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All I knew was the child had run out of the shuttle and ended up somewhere out here. The forest was dense and the wind whipped the tops of the trees, covering most sound. No tracks were showing on scan, but that didn't tell me much. I had to figure out where she had gone and retrieve her before the storm rolled in or any hungry fauna found her.
She could have gone in any direction, for any distance. All sensible, mathematical efforts to predict her location were turning up negligible results. Maybe she'd run through clear areas and was far away. Maybe she'd crawled through dense flora and was close. Or maybe she'd gone through one and then the other. What would I do if I were a dumb human?
I took five long steps into the forest, looking around, trying to think, trying to 'get in touch with my inner human' or some such. What would I do, if I were a little girl frightened of the big scary SecUnit and angry at my parents? Would I run far away or just stop at the first handy hiding place?
I scanned the greenery, hearing only the wail of the wind and the crashing of the branches. I didn't have a lot of time. But what would a person do in that situation? I had to get this right the first time.
Fear. She'd been feeling fear. Fear of being caught and kept and trapped in an oppressive environment, where she wasn't understood and had to behave, where punishment was always lurking around the corner and every mistake felt like the brink of disaster. What did I understand about that?
I don't know if I heard a noise that my organics registered and didn't tell the rest of me about, or if I really did somehow connect with something in me. But I knew. I turned in place and saw her, crouched and tucked up under the shuttle. She hadn't gone anywhere.
Neither had I, when I'd been in her position.
.
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