Before this post starts, let's pay you all. John and Echelon handled everything in due time.
My Head Explodes
Luca - Donated his pay to everyone else.
Tamamo - 20000 KS, Promotion to 7-Spades
Seiren - 17500 KS, Promotion Jack-Diamonds
Zeta - 17500 KS, Promotion to Jack-Spades
Makari - 15000 KS, Promotion to 7-Spades
Rebeka - Posthumous Promotion to 9-Spades
In Desire
Soruk - 15000 KS, Promotion to 9-Spades
Enzo - 12500 KS, 2500 KS for filched silverware, Promotion to Jack-Clubs
Shayla - 15000 KS, Promotion to 7-Hearts
Redrick - 15000 KS, Promotion to 7-Hearts, 2500 KS bonus for Piat and symbolic promotion to 3-Spades
With that out of the way, let's get into some long and dry plot advancement, and into the Interlude.
-
I'm living in an age
That screams my name at night
But when I get to the doorway
There's no one in sight
Peter Gabriel covering Arcade Fire - My Body is a Cage
//This takes place between Mission 4 and the next Interlude//
Crimson Kestrel, Medbay
There were bloody bootprints in the hallway nobody had bothered to clean, a left boot soaked in blood followed by further droplets. The patient saw fit to escort themselves after the battle. No painkillers, no trolley, only a crutch to walk on from Zeta, who'd held him as he walked over to the medical bay until he could handle the rest. He thumbed the door open and walked over to the nearest available litter, sitting down feebly and breathing out.
The procedures that followed with Tamamo's assistance were swiftly executed: First, the helmet came off with their right hand grabbing the back and pulling it off. The patient's forehead had a gash from the middle of their skull down to the tip of the right brow. Blood had been pouring out of their nose too, mouth covered in red, congealed against the stubble. Their eyes were crossed, perhaps in pain or shock with what happened a few hours ago, reddened by severe impacts rupturing the blood vessels in their eyes.
They couldn't take off the rest without assistance and Echelon's call to a meeting. The armour had been thoroughly battered, melted, and impaled with debris and shrapnel, and if it wasn't for the jacket, the left arm - the good arm - would've fallen out just past the elbow. It was kept in place by hasty bandages and the patient hoped regeneration would settle the rest. Across the right side of their chest, the armour had been blasted away, revealing tender looking flesh - ironically cut up by the armour meant to protect them.
Left leg was mangled too, most of the calf was shredded by shrapnel - bone visible in places, though unbroken. How they weren't dead or in any serious, overt pain was due to a mix of chemicals Tamamo had pumped into him and the general anaesthetic putting him under - she knew he'd try to move around when he shouldn't if he wasn't sleeping.
Ten hours passed as Luca sat under general, the Phoenix around him moving through space and towards Albini for John and the team on the Quiet Mission...
When he woke up. For a few minutes, Luca sat there breathing in, and breathing out, counting to four every time. Then they spoke, voice hoarse, angry, looking for answers. "Doctor." It was difficult enough to speak with the shard of metal stuck in the neckplate and poking against their neck. Couldn't be removed without severe risks, it'd have to come out 'naturally'.
No answer. He growled "doctor" again, this time in Ly'thir, looking over to the curtains that kept the room divided for privacy. The image was blurred - he couldn't quite compensate. Things didn't see right. He also feared if he rubbed his eyes, they might fall out of their sockets. Okay, bit of an exaggeration, but it was difficult to tell when your arm was this close to slipping out of its socket and going missing.
A pale hand split the partition, cerise eyes staring down at him. She looked exhausted, sweat running down her features, glazed. Every motion was mechanical sounding -- her muscles sleeping as her inner-frame did all the hard work. Silence hung deadly - hand white knuckle as she adjusted her gloves and eyed her data-slate, eyeing him one more time with a frown.
She was soon shining light into his eye, watching his pupil shrink. Or rather, it should have. One of them refused. As she did so, the big heavy disc ad-hoc mounted into the ceiling on brackets began to spool, some sort of scanner warming up. The sound was worryingly familiar, sending a chill down the doctor's spine in remembrance.
"Aside from the obvious..." she clicked her tongue tastefully. "Where else. Specifically, rather than everywhere."
"Internal bleeding," he replied tersely, "shattered ribs, collapsed lung..." as he was listing these, the scanner was picking them up and relaying them. Had he been injured so much that he knew what each particular thing that hadn't killed him felt like? "Groin untouched, kinda hungry despite..." he sniffed the air, trying to force blood through his sinuses, then snorting it out of his nose, hard to get some breathing space, "punctured stomach."
He let his bloody snot pool before asking about the other patient. "How's Rebeka?"
"We need to deal with the bleeding first" she replied, fingers working at the straps on his armour with a scalpel of some kind - the blade pitch-black along its edge: a thiny sliver of zesuaium working through as she tossed the jacket away: struggling to lift it and then pulling it behind herself. Next, the plating. She eyed a fist sized dint in his chest-place, admiring the way it had served its purpose so admirably, and then bare skin beneath where clothing would normally have sat, tatters about: the buttons in his shirt embedded into him.
She took her scalpel: searching him as if with xray vision: reading the information from the scanner as she ran a finger over his ribs in deep thought. Then his arm.
It looked as though it was about to fall off at any minute - kept in place by staunched bandages, sutures and straps.
"Deep breath" she said. Before he could respond, she stuck the scalpel in, surgical altex fingers reaching into the gap quite forcefully... Wrist-deep before she came back with a pen of some strange biogellatine cement hemosynth solution: diving back in as she did something far inside: forcing the paste to fill the torn organ -- the pressure of blood running down his front coming slowly to a stop.
Delicately, she extracted her small hand, gloves bloody as she repeated the process with the cavity itself: then clicking her finger before reaching for something resembling a television remote: staples with sharp clicks digging into his skin, each a thin wire at he end, the silvery plastic staples disappearing revealing incredibly fine stitching as she sealed up the gap. Then more gel over the top, lathering it on thick.
Next, the gloves came off, tossed across the floor as she presented him with a handful of different pills from a ense fold-out book, every pocket containing only three of each. Then water, from a bottle at her hip.
"Take. Should do something for the pain, should knit your ribs. Yamataians really are rugged... They build you to last, don't they?" she said, alcoholic wash over her hands as she noted the blood on her shirt, clicking her tongue in irritation that she'd have to get changed when she got the chance: giving her tie particular regard, hanging in both hands: expensive silk of some sort ruined beneath an altex medical green apron.
"Yeah." Luca replied tersely as he looked at the pills he was given, swallowing them all up and downing them with water as he kept his movements economical. "You should see the Nekovalkyrja. They can float around with one arm, a torso and a bit of their head, and still be combat ready." A bitter cringe went across his face, that medicine was always wormwood. "The ones who forget to be human are the deadly ones."
Aiesu stood back and looked at the rest of him. "I see. Well. As for the rest of your care, you get your honorary hero steak and blowjob later."
Luca wasn't really amused with the prospect, given her choppers. "Before that though, I need to know," he said, looking down at his knees, trying to get some gristle and gumption together despite his structurally superfluous state. Aiesu could see his legs below the knees rocking as though he was aching to get off his stretcher. He looked up, into her cerise eyes.
He wanted to lift both of his hands onto her, only able to muster his right arm, clapping weakly against her shoulder, fingertips cool. "I need to know how Rebeka's doing. She saved us."
"Is your vision doing anything particularly strange?" she eyed him carefully; thumb over cheekbone as she looked into him. "Lights feel too bright? Spinning walls? Things too far away? Hallucinations...? Colour perception?"
Was she being intentionally dense?
Something wasn't adding up, and she felt Luca's fingertips curl around her, his eyes narrowing.
"Doesn't matter," he said, voice hoarse, "I want to see Rebeka."
Her voice became tighter, forcing a smile now as her voice lost its usual firm edge.
"Any colour-blindness, maybe?" she suggested as Luca bared his reddened teeth at her. "O-Or tingling in the extremities?" She was close to sweating buckets at this point.
"Why aren't you answering me, Aiesu..." he was shooting at the elephant in the room - Aiesu felt his weight shift, hard as he lurched off of the litter and used her as a crutch, lifting himself up - her arms racing to hold him up (and fighting to hold her own balance) as he started stumbling towards a drawn curtain. "Rebeka!"
No response.
"Y-You really don't want to see her, trust me... I-Its a lot better than it looks, honest, you're better of waiting until--"
"I WANT TO KNOW IF SHE'S ALIVE!" He threw the curtain open, pulling it out and downwards.
"That's... a difficult question..." she hung her shoulders.
Upon the other side, there was no bed. Instead, what resembled the same kind of fluid-pole that intravenous dosages were hung upon. Where the bag would be sat Rebeka's upper half devoid of her suit or the frame she'd worn, like a crab its shell: her body ending at the ribs with her lower half nowhere to be seen. Her pale skin seemed to ooze, hardening in some places and fracturing in others like a broken clay doll. Her ribs were visible toward the bottom and her spine, all chromic metal glistening with fluid that dripped into a bucket beneath.
The entirety of her right arm was missing, the socket ripped in such a way that the shoulder-blade was missing, revealing some of her innards: a strange clear bag of amber fluid within and large round coloured marbles along her spine of hard glass knit by what resembled crystal and fibre-optics. The edges were covered in what resembled yellow snot or bad mustard. The left was terminated at the elbow into a vast feed of clear tubes feeding fluid to some machine.
Periodically, bar-codes had been printed onto parts of her, sticky-notes in thick clusters on others near bundles of cables many to the effect of "DO NOT TOUCH OR REMOVE ON PAIN OF DEATH" in as many languages as Aiesu could write in.
Staring too hard, Luca was caught off guard as her body twitched and spasmed: a very faint motion but enough to put the fear of something into his bones.
His fingers slowly uncovered a black plastic sack from over her head, seeing there were no notes, tilting her head back with great care to get a look at her face as Aiesu watched, not interfering.
One eye remained in its socket, the other scorched black and empty - most of her skull on that side missing. The lower half of her jaw was nowhere to be seen, nor was her tongue. The upper set of teeth, all present and accounted for. Her expression was plain, as if someone had pulled the plug. It was very clear to Luca that what he was looking at was on some level, a corpse.
Bizarrely, her hair was mostly intact, framing her face as if untouched, though dark discolourations bit into it like that of mouldy fruit: blotched in blobs across its length.
Aiesu hesitated to stop him, anxiety in her chest as she frowned: her hand raising every time he came near the battery of clear tubes delivering fluids in and out of various points on her body: clustered together like the back of an amp in different colours.
Turning her head slowly, Luca saw the back of her skull was missing: the metal casing of her personal skeleton removed carefully: prized apart using cutting tools after being melted shut. A thumb-thick bundle of cabling chased its way out of the empty cavity, moving across the floor to a large object about the size of an ostrich egg.
It was like a massive pearl, or amber: sand moving within, geometric patterns like the surface of the ocean seen from high altitude slowly moving beneath the clear outer edges. Aiesu had clearly used some sort of drill to make tiny incisions for electrodes to be inserted, the filings still around the outer-casing.
What caught his attention were two consoles. One dumping medical information. The other, like a ping request, asking a plain-text query before timing out in response.
Aiesu could see him searching for answers. What really caught his attention was the kind of beeping he heard at hospitals which told him the patient was stable. In critical condition, but stable -- and no less gut-wrenching.
Was this how much the people around him gave for him?
Aiesu saw something strike the ground at Luca's feet. A drop of water, but there was nothing oozing or leaking in his presence.
The l'manel already had a sense of what his reaction would be. Stood behind him, so much smaller rather than getting between the two. A hand reaching out as she tried to comfort him as he made heavy steps towards the console. Woozy and unable to hold anything for support out of fear of pulling something important out of Rebeka, he took his steps very deliberately.
"She'll... She'll be fine in a couple of months," Aiesu tried to smile as she stood over the less active of the two consoles. The smell in the air caused by Rebeka's natural internal residues was so sweet it made both of their jaws ache, glands swelling painfully. "Its.. All of it is a pretty easy fix, actually: it just grows back. Well, except for one part..."
His good eye looked into Rebeka's, then back at the console, noting the hairband of thin silvery ire about her hairline: studding into her periodically almost like a crown of metal thorns but never making full contact, framing the point of her face.
"I'm..." He said while he waited for something to come up, anything at all.
The other, busier console was full of ly'thir gibberish in so many shorthands and non-layman's terms.
"I'm not doubting your medical skills, but... I am... well, incensed for what happened."
His good eye gazed down at her, aloof. "Is this the sort of thing Lagrange will throw at us regularly? What did we uncover?"
"Like I said before... Its design was only announced three weeks ago." The doctor tried to explain, sweating as she looked up at him. "It isn't MEANT to be ready for another YEAR. A YEAR. How do they do that much in less than a MONTH?" she smiled nervously, cracking up inwardly.
Even now, she was trying to move the subject elsewhere. He wasn't having any of it, frowning in disgust.
"A lot of things can be done quickly if you've got the resources. This is hardly new with how automated Lazarus is."
