Patterson followed Stocky through the airlock into Sci-Med. Stocky laid Chandna down and then the two of them shut and locked the airlock door behind them. Though aching and coughing, they scoured the area and piled heavy equipment against the airlock door – desks, drawers, containers, and anything else that was sturdy and would make the heavy door even harder to move. She was then satisfied that whatever horrors lurked in Aux Two would stay there.

“TURING, report that we have returned and that Pazuzu is isolated in Aux Two.” She turned to Stocky. “I’m sorry about that.” She coughed while she spoke.

“It made sense to try,” he said. “Did you see it?”

She turned toward him, startled. “You saw it? What did it look like?”

He shrugged his shoulders. He couldn’t think of anything to compare it to. “Like Samoylova said…a weird, red, glowy thing. It was far off in the darkness and I don’t think I saw it all. But it’s big like me.”

She thought about what he said. It was adapting itself to better kill them. It would certainly be making itself strong like Stocky too. She looked back at the pile of equipment blocking the airlock. None of it was appreciably heavy for a high gravity optimized replicant. Still, even if it could muscle its way through it would make a lot of noise to alert them.

That will do for now but I got to get Chandna back.

They carried Chandna to Examination and laid him on a stretcher. She set up the overhead light and then gathered instruments to attempt to reboot him while Stocky went back and grabbed the equipment they brought back from Aux Two, and which they had left by the airlock. He tossed the equipment in a corner upon return.

“TURING, report if you possess information on Chandna’s make and model.”

“I’m sorry, I do not possess that information,” it said.

Patterson put on a set of electrically insulating gloves, and then disposables over those. She then took a scalpel and began to make an incision across the entirety of the android’s head on the hunch that all of the data access ports would be clustered together. Nothing public, sure. But I have access to all information now. She pulled the flesh from the crown of the android’s polymer skull, using the scalpel to scrape off anchoring tissue fibers. They stretched and then snapped with appreciable spring back. She set the soft cap of tissue aside and inspected its skull but there weren’t any new dataports.

“Access Chandna’s personal logs. Tell me if he has recorded the requested information.”

“Review complete. Information on the android’s make and model is not recorded in the logs.”

She sighed. She set the scalpel down, sat in a chair, and pulled out her tablet. Perhaps one of their files on robotics would give her some ideas. They didn’t have any faith in the real Chandna and so they gave us an android impostor without the information necessary to repair it. How could they not see the problem with that?

“Are you okay?” Stocky asked.

“Just frustrated.” There was no point in denying it. She fingered the device silently, speeding through lists of files and checking their key words to see if they might offer guidance. “And I’m getting tired.”

“You were right. We should have slept.”

She paused, remembering his insatiable desire in Berthing. He never would have let her go to her own bunk. And that kept her from being alone. “No, those things would have likely killed us if we had.” Me at least. “It knows about our biological need for sleep and it’s trying to use that against us. It knows a lot about us.”

“What do we do?”

She walked over to a cabinet and opened it, and then pulled out a carton. “I have modafinil. It will make you very alert, but you’ll crash afterward.” She noticed the brand on the carton (it was the wrong medication) and threw it back in the cabinet and pulled out another carton after some searching. “Here you go. This is it.”

He took a packet and she got one for herself. “I take it we should refrain from using this until we absolutely have to,” he said.

“That’s what I’m going to do.”

“I think I’ll do the same,” he said. “But then how much further can we extend ourselves using this?”

“Quite a while,” she said. “But mental function will be increasingly impaired. Judgment and reasoning are the first things to deteriorate, and we need those.”

“And what do we do when we have to sleep?” He slipped the stimulants in his pocket.

She grinned, but she didn’t take her eyes off her tablet. “You and I will find someplace inconspicuous, and then we’ll lay down together and sleep?” She pocketed her packet as well.

“Lay down together?”

“And sleep! Even you’re going to. You will want to! Stop worrying about before.”

“I’m not worried about hurting you. Maybe a little, but I understand the reasons for my feelings better, and I can do better. It’s just…there’s no way that I will want to only sleep with you next to me.”

“What I’ve said before is still true,” she said. “And…I don’t even know your name.” Think about that.

He stepped over to the examining table and leaned against it, silently thinking. She resumed her search for information but hoped that hadn’t been too harsh of a rejection.

“James,” he said after a long pause, “my name is James.”

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

She was surprised he settled on one so fast. “You like James?”

He nodded. “It’s simple, and it’s got history.”

“I like it. I’m glad we met, James. I wish it was under different circumstances.”

He made a little nod. His gaze, even though he was obviously tired, was intensely focused on her.

They were both silent for a moment. She was starting to feel she would have to give up because she didn’t have any detailed vendor information on any android model. The files she had were just basic general info. She kept the conversation up just to avoid thinking about defeat. “How are you holding up besides the lack of sleep?” she asked.

“My skin and eyes are feeling better, and I breathe a lot better now. I could deal with a couple more of those cursed things in a close fight if needed. I’m hoping to use these guns though. What is it now, just the Captain and the main Creature?”

“That we know of.” She pointed at the hives like bumps on her hands and forearms and then at his. “I want you to know that these will blacken and die in around twenty hours, leaving scabs. Don’t let that worry you; it’s part of the healing process. And it’ll keep itching until it is completely healed.”

He looked sternly at her. “You’ll still be here. The odds are pretty good for us. Two against two.”

She nodded affirmatively and resumed scrolling through files. She had a good idea what she was searching for, and what she was seeing wasn’t it. Chandna was a type that was designed to pass for human. He wouldn’t possess wireless antennas built into him or electrical access points. The electrical device to force a hard boot would be deeply buried within him underneath the synthetically grown flesh and polymer skeleton.

