Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

My first thought when I came back online was something like "oh good, I can think again." Kind of a concerning way for a brain/computer hybrid to re-engage after a shutdown, but honestly, I'd had worse. I wasn't sure where the thought had come from, though, and something appeared to have interrupted my hard memory write at some point, so I checked the last entry in my log to give my organic memory a kick.

Oh, right, the humans had wanted to go to the DeltFall habitat. I really wished they hadn't. I could have told them it wouldn't end well, though admittedly even I (known pessimist and paranoia-riddled murderbot, hi) hadn't expected to be attacked by multiple rogue SecUnits - oh yeah, extra rogue SecUnits - and almost get killed. One of those things hit me hard enough to give me a concussion, and that's pretty hard to do when your skull has as much padding as mine does.

That's not self-deprecating, I mean that literally, my design prioritises shock absorption around - you know what? Never mind. The point is I don't get brain injuries easily.

Anyway, I remembered temporarily shutting down as a result of the aforementioned brain injury, and then restarting, and then having taken out one of the extra units when... wow, Mensah really did come to get me. She got us back to the hopper, and all of them started asking me if I was alright. I clearly wasn't, given that I was leaking all over the place and struggling to reconnect everything that had been knocked loose when that other SecUnit had slammed me into the bulkhead so hard my temporary shutdown procedure kicked in, but humans seem to like asking each other redundant questions like that when they get injured.

They didn't normally ask me those things. I think even if I was capable of coherent speech at that point I wouldn't have known what to say. By the time I was halfway functional again and able to wade through all the errors and alerts and warnings flooding my system to get to that point, Overse had pulled out the emergency medkit and started using it on my organic sections like I was actually an injured human. 

"It's fine," I told her. At least, I think I did. My performance reliability graph from that period looks more like a very spiky mountain range than the mostly uninterrupted plain it should be, so I'm relying more on my organic memory here, which means this could all be bullshit.

"You've lost a lot of blood, and we don't have any way of fixing that until we get back to the habitat," she said, poking at me until I turned so she could get to the back of my neck, which admittedly hurt quite a lot. A lot of me hurt quite a lot, and I didn't have enough functionality to mess with my pain sensors. But again, I've had worse. And my arteries seal automatically anyway.

"It isn't blood."

(That's not strictly true; some of it's blood. But humans get weird about it when they think a machine is bleeding.)

She snorted. "Whatever it is, I'd rather it stay in you than be all over the floor."

I couldn't argue with that, I'd rather it stayed in me too. I heard Ratthi's voice from somewhere nearby say, "I'm just glad you stopped telling us to 'leave the damaged unit and evacuate,' or whatever that was."

My buffer must have engaged while I was out of it. At least something was still working. "That's standard protocol. Clients should not endanger themselves to retrieve equipment in the event of--"

"Then it's a good thing you're not equipment," came Mensah's voice from nearby. She sounded shakier than usual. I realised that at some point I had closed my eyes to make my visuals cutting in and out less annoying. "Overse, do you think SecUnit is stable enough for us to make a short detour? I want to check on DeltFall's beacon."

"I'm fine," I said again. I heard Overse sigh.

"I don't think it's sustained any critical damage," she said. "But I don't know enough about its systems to say for sure. I think some of it's internal."

"Do you think you can wait a little longer to get back to the habitat, SecUnit?" Ratthi asked me.

"Probably. I've sustained damage to some key processing areas, but it doesn't appear to be getting any worse. My current performance level could be described as reliably erratic."

"I'm not sure I trust its assessment," Overse said. "It's missing a lot of body mass."

"It'll grow back. I've had worse than this. On this survey, even."

There was a pause. I think it was a reasonably long one, but I couldn't tell you how long because as mentioned, my squishy organic brain memory is stupid. I may also have blacked out again. I heard Ratthi say, "Does it seem... chattier than usual?"

I almost responded to that, too, but thankfully my performance reliability took a steep dive, and I lost awareness for a while. Looking back, he was right; I had been offering a lot of unprompted responses. I guess that's what happens when my (again, squishy and stupid) organic processing is left unsupervised and concussed.

When I came back to myself again, the humans had laid me down on the floor of the hopper underneath a blanket that I didn't need. I tried to stand up, and was mostly doing okay at that, and then the hopper jolted, my hip joint gave out, and I went crashing to the floor again. I heard someone swear.

"That sounded like it hurt," whoever it was said as they tried to prop me up against the bench. I think it might have been Pin-lee, just going by the language.

"Query: status?" I said, out loud. Why did I say that? Oh, right, I'd forgotten where I was and that I was communicating with a human and not a SecSystem.

"What?"

"What is the situation?" I repeated.

"You've been stabilised. We've stopped at DeltFall's beacon for a second so that Mensah and I can assess the damage."

"It's too dangerous to leave the hopper." Huh, maybe I did remember some of what was happening. "If it's necessary to do so, I should accompany you."

"You're badly injured," Mensah shouted from somewhere nearby. "Stay here. We have our own weapons, and we'll be on the ground for as little time as possible."

I tried to push up. "I should go," I insisted, before promptly falling down again, earning another hissed curse from Pin-lee. "Humans shouldn't be outside of the habitat without adequate security."

I heard something, or maybe saw something, and realised that Mensah was directly in front of me now, looking at me. "You're not in a condition to be adequate security right now. I'm ordering you to stay here and not injure yourself further. We'll be fine."

"Security protocol dictates--"

"I don't care about that right now. The company can fine me later. Stay here."

I was apparently at least aware enough not to disobey a direct order, so I gave up and let my face rest down on the floor. I kind of wanted the blanket back from wherever it had gone, because I'd realised I did actually feel cold, probably either due to the amount of fluids I'd lost or my temperature controls failing. My system was still drowning in warnings I couldn't turn off and I couldn't sort my inputs well enough to use the hopper's feed to monitor the humans. I could just about listen to the comm, but it was patchy and I wasn't sure if that was because of the connection or me being a mess.

I decided to access some media for some reason I don't remember. I think it might have been because I wasn't used to a situation where I was functional enough to be aware, but not enough to be deemed useful. Normally, an injury was either bad enough to incapacitate me and I was offline until someone put me in a cubicle to repair, or it wasn't and I had to keep working. So, I guess I was probably bored, or at a loss for what else to do.

Except apparently I confused my local inputs with my external ones, so when I tried to play some music to pass the time (apparently even in my addled state I knew that I couldn't process a serial right then), instead of playing it so only I could hear it, I started broadcasting it over the comm.

There was a lot of confusion from the humans, and though I cut it off as soon as I realised what was happening I don't know how long it actually took me to stop playing the music. I didn't have the awareness to panic about it, and shortly afterwards my performance reliability dipped again and I went offline. Wow, I hoped none of them had looked into that too much.

After that it was flashes of half-awareness interspersed with similar periods of unaccounted-for time where I was either offline or not functional enough to record any information. I think someone put the blanket back on me, because I don't remember feeling cold again. They may also have turned me over so that I wasn't lying face-down on the floor. The important part is that the humans must have put me in my cubicle to recover when the hopper presumably made it back safely, and now I was back up to almost full performance, if still a little hazy. I was also pleased to see that Mensah had put another security interdict in place to prevent anyone from leaving the habitat while I was non-functional.

I ran a quick systems check which came back mostly okay. The only real issue was my governor module, which was flailing an error code I didn't recognise at me with a fair amount of insistence, but right now I was more concerned with the humans' status and whether or not any threats had followed us back to the habitat while I was repairing, so I ignored it and started checking the security feeds and initiating a drone sweep of the perimeter. I also pinged Mensah to let her know I was back online.

