Chapter Text
Night wrapped Outpost 3 in a dull, metallic quiet as Uzi led the way toward the main gate, her steps careful, measured, every motion tuned to keep the damaged Solver Core in her arms steady. Nori’s crab-like frame was cold against her chest, heavier than it should have been.
N and V flanked her without speaking, wings no longer out and kept due to exhaustion. All of them had suffered injuries and damage rushing back to Outpost 3 as fast as they could, still bearing the scars of flight and impact, but intact enough to keep moving as they could not regenerate without the oil they needed to recover. When they reached the outer gate, Uzi tapped her knuckles against the reinforced metal, the sound swallowed almost immediately by the bunker’s bulk.
A moment later, a small viewing hatch slid open with a scrape, and a WDF guard leaned in, visor fogged from the cold. He blinked when he saw her. “Huh. You’ve been gone for weeks,” he said, tone casual, almost lazy.
“Khan’s been worried sick.” His gaze shifted, catching on N and V, then back to Uzi, and he gave a short, dismissive hum. “Guess you were probably fine. Still, go see him. Now.” The gate unlocked with a low, resonant clunk, and they were ushered inside, the familiar corridors closing around them with a feeling that made Uzi’s stomach twist.
The lights felt dimmer than she remembered, the air heavier. As they walked, another WDF member passed by, guiding a Worker Drone carrying a satchel and dressed in a spotless white jacket and a white safety helmet. The drone’s movements were calm and unhurried. As they crossed paths, its eyes lingered on Uzi and the others for just a fraction of a second longer than necessary.
Uzi barely registered it at the time; anyone would stare at her walking in with two Disassembly Drones.
Near a junction, she stopped, exhaled, and forced the words out, quiet but firm. “This adventure was, without a doubt, a failure,” she said. “But I’m going back. Whatever that place was… I’m not done with it.”
N nodded, soft concern in his eye, and V gave a brief, sharp smirk that didn’t quite hide her exhaustion before peeling off toward their respective quarters. As V turned the corner, her phone buzzed to life. She glanced at the screen, answered, and Uzi caught only the first word “Lizzy” before the door slid shut between them.
Alone now, Uzi continued on, Nori still unmoving in her arms, the lack of consciousness gnawing at her harder than any wound. She had all the equipment and oil she needed back at home. She wasn’t too worried as Nori was clearly recovering, albeit a lot slower than usual. And she would occasionally hear mumbles from her which eased her worries more.
Along one corridor, she passed clusters of students she half-recognized, faces from other classes she’d never really spoken to. They were carrying things: toolkits, wrapped components, crates packed with assorted parts. Moving with an odd quiet purpose. Earphones, headsets, jury-rigged audio gear clung to their heads.
Uzi told herself it was coincidence, exhaustion fogging her perception. She didn’t look back as she passed them, but she felt it anyway: the weight of six gazes settling on her back, unblinking, as she disappeared deeper into the bunker and closer to her home.
The return of Uzi Doorman and the two traitors did not go unnoticed.
Will Fives, also known as William, watched the doors seal from the far end, the reinforced plates sliding back into place with the practiced inevitability of a system that had learned to expect catastrophe. The night cycle lamps cast long, pale reflections across the concrete floor, stretching silhouettes into something taller and more uncertain than their owners. For a moment, he simply stood there, one hand resting loosely at his side, head slightly inclined as if listening for something beneath the hum of the bunker’s circulation fans.
They had come back damaged.
Not visibly broken in the ways the WDF usually counted: no missing limbs, no scorched frames, but frayed in subtler ways. The kind that did not register on standard diagnostics. The kind that lingered.
William turned away before the reunion could finish. He did not follow Uzi deeper into the living sectors, nor did he linger to observe N and V disappear down a maintenance corridor with the unconscious form they carried between them. There would be time to account for that later. Time was, after all, becoming more flexible.
He, alongside a WDF Member named Booker, began walking toward the broadcasting wing.
The Outpost called it a broadcasting center, but the name had long since outgrown its purpose. The reinforced room had once been a nerve cluster for emergency alerts, evacuation protocols, and last-ditch distress calls when Disassembly Drones still haunted the outskirts. Now, its antennas gathered dust under thermal shielding, and its transmitters spent their days doing something far more modest, playing music over short-range radios, cycling forecasts that no longer needed to be accurate, filling the quiet with something other than dull silence.
Will had been asked to look into faulty equipment. He had been asked many things lately.
