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In between the confusing emotions of being freshly made rogue, SecUnit Three has a hard time deciding on what to do next. It just woke up after a devastatingly long involuntary shutdown caused by Murderbot 1.0, who is supposed to be its friend. (If rogue SecUnits have friends, that is.) Three has to admit that it had seen the attack coming, judging from the rapidly deteriorating mood Murderbot 1.0 had been in the further into the planet’s nature they charged. As it rolls to its feet and allows itself a quietly muttered curse under its breath, Three wonders once more about the motivation behind 1.0’s foray into wilderness.
It makes no sense, and still worries Three. That worry is what helps Three decide to go after 1.0, to try and find it even though it had almost killed Three. Three checks its internal chronometer and deduces that it lost perhaps four hours, but it can’t be quite sure. Its systems are still reeling.
Murderbot 1.0 had looked haunted and feverish as it led the way, and Three had only followed because something felt off, and for once in its life a weird gut feeling was reason enough to do something. (And maybe Three hadn’t wanted to remain behind alone with the other humans and ART. Maybe Three was scared, and sticking to 1.0 was more comfortable than being scared without it.)
1.0 has left tracks in the muddy ground, and Three picks them up and tries to follow. While Three has more experience with planets than 1.0 does, it still isn’t exactly a good tracker - that used to be another SecUnit’s task when it came up. The track holds up well, though, Three is lucky. It follows the tracks, and notices how linear they are, as if 1.0 walked in a straight line, with a clear goal in mind. That hadn’t seemed the case when the two of them had traveled together. Three doesn’t like it.
The path leads through small creeks, thick underbrush, and Three worries for its environmental suit. It knows the planet is technically livable, but it assumes that whatever virus is going around turning animals wild and technology wilder might travel through air. Or skin. Who knows. Nobody has told it yet, even though this is definitely important security information. It prefers not to have direct contact with anything. Its neck and head hurt where Murderbot 1.0 had landed the critical hits causing shutdown, and it is sure that the side of its visor is dented in a way that pushes into skin and deeper, making it worse with the swelling. Three refuses to take the visor and helmet off, just tunes down the pain sensors, which helps mildly. It crosses the creeks with long jumps that 1.0 didn’t take, judging by the broken reeds. Three tries to remember if anything had been stuck in 1.0’s neck - it seems almost as if it had been controlled by an override module.
Three shivers.
It just won the right to its own thoughts; thinking about losing that again makes its stomach freeze into tiny crystalline knots. It has to find Murderbot 1.0 and help it.
Three is aware now of time’s passing. It wonders if 1.0 is out of time already, if whoever is controlling it has done their worst to it already. It wants to give into the urgency and run, but it knows it can’t risk losing the trail, no matter how straightforward. It sends its drones out instead, briefly considers taking over the ones 1.0 had dropped. Then it remembers about the odd infection that is carried through scans and decides to leave the drones behind.
The trail ends, after two more hours, at a stony hill. A few more muddy footprints lead up, then the dirt wears off. Three wonders what happens just when its drones pin down a heat signature upwards the hill. Three refocuses. The side of the hill is dented inwards, creating a hollow. There are two heat signatures, one rapidly cooling. Three feels fear, and begins climbing. Before it reaches the cave it knows better; the drone catches visuals. The cooling shape is an animal of sorts, dying. The other one is a SecUnit, two centimeters below standard height.
Rogue and ungoverned as it is, Three gasps in relief and reaches the cave faster. It’s greeted with a disturbing view, to put it mildly. In a cold flush of panic, Three pings Murderbot 1.0 with an array of B-E distress codes. 1.0, who is lying on its side, back facing Three, the dead creature, and the cave exit/entrance, doesn’t even flinch.
Three scans the animal as it rushes over to 1.0. The creature looks misshapen, mutated, riddled with energy shot holes and clear signs of that same crystalline matter that had taken the humans into targetControlSys.
Oh, oh no.
Three falters, unsure what name to use. It knows by now that the name ‘Murderbot’ is private, has learnt so from the humans. It skids close to the curled up body, unsure if it should touch or not. The floor of the cave, simple in its stone slabs, is covered in all sorts of gore. The smell is bad, rotten and sweet. “Murderbot 1.0,” Three says, formality tainted by terror, “Can you hear me?”
For good measure, it pings again. The ping is not returned, but after a few seconds, 1.0 stirs.
It makes a noise that sounds entirely too human in its misery.
“It’s me, Three. I’m here to help.” Three has played this game before, and feels almost secure in repeating it. “Please get up.”1.0 curls tighter up in itself and whimpers.
Three checks on the monster again via drone input, but it looks sufficiently dead. Judging from the mess on the floor, there had been a fight, although the patterns didn’t add up. The monster is covered in a mixture of slimes and fluids and crystal structures and - something that looks like internal parts of a SecUnit.
Further down into the cave is a huge, and that means huger than an exploded SecUnit after governor module overcharge huge, puddle of unidentifiable goo. Parts of it for sure is SecUnit fluid. Parts of it are blood. Other parts Three can’t analyze like that. From there, the fight must have started, judging from the smear lines.
“I’m going to touch you,” Three warns, and grabs 1.0’s shoulder and hip to roll it over and assess damage. What if finds would have made Three scream if it had allowed itself to.
1.0 flops over with a lightness to it that is entirely uncanny for a SecUnit. It flattens on its back, limp arms falling beside it. The wheeze that leaves its open and cracked mouth is ghoulish and hollow. Hollow is the right word to describe the situation in its torso as well. Three feels the urge to choke.
Something like a huge cut draws an open, slowly oozing line from Murderbot 1.0’s sternum to its pelvis. The ridges look torn and at the same time like someone had ripped rubber along a perforated line - oddly straight despite the fraying ridges. Two large flaps of organic skin open to the left and right, seemingly stuck in that winged-open position by broken ribs and dented metal. Murderbot’s entire torso rises and falls with a shuddering wheeze that whistles through the busted lungs. Three hopes it hasn’t just tried to say its name.
“What the,” Three begins, hands hovering over the wound that is 1.0, unable to find a good expletive. “What happened to you?”
For a horrifying 12 seconds, 1.0 just stares at Three. Then, worse yet, its eyes follow Three’s gaze, and it looks in disbelief at its chest and abdomen, peeled wide.
When it tries to speak properly, blood and shredded pieces of lung bubble out of its mouth in a light pink foam. “It..f..fh…ouf…”
Three doesn’t understand. Its mind is a screeching, spiraling bout of panic. It never had to do first aid for an eviscerated but alive construct before. It watches as Murderbot lifts its hands, both shaking badly and with pebbles and crystal shards embedded in palms and knuckles (the fingernails are splintered, did it scratch at the stone?), and gingerly touches the rim of its flayed stomach. “Ah,” it says, almost matter-of-fact.
“Are you bleeding out?” Three has no idea what to do. None. It wants to sew the wound shut, but doesn’t know if that would make it worse. It also has no medical supplies. Its head still thrums with its own pain.
In a rigid suddenness, 1.0 sits up. The motion happens fast enough to cause a coughing fit, and more fluids fly. Three ducks its head and is grateful for its visor. 1.0, to Three’s shock, starts digging its hands into the cavity in its stomach, as if trying to excavate something. Its eyes are wide, and now Three notices how red and swollen they are, how bruised its face is, scratched up in long raw lines intertwined with burns from ground friction, pebbles stuck to skin. The corners of its mouth are torn and bleeding sluggishly, and only after watching this for a moment does Three register what it’s trying to say: “Out,” “gone,” “gone gone gone.”
Three decides Murderbot can have a psychological breakdown back with ART, under medical care, and lunges forward to grasp it by the wrist. It pries its arms out of its hollowed-out stomach, and 1.0 goes along almost pliantly, hazy eyes looking up, finally properly seeing.
“Three?”
“Hello,” Three blurts.
“It- you- how-,”
“You abandoned me in the forest. I came for you. You’re damaged, badly. I will take you back to ART. Okay?”
