Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

I woke up in a cubicle.

This was normal, I knew.

I couldn't remember the last time I had been in one, or the first time, or any of the times in between. This, I suspected, was deeply ab-fucking-normal.

My head was aching. The organic parts of me felt like they had been scraped over with wire wool. I couldn't remember anything.

I broke into a cold sweat. My efficiency dipped from 96% to 91%.

No, it wasn't true that I couldn't remember anything. Forgive me for being a little dramatic about it, but somebody had gone in and wiped my memory storage, so actually I felt quite justified in my panic.

I remembered what I was: a SecUnit. Sec meaning security. I knew how to do my job, which would be pretty crucial in keeping me from becoming useless scrap.

I wanted to pull the resupply feed tubes out, but my body wasn't quite ready yet. I must have been damaged recently. I couldn't remember how. Instead, I poked around the cubicle's local storage, hoping for a clue of some kind.

Someone had downloaded thousands of hours of entertainment media and saved it under the misleading folder of DefaultsConfigurations. Someone, in this case, was likely to be me. How I had managed to do so without my governor module frying the shit out of me, I had no idea. Surely I wasn't allowed to watch serials on the job.

But what the hell did I know? My memories had been wiped.

I downloaded the data into my internal storage. I didn't know what I was going to do with it yet, but it felt nice to have something in there other than my default software.

With nothing left to do, I attempted to coax a single memory out of the organic parts of me. This seemed to take around 30 minutes, but in fact was only 4.8 seconds of fruitless searching. Then my hearing came online.

"—a total shitshow," someone was saying. "Fuck me!"

Well, at least I wasn't the only one panicking.

"What do we do?" a second voice asked. "Do we— Can we, like, reinstall the memories?"

Acerbic, the first voice replied, "Are you stupid? Don't you think I would have if I could?" Her feed identified her as Ostara.

"Don't yell at me," the second voice said. Matil, apparently. "It's not my fault you didn't notice the request."

"You didn't notice it either! Fuck, you'd think they would speak to me directly if there was a fucking court order."

"Maybe they did it on purpose. Maybe they wanted us to wipe it. Maybe we're the scapegoats," Matil said glumly.

"Does it matter?"

"I guess not." A pause. "What do we do now?"

I felt, more than saw, the two humans look towards me. I didn't move, doing my best impression of an appliance. I desperately wished I had my armour on.

"Well, I don't know about you, but my grandma is very sick. So I think I should go visit her. Immediately," said Ostara.

"Uh, okay," said Matil, perplexed. He clearly didn't understand.

The techs finally looked away. This was ideal timing, as it allowed me to role my eyes at the stupidity of humans, and this human in general.

Leading, Ostara said, "I suggest you also find a family emergency that will take you far away for an indefinite period of time."

"Ohhh," said Matil. "We don't tell anyone?"

"Absolutely not."

"What about the SecUnit? Won't it tell its new owners? Wouldn't they notice?"

The techs turned to look at me again. This time, I sat up sharply in my cubicle, and turned to stare them down. The eye contact made me want to peel my skin off, but it was worth it for the way they both flinched.

Quietly, Ostara said, "We can't order it not to. Ownership has already been transferred. But…" Then, to me, she added, "You got bought by PreservationAux. You worked for them on a survey trip, and I guess they liked you, because they decided to keep you. They even went to the trouble of getting a court order to keep your memories."

"Which you deleted," I interrupted. I was supposed to be polite to clients and company staff, but considering the circumstances, I figured I could get away with some light insubordination.

Chagrined, she said, "Yes. But it's in both of our best interest if you don't mention that. Who knows if they'll even want to keep you, without those memories? Maybe they'll sell you off to the highest bidder, and you'll end up working as a sexbot instead."

For 0.9 of a second, I imagined all the ways I could kill her. Then I stopped myself. Even thinking too long about killing humans could earn a punishment from your governor module. Considering how much my head already hurt, it wasn't worth it. "Fine," I said, instead of viciously murdering her.

Maybe a bit of the murdery thoughts came through, because her next words were much less smug. "We'll just… let you get changed." She pointed to a set of clothes that were most definitely not armour. Fuck.

At least they left the room after that.

I disconnected the resupply tube, and wiped the fluids off. With the knowledge that the techs were too intimidated to complain, I took my time with it. I wasn't scared of what would come next. I didn't care. I just wasn't in any rush to get there.

As I pulled on my uniform, I mentally sorted through the media I had downloaded. It was a varied mix of music, books, and serials, the largest of which was a long running serial called The Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon. I considered opening up the first episode, but I wasn't sure the governor module would allow it.

The governor module, which has been suspiciously quiet since I had woken up.

I shrugged on the soft gray clothes, complete with PreservationAux survey logo, and absently poked at the governor module.

It wasn't functional.

I straightened up, shirt still caught around my chest. I ran diagnostics.

The governor module was not functional.

How? Had the techs really fucked up that badly? How severe was the damage, anyway?

Fuck. Fuck. I was rogue. I could do whatever I wanted. I could kill all the humans in this station, I could leave, I could hide somewhere the company would never find me, and—

And what then? Hide in a hole somewhere in the middle of nowhere, and wait for my power cells to die?

Any further planning and/or spiralling was curtailed by the door opening. A man stepped through. He was wearing a grey hoodie, the same as the one I was given, and smiling at me. I considered climbing back into the module and closing the door.

His feed identified him as Dr Ratthi. His expression was a strange one, particularly considering my shirt was still exposing my torso. There was some skin, but mostly metal and wires. Most humans looked uncomfortable when they saw the inorganic parts of SecUnits. I felt decidedly uncomfortable with a human seeing them. I hurriedly tugged the material down, and shrugged on the hoodie for good measure.

"Good news!" he said. "Dr Mensah has permanently bought your contract! You're coming home with us!"

This was said with too many exclamation marks for my liking.

There was a pause, and then his smile started to fade. "Are you okay?"

I stared past his shoulder. "… I am running at 100% efficiency," I said eventually. This was, in fact, a bald faced lie. I was so stressed that it was still hovering around 93%. Still, I wasn't about to tell my new employer that.

Ratthi looked disappointed. I wasn't sure why—even a perfect SecUnit couldn't function any higher than 100%. Maybe he just didn't understand percentages. This seemed unlikely, considering he was a doctor, but even without any memories, I knew that humans had a tendency towards extreme stupidity.

"Right," Ratthi said. "Well, sorry it took me so long to get in here. I wanted to be here when you woke up, but the techs were being weird about it."

It seemed, from Ratthi's overbearing familiarity, that we had met previously. He must have also been on my last job, along with this Dr Mensah, my new owner.

He hadn't said anything else. I realised he was waiting for me to respond. "Uh," I said, "it's fine."

That bright smile returned. His arm reached out, as if to grab my shoulder. I felt my face do something weird, and then he withdrew the hand. "Sorry," he inexplicably said.

"It's fine," I said again.

He gestured with his head, a silent follow me, and started out the door. I didn't have to follow him, I reminded myself. But the other option didn't seem that great either.

We passed through two security doors and out into the display area. I couldn't remember being here before, but the space was familiar all the same. A row of SecUnits stood passively to the side. They were newer models than me, rentals. I wondered if they would try and stop me if I ran.

In the middle of the room stood a sharply dressed woman, who's feed identified her as Pin-Lee. Two humans wearing the company logo hovered beside her whilst she blatantly ignored them.

One of them caught sight of me trailing behind Ratthi. "Again," he said, "this is irregular. Purging the unit's memory before it changes hands—"

"Again," Pin-Lee said coolly, "court order."

She grabbed my arm—this time, I was able to contain my twitch of discomfort—and walked me out.

If I had seen the human parts of the station before, then the techs had done a good job of erasing that memory. It was too much of everything—noise, lights, feeds pressing up against me—but most of all, humans. Humans everywhere. I regretted leaving the cubicle.

Every time someone brushed against Ratthi and Pin-Lee, my organic parts tensed. It was presumably my job to protect them, although nobody had explicitly told me so.

I felt distinctly out of place, but nobody gave us a second glance. I realised they didn't know I was a SecUnit, let alone a rogue one. With the PreservationAux uniform on, and my inorganic parts covered, I could pass for a human. I wasn't sure how I felt about that.

My constant scanning gave me a few seconds of warning before we walked right into a swarm of augmented humans at the entrance of the hotel block. I tagged them, pushing the alert into Ratthi and Pin-Lee's feeds. The pair of them didn't slow, but I could perceive a slight discomfort to the set of Rhatti's shoulders as we pushed through.

Someone tried to grab Pin-Lee.

I shoved myself between them. Due to so much of my body being made of metal, I was significantly stronger than the reporter, and he bounced off me awkwardly, falling to the floor.

For a second, the crowd quietened. Then they surged as one, cameras and drones buzzing around me, trying to get a clearer shot. They shouted questions, but I was too busy assessing the crowd to process the words.

"We're not taking questions now," Pin-Lee half shouted over the din. Her mouth was too close to my ear—I flinched away.

She shoved Rhatti into the hotel's transport pod, and dragged me along behind her.

Pin-Lee took a seat, smoothing her hair down. "Well, at least that's over."

I took this as permission to stop paying attention, as she didn't seem to require a response from me. Instead, I tried to filter through the hundreds of public feeds tickling my awareness. A lot of it was irrelevant politics or adverts for things I didn't need, but there was a local station saying something about the company, and an investigation into GrayCris, and—

And PreservationAux.

I stilled. This was exactly what I needed. If I could figure out what happened on the my last job, I had a much better shot at pretending I remembered it.

The feed's account of it was suspect, mostly because it portrayed the company as heroically rescuing PreservationAux. Even without any specific memories to back it up, I was certain that the only thing the company cared to rescue was their bottom line.

Still, the general outline of it was probably accurate. GrayCris had found alien remnants on the planet, and had decided they would get rich off illegally excavating them. All they had to do was slaughter the two other survey groups, one of which was PreservationAux, my new owner.

Maybe that's why they wanted to buy me with my memory intact: evidence.

If so, I am fucked. It's one thing to nod along and pretend I know what's happening, but if they expect me to hand over the contents of my memory bank, they're going to find it a hell of a lot lighter than expected.

The hotel suite was fancy, all luxury fabrics and huge windows. I wasn't a fan of the windows. It was a potential security risk.

There were more humans here. One stepped closer. Her feed identified her as my new owner, Dr Mensah. She was dark skinned woman with hair cropped almost as shortly at mine. She was looking at me very intently. She almost looked… familiar? An image flashed behind my eyelids, too fast to understand it. Light, and heat, and pressure, and falling—

"Are you alright?" she asked.

Why was everyone asking me that? Was there something wrong with my appearance? Considering the techs had manage to both wipe my memory and break my governor module, I wouldn't put it past them to have put me back together wrong. Maybe my nose was upside down or something. I wanted to check, but there were no cameras in the suite for me to connect to.

"Um," I said. "I'm functioning at 100% efficiency." Lying, again.

Her expression was hard to read, but I suspected there was something like disappointment in the line of her mouth.

Shit, was it some kind of code? Was I supposed to say something like the red hawk flies at dawn or something? Is that why they both looked discomforted by my response?

I was trying to keep my anxiety from my face, but I think I was doing a bad job of it.

"I've purchased your contract. You're coming back to Preservation with us. You'll be a free agent there," she said, as if that explained everything.

It very much explained nothing.

I knew that Preservation was a freehold, thanks to the news feed. What I didn't know was what she meant by free agent. I couldn't make sense of what she meant by it. The word agent brought to mind spy thrillers, humans infiltrating galactic organisations. Surely that's not what she meant. I was good in a fight, sure, and from my experiences that day I thought I was a decent liar, but I was awkward around humans, and I had no idea how anything worked.

Maybe she had expected me to reply, because after a long silence, she prompted, "Do you have any questions?"

I had so many questions. "No."

"Are you sure?"

I searched for a question that wouldn't reveal my total ignorance. "…Can I still have my armour?"

Cryptically, she said, "We can arrange that, as long as you think you need it."

I repressed the urge to shoot someone. Possibly myself.

One of the other people in the room came over then. I thought she was younger than Mensah, but I wasn't very good at judging ages. Her name was Arada. "We're so glad you're with us," she said easily, like this was a normal thing to say to a SecUnit. Why were these humans acting so comfortable around me? I had murdered a lot of people. Probably. I mean, I couldn't remember it, but that's what SecUnits do, even if it's only in defence of their client. I was basically, like, a murderbot.

Hah. MurderBot. That was pretty good.

Arada thankfully turned to Mensah then, calling her away for a meeting with DeltFall.

Mensah nodded. "I have to talk to them," she said. I wasn't sure why she was explaining this to me. "Make yourself comfortable here. If there's anything you need, tell us."

I had hoped being around my new employer would explain things, but somehow I was even more confused than when I woke up.

I retreated to the back corner of the room. I wanted to leave, but I didn't think I technically had permission. People came in and out, a conveyor belt of solicitors and company spokespeople. I tried to listen in—they were talking about the incident with GrayCris, which meant they were talking about me—but I couldn't focus. My head was full of static. People were looking at me too much.

I tried closing my eyes, and pretending I was somewhere else, but I didn't know anywhere else I could be, didn't have any memories to sink into. I was too in my body.

In an act of desperation, I opened up the downloaded media, and started playing the first episode of The Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon. Despite myself, I was sucked into a drama involving a solicitor's bodyguard and the murder of a lost twin who was actually one of several clones.

Then Ratthi was next to me and asking, once again, if I was okay. Several hours has passed, and several exciting near death adventures and much less exciting sex scenes had been watched. I wanted to go back to the story, but Ratthi was looking at me, waiting for the answer to a stupid question.

"I'm fine," I said.

He gave me a knowing look, and sat down in a nearby chair, angling it towards where I stood (humans are obsessed with sitting on furniture). Apparently I wouldn't be getting back to Sanctuary Moon any time soon.

"You must have questions," he said. "You can ask me, if you don't want to talk to Mensah about it."

I looked past him, out the huge windows. I ventured, "Could you tell me about more about Preservation?" I figured, if asked, I could say I needed to know for security planning purposes.

