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I'd been minding my own business when I noticed Gurathin acting weird.
That wasn't unusual by itself, no. (I'd once watched him spend two entire cycles searching every potted plant on the station for a paper book he'd somehow misplaced). He was on Preservation Station, as he usually was. But it wasn't often—or ever—that my drones saw him enter the part of the station reserved for long-term storage. It was typically full of things like replacement display screens and extra gurneys and spare pallets of recycler stock, but it was also where Mensah had kept the cubicle the Company had given her when they'd sold her my contract. I didn't need it anymore, given how rarely I found myself injured these days, but I kept an eye on it anyway. For reasons.
What could Gurathin want with a cubicle, though? I sent a drone in after him, keeping it quiet and out of sight. The cubicle sat outside the lockable storage compartments available to residents: too big to fit in any of them, too heavy to move, and quite useless to anybody but me. But Gurathin went over to it anyway. I saw him enter a data storage chip into a port on the upper surface of the cubicle and then… just stand next to it, presumably working via his augments. He was there for perhaps five minutes before he retrieved the chip and left. I waited another five minutes, making sure he was on another floor of the station and far enough away that I would have adequate notice of him returning. Then I hightailed it down to the storage units, intent on finding out what it was Gurathin had taken from the cubicle.
The storage units were dark and barely heated, and it made the hairs on my arms stand on end. Or perhaps that was just my reaction seeing the cubicle again. It just sat there, smooth and white, the company logo embossed on the side. I was glad I didn't rely on it anymore.
I checked the logs first: they were wiped clean, of course. I should have expected that. Gurathin wasn't an amateur; he wouldn't have left traces. Even so, it was disquieting to see: he was probably up to no good if he felt the need to hide it.
I tried the maintenance log next. It was typically only accessible to cubicle techs and it was written in a proprietary language, but I'd been a company construct and could read it just fine. It had all the information I needed, too, but that didn't do anything for how confused I was. What was Gurathin doing copying my appearance phenotypes to a data storage chip?
All constructs have an appearance phenotype file. It's what the cubicle uses when reconstructing external organics, a file with all the settings for a construct's appearance. I knew some media companies in the CR sold the appearance phenotypes of certain actors, and that some kinds of ComfortUnits came with cubicles that could alter their appearance given a phenotype file to work with… and that was really the extent of my knowledge. Was Gurathin—no, that wasn't likely. He was an asshole, but he wouldn't do something like that.
That was when I checked on him again, and my drones caught him booking transportation to the Corporation Rim.
I allowed myself a minute before I booked a ticket on the same transport, using a fake ID so a casual look at the passenger manifest wouldn't give me away. I needed to know what he was up to, because he was definitely up to something, and it apparently involved my phenotype file.
…
The transport ride was uneventful. Gurathin mainly kept to his tiny room, sleeping or working in the feed, all local low-footprint activity. I didn't leave my room at all. (Our tickets were cheap enough that nobody cared enough to notice.) The journey was only five cycles long, terminating at some crossroads station on the very edge of the Corporation Rim called MizeKaban. It looked like the sort of place pirates stopped at to fence shit, like a handful of small stations that had been shabbily glued together to make a big one. Some of the older sections were visibly falling apart, shedding exterior cladding into space.
It was still very much a Corporation Rim outpost, though. It even had a company liaison office, the logo bright against the panels of one of the shinier sections. I didn't like that Gurathin was taking my appearance phenotype file to an outpost with a company liaison office, but I didn't know if that was where he was headed. (And I was fairly sure the company had a copy of that data already.)
The station supports groaned when the transport docked. This place was a fucking wreck. The local feed was choked with long-expired advertising and shady offers for dubiously legal services.
I didn't leave the ship when he did, but I sent three drones along with him. I was careful to keep their feed footprint small and their movement as unobtrusive as possible. I did not want to be noticed by Gurathin, not here.
The danger of that seemed to be low, though. He moved through the people on the station like he was headed somewhere definite. It involved taking a cargo lift down into the more decrepit parts of the station, and I nervously directed my drones into the shaft after it. Where was Gurathin going? On the public feed, those levels were marked as "undergoing maintenance" and lacking life support. Was Gurathin aware of this? He had to be.
Let's just say I didn't expect the lift to drop him off on a floor teeming with activity and very much pressurised for human comfort. It was full of odd little shops and stalls, loudly selling everything from jailbroken interfaces to back-alley augmentation to instant fried food. I even saw what looked like large plastic barrels full of construct resupply fluid, up for sale by the litre. The people were noticeably different, too—a lot more augmented humans, for one, and they were augmented to a greater degree. It was a mess of noise and movement, and I found it easy to keep my drones hidden. (They weren't even the only drones hovering around here, intriguingly.) There was no indication on the public feed that any of this existed. How many stations had secret floors like this? I wanted to spend more time going over everything.
