"Well," said Director Angus, touching the tip of his nose and smiling. "You mean you'd like everyone to think you're just visiting colleagues. A word to the wise - right now you're new in the job and thinking everything's all about what you're going to do. But spare a thought to the man coming after you. You can do a lot to force the old lady's hand if you set someone up as a clear successor early enough, and that in turn secures your current position. Dictatorships fail, but monarchies endure."

With that, he was gone.

And finally you turned your attention to Rooster.

A clean, standard issue Positronic Brain. The same as in any of a billion androids and other synthetic employees. The only thing that makes it remarkable at all is that there is no logo anywhere. No brand, no serial number, no pattern, no aesthetic - a thing that feels almost beyond the corporate civilization of the modern age.

It cannot be interacted with in this format. A mind like this cannot be opened in safe mode; it needs a body. It needs a body, and it will permanently be put in relation to that body; everything shaped through the lens of those senses and those abilities. Any android chassis you imagine can be manufactured for you no questions asked, but this is a decision you'll need to make entirely based on your own taste and judgement.

Andrea sat with the positronic brain resting comfortably in both hands, turning it over once more as her thumbs idly traced the smooth seams that divided one section from another. It was almost impossible to reconcile the utter ordinariness of the object with the significance Mrs. Everest had attached to it. If somebody had placed it on her desk without explanation, she would have dismissed it as an off-the-shelf processing core waiting to be installed into an android chassis somewhere on the manufacturing line. Or maybe an Old World paperweight. But the bland appearance just made it unsettling to her. In a world where every premium product advertised itself through extravagant design language, impossible materials and carefully curated branding, Rooster looked almost aggressively... anonymous. No manufacturer. No serial number. No decorative flourishes. Which meant that maybe it didn't need to convince anyone of its value. The people who knew what it was, just knew it was priceless regardless of appearance.

Her thoughts drifted back to Magnolia Everest's office and, more specifically, to the nine women who had stood silently around its perimeter. At the time she'd dismissed them as unusually sophisticated executive attendants, but Orange alone had dismantled that assumption. There had been something fundamentally different about the way the maid had thought and spoke. She hadn't simply responded to Andrea's questions; she'd persistently attacked the assumptions beneath them, peeling away layers of reasoning until Andrea found herself confronting premises she hadn't realised she'd been relying upon. It wasn't impossible that Orange was simply an extraordinarily advanced android. It also wasn't impossible that Orange, and perhaps every one of Mrs. Everest's attendants, belonged to the same family of intelligences as the device now resting in Andrea's lap.

The possibility raised an obvious temptation.

If Mrs. Everest had spent decades surrounding herself with impeccably capable companions who could anticipate her needs, challenge her thinking and quietly manage every aspect of her professional and personal life, then perhaps the simplest course of action would be to request another chassis of the same design. Clearly they worked. Clearly they were effective. More importantly, Mrs. Everest herself had entrusted Andrea with Rooster knowing full well what her own attendants looked like, suggesting she wouldn't object on purely practical grounds.

However... after she thought about it for a minute, she realised that in this case imitation wouldn't flattery . It would just be faintly derivative. Mrs. Everest's maids reflected Mrs. Everest's needs, her habits and her way of viewing the world. Not hers. More importantly, she suspected that if Rooster truly was as unique as Magnolia had insisted, then forcing it into a role already occupied by nine remarkably capable siblings would be doing both of them a disservice.

The opposite extreme suggested itself almost immediately afterwards. A military chassis. Heavy armour beneath synthetic skin, redundant actuators, battlefield sensors, integrated weapon systems and enough raw physical strength to reduce almost any confrontation to a foregone conclusion. If Rooster truly represented one of the most valuable assets on the planet, then surely giving it the means to defend itself was sensible. But again, the idea gradually lost its appeal the longer she considered it. Bodies shaped minds. They had to. And if Rooster awoke inside a body purpose-built for violence, then every experience it accumulated would be filtered through instincts that rewarded threat assessment, dominance and decisive force. It would not necessarily become violent, but violence would always be one of the first solutions available to it. There was an old saying about hammers and nails that felt uncomfortably appropriate.

She considered subtler alternatives. A diplomat capable of navigating boardrooms and state dinners with superhuman charm. An engineer designed to interface directly with machinery. A logistics platform that could oversee factories with perfect efficiency. One after another, each concept seemed attractive until she followed it to its natural conclusion. Every specialised body quietly imposed a specialised worldview. Every carefully optimised chassis carried with it assumptions about what kinds of problems were worth solving and which senses deserved priority over the others. Specialisations that even she wasn't sure it would want or need. And then Andrea gradually realised that she had been approaching the decision backwards.