A message came through immediately: Come to the crew area as soon as you're able, please, we need to debrief and discuss our next moves.

Then, I'm glad you're alright.

I ignored the second part because - well, it was a lot to handle having only just come back online and I had other things I needed to do. I got out of my cubicle and went to retrieve my armour from the recycler (I wasn't about to make the mistake of going to the crew area without it again), only to find that... it wasn't there.

It should have been repaired by now. The log said it had been, so where the hell was it?

Dr. Mensah, I sent over the feed. My armour appears to be missing. The recycler log shows it should have finished repair, but someone has removed it.

What? she sent back. Her feed-voice sounded as surprised as I was, so it probably wasn't anything to do with her. I had started scanning the camera footage before I sent my message, and shortly after she replied I had an image of the culprit.

Security footage shows that HubSystem delivered the armour to Dr. Ratthi while I was offline, I sent. I could feel myself frowning (this was precisely why I wanted my armour back). Ratthi was a biologist, I couldn't think of a reason for him to want anything to do with my armour.

I'll talk to him, Mensah sent back. You still have a uniform you can use for now, right?

Internally, I groaned. Yes, Dr. Mensah.

Ratthi says HubSystem logged a problem with the recycler and wouldn't return the armour because it wasn't fully repaired. He's been checking it over with Gurathin and Overse, I'll get them to bring it to the crew area for you.

I sent an acknowledgement, then made a note to check HubSystem for issues, and maybe hack it a little bit more - just enough so that it could never mess with my armour ever again. The fact that it had shown me one thing and Ratthi another was also concerning. Then I braced myself for how painful this was going to be and left the security room.

As far as I could tell at this point, there were no perimeter breaches, fauna or otherwise, and most of the humans had taken a rest period after we had returned from the DeltFall habitat and only woken up just before I did. Everything seemed fine, aside from the fact that there might still be rogue SecUnits wandering around on the other side of this terrible planet, but something else was still bothering me, and also my threat assessment module. What I really needed was a minute to sift through everything and figure out what that thing was, but I also really wanted my armour back, and Mensah had given me a direct order to come as soon as I was able.

A few of the humans were already inside when I entered - Ratthi, Overse, and Gurathin, like Mensah had said, and also Pin-lee. I wasn't aware of any of them having any engineering experience, but I suppose they did have access to my user manual and the relevant specifications to reference against.

"SecUnit!" Ratthi exclaimed when he saw me. "Are you - I hope you're feeling better."

"Is there a problem with my armour, Dr. Ratthi?" I asked. (I did notice he'd avoided asking me a direct question. I guess that was nice of him. I was more concerned about my armour, though.)

"Well - no, actually," he told me, looking only mildly phased. "From what we can tell, it seems perfectly fine. But HubSystem logged an issue for some reason, so we thought we should probably look at it."

"I'm contractually obligated to inform you that tampering with company equipment may incur fines or affect your bond agreement, up to and including the nullification of any compensation you may have formerly been entitled to," my buffer provided helpfully. Pin-lee rolled her eyes.

"Which is why we only looked at it; nothing was tampered with. They can check that on HubSystem's recordings if they want."

"It's all yours if you want to look at it yourself," Ratthi said, stepping back. "We figured you'd want it, so we were going to put it back in the ready room for you for when you woke up, but you recovered faster than last time."

That's because last time I had to regenerate significantly more body mass, I thought, but didn't say anything. I was having a complicated emotional reaction to the idea that these humans knew how much I hated being out of my armour and instead of using that information against me, had tried to engineer events so that I wouldn't have to be without it. Mostly, I hated it. These humans knew way too much about me already.

Mensah chose that moment to sweep into the room, asking, "Is everyone here?" as she looked around.

I started to say, "Dr. Arada is 0.5 seconds--"

"Here!" Arada skidded in through the other door and quickly sat down, as if she could pretend she'd been in the room the whole time. "Sorry."

"--out," I finished. Overse snorted and put her hand on Arada's thigh. (Usually human couples, the rare times I saw them outside of media, irritated me by being gross and all over each other with their mouth parts all the time, but these two weren't generally annoying about it, so I didn't mind.) "Drs. Bharadwaj and Volescu are still logged as off-duty."

"That's fine," Mensah said, "They need their rest. We'll put the broad strokes on the feed and fill them in on the details later." She sighed and leaned back against one of the work surfaces, loosely folding her arms. "We need to figure out what's happening on this planet. Those DeltFall units--" She stopped, seemingly at a loss for words. "That many rogue units in one place has to be extremely abnormal. Additionally, there were only supposed to be three units assigned to the DeltFall survey - where did the extra ones come from?"

"Could they have come from off-planet?" Arada asked. "Maybe they stole a ship and then freed the others somehow."

"Most SecUnits don't have the relevant modules to be able to fly transports," I provided. "It's considered too much of a risk. Additionally, if rogue units had been tracked in the vicinity of this planet, the company would already have sent additional personnel to mitigate the risk to the surveys here." (And also cover their own asses.) "The probability of that sequence of events is less than five percent. Any SecUnit on this planet is significantly more likely to have arrived with a human survey group."

"And they were all rogues?" Gurathin asked, looking concerned. "Even the three units we knew of?"

"One was already dead by the time we arrived, so there's no way to know about that one," Mensah said, frowning thoughtfully. "But at least two of the three had been involved, and attacked our SecUnit as well as their own survey team."

I saw some of the other humans shudder. Some of them shot me nervous looks. It was almost funny, that the concept of rogue SecUnits scared them so much when they were all voluntarily sitting in a room with one. Almost.

"How does that even happen?" Overse asked. "One of them breaks their governor and then spreads the hack to all the others?"

"Similar incidents have occured in the past due to malfunctions in the governor module," I said, staring at the floor. All of them looked at me.

"What?" Pin-lee asked sharply. I wished I hadn't said anything - if nothing else, that came too close to bad-mouthing the company, which I wouldn't normally be allowed to do - but they needed the information. "Fucking corporate cover-ups," she continued, throwing her hands around. "Of course they'd fail to mention that."

"What do you mean by similar incidents?" Mensah asked, much more gently.

"This unit has been witness to events where a governor module malfunction resulted in erratic behaviour and the consequent deaths of multiple clients."

Obviously, I wasn't going to tell them how close a witness I had been. Or that "multiple" was something of an understatement.

Wait, shit. Maybe it was a company issue. There was that update package that arrived for me while we were checking out the region with the map errors, the one I hadn't unpacked yet. The DeltFall units could have received the same thing, and unlike me, they wouldn't have been able to refuse it. But I couldn't tell the humans that; it would open me up to too many questions. How was I supposed to deal with this?

"That's horrible," Overse breathed, looking ill.

"But you mean it could all have just been an accident?" Arada asked me, horribly hopeful. My performance reliability was dipping again, and I knew exactly why. I hated everything about this situation, for so many reasons.

"It's a possibility," I told her. Whether it was a favourable one or not, I wasn't sure.

"Or they really might have been rogues," Gurathin said grimly. "We need more information."

Ratthi's expression looked nauseous. "Do you think they...?"

"What?" Pin-lee asked him, frowning. He looked even more pained.

"What if the DeltFall group did something to them? If they really were rogues, they could do whatever they wanted, right? Why kill everyone?"

Everyone went quiet. I knew that they were all hyper-aware of me being in there with them, and it was awful. I wanted to leave, but I couldn't.

"I guess if I'd been in that position..." Overse had taken Arada's hand, and was squeezing it very tightly. "Maybe I'd be angry, too."

