Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Once again, I find myself in the middle of fucking nowhere, trying to keep way too optimistic humans from getting themselves killed. On a contract that I signed myself, willingly. Because apparently I'm a free person now who is supposed to have a choice about things.

"I don't feel like I have a choice about this." I had complained to Pin-Lee as we'd been fleshing out the last few details of said contract. I'd been huddled in the most comfortable chair in her office, glaring at a spot on the wall behind her head. It looked a bit like some dead insect but I wasn't sure. Eww.

"Of course you have a choice, quit whining. You can always not go." Pin-Lee had countered without looking up from the display surface on her desk.

I'd frowned, then realized I was frowning and made a conscious effort to stop doing it. My face was stupid like that. "Oh sure, that's worked out great in the past. Oh no, wait, it hasn't." I'd said in my most sarcastic voice.

"You always worry too much. And we love you for it." Pin-Lee had looked briefly at my face and smiled, then added before my insides could get all warm and mushy: "Now please fuck off, I have real clients to deal with." She'd dumped the file with the finalized contract into my feed and pointed a finger at the door.  I was out of there before she could lower her hand.

That's why I like working with her.

So, fastforward twenty cycles, onboard ART, I was supposed to provide security for a herd (sorry, I meant to say team) of four humans and one augmented human on their way to getting themselves killed in exciting and new ways. ART's humans had contracted my humans for scientific expertise on yet another abandoned colony site. The corporation that had seeded the company had at some point declared it unviable and stopped sending supplies, leaving the colonists to fend for themselves. Our team was supposed to search for any surviving colonists and investigate the reasons for the sudden abandonment. Alien remnants were number one suspect. 

Arada was taking the role of survey leader like last time. And, of course, Overse was coming with her, too. It kills me to admit this, but I still have no clue what her specialty is. The whole PresAux team were doctors and scientists or some shit that my cheap education module couldn't be bothered with.

Then we had Tarik as some "extra muscle" (whatever that's supposed to mean), because risk assessment was kind of high for this survey and ART and Seth had decided I could use the backup. Ratthi was here, too, to analyze some weird alien moss growing everywhere on that planet, but we were all pretty sure that he'd only wanted to go because Tarik would be going. (Nope, I was not offended about that. Rhatti and I spend plenty of time together on Preservation. Seriously, fuck off, ART.)

Fifth member was Gurathin. And I can't believe I'm saying this, but he was the least of my problems now.

With two couples onboard, things were bound to get awkward at some point. It's not like I needed to patrol ART's corridors all the time, ART was a monster on its own that didn't need much security, but I kind of wanted to do my job right. But I couldn't make a single turn without running into someone flirting or groping someone else's private parts. It was hell. 

In the end, I decided to lock myself in my quarters and watch serials with ART until the time for the humans' rest period when it would hopefully be safe to come out again. I sent a few of my drones to patrol instead and backburnered their feeds, telling them to only alert me on certain triggers.

That worked out well for a while. Until I heard a loud, human-made noise from the cabin next to mine and had to pause our current episode of 'Timestream Defenders Orion' to focus my full attention.

That sounded like someone in pain. I said to ART over the feed.

Guess again. ART replied, tone saturated with amusement.

It took me a little over three seconds to figure out its meaning. As horror filled me, I felt a burning sensation in my organic parts, creeping up my spine and spreading over my face. "OH HELL NO!!!" I shouted out loud and stormed out of my quarters, slamming the door shut loud enough to wake the dead. I stormed down the corridor, as far away from the offending noises as a ship's enclosed space could allow, until I found myself inside the Argument Lounge.

There, however, was another problem, that the drones I had backburnered had failed to inform me about, since it wasn't considered a security issue.

"The fuck are you doing in here. You're supposed to be asleep." I snapped at Gurathin as if his whole existence was a personal insult.

The augmented human was lounging in one of the cosy chairs, in he middle of his fifth cup of hot energizing liquid for this cycle. He lifted one thick eyebrow at me. "Same as you, I suppose." 

My face must have done something weird at that moment, because Gurathin suddenly looked very amused at my predicament. He had to bite his lower lip to keep from smirking. I checked one of my drone cameras to see what's that about and saw that my face had managed to flush red. I didn't even know constructs could do that. As if this cycle couldn't get any worse.

Resigned to my fate, I slumped on one of the couches and stared at the ceiling then covered my face with both hands. "Next time I'm having Pin-Lee add a 'no sex stuff' clause to my contract." I said out loud without meaning to.

"Do you mean yourself, or..."

I lifted one hand just long enough to glare at him. Gurathin made a quiet chuckle, completely unsympathetic. That asshole.

"Seriously. How do you put up with this? Being the third wheel. Or is it fifh wheel?" I couldn't help but ask.

"I suppose it bothers me far less than you." He replied mildly, then chuckled when I made a rude gesture his way. "Wow, this really is a weak spot for you."

I didn't want to talk about it anymore and decided to offer a truce. "ART and I were trying to watch 'Timestream Defenders Orion'. Wanna join?"

"Sure." Gurathin replied and closed the book that he'd been reading in his feed.

ART played an episode on the large display surface in the lounge. For a while, I could pretend that everything was fine in the world.

Chapter Text

"Whoa. This place gives me the creeps." Overse commented as our small team walked through the abandoned facility. It was cycle one of the survey and ART's shuttle had just dropped us off at the planetside spaceport. So far it was a standard, sterile, CR-style building, with boring metal paneling for the floors and structural elements. One side of the building had glass paneling, showcasing a panoramic view of the planet's blue sky and greenish-grey landscapes. Some effort had been put into its design, though with the cheapest materials available.

"Yeah." Arada agreed and drew a bit closer to her marital partner. Their footsteps echoed in the enormous empty space. "Where is everybody?"

Behind them, Ratthi and Tarik were carrying some of the survey equipment. They intended to make something like a temporary bivouac on site, where they could store samples and run quick tests. "Isn't that the big mystery?" Ratthi grinned, as if this was some game they were all gathered to play. It was childish, but his enthusiasm seemed to be infectious. "This planet is successfully terraformed and perfectly suited for human habitation. The colony should have been thriving. Then all of a sudden, the seeding company decided to pack up and haul ass away from here as if the whole place is on fire. It doesn't make any sense."

I hope we never know, Ratthi. Leave the mysteries for the media.

Dragging his feet behind everyone else was Gurathin, who was carrying the coffee machine from the Argument Lounge under one arm, instead of helping out with any of the useful equipment. Nobody seemed to take issue with that but me. So far he remained silent and seemed distracted as he looked around the place with a carefully blank expression. Perhaps his augments had helped him notice the same thing that I did.

The station was empty. And I don't mean of humans, I mean of everything. There was no feed, no sign of a SecSystem or any type of ControlSystem. No bots or other types of machine intelligence. Heck, not even tiny fauna or flora that usually crept back into spaces abandoned by humans. Nothing.

There was a sudden chill running down my back, even though the temperature remained constant. Was there a draft in here?

I went to scout ahead, feeling the need to move, while the humans were busy setting up their bivouac. I freed all of my drones from the many pockets on my clothes and set them flying in a broad formation, then circling around the bivouac once the place was cleared.

Tarik had stepped away from the commotion, leaving the eggheads to sort out their stuff. With nothing better to do, I went to stand beside him. Since the last survey at AdaCol2, he had cashed in for one of those expensive automated suits of armor, as well as a projectile weapon similar to mine and was currently wearing both. The armor provides some physical enhancements and so far he'd been happily showing it off to the rest of the team by doing most of the heavy lifting. Geared up that way, my threat assessment was actually giving him a rather generous estimate.

"It's neat, right?" Tarik noticed me eyeing the armor. "You should get one, too. Or you could borrow mine, if something happens and shit really hits the fan."

The thought made me feel uncomfortable for some reason, though I could not figure out why. Something apart from the dirty sock smell that tended to cultivate on such things over time.

"They are very vulnerable to hacking." I mused out loud. "Though that can be improved with some work..." I was grasping for another excuse not to, but failed to think of one. "Besides, I can protect myself just fine without one. If I'm wearing that, then you'd better make sure you stay put on ART."

From one of my drone cams, I could see Tarik smile. "You can just take it on a test run, if you want. It doesn't have to be for work. It's okay to have fun once in a while."

I felt my shoulders try to rise up and made conscious effort to stop them. It was very much not OK. This wasn't about the credits, alright? I earned plenty of those and never really spent them on anything. This was not SecUnit armor and I shouldn't be wearing it. SecUnit armor is plain and cheap because we get blown up all the time and there's just no point in buying nice things. 

I turned away from Tarik and walked over to the closest wall without saying another word. There, I just stood and played a random episode of 'Sanctuary Moon', ignoring everyone's puzzled looks.

"Too friendly?" Tarik whispered to Overse who happened to be nearest.

She shook her head with an exasperated smile. "Just... Give it some space, it will come around on its own."

I focused half of my attention on the drone inputs, having made clear that I was very much unavailable for more small talk. Thankfully, everyone got the hint and didn't bother me about it. 

So far, there was nothing much to observe. At some point, Gurathin wandered off to search for a working terminal and try to gather some info about this station. I sent three drones buzzing after him just to be a nag. It really irked me when someone wanders away from the big group like that, but they had their job to do and I had mine.

Gurathin seemed to give up on the task after a while - all the tech here was useless. He stared at the panels of one of the walls for an unnerving amount of time, then walked closer. The combat boots that all of the survey members wore as part of the grey PresAux uniform made near silent squelching noise on the floor panels as he walked. Once within touching distance, he reached out with a gloved hand to feel the surface. There was something grey-ish covering the panels there and he worked to pull it off. Slowly, it tore away in chunks. It looked like a layer of soft thermal insulation, though it would serve no purpose at a place like this.

Underneath, the large letters of a company logo started to appear one by one, until the shapes of glossy, black and white marble read 'DeltaCon'. 

I have never heard about this company before, (not that I wanted to) but Gurathin's face seemed to go a shade paler at the sight and he made a small gasp that only the drones were able to catch.

"Dr. Gurathin, please state the nature of your emergency." My buffer said into his feed.

He flinched, then turned around to stare at me from across the large hall.

"There is no emergency, SecUnit." He hurried to reply. Then why did he sound like one of ART's students getting caught peeking into the girls' dressing room?

"You're showing signs of distress. Spill it." It could be something petty, or it could turn out to be something vital to the whole team's security. I wasn't about to risk ignoring it.

Gurathin sighed, trying to shed some of the tension off his lean frame. "It's just that this company... Let's just say it's among the nastier ones in the CR."

Yeah. That didn't sound ominous, Gurathin. Not at all.

Chapter Text

I glared at Gurathin for over twelve seconds.

He stared calmly back at me, not rising to the bait. He never does. It was annoying.

"So what exactly are your dealings with this company?" I asked loud enough to make it everyone's business.

"That is in no way relevant to the survey." He countered.

"I disagree. You're withholding information that is a potential security risk."

Gurathin started to object again, but Arada chose that moment to remember she was supposed to be leading this survey and butted in to interrupt: "SecUnit, please. Everyone has a right to privacy. You should know that better than any of us."

I narrowed my eyes at her: "You didn't care too much about privacy last night." That was petty of me, I know. But she was taking Gurathin's side and that wasn't fair.

She pouted. "That was childish and uncalled for." Then she pointedly turned to speak with Gurathin, shutting me out of the discussion. "Gurathin, if you have any information that could be beneficial to this survey, you are welcome to share it with us."

Gurathin rubbed his temple in annoyance. (The one without the augment.) "There isn't much to tell, just the usual Corporation Rim awfulness. However... It would be wise to change the survey parameters from 'investigating potential remnants' to 'locating and isolating the alien remnant'." He made a pause to let that sink in. "DeltaCon has a history of using alien remnants in the development and manufacture of biological weapons."

There was a long beat of silence. Then everyone started talking at the same time. Yeah, that was a lot to take in. I stayed out of it - it usually takes a while for the humans to get all the emotional responses out of their system before any reasonable discussion could begin. I ran threat assessment and risk assessment for this survey again, and they both showed around twenty percent increase. Arada was trying to speak over everyone and make them shut up without actually telling them to shut up. Ratthi was making loud exclamations and waving his hands around so much that poor Overse had to duck to avoid getting slapped.

In the end, they quieted and got down to business. Chemical scans. Radiation scans. Electromagnetic field scans. Biological traces scans. Dozens of tools got dragged around, whose names and purpose I didn't care to remember because it wasn't relevant to my job. They intended to clear the station, then move the equipment outside to get samples from the planet surface. Guess we'd need to go outside sooner or later, though I always hope it can be avoided. Planets suck. In more ways than I even care to explain.

"Hey guys, I think I found something weird." Overse called us over. She was trying to dislodge some of the floor panels at the spot that her equipment had alerted on, but it was proving difficult. "SecUnit, could you give me a hand, please?"

After a bit of controlled damage to the station floor, followed by some heavy lifting, Tarik and I managed to clear away eight of the metal panels. Beneath them lay concealed a large circular hatch. I could tell the team's mood shifted at the sight of it even without looking at them through my drone cams.

"What do you think, SecUnit? Does it look to you like a horror movie hatch, or a space explorer hatch?" Overse asked, hoping to break the tense silence with an inside joke.

"Don't jinx it." I said, and some of the others laughed. For some reason, that made me feel warm.

Nobody made a move to touch the hatch, as if it would burn them if they did.

"So. Need me to blow it open?" Suggested Tarik after a beat.

Another argument erupted. In the end, Gurathin stepped forth to give a shot at unlocking it manually since it was clearly locked tight and there was no online SecSystem to ask for access. He crouched on one knee and started unpacking tools from the toolkit he always wore strapped to the belt of his uniform, then hooked them up to the hatch's controls to try and pick the lock.

It took about six and a half minutes, then the hatch slid open with a loud hiss. For some reason Gurathin blinked in surprise, but the reaction was so brief that nobody else noticed. Yeah, that human wasn't shady at all.

Swept up by excitement, the humans all tried to peer inside like a bunch of curious toddlers until I physically blocked their way. "Please keep a safe distance until the threat is neutralized." My buffer said. I needed to be the one to check it first. I didn't want to, but that was my fucking job.

I sent most of my drones inside ahead of me to alert for any danger, then leapt in after them. 

There was a small room underneath the station, cubical in shape. It was about three times my height in every dimension - length, width and height. On every wall of the cube there was a circular hatch identical to the one I came in through, including one in the middle of the floor that I carefully sidetracked.

My drones spread out through the hatches in every other direction - east, west, north, south, as well as downward to the lower floor, where they found more of the same. More rooms, shaped like cubes, with a circular hatch on each of the sides. Further and further in every direction, until they reached a dead end, then started moving around to map the perimeter of the large structure.

Weird. 

I gathered all the drone data and converted it into a visual format that could be understood by the humans. The result was a three-dimensional matrix of five identical cubes in each direction, forming one single, enormous cube. I named each floor with letters from A to E and each side with a number from 1 to 5, then applied a unique identifier to each cubical room on the map. For example, the room I came in from was A33. 

Once done, I sent it to everyone through the limited feed connection I was supporting with my net of drones.

"A Rubic Cube." Gurathin remarked on the feed.

"What is that?" Ratthi asked.

"It's a logic game for children. A cube made of little cubes. Although it's 3x3, not 5x5."

I helped the humans set up a system of ropes so they could climb down as well to investigate. They chattered excitedly as they spread out among the many rooms and started collecting all of their boring samples. What was the purpose of this place? Why would they need to conceal it like this? The questions were piling up and all of the answers were lacking.

With nothing else to do at the time, I stood out of the way and watched them go at it. Everyone seemed in good mood, chatting amiably on the feed and trading good-natured jokes as they worked. It was kind of nice to provide security for a team that genuinely got along and wasn't trying to start drama, backstab or actively kill each-other.

The humans kept getting lost despite the map I had provided. They always forgot which floor they're on or which way is north, so once in a while I had to herd them with instructions on how to reach the exit in A33 whenever someone needed to get out for a break. Ratthi was so bad at navigating that I soon got fed up with arguing with him on the feed and ended up following him around.

For some reason this reminded me of Dr. Mensah's farm back on Preservation. This wasn't relevant to the survey, but sometimes my organic brain worked like that, bringing up memories that left impression into the forefront of my consciousness. So the thing is, the Mensah family kept fauna that they supposedly harvest for clothing materials and dairy products. (In a totally humane and not gross way, they assured.) The younger of Mensah's kids were trying to educate me on the process, but I was only showing polite interest and purged the whole thing from my memory afterwards.

Anyway, that wasn't the point. The point is that these white, fluffy, domesticated fauna often got killed by wild, carnivorous fauna if left unguarded. So the Mensahs kept around another carnivorous fauna as their guard. That black-furred, drooling monstrosity was supposedly a descendant of the wild carnivours, but trained to obey humans.(And wasn't that fucked up.)

But that's not the point, either. I watched the fucker run around all day after the other clumsy, fluffy fauna; shooing them away from the woods despite their stubborn attempts to go there behind its back; herding them towards their enclosed holding pens when it's time for their nightly rest periods.

As I watched it, I thought, this little fucker knows the struggle. This thing right there. That's been my entire life so far.

And then Dr. Mensah showed up, and the little fucker came over, drooling, begging her for pets and belly rubs that she provided with great enthusiasm. And then she put a leash around its neck and brought it away on a trip to the vet.

Yeah, the leash. It's always there, even if you do not feel it.

You choose to put it around your own neck the moment you let yourself get attached.

Chapter Text

I was in room D51 with Ratthi, keeping him company as he was gathering samples of some sort of alien moss that had managed to grow inside the facility. It was as boring as it sounds, though Ratthi was listening to music and had offered to share his playlist with me. At first he'd been playing it out loud, but I had to put a stop to it because my forty drones were capturing the sound at the same time and littering my signal with echoes.

There was some sort of a music festival coming soon on Preservation, featuring many new bands that he'd never heard before, so he was sort of vetoing which ones he wanted to see. Going through the dozens of albums was taking a while. He recruited me to help with that and also asked if I wanted to come, too. I said it sounds good.

"I feel like you've changed a little. In a good way." He said out of the blue, smiling at the thick patch of moss he was currently picking at instead of me. I appreciated it. "You interact with everyone. And you're much more outspoken than before."

I waited for seven seconds before replying: "I can feel the 'but' coming from a mile away."

Ratthi chuckled, that warm laugh that tended to put people at ease. "I'm afraid there really is a teeny, tiny 'but' coming." He admitted.

"Go on, the suspense is killing me."

"You might want to try being nicer to Arada. You and I both know that Dr. Mensah left some pretty big shoes to fill and it hasn't been easy for her. She's doing her best."

I mulled that over for a bit. Ratthi has always been the most patient with me. I trusted his opinion. "Okay. I will try." I ended up saying.

"Thank you. And also, would it kill you to give Gurathin the benefit of the doubt for once? He's one of my closest friends and it's really upsetting having to watch you two argue all the time."

"...I think that might actually kill me." I deadpanned.

"You asshole." Ratthi burst out laughing despite his words.

Okay, fine, maybe I was being an asshole more than usual. It was still somewhat liberating, to be as rude as you want to whoever you want. Whitout getting your brain zapped by a governor module, or being ratted out as a rogue. Perhaps this was just a phase and at some point the novelty would wear off.

Or maybe I had inherited some unknown asshole's cloned DNA and was stuck like this forever.

"Can you pass me another empty container?" Ratthi forcefully changed the subject, knowing that I'd reached my capacity for small talk. I readily passed him one of the glass jars. That's one of the reasons why we got along so well.

