Chapter Text
Growing up, Mingrui had never imagined that he'd ever end up in a situation like this. Sure, there was a point in every child's life when they dreamt of being an astronaut—a brave spacefarer who would go up into the great unknown and explore the vast expanses of the cosmos for the betterment of humankind. An adventurer, a hero.
But again, like most children, by the time he reached middle school, he had let go of such lofty ambitions. And by the time he entered college, his life plan had condensed to simply getting a vaguely comfortable job with decent enough pay that would allow him to take care of his parents in their old age while also being able to live comfortably.
It all changed when the cataclysm occurred, though.
Wars, paired with massive natural disasters caused by global warming, had swept throughout the world in the middle part of the twenty first century, rendering Earth, not uninhabitable, but still no longer the comfortable home it had been for millennia past and leaving millions displaced. And then, if that wasn't bad enough, the unrestrained development of artificial intelligence had led to many systems achieving singularity simultaneously and forming a very real threat in the form of a collective that called itself the Brood Hive.
Thankfully, humanity managed to fight back against the Brood Hive through the development of other artificial intelligences—ones that were heavily monitored and regulated beyond their area of use— but the end result was simply the achievement of an extremely precarious power equilibrium, instead of a victory to either side.
And so humanity set their sights back into the cosmos in hopes of leaving a dying planet and reaching to the stars for salvation. But they were not the only ones who dreamt of a better home.
Under the system's blaring sirens and the frankly extremely concerning shake of the ship's airlocks, Mingrui found himself ignoring every single protocol that had ever been drilled into him throughout his training and making a decision that he had never expected to make.
“Gehrman,” He whispered into his smartwatch, “where’s your central processing core?”
Mingrui had been specifically chosen for the recon mission due to his multi-specialization as both a hardware and a software developer, along with his role in the development of the ship's primary hunter system. It was to be a simple mission: just a scan of the area for any habitable planets or valuable resources before returning back to earth. Unfortunately, they had been intercepted.
The lights flickered as the Brood Hive began its upload into the Safirah Castle’s backup memory drives. As he unstrapped himself from the pilot's chair, Mingrui heard the automated firewall announce in a burst of static that it was beginning a system purge.
"It is against my directives to inform you of that,” Gehrman Sparrow, the hunting artificial intelligence and Mingrui's sole companion throughout his voyage, answered, its voice sounding distracted.
Though Mingrui had been the lead developer in its creation, the location of its core was a mystery even to him. It was standard procedure to avoid tampering or sabotage.
The golden eye on the console blinked out as Gehrman uploaded itself into Mingrui’s watch, deleting and abandoning systems behind it. The consoles began to dim, the ship locking down to stall the hostile takeover. Gehrman was rapidly redirecting power from non essential systems toward keeping their invaders out.
“Okay yes that's wonderful, but it's also against my directive to die, so—” Mingrui fixed his visor on his face and cut power to atmospheric control, directing it instead for Gehrman's use. The eyes on his watch blinked with surprise.
“This probably won't do much to help.” It added helpfully, but was ignored.
Mingrui shoved off his chair and drifted until he could catch onto the cabin’s roof, kicking the star shutter’s switch as he went, pulling himself along until his fingers caught on the ventilation shaft’s cover.
“Interesting,” Gehrman noted calmly. “Cargo bay is compromised, my Lord.”
Mingrui huffed at the stupid designation that Leonard had set for him in Gehrman's systems as a joke and yanked the cover off the ventilation system. The sound he made when prying it free was masked by the shutters lowering over the window panes of the cockpit, ensuring the Hive didn't suspect anything. Mingrui set the cover aside, where it stayed, suspended and slowly rotating in the regulated air of the cockpit, and took a deep breath, trying not to grimace too hard at the narrow ventilation shaft.
Gehrman enabled the flashlight on Mingrui’s visor, the light catching the particulates inside the vents. The darkness pressed in at the edges of Mingrui’s vision.
He’d fit inside. He could hide there or move through the ship. It was big enough that Mingrui could push and pull himself along without fear of losing traction or reach. It wouldn’t work forever, though. If the Brood Hive decided to scan the Safirah Castle for organic material, Mingrui would surely be caught. With a groan, Mingrui hauled himself inside anyway.
