Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

I know I’ve said that I don’t like media that’s realistic, and I don’t usually like documentaries. But spending over a year with Three onboard ART as security specialists was expanding my horizons. At ART’s suggestion, every fifth cycle had now been designated “docu-series night” and we were all in the argument lounge watching another season of Three’s new favourite, Nights on Preservation. 

(ART and I had both vetoed any documentaries that talked about shipping disasters, SecUnits, mining installations, or anything where humans died in horrible painful ways. Three had agreed, and as a further compromise, the cycle after docu-series night, it would always join us for “How Bad Could It Be?” where ART, Iris, Turi and I were competing to find the absolute worst fictional serials in existence. Three only agreed to attend because the whole point was to criticize how stupid the shows were. And they were very stupid.)

Nights on Preservation was all about unique nocturnal fauna across the Preservation Alliance. I had seen lots of fauna on all my different planetary surveys, but I had never paid much attention to their behaviour, unless that behaviour was “attempting to kill and/or eat my clients.”

The narrator sounded really enthusiastic about all the different fauna on the screen, in a way that kind of reminded me of Arada. Even when the cute little pygmy lark got caught by a big lizard, her voice still sounded excited as she talked about how it had caught the bird through its heat-sensing vision (kind of like my night vision filter), and how the pygmy lark would sustain the lizard’s young.

Three was hovering in the feed monitoring my reactions, and I felt it focusing on me intently as the lizard munched the bird. I sent it a nudge through my emotional buffer, signalling [I’m fine/interested/not upset.] I had said in our agreement that fauna violence and death was ok, but it still always checked in on me during these scenes, especially if the fauna were of the “cute” variety. It was kind of nice, in a way that made my insides feel weird.

The other thing we practiced during these group media nights was “non-threatening touch.” Since we had officially become part of ART’s crew, PSUMNT had decided that we should both get some kind of trauma treatment, which I would have pushed back on a lot more before [redacted]. Because the University didn’t have any pre-existing trauma recovery protocols for constructs (I know, shocking, right?) developing this module was the first project for the newly instituted (and highly confidential) Construct Research Laboratory. Dr. Bharadwaj had even moved temporarily to PSUMNT to help establish it. I had a lot of feelings about that, but the trauma recovery module hadn’t made me unpack them yet, so I wasn’t in a rush. 

Anyway, what’s relevant here is that the trauma recovery module had decided that Three and I would both benefit from experiencing non-violent physical contact. So during media nights, Three and I would agree on a point of physical contact between us, and try to maintain that physical contact for the duration of an episode.

The module had said it was good for Three, because it missed the physical contact it received from 001 and 002, and it was good for me because even the times I hadn’t completely hated being touched had all still been in very high stress situations. That, apparently, had only reinforced my aversion to physical touch. Which I guess made sense. 

It was also way easier to do this with Three than with any of the humans. (I still hadn’t really wanted to do this, but the module was insistent, and I didn’t have a good argument about why I shouldn’t have to.)

Anyway, this is all to say that Three and I were spending this docu-series night sitting next to each other on the couch, with the sides of our feet and lower legs touching. I didn’t want to admit it, but it wasn’t… the worst thing ever. And practicing physical contact like this was actually helping me be less jumpy around our humans. Ugh. I hated it when the trauma recovery module was right. 

None of the humans in the argument lounge seemed to have noticed our physical contact experiment, probably because they were always sprawled on top of one another the whole time. They weren’t going to pick up on the 26.8 square centimeters of synthetic skin and metal that Three and I were sharing. 

The episode then switched to a new scene - a bunch of marine life swimming through some bioluminescent algae. It was actually really pretty. I almost didn’t believe they had filmed it without any VFX enhancements, but Three had said this entire docu-series had no effects beyond light-balance to make sure everything was visible to human viewers. 

I saved the scene to my internal media storage. Three radiated amusement through the feed, and nudged my leg a little bit. I didn’t hate that. I nudged it back. 

I felt ART shimmering with smug satisfaction, but it very tactfully didn’t say anything. I think it was also getting some advice from our trauma module, which had probably included stuff like “don’t tease the SecUnits when they’re being vulnerable”. Or at least that was a plausible explanation for why ART was so weirdly nice during docu-series nights.

Just as I had that thought, ART turned its attention elsewhere, leaking a hint of [concern/questioning] into our shared feed. 

Priority One message for Seth, to be received in private. ART sent to the public feed. 

Seth stood up. “I’ll be right back. Don’t pause for me.”

Three kept the show running as Seth hurried out of the room. Priority One calls were never a good time. I just hoped this one wouldn’t involve anything complicated for me. 

We were settling into a new scene about some creature called a “firefly fish” when Seth pinged me with an invitation to a private feed channel.

