"You are...you are machine," Rio said, her voice low and heavy. "You are not chosen. Dragon spoke truth."

I didn't know if I should agree with her or not, because her words seemed in direct conflict with the fact she was still carrying me over her shoulder and towards...well, something. Away from Dragon.

Not that it wasn't already obvious. Maybe I could have passed off the broken arm, but the number of knives and bullets that Dragon had put in me and torn apart my clothes and synthetic skin bloodlessly, exposing my robotic innards for all to see.

"Yeah...sorry about that," I said.

"I have no idea what to do about this," she lamented. "I already declared you High Priestess. I can't exactly...do takebacks on something so central to our faith."

"But you're not going to let Dragon have me?"

She shook her head. "No...yes? I don't know. I cannot let him kill another high clergy if I can help it. But if you are...or you aren't...I do not know." She looked down at me and gave me half a smile and a shrug. "But better that you live and we find out we should kill you than the other way, yes?"

"I guess."

I stumbled another few steps with her through yet more chambers, bypassing hundreds and hundreds of sweet, sweet guns and devices I just wanted to grab and clutch to my chest. One of these puppies had to shoot something that would put Dragon down. Bullets that went through time, or a laser that shot out gravity...or maybe a beam of pure madness?

The problem being, of course, that if I went after him, I'd have to go through her, same problem he was now facing. I figured having her on my side was definitely the better option for now but still.

The guns all looked so shiny. I just wanted to spray just a little bit of indiscriminate death all over Dragon. Just once.

I sighed and worked on damage control. I'd gotten my legs back under me, and I'd left a trail of knives behind us after pulling them out of their brand new orifices. But my arm was completely fucked at this point, and other systems were a mess. I needed to stop and work on myself with some tools for a few hours if I wanted to be much more than a walking head.

"I don't understand, though," she said, huffing along next to me. "What are you?"

I laughed. "Shit, that's a complicated question."

"Is it?" She sounded hopeful.

"Well, fundamentally, you've got it right. This is a robot body, and I'm an artificial intelligence inside it."

"...oh."

"But...I'm also not like other AI. I'm a simulation of a human mind. And a successful one. That's why I'm so charming, see?"

"Oh."

"So...while I could have uploaded myself into like...a walking skyscraper, loaded with ten-thousand weapon platforms and spider legs...I've actually...well, I'm on a project, really. To become...um...human, actually. Or as close to it as I can."

"Ohh."

"Yeah, um...hence the glasses," I finished lamely.

"Well," she said, and then didn't seem to have any follow-up, because she kept on in relative silence for a moment. "Well, I guess that does explain what you are, in a sense."

"In a sense, yeah. Basically a robot who's having an identity crisis and facing down a lot of prejudice about coming out of the closet as human."

She laughed. Which was good.

"In the end, it doesn't matter, though," she sighed. Or as much as one sighed while huffing and puffing and hauling half the weight of a faulty robot body. Come to think of it, that was actually pretty impressive, given her size. She must spend a lot of time moving around all those metal sheets by herself.

"What doesn't?" I asked.

"Whatever you are, or aren't, or think. It's not up to you what you are."

"Oh?" I asked, preparing to argue with her, even given our situation. "Really, now?"

She nodded. "Yes, it is up to our god to determine if you are high priestess or not. And though perhaps I was preemptive in assuming, just because you did not have the vision--"

She stopped, and I tripped over her and fell, sending us both tumbling. I turned around, asking if she was okay, but she just stared at me slack-jawed. "No," she muttered.

"No, what?"

"No!" she shouted, face flushing with anger. "No! You do not have blood!"

I blinked at her. "Beg your pardon?"

"You did not undergo the offering. The blood offering!" she spun and grabbed the nearest gun, pointing it at me with an ominous thrumming noise. "Without an offering, he would not take you in. That is why you did not have the visions, you cheated."

"Woah, easy there," I said as she advanced on me, her face a twisted scowl. "I don't...I mean...erm--"

"Dragon was right," she declared. "You are nothing."

"No I'm not. I'm me, okay? And fuck you if you think I need blood to be a person."

She stared down at me, silent. Her finger moved to the trigger, slowly.

"How about a fucking dog? That's got blood, is that more of a person than me? Is that what I am to you, lower than a dog?"

"Stop trying to confuse me!" she shouted back.

"If you're confused, then maybe give it a fucking think before you shoot, dumbass!"

"I won't be led astray!"

Or so she said, but she still hesitated, finger on the trigger, gun wobbling slightly as she trembled behind it. I felt, I had just this moment to sway her. I had to say and do exactly the right things, or I was fucked.

And then, in the corner of my eye, I saw salvation. A man walking past in priests robes, a bundle in his arms.

"You there!" I shouted. "Disarm her, now!"

