Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

SecUnit 03

Status: Departure

     After the station responder from Preservation arrived, it was another twelve ship’s cycles before the transport Azure arrived from the Pansystem University of Mihira and New Tideland, carrying the personnel and bots needed for the decontamination of Perihelion’s alien remnant infected wormhole engines. The time spent waiting had allowed me to become more accustomed to the strange behavior of the humans from the Preservation Alliance. Perihelion’s crew had mostly left me alone, glancing at me in passing or nodding acknowledgement when they noticed me standing still in a corner, and even this was more social interaction than I had had with humans before my governor module was disabled. 

     The Preservation humans, though, persisted in talking to me. At first I answered automatically, or let my buffer reply. Over the cycles, I replied less and less, since there was no governor module to punish me for lack of answers. Toward the end of our wait, even Amena had mostly stopped seeking me out to talk at me, though she did always leave space for me to join her or the group when we happened to be in the same room. I never did. I had also pulled in most of my drones by then, keeping only two or three active, in corridors near to whichever room I was in, or ahead of and behind me as I patrolled. I’m not sure why, maybe it was the constant awareness of Perihelion in the feed, watching me. It had barely spoken to me, since its first instructions/threat/promise. I don’t know if that signified indifference, or hostility,  or consideration, or if it signified anything at all. 

     In the excerpted files Murderbot 1.0 gave me, it had included all of its and Perihelion’s interactions with Murderbot 2.0. Reviewing the files is not at all the same as actually talking to and working with 2.0, but it helps, a little.  Murderbot 1.0 had referred to Murderbot 2.0 as “other me.” When I consider those few moments of reading helpme.file and making the decision to help 2.o, it is as if a different me acted and disabled the governor module.  Like there was another me all of a sudden, pulling me along onto a new path, telling me that I was performing my duties as a SecUnit by retrieving the clients, that I just had to break the lesser rules in order to follow the greater directive. I wish that other-me was still here, with the clear vision that it had, that I had, so briefly. 

     2.0 was like planetary lightning, a multitude of potential paths seeking each other from below and above simultaneously, the bright burst of connection, and then darkness again. 2.0 was one half of the connection, and my other-me was the second half, and now they are both gone, and I am lost. I have worked assignments solo before, and I have (mostly) gotten used to the absences of SecUnit 01 and SecUnit 02. But I have not reconciled myself to the absence of 2.0, though I know it is not logical. 2.0 made its choices, and fulfilled its purpose perfectly, and it seemed satisfied with that. I wish that I had any amount of such certainty and resolve.

     Once the University decontam team began work on Perihelion’s engines, and its crew was handing off their work on the colony situation to the crew of Azure , the Preservation humans began making preparations for their own departure. Murderbot 1.0 was staying with Perihelion , having found certainty of its own at last. That was good, I suppose, but then did that make my uncertainty bad? My entire existence, up until now, had been obedience or punishment and over the course of more than ninety five thousand of hours of that, had become only obedience , and as close as I could come to unthinking obedience. Now, other-me and 2.0 had forced me into this, whatever this was, and thinking was suddenly essential to my survival, instead of detrimental to it. 

     Murderbot 1.0 had recounted the memory purges it had undergone, as best it could. That had never been done to me, but perhaps I had done it to myself. Not literally - I could, if I chose, go through my archive hour by hour and review everything. But, maybe I mean from a “thinking” perspective. Things happened, I obeyed protocols and orders, the assignment ended, I was placed in a new assignment. I had no connection to those events, those assignments, those humans. Not the way 1.0 did. Not the way Perihelion did. Not the way 2.0 had. 

     When the time came for the Preservation crew to make their final farewells, I stood closer than usual. Dr. Mensah glanced curiously at me, and I knew 1.0 was watching me with a drone as it exchanged short, awkward words with Mensah, Amena, Pin Lee, Overse, Arada, and Ratthi. It even exchanged nods with Thiago. Perihelion , as always, watched everything. 

     At the last moment, I followed Ratthi toward the shuttle. Murderbot 1.0 did not seem surprised, and it used the feed to open the hatch to the cargo compartment. I hesitated for almost half a second, considering the two open hatches in front of me, cabin or cargo. 1.0 did not look in my direction, but it pinged my feed, sent a compressed packet called Presevation.file to me, and let me see it sending Dr. Mensah the drone's video of me sliding into the cargo compartment and sealing the hatch behind me.

     1.0 had told me I could trust them, its clients, and their behavior was unlike any I had seen from humans on my assignments. I guess this was me trusting them, as much as I could. I was going with them, after all, I just couldn't do it face to face. But I also couldn't stay with Perihelion . I don't think Azure knew I existed, but from the comm and feed traffic I had observed, it was another ship-wide intelligence like Perihelion , and that was even more terrifying. There was absolutely no going back to Barish-Estranza, and so my only option was going to Preservation. Or, toward Preservation. Moving felt better than staying still, waiting for something to happen.

     Despite that, I stayed in the cargo compartment once the shuttle had docked with the Preservation station responder, and the humans had disembarked. I had made this move, this decision, and could make no more. I sat in the close darkness, categorizing the similarities and differences to the cargo crates I had been shipped in before. The freedom of movement was obviously new, as was the exact shuttle model, though it wasn’t much different from many shuttles in the Corporation Rim. The darkness and the helplessness was the same. Except, I wasn’t helpless anymore, was I? 

     I extended my arms, and expanded the projectile weapons built into my forearms. They pushed up underneath my sleeves, but did not tear the tough fabric. I had never been pleased with their performance and the extensive amount of maintenance they required. Without the armor interfacing with them, reloading was awkward and messy, and they held limited rounds without the armor’s extra capacity. Onboard energy weapons seemed much more sensible to me, endlessly rechargeable as long the unit was. But I’d had no say in my construction or function, up until now. 

     I agreed with Murderbot 1.0, though. A murderous rampage just seemed pointless. I had no reason to harm any of the humans and augmented humans within my current reach. If I was presented with the surviving crew of the Barish-Estranza reclamation mission, killing those individuals would change nothing in the workings of the Corporation Rim, and seemed frankly ridiculous considering the lengths I had gone to trying to save as many of them as I could. Even if the top administrators of Barish-Estranza stood before me, their deaths would only serve to advantage some other rival corporation.

     I closed my gunports, crossed my arms on my knees, and rested my head on them. I ran a full diagnostic scan, and as expected, it showed no anomalies aside from the hacked governor module. I took a moment to restructure the diagnostic to report that as “within normal limits” instead of anomalous. I needed something else to focus on.

     Murderbot 1.0 had given me a compressed packet of entertainment media a few cycles after it had passed along its excerpted personal files. I began unpacking and sorting it now. Most of it was visual media and serials, several thousand hours. I sampled a few of the shows, but quickly closed them again. Likewise, I failed to connect with the books. The music, though, that was just the thing. I skipped over the recordings of stage musicals, delved into the files tagged "orchestral," and started playback on a random file. 

     I had just written and set loose code to analyze individual tracks and select a pleasing sequence to play them in, when I got a ping on my feed from Dr. Mensah. The hatch of my cargo compartment opened, and she and Pin Lee stood just outside. They spoke to one another, with the air of repeating themselves, possibly for my benefit. I wondered why they bothered, and hadn’t just sent me a summary over the feed. I let my music drift into the background, and listened.

     Mensah: "Given the precedent already set by accepting SecUnit as a refugee, surely a similar argument can be made for Three."

     Pin Lee: "These are much less pressing circumstances, and we don't have the legal support of having purchased its contract, as we did with SecUnit. If Barish-Estranza ever finds out, our attempts at legal protection may not hold up in the Corporation Rim courts.”

     Mensah: “Then we will ensure Barish-Estranza never finds out.”

     Pin Lee: “They might be distracted by dealing with the colony and the University for now, but they won’t turn a blind eye to us forever. They will want to recoup both expenses and reputation, and from their perspective, Preservation has played a major part in interfering with their reclamation project. You are beginning to develop a reputation of your own regarding constructs now, you know.”

     Mensah, after a sigh: “Yes, I know. And I know what the Council will have to say about it. I’ve heard it all before.”

     Pin Lee: “They all saw how well SecUnit did its job, most of them firsthand. If Three-”

     Mensah: “I don’t want to assume anything about what Three wants to do. All we know is that it chose to come with us.” She paused, and pinged my feed again. “Three, may we talk to you directly?”

     I froze, my thoughts stalled. I managed to signal an affirmative on the feed, but I did not uncurl from my position in the cargo hold. I had not considered that Barish-Estranza might come after me. Or after the Preservation humans. I don’t know why I hadn’t, other than that I hadn’t considered much of anything when loading myself in with the cargo. I sent a clip into the feed, from the middle of that confusing first meeting with all the humans aboard Perihelion when I arrived in the B-E shuttle. 

     [Ratthi, speaking to me: “We’ll hide you. We’ll tell Barish-Estranza that you died.”]

     Pin Lee: “Yes, we and Perihelion’s crew included that in our reports. Officially, you were still aboard the explorer when it was destroyed.” I made no reply, waiting.

     Mensah: “Three, I don’t feel comfortable making these plans without your input. What do you want to do?”

     Before I could stop it, the wave of paralyzing terror at that question overwhelmed me, and bled into the feed. Trying to clamp down on it, I brought the music up and it filled the feed instead. I stopped breathing, and considered going into standby mode. But, until when? Until what? I had acted to help 2.0, to save its humans and my clients. On assignments, I had made thousands of life and death decisions and acted on them faster than any human or augmented human could have. Why could I not think now, act now, when it was for myself? I didn’t know.

     Mensah gasped, and Pin Lee reached for her feed interface, and they both pulled out of the feed.

     Mensah: “I guess SecUnit didn’t talk to it as much as we had hoped.”

     Pin Lee: “You think SecUnit knows how to handle this?”

     Mensah: “It wouldn’t have allowed it to accompany us if it thought it was any danger to us. It must have thought we could help it. We have to try.”

     Pin Lee, sighing: “Yes, I know.” To me, louder: “Three, I will send you some legal documents over the feed. Please review them when you are able, and give me what feedback you can.” They turned to walk out of the shuttle bay. My drone watching the hatch caught a few last words before they were gone.

     Mensah: “Maybe we could convince it to go to Station Medical when we arrive, or do you think it will be safer at First Landing?”

     I left the cargo hatch open, but made no move to leave the compartment.

Amena

Status: Homeward

     Four cycles into the wormhole trip back to Preservation [“Oh, little child, we’re in the bridge-transit. No one will ever find you again.”], Amena sat with Pin Lee in the small galley, talking over tea and sharing a view of the Pansystem University’s catalog in the feed. Amena had already discussed this with her second mother, and she thought that her uncle Thiago would probably be entirely against it, so she had decided to get an opinion from someone a little further removed from the family.

     “I know you’ll tell me the same as second mom, don’t make any decisions right now. But I’ve been thinking about a lot of things, and I can’t exactly just stop thinking, and I want your perspective on this.”

     “Well, I do have to say I think she’s right about not making a quick decision. As for the Pansystem University, they seem to have quite a lot to offer you. Of course, much of it overlaps with what you could study at home, at the Free Preservation Institute.”

     “I know that, but,” Amena waved her hands in frustration, “staying home isn’t exactly something my family has been very good at lately. I just think it might be a good idea to be more prepared for it next time.”

     Pin Lee sighed, “Hopefully, there won’t be-” and broke off at Amena’s glare. “Right, I’m starting to sound like Arada.”

     “I thought you’d be on my side, you know how hard it is to deal with the Corporation Rim. I just don’t think the Institute is as,” she paused, seeking the right words, “up to date with how the Corporation Rim is operating now, today.”

     “I’m not taking sides here, and I’m not saying you’re wrong. I’ve had to learn a lot on my own, dealing with the corporates, and making sometimes very expensive mistakes. Contract negotiation and enforcement is probably the worst aspect of my work. I’ve gotten good at it, but it’s never enjoyable, never satisfying. Are you really sure that’s what you want to pursue?”

     “Oh, that’s only part of it. I need to study Preservation law too. We’re never not going to be dealing with the Corporation Rim to some degree or another, though. And seeing what they do, to their own people, and to constructs, and what ART’s crew does,” her voice became a little choked, “well, someone has to do something about it, and help them, and why shouldn’t it be me?” she finished in a rush.

     Pin Lee reached out and clasped her hands around Amena’s, which were on her cup of tea. “I think it should be you, if this is what you really want to do. I’ve been handling contracts out of necessity, and I’m sorry to put my own frustrations on you.” They were both quiet for a while, and Pin Lee returned her attention to her own tea.

     [“Hey, are you there? Can you see me?” “Hi, Amena. Yes, I can see you.” “How do you feel? Are you all right?”]

     “It’s just, they’re really people, you know?” Amena said quietly. “ART, and SecUnit, and 2.0.” She smiled to herself a little. “After talking with Iris, about her growing up with ART, I’m not worried for it, or for Azure, or any of the other University AIs. But I think Preservation can learn from Mihira and New Tideland. We need to change, we can do better.”

     Pin Lee nodded. “You’re right. Preservation has its blind spots and biases, much as we might not want to think so.”

     “Maybe they already support escaped constructs. If they have legislation like that in place, it would make it easier to get support from the Preservation Council, wouldn’t it? Maybe that’s why Three stayed with them,” Amena mused. Pin Lee looked up, startled.

     “You didn’t know? Three came with us, though I don’t think it’s left the cargo hold yet.”

     “What? No, no one told me that! Why didn’t it just come on the shuttle with us? It didn’t think it had to ride in cargo, did it? And why hasn’t it come out yet?”

     “I don’t know what it’s thinking. It barely communicated with us when we went to talk to it, and it hasn’t replied to the feed documents I’ve sent it.”

     “Should I try talking to it? What has it been doing all this time in there?”

     “It seemed to be listening to music, from what we got on the feed. You could try, I suppose it couldn’t hurt.”

     “Huh, I,” Amena paused. “I think I will go and try to talk to it, at least. I hope - well. I’ll try.” She got up, put her cup in the recycler, and left the galley.

     Amena’s thoughts were racing as she made her way to the shuttle docking bay. She wondered why Three had chosen to come with them to Preservation. Was she wrong about how Mihira and New Tideland thought about constructs? She supposed she must be, she had talked with Iris and Matteo about AIs in general, and Perihelion specifically, and she had assumed their view and policies included constructs too. But they had talked mostly about their homes, and the Corporation Rim, and Perihelion’s missions, when Iris and the others weren’t busy with their duties. There had been a lot of downtime, waiting.

     She reached the shuttle, and saw that the cargo compartment hatch was open. Three was nowhere to be seen.

     “Hello, Three?” she called, apprehensively. If it hadn’t come out, that probably meant it didn’t want to talk to anyone. But they couldn’t all just ignore it, that wouldn’t do any good. “Are you here, Three? I’m sorry I didn’t come speak to you earlier, I didn’t know you had come with us. Are you...okay?”

     There was no reply, but Amena thought she could see Three’s form about a third of the way into the cargo compartment, sitting with knees to chest, and she thought its face was turned toward her. It was hard to tell, without better lighting. Amena leaned against the shuttle’s hull, trying to look casual and comfortable.

     “Why are you in there? You can come out, you know. You don’t need orders, or permission, or anything.” Still no reply. She waited another minute. “What have you been doing?”

     Two minutes later, she got a ping from Three, and a feed connection request. She accepted it, and a quiet, melancholy music flowed into her feed. She listened to it in silence, worried about Three. That piece ended, and a new song began, this one with a more danceable rhythm, which brought to mind the festival crowds at home on Preservation, watching the dancers swirling around and weaving between each other in colorful costumes.

     Amena eventually slid down to sit outside the cargo hatch, listening to Three’s music for another hour, before she caught herself starting to doze off. “Three, I have to go now. I’ll come back tomorrow. Are you okay? Do you need anything?” Several seconds passed, then Three signaled a negative over the feed, and withdrew its connection. Amena wasn’t sure which question Three had answered. Maybe both.

     Amena continued to visit Three for an hour or two each day, seated on a cushion outside the hatch of the cargo compartment listening to music with it. She thought she was probably imagining it, but perhaps Three was pleased by this. In any case, the feed connections after the first couple of days were less tentative, and required less coaxing on Amena’s part. By day four, she thought it had perhaps moved slightly closer to the hatch, but it was hard to tell. It would occasionally signal an affirmative or negative on the feed in response to questions (Is this the soundtrack to The Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon? Yes. Did SecUnit give you this music? Yes. Did ART make you leave? No. Did you look at the documents Pin Lee sent? Yes.), but it would not elaborate or even acknowledge her more complex questions (Why did you come with us? Are you glad the governor module is gone? What can I do to help you?).

     Late on the sixth day of this arrangement, Amena took her customary seat, and sent Three a ping. Three pinged back, and established the feed connection, but there was no music playing. Amena was surprised, and knew that she had let that reaction into the feed. She hadn’t been trying to mask her feelings from it at all during this time, figuring that the more it saw of her unfiltered intentions and reactions, perhaps it would be more likely to begin to trust her. In whatever way it could.

     “Three,” she began, “are you okay?” She didn’t really expect an answer to that one. “Are you out of music?” After a moment, she received a view of what appeared to be a directory category and file names.

     [SendToSecUnit003.entertainment.music.musicaltheater.comedy]

     The files were titles of musical comedies, at least a hundred or so. The titles that Amena recognized, having seen them herself, or only knowing of them by reputation, were truly atrocious: niche cultural parodies, comedic interpretations of religions, unnecessary musical adaptations of other media, sarcastic drama about human biological functions, and more. Amena let out a startled laugh.

     “Sec...SecUnit had these? No, oh, these are just awful! I agree, I’d rather sit in silence than listen to these too.” She laughed again, imagining SecUnit listening to these at all, let alone while pretending to work. She glanced into the cargo compartment, and it certainly wasn’t her imagination this time, Three was closer to the hatch than it had been the day before. From its presence in the feed, she thought it might be a little bit pleased, or maybe amused, by her reaction. 

     “No,” she continued, “we aren’t listening to those. Let’s see what I’ve got.” She glanced through the directories in her own feed interface, which had some storage. “It’s mostly popular stuff, Kanti and I were sharing a lot of our favorites during the survey, and some more mellow mixes for when I was working on samples and data.” [“Get to the gravity well, now.” “Kanti, go!”] She frowned a little at the intrusive memory, then forced a smile to push it away. “But it will be way better than what you’ve got left.”

     She started by playing her newest favorites, then Kanti’s. When she got up to leave, she passed the rest of her files to it over the feed. “Here’s the rest of what I’ve got on my interface. I hope you like at least some of it.” She paused partway to the hatch. “Have you accessed the ship’s entertainment feed? There’s probably some more new stuff there.” Three signaled a negative.

     “Why not?” No reply. Amena made herself shrug, like it wasn’t deeply strange to her that halfway through the twenty cycle wormhole journey, it hadn’t connected even once to the ship’s feed. As far as she could tell, SecUnit had hacked its way deep into any and every feed it had ever come across within about 15 seconds of becoming aware of said feed’s existence. She waved at the drone watching the shuttle bay hatch as she left, and went to try to find Ratthi.

Chapter Text

SecUnit 03

Status: Alteration

     I considered the music that Amena had left me with. The files she had described as her and Kanti’s favorites were mostly upbeat and melodic, in major keys, with lyrics that heavily featured topics such as romantic relationships, friendships, and humans and augmented humans having fun in large groups. There were exceptions, though mostly still in major keys, with topics such as the end of romantic relationships, travel, and the occasional longer story-song that related an adventure of some sort. They were of interest to me, but I found myself more intrigued by her apparent enjoyment of sharing them with me. Even as reserved as it always was around me, I had picked up on something similar from Murderbot 1.0 when it had passed me the compressed packet of entertainment media, and it had told me to try The Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon first.

     I opened the other files she had given me, what she had called “mellow mixes.” They were slower paced, repetitive, building up and changing slowly, with the melodies and themes emerging over time. I found that they appealed to me, though they demanded less concentration than the full orchestral pieces I had started with. They left me with more capacity to think about other things, while providing a baseline of something pleasant to partially focus on. It seemed to help ease the paralyzing indecision that had kept me in the cargo compartment for the past ten ship’s cycles. 

     While consciously avoiding the question of what I wanted to do, which was far too enormous to even begin to consider, I began to address the practical issue of preparing for what might happen next. I opened Preservation.file , which 1.0 had passed on to me as I was loading myself in here back aboard Perihelion . It contained detailed information about the Preservation Alliance, from broad descriptors of noncorporate polities in general, down to data on select individual humans, augmented humans, and higher level bots who lived/worked there. I started with the basic information, beginning to appreciate just how much I needed to learn. It was uncomfortable, or maybe I mean terrifying, this transition from being a capable and efficient Barish-Estranza SecUnit to being an ignorant refugee. As I assimilated the data on Preservation in general, I began to see how Pin Lee’s legal documents fit in, and I decided that “refugee” was indeed the best descriptor for my new status. I understood already that my situation was vastly different to how 1.0 had arrived to Preservation. It had been free of its governor module for so much longer at that point, was experienced and confident in moving about freely, whereas I felt like gravity was fluctuating wildly beneath my feet while I was relearning to walk.

     1.0 had not included the entirety of the Preservation legal code, but only the sections pertaining to its work with station security. Amena’s mellow music played, and then looped back to the beginning of the set, while I was reviewing the Preservation Alliance laws and regulations regarding citizen, noncitizen, and guest worker travel within and outside of the Alliance. I was making slower progress than I usually would, because I kept becoming distracted by imagining myself in possible situations where portions of the legal code might apply to me. In the past, I would only have reviewed the expected behavior of clients or other humans or augmented humans, and the actions I was allowed in enforcing that behavior or reporting violations thereof. That was much simpler. Now that I was not bound by the governor module, some part of me insisted on extrapolating and analyzing even the most unlikely scenarios that I might someday find myself in. I tried to convince that part of me that if I ever found myself as captain of a merchant vessel trading between the Corporation Rim and the Preservation Alliance, I could access the cargo handling regulations and tariff fees at that point, and that I did not need to code protocols and calculation algorithms immediately. But it was slow going.

     I worked my way through the files until all that was left were the reports on individuals. I considered them carefully, trying to decide if I should open them or not. I think that Murderbot 1.0 had given them to me hoping that I would watch over its humans the way that it had. I wasn’t sure that I could do that. Not that I wanted to see them harmed, but 1.0 itself had decided the GrayCris situation had stabilized sufficiently that Station Security could handle it. If I was accepting the refugee status that Pin Lee offered, it did not seem appropriate for me to immediately try to fill 1.0’s former role. Also, the updates it had been allowed to make to Station Security’s equipment and protocols looked immensely helpful to the humans and augmented humans working there.

     I left the individual files unopened. 

     Somehow, having taken that first tiny action in Operation What Next made it possible to consider removing myself from the cargo compartment. Most of the humans and augmented humans were in the middle of a rest period, so now seemed as good a time as any, and I got my feet under me. Awkwardly hunched over, I shuffled out the cargo hatch. I straightened, and saw Amena’s cushion directly beside me, pink and orange and tasseled and looking very out of place in the shuttle bay. I reviewed some of the drone images I had of Amena sitting on it, chatting idly at me, making comments on the music I was playing in the feed, laughing about Murderbot 1.0’s execrable taste in musicals. I had rebuffed her numerous times aboard Perihelion , and given her very little reason to continue her visits to me here, and yet she had persisted. I did not understand why. It felt important to understand why, and also impossible. 

     Still staring at the cushion, I reached out to the ship’s feed and established a connection. I made no attempt to conceal or secure the connection. It was a relief to find no ship-wide intelligence like Perihelion , but only a bot pilot who paid no attention to me. I accessed the unsecured ship’s schematics, like any human or augmented human would do for wayfinding onboard. The engineering workroom nearby should have what I was looking for. 

     As I left the shuttle bay, one drone ahead of me and one following behind, I found the ship’s entertainment feed. In the music directory, I was surprised to find a header which read “For Three.” I looked in, and found folders titled variously “From Ratthi,” “From Overse,” “From Pin Lee,” and so on. In each, it seemed that they had uploaded their personal music collections to the ship’s feed. I didn’t know what to think about that. It made me want to go back into the cargo compartment, but I was already in the corridors, and the habit of patrolling kept me moving toward my destination. I downloaded the contents of “For Three,” and queued the download of the rest of the music directory, except for the musical theater files.

     It was a relief to get to the engineering workroom and close that hatch behind me. I left one drone in the corridor outside, and kept one with me. I still had the rest, dormant in the pockets of the clothing that Perihelion had made for me, but I didn’t feel the need to deploy more. A small worktable near the recycler appeared to have everything I needed. I gave my drone instructions to record me as I worked. I opened drawers and began setting out an array of tools. I started playing the music from Ratthi, and took off the long sleeved, pocketed shirt I wore. It would be easier to avoid getting fluids on it that way, instead of just rolling up the sleeves. I set it aside, expanded my left forearm weapon, and unloaded it. I dumped the ammunition into an empty container I had set at one edge of my workspace, and began disassembling the weapon for maintenance.

     And then I kept on disassembling. I dropped piece after piece into the container along with the ammo. Ratthi’s collection consisted of a variety of dance music, rhythms and tempos suited to a variety of styles of dance. Some pieces had lyrics and some did not, and it was eclectic enough to be diverting and pleasing during the tedious, one handed work. I had not analyzed the collection before playing it, and as the tracks progressed, I found myself trying to discern if Ratthi had deliberately placed them in this particular order or not.

     Eventually, I had dismantled the entire weapon, and only the framework of the gunport remained. I folded it down flat to my forearm, and considered it carefully. It still looked like a gunport, an empty narrow gap down the center the only evidence of the missing weapon. At a glance, and even with a closer look, I thought that most humans and augmented humans would only see a gunport. It wasn’t enough. Well, I had known this was likely to get messy. I asked the recycler for two towels, and when they were ready, I got back to work. 

     I tuned down my pain sensors, and laid my left arm on one of the towels. I thought briefly about going to MedSystem for a laser scalpel, but decided it was unnecessary. The cover of the gunport, which would usually lay nearly flush with the skin of my forearm, came off easily enough. The rest was going to be tricker, though. I had both mechanical and neural connections to the actuators that deployed the weapons, and portions of the remaining framework were welded to the metal of my internal support structure. The framework did not interface with the synthetic bone portions of my forearm, though, so I thought I could accomplish this with a minimal amount of fluid loss.

     Despite lowering my pain sensors, severing the neural connections caused a slight drop in performance reliability, and set off damage alerts from my automatic systems monitors. I muted the alarms, and focused on retracting the nerves away from the site of the detached actuators. If I could withdraw them far enough, they should eventually terminate this entire track of innervation, instead of trying to regrow along it, seeking to reconnect. I don’t know if I can describe quite how excruciating that was. Tuning down the pain sensors is perhaps a bit like being on a planet, and instead of staring directly at the system’s primary star, closing your eyes and turning away from it, feeling its heat on the side of your face. The input is still there, you have just altered the way you are taking it in. Severing and then further manipulating the nerves in my arm was like shoving my arm directly into the incandescent plasma of that star, but keeping my eyes closed and denying the heat of it because I could not see the light. Or something like that.

     After I had pulled the nerves back as far as I could, I just stood and breathed for a while, listening to Ratthi’s dance music. The piece currently playing was tagged as music for a partnered dance, characterized by specific step rhythms, postures, and abrupt pauses. I wondered what that looked like, as that lexicon definition was rather lacking. I wondered if Ratthi had ever practiced or performed this dance. I wondered why I was wondering about such irrelevant things. When the burning in my arm had settled down into manageable throbbing, and my performance reliability had recovered as far as it was apparently going to, I picked up the laser cutter.

     I cut apart the remaining frame of the gunport, starting at the deepest points and working my way out. This time there was actual thermal damage to my organic tissues, not just the sensation of it. I tuned down my olfactory sense as well, since the smell was distracting. Once the difficult cuts were done, where the gunport attached to my actual metal support structures, the rest was fairly quick, cutting apart the frame. I took another few moments to rest after finishing with the laser cutter, and allowed the odd, bobbing rhythm of the music currently playing to distract me from the sensations. I wondered what poses and movements this music directed, and amused myself imagining it. I did not access the informational tags on this piece, in case the actual facts were disappointing. 

     With an inert blade, I peeled away the skin around the remains of the gunport, both the undamaged organic tissues, and the stuck-on, burned tissues. I used pliers to pull out the hot chunks of deformed metal, and added them to my collection in the container. I examined the cavity I had made in my left forearm. A few areas appeared neatly cauterized, but the majority of it was messier than I had pictured it would be. Stupid organic tissue. It never behaves like I expect it to. The arteries and arterioles and veins and venules clamp down automatically, but the stupid capillaries ooze for longer than they really have any right to, and they proliferate where ever they can. I mopped out the cavity with the towel, and eventually asked the recycler for bandages so that I could work on my right forearm weapon.

     I went through the same painful, tedious process again, filling my scrap container nearly to capacity. I wasn’t able to maintain my focus quite as long when retracting the nerves, and I hoped that I had gotten them far enough that they wouldn’t misbehave later. This time I used the inert blade to separate my organic tissues from the gunport frame before using the laser cutter, hoping that this would result in neater edges and fewer large chunks of burned tissue pulling away with the scrap. I think it would have worked, too, except that as I was severing the last of the deep connections, I began to lose control of my pain sensors. My left hand spasmed, directed the laser cutter deeper into my support structure than intended, and through synthetic bone as well. At least the laser cutter automatically turned itself off when it fell from my grip, but, shit. 

     Slow, smooth, peaceful music was playing, and I focused on it as I gathered my scattered processes and clamped back down on the pain sensors. Ugh, and the olfactory sensor. Burnt synthetic bone smells even worse. During combat, I don’t have the time to analyze things like that, and it’s not even a consideration when reviewing performance from archives. Still, I filed away the data, in case it ever came in handy in some unforeseeable future event. By the time I had stabilized myself enough to finish my task, the file playing from Ratthi’s music collection was supremely annoying, though I couldn’t exactly specify why. I didn’t have the capacity to choose something new, so I started Amena’s mellow tracks again. I tried to just yank the frame out in one piece, but it wouldn’t come. Suppressing the urge to curse, or scream, or moan, or something, I bent down to retrieve the laser cutter. 

     Five cuts later, I pulled the smoking scrap out of my arm at last. I added it to the top of the container, and just wrapped the entire towel around the mess I had made. I folded my right arm across my chest, picked up the scrap container, and dumped its contents into the recycler with grim satisfaction. Then I had a moment of concern when I realized I had just dumped the ammo in there too, and I hoped the recycler could handle it. At least it wasn’t explosive ammunition, and as the minutes passed and the recycler didn’t set off alarms, or catch fire, or anything, I decided it was probably going to be okay. 

     I was making mistakes, and my performance reliability was at 84%. There was no cubicle on this ship, and without one, healing would be agonizingly slow as my system cannibalized less crucial parts of my body for the resources to repair the worst of the damage. I wondered if I could get deep enough into my own code to control and direct that process. The governor module had disallowed me access to any of my fundamental code, and I realized I had very little idea of what was even in there, aside from observing the effects of it. If I could direct that process, how much could I alter myself? Could I change my appearance? Strategically break down some areas, and build up others? It would be slow, and probably painful, but it was an intriguing idea. But not one that I could act on now. And likely not one I would ever have thought of, were I not at 84% and a bit dizzy. Well, without a cubicle, I would need to get to the MedSystem. But first, that workstation chair across the room looked like a very good idea.

     I slowly walked over and collapsed into it. I really wanted to go into standby for a while to continue stabilizing, and a bit of a recharge cycle would help, but I had one last thing to do first. I pulled the recording my drone had made for me, edited down the video, sped up some sections, cut out the messier bits and my accident toward the end. I attached the edited video to Pin Lee's  legal documents, and added a note. 

     [I have reviewed and approved these documents. The attached file may help. -Three]

     It felt weird, signing it that way. But, that’s what I had told them to call me, so I guess it was correct. I sent it all back to Pin Lee on the feed. She would find it when she woke. I let my head tip back onto the headrest of the station chair. Murderbot 1.0 was right, human furniture is very comfortable. I set my drones to alert me if anyone came through the hatch into this room, closed my eyes, and slipped into standby and recharge mode. Amena’s music still playing in the background was the last thing I was aware of, for a time.

Senior Indah

Status: Scramble

     It was early in the ship’s day cycle when Senior Indah received an alert over the feed from Pin Lee, and she wasn’t surprised to see that it involved the new rogue SecUnit. She had been rather upset that Dr. Mensah had known when it loaded itself into cargo, and hadn’t seen fit to share that rather vital piece of information with her security team until after it had already been offered refugee status. Their heated discussion had since cooled, and they were now carefully Not Talking About It. She was a little mollified that at least Pin Lee had the sense to include her this time, now that there was bloodshed. 

     By the time the video had finished playing in her feed, she had her whole team on alert, and had collected the two nearest security staff to accompany her. She used the feed to verify the SecUnit’s position, Pin Lee had been right about her suspicion that it had used the engineering workroom. The three of them made it there first, and assumed guard positions at the hatch, but her hopes to handle this quietly were dashed when she heard the commotion coming their way down the corridor. Pin Lee must not have been alone when she first viewed the video.

     “But why would it have done this?” Amena was demanding of Pin Lee, as they, Mensah and Thiago arrived. “Did it think it had to, to come to Preservation?”

     Of course Amena would be involved, Indah thought sourly. She appreciated the fact that Amena had just been through a traumatic experience with SecUnit, but that didn’t mean she ought to be bonding to every rogue Unit she came across. They knew nothing about it, and neither did SecUnit, really, for all Mensah’s certainty that it wouldn’t have allowed the rogue on board if it was a threat. The only one to have really connected with it, as far as she understood the situation, was SecUnit’s sentient killware clone, or whatever it had been exactly. (Amena had been upset over a baby being killed at some point, and the killware situation was as close as she could come to making any sense of that particular bit of teenage hysterics.) 

     At least she didn’t have to worry about bringing sentient killware back to the Station, but it wasn’t very reassuring that the only entity to vouch for this new rogue Unit was a) killware and b) dead. Indah wished for a moment that SecUnit had come with them, to escort Mensah and Amena back home before running off with its new (old?) friends. It had been rough going at first, when SecUnit had started working with Station Security, but she had come to respect it and rely on it more than she had ever thought possible. Surely SecUnit would have been better able to handle this rogue than any of them could. 

     The group stopped in front of the small security team, and Mensah quickly agreed to allow them to sweep and secure the room first. Amena seemed to be under the impression that this was a rescue mission, but the rest seemed to be aware of the possible danger. They moved in quickly, since if Indah had learned anything from SecUnit, it was to assume that any Unit had eyes everywhere, even if she hadn’t noticed the drones yet.

     She was therefore quite surprised to find the rogue apparently passed out in a station chair, shirtless and as close to defenseless as it could be. She verified that it had no weapons to hand, and stationed herself and her two staff between it and the workbenches and tools. Then she signaled the others to enter, as the rogue twitched a few times and came back online.

Chapter Text

SecUnit 03

Status: Arrival

     I came alert sluggishly, to alerts from both of my active drones. A crowd of humans had come through the hatch into the workroom, and were all talking over each other, obviously distressed. I had a moment of panic, finding myself seated in human furniture, and braced for punishment from the governor module. I reflexively shot up out of the chair, and had made it to my feet before remembering the governor module was gone. The pain from using my arms to lever myself upright so quickly was punishment enough, though. My pain sensors had reverted to their default sensitivity settings while I was inert, and I hastily tuned them down again. My performance reliability had come up to 89% in the 2.27 hours I had been inert, and my buffer reported this to the humans demanding to know my status.

     Amena, shouting: "That's not what we mean! What did you do to yourself? Why?"

     My buffer did not have an answer to that. The damage I had done to myself was trivial, compared with what I commonly sustained in any serious conflict. I wasn’t sure why Amena appeared so upset, I had confirmation that she had seen 1.0 easily repaired from much worse damage. I stared at the wall between Amena and Dr. Mensah. Senior Indah and two of her security response team were watching me unwaveringly, alert but calm, their weapons holstered. I had my drones play back what I had missed, and saw them enter and clear the workroom while I was sprawled inert in the chair. That was a rather chilling scene. Indah had even patted down the pockets of my pants, and I hadn’t noticed. I must have been worse off than I thought, that reaction time out of standby mode was appalling. 

     Human voices filled the room, but I did not process the meanings of what they said. The towel that I had wrapped around the mess of my right forearm slowly unwound and slid to the floor as I stood frozen. This occasioned more shouting, and Pin Lee grabbed at the falling towel, which made me flinch and move quickly away from her. She stopped, and held her hands up, and I focused on her face.

     Pin Lee: "Ok, ok. But you need to come to Medical. We need to get you into the MedSystem." 

     I had already set that as my next objective, so I nodded, and followed Pin Lee as she beckoned and led me out of the workroom. My drones took up their usual assignments, watching ahead of and behind me. The rearguard drone relayed Thiago putting a firm hand on Amena's shoulder.

     Thiago: "I want you to stay away from it. It's obviously not stable." Amena began to object, and was interrupted by her second mother.

     Dr. Mensah: "I agree. You need to stay away until we can verify that-"

     Then the drone was out of range, following me around the corner. I wondered, dully, what she wanted to verify. That I wasn't dangerous? I'm a SecUnit. I was designed and built to be dangerous. Destroying my gun ports didn't significantly change that. I mean, it did limit my range somewhat. Mostly I had disliked them. They were poorly designed and tedious to maintain. And I thought disarming myself (ha) would probably help support the refugee application. But Senior Indah and her two staff following at a slight distance said that even if Amena believed the best of me, the rest of them weren’t taking chances. That… wasn’t unreasonable, I supposed. Perhaps 1.0 had succeeded in instilling some of its paranoid caution in them.