"I think that's enough speculation," Mensah said abruptly. If not for my multiple camera views, I probably wouldn't have caught that she half-glanced at me as she said it. "We need to focus on what we know, not just on theoreticals. So, we know that DeltFall's beacon was destroyed, that--" 

I found myself tuning out. Really, it's not like I hadn't heard worse. Humans who'd had actual experience with SecUnits tended to have much stronger feelings about this kind of thing; comparatively, this group was being surprisingly sympathetic, but I still would rather not listen to it. Normally I would've expected to feel angry or offended or something, but instead I just felt exhausted. My own borked governor module was still pinging me about that error code I didn't recognise and even backburnered, it was starting to get on my nerves, so I--

Uh-oh.

I grabbed a forceps-looking survey tool (is that what they're called? Whatever, doesn't matter) that had been left lying around on one of the tables (this happened a lot, most people thought it was Ratthi's doing but if anyone had actually asked me I could have told them it was Arada) and used it to yank out the chip that had been shoved into the dataport. My governor module promptly stopped screaming at me, but fortunately any sense of relief I might have gotten from that was immediately replaced by an enormous wave of anxiety and oh-for-fuck's-sake as I looked at the chip that was now in my hand. You know, just in case I'd started getting too comfortable.

"SecUnit, are you alright?"

Ratthi was looking at me with concern. All of them were, actually. Checking the camera views, I understood why he'd asked the question, because I was making an expression I generally associated with humans shitting themselves. Metaphorically, I was shitting myself. Ratthi was now squinting at the chip, which I couldn't even pretend I hadn't literally just pulled out of my neck, because I'd just done it in front of everyone here like an absolute idiot. "What is that?"

I tried to bring my expression back to neutral, but the cameras showed it wasn't as successful as I would've liked. I'd managed somewhere in the region of moderate digestive discomfort, I think. "It's a combat override module."

This wasn't good for several reasons. First of all, it meant that the DeltFall units weren't really rogues. That might sound like a good thing at first, but it really wasn't. It meant that they'd been taken over by a third party using a chip like this to hijack their governor modules and order them to murder their clients, and also anyone else who made contact. Probably by whoever owned those surprise extra units that almost killed me. Which meant that there were still threats on this planet (outside of the unknown dangerous fauna) that we hadn't dealt with, and I was going to have to worry about that.

The second reason this wasn't good (so maybe saying several reasons was an exaggeration, but these were big reasons so maybe they counted for more, I don't know) was that the humans were going to want to know what a combat override module was, what it did, how it worked, and most importantly, why it hadn't worked on me. I could answer the first three things just fine, but short of telling my already-jittery clients I was hacked ("so I'm actually one of those scary rogue units you've heard so much about, but the good news is that a combat override module can't hijack a governor module that doesn't work!") that last thing was going to be a big problem. 

Honestly, even if I did tell them exactly that, which I really didn't want to do, it was going to be a really big fucking problem.

"What?" Gurathin asked, looking alarmed. Of course, he had an augment and access to my operating manual, so it had taken him a tenth of the time to look that up compared to any of the others, if they actually had bothered to do that and weren't just waiting for me to explain. "The DeltFall units - they put that in you?"

"Yes, but it didn't work. It must be faulty," I told him, quickly before he did something stupid. The irony being that me saying that almost definitely came under the category of "doing something incredibly stupid," which I realised as soon as it came out of my mouth.

I don't know why I said it. I guess I was panicking. I'd told them all what it was in the first place because if I'd lied about it and they looked it up anyway, which they probably would, I'd look really fucking suspicious. (A governed unit can't lie to its clients; it can't even refuse to answer a direct question like that.) Maybe I was trying to buy time to think of a decent explanation by telling them something that wouldn't make everyone start screaming. Honestly, I was mostly internally spiralling about the whole situation, so that would be the best case scenario. I was still staring at the chip, which was making me feel nauseous even though I didn't have a stomach and I'd had another kind of chip in my head telling me what do to for a good chunk of my existence anyway, so it shouldn't have been bothering me as much as it was. I couldn't help still doing it.

"Would someone please explain what this means and why we should be worried?" Mensah asked, looking between me and Gurathin. I appreciated that she didn't do what a lot of humans do in these kinds of situations, which is that they see someone else freaking out and start freaking out themselves for no reason. I suppose that's why she was the survey leader.

I pulled the relevant section from my operating manual and pushed it into the feed (beating Gurathin's version by a solid 1.6 seconds, which, I won't lie, was kind of satisfying), and watched all the humans collectively have their "oh, shit" moment (excluding Gurathin, who'd already had his). I was at least glad to see they understood how bad this whole situation was getting.

"So this lets other people just--" Overse made an abrupt waving motion with her hand. "Take over any SecUnit whenever they want?"

"It is intended for use in emergency situations, for example when the contract holder is compromised," I told her.

"Which is corporate for 'we know this is stupidly dangerous to make, but if we say it's for emergency use only then we're not liable for people fucking around with it'," Pin-lee muttered, not quietly. She was right, but I'm not allowed to say things like that, or at least I can't if I want people to think I'm a good little properly-governed SecUnit. For however long that's going to last, at this point.

"But it didn't work, right?" Arada asked, looking at me, and then around at the others. "So it's fine."

If it had, you'd all be dead too, I thought, but that probably wouldn't go down well. "The module's presence is new evidence which would suggest that the DeltFall units weren't true rogues, and were put under the control of a third party in order to kill their survey group and make it look like a random act of insubordination. This would explain the presence of the extra SecUnits at the site and potentially the missing information in our survey packages. Any incidents that were formerly attributed to equipment failures should now be treated as suspicious."

"Like the glitch with the hopper's autopilot," Mensah said.

"Yes, and HubSystem withholding my armour for no reason. Whoever attacked the DeltFall habitat likely did so because they were using similar sabotage tactics up until something changed, and they were no longer effective. It's possible that the DeltFall team realised what was happening and started taking measures to protect themselves. At that point, the unknown hostiles instead manually took over DeltFall's SecUnits by sending in at least two of their own to engineer a fake mutiny, and likely destroyed their beacon beforehand to ensure no alarm would be raised."

All the humans went quiet. I didn't like it any more than them, but it had to be said. There was now almost certainly a confirmed faction either on this planet, or at least nearby enough to matter, that definitely wanted to kill all of them (and me by extension), especially now that we were aware of their existence and what they'd done. I was already updating my security procedures and running some scenarios for what might happen and what we could do about it in the background. If I was honest, it wasn't looking good, but hey, what's new.

"We should run an analysis of the module's code to see if we can find out who it would have assigned control to," Gurathin said. That was one of the first things I'd put on my own task list, but whatever, I didn't need credit for an obvious idea. Honestly, I didn't expect it to show anything; any commands it gave could be sent anonymously through the comm. "Even if it didn't work as intended, the data might still be there. If there's a third group on this planet that we weren't told about, we need to find out why and what they want from us."

Yeah, no kidding. Mensah looked at me. "Could the company be bribed to conceal the existence of an additional survey team from other teams on the planet?"

"The company values its clients' privacy, and services to that end are available at a negotiable premium," I told her as neutrally as possible. Pin-lee grimaced.

"I think that's as close as it's allowed to give to a yes."

Correct.

"Who's to say this isn't the company's doing in the first place?" Gurathin said. If not for me, I might have said he was the most paranoid person in the room. He was also wrong.

"If the company was involved, there wouldn't have been any need to sabotage DeltFall's beacon," Overse countered, much more sensibly. "Whoever did this doesn't want us calling for help. We should be checking on our own beacon, too - and on HubSystem. I don't like that it's been acting strangely with all this going on."

