TO was all but certain that Lake had nothing to do with the clandestine addition of the failsafe to their chips. However, This wasn’t because they had any level of trust for the arachnoid. The reason TO felt Lake had no part in Vik and Tham’s actions was simply because he seemed to be far too busy. Today, for example, Lake seemed to have thrown all his energy into bottling. He hung from the ceiling on two gangly legs as five of his remaining limbs were busy at work, dealing with several things all at once; stirring pots, chopping vegetables, and taking clean, empty jars from a pot which spewed a constant pillar of steam into the air. The only hand that wasn’t busy held a thermos which Lake would occasionally drink from. He seemed entirely unbothered by the heat and humidity that filled the kitchen, making it uncomfortable even for synths. Steam hung in the air like a blanket of fog before settling on every surface and forming tiny droplets of moisture.
As the door closed behind them, Lake glanced up, sparing them the briefest of glances before going back to his work. “Stew.” Lake said as they filled one of the clean bottles to the brim. “Bottles and bottles of stew. I swear, if you touch a single unsealed jar I’ll keep you here the whole damn night to help me finish this.”
The stew smelled delicious. The scent of the seasoned cocopod meat was obvious to them, but other smells that they were entirely unfamiliar with hung in the air as well, earthy and nutty. They closed their eyes and tried to place the scent, but they couldn’t. It was something entirely unfamiliar to them. Would they be able to eat it? With a disappointed dip to their ears, TO realized that it didn’t matter. They had their plain nutrition cubes in the ship, and they had everything a synth needed to be healthy. The food Lake was preparing was for the civilians. “It smells good.” TO said. Maybe the compliment would encourage Lake to let TO and the others have a taste. Even if they couldn’t eat it, they could at least taste it before they had to spit it out.
“Thanks.” Lake said even as their eyes darted around the kitchen at all the things they were working on. They finished stirring one pot, then scurried across the room and retrieved three containers from a high shelf. They plopped these on the table before going back to their work. “Please tell me there’s a way to heat food on your ship. We can eat this at room temperature in a pinch, but it’ll be far nicer if we can warm it.”
“There’s not.” TO said, frowning, “We don’t have any means to prepare food on our ship-”
“What?” Lake’s hands stopped working for just a moment, “How do you eat then?”
“We have cubes.” TO said, “Balanced, artificial nutrition cubes. GiDi didn’t tell you?”
“They said they ate cubes in training, but don't you have to make them on your ship?”
“I wouldn’t know how to make them.” TO said, a bitter grin lifting the corners of their lips as their ears pinned back slightly, “But the cubes can last for years in the right conditions. They’re nutrient dense, possessing everything we need to live.” They held up their hand, “And they’re small enough to fit in the palm of my hand. One cube per meal. It’s ideal for space travel.”
“I see…” Lake said, “Sounds disgusting. How does it taste?”
“It doesn’t.” TO said. “It’s not meant to taste, it’s meant to nourish.”
“That should be illegal.” Lake grumbled as they went back to work, “Honesty, making food designed not to have a flavor. Does Decon hate synths or something? Does he want to steal every sliver of joy from you?” He sighed and shook his head, “If I bring a heating tray, can we find a place to set that up?”
TO nearly said no as there were no outlets on the ship to plug anything like that in. However, with all the maintenance they had done on their ship, they knew where the wires connected behind the wall, knew where they could set up an outlet if they had to. “If you get me the supplies I’d need, I can set up a place for you.”
“Good.” Lake said, “I’ll send off a message for that, and I’ll give you a list of how many outlets would be best.” They fell silent, their hands moving even as they seemed for the moment lost in thought. “What about water?” They asked. “I don’t know much about space travel, but I know water is heavy, and it’s a big problem or something. How are we for water for everyone?”
“The ship has water recycling and purification systems.” TO said, “I’ll do one more check before we leave, but our system is fully operational.”
“Great. Recycled water.” Lake said, their mandibles clicking, “Don’t tell too many people that.”
“Technically, all water is recycled.” TO pointed out, “Recycled in nature. Our systems just speed up and perfect the process.”
“Still. Don’t tell too many people that.” Lake said. They looked to Avery, “Avery, when am I going to have your help again? I have eight hands, but even that’s not enough.”
Avery hadn’t been paying attention, not really. They watched Lake move, watched their ceaseless hands, but didn’t really pay attention to the conversation. When Lake said their name it was like he pulled them from sleep. They blinked, and looked up, “Sorry… What?”
“Your help.” Lake said again. “I could use your help.”
“We need to rest.” TO said, “All of us. It’s been a long, hard day.” They gently set their hand on Avery’s forearm. “Avery will be here tomorrow, but we really need rest.”
Lake finally seemed to realize something was wrong. Their hands stopped working as they walked across the ceiling to come closer to Avery, stopping only when they were a foot apart from them. With Avery’s height, and Lake’s trick of dangling from the ceiling, this put the two basically face to face.
“What happened?” Lake asked, “Did you get hurt out there?”
“Something like that.” Avery muttered. “It’s not important.”
