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A biting wind was swirling in the air around a private military base as two men approached. Contracted by the government to pay it a visit, without the knowledge of anyone else in the building, they moved quickly and quietly. Agent Aban Stone opened the secret entrance door they had been told about, did a quick visual scan of the area, then nodded to the man behind him. Gun up and parallel to his shoulder, he walked in slowly, making absolutely sure that there were no immediate threats lurking in the corner. Behind him, Dr. Ivo Robotnik stormed in, a futuristic gadget in his hands. His eyes were glued to the screen on his little machine since Stone would take care of making sure they were safe. Robotnik’s job was to make sure the blinking dot on the screen, representing one Congressman Schultz, stayed where it was. He wasn’t due to leave the compound for the next thirty minutes, so that gave them twenty-nine minutes to eliminate everyone protecting him, then neutralize the Congressman himself and make a hasty exit before anyone could catch them in the act. Why the US Government wanted one of their own Congressmen assassinated, Robotnik didn’t know. But they funded all his research, so he didn’t mind sticking it to one of their stuck-up, pretty-faced legislators when needed. His various bank accounts and already overinflated pride could always use another boost.
“How are we looking, Stone?” Robotnik asked his assistant, still not taking his eyes off of the screen. Around the dot for the Congressman, a few other gray dots moved around him. Security detail, surely. The mini-Badnik prototypes the doctor had brought along would take care of them quickly, and Stone could finish off anyone they didn’t get to. The man seemed to have an itchy trigger finger when it came to keeping the doctor safe.
Stone lowered his gun to his side, but didn’t holster it just yet. “Room’s clear, Doctor. Where to first?”
With two fingers, Robotnik was able to easily zoom in on the compound and look into more specific rooms. The room they were in was visible and clear, with two blinking green dots representing both of them. He swiped over and looked to the north room next. There were a few gray dots in there, but he couldn’t fully see their movements, or who they were. Only that they were there. The west room showed the same, but the east room seemed to be empty - although he couldn’t guarantee that no one would be hiding in there. While his surveillance machine was high-tech and sophisticated, it was still experimental, and he hadn’t gotten a perfect reading on the compound while it was empty. Some of his readings could be inaccurate. But with the Badniks and Stone on his side, they could mitigate any risk of things going wrong.
“The east room,” Robotnik said, pointing at the door to the right. “That won’t put us too far away from the stairs, and they don’t start requiring scan cards until we get another level up. Schultz is in the control room on the main floor.”
Agent Stone nodded as he raised his gun up again, moving to the door. As he placed his hand on the doorknob, he leaned in and listened carefully. Robotnik raised an eyebrow, waiting to see if the man had heard something. But his assistant’s brow unfurrowed, and he opened the door slowly. After another quick scan of the room, he turned back to Robotnik and gave him a sharp nod with a hint of a smile beginning to grace his features. He always smiled like that when things were going well. More often than not, that smile was followed by praise, reassurance that the doctor was a genius. Not that Robotnik didn’t already know that, but he certainly liked to hear it as often as possible, especially when the brass were constantly questioning his intelligence with their stupid meetings and demands for progress reports.
But before the agent could even open his mouth, the crack of gunfire rang out, and Stone crumpled to the ground.
“Wh - STONE!” The name came out of Robotnik’s mouth before he could stop it. His eyes darted to his assistant laying on the ground, then up to find who was responsible for the shot. As soon as the assailant was in eyeshot, Robotnik pressed a button on his glove, and one of the miniature Badniks flew out from a small pack on his hip and filled the man with more holes than Swiss cheese before he could raise his gun again.
When the threat was neutralized, Robotnik fell to his knees, gathering up Stone in his arms. A quick scan told him that he was losing blood fast. Sufficient first aid couldn’t be performed in enough time to keep him alive.
“Goddammit Stone, how could you be so careless? Did your eyes stop working?” Robotnik had scolded Stone for missteps plenty of times, but there was a level of pain in his voice that he had never used before. He never thought he would be capable of this level of grief. It sounded foreign.
Stone’s eyes fluttered. He seemed to be using every ounce of strength he had to keep himself alive. “I’m s-sorry, Doctor. I failed you.”
“Damn right, you failed me! What the hell am I supposed to do without you?” Robotnik replied, clutching to his assistant as if he would fade away like dust at any moment.