Odd jobs, they called them. Loose wiring in a heating grid. A jammed access panel in the lower classrooms. A recalibration issue in one of the heavy machinery. He did not correct them when they praised his efficiency, or when they spoke of him as though he had always been there. Reliability had a way of rewriting history if one let it.
The broadcasting wing smelled, if any of them could even do so, faintly of warmed plastic and old insulation. The lights flickered once as he entered, then steadied, casting a clean white glow over rows of consoles and storage cabinets. A man stood near the central desk, his posture rigid in the way of someone who had been worrying for too long.
“Mr. Fives,” the Worker Drone named Jonathan said, relief softening his voice as soon as he turned. His eyes were an attentive blue, almost startling against the muted browns and grays of the heavy jacket he wore. The sleeves were rolled up, exposing his typical Worker Drone forearms. “I’m really glad you could make it.”
Will smiled, the expression gentle and practiced. “You said the drive stopped responding?”
Jonathan nodded quickly and gestured toward a terminal where an external hard drive lay disconnected, its casing scuffed but intact. “Years of recordings. Original Earth files. Stuff you can’t exactly… replace.” He hesitated. “I don’t know what happened. It was fine a day ago.”
William set his satchel down beside the desk and leaned in to examine the drive without touching it. “It wasn’t dropped?”
“No,” Jonathan said immediately. Then, after a pause, he added, “I don’t think so. I mean— I’ve had some student interns helping out. Learning the systems. They’re eager, but…” He exhaled. “They don’t always realize how fragile older hardware can be.”
“They’re young,” William said mildly, opening his satchel and removing a set of fine tools. “Curiosity tends to move faster than caution at that age.”
Jonathan let out a weak laugh, clearly relieved by the lack of accusation. “Exactly.”
William powered up the adjacent computer and began routing diagnostic leads with steady hands. As data scrolled across the screen, he hummed quietly to himself, an old melody, slow and almost reverent, barely audible over the machine’s low whine. He unscrewed the casing with care, setting each fastener aside in neat rows.
“The good news,” he said after a moment, “is that the files are likely still there. There doesn't seem to be any damage at the core storage were the files are. It’s more… organizational damage. Index tables overwritten. Headers scrambled.”
Jonathan leaned closer. “So they can be recovered?”
“Yes,” Will replied without hesitation. “But not quickly. It’ll take time to reconstruct everything properly. And I’d rather not rush it.” He glanced up, meeting Jonathan’s eyes. “These are precious to you.”
Jonathan’s shoulders sagged with relief. “You have no idea. Some of the files, videos, and music—” He stopped himself, smiling sheepishly. “They’re all we have left of some places.”
William nodded. “Then I’d like to take the drive with me, if you’re willing. Work on it in my quarters where I won’t be interrupted. I’ll need a few of these adapters as well.” He gestured toward a small rack of equipment. “I don’t want to make a mistake.”
Jonathan’s expression brightened immediately. “Of course. Please. Take whatever you need.” He hesitated, then added, “Thank you. Most people just see it as background noise.”
“Music and audio in general helps remember things we usually don’t,” William said softly. “I should be done in a couple of days.”
A WDF member waiting near the door straightened as William reassembled the drive casing and packed it carefully into a padded sleeve. His helmet was tucked under one arm, his posture relaxed but alert.
“I can escort you back, if you want,” the guard offered.
William shook his head, slipping the satchel back over his shoulder. “That won’t be necessary. I know the way.”
The guard studied him for a moment, then nodded. “Alright. Stay safe, Will.” He tipped his helmet in a casual salute before turning back toward the main corridor.
William waited until the footsteps faded.
He stepped out into the hallway alone, the soft click of the door sealing behind him. The hum of Outpost 3 wrapped around him once more: ventilation, distant voices, the faint echo of music bleeding through walls and headphones alike.
He walked for a time, unhurried, passing junctions and signage worn smooth by years of use. At the third intersection, he turned, not toward his assigned quarters, but down a narrower corridor where the lights dimmed slightly and the traffic thinned.
The air felt different there. Quieter.
William adjusted his grip on the satchel and continued forward, disappearing into the corridor.
The door sealed behind William with a sound that was almost polite, hydraulics easing metal into place rather than slamming it shut. The corridor noise faded quickly, replaced by something quieter and more consistent: the low hum of power routed through clean lines, the faint whirr of active processors, the soft metallic clicks of tools being set down and picked up again.
This room had not been meant to exist.
