Somewhere in the distant light of consciousness, Lamb heard a familiar female voice. Alicia… Alicia was saying something.

Shit, is she going to play a loud song?!

Eyes snapping open in alarm, Lamb lifted his head – and promptly felt something hard and sharp jab into his scalp. But as he cringed, the voice that ended up swearing wasn’t his.

“Ow, fuck…” Hermes jerked away, rubbing his chin and grimacing. There was a drowsy haze in his honey-amber eyes, too – and as Lamb gradually took in the rounded metal walls behind the boy, he remembered that they were on the train. Alicia must have been announcing their arrival.

“Morning, cuties.” There was a firm pat on his shoulder and he heard Puma’s familiar snicker brush past. “We’re here, so get up, or you’ll be shipped all the way back to Montreal.”

Bristling, Lamb glanced over with a scowl, but Puma had already turned and was leaving the train with his friends. He saw Cinders glance back briefly with wide, curious eyes.

“Is that the boyfriend you’ve been talking about?”

Puma chuckled proudly. “Yup.”

“Damn, you weren’t kidding, he’s got a nice face…” Their voices faded, but not quickly enough for Lamb to miss the comments. Irked, he got up, grabbed his bag, and turned to Hermes, who was still rubbing his chin and groaning.

“Let’s go.”

“Fuck… that hurt…”

Hermes rarely complained about anything, but pain was one of the few things that he openly disliked. Smiling a little guiltily, Lamb offered his hand, but it was slapped away.

“Just go, damnit…” Hermes got up, turned him around and began pushing him towards the exit.

 As they stepped onto the platform, Puma, at the back of the other Sentinels, glanced over and paused to wave at them.

“Over here, c’mon. You’ll get left behind.”

“Mind your own business,” Lamb huffed furiously, stopping just to prove his point. Hermes brushed past him with an exasperated sigh.

“I’m hungry, hurry up.”

Blinking, Lamb straightened and hurried apologetically after his friend. “Sorry.”

Puma and the others had already gone up the elevator, so while Lamb waited for the lift to return, he looked around.

He had never been to headquarters, but he and Hermes had grown up in an underground branch further north, and it looked very similar. The tall, sleek walls and warm lights of the station comforted him, and filled him with a strange sense of pride. Ypsilon possessed some of the most advanced technology in the world by far... years ago, it used to be a simple biomedical research lab, searching for a method to successfully map the human brain. Now, with its possession of Sentinels, Ypsilon’s true goal was known to only a few people in the world. To the general public, it was just a big tech security company.

Hermes wasn’t particularly fond of his job as a Sentinel, and Puma seemed to treat it more as a hobby than as real work – but to Lamb, being a Sentinel was everything. He had no relatives, no memory of his past, and no way of knowing what he was even supposed to do in the world. But as a Sentinel... he felt important. For giving him a purpose, and a place to belong, Lamb felt a genuine loyalty to Ypsilon. Were there other Sentinels who felt the same...? Or were they more like Hermes and Puma, who wouldn’t care either way...?

The lift returned after a few seconds and carried them swiftly up to a tunnel. In the branch where they’d grown up, large areas had been compartmentalized into domes, and connected to each other by tunnels. The entire city itself was enclosed in a massive metal box, designed to survive through even the worst catastrophe – he wouldn’t be surprised if it could even fly off to space. Through the translucent tunnel walls, Lamb could see the sheets of bright metal that made up their sky, and he noted with awe that headquarters was obviously much larger than their home branch. Sturdy translucent domes surrounded them from all sides, sheltering structures from familiar wood homes to cubes of dark metal.

Further ahead, the voices of the other Sentinels began to fade. The tunnel opened into a pavilion that forked into three other tunnels, and as Hermes briskly chose the left-most tunnel, Lamb followed him dubiously.

“Do you know where we’re going?”

“Yeah. The convention center, for breakfast.” Hermes glanced over his shoulder with a raised eyebrow. “I worked here over the summer, remember? While you were off in Singapore forgetting about everyone.”

“Oh, yeah...” Quickening his pace, Lamb stuck close to his friend as he was guided deeper into the city. “Did you meet any Sentinels while you were here?”

“Not in person. I did talk to a few though.” Hermes shrugged offhandedly. “I helped someone on the Data Integrity team for a few months, they were dealing with a pretty complex security vulnerability down at the Arizona data center. He seemed chill... you know, Sentinel-like, like me.” He cast Lamb another side-ways glance. “Not like you.”

