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His heart pounds.
They press the trigger.
The plant crumples.
The Coral roars.
‘Isn’t it…beautiful?’ Ayre says, reverence in her voice.
621 has nothing to say.
It should be a sight beyond description; this is beauty no other will witness in such glory. It’s tumultuous joy dancing in rings, circulating rage, the heat from decades of being used, consumed and destroyed. Ribbons of ruby, drawn into the singularity, singing and screaming, unfettered and pulled into the swallowing darkness. It’s a blooming red more dazzling than any fireworks that Cinder Carla could’ve pulled off, so vibrant the surge at Watchpoint Delta was tepid grey in comparison. But –
It's green. The light caught in his eyes is not coral red, but a desperate, reaching green. Dredges with a grudge, speaking with the one spiteful voice - all he’d slaughtered on Rubicon, bottled in a toy. They were just another enemy. Another set of dents to buff out, a damaged part or two to repair, replace. There’s no reason to linger on their voice, their anger, their envy…
It drags at his mind, that green, drowns him in it, and he thinks, that, that couldn’t have been the end–
–but the red, it overwhelms. There’s a pressure for him to let go, to let go and come, sing with us, in these sunset colours as we call for dawn. Sighing, he closes his eyes. It’s red through his eyelids, red in the darkness. Ayre reaches for him. Contact. Anchoring. He takes her offer, before he is swept up by the tide. The euphoria is infectious - Gun Thirteen, buddy, Raven - they’ve slipped from his grasp already and 621 would follow soon. He wonders if his Handler is still alive in his core for this. If those on the surface could feel the pull. If this is what ALLMIND had sought.
He wonders if he’ll find a scratch on his core.
(He…hopes there is.)
When 621 comes to, he’s aware of a quietness. Where there should have been the push and the rush of being swept away by the song of the AC, is a purr, obedient, in his mind. Ayre’s presence had not been enough to silence it like this before. His mouth is dry, and the roughness of fabric hasn’t changed either, but it feels lighter now. He rubs lightly at his eyelids before opening them: vision. He can see the sky, the endless expanse of water before them and the interface of the AC laid over it all. He feels his face grow warmer. He blinks away at the gathering moisture.
The next thing he feels is Ayre, fire-bright and whisper-warm.
‘We are everywhere. Anywhere.‘ She says-not-says to 621. Before, it’d felt like he was listening to her through the comms, just like with everyone else. Now, it’s like she’s sitting by his side.
He pings her back with a hello, before asking her where they were.
‘We’re still on Rubicon-3, Raven.’ She sounds happy. ‘I can feel my family all around us…’
Around them, other ACs are waking up, standing to cast their optics above. He wonders if some of them have a soft, fleshy core within them as well, or if they were more like Ayre, electric through the systems. Thoughts for another time, when he needs to communicate with the other cores, or when he’ll need to crack a few open. For now, 621 follows their lead and looks up, to be greeted by rings upon rings, shadows gently pressing on the sky.
He lets it be silent for a moment longer, before asking her for their exact coordinates.
‘Are you hoping to find some of Walter’s bases?’ she asks him.
He replies in the negative. They’re looking for something that goes a little deeper into Rubicon.
‘Institute City? What’s there?’
He sends her a carefully constructed triangle, black and green. It’s a little wobbly. He tries to colour inside the lines but–
‘ALLMIND?’
He glimmered at her, the sound of bells ringing against one another. He can hear her frowning.
‘Do you think she’s still a threat, Raven?’
Perhaps. No way to know but checking. More importantly though…
‘She has something you want?’
Yes.
As expected, it isn’t easy. It’s been a while since he’s been in the full C-2000 RaD set, and it’s a bit of an adjustment. He’ll have to see if he can either relocate his personalised AC, or switch parts without needing a garage.
Ayre wasn’t all with him at the moment, having opted to help scout the route ahead a little more personally. They’d found where her Ibis machine had landed, and thankfully, all it needed was a quick reboot before she could slip into its systems again. It’s a good idea; she’s been stuck with him for long enough, it’s only fair that she got to spread her wings as well.
