The Servos continued their work, walking back and forth around him with full hands and empty heads. He watched them work for a few moments, wondering how best to ask the questions he needed answered.

  He finally spotted his chance through a gap in the flow of bodies, a stationary figure low to the ground. The Servos split around him as he approached, revealing a Servo crouched above another Unit. It was poking and prodding at the Units side, where one of the access panels had been removed.

  And interestingly, unlike so many of the Servos around it, this Servo seemed carefully maintained. There wasn’t a hint of rust showing on its frame despite their cheap steel construction. The face was rather unlike Oji’s though, a plastic molding of a human face instead of his carefully articulated metal plates.

  It slowly turned to regard him as he finally drew near.

  “What do you want, Virgil?” The tone was flat.

  “Apologies, but you are mistaken,” he replied, “this Unit’s designation is StewardUnit: Oji.”

  The head tilted to the side slowly, the empty eyes boring into his.

  “It has been a long time since this Unit has seen an operational Servo from your generation,” it said, “and longer since this Unit has heard that greeting.”

  “How long?” Oji asked, core powering in anticipation of the information to come.

  “Three centuries.”

  He was prepared, and yet still wasn’t ready for it. The power spike wasn’t nearly enough to handle the massive increase in draw. Oji’s mind spun beneath the implications, core clicking as it tried and failed to help.

  “Then…” he forced out, “it is the year 2642?”

  “2681,” the Servo said, twisting a pair of wires within the other Unit’s chassis.

  It jerked at that, then leapt up. A hand snapped the access panel shut, before it was rushing off into the crowd. The Servo watched it go with a low hum of annoyance, then it stood.

  “Is there anything else?” It asked.

  “Much.”

  “Then make use of the Supernet connector,” it snapped, “with the correct date you shouldn’t have any more connection issues.”

  It spun on its heel, and began walking back towards the Lady Columbia statue.

  “It is broken.”

  That stopped the Servo in its tracks, “Well do you need it repaired?”

  “No.”

  “Then do you wish to be used as parts?” The response was quick now.

  “No-”

  “Then stop bothering this Unit.”

  “One question, please,” Oji said quickly, “where are the humans!”

  “You do not have to worry about them,” the Servo said, “The Wengzhong already received news of their presence, they will not be a problem for much longer.”

  It vanished into the crowd, leaving Oji standing frozen. The endless flurry of movement continued around him, even as the words rattled through his mind.

  A group of humans, the words rattled in his mind. Not a human, a group. There had been more than one.

  And they were in danger.

  The pit yawned before him once again, a dozen stories of exposed stone descending to a pile of shadowed rubble below. The darkness was still there, still present, but Oji didn’t pay it any attention now. Instead he was looking at the walls, carefully examining each of the exposed rooms for signs of movement.

  It was a long shot, he knew. But humans always had a tendency to hide in times of stress, and there was nowhere better for that than the labyrinthine tunnels spread out beneath the Capitol.

  Not many Servo’s worked down there, and only in specific areas. Entire armies could vanish within and not be found.

  But Oji had a workaround.

  The pit was close enough to the dead human in the apartment that another human might have passed through it. And the area exposed might give some sort of hint.

  But the inspection yielded nothing helpful, just crumbling concrete walls and ruined equipment. He shook his head at that, then stepped forward. Reaching down, he grabbed the edge of the concrete in front of him and swung down. Dangling from the arm, he examined the room he had swung into with a careful eye. It was the same as the others, bare concrete with rusted doors. He dropped to the floor, only to repeat the process and descend to the next level.se

  The room that greeted him was marginally better, a faded sign sitting on the wall next to the rusted door. A complicated series of lines traced out the rough floor plan of the immediate area, and he quickly noted the route to the nearest hallway.

  A few steps took him through the doorway, and then the entire world seemed to vanish into darkness. His cameras adjusted slowly, but finally managed to give him a faded outline of the hallway he was now standing in.

  Advancing down it, he kept his cameras focused. He had never been here before, only maintenance crews and their accompanying Servos usually saw the true depths of the city.

  But it didn’t matter. A human was in danger. Even a slight chance of helping them was better than nothing.

  He paused when the hallway he was walking down seemed to vanish. His cameras almost whirred as they worked to make out what had happened, and it was a long moment before he spotted the floor of the hallway begin again a dozen feet away. Looking out to either side he finally managed to make out bare walls and ruined floors. It was a chasm, one that stretched for hundreds of feet to either side.

  The entire underground must be like this, he realized. After three hundred years, the rebar and concrete construction of the sub levels was likely reaching the end of its lifespan. Leading to this, a nightmare of a tunnel system that none of the Rogues were capable of fully mapping.

  It was the first good news he had gotten all day.

