The little Evo hopped among the scraps of the destroyed road. Nothing but Evo carcasses before him. It was a Gobot type model, small and rounded, blank expressions and no features to speak of.
"Dead. Dead. They are all dead." it said in a robotic voice as it continue to hop along. "Must find family. Family will help. Must find family."
It looked around, scanning all the scrap. Then it stopped in its tracks. Something had caught its eye, something in the pile of junk. Whatever it was, whatever it had recognised, was important enough for it to hurriedly hop towards.
"Oh nooo! No no no!" it said, "Mummy! Mummy!" the Gobot type was staring at an Evo that had been torn to pieces, pieces of metal, scattered all over the road. "I'll fix you mummy!"
The Evo turned around, most likely hoping to find some sort of way to repair what it thought was its mother. However, when it turned around it was greeted with an unfortunate sight. The Major.
The Major pulled out her lance and pointed it at the little Evo's face. It was trembling.
An Evo was trembling. It was showing the behavioural traits that mammals showed when they were scared, when their motor functions would glitch out due to their fear. This Evo wasn't like any The Major had met before, it was crying over a family member, it was scared for its life. It wasn't a robot.
The Major couldn't hack, so there was no way of getting information out of it. So now what?
"No! Don't kill me! I'll do anything!" the Evo exclaimed. Could it be? Had it developed a fear of death? That wasn't something the Major had ever seen from Evos, what could have caused this Evo to act like this? The Major pondered for a moment, and then something came to her,
"Tell me, when was the last time Mother contacted you?" The Major asked bluntly,
"M-mother Brain left us. She deserted us two years ago." the Evo was still trembling,
"And since then?"
"Everything changed. Everyone went crazy. I did too! Now... now I feel- I feel..."
"Emotions huh?" The Major kept her spear pointed at the Evo, of course, being bombarded with the ability to feel emotion after living a life without must be overwhelming. For a long time she and the Block-1s had theorised that the Evos were having their emotions suppressed by mother, their experience with Evos they'd kindnapped, such as Gobot, had proven almost as much.
Still.
This wasn't something they'd ever told any of the other Serv units. If anything Servs up to Block-3 still had the power of empathy. To know that the beings they were killing had thoughts and emotions comparable to their own would impede them in battle.
It was funny really, the closer a Serv came to complete autonomy, to Block-0 level, the closer he or she became to learning empathy, sympathy, and all sorts of emotions such as that. However, it doubled back on itself, because the closer a Serv would get to Block-0, the more easy it was to ignore those emotions. Ignoring emotions for the sake of the greater good, something The Major had mastered, something that made her much more effective than the other Block-1s, or any other participant in the war.
Emotions were a weakness. But they were also a strength. And the ability to know when to succumb to them and when not to was a great power.
"What happened here? How did everyone die?" the questions continued,
"The Heretics."
"Heretics?"
"Evos like us. But... not like us. They have another god, but their god isn't Mother. They found another one when she left us."
"You're the only one left?"
"No, I came to find my family."
Family? Evos can't have families, they don't reproduce, what the...
"Where are the others?" she pointed the spear at the Evo again, "take me to them."
"B-but!"
"It's that, or death." no need to reason with it, it seemed to have a mind of a child, so fear would be enough to force it to do what she wanted it to do. "I won't kill anyone." and then the spear was lowered, "I promise."
The Evo stopped trembling and looked at The Major,
"O-ok. As long as you don't hurt anyone."
Perfect, if she was able to find a small society of Evos, they might supply her with more information. She and the Block-2s had gone in with barely any intelligence on their side, the opportunity to gather as much as possible was too much to pass up.
"Follow me." the Evo hopped along the road, The Major sighed and picked it up,
"You're too slow, I'll just carry you, and you can point me in the right direction."
***
It was a two hour walk, The Major had no idea how the little Evo, who she later found out had named himself "Small Evo Number 42", had made it so far.
Of course "Small Evo Number 42" was an extremely uncreative name, most likely born from the fact that he was one among many other Small Evos in the past two years, and decided to number himself arbitrarily (or perhaps they all did?). Either way, The Major found it easier to call him SEN.
