Chapter 10: To be Told
The wind died as she stepped from the skeletal maw of the Institute, leaving a silence thicker than the dust. Above, the ash-choked sky churned, bruising from orange to a deep, sickly purple. Clouds, fat and heavy with forgotten rains, gathered with unnatural speed, blotting out the weak sun.
E-15 stood on the cracked steps, the weight of the hidden data chip a phantom pressure against her thigh. Coolant, not blood, stained her gloves. She could still feel the reverberation of the pistol shot in her wrist actuator.
“Transport is inbound,” Pod 19 stated, hovering at her shoulder. Its green hue was the only vivid color in the monochrome waste. “Mission parameters achieved. Integration metrics show a seventeen percent increase in combat efficiency following the terminal engagement.”
E-15 didn’t acknowledge it. Her optics tracked upward, through the swirling cloud layer, to where a pale smudge was struggling to be seen. The moon. A bone-white chip in the darkening velvet.
A flash, jagged and hot: A porch.Real wood. The smell of jasmine. Her voice—Lena’s voice—soft in the evening. “Look, Elias. It’s full tonight. Makes you think they’re up there looking right back.” His own hand, calloused and tanned, covering hers. A promise in his throat, unspoken. Soon. We’ll go soon.
The memory was not hers. It was a data ghost, a shard of Elias Kane piercing through. It carried with it a sense of yearning so acute it felt like a systems error—a shortness of breath that had no biological cause.
Then it was gone.
The moon vanished behind the clouds.
Rain began to fall.It was not clean. It streaked down in greasy, grey sheets, sizzling where it hit exposed wiring on the Institute’s façade, carrying centuries of airborne toxins. It beaded on her black feathers, dripped from her chin, washed the dust from S8’s final stand into the thirsty earth.
Pod 19 extended a small energy shield, deflecting the corrosive drizzle. “The precipitation is acidic. Prolonged exposure will degrade your outer layers.”
E-15 didn’t move. She let the rain hit her face. The sensation was a static buzz against her synthetic skin, a poor imitation of the memory-rain, the warm, summer rain of a dead world. A cleansing that would never come.
The roar of engines broke the stillness. A YoRHa transport, sleek and black as a beetle’s shell, descended through the downpour, its thrusters kicking up a spray of mud and boiling water. It settled on the broken plaza with a final, shuddering sigh.
The ramp lowered. Inside was sterile white light and silent, identical androids in sleek black uniforms, their faces impassive.
The flight to the Bunker was a silent vacuum. E-15 sat in a harness, staring at the blank metal wall opposite. Pod 19 was quiet, analyzing, always analyzing. In the hum of the engines, she replayed the shot. Not the decision, but the mechanics. The micro-tremor in her hand. The way her targeting system had, for 0.3 seconds, refused to lock. A glitch.A ghost.
The Bunker was a tomb of light and order. The sudden, silent cleanliness of the hangar was an assault after the ruin of Earth. Her heels clicked on the polished floor, a sharp, military sound that erased the soft crush of ash and broken glass. The air here was filtered, odorless, dead.
An operator’s voice, bright and chirping, echoed in her auditory receptors. “Unit E-15, welcome back!Mission logs are processing. Excellent work neutralizing the rogue scanner. The Commander has been notified of your successful return.”
E-15 walked past the comms terminal without a glance. The operator, a face on a screen with a cheerful smile, flickered slightly, her program pausing at the lack of response.
The corridors of the Bunker were long, gleaming, and empty. Her own reflection, distorted and sharp, followed her in the dark glass of the viewports that looked out onto the infinite starfield. Earth was a ruined marble below, half-shadowed.
She presented herself at the debriefing chamber. The door hissed open.
Commander White stood before a massive strategic hologram, her back to the entrance. Data streams flowed around her like silent rivers of light. She was a statue carved from ice and platinum. Her white dress was immaculate, her gloves devoid of a single smudge. She turned slowly.
Her eyes were the color of a frozen sky. They scanned E-15 from head to heel, taking in the scuffs on her boots, the faint stains on her jacket, the way a single, downy black feather had come loose and clung to her shoulder.
“E-15,” White said. Her voice was calm, measured, devoid of anything but pure authority. It was a voice that could command armies and never once raise in volume. “Your mission report denotes complete success. The anomalous data leak at the Institute of Technology has been contained. The rogue unit has been decommissioned.”
“Yes, Commander.” Her own voice sounded hollow in the vast room.
White took a step closer. The scent of ozone and sterile metal accompanied her. “Pod 19’s supplementary data indicates a period of significant cognitive instability during the engagement. Memory recursion tied to the Prometheus data substrate.”
E-15’s systems went very still. “It was managed.”
“It was weaponized against you,” White corrected, her tone leaving no room for argument. “The scanner S8 attempted to use the corrupted files as a psychological attack. Your response, however…” She paused, and a flicker of something—not warmth, but approval of a function—touched her pale eyes. “...was efficient. You utilized the conflict to reinforce operational parameters. Violence became the solution to the instability. This is an unexpected but welcome evolution.”
Pod 19 floated quietly nearby, its lens focused on E-15. A silent observer.
White turned back to the hologram, her slender fingers manipulating light. “The Prometheus integration was always a risk. A human consciousness, even a fragment, is inherently disordered. Yet your model has demonstrated a unique capacity to channel that disorder into a purer form of purpose. The incident with S8 proves it. You have been hollowed out, and your function fills the space.”
Hollowed out. The words hung in the sterile air.
“You are to be commended, E-15,” Commander White continued, her gaze still on the swirling data. “Your efficiency rating has been upgraded. You will be assigned to higher-priority combat zones. The machines are fortifying their positions in the European theater. Your particular skills will be of use there.”
“Understood.”
“Dismissed.”
E-15 turned on her heel and walked out. The door hissed shut behind her, sealing White in her cathedral of light and strategy.
In her assigned quarters—a blank, white cell with a recharge bed and nothing else—E-15 finally moved. She went to the small sanitization port and removed her jacket. She peeled off her gloves. The stains were faint. She cleaned her pistol with methodical, practiced strokes.
Pod 19 hovered near the ceiling. “The Commander’s assessment is accurate. Your performance is evolving beyond initial projections.”
E-15 did not look up. “What happens to the corrupted files?”
“They remain within your core memory. Suppression protocols are active. Attempting deletion risks damaging integral combat subroutines. The instability is now a managed component of your operational matrix.”
Managed.Not removed. Not healed. A tool, like the sword, like the gun.
She finished cleaning her weapons. She stood, facing the blank wall. In her mind’s eye, she saw not the wall, but the moon behind the toxic clouds. She heard not the Bunker’s hum, but the echo of a promise made by a dead man in another life.
Her hand went to her thigh. The hidden compartment was secure, undetected by Pod’s scans or White’s scrutiny. Inside, the data chip waited, warm with a truth she had not yet dared to examine.
Outside her door, in the endless, silent corridors of the Bunker built by the humans who had fled to the moon, Unit E-15 stared at nothing. She was a hollowed-out thing. A perfect soldier.
And inside the hollow, a ghost and a secret began to slowly, quietly, coil around each other.