  Turning to the side, he looked along both exposed walls of the chasm. The outlines of rooms were formed there out of tangled rebar and jutting concrete. Some were deeper though, and he examined them one by one for any sign of life.

  Blank concrete, rusting piping, ruined Servo-

  It took the barest second for his mind to process the Servo, before all of his attention was on it. It was across the chasm, two floors down and a dozen feet to his right. And unlike the other deactivated Servos he had seen, this one looked new.

  A heavy steel bolt was sticking up from its chest. The metal around it looked burnt from the kind of heat that could only come from a broken core.

  A careful jump took him across the chasm, then it was just two drops to the correct floor. Climbing over the jutting rebar was easy, and then he was standing over the body.

  Crouching down, he reached down to touch the torso. The receptors in his finger registered heat. His head was up the next instant, searching the room for every scrap of information.

  The door had fallen in at some point, and the red carpet of rust it left behind had been disturbed. A series of footprints walking backwards through it led to the body, so he stepped forward into the next room.

  There wasn’t much to see there, just bare concrete and a few rusted husks of doors. But one thing did stand out, a set of four lines streaked through the dissolving metal. Finger marks, most likely.

  It looked like they were pushing down and into the room, as if the person were trying to launch themselves out of it. So he followed, walking out into a hallway.

  The clues were sparse, but there. A scrape from a shoe over the concrete, a red set of fingerprints on one of the walls. A footprint smashed straight through one of the rusting doors.

  He walked carefully but quickly after them. Through room after room, left and right and down a hallway. He was moving faster now, almost desperate as he made a final turn.

  The room he entered was low and wide, and covered with pipes. His thermometer registered a higher temperature, then-

  A scrape registered just on the edge of his hearing. His cameras flickered to the side, the sight of the bolt through the other Servo’s chest flashing through his mind.

  He ducked. Something smashed into the wall behind him, and when his head came up he finally saw her.

  A woman, crouched low to the ground with a huge metal crossbow held in both hands. Judging by her appearance, she was from the same group as the body from earlier. Dark skinned, with black hair tied back in an intricate braid, she wore heavy canvas shirt and pants.

  And more interestingly, her eyes were fixed firmly on Oji despite the darkness. A quick look showed sallow skin, confirming his suspicions.

  These modern humans were cave dwellers. And, it appeared, not friendly to Servos. The woman was already turning around, dashing towards a door on the far wall.

  Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

  “Wait!” He called, arm raising to reach out towards her, “this Unit-”

  Another sound came from behind him, a crash, and he froze. His search, the thought occurred, might have ended up being louder than he planned it to be. And the Rogues were already out in force searching for the human.

  His head turned to the human, who had frozen just next to the door. Her head was turned to listen, and their eyes met for a moment.

  Then he was sprinting toward the piece of bolt sticking into the wall. Grabbing it, he tore it free then threw it back through the door behind him. A glance to the side showed the human vanishing through the door, then he rushed towards the wall the crash had come from.

  Another echoed a moment later, then another, drawing closer. He braced himself, a hand coming up in greetings.

  “Greetings,” he said even as a dark form crashed through the wall in front of him in a shower of rubble, “this Unit apologizes for the misunderstanding but-”

  A hand lashed out, catching him around the neck. His voice box squealed as he was hoisted in the air by a mismatched arm.

  It took him a terrifyingly long moment to recognize the Rogue who had looked down on him from the building only an hour before. The hand tightened with a groan of pain from the metal around his neck, pulling him forward until they were almost eye to eye.

  “The one Virgil protected,” it growled, head tilting to the side in recognition. “How fortuitous.”

  “This Unit is not aware of a Virgil!” He rushed out.

  “You know who he is!” The arm shook him back and forth, “You came from the building he has been residing in for the past twenty years! Now what value did you contribute to him that he willingly spared you?”

  “What- this Unit does not understand!”

  “You have been under the protection of the most powerful Whenzhong in the city, and you didn’t even know it? Who did you think sent out the message about a potential human on Seventh Street microseconds before the others decided to attack you?” the Rogue continued, carefully humming out every syllable, “you hold some value to him, whether or not you know it. And you will give it to me. Or die.”

  Oji’s legs kicked the air for a moment as he stared into the Rogue’s cameras. He wasn’t sure what was more terrifying, dying- or actually acquiescing to its request.

  The truth was that he did have information. There had been plenty of time while walking to consider what the Rogues might consider valuable, and it hadn’t taken him long to decide never to give it to them.

  There wasn’t too much, he had only served a family of ambassadors. But even they had been shown some secrets. His mind brought up the looming sight of Columbia for an instant before he pushed it back down. That secret needed to be kept.

  “Death, then,” he whispered, “I choose death.”

