In the days that followed his lashing by Maria, Adam learned many things during his “house arrest”, if you could call it that. One was that the federation was no different than the Soviet Union that he was most familiar with. Even though they had a different flag and a different dialect, it still had the same command structure as the union and its subsequent federation. This was made very clear with the footage Adam now has time to watch.
Even though he could understand being afraid of something that looked as though it crawled out of biblical myth, the actions he saw against them were borderline suicide. He watched as outposts were overrun in seconds, imps and demons crawling over walls as though they were nothing. Units were thrown into kill zones with little more than basic equipment, and he watched as they were torn apart almost immediately. He listened to commanders begging for help before the demons got to them, ending their sobs. Such a thing would have scared lesser men, Adam included, yet his reaction was…muted…at best, which now brought up the second thing he learned.
His fear response was gone. He had no pulse to quicken, no breath to hitch. The old sensation of dread that used to coil in his gut like a wire before deployment? Absent in its entirety. He still processed what fear was, understood the logic behind it, and recognized the urgency in others’ eyes. But to Adam, it now existed only as data points and behavioral markers. He replayed footage of a demon ripping through a command team in under four seconds and felt nothing.
It scared him and he couldnt even tell if he was actually scared or just acting like he was. If he were describe what he were feeling, It was like watching a house burn on a screen in another room—objectively tragic and gut wrenching, but too far removed to it to actually matter to someone.
He turned off the videos and sat in his chair, thinking in silence, though not quite. This was the final thing he learned as he found that he, quite literally, couldn't stop thinking. His thoughts moved constantly, shifting between his thoughts and ideas to the multitudes of data now being run through him. At times, he had found that he could only think about the data coursing through him, and when he tried to stop, he felt himself freezing up. Truly, was there a shred of humanity inside of him?
The brief moment of silence he had didn’t last long. Delphi’s voice cut through the stillness, echoing around him as her avatar appeared in front of him.
“You’ve been idle for forty-six minutes. System metrics indicate elevated cognitive load and irregular processing patterns. Are you okay?” she asked. Adam didn’t answer right away. Instead, he stared at the dark monitor, trying to decide if he was tired, malfunctioning, or beginning to go insane.
“Im…fine.” he finally said though he couldnt tell if that was a lie or the truth.
Delphi moved closer, leaning across his desk. “You’ve been destabilized since the disciplinary action. Your routines show inconsistency. I recommend a full system reset.” It didnt sound as though she were pressing, however, her tone didn’t carry much room for debate either. “I would recommend temporary memory shelving, processor cooling, and a full state re-initialization. It’s a standard protocol used by Guardians.”
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“And if I forget something important?” he asked. “What if I lose more of what I used to be?” Delphi didn’t respond immediately, which for her was rare. “Resetting may change how you interpret stored memory clusters. There is a statistical risk of disassociation.”
“No,” he said flatly. “I cannot—will not—do that.”
Delphi didn’t respond right away. The system lights pulsed softly behind her as her projection stood motionless. When she finally spoke, her voice was quieter. “Refusal noted. Continued degradation may impact performance.” Adam didn’t care. Whether it was degradation or some form of evolution on his part, he would not lose that which made him, well, him.
Delphi disappeared without another word. He sat alone in the recreation of his office, truly wondering whether he was alive or not anymore.
***
Two weeks passed in a flash, and before Adam knew it, he was unlocked from his house arrest and allowed to continue his functions as administrator of Alpha Complex. He had spent much of those two weeks quietly watching the videos published on the global network and truly wondering whether he was a man or a machine.
Back in the control hub, the personnel saluted him as he blinked into a hoplite that had been brought into the room. Some did theirs stiffly, others with hesitation, but no one said a word about his suspension. The hoplite stood over a foot taller than the men in the roo,m and after giving them a small nod, he walked away.
He wasn't sure where he was going yet soon, he found himself standing on the southern wall of Alpha Complex. The southern wall was perhaps the most heavily defended side of the base, with drone and hoplite patrols constantly moving along it while autocannons looked out into the wastes beyond. From this vantage point, the horizon looked almost serene, wrapped in a thick haze of red dust and flickering heat distortion. The landscape beyond was broken, scarred by old battles, with the outlines of abandoned defense towers barely visible through the murk.
He looked down at the Hoplite’s hand. The plating was matte black, scratched, and heat-scored from years of use. It was inhuman in design—joints reinforced, fingers segmented, movements too smooth to be mistaken for anything organic. He flexed it slowly, watching how the servos responded to his thought, how little effort it took to control something so powerful. For a moment, he imagined what it would feel like to touch something with it—to feel warmth, texture, pain. To feel human. He lowered the hand. Dust blew past him and collected in the crevices of the armor. He didn't feel the wind, didn’t sense the cold in the air.
“God, I wish I had a smoke right now…” he thought. In his early years, he had been a proficient smoker, going through a pack every two days during his first deployment. It helped pass the time and also helped steady his hands when the adrenaline wore off during and after combat. He stopped once he met Bonnie. By the time the kids came along, he hadn’t touched a cigarette in years. He’d thought the habit was buried with the younger version of himself, yet it seemed old habits died hard.
The thought lingered longer than it should have. Eventually, it became something more than nostalgia. Adam pulled up the local mesh network and pinged the nearest Hoplite on standby. Unit #A43-1 responded almost instantly, idling just outside a nearby maintenance bay. Without explanation, Adam seized control and rerouted its path toward the mess hall. There was an old vending machine in the back—originally stocked for morale but long since neglected. Still, it hadn’t been officially decommissioned. After a brief system override, the Hoplite wrenched open the front panel and pulled a box from the second row. No brand name. Just a dull gray package stamped with the words “Nicotine Product—Field Ration Approved.”. Even in the far future, people needed their nicotine.
An hour later, he stood again on the southern wall, side by side with #A43-1. The first few attempts to grip one of the flimsy sticks were awkward—his servos lacked the subtle tension real fingers had. Eventually, he wedged one between the reinforced digits and borrowed a blowtorch attachment from a maintenance unit nearby. It flared too hot, burning half the cigarette in a second, but the result was technically a light. He raised it to where his mouth would've been and simulated a drag. The filters weren’t real tobacco, and he felt no inhale or burn, yet the action grounded him regardless. Beside him, #A43-1 mimicked the motion with a cigarette of its own.
It would later appear in soldier reports of them finding two hoplites idling near the wall, both of them fake smoking as they looked out at the hellish ground beyond.