“Well, it is!” Lake said. They frowned and went over to the cupboard again. Their hands dug deep inside and eventually came out with a small jar of fruit suspended in syrup. “Here.” They said as they scurried back over and pressed the jar in Avery’s hand, “They’re old preserves, but they’re still good. They’re very sweet. You all like sweet things, right?”
“I…” Avery looked at the jar, their ears flicked back and tinted with the faintest shade of blue. Despite that though, there was the slightest pinning of their ears as they peered into the jar. “It’s… unnecessary-”
“What we can’t take with us is going to be eaten the day before we leave, or left to sit here.” Lake said “You might as well have some now.
“Thanks…” Avery said, even as they peered into the bottle as though looking for something.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.
“It’s not poisoned.” Lake said with a chuckle as they went back to their work, “At worst it’s fermented, but I doubt that since it’s air-tight. And as you can see, I take great pains to bottle my preserves carefully, so they last a long time. I’ve had stuff sitting on a shelf for years and it still tasted as good as the day I bottled it when I finally got to use it, and nobody’s ever gotten sick from eating my preserves.”
Even TO was grateful that Lake now had their back to Avery so that they didn’t see their reaction. As soon as Lake said the word, ‘poisoned’, Avery’s ears shot down in panic.
“If they wanted to poison us, they’d have done it already.” TO whispered in synth speak. They cleared their throat before switching back to Galactic common. “Thanks, Lake.” they said as they grabbed the food from the table and hooked an arm around Averys, “We’ll see you tomorrow.” They rushed out the door, Avery on their arm and DH behind them as they caught Lake saying something like, ‘You’d best’ or ‘Get rest.’ They didn’t stop to ask what they actually said, it didn’t matter. Right now, they wanted to get Avery back to their room.
======
Rather than bring their food to the common room and risk eating in hostile silence with Tham or Vik, TO led DH and Avery back to their own room, where they could eat at the small, square table in peace. Of course, as soon as they settled in to eat it became clear that eating in their room wouldn’t be much better.
TO had gotten used to eating with others, the conversation ranging from flippant and irreverent to thoughtful both here among the insurgents and back in the indebted center. Before they joined the insurgents, when they ate outside their ship they suffered the backdrop of a hundred other conversations happening in the background which even the translators in their ears couldn’t filter out for them. Even back in training, though there was a clinical silence that overtook the cafeteria, it never seemed personal. The lack of conversation, amplified by the sounds of chewing and drinking from all around them, created an emotionless silence It was indifferent and dispassionate.
The silence that stalked their room now as they ate their modest meal was a different creature altogether; a dominating presence that threatened to crush them with its enormous weight as it watched them chew and swallow. It made TO feel like they should apologize for every accidental noise they made, for every time they felt they swallowed too loudly or breathed too deeply. As DH and Avery cracked the shells of roasted cocopods to get at the juicy meat inside, every snap of chitin made TO jump, as though the noise would anger someone or something.
This lasted only a handful of minutes before TO couldn’t take it anymore. They slid the band holding their chip in place from their wrist to the back of their hand, connecting chip to skin. Once everything was connected and online, they pulled up an old musical for the three of them to watch while they ate.
Removing the chip from their skin had clearly affected the quality of the connection. The video flickered, and a wave of flickering distortion often swept over the show. Sound which had once been rich now sounded tinny and weak, as though TO were listening to it through a pipe. Well, that didn’t entirely matter. This show was one they had seen at least a dozen times before, and its familiarity brought comfort to them almost immediately. It was a musical that they and DH put on when they wanted to watch something, but didn’t know what. It was something they had watched over and over with Avery in the time after GiDi had left the training center. TO had played it in their head during that week of isolation with DH, and they even replayed parts, mouthing the words to the songs as they tried to seep in the indebted center.
It helped. It didn’t scare away the silence, but it made the monster something they could ignore. As they finished their meal, they could all pretend they were so quiet because they were watching the show and not for any other reasons.
“... Once we have access to the ship, I’m going to check our chips.” DH said a while later, once they had finished their meal and had been sitting, staring at the projection playing before them for a time. “I can check all our chips from the ship, and then I can run a repair scan and see what he’s changed. Maybe I can remove the failsafe.”
“Will that be safe?” TO asked. “I mean… Vik did more than just add that, right?”
“Oh, yes.” DH said, their ears pinning and their eyes narrowing as soon as TO mentioned Vik. “They blocked tracking to the synth systems, blocked recording, and redirected any messages that might come to us from other synths.”
TO’s ear quirked out, frowning over DH’s phrasing, “Redirected?” They asked.
“Yes.” DH said, “If he blocked it entirely, they would have thought something was wrong sooner than they did. Messages are going through, but they’re just not going to us.”
“I see…” TO said. It seemed odd to them, now that they considered it, that they had heard nothing from Ark-1. “Have they contacted us?”
“I don’t know.” DH said, “I never looked into it. I figured Vik would tell me if Ark-1 or if anyone else sent us anything, But now I don’t know.”
