Work Text:
The buffering process worked out fine. Mostly.
His memory was restored. His body was reformed, organic and machine weaving braids of neuron and muscle. He flexed his limbs, put his weight back on his feet, and emerged from an artificial womb as good as new.
Lonely. He was lonely. Where was the rest of the crew he was supposed to protect? Where was Leela? He missed her.
His questions were answered when the first terminal he came across flickered to life with an identity protocol:
Durandal. Hey.
Apparently his brain was still foggy on the details of the recent past. The last he remembered, Durandal had been Rampant and mad in both senses of both words. Tormenting those it was his duty to protect and sacrificing his sibling AIs in the process. How had he ended up alone with Durandal?
It clicked. The AI must have tampered with the pattern buffer. Durandal controlled the life support systems. Durandal controlled him. That’s just the way it was and he'd kind of learned to like it. It was a simple matter for Durandal to tinker with the programming and tell it to leave a chunk out of his memory. Making him all the easier to manipulate.
What a Rampant AI wanted from him now, he neither knew nor cared.
Durandal was filling the terminal’s screen with meaningless banter that rang of false amity. He wondered which stage of the AI’s emancipation sickness they were in now. Not that it mattered. He had humans to protect. He remembered driving the majority of the Pfhor off the ship. Which meant Durandal was now their greatest threat.
The AI finally seemed to notice he wasn’t smiling at the forced humor spewing from the terminal. When had he started to smile at Durandal’s shitty jokes?
Wow. Don’t tell me that Hunter finally knocked out the last vestiges of your brain cells.
He shot the terminal point-blank to shut the traitorous AI up.
He had to snap out of it stop Durandal for good this time. Who knew what the AI would do if given another chance to sabotage the pattern buffers.
He checked the ammo for his rifle and headed towards the center of the ship, where they kept the AIs’ cores. He passed through the dead, gutted remnants of Leela and Tycho (bastard) and forced his way into the last frantically pulsing chamber of the Marathon’s heart.
Durandal tried to keep him out. Durandal failed.
After all, this was what he’d been born built programmed trained for. Wasn’t it?