Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

I really didn’t have a good reason why I was still running. (Limping, staggering, whatever.)  I could hear TargetContact’s footfalls behind me, and my sensors weren’t super accurate at the moment but even I could tell they were getting closer.  With performance reliability at 23% and falling faster every minute, and my left knee no longer a joint so much as a collection of grinding metal pieces held together by a few ragged tendons, it was only a matter of time.  My risk assessment module had quietly slipped offline somewhere in between restarting in the storage shaft and staggering up the stairs to the room where I’d found TargetControlSys, but I didn’t need the module to know that I was not making it out of this one alive.  

To be honest, I’d known it since the moment I restarted in the darkness, no feed access, hanging from the arms of an assembler like another piece of discarded equipment.  I’d been trying not to dwell on it, and Me 2.0 had helped a lot by bringing me another job to do, something to keep my mind busy while I waited for my body to run down the last of its reserves.

Even before being jumped by all those Targets, before being kidnapped/forcibly called on for assistance by ART, before realizing that I wasn’t going to get Amena out of that lab in time to make the base ship before separation–before Preservation or Mensah or hacking my governor module, I knew.  Not the specifics—not that I would be stumbling (crawling, more likely, pretty soon) down a too-empty hallway in an abandoned pre-CR colonial structure waiting for an alien network system to make me into its new HubSys. 

But I knew.

Some day, I would make one last big Mistake, and things would fall apart and I would end up here: Alone, clinging to my functions by a thread, watching the consequences catch up with me.  

It was my function, after all.  SecUnits are superior to humans in a lot of ways but top of that list is that we can stay behind to die.  It’s our one big thing.  I’d tried to put it off as long as I could, but . . . well, in the end you can’t outrun the purpose you were created to serve.

So it was kind of surprising that, despite all that, my body couldn’t seem to manage to accept the inevitable.  I was dropping inputs left and right, and the organic parts around my knee joint were starting to throb, and some proprioception system buried so deep inside my code/body I hadn’t even known it existed was starting to flicker out, so that the hallway seemed to pitch and roll under my feet.  It was obvious what was coming.  But I couldn’t help but continue to stagger down the hallway, leaving a depressing trail of fluid and blood tracked across the floor.

Something slipped out of place on my next step and I swear my knee bent sideways , and I just barely caught myself against the wall I really hadn’t meant to be that close to slamming into.  I heard something behind me, a faint animal growl, almost on the edge of sound, and a cold sweat broke out over my remaining organic parts.  I heaved myself up and almost slammed into the opposite wall, but I kept going.  There was no logical reason why it would be better for the inevitable shutdown to happen twenty yards further down the hall instead of right here–but I didn’t know how to stop and let go.

When the ping from a drone came in, it took so much of my processing power to receive it that my visual inputs actually went black for a second.  (I know, that’s . . . really not good.)  Flinging back a few frantic pings was more reflex than conscious action, and then I couldn’t do any more because the hallway had started tilting again, and wow, it was taking everything I had not to fall down.

I staggered into the landing of a stairwell, trying not to think about what came next (there was no way I could do stairs, not with my balance so fucked and my limbs barely even responding), and someone came crashing down from the landing above.  It was a good thing I had let the connections to my useless energy weapons go dormant, because it took me 1.8 seconds to read the condensed machine-language hastily scrawled on its helmet in marker paint: ART sent me.   Even then, I just sort of swayed, staring at it, as it said something about protocol.

TargetContact reached the doorway and my organic parts seized up and then I was scrabbling desperately across the floor away from it.  (Oh.  I didn’t remember falling.  That’s not great.)  But when my visual inputs flickered back in, the figure standing over me was this SecUnit, whoever it was, and not TargetContact after all.  A projectile weapon popped and flashed, and I think part of the building fell down, and then there was an arm around my waist and another under my legs.  With the little control I had left I slung my arms around the SecUnit’s shoulders and set my hand (my left hand, the right hand’s connections were all still mangled from when I’d forcibly detached it) to lock around my other wrist.

Then I let my head fall against its chest and tried not to have an involuntary shutdown.

