The interrogation doesn't go at all to plan.

We ended up tying Shane down to a gurney in the medbay. They have built-in straps and everything. He was still passed out for an hour after we got him restrained. Rick and I practiced what questions we were going to ask him.

We came up with:

-Did he do something to my implant? If so, what?

-Am I a cyborg?

-If I'm a cyborg, who manufactured me and when?

-If I'm a cyborg, how did I become a legal person?

-If I'm not a cyborg, why can't I remember my childhood?

I figured I would be satisfied if I could get some answers to these questions.But all that practice and planning goes to hell when Shane wakes up.

"What the fuck?" he says groggily, tugging against his restraints.

"It's okay," I tell him. I'm standing beside the gurney, right at his shoulder.

"The hell happened?"

Now he's looking wildly around the medbay.

"Relax, nothing's wrong. We'll let you up in a minute," Rick tells him from the foot of the gurney.

"Let me up now," Shane demands.

I have to hold myself back. I'm immediately reaching for the straps and have to shake off the impulse to just let him go and forget about this.

"We have some questions first," Rick informs him.

Shane is seething. "I'm not answering anything," he looks up at me. "Honey, what is this about?"

"Have you done something to my implant, Shane?" I ask calmly.

"Not this again," he's looking annoyed with me. He never looks at me this way and it's making me feel bad. Really bad. Like I just want to curl up in a ball and cry.

"I've never asked you about this before," I tell him.

"Yes you have," he tells me, "We've had this conversation five times and I just hate going over it again and again…I’m done. I love you, Honey, but I can't keep going around in circles like this."

"Hey, asshole," Rick says and Shane jerks his gaze to him. "Just answer the question. It's simple enough."

Shane lets out a frustrated sigh, looks up at the ceiling then closes his eyes, and answers, "No, I haven't done anything to your implant, Honey. No, I'm not manipulating you. No, I didn't delete your memories or rewrite your personality or anything like that."

I'm grabbing his restraints and unsnapping them.

Rick tries to intercede, he says "Honey, stop. We haven't asked him all the questions."

"I'm done," I reply as Shane is sitting up and unfastening the straps on his legs.

Rick looks at me, puzzled, and says, "Okay."

Shane sits up on the gurney, taking deep breaths, calming himself down.

"What other questions?" he asks resignedly.

I don't answer right away. I'm not sure I want to know anymore. But then I go ahead and ask, "Am I a cyborg?"

Shane hangs his head and gives a small nod.

"Why didn't I know that? Why didn't you tell me?"

"I did tell you," he yells at me, "I've told you five times! You always wake up the next day having forgotten it. You go back to thinking you're just a regular woman."

He has never, ever yelled at me like this. I'm crying, I realize. Tears are rolling down my cheeks in the face of his anger.

"Is it my fault you're programmed to forget? Is it my fault you're deceiving yourself about this every day?" he demands. "What am I supposed to do? Should I tell you every morning, break your heart with the truth every single day?"

He jumps off the gurney and turns on me, "You know what, I'm done. I'm not having this whole conversation with you again when you're just going to forget it anyway."

With that he leaves, angry and stomping and…I just, I don't know what to do or think. My whole world is coming unraveled. My whole life is a lie, and I can't trust my own mind and I'm stuck here on this space station.

What am I going to do?

And will it even matter? Shane said I would just forget all of this. That I have in the past. So what does it matter what I do or find out if it's just going to be gone from my head in the morning?

Rick gently grabs my hand and pulls me around into a hug.

"Let’s go get some food," he says into my hair, "We skipped lunch. You'll feel a lot better after eating."

So that's what we do. We go to the cafeteria and have some dinner. Then we go feed Borg.

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

Rick swears that if I forget anything, he'll remind me in the morning. He comforts me, telling me that he loves me and that I'm synced to him, not Shane; that he's all I need, and Shane can go fuck himself for being such an asshole about everything.

I smile about that as I tuck myself into bed next to Rick. Shane has always been a self-admitted asshole. An autocratic, controlling jerk. But that has never stopped me from loving him.

I can't sleep and I don't want to fuck. I just lie there snuggled up to Rick waiting.

Then Shane comes in. After petting Borg for a minute, he gets undressed. I pretend to be asleep as he slides under the covers on the other side of me. He scoots in to spoon behind me, and I focus on breathing evenly and keeping my eyes closed.

"I'm sorry Honey," he murmurs into my hair, "I love you so much and it has been so hard. And I just don't know what to do anymore. I feel like such an idiot. You don't deserve anything that's happened."

I give up the pretense of sleeping to turn around in his arms and say, "Tell me what it is that’s happened."

"Do you remember where I worked before I took this job?"

I nod, but he's waiting for me to answer, "You worked at HillCo."

"Right," he agrees, "I was the lead in R&D and the reason I got that job was because I was the only engineer without an implant that applied. The implants are all made by SynDeCorp, and they’re always trying to get a leg up on HillCo. Corporate espionage was a daily concern. HillCo went so far as to recruit kids out of high school. They paid them a generous stipend for years, throughout engineering school if they would not get an implant, so they could have a pool of engineers to hire from who wouldn't be unwitting spies–"

"I remember. You told me about this," I interrupt.

"Yeah, but right before I met you, the department was bare-bones. I was running the place by myself because none of the kids had graduated yet and everybody, every single person who was qualified to work with us, had a SynDeCorp implant."

I nod to show I'm following along.