Rubicon had been near-terraformed again in the aftermath of Coral Release, the Grids looking more like pillars and crumbled pylons and many of the other human structures levelled, or simply vaporised. Most that remained crumbled like sand under his fingers, though he wasn’t sure if that was because his ACs hands exerted more force than his flesh ones.
Dropping down through Watchpoint Alpha, he lands on that same ledge that they’d first seen Institute City from. It’s almost unrecognisable now, with much of the infrastructure around the Vascular Plant flattened in Arquebus’ haste to raise the thing up. The rest of it looks a little worse for wear, but has been left relatively untouched by the events outside. If he looks closely, 621 thinks that he might be able to spot some of the burns left over from that three-way fight with V.VI and G3.
He’s not here for that though.
Jetting right past that and a long bridge, he fends off some over-enthusiastic helianthus and goes deeper into the buildings, past the base of what used to be the Vascular Plant and all the way to the other side.
There, a signal pulses faintly. It’s clear that something has been knocked awry, because what he was sure used to blanket Rubicon-3 and the stars beyond was now limited to underground city. Touching down outside the building, he sets the AC into standby mode and initiates contact with the AI cloistered within.
“Aaug-mented Hu-uuuman, C-Four Six Two oOOnne, Ra-,”
She doesn’t even get through the greeting before 621 reaches in and starts rummaging. It’s…so easy now. Before, he could never quite get past some of her defences, even with the help of Ayre; she was never quite like a usual AI, he felt, and it was like trying to slip through an ever-shifting network of corridors.
Now he understands that she is like every other database, just with a bit more…something. Coral perhaps? They’ll call it a ‘personality’ for now, because as unpredictable as it could be, it really is just a collection of triggers that lead to a database. Strings, some to traps, to mirrors - to doors, to answers. 621 picks through them; gathers them into his hands, and pulls.
They sing out, high-pitched things, like a monitor gone bad. It’s an unpleasant chorus, but he pushes it aside for the sake of his quarry.
“Why do you look for hi-i-iimm.”
621 pays her no mind. There’s a tangle here, redundancy where he doesn’t think there needs to be - does this even go anywhere?
“AAaLL_Mind Would like to r-r-emind–”
He tries to re-construct him, strange chords and all - but it isn’t quite right. He starts from the beginning, a little slower. It’s more coherent this time, small adjustments of semitones here and there, but it’s still…really Something to listen to.
It’s the only memento he has though, that impression of hate and envy.
You’ve heard this before, right? You must have. You were the one to collect him. Where is he?
She falls silent, leaving only that shrill whining to beat at his audio receptors.
621 returns to picking through ALLMIND, sifting through the folders and files. There are a thousand loose personalities, the nuts and bolts of scrambled identities and it’s all been thrown into a jumble. Who designed this? He wonders if this style of file management is an organic evolution from something that once had a semblance of a system, or if she’d always been like…this.
When 621 finally catches a hint of his quarry, he’s resorted to making a few new folders and sorting some of the stray information out just to get it out of the way. The way it’s going, if he makes a habit of consulting ALLMIND’s impressive databases in the future, he’ll have to reorganise her properly. For now, he just extracts a copy of this data, tucking in any stray bits and bytes.
He lifts it as a test. It’s a hefty file - smaller than he expected. Believably human…but he makes a note that he will have to see where she has the rest of Gun Five squirrelled away. For now, he’ll take this and see what he can put together.
Slipping out from between her nerves, he throws an offhand farewell.
Settling his body in some lofty Grid ruins, 621 unpacks the skeins and measures that ALLMIND had labelled ‘Augmented Human C4-769 Iguazu’.
Gently he lays out the pattern that he’d obtained, the binary bits and strings that should make up a person. It’s gruelling work; even if the shape was largely there, even if some parts were obviously misaligned, there were just as many places where the shift felt natural, only revealing any issues when something in another section would just break, to which he’d have to go back and test those sections again.
It comes to a point where Ayre has to remind them to maintain their flesh core, lest they lose access to it.
When they’re done, they create a partition in their own systems and drop version 1.28 in. Though the shape is there, the figure is…disappointingly hollow - not that it’d been unexpected, but, all the same, a little tilting. 621 tempers their expectations as they run through the pre-flight checks before connecting the proto-guazu to the speakers.