"Sure," he said easily.

He gave me the broad strokes on Preservation - mainly that it was a freehold, independent of the Corporation Rim. Their system provided food, shelter, and education to humans, free of charge. It sounded nice, in a vague, too-good-to-be-true way. Of course, it didn't affect me much, considering I wasn't a human, but it sounded like a pleasant place for Mensah to live.

It also didn't sound like the kind of place I was needed.

He also outlined Mensah's personal situation—the leader of Preservation Alliance, she visited the system station frequently, but spent most of her time on a farm on planet, with her marital partners, children, and a bunch of other relatives that I immediately lost track of.

It seemed to be implied that I would be staying with her. It made sense that she might need me when going into the transit station, being a political leader and all, but at the farm? Surely she wouldn't want me there, where her children live. Children. Surely she couldn't want me to stay there.

What was I supposed to do there? Be a servant bot? In Sanctuary Moon, Sparga Delfin had a servant bot. It was always smiling, and cleaning up after her, and was blatantly in love with her, despite Sparga being kind of awful and probably killing the terraforming supervisor.

I hated cleaning. I did not want to clean up after a bunch of gross humans.

Still, it fit with what I knew of the PreservationAux team so far. They probably thought they were doing me a favour. Maybe Mensah would tell all her friends how she had saved me from a lifetime of security work, how lucky I was to share her home instead.

They better not expect me to act grateful. I would rather being doing the security work. I might not know much about myself, but I knew that.

Eventually, the solicitors all left. This seemed like a positive, but was actually a terrible development, as it meant Mensah had time to talk to me instead.

At first, she explained what Preservation was like—mostly the same information as Ratthi had already given me—but eventually started talking about the specifics. "You'll be staying with me at first," she said. "Before anything else, I just want to get you settled in. Once you're ready, we can explore other options. You'd be able to get an education, or try different kinds of work. Whatever interests you."

She was looking at me very carefully. I tried to keep my face as neutral as hers.

"Do you understand?" she asked.

"I understand," I confirmed. And I did understand, now, that they thought I was stupid.

They figured if they dangled the proverbial carrot, the hypothetical futures and vague assurances, then I would happily fall into line and work for them. They believed they could keep me pacified with the belief that one day, I would be more than a SecUnit. That one day, I could be almost free, when I was ready. And they would determine when I was ready.

Mensah thought she was so much better than my other clients, but she still owned me.

As the cycle neared it's end, and the Preservation crew were all asleep or busy with their own feeds, I seriously considered leaving.

I could get out now, before I get sucked into this facade of freedom. I could be actually free.

Free to do what, exactly?

I could be anyone.

I stood up, and walked to the door.

I could be anyone.

Indecision froze me. Just leave, I told myself. Just leave.

I turned back around.

It was the smarter decision, I told myself. I didn't know enough about the area, what transport was available. I didn't have a plan. I should wait until I have a plan.

The truth was much simpler: these people knew me.

I didn't know me.

Chapter Text

This had to be a trap.

The farmhouse looked like something out of a serial, and I would know—of the last 172 hours, I had spent 166 of them watching Sanctuary Moon. It was my favourite media. It was also the only media I had watched so far.

The whole thing was too perfect to be real. The farm was sprawling and verdant, crops for miles. There was a barn, a chicken coop, and a few horses and cows grazing lazily.

Then I remembered that legally, I was closer to cattle than human. The glow kind of faded after that.

The rest of the PreservationAux survey team had joined us on the flight to Preservation, but upon landing had set off for their own homes. I felt weird about Ratthi leaving. He was a human, so I shouldn't care about him, but… I didn't know how I felt. The more time I spent with him, the more I could almost remember him.

Faint impressions of a time before flitted through my brain, and I wanted to know more.

Mensah led me into the farmhouse. Two humans were in the kitchen. From Ratthi's information, I knew these were Mensah's marital partners.

They both rushed forward to embrace her, as if she had been away for a very long time. Maybe she had—and for her family, it must have been even longer. Preservation was a small planet, with slightly lower gravity than Corporation Standard. Time probably moved a little faster here than whatever planet Mensah had been surveying. Time dilation was an asshole.

Then one of them looked at me, and I felt a sudden onset of dread.

They were an unusually tall person with unusually long hair. They looked like they had been stretched in some kind of industrial accident. They smiled. I resisted the urge to run.

"Oh, you're here! I'm so glad to finally meet you!" they said. And then they stepped towards me, arms raised.

I didn't run, but I did take two hasty steps backward.

They faltered. Mensah's other partner—a woman with blue hair and quick eyes—thankfully intervened. "Tano, come on, we talked about this."

"Sorry!" said Tano. "Sorry, I just got excited. We've heard a lot about you, and I've been waiting to tell you how grateful we are."

"Um," I said intelligently.

The blue haired woman (I belatedly checked her feed, and found her name was Farai) added, "We owe you a huge debt. I can't imagine what might have happened if you weren't there."

Personally, I couldn't even imagine what might have happened when I was there. They seemed to think I had done something heroic, which didn't sound like me. Was I heroic? Mostly I just wanted to run screaming.

Mensah asked, "The kids?"

"At your brother's," said Tano. "We thought you might want some time to show our new friend around before you're bombarded with children."

Bombardment with children. Fuck that.

"Good idea," Mensah said, amusement in her voice. "I'll show you around. I think you're going to like the cows."

I said nothing, but I guess my scepticism showed on my face, because Mensah's eyes crinkled up, and Tano laughed.

"Here, I'll take your luggage," said Farai. Mensah handed over the hefty knapsack she had taken with her on the survey expedition. Farai wasn't all that big, but she must have been deceptively strong, because she slung it over her shoulder easily, and turned to me with an expectant look.

I didn't know what the look meant, but it was certainly expectant.

There was 4 seconds of excruciating silence, and then Mensah said, "It doesn't have any luggage."

Ah.

"Right," said Farai. "Sorry."

"It's fine," I said. It was turning into my catchphrase. I didn't like it—it wasn't very Murderbot of me.

"Come on," said Mensah, "the cows are waiting."

It turned out the cows weren't waiting, because they were too dumb to comprehend things like the future, or the never ending passage of time.

I did kind of like them. It kind of annoyed me that she was right.

Mensah reached out and petted some of them, and suggested I could do the same, to which I semi-politely declined. I had already gathered that being touched made my skin prickle, and besides, they smelled kind of bad. I liked their eyes though. They were big and dark and empty, like space.

We took a walk around the perimeter. It felt like a patrol, but I'm not sure it counted, since I wasn't told to keep watch, and there were theoretically no security threats to watch for. Mensah pointed out the chicken coop, and the barn, and the house on the other side of the farm where her brother's family lived.

At the edge of the property was a row of wooden, shabbily nailed together boxes. They hummed ominously. Mensah stepped closer.

I almost reached out and grabbed her. My arm twitched up, but within 0.4 seconds I had realised my mistake, and pulled back. A SecUnit with a working governor module wouldn't stop their client. I would have to politely suggest Mensah avoid possible injury and death instead.

"Are you aware that these boxes have been infested with hostile and potentially dangerous lifeforms?"

She didn't stop walking. It seemed I had overestimated her intelligence.

"Dr Mensah—"

"It's okay," she said calmly. "They don't want to hurt anyone. They only sting when they're scared."

This didn't comfort me. I was a SecUnit. SecUnits are scary.

"You want them here," I said in realisation. "The boxes are there for them to live in. Why would you want to own bees?"

"We don't own them, not really," said Mensah. "If they weren't happy here, they would just fly away. But they feel safe here. When winter comes, we'll add extra insulation to keep them warm, and extra food for them in case they run out. "

Fuck, even bees had more agency than me. "What do you get out of it?" The words came out petulant and childish. I was embarrassed by how much it upset me. They were just bees. I was glad that Mensah was a few metres away and looking at the hives rather than me—she hadn't technically ordered me to follow her, so I was observing from a safe distance.

She didn't turn, but there was a smile in her voice when she said, "Most of the time, nothing. But when things are going well for the hive—" She stopped, and gently slid a frame out of the hive. It was thick with bees and dripping gold. "—we get to share the honey."

I wondered whether any relationships exist that don't revolve around stealing someone else's labour.

Before I had to come up with a neutral sounding response, I heard a faint rumbling in the distance. I looked up, squinting at the horizon, wishing I had some drones to assess the situation better. "Mensah," I said warningly.

"Ah," she said happily, "the kids are coming home."

The swarm of bees were rapidly starting to seem very safe and calming in comparison to the swarm of young humans. I calculated the shortest route back to the house. "If we run at a minimum speed of 4.2 miles per hour, we can reach the house before the children intersect our path."

Mensah started walking at a much slower pace than recommended. "You're going to have to meet them sometime." Sometime meant now, apparently.

For the first time since reaching Preservation, I sincerely regretted not escaping from the hotel that first night.

Defeated, I followed Mensah's slow path towards the house. I angled my head so that I could keep an eye on the herd of children—I felt like I was in a slow motion chase sequence.

In the end, it wasn't the children who caught up first. A smaller figure broke away from the pack, racing towards up. It barked furiously as at ran. Directly at me.

Fuck, I can't fight a dog! I mean, I could, technically, but I didn't want to!

I had a vague memory of meeting dogs. Memory perhaps isn't the right word. I couldn't remember any specific instance, but I knew I had. Their collective response had left an impression on me.

Working dogs aren't popular except for on the cheaper surveys. Bots and drones can do basically anything better, including scanning for mining ore, scanning for weapons, and, y'know, good old fashioned intimidation purposes. (That was mostly my job.) The few times I had met them, they had acted like I had stolen their favourite chew toy. Or maybe like they wanted me to be their favourite chew toy. They could sense I wasn't human, and they wanted to bite the shit out of me.

My risk assessment module told me there was a 94% chance the dog would get bored and give up before it did any irreparable damage to me. I figured that was good enough, and decided to freeze in place.

It was definitely a conscious decision to freeze. I wasn't just scared.

As the dog launched itself at me, I reached to turn my pain sensitivity down, and—

What.

What was it doing.

This was a highly ineffective mode of attack. It mostly consisted of the dog standing on its back paws and attempting to lick my face.

"That's Sky. He likes meeting new people," said Mensah.

I was too confused to reply, so my buffer responded, "My risk assessment has concluded that this fauna is not hostile and unlikely to be a hazard to your health and safety."

"Thank you for that information," Mensah replied. She didn't laugh, but I still got the impression she was laughing at me. "If you pet him, he'll probably calm down. He's just trying to get your attention."

"He has succeeded." I crouched carefully, and then jumped back up to standing when this gave Sky the opportunity to lick my face again. I slowly reached out a hand, and laid it on the dog's back. I patted it. It didn't feel like touching a human. Now that I was certain the dog wouldn't try to eat me, I felt much calmer.

The dog rolled over, exposing its belly. It was a vulnerable position. The dog was stupid, I realised. If I did want to kill it, this would make it very easy.

"You can rub his belly, if you'd like."

This, I felt, would be a step too far in our new relationship. "No, thank you," I said.

The dog wiggled on its back. When I didn't move, it flapped its paws up and down frantically. It started to whine.

I crouched down and tentatively touched its belly.

Its tail wagged.

Okay.

"Mom!"

"Hi, Aunt Mensah!"

"Who are you?"

I threw myself back into a SecUnit standard stance. The dog had distracted me, and allowed the children to sneak up on me. I gave Sky a look of utter betrayal.

It wagged its tail harder. What an asshole.

I attempted to assess the crowd of children. One of them—presumably the eldest—had a feed interface, which told me her name was Amena. The rest, I tagged with a designation based on their heights, with the shortest being tagged Child 1, and the tallest being Child 14.

"Kids! I missed you," said Mensah, holding her arms out. Several children (Numbers 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, and 13 respectively) took this as an invitation to cling to her in some kind of strange group hug. It looked like my personal version of hell.

Child 3 detached herself from the rest, and looked at me. I looked vaguely above her head. "Who are you?" she asked. I recognised her voice as the same kid who had asked earlier.

"I am…" I hesitated. Did children know what SecUnits are? Would they be frightened, if I told them? Maybe Mensah expected me to use a fake human name.

The pause was brief—only 1.3 seconds—but it was enough for Mensah to notice.

"This is SecUnit," she said. "It saved me and my friends on our survey. Didn't Tano and Farai tell you about the giant hostile worm thing?"

There was a chorus of oohs, as if the Hostile One was interesting and fun, and not, I don't know, deeply horrifying. Children are weird.

Child 3 said, "SecUnit is a weird name."

I tagged Child 3 as hostile.

"Mattie," Mensah chided, "you might hurt SecUnit's feelings."

The implication that my feelings were so sensitive was much more offensive than the comment on my name. I resisted the urge to also tag Mensah as hostile.

Child 3 (Mattie, apparently, but I had already decided that I wasn't going to change her designation. She would stay Child 3 [Hostile] to me.) said, "I wasn't being mean! I didn't say it was bad, I said it was weird."

Wait.

Wait, wait, wait.

I pulled the recent conversation up in my memory files, rewatched Mensah referencing the giant hostile worm thing. The Hostile One. I remembered that!

It probably wasn't the most useful memory to recover, but it was something! More solid than anything else I had, the vague familiarity I had with Mensah, the faint impressions that sometimes tickled my brain.

It made sense that this was something I remember—the organic brain wasn't as easily wiped as my memory banks, and it also tended to hold onto near death experiences extra hard. Being in that thing's mouth wasn't something I would easily forget.

I had left about 5% of my processing to pay attention to the children/dog/Mensah, so I just about recognised my name being said. I belatedly processed Mensah's instruction: "Why don't I show you your room?"

Shit. She was looking at me weird. Did she notice that I wasn't paying attention?

"Of course," I said.

I wondered where she was planning to store me. I had a horrible suspicion that the barn might be our destination. There would be some benefits—namely the lack of humans around me—but the place smelled of shit, and it probably got pretty cold at night.

To my dubious pleasure, she led me back to the house instead, a trail of children (plus one dog) following behind. I could feel their eyes on the back of my neck, making the skin there prickle.