But Stone could only repeat his apology. “I’m sorry, I-I’m so, so sorry…” Blood was beginning to pool around them, staining Robotnik’s clothes with all he would have left to remember him by. The agent opened his mouth to speak one more time, possibly for his final, dying declaration, but Robotnik couldn’t take it anymore. Whatever it was, he didn’t want to hear it.
“END SIMULATION. NOW.” He shouted, and everything faded to black around him.
Yanking the VR set off of his head, Robotnik had to use all of his will to not slam it into the ground. It was a delicate piece of equipment, and losing it now would mean he couldn’t continue his tests.
In one week, Robotnik and Stone would be going on the very same mission featured in the simulation. When they were given the orders, Robotnik saw it as the perfect opportunity to run an advanced and experimental program he had been working on for years - AI predictions.
It was something out of a programmer’s simultaneous wet dream and worst nightmare. Using all the information it could gather, it would simulate all the ways that a scenario could go, and determine the best course of action to complete their objective. It took a lot of data collection, from information about the military base to records on every staff member in the building. It didn’t have access to all the data he needed just yet, but the test run tonight would tell him just how far the program could go, and what gaps it had in its features. The eventual goal was to be able to run it in real time and get its information to one of his portable devices so he could make decisions at an instant. It would be the perfect tool, and every government in the world would be tripping over themselves to get their hands on it.
At the moment, he was only able to run scenarios in advance over VR with the limited information he had. There was no guarantee that it would be perfectly accurate, but it was better than what they had been doing before. The best laid plans couldn’t beat artificial intelligence.
What he didn’t realize, however, was how much watching a failed scenario would affect him. For the simulation to be considered a success, it needed to fulfill three requirements: complete the mission, keep Robotnik alive, and keep Agent Stone alive. Technically, keeping Stone alive was not automatically coded into what the program considered essential, but Robotnik added it in manually. Who else could competently make his ideal latte? He sure as hell didn’t have the time to do that, and any other pencil pusher the government would try to assign him would just screw it up.
Robotnik shook his head, trying to get the failed scenario out of his mind. No use in dwelling on it when he now knew what not to do. That was just the first one he tried. There were still thousands of other scenarios that the program was creating. Unfortunately, it hadn’t learned to mark which ones were successful and which ones were not. He had to go in manually and watch each of them to find what would give them the best outcome. And although there was plenty of time to do so, it was eating precious time out of his days that he could be using to work on any of his other projects or get his much-needed daily dance break in.
As he typed the results of the scenario into his computer, Robotnik was surprised to find that his heart was still aching. It came from a place that he hadn’t felt in a very long time, so long that he wasn’t sure he could fully identify it. Was the thought of failure so painful to him? Surely, it had to be that. He hadn’t experienced total mission failure in a very, very long time. Being confronted with it, especially in a way that felt real, must’ve been messing with his psyche.
But maybe it wasn’t just that.
Pushing that away, Robotnik set the program up to load the next scenario. He wanted the next one to be successful, but he knew that there was always the possibility that he would have to watch himself or Stone getting killed over and over for the rest of the day. Biting down on his lip to try and distract himself from that fear, he put the VR headset back on. “Begin simulation.”
The next simulation opened the same way the first one did. Stone entered the room, scanned it quickly, and nodded to the doctor. Robotnik entered the room, tracking the Congressman on his screen, and instead of telling him to go into the east room, he suggested the north room. It would take a little longer for them to get to the stairs that way, but as long as nobody died that wasn’t supposed to, it would be worth it.
“There seem to be three people in the room. Possibly more. Proceed as if they’re all armed and dangerous,” Robotnik warned his assistant, looking up to make sure he was listening.
Stone nodded. “Always, Doctor.” He raised his gun again, placed his hand on the doorknob, and listened. After a few seconds, he nodded again, as if to say that he had heard people talking. Robotnik pressed a few buttons on his gloves and three of his mini Badniks flew up around him.
“Now, my babies,” the doctor said with barely-restrained glee. “Let’s play.”
Stone turned the doorknob and entered the room, ready to fire at anyone within. Three men were inside, just like Robotnik’s tracker had predicted, and all three of them raised their guns at the pair. Before any of them could get a single shot off, the Badniks flew forward and got to work, shooting lasers at the men until they were all downed. Stone didn’t even have to waste any bullets.
