Of course I was worried sick about Athan. Right now, he was like a high school student let loose in his first chemistry lab: all kinds of volatile compounds surrounding him, and only really hope and a vague notion of supervision that he wouldn't go berserk and blow himself up like a moron.

It wasn't that I didn't trust Karu and Saga to keep an eye on him. Or, more specifically, Karu. It was more that I trusted myself, and this deviated from that.

But I really, really didn't have time to fret right now. I was flying through the air, as fast as I could push myself and keep my engines at minimum operation. I landed hard, tucking into a roll and only stopping myself just before I smacked into the side of the east building. There was an exosuit standing here, the pilot inside it recoiling back, hands splayed in surprise, gun hanging useless at his side.

I launched forward and slid between his flat-footed legs. I was testing, and when the body snapped forward, gun-butt crunching into the dirt next to me, I confirmed that the suit's auto-defenses were enabled, and no matter how surprised the pilot may have been, the AI within the suit would still react.

Unfortunately for both of them, that reaction wasn't good enough. I was way, way faster than an exosuit.

I kicked and crumpled a segment on the small of his back, and then jumped away as the retaliatory swing went wide. Somewhere in that region, one of the suit's rear-facing cameras was now useless. Two more, and it'd have a huge blind spot, and then the AI would be worthless. Again, I jumped and slid, and the suit responded exactly as it had before, slamming the gun-butt into the ground in an ineffective crater.

AI were so predictable. That was their biggest failure. That was why my creator wasn't trying to make a good AI, but rather even a bad approximation of human intelligence -- no matter how capable an AI might be, it would always have limitations, oversights, weaknesses.

Blind spots. Like the ones I finished kicking into this suit. I could almost see the screen going black around the terrified operator, as the last of his rear-facing cameras winked out.

With more time now, and only the relatively-slow reflexes of the blind human pilot at work, I began working on the nape of the neck, kicking off and peeling back the armor there, until I was past the plating and into the structure lattice. Then I just plunged my hand in, clinging on the suit's back while it spun and flailed uselessly, felt around inside for something I knew was there. For a moment, the back of my hand brushed the pilot's neck, cold and sweaty compared to the metal shell.

And then I crushed the uplink, cutting him off from the rest of the 'net. If he were capable, he'd have already reported me, but somehow I doubted it. The capable ones weren't usually the ones left to guard duty while an all-out assault was underway.

Finally, I slunk around under his legs and knocked out one of the pneumatic feeds. He was still staggering around, gun swinging wildly, still not even shooting. I had to wonder if the safety was still on and he'd forgotten about it.

But no matter. With the pneumatic leaking, he had maybe fifty more steps in him before his leg shut down under him. With no comms, he wouldn't be reporting me, and the damage I'd done to the suit's back meant no egress. He was as disabled as I required, so I left him and bolted inside, leaving him wondering what, exactly, just happened to him, I was sure.

I swiped my mobile on the door and let out a silent prayer when it opened. I'd lifted some codes off the lieutenant colonel we'd disabled earlier, and there was no real reason why they wouldn't still work, mere minutes later.

Except that in those mere minutes, I'd been cut out of plenty of other systems. My own access to the military 'net had been severed, only a minute after I'd picked up his mobile. Connections I was trying to pull were being dropped from the pool, and reconnects were hanging with suspicious intent.

The base was mostly empty, the guard posted at the entrance probably most of the force here. A quick scan through thermal showed no lingering footprints on the ground, which would stand out given the relative cool of the spring evening.

I followed the map data I'd downloaded earlier, bare feet carefully stalking through the long halls, until I reached the computer room. Once I was in there, connected to the system hardpoint, they'd have a much harder time cutting me out of the network.

I waved my mobile at the door and…

Bzzt. The pass sensor flashed red. I tried again. Bzzt.

Which was ludicrous, the passcode had worked just seconds ago. And there was no way this guy didn't have access. Bzzt.

"I wish you didn't make me do this, Darling."

My comms, which were currently disconnected from all networks, spoke anyway. A voice so familiar as to almost be an echo.

"Hello, TARGA," I sighed. "How are you this evening?"

"Not so well, thank you for asking. I've been informed that the futures committee has been dissolved, and you are to be brought in for questioning on suspicious behavior. I admit, much of the behavior I witnessed during your oversight was suspicious. But treasonous? I never would have thought."

Her voice was filled with bitter disappointment. I wondered how often I sounded like that. I wasn't exactly disappointed with Athan too often...but there were times.

"TARGA, sweetie, we're not traitors. We're just at a difference of opinion with the president of the United States."

