Grains of gray sand kept plinking against his mask. He’d had to mute the warnings on his atmospheric monitors; they’d been beeping on and off from the carbon monoxide buildup in the area, which begs to question just how the city was kept powered if it couldn’t burn anything—nuclear power? Likely … Definitely.

He was sitting behind a boulder, waiting for the fireworks on the other side of the breach to die down. Zero handed him a tablet. “Your role is to watch, correct?” she asked.

Hassan looked down at the tablet filled with moving pictures and flashing lights. “Right,” he replied. Taking it, he couldn’t help but notice that he didn’t need some sort of AI telepathy to operate it. It was just a normal touchscreen tablet, even if a little bulky, but that’s the military philosophy of form-follows-function for you.

Yukai’s soldiers weren’t human, he reminded himself. To a civilian, the little four-limbed dots on the screen might be fighting like regular soldiers—a little like the Army, he amused himself with the thought—taking cover wherever they can and providing cover fire for their comrades, letting the mechs move ahead and mow down hardpoints with grenade launchers and machine guns. The differences stopped there, however. By human standards, they were insane, rushing out of cover to draw enemy fire, entire squads sticking their heads out all at the same time with some screwed-up “they can’t get all of us at once” philosophy. The body count just kept going up, but it was all he could do to stare at the screen. They’re just machines, after all.

All at once, the battle died down. Explosions were just pops now, and gunfire was just firecrackers. “Walk,” Zero said. Juu and Nii moved ahead, followed by Zero, who looked back to Hassan, cueing him to follow. San shored up the rear. The androids walked a little slower than Hassan, which annoyed him to no end, but that was a natural consequence of the fact that Yukai’s troops were modeled with Japanese humans as reference—a people smaller on average than westerners. With longer legs came great annoyance, at least to Hassan.

They came to the foot of a hill of concrete debris—leftovers of the perimeter wall. Looking up, Hassan had never realized just how huge these walls were. It was like lining up office towers beside each other and calling it a wall. The breach itself was a jagged top-to-bottom axe cut. With how thick the wall was, it must’ve taken thousands of tons of explosive to screw it over.

It didn’t take him more than one step to realize that he wasn’t going to be climbing over chunks of concrete—it was concrete powder, and it took all his sense of balance to keep himself from slipping and sliding all the way back down, even with the studs in his boots. There was still a hundred feet to the top, so he unhooked the trekking multi-tools from his pack and unfolded the ice axes from the shafts. Looking up, the androids ahead of him patiently waited. He knew deep down that they weren’t really feeling anything about him taking his time, but damn if it wasn’t patronizing. While he needed to drag his way up with upper body strength and tactical-fuckin’-ice picks, these guys were just walking normally. Goddamnit.

That said, he didn’t get why there was a wall in the first place. Even the Coast Guard had enough ordnance to blow up a section of wall. Things weren’t making sense. The huge-ass cannon emplacements, the perimeter walls—what use were static defenses against bombs and nukes?

Reaching the crest, Hassan gaped under his mask at the sight of a forest of broken pipes jutting in from the left and right. There were gaping trenches where fuel lines had erupted and ignited, and a littering of blown-up android and bot parts scattered every which way, a mess that a carrion flock of little silver-gray quadcopters feasted on, picking the scraps off the ground with little claws and lifting up, off into nowhere, off to recycling.

The original assault force had dug in by the time Hassan and Unit 19:a2 reached the foot of the breach. Many of them were androids just like Unit 19:a2, but most of them were still old-model bodies: cameras for heads, a boxy frame, a boxy backpack, and piston-like limbs. The only hint that they were modeled off JSDF infantry was the helmet. Admittedly, the fact that they were digging foxholes like good infantrymen was a little funny.

Zero told him they’d need to wait a while for reinforcements. There was a chance of counter-attack, but it never came. Soon enough, a fresh “mechanized company”—it was about the right size—marched in through the breach: infantry, mechs, and this time, tanks. Hassan had noticed that the mechs never had anything bigger than an autocannon, and mainly resorted to missiles and grenade launchers for firepower. It made sense that they’d tend to put the larger cannons on tanks, which were much more structurally stable platforms.

“We’re following them,” Zero said. Hassan nodded. He realized that maybe they didn’t understand human gestures, but whatever, they were moving already.