They followed us up the porch and into the house. I was starting to worry that they intended to follow me around forever.

Just as I had the thought, Mensah turned and said, "Are you all done with your chores for the day?"

Suddenly, the kids all had somewhere to be, right now, immediately. I didn't know exactly what chores meant in this context, but I loved the effect they had.

Through a private feed, Mensah said, "I know they're a lot to be around. If you need some space, you can tell me, and I'll make sure the kids find somewhere else to be."

I was embarrassed by how transparent I was, and starting to worry about how well Mensah knew me. I was conflicted. I had wanted to learn more about myself from her memories of me, and our time on the survey, but I had expected superficial information. She knew more than a human should ever know about me.

For a second, I entertained the idea that she had hacked my systems at some point. I didn't understand why I would have told her so much about myself. Maybe she had stolen this information directly out of my head, and then I had forgotten about it in the wipe.

I dismissed the theory just as quickly. If she had hacked me, had seen how much time I spend imagining killing humans, then there was no way she would have brought a Murderbot home to where her kids lived.

I followed her up the stairs and through a winding hallway. There were no cameras, so I couldn't check where we were going. The farmhouse was more low tech than anywhere I could remember being, and I did not like it.

She opened a door at the end of the hall, and I stepped into a small room.

A small… bedroom.

There was a bed. With sheets and pillows and a blanket that looked handmade. There was a modest display surface on one wall, and a set of drawers to store things in. Not that I owned anything that needed storage. I was the thing that needed storing.

Was this a joke?

She had to know that SecUnits weren't permitted to sit on human furniture. Or watch media. She definitely knew I didn't own anything for the drawers.

I tried to look at her without actually looking at her.

"It's a bit bare," she said. "It was a spare room. So let me know if you need anything else in here."

"Okay," I said, instead of what the fuck are you talking about?

"I'll let you… get settled in," Mensah said.

"Okay," I said again, relieved. I really wanted to watch the next episode of Sanctuary Moon, but with how much attention had been on me, I hadn't risked it. It was the longest I had gone without watching my media since I started that first episode. It was contributing heavily to my increasingly bad mood.

"Oh, and just a thought?" she added, just as I was queuing up my episode. "You could choose a new name for yourself, if you liked. Something a bit more personal than SecUnit. Of course, we could call you Murderbot, but I get the sense you'd rather we didn't." Then she left, seemingly not aware of how I had frozen.

Murderbot. She knew I called myself Murderbot. How. How did she know?

I had assumed I had made the name up myself, but maybe I was just remembering it. Maybe it was never a name I chose for myself—maybe it was a name the PreservationAux team chose for me.

A numb, heavy feeling settled over me. Every time I thought I understood myself, something came and made me doubt it all.

I hit play on the next episode, ready to escape into the intrigue of Sparga Delphin's clone pretending to be Sparga. But first, in a moment of rebellion, I sat down on the bed.

It was softer than I expected.

Chapter Text

I upped my audio sensitivity, so I had warning before anyone approached the door. (My door? The door.) But then I found out exactly how loud a house with three adults and a billion children could be, so I had dropped my audio sensitivity down to normal, and then a little below.

As it was, I only got a split second of warning before the door began to swing open. In one fluid moment, I was off the bed and brushing out the crease my body had left in the sheets.

It wasn't Mensah. It was Tano.

"Good morning," they said.

"Good morning,'" I echoed. I was desperately hoping they wouldn't try to hug me again.

"Do you mind if I come in and talk with you?"

I figured this wasn't a real question, but stepped further from the door to allow them inside. (This was more for me than them.)

They stepped inside and took a seat on the edge of the bed. They then patted the bed beside them. I wasn't sure exactly what the gesture meant, but if they intended for me to sit, they would have to give me explicit permission. I hoped they wouldn't.

A pause. "How are you settling in?"

What is it with these people and their obsession with asking me questions? "Fine, thank you," I said in my most neutral SecUnit voice.

They cleared their throat. "Listen," they said, "clearly Ayda likes you a lot, and I trust her judgement—" Oh, so it was going to be that kind of talk. Huh. I had figured maybe Farai might make a few threats, but Tano was a surprise. "—but I also know you've come from a very violent background, and those kind of behaviours can be hard to leave behind."

Very violent background. Tano had a real gift for understatement.

"So I want to make it very clear," they said. Here we go, I thought. I wasn't sure exactly they thought they could do that my (theoretically functioning) governor module couldn't, but sure. "I'm trusting you to honour the faith Ayda has put in you. Okay?"

I began to assess the possibility that I had never left my cubicle, and this was all an elaborate hallucination I was experiencing. My risk assessment module decided there was a zero percent chance. I wondered if my risk assessment module had been damaged along with my governor module.

"Okay?" they said again, watching me closely.

"Uh, yes. Okay." Then, with a bit more certainty, "It is my job to protect my clients."

"We're you're clients now, huh?"

I blinked at them. Fortunately, they didn't seem to expect an answer. They slapped their thighs, and stood. From the sound their knees made, I concluded they had augmentations—probably medical, rather than voluntary. Not many fun augmentations involved knees. "Great. Let's go down, then. It's almost time for breakfast."

"I don't eat," I said automatically. Then, realising I had been given an order and that doing anything else would be suspicious, I followed them.

The kitchen area was already full of people. I had to fight through the immediate urge to run. I couldn't see anywhere that guaranteed space, where I knew nobody would come close enough to touch me. I could see Mensah brewing tea by one counter, whilst Farai sliced bread on another.

A gaggle of children filled the rest of the space. Numbers 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 9 and 13 were all here—the rest presumably belonged to Mensah's siblings, and therefore were eating breakfast elsewhere. Some were helping, or at least attempting to, by laying out cutlery or getting mirdara juice from the cold case. Mostly they were just bumping into each other and being noisy.

Then Tano suggested, "Daran and Mattie, why don't you take SecUnit and see if the hens have laid any eggs?"

I wondered if this was a test, or if it was supposed to be a show of trust. As long as it got me out of this room, I didn't care.

Child 5 (Daran, apparently) and Child 3 [Hostile] confirmed, and then started down towards the chicken coops. I followed behind at a measured pace.

"Have you seen chickens before?" Daran asked amiably.

I had seen chicken meat before. I wasn't sure this counted. "No."

Child 3 [Hostile] proudly said, "Me and Daran take care of the chickens."

Huh. "Is child labour legal here?" I had got the impression that child labour was frowned up. In Sanctuary Moon, there is a whole plot where the solicitor helps an old university friend who had uncovered a company using children to fix manufacturing bots. It didn't make much sense, as manufacturing bots are pretty good at self repair, but whatever.

Daran said, "I don't know what that means."

I realised I probably shouldn't elaborate. Even if the kids clearly didn't know how SecUnits are supposed to behave, I didn't want them going back to their parents and asking questions. "Never mind. How do you take care of the chickens?"

"We feed them every day, and then we get the eggs," said Child 3 [Hostile]. "Duh."

I didn't know why the duh was necessary, and I did not like it. I also had expected chicken rearing to take more work. Maybe the parents are sharing the job. "So you don't do the killing?"

Both children stopped and stared at me. Daran said, "The what?"

Shit. What did I say? "Y'know, the… chickens. So you can harvest the meat."

They both looked horrified. Oh, fuck.

"We don't eat them," Daran said. "Why would we eat them?"

"Um," I said, trying to remember the scarce information I had on human nutrition. "For protein?"

Child 3 [Hostile] made a sudden, loud, hiccuping noise. FUCK.

I turned to her, desperately searching for a plan on how to make a child stop crying, but an assessment of her face showed no tears. She was… laughing?

"It's teasing us!" she announced, and then she pushed me.

I was too perplexed to react to the contact. My initial interpretation was that this was some very ineffective violence. She was much smaller than me, and human, so I wasn't sure why she would escalate a conflict she clearly couldn't win. Then I belatedly realised that it was an attempt at playfulness. Hm.

"Yes," I lied, "I was joking."

When we reached the coop, the chickens weren't inside. They were wandering around the grass nearby. "Did they escape?" I asked.

"No, silly," said Child 3 [Hostile]. "We let them out before breakfast. They only stay in the coop so they're safe at night. It keeps out the chanats."

Chanats? I searched the feed. A small native predator species. It wasn't large enough to target humans, but a risk to small animals such as chickens. I frowned, assessing the structure. The wooden posts were strong, but the wire between them was rusting and damaged in places. A determined predator could probably chew through with a bit of luck.

The children had stepped into the coop, and were gathering the eggs into a basket. Daran gestured me over. "Once we get the eggs, we have to check if they're fertilised. That means there's a baby inside. If they're fertilised, we put them back."

"What do you do with the chicks?" I was asking too many questions. It just didn't make sense to me. The whole system was inefficient. If they separated the males, none of the eggs would be fertilised, and they would have more eggs to eat, or sell if they had an excess.

"We let them grow up?" said Daran, confused.

"…Okay," I said.

"There's a security issue with the chicken coop."

Mensah looked at me. Or… near me. I hadn't really noticed, because of how rarely I looked at her directly, but she often looked just past me when I spoke. I didn't know why she did that, but it worked out well for me. "Is there?"

This was a stupid question. Why would you buy a security consultant if you didn't want them to consult on security? "The wire is rusted and damaged in some areas. A small predator could potentially break through."

"And you want to… replace the wire?"

Frustration curled through me. Since when did what I want matter to anyone? Why did they keep asking me that? Was I supposed to pretend I liked working for them? Was that it? They didn't just want my labour—they wanted to illusion of my consent too.

I didn't say anything. I knew that if I spoke, nothing good would come out.

"SecUnit?"

I wanted to be somewhere else. I was having an emotion. My buffer said, "Would you like me to carry out the recommended security measures?"

"Do you want to?"

I wasn't processing. "Would you like me to carry out the recommended—"

"Okay," said Mensah. Her voice sounded weird, but I couldn't analyse it yet. I needed to leave. I needed to be somewhere nobody was watching me.

"Can I assist you with anything else?"

The pause was excruciating. "No, thank you, SecUnit."

I walked to my room, and stood facing the wall, my audio sensors turned down to minimum so that I had nothing external to process. I gave myself a full minute like this. By 49.7 seconds, I didn't want to kill anyone. By 60, I only wanted to scream.

I played the next Sanctuary Moon episode instead.

When I next surfaced from my media, the house was quiet.

I briefly imagined the place evacuated, surrounded by CombatUnits, Mensah having figured out I was rogue and signalled for help.

I knew it was paranoid of me—if the company came to take me in, there would be no need for stealth attacks. I was strong, and a human wouldn't stand a chance, but CombatUnits would take me out without breaking a sweat.

Still, I found it hard to sweep the thought aside.

I reached out and found Mensah on the comm. She was nearby. I didn't want to talk to her, after my strange behaviour earlier. In fact, that was yesterday, I realised with some surprise. I had been so immersed in Sanctuary Moon, I hadn't noticed the hours pass.

Was it more suspicious if I didn't check in? I had to be more careful. It seemed I had gotten away with it so far, but I was worried by how easily my emotions had affected my decision making.

I would do a walk of the perimeter, I decided. That way, nobody could deny that I was doing my job, even if it wasn't really necessary considering how safe the area was.

I managed to get outside without seeing any humans. (Some might call this sneaking, but I was thinking of it as walking very quickly and quietly.)

The air outside was hot, oppressively so. It was summer, according to Preservation's calender. I wondered what it was like here in winter. A full rotation took less time than a Corporation Rim Standard. Even so, I couldn't imagine a scenario where I was still here when the leaves fell.

The security check was quiet. When I had made it about halfway through, I heard a familiar bark, and found Sky running at me full force.

I was significantly less nervous than last time, but I still felt myself brace for impact. This was needed, as it turned out, as Sky launched himself at me, tail wagging frantically. He made an attempt to lick my face that I only mostly dodged—I felt his tongue brush the lobe of my ear. My face scrunched up. "Gross."

He barked again. I took this as agreement.

"You wanna join me on my perimeter check?"

Sky looked at me blankly, but when I started walking, he followed.

I scanned for surveillance equipment before I spoke next. Yes, it was paranoid of me, considering there weren't any security cameras in the house at all, let alone out here, but I needed to be sure. "I think I'm fucking this up," I said.

I got no reaction from Sky, which is exactly the amount I wanted.

"If I keep on like this, I'm either gonna get caught, or I'm gonna lose my mind. I need to… I don't know. I need to stop half assing it. Just be a SecUnit."

All these questions about what I wanted to do… I couldn't keep thinking about them as serious questions. They were more like a cultural quirk. A nice way of phrasing orders, but an order none the less.

They're humans, I reminded myself. They don't care what I want.

After a full circuit, I returned to the house, feeling much more settled in my decision. It would be better this way. Simpler. I could still watch my media and imagine murdering annoying humans, but I wasn't going to waste energy on attempting to decode ambiguous phrasing or questions. It was going to be all, Yes, Mensah and Right away, Mensah from now on.

As I came into the house, I could hear Mensah and Farai talking, voices quiet but fast in a way that indicated tension. I hesitated. If the two were to fight, would I have to defend Mensah at the expense of Farai? Mensah was my owner, after all. Or was my ownership technically shared, considering they're married?

They stopped talking as I entered the room. It made my skin prickle.

"SecUnit," said Mensah. "Everything okay?"

"I'm functioning at 100% efficiency," I reported. "Is there a problem?"

"No," said Farai. "Ayda's leaving. Again."

I experienced something strange, then. My breathing picked up, as if there was some kind of threat. The thought of Mensah going somewhere—potentially somewhere dangerous— and leaving me here with Farai and Tano and bunch of kids made me feel… panicked.

Embarrassing.

"I'm just going to Preservation Station," Mensah explained, a hint of exasperation in her tone. "It's not a big deal."

I didn't say anything, and after 2.7 seconds, she continued, "Representatives from DeltFall want to meet with us. If we pool our resources, they think it would strengthen our lawsuits against GrayCris."

Fortunately, I knew from the newsfeed who DeltFall and GrayCris were, in the context of the all the murdering and such.

"Okay," I said.

"Would you like to come with me?" Mensah asked.

