Chapter Text
I have been free for six hundred and thirty-eight days.
In that time, I have: fought off alien-contaminated targets; led counter-intelligence against my parent-company; invaded my parent company’s headquarters; participated in multiple extraction and retrieval operations; formed and reinforced several worthwhile personal relationships; and applied for legal recognition of my autonomy and personhood.
That’s a lot, for a SecUnit. I’m proud of both what I’ve accomplished and what I’ve endured since hacking my governor module.
Amena: Hey, Three, can you come get me?
And I might be in the thick of the strangest and most suffocating assignment I’ve ever had, but when Amena’s message hits my load-out I am immediately on my feet and swinging my jacket around my shoulders.
“Hey, I wasn’t serious!” Kari tells the table, dismayed as I’ve already got my interface switched off and slipped in my bag. “Theo, c’mon…”
Theo. Not the worst name I could have chosen, but always just enough like my actual name to disappoint me when I hear it.
“It’s not your sense of humor,” I say, processing Amena’s location pin and plotting the quickest route from the Student Union Building to— why is she so far off campus? “Something’s come up. I’ll submit my notes later tonight.”
“I thought we were getting drinks after this?” Pavin complains.
“Vi doesn’t drink,” Mariko reminds him as I say the same thing.
Theo: Leaving now. Are you alright?
Amena: I’m fine, just a little freaked out. This is too much.
Theo: ETA, 32 minutes.
There’s a bit more talk, but I acknowledge Mariko’s tap asking if I’m fine (I’m fine), and fire off a quick assurance to Kari that no, I wasn’t offended by their joke. I’m not good with humor but I do know what jokes are, I also know they don’t believe me but I’ll deal with that tomorrow.
I walk (walk) out of the study space and through the glass doors into the Mihiran autumn night. There’s no precipitation but the chilly air is heavy with humidity. The thickly quilted clouds reflect the light pollution back so the sky has an uncanny glow.
I ping DiDi and the bot-pilot blinks awake with a chirp. It’s a simple intelligence integrated into a solo-engine driver, a civilian-class recreational hovercraft. Bringing it here from Preservation was part of what convinced me to accept this assignment: Perihelion had to build an entire feed matrix for DiDi to do laps around for the 21-day wormhole journey between systems.
See? I do understand humor.
DiDi eagerly accepts the location pin and my route map as it powers on from its spot a few meters from the SUB entrance. It withdraws its landing gear and reverses back to meet me, cool blue lights flashing down its sides and undercarriage as its wind-screen generates and my load-out ports onto it. A compartment with my helmet and gloves pops opens, and I gear up as DiDi runs its safety checks.
It pings me an alternate route from the University’s Alpha Campus down through the old freight bypass tunnels, versus the skybridge approach I chose. We have to reach the Mihira Alpha West Annex where Amena is calling me from.
I hesitate. I’m forbidden from hacking university systems or bypassing security protocols as part of my assignment, but the wider city infrastructure is no more off-limits to me than it is for any other student.
…Which means it’s highly illegal and I can be expelled from both the university and the planet if I get caught using those old tunnels as my personal traffic detour.
Amena: Three, I’m scared.
I accept the re-route.
Theo: ETA 18 minutes. I’m coming.
12-point-5 minutes later, I’m forced to throttle down as DiDi and I leave the old bypass tunnels behind for Mihira-Alpha’s West Annex. The Annex is a highly industrial quarter from the earliest days of M-Alpha, a bit of rot buried in the flesh of a glittering human city. Towers thousands of feet tall spear the night-sky and glitter with hovercraft traffic even at this late hour, their light circling the Annex that is mostly low concrete and metal structures. I’m in the right neighborhood, and approaching soon-ish.
A light rain has picked up but more importantly: so has the marker paint. If I shoot through these streets at the break-neck pace Amena’s fear warrants, DiDi will log every violation and ping the transit authority like the helpful bot it is.
It’s an argument for later.
I round another corner and get a blip in my load-out that immediately ports to DiDi’s wind-screen: it’s one of my drones, the one Amena wears and that I keep inert to respect her privacy. Her and I only arrived at PSMUNT-Alpha a month ago for her formal learning and my annoying assignment, and this is the first time she’s used the drone.
She’s physically tapped it to waken the pin-sized device and now that I’m in range, I quickly download its recording for a review.
I don’t recognize any of the faces or names except one: a young human female who Amena share her accommodations and one of her introductory classes with. They formed a fast friendship within the first days of semester.
“Quit being a little bitch,” said Amena’s friend about 45 seconds before she pinged me for retrieval. She shoved a glass with some glowing concoction into Amena’s hand, and a small clear-plastic fold with contents I manage to snag and clean up an image of.
Great, something almost as illegal as using the bypass tunnels as my personal shortcut.
DiDi switches its lights to a sharp yellow color as we come around the last corner and see the line of people waiting outside a two-story oval building. It’s covered in dazzling lights and projecting a teeth-numbing reverb into the street. From this close and with the recording I know exactly where on the second floor I can find Amena, because she knows how close I am and is putting up with being yelled at for being a kill-joy and standing on the catwalk outside her friend’s private room.