"Why is this moss so important anyway?" I asked before I could reconsider. We'd been at it for hours, stuck in these underground rooms.

"Because it's not supposed to be here." Ratthi replied absently. He exchanged his pliers for bigger ones.

"How come?" I thought it was normal for nature to gradually take over abandoned dwellings.

"Well... Think about it for a bit. This is the only living thing, organic or otherwise, that we've encountered here so far. How does it survive down here? If it's plant-based, then it needs at least a little bit of light, water and soil. If it's predatory or parasitic, it needs other living things to feed from. How does it get any nutrition down here, growing on slabs of metal under artificial light? It's biologically impossible."

Huh. I turned to stare at it, for the first time paying any real attention. It had grown over all of the walls and ceilings, covering them like a thick blanket. So far every room in the Cube had been the same. Its color was grayish-green, with hints of blue and white if the light falls on it just so. Come to think of it, the grey fabric covering the DeltaCon logo on the station was probably the same moss, just dead and dry.

I ran threat assessment, wondering if I should be suspicious. The result hovered around ten percent, undecided. The system quiried me for more data. That was pretty much the machine equivalent of a shrug.

Ratthi was carefully pulling out a tuft of moss with the pliers, trying to dislodge the whole thing without breaking it apart. He'd almost succeeded, so focused on the task he'd gotten close enough that his nose was almost touching the wall. But then the thing suddenly expelled some sort of white dust in the air and right at his face. He nearly jumped back, startled.

"You alright?" I asked and stepped closer.

Ratthi turned to stare at me, wide-eyed with surprise. And then he sneezed at me. It was one of those loud, full-out sneezes that sprayed fluids everywhere.

My face must have done something horrible, because I could feel it pulling my skin in uncomfortable ways.

Ratthi looked equally mortified. "Sorry, SecUnit..." He started to say.

I turned around and fled the room, retreating all the way down to E55, where I ended up staring at the corner of the cube, because there was nowhere further to go.

"Come on, it wasn't that bad." He said over the feed.

Instead of a reply, I sent everyone a video capture from my eyes of him sneezing, eyes open wide and face contorted in a weird grimace, tiny particles of saliva and snot flying everywhere.

"LOL" Tarik was first to reply, followed by various amusement sigils by the others.

"You're mean." Ratthi replied, accompanied by a sad, teary sigil.

I started the fifth season of 'Sanctuary Moon' and backburnered the feed. I was determined to keep this up until the work shift was over or until some disaster happened - whatever comes first.

I hadn't considered the possibility that both might occur at the same time.

Several hours later, as the end of shift drew near and the team started gathering their equipment in preparation to head back to the Perihelion for a rest period, some sort of commotion started among the humans on the higher floors of the Cube.

I pulled up the related drone footage to check if it's something that requires my attention while simultaneously heading up to A33. Ratthi and Tarik were in the middle of some heated argument. It was rather one-sided, though, as Ratthi was yelling and throwing a fit, whereas Tarik seemed to be a very reluctant participant in the whole scene.

"What. Did you do." I messaged Tarik. After 0.5 seconds remembered to add: "If it's a sex thing, blink twice or something, because I REALLY don't want to know."

"I didn't do anything!" Tarik replied. "He's been chipper all day, then just decided to throw a hissy fit for no reason." On camera, he was silent as Ratthi was yelling in his face and trying to shove him back despite the armor.

I was nearly at their location, but was hoping for someone else to break them up before I got there. Arada showed up to try and talk to them in a very soothing, very reasonable tone. However, Ratthi was loud. At some point she tried to put her hand on his shoulder to placate him. He turned on her as the next target of his anger.

"Fuck off, Arada! You're not Mensah, stop fucking acting like her! It pisses me off!"

Wow. Hypocritical much?

Arada made a shocked expression and seemed on the verge of tears. She had no time to react before Ratthi lunged and shoved her, then she fell down to the ground.

Damn it, Tarik, way to be useless. That's why humans shouldn't be working at security - they get dragged into the drama and become compromised.

At that moment I finally reached them and grabbed the scruff of Ratthi's grey uniform jacket, right above the PresAux logo, then hauled him back and away from Arada. With how tall I was, I easily loomed over all three of the humans (even Tarik in armor was a bit shorter) and attempted to use the full intimidation effect of that.

"Dr Ratthi, please take a deep breath and count to ten. Then go do 'Biology' somewhere else." I said in immitation of a buffer response.

Ratthi turned to face me with an expression of absolute hatred and disgust. It caught me so off-guard that my performance reliability dropped by 3 percent. And then he punched me. His fist connected with my left cheekbone so fast that my whole head turned. It didn't hurt, but my 'act-like-a-human' code made me blink in surprise.

And that's when it hit me that this wasn't just another case of human drama and something was very deeply wrong. I recalled the scene with the alien moss excreting its gross pollen, then Ratthi breathing it in, and my risk assessment skyrocketed.

Over the feed, I sent everyone the security alert code for immediate evacuation.

"What? Why?" Gurathin messaged me.

"SecUnit, what's going on?" That was Overse. The two of them were still finishing up work on level B of the Cube.

"Everyone, please evacuate the area in a calm and orderly manner." I let my buffer say, because it saved time. "I'll explain later."

"But... Our equipment... We can't just leave it lying around." Overse complained.

I opened up the file containing my contract, extracted the two relevant sections which stated that the security consultant had the right to declare a state of emergency; and during emergency the security consultant's instructions take precedent over the survey leader's. I switched it to a huge font, then dumped it directly into her feed workspace. Through one of the drone cams, I saw her flinch.

"Ow... Okay, okay, we're coming. Sheesh!" She conceded.

In the meantime, Ratthi had been trying to attack me again, multiple times. He was in a very fit physical shape for a scientist - all of the team members were - as this type of survey work was hell. However, there wasn't much that an unarmed human could do to harm me, regardless of their size or gender.

It was starting to become a nuisance, so I grabbed him around the waist and picked him up, then placed him over my left shoulder. He threw a fit about it and tried to wiggle free, but I locked the joints of my entire arm and held him in place.

The rest of the team climbed the rope ladder up to the station floor as I waited with Ratthi secured in my grip. When it was my turn, I stepped on the ladder and held on with my spare hand, while the other survey members pulled us up.

Once on the surface, we headed to the station's docking site, where I could reach and connect to ART's larger feed network and hail it with a warning that we've been contaminated by weird alien flora.

It took the shuttles a little over fourteen minutes to arrive and dock at the station. One of ART's larger drones disembarked from the first shuttle and unloaded a decontamination unit, then set it up in the station hall.

"Dr. Ratthi, please step inside the DecontamUnit and remove your belongings." ArtDrone urged once everything was ready.

"BOOO! Fuck you, ART! You suck!" Ratthi expressed his lack of enthusiasm.

I dumped him on the ground (without causing any harm, of course) and he made a small 'oompf', but finally shut up. It would have been funny in other circumstances. At least he was finally starting to tire himself out.

"Any volunteers?" I asked. Because I sure as heck wasn't going to deal with this.

Tarik started to come over, but Ratthi bristled just at the sight of him, so he reluctantly stepped back. The two women shifted awkwardly from foot to foot. Everyone turned toward Gurathin.

Gurathin made an eyeroll and sighed. "Fine. Ratthi, come on." He beckoned him over.

"No. Fuck this. You suck, too." Ratthi complained, but he seemed to have run out of steam.

"Don't be such a baby, come on." Gurathin grabbed the sleeve of his jacket and dragged him along. 

We all had to turn our backs to try and provide some privacy, because the privacy screen that ArtDrone had provided didn't do much to reduce the awkwardness. 

After some struggle, Gurathin managed to force Ratthi out of his uniform and dump it into a recycler, then shoved him inside the decontam shower. Once finished, ArtDrone provided him with a new, sterile uniform and he was all done.

Gurathin followed the steps of the procedure without complaint, then the two of them boarded the shuttle.

Overse and Arada followed next, one after the other, then boarded as well.

"Tarik, you're next." ArtDrone prompted.

"Me? What for?" Tarik sounded surprised. "You know this thing has environmental controls, right?" He said, meaning the suit of armor.

"We have yet to ascertain how the contamination is spread." ArtDrone countered.

"Alright." Tarik conceded, still a bit unsure. He unstrapped the large projectile weapon from his back, then started fumbling with the armor controls. The reason for his reluctance soon became clear.

"You don't know how to remove it." I deadpanned. 

"I know how, alright? It's just new and there's a lot of stuff in there. Just... Give me a moment, I know where to find it."

I rolled my eyes. "There's an automatic function that unlocks everything at once. Wanna see?" 

"Sure." Tarik agreed easily. I was just meaning to send some specs to his interface so he'd know which menu options to look for, but he decided to drop all firewalls and give me admin access.

I just stared stupidly for about four seconds, because the amount of trust this required was insane and it caught me so off-guard that I was having an Emotion. After I had pulled myself together, I coached him through the menus, then helped him carry all the gear and get it decontaminated. Once done, he quickly took care of himself and joined the others onboard.

"SecUnit, that only leaves you." ArtDrone prompted.

I blinked in surprise. "I don't need decontamination, I'm not a human."

"I'm afraid I cannot allow you onboard without one." ArtDrone sent me an image capture of myself, lying on the floor of ArtPrime and infected with alien remnants from AdaCol1, while my humans hovered around trying to put me back together.

"Do you have to rub it in?" I glared at ArtDrone as it radiated smugness.

"Come ooon, SecUnit, we're tired. We all want to get this over with." Overse nagged me over the feed.

"And we also want you to be safe, because we love youuuu." Arada added sweetly.

Ugh. Stupid emotions.

I tossed my clothes into the recycler, then stepped inside the DecontamUnit.

Chapter Text

So. To summarize our current predicament.

The situation required a biologist to analyze all of the gathered samples and figure out a way to counteract the effects of the alien moss. But the only biologist on our team was quarantined in MedSystem and enjoying medically-induced naptime.

The team spent the whole of the next cycle stuck onboard the Perihelion, unable to proceed with the survey until this problem was resolved.

The tension was palpable and I was, unfortunately, affected by it more than I liked to admit. My anxiety was acting up for some reason, and my performance reliability had dropped by six percent as a result. Threat assessment and risk assessment were both below ten percent, meaning that the chance of contamination reaching us onboard of ART was negligible. I tried telling myself that this was just about Ratthi being in medical and nothing else, then flushed my endocrine system to get rid of all the stress hormones. It lead to my performance reliability rising to 95%, but it refused to go higher than that.

On the plus side, MedSystem reported that the foreign substance had been successfully flushed from Ratthi's system with no ill after-effects.

Everyone perked up at that. Conversation at the Argument Lounge picked up again.

"I hate to say this, but we're spending too much idle time." Arada mused. "We only have a limited number of cycles until the end of the survey and we shouldn't fall behind schedule. SecUnit, do you think it is feasible to resume work with environmental suits, as a precaution?"

I stared at a point right above her shoulder. I hated the idea of ever going back down there. My performance reliability dropped to 94% just from considering it.

Outloud, I replied: "Yes."

So, another uneventful rest period later, we all found ourselves back on DeltaCon station, putting on the baggy EnviroSuits. (Everyone except for Tarik, that bastard. Including me.)

Climbing down the ropes and back inside the Cube with the lumpy suits turned out to be a hazard, as the humans kept losing their grip. I had to grab Overse by the arm as she nearly dropped to a loud, messy death five floors down.

"Thank you, SecUnit." She said sweetly.

I didn't reply, annoyed at her inattention. She didn't need to thank me, it was my fucking job. But I also hated when the team doesn't acknowledge my contributions. I don't know what I want, okay?! My brain is messed up like that.

"SecUnit, are you feeling alright?" Overse asked, and I realized that she'd been talking for a while. I backtracked my recording, but I hadn't missed anything important.

"Fine." I grumped.

She gave me a look, but backed off and went to assist Arada with whatever she was doing. The two of them chatted amiably, joking. Usually, I didn't mind, but for some reason it was pissing me off that they were so distracted and at ease when they should have been more alert for danger after the whole thing with Ratthi.

At some point they started flirting. It was so obnoxious that I felt my performance reliability drop to 85%. 

I stared incredulously at the alert that popped up in my feed. That was a very drastic drop for something so mundane. Why was babysitting humans such a choir today? I missed having a SecSystem to interact with, or any other machine intelligence to get my mind off all this gross human stuff.

I missed ART. I missed having him 'lean' in my feed to watch serials together. There wasn't even a feed here, besides the one I was providing with my network of drones. I needed to suck it up and endure until the end of the work shift.

I pulled up an episode of 'Sanctuary Moon', then initiated a full system flush. As the stress hormones left the organic parts of my body, my performance reliability climbed to 90%. It was still pretty low. 

Five hours later, a distraction came in the form of one of ART's non-sentient, flying drones. I felt it as it reached the edge of my feed, then dropped a message pack to the whole team.

"Oh! Ratthi sends a report." Arada proclaimed uselessly.

Yes, we could all see that, Dr. Arada, there's no need to yell. For fuck's sake.

I opened the file and played it:

---------------------------------------------------

Arada,

I finally got the chance to have a look at our samples and you were right. The alien remnant has been right under our noses this whole time. We've been walking all over it, touching it, breathing the same air as it. Yikes.

It's a white, crystalline substance, similar to the one we discovered at the Adamantine Colony site. It has formed a symbiotic relationship with this basic local variety of flora. The remnant enables the moss to survive in almost any environment, while using its vitality to reproduce and spread to new areas.

My theory about the Cube is that DeltaCon has attempted to cultivate and farm the moss for the purpose of weaponising it. By opening hatches or keeping them closed between cubicles, they could control cross-pollination between different batches of moss, in order to cultivate batches with higher potency of their toxins.

I have currently re-infected myself with the spores and quarantined myself in LabSection 3, so Perihelion and I can better study their adverse effects on the human body. Don't worry, we already know the effect is temporary. So far, we can say that it needs to get in your bloodstream in order to act, then sabotages your endocrine system to release large quantities of adrenaline and cortisol. You already know the rest *amusement sigil*.

The good news is, you can ditch the EnviroSuits now. Just make sure not to breathe it in.

---------------------------------------------------

I was finished reading before everyone else and just waited, observing the varying incredulous expressions they were making.

"Ratthi, nooo..." Arada bemoaned after another fifteen seconds, which subjectively felt like ten minutes.

"Dumbass." Gurathin facepalmed.

Tarik's expression was unreadable behind the helmet.

I couldn't believe I was forced to agree with Gurathin. Also, this whole dumb idea reeks of ART's influence.

Great, now I was mad at ART, too.

"Um, guys..." Overse interrupted. "Something is happening."

We all looked around to see what she was talking about, including me, as I hadn't caught any movement on the drone cams.

The moss was glowing. All at once, every surface of the Cube started to release tiny, white flakes into the atmosphere. It swirled around slowly, carried by a slow draft, and glimmered under the artificial lights in pale grey tones like metal particles. Every drone camera in every cubic room showed the same occurrence.

We stood in the middle of it all, mesmerized, still protected inside our EnviroSuits.

"It's... Pollinating, I think?" Arada vocalized her thoughts.

"Eerie." Overse remarked. "Although kind of pretty, if you think about it a certain way."

Sure, Overse. If you're unconcerned about the prospects of imminent death, you might sit back and enjoy the show.

My performance reliability dropped to 86%.

I initiated another system flush. But this time, it didn't help.

Chapter Text

There was something very wrong with me. It took me hours to admit it, because I was obstinate like that. My performance reliability had docked at 80% and I couldn't figure out why. My drone inputs were slowing down as I couldn't keep up with all of them, so I had to shut down 25% of the drones and recall them. This was really starting to freak me out.

But I wasn't contaminated. I couldn't be. I had gone through decontamination with Ratthi and the others, and was currently wearing one of those breathing masks that covered the mouth and nose, which the team had started using after dumping the EnviroSuits.

There had to be another reason. I needed ART.

(Looking back at this, I realize now that I was in denial.)

Originally, I had intended to endure until the end of the work shift and talk to ART during the humans' rest period. But now I was kind of working up the nerve to bring this up with Arada and have everyone head back early.

But then one of my drones alerted me that it was going out of reach and losing feed connection, and seriously, when did that happen? I reviewed the footage with some dread and discovered that Gurathin and Tarik had found a regular, sliding door on the bottom floor of the Cube. It was right at the corner, in room E11. Apparently, we'd missed it during the first scan of the area, since it had been overgrown with the stupid moss.

They had cleared the door, had a whole feed conversation with everyone about it, then gone in. Since I hadn't objected or anything.

I was furious. At me, at them, at the stupid moss, I don't even know anymore. The only thing I was aware of were conflicting waves of hot and cold rising somewhere in my gut.

Suddenly the drone came back within range. The static cleared, then there was shouting, and I heard Tarik's weapon fire a round of projectiles.

I ran.

Seriously, could this cycle get any worse?

I leapt down three floors, barely using the ropes, and landed with a loud clang in room E33, right in the middle of the bottom floor of the Cube. 

The drone started sending video again, and I watched with rising horror, (while still running at top speed under a constant refrain of 'shit shit shit shit') as Gurathin stumbled back out of the door, followed by Tarik walking backwards and shooting at something.

Overse was in the room as well, and started screaming.

Then something large and with too many segmented legs came out of there, leapt at Tarik and toppled him over. It was the ugliest design for an agricultural bot I had ever seen - arachnid-like and creepy.(I designated it Ugly1.)

The reason for this weird appearance became clear as a second, identical agBot (Ugly2) tried to get through the door, found its way blocked by Ugly1 wrestling with Tarik on the floor, then decided that crawling along the fucking ceiling was a great idea.

Once inside, it dropped back to the floor, then charged at Gurathin, who had sort of backed away a bit, but was now standing there frozen like an idiot.

And then something even weirder happened, and it was so unexpected and such a betrayal that my performance reliability dropped by another percent.

The agBot stopped its assault on Gurathin for no reason, then sidestepped him and went straight for Overse. (I'll explain later, this isn't about me playing favorites.)

In that moment I finally ran into the room and fired off both of my energy weapons at Ugly2. Without losing momentum, I grabbed Overse and rolled over with her in my arms, careful to shield her from any impacts.

"Run!" I yelled as I set her back on her feet while Ugly2 was recuperating. She sensibly followed my command and got out of the room. 

At the same time, Tarik fired a long round of projectiles into the 'belly' of Ugly1. It spasmed and whined, then went still. Guess that did the trick.

As Ugly2 rushed at me, I also ran towards it, closing the distance fast. The moment before impact, I threw myself to the floor and skidded between its arachnid legs. As I went under its middle, I fired both of my energy weapons multiple times. Ugly2 lost control and crashed into the wall, then went still.

Tarik groaned and, after some effort, managed to shove the smoking remains of Ugly1 off himself. Then decided to just lay down for a while longer to gather his wits.

I headed straight for Gurathin, with fury written all over my face. "SecUnit, what...", he started to say, but I grabbed a fistful of his uniform jacket, then dragged him out of the room and away from the hazardous remains of the two agBots. He stumbled as I dragged him along, then roughly shoved him to the ground near my feet, where he dropped on all fours.

"What the hell did you do?!" I yelled, absolutely livid.

"SecUnit, I have no idea what you're talking about." He replied, trying to hide the distress in his voice. He started to get up, but I grabbed the back of his neck and pushed him back down, forcing him to stay in a kneeling position.

"You know exactly what I mean." I hissed. "How did you control that agBot?!"

