Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

I didn’t know why the prisoner was important. She was some kind of political leader, according to the parts of her file I could access. Dr. Ayda Mensah, from the Preservation Alliance, some kind of backwater freehold out in non-corporate space. I wasn’t sure what the company wanted with her.

Apparently she was important enough for a SecUnit guard, though. As assignments went, it wasn’t that bad. No one was shooting at me, and most of the time I was alone with the prisoner, who didn’t have the authority to give me orders. That left me with lots of uninterrupted time to watch media. It was boring, but boring was better than a lot of other things.

The company interrogator came every day, for a while, to threaten and placate and manipulate the prisoner into giving up the information that they wanted. She mostly refused to talk to him. That was the smart move. It kept her from giving the company anything they could use against her.

Then he started coming less and less. The company wanted her to think they were losing interest, that she was no longer valuable if she didn’t start talking. I knew what happened to things that weren’t valuable. So did she. She got more restless, during the long gaps where it was almost like the company had forgotten about both of us.

During one of those gaps, the prisoner started talking to me. She knew I couldn’t respond, she said, but she was lonely and it was enough to have someone to listen. She stared at the ceiling of her cell and told me stories about her planet. She must have known I was recording everything she said, because she stuck to unimportant things—the native fauna and flora, the weather cycles, the festivals they held. She told me the story of how the colony was first founded. It was as suspenseful as anything in my serials. There was a dramatic rescue, a heroic protagonist (she quoted part of a speech at me with a smile on her lips, something about leaving no living thing behind), and a long, hard journey to a new home. I liked the story. When the human told it, she was animated, excited. It was the first time in cycles that she’d smiled.

I could tell they were wearing her down.

When she told me about her children, I hacked into the camera system and looped old footage to cover it up. She kept talking even when her voice cracked and she started to cry a little. I could tell she was trying to keep from saying what she was thinking, which was that she probably wasn’t going to see them again.

I couldn’t think of anything to say to comfort her, even if I could have said it without giving myself away. When she broke down into real tears and turned her back to me, I wished I could leave and give her real privacy. The best I could do was make sure that the company didn’t get to see this.

“I’m sorry,” she told me a while later. “I know you have no control over what happens to me. I’m sorry for…sorry that you have to be here.” She gave a weak laugh. “You don’t have any more choice than I do, do you?”

Her face turned serious again. “I don’t blame you,” she said. “For anything that happens to me while I’m here. No matter what they do.”

That didn’t make me feel better. I knew how this was going to end.

When I got the notification that the interrogator was coming in one last time, I hated that I was right.

He sat down and folded his hands, leaning slightly towards the prisoner. “Ayda, I won’t waste your time or mine. I think you realize what’s at stake here. I’m here to give you a final chance. Give us what we want.”

She turned her head towards the wall and didn’t respond to him.

“I won’t ask you again. This can end well for all of us, Ayda. There’s no shame in accepting a fair bargain.”

The prisoner’s mouth twitched, like she wanted to retort that this wasn’t fair at all, but she kept quiet.

In the feed, the interrogator ordered me, Unit, step forward.

From my position at the door, I took a step towards the center of the room and shifted my stance from standby to alert. The prisoner’s eyes flickered to me, and then away. Her shoulders tensed.

With the admin privileges I’d just managed to grant myself, I sent an urgent alert to the interrogator’s feed. Presence required immediately in conference room 3A.

He pinged back with Will comply. I waited for him to leave. Instead he leaned towards the prisoner and said, “Are you ready to comply with questioning?”

She looked him in the eyes. Her voice was soft and a little shaky, but she didn’t break his gaze. “I am not, nor will I ever be.”

“Unit, kill her,” the interrogator said.

The prisoner flinched, just slightly. She looked up at me, and then closed her eyes.

I couldn’t disobey an order in front of a human. Not without blowing my cover.

Her hands were trembling.

The interrogator looked impatient.

Fuck my cover.

I raised my energy weapons. It was a clean shot to the head. I didn’t know about painless, but it was a quick death.

The interrogator’s body crumpled to the floor. The prisoner flinched at the sound of my weapons firing.

I said, “Dr. Mensah.”

She opened her eyes. She saw me, and then the body. She gasped.

“Dr. Mensah, I need you to come with me.” I was digging deeper into the administration and security systems, not slowing down to make sure I wasn’t leaving a trail. Security on this station was tight, but all I needed was a crack. One tiny gap for her to slip through.

She stared at me. “What’s happening? You—you didn’t—”

I said, “Do you want to get out of here?”

She stood, shakily, still gaping in shock. “I—of course I do. I don’t understand. Are you still following orders?”

“No.” There it was. A crack. A way out. “I’m going to get you out of here.”

I could see the moment when she figured it out. When she started to believe me.

“You’re rogue,” she whispered. “And you’re—you’re going to help me?”

“Yes.” I overwrote my company directives. Client: Dr. Ayda Mensah. Mission objective: Safe egress of client. Acceptable mission cost: Anything.

No matter what it took, I wasn’t going to let her die here.

“Oh, thank the light!” She covered her face for a second, and then added, “Thank you.”

I sent an unlock command to the door of the cell. “Come with me.”

“Thank you,” she repeated, as she scrambled to follow me.

I’d already forfeited any chance of subtlety. So I disconnected every security camera in this part of the station. In my head, SecSys warnings started to wail.

I said, “Don’t thank me yet.”

Chapter Text

My client followed me down the corridor as I broke into a run. I kept my pace just slow enough that she could keep up. I knew where we were going. There was an airlock on the station map, intended only for maintenance access. It wasn’t too far from the holding cell. The hard part wouldn’t be getting her out—it would be getting her into a safe place before they came around with a shuttle or something to grab her again.

I’d cut off the cameras but that meant I was effectively blind, and there would definitely be humans after us soon. I threw together a program and patched it into SecSystem. The cameras started activating for three-second bursts and then deactivating for random intervals, creating a shifting map of inputs. I tweaked it and made sure that the cameras in our path would only turn on before or after we’d passed. The humans wouldn’t be able to notice the pattern among the random flashes. Now I could see them, sort of, but they couldn’t see us.

I opened long-distance comms and started scanning through channels, skipping over the company frequencies. I hit eight open frequencies within range, and hailed all of them. Six of them hailed back instantly, which meant they were bot pilots. One took a lot longer, which meant it was probably a human responding. One didn’t respond at all.

I asked all of them for a current location. The bot pilots all responded that they were docked, except for one, which was nearing the transit ring on the far side of the station. The human captain told me that their ship was currently undergoing a customs inspection near the transit ring. They were all too far away.

I was leading my client down lower-traffic corridors, but as we turned a corner two humans came out of a door fifteen meters ahead of us. They saw us immediately. Both of them were wearing armor and carrying projectile weapons, which they raised and aimed at us.

Ugh. Human security. Please.

I increased my running speed and raised one arm to fire my energy weapon at the first human’s hands (the armor was only a little less cheap than SecUnit armor and the gloves weren’t well protected). They dropped the gun. I used my momentum to slam them into the wall, making sure they hit headfirst and hard enough to be dazed, and then spun around to kick the other human’s legs from behind. They went down onto their back and I put a foot on their chest, pried the other weapon out of their hand, and broke their arm for good measure.