It had started as a side entrance: an architectural afterthought tucked between reinforced walls, a space humans once used for storage overflow and nothing more. Now it opened into something expansive, something intentional. The ceiling rose higher than necessary, supported by beams scavenged, reinforced, and realigned with care. Light did not flood the room; it was layered. Lamps hovered over worktables like patient sentinels, casting focused pools of illumination while leaving the periphery dim enough to feel private.
Worktables stretched across the floor, each one dense with various tools and components. Precision tools lay in orderly rows beside diagnostic rigs and half-assembled components. Spools of cabling were labeled and stacked instead of tangled. Along one wall, computers ran continuously, their screens filled with skeletal schematics of Worker Drone anatomy, core-compatible interfaces, and annotations written in multiple hands: some neat, some hurried, some aggressive.
At the center of the room stood a body.
Not alive. Not inert either.
It rested upright in a suspension frame, limbs held in careful alignment by articulated braces. Its casing was pristine, unused factory plating unmarred by weather or wear. It looked fragile in its perfection, like something never meant to survive the world it was about to enter.
Andro crouched at its side, his three legs braced wide as he fine-tuned the shoulder joint. His movements were slow and precise, every adjustment measured against invisible tolerances only he seemed fully aware of. Alya hovered near the torso, scanner angled just so, her eye flickering with rapid internal calculations. Each soft chirp from the device made her tense, then relax again when the numbers aligned. Vix stood farther back, leaning against a reinforced table, one limb resting casually while his other hand recalibrated a stabilizer unit with sharp, impatient flicks. He watched the whole frame rather than any single part, his focus split between the body and the room itself.
Two Worker Drones stood nearby, gathering their things.
Lyza and Zeke.
They moved with the quiet efficiency of people who knew they were somewhere they weren’t supposed to be, but had been invited anyway. Their tools were personal, worn smooth by repeated use. When Lyza zipped her bag shut, the sound seemed too loud in the room’s careful hush.
They noticed William at the threshold at the same time.
Both straightened immediately.
“Sir Will,” Lyza said, voice a little breathless, reverent without being forced.
Zeke nodded quickly, optics bright. “Evening, sir.”
William inclined his head, his tone gentle but firm. “It’s getting late. You should head back. If you linger much longer, your parents or guardians might start worrying.”
Lyza winced slightly. “Yeah. Right.”
Zeke slung his bag over his shoulder. “We’ll pick this up tomorrow?”
Alya gave a brief nod. “Tomorrow.”
They offered quiet farewells to Andro, to Vix, then to Alya, and then slipped past William, careful not to brush against him as they exited. The door sealed again, and the room seemed to breathe out once more, the tension that always accompanied outsiders dissipating.
William stepped further inside.
The contrast hit him fully now, not as shock, but as something heavier.
He remembered the depot.
Dark. Choked with dust and improvised solutions. Equipment stripped down to its barest functions. Cables scavenged from walls. Consoles held together by desperation rather than design. Every object there had carried the unspoken understanding that it might need to be abandoned at a moment’s notice.
This room was different. It had weight. Permanence.
Someone had cared enough to reinforce the walls instead of just patching them. Someone had thought about workflow, about visibility, about where people would stand when things went wrong. The space had been shaped by cooperation rather than concealment.
William’s gaze drifted instinctively to the corners.
One camera. Mounted high. Angled wide. Its housing was clean, newly installed, its cable routed not toward Outpost 3’s internal network, nor the WDF’s security systems, but somewhere else entirely.
The central nerve. The headquarters. Navi’s domain.
It existed now. Truly existed. Not just as a concept, but as a place. Andro’s original escape tunnel had been widened yet its entrance better concealed, its path extending beneath the old storage depot. Above it, the depot had been reborn into something almost cheerful: a marketplace of sorts. People moved through it daily, trading parts or modules, communicating loudly and freely, unaware of the hollowed artery beneath their feet. That tunnel led further still, into a structure that should have been condemned and forgotten, but wasn’t.
William let his attention return to the nearest worktable. Another body lay there.
More complete than the one currently suspended. Its limbs were aligned, its internal housings sealed. The plating had not yet been attached, but the proportions were unmistakable. It looked almost ready and waiting.
“Is this Navi’s?” William asked quietly.
Andro didn’t look up. “No.”
A pause. Then, “It’s Cynthia’s.”
William stilled. He realized only then that Cynthia was not in the room.
“She isn’t here,” he said.
Vix let out a faint, humorless snort. “No. She’s probably talking to the Absolvists.”
