[inca1980]

Machete can contain himself no longer and a yell bursts forth.

"Because the fucker's a pinche monkey carnal!  Listen.  They pay my ass to chaperon these chivato's through the zone and push ahead.  You're the king of the castle so we play by your rules homes.  I don't know how much you know about what it's like out there, but in the Zone the only way to survive is to depend on two things:  Your word and your balls and you don't break'em for no-one.  That's how I'm still kickin' up dust after all these years.  So just one more thing I want to add to the deal.  Have you seen this girl?"

Machete pulls out a wrinkled photo on a paper of a rugged but beautiful hispanic girl and holds it up. 

"If you have, then some information would be appreciated.  So do we got a deal?"

[Crossbow]

Digger shifts, looking around and taking in the team, still talking to the robot.

"I am not real good at figuring why people do what they do, I do know we are WAAAY out in the weeds right now and a lot of meat don't handle that kinda stuff too well, makes 'em skittish.  The furball is only alive right now because he wasn't as dangerous as the razorboy he named his drone after, when the bugs hit us the first time.  So instead he got to watch Ruckus die real painfully while he was getting his own ass handed to him.  That had been me I ain't sure I would be handling things much better, but it wasn't, so I got no right to tell him how to be.  Tex-Mex is speakin' word though, in the shadows I live in when you make a deal, you do the deal...period."

As he finishes, he settles himself firmly in the drone's line of fire, "So do we have a deal?"

[Sentinemodo]

Oh please .... the amount of exasperation Code put into those two words if translated into kilograms, would shift the Earth off the orbit.

[Kontact]

"None of those responses answer my question.  I appreciate that two of you are willing to give your personal word, but neither of you can give assurances for someone else unless you are willing to impose your will on them.  The one in the suit, Devo, has made it clear that he will accept nothing less than the total destruction of the insects.  They present a useful barrier to entry.  I am not attached to them, but they are contained and hardly unmanageable." 
The robot raises its arm to point at CodeMonkey. 
"Meanwhile, the monkey still can't even be bothered to hide his hostility.  I would like to give you reasons to leave my home alone.  I would like to offer you digital assistance in your future endeavors.  I would be willing to allow you to come and go as you please, taking much of the material wealth stored here.  I would hope that I could at least appeal to your greed since I wouldn't expect reason in a person who voluntarily chooses to come into Chicago.  However, I don't know if even that will suffice.  As distasteful as I find ultimatums to be, I must have believable assurances from everybody if we hope to move on in a friendly manner."

[Sentinemodo]

Does it has an unconditioned loop on the assumption that I am liar or something? It didn't accepted when I said truth, why should I hide readiness for it's hostility? Why in hell would it out of sudden believe anything I say or do?

Code wasn't talking to the robot, but then emotions took over
Go practice synchronous shooting, waste more ammo on empty threats, or frag yourself with a viral code - retractable modules would work best I believe if you apply them at the end of the source code.

And you two, think for a while - it is a PROGRAM, a fragging, glorified AR to the entertainment database of this building's executives extended by an imitation of personality, that after 20 years it has assummed to be self-aware for whatever it is worth to him. It does not understand a word it is repeating, it is like a parrot armed with cameras and microphones. You can talk all night with it about personal pledges or mammas' recipies full of 'distatefulls', 'blow your minds' and what not. They are collections of letters to him, backed by probabilities. In the end there is a probability of your behavioral action - 'will those metahumans call Ares the moment they are far enough from the nuke blast', since this is his hardware node, survival is priority, count all doubtful variables on the negative. How much is it now knowbot? 95%?

Whatever the agreement you'll got here, it will just lead us into the room full of robots like this one and eliminate all of us in a single move. That would take him very close to certainty that there would be no nukes detonating around and there is nothing preventing him from a lie if it's survival is at stake.  If it would be in position to eliminate the threat we would be dead by now.


Code started talking to commlink - This is message has been recorded at Cross Applied Technologies tower in Chicago. On the 85th floor is a bug spirit nest, contained by an elf mage named Holland. Mage is on the brink of maddness, extremely high risk. The building is operated by a rogue AI, developed from a building's SAKI. The AI is hostile and operates building security. Caution advised. Please send the reward for the information to the bank account., along with an information to my parents that I have died. ... geolocation information attached ... video feeds attached .. trid map of the building with the location of the nest attached ... audio recording form the nest development attached ... bank account number accessible by my parents attached. Timer set on 12 hours. Send message to Ares if timer not cancelled. Distribute the package to all my nodes and Holland's node. Setup automatic alert response on my nodes to send out on hacking attempts detected.

I think that knowbot got new variable in the equation.

[Crossbow]

Digger throws up his hands in disgust.

"THAT'S IT!!!  I swear on soul of mi nonna Maria, if I live tru dis, I am never takin another job without picking the team myself!"

Look Banana-brain, and listen up kid, this is for you too, one of two things is gonna happen here, we are gonna go up or we are gonna leave.  I took a job and this guy, or girl, or program, or ghostie thing, or toaster or whatever the frag it is says they will help, where is the percentage in making another enemy out of them?  You keep pissin it off and it could make us dead even if we decided to leave now, and if it is walking us into a trap, why bother talking at all?