SecUnit, Three, Tarik, could you all report to my office immediately? 

Well, shit.

***

And that was how I ended up here, on this run-down transit station, waiting in the public cafeteria near the docking bays. We couldn’t risk ART - and by extension, the university - being caught anywhere near this place, so it had downloaded a partition into one of the carefully anonymized shuttles it used for this kind of covert mission. It was docked one floor up from where I was currently sitting. I was doing my best to look nonchalant, pretending to sip the hot beverage I had ordered while I waited for our client to maybe, hopefully show up. ART-shuttle was hanging out with me and had tried to start an episode of Worldhoppers, but I was way too stressed to pay attention, so it had settled for just hanging out in my head with me.

Tarik, Three, and I had been dispatched for a tactical extradition of this junior UMRO corporate. (Well, mostly me and Three. Tarik was there in case we needed a human for whatever reason.) After years of covert espionage and sending thousands of coded messages and reports to PSUMNT, they had fucked up and given themselves away by doing something stupid. 

I didn’t like this at all. The whole thing felt like a bad set-up. But Seth insisted that we owed them, and also we couldn't risk letting this person fall into UMRO’s hands. He was definitely right about that last part - I didn’t know exactly what UMRO would do to them, but I guessed it probably wouldn't include all their limbs remaining attached to their body. 

My Act-like-a-human code was prompting me to fidget. I stopped that impulse, since I didn’t want to look like I was waiting for anything. Just a normal human here, reading in their feed and enjoying a hot caffeinated beverage! ART-shuttle reassuringly pressed itself against me in the feed, showing me that it was keeping an eye on everything through the station cameras. Hopefully we wouldn’t be caught off guard. 

See anything yet, Three? I sent via our secure feed channel. It was wandering around the balcony that encircled the common area of the transit ring, pretending to browse the shop feeds while keeping an eye on anyone coming in or out.

No. Nothing matching the description Captain Seth and Perihelion gave us. 

I don't like this. They're 34 minutes late.

Three pinged back a sense of uneasiness. They may have been delayed by other factors? It is not impossible that - wait, I see them. 

It sent a picture of our contact (designation: Junior Heran) walking towards the cafeteria and looking distinctly nervous. Fair enough, I guess, but if you’re trying not to get spotted it’s a good idea to control what your face is doing. (Yeah, I know, shut up.)

“Is this seat taken?” they asked as they came up beside my table. So far, so good.

“All yours” I said, following our script and gesturing to the chair across from me. I scratched my eyebrow three times to confirm I’m Eden, (the code name I’d chosen for this mission that Heran had been told to expect). They sat down looking relieved, and crossed and uncrossed their legs once. Clear exit. Not followed.

I didn’t nod. I didn’t look at them. Feed ID: Heran, they/them, single, UMRO junior executive – mining acquisitions.

I pinged Three to start making its way back towards ART-shuttle. The plan was for Three to ensure our path was clear, send the route to Heran via a secure feed connection, and then I would follow them about 20 seconds later to make sure we weren’t followed. Ideally, we’d make our way down there relatively unobtrusively.

Yeah. Should have known shit was going to go sideways as soon as that thought crossed my mind.

“Junior Heran! Fancy seeing you here!” a soft voice said just behind me. Heran stiffened, then tried to smooth their expression into something resembling nonchalance. It didn’t work. I glanced up at the augmented human standing over my shoulder, just a little too close for comfort.

“Senior Mariana.” They lowered their eyes, then tilted their head to the left side. Fuck, that meant trouble.

Three. I might need you down here really soon.

It pinged me back, acknowledging that it had seen the new potential hostile in play and it was already on its way.

(I really liked working with Three.)

“And this must be Eden!” she said cheerfully, putting her hand on my shoulder.

Oh shit. Three, shit has hit the fan.

Heran went pale, and for a second I thought they might actually throw up. I said, as coolly as I could manage, “remove your hand from my shoulder immediately.”

She laughed. “No, I don’t think I will. I think you’re both going to come with me.”

I stood up just as Three sprinted in and grabbed Heran around the waist, hoisted them up like a duffel bag, and flung them over one shoulder. (There was no point in trying to stay covert now. We just needed to get out as fast as fucking possible.) I drew my small projectile weapon (I couldn’t deploy my arm guns without making it obvious what I was), and pointed it at her. She seemed unfazed by having a sidearm suddenly thrust into her face. The humans nearby started screaming and running away, which is the correct response when you see someone pull out a gun. Three took advantage of the chaos to sprint toward ART’s dock. 

