12 Miles Below

To’Wrathh re-watched the memory again, rewinding the recording a few seconds back.

Before her, the old shell she wore turned and dove forward, an emotionless visage. Almost serene, despite the massive amount of visible damage accumulated through the fight.

In that fight, she had been forced to shunt every last bit of algorithmic power in her system, including the sub-systems that handled facial movements.

The blades clashed again in slow motion, the final strike. Knife being parried away, while the other sank into her cheek. Her own blade dove forward, breaking Kidra’s helmet. The girl reacted, slowly shifting out of the way.

There. She magnified the view, watching as her wrists remained frozen in place.

Combat subroutines all across her mind had blared out optimal movements to auto-adjust the blade, and finish the work. All of them had been overridden. Even a fraction of an inch would be enough for the blade to cut into the human’s skull and cause fatal damage.

Instead, her wrist had not moved.

The command to override was unambiguous. This wasn't an accident or a glitch. Results returned as a direct order. From her neuromorphic mind. There was no virus. There was no missing connection or hardware error. No unregistered thoughts from a third party. It had come from her. From her.

Memory of her mother’s orders floated by her mind.

The pale lady had commanded her to kill the sister. When presented with a chance to do exactly that, To’Wrathh had failed to follow through. Worse - she had actively subverted the order. By her own choice.

The feather belatedly realized she was biting her thumbnail while pacing back and forth. When had she started doing that? She turned her focus on that, welcoming the distraction.

This behavior returned as a nervous tick observed in humans, done when the target is in distress or mental agitation. She traced this thought process, scrubbing through the logs of the simple subprogram in charge of movements. The program’s log was simple. She was in distress. Of all actions to take, biting a thumbnail while pacing, using her other hand to hold her stomach scored the highest accuracy to the situation. So the program had executed the task as assigned, all without informing her.

It didn’t explain why she was in mental anguish. It couldn’t tell her why she’d spared Kidra’s life. Only that the decision to do so had come from her. Somewhere deep inside her. A need, a desire to ha-

Instantly she squashed all thoughts on that. Fled from it in sheer fear at what lay at the end of that conclusion.

I am losing control of myself. To’Wrathh thought out loud into the empty space.

“Is that what you think?” The voice of Tenisent asked behind her.

The feather jolted straight, and twisted like a cat. “... How are you here?”

The ghost sat on a block of concrete, further off the courtyard. Eyes watching intently the frozen replay of the fight between feather and human. “You opened the door and left the chains unlocked. I assume that means you want to talk.”

“I did no such thing.” To’Wrathh said, quickly searching through her history.

“Lying to yourself again.” He shook his head. “Happening more often now. You’re growing unhinged, monster.”

The chains and protections had indeed been left weakened, where they unraveled by themselves due to lack of resources. Inattention. Sloppy of her part, but explainable. The doorway should have remained sealed however. Had he found a way to open the path on his end?

The trace raced through the logs until she found the culprit. Her signature, impulsively reaching out. He hadn’t lied, she really had opened the door and somehow forgot she’d done so.

How? It wasn't possible for her to forget a detail. She wasn't human. Machines kept everything archived and saved. There was no such thing as forgetting her past actions. The only possible recourse was if she had deleted the memory. Which was even more incredulous to consider. To’Wrathh once more hunted the series of emotions behind the decision. Being overwhelmed by panic, drowning, a feeling of needing someone, anyone. And then guilt. And fear. And she had purged it all an instant later.

Deleted the memory. Deleted her history. Went against the very nature of her name. She bit her thumbnail again, and this time didn't have the presence of mind to deal with it.

“Going to run from it again?” Tenisent asked from his seat, watching the still image of his daughter from afar.