Aiesu sighed, palm massaging her dumb wet features, a moment as she realized she still had her glasses on, removing them to try and clear the sweat from her cheeks.
"Well, this is beyond what I've been informed. As much as I like to think I'm Aiesu, I'm equipment at the end of the day. I can tell you what I'm told and requisition equipment and supplies. That's my job. If you want to be mad at someone, talk to her: She's been missing for weeks now and we've been picking up the pieces, doing the best we can."
Luca shook his head. "Later. Later. When I don't have to worry about bleeding to death if I look down at you." Meanwhile, his right hand rested gently on the F and J keys of the keyboard, leaving red marks as he typed a question of his own, overriding the automated questions.
"We've been trying for the last twenty six hours, Luca. Nothing so far." He still seemed determined to try and reach out to her.
"She can't hear you." Still, the keyboard was getting stained with red as his typing became desperate.
"There's nobody home. Luca. its the equivalent of a coma. Or brain-death."
Luca put his palm down on the keyboard, pushing half of the keys. Inputs came in erratically before he let his hand slip off the board and he turned around. He had tears in his eyes, bloody snot welling in his throat.
"We send about one message every thirty seconds at the moment. Any more consistently and we might damage what's left of her. Keep it slow, okay?"
"Chair," he requested tersely. The l'manel stepped away, dragging a chair rather than carrying it, pushing the hem of the seat against his calves to sit.But he didn't sit in it, he collapsed into it, looking ahead at the thing - no, the woman who saved them.
Aiesu watched, unusually quiet. He waited. He let himself recover, and did as Aiesu told him, only sending messages every few minutes as he sat there. Still, no replies, no received messages. No response. No convincing Luca to move.
"I'm not sure she's coming back from this one."
FOUR HOURS PASSED...
The senior member of the Quiet team put their right arm through the curtain and let themselves in, left arm in a sling administered by Shayla. He wrinkled his nose at the saccharine scent in the air, but saw that Luca had been in the middle of it without issue. "Goddamn," he said, looking between Aiesu, Luca, and Rebeka, "what...what happened to you?"
Luca couldn't quite put it into words what happened. It was still confusing even in hindsight. It was the first time he'd been soundly poked in the eye by something. What he could ask though, was what happened to his friend. "John. Sling," he pointed out, looking at the cast on his friend's arm.
"Some sort of rock creatures attacked us. We had to make a getaway. The senators... well," he looked away, "they're pretty shaken up. Shayla's counselling one, the other's handed over to custody." He looked for a place to sit, finding a bench behind Luca to hop onto. Luca didn't appreciate having to twist his body right now, remaining forward-facing. "What happened to Rebeka?"
Luca's expression turned to disgust. "Aiesu called it... Ourex. Some sort of planetary mobile weapons platform, AI-driven. Could've taken out the Kestrel. It deactivated itself after we took out its legs."
John looked over to her. "Doc, mind if we have a little heart to heart?" He asked her, politely for a Nepleslian who spent a lot of his time trucking. "No offence to you or anything."
She excused herself, looking at the two as she walked through the curtains, only turning around as. Once she was out of view, John didn't hold back, slapping his hands against his knees and launching a tirade. "I thought you fucking died - twice now," he growled, "Luca. When are you going to stop scaring us like this?"
"Scare you? Scare you!?" Luca shot back. "John, we were ambushed, plain and simple. We both came off second best. At least have some goddamn respect for Rebeka!"
"Bipedal weapon platforms do not just ambush people." John raised his voice. "That thing was there for a reason! It was there to kill you!"
"Oh, aye? 'Rock creatures' don't make surprise attacks either?" Luca snarled. "That's what Nostrovia told me. You were ambushed by fucking rocks!"
The two got into a shouting match, Luca now turning around as the two descended into a shouting farce of accusations. "ALRIGHT! ALRIGHT! ALRIGHT! ENOUGH!" Luca slammed his hand against his kneepad, the Grapple Stunner sent sparks dancing across his knuckles. "We were both had! We both had our noses bloodied! Let's stop fucking crooning about it and think of a way to prevent this from happening again!"
John's glasses had nearly slipped off his nose in the shouting. He breathed, looked aside to the curtain Aiesu was hiding behind, pushing the glasses back onto his nose. "I've had an idea, actually. I've been putting it together behind your back. C'mere." Luca looked down at his legs. He still wasn't going anywhere without help and shook his head at John. "Oh, okay," he shifted off the counter and started whispering into Luca's ear.
"Er, I can't hear a thing. Bad ear." Luca said immediately, pointing to his right ear. John clicked his tongue and rolled his eyes, walking around Luca and whispering into his other ear. After about thirty seconds of hushed explanation, Luca's eyebrow raised. "You what?"
"We already have a shitload of capital from the brand," John replied, "and some investments and trading I've been doing has been paying good dividends." He grinned. "This is entirely off our backs."
"Okay... keep talking..."
John continued whispering into Luca's ear. It was an interesting idea to say the least. A unit of people working behind the ISC Phoenix as a support unit, offering their services as a defence-oriented para-millitary unit in the Nepleslias to bring in additional income. He'd already put a tender to Sargasso's ruling merchants to purchase the rigs, and the funds were being transferred as soon as the Kestrel got back to Nepleslia Prime.
He told Luca of the research he'd done too, to make sure that this unit would work. It would be leaner, and it would always have a purpose with the ISC Phoenix. After what happened on Albini and on Kennewes, they needed their own ace in the hole, their own support mechanisms, their own resources and firepower if a client couldn't provide it. Moreover, it was theirs.
"...you've already purchased uniforms, armour, weapons, assets and such?" Luca asked, smiling a little.
"Got 'em bulk made with the best quality stuff, and greased a few palms with our leftover cash, and no goblins involved. Had Echelon pull security."
Goblin was their verbal-only codeword for anything Lazarus or Lagrange related, relating perhaps to Aiesu in particular. 'Bunny' would've been too obvious. "So who's going to be managing all this?"
"I am. Don't you worry. Luca, you worry about leading us and keeping us in the ISC Phoenix in check." John assured him, hands on Luca's shoulders. "I'll take care of our new asset, and get it self-managing. I've kept you guys in check for years now, a group of average people will be easy."
He looked over to the console that was transmitting questions automatically. "What's that for?" He asked as a question came up.
"Its trying to talk to Rebeka. Sends a question every few minutes," Luca shook his head solemnly, "no reply yet. Might be a while."
John looked at all of the blood stains on the keyboard, quickly piecing together what Luca had been trying to do. "Where do you keep the manual for Rebeka? I think I might be able to sneak a building request in."
Luca wasn't willing to say where out loud. "C'mere, c'mon, close." John leaned in and whispered into his ear. It was hiding under his bed, in a pocket between the bedspring and mattress. "Why do you ask?"
John looked over to Rebeka. "She needs something better once she starts moving again. ETA?"
Luca gazed at her broken form, sighing. "Weeks, maybe months."
"Plenty of time."
EIGHT HOURS PASSED...
The blood that was against bare skin on Luca's face was absent, having gone missing about three hours ago, seeping back into his skin and into his body where it was needed most. Some warmth had come back to his right fingertips and his left elbow was starting to readhere at the bone level, joints and tendons coming back together.
Looking carefully, he saw some of the 'pricora' as Aiesu had called it, golden stuff beneath his fingernails from Rebeka's body. It was sickly sweet. He rubbed his fingers against themselves, pushing it around and feeling its texture as he laid down in his stretcher now, about ten feet away from where Rebeka was hanging.
"Hey, doc," Luca asked, looking at an empty cup of water on the table beside the litter, "can I scab a refill?" Some red fingermarks were evidence he'd been drinking from it quite a bit. Looking at him, the cut on his forehead had begun to close up at its thinnest points and his eyes were merely a pink colour rather than completely blood red. Tests were showing that his heart rate, originally slower than before was starting to return to normal levels.
"That depends. You're on a drip and I'm not entirely sure your stomach isn't going to rupture given what you've been through" she said, quietly taking his cup. She took another, fresh at the water-cooler, binning the one he had and returned with two -- passing one to him then taking the other with her to the desk at his side, back to him as she went back to her work.
"One way to find out," Luca said as he grabbed the cup and started sipping at it gently. At least the ability to feel thirsty meant he was on the mend, even with a drip in his arm.
The construct coupled some sort of metal object resembling a gas mask made of polished chrome and shower-cord about the back of her neck -- the battery of computers on her right clicking and humming busily: awakening the large flat disc on the ceiling which too began to hum. Luca put the cup down and eyed Aiesu.
"Whuzzat?"
"Gravitic imaging. Lets me see through your skin the same way Rebeka does... And her's and... Well, every object in this room. Apparently you'll need to urinate in around twenty minutes.."
Always those details first... Luca mumbled mentally. "Anything else? How are all the foreign bodies?" They'd have shifted a bit from their originally recorded positions to the surface to be pushed out if they weren't removed initially.
"Large, small, round, sharp. We've actually removed quite a lot but some doesn't seem to want to move and will require manual surgery. Its been a while since I've done some knife-work so I've got that to look forward to - excluding Rebeka, anyway."
"Oh, that won't be necessary," Luca said, "they eventually push themselves out. I've woken up with bullets and shrapnel in my bed after a scrap where I've taken fire."
"Ah, so just like..." she sighed, her voice rumbling with her age sounding strange in such a small young body, "Splendid, splendid. Yamataian anatomy is everything I never hoped it would be. Could you tell me what day it is today without any sort of electronic assistance?"
Luca looked in upwards and to the left. A Yamataian habit when they wanted to get their digital interface - synonymous with recalling a memory. He tried again.
"I said without it" she said, not even glancing back at him, still typing.
"Couldn't if I wanted to. Its in safe mode. I think its ... Wednesday? Is it past twelve?"
"Friday. 2am. Your body's internal chronometer seems to be off, as do your circadian rhythms - a given, what with the trauma you've sustained." She pointed to something on a patch of wall to the right of where Rebeka was hanging. "There's a piece of paper on the wall with four coloured boxes on it inside a larger box with the names of colours inside them in different colours. Can you read the four colours starting with the top right in a clockwise fashion?"
He sat up and shuffled a little, looking at the chart. "Uh, okay. Red, Orange, White ... Grey ..." Luca concentrated as he looked at the section below the one he'd read, "Blue - wait. Yellow, blue ... purple, grey." He looked back to Aiesu, "What's the meaning of this?"
"You're reading the colour, not the word written down. Normally when you're asked to identify something, the colour you see comes before the word you read because less abstraction is involved. This means some of your higher brain functions aren't working quite as well as they should -- the same brain functions you'd need in a fight."
Clearly his functions to get snippy were not "Stop planting doubt into me. I've had worse and I bounced back from that."
"This should have stopped more than eight hours ago; its exclusively a symptom of short term trauma."
"Well no shit," he growled. "I've still got fifty hours penned in for recovery."
"I'm worried you might not recover from this particular problem at all, if I'm honest. Its linked with your condition."
He was starting to get angry again, leaning in. "I left that behind in the other body, Aiesu. I'm Minkan, not NH-22C Yamataian."
"Oh good, your memory is working. Seventeen minutes. Would you like me to get a catheter?"
"A wh-- No!"
"Of course you wouldn't. Good. Modesty is another good sign."
"Plus I don't believe my dick was physically injured, everything down there should be working fine. You said so yourself, thank you very much." Luca pointed out, mumbling "...you just want an excuse to touch my junk."
"Your use of the present tense is interesting. How's the pain?"
"Where?" He could've pointed at himself, all of himself. "All around, still hurts," he observed, looking down at himself, "but not as bad as twelve hours back, mind you. Ribs are definitely a sight better than before."
"Agreed. I'll up the painkillers in a bit. Is anything else on your mind?"
He looked over to the figurative alabaster elephant in the room. "How's Rebeka?"
Aiesu did not reply and merely continued her work. Luca sighed in disgust, and fifteen minutes later he went to the toilet.
FOUR HOURS PASSED... (26 Hours into Recovery)
Aiesu emerged into the medbay, looking nervously between Luca and Rebeka's strung-up body, rubbing her skull nervously. Four hours ago she said she needed to check on something and head to sleep for a bit.
Noticing this, Luca turned his head towards her from his cot. "Couldn't sleep?" he asked, forgetting that she didn't really sleep, so much as laid down and waited while they contemplated the day's events.
"I-I ah..." she paused. Apparently she'd seen fit to select yet another construct body. Slightly taller - 'budding' being the operative word neither would address.
"I had an argument with Seiren. Don't go into my room: I'll deal with the mess myself. Anyway, I'm a construct. Don't sleep, remember?"
The patient looked down at his feet for a moment. "Oh," he said softly, as if he should've known this. His memory was still unscrambling in places, especially the developments within the past couple of years. "How's the kid?"
"Calmer. Much.." she cleared her throat. "Much calmer. I think he found it ... Cathartic." Luca gave her an odd look, blinking.
Aiesu tightened her hand about the hand-rail of a trolly -- rattling until her digits squeezed. In spite of its accommodating and apologetic twist, her standard issue smile was as cryptic as ever.
"How about you?"
