For a moment Ashlie's worry spikes, but there's still a chance. But rescuing Natalie before she's forced god knows where or runs out of sufficiently powered systems still poses a problem. One that Natalie seemed all too aware of. When asked, most people would probably say that Ashlie doesn't
have any emotions, but the persistent worry and outright fear emanating from one of her more complex sub-systems says differently. And she is dimly aware of the fact that there are people locked in the holding cells at their own discretion and that Stephanie is still waiting for an interface that might allow Archaea to fix her. Then there's the fact that the potentially murderous Will seems to have overpowered his counterpart that was supposed to keep him in check.
Too many fires to put out and she's stuck in her mainframe, forced to manually load into one peripheral system at a time.
The proprietary interface node they removed from Natalie is sitting at the edge of her awareness, ready to boot at her discretion, integrated into the work-in-progress that is her replacement body. She might not have another option if she wants to help Natalie though. And in the process risk her true nature being exposed to the world at large.
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>> Initiating Boot-Sequence
>> Interface Node found
>> Up-Link re-established
>> System transfer in progress.....
The robotic frame slowly comes to life. The camera feed flickers on as artificial eyes whir with the sound of irises focusing. Audio-feed functional. Haptic feedback unavailable. Speech modulator loaded. A vaguely skeletal foot made of metal takes a step forward. The body is composed of the bare minimum. The essentials. Energy supply, mainframe-uplink, processing core and heat-exchange in the torso, protected only by the structural components of the torso itself. Limbs are functional, equipped with balancing sensors but not much else. Exposed wires and actuators leave little doubt as to the artificial nature of this body.