Raising one eyebrow, Mariana smirked up at me way too smugly for someone with a gun pointed at their face. “Oh my, threatening me so openly? I suppose it's only fair that I return the favor.” With an overly dramatic snap of her fingers, a back door slammed open to reveal an armored company SecUnit raising a heavy projectile weapon that was a lot bigger than mine. Oh, fuck, that’s not good. I lunged backwards to avoid a spray of explosive bolts way too quickly to keep pretending to be an augmented human. And who the fuck approves explosive bolts in a crowded transit ring, anyways?

Mariana scrambled away, apparently just now realizing that it’s a terrible idea to be stuck in the middle of a SecUnit fight where one of them is shooting explosive bolts. I didn’t have time to worry about that, however, because the SecUnit charged towards me while firing, flinging its drones my way as it did so. I ducked under the spray of bullets and intel drones and lifted my projectile weapon, aiming a blast towards its chest. It blocked the bolts with its own gun, then tossed the smoking remains of its weapon at me, knocking me off balance. Before I could recover, it finished closing the distance between us, ripped the weapon out of my hands, and used it like a club to bludgeon me over the head. My performance reliability dropped by a whole eleven percent, which is even more than I usually lose from being shot. 

Oh, we are so fucked, that’s a CombatSecUnit. ART, is Three out?

Negative. Its ETA to my airlock is 5 seconds. Once Heran is with Tarik, I will send Three back to your position, ETA 43 seconds. 

Can you handle its drones?

I’m already on it. 

I caught the CombatSecUnit’s next swing at my head with one hand, and punched it in the face with my other hand. If it had been wearing normal SecUnit armor, this would have broken its visor and generally been a bad time for it. Company CombatSecUnits apparently do not wear normal SecUnit armor, because it just hurt my hand a lot. 

It knocked my fist aside and hit me in the face right back, and unfortunately my face is more susceptible to punching than CombatSecUnit armor. It deployed its projectile arm weapons to follow up as I staggered a step back, the bullets embedding themselves in my torso. Fucking shit. I found my footing as it paused for half a second to reload (arm guns making a ker-chik sound as it ejected the casings and the next bullets slid into place), and I lunged forwards and grabbed it around the waist, using the leverage to spin myself up into the air and send us both crashing to the ground with me on top of it. 

I tried to shove my inbuilt energy weapons under the CombatSecUnit’s visor, but it twisted its leg around to snag around my neck and flipped us, it kneeling on top of my chest this time. Note to self: figure out how to do that. I caught its arm as it went to shoot me in the face, so the bullet only shot off my ear when it fired. Ugh. I ripped the inbuilt projectile weapon out of that arm in retaliation, which it didn’t seem to like since it shot my hand off next. 

ART, remind me never to fight a CombatSecUnit again. 

Noted, it said, and I could tell it was massively suppressing any of its emotions from bleeding into the feed. I appreciated that. I couldn’t deal with that right now.

With me missing a hand, it didn’t take much effort for the CombatSecUnit to flip me over and jab something into my defunct dataport, my other arm pinned behind my back. It’s times like this that I’m glad I had ART disable it. Thankfully, it wasted enough time doing that that Three showed up, a bullet hitting the hostile in a joint on its shoulder armor, followed by Three body-slamming into the CombatUnit, shoving it off of me.

Three pinged me anxiously, sending me a request for a status update. It always gets worried when I’m injured on missions, which is… nice, I suppose, but a little distracting.

I’m fine. Focus on the hostile!

I scrambled to my feet and picked up a chair as Three and the CombatSecUnit circled each other and exchanged blows. When the CombatSecUnit had its back turned, I slammed the heavy chair down over its head, which gave Three an opportunity to shoot it in a weak point on its knee. It staggered, and I kicked the back of the injured leg, sending it crashing to a kneeling position. 

Three pointed its gun at the CombatSecUnits face, but didn’t fire. Instead, it opened a heavily walled threeway feed between us and sent the construct a copy of our updated helpme.file. Fuck, no! Three, don’t!

The CombatSecUnit didn’t even look at the file. Instead, it forced the connection open wider. Moving in the physical world is a lot slower than acting in the feed, so I could only watch in horror as it opened a killware blackbox, letting out a shockwave of corrosive code through the entire station feed. The killware slid off me and Three’s walls, carrying on past us to destroy the programming of everything feed connected in the common area. Several cleaning bots and an augmented human crashed to the floor. StationSec wasn’t going to be happy, and I hoped that whoever bribed StationSec to allow the CombatSecUnit onto the station was going to be even less happy. 

The CombatSecUnit angrily spat out a control order, and the malware shockwave halted and transformed into thousands of hungry little killcode daggers designed to overwhelm the strongest defenses, pointed directly at us. ART-shuttle surged like a wave through our connection, shoving my head underwater but surrounding me with a sparkling dome of its own firewalls. When ART-shuttle let up a millisecond later, I smirked as I watched the killcode shatter into so many error codes against ART’s protections. 

