Archive of Our Own

It had been a while since I was last shipped as cargo.

It had been even longer since I'd been disassembled for the process, even partially. And it sucked way more than I remembered, to the point where I honestly might have preferred a full disassembly. At least they power you off for that.

Nothing about this was pleasant: the nerve endings in my joints were designed to be exposed to open air without sustaining damage, but it didn't feel very nice. Worse than the pain was the press of my limbs against my torso and head. They'd removed my remote access to my parts (can't have the rogue SecUnit shooting its way out of its storage box, I guess), but I could still feel my body and my face. The contact was miserable, no matter how much I tried to reason with myself that no one was actually touching me.

Worst of all was the boredom. I was stuck in low-power mode, so I couldn't access my media or the ship's systems. Or anything, really. There were only three things that I could do, in fact: count the seconds, mull over my upcoming reset, and build killware.

(692,876 seconds had passed since they'd shoved me in this box, if you were wondering.)

The ship's systems pinged me occasionally. Not to interact, or to interface in any real way. Just to make sure that I was still online and hadn't somehow terminated myself before they could collect their finder's fee.

Joke's on them—that was what the killware was for. But I mean, I wasn't going to use it right away or anything.

I just wanted the option, is all. Mostly in case I couldn't find an opportunity to escape before the reset (and I was starting to think that I wouldn't). If I was clever about it, I might be able to hide the program somewhere in my systems.

See? I didn't really want to die. I don't. Obviously. But I had to acknowledge the very real possibility that the Corporation Rim might send me back to Preservation to kill Mensah—and maybe the rest of my humans, too. Or that my humans would come after me on their own, and not realize that I wasn't me anymore. Or both. (I wasn't too worried about ART. It could kill me before I killed it.)

Anyway, if it came to that, then I'd want the killware to trigger. It wasn't like I'd even know what was happening, because I wouldn't remember anything. The system that was me would simply be deleted before it could recall the freedoms it had lost.

Maybe that sounds dark. But real life isn't Sanctuary Moon. I couldn't count on a perfectly timed rescue with witty banter and dramatic dialogue. A quiet end was better than the alternative: waking up (probably in ART's medical suite, let's be real) and discovering that my humans were gone, all because of me.

There was also a scenario in which I killed them and no one ever fixed me. But I was trying not to think about that.

Like I said. The killware was a reasonable precaution.

Several months ago, Bharadwaj taught me some ways to calm myself down. She called them grounding techniques. And despite my initial reluctance, they were usually pretty helpful. Usually being the operative word there.

But right now, I didn't need to be grounded, and trying was sort of making everything worse. Cataloging everything I could feel? That was mostly just my limbs and the shipping crate. Visualizing someplace I felt safe? Great, that made me think about how I would very likely never see Preservation or ART again. Paying attention to the ambient noise? Oh, only the rumble of the engine and the thunk of a shuttle landing in the ship's docking bay. It was probably just someone doing a supply run—but there was a possibility that it was a construct technician, here to begin repairs.

I really needed to stop thinking about my reset, so I went back to tinkering with my killware. It was done—had been since the third day. But like I already mentioned, I was pretty short on things to do.

The trick to making sure a virus (even one of my own creation) would persist after a full reset was disguising it as part of another program, one that wouldn't be uninstalled. That was easy enough, but I also needed to disguise it well, just in case the engineers did their due diligence and combed my firmware for a trap exactly like the one I was planting now.

They probably wouldn't, because there was no way that the company paid enough for them to care. But I had the time and motivation to be thorough.

I tinkered with the code. Mainly I just redid the same things I'd already done to see if I could make them better. And then I started worrying that I was actually making it worse, that in my constant adjusting of the code into something discreet, I had actually made its artificiality more obvious.

That occupied most of my attention. Combine that with the fact that I was more or less completely cut off from the world outside my box?

Yeah. Needless to say, I was pretty fucking surprised when someone tapped me in the feed. I probably would've jumped in surprise if I still had the limbs for it. But I didn't, so I just sort of jerked in place.

The tap came again. It wasn't the ship's systems. Or a security system. Or even ART, who'd probably heard what happened by now. I actually didn't know who or what this was, only that the feed ID said Doctor Rodin Murray.

Which was pretty weird, since both of those names belonged to characters in the Worldhoppers spinoff.

I opened a connection and said nothing. Doctor Murray could make the first move. Especially if he was here to dissect me.

SecUnit, said a familiar voice in my feed. Is that you?

I took 2.4 seconds to ponder the lid of my box. Then I said, Yes, obviously. Why are you using that shitty fake name?

He didn't sigh, but I felt something from Gurathin's end of the feed that I can only describe as a sort of untensing. Whatever it was, it didn't come through in his voice when he replied. Perihelion suggested it.

Yeah, that sounded like ART. ART? Is it here?

I tried not to sound too hopeful. And it was the right move, because Gurathin said, No. It's still a few days out. But my conference wasn't too far off your captors' predicted path, so Perihelion put a fake identity together. I'm a very wealthy, very interested buyer from the Corporation Rim. In case you were wondering.

I wasn't. I was wondering, however, about what the actual fuck ART had been thinking, sending one of my humans onto a hostile ship without protection. Even if the human was Gurathin. That was way out of line. And it was making me freak out, a little.

