A soft tingling sensation spread all throughout Five Seven's body as her systems came back online one at a time.

She was... alive. 

She opened her eyes. Instead of the pristine white walls of a sterile repair bay, they were met with the mottled grey and brown of what looked like a very far-gone apartment. She tested her motor functions; looking left and then right, and then down... laying sight upon the person that fixed her. He didn't look like the typical IOP tech, but they clearly weren't in a typical facility either.

Before she could ask any questions, a loud beep emanated from a spot on the bench beside her- where a small device sat, connected to her by thin cabling. The man quickly stood and reached for it, tapping something repeatedly on the screen before cursing. The machine retorted with a burst of unpleasant digital noise. His face took on a grim expression, and he sat back down in front of her after disconnecting the interface device. He rubbed his eyes, and then looked into hers.

"Five-Seven, recite your operational status." he said quietly. She sat upright in response, taking perfect posture.

"Model Five-Seven Special, fully operational under the command of Leuitenant Colonel Breslin. Current objective- ensuring the survival of my unit." She replied, effortlessly. Breslin nodded, then sighed.

"Now... your telemetry response." he spoke through gritted teeth.

"Unit compromisation.. confirmed... recovery team en-route." she reported, confused. Why did she need recovery?

Breslin cursed again, seemingly at himself this time. "Automatic telemetry. I should have left your comms module disconnected."

Five Seven blinked. 

"Who are you?" she asked. "One of those grubby IOP Field Operatives?"

"Not even close. I'm your new Commander." he added.

"Captain Breslin?!" She jumped up from the couch he'd put her on and popped a salute. "I'm sorry, I didn't recognize you! I'd never insult you willingly..."

He waved her at ease and pulled his chair towards a table strewn with electronics and loose components that she couldn't identify.

"This is the first time we've met." He kept talking, slowly assembling what she eventually realized was an automatic pistol. "I found you out in the city, disabled and left to rot. Now you're here, under my command. Understand, Five Seven?" he finished speaking as he pushed a magazine into the weapon, and racked the slide.

She recoiled slightly, taking a moment to understand the implications. 

"So... you're not IOP... And you're also not military. Intriguing." she spoke with a haughty voice. "Then what are you, Captain?" she asked, sitting back down on the repair bench innocently.

The Captain paused his work on the table of scrap, grimacing. 

"Your Commander." he replied. "And I am on a mission that you are equipped and able to assist with."

Five Seven blinked again. She wondered what that mission might be, but decided against asking for now. After all, if he wanted her to know he probably would have entered it into her objective data himself. At least she knew why IOP still considered her 'lost'...

He continued, still methodically assembling a number of smaller devices on the table.

"I'm shortening your name for brevity. Will you respond to 'Fives'?" he asked, setting a small handheld radio up on the table and tuning it."Understood, Captain. Fives it is." She nodded, confirming the change and commiting to it internally. She didn't dislike the name- it had some charm, though it was a little casual for her tastes. She ran a hand through her artificial hair, still messy with dust and knotted beyond belief.

"Alright. As you know, you're salvaged IOP property. They will be looking to reclaim you with deadly force. Unfortunately for us, I reconnected your automatic telemetry system." he stopped what he was doing and brought his chair closer to her again. He pointed with two fingers at her neck on the left side, where her communications suite was installed. 

"Because of that, this little set of electronics phone'd home to IOP as soon as I woke you up. Not only do they know you're operational, they also know that your directives have been overwritten, and they have your exact coordinates." he looked at the ground and sighed. "Had I left my name out of your system, they might have sent a simple recovery team." he said, looking up into Fives' eyes with an intensity she'd rarely seen in others. 

"I think we'll be lucky to get out of this building alive. There's a very good chance that they have a kill-team flying here, now." with that he pushed himself back to the table and picked up the weapon and radio, handing both to Fives. "Do you know how to operate these? I tried to leave as much of your training data intact as possible."

She weighed the gun carefully in her hand. She recognized it as a Beretta M9. The radio was built from a standard she knew, and she had little difficulty calling up its functions. 

"I think so. I've never used a Beretta before, but it's similar to what I'm used to. I'll try to put them to good use, Captain." she replied.

"Good." he finished. He returned to the table and cleared it of the remaining scrap, then walked into the next room. When he returned he dropped a gun on the table, and began loading it from the a pouch on his belt. It was a revolver of some sort, but it was almost too big to bear that moniker. Easily the size of Fives' forearm, and loaded with cartridges that made some rifle ammunition look tiny, it seemed more like a hand-cannon than a pistol.

"Captain? I don't recognize that weapon... Would you mind enlightening me?" she asked quietly, half-expecting to be ignored. Instead, to her surprise, he pushed the cylinder closed and handed it to her. It was even heavier than it looked, and barely fit in her hands.