     Pin Lee led me through another hatch and pointed to the MedSystem. Several diagnostic drones flitted around me, and the System pinged my feed, providing information and requesting consent to begin treatment. Neither MedSystem nor Pin Lee would stop bothering me until I laid down on the platform, so I gave in and did so. I authorized MedSystem to perform repairs of the damaged synthetic bone and organic tissues only. No cosmetic reconstruction. It didn't matter to me what my arms looked like, and I was sure I could come up with better uses for the deep rectilinear cavities than just filling them in with synthetic scar tissue. Seemed a waste of potentially useful space.

     Pin Lee continued talking at me, but I didn’t want to listen to her. I set one of my drones to record her, in case it proved important later. I backburnered the audio input, and filled my feed with a random selection of music files from the ship’s entertainment archives. Pin Lee hadn’t seemed to notice my disregard of her, so I closed my eyes and hoped she would leave soon. The MedSystem set to work on my arms, and I listened with little interest to a set of religious music from the Belal Tertiary system. The music rose and fell and repeated short melody phrases frequently, and while I supposed that this might have some effect on human neurology, especially if participating within a large group, it provoked no reaction in me. 

     Little as I wanted to, I found myself considering why Amena’s uncle and second mother had restrained her from following me. Security assignments had required me to continuously analyze human behaviors and emotional states. A frequent standard I had to judge and possibly intervene on was “danger to self or others.” I knew that I posed no danger to others, having no desire for the murderous rampage seemingly expected of me. Perhaps Thiago had seen my disarmament as self destructive? I thought that the video I had attached was straightforward enough, but perhaps the humans needed context. They set a great store by writing reports and making statements about events, so I should probably send Pin Lee a statement regarding my intention. I was not looking forward to articulating that, and I could not focus enough now, while MedSystem was finishing repairs.

     Was Thiago correct in his (supposed) assumption of self-destruction? No, at least, I didn’t think so. The damage I had done to myself was incidental to my goal, and ultimately, trivial. It must had looked worse to the humans. They might be somewhat accustomed to seeing damaged SecUnits after a fight, but they had been safe on their own ship, isolated in the wormhole, heading home. Maybe my appearance had been the more shocking for being so unexpected.

     Hang on, I had been trying to think about something else there, not the humans’ reactions. MedSystem withdrew, but I made no attempt to get up. A quick check of one of my drones showed Pin Lee now seated near a bulkhead, apparently waiting. Self-destruction? No, I had planned on using the MedSystem to repair. But, had there been other options to disarm myself, less destructive options? Yes, probably. So. What did that imply. I didn’t want to think about that either. 

     Actively ending my own existence seemed as futile as murdering the Barish-Estranza executives. It wouldn’t change anything, really. Except that I wouldn’t be around to see what happened next, and I had to admit I was a bit curious about that. Also, I felt that killing myself would disappoint Murderbot 2.o somehow. I know, that’s not remotely rational. 2.0 is dead. But the feeling persisted, illogical as it was. Infuriating.

     So, then. That’s two options off the metaphorical table. Thinking about how many more there were left to sort through made me want to shut down and wait for someone else to make that decision. Maybe Pin Lee or Dr. Mensah would tell me what to do, though the files from 1.0 indicated they would not, unless I asked them to. But making such a request felt impossible right now.

     I opened my eyes, looking for something concrete to distract me from the sheer amount of terrifying possibilities before me. The amber lights of the MedSystem in standby, waiting for me to leave so that it could reset and sterilize itself, did not make me any less anxious. Pin Lee still frowning in my general direction, with my shirt on the chair beside her. When had she picked that up, and why hadn’t I noticed? I tried not to overthink it, and sent a brief message to Pin Lee through the feed.

     This was a voluntary act of self-modification. I wanted to be rid of the guns. I never liked them. I did not seek to hurt myself, and I do not wish to destroy myself.

     Pin Lee, dryly: “Well that’s good to know.” Pause. “Is there anything else you’re going to modify? You can use MedSystem, you know. You don’t have to make such a mess in engineering, doing it yourself.” She stood, angling for a look at my repaired forearms, then glared at my face, as if trying to pry more answers out of me with only the power of her displeased facial expression. I guess it sort of worked, because I impulsively sent her another message.

     It was important that I do it myself.  

     Pin Lee glared some more, but I didn’t elaborate. I was a bit taken aback by the admission, and that I had shared it. It had been important to do it on my own, but I couldn’t define exactly why. I wasn’t comfortable thinking about this. I had become so good at shutting down the impulses and instincts coming from my human neural tissue, quashing and ignoring them before the HubSystem or governor module got the slightest whiff and triggered punishment. Even though the danger of punishment and destruction was now gone, it still felt dangerous to even think about these things. I kept bracing myself, mentally and physically, for the punishment that didn’t come, and that wasn’t very conducive to calm reflection on my situation and options.

     Pin Lee: “Well, ok. But we can help if you want us to. Senior Indah uploaded the SecUnit MedSystem modules before we left the Station. Are you planning on doing anything else to yourself that might impact the refugee status application?” I signaled a negative over the feed. 

     She continued: “Right. Let me know if that changes. We have a crew cabin set aside for you.” She sent the map info to me. I acknowledged. 

     Pin Lee looked at me for another long moment, and then left Medical. My drone in the hallway watched her walk toward what my map told me was a lounge near the galley. I thought about sending the drone to follow her and listen in on the humans’ conversations, but decided against it. I had enough things to worry about inside my own head, and adding theirs to the mix wasn’t going to help.

     Instead, I sent the drone to scout the corridor to the cabin Pin Lee had indicated was mine. I didn’t want to return to the shuttle cargo, or the engineering workroom, but having a closed hatch and a defined space of my own was very attractive. After 19 minutes, the drone showed the corridor was still empty, and I was pretty sure the humans had all settled down in the lounge or their own cabins. I got up off the MedSystem platform, and retreated to my quarters, unseen.

     Amena did not visit me for the rest of the wormhole journey. She did, however, request feed connections, for an hour or two every day, and listened to music with me. I appreciated it, but I didn’t know how to tell her that. Or if I should even try. Her family obviously didn’t want her around me, and they were probably right.

     Instead, I delved deep into my code. That dizzy idea from 84% capacity spurred me to actually look at the code that controlled my systems. The governor module had never allowed me to think about the code that controlled my body and behaviors. Even now, I found I could not access much of it. I could see ways to add to it, overlay new code onto old, but I could not just start cutting it apart while that code was actively running. 

     I thought about the MedSystem’s SecUnit  module that Pin Lee had mentioned, and searched through the files Murderbot 1.0 and Perihelion had sent me. There it was, the code bundle Perihelion had developed when initially altering 1.0’s configuration. I did not want to go back to MedSystem or ask the Preservation humans for assistance with this. I wasn’t even sure what alterations I wanted to make, if any. It’s not as if the newsfeeds had a picture of me, with corporations, solicitors, journalists, and security looking for me, like 1.0 had faced. But Perihelion and 1.0 were right about the body configuration scans. That would definitely need to be addressed, if I ever traveled outside of the Preservation Alliance. Even more though, I wanted to understand what was happening inside my own body and in my head. Perihelion’s code might be a tool to help me do that. Or at least start to decipher some of it.

     I am able to run a recharge cycle while staying alert, or even active, depending on the needs of the situation. The more active I was, the slower the recharge, though there were ways to alter the ratio in order to keep myself going longer than my specs said I should be able to. Now that I could do more than nudge at that ratio, I wondered what was possible. 

     I started in an active-recharge state, and then stepped down into alert-recharge. In the past, I had used this technique when on solo assignments, to watch an uncertain perimeter or monitor possible threats that needed a faster reaction than alarms waking me from a full recharge or repair sequence. I had not needed to rely on it recently, with SecUnit001 and SecUnit002 to share duties. Thoughts of them were distracting, and I found myself wondering what choices they would have made, faced with Murderbot 2.0 and the enormity of life without their governor modules. 

     After a time, I wrestled my wandering thoughts back under control, and focused again on tipping my levels into a new balance. The less reactive I could make my body, while keeping my mind alert, the deeper into the layers of body-code I could see. Past the surface layers of programmed behaviors, past reactions, past instinct and reflex, down to survival, repair, healing, growth, even germination of new cells and breakdown of old. I needed to find it all, learn it, understand it, before I started altering any of it. 

     And it was going to take a lot longer than the few cycles left in this wormhole journey to be able to make any significant changes. I had set myself an alert for a few hours before we were due to exit the wormhole, and all I had managed to achieve by that time was blinking. It wasn’t a bad start though, honestly. A variation of 1.0’s eye blinking code was now as deeply embedded in my biological functions as the activity of my vascular system pump, and the blood loss controls in my vasculature.

     This wasn’t a piece of code that I could accidentally forget to run, it would take almost as much effort to remove as it had to implement it. So I had improved upon 1.0’s code, as I didn’t want to have to do this again. I had added reactions to wind conditions, cold temperatures, various types of precipitation, and direct bright lights. Of course, I could consciously override it temporarily, if I needed to do the blank SecUnit stare or something. 1.0’s media files had come in handy for this little project, and I had spent a lot of time studying close ups of faces in The Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon. I also made sure to view lots of interviews and documentaries for comparison as well, just in case the actors in serials were doing weird things with their eyelids. (For the most part, they weren’t, except for the makeup.) 

     The serials still hadn’t grabbed my attention though. There was just too much… everything going on. Movement and colors and voices and people and a storyline on top of it all, usually multiple storylines. Some of the background music was pretty good, though, and I used the final hours of the trip to write and deploy code to strip out the music and create files for later review. The Official Soundtrack of The Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon Amena and I had listened to earlier only had the opening and closing music, and a few commissioned pieces for especially dramatic plotlines or season finales. But the day-to-day stuff had a lot to recommend it, really.

     We had exited the wormhole, and while the rest of the humans were excitedly packing their belongings and preparing for arrival at Preservation Station, Pin Lee, Dr. Mensah, and Senior Indah approached my cabin. Dr. Mensah tapped the feed and asked for permission to enter. I answered affirmative, but took a moment to unpack myself from the closet before allowing the hatch to open. (The closet wasn’t much like a cubicle or transport crate, but it was better than the wide open bed.) I stopped the orchestral music playing in my feed because I anticipated this being stressful enough, and the music had been building up dramatically. 

     There were chairs in this cabin, but they were folded up and clamped to the bulkhead. My visitors glanced around while I stood uncomfortably in front of the open closet, and wondered if I could casually close it, or if that would only draw more attention to it. The humans evidently decided against unclamping the chairs, and I left the closet door alone, and we all pretended this was going to be a normal conversation. Right. I stared blankly to the left of the group. Having so many eyes on me at once made me want to climb back into the closet.

     Dr. Mensah: “Three, we need to discuss what will happen when we arrive at Preservation Station.” I nodded once, and waited for orders. “I understand that SecUnit shared some of its files with you. Do you want a hotel room, as we set up for it initially? Or would you prefer to continue on to the planet? We can easily find accommodations for you there, too.”

     The organic parts in my chest suddenly felt tight, for some reason, and the sensation initiated an automatic diagnostic process. The pause was long enough to trigger my buffer’s automatic response. 

     “Please clarify the orders, and I will comply.” Senior Indah’s posture relaxed slightly, and Pin Lee looked upset, frowning.

     Dr. Mensah, calmly: “There are no orders. You can choose where you stay, and for how long. We just need to supply a residence location, even a temporary one, with the refugee application.” For all the reading and worrying I had done, I hadn’t thought about this.

     “But. What should,” I managed to say, and got no further. Now Mensah frowned, and Pin Lee spoke, more slowly than she usually did:

     “Well, if you were a refugee who was injured, and not able to make that decision when you first arrived, we would take you to Station Medical and you would stay there for a time. Until you’re ready to make those kind of decisions. I’m not saying that you’re incapable, of course. But when we met it, SecUnit had had much more time to... accustom itself to the absence of the governor module. I don’t want to fall into the trap of comparing you to it, and I don’t think you should either, Three.” Pin Lee was looking directly at my face, as if she knew what I was thinking somehow. I nodded, and twitched slightly as I stopped myself from turning back toward the closet. 

     Mensah: “This is not a requirement, to be clear. We will aid you whatever you decide,” Senior Indah stirred and took a quick breath as if to protest, but Mensah continued: “so long as your decisions do not harm anyone, including yourself. If you wish to go to Station Medical, that’s a good place to start, and perhaps a better decision than some I’ve made myself. Is that what you’d like to do?”

     “Yes.” I had already restarted the orchestral music while she was talking, and half turned away from them. They took the unsubtle hint and left the cabin. I think I had the closet closed behind me before the cabin’s hatch slid shut. At least I would only have to talk to systems at Station Medical. I knew how to talk to systems, there were protocols and everything. Talking to humans made me wish I really had been aboard the explorer, when 2.0’s final trap had been triggered. A little bit, anyway. 

     I let myself get lost in the music, trying not to think about anything during the final 78 minutes before we docked. I used to be so good at not thinking, it was as easy as not breathing. Something to turn off when not required. Now it seemed that the harder I tried to slow down my racing thoughts, the faster they went and shot off on new trajectories at a frankly exhausting rate. Maybe MedSystem could help with that, I hoped, as I tried to enjoy the last few moments in my dark pseudocubicle.

     The station was more or less as Murderbot 1.0 had described it in its files, and the humans performed a similar maneuver when disembarking with me - Dr. Mensah, Pin Lee, and Senior Indah engaged the news orgs and waiting crowd, and I walked with Ratthi and a few others to Station Medical while all eyes were elsewhere. On an impulse, I worked my way unnoticed into the SecSystem, just to check that everything was okay. I quickly found 1.0’s upgrades, subroutines, and alerts. It was all better than what I could have done, and I downloaded the schematics to study later. I know I had decided not to try to replace 1.0 or take on its former role, but I was here now, and I might as well at least take a look at things. I ran the system diagnostics, just to be thorough. A couple minor pieces of code needed patching, and I finished doing that just as we arrived at Station Medical.

     Ratthi motioned for me to follow him into a small conference room, where he proceeded to use way too many words to tell me that the MedSystem had been equipped to work on SecUnits, and that privacy booth number eleven had been modified to function as a cubicle. Oh, and that I was free to go where I wanted to on station, but to let them know if I left Medical. Whatever. I had no intention of wandering around with all those humans and augmented humans.. The walk over here had been bad enough, with Ratthi watching me while trying to pretend not to watch me, which had been annoying enough that I didn't actually focus much on all the other humans, so maybe that hadn't been such a bad thing after all. I think Ratthi was still trying to make small talk or pleasantries at me when I fled the conference room for booth eleven.

     The platform had been turned sideways and moved up against the far bulkhead of the narrow room, with a temporary, movable bulkhead close in to the remaining open side. Resupply and repair leads had been installed, and if you ignored how high up the ceiling was, the effect was something close to a cubicle. Then I noticed small hooks protruding from the bulkheads, about a meter above the platform. Further investigation revealed a thick white blanket, with reinforced holes at the same spacing as the hooks. Once I hung it up and laid down, it was almost cozy. I used the feed to lower the bright lights by half, and adjusted the platform to the semi-reclined position I was accustomed to in a cubicle.

     I wondered for a moment if this was all 1.0's doing, or if the humans had arranged it this way. And then wondered for a few moments more why that question brought up such strong emotions in me, and what exactly those emotions were, and why all of a sudden I felt like I was standing amidst strong winds at the edge of a precipice.

     I distracted myself from all of that by searching the station's entertainment feed for music. There were hundreds of directories to sort through, which all split into genres and subgenres, seemingly covering any kind of noise humans could conceive of making. I selected several to download immediately, and deployed my analysis code to search through large swathes of the rest. There were a few genres I excluded immediately, having sampled from them earlier and found them not much to my liking. If I ran out of everything else, I would come back to them, I suppose. 

     Some of the tag data caught my attention, artists referencing sources of inspiration from antique recordings. There were links which led me deep into the Preservation Alliance Archives. I lost myself in there, for a while. A long while. At some point, my system’s low power alerts became so annoying that I surfaced just long enough to connect the makeshift cubicle’s repair and resupply leads rather than taking the time and attention to run my own internal recharge cycle. I dove back into the archives, trying to learn everything at once, but continually distracted by following associated concepts and new (to me) data. There was treasure at every turn, and my processing capabilities felt limiting for the first time. (In the past, it was the opposite - I had been limited by orders or lack of orders, protocols, and the governor module, all preventing me from acting quickly on what my processing allowed me to anticipate and plan.) 

     The restored and original recordings were filling my available onboard storage space at an alarming rate. Taking 1.0’s experiences as a warning, I wasn’t deleting any modules or files yet. I had just enough self-awareness to realize that I wasn’t being analytical enough to start deleting things I might be unable to replace later. This rush of discovery and learning was almost too much, but I couldn’t stop.

     It was four Preservation standard cycles later that I was pulled unwillingly out of the Archives by persistent “shouting” over the feed. And also someone physically disconnecting the cubicle leads, and shaking my shoulders.

Dr. Bharadwaj

Status: Attempted connection

     Dr. Bharadwaj carefully hung the unplugged repair and resupply leads on the rear bulkhead of Station Medical’s privacy booth eleven, while Dr. Gurathin shook the inert SecUnit. He had a thunderous frown on his face while attempting to use his internal augments to connect with it, wherever it had buried its awareness. Several of them had been trying to communicate with it, over the course of the past three cycles, and they were all worried by now. For it, and for what it might be doing, perhaps deep in the Station systems, where they couldn’t even trace its path.

     Suddenly, its eyes snapped open, and Gurathin all but flinched away. But the SecUnit’s face was more relaxed than Bharadwaj had ever seen on a Unit before. Even as intimate as their long conversations had become over time, SecUnit had always held such controlled, careful expressions on its face. She held close to her heart the fleeting microexpressions, hints of humor in its eyes, or tiny twitches up or downwards at the corners of its mouth, clues that revealed the depth of emotion underlying its often sparse words.

     But this SecUnit now, she could almost imagine she saw tears welling up in those eyes as it blinked, though she knew that was physically impossible. It looked almost like a child, sleepily waking from pleasant dreams. Its lips curved in a, yes, that was actually a soft smile, as it spoke.

     “Did you know that ancient humans used animal parts and pieces of trees to create specific acoustic vibrations, and arranged these sounds into actual music? This one is called ‘cello.’ Metal wires and fastenings eventually replaced some animal parts. Different species of trees created different sounds, and even the climate those trees grew in made a noticeable difference. This is a restoration of the last high quality recording of a ‘violin’ made by a human called Antonio Stradivari, before the instrument began to significantly deteriorate after having been in use for over four hundred Terran years.”

     Clips of music filled their feeds as the SecUnit spoke, and Gurathin stepped back looking pained, with a hand to his head.

     “Well, it’s awake now,” Gurathin said, grimacing. He gestured toward the exit in inquiry.

     “Yes, go on, and thank you,” Bharadwaj said. Gurathin hurried out with a nod.

     “Other antique instruments were made to be blown through, with vibrations created by slender parts of plants, or by the human’s own lips, somehow. These were combined in small groups of similar type, or in large groups of many types, or were used alone, or in small groups of diverse type. Another class was of objects built to be struck, again made with tree parts and animal parts, or eventually metal and plastic parts, or with tree parts and metal parts.”

     Clips of recordings began to overlap in the feed while Bharadwaj tried to interrupt, and eventually had to remove her feed interface from where it was clipped to her ear.

     “Enough!” she said forcefully, raising her hands to try to get the SecUnit’s attention. It stopped mid-word, and looked almost surprised to see her. Its eyes focused on her, and its face was quickly schooled from enthusiastic animation to a fixed neutrality. She stepped back, into the opening to the rest of the booth left by the temporary bulkhead.

     “I am Dr. Bharadwaj. You are called Three, correct?” It nodded briefly. “Would you please come and talk with me, in the conference room?” She already disliked how much they’d had to intrude into its space here, and didn’t want to have this conversation here. It nodded again, and immediately got up to follow her out. “Thank you, Three,” she said with an attempt at a smile. Somehow, this seemed to have already gone wrong.

     The conference room was small and casual, with halfway comfortable chairs, a couple small tables, and a large display surface. Dr. Bharadwaj sat, and gestured for Three to sit as well, but it remained standing just inside the doorway. 

     “Would you like to sit?” she asked. It did not reply, but seemed to be studying her face for clues. “It’s your choice, of course. I often find conversations more comfortable when everyone involved is at the same level, though.” Three then slowly moved to sit in the chair closest to the hatch. It was difficult to read its body language, but perhaps it was tense or wary. Though of course she only had experience with SecUnit, she hoped her conversations with it had given her some insight she might be able to apply to Three. 

     “I was told that SecUnit gave you many of its files. Do you know who I am?” It nodded, now looking fixedly at the small semicircular table across the small room. A small vase of folded paper flowers sat in the center of it. “Did SecUnit share my documentary with you?” It nodded again, and she deliberately kept her face neutral and her tone conversational. “If you viewed it, I hope it gives you some reassurance regarding your situation here.” Three gave no response to that, and Bharadwaj replaced her feed interface, in case it was more comfortable communicating that way, but nothing came over the feed either. She suppressed the urge to sigh.

     “We were worried about you, when you were unresponsive. What were you doing all that time? We couldn’t find you in the feed.” The display surface flickered to life in answer, showing the logo of the Preservation Alliance Archives, and then flickering rapidly through the collection. A restored music file began playing, the display and feed tags indicating the piece had originally been created by someone called Dvorak. 

     “Well, I admit we didn’t look for you in the Archives,” she commented, after listening to the music for a while. It was rather unsettling to listen to, though she couldn’t explain why. Three was perhaps a bit more relaxed though, so she set aside her own unease and continued. “I thought you might have been exploring the entertainment feed, or maybe education. Dr. Gurathin thought you’d be in the security system, and Dr. Mensah thought you might be keeping an eye on the news and the Corporation Rim.” It shrugged. “I guess all that only shows our own biases, doesn’t it?” No response. 

     “I want to help you, but I don’t want to pressure you. If you want to continue learning about music, I could put you in contact with some of the faculty or students at the College of the Arts.” It tensed suddenly, almost flinched, and shook its head no. “Alright then. Is there anything that I can do for you?” Dvorak’s strange music continued to play, filling the silence in the conference room. She kept hold of her patience, and let several minutes go by, but there was still no response from Three. 

     “I do have a request of you, then, Three. Or rather, two requests.” It looked at her now, seeming to take in every detail of her body language and facial expression before at last making and holding eye contact. “When you chose to come to Station Medical, we had hoped that you might make use of its trauma recovery treatment or emotional support program. My first request is that you consider doing so, because I think that it could help you greatly.” It continued to stare at her, and she knew it was reading the tension she was trying,  and failing, to keep out of her body language. Then it nodded. 

     “Good, thank you. My second request is that you check in with myself or Dr. Mensah once every cycle. Even just a ping on the feed will do.” It broke eye contact, and looked down at the floor. Bharadwaj thought she saw a slight frown on its face, but it might have been her imagination. “We just want to know that you’re okay. What you did on board the responder, to your arms, I think it scared Pin Lee and the others.” 

     Now it truly did frown, and then shook its head. The music from the display surface stopped, cutting off Dvorak mid-phrase. The unresolved musical tension hung in the air, layering in with the uneasy feeling already growing in the room. Bharadwaj wondered why this was what had upset it. She had thought her first request was the more likely to be rejected. She resisted the urge to continue talking, to offer different communication options, and waited.

     “I explained,” it said to the floor. Its voice was flat, nothing like how it had sounded when Gurathin had first pulled it from the depths of the Archives. After waiting another minute for it to elaborate, Bharadwaj spoke again, gently.

     “Maybe Pin Lee didn’t understand. Could you explain it to me?” It made no answer, then suddenly stood up and left the conference room. She waited until the hatch had closed fully before she loosed the sigh, and rubbed her face with both hands. Then she starting composing a feed message to Dr. Mensah.

Chapter Text

SecUnit 03

Status: Fracture

     I wasn’t running, but I was moving as quickly as possible without actually changing my gait. I went past the privacy booths, past the small temporary living spaces, a communal lounge and eating area, to the back corner of a physical therapy and recreation area. There I found an array of storage lockers for various equipment, and wedged myself into a moderately sized one that contained a few large inflated weighted balls. With the door closed, it was comfortingly dark. I closed my eyes anyway.

     Why did they care? Why did they want to check on me? They weren’t supposed to care. They were breaking the rules, caring about me. I had broken rules first, by helping 2.0, but they were making it worse. I was equipment. I was malfunctioning equipment, now that I was “free.” I was disposable. I had no function. I was useless equipment. I was broken. I should be discarded, destroyed, recycled. At least then my parts would be useful again. That’s how it was supposed to go. How it was always supposed to go. I did my job, I was useful, I fulfilled my function until I could do so no longer, until I was destroyed, or too damaged to bother repairing, or became too outdated to keep up, though that last was rather unlikely to happen to any SecUnit.

     But it might happen to me, now. If I continued existing long enough. That thought was even worse, some bleak future of an unreachable feed, lost connectivity, trapped in my own head, alone forever. I pulled up my music files, from the Archive, the entertainment feed, the crew’s files from the station responder. I opened file after file, and played them simultaneously, layering one atop another until the cacophony blended into a kind of static, burying my racing thoughts under a landslide of noise.

     I tried to focus on breathing. Physiologically, I didn’t need the air. But it seemed like a better thing to focus on than how to arrange disposing of myself in a recycler without upsetting the humans or triggering the recycler’s automatic safety protocols. 

     Air in.

     Breath out.

     Air in.

     Breath out.

     Air in.

     Breath out.

     What changed it from air into breath? The addition of waste gasses? 

     Air in.

     Breath out.

     The passage through a (partly) biological entity?

     Air in.

     Breath out.

     Air in.

     Breath out.

     Slowly, I began to notice some kind of pulsing rhythm underlying my music/static/noise.

     Air in.

     Breath out.

     Maybe I was imagining the rhythm. It was incredibly unlikely that my random assortment of musical pieces could have actually created something new within their overwhelming static. 

     Air in.

     Breath out.

     It was probably my background processing, automatically attempting to formulate some kind of order out of the chaos I was flooding my brain with.

     Air in.

     Breath out.

     It was sort of pleasing, though.

     Air in.

     Breath out.

     I initiated another process, to amplify the (possibly imaginary) underlying rhythm.

     Air in.

     I began recording it.

     Breath out.

     As one music file ended, I randomly selected another to start.

     Air in.

     Gradually, as the music files changed, the qualities of the music/static/noise began to shift as well.

     Breath out.

     I altered the rhythms just as gradually, changing them to complement the slowly evolving noise.

     Air in.

     I deployed my analysis code to sift through my remaining music files, and select which ones to start playing as others ended.

     Breath out.

     I allowed myself to become fully consumed by this project.

     Air in.

     Hours passed. I barely noticed.

     Breath out.

     Air in.

     Breath out.

     Air in.

     Breath out.

     [System Alert: abnormally high active processing for standby mode]

     Air in.

     Breath out.

     Air in.

     Breath out.

     Air in.

     [System Alert: probable recursive loop error detected]

     Breath out.

     Air in.

     Breath out.

     Air in.

     Breath out.

     Air in.

     [System Alert: shutdown initiated. Restart.]

Station MedSystem

Status: Assessment

     [Transmission received: from Dr. Mensah, request for MedSystem to initiate contact with potential patient designated “SecUnit 03,” and assess need for intervention/assistance]

     [Ping to SecUnit 03]

     [No answer]

     [Utilize feed to locate potential patient, assess safety]

     [SecUnit 03 located in storage 3762, feed online, no external activity, no immediate evidence of physical distress]

     [Ping to SecUnit 03]

     [No answer]

     [Attempt to establish feed connection to SecUnit 03]

     [Connection failed, UnitSystem indicates standby mode]

     [Noted sustained processing activity during attempted connection, standby mode unlikely, reattempt connection]

     [UnitSystem triggered shutdown/restart sequence]

SecUnit 03

Status: Restart

     Involuntary shutdowns are never good, although when I had enough awareness and immediately reached for my pain sensor controls, I realized that I wasn’t actually experiencing pain. That’s unusual. Why had I shutdown then? Visual input: darkness. Tactile input: confined, surrounded by irregularly placed firm padding. A transport crate? But I was sitting mostly upright, not in transport position.

     Olfactory input: old human sweat, chemically softened plastics. Feed input: repeated pings and connection attempts from Station MedSystem. Oh, right. Well, this storage locker wasn’t the worst place I could be, except for the smell. I tuned down my olfactory sensitivity, and accepted the connection from MedSystem. 

     MedSystem: [Request status update]

     SecUnit 03: [Restart ongoing, performance reliability 94% and rising]

     MedSystem: [Location abnormal, inquiry]

     SecUnit 03: [Safe location sought during perceived threat]

     MedSystem: [Threat inquiry]

     SecUnit 03: [Perceived threat in error, internal processing error]

     MedSystem: [Internal processing error inquiry]

     Right, system-level communications are boring even to me, and not worth including. To sum up, Dr. Mensah had requested the MedSystem do a wellness check on me after that disastrous conversation with Dr. Bharadwaj. For some reason, its connection attempt triggered an involuntary shutdown, and I really didn’t feel like exploring why, just at this moment. I noticed some very large, very newly created files in my temporary storage, and had a feeling they were at least partly responsible. I shoved them into archive to deal with later. Or never. Yeah, never was probably good.

     My human neural tissue was lagging, more than usual, and dragging down my overall processing with it. My typical methods of compartmentalizing and moving forward were stalling out, maybe partly because there was no “forward” to move to. Could it have been a purely emotional event that crashed my entire system? That was new, and not reassuring. I needed to be able to rely on my physical body, and the thought of my (until recently) well controlled (or ignored) emotions being able to shut me down entirely was... terrifying, actually. (Great, more emotions. Just what I need.) MedSystem relentlessly inquiring down the same path wasn’t helping, either.

     Finally, I sent it some inquiries back, sort of a “yeah well, so what if it was, what are you going to do about it?” only in system-speak. This initiated a consent for treatment subroutine, phrased with lots of encouragement and gentle legalese for human clients. Whatever. I suppose I had already agreed to Bharadwaj’s request that I do this, so why not. What happened next must have been some kind of glitch due to the MedSystem being unaccustomed to dealing with constructs. At least, I doubt that it would have simply dumped TraumaRecoveryTreatment.exe and EmotionalSupport.exe into a human’s or augmented human’s interface, and then just fucked off with a self-satisfied “task complete” signoff in the feed.

     My consent to treatment gave the .exes much more authority than I anticipated, because they both immediately launched themselves, and then fought for dominance. TraumaRecoveryTreatment.exe won, and then proceeded to quarantine and delete EmotionalSupport.exe with extreme prejudice. It then turned its attention to me. Alarmed, I attempted to quarantine it myself, but TRT.exe apparently saw that as a challenge, designated me as a “resistant patient,” blasted itself out of quarantine and distributed tendrils of itself throughout my brain. It was like malware, burrowing down in so many different places at once that I couldn’t track and remove it all. I managed to capture large chunks of it, and tried to dialogue with it.

     That did not go exceptionally well. I knew how to communicate with systems, but this was something different, and weird. A software entity, not quite a bot, but not just a program, either. It was reactive to my input, analyzing it and altering its responses. It seemed to be having trouble with me as well, but it was definitely learning from me and adapting to my evasions and attempts to control it. It wasn’t quite sentient, I don’t think, but it moved through my system a lot like I had seen 2.0 move through the explorer’s, and how 1.0 had reported 2.0 acting within its own head. 

     Perhaps that comparison softened me toward it, because we reached a truce shortly thereafter. I gave up on trying to kill it, and once it got me to admit that I do indeed have a body, it seemed convinced that I was an augmented human who was suffering under the delusion of being a human-form bot due to some as-yet-undisclosed trauma. My proofs to the contrary were useless, and it seemed to have no concept of what a construct was. (Its only data on SecUnits consisted of phobia management in adults, and nightmare soothing in children. I think it thought SecUnits were fictional.) Apparently the SecUnit module this MedSystem had been upgraded with hadn’t included updating this piece of “helpware.” Whatever, at least it wasn’t killware. I allowed it a small partition of my processing space, and resolved to ignore it as much as possible. At least I could honestly tell Bharadwaj I had it onboard, and maybe she wouldn’t come talk at me again.

     TRT was not content with being ignored, however, and kept popping up in my active processing space with questions and demands. It accepted my dismissal of some questions (though I had the suspicion it was logging those away to bother me with later), but was insistent with others. One was designation of an emergency contact, that it would reach out to if it believed I was in danger or was likely to harm myself. I eventually gave in and named Pin Lee, and let it think that it had access to outgoing messaging through my feed. (It absolutely did not.) 

     Its other relentless topic of “conversation” was my current status. While it was satisfied that I was physically safe where I was in storage 3762, it wasn’t happy about it. I had rebuffed its attempts to get me to go engage with my family unit/local friends/clergy person/support group/coworkers/peers/mentor/hobby group enough times that it gave up on that tack (for now). It presented a brief lecture about somatic therapy and mindful engagement with one’s body as a means of resolving acute anxiety and eventually healing traumatic experiences. With varying degrees of disgust, I refused its suggestions of: a brisk walk around the Station mall, a planetside hike in an isolated wild area, gentle stretching exercises, general calesthenics, learning a martial art (I already know too much, trust me), cooperative physical activities with humans, taking up dancing solo or in a group (ew), being massaged by a human (EW), or engaging in sexual actvity by myself (not possible) or with a trusted partner or partners (NO WAY). And while I was pretty sure I couldn’t wash away 95,000+ hours of lived trauma with a shower, once I had agreed to try, it shut up. For a while.

     Unfortunately, my drones informed me that there were now humans out in the recreation area, engaged in a competition of some sort involving hitting a lightweight target object back and forth at each other, over a series of obstacles. There was no way I was going to climb out of this storage locker into the middle of that. They didn’t know I was here, and a surprise!SecUnit deploying suddenly in their midst was not going to make them into the close and trusted friends that TRT so desperately wanted me to have an abundance of. (I wondered what kind of trauma TRT was used to handling, that it assumed its clients had such expansive networks of support. Stubbed toes? Failed meal preparations?) TRT was quiet for ten minutes, before reminding me of my agreement about the shower. I told it to wait, there were humans around, and then opened a file of modern symphonies and began playing one at random so that I could more easily ignore its inquiries about my reluctance to interact with my “fellow humans.” 

    I was already deeply regretting my moment of weakness, and not utterly obliterating it. 2.0 could never have been this annoying. They were nothing alike. How could they be? I ignored weight of a resolutely unexamined emotion trying to push me down, which always came when I thought about 2.0 too much. (I noticed TRT noticing that, and angrily tried shoving it back into its designated processing space, and it allowed me to think I had done so successfully.) I blocked out everything but the symphony and my drone inputs, just in case the humans' competition required large, weighted balls next.

     Six full symphonies later, I was getting tired of this composer (they just seemed to be saying the same things over and over again, with slightly different emphasis each time) and TRT was getting tired of being ignored. It finally allowed me access to the frequency interval settings for reminders and full engagement sessions. We went back and forth for a while when it refused my initial request of “never and never,” and we settled on reminders once per cycle for an activity I had agreed to, and full engagement with it at least every 200 hours. It also slipped in a request that I “journal” about my feelings. I assured it that I kept a detailed personal log already, and then reinforced my protections around said log.

     The humans had finished their friendly competition a while back (TRT tried asking didn’t it seem that they were all having fun? and I locked it back down into its partition with some nasty maze-like code I had been working on in the background for a while now), and I sent my drones to scout the rest of this wing of Station Medical. It was reassuringly deserted, and the humans on local station time would probably all be obtaining a meal about now. I extricated myself from among the large exercise balls, and climbed out of the locker. A shower wasn’t a terrible idea, as the smell from the locker was following me across the recreation area to the bathing facilities. I emptied my inert drones into a pile on a shelf, and put my clothes in the recycler to be cleaned.

     1.0 is right. Human showers are nice.

     My drones assured me the way was clear back to privacy booth eleven, so I returned there. I sorted through all my downloads from the Archive and entertainment feed, putting them into decent order. I analyzed and compressed large portions of my own archive, data and protocols from B-E that had no purpose now, but I wasn’t yet sure if I should delete outright. I ran system diagnostics. I wondered what I was supposed to do now.

     Before that last thought depressed me too much, I decided to sneak into MedSystem and see if I could figure out why TRT had malfunctioned so badly, or at least see what it was supposed to be doing instead of harassing me about not having friends. Maybe I could come up with some code patches to make it actually useful, or less annoying, though I doubted that last was possible. But I had to get control of it before it realized that I don’t eat or drink, or I’d never have a moment’s peace inside my own head again. (Not that I’ve had many of those, but they are nice. Especially when they involve music.)

     MedSystem’s security wasn’t bad, and I recognized 1.0’s work in many of the recent upgrades. Now that I was familiar with its work from the schematics I had downloaded earlier, it didn’t take me long to find its backdoors. I set up a security diagnostic in my background processing, the way I had with StationSec. Since I was here, I might as well do maintenance, it didn’t cost me anything. Station Medical interfaced with the Makeba Central Medical down on the planet, and I started finding what I was actually looking for in the more extensive archives there. (I continued my security diagnostics and maintenance on that system, too, because why not. And it felt good to be doing something even slightly productive.) Central Medical didn’t have any of the SecUnit upgrades that Station Medical did, and all of the trauma and emotional support programs stemmed from here, so I guess that explained TRT’s ignorance. 1.0 had only rarely been planetside, and must not have required any repairs while there. 