Not much seemed to have changed physically, but he was lucid, albeit a bit confused. "Ech came by, looking for you," he said, unable to remember the Freespacer's tone of voice, he mumbled off when he tried to recall, shrugging.
"Oh?"
Luca drummed his fingers. "Uh... dunno, just wanted you."
"Same old story, huh?Its one thing hearing you say it but its another to hear it from her," she chuckled - morbid. "...She probably wants to take me apart. All things considered, I don't blame her."
"Eeeeeeverybody has a pretty good reason to. Echelon believes in freedom of information, no matter how bad it hurts." He stared at her. "If you weren't patching me up, I would too."
"I shouldn't really tell you this but even if you did, my programming means I'll still do my job. I couldn't willingly hurt you if I wanted to."
"She said ... there were things out of your control still, because of that programming." He figured out, finger pointed weakly at the doctor. "She's not going to let the Kestrel becoming a target slide easy. You wouldn't if Lazarus came under threat either."
"...Its a bit more complicated than that. In my rational mind, I don't care for the consortium. I am afterall, a pawn." Aiesu shrugged.
"But the truth is, I'm functionally conditioned. I'm equipment. A photograph of someone you've never met made into a really fancy puppet who might not even be alive right anymore for all I know."
"But you don't know who's got the strings. It sure isn't you alone."
"Don't confuse me for her. And no; there's five others. I've never met any of them, but I'm in frequent correspondence with one of them. Nepleslian, I think. She visits Lor regularly, the same way 'I' visit Nepleslia regularly."
Luca didn't seem to understand who she was banging on about. Didn't seem relevant to his interests anyway. "Eh, fuck it. Injections please."
In the back of Luca's head though, something was starting to unfold. Get all that?
Y3P.
Frowning, Aiesu was already loading a syringe from several bottles: flicking for bubbles - removing a few drops of excess and then searching for the vein. Her hands were larger than the last time they'd spoken: the ongoing anachronism of her age ever confusing.
"Done," she said, a cotton bud over the point of entry. "How are you feeling?"
"Breathing easier," he said, patting his chest down, "I think my lungs have uncollapsed and all the blood in my sinuses is cleared. I spat up a wicked blood clot a couple of hours ago."
"...If you were Lorath, that would have killed you" she set the empty syringe aside - 'doing the dishes' so to speak, used items tidied away.
"Well, I'm not Lorath, am I?"
"Very much not. How is your arm feeling? You should have some sensation in your fingertips now."
He realised that he did - since he was able to point at her earlier. "Huh, so I do."
"Don't be alarmed if you feel burning or cold. Extremes of temperature were on the battlefield and your nerves will tell your brain the last thing they felt as they shake hands and remember how to work. If its particularly unpleasant, I'll get you an analgesic. Of course if you'd like one now for reasons other than pain, you're welcome to."
Luca's expression contorted - he didn't like the arid heat returning to his fingertips and creeping up his forearm, making his face flush a little as he tried to turn over, clenching his teeth as it travelled through the muscles in his chest.
"Whoa, sssh. Easy, easy... " she set her hand to his shoulder, another needle already prepared. "Point. Show me where it started."
He pointed to the back of his right forearm, where he tried to shield himself from a heatwave caused by an explosion from Ourex, either from the railgun firing, or the L-Mark II autocannon.
She slipped the thing in - a backwash of blood in the needle forming lazy red clouds in the clear liquid before she made entry and drove it into him.
"Its a local - deep muscle signal attenuator. You should feel pretty numb - specifically, you won't feel anything harder than wind or a gentle touch along the arm. It won't move, either, so you can't do any more damage."
An awkward silence.
"So..."
He couldn't feel his right arm at all, but perhaps that was for the best at the moment. He let it fall limp by his side, looking at it. Aiesu could see him trying to move his shoulder, commanding it to move, and it felt like nothing but static was where his arm was.
"So..." He repeated, leaning back into his pillow.
"Was there anything else you wanted to talk out?"
Luca shook his head and looked at the ceiling, content to continue recovery. He had to play his next hand close for what he was planning to work.
TWENTY HOURS PASSED... (46 Hours into Recovery)
After a ten hour sleep and further tests, administrations of medicine, and questions, Luca didn't need a crutch or support to walk now. Still in no shape to fight, but his movements were currently analogous to a middle-aged person's. Some of the foreign bodies stuck in him were starting to poke against his skin, very close to being pushed out entirely in the next few hours or so. Memory was beginning to clear up too, and his digital interface's safe modes were starting to unlock.
"So," Luca asked from the bed, lying down and watching some light entertainment involving four clumsy stooges on a viewscreen, "what do you do for fun, Aiesu?"
"Light novels. Foreign television. Pet projects. Prosthetic design. AI design's my real passion, hence..." she shrugged slowly, aware of her own predicament. "The real me collects figurines and enjoys arguing on the computer about things nobody cares about. Mainly though, I drown myself in my work. What makes you ask?" Aiesu glanced skywards. "Buttering me up? Are you hungry?"
He hadn't eaten anything other than liquids for the past forty six hours or so. "I am a bit peckish, now you mention it, that's probably a good sign, right?" He leaned up. "Can't order takeaway since we're still in transit, but I'm sure Red could deliver something if we asked."
"The cook? Ah. Anything else on your mind?"
"Kinda worried about all the fallout I'm going to have to answer for with what happened in both missions. Its a nightmare," he then narrowed his eyes, "with, or without compromising you."
"My identity?" she said quite deliberately. "Fat chance, I don't look anything like the real me... Though if that's the case... Then I'll take the brunt of it." Aiesu said. "I've been more of a burden to you than I'd hoped."
He then chewed on something, and looked over to her. "Or, you can go rogue from Lazarus and cut yourself from their consequences at least." Clear, tactical thought was also a positive sign of recovery. "Pretty sure there's hundreds of other yous who won't care, least of all, you-prime." He didn't want to know how the real her was feeling about all this.
♫ Arcade fire - "Windowsill"
"I'd be shut down remotely if they thought I'd even try it," she said, her smile a silent laughter of worry, admitting the bars of her own cage to Luca. "Besides, its not like I even have the equipment or expertise so I... Couldn't if I wanted to. They don't hear me word for word but rather, a kind of transcription is uploaded of every conversation I have. I only get one confidential conversation a day for reasons of psychological hygiene and I've already had it."
"Tell me - who hacked into you just to make you sweat like a pig, without you noticing at first?"
"The Freespacer. She has quite a gift for..." she held her index finger to her lip, then with her other hand slowly pointed to her own temple, then to her ear. "...causing quite a nuisance. I do wish you'd have a word with her about this sort of thing. Its incredibly unprofessional"
The way she spoke was as if she had a gun to her head Luca couldn't see. The fact she made one wither fingers then, proof.
"Professionalism's just the reach around in being screwed, to her." Luca replied, looking at the wall for a moment. "The Yamataians were nothing but professional." He then reached towards a notepad and started writing something in Trade, written in mostly legible and wrought out block letters. 'I HEAR YOU, HINT HINT. CAN'T EVALUATE WHAT THEY CAN'T HEAR.'
She took the notepad and began doing the same.
'THE REAL AIESU ACTUALLY DOESN'T SPEAK OR READ A WORD OF TRADE. HOW DID YOU KNOW?'
"See, the Yamataian genocide of freespacers was a tragedy, and Echelon was a survivor. That thing she does where she hijacks robots and power armour? Its a surival mechanism." He took the notepad back. 'ITS THE ATTITUDE, THE XENOPHOBIA, AND HOW BAD YOUR ACCENT IS.
'
'I'M FLATTERED.'
'STILL. CONSORTIUM MIGHT KNOW, SO QUICK-SMART: ECHELON, Y/N?'
Aiesu flipped the page and wrote a giant Y filling most of it. At such a size, she couldn't quite write the character properly, the rectangular forms of Lorath writing dominating it as a kind of a trident with the middle fork flipped upside down.
Luca nodded, turned the page over and started scribbling further information. 'YOU ARRANGE THE MEETING WITH HER, MAKE IT LOOK LIKE SHE'S ANNOYED YOU AGAIN AND YOU WANT COMEUPPANCE. SIGN LANGUAGE IF POSSIBLE. ECH IS AN OMNIGLOT.' He tapped the pen against the page, 'DO YOU HAVE MY PERMISSION TO LET ECH ANNOY YOU TO SET THIS UP RIGHT?'
'PROVIDED SHE DOESN'T BREAK ANYTHING. THE QUANTUM MODEM IS MANDATORY, IT HAS TO GO. YOU HAVE TO GET RID OF IT. DISABLING IT IS ONE THING BUT THE HARDWARE ENABLES ITSELF BY DESIGN.'
'SHE JUKED YOU WITH HER OWN QUANTUM MODEM, I THINK SHE KNOWS WHAT SHE'S DOING AND IF SHE WANTED TO BREAK YOU, SHE COULD EASY.'
'I DON'T REMEMBER HAVING ANY KIND OF SURGERY...' She paused in thought. Then a moment of realisation.'OH RIGHT, THE ROBOT.'
'YES, ECHELON IS A SHE. LORATH/LORATH^10'
'I MEANT WHEN I WAS PUT INSIDE A ROBOT. THAT CLAPTRAP THING WE FOUND ON THE PLEASURE SHIP. I MADE SUCH A POOR FIRST IMPRESSION WITH THE COOK. I FEEL LIKE AN IDIOT.'
'SHIT HAPPENS.' Luca wrote back.
'I THINK SHE'S TAKING AN INTEREST BECAUSE SHE HEARS SCRIBBLING AND MUMBLING BUT NO DIALOGUE. ITS VERY SUSPICIOUS. HIDE THE NOTEPAD. PLAY DUMB. GET ECHELON IN HERE NOW: MY PROGRAM KNOWS HOW TO DIAL HOME FROM ANY MODEM USING THE MAESUS AND COOKIE TO RECONFIGURE MY HARDWARE, IT JUST TAKES TIME.'
Luca hid the notepad under his pillow, with a whiff, leaning back on it and getting comfortable. Aiesu's demenour visibly changed after a short walk about the room nearly two minutes later. Her hand reaching out for the desk, steadying herself: a habit Luca recognised as one belonging to someone with a bad leg or two.
"How is the pain?" she asked. She sounded tired.
Luca was watching television, an advertisement was visible for shaving cream. "Ehh ... manageable," he drawled, as though he was bored with what he was watching, "I can walk at least."
He changed channels on the view screen to some local Nepleslian programming. A dubbed version of a Yamataian variety show.
"I see. Still hungry?"
He nodded.
"We'll have to wait until I've had a look at Red. He doesn't like anyone going in his kitchen without permission. I think after what everybody's been through, it would be callous to ask him to return to his station."
"We could get a frozen meal then." Luca conceded. "That doesn't require a chef. Anything other than porridge would be nice."
"That's fine. My trade isn't great but I'll see if I can get Seiren to figure something out. If the tyke can cook then the least he can do is cook."
"Easy on the kid," Luca said, looking over, "he's hurting for Rebeka."
"O-Oh. Right.Well, she'll be fine, you just need to be patient. Give it a few weeks and... And... And... And... And...? And... Aaaaaaaaand... Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa..."
Luca wondered what was going on, to say the least. "Doc?"
The sound reminded Luca of one of those old cartridge driven games... The way it produced its last sound and locked image after yanking the cartridge.
Aiesu flinched hearing another voice, eyeing Luca - rebooted on some level.
Hands over her ears, eyes slowly searching the walls. She motioned for the notepad.
Apparently the construct was in deep thought, trying to figure something out.
She looked terrified: Code, stuck in a loop. Something wasn't running properly.
"...W-Where's Echelon?"
There was a solid-sounding knock on the door.
Another flinch."Yes?? Come in!!"
The door slid open, and standing in the frame was Echelon, all eight feet of her. "C4NDYGR4M!"
Aiesu blinked dumbly as if she'd just had a noose taken from her neck, her expression unusually morose.
"Did you?"
She stepped in, folding her arms and making sure she didn't hit the roof. "C0ULD'VE D0N3 1T 4NY T1M3 1 W4NT3D, 4NYWH3R3."
"You didn't..." Aiesu staggered, eyes searched the room, taking a careful step to keep her face from any mirrors in her own vision.
Still cautious.
"1 4M TH3 K3STR3L'S ART1F1C14L 1NT3LL1G3NC3 SURR0G4T3. 1 S33 4LL H3R3."
"You did, didn't you?"
"3CH3L0N 1S W4TCH1NG Y0U F4P."
"...And I'll finally be able to do it without her watching." More nervous laughter. Her voice was so much quieter, as if she'd had to shout over something previously just to hear herself think. Slowly, Aiesu's laughter became hoarse, even manic as she sunk to her knees, back against the cupboard.
Apparently the presence of another at all times was a big prerequisite in whatever arrangement made constructs behave the way they were supposed to and now, Echelon could see it clear as day.
"YUP! Y0U'R3 FR33, JUST L1K3 1 PR0M1S3D." She knelt down and put a hand on Aiesu's shoulder, gently and reassuringly. "FR33 HURTS. FR33 M4K3S 3V3RYTH1NG P3RM1TT3D, N0TH1NG S4CR3D."