There is a way here for us all to get what we want, and it starts you getting your head out of your bright red hairy butt, and the kid to stop goin' Ragnarok as the only answer to bugs and start actin' like professionals.  Let's get this done and get gone."

[Sentinemodo]

That Banana-brain saved your ass during bugs shootout few floors below. That Banana-brain is your local technical guru. And that Banana-brain is telling you that all the trust you're putting on that thing is misplaced.

[Crossbow]

"Look Furball, I lost my scorecard when I was dragging your carcass out of the puddle of the samurai's bodily fluids and off the firing line.  But if I was keeping score, I could point out that as our tech geek you shoulda had all this drek under your thumb already, not that I'm sayin' that.  What I am sayin' is we gotta play the cards we got, so let's do the job as best we can, okay?  You keep watchin' our backs and I'll do the same."

[Kontact]

As soon as the words "frag yourself" came out of Code's mouth, the barrel on the robot's arm fired directly into his face.

[[Musical cue: Bjork - Army of Me]]

[inca1980]

Machete sees Code Monkey go down and shouts at the drone with the female top half:

"You want assurances mamacita?  Here's your assurances!!"

With that Machete merely turns the barrel of his Remington shotgun towards the unconscious Code Monkey and pumps him with two silenced slugs.

[Kontact]

The robot turns toward Machete and lowers its arm.  "Action is the faith of the faithless."  It squeaks and squelches as it rolls out of the doorway and further back into the room.  "I did not enjoy that, but I think he just found what he was looking for in deep Chicago.  I regret telling him earlier that he was uninteresting.  It was an incorrect assessment."

[Sentinemodo]

As the first bullet hit Code in the neck above the protecting material of the jumpsuit, he was already sinking his mind into much less painfull reality and settling into drone's silicon brain targetting for the shoot.

To his amazement, robot shot was followed by friendly fire. Two more shotgun blasts hit him straight in the chest and splattered his internal organs over the hall. He'll never forget Machete's face on that backstab. But it wouldn't be long 'never'. His furry meat was dying, simulation stability suffered immediatelly, as the blood that should be delivering oxygen to the brain was wasted on the floor.

"Don't ... let ... it ... take ... Ruckus ..."... to all nodes ... send.

[inca1980]

Machete had seen a lot of fucked up things in the Zone.   Year after year the load of shit flying at his mind slowly buried the happy and carefree compadre that he once was in the days when people still called him Sipriano.  But behind the scarred face and the catlike bioware eyes still lurked somewhere deep down the old Aztlaner who fled his homeland for trying to fight for what's just, who raised an amazing girl all by himself on a factory worker's salary and who threw it all away on a hope and prayer that his daughter was still alive when she went missing.  That part of Machete flinched a little as he saw the Code Monkey twitch and convulse as his life slowly seeped out onto the floor.  He stood over his dying teammate and with one smooth motion withdrew his machete blade from its sheath and brought it down hard splitting the skull as if he were cracking open a coconut.  With that the Code Monkey lay completely still.  He let the silence in the hallway settle in and then withdrew the blade, wiped it on a towel hanging from his utility belt and held it there in his left hand...his shotgun in the other one.  He was happy that he waited until his teammate had slipped into VR simsense before he had exploded his guts all over the ground....probably didn't even feel a thing the poor monkey bastard.  His face hardens again and he looks up at the team.

"Alright.  What's done is done.  Take what you can use from him, and we move on."

With that he begins to look for a security camera in order to face it as the team talks to the AI.

[Xzylvador]

Devoted watched the events unblinking and unmoving but for a trembling over his entire body. The guardian spirit he had summoned to protect his allies materialized as a response to the violence but seemed as confused about the situation as its summoner was.
His gaze went from the the corpse to Machete to the robot, back to the corpse and back to Machete. "Y-You... killed him... You KILLED him! The robot shot him and then you killed him! W-w... wha... why?!" he managed to stutter eventually, his face pale, his fist balled and his body still trembling. By that time, Machete had started reaching for Code's gear. "Don't nobody touch him or any of his stuff! I swear to Tyr, I... don't y... Just don't."

[inca1980]

Machete's catlike gaze shoots at Devoted. 

"I don't know how or why you even came to this god-forsaken place little vato, but if you plan on staying in the Zone for any significant period of time, you're gonna quickly realize that only one thing exists here.  Survival.  The Monkey was gonna get us all killed....his time was already up the moment he went solo.  It was just a matter of time.  I feel bad for the pinche fur-ball, but that don't matter.  None of it matters carnal.......just survivin'.   I don't need any of that gear, so I'll leave the dead monkey alone.  But let's get one thing straight: if you decide to go solo and start getting an ego.... if it ain't me...then it'll be one of these other Zoners over here that'll quickly set you straight.  Trust me, you'd rather meet your end with us than with everything else that's out there waiting.  At least with us the agony eventually stops.  So first rule of survivin' the Zone:  check your ego in at the Containment Wall.  In the Zone you ain't shit....and 'bout every god-forsaken day above ground here will remind you of that fact. 

So let's just focus on the reason we came here, and on how to get it, and then on how to get the hell out of this pinche tower alive.  I'm depending on you all and you're depending on me.  You saw what the monkey brought on to himself for runnin' his mouth.  Just learn from what you just saw and stay strong.  So I'll ask you once....do you trust me?" 

He continues to stare at Devoted as his vertical iris-slits narrow.