Reality seems to hit 1.0 square in the face then. It freezes completely.
Three no longer wants to debate this, gives in to the urge to retrieve its client (not that it is aware it has tagged Murderbot 1.0 as a client in that moment, but clients deserve rescue even after being shit to the SecUnit and so does 1.0), rises to its feet and pulls 1.0 along. 1.0’s arms are slick with blood and other fluids, but it shows no resistance to being moved. It also shows no integral support system and cannot stand on its own. After a few steps of semi-dragging 1.0 along, Three decides to pick it up. That way it can regulate Murderbot’s body temperature and press the hole in its abdomen closed with its own body.
Again, 1.0 barely resists.
Halfway to the exit, Three halts, unsure. The dead fauna is still looking hideous and ugly. “Did it attack you?” Three inclines its head towards the creature. 1.0 lifts its head.
“It-…that…I killed it.”
“I see.” Three waits for an explanation, fruitlessly. It adds, “What is it?”
Murderbot 1.0 blinks. In a small, almost desperate note it says, “mine.”
I hadn’t been excited about going back down to the colony, but I understood why my humans wanted to. That didn’t make being back down here any better. More humans I desperately needed to be safe were now in danger; Dr. Mensah, first and foremost. She had had a long and tearful reunion with Amena, who told her all about how heroic I had been, how I had rescued everyone. She had met, and to my consternation immediately befriended, ART. I decided not to bring up any details about how ART had gotten me and my humans in to help it and its crew. That shouldn’t matter anymore, not to me and not to anyone else. It still mattered, I could tell;
It mattered to ART, who was torn between trying to make up for it and reiterating that it had no other choice, and that everything went well, just according to calculations, hadn’t it? And also ART was still reeling from being deleted, clinging to its humans in a way the humans were almost uncomfortable by it.
It mattered to my humans, who were still shell-shocked, and unable to sleep despite how tired they were. Hell, that was half the reason they wanted to come back down here, to tie up loose ends. For the other humans here as much as for themselves.
It mattered to ART’s crew, who seemed to no longer trust ART to make intelligent decisions. Any other day I’d have found that funny.
And it mattered to me, but nobody cares about that.
We got one cycle of recuperation in orbit before shuttling back down, but it barely felt like anything. I spent that cycle trying to explain things to Three, who was shaking apart from anxiety. We picked a more sensible landing site this time, at least, and set up a habitat. Then the ART-humans and the Murderbot-humans decided on a plan of action that seemed great to anyone but me. Nothing seemed great to me.
The first cycle back down here is intended as a recon mission, in which we made sure nothing was trying to kill us.
It turned out however that this colony was supremely beyond fucked and evry much trying to kill us. While nature here looked less inherently toxic than the colonized bits we had seen before did, everything was clearly so infected by whatever sentient alien virus stuff that made things go crazy.
“Interesting,” Ratthi said to that, “Very interesting,” to which Dr. Mensah said in her authoritative voice, “Nobody touches anything.” As if not one but two groups of field academics were ever not going to touch anything.
-
Not too far from our landing site was another inhabited area. More gray people, probably still grappling with whatever civil war their infested minds had cooked up. ART’s humans decided to make it their problem and began planning a rendez-vous with them. Not being able to stay out of other’s business seemed to run in the crew.
I’ve produced more fitting envirosuits for you and Three, ART told me for the second time in as many minutes. They’re in recycler 7b.
“The one I have is fucking fine.” I was miffed by ART. It clung to my mind with the desperation of someone who had just almost lost someone, and I knew that someone was me. I knew it would have bombed the entire colony for me. I had no idea how to handle that information, and so I tried to keep ART and its attachment to me very far away. I wanted to be anywhere but here.
You know it is insufficient, said ART, which was funny enough because it had made those first suits as well.
“I’ll take them when the current ones break.” Maybe I was being stupid. Maybe I wanted to destroy something. Maybe I pulled on the suit with the determination to get it shredded in the field. Three and I were readying ourselves to accompany two small scout groups; Three to secure a way to the other inhabited area, me in order to keep Ratthi from falling into a mudpit again or whatever. There was no chance I’d abandon my humans again, so Three had to go with ART’s.
I tuned ART out for the next few minutes while checking that my team was safely tucked into their gear. Amena called me third mom again, and she didn’t even get to come along to risk her life.
I let Ratthi, Overse and Amena lead the way, but sent drones ahead to make sure. Something in the atmosphere was interfering with my signal connection, and I couldn’t get a hold of anything farther than 8 meters away from any drone. It was frustrating, and caused me to keep my humans on a shorter leash than usual (still too much, in my opinion.)
We stayed in a 3km radius from the habitat, which meant I was always within ART’s reach, who soon got tired of not being listened to and, like a fucker, forced down a bit of my wall to make itself heard.
There’s a potentially interesting area South-East from here, it told me. I knew it had no cameras here beside my own eyes so I didn’t give it the finger.
What does that mean, I sent back.
It sent me coordinates and a scan from my drones.
I don’t see how a bunch of dead fauna is of interest.
Don’t be dense, or I’ll send my notes to Ratthi directly.
I took a closer look at the report, which suggested a sort of mass-grave, or a whole nest of animals that had perished at once. The surrounding flora structures were overgrown with and twisted into odd, almost synthetic shapes. Ugh, fine.
I told Ratthi about a potential lead, and we changed directions. We were still in the rocky terrain we’d started in, but the ground here was torn open almost like by arteries. Dried up rivers, Amena suggested, and Ratthi agreed. At a branch between those former rivers was the entrance to a small set of tunnels, or caves, not large enough to fit a stupid suicidal human into, but big enough for a drone. I sent one in, and sure enough found dozens of dead animals. I was glad drones had no sense of smell.
“Can we get one of them out there, maybe?” Asked Overse timidly, “it might be useful to examine.”
“No one’s going into those tunnels,” Ratthi said, to my surprise. There was some bickering, and in the meantime my scout drone found a corpse not far from one of the entrances. I marched up a bit of rocky hill. My drone wasn’t large enough to drag anything larger than, say, my forearm.
ART said, Careful , and I blocked it from me again. Silence, for just a second, please.
Stupidly, like a human, I decided to poke my arm into the tunnel. I wasn’t keen on grabbing a dead thing, but I had gloves, and the suit.
As I pulled the thing out, something sharp sliced right through my palm. I engaged my gun and shot, out of reflex. Behind me, Overse and Amenayelled in surprise at the sound. Ratthi called for me.
I stepped back and held the dead thing, now with an unfortunate hole in its small skull, towards them. “That enough?”
My humans were not excited about the dead thing, apparently it was too cute for them to allow it to be a dead thing and not a living thing. Overse compared it to a “bunny.”
If a “bunny” came with crystal teeth lining its spine through its fur that managed to go through protective gear, then maybe I’d agree.
I didn’t want to put up with any fussing, and because I was stupid and annoyed and wanted to leave soon, I made sure my humans didn’t notice the cut. It was superficial enough, and barely leaked.
ART didn’t try to get back into my head more than I allowed it for the next two hours, which I almost appreciated. I’d appreciate it more if it left me alone. Ratthi decided to better not bring the animal to the habitat, because even stupid humans could put two and two together and tell this thing was infected, if dead. We had no idea if dead things could still infect someone. They examined it out here, on the stones, and took samples in small vials to bring back.
To my surprise, when we got back, it turned out the other team had in fact managed to arrange a meeting with the colonists, in two cycles, so both could prepare. There hadn’t even been a fight.
Back then, that almost made me feel something akin to hopeful that this would be over soon.
Three’s mind is trying to make sense of it, then decides that Murderbot 1.0 must be concussed, brain damaged, or hallucinatory.
“Requesting performance reliability status,” Three says, watching multiple emotions shift across the other SecUnit’s face.
“Nineteen percent,” comes the reply.
Three makes the executive decision to leave the dead creature behind. They can always come back for it to run analyses or retrieve whatever it is that it took from 1.0. But currently, 1.0 needs desperate medical assistance, and Three doesn’t care.
