Chapter Text
Era didn't rush X back to the cell, and she didn't try to take his cane or clothing. In fact, while he'd been out, someone had found an excuse to smuggle in several blankets and a pillow.
"I don't know what's going on," she said, uncertainly twiddling her thumbs, "but…you said you wanted a blanket to recharge, so I thought maybe…"
"Thank you," X said, and he meant it.
"If you need anything else…?" she said. The dichotomy between her hard-bitten appearance and quietly shy behavior was really something, X mused. One truly couldn't judge a book by its cover, or a reploid by their chassis.
"I'm fine." He wasn't, but he was still in one piece, which was enough. An idea struck him. Waiting was boring, and if he could find some way to make inroads with some of the Drifters individually, he might be able to reach them much more readily than he could Seren. "Actually…if you aren't forbidden to talk to me…can you tell me a little bit about your life here?"
"Sure," she said. "Um. Maybe inside the cell, though, I think I'd get written up if I let you stay out here."
"That's fine. I don't want you to get in trouble." X laboriously sat down on the pile of blankets. It was a good deal less terrible this way than it had been, though calling it comfortable was still a stretch too far. But it was better. He could deal with that.
Era pulled her chair over to the door, which she didn't close, and sat down. "Captain Seren talks about you a lot, actually. She got here some years back, I guess, before my time. The guy in charge then was a reploid named Tera, who ran the Drifters like a gang. She fought him for command and won. I don't know a whole lot about it, since I wasn't here, but she pretty much changed everything."
"Did you live in this base before that?" X asked, curiously.
"I think they did. I didn't, personally. It didn't have power then and I guess it was mostly trashed. I don't know what anyone even did to recharge. There was a lot of pushback when she first said we'd be forming a new unit of Hunters. Like, who wants to be a cop, seriously? Um. No offense," Era hastily amended in a mumble.
"None taken," X assured her.
"But she was pretty convincing. That was right around when I arrived, so I remember it. She talked a lot about proving that we weren't what they said we are, and she figured out how to get the backup generator back online so we could actually operate the doors here and recharge up properly. There's a lot of systems that we couldn't restore, and it doesn't produce enough power for all of them anyway, but it's more than enough. So after that, the rest of the crew didn't mind listening to her so much, and all the training she put us to at least gave us something to do."
X listened with interest. As unhinged as he'd found Seren could be, clearly she'd brought some stability and safety to the reploids here. "She hasn't promised you anything about reintegrating into society or anything, has she?" X asked.
Era shook her head. "Not exactly. She definitely thinks it could happen, and I think a lot of the others here just assume she's got some kind of insider info, but she's pretty careful about what she says. I don't know if it'll work or not, but I guess it's better than sitting around doing nothing. Um. Can I ask what happened in the, you know, her office, with you two?" she said, hesitantly.
"I don't see why not." X gathered his thoughts. In the course of the long, strange day he'd been having, they had all fled in opposite directions, as if unwilling to get too close to each other for fear that if they bumped into each other and coalesced, he'd have to actually process his situation. "Seren wanted me to contact Maverick Hunter HQ and tell them to have everyone here declared safe, but I can't do that, because to be able to do that, I'd need to be able to change the entire system from the ground up. I'm only one man, and even if I could, I don't know if that's what I'd use that power for."
Era tilted her head, puzzled. X had a feeling he was not what she expected. He just hoped he wasn't going to go three for three on accidentally provoking random reploid women into yelling at him. His track record wasn't good at the moment. "What would you use it for?" she asked.
"If I could do anything? In a perfect world? Start over with something that's actually fair. Something that doesn't categorize us as unworthy to live like this. We don't even get a trial, most of the time."
"Huh. Seren always says it's necessary. We can do so much more damage than a human, so we should have stricter punishments."
X scoffed, which he hadn't meant to do, but he was beginning to suspect he had lost some kind of social filter along the way. "I believed that, too, for a long time. I'm not that sure anymore. I think if you scare someone with the threat of death, they're going to feel cornered and do a lot more to survive than someone who believes they'll be given fair treatment. People, human or reploid, are the most dangerous when they think they have nothing to lose."
