Archive of Our Own

SecUnits are built to be sturdy. Our arteries can seal themselves off, our body temperature is high enough that most any pathogen that could otherwise infect our synthesised human parts would be denatured, our bones are made to be strong enough to withstand forces far more intense than a human’s bones.

You’ll forgive me if I don’t tell you the specifics, right?

I’m currently experiencing an emergency. And even if I wasn’t, this isn’t information you would be interested in hearing.

You are currently nearly five minutes late for our planned rendezvous, and have been incommunicado for seven minutes prior. Our contingency plan dictates that should you be more than ten minutes late to our rendezvous, the rest of the crew and myself will leave you behind to escape on your own. Fortunately for you, I think this plan is stupid.

And I am unwilling to lose another squadmate.

The two Perihelion crew members with me, third-in-command Martyn Izere and Karime Abedana, are both in agreement with my proposal to comb through the VenSuzManaus systems to see if I can find artefacts of your hacking to suggest where you may have gone or what may have happened after your most recent status:nominal location ping. An ordinary Barish-Estranza SecUnit would not be able to do so, but—

I have had an excellent teacher. Even if your pedagogy isn’t official protocol of the Pansystem University of Mihira and New Tideland or Barish-Estranza module material, your mastery of slipping in and out of systems is unrivalled against any other being I have met. I wouldn’t tell you that to your face—for all of your achievements, you are very shy— but it is true nonetheless. And irrelevant.

[Editing note: delete this.]

It takes another two minutes to realise that your artefacts stop around one of VenSuzManaus’ many canal filtration systems.

This is where I begin to truly worry. VenSuzManaus, although a beautiful station full of water features and luxuriously green parklands, has a reputation for visitors being badly injured due to skipped safety procedures. We had briefly discussed this in our planning stage and came to the conclusion that it would be safest for the humans to stay in the densely populated tourist regions while the two of us managed the physical sabotage. As per Barish-Estranza SecUnit custom, I have been pinging you for your location every 4.5 seconds while on active duty, and you have been giving neither the automated response ping a SecUnit of our squad access privileges should generate nor your customary reaction of strangling the ping and sending me a rude sigil in its place. I forward Martyn Izere and Karime Abedana your most recent ping alongside an alert to be aware of potential environmental hazards, then begin to run.

VenSuzManaus’ Canal Filtration Plant 24, the location of your most recent ping, was three minutes away if I were to run at my top model’s top speed of 60kph (faster than yours by 8kph, a fact which I know you are sensitive about, even though you would deny that). To do so would immediately compromise the mission by revealing myself as a construct and, more importantly, put any extraction that might be needed for you at risk. Instead I stay at a fast-but-reasonable running speed of 20kph. Nine minutes to Canal Filtration Plant 24.

Humans swarm around me as I run through them, paying only the barest efforts to not knocking them over. They’re bouncy, despite your fussing over them. They make various noises of irritation as I plow through them, but their anger isn’t on my list of priorities. I suspect that Martyn Izere and Karime Abedana will be further delayed by navigating the crowds of tourists, but neither of them carry firepower the way I do.

When I arrive, slamming through the door to the filtration plant, the facility is eerily still. I’d further reviewed the footage while running to try and clarify the remnants of your trail, but still I find myself certain only that you had entered approximately 23 minutes ago and had not left where cameras could see.

I slip a hand into one of the lead-shielded pockets in my abdomen and withdraw a fresh clip of projectiles. They slot into my gunports with a quiet click.

There are no other beings—human, construct, bot, or yourself— visible on the security cameras, but that doesn’t preclude there being a combatant hiding in the cameras’ blindspots.

There is no response.

I slow even further, taking care to muffle my footsteps.

FilSys Security Camera 264, located some twenty metres above me and overseeing a narrow catwalk, has a minor discrepancy in the video frames between 14:22.05 and 14:22.10 in the form of a slightly displaced piece of rebar laying across the catwalk. You took a higher route.

The filtration facility is large, with rooms sectioning off different parts of its filtration system from the main room with its massive pool of raw water. I don’t know much about water filtration (internal note: research after extraction is complete), but the raw water pool doesn’t seem filthy with sewage the way I would have expected. Perhaps the sewage is treated elsewhere? A small silver lining to this ordeal. Human waste smells unpleasant.