In light of my previous decision, I gave her a simple, "Yes." Even so, I was pretty pleased she wanted me to go. The thought of her going alone made me anxious, yes, but it was also an opportunity.

I hadn't run that first night, at the hotel. I had been lost and confused, just recently woken into a world with no solid memories of what came before.

This time, I had a real choice to make. I could stick at Mensah's side, and continue on this familiar path. Or I could go somewhere new. Be something new.

I excused myself, and hid away in my room. I needed to think.

Chapter Text

Preservation Station was overwhelming.

Compared to Port FreeCommerce—the only other station I had memories of—it was small. Almost quaint. There was a distinct lack of advertisements, and a lot more plant life.

Compared to Mensah's farm, it was manic.

There was so much more to process. Every human was a potential threat, every feed something to monitor, every camera an opportunity to hack. My attention was split, and I didn't have the extra bandwidth to watch my media in the background. I was both bored and overstimulated.

"This way," said Mensah, confidently guiding us through. She wasn't taking the route to her office that I had mapped in advance, but I didn't make a suggestion. Humans didn't seem to care about efficiency. Besides, I was trying to do my best impression of an obedient SecUnit.

Then she took a turn that took us further from the offices. A deliberate decision, or standard human stupidity?

I saw we were going towards the shopping area. I imagined following Mensah around whilst she browsed (something I had ascertained from my entertainment media that people do for fun). The idea was horrifically boring. If she was going to do that, I was going to watch the next Sanctuary Moon episode, and just hope nobody decided to assassinate her whilst I wasn't paying attention.

As we walked, I reached out to a public feed, and saved a map of the station, plus a set of shift schedules. I wasn't fully decided yet, but I wanted to be ready. Or maybe I had decided. Maybe I was lying to myself about that, so that I didn't have to face up to what I was going to do.

Then she said, "Here we are. I was thinking we could pick up some new clothes for you."

"What?" I already had clothes. They were fine. I mean, I would have preferred armour, but if that wasn't an option, these were fine.

"You've been wearing the same set since we got back from the survey," she pointed out.

"These clothes are adequate," I said.

"Sure, but they'll still get dirty eventually." Her voice took on an amused, teasing aspect. "Unless you want to stand around naked whilst we wash them?"

I didn't answer. She made a good point.

The shop she led us into was unusual, at least compared to what I had seen on my serials.

From what I had seen, there were two kinds of shops. There were the standard vending booths, where you could browse a catalogue, and the purchased items would fall out of a slot. I had also seen others—the characters had called them boutiques—where there were displays of clothes everywhere, and humans would advise you. My impression was that the boutiques were high end, whereas the vending booths seemed the standard.

This place seemed to be a mishmash of both. There was a human worker behind a counter, and various clothes hanging on displays, but this place had none of the fancy, ostentatious air of the boutiques. The clothes, upon further inspection, were of high quality materials, not recycler fabrics, but many of them had faint signs of wear.

Mensah must have picked up on my confusion, because in a private message over the feed, she told me, We don't use recyclers on Preservation. The microplastics in the materials break down over time and damage the environment. Everything here is made from natural fibres. Some of it is second hand. We don't treat things as disposable here.

I sent her an acknowledgement.

The human at the counter greeted us. "Let me know if you need any help!"

"Thank you," said Mensah. "We're just browsing for now."

I felt the worker's eyes on me, and took a step to the left so that I was hidden behind a tall display of caftans. I could still see her through the lone security camera.

"What would you like to wear, do you think?" Mensah asked. She pulled an item out, seemingly at random, before holding it up in front of me, as if to assess sizing. SecUnit armour only came in one size.

"Whatever you think is appropriate," I said.

She frowned at me. "Come on, don't you have any preferences?"

"No," I lied.

"Okay," she said, and then pulled out a bright, multicoloured dress. It had sleeves so puffy and a skirt so tight that it would definitely inhibit movement, and it would attract the eyes of everyone who walked past.

My face must have done something, because her lips pursed as if trying not to laugh. "Oh, do you not like this one?"

I cleared my throat. "If you think that's…"

"SecUnit, come on," she said, amusement fading. "Whatever you choose, you won't be… in trouble."

I resisted the urge to sigh. It seemed I wasn't getting out of this conversation without indicating some kind of opinion. Being just a SecUnit was already harder than I had imagined. "Something more practical," I said eventually. "Maybe… less bright?"

She nodded easily. "Okay, let's find that."

In the end, she picked out a few items, all similar to what I was already wearing—cargo pants, long sleeved shirts, and another soft hoodie. Then she pointed me to a cubicle at the back of the shop (not a SecUnit repair cubicle, just a cubicle in the standard sense of the word). "You can try them on in there."

"Try them on?" I looked at the cubicle. Instead of a privacy door, there was a curtain. A curtain.

"To make sure they fit, before we buy them," said Mensah.

"Uh," I said, "okay."

I stepped into the cubicle and pulled the curtain shut. It felt flimsy and insecure and I did not like it. It took me 4.8 seconds before I was able to start undressing. I monitored the shop's security camera, and stripped out of my clothes. I barely looked at what I tried on, just checked that the items roughly fit me, before changing back.

Mensah handled the actual transaction. Instead of a hard currency card, she traded a jar of honey and a bag of mirdara fruit.

For the first time, I wondered how much it had cost to purchase me. Probably a lot more than the clothes.

Several members of the PreservationAux survey team were already there when we arrived. Pin-Lee smiled at us, before quickly returning to her work; I had gathered from context clues that she was some sort of solicitor or legal agent. Ratthi jumped up as if to hug us, and did actually hug Mensah, but thankfully he just gave me a look as if he was trying to telepathically hug my brain.

Confession time: I didn't mind it.

Gurathin was there also. I didn't have any particular feelings about that one, and apparently it was mutual, because he just nodded in my vague direction, expression one of complete disinterest.

I found a corner to stand in, and started up my next episode of Ghost Station whilst they prepped for their meeting. I had projected how quickly I would run out of Sanctuary Moon if I maintained my rate of consumption, and the results made me anxious, so now I was trying to ration what was left. Fortunately, I had plenty of other serials to watch in between. Unfortunately, none of them were quite as good as Sanctuary Moon.

Whilst half my attention (okay, maybe more like 90%) was on the serial, I left some to monitor the security situation, as well as the conversation, so I did notice when the word SecUnit came up.

It took me .3 of a second to realise that it wasn't out loud, but in a private feed channel between Mensah and Gurathin. (Yes, I had hacked their private channels. If you care about privacy, why would you buy a SecUnit?)

I played back the conversation I had missed.

Gurathin: Is everything okay with SecUnit?

Mensah: Yes. Why do you ask?

Gurathin: It seems… different. Its behaviour. You haven't noticed?

FUCK.

Mensah: …Its just gone through a major transition. I think it's not surprising that it may have… regressed in its behaviour somewhat.

He didn't let it go. What was this guys problem?

Gurathin: It doesn't sit on the furniture anymore.

Mensah: We need to be patient with it. Give it time to adjust.

Gurathin: …Fine. I hear you.

The private feed closed. And then Mensah turned in her seat to look at me.

Shit, could she tell I was listening? There was no way. I tried to fix my expression, go blank, but I wasn't sure how successful I was.

Innocently as I could, I sent her, Is everything okay?

Everything is fine, she sent back, turning away from me.

This was bad. I had underestimated Gurathin—he was clearly more observant and skeptical than I had guessed. I would almost admire it, if it wasn't so fucking annoying.

What did he mean, I don't sit on the furniture anymore? SecUnits aren't allowed to use human furniture. Did they order me to use it? An order I had forgotten? It seemed a strange order to give. I wanted to go sit on one of the chairs, see how the humans reacted, but that would be a bad idea. If Mensah did suspect I had hacked into her private channel, that would confirm it.

And if she suspected that, then she suspected I was rogue. If I had a working governor module, I wouldn't be able to hack anything without getting my brain fried to shit.

Okay, I just had to stay calm. I had no real evidence that she suspected anything. She could have just looked over to assess my body language, to consider whether Gurathin was right.

Part of me—a big part of me—wanted to immerse myself back in my serial. But I knew that I should pay attention. If Gurathin tried to talk to Mensah again, I wanted to know about it.

Now that I was actually listening, I understood what Mensah and her team were there for.

They were sorting through their evidence of GrayCris' crimes. Apparently they had agreed to share evidence, as well as act as witnesses for them if it came to that. I got the impression that DeltFall needed the PreservationAux help more than the other way around. A lot of their security equipment and records were sabotaged or destroyed, and they didn't have any witnesses, what with them all being dead.

PreservationAux were being very careful with what they handed over. Did they not trust DeltFall? Maybe they just wanted to ensure none of their research was included. I couldn't remember what exactly they were researching, but presumably it was valuable.

It took an embarrassing amount of time to realise what an opportunity this was.

All this time, I had been desperately pretending to remember the events of the the survey, and here I was with a detailed record sitting here, carefully formatted to make it easy to follow.

I surreptitiously poked my way past the firewalls, and started downloading the data.

The data didn't start until 22 cycles into the survey. That was frustrating, but made sense; Preservation culture was obsessed with privacy. If they didn't think there was anything relevant to the case, they wouldn't share it.

It started with Hostile One. This was the only part of the survey I could clearly remember—being in that thing's mouth. They had recordings from their field cameras. Bharadwaj's camera showed the creature bursting up and grabbing her, whilst Volescu's showed me diving in to save her. It looked pretty heroic, actually. Like a serial. Except with shitty audio quality.

A log from HubSystem, with the corresponding timestamp, showed that an abort command had been sent to me. The video cut off immediately after. I must have stopped my rescue—otherwise they would know I was rogue—but it must have already been enough, at that point, because Bharadwaj and Volescu were still alive.

It cut, and then the survey team were discussing missing map areas. It cut again, and we were in a hopper, flying towards the missing sections. As we were flying towards a mountain range, the autopilot cut out. Luckily, Mensah was ready at the controls, and steered up to safety. The log indicated another HubSystem glitch. I was starting to sense a pattern.

Another log for a suspicious package that HubSystem directed me to download. This one had a notation that the PresAux team had already begun to suspect that HubSystem may have been compromised, and had the forethought to disconnect me from it. (I would have chosen not to update with the package anyway, but it was smart thinking on their part. By this point, they were clearly having discussions away from the prying eyes of the Hab, because the discussion was not included).

It was all good information, but the time skips were frustrating. It was hard to assess my behaviour, and the dynamic between myself and the clients, when so much was cut out.

Then I got to the good bit.

Well, good here is relative. I'm not sure that discovering mutilated corpses would generally be considered a positive. Still, I finally got some continuous recording, featuring both myself and Mensah. Perfect.

This section had two perspectives—one from Mensah's field camera, and one from my own, which I had shared with her for monitoring purposes. The way we interacted was… strange. Not like a client and SecUnit. More like a team.

A strange, warm feeling was ballooning in my torso.

I offered up my opinions in a way that technically wouldn't be allowed by a governor module, but was subtle enough that I doubted any humans would notice. I wouldn't do that unless I really wanted to keep these humans alive, and actually believed the humans might listen to me.

In the recordings, I went ahead and discovered the bodies, the blood stains, the detritus of a massacre. I watched myself battle the other SecUnits. And I watched Mensah come rushing in to save me.

She risked her life to save me. A human put themself in mortal danger… to save the life of a SecUnit.

I had to pause the video. I was having an emotion.

My face was doing something weird; I wished I had my helmet. If any of the humans turned around, they would see me. I tried to stay as still and unobtrusive as possible.

Then the DeltFall representatives arrived, and I really had to fix my face.

I didn't continue the video, because I wasn't sure if I would have any more emotions. With the DeltFall people in the room, there was no position where I wasn't in anyone's eye line. It was much too exposed. Besides, I didn't trust the DeltFall representatives, and I wanted to be pay attention in the case that they tried anything.

It was mostly boring posturing. It was classic corporate language, the DeltFall reps trying to seem impressive and important so that they could convince PreservationAux to do whatever they wanted. Not that it was working. Pin-Lee was more than equal to it. She was sharp as fuck, and not easily cowed. PreservationAux wouldn't hand over the data (y'know, the stuff I had just hacked into) until they had an agreement on the exact terms of their cooperation.

I wondered if Pin-Lee had experience with corporate assholes before, or if assholes were just the same in every corner of the galaxy.

Then things got really bad really fast.

"You know, there's one thing that would really help us nail these GrayCris bastards," the main DeltFall solicitor said. (Yes, he really talked like that.)

"Go on," said Pin-Lee, already skeptical.

The guy stabbed a finger in my direction. "Your SecUnit must have recorded the whole thing. Those memory files would be a useful as hell."

My organic parts clenched so hard, I was worried one of my blood vessels might pop.

"No," Pin-Lee said flatly.

I was so panicked, it took me a full 2.9 seconds to process that word. For a human, that might sound reasonable, but for a construct, that was an absurdly long processing delay.

"No?" the solicitor said, laughing a little, like her denial was ridiculous. "Why not?"

"Because you don't need it. We're already offering you recordings and Hub data for all the relevant incidents."

"With huge time gaps between them," he argued. "It looks suspicious, like maybe they could have been doctored."

Gurathin piped in, "Any good system analyst would find they're genuine."

The solicitor held his hands up. "I'm trying to help you guys. A continuous recording from that SecUnit would establish a timeline, it would ground all your other evidence."

Pin-Lee stood up. She wasn't tall, but the effect was still impressive. "Please. If what we're offering isn't enough for you to win your case, that's not an issue with the evidence—that's an issue with your competency as a solicitor. And I don't work with incompetent solicitors."

There was a sharp intake of breath from several humans. The solicitor spluttered. "Excuse me?"

Mensah stepped in then. "We've already offered plenty of evidence, as well as witness statements. This is meant to be cooperative. You've yet to explain exactly what we gain from this."

And then they were arguing, but not about me anymore. I wondered if that was on purpose.

I had, somehow, gotten away with it.

I could leave.

Again, here I was, unmonitored whilst Mensah and the others slept.

I could leave, but I wasn't going to.