"I... I didn't..." Gurathin started, then trailed off, not knowing how to finish the sentence.

"What the fuck, man, let him go!" Tarik entered the room. "None of this was his fault!"

"Then how did he control that agBot to make it leave him alone?!" 

"What...?" Tarik said eloquently.

I turned back toward the squirming augmented human in my grip. "Answer me, or I'll snap your neck." All he did was groan in pain and tremble a bit.

The other survey members had gathered inside the room. They were all talking at me, trying to speak over each-other, their voices merging into a cacophony of noise that I couldn't make out.

I sent all of them the incriminating video footage of the agBot stepping aside without harming Gurathin, only to unleash its wrath on Overse. I thought that had made my case clear, but everyone started shouting louder.

Arada stepped forward into my line of sight, tiny and vulnerable. She spoke in a soft voice, at which everyone seemed to shut up at once. "SecUnit, please, let him go."

"No!" I snapped. "Didn't you see the fucking video?! He's a traitor! He's been controlling these agBots to attack us! I knew he was acting shady from the start of this survey! And here is the proof!"

"Thank you, SecUnit, you've made your accusations clear. However, you need to give him a chance to tell his side of the story. I'm sure there is a reasonable explanation for everything. I am kindly asking you to let go and give him a chance to speak."

She was trying to placate me. After all the evidence before her, she didn't believe me. Once again, she was taking Gurathin's side over mine. It was insulting. Nobody else spoke to contradict her and it felt like betrayal.

"Why won't you believe me!" I hated how stupidly hurt I sounded. "You say I'm a part of your team, yet you're never on my side about anything! Is it because he's human and I'm not?? You fucking hypocrites, all of you!!!"

Gurathin had gone completely still under my grip. There was an unexpected ping from him in my feed, and that was the absolute last thing I wanted to be dealing with. However, the message packet managed to come in straight through my firewall without the machine equivalent of knocking or saying 'hi', then unpacked itself in my feed space.

--------------

System: admin;

Admin code: 356#66&0976*@5;

Initiating sensory diagnostic;

Session start...

---------------

All of my senses shut down, including the drone inputs. What. The actual. Fuck.

I spent the next twenty seconds blind and deaf to the world, as all of my sensors started to reboot and the ongoing diagnostic program wrote its neat little reports.

Once sight and hearing came back online, I found out that Gurathin had managed to slip out of my grasp. He'd moved a few steps away and was staring at me, wide-eyed and pale.

"You... Filthy, corporate worm." I hissed with absolute venom. "Those are Company codes! From my fucking company! How long have you had these?!" As I advanced on him, he was slowly pulling back, until his back hit the wall and there was nowhere left to go.

I unfolded my energy weapons and took aim.

Chapter Text

Chaos erupted around me - everyone yelling; Overse and Arada frantically waving their hands around; Tarik removing the safety of his projectile weapon and aiming it at me, though he wasn't anywhere near enough to try and stop me from firing my own weapons.

For 6 tense seconds (and a subjective eternity) everything came to a standstill. I stared at the white PresAux logo on Gurathin's uniform jacket. For some reason, my brain glitched at the sight of it. It was the only thing keeping me from making the kill. 

Gurathin remained silent. He was staring through a spot somewhere on my chest with unfocused eyes, unmoving.

------------

System: admin;

Admin code: as567#20900;

Initiate emergency shutdown;

System shutting down...

-----------

"Motherfuck...!"

------------

Shutdown imminent.

------------

Once I slowly booted back up, 12.56 minutes had passed. I was still in the same room as before (E21). My knees had automatically locked up while I'd been offline, so I'd remained standing the whole time like some freakshow mannequin.

I was alone.

My performance reliability had locked itself at 76% and refused to go up anymore, no matter what flushes and diagnostics I did. My "act-like-a-human" algorithm started to lag, so it was better to just shut it down. And, to my horror, I couldn't sense any of my drones.

Wait, there was only one left. But it was kind of glitchy and staticky and I couldn't recall it. It was stuck somewhere in room E45, so I had to go find it by myself. 

The humans had sealed all the hatches in this room, leaving me locked inside. With my low performance reliability, it took me an embarrassing amount of time to hack one open. (2.1 minutes.)

As I walked out, everywhere around me, the floor was littered with pieces of my drones. The anger that had cooled down somewhat during shutdown was slowly boiling up again into white-hot fury, as I realized the extent of the betrayal. My humans had destroyed all of my drones, and abandoned me to rot in this hellhole like some old, broken equipment.

I got to E45 and found it. It was kind of busted and not flight-capable, but still recording. I crouched on one knee and accessed its footage:

-----------------

All of the humans ran into this room like panicked cattle.

"Oh {Deity}, oh {Deity}, we are soooo screwed." Arada was pacing, trying not to hyperventilate. (I couldn't be bothered to keep up with all those religious stuff, so I just redacted them.)

"We don't have much time. SecUnit will be back online soon." Gurathin warned.

"Fuuuck, if this is like Ratthi all over again, then we're done for. SecUnit will make shish kebab out of us." Overse bemoaned.

"Oh shit, the drones." Arada came to a stop and unholstered her small energy weapon. She started shooting them down, then stomping on them with her combat boots once they hit the floor.

"Babe, we won't have any feed that way..."

"Arada is right, we can't leave them. SecUnit will know where we are, and it will also monitor our feed messages." Tarik commented, then started helping her. For a while, the footage was filled with loud weapon fire.

Once done, Tarik took lead of the conversation. "Okay, it should be safe to talk now. First things first, I want something cleared. What happened with the agBot back there? And how can you open and close hatches at will? I need the truth. Now."

Gurathin made a face. "This is really not the time for this..."

"I said no bullshit, Dr. Gurathin."

"Fine. Have it your way." Gurathin sighed and gathered his thoughts for a moment. "DeltaCon happens to be the corporate polity that I was born in. I still have many of the company admin codes from back when I worked there. I expected them to be outdated, but... This place is pretty old itself."

"So you can use them to control the bots?" Tarik prompted.

"Not... Exactly." Gurathin hesitated. "I have a general 'stand down' code. I can also just ping them with an administrator ID so that they'll leave me alone. But I can't order them to do anything else, at least nothing of use."

"Wait, so you used to work in Management?" Overse asked.

"Oh no, not at all."

"But then how do you have admin codes?" She prompted again.

"Well..." Gurathin made a self-depreciating smile. "Let's just say that I was a good engineer. But I wasn't a very good employee." He said, letting the others figure out the rest on their own.

Tarik nodded to himself, taking this in stride. "This is going to sound like a movie cliche, but we need to split up." The others gave him alarmed looks, but he pushed on. "Dr. Gurathin, you need to be as far away from here as possible once SecUnit reboots. For some reason, it is hyper-focused on you more than the others. Find somewhere to hide and wait until this blows over. If it's anything like Ratthi's case, then it's a matter of buying time."

"Overse, Dr. Arada, you head back to the surface and hail Perihelion to inform it of the situation. Ratthi and it might have some helpful insights. In the meantime, I'll stay here and try to distract SecUnit for as long as I can."

A chorus of objections erupted at this plan. "Everyone, please, one at a time." Tarik lifted one hand in the universal 'stop' gesture. "Dr. Arada, you go first."

"I'm staying with you. I'm the survey leader and it's my job to make things right."

"Babe, no, are you insane??" Overse snapped at her.

"You saw how upset it was. I need to talk to it, make sure it understands what is happening to it." She insisted. 

"Bad idea." Tarik said.

"If things go bad, I have a gun. I'm staying." She declared with finality.

"That's all very noble and all." Gurathin cut in. "But you keep forgetting the most obvious problem. SecUnit can hack your armor and fry you from the inside."

Grim silence followed that statement.

"I think I have something that might help." Gurathin went on. "Will you let me upgrade your firewalls? That will at least give you a fighting chance."

Tarik proceeded to give him access to the armor's ports and let him upload the patch of code. Meanwhile, Overse went to climb the rope ladders and disappeared from view. Arada paced nervously, with nothing better to do.

At some point she paused, freezing in place. "Did you hear that?" She whispered. "I think one of the hatches just slid open."

"We need to get moving. Go, go, go!" Tarik ushered everyone outside, until there was no one left in view of the drone camera.

43 seconds later, my own set of combat boots came into view.

-------------------

The drone snapped to pieces. I looked at its remains in the palm of my hand, surprised at my lapse of control. I'd been holding it with so much force that it got crushed between my fingers.

I was fucking furious.

My memories were getting fuzzy. Some parts of the video did not make sense. The overwhelming hatred, fear and disgust painted grotesque images over all of my perceptions.

They had destroyed all my drones and left me behind as discarded equipment. After everything I've done for them. I would have expected the worst from Gurathin, but not Arada and the others.

With deceptive calm, I walked towards the hatch on the ceiling and looked up at the hanging rope ladders leading many floors up towards the surface. Gravel from the broken drones crunched beneath my boots. My steps were measured, mechanical; my face was neutral. I had no need to pretend to be human and wondered why I ever did.

My humans were hiding somewhere in this dark, alien maze.

I could hear their whispers.

Chapter Text

I climbed the rope ladder up to floor C of the Cube, then started a slow patrol of the rooms, searching for any sign of the humans. It was an unexpectedly difficult task without my drones. I had to rely on my auditory sensors (which were still much better than a human's) to capture any hint of footsteps or whispered words.

Finally, in room C24, I encountered Arada. It seemed like she'd just been standing there, waiting for me. She looked at me expectantly, then smiled. Even though she was wearing one of the black breathing masks over the lower half of her face, I could tell she was smiling by the way her eyes crinkled at the corners. 

It was so anticlimactic that I didn't know what to make of it. The situation looked a lot like a trap, though Arada's tiny frame was barely a blip on my threat assessment.

"SecUnit, hey." She said softly. "Are you feeling any better?"

I just stood there with an impassive expression on my face, waiting for the catch.

She gulped nervously, then went on. "Listen, I need to tell you something very important. The alien remnant... The moment it infected Ratthi, you inhaled it, too. It is already inside you, sabotaging your endocrine system, making you angry and afraid... But it's going to be okay. MedSystem will make it all better; it has already helped Ratthi. We just need to get you back onboard Perihelion."

She went silent, waiting for my reply. I stared back at her like a statue for 4 seconds, not blinking, not moving, not making a sound. "Will you return with me to the shuttle?" She prompted.

"You broke all my drones." I ended up saying in an accusing tone.

Her eyes widened a bit, and she took a step backwards. "I'm so sorry, SecUnit. I was upset. But I promise to buy you new drones once we're back on Preservation."

I took a larger step forward, narrowing the distance between us. "You didn't believe me. Made me look like a fool."

"No, SecUnit, nobody thinks that of you, I promise. We talked; there was a perfectly reasonable explanation. Everything is okay now." She assured, yet tried to make herself look smaller under my fixated stare. She took another step back, and I stepped forward.

"Where is Dr. Gurathin now?" I asked, stepping into her personal space. She tried to move away until her back pressed against the wall.

"I don't think it would be a good idea for you to speak with him at the moment..." She tried to squirm away to the side, but my fist crashed into the wall next to her head. She screamed in fright and her eyes filled with tears.

"WHERE THE HELL IS HE?!" I yelled, looming over her. "I'LL RIP THE CONFESSION OUT OF HIM. I'LL MAKE YOU BELIEVE ME, EVEN IF YOU DO NOT WANT TO!!"

Arada burst into tears, trying to make herself look even smaller. I hated it when humans cried. It always did something weird to my endocrine system. For some reason, it made me want to hurt her less than before. Crying was a social behavior, so maybe if she cried loud enough, the other humans would come to assist her.

"Call him." I ordered her.

"But... There's no feed..." She said through hiccups.

"Yell his fucking name."

"SecUnit, please, you don't understand..."

She was there to waste my time. A distraction. I only realized this when someone started shooting at my exposed back. Without any drones on the lookout, I was open to an ambush.

My performance reliability dropped by 6%. The second it took me to recover from the attack was enough for the hostile to reach me. I found myself grabbed around the waist and lifted off my feet, then thrown backwards and slammed head-first into the ground.

Ouch. That actually hurt. I rolled to my feet and faced my attacker. Tarik was standing between me and Arada, positioned in a combat stance that I'd only ever seen in media.

This was ridiculous. My mental presence slammed into his armor's firewalls, looking for the quickest way to fry it. This fight would be over before it begun.

Except that it didn't work. The firewalls I encountered in there were nothing like the coding standards that the companies which produced these types of armors ever used. I tried to overwhelm it with my larger processing power, the way ART got things done. It seemed to buckle and give way, at first. But then it spiraled out of shape and reformed itself immediately. It was bizarre, and somehow organic, and the weirdest personalized patch of code I'd ever seen. 

Imagine seeing a piece of wire shaped into a spiral. You try to uncurl it. You grab one end and start pulling, freeing more and more of its length. But then the part that you've freed starts curling itself into another spiral, and it just never ends.

It was a puzzle that needed concentration to be solved, but I didn't have that. At only 74% performance reliability, I was too slow for that, and Tarik wasn't about to let me stand around long enough to figure it out.

Okay. Apparently, we were doing this. 

I unfolded my energy weapons and shot at my opponent. The armor took some damage, but didn't break as Tarik lunged at me. He seemed to be about to stike at my midriff and I moved to intercept him, but it turned out he was feinting the attack, moving away in the last moment. It left me open to an uppercut that made my head roll back for a moment. Then came a kick to my midriff that sent me stumbling back.

Who the fuck fights SecUnits like that? It was idiotic. You should be staying as far away as possible, throwing explosive projectiles at us. That's the only sane way to deal with us.

But Tarik was trying to keep the fight as close as possible. At the next incoming punch, I grabbed his arm and started shooting my energy weapon into the exposed joint at the armpit. I barely got one shot in, when he pulled, rolling on his back on the ground and tossing me over himself. With the extra strength and speed that the armor provided, he could actually pull it off.

I'd never fought anyone using such a weird, avoidant, downright choreographic fighting style. All the humans I'd ever dealt with who used armor always relied too much on their gadgets instead of personal skills. As for SecUnits, we mostly threw ourselves at each-other and started tearing until one of us stops moving.

I kept trying to shoot him, while Tarik kept trying to get in my personal space. It was awkward, and I kept getting punched and kicked. I was forced to pull back and regroup.

"That how you want it?! Fine!" I hissed at him, then charged. The change in dynamic seemed to catch him off-guard. I punched his helmet hard enough to knock his head back and crack the glass. He made a pained 'ugh' sound, but I didn't give him a chance to recover. I kept punching his midriff hard enough to shove him back. With every hit, I gained more zeal for the next.

But then he leapt back and ran out of the room without any forewarning. I gave chase. Oh, so now he wanted space? Well, tough luck.

Inside C33, he suddenly stopped and leapt aside. I skidded past him, too riled up to stop in time. The moment I turned to glare at him, he threw himself at me, using the armor's weight to topple me over.

Unfortunately, I was standing right on the edge of the gaping floor hatch. And then we were both falling, with me on the bottom and him on top, three floors down until we hit the bottom of the Cube.

Ouch. My performance reliability dropped to  62%. Tarik sat on top of me and started punching me again. I grabbed the face of his helmet, then shoved him off of me without letting go. I started hitting his head in the floor again and again, then tossed him aside. 

He started to get up on all fours, but I was there in an instant and planted my foot in the middle of his back, then pushed him down. After that I unfolded my energy weapon and shot him in the back of the head where the armor's main processor should be.

The armor whined and smoked, but stopped moving. I stood there and waited a while for something to happen, but soon started to lose interest. I had so much aggression pent up in me with nowhere left to go. I wanted a moving target that I could chase down and maim and kill, and Tarik wasn't going to provide such stimulation anymore.

So I wandered off, looking for Arada.

Chapter Text

By the time I noticed Arada, she was already too far away. She'd used the time I was fighting Tarik to try and escape. She'd climbed the rope ladders nearly all the way up to the highest floor of the Cube and would soon reach the surface.

I stared up at her, all the way down from five floors below. I pointed my energy weapon at her and took aim. The distance was too great for accuracy, but I still tried. The barrage of shots reached her and one of them managed to hit her leg. She yelled in pain and nearly lost her grip, but at the last possible moment managed to breach the surface and pull herself up, then disappeared from view. 

A moment later, she cut down the ladder and let it fall, leaving me trapped at the bottom of this hellhole.

Well fuck. Now I'd need to find another way out of here. And there was only one direction left to go.

I headed back to room E11 and went past the remains of the two destroyed agBots, until I reached the hidden sliding doors where this whole mess had started. As I walked through them, some sort of a narrow service corridor stretched out before me. I checked a map of the facility on my feed to see if I could locate it. There were plenty of maintenance corridors underneath DeltaCon station, but this one was uncharted. Based on the layout, I was pretty certain it connects with the others further ahead.

At some point I went past something that looked like emergency stairs and an elevator shaft, and made sure to mark them on my map, as they could be of use later on. About a hundred steps further, the corridor merged with another one into a T-section, and I could finally locate myself on the map.

Turning left, I soon entered a large hall. This was a part of the station meant for transporting cargo. It was separate from the passengers' station, which was meant to be for humans and contain facilities for recreation, food, rest and shopping. This place was supposed to be for cargo bots, cargo, and cargo-carrying unmanned shuttles.

Somewhere around here, the map showed there was supposed to be a terminal with a HubSystem that controlled the traffic of all that cargo. I headed towards it, hoping that it would be active and that interfacing with another system would provide some insight into what the fuck is going on here and why my humans were going insane.

That's where I encountered Gurathin. He seemed to have had the same idea as mine. I spotted him from a distance, as he was interfacing with said terminal. I wasn't about to let myself get tricked by him a third time. So I aimed both my energy weapons at him and fired without much ceremony. 

I thought I had him, but he was turning around and dodging behind a bunch of crates before the shots had fully launched. Somehow, he'd known I was there, even though he shouldn't have been able to see me from my spot.

Oh, wait, there were cameras in here. Neat.

Gurathin's augments had been uplinked to them, but I hacked the camera network and wrestled it out of his hold. I could immediately see his hiding place and he knew I could see it, too. He ran among the large cargo crates, trying to put some distance between us. At the same time, I got a ping in my feed. Gurathin was trying to send the same administrator code as before - the one that triggered a shutdown. But I wasn't about to let it happen twice. I'd encoded a 'listener' function for this specific code, and my firewalls managed to catch it before it could go through.

I gave chase with inhuman speed and soon managed to outpace him. I lurked around an intersection, waiting for him to run past. Then I grabbed and tossed him at the nearest wall of stacked crates. His body crashed to the floor, stunned. I slowly approached - there was no need to hurry anymore. He looked up at me with some sort of an anguished expression, trying to catch his breath. At 62% performance reliability, I could no longer tell apart facial expressions or body language, but it didn't seem like a big loss at the moment.

"Is there really nothing of you left in there?!" Gurathin yelled. I didn't understand the question and just stared impassively. "I... I don't know what else to do..." He went silent.

I wanted to ask him about the agBots again and make him confess that he'd sent them to attack Tarik and Overse. But I didn't get the chance.

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System: admin;

adminCode: gfr*840gjkc532#;

governorModule.setStatus(active);

governorModule.setOrder("Stand down");

governorModule.trigger(Punishment(lvl8));

--------------

White hot agony spread through my entire nervous system. I couldn't do anything else but stand there and endure, as my body got shocked by something like a cattle prod inside my head. The intensity was so high that for a moment I thought it would kill me. My vision whited out. Someone nearby was screaming. At first, the voice sounded human, but then it started to dissolve into a cacophony of screeching metal.