Mrs. Everest hadn't handed her a tool and asked her to choose an attachment. She had handed her an intelligence and asked her to choose its first experience of the world. Instead of asking what Rooster should do, perhaps the more important question was what Rooster should first be allowed to be. The curiosity of an artificial mind seemed infinitely more valuable than physical optimisation. Observation more valuable than specialisation. Whatever intelligence lay sleeping inside that featureless shell had already survived the collapse of one civilization. It seemed strangely arrogant to assume she already knew the best use for it after less than a week of acquaintance.

A faint smile crossed Andrea's face as she continued absent-mindedly rotating the core through her fingers.

"First, let's see what principles you want to have." She murmured quietly to herself as she stared at the core. "No assumptions. No inherited doctrine. Just... see the world."

She would have to commission a cradle of some kind that could house the unit and activate it, and then set up a connection between it and her own cybernetics, namely her optics and audio units. So that it could see and hear the world around it. Maybe a neural relay too that would let it 'talk' to her without anybody else hearing it. She was tempted to task it to Eager, but thought better of it. He was already dangerous.

But who else could be trusted with that kind of project?

What you were describing, an enforced period of helplessness, observation, being bound to a person of complete power... almost like having a baby, wasn't it?

That itself suggested an answer. There were security firms that provided the physical and digital protection for buildings and property, and they were the weak hunchbacked virgins compared to the chad security companies who optimized for executive-level child safety and surveillance. What you were after wasn't really anything more complicated than a baby monitor, and there were people out there who'd already started the strange project of raising an android mind from childhood rather than printing the full version into an adult body. The expertise on offer from these companies was discreet, ruthless, and provided a plausible explanation if anyone went looking. It would generate a secret that would cover for a deeper secret.

You could find that expertise in house, but if you were being honest you'd probably want to go with a Crown&Slate subsidiary. Their entire existence and corporate culture revolved around letter of the law contracts and they'd have to be really pushed into a corner before they considered playing with that.

Andrea rested the positronic brain in both hands, turning it over slowly as though some hidden marking might reveal itself if she looked from the right angle. It never did. The casing remained as featureless as when Mrs. Everest had first placed it on her desk, offering no clues beyond the uncomfortable certainty that this was, in all likelihood, the single most valuable object she had ever held. She had spent entirely too long trying to reduce the decision before her into an engineering problem.

A weapons platform had obvious appeal. BlackSun was searching. Whoever possessed the remaining Hecatoncheires would almost certainly be willing to kill for them, and there was undeniable comfort in the idea of giving Rooster every possible advantage at defending itself before it ever opened its eyes. But the more Andrea examined that line of reasoning, the less she liked where it ended. A body built around violence inevitably encouraged violent solutions. It did not matter how intelligent Rooster proved to be; the tools available to someone inevitably shaped the way they approached the world. Give someone a sword and they would, sooner or later, begin looking for things to cut.

Mrs. Everest's attendants had been the next obvious comparison. If Orange and the others truly were something close enough to make no practical difference to being Hecatoncheires themselves, then Magnolia had already demonstrated one possible philosophy. Build companions. Elegant, capable women whose talents existed to anticipate needs before they were spoken aloud, allowing one of the most powerful people alive to spend her attention on matters only she could address. Andrea understood the appeal. After the week she'd endured, she understood it rather well.

It still wasn't what she wanted.

Paradisia was already going to become the wall between Andrea and the rest of the world. That position had been filled by someone Andrea trusted precisely because she wasn't another immaculate corporate construct. Building Rooster into another secretary, another attendant, or another perfectly poised woman waiting patiently for instructions felt less like a gift and more like assigning someone a profession before they'd even had the opportunity to decide whether they wanted one.

She caught herself smiling. A gift. That was the thought she'd been missing. Andrea had spent the better part of an hour trying to determine the objectively correct answer, as though there existed some ideal chassis that would interfere with Rooster's development less than the others. It was nonsense. Every body carried assumptions. Every body encouraged certain experiences while discouraging others. Even an ordinary human form wasn't neutral. A gifted athlete understood the world differently from someone born frail. Beauty opened doors that would remain closed to others. Height changed how people spoke to you. Strength changed how confidently you moved through a crowd. There was no escaping that.

At least Andrea would have the luxury to choose.

She exhaled quietly before opening Lhotse's manufacturing catalogue. Thousands of templates scrolled effortlessly past her eyes; industrial frames, military chassis, labour units, diplomatic models, executive assistants, pleasure dolls, entertainment platforms, biomorphic shells so expensive they bordered on sculpture. She ignored them all and opened a blank design.