“Excellent as always, Doctor,” Stone praised, looking over to Robotnik with the same smile he had seen earlier. The smile he had given just before he was killed. The memory gave Robotnik a pang of grief in his chest. Instinctively, he looked around the room to make sure nobody was about to come out of a closet and take Stone down.
After determining there was no one else in the room, Robotnik reached up and gave his mustache a small twist to try and hide any anxiety that might be readable on his face. “Yes. Indeed. Let’s keep moving.”
Watching the current simulation was teaching Robotnik that the north room was the best starter choice. They could easily take down the three men that would most likely be there when it came to the real thing. So far, so good. They moved from that room into the only room next to it, which would have only one man in it according to Robotnik’s tracker.
One of the mini Badniks easily shot down that man, much to the doctor’s relief. Maybe he got lucky and the second simulation was the perfect one. After checking his tracker again, he decided that the next room to the left would get them to the stairs as quickly as possible. But as the two began to head in that direction, Robotnik felt a sharp pain in his lower back, and he fell to the ground.
This time, it was Stone’s turn to cry out. “Doctor!”
When Robotnik looked to the side, he saw that the man in the room had managed to stay alive and fire off a shot at him. A bullet to the head from Stone stopped him from doing any more damage. Then, the agent immediately knelt down next to Robotnik.
“I guess my Badniks… still need some work,” Robotnik said through gritted teeth, hissing in pain. He pressed buttons on his gloves and did a quick self-scan - the shot wasn’t fatal, but he was going to have to be treated immediately, and there was a strong chance of paralysis from the waist down.
“Oh god, oh god, oh god…” Stone muttered, taking his jacket off to try and tie around Robotnik. The doctor had never seen the man so panicked before. He was almost always calm and controlled. But at that moment, he looked like his own life was at stake.
Before Stone could do anything else, Robotnik knew he had seen enough. “End simulation,” he said, and everything went dark again.
As he lifted the VR headset off of his head, he let out an irritated sigh. Even though nobody died in that scenario, the mission had to be aborted, and Robotnik would’ve been left with permanent damage to his spine. He typed the results into his computer, beginning to fear that he was going to have to sit through a long string of failures before he could find an acceptable result.
Although he was already feeling emotionally drained and wanted to give up for the day, the screen still listed countless options he was going to have to get through before they went on with the mission. He would have to try at least one hundred before he could call it quits and go play with his favorite little robots.
The next few scenarios continued just as bleakly as the first two did. Robotnik died. Stone died. Both of them were shot down before they could even get a chance to react. They were captured alive without being able to complete their mission. With each failed scenario, the doctor grew more and more frustrated. How many times was he going to have to see him or his assistant die before they could have a happy ending?
Well, a happy ending probably wasn’t the most accurate way to put it. It would be hard to call a situation where a Congressman meets the business end of a Badnik a happy ending, but at least it would leave Robotnik satisfied, and he wouldn’t feel any guilt. At least Robotnik and Stone would be alive.
One part of watching each scenario that Robotnik couldn’t stand was watching the very end. Every time one of them died, Stone seemed to have something on the tip of his tongue that he wanted to say. Probably a long string of apologies. Robotnik didn’t need to hear it over and over again. There were only so many times he could hear the agent beg for forgiveness before it began to really weigh on him.
Finally, after one hundred and fifty failed scenarios, Robotnik decided that he was done for the day. He pulled the headset off and set it back in its drawer, wiping sweat from his brow. Stone had died yet again, only offering praise for the doctor as he took his final breaths. Robotnik couldn’t stand it anymore. He could feel a small twitch beginning to form under his left eye, and his hands were shaking.
He stormed back into the main hallway of his lab, checking every door for his assistant. The caffeine craving was starting to hit, and there was only one person who could make satisfactory coffee. Just the thought of having a warm cup in his hands quickened his pace. Finally, he found Stone sitting in his office, typing away at something on his computer. He was breathing. The doctor had needed to see that.
“Stone,” Robotnik said firmly, not betraying any of the pain of watching the man die over and over again in his voice.
The agent looked up, alert and ready to take orders. “Yes Doctor?”