The place SEN was talking about was nothing more than the broken down bottom floor of a towering skyscraper. There was nothing very special about it, it just happened to be that the Evos had decided to take refuge in that one small area.
All twelve of them. A tiny number.
They were all sitting around in the darkness, doing nothing at all, a lot of them looked lost and confused, but the moment The Major walked in, with SEN under her arm, they sprung to life. They all stared at her, in the millisecond between the moment they noticed her and the moment they would explode in panic, The Major pulled a gun out from her hip and pointed it at the group.
"Wait!" she commanded. And indeed, every Evo was frozen still. "I'm not here to hurt you." she let SEN go, however she kept her gun raised. "I understand Mother's lost her grip on you, or maybe, she's abandoned you. Either way I don't consider any of you enemies right now."
No-one said anything.
The Major sighed,
"That said, there's a lot of activity detected at the weapons factories you have to the north. I can only assume that your enemies, the 'Heretics' are behind this." it was weird, talking to the Evos like this, like they were real people. She still wasn't sure if they understood her.
"You, hate Heretics too?" one of the Evos got up, larger than the others, silver and cylindrical, very blank and expressionless,
"Hate isn't the word I'd use. The Serv military exists to protect their race. If someone threatens us, we'll eliminate them."
"You want to eliminate The Heretics?"
"That depends. I'll need information, more context. And then maybe you can point me in the right direction so I can take care of these 'Heretics'. But-, don't tell me you twelve are the only non-Heretic ones on Europa?"
"No, there are many Evos hiding. Hiding from the Heretics. They search for us so that they can kill us."
"I see. Give the me the information I need and maybe I can put a stop to that."
The Major sat with the group of Evos and continued to converse. She had to shut off the part of her brain that told her that she was talking to the enemy, she had to ignore the part of her brain that was questioning whether to kill them after they'd outlived their usefulness. Just pretend they're fellow Servs for now, talk to them like normal.
She'd learned that some of the factories and places around key pylons had stopped working two years ago and that soon after, the connection to Mother had stopped. Apparently a lot of Evos started to develop individuality, family units, emotions, however this was largely too much to cope with for many, and hence millions of Evos decided to self-terminate.
Around this time some Evos claimed to be receiving commands from another god, someone who wasn't mother brain. They started to show traits similar to back in the day, robotic, murderous, and antagonistic. These Evos, who called themselves 'Heretics' were filled with unrelenting spite, and would kill any living being that got in their way.
From The Major's perspective, it seemed like there was a certain hive-mind mentality going on with these Heretics. But, where did this "god" come from? Was it another super-being like Mother? Or perhaps just a construct made out of their own imagination.
Either way, the factory to the north was, apparently, a good target. The Evos had told The Major that it was one of the largest colonies of these Heretic Evos. Was only a handful of Serv enough to take on an entire colony of these enemies?
Well. Probably, with the Major there.
The conversation soon died down, and with perfect timing, all of The Major's Block-2 subordinates ran into the small Evo sanctuary.
They were all wielding their weapons, ready to attack. Ready to kill. The Major had already made the choice not to kill them, in fact, she'd developed enough empathy to decide that they were almost, comrades in this particular battle.
To her surprise however, before she could jump in and disable her soldiers, they all lowered their weapons.
Of course. Block-2s, not heartless enough to kill without good reason. The Major was glad to have them.
"Major! Are you ok?" asked Theodore,
"I'm fine. You shouldn't have bothered looking for me. That goes for all of you." The Major said sternly. She checked her internal clock. Six hours had passed since she said she'd meet them.
Her bad.
"I trust you've all gathered enough intel to make this mission efficient as possible?" asked The Major. The Block-2s nodded in unison. "Good, we'll share notes on the way, I'll show you the best route."
The Major started to walk away but then she turned to the group of Evos,
"Thank you, goodbye SEN, and the rest of you too." she said, with a warmth in her voice she rarely chose to share,
"Thank you! Thank you for helping! Good luck Miss-" SEN paused,
"Marina." said The Major as she walked off, "come up with a better name for yourself for when we next meet."