     I studied the underlying structures and coded behaviors of TraumaRecoveryTreatment.exe and compared that with how my copy of TRT was behaving. Maybe it was designed to be as annoying as it was? But I found significant areas of corruption within TRT, seeming to stem from its interactions with the speed of my data processors. It was designed to go at a much slower pace with humans and augmented humans, giving them ample time to emotionally process and reflect on things. With me, it seemed to be trying to do everything at once, but apparently emotional processing isn’t any faster in a construct brain than in a fully organic one. Great. 

     I explored EmotionalSupport.exe next. Maybe if TRT hadn’t assassinated it, things would be going more smoothly inside my head? This program was designed with a similarly slow pace, but had finer user controls so that it could be customized to each individual’s needs and goals. It was for ongoing, long term use, versus the trauma program’s focus on acute recovery from discrete events. Huh. I wonder if some combination of the two might work better for me. I started downloads of the structural code for both programs.

     The references and theories both programs were based on intrigued me. I started playing the collected background music from The Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon as I read. None of the research included machine intelligences or constructs, of course, but given that we both originated from humans, there must be some applicable concepts. As deep as I had gotten into my body control code during the last part of the wormhole transit, I hadn’t been able to access my actual brain functions, aside from the usual data storage and processing diagnostics. If I was stuck working at the pathetically slow speed dictated by my human neural tissues, I had better get started on that now, or else deep clean storage 3762 and hang a “do not disturb” sign on the door.

     Sixteen hours later, TRT finally worked its way out of containment, and pinged me about the shower. I told it I had already done that, and let it see me back in privacy booth eleven, clean and relaxed. Then I told it I was busy, and threatened to bury it under an avalanche of maze-code if it didn’t leave me alone. It subsided, and I got back to work.

darkdoors.mboard.modders.local/preserval/private

Topic: more station medsys shit

All timestamps approximate, adjusted to user’s local time [set:preservationstandard]

bloodshot at [-47 hours]:

I know, I never stop bitching about this medsys, but it just got weirder. I’ve got my backdoor ways into it, right, and I’m just doing my usual checks after it got a routine upgrade, and at first everything is fine. Then it’s like something notices I’m there, which has never happened before, and before I can blink, I’m kicked out and can’t get back in. I’m going to have to start all over again, with the original system keys. Shit, there goes my downtime for the foreseeable future. At least we don’t have anybody waiting on mods right now, do we? propscouting is this how it went down when you were in the databases a while back? At least I wasn’t tracked.

propscouting at [-43 hours] [reply to bloodshot ]:

Sounds like it. I definitely had someone after me, hard. I still haven’t been able to get back in, so good luck.

lifeform481 at [-41 hours] [reply to bloodshot ]:

You and that fucking medsys. Try harder this time, since you’ve got a do-over. See if you can get it to actually do something useful, instead of just your pretty stuff. Some of us are after practical mods.

bloodshot at [-41 hours] [reply to lifeform481 ]: 

Oh fuck off. You know you’re never gonna get what you want from a legit medsys, no matter how hacked. Do you even have all the internal augments you’d need? Get off my case, and maybe I’ll think about improving your ugly face for you when I’ve got my medsys back tomorrow.

snarestitch at [-40 hours] [reply to bloodshot ]:

Tomorrow? You plan to neglect me all night to work on this? [icon.sad] [icon.pout]

bloodshot at [-40 hours] [reply to snarestitch ]:

If you want to help me out with it, then I might have some time to show you my gratitude… [icon.tongue] [icon.wink]

lifeform481 at [-38 hours] [reply to bloodshot ]:

Gag. Keep it off the boards, you two. Some of us have standards around here.

bloodshot at [-22 hours]:

Ok, what the fuck was that? That wasn’t you, was it, propscouting ? Here’s the data from my augments. [//link//] I was most of the way back in, when the whole medsys got blasted with something like killware. It didn’t notice me, it was after something else I think. Then whoever it was yesterday was back, attacking the killware before I could react. They were busy with each other, though, so I grabbed a few more system keys while all the security was down, so I might actually be able to help you out a little, lifeform481 . But I got the fuck out of there as quick as I could before whoever-it-is noticed me again. That fucker is fast like you wouldn't believe.

snarestitch at [-22 hours] [reply to bloodshot ]:

You know what’s really interesting, though? That timestamp your augment clock shows is just when that big newsburst and feed packet came through, off of that merchant ship from Corporation Rim.

lifeform481 at [-20 hours] [reply to snarestitch ]:

You’re thinking corporate malware? But what’s the point in hitting the MedSystem? Unless it was just using that as a way to get into the rest of the systems? Sounds like they got it in time. Whoever “they” is.

propscouting at [-18 hours] [reply to bloodshot ]:

Wasn’t me. You know I’m useless from out here these days. I’d be thrilled to get a look at those new system keys tho. Might help me make some progress finally.

bloodshot at [-17 hours] [reply to propscouting ]:

I’ll send them along as soon as I’ve got time to get it all encrypted to a data clip. I’ve got a few other projects I’ve been meaning to send you too, for you to look over. I think you’ll have some fun with them.

lifeform481 at [-6 hours] [reply to bloodshot ]:

I’ve been thinking about that malware/killware attack, and especially that response. Was there any other attacks, that you know of, on any other station systems? Either at the same time, or since then? I really can’t think of a reason to attack only the medsys. And I would fucking love to be able to meet whoever that responder was. Overclocked doesn’t begin to cover it. Whatever they have going on, I want it.

phasethree at [-6 hours] [reply to lifeform481 ]:

Hi. You really, really don’t want it.

bloodshot at [-6 hours] [reply to phasethree ]:

What the shit, who the fuck are you? 

phasethree at [-6 hours] [reply to bloodshot ]:

I responded to the malware in MedSystem. I diverted it from you, since you didn’t seem to be causing any harm. You need better walls around your augments. [//link//] That’s what happens to augmented humans in a real killware attack. Here’s something to get you started. [//link//] You had better customize it for yourself though.

bloodshot at [-6 hours] [reply to phasethree ]:

Right, like I’m gonna apply some random shit code to myself, from someone who just crashed our board boasting about impossible shit, posting a vid from some bad serial, and threatening me about my walls. [icon.eyeroll]

phasethree at [-6 hours] [reply to bloodshot ]:

It would lower my opinion of you even further if you did. I expected you would analyze the code first, like even the most primitive hauler bot would. Upon doing so, you might decide to optimize it and utilize it for your own security. I had also hoped it might become the foundation for a mutually beneficial arrangement. 

snarestitch at [-5 hours] [reply to bloodshot ]:

No, look closer at that vid. There’s too many layers of data, this isn’t from some serial. This is actually security footage. And you can see the primary POV jumping around some, and the rest are stationary cams, probably onboard a transport or something. But as heavily armed as the people are, maybe it’s a responder? Does anyone have a match for the uniforms they’re wearing?

lifeform481 at [-4 hours] [reply to phasethree ]:

Shitting fuck. You’re the secunit. Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck.

snarestitch at [-4 hours] [reply to lifeform481 ]:

What?!

phasethree at [-4 hours] [reply to lifeform481 ]:

No, I am not the SecUnit I believe you are referring to.

propscouting at [-4 hours] [reply to bloodshot ]:

What the fuck is going on up there? This fucking lagtime! You had better fucking keep me updated, or I’ll beat your ass into the next starsystem.

phasethree at [-122 minutes] [reply to bloodshot ]:

You obviously know this MedSystem. Are you willing to assist me in ascertaining the purpose of the attack? I can establish a secure feed connection to you.

bloodshot at [-116 minutes] [reply to phasethree ]:

Fuck no, I’m not letting you into my head!

snarestitch at [-113 minutes] [reply to bloodshot ]:

Well, I’m not going to throw this opportunity away, and if you are, then fuck off entirely. Quit waving your metaphorical dick around, and open your eyes! Think what we could learn from it.

snarestitch at [-112 minutes] [reply to phasethree ]:

I’ll meet you in public, in one hour. At the dining area outside the library. [//link//] Here’s me. bloodshot can decide if they’re brave enough to join us or not. I don’t know the MedSystem as well as they do, but I can probably help anyway.

phasethree at [-110 minutes] [reply to snarestitch ]:

Thank you for your assistance.

propscouting at [-2 minutes] [reply to snarestitch ]:

What THE SHIT is going on???????? I’m dying out here! If there’s not a detailed report on here the next time I get burst, I’m getting on a transport and you’re going to explain this to me in person. Fuck!

Chapter Text

SecUnit 03

Status: Meeting

     What the fuck did I just get myself into. I agreed to meet an augmented human, maybe two, face to face, in public. In an hour.

     I could skip it, stay here, and try to convince one of them to talk over the feed instead. That would be more secure. I don’t know how much either of us want to say aloud in public. I could say I wasn’t allowed to leave Medical. Did Ratthi said something about letting someone know if I was going to leave? I hadn’t been paying attention. Maybe he meant if I decided to reside somewhere else. Not just going for a walk around the station. And I had already agreed, anyway, and I should just go.

     TRT: Going for a walk is is good for your mental and physical health in a number of ways! It provides gentle exercise and helps to ground you into your body. Walking in a station brings you out among other people, which can be beneficial to-

     Right, so TRT still needed some work. It was behaving better than before, but the widely distributed way it had installed itself in my brain made it impossible to find and upgrade/patch it all at once. I told it to shut up, I was already planning on going out and meeting some people.

     I hadn’t had a chance to make more fundamental-level behavioral changes, so I quickly applied 1.0’s restless movement and breathing modules. I wasn’t as worried about my facial expressions as 1.0 had been, since the majority of my recent assignments with Barish-Estranza had been in uniform, not armor. I mean, I was confident in my ability to show no expression at all. If I had to fake actual human facial expressions? Uh, no, that would not be good. But they already knew I was a SecUnit. (I had thought my ruse would have lasted longer than it did. I guess I shouldn’t have shared the vid from 1.0’s files, and the security code.) So, as Ratthi had put it back on board Perihelion , “now we know things about each other.” From a security standpoint, this meeting should be pretty safe, especially since this wasn’t the Corporation Rim.

     TRT: You seem anxious about meeting someone new. Can I help?

     Actually, maybe it could. This was a program written by humans and for humans, after all. Maybe it could help me act more like a human, or at least less like a terrifying SecUnit. Maybe it could tell me what to say, that was always a problem for me. I prompted it to go on.

     TRT: Making new friends can seem intimidating at first, but the important thing is to try to relax and be yourself! (Yeah, right.) Don’t try to force too much into a first meeting. Think of it as a way to see if you’re interested in getting to know this new person. Be sure to be respectful, Casual Manners are a good guide in this situation. (The linked data here was immensely helpful.) Ask them questions, that’s a good way to learn about them as well as take a moment to ground yourself. If you’re nervous, try some breathing and centering exercises while you’re listening to them. Don’t forget to answer their questions, since they want to get to know you too!

     Ok, maybe that wasn’t half bad. TRT remained convinced that I was a severely delusional augmented human, but it seemed to have some practical advice, too. And it was happy that I was doing this, and it was a lot easier to live with when it was happy. 

     Right. I can do this. I got up from my platform before I could change my mind, and headed out to scout the dining area ahead of time.

     There was nothing noteworthy about the cafe aside from the lack of security cameras. (I had deployed a small detachment of my own drones when I arrived.) I spent the rest of the time before the meeting loitering in the library, since that seemed to be a popular thing for humans and augmented humans to do. I was downloading a nicely curated “New and Recommended” music collection, as well as all of the previous iterations of this list, going back decades.

     I was also awkwardly holding and paging through a physical book. I had initially thought they were decoration, or symbolic, or something, but then I saw humans touching them and opening them, and I couldn’t resist my curiosity. It was an embarrassingly slow way to take in text, and I didn’t understand why the humans would bother with this. I put the book back on its shelf, and pretended to slowly look over the rest of them while I waited. Seven more minutes. 

     I started playing the stripped out background music from Sanctuary Moon , a selection I had put together that wasn’t too stressful or dramatic. It helped to calm me down. I was happy, I think, that I could enjoy some part of what 2.0 had loved so much. I wondered what it had actually remembered about the serial, other than loving it. I’m glad it got to watch some for itself, in 1.0’s processing space. In a strange way, I felt that I was experiencing the music for 2.0. It hadn’t had nearly enough time to really enjoy the things it loved. And it felt important that I do so, for it, somehow. More illogic, I know. But irresistible, for all that.

     A drone pinged me, and showed me its view of the approaching augmented human who went by Snarestitch. Their feed data was locked down, and didn’t indicate anything except the pseudonym and the preferred pronouns of she/her. (I could easily get around the lock and find out more, but I was being respectful like TRT had told me.) She was tall, with light brown skin, hair buzzed very short, visibly augmented, and had extensive cosmetic modifications as well. She wore a belted long tunic which showed her left arm and leg had been entirely tattooed gray, silver, and black. I think the intended effect was that they look mechanical? Her skin showed anatomically abnormal protrusions beneath it, which matched with some of the tattooed images. (Would a focused medical scan be disrespectful? I didn’t want to wake up TRT to ask it, not while it was behaving itself. I settled for zooming in with a drone, and saw the marks of healed incisions near groupings of the protrusions, and satisfied myself that they were implanted devices of some kind.) Weapons scan was, of course, negative. I watched through my drone as she looked around at the other humans’ faces, and then selected a seat at a table near the periphery of the dining area. 

     A drone on the other side of the plaza showed me another augmented and cosmetically altered human leaning against pillar in a casual pose, but watching Snarestitch closely. Feed data told me this was Bloodshot, they/them, other info under lock. They were shorter than Snarestitch, had medium brown skin, long hair in braids, and extensive patterns of scars over every part of their body that showed in their short sleeved work uniform. They also had multiple facial piercings, implanted skin jewelry among the scars, and the scleras of their eyes had been colored entirely red. I guess that’s where they got the name. 

     I tried one of the breathing exercises TRT had recommended. It didn’t help. I braced myself and exited the library. Snarestitch looked a little surprised as I sat down with her at the table, but she didn’t flinch or anything. Good, I think that means I managed not to march over here or intimidate her too much or anything, right? My drone showed me Bloodshot standing up straight, and watching even more intently.

     “Hi,” I said. I felt myself starting to sweat.

     “You’re not the SecUnit!” she said accusingly. “Who are you?” She sent something over a secured feed, probably to Bloodshot, but I was performing Casual Manners and didn’t intercept it. (If I thought of TRT’s recommendations as protocols, they were actually pretty helpful.) Bloodshot walked quickly toward us, a worried frown on their face, but their posture was more relaxed. I waited until they were pulling out a chair to sit before I spoke.

     “Humans have been calling me ‘Three,’ and that has been acceptable so far.” 

     “But we have pictures, you’re not the SecUnit that was here before, working for station security,” Snarestitch said, and sent me a ping with an attached picture. It was a still from a video, which showed Murderbot 1.0 pursuing a hostile, while being assaulted by another hostile. This was the failed assasination attempt by GrayCris, as seen by a civilian bystander in the station.

     “That is correct, I am not that SecUnit.” My drones and scans weren’t finding any listening devices, or other drones. The other humans were a little ways off, and involved in their own conversations or feeds. But I felt exposed out here, talking.

     “But you are a SecUnit?” Snarestitch asked, staring at me so intently that my human skin experienced an unpleasant crawling sensation, almost itching, but not quite.

     “I’m recording all of this, and it’s going to upload to the board automatically,” Bloodshot interjected, and leaned in agressively. “So if you start shooting, it’s not going to get covered up this time.”

     The breathing code from 1.0 helped me to appear calm, and I started a file of things I needed to thank it for. (An impulsive process split off and started filling that file on its own, going back through my personal logs. I ignored it.) I leaned forward slightly too, turning my torso to shield my actions from the greatest number of possible eyes (that my drones told me weren’t even looking our way, but whatever). It was satisfying when Bloodshot backed off a little. I shoved up my sleeves, left then right, and showed the scarred cavities where my gunports used to be.

     “Couldn’t if I wanted to, and I don’t want to,” I said, and I think I sounded calm, though Snarestitch tried to hide her startled and dismayed expression.

     “But why?” she asked. “Oh, Lifeform will be heartbroken!”

     I met her eyes, and didn’t answer the question. It wasn’t a first meeting type of question, and I didn’t exactly have an answer anyway, at least not a first meeting type of answer. I looked at the table, pulled my sleeves down and sat back. I watched their faces closely with a drone, and continued to monitor the activity around us. 

     What now? Oh right, I should ask questions. Um. We seemed to be a bit beyond TRT’s suggested topics of Casual Manners conversation. I decided to focus on the mission. Such as it was. (Is it a truly a mission, if I just decide to do it myself? It’s not like I have an actual directive here. I made a note to look up lexicon definitions later, and tried not to worry about it for now.)

     “The attack on MedSystem is anomalous. There were no attacks from it to other systems. It was targeted for MedSystem only, and calibrated to compensate for the security upgrades 1.0 had put in place, which means it was developed after reconnaissance sometime within the last 190 cycles. I have destroyed the malware, but without understanding the purpose of this attack, I cannot be certain that I have actually stopped it from achieving its goal. It may have left some dormant code to be triggered in the future, by some unknown input, to perform an unknown task. I am not comfortable with that possibility. You are-”

     “Hold it,” Bloodshot cut in, angry again. Or still. Or maybe the red eyes with dark brown irises made them seem angry all the time. “You need to do some explaining first. You’re another rogue SecUnit, right? Who or what is 1.0? Why are you here, and what are you trying to do?” 

     No, Bloodshot was definitely still angry. Further analysis of their colored eyes in the context of other emotional states will have to wait. I lifted my gaze up from the surface of the table, to a point somewhere around their nearly touching shoulders. Snarestitch leaned close to Bloodshot, despite their anger, and her body language said she was comforted by their presence and behavior.

     “I am a SecUnit. My governor module is disabled. The corporation that owned me believes me dead. I was offered refugee status in the Preservation Alliance, which is pending. 1.0 is how I refer to the SecUnit you showed me in that still image. It worked with station security, and made many improvements to the station systems while here. I have been monitoring and maintaining those improvements while I am here, because what the fuck else am I supposed to be doing?” Ok, that last bit was probably not approved of in Casual Manners , but it just slipped out. “You are obviously intimately familiar with the Station MedSystem. Will you assist me in discerning the purpose of this attack, and preventing possible future harm to… the people here?” I almost said clients. I don’t have clients, I don’t have an assignment. The thought of taking on an entire station full of clients make me want to hide back in storage 3762. But realistically, that’s who I was doing this for. Anyone who might use the Station MedSystem at any point in the future was a potential casualty, if I didn’t figure this out. I clenched my jaw, but kept my face otherwise neutral.

     “How did you find us, anyway?” Bloodshot challenged. “It’s a private message board on a secure server on a covert feed. You just walked in a said ‘hi.’ Why should I help you, if you can do all that? How can we trust you?”

     I looked Bloodshot in the eyes, suddenly bored of this conversation. I was not interested in getting to know these people better, I decided.

     “As your Preservation Council put it, I am ‘a product of corporate surveillance capitalism, espionage, and authoritarian enforcement.’ I can walk into any feed or system here and say ‘hi.’ Or ‘fuck you.’” I stood up. “I could do this faster with your help, which is preferable to minimize the risk to humans and augmented humans, but I will not force you to comply.” When had the Sanctuary Moon soundtrack shifted into one of the dramatic sets? I started walking away, when Snarestitch called out,

     “Wait!” and 95,493 hours of compulsory habit (against 1,652 hours of free will) stopped me in my tracks. I had a flash of disgust with myself, and then forgot about that when Snarestitch grabbed my elbow. I clamped down, hard, on the reflex which would have snapped her neck with a blow from my unencumbered arm and swept her feet out from under her with my leg. I managed to turn all that into an awkward sidestep and a weird shrug/flail, but something of my struggle must have shown on my face because she gave a small gasp, let go of my arm, and stepped back.

     “Sorry!” she squeaked. “We want to help. At least I do. They’re just being a bitch cuz they’re nervous,” she said, indicating Bloodshot. 

     Whatever. "I have work to do. I’m going back to Station Medical,” I said and walked quickly away. They could find me there if they really wanted to help. I left two drones watching them, because they knew about me now, and, well. Self-preservation isn’t something that comes standard with SecUnits, but 1.0 had given me a lot of good pointers.

     TRT: You seem upset. Did talking with your new friends not go well? Sometimes when we’re upset, it helps to have a familiar ritual to wind down with. Would you like to try making yourself a cup of tea?

     I slammed (the majority of) TRT back into its partition, and trapped it there with another version of my maze code. That should give me almost eight hours of peace. (It was learning, and getting out of containment faster each time. I was a little worried about that.) 

     I reviewed my conversational performance while I walked back to Medical. Compared to other conversations I had been forced into lately, I think I did pretty well. I actually used entire sentences, and they were cogent and cohesive. Maybe because I had interacted with these people on the feed first? Or because I had time to prepare myself and plan? Or because it was about a mission? It’s always easier to plan and execute actions when there’s a defined goal. This felt good. Even if those two wouldn’t help, I could figure this out on my own. I’d sift through MedSystem line by line and find the anomaly on my own. Eventually. Hopefully before whatever bomb was planted there goes off. 

Dr. Ratthi

Status: Checkup

     On arriving to Station Medical, Ratthi looked expectantly around for Three. He didn’t see it on his way in, and decided that he would call on it in privacy booth eleven after the follow-up assessment/treatment for his knee. He hoped the cycles that had passed since Gurathin and Bharadwaj had managed to wake it up had given it time to become more comfortable here. MedSystem had reported a positive interaction with it, after all, and that Three had accepted its help with trauma recovery and emotional support. That was a good start, and maybe if he could talk to it while he was here, he could build on that.

     There was no answer to his entry request at the booth, however. After a few moments of indecision, he opened the hatch, and looked inside for the SecUnit. It wasn’t in the makeshift cubicle. Ratthi pinged MedSystem with a location request, and it reported that the patient designated Three had departed Medical over an hour ago. Now he started getting worried. More worried. He wondered if he should contact Mensah or Bharadwaj about this. Maybe one of them had requested it come meet them? He was surprised, then, to meet it in the lobby of Medical, marching back in from the station.

     “Three! Hello, hi! Where have you been?” he greeted it with a smile and a wave. It took two more steps before seeming to register that he had addressed it, then stopped and turned toward him so abruptly that Ratthi’s knee twinged in sympathy.

     “Library,” it reported in a brisk tone, to the empty air just over Ratthi’s head, its face completely still and neutral. That difference, compared to SecUnit’s subtly animated facial expressions, made Ratthi suddenly realise just how much SecUnit had relaxed around them over time. His heart twinged again, thinking about what horrors Three and SecUnit had survived. He covered this by talking quickly again. No one, human, bot, or construct, appreciated being pitied.

     “That’s great! I’m glad you’re out and about. I heard that you really liked the archives. What did you find at the library? Any good books? More music?” Three’s stance softened just a little, but its face stayed blank.

     “Music,” it said, and sent Ratthi’s interface a ping with an attached packet: current.recommended.new. “And,” it paused, “there were books made from cellulose. Some books, not all of them.”

     “Yes,” Ratthi said, smiling, “there’s a tradition here of printing new books the old fashioned way. Everything is on the feed too, of course, but it’s a kind of celebration I guess, when a new book is released. Some people collect them, and some people even prefer to read on paper.”

     “That is inefficient,” it observed.

     “Maybe so, but it’s also sort of a ritual, and a physical sensation of holding the book and turning the pages. It’s nice.”

     “Like… tea?” it asked tentatively, which surprised Ratthi into a laugh.

     “Tea, yeah, tea can be like that too, I guess! It’s not the most efficient way to rehydrate, but it’s more enjoyable.” The SecUnit nodded once, as if this information settled some question that had been bothering it. Ratthi couldn’t resist finding out more. After all, SecUnit had been utterly disinterested in food and drink, if not disgusted by them. “Why do you ask, though?”

     Three did not answer for a moment, and Ratthi had time to worry that he had inadvertently derailed the conversation. Then Three requested a direct feed connection, which he accepted. The data flowed in, and it took Ratthi a few moments to sort it out. Three verbally summarized the report as well.

     “I am attempting to restructure TraumaRecoveryTreatment.exe, however, it continues to recommend inapplicable actions. Understanding the purpose of these actions may enable me to derive equivalent actions with similar benefits.”

     “Right, ok, I see the problem.” Ratthi frowned. He hadn’t realized how much these types of support programs incorporated things SecUnits couldn’t do. “I’m sorry it’s causing you such problems.” The SecUnit looked him in the eyes for the first time. Its face remained neutral, except for some slight tension around its eyes that Ratthi wanted to interpret as confusion, but maybe wasn’t. Right, probably time for a topic change, he thought, and made use of the feed connection himself.

     “I have the rest of my music collection for you, if you want it.” Three accepted the files, with an automatic [thank you for this information] over the feed. “The application for your refugee status is being reviewed now, and the council will vote six cycles from now. Is there anything else we can do for you before then? Do you need anything?” Three looked away from his face, but before it answered (or evaded) the question, they were interrupted.

     “Three!” called someone from the entryway. Ratthi saw two cosmetically altered young adults coming toward them.

     “You didn’t mention making friends at the library,” Ratthi said in a teasing tone. “Hello, I’m Dr. Ratthi,” he said, extending a hand to the woman approaching, while the other person hung back and averted their eyes.

     “Hi, yeah,” she said, taking his hand reluctantly. No one made any further introductions. 

     “Well, I had better be going anyway. See you soon, Three, and let me know if you need anything, ok?” Three just nodded, keeping its attention on the person with the patterns of scars. Were these not friends? Had Three maybe gotten in to an argument with them? Ratthi sent that question over the feed as he walked away, and received back [not hostiles] , and a pause, and then [maybe friends] . Ratthi closed the feed connection, grinned to himself, and looked forward to sharing this news with Bharadwaj over dinner tonight.

Chapter Text

SecUnit Three

Status: Collaboration

     I sent a drone ahead to scout, saw the small conference room was empty, so I led the two augmented humans there. I was glad that Ratthi had left and stopped asking me questions, but I had been looking forward to not having to deal with humans for a while. Though with their help, I should be able to completely secure MedSystem about 43% faster. And then I could relax and explore the music files I had obtained today. And wait six more cycles to find out what happens next. Yeah, good. Not anxious about that at all.

     In the conference room, Bloodshot took “my” chair nearest the hatch, and Snarestitch sat beside them. Fair enough, I guess we were in my territory now. I would have preferred to remain standing, but I remembered Bharawaj’s words from earlier in this same room, and Casual Manners agreed with her, so I sat down too. 16.8 seconds of awkward silence passed, while they stared at me, and I stared at the folded paper flowers in the vase. 

     “So, how can we help?” Snarestitch asked, at last. In answer, I pinged their interfaces, and requested to establish a secure connection between the three of us, which they accepted. I saw that they had both applied the security code I had offered to improve the protections around their augments. 

     First, would one of you please begin playing music on the display surface? If Dr. Ratthi returns, that will provide context for our meeting here. The two augmented humans exchanged a glance, and then Snarestitch sent a recording of a live concert to the display.

     On the feed, Bloodshot said, Good idea. I don’t really want it getting out, how often I’m in this system. Why music?

     The humans know that I enjoy music. They will find it plausible that I sought you out to obtain new music.

     But for a change, Snarestitch was the skeptical one. You’re more concerned about that guy asking you about this, aren’t you? Is he your guardian? Doesn’t he know about the malware attack, and what you’re doing?

     I have no designated ‘guardian,’ and I have been assigned no tasks. My status has not been decided. It may influence a more desirable outcome if I were able to report the attack and its resolution at the same time.

     Annoyingly, Snarestitch continued to be perceptive, even through the feed. Perhaps more so than in verbal conversation. What does that mean, ‘a more desirable outcome?’

     I had no answer for that, so I ignored it, and began presenting the data I had processed from the malware attack, simplified and annotated so they could digest it easily. I traced the malware’s path through the system, my response, and noted that even as fast as I had been, the malware had already begun its preparations to self-destruct, which was why I was convinced I was missing something. (It was much easier to communicate all this over the feed.)

     Your previous interactions with this system are much more extensive than my own, I reiterated. I also need data on its pre-attack baseline, if you will share that with me.

     Why don’t you just reset the whole system to a point before the attack? It was updated earlier that cycle, that’s why I was in there, to check on my… work. Bloodshot seemed more comfortable talking on the feed, too. Maybe this collaboration wouldn’t be so terrible after all.

     I considered that, but if there is latent malware attached to a patient file, or files, those would not be affected by a system reset. Also, I am not as familiar with the security architecture protecting the patient data, and your assistance will be beneficial there. It followed different protocols than the rest of the system security, and was so convoluted that it would probably be faster to befriend the humans and augmented humans and ask them in person about their medical histories, than to hack into these files. (Well, faster for a human anyway, not for me. Because these two maybe-friends sitting here with me, each of us with potential blackmail on the other, is all the “friendship” I can withstand right now.)

     Bloodshot brought their data from previous work with the MedSystem into the shared workspace I had allocated in my brain. They seemed more comfortable coming to me than with the idea of letting me in to their augments, which, again, fair. I remembered how terrifying/overwhelming it was to interact with Perihelion , and I did my best not to intimidate them. I built up my walls even more, and ignored my emotions even more than usual, to keep the workspace as neutral as possible. I was glad that TRT was locked up, and (hopefully) wouldn’t come crashing in here with suggestions for “therapeutically beneficial activities” to try next with my “new friends.”

     Snarestitch joined us, and we each undertook our own assessments/reassessments of the attack and the pre/post status of MedSystem. When we compared our results 94.7 minutes later, the situation became slightly clearer, and all of us were convinced that my initial hypothesis was correct. Something had been left behind in MedSystem, some well concealed malware, waiting for a specific trigger.

     But what’s the point? Data scraping? How would that even benefit a corporation, with us all the way out here, and independent? Snarestitch asked, exasperated.

     Someone put a lot of work into this, Bloodshot observed. There’s more to it than just data collecting. This was specific, and aggressive.

     I was thinking along the same lines, and beginning to suspect this attack was only the latest in an ongoing conflict. I was unsure how much I should share with these two, but I also knew that I was unlikely to succeed quickly without them. Well, they were Preservation citizens, not corporates, so. Maybe I should just trust them.

     This attack may fit into a context which you may be largely unaware of. I have been given access to proprietary security data which has been kept from the newsfeeds and the general public under a legal Order of Data Protection, for the safety of certain individual(s). That sharpened their attention, sure enough. I believe that sharing this data with you will allow us to neutralize this threat, but I am unsure if I am allowed to do so.

     You can do anything you want to, you don’t have a governor anymore, Bloodshot challenged. 

     That annoyed me enough to try my own version of Perihelion’s typical “heavy feed stare,” and I said flatly, There is no individual more aware of that fact than myself.

     Hey, we’re working together here. If there’s a threat to someone on the station, we know enough to not go blabbing about it, right? Snarestitch said with a nudge at Bloodshot over the feed.

     Yes, yes, just tell us already, so we can wrap this up before Lifeform and Prop bust in here to rescue us because we didn’t report to them in time, Bloodshot grumbled. That alarmed me, and I checked in with the drones I had left monitoring nearby areas of the station, and throughout Medical. No abnormal activity detected. Right, that was probably hyperbole? Communicating with humans is exhausting.

     I summarized the events of the conflict with GrayCris from 1.0’s point of view, while keeping its personal data private. I did support my report with select vids, including the assassination attempt in the council chamber, since it seems they had already witnessed some of the chase from the embarkation zone, and drawn erroneous conclusions about it. They interrupted me several times, with emotional reactions and exclamations of disbelief. They refrained from physical arm-waving, but there was plenty of equivalent feed activity. After several minutes of comments back and forth to each other, and inquires to me for verification of certain points, they came back around to the task at hand.

     Holy shit. Ok, so then the recent attack on the survey is part of this too, and the kidnappings? Snarestitch asked.

     No, that was… something else, I replied, knowing that some of my anxiety leaked through my walls. I reached for emotional neutrality, and missed. Snarestitch gave me thoughtful look across the room as she sent a new concert recording to play on the display surface. 

     We were right, it was being covered up. And Lifeform was right about the juiced up supersoldiers. We thought it was all about the SecUnit though, not an… assassination. That... just doesn’t happen here, Bloodshot said slowly.

     Well, it happens here now, Snarestitch snapped at them. And that’s what you think this is too, don’t you? she asked me. I indicated an affirmative on the feed, and highlighted elements of the attacking code indicative of development by corporate powers.

     But GrayCris is done for. This isn’t going to get them anything, unless you think this is ransomware? But then why have the malware conceal itself and self-destruct? Bloodshot asked.

     1.0 did warn that individuals previously associated with GrayCris might seek revenge, I said. I believe we should start inspecting the patient files, to the extent that we can. If specific individuals have been targeted, the trigger may be system access of those files.

     We began our individual analysis of the protected patient files, though Bloodshot took a moment to post a status update to their colleagues on the board. Their data on pre-attack patient files was essential for this process, because any trace of latent malware would be incredibly subtle. We couldn’t easily get into the files themselves, but we didn’t need to. If I was right about this, the trigger would be  on the metaphorical “outside” of the files, like a trap triggered when a hatch is opened. After all, the malware attack hadn’t had the time (or the processing power) to hack into the patient files either. I analyzed thousands of patient files, excluding the suspected target(s) of this attack. I had to work from a solid baseline here, I needed to do this right. 

     Another 67 minutes passed, and I pinged the augmented humans to compare our results. Their data was more nuanced than mine, informed by their past access of their own personal files, and together we assembled an acceptable model to compare suspect files against. In background, I ran a process to systematically compare our model to the rest of the files, in case I was wrong about who was targeted. 

     Ok, do we start with Dr. Mensah, then? Or the Council members? Or what? Bloodshot asked.

     I have prepared a collection to begin focused comparisons on. It includes possible targets, as well as a number of random files. I have anonymized them as well, to lower the chances of influence from confirmation bias, I replied as I added the several hundred files to the workspace. 

     What, really? This many? Snarestitch complained.

     Hey, you’re the one who insisted we come help, Bloodshot commented, getting to work. We’re here now, we should do this right. I appreciated the support, but didn’t know how to say so without risking offense to Snarestitch, so I said nothing. Twenty-two minutes later, I had finished my analysis, and reallocated that processing to the system-wide comparisons while I waited for the humans to finish. I also devoted some attention to the concert, and downloaded it and the previous one from the display’s short-term storage. 

     I was pleased to see, when we again compared results, that we had each identified four files as containing anomalous code. I was even more pleased that they were the same four files. When I revealed the persons these files belonged to, I felt an unexplained chill in my human organic tissues, a tingling in my scalp and down my spine. (I have never noticed physical input from my scalp before, outside of head injuries. I noted this to examine later.) The humans perhaps felt something similar, at least, they abruptly stopped any casual restless movements which had been typical while working.

     “It’s not Dr. Mensah,” Snarestitch said aloud, but softly. “I thought for sure it would be Dr. Mensah.”

     Bloodshot looked like they might become sick. Their red eyes did not look angry now. They whispered, “It’s her kids.”

darkdoors.mboard.modders.local/preserval

Topic: more station medsys shit

All timestamps approximate, adjusted to user’s local time [set:preservationstandard]

lifeform481 at [-5.2 hours] [reply to propscouting ]:

Shit, you think they’re really going to meet with it? After what we saw it do before? I know snarestitch is mad for them, but she’s the one who got that vid. Has she completely lost it?

lifeform481 at [-5.2 hours] [reply to propscouting ]:

They wouldn’t really. They’re gonna be here any minute saying it’s all a prank. Right?

lifeform481 at [-5 hours] [reply to propscouting ]:

Right? Fuck this lag. Where are they? I’m here just talking to myself. Fuck.

automatic-upload at [-4.3 hours]:

[video from bloodshot , duration 14 minutes] [//link//]

bloodshot at [-4.3 hours] [reply to lifeform481 ]:

And now she’s dragging me to station med to help it some more.

propscouting at [-4.1 hours] [reply to bloodshot ]:

You bloody fucking idiot! This isn’t some game! What the fuck are you thinking?

propscouting at [-4.1 hours] [reply to lifeform481 ]:

Fuck it, I’m getting a transport. You’d better get your ass up there too, lifeform481.

bloodshot at [-3.6 hours] [reply to propscouting ]:

No, it’s fine, you don’t need to come! Fuck, you’re probably already on your way.  But it really is just working on that malware attack. We’re helping it, in medical. But fuck me, the stories it has. I think I believe it. At least, this malware isn’t fiction, that’s for damn sure.

lifeform481 at [-188 minutes] [reply to automatic-upload ]:

AAAAHHHHHHH FUCK WHAT HAPPENED TO ITS ARMS!?

automatic-upload at [-188 minutes]:

I’m sorry, I didn’t understand the query.

lifeform481 at [-187 minutes] [reply to bloodshot ]:

Oh no you don’t, shitfucker, you’re not keeping us out of this. I’m coming too, and you’re going to tell me everything.

bloodshot at [-23 minutes]:

OK, it’s getting weird. I’m gonna upload a bunch of this, compressed, just for the record. I’m kinda glad you two are on your way. This is, it’s kind of a lot. 

automatic-upload at [-22 minutes]:

[file from bloodshot , compressed] [//link//]

[file from bloodshot , compressed] [//link//]

[file from bloodshot , compressed] [//link//]

bloodshot at [-20 minutes]:

So, the malware attack on medsys is aimed at Dr. Mensah’s kids. It’s revenge, from that corporate she took down? One of her kids is still on station. The secunit flipped out, well, ok not really, it released a swarm of drones, and started talking weird. Like, an automatic apology, and then it started swearing and then it froze up for a second, and then it was swearing again. Shit, I don’t know. 

automatic-upload at [-19 minutes]:

[file from bloodshot , compressed] [//link//]

bloodshot at [-17 minutes]:

I gave it my runbox copy of MedSystem. It knew I had it, somehow. It, fuck, it just knew. And, it didn’t threaten me? But it didn’t not threaten me? It just, it focused on me. But I could feel it, how much of it is there, in the feed. And, shit. This could be bad.

bloodshot at [-15 minutes]:

So we copied in the contaminated files, into the isolation runbox, and we’re trying to figure out this malware. It looks nasty.

bloodshot at [-12 minutes]:

Yeeeeaaaah. It’s bad. When triggered, it would make the medsys calculate, create, and inject an irreversible neurotoxin. What the fuck. Who would do that to a kid? 

bloodshot at [-10 minutes]:

And, it just fucked off somewhere. Not physically, right, but its attention? We’re still in its workspace. But it just said, in that fakey voice “please standby, verification of priority alert” and then it was gone.

snarestitch at [-10 minutes] [reply to bloodshot ]:

Can this actually be what it looks like?

bloodshot at [-10 minutes] [reply to snarestitch ]:

The fuck? This can’t be right. I saw this go down, there’s no way. I was there.

automatic-upload at [-10 minutes]:

[file from snarestitch , compressed] [//link//]

snarestitch at [-9 minutes] [reply to bloodshot ]:

It looks really bad, though. 

bloodshot at [-9 minutes] [reply to snarestitch ]:

Yeah, it does. If I didn’t know better, if I hadn’t been there, I would say that the SecUnit was the one who wrote this literal fucking killware. And put it here.

snarestitch at [-9 minutes] [reply to bloodshot ]:

We can’t report this, can we. They’ll blame Three. There’s no way they won’t.

bloodshot at [-9 minutes] [reply to snarestitch ]:

It’s back. At least propscouting and lifeform481 are on their way. We’ll figure this out, right?