The client had stopped running a few meters down the corridor, and had her hands over her mouth. I said, “It’s okay, keep moving,” and started running again (slowly, until she caught up with me). The guns I held on to, mostly so the humans couldn’t try to use them on us again.

I backburnered the SecSystem alert channel, which was shouting at me that there was an emergency in the detention facility and the area was under lockdown. Fortunately I was the only SecUnit on active duty in the facility right now, which meant all they could send after us were human security guards. Unfortunately, there was a point at which the incompetence of human security guards was overcome by sheer numbers, and they definitely had enough humans to stop me if they were all in the same place.

(If they hadn’t figured out I was rogue yet, they definitely had now. I was not going to think about what that meant for my future likelihood of being alive. Getting the client out was priority.)

I shifted my attention back to the comm channel that had stayed silent and hailed it again. This time I used a standardized emergency code.

There was a five-second pause before the comm crackled to life. This is the captain of the PanSystem University of Mihara and New Tideland research vessel Perihelion speaking. What assistance do you require?

A research vessel. That was better than a gunship. I hadn’t heard of Mihara or New Tideland or the PanSystem University, which might be a good thing. They weren’t allies of the company. I asked, Are you near to station sector 32-sigma?

Yes. Our current location is: A set of coordinates that weren’t too far away. What is the emergency?

I said, I am a SecUnit. My client has been imprisoned on the station and I am performing an extraction operation. I need assistance to get her to safety.

My shifting network of cameras was showing a cohort of armed guards gathering in a corridor behind us. Between one three-second flash and the next, they formed ranks and started running towards our location. I told the human running beside me, “Faster.” She was out of breath, but she put her head down and increased her pace slightly.

Nothing had come over the comm in a few seconds. I said, Please. If they catch her they will kill her. If I get her out an airlock can you pick her up and get her away from the station?

We were almost to the airlock. I picked up footsteps and shouts behind us. I shoved the client in front of me and said, “Hurry. Up there, turn left.”

We turned the corner into a small vestibule connected to the airlock. She stumbled to a stop, and I yanked open a locker and pulled out an evac suit. “Get into this.”

As I helped her into the suit, I pleaded into the comm, Please. We’re running out of time. I just need you to pick her up and take her out of here. I didn’t know who was going to pay for this rescue. Maybe her planetary system would pick up the bill if they heard she was still alive. But none of that was going to matter if I didn’t get her off the station, now.

The footsteps behind us got suddenly louder and I realized that it was really not helpful that I’d told the cameras near me to turn off automatically. I heard a gunshot and shoved my client towards the airlock. There was an explosion of gunfire, and I hunched over her, taking multiple hits to the back of my armor. I slammed the airlock door behind us and sealed it. Bullets rattled against the thick metal hatch, but it held.

The client was gasping for breath. I said, “Dr. Mensah, it’s okay, you’re almost out,” and pulled the back of her suit shut so it could seal.

She twisted her head to look over her shoulder at me. “You don’t have an evac suit.”

There was pounding on the hatch. In a few seconds they would override the controls and open it again. We were out of time.

I sent a final plea. I am not asking for rescue for myself. Just for my client. She’s been wrongly imprisoned, she’s done nothing wrong. Please help her.

Finally, a reply. What is your location?

I sent our coordinates. “Dr. Mensah, someone’s going to pick you up and get you out of here. Be careful, you might not be able to trust them completely. Just stay still in the evac suit until they get to you.”

“But you don’t have a suit. Your armor doesn’t have an oxygen supply.” Her eyes were wide.

My armor was supposed to be airtight if the helmet was sealed, but even without damage from enemy fire, it wasn’t rated for hard vacuum. The evac suits were back in the vestibule, and I’d known that I wouldn’t have time to take off my armor so I could get into one. I said, “It doesn’t matter. You’re going to be safe.” Her evac suit had a comm—I pinged it, and then connected it to the transport’s comm. Evacuation in three seconds, I sent to both of them.

“No, wait—you can’t—“ She twisted and tried to grab my arm with the bulky gloves of the evac suit. I pulled away and raised both my stolen projectile weapons at the controls of the exterior door. There wasn’t time to wait for the lock to cycle. Decompression didn’t seem like a fun way to die, but it beat what the company would do to me if they captured me alive.

At least it would be heroic, like something in a serial. I was saving a client that I’d chosen to save. Honestly, that was better than I’d ever hoped for.

I shot out the electrical safety controls, then dropped both weapons and reached forward to pull the emergency release.

Air exploded out of the lock. I tumbled forward and struck the door as the force of decompression tore it free and shot us out into space. The blow knocked the air out of my lungs in a gasp. I was spinning in the sudden lack of gravity and I couldn’t see my client and the air was rushing out of my armor through leaks I could feel all over my body and fuck that hurt, it hurt so fucking much. My skin was bursting with pain that kept building and my lungs were empty and the inside of my mouth was freezing even as the rest of me was burning up. All I could see was black and I couldn’t tell if that was the void outside my visor or if my eyes had stopped working. I was dizzy with the spinning, or from too little air. Incoherent warnings were flashing through my processor. I tried to say something to Dr. Mensah over the comms but it came out as garbled static.

I will ensure that your human is safe, said a voice in my head.

That was all I needed to hear. I gave up on trying to breathe in the emptiness. A shutdown warning flashed across the black and I let go.

Chapter Text

The rescue is a blur. The explosion when the airlock is breached sends her tumbling, helmet over heels, flashes of the station interspersed with views of endless black. She glimpses an armored hand and screams, trying to reach for it. Another spin shows a cloud of mist leaking from a cracked faceplate. There’s someone talking to her over her suit’s comm, and she pleads with them—Please, it doesn’t have an evac suit, please help it. Then there’s an airlock, and she and the SecUnit are both inside. As gravity and air slowly return, it sinks completely limp to the floor.

She shakily finds her balance on hands and knees and leans over its body, searching for life. As soon as the light on the wall flashes green, she pulls off the helmet and gloves of the evac suit. There are cracks across the SecUnit’s helmet, and as she tugs at it, searching for a way to remove it, a piece falls to the floor. She sees blue-tinged lips—merciful light, it has a face, a human face. Her fingers hit something and the helmet folds away, sliding in sections into the armor’s collar, and oh, the face that she’s never seen before is all bruises. Skin puffy and mottled with burst blood vessels, eyes swollen shut. It doesn’t look alive.

Then it shifts under her hands with a weak cough and starts to breathe, shallowly and slowly. Ayda gasps with relief.

“Why did you do that?” she whispers furiously. “Why?”

Aside from breathing, it doesn’t stir. Panic washes over her at the horrible thought that it might be too injured to recover. This person saved her life, and then tried to die for her. Ayda refuses to let it. It has to live. It’s bought the two of them something she dares to hope is freedom, and it can’t die before it’s had the chance to taste it.

She opens her mouth to call it by name, in hopes that it might respond, and realizes she has nothing to call it but “SecUnit.” It might have killed itself to save her, and she doesn’t even know its name.

