious, and honestly, X thought, it was probably good for him to be around it. He could use some positivity, even if it did frequently come with bad puns attached.
"The personal nodes aren't done, but they're also not the biggest deal. Well, no, yours is done and working, but we've known that for a couple of days now. Oh, speaking of that, give it here, it could use a recharge." Glitch held his hand out in a random direction, too preoccupied to actually look, and X pulled the phone and its stack of batteries from the inside pocket of his jacket, reaching around and placing it into Glitch's hand.
"Awesome. Won't take but a few minutes." He patted around on his workbench until he found the cable he wanted, and plugged it in. Watching him work while essentially blind from sensory overload was a little disconcerting to X, but Glitch didn't seem to mind.
"While we've got a moment," X said, lowering his voice and leaning in slightly, "I wanted to ask what you think of telling Mack about what's going on."
"Oh, yeah, we can tell it anything. I trust it with my life, no hesitation. If you wanna loop it in on the plan, we can do that any ti—oh, hello, node 29, you're a late bloomer, seems like! All nodes online. Fuck yeah. We got the full network in place and functional. This is huge, V. They can't catch us off our guard now that we have this."
"Great," said X, the smile creeping back to his lips. "I can't believe you pulled this together so fast."
Glitch pulled his attention away from the array of improvised sensors and turned it to X, eyes focusing, then did a double take. "Well, look at you!" he exclaimed. "Smiling again? Keep that up and someone's going to get the impression that you're happy for a change."
"Huh?" X's eyes widened in bafflement. Yet another facial expression he hadn't noticed he was making…he used to believe he had a good poker face, but now he wondered if he had just gone around with a flat affect for most of his life out of stress and sheer necessity. "I…guess I am, if I think about it. I probably shouldn't be, but…"
"Why not? Take it when you can get it, that's what I think. And don't look so embarrassed at being caught with a smile on, wow." Glitch rolled back in his office chair and hopped to his feet, stretching. "Alright. I just hope they hold charges long enough to get through the night. If they do, they should all get enough sun to charge back up, but if they don't…eh, I'll think of something. And in the meantime," he tapped his temple with a cheeky grin that X was beginning to think of as his trademark expression, "if they detect anything over a certain threshold of interestingness, they'll ping me immediately."
"Fantastic," X agreed. "Everyone's been taking well to the drills too, I think. Our odds are looking up."
"Of course they are. We got you, don't we?" Glitch said, beaming his grin at X before blinking and hastily correcting himself. "I mean, not to be weird about it or anything, just that you're a good teacher."
"No weirdness taken," X assured him, waving it off with the hand that wasn't on his cane. "I'm just glad I can help."
"And we're pretty goddamn glad for the help. Mutually beneficial relationship, right there." Glitch's eyes glazed over for a second, and X assumed he was double-checking the nodes. "Ah, right, none of them have wind filters on the mics. Well, that's not hard to code a fix for the noise." His attention returned to X. "When did you want to talk to Kathy?"
X's thumb rubbed absently over the end of his cane handle. "Sooner rather than later, I think. I've already put it off for too long." Indeed, he'd meant to do it tomorrow for several days now. It was easy to keep kicking it down the line and telling himself that he wanted to teach just one more practice drill before potentially disrupting everything…but he couldn't keep doing it.
"You know," Glitch started, unexpectedly serious in tone, but he hesitated, hand raising to scratch the back of his neck while his gaze fell down and away. "…ah, never mind."
"What's that?" X prompted him.
"Well, it's just that…what if you didn't bother?" Glitch ventured, still not quite able to look X in the eye. "I mean, you could just…forget about this guy, and stay here, and…you know. Just live. There's a place for you with us, if you want it."
X's grip tightened on his cane reflexively as the lab seemed to tilt several degrees. "I…" He had thought it without really thinking it, because he hadn't allowed himself to directly consider it, but every time he put off having this talk with Kathy, the sense of relief that he had another day safely lined up and waiting in the wings for him was more than he wanted to analyze. "I guess I…could," he said, after a long pause. "But I think I have to do this. I did give my word, and if I disappear much longer, they may actually send someone to look for me, and that would be a disaster for the rest of you."
"But after that?" Glitch asked.