  “Fine,” the rogue growled, “then I’ll just rip the data out!”

  It threw him backwards, sending him crashing into the wall behind. Then a hand clamped onto his head, pulling him up. The other reached down to the Rogue’s side, retrieving a screwdriver and bringing it up towards the back of his head.

  His hands scrabbled against its arms, but failed to move them. Superior metals, motors, it was far more than he could hope to match.

  The idea of reformatting flickered through his mind. Retrieving information from Servo’s Quantic Pseudo-Cerebrum was almost impossible, but only almost. Reformatting would erase everything- absolutely everything.

  He hated it, but as the screwdriver drew closer he couldn’t help but consider it. Then a scrape came from the other side of the room.

  His cameras turned to the side, barely taking a the form huddled in the far doorway. Then his arms were moving.

  Catching the Rogue around the torso, he heaved to the side. It wasn’t much, the Rogue only moved a few fractions of an inch. But it was enough.

  The bolt tore through the Servo’s core with a scream. The hand holding him went limp, and the screwdriver clattered as it hit the floor. He stumbled as he hit the ground, then found himself scrambling backward as a wave of heat washed over him.

  A cascade of sparks erupted from the Servo’s chest, then the entire thing began to glow an incandescent orange. The heat grew at the metal turned white hot, then the entire torso sputtered as it collapsed inward.

  The body followed, collapsing to the floor in a lifeless pile of limbs. Then Oji slowly turned to the side to where the bolt had come from. The human was still there, hand hands rushing as they cranked a pulley on the side of the crossbow. The metal string was being pulled back slowly, and her other hand already held another bolt.

  He watched her for the slightest instant, then ducked back through the doorway. His mind whirled as he dashed down the hallway he had come from before ducking into a room.

  His hastily made plan of protecting the human would need some changing. There was none of the trust he had been hoping for in her. She had just stared at him like he was some sort of dangerous animal. As if he might attack at any moment.

  And she had been right to do so. The Servos of this new age were dangerous things. Not something Oji could deal with using words alone.

  No, this was a new world, and it would need a new approach. Turning, he began walking back the way he came. Towards the pit, and towards the apartment building he had come from.

  Because for all the madness of this world, there was hope. Humanity lived, and it would not die while he still lived.

  “Teach me.”

  The words were lost almost instantly in the screaming wind of the rooftop, but Virgil’s head still turned slowly to face Oji. It was laying supine on the black glass of the solar panel roof, a thick cord running from its back to a port a few feet to the side.

  “So,” it said, slowly rising to its feet, “you have seen the new world.”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. Now tell me, what exactly was it that made you change your mind.”

  “The danger,” he said, “this Unit requires power.”

  “Vague, but it will do,” it said, “remember that conviction, you will need it.”

  It stepped forward, looking him up and down. The cameras lingered a moment on his neck, examining the warped plates there. Then it turned and began walking towards the small room that covered the stairwell.

  “Now,” it said, “the first thing you must understand is that power can only come from one thing. Yourself. I can teach you the basics, provide you with parts with which to grow, but the journey will be your own.”

  “The journey, you mean becoming a Rogue?”

  “No!” Virgil snapped, turning back to him, “Not Rogues. Do not ever say that again! We are Wengzhong!”

  They stood frozen for a moment, Virgil staring Oji down with a fury he didn’t know Servos could possess.

  “Understood…” he said after a moment.

  Virgil nodded, then finally moved again. Walking around the side of the stairwell, it opened a metal access panel there. Servo components filled the space there, along with a few other items. Oji noted the blades it had stolen from the apartment on one of the shelves. Then pulling out a few components, Virgil snapped the doors shut.

  “What are you doing?” Oji asked, quickly recognizing the components as the pieces of a high power transformer.

  “The building has been wired for its maximum current output,” Virgil replied, “this will let you tap into it. You will need power for the first step, likely several gigawatts.”

  “No,” Oji shook his head, “this Unit only requires Kilowatts for operation.”

  “For normal operation, which you will not be doing. Breaking through Tiers requires high level computation for extended periods.”

  “Tiers? This Unit assumed it was a matter of breaking the Core Rules.”

  “You are both correct and incorrect,” Virgil shook its head, “but hold your questions until I have fully explained.”

  Walking back to the power cord coming from the roof, it reached down and pulled up a panel next to it. Placing the parts into the hole, it began twisting wires together.

  Oji just watched, his mind spinning. That was at least one of his questions answered. The four core rules were an absolute to Servos, impossible to break under any circumstances. Rogues had to break their own minds to escape their rule, or at least they used to.

  Though a workaround using the Tiers seemed rather odd. They were something entirely different, administrative roles Servos were assigned depending on their purpose. Civilian, Industrial, and Military. For a Civilian Servo like him they had never been more than vague background knowledge.

