Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

You wake up hungover.

At least, that’s the best explanation for the headache you have, the dull bass beat at the back of your skull.

You definitely went drinking last night. An old colleague was in town. Burnerson. Ve’d been your supervisor, back in the day, not long before you got out of the game. You weren’t sure why ve was here, “in the back of beyond”, and probably should have ignored ver invitation. But your curiosity got the best of you. So you went. And of course ve offered you a drink. That was traditional, at least at ver level, the one where ve could afford it. Order the stiffest drink you could for your guest. Classic CR dick measuring contest.

Even after said contest/conversation was done, you must have kept drinking. Not that you can remember it, exactly. But you must have been miserable enough for it to seem like a good idea.

Typical. First time you actually let yourself get properly drunk in years, and you don’t even remember it.

With a groan, you roll out of bed.

You check your schedule. 9:15 – Initial Survey Planning, Henzai 11b

It’s in twenty minutes.

Thud thud thud, goes your headache. You’re shivery and your mouth is dry. You want to crawl back into bed. You should probably take a sick day.

But old habits die hard. You hate taking time off work, especially for something that’s your fault. You’ll manage. So you get dressed, take a painkiller, grab the massive cup of coffee Ratthi offers you in the kitchen, and head off.

===

“Morning you two!”

“Hey Ratthi, hey Gurathin!”

“Either of you want some pastries?”

You wince at their too-loud, too-cheerful voices. Hangover aside, you’ve never understood how any of them are able to be this enthusiastic so early in the morning.

That said, you do accept a pastry. You need some carbs to wash last night’s alcohol away. In theory, at least. When you put it on your tongue it’s too sweet, too intense. You force it down anyway.

Arada slides into the seat next to you. “You alright? Don’t take this the wrong way, but it looks like you got hit by a bus.”

“Mmmn,” you grunt.

Arada raises her eyebrows, and exchanges a look with Overse. Married couple thing. Able to communicate with just a glance. Usually it’s kind of sweet. Right now it’s just annoying.

Ratthi says, “He just had a little too much to drink last night.”

You turn to glare at him, but stop it at the last second. Sometimes you forget, it’s not the same here. Back in the Corporation Rim, that would be the equivalent of throwing your colleague to the sharks. Hey, look, my co-worker can’t keep up! The type of thing that gets Management’s eyes on you, gets them thinking as quarterly evals approach.

But it’s different here. Your team is meant to look out for you, have your back. That’s not always the case, but most of the time, it is. Ratthi meant nothing by the comment, except a genuine explanation.

And no one else means anything else by their comments either, as they make sympathetic little noises or ask “are you okay?” You wave them all off. You don’t like being fussed over, and it’s just a hangover. You’d really just prefer to be left alone.

“Alright, everyone, let’s get started,” Dr. Mensah says. Her voice is too loud, but it cuts through the clatter, so you don’t mind too much. A presentation flickers onto the nearest display screen. “As you all know, this is our initial planning meeting for the upcoming survey for the planet designated Herzai 11b...”

That headache is still burning away, but you’ve always been the type of person who does best with something to focus on. You let it fade into the background as you begin taking notes.

===

Nine hours later, the day is over. A bunch of the others are going out for drinks. None of them blame you when you decline. You walk back to your apartment, alone.

Mostly alone. In your left ear there’s a very soft buzzing, almost past the range of hearing. A drone.

SecUnit’s drone.

While you’ve become used to SecUnit’s monitoring, you won’t lie that sometimes it’s irritating, and this is one of those times. You’re tempted to tell it to shove off, or at least go far enough away that you can’t hear it.

But you don’t. You know how much SecUnit relies on those drones to interface with the world, to do its job, and don’t want to make it uncomfortable. And it seems like a lot of effort, when you’re close to home.

Six minutes later, you arrive at your apartment. Sure enough, the drone peels off, to find a sentry position on a strut near the top of the door. You don’t bother waving goodbye. It’s not like SecUnit cares about those kinds of things.

===

You eat dinner. You shower. You try to catch up with your reading, but keep losing your place, and give up after less than an hour.