"After that," X echoed, "I don't know yet. I really haven't gotten that far. And then if Kathy decides she doesn't want me here…"
"Yeah…yeah." Glitch picked up the nearest pen-shaped object from his desk and spun it from finger to finger, pinky to index, then lifted his other hand to it and caught it fluidly in those fingers as well, index to pinky. At the end he turned it around and started to walk it back the way it came. "Hopefully not. Well, we give her the shit sandwich, then. Good news, sensor network's up, bad news, there was this guy. Okay, we don't have the bottom bread, but maybe if we make an open-faced shit sandwich…"
"We should deal with it today, whatever comes of it."
"You wanna explain things to Mack, or should I?" Glitch asked, leaning back in his chair and attempting a new maneuver with his pen. It flipped out of his fingers and bounced across the workbench.
"I'd like to, but I'd like you to be there. It's not the easiest thing in the world to talk about. I think…I could use the moral support," X admitted, shyly.
Glitch made a grab for the escaping pen, missing it by mere instants. It rolled off and landed on the floor. "Ah, damn. Of course. Whatever you need me to do, I'm there."
X ventured a small smile. "Thanks. I just hope things work out."
"They will. Calling it now. Shit's gonna settle and everything will be fine, you wait and see." He reached under the workbench, looking for his lost writing implement, but it was against the wall. He crawled under with a noise of irritation.
"Are you in, Glitch?" came Kathy's voice through the door. X heard something thud sharply against the underside of the arranged tables, followed by a hiss.
"Fuck. Yeah," he called, raising his voice. "Door's unlocked."
Kathy pushed the door open and let herself in. She scanned the room, but spotted only X and frowned in confusion for a moment before Glitch popped out from under his workbench, dusting his knees off. "Hey! Kat. Just the boss I was about to go searching for. Guess what?"
"I could, but I have a feeling you're going to tell me anyway," she said, amusedly. The past few days of X's training sessions with the encampment had seen her mood soften further towards him, which was a relief. X only hoped that it would stay that way.
"Ha. Yeah, I am. V and I got the sensors working!" he exclaimed, with a fist pump for emphasis. "All placed and talking. Nothing above ground's gonna catch us off-guard now."
The former teacher reploid's face lit up. "That's great! What a relief. Thank you so much, both of you. I'm going to defrag a lot more easily knowing we've got an early warning system now. We should officially announce this, it's a big enough deal."
"At tonight's Sit Around An Exothermic Reaction And Bullshit Session?" Glitch suggested.
"It is not called that," Kathy protested.
"But imagine what a world it would be if it was." Glitch spread his hands wide and closed his eyes.
"It'd be the exact same world except we'd have to call it the Sit Around An Exothermic Reaction And…Cow Poop Session," Kathy objected, clearly balking at having to swear.
"No! Like, really picture it. Society, if we called it the Sit Around An Exothermic Reaction And Bullshit Session. Gleaming white and glass towers, green parks, blue skies…"
X suppressed a laugh, even as his cooling systems revved in nervousness. Glitch was almost definitely putting on a show to lighten the atmosphere as much as possible, and X was not about to stop him.
"That's literally just the new downtown, over the wall. You can see it if you go up on the building next to us there." She pointed through the lab's ceiling and at the neighboring half-destroyed structure.
"Yeah, and they probably call it the Sit Around An Exothermic Reaction And Bullshit Session. That's the difference between us and them. They've got it all figured out." Glitch held his stance, hands poised in the air as if projecting a vision of a perfect, utopian future.
"You are so incredibly full of it," Kathy laughed. "Okay, okay, fine, whatever it's called, I want you and V to tell everyone about it tonight."
"Hell yes." Glitch finally broke his stiff, silly upper lip to do another fist pump. "There was one other thing too, if you've got a second."
"Sure. I didn't have anything else going on except for some target practice. What's up?" Kathy commandeered a desk chair and spun it around to sit with her arms crossed over the backrest, smiling at the two of them expectantly.
X took a deep breath. Now or never, he told himself. This is easily the best mood I've ever seen her in, and I've got Glitch to back me up. I just need to find the least accusatory angle possible…if I can get her to volunteer the information from his phone, I might even be able to entirely hide the fact that I took it and Glitch returned it. "It's about the missing person, Charles. I…think he may have died," X said.