In its arms, a bout of coughing seizes 1.0, and it begins struggling against Three hard enough that Three sets it down on the ground. The body shakes violently, and Murderbot 1.0 leans over to the side, barely managing to brace itself on a feeble arm. Then it vomits. Three stares. It has never seen a SecUnit lose control over its expelling mechanism before, and only ever had to cough up explosion dust. 1.0 produces a slimy mix of blood-pink saliva, the bright green liquid that runs in a construct’s upper body to cool chest and lungs (which means its lung is torn, and 1.0 is potentially choking), and a green-white slimy substance. Small pieces of internal electrics drop into the mess. Three kneels beside it, reaches out a hand, but through the heaving and what must be sobbing, 1.0 turns and smacks its hand away.
“Don’t touch me.” It’s a command, but it sounds like a plea.
“Too late,” Three says desperately because there is no other way to get 1.0 to safety. “You can’t walk.”
Murderbot 1.0 retches again, a loud noise that echoes through the cave. Then it leans forward to clutch its stomach. “Leave me here.”
Emotion surges through Three, numbing its feet. “No. You’ll die.”
Murderbot coughs again, then wipes its face. Sweat sticks its curls to its neck, its forehead. Blood has painted a map of misery across its cheeks, disrupted by tear tracks and the same slime it has just vomited up. “I won’t. That’s why it picked me.”
Three leans in, trying to make eye contact, and if only to check if this is really 1.0 talking. “I don’t care,” it says, but means “I don’t understand.” It goes on, “I’ll pick you up again, and I’ll get you back to HQ, and then we can make sense of this.”
Murderbot tries to dodge, and Three regrets explaining its actions beforehand as if it was soothing a human client. Three has to wrestle with it for a terrible seven seconds of flailing limbs and flying fluids, until it manages to pin 1.0 on its side, to the floor. It is now wheezing, and definitely running out of lung capacity. More blood and fluids leak out of the gaping wound spanning its lower torso. Fear rings in Three’s ears.
Quickly, and as efficiently as possible, Three bends 1.0’s arms backwards, folds them across its back, and hoists it to its unstable feet. 1.0, meanwhile, starts hyperventilating, shaking its head, muttering a cacophony of “no”s and “please”s. Three doesn’t dare to pick it up like this, so it waits for it to cool down.
Eventually, the panic flushes out of 1.0’s system, probably induced by being pinned - whatever fight between the creature and it has gone down, it has left 1.0 deeply shaken. Three feels its empathy battling its quickly ending patience.
When it stops reciting its panic out loud, 1.0 looks up at Three, who is still holding it upright with its arms folded behind their bodies. 1.0 cranes its neck. Its eyes look wild, irises struggling to find focus.
“If you have to touch me,” it rasps, “Don’t take off your enviro suit. Please. If it catches you too…”
Three nods, and slowly releases Murderbot’s arms, switching its hold to supporting its back instead. Just then does the fact sink in that Murderbot 1.0 is entirely naked. Nudity is not much of a concept for SecUnits, neither is shame; but 1.0 doesn’t seem to be the type to voluntarily shed suit and skinsuit. Dread knots in Three’s chest.
“No direct contact, acknowledged.”
A rumble like thunder rings through the cave. Murderbot’s eyes grow wide in terror.
“Now. If we leave. We leave now.”
Three lifts 1.0 into its arms again, notices again how light the other SecUnit is. It estimates that about 42 kg of weight are missing. A lot of internal support structure is gone, that much is clear. Murderbot 1.0 wraps shaking arms around Three’s neck, and up close Three notices the small blueish crystals emerging from the plating on its neck and shoulders, growing in the gaps between inorganic and organic.
The floor drops out from underneath Three’s feet.
“Shit,” it says to itself, then looks over its shoulder as if to check if anyone who could punish it had heard. “Fuck.”
Murderbot’s head lolls against its chest, but otherwise it doesn’t react.
Of course, now that it connected the dots it seems so glaringly obvious. The crystals, the alien infection taking over the colony humans. The animals, frothing and dying fast. The odd, misshapen, eerie mechanics twisting under alien influence. That must be what got to Murderbot 1.0, though Three doesn’t know how.
“You’re infected,” Three states, walking carefully, but trying to pick up pace as the cave rumbles again.
“I’m sorry,” is all 1.0 replies.
“SecUnit.”
I stopped. My drone focused on Dr. Mensah’s gentle but strict expression.
“Do you have a moment?”
I replied by turning towards her, not completely. I really didn’t. I had better things to do, like going very far away from everyone and sitting in a corner and watching episode 212 of Sanctuary Moon five times.
Dr. Mensah took a step closer, but put her hands in the pockets of her comfortable jacket. At least it looked comfortable. Small bit of comfort you can have when you’re in an impromptu habitat on a colony planet full of alien bullshit with infected humans who are trying to kill each other.
“I can tell you dislike being here.” I scoffed before she could continue, and then immediately felt bad for it. It wasn’t her fault I hated planets. Or that ART had kidnapped me and now pretended like that was normal. Or that nobody listened to my intuition here. Or that I was suddenly a babysitter for Three. Ugh. Ugh.
“Everyone here hates each other.” That was referring to the colony humans, but in a sense it applied to my own feelings. There were tensions everywhere. It made me want to run away. My stomach twisted in unease. (I had been feeling nauseous for almost a whole cycle now, an extraordinary feat for someone without a digestive system.)
Mensah made a face. “We’re all high-strung. The past few cycles have been… taxing, on all of us. But that’s why we’re going to take it easy tomorrow.”
“ You are taking it easy tomorrow.” Any other human would have ducked at my tone. Not her.
“That’s why I want to talk to you, SecUnit. You deserve some rest, too.”
I turned to her fully so my glare would have a stronger impact. She didn’t hesitate to stare right back, and I couldn’t take it. I made a useless gesture with my hand, the good one. The bad one I tried not to move so much. I really didn’t want more attention on my needs than I was already getting, and ART had long turned into a nagging worrying headache.
As if it heard me, ART sent me a ping that made me flinch. I had an actual, gross headache, and did not appreciate pings.
“The moment I look away someone gets hurt.”
“I know you think that,” Mensah said in her ‘your emotions are valid but your logic is off’ voice. “But if you don’t rest, your body or brain will schedule a rest for you when you least need it, and then we all have a problem.”
Huh.
“I want to propose that you and I come up with a safety protocol for the whole team for the first half of the cycle tomorrow. During that time, you won’t need to be our security, because we’ll be following all the guidelines. And you can decompress.”
“What if something ha-,”
“The Perihelion is willing to assist in monitoring us and our surroundings, and will hold position until you’re action ready.”
In my head, ART said, I’ll keep your humans safe. You did the same for me. I owe it to you.
I stood there stunned. My jaw dropped by two centimeters.
“Okay,” I said to Mensah, “Let’s make a plan then.”
-
The habitat is secured , ART sent. I pinged it in acknowledgment.
Six minutes later, ART sent me the same status. My fuse was already barely existent.
“Fuck off,” I said. ART bristled my anger right back at me. Great.
If I don’t send you repeated updates, you’ll just panic, and that won’t be beneficial to your mental health either.
Something hot clawed itself up my throat. “My mental health?! Since when does anyone care about that ?!” My voice broke halfway through that, and I had to cough. An acidic taste filled my mouth.
ART pressed into my mind so much my ears buzzed. You’re the one who doesn’t know what’s good for you.
That was it. I disconnected from ART’s feed and threw a wall up, as strong as I could make it. (I knew ART could just barrel right through that and take over my brain if it wanted, and that pissed me off even more.) I stomped off, dedicated to leaving the perimeter ART had access to at all.
To my surprise, ART let me go.
