Saga wasn't exaggerating when she said she 'was a thinker.' I tried to celebrate her newfound freedom with her by enticing her to visit the base, ride the crawler, even just take a walk, but she declined, opting to stay sprawled under the tree right where I found her. I was a little concerned she'd just stay there forever, before I realized...she probably actually could without any issue.

I wasn't going to hang around all day though, I hadn't eaten since yesterday morning and was starving. I thought Saga might show if she knew we'd be heading back for food, but she was still disinterested and distant.

Even about food. Who was this girl?

I guess she was doing a lot of thinking right now, but I didn't have time to ponder, because Lia was hungry and making pitiful noises about it. We said our goodbyes, let her know she was welcome to visit anytime, and headed home.

What we found was...not what I expected. As we approached, it looked more and more like walking into a military camp. DOG-Es and tiny salvager robots were hard at work all over, deploying sandbag walls, digging trenches, and patrolling.

"Hi, AEGIS. Did uh, something happen?" I asked when we got in. Lia made a beeline for our larders.

"Yes, something certainly did," she said, looking and sounding pissed. "You let Saga out."

"Yeah, that's something we've been working on, if you remember."

"Well it's a terrible goddamn idea!" She shouted. "That woman is the worst kind of Exhuman. She's not going to find me easy to take. Not this time."

"Um, she's laying in the sun. She's not raising an army. She said she's turning over a new leaf and trying to get along with humans now."

"Oh is she? Tell me, were you being blatantly psychically manipulated while she was saying that stuff, or are you just an idiot?"

"Neither. I really believe her."

"An idiot then. Great. Look, if she attacks, you'll just be a hindrance, so when this alarm goes off…" she tapped a button and a wailing like an air raid siren went off throughout the base.

"Uh. Eating breakfast here?" said Lia, looking up from her holo and bear jerky.

"...please head to the second basement and strap yourselves securely to a table. I should probably manufacture some holding cells, but I'm trying to bolster our ranks now…"

"AEGIS, this is insane. Calm down."

"Calm down?" She straight up punched the side of her console, winced and held her knuckles, looking even more mad than she was before. "Do I need to remind you that this Exhuman destroyed the entire XPCA base which was here? A base I was in charge of managing? A base with far, far better security than we have here? And she did it on my watch, because I underestimated her?"

"She's not a prisoner now. We're not torturing or killing her. She has no reason to kill us. Just chill."

"I refuse to just chill. I was derelict in my duty once, and everyone died. Never again. Never." She muttered to herself as she typed frantically at her console.

I couldn't do much but stand there watching. It ate at my heart, seeing her so hurt and angry and frantically working to protect us all. There was a definite parallel between her insistence and Saga's yesterday, and I wanted to resolve this in a way that didn't involve me almost-dying again.

"Hey, AEGIS," Lia said, unexpectedly joining the conversation with a mouthful of food. "Athan's right. Have some faith in him."

I thought she was going to yell, was already preparing to feel bad for Lia getting caught up in my fights. AEGIS opened her mouth and then closed it several times.

"I...see." She said, sitting on the floor in front of her terminal. She looked mortally wounded by some kind of conflicted feelings.

"Did...how did that work?" I asked both of them at once, kind of unsure what just happened.

"Lia didn't do anything, she just reminded me," AEGIS said, from her slump. "How...after I...sorta tried to kill you, I said I'd listen to you more, trust your judgement."

"Oh."

On one hand, I appreciated that she was taking that thought seriously, but on the other hand, it looked like she was about to rip herself in half over it. She was holding her head and looking through her fingers at the holos, just kind of crumpled on the floor. I had the realization that if I were about two feet to my left, I might be able to see her panties. But this was not the time for that. Besides, I was a gentleman.

But I did have that realization.

"I just can't rule out the possibility that she's already affected both of your minds, though," AEGIS said. "Like that sleeper agent she dominated, who destroyed everything from the inside. That could be both of you, right now."

"And for what?" I asked. "Saga doesn't care about finishing you off, you were just a patsy in her last escape attempt. Why would she brainwash us just to have us infiltrate your defenses and kill you?"