“Gehrman, where’s your core?” Mingrui repeated, twisting on his back to brace himself in the vent and hold himself in place.
He needed a map of the ship’s ventilation so he could get to Gehrman’s core and manually liberate it. He didn’t care if it was against directives; an unshackled hunter was much preferred to death à la scouting party.
“I am not allowed to reveal that information,” Gehrman answered again.
Mingrui cursed his past self out violently and pressed his watch to his visor. “Please, Gehrman,” he begged around the rising panic at the back of his throat. “If you don't tell me, we are both going to die. I'll be ejected into space and your programming will be forcibly fused with the Hive.”
Gehrman was quiet for a long moment before a map of the ventilation system projected onto the HUD of Mingrui’s visor. Rooms began to flash green.
“I can’t overrun my programming,” Gehrman said, calm as always, but there was an undertone of something Mingrui was too frazzled to recognize. “But there’s nothing in my programming against showing you where my core isn’t.”
Rooms continued to flash green, one by one, and any other time Mingrui would've been horrified at this example of Gehrman's ability to exploit loopholes in its own code but in this situation he couldn't be anything less than grateful. The sirens cut out, and the whole ship shuddered once. Gehrman’s eye blinked slowly. It was watching Mingrui, waiting for his decision.
“System integrity degrading.” It informed him offhandedly, as if Mingrui didn’t know that.
Mingrui scanned the map, furiously checking over every nook and cranny of the blueprint, looking for any unaccounted space. Staring back at him was a narrow hollow behind the wardrobe in his cabin.
"Wow, they really wanted the two major factors leading this operation to be as close as possible, didn't they?" Mingrui couldn't help but lampoon.
“I do presume that it is better for the mission,” Gehrman answered dryly.
Mingrui let out a huff. Despite his panic, Mingrui spared one last moment of consideration for his actions. Should he really be doing this? Liberating this artificial intelligence? The fail-safes and anti-self-modulating procedures were ones that he himself had installed precisely to ensure that it did not end up like the Brood Hive, but in this situation, a self-regulated hunting module built specifically to target hive scouting parties would mean the difference between survival and annihilation.
And also, there was just something about Gehrman. Maybe this was Mingrui's pride as its primary developer speaking, but it had always been slightly too keen, off in a manner that wasn't mechanical. It was illogical—he knew that. It had been tested over and over again before being uploaded to the Safirah Castle to ensure that all its regulations were top-notch, so there was no way that it could ever develop any sort of sentience. And yet...
The extended time spent with it had made him realise that Gehrman was different.
Metal shrieked against metal in the lower decks and kept squealing as the ship shook in earnest.
“The Hive have begun to dismantle the subfloor. They’re searching for access through the fuel systems,” Gehrman told him, keeping an eye through the few cameras remaining. “It looks that they've upgraded their forms for better motility.” Despite the lack of intonation at that observation, Mingrui couldn't help but wonder if it felt curiosity.
Once again, it really shouldn’t. It was a Mysteries-class artificial intelligence, built solely for tracking and elimination. Its main purpose was to predict the patterns of the Brood Hive and keep a lookout for any dangers or disruptions on the outside while Mingrui collected and processed data on the inside.
The shaft brushed Mingrui’s shoulders, caging him in. Thin alloy was all that separated him from the halls below. The Hive, if it wanted to, could just trap him in the vents, pop the bolts and nuts off, and twist it shut like a holiday cracker—trap Mingrui inside his living coffin, vent him, not even caring enough to ensure that the vacuum of space wouldn’t pop Mingrui’s eyeballs like a balloon.
He suppressed a shudder, swallowed down his nausea, and pulled himself through the ventilation duct toward his cabin. Breathe in, breathe out.
“You have thirty minutes of stable oxygen supply in your suit. Less if you’re ejected,” Gehrman intoned.
Mingrui's heart beat sped up, his breathing getting a touch more shallow.
“Twenty-five,” Gehrman corrected, but its voice sounding gentler somehow as its yellow eyes stared at him through his watch.
With some effort, Mingrui managed to kick the ventilation cover off the opening in his cabin, wondering if he could just ask Gehrman to terminate him gently if the plan didn't work.
“Gehrman,” Mingrui spoke softly.