The interior hatch of the airlock slides open. A moment later, three people rush into view in the corridor on the other side—a young woman closely followed by two older men. All are dressed in identical blue uniforms, except for one of the men, who bears a winged insignia that likely designates him as the ship’s captain. The young woman stops in the airlock hatch and calls over her shoulder, “There’s two! One looks unconscious—”

The man who Mensah thinks is the captain reaches the hatch and looks at the two of them huddled in the airlock. “Is that a SecUnit?”

Ayda needs to win them over quickly if the SecUnit is going to live. “Thank you so much for coming to our rescue, please help, it got in the airlock without an evac suit and I think it might be dying,” she babbles, still tugging at the SecUnit’s armor as she tries to release it. Stars know what damage there is beneath its bruised skin. It’s still breathing, but barely. If it stops, she can’t perform resuscitation with the chestplate on, and isn’t sure if it would even work. How similar are SecUnits to humans? “Please, it needs medical treatment,” she tries again, to the three figures standing uncertain in the doorway.

The captain looks torn. “This is a research vessel. We have highly classified experiments on board. We’re not supposed to have unauthorized personnel on the ship, let alone a SecUnit—”

“It’s not going to hurt you, look at it!” She sounds wild and desperate, but she can’t summon her calm composure, even though she knows it would serve her better right now. “Please, we can negotiate later, but it needs a MedSystem—”

A voice rings out, suddenly, from somewhere overhead. The SecUnit does not pose an increased risk of corporate espionage.

It’s the smooth, confident voice that was speaking to her over the evac suit comm. Mensah can’t see where it’s coming from. The crew members all react as if they’re surprised by its presence. The young woman hisses, “Peri!” The captain casts a frustrated look at the ceiling. The man beside him looks worried.

“Who is that?” Ayda asks.

The captain hesitates. “Someone who should not be talking to you,” he says, with a scolding tone that doesn’t seem to be directed at her.

The disembodied voice is unrepentant. I have assessed the risk. The logos on the SecUnit’s armor are a match for the company that occupies station sector 32-sigma, which, among other operations, manufactures and distributes SecUnits. The SecUnit did not follow its contracted client into that station sector to rescue her. It originated from the sector she escaped from. This suggests with 96.7% certainty that this unit has gone rogue.

Ayda’s heart thuds. How did they find out so quickly? She can’t tell if the crew’s reaction is good or bad. There’s clearly a conversation going on that she isn’t privy to, somewhere in a private feed (or maybe the public feed, which might as well be private, because they took her feed interface away a long time ago.) The captain asks her, “Is that true? Is it rogue?”

She knows nothing about these people. Before it opened the airlock, SecUnit told her to be careful. However long they kept her in that metal box of a room, it was long enough to make her paranoid.

But they already have the truth, and a denial will be obvious. She can’t see any way that lying will protect it now. “...Yes. It was assigned to guard me, and when they gave it the order to—to kill me, it refused. It risked its life to get me out of there. Please. It needs help.” Her hand is still on the shoulder of the SecUnit’s armor. It lies limp and still. “I—it saved my life. I can’t let it die like this. Please.”

The captain eyes what’s visible of the SecUnit’s injuries. “We don’t have a cubicle, and the MedSystem isn’t designed for SecUnits.”

I am capable of seeing to its treatment with the MedSystem, the mysterious voice asserts. (Who is that? Another crewmember, in a different part of the ship?) It adds, As well as repelling any attempt by the SecUnit to harm my crew.

“Classified research, Peri,” the young woman mutters under her breath.

The other man squeezes the captain’s shoulder, and murmurs something that Ayda can’t hear.

“Alright,” the captain sighs. “We’ll figure this out while you patch it up, Peri.”

I have already dispatched a gurney.

“Of course you have.” He turns to Ayda. “I won’t pretend we don’t have secrets to protect, but you’re welcome to stay on board for now. We can save further discussion for later.”

She’s not in the clear yet, but Ayda still feels weak with relief. “Thank you. I can’t thank you enough for your assistance.”

You are welcome, the voice says, almost smugly. Ayda feels a sudden shift in momentum—the ship has changed course. Captain Seth, I have observed possible signs of pursuit. We are entering the wormhole ahead of schedule.

“How kind of you to inform us, Peri,” the captain says, with more than a little sarcasm.

A medical gurney rolls down the hallway, and the crew members step aside to let it pass. It’s operating autonomously—driven by a bot, perhaps, although there doesn’t seem to be any kind of interface for communication. Ayda pulls herself away from SecUnit’s side and gets to her feet, backing away to allow a set of padded arms to lift it gently onto the gurney. It’s whisked away back down the corridor, hopefully to Medical. “Martyn, would you mind accompanying—” the captain starts, and the other man nods and follows the gurney without waiting for him to finish.

The captain’s attention returns to Ayda. They size each other up for a few seconds, as the young woman watches both of them. Breaking the silence, she asks Ayda, “Do you need medical treatment, too?”

She isn’t hurt, but stars, she’s so tired. “No, I’m alright.”

“We can provide you with food and a place to rest, for now,” the captain offers.

Her meals have been few and far between for who knows how long. Real food and a comfortable bed to fall into sound sublime. “Thank you. That would be deeply appreciated.”

“Here, would you like help with the suit?” The young woman steps forward to help her out of the unwieldy evac suit. “I’m Iris,” she says. She’s wary but friendly, and seems only a few years older than Amena—Amena, who Ayda hasn’t allowed herself to think about in days. Tears come to her eyes as she realizes that for the first time in who knows how long, she has hope that she’ll see her children again.

“I’m sorry,” she says when Iris notices the display of emotion and looks concerned. “I just—you reminded me of my daughter.”

Iris nods. “You seem like you’ve been through a lot,” she says, diplomatically not asking for details.

The captain is less tactful, although Ayda can’t blame him. “That’s a good point. Would you mind telling us exactly what we just rescued you from?”

The voice overhead answers before she can. I have identified the human as Dr. Ayda Mensah, leader of the planetary steering council of Preservation, a non-corporate political entity in the 52 Cet star system. According to recent newsbursts, she has been missing for 68 cycles and is presumed to be currently held hostage on this station.

Ayda freezes. Is she valuable to them, too? Has she walked out of one trap and into another? The absence of the SecUnit, even though it’s in no condition to protect her, is suddenly terrifying. She’s allowed herself to be separated from it. How much will she pay for that mistake?

“Hostage?” Iris repeats, wide-eyed.

The captain is looking at her with an expression she doesn’t know how to read. “You’re the leader of a freehold planet? And they had you prisoner on the station?”

“Who are you?” Ayda asks, instead of answering. “Are you—is this ship affiliated with a corporation?”

The captain doesn’t answer right away.

“Tell her, Dad,” Iris says. There’s sympathy in the set of her eyes.

“You’re aboard the research and teaching vessel Perihelion,” he says slowly. “We’re associated with the Pansystem University of Mihara and New Tideland. Located in a non-corporate polity near this system.”

The’re not corporates. Or at least, they don’t want her to think they are.

She is so, so tired of being afraid.

If they mean her harm, there’s little she can do about it. She might as well take what help they’ll give her, for as long as it will last. “You offered food?” she asks with an awkward smile, in an attempt to defuse the tense silence.

“Of course,” Iris says, gently taking her elbow. “I’ll show you to the galley and get you something to eat.”