“I need a latte. Get it quick, or I’ll put an apple on your head and use you for Badnik target practice.” Before Stone could respond, Robotnik turned on his heels and stormed back off.
~
The next day, after an impromptu meeting with some government officials about machinery they needed for the Air Force, Robotnik sat down in the VR room to revisit their assassination mission. He was already in a bad mood from having to explain his genius to grown men like they were five, so he hoped that he could find the perfect scenario and get it over with. In the time that he had spent between the last session and now, his AI had already lined up at least a thousand simulations, ready for Robotnik to go in and view them. With a little bit of reluctance, he chose one at random and put the headset on.
“Begin simulation.”
The first scenario was an immediate bust. Robotnik was downed by two shots to the neck before he could unleash his Badniks. The next one went just about as well. The third one got them into the room with the Congressman, a rarity, but too many of the Badniks had been destroyed in previous rooms for them to have the manpower to eliminate all the soldiers surrounding their target.
After another sixty failed scenarios, Robotnik’s stomach was in knots. He still had six more days until they had to carry out the mission. Surely, he would find something acceptable by then. But how much more would he be able to take without cracking under the pressure? Even a man with as strong of a mental fortitude as his could only endure watching himself fail over and over again for so long. There was only one other person he knew that could potentially even begin to handle that kind of pain…
…Which was why Robotnik found himself standing behind Stone while he was feeding something into the copier. As he stared at the back of the agent’s head, he began to wonder if this was the right choice. Did passing off the duty to his assistant make him weak? Would Stone break down after only a few scenarios? Maybe the mental damage it would cause the man wouldn’t be worth it. Maybe this would be the thing that would finally drive him to quit. Robotnik couldn’t lose Stone. He was too valuable. That was the whole reason why he added his death to the list of unacceptable simulation endings. The program believed that Stone’s death would not be a loss to the mission or any future plans. But Robotnik didn’t feel the same way.
The doctor decided at that moment that handing the labor off to Stone wasn’t worth the potential consequences. He could just go back to his VR lab and continue watching as he had done so before. But before he had the chance to leave the room, Stone turned around. “Oh, hello Doctor! I could hear you come in. Did you need something?”
Of course Stone heard him. He was a special agent with years of espionage training. He could probably hear a pin drop two miles away. “No. It’s nothing,” Robotnik said, beginning to leave the room.
“Are you sure? I’m not doing anything right now that can’t wait. Just copying a few reports to send off,” Stone said with a smile, holding the papers up. “Whatever you’re working on is probably much more important. And interesting.”
That damn smile. Stone had always been more eager, more interested in Robotnik’s work than any other babysitter that had been assigned to him. That was why he was the only one who didn’t leave government work entirely one week in, or have to be brought out in a body bag. How could he deny the man any opportunity to bask in his genius? “Come with me.”
With a quick turn, Robotnik walked down the hallway, not looking back to see if Stone was following. “You know about the artificial intelligence program I was working on, right?”
Stone seemed to be keeping up well, despite the fact that he had to take quicker steps to match the doctor’s longer stride. “Yes doctor, you wanted to be able to predict outcomes of situations before they happen.”
“I’ve made significant progress on it. Enough so that I’m running simulations of our mission later this week. It’s still very experimental, and I can’t work in real time yet, but it’s already an incredible start.”
Stone lit up. “That’s brilliant! This will revolutionize the way we make important decisions.”
“Yes, yes, I know it’s brilliant.” When the two arrived at the door of the VR lab, Robotnik stopped abruptly, leaving Stone to nearly crash into him. “However, the program is not currently equipped to identify which scenarios are successes or failures yet. I’ve had to go in manually and watch each one. This is essential for the program to learn, but it’s taking up my valuable time.” He chose not to mention that it was wearing him down. No need to show the agent any weakness.
“So you’d like me to assist in viewing the simulations?” Stone asked. He seemed excited to be able to help. If only he knew how painful it would be.
Robotnik nodded, then opened the door to the VR lab. “It’s easy enough that even your miniscule brain could handle it. All you have to do is pick a scenario, put on the headset, and say ‘begin simulation.’ Then you watch it, say ‘end simulation’ when you’ve seen everything you need to see, and note the result as soon as you take the headset off.” He pulled the headset from the drawer and handed it over to Stone.