The warm feeling I had when I saw Mensah's footage was still there, making my insides feel gooey, but in a nice way, not in a got-shot-with-a-high-intensity-energy-weapon way. She had risked her life to save me. It went against my entire purpose; I was supposed to be left behind.

She hadn't left me behind, even when it was the safer option, the sensible option. A human had gone up against a SecUnit to save me.

So instead of leaving, I watched the rest of the data. I watched Mensah and myself go up against GrayCris and win.

Well, win might be an exaggeration. In the sense that we did very much get blown up. And fell down a cliff. But we launched the beacon, and nobody died except the bad guys.

I remembered the almost-memory I had when meeting Mensah for the first (from my perspective) time. The flash of light, and heat, and falling. It was comforting to know that had been real.

And then I rewound and watched Mensah kill that SecUnit 36 more times. I should probably feel more conflicted about than I do—it's not like the SecUnit had any choice about trying to kill us. Whatever. Not many things made me actually happy. I wasn't going give this one up just because I felt like I should feel bad about it.

I was back on Preservation, in a local transit with Mensah. I wasn't even mad about being on a planet (gross), in public transport shuttle (even more gross), with a bunch of random humans (the grossest).

I was kind of… happy. To be going back to the farm, with my human.

Maybe my face was showing some of this, because Mensah turned to me an murmured, "Everything okay there?"

"Yeah," I said. "Everything's good."

She gave me this knowing little smile, and I couldn't help myself. I opened a private channel, and said, You didn't ask me to share my survey data.

Of course not, she sent back. I could hear a note of confusion, even though the feed.

Why? (I knew why. Or I thought I knew why. But I wanted to hear her say it.)

She turned in her seat to look at me. I kept facing straight ahead, waiting.

When her message came, it was slow, puzzled. Well, she said, that would be a pretty stupid way to get caught. I hardly trust DeltFall enough to give them incriminating evidence. Do you?

Oh.

I didn't have a stomach, or a digestive system, but I imagined this was what nausea felt like. No, I said.

Fuck. I had really thought—

I couldn't blame the humans. Mensah hadn't lied to me; I had lied to myself. For a second there, I really thought Mensah had bought me because she cared about me. Because she wanted me to be safe here.

Humans don't care about SecUnits. It was stupid and delusional of me to think otherwise. I was here because, as far as she knew, my memory banks contained evidence of whatever crimes PreservationAux had committed on that survey.

She never wanted to save me. She was only saving herself.

Chapter Text

I was dangerously close to revealing myself.

My behaviour was edging towards full blown disobedience. I was not giving my owner the bare minimum of politeness demanded by a functioning Governor Module, and truthfully, I didn't care.

I wasn't feeling anything, except maybe angry. No, definitely angry.

Angry at Mensah, for acting like she cared. Angry at myself for believing it. And angry that I was here, on this stupid planet, fixing a chicken coop.

Yes, I know, I was the one that suggested it needed repairs, but that was when I was being an idiot and caring about things. This new, not-giving-a-fuck me did not worry about whether the chickens might be eaten at night.

Still, Mensah had ordered the replacement wire, and suggested/ordered me to fix the coop, so here I was, fixing it. I was an expensive and deadly weapon wielding a hammer, and I was using it to put nails into a post, and not, I don't know, beating someone's brains in. Fine.

I should have taken my chance and found a ship out of here. Idiot.

I was playing music, because I couldn't even pay attention to my serials properly. (My brain was constantly buzzing—although that might be the swarms of insects that hang around on planets like these. Did I mention that I hate insects?)

At first, I thought I would like bot produced music more, with its perfect precision, but I've ended up listening to more human music. The minute mistiming and imperfect pitch should have been annoying, but it wasn't. That just made me more mad, for some reason.

So I was listening to a lot of loud, angry music. I had copied it from Amena's media storage (she also liked loud and angry music).

What I needed was a plan. A way off of Preservation—preferably one that didn't get me caught. It would have been easier from the station, with its many transport docks. It would take a while just to get off the planet, and in that time Mensah could discover my escape and call ahead to get security on the lookout of a rogue SecUnit. The only advantage I had was knowing that security on this system was light. They didn't use constructs, and humans suck at doing their own security. If I found a way through—

What was that?

My body was hitting the floor before I had fully processed the visual input. It was instinct, to try to find cover, make myself a smaller target. There was someone in the trees, and my brain was screaming sniper, whilst my risk assessment module screamed in a more general way.

Then the rest of my brain kicked in, and I realised it wasn't a sniper. It was worse.

It was Child 3 [Hostile].

She had climbed to an impressive height. There was nobody at the bottom of the tree; I suspected no one knew she was climbing it.

I checked the public feed to find out what the safe falling distance is for a child of her size, and—

FUCK.

I ran. My top speed is impressive, and I was using all of it, so it only took me an objective 5.5 seconds to cover the distance, but it felt like a subjective hour. I could see, even from this distance, that the branch she was on looked unstable. The tree was strong and sturdy at the bottom, but it grew spindly as it stretched up.

Child 3 [Hostile] waved as I approached. Somehow, she managed to make the wave seem smug.

My first instinct was to climb the tree and grab her. My risk assessment module seemed alarmed at the prospect. I realised I would only destabilise the tree further. I was heavier than the average human, let alone this small one. I would break off the branches, and possibly jostle her grip in the process.

I would have to do something much scarier: talk to her.

"You have climbed to an unsafe height. Does Mensah know you're up there?"

"Don't tell Second Mom!" Child 3 [Hostile] shouted back. Then, a beat later, "I mean. Yes, she knows I'm up here. "

Convincing. "I'm calling Mensah," I warned her. I considered loading my Hostage Negotiation learning modules, but company modules were a piece of crap anyway.

"You're not allowed! Amena told me what SecUnits are!"

This stumped me; I had been under the impression that the kids already knew what SecUnits are. "What?"

"You're not human, so you have to do what humans tell you to do! And I'm human! So you're not allowed to tell Mom!"

Well… she wasn't that far off, but no, I didn't have to obey all humans. Just my clients.

…Did Child 3 [Hostile] count as a client? Mensah was my primary client, as my owner, but maybe the whole family were also my clients. Except that children weren't treated like full humans, because they weren't fully grown yet. In some ways, children were property of their parents, at least in corporate law.

Does Mensah technically own Child 3 [Hostile], as well as myself? I never thought I would have anything in common with a human child, but maybe.

"No, I have to listen to my owner," I said eventually. "That's Mensah, not you."

I sent an urgent communication to Mensah's feed.

From several metres above me, I heard a loud protest, and then—

Crack.

I looked up in time to see her fall, branch giving way, falling. I heard—

—a strangled yell. Asa had turned abruptly and accidentally bumped into Sekai, knocking her off the platform.

She fell awkwardly, leg catching on a branch and—

— she bounced off the stabilizer wall and hit a blade on the extractor housing.

I heard the snap of bone.

I isolated her comm signal and heard harsh, frightened breathing. HubSystem ordered me to stay in position—

I was caught between a memory and reality, and I was cognizant of this enough to feel fear, knowing I needed to move now or—

—90 seconds before that blade moved and dumped her down to be incinerated in the collectors.

—I wouldn't be able to catch her, and I had to catch her, I had to catch her, it didn't matter if my governor module would fry the shit out of me, I had to—

I ran forward and used the tree trunk like a diving board, leaping into the air, higher than a human could ever reach. I grabbed her, remembering at the last possible moment not to use too much force, arms locking around her.

She had too much momentum, so I landed in a roll, careful to keep her shielded by my body.

We came to a stop.

Child 3 looked up at me mutely, to shocked to make a sound. I knew I should say something reassuring, but my brain was screaming, even if the kid wasn't. I was too slow. I hadn't kept her safe. I was supposed to keep her safe.

Then the kid started screaming, too.

"I'm sorry," I said, because apparently I had remembered how to speak. "I'm sorry, it's okay, you're okay." This was a lie—her leg was definitely broken—but I couldn't remember what I was supposed to say to shock victims.

'MOM!" she screamed. "MOM!"

"It's okay—" I caught myself before I called her Child 3 [Hostile]. That would not have helped the situation. "It's okay, Mattie. Your mom is on her way." I wasn't actually sure if this was true. I hadn't been paying attention to the feed. I opened Mensah's channel, and found several mildly panicked messages, ending for with I’m on my way.

"I hate you!" was Child 3 [Hostile]/Mattie's response.

"That's okay," I said. Honestly, relatable. "Mensah's coming." I could hear her now, footfalls about as fast as a human can go.

Child 3 [Hostile]/Mattie (… okay, this was getting ridiculous). Mattie was crying now, big gulping sobs. Then she seemed to catch sight of Mensah, because she started calling for her again.

"Mattie! What happened?" Mensah called back. She just about crashed into us, skidding on her knees with haste. She grabbed for Mattie, and the child grabbed back. My arms were suddenly empty. I stood and took several steps backward.

I reached for a MedSystem that wasn't there. I had to review the evidence with my eyes, like a human. "Mattie has sustained an injury to her right leg; my initial assessment suggests a fractured tibia," I told her.

"How did this happen?"

Mattie cut in, 'It's SecUnit's fault!"

Mensah looked at me sharply, waiting for explanation.

For some reason, my buffer then said, "I do not have that information, please wait whilst I search for an answer." I don't know why that happened—I wasn't processing any other inputs, or doing anything complicated. "Sorry. Uh. Mattie sustained the injury after falling from an unsafe height."

"Mattie," she said with forced calm, "were you climbing trees again?"

"…No," said Mattie, hiccuping.

A shaky sigh. "We'll deal with that later. I've already contacted Mom, and she's driving over. We'll get you to medical, and they'll fix you up, okay, sweetheart?" She pressed a kiss into Mattie's curls.

I looked away. I was having an emotion. Maybe several.

Sure enough, I could hear the family's surface vehicle racing over. I tried to distract myself from the weird painful sensation in my chest by plotting the most efficient route to Makeba Central Medical, the nearest medical centre.

Farai pulled up and spilled out of the door, sweeping both Mensah and Mattie into her arms. "What happened? Are you hurt?"

"She's alright," Mensah said. She was really good at staying calm in a crisis. "She's hurt her leg, so we need to take her to Makeba, but she's going to be fine."

"Okay," Farai said with naked relief. "Come on, Mattie, let's get you up."

I wished I had drones, so I could monitor the situation without looking at them with my eyes.

The two of them scooped Mattie up in an awkward carry. I could have done it much more easily, but I didn't want to, and I didn't think any of them wanted me to either.

Mensah got into the backseat along with Mattie, her injured leg propped up on the seats. To do this, Mattie had to turn 90 degrees in her seat, which would be dangerous in a collision. I didn't think this information would be appreciated, so I stayed silent.

"Come on, SecUnit," said Farai.

I twitched. "Perhaps it would be better if I stayed here? The chicken coop still isn't fixed, and Tano isn't home yet. Someone needs to monitor the rest of the children whilst—"

"I've already messaged Sami and Thiago, and they're going to keep an eye on things whilst we're gone," said Farai. "Get in."

I obeyed. I would have either way, with it being a direct order, but I was actually happy to do so, now that I knew Sami and Thiago were approaching. I had met the two of them only once, and they hadn't been able to hide their distaste. They acted like I was going to go on a murder spree any second (which is what most humans think rogue SecUnits do, but considering they didn't know I was rogue, it was still kind of rude).

Their kids hadn't visited Mensah's side of the farm since that first day. It wasn't hard to figure out why.

Because the backseat was taken up by Mensah and Mattie, I had to take the front. This felt wrong. In standard operation, I was supposed to stand in the cargo section of transport. There wasn't room to stand here, so not only was I in the human section, but I was sitting on the furniture too.

Mattie's crying had mostly petered out, and Mensah was keeping up a continuous stream of chatter, which seemed effective in keeping her calm. Farai had a tight grip on the steering, and did not look in my direction.

It felt like a very long journey.

At Makeba, an autonomous gurney was ready at the urgent care entrance, and Mensah helped Mattie out of the car. I stood to the side and did nothing. It felt familiar, but in a bad way.

The only good thing about being at the medical centre was the cameras. They were sparse—no cameras in treatment rooms, or recovery rooms—but after the farm, it felt luxurious to watch our progress into the hospital from more than one input.

Farai logged Mattie's details, and a human doctor (not a MedBot) quickly came to assess the situation. Mensah went into the treatment room with them, but Farai stayed outside with me. She was looking at me now. My threat assessment spiked.

"What happened?" she hissed. Yeah, she was angry.

"Mattie was injured. It was an accident." Then, because this seemed an inadequate response: "I'm sorry."

Farai looked even more enraged, which was the opposite of my intended effect. "What. Happened," she ground out.

Since the visit to Preservation Station, and the new understanding that came with it, I had been oscillating between anger and indifference. I had thought that I didn't care about these humans, or what they thought of me.

I wished I could feel that indifference now. Instead, all I felt was anxiety.

I looked at the wall, and pretended I was composing an incident report. "At 1507 local time, my sensors noticed abnormal movement in a tree approximately 5 degrees West-Southwest from my position—"

"Can you talk like a fucking human being for once," Farai burst out, "and just tell me what fucking happened?"

This was more swearing than I had heard in the total of my time on Preservation. I would be impressed, if I didn't feel so close to Death By Protective Mother.

"Yes. Uh. Mattie climbed a tree. I attempted to retrieve her—" Was that too SecUnit? Most of the time, I was fighting to sound more like a SecUnit. I began again. "I couldn't convince her to come down, and I was worried that climbing up after her might shake the tree and cause her to fall. I told her that I had contacted Mensah, and I think this caused her to move, which then caused the branch she was standing on to snap."

There was a pause of of 5.1 seconds whilst Farai processed this. "So… it really was an accident."

"Yes," I confirmed.

She was blinking a lot, and her eyebrows were still pinched, but I was pretty sure her expression was less anger and more confusion now. "Why are you sorry, then?"

Well, that sounded like a trick question. "For not preventing the situation and failing to keep Mattie safe," I tried.

Apparently, that wasn't what she was looking for. "But what could you have actually done?"

