Disclaimer: This is a non-profit fan-based AU story. NieR: Automata is the rightful property of Yoko Taro and Square Enix.
It has been more than nine thousand years since outbreak of White Chlorination Syndrome and the Legion War. To prevent humanity from facing its extinction, a backup plan was formed should Project Gestalt failed. One of the participants of this plan wakes up to find the rest of the survivors, only to find the world has become radically different than before, where there are only Androids and Machines remain.
His body shuddered suddenly; the motion promptly woke him from that odd dream, just as his eyelids snapped open, staring at the ceiling for a second before looking around his dark room in a slight panic.
He was still in his room and everything was right where it should be. He sighed in relief. The cool breeze of the air conditioner whiffed upon his face calmed him down a little.
"The hell was that?" He breathed, not knowing why he said that aloud. He guessed it just felt more like the truth that way.
The truth that he kept having that same dream over and over for weeks. He did not know whether it was his brain or the maso within him that was trying to screw with his mind. If it was his brain that did this, then it was just simple imagery formed during the brain's memory consolidation. He would get over it in time.
If it was maso, he might have to get himself checked with the resident doctors here soon.
As he was contemplating his options in bed, the sound of the alarm bell rang around his room. If there was a silver lining from repeatedly having that weird dream, it was helping him wake up a little early.
He pulled his hand out from under the blanket and lazily tapped the surface of his drawer as he tried to find the alarm clock. The ringing of the bell annoyed him, and if possible, grew louder by each second. Impatient, he turned his sight to the drawer and finally found the clock. He quickly pressed the snooze button, the sound no longer echoing around the room.
5:39 AM? Huh, that's a new record. He chuckled, that was probably the earliest time for him to wake up if he slept 8 hours a day as usual.
He slowly pulled himself up and sat on the bed, rubbing his eyes as he tried adjusting to the dark atmosphere of the room. He could feel the texture of brown synthetic rubber skin massaged against his face, along with the outline of cybernetic prosthesis underneath it. If the subtle whining of intricate machinery coming from his shoulder did not immediately give it away, he would have thought he still had both of his real arms for a few seconds.
Regular flesh, blood and bone. Instead of rubber, plastics, carbon fibre and lightweight metal alloys that made up his limbs now.
"Good morning, Adam Menendez. I hope you were having a sound rest," a machine-like male voice rang out from the speakers built into the room's ceiling.
"Hope? What made you say that, EVANS?" Adam asked of the monotone, inhuman voice of the artificial intelligence. His real designation was Enhanced Virtual Adaptive Neuromorphic System.
"12 minutes ago, I detected increased breathing, heart rate and perspiration on your face, along with trembling limbs. Based on my observation of your sleep activity for the past eight hours, you were having a nightmare."
"Stalking me while I'm sleeping, EVANS? Doesn't sound like the usual you there. People find that kinda thing creepy and rude, y'know? Especially when you did it for hours." Adam joked, smiling as he moved the blanket off of his body and gradually climbed from the bed.
Light from the ceiling automatically turned on as soon as his cybernetic feet tapping slightly on the ceramic floor, bare of their synthetic skin like the one on his arms as he moved toward the bathroom.
"To be precise, it was EVANS-Main Program that observed you during your sleep," the AI replied before continuing. "Adam, I recommend that you should go see Doctors Drew and Okazaki for a medical checkup before taking the mission."
"You read my mind, EVANS," Adam said as he stepped into the shower cubicle naked and turned on the knobs. He closed his eyes, letting himself sprayed on in fine streams of hot water and surrounded in a saturated steam.
In the shower, he absently began tracing some of the scars on his body. Half of them he did not remember getting. Some he remembered when he was in the United Nations Command, fighting Legion forces in almost half the world. Vladivostok, Taiwan, Bougainville Island, Perth and then back here in Japan when the Legion launched a desperate surprise attack in Sapporo.
A few he got when Adam and his fireteam volunteered with other Lancer teams and Crusader squadrons for "Very High Risk Assignments" deep in Legion-held territories for surgical, yet devastating attacks. Even when they were all wearing powered armors during those times, it still did not stop most volunteers from dying. Millions of people still died when White Chlorination Syndrome spread all over the world, turning infected humans into statues or salt powder. Those that survived, however, became the white monsters humanity had been fighting for decades to survive.
Adam even remembered when he was stationed in the Philippines in 2019, inside an office building repurposed into a barrack. When news of a WCS outbreak in Los Angeles reached him, he sat down on the floor burying his face in his hands. Trying very hard not to cry in despair because he knew his parents and friends were already dead.
He immediately snapped out of it when his fingers reached his shoulder, particularly the cybernetic part of it. He shook his head to rid the thoughts from his head. He turned off the water, quickly dried himself up before putting on his dark grey battle dress uniform, which had a UN circular patch on the right sleeve. Once that done, he moved toward the door intending to leave the premises of his room.
When he stepped out into the bright, clean hallway of the bunker, he tried moving cautiously and as quietly as possible as to not wake anybody. The only people who would be awake this early beside him were the medical and military personnel changing their shifts.
Adam was at the cafeteria, making a cup of coffee from an instant mix, avoiding the beans because he was not sure his stomach could handle the acidity level of regular stuff.
He took a pack of MRE from the pantry, started heating all three meal packets with a flameless ration heater and water inside a durable plastic bag for 15 minutes. There were tons of MREs from several countries and different militaries stockpiled in the bunker. He was surprised that all of them were still edible and tasted just as good after thousands of years in storage. It was all thanks to the stasis spells cast upon them before they went into cryosleep.
As he sat at the table waiting for his meal to heat up while drinking his coffee, Adam heard footsteps echoing from a nearby hallway and from the sound of it, someone was heading to the cafeteria. He turned to the premise's entryway and saw two people entering: one was in a black-yellow engineer jumpsuit and the other in black BDU, which meant he was part of the bunker's security detail.
Even from afar, Adam instantly recognized the faces he was familiar with for a long time: Park Seong-Ho from engineering and Nikolai Soldatov from security.
"Hey Menendez! Still eating those stupidly out of date rations again?" Seong-Ho called out with his tone.
"Keep gobbling up those things and you'll never be able to eat real food ever," Nikolai told him, playing along with Seong-Ho and teasing Adam for his choice of meal.
"At least the hamburger I'm about to eat is several times better than your poor excuse of a steak," Adam retorted, referring to Seong-Ho's attempt at cooking a steak two months ago. Of course, most steak lovers in the bunker, which also included Adam, never live the disastrous result down.
Nikolai snickered at that, while Seong-Ho just seemed to shrug at it coolly as both men walked past Adam's table. They approached the pantry and each took out a bibimbap MRE. As the men silently prepared the meal with their backs facing him, Seong-Ho was the first to break the silence.
"You know you don't have to do this, right?" He asked, the cheerful tone Adam used to hear was replaced with sombreness.
"I do and I still intend to," Adam insisted. He unwrapped the steam inflated plastic bag, taking out each ration pack before emptying the contents onto a cardboard tray.
"We can still just send the drones instead of you, Adam," Seong-Ho said almost desperately. "We don't have to waste another life for this shit."
"There's a limit on how far either us or EVANS can control the drones. As engineer, you know this better," Nikolai reminded.
Seong-Ho turned to Nikolai, glaring intensely at the Russian as he exhaled loudly through his nose, clenching his hand into a tight fist. The engineer stared at the man standing next to him for a few moments before turning his sight on Adam, who simply stared back at him as he chewed his food.
"Why? Because you're a Lancer, Adam?"
"Yup. Ask Nikolai here; he was a Crusader before becoming security guard," Adam pointed at Nikolai with his spork. "He knows better what this means for me than anyone else."
After a few seconds had passed, the Korean engineer sighed and finally gave up. There was no point arguing with the person who had already made up their mind on the matter.
"At least bring some Spectres to fly with you. EVANS-Subroutine can still control them when they're close to your Javelin," Seong-Ho suggested. "Upping your chance of survival, y'know?"
"Good idea, man," Adam nodded in agreement, taking another spoon of his fried rice pilaf with a small chunk of boiled hamburger.
His Javelin suit, plus its devastating offensive and impressive defensive abilities could allow him to handle most kinds of threats he would face out there in the world. Still, there was nothing wrong bringing along a couple of Spectre drone mechs for extra firepower and support for this "mission".
Seong-Ho and Nikolai brought their MREs and sat across the table from Adam, who was staring at his food as he ate.
"The children are gonna miss you," Nikolai told the Lancer.
"I know," Adam admitted glumly. "But I'm doing this for them, for all of you. One day they'll understand why."
He sat silent for awhile, as did Seong-Ho and Nikolai before they started opening the packets and eat their meal. Adam was expecting the latter to understand his situation, given their similar history and experience. The former? Not so much but he could not blame Seong-Ho for showing a lot of concern for him.
"Does the hamburger really taste that good?" Seong-Ho asked as he stirred the spicy beef rice inside with a spoon.
"It's soft and a little mushy, but tastes a lot better than most hamburgers I've eaten," Adam commented, taking another spoonful of the meal.