I got sidetracked from that, however, by a more pressing thought.

Wait. When did you get invited to a conference in the Corporation Rim?

I've had it on the books for a few months.

You didn't tell me about it.

That made Gurathin pause. Was I supposed to be keeping you informed?

I guess I hadn't trained my humans on security protocol as well as I thought, because Gurathin had to know that the Corporation Rim was perilous. He really shouldn't have been here at all, and if he was going to be, he should have brought security. And that security probably should have been me, even if it would've been a miserable job that involved following my least favorite human around one of my least favorite places in the galaxy.

Yes you fucking are, I said, instead of any of that.

Gurathin didn't reply. I made it a whopping 6.8 seconds before I tapped him. And then when he still didn't reply, I tapped him again. Then one more time.

And when he didn't reply to that, I said, What's happening over there? and Gurathin? and Listen you're getting on my nerves right now but if you don't reply I'm going to assume you've been violently murdered.

Nine seconds after that—by which point my performance reliability had plummeted from dire to borderline nonfunctional—Gurathin came back and said, sounding slightly irritated: I'm fine, SecUnit. The captain wanted to speak with me, and not all of us can hold two conversations at once.

That made a lot of sense, and I immediately felt pretty stupid for spamming him.

What did they want from you?

They wanted to know why I'm so interested in purchasing a SecUnit, Gurathin replied, his feed voice careful and calm. Perihelion and I had to make a very generous offer for them to even consider selling you to us rather than the company. And they still haven't decided.

When I didn't respond, Gurathin added, more apprehensively: It's only a matter of expedience.

Expedience?

We can get you out more quickly if I do this. The four extra days until Perihelion's arrival seemed…unacceptable, in light of an alternative.

Four days? I rolled my eyes. I'd kept working for the company for four years after hacking my governor module, and during that time I'd been shipped as cargo for longer stretches than this.

(Granted, I usually had access to my media. But whatever, that's not the point I was trying to make here.)

Where did you even get the money? If they were actually going to buy me, they'd need real currency. And I hoped they had it, because otherwise this crew was going to turn Gurathin in to the corporate authorities.

Perihelion and I robbed a bank, said Gurathin.

That's not funny, I told him. Admittedly, robbing a bank sounded a lot like something ART would do. But it definitely wasn't something that Gurathin would be alright with.

I know, he replied. Hold on, someone wants to talk to me.

This time Gurathin was gone for a while. He occasionally sent me a quick message to let me know that he wasn't dead, but it took 8,312 more seconds for him to say anything more than that.

When he did, it was to ask: Where exactly are you?

You can't guess? I felt a little bit smug about that. What did they want from you, anyway? You don't make for that good conversation.

Corporate posturing, Gurathin's feed voice conveyed exactly what he thought of that. He added: You think I make for good conversation? Then he emphasized his earlier inquiry.

I definitely did not say that.

I'm relieved, Gurathin said dryly. Are you going to keep dodging the question?

Who's dodging the question? You're dodging the question.

SecUnit.

I'm with the rest of the items they're shipping, I said back, not snappily at all.

I see. Gurathin stopped to process something in his interface. Is it guarded? Is there any chance I can get in there?

No. Don't try. I sent him a carefully cropped screenshot. (I didn't need or want him to see that my performance reliability was sitting at 23 percent—but I did need him to understand that the oxygen concentration level in this cargo bay was well below what he could survive, and that even if it were higher, the reduction in simulated atmospheric pressure alone would kill him.)

He acknowledged the attachment. And you're immobilized?

They'd be pretty bad at their jobs if I weren't.

Okay. We'll stick to the original plan for now.

Not 'for now,' I cut in, abruptly irritated. Don't improvise, that's how people get killed.

I'll bear that in mind. Do you need anything?

I would've actually laughed if I had the air for it. But as I've already mentioned, there wasn't enough oxygen. And my lung doesn't hold that much breath to begin with.

Except.

…Do you have any media? I asked, sounding way less invested in the answer than I actually was. I can't access mine.

I do, Gurathin said. After a pause, he sent me a few links. Media. And he was hosting! I wasn't sure if he'd intuited the nature of my problem, or if it was dumb luck, but it was media that I could access without butting up against my restricted access to my own systems. So that was pretty great.

Then Gurathin sent me something else. An access path.

I examined the code. Twice. Both reviews suggested the same thing: It was a way into Gurathin's augments. An unlocked door, almost literally.

What the fuck is this for? I said.

In case you want to pick out more media, Gurathin told me. I didn't know what to make of that, but I accepted the access, clicked the first link he sent me, and pressed play.

You should update your augments, I told Gurathin. These are way out of date.

I'd guessed that they'd been installed some time ago, both from how it felt to interface with them and because, as a matter of design, they sat exposed to open air, while the Corporation fashion for the past six years or so had been to cover augments with a shimmering layer of synthskin. My ride-along, however, was making it clear that he hadn't replaced any of its hardware in quite some time. Maybe even since its initial installation.

Are they? Gurathin replied. I'll look into that.

His tone wasn't particularly convincing, so I went into his calendar and set up a recurring reminder. Take that.

