I stood frozen in front of the door leading to the intermediary hallway, staring blankly into the solid metal barrier between me and my shell. I could feel Theseus in network range, but the feeling of safe comfort it would ordinarily give me was overwhelmed by the oppressive aura of Skygraves somewhere on the other side of the door. The powerful EMP implant making my hair stand on end from a distance. At the very least, it was no longer a faceless terror, but that didn’t make the feeling go away.

He had beaten us home, personally. There was no way around it, Skygraves was there. What did that mean for Mouse and Doc? Were they still in there, safely locked away behind the completed cargo bay door while Skygraves and his men sieged the ship? Or were they…

I flinched when I felt a hand press on my shoulder. Aisling interrupted my grim thought, turning me to face her. “Hey. Don’t fall apart on me now. I don’t really know what you’re feeling when you get near that guy, but remember that he’s just an old man. Maybe he’s got some more nerds who don’t know how to hold a gun with him, at worst. Just a guy, okay? We got this. Do your thing and take a look in there before you freak out, yeah?”

I nodded slowly. She was right. There was no reason to panic yet. He was just a guy. A politically and cybernetically powerful guy who wanted me as an object. I just had to make sure that I didn’t accidentally activate his defensive mechanism again. I would be pretty useless if I had another seizure now, and I didn’t want to think about what would happen if he hit me with the EMP directly.

Aisling turned to watch our flank as I closed my eyes and took a shuddering breath. I could do this. He’s just a man. I had to keep telling myself that.

I took a peek into the intermediary room first, only pinging out as far as I needed to to reach the camera. Empty. He was waiting in the hangar itself. Thankfully, I didn’t need to risk tapping the security system in there. I hooked into the familiar network of Theseus itself, remotely possessing the ship just as I had yesterday. I went right to the external sensors, and let out a whimper at what I saw.

Three armed gunmen stood in a formation facing toward the hangar doors, away from Theseus. And in front of them, both on their knees with their hands behind their head, sat Mouse and Shaw. Alive, but helpless. They were leverage against us. Skygraves stood over them with a pistol in one hand, smartly dressed in a suit with just a little bulk beneath that betrayed a hidden layer of protective armor.

I wasn’t sure how he caught them off guard and captured them like this, but I was at least glad to see them alive. I couldn’t see their expressions from behind them, but I was sure that Shaw was being his usual irritating self while Mouse was probably seething with traumatized teenage angst.

But where was Doc? Had Skygraves found and recognized him? Had he dispatched him out of spite within the ship before using the others as bait? I bit my lip, stressful what-ifs building up in my head as I considered each possibility that came to mind. I imagined Doc’s corpse waiting for us at the back of the cargo bay.

“Talk to me, Meryll.” Aisling hissed. “I don’t like staying out in the open like this.”

“Hostage situation. Lined up in front of the ship. He has Mouse and Shaw. Skygraves is there with three more people.” I explained quickly “We can’t just walk in there, he’s got guns to their heads.”

“Implants fried?” Aisling asked, venom in her voice.

“Mouse wouldn’t be able to lift his arms if they were EMPed.” I started, making a futile attempt to zoom in and see around Mouse’s profile to try to see his emotional state. “No idea about Shaw. They’re both alive, though. I don’t see Doc…”

“Doc’s fine.” Aisling didn’t elaborate, though. I heard her messing with her gun, but I didn’t want to take my eyes off the scene. Skygraves paced impatiently, eyes locked on the doors. He was waiting for us. “The three others. Got anything on them?”

I shook my head “I can’t ping for augments. Not without activating the EMP.”

“You can see more than implants, Meryll. What do they look like?” I huffed and scanned over them, but they were all facing away from my point of view on Theseus’s exterior.

I shook my head, giving a frustrated shrug at how unhelpful I was being. “I don’t have an angle. Can’t see their faces. All men, I think? Body language… I-I’m not great at this. It’s hard to tell. They’re… they’re all pretty steady, I guess. He probably brought the best of them in there.” I shook my head. I was just guessing.

I briefly considered arming Theseus’s weapons. The guns were flexible enough to aim down in front of them at their position. But with Mouse there, I didn’t dare. Mounted batteries could never be accurate enough to ensure his safety when they were grouped so close together, and I wasn’t even sure that firing them inside the pressurized station wouldn’t expose the hangar to vacuum.