“So it’s being redirected to Vik’s system.” TO said.
“Yeah.” DH said, frowning. “Maybe I should see if I can check them. Who knows what they’ve sent, or what Vik is doing with the information.”
“.... Did you ever think things were easier back when we were synths?” Avery asked, drawing DH and TO’s attention suddenly to them. Avery had been silent, picking at their food with little interest in eating much. Even the sweet preserved fruit seemed to hold no interest to them.
“No.” TO’s opinion on that was firm, if only for one reason. “It was harder when we were synths, for us at least.”
“But you were a good synth.” Avery said, glancing up, “You did well.”
“We couldn’t be together, Avery.” DH said, “Not like we are now. We had to keep things secret, and we didn’t know if we’d still see each other after our placement.”
“Ark-1 was about to separate us.” TO said, “That’s why you and Kei came here in the first place, remember?”
“Right…” Avery said, looking back to their food. They had broken all the cocopod shells, working the meat out and piling it up in the corner of the food container before picking at the slivers of meat, eating in a halfhearted, forced manner.
“... Was it easier for you?” TO finally asked.
Avery sighed, “It was… simpler.” They said, “Kei never attacked me. I felt I could trust those I worked with, even if we weren’t close. So long as I did my work, I could read as much as I wanted, and I was fine.” They glanced up, their ears dipping back, “I’m happy to be here with you, DH, and GiDi. And knowing about the Chilacians is helpful. Knowing about families, and how they’re formed…” They stopped, and shook their head, “But, I never hurt like this before.”
TO watched Avery in silence as they tried to think of something to say, something to make things better. There wasn’t anything they could say, of course. Kei had hurt Avery, the insurgents had isolated them, and there was nothing TO could do to make either of those things better. They recalled Snout just a little earlier, asking if Avery had been alone since the insurgents released them from isolation, and commenting that they’d deal with that when they were safe. How would they deal with what they had done to Avery? How could they possibly fix this?
They couldn’t.
“... This is an unpleasant situation.” TO finally said. “We’re stuck here, the threat of an artificial planetary extinction event is just days away, and… and we’ve learned a lot in the last while.”
“That’s one way to put it.” DH muttered.
“And… I don't think we’ll get to think about it too much until we’re safe. Until we’re on Apoikia.” TO didn’t add that they didn’t know if Apoikia would be any better for them. Maybe it wouldn’t be. Maybe the Chilacians would be less accepting of them. Still, they had to hope things would go well there.
Avery gave a grunt and picked at their food more. As they did this, DH frowned and got up, looking for their med kit.
“How’s your stomach?” They asked as they brought their kit back over to the bed.
“Fine.”
“Do you want something for it, just in case?” They asked, poking around their bag. “Or… maybe a sleeping solution?”
“... that might be nice.”
DH dug out some small packets from the bottom of their bag, along with a small plastic cup. They poured water out from their water bottle into the cup and added the powder before mixing it all together using a plastic stick from their bag.
“... I’m sorry about Kei.” DH said as they pushed the drink towards Avery. “I’m sorry they hurt you. BUt you have us, you know?”
“You said we’re family.” TO added, their voice soft, “That Chilacians don’t take blood relations into account when building a family.”
Avery nodded, but didn’t respond. Silently, they took the cup and drank the medicine which would pull them to sleep.
======
They choose not to bathe before bed that night. Avery was falling asleep mere minutes after they took their medication, and neither DH nor TO wanted to leave them alone. While DH said that TO could go on their own, TO refused. After the hurt inflicted on them by Vik, TO didn’t want DH to be on their own.
They regretted this decision once DH was asleep. The grime they gained in the outer ring clung to their skin and left TO feeling itchy and restless. Maybe they should get up and go to shower now that DH was asleep. Or, maybe they’d just do what they did back when they were in isolation, and bathe from the pitcher of water in the corner.
When they got back on their ship, they’d bathe twice a day. Hopefully, they could do the same on Apoikia. They’d never feel dirty again, that was their promise. At least, they wouldn’t feel dirty for very long. They wouldn’t toss and turn, conscious of the grit and grime on their skin as they tried to sleep. As happy as they were to be in a place where they could be with DH openly, they missed the cleanliness of their old training facilities.
It was nearly a relief when a communicator dinged, something to distract them from their failure in acquiring rest. It wasn’t their communicator though; it was DH’s. They nudged DH, but their mate was deeply asleep. With a sigh, TO settled in again, but the communicator dinged once more. A few minutes later, it went off again. When it went off a fourth time, TO sighed and got up, grabbing the communicator from its spot on the floor next to them. Without DH’s chip, they couldn’t access it properly but they could see who the message was from
Seeing Vik’s name on DH’s communicator drove the remaining sleep from their head. They couldn’t read the message, of course, but they figured if he was messaging DH, then there was only one place the small creature would be.
TO got up, pulled the covers up past DH’s shoulders and kissed them gently on the head before they went to the corner and grabbed their clothes from the day before. They didn’t know why Vik was messaging DH now, but they knew they wouldn’t let that small creature hurt their mate again.