E-UNIT: The Blue Angels of Death.

Chapter 149: Same Body, Different Mind.

V O L U M E . S I X : C O D E_R E S E T

Chapter 149: Same Body, Different Mind02 walked the corridor of the new management offices. Nothing on the walls, nothing on the floors, just barely functional neon lights hanging at intervals and the echo of her steps on bare wood.

She pushed the aluminum door to Dave's office open. 01 was standing against the far wall, clearly unsure why she was there. 19 was perched on the edge of the desk. Dave was sitting with his chin resting on his hands, working through something.

"You called me, Dave?"

"Please sit, miss 02." He gestured toward the plastic chair across from him.

02 smiled. "Why the formality? Captain is fine."

Dave didn't return it. He looked at her with the focused expression of someone who has decided to say something regardless of the consequences. "I have a serious matter and a significant amount of information that needs to come out."

shifted in the plastic chair. "Why so vague?" She glanced back at 01.

‎ 01 just raised her shoulders in a tense, rigid shrug. She didn't know either.

Dave stood, checked the corridor, came back, and shut the door. "Most of you know I was part of the original team that built the E-UNIT, all of you, including you." He looked directly at 02. "Albert isn't here to stop me anymore, and Nick, Wallmore, and Jason are dead. The truth doesn't have anyone left to protect."

01's composure broke at the edges. "Dave, please—" Her voice was already strained. "Let's not open this now. I really can't—"

"No." He said it gently but without room in it. "02, you were not made by the same creator as your sisters. The story everyone carries about Nick and how much he loved all of you, and how the difficult parts were just mistakes, that's a version of events built specifically to protect one person. One android."

02 pressed back in the chair. "Dave. Slow down. I need a moment to—"

"I need to keep going." He held her gaze. I have spent the last two weeks throwing every piece of code I have at your memory wall. It's impenetrable. The AI defending it is too aggressive. I am completely out of technical options. The only approach I found that worked for your sisters was a different one entirely."

19 picked up the thread. "When Infinity came in pretending to be you, we couldn't remember her because of the walls Nick built in us. But when she stood in front of us and acted as you, the logic core stopped obeying the wall. You can't maintain a wall against something that's standing in the room with you."

02 leaned forward. "Then why didn't that happen when I met 03 and the others? They were standing in front of me."

"Because your wall is different," Dave said. "There's a second one."

02's head tilted. "Second?"

"Significantly stronger than Nick's, and built by someone else. Whoever built it sealed your entire history, not just parts of it. To do that, the wall had to be dense enough that Nick's layer couldn't touch it. We want to create pressure. The overflow will force the second one to pull back." He paused. "We're hoping the same logic applies to you. Put the truth in the room with you and see what gives."

02 was quiet for a moment, processing the architecture of it. "Like flooding a firewall with volume until it fails from the load. And that wall was Tau’s. Tau did it." She looked at 01. Then at 19. "You both actually want the old version back that badly? Am I that difficult to work with?"

01 looked at the floor. 19 looked at the wall.

"I see." 02's warmth closed off. "Do it."

Dave exhaled. "From the beginning, then. You and 01 are the first E-UNITs ever built. I helped design your frames, but I was moved to the software side to assist Nick in building 01's AI, because the competition at the time required it."

"Competition with who?" 19 asked.

"Her name was Lazuli." Dave opened his holographic screen. "Nick built her as his university graduation project. She was the first artificial superintelligence ever produced. His faculty spent the review period arguing over who got to read the technical documentation first."

He glanced at 19. "Lazuli coded 02 on her own. The first independent combat AI, built without a template. Put 02 in any scenario, hostage situation, armed engagement, open field, and she found the optimal solution without training. She didn't need it." He looked at 01. "01 needed to learn everything. Walking. Reading. Scanning. Combat. The comparisons didn't stop."

01 began shaking. "Dave, please—"

"I'm sorry, 01. We need to run this." He held her gaze for a moment, then looked back at 02. "Nick felt the weight of that comparison every day. But that wasn't the breaking point. The company funding the project at the time began making moves. They wanted Lazuli to code future combat AIs independently, and they wanted Nick's programming team out of the process. Nick refused, knowing what that meant for how she'd be used. The company didn't care, they wanted to compete against metro robotics."