I felt her tablet activating next to me, Aisling checking her terminal for something. She tapped my shoulder and let out a steadying exhale. “Alright, we’re going in.”

I finally opened my eyes again and gave her a terrified look “What? That’s right where they want us.” I whined, but Aisling was already opening the first of two doors between us and them.

She reached behind me and pulled out the pistol she’d given me from my waistband, pushing it insistently into my hands, which slowly and clumsily resumed the position she’d shown me. “I’ve got a plan. Time to look like you know how to use that thing. Just point at whoever looks most dangerous at the moment.”

I shook my head. Too much. This was too much all at once. Maybe I could have done this confidently if this was the first close encounter with armed guards today, but my nerves were shot. “Captain… I-I’m scared.” I finally admitted in a quick stammer, feeling like I was on the verge of tears. I was starting to hyperventilate as she pulled me into the room with her, closing it up behind us and giving us a moment to collect ourselves in the enclosed space. “I’m really, really scared. I don’t want you or Mouse to die, I don’t want to be taken away by him, I don’t know where the others are, he’s got a weapon that could just… shut me off if he wanted to. I’m-”

She suddenly dropped both hands onto my shoulders, the side of her pistol pressing against me as she applied an anchoring pressure. “Breathe.” She commanded. And I did. I pulled in a deep breath, held it for a few moments, then exhaled, feeling tension seep out from my shoulders, feeling her hands slide off of me again as my muscles stopped holding everything tight. How could I relax at a time like this, though? I quickly felt the pressure return. “Joel and Ray messaged me. They’re on their way now. We’re gonna meet up with them. Right now, you and I, we are the distraction. You’re exactly what he wants, and when we go in there, all eyes are gonna be on you, and on me because I’m protecting you. Do you follow me? We’re setting things up for them. You just have to take up time and keep their eyes on you, no matter what. Got it? They will get the drop on them, and we’ll have to improvise at that point. But until then, that’s your one goal. Keep their eyes on you.”

Ray and Joel. They were up to something. And we needed all eyes on us for it to work. I nodded slowly as she repeated her instruction. “I… think I get it.” I muttered “I’m still scared.”

“Then be scared. This is scary.” She sighed, turning me to face the closed hangar door. “Bravery isn’t not being scared, it’s acting even when you’re scared, and I’ve seen you do just that. You’re brave, Meryll. Don’t fall apart and forget that just cause this is stressful, okay? We’re the wildcards, so we might have to do something real unusual and think on our feet out there. Let your instincts guide you. Doing drastic, dangerous shit in the thick of it is your whole thing, Meryll. You got this. I believe in you.”

I swallowed, adjusting my grip on the gun and making a stiff nod. Trust my instincts. Just trust that I’m going to be able to do the right thing in the moment. That would have to do. I approached the door at Aisling’s insistence. She believed in me. I would just have to trust that. This was it.

—

The door slid open with an accompanying chorus of clicking firearms. Four guns leveled toward me at once. I knew none of them would dare fire on me, but that didn’t make the intimidation any less real. I held my handgun forward into the crowd of armed scientists, my hands visibly shaking as I stared them down. Aisling was right behind me, aiming at them in kind with her own much steadier pistol and using me as cover.

“Ah. Meryll. How nice of you to join us.” Skygraves called out over the distance between us, radiating confidence with a disgusting, greasy smile on his face. I recalled the face of my boss from my false memories. The face of someone who thinks they know everything and hold all the power, and they’re used to being right.

I wasn’t sure what possessed me to reply to him, but my nerves finally broke at the sound of his voice. I shouted through a cracking voice on the verge of tears. “Fuck you!” And any further words I had were lost in my throat.

He looked surprised at my response, his eyebrows shooting up. Whatever he expected to hear, it wasn’t nervous cursing. “Well then…” he started.

“You’re negotiating with me, Skygraves!” Aisling called out from behind me, rescuing me from my awkward conversational fumbling.

“I seem to recall that you ended negotiations, Captain Barrowin.” Skygraves motioned toward Mouse and Shaw in front of him with his pistol. “But if you insist. Throw down your weapons and hand over Meryll, then I’ll let you and your crew go. I’ll even overlook any… unfortunate collateral damage that’s happened on your way here.” Skygraves offered, holding his arms out in an exaggerated shrug as he gave a slimy smile that I was used to seeing on Shaw. “You’re hardly in a position to refuse.”

