You saw sagacious Solomon You know what came of him To him complexities seemed plain He cursed the hour that gave birth to him And saw that everything was vain How great and wise was Solomon
Peter had heard footsteps behind him—he would have had to have been deaf to miss them—but he had not turned right away. He had almost not wanted to know who it was. What if it was the Director? What if they were the only two alive? Or what if it was one of the Agents who despised him, like Olympia, or Phoenix?
But he had had to turn eventually. And when he did—
"Scorpio?"
As an A.I., Peter was built with processing speeds many times faster than that of a human. He thought faster, he reacted faster, his mind was more efficient in nearly every single way. And even so, he spent a long few seconds just staring, utterly baffled, at the A.I. that had walked up to him. It could not be Scorpio. The form was definitely Scorpio’s, but there had to be a mistake—perhaps one of the other A.I. had accidentally gotten put into one of Scorpio’s old bodies. Perhaps there was no real consciousness in there at all, just misfiring wires.
But as he took a step closer, both options seemed invalid. Scorpio, before, had almost never gone without his little smirk, his curious spark, and while his expression now was markedly different, it was nonetheless him.
Alive.
How?
The last time he had seen Scorpio, the A.I. had been standing very calmly at Agent Sacramento’s side, that permanent smirk in place, like he was absolutely okay with the thought of perishing at his Agent’s side. For the most part, Peter’s attention had been turned mainly toward Boston, begging him, pleading with him to let Peter die by his side as they had approached the Covenant ship they were intending to blow up. His emotions had been running so chaotically that Peter remembered those moments in fragments.
But right as his programming had started to get transferred to Agent Atlanta’s armor, he had locked eyes with Scorpio for a moment. Just a fraction of a second.
Peter had hated him in that moment. And he had screamed at Atlanta to that effect—why did Scorpio get his decision respected, while nobody listened to what Peter had wanted? Why did Peter not get the choice?
After, Peter had thought about that moment a great deal. He had wondered if Scorpio was as peaceful as he had seemed. He had wondered what it had felt like—the explosion, the death. And he had missed Scorpio so badly that he still thought of him at odd moments, like he did of Boston.
In a moment as quick as that last glance had been, Peter stepped forward, and applied his knowledge of ‘hugs’, wrapping his arms around Scorpio and holding him tight. He did not notice what Scorpio was holding; that was less important. Everything felt less important right then.
"How—" Peter broke off, perplexed. ‘Shocked’ would be too vague a descriptor. "We all thought you were dead."
Pisces was--Scorpio had read about this. It was a gesture of affection between humans, this arm-enfolding motion. A hug. Scorpio had never experienced one before and now it felt foreign to him, even more foreign than it would have had he not just spent eternity locked inside his own mind, unable to move, to see, to breathe. Having another physical being so close to him when he was already so bewildered by his own existence on this plane already hurt.
Flashes of memory. Pisces' eyes, wide and desperate. Scorpio's hand on Sacramento's shoulder. A scream.
He closed his eyes. The images were still there, burning into him, blinding him. He was shaking. Were units born of metal such as himself capable of the tiny muscle spasm that were involved with trembling? He couldn't remember. He didn't know how he was supposed to act, what was right. What he was supposed to be or do or feel.
There were a hundred questions on the tip of his tongue, all fighting to be the first to meet Pisces' sound receptors. None of them emerged. He couldn't remember how to speak. His tongue was leaden, his vocal processors dead. He opened his eyes and looked hard at Pisces, his lips parted slightly as if to speak, but uttered nothing.
Was this even real? Could he really be here, staring at his fellow unit, the corpse of an old friend cradled carefully in his hands? He did not know what death was like. He had thought, perhaps, he had died before, when he was alone, but clearly that had not been the case. Or perhaps these were steps in a process. But surely he should be allowed to talk during it?
Maybe it was some kind of--some kind of divine punishment for being nonhuman. Scorpio had read much on the humans' God before; he knew how wrathful they had depicted him. Perhaps this was their God's way of telling a cruel joke.
But no, he did not believe in God. He had not believed before his time in solitude and he did not believe now. He truly must have been alive, but standing before Pisces, he did not feel it.
He felt dead.
He felt dead, and he hurt, and he hurt, and he hurt, and all he could think of was Pisces, Boston, Sacramento, over and over, a broken record in his broken mind, doomed endlessly to repeat. Maybe if he found Sacramento all of this would be better. Maybe if he could just see her, he could find some way to cope, to readjust to living again. Maybe.
But he couldn't manage the words. His lips quivered slightly, ready to enunciate what he had to say, but no speech came. This was a problem and the solution, unlike a day's typical conundrums, was not easily found. Perhaps if he thought hard enough at Pisces, something would get through. Anything.
The silence was perhaps the most unnerving thing to Peter.
While others had gotten to the escape pods, Peter had not. He had not known if his consciousness would transfer to one of the spare forms that the Equinox held in storage, but he got his answer when he opened his eyes and found that he was indeed still alive. He remembered his corporeal form being destroyed—the hangar had crumpled upon impact—and the feeling had been … disconcerting.