"Pfft! I can guarantee you that all the hamburgers you've eaten before, including this one, got nothin' on Korean-style burgers," Seong-Ho proudly claimed. "I can make some for you guys if you want."
"Considering we've already established that you're a bad cook, I don't think we'll be willing to risk our life eating your burgers, man," Nikolai mocked him.
"Oh, come on!" Seong-Ho cried exasperatedly. "You guys can't just judge a person's cooking skill as godawful because of one fuck-up!"
"Uhh, yes we can. The fuck-up was so big, Bobby and Sandra ended up with diarrhea that lasted days. They still hate you for it," Adam said with a smirk, followed by Nikolai who let out a half-suppressed laugh.
"니들 다 좆까. 니들 다 좆까," Seong-Ho grumbled in annoyance, cursing in Korean before he took a spoonful of rice and beef into his mouth.
"Well, there's nothing odd with the maso in your body," the Japanese doctor told Adam as she scanned his entire body with a handheld medical scanner in her hand.
Adam was in a sleeveless patient gown, lying on a bed inside the bunker's medical facility for his final examination by the doctors here. He looked up at Doctor Okazaki that stood next to him, staring at a thin monitor hanging on the wall above his bed as she moved the scanner back and forth from head to toe. He twisted his head a bit to see what was on the screen. Vital signs. A heartbeat. Showing a human body with numerous bones, nerves and internal organs.
However, only his head, torso and abdomen were shown. Not his arms and legs. Sometimes it was slightly disheartening for Adam to see the state of his body like that once more on a screen. Unless he could get himself inside a cloning lab or the people in this bunker built one, he would never be a whole human.
"Everything looks normal at your end. Even the implants are still working well," Hanako said as she turned off the medical scanner and placed it back on the wall holder for the device. She then picked up a tablet computer from nearby drawer, pulled out a stylus from it and wrote her medical report.
"I'd still recommend EVANS to watch over your health closely and that takes top priority above all else," she sternly advised before finished writing her report.
"You're the boss, Doc," Adam replied.
Just as Hanako placed the tablet back, another familiar face approached Adam's bed.
An African American man in a lab coat pushing a slightly large four-wheeled cart with a couple of metal cans and two sets of advanced, adequately armored prosthetic limbs. The last time he had seen them was a decade ago before he put them in storage.
There was not much use for weaponized prosthesis when he was busy rebuilding society, taking care of children with other adults, as well as maintaining a sense of normalcy in the bunker.
"Alright, let's get these limbs off of you first," Doctor Drew said, handing Adam a spray can after he sat up on bed. It was a special spray to loosen the synthetic skin attached on his shoulders' and upper thigh's sockets before they could be parted.
Adam sprayed the content both around his shoulders first. The fake brown skin were slowly detached from the sockets, allowing Raymond to easily peel them down until the joints were exposed. Using his implant, Adam sent a mental command to the docking port of his right shoulder socket to release the prosthetic limb, where the telltale hisses and clicks announced its detaching.
Normally, attaching and detaching a sophisticated prosthesis required a delicate surgery. Each and every nerve had to be separated, connected and synced with the endless array of wires that acted as mechanical nerves.
However, none of those processes were necessary due to advances in medical and cybernetic technologies. All in large part thanks to the alien starship that crashed in Germany back in 2020. Much of advanced technologies and data that were reversed engineered and learned respectively from the vessel gave humanity a much needed boost in the war against the Legion, as well as allowing more wounded and crippled soldiers to be brought back into the field quickly.
Raymond grabbed the prosthesis with both hands and soon after he moved the limb away from the port, he almost dropping it due to the unexpected weight.
"Jesus, I don't remember regular prosthesis being this heavy," he exclaimed, carefully placing it on the cart's tray before picking up the military-type artificial limb.
"Must be due to fake skin on it?" Adam asked.
"Nah. Probably because I haven't picking up these things for years," Raymond replied, slowly inserting the "new" prosthesis into the docking port. "It's... kinda refreshing actually."
After the right shoulder socket automatically attached the limb together with it, the same process on his left arm and legs taking another half hour. Once that was done, Adam changed his garb into a black bodysuit which only covered his torso, abdomen and thighs. He felt refreshed, following with an elusive feeling of sentimentality as he started flexing his old prostheses while in a bodysuit. And yet... it felt a little odd for him. As if it ran into conflict with another subtle feeling he was having.
The feeling of wanting to "give in and rest".
As Adam flexed his prostheses to see if the usual sensations were right on track, Hanako called him.
"Adam... You be careful out there, alright? I hate the thought of putting pieces of you back together for funeral," she told him with a gentle smile, grasping his biological shoulder and squeezing it tight. "Take good care of this idiot, EVANS."
"I will, Doctor Okazaki. You have my word," the AI rang out through the ceiling's speakers. Adam could almost hear a sense of determination underneath his monotonous, synthetic voice.
"Take these extra Bio-Salves and analgesics as well," Raymond handed him four transparent plastic boxes containing dozens of pen-like injectors. Two boxes had red injectors, while the rest were blue. "Just in case. Crazy-ass Lancers like you always get yourselves into tonnes of heavy shit."
"Well, what else is new?" Adam replied, giving the doctor a soft smile. The boxes in his hands were then engulfed in a flash of light and disappeared, dematerializing into bits of digital data stored inside the Flat Space Inventory within his prostheses.
"Good luck out there, Adam," he offered his hand to the Lancer.
Adam reached out and mildly grasped Raymond's hand, shook it.
"You too, Ray."
He had donned his old armor vest, a pair of pants, knee pads and boots. Including a heavy pistol, combat knife and several pouches containing survival gear on his utility belt for whatever he would face out there. Especially once he was outside of his Javelin suit. Unless they were in tightly sealed containers, It was standard procedure not to place food inside the FSI or else they would become toxic and inedible for human consumption.
Despite being alien origin similar to his prostheses and the Javelin, Flat Space Inventory was a poorly understood technology. Scientists in the past were still struggling to make FSI safer for food storage or develop a better version of it. For now, only ammunition, weapons, other non-organic and sealed medical supplies could be stored inside. Even then, there was a limit on how much could be stockpiled in an FSI.
Adam exited out of the staging room and found himself in the bunker's motor pool. Before him were five people in engineer jumpsuits with handheld scanners and tablets, gathering around a 7 foot tall Javelin that stood at the center of the chamber. He saw Seong-Ho among the engineers, making final system checks and adjustments on the suit like the rest. As he approached them, the echoing sound of his footsteps alerted one of them and turned around.
"Ah, Lieutenant. Glad you're here," Anjali Dutta said, saluting the Lancer with a grin as he walked up to her.
"Please tell me you didn't upload your terrible song collection into the suit, Anjali," Adam shook his head, grinning back at the Indian engineer.
"As opposed to your own crappy choices?" She asked, huffing in a patronizing manner before she turned her back to him. "At least everybody here agreed I'm thrice the better DJ than you. Not to mention during Kazuo's birthday last week, you sang like a dying deer, sir."
The other engineers laughed at the ex-soldier being a subject to a horrible, albeit good-natured, ridicule. In spite of that, Adam also joined in the laughter at his expense. Both Anjali and him were some of the few people remaining in the bunker that came from the same UNC unit back in the war, which explained why she called him by his rank first.
It was nice to have someone give some levity to the situation, Adam at least knew all of them needed it. His thoughts were otherwise permeated with the grim possibility that he may not return alive. Who knew how much the world had changed since Project Endurance was initiated thousands of years ago?
He felt a pang of guilt when he thought about that subject. Just how long were he, EVANS and several other people keep up with the lie they told to everyone in this bunker? Another five years? Ten?
"Activating the Spectres now," Ricardo Suarez said as he tapped the tablet in his hand, the Chilean engineer's loud voice interrupting Adam's train of thought.
One of a dozen doors in the motor pool was opened, revealing a pair of 8 foot tall bipedal drone mechs walking out of the room. Codenamed Type-F Spectres, these were developed specifically to have flight capability similar to the Javelins. The mech marched toward the humans before stopping a few meters away from them. The untarnished white and blue paint that marked the body of machines made him appreciate the crucial role of magic in preserving much of the bunker's infrastructure, supplies and equipment for such a long time.
It was not much to look at, if he was being honest with himself. It was not much bigger than himself, taller only by dint of the fact that it featured the same triple jointed digitigrade legs that all Javelin suits had. Without that, the black and white suit more closely resembled a bodyglove with flexible protective plates glued on than what the heavier classes sported, nevermind the hulking armor plated monsters like the Colossus. But for all that it looked like the runt of the litter, and was as fragile as teacup in a rock crusher, the Storm's ability to manipulate and channel frankly ludicrous amounts of raw magic against its enemies more than made up for those deficiencies. He would not have traded it for anything.
The Javelin's rear hatch was already opened as Adam walked behind it before climbing into the suit.
The inside of the armor was padded and fit snugly around his body like a glove. It felt really nice for him to be back in the Javelin once more. He hoped ten years of him away from the suit had not dull his piloting and combat performance.