“Mouse, are you okay?” I managed to pull myself together enough to speak, ignoring Skygraves’ unreasonable demands.

“Just shoot him.” Mouse growled loudly, furious gaze locked back at an angle up at Skygraves.

“I’m alright. They didn’t shoot us.” Shaw called out, sounding more nervous than I usually expected of him.

“Didn’t ask you.” I repositioned my hands on my pistol, starting to get some of my courage back. The shock of walking into the room was passed, and I was beginning to grow accustomed to the tension. Shaw rolled his eyes and gave a defeated shrug without moving his hands.

“I’m not dropping anything or handing anyone over. If you didn’t notice, we have you outgunned!” Aisling called and tapped on my shoulder to signal me. I nodded back, and closed my eyes, holding my pistol in their general direction. Loud mechanical clicks and whirs rang out from behind them, making several of the gunners turn their heads as Theseus’s cannons repositioned themselves downward, almost directly at the group.

Skygraves glanced to them as well, but held his pistol down toward Mouse’s head as he did so. “It’s a bluff, you idiots. They wouldn’t blow a hole in the station and kill themselves. Face it, Aisling. The only way out of here is to give me the core. There’s a replacement waiting for you if you comply.”

“Don’t you dare call me that!” I shouted, opening my eyes again. He’d called the bluff, but that was okay. We weren’t out of options yet. We just had to keep them occupied for a little longer. The other scientists were shaken, with starship cannons aimed directly at them as a group, but they took Skygraves’ word on it and repositioned themselves into formation against us again. “I’m not just a core. The last fucker that made that mistake is busy choking on his own blood right now.” I spat the words. They were real, visceral emotions, elevated by the tense atmosphere. Aisling’s advice was working. In the heat of the moment, I just knew what to do. What to say. At least when it came to blustering and getting their attention. I just had to keep letting myself shout what came to mind. “Call me that again, I fucking dare you!” I pushed my pistol forward, steadying my aim on him.

He scowled, his handgun still steadily aimed at Mouse. My words didn’t shake him, and he was right to think that I couldn’t possibly pull the trigger, even if he didn’t have one of my friends at gunpoint.

“I’m waiting, Barrowin.” He growled. He was just going to ignore me entirely if this kept up. It was in Aisling’s hands. “Weapon down! Or the boy dies!”

“You touch either of them and I take Meryll out.” Aisling declared, training her pistol on me. It probably didn’t help this bluff that I didn’t even flinch when she said it. I’d expected it, after all, and I was fine with it. I trusted her not to shoot me no matter what happened.

“Enough! You shoot her, you lose all leverage, and you and your whole crew dies! You can’t play these kinds of tricks on me! You will hand her over this very moment or else!” He was losing his temper. This was bad. Where were Joel and Ray?

That’s when I spotted it. A panel in the ceiling of the hangar, over the opposite side of Theseus began sliding to the side. There. They were right there. I’d have to ask them how they managed to get into such a position later. We just had to hold Skygraves’ crew a little longer, but if we stalled anymore with empty threats, he would kill Mouse.

“Meryll…” Aisling said quietly “I’m out of plays. You got this?” I nodded. It was time to do something crazy. I heard Aisling moving in a way that made Skygraves grow a triumphant smile. I heard the clack of metal falling to the ground “Okay. You win.” Aisling called out. “She’s yours. Let them go.”

I swallowed, assuming Aisling had disarmed herself. Skygraves motioned to the others, and the three began to take cautious steps as a squad toward me. It was on me now. I just needed one more credible threat. I relaxed my arms slightly, letting my muscles relax as I rose from the tense stance I’d taken, my arms dropping to my side as I took my practiced grip off of my pistol.

Then I rose it up and placed the barrel against my own head, causing everyone in the room, even Mouse and Shaw, to seize up, and a horrified grimace passed over Skygraves’ face.

“Fine.” I started, swallowing nervously. My hand shook, and I started to let the tears I’d been holding back fall. “Fine. I… I thought this crew meant something. That we were family. That you’d protect me through anything!” I tried to sound bitter, and as I started to cry real tears, I knew that I could fake it. For this to work, I needed him to think I no longer cared about Mouse or Aisling. That I felt betrayed by them and had become a rogue actor in this situation. “I… I’d rather die on my own terms than go with him. If you don’t care what happens to me, Aisling, I don’t care what happens to you.” I grit my teeth and shouted at Skygraves. “New deal! You let ME on Theseus! Alone! Or I shoot myself! I’ll end it right here!” I shouted hysterically.