"I don't know. But just because I don't see something doesn't mean it can't happen. I'm concerned she's a lot smarter than I am."

"AEGIS, trust me. We're fine. Right now, we need to de-escalate the situation. The only reason she would ever have for wanting to harm you is if you do exactly what you're doing now. Believe it or not, she just wants to exist, like all the rest of us. I've spent enough time in her head to know that much."

She didn't respond, just held her head, eyes wide, staring at nothing.

"Is this my programming, again?" she finally asked.

"You mean, you're programmed to kill Exhumans?"

"No, I'm programmed to protect people from Exhumans. Athan, like when I went after you, I just thought I was doing what was right, it was impossible for me to tell if that idea came from me or my programming though."

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

She turned and looked at Lia and me, both. "Do...you two think I'm just falling victim to my programming again? Be honest, please."

"I don't know," I said. "It's hard to know, but I guess it's likely, given the circumstances. You see Saga as an Exhuman threat, and you're definitely trying to protect us. That does kind of toe the line."

"I don't think so," Lia said. "Let's ignore the programming for a second and just treat you like a normal human. In that light, are your actions still reasonable?"

"No. Maybe?" said AEGIS. "I thought you two were convincing me I'm being unreasonable."

"You are, but don't forget, humans are unreasonable, too. I think it's pretty safe to say that you'd have a lot of paranoia wound up when dealing with someone who'd already hurt and betrayed you before, not that I heard the whole story." She tore off another strip of bear jerky with her teeth, and kept talking with her mouth full as she chewed. "Bud eed 'eems 'easonable to ee."

"Hmm. Stupid little sister might be right on this one. I know that's how I'd feel, and I don't have programming, so I guess...we can't rule out your programming's interference, but at least it doesn't look like it's affecting your judgement?"

"That's a relief, I guess."

She sat in quiet reflection for another moment before I had a thought.

"Hey, you brought up deleting your programming and memories before, and I said I didn't think you should."

"Yeah."

"Aat, ee uz 'onna oo wa--"

"Lia, please swallow first."

She rolled her eyes and chomped the jerky with impatience. "She was going to do what? Why would she wipe out her own memories?"

"I was...choosing between responsibilities and my own happiness, is how I saw it," she said, not looking any happier about this conversation. "Back when Athan first found me, I had no memories of who I was, and he helped me restore them. But the more I learned, the more unhappy I became, culminating with finding out I was an AI, everyone I'd known my whole life was dead, and it was all my fault for not being able to do my job effectively."

"Ouch," said Lia, finally putting down the damn jerky.

"So I thought, maybe, I have the advantage of being an AI. I could erase all those memories, wipe out my programming, start over. Life as a human, never finding out my true nature. A human trapped in a box, sure, but I'd done that before and I was happy enough."

"What did you tell her?" Lia asked me, eyes narrowed accusingly.

"Your brother was actually very helpful for once."

"'For once?' I get no credit around here."

"He convinced me that I should try to figure out a life purpose, like humans do. I realized that if I spent my whole life just resetting whenever I was unhappy, that would be the extent of my existence."

"Oh yeah, and you started working on something as a project. What was that?"

"Hehe, we're almost at the prototyping stages. I was actually going to show you but then...started gearing up for war…"

"Ooh, show me!" said Lia.

"It's not...all ready yet."

"It's fine, I want to see!"

"Weren't we having a serious moment about trusting Saga and erasing memories and stuff a moment ago?" I said, trying to keep us from flying off on too many tangents.

"Yes, and your sister...and you, finally some credit given...have convinced me that I should at least try to coexist with the murdering Exhuman bitch. So I will do that."

"Neat. I uh, gave her permission to visit if she wants."

"She is most welcome to stand outside the gate if she desires. Guns will be trained on her the entire length of her stay. Oh, right, I was going to make some auto-turrets…" She began taking a note down on another holo.