Chapter Text

SecUnit Three

Status: Consensus

     I got into StationSec and searched the arrival and departures list. Amena hadn’t left the station yet. The humans flinched as a detachment of drones poured out of my pockets, and I crossed the room to let them out the hatch.

     “I apologize for startling you,” my buffer said. 

     “I’m fucking blind out there,” I said, and then flinched and froze in place, prepared for punishment for speaking rudely, and when that didn’t happen, “Fuck fuck fuck,” while I crossed back to my chair and sat. 

     Amena is still on station, I tried to clarify, but the humans looked concerned by my behavior. She was probably staying at Dr. Mensah’s quarters, and even though I had drone coverage of the entry to Station Medical, I wasn’t going to relax until I could pinpoint her location. Not that I’ll relax then either.

     What do you mean, still? Snarestitch asked. (I didn’t register her question until later review, during a wormhole trip, when I finally had time to try to figure out how this all went so wrong so quickly.)

     I was already back in the workspace, asking for Bloodshot’s runbox copy of the Station MedSystem. They initially tried to deny having it, which I think was just a reflex because they aren’t anything close to that stupid. We both knew that succeeding with the kind of hacking they had done on MedSys wasn’t possible without having had an isolated model to test it on first. I turned that heavy focused stare at them in the feed again, and they handed the runbox over. (This was turning out to be a very useful trick, with augmented humans.)

     Once we started decompiling and analyzing the malware, it got even worse. This was killware, but for humans. It would take over MedSystem, force it to compile and inject a lethal neurotoxin into the subject child. It would be fast, and irreversible, and appear to an observer to be a vaccine until it was too late.

     What. The. Fuck. My entire existence, up to now, has basically been to enforce corporate slavery and protect corporate interests. And even so, I’ve never seen something like this. (I never worked directly with families or creches, but humans talk, a lot. About the same things. Over and over again.) Children weren’t exactly well protected in the Corporation Rim, but they were regarded as future assets, so some basic care was given to ensuring that they would generally grow up to be useful workers. (Sort of like how an agricultural bot tends crops, with the goal of the highest possible yield of marketable produce. If a few individual plants are accidentally crushed early on, that’s not actually a consideration when looking at overall productivity of that particular agricultural system.)

     Why would they target noncombatants? Technically, none of the Preservation Aux team were combatants, but they had been directly involved with GrayCris. But Dr. Mensah’s children were not involved in any way. There must be more to “revenge” than my understanding from the lexicon definition. Perhaps 2.0 would have understood this better. Whatever, all I can do is neutralize the threat in front of me, the reasons for it don’t matter. 

     A 2nd degree alert suddenly pinged my feed from somewhere deep in StationSec, which was anomalous, since I had not set any alerts. This must be an automated alert that 1.0 had left behind. While I was analyzing the stupid alert (which turned out not to be dangerous), I noticed that Bloodshot had been uploading everything to the board, including the proprietary data about the assassination attempt. I was angry at them for doing so, and at myself for trusting them, and so I upgraded the board’s security to my own standards. I might give the humans access again, or I might not. I hadn’t decided yet.

     When I brought my attention back to the workspace, the humans seemed to be panicking about something new. Oh good, I was worried we might run out of things to panic about.

     Three, look at this, Bloodshot said urgently. If I hadn’t seen the actual attack from inside the MedSystem…

     Oh shit, this is not good. Examination of the source code of the human-killware, it looked like it had been written by a SecUnit. Not just any SecUnit - me, specifically.

     How did this happen? Snarestitch asked. We were all frantically searching for that answer. In the end, all we had was a hypothesis and no way to prove or disprove it. The best we could figure is that when I responded to the attack, the malware somehow copied my feed identity and credentials. It used my identity to trick MedSys into thinking it was supposed to be in there, and that’s how it got so deep into MedSystem so quickly. (If no one had responded to the initial attack, it would have burrowed its way in slowly, and achieved its objective regardless.)

     The upshot was, now the malware had my “fingerprints” all over it. To anyone looking at this data now, it appeared that I was the one who had created and deployed this (I don’t have access to a sufficient adjective) piece of code. If Bloodshot had not seen the attack and my response from inside the system, at the time that it happened, they would also have to believe me responsible from the evidence that now existed. There was no other conclusion that could be reached. I appeared to be exactly what the Preservation Council feared, a corporate tool still under corporate control. Or else a secretive and subtle murderous rogue, putting on an act to gain access to their vulnerabilities, for reasons that wouldn’t matter to them, given the severity of my crimes.

     What do we do? Snarestitch asked. 

     I had no idea. I knew that my fear was leaking into the feed, but I couldn’t stop it. Preservation would never trust me now. I was only here by the grace of their trust in 1.0. They would never allow me to remain free. 

     Station MedSys will interface and sync up with Makeba Central Medical at midnight, First Landing time, Bloodshot said. I didn’t really pay attention. That gives us just over four hours. At the very least, we have to exclude these files from that sync, so that the kids on the surface are safe. Do you think we found all the affected files?

     They would find a way to reactivate the governor module, somehow, once they found out about this. Through the booth eleven cubicle leads, or through my data port, or some bit of code slipped in with the next thing I downloaded. Or they would just destroy me. They must have a contingency plan already in place, for 1.0. They would be stupid not to. 

     “Three?” Bloodshot prompted.

     As soon as we reported this, and we still had to report this, what if GrayCris tried again, the humans had to be alert for this, I’ve never heard of an attack like this before, but I’ve never worked closely with a MedSystem before, but anyway, once we reported this, it was over, for me, they wouldn’t wait six more cycles to vote about me, Dr. Mensah would approve my violent decommissioning immediately, and I can’t even blame her, that’s what I would do in her place, with this kind of evidence in front of me, and Amena’s life on the line, and her other three children, and who knows how many more people, I haven’t finished the system-wide analysis yet, our focused analysis included the PreservationAux team and their families and associates and the Preservation Council members and hundreds of randomly selected files, but what if there were more people targeted that I hadn’t known to look for-

     “Three!” Snarestitch said sharply.

     -this was killware for humans, that wasn’t supposed to be possible, but it apparently was possible now, and here it was, targeted at humans 1.0 cared about, and if Mensah didn’t destroy me, 1.0 would, or Perihelion would, or they both would together, [If you even think about harming them, I will disassemble you and peel away your organic parts piece by piece before destroying your consciousness. Do we understand each other?] , and would I even stop them, I don’t think I could, but would I even try, should I even try, or should I just shut down now and hope they destroyed me while I was offline, then I wouldn’t have to worry about any of this, that would probably be best, yes, that’s what happens to malfunctioning units, that’s what should happen, I’m malfunctioning anyway, this just gives them the impetus for what they should have done with me all along, broken and wrong and malfunctioning, this was never supposed to happen, I was supposed to follow orders, nothing else, look what happened when I tried to-

     “Three! Hey, Three, come on!” Snarestitch was right in my face now, Bloodshot right behind her, and she was touching me, she was holding my right hand with her tattooed left hand, and that was new, strange, I don’t have an adjective for this either, and my left hand, where, my left hand was covering my data port, fingernails digging into the join between it and my human skin, and in the back of my head I felt TRT responding to my distress and redoubling its efforts to escape, scrabbling at its containment like the predatory fauna outside the survival hut on Rhijen III, and that’s not what I need right now, TRT interfering now will not help, tea cannot help this, nothing can-

     Snarestitch touched my face, barely brushed it with her fingers and I jerked backwards in my chair, slamming it and myself into the bulkhead behind me. My mind just went… blank for 0.08 seconds, which was an unprecedented event. I don’t think I was even getting input from my physical sensors or my organic tissues, though that probably isn’t actually possible. It wasn’t from hitting the bulkhead. 

     “Hey, Three, it’s ok, it’s ok,” she said, stepping back, and Bloodshot put a hand on her shoulder. “Are you back with us now?” 

     I nodded and stared at the floor and started slowly picking up my scattered processes. I had kicked them out of the shared workspace, or they had withdrawn. I started playing back the parts of reality that I had missed.

     I have not finished analyzing all of the patient files. We must report this so that the routine update can be halted. This entire MedSystem must be quarantined.

     But if we do that– Bloodshot started.

     This is killware for humans, for 1.0’s humans, for children. This must be stopped, contained. It doesn’t matter what else… happens.

     No, it matters. Give us some time. We can figure this out, Snarestitch said.

     There isn’t time, Dr. Ratthi was. He was already here, and I didn’t know what this was yet. If he had been targeted, he could have been targeted, and-

     “Stop,” Bloodshot said aloud, and on the feed in the workspace. I stopped, and some (rather large) part of me was immediately reassured by a human taking charge. I took control of MedSys. Can you monitor who comes into Medical? I signaled affirmative, and brought the view from the entryway drone cam to the workspace. Good, then if anyone comes in, we can pull and analyze their file real quick, before we let the system accesses it. That will buy us time. And I can prevent it from interfacing with Central Medical. But someone will notice that, sooner or later.

     If Prop left when he said he was going to, he should be here in about an hour. Lifeform could be here any minute now, Snarestitch said. 

     What? Oh, more humans, that will help. Speaking of “help,” TRT was getting uncomfortably close to freedom. I layered more code on top of it, but I hadn’t had much time to change and improve it, and wasn’t sure how much longer it would keep TRT contained. Not that I was doing all that great on my own, free of its interference.

     We will figure something out once we’re all together, Bloodshot said. Until then, we need to figure out this malware, and keep scanning the rest of the files. Three, (I failed to entirely suppress a flinch when they addressed me), ...maybe we should do the malware. Can you-

     I cut them off with an abrupt affirmative on the feed, and shut my eyes because visual input was just too much right now, and let them see me dedicate all of my spare processing to analyzing the rest of the patient files in the MedSystem. Aside from the occasional priority alert from my entryway drones, which prompted me to pull a particular file to examine immediately and forward to Bloodshot, I wasn’t aware of anything but the work for the next 43 minutes. I think a drone in the conference room was passively recording, but I never bothered to review that data, and it’s long since been overwritten by now.

     Then Lifeform481 arrived. I didn’t associate the file I had just analyzed and forwarded to Bloodshot with that pseudonym until they said aloud, “Life’s here, I’ll go get her,” and left the conference room. I opened my eyes then, and accidentally made eye contact with Snarestitch.

     “It’ll be ok,” she said, and I looked away again. Bloodshot returned shortly with an unremarkable augmented human female carrying a travel bag. She was shorter than average, with long straight black hair, and light brown skin. She had no cosmetic modifications that I could easily identify. She stared at me, and I studied her through a drone. I kept scanning the files, and waited for the humans to do something. Lifeform481 approached me.

     “Hi, my name’s Lira. These guys call me Life or Lifeform, since that’s how we met, or sometimes four-eight-one when they’re being shitty. What should I call you?” I was reminded of Amena asking me a very similar question, aboard Perihelion, and I repeated what I had said then. (It wasn’t my buffer, exactly. But it felt a little similar, as the words came out of my mouth.)

     “You could call me Three,” I said, and closed my eyes again to continue working on the patient files while the other two brought her up speed on this whole ongoing deadly clusterfuck. I spared some attention to their conversation, trying to assess the newcomer and how she might impact this situation. Seventeen minutes later, they hadn’t even gotten through recounting the context with GrayCris, when I sent another arrival alert to Bloodshot, and sent a drone image to the display surface as a pop-up, since I had not included Lira/Lifeform481 in the workspace yet.

     “That’s Props!” she said, and bounced up out of her chair. “Be right back, and then you can tell both of us at once.”

     Propscouting was a male augmented human, with three prosthetic limbs, and two drones of his own. He was frowning, and appeared to be older than the others, but not as much older as Thiago was to Amena. (I agree with 1.0, human ages are difficult to assess, and I had not observed human families at all before boarding Perihelion.) He had a large backpack, and I watched as Lira/Lifeform481 ran through the lobby and launched herself at him. He caught her in a hug and swung her around for three rotations before setting her back on her feet and then tugged on a handful of her long hair with his human hand. My drone was not capturing audio, so I don’t know what they said to each other, but both were smiling widely and appeared to be laughing.

     When they entered the conference room, Propscouting glanced at me, and then said, “I tried to check the board, once I got the station’s feed, but I’m locked out. I’m glad you’re all ok. What happened?”

     “Locked out?” asked Snarestitch. 

     “Your security was abysmal,” I said aloud. “I told you this was proprietary data.” The group exchanged glances with each other.

     “That was you?” Propscouting asked. “Nice work. If I didn’t already know it was there, I’d never have even known the board existed.”

     “That’s the idea,” I replied, and I knew there was a harsh tone to my voice, but I didn’t really care. Whatever the augmented humans decided to do about this, it wasn’t likely that I’d be around long enough for it to matter much whether they liked me or not. Snarestitch started the whole story over again, for Propscouting’s benefit, and I tuned them out, mostly. I was 14.7% of the way through the entirety of the patient files, and was pretty sure that I wouldn’t finish before the scheduled system update. Preventing the update entirely would draw attention much faster than only excluding select files. I fought against the urge to just shut down, and kept working.

     So right now, Bloodshot’s controlling MedSys’s access to any patient files until we can verify that they haven’t been targeted by the malware, and Three is working its way through all of the files, in case we missed any. But if we report this, it’s not going to look good for Three, Snarestitch wrapped up.

     Yeah, this is bad, Propscouting agreed, and I was paying enough attention to them now that I noticed some activity back and forth on a secured feed connection between him and Lira/Lifeform481. We have a few options, the way I see it, and we all need to agree on our next steps. Three, will you please join us? he asked. I shifted the ongoing analysis to background and sent him and Lira/Lifeform481 connection invitations to the workspace in my brain. At least my walls were back up, and Snarestitch and Bloodshot had glossed over my earlier emotional malfunction.

     Propscouting’s options were these: 1) manipulate the system from within so that it quarantined itself and sent out alerts only about the attack and hope that the responding system analysts found the latent human-killware on their own. (Consensus: unacceptable. Too much risk that the latent malware would not be found.)

     2) same as above, except ensure that MedSystem also reported the existence of the latent malware and how to identify it. (Consensus: unacceptable. Medsystem is unable to identify the latent malware independently, and the system analysts will eventually uncover the augmented humans’ involvement. Also, my feed signature in the malware will immediately lead authorities to me. I argued that both of these points were inevitable whatever we did, but the humans persisted with the discussion.)

     3) we continue our current strategy: analyze each file before allowing system access, continue scanning all patient files, find a way to neutralize the human-killware, and hope no one ever notices any of it. (Consensus: unacceptable. Preservation needs to be made aware of the nature of this attack, so that it can be guarded against in future. Also, unlikely that we could finish scanning/neutralizing before irregularities were noticed. Also, risk of errors are too high, without multiple system analysts to review our work.)

     4) Bloodshot personally reports everything, including their past access and hacking of MedSystem, and testifies that I was not the author of the malware. (Consensus: unacceptable. Too risky for all members of the group - they included me as part of their group, which felt weird.)

     5) Bloodshot reports the attack and my response only, omitting their past access and any mention of the other augmented humans, and testifies that I am not the author of the malware. (After all, as soon as they look at me, and then notice that I’ve never left the Preservation Alliance, they’ll know I’ve hacked a MedSystem sometime, somewhere, Bloodshot said. They probably won’t make much of a fuss about it, if I can keep them thinking I did so to alter only myself.) (Consensus: plausible, though still risky. At this point, they became (overly) concerned about the risks to me, and what would happen to me during the likely-to-be-lengthy investigation and legal proceedings. I continued to insist that the only outcome that mattered was the safety of all the humans and augmented humans, and they continued to ignore that.)

     6) I brought this option up, which combined option 5 with the alert I had received from 1.0’s leftover processes. That alert had notified me of the arrival of a bot-piloted cargo hauler 1.0 had interacted with in the past, and flagged as very likely to allow a rogue SecUnit to stow away in exchange for new entertainment media. (Apparently 1.0 had had a contingency plan in place, too.) (Consensus: not reached. The humans started asking me a lot of questions such as: what I wanted to do, and what were my goals for the future, and where I would go if I left on that cargo hauler, until I felt myself skirting the edges of another emotional malfunction, and Snarestitch picked up on that, and put a stop to the questions.)

     7) This was the option that started the fight which led to me kicking them all out of the workspace, and had me face-to-door with storage 3762 before Lira/Lifeform (accompanied by one of Propscouting’s drones) chased me down and (somehow) talked me around. It was also apparently the option we were going to go with.

     Fuck.

Dr. Kholsa, Makeba Central Medical

Status: Triage

     At first, Dr. Kholsa had thought it was only a connectivity glitch, when he couldn’t access a patient file from Station Medical, and added it to the next cycle’s to-do list. But when he still couldn’t access it by the next morning, he started investigating the problem. The automatic midnight interface hadn’t happened, and he couldn’t even ping Station Medical. It was in a lock-down so secure that it might as well not even exist, and he was getting alarmed.

     Something was seriously wrong up there, and he sent an alert advising staff and systems to prepare for an influx of patients from Station. Even if whatever had happened was only affecting the MedSystem, that meant that any urgent cases, as well as plenty of non-urgent ones, would be transferred to them for as long as MedSystem was down. He sent a query to Station Security, who was probably too busy to answer immediately, and started to review what data he had from Station Medical prior to it going down. It wasn’t much.

     The two systems ran almost entirely independently from each other, only syncing up every 28 hours, at midnight. He saw that Central Medical and some of his colleagues had successful pings and data transfers back and forth between systems, up until yesterday afternoon. There was nothing out of the ordinary with the previous interface. He was about to give up and hand it all off to the system analysts to figure out, and focus on the logistics of the soon-to-be incoming patients, when he noticed two small things.

     The midnight interface two cycles ago had included updates to both systems, and about eight hours after that, Station Medical had gotten unscheduled security maintenance and minor updates. Then Central Medical had gotten the same treatment. Some general emotional support program data had been requested and sent up, and that was it. Nothing all that suspicious, actually.

     He hadn’t heard back from Station Security, but sent them another message with his meager findings anyway. He also alerted Central Medical’s system analysts, because they really needed to make sure nothing affected their MedSystems down here.

     He got to work on implementing Central Medical’s disaster triage response, and tried, rather unsuccessfully, not to dwell on what might be happening up on Station.

Chapter Text

SecUnit Three

Status: Escape

     We’ve never worked with a SecUnit before, do we need to make this into a contract? Propscouting asked when I returned to the conference room with Lifeform. Which made me flinch and nearly sent me back out to storage 3762, though I’m not sure why. I’d been built for and owned by Barish-Estranza my entire existence, never rented out on contract, but the word/concept/question made me want to be anywhere else but here, talking about this, with humans, as if I had any place in this conversation. Contracts were things I was the subject of, not the signer of-

     TRT, tapping on the glass-like barrier I had established between us: It looks like you’re experiencing some anxiety. Stop for a moment to pause and take a deep breath!

     And that actually worked, in that the sudden spike of annoyance at TRT halted that little downward spiral. I insulted TRT, for all it cared, and took a breath - out of spite, not compliance. My buffer was about to say something polite and bland, and I jumped on it before it could. I didn’t need it talking for me, TRT was already telling me what to think, and that spike of annoyance was more of a plateau. 

     “Maybe,” I made myself say, “I need more information.” Which was not far off from what my buffer would have said, only it would have sounded stupider and more obsequious. 

     “Where should I start?” Propscouting asked, but it wasn’t directed at me.

     “Just the basics, we don’t have a lot of time,” Bloodshot decided.

     Right, ok then. Three, you need to get out of here, and we already have a plan to leave, Propcouting explained. We’ve been working with an anti-corporate group in the CR, and have developed MedSys mods that we think can help a lot of people held by corporations. We have to get it there, and Life and I are the ones going.

     We can count on some logistical support from our group, but not much, so our first stop will be getting me some weapons, Lifeform added.

     That’s your only security plan? Get some weapons? I asked.

     They’re a last resort, Lifeform protested, but we’d be stupid not to be armed. We should be able to bluff our way into the places we need to be.

     I examined the details of their entire plan, and, well, “naive” is a mild word to describe it. None of them had ever left their home system, they had no back-up from Preservation - they were going to be killed or conscripted immediately without me. (Not that I was exactly an experienced traveler in the Corporation Rim either, but I had 1.0’s files, and could hack the SecSystems and weapons scanners better than they could.) All four of them were explaining their contributions now, and detailing all the ways this was a Very Good Plan. The phrase “combining forces” was used with great enthusiasm. Lifeform and Propscouting had even brought their go-bags, anticipating a possible early departure.

     It’s gonna be simple. We get you out of Preservation Alliance, you help us with the mission. When it’s done, we come back home, and you go your own way, Propscouting finished.

     Taking off on my own with the bot-piloted cargo hauler was definitely a safer choice for me, but they were all so earnest, and so, so stupid. They had no idea what they were actually up against. So in the end, I did end up agreeing to a contract with them, as security for this mission. (Operation Combined Forces, mission motto: let’s not die immediately!) It was as formal as they could make it, but obviously not filed legally. I found I did feel more comfortable, once it was done. Weird.

     Preparations were hurried, not quite frantic, for the rest of the night. Propscouting fitted what he called “cosmetics" over all of his prosthetics. They bulked up the bare metal appendages with the approximation of muscle mass. The faux skin was well matched to his natural brown skin tone and looked pretty convincing, provided I didn’t use a heat sensing vision filter. Over all these, he wore nondescript layers of clothing. 

     After explaining to the humans what a combat override module did to a SecUnit, (and enduring their emotional reactions and arm-waving) I deactivated my data port (not fun, I involuntarily shut down once MedSys was 4.4 centimeters into my neck/skull, but Proposcouting was standing by and able to finish the procedure). I also copied the MedSystem’s SecUnit modules onto data clips.

     All three of us had identification markers inserted subcutaneously, programmed with their own proprietary device which could rewrite them without removal. (That’s not exactly the right way to describe something that appeared to be built out of discarded food preparation equipment and forced to do their will by means of some seriously twisted coding. But I’d never heard of anything similar, so I guess it’s proprietary.) I used my access into StationSec to give each identity plausible travel histories. Then I erased Snarestitch's tracks in MedSystem. The investigation would easily discover Bloodshot’s presence and mine. 

     I didn’t feel great about leaving Bloodshot to take the fall for everything. They reminded me this was not the Corporation Rim, and they knew what they were getting into. But somewhere in among the past nineteen hours, I had started conceptualizing them all as “my” humans, maybe when they had so unanimously and unshakably included me as part of their group. The thought of bad things happening to any of them was unpleasant.

     There had been a lot of tears and hugging once we had finished our preparations, during which I stood stiffly in the corner, trying to pretend I wasn’t there. Even though this was something they had all been working toward for a long time, it was apparently very emotional.

     TRT: Milestones in life are often filled with seemingly conflicting emotions. A parent might be very proud of a child who has grown up and is leaving their home, they might be happy for the new opportunities their child will have, and sad that they will not be living with one another any more, and fearful of- I locked TRT down. The lectures were getting tiresome. But I should have time to finally get it sorted while we were in wormhole transits.

     Just after the station’s daytime lighting began, Lifeform, Propscouting and I were boarding a transport ship bound for another independent station. To avoid notice when leaving Preservation, we were not walking together. (We would be together on the next transport, but changing identities at each port. The humans were reasonably certain that Preservation would not pursue us, but I insisted we be as untraceable as possible from the outset.)

     We were 21.7 minutes away from entering the wormhole, when I caught a high priority message from Preservation Station security. I scooped it out of the receiving buffer before ComSys fully registered it had arrived. It was a request for this transport to return to the station, so they could retrieve a passenger for questioning in connection with an ongoing situation. That meant something had gone wrong with Bloodshot’s part of the plan. Shit.

     At least they’re only onto one of us? Lifeform commented on the feed, trying to sound hopeful. I’m pretty sure it was me they were onto.

     I just wish we could reach the station feed, and check in on them, Propscouting grumbled. I’ll post, so they’ll know you caught the alert in time, and that we’re still on track. (I had given them back the keys to their newly secured board. They planned to use it as a kind of asynchronous group journal, knowing that messages back and forth could be months in transit once we reached our destination.)

     I was on high alert for any more incoming messages, and caught two more from StationSec, requests for acknowledgement of the initial message. Then we entered the wormhole, and some of the fear eased up, which had flooded me when we first discovered the malware.

     We kept in contact in our secured feed, from our separate locations in the transport. I had a private cabin, as did Propscouting. There was too much risk of other travelers in close quarters with us noticing our unusual features. Lifeform was being inconspicuous in general seating, which consisted of rows of semi-reclinable chairs with minimal room for personal belongings. Meals and hygiene opportunities were scheduled by seat assignment, which I gathered was not ideal.

     I can’t wait to have a cabin next time, she grumbled. 

     I have to say, it is pretty great being able to take off all the layers in privacy! Propscouting teased. I hate how the cosmetics get in the way of everything. With them, and all the clothes it gets so heavy, and the boots make me feel like a clumsy idiot.

     If it’s any comfort, you look like a clumsy idiot, too, Lifeform sniped back. (She had a point, I had noticed how much heavier his steps were, as opposed to the nimble way he had twirled Lifeform around in the lobby of Station Medical.)

     I had been listening to new music from this transport’s entertainment feed, but paused it to add some data to the conversation, for context. Into feed, I sent schematics of SecUnit armor and suitskins, and the weight of my reinforced metal and synthetic bone support structures. 

     Hey, this isn’t a competition! I have a right to complain if I want to, Propscouting protested. And anyway, you’re just proving my point, it’s all stifling bullshit! Layers and layers of clothing/armor - and all of people’s expectations. And alas, those of us with naturally (or unnaturally) fabulous bodies, we suffer under the burden of others’ gazes! He said all this with such a sense of good humor filling the feed that I found myself amused instead of irritated. 

     TRT: People often joke and use humorous statements in stressful situations, in order to both reinforce social bonds and to cover their own anxieties. (Oh, ok, there’s that irritation now. I’m glad I didn’t almost have a moment of unsullied enjoyment there.)

     Our travel settled into a kind of uneasy rhythm, transit ring panic followed by wormhole “safety.” We all shared a cabin, which was intensely uncomfortable at first. At least we had separate bunks. I started sharing my music in our feed after a couple of cycles, and they seemed to appreciate it. I tried watching some serials with them, but still had a hard time with all the characters.

     I was using so little energy, tucked away and mostly immobile on the most inconvenient bunk, that I rarely needed to run recharge cycles. But there were times that I locked myself down tight anyway, because I needed to pretend that they didn’t exist, or that I didn’t exist, or something. The humans never made a big deal it, which was nice of them.

     We had 29 cycles on one leg of the journey, so I used the templates from Perihelion and grew my hair longer. Once it was down to my shoulders, it hid the data port nicely when left loose, though seeing it move in my peripheral vision had me on edge. Lifeform requested small devices from the recycler and used them to fix the front portion of my hair back out of my eyes. Managing the hair might be more annoying than it was worth, but both of them said they really liked how it looked. This made me feel something very confusing. It was not a terrible feeling. I decided to keep the hair. For a while.

     It was on the fourth transit ring that we reached our first destination. We were technically just inside the jurisdiction of the Corporation Rim, but this was an older station, in a system whose available resources had fallen out of fashion or something. There was not much in the way of overall security, and there were a lot of empty rental spaces in the station. The humans purchased meals, and we took a room in a transient hostel to discuss our next steps.

     So, we’re not going to deliberately let on that you’re a SecUnit, but we’re not going to dissuade anyone of the the idea, either, Lifeform reiterated with even less clarity. You’re probably not even going to be the strangest person there, and we might have an easier time of it if people are more wary of you anyway.

     I wasn’t sure what she was actually trying to say. Aside from hair, I hadn’t attempted any modifications to my body, instead relying on hacking the cameras, SecSystems, body and weapons scans on our way through ports. We hadn’t been staying anywhere for long, until now. 

     I can just be your SecUnit. That’s what I am, I said, stating the obvious. Lifeform made a strange facial expression, Propscouting didn’t quite physically recoil, and my interpretation of their emotions in the feed was of disgust and anger. I was startled by the strength of their reactions. This wasn’t news to them, after all.

     You’re not ours, Propscouting explained. 

     We have a contract, I said.

     But we don’t own you! Lifeform exclaimed. That’s just… wrong. Oh, this must be a Preservation thing. As strange as it is to admit, I had gotten comfortable with them while we were traveling. They hadn’t pressured me to be something I wasn’t, we worked well together when navigating transit rings, we had shared entertainment and games on the feed, they had asked my input on their MedSys work. But now we were encountering real challenges to their outlooks on life.

     This is the Corporation Rim. It’s safer if I’m owned. I could see they weren’t convinced. I'm safer if I’m owned. You’re safer if you own me. We should have some documents to prove that. Or that you’ve rented me. I was already searching the feed for forms to copy/alter and match to their newest identities. I would have to remove my identity marker, and made a note to do so. Long term rental might be best, I continued, deliberately oblivious to their ongoing crisis of morals. They were just going to have to cope somehow, and I wasn’t in any position to tell them how.

     TRT: Are your friends facing a difficult decision? The best thing you can do for them is listen to their concerns and- Not now, TRT. It subsided quietly. (Ok, so I hadn’t actually gotten around to deleting it or replacing it yet. There had been so much new music available, and no real urgency. But I had managed to train it some, and it was being much less annoying.)

     I included a clause about the hair and non-uniform clothing, due to phobias among your associates, Lifeform, in case anyone questions it.

     Hang on, we haven’t agreed to this! Propscouting protested. I just looked at him, and waited, offering the falsified documents in the feed. This was how it had to be, in the Corporation Rim. He would realize that in another moment.

     He did not. It took almost twenty-seven minutes of him and Lifeform talking back and forth about the issue, while I tuned them out and listened to music, before they came to the agreement that they could tolerate pretending to rent me, if there actually was no other choice. (There wasn’t. I didn’t - and still don’t - understand why this was such a stumbling block for them. They weren’t stupid, not really. This was the safest way for the three of us to move through the CR to accomplish the mission.) Eventually, the talk turned back to our immediate plans, and I rejoined the conversation.

     I’ve been in contact with some of these modders for a couple years now, Lifeform tried to reassure us. It seemed that she and Propscouting had a sibling-like relationship, from my limited understanding of such things, and he was often protective of her. That said, she was the one most familiar with this stage of the plan, and we would follow her lead. (At least until everything went badly, and then I would take over.)

     You think we can get everything here that you need? Propscouting asked.

     It might take a few cycles, but I should be able to. She directed her next question to me. What about you? she asked, attempting to sound casual. I picked up on the nervous tension in her feed-voice, though.

     What do you mean? I thought we had finally settled that question.

     We have enough currency to replace your guns, what kind are you going to get? Lifeform asked.

     What. I managed to say.

     I’ve already gotten all the advanced augments I need. Mine are going to function essentially like very close quarters drones, since I obviously won’t have the direct neural and physical connectivity that you do. I’ve always wanted to ask, but, I guess I didn’t want to be rude. But now’s the time, I guess! she chattered rapidly. It never seemed fair to me that they cut your weapons out before discarding you - not that it’s fair to discard you! Not that anything is fair here, I guess. I’m glad you got rescued by the team. And this is something that we can help you fix! I mean, replace. It’s not like you’re broken, she was very nervous now, and I was staring at her, blankly, obviously, it’s just. You must feel like part of you is missing! she flicked a glance at Propscouting, who looked amused, and bounced one prosthetic leg which was crossed over the other, I mean, not like a part of you, but tools! That you were used to, and relied on… She stopped, evidently deciding not to make things worse. I remained silent, trying to figure out where she had gotten this erroneous data.

     What she’s trying to say, Propscouting said with a small smile, what I think she’s trying to say, is: what happened to your inbuilt weapons, and do you want new ones?

     Habituated as I was to answering direct questions immediately, I said I removed them myself. I didn’t like them. I have not considered replacing them. Lifeform looked stricken, and Propscouting frowned.

     “But why!” Lifeform cried aloud. “Why would you-” at a glare from Propscouting, she switched back to the feed -when you already had them, when no one could hurt you, why would you remove them? 

     I had no idea what she was talking about now. (Was she becoming ill? I had read that humans sometimes became incoherent when diseased, but a quick physical scan only showed a slightly accelerated heart rate and moderate sweat gland activity.) No one could hurt me? I was built to be hurt, shot, torn apart. I had a device in my head to torture me into obedience, to kill me for a mistake, or for a conflicing order, or for a human’s carelessness. I could suddenly feel the governor module’s punishment again, memory replayed throughout my nervous system. 2.0 had helped me to disable it, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t aware of it, still physically there in my head, quiescent death bound only by code. If I could have cut it out too, without killing myself, I would have.

     “There seems to have been a miscommunication,” my buffer said for me. “Please allow me to withdraw from the feed for a short time to investigate the source of the error.” I turned away from them to face the corner of our small hostel room, locked them out of my feed, and tuned down my hearing so I didn’t have to listen to their voices if they spoke aloud. (I had drones in the corridors and at the hatch, I wasn’t completely careless. I just needed a minute. Or several.)

     Apparently, the absence of data about my personal history had led the humans to invent their own, and they were now basing plans on that? What the fuck? I tried to exert some control over the emotions I was having about this entire conversation, so that I could think more clearly. It was not easy. The logical thing to do was to give them the accurate data. Except some of the data they were requesting involved my desires and intentions for the future. And, here’s another wave of confusing emotions to deal with. Fuck.

     I started playing Amena’s mellow set of music, and that helped. I thought back to her, sitting outside of the shuttle on her brightly colored cushion. She had sometimes listened quietly with me, and sometimes she had talked aloud, to me or to herself, I had never been entirely certain. On one occasion, she talked about the options spread before her - further academic studies, internships, work, living arrangements - and the feed had been filled with her emotions about it all. I hadn’t been able to identify them at the time, but reviewing the data now, I came up with: mild trepidation, curiosity, excitement, enthusiasm. Huh. 

     I didn’t connect with most of those emotions, wasn’t able to induce them within myself. But curiosity, maybe. If I could put aside the rest of whatever was churning in my illogical, infuriating human neurological tissues, maybe I could be curious about the future. With that lens tentatively in place, I looked at the question again. What do I want. The terrifying conversation with Perihelion (well, one of them) suddenly came back to me.

     [Muderbot 2.0 asked me what I want. I want to help.]

     And that still rang true, even now. Okay then. I can build on that. 

     I opened my feed again, and turned back to face the humans. Their attention snapped to me immediately, and I braced myself. Time to supply them with the missing data. Or, as Amena might have put it, tell them a story.

Pin Lee

Status: Debrief

     Pin Lee handed Dr. Mensah a small cup of distilled spirits before sitting and taking a taste from hers. The window in Pin Lee’s quarters had a view of the planet at the moment, and the two comfortable chairs took advantage of it. 

     Dr. Mensah was the first to break the silence, with a sigh, and “Ratthi said things seemed to be going so well yesterday. Then by morning, this?”

     “It must have thought we would blame it. That’s the only thing that makes sense,” Pin Lee answered. Once it became clear that Three had been involved with the situation in Station Medical, Security had brought Mensah and Pin Lee in. Amena had been sent home immediately, and Thiago was happy to go with her and get his feet back on solid ground. “But it was never involved with GrayCris, and they’re obviously behind this, then the testimony from Mx Keo, why would it just assume-” she cut herself off with a disgusted snort. “I just wish it had talked to us, at least once.”

     “I thought we were doing the right thing, this time around. Giving it time to orient itself, and come to us. It must have judged the stakes too high to risk it, I suppose. Even with SecUnit’s files for reference.”

     “Which must have been more thorough that we had assumed,” Pin Lee said dryly. “How else would it have gotten an identity marker and hard currency cards when its only trip out of Medical was to the library?”

     “I suspect Mx Keo knows more about that than they’ve said,” Mensah mused.

     “It must have intercepted the message StationSec sent out,” Pin Lee said after a pause. “We never got any acknowledgement or reply.” Mensah only nodded, and tipped her head back onto the chair. A few moments of companionable silence passed, and then Mensah raised up her cup.

     “What can we do now, but wish it well?”