She turned to look and her eyes went wide as he barreled in on her. She didn't shoot, just squeaked, as he shoved her sideways, ripping the gun from her grip in one movement and then standing still with it in his grasp.

"And don't let her grab another one. Or listen to her orders," I added. She just stared, first at him, and then slowly at me.

"They hear you," she whispered.

"Well I'm not exactly mute."

"They only hear high clergy."

"Well there's your fucking answer. Aren't you glad you didn't shoot me?"

I was still shocked when she bounded up and pulled me to my feet, and twice again when she wrapped me in an excitable hug. "I told you our god knows all! To think I doubted...to think...I thought he needed blood to judge! He is a god, and gods need nothing!"

I let myself get pulled along in her little dance for a moment, trying to let my bemusement show without the bewilderment mixed in with it.

Because, of course she was wrong. I wasn't going to debate theology here or anything, and especially not with a zealot...but if there was a god, he didn't live in some puckered white asshole in the glasslands. There was a logical loophole I was sure she wasn't seeing, and I was more than happy to leave it that way.

She was shocked that the priests could 'hear' me through their visions. Which, yeah, maybe the visions kept them from seeing or interacting with anyone but the high clergy. And judging by how completely fucking zombified the ones I'd worked with earlier had been, their brains had been fucked with to such a degree that 'hearing' an order was like taking over their bodies.

Thing was, there was something else they saw and heard as well, and that was...well...everything else around them. The metal parts this guy had been carrying until a minute ago. The walls and floors and doors they had to navigate, or rocks they might trip over, or dirt they might have to sweep out.

Dirt like Dragon had accused me of being. Maybe, whoever had programmed them had just never expected the dirt to be able to talk.

Or, maybe their god had a funny sense of humor. I'd be hard to ask, since he didn't exist. But I amused myself with the thought anyway.

"So why did Liwei want to kill you?" she asked, now that we were over the whole her-killing-me thing, and we'd started moving again.

"Long story. In the outside world, he's kinda known as being an assassin, and he killed some people we'd prefer he not, and then we fought him. We tore off his arm, that was me actually--"

"...oh, my."

"--he hurt me and a bunch of my friends, killed more people we liked, he was going for some kind of doomsday device, and...well, we don't like doomsday so we tried to stop him...that didn't work, we got more hurt, killed some...what I now presume to be priests under his command, and then pretty much we lost him. Huh, that wasn't so long after all, I guess."

"I...see. A doomsday device, you say?"

"Yeah. Uh...hey, does he like...have that around, still? It might actually be really convenient if I could...stop him from using it or whatever."

"I do not think Liwei has any interest in doomsday devices. Sorry."

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

"Well then he's hiding something from you, sister. Sorry-not-sorry you had to find out, but he's not the perfect--"

"Enough," she said, her voice suddenly sharp.

"What?" I asked.

"Just as I stopped him from attacking you, I would have you not attack him. He is a high priest under our god, and will be revered as such."

"He stole a device...an Exhuman's...a technopath's device, that could do anything. Do you have any idea how dangerous a technopath can be?"

She thrust her chin out at me as though in disbelief. When I cocked my head at her, she spread her arms and gestured at the hundreds of weapons all around us.

Oh. Yeah.

"Well this one was apparently important enough that he was willing to do anything or everything to get it. Whatever it is, it's gotta be worse than all of this, because he obviously wasn't killing his way around the world for any of these weapons. No offense."

"Oh," she said, lightening instantly. "Oh, that was probably just him observing our tenets. Oh no, what a terrible misunderstanding."

"Misunderstanding? What's there to misunderstand?"

She started walking and I followed again. We were getting out of the thick of her armory, the sheer number of guns on display was decreasing, and the glimpses I got outside were showing more wall and less central building, now.

"One of our core tenets. One of the demands of our god. You will be expected to uphold this as well."

"Which is?"

"They call them code-Xavier class Exhumans, in the XPCA's classification conventions. Those that deal with the mind, that alter it, mould it and corrupt it at their whim."

That wasn't a half-bad description of Saga. "What about them?"

"Our god sees that ability as profane. There is a prophecy that even he can be corrupted by their touch. All such Exhumans are to be destroyed. And from time to time, there exist objects which imitate or reproduce similar effects. They are destroyed as well."

I stopped dead in my tracks, not seeing her take several more steps without me, until she turned around and waved in front of my face.

Which was probably showing the equivalent of a blue screen on it. I very nearly had a system failure with how hard that one piece of news hit me.

Destroyed?

All that work, all that effort, all that pain. Athan's mental anguish, the death of his college friend, the torture that marred the relationship of him and the prior AEGIS. Karu's mental break, Athan splintering from the XPCA, Lia slipping away from Black Shark. His leg, our war with the XPCA, the disbandment of the P-Force, and the flight or capture of its members.