".50 caliber. Special stock. Enough to stop anything." he said flatly. As he finished, a quiet alarm sounded from the next room and he quickly took the weapon back, sticking it in his belt. "Looks like time's up. Come with me."

She followed him swiftly gun-in-hand, and together they came to a stop at a small makeshift surveillance station. The alarm was set next to a grainy camera feed watching the building's first-floor hall, and they arrived just in time to see three figures quickly sweeping through it with rifles at the ready.

"At the end of the hall, left out of the door to this apartment, there is an elevator. The door's loose enough to pry open, and the top hatch is unlocked. Do you understand me?" he spoke quickly, throwing his loose gear into the room they'd come from and closing the door.

"You mean you want me to hide?" she said incredulously. "You give me a gun, order me to protect the both of us, and then tell me to go hide?" her temper started to show, and The Captain seemed more impressed than impatient towards her.

"You've only just woken up from months of inactivity. Half of your internals have been patched with junk parts that I ripped out of whatever I could find here- even if I was absolutely sure of their integrity, I can't be sure how you will function after what you've been through. It will take time to test it all, and that's time that we don't have right now." he finished with a stronger voice. She wanted to argue, but couldn't bring herself to it. He was right.

The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

"Understood, Captain." her voice was more tense than before, owing to indignance. She moved past him and out the apartment's front foor, turning back to see him pull a shotgun from behind a dresser stand in the hallway before following her out. 

She watched him disappear into another apartment towards the stairwell-end of the hall, where he tinkered with something on the other side before coming back out and closing the door carefully behind him- without the shotgun. He insistently pointed her down the hallway towards the elevator as he jogged in the same direction opening every second door, stopping about three doors before reaching her- passing the apartment they both emerged from, ten doors down from the one he'd left the shotgun in. He disappeared into the apartment two further doors down from their own, leaving it wide open.

Fives kept moving until she reached the elevator. The doors were loose like he said they would be, and she had little trouble getting inside. It took her a minute to pop the hatch and climb up- she was too short to do it standing, and had to jump to reach the elevator's ceiling. She gently closed the hatch behind her and sat next to it, holding the gun he'd given her tightly. It was quiet now, all except for the distant sound of doors being opened on the floor below.

---—

Breslin recognized the method they were using to sweep the building from watching the camera. All three dolls would ascend the stairs together, and then two would move ahead equidistant from the first- leaving a third of the floor to each unit. It was extremely amatuer compared to the methods he was familiar with, but for machines like these it must work well enough.

He stood in an apartment half-way down the corridor, with the door open to his left. His back was against the wall between the room and the hallway, with an ear to it, listening. They wouldn't be able to see him from the hall.

After a few minutes of waiting, he heard the stairwell door open as they came out onto the top floor. Their footsteps were faint, but evident due to the way their combined weight stressed the floor. Sequentially the noise got softer, as they each stopped at different points in the hall. One had already passed, and a second had stopped just outside the room he'd chosen. He steadied his breathing and waited, bracing himself for what was to come.

Doors started opening. First at the end nearest to the elevators, then across the hall and down from himself, and finally back towards the stairwell. Breach, enter, clear, repeat. They were quick. 

The first door the one nearest to him picked was the one where he'd set up- and though there wasn't much there now, the android still spent time investigating while the others continued moving through each room. Breslin started to fear that his plan would fail on the second leg, that she'd still be in there when things got hot- but before his worry went too far he heard her slowly skulk out of the room. The others had cleared three doors each by his estimate.

Just one more... 

The nearest android entered the apartment directly across the hall. He heard every muted step, each shift in weight as she surveyed the room, found nothing, and started to back out to cross the hall. She was close, too close. Moving too fast, he thought- if she came in before the plan came together, he'd have to forgo the entire thing. She stepped closer.

Two steps away.

Come on, open it...

One step.

Midstride on the step that would have put her through the doorway he was hiding behind, a doorknob turned and a door swung open down the corridor resulting in an explosion that rocked the hall. The doll that triggered the trap was blown away from the door and crashed into the wall opposite with a thud. He stayed in place, listening carefully.

That one didn't get back up, and the android on the other side of the wall from Breslin paused in place, turning to get eyes on the victim of his trap. He made his move, silently spinning out in front of the door as the doll began to move back towards her fallen ally, careful not to extend any part of himself through the doorway. He took aim at the back of her head.