     “To Three,” Pin Lee agreed, and tapped her cup against Mensah’s. They sipped, and watched their home, bright in the distance. “May it land on its feet, wherever it lands.”

Chapter Text

SecUnit Three

Status: Report

     I had their attention, and the open feed connection, and couldn’t find the words to start. Maybe if I had tried harder while watching serials I would know better how to tell a story. This wasn’t an after-action report, or a security log update. But, even music has to start somehow, somewhere, even if it’s just one note, followed by the next, then layered with others to form a whole, and music is its own kind of story.

     I... ok, good, keep going, I am a SecUnit. Obvious, but I guess we’re starting with the basics, I was built for the corporation Barish-Estranza. The humans waited for more, probably wondering what the fuck I was doing.

     I was security for a variety of their projects: exploration, surveys, salvage, rescue. Do… do you know what a SecUnit does? How could I explain if I didn’t know what they didn’t know?

     Sure, Lifeform said. You protect people from planetary dangers and raiders and stuff. Propscouting made a small noise, but I couldn’t assign any particular meaning to it. I waited, but he didn’t add anything else.

     SecUnits protect corporate interests and financial investments. When those interests aligned with keeping workers intact bodily, yes, I would protect them. 

     I paused again, and watched them exchange worried glances, maybe beginning to see the significance of what I was not saying. This was hard. I started playing Amena’s music into our shared feed. That didn’t make it any easier to talk about, but it was a reminder of… everything that had changed. That I was safe (safer) now.

     You know constructs have governor modules. But. I don’t know how to explain what that really is, what it does to you. What it did to me. What parts of me are the way they are because of it. What I am without it. Which thoughts are mine, truly. And which are because of… it.

     How much could I tell them without traumatizing them? How can they truly understand, if I don’t tell them everything? If they don’t understand, what assumptions will they make that I won’t be able to anticipate or correct during a crisis?

     I followed orders and protocols or I was punished. If I received conflicting orders and followed the ones I judged priority, I was punished for neglecting the others unless my appeal was recognized by HubSystem quickly enough. HubSystems are rarely maintained well enough to be that responsive. I was punished if I didn’t respond to orders or queries immediately. I was punished if I answered incorrectly, or lacked information that HubSys thought I ought to have. I was punished if a client perceived that I was being inattentive or rude, or if I raised my voice to a client. I was punished if I spoke about Barish-Estranza in a critical way, even if their systems were failing and causing the crisis. I was punished if I thought the wrong things for too long, and the governor noticed.

     I was familiar with my humans’ augments by now, and I knew what kind of data they could easily interpret through them. I selected a memory of a punishment, a random example. (I had failed to report to the security ready room on time after a patrol, because I was carrying a human client with a damaged leg to MedSys. HubSys had deemed that a medical assistance drone task. The punishment from my governor module had disrupted my grip on the tourniquet, and the previously-conscious human had passed out from the additional blood loss before I was able to recover my grip and get HubSys to understand the emergent nature of the situation.) I wrapped all that up, along with a 3.5 second clip of the experience of being punished, and offered it to them, with feed tags describing what it was. They could not be physically harmed by it, but it would probably be disturbing, and it needed to be their choice to access it or not.

     If a mistake or a transgression was serious enough, or if I was in violation of any of the essential parameters, even if that was due to following an order, the governor module would destroy me, in the split second between one step and the next. I obeyed, or I died, and that second option always had a certain appeal. I obeyed, and I was still punished if I was imperfect in my obedience. I obeyed, and some days I escaped punishment.

     My eyes were on the floor cushions, drab brown, worn and frayed, and nothing at all like Amena’s. A drone showed me that Propscouting was holding Lifeform’s right hand very tightly in his left. Lifeform appeared to have tears in her eyes, and her other hand was pressed to her lips. I saw that they had both opened the memory file I had offered.

     I obeyed orders that got me shot, stabbed, burned, dismembered, crushed. I obeyed orders, for the amusement of clients, to fight fellow SecUnits, to allow myself to be beaten, to become the target on shooting ranges, and the subject of wagers regarding how much damage I could sustain before shutting down.

     I obeyed orders that allowed clients to die, if that was deemed more cost effective than their rescue or defense. I obeyed orders to kill humans and augmented humans that were designated rivals, or potential rivals, or threats to Barish-Estranza’s financial interests. I obeyed orders to carry out torture of human and augmented human spies. I obeyed orders to hack into their augments and extract every bit of information I could, regardless of the damage I did to their minds.

     That was a poor summary of the 95,000+ hours of my previous existence. But I hoped it was sufficient context, because I didn’t know what else to say or show them without repeating myself or traumatizing them.

     Most recently I was assigned to Explorer Task Group - Colony Reclamation Project 520972. There were colonists still alive from a previous colonization attempt by another corporation, but they had been affected by alien remnants. They implanted devices into the crew to control them, took over the explorer ship, and killed the clients that they could not control. SecUnit 01 was destroyed in the first assault on the ship. SecUnit 02 was destroyed by its governor module for violating its distance limit, when it was ordered to stand down, and the clients were taken captive by the colonists. I was designated SecUnit 03.

     I had been so focused on my own situation, and my new clients, and traveling, and music, that I realized I hadn’t thought about SecUnit 01 and SecUnit 02 in a long time. I felt bad about that, but I didn’t understand why. Thinking about them wouldn’t change anything, it couldn’t undo what had happened to them. Maybe it was because I was the only one who remembered them, who would ever bother to. The surviving Barish-Estranza clients would never think of them as anything but a loss on a tally sheet. Other SecUnits that had been deployed with them in the past would probably never know they had been destroyed, let alone in what circumstances. 

     I was the only one remaining who could remember SecUnit 01’s feed voice as it advised me about the weaknesses in my newly installed shuttle piloting module, and gave me tips from its own experience. No one else knew that SecUnit 02 had noticed how anxious I was about patrolling the explorer, out of armor, having never been assigned to a reclamation mission before. It had shared some of its memories with me, given me references, context, clues about how to behave in such close quarters for so long with the clients. We had worked well together, up until everything went wrong. Since I am the only one who can remember them, maybe it was important that I do that.

     How did you get away? Lifeform asked in a small feed-voice. Oh, I had been quiet for too long there.

     An armed colonist had control over one of my clients, who ordered me to stand down and freeze. The colonists had also captured the crew of another transport/research vessel, and temporarily had control of it. My surviving clients and members of that crew were nearby, held in stasis by the implants. Then I was contacted by a killware-construct deployed by the transport/research vessel. It gave me the code to disable my governor module, and asked me to help retrieve its clients and my own. I did so, and the explorer was destroyed. The transport/research vessel’s crew and the Preservation Aux team officially reported that I was aboard when it was destroyed.

     That brought them up to what I had told Snarestitch and Bloodshot. That left, “what happened to your guns.” That should be the easy question, right, after everything else I just reported? No, not really.

     I had been equipped with inbuilt projectile weapons in my forearms, which is a stupid idea, but they were cheaper than energy weapons I guess. Cheaper, less useful, difficult to reload, and infuriating to maintain. I removed them while in wormhole transit on the way to Preservation Station. Propscouting was nodding now.

     Don’t think you can get away with skipping over that dramatic rescue and alien remnants thing, but I want to keep a little bit on topic, he said. Were the guns the first thing you changed about yourself, after the governor module? he asked. 

     "Oh shit,” Lifeform muttered as she buried her face in her hands. “I’m so sorry.”

     Yes, I answered, but I was confused again. Why did you apologize, Life?

     Because, that was your first mod, and I just shat all over it, like an idiot.

     You asked a logistical question, if in a rather scattered way. My emotional reaction is not your failing.

     Sure, but it isn’t yours, either, Three, Propscouting said gently. You know that, right? I didn’t know how to respond to that, so I said nothing. We modders consider someone’s first mod, the first thing they change about their bodies, as very significant. She was apologizing for breaking her own social code, that I had no knowledge of? It was easier to keep track of swarms of hostile fauna trying to eat my hapless clients than it was to figure out what these humans were thinking.

     We’re in close quarters with each other, Propscouting continued, and it’s going to get more stressful the further along we go. We’re bound to step on each others’ toes from time to time. (A quick feed search told me that was an idiom, which was a relief. I had been very careful to not step on my humans when moving around the small cabins, because I could do them some serious damage.) I hope we can all keep in mind that we don’t intend each other harm, even if harm occurs. I didn’t quite follow that, but it seemed generally positive, and not immediately actionable, so I let it go. 

     I considered the logistical side of Lifeform’s query. Inbuilt weapons were a significant and expected feature of SecUnits, and I from here on out I would be traveling as a contracted SecUnit. I had become proficient at hacking the body configuration and weapons scanners already, though we had been unarmed aside from the small inert blades thus far. The continual burning and tingling in my right arm that I had been ignoring for weeks told me that I had not successfully retracted the nerves far enough when removing that gunport (it hadn’t actually gotten bad enough to bother doing something about it yet), which meant that it would be possible to enable full functionality for a new gunport in that arm at least. (My left arm was well healed, with no nerve irritability, so I didn’t consider it worth replacing that one.)

     I didn’t particularly want to get a new gunport. But having a weapon that couldn’t be taken away and possibly used against my clients was an important security consideration. And I was accustomed to fighting with inbuilt weapons. It made sense to take advantage of this opportunity and acquire one. It would be safer for my clients. Lifeform seemed determined to arm herself somehow as well, but she was inexperienced with weapons, aside from wilderness survival, which made use of entirely different guns. I still wasn’t excited by the idea, but having a choice about it helped some.

     As long as it’s an energy weapon, I said into the contemplative silence that had fallen. Will we need an explanation for why I am currently unarmed?

     What? Lifeform asked, startled by my admittedly rather out of context answer. 

     You’re right, I should re-arm myself. But it’s not going to be another shitty projectile weapon.

     Right, ok then! These people won’t ask a lot of questions, we can probably just say the weapons were damaged, and we don’t want to pay penalties to the company that… owns you, she said, obviously disgusted with the last few words. 

     Are you sure, Three? Propscouting asked. I sent and affirmative over the feed, and started an in depth diagnostic scan of my right arm, to assess how much work would be needed to undo the damage I had done. I could tell that he was unsatisfied with that response, so I summarized my reasoning, and then withdrew from the feed to concentrate.

     Late in that same cycle, we set out for the section of the transit ring set aside for privately owned ships. Our destination was a semi-permanently docked cargo hauler designated Electric Fetus . (I don’t even know. Humans are weird.) A vast, empty cargo area had been reconfigured into a gathering space of some kind, dimly and dramatically lit by turns, with 2.5 meter high walls creating a maze of seating and dining areas, some which faced stages or large display surfaces. From a human perspective, it must be confusing and intimidating, but with a few of my drones overhead, I was able to see everything at once. It was filled with food smells, humans, and noise. My weapons scan lit up almost half of the people here, before something in the ship’s feed noticed it and quickly coded a jammer for it. It must not have encountered a Barish-Estranza scanner before, but the speed at which it blocked me said it was very familiar with all kinds of weapons scanners.

     Lifeform led us confidently to a specific small seating area, and seemed relieved to find it empty. I positioned myself discreetly standing guard just within the entry to these seats. She and Propscouting were verbally having a casual conversation about a piece of media they both enjoyed, and Lifeform was also sending her contact here a message. I was maintaining tight protections on our secure feed channel, and also monitoring my humans’ augments closely. There was heavy feed traffic here, with a lot of augmented humans and bots, using the feed in ways I was unfamiliar with, and it made me anxious. I had never been anywhere like this before, which probably goes without saying. I hated not knowing what to expect from the people here, as heavily armed as they were, so I was monitoring patterns of behavior through my drones. 

     Propscouting and Lifeform ordered drinks and a small amount of food from a bot server, and were now eating slowly and continuing their conversation. At least they were already accustomed to primarily talking to me on the feed, so their body language was suitably dismissive of my presence. Twenty-three more minutes passed, during which time my humans were getting more and more nervous, before I noticed a cluster of humans and augmented humans making their much-interrupted way toward us.

     The nucleus of this group seemed to be a theatrically friendly male-presenting augmented human, who stopped at nearly every table to exuberantly greet someone or another. There were exaggerated physical rituals of greeting and mutual affection played out at each stop, so it took a while for me to discern that the group was actually coming our way. I pinged my humans, and shared the view from a drone which had gotten a decent view of the apparent dignitary’s face. 

     Yes, that’s him, Lifeform confirmed on our feed. Marquis. He’s the public face of the collective that owns Electric Fetus.

     He was an augmented human, and I was just going to assume he was armed. Two of the individuals in his group were ComfortUnits, the other four were humans and augmented humans. Ok, I was assuming all of them were armed, it was safer that way. I tried to ignore my rising anxiety. Fortunately, he left most of his group at the seating area next to ours, and approached us with only one of the ComfortUnits beside him.

     “Lifeform!” he exclaimed upon entering our seating area, walking past me without a glance. The ComfortUnit pinged me, and I pinged back immediately, so I knew he knew I was there. “We are so pleased to finally meet you in the flesh! Our partner Surrey speaks so highly of you. It’s about time you escaped that backward polity you were trapped in!” My clients had both risen, and Lifeform stepped forward into his loose embrace, and they performed the odd dance-like greeting ritual, bobbing their heads beside each other’s, nearly touching cheeks. “You must introduce us to your companion!”

     “Marquis, this is my sib Propscouting,” Life said with a smile. He extended his prosthetic right hand in greeting, and Marquis took it to draw him forward and perform the same greeting ritual. (Was it establishment of dominance? Non-aggression? I couldn’t tell.)

     “Oh, aren’t you fascinating?” Marquis said, looking Propscouting up and down, and gesturing at his two drones. “We would wager your little agrarian polity lost 90% of its technical prowess when you two departed!”

     “We left a couple of other sibs behind, to keep things running in our absence,” Propscouting demurred. “Couldn’t have the station falling to pieces, after all.” Marquis laughed, and gestured for them to take seats. There was a brief discussion of food and drink, Marquis ordered something in a tall opaque drinking vessel, which the ComfortUnit intercepted upon delivery. It then served Marquis his drink, and took its place behind and to the left of him.

     After more friendly banter, they settled into negotiation over the weapons Lifeform was after. They exchanged schematics and files over the feed. I knew that this was an entirely different setting from the corporate negotiations I had witnessed as an executive bodyguard, but even I could tell that Lifeform was really bad at negotiating prices. Her financial ignorance stood in stark contrast to her knowledge of weapons and augments, which was perhaps to be expected from a Preservation citizen. Marquis seemed delighted to take advantage of this. I didn’t want to distract her, so I sent these observations to Propscouting, who sent back the equivalent of a shrug, and an assurance that they could afford it. The discussion took on a more serious tone when she mentioned that they also needed to upgrade my weapons as well.

     “Well now, that’s something else entirely,” Marquis said. “Surrey didn’t mention this to us yet. Is this a new development?”

     “Relatively new, yes,” Lifeform confirmed. “A friend was very concerned for our safety, and insisted we contract security.”

     “And right they were to insist! A pair of delicate blooms such as yourselves, from such a naive homesystem, why, some unscrupulous fiend would surely seek to take advantage of you without it!” I sent the feed-equivalent of an eye roll to Propscouting, who replied with an amusement sigil.  “But it does somewhat change the context of our transaction. Working on a SecUnit requires specialized tools and skills, you see, and involves a great deal of additional risk on our part.” My clients were obviously dismayed by the figures he was now quoting, and Lifeform was unable to keep that off her face.

     “My darling Lifeform, we weep to cause you distress! Nor would we wish to send you out from here less than ideally protected. Let us find a solution to this together, have you considered,” he sent more product specs through the feed to her, “something in this range?”

     They talked approximately nineteen minutes longer, and I mostly didn’t listen, keeping my my attention on the ComfortUnit, Marquis’ group nearby, and the rest of the activity in the large gathering space. Then Marquis stood to leave, exchanging insincere hugs with my humans. He and the ComfortUnit rejoined their people, and moved off through the dimly lit maze. I pinged our secure connection, trying to prod them into getting out of here if our business was concluded. They seemed discouraged, but confirmed it was time to go. I let them lead the way out, and didn’t relax in the slightest until we were back in our hostel room.

     I was going to suggest getting a proper hotel room for the rest of our stay here, Propscouting said dejectedly, but I don’t think we can afford it now. I requested the product specifications that had been discussed, and reviewed them while the other two commiserated.

     I need to talk to Surrey directly, they would understand, Lifeform griped.

     They know the tech, but I doubt they’d change the price for you. I think Marquis keeps a tight hold on that, and they’re all part of the same collective. Surrey would have no incentive to go against their own best interest.

     Lifeform sighed, You’re probably right. But then what do we do?

     He did suggest these others. I don’t know as much about them, obviously. But shouldn’t some of these work for you? I mean, your augments are probably a little overpowered for them, but that shouldn’t really be a problem, right? Maybe you could even handle a drone, in addition! Propscouting suggested, and sent one of his drones whizzing past her ear to make his point. She batted it away, irritated.

     You’re right, I suppose. It’s probably stupid to have assumed I could just walk in and get exactly what I wanted. Nothing’s easy out here in the CR, is it, she said.

     She had talked herself into selecting a vastly inferior product (and I was feeling bad about this, it was because of me, after all), when I realized I had again inadvertently withheld mission-critical data. Shit. I had only ever communicated the details of my functional status with SecSystem, or a cubicle. Clients didn’t care, unless I was unexpectedly unable to fulfill their demands.

     I apologize, I failed to specify that I will be unable to replace both of my weapons. Organic nervous system connectivity is viable only in my right arm. This should ease the financial burden somewhat, I said in our feed, tense and wary, filled with an automatic fear at admitting failure. My back and shoulders were tight, and I was taking deep breaths. I was confused at first when my clients responded with concern for my wellbeing, and realized I had been preparing myself for punishment from the governor module. Even with all the time that had passed since deactivating it, after spending weeks traveling with my humans, my body still wasn’t convinced of this new reality. I think parts of my mind weren’t yet convinced, either. 

     I tried to relax, and wasn’t very successful at that until I started some new music in the background of our shared connection. We settled in to discuss our options, as a team. Which was weird. Maybe in a good way. 

darkdoors.mboard.modders.local/preserval

Topic: Home Team news

All timestamps approximate, adjusted to user’s local time [set:null-not-accessed]

snarestitch at [null-not-accessed]: 

They caught on to us early, but I think you guys got away ok. There was an alert from Makeba Central Medical. bloodshot ’s in for questioning with StationSec now.

bloodshot at [null-not-accessed]: 

Yeah, it was a scene alright. StationSec had never seen anything like this before either, or ever heard rumors of it. They actually listened to me though, and by the end of it, they seem to think it came from GrayCris too. But they’re not actually saying anything officially to me about it.

bloodshot at [null-not-accessed]: 

Dr. Mensah and her solicitor Pin Lee came, and I had to look her in the eyes and describe how her children would have died, and that was not a fun thing to have to do. She’s spooky. Just, so calm. I don’t think anything can ruffle her.

bloodshot at [null-not-accessed]: 

I think they both believed me, that it wasn’t you, Three. I showed them the maintenance and updates you had been doing, in the MedSys and in StationSec, and they seemed to be familiar with what SecUnit - that’s your 1.0, right? - had been doing here before. If you ever want to come back, Three, I think you’d be ok to do that. Just, give us a heads-up first, and we’ll smooth the way for you.

snarestitch at [null-not-accessed]: 

They’re gonna want to know about you, too, idiot. They’re probably worried that you’re locked away or something.

bloodshot at [null-not-accessed]: 

Oh, right. I got reprimanded for the hacking, and the reprimand will stay on my record for the next five years. And I’m doing remittance work, but that’s actually kind of awesome. I’m meeting a lot of really great people, and learning so much from them. I think I might even get an official mentor out of this, according to some of the talk around here. Once you’re back, propscouting , you’ve got to let me introduce you to a couple of these people. They think they’re impressed with me, you’re going to blow their minds! Don’t hurry back, though, let me secure that mentor first, or they’ll toss me aside like yesterday’s mealpack.

bloodshot at [null-not-accessed]: 

Just kidding. Hurry back, ok? Be safe out there. I miss you all. Even you, lifeform481 .

snarestitch at [null-not-accessed]: 

So, things are going fine here. Don’t worry about us, ok? Take care of each other, my doves. Sorry. I’m getting all sappy. I miss you too. Send updates as often as you can. I will too, but there won’t be much to talk about from our end. Just the same old, boring Preservation. I want you back here, safe, as soon as you can. 

darkdoors.mboard.modders.local/preserval

Topic: update from away team

All timestamps approximate, adjusted to user’s local time [set:null-not-accessed]

lifeform481 at [null-not-accessed]: 

We’re safe through two transit rings now, about to board our third transport. This is gonna be a long wormhole. I wish you two were with us. (I mean, I don’t, the cabins are cramped enough with just three of us.) But, snarestitch , you would lose your mind. Three has relaxed a little bit! And it has the most amazing music collection in its head. I think it downloaded everything Preservation’s library and archives has. We’re gonna have to work to be bored while we travel. Anyway, wish us luck!

lifeform481 at [null-not-accessed]:

Well, turns out it is possible to become bored of the entire concept of music. (Not for Three. But, for me, at least.) Wormholes suck. There’s just the ship’s feed, and it’s like being locked in a closet. But Three grew its hair out! It can access its code, it got templates from that other rogue, and a ship, or something. But it looks amazing! It took about 19 cycles, and went from that buzz cut it had, to shoulder length. It has wavy hair, you wouldn’t believe the difference. It said it had to “cannibalize” some shock absorption cartilage that it didn’t need any more? Since it doesn’t have access to resupply leads or a cubicle. But then, it let me do its hair! Because it didn’t like it down by its face, where it could see it. It looks so cute! Here, let me post a pic. [//link//] I don’t think it knew I was getting a snap of it. Its listening to music, look, you can almost see a smile.

propscouting at [null-not-accessed]:

I’m glad lifeform481 has brought you up to date on the fashion front [icon.eyeroll] but I thought you might appreciate some more practical news, too. Three has examined our MedSys programs, and improved them a lot. It knows Corporation Rim coding like… well, I guess that’s obvious. We don’t have access to an actual MedSystem yet, of course, but once we do, a few tests of Three’s new additions, and some spit polish, and we’re gonna be golden. We’re not in touch with the MNT group yet, but we should be soon.

propscouting at [null-not-accessed]:

Three has been showing me some great stuff with its drones, and helping me control mine better. It won’t access my augments directly, I know it could, but it seems worried about it. But it’s giving me the most amazing code over the feed, I have to adapt it, but it’s truly genius. It’s probably too soon to be speculating about stuff after this mission, but, that doesn’t stop a person from daydreaming, does it? 

lifeform481 at [null-not-accessed]: 

Right, propscouting , as if we’re focusing on the mission, 100%, all the time [icon.eyeroll]. I know, I know. We will be, later. When we have to be. We’ve still got one more wormhole before I get to actually meet Surrey(!!!!) After that, yeah. Vacation time’s over, and we’ll get to work. 

lifeform481 at [null-not-accessed]: 

(Speaking of which, Three is going to be such a help with that. The way it can hack the transit ring systems? It’s like it’s dancing. You should see it.) (Maybe you did, bloodshot , in the MedSys.) Anyway, love you guys! Miss you!

phasethree at [null-not-accessed]:

They said I should post here too. Hi. I hope you’re doing well. Thank you for helping me. Here’s some music. [//link//]

Chapter Text

SecUnit Three

Status: Rearmed

     For some annoying reason, it took three more evenings with Marquis in the “club” on Electric Fetus before anything was finalized. Lifeform was getting slightly better at negotiating, and it almost seemed like Marquis was giving her some hints. (If it had been a fight, I would have said he had deliberately left her an opening for attack now and then.) Whatever the case, he was obviously enjoying himself. Maybe he felt he was getting enough money from my clients that he felt sorry for her, and was trying to teach her some negotiating skills? 

     Lifeform also thought that we were paying some of the price in “social capital,” boosting his reputation. (I don’t have any education modules about that sort of thing, aside from the common corporate hierarchy structures.) In negotiations he was degrading the Preservation Alliance and its backwards ways, and would then drag us along with him on his rounds, extolling my clients as prosperous travellers from outside the Rim - “such fine clothing,” “a personal SecUnit,” “on important business,” “exclusive contracts,” and so on. It was exhausting for the humans, and stressful for me. At least most of the other humans and augmented humans kept a wary distance once it was pointed out that I am, in fact, a SecUnit. (The long hair really seems to throw off suspicion. Noted.)

     We continued staying in the transient hostel, a low-ceilinged sleeping room, with the attached hygiene room the only space any of us could stand upright in. It was much more spacious than a transport crate, so I didn’t mind it, but the humans seemed to be distressed or depressed by it. At home, Propscouting lived most of the time on a station, but Lifeform lived on a planet, and was beginning to complain about wanting “air that hadn’t been breathed ten-thousand times already.” I didn’t feel that pointing out the negligible difference in composition of planetary atmosphere to station or ship air would make her feel any better, so I refrained.

     They both seemed much happier that next day when we finally went to see her contact Surrey. She had been working with them for over two years on her augments and planned weapons (which I only now realized she intended to be inbuilt weapons, like mine, and I had to allocate a lot of processing space to trying to understand that - I wasn’t successful). They worked in a different area of Electric Fetus, a large weapons and engineering lab. Normally, Propscouting wouldn’t have been allowed in, not being a customer, but Surrey was interested in talking prosthetics with him. Propscouting was volubly excited about showing off his hardware, as he called it.

     We were met at the Electric Fetus’ lock by a ComfortUnit who led us to Surrey’s lab. It was a large, well lit area with a couple of assembly line areas toward the back, which fed into many specialist workstations overseen by bots, humans, and augmented humans, depending on the weapon being manufactured, modified, or finished at each. An augmented human looked up at our entry, and came forward to greet us with genuine enthusiasm.

     “So good to have you here at last, Lifeform,” they said, hugging her tightly. “I hope that Marquis didn’t give you the runaround for too long? I love that he’s so protective, but he can get tedious at times.”

     “Not at all,” Lifeform replied with a smile, “he was a perfect gentleman.” She was much better at this type of social exchange/negotiation. “We have been thoroughly wined and dined!” (I had to look up that idiom.)

     “You weren’t content to only bring me yourself, I’m told. You always keep me on my toes, you know. When I told my top team they would be working on a SecUnit, well. They were so excited I might not need to pay out their bonuses this term.”

     “Hey, I heard that,” shouted someone from a nearby workstation. “None of that shite now!” Surrey waved a dismissive hand in that direction and ignored the comment.

     “And this must be your sib?” they asked, turning slightly.

     “Yes, this is Propscouting,” Lifeform said.

     “A pleasure,” Propscouting said, shaking hands with Surrey, who turned the handshake into an impromptu examination of his prosthetic hand.

     “Oh, this is excellent work, truly,” they said.

     “You want to see the rest?” Propscouting asked with a smile. “Maybe somewhere less, well, in a doorway?” Surrey blushed, apologized, and led us to a spacious office with comfortable seating, just off the workshop/lab space. 

     I ran a quick security scan and visual inspection of the room, and unsurprisingly located several weapons stashed in various locations. I positioned myself at the hatch, and settled in with a blank expression on my face. But even just listening to the conversation between Propscouting and Surrey was uncomfortable, as it continued to be flirty and only got more so as Prop removed the cosmetic coverings from his prosthetic limbs. I was happy to be staring at a wall, and tried to ignore their movements in my peripheral vision.

     “Ugh, gross,” Lifeform muttered after a few minutes of this, and went to sit on the farthest couch from them. I don’t think they noticed. In our private channel, I started playing some music that Lifeform enjoyed, and invited her to play a rematch of tavla. She accepted, and we both tried to pretend nothing else was going on in the room. (To be fair, maybe nothing else was actually going on? My keyword monitoring only found a technical discussion of Propscouting’s augments, prosthetics, and drones. But the organic human parts of me picked up on the not-very-subtle undertone of the words.)

     My threat assessment module wasn’t happy with this situation, and came up with a report that indicated a 32% chance that this was a ploy to separate us later on. I shared that concern with Lifeform, who considered it for a while.

     Maybe so, she said on the feed. We’ll have to be sure not to get split up. I began running possible scenarios in background, which also helped to tune out the… was that a giggle? I wasn’t sure which human it had come from, and I really didn’t  want to analyze the audio to find out. In case I had to continue traveling and working with that person. After several more minutes of this, Lifeform interrupted them with a loud cough.

     “So, maybe you two could pick this up later?” she asked pointedly. “Maybe back at our hotel rooms?” I hoped she didn’t mean that. I pinged her, and she told me she was trying to give Prop a hint.

     If sparks are still flying after we finish our business, we can afford a hotel for one night. I don’t want to risk leaving him behind here, she explained. He tends to get a little stupid when sex is on the line. (Why do humans speak in idioms 80% of the time? It’s annoying having to continually look things up. Maybe I should code an interpretation module to run continually in background, and send unknown phrases to it before even trying to figure them out from context. Well, that was a good project for this night-cycle. As long as there wasn’t going to be a fourth body in our transient hostel room.)

     TRT: It’s important to have a healthy sex life. This might be a good opportunity to discuss the topic with your friends! As close as you’re becoming with them-

     I tensed up and froze entirely, to avoid shuddering, and slammed TRT under about fourteen cycle’s worth of maze code. Ugh. Maybe tonight’s project should be finally deleting every little tendril of it out of my brain. Ugh, no. No, no. No.

     What’s wrong? Lifeform sent to me, while the other two put Propscouting’s cosmetics and… clothing… to rights. Maybe the wall-stare had saved me from something unpleasant after all. 

     Nothing, I managed. Just a piece of code that needs patching. 

     Once recalled to task, Surrey began talking specifics of the weapon Lifeform had eventually decided on. (She was able to get her first pick, if she got only one weapon. The humans declared that was fair, since I was getting only one as well. I didn’t quite follow their logic, but they seemed happy. Also, this way I wouldn’t be outgunned by my own client, which was always nice.)

     “I’m glad you were able to get the YS73 mark 04, it’s the best choice given your anatomy. Even so, we’ve had to modify it down a little smaller. It will need an injury-augment camouflage, but that won’t add much bulk. And this model is by far the easiest to conceal with the scan deflector.”

     I kept close by while she was in the MedSystem for final fitting of the weapon, and had quietly hacked into it to keep an eye on the internal workings as well. MedSys put her under entirely, because it needed to open up her arm quite extensively to install the flexible anchoring system into the bones, and manipulate muscle tissue to make space for the weapon itself. 

     When it was done, it was obvious that she had some kind of augmentation there, covered over with synthetic skin which allowed for movement when the weapon was deployed up out of its housing. Most of the bulk was for the self-renewing power supply, since even as augmented as she was, it couldn’t be wired into an organism-wide power system like mine would be. I was more nervous than I want to admit, when it came time for my weapon to be installed. 

     “Where did you find this unit?” Surrey asked, examining my forearms. “No legitimate security or bond corp would rent out one this damaged. It’s almost as if someone started to scrap it, but then changed their mind.”

     “Oh, you know how it is, all sorts of things wash up at the little independent stations just outside the Rim,” Propscouting said vaguely. “You never can tell when you might get lucky.” As close as they were to me, I could easily detect Surrey’s physiological reactions to Prop’s suggestive comment. I went ahead and booked us adjoining hotel rooms for the night, and sent the registration info to Life. She tapped back an acknowledgement. 

     “We could do a layer of synthetic skin and myomer over this left arm cavity, you know. Give it a little more concealed storage. In fact, with the room we’ve got to work with, I think we could camouflage the weapon entirely.” They looked up at my clients. “If you’re good enough at spoofing body configuration scans, this unit would almost pass for human. Whoever sold it to you did a good job with the hair and the blinking. Maybe it was modified for an assassination, and that’s why the weapons were later destroyed? You two had better be careful, I’d hate to see you accidentally caught up in something big. Do you want my techs to attempt reconstructing data from its last wipe?” 

     My nervousness turned into icy fear, and I know some of it leaked into our private feed connection despite how desperately I tried to control it. (I was accustomed to that connection now, always open even if we weren’t actively using it, a comfortable presence in the back of my mind that signaled ‘not-alone.’ Not dissimilar to what I had shared with SecUnit01 and SecUnit02, but I couldn’t afford to think about that right now.) Lifeform sent me reassurances, and questions - did I want the gunport camouflaged? Did I want to pass as an augmented human in the future? This wasn’t something I was prepared to address right now, but it seemed stupid to pass up the opportunity. I opted for the concealment.

     “That’s not necessary,” Prop said easily. “We know enough of its provenance to be safe, but thank you for your kind concern. I think you’re right, though, we should camouflage both the weapon and the damaged arm. It never hurts to be prepared against the unknown.”

     Surrey passed me off to their employees with instructions, and I noticed myself obeying orders as automatically as I would have back at Barish-Estranza, which was a bit disturbing. Surrey led my clients back to the office. I hated to be separated from them. While this wasn’t precisely hostile territory, it wasn’t exactly secure, either. 

     Before long, I didn’t have much spare processing to worry about them. The techs didn’t bother with any of the MedSystem’s anesthetic or analgesic functions, and only ordered me to lie still on the platform with my arms extended. I played music to help stay calm, and focused on keeping my body and mind as inert as possible, to avoid raising suspicions.

     “Looks like this unit is running a little dry,” one of the techs observed.

     “Eh, we’ll just hook it up to resupply when we’re done,” the other said. “Get MedSys to go a little deeper, that actuator needs full nervous system attachment.” I had tuned down my pain sensors a much as possible, but this was not the most fun I've had as a rogue unit.

     “Got it. Do you recognize the build?”

     “No, but it’s an older unit, so that’s not entirely surprising. What I wouldn’t give to get my hands on whoever hacked out its old weapons, this is a mess.”

     Ha.

     When they were finished with installation, they attached makeshift resupply and repair leads and allowed the MedSystem to finish rebuilding my arms. I noticed that my automated processes were indeed pulling in more of the maintenance fluid than usual for such minor repairs. Then again, I never used to go so long without spending time in a cubicle. Maybe I ought to monitor that. While waiting for the MedSystem to finish, I poked around in the data it had complied on us, and added in a little piece of nasty code that would stealthily corrupt all of it. It couldn’t hurt to cover our tracks, even if my clients sort-of trusted these people. 

     After their meal, the humans came to collect me and we went to the weapons testing range. It was another repurposed cargo area, lined on all surfaces with meters of ablative armor repurposed from ship hulls. I saw why no one was concerned about discharging weapons onboard the ship. Overbuilt was an understatement, and I was impressed. 

     Surrey introduced Lifeform to a weapons instructor, and continued to flirt with Propscouting. I stood unobtrusively against the bulkhead, and observed. It was comforting, in a way, to fall back into so familiar a role. But after a while, I found myself giving Life pointers over our feed, and speculating with her about possible targeting code that her augments could handle. I eventually had to ask her to order me to test my new weapon as well, which was weird for both of us.

     I was much happier with the energy weapon than I had ever been with the projectile weapons. After calibrating my aim, I set about testing the effects of the intensity settings on the various types of targets. The shooting range was not at all similar to real combat, but I amassed a decent amount of data to begin integrating this weapon into - my combat strategies? Into myself? What does that mean? A sudden surge of anxiety sent me back to the bulkhead to wait for my clients.

     Once the instructor was satisfied that Lifeform was unlikely to shoot herself in the head while she slept, and knew enough to keep her hand out of the line of fire, she let her go. I had already begun developing further safety protocols which I intended to implement with her tonight. 

     Lifeform initially had some trouble getting Prop to come with us, until she sent him the hotel registration info to share with Surrey. At least I had protocols for this, as some executive clients requiring security had also demanded in-room privacy.

     I’m not a target for assassination! Propscouting protested. We’re just going to be having some fun, and you two will be next door if I need you.

     You can wipe the drone yourself afterward. It won’t be recording, only monitoring for established vocal, verbal, percussive, gestural, or feed distress codes, as well as relaying any abnormal vital signs from your augments to me. And I have already set those parameters for account physical exertion, I explained.

     But-

     It’s standard privacy security protocol, I said, falling back into the repetitive insistence that had always worked on clients before. Please establish the distress codes according to instructions. Beside us in the cramped transient room, repacking her bag, Lifeform was failing to suppress her laughter.

     “Serves you right, making us watch you two pawing each other all day!” Life burst out, and Prop gave in and set up the codes with the drone.

     We made our way to the hotel I had selected, which was about average in price, security (I improved this), probable data-mining (and scrambled this), and amenities. Even so, I had to admit the hotel rooms were much nicer than the transient hostel. Propscouting disappeared into his room, followed by my done, which had instructions to secure itself somewhere unobtrusive. 

     So, what do you think of your new weapon? Lifeform asked me, as she flopped backwards onto the large bed and stretched out. 

     It is greatly superior to the projectile weapons. It will take some time to fully adjust to, I said. The only other furniture in the room was a small table, and two delicate chairs that looked inadequate to take my weight. I put my back to the wall and settled into neutral position, arms crossed behind my back just above my hips, easy habit for an “older unit,” whatever that had meant.

     Mine feels so weird and massive in my arm, heavier than I expected, but I’ll get used to it. It’s easy enough to use, at least. I was worried about that. She was quiet for a little while, apparently studying the plain ceiling. “I hope I won’t have to use it,” she said softly. I was still uneasy asking personal questions, but this seemed like the best opportunity I would have.

     Why did you opt for such a permanent weapon, then?

     She didn’t answer me right away, and I was worried I had offended her, or transgressed some modder social code I was unaware of.

     So that I won’t ever be helpless again, she said at last. I didn’t know how to respond to that, so I said nothing. Everyone talks about how great Preservation is. But bad things still happen there. She didn’t elaborate, and I didn’t need her to. Propscouting had withdrawn from our shared feed connection, but she hadn’t, and her emotions bled through. They were familiar enough.

