“I don’t get it,” Miller sighed. He put fingers to his temples in frustration, rested his head lightly on the tripod of his hand. “We should see results by now.”

He was at the Tower again. He sat, interfaced, while the screen burped its bubbles of code. Rauch’s body had been moved; it now sat by the secondary station, in the chair I recognized from present time, but in a very different position. Charles still lay on the floor. Britt, taking a more active role after the loss of two of his team, hovered over Miller’s shoulder for the moment, but a smattering of office clutter strewn about the secondary station suggested he was locked in there, swiping away at I knew not what when he sat between the corpses. The girl was nowhere to be seen. Resting, probably, knowing how Miller felt about her. And, knowing how she felt about Miller, probably doing so by force.

Holos clung to both them.

“It’s adapting,” Britt said. “Surviving the kill. Rauch warned us this might happen.”

“But…but HOW?” Miller ejaculated. “The kill switch is so disruptive, at the basest levels of their code…how can they adapt enough?”

“I don’t know,” Britt consoled him with an arm around his shoulders, “but they did.” He spoke as if Miller were a grieving child, and Britt his sympathetic dad. That was one of the things I liked best about him, and why I chose him to lead this team. He could be an asshole when he had to, but he knew when to soften up, and at times like this, when he sensed a member of his team teetered on the edge of despair, he knew how to relate to them in ways I could never hope to, and to talk them off the ledge. It calmed me down just watching him. “At the heart of it, that kill of yours is just another selector, no different than a freezing wind, or a famine or a drought. Lethal only to the unadjusted.”

“But this…they shouldn’t be able to adjust to this,” Miller argued. “It’s like adjusting to life inside the sun, or if the atmosphere turned toxic. It’s just…too much.”

“For you or me, maybe, or any other natural thing. But these bots aren’t natural, are they?” Miller shook his head. “With as much firepower as we’ve given them, they can code themselves however they want. However they have to, in order to survive. Do you really think, with that kind of power at your disposal, and a nearly infinite number of tries, you wouldn’t be able to draw up something that’d be right at home in a G-type star?”

“I suppose.”

“Maybe if it had taken when Charles first sent it up it would have been effective. But it didn’t. Charles’ sending was ineffective, queued at too high a frequency. All it did was tip them off – let them know what we had planned, and gave them time to ready themselves. They didn’t have to deal with the kill-switch fully until Rauch was off the system, and you launched it yourself. It looks like the little piss-ant saved them after all.”

“Yeah…” Miller stared into nothing. It unnerved me to see him so disarmed. I checked the time stamp on the holo – a time stamp appeared even as I looked for one – and saw that this scene had played out two days before. Working backwards to the last time that I thought he’d slept, I guessed he’d been awake going on seventy-two hours at that point. No wonder he was so suggestible. “So, what are we going to do?” He stared up at Britt. The fluoros caught him full in the face. He looked like an albino, his skin had grown so sallow and pale. The gouge Rauch had left in his neck stood out, raised and red, in the harshness of their glow. Its edges were crusted with pestilent black.

Britt stood. “I know what you’re going to do,” he said, “You, my friend, are going to rest. You’re no good to us like this.” Miller opened his mouth to protest. Britt never gave him the chance. “I don’t want to hear it,” he said, putting a finger to Miller’s lips. “Go to your room, and don’t even think about coming out until you’ve had a few hours’ sleep. I’ll hold down the fort until you get back.”

Miller didn’t argue, but he didn’t move either. At least, not right away. He seemed to be gathering his strength.

“Come on,” Britt helped him to his feet. He looked positively skeletal. “Rauch was right about one thing…it’s not malicious. It’s not going to come after me while you’re gone. I’ll be alright.” Together they staggered towards the living quarters. Miller walked like a scarecrow with a gimpy knee. “Eight hours,” Britt ordered, as he swiped the door open with one hand and guided Miller through with the other, “not a minute less.” He stood just inside the door, confirming Miller’s first few steps, as if he thought his sharpest puke might try to sneak his way back in. “And dress that wound,” he called out into the hall. “It isn’t healing right.”

Miller turned and put a hand to his neck, tracing around its crusted edges with a finger he could scarce control. He nodded.

The pane of the door slid shut between them, leaving Britt alone in the lab.

I almost had to laugh. Yeah. He could be a real asshole when had to.

His holo showed what he was about. Miller, exhausted as he was, hadn’t noticed, or hadn’t understood if he had, but I’d seen it the whole time. He knew Miller would have never let him do what he intended, so, rather than risk another Rauch-like confrontation, Britt had simply sent him away.

He set upon the tower, and for a moment wondered at the strength the thing possessed. It was like a city in his mind: hustling, bustling, and self-sufficient, composed of trillions of swarming members that meshed together to form something greater than the sum of its parts, capable of designing itself, selecting the direction of its next expansion and moving there with unbound zeal. Of dealing with the unexpected, adapting both itself and its population to the ever-changing need. With its help the bots had backhanded the best Miller had been able to throw at it…or at least, the best he’d been able to throw it its back-door. Sure, they could try another kill, and make it more disruptive, or try to insert it in a different way, but Britt had no real hope that that would work. If it could solve their greatest weakness, the soft, unprotected underbelly that had been designed into their basest code for exactly this sort of contingency, what chance would a cobbled-together Hail Mary of a kill-switch, thrown in wherever they perceived another chink in the armor, have? Not much of one, in Britt’s mind. Not much of one at all.

And so, to him, the answer was obvious. He’d locked in by now, and used his Hades-level clearance to access the startup sequence.

I felt a pang of regret at that, and glanced towards the now-dormant Tower hulking over us in the lab. I’d been the one to grant him that clearance. Someone on the inside needs to have it, I’d argued. Someone on the ground, who can take the pulse of any situation and know they’ve got the tools to address it however they see fit. And that someone should be Britt. I’d trust him with my life. It hadn’t been an easy sell. The gentlemen to which I’d spoken weren’t the type to disseminate authority, and they’d made it clear Britt’s neck would not be noosed alone if anything…unsavory should happen. Don’t worry, I’d finished, it’ll be fine. It’s not like he’ll have deic power. We can pull it whenever we want, if things start going sideways. I wondered how we’d forgotten that.