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When ART was finally finished with my repairs, I stretched long on the MedSystem bed and sent my joints through a range-of-motion recalibration. Okay, I had really needed that. Walking all over that shitastic torus with three projectiles and thirty-six needle-bomb needles wedged in my various organic and inorganic parts had been annoying.
Feeling better? ART asked.
I was, but ART sounded so smug I didn’t even bother to thank it. It had sufficiently congratulated itself already.
It was good to be back.
As I was leaving the medical suite, ART sent me an alert, incoming, which caused my organics to give a brief twinge of terror despite the data accompanying the message: an image of Tula slipping out of Farai’s arms and running surprisingly quickly in my direction.
Tula crashed into me at full speed and wrapped her arms tight around my waist. I’d seen enough “comedy” videos to know that, if I’d been a human male, I would’ve been doubled over in pain right now, but I don’t have a weak spot there.
Tula was squeezing hard and I definitely couldn’t walk like this, at least not without hurting her, so I said, “I can pick you up.”
Tula did her arms-up thing and then her tentacle-monster thing, so I was able to walk towards the argument lounge. I encountered Janity on the way.
“Tula, leave SecUnit alone!” she admonished.
“It’s okay,” I said, and it was. Tula barely weighed anything and… something else. Something about knowing this was where she felt safest.
Farai and Mensah had been in the lounge talking with Janity about what the fuck they were supposed to do with her and Tula. They didn’t put it that way, of course. They’d been discussing it with Janity because, according to Preservation customs, she was old enough to have a say in the matter. I brought Tula in and sat on a couch with her still wrapped around my upper body, her head on my shoulder. Janity came back in and stroked Tula’s hair, then sat next to us. Tula turned her head a little so she could see her sister.
Once we were settled, Farai asked, “Janity, do you know the people your mom said we should deliver you to?”
“Yes. Or—sort of. It’s my Aunt and Auncle. Tula’s dad’s sister and her marital partner. We saw them maybe a year ago, the last time Mom was home from work for a whole ten-day.”
When she heard that, Tula whispered, “The ones with the pool and purple room?” But her voice was muffled against my shoulder and I didn’t think anyone could hear her, so I repeated what she’d said.
“Yes, those ones,” Janity answered.
“I didn’t like them,” Tula mumbled, and I once again acted as her personal communication device.
“I know.” Janity patted Tula’s head again, being careful not to touch me, too.
“We should at least try contacting them.” That was Mensah, the voice of reason.
“I know,” Janity said again, sounding resigned.
After so much more talking (all I did was make Tula’s quiet words louder), it was decided that we’d send Three in the shuttle to the different torus where Janity and Tula’s relatives were expected to be. (Ugh, more toruses...torusii? Whatever.) This torus was controlled by a non-B-E company and ART’s intel indicated this other company should be able to repel any B-E insiders intent on the continued murder of Leonide’s remaining family. But we were still sending Three first to assess the situation.
(I could go, I’d said reluctantly, but I really didn’t want to go back to any torus ever again. Three, on the other hand, had been eager to go. Too eager.)
You must follow the plan this time, ART threatened.
I will, Three said meekly. But it was also smiling a little. When I’d come back from the torus, I’d brought extra humans and an existential exhaustion. I wondered if Three would come back with more clothes and some extra SecUnits.
Three did come back with more clothes. No SecUnits, but guess what it had done again. I hoped all these new rogues didn’t go on any murdering sprees. And also that they could find their way out of the infinite circles of torus hell. But we needed to get out of here fast because we’d decided to kidnap Janity and Tula. Sort of kidnap.
Three had found Leonide’s relatives. They were still alive, but they weren’t especially happy to learn that everybody else was dead and they now had more kids to support by sending them away to an expensive school. Their own kids were off at some boarding school Janity had heard about and didn’t like the sound of. Tula was too young to legally have a say in the matter, but she was hard to resist when she said, “No! I don’t wanna!”
So, we made a plan to bring them to Preservation. Janity was old enough to qualify as an independent adolescent refugee. She wasn’t old enough to have custody of Tula (humans with all their “old-enoughs” were so confusing: SecUnits were just booted up and sent out), but Mensah was pretty sure Pin-Lee could come up with something about legally linking a juvenile with a trusted family member. If anyone even asked. I suspected no one would—Leonide had cared, but she was dead.
(I kept seeing an image of Leonide’s bloody body. My arm outlined by her blood.)