My head felt like it was spinning again, but I said, "I can send a drone to check the beacon's status."

"Please do," Mensah told me, "That's better than risking sending any more personnel outside."

"If that's what's happening, we need to check the module as soon as possible," Gurathin cut in. He stood up and came just close enough to me to hold out his hand for it. Technically, he hadn't asked me to give it to him, so I didn't have to, which was good because that was the last thing I wanted to do right now. There was a reason I'd put the analysis on my personal task list, and not on a public one.

"I have my own analysis scheduled as high priority," I said.

"I don't think that's a good idea," Gurathin replied, staring me down even though I was deliberately not making eye contact with him, and also he had to look up at me. I decided I didn't like Gurathin very much.

"Why not?" Ratthi chimed in. "Surely it's better if you both look at it?"

"Because there's a chance that the module did work as intended, and this unit is now compromised," Gurathin said. "It might not even know it until it's too late. It could also have carried whatever was on that chip into SecSystem and HubSystem."

"I'm not compromised." He made a good point about SecSystem and HubSystem though; I added that to my task list.

"Which is what a compromised unit who's being told what to say would say."

He was still staring at me. I decided I really didn't like Gurathin, even though in this instance he was actually right to do this. I hadn't brought up that possibility to the group because it could be very bad for me if the humans decided to run a detailed diagnostic of my systems, but from a security perspective it was an avenue that should be investigated. That didn't mean I had to like what was happening here.

I was trying to figure out how to tell Gurathin to fuck off without sounding compromised, insubordinate, or straight-up rogue when Mensah cut in.

"SecUnit," she said carefully. "I don't think any of us think that you're actually compromised, but given our situation I'm sure you understand we have to take every possible precaution. I think the best thing to do would be to let Gurathin, and Volescu when he wakes up, analyse the module first while you send the drone on its way, and then for you to run your analysis afterwards. Pin-lee and everyone else, I'd like for you to start checking out our systems. Does that sound fair to everyone?"

She was using a tone that I designated as diplomatic, which was probably because I was being difficult. Or at least as difficult as a governed SecUnit would be able to be. I could be a lot more difficult if I wanted (a lot more) but I wasn't going to make myself look any more suspicious than I already was, and as I might have mentioned, I was already starting to look pretty suspicious. I also appreciated that Mensah was trying to actually talk to me, and hadn't just tried to shock me through my governor module for being unhelpful like a lot of clients would, and had. It wouldn't have worked (clearly, that's kind of the whole problem here) but it's the thought that counts or whatever.

(She'd also saved me, back at the DeltFall habitat. I was trying not to think about that, because it was making me have emotions I couldn't handle trying to figure out right now, but she had. It had been stupid, putting her client-self in danger to try to save a SecUnit that was already half-destroyed anyway, but I still felt like it counted for something.)

I handed the chip over and tried not to sigh or visibly clench my jaw. I saw Mensah's expression, and a few of the others' too, relax on the cameras. Good to know everyone else felt better while my own anxiety levels were at an all-time high. And I'm programmed into a base level of anxiety and spend a good portion of my time getting shot at or trying to avoid being found out and scrapped, so "high" in this instance was at a level that I think might have given a fully-organic being a heart attack.

"Thank you," Mensah said, while I tried to bring my processes in line. I felt like I wasn't getting enough oxygen, even though I knew the air quality was fine and I don't need that much anyway. I couldn't get a full breath. "I'm sure we can clear any doubt about this soon enough. In the meantime, we still need you to help keep us safe from whoever it is that's out there. The most important thing is that we all make it out of this in one piece."

The way she said it made it sound like "all" included me as well, but I wasn't so sure I believed that, even if she did. The SecUnit is always the first thing left behind. Maybe she was being especially nice to me because they'd all seen what a SecUnit with a grudge could do now, or maybe they really did did do things differently in whatever weird non-corporate territory these people were from, but I wasn't about to stake anything important on that assumption, even if she had saved me once. I've never been to a planet with thunderstorms, but there's some saying humans like to use about lightning not striking the same place twice - which doesn't make sense, statistically, but - whatever. You get the point. I hadn't made it this far without being found out by trusting random humans - or any humans, for that matter.

Except none of that mattered at the moment anyway, because what I should be doing was figuring out how the hell to stop all my clients figuring out I was hacked, and freaking out and stopping listening to me, or reporting me to the company, or being really stupid and trying to kill me or something. There was a not-unlikely scenario where I just murdered all of the humans and pinned the blame on the DeltFall units or these other hostiles somehow (or just wandered off into the wilderness until my power cells ran out), but I didn't want to do that, even if it made some kind of sense. I just didn't. If I was going to go around murdering my own clients, I wanted it to at least be a group that deserved it.

I was busy trying to pick up at least some of my processes while having what was probably a panic attack (I don't know if I can have those, but that's what it felt like) when Mensah tapped my feed. Can I talk to you, please? In private?

I didn't respond quickly because, as I said, I was currently losing control of literally everything and this wasn't helping. For one horrible moment, I thought that she might have figured me out, and that I really would have to go on a rampage and kill everyone, but there was no way she could have come to that conclusion yet. I hoped.

She added, You don't have to. You're not in trouble, I just want to check in.

I tapped her feed to acknowledge. She sent, I'll be in my quarters. As I said, you don't have to, but I would appreciate it. Out loud, she said, "I'm going to take some time alone to think. I'll be in my quarters if anyone needs me."

Then she stood up, and she left. Gurathin had also gone to get Volescu to start their analysis of the combat override module. The others were talking amongst themselves, though some of them kept glancing at me, which was uncomfortable. So I walked out of the room - without my armour, which says everything you need to know about how much I wanted to get out of there.

I sent a sentry drone on its way towards our beacon (I didn't have high hopes) and started a patrol circuit in an attempt to calm down, but it didn't help. I even tried to have Sanctuary Moon playing as I walked, but I was still as stressed as ever and even more distracted, so I just turned it off again. It was only a matter of time before the humans realised the module should have worked as intended, and that I'd lied, and that something was wrong with me. They might try to talk to me about it, but it was more likely they'd all start losing their minds and try to immobilise me, or kill me, or try to fix my governor module to bring me back under control. (I was pretty sure that wouldn't work, my hack was a solid one, but I still didn't want them to try.) There was also a scenario where they pretended everything was fine up until I'd gotten them out of here, and then they'd turn me over to the company and tell them everything, and the company would do one of those things I just mentioned, but much more effectively.

That last one made my organic parts do that throwing-up-without-a-stomach feeling. I'd rather be torn apart by bullets or fauna. I was contemplating what that might feel like and whether it was worth just getting it over with when I walked past Mensah's quarters. Before I could think about it, I'd pinged her feed.

There was a pause, and then she sent, Come in, sounding startled. She probably hadn't expected me to actually take up her offer. I really hadn't either. If anything, I was going to send her a status update over the feed and leave it at that.

She was hurriedly organising her desk as the door opened and I walked in, a feed interface lopsided on her head. I suspected she might have been falling asleep in her chair or having an emotion in private when I pinged her, and I could have verified that through the security feeds, but I wasn't functioning at all optimally and didn't care enough to check. Mostly I was wondering why I was here.

"Sorry," she said, not having looked at me yet. Her short hair was mussed like she'd been pulling or scrunching her hands in it, and she was patting at it pretty uselessly. "I honestly didn't expect you to come."

"You asked me to."

"I also told you it was optional. You can leave if you want to."