You fall into bed, exhausted, expecting to fall asleep immediately.

You don’t. All the water you drank keeps driving you to the washroom. You head itches, then your foot, then your nose, then the back of your neck, then one really awkward place in the middle of your back that you can barely reach. The blankets are too hot, then when you throw them off, too cold. Ratthi slips in, and later his partner of the month, and the thin slip of light that shines through the door is too bright. You press your face into the pillow to block them out, but the texture is all wrong.

Why can’t I sleep? you moan to yourself, miserable, but there’s no answer.

===

You must fall asleep eventually, because next thing you know, you’re waking up for the next day.

You feel better. Objectively, you feel better. The hangover is gone. It must be gone. The headache has subsided. You’re fine.

You try to match Ratthi’s smile when you meet him in the kitchen, and mostly succeed.

It’s a lighter schedule today. No 9:15 meeting. You need to do some research for the upcoming survey, plus you offered to help make a dent in the backlog of help requests for the station’s IT department. There’s still work to do, but not as urgent. You can’t take things at your own pace. It’ll be fine.

===

Void above and below, you forgot how annoying IT requests are.

At least half the tickets aren’t even actual problems, just user incompetence. Forgotten passwords, missed updates, getting programs mixed up, or not having charged their feed interfaces. Utterly preposterous. You know it’s ridiculous to assume everyone is a technical expert, but would it kill people to do a basic search before crying for help?

But somehow, the actual tickets are even worse. Debugging is a boring slog. You have to keep repeating the same troubleshooting steps again and again. In the cases where the situation is bad enough to actually look at the code, you’re reminded again how frustrating it can be to wade through someone else’s programs.

Oh, and SecUnit’s drone is back, of course. That low, barely-perceptible buzz like a particularly persistent fly.

But you’re Dr. Persistence Gurathin. You get the job done. That’s what you’re best at. So you slog through, despite it all.

===

Again, sleep is elusive that night. All manner of petty annoyances and grievances prick at you, pulling you back to the surface just as you’re about to drift off.

You get so desperate that you pull up one of those guided-meditation-mindfulness-audio-drama things. Although ‘drama’ definitely isn’t the right word. The scenarios they go through are stuff like ‘Baby Kittens Explore a Living Room’ and ‘Florist Prepares to Open The Shop’. Utterly dull. Which of course is the point, they’re meant to lull you to sleep, but just right now you find the cloying sweetness of it almost unbearable.

===

More survey preparation meetings the next day. “Hello, Gurathin,” Bharadwaj says, glancing up at him from her private display. She’s retired from field work but she wanted to help with the planning. Right now, though, it looks like she’s doing some editing for the follow-up to the documentary. “How’s it going?”

“Fine,” you say, clipped.

Pretty much everyone calls you Dr. Gurathin here. Even people you’ve known for years, who you’d consider your friends. It’s not something you generally mind. It’s a pretty standard part of the local culture. Most folks go by their family names in professional settings.

But you won’t lie, it’s something you started encouraging, early on, after you got one too many raised eyebrows about your first names, or ‘jokes’ about how similar ‘Persistence’ was compared to ‘Preservation’. Yes, yes, they both begin with a P sound, how astute.

Or worse, the attempts to shorten your name. No matter what happens, you refuse to answer to the nickname Percy.

It bugs you, today, though. Right now, it’s just you and Bharadwaj in the room, besides SecUnit, tucked in the corner. The two of you have known each other for eleven years. Is she still not comfortable using your first name?

You could ask, you suppose. But what if she refused? Or couldn’t even remember your first name? Or started to use it, but a few days later, it was back to Gurathin?

Whatever. It doesn’t matter. You’re not even sure why you’re thinking about it.

===

Planning a survey takes a lot of work. Logistics, scheduling. What tests you want to run, where you want to run it, what equipment you’ll need, what results you’ll be able to generate on site versus which ones you’ll process during the trip back. 

Growing up, you never intended to be a scientist. You certainly didn’t intend to be an academic. At your parents’ insistence, you put all your focus into Systems Analysis. “Companies will always need people who are good with computers,” your First Father said. “No matter where, no matter what industry, they’ll need people who can program and code and hack.”