The agent examined it carefully, rotating it in his hands with a look of awe on his face. “Incredible! I’m so honored to be trusted with this.”
“Yeah, yeah. Don’t break it, or you’ll be cleaning this room top to bottom with a toothbrush.”
Stone sat down at the computer, logging in and loading up the program. Robotnik was already beginning to feel a pang of regret watching him do it. It would be fine, right? As long as he didn’t have to carry such a big emotional burden himself, it wouldn’t matter how Stone handled it. He could deal with it on his own time.
So why did it almost feel like it hurt?
“Well, I’ll leave you to it. If you have any problems, figure them out yourself. If you find a successful scenario, I’ll be in the maintenance room.” At that, Robotnik turned and left.
With every step he took down the hallway, he was feeling less and less certain about his decision. A decent-sized part of his brain was telling him to go back and tell Stone that he changed his mind. That he was too incompetent to do it, and Robotnik could just keep doing it himself. But no, this was for the good of both of them. If Robotnik was emotionally compromised, then he would never be able to get anything done. That wouldn’t help anyone. The doctor being the stable one would keep them working efficiently.
When he arrived in the Badnik maintenance room, the first thing he did was put some melancholic music on. Having something to listen to would be the best way to keep his mind off of whatever Stone was dealing with in the VR lab. Maybe the agent would be the lucky one to stumble upon a successful scenario immediately. Then he could stop wasting time worrying and go back to cool indifference.
But hours went by, and there was no sign of Stone. Time had been passing much more slowly than it ever had before while Robotnik was working. Usually his assistant had to remind him that it was time to eat or get some rest, since the doctor barely had any concept of time when there was work to focus on. But after three hours of checking the clock every five minutes, he was beginning to get worried. Maybe Stone hadn’t even been watching the simulations. Maybe he figured out how to hook up a video game on there and was doing that instead of working. It was almost a preferable option to the man being traumatized by three straight hours of death, but Robotnik would also make sure the man paid dearly for wasting his time.
His thought process was interrupted by the door to the room whooshing open. There stood Agent Stone, looking slightly pale. Robotnik’s heart fell into his knees.
“I found a successful scenario. Only took three hundred and twenty-one tries!” The man was trying to keep up his usual sunny attitude, but Robotnik could tell that there was pain behind those eyes.
“Did you mark it?” Robotnik asked, his hand clenching around the screwdriver he had just been using.
“Of course. You’re welcome to go in there and confirm.”
“You’re dismissed, Agent. Go get some rest,” Robotnik said, turning his gaze away from the other man.
“But Doctor, I still have other work to-”
“I said you’re dismissed,” Robotnik fired back, harsher than before. After hearing the door close, he stood up and threw his screwdriver to the ground. It had gone exactly as he had feared. The man’s spirit had been broken from seeing the two of them die or fail so many times. And he had watched even more than Robotnik had. He couldn’t even begin to imagine the kind of turmoil that must have put the poor man through.
After a few moments of brewing in frustration, Robotnik stomped out of the maintenance room and headed right back down the hallway to the VR lab. No sign of Stone. He must’ve taken the hint and made himself scarce. When he got back to the lab, he found that the headset had been delicately placed back where it belonged, and the computer was open to the simulation that had been marked a success, waiting for Robotnik to review it.
The doctor sat down in the chair, put the headset on, and with the sense of guilt still itching at him, told the program to begin the simulation.
It opened as every other scenario had, with the two entering through the secret door and Robotnik checking his device. They went into the north room, then into the next room over where Stone took down the man inside with a bullet to the head so the Badniks didn’t have the chance to fail at neutralizing him. They continued to move from room to room on the first floor, taking down every man and woman inside until they reached the stairs and had to scan in with a falsified ID card.
On the second floor, they cleared the first room they arrived in easily, but had some trouble on the next one. Stone could hear from inside that the soldiers had been alerted to their presence, and they were preparing to hunt them down. After communicating that information to Robotnik, Stone looked at him with a furrowed brow, as if weighing some options. He ultimately decided to turn back to the door and fling it open, revealing six angry soldiers with guns raised. The Badniks rushed forward and assisted Stone in eliminating the enemies, but not before the agent took a bullet to the shoulder, and Robotnik just narrowly missed taking one to the abdomen.