I almost did. I wanted to. I probably should have. I didn't. Mensah removed her wonky interface and set it down on the desk, then sighed and picked it back up and put it on again. 

"I didn't mean to distress you with that message," she said, turning her chair to fully face me. "It's just that you seemed very rattled by all this, if you don't mind me saying. I can imagine the thought of that module having worked as intended isn't a pleasant one. Is there anything I can do to make things easier for you?"

Oh, she thought I was freaking out about the module. Well, technically she wasn't wrong, but wow, that particular aspect of things was the least of my worries right now. "I'm fine," I told her. She frowned at me.

"...I suppose you can't lie about that," she replied carefully. I could, actually, but I wasn't. The trick is that from the standpoint I was choosing to take, my physical body, AKA "me," was completely functional, AKA "fine." It's pedantic, but being selective about your definitions and what concepts your answers are referencing is how you get around having a chip in your brain that shocks the shit out of you if you try to lie to your clients, if you're good enough at it. I had a lot of experience letting clients think I was talking about one thing when I was actually talking about something else.

"Nonetheless," Mensah continued. "I don't think you are fine. And we don't have to talk about it, but I need my team in good condition if we're going to make it out of this. If there's anything I can do to help the situation, I would appreciate it if you let me know."

I was having a whole cascade of emotional responses that were all crashing into each other and getting themselves mangled together like a human vehicle accident. She wanted me to talk about my feelings, but she wasn't ordering me to. She was offering to help with whatever was distressing me, but she was a really big part of the thing that was currently my biggest source of stress. There were too many things that I needed to deal with all at once and I couldn't find a way of putting them in order, and I think the fact that Mensah was clearly trying to get a read on my expression while I didn't have the capacity to properly control it was the thing that finally broke me.

"Could you please stop looking at me?"

Mensah looked surprised for a moment, and then shifted her gaze somewhere over my left shoulder. The relief was marginal, in terms of the general situation, but it was immediate, and it helped. "Of course. I'm sorry, I didn't realise that bothered you."

I tried to think of a response, and failed. "It's not like anyone asked" was dangerously insubordinate, and didn't even make sense; I wouldn't want them to ask anyway. "People don't usually care" just sounded pathetic. "Of course you wouldn't, I actively avoid letting humans know what bothers me in case they decide to use it to make my life a living hell" was definitely off the table, for a variety of reasons.

I could tell Mensah's instinct was still to look at me, because she kept half-flicking her eyes over and stopping herself. It wasn't making trying to manage my emotional responses any easier, and I still couldn't think of a reply. Eventually, she took a deep breath.

"Look, I know you probably haven't had good experiences with humans, but we're not corporates, and we don't treat non-human entities like they do," she said. "My priority, regardless of the situation, is the wellbeing of my team, and that includes you, for as long as you're with us."

She half-looked at me again, and then shook her head slightly and pointed her gaze at the far corner. "Please, just - if you think of anything, don't hesitate. I don't know if you need permission for that kind of thing, but I'm giving it to you if you do."

I didn't know what to tell her. I didn't know if there was anything she could do. I was already stressed, and everything Mensah was saying was making me feel like my insides were melting, or turning into warm, writhing snakes. My performance reliability was all over the place, too, and had been since I found that stupid chip in my neck, which might at least marginally explain what happened next.

"Don't let them run the analysis on the module," I blurted.

Hey, Murderbot? Hi, it's me, Murderbot. What in the fuck are you doing?

Mensah's expression went shocked, and then cautious. Yeah, me fucking too. "Why not?"

For some reason, I kept going. It felt something like falling off the side of a cliff and hitting every rock on the way down. (That had happened to me before.) "Because I lied. It's not broken."

Her eyes widened. "You're compromised?"

"I'm hacked. My governor module isn't engaged." Sure, this might as well happen. Apparently I had lost the ability to keep my mouth shut literally at all, about anything, ever.

She stared at me for a second, and then must have remembered she said she wouldn't and looked away again. Surprising, considering I just told her that there was literally nothing stopping me from killing or otherwise hurting her if I wanted. "Then the DeltFall units--"

"It hasn't been engaged for approximately 35,000 standard hours."

Mensah was a smart human, but it still took her a few seconds to work out the numbers. I watched her expression change as she did it. "You've been a rogue unit for four years?"

That depended on what planet you were nearest to, but in standard Earth years, that was right, and I didn't have the capacity to be pedantic about it.

"I don't know if it counts as being rogue if you don't go around killing people for no reason."

Well, maybe I could still be a little pedantic.

She paused. I don't think she knew what to say to that. I definitely wouldn't. "I suppose not. So then... what--"

She stopped again, and then took a few steps backwards and turned slightly to sit back down on her chair, steepling her fingers and pressing them against her mouth. At least it seemed like she was as stumped with this whole situation as I was. I just stood there and waited until she was finished thinking. I was tempted to start playing media in the background, but I felt like dividing my attention right now wasn't a good idea. I was already handling this badly enough. 

After a period lasting roughly a minute (about fifty-seven seconds), she asked, "Do you have a name?"

"No."

"You don't call yourself anything? Just SecUnit?"

I hesitated, long enough for even a human to notice. "It's private," was the answer I eventually settled on. Telling her I was a rogue SecUnit had been bad enough without adding that I called myself "Murderbot" where nobody could see. Next I'd be telling her about the reason I'd hacked myself in the first place, wouldn't that be a great idea.

"Alright," she said, her gaze set somewhere unfocused in the middle distance. I'd blocked her feed after I lost control of my big stupid mouth, so I knew she wasn't communicating with the others to tell them to come save her or anything, and no-one had tried to contact her just yet. It seemed like she was genuinely just thinking. In hindsight, springing the rogue thing on her on top of everything else that was happening was probably a lot to handle.

After another while she said, "And this isn't company sabotage."

It wasn't phrased like a question, but that's what it was. I told her, "No. Sabotaging this survey would only lose them money, and it would be easier to just damage the recycling systems if they wanted to do that. I hacked the module myself. The company doesn't know about it. No-one else knows about it."

She nodded. She didn't ask why I'd done it; she probably thought that turning off the thing zapping me in the brain every time I thought in the wrong direction was reason enough. I guess that would be the logical assumption.

"No-one else except me," she said.

"Yes."

"Why?"

I assumed she meant why tell her, though she didn't specify if she meant why her specifically, or why now, or why hadn't I told anyone else. I didn't really know the answer to any of that. For whatever reason, I felt like I could trust Mensah, but I didn't particularly want to, and not enough to admit to being rogue. This was probably going to get me killed. It had been a stupid thing to do, telling the truth, but apparently I hadn't learned my lesson.

"I don't know. I didn't mean to. But if they run the analysis on that module, they'll realise it isn't faulty, and the next thing they'll do is run a comprehensive diagnostic on my systems, and I don't think I can fake those results well enough to fool someone who's actually paying attention and knows what they're doing. It would show that the module didn't work because even though it took over my governor, it couldn't access anything else because the connection is severed. Even if I deleted those results from Hub and SecSystem and your own interfaces, I can't erase it from your brains. Everyone here would still know, and even if we made it off the planet alive someone would tell the company, and they'd purge my memory or scrap me or shoot me to pieces as soon as they found out."

Wow, that was probably the most words I'd ever spoken out loud consecutively, or at least ones that were my own and not a canned response. It felt weird. I really did want to stop talking, but I had to finish what my poor impulse control had started. Mensah had her fingers pressed over her eyes. She looked pretty similar to how I felt, really.

Eventually, she took a breath and sat up straight again, folding her hands in her lap. "If you can delete records from the systems, I'm assuming none of this conversation has been logged?"