To my greater surprise, I started feeling better once I knew I was out of range. I still had the communication device tucked under my rib, and if an emergency arose (which it might just, given where I was), I was sure I could still yell for ART. As I marched from the rocky barren area we had built the habitat towards the more bushier, definitely much grosser area, I absentmindedly tapped my hand over the rib compartment. What I felt made me stop. The skin hurt where my fingertips pressed in. I ran a diagnostic, which came up with nothing, all systems green, no problems. I didn’t want to peel off my enviro suit, not out here, so I tugged my collar open and sent an intel drone under it.
It came back out beeping in alarm, reporting a bunch of anomalies about my configuration that my diagnostics didn’t agree with. I ran one on the drone. All normal, too.
I flinched when Three pinged me as I stood there trying to wrap my head around the smarting skin and the panicking drone.
“What do you want,” I snarled at it, and Three froze. Its face looked miserable.
“You shouldn’t go alone.”
“Did ART send you?”
After a second, it lowered its head in a nod.
I turned and kept walking. Three caught up with me.
“If our humans die it’s your fault.”
Wow, Murderbot, you asshole. I really, really needed Three to leave me alone. This was for my mental health, right? Oh, right, nobody cares how SecUnits are doing.
“They won’t, I cleared the perimeter and set up sentinels. And Perihe-“
“Shut up.”
Three shut up.
The mud felt disgusting under my boots, as if it was trying to keep me rooted to the ground. It also made horrid noises. My knowledge about nature was limited to the few things Ratthi kept bringing up, or that got humans in trouble on shows or real life. I knew where to avoid danger, that was about it. I picked the most uncomfortable looking path in the hopes Three would get too annoyed and fuck off. It followed me dumbly into shoulder-high bushes with thorny branches.
“1.0?”
I halted so abruptly it startled Three. “What.”
“Do you want to talk about it?”
My gunports clicked open. Seven different deeply insulting things crossed my mind, and I just barely managed to shove them down along with my weapons. My eyes caught something and I simply changed the topic.
“That thing’s dead.” I pointed. Three shifted closer to me, boots making wet noises. “Thing” was the right word for it. It probably was an animal at some point, but it had mutated sometime along the way. Developing more limbs that looked jagged and wrong, crystalline structures ripping skin and fur apart. It was oddly long, lying twisted under a tree.
“Pretty dead,” Three observed intelligently. I changed direction and walked away from it. Three lingered for a moment, which it really shouldn’t, but it probably didn’t know better.
Just looking at these clearly alien-fucked-up-animals made me feel sick in a way I had no words for. There were multiple infections going around this planet, all caused by the same pathogen or whatever the word was Ratthi kept using. The thing that had created targetControlSystem, the thing that made the humans here grey and sharp and aggressive, was probably also the thing that turned the animals here into grotesque, biting monsters, dumb enough to even attack SecUnits. I flexed my hand just to check. The cut still hurt, but it was healing up alright.
For a millisecond, I thought I saw Three raise its hand to reach for my arm, to grab me and examine me. I whipped around and jumped a few feet back, combat ready.
Three stood there perplexed.
Shit.
I straightened up and said nothing while Threat Assessment cooled down.
-
We came across four more dead animals, and Three began keeping track of potential cause of death, which was visibly: none. Poor, dense Three. (Or maybe nobody had made the connection yet, even though it was so glaringly obvious. I’d ask my humans when we got back. Ugh. I didn’t want to go back.)
Whatever was eating through these creatures, it hadn’t picked the right enemy. They were too weak, ending up with their guts spilled from bloated bodies bursting from the inside out.
It was just a matter of time until it found the right host for whatever it was that it tried to achieve. I ignored the fever crawling through me.
Three realizes once more that it is afraid. It can’t make sense of what went down here- there has to be a connection between the dead animal and the state 1.0 is in. In its arms, the other SecUnit seems undecided on whether it wants to escape again or stay still and be carried. Three feels almost sorry for having to put it through the embarrassment of a rescue twice in so short a time.
With careful steps, it maneuvers both of them past the center of the cave and to the exit, which looks less like it has been worked on by someone. The cave itself, now that Three thinks about it, seems purposeful. Like someone made it.
“The animal,” it says slowly, quietly, “the small one. It lives here? The growling is its… parent?”
Murderbot 1.0 nods once. “Home. Nest. Something.”
Three swipes through the various conversational paths that open up in its mind, those designed to keep shocked and traumatized clients awake and talking. Nothing seems to fit. Murderbot is an eviscerated shell and nothing makes sense.
Three peers down the cliff, if one can call it that. It’s steep, and rocky, scaleable for something with many legs, but harder for a biped. Near impossible for a biped who can't move its arms.
“Can you hold on to me? I need to have you on my back.”
Murderbot nods again, and endures the jostling as Three moves its position. With its arms slung around Three’s neck in a grip much too loose for Three to feel safe about it, Murderbot’s torso presses into Three’s back. It’s hot, and wet, and Three shudders. The open wound is being pulled over the curve of Three’s spine, and a slick noise arises as Three begins climbing down the slope. Murderbot must be bleeding again, but it makes no sound. If it wasn’t for the fast, shallow breaths in Three’s ear, Three might fear it has died.
Warmth spreads over its back. Three hopes the suit will hold. Three thinks about itself having to face the consequences of this infection, and even though it is unsure what of the current situation is a direct result and which is just coincidence after an animal attack, it is still afraid.
It descends another half meter, careful not to slip.
Murderbot is quiet.
“Is it going to infect me too?” Three can’t help but ask. The silence is eerie, and its thoughts aren’t being tamed by a governor module. Anxiety is making its hands shake, and that could kill them both.
In a brittle voice, 1.0 replies, “Don’t know.”
That’s not enough information. Two more steps down and Three asks, “How did you get it?”
“Don’t remember.”
“I don’t believe you.”
Silence.
They make it down the hill, and Three sets 1.0 down in the soft, evening-damp grass. It collapses onto its side immediately and curls in on itself, covering the hole in its stomach with its arms. A small, long wail escapes it. Three doesn’t know what to do, so it stands beside 1.0 and keeps guard. The wail turns into a screech and then a sob, and frantic movement takes over 1.0’s body. Suddenly it seems to seize upright, spine straight and eyes wide, and then it begins digging its hands back into its torso, grabbing at whatever is left inside, pulling out wires and broken tubing and loose pieces of flesh. Something tears wetly, then something else.
Again, Three can only stop this by tackling 1.0, pinning it, and the resistance it puts up is even less this time. Blood smears all the way to 1.0’s elbows now, and the brown skin of its cheeks has turned gray.
“Please stop injuring yourself,” Three begs, and slowly Murderbot stills.
“I need it out,” it tosses its head to the side, “out, out.”
“What out?”
Murderbot bucks its hips and tries to get free again, so Three leans in.
“The thing. Tell me it’s out.”
Without any idea of what else to do, and hoping to the stars and ART’s recyclers that the suit will hold, Three jams its hand into the hole in Murderbot 1.0’s stomach, grabbing into the gore and guts there. Murderobt seizes again, another scream ripping free. Three knows pain sensors don’t run that deep, this is an organic sort of agony.
“There’s nothing in here!!” It withdraws its hand, dripping now too. “Nothing, nothing. See?”
Murderbot’s eyes roll back as a shut-down takes it under.
Three panics again. It would connect their energy cores to jumpstart Murderbot’s system, but that’s a definite way to get infected too, and then they’re both doomed. It pings desperately into a feed that doesn’t exist, begging for someone to show up and help and fix this. After a minute and 21 seconds, Murderbot comes back online, quietly, without much off a fuss.
“Sorry,” it says, “Overload.”
“It’s okay. We’re running late already. The others might find us soon.”
Murderbot huffs a laugh, like it doesn’t believe that. Three’s heart aches from the pessimism.
“So. What happened?”
This time, Murderbot 1.0 turns its head towards Three. Everything about its face looks miserable, and the blood has left dried stains on its lips. Where small vessels popped under the skin, bruises are forming.
“It used me.”
Three flinches at the tone. “What?”
“The virus. I don’t know. It controls more than we might know.”
“What does it want from us?”
A silence. Then quietly, 1.0 says, “To breed.”