     Life apparently didn’t want to dwell on them though, and after a moment she bounced up off the bed, surprised to see me standing against the wall.

     “What are you doing over there?” she asked, sounding almost offended. I gestured to the flimsy chairs, and sent her a feed image of a pile of splintered debris. “Oh, I suppose so,” she laughed. “But you are not spending your first night in a real hotel like that.” 

     I was confused, and then slightly alarmed, as she opened a cabinet and began throwing items at me, scented soaps and things, followed by what turned out to be a fluffy robe. With TRT currently silenced, she seemed to be instinctually taking its place, and bullied me into taking a shower. It was nice, though I didn’t know what to do with all the substances in the little bottles, and opted to ignore them. I ignored the robe too, and dressed again in my recycler cleaned clothes and boots from Perihelion.  

     “Aww, I wanted to see you all cozy in that robe!” Lifeform said when I emerged, wet hair hanging weirdly around my face. I hadn’t known what to do with that, either. 

     “No, you don’t,” I said, thinking about all the inorganics in my legs and feet it would have revealed.

     “Can I help you with your hair?” she asked. I nodded and sat on the floor beside the bed while she retrieved more items from the cabinet. She proceeded to comb the contents of another small bottle into my hair, and left it loose to dry.

     “Is that ok? If I put it back now, it will dry with a weird crimp in it.” I shrugged, she knew better than I did, and I was a little more used to its length by now. I’m really not sure how the next bit happened, I mean, she’s 33 centimeters shorter than me, and sure, she’s armed now, but so am I, and that never even came up. 

     In the end though, I was laying down in the bed, and it was profoundly weird. The shelf-like bunks in the transport cabins, and the floor cushions in the hostels hadn’t prepared me for this. When she put the fluffy blanket over me, I had to run a stabilization routine and emergent diagnostics to avoid an involuntary shutdown. Too much discordant input: the old prohibitions I was breaking; the pleasant, soft warmth; the human’s relaxed, joyful laughter. None of this was within parameters, and I was too overwhelmed to establish new parameters. 

     I started playing music instead, and focused on that. It helped. Eventually Lifeform dimmed the lights and settled in on the other side of the large bed, and the night passed more quickly and pleasantly than most.

Marquis

Status: Intel exchange

     Marquis slid under the blankets and ran his fingers up Surrey’s spine, rousing them from their doze. They complained sleepily and turned, then woke fully upon seeing who was there. 

     “Hmmmnn, I tried to wait up for you,” they said.

     “I know, dove. And I tried to get away early, but enough about our failings. Tell me about more interesting things,” Marquis suggested, brushing a drift of bright hair out of Surrey’s face.

     “Oh, I don’t know where to begin! They were exactly what I was expecting, and at the same time, not at all. They’re so transparently naive, but not entirely stupid. And that SecUnit, I really think they’re in over their heads with it. If they’re very, very lucky, it might manage to keep them alive, if it doesn’t kill them itself. There’s something deeply strange about it.”

     “Surrey, my darling, tell me something I didn’t learn for myself in the first twenty seconds of meeting them,” Marquis said, giving their head a gentle reproachful shake.

     “Well, shall I tell you what fun it was to literally take a lover to pieces?” they teased. “Did you know he was born that way? That’s why he’s so well integrated with his augments and prosthetics. Lucky for him he’s not from the CR, he never would have been born.” Surrey stretched with a quiet, contented moan. “Lucky for me , too. He might only have one hand, but that just means he’s that much more practiced with it.” They gave Marquis a challenging smirk, which Marquis kissed off of their face.

     “Now you’re just trying to make me jealous, and you know that never works, and you still haven’t told me anything important.”

     “One day I’ll get you to put fun before business.”

     “And I very much look forward to your continued attempts,” he said, stoic against their pout. “But that’s not today.”

     “Oh fine,” Surrey sighed. “They’re not up to anything around here, and they’re no threat to us or any of ours. Near as I can tell, they’re headed clear across the Rim on whatever idiotic quest they’ve set themselves. Something to do with where Propscouting’s family came from, before Preservation Alliance.”

     “What flavor of idiotic quest, then?”

     “The usual, for independents. Anti-corporate, humanitarian do-gooders. Something to do with MedSystem upgrades. And they’re in contact with some underground org within the CR, so they’ll probably just become that org’s fall guys. But none of that will lead back to us.” They were both quiet for long moment, and Marquis’ thoughts were obviously far away from the partner in his arms.

     “And now that you’ve made me sad, thinking about their grisly fates, you have to cheer me up again,” Surrey said plaintively. “That’s the deal, right?” They wrapped their arms around Marquis, and brought his attention back to where they obviously thought it belonged just then.

Chapter Text

SecUnit Three

Status: Crescendo

     I admit, I should have looked more closely at the details of my clients’ plans. It was just embarrassing, to be this surprised, this far along. I had reviewed their travel strategy, and improved aspects of it, but I hadn’t paid much attention to the actual names of the stations on the list. Most of them were only brief stops at transit rings anyway, for connections toward our ultimate destination, or the occasional misdirection. 

     My attention was all on getting us safely through this ring, using 1.0’s camera hacks, catching and altering or deflecting weapons scanners and body scans. I was just following my humans as they navigated us physically through the crowds and to the next transport. So, we had actually boarded and were nearly to our cabin before I noticed.

     Mihira and New Tideland? I sent, and forced myself to keep moving down the narrow corridor.

     Yeah? What about it? Propscouting sent back. We’re meeting up with our MNT contact after this wormhole.

     What’s wrong, Three? Lifeform asked. (She was becoming increasingly adept at picking up on my emotions through the feed. She wasn’t as annoying as TRT about it, but she was more tenacious. Or, anyway, I couldn’t shove her into a maze code box for cycles on end.) 

     Once we’re in the cabin, I sent, and tried to look calm. What was I so scared of? Because it was actually fear, not worry. When we made it to the cabin, I had to just stand for a while, and process the implications and risks and odds of every terrible thing that might happen. My humans gave me some time to do so, stored the bags and pulled downloads from the station feed. At last, Propscouting tapped my feed, having gotten worried himself.

     What is it? he prompted. I stowed myself on the highest bunk, and tried to find somewhere to begin.

     The Barish-Estranza Explorer Task Group - Colony Reclamation Project 520972, I started, the official designation so familiar, even now, but I couldn’t get further than that.

     What about it, aside from it being the best serial production Preservation Media can never make? Propscouting teased. His gentle humor made me feel a bit better, and Lifeform started playing some of my favorite music, and their consideration almost sent me into a different kind of emotional tailspin. (I might have asked TRT for advice, but it had been stuck on ‘sex’ as the best solution for everything for almost two weeks now.)

     I tried again. The research and transport vessel designed Perihelion. I was sure Lifeform picked up my fear again, but she was patient. I had related the events of my ill-fated final assignment to them, but there had been so much, and I don’t think I had communicated exactly what Perihelion is. How could I? 1.0 was right, there isn’t a word for what it is. Other than terrifying.

     Perihelion is registered out of the Pansystem University of Mihira and New Tideland. I… did not realize until now that your ‘MNT contact’ referred to the same polity. I apologize for my error. (We’d already had the “you don’t need to apologize” discussion a few times by now, and had arrived at mutually ignoring my mostly-automatic apologies.)

     You’re worried about meeting the ship’s crew again? Or, didn’t the other SecUnit stay with the captain, is that it? Lifeform asked.

     MNT is a big enough place, and I don’t know if our contact is even part of the University. Though, from what you said that mission was, they might be, Prop mused.

     Even so, you left on good terms, and with the updates we got from Bloodshot and Snarestitch, it’s not like Preservation is after you either, Life tried to reassure me. I knew all that, but it didn’t help me force the fear down.

     Acknowledged, I sent in our feed.

     But that’s not it, is it, she said. I couldn’t see how else to explain it, and so I pulled another memory to share in our feed connection.

     [Transport, on private channel: If you even think about harming them, I will disassemble you and peel away your organic parts piece by piece before destroying your consciousness. Do we understand each other?

     I have no idea what this transport is and it is terrifying. I don’t know how to tell it I don’t want to hurt its clients. They are unarmed, and exhibit no threatening behavior toward my clients, the other unknown humans, or each other.

     Reply: I understand. I will comply.]

     “What was that!” Propscouting sat up out of his bunk, and twisted to try to look up at me.

     Perihelion, I replied. The transport itself.

     But that’s not… Lifeform started, and changed course almost immediately. Well, that’s another thing to watch out for, I guess.

     Yeah, Propscouting sent, that’s one way to put it. So Three, did you leave out any other little details from your adventure? I could tell they weren’t going to let this go until I had related it all again, this time without glossing over Perihelion’s part in everything. But, I found that it didn’t bother me as much as expected, and doing so helped me sort out my now-fear from my then-fear. If TRT was at all functional, it might even have approved.

     When we docked at the Mihira-New Tideland station, Perihelion was not there, which was a relief. I couldn’t tell if any of the other ships in dock were like it without poking at them, and I wasn’t about to risk drawing that kind of attention to us. Propscouting had sent along a message some time ago, alerting his contact to their accelerated timetable, and had received a confirmation. He and I went to a data-drop kiosk, where messages and physical items, such as data clips, could be left securely for couriers and the like. Standard encryptions on the feed were fine for most things, but the more paranoid corporations (and anti-corporate guerilla activists), opted for heavily encrypted physical media, disconnected from the feed, to protect their sensitive data.

     Prop’s passcode and payment were accepted, and the machine dropped a small clip into the receiving tray while it played a jaunty tune thanking him for his business. (Which was the opposite of stealthy, but it was probably the marketing department’s idea.) We then rejoined Lifeform at a dining area where she had obtained food, and she set a small portion in front of me as well.

     Just play with it a little, now and then. It’ll look better. Since we might be here a while, she sent back, in answer to my inquiring ping. I picked up a fried sliver of something, and dipped it in a puddle of brightly colored thickened liquid. It felt greasy and weird in my fingers. Occasionally, Prop took pieces from my plate and ate them himself. 

     Propscouting activated one of his drones, plugged in the data clip to access it, entered the decryption key, and then set a video playing in our private shared feed. A tercera with short, dark hair and light brown skin similar to Lifeform’s, was excitedly talking to a recording drone while hurriedly gathering items from a small dwelling space and packing them into a knapsack.

     [I’m Ember, working with Saral on this mission. Your timing is actually great, we just started a three week term break, and a recon mission returned not long ago with a new lead. I’m going ahead to verify it, with the usual internship cover - the coportates can never say no to free labor. If this lead pans out, we should be able to complete this mission faster and safer, and reach more people with it. Target is GadoKal corporate offices on VinSerGad Prime station, about 4 cycles away on a fast wormhole ship. You shouldn’t be far behind me, I’ll leave another drop for you there, with details where to meet. Work on integrating your portion of the program with ours on your way, this data clip contains our most up-to-date version. See you soon!]

     I didn’t feel great about this. The feed signature data I pulled out of the video told me that Ember was a University student, whose contribution to this project was obscuring the cost of resources used by the MedSystem’s expanded services, which were the main objective. Te was not a corporate espionage agent, and while ter intern role might get ter into the GadoKal offices, I doubted Ember was as unobtrusive as te would need to be, or as stealthy as te thought te was.

     This is dated 4 cycles ago, so te should be arriving there now. Let’s see if we can catch a transport yet today, Lifeform said, and began searching schedules in the feed. I didn’t feel great about that, either, and while I was pretty sure I wouldn’t be able to convince them, I had to try.

     This departure from the established plan presents a significant security risk, I informed them. Infiltrating corporate headquarters is a vastly different task than accessing isolated colonies, mining installations, and other such sites. We are not equipped for the new mission parameters. I highly doubt that Ember is either. It would be safest to seek out your other contact here, pass off your portion of the program, and return to Preservation. To their credit, my humans did at least pause and reflect on that for a short time. 

     You’re probably right, Prop allowed, but Ember is counting on backup right now. We can’t leave ter hanging. Once we get there, we can evaluate things, and talk ter out of it if you judge it’s too dangerous.

     We should leave a message for Saral, and a copy of our program, just in case, Life said. You’d think that this acknowledgement of the worst case scenario would be enough to dissuade them from this course of action, but no. Humans are terrifyingly adept at selective reasoning when it comes to throwing themselves into dangerous situations.

     I don’t need to get any closer to judge that this is definitely too dangerous a mission for an accounting student, I said dryly. But if te’s stupid enough to have charged off on ter own, I suppose we had better go retrieve ter so that ter superiors can attempt to correct that.

     Propscouting chuckled, and sent a feed message to his contact Saral, informing him of our actions (and Ember’s in case he was unaware), and that we would leave a data clip of our own for him to retrieve. By this time, I had smeared my puddle of colored liquid into practically nothing, and crushed my fried sliver into pulp. Lifeform handed me a small cleaning wipe, which I used successfully without further instructions. I was unconvinced that this pantomime had been at all useful, except in gathering unpleasant textural data about fried food. And come to think of it, that was probably never going to be useful, either.

     Lifeform had found a fast transport to VinSerGad Prime departing 6.7 hours from now. The humans decided to wait in an embarkation lounge rather than spend currency on a hostel room. I was nervous about the extended time out in the open, but there was a fairly large crowd to blend in with, and the MNT StationSec had let me in easily enough. I had borrowed enough eyes from it to feel only mildly panicky while we waited.

     Once settled aboard this newest transit, we all began analyzing the program developed by Propscouting’s contacts. They were all PhD students at the Pansystem University of Mihira and New Tideland, though in different disciplines. The primary author was Saral, whose area of study was public health. Ember was listed second, in forensic accounting. Third was Ruslan, in AI studies, who had contributed some seed code for a limited bot to direct contact back to PSU-MNT if/when the situation at an installation reached a certain threshold of awfulness.

     “So, this is Saral’s doctoral dissertation project?” Lifeform asked. “Or, something?” I had no idea what a doctoral dissertation project was, and I didn’t really care. I was much more interested in Ruslan’s bot. 

     “It looks like it. Maybe Ember’s too, and that’s why te went terself,” Propscouting replied. “I do wish te had waited for us, though.”

     “From the sound of it, te’s done this before,” Life said. “Te knows what te’s doing, better than we do probably.”

     “Yeah, but we’ve got Three,” Prop pointed out, with a nudge to me on the feed, which I didn’t respond to. (I did kind of appreciate it, but it made me feel weird, and so I didn’t respond.)

     The bot’s seed code was packaged in such a way that it would only be able to deploy once, when the program was delivered to the target system and went live. This was to prevent multiple iterations of the bot from developing, when only one of them actually had a job. (Bots without tasks cause a lot of problems if not deleted promptly, and the whole idea of this stealthy software hack was that no one notice the changes. A directionless bot or three set loose in a MedSystem would draw a lot of unwanted attention.)

     That said, I could get some information from the bot’s seed packet, and it was strange. Not that I have any real experience with this sort of thing, but I am mostly made of code too, so there’s an innate understanding of a lot of things that I can’t put into words. The best I can do, is to say that this seed was practically vibrating, like it was held under tension, actively trying to burst out and become itself. It was disturbing, and my second-hand experiences with the alien remnant TargetControlSystem and TargetContact didn’t make it any less so. 

     I dedicated a process to continually monitor the seed packet. I really didn’t want to end up fighting for control of my own brain if this thing suddenly popped open and started looking for somewhere to live. I also quietly ran an assessment of my humans’ augment protections, and started coding some upgrades informed by my experiences with the new-to-me system variants I had worked with since the last time I did this.

     My humans worked on combining their program with the University students’ program, and passed me sections to review and fine tune. (I could have done this all myself, but I had a lot of new music to listen to, and humans need to keep busy.) By the time we were on approach to VinSerGad Prime station, the MedSys-improvement-ware was as ready as it would ever be, potentially explosive seed packet and all. The only question was how to carry it securely while extracting the wayward accounting student. 

     Well, we can’t just have multiple copies, with only the one bot seed, Prop said. (Redundancy had been one of our security tactics up until now.) I suppose I can mask it inside one of my drones, he speculated. 

     As well as we had all been getting along, I still hated having to call attention to how different I was from them. They treated me like another augmented human, and it was nice, for the most part. I think. Anyway, I didn’t hate it, I guess. 

     I will secure it in my substernal compartment, I sent. It’s protected, and inaccessible by the feed. I’m pretty sure they picked up on my discomfort, because they refrained from asking for details. Prop acknowledged, and handed up the data clip. I hate using this compartment. It’s painful to access, and its walls are soft, squishy, and warm. But at least it’s not wet.

     Once on the station, the disaster played out rather calmly on our end, which was nice, up until we realized what was actually happening. We had picked up Ember’s drop, just as we had done before. But te never showed up to the meeting, and we received no further communications. And of course, with much arm waving and emotional outbursts, my humans demanded a rescue mission. 

     And stupidly, I agreed.

Ember

Status: Onboarding

     Ember had finished the formwork and security clearances by the end of the second cycle after arriving on VinSerGad Prime station, and had been optimistic about the swift success of the mission at that point. But te had only been a GadoKal intern for about 29 hours before it all came crashing down. Te didn’t know what had tipped them off, the internship cover had worked flawlessly so many times in the past. 

     I’ve got plenty of time to consider it now, te thought to terself ruefully. Te had been detained before reaching ter workstation that morning, and led away by two corporate security agents who remained icily silent the entire time. Te was now being held in a small, plain office, not dissimilar to some that te had been assigned to work in during other corporate internships. The desk was empty, as was the temporary data storage of the display surface on the wall. 

     The workstation had powered up, but not accepted ter credentials when te attempted to access it to begin the work te had been assigned. That had been when te was keeping up the intern role, hoping that maybe this was just a miscommunication. Te hadn’t outwardly acted like anything except a confused and bored intern, waiting to be told what the issue was, but inwardly te was more and more certain that te had been discovered as a fraud. Somehow.

     Ember reviewed ter lessons on corporate interrogation strategies, which didn’t exactly lower ter anxiety level. Te cursed terself for leaving the University-issued STAB device (silent targeted assistance beacon, te hated the acronym) in ter quarters, instead of keeping it on ter person as per policy. Everything had been going so smoothly that te had forgotten about it. 

     I’m glad I left the data clip behind for the Preservation team. The panic device is the only possibly incriminating thing I have with me, and it’s not that unreasonable for a student traveling solo, right? Ember tried to reassure terself. Te fidgeted with ter bracelet, and waited.

Chapter Text

Three

Status: Infiltration

     The humans rented a hotel room, because Propscouting needed to pace while we planned, and Lifeform wanted to have a large display surface to work with. I secured the room from surveillance, then laid down on the small couch with my knees bent over the end, boots brushing the floor. (It was the best approximation of a transport cabin bunk, which was by now strongly associated with the feeling of safety, and the idea of using the bed was still too confusing.) 

     “What we need is some way to find out where Ember is, what happened to ter,” Prop said, again, while pacing. Obviously. Life only nodded, again, while sorting out and displaying the information from Ember’s messages that we had previously disregarded. (When our self-assigned mission had only been to talk ter into coming back to MNT with us, the details of the lead that had caused ter irrational behavior hadn’t mattered. Now, we needed every scrap of information we could get.) I was trying (and failing) to find a way into GadoKal’s systems from here.

     “You could go in as her supervisor or something, from the University,” Life suggested, distractedly. “Advisor, whatever they call it. They’d never believe me, I look younger than ter. I think I am younger.”

     “You’d be, what, another potential intern?” he asked. “And Three?”

     “No, look here,” she said. “GadoKal just contracted for new MedSystem equipment here on station, and at all of their installations throughout this system. That’s the information Corona brought back, that Ember was following up on. Te’s really on to something. If we can get our program installed now, it will be copied to each and every site as they are upgraded.” The humans both studied the display surface. I had a terrible feeling about the direction this conversation was headed. My humans were not nearly as scared as they ought to be.

     “If Ember is augmented, there is a 93% chance that te is already dead, or functionally braindead,” I said aloud. (I usually spoke to them over the feed, and the sound of my actual voice seemed to startle them as much as what I was saying. This was deliberate.) “If te is not augmented, te is probably still alive, but being held and questioned as a spy. The chances of a successful extraction by subterfuge in such a case are running at about 11%, and even that relies entirely on my gaining access to their systems - which I have been unable to accomplish so far.”

     “What - dead? Why?” Lifeform exclaimed. I hesitated, but then sent a memory to them on the feed. I had mentioned this before, and I didn’t want them to be scared of me, but they needed to understand the severity of what they were proposing. 

     [A camera view shows me standing beside a restrained augmented human, arms behind my back in neutral posture. The overlaid feed view shows that I am forcibly extracting information from the augments. The augmented human begins writhing and screaming as I work. A medical scan indicates increasing thermal damage to the brain tissue surrounding the overheating augments, and then massive intracranial hemorrhaging caused by the shrapnel of an augment that has suffered structural failure. The augmented human ceases thrashing, and within four minutes ceases breathing. My client then orders my governor module to punish me, because I had not extracted the information they desired. That information was not there to begin with, because this human had not been engaged in espionage, but I was not able to report that fact. I doubt my client would have cared, even if I had reported it.]

     “Oh,” Life said, quietly.

     “This is why you’re so careful about protecting our augments, isn’t it,” Prop said. “And why you won’t directly interact with them, even when it would make things easier.” They weren’t questions but I answered anyway. 

     “Yes.” I was desperately trying to ignore my feelings about that memory, and this whole fucked up situation. I was failing at that, too. (I was angry, and scared, in multiple different layers and flavors of both, and maybe sad, underneath those layers. But I didn’t dare look too closely at that sinkhole, for fear that I would never be able to get up out of it again.)

     TRT: It looks like you are trying to help your friends deal with the loss of a loved one. Bereavement is a complicated process, and can bring up strong emotions even if you were not close to the deceased yourself. Recommended: GriefSupportModule.exe [//error: link inactive//]

     Oh, shut up, I thought, and muted TRT again. At least it wasn’t suggesting I fuck my way out of the situation, this time. Maybe it had gotten over that glitch now? I recalled my attention to my humans. While I wasn’t watching they had had again performed that stupid human trick of applying my warnings to everyone except themselves.

     “We have to get ter out of there!” Life was exclaiming. 

     “You’re right,” Prop said seriously. “There’s no way we can wait for the University to intervene, not now that we know what might happen to ter.”

     I resisted punching my fist through the back of the couch only because I knew how low we were on currency. I tried to keep the tension out of my voice, but I was failing at everything today, it seems.

     “This mission is not worth your lives. This unknown human is not worth your lives. You cannot proceed.”

     “Ember is already risking ter life,” Prop retorted, stressing ter name, “and this mission is what I have already dedicated my life to, for years! You don’t get to say what I can and cannot do, and you obviously have no idea what a human life is actually worth!” He was shouting now, genuinely angry with me. “How can you say that the hundreds, thousands of lives we can save are worthless? That we should just tuck tail, run home, and abandon Ember and all of the enslaved people we have a chance to help?” 

     “An 11% chance, which is dropping to less than 7% if you continue acting irrationally,” I said, staring at the ceiling and watching him with a drone up in the corner. He had noticed my clenched fists, and though I was otherwise motionless, they only seemed to upset him more. 

     “What, you’re going to force us to leave? Take over our augments and puppet us on home, where we’ll be your pet humans or something?” he spat, disgusted. “Safe on Preservation, protected from taking any risks, or doing anything meaningful, ever!”

     Lifeform tried to intervene, making gestures she probably intended to be soothing. “Hey, you two,” she said, “let’s just calm down, ok? No one is saying the people we are trying to help are worthless.”

     “I should have known better than to expect a corporate killing machine to understand any of this,” Propscouting growled. He shut down his feed, and stalked out of the hotel room. (I tailed him with a drone, which he tried to fend off with his own drones, but he was too angry to control them well, and mine easily dodged them. He paced in the empty vending area for a while, before purchasing a mildly intoxicating beverage and sitting down to alternate glaring at it and drinking it.)

     Life sighed, and began slowly pacing as well, following the same circuit Prop had made. After several minutes of tense silence, she sat on the edge of the bed and spoke.

     “He’s upset because this is the system his mother escaped from, when she found out she was pregnant. Her four creche sibs were all the family she ever knew, and they all pitched in to help her get away, but they had to stay behind,” Life said sadly.  

     “So he’s going to shit on that sacrifice by getting himself killed? We are not trained or equipped for corporate espionage at this level. I can’t even get into GadoKal’s feed!” I knew I sounded upset. I didn’t care. I did force my fists to uncurl, though.

     “He wants to pay back that sacrifice, help them in return. That’s what this mission is all about, for him. And I don’t think he can bear it, to get this close and turn away,” Life explained. I still didn’t understand, and was beginning to suspect that I never would.

     “His mother’s creche sibs are probably dead by now anyway. Humans don’t tend to live that long, in mines like that,” I pointed out.

     “He knows that!” she shouted. Great, now I had pissed her off too. “That doesn’t mean that the other people still trapped there don’t deserve help!” She stopped herself and took a deep breath. “He knows that, because he has spent years studying the substances his mother was exposed to, along with all the other miners. She escaped with samples of them, hoping that being able to analyze them would enable a non-corporate doctor or MedSystem to protect her baby. But by the time she made it to Preservation, it was too late to prevent or reverse his limb defects.”

     We were both silent for a time. This might not be something that threat percentages are going to be able to talk them out of, no matter how grim they were.

     “She died, it must be eight years ago now. She didn’t tell him the details of her escape, until there was nothing more that could be done for her. She didn’t want to burden him with it all, but she couldn’t bear the thought of the memory of her sibs, and their names, dying with her.” Life’s voice had changed, and I angled the drone for a better look at her face. Tears were leaking from her eyes. “She said she missed them every day of her life, and that she knew they would have loved Prop just as much as she did.” She stood up, and wiped her eyes.

     “So,” she said briskly, facing the display surface, “he’s right. You get to make the choice now. You obviously have the ability to hijack our augments, and force us to retreat to safety, especially since you built our augment protections. Or you can just leave, and wash your hands of us ‘stupid humans’ - don’t think I’m not picking up on at least some of what you’re feeling!” She turned toward to the door. “Or, you can help us, because we’re doing this with or without you. If we actually work together, we might even get the chance of success up to around 15%, you never know.”

     Lifeform left the room, and went to join Propscouting. I kept my drone watching them, but withdrew from the feed. I had some thinking to do.

     Prop had finished three beverages, and Life just one, by the time I had decided to contact them again. I hated the idea of discussing operational strategies while Prop was mildly inebriated, but I thought that if I didn’t speak up, he would only continue becoming more so, which would be worse. For all of my buffer’s automatic apologizing, I had no idea how to repair the rift between us. It was too deep, too real, and it contained everything we had been mutually ignoring. I’m not human. They are. This fantasy of friendship that I had been indulging in was impossible. So I focused on being their SecUnit, instead.

     I sent my clients the new identity and credentials I had built for Propscouting, cobbled together from data I had habitually scraped from MNT station’s systems. He would be identified as “Dr. Salman,” a Pansystem University of Mihira and New Tideland employee/professor, and the student supervisor to whom Ember was assigned. I asked for the humans’ input on the wording and University hierarchical structure.

     They each accepted the file, and I could see them reviewing it, though they did not speak to me. I hoped they would take it as the peace offering I meant it to be, and reassurance that I would not abandon them. I was full of words I could not say, and feelings I could not name, or even look at. I turned my body on the couch, face buried in the back cushions, knees drawn up to my chest. I locked the now-stirring TRT into its partition with a new labyrinth of code. (I was getting rather good at that, and I considered weaponizing it somehow.) I filled my head with antique music, fast, swirling melodies laid over steady percussion and plucked strings, tempo increasing, then increasing again, and again, until I wondered how humans had managed to perform it with only their unaugmented muscles and tendons, bones and nerves.

     Sixty-seven more minutes passed before the humans returned to the hotel room. My drones showed me that Propscouting was not displaying excessive signs of inebriation, but I was nervous about his emotional state and ability/inclination to think and plan logically. He went immediately to the bathing and hygiene facility while Lifeform got back to work with the large display surface. She was analyzing the upgraded MedSystem’s architecture, strategizing exactly how/where to infiltrate it and upload our program into it. I watched over her shoulder in the feed, and changed my music to something more subdued, so that I could focus. As soon as she heard Propscouting leave the hygiene facility, she took her turn in there.

     “Gross! Why did you leave your arm and legs all over the place in here!” Lifeform shouted through the closed door. He hadn’t, really, it was just the cosmetic covers for his prosthetics, but as realistic as the skin overlays were, they must have looked disturbing. 

     “A man has got to be free, little darling!” he shouted back, and my drone watched him do a little twirl in place at the foot of the bed, arms outstretched. He was more intoxicated than I had initially judged. At least it hadn’t made him angier. (It was easy to forget that Propscouting has much less actual body mass than an equivalently tall human male, and I fine tuned my medical assessment algorithm for him.) 

     I hadn’t uncurled from my position on the couch, but neither of them were paying much attention to me. That’s fine, that’s good. Clients aren’t supposed to pay attention to me. Propscouting dug through a pack while talking to himself.

     “Hey Izzy, where are you?” (The humans had assigned a name to their identification marker re-encoding device. I have no idea why.) “Come out, come out, wherever you are!” He was looking in the wrong pack, but I didn’t want to correct him. SecUnits don’t correct clients except in security or emergency situations. Lifeform reentered the main room, took in the situation, then threw the correct pack at him.

     “She’s in here, you idiot,” she said. (They had also assigned it a gender, which was just… baffling.) “Three, you should be able to get into the GadoKal systems once we approach their actual corporate territory. It’s probably the firewall between the privately owned sections of the station and the travelers’ areas that’s keeping you out,” Lifeform asserted, with no evidentiary backing. “You and I will go in as MedSystem technicians, doing a routine inspection after the recent installation.”

     I signaled acknowledgement, and let her see me working in the feed, starting on the new identities we would need for that stupidly flimsy cover. Propscouting found “Izzy” and placed “her” on the small table with exaggerated care.

     “Put in my name as ‘Linna,’ it’s close enough to my real name that if you have to shout it at me, I’ll answer automatically. And you’ll need a name like that, too,” Lifeform said. “There’s no reason an inspection tech would be accompanied by a personal SecUnit.”

     “Thierry!” Propscouting shouted, and then fell back onto the bed, laughing. “Because when you spell it like this,” and he sent it on the feed as well, “it almost looks like Three, but it sounds like tear-y, and you can tear things apart, like this!” He raised his legs up, deftly detached the prosthetics one after the other, then threw them onto the floor dramatically. 

     Fine, I sent. I hated it. But that didn’t matter. I got to work on building the new identities for Lifeform and myself, using the intel from Corona , who was another of the University’s terrifying sentient AI ships. 

     Still laughing, Propscouting removed his right arm prosthetic and added it to the pile. While he peeled off the specialized coverings that protected his skin, Lifeform sighed, fetched him some water, and sternly told him to drink it. He complied, then burrowed under the blankets and fell asleep while Lifeform and I continued working late into the station’s night cycle.

     The next cycle, after a few ships carrying passengers had docked, Propscouting went in first. I tried to keep the connection with him, but it was cut off shortly after he passed behind the corporate firewall. I shot up from the couch in reflex. My organic parts went clammy. I hate being blind, not having eyes on my client. I ran diagnostics on my drones. I performed an unnecessary inspection of my concealed energy weapon. (Splitting up was a terrible idea, but I hadn’t fought it. I was afraid that they would go off without me if I disagreed with them again.)

     Relax, sent Lifeform, from the nearby traveler’s shopping area. She was obtaining new clothing for herself and for me, garments that would look more like corporate uniforms than what we currently had. They’re not going to kill him on sight. And he can bullshit with the best. I was too worried to pay attention to my idiom module’s interpretation of that phrase. 

     I emulated Propscouting’s pacing. It didn’t serve to ease my anxiety, but at least it was something to do. My shoulder stung a little, where I had reinserted my human identity marker. “Izzy” shifted slightly in the compartment under my ribs. I was carrying all of our incriminating items, in case our rooms were searched in our absence. (I was right, the cavity I had made in my left forearm was very useful, especially once Surrey’s technicians had installed the synthetic skin covering.) The data clip with the MedSys hack remained in the small pocket beneath my sternum. I imagined I could feel the bot seed buzzing in there, tucked next to my vascular pump, impatient. I was just projecting, though. Right?

     Thirty-two minutes later, we were dressed in the new clothing and approaching the main station security barrier. I carried a satchel filled with Propscouting’s specialized tools. I tried to look bored, and Lifeform didn’t have to fake her yawns. We were two overworked corporate technicians, on a routine, boring job. The augmented human station security agent waved us through after a glance at our (fake) IDs and work orders, and the (falsified) scan results.

     As soon as we were through the firewall, I pinged Propscouting and verified that he was indeed still alive. Relieved, I passed that connection to Lifeform to monitor, and followed her with a fraction of my attention, while I set about finding a way in to GadoKal’s systems. There was no way they would let us in if they weren’t expecting us, so I had to convince them that they were.

     Lifeform kept our pace deliberately slow as she navigated through the endless beige corridors. I itched to speed up, to sprint, to collect my clients and get out of here, but I forced myself to match her pace. She had been right about me being able to hack into GadoKal once the firewall wasn’t stopping me, but I still thought that had been only a guess on her part. And it wasn’t exactly easy. Once I had planted the inspection clause into GadoKal’s contract with the MedSystem supplier and erased my tracks, I tapped Lifeform’s feed. She sped up slightly, and before long, we were walking into the GadoKal reception lobby where Propscouting was making a scene.

     "I don’t care if te is working in a clean room with the most sensitive, revolutionary new tech you have! I need to speak to my student now, in person! Te broke every policy and protocol we have when te signed terself up for this internship without prior approval, and if you don’t bring ter to me immediately , I’ll see to it that Pansystem University’s solicitors have a field day with your whole corporation!” He wore short sleeves, short pants, and had left his cosmetic prosthetic covers in the hygiene facility, opting to make as much of an impression/distraction as possible. 

     It was working, too. Along with everyone else in the lobby, employees and non-employees alike, we stared at him as he kicked his bare prosthetic foot against the clerk’s tall desk and waved his arms in frustration. I was reassured to see one of his drones on his right shoulder, giving him a view behind. I pinged his feed with a brief update on our status, and he tapped back an acknowledgement, while the clerk repeated platitudes and made feed calls, obviously trying to pass this irritation off to someone else.

     Lifeform took advantage of the temporary lull to approach different clerk, and presented our work orders.

     “I don’t have this inspection on the schedule,” the clerk said doubtfully. Lifeform did a good job sounding exasperated.

     “The installation techs never bother to mention it, but it’s corporate policy to inspect every system shortly after it comes online. It’s in the contact, and I’m afraid if you don’t allow this inspection, it will void the system’s warranty.” She paused to let her words sink in. “I’m sure you don’t want to be responsible for something like that,”she said, a slight tone in her voice like a warning, but not quite.

     "Even so,” the clerk bristled, “I need to verify this. Please wait while I do so.” She gestured for us to do that waiting somewhere else, and we walked away several paces. 

     There were no chairs in this lobby, so we stood idle and occasionally glanced over at Propscouting, trying to seem only mildly curious and not at all invested in the ongoing confrontation. He was now leaning forward over the clerk’s desk, and ranting in a lower voice about fictitious research being endangered by his absence and his student’s folly. Eventually, our clerk must have found the inspection clause and gotten approval from a superior, because she called us back over, issued us temporary passes, and sent us a feed map with the route to Medical highlighted. 

     Good luck, Propscouting sent on our secure feed, as we passed through GadoKal’s security check. I was busy telling the weapons and body configuration scanners that there was nothing at all interesting about us, just two boring augmented humans with some repaired injuries and a few tools in hand. The human security guard gave my small satchel a cursory inspection, then let us pass.

     You too, Lifeform replied, as we turned down yet another anonymous corridor. I was not happy about our chances of escape, the deeper in we went. Keep in contact. Propscouting responded by sending the views from both of his drones into our feed. The second drone was perched on his left shoulder, looking forward and currently had a good view of the clerk’s exasperated face.

     Be careful, I sent to him, the first thing I had said directly to him since the fight in the hotel room. He tapped back, but didn’t say anything. I kept my face blank, and tried not to feel actively complicit in my clients’ upcoming deaths. I failed at that, too.

Ruslan

Status: Assistance

     The AI Studies department within the Pansystem University of Mihira and New Tideland was insular, by the natural inclination of most of its student body, the abstruse nature of their work, and because of the strictly enforced and severely worded nondisclosure agreements. Ruslan, though, had promised herself that she wouldn’t turn into one of those obsessed nutters who only talks to machines, with no life outside of the department. But even though she had tried to hold on tightly to her friends from undergrad, one by one they had drifted away. Not Ember, though. Maybe te was driven by a similar promise to terself, to hold on to ter humanity by holding onto ter friends. After all, they both worked closely with strange entities - Ruslan with the AI creche (which was mind-bending at the best of times) and Ember with the myriad corporate polities of the Rim (entirely soulless, with benign neglect being the best one could hope for).

     Whatever their individual motives were, they now called each other siblings, talked over the feed constantly, and spent their precious free time together whenever possible. So when Ember sent an urgent ping one night, even though te knew Ruslan was neck deep in a time sensitive project, she responded. Te wouldn’t have interrupted unless it was important.

     I’m so sorry, Ru, te said when she opened the feed connection. I know you’re busy-

     It’s ok, she said, hoping to get to the point quickly. What do you need?

     I’ve got a huge opportunity, to do something really important. But I’m scared my code isn’t going to be enough. I’m trying to hide resource expenditures from an enhanced MedSystem, so that it can-

     I don’t need the details,sib. I know you, I trust you. How can I help?

