Heel, Sit, Stay
“Soldier.”
“Sir.” The sentry snapped to attention and saluted him; NOV nodded in return.
“I wish to speak to my comrade,” he whirred under the glassy helmet, and the sentry bowed and stepped back to let him pass through.
His purr crescendoed as he prowled down the dark hall, breath short, boots silent. His time to act grew short. If caught, both he and the innocent sentry at the door would surely receive punishment. The thought quickened his pace. No, he couldn’t let the sentry be punished for this. Spotting the room, he gently cracked the door and entered.
His target rested face down on a long palette. His circuitry, blackguard in pattern, was blacked out completely, no doubt from the heavy damage he had sustained. Only a few guards in a hundred cycles received damage as substantially as this one without dying. No disc, core processor ruined to the point of memory loss—he would have to start a new life. The damaged guard would be fitted with a new template disc and sent back out into the field.
Removing the disc clipped to his own back, he examined it with his finger tips. The disc looked like any other guard’s disc, or a sentry’s disc, or the disc of anyone from this system. Just another cog in the machine. After everything he did, no one would notice a swap.
In front of him, the hole bloomed and gaped, and red pixels fell like shattered glass—
How many nights had he spent sleepless since that encounter? How many times had he paused and wondered if he could become the monster? How many times did he meditate by systematically clearing hellish memories from the disc of a fallen enemy?
This disc in his hands was safe now. A personality template, without time to make it bitter and cynical. The same person at birth, but not as in life.
In one precise and fluid motion, NOV slotted Dante’s disc into place on the defunct blackguard’s back, releasing it as soon as the syncing light flickered to life. The wireframes of limbs rezzed into place with a hiss.
No turning back now.