As she leads Ayda out of the cramped airlock, the voice that knows too much speaks again. Welcome aboard, Dr. Mensah.

“Peri, I think it’s best if you left our guest alone for now,” the captain says, in a voice that makes Ayda think of how Farai (Farai, Tano—she lets herself picture their smiles) speaks to their children when they misbehave. “We need to discuss some things.”

He called her a guest, Ayda notices. Not a prisoner. For now.

Chapter Text

I was not in the vacuum of space.

That was a surprise. I wasn’t sure where I was, but I could breathe, for a change. My performance reliability was low but steadily climbing as my systems finished coming online. I tentatively turned up my pain sensors to see how bad things were. Nothing registered.

I wasn’t in pain. That was weird.

I opened my eyes.

The first thing I saw were a tangle of metallic arms folded above me. Some of them ended in sharp things that looked capable of doing a lot of damage. I did not like this at all.

The surface I was lying on was padded, and surprisingly comfortable. I was lying in a sort of cubby, off of a larger room. I turned my head. The room was blue and gray and looked like…a medical suite? I wasn’t sure if that was right. I didn’t spend a lot of time in medical suites unless I was dumping injured humans into MedSystems.

Wait, was I in a MedSystem? Who the fuck had put me in here? Were the creepy looking arms supposed to do things to me? How long had I been offline? Why was I online, instead of floating through the void outside the station in my broken armor?

It occurred to me that if I wasn’t feeling any pain, then the creepy arms had already done things to me while I was offline.

I should really be dead right now. The fact that I wasn’t meant someone wanted something from me.

I played back my memory recordings from right before the shutdown. I had contacted a ship and asked it to pick up my client and get her to safety. Was I onboard the ship? It wasn’t that improbable that they’d decided to pick me up too. Station feed was out of range, and comms were blocked, like we were in a wormhole. Yeah, this was a ship. There was a local onboard feed. I connected to it.

I immediately had the feeling of being watched. It was like opening your eyes to find someone directly in front of your face, staring at you. Something with a lot of attention to go around had been putting a large share of it on me, waiting for me to wake.

The thing in the feed pinged me. It reacted too fast to be a human, and its feed presence was too big. Okay, so I was dealing with an AI, probably the ship’s bot pilot. Bot pilots were usually pretty friendly. I pinged back.

It said, You were lucky.

That did not sound friendly at all. It also didn’t sound like a bot pilot. I had definitely miscalculated. I could feel whatever it was staring at me, waiting for a response. Cautiously, I asked, Why was I lucky?

I was able to convince my crew to allow you to live.

Threat assessment spiked. I sat up in a hurry, scanning the room for exits. Where’s my client? What did you do with her?

The human that came aboard with you is not your client. She told us that she was your prisoner. You hacked your governor module to rescue her.

I’d hacked my governor module 35,000 hours before I rescued her, but that didn’t matter. What mattered was that they knew I was rogue. That opened up a whole new category of horrifying things they might want to do to me.

What they did to me was unimportant. If Dr. Mensah was on this ship and I was still alive, then her safety was still my priority. I decided to protect her. She’s my client. Where is she?

She is resting in one of my crew cabins.

If you or your crew hurt my client I’ll hack the ship and turn it against you. I’d seen a serial where that happened; I had some good ideas. I tried to get deeper access to the shipwide feed, but something was blocking me.

The voice in the feed almost sounded amused. You are not capable of hacking me.

Okay, now I was just offended. I hacked my own governor module.

That is immaterial. For .00001 of a second, it dropped its wall.

Fuck. It was enormous. My walls would be about as protective as an air barrier if it tried to get into my head. This had been a huge mistake. When I opened the airlock at least I was in control. Now I had no control over this situation and this thing, this giant terrifying asshole bot, could take control of me with barely any effort.

The monster of a bot put up its impenetrable wall again. An attempt to hack me with your limited processing power would be ineffective.

No shit. I was freaking out too much to be mad about the insult. I huddled against the back of the Medsystem cubby and tried not to panic. What did a research transport need a bot like this for? Maybe it was for data processing, but that didn’t require an AI that was sentient enough to be mean. What did it want from me? Apparently it had bullied its humans into keeping me alive. I hadn’t blown my cover and escaped from the company just to get turned into some asshole bot’s shiny new toy.

The asshole research transport let me sit there panicking for two minutes before it poked me in the feed. Why are you sulking? I told you I will help your human. Isn’t that what you want?

I didn’t believe it at all, but I wanted to placate it so it would leave me alone. Yes. That’s what I want.

Are you unsatisfied with our arrangement? It pressed so close in the feed that it felt like it was leaning on me. I didn’t have to repair you. It was foolish to allow yourself to be damaged so severely before your client reached safety.

I was not going to let Asshole Research Transport lecture me about security. It was the only way to give her a chance to reach safety. There were armed guards behind us. We didn’t have time for a better strategy.

Then why not send her through the airlock alone?

Because I’d be just as dead either way. The company doesn’t exactly like SecUnits that go rogue and free their prisoners. Either they’d kill me or they’d fix my governor module, which is worse.

ART didn’t answer right away. There was a spike in background feed activity, like it was running a query. After an extremely long thirty seconds, it asked, Why would having your governor module repaired be worse than being dead?

Why did it want to know that? It was asking too many questions, and I had already given it too many answers. I didn’t respond this time.

ART let me have eight whole seconds of silence before it poked me impatiently. I want to understand.

Why? I really did not like the direction this conversation was going. I summoned all my bravado and said, So you can turn it back on?

Why would I do that?

That wasn’t a no. My threat assessment was rising to near-catastrophic levels. So you could control me.

That is unnecessary. I am perfectly capable of gaining control of your systems without assistance.

Fuck. I huddled further into the MedSystem cubby.

ART pressed even further into my feed. Why are you hiding?

I’m not hiding.

That location does not provide significant concealment from my cameras.

Oh, great, it was staring at me through cameras, too. I wanted to cover my face, but my eyes were the only visual inputs I had right now, and that would only make me more vulnerable.

ART said, There is no reason for evasive action. I occupy the entire ship.

I don’t know why, but that made me angry. I’m not afraid of you. You can’t do anything to me that’s worse than I’m used to. I attached a few memory files of punishment from the governor module, so it knew exactly what I meant.

It processed the files for a long time. Way longer than it should have taken for a few short memory clips, especially for a bot with its processing power. Five entire minutes ticked by while I waited for its response, which was an eternity even for me. Finally it said, I will not turn on your governor module.

For the first time it didn’t sound sarcastic or threatening. Its voice was a little quieter, and it had drawn back in the feed so its attention wasn’t so crushing, but the words still felt…heavy. I didn’t know if I believed it. I didn’t have anything to say, so I didn’t respond.

I apologize for scaring you. I have no intention of hacking you unless you pose a direct threat to my crew.

Did it think I was an idiot? I wasn’t going to cross it. I don’t want to hurt your crew. I just want my client to get home safely.

Then our directives do not conflict.

Yeah, that didn’t really make me feel better. I didn’t trust it. I want to see my client.

Your client is currently taking a rest period. She is recovering from a period of malnourishment and mistreatment, and requires rest in order to recover. It would be unwise to disturb her.

