As Jacob looked out over the dunes, hating the heat, hating the sand, hating every bit of this god-forsaken desert, he gave a grunt; and dragged his pack up to his legs, settling back to sit on it; and glance back at the long trail he’d left behind.

He was a long, lean figure; sunburnt and broken by malnutrition and constant effort, covered in a long hooded cloak, the silvery fabric improvised from a vacuum suit helping keep the worst at bay.

He hated walking during the day, here. It was a miserable, awful, experience. But, unfortunately… he needed the drone to be…. Thirty-seven meters north, stuck into that very dune right there, in an hour and a half, and if the dune were too tall, he needed to dig it out. Otherwise, he’d have to wait another seven months to try again.

He wasn’t sure he could survive here another seven months. He’d been eating local plant-life for almost a year now, and the taste was… well. Didn’t quite match up to anything he’d had before the crash. He tried to imagine it tasted like a pear, since it roughly matched the texture, but… no. A strange, indescribable taste of the local cactus-equivalent. But…. it had water in it. And it kept him alive. The taste was so strange, the feelings it gave him so odd, he almost didn’t want to keep going.

The problem… he was immortal. Not only had he had the good fortune to be born as one of the many augmented breeds that didn’t age… but he’d had the digitization process started long ago. By now, his brain was half computer, or even more. He might live for centuries on this desolate hellhole… and if he let his body die, his mind might live on, trapped in a useless husk. A living hell, until whatever electrical energy persisted in him finally died out. He knew there was a battery in there, being topped up by his body; but it was damaged. He had no idea what the remaining charge was; it might die out in weeks after his flesh did… or centuries.

An hour left now. He dragged the pack over to the target dune, and settled it into position. There was no point doing it too early; the sand might shift and knock it off course with a sudden gust of wind.

As he oriented the drone, carefully pointing it into the sky; the meter he’d built using the wreckage gave a green light when he had the orientation right; he sighed.

This was the part he was dreading. The place he would have to send it…. If someone were here, to watch him program it, or even just able to track the drone… they’d find the base. And undoubtedly sell its coordinates to the Alliance. He shouldn’t take this risk. It was allowed, but usually something you only did if you knew you were safe.

The first time he’d had the chance, he’d decided not to. Too much risk to the others. Eventually, though… surely nobody would be willing to wait over a year, just for the off chance he could get a message out, and they could track him? The odds of him surviving that crash were virtually nil. It would be a terrible waste of resources, with virtually no chance of paying off.

He knew that, eventually, he would give in. He wasn’t suicidal. When it reached the point where the sparse local ecosystem couldn’t keep his flesh moving, he’d try, damn the risks. Might as well be now.

He looked up. The moon was approaching the right spot. If his computer was spot-on about the math, he was currently in a 45-minute window that the drone could reach orbit, with the best odds at the middle of the window.

This was it. The gamble. If some Alliance spec-ops team was watching him through a scope… something he’d searched and checked for thoroughly for two years now… the coordinates he was about to enter would put two thousand lives at risk of death, slavery, or worse.

He waited. At the beginning and end of the window, the odds were a bit over sixty percent. In the middle, closer to eighty. He only had one drive. One means of getting anything out there faster than light. He closed his eyes… and when the computer gave a beep, that the odds were over eighty percent right at that moment…

He typed in the coordinates quickly. A message; the standard code they’d expect for him for the Anti-Slaver-Union, his location and condition… but no active alert code, which would send up a red flag and mean they didn’t respond automatically. The alert codes were updated regularly, but they were strictly passed person to person; and he had been out of communication for a year. He had to give something different; a personalized message, which would be passed to the right person for review. Something to let them know he wasn’t being watched, and needed retrieval.

“This is Jacob Alpha Charlie Echo Sierra Wilco Indigo Lima Delta. Stranded on the planet contained in the records. Tell Benjamin he was wrong about the cows, they would’ve survived on Inferno just fine if someone had watched them.“

The codes weren’t supposed to form words. Just be a random series of digits. When they verified that was actually his code, he’d probably get a reprimand. Just… hopefully they’d come get him. And the phrase would both tell them to check with Benjamin… and that he wasn’t being watched.

***

Officer Seraph pumped her fist, grinning, as she shut off the power. For the subject, it would be as if time slowed, then froze; and nothing else would happen until the moment she turned it back on. She’d gone from the heavily accelerated time-state to real-time as the pivotal moment arrived; and it had all paid off, perfectly.