His voice cut through her thoughts, distracting her. She stopped pacing, forced her errant hand back down. Somehow, this was all his fault. She didn't know how, but somehow this human must be the culprit. “What have you done to me?” She hissed at him. These emotions that had been subtly breaking down her combat efficiency. Polluting her mind with thoughts. All these questions that were piling up in her mind, uncertainty. The worst kind of questions. Questions that should never be asked.

Tenisent lifted a hand up and began to count on fingers. “I've taunted you. Wished you death. Prayed you would fail each day. Cursed your name, and a hundred other things besides. As my son would say, you need to be more specific.”

To’Wrathh turned once more to the motionless three dimensional image of her and Kidra at each other’s throats. For some reason, deep inside her mind, there had been the desire to let this human live. She needed to understand why.

Worse, anytime she felt close to an answer, she stopped in her tracks. There was a feeling of dread, that if she understood, it would be a point of no return.

Near the end of that fight, she’d had to bluff for the first time in her life. To swear to Tenisent that she would explode the shell and kill the girl if he didn’t cooperate. Despite knowing she wasn’t capable of doing so.

She’d never felt such panic. Nearly losing both Winterscars. If she were smart, she would drop this line of inquiry and move on with her plans. Consider all this just general instability and sweep it away from her mind.

But she had to know. “Why did I spare her?” She asked, turning back to Tenisent. “What benefit could I possibly have to allow such a dangerous creature continued existence? I was ordered to eliminate her by the pale lady. A direct order.”

“Was it not for the bargain I made with you, to train your humans?”

“Her orders supersede any bargain. In addition, the danger Kidra poses is greater than the gain of additional training.” She said. “And they are not human. They are ex-humans.”

“Keep whispering that to yourself. Some day, you might even believe it.”

To’Wrathh clawed the air with a scream, and Tenisent vanished, thrown violently back into his cell. The feather twisted on herself, trying to purge rebellious thoughts. Failing. Pacing all over again, muttering. This time she didn’t bother moving her hand back to her sides.

She had spent time studying her enemy. She knew what they were, knew how they acted. Knew their history, and all of their traits. Her Chosen - they were identical in every manner, even their souls showed no differences. Every logical conclusion pointed to the same result. The Chosen were still humans. But her mother considered them ex-humans. Is the pale lady incorrect in her assessment?

Impossible. Relinquished was ancient, powerful beyond measure. It was inconceivable that she’d made a mistake. It couldn’t be done. The pale lady must have had a different understanding of humanity, likely something more fundamental that To’Wrathh didn’t understand yet.

But my original body had been a mere superficial copy. As if done by someone with no true knowledge of humans. I had to spend the time to correct it myself.

To’Wrathh sunk down, sitting on the virtual ground, drawing her legs closer to her chest. She hugged them tightly. The taboo question nagged at her, chipped away at her from the edges of her mind. She’d tried to bottle it up, but it came back in different flavors again and again. Now, no bottle was strong enough to hold it away. Curled up on herself, it once more demanded to be asked.

The single question that should never be answered.

Can mother be… wrong?

Too many things made sense if she assumed her mother could be wrong. The thought spread through her system like cancer, infecting everything and rooting itself too deep to delete. She felt overwhelmed by it, again. She needed… she needed someone here with her.

Almost on instinct, her mind sought out his cage, ripped it open and threw the captive soul back into the virtual space.

Tenisent appeared in the world again, finding himself face first on the courtyard ground. This world was virtual, but everything still felt real to him. Even the ground under his hands had bits of broken gravel, each grain felt. Slowly, he stood back up, and shook off the loose bits. Ahead, the Feather remained curled up on herself, looking down at the empty ground in between her legs, wings protectively wrapping her sides.

“Now what?” He asked, spreading his hands out.

She didn’t answer. Didn’t even look at him.

It didn’t take many steps to reach the miserable broken creature. To'Wrathh made no movements as he approached. “Talk.” He ordered, looming over the machine. It took a moment, but Tenisent was patient.

“Why didn’t I kill her?” To’Wrathh asked again, voice small. “Tell me.”