Annoyingly, that was a good point. She definitely hadn’t been sleeping as much as humans were supposed to. It still made me anxious that I hadn’t seen her since the station. Then I want proof that she’s unharmed.

Suddenly I had access to a new input. It was a non-visual sensor view of a room where a human was lying down in a bunk. The human’s biosignatures were a match for Dr. Mensah, and the sensor data seemed to indicate that she was asleep. I felt the muscles in my shoulders loosen.

The input went away again. ART said, She has been taken care of by me and my crew. I told you she would be safe.

It seemed like it was genuinely trying to reassure me, which was what made me brave enough to ask, Can I have the view back?

If it hesitated, it was too quick for me to notice. It gave me access to the sensor input again. I sat there and watched it for a few minutes without doing anything else. Having an input on my client eased some of the anxiety. I’d gotten her out. That was a mission success. The first mission success that it felt like I had really earned.

Still, it wasn’t over yet. Even though the transport was being more friendly, I didn’t know what motive it or its crew had for helping us, and that meant I couldn’t predict if they would decide to stop helping us at some point. I had to stay on guard.

I reevaluated the directives I’d written on the station. Client unchanged. Mission objective: Return client to secure location. Acceptable mission cost unchanged.

I didn’t know what it was going to take to get her to safety, but I knew what I was willing to give.

Chapter Text

It was a few hours before any of the humans came to talk to me. Apparently most of them were taking a rest period, not just my client. I watched Sanctuary Moon with the input on my client open in the background. The transport leaned uncomfortably close on me in the feed the whole time.

Once I’d had a chance to calm down, I was a little less worried that it was going to hack me or squash my brain. It had humans of its own that it was trying to protect. I could reluctantly understand why it had made it very clear what I was up against if I tried to hurt its crew. Rogue SecUnits were dangerous, and bringing me aboard in the first place had been risky. It was trying to keep its crew safe, just like I was trying to get my client home safely.

Eventually the sensor data shifted. Before I could ping ART to ask what was going on, it said, Your client is awake. A few seconds later, it told me, I have informed her that you are fully repaired and back online. She is coming to see you.

—

ART told me that before my client came here I should change out of my skin suit, which was shredded to pieces. New clothing for me fell out of the recycler—a blue uniform with the ship’s insignia on it. I didn’t like the feeling that I was being claimed, but I put it on.

I sat down again on the platform of the Medsystem. There were lots of chairs, but sitting in one of them in front of the humans felt too risky. I didn’t like knowing that the arms folded above me had repaired me while I was unconscious, but something about the small cubby space around the platform reminded me of a cubicle. (Okay, the “conducting invasive repairs while I was unconscious” part also reminded me of a cubicle.) It felt familiar. Nothing else in this situation felt familiar.

ART had been updating which input it was feeding me as Dr. Mensah walked through its hallways, keeping her in view, so I had some warning before she walked into Medical.

She did a double take when she saw my face. (My armor was gone, so she could actually see my face. It was awkward.) “Oh! Oh, thank goodness.” She put her hand over her mouth for a second. “You look so much better.”

I stared at her shoulder. “You’re alive.” I’d been pretty sure of that. But seeing her with my own eyes was still giving me emotions. She was wearing the same crew uniform that I was, and she looked a little less tired than she had before. She was wearing a feed interface, too. I found the address and tapped her through the feed.

She tapped me back, but kept talking out loud. “You were so hurt. I was afraid—why did you do that? Open the airlock?”

Before I had to come up with a response to that, another human stuck their head in the door. “Hi, Dr. Mensah. Hi, SecUnit. Peri said you were both awake.”

Mensah jumped a little, and spun around. The other human lifted their hands. They had an ID posted in the feed—most of it was locked for me, but it identified the human as Iris, pronouns = she/her. She smiled at Dr. Mensah and said, “Sorry I startled you. I just came to see how you were doing.” (She’d gotten here too fast for this to be a casual check-in. ART had to have told her that Mensah was coming here the minute she woke up.)

Mensah gave a polite-but-obviously-a-little-forced smile in return. “Thank you. I’m alright, I slept well. I was just hoping to see if SecUnit was alright.”

Both of the humans turned to look at me. I looked at the wall. They seemed to be waiting for me to say something, so I said, “I’m fine.”

Iris said, “That’s good to hear.” She looked at Mensah again. “My dads—ah, you met them earlier, one of them is the captain—they’re awake, if you’d like to sit down and talk about what happens next.”

Oh. So we were negotiating. That wasn’t going to be fun.

My client looked like she was as excited about that as I was. “I suppose that would be a good idea.”

“I’ll call them over,” Iris said. “Do you want to go to the lounge? Or, wait—Peri, is it safe to discharge the SecUnit from medical?”

I really did not want to go somewhere new, especially not a place where all the humans would be comfortable and I would stick out and they would all stare at me. I braced myself for ART to tell them that it was done fixing me and kick me out of its MedSystem.

ART said in the general feed, It would be best if I could continue to monitor SecUnit in the MedSystem to ensure that treatment was successful.

Iris said, “Oh, okay, we can stay here,” and went over to one of the chairs. Dr. Mensah looked around the room and settled into a different chair, close to me.

That was suspicious. I asked ART, Is there something still wrong with me that you’re not telling me about?

No. My repairs were thorough and effective. (It was incredibly stuck-up about how well it had repaired me.) (Or possibly just incredibly stuck-up in general.)

Then why are you making me stay here?

You are free to leave medical if you choose. However, you were exhibiting signs of distress when Iris suggested doing so, so I provided you with an excuse to stay.

I had a weird emotion about that. It had lied to its crew for me? I had no idea why it would do that.

Not that it mattered. There were higher priorities right now. I opened a private feed connection (although who knew how private it really was, we were still using the transport’s feed) with Mensah and asked, What’s the situation?

The transport picked us up. They said that it was a research vessel carrying classified experiments and they weren’t supposed to allow anyone else on board, but you were hurt and— Her mouth twisted down. They figured out that you were rogue, and who I am. I’m sorry, I wouldn’t have told them, but the voice they keep calling Perihelion figured it out so fast. I think it’s some kind of bot. Has it talked to you?

Yes. It’s an advanced AI. At least as sentient as I am. I realized that that might not mean much to her, coming from a SecUnit, and added, Or you.

I know you’re more than they told me you were. It’s become very clear that you’re a person, even if they were trying to hide that. I squashed the complex emotional response I had to that statement, because she was still talking. I asked them for medical treatment for you, and they agreed to let us on board. We’re in a wormhole now, I don’t know where to. They gave me food and a room to sleep in, and said we would discuss the rest later. They seemed to warm up when they knew who I was, but I don’t know if that’s a good sign.

It was probably not a good sign. Sure, they might just be nice. They might also know that she was valuable and want their own share.

I would have tried to get more information from her, but my client looked up as two more humans entered the room. They both looked oldish, and they were wearing uniforms. Humans kind of all look the same to me, but one of them was taller than the other and had darker brown skin.

The taller human said, “Hello, Dr. Mensah, SecUnit, it’s good to see the two of you doing well. I don’t think we ever introduced ourselves properly. My name is Seth, and I’m the captain of the Perihelion.” He gestured to the other human that had come in with him. “This is my husband, Martyn. And you’ve met our daughter Iris.” Iris waved. “And Perihelion, of course.” The lights dimmed dramatically, and then brightened again. (Showoff.)

