5-AE - Black And White

Their objective was nothing out of the ordinary, although 5-AE's idea of "ordinary" was not exactly what most saw it to be. The two ANGELs were to enter a building owned by one of EDGE's most prominent technological and economic rivals, LiFE Enterprise, and eliminate the heir to the company. This mission was of the same category as their last, which had happened not two hours before.

5-AE thought back to the talk she had had with 4-HN that day. She was grateful to him for it. After they had gotten back to EDGE, she started acting and speaking through her own volition. The researchers who developed her personality software were, of course, furious. They restlessly worked away trying to find the error in their tediously strung together code, line by line, for months. There was no error. In fact, ANGELs were designed almost too well for the personality embedded in them to remain obsolete. Their intelligence and learning capabilities were unmatched, for both humans and other androids of similar caliber.

It was at this point that the scientists decided she needed to be emotionally stimulated to find the origin of the error. The only way to do this, they determined, was to put her in situations under which she was in immense amounts of pain to instigate the strong emotional responses this would produce and analyze them. "I'm sorry" were words she heard frequently during this time. Unable to move, she was allowed only to watch as the researchers prepared the "tests" for her, repeating this statement a plethora of times as they did so. She had found, however, that humans often tended to portray their emotions through their eyes, much like she would have if she had truly felt anything up until this point. As she watched their eyes, searching for emotions that matched their empty words, she found nothing. These people felt no sympathy towards her. She was a tool, an interesting subject, nothing more.

Of course, 5-AE had no connections with these people. She hadn't so much as seen their faces before then. They were only workers, doing their jobs. Hence, 5-AE held no resentment toward them. She was not angered or self-pitying as they did everything they could to put her under both physical and emotional stress. The researchers were dumbfounded. Any android, let alone such a supposedly emotionally responsive one, would have been outraged, making every attempt they could to pour all the hatred they could muster toward these people. They had, for there was no word more fitting, tortured her. Yet there she lay, stone faced, her eyes entirely gray as she watched herself receive such horrible treatment.

The only time she had any form of response was when 4-HN came to visit, which he was allowed to do daily after his own emotional analysis. She did not hate him either, despite the fact that his advice led to her current situation. He had simply told her to be herself, though she hadn't the slightest clue who that was. During his visits, he never gave the empty apologies that so many others did. He simply asked how she was doing, to which she replied, "I am not happy or sad. I never have been. The only difference now is that when I am released from here, which after the scientists find no results, I inevitably will be, I will be free." 4-HN only nodded. When he did so, his eyes showed the slightest hint of the same blue she had seen on the day of their conversation.

She was correct. After EDGE had done all of the possible experiments they could imagine, they determined that as long as she was effective, her lack of emotion wasn't an issue. In fact, it was a good thing. An android that felt nothing would be far more predictable, and, in turn, easier to control. She started going on assignments with 4-HN again, and the ever growing red stain on the white hallway floor was proof of their effectiveness together.

5-AE wondered what had motivated 4-HN to say what he did that day as the car they were currently in pulled to a halt. 4-HN shared a quick glance with her, as if to ask if she was ready. She responded by stepping out of the car, her two blades already in hand. Normally, they would take a far less conspicuous approach, as many of their tasks involved dealing with the civilians roaming around the heavily populated city streets. This particular estate, however, was in an unusually secluded location, perhaps being so with the intent to draw as little attention as possible.

If that was their intent, they failed, she thought as they circled to the backside of the building. On this side, there was an automatic glass door that they didn't go through for fear of alerting the opposition early enough that the target had time to escape. The rooms within the building were seemingly small, enough so that both of them attempting to fight at once would only cause them to get in each other's way.

"You go in and locate the target, I'll get my rifle ready and watch the exits from a high vantage point in case something goes wrong," 4-HN said. 5-AE was more than capable of clearing the entire building herself.

She nodded, then headed over to one of the lower windows of the building. To her surprise, it was unlocked. She slipped in, landing quietly on the floor almost ten feet beneath. She observed her surroundings, finding herself in a dimly lit hallway with various doors lining the sides. The man they were looking for was supposedly in room 102, on the second floor. As she entered the stairwell, she heard multiple voices echoing off of the concrete walls. She quietly opened the door to the second floor, revealing four large men standing outside of one of the rooms. She engaged the optical zoom in her eyes, confirming that this was, in fact, room 102.

I found the room, she said to 4-HN. Four armed guards. Is there any way to approach from the outside? One of the key functions that allowed them to work together so effectively was the ability to communicate telepathically, making missions that required high amounts of coordination or stealth far easier.

There's a window, but it's barred from the inside. If you break in, you'll only alert the guards while you're forty feet above the ground, 4-HN's voice came in as if it were in her head, almost like the thoughts were her own.

