NieR Chronicles 10 — Adam and Eve Are Born in the Desert
Chapters in this story
- Adam is born in the desert: an enemy orders cannot explain
- 1. A machine that says it is afraid
- 2. Following a fleeing machine into the housing complex
- 3. A cocoon made from the machines' own bodies
- 4. Adam learns while fighting
- 5. Eve emerges from the wounded body
- 6. Soldiers returning from an enemy investigation
- Sources and scope of verification
Adam is born in the desert: an enemy orders cannot explain
Spoiler notice: This chapter covers the desert investigation, the appearance of Adam and Eve, and 2B and 9S's escape. 9S's judgment about the machines' speech is presented as his position at that point in the story.
1. A machine that says it is afraid
After Jackass opens the blocked route, 2B and 9S head farther into the desert. Remains of old buildings lie among the sand, with machines nearby imitating human clothing and masks. Their basic bodies resemble the small weapons from the factory, but their clothes and decorations are different. Even within the same category of machine lifeform, appearance and behavior vary depending on the region in which they operate.
During the investigation, the pair hear expressions of fear and a wish to escape. These sound different from signals reporting enemy positions or exchanging attack orders. When a machine speaks in human language as though pleading to be spared, a question arises: how should a soldier understand those words? Their desert assignment proceeds in the presence of precisely such speech and behavior.
9S resists accepting that machines have emotions. He explains that they are merely imitating human speech and intends to continue fighting. He was willing to question a surface resident about his leg and identity, but his present standard for dealing with machines is clear. These are the enemies they have been fighting. Hearing familiar words alone gives him no reason to acknowledge that they think and feel as people do.
2B does not abandon her mission to form a new community with the machines in the desert either. The two fight enemies and track their movements. Yet what the player directly sees and hears does not end with 9S's explanation. Opponents flee, repeat words, and try to put distance between themselves and the soldiers. The action of destroying an assigned enemy unfolds alongside the behavior that enemy displays.
2. Following a fleeing machine into the housing complex
While investigating the desert machines, the pair pursue one that runs away. The chase does not continue in circles amid the open sand. It leads toward a residential complex where humans once lived. Among the surviving buildings and passages, spaces used by machines overlap with traces of human habitation. Following the desert's clothes and masks, they now encounter activities suggestive of homes and families.
The task of following a fleeing opponent takes 2B and 9S deeper into a place where machines have gathered. For the pursuing soldiers, it is an enemy's trail they must not lose. But at its end, that one opponent is not alone. There is a space shared by many bodies and the activities they repeat. What the pair discover is not an empty room hiding a single machine, but a gathering place where numerous machines imitate human life.
The machines rock cradles, act as though tending children, and form pairs that bring their bodies close together. They imitate human families and childbirth. The sight differs from machines swinging weapons at soldiers in the factory. That does not immediately mean they reproduce in the same way as humans or that real babies are growing there. Bodies created as weapons are repeating, with their own bodies, actions observed in humans.
Their speech includes words for love, children, and relationships of being together. As 9S explains, this may be imitation that repeats learned expressions. Even so, the bodies repeating those words really do share a space and enter into relationships with other bodies. The two soldiers have found enemies, while also witnessing activities other than combat among the beings they were taught to regard as threats.
3. A cocoon made from the machines' own bodies
2B and 9S fight the machines in the gathering place. The sight of machines imitating humans does not produce an agreement that stops the soldiers' attack. As combat unfolds and bodies are destroyed, surviving machines begin moving toward one another. Their gathering does not stop at a few units joining a formation to surround the soldiers.
Numerous bodies entangle and pile together into one large mass. The movements of beings that were talking about children and love become a scene of another being's creation. Bodies imitating human reproduction actually bring about a different kind of birth through their own materials and connections. The pair are not witnessing a living human being born inside the mass. They are watching machines create a body unlike their previous forms.
A unit with a human shape emerges. They will later meet this being again under the name Adam. His appearance differs immediately from the desert machines with round heads and short limbs. 2B wonders whether an android has appeared, but 9S identifies him as a machine lifeform. A humanlike face alone cannot make him an ally of their kind or a living human. Both soldiers also saw the process by which this body was born from the mass of machines.
Newborn Adam does not greet them as a fully formed ruler who knows everything. He begins to see and learn through contact with the pair. Before this new life has time to understand the world, the first people confronting him are armed soldiers. Learning and combat begin within the same event. Discovering what he can do becomes a process of being attacked and fighting back.