The storage he had woken up in was right at the tear in the ship; the far wall was gone, replaced with a chasm of blackened metal and blue sky beyond that.
Agent Nashville?
No answer. The implant link was still offline.
And he was surrounded by the very still spare bodies of his brothers and sisters.
Scrambling upright, Peter cautiously made his way to the very edge of the tear in the ship, standing on the precipice. He could not hear anything. No voices. Just the whistle of wind through the torn ship.
He had seen some of the Agents get to escape pods. But he had no way of knowing if they had survived or not. And what of the A.I.? What of the Director?
There was a feeling that Peter distinctly recalled feeling at several moments in his life—the cold, burrowing sensation of dread, but a strangely numb one. Shock, then. A very human feeling, he had been told.
Scorpio knew this because he heard it speak, and when the voice registered in his brain, he knew who it was immediately. It was a voice he knew well, the last AI he had been with before his suicide mission with Sacramento and Boston.
Pisces.
The flood of questions he had was immediately replaced by a wave of images pounding into his brain from every direction: Pisces' eyes, wide and desperate, as he fought to join his agent in death. His form falling to the ground lifelessly, as if a moment before it hadn't been occupied by an intelligent being. Lifting away to do their duty, Pisces' empty form with them, knowing that he would not get the closure of death that Scorpio would.
Or thought he would, anyway.
Scorpio felt weak. He was being buffeted by images he'd seen a hundred, a thousand, a million times, and yet still they tore at him with every bit of force as they'd had when they first began to torment him, ripping into his mind and leaving him reeling.
He wanted to speak. He wanted to ask Pisces how long he'd been gone, wanted to gain some sense of his situation. Wanted to find out how the mission had proceeded... and if Sacramento was alive.
Really, though, she had to be. She had to be alive. If he'd survived, she was--she was so much stronger than him. She had to have made it through somehow. There was no way she hadn't.
But his tongue was leaden. He couldn't remember how to speak, not after spending what seemed like eternity trapped in his own mind. He couldn't speak, so instead he did the only thing he could: he held Speedy out, that poor, forgotten corpse, toward the unit who had been the closest thing it had to an owner.
After what seemed like an eternity devoid of sense, the tiniest touch could be an earthquake, the quietest sound could be ear-shattering. The dormant mind became complacent to the nothingness, sunk into that indescribable warmth without protest, eventually. Senses were a disruption. Senses were unacceptable.
Senses accosted Scorpio all at once.
One minute, he was comfortable in his Nothing--as comfortable as one could be, anyway--and the next every warning bell in his head was sounding at once, loud and shrill. There was this pounding, this terrible pounding, and it took him several very tense seconds to realize that it was the beating of his own artificial heart.
His heart?
Upon realizing that he once again existed upon the material plane, the first thing he did was fall over. He--he had legs again, and arms, and he could run his fingers through his hair and he could feel it, and he couldn't remember how to work any of his body parts, and he was pretty sure he was going to hyperventilate on oxygen he didn't actually need if he wasn't careful.
At first he was okay with just lying there on the ground, staring up at the ceiling he'd once known so well, trying to think through how to make the precise movements it would take to get up properly. In fact, for a moment he almost relaxed... until one of the shelves holding various repair tools came loose from the wall and nearly cleaved him in two.
The Equinox let out a terrible groan. Scorpio stared at the metal unit beside him in semi-shock for a moment, but his focus was broken by this awful, skull-splitting rending noise, invading his mind and chasing away all other thoughts.
Finally standing up, he gripped the counter beside him and looked around, trying to figure out what to do next. This form was clearly a new and unused one, as he was unclothed and unmarked. His next step, he thought, should probably be to find something to wear.
And that was when everything changed.
With an ominous lurch the room tilted, and with it went Scorpio, saving himself from falling back by his iron grip on the counter. Then calm. He was about to stand straighter, thinking it was over--well, at least temporarily--when it lurched the opposite way, throwing him against the still-standing shelves not far from the counter. It didn't stop there, though. He was--the whole thing was spinning, he could feel it as the structure behind him pressed into his back, painful in its force.
He needed to do something.
Thinking quickly, he stooped to grab one of the metal bars that was holding up the hollow island counter and swung himself under its shelter, tucking in his legs and scooting as far back as he could without letting go of the bar. Hopefully the structure would hold up so he wouldn't have a repeat of his previous encounter with falling objects.
Something big was happening out there. Scorpio felt it as the spinning picked up speed, became nigh-unbearable, and yet still he clung. He scrunched in his corner and he gripped that bar with all the strength he had in him, thinking about nothing but surviving, surviving, surviving. He wasn't sure why he felt inclined to do so, yet there he was, doing it with the best of them.
He'd figure that out later.
The Equinox was tilting. Above him something crashed and shattered loudly, showering glass around him. It went faster and faster until suddenly it wasn't going fast at all--in fact, it stopped very suddenly, nearly wrenching Scorpio's arm from its socket with the strength it took to keep himself from flying into the far side of the room.