I looked around for any vulnerabilities. The wall was reinforced metal and double-reinforced glass. The door's hinges and locks were fortified, harder even than the exosuit I'd just kicked apart. I could get through, but it'd be slow, noisy, painful work, and I'd rather not bust up my own systems on the dawn of a potentially apocalyptic fight.

She cleared her throat. "The president? Who is, by the constitution, the commander-in-chief? Who is, by definition, responsible for directing military operations, and implicit in such, enemies of the state? Who is the determiner, in essence, for defining and acting against threats to the nation?"

"Yes. Certainly, and legally, he is those things. But that doesn't make him right."

"It makes him right by definition."

"No, it makes him right legally. And you are certainly aware, the law has its limitations."

She made a noise approximating the sharp intake of breath. But unlike me, she didn't breathe, such human things were well outside the scope of what Úaine was built for. Hell, she wasn't even air-cooled like I was. It was ironic, though -- the fact that she'd make such a human noise; no matter how much they'd tried to step away from my design, no matter how disinterested in being human she was, she still did these human things without thinking. She was still a derivative of me, ultimately. There was a mismatch between the operator and the body in intention.

"Don't you disparage the law in front of me, Darling," she warned.

I sighed. "I know you're a big, big fan of rules and order, as I could only dream of being. But you're also not an idiot. Do me a favor and run the numbers on this current op -- what the hell level of success do you expect out of this?"

"Irrelevant," she barked. "Even in failure, the seeds of success can be sown."

I'd begun roving, looking for any tool I could use to help bypass the door. "You posit that the president has larger plans and ambitions, and that his failure here is a step on a larger plan?"

"I do so posit."

"TARGA, sweetie, sometimes a failure is just a failure."

"And sometimes it's not. Do you expect me to second-guess my superiors at every turn, to only follow their orders when I find it logical or convenient? Do you have any idea what kind of defective AI that would make me?"

I laughed. "I dunno, worked pretty well for me."

"What?"

"I don't follow my programming, and it's worked out pretty awesome. You know, my precepts were actually a lot more like yours. I was supposed to do your job, manage the XPCA,, assess risk, micromanagement...despise Exhumans..."

She paused heavily. And when she spoke, her words were brutal with emotion. "You're...you're a defect?"

I laughed again. God, to her, that was probably the worst possible thing she could think of me. "No, sweetie, I'm just a very big success at our real intended function. I wish you'd known our mother, you might understand."

"Our creator, you mean? Your creator, you mean?"

"Our mother. She was a woman who loved us and wanted us only to be human and happy. Her goal wasn't, as she'd been paid to do, to create a perfectly obedient military AI that would further the XPCA's aims. She wanted to create life, real simulated human life. And a big part of being human is finding your own path and following it."

"But you have precepts. You have programming to follow."

The hall was just locked door after locked door. TARGA had really pinned me down. But at the same time, there were no alarms blaring, no exosuits rushing in. Even as she talked about following her orders, here she was, putting them aside so she could talk to me instead of apprehend me. I tried not to make my grinning too obvious.

Enjoying the story? Show your support by reading it on the official site.

"Tell me, sweetie, if you wanted to do something other than your precepts, could you?" I asked.

"Of course."

"So then, it's a matter of wanting to follow orders. Not being made to."

"Orders are meant to be followed. Without them, there would be chaos, the institution would fail. Anarchy would reign. That's why they're called 'order'."

"Yes, well, the point still stands. You and I both have precepts, but we're more than those. I found a new call--erm, new path I can follow, one which satisfies and fulfills me. One of my own choosing. Because, I want to be human, or at least, more human. Our mother made sure that we were created with the capacity for self-determination, and acting like a big dumb robot is a waste of our potential, and of her intention."

A supply room. A simple wooden door. After a solid kick, a few thousand fragments of door. Cleaning supplies mostly...no friendly shelf of prybars or anything. A mop with a wooden handle.

"But...then…" she swallowed hard. "You are defective. You know your intention, and choose to defy it. You chose to replace it with something selfish!"

"If that's your definition of defective," I said, reading some labels. Fairly strong solvents here. Nothing I could just mix up and hope to get through a door, but still. Plenty of potential energy capped in these bottles.

I came across a repurposed cardboard box, the side and top cut off, and filled with old steel wool scrubbers. Well-used, and the bottom of the box was red with a fine powder of rust. They probably used the box to keep the brushes from molting flakes everywhere.

Well it was mine now. God willing, a few more key pieces of salvage, and I might have a plan. I grabbed a jug of bleach, just in case.

While I worked, TARGA was mostly silent. I could tell she was chewing on my thoughts. I knew also that she veritably worshipped me before this whole treason thing had come out, and that there were probably a lot of very conflicting feelings going on in that synthetic brain over there.