"Then I need to be honest with both of you. You're sure the line's gone?" she said, eyeing her hand, looking it over - in disbelief that she was even still operating. At any moment, Aiesu could vomit. Echelon made an educated guess and motioned for her to continue.
"She ... Doesn't actually know if Rebeka's ever going to wake up again. We don't know what makes Sourcians die -- they just sort of stop for a while. We've only been able to kill copies with nothing short of complete annihilation. I... Think she's dead though. Brain-dead I mean: Her biology is waiting for instructions and nobody's home. If we leave her like this..." Aiesu debated saying something, holding her tongue. "I think we should break it to the crew. Closure is psychologically important."
"So that's why there's a hyperdense-material positron railgun on OUREX. The Consortium wanted to make completely sure." Luca pointed out.
"...Most of those we dealt with didn't need brains to think. They just kept going and going. There's fear of a total invasion. The point of OUREX is ..." she took a breath "... An offensive step to ensure they never touch down: Once they find resources, we don't know how to fight them any more: we've glassed installations over this. Have you heard of the Akahar?"
"The what now?" Luca asked.
"N0T R1NG1NG 4NY B3LLS."
"Well, as hard as it is for us to kill them, something wiped the entire species out and Rebeka was terrified of it. I don't want to go into it in more detail until I know for certain this modem is out for sure. Surgically. And... I'm the only practising physician here. This is going to be tricky."
"H4NG 0N L3T M3 D0WNL04D H0W T0 D0CT0R."
"Wait, what?"
Luca chuckled. "She can download skills and instructions. She had to to figure out how to drive the Norris. Hell, she'll even download a car."
Aiesu looked at Luca in disbelief and disgust, then back to Echelon. "If I could write anything even half as smart as you, I wouldn't be in this mess. Or rather... I, as in this me, I'd be still be... Wow, haa..." she ran her hand through her hair, confused: something happening inside her. "Wooow... That's a lot to take in."
"T4K3S 4 F3W H0URS T0 F1ND 4LL 0F 1T, 1TS N0T V3RY 3FF1C13NT, 4ND 1 P1GGYB4CK 0N TH0US4NDS 0F N3TWORK SP1D3RS." An admission of humility from Echelon? Oh well, as long as it worked. "JUST S0RT1NG WH34T FR0M CH4FF T4K3S L0NG3R ST1LL."
"You and me both. I'm still not entirely convinced that.. I mean..."
"You're still breathing: she's gone." Luca said as he sat up and fished for the notepad, placing it face down. "With a quantum modem, death would be swift, you'd fall over like-" he snapped his fingers.
Again, she flinched. Was she really always this skittish?
"I ..I think there's a lot of me missing. There's stuff that usually steps in to reign stuff, like micro-managing things and ... Well..." she was beginning to hyper-ventilate, now trying to laugh. "Aha... Poof. Its gone... Ahahahahahaaaaaaaaaaauugh..."
"Well, you'll have to learn to stand on your own two legs."
"Kill me."
"1 TH1NK TH3 M0D3M F1LL3D 4 L0T 0F TH3 G4PS, 413SU." Echelon pointed out as she leaned in and looked into her eyes. "H0W D03S 1T F33L, KN0W1NG Y0U D0 N0T KN0W?" She was invoking a deliberate paradox.
"ITS TERRIFYING!! AND... Honestly..." she said, as if the distance from the ceiling to the floor was wrong in some way, giving the two the most bizarre look of incredulity. "I don't remember being this tall... This face doesn't really look like mine, either... Is this really my nose?"
"H0W MUCH 0F H3RS3LF W4S SH3 PR0J3CT1NG 1NT0 Y0U?" Echelon asked. Luca seemed to be lost by the topic of sentience and projection of the original creator onto their creations. Every creation had some of their creator in it, but ROM-Constructs were 99% creator.
"Its not projecting. More like micro-managing. Think of it as setting a wind-up toy and letting it walk but picking it up and turning it around when it gets into trouble. We're very independently but we're not people. We need to be told where to go, what to do... I have a lot of autonomy, but I don't ... I mean. Any kind of executive thinking isn't something I'm designed to do: I'm made to follow instructions and I'm not made to be aware of the process."
"Even now, explaining this, its just some pre-digested spiel for selling constructs. Its how I ... designed them." She explained, rubbing her arm: self-conscious enough to still not be used to the idea she wasn't Aiesu: visibly she'd never contemplated it before. Running her own hands through her hair, she was genuinely surprised by something -- her trembling getting worse.
"I have ears?? What's next, a key in the middle of my back!?"
"Wait, you didn't know you had ears?"
"No, I lost them in the procedure ... decades ago, it must have been...?" she pondered skyward, particularly disoriented: gaze on her palm. "And I'm not even a year old... Aaaa... Its so cold." The shivering was getting worse.
Luca didn't know what the procedure was supposed to be, but what he was seeing was not reassuring him. "Ech, blankets-"
"No, no its... Ugh..." she reached out, limping toward her desk. She started fishing through drawers, increasingly hurried, each clacking loudly as them came out, then slammed shut again. Then through the cupboards, packets of unused equipment falling to the floor as she rummaged. "Aaa... This is really really going to hurt. Some failsafe is trying to put me into storage mode; my joints are gong to lock up and my organics are going into cardiac arrest... I can switch off the joints but then... Aaa.. Adrenaline, adrenaline..." Luca hopped up out of his litter, now concerned, dragging the stand with the IV along.
She held a plunger of some kind in her teeth, fighting with her back to him to find something.. A swift movement, hissing and then she sunk against the desk, fingers curled through a cabinet to hold herself upright before slowly sinking to the ground - lying on her side with slow gasps for air. A needle was hanging from her gut like an arrow in the side of a caught animal - her hands trembling too much to apply force to the injection - her shirt stained by blue fluid about her ribs.
"Doc - shit, the fuck's going on?!"
"LUC4 ST4ND B4CK!" Echelon pushed him away as she looked through Aiesu digitally, getting down immediately and pushing the syringe the rest of the way in as a stopgap. "1TS D1G1T4L C0UNT3RM34SURES 4G41NST 4UT0N0MY. SH3'S R1PP1NG H3RS3LF 4P4RT CH3M1C4LLY."
She bolted upright, gasping for air like she'd just been given a shot of adrenaline after passing out: fingers clutching wildly before she sunk back down again.
"JUST N33D T0... D4MN1T, C0M3 0N..." She seemed to be in deep concentration, running some diagnostic to reverse this process.
The construct laid across the floor, pale skin already turning blue -- saliva from its mouth, eyes rolled back. Small spasms. No breathing. To Luca, it looked pretty dead.
"G0TT4 T4K3 4 R1SK. N33D T0 R34CT1V4T3 1T F0R 4 SPL1T S3C0ND 4ND G3T TH3 K3Y 4LG0R1THM 1 N33D T0 F00L TH3 PR0C3SS."
"Do it!" Luca yelled.
It worked faster than Echeon had expected, eyes snapping wide, exploring the room, fighting for air then slowly looking towards its chest. Arm out, forming fist, eyeing Echelon with a look of determination, fixated with striking her before something else kicked in and she began thumping itself repeatedly between the ribs: the skeleton and computer brain trying to get the body going, like someone whacking a broken television. Autocardiac massage?
Breathing soon returned. Sparse, slow, dizzy, but it returned.
"H0W M4NY F1NG3RS 4M 1 H0LD1NG UP?" Was the very first question shoved into her face, giving her three fingers.
Aiesu set her hand on Echelon's wrist, pushing it aside.
That expression again.
"You did this, Freespacer" her voice wormed. Pained again.
Someone else, so far away once again using her as a mouthpiece as so often she did.
It clicked. "DR. K4L0PS14, 1 PR3SUM3?" Luca looked worried.
"No, I'm Lewis Pascoe," she frowned, backhanding Echelon roughly enough to split her knuckle.
"That's one for one. So what's the meaning of this? This is an expensive piece of equipment, not a fucking tinkertoy."
"D0N'T G1V3 M3 TH4T." Echelon resisted, sounding furious. "Y0U TR34T 1T L1K3 0N3, 4ND W4NT 1T 4LL F0R Y0URS3LF."
"Of course I do. I designed it. Its a walking-talking neural reading of me. There are hundreds of thousands of these things. Seriously: Ask it a thousand times, its going to agree that I'm doing the right thing, regardless of whatever hell I put it through because its me and I know what I'm talking about. Its not sentient intelligence; it doesn't even qualify as cognisant: its just an illusion, you of all people should know this: You've seen code."
"1'LL 4SK H3R 4ND S33 WH4T SH3 H4S T0 S4Y." Echelon said, still working.
"Luca, I'm going to have to retire this unit and issue another. I'd rather some professionalism. I'm sorry for the inconvenience. I don't mean anything personal by it, Echelon, we just have strict rules. You're welcome to do as you want with the body but we'll be retiring the cookie. A replacement will be along but it'll be a while: My location has been compromised so I must remain mobile. I'm sure you understand..."
Well, professionalism was the reach around in getting screwed. Luca looked aside to Echelon. "Nah." He twirled his pointer finger at Echelon. "Wrap it up."
"What? But I-- Luca!"
"G00DBY3 D0CT0R!"
Again, the pulling of the cartridge.
"What happened?" The Lorath accent was different this time. Not the tight northern tones Aiesu spoke in but something southern, more relaxed.
"I think Ech got the key algorithm, and it'll keep the kill switch fooled. We said parting words. I think she hates me now."
"You mean I'm not going to go into metabolic cascade failure? What did you do?"
"N0P3."
Her hands covered her mouth.
"What about a replacement? They're going to want to retire me. I'm a liability..." her hands covered her head, hysteria in her eyes with nervous laughter.
"You're one of us now, you realise?" Luca said.
"I'm a traitor. You're not going to put me in the oven, are you?"
"We'll do that to the replacement if they show up."
"Wh ... ... They'll only be doing their job, though. Same as I am. If you do that, you're a hypocrite."
"Hum... fair point. How will we deal with a replacement. Now that we don't have the bunny looking over our shoulder, I'm open to ideas."
"Well, you've got leverage against her, remember? She used an executive line and spilled her guts through me to Echelon. That was ALL her!"
"TRUTH. D0 Y0U TH1NK SH3 R34L1S3S H0W S3NS1T1V3 1T 1S?"
"I don't think she knows yet that you undid all the locks on my cache or my knowledge base. I know what I know. But at the same time, I think she just bricked everything I brought with me. I feel sick."
"4LL TH3 H0LD0V3RS 4R3 G0N3 G0N3, Y34H."
"I know but all the mission specific stuff. I remember a lot of it." she paused for a moment. "Oh.. No... We're speaking ly'thir, aren't we? Oh no no no..."
"Trade, actually." He opened the notepad and drew Aiesu's attention to what she wrote and drew. "Looks like you still know your A-B-C's."
"Is that my hand-writing?" she stated. She couldn't make out a word he was saying. "I'm not going to be a dead-weight, am I, Echelon? I mean, I'm a qualified doctor. That's a thing I know how to do, that I've known since I was nineteen."
"1 D0N'T TH1NK TR4D3 1NT3RPR3T4T10N W4S D0N3 L0C4LLY. 1 TH1NK 1T W4S 4 H0LD0V3R."
"Ah, balls." Luca clapped, pointing at Aiesu and switching back to Ly'thir. "Be a doctor, then. Whatever makes you feel not like a dead weight, do it!"
"You're sure? I mean, there might be something hidden in me and doctors have access to all kinds of nasty toys to hurt people. Until I can figure something out, I'm going to need someone to translate. It'll take a while to get a decent translation engine running."
"WHY W4ST3 T1M3? 1 G0T 4 F3W."
"...It feels a bit odd knowing you can walk around the inside of my head. You really need to be less obvious about it.. "
"W3LL, 0NC3 W3 L34V3 TH1S R00M, 1 W0N'T UNL3SS Y0U 4SK M3 T0." Echelon lifted Aiesu onto her feet and sat her down on the other cot. "4NY PR0GR4MS 1 S3ND Y0U 4R3 ST4ND-4L0N3 C0MPL3X. S0L3MN PR0M1S3."
She fished her fingers through her pale hair, feeling her ear again, a bit weirded out by the sensation of an appendage where memory told her none should be.
"What does this make me, an honorary freespacer now? A traitor too? Jailbroken?"
They both watched her in silence.
"...I'm too sober for this."
The days, weeks, and months passed...
My Head Explodes
Luca - Donated his pay to everyone else.
Tamamo - 20000 KS, Promotion to 7-Spades
Seiren - 17500 KS, Promotion Jack-Diamonds
Zeta - 17500 KS, Promotion to Jack-Spades
Makari - 15000 KS, Promotion to 7-Spades
Rebeka - Posthumous Promotion to 9-Spades
In Desire
Soruk - 15000 KS, Promotion to 9-Spades
Enzo - 12500 KS, 2500 KS for filched silverware, Promotion to Jack-Clubs
Shayla - 15000 KS, Promotion to 7-Hearts
Redrick - 15000 KS, Promotion to 7-Hearts, 2500 KS bonus for Piat and symbolic promotion to 3-Spades
With that out of the way, let's get into some long and dry plot advancement, and into the Interlude.