4. Adam learns while fighting
2B and 9S attack Adam. Newly born, he does not immediately rush them in a battle-ready stance. As he is struck, he asks why this is happening and cannot keep up with their movements. But continued attacks raise the level shown on screen and change his responses. He learns to evade and counterattack, eventually using attacks that emit light. His seemingly defenseless condition at birth does not last long.
Adam develops defenses and counterattacks, becoming an opponent the soldiers cannot simply finish off. His humanlike appearance is not the only issue. The threatening part is how quickly he absorbs information during combat and alters his behavior accordingly. The pair have attacked a newly encountered enemy in a familiar way, but the enemy uses that very experience to change himself. The subject of their mission is growing during the investigation.
For 9S, that change also matters as an object of study. An explanation that treats machine language and imitation of human behavior as simple repetition cannot fully account for a new form being created and learning combat before his eyes. He continues fighting alongside 2B while observing the opponent. Even if he still finds it difficult to acknowledge meaningful judgment or a self in the enemy, he is directly witnessing something outside the behavioral range of earlier weapons.
2B keeps attacking as she responds to the developing threat. There is no time to understand the opponent's entire origin before fighting. At the end of the battle, 9S pierces Adam with his sword from behind, while 2B strikes from the front. Liquid resembling red blood flows from the damaged body. Even his wounds demonstrate that a metallic exterior can no longer serve as the sole way to recognize machines. But birth in this place is not over when the pair bring his body down.
5. Eve emerges from the wounded body
Another humanoid unit emerges from the fallen Adam's body. This is the being who will later be called Eve. He does not arrive as a reinforcement manufactured elsewhere in a separate factory. He comes from the body the pair have just attacked. An event they tried to end through violence produces another being. At the moment when they might think the original target has been eliminated, the number of opponents and their relationship change again.
Eve embraces the injured Adam. His attention in this scene first turns toward the other humanoid directly before him. In the later story, these two will act as an older and younger brother. What the soldiers see in the desert is the beginning of that relationship. As Adam moves toward understanding the outside world through learning, being with his brother and protecting him will remain a powerful center of Eve's existence.
Their surroundings no longer remain the combat space they first entered. As the collapse begins, 9S points out an exit above them, and the pair climb up and escape through a cave passage. Near its end, they must also push a box blocking the way. Their return does not come after subduing every new unit and calmly examining the wreckage. Before they can determine how far the phenomenon will go, they must first leave the place collapsing behind them.
Attacking and bringing down Adam did not end their relationship with him. He will later reappear with Eve and speak to the soldiers. The desert birth is more than a brief introduction of names before fully formed enemies arrive later. It establishes what actions constituted their first experience and how the two brothers came to stand together.
6. Soldiers returning from an enemy investigation
After escaping, 2B and 9S have new information to report. The desert machines repeated human speech and imitated daily life; numerous bodies gathered to create a humanoid unit. That unit learned rapidly in combat, and another emerged from its defeated body. A succession of events has occurred that cannot easily be reduced to a report of fewer enemies in a particular region.
Even so, the pair have not yet discovered every purpose of the machine network or the aliens' current condition. There remains a distance between what they have witnessed and the intentions of the larger system producing it. Subsequent investigations will gradually narrow that gap. Having been present at an event does not instantly provide answers about the entire world.
Nor does one shocking experience completely reverse 9S's denial of machine emotion, making him accept every machine as a friend from then on. He investigates what he has seen while continuing to operate within the understanding that machines are enemies. 2B also carries out missions beside him under the same command structure. The nonhostile individuals and communities ahead will test that standard again in different forms.
After escaping, they contact their Operator and return through the city to the Resistance Camp. Once they tell Anemone what happened in the desert, they can use a room at the camp. There is a bed inside, and they may rest there. The base where they repaired merchants' equipment before setting out to investigate now becomes a place to return to and stay. Receiving a room does not confirm that Adam and Eve have been permanently eliminated. The questions left at the site have returned with them.
As they leave the camp, a message from the Commander brings their next task: searching for missing YoRHa personnel. The signal will lead them to the amusement park. There, machines imitate festivities, and a singer who changed her body to attract another's attention sings. Where the desert machines repeated family and birth, the next location connects combat with what someone will do to be loved. The two soldiers begin passing through worlds of different machines trying to learn human life, as well as fighting enormous weapons.
Sources and scope of verification
This chapter is based on the desert investigation and the humanoid birth scenes in the game. Adam's first appearance, Eve's emergence, and the brothers' later reappearance are distinguished. They are not described as already explaining the entire truth of the machine network at this point. This is an AI-assisted story commentary by the TroubleMaker editorial team, without reproducing original dialogue or lyrics. Verified: October 18, 2026 (Bangkok).
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