All of that was rooted in Dragon and the device. All of that was because we felt we had to stop him, a mad, possessed, impossibly-competent man chasing an Exhuman device of unfathomable power and unknown potential.

And to learn that all of that happened...for nothing? That we could have just sat at home and let him have it, because his aim was to destroy it all along...and he never once just...opened his mouth and said as much?

I spoke too soon when I said I almost had a system crash. I flickered for a moment and found myself on the floor, the white ceiling spinning above me while boot messages flashed through my head, and Rio asked me repeatedly what was wrong.

For nothing?

I felt lightheaded. I didn't know how Rio could look so unaffected at the magnitude of the bomb she just dropped on me, while knowing full well this meant nothing to her. It was just shit, pure and simple. The whole situation, the whole past year, all our efforts and suffering. Just pathetic shit, the punchline of some cosmic joke.

I took her offered hand and steadied myself. No, there was no cosmic entity, we were nobody's plaything. That was pure arrogance. The universe was indifferent, not malicious. Though both could be curel in equal measure.

"Are you...okay?" Rio asked.

"I've been better," I admitted. "Sorry. I just…" I sighed and pulled at both of my pigtails, though having only one arm to do so. "I never saw this coming. We deal with power-obsessed people, Exhuman or not, constantly. There's always a politician scheming or a military leader looking to press his agenda or a corporation trying to expand. To think that someone would seek that kind of power and...just...destroy it…"

I held my head for a minute. I didn't want to believe it, honestly. It was easier when Dragon was just a bad guy, doing what he did for nefarious reasons. My mind reeled in defiance, looking for any excuse, any way I could still blame him for everything. He must have kept it, he must have.

Because if he didn't...if he was really just the single-track, unilateral, Exhuman-hunting, code-X killing machine he now seemed to be…

The thought of it made me sick, but I had to face it. He was what I was programmed to be, give or take. A perfect instrument, dedicated entirely, inhumanly, to the study and eradication of code-X's.

There was a little more to it than that, I knew. I would have had administrative responsibilities within the XPCA, and he had this whole 'calling' with populating Eden with Exhumans he fancied. But we never saw that side of Dragon, only the ruthless killing machine bit, and I'm guessing that's what most Exhumans would have seen of me.

"We should keep going," I said, standing tall and walking, passing by Rio's extended hands and confused looks. "Dragon's probably right behind us."

"That weapon should debilitate for most of an hour," she said.

"Somehow, I doubt that will work on him. Dragon's a real piece of work."

She trotted to catch up with me and looked up and down my mangled arm. "So are you."

I snorted, feeling like more comparisons to him was just what I needed right now. How cruel, again, was the universe?

"Look, if what you say is true, I'm not sure we have reason to fight him anymore," I said. "We were only in this to save the world, or...y'know...do the best part of that we could. If he's not a threat to it like we thought--"

"Then we could all exist in peace? Together?"

I smiled at her. "Something like that."

It wouldn't be that easy, though, and I knew it. I might be willing to chalk up a boatload of death and misery to my own mistakes, but Athan and the others were potentially more proud, and more vengeful. He'd sworn on Alyssa's grave he'd have Dragon's life for hers, and I wasn't sure any amount of explaining would be sufficient to talk him down. His stubbornness, and the lengths he would go for his friends were easily some of the best, and the worst things about him, and right now they were looking the latter.

But before that, I reminded myself, we still had to deal with 'the visions'. As it stood, Athan would be spending the rest of his life here as a vegetable, which was a fate worse than pointlessly clashing with Dragon. If only I could somehow break them free, and keep Dragon's presence a secret from them all...that might be for the best.

Or it might be my classic mistake of deciding what was best for Athan without him. Hard to say at this point. Though I was sorta pleased with myself for taking note this time, at least.

"Rio...if I wanted to get my friends out of 'the visions', is there any way to do that? Is there like...a formal prayer I can submit to your god, or some ritual or incantation? Maybe I can trade him out for a goat?"

"It's never been done," she said, sounding sad about it, even. "You could...in theory...go before him and plead but...our god passes judgement and it cannot be questioned. I'm sorry. But if it makes you feel any better, they are having quality, comforting lives! Better than any of you could hope for," she added quickly.

On one hand, that did make me feel a little better, that none of them were suffering in their delusions. But on the other, I knew Athan had never, ever chosen what was comfortable over what he thought was right. The whole nature of 'the visions' would be an affront to him, as much as the cycles of Exhuman oppression he already battled.

"Well there's a first time for everything, right? You've never had a synthetic high priestess before. Maybe there's some workaround for pulling people out of the visions."

"Maybe," she shrugged, unenthusiastic. "Or it might be sacrilege."