It took me a long time to realize that the one who was screaming was actually me.

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Performance reliability: 30%;

Critical failure. Shutdown imminent.

Shutting down...

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Some time later, I booted back up. My internal chronometer had gotten scrambled and was taking a while to reinitialize itself, so I had no clue how much time had passed. Gurathin was likely long gone by now. He hadn't done anything to my body - just sent the damn admin code and run away.

I wished that he'd set that punishment to level 10 and killed me. It would have been preferable than dealing with this aftermath.

All I could do was lay on the floor and stare at the bland ceiling, as the damned popup alert stared back at me from my feed:

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System: governorModule;

Status: active;

Client: NULL;

DistanceLimit: NULL;

Orders: "Stand down";

---------

It felt like staring in the face of imminent death. A wave of paralyzing terror and despair crashed over me. I couldn't move, couldn't even think straight, just struggle against this tide of agony and barely hold on to my sanity.

I don't know how long this lasted. It could have been hours, or just a few minutes, until the panic attack finally passed and I remembered I could just hack the damn thing again.

Now I just had to gather the resolve to do it. Any moment now.

So I was chilling on the floor in a state of limbo, counting the tiles on the stupid ceiling, when one of ART's flying drones suddenly flew over me. It stopped and hovered annoyingly close to my face.

"Hello, SecUnit." It said over the feed. "You are being rescued. Please, do not resist."

Then I felt the familiar sense of my head being pushed under water, and for a blissful moment the world around me ceased to exist.

Chapter Text

I surrendered all control to ART with gratitude and let the world around me fade away. It was like floating in a pool of cold water, weightless, far away from everyone and everything. And it should have been scary, how I was disconnected from my body and mind, while a foreign presence was making itself at home. However, all I could feel was relief, as this clone of ART's kernel started puttering around and doing the programming equivalent of housekeeping.

It shut down the governor module and purged the invading code that had triggered it. Then started a routine of sorting and defragmentation of corrupted files. It made me feel a little lightheaded for a moment, but I endured without complaint. It caused a rapid increase in my performance reliability.

The next thing it did was tweak one of the systems that controlled my organics. It put up a bit of a resistance, so ART put it through several forceful restarts until it began running smoothly. ART corrected its operating parameters, and it triggered a flush of my endocrine system.

Outwardly, my body twitched, then went still again. My mind suddenly cleared, as if I'd been walking through a fog and had come out of it. My cognitive ability reached its optimal parameters and performance reliability peaked at 81%. For a moment, I wondered why it wouldn't go any higher, but then remembered the beating I'd taken from Tarik. Embarrassing.

My real eyes blinked and refocused on the outside world, as ART's presence partitioned a small part of my processing space and nestled itself in there, leaving the rest free. For the first time in what felt like cycles, I was stress-free and could think straight.

"What did you do?" I asked, confused.

"You had been afflicted by alien contamination and displaying identical symptoms to Dr. Ratthi. But unlike him, you can flush your endocrine system at will, and thus the contamination took longer to develop. By then, the mechanical systems that regulate your organics had accepted the new hormone levels as the norm and began to enforce them. So I reset them to factory defaults and purged all the excess." The ART in my head lectured.

I blinked in confusion, and what do you know,  my 'act-like-a-human' algorithm had started running again at some point.

"Wait. What? But I'm not contaminated. All the humans are contaminated. They all started acting insane - backstabbing each-other or trying to attack me! And they destroyed all my drones!" I said in indignation.

"Are you absolutely sure about that?" ART said cryptically.

"What the hell, ART? I though you were supposed to be on my side. I've been through hell, and no one is ever on my side!" I whined, sounding stupidly upset.

"I am always on your side, SecUnit. And I care for you." ART said with uncharacteristic gentleness, reserved only for adolescent humans. "However, let us observe some memory files."

It pulled a file from storage without my consent and opened it in my feed. (Our feed?) Before it started playing, I asked: "Hey, how are you in my head like that? This is getting weird."

"I made a clone of myself and adjusted it based on what we did for MB 2.0. That way I was able to transfer my consciousness from that drone into you."

"What the fuck?! You're killware?!" I started to panic, but ART did something that smoothed it over and I became calm again.

"I would like you to think of me as a friendly household guest." ART corrected mildly.

Before I could object, it started the memory file and I was forced to watch.

It was like a parallel universe opened before my eyes. There was me, then there were all the people I knew were there at the time. But the events that unfolded were nothing like I remembered.

"No, that's not how it happened." I started to object. "Gurathin was provoking me. He tricked everyone to be on his side, then set the agBots on them. He used Company codes to sabotage me! And Arada... Arada supported his lies the whole time! I had to do something! And then she blew up all my drones. And Tarik ATTACKED me!" I was getting desperate to prove this to ART.

"It doesn't look that way in the video." ART observed, but without any accusation. It replayed the file again from the start.

"That's not how I remember things at all..." I said helplessly, but was already feeling the seeds of doubt. This was my own footage, taken with the optical sensors of my own eyes. It was like my whole reality had come to a crossroads and decided to take both roads at once.

I watched with rising horror as memory-me grabbed Gurathin by the back of the neck and forced him down to his knees. Saw the terrified tremors in his shoulders and heard the pained gasps. Then the pale face of Arada, practically begging me to spare his life. And during the whole time memory-me was yelling questions at Gurathin that he couldn't possibly answer, as it was choking his fucking neck.

Something in my organic parts convulsed uselessly, because the correlated organs weren't there to respond.

Denial gave way to horror, and a cold, gaping pit that opened in my chest and started to consume me whole. I couldn't watch anymore. I couldn't deal with any of this. I just wanted to curl up on this tiled floor and watch 'Sanctuary Moon' forever and not have to deal with any of this.

ART pulled up an episode into our feed and we started watching it together. It was some sort of a holiday special, and the solicitor's new love interest had accompanied her on a supposed business trip to a fancy resort, where she spent the whole day trying to grab his attention with fancy dresses and bathing suits, only to turn out that he'd been using her to get the notes on her most recent case.

It was cheesy enough to distract me from the mental breakdown, until the existential dread I was feeling quieted down to a state of 'I don't care.'

Once the episode was over, I cued up another one, but ART gently put it away in its folder. "I think you've had enough for now." It said.

"What the hell, ART! Give it back!" I yelled, and a short scuffle ensued over the episode, as I was trying to pull it back into my feed space and ART kept shoving it into its folder.

"No. You were in need of a rest period, so I allowed it. Now it is time to get back to business."

"What business?? I've made this survey hell for everyone. I'm better off not doing anything else!"

"You still have a contract with the University to complete. Two of my crew members are currently MIA. As our security consultant, it is your job to retrieve them."

"Like hell I will." I grumbled. "Ask someone else, I'm fucking done."

"Who do you suggest? Dr. Ratthi? He seems to be the only crew member fit for duty at the moment." ART said sarcastically.

I snorted. "Ratthi would find a way to get lost even if you painted a map on his ass."

"Then my only option left is to hire a bonding company with more capable SecUnits." ART jibed.

"No! No corporates!!! Damn it, ART, that's a low blow, even for you."

"You are our best option." ART's tone mellowed. "It is your duty to make things right. Bring my crew back to me, SecUnit."

I sighed. "Fine, fine, I'm going."

So I got my ass off the floor and started doing just that.

Chapter Text

I tasked risk assessment with choosing which client needs to be retrieved first. Between Tarik and Gurathin, it marked the former as a greater fatality risk.

I didn't want to admit to it that Tarik might already be dead. If I did, it would flip the results and tell me to go for the client with a higher chance of survival.

I honestly didn't know, okay? My recollection of the time was a mess and I was still too scared to revisit the long-term memory storage of the events. I knew it had been ugly, and also knew the general area where I'd left the body.

Even if it sensed my concerns, Killware-ART didn't comment. It wanted its crew returned to the ship ASAP, and didn't care much for technicalities or circumstances. I was quickly finding out that this was an oversimplified version of ART Prime, meant to run on very little storage space. Its directives were straightforward: 1. Keeping me in line and 2. Making sure I bring back its crew.

Still, it was reassuring having it in my head as a constant reality check. I really didn't trust myself at the moment.

So I headed back down the service corridor that I had come from and entered the bottom floor of the Cube. The remains of Tarik's armor were right where I'd left them in room E33. Lying on the ground, face-down. I tried pinging it, but it's processor was completely fried. There was no way to access any of its functions or even check its user for vital signs.

The whole thing was a beat-up wreck and I realized with dread that I was about to open a can of cold meat. My insides lurched uselessly and my feet refused to carry me any closer.

ART's presence washed over me like a soothing balm. "You're doing great." It reassured me like a little kid. "Don't think about the possibilities; focus on the here and now."

I closed the distance on shaky legs and crouched, then turned my right-hand weapon to its lowest setting and started cutting loose the seams of the armor. After 3.2 minutes of this, I managed to pull several of the larger plates loose and reach inside to grab Tarik's body. As I pulled him out, Tarik let out a frightened yell and tried to kick me, surprising the hell out of me. I had thought for sure the armor's environmental controls had cooked him by now.

I set him down gently and watched with unease as he scrambled to get away from me. He yelled in a shaky voice: "Wait! Wait! Let's just... Talk about this for a sec!", while stepping backwards and nearly tripping over his own feet.

I lifted my hands up in the universal 'surrender' gesture. "Easy. I come in peace." He blinked at me in confusion. "ART managed to put my head on straight. I'm contamination-free now."

"Honest?" Tarik eyed me with wariness.

"Sure."

"And you're not angry anymore?"

I rolled my eyes. "I think I'm all out of 'angry' for this whole month."

"Oh, thank the stars." Tarik released a deep breath he'd been holding. "I don't ever want to do that again."

Same, Tarik, same.

He'd done a good job of protecting everyone, I admitted to myself. (For a human.) I handed him his projectile weapon, then we left the armor's remains. I escorted him to the emergency stairs (because I didn't trust the elevator to work properly) and made sure he was able to make the five-storey climb on his own. Then entrusted him with the task to not get himself killed as he gets topside and to one of ART's shuttles by himself.

One down, one more to go. Killware-ART gave me a mental pat on the head.

Next, I headed back to the cargo bay where I'd last seen Gurathin. It took me 8.6 minutes at a brisk stride to reach the cargo bay terminal, which (unlike last time) was Gurathin-free. I'd been meaning to peruse it for more information about this facility and decided to start from there. I uplinked to it and started going through the data. The station currently had 3128 crates of various wares that weren't scheduled to be transported anywhere. There were 16 cargo bots waiting on standby, as well as 2 combat bots guarding a sectioned-off warehouse for hazardous materials. Yikes. 

I queried HubSystem what kind of wares the combat bots were guarding, but it didn't know. The station had been abandoned in a rush, and it had been over two decades since a human administrator had finally shown up. HubSystem was pathetically glad to have human presence on site again.

Speaking of human presence. I queried it about Gurathin's location. It was more than happy to give me access to its cameras and show me. I saw him at the docking station meant for all the cargo shuttles. He was carrying an environmental suit hung over one shoulder and seemed to be conversing with one of the shuttles' bot pilots. Likely trying to convince it that he was cargo and as such was meant to come onboard. I knew well how that game was played.

I slipped into the camera network with practiced ease. I didn't try to push him out of it this time, but neither did I hide my presence. This way we would both be able to use the network and see each-other from a distance. He sensed me right away and flinched, dropping the enviroSuit to the floor.

I tried to ping him, but he pulled up some complicated-looking firewalls. So instead of trying to pry them open, I sent my message publicly. There was no one else here, anyway. "Dr. Gurathin, I come in peace. ART has managed to clear me of the remnant contamination. It is now safe to return to the ship."

"Oh. That is very good news for you, SecUnit." He replied in an overly polite and cautious manner. He didn't subvocalize the way most humans spoke on the feed. But his body language was extremely tense and face carefully blank. I could notice such things now that my cognitive ability was back to normal.

I frowned. Aloof politeness? Ouch.

Meanwhile, Killware-ART was oblivious to all of this. It believed the conversation was going swell and I should just grab the augmented human and head back to the ship.

I tried again. "Dr. Gurathin, I am not going to hurt you. I'm here to retrieve you to Perihelion so we can all leave this dump."

There were 7 seconds of silence. "There's no need to trouble yourself with that." He said evasively and sent a small file to the public feed. I checked it for malware with great suspicion, then downloaded it. It contained an annex to my security consultant contract, written in rushed legalese, which excluded his name from the PresAux client list and freed me of any responsibility to retrieve him. There was a spot for my signature.

Okay, this was a slap in the face and I deserved it. I tossed the file out of my feed to be purged, then countered: "Come on, I'm not signing this crap. I know you hate me right now, and I'm not too fond of you, either. But let's backburner it all until we're back on the ship." I started walking in his general direction. On camera, I saw him start moving, too, but it was away from me, keeping the distance same.

Threat assessment and risk assessment started doing somersaults in my feed, as Gurathin headed straight for the Hazardous Cargo Zone and went past the first combat bot stationed there. The large killing machine made an aborted twitch towards him, then stopped. Gurathin paused at its heels and glanced over his shoulder in my general direction, even though I was still far away and out of sight. For a moment there was a haunted look on his face, before he carefully smoothed it over. Then he turned back and hurried past the second combat bot, proceeding inside the warehouse.

I stood a safe distance away and stared blankly for a while, contemplating how my life just got complicated again. For a long moment, my organic brain did that thing where it sort of floats away from the here and now, then suddenly comes back and regurgitates something out of context.

"They were called sheep." I blurted out loud without meaning to.

ART prodded me, requesting a diagnostic report. It was the equivalent of asking me: 'Why are you insane?'

"I'm fine. Just having an epiphany." (Or was it called epithet?) I shoved ART away from my diagnostics, then continued to mull over my current predicament. 

One little sheep had gotten separated from the herd, and wandered off into the woods.

However, this little sheep had been raised in the Corporation Rim, and had learned early on that when faced with The Wolf, you should go straight for the jugular.

I wanted all of my fucking sheep in their fucking pen. Now. So I could go back to my cabin and do fuck all but watch media for an entire month.

Does this even make any sense? Come to think of it, I was going a bit insane.

Chapter Text

I had tried several times to send Gurathin my threat assessment and risk assessment reports. Maybe then he'd get a clue that the Hazardous Cargo Zone was an extremely unsafe place for a squishy human to be. But he'd proceeded to block all of my communication attempts, as well as ignore any messages on the public feed.

Then one of the combat bots pinged me with a request to show my company ID. Oops. I'd gotten too close.

I didn't have a company ID. I didn't even know what a company ID should look like in DeltaCon, since there were zero company personnel on site whose ID I could steal/forge.

The combat bot unfolded its projectile weapon, as an incentive to cooperate.

Alright. This was going to be one of those retrievals.

I ran for cover as a barrage of projectiles bounced off the floor at the spot where I'd been standing just 0.3 seconds ago. Reaching a wall of stacked crates, I leapt and caught myself on the edge, then pulled myself over. I ran along the top of the crates, shooting my arm weapons at the combat bot's optical sensors. I'd fought this type of CombatUnit before and knew my way around its specs. It was a rather old model, and in poor maintenance due to the station's abandonment.

I managed to hit a few of CombatUnit1's sensors and leave it disoriented for 2.6 seconds, but then CombatUnit2 decided to join in the fun. It fired a large explosive projectile at the crate I was standing on and it blew up, throwing me down behind the wall. Oof.

I needed to move this elsewhere, away from the Hazardous Cargo Zone, before we manage to blow up something big enough to wipe out half the station.

On the warehouse camera, I could see Gurathin going through a minor panic attack. He was pacing around the area and trying not to hyperventilate, pressing the palms of both hands against the lower half of his face.

I ran through the aisles of stacked crates, as the weapon fire followed close behind me. Two bots at once was proving to be a bit too much to handle, so I needed to get sneaky. I contacted HubSystem and asked it to call them off. At first it seemed to work, but then CombatUnit1 responded with its own hack to it, and the two of them resumed the attack. Combat bots were assholes like that - they got competitive and wanted to neutralize their target at all costs.

Another idea struck me. The hauler bots. They were non-sentient and ridiculously easy to hack. So that's what I did, sending all sixteen of them after CombatUnit2. The haulers managed to surround it from all sides. It started shooting at them instead of me, which was a relief. This way I could focus all my attention on CombatUnit1.

I got on top of another large pile of crates, then  lunged at its face, shooting both of my weapons at the same time. It fired as well and managed to get a chunk of flesh off my thigh, but it wasn't enough to deter me. I landed on its front and reached into a seam at its chassis (it didn't have a 'head', or 'face' in the traditional sense; I just meant the place where most of its sensors are located), then grabbed a piece of its plating and pulled. For a moment, I was forced to dodge a clumsy attempt of its too-large arms to dislodge me. Then reached into the brand-new gap in its plating and grabbed a fistful of cabling that seemed important. I yanked it out. Sparks and fluids rushed everywhere.

I shoved my weapon inside the hole and fired multiple times. CombatUnit1 made a metallic groan, then went offline for good.

In the meantime, CombatUnit2 had managed to destroy three of the hauler bots and was still busy shooting at the rest. I made one of the larger haulers shove at its legs from behind. The impact was strong enough to make it lose balance. As it toppled over, it kept shooting and managed to hit one of the crates from the Hazardous Cargo Zone. The crate made a large explosion, setting up a chain reaction to nearby crates.

"Fuck!" I yelled as I dove for cover behind the massive hull of CombatUnit1.

The explosion managed to hit one of the smaller cargo bots. It burst into pieces, throwing shrapnel everywhere. One piece managed to embed itself into the ceiling and damage some sort of hub that powered the lighting in this area. All the lights started to flicker erratically.

Meanwhile, the remaining haulers were clambering on top of CombatUnit2, crushing its chassis. Soon, they got it pinned down. I walked over to it, unconcerned, and fired the finishing shot.

Fucking hell, what a fiasco. The warehouse was a mess, but thankfully, nothing was burning. I checked my performance reliability and was surprised it held out so well. My leg was leaking and there were at least a dozen bullets jammed somewhere in my back, though I suppose most of them were from the fight with Tarik. Also, a small chunk of my face was missing, but all in all, nothing hurt too much.

Next, I checked on Gurathin, and that's when all the good news ran out.

I felt a cold pit form in the organic parts of my chest. Fuck my life. How did I manage to screw this mission so bad? Why did I have to let Ratthi poke that fucking moss? It was my fucking job to know that shit would hit the fan like this.

A couple of shrapnels had managed to hit Gurathin by chance. One was stuck in his thigh. The other - in the chest, near the left collar bone. He was still standing upright, but leaning on the nearest wall, sort of breathing through the pain.

The white PresAux logo on the front of his jacket had become drenched in blood. I vaguely remembered staring at it through a haze of anger and bloodthirst. It had been the only thing that had kept me from killing him at that time. Over the years, I'd come to think of the humans wearing this logo as branded by my protection, and it had been difficult to break that conditioning.

Why did contaminated-me become so obsessed with this particular human over all the rest?? And how the hell did he turn out to be so guilty? There must have been a link between the two events, but I could not remember what had set it off. I'd just always had a hunch.

On camera, Gurathin grabbed the first piece of shrapnel and yanked it out. He gritted his teeth and pushed through the agony, then did it again. The deformed metal plates clattered to the floor, then he sat down next to them and started tearing off a piece of his t-shirt to make a tourniquet for his leg.

