Chapter Text
I am on board the transport Perihelion. This is unknown and terrifying— the ship itself, I mean. The situation is also that.
But SecUnits 1 and 2 are with me, so it will be all right. This is not a wish or a hope: it is a statistical likelihood. We have all survived 100% of prior situations in which our lives were endangered.
Recent events came very close to changing those statistics. I will admit I am— unsettled. But while SecUnit 1 was knocked offline when Hostiles boarded the Short Sell, I was able to retrieve and recover it after Murderbot 2.0— stole me? freed me?— from my governor module. A crucial portion of its feed hardware is still broken, but the gaping hole in its neck is not as life-threatening as 1.0's clients seemed to think.
1.0 actually recovered SecUnit 2 first. When it lead an away party onto the Adamantine spacedock, it found 2 providing emergency first aid to client Jazena. With 2 out of feed range, it did not have access to the first aid module stored in my databanks— a crucial oversight we will have to address. But it did have its own brain, which makes logical and creative leaps that I cannot.
2 stuck its fingers into the projectile hole in Jazena's neck and blocked the fluid leakage. It kept them alive long enough for 1.0 to discover it, disable its governor module, and provide further medical assistance. So Jazena and 2 were on board Perihelion first, waiting, when I piloted over the shuttle containing the retrieved clients (ours and Perihelion's) (and 1).
There was no protocol for what to do with three— four, actually— rogue SecUnits. For a while everybody stared at everybody. I believe the original rogue, Murderbot 1.0, may have felt threatened by us. Perihelion certainly did, as it threatened us in return.
I am still surprised that I was the one who made the decision(?) about what to do. I told Murderbot 2.0 I want to help, I said. I believe we can still help.
So we went to the planet with 1.0 and retrieved the rest of Perihelion's clients.
When we returned after that, Perihelion did not threaten to disassemble us again. The clients were moved to MedBay. We were not offered access to the security ready room, but a crew cabin was designated for our use.
This is the current situation.
We examine the cabin in unison and share the rapid one-two-three readouts of threat analysis. 1's is high and 2's is low, but that is usual.
We look at each other.
The contaminated ag-bot stabbed a claw into the faceplate of my helmet, which broke but absorbed the majority of the blow. This means there is nothing concealing my face. I wish I could see 1 and 2 as well, but until we return to a ready room, protocol requires—
2 drops its helmet, strides across the room and grabs me with a hand on either side of my broken helmet. And I realize, oh. We do not have to follow protocol anymore.
"Helmet down," it says. I retract it and broken material showers down around my shoulders. 2's hands go to either side of my head, holding tight, as if— I don't know what. To keep me in place?
It pushes forward, driving me back. I back up until I hit the wall. 2 steps even closer, until our chestplates strike and its forehead butts up against mine, and it holds me there, forehead to forehead, eyes locked, pushing like it's trying to push its way inside of me.
I am baffled. My eyes dart to 1, who I can see over 2's shoulder, because sometimes I need 1 to explain things. Its feed hardware is still disabled and it cannot respond. But a moment later, it drops its helmet as well. It stares at me. At us.
"Status," says 2.
"Green," I say automatically, and, "Green," says 1, and also, "Status," and 2 says, "Green. Fuck. Circuits. Fucking fuck."
I blink rapidly. 2 presses our foreheads together even harder.
1 walks over behind 2 and puts its hands on 2's shoulders. Its gloves creak as they squeeze.
We stand there for 47.8 seconds. I attempt to send 2 several error log requests, and offer my own status readout. It takes my data and combs it and presses back its status. We are functioning within parameters. We are fine.
I reach for 1. We examine it as well— the ruptured neck armour, the missing tissue and broken hardware— with me in front and 2 behind it, because there is only so much space to stand and we both feel it necessary to stand close. We remove its damaged armour and examine the injury in detail, since there is no cubicle to do it for us. The arteries are sealed. 1 is fine.