Era mulled this over, watching X out of the corner of her eye. "Huh. I guess that makes sense…but that's all you said? Captain can be kind of tightly wound, but that's a lot."
X shrugged. "It's personal for her. She really thought I was someone I wasn't, but I thought I was too, so I can't even hold it against her." The other reploid was clearly out of her depth, so X relented and clarified, fidgeting with his cane handle as he spoke. "I've realized that I don't even know when I went Maverick. It's…hard to explain. I didn't think it was possible, but now I think it was maybe inevitable. Even if I could go back and put my armor on and fight, I think I'd never be able to stomach doing it for the Hunters again."
"Oh," she said, now looking at him fully as if trying to read the truth of his words on his face, both aged and strangely young at once. "No, she would hate that. Is that why you're…did you have to run, too?"
"I ran from myself," X answered, simply, because he had. "It worked about as well as you'd expect."
"But you're a hero," said Era.
"I'm a weapon who never learned how to be a person. It's a pretty poor replacement for a hero, but it's all I could do. I have a lot to answer for and no idea where to begin."
Era didn't seem to know what to say to that, so X asked her a question about herself instead. "What did you do? If you want to say, that is."
"Me? Oh, um. I don't mind. Robbery. The human cops got called, because all my friends were humans and I don't think the store realized I wasn't, so I got away when I panicked and ran because they only had solid bullets and couldn't drop me." She shifted to show X the back of her chest casing, where she still sported several bullet holes. "Didn't really do much to me. Free ventilation upgrade. But once you run, you gotta keep running."
"Are your friends okay?"
"I think so. Last I heard they got sentenced to a few years. They're probably all out by now, but I'm still here."
"It doesn't seem right," X said.
"You're telling me," Era agreed quietly. "I should probably close this door. We're coming up on shift change, and I don't want to get us in trouble."
Us, X thought. Do I dare believe that I didn't entirely screw up this time? Finally, a conversation he didn't have to limp away from even more dissociated than he already was. "Should I give you the blankets and my things back?" he asked, hoping she wouldn't say yes.
Era stood, looking at him like he was speaking nonsense. "I'm not taking an old man's cane and blanket. Captain can say whatever she wants, but that's crossing a line somewhere. It's got to be."
X half-smiled weakly at her indignation. "Well, this old man appreciates it."
"I don't know what she's planning on doing with you, but if I get a vote, Maverick or not, you seem like you've had enough already. Just…maybe try to not set her off again?" Era suggested.
"Fair plan," X agreed.
"After me, you've got Fortran. You'll want to be careful with him. He's in real deep with Captain's whole thing. Maybe just defrag though that shift if you can. I don't think he'll bother you, but you definitely shouldn't try talking to him…he's probably going to be pretty angry about Faraday."
"I'll keep that in mind," said X, nodding. "Thank you. It was nice having someone to talk to for a bit."
Era looked a little surprised. "Of course. I gotta close this now. Try to stay safe." The door slid shut with a heavy ka-chunk of bolts engaging, and X settled into the pile of blankets, back to the wall in the corner. There was nothing much to do but await whatever fate had in store for him, but at least he could do it on a fresh defragment cycle.
"It's not right," muttered Era. "He's not even scary. He's just an old, sad reploid."
"He is kind of scary. You saw what shape Faraday came back in." Simos sat on the edge of the dilapidated couch, hovering nervously. He was painted red like the rest of them, a mass-produced reploid with very little in the way of distinguishing features other than the spray paint and a deep sense of self-loathing.
"Faraday scares me. X cut the strap off my rifle without even toasting my finish, and was going to kneecap me too until his weapon failed. He could have just killed both of us, but he didn't. Even if he probably should have killed Faraday," Analog added under his breath, fiddling with his tail in both hands. Era wondered if it was in fact meant to be a built-in fidget toy. It certainly got enough mileage as one.
"Maglev says you squeaked like a little human girl," Simos said, similarly under his breath.