This one finally caught Skygraves off guard. He didn’t buy that Aisling would shoot me, but shooting myself in an act of emotional desperation was territory he had no information for. He’d been talking with and getting to know Aisling all week, but he didn’t have more than a single cursory moment of direct interaction with me. He didn’t know if I was unstable and spiteful enough to do it. For all he knew, I’d been on the verge of suicide since I got here.

“You’re bluffing.” He called, but this time he sounded uncertain. “I saw how you walked in here, you don’t have the nerve-”

“I have a psychic damper.” I interrupted, tilting my head to show him the module protruding from the expansion bay at the back of my head. “You’re right, I can’t pull this trigger, I don’t… I don’t have the nerve. But I can launch a script that would. It’d be out of my hands. A computer running a program. If you want me to be a machine, I can die like one.” I spat the last sentence as spitefully as I could. “Let. Me. Out.”

I couldn’t do that. I’d had the hardware that I would need to control my body while under the influence of the psionic damper removed because I didn’t think I would ever need it, being able to control my body the natural way, unlike ordinary cores. But he didn’t need to know that.

I could see Skygraves measuring his options, glancing around between Aisling, Mouse, Shaw, and I. He was frozen in place, and his cronies were beginning to glance at him, silently asking for guidance he wasn’t prepared to give. He swallowed, and I felt like he was about to explode and take drastic action to try to stop me before I could launch that imaginary script.

I’d done my best not to watch my two largest friends descending from the distant ceiling on rappeling cables, lest my glances give away the scene happening right behind Skygraves’ blockade, but I lowered my gun from my head as soon as I saw them in position at the top of the cargo bay.

Skygraves gave an expression of surprised relief. I reached up and wiped my tears away on my sleeve and then lowered my head to give him the most wicked smile I could. Seeing the expression of bewildered realization that he’d been duped was worth giving the game away a moment earlier than I had to.

Before he could do anything about it, I watched Joel and Ray drop down on two of his men from above. Ray had her strange hooked sword held out in one hand, but she didn’t need it. The man beneath her crumpled under the mass of her huge frame as well as the cargo container strapped to her back, some important bone cracking beneath her weight and leaving him immobilized beneath her. She barely stumbled, her massive frame allowing her to remain on her feet despite the fall. Joel dropped down on top of his target as well, but he smashed the butt of his rifle into the man’s head, using the momentum of his drop to clobber the man into instant unconsciousness. He was still attached to his rappel line, and used it to catch himself at the same time as his attack.

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In a moment of rushing adrenaline, I leveled my gun on the third man, who was raising his gun toward me in a panic, but before I could bring myself to pull the trigger, Aisling stepped forward from behind me, drawing another of her handguns and firing off a volley of shots at the man. Neither of them had a chance to aim properly, though, and they both sprayed bullets toward each other in a hail of haphazard flying lead. I stumbled out of the crossfire, barely managing to stay balanced and on my feet. It was over in an instant. I watched as the man took a shot to the chest and stumbled back, losing his balance and falling to the floor.

I started to smile and looked to my side before I stared in shock at Aisling. A blotch of red grew slowly from beneath her jacket as well as from the hand that had been holding the pistol that now lay thrown to the ground. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. Some part of me had assumed, until that moment, that Aisling was invincible. Untouchable. A legend kept safe by the workings of destiny. But no, she was as human as anyone else, and as far as I could tell in the moment, she’d just taken a mortal wound for me.

I rushed to her side with a terrified squeak of her name, ready to examine the spot of red at her waist, and she stumbled into me. “Ow.” She rasped, taking in a seething breath.

As I held Aisling steady, I turned to see that Mouse and Shaw had tumbled away from Skygraves, the former holding his metal arm up to shield himself, the latter controlling his strange shaped metal into a small barrier floating in the air between his vitals and the barrel of the last armed enemy, Skygraves himself. Ray was already stepping toward him with her sword raised, while Joel tried to adjust his aim at him while he tried to take control of his rappel line.

Skygraves was not a fighter. The moment that things had fallen out of his favor, it was clear that he had begun to shake and panic. But he still had his biggest trump card, and he was prepared well enough to play it.

