The old botanical lab was half-flooded and smelled of iron chloride and standing water. Broken grow lights dangled from the ceiling. The floor was cracked tile, green with something that had been growing in the moisture for a long time. It was not a good place to do anything precise.
It was the place they had.
Naomi and Aphrodite had cleared a central area and pushed the defunct lab tables to the walls. They'd rigged four lamps on brackets and run power from a portable generator. The EVA body was in the transfer cradle at the center, polymer shell still faintly opaque from the stasis fluid. Even inert, it hummed.
Mod coordinated the connection points. He was still sporting bruises from captivity, bandages on his left forearm, moving carefully when he bent. Naomi had the primary console. Rook covered the perimeter.
Aphrodite came to him while he was checking the cable array. She looked at his face without saying anything for a moment. Then: "You sure you're fit to do this?"
"Genara's been on that drive for three months," he said. "Yes."
Aphrodite nodded and went back to her position.
Cache sat near the door. Watching. His lines ran a steady amber.
Mod connected the diagnostic cable to the drive and transferred link authority to Naomi's console. The drive's indicator pulsed twice, confirming.
"Ready when you are," Naomi said.
They were two minutes from starting when a figure came through the far doorway.
Tall. Hooded. Moving with the specific care of someone who knew where the sightlines were.
Aphrodite's hand went to her weapon.
The figure pulled back the hood. Zavo. Eyes adjusting to the lamp light, scanning the room with the same practiced calm he'd had the last time any of them had seen him, which had been when they thought he was dead.
"Reports of my demise," he said.
"How did you find this location," Aphrodite said. It wasn't a question.
"I've been tracking the EVA transfer logistics for two weeks." He reached into his coat and produced a small data crystal, holding it up between two fingers. "You'll need this. It's a repair code for the consciousness architecture. Without it, the structure fractures at forty percent integration. You'll lose her at the halfway point."
Nobody moved.
"It's current as of three hours ago," he said. "I can verify the chain if you want to burn time doing that." He looked at Mod. "Or you can run the transfer and find out the hard way what happens at forty percent."
Mod looked at the crystal. He looked at Naomi, who was already pulling up the integration parameters on her screen. She checked something. Her jaw tightened.
"There's a structural gap in the architecture," she said quietly. "I didn't have a patch for it. I was going to hope it didn't matter."
"It matters at forty percent," Zavo said.
Mod crossed the room and took the crystal from him. "Step back and stay back."
Zavo stepped back.
Naomi loaded the repair code. The console ran a verification pass. Clean.
"Starting the transfer," Naomi said.
10%.
The lamps flickered once. Naomi adjusted the generator load. Steady.
20%.
The EVA body's indicators came on. Dim at first. Then a steady pulse at the sternum.
30%.
"Power draw is increasing," Naomi said. "Expected. Stay with it."
The repair code ran at 38%, bridging the gap, holding the structure together. The percentage didn't stall. It kept climbing.
40%.
50%.
Rook's voice came low from the perimeter: "We have company. Corporate, three vehicles. They followed the generator signal. Two minutes out."
"Naomi," Mod said.
"I know. I need ninety seconds."
60%.
Aphrodite was already at the door. She looked at Rook. "How many?"
"Two squads. Maybe twelve."
"Hold them."
They held them. Short bursts in the corridor, controlled, pulling the troopers' attention toward the side entrance. Cache moved into the corridor and flanked the second trooper through the doorway, knocking the weapon wide before the shot could reach the lab. Rook jammed the corporate communication frequency. The troopers outside were fighting blind and loud and couldn't coordinate.
70%.
A trooper pushed through the side wall breach. Aphrodite put him down. Two more behind him.
80%.
"Sixty seconds," Naomi called.
Cache was holding the corridor. Aphrodite and Rook kept the pressure at the entry points. The generator stuttered once and Naomi hit the override without looking up.
90%.
"Thirty seconds. Hold position."