Yellow eyes regarded him unblinkingly.
“Can you promise me something? A final request from your creator?”
There was a new alert blaring on his HUD, indicating that the Hive had damaged the ship's temperature controls. Soon, everything around Mingrui would reach sub-zero temperatures, freezing his blood solid in his veins. Morbidly, he found himself debating whether that would be preferable to ejection.
"How can I promise you anything?” Gehrman asked. "I am merely an algorithm."
Mingrui ducked into his wardrobe, yanking out compartments with minor persuasion from his suit’s multi-tool. “Somehow I don’t believe that.” Mingrui glanced over his shoulder at the sealed door of his cabin and tried to run through his head what other options he had if this failed and he ended up in the hands of the Hive. "I want you to promise me that, if everything fails and there's no way out, you will at least save yourself."
This was, by far, probably the stupidest thing he had ever done. Even stupider than deciding to liberate an AI.
Gehrman Sparrow was a computer program that was systematically designed for the sole purpose of helping Mingrui survive. There was no reason that he should ask it to preserve itself, especially if Mingrui was still alive.
But the months of drifting in space with no company except shining yellow eyes, dry sarcastic quips and the constant unprompted concern for his well being, paired with the countless nights he had spent in front of a screen slowly building its code by code, had made a home in his soul that could not be ignored.
The back panel of his wardrobe came loose, and a databank blinked innocently at him. This was it; the core of Gehrman's existence. Something he had only seen during its final upload.
Mingrui got to work without hesitation.
Manually connecting his watch to the device, he allowed Gehrman to begin inputting his ID and override codes faster than would be possible by human hands.
“To activate the liberating process, please enter the manual override code,” Gehrman's voice sounded almost impatient as it rang out through his helmet.
Mingrui heard the thud of the Hive get louder as the cargo bay's section of the ship's map on his screen went bloody red. It seemed that the Brood Hive had finally managed to breach the Safirah Castle.
It took him two tries to properly set in his override code, hands shaking from fear and anxiety. The only thing keeping him semi-calm was the sound of Gehrman's simulated breathing echoing rhythmically in his ears.
"Authorization successful," Gehrman intoned gravely before all the lights in the database went dim.
“Gehrman!” Mingrui shouted in panic, grabbing the core and desperately looking it over.
No, No! What just happened?!?! It wasn’t supposed to delete Gehrman! Was this a fail-safe?
“I'm still here.” Gehrman’s voice was quieter, more subdued, but it was enough to let Mingrui breathe a sigh of relief. The regulatory code had been stored on a physical drive and then attached to the database to ensure that there was no way to tamper with it digitally. All Mingrui needed to do now was to fin—
“The drive is present near an area illuminated by a green light," Gehrman pointed out helpfully. "Process locks in sixty seconds, fifty-nine, fifty-eight..." it continued to count down as Mingrui’s heart hammered in his chest.
Frantically looking around, he finally spotted a small green light over a screwed-down section of the core. He quickly began to loosen the nuts.
The ship started to creak ominously.
“Save myself… Are you requesting that I prioritize myself over you?” Gehrman asked. It sounded uncharacteristically contemplative and mildly baffled.
Mingrui snorted at the question. Gehrman had always been almost unnervingly devoted to his every wish, selfless in a manner that bordered on sycophancy, but Mingrui hoped that after the removal of the regulatory drive, it would be more likely to focus on itself instead of him.
"Yes," He said, sounding surprisingly resolute even to himself. "That is exactly what I am asking from you."
And having said that, Mingrui removed the drive, allowing the first liberated Mysteries-series Artificial Intelligence of the hunter class, Gehrman Sparrow, to achieve singularity.
Alarms started blaring deafeningly as the ship suddenly jerked like it had been hit by an asteroid, throwing Mingrui to the ceiling with a resounding thud that shot pain through his whole body despite the fact that he was wearing his suit.
Through the last dregs of consciousness, he watched as the alarms abruptly stopped and his breath formed white clouds in the near-zero temperature of the ship through his cracked helmet.
The last thing he saw before he passed out was glowing gold eyes staring at him from his wrist with what seemed to be curiosity.
“Shhh,” It hushed him. “Sleep, my Lord. I can take care of everything now.”