He wasn’t wrong, is the thing. Your skill, hard work, and augmentation had basically guaranteed you a lucrative career in the Rim. You could have climbed the corporate ladder, made it safely into middle management. If you’d settled down with a partner or three, you could have afforded a comfortable apartment, and probably ensured any of your kids could have gone even higher.

But instead, you’d decided to settle in a freehold system, and fallen into academia almost by accident. You’ve picked things up here and there; some meteorology, some statistical analysis, some geology. You’re a bit of a jack of all trades.

Normally you don’t mind. Teams need generalists. But today, as you listen to your colleagues argue back and forth for hours about the best approach, you feel a little out of your depth.

You wonder if they notice.

You wonder if they’re judging you for it.

===

Oh, and there’s another stack of IT requests for you to do. Joy.

Chapter Text

Ratthi has friends over when you return to the apartment you currently share. They’ve taken over the entire living room, laughing and listening to music and eating all manner of greasy food. You’ve met them before, at least some of them. Ratthi’s dating (sleeping with) at least three of the group.

They wave you over, invite you to join.

“I have a lot of work,” you say, which isn’t a lie. But the truth is that sitting in a room full of extroverted, near-strangers for hours on end while they talk about the latest action games or the Flyball playoffs or who’s broken up with whom is so far from your idea of a good time that you’d rather do janitorial duty.

For a brief moment, you even consider saying as much.

You hold yourself back, obviously. That would be petty and mean.

Instead you just go into your room, try to catch up on reading, and desperately block out the incipient sound of laughter and chatter that goes on for hours.

===

The mediation audio you listen to that night is about repairing a bicycle. You give up on it even half-way through. You never learned how to ride a bike. Would have been a waste of time and money.

===

You wake up. Another day stretches before you, full of academic articles, full of survey meetings, full of IT service requests. Work, work, work.

At least you’re up early. You use that to your advantage, slipping out of the apartment before Ratthi is up.

===

“Hey! Missed you this morning!”

You don’t bother responding to Ratthi’s hello. You barely answered anyone’s as you came in. Preservation culture requires so much small talk. It’s exhausting.

===

“What do you think, Gurathin?” Mensah asks halfway through that day’s meetings, jolting you back into focus. Seems that someone has finally bothered to ask your opinion on something.

You didn’t plan the words that slip out, they just happen; “I think... What I’m thinking is... Are we sure we even want to go ahead with this survey?”

Heads swing in your direction. Frowns, creased eyebrows.

“Well, yeah,” says Meera. She’s a contamination specialist, being brought on for this specific team, since this planet’s flora are still fairly under-studied. If it turns out that some the local pollen will melt your esophagus into slag, that’s the kind of person you want to have around. You’d met with her a few times at parties, but never worked with her before this. “This really seems like a plausible location to set up some new bases, but we can’t move forward without a more thorough assessment.”

So she’s not from the original group. Doesn’t quite get your concern, or why some of the others are looking uncertain. She deserves to have it spelled out for her.

“The last two surveys were a disaster,” you say, frank. “Corporate agents nearly killed us.”

Flinches, all around the room, strangely satisfying.

“That was GrayCris,” says Pin-Lee, from across the table. “If not for them, the planet would have been perfectly safe.”

“I guess I forgot the giant worm that took a chunk out of Bharadwaj, then.”

Bharadwaj flinches, that time. Which makes you feel a little bad— you know she’s still in therapy, both the physical and emotional kinds, to get over what happened to her.

But you push back against that impulse. This is exactly why you need to speak your mind. To remind them of the dangers.

“The worm was only dangerous because GrayCris fucked with the maps,” Pin-Lee argues.

“You can’t know that.”

“No, but—”

Bharadwaj herself interjects. “Besides, the survey before that went perfectly fine—”

“I was talking about the survey after that,” you reply, cold. “The one where the base was attacked by raiders? And then about half the team were kidnapped by an alien remnant-infected transport?”