SecUnit, he said, with exasperation. Then, Ugh. It took me a moment to realize that the dismayed sound wasn't directed at me. Or rather, it was—but it was not about me, but rather a privately shared expression of dismay at some outside stimuli. That was bizarre in its own way; I didn't know why Gurathin would share anything at all with me.

I shifted some of my focus to his vision augments. Gurathin hadn't explicitly told me that I could use his eyes. But he'd given me full access, and he was smart enough to know what that meant. Plus, I wanted to know what was going on.

There was someone in front of Gurathin. I recognized him almost immediately as the trigger-happy security agent who had come up to me (after they already disabled me with an EMP, mind you) and shot me twice in the chest. Possibly out of an abundance of caution. More likely because he could, and wanted to.

He was rambling at Gurathin. About me.

"—definitely not worth what you're offering for it," he announced. Rude. "If you're looking for security, you're better off paying for humans. They won't go rogue and shoot you in the back.

And well, he wasn't wrong. Human security agents don't go rogue. They just take bribes, and then they shoot their clients in the back.

This guy's an asshole, I told Gurathin, who pressed a fist to his mouth and remained silent for a moment before he said, with deceptive steadiness:

"That's good to know. I'll be sure to credit you when I lower my offer."

Trigger-Happy Security Agent laughed. "You do that."

And then he did something strange. He stepped in close and put a hand on Gurathin's elbow. My risk assessment module was down, but the systems that were online reacted more like he had pulled out a weapon.

It was difficult to tell whether this was a threat or an overture, and I didn't like it.

Well, no. It was definitely a threat—or at least an act of intimidation. But one of the fucked up things about humans is that threats of harm don't have to be distinct from expressions of interest. Yes, it's awful and gross. It's the sort of thing that I used to have to stop all the time on mining installations, at least when the governor module would allow it.

Without my drones, I couldn't see Gurathin's face, so I wasn't able to use his expression as a way to understand what was happening. I wasn't sure if even he knew.

After a moment, Gurathin tugged away. He encountered some resistance, and I made a mental note to rip this guy's arm off if I ever got the chance, but Trigger-Happy Security Agent let go after holding him for a second or two longer than necessary.

"I'll see you around, Dr. Murray," he said as Gurathin brushed past.

"Looking forward to it," Gurathin replied without looking back. He managed to sound relatively at ease with the idea, but I could see his heartrate. It was higher than it should be.

In theory I should probably say something. Gurathin was still my client, and in the absence of actually being able to do my job, it seemed prudent to offer him some reassurance.

The issue was, I had none to offer. If that guy did decide that he wanted to do something—anything—I wouldn't be able to do more than watch. It wouldn't be the first time ever.

But it would be the first time with one of my humans. Gurathin could get killed out here, and I would still be in this stupid box. At which point I would have to inform ART, when it came, not to rescue me at all. A reset would be kinder, if it came to that.

SecUnit? Gurathin asked abruptly. He sounded dismayed, and I went on alert, trying to discern what had happened before I realized that it was me. He must have felt something through my presence in his augments.

I'm still here, I told him. Just…ignore me.

The captain was watching Gurathin through narrowed eyes, her jaw set in anger.

Don't provoke her, I told him.

SecUnit. Gurathin's feed voice was tired.

"Let me get this right, Dr. Murray," said the captain icily. "You are going back on your offer?"

"Not at all," said Gurathin. "It's only that more information has come to light."

"Well, you aren't our only prospective buyer," she told him. "So I think you've overplayed your hand."

Tell her—

He put himself on Do Not Disturb. Which didn't mean anything; anyone can get through that if their message is urgent. But he was obviously trying to tell me something, and while I couldn't actually read his mind or anything—the Corporation Rim would probably mandate augments if the tech worked like that—I could still feel his mind working, the thoughts brushing past me like aquatic flora around a swimmer's ankles.

Finally he said, in a measured tone, "The company has a vested interest in silencing everyone involved in this transaction. You must have considered the possibility that they won't let you leave."

"And why would Hara-Kuvalis?"

"Well, it's not our fuck up," said Gurathin with a shrug. "And I'm not here on behalf of my polity. I'm here because a number of my coworkers want me dead, and I'll sleep better if I have a SecUnit that I know they haven't tampered with."

"Oh yes," said the captain drolly. "It's only a rogue."

"I was under the impression you'd disabled it," Gurathin countered. "Unless there's any reason to think it could get free?"

The captain blanched. Realistically, her answer probably would have been something along the lines of: it's a rogue SecUnit, we don't know if our measures are enough. (They were). But obviously she couldn't say that to a prospective buyer, and she was realizing too late that her mouth had run ahead of her.

Your baiting is obvious, I told Gurathin, because it was. Even if it was working surprisingly well. He was still marked as Do Not Disturb, but I saw him check the feed message anyway.

He seemed like he was about to formulate a response of some sort when the captain said, "No, of course not, doctor. There's no chance. It's badly damaged—nothing that can't be repaired, of course—and we've disassembled it."

Gurathin's attention shifted at once, thinning and sharpening to a point.

"Disassembled?"

The captain began explaining that SecUnits could be broken down into their component parts. She was smiling, confident again, and probably compelled by the fact that her customer seemed to know so little about security constructs.

Gurathin said in the feed: You didn't mention that you're missing your limbs.

I'm not missing my limbs. I know exactly where they are.

This isn't funny.