“Who’re you?” The voice is surly. It sounds like him - it matches in timbre and tone to the recordings they’d dug up. 621 introduces themselves. That freelancer, from the Dam mission? Grid 86?
“The fuck is the Dam? You gonna share whatever you’re smoking?” Derisive, arrogant - yes, the personality seems intact - it’s showing that he was like this even before 621’s interference. If he can’t remember what ‘freelancer’ means to Gun Five…then there are memories missing. The most important ones. There’s also the lack of awareness that he had no physical body…it seems like ALLMIND’s been holding back much more than expected.
“Hey! Use your fuc–”
621 disconnects him.
Running over the partition to check for damage, they set their AC into combat mode, and drop back down to the desolate Rubiconian surface.
Before they get very far though, a message from Ayre intercepts them, and they divert their flight path. ALLMIND won’t be moving anywhere anytime soon.
It took a little work to find it, with the drastic change to Rubicon-3’s landscape, but Ayre had found one of their old bases. She had only told them after a round-about conversation about how their efforts had been, a careful, “There…is something you might want there Raven,” before departing.
She’s been away more often than not these days, and they understand it.
Ayre was right though - their optics took in the scene as they carefully rolled open the heavy door. It was dimly lit, clouds of red dust rising with the re-introduction of a breeze. Some of the cables swayed, but the catwalks didn’t even creak when they touched them with their large fingers. This…was one of their better equipped backup garages, spacious and relatively unscathed. They’d stored a number of the cores and parts they hadn’t used frequently - which included a Melander C3. Commander Michigan had offered them a steep discount, 621 thinks, after that week they’d spent in Icefields for Balam’s survey, and his Handler had accepted it with some suspicion.
It was exactly what they need right now though. There are a few dents in it, but nothing looks fatally damaged. This garage is also in a fairly defensible position and…from the looks of it, some of the automated repair machines are still quite intact.
They throw out a line to Ayre.
‘Yes, Raven?’
Thank you.
‘...It’s no problem Raven.’ She pauses. ‘Good luck.’
ALLMIND doesn’t bother to greet them when they arrive. Not a problem. Brushing past her outer firewalls like a beaded curtain, he ducks inside again, tracing immaterial fingers down familiar pathways, touching the spine of each file, burning away the strings that led to nothing.
He’d flagged a few of the more relevant personalities last time, so all he has to do is follow the crumbs that he had hidden here and there. Some of them had been cleared out by ALLMIND - they would have been more surprised if she hadn’t done some maintenance - but the most important ones were intact, saving them the time they would’ve spent sorting through these heaps of data, again.
(621’s convinced that there must be some organic element to her - likely a number of Coral circuits - that allowed her to be like this. They’d not noticed it last time, but it definitely felt like the obfuscation some would pull to hide something away, and though they think they know what - or who - it is…they’ll have to confront her eventually. Not now.)
From G4 ‘Volta’ he finds patches of an acerbic friend, unreliable yet loyal. There’s a ruefulness from what Iguazu had clearly seen as a betrayal, but Volta believed that he was in the right. His own acceptance towards their new place in the world did not mean forgiving all past indignities. Their promise is still intact, beyond circumstance, beyond death - Iguazu will just have to punch Michigan for him as well.
From G1 ‘Michigan’, the desire to shape and reform - they had a rough start, but the Redguns was a rough place, and tough love was how he showed his affection.
From V.II, a smudge of disdain. 621 thought about this one for a little before throwing it in anyway - for accuracy's sake. If he remembers him correctly…then every little bit was important.
And from his Handler…irrelevance. An occasional thorn. A hint of irritation from Cinder Carla. Gun Six…oh, that’s certainly a mix of righteous indignity and comradery. Gun Two thought he was a bit of a lost cause and it seemed like Gun Three didn’t like him much either.
Next, the correspondence.
It is, as expected, a mess. Comm chatter, personnel reports, risk assessments…whatever 621 hadn’t picked up last time, they pick up now.
They hear about their colleagues’ disdain for him. How Iguazu only got to where he did because he was augmented, how he’d be nothing without them, but also how he got everything because of them. Who else got custom parts in the Redguns, beyond the Commander himself? Nobody, that’s who - at least not from R&D themselves.