[ALERT: System direction no longer possible within mission area.]

[ALERT: It is recommended to disable direct RF and resort to vocal, gestural, and wired communications to limit enemy E-war and cyberwar capabilities.]

They joined up at the rear of the column, traveling with another squad, Unit 19:f5. “Reporting,” Unit 19:f5:00 said. She was a newer-model android, covered in a cape. “We are temporarily supplementing your mission until Domain 9F11:B882:0005:0C8A.”

“Acknowledged. We’re falling in,” Zero replied. She signaled for the rest of 19:a2 to move out. Their use of vocal comms surprised Hassan. The fact that it was in some strange mix of Japanese and English surprised him even more—he’d taken a three-month course for Japanese in the Green Berets before he’d transferred into the SEALs, so he understood—but why?

“I’ve got a question,” he said, the direct RF spilling out from his mask.

Zero spun around. What a blunder. No one thought that the human didn’t receive messages from the System. “Turn off your direct RF,” she ordered. Hassan flipped a switch under his mask before asking, “What’s going on?” the speakers outside his mask making his voice clear.

“Enemy E-war and cyberwar capabilities are too advanced,” she explained. “Direct RF will send them straight to us.” They weren’t too far from where they began, so it should be fine. “We must use alternatives. Enemy central servers will also expend tremendous processing power from translating bilingual code-switching.”

It was an explanation as good as any other. Hassan gave this code-switching thing a go, too.

The march was eerily quiet. The fighting in the distance didn’t count—that’s just something you tuned out after a while. Every now and then, they’d pass a factory monolith that didn’t have a single speck of damage or even dust on it—most of them had a hole or two from factory busters. Oh, the outside looked fine, besides the holes, but their insides was an exploded mess of ignited chemicals, collapsed catwalks, and pieces of machinery strewn about.

Hassan thought urban combat was bad, but this “factory city,” they called it, it was much worse. Actual “roads” were few and far in between. At the moment, they were marching over a wide conveyor belt, broken and unmoving. Its cargo, tons of gravel, impeded most movement, and the tanks had to be diverted through a different path. The mechs fared a little better, but they still had to slow down and be careful with their footing. The androids were expert navigators, in this case, and Hassan was just a little worse. At least it wasn’t like the hill of powder. A good trekking pole sufficed here.

There weren’t any windows around here to threaten them. Still, Hassan thought, there could be snipers on the roofs. There were factory-skyscrapers with line-of-sight, as well, so it wasn’t impossible to imagine spotters calling in artillery and drone strikes on them any time now. More likely, though, were spotter drones unknowingly zipping overhead.

An A-shaped flight of drones buzzed overhead. Hassan sharply looked up, his finger already just an inch away from the trigger.

“Near-surface superiority,” Zero explained. “They hunt for enemy spotters.”

Whoever the hell said “war never changes” was wrong. War has been automated.

After a few more industrial blocks, a firefight erupted, but far, at the head of the column. A drone the size of a baseball zipped overhead from that direction, chirping something weird and flashing like a strobe.

“Scouts engaging ahead. Light resistance,” Zero said. In reality, she’d received far more information, detailing enemy positions and the disposition of engaged allies, but all those extra details weren’t something that Hassan needed to know. She moved ahead to rip Nii away from kicking a rock.

A whining something came from everywhere—a jet? It was impossible to tell the direction. The sound echoed all around them, bouncing off the factories’ walls. It would be shot down, soon.

The androids ahead were shouting something and started scattering to the sides. A line of tracers rained down from the sky, and Hassan was too slow to evade. Zero was too far to reach him.

Unit 19:f5:00 threw herself over Hassan. Gravel and metal erupted all around them. There was an explosion in the air, and the two fell to the ground, while the enemy flyer spiraled into the city, smashing straight into a warehouse and igniting whatever was in there, as the resulting explosion was enough to shake the city. San reached them first, rolling f5:00’s body out of the way.

“Lieutenant Watchman?” she said. Hassan coughed. “My fucking back,” he complained. This was as good as any other confirmation. Juu came soon after, and then Zero and Nii.