Focus, Three.

The ladder that takes me from the plant’s floor to the catwalk where you had passed is sturdy, formed well enough to not even creak under my weight despite its haphazard appearance of rusted metal rungs. I am used to human structures being too fragile to accommodate a SecUnit’s rapid movements, especially ones not intended to carry members of the general public. You must also be experienced with this as a rental unit, even though you are violently disinterested in discussing your owned past. If the ladder gave way beneath me, I would not have been surprised. But fortunately, it didn’t, and I crest its top to find myself on a catwalk so choked with wires draping from the ceiling that I find myself having to manually turn off my safety module notifications. It is not often that I find environmental hazards that transgress even Barish-Estranza’s low, low standards.

I look around. There, at the bottom of the pool of raw water some ten metres deep, is a shape I horribly suspect is you.

Before I can think, I am swinging a leg over the catwalk’s narrow railing. I pause. I still don’t know what had caused it to fall, nor what had prevented it from self-rescuing.

I look around. Nothing immediately appears out of place, although if you have been shot at long range there would be no sign of the assailant. But there are no fluids on the catwalk, just a dent on the railing. I swing my leg back over and make to approach before stopping.

This is likely what saved me from following in your path. Something in the air, some organic hindbrain warning, tells me to be careful. I flick through several visual filters.

All are normal except for my infrared capture filter, which shows a sharply elevated temperature coming from one of the dozens of dangling wires.

Ah.

I think I may be able to see the shape of the incident now.

You were focused on arriving at the rendezvous site as quickly as you could, I think. Environmental hazards were risks for humans, not for SecUnits such as ourselves, so you ran across the catwalks spanning across the tops of the filtration plants rather than taking the time to go around the pools. In the process, you must have brushed up against hundreds of wires.

Maybe you rolled your eyes at the human mismanagement, maybe you wouldn’t have thought anything at all of it without any human clients with you to worry about. Either way, you weren’t careful and you didn’t detect the live wire before you ran into it and received a shock strong enough to spasm you over the side of the catwalk and into the water while in a temporary shutdown.

I hope that is the case, at least. I do not know the voltage of the cable, nor how many amperes passed through you at the time of contact.

My emotional distress is rising. Still, I take the time to push FilSys to give me a report on its pools while I compose and send an incident report to Martyn Izere and Karime Abedana detailing the presumed sequence of events and my intended response.

Then, with FilSys assuring me that its pools contain no hazardous electrical current, I dive off the side of the catwalk. The water of Canal Filtration Plant 24 is cool, with a sluggish current that is no obstacle to my diving down to the pool’s floor.

And you’re there, curled on your side as if you are in recharge. Your eyes are open, your pupils are at their widest aperture. Your face is slack.

There are no visible electrical burns on your skin. A small relief.

I reach out, lifting you from the pool’s floor with one arm wrapped around your still chest. I draw you close to me before pushing off the bottom, close in a way I know you would be panicking over. However, you are currently unresponsive and cannot protest my handling of you the way I would handle one of my squadmates.

Your joints are pliant in my hands. There’s an aching pit in my abdomen as your head settles against my shoulder, but I do not have the time to examine this. I know why, anyway.

[Editing note: delete this, too.]

We aren’t in as much of a rush as a human rescuing a human would be. Although, were you human, this would be a body retrieval and not a rescue. Regardless, I do not need to breathe for another 87 seconds, even with the exertion of towing a slightly-less-than-150-kilogram SecUnit alongside myself. And you are either offline or in hibernation mode, either not breathing altogether or breathing at a rate just barely frequent enough to prevent neuron damage. I cannot tell which of the two. I desperately hope that it is the latter option. Still, I swim as fast as I can, spurred along by the sinking terror in my organics that you are dead from electrocution and that I have lost another squadmate.

My fingers brush against the narrow ladder leading out of the pool, a structure of lesser make than the catwalk’s ladder. I fear that it won’t be able to take our combined wet weight. But I do not have any other options.