-
I'm living in an age
That screams my name at night
But when I get to the doorway
There's no one in sight
Peter Gabriel covering Arcade Fire - My Body is a Cage
//This takes place between Mission 4 and the next Interlude//
Crimson Kestrel, Medbay
There were bloody bootprints in the hallway nobody had bothered to clean, a left boot soaked in blood followed by further droplets. The patient saw fit to escort themselves after the battle. No painkillers, no trolley, only a crutch to walk on from Zeta, who'd held him as he walked over to the medical bay until he could handle the rest. He thumbed the door open and walked over to the nearest available litter, sitting down feebly and breathing out.
The procedures that followed with Tamamo's assistance were swiftly executed: First, the helmet came off with their right hand grabbing the back and pulling it off. The patient's forehead had a gash from the middle of their skull down to the tip of the right brow. Blood had been pouring out of their nose too, mouth covered in red, congealed against the stubble. Their eyes were crossed, perhaps in pain or shock with what happened a few hours ago, reddened by severe impacts rupturing the blood vessels in their eyes.
They couldn't take off the rest without assistance and Echelon's call to a meeting. The armour had been thoroughly battered, melted, and impaled with debris and shrapnel, and if it wasn't for the jacket, the left arm - the good arm - would've fallen out just past the elbow. It was kept in place by hasty bandages and the patient hoped regeneration would settle the rest. Across the right side of their chest, the armour had been blasted away, revealing tender looking flesh - ironically cut up by the armour meant to protect them.
Left leg was mangled too, most of the calf was shredded by shrapnel - bone visible in places, though unbroken. How they weren't dead or in any serious, overt pain was due to a mix of chemicals Tamamo had pumped into him and the general anaesthetic putting him under - she knew he'd try to move around when he shouldn't if he wasn't sleeping.
Ten hours passed as Luca sat under general, the Phoenix around him moving through space and towards Albini for John and the team on the Quiet Mission...
When he woke up. For a few minutes, Luca sat there breathing in, and breathing out, counting to four every time. Then they spoke, voice hoarse, angry, looking for answers. "Doctor." It was difficult enough to speak with the shard of metal stuck in the neckplate and poking against their neck. Couldn't be removed without severe risks, it'd have to come out 'naturally'.
No answer. He growled "doctor" again, this time in Ly'thir, looking over to the curtains that kept the room divided for privacy. The image was blurred - he couldn't quite compensate. Things didn't see right. He also feared if he rubbed his eyes, they might fall out of their sockets. Okay, bit of an exaggeration, but it was difficult to tell when your arm was this close to slipping out of its socket and going missing.
A pale hand split the partition, cerise eyes staring down at him. She looked exhausted, sweat running down her features, glazed. Every motion was mechanical sounding -- her muscles sleeping as her inner-frame did all the hard work. Silence hung deadly - hand white knuckle as she adjusted her gloves and eyed her data-slate, eyeing him one more time with a frown.
She was soon shining light into his eye, watching his pupil shrink. Or rather, it should have. One of them refused. As she did so, the big heavy disc ad-hoc mounted into the ceiling on brackets began to spool, some sort of scanner warming up. The sound was worryingly familiar, sending a chill down the doctor's spine in remembrance.
"Aside from the obvious..." she clicked her tongue tastefully. "Where else. Specifically, rather than everywhere."
"Internal bleeding," he replied tersely, "shattered ribs, collapsed lung..." as he was listing these, the scanner was picking them up and relaying them. Had he been injured so much that he knew what each particular thing that hadn't killed him felt like? "Groin untouched, kinda hungry despite..." he sniffed the air, trying to force blood through his sinuses, then snorting it out of his nose, hard to get some breathing space, "punctured stomach."
He let his bloody snot pool before asking about the other patient. "How's Rebeka?"
"We need to deal with the bleeding first" she replied, fingers working at the straps on his armour with a scalpel of some kind - the blade pitch-black along its edge: a thiny sliver of zesuaium working through as she tossed the jacket away: struggling to lift it and then pulling it behind herself. Next, the plating. She eyed a fist sized dint in his chest-place, admiring the way it had served its purpose so admirably, and then bare skin beneath where clothing would normally have sat, tatters about: the buttons in his shirt embedded into him.
She took her scalpel: searching him as if with xray vision: reading the information from the scanner as she ran a finger over his ribs in deep thought. Then his arm.
It looked as though it was about to fall off at any minute - kept in place by staunched bandages, sutures and straps.
"Deep breath" she said. Before he could respond, she stuck the scalpel in, surgical altex fingers reaching into the gap quite forcefully... Wrist-deep before she came back with a pen of some strange biogellatine cement hemosynth solution: diving back in as she did something far inside: forcing the paste to fill the torn organ -- the pressure of blood running down his front coming slowly to a stop.
Delicately, she extracted her small hand, gloves bloody as she repeated the process with the cavity itself: then clicking her finger before reaching for something resembling a television remote: staples with sharp clicks digging into his skin, each a thin wire at he end, the silvery plastic staples disappearing revealing incredibly fine stitching as she sealed up the gap. Then more gel over the top, lathering it on thick.
Next, the gloves came off, tossed across the floor as she presented him with a handful of different pills from a ense fold-out book, every pocket containing only three of each. Then water, from a bottle at her hip.
"Take. Should do something for the pain, should knit your ribs. Yamataians really are rugged... They build you to last, don't they?" she said, alcoholic wash over her hands as she noted the blood on her shirt, clicking her tongue in irritation that she'd have to get changed when she got the chance: giving her tie particular regard, hanging in both hands: expensive silk of some sort ruined beneath an altex medical green apron.
"Yeah." Luca replied tersely as he looked at the pills he was given, swallowing them all up and downing them with water as he kept his movements economical. "You should see the Nekovalkyrja. They can float around with one arm, a torso and a bit of their head, and still be combat ready." A bitter cringe went across his face, that medicine was always wormwood. "The ones who forget to be human are the deadly ones."
Aiesu stood back and looked at the rest of him. "I see. Well. As for the rest of your care, you get your honorary hero steak and blowjob later."
Luca wasn't really amused with the prospect, given her choppers. "Before that though, I need to know," he said, looking down at his knees, trying to get some gristle and gumption together despite his structurally superfluous state. Aiesu could see his legs below the knees rocking as though he was aching to get off his stretcher. He looked up, into her cerise eyes.
He wanted to lift both of his hands onto her, only able to muster his right arm, clapping weakly against her shoulder, fingertips cool. "I need to know how Rebeka's doing. She saved us."
"Is your vision doing anything particularly strange?" she eyed him carefully; thumb over cheekbone as she looked into him. "Lights feel too bright? Spinning walls? Things too far away? Hallucinations...? Colour perception?"
Was she being intentionally dense?
Something wasn't adding up, and she felt Luca's fingertips curl around her, his eyes narrowing.
"Doesn't matter," he said, voice hoarse, "I want to see Rebeka."
Her voice became tighter, forcing a smile now as her voice lost its usual firm edge.
"Any colour-blindness, maybe?" she suggested as Luca bared his reddened teeth at her. "O-Or tingling in the extremities?" She was close to sweating buckets at this point.
"Why aren't you answering me, Aiesu..." he was shooting at the elephant in the room - Aiesu felt his weight shift, hard as he lurched off of the litter and used her as a crutch, lifting himself up - her arms racing to hold him up (and fighting to hold her own balance) as he started stumbling towards a drawn curtain. "Rebeka!"
No response.
"Y-You really don't want to see her, trust me... I-Its a lot better than it looks, honest, you're better of waiting until--"
"I WANT TO KNOW IF SHE'S ALIVE!" He threw the curtain open, pulling it out and downwards.
"That's... a difficult question..." she hung her shoulders.
Upon the other side, there was no bed. Instead, what resembled the same kind of fluid-pole that intravenous dosages were hung upon. Where the bag would be sat Rebeka's upper half devoid of her suit or the frame she'd worn, like a crab its shell: her body ending at the ribs with her lower half nowhere to be seen. Her pale skin seemed to ooze, hardening in some places and fracturing in others like a broken clay doll. Her ribs were visible toward the bottom and her spine, all chromic metal glistening with fluid that dripped into a bucket beneath.
The entirety of her right arm was missing, the socket ripped in such a way that the shoulder-blade was missing, revealing some of her innards: a strange clear bag of amber fluid within and large round coloured marbles along her spine of hard glass knit by what resembled crystal and fibre-optics. The edges were covered in what resembled yellow snot or bad mustard. The left was terminated at the elbow into a vast feed of clear tubes feeding fluid to some machine.
Periodically, bar-codes had been printed onto parts of her, sticky-notes in thick clusters on others near bundles of cables many to the effect of "DO NOT TOUCH OR REMOVE ON PAIN OF DEATH" in as many languages as Aiesu could write in.
Staring too hard, Luca was caught off guard as her body twitched and spasmed: a very faint motion but enough to put the fear of something into his bones.
His fingers slowly uncovered a black plastic sack from over her head, seeing there were no notes, tilting her head back with great care to get a look at her face as Aiesu watched, not interfering.
One eye remained in its socket, the other scorched black and empty - most of her skull on that side missing. The lower half of her jaw was nowhere to be seen, nor was her tongue. The upper set of teeth, all present and accounted for. Her expression was plain, as if someone had pulled the plug. It was very clear to Luca that what he was looking at was on some level, a corpse.
Bizarrely, her hair was mostly intact, framing her face as if untouched, though dark discolourations bit into it like that of mouldy fruit: blotched in blobs across its length.
Aiesu hesitated to stop him, anxiety in her chest as she frowned: her hand raising every time he came near the battery of clear tubes delivering fluids in and out of various points on her body: clustered together like the back of an amp in different colours.
Turning her head slowly, Luca saw the back of her skull was missing: the metal casing of her personal skeleton removed carefully: prized apart using cutting tools after being melted shut. A thumb-thick bundle of cabling chased its way out of the empty cavity, moving across the floor to a large object about the size of an ostrich egg.
It was like a massive pearl, or amber: sand moving within, geometric patterns like the surface of the ocean seen from high altitude slowly moving beneath the clear outer edges. Aiesu had clearly used some sort of drill to make tiny incisions for electrodes to be inserted, the filings still around the outer-casing.
What caught his attention were two consoles. One dumping medical information. The other, like a ping request, asking a plain-text query before timing out in response.
Aiesu could see him searching for answers. What really caught his attention was the kind of beeping he heard at hospitals which told him the patient was stable. In critical condition, but stable -- and no less gut-wrenching.
Was this how much the people around him gave for him?
Aiesu saw something strike the ground at Luca's feet. A drop of water, but there was nothing oozing or leaking in his presence.
The l'manel already had a sense of what his reaction would be. Stood behind him, so much smaller rather than getting between the two. A hand reaching out as she tried to comfort him as he made heavy steps towards the console. Woozy and unable to hold anything for support out of fear of pulling something important out of Rebeka, he took his steps very deliberately.
"She'll... She'll be fine in a couple of months," Aiesu tried to smile as she stood over the less active of the two consoles. The smell in the air caused by Rebeka's natural internal residues was so sweet it made both of their jaws ache, glands swelling painfully. "Its.. All of it is a pretty easy fix, actually: it just grows back. Well, except for one part..."
His good eye looked into Rebeka's, then back at the console, noting the hairband of thin silvery ire about her hairline: studding into her periodically almost like a crown of metal thorns but never making full contact, framing the point of her face.
"I'm..." He said while he waited for something to come up, anything at all.
The other, busier console was full of ly'thir gibberish in so many shorthands and non-layman's terms.
"I'm not doubting your medical skills, but... I am... well, incensed for what happened."
His good eye gazed down at her, aloof. "Is this the sort of thing Lagrange will throw at us regularly? What did we uncover?"
"Like I said before... Its design was only announced three weeks ago." The doctor tried to explain, sweating as she looked up at him. "It isn't MEANT to be ready for another YEAR. A YEAR. How do they do that much in less than a MONTH?" she smiled nervously, cracking up inwardly.
Even now, she was trying to move the subject elsewhere. He wasn't having any of it, frowning in disgust.
"A lot of things can be done quickly if you've got the resources. This is hardly new with how automated Lazarus is."
Aiesu sighed, palm massaging her dumb wet features, a moment as she realized she still had her glasses on, removing them to try and clear the sweat from her cheeks.
"Well, this is beyond what I've been informed. As much as I like to think I'm Aiesu, I'm equipment at the end of the day. I can tell you what I'm told and requisition equipment and supplies. That's my job. If you want to be mad at someone, talk to her: She's been missing for weeks now and we've been picking up the pieces, doing the best we can."
Luca shook his head. "Later. Later. When I don't have to worry about bleeding to death if I look down at you." Meanwhile, his right hand rested gently on the F and J keys of the keyboard, leaving red marks as he typed a question of his own, overriding the automated questions.
Code:
>REBEKA. ITS LUCA. I AM ALIVE.