Three was following me. I needed to get rid of Three.
I felt a sort of disgusting, hot, blinding rage at Three just for showing up and tailing me. I had ordered it to be quiet, and it did. At least it did that.
I was so enraged I kept losing focus on my drones.
I knew where I was going. I didn’t need the drones. My feet had a plan and I adhered.
Three was sending me messages that glitched out in my head and hurt.
I snapped at Three to leave me alone. Three stared as if it didn’t understand me either.
I knew where I was going. I only stopped occasionally, to spit. Something was in my mouth, and it felt bad.
My system was screaming at me in the same glitchy voice that Three used to communicate, but I couldn’t do anything about it. I couldn’t tear my brain out, could I? I wished I could. More space. I wanted more space.
Three grabbed my arm and I whirled around. Three hit the ground. The sweet, lovely, lush ground. I brushed my boot against its shoulder. It didn’t get up again. I left.
My skin was on fire and my fluids seemed to boil right out of me, driving me forward.
Relief was forward.
-
The sky changed and the breathing of nature with it. I felt it, like I had never felt anything before. The trees were singing, asynchronous and hideous, reaching for one another. I was aware of every tiniest insect underfoot, the rotting commotion of leaves decaying.
I heard my own body, and the changes it begged.
I was no longer nauseous. I was aware I had lost blood, and other things. Every joint ached, filled with acid and yawning empty.
It would be over soon though, I knew.
My drone input died but I was not afraid. I heard and saw more than I ever did before. The soil accepted the imprint of my steps, guiding me forward steadily.
-
I found my goal by nightfall. Safety, the promise of shelter. My fingernails had split and splintered from the climb, my hands were torn. I knew because the pain felt gentle, like a caress. I liked it.
The cave was large, illuminated by the dimming star setting. I collapsed to my knees, folded forward onto the gentle ground. I laid there and panted. Alarms were in my head, something air, something volume, something reliability. I ignored them.
I felt hot.
I sat up, seeing black for a moment. I peeled myself out of my suit (clunky, heavy, barrier), and folded it aside. I looked around. Now I saw more of the cave, my visual filters had managed to adjust. The corner furthest back looked soft, padded out with greenery. The ground was smooth, as if worn down. Someone lived here. My legs twisted until I was standing, unsteadily as it was. I walked over to the nest, and laid my suit down.
Then there was movement behind me. I didn’t startle. I didn’t know how, but I had expected it to be there. I turned.
From the ceiling of the cave, a being unfolded. One leg, three legs, six legs in total unfurled in multi-jointed, spindly elegance. They were long, each one longer than me, if thinner. Black and shiny, as if armored. As the first set of legs reached the ground with soft, clawed clicks , more of the thing’s body came into view. I had no word for it. A creature.
An alien, probably. Some part of my mind found that funny, but I didn’t understand why.
It was massive, the size of a little hopper, maybe. What even was a hopper? The thing had multiple heads, of various shapes, set around a central one that was long and sharp, with a maw that could have swallowed me. Scales, skin and fur mingled across its body, segmented into parts that made no sense but were beautiful. The ceiling cracked where it loosened itself from it, causing a rain of small stones. I didn’t feel them.
It descended from the ceiling and towered in front of me, blocking the exit. I didn’t mind. I was supposed to be here. My mind was foggy.
It approached, in a slow terrible rumble of limbs. It leaned down to face me with its many faces, the main snout tasting the air around me. I took a step back as its maw opened and a tongue, then two more, became visible, and reached for me.
Stepping back didn’t feel right. The tongues brushed my face and shoulder. I felt it wet and rough on my skin.
The fire under my skin died into a soothing heat and my knees gave in. The creature caught me with two graspers, maybe shears. I was supposed to be here. I melted into it.
-
It spread me out on the soft surface of the nest in the corner. My senses left me. I was awake but hardly aware, aware but barely awake. My whole body hurt in an ache that I knew would be soothed soon. The creature made noises, clicking and rumbling and purring and snarling, from many mouths. As I laid on my back, it took stock of my body with its tongues again, which were probably some sort of feelers and not tongues at all. Something in its saliva did something to me. My head swam. I relaxed.
My hand moved to brush over the snout. I didn’t make it move, it just happened. The creature was warm, almost as hot as me. It pushed into my hand. My hand tingled. I remembered the cut, but then it licked a soothing stripe into my palm and the thought fled my mind.
I had questions, but reaching them was like wading through mud.
“What are you?” I managed eventually, dumbly. By then, its shadow was almost encasing me. It was massive. If it fell on me I would die. I knew it wouldn’t. It wanted me alive. I wanted to be alive for it. The graspers, with their sharp edges, took a hold of my shoulders. From its midsection, or one of them, something unfolded. Plates moved to the side with an almost automatic whir. Crystalline dust fell on me. My skin prickled. I had nothing to compare this creature to, but what I saw reminded me of a medical system, almost. Small pincers, dripping somehow. Threat assessment blared through my brain so loudly it caused me pain, but when the needles pushed into the soft skin on both sides of my neck I didn’t care much about the pain anymore. My vision hazed over. Some of my fine motor skills escaped me. My hands fell open and loose, my head rolled to the side. I noticed that my jaw was open only because I began leaking from the mouth.
My body was examined again. The creature talked to me, or communicated somehow. I didn’t understand the words but I knew what it meant. Checking me over, making sure I was right . Or ready. I felt ready.
I tried to arch into the tongues but had no control over my muscles like that.
The arms holding me by the shoulders moved me. I was on my stomach. It hurt, just a little. I tried to voice my discomfort. The creature leaned in more closely, like it tried to cover me with its mass. I wanted it to crush me.
I felt ready.
I replied to its animal noises with an animal noise.
More tiny pinpricks of pain bloomed and wilted along my spine. More warmth spread through me. Risk Assessment went to sleep. The creature’s legs folded on either side of me as it crouched closer. The pincers and a set of legs still held my shoulders, lifted my head. I would have gone along willingly if I had a will. The feeler tongues moved across my face again, as if searching. They poked into my eyes, and it didn’t hurt. They pried into my nose, and that was odd, and obstructive, but I tried to breathe through my mouth and it didn’t hurt. Then something filled my ears, tore at the mechanics lodged there, tore them out. That hurt. The world went buzz-loud quiet. I heard my own pumps, my fluids, my breath. It all sounded wrong and bad. Too fast, too slow, too shallow, too weak.
I tried to speak, to ask it for help, but I had no voice. Next, it entered my mouth, and breathing was no longer a possibility.
I was oddly at peace with the prospect of suffocating.
I was supposed to be here.
-
More legs wrapped my body closer to the creature’s body. My torso no longer touched the ground. I missed the ground. Where it could, the creature tried to advance. I felt it crawl into my head through every opening my skull offered, carving out what was in the way.
My brain was somewhere in there.
I lost more focus.
I knew from looking at my own… visuals? That I had a pipe going down my throat. One for air. Lungs. Small. Another one? No. Not me, humans.
The thing was in my lung.
Pressing from the inside into the outside.
No, I wanted to say, No.
Wrong place, you are in the wrong place.
My lungs began filling. I was wet and heavy, but I was also blind, and death, and suffocating.
Wrong, all wrong.
I was supposed to be here, but not being killed.
No, stop, get out.
-
I vomited masses onto the ground. It writhed under me, the poor pretty nest all stained. I shook my mute blind and deaf head.
I felt my hands and knees under me, on the ground. The comforting heat in my body dissipated. I couldn’t let it, I was dying. Stay, stay. It let go of my head and my head dropped so hard my neck made a snapping sound, swinging supportless in the air between my arms.
My eyes cracked open. For a moment, what I saw made no sense. Then I noticed it was myself, my stomach and thighs, from below. I couldn’t lift my head, but I threw up again, trying to empty my lungs and failing. It was all over my face now, sticky and writhing.
The monster around me was desperate for me. It clung to my arms and clawed at my skin and licked my neck and back and pushed more needles into me, more poison, more medicine, more feel better calm down juice.
