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I came online to the unsettlingly familiar sensation of an involuntary system shutdown. I had no hearing, no vision, no ability to move. My feed connection was just as dead as I tried to force a startup or connect to the comms. The only sensory input I could register was from my organic skin and the vellus hairs from the code that ART had made me enable. There was a strong breeze. I think I was moving? Or being moved.
There was a pressure around the skin on one of my arms. My left one (unknown certainty, as my calculations were not running). It was confusing and hurt a little in a dull way, maybe I had gotten damaged there? Or my arm guns had malfunctioned, and my skin was reading them wrong.
I tried to move but I don’t think I did because the breeze didn’t change.
I would just have to wait until my systems came back online or someone came to help me. What had I been doing and where had I been? That information was out of reach in my memory archives. All I could get from my organics was a feeling that I had been with Mensah, which was a kind of cold and ominous dropping sensation. Like being cold and slightly damp.
I didn’t like having involuntary system shutdowns when I was around Mensah. That meant I had either experienced another [redacted] incident or that something had happened, like an assassin, and there was a very real risk (unknown certainty) that she was injured somewhere while I was immobilised (but potentially being moved?).
I came back online slowly. There was a constant noise above my head, which is a pretty odd place for a noise to be happening. Especially as it sounded like someone was talking to me, and despite the surgery, I am still taller than most humans.
I recognised that voice and way of speaking. It was Dr. Mensah, and she was talking to me loudly with a strained voice, like she was struggling to breathe. That was alarming as it implied she could be injured.
Maybe I was lying down while she was standing over me? It didn’t explain why I felt like I was moving, and why one arm felt stiff and under pressure while the other was dangling?
Then my language modules came back online.
“-don’t know how much longer- I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’ve got you. I won’t let you go. SecUnit, can you hear me? I won’t let you go, I’ve got-” she said the words on repeat, like she was stuck in her own organic human version of a buffer. The pressure around my arm moved upwards over my arm guns, then tightened again.
I still couldn’t move. My visuals were coming back online, and I was able to register that I was looking down at the exterior of a transit pipe. I was so shocked that risk assessment and threat assessment immediately came online and freaked out too. It was a long way down, and because I was outside the transit pipe, which meant I was being subjected to human-appropriate gravity levels. (Translation: If I fall that far, I will be turned into secunit paste. I probably wouldn’t survive that. A human certainly wouldn’t survive that.)
I needed to find out if Mensah, or one of my other humans, was also in this hazardous situation.
My head felt weird, what had happened to me? I felt like I had been fried inside and out and now my connections didn’t want to work. By concentrating my processes, and sending multiple instructions along the inputs, I could slowly rotate my head left and right to confirm that I was definitely dangling and immobile on the exterior of a transit drop, and that whatever was preventing me from falling was in a direction I hadn’t been able to look in. Memory archive still wasn’t active so I had to scan that direction too.
Moving my head upwards was difficult, mostly because I had to fight gravity and my own malfunctioning connections, but I eventually managed to raise it enough that I looked upwards and could lock my neck into position.
Not the best position to lock my neck in, as I was making direct eye contact with Mensah’s own startled (and rather close) eyes. But it was Mensah, so not the worst kind of eye contact I could have. Her face was very strained and had a light coating of sweat, her teeth gritted, and I could see the wrinkles of her forehead deepening. Her eyes were also slightly reddened and glassy. Her mouth had been moving with her repeated organic buffer that she had me, but it stopped open in surprise as I looked at her.
“Hello.” I said. Or tried to say, it came out mangled and slow because of how my neck was frozen and from the poor control I had of my communication systems.
I could see now that I dangling from the edge of the transit platform, only stopped from turning into secunit-paste by Mensah’s tight grasp around my arm. She was flat on her stomach and half-curved over the edge in a way that looked painful. Her fingers dug into me and slipped a little, then dug in harder.
“SecUnit. I’m so glad you’re awake.” She sounded unsteady. My memory archives finally clicked into place, and I sped through the recordings of the contingent of hostile humans who had been chasing us with the intent to destroy me and either kidnap or destroy Mensah. Both of which were increasing as she stayed stationary in this vulnerable spot, holding onto me instead of hiding like she should be.