Analog put his pointed nose in the air, affronted. "You would have too. And Maglev can suck my left connector."
The door to Era's tiny room opened, and the three reploids looked up in guilty alarm until they recognized the newcomer. "Got some news," the reploid announced, tossing white hair from their eyes and settling into the couch next to Simos. They were another mass-production model, though newer than him, painted black and acid green, and with enough aftermarket modifications that they were sometimes mistaken for a custom model. They'd opted to draw just a single red slash across their chest as a concession to The Rules, and they wore a dark, dusty cloak that Era found entirely unnecessary. There was really no accounting for taste, especially where Toxotes was involved. "Wow, you guys need to work on your poker faces. If I was Ricochet or someone, you'd all be busted for sedition."
"Well? Good or bad?" Era prompted.
"Worse. Captain's thinking of throwing him to Faraday for a bit. I overheard her talking to Ricochet and Trebuchet in the hall. I don't know what he did exactly, but she's pissed at him." They crossed one leg over their knee.
"She can't do that. That's X," Era protested, then realized she was being too loud and dropped her voice. "Like, The X. He's her personal hero. Why would she even think about that?"
"Beats me."
Analog twisted his tail in his hands some more. "That's a death sentence. Tox. What are we supposed to do about it?"
Toxotes shrugged. "Dunno why you're asking me. Nothing, unless you're real into mutiny, and I don't think that's gonna go good for us. Argue with the Captain, maybe, but you know how that goes."
"Mutiny. At least that's an interesting way to die, I guess," Simos added, no happier about the prospect himself. "I don't like any of this." He sighed deeply, slumping with his elbows on his knees until his helmeted forehead almost knocked against the much-worn coffee table.
"Nobody is making you be here," Era huffed. "Just shut up and don't rat us out if you decide you're not helping after all, that's all I want."
"Didn't say that," Simos grumped, morose. "Just the whole thing sucks."
Analog scowled at Era's choice of rat phrasing, but let it slide. "If we did…do something about it," he started, flicking his ears back. "What would we even do?"
The four of them fell silent for a bit. "Well, he's been with Kathy's group," Era ventured after a bit. "If we could get him out, assuming we did, he'd probably want to go back to them, right?"
"Is that better…?" Simos wondered. "I mean…turning him over to a bunch of Mavericks…"
"He called himself a Maverick, though," said Era.
Toxotes glanced up at her. "Is he?" they asked.
"I don't know. He definitely believes he is. He was pretty serious about it. But, um, I know what the Captain always says, but technically we're all Mavericks anyway, so what's the difference?"
"They're not that bad," Analog mumbled, mostly to himself. "Captain just hates Kathy for some reason."
"Right, you lived there. I almost forgot." Toxotes crossed their legs the other way. "Look. Here's what I think. We smuggle X out somehow, get the hell out, take him to Kathy's bunch, and…I guess hope they're so glad to see him that we can stay, because I don't think it's gonna go great if we have to go it alone. What do you think, Analog? What's our odds?"
"Oh, I don't want to calculate them. It's so many variables." Analog went back to wringing his tail in his slender hands, but at the end of the day, he was a statistical prediction model, and he couldn't resist a question about the odds of any given situation. Everyone knew it. Asking him random questions that he couldn't refuse to answer was a bit of a pastime in their squadron. "Fine. It's just a guess, but here are my predictions." He cleared his throat and let go of his longsuffering tail, sitting up a little straighter. "If we do nothing, Faraday is probably going to disassemble X. From what you've said, Era, I doubt he'd survive it. He can't likely fight his way out, either, if whatever weapon he had before is gone, and I think it is, because I think I saw him throw it after it stopped working."
"If we try to talk to the Captain, she's not likely to listen, and we'll be informing her of our intent from that point on, which would drastically decrease the odds of any other actions we might take. I don't think that's a good course of action."
"If we get him out ourselves…we can probably do it, but there's no going back. Captain Seren's not going to give us a second chance. I think I could explain everything to Kathy. I never had any problem with her. But I also don't know what the situation there is like, or if they could even afford to house us, so it's…still a gamble, but it's got a better chance of success than any other route."
