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The Final Weapon glows like the sun, molting bits and pieces as it gets pelted by the atmosphere. The insides creak and heave as physics do their part, and from somewhere deep inside, a battle of insurmountable stakes rages on, ever more desperate.
The sound of the structure folding under its own circumstances, however, is but a whisper to him. A hazy white noise, as he trudges through the shrinking hallways and mounting piles of debris and spaceglass. Meaningless, as he floats somewhere between death and ecstasy, wires fried and the taste, the smell of the virus on his rusting tongue.
He's coming to see it all blow to bits. The fight is a foregone conclusion, and the conclusion- he's harmed him, the hope of humanity. Sowed doubt into him that will haunt him, and as his lord and master strikes him, it will fester.
The virus-laden mucus could hurt his body. It could touch at his lessers. But the mind? The mind was hardly penetrable, and yet he'd done it.
Double has been loyally duplicitous. All that comes now is irrelevant, but the contentment... It spills from within him, just like the dipols running his shell. He doesn't long, and he makes sure to savor it.
But then he runs into her corpse.
He laughs for an unidentified amount of time. He should know, but his sensors are shutting down and- it's so funny. It's so pitiful.
It's almost as if fate is on his side, he thinks lazily, sitting down- collapsing into a sitting position- next to her. He regards her, a picture of untainted beauty, all but sleeping peacefully on the one unmoved plane in the entire station- but there is a story there, the untold truth in the carnage that stretches outwards from her resting place.
Iris, the ingenue, piteous girl, has made a stand here. She now lies dead, her hair smoothed and fingers woven together in an act of belated, loving courtesy.
They didn't even take her body.
The sounds of the battle no longer register in his sensors. The explosions sound so far away, it's almost as if they've already decompressed.
But that is okay. He cannot wait, affirmed by it all. Perhaps fate has led him here, to this spot, so he may die knowing that the Hunters don't merely face the might of the Sigma faithful. This tapestry of half-baked strikes- Bits and pieces of frayed data- testament to wounds that run deeper than mere hardware scans.
The Hunters are destroying themselves.
Double stares at Iris in awe.
His wires seemingly cross, then. He cannot help but feel a sliver of affection for this corpse - this empty shell of a ravaged botchling, betrayed so callously by the people she loved at her darkest hour. To him, back when, she presented a picture of faith - and she proved herself as such, somehow both affirming and subverting his expectations.
With a stand of single combat in the way of Zero and the slaughter of her people, the defeated, unmoving doll wins his respect.
They didn't even take her body.
It's okay. He feels it- that he doesn't feel it- his motor functions. They gave way three seconds ago. His internal scan is lagging, because there is nothing there to carry the data. It's like he's there, but he isn't.
Double is a religious individual. His religion is Sigma- no, his religion is the virus. The world the virus brings is cleansed of impurities, suffused in that gentle scent. In it, he teaches. In it, his directive is fulfilled, and he is blissful and true.
The space station whispers to him silently through mounting dents and cracks. His functions are closing, and the death throes of his hardware flash red behind his optics. The lighting blinks white, then red, then white again. He's frozen stiff, optics fixated on this girl - the little flower in the soot of the world, and- for a one- for one last while, he- he decides to keep her company.
The silicone plating of the station breaks. He sees it, ever so slowly, the rising whirlwind of shrapnel, and dust, and her hair- her hair floating everywhere as the Final Weapon gives its final breath. Raw sunlight dawns on them as the ground splits open around and between them- vertical beams of alloy rising to the surface as they are repelled by- by- only one possible thing. She remains impassive through it all. There is nothing left for them, and the end is nigh, just centimeters below their feet, and though he can't hear it, he can imagine. The future...
Double lets his consciousness go.