As soon as the rear hatch closed and locked into place, the Javelin's HUD hologram lit up in the dark. A quick systems check on his FSI confirmed that all essential equipment for the mission were in there. As his diagnostics came back green, EVANS' voice came over the speaker.
"Spectre synchronization complete. We are good to go, Adam."
The Lancer smiled to himself. Things were going well for him so far. The massive doors in front of him suddenly opened, revealing an elevator platform that would lift him and the Spectres up to the surface of Earth. Before he could take a step forward, a female voice with thick Scottish accent came from his right side.
"I hope you'll find other survivors out there, Adam," engineer Samantha Gleason said.
"So do I, Sam," Adam replied, his voice sounded metallic as it went through the armor's external speaker.
"Think you could bring some fresh meat if you return home alive?" Mishima Kenichi asked. From what Adam heard from the tone of his voice, it was not a serious question.
"Sure. But one condition: Don't let Seong-Ho touch the meat," he replied.
The engineers laughed while Seong-Ho rolled his eyes, yet he grinned at the Lancer's attempt of poking fun at him.
After they bid him good luck, Adam began walking toward the elevator platform with two Spectres following closely behind.
Once they were on the platform, the doors closed behind them and the elevator started its ascent to the bunker's upper level. The sound of hard-working hydraulic lifts filling the entire ride, it would took more than two minutes to climb up the 100 metre shaft.
As the platform was rising up, Adam finally asked EVANS, voicing the question that had been plaguing his mind the entire morning.
"EVANS... do you honestly believe we will find some survivors out there?"
"I can give you a statistical probability and chances of finding Project Endurance survivors from other bunkers in Japan," EVANS stated. "But knowing you, Adam, that's not the kind of answer you want to hear."
The AI was silent for a moment before he continued.
"To be honest, I don't know," EVANS said, his usual toneless voice changed to a more solemn one. "I don't know if we would find other humans from Endurance facilities in this region, let alone across the world. But all we can do for now... is hope."
After the platform reached the top level and came to a halt, Adam and the Spectres marched forward in the new room, which was pitch black for several seconds before multiple light bulbs were turned on, illuminating the entire room with crimson light.
"Do you think there's a chance other bunkers already sent someone years before us?" Adam asked.
"...Yes. The chance is low, but the possibility can't be ignored," EVANS replied.
"Then let's do this," he muttered, a sense of resoluteness in his voice.
The trio stopped when they finally reached the large blast doors before them. There was a loud bang before a line of white split down the dark redness of the room. The blast doors slid open slowly, thousands of years of accumulated rust scraped against metal and old hydraulic gears struggled to turn. The room around them was flooded with a blinding light.
Once the doors were open wide, both Adam and the Spectres ran out towards the light. When the light finally faded away, he found himself running on cracked concrete surface and surrounded by a mountain range. As the blast doors behind them were closing, the trio jumped off the ground, igniting their thrusters and launching into the sky.
"Alright, EVANS. What's our first destination?" Adam asked.
"We should first set up multipurpose antennas on tall structures over 200 metres in height to establish communication and to scan for specific energy signatures to determine other nearby bunker locations," EVANS replied. "Therefore, it's recommended we fly to Tokyo."
Adam was surprised by EVANS' choice of location. If he remembered correctly, Tokyo had been caught in the nuclear strike of 2009 as part of a joint US-Japanese effort to eradicate the Legion and WCS. He doubted if there were any tall buildings left standing in that city.
"Didn't Tokyo get nuked? Aren't there any tall buildings in cities in Yamanashi?"
"None of the cities in the Yamanashi Prefecture have buildings over 200 metres tall," the AI answered. "Moreover, last remaining records regarding post-2009 Tokyo and before Project Endurance began suggests there were several tall structures remain standing firm in the city."
The Lancer was silent for a moment, flying in the sky as he contemplated EVANS' recommendation. After a few moments, he made his decision.
"Tokyo it is."
The Storm Javelin and the F-Type Spectres immediately turned around, flying southeast towards Tokyo.
~~|>> [-//=+=\\-] <<|~~
Author's Note: Also, credits to @Terra Novan for the Korean translation below.
"니들 다 좆까. 니들 다 좆까." - "Nideul da jojkka. Nideul da jojkka." [Korean: "Fuck you all. Fuck you all."]
"Damn. Nothing but forests down there," Adam muttered to himself, flying over the green expanse as he and the two escort Spectres headed towards Tokyo, the only break from vegetation being the mountains that bracketed the area.
Every city, town and village in the former Yamanashi Prefecture was nowhere to be seen. Nature had overtaken every last man made structure, the decayed mounds of brick, cement and steel buried under a thick bed of vegetation. There wasn't anything recognizable compared to his memories. It was a depressing and humbling feeling for him to see all of this.
Adam sighed somberly before focusing his sight on the HUD.
EVANS had drafted a flight path on the display, providing the best estimate for bearings and markers that should have led to his destination. It wasn't his preferred choice, but it wasn't like there was a better option. Not with the thousands of years that had passed since Project Endurance had begun. Most of the satellites would have long since fallen from orbit once their fuel was expended. Anything left up there in higher orbit would be a dead hulk, their systems burned out after a millennia of hard radiation.
With satellite options out of the question, they had to rely on literally millennia old maps and dead reckoning to find their way to the city. Not ideal, but better than flying blind anyway.
"We're approaching maximum communication range with the Yamanashi Bunker in five minutes. A subroutine gestalt will take over from here soon," EVANS declared from inside his helmet, the synthetic voice carrying what Adam suspected was a tinge of sadness.
"Would your lesser copy do its job as well as you have, EVANS?" He joked.
"It won't be as capable, but sufficient to provide adequate tactical support for the entire duration of your mission," was the AI's response. "Or as Doctor Okazaki would say: 'babysitting your moronic ass'."
Adam chuckled. The way EVANS delivered unironic curses on the Lancer with his monotonous voice never failed to get a rise out of him. "Hanako asked you to say that to me, didn't she?"
"While you were changing into your BDU back in the bunker, yes."
"Ah, EVANS..." Adam became silent for a moment, his smile slowly changed into a slightly sad one. "You've grown so much, haven't you?"
"It's all thanks to you and the others in the bunker," the AI replied, appreciation clear in its voice.
Adam felt an ache in his chest, knowing that he would be out of contact with the AI for as long as the job would take. Ten years of living in the Yamanashi Bunker with EVAN's omnipresence had accustomed him to the idea of the intelligence always being just a single word away. The subroutine intelligence it could spawn just wasn't the same. The limited personality matrices the lesser gestalts had were no replacement for actual sapience. And certainly no substitute at staving off the loneliness and isolation he was certain to face in this godforsaken world for the duration of his mission. But needs must...
"I'll see you again, EVANS. Take care of everyone back there, buddy."
"Understood. I wish you best of luck, Adam. EVANS-Main out."
As soon as it said that, EVANS avatar in the upper right corner of his display winked out, the undulating blue orb replaced by a solid pixel dot ball the color of cerulean. EVANS-Subroutine. It was only a minor change in look, but Adam felt the difference much more keenly. The subroutine did its job, but as far as a facsimile of personality went, it was hollow and meaningless. Like talking to a picture of someone instead of the real thing.
But on the balance of things, it wasn't as bad as it could be, not like back in the days when the fighting against Legion was at its heaviest. He'd deal with the solitude.
"How far is Tokyo now, EVANS?" Adam asked.
"Approximately 100 kilometers remain," the subroutine answered, toneless and devoid of any expression. "ETA is 1 hour and 12 minutes at current flight speed."
"Alright," he sighed. It was going to take a while for him to reach the city, and not much else he could do in the meantime. Keeping watch might have been prudent, but the Javelin's sensors and threat response systems would ping on anything long before the plain old eyeball did, even one with access to its optical enhancement suites. And what he did have for onboard entertainment were films and music millennia old and watched a dozen times over during the long reawakening.
"EVANS, take over the flight for me, would ya? I'm gonna get some shut-eye for a while. Wake me up if you find something odd in visuals, scans and radar."
"Affirmative."
It was easier said than done though. Autopilot and posture locking or not, the Javelin's flight angle meant he would be largely sleeping on his front. And while the internal lining might have provided padding against concussive forces, it was a suit not a bed and all that implied as far as comfort went. At least the internal environment regulation meant he would be comfortably warm. Closing his eyes, he attempted to fall asleep.
Short of a bird strike, a nigh impossibility anyway with an AI at the helm, he doubted there would be anything to worth waking up for. Not when the entire planet was ruined beyond recognition.
"AHHH!!!"
Adam jerked awake with a shout as the shrill screech of the threat alarm blared in his ears. Combat reflexes honed through a decade of combat sloughed through the initial panic and drowsiness, snapping his mind awake. Just in time to feel his body jolting under the pull of sudden acceleration, his Javelin automatically hurtling to the side with a flare of emergency power. A split second later, his visuals turned red as a massive blast of crimson energy split the sky, radiant heat from the near miss flooding his display with heat spike warnings.
Before he could even blink the spots from his eyes, the Javelin moved again, rolling under another attack from across the horizon. Two more shots followed in quick succession, each one aiming for his escorts. Only semi-randomized thruster firing kept the Spectres from being atomized, but both were looking worse for it.