"That's about what I thought, too," Era agreed, chewing on the inside ends of the bars through her spiderbite piercings. "Okay. Um. Well, I'm gonna try. The rest of you…I won't make you. Do what you think is the right thing. But I can't stand by and let this happen."
"I'm in. This whole thing's always sat weird with me. It's not like they're actually gonna un-convict a bunch of Mavericks, whatever she thinks, and I'm kinda getting tired of the Cult of Seren." Toxotes uncrossed their legs, looking to Simos and Analog.
"You're bored, admit it," Analog chittered.
"Okay, and I'm bored."
"Edgelord," the mouse reploid muttered. "Whatever. I guess you'd need me to talk to Kathy if we get that far, and I'm through taking orders from Maglev. I just want to bite him every time he opens his mouth."
Simos wilted a bit under the combined gaze of the other three reploids. "Yeah, sure. Count me in too," he said, though he didn't sound entirely convinced.
"So how do we do this?" Toxotes asked.
Era motioned the other three to huddle closer. "I've got an idea, but shift change is pretty soon, so we have to hurry."
X lurched awake from a defragmenting dream to the sound of the door opening, grasping at the last fragments of it even as he forgot them. He had an impression of sunlight, and trees, real ones, and that Zero had been there. Or Glitch? They weren't similar at all, and yet, he couldn't make up his mind who had been in his dream, just that he'd been at ease for a rare moment.
"Well, well. So you're the great X." X looked up, still bleary, at the reploid who entered. He was imposingly large, yellow where he wasn't red, and unfortunately very familiar from having taken him apart once. This must have been Faraday. He still walked with a limp, favoring one leg whose knee had been braced but not replaced, probably for a lack of parts. "You know, I thought you'd be taller."
"I hear that a lot," X replied.
"I bet. I thought you'd have more sense than to piss off the Captain, too."
"That certainly wasn't my intent."
"I'm sure it wasn't. But you did, and you pissed me off, too." With one smooth motion, Faraday seized X by the coat, lifted him, and slammed him into the back wall hard enough to knock the air out of his ventilation systems with a ragged cough and a rattle of fans. "Really shouldn't have done that. You're kinda digging yourself a hole straight to hell, you know."
X struggled to see through the sheer avalanche of pain and warnings that filled his vision. He should probably be afraid, he thought, but it was as if he'd had a limited capacity for fear and had already burnt through it. He mumbled something, trying to find his voice.
"What's that?" Faraday said, holding X still and leaning in.
"If you're going through hell," X said, more clearly, "keep going."
Faraday laughed, a single, derisive bark. "Oh, you ain't seen hell yet, little man. But I might send you there myself." He slammed X to the floor next, letting go of his jacket and watching him for several moments with clear amusement.
X reeled. He blinked back several new errors he'd never seen before, which was impressive for as long and violent a life as he'd had. His balance systems had gone entirely offline, as had one of his fans and a coolant pump. His combat systems just shrugged emphatically. What did he want them to do about it? He couldn't move enough to retaliate. This wasn't even a fight, as far as they could tell. This was a completely one-sided murder.
"Oh, come on, this isn't even going to be fun if you just sit there making that stoic face." Faraday set one large, heavy foot on X. "I could stomp you like a bug, you know. You gotta have an opinion about that."
X tried to speak, and found himself gurgling coolant instead. He turned his head and spat transparent blue liquid tinged with silver nanofluid across the floor. "D-don't threaten me with a good time," he managed.
Faraday's gleeful expression soured. "You really think you're gonna be funny now?" he growled, pressing down. X's chassis creaked under the strain, and his combat systems lit up with the first spark of hope they'd found since he'd been taken captive. He swung a kick upwards at the back of Faraday's bad knee. It connected, but the much larger reploid only staggered, correcting his balance by slamming his foot down on X's chest.
"What is wrong with you? You senile or something?"