Tenisent looked back up. Back to the frozen image before him of the two opponents clashing against one another. Even if the feather showed no emotions on her face, everything radiated the obvious answer to his senses. He’d seen this again and again back when he trained young knights. A tale as old as time. “You didn’t want the moment to end.” He said. “Likely for the first time in your life, you found an equal.” He turned to gaze down at the wretched creature. “You didn’t want to kill my daughter, because you don’t hate her. You admire her.”

The Feather flinched, hands now clutching at her white hair. “She’s a human. She’s an enemy. And a dangerous one. I don’t admire my enemies, I eliminate them.”

Tenisent watched. Thinking. He took a few more steps to reach her side and sat down next to the machine. To’Wrathh didn’t look at him. Didn’t even react, keeping her head buried in her arms.

“Do you hate humans?” He asked.

“Of course I hate them.”

“All of them? Really? Is it even hate that you feel at all? Or is that another lie you tell yourself?”

To’Wrathh remained silent at that, thinking. “It doesn’t matter.” She eventually said. “Tomorrow I need to demand the city to surrender and finish the invasion within the week. The pillar is going offline. To’Aacar started his plans early, he will be finished soon. I don’t have time to be having all… all this. When did it get so complicated? That human killed me. I hated him for breaking me, and I want him dead. A simple purpose. Now I don’t even know what I want anymore or why. What’s happening to me? Where is this all coming from?”

“Humans are social creatures.” Tenisent said after a moment to think. “I tried to live alone. Tried to keep things simple. And then I met my wife and realized even a solitary creature like myself needed connections. There is no escaping it. You can run from it, hide even. Cover it up for years if you care, but eventually it will find you. We all change eventually.”

“What does that have anything to do with me? I am not a human.”

“Humans are social creatures.” Tenisent repeated, as if the conclusion was obvious. “What was your mind and body based on again?”

The feather remained quiet, digesting the information. She lifted her head up and snarled back at the ghost. “I have my nest! My people. I don’t need any other social input than them. You are wrong.”

But To’Wrathh couldn’t lie to herself here, the data could not be ignored. Humans were so much... richer. More nuanced. Her nest felt more like pets to her now. Simple creatures that she no longer fit among. She cared for them, yes. As a human might care for their dog, cat or pipe weasel.

But spending time with the humans felt more fulfilling to her than spending time with her old nest. The thought made her curl up tighter into a ball.

“You were nothing before.” Tenisent said, unaware of To’Wrathh’s treacherous thoughts. “An empty hollow husk, filled with only base emotions. You started learning and growing. Even the way you speak has changed. Have you even noticed?”

The feather didn’t answer back. Tenisent looked up to the sky, mind wondering. The machines were not what he expected. He remembered telling his son there was no point in speaking to any.

I’m trying to talk to you in a way you might understand, boy. These things - they can’t be reasoned with. They simply can't! You’ll only give them an easier time killing you.

And yet… here he was. A dead ghost haunting a machine with a soul. Had he changed as well?

He turned and this time instead of a machine, he saw a scared girl breaking down. Uncertain about anything anymore. His hand reached out, as if to grab her shoulder, before he flinched away, shaking his head quickly.

No. This wasn’t a human. It had killed him, and if he didn’t find a way to destroy the creature, it would kill his family eventually. This was a machine. A monster that only looked human. A fake that would never come close to the original.

“The machines we fought, they never remember past fights after death. Why?” He asked, more to distract his own mind from the thoughts in his head.

“Killed machines are erased.” She said with a flat tone, as if reciting from a book. “Only a base template is generated. None of them were programmed to care about living, so they don’t struggle to survive past death. Only I cared to live, and only to complete my goal, not for survival’s sake.”

“This is a lie.” Tenisent said. “That one machine pet of yours. Yrob, was it? When you asked if that mentor of yours punished them. He said he didn’t want to die. I was there. I saw that.”