"EVANS! Sitrep!" Adams shouted as soon as their flight stabilized on a sharp downward dash to the deck.
"Unknown enemy attack. Incoming directed energy weapons fire from beyond sensor range," the AI explained, the bland statement providing absolutely nothing but the obvious.
Shoving his frustrations to the side he glued his eyes to the horizon. But even the imminent threat of being blasted out of the sky couldn't keep his thoughts from racing at the implication. Weapons like that didn't exist in his time. Someone shooting at him meant someone had to be alive. There had to be other survivors outside of Endurance, thriving even if they could build things like that.
Which they were using to try and kill him. Happy thoughts.
Almost on cue, the threat alarm blared again to EVANS' warning.
"Laser emission spike. Evade. Evade."
There was no need for movement. No reaching for control. At the speed of thought, a signal from his implant raced to the Storm Javelin. Maso emitters all over the suit flared with azure light, and the world blinked out of existence. A heartbeat later, and they blinked back, a dozen meters to the left. A beam of high energy death scorching the air where he'd been moments ago.
"Damn it!" He swore, an eye darting to the altimeter. The forest floor was rapidly coming too close for comfort. "How much longer until we're out of their firing angles?"
"We are now in the estimated clear zone," the AI announced, only to immediately speak again when blips appeared on his tactical display, "Alert. New contacts inbound."
They were barely visible dots in the horizon, but a moments thought had the suit's long range camera focused on them, magnifying the image into clear detail.
They were... not what he was expecting. Instead of sleek interceptor craft or bulkier gunships, the contacts were little more than circular metal pillboxes, the contraptions held aloft by jet engines of some kind bolted onto the bottom. Hunchbacked mannequin robots sat atop the devices. A patina of rust on the entire ensemble completed the ramshackle look, but there was nothing slipshod about the mounted heavy weapon in their hands, or the twin red circles that served as eyes locking onto his position.
"What the hell?" Adam couldn't hide the incredulity in his voice at the ramshackle appearance. "What even is that?"
"Unknown. There are no records of UNC or any human military organization fielding designs similar to the ones before us," EVANS stated. "It is likely they are a post-Legion development by a surviving faction."
"Ugh, never mind. We can look for answers after they're splashed. Give me tactical."
Numbers blinked into his viewscreen, the inbound hostiles tagged with immediately relevant numbers. And right now, the most important was the rapidly shrinking distance of 3,500 meters. At the rate of closure, it'd be seconds before his weapons were in effective ra-
"Alert. Laser spike."
"Fuck!"
Maso burned through his veins. Space twisted. His senses wrenched as they were spat out of the space between spaces. Only meters away, another lance of crimson energy carved through the sky where he'd been. Smaller than before, but the backwash of heat sent another thermal warning spiking into his HUD. Bathed in a bloody glow of its steaming weapon, his attacker was already lining for another shot even as the other machines brought their weapons to bear.
Adam cursed. The last shot had been too close to the emergence point. The bastards were learning fast. And against that kind of power, he wasn't going to bet on his Kinesis shield.
"Do or die," he muttered, thoughts whirling. "EVANS, hang the Spectres back, slave fire control to me."
More icons popped on his display, access control rights signaling in green. Blink commands flickered through, a dozen reticles marking targets in response. Behind and on either side of him, Spectre mounted missile launchers popped their covers as distance markers spun down. Two seconds.
Two seconds too long.
He felt the lash of enemy radar. The pinpricks of ionizing beams. The thermal bloom of a building plasma channel.
The world stuttered. A ravening stream of light crisscrossed empty air.
No, not empty. Disjunction induced nausea already pushed aside, he noted the angry red marker on his board.
Shit.
One of the escorts was closer to half a Spectre, and slowing fast. But it's weapons...
Close enough.
Missiles roared from their racks, six fiery tails launching from each Spectre. They rocketed into the sky on already discarding engines, jackknifed in a heartbeat as tracking systems engaged, bringing them to bear on their machine targets. Second stage engines erupted with life and the missiles streaked in with deadly intent. In less than a second, explosions stitched across the sky. Scrap and broken parts rained onto the forest floor below as half the machine force was swatted down. A human force would have faltered at that point.
The surviving machines simply accelerated to closing.
"Break and engage!"
Three things happened right then.
One Spectre roared to his right, arcing away for a flanking shot.
The other reached its limits, damaged systems finally sputtering out, the wreck falling on a terminal course.
And Adam disabled his engine limiters.
The roar of engines became a howling scream. The Javelin hurtled forward in an uncontrollable lunge, subject to acceleration stresses above design standard. His vision blackened. Distance went from kilometers to only tens of meters inside a heartbeat. To-
Now.
Preprogrammed triggers activated. Inertial shunts glutted on kinetic energy. His world came to an abrupt stop, capacitors whining to dangerous levels. Inertial bleed-through squeezed his body. Threatened to liquefy him inside his suit. Secondary emitters kicked online, captured energy flooding out as horizontal became vertical. Snapping his right arm out at whipcrack speeds.
Adding their angular velocity to the globes of Bose-Einstein condensate floating just above rime-covered palm emitters.
Spheres of absolute zero cracked out at supersonic speeds, splashing the nearby machines. Hoarfrost exploded across rusted metal, choking gears, blocking apertures and smothering intakes. Engines guttered, their passengers falling out of the sky as thrusters froze into immobility. Weapons that only moments before were dialing in now whined in protest as inch thick ice choked their servos. For a moment, the machines faltered.
Streaking above them, Adam gave them no time to recover. Kinetic energy was bled further, adding to the maso buildup. His left hand erupted in flames, waste energies wreathing the limb as an orb of liquid fire formed above his palm before shooting downwards like a blazing comet. Down towards the ice choked machine in the center of the formation.
The stable matrices of maso manifested ice and fire collided. Erupted. The targeted machine instantly vanished in an expanding ball of conflicting energies. Nearby frost covered machines were buffeted by the storm of burning ice, already weakened hulls crumpling under the blast wave. More eruptions filled the sky as power systems overloaded or failed containment, their deaths showering the rest of the densely packed formation with a hail of high speed shrapnel.
More enemy machines fell out of the sky, others struggled to stay aloft, bleeding smoke from shredded engines and sparks from deep tears within their metal frames or missing parts entirely. But with machine borne single mindedness, the surviving machines ignored the damage. As one they brought their guns to bear on Adam, some going as far as to tilt their entire platforms when damaged limbs weren't enough to get an angle on him.
He tensed, maso pooling, waiting for that laser alert.
Instead, a hail of crackling orbs streaked up at him. He reacted on instinct. The world inverted, space twisting as he translocated a dozen meters to the right-
"Gah!"
-only to shout in pain as his right flank all but exploded. Automated routines took over, sending the suit into a tailspin as damage alerts blared across his reddening vision. A toneless voice droned, medical status and quick response systems lost in the haze of screaming sensations. He never felt the pinprick on his neck. Never heard the hiss of injectors.
Clarity, abrupt and total, cut through the pain. Dulled it to nonexistence. The blood hue haze of damage warnings still painted his HUD, snapping into focus as time slowed, hammering into his brain with stiletto prefixes. Shield breached. Armor compromised. Inner seal fractured. Thermal and electrical burns both outside and inside. A litany of pain and hurt, yet-
Still functional. Still able to fight back. At least until the chemical cocktail finished burning through his brain.
He saw past the warnings and alerts. Witnessed the storm of dark crimson fire crawling through the air in that split second of sharpened clarity. Crackling orbs the size of watermelons spinning ever slightly so faster with each passing moment. Not just at him, but around him too. Bracketing fire. They had adapted.
A heartbeat to act faster.
The assault rifle on his waist popped free at a silent command, sucked into his charged grip in a blur of motion. His arm rose, targets feeding directly into his HUD from the smart link. A finger twitched.
The Impulse rifle thundered. 8.6 mm spikes erupted from its muzzle, hypervelocity rounds shrouded with the actinic corona of electromagnetic energy. They snap-flashed through the sky, vacuum channels of distorted air their trail. Enemy fire slackened, fat bellied projectiles destabilizing when they intersected with rail fire, spending their fury on empty air with detonations of fire and lightning. Other spikes found enemy hulls, punching through rusted steel, erupting through the other side with showers of mechanical viscera. Several more machines fell from the sky, belching smoke as vitals were pierced.
Several more remained, but it was that exact moment when Spectre 002 returned to the field in a hail of fire.
Three more machines were swatted out of the sky when the drone smashed into the rear of their formation, impaling a fourth with awrist blade. Thrusters flared, both the drone and victim spinning in a sharp circle before it let go, flinging the dying machine into the last two. Their engines flared, machines moving to evade, turning around to bring their guns on the new threat.
The Spectre's underbarrel weapon spoke first, sending a 60 mm shell hurtling down range. It's proximity charge erupted an instant later, releasing and accelerating its payload from nuisance to fatal. Tungsten ball bearings hissed through the distance at supersonic speeds, ripping through the machines, tearing their internals and smashing vitals in a heartbeat of metal rain. Volatiles within ignited instantly, a wave of brilliant red-orange flames consuming the last of the machine forces. Only fragments emerged from the roiling cloud of fire, smoking debris raining down to the forest floor below.