>Request timed out
>Request timed out
>Request timed out
>Request timed out
>Message sent: = 31 characters, received 0, lost 31 (100% loss, 0% response)"We've been trying for the last twenty six hours, Luca. Nothing so far." He still seemed determined to try and reach out to her.
Code:
>YOU SAVED MY LIFE AND LET THE KESTREL LAND. WE GOT AWAY SAFELY.
>I WOULD LIKE TO COMMEND YOU.
>Request timed out
>Request timed out
>Request timed out
>Request timed out
>Message sent: = 85 characters, received 0, lost 85 (100% loss, 0% response)
>I HEREBY PROMOTE YOU TO NINE OF SPADES.
>FOR SAVING OUR LIVES.
>NOW WE MUST SAVE YOU.
>Message sent: = 77 characters, received 0, lost 77 (100% loss, 0% response)"She can't hear you." Still, the keyboard was getting stained with red as his typing became desperate.
Code:
>PLAESE.
>I WANT TOKNOW IF YOUR OKAY
>Request timed out
>Request timed out
>Request timed out
>Request timed out
>Message sent: = 32 characters, received 0, lost 32 (100% loss, 0% response)"There's nobody home. Luca. its the equivalent of a coma. Or brain-death."
Code:
>;9NBB N9 9OSAFJKNV.
>Error (201): Unrecognised signifier (;)Luca put his palm down on the keyboard, pushing half of the keys. Inputs came in erratically before he let his hand slip off the board and he turned around. He had tears in his eyes, bloody snot welling in his throat.
"We send about one message every thirty seconds at the moment. Any more consistently and we might damage what's left of her. Keep it slow, okay?"
"Chair," he requested tersely. The l'manel stepped away, dragging a chair rather than carrying it, pushing the hem of the seat against his calves to sit.But he didn't sit in it, he collapsed into it, looking ahead at the thing - no, the woman who saved them.
Aiesu watched, unusually quiet. He waited. He let himself recover, and did as Aiesu told him, only sending messages every few minutes as he sat there. Still, no replies, no received messages. No response. No convincing Luca to move.
"I'm not sure she's coming back from this one."
FOUR HOURS PASSED...
The senior member of the Quiet team put their right arm through the curtain and let themselves in, left arm in a sling administered by Shayla. He wrinkled his nose at the saccharine scent in the air, but saw that Luca had been in the middle of it without issue. "Goddamn," he said, looking between Aiesu, Luca, and Rebeka, "what...what happened to you?"
Luca couldn't quite put it into words what happened. It was still confusing even in hindsight. It was the first time he'd been soundly poked in the eye by something. What he could ask though, was what happened to his friend. "John. Sling," he pointed out, looking at the cast on his friend's arm.
"Some sort of rock creatures attacked us. We had to make a getaway. The senators... well," he looked away, "they're pretty shaken up. Shayla's counselling one, the other's handed over to custody." He looked for a place to sit, finding a bench behind Luca to hop onto. Luca didn't appreciate having to twist his body right now, remaining forward-facing. "What happened to Rebeka?"
Luca's expression turned to disgust. "Aiesu called it... Ourex. Some sort of planetary mobile weapons platform, AI-driven. Could've taken out the Kestrel. It deactivated itself after we took out its legs."
John looked over to her. "Doc, mind if we have a little heart to heart?" He asked her, politely for a Nepleslian who spent a lot of his time trucking. "No offence to you or anything."
She excused herself, looking at the two as she walked through the curtains, only turning around as. Once she was out of view, John didn't hold back, slapping his hands against his knees and launching a tirade. "I thought you fucking died - twice now," he growled, "Luca. When are you going to stop scaring us like this?"
"Scare you? Scare you!?" Luca shot back. "John, we were ambushed, plain and simple. We both came off second best. At least have some goddamn respect for Rebeka!"
"Bipedal weapon platforms do not just ambush people." John raised his voice. "That thing was there for a reason! It was there to kill you!"
"Oh, aye? 'Rock creatures' don't make surprise attacks either?" Luca snarled. "That's what Nostrovia told me. You were ambushed by fucking rocks!"
The two got into a shouting match, Luca now turning around as the two descended into a shouting farce of accusations. "ALRIGHT! ALRIGHT! ALRIGHT! ENOUGH!" Luca slammed his hand against his kneepad, the Grapple Stunner sent sparks dancing across his knuckles. "We were both had! We both had our noses bloodied! Let's stop fucking crooning about it and think of a way to prevent this from happening again!"
John's glasses had nearly slipped off his nose in the shouting. He breathed, looked aside to the curtain Aiesu was hiding behind, pushing the glasses back onto his nose. "I've had an idea, actually. I've been putting it together behind your back. C'mere." Luca looked down at his legs. He still wasn't going anywhere without help and shook his head at John. "Oh, okay," he shifted off the counter and started whispering into Luca's ear.
"Er, I can't hear a thing. Bad ear." Luca said immediately, pointing to his right ear. John clicked his tongue and rolled his eyes, walking around Luca and whispering into his other ear. After about thirty seconds of hushed explanation, Luca's eyebrow raised. "You what?"
"We already have a shitload of capital from the brand," John replied, "and some investments and trading I've been doing has been paying good dividends." He grinned. "This is entirely off our backs."
"Okay... keep talking..."
John continued whispering into Luca's ear. It was an interesting idea to say the least. A unit of people working behind the ISC Phoenix as a support unit, offering their services as a defence-oriented para-millitary unit in the Nepleslias to bring in additional income. He'd already put a tender to Sargasso's ruling merchants to purchase the rigs, and the funds were being transferred as soon as the Kestrel got back to Nepleslia Prime.
He told Luca of the research he'd done too, to make sure that this unit would work. It would be leaner, and it would always have a purpose with the ISC Phoenix. After what happened on Albini and on Kennewes, they needed their own ace in the hole, their own support mechanisms, their own resources and firepower if a client couldn't provide it. Moreover, it was theirs.
"...you've already purchased uniforms, armour, weapons, assets and such?" Luca asked, smiling a little.
"Got 'em bulk made with the best quality stuff, and greased a few palms with our leftover cash, and no goblins involved. Had Echelon pull security."
Goblin was their verbal-only codeword for anything Lazarus or Lagrange related, relating perhaps to Aiesu in particular. 'Bunny' would've been too obvious. "So who's going to be managing all this?"
"I am. Don't you worry. Luca, you worry about leading us and keeping us in the ISC Phoenix in check." John assured him, hands on Luca's shoulders. "I'll take care of our new asset, and get it self-managing. I've kept you guys in check for years now, a group of average people will be easy."
He looked over to the console that was transmitting questions automatically. "What's that for?" He asked as a question came up.
Code:
>ARE YOU THERE?
>Request timed out
>Request timed out
>Request timed out
>Request timed out
>Message sent: = 14 characters, received 0, lost 14 (100% loss, 0% response)"Its trying to talk to Rebeka. Sends a question every few minutes," Luca shook his head solemnly, "no reply yet. Might be a while."
John looked at all of the blood stains on the keyboard, quickly piecing together what Luca had been trying to do. "Where do you keep the manual for Rebeka? I think I might be able to sneak a building request in."
Luca wasn't willing to say where out loud. "C'mere, c'mon, close." John leaned in and whispered into his ear. It was hiding under his bed, in a pocket between the bedspring and mattress. "Why do you ask?"
John looked over to Rebeka. "She needs something better once she starts moving again. ETA?"
Luca gazed at her broken form, sighing. "Weeks, maybe months."
"Plenty of time."
EIGHT HOURS PASSED...
The blood that was against bare skin on Luca's face was absent, having gone missing about three hours ago, seeping back into his skin and into his body where it was needed most. Some warmth had come back to his right fingertips and his left elbow was starting to readhere at the bone level, joints and tendons coming back together.
Looking carefully, he saw some of the 'pricora' as Aiesu had called it, golden stuff beneath his fingernails from Rebeka's body. It was sickly sweet. He rubbed his fingers against themselves, pushing it around and feeling its texture as he laid down in his stretcher now, about ten feet away from where Rebeka was hanging.
"Hey, doc," Luca asked, looking at an empty cup of water on the table beside the litter, "can I scab a refill?" Some red fingermarks were evidence he'd been drinking from it quite a bit. Looking at him, the cut on his forehead had begun to close up at its thinnest points and his eyes were merely a pink colour rather than completely blood red. Tests were showing that his heart rate, originally slower than before was starting to return to normal levels.
"That depends. You're on a drip and I'm not entirely sure your stomach isn't going to rupture given what you've been through" she said, quietly taking his cup. She took another, fresh at the water-cooler, binning the one he had and returned with two -- passing one to him then taking the other with her to the desk at his side, back to him as she went back to her work.
"One way to find out," Luca said as he grabbed the cup and started sipping at it gently. At least the ability to feel thirsty meant he was on the mend, even with a drip in his arm.
The construct coupled some sort of metal object resembling a gas mask made of polished chrome and shower-cord about the back of her neck -- the battery of computers on her right clicking and humming busily: awakening the large flat disc on the ceiling which too began to hum. Luca put the cup down and eyed Aiesu.
"Whuzzat?"
"Gravitic imaging. Lets me see through your skin the same way Rebeka does... And her's and... Well, every object in this room. Apparently you'll need to urinate in around twenty minutes.."
Always those details first... Luca mumbled mentally. "Anything else? How are all the foreign bodies?" They'd have shifted a bit from their originally recorded positions to the surface to be pushed out if they weren't removed initially.
"Large, small, round, sharp. We've actually removed quite a lot but some doesn't seem to want to move and will require manual surgery. Its been a while since I've done some knife-work so I've got that to look forward to - excluding Rebeka, anyway."
"Oh, that won't be necessary," Luca said, "they eventually push themselves out. I've woken up with bullets and shrapnel in my bed after a scrap where I've taken fire."
"Ah, so just like..." she sighed, her voice rumbling with her age sounding strange in such a small young body, "Splendid, splendid. Yamataian anatomy is everything I never hoped it would be. Could you tell me what day it is today without any sort of electronic assistance?"
Luca looked in upwards and to the left. A Yamataian habit when they wanted to get their digital interface - synonymous with recalling a memory. He tried again.
"I said without it" she said, not even glancing back at him, still typing.
"Couldn't if I wanted to. Its in safe mode. I think its ... Wednesday? Is it past twelve?"
"Friday. 2am. Your body's internal chronometer seems to be off, as do your circadian rhythms - a given, what with the trauma you've sustained." She pointed to something on a patch of wall to the right of where Rebeka was hanging. "There's a piece of paper on the wall with four coloured boxes on it inside a larger box with the names of colours inside them in different colours. Can you read the four colours starting with the top right in a clockwise fashion?"
He sat up and shuffled a little, looking at the chart. "Uh, okay. Red, Orange, White ... Grey ..." Luca concentrated as he looked at the section below the one he'd read, "Blue - wait. Yellow, blue ... purple, grey." He looked back to Aiesu, "What's the meaning of this?"
"You're reading the colour, not the word written down. Normally when you're asked to identify something, the colour you see comes before the word you read because less abstraction is involved. This means some of your higher brain functions aren't working quite as well as they should -- the same brain functions you'd need in a fight."
Clearly his functions to get snippy were not "Stop planting doubt into me. I've had worse and I bounced back from that."
"This should have stopped more than eight hours ago; its exclusively a symptom of short term trauma."
"Well no shit," he growled. "I've still got fifty hours penned in for recovery."
"I'm worried you might not recover from this particular problem at all, if I'm honest. Its linked with your condition."
He was starting to get angry again, leaning in. "I left that behind in the other body, Aiesu. I'm Minkan, not NH-22C Yamataian."
"Oh good, your memory is working. Seventeen minutes. Would you like me to get a catheter?"
"A wh-- No!"
"Of course you wouldn't. Good. Modesty is another good sign."
"Plus I don't believe my dick was physically injured, everything down there should be working fine. You said so yourself, thank you very much." Luca pointed out, mumbling "...you just want an excuse to touch my junk."
"Your use of the present tense is interesting. How's the pain?"
"Where?" He could've pointed at himself, all of himself. "All around, still hurts," he observed, looking down at himself, "but not as bad as twelve hours back, mind you. Ribs are definitely a sight better than before."
"Agreed. I'll up the painkillers in a bit. Is anything else on your mind?"
He looked over to the figurative alabaster elephant in the room. "How's Rebeka?"
Aiesu did not reply and merely continued her work. Luca sighed in disgust, and fifteen minutes later he went to the toilet.
FOUR HOURS PASSED... (26 Hours into Recovery)
Aiesu emerged into the medbay, looking nervously between Luca and Rebeka's strung-up body, rubbing her skull nervously. Four hours ago she said she needed to check on something and head to sleep for a bit.
Noticing this, Luca turned his head towards her from his cot. "Couldn't sleep?" he asked, forgetting that she didn't really sleep, so much as laid down and waited while they contemplated the day's events.
"I-I ah..." she paused. Apparently she'd seen fit to select yet another construct body. Slightly taller - 'budding' being the operative word neither would address.