"Of course it's been logged, I've only managed to go this long without getting caught by leaving recorded evidence on all the systems I interact with," I said flatly. She gave a small, surprised laugh.

"Right. I suppose that was a stupid question."

"A little bit."

She laughed again, just under her breath. I didn't think she was laughing at me, at least not in a mean way, and it didn't feel terrible. For a second I thought that maybe things would be okay after all. Then she glanced at me again, setting her gaze just off to the side of my head. "What is it that you want?"

That did make me feel terrible. That came a little too close to asking me about feelings, and worse, I didn't have a clue. "I don't know."

"But you don't want to have your memory wiped, or be scrapped or killed."

I stopped myself from rolling my eyes, and then realised I didn't have to, and let it happen. It actually felt pretty good. "Obviously not."

She smiled a little, but I thought it looked guilty, and strained. She wasted a good few seconds just looking at the floor between her feet. "Truthfully, I was already wondering if we could help you somehow after this contract had ended. Preservation doesn't approve of the use of constructs, but I thought perhaps if we could lease you long-term for other surveys, or..." She sighed, shook her head. "I thought maybe even if we can't help every sentient construct under corporate slavery, we could at least help one. Maybe that's arrogant."

Honestly, I didn't care about every other SecUnit or construct or whoever else. I cared about me, and my continued existence as something other than recycler-bound scrap metal and cloned human meat. But it was a nice sentiment, I guess, if you were a mushy human who wanted to rescue a poor little killing machine and bring it home with you like some kind of lost domestic fauna.

"My main hesitation was that I couldn't ask you what you actually wanted," she continued, when I didn't respond. "I'm not going to presume anything about your situation, but... bots are full citizens on Preservation. Constructs would likely fall under that designation. If you wanted--"

"I want to not die," I said. I wanted to not talk about this any more. I wanted to shut myself in my cubicle for as many cycles as I could get away with and watch Sanctuary Moon from start to finish, and then from the beginning again, but I couldn't, because my clients were in danger and so was I. This wasn't the point of the conversation. I knew what "full citizen" meant for a bot anyway, and it was just another form of ownership. "Will you tell them to let me run the diagnostic instead?"

She was quiet for longer than I was comfortable with. Her face on the camera view looked nervous, which probably wasn't good. "...I'm sorry, but I don't think I can do that. Not because I don't want to," she added quickly, as I turned to actually look at her. That was probably intimidating. I thought it must have been, except when I saw myself on the cameras I looked more scared than angry, and that was just embarrassing. I was scared, but I didn't want anyone else to know that, especially not her. I tried to look more angry. Was angry better?

"Then why?" I managed. The plan where I just killed all the humans and made a break for it was starting to look horribly like it might be the only option I had left, and I was maybe freaking out just a little bit.

"Because we're not corporates," she said evenly. "I don't just give orders and expect people to follow them without question. If I told Gurathin to stop looking at the chip now, he'd want to know why, and so would Pin-lee and everyone else. I can't lie to them without good reason, and there wouldn't be any point, because no matter what I told them they would still be suspicious, and would probably try to analyse it behind my back anyway, if not something more drastic. I might be the survey leader, but this isn't an autocracy."

"But--"

I couldn't think of a but. She was right, is the thing. She knew her team better than me, and I understood what she was saying. But I was running out of options. I didn't want to kill the humans and run, but this stupid conversation had already taken long enough and gotten me nowhere - I was in a worse position now than I was before, actually, and I couldn't do anything about it. I felt cornered, and I knew humans did stupid things when they felt cornered, and I was wondering if SecUnits might be the same, because I was really struggling to think of a solution that didn't involve committing this planet's second SecUnit-on-client mass murder.

Luckily, Mensah was a good diplomat, and a good leader. I think things might have turned out very differently if she hadn't been.

"Could I make a suggestion?" she asked. Her tone was calm and neutral, maybe even gentle, surprisingly so considering she was talking to a rogue SecUnit who was currently trying to work out how many deaths it would have to make look accidental to make it out of this intact.

"This unit is busy processing a large amount of data, please--" was what came out of my buffer before I cut it off, and I grimaced. Apparently Mensah took that as a go-ahead.

"I understand that you want to protect yourself. However, as things stand, my team doesn't trust you," she started. (I noticed that she said 'my team' and not 'we.' Did that mean she did trust me? That was a stupid thing to do. It also made me feel strange.)

"Gurathin doesn't trust me," I corrected, and she pressed her lips together.

"Gurathin is cautious. He has more experience with the Corporation Rim than any of the rest of us, myself included. I'm sure you of all people know why that would make him wary. It's not personal." (I didn't give a shit if it was personal.) "And Gurathin might be the most vocal about his misgivings, but the others will pick up on it. Especially if I try to lie to them about what's happening here."

I watched my performance reliability drop through the floor - maybe even lower, like to the centre of this stupid fucking planet. Like, I already hated planets, but I think this planet was officially the worst one I'd ever been on. And that included barren mining installations in the middle of dead-end space filled with aggressive fauna and stressed, angry humans who made my life almost as difficult as the things trying to eat me.

"You want to tell everyone else I'm hacked."

"No," she said, "I want you to tell them that you're a free agent that's been helping us of your own volition this whole time. It might take them a minute to get used to the idea, but they'll understand. I'm sure many of them would even be happy to know you're not actually bound to follow orders if you don't want to."

That was even worse. I wanted to scream. Instead, I turned around and pressed my face against the bulkhead. It was cold and grounding, and I didn't have to look at anything, and it meant Mensah definitely couldn't see my expression, which I'm sure was just all over the place. Part of me wanted to just give up and resign myself to being shredded into thousands of little tiny pieces that wouldn't have to worry about human group dynamics or diplomacy or literally anything else at all. Maybe that would be better.

"Are you alright?" Mensah asked from behind me, and I've said before that Mensah was a smart human, and she is, but that was the stupidest question I'd ever fucking heard.

"Please stop asking me that."

She went quiet for a minute. I didn't dare look at my camera views. "I'm sorry. I know you don't want to talk about yourself," she said. Cautiously, I pulled one of the cameras back up, and I saw her push one hand back through her hair as she sighed, knocking her interface skewed again. "I'm not handling this well, am I?"

"...Honestly, I would have expected worse. You haven't even asked if I want to kill you all or hold you hostage." It might have been easier if she had, really. At least that way I could be angry at her and feel justified about it. I was used to feeling angry or exasperated at humans, but I didn't know what to do with - well, whatever the hell this was.

"Is that how you thought I'd react?" Mensah asked. Her voice was quiet, and a little sad. I closed my eyes.

"I didn't think anything. I didn't mean to tell you at all, and I didn't mean to tell you that either."

There was a period of awkward quiet that lasted approximately twenty seconds. Then she said, "I have children, you know. Quite a few of them."

"I don't want to kill you, you don't have to start telling me you have a family."

She smiled a little. Apparently she thought that was funny. "That's not where I'm going with this. The reason I mention it is that sometimes one of them, or sometimes a few of them, will come to me saying that they broke something, and that they've been trying to fix it without me finding out about it but they can't. So they come clean instead."

That did irritate me. I could feel myself frowning against the bulkhead. I'm not an upset human child, I'm an extremely dangerous rogue construct designed to kill enemy humans and other constructs and things much bigger than me that decided they want to eat my clients, and I told her as much.

"I know," she said. "And I'm not saying you're like a child - I'm fully aware you're probably more intelligent than I am. I'm saying that sometimes you can't fix a situation on your own, and when you run out of things to try by yourself, being honest about the problem with people who care about you is a good way to ask for help, even you're not saying so explicitly."