The aura of dread I thought that I’d almost become accustomed to in the heat of the encounter suddenly flared and made Ray, Mouse, Shaw, and I all flinched before the room filled with electricity. The sharp sound of a powerful electric shock discharging exploded out from the man.

Ray collapsed first, her attack disarmed as she clutched her abdomen in agonizing pain, a muted roar escaping her lips as she awkwardly fell to the floor.

Mouse flinched, and I watched his arms both drop to his sides, limp. A horrified expression I hadn’t expected the teenager to be capable of washed over him as he stumbled back onto the ground, his balance totally thrown off by his limp appendages.

Shaw’s metal shard immediately dropped straight down, and he reached up to clutch his head with an uncharacteristic whimper that I might have actually been sympathetic for if I didn’t know I was about to be in much worse shape.

As the wave of electromagnetism approached, I watched Skygraves whip his arm around and he shouted, firing off several rounds toward Joel. The tough guy of the crew let out a cry as one bullet penetrated his leg. He flinched, accidentally wrapping his gun in the cable before he dropped down, accidentally disarming himself with his own gear.

Then I felt it. It’s difficult to put into words exactly how it felt as the EMP hit my four major systems at once. The damper, my computer bay, and the terminal on my arm were uncomfortable to suddenly feel shut off, as if all of my clothes had suddenly been torn away from me all at once. But over the past month and a half, my neural implant had become a part of my mind. As the data stream crashed and I felt myself suddenly cut off from an entire dimension of my world, it felt like I had just had my very soul violently ripped in half.

I didn’t know that anyone could experience the kind of pain that coursed through me when that EMP hit me. It didn’t even register as something that was physically happening to me. My senses couldn’t process any of it. I didn’t have the cognizance to recognize what I was doing at the time, but I let out an unholy bloodcurdling scream before I fell to the floor and started seizing, clutching at my head as if to try to reach for the invisible beast that had latched onto half of my being and ripping it from me like a wolf tearing out the throat of its prey. At the moment, I was more a wounded beast than a person.

Aisling dropped to the floor next to me, unable to support herself without me after succumbing to her wounds. She was fumbling clumsily at her chest for the next pistol, grunting in muted frustration, but her primary hand was a bloody mess that wasn’t responding to her properly. She was losing blood fast.

I couldn’t believe that had just happened. We were winning. We had taken everyone out except him, but that implant had just disabled everyone who was left in one fell swoop. He aimed his pistol at each of us, all temporarily helpless as he panted and swallowed, settling his eyes on me. Potent as they are, the immediate effect of EMPs don’t last long. He didn’t have time to walk around and execute everyone, and his goal was right in front of him, helpless. I could barely see as I reeled from the attack, but I locked eyes with him, terror washing over me as I realized that I had lost.

Skygraves was going to claim me and perform unspeakable experiments, and I would never be treated as a person ever again. I would never feel that wonderful freedom of soaring through the stars. I would never be allowed a crew of flawed but wonderful people backing me up with everything they had. The rest of my life would be spent locked onto an operating table with my mind and body torn open under observation. It was over.

That is, until he froze at the sound of a safety turning with a theatrical click behind him. “Don’t. Fucking. Move.” Came the seething voice of Doc from the cargo bay door, rapidly approaching Skygraves.

His breath hitched and confusion washed over Skygraves once more as he raised his hands up in the air. He had never gotten the intel about Doc because we’d been careful not to report him as part of the crew our entire time aboard the Venus colony. He hadn’t expected one more unaugmented person. I didn’t know where Doc had been hiding all this time, but I was so happy to see him.

He approached the other doctor in a rush and yanked the pistol out of his hand, throwing it to the side across the hangar before making some distance between them again. “Turn around.” He instructed.

I wish I’d been able to see the look on Skygraves’ face when he turned and saw Doc. “Cornelius?” He muttered in the tone one would use to address a long-dead ghost.

“William.” Doc nodded, still holding the pistol calmly as he aimed it right at his chest. “Fancy meeting you here.”

“You signed on with pirates!?” Skygraves asked with indignant bewilderment “You signed on with THESE pirates!?”

Doc shrugged his shoulders. “Well, you see, someone went through all the trouble of making me a criminal. It seemed prudent to embrace the role.”