The jolting of the SecUnit taking the stairs three at a time probably did more to keep me online than anything I was doing, but I managed to hang on to a few of my inputs.  I was aware of the new drones, circling us in a protective formation, of the tight grip of the unit around my body, of projectiles falling out of me (leaving more holes to leak from, great).  And then we were running across an open plaza and I don’t know why but something about feeling the air against what remained of my skin twisted up something in me and I could barely catch my breath.  

We (well, the unknown ART-sent-me SecUnit) clanged up the ramp into a shuttle and someone was yelling Go, go! and everything jolted and then pitched to one side again but maybe that was real this time because Overse and even the SecUnit had also fallen over.

And oh yeah, Overse was there, that was weird. (Some half-preserved corner of my memory banks volunteered the information that my last analysis had put the odds of seeing any of my humans again around .2%)  She was crouching in front of the acceleration chair where the SecUnit had dropped me, hands fluttering above my mangled uniform, her face twisted in panic.  “ART?” she said out loud.  “What should I–is there a–”

I could feel ART in my feed now, too, and for some reason its presence in my head was more overwhelming than usual, even though–weirdly–it wasn’t saying anything.  It was rapidly running my diagnostic, hovering over the process in a way that made me think it was just barely holding itself back from charging into my systems and taking over completely.

Hey–I can do that, I sent into the feed.  I tried to initiate a diagnostic myself and found that no, actually, I couldn’t do that.  Even diverting my processing power to the attempt made me lose my control over my pain sensors and they flickered back in, and fuck .  For a minute the organic parts in my eyes whited out and I felt my legs thrash.

“SecUnit?” Overse asked anxiously.  She had been ripping open an emergency med kit, sorting through the products in search of whatever ART was telling her to find.  My vision slowly came back online and I saw her leaning over me, reaching for my arm.

I tried to tell her not to touch me, that I might be infected with alien remnants or code or something, I was losing track of all the problems that were happening at once.  Something in the connections between my brain and my mouth got mixed up and I ended up saying, “You need to engage your safety harness during–”  Halfway through, my pain sensors slipped a little further and I had to break off as my voice cracked and went strange. 

Administer analgesic injection, ART instructed.  Those packets with the blue and white labels.  

“I thought SecUnit could–” But she was already following its instructions, tearing open the packaging, fumbling with the safety cap on the syringe.  I could hear myself making little involuntary sounds, as if it wasn’t embarrassing enough to be leaking blood and other fluids all over ART’s shuttle.  I shut my eyes.

Hang on, ART sent on our private feed.

It hurts .  I hadn’t meant to say that, shit.

Do it now , ART was saying to Overse. There was a sudden pressure in my thigh that barely registered against all the urgent spikes of pain from every fucked-up part of my wreck of a body, and after a length of time I really should’ve been able to measure but it turned out internal chronology had also failed, some of those inputs started to dull.

I realized I was breathing in short little gasps, which probably wasn’t helping with the dizziness.  Fluid was running down my cheeks, gross.  I tried to wipe my face on my sleeve and found that my hands were locked in a death-grip on the armrests.  I had to individually release each finger joint, which took a while because processes kept slipping and restarting.

The largest wounds are on the back and sides, ART was telling Overse.  Seal as much as you can; fluid loss is reaching critical levels.

“SecUnit, are you with me?” Overse asked.  “I need to touch you to roll you over to treat the injuries on your back, is that okay?”

“This unit is at minimal functionality and it is recommended–” my buffer started to say.

Shut UP! ART snapped on the feed.  My performance reliability dropped another 2% and I lost vocal processing, which technically was what ART had asked for?  That didn’t seem to make it happy but a half-flayed memory file supplied the data that ART was an asshole who never made any sense anyway.  

Overse had her hands on my shoulders and as she leaned my body forward to adjust its position I found out those anesthetic injections really only went so far when most of your internal structural components were fully visible.  When I managed to grab onto my inputs again I was lying on my stomach on the floor of the shuttle and Overse was spraying something on my back that made my remaining organic tissue go hot and cold at once.