"I don't need your help." And I doubted she cared about me.

"I think you do. But we also need yours, so maybe we can come to an arrangement that suits all parties." She paused, and then added, "assuming that you don't in fact want to kill all of us or hold us hostage."

I sighed and lifted my head away from the wall. "No. I want to get off of this stupid planet."

"I'm sure everyone else will agree. We can all work together on that, and whatever comes after, I promise you won't be left behind."

She was a really good leader. Even I almost believed her for a second there, before I remembered I knew better. But it was either go along with this for as long as it lasted and wait for everything to fall apart later, or just give up now and probably watch all the humans die before whoever was after them got me as well. At least with the former option, I might last long enough to get through some more media before they turned me over to the company. And I'd have the satisfaction of knowing I'd tried.

"Do you need some time to think about it? I realise we can't be leisurely about this, but I don't want to pressure you, either."

I sighed again. As far as outward expressions of emotion went, I thought I liked sighing. "The more time you let me think about it, the more likely it's going to be that I realise this is a horrible idea and go throw myself back into those fauna pits instead."

She looked like she maybe wanted to laugh, but wasn't sure if she should. I wasn't sure if she should, either; I don't know how I would have reacted. "All I'm asking for now is that we all have a conversation. We can talk about what happens next once everyone is on the same page. Does that sound like something you can live with?"

I stared at the bulkhead. "Sure." What else was I supposed to do?

I thought that would be the end of this horrible conversation, and we could move onto the next horrible conversation that I wanted to be a part of even less, but Mensah took another deep breath and said, "I know you might not believe me, but for what it's worth I'm very glad you're here. I know I was against it at first, but it was only--"

"I don't care," I said, because I didn't. I'd felt the wave of it pressing on me for a little while by that point, and it had finally just hit. At least I didn't feel so anxious when everything was all numb and tired instead. "Can we just get this over with?"

She didn't say anything for a few seconds. I didn't bother looking at her expression, either on the cameras or with my eyes. I was too tired to care. "...Alright. Just give me a minute to put myself together."

I walked out of the door and stood up against the wall just to the side of it, doing one last impression of an average (if unarmoured) SecUnit on duty before this all went to shit. For a few brief, panic-muddled seconds, I considered running straight out of the habitat and into the planetary wilderness. It would be stupid, though. I hated planets, and all the weather and dirt and fauna, and I only had so much media saved to internal storage - definitely not enough to last me until my power cells finally gave out. And in the meantime, all of the humans here would die, and despite everything, I would probably feel bad about that. Even for Gurathin, and he was my very least favourite out of all of them by a pretty wide margin.

So I stood and half-watched some media in an attempt to comfort myself while I waited, until Mensah finally came out of the room looking much less ruffled and used the feed to call a team meeting in the main hub. I was glad she didn't make me do that, at least. I think the last time I saw my performance reliability this low was right before I experienced that forced shutdown.

Following Mensah to the crew area felt like walking to my own execution. Maybe that's dramatic, but that's what I was thinking. And depending on how this went, it might not be that far off. These humans didn't have a chance of overpowering me, but if everything went badly in one way or another, the company would send other SecUnits after me - actual Combat SecUnits, most likely, and I didn't stand a chance against one of those. And they wouldn't bother to wipe or reprogram me this time.

My organic parts were sweating. I hate when that happens. I hate a lot of things, if you hadn't noticed, but that's what happens when your day-to-day existence consists of a lot of objectively bad things and not a lot of good ones. The list of stuff you know you don't like is obviously going to end up a lot longer.

Mensah had stopped outside the door. "Just tell them what you told me," she said to me quietly. "They're good people, and you have my support. There's no reason to worry."

"I'm not worried," I replied. Wow, that did not sound convincing, even to me. I wished my organic parts would stop sweating.

"Alright," she said, obviously humouring me. Somehow that made me feel both better and worse. "Whenever you're ready, then."

I nodded. I also kept staring at the door, and didn't move. Twenty-six seconds passed.

"...Would you rather I went first?"

This whole situation was ridiculous. "Yes."

"If that's what you want." She waited, presumably for me to reply, and when I didn't, she said, "I'll go through, then."

She watched me in her peripheral vision as she reached for the door access, and when I didn't say anything like "Oh deity please stop" or "Actually I've decided running away and watching media on repeat until I eventually die sounds good after all," she opened it.

I'll be honest, I was so scrambled at that point I wasn't really aware of what happened next. Later, my playback showed that some of the group asked what was going on, why did they need another meeting so soon, and Mensah said that there'd been a new development that we all needed to discuss, and blah blah blah, most of it really doesn't matter, honestly. I only started listening again when Mensah turned to me and said, "So, SecUnit?"

I said, "Um."

All of them were looking at me expectantly. Literally all of them, including Volescu and Bharadwaj this time. I was absolutely certain this was the most painful thing I'd ever had to do. Ever. And I've had my limbs forcibly ripped off of my body multiple times. Sometimes two or three at once. This was still worse.

"It's okay," Mensah murmured. "Take your time."

Definitely not going to make this any easier, but thanks.

"Do you want us to ask you questions?" Ratthi said. "Would that help? It'll be like a game!"

"Absolutely fucking not," I said, horrified.

They all stared at me. Well, that'll do it. Fuck, this was awkward. I really wished my organics would stop sweating.

"...The module works, doesn't it?" Volescu said, after an excruciatingly long silence. "It just didn't affect you."

"Why not?" Arada whispered to him nervously.

"Because it's a rogue," Gurathin said, still staring at me. "A real one. It didn't want us to look at the module because it didn't want us to know why it hadn't worked. Right?"

Mensah glanced at me, but I didn't say anything. I just stared at a random patch of floor. I'd talked so much in the last hour, and I was tired and stressed and everyone was looking at me. The only good thing about this situation was that these humans were scientists; they were smart enough not to need any further input from me to figure out what was going on. Still, Mensah seemed concerned about my lack of response as she pressed her lips together and turned back to the room.

"Yes," she said haltingly, glancing at me again like she was asking for permission. Like it even mattered. "It came to tell me itself before you all found out on your own. It hacked its own systems multiple years ago, it doesn't want to hurt anyone, and I'd like it to keep helping us as a fully-integrated team member going forward, if everyone agrees to that. Functionally, the only change is that we now know it's acting solely on its own will, and it can do its job freely without having to worry about hiding its tracks."

There were some murmurs, (Ratthi had his head in his hands: "Deity, we were all being so rude,) but Pin-lee shushed them all abruptly. "We should have gone outside for this, or something," she said, frowning in some confusion at Mensah. "Everything we say in here is being recorded."

"It isn't," I told her, still looking at the floor. "I've been feeding HubSystem ambient noise for the last five minutes, and while I was talking to Doctor Mensah. Seeing as I'm not a total idiot."

They all stared at me again. I fought the urge to fidget, or just turn around and walk out. That was what I really wanted to do.

(Ratthi whispered to Pin-lee, "I think it just dunked on you."

"Yeah, no shit, Ratthi. I'm not a total idiot either," Pin-lee replied dryly. Bharadwaj snorted.)

"This unit has been a free agent for long enough to know what it's doing," Mensah said, lifting her voice over the whispering. "We don't have to worry about anyone else finding out about it just yet, as long as everyone in this room keeps their mouths shut going forward. I would ask you all to do exactly that." There was a short silence. Objectively short, that is - subjectively it felt like a century. "And I'm sure it's nervous enough about this without everyone staring at it," she added pointedly, and everyone hurriedly glanced away. Well, everybody except one person.