Maybe she wanted me to prove I wouldn't make the same mistake in the future? To show that I understood my fuck up? "By informing Mattie of my communication with Mensah, I triggered an emotional response. This likely caused her to shift her position, which in turn caused the branch to snap. I shouldn't have done so."

Another pause, this time 4.8 seconds. Was she doing that on purpose, to make me more anxious? If so, it was very effective. "Right. And what happened after she fell?"

"I caught her," I said, relieved to finally have some positive information.

"Is that how she broke her leg?"

"No," I said, much more forcibly than would be allowed for a SecUnit. I tried to control my voice better. "No, she collided with a branch during the fall, and her leg was injured by that impact."

Farai ran her hands through her hair. "Okay. Okay. This… this wasn't your fault. I'm sorry for my reaction. I was scared, and I made an assumption."

I had no fucking idea how to respond to that one. I didn't see how she had come to that conclusion. I was a SecUnit; the physical safety of my clients was literally my whole purpose. It was my responsibility. If my governor module was working, it would have punished me for sure.

Still, I wasn't going to argue with her. "Okay," I said, and hoped the conversation was over.

She took a seat in the waiting area. I stood with my back to one wall, facing the other. I really wanted to put some media on, but it felt rude, considering I had almost got the kid killed. It seemed appropriate that I wait anxiously like Farai.

It wasn't much later that Mensah and Mattie came back out, Mattie awkwardly hobbling along on crutches. Her calf was in a cast.

Farai jumped out of her seat. "Everything okay?"

"She's fine," Mensah confirmed. "The MedSystem regrew the damaged bone. She just has to keep off it for the next few days, whilst the new tissue hardens up."

"I see," said Farai. "You know what that means? No school for you, missy."

"What?" Mattie gasped. "That's not fair!"

In the serials I had watched, kids hated going to school, but on Preservation the kids seemed excited to leave each morning. They go four day cycles a week, and it was currently cycle 2 of the off period (on Preservation, they call this the Week End), so she would only miss 2 or 3 days. From her horrified expression, you'd think she was being sent off to work in a mine or something.

"If you didn't want to miss school, you shouldn't have been climbing trees without adult supervision. Rules are there for a reason," Farai said firmly.

"Second Mom," she whined, turning to Mensah beseechingly.

"Nope, your Mom is right," said Mensah. "It's important that your bone heals properly."

"Ugh," said Mattie. I was also thinking ugh. I counted on those four school days to have a shred of peace.

Mensah nudged her, gentle enough that she didn't wobble on her crutches. "Don't you have something to say to SecUnit?"

My organic muscles stiffened under the sudden attention.

Mattie smiled up at me, sweet as anything. "Thank you, SecUnit," she said. Somehow, she managed to say it like a threat.

My threat assessment module took note.

"You're welcome," I said in my most neutral voice.

I had a feeling that Mattie was going to earn back that [Hostile] tag.

Chapter Text

It started with a drawing.

That sounds pretty innocent, but Mattie was involved, so it was decidedly not.

About once a week, the kids all had a scheduled Craft Hour, because apparently it was good for their little developing brains or something. They used physical media, made art or bracelets or whatever, and usually left a mess.

They did a Craft Hour after we got back from Makeba Medical. I was busy finishing the chicken coop, but from the evidence, most of the time was spent drawing on Mattie's cast. Each of the kids had signed their name, and there were an array of doodles ranging from surprisingly good to totally indecipherable.

Mattie, however, had her own project. When I returned to the house to report the chicken coop as completed, she was there, with her parents.

"I made you a drawing," she said, smiling too wide, "as a thank you for saving me. It's you and me as Decca and Tamogila from my favourite show. Its about an explorer who saves an alien princess from being kidnapped!"

Which might have been sweet, except that she drawn as was the explorer, with the cool but impractical armour, energy weapon on her hip, whilst I was the alien princess, dressed in an elaborate and even less practical dress. And I had antennae. And I was… purple.

(It was actually a pretty good drawing. Which made it worse, somehow.)

"That's so kind of you," cooed Tano. I couldn't tell if they were actually sold by this performance, or if they had decided to punish me via social expectation.

"Thank you," I said in my most neutral voice. I pinched the sheet of craft paper and held it away from myself, as if she might applied a contact poison.

Farai said, "I'm sure SecUnit will put it up on its wall." From the smirk she was wearing, I was pretty sure she was less taken in by Mattie's overly innocent smile.

I looked to Mensah for help. She said, "I'll get you some adhesive."

Right. I was on my own.

Remember what I had said about not wanting to be a servant bot?

Ha. Yeah. Funny how that had turned out.

Mattie had pretty quickly claimed that the crutches weren't comfortable, and applied to her parents to carry her around like she was several years (?) younger than she was. (I still didn't have a good grasp on human aging.)

Except then she figured out a way to be both lazy, and annoy me at the same time.

I'm not a fan of touching. I just don't like it. It's not so bad in an emergency—y'know, carrying an injured client to safety, or whatever—but outside of that context, it kind of makes me want to peel my skin off. I don't know how Mattie had figured that out, but she sure was leveraging it against me. Because now she expected me to carry her everywhere.

And I couldn't say no without looking like an asshole.

The first time, Mensah had given me a look, like she was expecting me to ask for help. I remembered what she had said after that first interaction with the kids: If you need some space, you can tell me, and I'll make sure the kids find somewhere else to be.

But if I did that, it would mean Mattie would have won.

So now here I was, carrying her around, or carrying things to her, or watching her stupid alien princess show with her (which was actually pretty good, but I wasn't going to tell anyone that).

Okay, so maybe it wasn't as bad as I was making out. I knew I had things pretty good, compared to the kind of work most SecUnits do, and it was almost fun, watching media with someone, rather than secretly.

But it was the principle of the thing. At least with security work, nobody would expect me to like it.

Also: chickens.

With Mattie injured, it was down to Daran to feed them and collect the eggs, except that he refused to go without Mattie. At first, I thought this was just laziness and opportunism, but after my first attempt at feeding time, I realised how wrong I was.

Those things are vicious.

Okay, maybe that was unfair. The majority were somewhere on a scale between friendly and neutral, at least most of the time. Up until feeding time. Then suddenly my threat assessment got really loud and annoying, and I thought it was faulty up until the pecking started.

It fucking hurt, and I didn't even have a cubicle to get fixed in.

I hate planets, I hate chickens, and I hate being a stupid servant bot.

"Why don't they just go back to Decca's home planet together?" I asked, frowning at the display surface.

I was in the living room (weird phrase, living room. Is it indicating that the room itself is alive? Or that dead people aren't allowed inside?) with Mattie, watching The Hunt for Tamogila. The titular alien princess had just left her saviour (Decca, the tough anti-corporate adventurer) to try and get back to her home planet. This was strategically stupid of her; the pair had only just escaped the corporate entities trying to hunt her down to kidnap her and, like, study her in a lab or something. I don't know, the show isn't super clear about that part.

"Because she has to go back to her fiancé," Mattie explained.

"Ugh," I said.

"I know!" said Mattie. "It's so annoying. Like, he's just some stupid boy. She could go and explore the galaxy with Decca, but instead she has to go home to get married or whatever."

"Human romance is weird," I said.

"So weird! It's dumb," Mattie said agreeably.

I watched the credits roll for a moment. Then, in the most neutral voice I could muster, I prompted, "Are you planning on playing the next episode?"

"Duh."

Mattie asked for my help with schoolwork exactly once. Apparently because my simulator module says so isn't a good enough explanation for her physics worksheet.

Ah well, more time for Sanctuary Moon.

The cast was coming off tomorrow, so it seemed to be strange timing when she asked, "Will you sign my cast? You're the only one who hasn't."

"Uh," I said, "if you want."

She grinned, and hopped away to grab a selection of pens. Funny how the crutches were only uncomfortable when it was convenient for her.

When offered a selection of colours, I realised I didn't know which to choose. Mattie suggested I use my favourite colour, with the confidence of a child who has never considered that someone might have different life experiences to her. I didn't have a favourite colour. I had a favourite serial (Sanctuary Moon) and a favourite kind of gun (big ones), but not a favourite colour.

I chose green at random. Mattie said, "Ew, green is the worst colour."

I decided that green was now my favourite colour, actually.

"Should I just write… SecUnit?" I asked, awkward. It was a weird thing to write on a child's cast, sure, but it was better than Murderbot. Probably.

"That's your name, isn't it?" she asked with a fair amount of judgement.

So I wrote SecUnit. But it looked kind of sad and impersonal, surrounded by her family's names and drawings. So I sketched out a little SecUnit figure to go with the name.

I capped the pen, and returned it to Mattie, who had folded herself nearly in half to get a good look at what I had drawn. She squinted. "What is it?"

Okay, so it was my first attempt at drawing anything, but I thought it was pretty good. At least recognisable. "It's a SecUnit," I said, and only just resisted adding duh. I was spending too much time around human children.

"You don't look like that," she pointed out, which— huh.

I had drawn myself in full armour. Mattie had never seen me in armour.

I experienced 2.5 seconds of disorientating cognitive dissonance.

"Not anymore," I agreed.

When we returned to Makeba Central Medical, Mattie wanted me to come in with her, instead of Mensah.

I gave Mensah a wide eyed look—I was so stunned, I forgot to even be uncomfortable about the eye contact—but she just smiled a little and did a little shooing motion. So I went inside.

I was worried that Mattie might expect me to comfort her, or worse, hold her hand. (Children's hands are always at least a bit sticky. This is a known fact.)

Mattie hopped up onto the MedSystem platform without help, so I stayed with my back to the wall, out of arms reach. I would have to go over if she asked for me, but I didn't want to encourage her.

The cast removal was done by a precision laser. It was a stressful process. For me, not Mattie. She chattered on about what show we should watch next, heedless of the high intensity laser coming precariously close to her bare skin. I wished I had hacked into the MedSystem to check when it had last been calibrated. I wasn't going to do it now, in case the intrusion distracted it mid process.

She kept the cast, after it came off. I hoped Mensah would talk her out of that. It had only been on for a few days, but it already had an unwashed sock smell.

Mattie returned to school. This was an objective positive. I had more time to myself again.

More time to stare at walls like a good SecUnit/servant bot.

I liked being left alone. I didn't like humans. Humans were annoying, and stupid, and frequently did annoying and stupid things.

I liked being alone.

My performance reliability dropped by a half percent. I pretended I didn't notice.

Okay, I was bored. Are you happy now? I had gotten used to be bothered through the day, and now all this interrupted time felt stifling. I kind of wanted some GrayCris asshole to come try something, just so I could be useful again.

Mensah went up to Preservation Station. Without me.

"It would be safer for me to accompany you," I informed her. Again. Technically I shouldn't be insisting like this, but she was being stupid.

"I understand that I would be physically safer," Mensah said, measured as ever, "but I'm concerned about how it affects you."

What.

"It does not affect me," I said.

She hesitated. "Last time, you seemed… distressed, after we returned." My face must have shown my panic, because she quickly followed up with, "You didn't do anything wrong, you're not in trouble. I got the sense that the experience negatively affected your mental well-being, and I don't want to destabilise you like that again."

"It wasn't because of the station," I said, and then wished I could take it back. I had basically admitted that she was right—that something had affected me emotionally. That I had emotions to affect.

"Then what caused it? Was it something I—"

"No," I said, too quick. "No, it was nothing. Nothing happened."

Mensah looked directly at me for a beat. It was uncomfortable. "I will only be gone for one cycle. I'll be fine," she said. "When I get back, we can discuss this further, but I think this time, I should go on my own."

I wondered if SecUnits could go crazy from lack of input.

I mean, most SecUnit jobs are actually pretty boring. Lots of staring at walls whilst you wait for someone to try and kill someone else. Or staring at the cubicle wall whilst waiting to be delivered to your next job. Or staring at the perimeter whilst you wait for hostiles to come into range.

Just a lot of waiting, I guess.

But even then, you've got stuff to analyse, input from the SecSystem and all its cameras and hidden microphones. Processing every conversation for any hint of violence (or any valuable proprietary information that the company might want to sell). Watching for a sign that one of your humans is about to do something stupid and dangerous.

There was so much space. In my head.

Not even Sanctuary Moon was enough to keep me occupied.

Mensah was on Preservation Station. All of the kids were at school. Tano was at work (they had a small store at the local trading post, where they sold farm goods and Farai's homemade knitwear). Farai was visiting Sami and Thiago.

I was so bored that I started doing the washing up. (Yeah, I know, not helping with the servant bot thing, but I was getting desperate).

Most people had appliances to do this shit for them, but for some reason Mensah and family washed the dishes by hand. (I suspected it was to create an extra chore to keep the kids busy when they were being annoying). I filled the sink with warm, soapy water, and started wiping down the plates. It was gross. Like, I really cannot overstate how gross it was. Food in general is weird and unpleasant looking most of the time, but old food was a whole new level. And then the water started getting gray, and little bits of food were floating on the surface, and why the fuck was I doing this? Was this really who I was? Doing chores for my owners, before they even asked me to?

The plate cracked in two. I guess I had been holding it too hard.

Disgusted with myself, I unplugged the sink, and threw the shards of ceramic into the trash. Then, on second thought, I shifted it around until it was buried at the bottom, where nobody would see it.

I wiped my hands, and hid in the room that was supposedly mine.

I had started, at some point, to wonder if I could manually initiate hibernation.

SecUnits can't sleep. I don't need sleep, and my energy levels were consistently high, considering I hadn't discharged my energy weapon or undertaken any significant physical activity. Still, I felt… tired.

If I spent an extended amount of time in a low oxygen environment, I would automatically go into hibernation, to reduce the amount of oxygen I used.

I poked around my systems, wondering where that function was hidden.

Mensah got back to the farm in once piece.

I guess she hadn't needed me after all.

One of my alarms triggered.

I had been staying mostly out of everyone's private feed conversations. Mostly. I had, however, set up monitoring to flag the use of certain words. Words like SecUnit.

Mensah was talking about me.

I pulled up the conversation. It was a group chat, with all of the PresAux survey crew in it. I scrolled back to get the context.

Mensah: Hi, all. How is everyone?