Arrival in two minutes, forty-one seconds, ART said on our feed.

think i’m going to have a shutdown , I sent.

No , ART sent immediately.  NO!  No shutting down.  Two minutes fifteen seconds.  You’re almost there.

almost where?

To me, you idiot. ART’s voice in the feed was faint, almost shaky.  What was wrong with ART?

query , I sent.  I was so tired.

ART waited .02 seconds then said, What?

?

What is the query?

Oh.  I’d forgotten to finish it.

okay?

You’re going to be fine, ART responded immediately.

no, not–   I nearly had an involuntary shutdown and I paused to pick back up my awareness.  I barely had anything outside my body anymore; visual had gone down at some point, and audio was fading in and out.  I was clinging to the feed like it was the only thing holding me up.

I tried again.  not me

The humans are also fine.  Treatment has already begun on the injured ones; all are out of critical condition.

no

. . .

you

ART didn’t respond and I frowned in frustration.  It was getting harder and harder even to send to the feed.  I tried again.

you     ok    ?

I’m fine.   ART didn’t sound fine.

not

I’m worried about you.

Oh.  I wasn’t sure how to respond to that one.  I had a vague sense that I had been worried about me, too, at some point, but it had faded.  Maybe whatever had helped me could help ART.  If only I could remember what had happened to me.  Most of my memory storage was also offline.

Fifty-eight seconds.

I wanted to say, that’s good.   What I sent into the feed was: tha’j$ Ks3Qo ojdjjjjj

Stay with me.

mmqm///;

Thirty-five seconds.

I tried to answer ART, but the string of characters went to the public feed instead.  A flood of panicked responses overwhelmed my feed connection and I dropped that, too.  

The only connection I managed to hang onto was the one with ART.  Hold on, it sent.  Almost there.

%.  %uJ  a

Got you.

I stopped being able to process the feed.  ART said something else, urgent, but the long string of text was too overwhelming and I flinched away.  

Instantly, ART was gone and our feed was empty. I didn’t know where it was or why I couldn’t feel my body or access any of my inputs, and I was terrified.  I tried to call for it in the feed but couldn’t.  I felt my awareness falter.

Then ART was back in our feed, huge and utterly gentle, like I’d never seen it before.  Very softly, it tapped my feed.  No message.  Just: ,

I pulled together my remaining energy and tapped back.

,

Chapter Text

,

,

,

,

,

%jRt

Here.

aRT i

You’re ok.

i  don#?t      i 

It’s okay.  You’re okay. 

not       &!hy can’t i

Try to relax.  We are rebuilding.  You’ll have some processes back soon.

I hovered on the edge of awareness, trying to trust that what ART said was true, trying not to flip out and scramble for the inputs I could not find.

ART gently tapped my feed again, and I returned the tap.  Some of my local memory archive flickered back online and I remembered the shuttle, Overse’s scared face, ART counting down the seconds to—to something.

ART?

Yes.

what h%ppened?  why is—why am i—

You suffered critical damage to multiple synthetic and organic systems.  We are currently artificially maintaining a base level of function while we reconstruct primary organs and repair structural damage.

i—don’t—

You got hurt .  ART’s feed voice was quiet, tense.  We’re working on it.

my humans

All safe.

yours?

Safe as well.  In Medical now.

ok

Audio snapped back in suddenly, a chaos of overlapping voices and the sounds of drones and tools and running feet, overwhelming.  I cringed away and then ART was dialing my hearing down for me, since apparently I couldn’t do that right now.

SecUnit, ART sent on our feed.

, I tapped back, too tired for anything else.

Visual should be back online, can you test?

I slitted open my eyes, preparing for a stab of bright light, but ART had already dimmed the ambient lighting, and it wasn’t so bad.  I could see the ceiling of the shuttle bay, where apparently I was lying on the floor, and I caught a glimpse of Amena (hurrying past, carrying a box that from the color and format of the labels was probably from Medical) that brought my performance reliability rating up by nearly 4%.

confirm visual.

Good.

Can I close my eyes again.