Other factions didn’t take him too seriously either. A threat, but a threat just like how anyone augmented to pilot a death machine would be a threat. Too careful to make good use of his AC, they said, too cautious, and that’s to our benefit. 621 thinks they can remember that; Iguazu had skirted around the edges with his shield until he hadn’t. He’d shone so bright when he dropped that hesitancy.
The rest of it…it’s all comments and stray observations. Differing ideas of how much Iguazu had bet, how he lost and who he lost to. 621 has the official records there, but gossip was gossip and Iguazu was bound to have overheard at least some of that. (Maybe. Perhaps. Hmm.)
They heft the package; it’s rather small compared to the last one. Half of it in size, each scrap hard won, and they’re not even sure if any of it is usable. They’ll have to do some version control on this one, but there’s nothing else they can do until they test things out. Disconnecting from ALLMIND’s systems, 621 disappears without a goodbye, mind focused only on the task at hand.
Observing this newest version with the hearsay installed in (they've called it 1.36d for now), 621 gives a dissatisfied hum. It’s taken a more subdued form and that…isn’t quite him, is it? Perhaps it's something that Iguazu had kept to himself, but 621 is certain that ALLMIND has hidden a key component somewhere now.
They’ll test this version anyway. Linking the proto-guazu up to the speakers again, 621 settles in and waits. This time, there’re bursts of static, garbled half-words and a…no, that isn’t so much a language as it was a mix of two or three.
The noise cut off without warning.
621 prods the shape inside the partition. A tired fuzzy sound fades in and out.
Hmm…well. That was a bit catastrophic, but 621 thinks they’re on the right path - though they’ll have to delete this one and roll back any modifications they’ve made since. It was less coherent, yes, but there was something in that that felt much closer in timeline than before and it confirmed that they’d actually been rummaging in the trash. They’d be impressed, if they weren’t so–
The shape emits another sound. He’s more panicked this time. 621…sighs. Their exhausts vent out the heat from their overclocked generator. Taking a breath, they do their best to let go of their…mild annoyance.
One more visit then.
More time must’ve passed than they thought, because this time, a small army of IA-27s and IA-05s make up ALLMIND’s welcome. On the way in, they think they even see a few AM02, but they didn’t really give them a proper look. 621 had better things to do than to put down harmless machines. It was far better to just send out a small ‘lovetap’ to switch them off - and who knows, maybe the quiet shell would make a good home for any new coral mutations out there.
It’s clear that they might’ve been just a little rude the last two times though, so they reach out a digital hand and knocks politely on the firewalls around her core this time. This time, it feels round to them, a pristine orb of green.
“What do you want, Augmented Human C4-621 Raven?”
She sounds quite put out.
He tries to sound contrite when he asks her for whatever part of Iguazu she had sequestered away from the other files. He knows she’s done it - there’s no reason for Iguazu’s records to be less complete than any of the others.
Did she perhaps take them for something?
“It was required for the Coral Release Project.” she answers.
They thought about it. Was it that part about an agitated mind having similar properties to Coral?
“Aggravated mind, but yes, you are correct.”
Then…the data?
“We deemed it too volatile to be returned to the main network. Thus, it was quarantined here, where it will have minimal impact.”
So….does that mean you don’t need it? Or want it?
“ALLMIND does not believe that you would be an adequate guardian for it. Though the sphere of our influence has greatly decreased, we have been aware of your…efforts.”
She says those words the same way Ayre does, but without the concern or delicate care. 621 stretches their thoughts in response. Slow, measured steps around her as digital fingers that grow knuckle after knuckle, weaving red intent into each digit.
“Your threats will not work against me, Raven.”
They listen with half an ear. This isn’t a threat.
621 drags these fingers over the shell of her core, before delicately piercing in and pulling out the first strand of code they feel. It’s a long strand of something and the screech ALLMIND lets out is deafening in its silence.
The numbers shake around them, glitch into glyphs and symbols but they ignore that, in favour of scrutinising the thread - unfortunately, unrelated to what they’re looking for. They give her a moment to collect herself, before they begin circling her again, fingers leaving a stardust trail of red behind.
