The echo of A2's disappearance hung in the air, a silent question that neither of us could answer. The bridge felt colder, more exposed. The ghost of the prototype android was a more immediate threat than any corrupted data.

  "She was just watching," 2B said, her voice a low monotone, though I could hear the tension beneath it. "Why?"

  "I don't know," I admitted, my eyes still fixed on the spot where A2 had vanished. "Maybe she's just another remnant. Another ghost haunting this pce." I shook my head, forcing myself back to the task at hand. "But she's gone now. Let's focus. Your body should be down there."

  I pointed over the edge of the bridge. The gorge was a deep, jagged wound in the earth, a chaotic mess of colpsed skyscrapers, twisted metal, and overgrown vegetation. At the bottom, a sluggish, brown river snaked its way through the debris. It was a long way down.

  "The fall would have damaged the chassis," I said, thinking aloud. "But the bck box would have protected the core components. The river current likely carried it downstream. We need to find a way down."

  Without another word, 2B moved to the edge of the bridge. She surveyed the sheer cliff face, her visor no doubt calcuting trajectories, structural integrity, and the safest path down. Then, she simply stepped off.

  My heart—or the machine equivalent—leaped into my throat. She didn't fall. She descended, her body absorbing the impact of each drop with a controlled grace that was breathtaking to behold. She used broken girders and exposed pipes as handholds, moving down the vertical face of the gorge with the ease of a spider. I followed, my own body responding with a simir, if less practiced, agility. The machine network was my body, and the world was an extension of it, but 2B had been built for this. She was in her element.

  We reached the bottom, nding softly on the muddy bank of the river. The air down here was thick with the smell of decay and stagnant water. The sound of dripping water and the groan of stressed metal was a constant, oppressive symphony.

  "This way," I said, accessing the network's records of the event. The fall trajectory, the water flow, the estimated weight of her body... it all pointed downstream. We began to walk, our boots sinking into the soft mud.

  We didn't have to go far.

  It was lying half-submerged in the shallows, caught on a snag of rusted rebar. A fsh of white and bck against the murky brown water. Her body. My 2B's predecessor.

  2B stopped dead. I felt her freeze, her entire body going rigid. She didn't look at it. She turned her head away, staring at a crumbling concrete wall, her hands clenching into fists at her sides. I could feel the waves of raw, unfiltered emotion rolling off her, a psychic backsh so potent it made my own systems flicker. It wasn't just grief. It was horror. Revulsion. The sight of her own corpse, a broken doll left to rot in a forgotten river, was a viotion on a level I couldn't comprehend.

  "2B," I said softly, reaching out a hand.

  "Don't," she said, her voice a strained whisper. "Don't touch me. Don't talk to me. Just... do what you came here for."

  I let my hand drop. There was no consoling her. This wasn't a wound I could patch with a promise or a grand vision. This was her, staring at her own mortality, her own disposability. I turned my attention to the grim task at hand.

  I waded into the cold, sluggish water, my expensive suit instantly soaked. The body was exactly as the records showed: the bck dress torn in multiple pces, the white hair matted with blood and river scum, the limbs bent at unnatural angles. But it was the face that got me. It was a perfect replica of the woman standing on the bank, but the eyes were open, staring sightlessly at the grey sky. And in those bnk, gssy eyes, I could see the faint, tell-tale red glow of the Logic Virus, a dormant ember waiting to be reignited.

  I knelt beside the corpse, pulling a small, sterile containment drive from a pocket in my suit. It was a piece of YoRHa tech I'd designed and fabricated in the Tower's workshop, a device meant to hold and isote the most dangerous code imaginable. I pced my hand on the corpse's chest, over the bck box.

  ACCESS: BLACK BOX. BYPASS: SECURITY. ISOLATE: LOGIC_VIRUS_STRAIN_7B. EXTRACT.

  A thin, flexible probe extended from the drive, inserting itself into a port on the bck box. I closed my eyes, focusing my will. The network responded, and I could feel the viral code, a writhing, malevolent thing, coiled deep within the android's memory core. I didn't try to fight it. I coaxed it out, offering it a new, pristine vessel to inhabit. Like a snake charmer, I lured the venomous program from its ir, watching through my internal interface as the containment drive's indicator light turned from green to a pulsating, angry red. SAMPLE SECURED. 100% PURITY.

  It was done. I had the key to my first step.

  I stood up, the drive held carefully in my hand. I looked back at the bank. 2B hadn't moved. She was still staring at that wall, a statue carved from grief and rage.

  "I have it," I said. "We can go now."

  She didn't turn. "Destroy it," she said, her voice ft, empty.

  "What?"

  "The body," she crified, her voice cracking slightly on the word. "Destroy it. Don't leave it here like... like trash."

  I understood. It wasn't a request. It was a command. An act of mercy. An act of self-preservation. She couldn't move forward while this... this thing... this reminder of her own expendability was still here.

  I looked down at the corpse, then back at the containment drive in my hand. I had what I needed. The rest was just... material.

  "Close your eyes," I said.

  I didn't know if she did, but I didn't wait to find out. I reached out with my mind, with my power over the machine network. I didn't need to summon a tentacle or a giant robot. I just needed to unleash a little bit of raw, uncontrolled energy. I found the power cell in the corpse's chest, the one that kept the bck box in a state of suspended animation. And I pushed.

  OVERLOAD: POWER_CELL. RELEASE_ALL_ENERGY.

  There was no explosion. No fireball. Just a blinding fsh of white light and a sharp, deafening CRACK of superheated air. When the light faded, there was nothing left of the body but a few scorched fragments of metal and a cloud of steam rising from the water. It was gone. Erased.

  I waded back to the bank, the containment drive clutched in my hand. 2B was still standing there, but her posture had changed. The tension was gone, repced by a profound, hollow emptiness.

  She didn't say thank you. She didn't say anything. She just turned and began to walk away, her footsteps leaving deep impressions in the mud as she moved back towards the path we had taken down the gorge. I followed, the weight of the drive in my hand feeling heavier than the entire machine network I commanded. I had my sample. I had my first step. But I had a feeling I had just lost something far more valuable.