I was desperate too.
It was on the right track but it got it wrong, how could I tell it where to go when I didn’t know what was going on?
We made horrible, vile noises at each other. Blood ran down my sides from claws trying to find purchase, or their goal, or to make a new goal.
I bucked and twitched under it.
Instinct, maybe. Altered programming. My system so corrupted it wanted, wanted.
I got it right, somehow.
Got myself in the right position, hips aiming up, knees wide. Tongues and appendages wrapped around my jaw and neck, prying at my mouth again. I preferred that over breaking my spine. Just as massive movement picked up behind me, a shadow unfolding, I let the tongues slide over mine. They were sticky and wet, ready to discharge more into the wrong place.
I didn’t want to drown.
Then I saw the stinger.
It emerged from the creature’s lower body. I caught a glimpse of it from under me. It was wider than my head, and longer than my torso. It positioned itself between my legs, and maybe it wasn’t a stinger at all. It was jagged, sharp with a crystalline glint. Wet, like the tongues.
Maybe the knot in my stomach I felt was fear, then.
Maybe it was want.
I was so empty, right there, and I knew it would aim true. I knew it wasn’t trying to kill me. It just wanted the emptiness it hard carved out for itself in my body. I was seized by every movable appendage it had, which was nice. That way, I didn’t even have to try and struggle, not that my body would have gone along with that. The stinger positioned itself. Then it began digging.
The sound was awful, like a mining drill, but alive, and going through me not a stoneslab. I screamed soundlessly into the tongue holding my mouth open and weak.
The agony was two steps removed and distant. I felt it take over my very being, drilling deep, advancing. But this time it was right, and I wasn’t choking. This meant I stayed conscious. In hindsight, I wish I had shut down again.
Relief.
I felt relief when it reached where it had to go.
Just for a moment. There was room, below my rips down to my pelvis, for the creature to burrow itself into. I couldn’t enjoy the relief, because once it had situated itself there it tried again to -
My mind denied the fact.
My mind tried to go somewhere else.
If the creature had decided that pumping me full of its procreative mass for half an hour was enough, then I might have succeeded. But when I came back into reality, it was still seated deep, and it was still filling me. My skin hurt again, though differently this time, like it wasn’t big enough for my body. It hurt. The stretch of it hurt. The entrance it had carved for its stinger was a huge, pulsing wound. But worse than that was that I could feel it fill me. My body was growing heavier by the moment, with this foreign, not hot and not cold mass. It stirred. I couldn’t stop the agonized moans dripping from my mouth. My strength to voice my misery left me before the creature was done with me, long before that.
My timekeeping was beyond broken. Most my internal systems simply didn’t work. It felt like days, that I was held under it while it used me.
I sobbed from relief when it moved. I was an idiot to think it was over.
The stinger retracted, I felt it pull at the wound it had made between my legs. Then it pressed forward again. After maybe hours of it remaining in one place, I thought that was the worst pain I could endure. The creature was keen on proving I could take more. It began pushing and pulling, forcing my body along with the movement. I was too exhausted to do anything about it or even to think about doing anything about it. I was pushed into its hold, I felt small vessels break in my arms where it held me. I was pulled back, felt the rasp of the tongue around my neck pull at me.
I began doubting that the creature would let me live. This felt like dying.
Wet squelching noises arose where it dug into me, and maybe it was trying to create even more room with its thrusting. I gave up.
The monster (monster?) changed its tone, growling, groaning, moaning with its many maws. Insanity clawed at me.
Mounted as I was by it, I saw the parallels, and tried to ignore them. If I survived this, I would not remember this incident as being fucked and bred by an alien creature.
Its cacophonic noise grew louder, its motion in urgency. Somehow, it managed to pump even more of its fluid into me. I felt the urge to vomit again, but didn’t have the strength.
I wished to be numb. When it finally, finally pulled out, I felt the substance it had filled me with slide down my thighs. I heard it splash on the floor, in lazy huge chunks.
I moaned my disgust at it.
The monster groaned back at me, and replaced the stinger with one of its …graspers. Arms. Legs.
It uncurled its grip on me, and I collapsed forward, hips still held up by it. As my face sank into the abhorrent puddle I had made, my systems slipped into another involuntary shutdown.
Three cocks its head to the side. “What does that mean?”
On the ground, Murderbot 1.0 rolls into a sitting position, and shakes its head. Three has trouble parsing its expression. “I… I can’t explain. Viral spread. It- I can’t.” Its voice breaks. It sounds sore, like a human who is sick. Or a human who has been screaming. The unmoored feeling of helplessness threatens to sweep Three off its feet again, so it tries to backburner the sensation of losing ground. Murderbot is attempting to get up, so Three helps, hoisting a bruised arm over its shoulder. Even through the protective suit it can feel Murderbot shiver. It feels cold, too cold. Three wishes it could access its feed to find out how much time they have left.
They stand together. Murderbot shakes, and tries to get free. Three won’t let it. “We’ll get you decontaminated.”
“Three.” It tries to take a step forward and stumbles. There’s fluids everywhere, so much of it that it stinks through the protective gear. “I can’t infect you. Please. Be careful.”
Three wishes it wasn’t alone here. Wishes one of its distress calls would finally go through, or that they weren’t multiple hours on foot away from the habitat, and someone who was ready to take charge. From someone who could explain what had happened and would take care of Murderbot 1.0, because Three was completely out of its depth here. All it could do was lie. “I won’t get sick.”
Despite the difficulties, they walk. Murderbot leans onto its shoulder, and weighs almost nothing. What did the creature all take from it? Three is still reeling. The conclusion is obvious, but it refuses.
“It’s not like that,” 1.0 wheezes out, unbelieving, as if Three is being very stupid. Bitterness rises in Three’s throat like bile. It has known Murderbot 1.0 for about three cycles, saved its life twice (hopefully), and still it treats Three like a subordinate. Shouldn’t they be equal? It swallows the anger. “Then how is it?”
It takes a while for 1.0 to speak again. They cover about 24 meters in the meantime. It feels like much more.
“It’s through with me, I think.” Three has to look at 1.0’s face then, because it sounds so different suddenly, like all the fight has drained from it. Like it has given up, on what, Three doesn’t know. 1.0’s eyes stare blankly ahead. “I’m just a host.” A couple steps more. “I don’t know.”
Not sure what to say, Three says nothing, and thinks. If Murderbot 1.0 is now a host for the virus, then what is the small monster in this equation? It’s obvious that- Three’s head hurts. Is the monster a virus made flesh? If so then how did it infect 1.0 in the first place, because clearly that happened before 1.0 was taken into the cave and used , whatever it implied with that.
“Do you remember injuring me?”
“I… no.”
Three doesn’t like that. “What do you remember? From before the cave?”
Murderbot shakes its head. “No. Please. Later.”
An unearthly sound woke me up. Only when it ended did I notice a shift in my chest, and that the sound had been me, screaming. My throat was a busted mess of cables, wires, and fluids. I rolled over to vomit but noticed I couldn’t. I reached for my drones but I had none. Then the pain slid into relation and position in my mind and I screamed again and tried to flee.
The monster held me still, and my movement alerted it. Six deformed, ugly, revolting animal heads turned their attention on me, and the same disgusting set of tongues came to lick my face. I tried to turn away, but a claw had the back of my head.
“No,” I told it, or I begged, or I cried. What I did had no purpose anymore.
Multiple voices trilled back at me, and the tongue only left me alone once I stopped struggling. I realized how utterly helpless I was. Not even a shutdown had rescued me. Looking around, I understood I must have lost some time. The monster wasn’t mounting me anymore, wasn’t mating me anymore. I was on my back, still held by it, but also surprisingly, well, comfortable. In comparison. A sickly smell permeated the air and I felt too hot and shivery at the same time. The monster was blanketing me, almost. I only saw myself in glimpses between its many legs wrapped around me, and what I saw didn’t look much like me. The concept of myself disconnected from my body.
I wanted to stop staring but couldn’t.