One of the troopers got a shot into the lab. It went wide and took out a lamp bracket. One lamp swung down, still on. Shadows stretched. Naomi kept typing.
95%.
98%.
The console beeped.
TRANSFER COMPLETE.
The lab went quiet for a moment. Three troopers still in the corridor. Aphrodite pushed them back and sealed the breach panel. Then she came back in.
The EVA body was still.
Then it moved.
Not a dramatic surge. A small thing: the chest rising with something that was not mechanically required but happened anyway. A breath. Then another.
The eyes opened.
They moved too fast at first, then slowed. Taking in the ceiling. The lamps. The faces.
EVA sat up. The cradle's restraints had released automatically. She put one hand on the edge of the cradle and held it there, steadying. She tried to speak and nothing came out. She tried again.
"I can hear everything," she said. Her voice was strange to her. You could hear it.
Naomi was watching the console. "Neural integration is holding. All sectors." She exhaled. "She's stable."
EVA looked at her hands. Turned them over. Something in her expression said this was not what hands were supposed to feel like and also that it was, somehow, exactly right. She swung her legs off the cradle and stood.
She nearly went down. Caught herself on the edge. Stood again.
She looked at the room. At Mod, at Aphrodite, at Rook. Then she saw Cache.
She walked to him. Unsteady on the first steps, more certain on the last few. She knelt down in front of him. Cache was very still.
"There's a corporate override structure embedded in your secondary network," she said. "Layered. It's been running the whole time." She wasn't asking. She'd read it in the three seconds since she'd come fully online. "I can remove it."
Cache looked at her.
She put her hand on his plating and closed her eyes.
The override code unwound. Clean disconnections down the chain, one after another, each one a signal that had been running on a loop without Cache's knowledge. She cut them all.
Cache went completely still.
Three seconds. Four.
Then his lines shifted. The faint cold blue that had been at their edge, barely noticeable until it was gone, faded. The amber came back. Warm. Full.
Cache pressed his muzzle to the floor in front of her. He held it there.
EVA took her hand off his plating. She sat back on her heels. Something in her face was different from a moment before.
Mod watched from across the room and didn't say anything.
Zavo had watched all of it from the far wall.
When EVA stood and turned, she was already looking at him. He hadn't moved. His expression was difficult to read.
He pulled the weapon from his coat slowly, showing it before he raised it. Leveled it at her chest.
"I know what you are," EVA said.
Not a guess. A statement. She'd been reading the network since she opened her eyes, and Zavo had a long history in it: comm logs, transaction records, the architecture of deals made on both sides of a line he'd moved whenever it suited him.
She looked at the weapon. Her hand came up.
The weapon's internals shorted. Zavo's grip tightened on reflex, but there was nothing to fire. He looked at the dead muzzle in his hand. Then he looked at her.
He put the weapon away.
"You're not what they made," he said. One corner of his mouth moved. Not a smile. Something else. "This isn't finished."
He stepped back into the shadows of the corridor and was gone.
Aphrodite stared at the empty doorway. "Someone follow—"
"Let him go," EVA said.
The room held.
The lab was quiet now. Troopers down in the corridor, dust still settling, one lamp throwing long shadows across the cracked floor.
EVA stood at the center of it.
She had been alive for eleven minutes.
She looked at the rebels. She looked at the city beyond the broken wall where the raid had come through: Arcadia's skyline, acid-yellow under the clouds, the corporate towers lit against the dark.
"The Umbra Protocol files," she said. "I have them. All of them." She looked at the rebels, then at the city beyond the broken walls. "I can broadcast them to every screen in Arcadia right now. Every citizen would know what Flora and Chronos planned to do to this city." A pause. "Once I do, there is no taking it back."
Nobody spoke.
"They'll know our faces," Aphrodite said finally.
"They already do," EVA said.
The rebels looked at each other. Then Aphrodite nodded once.
EVA opened the broadcast.