Director: Dear Chairman. I imagine this investigation of our program is providing you with the kind of attention that politicians crave so much. How very predictable. What has surprised me most about mankind during the great war, is not our ability to adapt to the new arenas of conflict, but instead, our willingness in victory to so quickly return to the old.

-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-

Slade sighs in relief, seeing his old A.I. companion alive and functioning.

Slade: Mate, am I glad to see you. After what happened back on the ship, I-

Rho: Cal, it's okay. I told you I'd be alright. The Director has always thought A.I. to be to important to keep alive than destroy.

Slade: Still, I was scared out of my bloody skull for you.

Rho: Seems like you got by fine with three A.I. in your head.

Delta, Theta, and Tex then appear.

Theta: RHO!

Rho chuckles as the purple A.I. runs towards him and hugs him around his waist. Rho pats his head as he sees Tex and Delta come over.

Delta: It is agreeable to see you again, Rho.

Rho: What? No hug from you, D?

Delta: Hugging is a concept I've yet to feel able to do comfortably.

Tex: You'd think after all the time you spent with York you'd have gotten at least a couple of those 'concepts' down.

Delta: How can something holographic and made of algorithms hug something physical?

Tex: Alright, I'll give you that one.

Rho: Allison. Good to see you.

Tex and Rho grip their forearms.

Tex: You too, Rho. Though I have to tell you, being an A.I. is a lot more work than being a Freelancer with a physical body.

Slade: While it's good to see you four getting along, we need to regroup with Wash and Church and find Alpha.

Rho: Wait, we're finding the Alpha? Geez, I'm out for almost a decade and shit hasn't gotten any less serious, huh?

Slade: (laughs) Mate, you have A LOT to be caught up on and told later. Come on.

The A.I. disappear and Slade runs off.

-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-

Church looks down at the storage device, now known to have Wash's A.I. and not the Alpha.

Church: You mean to tell me we've come all this way for this? Your fucking crazy A.I. Epsilon?

Washington: Yes. I thought it was gone. But Delta told us memory was the key. At first I thought he meant to remember our first encounter. And when I met Delta the first time what I told him was-

Church holds his head as he sees a memory of Wash talking with Delta.

Washington: You were encrypted until you could be recovered.

Delta: Recovery carries risk. Destruction ensures that an A.I.-

Washington: You cost a lot of money, okay? It's cheaper to recover you than it is to delete you.

Back to present time.

Washington: When they removed Epsilon from me, he was unravelling, casting off all his thoughts. I was sure they deleted him but it's-

Church: It's cheaper to store it than it is to delete it. Right?

Washington: Right.

Slade then jogs up.

Slade: D'you find him? Epsilon?

Washington: (gestures to the device) Right here.

Church: But why are we looking for this thing? What's the point?

Washington: Delta specifically said that memory is the key. He was telling us that Epsilon was still alive.

Church: And Epsilon is the key?

Washington: In a way. At the end of the war, things didn't look good for humans. And there were dozens of projects all trying to come up with the magic bullet to win.

Church: Right.

Washington: Project Freelancer was one of them. They had their research with aggressive A.I. But they could only get the one, and they needed more to conduct their experiments. So, they got desperate.

Church: Right. They tried to... they tried to copy it but they couldn't, so they-

Slade: All artificial intelligence are based on a human mind. And the Director had a theory. He thought, if we can't copy it, we'll just have to do the next best thing.

Church holds his head as another flash hits him.

Church: Ah! They, they split it?

Washington: Just like a human mind when it's broken; it fragments. It fractures itself to protect itself.

Church: They tortured it.

Washington: Like reverse engineering a multiple personality disorder.

Slade: They presented Alpha with scenario after scenario of stress and danger. When it started to fragment, they harvested those fragments.

Church: The Freelancer A.I.s.

Washington: Exhorted little fragments of purified compartmentalized emotion. None of them were a full personality. Some were good-

Church: Like Delta and Theta?

Slade: Delta was Alpha's logic. It needed to protect itself from analyzing what was happening to it. So it segregated that part of its mind. The part that would be able to understand the horror of what they were doing to it. And when the anger came and threatened to take over, it split that off too. That was Omega; its rage. Theta was its trust. Gamma was its deceit. Sigma was its creativity. And Epsilon...

Church: Epsilon was its memories.

Washington: And memory is the key.

-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-

Back in the control room, Grif sighs out in boredom over South and Kan in the back, punching and slashing bulkhead walls.

Grif: Uhh, okay. Now I'm bored. Simmons, promise to do me a favor. If the madness sets in, just shoot me.