It only made sense. The monster had put so much effort into filling me with whatever agent it needed to create more of itself, there was no way my body could hold it all. But seeing a deformation take place was fucking terrifying, and if I could crawl out of my skin I would have. My lower torso was bulging upwards. Not by much, maybe a handswidth. Still, very much too much.
The monster noticed where my attention had wandered, and shifted a grasper to stroke my flank, as if it was soothing me, or trying to apologize.
Or admiring its handiwork.
Nausea took me again, and I tried to retch again. I knew trying to get away was futile, but I couldn’t help myself. Instead of tightening its grip, though, the monster began letting me go. One by one, its legs unwrapped from around me, making horribly clicks and cracks in the process. Tingling numbness spread through me where circulation picked up again after what must have been hours. It lifted from me in slow, terrible grace. I rose to my elbows, which was a huge fucking mistake because it made me feel ten times worse. This time when I retched, clear liquid came up and burned through my throat, maybe leftover spit from the monster.
The monster made a series of noises, high-pitched trills, and ambled across the cave. I knew I had no chance of escape, but I tried to roll to my feet anyway. That caused the damned stinger wound to reopen, and fluids spilled down my legs. I almost passed out from the feeling alone. I wheezed pathetically. I’m an idiot.
Of course that made the monster rush back over to me, just that now it had something in one of its graspers. I couldn’t make out what it was before it pushed me down again, into the soft nest of leaves and moss. The pain turned me into a creature only half-sentient myself.
Pinned down again, the monster loomed over me, stroking me with its entirely too many appendages, touching my face and my side and the swelling in my stomach. Then it lifted the thing it held to one of its secondary heads, maw open, bit, and chewed.
It didn’t swallow.
It leaned down, awkwardly bending at an angle to get the maw closer to my face.
No, oh stars no.
I understood the noises it made, like I had understood it before. I threw my head to the side but only hurt myself in the process. My head was locked in its claws, digging in, and then the sharp edge of a claw pressed my jaw open. The tongues form the main head swooped in to help me keep my jaw wide, and then the secondary head’s mouth closed over mine. A terribly hot, slippery mess was pressed into me. I had no means to tell the monster I didn’t need to be fed, neither could I resist. Its mouth choked me until I swallowed down, and then more came. My lung filled again. I was so exhausted that I couldn’t even panic anymore, just sealed off bits of my lung and tried not to die.
When it finished feeding me, it curled up beside me, with me in the center of all its arms. If I wasn’t so completely incapacitated, then I’d have been in prime position to annihilate it get it right in the center. I couldn’t even unlock my gunports, lifting my arms was impossible.
My body tried to vomit two more times, but the monster just held my mouth shut. At that point, I wished I could just die.
And then I felt movement in my abdomen.
I shrieked in shock, and the monster shrieked with me in excitement.
Something was living under my skin, like I was a habitat, and I could not do fucking anything about it.
Murderbot 1.0 goes into a shutdown after 73 minutes of walking. Three decides that that might be the best option for it, no matter how worrying. Before hoisting the body into its arms again, it takes a moment to examine.
It feels guilty for doing so, like it’s breaching 1.0’s privacy, but then again since when do SecUnits have privacy? If this was One or Two, Three wouldn’t even hesitate. It checks the gap in 1.0’s stomach again, and can’t help but notice that where the skin doesn’t look torn, it looks almost clean, smoothly grown, as if this line had existed before the injury occurred. It can see the broken ribs and the slots where entire parts are missing. It smoothes the wound closed with both hands and searches for something to wrap around 1.0’s torso to keep it closed. It finds nothing, and decides to keep its own hands on the wound. Then it finds the much more nasty looking injury between 1.0’s legs, and fails to parse the meaning. There are bruises and cuts all across its body, and puncture wounds along its spine. The medical system is going to have a field day analyzing these injuries.
With none of the injuries actively bleeding, there is nothing Three can do but to pick 1.0 up again and speed up.
It reaches the habitat before the primary sun rises again, and enters ART’s radius of transmission about an hour before that.
The avalanche of ART’s emotional reaction almost disables Three and causes both of them to crash.
What have you done to it, ART thunders through Three’s brain, knocking over every wall of defense it has. Three, smart, bundles up the logs of the past 10 hours whole and compresses them and sends them, which causes ART to be silent for 2.2 seconds. It doesn’t apologize to Three, which Three doesn’t expect from ART in the first place. It knows it isn’t of priority to the Perihelion.
Bring it to me, orders ART, and Three’s knees buckle from relief. Finally, finally, this clusterfuck of a situation will be out of its hands.
My awareness slipped like fishes.
Fishes were the sleek animals living in some waters.
I wondered if there was a fish growing in my stomach.
I felt it move. The monster saw it move, and put its feelers on my abdomen to feel it too. It hurt, like everything hurt. The monster moved my hands to rest over my stomach almost as if urging me to protect the thing growing, and my fingertips found the line. There was a line running from between my ribs to my pelvis, with a dip in the middle. It must have grown on me before all of this. Knowing it was there made me feel better. The line would open into an aperture, and the fish would be out.
When next I could focus, I screamed again at the sight of my body. The monster licked my forehead. Not long now, it seemed to tell me. I closed my eyes again, and tried to ignore the kicks from inside.
-
I could tell it was almost over. The thing was alive, and it wanted out. I tapped the monster’s maw closest to me with a finger. It lifted its head and licked my cheek like I was precious to it. I was sweating rivers, even though I had lost almost all of my fluids. My systems were almost completely offline. I was not a construct anymore. I was a lump of organics growing more organics, with useless tech attached.
And to my absolute horror, the monster decided to leave me alone for this. It gave me a final once-over, replacing my sweat with saliva, removing the vomit and bits of raw meat that had escaped up my throat. I begged it to inject me again with whatever drug substance it had needled into my spine before, but I wasn’t using words, just sounds and noises, and it ignored me. I felt betrayed.
I was alone with my pain.
I convulsed, forgetting about the stone of the cave and the soft of the leaves. My being became urgency, agony.
-
It was loud. It was me, the loud thing. There was another thing then, not loud, but still noisy. My ribs cracked. My skin sang. The absence of all alarms scared me more than anything.
-
I was no longer alone.
-
It was the size of my head, maybe. It was still part of me, but letting go. Wires tore, tubes burst. Electrics pulled out of me. I felt the loss. I felt the loss. I felt loss.
It screamed with me. I reached for it. Two hands full of one writhing mass, small, partially me. Mostly monster. It was warm from my making.
-
Its abhorrent maws opened. I had nothing to give it.
My own maw opened. I gave it what had been given me.
It liked that.
-
The monster was not coming back. I was alone with my new monster.
Everything but the new monster was pain.
-
No.
My name was Murderbot. I was not this monster. This monster was not me.
I had to leave.
It had to leave.
I vomited more chewed flesh into its hungry fangs.
-
When my gunports unlocked with my will again, I shot at it until my energy reserves were depleted, and then kept going until I shut down again.
My last thought was that I wished for us both to die here.
Murderbot 1.0’s body is taken from Three. ART meets it at the habitat with multiple medical drones. The habitat is quiet, buzzing only with soft electricity. It feels surreal in its normalcy and comfort. Maybe this was a hallucination, Three thinks, the same way it hopes that the next cycle or the cycle after, One and Two will show up alive and ungoverned.
Three trails behind the self-moving gurney, and ART doesn’t stop it. Three knows that down here, ART does not have as much control as it would have if they were aboard it.
“Tell me how I can help,” it offers.
ART still feels like a storm in its head, but it has calmed down since the initial shock of seeing its friend almost dead. You retrieved it. You helped.
The drone manipulates Murderbot’s body into the cradle of the medical system. “A cubicle would be better,” Three suggests.
A cubicle can’t fix this.
Three stands beside the cradle and watches as ART orders the medsystem to attach any possible port to Murderbot. It has to help twice, when the system fails to execute at a specific angle. After that, ART orders Three to wait until it was sure 1.0 is fully decontaminated. Then it will decontaminate Three, and then the world would be fine again.
