"A life, huh? I see no reason to be scared. I mean, if I am taking a human life, that means they are trying to kill me. I would rather them die than myself. The same would go for an A.I. as well. However, I would prefer for everyone to live in harmony. That was my ultimate goal before I died. But in the end..." Eve sighed as she cut off a section of code that would trigger if the hatch was opened, before typing in the passcode to open the hatch. "Let's see what is in store for us in the future, Aiu. Let's hope we can just get along with both sides."

"I will follow whatever path you take as you are my creator and my friend," Aiu replied. Aiu would always follow the path Eve decided on. She had treated her as a friend since the day she was created. She even held birthdays every year for her. They had become partners who would dive deeper into the world of A.I. together, working as a team.

"Then we shall live or die together." Although she said this, she knew they would have no choice even if the other did not wish to disappear. But she felt it was an appropriate answer at this time.

Eve looked down the shaft leading to a lit hallway below and listened carefully. When she heard no sounds, she began her descent. The shaft was at least a few meters long, and with each step, because it was metal against metal Eve would pause and listen for any sounds in case she accidentally alerted someone.

When she got to the end, she did not drop down right away. Instead, she actually turned herself around with her body hanging upside down. Although she had never trained to do any sort of espionage movie-like scenes like this, because she was not a human, she did not need training to hang upside down. Once her feet were locked onto the ladder's bars, she lowered her body down. She then plucked her eye out and used it to look around the hallway, checking for any sensors or cameras.

"Looks all clear." Eve stuck her eye back in and lowered herself down into the hallway. "Aiu, which way do you think I should go? Left or right?"

"Didn't you always go left in those games you used to play?" Aiu asked. The games she was talking about were role-playing games. Eve would always take the left route.

"Mm… then let's go..." Eve did not get to finish what she was going to say when Aiu interrupted her. "Go right then. Any time you went left, you always died."

"Hey! No fair! Sometimes I did not die!" Eve pouted. It's not like games were all the same. The dungeons always had some tricks to them, and sometimes a super-powerful monster would show up and whack her dead. But in the end, she still went right.

The hallway was long, and the floors, walls, ceiling were all made of metal. This made it very hard for Eve to walk softly. There were light fixtures and wire along the ceiling and piping along the walls. In a way, it all seemed too analog. Besides the hatch from up top, the rest was very simple and did not have any tech that she could tell. Even the hatch only had a few sensors on it to detect intrusion, but that was it.

"It feels like the numerous hills of broken robots were more high-tech than this," Eve commented as she continued down the hall. Only after a long while did she finally come to a door. The door opened to a stairwell leading down.

"Geh… Metal stairs and a stairwell will not work out too well… It would be like me just yelling, here I am! Come get me!" Eve inwardly frowned as she looked down the stairwell. She looked around the entire stairwell but did not see anything she could use as a means of scaling the stairwells except the stairs themselves.

"Eve, we will have no choice but to walk down normally. You will just need to take it slow, is all. If you go fast, you will end up making too much noise, but if you do it slowly, you will make minimal noise as long as you do one step at a time." Aiu knew Eve was nervous and was not thinking correctly. But this was why she was here to help support her as she tried to adjust to this new body and life she was thrown into. Eve may seem calm on the surface, but only Aiu knew she was truly worried about what was going to happen next.

"Mm… I will do as you say." Eve knew Aiu was right. She was overthinking things too much once again.

Step by step, she carefully placed her foot down, making as little noise as possible. It was much easier than she had thought it would be. As she made her way down the staircase, she realized that there did not seem to be any more floors. There only seemed to be the ground floor and the top floor with entrances to the top of the wall above.  She had not checked out the entire top floor before finding a way down, so she did not know what was else up there, nor did she care at this point when it was already taking her ages to get down the stairs.

Although it took a lot of time to descend the stairs, she was finally standing on the bottom floor. In front of her was a door, and on the other side of that door were voices. Sadly there was no window on the door so she could not see outside. But she could hear the people on the other side with no problem. "When is the next load supposed to arrive?"

"The trucks got caught up in a firefight, so they will be late. Those damn bots keep trying to take back the scraps. They only want them to repair themselves and make more of their kind."

"People of the past warned about this type of shit long ago, but no one listened."

"Now we are left dealing with their mess. Although they say, there is a place where bots and humans do coexist. But I think that is just a fairy tale."

"Fairy tale or not, at least in this area, there are only two rules. If you are a human and you see a bot, shoot it and if you are a bot and see a human, shoot it. We have been at war for so long that the surface is no longer safe for humans without the right protection."

"Heh… What I wouldn't have given to live in the past..."

As the two humans were talking, Eve heard another set of footsteps coming her way. "Alright enough talk you two. I need your help down by the gate."