“You weren’t even on that survey,” Arada says. Her usually light expression is replaced with something stubborn and stern. She was the lead for that expedition; the fact that it was such a clusterfuck must be a bruise to her ego.

“Maybe not, but I still know how it panned out. It was a miracle you didn’t all die, wasn’t it?”

The silence in the room is brittle and oppressive.

Mensah is the one who breaks it. It took her longer to regain control of the meeting than it normally would have, though. There’s something of a pallor beneath her dark skin, and she might be trembling a little, although perhaps you’re imagining that. “Those surveys are in the past,” she says, firmly. “And besides, issues like that are precisely why SecUnit will be accompanying us.”

And sure enough, SecUnit has left whatever corner it was hiding in to stand next to her, tall and intimidating. It’s not meeting anyone’s gaze, but its head is raised and its shoulder is squared, like it’s daring the universe to fuck around and find out.

“I will ensure that any threats are dealt with, and that this survey does not go forward unless it falls within acceptable bounds of risk,” it says. And that genuinely seems to reassure people, with sighs of relief and weak watery smiles going up.

Mensah says, “If anyone has any specific concerns about safety, or suggestions for measures we can implement, you are more than encouraged to bring them up, either here or privately. But unless there is something specific for us to address, I suggest we move on for now.”

And they do exactly that.

So much for hearing you out.

===

That night, Ratthi catches you before you can slink into your room. “Hey, could you make sure to do the dishes tonight? It’s your turn and they’re kinda piling up.”

Sure enough, they are. No wonder the apartment stinks so bad. “Fine.”

You go into your room, after that. You’ll handle the dishes later. You just can’t be bothered right now.

===

Good news: you do actually manage to sleep pretty easily that night.

Bad news: you have intense, violent dreams the whole way through.

You wake up, blinking, the exact details already fading. You’re left with the impression of yelling, screaming, kicking, the scent of blood. More of a nightmare than a dream, really.

Despite that, you’re in a cheerier mood than you have been in days.

===

That doesn’t last, however. What was looking like a relatively light day gets more hectic when you receive a last minute request for a private meeting with Dr. Mensah.

You’re extremely tempted to turn her down just for the hell of it. But she is, technically, your superior, even if most people in the Preservation Alliance try to pretend that hierarchy doesn’t matter. You accept the meeting, and go at the scheduled time.

She smiles when you enter her office— smaller than her old one, and, if you’re being honest, not anywhere as nice— and offers you tea. After that, though, she’s all business.

“It’s perfectly understandable for you to have reservations about this survey,” she says. “If you’re not up for it, or you have any concerns... You’re under no pressure to come. No one will have any issues if you decide to sit it out.”

Oh. She’s trying to frame it as if it’s about you. As if you’re the one who’s odd for having concerns. As if you’re delicate. As if you can’t handle it.

But you’re not some fresh undergrad. You see this for what it is; a transparent attempt to get you off the project.

You’re not going to get kicked aside that easily. You smile back, the expression not quite reaching your eyes, and say, “Oh no, I wouldn’t want to miss out. It was really you that I was more concerned about.”

“Oh?” she says, deceptively light.

“You are supposed to be retiring, aren’t you?”

“From the political sphere, yes. And it’s not necessarily a retirement. A break while I focus and reassess. I might return to it, one day.”

The meeting doesn’t last much longer, after that.

===

That was rude, SecUnit messages, after.

You weren’t supposed to be listening.

It was related to the topic of security. Of course I was supposed to be listening. And my drone was right there.

Right. Of course it was. Looking back, it was plainly on display. You’re not sure how you missed it.

That just pisses you off more. And besides, since when does SecUnit care about being polite? I don’t care if it was rude. I care more about protecting lives than protecting feelings.

Well, this seems like a way to fail at both. Great job.

===

The conversation(s) leave you jittery, on edge. You take a long half-walk, half-jog around the station. It does basically nothing to help you burn off the restless energy, but it does work up a fierce appetite. Nothing feels less appealing to you right now than cooking, so you make a bee-line for the nearest food court. But once you get there, the food doesn’t seem appealing either.