"Maybe I am," X wheezed. Something popped painfully in one of his shoulder joints, and a gush of nanofluid soaked through his jacket sleeve, bright mercury-silver on the dull metal floor tiles. "At least…I'm not the one…beating up on an…old man…and acting big about it…"
Faraday reached down and picked him up again, by the head this time, holding them eye to eye. X dangled limply, still conscious, but only just, staring defiantly at Faraday. "You got a death wish, and I don't think the Captain's gonna be too mad if I grant it to you. That what you want?" He gave X a shake, and X heard several things rattle inside of his skin that shouldn't have been rattling. He couldn't even sort through the warnings fast enough to figure out what they were or how much he should worry.
"How's…the Capttttzzzttain think…they'll reinsztttzzzzstate her…or any of you," X said, speech synthesis jamming and buzzing a few times under extreme load, and none too happy about being drowned in the coolant now pooling in his throat, "if they findzttttzd out…you decommiszztttzzzsioned me?"
"Well, first, they'd have to find you, and you'd be surprised how deep you can bury someone in the quarantine zone. And secondly, see, all these other guys bought the Captain's Hunter bullshit. Me, though? I don't give a shit." Faraday lightly tossed X up, catching him by the arm and squeezing as hard as he could, watching it deform. X finally cried out, the sensation of his frame itself bending too much to bear in silence. "There we go. I knew you could do it." He grinned sadistically and dropped X to the floor, where he landed like a marionette with its strings severed, lacking the strength to move.
X heard the door slide open. "That's enough, Faraday. You step away from him, and not a single broadcast, or we light you up." Ah. He must have been hallucinating, because that sounded like Era, and as much as she'd sympathized with him, he couldn't imagine she'd risk her life for his.
"W-what have you done?" And that sounded like the mouse reploid from before. How strange.
Faraday froze, turning slowly to face them. "Well, if it ain't the Girl Scout Squad. Figures it's you losers. Wait 'til the Captain hears about this."
"Oh, don't worry, she won't," said an unfamiliar voice, but with an edge that X recognized immediately: bloodlust. Something twanged, something crackled electrically, and Faraday made a strange, garbled little digital noise. He crumpled to the floor next to X, dead as a paperweight, a fletched metal shaft protruding from his forehead.
"Tox! Did you have to do that?" a fourth voice asked.
"No, but I've wanted to for a while now." The four gathered around X, kneeling around him, and he realized he wasn't hallucinating. "This doesn't look good at all. X. Can you hear us?"
"I'm…fzzfffzzine," he replied, from approximately a thousand miles away. His circuits were spinning fuzzily, and if it weren't for the deluge of critical warnings and errors, he could almost have been comfortable, which should have been troubling. It wasn't. He was going to die, and he knew it, in every system. The feeling was not one of panic or fear; just a quiet, calm certainty that he could simply close his eyes and let it happen, if he wanted to.
He did want to. But he couldn't, he thought, distantly. Glitch and Mack would be sad.
"Said the world's least fine guy. I have no idea what self-repair's even going to do here, but toss me one of those." Era very gently tipped his head up and poured a canister of nanofluid down his throat. His low nanofluid errors didn't change that much, and he realized it must have been dripping out of him as fast as she poured it in. "Oh, shit, he's leaking everything everywhere…can we even move him?"
The cloaked reploid spoke up. "If we don't, it's only going to be worse. We're just going to have to make a run for it. Simos, take the vanguard. Analog and I will cover the rear. You take him and run, Era, you're strongest and fastest carrying a load."
"We should have been faster," Era sighed, despondent. "Just a few minutes would have made all the difference. Damn it. I'm so sorry, X. Come on. Let's get you out of here." She wrapped a blanket around X, making an easier to carry burrito, and lifted him in both arms as carefully as if he were a sick child.
"We're still clear," said the reploid at the door. Simos? Maybe that was what Era said. X could barely keep track, and the room was swimming. He closed his eyes. "Let's go."
The four of them ran, and X was only dimly aware of the lights on the ceiling going past. Suddenly, Era came to a stop, clutching him more closely.
"Ah, fuck," said the cloaked reploid, who X assumed must have been Tox. X opened his eyes, weakly, but still struggling to hold on.