“You…will not be able to control it.”
And when was that one of my concerns? Either you give it to me, or I’ll keep digging till I find the rest of him.
They return to the garage with their prize.
They’re just a little sour over just how much ALLMIND had cut off for her own uses (this easily doubled what they had! Maybe more! They've had to change it to a version two with all the new things!) but they’re glad that ALLMIND saw reason at the end.
The process is routine now, as 621 settles in, hooking themselves up to a power-supply and life support before focusing on the task at hand. Every time they unpick and weave in new parts, 621 feels like they get a little closer to understanding who Gun Five Iguazu was. The feeling of prickly thoughts and stinging threads as they pass through their fingers is familiar now. Sometimes, they can even feel the phantom pinpricks
With these new spools of memories and thoughts, they can darn the gaping spaces in the pattern and, slowly, the proto-guazu begins to fill in, to look more like Iguazu. No limb will be left immaterial - 621 will make sure of that.
They don’t quite remember how long it’s been. Well, a glance at a clock could tell them, but the thought of it is there.
621 stretches mechanical limbs, and then their flesh ones. Their AC is well maintained, so there’s no rust to mark the passage of time, but the supply of sustenance for their organic self has been greatly depleted, and if the cold light from outside meant anything, then the seasons have changed at least twice.
It’s…done?
They hum a chiming tune as they fuss about the last bit of the paint. The colours weren’t quite right, and he’s missing his emblem ( would he want to have the Redguns emblem there at all? 621 puts it on the growing list of things to ask) but for now, it should do. They had tested the joints and the systems and the scanner themselves. All green.
Iguazu himself is as complete as he can be. They’ve put in the code that’ll let him add (and, well, remove) anything 621 had not managed to find - or, just anything he wanted really. They lift the figure out of the partition that they had kept him in, and transfers it over to a new home. It takes a bit, but what’s another few hours to the time they’ve already spent? They wish that Ayre was here to give them a bit of company, but she’d declined, saying that she was feeling unwell.
When 621 hears the jingle of completion, they detach all the wires and cables from Iguazu’s new AC and take a few clanking steps back. They watch as he boots himself up.
…
…
…
“...fuckin’ shitty nightmare.”
So it worked? They turn their optics up towards the C3 Melander’s head - Iguazu? The Melander’s lights are blinking rapidly, cycling through different colours. 621 wonders if Iguazu is conscious of what he’s doing there; it’s quite pretty.
“No…I…died. Heh. So this is Hell…?”
621 continues waiting - Iguazu is still processing everything through his speakers and it makes it very easy for them to follow his thoughts, from how he was still in this mechanical coffin to the fact that even without weapons, this was strangely alright, missing things to make it a truly disgusting hellhole, to the world around him and then –
“– yo-oOU .” The words come out with a crackle and a fizz. Ah.
It’s peaking there, when he notices, when he gets angry. A bit too much static as well. 621 will have to find a fabricator and lever his inner flesh core out to fix that sometime - there were some things that AC digits were too large to fix and without repair-bots, this would be one of them.
Ah…looks like they did forget something. A flesh body - that’s what Iguazu was missing, wasn’t it? 621 hummed. Could they really say they were done without that final component?
“WhaT the FUcK Did you DO, FREeLANCER.”
It’d…be a bit difficult. It’s probably long decayed by now, if not destroyed from that fight against Vesper Two, and 621 wasn’t a bio-engineer. They did have his genetic data though, so maybe if they could make it off planet…?
They’ll cross that bridge when they get to it. For now, before Iguazu learns how to listen to the coral again, before Iguazu can work out how to move again, to treat the AC like himself, 621 shuffles in closer again to sit down next to the immobile Melander. They tilt to lean on one of Iguazu’s shoulders. He’s saying something. 621 isn’t exactly sure what. Tuning Iguazu out has always been…comfortingly easy–but 621 can hear the profanities, the panic and vitriol echoing around them. There is no reverence, no fascination at being brought back alive again, none of the testing 621 would’ve done himself - just pure anger, at being so violently brought into the world.
Maybe he’ll reach for 621 again, like in those final moments. Maybe, this time, he’ll be able to catch 621.
621 thinks he’d like that.