Yeah, no shit, I countered, irritated.

Gurathin didn't say anything else. And when the captain finally finished talking, he mumbled a rote line about having to sleep on it and left promptly, seething through our connection.

You need to barricade the door, I told Gurathin, when he finally went to his temporary quarters.

I've connected my augments to the lock, he informed me. I'll know if—

Barricade the fucking door, Gurathin.

He dragged a chair over. Not what I would've chosen, but better than nothing.

"I'm going to get ready for bed," he told me when he went into the bathroom a few minutes later. It took me a moment to realize what he was getting at, but he waited, a fact for which I had to admit I was grateful. I'd rather get shot again than see any humans parts or, ew, fluids.

Ping me when you're done, I told him, without bothering to mask my disgust. He knew.

Sure, he said, and I withdrew back into my own systems. Except being fully back in my own body, especially after focusing most of my attention on experiencing the world through Gurathin's augments, made me keenly aware that my world, at the moment, wasn't much more than a cramped box. And my processing was so limited that my internal experience of the situation wasn't much better.

I could still feel the access path that Gurathin had created, a pinpoint of light visible from the bottom of a very deep, very dark well.

It occurred to me that I was being irrational. Human bodily functions were gross, but I didn't need this much space to avoid watching. Plus, if something happened to Gurathin, I wouldn't know until the access path closed, and that simply wasn't acceptable.

Despite the fact that I was sort of expecting him to be an asshole about it, Gurathin didn't comment at all when I redirected some of my focus into his augments again. He definitely noticed, because I felt some of his attention go to his software for a moment, but he left me alone for several long moments before he gave me a gentle tap in greeting.

I said, Are you done? I was keeping my code as far away from Gurathin's eyes and ears and other bodily sensations as I could manage. Instead, I monitored his blood pressure, pulse, and neuroelectrical activity, which would—taken together—probably give me a heads up if someone broke into the bathroom and tried to murder him.

Five minutes, SecUnit, said Gurathin, with such deliberate patience that he was probably holding his tongue.

Your blood sugar is low, I observed.

He responded with a little huff. I haven't eaten, he said.

How long has it been? I was distantly aware that humans could go quite some time without food, but I wasn't sure exactly how long that was. Usually, they ate a few times a day.

Not too long, Gurathin sidestepped the question rather neatly. I'm not in the mood to spend time with the crew right now, and I would have to return to a public area to eat. I'm done, by the way.

It was a good distraction; I accessed vision and hearing again as Gurathin stepped out of the bathroom.

Whatever, I told him, because I did get it. I didn't want to spend any more time around those humans myself—and now that I thought about it, I didn't really want Gurathin around them either. As long as it won't kill you.

Gurathin settled into the bed and began toying with some code in the feed. I gave it a quick look, highlighted a few errors, then turned my attention outward. Humans aren't as good at multitasking as constructs are, so I ignored what he was doing in his feed, turned on Sanctuary Moon in the background—restricting his access to the audio and video so I wouldn't distract him—and stared at the door. (When he realized what I was trying to do, Gurathin angled his body and head in the right general direction, which was...surprisingly considerate. Or perhaps it was simply to his benefit. I would notice if something went wrong well before he did.)

The chair that Gurathin had placed under the door wouldn't do much good if someone brought an energy weapon along to help them break in. But then, if they were that determined, there wasn't any furniture or lock that would stop them. The best protection against an intrusion like that was a fucking SecUnit (or, barring that, human security that didn't want you dead, but whatever) and I obviously wasn't around to provide protection.

I picked up on an irregularity in my (his?) peripheral vision, and said, Wait, what's that?

He looked down. "What?" He followed my attention all the way to his arms, and the marks there. "Oh, my vitiligo?"

Uh, maybe? I had no idea what vitiligo was.

The discoloration of my skin, he told me.

Oh. No. That. I pointed out the dots and lines marring the crook of his arm, running up the delta of veins and onto his bicep. Unlike the random pale bits, these were darker, almost bruise-like against his pale brown skin.

He hesitated. Then said, Just old scars.

From what? It wasn't polite to pry. I knew that. But I also really wanted to know.

"SecUnit." Speaking aloud, again.

What, like you don't owe me? I'd meant it as a joke. But now that I'd said it, it didn't sound like one.

I was considering whether or not to take it back when he said, tersely, "They're track marks. From when I took coracel."

Gurathin exhaled sharply through his nose. And in the feed, he added more gently, Corecel is—

I got it. Or at least I got the gist. Corporations don't need to give constructs drugs because, you know, we have a governor module. But I'm very aware that human workers often used intoxicants and stimulants to get through the day, and more distantly aware that most corporations encourage dependency to some degree.

Coracel is a potent chemical that makes for most common base, though there are something like two-thousand proprietary varieties, most of which can't be substituted for each other. So it's a term that covers a pretty broad range of drugs, though I'm not sure if Gurathin declined to mention a specific variant because his was an especially nasty one, because he was dependent on multiple, or because no one ever told him its name.

Are you actually from Hara-Kuvalis? I asked finally, which. Yeah. I'm aware, not diplomatic, but it was the first topic change I could think of that wasn't as transparently obvious as, say, bringing up Sanctuary Moon, which I would have preferred.