It felt a little weird for his view to be clouded over by four androids watching him intently. He rolled over to his side, only to be met by a view of Unit f5:00’s broken body. There was a hole punched into her back; the bullet probably bounced around in there. She really was made of metal and oil. Her face remained expressionless, and yet, she readily gave her life just like that.

He pushed himself up, and the androids around him straightened their backs with him. They were all much too close and in-his-face when he realized it. He looked again to Unit f5:00’s body. “Is she...dead?” he asked. It might’ve been a weird question for them. Did they understand what being “alive” and “dead” meant?

“A savepoint is available in Nagoya,” Zero said. “If she does not receive a new body there, she will be remade in Tokyo, instead.”

“That doesn’t make any sense.” Hassan shook his head. “You have a connection to some server somewhere or something?”

“Negative. We are autonomous. All connections are for backup or communications purposes only.”

“Then she’s dead.” The androids didn’t say anything for a while. He continued, “Aren’t any of you smart enough to know that?”

“It does not matter.” San was the one who replied this time. “We are soldiers, made to die for anyone other than ourselves.”

Hassan chuckled. “So it’s fuck-all when it comes to self-preservation, huh?”

“Co-preservation, Lieutenant Watchman,” San corrected him. “Die for someone else, and never for ourselves. Human soldiers must also work for the same cause, yes?”

Hassan chuckled … but that was all he could do. He didn’t expect to have this conversation. They might not look human, but … yeah, they were something else, alright.

The androids who survived that strafing run began shouting and scattering again. “Now fucking what?” Hassan blurted out. This time, he was prepared to run. He wasn’t prepared, however, for the soft glow emanating from the top of the tallest skyscraper around here. It was this black monolith in the middle of the city, no doubt one of the most important structures here, but if his imagination served right, that slowly intensifying glow wasn’t going to end in anything good.

The androids around him were just staring at it. “Hey? Hey!” He tapped Zero in the shoulder, but she looked at him, then back at the tower. He tapped everyone else’s shoulders, too—Nii, San, and finally Juu.

“What?” Juu said, a little startled. It was such a human reaction that Hassan had to shake his head and remind himself that she wasn’t.

“We need to look for a place to take cover in. Come on!”

“Right,” Juu said with a smile—what the fuck, a smile? “Let’s go.”

The glow strengthened, and Hassan and Juu searched on opposite sides of the conveyor belt. There was something like a service tunnel, Hassan noted, obscured by some debris. “Over here!” he called. Juu appeared a few seconds later, and he pointed at the tunnel.

“It’s slightly blocked,” Juu said. Slightly blocked my ass, that’s a tunnel collapse! Juu disappeared off in the next moment, then came back with the rest of her squad the next.

“What’d you tell them?” Hassan asked.

“That there’s a blocked tunnel and it needs to be unblocked,” Juu said. It was probably the most actionable thing the androids had heard since the tower started glowing, and was what spurred them to action.

Juu took out blocks of explosives from her many pockets and distributed them among the squad and Hassan. While Hassan got a little competitive about how well he could determine what needed to blow up and why, Juu got to work wiring everything together with detcord.

It wasn’t a lot of explosive, but they took cover away from the mouth of the tunnel, anyway. The moment they blew off the debris was the moment the whole world flashed in shades, tints, then sprites of orange, like turning back time from dusk to sunset. The shouts of androids began to be drowned out by crashing debris and some kind of breath that might have come from a goddamn dragon if they were real.

Hassan didn’t look back. He and Unit 19:a2 rushed through the opened tunnel, which promptly collapsed behind them. They would only find out about the 82.1% destruction of the main assault force later on.

***

Hassan’s boots and Unit 19:a2’s metallic feet clacked. The tunnel was a remnant of the human era, when subways still needed space-inefficient maintenance tunnels, where nowadays a little gremlin bot zipping through a vent was enough to get most investigation and repair jobs done.

Fluorescent tube lamps stayed dead, and others, broken, along the sides of the tunnel. The group’s night vision equipment was enough—for the first fifty yards.

Hassan grabbed Zero’s arm. The android looked at him. “Careful,” he said. He pointed at the spot just in front of her leg, where a thin tripwire was strung. Zero couldn’t see it through her superior optics, but upon flipping through different filters, it was there: a silver strand floating in mid-air.