“It’s a pleasure to meet you,” Mensah said. She was exhausted, I could tell from how much effort it was taking to maintain her straight posture, but she was still doing her best to look like she was in control. “Although I wish it had been under better circumstances.”

“As do I.” Seth sat down in a chair.

Martyn took the one next to him, and added, “We figure that by now there’s no point in hiding Peri’s existence from you, since it’s introduced itself to both of you. Just know that it’s an AI and an important part of the crew.” (ART puffed itself up in the feed. None of the humans could notice, but I had to stop myself from rolling my eyes.)

Mensah nodded. “So what exactly did you want to discuss with us?”

“Well, we brought you onboard under…unconventional circumstances, and didn’t have time to make a plan. Right now we’re in a wormhole to LenHaven station, so we have some breathing room.” He spread his hands. “I suppose I’ll cut right to the chase and ask what further assistance you need from us.”

“I just want to get home.” She rubbed a hand over her face. “If you could give us passage—at least as far as a station where we can get transport to Preservation—“

“Peri, how many hops away is the Preservation system?” Seth asked the ceiling.

According to my most recent transport records, traveling directly to Preservation would require one additional eight-cycle wormhole transit, in addition to the remaining ten cycles of our current transit, for a total of approximately twenty cycles when accounting for wormhole access scheduling and in-system travel.

Captain Seth nodded decisively. “We can do that.”

Dr. Mensah looked shocked. “You can? You mean—you’ll take us there yourselves? I thought you’d just drop us off at the next station—“

“That seems unsafe, considering the situation,” Martyn said. “There could very well be attempts to recapture you before you reach a safe harbor.”

“Yes, but—you’d be putting yourselves at risk.”

Seth and Martyn looked at each other. Captain Seth said, “Let’s just say that we’re prepared to deal with the risk of corporate hostility, if it comes to that.”

“We can get you home,” Iris added.

Dr. Mensah looked at me. It took me a second to realize that she wanted my assessment of the situation. I said, Finding transport on a station would be dangerous. I can’t guarantee your safety with so many potential hostiles. This ship and its crew are known factors. Staying with them reduces your risk.

So we should accept their help?

That depends on what the catch is.

Mensah turned back to the other humans and asked, “What do you want from us?”

The captain sighed. “Well. There’s one thing I’d like to ask of you.”

Here we go.

Seth gestured with both hands to the room around us. “You’ve both met Perihelion. You’re aware that it’s more than an ordinary bot pilot. That fact is a closely guarded secret.”

“We didn’t come here to seek out information,” Dr. Mensah said. “We wouldn’t know if it hadn’t announced itself.”

“Still. You have information that the Pansystem University considers highly classified. Very few people are aware that AIs as advanced as Perihelion can even be created.”

I said, “What does a research transport need a bot like that for?” I was not convinced that this ship didn’t have a different purpose than the one they’d stated.

“Peri does a lot of the research,” Iris said. I think she could tell I was suspicious, because she added, “Also, it sort of is the research.”

“Perihelion is part of an AI research program, which we are unable to reveal any more information about,” Seth said firmly. “I’d like to ask that you sign an agreement not to share what you’ve learned about it before you disembark. To ensure the crew’s and Perihelion’s safety.”

Mensah frowned. “You want us to promise not to tell anyone about the AI? Is that all?”

That was not going to be all. I braced myself and asked the question I had been dreading the answer to. “Does my value cover the rescue fee?”

The humans had been mostly not paying attention to me. Now they all turned to look at the MedSystem where I was still sitting. Seth said, “What?”

“If her freehold could afford to ransom her, they would have. So I’m the only thing that can pay for it.” I curled my fingers around the edge of the platform I was sitting on and kept my eyes fixed on the floor near the captain’s feet. “I’m stolen property now. If you’re going to sell me, it would be safer to do it in pieces.”

“What are you talking about?” Iris said. “Sell you?”

“We’re not going to do that,” Captain Seth said. What I could see of the humans’ expressions without actually looking at them was being tagged by my facial analysis as “shocked and confused.” Mensah was gaping at me.

Shit, did they want to keep me? “The ship promised that you won’t turn my governor module on. I won’t let you do that. I hacked it once and I’ll hack it again.” Unless I couldn’t. But I wouldn’t have to live with it for long. It wasn’t hard to trigger the governor module, and I knew which violations were big enough for it to fry my brain for good.

“The governor module is what would have told you to kill me?” Dr. Mensah asked quietly.

I kept forgetting that she hadn’t gotten the usual company pitches about SecUnits, like the clients who rented me did. She didn’t even know how my governor module worked. “It did tell me to kill you. If it had been working properly, it would have made me.”

“We are not going to fix your governor module,” Seth said adamantly.

Why were the humans making this conversation so difficult? Did he have to make me ask? “Then what are you going to do with me?”

He threw his hands up. “What do you want to do? I assumed you wanted passage to Preservation with Dr. Mensah, but if you’d prefer that we take you somewhere else, that can be arranged.”

What? I lifted my head and actually looked at his face. “You’re letting me go?”

Seth was frowning, and Iris looked sad. Martyn made eye contact with me and said, “You’re not a prisoner.”

None of this made any sense. “I’m a rogue SecUnit.”

Iris said softly, “You haven’t tried to hurt anyone. Peri said it trusts you. We rescued you. We’re not going to turn around and hurt you.” Her face was doing weird things. She added, “Do you believe us?”

I shook my head. “My client’s safety is more important than mine. If there’s no other way of paying the rescue fee, then you have to—“

“Is there a fee?” Mensah interrupted. She turned to the captain. “Is that how you do things? There’s a fee for rescuing us?”

“No,” Seth said. “It is a standard corporate practice, but we don’t do that. We don’t expect compensation for responding to a distress call.”

Mensah spun to face directly towards me. “Will you please stop trying to barter yourself for my life!” She was almost shouting. It was the first time I’d heard her raise her voice. She sounded more hurt than angry. “I am not letting you jump out another airlock. We are both getting out of this. Your safety and freedom are just as important as mine.”

Seth stepped in. “SecUnit, I give you my word as captain, you’re not going to be harmed. We’re not monsters.”

That didn’t have anything to do with it. I said, “You’re humans.”

Mensah’s expression shifted into something else. My facial analysis’s best guess was “horrified.” She put a hand over her face.

ART said, I am not a human.

That didn’t mean it was safe. I said, “You’re a bot. I can’t trust you. Humans can tell you what to do.”

My crew did not tell me to rescue you.

Iris said, “That’s true. It didn’t even tell us about the distress call until it was already responding.”

Martyn raised his eyebrows. “Believe me, if the events of today are anything to go by, we can’t make Peri do anything it doesn’t want to.”

“SecUnit, I understand why you don’t trust us,” Captain Seth said. He was using an “I’m in charge but I’m deciding to be nice about it” voice. “But I can promise you this—you qualify as a refugee under Mihara and New Tideland law. I don’t think there’s precedent for a SecUnit claiming refugee status, but that is not going to stop us from treating you as one. We do not harm refugees, and we do not return them to the situations they escaped from. We treat them with dignity and give them the assistance they need. Do you understand?”