She gave a low stretch, spinning her chair around; long, curly red hair framing her dark skin, though the golden color indicated either an odd background or simply an expensive dye-job, the seemingly young woman clearly happy about her achievement. She’d just spent the past eight hours on poor Jacob here, creating the perfect simulation, running his mind through it, and creating the situation where he’d give up some useful intel, without ever being aware he was being interrogated.

He didn’t even know he’d been dead for a month. Dead men always told the best tales; the Alliance was lucky the man’s brain was intact; most likely, the power supply had been hit by an EMP during the fight and left the man’s brain intact, but his body dead, and his neural network de-powered.

Now, either they would try to torture him; generally a useless effort, as it would destroy the man’s mind; or run through the possibility of either selling his brain or destroying it.

Either way….

She tapped a few buttons on the display, and muttered a code-phrase under her breath, before speaking. “This is Rev-Int Officer Seraph Glass. I’ve got a set of coordinates for a probable ASU base, a code-phrase to use for contact, and am requesting final disposition orders for the latest.”

A few seconds of calm on the other end. Her boss’s face came up; the lean, pale face of Director Ericson looking even more disturbing than last time; some new implant along his scalp, a shiny bit of chrome with the flesh around it still appearing raw.

“Excellent work, Seraph. Keep him on ice for now. Is using or selling him viable?”

The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

“He thinks he’s been stranded on a desert world for over a year. If we keep him on ice that long, I could just fake that his body fails in a way that leaves the brain intact, and anyone not affiliated with us could use him as a Ship’s AI with minimal effort, he’d even be thankful for the ‘rescue’. Definitely not suitable for navy use; he seems too smart to be fooled by the overlays we use, though he was a pilot and engineer, so someone could pay well.”

Ericson shook his head. “Too bad. I love the stupid ones. Great to make them kill their own people without ever realizing they’re doing it. Sometimes, when the navy decommissions one, I remove all the overlays and let them see what they’ve been doing, just before the lights go out.”

Seraph sighed. Needless cruelty and wastefulness all combined into one. Classic Ericson. “Of course, sir. Have the next one off the stack for me?”

“Of course! But no rush, they’ll stay dead, sweetheart. You’re officially still working on that particular AI for the next two days, that one was labeled as ‘highly resistant to interrogation’ and they gave us a 24-hour estimate. I’m ordering you to relax for the next shift… spend it at your desk or not as you like. After that you can either take a third one to relax, or report this in as having completed it in a third less than the official time estimate and pad your bonus a bit further. I’ll have the next one sent over tomorrow.”

He might be an asshole to the gene-augs… and always spending far too much time staring at her… assets… when they met in person. But otherwise, Ericson was a great boss, so long as she kept doing her job. It helped that the sale of her subjects more than paid for her salary, and the boss had to find ways to spend the budget to keep from getting less next year.. So every mind she got information out of but left in a condition for sale got him a bonus as well.

At one point, she’d wondered why he didn’t make her do more… pad his pockets even further, buy even more of those cybernetic augments he was addicted to. But if the department made too much profit, someone might start looking at the books.

She powered off the console. Time to head home. She glanced at the display. It always felt weird to her. They’d been born to someone who, genetically, wasn’t human. So officially, they weren’t human. But in this state, Jacob there had no difference whatsoever from the brain of someone who’d had classic human genetics. If she died tomorrow, they’d put her into a database and she’d go on to live in a beautiful simulated afterlife… or if she wanted, get a job flying a ship, or even still doing this work. And Jacob there…. Would be destroyed. Or sold. Because of something that didn’t matter in the slightest, at this point.

She shook her head. Hers not to reason why. Hers to go enjoy a bit of real alcohol, play a few sims, and maybe look at taking out a loan she could pay off with that bonus, to buy herself a pet.

***

She grumbled as she badged her way out of work; most of her family who had office jobs got to work from home, and wear whatever they wanted. But nooo. She worked on classified, important material. She had to wear a nice white alliance uniform despite not being part of the military, wear an unranked ‘Operative Officer’ badge…

The uniform doubled as a vacuum suit in an emergency; add a helmet and she could do a spacewalk. Which was even more ridiculous. She lived on a planet. In a city. She only left the surface for the training she’d needed to get her security clearance and credentials.

Technically, it was also an extremely light form of armor; but the only real positive note to it was that she looked good in it.