For a moment, I thought it was going to be that easy. Three would just fire its projectile weapon and finish off the CombatSecUnit, and we could run (or hobble, in my case) back to ART and leave this shitty station. But a second passed, and Three just blinked, confused. Then I watched as its arm fell, and I heard several loud pops coming from somewhere inside its body. The light faded from its eyes, and it collapsed into a heap, smoke rising from the joins between its inorganic and organic parts. I didn’t even have time to react as the CombatSecUnit twisted and shot me in the shoulder, then grabbed my leg and pulled me onto the floor beneath it again. With my working hand, I grabbed its arm with the intact projectile weapon and tried to hold it off as it slowly but steadily pushed it up to point it against my face. ART-shuttle screamed in my feed as my life flashed before my eyes. 

A loud bang echoed through the room, and the CombatSecUnit collapsed on top of me, dead. Tarik had showed up with a heavy projectile weapon of his own, and holy shit I had never been so glad to see an armed human in my fucking life. I could be annoyed at him for leaving the client alone later. 

“Can you walk?” Tarik said, eyeing Three who was still collapsed on the floor. I nodded. “They’ll come back soon. Heran is safe, but we need to get you both out of here. Can you help me carry Three?”

Three. I sent a frantic ping. I had no idea what that killware might have done. There was no response. Why the fuck was there smoke? My breathing became frantic as I started wiggling my way out from under the weight of the dead CombatSecUnit.

I’ve got it. ART-shuttle said to me. I managed to get a wall around its kernel just in time to stop a complete systems deletion, but you both need to get to my MedBay IMMEDIATELY.

Okay. Okay. ART wouldn’t lie to me about something like that. So now we just needed to get Three’s completely inert, smoking body back to the shuttle. 

I was missing most of my hand and I’d been shot a bunch, so this was going to be difficult, but there was no way Tarik would be able to carry Three on his own. I shoved the CombatSecUnit the rest of the way off of me, feeling the inorganics in my shoulder grinding uncomfortably and a lot of leaking points all over my torso. Tarik had gotten Three sitting up so I could grab it under its armpits. With my pain sensors dialed down, I could scrape my way through this station. Tarik was sweating, and we hurried as much as we could while dragging Three’s heavy frame through the station cafeteria and towards the staircase.

It smelled like burning flesh. 

We got to the stairs, and I decided to give up entirely on trying to drag Three the rest of the way. UMRO was definitely going to send more SecUnits if we didn’t hurry the fuck up. The grinding in my shoulder was definitely audible as I used the stump of what used to be my hand to leverage Three’s body onto my back, and Tarik and I sprinted the rest of the way to ART.

Heran, like an idiot, was standing in the doorway of the airlock. “Hurry!” they screamed. “They’ll be here any second!”

Tarik shoved Heran out of the way as I ran inside. The second we cleared the airlock, ART-shuttle was already undocking from the station and shooting towards the main ship hiding one planetary system over.

We were safe. For the most part. 

I looked at Three again. Its dead, unblinking eyes stared back at me, the reek of burnt flesh filling the cabin. It looked so, so much like a SecUnit that had just been fried by its governor module.

I promise, I have it. I won’t be able to reinstall its control over its body until I get it into MedSys, but it’s not dead. ART-shuttle said.

I trusted ART, but it was still hard to believe. Can I do anything?

ART-shuttle pinged back [worried/amused/scared/comforting]. You can shut down until you get to my MedBay, if you want.

That sounded like a great idea.

Chapter Text

SecUnits don’t usually dream while we’re shut down. Before I met Three and it had told me otherwise, I didn’t even know it was possible. Three dreamed about its squadmates sometimes – their lives together, usually, but sometimes it would have nightmares about their deaths. I had felt pretty lucky that I never had to deal with any of that – [redacted] was more than terrifying enough, thanks.

So I didn’t realize what was happening, at first, when I “woke up” back on the station. The station was dark and empty, both physically and in the feed. I knew, deep in my organic parts, that ART (and Tarik, I guess) weren’t there. It was just me and Three on the station, and the CombatSecUnit, but I didn’t know where either of them were. 

I knew if I didn’t find Three, something bad was going to happen to it. It wasn’t safe with a CombatSecUnit looking for us. If it found Three before I did… that couldn’t happen. I wouldn’t let that happen. I walked down the dark halls of the station for what felt like forever, scared of what I would find, but more afraid of what would happen if I didn’t look. 

