Chapter Text
Humans so close to death, they break. Something about their minds not matching their bodies… KAY/O had experienced it plenty as a machine, through routine fixes and maintenances. But he could tell that this, more than anything else, was breaking Brimstone’s mind apart.
“It’ll be okay.” Brimstone had started saying, hand reaching up towards the side of KAY/O’s monitor. KAY/O knew his monitor would be cold to the touch, no comfort for this dying man- he held his hand in his instead, hot radianite pumping through them almost like blood through veins.
Brimstone saw this and grew quiet. His eyes grew dim, not like he was dead, but like he was somewhere else.
“My legs…” he murmured. “I can’t move my legs.”
KAY/O did not move. He knew, even from the blast alone, that his legs were as broken as his mind.
Brimstone shuddered, squeezed his eyes. “Is this how you felt?” He tried to laugh, but it sounded more like jilting squeaks. “It’s awful.”
KAY/O said nothing.
Brimstone’s breathing came heavy and difficult now. “I…” He had been staring into KAY/O’s monitor, but now he shook his head. “No, doesn’t matter now. I can’t die here.” He tried to laugh again. “KAY/O, there’s too much left to do. I’m not… I’m not done yet.”
KAY/O nodded, lifted Brimstone’s body up in his arms. “I’m taking you back.”
Brimstone nodded, grew quiet again. The walk back was long and slow. Wreckage stood around them, fires and torn apart buildings. But KAY/O knew none would disturb them. Everything for miles, even Reyna, was dead.
In the distance, KAY/O finally made out the beginnings of their safehouse. “Brim, we’re here.” KAY/O spoke gently, more gently than he had ever dared to before. So close to safety, Brimstone’s weight no longer felt heavy, but reassuring. KAY/O clutched him a little tighter.
Killjoy was the one who opened the door. Her long hair was strewn about wildly, her eyes panicked. She saw KAY/O and relief flooded across her face- and then she glanced down and screamed.
KAY/O followed her gaze. Only too late did he realized that Brimstone was already gone.
[2 MONTHS LATER]
Killjoy never asks anyone for help. And on the rare occasions she does, KAY/O would certainly be at the bottom of the list of people that she would ask. But, stuck with just them two being the only people around that day, she really doesn’t have a choice.
After all, Brimstone has wayyyyyyyy too much shit for her to sort through on her own.
And so, KAY/O and her are in Brimstone’s old room. It’s small and a bit cramped, but mostly neat. The bed is smartly tucked, the bedside drawer and desk empty of clutter, and beside a small layer of dust residing over the windowsill and on top of the clothes drawer, it’s mostly clean.
The real mess comes from the adjourning room, too big to be a walk-in closet and used more as a storage unit rather than as a place to store clothes anyways. Besides an exercise bag tossed carelessly by the door, the rest of the room is inhabited mostly by tall towers of cardboard boxes. They are all roughly the same size and scribbled on in a thick, dark colored scrawl that KAY/O recognized as Brimstone’s handwriting.
They’d been sorting the boxes for ages now. Killjoy had quickly been getting frustrated with KAY/O asking her questions on what to do with this or what, mostly odd trinkets or other human knickknacks that both KAY/O and even Killjoy have no use for.
He eventually comes upon an unlabeled box and opens it to find hundreds of small card sized shapes. When Killjoy glances over, her eyes widened in recognition.
“Brimstone liked to collect old memory chips.” She remarks. “I mean, he kept like journals and stuff too, other memorabilia. But once we figured out how to record memories, he’d tried to collect those from people too. Actually, it’s why you have a built in port for them too, he thought it’d be more useful to review stuff.”
Killjoy pauses for a moment before continuing. “In your case it’s useful, but honestly, he kind of had a hoarding problem with all this old junk.” She laughs. “Talk about an old fart obsessed with the past!”
KAY/O scolds her gruffly, “Don’t talk shit.” He glances at the memory chips, humorlessly avoiding her eyes. Most of them had corroded, he can see exposed broken wires and rust coating the outside sleeves. One, near the top, remained untouched. He picks it up gingerly with his large metal fingers, toying with the jet-black sleeve until he finds the zipper, and opens it. The chip inside is customized, almost like a face, but beyond that and the fact that it’s unlabeled, it’s the same as the others.
KAY/O runs the calculations in his head. “I’ll scan through the viable ones and see if there’s any useful information.” He tells her. “I’ll rerecord the important data and import it onto the servers, then I’ll just toss the rest. Sound good?”