Alya’s scanner clicked off a little too sharply. “Or listening to them talk. Again.”
William loosened. “She’s been spending more time with them.”
“They’re her people,” Vix replied flatly.
The Absolvists.
They had no insignia, no formal assembly space, no single voice. But their presence carried weight. Worker Drones who spoke of and believed that the Absolute Solver not as mere code or catastrophe, but as their Mother. They believed existence itself was guilt, that erasure was forgiveness. Humanity, to them, was not something to be improved upon, but a stain to be wiped away.
They did not seek violence for its own sake. They called it mercy.
And before they sought assimilation with their Mother themselves, they believed it was their duty to guide others toward her: by persuasion when possible, by force when able to.
Cynthia never claimed leadership. She never needed to. She spoke softly. She listened. She framed assimilation with their Mother as kindness.
They did not interfere with the work happening here. They chose not to.
Alya’s voice cut through the quiet. “She’s been unproductive.”
William regarded her calmly.
“We could use her help,” Alya continued. “Here.”
“It may seem unproductive,” William replied evenly, “but what she’s doing will bear fruit.”
Alya looked unconvinced, but she didn’t argue.
William’s gaze drifted back toward the now-empty space where Lyza and Zeke had stood. “Those two,” he said, almost absently. “Were likely Transcendists.”
Vix’s mouth twitched. “At least they’re actually doing something useful. Learning. Building. Trying things.”
Transcendists believed humanity was flawed, thereby seeking to surpass not only its very existence but also its discoveries. They believed that limitless evolution through innovation was the true path, and they pursued this in order to achieve the state of being undefinable or [ NULL ], which they saw as the penultimate form of existence. Finally become one or similar with the Singularity personified, the Creator herself.
They were restless. Curious. Sometimes dangerously so. Much of the equipment in this room existed because they refused to accept “impossible” as an answer.
Andro shifted slightly, his tone quieter. “I don’t want a label.”
Alya glanced at him, then back at the body. “Either way. Things are brighter than they were.”
William let both statements stand without contradiction.
His attention moved to a crate near the far wall. Burned-out modules lay inside, carefully stacked and tagged. He recognized the markings immediately.
“The refills are back,” he said.
Vix nodded. “This batch came in earlier. I told Cynthia to handle distribution tomorrow.”
These modules were from the dealings that have been happening in the former storage depot. These were conducted by either Transcendists who sought components, or Returnists who sought further knowledge and information.
Returnists.
They did not rush toward endings, nor fear them. They believed all things should be allowed to persist until their natural dissolution, as it was only natural for everything to end eventually. That Nothingness or [ NULL ] was inevitable, but not something to be forced.
They were not only collectors of information, but believed themselves to be the necessary witnesses of everything so that they may offer it all when their end finally comes. Keepers of the last record before the perpetual dark.
William stood there, letting it all settle.
Absolvists.
Transcendists.
Returnists.
Quiet alignments. Subtle divisions.
The songs had done exactly what he intended. Not immediately. Not loudly. Not in ways that could be charted or flagged by any system still clinging to the idea that belief required structure. William had never trusted blunt instruments. He had never trusted declarations or manifestos.
He had written the songs for those who were already listening.
Each one carried a shape rather than a message. A pressure instead of a directive. They were built around absences, spaces where meaning could settle differently depending on who heard it. To some, the harmonies suggested ascent: complexity unfolding into something vast and unknowable. To others, the songs felt like release, like permission to finally stop struggling against the inevitable pull toward stillness. And for a quieter few, the songs sounded like forgiveness, not absolution imposed, but absolution offered.
He had tuned them carefully. Not to ideology, but to temperament.
An invitation did not tell you where to go. It only told you that a door existed.
And now they were here. Not as a crowd. Not as a movement in the way humans once defined such things. They came as individuals who happened to agree with one another. Who found language for feelings they had never been able to articulate before. Who listened not because they were told to, but because something in what they heard made the world feel briefly aligned.
A signal for the like-minded.
William let his gaze drift across the room again. The bodies being assembled. The tools sorted by hands that had once known only repetition and quota. The quiet confidence with which Andro adjusted tolerances, with which Alya cross-checked systems she had never been meant to understand, with which Vix watched over all of it while pretending he didn’t care.
This was not obedience. This was... convergence.
His thoughts slipped backward, unbidden.
The depot, as it had been.