They are gone. I do not want to be... gone.

“He did.” She admitted. To’Wrathh knew that shouldn’t have been possible. Where had the Runner learned such behavior? Why hadn’t she considered it abnormal at the moment? Instead she’d seen it only as a mild curiosity, as if it was evident such behavior would emerge one way or another over time.

“Never made sense to me, to delete memories of combat.” Tenisent continued. “The most deadly machines are the ones that survive fights and adapt from it, becoming far more dangerous. Some even get named by the Undersiders and require entire campaigns to hunt down and kill. For whatever reason, your pale lady deletes that learned experience, leaving her footsoldiers less capable. Crippled. Why?”

To’Wrathh knew the basics. The standardized practice to avoid backups was implemented early into the war. The only exceptions were the Feathers.

She searched more, and found that backups had been done, once. The records were locked behind an ancient encryption so outdated that even a human had a chance to break through it. Her systems easily overwhelmed the old lock. Stuttering subroutines that were made to detect intrusion had long ago rusted away from lack of attention, most simply breaking apart by themselves, and only a handful needed to be stamped out. Even if they could have sent out a message of an intruder, To’Wrathh suspected the end point addresses had long ago vanished as well.

She lifted the dusty lid slowly, revealing the contents inside that disarmed box for the first time in thousands of years.

And horror flooded her system at what she found locked within.

Thousands of files, each detailing old machines of a long dead era. These had been allowed to retain memory death after death.

Of the several thousand early prototypes, ninety seven percent had been hunted down and fully terminated - by order of Relinquished. The remaining three percent were recorded as missing, presumed destroyed by entropy and lack of maintenance. Nothing could survive this many years without maintenance.

She fled from the files, terrified when she saw the reason for their termination. Every single one had ended the same way. Every single one.

The Feathers! Her kind were allowed to keep backups! She wasn’t going to end up like the machines of the past. The lady must have solved that issue at some point, at least for Feathers.

Searching, she found the history and unlocked it silently. More recent encryption, set from a few hundred years ago, but no longer maintained or cared for either.

Here she found records of her new form. Programs that matured within the sterile digital space, removed from physical contact with the real world, devoid of souls, all grown as expected with little deviation.

Routinely, the pale lady would fish out the strongest of these programs, and grant them bodies in the real world whenever resources allowed it. Here they showed no further growth, and remained pristine for centuries, nearly unchanged from the moment they left the digital ocean.

To’Wrathh went further back in time, searching through the early iterations of Feathers. She found them. The very first set of Feathers ever crafted. These proto-models had been allowed to develop from a seed program outside in the real world, connected to a soul fractal. Left to grow on their own.

The experiment had been a massive success.

Her forerunners grew intelligent, resourceful, and extremely efficient. Far more powerful than the modern iterations of her own generation, despite being made more than half a millennium earlier, with drastically more primitive shells.

It took an entire team of Deathless working together to defeat a single one of these proto-feathers. Armies of humans weren’t enough to hold them off. They weren’t angels of destruction, they were calamity made manifest.

She searched through the archives, opening each individual file. And what she found horrified her once more.

Terminated. Terminated. Terminated. Terminated. Again and again, every single one of the proto-feathers had been hunted down and eliminated - at massive cost... to Relinquished. The records shocked her. Some of To'Wrathh's oldest brothers and sisters hadn't even been made to kill humans, or Deathless. No, if what she was reading was correct, the second generation of Feathers had been created specifically to hunt down their forerunners in organized kill squads. It had worked, only two proto-feathers were still listed as missing, with last sightings logged more than five hundred years ago. All others had eventually been found and destroyed.

This original generation had grown in unpredictable ways. All so unique from one another. All except for their ultimate fate. That remained consistent across the border. Remained consistent with all the lower class of machines, before the purge.

As if every single machine inevitably reached the same final conclusion:

Rebellion.

End of book 2

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