“Goddammit, you couldn’t come out of this unscathed, could you?” Robotnik snapped, approaching his assistant to examine the wound. His scan told him that it was not lethal, and could be fully treated once the mission was over without risking major damage. The doctor reached down and snatched a tourniquet from one of the soldiers, then quickly assisted Stone in getting it on, mumbling to himself about how his Badniks were far more reliable.
“You’re right, Doctor. I’ll try to not get shot next time,” Stone said with a wry smile.
Once the tourniquet was secured, the two men cleared the rest of their path to the control room, only having to take down three more soldiers in the process. They were making good time with five minutes remaining before the Congressman was set to leave the base.
Although Robotnik was a little worried about the amount of Badniks and bullets they had, he was pleasantly surprised that when he got into the control room; the amount of guards surrounding the Congressman was minimal, and they were able to easily neutralize them. That left just one horrified legislator.
“I’ll call the Badniks back. You take care of Schultz with a bullet to the head,” Robotnik said to Stone as he pressed a few buttons on his gloves. The Congressman could only whimper in fear as Stone circled around him and fired at the back of his head, execution style.
At that, both the Robotnik in the scenario and the Robotnik in real life let out a relieved sigh. “Well, I would’ve said that this went off without a hitch, but you had to go brain dead and let yourself get shot.”
There was a little bit of shame on Stone’s face, but he mostly mirrored the doctor’s relief. “I’m sorry, Doctor. I won’t let it happen again.”
“You’d better not. Now we’re going to have to move double time to get back to the mobile lab and treat that wound before the tourniquet starts doing serious damage.” Robotnik plugged a USB drive into the main board that would wipe out all of the camera footage of them raining down terror on the base. How the news and government would try to spin the ‘terrible tragedy at the military compound’ didn’t matter to him, as long as his nose stayed clean.
Although they had successfully assassinated Congressman Schultz, the mission wasn’t officially a win yet. They still had to get out of the base and get back to the mobile lab so Stone’s gunshot wound could be treated. But once Robotnik watched them get out safely, he was satisfied with the results.
“End simulation,” he said, a huge weight lifting from his chest. He took the VR headset off and gazed with pride at the green “SUCCESS” bar on the screen. His program worked. And now, with some help, it could continue to be trained on labeling scenarios - maybe with something less scarring, like whether a complete stranger was able to cross the street safely. Seeing a little old lady getting hit by a car a hundred times wouldn’t break his heart.
Robotnik was just getting ready to close the program and wipe his hands clean of it when he noticed a small notification on the screen. There was one simulation that had been viewed, but not marked as a success or failure. Had he forgotten to mark one in his emotionally exhausted state earlier? Curious, he moused over and clicked on it. The timestamps on the program showed that it had been viewed three times - once about an hour ago, and two more times before Robotnik came in and watched the successful one. No other information about it was available. The only person that could’ve seen it was Stone, considering that Robotnik had given up hours ago.
“Hm… interesting…” He said out loud, putting the VR headset back on. Maybe it had just been an error on Stone’s part, but why would he have watched it thrice if so? “Begin simulation.”
As the opening of the scenario began to unfold, Robotnik observed as it went almost the exact same way as the successful one had. The only difference was that two extra Badniks had gone down in the fights on the first floor. Likely incompetence on Stone’s part, Robotnik thought. But what was so special about that?
After getting to the stairs, the two men went to the second floor and cleared the first room with ease. But where the simulation had a large divergence was after that, when they could hear the soldiers on the other side of the door. Robotnik realized that with two fewer Badniks than the successful scenario, they would have a much more difficult time eliminating everyone. Stone turned back from the door, just as he had before, but he looked at the Badniks at first. Maybe he was calculating their odds and realizing that they were in trouble. And the look on his face when his eyes met Robotnik’s was far more worried. “Doctor, I…”
“Stone, spit it out,” Robotnik snapped. “We don’t have much time.”
After hearing that, the look of worry on Stone’s face quickly morphed into one of determination. Without another moment to think, he crossed the room, placed his hands firmly on both sides of Robotnik’s face, and pressed their lips together. Both in the simulation and out, the doctor’s brain short-circuited. He didn’t even have any time to react before Stone pulled away and flung the door open. The Badniks rushed forward to meet the soldiers, and Stone started firing as soon as they were in sight, but it wasn’t as strong of an approach as it had been in the other scenario. After getting two shots off, Stone was downed with a bullet to the neck.