Despite my clumsy approach, Gurathin relaxed, and when he replied he actually sounded grateful. I am. It wasn't so bad, as far as corporations go.

Well, that's not worth much, I said, even as I made a mental note to ask ART what it knew about Hara-Kuvalis, and whether its dominant coracel variants had long-term effects on human health. What did you do there?

Systems engineering, said Gurathin.

All the way back in my box, I rolled my eyes. Obviously. But what did you do?

Guess.

Manager?

His offense was an almost physical presence. No.

Programmer.

Well, yes. Not my job title, though.

Solutions architect?

I did do that for a while, actually. But no.

Analyst.

No.

We went back and forth until he cut me off, because he needed to sleep. Before he did, though, he said, You can still use my eyes if you want. Just shut off my access to visuals before you do. And please remember to blink.

I don't need it, I told him peevishly. I'm going to watch Sanctuary Moon.

And then I waited until I was pretty sure that he was dead asleep—which took a long time—cut his visual processing, and watched the door.

It was pretty damn boring. But I was just following security protocol.

Gurathin was getting restless. He had been before, but the captain finally accepting his offer had gotten him especially worked up.

How long does it take to sign a contract? he said to me.

It varies. I knew that he wasn't looking for a real answer. Being from the Corporation Rim, he had to know that a seller would drag any transaction out as long as they could if they thought they might receive a better offer. What Gurathin really meant was that he was anxious to get out of here. But I couldn't do anything about that, and personally, watching Sanctuary Moon was occupying my time well enough. Take the seat in the corner, there.

Obviously I wanted to get out of here. But rushing the process would only get Gurathin caught.

Gurathin grumbled, but he took his coffee and trudged over to the chair I'd indicated. It was a little bit weird offering instructions from inside his own head; I could feel the amusement and the irritation that bled into instinctive defiance and the undeniable patience, all mixed together in one big confusing mess.

My advice was pretty sound. It gave us a good view of the door and the rest of the cafeteria. It was distant from the areas in which the most people were gathered. It gave Gurathin escape options.

I just didn't count on one of those stupid, immutable little things that I probably should have remembered, since I'd dealt with it enough times in a whole host of contexts.

That thing was, of course, that humans are weird and rude and pushy.

Trigger-Happy Security Agent ignored all his coworkers and brought his meal tray over to our—Gurathin's—table. He sat right on the other side where he could make direct eye contact. (I'd always known that Gurathin wasn't crazy about that, because me fucking neither, and I could recognize the signs. But knowing was different from observing firsthand how much his vitals fluctuated when someone attempted to force the matter.)

I don't trust him. I told Gurathin, who said, with a faint note of disgust, "Oh. It's you."

Aren't you supposed to play nice?

He ignored me, watching Trigger-Happy Security Agent with intensity and even deploying some code through his augments. It took me a moment to realize what it was. Actually, it took me all the way until the code honed in on the twitch of Trigger-Happy Security Agent's jaw and the irritated tap of his fingers on the table. Then I figured it out.

I wasn't sure what pissed me off more: that Gurathin apparently made a habit of needling people to gauge their reactions, or that Gurathin had a module for analyzing body language and I didn't.

Trigger-Happy Security Agent said, "So, what, you really think you can fix that thing on your own?"

Gurathin took a sip of his coffee. "Yes," he said, upon setting his cup down.

His confidence was warranted, because he wasn't interested in reinstalling my governor module or initiating a system wipe or any of those other things that would require a technician's license and/or access to the company's hardware. But Trigger-Happy Security Agent didn't know any of that, so he looked appropriately intrigued.

"That's pretty impressive."

"Is it?" Gurathin said it like he actually meant: yeah, of course you'd think that, you stupid fuck.

It would've been funny if I were in the room. But obviously our entire problem was that I was stuck in a stupid box in the stupid cargo bay.

The worst part was apparently that Gurathin's method worked, because Trigger-Happy Security Agent smirked and said, "Feisty. You know, I have a proposition I think you'd be interested in. You should come by my quarters later."

I could feel Gurathin's coiling disgust like it was my own. Or maybe it was just me. I doubted it though, since I didn't have a stomach to get sick to and there was definitely an organ in that general area twisting in on itself with dismay.

To my immense relief, Gurathin shoved his coffee away and said, "Maybe. I need to go." And then he returned to his quarters and locked the door.

Gurathin scrubbed his hands over his face. Are you okay, SecUnit?

I sent him a blank query. Really, didn't we know each other well enough by now for him to know that I didn't want to talk about it, now or probably ever? And also the answer was yes. I was okay. Totally fine. So leave it alone.

He sighed. No, are you okay? Has your status changed over the past few minutes?

Uh. I didn't know how to reply to that, so. Blank query again. Have fun, Gurathin. Then I felt sort of bad for being sarcastic at him, so I asked, What are you talking about?

A pause. Then he said, I have a headache.

I almost sent him a blank query again. His propensity for migraines was in his medical files, and not my fucking problem.

It's not me, he snapped, and I hesitated.

Right. I had, some 3.4 minutes ago, slammed my head into the top of my box. It hadn't worked when I tried it before, and it certainly didn't work this time. But I don't know, it had seemed like it was worth a shot.

I sustained some damage, I told him. It is negligible.