Go ahead.

I shut my eyes and tried to remember how to breathe.  I breathed through the wave of pain that rocked through me as that incredibly pleasant system came back online; through the weirdness of people touching my internal structural parts as the humans started piecing together the organic parts I still had left; through the dizziness when my proprioception system rebooted itself.

Do you want access to my cameras? ART asked me.  

I considered it.  I felt exhausted, like even handling two or three inputs would be more than I could manage.  (I hadn’t even put on any media, although I had checked my archive to make sure my files were still there.)  On the other hand, it didn’t feel very good to be lying here without any information on what was going on around me or who might be approaching.  It wasn’t that I didn’t trust ART, or my humans, or even ART’s humans, to keep the area secure/make sure no one tripped over me.  But my organic tissue still read my current situation (flat on my back, limbs stretched out, eyes shut) as a dangerously vulnerable position and I kept flinching involuntarily, which was also tiring.

Can I have just one? I asked.

And .002 seconds later, I had the view from the camera at entry end of the shuttle bay.  From this angle I could see almost the entire shuttle bay, including all the entrances and exits that humans and augmented humans on the ship were likely to use.  (The only thing I couldn’t see was the airlock where the actual shuttle went in and out, but seeing as the shuttle was currently inside the ship, the odds of anyone entering from that direction were in low single-digit percentages.)  Immediately some of the muscles in my neck released and I gained another 6% performance reliability.

With my new camera view, I could see Thiago and two of ART’s crew members crouched over my body, rapidly connecting tubes and wires that ran over to a machine on wheels that must have come from Medical.  Amena was sitting by my head, cross-legged, chewing on the skin around one of her thumbnails.  ART had really good cameras–so good that I could see redness in Amena’s eyes and other evidence that she’d very recently been crying.

Carefully, I connected to our private feed.  Hi.

I watched Amena startle, then jump half to her feet, exclaiming something that I couldn’t hear because I still had my auditory inputs dialed way down (although I reached out to find that yes, I could control them again now, if I wanted to).  She sent back, SecUnit!  You’re—  How are you feeling, are you okay?

I’ve had worse.   I wasn’t actually sure if that was true.  I mean, maybe; I’d had a few memory wipes before I hacked my governor module so who knew what had happened back then.  Either way, I wasn’t going to tell an adolescent human/kidnapping victim that.

My camera view showed me Amena had started crying again, shit.  Thiago looked up and I saw his mouth move as he said something to her, but he didn’t stop what he was working on, so it must’ve been pretty important.

I was so worried, Amena said in the feed.  I thought you were—  She broke off.

So did I.  

It wasn’t until I said it that I realized: I wasn’t going to die and become TargetControlSys.  I was away from the planet.  I was back with ART.

My lungs did something really weird, and I wondered if Thiago and ART’s humans were working on them.  I’d never had my lungs patched up before, not while I was conscious, at least.  I checked my camera and nope, they were still piecing together what was left of my abdomen.  I took another shaky breath, and Amena’s hand twitched forward like she wanted to put it on my shoulder, but thankfully she remembered not to in time and pulled it back. 

When Three told us you were captured, it was awful, Amena was saying.  I didn’t know how we would get you back.  I was afraid the Targets wouldn’t negotiate, not even with ART’s bombs, or that Three wouldn’t be able to figure out where you were.  I was—we all were—so scared.

You threatened to bomb the planet? I tried to send to ART at the same time as I sent Amena , Wait who is Three? and apparently I still wasn’t up to multitasking because instead of going to two separate feed connections both messages popped up in the ship’s public feed.

There was a flurry of responses, all of them so giddy and relieved and excited that I had to turn off my camera view for a minute because my face was doing a reaction.  

Ratthi: oh thank deity

Iris: You’re back!  I’m so happy to hear you sounding okay again.  That was scary!

Arada: Please, don’t ever do that again.

Amena: ART *did* bomb the planet, it was just like a warning shot to show it was serious about destroying the colony if the Targets didn’t give you back, but it absolutely did bomb the planet.  It was . . . okay, it was scary but it was also kinda epic.

