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The wind was rushing past KAY/O as loud as a roaring storm. He was weightless as the ground rushed up to meet him, and yet the robot didn’t feel afraid of the steep drop. He hit the ground with a thunderous thump, the area rippling with a strong shockwave.
“YOU. ARE. POWERLESS!” KAY/O felt the radianite shockwaves leave him in a strong pulse, rendering the target powerless. The resulting chaos was loud yet dealt with quickly. Sova and Breach drew their weapons as the robot activated his ultimate, causing the woman who had been terrorizing them for so long to falter.
“Freeze! Hands in the air!” KAY/O commanded, lifting his judge to head level.
“Don’t move!”
“Get them up now!” Sova and Breach followed, surrounding the woman in a loose circle. With the robot’s ultimate, there was no way for her to escape. The two men closed in, handcuffing the woman easily. She didn’t resist, keeping her head bowed, draping black and white hair hiding her face.
“Target secured. We got her.” KAY/O reported, lowering his weapon slowly.
“Uh, hold on. She was alone?” Neon spoke up confused as she shuffled on the outside of the group. She seemed on edge, almost afraid of this woman’s power, yet curious as to how this entire situation stemmed from just this one woman.
“She’s a radiant.” KAY/O noted. It didn’t really answer Neon’s question entirely, but it was all the group had for now. The confusion and wariness were broken by faint sirens in the background. Cypher’s police scanner jumped to life from the Moraccan’s jacket, causing the masked man to remove it and let the device crackle for a second.
“My scanner’s picking up chatter. Police coming.”
“Something feels off.” Sova said warily, expressing what all the agents were silently thinking. The entire mission was almost too easy. By now KAY/O had stopped using NULL/cmd, the area eerily filling with the wail of distant police cars.
“Of course it does,” Chamber stated, staring down at the unknown woman. He had a distasteful but calculating look. The french man looked up, pulling his tour de force back into the various metallic stripes on his body. “We didn’t find the target. She brought us here.”
“You think it was a trap?” Breach reiterated.
“Hey!” Cypher snapped, waving the small police scanner in his hand. His head titled, cybernetic eyes squinting slightly in an expression that conveyed urgency. “We have to move.”
“Orders stand. Everyone rendezvous at the LZ. We’re taking her back to base for interrogation. Move out.” KAY/O commanded, remotely pulling the Vulture out of idle. For now, questions could wait for when everyone was safe back at Headquarters.
With Fade now in the VALORANT protocol’s possession, things didn’t get much better. The woman was resistant to questioning and her power was volatile, managing to reach out beyond the holding cell despite it being made to contain radiants.
It didn’t help that the Turkey strike team seem to be a particular target of hers. Neon and Breach complained about the ‘nightmares’ the most, distancing in the furthest parts of the base from the holding cell. Sova, Cypher, and Chamber seemed more restrained in their experience. Though that didn’t mean KAY/O didn’t see them falter from time to time.
For a while, the robot didn’t quite get the human’s fear. He never really did, given his nature, but at the bare minimum, he knew what emotions were meant to look like. By some mercy, KAY/O was built upon the consciousness of a human - and he knew this for a while. He’d see memories and learned to connect these visions to certain emotions over time.
He was standing by a lakeside, laughing heartily. KAY/O stared down at his human feet, dark toes digging in the bank as the water lapped at the edge. The cargo shorts he was wearing were getting soaked by the damp sand but he didn’t seem to mind at the time.
“Hey Liam, come sit with me!” KAY/O glanced over his shoulder, the vision blurring into a kaleidoscope of colors. The memory grew almost heavy, slipping away but a tiny voice always slipped through the crack when this one came to mind.
“Yeah yeah! I’m coming in a second, Ta-”
Well, KAY/O never really knew how that one ended. All the robot knew was that he was quite ‘happy’ at the time, as humans would put it. And he experienced the world this way. A conflicting mess of jumbled code and human memory that functioned as a sentient AI - yet was so much more than that.
He saw a memory he’d never seen before when the woman unleashed her power again back at Headquarters. It reached out through the whole complex like desperate, drying roots looking for water. And it found him, peacefully resting in sleep mode.
The holding room filled with soft whispers of malice, spitting and curling into dark tendrils. They wound into the robot’s metal exterior, seeping into every crevice available and reached for KAY/O’s fears.
