Cor and Cleve begin pushing the robots out of the elevator. I grab the arm of the one closest to me and lend a hand tugging it out into the hall. “I think we have a delivery to make to Tenoch,” I suggest.
“Let’s go show Roze first,” Cleve replies with an eager grin.
“How do you want to do the reveal?” I ask, knowing the value of a good presentation.
Cleve simply shouts, “Roze!” Further down the corridor, his old friend pops their head out of a doorway. “Look! Eh? Eh?” Cleve indicates the robots proudly.
“I’m glad to see you all back in one piece!” Roze says, stepping out. We’re all included in that statement, but they only have eyes for Cleve. We get the robots over to the entrance to Roze’s office, and they pace around, examining the haul. They click their tongue in satisfaction. “Not too bad, not too bad. Looks like you got a good shot in on this one. But you only dinged it on the side here, Cleve. Your aim’s getting a little rusty.”
“I dropped my gun,” Cleve admits with a chuckle. “When he was hitting me,” he adds when Roze tsks. It seems that with the balm of time, a failure becomes merely an anecdote. I suppose it’s because we did not all die, after all.
“Ah, well, that makes sense,” Roze says. They rub their hands together eagerly, eyeing the more intact robot. “Can’t wait to dig into this!”
“Do you think Tenoch’s going to like it?” Cleve asks.
“Which one is Tenoch getting?” Roze asks, but before we can answer, they realize that’s an unnecessary question. Roze is going to see all the data regardless of where the physical robots go.
“We also have the data that you sent us for,” I point out.
“Oh, right! That!”
Shades still down, Hypercor proudly holds out the data stick. “Datajack Roze,” she says formally, “I got the data.”
“Might have something about what happened to the kid on it,” Cleve adds.
“Arx,” I remind, supplying the name.
Roze nods. “If we find anything about what happened to them, we’ll let you know. And if you have any pointers on what I should search for, let me know. There’s a lot of data here. It’s going to take me a little bit of time…” They take the stick from Cor and head into their office with it as they speak. Once it is plugged in, they’re lost to us. Graphs and charts start filling the monitors. Roze hooks their earpiece in place so that the tiny HUD obscures their left eye. Who knows what is streaming across that surface now.
“There’s also what the robots themselves recorded,” I point out, catching Roze’s attention again—or at least half of it. “They might have footage of what happened to Arx after Takuto left the scene.” I pull the robot brain from my satchel. “I ripped this out of that robot,” I explain. Roze takes it from me to plug directly into their system. As for the fully functional robot, we are free to take that to Tenoch after Roze plugs in a small dongle. Now that the robot’s data stores are connected to Data Haven’s wifi network, the upload can begin.
“Oh! What is this? And that over there?!” Roze barely notices us anymore.
Cleve seems unsurprised. “Roze is dark,” he says with a shrug. “Let’s take these to Tenoch.” He steps into place to push one of the robots, and I join him out in the hall behind the other. Cor remains behind, transfixed. She’s trying to track what Roze is doing but can’t quite keep up with all the text and images. We leave her to enjoy the show.