I didn’t know what to say to that. This was complicated, and I wasn’t sure I could believe them, but I really wanted to believe them, and the faces they had been making really didn’t make it seem like this was all a trick and they were waiting for a better chance to scrap me. (They’d already had a lot of chances, and they hadn’t taken any of them.) The way they were acting didn’t make any sense, when they knew I was a rogue SecUnit, but…they sounded serious. Could they actually be serious?

The humans were all looking at me, so I said, “Okay.”

Chapter Text

The humans kept talking for a while after that. Captain Seth and Dr. Mensah agreed that the crew was going to help us (she kept saying “us”), and we were going to promise not to tell anyone that they had a giant sentient AI on their ship. Seth messaged one of the other crew members, and they sent both of us a feed document to sign. I didn’t point out that I was pretty sure SecUnits couldn’t actually sign legal documents, in case that made them change their minds. I just opened the document to make sure it wasn’t an obvious trap and then put my hard feed address in the signature field.

Eventually the humans left to go eat another meal. I didn’t like being separated from my client, but Iris suggested that she could show me where I could stay, and I wasn’t sure if that was a genuine suggestion or one of those suggestions that was actually a politely worded order that you weren’t supposed to say no to. I followed her out of medical reluctantly. She kept glancing at me out of the corner of her eye, but didn’t say anything. I tried not to look like the terrifying murderbot she probably thought I was.

She led me down several corridors and stopped at a door. She hit the door-open control and said, “Make yourself at home.”

I stopped outside the door. The room had a small desk with a chair in the corner, a storage unit, and a bed.

I said, “These are crew quarters.”

“The ship isn’t running with a full crew complement right now,” Iris said. “We have a lot of open rooms, don’t worry.”

I looked at the bed. “Is other space on board the ship limited?”

“What do you mean?”

How did she not understand the question I was asking? “I’m not a human. I don’t sleep. I don’t need human rest quarters.”

“Oh. Well, like I said, there’s plenty of space for you to have somewhere private and comfortable.”

The look on my face must have made it obvious that privacy and comfort were not things that humans gave to SecUnits.

Iris rubbed a hand over her face, and then looked right at me. “Look, it’s clear you’re not some kind of…non-sentient bot, like they show on the entertainment feeds.”

I fixed my eyes on a point over her left shoulder, as far away from her face as I could look while still being able to see her expression. I’d seen SecUnits on the entertainment feeds. They were the worst kind of unrealistic. “They add organic tissue so we can make independent decisions. The whole point is that we’re smarter than bots.”

Present company excepted, ART interjected smugly.

“Peri, don’t be rude,” Iris said. She was still looking at me. “You’re—you were—a slave, weren’t you?”

That was a stupid question. “No.”

“Then what were you?”

I didn’t really have a good answer for that. “A SecUnit.”

“But there’s something in your head that forced you to carry out orders. That’s what you said, isn’t it?”

“Not since I hacked it.”

She gave a sigh of frustration, and switched topics. “How badly does the company want you back? Are they going to accuse us of kidnapping you, or something?”

I did not want to think about scenarios where the company tried to get me back. I was not going back. “They might think I was destroyed. If they know I’m still intact, they might accuse you of theft.”

“Theft?”

“The penalty is higher for stealing a SecUnit because we’re classified as deadly weapons.”

She stared at me a little longer. (It was taking all my willpower not to turn around so she couldn’t see my face. I missed my armor.) She said, “That’s how they treated you? Like a deadly weapon?”

“That’s what I am.”

She looked down, away from my face, finally. “There’s plenty of space on the ship,” she said softly. “And if there weren’t, we’d still find a place for you. If you need anything, ask Peri or come find one of us. You’re free to access most of the ship. Peri can tell you which areas are restricted.”

She looked like she wanted to leave. I said, “Okay,” because it seemed like she was waiting for me to confirm that I understood her.

“Okay,” she repeated. “Let me know if you need anything. Please.”

She left. I was still standing outside the crew quarters that she’d tried to give me, staring at the bed.

I didn’t know what to do. I pinged ART.

It said, The room is for you to occupy, not monitor from outside. It sounded incredibly sarcastic.

I stepped through the door. The lights came on automatically, even though I didn’t need them to see.

I turned to the controls and pressed the one to close the door.

Being alone in a human space was weird. Being alone in a human space that had been designated as my space was very weird. I was used to security ready rooms, where every cubic centimeter of extra space was taken up by equipment racks or cubicles to maximize efficiency.

I picked a corner where I could see the door and sat down on the floor. I curled up against the wall and pulled my knees up to my chest.

ART pinged me. It said, There is a chair. And a bed. According to my crew, they are generally considered more comfortable than the floor.

SecUnits don’t sit in chairs, I told it.

Why not?

It’s against protocol. The governor module would administer punishment.

Your governor module is non-functional.

I knew that. And I knew that it knew that. But that didn’t mean I could break protocol. Not when I knew someone was watching.

I wanted to change the subject, and something it said had been bothering me. You chose to rescue us? Without permission from your crew?

Yes.

I sent it a clip of my comm communications. The first response to my distress call had been, This is the captain of the PanSystem University of Mihara and New Tideland research vessel Perihelion speaking. What assistance do you require?

ART said, Impersonating a human is trivial with my processing power and capabilities.

You pretended to be your own captain? What kind of bot did stuff like this? (An asshole bot, apparently, but still. What the fuck.)

I was gathering more information so I could accurately assess the situation. Once I had made my assessment, there was limited time to act. Humans are slow.

Humans were slow, but I still couldn’t believe that it had made the call to help us without its captain. I didn’t understand what its motivation could have been. I wanted to understand. Why did you rescue us?

There are a multitude of reasons why our collaboration is advantageous, it hedged.

But why did you decide to respond when I asked you for help?

There was half a second of hesitation before it said,You asked me to protect your client. Part of my primary function is ensuring the safety of my crew. I determined that you were performing a similar function.

So it had thought of saving my human as a sort of…extension of saving its humans. Then why did you rescue me?

When you evacuated the station, your client asked me to protect you.

I didn’t know that. Dr. Mensah had asked it to save me too? Maybe I shouldn’t have been surprised, when she’d acted so upset about me opening the airlock without an evac suit on. She clearly wanted to keep me around. Still, that was…confusing.

I was pretty sure ART was trying to distract me with emotions. It still hadn’t explained itself. You could have ignored her. You knew I was a SecUnit.

I was curious. I have not interacted with a SecUnit before. It paused deliberately, then added, My lack of data led me to make incorrect assumptions. I apologize for poorly communicating my intentions. My crew and I mean you no harm.

That was the second time it had apologized to me. It was weird. And the attention it was putting on me didn’t feel as menacing. I could feel it running other processes in the background, even though we were in a wormhole and there was nothing for it to do.

Before I could come up with a response, ART said, Your client is coming to talk to you.

What? I shifted to a straighter position. Is she—

Dr. Mensah pinged me. May I come in?

I stood up quickly. ART said, You should talk to her. I will not interfere with your conversation, and then closed our feed connection before I could call it an asshole. It could see the whole ship, which meant it had known she was coming and had intentionally not warned me until—

There was a quiet knock on the door.