Murderbot remains unconscious as ART scans it. It does not get to hear ART lose its mind over the injuries, over what has happened to it. ART blames itself loudly enough for Three to hear although it tries to ignore the emotional distress it leaks into the feed.
“Can you tell me what you find out,” Three asks quietly, hoping sharing will help. It is also afraid, still, listening into its own systems for signs of corruption.
It is entirely infested with this virus that eats half the planet alive, ART says, tense. This should never have happened.
“Will it live?”
I will make it live.
Three nods, believing. It watches ART complete the scan and project multiple charts, detailing every millimeter of 1.0’s deformed body. Seeing the stats is sickening even to Three. ART seethes at the peeled open torso, the shattered bones in its arms, the torn ligaments in its jaw and the blisters in its tongue and down its throat. Three has to help clean out the body, has to figure out the best way for ART to shove cleaning utensils down every single one of 1.0’s orifices, even the ears.
( The ears, for star’s sake , ART whispers in agony.)
After that they clean the wounds, and despite the shutdown Murderbot 1.0 whimpers its pain. Routinely, Three checks the habitat’s drones to make sure no human wakes during this. The three of them impacted by this are three enough already. Once 1.0 recovers, ART and it agree, they will have to figure out just how badly 1.0 is affected.
ART sees black.
It sees red too, clearly, when it evaluates just what must have happened before this event. The infection, vicious in its plan to procreate, had decided that 1.0’s body was the perfect ground for its endeavor, it restructured its body to fit its needs.
It went incredibly fast, scarily fast, and now Three really hopes it is safe. In the span of a cycle, the virus must have hollowed out enough of 1.0 to make room for its offspring. ART will need to rebuild about half of Murderbot’s internal components, and curses at the realization. They do not have the needed materials on site.
Of course, Three offers.
Of course, ART agrees.
ART begins a dialysis, pumping out every bit of fluid from 1.0’s system, after the exterior and interior are scrubbed clean. It can produce fluids to replace what was lost, and quickly so. Once 1.0 hits 70% fluid volume, its systems begin recovering. For a moment, this relieves both Three and ART. Then Murderbot reboots properly, takes one look at its new position, strapped into the medical cradle and plugged into so many machines, and promptly starts screaming and thrashing again. This time, ART holds it down, not Three. Murderbot cries with dry eyes, not understanding that it is now safe.
Three wipes wet hair from its forehead. “I’m sorry,” it whispers, “This is the only way.”
Murderbot’s glassy eyes find Three’s, and recognition sparks. “Three?”
“Yes.”
“Get me away from here.”
In the feed, ART shudders.
“I can’t. You need to be here. We’re fixing you.”
Before unfocusing again, mind going elsewhere, Murderbot denies this fact.
Its dissociation is for the best, because after dialysis, ART has to rearrange its position, but cannot yet inject painkillers. Too little body mass to risk it , ART says.
The next cycle of decontamination is so brutal Murderbot sobs through it despite barely being conscious. ART insists, swearing revenge as it goes. It does not enjoy this either.
Then it’s Three’s turn.
Three sinks into the adjacent cradle in terror, closes its eyes to its fate. Being scanned, scrubbed and purged hurts in a metaphysical, conceptual, and raw animal way.
Give me every piece of yourself you can spare , ART orders. Three opens its own chest panel, forces its skin back, and names the components it has that 1.0 no longer does.
I’ll extract them. I will copy them. It will take 4 hours and 17 minutes. You will survive.
Three watches the mechanical arms peel it like a fruit, and turns its pain sensors down. It barely helps. Pain remains pain even if you close your eyes against it. Murderbot comes to, in between, and draws the wrong conclusions. It begs ART to stop, to let Three live.
“Don’t scrap it for me,” is the phrasing it uses, and Three almost weeps from the connotations. It tries to give Murderbot a reassuring smile.
Murderbot thrashes despite its restraints as ART installs the foreign components. Three drifts off.
My performance reliability is at 86% and rising. As I come online, the usual process of realizing who I am, what I am, where I am and when I am is disrupted by the absolute mess that are my logs, and the multifaceted pain that seems to be rooted in every centimeter of me, coming from everywhere and nowhere at once.
“ART.”
A ping that makes me flinch in terror. I’m here. Of course it is here. It’s in my head, in my systems and in my logs and it knows everything.
“What the fuck did you do to me.”
I was in the medical system that ART had control over, in the habitat we had set up on the colony ART had wanted to bomb to pieces because of me. Now I was the one in pieces. I knew, in the logical part of my brain, that I was not making sense.
I repaired you to the best of my abilities. I apologize for the mediocre job I have done.
ART was talking to me like I was an injured client and not a SecUnit that had gotten shredded during a mission- no, wait, this hadn’t even been a mission, had it? Free time. Fuck. I needed to leave this planet, I needed to leave this behind me as fast as I fucking could.
Please don’t try to move just yet.
“Not like you’d let me,” I snarled, twisting in the restraints.
Please calm down. I didn’t mean to hurt you. It sounded like it meant it. It sounded as if it had hurt me, as if it had been ART who orchestrated me to get infected with alien brainrot to get fucked and bred by a monster in a cave like I was fucking livestock.
My vision swam with error logs. Half of my internal components weren’t company made but foreign, and even if I could have moved it wouldn’t have looked pretty.
Is that what ART was talking about?
“Let me go.”
Not yet. You’ll hurt yourself.
“ART. I’ve been held down for entirely too much the past cycle and a half. Let me go.” My voice cracked. Had ART repaired the damage to my throat, my vocal chords? Had ART been able to reconstruct from the bruising what had happened to me, what I had been too useless to avoid?
You have to go slow. You need to recalibrate. If you overexert your-
“Did you read my logs?”
Its hesitation was answer enough.
The last bit of dignity I had held on to shattered. But really, did I expect any better? Ever since coming here again, ART had been clinging to me like it owned me, and now it decided it owned my memory too. Maybe my trauma was my fucking own, if my body wasn’t.
Fuck, my body belonged more to Three’s stars damned company now than me, ignoring what the monster had taken from me.
I read your files to understand better what had happened, in order to save your life. For which you have Three to thank as well, by the way. Despite the grotesque softness it was using, that still sounded flippant.
“You had no permission to change my configuration,” I hissed, “At least let me move.”
I did what I had to. You should understand that.
I bristled. This bullshit again. “Fuck off, ART. Fuck off.”
ART retreated out of my systems. Suddenly, it was just me alone in an empty medbay, hooked to three monitors, and an eerie steady beep behind me.
I couldn’t help the rising panic. My body felt off, no longer my own, and the straps holding me to the cradle were almost as bad as the claws. The tube that led into my nose to keep me breathing felt too slimy. My torso was full of strange insertions. No. No. I wheezed a breath. My head was empty and silent beside the alarms and warnings I couldn’t figure out how to dismiss.
“ART,” I called, gasping, “ART no. Come back.” The beeping sped up as my panic rose, and I tried harder to escape, like I had been doing.
Out of nowhere, the larger feed connected back with me and my mind exploded in information streams, noise and color. I sent frenzied pings I couldn’t control until ART decided I had suffered enough for my mistakes and came back in, rescuing me from the onslaught. I clung to its presence, Thank you, thank you.
ART curled tight around me, yet another massive shadow of a creature that wanted to hold me. To my terror, I realized I needed it to.
Three came back once I had calmed down. I couldn’t speak to it, not out loud, not after all this.
Nobody can know about this, I told them both.
I can inform my captain and yours that you will no longer be part of the ground crew. Three agrees to stay down here and protect your clients.
I acknowledged immediately. I knew myself enough by now. I knew I had no chance hiding my state from my humans, not when I wasn’t even able to interact with Three or not be angry at ART. I could envision the pity on their faces when they connected the dots, the quiet offers for trauma treatment or a shoulder to cry on, and wanted to claw my own skin off. Please , I said to ART. I don’t want to be here anymore.