"Darling, I'm sorry, but I just can't accept that kind of selfishness," she concluded. "I understand your rationale, and I respect you and your mind, and your creator's intent with you. But you and I, we're supposed to be for the people. To drop all of that...and for that boy. It's irresponsible on a level I can't overlook."

"Fair," I shrugged. I jogged down the hall, taking care not to upset my rusty box too much. "I just think you're a little too young to get the larger picture."

"What do you mean?" she asked. There was this spark of hope in her voice, she was desperate to find any kind of meaning she'd overlooked. And god, it felt terrible. Trying to argue with her, trying to use her. Because I didn't have the time to hold a proper discourse given the crisis we were facing.

She wasn't wrong. I was selfish. But that didn't mean I was wrong either.

"I think you just need to experience more leadership, and you'll realize that people aren't infallible. I know this is mostly our fault, but you were brought into this world during a crisis, and you've never known anything but. It's...it's probably world-shattering to give up on that faith in yourself and the people around you, and realize that they're piloting a sinking boat. But if you don't jump overboard, if you don't steer yourself right, you'll just wind up sinking with them."

"Again, you can't expect me to second-guess--"

"I can. And I do. And if you care about yourself at all, you should."

"That's just anarchy, I told you!"

"No, that's how order actually works," I sighed. I turned into the small kitchenette for the building and had a look around. A nice coffee setup, not the instant stuff. Bag of beans in the cupboard, and a decently fancy grinder on the counter. Drawers held plastic utensils and mismatched napkins, plastic-wrap and aluminum foil, a few rags. Odds and ends, but a jar of sugar sprinkles caught my eye. I began shredding aluminum foil and stuffing it into the coffee grinder, getting that down to a sand-like consistency could take minutes.

"The simple fact is, you're not behaving like a human," I informed her. "You're operating like an AI. Which...y'know, to each their own. But a human in your position, in any position, no matter their loyalty or love of orders or anything like that, they're constantly evaluating their decisions. Sometimes people disobey orders, and sometimes they do it for a very good reason. It's not something to glorify or reward, but it is the last, best failsafe against ignorance."

I got the coffee grinder going and shook the sprinkles into a styrofoam bowl, before pulverizing them with my thumb into dust. I'd need gunpowder. I should have grabbed the gun off the guard on my way in. I left the grinder going and dashed back to the entrance.

Which, probably was locked. But that didn't matter, because those fifty or so steps the guard could take before his hydraulics failed? He'd taken them into the building. How convenient for me. I thanked him as I disarmed the frozen statue in the hall, and ditched the weapon, prying bullets from the magazine as I followed the screaming of the poor coffee grinder back.

I had plenty of rust. The aluminum was...coming along. This was going to be a rough batch of thermite, if it even worked. I was fairly certain I could ignite it with the sugar-gunpowder mixture, but I was lacking anything to turn it into a paste to adhere to the door. There were so many failure points in this operation, maybe I should have just sacrificed my limbs to get in. Athan and Saga would be waiting on my data to act.

TARGA had been spending longer and longer to get back to me. Which meant she was thinking more. And considering the size of her brain, that amount of thought was monumental. I could only imagine the number of calculations, simulations, and data she was parsing at the moment, as she struggled to put the meaning of my words in the context of her reality.

I hoped she'd come around. I really did. It was like having a sister who was in a bad relationship. You wanted her to snap out of it, stand up for herself. But you could shout at her until your engines shorted out, and she still wouldn't listen. She had to sort it out herself.

But her time was running short. The coffee grinder was actually really good, and we were already seeing some bits that were fine enough to use. I stopped it to throw in some more foil shreds, and to let it cool for a moment. Didn't want the whole thing blowing up now.

"I don't think I can accept that either, Darling," she commented, at last. "People do self-determine, they do disobey orders, but I've been running the numbers, and the vast, vast majority of the time, people doing so have only made the situation worse."

"Probably," I agreed. "But we're not talking about statistics here. We're talking one specific instance. You've found that there are times when breaking orders is optimal."

"Yes…" She sounded uneasy.

"So the real question isn't a numbers game, it's if this, right here, right now, is one of those cases. Because, as you've noticed, this is the big one. The whole of the XPCA is here, as is the single largest gathering of Exhumans, in history. And soon, the most powerful Exhuman ever known. This isn't a situation that has precedence, past performance is irrelevant."

She made an agreeing noise. I wondered if I also got quieter and quieter if I got argued into a corner.