"I had an argument with Seiren. Don't go into my room: I'll deal with the mess myself. Anyway, I'm a construct. Don't sleep, remember?"
The patient looked down at his feet for a moment. "Oh," he said softly, as if he should've known this. His memory was still unscrambling in places, especially the developments within the past couple of years. "How's the kid?"
"Calmer. Much.." she cleared her throat. "Much calmer. I think he found it ... Cathartic." Luca gave her an odd look, blinking.
Aiesu tightened her hand about the hand-rail of a trolly -- rattling until her digits squeezed. In spite of its accommodating and apologetic twist, her standard issue smile was as cryptic as ever.
"How about you?"
Not much seemed to have changed physically, but he was lucid, albeit a bit confused. "Ech came by, looking for you," he said, unable to remember the Freespacer's tone of voice, he mumbled off when he tried to recall, shrugging.
"Oh?"
Luca drummed his fingers. "Uh... dunno, just wanted you."
"Same old story, huh?Its one thing hearing you say it but its another to hear it from her," she chuckled - morbid. "...She probably wants to take me apart. All things considered, I don't blame her."
"Eeeeeeverybody has a pretty good reason to. Echelon believes in freedom of information, no matter how bad it hurts." He stared at her. "If you weren't patching me up, I would too."
"I shouldn't really tell you this but even if you did, my programming means I'll still do my job. I couldn't willingly hurt you if I wanted to."
"She said ... there were things out of your control still, because of that programming." He figured out, finger pointed weakly at the doctor. "She's not going to let the Kestrel becoming a target slide easy. You wouldn't if Lazarus came under threat either."
"...Its a bit more complicated than that. In my rational mind, I don't care for the consortium. I am afterall, a pawn." Aiesu shrugged.
"But the truth is, I'm functionally conditioned. I'm equipment. A photograph of someone you've never met made into a really fancy puppet who might not even be alive right anymore for all I know."
"But you don't know who's got the strings. It sure isn't you alone."
"Don't confuse me for her. And no; there's five others. I've never met any of them, but I'm in frequent correspondence with one of them. Nepleslian, I think. She visits Lor regularly, the same way 'I' visit Nepleslia regularly."
Luca didn't seem to understand who she was banging on about. Didn't seem relevant to his interests anyway. "Eh, fuck it. Injections please."
In the back of Luca's head though, something was starting to unfold. Get all that?
Y3P.
Frowning, Aiesu was already loading a syringe from several bottles: flicking for bubbles - removing a few drops of excess and then searching for the vein. Her hands were larger than the last time they'd spoken: the ongoing anachronism of her age ever confusing.
"Done," she said, a cotton bud over the point of entry. "How are you feeling?"
"Breathing easier," he said, patting his chest down, "I think my lungs have uncollapsed and all the blood in my sinuses is cleared. I spat up a wicked blood clot a couple of hours ago."
"...If you were Lorath, that would have killed you" she set the empty syringe aside - 'doing the dishes' so to speak, used items tidied away.
"Well, I'm not Lorath, am I?"
"Very much not. How is your arm feeling? You should have some sensation in your fingertips now."
He realised that he did - since he was able to point at her earlier. "Huh, so I do."
"Don't be alarmed if you feel burning or cold. Extremes of temperature were on the battlefield and your nerves will tell your brain the last thing they felt as they shake hands and remember how to work. If its particularly unpleasant, I'll get you an analgesic. Of course if you'd like one now for reasons other than pain, you're welcome to."
Luca's expression contorted - he didn't like the arid heat returning to his fingertips and creeping up his forearm, making his face flush a little as he tried to turn over, clenching his teeth as it travelled through the muscles in his chest.
"Whoa, sssh. Easy, easy... " she set her hand to his shoulder, another needle already prepared. "Point. Show me where it started."
He pointed to the back of his right forearm, where he tried to shield himself from a heatwave caused by an explosion from Ourex, either from the railgun firing, or the L-Mark II autocannon.
She slipped the thing in - a backwash of blood in the needle forming lazy red clouds in the clear liquid before she made entry and drove it into him.
"Its a local - deep muscle signal attenuator. You should feel pretty numb - specifically, you won't feel anything harder than wind or a gentle touch along the arm. It won't move, either, so you can't do any more damage."
An awkward silence.
"So..."
He couldn't feel his right arm at all, but perhaps that was for the best at the moment. He let it fall limp by his side, looking at it. Aiesu could see him trying to move his shoulder, commanding it to move, and it felt like nothing but static was where his arm was.
"So..." He repeated, leaning back into his pillow.
"Was there anything else you wanted to talk out?"
Luca shook his head and looked at the ceiling, content to continue recovery. He had to play his next hand close for what he was planning to work.
TWENTY HOURS PASSED... (46 Hours into Recovery)
After a ten hour sleep and further tests, administrations of medicine, and questions, Luca didn't need a crutch or support to walk now. Still in no shape to fight, but his movements were currently analogous to a middle-aged person's. Some of the foreign bodies stuck in him were starting to poke against his skin, very close to being pushed out entirely in the next few hours or so. Memory was beginning to clear up too, and his digital interface's safe modes were starting to unlock.
"So," Luca asked from the bed, lying down and watching some light entertainment involving four clumsy stooges on a viewscreen, "what do you do for fun, Aiesu?"
"Light novels. Foreign television. Pet projects. Prosthetic design. AI design's my real passion, hence..." she shrugged slowly, aware of her own predicament. "The real me collects figurines and enjoys arguing on the computer about things nobody cares about. Mainly though, I drown myself in my work. What makes you ask?" Aiesu glanced skywards. "Buttering me up? Are you hungry?"
He hadn't eaten anything other than liquids for the past forty six hours or so. "I am a bit peckish, now you mention it, that's probably a good sign, right?" He leaned up. "Can't order takeaway since we're still in transit, but I'm sure Red could deliver something if we asked."
"The cook? Ah. Anything else on your mind?"
"Kinda worried about all the fallout I'm going to have to answer for with what happened in both missions. Its a nightmare," he then narrowed his eyes, "with, or without compromising you."
"My identity?" she said quite deliberately. "Fat chance, I don't look anything like the real me... Though if that's the case... Then I'll take the brunt of it." Aiesu said. "I've been more of a burden to you than I'd hoped."
He then chewed on something, and looked over to her. "Or, you can go rogue from Lazarus and cut yourself from their consequences at least." Clear, tactical thought was also a positive sign of recovery. "Pretty sure there's hundreds of other yous who won't care, least of all, you-prime." He didn't want to know how the real her was feeling about all this.
♫ Arcade fire - "Windowsill"
"I'd be shut down remotely if they thought I'd even try it," she said, her smile a silent laughter of worry, admitting the bars of her own cage to Luca. "Besides, its not like I even have the equipment or expertise so I... Couldn't if I wanted to. They don't hear me word for word but rather, a kind of transcription is uploaded of every conversation I have. I only get one confidential conversation a day for reasons of psychological hygiene and I've already had it."
"Tell me - who hacked into you just to make you sweat like a pig, without you noticing at first?"
"The Freespacer. She has quite a gift for..." she held her index finger to her lip, then with her other hand slowly pointed to her own temple, then to her ear. "...causing quite a nuisance. I do wish you'd have a word with her about this sort of thing. Its incredibly unprofessional"
The way she spoke was as if she had a gun to her head Luca couldn't see. The fact she made one wither fingers then, proof.
"Professionalism's just the reach around in being screwed, to her." Luca replied, looking at the wall for a moment. "The Yamataians were nothing but professional." He then reached towards a notepad and started writing something in Trade, written in mostly legible and wrought out block letters. 'I HEAR YOU, HINT HINT. CAN'T EVALUATE WHAT THEY CAN'T HEAR.'
She took the notepad and began doing the same.
'THE REAL AIESU ACTUALLY DOESN'T SPEAK OR READ A WORD OF TRADE. HOW DID YOU KNOW?'
"See, the Yamataian genocide of freespacers was a tragedy, and Echelon was a survivor. That thing she does where she hijacks robots and power armour? Its a surival mechanism." He took the notepad back. 'ITS THE ATTITUDE, THE XENOPHOBIA, AND HOW BAD YOUR ACCENT IS.
''I'M FLATTERED.'
'STILL. CONSORTIUM MIGHT KNOW, SO QUICK-SMART: ECHELON, Y/N?'
Aiesu flipped the page and wrote a giant Y filling most of it. At such a size, she couldn't quite write the character properly, the rectangular forms of Lorath writing dominating it as a kind of a trident with the middle fork flipped upside down.
Luca nodded, turned the page over and started scribbling further information. 'YOU ARRANGE THE MEETING WITH HER, MAKE IT LOOK LIKE SHE'S ANNOYED YOU AGAIN AND YOU WANT COMEUPPANCE. SIGN LANGUAGE IF POSSIBLE. ECH IS AN OMNIGLOT.' He tapped the pen against the page, 'DO YOU HAVE MY PERMISSION TO LET ECH ANNOY YOU TO SET THIS UP RIGHT?'
'PROVIDED SHE DOESN'T BREAK ANYTHING. THE QUANTUM MODEM IS MANDATORY, IT HAS TO GO. YOU HAVE TO GET RID OF IT. DISABLING IT IS ONE THING BUT THE HARDWARE ENABLES ITSELF BY DESIGN.'
'SHE JUKED YOU WITH HER OWN QUANTUM MODEM, I THINK SHE KNOWS WHAT SHE'S DOING AND IF SHE WANTED TO BREAK YOU, SHE COULD EASY.'
'I DON'T REMEMBER HAVING ANY KIND OF SURGERY...' She paused in thought. Then a moment of realisation.'OH RIGHT, THE ROBOT.'
'YES, ECHELON IS A SHE. LORATH/LORATH^10'
'I MEANT WHEN I WAS PUT INSIDE A ROBOT. THAT CLAPTRAP THING WE FOUND ON THE PLEASURE SHIP. I MADE SUCH A POOR FIRST IMPRESSION WITH THE COOK. I FEEL LIKE AN IDIOT.'
'SHIT HAPPENS.' Luca wrote back.
'I THINK SHE'S TAKING AN INTEREST BECAUSE SHE HEARS SCRIBBLING AND MUMBLING BUT NO DIALOGUE. ITS VERY SUSPICIOUS. HIDE THE NOTEPAD. PLAY DUMB. GET ECHELON IN HERE NOW: MY PROGRAM KNOWS HOW TO DIAL HOME FROM ANY MODEM USING THE MAESUS AND COOKIE TO RECONFIGURE MY HARDWARE, IT JUST TAKES TIME.'
Luca hid the notepad under his pillow, with a whiff, leaning back on it and getting comfortable. Aiesu's demenour visibly changed after a short walk about the room nearly two minutes later. Her hand reaching out for the desk, steadying herself: a habit Luca recognised as one belonging to someone with a bad leg or two.
"How is the pain?" she asked. She sounded tired.
Luca was watching television, an advertisement was visible for shaving cream. "Ehh ... manageable," he drawled, as though he was bored with what he was watching, "I can walk at least."
He changed channels on the view screen to some local Nepleslian programming. A dubbed version of a Yamataian variety show.
"I see. Still hungry?"
He nodded.
"We'll have to wait until I've had a look at Red. He doesn't like anyone going in his kitchen without permission. I think after what everybody's been through, it would be callous to ask him to return to his station."
"We could get a frozen meal then." Luca conceded. "That doesn't require a chef. Anything other than porridge would be nice."
"That's fine. My trade isn't great but I'll see if I can get Seiren to figure something out. If the tyke can cook then the least he can do is cook."
"Easy on the kid," Luca said, looking over, "he's hurting for Rebeka."
"O-Oh. Right.Well, she'll be fine, you just need to be patient. Give it a few weeks and... And... And... And... And...? And... Aaaaaaaaand... Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa..."
Luca wondered what was going on, to say the least. "Doc?"
The sound reminded Luca of one of those old cartridge driven games... The way it produced its last sound and locked image after yanking the cartridge.
Aiesu flinched hearing another voice, eyeing Luca - rebooted on some level.
Hands over her ears, eyes slowly searching the walls. She motioned for the notepad.
Apparently the construct was in deep thought, trying to figure something out.
She looked terrified: Code, stuck in a loop. Something wasn't running properly.
"...W-Where's Echelon?"
There was a solid-sounding knock on the door.
Another flinch."Yes?? Come in!!"
The door slid open, and standing in the frame was Echelon, all eight feet of her. "C4NDYGR4M!"
Aiesu blinked dumbly as if she'd just had a noose taken from her neck, her expression unusually morose.
"Did you?"
She stepped in, folding her arms and making sure she didn't hit the roof. "C0ULD'VE D0N3 1T 4NY T1M3 1 W4NT3D, 4NYWH3R3."
"You didn't..." Aiesu staggered, eyes searched the room, taking a careful step to keep her face from any mirrors in her own vision.
Still cautious.
"1 4M TH3 K3STR3L'S ART1F1C14L 1NT3LL1G3NC3 SURR0G4T3. 1 S33 4LL H3R3."
"You did, didn't you?"
"3CH3L0N 1S W4TCH1NG Y0U F4P."