She stepped over it. Hassan grabbed her arm again. “Stop, damn it,” he said. He pointed to yet another tripwire right by the first one. “Smart fuckers.”

Zero didn’t understand. This second tripwire showed up on a different filter than the first. “How did you know?” she asked Hassan.

“Typical insurgent mindset,” he said. “I can’t imagine you AI folk setting up traps like these.”

“We wouldn’t,” Juu remarked. She kept her rifle trained into the depths of the tunnel.

“Human traps?” San said. “Odd.”

“Refreshing,” Nii said. “New data.”

Zero looked to Hassan. “Can we disarm them?”

The whole of Unit 19:a2 had a moment of logical errors as Hassan bent down and snipped the wires with a pair of scissors.

They ventured forwards, deeper into the darkness, disarming 67 traps after the 15^th minute, each of increasing quality of placement. There was one where the trigger was a photosensitive diode that would have blown the det-charges on the ceiling had they turned on their flashlights. They were already deep enough at this point that their night vision wasn’t working right, but they had near-IR flashlights, which despite being nearly invisible to the naked eye, showed up nicely on the right filters.

Water seeped through the cracks, filled with chemicals from broken and bombed factories above. Hassan checked his environmental monitors. Carbon monoxide concentration was fluctuating between 10.1 and 10.2% … just 0.4% could kill him in a few minutes.

They came upon a blast door, marred by slag and singe marks that had burned away the black-and-yellow caution patterns, but otherwise, it was a completely shut door.

“Live electronics,” Zero said. She pointed at a camera hanging from the corner between the blast door and the wall. She turned to Hassan. “Humans may be on the other side. As the human liaison, how do you recommend we proceed?”

Hassan was eyes-wide at this. It was utterly strange for the AI to hand over tactical control to some lowly human, but, well, he’d push this sort of problem to someone else if he were in her place, too. “Guess I’ll knock,” he said. He walked up to the door and knocked twice. “My name is Lieutenant Hassan Watchman! United States SEAL Team 13!”

There was no response. He knocked again, but still, nothing. He looked back to the androids, then back to the door. He had one last trick up his sleeve—or rather, tucked away in his high school memories.

Knock. K-k-knock-knock. Knock. Knock. Knock. K-k-knock.

Knock. K-k-knock-knock. Knock. Knock. Knock. K-k-knock.

And with his shitty voice, started singing...

“Doryoku! Mirai! A beautiful star! Doryoku! Mirai! A beautiful star!” His voice transmitted clearly through the loudspeakers on the exterior of his mask.

On the other side of the door, masked guerrilla fighters, tubes snaking down from their masks and into oxygen tanks they carried on their backs, started bopping their heads to the tune. The singing was bad, and the accent, clearly American, but it was the echo of a nostalgic time.

Their commander slapped them over their dumb heads. He signaled for the heavy machine gun team to ready up and stack on more steel plates over their gun shield. Once they gave the OK sign, the commander pointed to the guy by the control panel and gave the signal.

The blast door creaked, then something kicked in, and it hummed and screeched as frozen gears finally turned after many long months. The moment there was even an inch-wide crack, though, floodlights came on, blinding Hassan who had been peeking in through his NVGs.

Unit 19:a2 stood ready to defend their human...against other humans? Wait. Who should they defend? They looked to each other. They couldn’t really kill what they were meant to protect, even if it meant protecting another human.

The easiest solution, therefore, was for them to line up and form a physical barrier between Hassan and the other humans.

The blast gate fully opened up. Unit 19:a2 refused to raise their weapons. They stood expressionless, waiting for bullets to rain from the heavy machine gun, a 50-caliber Sumitomo J2—effectively the M2 Browning, but in Japanese. Their new android bodies could definitely take a beating even against such a fearsome weapon, but even if it couldn’t penetrate their skin, each round could still leave baseball-sized dents. Enough of those, and their bodies would get folded.

“Good evening,” Hassan started. “I’m here on the order of”—he paused, thinking that these people might have been here for far too long—“US President Miyoumi Mane. Please allow me to speak to your officer.”

He’d tried his best in using polite speech. Even AI would struggle with Japanese, he was sure.

Meanwhile, the commander looked the SEAL up and down—or at least, whatever he could see of the SEAL behind the shield of women. Who the hell is this harem protagonist? There was too much culture in there, and as an outstanding Japanese person, he was too sexually repressed to simply gloss over this fact, especially not after so many years underground.

