Ortho and his Parents

When Ortho’s alert of Malleus’ overblot reaches STYX the Director responds “What if the worst has happened to everyone on the island, including our boys..?”

The Chief Engineer refers to herself as one Ortho’s parents and Ortho refers to the two of them as mom and dad.

When speaking to Ortho the Chief Engineer says, “You really do take after your brothers,” so Idia’s parents may have adopted robot-Ortho into their family as a third son rather than as a replacement for their second.

Ortho thanks them for treating him like a member of the family and insists that he wants to take on the dangerous mission of infiltrating Malleus’ domain as he doesn’t want them to lose another of their beloved sons (in reference to Idia), saying, “This is what I want…what both of us want,” possibly in reference to both himself and human-Ortho.

The Chief Engineer responds, “You’re one of our beloved sons, too,” and the family shares a promise hug.

When Malleus starts trying to destroy Ortho his parents respond by putting all the CHARON into termination mode and diverting all energy to their technomantic cannons in order to distract Malleus. When a staff member cautions that they will fry their generators the Director responds, “Do it anyway!”

Ortho manages to escape Malleus’ domain with the data he was sent in to collect and is found with his Cerberus gear floating in the water outside of Malleus’ barrier, possibly in a reference to the original animated Pinnochio movie.

His parents are relieved.

Ortho apologizes for losing the two android dogs that his mother made for him and she responds, “What matters most is that you made it out safely,” saying that she can fix them up again after their components are retrieved. The Director welcomes Ortho home and the family shares another hug.

It is Idia and Ortho’s parents who come up with the idea of making dream-based contact with those within Malleus’ domain to approach Malleus from inside his own worlds: “If we can’t do anything from the outside, we have to work from the inside instead.”