(Emotion check: Guilt, and I know: I know I did what I could. It still sucks. I don’t like losing humans I’m trying to save, especially when it turns out they weren’t quite as much of an asshole as I’d thought they were. So. Now I’ve got to feel guilty about that, too.)
On the first day of our wormhole jump back to Preservation space, Mensah found me during a rare moment when we were both alone. She had that soft look in her eyes, the one my humans get when they’re planning to say something nice even though they know I don’t want them to.
I tried to get ahead of the problem. “You know you don’t need to thank me.”
“I know,” she answered, that soft look intensifying. “But I want to. Is that okay?”
How could I say no when she’d asked? I nodded, which I knew she’d see out of the corner of her eye where she wasn’t quite watching me.
“Thank you,” she said simply. “For saving the lives of my family, and for coming back safely yourself. It wouldn’t have felt like success if you hadn’t made it out, too. And I’m so glad you brought Janity and Tula as well.”
I knew Mensah wouldn’t expect me to respond to all that. But I had something to say. It took me forever to figure out how to say it. 2.1 seconds to be exact.
“Thank you for offering Tula and Janity a place to live. At the company, I never knew what happened to clients after I retrieved them. It’s nice to know these ones are going somewhere safe.”
“You can visit us anytime you want. We would all like that so much.”
Tula followed me around constantly during the long wormhole trip to Preservation. Everyone kept worrying about her touching me too much, until finally I snapped to ART, I’m a murderbot, I can make a tiny human child leave me alone if I need to! ART must’ve said something to everyone, because they all finally shut up about it.
Tula was clamped onto my torso in her usual position while I was watching Honor Princess Detective with Sofi. Janity was on one of the other couches pretending she wasn’t watching, but I knew she actually was. It was that good of a show. I didn’t think Tula was watching, but I wasn’t sure. I wasn’t sure how much she understood, about the show or her messed up life. I hoped I didn’t need to find out what she understood; that it was enough to just let her tentacle onto me. But partway through the season finale of Honor Princess Detective, she spoke with her typical whisper into my hair: “Am I gonna live with you in the new place?”
Oh no. I stopped breathing. How did she get that idea? I didn’t want to tell her no.
Thankfully Janity stopped whatever she’d been doing in the feed while pretending not to watch Honor Princess Detective and answered, “No, Tula, we're going to live with Farai and Sofi.”
“Oh. That’s okay, I guess. But what about Mom?”
Oh shit.
I was frozen and the mental health module was pinging me in alarm. And Janity wasn’t going to answer this time: her face had gone completely still, except her lower lip which was trembling. I wished Farai or Mensah were here. I could feel ART lurking, trauma modules in its metaphorical hand, but I think the kid wanted me to answer. After 3.9 seconds, I did.
“Your mom died. You aren’t ever going to see her again.”
I think I fucked that up. But what else was there to say? “Umm,” I added, “I’m sorry.”
“Not your fault,” Tula whispered, and something happened in my organic parts that caused my mental health module to glitch.
Janity was crying now, and Tula was snuffling into my hair. (It was gross, but nothing a nice long shower couldn’t fix.) I couldn’t cry, so at least I didn’t need to join the fluid leaking party. But I was definitely having emotions and I didn’t need a module to tell me about it.
We were only two days from Preservation when we (and by “we” I mean me and all the “grown-ups” who were taking care of Leonide’s kids: apparently I counted) decided it was time to give Janity the secret interface. The one that Leonide had hiding in her hair when she died. ART and I had scanned it, of course. It was free of malware or tracking devices, just a simple interface for basic feed access and a backup copy of Leonide’s plan for her family. And also messages. Messages for Janity, Tula, Armelle, Lea, and Faris. We’d decided to wait until Janity had recovered a little more before we heaped more on her. Even nice messages were hard to handle after your mom died. Or so Mensah had said.
“Janity,” Farai called her over, holding out the tiny, jeweled clip. “This belonged to your mother. We think she intended for you to have it.”
Janity took it with shaking hands and placed it in the hair behind her ear. After a pause and that distant in-the-feed look that humans get, she started to sob. The kind of crying that’s mostly sad with some relief in there, too. You know the word. Cathartic. Farai wrapped Janity in a hug. Mensah and Sofi, who'd been watching, leaned in as well. Tula was clinging to me, but when she lifted her head and saw Farai and Janity, she did the wiggle that meant I should put her down. I set her down and she went into the hug with her sister. My arms felt a little empty, but it also felt right. She needed to be with her new family. I let the emotion check ping through this time.
(Emotion check: actually pretty fucking good for once.)