Not a problem, she replied. I'll be back outside in sixty seconds.

There were only four lights in the hallway, each hanging down by a thin wire, which was strange, she thought, for a building belonging to a company worth billions, much less the one the heir to the company was living. She quickly drew four knives from the pouch on her belt. She could have used her fingers as projectiles, as when she did so, they changed shape into a sharpness that could split a hair down the center, retrieving them with a special type of magnet designed specifically to attract the metal her hands were made of. This method, however, meant that she could only use one of her swords until her fingers returned, which she wanted to avoid, if at all possible.

She put all of the knives into her right hand, looked back to the lights, and threw each of the four with not a tenth of a second separating each throw. She aimed at the light farthest from her first, then the next, and repeated this process until she had hit the light closest to her, all of which had occurred in under half of a second. She did it in this order to draw the guards' attention toward the other end of the hallway first, then rush in from the other end. By the time they had looked back in her direction, the guard closest to her no longer had a neck and torso that looked anywhere near properly aligned. The snapping of his neck was what brought the remaining three guards to whip back towards her.

The man closest to her opened fire. He was using LiFE Enterprise's newest model of plasma rifle. These guns had the ability to melt through metal in a matter of seconds. 5-AE, however, was more than prepared for this. She brought the now lifeless body of the first guard in front of her, using him as a shield against the hail of burning plasma. By the time she had reached the second guard, the first was nothing more than a pile of mush on the formerly clean floor. She took advantage of the time the second man was taking to frantically reload to effortlessly separate his head from his shoulders.

The third man had already started firing, but to his horror, the android in front of him had monstrous speed, simultaneously dodging all of his feeble attempts to hit her and closing the ten meter gap between them almost as quickly as she had thrown the knives. Dodging plasma shots at point blank range would be difficult, even for the terrifyingly fast android the man now faced. Knowing this, 5-AE quickly cut the incredibly expensive weapon in half with her sword, pushing the limit of human terror onto the now unarmed man facing her. Before he could turn around to run, his torso had joined his comrade's head on the floor below, having been removed from his legs.

The last guard stood at the end of the hallway nearly twenty meters away. He was armed with only a pistol, which 5-AE thought to be odd for someone protecting such an important person. He, too, opened fire, which was futile, as 5-AE wove through the flying bullets just as easily as she had done moments before. When the man ran out of ammo, he dropped his weapon, extending his palm towards his android assailant, who was now a mere two meters away. His palm had wires protruding from various places, all linking to a metal circle in the center. A hand rifle?! 5-AE thought in surprise. Human augmentation cost upward of a million credits. How this man had one was beyond her. The man smiled, knowing that the android had let her guard down too soon. This was a victory for him. He fired the shot.

His victorious smile quickly turned to that of utter terror as 5-AE lifted her sword faster than the human eye could follow, intercepting and redirecting the shot into the wall to her right. She had made her blades using the large amount of privilege that ANGELs had at EDGE to custom order them directly from the weapons development team. They were surprised, to say the least, when she asked for not one, but two katanas with the capability to withstand the heat of plasma bullets. After over two months of experimental prototypes, they finally handed the precious swords over to 5-AE. These were the team's pride and joy, as they had needed to develop a coating that would allow the simple blade to survive extreme thermal and kinetic stress. The process of applying this coating had dyed one of the blades white as snow, the other black as night. They had waited in anticipation as she picked the blades up, then, to their horror, unloaded an entire magazine of plasma rounds into each of them. After confirming that the blades hadn't melted, she looked at them, stone faced, said, "This will suffice," and left.

One of these precious blades was now slicing through the unfortunate guard's forearm, leaving a shower of split circuits and blood in its wake, the other sword being pointed at his throat.

When the man had finished bellowing in pain, 5-AE asked, "What other security measures are in this building?"

The man's defiant smile returned. "You've still lost. They're already on their way."

His smile remained as his head rolled down the hallway.

5-AE walked calmly over to the door of room 102, putting her hand on the knob and probing for traps. After confirming there were none, she turned the knob, finding only one heat signature inside.

In the room was a simple bed. Over its sheets were numerous cables and tubes with a multitude of fluids running through them. Underneath the sheets was a boy, no older than six, to whom the tubes and cables were attached. The steady beeps of the EKG monitor to his right indicated that he was alive, but one glance at his pitiful state would not have given the same impression. The boy looked at 5-AE, taking in the bloodied swords and sinister appearance of her gear. He did not appear afraid, nor did his heart rate increase. His situation reminded 5-AE of her own time spent strapped down in a similar bed, with similar, albeit more severe, things protruding from her body.

The boy watched silently as she slowly walked over and put her sword to his throat.