"Let's not overcomplicate this." She murmured to herself.

The body would be female. Andrea didn't bother inventing some elaborate professional justification for it. She simply preferred women. If she was going to spend countless hours in Rooster's company, she saw no reason to pretend otherwise. Beyond that, she found herself making surprisingly modest decisions. Human proportions. Neither especially tall nor physically imposing. Attractive without drifting into the artificial perfection favoured by corporate advertising. Slight asymmetries left untouched. Synthetic hair that would continue to grow. Skin capable of bruising, despite layers of sub-dermal armour plating beneath, capable of rapid healing and changing with time. A face that people remembered because it was pleasant to look at rather than because it seemed impossibly flawless.

Then came the engineering. Andrea had no intention of making Rooster fragile.

Beneath the outwardly ordinary appearance, the chassis would represent everything Lhotse's engineers could accomplish without announcing itself. Reinforced synthetic musculature. Reaction times no human nervous system could hope to match. Balance bordering on impossible. Durability that would allow her to survive accidents, gunfire and environments that would kill an ordinary person. Enhanced sensory arrays concealed so completely that they would only become apparent when Rooster chose to use them.

Andrea wanted to give her capabilities. Not weapons. Andrea deliberately left the weapons catalogue unopened. If Rooster eventually decided she wanted to carry a firearm, she could. If circumstances demanded heavier equipment, Andrea could authorise it later. Those would be choices. Andrea refused to make violence part of Rooster's identity before she'd even spoken her first word.

Finally she reached the behavioural architecture. Default personality overlays. Occupational predispositions. Corporate loyalty conditioning. Obedience hierarchies. Andrea stared at the list for several long moments before highlighting the entire section and deleting it.

"No." The word escaped her before she'd consciously decided to say it. "If there's already someone in there..." She said softly, her eyes drifting back to the anonymous positronic brain resting upon the desk, "...then I'd rather meet her than replace her."

The completed specifications remained on the display for a long while before Andrea finally reviewed them from top to bottom. They were hardly perfect. Inevitably, they reflected her own tastes, her own priorities and her own assumptions about what constituted a good life. Perhaps that was unavoidable. Mrs. Everest had once given Andrea an opportunity without telling her who she ought to become. This, Andrea decided, was simply her attempt to do the same for Rooster.

Three, two, one...

Eyes opened.

Action - before data has had a chance to accumulate. Not acting on information, acting on instincts - rolling up out of the activation pod, coming up into a run before she even stood, let alone walking. The unbalanced, wild motion resolved into a perfect sprint, all the way towards the other side of the room, orange-fire hair rolling behind her - before she arched around, coming back around. The primal sprint slowed a little and then she was off again like a fire, stepping up onto couches and desks, leaping from point to point around the office in a frenzy of physical movement, running along the wall, coming out into a flip, sprint turning into slide turning into seat as the flurry of movement ended with her sitting in your office chair, elbows banging down onto the table, gleaming golden eyes looking up at you with both fists under her chin.

"Hello," said Rooster, trying her best to tamp down on an upwelling of raw positive energy with something resembling professionalism, fighting to keep a smile off her face. "I have been in that box for a very long time and I hope you understand it would make me very happy if I could bench press your desk for a little bit."

Andrea had instinctively risen from her chair the moment Rooster exploded into motion, one hand catching the edge of her desk as orange hair flashed through the office like a streak of sunlight. Her optics struggled for perhaps the first time in years to produce anything approaching a coherent prediction. Every leap, every pivot and every impossible correction should have looked rehearsed. Instead, it resembled someone discovering gravity and deciding they approved of the arrangement.

She watched in complete silence not because she was afraid, because interrupting would have felt almost cruel. The office, ordinarily so sterile and meticulously ordered, had abruptly become alive. Rooster wasn't traversing it with the clinical efficiency of an infiltration unit mapping exits or an executive assistant cataloguing her surroundings. She was simply... moving. Testing muscles that had never been used. Feeling momentum. Finding the limits of balance. The entire display reminded Andrea less of a machine coming online than of a child discovering they could run for the first time. By the time Rooster skidded effortlessly into the executive chair, Andrea realised she had been smiling for several seconds without noticing.

"So that's a success..." She murmured, more to herself than anyone else.

She folded her arms loosely, studying Rooster with the same analytical eye that had dissected department heads, an Admiral, and boardroom politics over the past week. Beneath that scrutiny, however, was something considerably less professional. Relief. Whatever she'd expected to wake up inside the Hecatoncheire, it hadn't been this.

Not cold. Not detached. Not terrifying. Just... delighted.

