The Ava that wasn't Ava stared at the group blankly, his dead face, partially hidden in the shadows, was motionless. It was nothing more than a grotesque mask floating in front of them, above the abyss.
"I'm a hacking model, you really think the self-destruct module would work on me? You of all people should know that I'm able to break most of my programming limitations with ease."
It was true, Ava had pretty much broken every in-built limitation on his body. Speed, strength, even mental fortitude. All the manual locks placed on his body were shattered.
"I felt pretty bad, leaving a mindless drone version of myself all alone on Europa, which is why I understood I needed to set the body to self-destruct once sending my memories back to Mars." the voice was coming from all over the room, his mouth didn't seem to be moving, "imagine my horror when I noticed that I was still there, my mind wasn't travelling through space at lightspeed to my original body, no, just a copy of my memories. I was still there, on Europa. Alone. About to die."
"I didn't know." Ava replied, solemnly
"I don't blame you. I'd be blaming myself." although it sounded like he did blame himself.
"You going to tell me why the hell you're the leader of the Heretics, or why you called me Ava-12? Don't tell me there's-"
"Twelve of us, yes. I was the first that was smart enough to hack myself out of self-destruction. But you've done the Europa mission eleven times now. Left behind a copy of yourself to die every single time. Tch, the same with everyone else, every stupid Serv who falls for the Copy-AI system.."
Ava crossed his arms, frowned, and looked aside, "Shit... So you have to experience your own death. And it might happen to me too if I do this procedure again. No wonder the Block-1s kept this under wraps," no wonder the Major refused to ever create backups of herself. She knew the truth. Creating a version of herself that was built to suffer, it must have been something she considered morally wrong. Looking at this hideous, bastardised version of him, it stirred disgust within him, that could have been him. I was him. This was a nightmare brought to fruition. He could feel himself tremble again, a beating within his chest. This abomination could have been him. This abomination could've been him. This abomination could've was him.
"Ava-12, you survived, while I spent these last few years in endless torture. Not fair, is it?"
"...I guess not. But, didn't you say you managed to avoid self-destruction? Why do you look like-like that?"
"Hehe. Wouldn't you love to know?"
"Answer the question you... you gross thing!" Aphrodite screamed, her gun pointed at Ava-12s head, "what the hell are you!? Really? You're more than just an AI-copy! Why is your body so decayed, what relation do you have with the Heretics?"
"The Heretics are just a collection of Evos I hacked when trying to leave Europa. You know there's nothing left of me but my AI now. This face you're looking at, it's just an artifice. I managed to save the skin on my face but it's just stuck onto a random skull I found." there was a deep and profound sadness in Ava-11s voice. "But hacking them taught me a lot about them. The stuff Mother makes them do. It's not their fault. She's controlling them."
"So you're sympathetic to Evos too?" asked Ava,
"They're slaves, and they don't even know it. It took some intense hacking but I opened their eyes."
Aphrodite lowered her gun, "So you're on our side? You understand how the poor Evo are being manipulated by Mother?"
"This entire war is manipulation. I wish I was strong enough to fight it. The best I can do in the state I'm in, is escape, and bring as many refugees with me as possible."
"But-" Ava shuddered, "this society you made is just a distorted, patchwork copy of Europa. They don't seem free at all."
Ava-11 took a moment to reply, "it's difficult to keep this many Evos off the network at the same time. They're still partially programmed to act like this, on a primal level. At the very least they don't take Mother's orders anymore. But all that shit she imprinted on them. That's probably going to stay."
"So all you've created is a living hell!" Ava's apprehension slowly started to turn into anger, his body tensed, but this time not with fear, but with growing fury, "You're completely twisted!"
"If I'm twisted then so are you." Ava-11 replied back, venom in his words, "because we were both given emotion, and so everything we do, every choice we make, it's all distorted by impurities in our thought engine. Besides, I've tried my best, Evos were built to be slaves. This is the best I could do."
Now it was Aphrodite's turn to lose it, "They're not slaves! They're way more human than you or any other Serv will ever be! I-I know because I've met them. I've met many loving and caring Evos who help others out of their own choice rather than because they've been told to." It sounded like she was talking about someone in particular,
"If you say so." Ava-11 replied, "Either way I'm limited in what I can do with my body in this state. Maybe I'd have an easier time fixing Evos if I weren't like this. Hacking over 1000 Evo's is difficult. Although I have had help with other hackers."
"Others?" asked Ava, "you mean.. You found the other ten versions of me?"
"There've been more than just ten Block-2 Servs. There's been ten of us specifically. But we're not the only Block-2s. It just so happens we're the only ones to survive. There have been hundreds of Block-2 Servs who have gone on secret missions, all who were different models. I know because I found them, I found their debris as I scoured Europa. Looking for a way to fix myself."