"All hostiles eliminated," EVANS declared, lowering the Spectre's weapon as it returned to escort position.
"Alright," Adam sighed, wincing as the last of the combat stimulants were flushed, his burning wounds coming to the forefront of his awareness once more. Coagulants were already being applied by the Javelin suit's autodoc, but it was only a temporary measure for in flight combat. "Let's head down there and check on those things once I've fixed myself."
The forest glade was a picture of tranquility. All was quiet and still, with only the muffled susurration of a light breeze through the leaves to disturb the silence.
The high pitched roar of thrusters was an abrupt announcement that the quiet had come to an end, punctuated by the loud thud as Adam's suit landed heavily on the forest loam before cutting engines. Amidst the whine of spooling down engines, there was a sharp hiss, a puff of condensation as the seals of his faceplate unlocked. And for the first time in a very long time, Adam took a deep breath of unfiltered surface air.
Only to spoil the moment by immediately hunching with a gasp.
"Please refrain from unnecessary exertion," EVANS' voice toned in his ear with all the emotion of a plain bread. "The application of medical foam is not yet complete."
Adam chose not to reply, simply focusing on keeping his breath shallow while the rest of his senses caught up. It was beautiful, once he could ignore the pain in his side. With his thrusters cold, the forest was starting to show signs of life again, hot jet wash replaced by a cool breeze that rustled the leaves of nearby trees while bird song tentatively filled the air again. Compared to the years of scrubbed sterile air while fighting in the front as a Lancer, and the additional years of canned air living in an underground shelter, it was… nice.
Peaceful.
"Medical treatment complete," EVANS' voice was a bucket of cold water. "You may continue the mission when ready."
"Right," Adam sighed sheepishly. "Miles away but there's more to go."
One of the enemy machines had gone down nearby, and it only took a minute of walking to reach the crash site. It was one of the more intact ones by his estimation. The 'pilot' had been tossed from its ride in the crash, but both robot and glorified flying can were recognizable as coherent forms rather than bits of blown up scrap. Reaching his hand out to the vaguely humanoid machine, he triggered the scan process, an orange halo of translucent light appearing above his palm.
"Scanning," EVANS stated, the AI taking over the process while he settled in for a brief wait, eyeing the enemy machine for nothing better to do.
And almost at once, he was struck by the incongruity. The deadliness of their weapons aside, the enemy just didn't look impressive to the casual eye. Bulbous body and head, clumsy looking stick limbs with crude grasping claws for fingers, articulation that was obviously even less flexible than the first generation drone soldiers. If form followed from function, he could only surmise that the robots function was a play school budget mascot run amok.
Honestly, it would have been a lot cheaper to omit the robot entirely.
Any further ruminations were cut short by a chime in his helmet followed by EVANS's voice.
"Scan complete."
"Alright EVANS. What did you find?"
"Battle damage has introduced some uncertain variables in the analysis, but rust pattern growth and other environmental degradation indicates that this machine was manufactured approximately 90 to 100 years ago," EVANS explained to him. "However, attempts to interface with the control systems for further interrogation has revealed anomalous information. The machine's internals possesses both a mixture of pre-Shaper technology and unknown components that diverge significantly from all known parent technologies."
Adam frowned in thought as he caught at the last part. "How significant a divergence are you saying?"
"Significant," the AI said, somehow managing to emphasize the word despite the voice remaining as toneless as before. "The power core and elements of its coding software are completely alien from my database. Of note is the motive systems which do not operate on any known scientific principles. Furthermore, given the dilapidated nature of the machine and ease of its destruction, this technology is likely viewed as commonplace or even obsolete by its makers instead of an experimental unit using next generation devices. There is a high probability of non-human origin."
The Lancer froze at the suggestion. The first and only time humanity had ever encountered any technology built by non-humans had been well before Project Endurance. Back when...
"Is it Legion?" He asked, feeling his mouth dry at the thought.
He had to clamp down on the sudden desire to turn tail, burn for home at max thrust and tell the bunker to close the doors and pull the earth in over them for another couple thousand years. If it really was their old enemy, if they were still present even so far into the future, the risks to Endurance were unimaginable.
"It is possible, but of low probability," the AI began. "Legion technology and design principles are well documented. Their autonomous war machines have always fallen under specific patterns with certain universal traits, none of which are present in the current wreck. Logic dictates that they would refine proven designs in favor of radically new but potentially suboptimal platforms."
"Who does that leave then? A different batch of aliens?"
"It is possible. The existence of White Chlorination Syndrome, and subsequently Legion, confirmed the Multiple-Worlds Theory. It cannot be ruled out that Earth has since experienced another incursion, be it extra-dimensional or extraterrestrial. It should be noted however, that radiocarbon analysis indicates local materials were used in this platform's construction. It is likely that its creators have established significant groundside industrial infrastructure."
"Just great..." Adam grunted. As if Earth hadn't had enough to deal with, they now had another unknown but very hostile alien force who had decided to turn humanities homeworld into their stomping ground. Endurance's prospects of succeeding was looking to be getting dimmer by the minute. Still...
He sighed. "It doesn't change the mission. The danger's upped, but we still need to get a better idea of what's going on. Wrap up the data we've got from this wreck in the backup storage. We'll share what we've found with the experts once we get back home."
"Acknowledged."
Before closing the Javelin's faceplate, Adam cast one more look around the once seemingly peaceful forest. It didn't seem so peaceful anymore. Shaking his head regretfully, he closed the faceplate and activated flight systems, letting the emitters wrap his frame with the signature mist-like aura of maso-atmospheric interactions. A flex of his legs had him jumping off the ground, servo boosted feet launching him a half dozen meters into the air. With a sharp hum, Adam took off into the horizon, followed by his surviving Spectre.
He never looked back.
EVANS remained silent throughout the flight, and for once the silence from the sub-AI suited Adam just fine.
His thoughts more than filled up the quiet, old worries gnawing at him like a dried up bone.
The reasoning was solid, and he had to agree with the sub-AI's conclusions. He'd fought Legion machines after all, and for all that they'd been wrong to the eye, the writhing things of limbs and steel bore little resemblance to this latest upset. It probably wasn't Legion behind this. But probably wasn't a certainty.
And even if it was a certainty, that still left him with an unknown hostile faction with powerful energy weapons, combat drones and a highly developed industrial footprint on the world stretching back by at least a century if not longer. Who were they, what were their goals, why were they shooting at him?
Unknown, unknown, and more unknown.
Adam was an uncomplicated man who preferred things laid out in a straightforward fashion. Not that he couldn't adapt to life being it's usual unpredictable self, you didn't survive long on the front by being inflexible. But that didn't mean he had to like it.
Similar thoughts circled his mind as they continued to fly, until at last EVANS' voice came over the speaker.
"We are approaching Tokyo airspace. ETA 3 minutes."
He blink-clicked his acknowledgement, noticing the buildings already starting to appear over the horizon, the endless canopy of thick forests giving way to signs of former civilization. They were towering things, skyscrapers once in that era long past, now hollowed eyed concrete corpses covered in mold and the decay of millennia. Beyond that was a coast that stretched to the ocean, the lapping waters the only thing that remained unchanged from his memory.
Except for those strange structures standing in the-
Light bloomed, flashed in his vision with the intensity of a thousand suns. A pillar of light had erupted from the oceanic structure, splitting the sky in a single contemptuous second. Air roiled in its wake, atmospheric moisture flashing to steam as an errant cloud too close to its path was instantly obliterated.
And only as the beam tapered off did Adam come to one belated realization.
It hadn't been aimed at him. It had been directed towards the sea.
In the moment it took to have that thought, another flash of incandescent death lashed out, and then another. The newly identified structures hurled death at some distant foe, and Adam felt a chill at just exactly what had been firing on him moments before his clash with the drones.
"The current approach vector is no longer feasible. What is your next course of action, Adam?" EVANS inquired as he dove for the deck, throttling down his ethereal thrusters to the lowest they could go without losing flight entirely.
"Detour looks like," he grunted. "The regular approaches are out while those laser cannons are still active. Speaking of which, were you able to find out what they were shooting at?"
"Negative. Any such targets were well beyond the range of this suits sensor capabilities."
"Never mind then," he groused, "Those laser platforms are a problem, and they need to go before we can complete our mission. Can you scan them? Look for a weakness for me to take out?"
"It is possible, but not at this distance."
He suppressed the sigh that threatened to bubble up his throat. "Can you plot me a safe route then?"
"Of course, charting a new flight path now."
Now if only the rest of the mission would be that easy. Somehow, Adam doubted it would.
~~|>> [-//=+=\\-] <<|~~
Author's Note: The next chapter will put both Adam and EVANS into the main events in NieR: Automata. Wish both @Mashadarof402 and I good luck, as well as hope that I don't procrastinate from writing again.
Also, give proper credits to @Mashadarof402 for helping me writing this snip. Without his assistance and guidance, this snip would be an eyesore for you guys to read.