"Ah. It wouldn't surprise me," agreed Kathy, appropriately somber. "It's hardly a place for reploids to survive out here, let alone humans."
Please just confess to whatever you did on your own please just confess to whatever you did on your own please just confess to whatever you did on your own, X repeated in his mind. I swear I will not be angry. I really don't care at this point. Just tell me so this can all be over. Glitch glanced at him for guidance, and he returned the glance, but didn't say anything yet. "It really isn't. Even coming out here in the first place, he'd need to be either very stupid or very prepared," X said, as delicately as possible.
"Even prepared, he'd have to be stupid," Kathy countered, in a calculatedly mild tone. Something behind her green eyes had gone very hard and pointed very quickly, and X's systems began calculating her estimated threat entirely without his input, or indeed, even his permission.
"Come on, Kat, don't give V a hard time." Glitch cut in, dropping into a seat himself. "You already know he isn't out to get us or anything. He's helped get the fourth pod finished and working, he's been huge in putting together the majority of our defenses, he's helped with like…everything."
Kathy sighed, though some of the hardness went out of her voice. Not all of it, but enough to give X a faint glimmer of hope. "If you're trying to say something, just say it."
Time to lay it all out, X thought, steeling his nerves. "I don't want to make any trouble," he started. "I like everyone here, more than I'd ever expected I would. I've…come to understand a lot of things about myself here. To be honest, I owe you all. So please understand that when I say this, I am not at all coming from a place of trying to upset things." He paused; Kathy eyed him, and he realized that she was calculating his threat, too. X hadn't often seen a civilian reploid with that sharpness of gaze, especially one who was not infected with the Maverick Virus, and his own evaluation of her danger raised by several points.
"Go on," she said tersely, her jaw set, posture straight. The exposed metal of the orbital frame underneath her eye glinted in the lab lighting.
"I…know what Alderman did. I understand that he was a serious threat. If you encountered him and had to…stop him yourself, I don't blame you for it. I hope it didn't come to that, but…I just need to know what finally happened, so I can decide what to tell Hunter HQ."
Kathy continued to watch him with a level, hard gaze, her expression revealing nothing. "What makes you say that?" she asked, voice softer than her eyes.
"Kat—" Glitch started, but she turned that steely look on Glitch, and he fell into silence.
She was afraid, X realized. Just like him, she covered it with a straight back and a cold determination to protect those she cared about, but underneath it, she saw her entire world crumbling, everyone she knew and loved falling away from her. He wished he knew how to reach out to her in a way that she wouldn't have flinched away from. "I…realized his phone wasn't with the rest of the collected electronics. I almost stopped looking, and…maybe I should have, but his business card was in one of the empty cases. So I knew it had to have passed through here."
"Maybe you should have," Kathy agreed, quietly.
"I thought about where it could have been, and…I found it. I looked through it. It was…I…I don't have words for it." X shuddered at the memory. "Inhuman. I've never seen anything like…that. If I'd encountered him myself, I know what I would have done, and it would not have been good."
"I should have destroyed it," Kathy said, though mostly to herself. "I knew I should have. I almost did." And then, to X, "How did you unlock it? I was never able to."
"Lucky guess. The PIN was the street address on his card."
"He got Lapis," Glitch said, quietly. "And Para. And Jason, too. And at least three more that I didn't recognize."
Kathy looked between X and Glitch. "So you've seen it too," she said. "You went through my things. You're both in on this."
"Nobody is 'in on' anything, Kat," Glitch chided, as gently as he could. "Listen to yourself. This isn't like you. I know you want to protect us, but V wants to figure out what he can tell the Hunters to keep them away from us. If he doesn't have something to say soon, though, they might come looking instead, and then we're really in it. I swear, he's trying to help with this too."
"You believe him?" Kathy asked, piercing Glitch with a look that clearly rattled him for a moment.
"Yes. Absolutely. I've told you that how many times now?"
"If it came to it, I'd…if the Hunters actually attacked…" X began, haltingly. The enormity of what he was saying almost weighed him into silence and anxiety welled up through every system process, but he found his voice and carried on. "I'd…stand with you. And that's…that's how I know I'm…irregular. I don't want to fight at all, but if I had to choose…that's my choice. I'd rather be labeled a Maverick with you."