The revolver in his hand roared and kicked like a beast as it launched a bullet forward with a torrent of fire, propelling it straight into the metal skull of the android in the hall. She fell to the ground limp, the opposite wall flecked with bits of metal and electronic scrap blown out of the exit site. Breslin moved quickly once he was sure she wouldn't get back up- the fireball would have been visible from the end of the corridor, and he was sure that the final doll was looking towards them when he made his move. 

He disappeared into the back of the apartment and hid around a corner, ear to the wall again, waiting for the third to come after him. They were ASh-12s, well-equipped models that were more than capable of killing him if given the chance.

Soon enough he heard her stepping out in front of the doorway, carefully sweeping the foyer before crossing the threshold. The third didn't bother checking the other two, probably already aware of their inoperability through shared telemetry. 

Methodically she checked every room in the apartment on her way through, making use of her superior mechanical precision in observation and movement. She was being cautious, and he could barely hear her moving now. He lined his arm and revolver up with the wall, pointing right at the foyer's outlet, waiting for her to pass by. 

The android was dangerously close, only a few steps away- when she stopped dead. Before he could notice his own shadow, painted on the floor by the windows opposite the foyer, his thoughts were interruped by the hail of gunfire that tore through the wall behind him.

The majority of the bullets missed, but one lucky shot ripped across the top of his arm. The shock was enough to make him drop his gun- and as soon as she heard the thunk of it hitting the ground, the android rushed out to execute him.

He slammed into her as she rounded the corner, bringing them both to the ground and keeping the rifle pinned between them. He knew that they weren't programmed for close-in combat, much less a melee, and took full advantage of it. 

While the doll wasted precious seconds struggling with the rifle, he attacked her viciously at every weak point he could think of, crushing one of her eyes in its socket and driving his elbow hard into her throat. 

She thrashed on the ground in response, forcing him to focus on holding on- if his grip faltered even slightly she'd send him flying. She shoved the gun into his abdomen lifting him a few inches into the air, but he held fast- letting his hands slide towards the rifle's controls on the downstroke. With an audible click he released the rifle's magazine and knocked it away down the foyer. The android realized his game and drove her head forward into his shoulder with surprising strength, knocking him back again.

With his advantage broken she was easily able to reverse the hold and drive him back against the floor. She started to wrestle the gun free, but not quickly enough- before it could be pointed at him, he found the trigger and sent the last chambered round flying out the window beside them. Glass showered them both and he moved one of his arms to cover his face, while she pulled her fist back and launched it into his chest.

The sheer impact was enough crack a few ribs and shove him away from her, rolling him onto his side to face the broken windows. She shot up from the floor and ran for the magazine in the foyer, grabbing it and slamming it into the rifle before Breslin could even begin to recover.

She reached for the charging handle, but never got to pull it.

From behind her in the hall, six shots broke through her chest and knocked her to the ground. 

Fives stepped forward, standing above her, and put another three into her head. She looked up from the dead doll, spotting Breslin laid out at the far end of the apartment.

"Captain! Are you alright?!" she shouted. He pushed himself up and waved to her, trying to catch his breath.

"Fine! Just... a little stiff." he lied. Fives came up to him and helped him to his feet. She noticed the blood running from his arm and his trouble breathing, but he dismissed her concern. "This must mean that core directives override spoken orders!" he laughed to himself.

"I'm sorry Captain, but I couldn't bear to leave you in a struggle like that." she said. Breslin shook his head slowly.

"If you hadn't been there I'd be a smear on the floor." he said, hardly wasting a breath as he crouched to retrieve his gun. Before they left the room, he checked the rifle that the androids had been equipped with. Sure enough, the ammo was a match for his revolver. He was surprised to find ASh-12's still in use, considering the relatively limited application of their ammunition.

He grabbed the magazine and lead Fives back out into the building's main hall, and then back into the apartment they'd both started in. He collected everything he could carry- electronics, a few harddrives, rations, a couple boxes of ammunition- and packed it into his bag. He also took the small solar power platform out of the back room's window, and broke it down before packing it into a separate bag for Fives. After that he bandaged his arm, and had Fives help him wrap his chest too.

Next he had Fives sit back at the bench where he intitally repaired her. It only took him a few minutes to disconnect her telemetry module, which he then smashed to pieces on the floor.

"That should buy us time once we leave this place." he said, handing her the spare pack. "We're going east. If we can break out of this region, the collapse contamination should wane enough for us to cut south and head towards the next objective. It could be a safe place to set up again, or it could be too far gone for that. We'll deal with it when we arrive." he finished, pulling his pack on and directing her to do the same.

Once they were kitted and heading out, he stopped at the door.

"Things are going to get difficult, now. Don't let me down." he turned his head back as he spoke, knocking his fist against the doorframe. Fives was taken aback at the mistrust in his voice- but she nodded affirmative all the same.

He smirked.