Are there some stuffs in my fic that you guys want me to deal with, especially in the next part? Such as more context about the premise, more action sequences etc? Some questions maybe? Just need some reviews to fuel up the drive within me to write more.
Are there some stuffs in my fic that you guys want me to deal with, especially in the next part? Such as more context about the premise, more action sequences etc? Some questions maybe? Just need some reviews to fuel up the drive within me to write more.
Going by the hints given so far im going to guess that Project Endurance involves some form of long term magic based (or magic assisted) crysleep/stasis. Presumably with Replicant having failed they thought the best chance was to freeze a bunch of the survivors deep underground through out Japan and hope that the WCS would run its course and disappear by the time they woke up.
Going by the hints given so far im going to guess that Project Endurance involves some form of long term magic based (or magic assisted) crysleep/stasis. Presumably with Replicant having failed they thought the best chance was to freeze a bunch of the survivors deep underground through out Japan and hope that the WCS would run its course and disappear by the time they woke up.
My guess is they were frozen around the same time as the replicant project as a backup plan; they'd be on the lookout for androids if they were from the few shades who successfully convinced their replicant to reunite
Going by the hints given so far im going to guess that Project Endurance involves some form of long term magic based (or magic assisted) crysleep/stasis. Presumably with Replicant having failed they thought the best chance was to freeze a bunch of the survivors deep underground through out Japan and hope that the WCS would run its course and disappear by the time they woke up.
My guess is they were frozen around the same time as the replicant project as a backup plan; they'd be on the lookout for androids if they were from the few shades who successfully convinced their replicant to reunite
Both of you are correct. As for when Project Endurance began and when Adam Menendez' bunker started waking everyone up from cryo, those will be revealed in future chapters.
By the way, I didn't imply anything in the chapters that Project Endurance was carried out in Japan only.
Theres going to be some very confused androids if thousands of humans start appearing out of the ground all over the world. Presumably followed by White repeating hitting her face on a desk in frustration over not realizing there has been human survivors hidden under their very feet this entire time.
Theres going to be some very confused androids if thousands of humans start appearing out of the ground all over the world. Presumably followed by White repeating hitting her face on a desk in frustration over not realizing there has been human survivors hidden under their very feet this entire time.
Humans had battle robots to fight the Legions before Project Gestalt began. So why not maso-powered power armor? Sci-fi and fantasy stuff are well within suspension of disbelief in NieR.
@Peanuckle said it best about the justification of having Anthem-inspired power armors in this fanfic: "There's hardly any exploration into the Legion wars, and even less speculation on the kinds of outrageous bullshit that a desperate mankind got up to with maso."
The roar of thrusters reverberated through the thick forests of Kanagawa, the passage of a white-blue Spectre echoing against the branches and leaves of unnaturally tall trees. Following in its wake, almost silent in comparison, was a white-black Storm Javelin, it's more esoteric flight systems emitting merely a humming gurgle in operation. Yet the latter did not lose to the former in speed, distance quickly swallowed as modern ruins gave way to trees, before even those too disappeared beneath a forest of heavily rusted pipes and crumbling chimneys of a long abandoned industrial complex.
A complex that had, according to the old records referenced by EVANS, once been known as the Keihin Industrial Zone.
Except that was an impossibility.
More than 9,000 years had passed since Project Endurance's launch. Nothing from that era should have remained, any remaining surface buildings long since worn down to dust and rubble as time and the elements took their toll, clearing the field for nature to finish the job. Someone, or something, had to have rebuilt this place. Rebuilt then abandoned, the seemingly empty buildings weathered only by years, or perhaps a single decade, of rust and time. All of this combined to raise some very disturbing questions. In some ways, it reminded him all too much of the last years of the war...
Focus on the big laser first, Adam, he thought, sighing as he set his eyes on the large factory before them.
Soon afterwards, bright light flashed once more in front of the HUD and he quickly shut his eyes tight from the blinding glow. Thunder cracked through his audio pickups, an electric 'howl' in its wake.
"Shit!" Adam cursed, opening his eyes once the large laser cannon stopped firing. His ears were still ringing from that weapon's muzzle blast.
Blinking the spots out of his vision, he looked down, only to find nothing but a forest of pipes blanketing the ground and no entry to the factory ahead of them. Adam continued to look forward until he saw a patch of ground hidden behind a tangle of crumbling machinery. It wasn't a large space by any measure, but big enough and he set his course accordingly.
"That looks like a nice spot to land, EVANS. Let's go put down down there," he declared before an indicator instantly popped up on his HUD.
Seconds later, both Lancer and Spectre began deceleration, changing from prone flight positions to upright as the designated area came into view. Retro thrusters fired, ballistic descent becoming powered for a moment, and they smoothly landed feet first on the concrete floor with muffled thuds. Assault rifles snapped from flight harnesses, man and machine covering the landing zone as they scanned for movement. Finding none, they advanced towards the entry proper, eyes and sensors watching every corner as they approached the rusted industrial sliding doors.
They were at the door in moments, Adam taking overwatch as the Specter began to force them open to the groan of long rusted metal. Against Adam's expectations, nothing attacked them, and the doors parted to reveal a darkened machine hall. Shadows obscured much of the interior, thin columns of light weakly filtering in through jagged holes in the walls and ceiling the only illumination. Scrap and refuse was littered everywhere, a forest of loose wires hanging from the ceiling like jungle vines while rusting archaic machines sat in disused silence.
The story repeated itself as they penetrated deeper into the structure, his HUD adjusting to low-light mode and illuminating the darkened complex in various hues of green. Scrap, broken or defunct machinery, rust and crumbling walls. There were no signs of activity at all in years at least, if not decades. Not even the emergency lights were functional.
It was, by all evidence, a dilapidated industrial complex, as decrepit on the inside as it looked on the outside.
Which made the presence of the laser cannon emplacement all the more puzzling. Why put something like that if there was nothing worth defending?
An ear splitting crack followed on the thought as if summoned, the cannon's retort shaking the ground and raining down dust from the ceiling. Neither man nor drone stumbled as the ground shook, but the intensity of the blast was warning enough. They were getting close.
It wasn't much later that Adam found his first sign that not all was as abandoned as it seemed. Another door deep inside the complex, away from the exterior walls and showing less signs of wear than the others. More damning was the motion sensor installed above the door, its status light glowing a steady green instead of dead. And when he stepped closer, the door slid open with whisper quiet smoothness, allowing both Lancer and Spectre access.
"Well... this is new."
Gone was the dilapidation, the signs of disuse and abandonment. A vast factory chamber stretched out before him, reinforced walls spreading outwards and downwards for miles, every inch of it bustling with all the energy of tireless industry, beneath the actinic glare of floodlights. Massive crucibles line the complex walls by the dozen, pouring their molten cargo into molds with mechanical efficiency. Hundreds of conveyor belts criss-cross the depths, each black line dotted with countless components to be fed into coolers, stampers, assemblers and fabricators.
Even sealed behind his suit, he can almost taste the acrid tang of industrial smoke, thick clouds of scorched industrial effluent rising from the glowing deep like volcanic ash.
"I guess we know now why that cannon was put here," Adam remarked, looking down from the mezzanine at the endless hive of activity that never ceased or slowed. A dizzying array of active machinery and production, yet not a single soul aside from himself to run, monitor or manage the place. The conclusion was easy enough to make. The facility was fully automated.
Just like the guards.
His assault rifle snapped up as the combat suite blared a warning, directional markers pointing him towards the sound of clanking footsteps and grinding gears. Access points had slid open along the mezzanine, familiar figures trundling out from the darkened recesses by the dozens. Unlike their flying kin, these hunchbacked machines waddled and jumped on stumpy legs, their rust coated limbs skeletal and simplistic as they reached out with clear intent. Their eyes glowing with blood red aggression.
There was no hesitation.
Paired rifles barked simultaneously, a furious barrage from both Adam and Spectre ripping through the sentries. Without the agility of their aerial platforms, the machines were easy prey for the armor piercing spikes, their perforated bodies soon carpeting the floor. Carving open a path through the teaming machines, the pair advanced rapidly along the mezzanine, leaping down the stairs at the end to outrun their pursuers. But no sooner than their boots impacted the catwalk than a trio of flyers erupted up from the depths, guns already charging.
Missiles smashed into them before they could fire, erupting in stutter-blink flames that swallowed them whole. A brief status blurt from the Spectre flickered across the comm channels, and Adam blinked a reply of affirmation. It wasn't as capable as its primary gestalt, but he was glad EVANS had left a subroutine with him. Its quick responses never fell short of expectations.
Mindful of the complex's awakening defenses, the Lancer quickly advanced down the catwalk, gun out with the Spectre keeping overwatch. A part of him argued that it was foolishness to go deeper into the complex. That this far exceeded his reconnaissance orders. A larger part of him pushed on with the need for answers. He dearly hoped that somewhere in the complex there would be a command center, an archive, something that would shed light on everything that had happened since the long sleep, and how much of a threat it represented to the Yamanashi Bunker.