Glitch quietly patted him on the shoulder. "See, Kat? Please. Just listen. He didn't even do anything but look in your bag once. I put that shit back where it was myself."
She stared unblinkingly for several long moments, at X, at Glitch, and then at X again, green eyes unreadable. X had to tighten his grip on his cane with both hands to keep them from shaking. Finally, her expression softened; just a touch, but enough for X to hope all over again. "Alright. I'm…listening. Glitch, go find Hammer. Tell him I want to talk to him. V, I'll tell you everything, under one condition."
"Yes. Of course. What is it?" X asked.
"You tell me everything. You aren't the only one with a gut feeling to follow."
Glitch spoke up. "Kat, come on, we've been over this—"
Kathy pointed to the lab door. "Go. I want to hear what V's got to say. We'll be in my office."
"It's fine, Glitch," X said. "I'm fine. Just go find Hammer."
Glitch stood, hesitating and hovering until X repeated himself. "Go, go. I'm okay," he insisted, standing with the help of his cane. "I don't need a helicopter."
Glitch finally relented, dashing off at speed, though not without a glance over his shoulder before he rounded the corner out of the central building. Kathy motioned for X to follow, and took her seat at her desk in the next room. X closed the door behind them and took a seat across from her. Whatever happens, he thought, I'll give it my best, then it's out of my hands from here.
At least I'll have been truthful.
At least it'll be over.
"You're right," he began. "I haven't told you everything. I meant to, from the start. I'm sorry I haven't yet. I didn't…no. I was going to say I didn't want to cause any disruption, and that I didn't think you'd trust me if I told you, and that's all true, but that's not really the reason in the end. The real reason is…that…I don't…want to be who I've been anymore. I'm so tired. Everything I've done, I did because I thought it was the only choice I had. I thought nobody else could have done it. That it was the only way. I really believed that. I'm…not so sure, now." He forced himself to meet Kathy's eyes, even though it terrified him. He felt transparent, like she could see straight through him and read his every thought and memory.
Well, good, X thought. I finally want somebody to. If she could see me…really see me…maybe she would understand me. I won't run, no matter what happens. I've been running this entire time. I'm tired of everything…but most of all, I'm tired of running.
"I can't stop being who I've been by hiding from it, and I can't start being who I am by pretending to be someone else. So I'm just going to tell you. It's only fair, and it's what I've intended to do since I came here." He took a deep breath, still holding her gaze with his, as much as it felt like drowning to do so.
"My name…my real name…is X."
Kathy blinked, wide-eyed, uncertain how to even react. Disbelief clouded her features, first, in a frown. Then, when he didn't take it back or play it off as a joke, confusion deepened the frown to consternation, then alarm.
"X," she repeated. "The X. The Maverick Hunter. The first of all of us. That's…no. That's preposterous. You can't be X." She pushed her chair backwards from her desk, both hands on the edge. "Don't play games with me, V, this isn't funny."
"I'm not," he insisted. Fear gripped his circuits, but he gripped it back, harder. Not now. He had to stay calm. Maybe he should have waited for Glitch and Hammer to return…but it was too late for that. "I'm being completely serious."
"No," she repeated, but her resolve waned. "But you are telling me the truth…aren't you. I should have seen it. The lines on your face…I should have been able to read them like Glitch did. He knows, doesn't he." It wasn't a question at all the way she said it.
X could only nod in reply.
Kathy shot to her feet. "What else have you lied about?" she demanded, so suddenly and loudly that the carefully-constructed dam holding X's panic at bay shattered under the impact of her voice. He bolted to his feet too, backing away from her and towards the door. It opened as he approached, revealing Glitch and a very confused Hammer. X stumbled backwards through it and between them, barely keeping his footing.
"I haven't," he protested, shaking so hard he thought he might rattle apart, pleading desperately. "I—I never—please, if you'd just listen—"
"This was all an act!" Kathy raged, following him into the common room. "Wasn't it? This entire thing. Coming in here, making friends, acting like you needed us! Like we needed you!"
"Kat, what's gotten into you?" Glitch demanded. Within moments, Valentina appeared in the doorway to the outside, and Focus, and Drive, and Mack. "Calm down, none of what you just said is even—"
"Katie, hey, what's the matter?" Hammer interjected at the same time, trying to reach out for her, but she stormed past him as if he didn't exist.