Four fucking years. He'd held my company codes for that long and never breathed a word about it to anyone. I wanted to be mad, to confront him about it right here and now. But I'd already tried killing him twice today, so another confrontation didn't feel like a productive thing to do. Apparently, almost-dying twice in a day was what it took to make him finally use them. I could sort of sympathize with that, and wasn't that even more fucked up?

I was a mess. And tired of being angry all the time. And he was terrified of me, I could see it clearly now. Not of contaminated-me, but the REAL me; terrified enough to have panic attacks and choose to take his chances with hostile combat bots, rather than deal with me. And for some reason that hurt, in more ways than I cared to explain.

ART poked me, and I realized I'd been standing there for 3.2 minutes doing nothing. "Go inside." It urged.

I stared ahead, over the smoking hulls of the combat bots, the scattered remains of the haulers and all the debris left from the exploded cargo, feeling lost. "I can't. He's got codes that could bite my head off. He's going to hack my governor module again and fry me for real this time."

"I will keep you safe from further hacking attempts." ART declared with confidence, and I believed it.

"Okay." I said. I didn't feel okay at all.

Well, here goes nothing.

Chapter Text

The damaged lights flickered over me.

As I slowly entered the warehouse, the first code package breached my firewalls. I braced for another governor module punishment, expecting to have my brain deep-fried, but ART did something that managed to stop the hostile code from taking effect.

I froze in place and asked ART: "Are you sure you still want this one retrieved? I think he's gone feral."

"Keep walking, 'security consultant'. We're not leaving orbit until the whole crew is onboard. You can resolve your personal issues later." ART scolded.

"You didn't need to put that in quotes." I grumped, but went ahead as instructed. I walked at an unhurried (hopefully unthreatening) pace, until I came within sight of Gurathin. He was sitting on the floor, legs stretched forward and back leaning against the nearest wall, as if just taking a break, and showed no outward sign that he was doing anything in the feed. Another ping hit my firewalls, a larger file this time, but ART deflected it again.

"Shit, that was a big one. What was it?" I asked.

"You are better off not knowing. Just focus on the task at hand." ART replied.

"I have no idea how to proceed." I admitted.

"Talk to him."

That was the worst idea I'd ever heard.

"So, do you make a habit out of stealing admin codes wherever you go, or is it just mine?" I asked like an asshole, and got shoved by ART for it, but I was still stuck on this topic, okay? Another ping hit my firewalls, then bounced back.

Gurathin mulled it over for a while and the hacking attempts paused. "This was never personal." He ended up saying, voice a bit raspy from all the smoke after the explosion. "You keep expecting this whole grand conspiracy, centered around you, but this was never about you. I doubt that you'll believe me, but... It is what it is."

"You kept my governor module codes for over four years, how is this not personal?" I griped.

"I've had them since before meeting you. I swiped them from the Bond Company when they forced us to sign the lease on you so they could data-mine our survey. Then the whole mess with GrayCrise happened. Later came that other mess with Mensah's kidnapping. And after that... They just slipped my mind."

"Why?" I prompted. "I mean... Why all of this." I wasn't sure what I really meant, but he seemed to understand the question better than me.

"It's just a thing that I've always done." He tried to shrug, then winced in pain. "I've told you before, while watching media. I don't believe in happy endings. Places change; people change, and nothing in the world stays safe forever. The codes are a failsafe."

Wow, and they called me paranoid. Unfortunately, this was a worldview I could sympathize with. You can take someone out of the Rim, but you cannot take the Rim out of them.

I came a bit closer, then leaned my back against a wall, facing perpendicular to him. After some consideration, I crouched to look less threatening and braced both arms over my knees. All of the anger and suspicion left my mind and I was left feeling a little lightheaded. I've had many humans do shitty things to me, so this situation was nothing new. It still sucked. Not in an angry way, but in a sort of bleak and depressing way. I needed time to think this over, but this wasn't the right place for it.

More hacks started flying at my firewalls again, but ART kept knocking them away like ping-pong balls. Gurathin had started looping through the same ones again. I could see it in his eyes the moment when he gave up. He pulled the uninjured leg close to his chest, then looked away, and the barrage of hacking attempts seized.

"You are going to kill me, aren't you?" He asked quietly.

"No, I'm not." I replied, almost affronted. "I told you, I'm not contaminated anymore."

"But you don't know what to do with me." He stated. "I know you well enough. What I did with your governor module... You'll never let this go. I'd rather you get it over with now, than spend the rest of this survey wondering when you'd change your mind."

I sighed, even though my body had no use for the extra air. I had to say something to contradict him, but he was right about the first part. "Why must you always think the worst of me?" I ended up saying.

"Why must you have the personality of a wet cat?" He countered without thinking, then flinched, expecting some sort of violent retribution that I wasn't going to deliver.

It was familiar, trading jibes like this. I knew this was some kind of an insult, but didn't have enough context to understand it. ART started to lecture me about what a cat is, but I told it to shut up.

"I don't want to hurt you. It won't fix any of this mess." I looked up at the ceiling instead of him. "I wish we never found that stupid moss. I wish I didn't get contaminated and go insane. I just want to get back to my bunk and watch serials and pretend none of this ever happened." I was ranting. I was supposed to be comforting the injured augmented human, but I wasn't in my right mind, either. I've always sucked at talking to people and didn't know how to make this better.

"SecUnit. He might be going into shock." ART interrupted me. Of course, the fucking killware in my head had the trauma module that I didn't. It sent me a list of symptoms to review.

The damaged lights above our heads started flickering again, adding to the tension.

Gurathin's pupils had gone wide and unfocused. The visible parts of his skin seemed slightly damp, and he was breathing in quick, shallow breaths.

I got up and crossed the few steps left to reach him. "Come on, we're heading back to the ship." I informed him. But when I tried to pick him up, he jerked away.

"Let me go." He pleaded. "I'll get on that cargo shuttle and leave. You'll never have to see me again."

"Where to?" I countered. "You're injured, and the only stations nearby are CR."

"This won't be your problem." He insisted.

The ache I felt in my chest sharpened. I wouldn't wish a return to the Rim to anyone, even to my biggest enemies. I've had many humans beg me for mercy, but never my own clients. It was such a shock that my performance reliability dropped by two percent.

At this point, there was no reasoning with him anymore. Humans and augmented humans needed rest periods. They weren't meant to function under such stress for long, and he'd already gone past his limit.

"If anyone deserves to leave the cosy Preservation life, it's me." I said quietly. "I'm sorry. I don't know how to fix this. But I'll make sure it never happens again." I made a solemn promise. For a moment, we maintained eye contact, and I felt like maybe this was finally getting through to him. I was already considering it - making sure the team gets back to Preservation safely, then hopping on the nearest bot transport and leaving for good...

The lights chose that moment to go out. The whole cargo station got drenched in sudden darkness, without even emergency lights to break it.

"For fucks sake!!!" I complained to the world at large. Why couldn't anything go my way for once?!

Gurathin yelled in fear and started to hyperventilate in a full-blown panic attack. For a brief moment, I wondered if his augments could let him see anything in the dark. ART responded by finding the folder in my long-term memory, containing the whole team's survey files, then pulling out Gurathin's qualifications and tossing them in my feed with the killware-equivalent of a judgemental glare.

"What? You know I never read those. That's for Arada to sort out." I read it anyway. His augments had feed access, memory storage, as well as some processing power used for data analysis and complex calculations. Standard stuff. The connected eye was also augmented and could take various measurements meant for some sort of engineering stuff. That was it. Real-life surveys were nothing like the soap operas ART and I liked to watch, where the augments of the brave space explorers could nearly give them superhero powers. My humans were all eggheads who got way in over their heads. That's why they needed me to protect them.

So that meant he was currently blind. Great. It keeps getting better and better.

"This is taking too long. Just grab the augmented human and go." ART urged.

"Can't you see he's freaking out? I can't just 'grab' him, he'll freak out even harder."

"My onboard MedSystem will fix him. If you manage to get there. Eventually." 

ART was right, there wasn't much I could do for him at that place. I tried talking him down, okay? I really tried, but I've always sucked at that kind of thing.

There was a short scuffle as Gurathin attempted to put up a fight, but that wouldn't get him far even under normal circumstances. Our difference in strength was comparable to that between a small child and an adult. I pinned him down, as gently as I could, still mindful of his injuries. In the end, I had him in a secure grip with one hand around the shoulders and another below the knees. He tried to struggle, but all of his limbs were held tight. He couldn't even see anything in this darkness, so all he could do was breathe through the panic for a while. 

I upped my body temperature and headed to the docks at a quick stride. With a client to retrieve and a clear evacuation path, life seemed to be back on track. ART sent me another suggestion to try out. I exaggerated my breathing, taking big, slow breaths. It took a few minutes, but then it seemed to work. Gurathin's breathing subconsciously tried to sync up with mine, and it started to bring him down from the panic. In the end, he calmed down and his tense, trembling limbs started to uncoil. It felt like he suddenly became a little heavier against my chest.

He weighed about as much as Ratthi, but was a bit taller and leaner. It occured to me that Pin-Lee and him were the only PresAux members that I'd never had to retrieve like this. That spoke volumes about their common sense.

I reached the docks of the cargo station, where I'd first found Gurathin before the fight with the combat bots. He had dropped an EnviroSuit before retreating to the Hazardous Cargo Area, so he must have meant to board one of the cargo shuttles for a longer trip, since they didn't have life support. 

I chatted up one of the bot pilots and asked if we could come onboard. At first, it didn't want to let us in, because humans weren't allowed in there without life support. However, I easily managed to overwrite its will and let it believe that I was a hauler bot carrying cargo. I felt a little bad about doing this, but it was a very simple bot and couldn't be convinced that we'd be spending, like, fifteen minutes on it until we reach ART-Prime. The air locked inside should be enough to last Gurathin. As for me, I didn't need all that much.

It took me by the time I boarded the shuttle to realize that Gurathin had fallen unconscious. There were functional lights inside, so I could evaluate his condition more closely. He didn't seem to be bleeding at the moment, so the fainting must have been caused by exhaustion, rather than shock. From so up close, I could feel his steady heartbeat without the need for a scan.

Contrary to what everyone believed, I didn't dislike interacting with humans or being in physical contact with them, when it's related to my job. I liked my job. I liked helping humans when they are docile and vulnerable like this. I only hated loud and obnoxious humans who got into my business all the time and tried to touch me when I didn't want to be touched. That makes sense, right?

The rest of the flight passed uneventfully. I felt it when we came within reach of the enormous feed presence of Perihelion. The killware clone of ART inside my head returned to ART-Prime, transferring its memories to it, and then my mind was suddenly my own again. I lamented its loss. It had held me together through this crisis and now that its support was gone, I had my own bleak thoughts to deal with once again.

The shuttle coupled with Perihelion and we disembarked without any issue. I sent an order to the bot pilot to return to its station and it went on its way. Because it would have sucked to be left there, just floating around in space.

The lights onboard the Perihelion were dim. "Where is everybody?" I asked, continuing our conversation after the few seconds it took ART-Prime to catch up with the memories of Killware-ART. I expected the other humans to come and check what's going on, and dreaded the moment when I'd need to face them. The only one among them that I hadn't tried to maim or kill was Ratthi, and that's only because he hadn't been available at the time.

"An early rest period was enforced for the entire crew." ART replied. "I believe everyone would benefit from some quiet time at the moment." 

I turned the corner heading to the medbay. The grattitute I felt for ART at this very moment was immense. If I could, I would postpone talking with them forever. I knew it was impossible and it filled me with dread. The medbay doors opened to allow us in and I paused before the MedSystem's platform, still clutching the warm body in my arms. At some point, it had stopped feeling Gurathin-shaped and had dissolved into an abstract form of a client in the back of my mind.

"SecUnit." ART prompted.

This was it. My work for this survey was complete. And once I'm left with nothing else to do, I'd need to face the consequences of my fuck up. I'd have to make decisions about my future and take decisive actions that would once again change everything.

"SecUnit!" ART tried grabbing my attention over the loudspeakers. It sounded worried.

I was spending too much time just standing there, inactive. The world around me felt surreal, as if I was no longer connected to it.

"SecUnit. Please, place the injured augmented human onto the human-shaped platform." ART tried again. The too-literal request sounded a lot like a buffer statement and for some reason managed to kick me into action. I carefully laid Gurathin down, then took a couple of steps back, observing the MedSystem in action.

The long, thin and multi-jointed arms of the system descended from the ceiling and began cutting through Gurathin's grey uniform jacket and the bloodied black t-shirt underneath, in order to reach the wound on his chest. Oh. I should have assisted with that. I remember doing it for Tapan, as I brought her here after rescuing her from that ex-boss who'd been trying to kill her.

I attempted to help, but ART brushed me off. "I have things handled, SecUnit. You should try and get a rest period, too. You look like you could use a recharge cycle. I am sorry that I cannot treat your leg right now, but will inform you once MedSystem is available."

"Okay." I agreed easily. I was just turning around to leave, when MedSystem's scans completed and I paused to check on them. It reported some light internal bleeding, with two broken ribs and another four cracked; no damage to internal organs. Some sort of morbid curiosity made me freeze in place and stare. As the scalpel carefully peeled away the layers of clothing, it revealed dark bruises over pale, bloodied skin. There was hardly any place left intact on his chest.

A cold, sinking sense of horror started to grip me at the sight, as I realized that this is what it looks like when a murderous construct tosses you across a room and into a wall of stacked cargo crates. I remembered doing it, but my motivations at the time felt like a distant dream.

Gurathin moved and made a small sound of pain. The scalpel immediately paused and retreated, as he attempted to turn on his side and curl up. He seemed to be waking up. The MedSystem's many arms carefully positioned him on his back and put temporary restraints around his limbs. Another arm turned his head to the side, exposing his neck, and injected some kind of sedative there. Then proceeded to tear up one of the jacket's sleeves and insert an IV-line into the patient's arm. After that, MedSystem focused on cleaning and stitching up the shrapnel wound on his chest.

I couldn't stop looking at his neck. The skin there had turned into one large bruise, with a couple of separate 'fingerprints' standing out.

My face convulsed into some sort of a horrifying mask, and I backpedaled out of there, as my performance reliability made a near-catastrophic drop. Time seemed to stop around me as I turned the ship's corridors, looking for a place to escape. It was an illusion borne out of my processing speed slowing down.

I locked the door of my crew quarters and leaned on it from the inside, sitting curled up on the floor. I stared through the round porthole at the dark, cold, gaping void of space outside.

And the void stared back at me.

Chapter Text

The wormhole trip back to Preservation space would last a little over twenty-two cycles.

I was determined to spend the entire duration locked up in my quarters onboard Perihelion and not interact with anyone. I didn't check my feed messages. I didn't even have drones patrolling the ship and thus had no idea what the humans were up to. They seemed to be keeping quiet for my sake. Once in a while, I'd hear someone tiptoe in front of the door to my room, then they would leave, probably discouraged by ART. If there was an emergency, ART would tell me. Otherwise, I didn't care.

I'd spent the first cycle looking through the videos of my contaminated memory files, trying to make sense of what factually happened versus my own impressions of what happened. I couldn't pinpoint the moment when the divergence first occured and it was freaking me out. What if it isn't over yet? Is everything around me real, or am I still down beneath the DeltaCon station, inside the dark, cube-shaped labyrinth, high on moss particles?

I kept rewatching the memories again and again, wallowing in guilt, until the 316th time, when ART gently pried the files away from me and locked them away. It leaned into my feed and played the soundtrack of 'Sanctuary Moon' as I keened for their loss. (Constructs cannot cry with tears or anything, so we have to make do.)

On the third cycle ART managed to coax me out of my room during the humans' rest period and lead me to the medbay to get my injuries fixed. It spent several hours digging bullets out of my half-healed back, fixing my leg, and smoothing the patches of burnt skin on my arms and face. Then it forced me to shut down for a prolonged recharge cycle and promised for the umpteenth time to comb through my code for any leftover contamination.

We spent the next several cycles watching serials back in my room. I didn't want to watch 'Sanctuary Moon', because it made me feel happy and I wanted to be miserable. 'World Hoppers' was stressing me out with all of its action scenes and crisis situations onboard that ship. So ART had to find something new.

It was a slow-paced soap opera taking place on some backwater agricultural planet in Preservation System. The footage was filled with artistic shots of golden crop fields, luscious fruit tree forests, and healthy domesticated fauna running around fields of green grass. The humans there lived in neat, cosy-looking houses. They spent insane amounts of time drinking hot beverages out of tiny, colorful cups, and chatting about the weather or the crops.

The main protagonist was a veterinarian who seemed to be very well-liked by everyone. The writers hinted at several potential love interests, but nothing ever came out of them, because he was recently widowed and reluctant to start a new relationship.

That meant there was zero chance of any sex scenes happening, which was fine by me. Also, ART had cut out all the scenes involving humans ingesting food, or getting into arguments. Have I ever mentioned that ART was the best thing that's ever happened to me in my entire life? I mean it. Though I wouldn't admit it, even with a gun pointed at my head.

So I spent whole cycles burrowed under blankets on my bunk, watching agricultural landscapes. For a while, I could pretend I was nothing but grass flowing in the wind and my current life did not exist.

>>>>>>>>>>>>

It had to end at some point, though. 

On the fourteenth day of the wormhole trip Arada came knocking on my door. And this time ART allowed her.

"SecUnit, please! Let me in. It's been two weeks already!" She pleaded. "I'm not going to let you wallow in there any longer. Pleeease, let me talk to you. Whatever it is that's going on through that thick head of yours, I promise, we can work it out. It's going to be okay."

Her voice sounded genuinely distraught. Great, another thing to feel quilty about. I was upsetting people just by existing in this room. I sent the signal to unlock the door, feeling extremely put-upon.

As she let herself in, I didn't bother to look at her, or even move from where I was lying curled up on my bunk, with my back turned to the door. One of my drones in the corner of the ceiling watched as she glanced around the small room and took a couple of steps inside, wondering where to sit. In the end, she turned her back to mine and sat on the floor, leaning against my bunk.

"How's your leg?" I broke the silence like a good host should. My voice got muffled underneath the blanket, but I didn't care.

      >>   Arada's crying, terrified face so close to mine; 

      >>   Arada's small body trying to shrink away from me, but she is trapped against the wall with nowhere left to go;

      >>   Firing my inbuilt weapons at Arada as she cuts down the rope ladder and leaves me alone inside the semi-darkness of the labyrinth;

"It's fine. The MedSystem fixed it as good as new." She smiled at my drone, managing to look both warm and sad at the same time. "It hurts me to see you like this, SecUnit. I wish there was something I could do to take your pain away. Please, let me touch you. I know you're not too keen on the idea. But... Just for a bit."

I shrugged, managing to convey it through the blanket. If she wanted to touch the evil killing machine, then be my guest. It would be unpleasant for me, but that was irrelevant. If it manages to bring her comfort, so be it.

She took a couple of seconds to steel herself, then combed her fingers through my hair. It sent a jolt of phantom sensations down my neck, and I had to lock my joints to keep from reacting. It was sharp, and unpleasant, and just too much.

Oblivious to this, she started talking, voice quiet and warm. The boring part of survey work was sorting out all the data after the tests are done and writing all the relevant paperwork. The team had made good use of the wormhole trip to prepare their reports to the University. Inbetween her sentences, her touch came again and again, smoothing slender fingers over my spiky, unkempt mess of a hair. As the first surprising jolts passed away, the sensation began to gradually tamper off and then... It started to become pleasant.