"Ah, fuck, indeed," Seren said, falsely sweet, and sent a burst of encoded orders. X couldn't understand it, but he could guess. Era heard it ripple throughout the base, as everyone who heard it repeated it, effectively extending Seren's range. '>Captain to the Quarantine Hunters. All units to the entrance. A mutiny is in progress. Prepare for combat.' She stood in the hall, arms crossed, flanked by her two right hand men, Trebuchet and Ricochet. X recognized them, vaguely, from the encounter he and Glitch had had. They were two of a kind, built not unlike Faraday, though not as hulkingly large. Not the same model as him, but perhaps the same manufacturer.
Toxotes raised and drew their bow in one swift movement, nocking an arrow that shimmered into existence in their fingers and pointing it at Seren. "I wouldn't recommend that," warned Seren, waving a finger at them. Ricochet and Trebuchet both aimed their weapons at Toxotes.
"I killed Faraday, and I'll kill you," growled Toxotes.
"Tsk. What a murder machine. All that time trying to teach the lot of you right from wrong, and only one of you ever paid attention. Simos."
"S-sir," Simos stammered, glancing at his comrades in panic and backing away, towards Seren and her lieutenants, buster aimed at Era and her allies.
"I have to commend you for the advance warning. Now, bring him here." Seren motioned, pointing to X, then imperatively to the ground at her feet.
"You rusty bastard," hissed Era, turning half away as if to shield X's critically damaged body with her own. "You fucking snitch. What is wrong with you?"
"I don't want to die, that's what. Just hand him over. This isn't worth it." He made a grab for the blanket covering X.
"Snitches get stitches," Toxotes said, then simply turned and released their arrow through Simos's optics. With a single arc flash and an unmodulated, buzzing croak from his voice synthesizer, he dropped like a twitching bag of gravel. Ricochet and Trebuchet both fired, and Toxotes threw their arms wide, absorbing both shots rather than letting them hit Era and X.
"Simos! Tox!" Era nearly jumped out of her synthetic skin as Toxotes crumpled against her with a pained hiss, and X groaned as the motion jarred another fresh drizzle of silver-white nanofluid from his self-repair system's veins. Why weren't they mending themselves? He had no idea. He should have stopped bleeding by now, and yet…and yet.
He was dying. All this trouble, X thought, distantly, and for what? I'm so tired. I could just…stop. No. Zero told me to survive. Glitch and Mack want to see me again. I can't just stop.
"I'm still up," Toxotes said, through gritted teeth.
"This is stupid. Just put them down." Seren said, pointing her arm at them. Her hand retracted, and her gauntlet shifted into a buster. She aimed along it with both eyes open, as calmly and casually as if they were targets in a shooting gallery. Seren could take her time; she didn't often miss, and she knew it. She'd been trained by the best, after all.
Several encoded broadcast reports burst from the halls around them. The entire rest of the base was converging on them. If they couldn't make it out and escape within the next few moments, they weren't going anywhere, and yet, Era's feet felt rooted to the spot. It wasn't supposed to happen like this, she thought, over and over. It wasn't supposed to happen like this…
Trembling in terror, Analog somehow managed to marshal himself and pushed in front of Toxotes, trying to protect them, Era, and X, even though his shoulder came only as high as Era's waist. "I-I won't let you," he chittered, ears flat to his head and sharp teeth bared, raising his buster rifle with its recently stitched strap. He was too small to even hold it properly without the extra support, and yet, he stood his ground, shaking like a leaf but refusing to move.
"Aww. I'd commend your cute little bravery thing, if you weren't about to die for it," Seren cooed sarcastically. "But you are, so goodbye."
Everything happened so quickly Era could barely process it. Plasma pooled and flared in the barrel of Seren's buster as the electromagnetic fields that held it began to flux in preparation to fire. Something flashed, right across her buster arm, and she reflexively flinched in surprise and pain just enough to send the shot crackling over Era's shoulder, where it splashed against the wall. Era drew away from it, cradling X protectively. With a squeaking screech, Analog opened fire, sending both Ricochet and Trebuchet diving for cover behind the old front desk. Trebuchet pulled Seren down with him just in time to spare her from being scorched by several more buster shots from the entrance.
