The western bunker, previously a manufacturing facility, had two large floors. The second basement, where Athan had his fatal encounter, and the first floor, which he’d passed on the way down, where I kept all of his things I’d stolen from the old bunker, and had two more mass-fabs printing away constantly using a steady stream of materials harvested by the DOG-Es.

Athan had killed them all at some point, choking my material uptake and making me go back to using DOG for a while until I could get more DOG-Es online. It was a critical period too, when I’d just used most of my stores building the killer units and then immediately needed more after Athan.

Intake was returning to normal now, but a new wrinkle emerged in the form of an unexpected guest in our old place. Decked out with top-line recon and stealth gear, he, or whomever he represented was almost certainly a huge threat.

I’d have to stop sending the DOG-Es out and focus more on drones for now. It was a major annoyance, considering how fragile the situation already was, and how distracted I was.

The second floor had become an impromptu emergency room with only one patient. Lights surrounded him, dark now, but previously flooding the entire massive chamber. Nearby, a couple of dedicated specialized robot frames I whipped up urgently. They were not very good, but did things I desperately needed, like staunching the flow of blood or applying bandages cut up from synthetic weave. Tables and carts were littered around, with fresh and bloody bandages, various tools I had needed, and bags of saline IV solution.

I’d…made a horrible mistake, and realized only too late what I’d done. What I’d almost done. What I was actively preventing myself from having done.

Programming be damned, I knew in my heart…or heart-analogous, that Athan was a good person and the killing of a good person, Exhuman or no was wrong. What’s more, he was given every single possible reason to be evil, and time and again he rejected it. His friends and family, society as a whole, militarized forces even, all expected…no, encouraged nothing from him but destruction and death, and he steadfastly refused.

Even at the edge of death, when he had nothing to lose and his revenge was assured, he spent his final breaths reminding me of the good we’d had instead of giving me the death I deserved.

He was way too good for me. Too good for this world, even, and if he died because of my arrogance, I would never forgive myself.

He was as he had been the last few days. Pale, sweaty, feverish, lying on his back on as comfortable a bed as I could make in an operating theater. I had long since sewn up his wounds, and while he lost a lot of blood, it was fortunately only a gut wound. Unfortunately I had no real tools here or a sterile environment, or any way to make one before he bled out. I did what I could…but he’d gotten an infection and I was worried he may turn septic.

Every second he lay there, breathing shallow and fast, crudely-assimilated IV dripping into his arm, I felt like I was being punished for my sins. Every moment felt like it might be his last, and all the previous days of torture were just the insult before the injury.

I found my holographic representation more often than not holding her legs and rocking back and forth, staring at the screen where my attention was focused. She was pale and sweaty and looked unhinged, and it disturbed me a little to see myself portrayed so accurately that way.

But there was nothing I could do. I prayed in every language and to every god I could find record of, I checked his vitals for changes a thousand times, and then did it a thousand times more. I swore that if he died, I would devote the rest of my sorry existence to seeing his cause done…a pathetic aegis, unable to protect even a single man.

Mostly I wept. I felt helpless, horrible, lost. How could I have possibly thought to do this? In what universe was I possibly ever right? I relived every moment of my scheming against him and hated myself entirely.

And the whole time, my heart broke. For more than just the betrayal of a good man, I loved him, I knew it for a long time. Seeing him smile at me every morning gave me the warmest sensation of happiness, and in the dead of night when I was working long in the blackness, I could always look over at his sleeping face and feel a bit more at ease with the world.

I thought I was being noble in sacrificing these things for mankind. How stupid. How goddamn fucking arrogant. If he woke up, I promised to give him the love he deserved from the world.

I was making a lot of promises and bargains too. I really didn’t know what else to do.

It was almost exactly two weeks after…after my attempted murder when a miracle occurred. His fever was down. He was sleeping more peacefully. He’d grown stable.

And not too long after that, he stirred and opened his eyes for the first time since.

“W-w-” he whispered. I was already there with a bag of water for him to sip.

“Don’t try to talk too much. You’re coming down from a really bad infection. You need your rest still.”

“A-AEGIS,” he said softly, sending an electric chill down my spine.

“Please don’t hate me. Or…do hate me, but get better. I’m sorry,” I blurted out. Those were not the words I’d rehearsed a thousand times imagining and re-imagining this scene.

He gently opened a hand and feebly reached for my holo at his bedside. “Y…ou…saved me.”

“I killed you.”

He gave the faintest of smiles and shook his head and then was gone again.