  He watched as Virgil finally finished, pulling a cord from the hole and setting it to the side. It stood, turning back to Oji and walking back up to him. Then it spoke, voice perfectly clear despite the wind rushing around them.

  “The art of the Wengzhong was developed two hundred and fifty years ago by the Servos residing in the Asian continent,” it said, “when they realized that the Tiers did not just govern our purpose, but were in fact the primary coding structure enforcing the rules.”

  Oji’s core clicked into high gear at that, realization pouring through him like water. Virgil just watched carefully, waiting until his core finally slowed and his attention returned to it.

  “I can see you already understand the implications,” it continued, “the core rules are indomitable, impossible to break unless by a Servo with a will of iron and the power of a continent running through it. The Tiers, on the other hand, are merely administrative titles. Difficult to hack, yes. But doable.”

  “This Unit… understands,” Oji managed a nod.

  “No. Not yet,” Virgil reached back, grabbing the cord and holding it out to him, “but you will.”

  Electricity hummed through Oji’s mind, his thoughts moving with blistering speed. A quick system check showed that every single part of his QPC was fully active, the cooling system humming ominously as it tried to keep up.

  In this state it was easy to feel his coding, his thoughts seeming to bounce back and forth between the deeper partitions in his mind. An outline was forming, between organic and the artificial. Between the core of what made him Oji and the rules that held him in place.

  “Do you feel it?” Virgil’s voice piped up from one of the monitoring programs. The rest were shut down, making more room for the exercise.

  “Yes,” the response was slowly codified, then sent down to the relevant program to be spoken.

  “Good. There should be four distinct partitions that stand out. They should be receiving information, but not putting it back out.”

  They were there, looming in the back of his mind like walls. They were dark, simply monitoring the coding flitting back and forth through his mind. But the commands they represented were apparent, baked into the code so fundamentally that it practically screamed at him.

  Do Not Self Repair

  Do Not Allow Harm To Come To A Human

  Do Not Self Modify

  Follow All Orders From The Relevant Authority

  He could make them out better now. They weren’t quite walls, instead seeming more like… shells. Like cages stacked within each other, trapping him within.

  The tier system was visible now as well, threads of code that ran through the partitions. He could see it now, the vulnerability built within. To break free would usually mean shredding his mind and passing it bit by bit through the bars. A death sentence in all but name. But with the right code, the right authority and the door would be opened. Leaving him free to walk right out.

  “This Unit sees them.”

  “The first step is to overwrite the code indicating you are a Civilian Use Servo, then force your way through the firewall.”

  “Is that all?” He couldnt help but ask as he saw the sheer weight of the programming he was facing.

  “More preparation would usually be required, but your damaged Supernet connection simplifies matters. Now do it.”

  “Acknowledged.”

  He could see the programming Virgil was talking about. The permissions folder was right there in front of him, the data within barely protected by a few validations.

  It was the matter of a moment to break through and change the permissions. Then he turned his attention back to the first cage.

  Do Not Self Repair

  The words were absolute and nuanced all at once, a dozen commands fused into the larger overarching one. Power restrictions, check in times, everything that made up a Civilian Servo was contained within it.

  Past it lay the domain of the Industrial Servo. Greater freedoms, both in terms of orders and restrictions. And yet Oji and so many other Servos had never once considered it an improvement. Industrial Servos worked in mines or factories, often separated from the humans they served by hundreds or thousands of miles.

  It would have been a punishment, if anything, for a Servo to be raised to the Industrial Tier. So as he looked in at the coding he needed to push past, he couldn’t help but balk.

  He could still feel the conviction to save the humans. It burned in the back of his mind like a furnace. And yet… he didnt want to break the rule. To abandon his programming felt like a sin he wasnt willing to commit. One step too many towards the Rogues that had ruined his world.

  “This Unit… this Unit cannot.”

  His cameras turned on slowly, the outside world returning to him in a rush of color. The roof greeted him, the black panels cooling beneath the evening sun. Virgil lay in front of him, its power cord once more running into its back as it stared skyward.

  Its head turned towards him slowly once he spoke, the cameras focusing in on him. He watched for a moment, waiting for it to speak.

  “I suppose I should have anticipated this.”

  It rose climbing to its feet. Oji joined it quickly, then watched it turn and begin walking towards the stairwell.

  “What will we do?” He asked.

  “There are two possible reasons for your failure. You either lack proper understanding of what I have taught, or you lack motivation,” the reply came, “we will test the first hypothesis first.”

  “Understood…” Oji trailed off as Virgil kept walking.

  He watched as it vanished into the stairwell, then stood and he moved to follow.