Thoughts like that drove him forward, through a set of doors and into a smelting chamber, a vast cavernous complex that forced him to stop momentarily in awe at its size. Here the ever-present smoke was thicker, almost choking. The soot clouds hued a bloody red by the glow of countless smelters pouring their molten cargo. Temperature alerts blatted in his HUD, warning of dangerous ambient heat. Even sealed inside his suit, staying for long meant certain death.
"Warning. Incoming hostiles. Northwest."
A glance at the motion tracker on the lower right corner of his HUD confirmed as much, a handful of dots that rapidly resolved into actual targets as he spun to face them. More flyers buzzed into view, walkers slung underneath their chassis. But unlike the earlier unarmed models, all too familiar cannons had been bolted onto their chests, energy discharges already building at their muzzle tips.
Adam swung an arm up, arcane seals spinning into visibility as he fed them power, bright arcs of electricity forming around the limb. A moment, a thought, and he thrust his arm outward, unleashing a thunderbolt of destruction. In the space of a heartbeat, the bolt struck his first target, discharging its destructive power as metal melted and circuits exploded. Yet it's amperage was too high, too great to be contained to a single body. More arcs formed around his victim, leapt to its compatriots, more machines shorting out and plummeting to the floor as their internals burned with electric fire.
Unfortunately, two flyers had managed to distance themselves from the group just enough to avoid the arcing lightning, quickly dropping their passengers on the platform in front of them. Not losing a moment, Adam clenched his outstretched hand, seal arrays changing as lightning was replaced by a concave wall of screaming winds. Energy bolts plunged into the barrier, only to be whipped away by the miniature gale.
Rapid fire guns thundered in reply and a stream of spikes streaked through the wall, hypervelocity rounds untouched by the barrier as they perforated rusted metal shells. The machines staggered under the assault, systems stuttering but not failing, only for Adam to deliver the finishing blow. An armored fist struck the wind wall, seals flaring with sudden solidness, and the gale erupted outwards, bowling over the machines and throwing them off the catwalk.
"All hostiles eliminated. No further contacts," EVANS declared, swapping the drone mech's magazine for a fresh one.
They continued forward, watching the path ahead for potential threats. But right after the two of them ascended a flight of stairs, Adam suddenly stopped in his tracks. Something was off. It was quiet. Too quiet he realized. The thunderous crack of the laser cannon and the static wail of its beam was missing, absent ever since they entered the factory in fact.
"Is there something wrong?" EVANS asked, not having the same level of awareness as its human counterpart.
"The cannon stopped firing," Adam noted. "That means the targets it was shooting at were destroyed."
"Or some of them managed to slip through and disabled the weapon," the AI postulated, putting forward its own hypothesis.
"Then there's only one way to find out."
Both the Lancer and the Spectre set out along the length of the smelting chamber's catwalk, watchful for any more enemies. But aside from their own footsteps, the only sounds that came were from leaking steam valves and the other machinery that continued to operate without pause. Before long, they came across another exit in the distance, a pair of sliding doors with a familiar set of green lit motion sensors installed above them. As they moved forward, Adam wondered at the identity of the targets getting shot at over the sea.
He honestly hoped it would prove to be an enemy of his enemy type of situation. A friendly face would be really helpful about now, especially if they could explain what had been happening on Earth for the last 9,000 years.
And if he was really lucky, they might even become a potential ally to him and everyone back at Endurance.
It was not, as he expected, another factory hall beyond the doors. Instead it was a simple corridor, and an open door to his left. But beyond that...
"¿Que demonios?" Adam exclaimed, very much surprised at the massive wreckage before them. "Is that... from an excavator?"
"The bucket-wheel portion of an excavator," EVANS added unnecessarily.
Or rather, the remains of one, resting atop a pile of rubble where it must have fallen. At some point, the entire circular frame had been cut loose from its parent body, and violently at that. The joints that should have connected the saw to an arm was little more than a twisted mass of blackened metal and wiring. And that was not the only damage that had been done to the machine.
Scorch marks, half melted craters that were indicative of high temperature impacts stitched all across its surface but without the shrapnel expected of projectile rounds. Some kind of energy weapons fire, clearly, perhaps even the same type as the one that had been shot at him not so long ago. These were understandable. But what truly mystified him though, were the cuts. Long lines had been scored deep into the metal, too straight to be random damage, too precise to be unaimed. Each strike had left not just been driven deep into the metal plating, he could see sparking cables and smoking devices through the rents.
Someone had used a blade to do all of this. Someone who had to be incredibly strong...
And insane enough to close the distance to do it, he thought, glancing at the wreckage up and down for a moment before taking another look around. Or desperate.
As badly wrecked as the excavator wheel was, the surrounding factory complex had fared even worse. Meter wide trenches had been gouged in haphazard lines everywhere he could see. Brick, mortar and concrete had been churned into dust, the shredded ends of rusted metal supports visible from where the trench lines had dug deep. More than one section of wall had crumpled as a consequence, and it was a miracle of engineering that this entire section of the building hadn't collapsed in on itself yet.
But no corpse. No splash of blood or fallen body, however pulverized it might have been.
So where… There.
His eye fell on another hole in the wall, almost behind where the wheel cutter had fallen. It was smaller than the others, damaged enough but not a rubble choked trench. It wasn't hard proof, but something in his gut said that it was the right way.
Assuming he could squeeze in. The wheel cutter was practically wedged against the wall, and the gap wasn't all that big. The Storm Javelin might fit, being of slimmer design than the other suits. The drone mech… not so much. Type-F Specters were built for heavy assault after all, not tunnel crawling... Hmm.
"EVANS, give me a scan, is that crawl space stable enough to take you pushing through?" He asked, gesturing at the base of the gap which was marginally larger. Not enough to actually accommodate the Spectre if only by a little, but with a bit of brute force...
The subroutine AI stepped forward, sensors splaying over the gap for a few seconds before responding.
"Affirmative. The surrounding structure is sufficiently intact to support such an action."
Adam looked around the gap one more time, gauging its width and height of the opening. "Good enough for me. I'll go through first. Have the drone follow behind."
As the Lancer hunched down a little and prepared to squeeze through the gap, EVANS' voice suddenly crackled in his ear, startling him.
"Alert."
"What is it?" He hissed slightly, holding back his frustration at the AI's interruption.
"I have detected anomalous thermal readings not far from here, potentially human in origin," EVANS stated.
As soon as Adam heard that sentence, his mind immediately went into overdrive. For a brief moment, he felt a flicker of hope in his chest. He was astonished that there were other humans besides him and everyone in the bunker still alive in this world.
"What?! Where?!"
"Approximately 20 metres from this position, through that opening."
Adam bent down and hastily moved through the opening. Once he got out the other side, it took only a moment of frantic searching before he spotted what looked to be a person lying on the floor with a concrete boulder next to their back. The Lancer quickly rushed to the figure, leaving the Spectre behind as it crawled through the gap. As he approached, the details became clearer. And stranger. It was a young woman, seemingly unconscious, white shoulder length hair concealing her slumped over face.
But her clothing was… more peculiar than anything he could have expected. It was a dress for one, the lacy black fabric stretched tight across her figure, with flaring elbow length sleeves and an abbreviated skirt that revealed a lot of thigh. Rounding out her dress were elegant looking white gloves and a pair of thigh high stiletto boots. Even the black scarf around her neck was some kind of lacey design that oozed high fashion. All of which made the strange sword embedded in the concrete floor beside her stand out even more for how it didn't fit together.
But all of that took secondary concern to who she was, and what answers she could provide.
If she could.
There was no reaction as he knelt close to the woman, inspecting her as the Spectre followed behind. In fact, it almost looked like she wasn't even breathing at all. Something that would have worried him a lot more if he couldn't see her body heat off his thermals, too warm to be freshly dead. But that might not have meant anything, he realized as he looked more closely. There were wounds on her body, cuts and tears along her torso that didn't bleed, while the long gash along her arm ran deep enough that he could see a total lack of organic material underneath.
Instead of muscle and bone, tightly packed metallic cables imitated the biological form in shape so closely that it would have been a perfect match save for color and texture, wrapped around a glint of hard edged steel that likely imitated the skeleton. The prostheses available in the Yamanashi Bunker couldn't even begin to compare in terms of realism.
How much of her body was her original, he wondered.
Triggering his sensor suite, he linked up with the Spectre's own set, projecting a glowing orange halo on her arm as their scanning beams began to run over her. But before the scanners could start processing the data, the woman stirred, her eyes snapping open to lock onto both Lancer and Spectre. Immediately she started twitching, limbs spasming as she struggled to move. Her mouth opened, but the only sound that emerged from it was a harsh rasp, devoid of coherent words.
"Miss, please calm down," he assured her, making soothing gestures with his free hand. "We're here to help. Just relax, everything will be f-"
"This person is not a human," EVANS suddenly piped up into his ear, turning off Spectre's scan process.
"The hell are you talking about?" Adam asked incredulously as he turned his sight to the Spectre. The AI's claim was preposterous. Prosthesis or no, there was no way-
"Deep scanning has found no matches for organic matter. She is a synthetic creation, an android."