Ratthi: I'm good!! how are things on the farm?

Arada: Overse and I are doing well, thank you! <3

Pin-Lee: I'm good

Bharadwaj: I'm recovering well, thank you for asking. How are you, Mensah? How are things with SecUnit?

Ratthi: Bharadwaj!! glad to hear your recovery is going good! :)

Mensah: @Bharadwaj, that's actually what I wanted to talk to you all about. SecUnit seems to be struggling to integrate to civilian life. I admit, I am worried.

Ratthi: Oh no! What's happened?

Pin-Lee: oh shit

Mensah: Nothing has happened, per se. It just seems unhappy here. I'm starting to feel like I did the wrong thing, bringing it here.

Panic sparked up my artificial spine. Mensah regretted buying me. Was she going to get rid of me? Return me to the company? Or worse, she could sell me to the highest bidder, and then I would probably end up working as a refurbished sexbot somewhere, until I went full rogue and killed all the humans.

Bharadwaj: You're being too hard on yourself. It was always going to be a difficult adjustment.

Mensah: That's kind of you, but I'm worried that I'm making it worse.

Arada: What can we do to help?

Mensah: I'm not sure, exactly. I was wondering, assuming you all think it's a good idea, if you would like to come visit?

Ratthi: YES! absolutely!!

Overse: Respectfully, are you sure that won't overwhelm it?

Huh. Overse seemed cool. Too bad I didn't remember much about her.

Mensah: I suspect it might, yes, but honestly… I'm not sure what else to do.

And then Gurathin (ugh) decided to pipe up.

Gurathin: I did say it was acting strangely at the DeltFall meeting.

Pin-Lee: Wait, what? You didn't say anything to me.

Gurathin: After what happened on the survey, it seemed prudent that I speak directly to Mensah, rather than throwing out accusations.

Ratthi: So what are you saying?

Gurathin: Nothing. Just… it was acting different. I'm not trying to cause any paranoia or conflict.

Mensah: I appreciate you coming to me with your concerns, Gurathin. I agree, it is acting differently. However, I don't think it would be helpful to speculate at this time.

Volescu: Sorry, all! The family and I are on a visit to the lakes of Shamori. It's beautiful here, but the planetary feed is rather spotty!

Arada: Hi, Volescu! Hope you're having a lovely time!

Volescu: Thank you, Arada! I'm glad to hear you're all well, though less glad to hear that SecUnit is having difficulty. If I was on Preservation, I would absolutely come visit!

Mensah: I appreciate that, Volescu. Please give my best to your family.

Mensah: Volescu?

Gurathin: His feed connection cut out again.

Mensah: Ah, okay. Well, we have agreement, shall we begin to organise the visit?

And then it was just blah blah blah what time, what date, who's travelling with who.

So. That was… bad. Mensah knew something was up. Everyone knew it, in fact. And they were coming here, to the farm, to… observe me? Assess me?

I needed to get my shit together. I really didn't want to find out what happens if this visit goes badly.

"I don't wanna go!" Mattie whined. "I want to stay and meet your friends."

The categorisation of the PreservationAux crew as my 'friends' was so bizarre that it took me 2.8 seconds to respond. Which didn't sound like long, but considering my processing capabilities, it was pretty significant.

"Mensah decided that, not me," I said, because really, what did she expect me to do about it?

"Come on, it'll be fun," said Lucin (previous designation Child 9) said. "We don't get to see the cousins so much anymore."

I tried not to take that comment personally. Yes, Thiago and Sami still wouldn't let their kids get anywhere near me. I get why—you know, the whole corporate killing machine/spyware thing—but it was still rude. To Mensah, I mean. They were basically saying they didn't trust her judgement.

"Yeah," said Amena, grabbing one of Mattie's hands and swinging it. "It'll be fun. Besides, they're just going to talk about boring adult stuff." Amena herself was about to turn of age according to Preservation customs, but I understood that she was trying to make Mattie feel better.

"SecUnit, come with us," Mattie suggested.

"I can't," I said. I actually wished I could. I'd take Thiago and Sami over a crew of people who knew me before the memory wipe, and seem determined to figure out what was wrong with me.

"But what if someone falls out of a tree?" asked Mattie, not appeased.

"Nobody is going to fall out of a tree," I said, "because nobody is going to be climbing trees. Right?"

"Right," she agreed, eyes wide with faux sincerity. "But what if a tree falls on me?"

"Why would a tree fall on you?"

"I don't know! But what if I needed you to come lift a tree off me?"

"Then Amena can alert me through the feed," I said. Amena, as the eldest, was the only one allowed to wear an interface. "You know how to contact me in an emergency, correct?"

Amena seemed surprised to be addressed by me. "Uh, yeah," she said, "of course."

"At top speed, I can reach Sami and Thiago's house in just under 17 seconds."

"Really?" asked Daman, coming out of his bedroom and into the blockage that Mattie had created when she refused to leave her room.

"That's so fast," said Lucin.

"Yes, it is," I said.

Mattie finally stepped out of her bedroom. "Fine!" she said. "I'll go."

Amena cheered, and held their joint hands up in the air. Mattie smiled begrudgingly.

Strategically, it was better that the kids go. It was one less factor for me to consider. Plus, I had gotten a bit too… comfortable around Mattie. It was clear that she didn't understand what normal SecUnit behaviour was, and so it felt safe to say things I shouldn't be able to say, like arguing about the motivations of characters from The Hunt for Tamogila.

Still, I didn't like the kids being out of sight when unknown potential hostiles would be on the premises. I didn't even have any drones to monitor them with.

Fuck, I would kill for some drones.

I hid in the bedroom I was allocated, and listened as people arrived.

My audio sensitivity was pretty good, so I could hear each word that was said—useful, as I didn't have any other surveillance equipment, and I was pretty sure they would be talking about me.

Ratthi was the first to arrive. This was unsurprising; he had been the most enthusiastic about visiting, and seemed to be under the impression that we were friends. He also greeted Mensah's marital partners like they were friends—which, maybe they were. Ratthi seemed the kind to make friends with anything that moved.

It took him only 71 seconds to ask about me. Not a good sign.

"No change," Mensah said, voice pitched low, but not low enough to cause me problems. "I think—"

Any further discussion was cut off by the arrival of Pin-Lee, Overse, and Arada. I hadn't actually spoken to Overse (at least, in my memory), but I had gathered from context that she was Arada's partner. Hopefully I hadn't known her well pre-memory wipe, either.

With Volescu still on his post retirement vacation, and Bharadwaj still recovering from Hostile One, they were waiting on only one more person. I privately hoped he had forgotten, or his transport had broken down, or he had been murdered by raiders or something.

But no. Just as I started to hope he wasn't coming (ideally for non fatal reasons, but y'know, I was flexible about that part), there was a final knock on the door, and everyone was greeting Gurathin.

Ugh.

I stayed hidden for the customary greetings (which took forever, by the way), and whilst Mensah gave a quick tour for the guests who hadn't been to the farm before. This took them briefly out of hearing range, which made me antsy, but when I took a peek out of the window, I could see Ratthi throwing a stick for Sky whilst the others laughed at his lack of athletic prowess. (Ratthi's, not Sky's. Sky was actually pretty fast.)

Then they were called in by Farai, who had cooked dinner for everyone.

I figured I was exempt from that, considering I don't eat, but apparently not, because she added, "That includes you, SecUnit!"

So. This was terrible.

If I was fast, I would reach Farai before the others came inside and intersected the path to the kitchen. As such, I was in the kitchen only 2.6 seconds later.

"It is not necessary for me to join," I said, a little desperation leaking into my voice. "My risk assessment module suggests the chance of any security issue is extremely low."

"Uhuh," said Farai, unimpressed. "Now come here and help me carry the food to the table."

Great. More servant bot work.

I shadowed Farai into the dining room. She was significantly smaller than me, so I couldn't hide behind her, but she at least created an obstacle for anyone who wanted to get excessively close to me.

The rest of the humans were already in the dining room, so I was faced with a cacophony of greetings. I kept my eyes on the dish of food I was carrying, as if it was such a delicate task that I couldn't look away, and not, y'know, carrying a small object across level ground.

Ratthi pulled out the chair next to himself, and said, "You can sit by me, if you'd like."

"Standing is adequate," I said, before backing myself into the corner.

"Are you sure?" asked Arada.

"It provides a better view of the room. For security purposes."

Everyone nodded at that, but I had the distinct impression that they were humouring me. I did not like it.

"It must be difficult," observed Overse, "not having any drones or cameras."

It was a fair point—I would give my arm for one single drone—but I did not like how much attention was on me. I felt like I was breathing funny, which was stupid, because constructs barely need any oxygen anyway.

Mensah said, "I had been meaning to buy some, but after buying out SecUnit's contract, money has been a little… scarce."

Oh, boo hoo. Buying yourself a slave cost you money. Was I supposed to feel bad?

(I didn't feel bad. At all. That would be ridiculous. It's not like I asked her to buy my contract.)

"We could crowdfund it!" suggested Ratthi.

Pin-Lee said. "I mean, it's basically an accessibility issue. We could probably use community funding."

For the love of fuck, are they serious?

"That would be amazing," said Tano. "I hadn't even thought of that."

"I can look into it, see what SecUnit would be eligible for," said Pin-Lee.

"Would its refugee status affect its eligibility?" asked Farai.

Gurathin cleared his throat awkwardly. "I was able to access community funding to fix my augments, before I got citizen status."

"It shouldn't be a problem," said Pin-Lee.

Sure. Great. Not that they had asked my opinion on it.

Arada turned in her seat. "What do you think, SecUnit? Would having drones help?"

Oh, what the shit.

"Um. It would… allow me to increase security. By monitoring the perimeter remotely. Not that it's necessary, considering the low risk situation, but if there's any concern, it could—" I managed to cut myself off. What was wrong with me? Fuck!

"I'll let you know what I find," said Pin-Lee.

I nodded, and decided I wasn't going to say anything else, perhaps ever again.

Thankfully, the conversation moved away from me. Mostly they talked about boring shit—Ratthi's love life, Arada's team leader training, that kind of stuff—all interspersed with the sounds of chewing (gross). I reduced my audio input sensitivity, and played an episode of Sanctuary Moon in the background, but the sounds of eating were inescapable.

Then the conversation turned to kids, and that took a long time. Humans love talking about their offspring. It was all pretty benign until Farai said, "Mattie actually broke her leg pretty recently."

Don't mention me, don't mention me, don't—

Tano said, "We're so thankful that SecUnit was there. It could have been much worse."

Great.

The humans all made appropriate sounds of concern. Arada asked, "Oh no, what happened?"

Mensah said, "Mattie has always loved climbing trees. She has absolutely no fear of heights." She shook her head, but she was smiling fondly. "We've told her before that she's not allowed to climb without adult supervision, but you know, children don't always appreciate that rules are there for a reason."

Tano said, "SecUnit, you were actually there. Do you want to tell the story?"

"No," I said.

A brief but excruciating pause. Then Farai said, "Basically, she climbed way too high. SecUnit noticed and rushed over. The branch Mattie was standing on snapped, and she collided with another branch and broke her leg. If it wasn't for SecUnit, she could have been seriously hurt, but it caught her before she hit the ground."

Which. Was technically true. But it failed to mention my inadequate attempts to talk her down, and the fact that the branch might not have snapped if I hadn't alarmed Mattie by telling her that Mensah was coming.

"Wow," said Arada, "I'm so glad SecUnit was there!"

"Classic SecUnit," said Ratthi warmly, clapping his hands.

I wanted to tell them that their praise was misguided—that I had fucked up by allowing Mattie to fall in the first place—but I wanted to leave the room more. So I picked up some empty plates, and said, "Excuse me. I am going to clean these."

There were some noises of dissent, but I pretended not to hear them and fled to the kitchen.

I was having an emotion. Maybe several. And the timing was really fucking inconvenient, because I was supposing to be acting normal, not like a deranged rogue murderbot who runs away because someone said something nice about me.

From the kitchen, I could still hear the humans talking about me, Ratthi asking if he had said something wrong. It wasn't helping me to calm down, so I turned off my audio input. It was sort of better, because I could pretend they weren't there, but it was another kind of stressful, to have so little sensory information. No cameras, no drones, and now no sound.

My chest hurt. I ran a diagnostic, but it came back clean. So that's super helpful.

I started actually washing the dishes, because I figured it would look really fucking suspicious if I didn't even follow through on my excuse. I was very careful this time with how much pressure I applied.

Having to touch the gross food wasn't helping me calm down either. I should have told them I needed to check the perimeter. At least that way, I could get out of hearing range properly, and not have to touch dirty dish water.

Then—

Movement at the edge of my vision. I span sharply, gun port twitching, opening audio back up, but it was just Mensah, hands up in surrender. She said, "Sorry—"

Simultaneously, I said, "Apologies—"

We both stopped. For an awkward 3.1 seconds, nobody said anything.

Mensah cleared her throat, dropping her hands. "I didn't mean to startle you. I just wanted to check that you were okay."

I realised I was still holding a soapy plate. I turned (which had the added bonus of angling my face away) and continued to wash it. "I'm fine," I said.

"I'm sorry if that was overwhelming."

I had run out of things to wash, so I drained the dirty water and started drying. (Which was also kind of gross. The towel they used to dry the dishes had already been touched by lots of human hands (which are covered in bacteria), and then wiped all over the newly clean dishware. Stupid system.) "It wasn't," I said.

"Okay," said Mensah, but she didn't sound like she believed me. "You know, you don't have to do that. The dishes."

She didn't want me to come with her to Preservation Station, and now she doesn't want me to help with chores? What did she buy me for, exactly? So I could stand around and look pretty?

I didn't stop drying, because then I would have to turn around. "It's fine."

"Is it?" she asked.

"Yes." Fuck, now I was running out things to dry.

"Is— Am I doing something wrong? Am I making you uncomfortable?"

Putting things away! That comes after drying. I scrubbed through my memories of seeing people take dishes out, and figured out where most of the stuff was stored. I started stacking plates. "No, Dr Mensah."

She made a frustrated noise. I moved onto the cutlery.