I opened my mouth to tell Mensah to go hide, but she beat me to it. “I’m not leaving you.”
The firm effect of her voice was reduced slightly when she involuntarily slid forward a bit with me towards the edge, her words turning into a surprised gasp. I could feel her hands shaking around me. One of my fingers twitched on one of my hands, the direct hit from whatever-the-fuck hit me still impacting my connection to my body parts. Just talking to her took an unnecessary amount of focus.
I had to try. I would probably become secunit-paste, which meant Mensah would definitely become human-paste and I didn’t want that to happen.
“You should go hide.” I told her.
My locked neck gave me an unnecessarily high definition close-up of her face becoming angry. Eyes narrowed to slits and her nose flared as she took a deep breath and tried to pull my limp, useless body towards her. “I’m not leaving you.” She said it angrily, the way she spoke to the company that one time.
Despite her efforts, we both slipped a little closer to a situation where gravity would take over. If I had a stomach, it would have dropped along with the rest of me, but because I was having [redacted] images of Mensah falling and becoming human-paste, while I somehow remain undamaged and surrounded by her smeared body. I really didn’t want that to happen.
“It’s okay.” I reassured her that it was okay to let go and save herself. I didn’t want to become secunit-paste, but there were worse ways to go than fulfilling my function to protect my favourite human.
I could feel her fingers shaking where they dug into my arm guns through my jacket. She tightened them almost to the point of pain. Mensah had impressive grip strength. “I’m not letting go.” She said.
Fluids from her exertion dripped onto me, and my face made an expression. Mensah gave a slightly hysterical laugh, so I tried to give her a reassuring smile that it was okay. We probably looked ridiculous like this, a human risking their life to stop a malfunctioning secunit from falling off the transit station.
“It’s okay.” I repeated it to her, tried to get her to understand how thankful I was to spend so much of my time with her, and that she could let go and save herself. “Your family-”
“Shut the fuck up!” I’m not letting you go.” She hissed it out, then started making stressed panting noises as we slowly inched to the drop off.
I shut up.
More of my inputs and archives had come back online, and I scanned them for ideas on what to say. Mostly, I got a lot of scenes from shows where the two people then died tragically together, or were rescued by a mysterious third party. I didn’t find anything I could use where someone managed to convince the other person to let them go and save themselves.
“They will understand.” Mensah said it as she tried to wiggle backwards, but my weight prevented her. It was impressive she had held onto me for as long as she had.
I had shut up, so I stared grimly up into her eyes instead. It was weird, because I was having melty feelings that she had her family and was going to give all that up for me, because she was too optimistic that she could save me. The way I would give it all up for her and keep holding on, even as risk assessment ticked up to higher and higher levels with lower and lower odds of survival. (I didn’t want Mensah to give it all up for me, that’s my function, not a human’s function.)
One of my legs twitched as it came online. Just the one. It was an involuntary movement, and I hated my machine side so much because it jerked Mensah enough that we started a slow and continuous slide towards the air. I wanted to yell or scream or say something to reassure her so that her last few minutes alive weren’t drowned out by fear. But my inputs were too sluggish to respond.
And then we were falling, and my emotions fell with us.
Mensah still had hold of my arm between her hands. I fell like a partially offline construct made of organic and inorganic parts. Mensah fell more like a human, her legs stretched out behind her, and the caftan billowing in the wind. Her decorative feed device shimmered in the breeze. I had a moment to think she might get to live for a fraction of a second longer if she didn’t have my weight speeding the process up, but I dismissed that thought. Humans couldn’t think that fast.
A shot went through the billowing caftan. I tried to identify the hostile locations even as we feel nd I couldn’t do anything about it. It seemed silly that they were only shooting at us now when gravity was going to turn us into combined human-secunit-paste, it just seemed a bit of overkill and a waste of projectiles-
Then another one went through the arm Mensah was holding onto. Through my arm. And some of her hand. Then we were being separated as I fell that fraction faster than her. Her expression was already pretty startled from the situation, but it changed to horror as the distance grew. And I think she was yelling something but even my audio can’t filter out the sound of falling that fast.
She still held the remains of my hand in hers. (Well, what was left of hers.)