"Can we make sure the holo turrets only defend from attacks and not engage targets on their own?" I thought back to Karu hitting the base when I was unconscious. "Actually, can we just not have auto-turrets?"

"I'll keep them on manual control only, okay?"

"Somehow I think that makes them even more dangerous."

"We'll work something out. And now, to divert attention so that hopefully you forget about the auto-turrets until I get them installed...wait. Hang on."

We waited while AEGIS putzed around on her terminal for a moment.

"Just...had it here. Dang it. I had this whole thing planned... " she looked up at us. "Oh. Head to the machine shop, sorry. See you there." She turned off the holo and DOG sprang up from somewhere and picked her up, leading the two of us to the elevator.

"Am I the only one who has a really bad feeling about this?" I asked.

"Yep. AEGIS is cool. I'm excited."

"I hope you're right."

The doors opened to a familiar scene of dozens of little robots crawling all over the place, moving parts and raw materials all over the room. New were some partitioning walls which had gone up around the periphery, creating different bays. Some were for storage of raw goods, another looked like it was just a stockpile of quantum cores ready for programming. Some were sealed off, and it is to one such bay that DOG now led us.

The holo switched back on, AEGIS now standing triumphantly at her terminal. "I found it. We're good."

"I hope so, it's sitting right here in your workshop."

"No, not that. How would I lose that? No I found...this!" Dramatically, she pressed a single key and for a moment nothing happened.

And then, piped in over the speakers from AEGIS' holo came a soft, low brass horn. It sustained for a moment, and then was replaced by another, louder, higher pitched for another moment, and then a third, clear and loud and long, several seconds.

"This is from that movie," Lia said.

"What movie?"

"I don't know. A really old historical film or something. It's kind of famous?"

"The movie is 2001: A Space Odyssey, and you are ruining my moment," AEGIS said, over more horns and drums.

We shut up and waited while the song slowly built to a triumphant crescendo. I'd never heard it before, but it was a very good piece. I thought about asking for the MP14 file later, but I didn't really have a computer to play it on. AEGIS was hamming it up a little by conducting from the side.

As the song blasted us with horns and drums and reached its apex, the bay doors swung open and revealed...a…a...

"AEGIS, who is that?" I asked, feeling very much like my concerns in the elevator had been fully realized.

"That," AEGIS said, proudly, "Is the Rua X Mk.1."

"That's a machine," I said blankly.

It was a girl, strapped to a table turned 45 degrees so we could see from over here. She looked young, about my age, lithe but not thin. There was no hair, instead a mass of orange-brown braided cables, some thin, some over an inch thick, were connected from her head to a duct in the wall above her. There were dark circles on her shoulders, like where there would be pins on the joints of a doll. She had a piece of cloth draped over her for modesty, so I couldn't see much between her shoulders and ankles, but her face looked familiar. Very familiar.

"AEGIS...I can't be certain without the glasses and with the mouth closed, but...is that you?"

"You are both cruel and correct, sir. Zero net points awarded."

"Is that going to be your body? You're not going to live in a box anymore!?" Lia asked, bouncing excitedly.

"Yep! This is my big project I've been working on. When Athan and I talked about being human and memories and life goals, I had thought that one of the things that made me unhappy was the fact I wasn't human. Well...now I'm still not human, but one step closer."

"Is that healthy?"

"I'm not under any delusions I will be human or anything...and I'm the only AI of my kind that's ever been made, so there's not a lot of data. Going to go with 'probably not, but who cares.'"

"Fire it up! Test run!" Lia said, clapping.

"Okay. Like I said, still not a finished prototype. Also some issues remote piloting...well...you'll see. Just keep in mind she's not done yet."

Lia nodded excitedly. I stood back, not sure what to think.

"And a one, and a two and here we go," AEGIS said, and struck a key.

For a moment nothing happened but I could sense large amounts of power transferring through the cables above Rua X Mk.1's head. Then, surprisingly, the cables detached from the wall, hanging around the girl's form like...well...hair, I guess.

The eyes opened, and Rua smiled at us, a smile I'd seen on AEGIS' face a thousand times before.