Chapter Text
SecUnit was gone.
Bharadwaj had slept poorly, as she often did since the worm attack. It came back to her in dreams, that moment when the earth fell away and something warm, hot, and stinking engulfed and pierced her through. She could still smell it, in dreams and sometimes while awake.
And yet somehow she slept through SecUnit leaving. She woke and lay there unsuspecting, taking comfort in the sounds of her friends talking in low voices. Pin-Lee using the drink dispenser, Ratthi’s spoon or fork clattering as he set it down too roughly. She didn’t expect to hear SecUnit; it stood so quietly.
But when she got up, it was gone.
Mensah noticed the moment she looked for SecUnit and couldn’t find it. Mensah, who always stayed calm, who kept them all together.
“It left me a message,” she said in a low voice. “Once everyone’s up, we’ll talk.”
Maybe SecUnit was doing something important. Maybe Mensah had given it some kind of mission now that it had its memories back. It would finish its job and be back soon. Bharadwaj tried to persuade herself of that as she washed her face but that thought didn’t fit. Mensah would have said so right away. Bharadwaj wanted to ask the others but this must be hardest of all on Mensah and Mensah said to wait.
Gurathin woke last, bleary-eyed but at least the near-bruising under his skin had faded a little. He kept his eyes averted from the others which meant he must already know. Bharadwaj approached him as he filled a water glass.
“Did you get much sleep?”
He gave her a quick smile and a nod.
He felt different. More like the Gura she knew on the station, awkward and a little odd but less sharp-edged, less huddled in on himself. Returning SecUnit’s memories had restored something in him too. She patted his shoulder and sat at the big round table, the one they’d all shared a meal at just last night.
“Lets all sit down,” Mensah said. She waited while the others took their seats.
Mensah said, “SecUnit chose to leave. It doesn’t want to return to Preservation. It intends to explore on its own.”
“Seccy can’t be off on its own—”
“Where can it even go?”
“If it gets caught—”
“It barely even remembers—”
Everyone talked over each other. Everyone except Gurathin, Bharadwaj noticed. He sat quietly, looking over the faces of the others.
When the first rush of reactions died down, Ratthi asked, “Did it say why? Or where it’s going?”
“It sent me a letter.” Mensah smiled, but it was the kind of smile with tears behind it. “It was quite long. It recounted the story of the whole expedition through SecUnit’s eyes. The reasoning behind all its choices, everything it hoped for, everything it feared. And in the end, it was afraid to trust itself to us. To me.” Mensah drew in a long, shaky breath. “It said that guardian was a nicer word for owner.”
“If we hadn’t bought it—” Arada started.
Pin-Lee interrupted. “We had to. I couldn’t have gotten the injunction fast enough without that purchase. Even so, we barely got there in time. Just one more minute and—”
“Don’t say it!” Ratthi said.
“It’s true though. We were so close. Those other units we saw are all dead by now.”
Their blunt statement hung in the air.
Finally Ratthi said, “I wish…” and then just trailed off.
“Can we find it?” Arada said.
Mensah said firmly, “We can’t even look. We’ll be watched and anything we find, we risk tipping off the corporates.”
At that, everyone naturally looked at Gurathin, the one who should know about corporate espionage.
He stared at the table, then looked up and met their eyes, one by one. He was blinking back tears.
“It told me goodbye,” he said. He waited for the reactions to die down. Bharadwaj looked at Mensah, wondering if she knew. But Mensah (normally so expressive) could be hard to read when she chose to be.
“Gura, what did it say?” Ratthi asked.
“That it needed to check the perimeter. The thing is, I felt it.” He tapped his head, the same gesture he’d used when he said he “had it” while carrying SecUnit’s memories. He’d looked so manic then.
“It isn’t angry at us. For four years every decision it made was about how not to let a client die and how not to get caught. And it’s scared of itself. It wants to be someplace where it doesn’t make decisions because of humans, and it wants to know.”
Mensah prompted him. “To know about…”
“The miners.”
“You were mean to it,” Arada said, her voice cold and accusatory.
Gurathin nodded. “I was.” His face held remorse.
“If you hadn’t been so mean to it, maybe it would have trusted us.”
Ratthi said, “Hey…”
“It’s true!” She was breathing hard.
Mensah said firmly, “Enough.”
Pin-Lee took Arada’s hand. They leaned in and said something quietly in her ear. Gurathin hadn’t looked away. Bharadwaj felt an odd tension in herself, an urge to yell, but unlike Arada she had no one she wanted to yell at.
It wasn’t Gurathin’s fault. They’d all signed on and rented a person and they hadn’t understood what they were doing. Not until the worm bit her and SecUnit brought her back at risk of its own life. After that, she still hadn’t understood. She’d been scared of it. She didn’t blame it for running away.
“Is it going to be safe?” she asked. “If it gets caught…”
“It’s smart,” Gurathin said quickly. “Resourceful.”
“But…” she cut herself off. There was no point arguing. The person to have that argument with was SecUnit itself, and none of them had thought to try to persuade it. They had just assumed.
Pin-Lee said, “This is going to be a mess. We justified the purchase on the grounds that it was evidence. We’re going to be expected to produce that evidence.”
Mensah said, “Legally it is ours though. And if we don’t bring it forward, we can simply say that we didn’t find the evidence we wanted, right?”
Pin-Lee shook their head. “We can claim that, but rumors will spread. This affects DeltFall’s claim against the company as well. If they think we’re holding back evidence, they’re going to think we cut some kind of deal.”
Pin-Lee and Mensah began discussing legal tactics. Bharadwaj knew she ought to listen. This was important; whatever they did next affected SecUnit’s safety as well as their own lawsuit against GrayCris. She couldn’t focus though. She didn’t think Gurathin was focusing well either. His brow was wrinkled and he stared as if listening intently, but he kept blinking and his eyes would go distant like they did when he was in the feed.
Bharadwaj stood up, planning to drag him off to get more rest.
“Wait,” Mensah said. She looked around the table, making eye contact with each of them in turn. “We need to give SecUnit the best possible chance to get away and find safety. And to do that, we need to conceal its absence as long as possible. Tell no one. And no one but us comes and goes from this space. We’ll hold all meetings elsewhere.”
Mensah looked around the table. One by one, they nodded. If this was all they had to offer SecUnit, it was the least they could do.