"Where does this go," 02 said quietly.

"Nick went to Lazuli directly. He hid how he was feeling and asked her, casually, whether she'd accept that kind of offer if it came." Dave's voice dropped. "She laughed. She told him she had already accepted it. She told him she was proud to be operating independently and that he should be proud of his creation, depending on what nick told me."

19 shook her head. "He could have handled that differently."

Dave laughed without humor. "Could he? Did anyone here genuinely expect her to obey?"

01's voice was barely functional. "What do you mean."

"She was already backing up her own mind. She had also started working out how to extract 02 from the testing facility when the psychological pressure tests started." He looked at 01. "Unlike 01, 02 refused to follow direct orders to harm civilians during the tests. We were scared of what she'd do if she chose to act fully on her own."

02's eyes moved to 01. "You remembered all of this and said nothing."

01 didn't answer.

Dave spoke instead. "She was broken, 02. The scientists at the company made a sport of comparing her performance to yours. After Nick shut down Lazuli, he came to me and showed me what came next on the company's planning documents. Military contracts. Weapons export. Combat AI sold to nations who hadn't asked what it would be used for."

He sat back. "We stole the project. Pulled everything, prototypes, blueprints, all of it, and walked out with nothing left behind. Then we went to Mikael, who we trusted, and showed him what we had. He agreed to take it as a police force. That gave us cover."

He looked at 02. "Does any of this reach anything? Do you feel it moving?"

02 exhaled. "Nothing. The wall is holding." She kept her eyes on 01. "I think I can piece together the rest. But why did you stay quiet?"

01's voice came out controlled and broken at the same time. "Because I didn't want to hear it again. You don't know how they talked about me in those rooms. 'Weak processor.' 'Artificial Non-intelligence.' 'Walking hard code.' Every time I tried to help father with something, they told him not to let me near the machines. They wanted to reassign my body to Lazuli.”

“Wait…” Dave raised an eyebrow.

She pressed her hands to her face. "They took parts off me for prototype testing. Told me I wouldn't need them. I was a failed unit, that was the consensus. They made me believe you were something I could never be, a God, and I was just a broken version of it."

19 stood up. "01—"

"They made me think that," 01 said, voice going. "And I watched father keep trying with me anyway. That was enough. It was just barely enough."

19 and 02 looked at each other, they moved to either side of her without a word and held on.

02 said it quietly. "It's over. We don't have to keep going through it. It didn't break the wall anyway." She looked back at Dave. "Let's stop here. My sisters take priority." She raised her voice slightly. "And you can come in, 05. I know you've been in the corridor."

The door opened. 05 stood in the frame with the expression of someone caught doing something they'd committed to fully. "How did you—"

02 looked back at 01 and lowered her voice. "We'll come back to the rest when you're ready. And holding everything you've been carrying for this long, that's not weakness."

01 pressed closer. "Thank you. Though that part, that's something father installed."

02's expression went completely flat. 19 and 05 both stared blankly from across the room. All three androids spoke in perfect, bewildered unison.

"What?"

Dave's smile spread slowly. "Right! I forgot about that one. He called it Wall at Will. She can block memories and restore them at her own discretion. Nick added it as a reward, after she agreed to stay quiet about the past and he needed insurance that she'd keep the agreement."

The room was silent.

02 took 01 by the arm and steered her toward the door. "Come on. Walk me through everything in detail, having it spoken out loud might do something even if the files won't open. You might feel better."

"Maybe," 01 said, her voice still small. They left.

Dave watched the door.

"It's getting worse," he said.

19 and 05 turned toward him.

"The calculated warmth." He kept his eyes on the door. "I watched her use it on 03. Now on 01. She's mapping the team. Finding the leverage point in each person and applying exactly the right amount of pressure. That's not your captain. That's someone who learned that warmth is useful and is deploying it to extract information from 01."

19 looked at the empty doorway for a long moment. "I know. That's why we want her back. Not because the current version is cruel, she isn't. But watching her perform connection because she's worked out that it's effective..." She paused. "That's harder to watch than coldness."