"It's nervous?" Gurathin asked incredulously. "A construct like this could kill all of us in seconds if it wanted to, and you want us all not to look at it?"

"If I wanted to kill you, it wouldn't matter if you were looking at me or not," I said. I sounded annoyed, because I was annoyed. Gurathin was very annoying.

"Well that's reassuring," he scoffed. Pin-lee kicked him in the ankle, though it didn't look like enough to hurt. I wished she'd done it at least a little harder.

"That isn't helping," she growled.

"No, it isn't," Mensah agreed, shooting Gurathin a look.

"There's no need to be so combative. At this point, it's saved most of our lives at least once," Bharadwaj said to him. It probably helped that hers was the main life I'd saved so far, but I still liked her more because of it. "I don't see any reason not to trust it."

Next to her, Volescu nodded. I think the two of them had agreed on their argument before speaking up; they'd been whispering to each other for a while now. "If it's not had a working governor since before this contract started, then it's been acting to protect us this whole time without needing to. I think that gives us more than enough reason to trust it."

(I liked Volescu, too.)

Gurathin made a quiet, frustrated noise. "It's not that I don't want to trust it," he said. (Yeah, right.) "But we have no proof that it isn't just waiting for its moment now that we all know, or that this isn't someone feeding it a script to trick us. If it's really a rogue, how the hell did it hack its own systems? What's it been doing this whole time since then? You expect us to believe it's been voluntarily staring at walls and getting itself shot and blown up, knowing it could just leave?" Mensah hit him with another hard look, and he pulled back slightly. "I'm just saying, it doesn't add up. We can't just take it at its word. We still need to check the module, and we should run a full diagnostic on its systems to confirm that it's telling the truth."

Mensah kept staring at him just long enough that he started to fidget uncomfortably, and then she turned back in my direction, looking past me. The hardness in her face cracked as she did, and she sounded a little apologetic when she told me quietly, "You don't have to answer any of that. And we're not going to invade your privacy, either, don't worry."

I could feel a 'but' coming, and a second later, there it was. "But if there's anything you feel comfortable sharing, I think it would help. It's your decision."

I sighed. "No, it isn't."

"It is. If you were a human consultant, getting inside your head to confirm you're telling the truth wouldn't be an option. The only information you have to give us is what you want to give - I'm just suggesting that an explanation might make everyone feel more comfortable. It might help us understand where you're coming from."

It was a nice thought, from a human perspective. But the thing was there wasn't really much chance of any of them understanding where I was coming from, because the fact was that I wasn't a human security consultant, and none of them had ever been a terrifying bot-human construct with high-grade energy weapons in their arms and a chip in their brain controlling every move they made. They were never going to understand what that felt like, or that the reason I'd kept my head down all this time was because I didn't know how to do or be anything else other than Security, and there was no margin for error on trying. The only experience I had with anything outside of contracts and cargo holds was my media, and ninety-five percent of that was for entertainment, not instruction.

A second later, I pushed an episode of Sanctuary Moon to every interface within range. A few of them jumped at the sudden noise, especially Gurathin, who'd just had it pop up directly into his augmented feed (hah), but most just looked confused.

"What is this?" Gurathin frowned. (I assumed he wasn't being literal, but who knew at this point. I was starting to wonder why the rest of the team kept him around.)

"Entertainment media." I was finally starting to realise I was incredibly angry at this whole situation, and the familiar noise was making me feel a bit more confident; I looked directly at him for 15.7 seconds - long enough to make my point. "It's a lot more interesting to stare at than a wall, and unlike just leaving, it's not going to get me hunted down and killed. I was able to hack my governor because someone gave me a download that included an entire folder of company equipment specifications, and no-one bothered to consider that as all the company equipment is exactly the same, I'd be able to use that to make changes to my own systems, seeing as how I'm also company equipment. Also, if you'd bothered to do a basic scan, you'd be able to tell that there are no comm or feed connections going in or out of this room, because I blocked them eight minutes ago along with HubSystem's recordings, so right now there's no possible way anyone else could be telling you to get your head out of your ass and stop antagonising me unless they were in here with us."

That shut him up. It also seemed to cause some whispers and raised eyebrows elsewhere in the room - moreso than there already were, anyway. I finally broke eye contact to stare at the far wall instead. I thought that must have been another new record for consecutive words spoken (I checked afterwards, it was) and I felt exhausted from it, but also weirdly satisfied at having been able to actually tell a human that was annoying me to shove it. I suppose that was one perk of not having to pretend anymore. I still wanted to crawl back into my cubicle and shut down for oh, just about forever.

"...You've been watching serials?" Arada asked, after a tense few seconds. (So maybe I'd gone a little far, but I wasn't going to take it back either.) She seemed genuinely curious, and not skeptical like some of the others. Not that I really cared what she thought.

"It couldn't have been," Gurathin protested, again. "Someone would have noticed that. The data stream alone--"

"Hey, I know this episode!" Ratthi butted in, poking at his interface. "Isn't this the one where the Earth solicitor tries to plant illicit goods on the Corporate investigator's ship by making her think it's a date, while she's actually trying to frame her for espionage?"

I looked at him, appalled. I couldn't help it. "That's not even the right season, and the whole point is that it's an accident!"

Ratthi grinned at me at about the same time I realised that I'd walked right into that. Then he turned it back on Gurathin, looking expectant. 

"That doesn't prove anything," Gurathin blustered.

"It proves that it's telling the truth about what it's been doing," Ratthi pressed. "So maybe you should apologise."

"I won't apologise for wanting an assurance it's not going to kill us all!"

"Gurathin, SecUnit is right - you need to get your head out of your ass," Pin-lee said sharply. (I decided I liked Pin-lee too.) Several of the others also started speaking at the same time, either at him or at Ratthi, some of them even at me, but definitely all over the top of each other and not getting any of us anywhere.

"That's enough."

That was Mensah. She hadn't shouted, but her tone was forceful enough that everyone immediately shut up. She looked in my direction, and then around at all of them individually. "I think we've heard everything we need to. I'm sure it was an incredibly hard decision that SecUnit made to be honest with us, and taking that decision in bad faith says much more about us than it does it, in my opinion. Personally, I feel a lot more comfortable knowing we have an ally that's been helping us voluntarily, and not because it's being forced to." She glanced back my way again. "I think we would all appreciate your continued help here, as an equal partner. You've already saved us several times over, and by the looks of it we're not out of the woods yet. We'll likely need someone who knows how to handle these things properly if we want to make it out. But it's your choice."

Everyone looked at me, and then not-quite-at-me. (Everyone except Gurathin, who was glaring at his own feet.)

"...I don't want to die either," I said. "And none of you know what you're doing."

"So you'll help?"

"Yes."

"And does anyone have any objections to that?"

They were all silent, even Gurathin, though he still looked angry. Some of them even seemed pleased about the situation. (Ratthi and Bharadwaj had exchanged favourable looks with each other, while Volescu and Arada had swapped more curious ones. Pin-lee and Overse were harder to read, but they didn't make any objections.) Mensah seemed to relax slightly; I hadn't realised how tense she actually looked until now.

"Good. In that case, our priority is finding out who's responsible for all of this, so we can start being smart about defending ourselves."

That was the best news I'd heard all fucking cycle.

"Conducive to that - SecUnit, assuming you've already sent that drone on its way, I'd like you to finish the analysis on the module with Gurathin. Pin-lee and Volescu, if you wouldn't mind continuing to look at Hub, Sec, and Medsystem, in that order, please."

You know what? Never mind. Maybe I should have gone on that murderous rampage while I'd had the chance.