Everything seemed to move in slow motion. The Badniks finished off the remaining soldiers, keeping any more harm from coming to the two men, and Robotnik rushed to the agent’s side. “S-Stone, you… you… goddammit, Stone!”
Stone was unable to speak, but he reached up and placed a hand on the doctor’s face. Despite the fact that he was bleeding out, there was a smile on his lips. He tried to mouth something, but the last of his life force drained away from him before he was able to finish his words. All Robotnik could make out was something that looked vaguely like “isle.”
“Fuck… fuck!” Robotnik didn’t realize that he was saying it out loud until he had ripped the headset off his head, not even taking the time to tell the computer to end the scenario. His chest heaved as he looked up at the screen. A blinking box was waiting for him to enter if it was a successful simulation or a failure, and the doctor pounded in the word failure so hard that he thought the keyboard would break.
Was there a singular sick, twisted universe out there where Stone would think to kiss Robotnik before throwing himself into open fire that he knew he would die in? It had to be a cruel joke by the computer. All of the data for Robotnik and Stone’s behavior in the simulations was created by analysis of every file on them that ever existed, along with surveillance recordings, both public and private. None of the scenarios had ever shown either of them acting out of character. Robotnik couldn’t understand why only one simulation, under those specific circumstances, would show Stone kissing him.
Unless it wasn’t just one simulation.
At that moment, Robotnik remembered that in every scenario where one of them died slowly in the presence of the other, he had stopped watching them before it completely ended. There was still time after the bullets had embedded themselves into their bodies. This was just the only time something showy happened before whatever took them down.
Furiously clicking away on the keyboard, Robotnik lined up a queue of all the scenarios that had time left over after one of them had been shot. He wanted every single one that could show one of them saying or doing something as they bled out. After loading them up, he set the recordings to only play those last few seconds before either Robotnik’s view went dark, or Stone was no longer breathing.
When he put the headset back on and told the program to begin the simulations, he found that he was launched back into the very first scenario he had watched. The man who had shot Stone in the abdomen was dead on the floor, and the agent himself was in Robotnik’s arms. Previously, he had ended it just when Stone began to speak, but this time, it picked up right where it left off.
“I love you, Doctor. Forgive me for failing you…”
As Stone’s eyes closed, the program immediately launched Robotnik into the next scenario. In another one where Stone died, he made a very similar declaration, pressing their foreheads together. In one where Robotnik died, Stone’s lips grazed the doctor’s ear as he begged him to hang on, saying that he couldn’t live without him. One where Stone used the last of his strength to kiss Robotnik. One where the agent said that he only wished he could’ve shown Robotnik how much he loved him before they both died. One after the other, Robotnik watched Stone confess his love every single time he had the chance to. The first kiss he saw hadn’t been an outlier - it was a consistent pattern of behavior based on data from Stone’s personal life.
When he couldn’t take it anymore, Robotnik ended the simulations and pulled his headset off. As he sat back in the chair, his mind swirled with feelings that he didn’t understand. Watching Stone die, even without hearing his final confession, had made him feel like someone had ripped his heart out of his chest. The combination of that and continuous failure had been what did him in and made him hand off the rest of the duties to Stone himself. But the agent didn’t tell Robotnik about the scenario with the big kiss. In fact, he probably thought that the doctor would never even see it. If it weren’t for that one missed label, he never would’ve known about Stone’s feelings.
And he never would’ve realized that those feelings were reciprocated.
But for now, he didn’t know what to do with those feelings. Those had to be tucked away. The Robotnik in the one successful scenario didn’t know about Stone’s secret affection, and he was afraid that behaving any differently because of it would cause the mission to fail. If sticking to the plan would assure that no dying declarations would have to be made, then that would have to be the way it went.
Before Robotnik left the VR lab, he took a moment on the computer to delete all of the failed simulations. The program had learned all it could from those, and he would be ready to work on it more after the assassination was successful. Besides, there was no point in keeping clips of Stone saying that he loved him while he was dying. He would much rather hear him say it while they were living.