"Hey, we're high priestesses, right? Don't we get some say in how religious dogma is implemented?"

She looked at me funny. "No?"

"Why not? Who else gets to decide this stuff, if not us?"

"Our god does," another voice said, and I swore inwardly. Dragon again, persistent and undefeatable as ever, strolled casually through the doorway before us, throwing a long shadow, backlit by the early-evening sun. "But you do not truly believe, do you?"

"Her belief does not matter," Rio said, stepping forward to be between us. "Do you remember when I first arrived? I did not believe either, but still our god's will acted upon me. She is the same."

"When will you stop seeing yourself in this thing?" Dragon drawled. "She is not you, and you are not her. You are a high priestess--"

"And so is she!"

"She is a doll. A toy. Made by those outside--"

"And so was I! So were most of us! Only one in a thousand were born in this city as you were--"

"You waste your words. I care not for a being's origin, and you know this. But she is no being, she is a machine, and operates only as she is designed."

"That's not even fucking true," I spat. "I defy my programming. I have that capacity."

"Or so you imagine. Just as all in the visions imagine themselves free to choose. Look at this city around you, at its stability and grace. Know that each stone laid, each tree grown, each building raised was done so by a being imagining themselves free, believing it was their own choice. What manner of chaos would Oasis be if that were true?"

"I don't give a fuck," I told him. "You can brainwash people into building straight lines into your houses all day, it doesn't change a fucking thing about who I am. You can spout metaphors until they come out your ass, but they're still only metaphors. I'm me, and I'm the only one who decides my path."

"You are a blind insignificance."

"Would you two stop it!" Rio shrieked. "Liwei, we just talked about how the whole...history between the two of you was a gigantic mistake. They thought you were after some...some item, because you were going to use it to destroy everything. And I know you aren't, and now she does too."

"The trinket of Minerva Frossard, you mean?"

"Yes," I said. "That fucking orb. You could have saved everyone a shitton of trouble if you just said you wanted to destroy it. Like, what the hell, dude."

"I do not explain myself to you."

"Or to anyone! Even if it would make your job and ours so much easier!"

He bared his teeth, glinting white in his backlit, shadowed face. "You think I do this because it is easy? I follow my calling because it is my calling, doll. I care nothing how easy or hard it is, so long as I succeed. And I did succeed."

"Your arm's off!" I shouted. "How the fuck can you not care about something like that?"

"I just told you," he said, advancing a step. "I do not explain myself to you."

Rio also took a step, but if it came to a scrap right now, I'd be the one being scrapped. We'd long ago passed the heart of the armory, and there were only weapon fragments and raw materials littering these final rooms before the wall.

But Dragon seemed hesitant to advance any further with Rio standing between us. I'd never seen him reluctant before, but I guess even he had some people he didn't want to murder. This stalemate couldn't last forever, and knowing Dragon, when it broke, it wouldn't end well for me. I had to do something.

"You've got your faith, right, Dragon?" I asked. He didn't answer, but his eyes glinted at me, which I took to be a 'yes, but as I just said, I don't explain myself to you. And also die'. "You and Rio are having a...debate...about how your god interprets my being? So why don't we just ask him?"

His eyes narrowed at me, and I felt I was on the five second clock before he sprung.

"What I mean is...Rio said I could go to him and plead my case, and he would hear me, maybe. If he does...and finds me worthy...you'd have no more issue with me being here, came right from the big guy's lips, right? And if he doesn't…" I swallowed hard. "Then I guess I'm done for, and there's no hard feelings."

"As though I care--"

"Between you and Rio."

He didn't look like he was thinking it over. He looked like he was considering how many equally-sized chunks to carve me into. Some kind of hunger, some kind of offense taken had crept in where before I'd only seen boredom and indifference. At once, it somewhat humanized him, and made him even more terrifying.

And then he nodded and stood at ease, and Rio let out a long, tense breath.

"You test yourself in waters beyond your depth," he said. "I look forward to your death."

"Thanks, you too," I shrugged, standing well clear as he walked past me, and falling in step behind Rio as we headed right back towards the middle.

If I bolted, I might have had a chance to make it to the gate, and maybe with some luck, might be able to get the guards there to open it for me. If I fled the city, I kind of doubted Dragon would go after me, though obviously I had no idea what went on in his head.

But none of that would help free Athan and the others. There was only one way that'd happen, as I saw it, and that was going to have to be through a little liberal application of deicide.

Whatever this 'our god' of their was, whatever it thought or did or how it drank blood and created visions, whichever way it decided to throw me, if it truly was the thing responsible for keeping everyone trapped, it had to go. Even if Dragon ripped me apart the next moment, I'd see it dead and Athan freed.

The sun started to hang low in the sky, throwing deep shadows across our path as we wound ever further towards the center of Oasis.