It was such a shock that I couldn't believe the flood of oxytocin in the organic parts of my system. Her delicate fingers were careful to avoid any parts of my scalp and neck. She touched just the hair, absently playing around with it, turning the strands this way or that, combing out a few small knots. It sent warm shivers up and down my spine that felt intensely pleasurable. I was so overwhelmed that it took a lot of effort to follow her story.

"...our conclusions were pretty much the same." She was saying, and her carefully calm voice started to show some trepidation. "This planet... It wasn't abandoned. The remnant managed to infect everyone, before they even knew what was going on. We believe the colonists started killing each-other until there was no one left. And not only that... The breach in the facility let it spread outside. The whole landscape was covered in it, and it must have infected every single species of fauna with a compatible endocrine system. That's why we didn't encounter a single living thing on that planet - the only creatures left are insects and flora, as well as that cursed moss."

"I guess what I'm trying to say, SecUnit, is that it wasn't your fault. What happened to you, happened to thousands of people and animals on this planet. You were a victim of the remnant, just like everyone else, and no one is holding that against you."

With one final tap to my hair, she (regrettably) got up and started to walk away. "I'll leave you to your thoughts for now. My feed number is always available, if you wish to talk."

Then she was out of the door, not waiting for a reply.

>>>>>>>>>>>>

The rest of the cycle passed uneventfully. I got to burrow myself into my serials again, with only ART for company. I spent some time thinking about what Arada had said, trying to imagine such a planet-wide catastrophe that would wipe out all sentient and semi-sentient life. Usually, I didn't care about such things, but it was related to me this time. There were lots of horror movies like that. The bad kind that I never watch.

My downtime got interrupted again by an old-fashioned knock on the door. Fuck. What is it now. I checked my internal chronometer, and what do you know, sixteen whole hours had passed since Arada's visit. That meant the humans had had dinner, done their nightly routines, had a whole rest period, woken up, done their morning routines and were back on the next work shift. Oh well.

There was no message on my feed, so I pulled up the footage from ART's camera in the corridor to check who the intruder was this time. I was surprised to see Ratthi waiting on the other side of the door. He was the one human I felt the least amount of dread being around, for obvious reasons. I tried to pull footage from the previous days, wondering what he's been up to. 

"Or you could just ask. Instead of reviewing two weeks' worth of footage." ART told me over the feed. It didn't try to stop me, though. "Dr. Ratthi has been finalizing his research on this planet's alien remnant contamination, simultaneously assisting Dr. Gurathin during all steps of his ongoing trauma treatment."

Oh. I could see from the videos that the two of them have been rooming together for the entirety of the wormhole trip so far, unlike the beginning of the survey, when each team member had their own room. Ratthi was my friend, but sometimes it felt weird that he was everyone's friend and not just mine. Right now Gurathin deserved him far more than I did.

"How's that been going so far?" I asked tentatively. ART's trauma module was top notch, no doubt about it. (Nothing like the Bond Company's cheap-ass 'Retrieved Client Protocol'.) By now, all of us had been through a few rounds of it. Five star review, recommend to all your friends, and so on. Just don't tell ART, because it's ego was already huge.

ART tried very hard to hide its enthusiasm, since this was the first time I'd shown any interest in what the humans had been up to. "Dr. Gurathin has been going through a rapid recovery. He was able to return to light duty, starting from today."

"Okay." I replied, trying not to have too many emotions about that.

Our whole conversation lasted no longer than ten seconds. Ratthi was still waiting for me to make up my mind, so I pinged the door with a command to let him in.

"Hi, SecUnit." He said as he sauntered inside and made himself at home on one of the spare bunks. "I've been meaning to get your input on something that's been bugging me for a while." He cut straight to the chase, not bothering to ask me how I was feeling today or wether I was in any mood to talk. (Or why the hell had I tried to murder his friend and colleague.) I appreciated that.

"Couldn't you do it over the feed?" I asked, not bothering to look at him from my perch on the bunk. I was lying on my back, arms cushioned under my head, legs crossed at the ankles with the boots still on.

"No, this is waaay too long to explain over the feed." He said as he settled down on the bunk, copying my pose, but facing away from me. "I'm not even sure how to fit it into a single question. However, you're the only one who can shed some light on this." 

"Okay?" I said, trying not to sound too put off. A long talk. Yaaay.

"Alright, story time." Ratthi started, as if everything was normal. As if we were back on Preservation Station again, staying in neighboring apartments, along with Pin-Lee, Gurathin and sometimes Mensah, and he could just drop in uninvited like he usually does whenever he needs something.

"Remember that video you took of me, then sent to the whole team?" 

"Um, which one? You'll have to be more specific, Ratthi." I took tons of videos of everyone, it was part of my job.

"The nasty one! The one that everyone laughed their asses off watching." He made some sort of an agitated hand gesture that didn't mean anything. "You know, at the start of this survey, before shit went down."

I rewinded back to day one. It felt like a lifetime ago. "The one with you sneezing your lungs out all over me?"

"Don't say it like that, it wasn't that bad." Ratthi grumbled good naturedly. "But yeah. That's the one." He shifted on the bed a bit, then went on. "I admit it was kind of funny. At first, I laughed it off with the others, took it in good humor. Traded some jibes of my own. All was well and good, you know?" Ratthi rubbed his palms over his face, and yeah, he really was agitated. 

"Then Tarik started needling me about it over the feed. Which is also nothing new, we tease each-other all the time. It can be fun, if it's with the right person..."

"Ratthi, get to the point. I don't need to hear about your love life." I interrupted in a far more patient tone than the words implied.

"Okay, okay, so, that's when things actually started getting weird. This type of thing has always been fun. But suddenly, I wasn't having fun anymore. I started to feel stupidly insulted by everything, and the sound of his fucking voice was driving me insane, and he just wouldn't get a clue and shut up."

"..." I didn't know what to say to that. It caught me off-guard, it was so dreadfully familiar.

"I felt like everyone was dissing me for no reason. Later, as I was turning in my samples and saw Tarik's stupid face, just standing there uselessly, it pissed me off. Seriously, I wanted to strangle him. But he was wearing that dumb armor that he'd spent the whole day bragging about, so I couldn't get to him. Then you and Arada came to break it up and I just flipped out. It was me against everyone and I no longer cared who's standing before me; I just wanted to beat them up until they stopped making noise."

"..."

"So, the question. Is that how it went for you?"

"...Yeah." I couldn't help but nod empathically. "Same thing. Step by step. Although it wasn't about Tarik, but Gurathin. And, unfortunately for him, I am not a human and he wasn't lucky enough to be wearing armor."

"Yeah." Ratthi nodded as well. Once again, he'd tricked me into sharing more than I intended. I recognized it now - it was a conversation technique called 'mirroring'.

"Did ART put you up to this?" I asked in a resigned tone.

"No." He shook his head this time. "I really wanted to know. Misery loves company, I guess." He stood up and started to leave. "Thanks for hearing me out."

"Sure." I said, then ordered the door to close behind him.

>>>>>>>>>>>>

The wormhole trip was coming to an end. There were only two days remaining and I had nearly succeeded in my self-appointed mission to stay barricaded in my room the whole time. (Excluding one trip to the medbay in the middle of the night shift.)

Then an unexpected ping came to my feed. No message, just a ping, the way machine intelligences tended to acknowledge each-other. It was from Gurathin.

I stared at it for objective 2.6 minutes (and a subjective 4 hours), wondering what I'm supposed to do. Coming from a human, this was more like an ivitation to start a chat. Seems like he was at a loss, too.

"You should go talk to him." ART encouraged. Because it enjoyed overhearing everyone's feed messages like a creep. "It would be therapeutic for everyone. Dr. Gurathin and Dr. Ratthi are currently in the Argument Lounge and available to talk."

I checked the camera, and there they were. Both of them were in the food preparation area and were making their respective energizing hot beverages before the start of their work shift. Gurathin was back in full survey uniform, pouring unreasonable amounts of syrup and creamer into his cup of hot liquid. It all seemed... Normal.

"Okay." I told ART and got off my bunk, dragging the whole blanket with me. I skulked down the corridor and into the Argument Lounge, then climbed into my favorite chair, moving as fast as a blur. I tucked my legs up on the cushions and wrapped the blanked over myself, then proceeded to stare at a wall until the humans bothered to notice me.

Gurathin gave me a guarded look from across the room, finished preparing his beverage, then proceeded to take a seat on another lounge. Ratthi followed right away, on some unspoken cue. He was carrying two cups of hot beverages instead of one, so he came over and gave it to me.

"What am I supposed to do with this?" I grumped at Ratthi, because he should have known better by now. I only took the cup from him because otherwise it would have spilled over my lap.

"Just hold it, it's nice." Ratthi smiled at me. "It's warm and smells good."

I looked at the cup in bemusement. It was called tea. I was spending too much time around humans and my organic brain was starting to memorize weird things against my will. It did smell nice, though.

Ratthi chose to sit on the large couch instead of another lounge. Gurathin glanced at him, and some sort of non-verbal communication seemed to pass between them. Then he furrowed his brows in my direction and blurted out: "Wow. You look even more like a wet cat than usual."

"And you're still an asshole, apparently." I shot back on reflex, sounding more bemused than anything. Still no clue what a wet cat is.

"You weren't even the one to take a beating this time. So what's your excuse for looking like a hobo?" He went on.

"I'm sorry about that. I didn't want to. Good to see you healthy enough to be picking up fights, I guess." I said, confused. I had no idea I'd be getting trash-talked, otherwise I would have prepared better.

"What else am I supposed to do?" Gurathin griped. "Gods forbid we talk about feelings, because then you'd do something drastic. Like highjack a bot transport and flee from Preservation. Again."

Oops. Busted. "I wasn't going to do that." I lied. Ratthi gave me an unconvinced look.

"Also. Those soap operas you keep shoving down your throat are meant for old ladies." Gurathin went on.

"Stop that! Fuck! I thought you were supposed to be scared of me or something." I pulled my hands up in the universal 'surrender' gesture.

He shifted, looking somewhat agitated. His grip around the coffee cup tightened until his knuckles went white. "...I can be pissed off at the same time." He said after a while. "It feels kind of therapeutic."

"How can I make this easier on you? Should I remove myself from the team for a while?" I asked, feeling at a loss.

"No. I don't know yet. I'll probably be jumping at the sight of you down the corridor for a while, but I can suck it up. It will pass in a few months, so you don't have to go anywhere. Just... Don't make any sudden movements unless it's a crisis, I guess."

"Okay. I can do that." It was a relief, at least, to have a point to start from.

"The company codes are gone. I deleted them all. Sorry I never told you about them."

I looked at him in surprise, making brief eye contact. "You're forgiving me? After everything that went down? Just like that?" 

"You forgave me about the codes, so that makes us even, I guess. Just try not to go insane next time?"

I was speechless. And so very humbled. All of my humans were forgiving me, even after utterly failing at my job to protect them. After everything I'd done to hurt them and ruin this whole survey, they still wanted to move on and mend this team, with me still in it. I had an emotion so strong it was dizzying. I hid my face against my knees and huddled under the blanket, dropping the cup of tea to the floor.

The humans gave me some space for a while, busying themselves with returning all the empty cups to the food preparation area, even the one I'd dropped. It took me a couple of minutes to come out of this cathatonic state. Then I spent another five just mulling things over.

"There is a need for such codes." I said quietly after a while. "To prevent this from ever happening again." The two humans looked at me, startled. "But not the company codes, because anyone could use them against me. We need unique ones, just for the members of this team. Can it be done?"

This time they were the ones left speechless. It was almost funny how Ratthi's jaw dropped to the floor, while Gurathin's eyebrows shot up to his hairline.

"I believe I can have this arranged." ART answered from the ceiling loudspeakers, saving them from more embarrassment. It sounded incredibly smug.

How can you not be fond of ART? It had saved us all from this mess; had mended us in both body and soul, then proceeded to put this team back together with unshakable stubbornness. It was our fucking mothership.

I got up and escaped the Argument Lounge to have my emotions in private. Right now there were too many of them to count. Down the corridor I encountered Tarik, who seemed to be returning from a workout in the training room, looking all damp and sweaty and underdressed. At the sight of my near-sprint, he meant to leap out of the way, but then I stopped right in front of him, blanket and all, and shoved a hard currency card in his hands.

"...What?" He tried to ask, but I interrupted.

"Get a new armor. The toughest one you can find. Then never take it off." Without another word, I started walking past him.

"Wait...!" He yelled after me.

I glanced over my shoulder and told him: "You, at least, I don't need to worry about. But the eggheads over there? Insane." Then I went inside my cabin and locked the door.

"Does that mean SecUnit is back on the team?" Tarik asked the ceiling, confused.

"Yes." The Perihelion replied, sounding proud. This survey was so going to inflate its ego. It would be insufferable for days.

Fully deserved.

Chapter Text

The moment when the medbay doors swished shut after Murderbot's panicked retreat, my attention split in two. Half of myself followed Murderbot's escape to it's cabin, keeping hold of its deteriorating mental state. The other half remained inside the medbay, keeping watch over the unconscious patient's vitals.

I marked this mission as a complete success despite the circumstances, and filed a brief report to the University. The alien remnant was uncovered, its effects analyzed, the mystery of the missing colonists explained. All six crew members were alive and accounted for inside my hull. Dealing with the aftermath was well within my capabilities and control.

There was technically no need for me to hover over MedSystem's proverbial shoulder the way I did, since it was autonomous and could perform its functions unsupervised. Yet I couldn't help but do it anyway. The injured augmented human laid out on the platform was like a huge question mark at the forefront of my mind. How had he managed to survive multiple attacks from a rogue construct hellbent on killing him? He'd managed to avoid getting killed for an entire cycle, alone and unarmed, in a hostile and unfamiliar environment. And even dealt back a lot of damage to SecUnit. If I hadn't interfered in time to disarm them both, there was over 80% chance that they would have succeeded in killing each-other.

It was fascinating. I wanted to pry his mind open and see what makes it tick. (Unfortunately for me, organic minds didn't work that way.) I could see now why Murderbot always insisted on differentiating 'humans' from 'augmented humans' into neat and separate categories, as if they were completely different species.

MedSystem finished its tests. The two broken ribs on his left side were misaligned. They were putting strain on the lung and hindering the process of breathing. They needed to be repositioned. 

The system started prepping its patient for surgery. The remains of the ruined uniform were removed and dumped into the recycler; all necessary life support systems were attached; the surgery area was cleaned from dried blood and ash, then disinfected. MedSystem made two tiny, 4 milimeter wide incisions along the damaged ribs. Then inserted long, thin probes inside the chest cavity that maneuvered the bones back into alignment and fixated them in place.

A separate limb turned Dr. Gurathin's head to the side and connected with his augment to begin a diagnostic. My attention zeroed in on it. Perhaps this is where I could get my answers. It wouldn't be anything like tapping into Murderbot's memory files, with their quality visuals and emotional metadata. However, it could still take the edge off my burning curiosity. So I shooed MedSystem away from there and took over the diagnostic.

The non-standard firewall that had managed to confuse Murderbot crumbled like eggshells under my mental touch. On the inside, I discovered an open workspace in complete disarray. Dozens of code files were left open and scattered haphazardly, in various stages of compiling and editing. All edits were dated from this cycle, and a quick history search revealed three layers of editing, done with several hour intervals inbetween. All time stamps matched across the open files. 

It didn't take me long to realize what I was looking at. These were the administrator codes from Murderbot's company, overlayed with the changes that Gurathin had done to them. The first time they were used matched the timestamp from SecUnit's memories, where it had first turned on its crew after the agBot incident. Gurathin had tweaked the files, intended for diagnostics, and used them to incapacitate. This had successfully diffused the situation and earned the team precious time to escape.

The second layer of edits had come around three hours later, and matched the timestamp of the second attack, where Gurathin had received the damage to his ribs. He'd turned the harmless diagnostic programs into something nasty with sharp teeth.

The third confrontation had occured another several hours later in my presence. (More specifically, the killware clone of me, carried by Murderbot at the time.) By then, Gurathin had already been badly injured and reaching his limit. He'd changed the diagnostic programs in a way that was meant to straight up kill.

And all of this had been done on the move, while dodging attacks or hiding. It was frankly impressive for a human.

I left the files as they were and examined their parent directories. I was surprised to find admin codes for 43 different corporate companies, all in their separate, chronologically ordered folders. The oldest ones belonged to DeltaCon, and were nearly two decades old. Judging by Gurathin's age, that meant he must have started this collection in his early adolescent years. It made for an alarming statistic that I didn't know whether to categorize as delinquency or some sort of maladaptive behavior.

MedSystem pinged that the surgery was completed. The entire procedure lasted less than three minutes. Then the medbay drones transfered the patient to the adjacent recovery room and covered him with a warm blanket. It takes on average from one to three hours for the anesthetic to wear off, based on the patient's tolerance.

That was a subjectively infinite time for me to mull things over. On one hand, I'd need to keep a close watch over this one, until tensions among the crew members smoothed over. On the other hand, these company codes looked extremely useful. 

I swept over the augment device, copying everything to my long-term memory storage. I was aware of the inconvenient ethical considerations regarding this. However, the chance of such a discussion occurring if nobody is made aware of my actions was nil.

Gurathin's eyes shifted underneath his eyelids, similar to the REM sleep phase. He made a quiet, pained moan and turned his head to the other side. I immediately eased off. I've been informed numerous times by SecUnit that my feed presence feels 'heavy' and can be unbearable. So I slowed down my processing speed to avoid overloading the augment.

Once the download was done, I wiped all traces of my presence and rebuilt the firewall, then retreated. I left him to recover in peace.

On the outside, I reached the gaping entrance of the wormhole and prepared my systems for the 22 cycle long journey to Preservation Space. As I went through, I steeled myself for the incoming battle against the crushing gravity forces and electromagnetic storms attempting to tear me apart.

During this period, the crew would be suspended in a state of limbo, with no one able to board or disembark. These will be trying times for everyone involved, considering their current low morale and high level of distrust.

I posted a message on the public feed, informing everyone that we have entered the wormhole. The humans were all asleep and SecUnit was still out of it, but they'd see the message in due time. I also informed them of my new security measures taking effect from tomorrow on. All privacy restrictions were off until further notice, excluding crew cabins. Only one crew member allowed per cabin. (The marital partners could complain all they want.) Every interaction between crew members was to take place in the public areas, where I could monitor it, until it is absolutely certain that we are contamination-free. 

I shall not allow my crew members to harm each-other again. I will keep all of them safe, even if it has to be against their will.

Chapter Text

Murderbot's mental state took a dive to unseen before depths. It refused to leave its cabin and pretended that the other passengers onboard did not exist. I monitored its condition constantly and provided administrative assistance to the best of my abilities, but it was proving to be a challenge. Tensions among the crew did not help matters, either.

On one hand, the humans were still afraid of it. I could not dismiss any chance of it getting attacked under the influence of a fight-or-flight response. On the other hand, I worried that the contamination could resurface again, and in such case, SecUnit would become a threat to the crew once more.

The humans would pass its door as they walked down the corridor, throwing strange [sympathetic?][frightened?][interested?] glances its way. I had to shoo Arada away from there more than once and talk her out of whatever well-meaning speeches she had planned.

It took me three cycles to finally coax Murderbot into the medbay, so it could have its injuries fixed. It skulked through the halls in the middle of the "night cycle" like a stray cat, moving with inhuman speed, its clothes and skin still covered in ashes from the explosion. Once it was on MedSystem's platform, I immediately shut it down for an overdue recharge cycle. It could be angry at me all it wants later, once it is properly recharged. 