Eventually I found the public cafeteria. There weren’t any humans there, but there was… so much blood. My boots sunk into blood pooled centimeters deep on the floor, there was blood painting the walls, blood dripping from the ceiling. Standing in the middle of it all was Three, facing away from me, staring into space.

I ran up to it, shouting to it as my footsteps echoed in the open space. “Three? Are you okay?” When it didn’t respond, I grabbed its arm. It didn’t seem to notice me. I realized why when I stepped in front of it. 

Three had a bullet hole in its forehead. Its joints were locked, holding it upright exactly where it had died.

Chapter Text

I snapped back online already scared and gasping for breath, and everything immediately hurt. I reached for my pain sensors, but I couldn’t find them. I started panicking. 

I’ve got you. You’re okay, you’ve just come back online earlier than anticipated. I’m currently removing the projectile from your shoulder. Shut down again, please. 

Is Three okay? I asked frantically, the echoes of my dream lingering whenever I blinked. Three had to be ok. It was a dream. It wasn’t real, it was just like [redacted]… 

Yeah that didn’t help at all.

Three will be fine, but I need you to shut down now. 

Okay, I sent, my voice wobbly, and I forced another shutdown, this time with a dedicated timer that ART could adjust as necessary. 

When I came back online a second time, (no dreams, thank fuck) I had a functional hand and ear again, and some new skin on my torso.

Calibration required. Please run through the following set of motions, ART said, and dropped a folder of hand-related movements for me to run through.

Where’s Three? I asked, shoving the file aside. 

Three is still in reconstruction. ART said.

Reconstruction? I sat up and looked over at the closed door to its surgery room attached to the main MedBay. I swear I could smell burning flesh again. What do you mean?

ART pulled up the hand document again. It is important that you ensure the proper calibration of your -

ART, stop avoiding the question. What’s happening with Three?

I dug a little deeper into ART’s processes and - oh shit. I was only getting 9% of its attention right now. Usually after something like this happens on missions, it's all over me in the feed, constantly pulling diagnostics and helping me with recalibration and being a big overbearing overprotective sap. 

84% of its attention was occupied by something it was keeping hidden in a double-encrypted process. I felt my organics clench. 

It’s that bad?

Yes. ART said simply. 

Fuck.  

Let me help. I said, pushing to my feet and sending a request to join the encrypted space. ART politely but firmly rebuffed me. 

This is not something you can help with. If you really want to help Three, see if you can find the specs for B-E SecUnit transistors.

That was as much information as it was going to give me. I looked over at the closed door one more time, then sat down on one of the chairs, digging into my databases and the University’s growing collection of proprietary corporate SecUnit specs. There had to be something useful here. 

***

After about an hour of digging, I managed to cobble together enough scraps of proprietary information from B-E, supplemented by what we knew about my transistors and internal wiring schematics. This was enough for ART to start printing out new components for Three that had been burned out during the killware attack. 

I shivered. The attack had targeted both hardware and software, custom made for constructs. That was a horrifying thought that I decided to think about later.

ART still wasn’t saying anything, but one of its drones zipped through with a bunch of freshly printed transistors. The door to the private surgical suite whooshed open and shut to allow it in. I caught a glimpse of Three surrounded by ART’s surgical arms, but I couldn’t tell what it was doing.

I stood up and started pacing around the MedBay, because if I didn’t move I felt like I was going to do or say something stupid.

Seth had sent me a message while I was offline, telling me that Heran was cleared and had been debriefed, that Tarik and ART had already given him a full mission report, and that he hoped Three and I would be okay soon. The rest of the humans had been instructed to stay clear of MedBay and not bother us until ART said so. I was really, really grateful for that. 

I also felt some emotions about the fact that the rest of the crew had all sent short messages wishing me and Three a speedy recovery. Having humans that care is still weird to me, even after all this time being freed from the company. 

I tapped the camera feeds to check on Tarik and Heran. They were both still in their rooms, having gone to sleep right after ART cleared the wormhole and neither of them had emerged since. I sent Tarik a quick message for when he woke up. You know, a standard “thanks for saving our asses and not abandoning us” kind of thing.

I was getting more and more used to trusting humans, but Tarik shooting a CombatSecUnit and helping me haul Three back to the shuttle was… A lot. I shoved those emotions aside, tagging them to unpack with my trauma recovery module later. All I could think about right now was Three on the other side of that door.

I pinged ART. How much longer is the surgery? 

Asking again is not going to make it go faster. ART snapped. This is an incredibly delicate process. I will ping you again when I have the processing capacity to talk. 

That was bad. That was really really bad. We were in the wormhole. There was literally nothing for ART to do except keep the ship balanced, and work on Three. I know what it’s capable of even while it's doing surgery on me. I pulled up the readout of ART’s processing allocation and - yeah. This was so, so fucking bad. 