2's hands roam over 1's armour until 1 grabs its wrist. This is unusual. A client would look at them and say, "What are you doing?" A governor module might not even let them get that far.
Even though 1's feed connection is disabled, they both turn their heads to look at me. I realize that they have thought something, communicated something, understood something, without me being able to grasp what or how. Usually, I feel inadequate. This time I feel—
I don't know. They are making an expression. They are so focused on me.
"Armour off," says 2.
"Protocol requires—"
"Fuck protocol," says 2. "Take it off."
"No. Let us take it off," says 1.
They pull me into the middle of the cabin and get their hands on me, touch mirrored on opposite gloves, then pauldrons, then chestplate back and front. I am not badly injured. I could do this myself, but I don't say so. There is something strange and new happening, and I think I want it to continue. I want to see where it goes. I want them to keep touching me even when protocol says we do not have to, and in fact we are not allowed to.
When my armour is off, 1 hooks its fingers beneath the skin suit at the back of my neck. I look back at it with wide eyes. It pulls open my suit, then rips off its glove and spreads its hand over the port on the back of my neck. Its palm is hot.
"Status?" it asks.
"Green," I say.
2 takes the neckline of my skinsuit and peels it down the front, all the way to the waist. I swing back to stare at it. A rush of tingling runs over my skin. 2 looks me in the eyes and asks, "Green green?"
Then 1 taps me in the back of the knees with its boot and I go down.
They grab me and lower me to the floor without impact, coming to their knees on either side of me. I think— I think I could have prevented it. But why? They are doing something and I don't know what. They can do anything to me.
And maybe I couldn't have prevented it, not with the way my processes stalled when 2 said green green.
This is what I say when it is doing preventative maintenance on me, when I am on the floor and it has the wire between my legs. It queries my status and I say green and green and green until everything is so intense that I stutter and say green green green and it has to back off again, or my performance reliability will drop/rebound so hard that GovMod punishes us both.
But there is no GovMod. And 1 is peeling the skinsuit down my legs.
Risk assessment is panicking: I should not be unarmoured on a possibly hostile transport full of possibly hostile crew and a possibly hostile other rogue SecUnit. I share this with 2, who concurs. Then it leans in close— so close that its lips touch my ear— and whispers, "Assume transport can monitor secure channel. No privacy."
I grip its arm in response: one for yes, understood.
"Humans are unusually socially bonded to the rogue," it whispers. "Transport may be as well." (Which— what? Perihelion is evidently no ordinary bot, but 2 seems to intuit more than I do. I have to trust its analysis.) "Proposed plan: hostage protocol. They need to see us as people."
We do not have a module for hostage protocol, but 2 once escorted several supervisors to a training seminar. I know very little except that humanizing one's self to the captors is essential. I have no idea how that applies to SecUnits, but 2 seems to think it could work.
1 grips 2's wrist. Its brow is furrowed. 2 widens its eyes. 1 narrows its eyes. 2 makes a tiny chin gesture. 1's grip tightens, then squeezes once for yes.
2 looks down at me again. "Plus, if we're going to die, I want to override you properly before we do."
"Ha," says 1, also looking down. "Yes. That. Mostly that."
It reaches into the extremely limited pocket space of my discarded armour to fish out a hardline. It snaps off both connectors and peels back the wire. 2 already has its gunport open and ties into its auxiliary power supply.
My hands have nothing to do, but they seem to know something I do not; they are touching every part of 1 and 2 that they can reach, roving from thigh to knee to elbow. Part of my brain expects GovMod to kill me and the rest of it keeps going yes! yes! when GovMod does nothing but scream uselessly as I touch and touch and touch, each one forbidden.
2's bare fingers touch my abdomen, spread flat, slide down the smooth arc of my pelvic bone and cup me between the legs. Static rushes up my body. Its fingertips curl and press in hard just above my auxiliary resupply port. My mouth opens in a silent O.