'>Entrance detail, report,' Seren ordered, but nobody responded. 'Report!'
"I have no idea what you're saying, lady, but if you're talking to those guys outside, they're not gonna be saying much for a while," said a familiar voice, and X felt his power core warm within his chassis even before he'd consciously registered whose it was. A green and charcoal gray figure wearing a tattered brown tarp like a cape dashed into the entrance hall, carrying a patchwork buster in each hand.
Analog's ears perked and flicked, and he paused in trying to burn a hole through the desk with his rifle. "Holy shit. Glitch? What th-the hell are you even—Tox, no, put it down, you don't need to skewer him." Toxotes lowered their bow, jaw set tightly with the effort it took to overcome their pain sensors.
"Analog? Is that seriously you? I'd ask you what the hell you're even, but we can hug it out later. Mack! Cut the power, we're going home."
The lights went out, throwing the room into pitch blackness, and footsteps sounded from somewhere in the air ducts. "You guys got busters? Good, put down some covering fire. Here, trade me." X felt himself be handed off into an uncommonly warm pair of arms. "Ah, shit, buddy, they messed you up bad, didn't they…"
"I've been bettttzzzttter," X agreed, quietly and deliriously.
"Shh. Don't worry. I'm gonna get you home." X closed his eyes again, because reality was more than he could process. He was dimly aware that he was still leaking coolant and nanofluid and other things, but the warnings had at least slowed to a crawl. Maybe that was good, or maybe it was bad. He wasn't sure, and he didn't have the energy to care.
"Stay with me, buddy, if you go offline now I don't think we're gonna be able to boot you back up." The front door of the Hunter base whizzed by. Another round of buster fire cracked past them from behind, and Toxotes, grimacing with pain as they drew their bow, returned a single shot that from the digital yelp behind them must have flown true.
There was a thump in the general vicinity of Glitch's head. "When did we pick up a bunch of extras?" asked Mack, from above X. Very early morning sunlight hit X's eyelids, then shade.
"Seren is going to kill all of us for this," Analog squeaked, scampering backwards to keep line of sight to any pursuers.
"Seren can get fucked," said Era, angrily. She was stained with silver nanofluid from X's injuries, sparkling strikingly against her mostly black paneling.
"I gotta ask. How the rusty fuck did you guys time this?" Glitch said. "Wifi sensitivity? Motion-activated cameras? Lookouts?"
"We didn't. I was about to ask you the same thing," Analog replied. "Here, into the tunnels. I did all the traps on this end. I can get us through."
"Wow, stealing my thing? Great. Lead on." They took a winding route, and soon the sounds of pursuit disappeared into the darkness behind them and they could afford to slow down to a jog instead of a breakneck dash. X passed in and out of full consciousness, despite his struggle to stay awake.
"V, buddy. Hang in there," Glitch said, quietly and so full of worry that X managed to open his eyes, wanting so badly to reassure him.
"You…came to reszzztttzzcue me," he said, around half a mouthful of coolant.
"Of course I did."
Even with his eyes open, X drifted, vaguely aware that he was warm, and Glitch had him, and that was already more than he'd dared hope for. They made it to Glitch's end of the tunnels, and he took the lead, pointing out what to avoid and where to step, and then…stairs upwards.
"Clear the way," Glitch called. "It's just me. And Mack. And V. And Analog. And Toxotes, and Era. No, I know they're red, they're fine, put the buster down, Hammer."
"Oh, my God," X heard Valentina say, and illogically, he felt guilty for scaring her.
"You actually got him?" That was Kathy. "Glitch, I should either string you up by your auditory sensors or hug you and I don't know which. Analog? Is that you?"
"Do whatever you want with me, but do it after I get him fixed up. Everyone out of the way. And be nice to the new kids." Glitch stormed into his laboratory with an armful of X, and kicked the door shut behind them.