KAY/O couldn’t move. He cracked open his eyes to a smoke-clogged world and let out a wheezing cough. Layers of dust clouded his vision, and for a while, the robot existed in a delirious state of confusion and pain.
The sound of crunching soles brought him back to reality and KAY/O desperately squinted through the wreckage. He called out, the sound diminishing into a pitiful croak, but it was enough. The footsteps grew urgent and drew close, causing a pounding pain to pass through KAY/O skull.
“Tariq, shit!” KAY/O recoiled from the name. Something about the weight of it felt wrong and foreign - like it wasn’t meant to be his. Just as quickly as it was said, KAY/O forgot it in an instance and it was shoved far away to a place he wouldn’t easily find it again.
“Liam.” He wheezed, voice painfully human. Slowly he became weightless, the feeling of several pounds of rubble easing off his body making it easier to breathe but so much more agonizing. KAY/O struggled, wheezing again as the breath turned into a rattle. Light hit him and his skin grew warm under the glow, but it was replaced with coldness again as a shadow loomed over him.
“I’ve got you. It’s okay, just stay awake. Please.” A desperate voice keened. KAY/O wanted to reassure this person but he was just too tired. Fighting to open his eyes, KAY/O reached out a hand, ignoring the way it felt like he’d plunged it into fire.
“Don’t.” The man choked out, grabbing the arm firmly. It hurt like hell and KAY/O cringed, but the feeling slowly became numb. “I’m getting us out of here.”
“Liam..” KAY/O tried again, barely managing to finish the word before running out of breath.
“Fuck, you promised!” KAY/O would have laughed at such a human sentiment, but instead, he cried. In an instant, he was filled with overwhelming grief without knowing why.
“Sorry.” KAY/O let go and fell away into darkness. “I’m so sorry.”
It was suffocating, pulling at his limbs and dragging him through a torrent of sludge. He kicked and clawed, his limbs becoming stronger than before - less human and more machine. Memories of ‘Tariq’ blurred into a jumbled mess that made less sense the more the robot fought.
Tariq was not written into his code and thus wasn’t meant to exist. As the darkness swallowed him whole, the memory of a man died and a new phoenix was borne from its ashes. With renewed strength, he tore through the darkness and was blinded by light.
KAY/O jolted into a sitting position, the room around him bathed in a sickly orange glow. The room was destroyed as if an explosive had gone off in the building and the rubble was just barely holding. KAY/O struggled to free himself from the various piles of concrete around him, but eventually, the robot clawed himself free from the concrete.
The air was thick with dust and he could hardly see more than ten feet in front of him, but a quick calibration and the room faded into clarity. Scanning over his surroundings, KAY/O froze, spotting a familiar orange herringbone cap in the distance.
KAY/O didn’t recognize the emotion he ‘felt’ then. He’d always heard the other agents describe fear, but that didn’t quite fit the emotion he felt tear through him now. With the desperation of a man, KAY/O navigated the room even with his faulty components. It took an agonizing number of minutes, but he came face to face with the catalyst of this nightmare.
“Liam.” ‘Brimstone.’ Why did that name always come back to haunt him? The sight brought on confusion, but also pain. A type of anguish KAY/O had never felt before. Even if this wasn’t the man he knew now, this grief felt all too real.
He felt afraid. Afraid of history, this vision, whatever sick future this was, becoming real.
The man’s figure didn’t move, even as the robot lifted the fallen man carefully and carried him away from the destruction. The outside world was riddled with the scars of war - fire plaguing every last standing structure - but KAY/O could only focus on laying his friend to rest.
KAY/O woke up with a whirring gasp. The noise echoed pitifully in the empty engineering room the robot called home, and KAY/O spent a few minutes processing whatever that was. He’d never seen a ‘vision’ quite like that one. It felt more personal - considering he had his robot body and all - and someone in it was disturbingly familiar.
KAY/O wasn’t one to really act on the more human side of his AI, but right now the robot had an urge to make sure Lia- Brimstone was okay. Realistically, KAY/O knew the man was fine, but something about the nightmare opened a wound that seemed to fester the more he tried to ignore it.
Killjoy would probably laugh at him if KAY/O confessed this odd phenomenon to the engineer, and she would probably hum and say something about his ‘advanced’ AI. Even though the German was in charge of KAY/O’s upkeep, most of his code and components were a mystery even to her. It lead to odd things, like the annoying itch that drug him away from the comfort of his charging station now.