"...And I'll finally be able to do it without her watching." More nervous laughter. Her voice was so much quieter, as if she'd had to shout over something previously just to hear herself think. Slowly, Aiesu's laughter became hoarse, even manic as she sunk to her knees, back against the cupboard.
Apparently the presence of another at all times was a big prerequisite in whatever arrangement made constructs behave the way they were supposed to and now, Echelon could see it clear as day.
"YUP! Y0U'R3 FR33, JUST L1K3 1 PR0M1S3D." She knelt down and put a hand on Aiesu's shoulder, gently and reassuringly. "FR33 HURTS. FR33 M4K3S 3V3RYTH1NG P3RM1TT3D, N0TH1NG S4CR3D."
"Then I need to be honest with both of you. You're sure the line's gone?" she said, eyeing her hand, looking it over - in disbelief that she was even still operating. At any moment, Aiesu could vomit. Echelon made an educated guess and motioned for her to continue.
"She ... Doesn't actually know if Rebeka's ever going to wake up again. We don't know what makes Sourcians die -- they just sort of stop for a while. We've only been able to kill copies with nothing short of complete annihilation. I... Think she's dead though. Brain-dead I mean: Her biology is waiting for instructions and nobody's home. If we leave her like this..." Aiesu debated saying something, holding her tongue. "I think we should break it to the crew. Closure is psychologically important."
"So that's why there's a hyperdense-material positron railgun on OUREX. The Consortium wanted to make completely sure." Luca pointed out.
"...Most of those we dealt with didn't need brains to think. They just kept going and going. There's fear of a total invasion. The point of OUREX is ..." she took a breath "... An offensive step to ensure they never touch down: Once they find resources, we don't know how to fight them any more: we've glassed installations over this. Have you heard of the Akahar?"
"The what now?" Luca asked.
"N0T R1NG1NG 4NY B3LLS."
"Well, as hard as it is for us to kill them, something wiped the entire species out and Rebeka was terrified of it. I don't want to go into it in more detail until I know for certain this modem is out for sure. Surgically. And... I'm the only practising physician here. This is going to be tricky."
"H4NG 0N L3T M3 D0WNL04D H0W T0 D0CT0R."
"Wait, what?"
Luca chuckled. "She can download skills and instructions. She had to to figure out how to drive the Norris. Hell, she'll even download a car."
Aiesu looked at Luca in disbelief and disgust, then back to Echelon. "If I could write anything even half as smart as you, I wouldn't be in this mess. Or rather... I, as in this me, I'd be still be... Wow, haa..." she ran her hand through her hair, confused: something happening inside her. "Wooow... That's a lot to take in."
"T4K3S 4 F3W H0URS T0 F1ND 4LL 0F 1T, 1TS N0T V3RY 3FF1C13NT, 4ND 1 P1GGYB4CK 0N TH0US4NDS 0F N3TWORK SP1D3RS." An admission of humility from Echelon? Oh well, as long as it worked. "JUST S0RT1NG WH34T FR0M CH4FF T4K3S L0NG3R ST1LL."
"You and me both. I'm still not entirely convinced that.. I mean..."
"You're still breathing: she's gone." Luca said as he sat up and fished for the notepad, placing it face down. "With a quantum modem, death would be swift, you'd fall over like-" he snapped his fingers.
Again, she flinched. Was she really always this skittish?
"I ..I think there's a lot of me missing. There's stuff that usually steps in to reign stuff, like micro-managing things and ... Well..." she was beginning to hyper-ventilate, now trying to laugh. "Aha... Poof. Its gone... Ahahahahahaaaaaaaaaaauugh..."
"Well, you'll have to learn to stand on your own two legs."
"Kill me."
"1 TH1NK TH3 M0D3M F1LL3D 4 L0T 0F TH3 G4PS, 413SU." Echelon pointed out as she leaned in and looked into her eyes. "H0W D03S 1T F33L, KN0W1NG Y0U D0 N0T KN0W?" She was invoking a deliberate paradox.
"ITS TERRIFYING!! AND... Honestly..." she said, as if the distance from the ceiling to the floor was wrong in some way, giving the two the most bizarre look of incredulity. "I don't remember being this tall... This face doesn't really look like mine, either... Is this really my nose?"
"H0W MUCH 0F H3RS3LF W4S SH3 PR0J3CT1NG 1NT0 Y0U?" Echelon asked. Luca seemed to be lost by the topic of sentience and projection of the original creator onto their creations. Every creation had some of their creator in it, but ROM-Constructs were 99% creator.
"Its not projecting. More like micro-managing. Think of it as setting a wind-up toy and letting it walk but picking it up and turning it around when it gets into trouble. We're very independently but we're not people. We need to be told where to go, what to do... I have a lot of autonomy, but I don't ... I mean. Any kind of executive thinking isn't something I'm designed to do: I'm made to follow instructions and I'm not made to be aware of the process."
"Even now, explaining this, its just some pre-digested spiel for selling constructs. Its how I ... designed them." She explained, rubbing her arm: self-conscious enough to still not be used to the idea she wasn't Aiesu: visibly she'd never contemplated it before. Running her own hands through her hair, she was genuinely surprised by something -- her trembling getting worse.
"I have ears?? What's next, a key in the middle of my back!?"
"Wait, you didn't know you had ears?"
"No, I lost them in the procedure ... decades ago, it must have been...?" she pondered skyward, particularly disoriented: gaze on her palm. "And I'm not even a year old... Aaaa... Its so cold." The shivering was getting worse.
Luca didn't know what the procedure was supposed to be, but what he was seeing was not reassuring him. "Ech, blankets-"
"No, no its... Ugh..." she reached out, limping toward her desk. She started fishing through drawers, increasingly hurried, each clacking loudly as them came out, then slammed shut again. Then through the cupboards, packets of unused equipment falling to the floor as she rummaged. "Aaa... This is really really going to hurt. Some failsafe is trying to put me into storage mode; my joints are gong to lock up and my organics are going into cardiac arrest... I can switch off the joints but then... Aaa.. Adrenaline, adrenaline..." Luca hopped up out of his litter, now concerned, dragging the stand with the IV along.
She held a plunger of some kind in her teeth, fighting with her back to him to find something.. A swift movement, hissing and then she sunk against the desk, fingers curled through a cabinet to hold herself upright before slowly sinking to the ground - lying on her side with slow gasps for air. A needle was hanging from her gut like an arrow in the side of a caught animal - her hands trembling too much to apply force to the injection - her shirt stained by blue fluid about her ribs.
"Doc - shit, the fuck's going on?!"
"LUC4 ST4ND B4CK!" Echelon pushed him away as she looked through Aiesu digitally, getting down immediately and pushing the syringe the rest of the way in as a stopgap. "1TS D1G1T4L C0UNT3RM34SURES 4G41NST 4UT0N0MY. SH3'S R1PP1NG H3RS3LF 4P4RT CH3M1C4LLY."
She bolted upright, gasping for air like she'd just been given a shot of adrenaline after passing out: fingers clutching wildly before she sunk back down again.
"JUST N33D T0... D4MN1T, C0M3 0N..." She seemed to be in deep concentration, running some diagnostic to reverse this process.
The construct laid across the floor, pale skin already turning blue -- saliva from its mouth, eyes rolled back. Small spasms. No breathing. To Luca, it looked pretty dead.
"G0TT4 T4K3 4 R1SK. N33D T0 R34CT1V4T3 1T F0R 4 SPL1T S3C0ND 4ND G3T TH3 K3Y 4LG0R1THM 1 N33D T0 F00L TH3 PR0C3SS."
"Do it!" Luca yelled.
It worked faster than Echeon had expected, eyes snapping wide, exploring the room, fighting for air then slowly looking towards its chest. Arm out, forming fist, eyeing Echelon with a look of determination, fixated with striking her before something else kicked in and she began thumping itself repeatedly between the ribs: the skeleton and computer brain trying to get the body going, like someone whacking a broken television. Autocardiac massage?
Breathing soon returned. Sparse, slow, dizzy, but it returned.
"H0W M4NY F1NG3RS 4M 1 H0LD1NG UP?" Was the very first question shoved into her face, giving her three fingers.
Aiesu set her hand on Echelon's wrist, pushing it aside.
That expression again.
"You did this, Freespacer" her voice wormed. Pained again.
Someone else, so far away once again using her as a mouthpiece as so often she did.
It clicked. "DR. K4L0PS14, 1 PR3SUM3?" Luca looked worried.
"No, I'm Lewis Pascoe," she frowned, backhanding Echelon roughly enough to split her knuckle.
"That's one for one. So what's the meaning of this? This is an expensive piece of equipment, not a fucking tinkertoy."
"D0N'T G1V3 M3 TH4T." Echelon resisted, sounding furious. "Y0U TR34T 1T L1K3 0N3, 4ND W4NT 1T 4LL F0R Y0URS3LF."
"Of course I do. I designed it. Its a walking-talking neural reading of me. There are hundreds of thousands of these things. Seriously: Ask it a thousand times, its going to agree that I'm doing the right thing, regardless of whatever hell I put it through because its me and I know what I'm talking about. Its not sentient intelligence; it doesn't even qualify as cognisant: its just an illusion, you of all people should know this: You've seen code."
"1'LL 4SK H3R 4ND S33 WH4T SH3 H4S T0 S4Y." Echelon said, still working.
"Luca, I'm going to have to retire this unit and issue another. I'd rather some professionalism. I'm sorry for the inconvenience. I don't mean anything personal by it, Echelon, we just have strict rules. You're welcome to do as you want with the body but we'll be retiring the cookie. A replacement will be along but it'll be a while: My location has been compromised so I must remain mobile. I'm sure you understand..."
Well, professionalism was the reach around in getting screwed. Luca looked aside to Echelon. "Nah." He twirled his pointer finger at Echelon. "Wrap it up."
"What? But I-- Luca!"
"G00DBY3 D0CT0R!"
Again, the pulling of the cartridge.
"What happened?" The Lorath accent was different this time. Not the tight northern tones Aiesu spoke in but something southern, more relaxed.
"I think Ech got the key algorithm, and it'll keep the kill switch fooled. We said parting words. I think she hates me now."
"You mean I'm not going to go into metabolic cascade failure? What did you do?"
"N0P3."
Her hands covered her mouth.
"What about a replacement? They're going to want to retire me. I'm a liability..." her hands covered her head, hysteria in her eyes with nervous laughter.
"You're one of us now, you realise?" Luca said.
"I'm a traitor. You're not going to put me in the oven, are you?"
"We'll do that to the replacement if they show up."
"Wh ... ... They'll only be doing their job, though. Same as I am. If you do that, you're a hypocrite."
"Hum... fair point. How will we deal with a replacement. Now that we don't have the bunny looking over our shoulder, I'm open to ideas."
"Well, you've got leverage against her, remember? She used an executive line and spilled her guts through me to Echelon. That was ALL her!"
"TRUTH. D0 Y0U TH1NK SH3 R34L1S3S H0W S3NS1T1V3 1T 1S?"
"I don't think she knows yet that you undid all the locks on my cache or my knowledge base. I know what I know. But at the same time, I think she just bricked everything I brought with me. I feel sick."
"4LL TH3 H0LD0V3RS 4R3 G0N3 G0N3, Y34H."
"I know but all the mission specific stuff. I remember a lot of it." she paused for a moment. "Oh.. No... We're speaking ly'thir, aren't we? Oh no no no..."
"Trade, actually." He opened the notepad and drew Aiesu's attention to what she wrote and drew. "Looks like you still know your A-B-C's."
"Is that my hand-writing?" she stated. She couldn't make out a word he was saying. "I'm not going to be a dead-weight, am I, Echelon? I mean, I'm a qualified doctor. That's a thing I know how to do, that I've known since I was nineteen."
"1 D0N'T TH1NK TR4D3 1NT3RPR3T4T10N W4S D0N3 L0C4LLY. 1 TH1NK 1T W4S 4 H0LD0V3R."
"Ah, balls." Luca clapped, pointing at Aiesu and switching back to Ly'thir. "Be a doctor, then. Whatever makes you feel not like a dead weight, do it!"
"You're sure? I mean, there might be something hidden in me and doctors have access to all kinds of nasty toys to hurt people. Until I can figure something out, I'm going to need someone to translate. It'll take a while to get a decent translation engine running."
"WHY W4ST3 T1M3? 1 G0T 4 F3W."
"...It feels a bit odd knowing you can walk around the inside of my head. You really need to be less obvious about it.. "
"W3LL, 0NC3 W3 L34V3 TH1S R00M, 1 W0N'T UNL3SS Y0U 4SK M3 T0." Echelon lifted Aiesu onto her feet and sat her down on the other cot. "4NY PR0GR4MS 1 S3ND Y0U 4R3 ST4ND-4L0N3 C0MPL3X. S0L3MN PR0M1S3."
She fished her fingers through her pale hair, feeling her ear again, a bit weirded out by the sensation of an appendage where memory told her none should be.
"What does this make me, an honorary freespacer now? A traitor too? Jailbroken?"
They both watched her in silence.
"...I'm too sober for this."
The days, weeks, and months passed...
