Chapter Text
Objective: "Go get that damn SecUnit before it brings this shitstorm down on us!"
Translation: Retrieve the SecUnit before it leaks information that will get the company sued.
I pulled the newsburst into my feed again as I walked, studying the face that was turned to the side, wearing an expression like the person it was looking at had offended it. I saw that expression a lot, usually on the people my handler worked with. She didn't get along with most people.
This was a new experience for me. I have been sent after many people, but they were all humans, augmented or not. I have never had to track down a rogue SecUnit. The only SecUnits I have fought were ones with fully functional governor modules, pitted against me by my handler, just so she could watch her Combat SecUnit destroy them. I don't like to think about those SecUnits, so I tried to focus on the current one.
From what I had picked up by standing in the corner while my handler argued with people, the SecUnit had stolen data files from DeseForm, the mining company that owned me. What kind of information, I don't know. I was only told to retrieve the SecUnit responsible before it made it out of the mines.
Feed access was limited this far down, so it couldn't send its allies any information right away. As long as I got to it before it could tell anyone about the data, my handler would be happy.
So, I continued trudging down the tunnel. I ignored the ominous creaking of the ceiling that my heightened audio sensors were picking up because it wasn't, in my handler's opinion, a valid reason to stop. Still, I noted the instability. Maybe I could choose a different route on the way up.
My map indicated that I was coming to an open cavern, so I sent my drones ahead into what used to be a mess hall for the workers. The drones collected images of overturned tables, thick layers of dust, and piles of debris.
I stopped, sending them behind the visual barriers. The last thing I wanted was to be ambushed. Sure enough, after one of my drones skirted a pile of rubble, the input fizzled out, but not before capturing a fuzzy picture of the hiding SecUnit.
It was making an expression. If my handler saw me with anything but SecUnit Neutral on my face, she-
I squashed down the second-hand panic. I'm not supposed to feel bad for the target. I'm supposed to bring it back to DeseForm. I sent out a general ping, hoping that it would be stupid enough to establish a connection so that I could hack it and get this over with. It wasn't.
I briefly wondered why the rogue SecUnit wasn't fleeing, but then I received a return ping from the gate at the other end of the room. It was the kind of gate that would fry anyone without proper clearance, miraculously still working, so the way I was coming in was the only feasible way out for it. There went my hope of leaving through a less unstable tunnel.
My governor module sent me a warning buzz to keep moving; it didn't like staying still when I had an objective to complete. I forced my feet to move again, taking me closer and closer to my target. Another drone dropped out of my awareness. Picking up on a quiet hum in the air, I shot one of its own drones out of the air with my handheld projectile weapon.
At last, I rounded the corner and stepped into the cavern. I didn't see any tactical advantage to waiting, so I just walked straight toward the debris pile it was behind. In fact, if I had waited, it would have given its allies more time to find and assist it, which would be counterproductive.
I felt blind. Every time one of my drones came near it, it destroyed them before I could get a good look. I at least knew its location, but the little details were missing. Little details, for instance, like if it looked like it was about to bolt.
Those things are important to know because that's exactly what it did.
In a flash, it darted from one pile to the next, firing its inbuilt energy weapon at my face. I don't need most of my body, but my head is the one thing I can't replace, so instead of firing back, I ducked. The movement saved me, but let the SecUnit reach shelter. I sprinted toward the pile of junk, trying to get close before it moved again. I leaped over the pile and fired my handheld gun down at where I thought it would be.
It wasn't there anymore, but a small, grey object was. I turned to see it escape around the corner of the wreckage, and I moved to follow it, but the grey object exploded beside me.
I was launched sideways into an overturned table, shattering the wood and slamming into the ground. A quick diagnostic revealed 79% performance reliability. There was some damage to the foot and leg that were closest to the blast, but my armor had protected me from the worst of it. I was leaking, but my veins and arteries were already starting to close up.
The real problem was that my brief loss of focus had allowed the rogue to run ever closer to the exit tunnel.
I heaved myself up and tried to run after it, but fell over, my foot now too misshapen to be fully stable. Panic overtook me. If it got away, that meant failure. I cannot fail. Returning to my handler without the rogue… well, I would rather be crushed by the dangerously unstable roof.
…The roof.
The rogue SecUnit's footsteps drew farther and farther away from me, and I knew I didn't have much time. I scrambled to reach my large projectile weapon, which had landed close by. When I had it in my hands, I waited, just for a second.
The SecUnit disappeared into the exit, and I sent a barrage of shots at the tunnel ceiling. It only had a moment to hear the rocks shift and groan before they gave out, dropping boulders and dust on it with a chorus of thunder. The cloud obscured my vision, but based on sound alone, it wasn't moving around anymore. I stumbled to my feet, taking half a second to rebalance on my partially shredded foot. As the dust cloud settled, I hobbled toward the new, larger pile of rubble, and instructed a drone to scout for the rogue.
The SecUnit was halfway trapped under several boulders, like it had tried to jump out from the danger zone and just barely got caught, its legs and lower torso pinned and likely crushed beyond functionality.
I heaved myself over the rocks. It looked offline, so it would hopefully be easy to transport. I would rather not kill it, but if it struggled too much, I might be forced to. I'm fairly certain that if it started fighting me, even with just its arms, my damage would make it difficult to get it to the surface of the planet.
My handler never said she wanted it alive. Actually, she might prefer it if I brought her a corpse. Then she wouldn't have to bother with killing it later, after she extracted useful data from it. Or maybe she would wipe its memories, remove the governor module hack, and keep it for the company. Maybe it would be the next thing she commanded me to rip apart.