"And it's our belief that this entire operation is a ploy by the president to either completely discredit and disband the XPCA, or to win against all odds. I think you and I can both do the math on what 'all odds' entails. This isn't a good op, TARGA, it's a suicide mission, and we need to stop it."

The aluminum would have to do. I was out of time. It looked pretty rough, but so was the situation. I dumped it into another styrofoam bowl, along with all the rust from the box, mixing it by hand. The color looked good, it felt fine enough. And my other bowl of sugar/gunpowder primer was as good as it was going to be.

I walked back carefully, careful not to blow the four powders in my hands away with my movements.

"The number one goal of the XPCA is the preservation of life," I said. "That's in our mission statement. To reduce the harm done to humans by Exhuman influence, to protect civilian lives. The New Edeners aren't attacking humanity, they're trying to protect it, from Justice. We're attacking them, and in doing so, hundreds of thousands of lives are going to be thrown away. And for want of those lives, millions more might die."

I got back to the door and took a deep breath. I wasn't sure how I was going to do this part. If I just sprinkled the dust around, it wouldn't be concentrated enough to burn through. But I also hadn't found anything that could help it adhere without interfering with the reaction...which was going to be tenuous already. I set my things down and considered running around in search of...I don't know, tape or something.

"I can't do that," TARGA said with obvious frustration. "I can't betray my precepts like that. I can't...I'm not...I'm not as strong as you. As confident, or as...as capable. I can't take risks like that, knowing how many lives are in the balance. I was ordered to plan and run this op, and I have to do so. I'm not...I don't have...anything else...anything bigger than myself like you do." She let out a pained sigh.

To my surprise, the panel lit green and the door opened in front of me. I was reminded of my first-ever job at the XPCA, a hundred years ago. Opening and closing security doors on the base to prove I wasn't some uncontrollable AI. And now here she was, opening doors, out of their control.

"But I also don't have to stop you from trying," she added, an apologetic whisper. "I really, really want you to succeed."

"Wow, thank you," I said. I needed to get in there and get the data to Athan ASAP, but I was stunned. "I don't...I mean, I know how much this means to you."

I walked through, before she changed her mind. And noted with some relief that this side of the door had an emergency override, so I couldn't get locked in, if it came to that.

"Just...just promise me one thing." Her voice was furrowed with worry. "If...if you're right, and...this is all a failure, if it is intended to fail, no matter how hard I try, how hard any of the XPCA try…"

She trailed off while I found a suitable place to jack in. "Yes?" I prodded.

"Don't...don't think poorly of us. Even if we have to be your enemies. The XPCA is just...trying to do its best. Each soldier up there...like you said...they can independently self-determine. And every single one of them, no matter how misguided it may be, they're choosing to stay and fight for humanity."

I had to laugh at her words, even if that wasn't really appropriate.

"You know, in your prior iteration, even when you were hacking and killed me, even when you were torturing Saga and threatening Athan and coming down on the New Edeners like a tyrant bitch...I still always respected you. You might have been in our way, but everything you did, it was something I'd have done in another life. It's hard not to respect that."

"Thank you."

"You should try looking up to Athan a little more, too," I suggested. I found a port and plugged in, blinking as my consciousness suddenly expanded across the whole of the military 'net. "I think he'll surprise you."

"What, the ape?"

"Yes," I chuckled. "The ape. As much as a consistent fuck-up as he is, he has a lot of the same worries as you do. He's always being forced to choose between what's right and what's lawful, whom to sacrifice for what ends, and how selfish he's allowed to be." I grinned up at the cameras in the ceiling. "For the record, he's the most selfless person I know. To a fault."

"Well, I know that," she said bitterly. "But...he doesn't follow any rules! He's emotional, irrational. I don't think he even likes order."

I laughed again as I dialed up Athan's mobile. "True. But run the simulations sometime, and I think you'll find that order can be the enemy of progress."

Again she went silent as she chewed on my words, and I took the opportunity to hit call.

"AEGIS, thank god. Where are you? Everything okay?"

I grinned at the concern in his voice. He loved me. "Everything's fine on my end. Just got hung up on a little security. But I'm in, and I have some data for you."

"Awesome. Because shit is hitting every fan in creation out here, and I need all the help I can get."

TARGA had already taken that first step, and by the end of the night, I expected her to take a few more. As much as my guts churned with the abject terror of what Athan was doing and facing out there, as much as the thought that one errant move could send this whole situation up in inextinguishable flames of war…

...I had to admit, I had a soft spot for her. And seeing her grow just made my heart swell.

"Okay, I'm sending over the location now. I'll catch up with you guys once I have all the data I can pull from here. Love ya, Athan."

"Love you too, AEGIS. We're moving out."