The pain was beginning to numb already. Everything felt strange and new. It had been so long since I’d done anything without the data stream moving through my thoughts. The neural implant wasn’t fried though. I was so relieved when I started to feel the data of diagnostic examination course through my head. My electronics were just as confused to be rebooting as I was to having them turned off in the first place. It didn’t make what had happened to me any less painful, and it was going to take some time before it was ready to work properly again. But it would work again. I would work again.

I experimentally pushed my arm down against the ground, trying to push myself up. My eyes weren’t working properly, and movement made me dizzy, so I got as far as sitting before I groaned and closed my eyes to watch the diagnostics. Neural link, okay. I wouldn’t be able to move at all if it wasn’t. System bay 1, fatal error. That was my general system. I’d need a new board. System bay 2, fatal error. The sims were fried. Disappointing, but not critical. Drive 1, okay. I gave a grim smile; the video game survived somehow. Port 1, okay. Port 2, okay. Good, replacing those would probably mean surgery. Interface 1, fatal error. That was my arm terminal. No big loss, but annoying. Expansion 1, okay. Much as I feared the psychic damper, I knew that it was an expensive module that would be difficult to replace, and I was glad to see it relatively unharmed.

“I’m not augmented. Set that thing off again and I blow your brains out.” Doc warned. I wasn’t sure if it could be set off in that destructive of a fashion again without being replaced. EMPs weren’t known for stability, and he had definitely pushed it to its limits. Still, I was happy to hear Doc take the precaution.

“You’re not a killer, Cory.” Skygraves experimentally started to lower his hands, testing Doc’s resolve.

Doc made an amused huff, gripping the pistol in both hands as he spoke, making Skygraves raise his hands up again. “I don’t think you ever really knew me, Bill.”

Behind them, Ray and Shaw started to pull themselves up off the floor. While Ray’s implant was critical to her health, I guess she was able to power through it, because she watched the scene playing out in front of her for only a moment before she jumped into action. She haphazardly threw the cargo container, doubtless loaded to the brim with stolen rations, off of her back and pushed it into the cargo bay door.

Shaw pocketed his lump of mysterious metal as he got to his feet, then helped Mouse to his feet, who boarded the ship with that unfamiliar expression of frightened helplessness still plastered on his face, moving clumsily with both of his arms still limp.

“It’s good to see you, Skygraves. But I was just leaving.” Doc motioned for him to move as he circled around him so that he could stand next to Aisling and I. “You two okay?”

“Peachy.” Aisling grunted “Just a flesh wound.”

“It’s always just a flesh wound, isn’t it? I’m going to have to dig metal out of you again.” Doc rolled his eyes, then returned his gaze to Skygraves with a fresh glare.

“Cornelius, don’t do this.” Skygraves begged, an uncharacteristic helplessness to his voice that I couldn’t help but enjoy. “She could have the answer. She must have the answer in her brain! She’s the bridge between man and machine! She could hold the answer to digitizing the human consciousness! Digital immortality! Think of what this could mean for science if we could just examine her here. Even beyond my own goals, she could revolutionize every machine industry!” He sputtered nonsense, trying to get Doc to turn on us with his twisted ideology. “I thought we shared a scientific curiosity.”

“Maybe we did.” Doc admitted “You made me believe in something like that, once. You took that from me too. So… thanks for that, at least. I got a lot more real things to believe in these days.” He gave a cautious glance back toward Aisling.

Shaw was helping Joel up, limping on his injured leg toward the door as Ray approached us. She didn’t look so good. She was panting loudly and holding one claw at her abdomen, no doubt feeling at the now-inert implant in her gut. I didn’t want to imagine what this meant for her medication or if it could be fixed with the limited facilities we had on board.

“Bastard.” She spat at Skygraves, who couldn’t help but take a step back at her approach, but she instead approached Aisling and I. “That’s a nasty wound, captain.” She groaned “Want me to carry you?”

“Not really, but I don’t think I have a choice.” Aisling actually let out a weak laugh, then winced at the effort “Ow.”

“Meryll too?” Ray asked.

I opened my mouth to speak, but that felt foreign too. I think I managed to croak out “Feels wrong,” before I fell silent, the words that I had managed already feeling terrible and alien.

“Hmm…” Ray nodded. I felt like she understood what I was going through somehow. She reached down with one massive claw, and I felt myself lifting, even though my vision blurred and I couldn’t keep up. I had to close my eyes again.