"But I do—" X stammered. "It wasn't—I didn't lie about—"
"Pretending to be harmless! So we wouldn't suspect anything! How much of this was ever real? How much of this was just an act?" She lunged for his cane and wrenched it from his hands. Unsupported and spinning with panicked vertigo, X lost his footing immediately, stumbling to land ungracefully on his backside.
"Kathy!" Glitch snapped. Immediately, he was on the ground at X's side, helping him up, one arm around him, the other in front of him protectively. X couldn't process this at all. He felt about three feet to the left of his own body, watching things happen but without any agency to stop them. "The fuck is wrong with you? He needs that!"
"No, he does not!" Kathy yelled. "He's lied to all of us and you've fallen for it the hardest!" She threw the cane at both of them, and Glitch snatched it from the air, his hand a green blur moving faster than X's eyes could track. Instantly, Mack was there too, planting itself defiantly between the two of them and Kathy, its simplistic eyes turned down in a scowl.
"At least I'm not stealing the goddamn cane out from under a disabled person!" Glitch shot back, handing the cane back to X. He closed his fingers around it mutely and leaned into Glitch, who pulled him closer. "Who cares who he said he is? Everyone was someone else before we ended up here!"
"We have rules about violence towards residents, Kathy, and they apply to you, too," Mack said. Its voice was the same synthesized monotone as ever, but its posture was that of a guard dog, ready to lunge at the next threat.
"What is goin' on?" Hammer demanded, raising his voice. Deep and booming, designed to be audible above the din of a busy construction site, it cut through the entire camp. Flip and Siobhan sidled in, followed much more obviously by Cirocco and Trigger. All eyes turned to him, then Kathy, then Glitch and X. "Explain yourself, Katie."
Kathy pointed at X. "That's X. The X! I don't know what he's doing here, but he can't be here! He has no business with us. He's endangering us all by being here. He's going to get us killed!"
A shocked ripple went through the entire little crowd of reploids. No, I'm not, X tried to say, but his voice synthesizer didn't even engage. Nothing at all came out of his mouth.
"No, he's not," Glitch said, as X didn't, and for a dizzying instant X had the strange notion that he had spoken the words through Glitch in his stead. "So he's X. So what? Do you have any idea how much he's been through? We've never once demanded that anybody give their real name or history here. We've only ever cared that they did their best from here on out. Who the fuck cares who or what he was before? I sure as hell don't!"
"Glitch has a point," Hammer rumbled, and Kathy spun on him with a glare.
"It's kind of different when it's someone that, you know," Flip mused. "Famous. Infamous? I mean…aren't the Hunters going to be looking for him?"
X closed his eyes and lowered his head, trembling. He couldn't stand seeing everyone stare at him. Glitch's arms tightened around him defensively.
"He's retired," Glitch said, forcefully. "It's not different at all."
"He's been, like, really nice to me," Valentina said, wonderingly. "I even told him…who I was before. And what I did. He was still just…nice to me."
"I told him what I did, too," said Mack, in its monotone voice. "He didn't treat me any differently."
"He helped me put together the sensor network. We were supposed to announce it tonight," Glitch added. "The entire camp perimeter out to a full city block is safe now, and he worked with me on it. And he trained all of us. Doesn't that count for anything?"
"He gave me a lotta good ideas on how to shore up the walls around the town, too," Hammer added.
"But he destroyed one of my predecessor units," Cirocco growled.
"Mine, too," Trigger added. "He has entire war's worth of blood on his hands."
"I'm sorry," X whispered, eyes still squeezed shut. "I'm so sorry. I—I thought I had to. I didn't want to. I'm so sorry."
"Who cares?" X heard Glitch ask again. "Who here actually got treated fairly by life? You don't end up here if you were. That's not how it works, and you know it, Kat. We all know it. We're not here because it's a fucking party, we're here because it was this, or nothing."
"And that's going to protect you from the Hunters when they show up, is it?" Kathy demanded.
"Holy fuck, Kat, did you hear a word V said before? He doesn't want the Hunters here. He's trying to think of what to tell them so that they'll leave us alone."
"Wait," Valentina said, timidly. "Wait. Hold up. Why…would the Maverick Hunters be here?"