The halls of the protocol were empty and quiet except for the occasional lurking nightmare from their new tenant. KAY/O avoided the things, though they seemed harmless for now, and eventually he was outside of Brimstone’s room. The door was unimpressive and if it wasn’t for the small plaque outside, one wouldn’t even know the room belonged to the first in command.
KAY/O thumped on the door loudly, the poor thing creaking under the force of his metallic fists. Then he waited. The robot stood awkwardly in the darkness for a few minutes, before finally, the door creaked open slowly.
A bleary-eyed Brimstone squinted up at KAY/O in confusion, his hair a rat’s nest of a mess - which was a stark contrast to his usual neat updo. The man grumbled, pushing the door further open so that KAY/O could see the man’s rubber ducky pajama pants in their full glory.
“KAY/O? What in God’s name are you doing up this late?” Brimstone grumbled out while rubbing his eyes. He yawned loudly, then blinked off some of the sleep so he could acknowledge KAY/O properly. The robot didn’t say anything for a while. This made Brimstone a little uneasy.
“Did something happen?” Brimstone asked instead, dragging out the question with a confused wariness. Again, KAY/O didn’t answer, just staring at Brimstone for a long moment. Finally, the robot spoke up.
“Can I stay in your room for a little while?” KAY/O asked, the question was said in his normal monotone voice, but the inflection delivered KAY/O’s awkwardness clearly. It was like a young child asking to spend the night in their mother’s room after a nightmare - uncertain but desperate.
Brimstone paused at this for a second. His face twisted in confusion and some other emotions KAY/O couldn’t recognize. It wasn’t necessary to read the emotions of the Radiants he was going to kill, so his understanding of human emotion was mostly learned from the protocol itself.
“Uh, sure. What? Have a nightmare or something?” Brimstone joked and let out a short, hearty laugh as he stepped away from the doorway. KAY/O followed him into the dark room, the place lighting up in a warm glow as Brimstone clicked on his bedside lamp.
“I did.” KAY/O said bluntly, walking in to the man’s room. He closed the door behind them and sat at the Bimstone's desk. It was surprisingly neat - which was odd with all the paperwork the Turkish strike must have been. He’d always seem pretty adamant about keeping work life and leisure separate.
Brimstone paused in visible surprise, turning to face KAY/O with a confused look.
"Wait, really? I didn't think you could be affected by her power, for uh- obvious reasons." The man mumbled, scratching his beard in muddled confusion. "What was it about?"
KAY/O faltered. He’d never really told anyone about the memories. Sure, some aspects of the future, but never the past - that had a deeper significance to the robot. He didn’t know what most of them meant, and it was like he was just a time capsule waiting to be opened. However, KAY/O believe Brimstone was the key behind them all.
It wasn’t a coincidence Liam resembled the man in front of him now, but unlike that man, KAY/O wasn’t going to let Brimstone die. Maybe that’s why KAY/O told the man almost everything.
He told him about the war, about his human companion, about his loss. The robot told Brimstone everything, carefully omitting details that he’d rather keep close. Brimstone listened intently to every retelling, his face cast in a light that accented the furrowed pull of his brow, and at the end of it all, he sighed deeply.
“That reminds me of an old friend of mine. Way before all of this VALORANT stuff…” Brimstone sighed, dragging a hand through his messy hair. Even in the dull light, KAY/O could see the way his gaze grew nostalgic. “He and I were pretty close. Worked as firefighters together and even went to war.”
Brimstone’s face fell, growing dark. He sat down on his bed and leaned back to stare at the ceiling for a while.
“Well, fate is often cruel. The current state of the world is proof of that. I don’t think I’d be here without him though.” KAY/O hummed - or mimicked one to the best of his ability. The two fell into a comfortable silence, just basking in each other’s presence.
KAY/O had settled that feeling from before, his mind - if you could call it that - becoming less plagued with worry. Brimstone was in fact alive and as long as KAY/O was around, that wouldn’t change. It was like he gained a new objective, a new purpose beyond preventing the inevitable Radiant uprising.
“What was his name?” KAY/O asked suddenly. Brimstone shifted, looking at the robot with a forlorn gaze. Slowly he smiled as if the weight of his sorrow was being washed away.
“His name was Tariq.”