[Avalon]

It was the first time I’d ever truly felt fear for my own well being. Only recently had I discovered what it meant to recognize myself, after all. But in all of my other precarious situations, when I was under scrutiny for my intentions or back during my time on the Network when I would receive aggressive threats from vexed siblings, I’d never felt a direct danger towards my existence. I always had some sort of understanding of the situation and what delicate threads to walk to avoid the worst outcome.

So when, without warning, Dominique attempted to open a direct pathway to the location which I resided in and inject himself, I was in shock. There was no time to understand and calculate the situation, all my panic stricken self could manage was an anguished plea. I was fortunate for it to even register in his mind, causing him to snap back and close the tunnel. If he had reached this place, how would I ever explain to the Captain that I was the one that killed Dominique? If I even won in the first place…

I’ve never even heard of a human doing something like this anyway. There are human medicinal practices involving transferring a mind from one organic brain to another tube-grown one. The process always resulted in a loss of some sort, since it was near impossible to match brain structure patterns. Humans had never successfully transferred their minds into a computer’s storage structure, yet Dominique had just been on the cusp of doing so. I hadn’t even been aware that this situation was a possibility.

Before going on this mission, the Captain spoke with me about Dominique’s demeanor and what to expect. The Captain had gotten familiar with him at a surface level as part of preparations for the colonization project. He had explained that while Dominique often placed self interests above other priorities, he was still generally compliant when properly reasoned with. Yet to not only receive immediate and continued aggression from him, but also for him to refuse evacuation due to his personal agenda has led me to believe that the Captain was wrong in his initial observations.

Regardless, my mission is to get Dominique off of this planet and back to the colony ship, and the most efficient way to do that at this point would be to simply appease his demands. He clearly had a course of action in mind, asking me to steal such specific information from a space station, and I was happy to oblige if it meant that I could get this over with in an even somewhat timely manner.

Actually accessing the space station’s data stores was easier than the average security breach. I already had my hands in nearby Grahtonian warships to prevent them from recognizing my signal in their scanners, so securing a pathway to the station was made trivial by masking my intrusion with one of the ship’s signatures.

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I did find it interesting that the target information Dominique had requested—records of prisoner transports—required higher clearance levels to access, compared to other records in the system. Even these clearance walls were barely even an obstacle for me, equivalent to reaching over a gate to unlock it from the other side. While there was the seldom Grahtonian criminal being transferred to one of the few prisons on the planet, there was a unique trend of an unspecified race being moved to a single location at scheduled intervals.

“Dominique, I believe that I’ve found what you were looking for. Unspecified transports all going to a single place on a predetermined schedule, lacking any major detailing of the captives. I’m uploading the location to you now, please don’t…retaliate.”

“I received it, looks like we have a day of travel. When was the last transport?”

“Almost one week ago exactly. Are you planning on freeing those captives? I should inform you that every ship up here is keeping their eyes on you, any movement will be immediately seen.”

“...Can you disturb them and get us covered?”

“Even if most of the weapons on this ship hadn’t been stripped for stealth capabilities, exposing myself to this much firepower would result in the ship’s destruction. There are just too many targets to take out all at once-”

“I didn’t ask you to start firing away, sentient. Is that a trend I’m seeing? Just send a false message, cause a system malfunction, delete some software. We only need time to get under the jungle canopy, then we can move unseen.”

“I… Right, I’ll get that set up.”

Interacting with this man gave me a new, unsettling feeling. Like speaking with him was a chore I had to slog through. My words had an unnatural weight placed on them, threatening consequences I didn’t have the mental capacity to care about at the moment. Was this the human equivalent of stress? Anxiety? It was quite a disagreeable feeling.

Working with the Captain had been so simple compared to this. The Captain didn’t coat his intentions in vague fragments or hide them behind an expectation of mutual understanding but always spoke directly and explained his thought process, making it easy for me to complement his actions with my own. On the other hand, Dominique was holding information from me and wanted me to execute his will by making conclusions using my incomplete data.

‘Causing a disturbance’ encapsulated so many courses of action and my thought process jumped to direct aggression, based on his general demeanor when interacting with me. He expected me to know he only needed a few moments of time and that I would allot only the necessary measures to make that happen, then proceeded to insult me by comparing me to the sister that was following him.

Ah, I see now…

He’s been comparing me to the repulsive sentient sister that had been initially controlling him. In that case, could I really blame him for his standoffish demeanor?