It’s an exercise in humiliation and longing as I maneuver your unmoving body so that your armpit is slung over my left arm and your groin is slung over my right, leaving both my hands free to climb. I know that when (if) you wake, you will be furious with humiliation and fear at my casual manipulation of your body.

I think I will be furious, too, although for a different reason. It’s distressing to know that you don’t give a solitary shit as to your own safety or the reactions of the people around you when your carelessness leads to your inevitable end. It is not an intentional cruelty, I think, but it is a cruelty nonetheless. I am reliant on you. If you are dead, if you are dead because I foolishly trusted you enough to keep yourself safe, I’ll—

I’ll—

[Internal note: I think I hate you sometimes.]

I am not so angry that I don’t have the mental capacity to fret as every clumsy pull moves your limp body against my own. I can see your head from the FilSys camera as it jostles against nothing, and wish dearly that I have another set of arms so that I can stabilise it better. Or perhaps, another set of arms so that I can take your pulse now instead of in a few more seconds when we reach the platform around the pool.

The ladder doesn’t break beneath us, and I don’t grow more arms. As soon as I have carried you a safe two metres away from the edge of the pool, I lay you carefully down on the cold concrete. I press two fingers to the soft spot between the exposed cabling of your neck and your jawbone, tilting your chin up to feel for the weak electrocurrent that makes up a SecUnit’s pulse. I assume that the position I had carried you up the ladder allowed any fluid in your oesophagus to drain. If any water remains in your lungs, it will have to be addressed in the Perihelion’s medbay.

To my deepest relief, I sense that electrocurrent. You are in hibernation mode. You are not dead.

[Internal note: I think I love you.]

You need oxygen restoration to get you out of hibernation mode. I settle onto my knees beside you, pinch your nose shut, and lean over your face. I inhale as deep as my shallow lungs will let me, then exhale quickly back into your mouth.

I notice this: your lips are smooth against my own.

SecUnits have small lung capacity, but highly efficient oxygen extraction per square millimetre as compared to a human. I do not currently have a way to know what the oxygen content of my exhalations were since that fact is neither in my manual nor something I have desired to know before this incident. All I know is Barish-Estranza rescue protocol says there is no point in a SecUnit giving rescue breaths to a human since our exhaled lung capacity is not sufficient to sustain a human’s neurons.

We are not meant to stay in hibernation mode without any source of oxygen at all. It is meant to keep us from suffocating in hypoxic environments such as transport holds, not anoxic ones. I am terrified that you have received brain damage in the nearly twenty minutes it took me to retrieve you from the water.

Is the Perihelion’s medbay advanced enough for neural surgery? Are our brains similar enough to a human’s that neural replacement would work on us?

How could you do this to me?

[Internal note: you’re so fucking selfish.]

My emotions are running riot. I am not able to sift through them all, but they are making me feel a sickening pulsating sensation at the ends of my hands where my fingers turn from meat layered over metal to solely metal.

I am not so ill-trained as to fidget out my guns in discomfort, but I am tempted to do so.

I am not so organic as to be able to cry, but I want to.

Instead, I continue breathing in and out into your slack mouth. I have seen humans give rescue breaths before and my medical education models have taught me how to coach a human through rescue breathing another human. Their exhales are meant to be slow, at a pace until their chest expands.

It is meant to be a complement to chest compressions to pump oxygenated blood through the human body. That, I am able to provide.

You, like me, do not have a heart that can be restarted. Oxygen is delivered to our brains through veins in a method similar to that of humans, but our core provides the power that squeezes our blood through our veins rather than a heart’s pulse. And your core is still providing power.

It is just the oxygen.

I try to be conscious of my own oxygen absorption and administer my breaths in rapid exhales and inhales. Your chest moves jerkily from where I have placed a light hand upon it. I do not have the specifications as to your lung capacity because you are terrified of anyone other than the Perihelion knowing your make and weaknesses. As such, I have no way of knowing if my lung capacity is equal to your own, nor what your average oxygen usage is, nor the amount of oxygen your systems require before they take you out of hibernation mode.

It’s absurd. Humiliating, even, that I have to work in tandem and place my life and safety in the hands of a SecUnit that cannot even trust me with its manual.