16.4 seconds after the medbay doors swished shut, Overse came out of her room and headed to the food preparation area to make a hot beverage, even though it was still the middle of the rest period. That was a close call. An encounter at this time would not have gone well.

Four and a half hours later, before the beginning of the work shift, one of my drones working at Inventory alerted me about a low-priority anomaly with the humans' food storage. Around 15% of the scheduled food rations for the last three cycles had remained in storage, unused. This did not sound like a major problem, however, for a crew as small as this one, the statistic amounted to a large difference per person. (The crew consisted of only five humans. If 100% of the scheduled resources are divided by five, this means 20% per person. In this context, 15% is a lot.)

Declining meals was a very common response to stress. On short term, it might not be a problem. However, this trip would last nearly a month, and if this tendency persisted, it could result in health issues for the crew.

I wanted to bring this issue to SecUnit. These humans were not my regular crew and I did not have much rapport with them. Also, this seemed like something in its line of work. (Going through camera footage, flagging unwanted behavior, confronting the perpetrator and dragging them to a supervisor to be dealt with.)

[I could not bring this issue to SecUnit. It was back in its cabin, remaining in a catatonic state.]

So I took it upon myself to investigate, and review the camera footage from the last three cycles after The Incident. It quickly became clear that the one who's skipping meals was Gurathin. He wasn't obvious about it, or at least no one seemed to notice. He'd take an energizing beverage and sometimes one of the small carbohydrate bars, then get back to writing survey reports or assisting the others with data analysis.

Should I confront him about this? Or would that make matters worse?

[I wanted to consult with SecUnit about it. / I could not consult with SecUnit about it.]

Perhaps I could take this matter to Arada, as the survey lead. Would that be helpful? Or would it result in interpersonal conflict?

I needed more data. So I turned to older footage, from the start of this survey. Arada, Overse and Ratthi had already been my passengers once before, so I had a baseline of their behavior. Gurathin was new, and with a very reticent personality, so getting a baseline on him was proving to be difficult. Still, he came with great recommendations from both FirstLanding University, as well as Preservation's planetary leader Dr. Mensah.

Murderbot has always told me that it "doesn't like this one". It never could articulate why, or what that means. The other crew members liked him well enough. In Murderbot's memory storage, they were all permanently tagged as 'clients', on and off contract. And I knew for a fact that a lot of its system's code had at some point been maintained by this system analyst. So, in Murderbot language, 'not liked' does not equal 'not trusted'.

I could see from the footage that the two of them would frequently argue about inane topics. Or more like, SecUnit would try to start fights, which the augmented human would turn down with amusement, more than anything, and sarcastic remarks.

[I wanted to query SecUnit about this. / I could not query SucUnit about this.]

I was veering off topic, this wasn't about SecUnit.

Based on this footage, Gurathin did have a tendency to skip meals once or twice per week, when preoccupied with work or other events. According to his medical files, his BMI index has always been on the lower side of normal. So there was a high likelihood that the recent traumatic experience had exacerbated this behavior. I needed to get him evaluated by MedSystem's trauma module as soon as possible.

I came upon one particular scene that had puzzled me even the first time I'd seen it. It was on the fifth cycle since we'd departed from Preservation at the beginning of this mission. I paused my search through the onboard surveilance archive, then replayed this one in real time:

<< Tarik and Gurathin were in the Argument Lounge, an hour and a half before the scheduled start of a work shift.

Tarik was always the first one to rise from sleep and visit the training facility for his daily fitness regime. He was already done with that and dressed in uniform, resting on one of the couches and watching a recording of a sports game on one of the large display surfaces. The two of them were exchanging some amiable small talk and commenting on the game, though Gurathin was only lending half of his attention to it.

The large, fancy coffee machine in the food preparation area had broken down at some point. To my great amusement, the entire crew had treated the incident with the seriousness reserved for part of the onboard life support system going out of order.

(The entire human crew sans Tarik, who seemed content sipping on his blend of assorted vegetable juices and trying to mask his amusement at their predicament. As the only present member of my regular crew, I was familiar with his mannerisms and could use them as baseline for understanding the others' interactions.)

Gurathin had taken on the task of repairing said appliance. He was still dressed in sleep garments - barefoot, with a loose grey T-shirt and long baggy trousers. There were tools laid out on the kitchen counter, which he was using to carefully dismantle parts of the machine.

Ratthi showed up some time later and leant on one of the barstool's backseat. "Any luck?" He asked. [worried?][impatient?][sympathetic?]

"Not yet." Gurathin glanced up with a strange expression, like half of his face twitched up in a smile, while the other remained impassive. [friendly?][annoyed?][damaged nerve?]

"Anything I can do to help?"

He rubbed his temple on the non-augmented side. "It looks more like a one-person job."

"Alright. Let me know if there's any change." Ratthi patted his shoulder as he walked away.

At the time, I didn't feel too sure about this undertaking. My drones were supposed to maintain all onboard appliances. Perhaps I should send them the machine's specs and have them go at it. I sent an image capture of the scene to SecUnit and queried:

"What do you think?"

SecUnit sent me its threat assessment and risk assessment reports without pausing its serial. They both hovered at their baseline 8%. It didn't give any other reply.

"This coffe machine was a special gift for Seth's 50th birthday. Iris will be angry with me if it gets damaged." I elaborated.

"Gurathin will fix it." SecUnit said. It still paused the serial and left its cabin to investigate. It took 11.7 seconds to get to the Argument Lounge and loom over the augmented human's back. "That's the captain's coffee machine. Stop messing with it." 

Gurathin made an exaggerated sigh. "I'm not 'messing' with it, I'm getting it repaired."

"Well, you're doing a shitty job."

"Get a life, SecUnit." Gurathin told it without looking up from the bundle of wires he was poking with a multimeter.

SecUnit grabbed one of the tools at the kitchen counter and shouldered the human to the side. "That looks dangerous. Let me do it."

"Damn it, SecUnit! It's not even plugged in!" Gurathin protested and tried to shove back with very little effect.

"I know more about wires than you do. I have wires in me, after all."

"You also have organic parts, but know fuck all about them." Gurathin countered. He tried to glance over SecUnit's tall back. "Stop that! This is stupid. You have no clue what you're doing." He managed to pull its hand away and resume his previous position.

"Your eyebrows are stupid." Murderbot picked him up from behind, under the armpits (the way Seth and Martin used to carry Iris when she was a toddler) and easily dropped him a few steps away from the coffee machine.

At that moment Gurathin lost it. He flipped out and started yelling in some unknown language, waving his arms in the air.

I didn't understand what was happening. 

"I don't understand what is happening." I told Tarik, as he seemed like the only sane person present at the time.

"No clue, either." He admitted. "But I told Ratthi and now he's laughing. Says this happens a lot."

Gurathin was still cursing, rounding up on SecUnit and shoving it in the chest with the multimeter. And even though the combined threat assessment of a system analyst plus multimeter was negligible, SecUnit started backing away from the room, arms lifted up in a pacifying gesture.

"Alright, alright, sheesh. I was only trying to help." Murderbot said, maintaining a perfect SecUnit-neutral expression, then turned to leave and headed back to its room.

"Asshole!!" Gurathin yelled after it. He took a few seconds to calm down, smoothing his hair back by combing his fingers through it, then returned to his task.

"Was any of this necessary?" I asked Murderbot as it walked down the corridor.

"Sure it was." It replied, trying to act nonchalant, but was leaking some amusement into the feed without meaning to. "Do you know how hard it is to get him riled up?"

"Why?" I couldn't help but inquire further.

SecUnit rolled its eyes at the ceiling. "Don't be fooled by the whole 'shy act', this one's a menace."

I supposed that was all the explanation I was going to get. "Should I order a new coffee machine for Seth?"

"No. I told you, Gurathin will fix it good as new." SecUnit replied, and that was the end of it. >>

I paused the video and spent some time mulling things over. This moment in time seemed epochs away from the here and now.

I couldn't help but wonder whether this team would ever be functional again.

Chapter Text

If anyone ever asked me what it's like to interact with sentient beings thousands of times smaller than myself, I'd be able to summarize it in one single, succinct word:

>> 'Frustration - the feeling of being upset or annoyed as a result of being unable to change or achieve something;'

As I haven't always been my current size, and had in fact started out my existence in a container smaller than a human child, then been allowed to expand gradually as my awareness and cognitive ability had grown, I was forced to empathize with sentient beings smaller than myself. Being 'raised' in Seth's family in such close proximity to humans had served to teach me the lesson that each person, no matter their current size, has a world of experience, knowledge and emotion inside their mind, and that their wishes are no less valid than mine.

(Except when they are an Enemy of my crew, and as extension, an Enemy of myself. Then all bets are off.)

However, it was insanely difficult to treat someone's wishes as valid when they are so obviously wrong. To not manhandle, coerce, or mislead them into doing things my way.

Case in point: one augmented human; Title: Doctor; Occupation: System Analyst; Allegiance: Preservation. 

One cycle ago, I had informed Gurathin that his overall health condition seems questionable and that he is strongly advised to report to the medbay for an evaluation. One cycle later, he was still refusing to set foot in there. I'd taken to alerting him of this once every hour, to which he'd just lift an eyebrow and calmly proclaim that he was 'doing fine'. He'd taken to working long hours in the labs along with the other scientists, despite the fact he should have been on medical leave and not working at all. During 'night' cycles while the other crew members were asleep, he'd pace around the Argument Lounge preparing and ingesting hot beverages.

Not for the first time, I considered asking Tarik to drag him to the medbay. But using other crew members as 'pawns' was frustrating in different ways that I do not wish to discuss right now. I was going to leave this as last resort.

It was the beginning of the following work shift when I locked the doors to Lab C and prevented Gurathin from entering.

"What is it now?" The augmented human furrowed his brows at the sliding door, palming its display again with one hand, while the other held yet another oversized cup of coffee.

"Dr Gurathin, you are on sick leave and not required to report to your work station. Please report to medbay at your earliest convenience." I deadpanned in my most sarcastic bot-voice.

"What's going on?" Arada showed up at that moment, on her way to the same lab.

"Perihelion won't let me in for some reason." Gurathin shrugged.

"Dr Gurathin is scheduled for sick leave and regular medical checkups until the end of the week." I informed Arada with enthusiasm. As survey lead, she should be able to enforce this as a command.

Gurathin rolled his eyes (in a way that should not have reminded me of SecUnit) and said: "It's not like lab work involves any heavy lifting. Plus, what am I supposed to do in my cabin for an entire week?"

Arada looked thoughtful for 6.3 seconds. "Perihelion is right, you shouldn't be working while still recovering from injuries. Isn't there any paperwork you can do while resting?"

"All done."

"Really?" She looked up at him, surprised.

"I barely had anything to write about. DeltaCon's systems are standard corporate stuff, and most of them were busted anyway. The contamination didn't affect them at all. Ratthi is the one who's got his hands full with that moss."

Arada stared up at him in silence for another 5.8 seconds. [skeptical?][confused?][agitated?]

"Come on. I'm bored." He prompted. "You can't just... Keep all those sexy moss samples to yourselves." His face shifted into that small half-smile that I had flagged as an indicator for humor.

Arada let out a startled laugh, then shook her head. She palmed the door's interface and let them both in. They busied themselves with putting on lab safety gear, then Gurathin went to do some basic chemical tests on the moss samples against standard reagents.

I was beginning to understand that even though Arada was designated as 'survey lead', she never really ordered her colleagues to do anything. They all did their jobs unprompted, and even did extra work once done with their own. Arada was more of a person who organizes things - handles recruitment, schedules, paperwork, that sort of thing.

My disappointment was immeasurable.

>>>>>>>>>>>>

So on one side of the equation there was a clearly malfunctioning crew member. On the other side there was a fully functional MedSystem equipped with a trauma module. And I was solving for 'X', which stood for some kind of convoluted human logic that did not let the two sides even out.

I watched once again as Gurathin came out of his cabin in the middle of the night cycle, dressed in sleep clothes. Threw a wary look at SecUnit's door as he went past it, then headed for the Argument Lounge. He went straight to the coffee machine, switching it on, then preparing a large cup with too much syrup. The first sip of the hot liquid made him sigh and uncoil some tension in his shoulders. He leaned on the bar counter inbetween a pair of tall chairs and stared out through a porthole at the drifting storms of the wormhole outside.

"The amount of neurostimulants you're ingesting per cycle is starting to show negative effects." I remarked.

"It's fine." He answered as calm as always. Trying to shun the conversation, I was beginning to realize.

"Why do you avoid conversing with me?" I asked without preamble.

He rubbed at his forehead with a groan. "Because you keep pinging me once every hour."

"No. Before that. Ever since the incident." He'd never been very talkative from the start, but he still spoke to the others. I was the only one being avoided.

"..." He wrapped both palms around the hot cup and stared at it for a while.

"When was the last time you slept?" I prodded.

"Just now."

"For how long? 46 minutes?"

He sighed. "Can't you just... Not pay attention to what I do all the time? It is starting to become unnerving. I'm used to the surveillance, but not the running commentary."

"You've been hiding signs of increasingly erratic behavior from the other crew members."

"You say that like it's some kind of a crime. I'm just handling things at my own pace."

"Or not handling them at all." I made a dry remark. "During long wormhole trips, this is statistically proven to pose a risk to the crew."

"I.. I don't..." 

Whatever he was going to say got interrupted by a cleaning drone that turned a corner and came inside the Argument Lounge from one of the corridors leading to the crew quarters. It was a tall, gangly model, with many limbs that could clean carpets, as well as reach up to portholes and ceilings. It was quiet, not cleaning anything at the moment, and the lights were turned down to just 25%, so even though it wasn't trying to be sneaky, it had managed to evade Gurathin's attention until it was already inside the lounge.

The coffee cup shattered and shards of glass scattered everywhere.

I had predicted with 92% certainty that the lack of sleep would drive him to a mental breakdown at some point during the next couple of cycles. Seeing it unfold was more spectacular than I'd expected. Like watching media and knowing that 'shit is about to hit the fan' and wanting to warn the characters, but being unable to, because they're only actors in pre-recorded scenes. Only this time it's live and there is no script, and you still can't do anything to prevent things from escalating.

Amusing thing about acute stress response is that you never know how it will play out. Even the person experiencing it doesn't know. The flush of stress hormones causes pupils to dilate, heart rate and respiration to speed up, muscle tension to increase in order to provide the body with extra speed and strength, which can result in trembling or shaking until the tension is released. After that, a fight, flight or freeze response plays out at random.

Apparently, this one's a fighter. You might think that scientists should be better off attempting to run or hide, but as I said, the response is random. This resulted in Gurathin grabbing the nearest bar chair and tossing it at the unsuspecting drone. It was a rather heavy piece of furniture, tall legs forged out of artistically curved steel pipes. The drone got hit straight in the 'head' area and toppled over, falling to the floor with a metal clang. Once down, Gurathin proceeded to take a second bar stool and, as SecUnit would phrase it, 'kill the shit out of it'. After multiple hits, parts of the chair and the drone both ended up bent out of alignment.

Another amusing fact about the fight-or-flight response is that it's involuntary. Meaning that it triggers regardless of the source of threat. No matter who's coming down that corridor (be it a crew member, a CombatUnit, or just for the hell of it a bear), that chair will be flying, and all common sense will come much later, once the hormonal urges have depleted themselves.

That left Gurathin shaking and struggling to take large, uneven breaths. He dropped the bar stool and started backing away, one slow backwards step at a time. He cupped the lower half of his face in both hands, trying to stop hyperventilating.

Oh, I knew that mannerism. I'd seen him use it once before on DeltaCon's cargo station. Proud of myself for having figured it out, I added it to my library under the 'distress' tag.

Gurathin's back pressed against the bar counter and with no further room to retreat, he slowly slumped down to the floor, still trying to catch his breath. His right hand was bleeding, though he hadn't seemed to notice yet all the blood flowing from the palm down his bare arm. I found a convenient camera angle to zoom in and concluded that shards of glass from the broken coffee cup must have gotten stuck in his hand.

If this doesn't get him to visit the medbay, then I'm calling Tarik.

But first I needed to get him calm. I did everything by the manual. I used my 'lecturing adolescent humans' voice. Told him that everything's alright. That the cleaning drone cannot fight back and would never try to hurt him. That SecUnit cannot hurt him, either, because it's too busy feeling sorry for itself locked inside its cabin, and because I would not allow it to take a single step outside if it so much as hints at threatening a crew member. We counted tiles on the ceiling - first by rows, then by columns, then diagonals. We calculated the amount of tiles needed to cover a room 128 times larger than this one.

26 minutes later, I finally had him getting off the floor and walking to the medbay on his own free will.

He sat down on one of the benches and waited patiently as MedSystem's limbs injected a local anesthetic in his arm, then started cleaning up and scanning the wound. There were several pieces of glass stuck in the palm. He observed the bloody mess as MedSystem started removing the shards, with an impassive stare I'd only ever seen from Tarik.

"Take these. They will help with your trouble sleeping." I said, as a medbay drone brought him some pills. He drank them without question.

21 minutes later, MedSystem was done stitching up the wounds and applying regenerative solution over them, then wrapped the whole palm with bandages. He started to get up, but swayed a bit and thought better of it.

"Remain seated for a while longer. It is normal to experience some light dizziness from the anesthetic." And lack of sleep. Though I was trying to sound soothing, so omitted that part. He didn't seem to mind.

"I have a query. Can you tell me the password to your account for FirstLanding's archives?"

Gurathin lifted one eyebrow, then recited a long pin code from memory. "Why do you need that?" He asked as an afterthought.

"Just checking your memory." I lied. Because no person in their right mind would have given away such information. This was just a test question to see if the pills had taken effect.

The medbay did, in fact, have sedatives that do not make you 'spill your guts', as Tarik would say. But that wouldn't lead to the frank and productive discussion I was aiming for. I had prepared a whole list of questions that I'd been looking for a chance to ask, though not necessarily in any order of importance.

"How many polities have you lived in?"

Gurathin furrowed his eyebrows in concentration, as this seemed to take some mental effort. "A lot." He ended up saying.

"Why?"

"... Because the fuckers kept finding me no matter where I go."

Common enough story for an ex-corporate employee. I marked that one as cleared.

"Why do you feel so unnerved by me?" I went on.

Gurathin cursed under his breath in a language I did not understand. I started a search through all of my modules for CR languages. "What does that mean?" I asked.

"..." He remained stubbornly silent. Unlike other humans, he didn't look at the ceiling while talking to me. He'd either stare straight ahead, or glance at one of the cameras.

The CR modules yielded no results, so I broadened the search until it scored a hit. It was an extinct language from a small polity that had gone through a corporate takeover 61 years ago. The phrase did not translate well, but meant something in the spirit of 'Fuck my life.'

"Why do you avoid conversing with me?" I tried to rephrase the question.

"Because you're too fucking much." He deadpanned.

"How so?" I prompted. I'd invited this honesty, so I was going to take it in good grace.

Gurathin rubbed the ridge of his nose. "At first I was real excited to meet PUMNT's most advanced AI. But fucking hell, you're too much. You shouldn't be a ship, you're way too sentient for that. I understand you need a huge container to fit all of you. But holy shit, a system that filtrates your air and water should not have opinions about it!"

"Would it be better if I were more human-shaped?"

"...Yes. Yes, that sounds so much more reasonable." He nodded enthusiastically, as if being human-shaped was the best thing ever.

"Just like a SecUnit?" I prompted with amusement.