Gurathin walked through the place like he was familiar with it. He was all smiles and greetings, nodding and waving at people. His expression fell as soon as he was in an emptier part of the floor, though. I kept my drones close to him as he approached a door—no identifier in the public feed, unmarked except for a door number stenciled in with paint. He stopped, then, and placed a hand on the door. I couldn't imagine what he was doing here—no, actually, I could: all the media I'd watched gave me a wide range of dangerous possibilities. When I added my appearance phenotype file to the mix, that number dwindled considerably. There was the chance this had nothing to do with the file, but that seemed remote.
When he finally pushed the door open—remotely unlocked, he was clearly familiar with this door—and went in, I sent the drones in after him, slipping them in just before the door swung shut.
Whatever I'd expected—some kind of drug lab, maybe, or a bunch of grimy smugglers, perhaps even a company liaison officer—it wasn't this. The room resembled a mid-range hotel suite in one of the better class of CR stations, with a large bed, a little table, and a squashy-looking sofa. I directed two drones into good vantage points (the room was dimly lit and they'd be well hidden). The third drone I sent into the vents and set it to record but not transmit, keeping it silent on the feed. Just in case this really was something illicit and somebody brought in a feed jammer. Or something.
Gurathin sat on the sofa and fidgeted. He kept glancing at the door of what would ordinarily be the ensuite bathroom. The door finally opened, and I caught a glimpse of a larger room beyond—but then I noticed what had come through and found it hard to focus on anything else.
It was me. Or someone who looked just like I had before I'd met ART, albeit with slightly longer hair. I now knew what Gurathin had wanted my appearance file for, but it didn't make any—oh no. No. No. The clone was wearing a dressing gown with very obviously nothing underneath, and seeing that was enough. It became horribly obvious what Gurathin was doing here. It was somehow worse than anything I could've come up with.
"A SecUnit?" said the clone, crossing its arms. It had my voice. "Really?"
Gurathin only nodded. The drone with a view of his face showed he seemed… close to tears? Which was definitely weird. A bit jarring, honestly. I didn't ordinarily see this kind of emotion outside entertainment media, and certainly never on him.
I kept watching, utterly numb, as the clone walked closer. It didn't have any of the inorganic parts of a SecUnit, just unbroken skin the same colour as mine. Seeing that helped distance myself from what was happening: this was just a costume this person was wearing. That wasn't me, as obvious as it was that it was meant to be a stand-in.
It was still a surreal sight. Gurathin had never shown the slightest hint of an inclination—absolutely nothing of this kind, definitely. I was certain I would've picked up on it.
I watched the clone reach for him, pull him to his feet. Its actions were familiar, even friendly. "You're a fool," I heard it say. It sounded pitying, and fond, and hearing that in my voice— it was sickening. "How long have you been sitting with this?"
Gurathin then made a choked gasping sort of noise and hugged the clone. I winced just watching it happen. The clone didn't seem to mind, though; it put its arms around him and brushed its fingers through his hair and let him cry into its dressing gown. Because he was definitely crying now, completely silently, hitching shoulders and all. Fuck. I felt a bit of pity despite myself—and snuffed it as viciously as I could. There was more to this than what I'd pieced together, but I knew none of it would conflict with what I'd guessed already.
"I'm sorry," said Gurathin, like everything so far hadn't been horribly out of character for him. He looked up at the clone's face, and his expression was a sight. "But you—you look just like it. And you're holding me. I—I feel like I'm dreaming." What the fuck, Gurathin.
"This is not a dream," said the clone, dry but gentle. I didn't even know my voice could do that. "One day I'll figure out why humans give me face files and then act shocked when I wear that face. It never gets old." It carefully, deliberately pressed Gurathin's face back into the fabric over its chest, pressed its lips to the top of his head, and then placed its chin where its lips had been. Its face was tilted up a little, and its eyes were half-shut. It looked… peaceful.
Then the clone looked up and across to stare right at my drone, one of the two actively transmitting, and I knew I'd been caught. It wore a new expression, this one cold contempt (and I had a chilling flash of recognition to faces I'd made in ART's mirrors). It was the last thing I saw before both drones were forcefully ripped from me. The third was still connected by the thinnest thread, still recording (I hoped), but I wasn't going to touch it to see. That one action by the clone had made some things startlingly clear, and only added more questions as I examined what had happened.
I'd been in my room aboard the transport all this time, but now I felt the urge to lie down on the bunk. The pattern of that hack, its brutality—I recognised it. It wasn't something you forget, the one time you fight a CombatSecUnit. But this quite obviously wasn't a CombatSecUnit. Its appearance only made that more obvious: humans took a lot longer to recover from extensive cosmetic surgery, while specialised ComfortUnits were probably done in minutes. And I knew what ComfortUnits looked like in the feed.
A ComfortUnit using CombatSecUnit hacks… it was a rogue. It had to be. The realisation took me entirely too long to digest. I couldn't fathom why a sexbot would want to keep doing that if it was a rogue. I was angry that it had taken on my appearance. I was furious with Gurathin, disgusted, appalled—I shouldn't have trusted him. Or I would have, and I wouldn't have known about any of this.
I already knew I would be watching the footage when I retrieved the drone. I needed to know, as ghastly as I expected the experience would be. I needed to know just how badly I wanted Gurathin to suffer once I hunted him down.