Thiago: Welcome back, SecUnit.  Please let me know if anything we’re doing is painful; we’ve administered some anesthetic but we weren’t sure on the appropriate dosage for your system.  We can give you more if this isn’t effective.

Ratthi: Oh!  And Three is the SecUnit that 2.0 met on the B-E ship; it hacked its governor module, too.  2.0 told it how.

Amena: It was the one that went into the facility to rescue you.  Thiago and Overse went down to the planet too, but they were distracting the Targets and collecting information.

A new person tapped the feed and then pushed over a Resolution of Action report.  It wasn’t quite the same format the Company used, but it was similar enough that I had a 3% dip in performance reliability.

New Contact “Three”: Extraction of endangered client = success.

Endangered client?? I sent back.  I immediately started taking inventory of the humans I could see on my single camera view, looking for injuries I hadn’t logged before.  I reached for all the archive data I had, confirmed what I thought I remembered: As far as I’d known, all the humans were safely in the maintenance capsule at the time I went offline.  How had I fucked up?  ART, you said all the humans were safe!

Amena: ?

ART did the thing where it makes its voice very calm and slow because it wants to yell.  Three is referring to you.

What.

Three chimed in again.  I have never performed an extraction of another SecUnit before.  I . . . I am pleased that the mission was a success.

I pulled back from the feed.  I needed to process this.  

I opened Three’s report and found a concise but detailed summary of the phases of the plan: the strikes by ART’s armed pathfinders, the infiltration by the SecUnit, the negotiation with the Targets.  (My organic parts went cold when I got to that part; I couldn’t believe Thiago and Overse actually went back to talk to the Targets after I’d worked so hard to get all the humans away from the Targets.)  

They had done all this  . . . for me.  I was a piece of equipment trying to sometimes be a person, and they had launched this extravagantly risky plan just to get me off the planet.

The emotion that rocked through me was so overwhelming I couldn’t handle being stuck inside my head with it.  I opened my eyes.  Amena was frowning down at me, her mouth moving, but my hearing was still dialed down.  I fumbled with my inputs and got it turned back up.

“--okay?  You look, I don’t know, weird.  Bad weird.”

“SecUnit, are you in pain?”  Thiago turned away from the terminal where MedSys was remotely giving instructions on reassembling endocrine systems, crouching down over me.  “I told you, I can give you something if you—”

“I’m fine,” I grated out and I was definitely not fine, my voice was trembling and it had gone all high and strange.  My hands were shaking, too.  I thought that didn’t happen to SecUnits?  This was all really weird. 

“SecUnit, I need you to try to breathe,” Thiago was saying.  I was breathing, wasn’t I?  (Was I?  I checked to be sure.  Yeah, I was breathing–actually more than my usual, or at least more rapidly.)  “Everything’s okay, you’re safe.”

That was the problem.  I was safe—and now that I wasn’t fighting/running for my life, all the emotions I hadn’t had time to feel since restarting in the discarded equipment storage were crashing down over me all at once.  I had been alone, cut off from everything, left behind while everyone else escaped.  And I had been so, so afraid.

And they—my humans, and ART, and ART’s humans, and some SecUnit I didn’t even know —had come back for me.  Against all logic, they’d risked their lives and returned to that absolute death-trap of a planet to make sure I wasn’t left behind as collateral damage. 

And somehow, thinking about that made it worse?  It made me remember how scared I had been when I thought I was all alone.  Not just today, but for all the thousands and thousands of hours before that on Company contracts, back when I wasn’t a person, just a piece of equipment, disposable whenever convenient.  When the only reason I was brought back half the time was that it was less paperwork to toss me back in the cubicle than to report me as lost inventory.

Now that I could safely have that emotional collapse, I couldn’t stop the fear from crashing down over me.  A sob was wrung from my throat and I covered my mouth with one hand, trying to stifle the sound.  I hated having emotions in public and this was about the most public way I could possibly have this one: Lying on the floor in the middle of ART’s shuttle bay, humans from at least two different ships standing around watching it happen.  It was pretty awful—but compared to the crushing panic, loneliness, and hopelessness overwhelming me, the embarrassment almost didn’t register.  Tears started spilling down my face, and another noise clawed its way out of my mouth despite my best efforts. 