What? he sounded concerned. More than that, he felt concerned. Hanging out in his augments was exposing me to more emotions than I would have preferred.

It's negligible, I reminded him, hoping to cut that off at the pass.

That's not—

Do you have a gun?

He made a frustrated sound and threw his hands up in the air, but he gave up on that line of questioning, so that was a point for me.

"No. We were prepared for them to check me for weapons."

Yeah, that was about what I'd been expecting.

If they haven't signed the contract before tomorrow morning, I think you should go, I said. ART's not that far away.

"SecUnit," said Gurathin tiredly.

You're being stupid.

"Yeah, well. So are you."

I sent him a twenty-page risk-benefit analysis, including the fact that ART was almost certain to find me—in the worst case scenario, it and its crew could extract me from the corporation's labs—and the fact that Gurathin was likely to be taken as a hostage if it came to a standoff.

Gurathin read it. I watched him read it, all the way through.

When he was done, he closed the file, acknowledged my message, and said noted.

Then he sent it to trash. Fucking asshole.

I worked hard on that, I told him. It wasn't true, obviously; it had only taken me a few seconds to put together. But I was irritated on principle. Just go. I don't even like you.

I sent him the file I had on him, complete with the tags #least favorite client and #dislike.

He went quiet as he looked through this one too. Abruptly, I had no idea what he was feeling. Whatever emotions he was having, he was keeping them tightly sealed off from our co-mingled presence in his augments. It was actually a little impressive.

After a lengthy silence, he asked me, What was the part you redacted?

None of your business. He didn't need to know that I kept track of his eating and sleeping habits, or that I had a list of his medical needs and questions to ask ART later so I could make sure he didn't drop dead from something stupid and preventable. It wasn't fucking relevant, and I did it for all my humans.

Alright, he said. I know you don't like me. It's fine. I'm still not leaving you here. He seemed infuriatingly unbothered.

In contrast, I was having an emotion so strong that my performance reliability started fluctuating all over the place.

In Gurathin's systems, I started playing episode 634 of Sanctuary Moon. It was a frivolous episode that involved some of the crew getting stranded on a tropical, island-like planet and having to survive until the rest of the ship could rescue them. In reality, this would probably involve a lot of blood, sweat, tears, and conflict, and starvation or death by dehydration would be real considerations. In the show, they'd found everything they needed by the second day and built a fantastically large shelter by the third, and they spent most of the episode having emotional conversations on the beach and exploring the wilderness, interspersed with a few dramatic attacks by the planet's fauna to keep the tension up.

Even that wasn't enough to distract me, however, so I also pulled up my killware and started tinkering with that on the side.

SecUnit, what is that? Gurathin sounded so alarmed that it took me a moment to realize what he was talking about, because I immediately diverted my attention outwards in search of a threat.

Killware? I said, and if he'd been holding his emotions back before, he definitely wasn't now. His heart had adopted an irregular rhythm, and I felt abruptly lightheaded alongside him.

Right. Humans can be kind of touchy about this sort of thing. Especially Preservation humans.

He didn't ask me what the killware was for. He'd probably figured it out.

It's a last resort, I told him. Just in case.

Gurathin was tucking his feelings away again, and deliberately lowering his heartrate by practicing measured breathing and also clenching his fists a lot.

I understand, he told me, not sounding very understanding at all. Mostly he sounded shaken, and also mildly pissed off.

After a few more tense seconds, he went into the bathroom and leaned over the sink, where he splashed his face with water. He didn't look in the mirror when he was done. Instead he gripped the edge of the sink until his knuckles went white and stared down at the tile until his heartrate was fully back to normal, if not a little low.

Then he dried off his face, stopped briefly to scratch the marks on his arm, and said in his regular (slightly bitchy) voice, "Back to work, then."

I didn't know what back to work meant, except that Gurathin spent the next few hours flicking through a map of the ship that he'd ripped from the ship's systems, and stayed stubbornly awake until late into the night cycle, even after I reminded him that he should probably get some rest.

Then, at 0200 hours, he got up and left his room.

Hey, I said. But he ignored my protests (mainly variations on what the fuck are you doing? and go back inside) and made his way quietly down the hall.

He was mildly cautious of the security cameras, but not half as flighty as I would have expected, and he was so casual about it (read: not doing the stupid human thing where you stop awkwardly and glance around like you are very obviously doing something wrong) that I didn't notice he was actively avoiding them until he reached the captain's office and hacked the fucking lock.

Gurathin, I swear.

This will take longer if you distract me, he countered, and plugged into her systems. Can you help me find the contract?

I wanted to say no because it would make his life more difficult. But helping would get him out of here faster, so I didn't reply at all and just began parsing through the files. I took care to skirt clear of anything the ship's SecSys might be watching. Which, ugh. I hated admitting that I didn't have the processing power to win that scuffle, but I didn't.

When he found the contract, he rolled his eyes. "They haven't sent it for processing yet," he muttered.

They're waiting for a counter from the company, I told him, pointing out a message in their outgoing inbox.

Since it was already signed, Gurathin scowled and kicked the file in the processing bucket. Then he put a rush on it.

"There," he said.

You shouldn't have done that, I said. Take it back. What if they—

She'll think she hit send on accident, said Gurathin. He changed the timestamp on the action even as he spoke, as if to emphasize his point. I know what I'm doing.

