The mechanical noise of Otto’s Garage slowly comes to a halt, as Harry slams his palms down on a workbench all of a sudden, sending a spray of corn chips into the air with the impact. “Why aren’t we just going after them?”
The others stop their tasks and turn. Jason and Alycia, repairing and reconstructing the shells of Otto and Summer respectively. Adam and Charlotte, talking in low tones about the state of the hostage recovery. Stingray and Fuko, looking at a map of Atlantis. Aria, working on a laptop. Mo and Big Bill in their human avatars, pulling broken modules out of Mo’s vehicular shell.
Harry points at Charlotte, then Adam. “We can just, I dunno, portal down there, get Leo, fight Saito. You can travel in time and space. You can find people.”
He looks at Alycia and Jason. “What do you two need to plan the operation? Come on.”
His eyes seek out the others, one by one. “Why isn’t this simpler?”
Aria is the first to respond. She folds the laptop screen down, stands with deliberation from her chair, and finds and faces Harry head on. “Do you think I don’t want to burn through that whole god damn fish tank and get him back?” she asks, in words of frozen fire.
Harry swallows and shakes his head.
She draws her emotions back into herself with a long breath. “We’re both frustrated. So maybe let’s talk about what I’ve got worked out so far. It’s not what you want to hear. But it’ll answer your questions.”
She returns to the laptop and projects its contents onto the big-screen TV on one end of the garage. It’s usually reserved for multiplayer console games between the Garage’s boys, and now illustrates a conflict of vastly more serious purpose.
Aria clicks from slide to slide as she speaks. Her presentation is slick, clean, and visually informative. “First. The scope of the problem. We hit their biggest city, but not their only city. Within the ‘attic’, the level where human beings can function, we rescued almost four thousand people in a few minutes.”
The slides shift to a map, with the rescue area projected onto a larger map of Atlantis. Aria’s voice grows softer. “Debriefing interviews with those people, plus estimates on the extent of the attic, put the human population of that city at one hundred thousand people.”
She stares around the room. “That’s a hundred thousand hostages. Senior Commander Saito let us take those people out, but what about everyone else? He’s clearly prepared for the tactics and technology we brought. He has weapons capable of neutralizing us robots, for which we don’t have a counter. He’s got EMP weapons to disable almost anything electrical we bring there. So we have to consider the hostages still at risk.”
The slides advance. “Next, our understanding of the Atlantean high command, from Shinkai Hafuko aka Ninjess.” Aria nods to Fuko, and withdraws to run the slides while she speaks.
“The current government reports to the Emperor through a series of hmm, ministers is probably the right English word. Seniority is very important within the upper echelons. Atlantean society associates wisdom with longevity, and True Atlanteans can live very long indeed, so most senior posts have been held by the same people for quite a long time.”
“Below them are the Blood. People like me, and like Senior Commander Saito. We rise through the ranks based on merit. We’re preferable to True Atlanteans for roles where things change relatively rapidly - like gathering intelligence on the surface world - because, frankly, we die out, meaning old ways of thinking don’t contaminate fields where innovation is required.”
More slides clicks through. Fuko has no photographs, but does have descriptions, for each of the leaders she names. First, the different divisions of the military, who handle perimeter defense, the logistics of invasion, and so forth. Second, the intelligence service and ninja corps, who spy on the surface world. Third, the civilian echelons, responsible for regulating life among Atlantis’ many peoples.
“The invasion is a close partnership between the military and intelligence arms,” she explains. “They in turn report to a handful of True Atlanteans, and in turn to the Emperor.”
Harry speaks up. “So okay, we just take down the Emperor.”
Fuko looks like she’s been struck with a hammer. It takes time for her to recover, and explain.
“That’s… that is, what you say is as close to impossible as I can imagine.”
Harry tilts his head. “Okay, why?”
Fuko composes herself, to try and think the unthinkable. “Er, well, for one thing nobody knows where the Emperor is. Or who he is. What he looks like. How to recognize him. Where to even start looking for him.”
Harry takes this in. “Okay, what else?”
“Well, second, he’s the oldest of any True Atlantean, and has wisdom and secrets to match. Many legends are told about him.”
“Many legends are told about my parents,” Harry retorts. “I’m willing to take my chances.”
The slides continue, and now Jason takes over the presentation. “Complicating things is that we’ve been coordinating this via INTERCOM, a network of numerous countries. We discussed plans, shared intel, and so on. Unfortunately, we also warned people that governments might have already been infiltrated by the Atlantean intelligence service’s human agents. Those people might also have access to the plans.”
A set of slides show the countries suspected of harboring such agents, intersected with those who use INTERCOM and contributed materially to the rescue operation.
“Going up against a civilization takes numbers,” Jason explains. “We’re still producing more Leviathans, but they’re limited-use tools. Anything that isn’t an intensely surgical strike by our team - such as trying to take down an Emperor, or Saito, or a similar target - runs the same risk of discovery by Atlantis. People are taking our warnings more seriously now, but it’ll take time to root out the moles.”
Aria speaks, as the slides come to an end. “There’s a question that’s been bothering several of us, and it’s the one that I think should guide our next steps.”
Harry blinks. “What question is that?”
Aria smiles grimly. “What exactly does Atlantis want with Leo Snow?”
Leo finds himself in a holding cell, inside what he assumes is a building owned by the intelligence service. It’s underwater, so there’s nowhere for him to go if he escaped the cell. There’s air and water partitions, like the Surface Science Center had, but none of the signs here are in English.
To his great irritation, he sees his father - Rossum, the Minion Maker - approach the cell from the hallway.
“Our positions appear to be reversed since our last encounter, my boy,” Rossum says with a glance at the cell’s bars. But although it’s a smirking, sardonic thing to say, it’s curiously devoid of venom.