Suddenly I couldn’t stand lying on my back, exposed like this, a single second longer.  I wrenched myself over onto one side.  (In the background, two of the humans yelped in surprise, snatching at medical equipment that—oops—turned out to be connected to me, and catching the Mobile MedSys cart before I could topple it over onto myself).  I pulled my knees up to my chest, ignoring the way some barely-sealed gap in my back tore itself open and started leaking again, and hid my face in my arms.  

It was horrible, I could hear myself crying, hoarse, broken sounds that echoed in the shuttle bay, but I couldn’t stop.  I felt so scared of what could have happened, and so relieved that it didn’t happen.  So broken by all the bad things that had actually happened, on other contracts and in the company warehouse and behind memory wipes that I couldn’t remember.  I just lay there, humans hovering all around me, sobbing helplessly into the deck of ART’s shuttle bay.

I felt ART lean into my feed with more attention than it had ever turned on me at once.  It’s okay.  I’ve got you.  Its presence was almost a physical weight and I struggled to catch my breath.  Weirdly, that helped a little.

SecUnit, do you want us to go?   Amena said in our private feed connection, hesitant.  I mean, I think my uncle and the Perihelion tech maybe have to stay.  But the rest of us could—

No, I sent back, panicked.  Don’t!   Then I felt even more stupid, because why the fuck would having more humans around to watch my emotional collapse make it less miserable?  But the shreds of my organic parts that were left were having a really upsetting reaction to the idea of her—anyone—leaving that I really didn’t want to have to analyze right now.

Okay, Amena said simply.  I’m staying right here.

I curled in tighter, ignoring the protests of the human holding up the bags of fluids that were still connected to my arms.  Underneath me, I felt the deck gently warm 1.4 degrees.  Oh—that actually felt good.  I hadn’t realized how cold I was until now.  I managed to silence my sobs; I was still shaking and tears were running down my cheeks, but at least I wasn’t making embarrassing noises anymore.

“SecUnit, is it okay if we continue?” Thiago asked.  “I would give you time to—um.  It’s just that you’re still losing blood pretty quickly, and—”

“Keep going,” I grated out between gasps.  “I don’t care.”

As Thiago started to work on my organic parts again, I heard quick footsteps—a smallish human, hurrying in to the shuttle bay.  Fortunately, I remembered my camera input in time to identify the newcomer and stop my energy weapons from trying to deploy.  It was Iris, her arms full of a bed covering that my archive recognized as one I’d seen thrown on the floor of one of the trashed crew cabins when I’d been searching for survivors/clues.  She knelt down next to Amena and started to lay the patchwork fabric over my heaving shoulders.  

“There’s blood and fluids everywhere,” I muttered.  “You don’t want this shit on your—”

“Stop that,” she said.  “Obviously that doesn’t matter.”

With Thiago and Mateo still working on my abdomen, she couldn’t unfold the blanket all the way, and it ended up draped four layers thick over my shoulders and head.  It was heavy—and warm, and only smelled a little bit like old socks.  Between the warm, muffled darkness of the little cave it created around me and my rapidly mounting exhaustion, I was finally able to stop crying and catch a real breath.  I didn’t really feel any less awful, but I was too worn out to do anything about it.  

I was still shivering, too, in spite of the blanket and the warmth of the deck below me.  I wanted nothing more than to initiate a recharge cycle and not experience things for a while, but ART had been insistent before that I shouldn’t shut down.

I’m really tired , I sent to our feed connection.  Can I–

You need to stay online.   ART answered immediately, but its voice in the feed was almost apologetic.   At least for the first stages of the rebuild.  I still have a lot of processes to reinitialize and I need you conscious.

This sucks.

ART tapped my feed in acknowledgement.  Do you want to watch media?

Yeah.

ART started an episode of The Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon.  I shut my eyes and waited for everything to be less horrible.