“Instinct. People around Nate had always remarked on his good fortune, on his clever mind, or even on his quick reactions. Really, it always felt like an instinct to him. A gut feeling more than anything.
Ever since he was young, his instincts had guided him. When he wasn't looking or even paying attention to the world around him, he could avoid traffic. When he was haggling, he could tell when someone was giving him a bad deal. He had a sense for these things. Even now, when he was being held at gunpoint in the corner store he was getting a snack at, he wasn't particularly worried. In fact, he even felt pity for the criminals. A gut feeling.
As he thought about how to resolve the situation, something in his mind stirred. Instantly, he found his attention on the lottery tickets. The gunman yelled, blurting expletives in Nate’s face and threatening a pull of the trigger, but Nate didn’t care. They simply purchased two lottery tickets, handed one to the gunman, and walked off, leaving the man baffled and confused more than anything.
The next day, the gunman walked away with millions and then was investigated for lottery fraud and taken in. Nate made a modest winning of the second prize’s pot.
Once again, his instinct guided him. One day, he might even learn its name.”
A twinge of a smile came to my face.
Left. Left is correct.
“Come on, Macy…you’re close, I know it,” Nate muttered as he ran through the halls of the shelter, rumbling from outside apparently as he stumbled to the side. He caught his footing and gagged for a moment. The smell of death in the shelter and the sights around him were starting to take their toll.
A modicum of anger fills the mind.
Dust began to fill the air as the ceiling began to show signs of cracking.
Not anger. It was annoyance.
Left or right?
Sadness followed by curiosity.
Curiosity was dangerous but passable.
What about staying right here?
Despair.
Duly noted. Right it is then.
Nate rushed to the right as he reached the end of the hall, finding that he was close to the central area of the shelter, getting closer to the front.
Malaise.
Nate stopped on a dime right before he began to step into the hallway, just in time too. A piece of the ceiling’s supports cracked and fell out into the middle of the hallway.
Urgency.
Nate rushed forwards, passing a crumbling wall and narrowly avoiding a brush with being covered in debris.
Fear.
Something was wrong. Very wrong. Fear wasn’t a response that Nate usually had in these situations. All of a sudden, the ceiling above Nate began to cave in, the massive foot of an Antithesis crushing downward. Nate jumped to the side, a cold sweat breaking out on his brow.
Desperation, followed by yearning.
That’s…a new one… Nate thought in the moments before he would have been crushed under the weight of the bus-sized Antithesis.
A keening sound rippled through the air, forcing the alien to recoil, pulling out of the shelter and away. Nate backed up, startled and trying to get his bearings.
Failure.
“What-”
An avalanche of rubble from the other half of the halfway unbroken by the xeno’s path fell on top of Nate, crushing him. He could feel his consciousness fading as the sound that rang through the air lulled him to the black abyss.
Inevitability.
Awakening with a stab to the leg, Nate startled upwards.
“WHAT THE FUCK WAS THAT FOR-” he yelled before recognizing his best friend, even through all the augments and changes that she had gone through. “Oh, hi, Macy.”
It was at that moment that Nate realized the fire that was going on in his torso, limbs, and even a little in his head.
“Ok, firstly, ow,” Nate gripped his chest as the pain coursed through his body like a pack of fire ants doing the tango before receding back into their anthills a moment later to give me reprieve.
Calm.
“Secondly, things should be ok from here,” He said, relaxing back a little.
“Seriously? You’re still calm even after being crushed under this much rubble? You’re so lucky that I was here, you know that?” Macy chastised me, finger wagging and everything.
“I knew you’d be here…but not like this and not with me being like this,” Nate grumbled.
“Is it because of that AI in your head that you are like this?” She asked, pulling back and standing up, bouncing her leg with concern.
AI? What did she mean by that? I have an AI in my head? I thought I’d know if I was a Samurai, but this? Nah, it couldn’t be something like that.
“N-te…be-ore - go, I --nt to ---- y---...”
Nate shook his head, trying to figure out what that flash of thought was. A tiny mote of dread began to grow within his thoughts.
“What are you talking about, Macy? I don’t have an AI in my head. It’s just…you know those feelings I get? My great intuition, the stuff that’s helped me throughout the years? Even brought me to meet you on that day back in college when you were being bullied after class. It’s like that, you know?” Nate was trying to wrap his mind around what he was being told compared to everything he had accepted as truth about his life.
“The same intuition that got you stuck here? How did you even end up in this place?” Macy was livid for a reason Nate knew very well. She cared a lot.
“I…umm…I think I was feeling the same thing that my intuition was telling me, which let me ignore the signs that something was going to go wrong,” Nate mumbled as he mulled over his thoughts.
“Like how you have a feeling about…oh…”
Macy went silent for a moment, seeming to be thinking in different directions, judging by the way her eyes darted around for a minute or so. A small shark robot appeared in her hand.
“Hello again, Nate, I am Kyos, Macy’s Protector AI. Your intuition and I have connected and have interfaced, allowing me to piece together the nature of their being. They are a Class IV AI created by the Class XII Protector AI Lefaye in 2040.”
Nate’s face blanched at the mention of that name. That was a name he hadn’t heard for a very long time, but Nate knew exactly who that AI belonged to. Nate’s mind finally drew clarity from the brief flashes of memory, and did not like what he found. The present faded as he immersed himself in the past
“Nate, you know I need to go,” Leon Kingson, Nate’s brother, spoke as he slid on a set of sleek armor. “I’ve got to deal with some stuff going on in Montana. I’ll be back before you know it.”
“Leon, you’ve barely been able to spend time with your baby brother. The least you can do is-”
“I know that, Dad!” Leon slammed the wall and sighed, tired. “I’ve been running myself ragged. People keep sabotaging everything I’m trying to do to help, and I have to deal with all of that on top of the plants. I barely have time to sit down these days.”
“As your dad, I feel like I should tell you to take at least a week break at some point soon. You need it more than you think. You seem angrier than you used to be.”
Chivalry’s shoulders fell like boulders. “You’re probably right. But not until after this job.”
There was a moment of silence, Chivalry’s eyes moving left to right as he thought through something.
“Lefaye say something?” Chivalry’s dad asked.
“Yeah,” Leon nodded and turned towards Nate, who was playing with his food at the dinner table. “Hey, bro. I want to give you a present. Something to help you, even when I’m gone. There’s a lot of things that are happening out there in the world, and I want you to be safe.”
A beat of quiet.
“I’ll be off now,” Chivalry said, straightening up and walking towards his dad. He gives him a great big hug and then walks out the door, not knowing that a year later from that day, he would be dead.
Nate looked to his brother, confused at what to feel as his brother left again and what he was talking about.
Contentment.
But as the confusion met with contentment, the contentment won out, and the little boy went back to playing with his food.
“Oh god,” Nate whispered with all the fear that those words could be uttered with.
“Your AI’s name is Pathos, and it is the last remaining vestige of the Vanguard known as Chivalry.”