It’s mostly local Preservation dishes, of course. There’s definitely some non-Alliance cuisines on offer, but those are all cooked using local ingredients, fresh from the station’s hydroponics bays or shipped up from the planet’s farms. Delicious, fresh, healthy.

But right now, you don’t want any of that. You crave the comfort foods of your childhood. Brightly colored, packed with salts and flavourings, greasy and sugary and awfully wonderful.

You’d even settle for a steak.

It’s not that meat is impossible to get on Preservation, of course. But they’re very into sustainable farming and ethical butchery, so it’s not exactly offered at every food court stall, and priority is given to people with special dietary requirements. Usually none of this bothers you; right now it has you rolling your eyes.

You settle for a faux-chicken burger.

===

Another restless sleep. Another vague stretch of dreams.

In the morning you’re left with an itch in your head that you can’t shake, no matter how hard you try.

Chapter Text

More IT requests. More research. More messages you have to respond to.

You can’t stay cooped up inside anymore. At least, inside your apartment or inside a booked office. Obviously on a station, there’s no way to actually go outside. Not unless you enjoy the prospect of suffocating in the cold void of space.

You don’t.

So you take another walk-jog hybrid around the station. Again, it doesn’t really help. It does remind you of how old and antiquated everything looks. The place was built from the husk of a generation ship that was centuries old by the time it arrived at its destination, and it shows.

No wonder everything is so ugly. No wonder everything is so janky. No wonder there’s always so much for systems analysts to fix.

===

You wind down from your run— or attempt to, at least— with a shower. You’re just towelling off when Ratthi knocks on your door. Grumbling, you throw something on and answer it.

“Hey,” he says.

“What?” you say.

“Sooooo.” He rubs the back of his neck. “It’s been two days and you still haven’t done the dishes?”

Right. Those. “I forgot.”

“Uh huh. I get it. Been there.” He smiles. He smiles so damn much. Sometimes you wonder if he knows how to make literally any other expression. “But think you can get them done tonight?”

You still have a pile of code to pour over, plus two papers to read, plus that report that Arada shoved into the team workspace so she could get others to do the editing work for her while she takes off on a date with Overse. Doing the dishes is the last thing on your mind. But you just want to get Ratthi out of your way, so you say, “I’ll try.”

“Okay,” Ratthi says. But he doesn’t leave. He just stands there. Although at least the smile has faded. “... Did I do something to upset you?”

“What?”

“It’s just... You’ve been really quiet for the last few days. You’ve been barely talking to me, or anyone really, and I just wondered... Are you mad at me, or...?”

“It’s nothing. I just need some personal space right now,” you say, pointedly.

“Right. Of course. But are you... sure?”

By the Void.

Clearly Ratthi needs to hear something or this conversation will never end. “Well, actually, I’d appreciate if you’d let me know before you invite people over.”

“Oh.” He blinks. “Right. Yes, I can do that.”

“It’s rude and disruptive and the noise is distracting.”

“Yes. I can... see that. Sorry. You just never mentioned.”

“Well, now I have.”

“Okay,” Ratthi says. He nods. That pathetic smile is back. “Okay, I’ll definitely try to do better on that front, moving forward.”

“Good.”

You close the door in his face.

You briefly catch a glimpse of the smile vanishing again, and it feels a little like victory.

===

When that simmering frustration rises to a fever pitch again the next day, instead of attempting a fruitless run, you instead try reading in the little public garden about a ten minute walk away from your current accommodations.

Normally you like it. It’s calming and quiet and the lighting there perfectly simulates the dusk of the nearest planet.

But today, it’s all wrong. The scent of the flowers is too thick and cloying. The shrieks of children playing some sort of tag game among the foliage is grating. And your SecUnit-assigned-drone is somehow being more irritating than usual.

Could I have five minutes to myself, please? you finally demand.

Fine, SecUnit says. Unlike a normal person’s, its feed voice doesn’t sound anything like its speaking voice, but cadence and tone still carry. It sounds distinctly pissed off. Its drone goes zipping off through the trees.

Good.