"Because Kathy killed some human, here, on this side of the wall, and didn't see fit to tell anybody else about it!" Glitch accused.
"I did not!" Kathy yelled.
"No," X whispered. "No. Please. Not this."
"She did not," Hammer said, resolutely, arms crossed as he drew himself up to his full height. Then after a pause, his eyes fell with shame to the floor, and his shoulders slumped. "I did," he confessed, his voice exhausted and heavy.
X could hear the murmurs. This was the one thing he'd wanted to avoid, more than anything else, and it was happening. Of course it was. No matter what he did, no matter how hard he tried, all paths led to the same end, again and again and again.
"Why didn't you say anything?" Flip demanded.
"Well…so what? Right?" Valentina piped up, hesitant resolve in her voice. "I…I killed seven people. I'm Bloody Valentina. That's what they called me. Bloody Valentina, the serial killer reploid prostitute."
"I…" Hammer sighed. "Four, before this. My old coworkers attacked me, an' I…that's…why I'm here. It was all over the news. My name was Smith. I guess…it's five, now."
Flip cleared his throat. "We got mugged. Siobhan and I, I mean, right outside the wall. Three guys, and I killed them."
"I wouldn't let him leave me again," Siobhan said, timidly but with some determination.
Focus was trembling, and Drive took his hand. "We didn't break any laws. We just left, to be near something important to us that was still here. There wasn't anything on the other side of the wall for us. That's all."
"I cut six legs off of a unit of Hunters because they were after Glitch," Mack said, its voice somehow tinged with pride even though its tone hadn't changed.
"My name was Toyota Kujuyousuke and I was the most-wanted hacker in the world for a couple of weeks," Glitch volunteered. "That was a fun couple of weeks."
"We disobeyed orders," said Trigger, even though Cirocco growled warningly at him. "Poachers killed Cirocco's family. She killed poachers. We had to run for long time after that. We only found this place by chance."
"So that's it? We're trading stories now? Okay. I got tired of watching one of my students be abused, so I tried to stop it, and hospitalized two people instead. Is that what you wanted to hear? Are we going to hold hands and sing while they come raze us looking for their lost hero?" Kathy demanded, unswayed. "So that's everyone else. What's your story, hero?"
"Hey, you lay off him," Glitch countered, angrily. "He doesn't deserve this."
X opened his eyes, even though they refused to focus quite right. "It's alright. I'll answer." He took a step away from Glitch, carefully, and straightened as much as he could with the entire room spinning sickeningly. A hush fell over the room, and he realized he had no idea what he was about to say. All the same, he drew a breath to steady himself, and spoke.
"Kathy. You asked me what I would have done in your position, not long after I got here."
"I don't see what that's got to do with it, but sure. What was I supposed to do?" Kathy demanded, crossing her arms.
"I know, now." X's vertigo surged, and he placed his other hand on his cane as well. "I…I would have asked him what he wanted."
Kathy's expression wavered. "What he wanted," she echoed.
"Yes," X said.
"I…didn't think about that at all, did I," she said, looking as dizzy as X felt, suddenly. She touched a hand to her torn cheek. "I never asked him what he wanted. I…tried to kill his father because I thought I could decide what was best for him without…"
"I know why you didn't," X continued, voice trembling with the rest of him. He couldn't at all stop it from happening, so he spoke around it, as best he could. "You couldn't have known to. We're built, and then we're put into situations that aren't fair. Nobody asks us what we want. We don't even know what we want. And…and then we're punished when we can't keep going anymore, and now I can't keep going either. I don't know what to do. If I've lied to anybody, I lied to myself. I told myself…I was picking up some of the Hunters' slack in my spare time because I wanted to keep busy. But I think…I think I came here because I wanted to die."
"V," Glitch started, from behind him. The concern in his tone wrenched X's heart to hear, let alone imagine what his expression must have been, but X continued. If he didn't keep going, he'd stop, and if he stopped, he might never get the words out, he feared.