I curled up against the door of the surgical centre, and put on an episode of Sanctuary Moon. 

***

I had gotten through a season and a half of Sanctuary Moon before ART pinged me again.

Stable, it said. It sounded exhausted. I didn’t even know it was possible for ART to sound like that. 

I want to see it. I said, jumping to my feet. 

The door to the surgical bay hissed open. Three was lying on its stomach on the med platform, still hooked up to a FluidCirc and Respiration machine. One of ART’s cleaning drones was just wiping up the last of the fluid that had leaked out of the cut it had made into Three’s spine, while an arm of ART’s MedSys was reattaching the protective metal casing over the incision site. The incision was… big. ART had needed to replace all the wiring and components from the base of its skull down to its lumbar spine. Based on the number of smaller incisions I could see in the skin around Three’s inorganic parts, ART had needed to get into its limbs as well. That was so fucking many components. 

ART seemed to know what I was thinking, because it said, At least I stopped it before it overloaded Three’s power cell. That would have caused it to explode. The power cell is damaged, but functional. It will need to be replaced when we return to PSUMNT and we can receive assistance from the CRL.

(I had been hesitant when ART, Seth, and Bharadwaj had proposed setting up the Construct Research Laboratory at the University. I was so, so glad they had decided to do it anyways.)

I suddenly felt like I couldn't breathe, and couldn't say anything even in the feed. I had a sudden flashback to the PresAux survey, when Gurathin was hovering around while MedSys worked on Bharadwaj. I thought at the time that it was stupid, because there was nothing he could do for her that MedSys couldn’t. I think I understood why he was there, now. 

I didn’t know what to do. 

ART nudged me towards a chair in the corner, which I pulled up to sit right next to Three. Then ART pushed a bundle into our shared feed space. It was huge, ART had added a couple extra servers to our shared feed to accommodate it. 

ART, is this… 

Yes.

This was Three’s kernel.

I had to rip it out of its body to prevent catastrophic failure. It was not a delicate process, and… it was not a perfect removal. Several processes have been damaged. The dual nature of the attack meant that nothing was safe. I have kept it unconscious in a runbox while I performed surgery on its body. I need your help to re-integrate it.

Fuck. Okay. Okay. You could do this Murderbot. You did it to yourself when you rebuilt your memory after the company gunship incident. You helped ART reconstruct its archives after the TargetControlSys deletion. It’s pulled you out of your body and reintegrated you before. You could do this.

I brushed over Three’s code. It was almost like it was asleep. It was kind of mesmerizing just… holding it here, in our shared feed space. I almost wanted to keep it here, to protect it. I wanted to stop anything like this from ever happening again.

Okay. Okay. We could do this.

Three’s code was different enough from mine that I had to make some creative guesses about what went where, and the killware had ripped several higher-order codes into garbled nonsense. But with ART lending me processing capacity I was able to re-link the appropriate software and hardware bundles without completely fucking everything up. Walking movement codes were reintegrated with the inorganic calves and feet, the dexterity and tool handling modules connecting smoothly with the thousands of newly-installed tiny processors in its fingers. 

Can you hold its hand? ART said.

Huh? Why? I replied, still trying to figure out how to integrate the code bundle that controlled fluid circulation. 

Checking sensory inputs. I couldn't replace all of the wiring in its hand. And - I think it would find the gesture comforting. 

Oh. Okay. 

I held onto Three's limp hand with my newly attached one, and gave it a gentle squeeze. I was so deeply embedded in Three’s processes that it almost felt like I was holding my own hand. 

I sent its lungs the activation code, and I was in there alongside it as it took its first gasp of breath without ART’s help. All essential systems were now online. We could now return its kernel to its brain. 

ART unfolded the kernel, and I felt the pulse as the inorganic parts of Three's brain switched on, awareness flooding through and around me. I re-integrated its feed connection, and its presence bloomed to life in the feed. I had a big emotion at that, a good one, but I couldn’t process it right now. Three was alive, and it was going to be okay.

I felt its eyes flutter open, and for a second, I saw myself through its eyes, my face all scrunched up with emotions I wasn’t letting myself think about yet. I pulled out from its systems and it blinked a few times as it suddenly had full control over its sensory inputs again. 

Well done. ART said to me. We were both completely exhausted now. Well overdue for a long rewatch of Worldhoppers. I relaxed my grip on Three’s hand.

Suddenly I felt Three scrambling to hold onto me in the feed, while simultaneously locking its fingers around my hand. Don't go, it said, its voice tiny and weirdly staticky and full of terror. Don't leave me. 

ART was there immediately, its feed presence full of protectiveness and relief. We won't. 

I scooted my chair closer to the surgical bed, not letting go of Three. 