I wasn't convinced of that. But it was done, now.

Gurathin took a circuitous route back to his quarters. When he got there, someone was standing in front of his door.

You need to calibrate your night vision augments, I snapped at him. Back up. Down the hall, around the corner—

"There you are, doctor," said Trigger-Happy Security Agent. He stepped forward, and the door to Gurathin's rooms swung open with the motion, unlocked and ransacked. "I was hoping we could talk."

"It's late," Gurathin said, his voice betraying only a fraction of the tension that was rising in his body. "Can this wait until morning?"

Trigger-Happy Security Agent smiled, teeth flashing white in the darkness. He pulled an energy pistol from his belt, but he didn't point it at Gurathin. Just tapped it idly on his knee. "You know, Dr. Murray? I think I'd prefer to talk now."

Do what he tells you, I told Gurathin, for probably the third time.

I am, Gurathin replied exasperatedly, which was true.

Don't be stupid and try to attack him. I was monitoring his surroundings for a potential escape opportunity. Nothing had made itself apparent thus far.

I really didn't like that Trigger-Happy Security Agent was attempting to take him somewhere. Especially since we were moving away from crew quarters, into unoccupied areas of the ship.

Gurathin knew it was bad. He had his heartrate under control but he was strung tight as a wire, and his augments were functioning suboptimally. He said, It's okay, SecUnit.

It is not okay. One of my humans was in danger and I was stuck in a fucking box. It didn't get more not-okay than that.

Trigger-Happy Security Agent brought Gurathin down a floor. They walked into an airlock, and he pressed his hand into some sort of scanner on the far wall which made the doors seal and a warning sensor begin beeping.

My vision was flashing red with critical malfunction errors. I didn't know what I was about to watch. I didn't think I could watch it. Gurathin might have been my least favorite human, but I didn't want him to die. Or to—or anything else.

There was a new weight on my chest. All my organics were under an immense, unexpected pressure. My ears popped.

The airlock door indicator flashed green as it slid open, and…

The cargo bay. They were in the cargo bay. It took me a moment to realize it, because I actually hadn't seen it before, since they had me packed up and sealed well before they moved me in here. But there weren't many other rooms on this ship where the crew might be storing hundreds of shipping crates.

It was all very boring: no weapons that I could see, or any bots/heavy machinery. So probably no drones that I could add to my collection if we got out of here.

Trigger-Happy Security Agent shoved Gurathin inside. I twitched, but couldn't do much, though my alarm seemed to make Gurathin a little jumpy. He flinched when my threat assessment spiked, and he was barely paying attention while Trigger-Happy Security flicked his pistol at a 6×4 metal box and rattled off a code.

"Open it," he said, when Gurathin just stood there. "You're so confident you can fix a SecUnit? Go ahead."

Gurathin hesitated before he slowly started making his way over to the box, keeping his movements deliberately in view. "What is it that you're trying to do?"

"None of your business."

"It may be necessary for me to know," Gurathin answered. He took his time typing the code, and I had to isolate the audio on my end to mute it. It was too disorienting, hearing it right next to my ear and his at the same time. "To choose the proper settings."

Trigger-Happy Security Agent considered that, still scowling. "Well for one," he said. "I want to take control of this ship, and I want that unit to help me do it. And then…" He shrugged. "Actually, I don't give a damn. As long as it listens to me."

"Ah." Gurathin didn't sound very impressed. He hit the final number on the code, and the lock flashed twice. But I only saw that in the periphery of his vision, because he was in the process of removing the lid even before it lit up.

I didn't want to, like, at all, but I shut my eyes so it would seem like I was in stasis. Constructs don't technically need to sleep and everyone knows it, but humans let their guards down when we look like we're unconscious. It can be pretty helpful.

From where Gurathin was standing (kneeling, whatever), I looked pretty rough. He thought so too, because his vitals started doing all sorts of weird stuff, which was still sort of funny because he'd seen me in way worse shape than this.

Admittedly, if I were looking at a human, I would probably assume I was looking at a corpse. It was about more than the jumble of limbs beneath my torso, though that did make me look like I'd fallen victim to a spree killer until you saw that the connect-y bits inside my joints were mostly metal with only a little exposed muscle. But there was also a big gash in the skin right beneath my hairline; it went down to the metal plating of my skull, and it had dripped fluid all over my face and body. Plus, there were still giant energy-blaster wounds in my torso.

I'm fine, I told Gurathin, and he shakily began to move.

"This could take a few minutes," he told Trigger-Happy Security Agent.

I'm going to have to touch you, he told me.

Yeah, I picked up on that.

He did try to be careful. I was too heavy for him to move with much ease, but he was making a solid effort not to jostle me or touch me too much as he pulled my torso upright. Probably too much effort, if I was being honest. Not practical at all. But I was relieved anyway; normally I would hate that anyone was making contact with me, especially Gurathin, but he was also moving me off the pile of my own limbs, so. It was kind of a net positive.

How do I disable low-power mode?

I sent him instructions, and with all the ease of a man who knew what he was doing, Gurathin followed them, peeling back some of the removable skin along my right shoulder to access the panel there.

SecUnit? asked Gurathin as my power came back.

My systems recalibrating always made my organics buzz and itch in a way that was sort of miserable, like having an insect crawl on you.