She has not taken the stimulant-marked-depressants, but is very overwhelmed and very scared.
I warn DiDi and then dismount without slowing down, stepping onto the asphalt and letting DiDi swing its back-end around without me. Its engine revs loudly like it’s about to go out of control before it pilots itself tight behind me, coming to a perfect stop.
I ignore the line, heading straight for the human security guard who doesn’t like the look of some nobody marching up to them. I pull my helmet off to appear less (but not not) threatening. I can’t access their feed, but I have my interface out with the cleaned-up snapshot already displayed, and show them the drug snapshot.
“I’m here for my little cousin,” I lie-but-not-lie, and the guard freezes. “Take my word for it or follow me, I don’t care, but I’m going in and I’m getting her away from her so-called friends.”
Mihira isn’t the same kind of idyllic human paradise as Preservation. They have criminal activity, and the only other time I’ve been down in the West Annex after dark my weapon scans reacted like I was back with my parent company.
They’re doing the same thing now, too.
This guard is wearing a side-arm and shock-rod, but the most important piece of kit they’re wearing is a face-blur. It’s a visual-field distortion with a similar principle to, but extremely limited execution of, the target’s cloaking technology from HellPlague Planet. The gap between two pieces of tech are akin to the one between DiDi and Perihelion.
Oh, they also have augments worked into their hands, but my augments are better because all of me is an augment.
I’m also at least two centimeters taller than them, and while I don’t look as outwardly strong as they do, I am much, much stronger, and extremely willing to use that strength.
[MISSION PARAMETER LOCK]
I grit my teeth. I don’t want to hurt anyone, but I will if I—
[MISSION PARAMETER LOCK]
I am not going to hurt anyone.
My face reacts to the internal warning, and the guard reacts to my face by saying, “You have two minutes before I drag you back out.”
I nod, “Thank you.”
Even through the face-blur, this startles them.
I tap Amena and get a crying-but-relieved emotional sigil.
It’s loud and dark inside, but I activated my night-vision before leaving the Student Union Building and dampen my hearing so I won’t get distracted. The whole place smells like sweat and spilled alcohol and the sour-but-earthy reek of breathalized chemicals. Humans and augmented humans are drinking and singing and shouting.
I’m momentarily put off by what has to be a duo of ComfortUnits dancing barely-clothed inside glass tubes around the central dance-floor, but push past it.
My weapon scans pick up a lot, and my threat assessment is steadily rising as I tag several face-blurred guards who are already paying attention to me. There are no SecUnits to match the ComfortUnits, only human security. I let just four drones out of my pocket, bread-crumbing my path back out of here and isolating one other alternate exit.
[MISSION PARAMETER LOCK]
That’s what I get for trying to release a fifth drone, and catch it before it can fall out of my pocket and get crushed on the floor.
Risk assessment is chafing against the parameter lock. I flex my hands but don’t bother bringing up my on-board weapon widget because I know the lock will resist until its conditions are met. I don’t want to hurt anyone, so the conditions aren’t unreasonable, but having them at all is stressful.
I scan for the cat-walk access and keep my LikeAHuman codes running so I actually strafe around the club-goers instead of SecUnit-marching my way straight across the venue.
I see myself in Amena’s drone feed and then make visual contact with my own eyes. She doesn’t see me until I side-step in front of her with a hand out.
“Amena.”
Her face crumples immediately. “I’m sorry!”
At least she’s okay. At least I’m here. “You’re safe.”
Her face is smeared with make-up and glitter is splattered over her braided hair and stains her clothes. The same yellow glow of the drink is splashed down her skirt and leg, and she is wearing far less clothing than I am accustomed to.
I put one arm protectively around her and shepherd her back out toward the entrance, reclaiming my drones as we go. My bioscan of her shows a modest blood-alcohol level, plus a minor dose of neuro-inhibiting chemicals. Not unreasonable, it is her first month away on a new planet and new environment with new… friends.
It’s too loud to speak so I ask my next question over the feed. As we reach the entrance, Amena hands me the bundle of pills and I pass the drugs to the bemused guard, who will probably pretend this entire exchange never happened.
They gave me two minutes, and I have Amena climbing weak-kneed on to DiDi as that limit expires. She sniffles, distraught, and murmurs apologies to DiDi as she tugs uselessly at her too-short skirt and tries to sit side-saddle instead. DiDi ejects one of its crash harnesses, which I help Amena put on over her too-short-too-tight jacket. It tries to eject the other one for me, but I just put it back and get a disappointed trill back in response.
I don’t have a second helmet, but Amena doesn’t want to get glitter all over the inside of mine and I am momentarily torn. I’m less likely to die in a crash scenario due to my physiology, but I also don’t want glitter all over the inside of my helmet.
The decision is made for us when a sharp female voice shouts, “Hey! Fuck you! Where are you going, Mensah?”
DiDi’s lights flare orange and I mount up with Amena behind me with her arms around my waist. I make a rude gesture at Amena’s ex-friend as we peel away through the cold autumn rain.
Retrieval complete.