She was about to become human-paste, but I was still sad that it wouldn’t be all of her, that I had failed at keeping her intact and now she would die knowing what it was like to be missing part of a hand. I felt bad that having my arm separated from her like this had made her break her promise. That as we were falling, she was still reaching out to me with that ruined hand while the other clutched mine close to her chest.
I had another involuntary twitch, my whole body this time, and finally, the rest of me was online. I immediately kicked out a foot to the side of the transit drop. The speed at which I was falling started to wear away my boots, but it slowed me enough that my other hand could reach out to grab her ruined hand and pull her in towards me. I used a bit too much strength, so she came in fast with an “oof!”, and I wrapped my arm around her in a tight hug and locked it. Then I brought the stump of my other arm up to protect her head and locked that too. I could feel her hands coming up to grasp at my jacket, and the weird feeling of a third hand, my disconnected hand, pressed between our bodies.
I twisted my leg that was grinding against the transit drop to dig my toes into the surface. They’re not toes like humans have, but they are flexible and inorganic, and with my shoe worn away, I could stab it in. It started to wear away too, but as it was inorganic material, it didn’t hurt and mostly resulted in a lot of error messages I didn’t have time to look at, because the surface was coming closer and closer to turning us into combined-paste.
In my arms, Mensah was trembling and holding me tightly. It was a bit like the other times I had held her in my arms as we fell from great heights. I had to hope I could continue to protect her. Her organic buffer was saying, “I’ve got you,” and I melted even as I used my scraping toes to pull me in closer to the transit and stab my other leg at it as well. I was scrabbling, trying to catch them on any defect that would slow us down or stop us.
A few times, I almost grabbed something, but then our momentum kept us moving. I curled my toes harder and-
UNIT OFFLINE
I was upside down, and the shock of the memory of the last time I was dangling in that orientation kickstarted my systems. Mensah was in my arms, also upside down, as I was still locked around her. It couldn’t be comfortable for her to be sagging like that in my grasp, but she was awake and still telling me that she had me. Her head was buried into my shoulder, and I could hear her so clearly.
(I scanned the environment. We were pretty close to the surface, but had stopped when my leg got tangled in the scaffolding of some advertisement screens that were being installed. I could disconnect my leg and let us drop from this distance, Mensah would probably survive with a few more injuries, but the strength of the fall had dislocated my spine when my leg stopped moving, and the rest of me kept going. So I wouldn’t be able to use my legs to turn us and cushion Mensah’s fall.)
I carefully unlocked my arms so I could tighten them even more around her, then locked them again.
“You got me.” I interrupted her. (I didn’t think it was good for humans to have buffers. I think I understood why she yelled at me about my buffers that one time.)
There was a wetness where her face pressed into my neck and also where her damaged hand was pressed against my chest. Humans don’t have pain sensors to adjust, so I was worried about the state of her health. Now that I was properly online again, I could ping the feeds for Pin-Lee and the others to come collect us before the hostiles managed to travel down and find us. (One pro to falling off the transit station, I guess, it was a very efficient relocation process.) (Also, a very efficient dislocation process, going by the tearing in my neural spine and machine connections.)
She made noises into the growing wet patch of my neck. “Sorry, SecUnit. I’m just so happy I’ve got you.”
I looked her over. The blood was rushing to her head, and I wasn’t sure how long a human could stay upside down like this. She also pulled back in my arms to look me over.
Between the two of us, we were both missing limbs and had several injuries. But we were alive, so I went to the effort to crinkle some of my lower face at Mensah in the way I had practiced in my room. She cry-laughed at me, which would be hurtful if it had been anyone else but her. Then she started crying properly, the different types of fluids coming out of her face and then she was back to having her head on my shoulder.
Oh. Well.
I sort of understood that.
I couldn’t cry like her but I think I kind of felt the same way, a wave of relief that went through my body and made me unlock my arms so I could tighten them even more before locking again. I increased my body temperature and confirmed Pin-Lee’s query with our location and estimated distance from the lower surface we nearly became paste on. She sent me an ETA and a request for what types of medical care we needed. I replied absently, most of my processing focussed on holding onto Mensah. I had her, I wasn’t going to let her go either.