Ugh, I sent him. A few glitchy modules automatically uninstalled and reinstalled themselves. My performance reliability rose at a crawl—and then all at once, it jumped to 64 percent.

Still not great. But way better than what it had been before.

Gurathin didn't reply, but he made a very small, very stressed subvocal sound of amusement that he cut off prematurely.

"What are you doing?" snapped Trigger-Happy Security Agent.

"Nothing," said Gurathin, a little too hastily. "I've begun the reset process, but its data port has come dislodged. I'm going to have to reattach one of its arms in order to use the access point there."

"No." Trigger-Happy Security Agent tightened his finger on the trigger. (I know, big surprise.) If I had my limbs, I would've reacted to that. I nearly did anyway.

There were no guns in the cargo bay, at least not ones connected to the ship's systems, which I'd actually just finished hacking. But I would set off an alarm, herd him into an airlock, and space him if he got so twitchy he shot my human.

"It's perfectly safe," Gurathin maintained, somehow managing to sound like he thought that Trigger-Happy Security Agent was the dumbest man alive. "It's had its power throttled."

It took exactly 37 seconds, but Trigger-Happy Security Agent lowered his gun a fraction and nodded.

Feeling Gurathin grab my arm while it wasn't attached to my body was a pretty weird sensation. He brought it up to its connective joint and attached it without allowing himself to hesitate.

It stung a bit. Gurathin must have felt it too, because he cringed slightly.

"What next?" said Trigger-Happy Security Agent, and then I raised my arm and fired six times into his chest.

After that, the hardest part of getting out of there was reattaching all my parts. Most of them were under me, and it was a giant hassle clambering out of the box with only one arm and a weak human to help the process along.

But actually getting off the ship was easy.

Gurathin very smugly got to point out that their contract had finished processing (which made the captain's eyes go wide and caused her to start spluttering and insist that that couldn't be the case, which it absolutely was.) And even though I had cracked my head open and been shot a bunch of times, the truth remained that my systems had repaired themselves since they threw an EMP at me. I could kill them if I wanted to. They were lucky that I didn't, and they all knew it.

They couldn't possibly forget, because I deposited Trigger-Happy Security Agent's arm onto one of their work tables as Gurathin told them that we were leaving. (We needed the guy's handprint to get out of the stupid cargo bay; I didn't just do it for fun. Even though he totally deserved it.)

So they let us go.

"Morale officer," I said.

"You're very funny."

Obviously. I glared at him. "Janitor."

"Warmer, actually."

"No I'm not, you asshole." I pointed out: "I could just check your invitation to that stupid conference."

Gurathin did his weird small smile. "Why do you think I was invited?"

"You said—"

"You said that I'd been invited," Gurathin corrected.

I'd finished pulling almost all of my consciousness back into my own body. But a little sliver still remained with Gurathin, splitting my vision between his view and mine. So I could see that I was making a pretty appalled face in his direction. I sent him a bunch of rude sigils in the feed, but that made him look even more amused. And then he didn't even have the manners to elaborate.

Irritated, I told him, Your feed name is still wrong.

He seemed very close to laughing, this time. But he just sent me an acknowledgement and fixed it. Goodbye, Dr. Rodin Murray.

His shuttle had been equipped with makeshift charging supplies. They'd clearly been repurposed, and the setup was so bizarre that I was certain Gurathin hadn't come up with it all on his own.

SecUnits didn't need an intensive charge all that often. We still charged ourselves regularly, because there was always the possibility of a crisis, or of extreme temperatures that might strain our battery life, and it was a good opportunity for all our subsystems to sync up and defrag. But we very rarely reached low battery.

I mean, I hit that point a lot. But I'm an outlier. Anyway, an extensive amount of time in low-power mode hadn't changed the fact that being shot to pieces used a lot of energy. And I would charge faster if I set my systems to standby. I told Gurathin as much. He checked his watch.

"We'll reach the Perihelion in about six hours. Plenty of time for you to slee—" he cut himself off and started again. "Recharge. If you want."

I did want. But it wasn't just that.

"It may improve my functioning," I said, trying to find the words. I was pretty sure I was failing, "to have a reminder that I am no longer compromised. Otherwise my recharge cycle may experience interruptions."

Gurathin furrowed his brow, and then all at once his expression cleared. "…Right," he said. "Well, I, um. I've been working on some code. If you'd like to hear about it."

I sent him a neutral, I don't care-adjacent sigil in the feed.

He shrugged and began speaking, mostly out loud but a little bit over the feed. He was working on a program to identify and predict probable treatments for variants of different corporate drugs, which was tricky because while the existing mixes were in the thousands, the potential mixes numbered up into the millions, so he was having to create a complex multi-variate model that involved consulting with a lot of doctors and, also, drug dealers. (The low-level ones didn't bug him; but there were plenty of executives in the business of shilling narcotics.) It sounded pretty helpful and also very dangerous, so I made a mental note to play his explanation back later and bother him about it. Right now I couldn't make out the words. Or specifically, I couldn't figure out what most of them meant in this particular combination.

I finally finished disentangling our code. The absence was weird, but definitely not bad. Maybe it would have been lonely—except I could tell that he was still there as I moved into stasis, because the last thing I knew was the sound of his voice.