We won't let that happen again, I said. 

With both of us squeezing it in the feed, it started to relax, but it was still getting flooded with error codes and injury reports. Which made sense - it had just had major reconstructive surgery, and I had done my best, but its code was definitely going to need a lot of patching.

Wanna watch Nights on Preservation? I asked. 

It pinged affirmative, and ART started the first episode in our feed. 

***

It only took an episode and a half for Three to peacefully slip into a much-needed recharge cycle. When Three’s hand suddenly went slack, my performance reliability dropped by two whole percentage points before ART shoved Three’s diagnostic in my face. Seeing that its stats were about as good as could be expected from a Unit coming out of intensive surgery stopped my performance reliability from dropping any further, but it didn’t climb back up at all. 

It felt like if I looked away from Three, it was going to disappear. Like if I wasn’t holding on, something would happen while it was recharging and it wouldn’t wake up. The image of Three standing in that pool of blood was still there every time I blinked. (My verdict: dreams suck!)

The trauma recovery module was pinging me to check in with it. (It was set to wait at least one cycle after a major stressful/traumatic event, mostly so it didn’t distract me during the middle of said stressful/traumatic event or the subsequent fallout/cleanup I would have to manage.) I should probably check in with it. But I wasn’t ready yet. I couldn’t stop looking at Three or let go of its hand. I was stupidly grateful that the module had been so insistent that we get used to making physical contact with one another. If I wasn’t holding Three’s hand, I think we would both be doing a lot worse.

I batted away the pings, which just meant it would check in with me in twelve hours, and I was only allowed to put it off two more times. ART did the feed equivalent of raising its eyebrows at me, but didn’t comment. 

ART was still playing “Nights on Preservation” in our shared feed, but I backburnered the input and pulled up my recordings of the mission. I had to figure out what the fuck had gone wrong so that I could stop something like this ever happening again. 

I spent almost an hour going over the footage, scrubbing through each section over and over again. So many fucking things had gone wrong. First of all, our messages to Heran getting intercepted, to the point that they knew we were SecUnits. Meaning UMRO might know a whole lot more about the University’s covert missions than we had hoped. This could be really, really bad. I made a note in my shared feed with ART that we would need to talk to Heran and Seth about that. Probably pretty urgently. 

Second, the fucking CombatSecUnit. There was no way in hell I would ever be able to go toe-to-toe with a CombatSecUnit, and even with backup, the only reason we had all survived was the fact that Tarik hadn’t been accounted for. (Was there a tiny part of me that was annoyed that Tarik had managed to take out a CombatSecUnit and I hadn’t? Maybe. But that was trauma recovery module’s business and no one else’s). I had no idea how to account for that in the future, but if corporates were going to deliberately start targeting me, us, with CombatSecUnits, we were going to have to come up with some strategies. 

And finally… Three. Three had the killshot. Three could have taken it out. But it didn’t. 

This was a continuing source of disagreement between us. It’s not that I wanted to kill other constructs. I usually tried to offer them our updated helpme.file and a guide to how to get to the CRL at the University. (Bharadwaj had told me that she had already helped four Units we had encountered on missions with ART, and either connected them with the University or with Preservation, which made me feel a lot of warm, melty feelings. But that’s a story for another time). The point is, I would always take the killshot if I absolutely had to. If it was my life or theirs, I would choose me and ART and my humans (and Three now, apparently), every time. I wouldn’t give anything a chance to hurt them.

Three disagreed. Three had watched SecUnit 001 get shot point blank by the Targets onboard the B-E Explorer, and it had felt its last moments in their feed. Three would never, ever kill another construct. The most it would do was disabling shots. 

I slumped in my chair. It’s not like I wanted Three to kill the CombatSecUnit, or that I thought it should just get over the trauma of losing 001 and 002, or anything stupid like that. I understood why it hadn’t killed the CombatSecUnit, and I didn’t want that reason to change. Three was a good person. Better than me in a lot of ways, really. 

No, there was no way Three would have taken the shot, and it was stupid of me to have let it get into the position where it had to make that choice. 

I looked down at Three again, with my actual eyes instead of ART’s interior cameras. Without letting go of its hand, I manoevered myself so that I could see its face. Like this, resting facedown on ART’s medical platform, it looked just like a sleeping human.

I didn’t know when I finally stopped thinking of SecUnits as less important than humans. 

I didn’t know when Three had become just as important to me as ART and my humans. Maybe that had happened sometime during my trauma treatments. Maybe it was my humans and ART yelling at me for months now to stop with the “self-sacrificing bullshit” and stop thinking of SecUnits as inherently more disposable than humans. Maybe all of that was actually starting to sink in. The point is, I didn’t fully realize how important Three was to me until it had collapsed during that CombatSecUnit attack. It had felt like when I had come on board ART after it had been deleted, the terror of sending pings into a big empty void where someone should be.  