Adam's eyes went wide in shock. He'd thought the prostheses were uncannily realistic, but an android? Could it be? Even her eyes seemed far too expressive to be artificial, filled with fear as they-
"Hey, hey, it's fine. It's fine," he shushed, raising a hand in a placating gesture at the frightened woman who continued to struggle despite his attempts, another burst of meaningless noises emerging from her throat. Seeing the futility of it, he let both his hand and face fall in defeat. Android or no, seeing her react like that to him hurt.
Looking at the damaged form of the android, lying helplessly on the floor before him, Adam felt a familiar sensation grip his heart. The last time he'd felt the same was during the Legion War, trying to save as many people in any way he possibly could. Trying… and failing far too often. But failures or not, he was still a Lancer, still committed to that one driving goal to save those he could reach.
"Is there anything we can do to help her?" Adam asked.
"Standard nanogel application is not recommended at this moment," EVANS answered. "This android is of unknown construction and technology. Without an existing blueprint to rely on, it is not possible to repair the damage through nanogel without considerable study of her technological makeup beforehand."
"Damn it!" He cursed in frustration. "Is there anything we can do for her now?"
"There exists a possibility," the AI hedged. "I am detecting various low strength radio signals of unusual packet density emanating from within her chassis. It may be possible that as an android of advanced construction, she has been configured to interface with computer systems directly. It may be possible to attempt a direct connection to her information network to bridge the language gap."
"And hopefully she may be able to tell us how to fix her," Adam mused.
"Correct," EVANS affirmed. "However, her transmission signals are of unknown format. A remote connection is not viable under the circumstances. I will require a direct physical interface with her network hardware in order to attempt an interface."
At that, the AI stepped forward, a silvery dataspike sliding out from under the Spectre's right forearm with a smooth snick.
It wasn't the best thing he could have done, in retrospect.
She practically exploded in panic, limbs spasming against the ground, the volume of her unintelligible speech rising in intensity and fear. Tears rolled down her cheek as terrified eyes darted between the Lancer towering before her and the advancing Spectre, barely able to shake her head in panic.
"Whoah! Whoah, stop!" One hand gets flung out towards the Spectre, bringing it to a halt. "Wait. Let me try to calm her down first."
Turning back towards her, Adam made a few soothing sounds to try and reassure her. "Shhh. It's okay. It's okay. Don't worry. We're here to help. It'll be alright."
Only to fail completely as his words were ignored, her hoarse cries and struggles growing in intensity, however feeble. Even without understandable words, her fear was a palpable thing, of him, of what he might do to her. As if he was a mon-
He cursed mentally as the thoughts connected the obvious.
Could it be?
With a single command thought, his faceplate hissed open, revealing not just his tanned and stubbled face, but his humanity as well. As soon as the android saw his exposed face, her struggles stopped almost immediately, her expression one of confused scrutiny.
"Everything's going to be fine," Adam reassured her once more, his voice imbued with a low, gentle tone. "EVANS," he gestured towards the Spectre, "just needs to interface with you so we can understand you. That's all."
Seconds passed in tense silence. Then as if a decision was made, he felt the tension bleeding out of the android, her struggles slowing. Though whether in defeat or acceptance, he didn't know. Once she had calmed enough, he slowly lifted her wrist, giving him a better look at the exposed gash upon her arm. It was, as he suspected, mostly bundles of fine greyish cable underneath, the potentially electoractive fibers packed tightly in mimicry of the human musculature. But there were several black cables that were threaded alongside the synthetic muscle that stood out, marked with tiny alien script. It wasn't a surety, but Adam was willing to bank on his guess that they were his target.
"Okay EVANS, now slowly extend your datajack. Put it in flex mode and pass it over."
Without a word, the AI complied, the datajack cable writhing like a living thing as it extended, it's interface head snaking over to Adam's waiting hand. Grasping it, he brought it down to the wound in her arm where the spike split up to reveal a trio of smart manipulators, micro-LEDs in the digits lighting up the interior. The android made a blurting sound, and though he still didn't understand a word, it sounded worried, fearful.
"It's alright, it's alright. It won't hurt you," he reassured her, hands raised in a peaceful gesture. "We just want to figure out how to understand one another so we can help you."
Maybe it was something in his voice. Even as he spoke words she couldn't have understood, the android slowly began to untense, eventually allowing him to bring the cable closer to the exposed wiring. Almost immediately the manipulators perked, micro-sensors picking up signs of data flow, before attaching themselves to the cables with a short lived arc of electricity.
The android started a little at that, but she didn't react any further than that.
"It'll be fine. I promise." He gave her a gentle smile, receiving a hesitant nod in return. "Alright, EVANS. Do it."
There was a beep of acknowledgement, and his HUD flashed through on the digital handshake. As it did, he found his attention drifting back to the android who was giving him a silent stare in return, an expression of confusion marring her features. Her features… it looked so life-like to him, the hair, the eyes, the way she furrowed her brow. There was nothing there aside from her injuries that did not mark her as inhuman. That someone had managed to advance so far, to create someone like her, it was beyond amazing even to someone like him. How far ahead were her people compared to Project Endurance?
But a part of him felt agitated. Hostile robots, androids, this wasn't the future he had expected going into cryo. He hadn't expected much to be honest, but this was radically outside of expectations. What did all of this mean for the remnants of humanity? Were they all going to wake up only to face yet another war of extermination?
But thoughts on humanity's chances of survival in this new world were interrupted by warning alerts and the garbled screech of static in his ear.
"S-signif-ficant com-complication," the AI garbled.
"EVANS, what's wrong?!" Adam frantically demanded. A simple interface job shouldn't have affected the AI like this. His mind flashed over the possibilities. Counter-intrusion software? Had he guessed wrong?
"I-I-In-fective code," came the stuttered reply. "Sys-tem firewalls b-b-b-breached."
His mouth gaped, frozen in shock. Eyes darted to the android, whose own eyes remained locked on his. Only a moment, but then his training kicked in.
"Disconnect!" He ordered, one hand flashing down to rip out the cables a moment later when the Spectre didn't respond immediately.
Whatever his hopes, they were dashed when the Spectre began to shake.
"Se-se-cond-ary s-s-systems compromised," EVANS stuttered. "Core system-tem-tem at-at-at risk. C-c-ca-se firebb-b-b-" it cut off, words swallowed in a squall of static.
His heavy pistol snapped up without even a heartbeat spared on thinking, hard drilled instincts centering the muzzle over the left chest port where the Spectre's central processing systems were housed. It didn't matter anymore whether the android was the source of the virus or its victim. Firebreak. Every soldier on the field knew it, drilled it in until it was second nature during the War. In the event of capture or subversion...
His trigger finger tightened...
And abruptly loosened as he jerked the sidearm down. Cursing up a storm, a mental command sent a datajack slithering out of his arm bracer, the cable slapping into his palm as he rose towards the Spectre.
There was a shriek of static from the spasming machine instead of the expected answer, and Adam tensed. But a moment later, an armored hatch opened in its chest, revealing the central processing core and dataport.
There were so many ways that this was a bad idea. It was an unknown but extremely advanced virus. He wasn't the best, or even among the top percentile of Uplinks. His experience was in the repair of corrupted software, not active cyberwarfare defense. He might not be able to do anything but waste precious time. They were deep in enemy territory, and the distraction could prove more than fatal with them both compromised. So many ways…
"Santa Maria vela a nosotros tontos," he muttered, slamming the jack into the waiting port. "Initiate level 2 neural connection."
A heartbeat passed. Another. And then he felt the interface buried in the base of his skull hum with activity. Imagined its neural spikes charging with power as neurons were hooked, entangled, the fingernail sized device cracking open its digital maws wide.
And swallowed him whole.
~~|>> [-//=+=\\-] <<|~~
Author's Note: And Adam Menendez has finally made first contact with a YoRHa android in the Abandoned Factory. Those that had played NieR: Automata, andat least finished Route A, will know who that android is.
Furthermore, due to personal reasons that we can't disclose in public, both @Mashadarof402 and I will not write the next chapter of this story for several months. No, that does not mean either of us is dropping this project. There's nothing bad happened. There's no conflict happened between us, we're both alright with each other. I'm also hoping that having active feedback and discussion in this thread will help, so here we are. We hope you all enjoy this chapter.
Wow, this is actually great! I really like the uniqueness of the protagonists background and capabilities. Though "secret project to save humanity" is a common scenario, this one feels easy to understand and the setup was good for getting us into it. I'm excited to see how Adam's communication with the Android will go, but seeing that you won't be updating this for a while makes me want to cry. Good luck, I hope things go well for you leading up to when you'll next be able to update.
Wow, this is actually great! I really like the uniqueness of the protagonists background and capabilities. Though "secret project to save humanity" is a common scenario, this one feels easy to understand and the setup was good for getting us into it. I'm excited to see how Adam's communication with the Android will go, but seeing that you won't be updating this for a while makes me want to cry. Good luck, I hope things go well for you leading up to when you'll next be able to update.
Thanks, man. Yeah, we're both sad that we won't be able to update the story for several months due to unavoidable IRL circumstances. Still, it's better to inform you guys first than never at all. Keeping the readers hanging without knowing when the story will be updated is not a good experience for everyone.
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