“What are you here for, old man?” asks Leo in a weary voice.
“You failed to tell me my wife - your mother - was alive.” Now Leo can hear genuine emotion. Hurt, anger, betrayal.
“Yeah, sorry, the minute I got back I was taking steps to fend off an invasion, and then was being chased underground by fucking ninja assassins,” Leo retorts. “Thank your new buddy Saito for that, by the way.”
“I owe Saito quite a debt, for the way he’s treating Ji-a Lee,” Rossum growls. “But… it is true that while he has her, he has me.” His eyes study his son, trapped behind the bars. “And he has you, does he not?”
It is a question Leo does not want to answer.
Rossum perhaps senses this, and goes forward anyway. “Whether you like it or not, my boy, we’re now on the same side. You had your grand showdown with me, won your precious victory for the side of law and order, satisfied those sanctimonious pricks at AEGIS. Now isn’t it time for your dear old dad to get his redemption arc, where all is forgiven?”
Leo looks up at Rossum through the bars, and asks a question. “When they finally caught you - when that EMP went off in your face, courtesy of the robot you thought was me - how did it feel?”
The question strikes Rossum like a fist, as Leo can clearly discern.
At length, the older inventor finds his words. “I’ve always loved you, Leonardo. You’ve always been my son. I tried to raise you, but they always got in my way. I tried to homeschool you, to show you what it was really like when the powerful are in charge, to let you be ready…”
Rossum rubs his hands together. Leo finds his eyes drawn to the wrinkles, the way the signs of age makes the skin fold under the motion. “I know I was not the best of fathers. Perhaps you think one of the worst. But even under my tutelage, when I set traps to test you, I warned you. I gave you ways out. Not even I would have used that android, the way AEGIS did.”
Leo draws unsteady breaths. “It hurt me too, what they did. How they did it. It betrayed everything I’d created the robots to do.”
He looks Rossum in the eye. “When Vyortovia called for peace, and Congress said they’d do us for treason if we took them up on it, I said fuck that shit. We worked out a deal - made slow overtures. Finally Harry made the move. Nothing the bigwigs in charge wanted, of course. Not the way they wanted.”
Leo’s hands ball into fists. “So you’ll forgive me, dad, if I call bullshit on your ‘law and order’ and ‘friends with AEGIS’ crap. I didn’t need to impress anyone. I went after you because you. Hurt. People.”
“I had already lost my wife!” Rossum insists. “I wasn’t going to lose you - not to anyone. And I was going to make them all pay, for all the hurt they’d done!”
Connections form in Leo’s head. “And now the guy who’s had her for twenty years is your new boss. And you’re just itching to take him down. He knows that. So he lures me here, to be backup leverage against you.”
Rossum smiles strangely. “Actually, it’s the other way around. There’s something only you can do, something that Saito wants very badly.”
As guards approach from the hallway, Rossum nods in their direction. “I expect they’re here to take you to hear all about it.”
Ji-a Lee is there when Leo and Rossum enter the room. A glance at their faces tells Leo they’ve already interacted, and complex emotions are still there to read. He wonders how it went - what kinds of thoughts and words and wishes and feelings such a reunion must have generated.
But Saito is also here, along with several other Blood in what looks like the underwater equivalent of an Atlantean uniform.
All but a few of the soldiers leave. Some of the Blood nod to Saito, and he commences his explanation.
“Leo Snow, you are aware of our invasion of the surface. And you’ve no doubt surmised the reason for it. Atlantis has numerous reasons to fear the surface. Some of those reasons have long since come to pass. Others, not yet.”
Leo scowls. “Yah. Good luck surviving what comes next, asshole.”
“As it happens, survival is very much on my mind,” Saito answers smoothly. “Leaving your armor here allowed us to craft weapons effective against your technology and test that effectiveness first hand. But that took considerable effort. Furthermore, even before we got to see the performance of your robots first-hand, I’d taken some time to research their past exploits in Halcyon City and elsewhere.”
Leo rolls his eyes. “Proceed directly to the point, please.”
Saito, hands folded and clasped behind his back, smiles with the satisfaction of a cat in the final stages of trapping a mouse. “We’ve seen from your armor’s construction that safety and durability are paramount to you. And your technology allows the exchange of living minds into artificial bodies. You will give it to us, and we will live forever.”
Leo’s breath catches. This is so far beyond anything he’d seriously considered. Uploading an entire civilization of minds - a whole society of robots - the scale, the magnitude of it–
Something’s not right here.
“Wait a minute. Your biology is spectacular,” he says, reasoning aloud. “There’s no reason you couldn’t have started longevity research, or engineering the Blood to have the lifespan of a True Atlantean, or researched healing factors. You don’t need me. You’ve got all the…”
It hits him. “You don’t have the support of the True Atlanteans. They could do this. They haven’t. They let you grow old and die. You’re supposed to be expendable!”
Saito’s eyes light up. His voice is low and even, like a cat’s satisfied purr. “You are very discerning, Mr. Snow.”
Leo looks wildly to Ji-a Lee, then to Rossum, then to the other Blood and back to Saito. “While the Atlanteans are off fighting the surface world, you’re going to stage a coup. You’ve bought the support of other Blood with promises of technological immortality. You’ll use that to overthrow the True Atlanteans and take over.”
Saito draws back, and beams at Rossum. “You said you had educated him on strategy. I see you spoke the truth. Very good. But will he cooperate?”
Rossum’s eyes flash to Ji-a Lee for just a moment, then back. “He has to, doesn’t he. We both do.”
Saito claps his hands. “Wonderful.” He returns his attention to Leo. “You understand the stakes. You understand the command. Now it is on you to fulfill it. You have no choice, boy.”
He smiles and watches, and Leo stares back, rage and hopelessness fighting behind his eyes.