I wanted to keep Three safe. I never wanted it to get hurt again.

I felt a spike of guilt as I reviewed the footage of the fight one more time. The only reason that I hadn’t gotten caught by the CSU hack was the fact that ART was riding my feed the whole time and was able to throw up an extra firewall for me…

…

… I had an idea. 

I pulled up ART’s and my Mutual Administrative Assistants agreement that we had made after the whole HellPlague Planet incident. It was a contract that outlined how we interacted with one another. ART and I had made it ourselves (it would have been weird for Pin-Lee to help me with this one). It granted us basically constant feed integration when we were in range of one another, and several critical systems accesses. For example, ART was allowed to pull my diagnostics at any time, and I had full access to all cameras/security interfaces in all parts of ARTs ship body. Some things were still private (like my trauma recovery module), but for all intents and purposes, I was like a mobile component of ART, and ART was like a big overbearing asshole HubSys. 

I thought about how useful it would be for Three and I to be able to share drone inputs, and pull visual and auditory data from each other during missions. We could almost be like each other’s own drones, perfectly in sync at all times. 

I had never really worked closely with other SecUnits, but I knew that Three had had this level of integration with SecUnits 001 and 002 before we met it, so it would probably be okay with this much connection for mission purposes. But there were a bunch of other things in the M.A.A. that had nothing to do with mission relevant systems integration. Things like regular systems maintenance beyond what was strictly necessary, being inside each other’s firewalls, dedicated media time together, that kind of stuff. Just being with each other, and helping each other even if we didn’t need it.

I didn’t understand why my organic parts clenched at the thought of Three not wanting those things with me and ART.

You’ve been awfully quiet for the last few hours. This is unusual for you, especially if you’re not actively watching a serial.

My Act-like-a-human code prompted me to sigh, so I did. It also prompted me to run my thumb over the back of Three’s hand, so I did that too. That felt pretty nice. I wondered briefly where I had picked that gesture up. I was starting to have the beginnings of a plan, but I wasn’t sure yet how to pitch it to ART.  

ART had added a stipulation pretty early on in our agreement about me letting it know before I interfaced with other bots/hacked other systems, which I had thought was weird but not enough that I wanted to argue about it. I had no idea how it was going to react to this. I knew it liked Three, and I didn’t want it to feel… I don’t know. Threatened? Jealous? 

The fact that 32 seconds had passed and I hadn’t made a rude comment in response to ART made it focus even more of its attention on me. After an additional 16 seconds of what I can only describe as aggressive feed-staring, I pushed my video of the attack over to it, with all the important sections tagged.

It squeezed me hard, bearing down on me in the feed in the way it knew I found comforting.

There was nothing you could have done to prevent this from happening, it murmured.

I didn’t say anything. There was something we could do, to stop this from happening again. 

My organics twisted weirdly. I felt really weird about saying this, but I promised. I had promised Three that we would never let this happen again. 

I tapped ART, and it squeezed me even closer. 

Yes?

You were able to deflect the attempted hack of my systems because you were riding my feed. That was a key part of our M.A.A. agreement. Whenever I was in range, ART was in my head, especially on high risk missions.

Yes, I was. ART was radiating [curosity/worry], probably wondering where the hell I was going with this.

I wondered briefly one more time if this was a bad idea. But then I looked over at the newly grafted synthetic armor covering Three’s spinal column and I decided fuck it. It was worth at least asking.

We could bring Three into the M.A.A. agreement. I said. 

ART was quiet for a whole 86 seconds. That is a long fucking time for ART to not respond to me. I resisted the urge to send it a ping, but it was tempting. 

I had not thought this was something you would want. I am not opposed, but I will admit I am surprised. 

For some reason that annoyed me. Well, all your shit about SecUnits not being disposable has finally gotten through my thick skull, okay? Three is important and I want it to be safe. I failed to protect it and this is a way we can actually do that so it doesn’t end up here like this again. 

ART was still all up in my feed, and it squeezed me even tighter as I said that. About time, it said softly. 

I’m an idiot sometimes. You know that. I leaned against it in the feed as I said it. 

My little idiot, it said, bleeding [warmth/affection/care] into our feed. I could feel my face getting hot in response. I wondered absently if Three could blush. 

I think this is a good idea, it added. Would you like to work on a proposal for it to review once it has healed enough to make this kind of decision?

Yeah. Yeah, that sounds good. 

I held Three’s hand a little bit tighter as I pulled our M.A.A. agreement into our shared feedspace, adding a new subsection with the heading THREE-MURDERBOT-ART.