The walk back to the Tower was heavier than the journey out. The weight of 2B's tentative agreement was a physical presence between us, a fragile truce forged in grief. I could feel her skepticism like a cold spot in the air beside me. She had agreed to help, but she didn't believe. Not yet. I needed to give her a reason to.

  Inside the Tower, in the shadow of the server terminal, I had id out my grand, three-step pn, and 2B's reaction was exactly what I'd anticipated: a wall of cold, professional skepticism.

  "Step One: The Logic Virus," I said, pacing before the humming server terminal. "It's still out there, a dormant cancer in the system. I can use the network to develop and deploy a universal purging agent, wiping it from the pnet for good."

  I held up a second finger. "Step Two: Recover the YoRHa data. The Bunker is gone, but the information isn't lost. It's scattered across the network and old Resistance servers. We recover that data, and we have the blueprint to restore our people. Not as soldiers, but as citizens."

  "And Step Three?" she asked, her voice ft, betraying nothing.

  "We go to the moon," I said, letting the words hang in the air. "The server up there is real. It holds humanity's st repository—the Gestalt data, the DNA, the genetic history of our creators. We retrieve it. With the machine network's ability to synthesize organic matter and the android framework, we can bring humanity back. Not as ghosts, but as a living, breathing species."

  She stood perfectly still for a long moment. "It's impossible," she stated. "The moon is inaccessible. The Logic Virus is too complex. The data is too corrupted. You're offering a fantasy."

  "It's only impossible because no one has ever had the tools I have," I countered, my mind already racing ahead to the practical first step. "But you're right about the virus. To create a true counter-agent, I need a pure sample. Not just the dormant code in the network, but an active, aggressive strain. I need to study it in its natural habitat."

  A flicker of understanding—or suspicion—crossed her posture. "Where would you find an 'active strain'?"

  I hesitated, a fraction of a second too long. "There are… hotspots. Pces where infected machines were st active. I can scan them from here."

  It was a clumsy lie. She knew it. Her head tilted, a gesture so small it was almost imperceptible. "You're going somewhere," she said. It wasn't a question.

  "Damn it," I muttered, turning away. I hadn't wanted this. I had pnned to slip away, to handle this grim task alone. The thought of her seeing her own previous body, twisted and corrupted by the virus, was a complication I didn't need. It was too personal, too raw. It might shatter the fragile alliance I had built.

  "Where, Adam?" she pressed, her voice like ice.

  I ran a hand through my hair, a human gesture of frustration that felt more real than anything else I'd done since waking up in this body. "The bridge," I said, my voice low. "The commercial city bridge. Where A2 killed you. Your old body is still there. The Logic Virus… it was the cause of that whole confrontation. It's the purest sample I can find. The virus that infected you, that forced A2's hand."

  The silence that followed was heavier than before. I could feel her processing the information, the brutal logic of it warring with the emotional horror of it. "You want to… dig up my corpse?"

  "I want to save the future," I snapped, turning back to face her. "I need that viral data. It's the key to everything. The first step to making sure no one ever has to go through what you went through again."

  She didn't respond immediately. She stood there, a monolith in the dim light of the server room. I could see the conflict in the rigid set of her shoulders. The logical part of her, the soldier, understood the necessity. The other part, the part that loved 9S and had been forced to kill him time and again, was recoiling in horror.

  "I'll go with you," she said finally, her voice quiet but firm.

  "No," I said, perhaps too quickly. "Absolutely not. This is… this is something I need to do alone. It's a technical task. Data recovery. You don't need to see that."

  "I'm not asking for your permission," she stated, her hand resting on the hilt of her sword. "I'm not letting you go alone. And I'm certainly not letting you go to that pce without me."

  I argued. I id out every logical reason why she should stay behind—her emotional state, the potential danger, the need for one of us to remain at the Tower to monitor the network. She listened to it all with the same unyielding silence. When I was finished, she simply repeated, "I'm coming with you."

  I was trapped. Forcing her to stay would shatter our partnership instantly. I had no choice. "Fine," I conceded, the word tasting like defeat. "But you stay back. You let me work. Understood?"

  She gave a short, sharp nod. It was the best I was going to get.

  The journey to the commercial city was tense and silent. We moved through the ruins, two bck-cd figures against a backdrop of decay. The closer we got to the bridge, the more I could feel her anxiety, a low-frequency hum of dread that was almost palpable.

  We arrived at the edge of the chasm. The bridge, a long, skeletal span of shattered concrete and twisted rebar, stretched out before us into the haze. This was the pce. The scene of her st death. I could feel the history in the air, the echoes of violence and despair.

  "There," I said, pointing to a spot near the center of the bridge, where the structure had partially colpsed. "That's where the records indicated you fell."

  We began to cross, our steps careful on the unstable surface. I was scanning ahead, looking for the glint of android chassis, when a flicker of motion at the far end of the bridge caught my eye.

  I stopped dead, holding up a hand to halt 2B.

  There, standing at the very edge of the far side of the chasm, was a figure I recognized instantly from the game's data. A2. Her short, white hair was wild, her tattered bck clothes barely covering the lean, muscur frame of the prototype android. She was just standing there, looking out over the abyss, her back to us.

  She must have sensed our presence. She turned, her head moving with an unnatural smoothness. Her eyes, one red and one blue, locked onto us from across the distance. There was no aggression in her posture. No surprise. Just a calm, unnerving stare.

  She held our gaze for a long moment, a silent, unreadable communication passing across the ruined ndscape. Then, without a word, without a gesture, she turned and disappeared back into the ruins, leaving us alone on the bridge with the ghosts of the past.

  If you are wondering why you are seeing Chapter 5 again, don't worry. It is a rewrite. I didn't like how chapter 5 and beyond turned out, so I decided to rewrite them. Hopefully they flow better now.