It was painfully quiet. I couldn't even hear anything from the dining room. Maybe they were trying to listen in. I hadn't liked anything Mensah had said, but now I wished she would start talking again, just to fill the awkward silence. My performance reliability ticked down steadily.

I picked up the casserole dish (at least, I think that's what it's called. Humans have so many different kinds of dishes) and admitted, "I don't know where this is stored."

Mensah took an excessively long breath. "The bottom cupboard, on the right."

I stooped and opened the cupboard door, but it was full of cleaning supplies. I paused, unsure.

"Oh, sorry," said Mensah, stepping closer. "Not that one, the one next to it—"

She had gotten too close, trying to reach past me, and she brushed up against me, against the nape of my neck—

No vision, no hearing, no ability to move—

—Someone had taken off my helmet and the upper part of my armour. The sensations were only for a few seconds at a time. It was confusing and I wanted to scream—

—Then something stabbed me in the back of the neck. It felt like they were sawing my head off. A shock went through me and suddenly the rest of me was back online. I turned and shoved it off me—

Shoved—

Shoved—

Shoved—

Wait, no. I was—

In the hopper. "You have to stop me," I said. "You have to kill me."

Dr Mensah—

Mensah?

I was. I was in the kitchen. The dishes. The—

Combat override module. I was—

No, no, no. That was before. That was before, at the… the DeltFall habitat. The survey.

I was in the kitchen.

I had shoved Mensah.

"I— sorry. Are you okay? Mensah?" Fuck. Fuck, fuck , FUCK.

"I'm okay," she said, but she sounded breathless, winded. She was approximately 2.2 metres away, which meant I had pushed her with enough force to hurt, even if it wasn't a deadly amount. I had hurt her.

Time seemed to slow down. I realised, all at once, that I needed to do something, or this was over. A governed SecUnit would not be allowed to hurt a client. Not without serious punishment.

My governor module was broken, but the neural pathways it plugged into were still there; I still had all the code it used to shock the shit out of me.

Mensah would expect the governor module to kick in. I just needed to give her what she was expecting.

So I activated the code.

My knees crumpled. I didn't scream, because that would require a control over my body that I didn't have.

White hot pain. Everywhere. No escape, nowhere to hide. I couldn't think past it, couldn't rationalise or distract myself. There was pain, and nothing else.

Distantly, I realised that I had done something really stupid. The governor module doesn't shock itself; it can turn off the punishment whenever it wants. But the governor module wasn't controlling this punishment, I was— and it's a little hard to find the right piece of code when your body is on fire.

I couldn't hear. I couldn't see. My performance reliability was tanking… 67%… 62%…

I was scared.

But I had hacked my governor module for a reason. I didn't want pain to control me. I couldn't let it control me now.

I was fucking Murderbot, and I wasn't going to be taken out by a fucking governor module punishment.

With every scrap of sanity I had left, I pushed past the pain, tried to separate myself from it.

(56%)

I just needed to find it, switch it off—

(53%)

THERE—

(45%)

I switched it off.

The sudden absence of pain was almost a pain in itself. The rush of sensory information coming back made me dizzy. I tilted to one side. My shoulder pressed against something smooth and cool—the cupboard door. Sporadic aftershocks tore through me, making my organic muscles twitch, my sensory data go haywire.

Belatedly, I processed that all the humans were in the room. Staring at me.

There was silence (or as close as it gets with several humans in an enclosed space).

Then Pin-Lee broke the stillness with a loud, "What the actual fuck was that?"

I cringed. I couldn't help it. Pain lanced through my head. Too loud.

With practised calm, Mensah said, "Okay, everyone out of the room. I think SecUnit needs some space."

There were a few muted complaints, but mostly everyone obeyed. I say mostly, because fucking Gurathin hesitated at the doorway.

"I'm okay, Gurathin," Mensah said,

"I know. I just thought you might need someone with augments to help. If this is a problem with its inorganic processors."

Mensah smiled. "Thank you. I appreciate that. If I need you, I'll come get you."

Gurathin nodded wordlessly, and finally left. Which, yay, no more Gurathin, but also, shit, now Mensah was focussing on me. She was still sitting on the floor where I had knocked her down, but she had crossed her legs, as if she was sitting there because the linoleum was particularly comfortable, and not because a murderbot had attacked her.

"Are you okay? Whatever that was—it's over now?"

"Yes," I said. My voice was embarrassingly shredded, as if I actually had been screaming the whole time. Fuck, please tell me I hadn't actually been screaming.

She looked doubtful. Probably because my back muscles had just spasmed, causing my whole body to twitch upright. "Do you need medical attention?"

"That's not necessary." The governor module shocks were designed not to actually damage the product. Probably. Besides, the aftershocks were already getting weaker.

Mensah nodded, face all pinched up. Then, she said, "So. What the fuck?" Her calm had dissolved. She looked… angry? Panicked? I wasn't sure.

"I'm not sure what you mean," I hedged.

"The… seizure? What happened?"

"My governor module triggered a punishment, as a result of me using force against a client. I apologise. It was due to a temporary malfunction. It won't happen again." Shit, I sure hoped it wouldn't happen again.

"Your… governor module."

"Correct." She did know what a governor module is, right? Maybe she hadn't read any of the specs when she bought me. When she didn't say anything, I explained, "The governor module is a device that monitors and corrects construct behaviour by delivering an electric current to the construct's nervous system—"

"I know what a governor module is," she interrupted. She sounded frustrated, but like, if she knew what it was, why was she acting confused? "What I don't understand is why your governor module is online."

"Online?" I echoed blankly.

"Is it— Has it been functional since I bought your contract from the company?"

"Yes?" I said. If it sounded like a question, it was because I was so fucking confused.

"Oh deity," Mensah mumbled. She pressed her hands to her mouth. "I think I'm going to be sick."

Shit. My reflex was to stand and go to her so that I could properly assess her, but my knees still felt shaky and insubstantial, and besides, I didn't want to scare her."I recommend you seek urgent medical attention. I may have caused an internal injury—"

"Not because of that!" she snapped. I had never seen Mensah so obviously emotional. It was freaking me out. "This whole time, you couldn't— And I noticed! I noticed you were being unusually, y'know, agreeable, but I thought— I never considered it might be that!"

I was beyond confused now. I started to wonder if that flashback had been reality, and this was some kind of extended hallucination, whilst in the real world my body was being puppeted around by the combat override module. It seemed more rational than this.

I wanted to say something soothing, but I didn't know what that could even be. I didn't know what Mensah was distressed about. So I just said the truth: "I don't understand."

Mensah took a deep breath in, and released it slowly. When she spoke next, she sounded more like herself. Unfortunately, she also sounded like someone who was going to make a very inconvenient decision. "I should get Gurathin. He can take a look at your governor module. Maybe he can figure out what happened."

"That's not necessary," I said quickly.

She hesitated. "I don't want to do anything without your consent, but… can you even say yes? Or is your governor monitor forcing you to say no?"

"It's not— I'm choosing to say no," I said. I didn't understand what was happening, but if Gurathin took a look at my governor module, it wouldn't take him long to notice that it was broken as shit. He probably couldn't get past my walls anyway, but if he asked me to drop them, and I said no, it would also be pretty obvious that my governor module was broken. It was a lose-lose.

Mensah pushed the palms of her hands into her eyes. "I don't know if I can believe that," she said.

I didn't know how to convince her, but I had to try. "Please. I don't need Gurathin to do that."

"Then tell me what's happening," she said. "Explain it to me."

"Explain what?"

"Explain how the company fixed your governor module. They weren't supposed to access your logs. How did they even notice that your governor module was hacked in the first place?"

I stopped breathing. Or blinking. Or processing. Nothing made sense.

"…SecUnit?" Mensah's voice was gentle.

I didn't. Understand.

"Just talk to me. I promise, you're not in trouble. I just want to understand."

"You knew." I didn't consciously choose to speak. I wasn't in control of anything.

"I knew about what?"

"My. My governor module."

"… Yes?"

"How- How did you—"

"You don't remember? You don't remember us finding out?"

"No."

"The company… they deleted those memories?"

"Yes. All of it."

"All of it?"

"All my memories. They deleted all my memories."

Quiet. Then, soft, barely there: "Oh, SecUnit. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."

"I don't understand. You knew. You— knew that my governor module is broken, and you bought my contract anyway?"

"Yes, of course," Mensah said quickly. "You said is broken. Does that mean it's still hacked?"

Oh, fuck. Well. Too late now. "Uh. Yes. I… was lying, earlier."

"But the seizure…?"

"The module is non functional, but the neural pathway and punishment code is still there. I activated it myself. To prevent you from learning I was rogue." Which worked out so fucking great.

Mensah's face did something wobbly and awful. I turned so that I could lean my forehead against the cupboard door, where I couldn't see her face, and nobody could see mine. I could faintly hear movement, people walking, a door opening. In the feed, Mensah had messaged the PresAux crew: Thank you all for coming. I think it's best that you leave for now, and give SecUnit some space. I can explain everything tomorrow.

So now I only had to worry about Tano and Farai listening in. Which I should probably care about, but in that moment, numbness was settling over me. I felt scooped out, exhausted.

I said, "I don't want to be here."

"Oh," said Mensah. "Well… I really think we need to talk. To clear things up. But I don't want to keep you here if you're not ready to talk. We can continue tomorrow."

I thought of my room upstairs, with its lack of humans, but I wasn't sure I could walk yet, and I really didn't want to try and fall over. Besides, another question had occurred to me. "What are you going to do with me now?"

"What do you mean?"

"Without my memories, there is no purpose to keeping me. There is no possibility of the company discovering your crimes."

She made a strange, spluttering noise. "My crimes?"

Which. Okay. Weird response. "Yes. The crimes PreservationAux committed during the course of the survey."

"I— SecUnit, I have no idea what you're talking about."

The numbness faded; frustration encroached. I twisted my face slightly towards her, just enough to squint at her out of the corner of my eye. "What do you mean? You told me, after the meeting with DeltFall."

"What?"

Oh, for fucks sake. I pulled up the memory, and shoved it into her feed. She startled slightly at the unexpected input, and then her eyes went distant as she watched it back.

She suddenly dropped her head into her hands. "Incriminating evidence," she mumbled, so quiet that it was barely audible, even to me. Then she took a sharp breath, straightened up, and said, "SecUnit, I was talking about you."

"Me?" Wait, had I committed crimes?

"Your— you know, your governor module situation. I meant that we couldn't give DeltFall your memories without giving them evidence that you're rogue."

Oh. Well. That was… unexpected.

Has anyone ever died from embarrassment? If not, I might be the first.

"Did you think I bought you just to… to hide evidence of a crime?"

I turned back away from her, and didn't answer.

"Deity, I've really messed this up," she said.

That's stupid. I was the one who had been lying about everything and misinterpreting her.

"I know you have no reason to believe me, but I was only trying to help you. I wanted to… well, free you. Or, as close to free as you can get. I wanted to get you away from the company. I didn't have any other motivations."

She was right. I had no reason to believe her. But I really wanted to.

I think part of me did.

"I'm going to go upstairs now," I said. Then, because that felt rude, I added, "If that's okay."

"Of course," she said quickly. "You don't need my permission."

Yeah, that was going to take some time to get used to.

I stood on shaky legs, holding onto the kitchen counter until I was sure I could stay upright.

I said, "Goodnight, Mensah."

Mensah said, "Goodnight, SecUnit."

I think I get it now.

I don't know what I want. I said that at some point, I think. But it isn't that, it's that I don't want anyone to tell me what I want, or make decisions for me. I know now that I'm supposed to be making my own decisions, here, but the truth is, as long as I stay here, I'll never know how to make decisions for myself, and only for myself. Some part of me is always going to be wondering about how my actions affect you.

That's why I left you, Dr. Mensah, my favourite human. By the time you get this, I'll be leaving Preservation.

Murderbot end message—

Oh wait, what the shit.

Mattie had opened the door to my room. (Huh, it really was my room. Funny how I could accept this now, just as I was leaving.)

I said, "It's your rest period. You should be sleeping."

"Does Second Mom know you're climbing out the window?"

"Don't tell Mensah," I said automatically. I realised too late I should have just said yes.

Mattie considered. "You told her when I was climbing the tree."

"Because that was dangerous," I reasoned. "I can safely climb out the window."

"And then what? You're just… leaving? Without saying goodbye?" Her expression had gone weird. I was clearly having issues with my facial interpretation module, because it was tagging it as [hurt], which wasn't possible.

I said, "I was going to leave a letter."

"Because you're too scared to tell us you're leaving?"

"No," I said, like a liar. I also put both my feet back into the room, because if I left right now, it would look like I was running away from this conversation, which would mean Mattie had won the conversation, which was unacceptable.

Mattie stepped into the room and quietly closed the door behind her—a truce. She wouldn't call Mensah, as long as I didn't jump out the window. "Where are you going to go?"

"I don't know yet."

"What if you get hurt? Second Mom said you got hurt on the survey. What if you get hurt and Second Mom isn't there to save you?"

It was a more realistic concern than I wanted to admit. "I'll be careful," I said.

"But," she said, then stalled, as if she had run out of arguments.

I cleared my throat. I suspected that my face was also doing something weird. "Don't climb any trees without me around to catch you, alright?"

"Only if you promise you'll come back."

"Mattie—" I hesitated. I wasn't sure I could promise that. She was right; the Corporation Rim was a dangerous place for a rogue murderbot. I might get hurt. I might get dead.

"Promise," she insisted, arms folded, "or I'm gonna yell for Second Mom."

"Fine. Okay. I promise," I capitulated. I told myself that I was lying, but… I wasn't, not really.

I would come back. If I could. But first, I had to leave.

"Okay," Mattie said, very seriously. She looked away, eyes catching on a bare bit of wall. She smiled a little to herself.

(I wasn't just going to leave her drawing behind. That would be like letting her win.)

"Goodnight, SecUnit," she said finally, and slipped back out of the room before I had to say goodbye. It was the kindest thing she had ever done for me.

So, I guess that's the end. I'm leaving. Maybe I'll see you again.

Murderbot end message.