Sarge: Do everyone a favor and shoot him now.

Simmons: Is that an order?

Sarge: Nah, save your bullets for somethin' worthwhile.

While nobody's looking out the window, a transparent shape moves across from right to left.

Sarge: Hey, Simmons, get over here! Hustle up!

Simmons: What's up, sir?

Sarge: You're good with uh, computers, right?

Simmons: Well I'd like to think so, I mean there's really all different kinds of skill sets. Like you have your binary computation, you have uh, bus transport-

Sarge: Yes or no?

Simmons: Yes.

Sarge: Okay here's what I'm thinin'. If this is Command, and these computers have some of those internets installed on 'em-

Simmons: There's just one internet, sir, and I don't think it's located inside this building.

Sarge: They probably have all the information about everything, right? Like in a, spreadabase or, one of them ROM things? Datasheet?

Simmons: I'm sorry, was that something I was supposed to understand? Was that even English?

Sarge: Come on, man, you know, like all the mainframes, on the Reds and the Blues. Series of Tubes and whatnot.

Simmons: Ookayy, you're using a lot of terms that don't really make sense. I think you're asking me if these computers store all the data on Red and Blue Armies?

Sarge: Control-Alt-Bingo.

Simmons: Probably.

Sarge: Could you get in to it?

Simmons: Yeah, if I had some time. What're you thinking, sir?

Sarge: Simmons, I want you to erase the Blues.

Simmons: What, you mean like the Blues from our canyon?

Sarge: No, Simmons, all of them. Gone. Erased. As in wiped off the map. Kablooie. Terminate process.

Simmons: Sir, you just blew my mind.

-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-

Back with Wash, Church, and Slade.

Washington: As they continued to torture it, Alpha couldn't keep its sanity and its memories at the same time. So it had to purge them. That fragment became Epsilon. And I was just unlucky enough to have it assigned to me.

Church: So you knew. You knew from the beginning what was going on.

Washington: Mostly. They never told anyone what they did here. I got flashes when they put Epsilon in my head. Memories of what the Director did to it.

Flashback to Wash and the Counselor.

Counselor: So you would say that you have overwhelming feelings of anger, and a need for revenge?

Washington: More than you know.

Back to present.

Washington: Just like you're getting now. That's why Epsilon went insane; it was meant to. It was all the horrible experiences the Alpha needed to shed to survive. And that's why it had to be removed from me.

Church: Did they know that you had the memories?

Washington: I never said a word. But they had their suspicions.

Flashback to Wash and South.

Washington: Do you still have yours?

South: No Wash, I never had one. I was in the implant group behind you, remember? And after what happened to you, nobody got any more.

Back to present.

Washington: I would never let them put another A.I. in my head. I was afraid I wouldn't be able to hide what I knew from another program. Which, ironically, is what led them to think I could be trusted.

Church: Well what do we do with it?

Washington: We take it, and we get it in the hands of someone who can use all its information. Then they can bring down the person responsible for what was done to Alpha. And to me. And to my friends. They can take down the Director.

Church: But what about the Meta? How do we stop him? Isn't that the point? I thought only the Alpha could do that. Are we gonna find it or not?

Slade: No.

Church: No?

Slade: After the first attack on Command, they moved it. They knew the A.I. would just convince their Freelancers to come looking for it again. So they put it in a place where they didn't think anyone could find it.

Church: But... where? Shouldn't we be there, instead of here?

Washington: Church, I need you to listen to us. Delta was the logic. He was able to figure out things before anyone else. It's why he left a message for you in a way that he knew only you could find, and in a way that let me see you getting it.

Church: What are you saying?

Washington: I'm saying I know what you are. Even if you don't. Why you can seemingly live without a body.

Church: What?

Slade: It's why they stuck you in some useless backwater canyon where no one ever goes. Then why they transferred every person in your outpost to a different base than you. It's why Flowers was assigned to look after you.

Church: Flowers?

Slade: Flowers was Agent Florida, Church. He was the only Freelancer they felt they could trust to watch after you in the Gulch. He was able to get in contact with me and asked if I could help keep you in check in that canyon. I didn't want anything to do with Freelancer anymore after all the horrors I'd learned and helped them accomplish. But I also knew that I couldn't hide forever. And I couldn't let anymore people die because of the Director's experiments and leftover projects. Think about it Church!

Washington: It's why you always agreed with everything Delta and Theta said. Why you didn't feel anything when Omega got inside your head. Why you can jump from person to person the way it can.... Church, there's no such thing as ghosts. You're one of them. You're an A.I. You... are the Alpha.