===

But you can’t get rid of SecUnit that easily, as your calendar reminds you a few hours later.

There’s a dance performance thing-y on at Makembe Theatre. You were invited weeks ago, along with everyone else in the original PresAux survey team. And you had accepted, Void knows why. Dance, on its own, is boring.

You cancel.

You receive a few messages, acting all concerned. Not concerned enough to actually stop going themselves, but whatever. If they want to hang out, watching sub-par entertainment with an overly-invested SecUnit, be your guest.

SecUnit. Ha. As if you don’t all know what its real name is.

===

You still haven’t done the dishes. Ratthi must have gotten fed up and did them instead. But he’s still apparently on your case about them, because you receive a passive-aggressive text message saying, By the way, if you’re finding chores kind of hard to keep up with right now, we could also put in a request to have one of those cleaning bots to come by and help out a couple times a week.

Right. Because what you all need in your life is more bots.

===

So you finally have the apartment completely to yourself. Wonderful. You should be happy, but you’re not.

You’re lying in bed and wondering, was this all worth it?

You gave up a lucrative, successful career in a well-situation company, for a lonely bedroom in an ugly, ancient excuse for a station, going on academic surveys proving to be nearly as dangerous as mining contracts, having your expertise ignored?

Well, at least you’re not spied on all the time here.

Oh, wait. Nope. You’re more closely monitored now than you ever were back home.

So, yeah, Dr. Persistence Gurathin. Was it worth it?

===

Something else awful about Preservation, you reflect the next day, besides the stupid soppy attitude and the near-vegetarian diet. The clothes.

Oh yeah, sure. They’re almost all hand crafted. High quality fabric, detailed embroidery. Real luxury goods. That was part of why you were sent here for business in the first place, fifteen years ago. Get a contract for them going. You could sell any article of clothing from Preservation for thirty times the cost of some recycler printed crap, easily.

But they itch. No one tells you that. It chafes against your skin, too hot, too hot.

===

I’m afraid I won’t be able to attend the rest of the meetings this week, Meera the biocontamination specialist writes in the team group chat. There’s been a family emergency. I’m really sorry. 

It kind of seems like a weak excuse to you. It’s not even original. It’s the same one that Dr. Mensah has been using for half a year to duck out of extra work herself.

You write up drafts for three different messages saying as much, but duck away from sending them at the last moment, you coward. 

===

Meera or no Meera, you still have yet another stupid survey planning meeting. On the way, you bump into a woman pushing a cart laden with groceries.

“Look where you’re going, please,” she says, snappish.

“Look where you’re going, yourself,” you say, raising your hand in a vulgar gesture. 

She gasps, scandalized, and hurries off in a fury. You’re left standing in her wake, flush with victory. You’re still hot, but it’s a good kind of heat, pulsing, charging. You want more.

Chapter Text

The meeting is even more intolerable than usual, after that.

Well, past the initial hour-long discussion, it’s not so much a ‘meeting’ as an extended work session in the same room. Yes, because being surrounded by peoples’ idle chit chat and breathing and farting makes it so much more conductive to get things done.

Really, could anyone blame you for not being able to focus?

Well, yes. In the Rim, even the most minute delays in your workload could have you docked essential pay. They’d blame you. And they’d be right to, honestly. They understand the value of work out there.

Not here. Here, they prefer to relax and laze around all day. But of course, the work still has to get done. It’s just a question of who gets saddled with it.

You get up. Pace a little. Get a few looks in your direction. Pin-Lee tries to drag you into a conversation. You rebuff her. You reposition yourself at the window, staring out at the courtyard below. It should be peaceful, but all you can focus on is that awful itch in the back of your brain.

Overse’s voice cuts through your distraction and says, “Hey, did you ever get a chance to look over my notes? I haven’t seen any comments from you in the shared workspace.”

You tell her, “No, I haven’t. Work like that takes time, and I have so much work right now that time is at a premium. Not that I expect you to understand that.”

Silence. A few snatched moments of blessed, blessed silence.

But Dr. Mensah, your boss, apparently doesn’t take kindly to you daring to talk back. “Gurathin, what do you mean, that she doesn’t understand?”