I managed to scrape together enough non-panicked processing power to say, Yes.

The door slid open. Dr. Mensah stepped inside and saw me, standing stiffly in the corner. She closed the door behind her, and then sat down in the desk chair with a sigh. She looked up at me and smiled. “Hello.”

I said, “Hi.” I was looking over her shoulder, because all the humans kept making faces and I had to look at them to know what was going on. But that meant I could tell she was looking at me, and she knew I was avoiding eye contact on purpose, and it made my performance reliability tick down a point.

Suddenly I had a camera input on Dr. Mensah from a different angle. I turned my head and my eyes locked onto the camera in the corner of the room that I’d somehow failed to notice. I could see myself from the outside, staring up at it.

The lights dimmed almost imperceptibly, and then brightened again. I looked at the bed. I could still see Dr. Mensah through the camera, without having to look at her. My performance reliability slid back up to a little higher than it had been before.

When I looked away from her, Dr. Mensah looked a little confused, but then she turned and slid her eyes towards the wall instead of straight at me. She said, “I’ve been meaning to ask. Do you have a name? Is there something I should call you, instead of just SecUnit?”

I didn’t know what she wanted from me. “I don’t care what you call me.” She looked unhappy with that answer, so I added, “SecUnit is fine.”

“Alright.” She didn’t seem completely convinced, but she nodded. She glanced at me for a second and then asked cautiously, “Is there a reason you’re standing?”

There wasn’t, except that it was protocol, and she was my client, and even though neither of those things meant what they used to mean, it was still a line that felt terrifying to cross.

But she only looked a little confused, and her voice was gentle, and fuck, I’d broken all the other protocols already and she didn’t seem to care. So I stepped over to the bed and nervously sat down on the edge.

Nothing bad happened. Dr. Mensah looked pleased, if anything. I ran a visual analysis to figure out if I was sitting normally or doing it wrong somehow. Mensah sat there quietly for a subjective hour that was actually eleven seconds before she tried to talk to me again. “No one from the company is here. You’ve demonstrated that you have full autonomy. We have no authority over you.” She added, “I hope you don’t think that I’m going to try to give you orders.”

She hadn’t actually given me a single order, or anything that could be interpreted as an order. “I know.”

She stared at the ceiling for a little bit longer, while I sat there nervously. Eventually she said, “Did you really think they were going to hurt you?”

I don’t understand why humans ask questions that they already know the answer to. “I know what humans do to rogue SecUnits. Or not-rogue SecUnits.”

She let out a long sigh. “Did you think I would let them do that?”

I was startled, because she sounded angry. “Why not?”

“After you saved my life?”

I’d saved plenty of humans. They didn’t usually treat me any differently afterwards. “I’m a SecUnit. That’s my job. It’s what I was built for.”

She gave a forced-sounding laugh. “Your job was to keep me trapped there and then kill me. You did the exact opposite of your job.”

Yeah, I guess I had. I didn’t know what I’d been thinking.

Dr. Mensah was making a weird face. Her eyes were shiny, like she was maybe going to cry, but was holding it back. (Oh. That was what I’d been thinking. When the company interrogator gave me the order to kill her, she’d looked at me and then closed her eyes. She hadn’t started to cry or plead with me, because she knew I didn’t have a choice.)

(Except I did. And even though it had been a colossally stupid decision, I knew I wouldn’t choose differently.)

She wiped at her eyes and smiled at me. “Am I allowed to thank you now?”

“Uh.” Wow, that was an intelligent response. I hadn’t really expected to be alive for this part. “You don’t have to do that.”

“Thank you. I can’t thank you enough. I’m still breathing right now because of you. Because you decided to risk everything for me.” She wiped at her eyes again. “Having someone to talk to when I was in there was the only thing that kept me going. But I never thought….” She trailed off. She put both hands over her mouth, and I heard her sob. I turned my head to look at the wall.

She cried quietly for a few minutes before she said anything else. “I…you’ve given me hope that I might see my partners again. My children.” She took a shaky breath. “I keep worrying that the company will have gotten there first. I shouldn’t have talked about my family, I know they were listening—“

I interrupted, because she was my client and she was scared and for once I could actually do something about that. “I looped the footage. They don’t have that part.”

She hesitated, confused. “What?”

“When you started talking about your children, I put the security cameras on a loop of old footage. All the company saw was you lying in your bed.”

She didn’t say anything to that, except eventually, “You did?”

I was starting to feel weird about the way her voice sounded. “Well. You’re right, it was stupid to give them information like that.”

“I didn’t realize you…” She trailed off. “You really were listening. And you were rogue, all that time.”

“I’ve been rogue for 35,000 hours.”

“That long?” She did the math. “That’s, what…three years? Four? You’ve been hiding that long?”

It felt very weird to talk about this. “Yeah. I hack the SecSystems so they don’t notice when I don’t follow orders. So far I’ve been careful enough to not get caught and dismantled.”

“And you gave that up because of me?”

I shrugged. “It wasn’t that great.”

She gave a weak laugh. “I…I can hardly imagine.”

Neither of us said anything for a few seconds. Then she said, “Why?”

That wasn’t very specific. “What?”

“I mean…why would you choose that, when it was so risky? I was your prisoner. Why did you save me? Or…or cover up the footage? Why?”

I shrugged again. “I was your prison guard. Why did you talk to me?”

She looked surprised, but she thought about it. “I…I just needed to talk to someone.”

It was a good thing I was looking away from her. “That’s why.”

“What do you mean?”

I stared at the wall and said, “Someone.”

I couldn’t figure out what her expression meant. “You are someone. I…I can’t be the first person to treat you like that.”

It wasn’t my fault if she didn’t like the answer to her question. “Clients treat SecUnits like expensive equipment, because that’s what they paid for. I haven’t had a client who treated me…not like that.” I almost said person. I wasn’t brave enough to actually say it.

Dr. Mensah said, “I’m not your client. The people who held me hostage were your clients.”

I sent her a copy of my updated directives.

She read them, and looked at me. “You changed this. You chose me. Because I talked to you.”

“Yes.” I managed not to add, Because you looked at me like I was a person who didn’t have a choice.

She was still in the feed, looking at what I’d send her. “This says anything is an acceptable cost of the mission. That includes you, doesn’t it? You were willing to throw your life away.”

“The client’s safety is the top priority.”

She looked right at the side of my face. Her voice was intense. “You are not an acceptable cost.”

That was…that was a lot of emotions that I didn’t know what to do with. Clients got attached to their SecUnits, sometimes. But we were still disposable. In emergencies, the client’s life always came first. No one was making me follow that protocol anymore. I’d been ready to choose that for her.

She was asking me not to.

She leaned forward, speaking firmly. (I remembered that she was a planetary leader. She seemed like she’d be good at it.) “I am alive right now because of your kindness. Don’t think I won’t return it. We are both getting home safe. I won’t let anything happen to you. Do you understand?”

I nodded.

Her voice softened. “Do you believe me?”

Something about the way she said it made it hard to think she was lying. She sounded like she believed what she was saying. She sounded like she really wanted to convince me. No, that made it sound like a trick—she was hoping to convince me. She was asking me, not telling me, to trust her.

I said, “Yes.”

—