Stocky took a seat and sat silently near her like a guard. He watched her work. They were both put here to help me. Stocky to keep me safe and Chandna to keep stress or emotion from affecting my work. She looked toward him. You’ll die because of me.

The Company had thought of more dangerous possibilities than she had.

He returned her gaze. “Can you repair him?”

She sighed. Yes, forget about all that, focus on repairing Chandna. “Maybe, if I had the technical documentation for his model and a few days to work on him.” She shined a pocket flashlight in the android’s eyes to observe the photosensor behind the lens for any response. “I don’t see how Pazuzu could have actually damaged him. Hardware, I mean. I think it just found a way to corrupt his operating routines and he shut himself down as a safety measure. Give him the right command stimulus and he should boot up fine.”

Stocky sighed. “We’re down to six total. Or two, depending on how you look at it. We at least match Pazuzu. So, maybe we don’t need him.”

She understood his meaning, but she didn’t have the same confidence. She stood up silently. “This ship needs a survivor. Someone must pass a warning about what’s out here. You have to forget about any feelings you have for me. If Pazuzu’s beast jumps us both then I suppose we’ll try to kill it together. If it gets me then I’ll do my best to slow it down. And you run and escape. I’ll do the same if it gets you.”

Stocky looked silently at her for a long moment. Finally, he nodded. “I understand. You’re right.” He leaned to the side in his chair and peered down the hallway and then turned to her and said, “What do we do now?”

“Help me turn him over. There may be a contact at the base of the skull which will force a restart. And if that don’t work…I don’t know yet. Let’s just try a few things.”

They flipped him over and Patterson cut the back of his neck open with a scalpel, and she peeled the synthetic flesh open. All the incisions had soaked the paper on the table a deep red and she took a moment to clean up excess blood with a towel.

She examined the polymer spinal discs and the fiber bundles that ran up into the skull. She used hemostatic forceps to pull them to the side and saw what she believed was the contact for forcing a cold boot. She grabbed a pair of scissors and pressed the contact with the tip. Nothing happened. She did it several more times, alternating the amount of time she left it pressed, and Chandna remained inoperative.

She set her tools down. “That’s it, I’m sure, but it doesn’t seem to work. Either the power unit has somehow been damaged or the boot firmware wiped. We don’t have the information…” She rested her head in her hands for a moment and then sluggishly placed her surgical tools back on the tray. She had to consider the possibility that her energy would be better spent elsewhere.

She collapsed in a chair, looking down and with her arms folded over her chest. Her bloody hands stained her white coat. “I don’t know what to do,” she said. She thought about trying to get some rest hoping that it would sharpen her mind. Could she afford that? Or was this really the point to walk away from this effort and plan for new struggles?

“We just keep going,” he said. “We don’t need to know everything to do that. Pazuzu has made mistakes before. When we discover its next move then we help it make another mistake. Then we make it pay for that.”

Simply “waiting” wasn’t what she had in mind. She looked at him exasperated, saying nothing. Waiting is too risky; I have to do something. She got up, took a pair of scissors and began to cut through Chandna’s shirt.

Stocky watched her work. She grabbed her scalpel again and continued the incision down the back, going all the way to his pants. Then she stretched the flesh open with forceps. Strange fibers stretched and finally gave under strain, and the flesh incrementally separated from the composite frame below. The flesh couldn’t be human (since it was designed for a different skeletal structure) but it was a close, bioengineered facsimile.

The effort their buyer put into Chandna was impressive. Most “androids” had an obviously synthetic exterior. They were humanoid in shape but different enough to avoid the uncanny valley. There were shapeshifter androids too. They weren’t used much because, unlike in science fiction, they weren’t very useful. They couldn’t use a collagen-elastin matrix based exterior because the requirement to change shape necessitated weak intermolecular bonds. Their exterior was almost a viscous liquid, and you could always identify one with a simple poke or pinch test.

But this android even had Stocky/James fooled.

“Are you looking for something?”

“I don’t know,” she said while beginning to cut away the remaining connective tissue. “Androids are typically designed to have similarities to our physiology. So the core of their power generation, processing, and data distribution are located in the head and spinal area. They often have a backup processor and memory core in the back of the chest. I’m shot-gunning this problem. Maybe I can force that processor to boot.”

Stocky picked up another set of forceps and began to help her uncover the spinal column by peeling the flesh wide open. The translucent polymers allowed them to barely see the cabling contained within. There was significant hardware within the chest cavity, with two access plates on either side of the column. He pointed at the star screw head. “I’ll get a driver for these from the damage control toolbox. Just give me a minute.”

He soon came back and removed the plates but there wasn’t a hardware power switch. However, there was physical access to the backup CPU and memory. “We may need to take him to the Workshops. We have several logic state analyzers there. We could test the main components individually.” He looked at her. “It’s going to take a while.”

“I don’t think they’re going to let us work there.”

“I don’t think they can stop us. But we should get some rest before we try it.” He took her tools out of her bloody hands and then set them down. Then he placed his hand on the small of her back and began to walk her toward the hall. “Take your gloves off,” he whispered.

She pulled them off and tossed them in the trash bin. “And you want to sleep?”

“We’ll sleep,” he said while nodding. “And then we’ll be ready to work.”

“You said you wouldn’t want to just sleep.”

“I’ll have thoughts about you. But I’ll do right.” He looked at her with gentleness.

They picked up their weapons and then gathered blankets and went to the reception lobby. He moved the chairs out of the way and prepared a spot on the floor with some of the blankets. He made sure to lay next to her, covering them both with another blanket. And then they napped together. He kept his word.