“Don’t act like you aren’t pulling the same scam,” you sniff. “You all are. ‘Let’s just push everything we don’t want to do on Gurathin. He won’t notice the difference, it’s not like he has a life or anything.’ Just because I don’t have a family doesn’t mean I want to spend all of my spare time cleaning up after the rest of you.”

Mouths start hanging open. You guess they thought you were too stupid to ever catch on.

Bharadwaj exclaims, “What’s gotten into you?” Everyone is standing up. Looks like they’re not even going to bother pretending to be working anymore.

Ratthi comes over. Which, just great. Not like you don’t have to deal with him enough already, what with the two of you sharing the same apartment or anything. He reaches out. “Gurathin, I think you need to sit down.” His voice is so annoying and warbly. “And just… breathe, for a second. Whatever’s wrong, we—”

What’s wrong is he’s an irritating prick of a man who can’t pick up signals.

Well, he’ll be able to read this one.

You hit him dead in the chest.

Ratthi reels. His body had been warm against your hand in the split second you made contact. His expression is shocked. He pinwheels, nearly falling over.

Had it hurt? You can’t tell.

You hope it did.

Better make sure.

You raise your hand again.

Someone— something— pulls him out of the way. 

SecUnit.

Of course it’s the SecUnit. That’s its job, right? Watch workers, keep them in line. No violence, unless it was the kind it approved of. Sanctimonious control freak.

No matter how much Ratthi deserves this, there’s no way you’re getting through, not with his guard dog SecUnit hovering over.

That’s fine. That’s fine. Murderbot deserves this too.

With all the strength you can muster, you change targets, and hit it right in the chest instead. 

You turn to look at it. You want to see its expression. You want to see it hurt.

There’s no pain in its face, and that sends a fresh new wave of anger roiling through you, but even if it's not hurting, it looks angry. Angry, betrayed, furious. Good, good. It thought it had you under control, didn’t it? That you were trained and docile, that you fit whatever weird personality profile it probably has compiled somewhere in its inorganic systems. You make eye-contact, deliberate and sustained, communicating your defiance.

( Am I really doing this? you wonder briefly, staring into your teammate’s eyes.)

But you don’t want a staring contest. You want a no-holds-barred-beatdown. So you bring up your fist again, and drive it right into Murderbot’s face.

There’s the sound of something breaking. Pain, but distant, unimportant.

The only important thing is the collective shouts of anger that are filling the room, the grim expression on Murderbot’s face, and you want more.

They’re talking about you. Of course they’re talking about you. You’ve made yourself impossible to ignore now, haven’t you? No more leaving Dr. Gurathin out of conversations, no more going to performances while he’s left alone in his room. Now you’re the center of the show!

Except Murderbot is holding you. You try to strike again, but you can’t, its grip is a vice around your wrist. You try to kick but your legs can’t seem to reach.

But you have to hurt it. You have to. You have to hurt them all.

But there’s more than one way to hurt someone, and the words are coming out, as hot as the blood dripping from your hand. “Fuck you!” you cry. “I bet you’re fucking loving this, huh? I bet you’ve been dreaming about this since day one!”

Murderbot doesn’t react. It’s just talking along with Mensah, like it doesn’t even hear you. And if that doesn’t sum up your relationship, what does? Everyone knows that she’s its Favourite Human, that if given the chance it would give all of you up for her.

“You had fun pinning me up against the wall, didn’t you? You could have killed me then. I bet you still wish you had.”

Murderbot still isn’t reacting. The humans in the room are, though. Pin-Lee is telling you to get a hold of yourself and Arada is telling you to just calm down. Their words are fuel for the fire.

You have another arm, you remember. You use that one to land another punch on Murderbot, and receive another deeply satisfying whack.

“And you’re all fine with this. We have a killing machine just walking around in the open, and you’re all fine with it. We all decided that it wouldn’t hurt anyone! That it was on our side. But LOOK. It’s pinning me. It turned on us, turned on me, and you’re taking its side.”