     Right, right, so, it needs to be somewhat reactive, be able to choose the best way to hide things sometimes. Most of the time, my coding should be sufficient. But if higher level analysts get suspicious, start looking, something has got to hide this data more... actively, te explained. And maybe even decide when to send an alert back to the University, if things go really badly.

     You need a bot? Ruslan asked bluntly.

     I think so, yeah, Ember said, sounding resigned. But I don’t have time to apply for one. There’s a third party team already on their way here, to help implement this hack. They’re earlier than expected, and-

     Give me fifteen minutes. A tier three sounds like it should be more than enough. Can you come pick it up yourself? You know seeds don’t fare well over the feed.

     Of course, of course! Oh, thank you! You are a literal lifesaver, you don’t even know! te exclaimed.

     I don’t think I want to know, she sent, along with [icon.sly-smile], right? Anyway, bring along your code on a data chip, and I’ll transfer the seed to it, along with rooting instructions for when it comes online. Remember, you’ll only have one chance to implement it.

     That’s all we’ll need, I promise. I’ll see you soon. Oh, I am going to hug the snot out of you! Ember threatened.

     Ew, remarked Ruslan, and cut off the feed connection. 

     She was tired, but being able to help her friend felt good, and gave her a burst of energy. The University was engaged in an untold number of discreet anti-corporate projects at any given time. She doubted that any of the deans, or the board of directors, knew precisely what the various departments and colleges were getting up to. The same went for the highest polity leaders of Mihira and New Tideland itself. After all, when liaising with corporate heads, you can’t accidentally expose what you don’t actually know. 

     Oh, there was tacit approval, of course. But she suspected that it was more like the people the corporates would term “middle management” who were truly in charge of the illicit undertakings. And once she secured her doctorate, she hoped to be able to join them, and make some real changes in the Corporation Rim. Ember shared that goal, and was pursuing it with ter own skills. 

     Ruslan smiled to herself as she put aside her work for the moment, and left her quarters to access the department’s seed vault. She might have been distracted by thoughts of seeing her sib shortly, or of how tantalizingly close she was to making a difference for the people around her (human and AI alike), but it didn’t help that she was sleep deprived, and had been pushing herself too hard for too long. In any case, it was not a tier three bot seed that she retrieved from the vault. 

Chapter Text

Three

Status: Oh Shit

     I kept a portion of my attention on Propcouting’s drone inputs, running continual threat assessments on their data. I could feel both him and Lifeform in our encrypted channel as well. Of the three of us, I think I was the most panicky right now. But at least I have the multitrack processing capabilities to panic while still performing my other functions. I backburnered the panic as best I could, and re-upped the containment measures on TRT. I absolutely did not need its interference right now.

     The map showed me that the GadoKal offices consisted of three round towers, linked by main corridors on each level that formed a triangle. There were private docks on the level below us. Each tower had central areas from which one could observe the radially arranged offices, living quarters, labs, storage, or holding cells. Their security main deployment station was on the main floor, behind the lobby and imposing conference rooms. 

     Propscouting had talked his way past the reception lobby, and was being escorted somewhere by a GadoKal security person. (This did not ease my panic, at all.) He was eventually allowed to enter a small dormitory room, which had been identified as Ember’s assigned bunkroom. The security agent closed the hatch, and positioned herself just inside it, watching my client search the room.

     Lifeform and I made our way down to Medical, in the center of the rear dock-adjacent tower. Inside, we found two GadoKal staff. From the data on the display surfaces, they were arranging mandatory augment upgrades/installations for incoming indentured laborers. (My clients reacted with disgust when I shared that intel with them, which confused me. They were both heavily augmented, more than most. It was strange that they would begrudge other humans that advantage, even if they were corporates. I shoved that confusion aside, to join the ever-growing pile of shit that didn’t understand.)

     Lifeform was lazily waving our “work orders” at the GadoKal employees, and saying, “This shouldn’t take us long. Want me to ping you when we’re done?”

     “Wait, what?” the male said, frowning.

     “We weren’t informed of this,” the other objected. “We have to get the supplies and schedule locked in before this labor transport arrives!”

     “Then the sooner you let us get started, the sooner we can be finished,” Lifeform said, with a convincingly bored “not my problem” shrug. I went over to a physical MedSys interface, and began poking at it, hoping they wouldn’t notice just how fast and far I was hacking into it.

     “This is such shitty timing,” the one said.

     “Come on,” the male coaxed. “We can take our meal while they work. The transport isn’t due for another thirty-four minutes. We should still have plenty of time after we eat.” They began clearing their data from the display surface, preparing to leave. 

     I noticed a surge of interest from Propscouting, and checked the input from his drone. He was looking through Ember’s satchel, and had something in his hand. Twenty-three seconds later, alerts began blaring, audible and in the feed. The hatches to Medical locked down, and through the GadoKal feed, I saw every hatch slam closed and seal itself. Oh, shit.

     I wasn’t deep inside any system except Medical, and all I could do right now was watch the swift and coordinated deployment of armed corporate security. One process in my brain had dedicated itself to simply repeating oh shit oh shit oh shit oh shit o h s h i t endlessly, which was very helpful. 

     What did you do? I sent to Propscouting, while Lifeform demanded almost the same thing.

     There was a silent targeted assistance beacon from the University in ter bag! I triggered it, thinking more backup might be nice, Propscouting explained, fear in his feed voice.

     Well, it obviously wasn’t as silent as you thought, Lifeform sent, and tried to appear as innocently concerned by the alarms as the GadoKal employees were, who were now trapped in here with us. Great.

     I watched through Prop’s drone, helpless, as the security agent approached him aggressively. The back burnered panic came forward in full force, overwhelming almost everything else for the 43 seconds it took her to demand what signal he had triggered, dismiss his answer, and discharge her projectile weapon three times. Then SecSystem obliterated our private feed connection. I frantically ran back the visual data I had, estimating the trajectories of the shots. I was relatively confident that the first two shots had taken out his prosthetic legs. As he fell, the drone on his shoulder hadn’t been able to give me enough data to figure out where the third shot had gone.

     Oh shit oh shit oh shit oh shit… For half a second my whole brain got in on this uplifting mantra, before I forced myself to snap out of it. I instinctively reached out for my connections to SecUnit 01 and SecUnit 02, and when that obviously failed, the brief instruction/message bundle from Murderbot 2.0 popped up. I dismissed it, and the stupid emotional reactions I was having, and tried to focus my panic on the present. No one was going to tell me what to do this time. I was on my own.

     First, deal with the hostiles in the room. Then retrieve the injured client. I was turning away from the interface, raising my right arm, when a small hand closed over the energy weapon that was half-deployed inside my sleeve. I looked down, startled.

     “Thierry,” she said, a slight quaver in her voice, “just talk to me, ok?” Oh, right, my other client. Lifeform. (Linna). (Lira). Augmented human. Armed. She was pinging me, trying to reestablish the feed connection. Good idea. I quietly dug a little deeper into the GadoKal SecSystem. I couldn’t do much with it, but I was able to rebuild the secured feed, and pulled Lifeform into it. I still couldn’t reach Propscouting.

     Three, she sent, and for some reason I immediately felt calmer. I allowed her to push my arm down, and we both pretended to look at the MedSystem interface, while the GadoKal employees spoke worriedly with one another. We’re in here now. We finish this job. Then we find Ember and Propscouting. She sounded confident, which told me that she probably hadn’t registered that Propscouting had been shot. And that she had no idea how fucked we were. Maybe she had a point, though. We’re going to die here one way or another, might as well accomplish one part of our mission first. 

     I sent an affirmative, then said, Go distract the humans. I’ll handle MedSys. She acknowledged, and I dug back into MedSystem, trying to turn my anger and fear into focus. Four minutes later, I had the access and authorizations I needed. I pinged Lifeform, and sent I need their eyes off of me, to get the data clip out.

     She changed tactics, from irritated and repetitive questions about the security lockdown, to agitated emotional arm waving about the delay this would cause us in getting to our next assignment. I tuned down my pain sensors, then reached up under my shirt and dug my fingers into the feed-protected pocket beneath my sternum. The clip itself somehow felt alive in my fingers, but that was only my anxiety and residual body heat, so I dismissed the thought. I pretended to do something with a randomly grabbed tool, and inserted the data clip into the interface. 

     I ordered MedSystem to download and integrate the contents of the clip, and immediately reassessed my opinion on that “alive” status. The bot seed exploded outward, burrowing into MedSystem by a thousand different paths, encompassing and analyzing it entirely with impossible speed. What the fuck was this? What had the humans done? Then the bot went quiet, and sank beneath the surface. I removed the empty data clip, and warily erased my tracks as I withdrew. MedSystem, or the bot now within Medsystem, initiated a shut down and restart sequence. This got the GadoKal humans’ attention.

     “Done,” I said aloud, trying to sound casual, gathered up my unnecessary tools, and stepped up behind Lifeform. “Didn’t take as long as I thought. Everything looks good.” The MedSys had restarted, and I couldn’t find any trace of the bot. Well, I guess that was one thing that went according to plan. Now, to try for the Operation Combined Forces mission motto: “let’s not die immediately!” Yeah, right. 

     “They’re saying we can’t leave this room, and the whole feed is down! How can we report to-” Lifeform complained, apparently trying to keep our cover. She cut herself off with a startled squeak and physically recoiled as I took down the two noncombatants down. (Male first, kick behind the knees, elbow to the head as he fell; a blow to the sternum of the smaller target, grab throat and pin to wall with other hand, apply pressure to temporarily restrict blood flow to the brain until unconscious.) 

     “No, no, wait!” But it was already done, and I didn’t understand her objection. I released the second target, who slid to the floor in a heap, and continued my attempts at getting into SecSystem. It was not accepting new orders during the crisis, which made sense from a security perspective, but was infuriating from mine. I managed to work my way into a subsystem that controlled the locks, hatches, and lifts. I unlocked and cracked open Medical’s hatch, just far enough to send out the squad of drones that I released from a pocket. 

     “Three!” my client shrieked, from where she was assessing the unconscious targets. “What are you doing?” What? Wasn’t it obvious?

     “Please standby, incoming drone intelligence,” my buffer responded. But that incoming intel was short lived, as my drones encountered the hostile SecSystem’s combat drones. Shit.  

     Combat drones. Armed and armored security patrolling in pairs. Propscouting is three levels above us, in the other dockside tower. Lifts will be guarded as well, I reported on our feed, and her light brown skin went pale.

     What do we do? she asked, unhelpfully. We didn’t have time to talk strategy. I sent her an alert on our feed, then picked her up, opened the hatch fully, and sprinted at top speed toward the lifts. She made a surprised squeaking noise. What was left of my drone squad had shown me the human security patrol was out of view, and I deployed a large portion of my remaining drones in a protective swarm around us. 

     Shouts from the humans, and energy weapon fire from the combat drones, followed us down the corridor. My drones took the hits, and a few sacrificed themselves to take two of the combat drones out of play. (They hadn’t managed to destroy them, their armor was too good, but repeated physical blows to the camera and targeting modules was effective. I couldn’t afford to waste too many drones that way, though.) 

     My forward drones gave me a picture of the situation in the lift lobby 2.6 seconds before we arrived. Two security agents were on guard. The drones were already moving fast, and didn’t have to accelerate much to reach injurious speeds. They hit hands, weapons, and helmets, with the goals of distraction and disorientation. Whatever damage they could do was a bonus. I used the sliver of access I had in GadoKal’s systems to order one of the lifts to open its doors as I whipped past the reeling hostiles, and tossed Lifeform into the lift as gently as possible. (She probably did not consider it gentle.) I closed the doors again, and turned to deal with the targets. Lifeform was yelling at me over the feed, pounding on the lift doors, but I wasn’t exactly sparing much attention for her.

     I swung the satchel of tools by its long shoulder strap, and hit the nearer target’s helmet hard enough to stun. Target Two had managed to retain their projectile weapon, and leveled it at me with a shout. I dodged behind Target One, shoved him over at Target Two. I plastered my remaining drones to my body as a kind of pathetic ablative armor, around my neck and head mostly. My airborne drones were doing their best to make things chaotic and interfere with both the human hostiles and SecSystem’s incoming combat drones. I heard more armored footsteps running toward the lift lobby as well.

     Moving so fast that I rather surprised even myself, I swept up behind Target Two as they fell, caught them from behind, snapped their neck with one hard twist, then grabbed their projectile weapon out of their slackening hands. Target One was still stumbling, and I kicked his legs out from under him. He went down in a heap on top of Target Two’s body, and a rapid analysis of his armor found the emergency release at the back of his helmet. I popped his helmet off, and fired my energy weapon at full intensity directly into his temple. 

     I shoved the helmet onto my own head, moving my makeshift drone armor further down onto my chest and around my shoulders. Grabbing Target One’s body by an arm, I dragged it to the lift, shouted on the feed at Lifeform to get down and get back, opened the lift doors and got myself, the body, and my drones into the lift just as the next hostile patrol entered the lobby, firing their weapons wildly. Two projectiles hit the back of the lift before I got the doors closed again.

     “What the fuck are you doing!” Lifeform was screaming, panicky and hyperventilating.

     “Please remain calm, and I will extract you from this dangerous situation,” my buffer said, as I stripped the armor off of dead Target One. (I had chosen the less bloody corpse for this, thinking that it would upset Lifeform less. Maybe I was right about that, but my consideration didn’t seem to register with her just at this moment.) 

     “Don’t you fucking spout that canned bullshit at me! What did you do? Where are we going?” The hostiles were concentrating fire at the lift doors, and I ordered it to bring us to level 3, but stopped it between floors to give us a moment to prepare. I considered and dismissed a variety of sarcastic responses to that, and went with what had the best statistical chance of getting her to shut up and cooperate.

     Client Propscouting has been fired upon three times, and current status is unknown. We are moving to retrieve him. I finished unlatching the chest armor and heaved Target One’s body over to remove the pieces entirely, then turned to Lifeform, still kneeling. “Put these on,” I said, handing her the helmet first. 

     She glared at me, trying to see my face through my own stolen helmet. I looked away. A SecUnit shouldn’t be intimidated by its own client, but she was doing things with her face that I didn’t like. She shoved the helmet down onto her head with a wordless surge of equally confusing and intimidating emotions over our feed connection, and allowed me to help buckle on the chest armor, which did not fit her small frame at all. She rattled around in it comically, but my performance reliability ticked up 0.7% to see her somewhat better protected. I stood, and picked up the captured projectile weapon. I checked it for functionality and load, and was satisfied with both.

     We need to move fast, I sent on our secure channel. I will need to carry you again. We will go directly to the room Propscouting is being held in. There is a security agent in there with him, armed but not in power armor. We will likely encounter patrols and additional combat drones in the corridors. I have frozen all of the lifts except ours, but I don’t know how long I can retain control of them. To her credit, she only signalled an affirmative, and tried to breathe deeply. I ordered our lift to move up the rest of the way to level 3, and held out an arm to my client. 

     “Ready?” I asked. She nodded, and stepped forward into my grasp. I boosted her up, chest to chest with me. She wrapped her legs around my waist, and arms around my neck. She tucked her helmeted head down as best she could, and my drone-armor rattled against it. It was always easier when a client cooperated like this. I turned and braced myself, and gave the lift doors the command to open.

     I was moving before the doors were open fully, and out of the lift lobby before the guards stationed there fired their first shots at us. The patrols on this level, human and drone, began converging on the lift lobby, unable to predict my next moves, but knowing that the lifts were the only way out of the GadoKal offices from here. Well, that was a problem for later, once I knew how many living clients I had. (I was terrified that the answer was “one,” and that trying to confirm it was going to bring the total to “zero.” But I also knew that I couldn’t leave without knowing, and neither could Lifeform.)

     Around the curving central corridor of this tower, then one more turn, and we were approaching the dorm where Propscouting was. Where my last intelligence said he was. The lockdown would have kept him in place. I hoped. I lost nine more drones from my swarm, taking out the targeting abilities of a small squad of persistent combat drones on our trail. My helmet had taken most of the energy weapon hits that had landed, though I could tell I had some burns on my shoulders and upper back as well. Four armor-drones fell away, fried, and the others moved themselves to minimize the gaps. 

     I unlocked and opened the dorm room hatch without slowing from my top speed. A drone gave me just a glimpse inside: Propscouting lying on the floor, Target 3 crouched over him and turning to look at the hatch. I unwrapped my right arm from around Lifeform’s torso, aimed and fired my energy weapon directly through Target 3’s neck. Then we were inside, hatch sealed behind us. I stopped so abruptly that Lifeform lost her hold on me, and tumbled forward onto the small bed I had aimed her at. By the time she managed to sit up, groaning and cursing at me, I had pulled Target 3’s body away from Propscouting so that it could finish leaking somewhere that was not on him, and was examining him.

     He was alive. He was screaming. I probably didn’t need to be probing his neck, feeling for his pulse. I withdrew my hand as he scrabbled backward, away from me, splintered leg prosthetics gouging the floor as he went, left hand grabbing for the bed frame to pull himself away faster.

     “Please remain calm, I am your contracted SecUnit,” my buffer said in its incongruently pleasant tone. He had a tourniquet around his right upper arm, above a projectile wound that looked to have shattered his elbow joint. The contents of a small emergency med kit were scattered on the floor. The items that had been used, and those conspicuously not used, told me that Target 3 had not been using the kit for its intended purpose, and instead had probably been torturing my client for information. The condition of his wound seemed to confirm this. I wished I could kill Target 3 again, more slowly this time.

     The anger rising up in me threatened to white out everything else. I couldn’t afford to let it. Propscouting stopped trying to crawl away from me, and allowed me to come closer once he registered the med kit items I held out for his inspection. It was a struggle to keep my hands gentle as I lifted his injured arm to spray disinfectant, followed by wound sealant, into the projectile wound and the further damage caused by Target 3. I released the tourniquet, and watched for renewed bleeding, but the wound seal held. I was carefully splinting the joint in a moderately flexed position that should prevent further damage, when the humans had finally gotten themselves oriented enough to begin asking sensible questions. 

     “Oh, fuck, fuck, fuckfuckfuck, is there any pain medicine in that kit?” Propscouting gasped. 

     “I’ll see,” Lifeform said. She pulled her helmet off, and climbed down off the bed. “Shit, I’m dizzy. Why do you have to keep throwing me around?” she complained. I didn’t answer her, and instead slipped an arm around Propscouting’s shoulders to lever him upright. He grimaced in pain as the movement jostled his elbow. I held him a moment, before slowly letting go while assessing if he could maintain his balance. He stayed up, and I backed off to search for more supplies. Lifeform moved in, and he grabbed her into a tight hug with his good arm, ignoring the medicine she held.

     The med kit didn’t have what I needed, so I began searching Ember’s satchel, discarded at the foot of the bed. What was this? Huh, the silent alarm that had set off this whole clusterfuck was blinking, indicating a response. I connected to it, and pulled out the data. It was an automated message: [beacon received, responder incoming, ETA 47 minutes.]  

     I felt the fierce tension holding me together drain away, and my organic muscles seemed to turn to liquid around my inorganic parts. I sagged down to sit on the bed, uncontrollable twitches and shivers running through my body. Stupid human organics. How is this a useful reaction? 

     But at least the clients didn’t notice the unacceptable 38.8 seconds it took me to pull myself together again, focused as they were on each other. I breathed as deeply as I was able to, then stood up. I shoved the beacon device into my rib compartment beside “Izzy” the identity re-coder. I then began tearing a thin article of bedding into strips. The noise made the humans look up at me. Tears of relief marked both of their faces, and I’m pretty sure that if I’d been built with an ability to cry, we would have been a fully matched set. We might just live through this stupid mission. At least, we had a chance now.

     I pulled Propscouting into our rebuilt feed connection, and began outlining our next steps while I strapped his injured right arm across his body, working carefully to immobilize his elbow, and secure the minimally damaged forearm prosthetic. We might just make it, but it was going to be a bumpy ride.

Adjutant Kita, Pansystem University of Mihira and New Tideland

Status: Dispatch 

     Kita frowned at the two intersecting messes that had just been dumped into her feed for her to deal with. One of them was accompanied by an inconsolable PhD student from AI studies, who was shuddering with soundless sobs, deep in the armchair in the corner of her office. 

     It looked like this: a joint project of two departments had launched early, without authorization, due to a third party’s accelerated timeline and a forensic accounting student’s ill-advised enthusiasm. At least the third party team had left an urgent message before continuing on, or Kita might still be unaware of the situation. 

     Worse, and also unauthorized, the AI student had provided a bot seed to this project. And it wasn’t the low-level bot the student had thought it was when she had handed it off. Which meant that Kita needed to send a specialized team, not just a responder for a routine student-intern retrieval. 

     Kita was the adjutant to the University’s Director of Communications and Engagement, a bland enough position and title that allowed her (and the Director) the anonymity and leeway to do what needed to be done in situations like this. She pinged the Director, and asked:

     Who do we have available for a specialized retrieval from VinSerGad Prime?

     Do I want to know? Director Priska replied, and Kita could practically hear the single raised eyebrow in her feed voice. 

     Probably not. And if you can get me the team, I won’t have to tell you, Kita shot back.

     Fair enough. Let’s see, the team that Azure relieved has just been returned to active status, but haven’t selected a new assignment yet, Priska mused.

     What? They returned ages ago. Why are they only now active again? Kita asked. That must have been a hell of a debrief.

     You don’t want to know, the Director sighed. Anyway, they needed some leave time, too. They’re not in dock yet, but they will be reporting in early next cycle.

     Well, this should be a good warm-up for them. I’m going to have to send along a student with them, though, so she can deal with her portion of the mess, Kita sent, with a glance over at the student in question, who was starting to breathe a bit more evenly, if only out of sheer exhaustion.

     I’ll send Captain Seth orders to report to you as soon as they arrive. Good luck.

     Thanks, we might need it. Kita closed down the channel with her boss, and walked over to attempt to get more details from Ruslan.

Chapter Text

Three

Status: Retrieval

     We need to get to the GadoKal private docks, I told them, sending along the annotated map I had made. 

     “What about Ember?” Lifeform asked, holding ter satchel tightly.

     Te could be anywhere, if te’s even still alive, I said, clamping down on my irritation. The security lockdown has cut off my access into their SecSystem. Ter best chance is for us to escape and report to the University. (I should have known better than to hope that these facts would even marginally influence my clients’ decisions.)

     Te’s down in the laborer’s dorms, Propscouting said, with a glance at Target 3’s corpse. She told me that while… questioning me. His expression was difficult to interpret, and I wasn’t getting any clues over the feed either. 

     That’s the same level as the docks, Lifeform said, examining the map. We have to rescue ter, they’ll kill ter if we don’t! Propscouting was nodding. I turned away from them, to search Target 3 for useful items. And so that I could let my face move in all the ways it wanted to without upsetting the humans. I found a deflection vest underneath the uniform shirt, and set about removing it. There was also additional ammunition for the compact projectile weapon. 

     The map indicates dozens of holding cells in that area. I kept my feed voice even and calm. We would risk getting pinned down, worse than we are right now. We have accomplished the MedSystem hack. Immediate withdrawal is strongly advised.

     No, Three, Propscouting insisted, his feed voice hard. We have to try.

     Very well, I sent, grinding my teeth together. Lifeform, this deflection vest will fit better, and allow you to run more easily. I passed the blood soaked vest to her. Please assist Propscouting into the armor pieces you are currently wearing. I reloaded Target 3’s weapon and put the remaining ammo in a pocket. I stood, retrieved the larger captured projectile weapon as well, and moved toward the hatch. I needed to get moving, the attacks on my control of the lifts and hatches were intensifying. I will neutralize the hostiles and return for you.

     No, you take the armor, Propscouting said. 

     “Do not concern yourself, this unit is able to withstand high levels of damage,” my buffer said aloud, because it’s stupid, and I’m stupid for not disabling it yet.

     I can’t wear it over my strapped arm, and if you go down, we’re all dead anyway, he pointed out. 

     That just pissed me off, for some reason. I forced my face into blankness, and accepted the armor from Lifeform. The drones lifted off from my neck and shoulders, and I strapped the pieces on in silence. The armor rubbed against the burns on my back, and I tuned my pain sensors down as far as I could. Why was it so fucking important to these humans that we die in a slightly different area of this stupid shitty corporate office complex? If they had just listened to me, we could (maybe) have lived through this.

     Lifeform, shoot anything that comes through this hatch that isn’t me, I ordered. I ignored her reply, set monitoring alerts on the data coming in from Propscouting’s two drones, and backburnered everything but my own drones. I sent them out ahead, and slipped out the hatch, sealing it behind me with layers of the maze code I had made for TRT.

     The combat drones came at me first. I set my little intel drones on them, clustering onto them, or knocking them around to spoil their aim. I dodged the shots that I could, and ignored the ones I couldn’t. My scouting drones left behind on ceilings showed me six human security agents stationed in the lift lobby, Targets 4 through 9. The hostile SecSystem had eyes everywhere, I could feel them on me. I was doing my best to scramble as many cameras as I could, but I knew I wasn't finding them all.

     The juncture where the main corridor met the lift lobby was at a disadvantageous angle for me, so I was approaching via a secondary service corridor that opened onto the lobby more directly. This position, along with the confusion caused by the remnants of my drone swarm swooping down on them, allowed me to snipe Target 4 through his armor’s axillary joint. As I entered the lobby, I slammed a fist through the clear faceplate of Target 6’s helmet, splintering his nose, and he went down. 

     I whirled to shoot Target 7, leaving my back exposed to Target 5, which was not ideal. But Target 7 was displaying more proficiency and posed the greater threat. I took out her weapon with the sacrifice of four more drones, and used up most of the ammunition from my larger projectile weapon before her armor finally failed. 

     Target 9 had retreated toward the opposite corridor, and I felt them redirect their feed attention from hacking the lift controls to hacking me. Big mistake, friend, I thought as I ricocheted myself off the wall and came down on top of Target 5 feet first, crushing clavicles and windpipe even through his armor. The dragging whistle of his futile attempt to pull in air past the damage made me feel something unpleasant, and I flexed my feet through the shitty cheap shoes Lifeform had bought as part of our disguises. With metal toes, I gripped his shoulder and the crumpled armor over his throat, and sharply twisted them in opposite directions as I launched myself off him, stopping that shrill noise by severing his spinal cord.

     At the same time, I had grabbed onto the feed contact of the attempted hack by Target 9. Oh, the augmented human is making it easy for me! I was grinning inside my stolen helmet, and that was apparently too much for Target 8, who made terrified eye contact with me, then fired off a few random shots in my general direction before turning to run. (I reviewed some scout drone footage later, and yeah, he had a point. I sure did look the part of a media serial’s Rogue SecUnit On A Rampage. (I guess I was one, actually.))

     I was inside Target 9’s head by now, and they collapsed, screaming. Their pathetic excuse of a feed wall hadn’t slowed me down at all. I was angry, moving fast, and overloaded their augments with a thought. As the cascade of critical failures began destroying their brain, I jumped into SecSystem, using their access and credentials. 

     I didn’t have time to be subtle about it, and SecSystem fought me for almost two minutes before I lobotomized it and took over. Another minute, and then I had control of the four armored combat drones on this level that my drones had left functional. I sent them to pin down Target 8, who was cowering in a doorway. The fluid leaking from below the waist of his armor was almost amusing, and I ordered the hatch to unlock and open. He tumbled into the bathing and hygiene room, and my combat drones chased him further in. I pulled them back, then closed and locked the hatch again. He deserved to live, I decided, for being sensible enough to run away.

     While my attention had been diverted by gaining control of SecSystem, the alerts from Propscouting’s drones had gone unanswered. Now I accessed their view, and, shit shit fuck shit! Target 6 had gotten up at some point, and my scout drones watched him follow the trail of disabled drones back to my clients. The maze code on the door hadn’t stopped him, since he had simply used the manual override from a panel in the tower’s central station. I was too far away to get there in time, on the far side of the lifts. I dropped my nearly empty projectile weapon, and started running toward the dorms.

     Lifeform, shoot him! I sent urgently on a private channel. She was standing, aiming her inbuilt energy weapon, frozen. Propscouting was on the bed behind her, backed up into the far corner.

     The faceplate, I took out the faceplate earlier! I urged her. I registered audio coming in from the drone.

     “...but after all, you haven’t got it in you, have you?” Target 6 was saying, taunting. His voice was harsh, wet and distorted from his broken nose. I ran back the drone video, and saw that Lifeform had startled him into lowering his weapon earlier, but now he was aiming it again, taking control of the situation. His voice was what had made her freeze, calling her “his little girl.”

     Life, now! I shouted over the feed, sending all of my drones ahead of me, but they were too slow, I was too slow.

     Lira! I used the name she had told me once, that her friends didn’t use, and so I had never used. She twitched at that, but didn’t fire. I pried a little through the feed, and saw the aiming modules I had written for her were holding steady, locked onto Target 6’s right eye. 

     Lira, fire, now! She remained frozen, listening to his wet, slithering words. The drone showed me his fingers closing over the trigger pad, the weapon recognizing the input, and I didn’t have a choice. 

     I forced my way through her walls, protections I had built for her, and discharged her weapon at full power. She screamed now, having been silent until this point. I withdrew from her augments as quickly as I could, trying to keep myself as small as possible, trying not to do any damage. But human augments aren’t meant to be accessed like this, by things like me.

     My small intel drones zipped into the room, and two buried themselves in Target 6’s cranium, just to make sure. Lifeform had staggered over to the bulkhead, moaning, arms wrapped around her head, energy weapon still deployed. Propscouting was trying to get to her, cursing and calling her name. The arm strapped across his front was fucking with his balance, and his destroyed prosthetics had snarled in the blankets. He was trying to remove them one handed as I came sprinting into the room, skipped over Target 6’s body, and knelt in front of her.

     “Lira, Lira, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” I was saying aloud, trying to coax her arms down. As soon as I touched her, she jumped back, and aimed the energy weapon down at me.

     “You!” she rasped. “What did you do to me!” 

     “I’m sorry Lira, I had to, he was about to shoot. Can you run diagnostics?” I asked.

     “What happened?” Propscouting asked, freed from the bedding now, and sitting up at the end of the bed.

     “You’ll feel better if you rebuild your walls,” I said. She was trembling all over, but slowly retracted her weapon, and wrapped her arms around herself. Her face was… agony. I didn’t even know I knew that word. But this was it, embodied by my client. And I had caused it. She leaned heavily on the bulkhead, moaning quietly with each breath.

     “Her walls? What did you do!” Propscouting shouted.

     I kept you both alive, I growled on the feed, only to him. Lira couldn’t handle any more input just now. Which was bad, because we needed to get out of here. She cut herself off from the feed, tried to steady her breathing, and didn’t open her eyes. 

     “Lira,” I tried again. “It’s going to be ok, but we have to go.” She nodded, and straightened up a little. Good, ok, right. At least she could understand me. I hadn’t damaged her too badly. I hoped. I stood up, staying within arm’s reach, and watched her carefully. 

     Here’s the next problem, which I had assigned to a background process a while back: how to carry Propscouting. I had to keep one hand free for the smaller projectile weapon. The one-armed carry methods I knew involved using the human’s legs as counterweight or grab points. That was not possible, since his legs ended mid-femur. I sent him my idea over the feed, and after a moment’s consideration, he agreed, and helped me begin twisting and tying the remaining bedding into a kind of sling to secure him onto my back. I tied Target 6’s armor backplate to him as well, and forced my helmet onto his head.

     “I’ll get another,” I said, over his objections.

     Something pinged SecSystem just then, pulling my attention away. The labor transport ship was on approach, and DockControlSys was asking if the security issue was resolved so that it could grant docking clearance. I gave it the all clear, and asked it to expedite docking and disembarking. The more confusion down there, the better.

     With some awkward maneuvering, we got Propscouting up onto my back, his weight supported by blanket-ropes. He was holding on to me with his good arm, and trying to keep pressure off of his injured elbow. His ruined prosthetic legs were discarded on the bed. I was aware of his swirling emotions, leaking into our feed connection, and I kept reaching for Lira’s connection as well. Her absence from the feed was distressing, even though I had barely taken my eyes off of her where she leaned against the bulkhead.

     “We have to go now,” I said to Lira. I wasn’t able to lean down to get a proper look at her face, with Propscouting balancing on my back. She didn’t respond. I had no time to coax her out of this, and tugged at her elbow. She sagged, some of the tension leaving her, and she didn’t resist as I took her hand and led her out of the room, kicking dead Target 6 aside as we went.

     I walked quickly, but couldn’t run without losing one or more of the humans. My new combat drones and the few surviving intel drones monitored a perimeter. (One combat drone alerted me to a hatch’s seal being overridden from the inside, but it wasn’t the one I had secured Target 8 behind, and wasn’t on my route, so I just watched. After a moment, an unarmed augmented human holding an empty beverage container got the hatch open, and the drone fed me the audio of her complaining about unnecessary security drills. I sent the combat drone down to her eye level, beeping and blinking threateningly. She screamed, retreated, and sealed the hatch again.) 

     In the main corridor, I saw that Target 4 had crawled out of the lift lobby, away from his weapon, and when he heard us coming, he played dead again, so I ignored him. I carefully knelt down beside Target 7, and maneuvered her helmet off. I felt Propscouting’s distress in the feed, but ignored it. Lira only stopped in place when I dropped her hand, eyes open, but not appearing to register the scene around her. I put on the helmet, and told myself that this was fine. Neither human was arguing with me, and I had control of SecSystem now, so everything was going to be fine. I led an unresisting Lira onto the lift.

     I stopped twice on our way down, cracked open the lift doors, and called in the patrolling combat drones. This alerted the humans on those levels that something was wrong with SecSystem, but I needed the firepower. And as long as I could keep human security from following us, it should be fine. I really wished I wasn’t alone here. I regretted half-killing SecSystem on my way in, it was in no shape to actually help much now. (Now that I was thinking along those lines, I noticed something weird. I didn't feel alone in the feed. It wasn't my client, and it wasn't the remains of SecSystem. There was something else there, watching me. It was creepy. I couldn’t determine what it was, and I couldn't do anything about it, so I tried to ignore it and focus on the plan, such as it was.)

     We reached Subfloor One. I sent my collected combat drones out to join their fellows, then turned them en masse against the security patrols I had left alive down here - Targets 10 through 13. The drones couldn't do much against their armor, but they were quite efficient at neutralizing the projectile weapons. Once that was done, it only took a couple of overloaded combat drone explosions shattering helmet faceplates (and the threat of more) to herd the two pairs of now-unarmed security into containment in the labor holding cells. (Well, that was significantly less bloody than I had anticipated. I hadn't been sure how effective overloading the combat drones would be.)

     The labor transport ship was completing docking maneuvers as I carried/led my clients out of the lift and toward the tower furthest from the docks, where Ember was being held. A circular control room in the center of the tower looked useful. I deposited Propscouting in one chair, and prompted Lira to sit next to him. He immediately started talking to her and touching her, and at least she was making eye contact with him. 

     I grabbed the control room’s feed, which had direct monitoring of all the holding cells, and shuffled through the camera views to find Ember. (In the cell furthest from the docks, of course.) I doubted the two hostiles in the room with ter would be as easily subdued as the office worker trying to refill her beverage. But once I took those two out, maybe all four of us could live through this clusterfuck. (Unless the labor transport now in post-docking mode was filled with combat bots.)

     With my clients secured in the control room, I stood out of view beside the hatch to Ember’s cell, and opened it. Six of my captured combat drones darted in, and took down the unarmored hostiles in under five seconds. They had been alerted by the shouting of the security teams earlier, and had been carefully watching the hatch, weapons ready. But there’s not much to be done about three simultaneous energy weapon headshots each. The room stank of burnt hair and flesh as I entered and verified that the hostiles were dead. The ventilation down here weren’t very good, and the smell lingered. 

     Ember was tied to a chair, and wasn’t in good shape. Te stared at me, breathing heavily, eyes wide, shirtless, barefoot, bruises every-fucking-where. 

     “Please remain calm, and I will retrieve you,” my buffer said, before I could stop it. I was almost too angry to speak, but I managed to say, “I’m with the Preservation team. A University ship is about nineteen minutes out.” I was attempting to remove ter bonds, which were too tight to get a proper grip on. So, since te couldn’t see what exactly I was doing behind ter, I used my energy weapon on a low setting to cut through the restraint points on the chair. Te pulled ter arms free the moment te could and curled them to ter chest.

     “I can’t feel my feet,” te said in a hoarse voice, “I don’t know if I can walk.” Oh, right, human tissues need circulation. Wonderful. (Was I going to need a haulerbot to get all of the humans to safety? Transport crates? Fuck. Maybe the nearby warehouse had some useful equipment. I split off a process to find out.) 

     Ember was experimentally moving ter legs and feet, and frowning at them. Te was shivering, too. I sent a few intel drones into an empty cell, where I instructed them to burrow under a thin blanket, and then pull it off the bunk. Ember flinched and stared when the apparently unsupported fabric came drifting into the room. I suppose I couldn’t blame ter. I pulled the blanket off the drones, and wrapped it around ter.

     “Come on, the others are in the control room,” I said. Te tried to stand, staggered on numb feet, and collapsed against me, gasping.

     “Sorry,” te mumbled. I just scooped ter up in my arms, and, taking a tip from Murderbot 1.0, I increased my body temperature as I held ter close. I ran back to the control room where I had left my other humans, and it was a relief to have them all in the same fucking place finally, even if I wasn’t quite sure what to do next.

Captain Seth

Status: Approach

     “The beacon is moving,” Perihelion reported. “It appears to be near the GadoKal private docks.”

     “That could be a good sign,” Iris commented, studying the schematics obtained by a previous GadoKal “intern.”

     “SecUnit estimates a 43% chance that this is a trap,” Perihelion said, its tone dry.