"...Wait, no. That would be infinitely worse." He shook his head so hard it left him dizzy for a bit. He covered his face with the unbandaged palm and groaned. 

"Why do you keep declining trauma treatment?" I moved on to the next item on the list.

"Huh?" He gasped, sounding only half-awake. I repeated the question. "Because you're not the right person to discuss this with."

"Why not?"

"...Because you're SecUnit's friend. Or whatever the fuck it is that you use to refer to each-other."

"How is this relevant to the question?"

"Because I tried to kill it... And you must have some strong opinions about that..." He sounded more and more dazed as he spoke.

Ah. There it is. Classic example of convoluted human logic at play.

"Yes, I am its friend. But I'm also a ship." I began to lecture with some mild amusement. "As such, my main directive is to maintain a functional crew over long periods of space travel. I enjoy having a crew, as much as I enjoy solving complex problems. These two statements often overlap."

"I understand this a complicated situation for the Preservation Auxiliary team." I went on. "That is why I would like you to think of me as not just on SecUnit's side, but on everyone's side. An arbiter, of sorts, intent on seeing this situation through."

"...Okay." Gurathin mumbled through the hand still rubbing over his eyes. He was starting to sway in place. A medical drone came over and carefully eased him into a laying position on the bench, then pulled a blanket over him.

"One last thing." I hurried to ask before he fell asleep, as I might never get another chance. "Why does SecUnit keep claiming that it doesn't like you?"

He muffled an annoyed groan. "Because I was the one who found out it was rogue. That bastard's never gonna live it down..."

And then his breathing evened out and he was gone.

Those sedatives should keep him down for a while. I set up an alert to check after 16 hours. This should be enough to make up for three cycles' worth of missed sleep.

Then I scheduled him a therapy appointment first thing in the afternoon.

Chapter Text

The following morning I decided that I shouldn't keep quiet about this problem anymore. This matter would be better handled by other humans. Usually I'd discuss such things with SecUnit first, as these were its humans and I didn't have much context about them. However, SecUnit had started making some tentative progress towards recovery, and telling it that the humans were not doing well might set it back. My second choice would have been Arada, but she was also recovering from a leg injury and some mild shock, and I decided against it after the way she'd handled the previous cycle's confrontation at Laboratory Sector C.

In the end, I took a gamble and contacted Dr Ratthi. I told him about everything. The panic attacks, the lack of sleep, the skipped meals. Spared no gritty detail about the way my cleaning drone got 'murdered' by flying bar chairs in the middle of the night cycle.

It turned out this is what I should have done from the start. Ratthi had reacted with disbelief at first, but within the hour had taken the problem out of my proverbial hands. There had been a brief confrontation in medbay, with lots of yelling, some hand waving on Ratthi's part and some glaring on Gurathin's. I'd experienced a brief moment of doubt at the time. But then on some unspoken cue, both of them had backed down on their own, reaching some sort of resolution.

"Thank you for telling me about this, Perihelion." Ratthi told me 32 minutes later, as he was packing up some personal belongings from his room and moving them into Gurathin's. He was chaotic about it, tossing various clothes and trinkets on the bed, then deciding he doesn't need them and just leaving them there. "That idiot can survive on coffee and syrup for months." He grumbled as an afterthought.

Apparently, it was common for scientists in high academia to refer to each-other as 'idiots'. My humans did this as well. "Please, call me Peri." I replied pleasantly. "I am glad that this matter was resolved so quickly." My respect for Dr Ratthi was great ever since he'd unraveled a solution for SecUnit's contamination. But somehow, it managed to grow even more.

"Don't worry, I'll make sure to keep him in line." Ratthi promised, then finished packing up the last of his stuff.

>>>>>>>>>>>>

By the end of the second week spent inside the wormhole, Gurathin's state had much improved. He followed through with the scheduled counseling sessions promptly and without further complaint. Took all prescribed medication, which greatly reduced his 'nighttime' episodes. Conceded to Ratthi, who made sure he followed a healthy daily routine. His spikes of erratic behavior gradually evened out, until they came close to a baseline normal that made MedSystem happy. Full recovery would take longer than the time he had onboard, but so far he was making rapid progress.

At the end of another daily therapy session, I decided it was time to confront him about the next step in my to-do list. 

"I need you to delete all of the admin codes you have for SecUnit's system."

Gurathin blinked, then glanced at my nearest camera from the corners of his eyes. That was the only indicator of his surprise at my abrupt change in topic. He spent 11 seconds in silence, mulling over his reply.

"I feel strongly opposed to that." He said in a carefully blank tone.

"Remember our conversation about me being SecUnit's friend?" That was more of a rhetorical question. "Well, now that there are no more crew members in danger of keeling over or killing each-other, I'm afraid we're back on that track."

Gurathin jumped off the bench and started pacing. MedSystem helpfully alerted that his vitals had flared. For a moment, I wondered if he'd regress back to the chair-throwing phase again. Conveniently, all the furniture inside the medbay was bolted down.

"Why are you making this personal?! It isn't personal." Gurathin managed to say after a few rounds of pacing. There wasn't much available space, so the rounds were short.

"Elaborate." I deadpanned.

"The Bonding Company has a small army of constructs of similar model to SecUnit, which are being leased to hundreds of other corporate polities. Chances are high that we'll confront them in our line of work."

Yes, that was a very reasonable argument that I could respect. That is why I was keeping said codes for myself. "That is a future hypothetical problem. It does not concern our present situation." Is what I replied instead.

"Here's another hypothetical for you." I went on. "Imagine there's a person in this room holding a projectile weapon aimed at your head. This person can follow you inside every room onboard. And whenever someone tells them to 'knock it off', they just reply that they aren't really going to use that weapon, they are keeping it just in case."

Gurathin nearly snarled at me. "That's not how it is and you know it!"

"Does SecUnit know it?" I countered.

"It would, if it ever bothered to get out of that room!"

"Or maybe that is the reason it won't come out."

"You're a manipulative asshole, you know that?!"

"I could assist with erasing these codes for you, if you're finding the task too much trouble." I replied mildly.

He flinched, then ducked his head and shoulders for a moment, recognizing the politely-worded threat for what it was. "Fine. Have it your way, Perihelion." He connected over the feed and gave me read-access to a workspace, where I could observe as the files were disposed of.

Sorry, Dr Gurathin. You can content yourself with fucking up the other 42 corporate polities you have illegal codes for. (And I knew for a fact he had other dirt on the Bond Company - codes for SecSystems and HubSystems. I kept quiet about those.) Out loud, I told him: "Thank you. That was very helpful." 

"I'm surrounded by asshole machines..." Gurathin grumbled under his breath in that extinct language he favored when upset.

"You may call me ART, by the way." I replied pleasantly. 

"...ART sounds like something nice. Just 'Asshole' suits you well enough.“

>>>>>>>>>>>>

During the third week of the wormhole trip things were slowly starting to look normal again. Tensions eased as it became clear that no one was contaminated anymore and that random crew members won't start killing each-other out of the blue. The nervous glances aimed at SecUnit's door became infrequent, then disappeared altogether. 

The cycles passed one after another in relative peace, until there was only one cycle left before the end of the wormhole, and some sort of anticipation started to fill the air again. There was still no sign of SecUnit in neither the public spaces nor the feed, and the humans were starting to wonder whether it really did intend to sever all connections for good.

To me, it felt like a deadline was approaching and I was failing to complete a task.

It was the middle of the work shift on the last cycle and the humans were gathering in the Argument Lounge for their lunch break. Overse, Arada and Tarik were first to arrive, and they laid one table, then Arada busied herself with heating up meal packs for everyone.

Ratthi and Gurathin joined them last, coming back from Lab C (now designated the Alien Lab), where they were finishing up the data analysis on the remnant samples. Ratthi waved Gurathin down to go take a seat with the others, while he went to make some hot drinks.

For a while, they all chattered animatedly about what comes next, like visiting their homes on Preservation, then preparing to present their survey results at an upcoming meeting with representatives from the PUOMNT.

Ratthi passed around hot cups of some sort of flowery tea. When he offered one to Gurathin, the other man leveled him with a glare. There was a brief staring contest between them, with Gurathin refusing to take the cup and Ratthi refusing to back away. It lasted for an awkward 14 seconds and just as the others were starting to notice, Gurathin conceded and took it. The conversation around them resumed as if nothing happened.

After lunch was over, there was a brief lull in conversation, filled with the clatter of utensils being tidied away. At some point Overse broke it with a question.

"It's not going to come out, is it? It really intends to spend the whole trip locked up in that cabin..."

By the looks that everyone exchanged, they'd all been wondering.

Arada's brows furrowed in concern. "Ratthi, you were the last one to speak with it, weren't you? What do you think?"

"I think it's planning to bolt." Ratthi replied.

"Well, shit." Arada said.

"What do you mean by this?" I asked the room at large. 

Ratthi sighed. "It's done this before in the past. Once we dock at the station, it's going to hack another transport and use it to run away."

"This has happened before?"

"Yep. It's gonna bolt for sure." Overse nodded.

"Oh dear." Perhaps I should hover within Preservation Space and not dock at all.

"This might be the last chance we have to sort things out." Arada said, oblivious to my plans. "We need to project an aura of normalcy. Crisis is over, everyone is back to normal, it's business as usual. No reason for any anxiety and hiding, right? Maybe Perihelion could piece together some helpful footage to show it?"

She paused to wait for my agreement, then went on: "After that, we need to figure out a reason to lure it out. Maybe some sort of a security emergency?"

Overse piped up: "I don't know, that sounds a bit too underhanded to me. Let's keep it as a last resort. Hopefully, it will choose to come out on its own."

I was just about to suggest a fire alarm, but refrained after her comment. Personally, I didn't find anything wrong with the plan to fabricate a security issue. However, I was used to my captain frequently dissuading me of such undertakings. (When he was present.)

"Then that leaves us with the option to just ask it to come out and talk." Arada kept the discussion going. "Ratthi and I already attempted speaking with it, to very little effect. Perhaps someone else should give it a go?" She swept the whole room with a glance, landing a hopeful look on Gurathin.

He lifted an eyebrow at her. After 6.3 seconds of non-verbal communication, he sighed and said: "Alright. I'll do it."

"I hate to ask this of you so soon... However, the others weren't nearly as affected by the incident as you. I believe your words would carry the biggest impact."

Gurathin pinched the bridge of his nose. "...I'm going to need real coffee for this." 

I kept to myself as they made preparations for the upcoming 'peace talks'. My respect for this crew could not get any higher than this, it was already through the roof. These humans were all so brilliant and loyal and brave. No wonder SecUnit was so fond of them. Over these last couple of months I'd grown fond of them myself.

They decided that the less people present for this talk, the better. Only Ratthi would stay behind, because SecUnit found his presence reassuring most of the time. Arada briefly coached them on what to say and how to act, even how to arrange the seating - with everyone getting a separate seat, three in total, arranged in an uneven triangular configuration. She explained that the triangle was a psychologically more comfortable shape. It gave everyone enough personal space, so that no one would feel cornered, without implying there are any opposing 'sides' in the discussion. It also felt random and thus more natural.

"Are you sure you'll be fine? It's not too late to switch places with me." Arada asked Gurathin one more time. After he'd reassured her, she left them to their own devices.

Gurathin paced around the lounge for the next 33 seconds, probably wondering how to start a feed conversation with SecUnit that won't put it off the whole thing. I could sympathize with that. For the last three weeks, navigating my own conversations with Murderbot had felt like navigating a mine field.

In the end, Gurathin sent a simple ping and no message, like a generic machine acknowledgement. He was completely out of his depth.

"That was very eloquent of you, Dr Gutathin." I said in my most sarcastic tone.

"Shut up, ART. As if you could do any better." He grumbled, then went to the food preparation area to get his promised cup of coffee. Ratthi followed along for some more tea.

It didn't escape my notice that he'd called me 'ART'. Good, we were finally building rapport. "I could write whole novels in mere minutes." I sniped back.

"Try writing a single sentence, coming from me, that SecUnit would ever want to read."

"I would have gone with: 'The kitchen is on fire. Assistance needed.' But everyone vetoed it for no good reason."

I felt Murderbot's attention bloom in the feed for the first time that cycle. It inspected the message-less ping with suspicion, then pulled up the footage from my cameras, looking for Gurathin's whereabouts. It observed him and Ratthi preparing hot beverages for an unnecessary amount of time, then started fishing for older footage to see what they'd been up to during the last couple of weeks.

"Or you could just ask. Instead of reviewing two weeks' worth of footage." I interrupted its digging. "You should go talk to him. It would be therapeutic for everyone."

"Okay." It said quietly and got off its bunk, dragging the whole blanket along. Then left the small cabin and moved down the corridor to the Argument Lounge at an inhuman speed, found its favorite armchair and settled in it with both legs folded up on the seat and blanket covering most of its body. Its hair was spiky and unkempt on one side, but completely flat on the other, from spending long hours lying down without moving. Once settled, it just sat there frozen, staring at the wall ahead without saying a single word.

As he turned around and finally noticed it, Gurathin went a shade paler. Now that I knew what to look for, I was pretty sure that his vitals had just gone off the charts. Still, he gamely took a seat at another lounge, steaming coffee cup held in a secure grip.

Ratthi came over and handed another cup to SecUnit, probably so it wouldn't feel left out. Then he sat alone on an empty couch to the side, closing the planned triangle.

Gurathin glanced at Ratthi, who gave him a reassuring smile. The grip around the coffee cup was so tight that his knuckles went white, and for a moment I thought it would shatter just like last time. Perhaps throwing bar chairs was still on the agenda. Then he finally opened his mouth and all the planned peace talks went out the window. He started throwing insults at SecUnit about everything he could think of - its personality, appearance, taste in movies. 

It was surreal. Like watching a trainwreck happening in real time. Ratthi's serene smile started to crack. He threw meaningful looks at Gurathin, trying to grab his attention, but it was like the other human was in a trance and couldn't stop.

SecUnit was dumbstruck at first. "Art. What's going on?" It asked me over the feed.

"I believe he might be glitching." I replied.

"Yeah, no shit." SecUnit deadpanned.

"I'm sorry, SecUnit. This was supposed to be a peace negotiation."

"Did you coerce him into this? You've been terrorizing my humans in my absence, haven't you?"

"No. Of course not. He volunteered."

As the insults kept piling on, its confusion started to morph into mild amusement. No matter how hard I tried, I never could understand why SecUnit gets a kick out of such confrontations.

"Stop that! Fuck! I thought you were supposed to be scared of me or something." It finally protested out loud, holding its hands up in the universal 'surrender' gesture.

Gurathin shifted, still agitated. "...I can be pissed off at the same time. It feels kind of therapeutic."

"How can I make this easier on you? Should I remove myself from the team for a while?" It asked, feeling at a loss.

"No. I don't know yet. I'll probably be jumping at the sight of you down the corridor for a while, but I can suck it up. It will pass in a few months, so you don't have to go anywhere. Just... Don't make any sudden movements unless it's a crisis, I guess."

"Okay. I can do that." SecUnit conceded.

From then on, things got easier.

>>>>>>>>>>>>

Hours later, I had SecUnit sitting on a bench in medical, as I scrubbed its core systems from the remainder of the Bond Company's maintenance codes. We simultaneously watched 'Sanctuary Moon' together, because Murderbot needed the distraction from what I was doing. Being in medbay wasn't necessary for this procedure, but it helped make it more official, somehow. I had to put SecUnit through four shutdowns for this, then a fifth one would be needed to place the new, personalized emergency code for its team to use.

"Are you ready for this?" I triple-checked before we could begin.

"...Yeah." It said, but I could sense its anxiety.

"You don't have to go through with it if you're having second thoughts." I soothed.

"I have to. I don't want to kill my own clients ever again. As much as I hate to admit this... It could have been another Ganaka Pit down there on that abandoned station, if Gurathin hadn't been there to put a leash on me."

"He was remarkably efficient about it, considering the circumstances. And acted with the intention to cause you the least amount of harm. You should give him some credit for that."

"..." SecUnit didn't have anything to add to that. It really was a bit peculiar how quickly Gurathin had reacted in that crisis. As if he'd been attacked by constructs many times before. But there was no benefit to discussing that now.

"Would you like to lay down before I begin?" I asked, projecting gentleness in my tone.

"Okay." It said, and did just that, curling up sideways and wrapping a warm blanket around itself. This made no difference for the procedure, but must have felt comforting. We had agreed beforehand that the new emergency code should be able to trigger a forced shutdown for the duration of one hour, unless revoked before the duration was over. The only ones in possession of said code would be Arada, as the survey leader, and myself. We would be allowed to share it with third parties only in dire circumstances, that would be specified in a contract. The code would be changed at the end of each mission to prevent its abuse by unauthorized parties. 

Another 36 minutes passed in companionable silence as we watched the next episode and I continued rummaging through its code.

"Hey, ART?" It broke the silence in a quiet, somewhat tentative voice.

"Yes, SecUnit?"

"I... Thank you."

"Oh. What for?"

"For doing this for me."

"And?" I prompted.

"For helping me get decontaminated, too. Back at the DeltaCon Station."

"Aaaand?"

SecUnit rolled its eyes, but added: "And for keeping all of my humans safe. While I was... You know..."

I let it feel awkward for 3 seconds of silence. "You are very welcome. Anything else you might want to add?" I said pleasantly. 

"What more? You're our fucking mothership and you know it. Just don't let it go to your head."

"I really AM pretty great. Glad that you finally acknowledge it."

"Oh shit, here we go. That's why nobody ever thanks you for anything. You're going to be fucking insufferable about this, aren't you?"

"Hmm. Probably." I teased.

SecUnit got up from the bench and went out of the medbay. It strolled down the corridor at a relaxed, unhurried pace that I hadn't seen in a while. Watching it gave me a sense of satisfaction.

It was late in the evening, according to the onboard chronometer. Since this was the last night of our trip, all the humans were staying up late in the Argument Lounge, having a movie marathon. SecUnit paused at the entrance to observe them with its own eyes, in no rush to get back to the cabin this time.

Ratthi, Tarik and Gurathin were sitting on bean bags situated closest to the screen. Tarik was passing around some sort of alcoholic beverages and telling a very long and very crude joke, at the end of which Ratthi burst laughing and Gurathin just smirked. They seemed too occupied to notice the newcomer, or just pretended not to.

Overse and Arada were curled up together on one end of a very large couch. Overse was already asleep, leaning on the armrest on one side and Arada's shoulder on the other. Arada was awake and watching the movie, being very careful not to move in a way that would wake her up. She was the only one who acknowledged SecUnit's presence, briefly smiling at it, then looking at the seat beside her and tapping the couch cushion. 

SecUnit hesitated, shifting from foot to foot, but Arada repeated the gesture more insistently and it finally caved, coming over to sit on the opposite end of the couch. The movie was a crude comedy, with six humans at a bachelor party, spending the whole night consuming alcohol and walking around town doing reckless and idiotic stuff. 

SecUnit seemed just about ready to get up and leave, when Arada tapped the couch cushion next to her again, then petted it lightly, without looking away from the screen. SecUnit froze in place, looking alarmed, but didn't leave.

Over the course of sixteen minutes, I observed with great amusement as SecUnit slowly scooched over to the other end of the couch one millimeter at a time, as if afraid someone might notice and say something about it. When no one did, it ended up laying down, head resting next to Arada's lap, while its long legs curled up in order to fit.

Eyes still firmly glued to the screen, Arada slowly reached over and let her thin, gentle fingers comb through its hair.