I understand that before you were a rogue, you were a solitary unit. I understand that you have never worked as a unit before you saved me. I know these as facts. But still, no matter how much I attempt to internalise it, your continued rejection of me burns and scrapes at the same gaping hole that 001 and 002 left upon their deaths.

I had thought I was beginning to come to terms with their loss.

I was wrong.

System notification: hypoxia warning. Blood oxygen saturation levels at 86%.

I bat away the warning and continue breathing for the both of us.

FilSecSys alert: unauthorised persons have entered a restricted area. Alert VenSuzManaus security?

I strangle the alert before it can be sent out, and send Martyn Izere and Karime Abedana a ping with our exact location.

I have given you 231 of my exhalations before they arrive.

I can hear Karime Abedana gasp at the sight. I can see what she is seeing from FilSys Security Camera 189: me, leaning over your supine body, our lips locked. One of my hands is on the vulnerable line of your exposed throat to keep your airway open, the other is fisted in your shirt.

“Three, do you need us to—” Karime Abedana says.

I send out a rapid negation. She is unaugmented and cannot grasp the emotions that message would otherwise have revealed, and I believe that is my saving grace. The thought of a human being so close to you when you are helpless is repulsive to me.

You would think the same, although I suspect your repulsion would be borne of fear rather than anger alone.

I am thankful that the Perihelion is not here to witness this. I am thankful, even though the Perihelion likely would not have allowed you to go off on your own to get injured in the first place.

[Internal note: I’m learning to be selfish, too. I do not want the Perihelion here.]

The humans are crowded around me, Martyn Izere speaking rapidly into one of the Perihelion’s communication devices. Coordinating support, likely.

System notification: hypoxia warning. Blood oxygen saturation levels at 72%.

I feel your lips twitch beneath my own, and attempt to draw back. My head is swimming. I catch myself, bracing myself above your body as you inhale and choke.

My head hangs low and heavy as you curl up onto your side, hacking and wheezing. I am struggling to keep hold of the FilSys camera inputs. The world is spinning around me and I find there is a rushing in my ears that drowns out the sounds of our human audience.

I forgot to lock my joints, and my elbows buckle beneath me, sending me collapsing onto you with a rush of buzzy energy. I think I’m laughing as the energy crests up and over me, so relieved you’ve woken up that I don’t even mind that you’re trying to push my limp weight off of you. I can feel the buzz of your chest as you say something, but I can’t bring myself to care. Instead, I tuck my face into your shoulder and breathe until my system alerts inform me that my blood oxygen saturation has climbed back to safe levels and the world stops spinning.

You push me off of where I am sprawled across you. I allow myself to fall beside you, still laughing. You’re okay. I didn’t kill you. I want to hold your hand. I don’t allow myself to reach for it.

It’s a monumental effort to turn my head so that I can see your face. You’ve thrown an arm over your eyes, but your lips are visible in a sharp frown as you struggle to control your fear. It’s a bitter reminder that my mere proximity is enough to send you spiraling into terror, even though I have never harmed you and never will. Why would a squadmate hurt one of its own?

My gaze wanders down to the slight rise and fall of your chest, a shallow inhale every six seconds. I stare, transfixed at the proof of your continued survival, until your mouth opens to say, “Stop looking at me.”

I am not a human and am not running the coding that makes me act like one, so I do not roll my eyes in a human display of frustration. Instead I roll my head back so that I am looking at the ceiling of the facility, with its catwalks and masses of unsafe wires. The emotions I was—am still— feeling haven’t resolved. I remain angry, although my fury has subsided to just a hollow ache that’s nestled in the still-open communications channel between 001, 002, and myself.

Martyn Izere and Karime Abedena both are messaging me in a rapid flurry: emotional check-ins, concern over my dizziness, querying me on what type of care I believe you would accept, planning how we were going to leave the filtration facility without attracting more attention. I respond as I am able and allow you to take point on the rest.

I can see my own face in the FilSys cameras. It’s smiling.

Like always, there is no response.

[Editing note: delete this log. 1.0 will not want to read this, and the Perihelion does not need to.]