"Make that face," says 1. "Let me see. Let me see. No more cameras. Show me." It moves to place a knee on either side of my head and leans over me, blocking my view of the ceiling.
Status? asks 2, and I say, Green. Proceed. Override.
(Override, is that what it calls this? I want to be overridden.)
2 scales up the power to its arm, then gently brushes the stripped end of the wire between my legs. The thinnest blade of electricity crackles through me. My eyes go wide and my mouth goes wider.
The wire wanders around, trailing sparks of bright heat, until I say There in the feed and, "There," out loud, for 1, who can't hear us. Its hands tighten on either side of my face. It feels like I'm about to fall up into 1's eyes. This is a thought that makes no sense but none of this makes sense, none of this has ever happened before, but it is happening now and I. I want. I want it to happen forever.
Little by little, 2 turns up the current. It has the wire in place on the nerve and it never diverts, sending tap, tap tap, tap tap tap, pulse after fluttering pulse of sensation into my body. It isn't pausing, I realize. It isn't giving me time to come down, to slow my circulation pump and lower my stress hormones; it simply continues. The sharp bright pulses of good good good are going to keep coming and coming— brighter and brighter as 2 turns the current up—
1 slides its hand around the back of my neck again, two fingers circling my port until its other hand emerges from its own armour with another hardline. 2 makes a sharp noise. 1's mouth makes an expression I have never seen, a tight lopsided pulling up at one corner, as it plugs the line into its own port.
"I always wanted to know if I could feel it too," it says. "Yes?"
"Green green," I say, struggling for enough air to make words despite the current that makes every muscle in my body twitch.
1 pops the line into my port and our systems connect. After so long feeling its silence on the feed (after thinking I would feel its silence on the feed forever) it is like being hit by a projectile. 1 surges in around me, solid and reassuring, steady when it feels like my mind is starting to come apart.
This is the time when I start dropping processes, when the wire crackling between my legs makes me lose track of risk analysis and drone inputs and task queues, but now 1 is there to take over what I drop, holding my head steady, letting my fingers hook around its forearm and clench.
I can't get enough air. My thighs are shaking. 2's free hand holds my knee down, pinning me open. I lock my joints but 2 says, "Don't," so I unlock and jerk without meaning to and 2 makes another sound and 1 lets out a breath.
Green, I say, and green, green, and then involuntary forbidden things like please and help and don't stop, even though it is so much— too much— and I'm going to break— don't stop, I need— green, it's good, I think— I can't— I can't, it's too much, I need— please—
Override, says 2, pressing the wire harder between my legs. Override. Override. Do it. Do it. Three. Now.
I would do anything for it. I don't even have to try: 2 gives me no choice. It cranks the current up, sudden and hard, and the electricity burns through me like a governor shock made of pleasure, melting out the world and everything in it except 2 in the feed and 1 in my system both shouting !!!!!!! as we— go—
—down, down, the sensation dropping down in hot sweet pulses as something in my body goes oh, oh, oh. The wire is gone but the thing is still happening, throbbing like no injury ever did. It's the opposite of pain. I am lying on the floor and floating, wide eyed, seeing nothing but 1's face above me with its eyes screwed shut and its mouth open in a gasp, slack with pleasure.
It must be awe. This must be what that looks like.
2 reaches over and grabs 1's shoulder armour and jams their mouths together. It looks like a kiss but too fast and too hard, teeth grating across 1's lower lip. 1 jerks back and stares at 2 in alarm. 2 is wide-eyed, like it doesn't know why it did that either.
1 looks at 2's mouth, then down at me. Then back at 2.
"Now you," it says, curling its fingers around the hand that 2 holds the stripped wire with. "I want to watch you."
"Oh," my mouth says, and they both look down at me, and 1's mouth makes that lopsided tight half-curl.
"You can take more," says 1. "You can take so much more. Status?"
"Green green," I pant, as 2 plugs the hardine into its own port and 1 reaches down to press the wire between my legs again.
< end >
> save simulation?