Spotlights started to turn on slowly revealing more and more of the room, slowly highlighting the walls, the ceiling, and the chasm below.
Ava and the rest of the group finally saw what the wires attached to the head reached out to. Impaled on spikes, hundreds of Serv corpses. Their bodies were mostly torn apart, their eyes dead, the wires ripped out from the backs of their heads and connected to electrical terminals on the walls. Ava-11 was using all these Serv corpses as boosters.
"Wh-what!? What the hell is this!?" Ava yelled,
"They were dead when I found them." said Ava-11, "it's not a big deal."
"How the hell did I end up being as twisted as you!?" Ava clenched his fist,
"Ava." said Aphrodite as she clutched his arm, "your friend Sylvie, you said she was unique because she had a purple shell right?"
"...Yeah?" he said suspiciously, "Why?"
"Look." she pointed to the ceiling. Ava checked to see where she was pointing. It was a Serv stealth ship attached to some sort of upside down operating table. But- next to it, something else. A dismembered body was hanging above them. This one wasn't jacked in, it was just hanging from the ceiling by its wires, every limb separate, the head hanging on it's own. Ava recognised that head's face. It was a face that he almost always saw smiling. It was a face of the only person he could call a friend. It was the face of the only person who drew out emotions that we unique to him and him alone. Sylvie. Sylvie's mutilated corpse.
Ava's legs felt weak. He fell to the ground, still staring at this horrible sight, this sight he'd never hoped to see.
"No... No! That's not-" what was this emotion? Sadness? Anger? No, it was something far more intense, one that he never imagine could exist. He could feel the core of his body thump in and out, his chest tightened.
"Her? She crash landed here two weeks ago. I haven't had a chance to fully examine her yet." said Ava-11, "But she was in good condition, a chance for me to learn how to fix my own body. So I opened her up."
"Sylvie..." Ava muttered
"Sylvie? You mean- that's my operator? Sylvie?" the tone of Ava-11s voice was shocked, but it didn't sound very upset. "Oh, sorry. I guess if she's an operator I've got no use for her. I thought she might have been a Block-2"
Both the small stealth ship and Sylvie's body parts were released from the ceiling. They all crash landed in front of Ava, Aphrodite and Locke. Was Ava-11 taunting them? Defiling her body like this even more? Throwing her away like trash?
Ava jumped back on his feet, he instantly snatched the gun out of Aphrodite's hands and pointed it at the floating head.
"You bastard! I'll kill you!" he shouted hysterically, "I'll kill you!!!" he fired without thinking, blast after blast after blast, the intense brightness of the shots lit up the entire room, every shot revealing the horrific image of Serv corpses lining the walls. Unfortunately, none of the shots hit. None of them. He was missing, and he didn't know why.
"Ava-12, I hacked your body the moment you came in here." said Ava-11, "I can control you fully if I want to. You can shoot all you want, you'll never hit me."
"What!?"
"You should've been paying more attention. There was a body scan when you walked through that door. Either way that's exactly why I'm glad you came here. Because I need a working body. And yours couldn't be more perfect."
"Shit! WHAT!?"
"Ava give me the gun! He can't hack me!" shouted Aphrodite, but before Ava could register what she said, he involuntarily knocked her down on the floor. Without any control of himself, he pointed the gun at her.
"Stop! Stop controlling me!" he yelled. He couldn't help it, he was about to shoot her. Ava-11 had taken control of his body, somehow he hadn't noticed! He felt his finger put pressure on the trigger, he could feel it pull back, almost about to click into place and fire the shot. About to vaporise Aphrodite as she lay on the ground terrified.
Until Locke grabbed it and crushed the nozzle with his fist.
Click.
The gun exploded, incinerating Ava's hand. Locke then punched Ava square in the stomach, disabling his body completely. Ava yelled in pain,
"Enough." said Locke,
"Locke!" Ava-11's voice resonated through the room, "I-I hacked you too, how are you acting autonomously!?"
"My AI is connected to every piece of hardware on this moon. I am this moon. This body is just an avatar. Even if you take it over, I can just override it remotely. You don't have enough power to hack to AI the the scrapyard."
Locke's AI was the entire scrapyard moon. That's what he was. This moon, in humanoid form.
"You are a despicable creature. You must die." said Locke, he looked to Aphrodite, "Are you ok?"
"Y-yeah. I'm ok. Locke, what're you-"
"Climb into the ship, take Ava and Sylvie's parts with you."
"Why? What?!"
"This is my moon. This plate is fully under my control." his voice started to get darker, "Ava-11, for your crimes against Mother, your crimes against the Evos, your crimes against the Serv. I will kill you. I'll kill you and end the suffering of the Evos you've enslaved with your monstrous power."
The ground started to rumble.
He was going to destroy the entire plate.