"Well, right after we got married, fifty fresh-faced graduates were brought in for me to train. They all signed non-disclosure agreements. None of them had implants. HillCo had run background checks on them and their families, but there was a leak. Right away, from the first day, someone in our group was a spy, passing on information to SynDeCorp. I tried to root them out, but no matter what trap I set, I couldn't catch them. After six months of this, HillCo declared it a loss and laid off the whole batch, all fifty of them. They instead hired a group of ten graduates that they had initially passed over…" I feel him squeeze me where he has an arm wrapped around me, "Still awake, Hun?"

"Mhmm, keep going."

"Okay, well I had this new batch of second-rate recruits to train. But there was still a leak. SynDeCorp was still managing to get insider information and they were not being discreet about it. Everything we had in development was rushed through production and sold for cheap by them before we were done with preliminaries."

As he's recounting all of this, there is a sort of tickle in my brain. I remember this. He used to come home every evening, going on and on about it. But something is bothering me about this story.

"It was you," I guess, "You were the spy."

"No," he shakes his head sadly, "You were."

"But how could I? You never shared classified stuff with me. Because of the implant issue."

"Yeah, but there were recording devices in my clothes. My shoes. My wedding ring. You would sync up every night and deliver everything to SynDeCorp."

"But—"

"I came into work one day and I was stopped at the door. I was brought into a decontamination room and told to strip naked. They gave me some scrubs and then debriefed me, breaking it to me that the love of my life, my perfect, beautiful wife, was a cyborg. You were a trap set by our competitors to snare me."

I swallow thickly–I, somehow, I…remember all this. I really did do those things, and then I would immediately forget about it.

"They planted you in Dad's assisted living facility. They made you everything I had ever wanted. They had accessed the information from all my exes, all my one-night stands. They all had implants. They spied on what kind of porn I watched. And then they built the perfect woman. Someone I couldn't resist."

He clears his throat and hugs me tightly again.

"HillCo had finally caught onto it through some corporate espionage of their own. They gave me a choice: they could fire me and arrest you, have you charged for whatever crimes you may have committed with your spying, or I could continue as before, but feed you false information. Lead SynDeCorp on a chase."

"After a year of this, SynDeCorp had caught on and weren't falling for it anymore. My boss said I could have my old job back if I split with you. But I couldn't."

He squeezes me in a hug again and kisses my cheek.

"I tried to talk with you about it, Honey. You would argue with me. You'd tell me I was crazy, that you weren't a cyborg. I pointed out that you had no family, no school friends. You never got a pimple. You never had a period for Christ ‘sake. And the way you come at the drop of a hat when we fuck. No woman does that. The way you always, always wanted sex when I did. And the way you look at me like I hung the fuckin' moon when I'm just an average asshole. You are too good to be true. You were made that way. Every time I would tell you, you'd end up in tears, but I would still convince you. And then you'd go to sleep and forget the whole thing the next morning."

He's getting worked up as he talks about this part. I comb my fingers through his short hair and kiss him. I kiss his chest, then his cheek, then his mouth. He calms and then continues.

"I knew I was dumb, I was being crazy about this whole thing, and I should have just let you go. But I didn't, so then I was transferred–Horizon Colonies is a subsidiary of HillCo. I didn't have any choice; If I refused, if I quit, they would have you arrested. In the end I figured it was for the best. That I needed some distance. I kept expecting you to just disappear. Ever since I found out what you were, but especially since I left. Every time I video-called, I was so relieved when you answered. Relieved that SynDeCorp hadn't picked you up."

"And then you bought Rick," I prompt him.

"Yeah," he nods, "I knew I was stuck out here, that I would have to renew my contract and things were never going to be right with us again. I was miserable. And you were miserable too. But I figured you didn't have to be. When I saw an ad for The Perfect Match, it seemed like a solution. A way for me to make you happy and do right by you even though I couldn't be with you anymore."

I kiss his cheek.

"And then that recall happened and ruined everything—"

I kiss him again, on the mouth this time. He opens to me so I can deepen the kiss and then I push him on his back and straddle him. I rub myself against him like a cat, trying to feel as much of him as possible. Trying to make him feel how much I want him and love him.

He never betrayed me. He never tricked or manipulated me. He has always taken care of me and protected me.

I reach behind me where I'm sitting on him, and I find his hard cock. I want him so much and I'm wet for him like I always am, so I scoot back, lift up and impale myself on his gorgeous, perfect cock. And oh-my-god it feels so good. That makes sense because now I know that I was made for this. I was made to be his wife, his good girl, his perfect fuck toy. I was made to come on this cock. That's what I do. I fuck myself on his cock and grand on him until I come and it's like a wave through my body, I'm shaking with the intensity of it.

Then he takes over. As I fall limply on his chest, he grabs my hips, lifts me up and yanks me back down again and again.

"You feel so fucking good. I love you so much," he says, his words choppy, "so fucking perfect," he growls, then he pulls me tight against him, his fingertips digging painfully into my ass, his muscles tense and his breath warms my temple as he comes.

He rolls to the side, scooting me onto the bed and gets up a moment later to go to the bathroom, coming back with a washcloth. He uses it to clean me up, but I'm already dozing off before he finishes.

Then he climbs back into bed and pulls me into his arms. Rick snuggles up to my back and throws an arm over me and Shane. I forgot he was here! He must have slept through all of that.

As I fall to sleep I hear Shane say very quietly, "Please remember it this time."