Sylvie stared at the screen for a moment. Her eyes open wide.
She tried the username and password again.
Once again it didn't work.
"That was my password, that was definitely my password!" she exclaimed,
"Are you sure? No chance of it being something else?" asked Aphrodite, "Wait, it said your username didn't exist, didn't it? That means it's not your password that's incorrect-"
"It means my user details were removed. I guess at some point in history they decided my login details weren't valid. Tch. Of course."
"W-well what are we going to do?"
"I don't know..."
The two stood there, completely lost. What could they do? Maybe retreat for now and come up with another plan of action?
An alarm started to ring, the lights turned red and all the teleporters started to flash with the words "exit" on them.
"Wait, what activated the-" Aphrodite said,
"...Maybe we didn't manage to fool it." Sylvie muttered,
"Fool what?."
"The network."
"What do you mean?"
"Didn't you know? The Network itself is an autonomous being. It has its own individual thought process and higher level AI. Maybe it's defense system is more advanced than we thought. Or maybe..." Sylvie frowned, "maybe it evolved over the past eight thousand years?"
"Why didn't I know this!? No-one mentioned there was an AI here!" Aphrodite growled, "what level alert is this, how much time do we have?"
"From the sounds of it, if I remember correctly, it's a level 3 alarm."
"Meaning?"
"Meaning this whole floor will be flooded with hard wax in thirty minutes." Sylvie almost fell back in shock, she sat on the console clumsily, trying to keep herself on her feet "Shit."
"Ok, we need to get the hell out of here. Come on."
"But, but if we leave now-"
"We'll die if we don't leave Sylvie! The journey here was almost twenty minutes!" she grabbed Sylvie arm,
"No!" Sylvie pulled her arm back, "are you crazy!? If we don't do this now millions of Servs, Billions of Evos, the potential to save the entire damn human race, it'll be gone!" she frowned, "You know what, I don't care if all life in the universe ends. But I know you and Ava do. I know everyone does. This is the single most important event in the history of mankind."
Do we live, or do we die?
"But-" Aphrodite started. She didn't know what to say, "but what can we do? The AI is kicking us out. And we don't even have the username and password."
"It's fine. I'll hack the security system to delay the self-preservation wax. You get out there and bring Ava to me."
"You need Ava?"
"Yes. The teleporters are all set to exit the facility, so you'll get there in time. Although he'll have to hack his way back in."
"...Sylvie. You can't perform a second hack."
Sylvie paused for a moment and then she pulled a wire out from the back of her neck,
"Well, I'm gonna try anyway."
"You'll die Sylvie!"
Sylvie trembled, she wished that Aphrodite didn't remind her of that. She couldn't help but admit that she was scared of death. She didn't want to see this as some sort of sacrifice but-
"I-If you get Ava here as soon as possible, I'll probably be ok, ok? Please, go get him as quickly as you can!"
Sylvie tried not to think about the consequences of her actions, at least, not to herself. She needed to look at the bigger picture. Ava, no, he wasn't Ava, he was someone else, someone from a history long gone, he wanted mankind to live. He was there for the genesis of the Serv, he was the one who loved mankind, the one who wanted to see them survive.
Even though those wishes were eight thousand years old. Sylvie, no, Saori, still needed to respect them.
She couldn't help but wonder if Ava, the current version, if he knew why he feared man so much. Hopefully, she'd have time to ask him.
Sylvie pulled out a wire from her neck and looked for anything that resembled a port on the console, anything that allowed data input. She eventually found a collection of small rectangular holes on the side of the main monitor. After that, it was a simple case of letting her wire latch into one of the slots, and let the nanomachines do the rest.
"Go on! I'm going to freeze the defense system, get him already!" Sylvie sounded more forceful than she'd ever done before. Aphrodite nodded and reluctantly ran off.
***
Despite the exit teleporters, it took almost fifteen minutes for Aphrodite to escape, she still needed to account for the amount of time she spent running around from area to area, and making her way through the main building. She eventually made her way outside, she ran as fast as she could throughout the main courtyard to see Ava standing there with The Major. Steam was emanating from their joints and they were surrounded by a flood of incinerated meat and blood.
Ava was having trouble moving, and it looked like his left arm had been bent out of shape. The Major, of course, seemed perfectly fine.
How many of those beasts had they fought?
To Aphrodite's horror, there were even more of them coming through the entrance. The entrance which was originally jammed was now smashed down onto the ground, most likely from the barrage of beasts trying to make their way in. What was it about the facility that made them so ravenous? What were they so desperate to see in there?
Aphrodite ran up to the two,
"Guys! The alarm!" she exclaimed,
"We heard, where's Sylvie?" asked Ava,
"She's still in there, she decided to-" Aphrodite didn't even have a chance to explain the situation. Ava ran around her and dashed towards the facility.
"Don't worry," said The Major, looking at Aphrodite, "I can deal with the rest of these myself. Ava was sort of holding me back anyway."
"Right." Aphrodite nodded and then ran after Ava, who had already smashed through the front door and was running to the main elevator indoors.
By the time Aphrodite reached Ava she noticed he was just about ready to kick the doors down in frustration.
"Shit! I need authorisation to get in, I can smash the damn elevator!" he growled,
"Also all the teleporters downstairs bring you back to the exit anyway Ava." said Aphrodite,
"Well what the hell!? Why did you leave Sylvie down there! She's stuck down there now!"
"Stuck? Can't you hack your way in? Turn off the teleporter limitation, send us directly to the control room where she is?"
"No. I was using my overdrive when taking on those creatures. It cut off my hacking ability..."
"What!?"
"I can't hack for at least thirty minutes. Even if I could, the programming language is alien to me."
"No... there's no way Sylvie can hold the fort for that long!"
"Hold the fort?"
"She managed to hack the security system, she's preventing the area from flooding but-"
"Wait. How? The programming language is 8000 years old. It's evolved immensely since back then, how could she-" his eyes opened, "how could you let her hack!? Her body can't handle it!" Ava shouted,
"Dammit Ava stop freaking out and figure out a way to save her!" Aphrodite shouted back.
There was a slight pause while the two were stuck in though.
After a while, Ava looked at Aphrodite and narrowed his eyes,
"What?" Aphrodite was taken aback,
"That Copy AI" Ava muttered,
"Copy AI?"
"That one I planted in you months ago. It should still be in there."
She completely forgot about that. He'd placed a hacking AI in her body, the robotic AI part of her body had a tiny version of Ava floating around in there.
"I can probably use that thing as a pathway." Ava continued
"Pathway?"
"The Copy will do all the hacking work for me, opening up all the locked systems, and then I can easily operate the whole facility remotely. No need to expend any of my own energy hacking."
"Woah. You can do that?"
"No question. My Copy AIs are strong. Let's find an input device somewhere here, maybe one of the biometric scanners, and then you can send my Copy AI through."
"What about the language barrier? I thought you said the programming language is alien to you."
Ava paused,
"But is it alien to you?" he asked,
"What?" Aphrodite frowned, "what are you talking about?"
"Aren't your robotic memory banks stuffed full of knowledge about ancient human culture? Mother placed it there so you could learn right?"Â that was right, Aphrodite wasn't fully human, she was still part AI, and she'd been fed an immense amount of information when she was being raised on Europa.
"Yes but-" she raised her eyebrows, "actually, I've never checked. I have access to almost every language in mankind's history in here. It's not a stretch to imagine I might have programming languages stored there too. I-I never really considered it."
They could only hope.
It all made sense.
It all added together.
It had to.