About half a kilometer from her job… and another half from her home… was the Bloody Fist; a bar which, despite knowing she was about as much a soldier as she was a being from beyond time and space, still gave her a discount for being Alliance; and as the bartender started pouring her usual, she deftly sidestepped the janitor; a 7-foot tall bald gene-aug who looked like he could pick her up and snap her in half with one hand, wearing a simple grey utility outfit, and a very obvious black collar.

She nodded at him as she passed, noted the place only had a handful of patrons, and settled in at the bar. “Hey, Gina. Slow day?”

The woman leaned back, and studied Seraph for a moment. “You realize that most people aren’t off work yet? You might work by the job, but the regular Alliance folks keep hours. It’ll start getting busy in an hour or two, and get really busy in about four.”

“Oof. Sorry, sorry, Tracy.” She picked up the glass; red willow, a drink made by fermenting some local animal’s blood, producing a strange blend that produced a nice buzz and precisely zero hangover; and took a sip.

She looked up at Tracy; the woman was covered in tattoos, had a cybernetic left eye, and based on what she’d heard, at least one built-in weapon whose implant scars were mostly hidden by the dragon tattoos on her arms.

“So, they’ve given me all sorts of regs since I got my security clearance. The apartment’s been lonely as hell, the only guys I can date are ones with at least the same clearance…. So I’ve been a bit lonely, thinking about getting a cat. Any recommendations?”

Tracy tilted her head… and glanced over down the bar. There was a married couple sitting in one of the booths, accompanied by a pair of Gene-augs; smaller, and both with cat-like ears, clearly engineered for appearance sake rather than any genuine utility.

“A cat like… a cat, or a cat like..”

“Of the four-legged variety!” Her blush was barely visible thanks to her skin-tone, but Tracy could tell she was embarrassed. “I… I’m not really interested in a man who can’t say no. Or woman.”

Tracy chuckled. “As if they would. Come on now, you know how guys are. But I get it. You know the rules for cats, right? No letting them out, gotta get them pre-fixed, only the big facilities can breed them… don’t get me wrong, I like cats, but if you’re gonna trap it inside its whole life…”

“Devastate the ecology of two colony worlds and suddenly people have to be careful….” Seraph grinned.

Tracy shook a finger at her. “Ohhhh, no no no. Seven. Only two Alliance worlds. Cats have devastated seven worlds total. So far. And if our obsession with keeping them as pets doesn’t stop, I bet those are only the beginning.”

“It’s… hard to imagine cats wiping out a world. I know it happened, but… Ugh. Still. You know a good place? The official stores are like… thousands of credits for a kitten.”

“Ehhh… actually, yes. You’re Alliance, and you’re local… there’s a pet-care service that keeps an eye on the pets of Alliance folk who head out into space. It won’t be a kitten, but sometimes when someone dies, you can pick up their cat, cheap.”

Seraph glanced down at her hand; a momentary flicker. Tracy had just sent her a message. She smiled. “Nice! Kittens are adorable, but any cat would be wonderful!” She drank down the rest of the glass, and set a credit chip on the table. “Thank you so much!”

She turned, and started walking back out of the bar, practically skipping; she might come back later, check for men with the right clearance level… but more likely she’d just go home, lookup whatever number she’d just been given… and probably play sims for a few hours.

***

As Seraph stepped out, two figures watched her from a nearby alley; dark grey skinsuits with orange markings standard for a cargo loader from the spaceport.

The first; the one who looked fairly normal, no implants, no obvious oddities; spoke up. “That’s her. Same path every day. Stops at the bar… sometimes for hours… then heads home. No stops for friends or family, gets all her groceries delivered… Not sure what she does…. But she’s Alliance. And whenever she talks to a guy at the bar, if he doesn’t have any security clearance, she just goes cold. Means she’s got one. Knows things.”

The other; a pair of cybernetic eyes the only thing visible beneath a rebreather and grey facemask that matched the skinsuit; gave a soft chuckle. “She might just do. Now…”

It turned to the man. “If you speak with anyone about this conversation other than Alliance Intelligence, you will never be seen or heard from again. No police. No other criminals. If you’re concerned, you can contact them… but if you speak with a single other soul, I will personally remove your spine.”

“O…Oh. You’re… Alliance? But..” The man looked confused… but then nodded. “Of… of course.” He started walking away, stepping out into the path of the other pedestrians, trying to pretend like nothing was going on and failing miserably.

A pair of cybernetic eyes focused on Seraph as she headed down the street for home. “... We’ll just have to see what it is you know.”