"I don't now. I think I want to live. I don't even know what that's like, but I want to find out. Humans just get to be born without a purpose, but we don't get that luxury. Not even me, even though I was supposed to. I spent my entire life telling myself I was doing what I had to do, fighting for a world where humans and reploids lived in peace, and I gave up everything I had, everyone I loved…and all I did in the end was help build a world where reploids aren't even people, and…and I don't know what to do, now. So I'm…here. My armor is in a fancy display case in Maverick Hunter Headquarters, and I'm…" He shrugged, looking up at Kathy with lost, pleading eyes. "Just…trying to figure out how to go on from here."
"Oh, V," Valentina said, quietly, both hands pressed to her mouth.
Kathy stood up straighter again, leveling her gaze at X. It wasn't as cold as before, nor was it as hard, but he still struggled to not wither away beneath it. "I need to think about what we're going to do. For now…I want you to leave. V, or X, or…whoever you are."
"You can't just—" Glitch exclaimed, stepping forward and temper flaring, but X pressed a gentle hand to Glitch's chest, and the fire went out of him instantly.
"It's okay," X said, sorrow plain on his face and resignation heavy in his circuits. He shook his head. "It's okay. I'll go."
"It's not fair," Glitch protested.
"Nothing is," said X.
"Come back tomorrow morning. We'll decide what to do about you by then," Kathy said.
"If you're going, I'll go too," Glitch declared, and X almost choked up. Glitch really had meant everything he'd said about being on X's side. What was he even supposed to do, knowing that?
"If he's going with you, I'm going," Mack added, and X looked down at it with newfound feeling.
But there was only one answer, X knew, however much he might wish it to be otherwise. "Stay here," X said. "The sensor network's no good without you watching it. Everyone needs you here. Keep them safe."
"And who's going to keep you safe?" Glitch asked.
"You," X replied, tapping his jacket, right over where his heart would have been, had he been a human. "I've got your sensor, right here. Don't worry about me. I won't go far."
Glitch sighed, distraught, and gave X a crushing hug. "You'd better not."
"Ouch. Agh. Glitch. Please. You're. Way too strong," X sputtered, until Glitch released him. X recollected himself, and it was easier than he had expected. Maybe he was still half dissociated, or maybe the worst was happening and therefore he had nothing left to fear, but whatever the case, a strange calm had overtaken him.
"You can't just throw him out, Kat," Valentina argued. "It's not right."
"It'll be okay," X told her, gently. He turned to Kathy and Hammer, reaching into his jacket, and pulled out the business card. "Take this. You can unlock his phone with the address on it. It's not a pleasant sight, but you deserve to know exactly what he did." Kathy accepted it without comment.
"Hey, V. Or X. However you wanna be called," Hammer said, not at all trying to project his voice now. He glanced around, awkwardly. "I dunno what's gonna happen, but if I don't see you again…"
"You will," X assured him. "Tomorrow morning."
"Yeah, but lemme finish. Just in case. If I don't, it's been real."
"Yeah. It has."
The group of reploids parted to let X pass. He crossed the little square to the housing, collected his tarp from the locker it was still in, and turned to the surface exit.
Everyone else fell away as X walked, but Glitch followed him the entire way and was still at his heels, with Mack silently right behind him.
"I'm sorry," Glitch said. "It wasn't supposed to go like this."
"It always does," X replied. "I hoped for too much."
"What, for just one time that you could be treated like a real person? That's hardly anything to hope for and you didn't even get that. Are you sure you're gonna be okay alone?"
"I will be," he reassured Glitch again. "I got here alone, remember?"
"I'm gonna give Kat a piece of my mind for this," Glitch fumed. "This is such bullshit."
"It isn't fair," Mack agreed. X had never imagined it could sound angry while not sounding like anything at all.
"Don't split the group over me. Whatever happens, that's the last thing I want. You all survive because you work together. Don't endanger that just for me." He tied the old tarp around his shoulders, leaning on the wall for support while his hands were busy, and adjusted it over his head. "Promise me you won't."
"I'll try," was all Glitch could say. He didn't move, fingers interlocked for lack of any idea what to do with himself, and just stared at X with his dark eyes full of something he couldn't quite put into words.
X stared back for a long moment. "Thank you," he finally said. "Whatever else happens, you've done more for me than you know."
"We would have done more," said Glitch. "We would have followed you anywhere."
"I know." X managed a sad little smile for him and Mack, and turned away, picking a slow path through the rubble and out into the ruined city center. He didn't look back.