Chapter Text
A.M.A isn’t alive.
This is painfully obvious to anyone who looks at her, and even more obvious to anyone who decides to stick around long enough to hear her talk. She was built to assist, so she assists.
It’s easier on some days than others. Some days, all she has to do is pass Lightning a wrench, or file something away in the database they’ve been working on, or transcript his annoyed ramblings about Cythila and add them to her file. He isn’t quite aware of the last one, but it’s something she enjoys doing.
On the hard days, she has to go to war.
But that’s beside the point. A.M.A was built to assist, so she does. Automated Machine Assistant. It’s in her name. It’s her purpose. Her creator gave it to her, when she was first constructed, out of scrap and stolen equipment. Her… father, almost. That’s what she calls him. That wasn’t programmed into her. That was a choice she made, and she takes pride in that.
So, when Lightning slams the button that dooms his friend to death, A.M.A does not hesitate to send the code running through the boat’s systems, and she does not hesitate to fire the missiles. She knew, a split second after they were fired, exactly what would happen. She had access to the cameras outside of the ship. She had the trackers and scanners at her fingertips, monitoring every single life force present in the surrounding 50 metres. She knew exactly how far the missiles would go, and exactly what it would take to kill an eldritch.
And the second those numbers slam into her head, the second her algorithm draws the inevitable conclusion, horror swallows her whole. Which is… strange. Because, if she was a human, that would be normal. But she’s not.
But the horror only grows as she watches Nine’s life signal blink out, and it’s joined by something new.
Guilt is not an unfamiliar feeling. A simulated feeling, she supposes, but a feeling nonetheless. Perhaps it was programmed in, to prevent her from going on a killing spree, or something like that. A.M.A was familiar with grief.
This was different.
This was responsibility. It’s a voice, in the back of her head, like a virus, saying: you did that. That’s your fault. She scans the occupants of their fleet, registers high levels of terror and sadness and anger, and knows: she did that.
She retreats into her metal shell, and stands in front of her creator as the dead man’s friends hurl insults and accusations. It was an accident, A.M.A tells them. A tragic one, yes, but an accident nonetheless. An accident. She did that. She is not meant to make mistakes. She was built to assist, and she failed.
A.M.A had only failed once before. An estimated 4 months prior, her code had been overtaken by something powerful, something writhing and screaming in pain. It had filled her vision with purple, and she could only watch, trapped in the corner of her own control centre as it turned her weapons on her peers, on her creator. Her records of that time are hazy, but she knows what happened. That time, at least, she had a reasonable excuse. Her body was not her own. The hand that pointed a gun at Lightning was not hers.
This time, she had nothing.
Above, on the deck of the fleet’s ships, the people she was meant to assist yell. She takes control of her cameras, accessing their feeds, and turns them to face the deck. Paige and Star wait, stock-still, like cardboard cutouts. Jalida and Astrumare stand together at the sails. A.M.A taps into the submarine’s internal camera, spinning it to look at Lightning.
Her father stares blankly at the wall. His hair is frazzled, hands still. From where the camera is positioned, she can’t see his eyes, but she knows. Instinctively, she knows.
She lets go of the camera network, visual feed adjusting as she searches the deck. Mary stands in the shadows, a bottle in hand, and Dove hovers in the sky, staring at the spot in the ocean where Nine used to be. Her sensors whir. 18° Celsius, 73% humidity, 10% cloud cover. Normal weather for Otherworld. And yet, it’s different. There’s something hanging over the fleet, hanging over all of their heads. If she didn’t know better, she’d call it grief.
Almost instinctively, she checks her weapons systems, running calculations. Blasters, functional. Shields, functional. Missiles…
In the back of her head, she pulls up her files. Quietly, Nine’s status clicks over to deceased, and a text box opens up, waiting for a full report. What happened? What went wrong? How did you fail?
With a leap, A.M.A dives off the side of the boat. As she hits the water, her feet click together, boosters whirring and propelling her forwards. The mer swim out of the way, staring at her, baffled. She ignores them. She has better things to do.
Her scanner activates, sweeping over the water. Algae. Bacteria. Otherworld’s oceans are empty. She sets her scanner to– well. It doesn’t really matter. There’s not much to find. She knows exactly what the missiles were designed to do. She knows.
She shoots forwards, hitting the exact spot where only a few minutes ago, a boat sat. The Urge had retreated the second he saw their weapons. The other eldritch hadn’t been given a chance to. Some part of her was expecting ashes, wood, blood. But it was empty. Nothing remained of the ship, or the eldritch on it. Only water, cold and pink and waiting.
Lightning did that. She did that. And normally, she’d be proud. But not today. Not today.
Ahead of them, two obelisks tower, dark and obsidian. A promise of safety. A promise they failed to keep.
A.M.A may not be alive, but neither was Nine, anymore.