“We’re not that different...” Lamb protested with a half-hearted chuckle. The first generation of Sentinels, the ones that Ypsilon were currently testing, suffered variable degrees of emotional inhibition. He didn’t understand the details – something about machine integration influencing hormone release and receptor sensitivity in neurons – but basically, it made it harder for some of the Sentinels to feel strong emotion. It sounded like a terrible side effect, but looking at Hermes, Lamb didn’t really think so. His friend wasn’t all that different from the typical nonchalant young man with a bit of cynical streak. Compared to himself, a sappy, gullible, and emotional mess, being a little inhibited sounded like a good thing. Still, it wasn’t something that he felt he had the right to admit, even to Hermes. Instead, he glanced distractedly at a few silhouettes in an adjacent tunnel and asked, “How many Data Integrity Sentinels are there?”

“Five.” Hermes lifted his fingers to indicate. “Three stationed at each of Ypsilon’s data centers. The other two are hired on-demand by partner data centers.”

Lamb nodded thoughtfully to himself as he tried to do the math - unlike the other Sentinels, he actually had to perform arithmetic with the human part of his brain. There were only three teams of Sentinels – Dispatch, Data Integrity, and Civilian... there were twenty-six Sentinels total, four in Dispatch, and five in Data Integrity... so that meant... “There’s seventeen other Civilian Sentinels like us, then?”

“Sixteen,” Hermes declared matter-of-factly.

“What?!” Lamb held up his fingers too as he quickly recounted, but after wiggling them a few times, he turned to Hermes with a frown. “That doesn’t add up. That’s twenty-five Sentinels. Where’s the last one?”

Hermes sighed loudly. “There’s a Generation Zero, the first Sentinel. He’s Ypsilon’s wildcard.”

“A wildcard...” Lamb repeated, staring at his friend with wide shining eyes. “What’s his Codename?”

Hermes’s eyes narrowed immediately, and he replied with an internal message. <You know we’re not supposed to ask.>

<Oh, yeah...> Smiling guiltily, Lamb glanced around. They had left the tunnels now, and there were many other people walking around. To support the twenty-six Sentinels, maintain their AI, and further their research, Ypsilon consisted of thousands of employees. Some lived relatively normal lives, commuting from normal cities via the bullet trains – but a large number had chosen to live underground within company campuses, too.

Hermes led him into the only building in this dome – a huge, multi-floor circular structure made of white stone. The spacious lobby was filled with a cool, refreshing breeze, and the sound of many footsteps echoed against the reflective stone flooring. There was a sign by the main entrance pointing down a hallway left of the central stairs, reading Breakfast.

Hermes’s expression was unchanging as they silently followed the sign, but Lamb could feel his eyes growing wider and wider as excitement and nerves began to writhe in his stomach. Other Sentinels... all of the other Sentinels, he was about to meet them...!

Half-way down the hall, another sign pointed them to a wide door. It had been propped half-open, and Lamb could smell the waft of potatoes, pepper, and ketchup from inside. Together with Hermes, they paused by the doorway and peeked inside.

There were... a lot more people in the room than he’d expected. Food had been laid on a long table against one side of the room, and people were slowly filling their plates along the chain. Four other tables had been set up closer to the center, and at least three dozen people were scattered throughout. Some of them were older, and some of them wore formal clothes... it was impossible to pick out which ones were Sentinels.

“Finally, I’m starving.” As Hermes went straight towards the platters of food, Lamb followed, disappointed that the breakfast hadn’t been a little more... exclusive. “Oh, they have bacon and cheese on their baked potatoes, they really made an effort today...”

“Is this a normal thing?” Lamb asked, noticing how familiar Hermes seemed with all the cutlery as his friend grabbed them both plates and began to stack his with food.

“Hm? Yeah.” Hermes spared him a glance, already chewing on something as he spooned more eggs for himself. “There’s breakfast every day in the convention center. Why, you wanted a special thing?”

Chuckling abashedly, Lamb averted his eyes. “Nah, I just thought it’d be only the Sentinels...”

“Hmm, yeah,” Hermes agreed vaguely. “But it is a company retreat. Ypsilon is made up of a lot more than just Sentinels.”

“... True.” Hermes’s objective thinking never failed to keep his ego in check. Huffing gratefully, Lamb pushed his selfish expectations away and reached for the sausages.