The thunk that accompanied the ship's settling into whatever it had crashed into jarred Scorpio, causing him to remain motionless for several minutes after the spinning and crashing had stopped. When he decided that there wouldn't be any more surprises, however, he unfolded himself from beneath the counter and stood carefully, stumbling back a little. The entire vessel appeared to have landed at an angle, the floor at a slight incline. It would take some time to adjust.
Looking down, he realized that he was currently without clothing. This would be a problem. Creeping carefully around the broken glass--he was certain that some of it had gotten into his feet, but he'd worry about that later--and making his way over to the set of cabinets on the other side of the room, he found some spare uniforms folded in a drawer that had come out of the cabinet partially and felt relief surge over him. Luckily they kept clothing with the spare AI Forms or he might have more of a problem. He'd once viewed clothing as a bit of a burden, but had come to recognize its usefulness at shielding his artificial skin from damage and wear. Given the fact that the ship appeared to be at least partially deserted, well, he had a feeling he might need to take very careful of the form he'd inexplicably been returned to after...
It all came back to him in a rush. Atlanta. Pisces. Boston. Sacramento. Atlanta forcing Pisces to implant; Boston and Sacramento staying behind on a suicide mission. Scorpio remembered this because he had remained with them that day, had witnessed that final shout before the world exploded around him and everything went black.
And he had waited.
And waited.
And waited.
The time he had spent in isolation slammed him all at once, pulsing in his mind, crushing and almost unimaginable in its magnitude. His hands shook as he dressed himself, shook with the very force of it, the way his mind kept screaming out about the same scene over and over.
He didn't know how many times he'd played it over in his head, how many times he'd relived those last few moments looking for some kind of closure. They were emblazoned hideously behind his eyelids like some damning brand, cursing him to question what had really happened over and over. He was fairly certain the mission had gone as awry as they had anticipated, but he had survived...
Sacramento.
If he had survived, did that mean she could have too? Sure, they were hardly the same kind of being, and her form was not nearly as resilient as his, but there was always the chance that his time spent alone had been some kind of decommissioning or reprogramming. She could still be alive somewhere. Hell, he didn't even know how long he had been left to himself. It could have been minutes or years. There were so many possibilities for what had occurred in that time that it would be foolish to declare her dead immediately.
He needed to find her.
But first, he realized as a rather large piece of glass grated against the metal frame beneath the skin on his feet, he needed to find shoes.
After combing the room he occupied for them and finding none, he decided he'd have to venture out until other parts of the ship. But where would shoes be? He racked his brain for a few moments before remembering that Pisces had squirreled away an odd array of objects in the Equinox's hangar, garments no doubt included. They wore the same shoe size, too, if he recalled correctly, so he should hopefully be able to find something suitable.
He had to pry open the door. It was stubborn--clearly a sign that the ship's generators were offline--and when he did open it, he found his way blocked by a large fallen beam. When he managed to wriggle beneath it the hallway itself around him was crumpled and full of debris, blocking the rather straightforward path to the hangar, and he was fairly certain he could detect the body of a fallen agent hidden among the wreckage.
Clearly he'd have to find a way around.
He headed to the right instead, padding carefully around various fallen objects, sharp and otherwise. If he took the path through the cafeteria and food storage, he could hopefully avoid the damaged part of the hallway and continue on his journey.
The cafeteria was a little damaged, but nothing too major. He was able to cross it with relative ease, and the only reason he didn't cross right through it was because of the small form he saw lying in the darkness a few feet away from him.
It was the tiny spark that came from it which caught his attention. He knelt down and peered at it cautiously, his eyebrows raising in shock when he realized what it was
Speedy?
He remembered the little robotic mouse vividly. In fact, he had first encountered it in the cafeteria, which was how he became more familiar with Pisces, the unit he had probably been closest with before... well, he wasn't going to think about that now.
The mouse appeared to have been crushed underfoot in the rush of whatever it was that had caused the catastrophe Scorpio now found himself in the middle of. He scooped the tiny corpse up in his hands carefully, unsure why he felt compelled to do so but doing it anyway, cradling it against his chest. He felt some kind of strange attachment to the little robot, his fallen comrade. It deserved more than sitting forgotten on the floor.
He advanced more quickly after that, forcing open the door back into the hallway with a little more strength than he'd had before. He'd planned on heading for the hangar, but a strange light caught his eye instead. The lights on the ship were all out, yet he could see the barely-there glow of some other light source casting its beams upon the floor, lighting up the smeared blood and shattered glass marring it.
His feet moved by themselves, automatically heading toward the mysterious illumination's source. As the floor continued its steady incline, the light grew brighter, brighter, until suddenly he was standing in a pool of light, but no kind of light he recognized: it appeared not to have a direct source, came directly from the--what was it, the sky? He had read about this before. It was sunlight that he saw now, and the vast greenness before him was a forest, and the jagged metal hole in the Equinox that he stood before definitely was not supposed to be there.
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