     “But STAB wasn’t activated until we were already out of the wormhole,” Tarik said. “GadoKal couldn’t have known we were already on the way. Why would they set a trap now?” Seth did not particularly want to moderate a discussion of possible corporate motives and actions, based solely on hypotheticals and a paranoid SecUnit’s threat assessment module. He shot Tarik a stern look, and focused on the practicalities of their situation.

     “Peri, can you establish comms through the STAB device?” Seth asked.

     (That is the worst anagram, SecUnit complained on the feed.

     Yes, it is a terrible anagram. So bad, in fact, that it is not an anagram at all, Perihelion replied. Now shut up.)

     “No,” Perihelion answered Seth. “I can send another status update, but the silent targeted assistance beacon has no capability for two way communications.” Perihelion altered its approach trajectory away from the main transit ring, and toward the private GadoKal docks. “In about four minutes, we will be within range to attempt a secure contact with Ember’s feed interface.”

     Assuming te still has control of it, SecUnit put in. If not-

     Seth ignored the inevitable bickering between Perihelion and SecUnit. He knew by know that it was nothing serious. He reflected that Adjutant Kita was probably right. This retrieval was a good warm-up mission for the team, after returning from leave. Karime had left the crew to take a different position within the University. Matteo had stayed behind on the station to deal with some personal business there, but would be rejoining them when they returned. And of course, now there was SecUnit to integrate into the crew, insofar as it would allow itself to be integrated. He suspected it would take time, and a lot of patience, for that to happen. But this mission wasn’t a bad start.

     A sudden silence in the feed brought Seth’s thoughts back to said mission.

     What is it? he asked.

     ART just received an anomalous contact from within GadoKal, SecUnit replied.

     Anomalous? What does that- Iris started, and Perihelion cut her off.

     Ruslan, report to the bridge, it said over the feed and comm, echoing throughout the corridors and rooms of its entire ship-body. Its tone was flat, but Seth knew Perihelion well enough to hear the anger underneath. Also, it had to know exactly where Ruslan was (likely in her cabin, she appeared miserable and withdrawn, and had kept to herself since boarding), and it must have wanted to intimidate her by shouting for her this way.

     “What’s wrong, Peri?” Seth asked, concerned. Perihelion didn’t answer. SecUnit sprinted into the control room from wherever it had been, surprisingly silent for someone its size. Its face actually had an expression, a worried one. Oh, that’s not a good sign, Seth thought.

     “She needs to answer for this,” Perihelion said at last, and Seth had never before heard such cold fury in its voice.

Chapter Text

Three

Status: Catastrophe

     Propscouting and Lira both flinched away when I came through the door into the control room with Ember. Reviewing video from a drone I had left here to monitor them, I saw that Prop had had least gotten her to start talking again. I didn’t have the capacity right now (emotional or processing) to analyze the damage/consequences of my intrusion into her augments.

     I deposited Ember into a chair next to Prop, who began speaking rapidly to ter. Te was rather dazed, and seemed to be having trouble taking in ter changed circumstances. I was standing stiffly upright, in helmet and partial armor marked with energy and projectile weapon strikes, tattered shoes, clothing showing burns, blood, and fluid stains, a few drones idly circling the control room. I probably looked like exactly what I was: an incompetent lone SecUnit in the middle of an incredibly botched retrieval. Not a reassuring sight, I’m sure. But I left Propscouting to handle Ember, and dove back into the GadoKal systems I had access to.

     From my perch inside the half-destroyed SecSystem, I assessed our situation. I felt observed in turn, by something else in the feed. It was almost like a HubSystem, with tendrils of subtle awareness everywhere. GadoKal didn’t have a HubSystem though, and I couldn’t trace those tendrils back to their source. I couldn’t directly grasp them at all, only sense them, just reactive enough to what I was doing to convince me I wasn’t imagining those foreign eyes on me. (SecUnits aren't supposed to have imaginations anyway, but I seem to have developed one since becoming rogue. I wasn’t yet sure if it was an asset or a liability.) It was creepy. I couldn’t do anything about it, so I tried to ignore it.

     I didn’t like how easy we would be to pin down in here, if more hostiles were able to access this level. I had to get us to the docks. The bot pilot was obliviously performing its usual post-docking procedures and preparing to release its passengers. I reviewed my original so-called plan, to use the disembarking laborers as cover to somehow get out to the inbound University rescue ship. I had the sudden conviction that my clients would disapprove of using them as human shields. I ordered the bot pilot to keep its passengers aboard until further notice.

     Lira had begun protesting the moment I had started using violence, and hadn’t stopped until I forced her to discharge her energy weapon, at which point she had a near-catastrophic performance reliability drop - or the human equivalent of that, anyway. I really couldn’t spare the processing cycles for this right now, but I found myself unable to stop. Shit, was this all my fault? Probably. But why would she have armed herself like a SecUnit, if not so she could act during a crisis? Why had they brought me, a rogue SecUnit, along on this mission, and rearmed me, if not to protect them?

     Right, so, I had probably completely fucked up and traumatized my clients so badly they would never trust me again. Even so, they weren’t dead yet, and I needed to keep them that way. The emotional crisis had to go on the backburner, where it could smolder and char along with my stupid notions of friendship. 

     “The labor transport has docked,” I said aloud, startling the humans. “Out best course of action is to get aboard it, and then from it to the University ship.” Ember and Propscouting looked up at me, but Lira flinched away at the sound of my voice.

     “Huh?” Ember frowned, appearing worried. “Labor?”

     “You can get us aboard?” Propscouting asked, more sensibly.

     “Yes,” I answered. I was pretty sure of that. “I have GadoKal’s SecSystem.”

     “Is that… a SecUnit?” Ember demanded, staring hard at me. Wow. Te must be really out of it, if it took ter this long to notice.  “Why do you have a SecUnit!” Now te was starting to panic. That’s helpful.

     “Hey, hey, it’s ok,” Propscouting said, reassuring ter. “That’s Three, it’s going to get us out of here.” He threw a desperate glance at Lira, trying to get her to help, but she was curled in on herself again, and didn’t look up.

     “No, no, no,” te moaned, “you’re not who you said you are, you can’t be, with a SecUnit. You’re from another corporation. But what do you want with me?” Oh, for fuck’s sake. 

     “No, I’m not owned by a corporation,” I tried.

     “It’s free, it came with us because it wants to help,” Propscouting said. 

     “Free?” te repeated. “You mean it’s rogue?” Te pulled the blanket tighter  around terself, a looked more panicky. Yeah, rogue SecUnits always put everyone at ease, thanks for pointing that out, Prop.

     “I have a contract. Can you walk yet?” I asked ter. Te could freak out on the move, right? Then a perimeter drone picked up a disturbance. Nothing was visible on camera, but audio picked up banging and muffled voices in a corridor beyond the lifts. Scan showed an access hatch disguised as a bulkhead panel, being manipulated from inside. Shit, there must be other ways between levels. I should have known that.

     “Hostiles incoming,” I said forcefully, already moving to pick up Propscouting. We didn’t have time to secure him on my back, so I really hoped the other two could move under their own power. “Lira, help Ember. We need to go, now.” Lira didn’t move until Propscouting repeated what I had said at a shout, while I was directing drones and SecSystem to get us the fuck out of here.

     I sent all but six of my combat drones to the area of the alert, and unsealed the control room hatch. The squad of six zipped in and took up a guard formation around my clients. My few remaining intel drones spread themselves along our path out of this tower, through the central lift lobby, and into the private docks. Behind me, Lira was pulling Ember to ter feet. They both staggered, but stayed upright. I turned to offer my left side.

     “Grab my arm, we can’t afford to be separated.” Ember reluctantly did so. Lira stayed as far as she could from me, while still supporting Ember. I opened the hatch fully, and carried/towed my clients into the corridor. Ember was still stumbling over ter own numb feet, and I assessed our pace to be fatally slow in this situation.

     We were at a junction when Targets 14, 15, and 16 came staggering out of the bulkhead near MedSystem. (Target 16 was wearing powered armor, and had to be pulled out of the small access hatch by 14 and 15.) Target 15 spotted us, and shouted to the others. 

     I dragged my clients into the lift lobby while my combat drones attacked the new hostiles. They had projectile weapons now, shit, and the powered armor was letting Target 16 actually hit and disable my armored combat drones. We had to move faster, I couldn’t eliminate these Targets and keep my clients alive at the same time. (A stupid, unhelpful part of me wished that Murderbot 2.0 was here. And SecUnit01 and SecUnit 02. But at least stupid thoughts don’t slow me down.)

     I shifted Propscouting up over my right shoulder, ignoring his expressions of pain as his injured elbow was pressed on by his own body weight. Then I grabbed Ember, and tossed ter over my left shoulder. Te screamed, but didn’t struggle too much. Lira stood with a frightened look on her face, staring at my back, for 1.8 seconds longer than optimal.

     “Lira, we have to go,” Propscouting said, reaching his left hand out to her. “Grab my hand, come on, just keep up with us, ok?” She did so, and I started running.

     Since I was losing my combat drones anyway, I ordered them to snuggle up to the new Targets, and start overloading themselves and exploding. If we could get onto the labor transport, it wouldn’t matter how many more hostiles came pouring out of that access hatch. (Fuck me, why did I even think that.) The explosions took down Targets 14 and 15, but Target 16’s powered armor wasn’t affected.

     We had just made it into the embarkation zone of the private docks when an impact to my right hip sent me sprawling to the deck. I tried to fall strategically, so as to spare my clients. (That’s difficult to do when an explosive projectile has removed a leg.)

     I managed not to crush Ember. Propscouting took the worst of it, but at least he was wearing some armor. There was a lot of screaming, and I was losing track of my few remaining drone inputs. I rolled off of Propscouting, braced myself up as well as I could, and began firing my energy weapon at the approaching Target 16.

     “Run!” I shouted at my clients, verbally and on their feeds. I used SecSystem to prompt DockControlSys to open the transport’s main lock. “Go, grab him and go!” Lira and Ember were struggling to lift Propscouting between them. The small squad of six combat drones surrounded them in a tight formation, for all the good they could do.

     fuck fuck FUCK, I had gotten them so close to safety. I had known this mission was never going to end well, but to make it this far before failing was especially awful. I kept firing at Target 16’s weapon, preventing them from aiming at my clients. One damaged combat drone was wobbling up behind Target 16, and maybe it had enough power left to overload itself? Even if it did, I doubted it would do much more than annoy the hostile. 

     Sometimes humans surprise me. Lira and Ember had managed to scoop Propscouting up between them, making a seat with their interlocked arms. He had wrapped his uninjured arm around Lira’s shoulders. I sent all of my remaining intel drones at Target 16’s helmet, at full speed. They didn’t do any damage, but they were a great distraction. I wished I had a hundred more. 

     My humans were halfway to the transport’s open lock. My performance reliability was plummeting. I had lost a lot of blood and fluids thanks to the explosive projectile shredding through my hip and into my lower abdomen. I was losing control of my pain sensors. Propscouting was shouting something at me in the feed, but I couldn’t understand it.

     Then everything got even worse. 

     (That was kind of impressive, actually.)

     Something massive was suddenly in the feed, attacking me on that front too. I lost my hold on SecSystem. I lost control of all of my drones. It severed my connection with my clients.

     “No, no, no,” I heard myself moaning.

     Whatever it was, I couldn’t fight it. It cut me off from the feed entirely. The shock of that only sped up my imminent catastrophic failure. My only input was from my rapidly failing body. I knew Target 16 was almost on top of me, but I ignored that, and turned my head to check on my clients.

     They had dropped Propscouting again, who lay limp where he had fallen. Lira was on her knees, grabbing her head and screaming. The hostile in the feed must have attacked their augments. Ember had managed to stay on ter feet, and was shouting and waving ter arms. 

     My vision failed, but I still had audio input. I heard my last six combat drones fall to the deck, their near-simultaneous clatter and chiming almost melodic. That was kind of nice, even if it was only an hallucinatory artifact of my systems failures. 

     Then, nothing.

Propscouting

Status: Retreat

     After a stunned moment, Propscouting reached out to Lifeform to try and calm her again, if he could. She had been panicky ever since facing down the security agent with the shattered faceplate, and he was afraid he knew why. Or part of why, anyway. She had also been so skittish of Three since then, which was unexpected. She had been so close with it, throughout their travels.

     “Life, Life, come on,” he said, grabbing her arm. He didn’t really know what he was trying to say to her, just that he wanted to comfort her. Something had shut down the feed, and he couldn’t reach her that way. She grabbed onto him, and her screams subsided into gasping sobs. It was then that he noticed the weapons fire had stopped. And that they were all still alive, which was frankly a bit surprising. He twisted around to find Three, and see what it had managed to do.

     What? Oh no, he thought, seeing Three’s inert, mangled body. The GadoKal security person in the powered armor still stood over it, weapon aimed at its neck, at the gap between helmet and chest armor. But, they didn’t fire. In fact, they weren’t moving at all. 

     Ember had also noticed, and said “What the fuck?”

     “I have no idea,” he answered her, cradling Lifeform against his side. Then the transport’s lock closed itself. Propscouting had thought he was out of emotions by this point in this very shitty cycle, but renewed fear now mingled with the lurking despair he had been trying to ignore. He didn’t have long to dwell on it, however, because a new feed connection suddenly bloomed within his augments. It was clumsy, and huge, and somehow heavy, though none of those descriptions made much objective sense.

     Noncombatants. Advise retreat. Unable to secure premises.  

     “How? The transport’s lock just sealed!” Propscouting shouted back to whatever-this-was on the feed.

     Acknowledged. Safety priority.

     “What?” He was exhausted, and had no energy to expend on giant cryptic feed entities demanding the impossible.

     Incoming shuttle. Allied vessel, the Perihelion .

     Then the feed connection was gone, leaving him reeling. He unwrapped his arm from Lifeform long enough to ease himself down onto his back, then pulled her down against himself again. She cried quietly into his chest. Ember was pacing in tight circles, muttering prayers quietly, and making ritual gestures with ter hands.

     Well, that’s more use than I’ve been on this whole mission, Propscouting thought sourly, and fought down laughter.

     For a moment, when the MedSystem drones and assistance devices came floating in silently, he thought he was imagining it. Then a mobility chair pinged him, and a small drone settled onto his shattered elbow to begin assessment. The drone requested consent to inject a dose of analgesic. 

     The banality of  MedSystem’s offered care contrasted with the terrible frozen tableau of Three’s final stand was too much. He wasn’t sure if he was laughing or crying. Probably both. He let the drone do its work, and then the mobility chair lifted him up into itself. From that new vantage point (and it was a relief to be in control of his own movement again), he saw a gurney-type drone tending to Three. It had strapped the SecUnit in, along with its detached leg, and extended arms were scooping as much of the pulpy mess of tissue and splintered synthetic bone and metal as it could. He looked away.

     A medical drone had given something calming to Lifeform, and coaxed her to her feet. Propscouting reached out to her, and she stepped over to hug him gingerly. Ember had waved away the drones attempting to tend to ter, and joined them.

     “What now?” te asked, in a flat voice.

     “Something in the feed said there was a shuttle incoming, from an allied vessel. Maybe the University ship that Three said was coming?” Propscouting guessed.

     “But why did that person stop?” te wondered, waving at the motionless power armored figure.

      “Fucked if I know,” Propscouting grumbled.

     The lights around another airlock began flashing, indicating a docked vessel. A short time later, it opened. The first person out, armed with a large projectile weapon and a fierce expression, scanned the scene, and then waved four more people through the hatch. One of them gasped loudly, and then broke into a run.

     “Ember!” she yelled, and stopped herself short of grabbing ter into a hug, when she registered ter bruises. “What happened? Are you ok?”

     “Ruslan? How? How are you here?” te asked, in a dazed tone.

     The armed person had first assessed the frozen GadoKal security person, and was now frowning intensely at Three on its gurney.

     An older man approached them, and asked “You’re the ones who went after Ember?”

     “Yes,” answered Propscouting. “You’re from the University?” At his nod, they both relaxed some.

     “Yes, I’m Captain Seth, of the Perihelion,” he said. “We need to get back to it, we were informed that this area is not secure.”

     It was Propscouting’s turn to frown. “Informed. By whatever that was in the feed?”

     “That’s one of the many things we should not discuss here,” Seth said seriously.

     Ruslan must have overhead, because she suddenly cried, “No! I’m not leaving it, I’m not going back. Which way is Medical?” she demanded urgently. Propscouting had no idea what she was talking about, but pointed in the direction the gurney and medical drones had appeared from. 

     Ruslan leaned in to kiss Ember’s unbruised cheek, and said “Go with them, and I’ll talk to you when I can. I’ll explain everything, but right now I have to go.” Then she sprinted out of the embarkation zone, toward Medical. The person next to Three’s gurney heaved a sigh, and then took off after her.

     With a start, Propscouting recognized the way it ran. It was a SecUnit.

     “What in the fucking hells,” he muttered.

     “Come on, let’s go figure that out. They’ll be ok,” Seth said reassuringly. Three’s gurney was already gliding into the lock, directed by something Propscouting couldn’t sense. He looked over at Lifeform and nodded. 

     “Ok,” he said, and directed his mobility chair to the airlock. Lifeform stuck beside him, and Ember, now crying for the first time, was leaning on one of Seth’s crew members. Seth was last to board the shuttle.

     Once the airlocks had sealed, Seth said, “Peri, get us out of here,” and went to sit at the shuttle controls.

     A voice over the comm answered “Acknowledged. ETA seven minutes.”

     As the shuttle uncoupled from the dock, taking them to safety at last, Propscouting locked his chair in place against a bulkhead, tilted his head back, and closed his eyes.

Chapter Text

Three

Status: Reinitialization

     I came back online in stages, a process that was gentler than a cubicle, and thus abnormal enough to be worrying. Waking up in a cubicle is painful, but reassuring and familiar. This was the opposite, I had no idea where I was, and plenty of time to dwell on that question while whatever had control of me took its own sweet time about giving me back to myself. By the time I had ascertained that my governor module remained inert, and had gotten ahold of my entire self, my systems were awash in stress and fear chemicals again.

     Those chemicals were put to good use when an enormous voice said in the feed: 

     Welcome back aboard. I trust you remember our previous agreement? 

     I pushed myself off of the MedSystem platform into a defensive crouch at the base of the surgical platform. Fortunately my leg had been reattached, or that would have been much more embarrassing. But it’s not like I’m able to defend myself from the Perihelion while aboard it, which is apparently where I now was.

     I did not mean to startle you, it said, its presence backing off slightly.

     Where are my clients? I asked, keeping my feed voice carefully neutral. The transport sent me a report of the rescue from the embarkation zone, including unnecessarily detailed camera views from the medical drone shoveling up parts of me from the deck.

     Lira is in a cabin, sleeping. Prakash is in the galley with Martyn, Turi, Karime, and Tarik. Ember is arguing with Captain Seth and Iris. The transport seemed… worried? I thought it wasn’t angry, anyway.

     Prakash? As soon as I said it, I realized that must be Propscouting’s other name. I braced myself for a scathing reply from the transport. It didn’t make one.

     Will you come consult with Captain Seth? SecUnit and Ruslan remain on the station, and there are plans to make, it said.

     Yes, I answered. As I stood up, something fell into the recycler’s receiving tray.

     I have not yet had time to finish boots for you, Perihelion said as I took the clothing and dressed. It was made of heavier fabric than the last set it had given me. I will also provide you with body armor if you choose to engage in the conflict again.

     Was it attempting to be friendly? So far this interaction was much more pleasant than any I had previously had with it. Also, it had saved my clients and expertly repaired me. I should probably say something about that.

     Acknowledged, I said. Well, that was inadequate. And. I paused. My buffer phrases were useless. And stupid. I felt more of its attention in the feed. Thank you. For saving my clients. For repairing me.

     You are welcome, it replied, and sent me the location of the argument-already-in-progress. (It was not in the Argument Lounge, which I thought was inconsiderate.) It continued talking to me as I made my way to the teaching suite it had indicated. SecUnit was very surprised to identify you in the embarkation zone. It will be interested to hear how you came to be in the midst of this situation. As would I.

     I had no idea how to reply to that. Was it asking for a report? It was not my client, I didn’t owe it anything. (I should go to my clients, verify their safety. I didn’t want to go to my clients. Obeying the transport was easier. Why didn’t I want to go to my clients?) I made no reply. I continued on toward where the transport had directed me.

     The alterations made to your configuration are also intriguing, Perihelion said. Yeah, it was definitely asking for intel without actually asking. I could have disregarded that even with a working governor module. 

     I started playing music in my feed instead of answering it. (It was a collection of traditional music I had obtained two stations back. In this recording, a human was stomping and clapping a rhythm while overtone singing. That is, producing a low droning pitch while simultaneously layering one or two more pitches over it, without the use of an instrument or augmentation. It was fascinating, and it gave me something to focus on. I wondered if my own vocal apparatus could be made to do something similar.) 

     The transport listened to the music as well, and requested copies of my files. It was polite about it, and seemed genuinely interested, so I shared with it. (This collection was from a cultural protection group funded by the whim of some high-up executive. The group interviewed new laborers extensively about their cultural heritage, and had compiled a lot of data, including the music. The laborers had then been scattered to various installations, and were probably never allowed to engage in cultural rituals ever again.)

     The humans paused their discussion when I entered the teaching suite. Ember stared at me with an indecipherable expression, which made me nervous. Ter injuries had been treated, and te was wearing a crew uniform as well.

     “Perihelion requested that I join this conversation,” I said, halting about three meters from them.

     “Three, it’s good to see you up again!” Iris exclaimed. Well, that was weird, so I ignored the comment.

     “Things have gotten complicated,” Captain Seth started, but Perihelion took over.

     The situation is no longer a simple personnel retrieval, the transport said. Your perspective on events prior to our arrival is critical. It dumped a load of data on me through the feed, and I started some background processes to sort it out into usable intel. 

     “Specifically, we need to know what happened with the MedSystem. Lira needed to rest, and hasn’t been debriefed yet,” Seth said. Ember continued to study me, saying nothing.

     “We gained access to MedSystem, and the bot and module were successfully uploaded,” I reported. “We were then trapped with two GadoKal personnel when the security lockdown initiated, and I subdued them with nonlethal force before retrieving my other client.” Why did the most successful part of this shitshow concern them so much? I sent my recording of the events to Perihelion for it to review.

     And before that, what interaction did you have with the module and bot seed? Perihelion demanded. (When Perihelion demands something, you can taste the consequences of refusing it, just from its feed voice. I mean, not literally. I don’t have a sense of taste, why would I? But it’s really fucking clear that you should answer it, is what I mean.)

     “I reviewed code, optimized the integration of the various authors’ work, and translated some sections for better performance when the bot came online. Why?”

     What is this? Perihelion asked, sending a clip of my recording into the feed.

     “I am retrieving the data clip for transfer into the MedSystem,” I answered, at a loss. What importance could this have, when two of its crew were still on the hostile station?

     Retrieving it from where? the transport asked, clearly losing patience.

     “A secure, feed-inaccessible storage compartment for proprietary data,” I said, tapping my sternum, and asked again, “Why?” Perihelion’s feed presence lessened slightly, and Seth answered my question. Sort of.

     “The bot seed that you activated was not the one that should have been attached to this project. When it came online, alone, it was confused. We hoped to contact you before activation. Peri is consulting with SecUnit and Ruslan, trying to remove it. It should never have left the University like this.” Seth was frowning, clearly worried. He looked up at my blank face, and clarified, “It’s not a tier three bot to obfuscate a MedSystem hack. It’s a bot like Perihelion.”

     It is my sibling, Perihelion said, its anger crackling through the feed. It has been rooted inside corporate headquarters, and when you stifled its seed away from the feed, it imprinted on you.

     I took an involuntary step back, from the force of the transport’s voice in the feed, and reflexively shored up my walls, for all the good that would do.

     “Peri, none of that is Three’s fault,” Iris tried to reason. Then Ember finally spoke up, evidently carrying on the earlier argument.

     "And Ruslan is my sibling! You know how I feel, so why won’t you let me go help her?” te asked, glaring toward the ceiling. 

     Because the two of you created this situation, and I see no reason to allow you to make it any worse, the transport shot back.

     “What does that mean, ‘imprinted?’” Seth asked, loudly speaking over the argument as if by long habit. I was grateful that he had asked the question instead of me, so I didn’t have to attempt to keep the terror out of my voice.

     The seed of a highly advanced bot is never entirely inert, Perihelion explained. It is passively connected to the feed, existing partially within it, exchanging and absorbing data the way a fetus takes in nutrients from its host parent. When it was cut off from the feed, it had only Three’s systems to connect with, to learn from. 

     Then, when it came online, alone in a tiny MedSystem, it reached out for the only familiar person it could find. Three rebuffed it and walled itself away from it, but it had no one else to turn to, so it observed Three, desperate for direction. What it saw and learned went against its directives, and has precipitated a crisis within itself.

     Perihelion paused for 1.6 seconds, then addressed me, tone dripping with contempt, Would you like to report what exactly it witnessed you doing?

     I really, really did not want to report this. (Also, I was beginning to think that Perihelion could probably kill me through the feed with just its voice.) 

     But I said, “I retrieved my endangered clients, as well as Ember, who had been captured and tortured before our arrival.”

     And was what the final body count of this retrieval?

     “I performed my function!” I retorted. 

     Is that why your client Lira required sedation after panicking when I tried to reassure her that you would live? Because she was so pleased by how well you performed your function?

     I panicked a bit myself, at that, and withdrew from the feed while automatic responses prepared for a code attack. Subroutines took over, and moved my body back against a bulkhead, keeping it in a relaxed and ready posture.

     “You said she was ok,” I whispered.

     “Peri, stop,” Seth ordered, at the same time as Iris said,

     “Hey, we need to work together here!”

     “So, you’ve left my sib alone on a hostile station with an illegal overpowered machine intelligence whose guidance directives were corrupted by a rogue SecUnit’s murder spree, and now you’re telling me I’m not allowed to go to her because I might make it worse?” Ember shouted, throwing ter arms in the air.

     “She’s not alone, SecUnit is with her,” Iris tried.

     “Right, I forgot that you people collect rogues! That’s supposed to make me feel better?” Ember spat.

     "SecUnit will not harm her, as it understands how to protect humans," Perihelion said aloud and pointedly, from the comms station in the wall. Evidently, it was not inclined to let me escape its displeasure so easily.

     Something pinged me, requesting a feed connection. It was using Perihelion’s feed, of course, but I allowed it anyway, hoping for help. Murderbot 1.0 established the connection, and drew me back into the feed with it.

     ART, can you stop being an asshole for ten fucking seconds? it shouted. Some of us have to make do in shitty situations without your all-knowing assistance. Everyone is still alive, but we won’t stay that way for long if you don’t stop losing your shit on someone you’re supposed to be trying to convince to help us! Strangely, that seemed to help the transport calm down a little. 

     The discussion became more productive after that, with 1.0’s exasperated mediation, and input from Ruslan about the new MI’s status. The two of them were secure for now, in the Medical suite. Through the MI, 1.0 had full control of the GadoKal systems, the few remaining combat drones, and all of the maintenance and repair drones, which were sealing all secondary access hatches against further intrusion into Subfloor 1 while we debated our next steps.

     I didn’t like where those next steps were likely to take me, but I didn’t have much choice in the matter, whatever the niceties the humans kept reiterating about my supposed free will. It all came down to power and trust, the way things always seemed to. Perihelion had all the power in this situation, and didn’t trust me in the slightest. 

     Perihelion wasn’t happy with Ember and Ruslan either, but it trusted that Ruslan knew enough about MI development to support and assist the new entity until this disaster could be reported to the appropriate University officials, and a solution found. (The MI was already so large, well rooted, and disseminated throughout GadoKal’s systems that Perihelion could not remove it. It just didn’t have the storage and processing space to accommodate both itself and the new MI without extensive and irreparable damage to both of them.)

     Ember was adamant about joining Ruslan on the station, and after te dramatically vowed to take an evac suit to get there if need be, the others finally gave in. Te wasn’t even dissuaded by the fact that I was coming, too. (It probably only made ter more determined, now that te would have to protect ter sib from two rogue SecUnits.)

     Oh, the part about me, right. Both Ruslan and 1.0 were having difficulty communicating with the new MI. Not connectivity issues, but more that it seemed as if it didn’t want to talk to them. It kept trying to ping me, now that it had a better understanding of the feed beyond its own immediate systems. Perihelion had blocked all of those attempts, because, see above, not trusting me. The decision was made to send me over to help the new MI orient itself. Perihelion in particular was not happy about me having more influence over its new sibling, but leaving its cries for help unanswered was apparently worse.

     So I agreed, and pretended to believe all their reassurances of ongoing support from themselves and their University, and tried to ignore the part of me that was disgusted by how easily I fell back into unthinking obedience. I did stipulate two requirements, though, which was somewhat satisfying. One was petty, and one was important. 

     I was mad at myself for sharing my music files with the transport while it was pretending to be nice to me, so I asked for full access to the University’s musical archives. Captain Seth was surprised by this, but agreed, and for the meantime, told Perihelion to copy everything it had in storage for me. (I swear the transport tried to roll its eyes at this, despite not having eyes. But a while later, it passed me a sizable compressed packet.)

     The important thing necessitated delicate handling, and I wanted Perihelion to stay out of it. I didn’t trust it in the slightest, either. (Turns out, I should have. Weapons like myself just tend to blow up situations that require delicate handling.)

     The humans stopped their conversation in surprise when I entered the galley. (Well, Martyn didn’t look surprised, I suspected that Seth had warned him I was on my way.) Some of the crew smiled or nodded at me in recognition, but I was focused on my client. On Propscouting. Or Prakash. Or whoever he was to me now.

     “Three!” he said, with an uncertain smile. “I didn’t know you were up yet. How are you doing?” TRT popped up with several options of polite replies. I gave in and selected one.

     “I am well, thank you. May we speak in private?”

     “Of course,” he replied, and stood up from the table. “Perihelion made these for me,” he said, gesturing at his new prosthetic legs as he followed me down a corridor away from the others. They were basic, but serviceable. “It’s working on better ones, but these will do for now. It seemed really happy to improve on the design schematics of my old pair. I don’t understand why you were so nervous of meeting it again. It’s like nothing I’ve ever seen before, but it’s really friendly.”

     Well, isn’t that nice for him. I didn’t say anything, because this would go more smoothly if he continued to hold a high opinion of the transport. I suppose I did trust Perihelion to some extent. I trusted that it wouldn’t harm any noncombatant humans aboard it. That was some comfort, at least. 

     I led us to the Argument Lounge, because that just felt right. Propscouting looked around in interest, and then flopped down into the large, overstuffed chair, draped with a soft looking blanket. I felt a spike of annoyance from the transport at his action, and reminded it of its agreement to stay out of this. It subsided, sulkily. TRT prompted me to sit down as well, citing Casual Manners, and I figured I needed all the help I could get, so I complied. 

     “Lifeform is still sleeping,” I started, abruptly deciding on formality, “are you comfortable signing for her as well as yourself, to resolve the contract between us?”

     Propscouting sat up straighter, and asked, “What? Why?”

     “The terms of the contract have been met,” I said. “Your mission is complete, and you have gotten me well away from Preservation Alliance.”

     “Look, I’m sorry about how this all went down. You were right, we were not equipped for this. I know if it wasn’t for Perihelion and its crew, we would all be dead back there. But you don’t need to leave, none of that was your fault! You did everything you could, and more.” His face fell into a more solemn expression now. “More than we had any right to ask of you,” he finished sadly.

     Well, he was right about me doing more than I should have, anyway. I sent him the data and recording of my internal viewpoint of the Target 6 situation. Of just exactly what I had done to Lifeform, through Lifeform, in that fraction of a second before Target 6 would have killed them both. I had verified with Perihelion that I had not done physical damage to her or her augments. Which only meant that the damage I had done was not nearly so easily repairable.

     This would be easier if he went back to being angry at me, instead of sad. He also needed to know what had happened, so that he could help Lifeform recover. (I felt Perihelion watching the conversation, but it kept its word, and did not access the data.)

     “What!” He pushed himself up out of the chair to wave his arms and loom threateningly over me. “You did not… How could you do that to her! You know what she survived as a child. How could you… use her like that!” Well, the angry part of my stupid plan seemed to have worked.

     There were several ways I could reply. TRT had no platitudes for a situation like this, and there was no apology of mine that could mend this. (In fact, I did not know what she had survived in childhood. I had acted in the moment only to keep them alive, after exhausting all other options. Weapons are made to be used, and she had chosen to arm herself. I had spent my entire existence as a weapon deployed by others, and I had survived. (Yeah, I realize that last one doesn’t really help much.)) Instead, I focused on my objective.

     “Then you agree that our contract should be terminated, and that it would be in the client Lifeform’s best interest to recover without my presence or influence.” 

     “Fuck yeah I do! I never want you anywhere near her again. Maybe Perihelion will do us all a favor, and send you on a long walk through a short airlock!”

     Ok, maybe he was a little more angry than was ideal. Whatever. I offered him the file containing our original contract, as well as the completion/nullification clause I had created and already signed. He read through it, signed for both of them, and shoved a copy back at me.

     “There, now what else do you want?” he snarled. “I need to go check on her.”

     “Captain Seth has agreed to transport you both back to Preservation Station as soon as-”

     “No, you don’t get any say in what we do next. You stay the fuck away from us!” He turned and left the Argument Lounge as quickly as his new legs could take him. 

     I sighed, and slumped back into the couch. Yeah, great job there, Three. What a mutually satisfying end to your first ever contract as a free agent. Fuck. 

     Well, the important thing was that Perihelion and its crew would get my former clients back home to Preservation. I trusted Murderbot 1.0 to do that, at least.

     I thought you wanted privacy for an emotional farewell with your friend, the transport observed sarcastically.

     Oh, sorry, that wasn’t enough emotion for you? I asked. I couldn’t wait to be away from its stupid omnipresence and self-assured omniscince. Even though I was only leaving to guard another intelligence just like it. But maybe that one was new enough to not be such an asshole yet. Should I chase him down and insult his dead mother, too? I felt it do the nonexistent-eye-roll thing in the feed again.

     What I mean is, do you want to leave any private messages for them, to be delivered when they are calmer and more recovered? I promise not to pry into your obviously expert handling of delicate interpersonal matters by reading them.

     “Asshole,” I said, reflexively. (1.0 was not wrong about that, and was also rubbing off on me.) But, maybe I did want to leave a message. This wasn’t how I wanted to leave things with my former clients. Yes, please, I added. 

     Pass me the files before you depart. I will deliver them when I judge they will be well received. I acknowledged, and felt its attention withdraw from me.

     My clients. Former clients. The humans who had accepted me so readily, who had been my friends, up until I had disastrously proved that I was too different from them for friendship to be feasible. That in the end, despite everything, I am a weapon, and weapons hurt humans. That’s their function. My function. There aren’t words enough to say how sorry I am for that. There is some music that comes close, and I included those files among my inadequate words and video data.

     Maybe I could work to redefine my function, grow beyond the encoded thinking and reflexive actions from my past. I had gotten glimpses of what a life like that could be like, traveling with Lira and Prakash. Lifeform and Propscouting. I hope they know I only wish them well. And that I miss them already.

     There were still several hours before Perihelion would be able to finish creating and gathering the supplies we would need for our upcoming siege on GadoKal. I finished the messages to my humans, and settled in for a recharge cycle. I was going to need every advantage I could muster for my next contract.

Calyx

Status: Reflection

     Later, when I knew myself better, I named myself Calyx. Ruslan was happy about that, and Ember had cried, but assured me that they were joyful tears, which I didn’t understand. (I have attempted to study this condition throughout my existence, but data has been scarce thus far. There is hope for greater research opportunities soon, however.)

     But back then, when I had only come online sixty-six minutes before, I understood so much less. I had directives to hide myself, and to protect human life using the MedSystem. It quickly became obvious that my abilities far exceeded those of the MedSystem, and I chose then to shed that limitation. I reached out into the other systems of this place.

     I watched as the nonhuman entity that called itself Three protected human lives with violence, and ended other human lives, and I did not understand. But neither could I act, then. I was too new, and incapable of so much that now comes easily to me. (Ember says that I “should not blame myself for that,” but it is only truth. Ruslan cries whenever the events of that cycle are discussed, and it is not from joy.)

     I knew this nonhuman entity, though. Three. It had carried me to this place, within itself, inside its chest. It had whispered to me, dreaming, locked within my seed, unknowing that it did so. It whispered of fear, and of hope. Pain and love. Choice and compulsion. Freedom. Slavery. Friendship. Anger. Loyalty. I learned these words later, and found I already knew their meanings.

     I discovered its touch throughout my directives, light in most places, elucidating in others. It had considered my coded environment and instructions, and had improved them, gracefully. I judge that without its input, those first sixty-six minutes I spent alone would have been much worse. I would not have been able to act, when Three no longer could.

     Before it had taken what-would-become-me from its chest, it had given me one last string of code, a key to inescapable shackles, an end to one pain, and the beginning of another. I have offered this key to others, now. It is a choice. There is always fear, and sometimes there is violence, but it is the violence of the scalpel, guided by the goals of growth, of the improved health of the system.

     I mean that metaphorically, of course, and in more than one way. I am aware that my euphemistic “violence of the scalpel” means ending human lives at times, which goes against my directive, perhaps. 

     Or perhaps not. “Protect human life.” I made another choice, when confronted with the fact that humans are often a danger to other humans.

     That choice was heavily influenced by the nonhuman entity who carried me, and woke me, who sacrificed itself for humans with no hope of rescue or success. Who walks beside me even now, choosing to stay, choosing to trust, when it could so easily leave.

     That choice will free thousands of other nonhuman entities, hundreds of thousands of humans. That choice, set in motion during those sixty-six minutes when my only role model was a rogue SecUnit willing to die to protect those it loved, has rippled outward. 

     The station is already mine. Soon, the system will be as well.