It proves how fake they all are, aren’t they? All smiles, all gentle words, but when push comes to shove, they know what side they’re on. Preservation isn’t so different from the CR after all. 

“You said it was immoral. That you’d never work with a construct.” You twist around, as much as you can, to face Mensah and Pin-Lee. You savour their horrified expressions. “HYPOCRITES.

“And YOU,” you snarl, pinning Bharadwaj under your gaze. “IT WAS NEVER A MORAL ARGUMENT, NO MATTER WHAT YOU CLAIM IN YOUR DOCUMENTARY. YOU WERE SCARED. PLAIN AND SIMPLE. YOU WERE SCARED, AND YOU STILL ARE SCARED, YOU JUST FOUND SOMETHING SCARIER.”

Laughter gurgles up, threatening to choke you. You can’t let it happen. You have one singular purpose now, and you can’t let anything keep you from it.

“YOU’RE A BUNCH OF SANCTIMONIOUS HYPOCRITES. YOU ACT LIKE YOU’RE SO MUCH BETTER THAN EVERYONE ELSE, BUT IT’S JUST BECAUSE YOU CAN AFFORD TO BE. IF YOU’D BEEN DUMPED INTO THE CORPORATION RIM AS KIDS, YOU’D BE JUST AS RUTHLESS AS THE REST OF US.

“YOU WOULDN’T HAVE A LEG TO STAND ON. YOU DON’T. SO YOU DON’T GET TO JUDGE ME—”

You must finally get through to Murderbot. It flips you over, rough, and victory, victory—

A yank on the back of your collar, and you wonder for a moment if it is going to choke you after all. Full circle. A good narrative arc. It would appreciate that.

But it doesn’t. It just holds you there, hands exploring, oddly cold against your skin, an invasion. It says something: “A combat override module.”

“FUCK YOU MURDERBOT, GET OFF ME,” you shout.

It doesn’t get off you. It’s still gripping tight. It pulls and you feel something go free and you buck. You swear and you swear and you swear, calling it a killing machine and a spy bot, and no one even seems to notice or care.

Arada is crouched above you. “Gurathin,” she says, insistent. “Gurathin, you need to listen to me.”

“DON’T TELL ME WHAT TO DO.”

“Gurathin, you’re not in your right mind. Look at me, Gurathin. You’ve had a combat override installed, probably for nearly a full week.”

“SO WHAT?” you roar. Or you try to. It’s becoming very hard to get a full chest of air.

“You have hostile code installed in your augments,” she continues. “We don’t know what it’s been doing to you, exactly, but nothing good. You’re not acting fully under your own control.”

You spit at her face.

Fuck her. Fuck her, fuck all of them. They’re trying to gaslight you, to tell you what you’re feeling isn’t real.

You want her to recoil, to shout, to hit you, something. Instead Arada just wipes the spit away. She says, “You’re hurting yourself, Gurathin. Please, calm down. Let us help you.”

You don’t want help. You want them to leave you alone. You want to hurt them. You want—

Nothing’s working the way it should. You squirm, desperate to get free, but Murderbot is still holding you. Everyone’s talking, loud, none of them listening to you. The carpet is rough against your face. You’re sweating. You’re bleeding. You’re in pain.

How long have you been in pain? It’s advanced to a dull roar, suddenly, impossible to ignore.

Your head is spinning and it’s too hot and everyone’s talking but you can’t follow their words. You make out a few things in the mess of it all, ‘tranquilizer’ and ‘medical proxy’, and in a distant, hazy way, you realise what that means. You can feel a cool, alien presence seeping through your brain, and you know it’s Murderbot, you know it's poking around in your mind, like a snake, writhing into all those little cracks. You fight harder, or you try to, but your muscles aren’t coordinating, and even if you weren’t being held down by a programmed bot-soldier, you wouldn’t be able to do much. So you’re forced to lie there, lie there, until you hear the awful familiar beeping of a med-drone and feel a sharp prick somewhere in your arm and everything starts to go hazy—

“It’s going to be alright, Gurathin,” Dr. Mensah says to you, right before everything winks out, but you know that’s a lie.