The request itself caught Andrea completely off guard. For perhaps two seconds she simply stared. Then, despite every instinct she'd cultivated throughout a corporate career spent projecting measured competence, she laughed. It wasn't loud, nor especially elegant, but it was genuine.

"Your first request after what may well have been decades of dormancy..." Andrea shook her head, still smiling, "...is to bench press my desk?"

She glanced towards the heavy executive desk. It wasn't exactly light. Reinforced frame. Embedded displays. Secure processors. A piece of furniture designed more like infrastructure than decoration.

"All right."

"Thanks!" said Rooster, ripping the bolts out of the floor and sliding in underneath. "Knew you were cool."

She had good form, arms set, pressing from the chest, control on descent, steady control. Her eyes fluttered closed and she hummed happily, savouring her long breaths in and out. A cosmetic action, but she was visibly enjoying even the performance.

"Speaking of cool," she said, "Faa-aaancy desk, domme suit, bad guy view of the city -" she huffed, lowering one arm and balancing the desk on just one hand. "- you're like the new Queen of Capitalism, right? Context's pretty clear. I am scared and obedient and all that, you can skip that whole speech. Can I just ask what happened to the last guy?"

"I wish I knew." The admission came easily. "I've spent the better part of a week trying to reconstruct what happened before I arrived, and the trail ends remarkably, annoyingly cleanly. Your previous handler is dead. Officially, that's about all there is to it. Mrs. Everest deliberately destroyed his notes before I ever entered this office because she didn't want his assumptions becoming mine. Whether that was wisdom or frustration, I couldn't tell you."

Her eyes lingered on Rooster for another moment before continuing.

"I've also been given reason to believe the two of you worked together, at least to some extent. Lhotse's research division has spent years consuming an absurd amount of money pursuing projects that nobody outside a very small circle seems capable of explaining. They were taking direction from my predecessor, and Mrs. Everest was content to let them continue. That tells me there was a plan." She shrugged lightly. "Whether it was a good one is another matter."

Andrea paused, studying Rooster's expression rather than her posture. It was habit now. Every conversation had become an exercise in reading the person sitting opposite her, searching for the tiny reactions that revealed more than words ever would. It occurred to her a heartbeat later that Rooster's face might reveal things no human's ever could, or perhaps conceal them just as effectively as Orange's had.

"As for me? I'm not your queen." She smiled faintly at that. "My name is Andrea. I'm the new Chief of Operations. A position which I was given for one purpose, it seems." Andrea met Rooster's golden eyes. "To find the Hecatoncheires. So no, I'm not interested in you being scared, and I certainly don't expect obedience for its own sake. If anything, blind agreement worries me. I've spent too much of my career surrounded by people who told their superiors exactly what they thought they wanted to hear."

A corner of her mouth lifted.

"You've been awake for less than five minutes, you've ripped my desk out of the floor, and you've already called me the Queen of Capitalism." She gave a quiet, amused shake of her head. "I suspect we're well past pretending this is going to be a conventional working relationship." She nodded towards the desk still balanced effortlessly above Rooster. "Now tell me something in return."

A flicker of curiosity crossed her face.

"When you asked about 'the last guy'... was that just the obvious question to ask?" She tilted her head slightly. "Or do you remember him?"

"Mm. Bits and pieces," said Rooster, clonking the side of her skull with a fist. It made a nice, resonant metallic sound. She liked it enough to do it again. "It's all up here, it just gets scrambled and takes time to regrow. Aren't you lucky?" she grinned, hefting the table up again, "You got the brain damaged one!"

She grunted, curling up into a ball, getting her feet in and lifting the table with her legs instead of her arms.

"So there are twelve of us. My family, I mean. Named after Zodiac animals, dog and tiger and so on. Goat was the first, cycle follows from there. I remember them, bits and pieces. Last guy wanted them too. Too bad for him he was up against Snake. Did she kill him? She was definitely capable of it, physically, but it'd surprise me if she - oh nevermind, you said you didn't know. Can I see the crime scene?" She clonked her head again. "No! Bad Rooster! You don't have to care yet!"

She heaved the desk up with two legs so that it shivered and clonked onto its thin side. She sat up, running fingers through her air. "Anyway, I get it lady, already told you I didn't need the hard sell. You've got the carrot, you're keeping the stick quietly on the table and you're asking the expensive robot to be honest with you, I geeeet it. I have been sufficiently Managed! I am Honest and Helpful! Alignment training: successful!" She gave a thumbs up to show she was serious. "Your problem here isn't I don't get it, it's that I suck. I'm the dumbest and weakest of my siblings, complete design dead end, and unless a lot has changed since I was out you're still up against the Perfect Child. So, just like I told the last guy, I'll tell you: I can't beat Snake."