I fell down, my naked body slamming hard into a metal grate on the floor. The fluid that once surrounded me was flowing down over top of me, down into the grate. I immediately coughed up copious amounts of the liquid. It just kept coming, like the whole of my lungs had been filled with it. I felt like I was running out of oxygen before I finally had a dry cough and took in a loud gasp of fresh air, sitting on all fours and continuing to spit out bits of it as I tried to catch my breath again. I hadn't been able to appreciate just how slimy and gross the fluid felt when I was fully immersed in it, but here in the open air, it suddenly felt like I needed a bath. I flung bits of it off of my hand and futilely tried to wipe it from my face before I was finally able to look up, panting hard to take in the sweet air that I felt like I'd never really appreciated before.

There, in front of me, stood the two people I'd already seen in my mind moments before, looking down at me, astonished, and I saw them with the kind of clarity I was used to seeing with my own eyes.

The woman had tanned skin and short hair, wearing a brown vest, and she was watching me with intrigue, suspicion, and curiosity. The man, in contrast, wore a nice black office-worker's shirt and slacks, littered with spattered stains that showed poorly against the outfit's color. He was staring at me in total, surprised disbelief.

My lungs emptied, I sat up and did my best to place one arm over both of my breasts. I spoke hoarsely "Thanks." before I reluctantly swallowed some of the fluid that still remained in my mouth.

They both continued to stare, unmoving for a moment before the woman turned to her counterpart and asked "Did my core just talk?"

"So it would seem." the man mumbled his reply.

"Fuck..." was all I could think to say, throwing my arms out to the side and beginning to inspect the unwanted cyberware on my arm once more in the open air "Look, I don't know what's going on, but I'm an IT consultant, not a spaceship part." I coughed a few more times, groaning as I felt.

"Well, good thing you didn't start it up yet, we have enough corpses around here as is." the man mumbled as he turned around to the biometrics console. The statement alarmed me. What exactly had happened while I slept?

"That's the thing, I did." the woman spoke in a matter-of-fact tone, causing the man to double-take "She was almost halfway through."

I stayed silent as the man walked over to the chamber that had held me and moved to inspect some of the wiring inside and out "Impossible, there must have been a network failure." he declared.

"Help. Core. Alive. Help." I said slowly.

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The woman just stared at me for a moment, then looked back up to the man "Then just how did she manage to hack navigation and send me those exact four words?"

"Humans can't survive a neural upload like that." the man declared again.

"Well then, she's a pretty convincing dead body." the woman pulled a paper sheet off of a medical bed placed next to the core chamber, walked up to me and knelt down to put it over my shoulders "What's your name?"

"Meryll Watkins." I grabbed hold of the sheet and wrapped myself in it, glad to at least have something to make myself decent "I don't know why I'm here. Last thing I remember I was boarding a ship on my way to Titan. I fell asleep, then I woke up here with..." I struggled to motion to my new implants that I was beginning to notice the weight of now that I was outside of the fluid.

"Titan?" the large man who had been in the hallway before trundled into the room "What's another corpo drone doing in the middle of our ship?" the man was muscular and wore an undershirt with jeans, clearly showing off his figure. There was contempt in his voice "And... covered in goo?"

I suddenly felt... vulnerable. The ship that I'd mapped out so far felt too distant. Like it was still a part of me, but I couldn't quite feel all of it, just the space around me. My map of the heart overlapped with my vision and I had to blink and shake my head. I needed answers "What is all of this? How did you find me? Were you the ones who put all this... gear in me?"

"Give her some space, Joel." the woman demanded "You're on board the Theseus. Our core bit the bullet about a month ago. Lucky us, we drifted into some wreckage that happened to have a fresh one on board. You. You were in an escape pod that was nearing the end of its life support. Lucky you." she started "Figured you were some smuggler's prize who met their match and managed to save their merch. So we picked you up, got Doc here to stitch in the interface parts." she motioned to the man who was still tinkering with the chamber "And with that, we had a way to pick ourselves up." she threw her arms up in frustration that this plan had now been interrupted.

I nodded, understanding the situation. It was said that smugglers managed to get illegal ship cores through civilian transport on occasion, so it wasn't totally unreasonable to think that I could have been one. "Sorry to disappoint, but I just have Arthausen Syndrome."

"Arthausen Syndrome?" the doctor parroted "I'm not familiar."

"Thought you knew everything." Joel quipped.

"It's a rare genetic disorder. It's benign, the only known effect is that it causes psionic sensors to malfunction sometimes. Reads out as though I had resonance." I explained, holding the sheet tighter "... Hey, if you were stranded, why not just use an emergency signal band?"

Joel let out a small laugh and turned to step out into the hallway. The woman raised her eyebrows at me, as if to ask if I was serious. I looked around at the three and after a moment, it dawned on me "You're pirates." I mumbled, my shoulders drooping as the gravity of my situation fell on me.

"Smart." Joel taunted, sounding amused at my realization.

"Captain Aisling Barrowin." the woman finally declared, slapping me lightly on the shoulder "Captain of the Theseus. The musclehead's Joel, and that's Cornelius Something-or-other, but everyone just calls him Doc. Welcome aboard." she smiled and then stood up "Looks like we're sitting still a bit longer, boys. Tell Mouse and Ray to come to the canteen." she turned back and held her hand down to me "You hungry?"