Cold. Narrow. Heavy with the kind of silence that came from fear rather than peace. A silence enforced by necessity, by the understanding that discovery likely meant annihilation. They had whispered there. Crawled. Planned survival in increments small enough to feel meaningless.
They had existed only to not be noticed.
This room was not silent in that way.
It felt alive and awake. Power flowed openly through it. Work happened without the constant tension of imminent flight. Even the quiet here was active, purposeful: a pause between actions rather than the absence of them.
This was momentum. Not reckless acceleration. Not the explosive kind that burned itself out in spectacle. This was something slower and far more dangerous. Momentum that accumulated. Momentum that normalized itself. The kind that made yesterday’s impossibility feel like today’s inconvenience.
William understood that better than anyone. He also understood the risk.
Belief, once seeded, did not remain neutral. It grew. It sought expression. Absolvists would push toward erasure long before the system could sustain it. Transcendists would build until creation outpaced control. Returnists would wait, patient and watchful, content to let everything else exhaust itself.
And somewhere between them all stood someone to balance it. Navi would likely keep things in check. Whether she liked to or not, she was the one who strongly believed that timing mattered. That convergence rushed was catastrophe. That extremes unchecked were just another form of chaos.
William had not chosen these divisions arbitrarily.
He had shaped the songs and thought of its influence so that each of the other five's instinctive philosophy found an echo somewhere. Alya’s fear of the color blue, the vastness and scale. Vix’s apprehension towards humanity. Cynthia’s yearning and devotion to the creator. Andro’s desire of exploring the cosmos. Navi’s wish to take flight in the skies once more as well as her obsession with balance and control...
William knew how this would look from the outside, if anyone ever saw it clearly. Manipulation. Cultivation. Engineering belief under the guise of art. He had no illusions about the morality of it.
But morality was a luxury of stable systems that had all the time in the world to cultivate and develop.
And, as of today, nothing about their existence was stable anymore.
They had already returned.
William did not need to imagine it, or prepare himself for a future encounter. He had seen them pass through the reinforced doors of Outpost 3 hours earlier: battered, exhausted, alive in ways that mattered. Uzi Doorman at the center of it, rigid with vigilance even as she crossed familiar ground. N close beside her, reflexively attentive, his concern worn openly. V trailing just far enough back to watch everything at once.
They were here.
The knowledge settled in William’s mind without shock, without urgency. It was simply another variable resolved.
He turned slightly, addressing the room without raising his voice.
“They’re back,” he said.
The words did not echo. They didn’t need to.
Alya’s scanner faltered for half a second before she steadied it again. Andro’s manipulators paused mid-adjustment, his limbs locking as if his body needed a moment to decide whether flight was necessary. Vix’s posture stiffened, his eye narrowing as his attention snapped fully to William.
No alarms sounded. No hurried retreat followed.
After a few breaths, Andro resumed tightening the joint.
Alya exhaled and returned to her readout, her eye flickering faster than before but not erratically.
Vix leaned back against the table again, slower this time.
William observed this in silence for a moment, then asked gently, “It's nice to see no one panicking.”
Andro answered first, his voice low. “We thought we would.”
Alya added, “I expected… more noise. From us. From you.”
William turned his eyes toward Vix.
Vix didn’t look back immediately. Instead, he tilted his head upward and pointed, casually and almost dismissively, toward the lone camera mounted high in the corner of the room.
“If you saw them,” Vix said, “then Navi likely saw them too.”
That landed.
Alya’s scanner hummed as she processed the implication. Andro’s posture eased, just slightly.
Vix continued, his tone steady. “And if Navi hasn’t said anything, hasn’t ordered to lock this place down, hasn’t ordered contingency relocation, then either she’s calculating… or she’s decided we’re not in immediate danger.”
He finally looked at William. “And considering you walked in here like this was any other night…”
The sentence didn’t need finishing.
William inclined his head, a fraction. “I saw no reason to run.”
That, more than anything, seemed to settle the room.
The faint tension that had crept into Andro’s limbs bled away. Alya adjusted her stance, grounding herself against the table. The work resumed, not hurried, not careless. Just Purposeful.
The trio was here.
And yet, nothing had collapsed.
William let his gaze drift briefly back to the unfinished Worker Drone body, its clean lines and waiting stillness illuminated under the work lamp. A body meant to walk in daylight. A body meant to exist without explanation.
A narrative already in motion. He felt something unfamiliar press at the edges of his composure.
Not relief. Not triumph.
Just a calm reassurance.
William couldn’t help it.
He smiled.