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“Nothing is wrong with the switch,” Nastya says, twirling the wrench in her hand and leaning back against one of Aurora’s bulkheads. (The ship hums contentedly at the touch.) “Which is what Raphaella told you. I don’t know why you’re so worried, anyway.”
“I just…” The DrumBot sighs. “I wasn’t tricking Pilchard. At least, at least I didn’t mean to? But I s’pose… I know as well as anyone what the Doc is capable of. I could’ve warned him. Could’ve just… not told him where the workshop was. And now the poor fool’s gone—”
“Stark-raving mad, yes,” Nastya says with a shrug. “My apologies if you don’t see me weeping; I’m still a little dehydrated after having all of my blood filtered for malware.”
“I know , I know he was a… a bad person, okay? I’m not naive,” Brian says. “But I mean… we’re all bad people, aren’t we? Those of us that are still… people.” For a moment, the writhing thing behind his chest plate aches. Just for a moment. “What’s to stop me from deceiving any of you into death or madness?”
“Jonny’s gun. Tim’s guns. The fact that we would just come back pissed off.”
“Okay, okay, fine.” He slumps. “I just… I didn’t think that anything I could do as, you know, as ‘Nice Brian’ would lead to people getting hurt. Is all.”
Nastya’s quiet for a moment, and then she chuckles lowly, looking up at the wall behind her as though it’s said something funny. “That’s true,” she says, patting the bulkhead, and Brian realizes she’s talking to the ship. “Aurora says she’s never met anyone with such a hefty inferiority and superiority complex.”
“Shut up.”
“He doesn’t mean it, darling,” Nastya says to the ship. “Brian, none of the rest of us have a switch between ‘the ends justify the means’ and ‘the means justify the ends.’ We all just have to take our best guesses and hope things turn out alright in the end. And if they don’t, well, we just hope the bad things that happen are at least entertaining.”