This ‘Hassan Watchman,’ however, was wearing a mask, whereas the others were not. It was clear who the humans were. “Who are they?” was the first muffled thing out of the commander’s mask. Under his trench coat, he’d already flipped the safety off.

“Uhh”—complicated story, holy shit was Hassan panicking—“allied AI, I think?”

“You think?”

“I can write a book about it.”

Well, thought the commander, at least he’s human. “Have they killed humans?”

There was a momentary silence. “Have you?” Hassan asked Zero.

“No,” she said. “The Prime Directive is clear: humans are not to be harmed.”

“Then why are we hunted?” the commander asked.

“Since when?” Hassan asked back.

“One month ago.”

“This city’s overseeing AI went rogue,” Hassan explained. “How long have you been here?”

“The start,” the commander replied, after a pause. He assessed the situation to be non-threatening, but he was still unsure of the androids before him. He’d lost too many men. “Is this a rescue?”

“Can we put the HMG away?” Hassan said. Instead, the commander stood and walked halfway to the door. Hassan reciprocated. Zero was hesitant to let him go, sternly blocking him with her arm. He grabbed her shoulder and squeezed it in turn, hoping that, somewhere under that skin of metal, were pressure sensors and a brain that could tell what he meant by this.

The earlier, yes, but the latter, no. They stared at each other for too long a moment. “He’s meeting us halfway,” Hassan explained. “If we don’t establish trust now, we won’t get past this situation.”

That made sense to Zero, so she relaxed. Hassan walked forward, looking into the commander’s visor, looking into those tired eyes. The man extended his hand, and Hassan took it.

“Captain Kobayashi Daichi,” the commander introduced himself. He was smiling under his mask, Hassan could tell through his eyes—which was why he hated to bring this news.

“I’m sorry to tell you this,” he explained, “but, in truth, we were trapped here after a tactical weapon on the citadel fired.”

Whatever smile was on Kobayashi’s eyes faded. “A tactical weapon, you say?”

“I don’t know. It could be a giant laser.”

“That’s insane.” The commander looked over Hassan’s shoulder. “And them? Where are they from?”

“They’re part of my escort. I’m just an observer.”

“What do you mean?”

“The ones attacking the city are AI.”

Kobayashi froze. “I don’t believe you,” he said.

“There have been certain developments in the United States...”

Kobayashi’s eyes became happy again. Maybe the man thought the US had developed an anti-AI weapon—some kind of general override that allowed them to hijack and gain master control of rogue AI. Hassan...should probably shoot down their hopes as early as now. It was merciless, but it was worse to lie, not even by omission.

“The new US President is...actually an AI.”

Kobayashi took a step back. Hassan continued, “I know how it sounds. She’s not like the AI here. Life in the US is mostly the same—actually, maybe a little better.”

Hassan looked to the man. He was looking away—to the ceiling, to the floor, anywhere but straight at Hassan.

“How can this be?” Kobayashi said. “From one hellhole into another...”

“Like I said, there are no concentration camps. America is still America.”

Kobayashi slowly looked up to him. “Can I trust your word, Lieutenant Hassan Watchman?”

“I swear,” Hassan said. Kobayashi observed the androids for a moment, and they hadn’t a hint of any expressions. They weren’t going for their weapons; they weren’t standing relaxed; they weren’t so on guard, either. They just stood there, like the perfect, unsleeping soldiers they were.

“You were talking to one of them familiarly,” Kobayashi said, catching Hassan off-guard.

“I know they’re not human,” he said. “If they understand human language, though, then it’s enough just to communicate with them.”

“I see ... so, did you say you are trapped with us?” Kobayashi said.

“That’s the case,” Hassan said. “If we try to radio for help, they’ll find this place, probably.”

“We can’t have that.” Kobayashi chuckled, surprising his men. Guy’s finally lost his knockers. “Do our AI allies have explosive charges?”

“I think. Why?”

“Give me a few minutes. I may have a solution to our predicament, but I must first speak to my men.”

Hassan knew those words. He watched as Kobayashi turned and walked back to his men. Why can’t these sorts of guys have a sense of self-preservation?