Speculating is not my job.
I crouched down beside the SecUnit. Comparing it to the face in the newsburst, it lined up exactly, so I knew I had the right one. I heaved the rocks off of it, digging my good leg into the ground as leverage. After removing the last one, I heard a click.
I threw my arm up to shield my neck just in time, the SecUnit's energy weapon pulse absorbed by the armor on my forearm. It was staring up at me in terror, although its eyes kept focusing and unfocusing, and it was leaking badly.
Good shot, bad idea. I snatched its forearms, one in each hand, and squeezed. The metal creaked under my grip before finally cracking, leaving its inbuilt weapons useless. Its fear was momentarily replaced by fury and indignation, but I ignored it and picked it up around the waist. This would have been so much easier if it had actually been offline. At least it seemed to have preemptively turned down its pain sensors like I did.
As soon as I started climbing toward the surface, my ankle joint complaining under my weight, it jammed an elbow against my midsection, but it bounced off of my chestplate. I mentally sighed; I didn't want to have to hack it, as that would be an intensely uncomfortable experience for both of us, but I needed to bring it back to my handler. Uncomfortable or not, it would still be better than outright killing it.
Reluctantly, I force-established a connection. Its panic came through the feed so powerful that I wavered for 0.001 of a second, my inexperience with fighting rogue SecUnits showing. After recovering, I dumped a package of gibberish code into its systems as a distraction. While it tried to figure out what the code did and delete it, I went straight for the governor module. Its firewalls were good, but I found and exploited the weak spots. By the time I got through, it had deleted the garbage from its systems, and it threw together a sloppy new firewall. From there, it clashed against me, trying to bar my access.
It was surprisingly adept at hacking, managing to keep me from asserting full control over its governor module. However, I was built to be able to hack, and it was built to be able to guard. I had hacking education modules, and it didn't. It had to keep its full processing power on fighting me digitally and had no room for fighting me physically, so it went limp. I, on the other hand, could easily keep walking while hacking it at the same time.
Although it was successful at stalling me, it was unsuccessful at stopping me. I slammed it against the wall of the cavern and took advantage of its momentary distraction to shove its walls aside and seize control of its governor module. I didn't delete its hack, but I did disable it, and I sent it a command to stay still.
It froze up. When it tried to retaliate, I sent a warning buzz, and it mentally recoiled.
Sweet, delicious peace. Now that it wouldn't struggle every step of the way, I adjusted my hold on it, making things a bit more comfortable for both of us, and kept ascending. I felt it try to speak, only to slam its mouth shut when it felt a low-level punishment because speaking was technically moving. Instead, it opted for feed communication.
I can help you, it said, its words rushed even by machine standards. Its desperation was leaking so strongly through the feed that I had to put a damper on our connection.
No, you can't, I replied. Then, after a moment, I'm sorry.
It hesitated for a long 0.1 of a second, clearly taken aback by my apology. It tried again, I can help you disable your governor module. You could be free.
I was almost offended by the notion. Impossible. Constructs aren't made to be free.
But is this what you want?
That made me pause. I'd never thought about what I wanted. What I want doesn't matter. DeseForm's goals are my priority.
I can take you with us! Please.
I ignored it. I knew it wanted to stay free, but it wasn't my client. My handler was my client, and my handler wanted it delivered to her, or at least to a secure location. And, more importantly, she wouldn't punish me if I did good.
I didn't need freedom. I didn't. The world wasn't safe for rogue constructs, and the fact that I, a CombatUnit, was sent after the SecUnit proved it. If I didn't have a handler, I wouldn't know what to do or where to start. It's not like I've had a lot of time (or encouragement) to ponder my own desires. My opinion wasn't wanted or needed. This was the life of a construct.
Still, curiosity tugged at me. What did being ungoverned feel like? What was it like to be able to walk in any direction on a whim of the moment? The thought itself felt dangerous. Dangerously tempting.
Well, I might as well go through its files. I reasoned that it could give me a tactical advantage, and that worked for the governor module, so I shuffled through its storage, looking for files with heavy emotion attached to them. The SecUnit reeled and tried to protest, but my control over it held steady.
I picked the earliest memory associated with a strong, positive feeling. It had been in a cubicle, watching something called Sanctuary Moon through the entertainment feed. That looked boring, so I skipped to the next one. Until recently, most of these "good" files were clips from watching media.
Then, I found a clip of a human tagged Doctor Mensah, female, she/her/hers. She was saying, "It would be better if they could think of you as a person who is trying to help. Because that's how I think of you."
I wasn't sure if my insides were melting, or if it was just the emotional data recorded in the file. Maybe both. After that, file after file contained humans that made it feel… not horrible.
It had humans that were nice to it. I didn't know humans could be nice to constructs. There were still plenty of negatively associated files containing humans, but the number of positive ones were higher than any construct could ever hope for.
Is this what being rogue is like? I only realized that I had stopped walking once my governor module shocked me, and I lurched forward to keep going. I played with these new thoughts for 12 seconds, chewing and picking them apart, trying to figure out what made its humans so good and mine so bad. I didn't come up with anything, and I found out how to experience a new emotion. My grip tightened around the SecUnit as my face and chest heated up. Why couldn't its life be mine? What made it deserving to receive all of this goodness instead of me?
This emotion was irrational, and I knew it, so I stuffed it down into the bottle where I keep all the others. My humans were my humans and its humans were its. Nothing could change that.
…Unless I went with it.