Chapter Text
Because it wasn’t auspicious enough to give him free reign to use items from their weapon room without the proper security clearance or rank, his commander even threw in the option to hand select hunters to accompany him. It was a private mission, however, so no one was to bother him until his return. It was simply to put his mind at ease after Dr. Cain disclosed the sensitive information in celebration of earning A Rank. He doubted he would even find anything. Sites like this were usually stripped clean by scavengers. His commander swore they found everything that was relevant at the time of discovery but he still couldn’t escape his curiosity.
His already terrible sleeping schedule promptly went from thoughts cycling unknown enemies to the circumstances of his birth. No memories of anything meant it was easy to hand wave from people who weren’t himself and that was downright frustrating. Maybe it wasn’t important and he was being pedantic again. That was great for Maverick Hunting.
Useless here, where it seemed as though every corrupted file and broken piece of hardware was some missing link. His scanners alerted him of unknown data that was dangerous to his software, so he couldn’t go too far. He disconnected from the cockpit. He tapped his fingers on the broken glass, observing the skull at the top of it with more than disdain. No warnings, no messages, nothing.
Not even a note to the being inside the capsule on the off chance it would need guidance. Making peace with things that held no meaning was something his commander insisted would help him. The red hunter wasn’t going to admit this was troubling him so much. He probably didn’t need to. The special treatment was no doubt a byproduct of the doctor and commander being worried how he would react to this information. They probably knew he would hit a wall and had made it as easy as possible so they didn’t deal with the brunt of his bad mood later on. It was childish to want to find something to prove his commander and all the others wrong. To show they just couldn’t find it, but there was something that would shed light on why or how he came into existence.
Anger came in waves, cycling, lapping at the rational voice justifying why it was like this. Everyone kept secrets, he was no different, but to keep it that way even after dying was beyond enraging. If everything wasn’t already destroyed, he might fire at something. The buster in his arm had to be touched once he could feel it was charging up energy. It was harnessing his negative emotions, feeding off of the loathing he felt for the situation. The circumstances of his birth and this was it.
His commander would not disclose a detail more, already saying he would be in trouble for sharing with the coordinates. His commander conveniently forgot how to hear when he pointed out they had a surplus of historical accounts from thousands of years ago but conveniently, nothing for an incident that was only one hundred years ago. Not even a complete hundred, it was like it never happened. No leads to go off of, there were plenty of scientists at the time dabbling in robotics but nothing even remotely close to being as advanced a creation as himself. His commander made the joke he was a happy accident, why complain? He was gifted with a mind during a time when robots could only be bothered to chop wood or burn sewage.
For all he knew, his commander picked those words to ease him but they had an inverse effect. He was more annoyed than before and he found himself clawing at a broken door until he caved and fell apart. Another room with nothing operational in it. The layers of dust on the monitors were older than him. He had to wade through wires and rusted metal to find something that resembled a computer. Devices were thrown aside, perhaps harsher than he intended when one left a dent in an already crumbling wall. The sound of it falling apart broke him out of whatever trance he had been in since teleporting.
Nothing, the data was so corrupted it creeped him out. The machine couldn’t turn on but he could connect himself and it hurt his head immediately trying to force open folders. More useless data, more code that couldn’t be called a program anymore. Strings of it passed his mind but not of it was decipherable. He was eerily reminded of his commander saying how there was so little resembling a mind when they found him that they had to rebuild entire programs from the ground up.
Was this what they had to deal with when trying to bring him back? At what point would it have been reasonable to quit and say ‘This one is beyond repair. We tried to save him but this isn’t worth the effort.’
How kind of his commander, the large reploid who took him in would say. Be grateful for getting another day of consciousness instead of complaining that there isn’t a reason given on how it happened.
And how easy it would be to just let things go and listen to those comments. He let things go during training and while he went through the ranks. Focusing solely on what was in front of him was the only reason he moved forward in that early part of his life. It could only last him so long and the added guilt trip his mind was giving him when he said those words to his commander wasn’t helpful. He didn’t want to come off as unappreciative, it’s not like he was trying to find this information out so he could leave his job or find a different life. He was under no delusions, whatever or whoever was building him had one idea in mind. To follow that would lead to his colleagues destroying him.
The Airborne Unit commander was more of a parrot than an eagle, repeating that it didn’t make any sense for him to try. This was an endeavor that would only lead to hurting himself. His response was to tell the Airborne Unit commander his opinion was neither asked for and for future reference, will never be asked for again.
Keep pushing, that would lead to something. He tugged at the wires behind the computer, having conceded there was nothing he could extract from a software standpoint. There should be something else nearby however that he could continue inspecting. The wire guided him down the hallway to another room, one where the door was already broken and saving him the trouble of needing to kick it down.
Mechaniloids had been hiding in the debris here. No need to think, his reflexes took care of the bat-like robots that popped up from the broken piles of hardware to attack intruders. He did not use charged shots, he dashed to avoid sweep attacks and rapid-fired small plasma shots. These were weak, easy to make defensive measures; a charged shot was overkill anyway. The small explosions from their bodies worried him, however. Not for his own safety but for the already damaged equipment nearby.
He guided the enemies out into the hallway to take care of the rest. The screeches hurt his aural cones; his reasoning said it was a program meant to alert stronger mechaniloids to come take care of stronger opponents if this line of defense failed. It was pointless, the main forces had been destroyed long ago by his commander. It was busywork, and oh, how he loathed busy work when he was already in a sour mood. He might have been using slightly charged up beams at the end of this diversion. He was rushing back into the room once the final bat enemy fell apart into a smoldering pile.
The wire was located once more for him to follow along. He found the capsule at the end of it, still connected to multiple other wires to broken down machines nearby. Once upon a time, there was a monitor that would have displayed the specs for the being nursed inside of the capsule. Running tests, displaying diagnostics, alerting the scientist (or the team of them) that this ‘thing’ was working the way it was supposed to. They were making progress or something should be adjusted. Records taken that were long since damaged after this room was left to rot.
Now he could believe what Sigma had said was right. There was no thought put behind here. The commander had nicer words when describing it but he was too old for sugar coating. Someone didn’t bother to write anything or say anything, someone didn’t do anything for the machine that had once been inside of this capsule because…
Because….
…
‘Would you feel better if they had bad things to say instead?’
Maybe.
‘Don’t worry about the dreams. There’s a good chance your memories wouldn’t be real, they would find it useful to upload a story for you to follow so you wouldn’t ask useless questions. It’s been corrupted anyway, that’s twice as unreliable. The only facts we have is you exist.’
The contemptuous snort that followed after declaring all they could find was his name had hurt at the time, but he was pretty good at hiding his emotions from his commander. It wasn’t said to hurt him. His commander could speak dryly, he was guilty of the same. It wasn’t meant as an insult.
The point the commander wanted to make was nothing is better than something awful. He did not agree with this. Something, even a negative, at least meant there was thought. That there was a reason. And…it was that part of himself he hated the most, but even a negative ‘something’ at least meant that the person in charge of it cared. But he shouldn’t have expected anything less when his name was ‘Zero’.
His fist fell on the side of the capsule, breaking it in half.