Killjoy nods. “Affirmative!” She shouts with a laugh.
KAY/O nods and gets to work. Killjoy begins to work on boxes on the other side of the room, trying to be quiet… but KAY/O has soon lost himself in the data of the memory chips. Many are just logs, digital diary entries or short notes with only timestamps and little else of note. Some are from Brimstone himself. Audio or written recordings on people he met, or lost.
KAY/O takes note of a young man from Russia. The file is small, but it’s the first one that includes a genuine digital memory. The audio and tactile aspects of the file was distorted beyond repair, and the vision file itself is mostly white noise. However, after a little adjusting and running it through a few programs, KAY/O is able to get it to a point where he can see through the fuzzy, scratchy lines running through the video.
It’s from the perspective of the man. Judging by the height, he’s young, not quite a child though, or perhaps just a little shorter than average. It’s of a snow-covered shipyard, long icicles protruding down from the edges of buildings and along clanging metal fences.
A lone woman wanders through it. Despite being lightly dressed, she doesn’t appear to be cold. Long dark hair cascades down her back, light in color at the ends, and she’s carrying a gun in one hand.
KAY/O freezes. Rewinds the video, watches it again. Over and over. Even through the mass of pixels and interferences, he can tell who it is with just one look- that bitch Reyna.
Even though she’s dead, the fact of it does little to ease KAY/O’s mind. Still, he figures that perhaps she had been doing something important at that location, and so he picks out a few screenshots of the surroundings and sends them off to be stored on the server.
Another chip is full of logs. This one KAY/O is able to go through more quickly. It’s light on the information, but confirms the identity of the one who held the memory of Reyna- a young man by the name of Sasha Novikov. KAY/O wonders about this young man- he must have been quite talented to be able to spy on Reyna without her noticing. However, the log also later confirms his death, leaving KAY/O feeling disappointed that he hadn’t been able to meet him.
On the same chip, he also finds information on a rather sticky individual; one Vincent Fabron, a cutthroat weapons and arms dealer hailing from France. On the chip, Brimstone notes how troublesome the individual is, playing both sides of the war and eventually betraying humans and destroying multiple necessary facilities before joining up with the radiants. This time, KAY/O isn’t surprised to find information on his death; he’d already heard about his demise at the hands of the same people that he had betrayed his fellows humans for. KAY/O does however take time to mark down some locations that Fabron had frequented or shown interest in before uploading them to the server, wondering if there might be stored weapons or other shady business deals still going on there today.
After sifting through the rest of the viable chips, KAY/O finally finds himself staring down the last chip- the one in the black sleeve. It wasn’t that he had been saving it for last per se, it simply worked out that way. As well, KAY/O doesn’t suspect that it is that important, being unmarked and custom built after all. Possibly the information on it is mostly… sentimental.
Still, it had been something that Brimstone had kept. This fact makes it feel somehow special to KAY/O, somehow warm between his cold metal fingers. Opening a compartment in his chest, he slides the chip into his installation port. Like all the rest, it fit snugly, without so much as a squeak of complaint.
Opening the chip’s files, KAY/O is surprised to find all of them to be entirely recorded memories, including the audio and tactile files still intact. Perusing a few of them, he finds them to be of a strange, rather benign day-to-day life. Many of them were extremely similar, featuring the same faces and taking place more or less within the same building, occasionally with small clips of driving in a car or going to a market. KAY/O would be quick to dismiss them if it weren’t for the fact that they were in such good quality, lovingly kept, and that almost every single video featured Brimstone’s face.
This must be his family, and his life from before the war. KAY/O thinks. Though I’ve never heard about his family so… obviously it didn’t end well. He begins processing each one, fast forwarding through the audio and simply getting glimpses at Brimstone’s past life. He is at once nostalgic, seeing that face, but mostly there is only an emptiness inside him as he gazed at these videos- or even a small pang of envy that he hadn’t been able to know a Brimstone during peacetime as well as during war.
He stops suddenly, on one frame. He notes a small, dark figure in the distance, in someone else’s yard. One frame it’s there, the next it’s gone. KAY/O studies it a bit longer, confused. No human should be able to move that fast. Could that figure possibly have been… a radiant?
KAY/O makes up his mind. He sets aside a few of these videos that feature this strange intruder, and begins to watch them in earnest. Audio and tactile settings on, he closes his eyes and lets the memories of this unnamed human begin to fill his head.