Chapter Text
I still don't remember what hit us.
(Mayday, mayday, mayday.)
We were crossing a major system with four inhabited planets.
(This is MNT Perihelion.)
A non-corporate polity.
(Mayday, mayday, mayday.)
One ART and its crew had been to many times before.
(This is MNT Perihelion.)
Non-hostile, supposedly.
(Mayday, MNT Perihelion.)
Which did not explain the breach in ART's hull.
(Coordinates encoded in transmission.)
My head hurt.
(Requesting immediate assistance on all interstellar broadcast frequencies.)
My ears were ringing.
(Vessel has sustained catastrophic damage from unknown source.)
I couldn't open my eyes.
(There are seventy-four souls on board.)
Shit, the students. (I still couldn't open my eyes.)
(Evacuation impossible.)
I was supposed to look after them. SecUnit, can you hear me?
(Mayday, mayday, mayday.)
I couldn't look after them. SecUnit! SecUnit!
(This is MNT Perihelion.)
(Mayday, mayday, mayday.)
(This is MNT Perihelion.)
(Mayday, MNT Perihelion.)
UNIT OFFLINE
~
Despite what most people might think, constructs can dream. I wonder how much it spooked the first technician to discover that fact, coming across a twitching SecUnit in stasis. It was a side effect of our human neural tissue. A horrific one. But hey, they put governor modules in us so obviously they didn't care that much about our mental health.
We never remembered our dreams because they never got encoded to storage. Probably for the best.
Thing is, I could always tell when I'd had a nightmare. The last scrapes of imagery faded when I opened my eyes, but their echoes remained. Red. Lots and lots of red.
This felt like a nightmare. I wished it was a nightmare.
~
UNIT ONLINE
"...SecUnit? Do you know who I am?" a wavering voice said to my left. My eyes flew open and my head fell to the side, taking in the anxious hand-wringing before I found her face.
"Dr. Mensah. Why are you here?"
She looked like she was about to collapse and I wanted to be there to catch her, but I still couldn't move.
I looked down at the restraints on my hands, strained my neck to see the same cuffing my ankles. Why was ART restraining me, what the fuck? Then I realized, wait, this wasn't ART. This was the Preservation medical center.
"Thank god," Mensah murmured. She had one of my cuffed hands in hers. "Do you remember anything that happened?"
"Wasn't I on board ART?"
Her face got all sad. I didn't like that. Fuck, I hope something hadn't happened to ART.
"Yes, you were," she said, her voice doing that thing where she tries to be brave and does a really really good job of it. "But both the University and Captain Seth thought it best you be brought to Preservation to heal once they finished treating you."
"Treating me?"
Mensah's eyes flicked to something or someone else on the other side of the room. I turned my head to follow her gaze. What the fuck, why was Gurathin here?
"Perihelion was attacked," Mensah explained, her eyes back on me now. "They're not sure who by, but it had a large chunk torn out of its hull."
Oh shit, something had happened to ART.
"Don't worry, SecUnit, don't worry. Perihelion's okay, it's just undergoing a repair and refit."
Screaming. I could remember screaming.
And me, climbing into an environmental suit.
Me, sprinting down the corridor to the lounge.
Who was in the lounge? Why was I so afraid?
"SecUnit!"
I jumped.
"Don't scare me like that," Mensah hissed. Her eyes were shiny. I looked around. Gurathin was gone now. The lights were low. It was just us.
"What happened?"
She pressed her lips together, shaking her head. She didn't know. Not knowing scared her.
It scared me too.
~
The medical staff uncuffed me from the bed, finally, after I promised I wouldn't run off. The restraints had been there "for my own good" which meant "so I wouldn't hurt any humans or damage the room."
Dr. Mensah had also managed to get a nice big display surface installed on the wall opposite me, which was the main factor in my agreeing to stick around for further medical supervision. They still hadn't told me what happened, exactly, but Dr. Mensah had explained that until I was "a little more stable" they didn't want to risk undoing the progress I'd apparently already made while mostly unconscious.
Also, apparently Gurathin was qualified to be one of my care providers. Or he was just here to consult because of the weird scary corporate nature of all the metal in my body, I don't know. Because I saw him hanging around a lot, talking to various medical staff and looking at my room. I knew because I had drones again (Dr. Mensah got me some new ones) and was attempting to use them to figure out what the hell had happened to me.
Gurathin had a weird sour expression while looking over something on the feed with the nurse on duty. I started hacking in to see what they were looking at/talking about when Gurathin looked sharply over at my drone with an even more sour expression. "SecUnit, don't."
I backed off. Well fuck you too, Gurathin.
It looked like he got into some sort of argument with the nurse, and then a medical doctor arrived and Gurathin got into an argument with her too, and finally he put his hands on his hips and must have won the argument because his face relaxed back into the usual asshole look. Then he looked at my drone again and walked toward the bubble-shaped room where they were keeping me (there were a lot of bubble shapes in Preservation medical architecture, I don't know why).
May I come in? he asked as he paused beside the panel that controlled things like the privacy screen's opacity and the overhead lights and stuff.
Go ahead.
He stepped inside and pulled up a comfortable chair beside my bed. He didn't say anything.
"What were you arguing with them about?"
"Whether or not I should tell you what happened. I told them they were in over their heads, I knew what I was dealing with and have assisted your safe recovery after catastrophic failures in the past, and that they should let me handle this as Dr. Mensah requested."
"I had a catastrophic failure?"
"You could call it that."
"What happened?"
"You sustained severe damage to your cranial augmentation during the hull breach. They had to install a..." He looked worried, all of a sudden, which I really didn't like. "I'm not sure what it is, exactly, because the tech is proprietary. It's not a governor module, but it is some kind of regulator/inhibitor that controls certain processes. And it will unfortunately require frequent recalibration until they can figure out a more permanent solution at the university."
"So... why am I not there, then?"
He pressed his lips together just like Dr. Mensah had earlier. "They... thought it would be best for you to be with Dr. Mensah while you recovered and got used to it."
He was lying. Or, at least, not telling the whole truth. I stared him down with my eyes until he caved.
"They said the recalibrations should be done by an augmented human you know and trust."
"Iris is augmented. I trust her." Not that I didn't trust Gurathin, but Iris was right there, why wouldn't she be the obvious choice? Unless...
He refused to look me in the eyes as he spoke. "There were... complications, with that plan."
"What sort of complications."
"Maybe the doctor was right, maybe I shouldn't overwhelm you."
"Gurathin. What. Sort. Of. Complications."
He closed his eyes, inhaling deeply through his nose. "They tried several different augmented people and none of you were... compatible."
"What, and you are?"
"Yes."
"And you know this how?"
"...We tested them. While you were unconscious."
"Okay, why the fuck are you being so cagey then? And what do you mean 'compatible?'"
"Because of the nature of the recalibrations that will be needed, SecUnit. I can't demonstrate right now, but..." He pressed the spot between his eyes. His face was red, probably from frustration at having to deal with me again. "You won't like them. But it's that or... put you into stasis until they can figure out how to fix it."
Or maybe he didn't like the nature of these ever-more-ominous "recalibrations" either.
It was the off-shift, there were probably a lot of people in the lounge.
Like Martyn, and Tarik, and Matteo, and Iris.
I couldn't get to the lounge. Hallway was blocked off. ART wouldn't let me open the bulkhead.
My comm crackled to life.
SecUnit, my feed is down. It was ART. Hull breach is imminent. Evacuations in progress.
How can I help? I asked.
Help Iris get the students into the pods. She's in the lab.