The diagnostics appeared to be over, but now it was running through a firmware update. Computers always did this shit at the worst time. I heard Aisling grunting as she was picked up alongside me, groaning pitifully with each of Ray’s steps.

Aisling grunted out in pained breaths between Ray’s steps. “Gonna be ready to fly this thing, Meryll? Don’t think the good doctor can hold whatever backup Skygraves had prepped at bay forever.”

I let out a quiet groan, trying to make sense of my entire existence as flesh again. I hadn’t realized how much of my mind was intertwined with my cybernetics until then. It was like everything I did had become part of the machine in my head. I had to remember how to parse basic mind-body interaction without it again. “Maybe.” I managed. “Heart. In my heart.”

“Heart?” Aisling mumbled.

“Her place in the ship.” Ray added. I nodded in agreement. “She needs to be able to commune with it.” I felt like maybe Ray understood what I did better than I thought she did. She viewed it through an almost mystical lens, but she got the point of it all. She knew that the ship was a part of me and I was a part of it. I nodded again, not daring to open my eyes.

I felt the slight change of environment as Ray passed me through the makeshift cargo bay door.

Doc and Skygraves continued their gunpoint conversation out of earshot, Skygraves becoming increasingly exasperated, futilely trying to coax Doc with poisonous words and empty promises.

But we were all already piling into the ship. The moment the door was shut and sealed, there would be no amount of small arms fire that could break through again. At least not before we would be able to take off.

As the firmware update finished, the psychic network began to expand around me. The world slowly started making sense to me again. I opened my eyes and the dizziness was still there, my head hurt like hell, and I felt completely exhausted, but I was rebooting. Vision started to clarify, and my body started to feel like me again, even if it was numb and stiff, like when a limb had fallen asleep, but for my entire body.

I watched as Doc approached the door and stepped inside. Skygraves was actually following him, trying to get close for some reason, trying to peek through the door. We made eye contact, and he locked on, but he didn’t dare move past the man with the gun.

“You can’t do this!” Skygraves shouted. “If you leave this place with her now, it will be a loss for humanity! And you’re standing here ready to shoot me because I want people to live! You’re standing in the way of immortality!”

“William, you really never did know me, did you?” Doc repeated, finally holding the gun up and away from him. “First…” he gestured with his other hand to the gun pointing up into the air and pulled the trigger, an audible click ringing through the room. He turned back to Skygraves and smiled wide. “Do no harm.”

Skygraves stared, bewildered at the demonstration before I heard him curse loudly and reach for something on his person, but it was too late. Ray slammed the door shut on him, and twisted the crank mechanism to secure the door into place, locking the cargo bay shut. Weak knocking noises came trough as Skygraves slammed himself against it.

“The fuck were you gonna do if he called that bluff, you showoff?” Joel groaned, sitting up against the container that Ray had brought in, nursing the hole in his shin.

Doc rolled his eyes “I’m just messing with him. It’s loaded, I just never chambered it. I won’t tell him if you won’t.”

“You’d rather just fuck with him than kill the guy that ruined your life?”

Doc stared down at Joel, an unamused look on his face “I can’t say I’m not a killer anymore. You know that. But I can say I’m not an enthusiastic killer. And personally, I enjoy him having to live with this much more than I would his death. Besides…” Doc put the gun away somewhere inside of his shirt “He ruined my last life. I think this one’s going pretty well.”

Aisling gave an amused smile despite her obviously dwindling physical state. “He keeps banging on the door like that, he’s gonna get spaced, anyway.” She mused, then turned to Shaw. “You better have our launch codes.”

“I’m upgrading your favor.” Shaw growled, reaching into his shirt and feeling around for something. “I did not sign up to have my brain exploded today.”

“Could leave you here, if you want.” Aisling motioned weakly toward the door.

Shaw paused for a moment, then grumbled “Here’s your damn codes.” He held a small fob out toward Aisling.

Aisling lifted a hand, but it dropped limp as she let out a groan. “Doc… M’not okay.” She lurched forward in Ray’s arm, exhaling as she passed out.

“Aisling!” I don’t really know what I was supposed to do for her, but I tried to reach out for Aisling. She kept her promise and got me to this ship in more or less one piece, and true to her word, I didn’t have to shoot anybody. I couldn’t lose her now. I wasn’t in much better shape, though, panting as I quickly ran out of energy and went limp myself, still conscious, but too exhausted to carry myself out of Ray’s grip.

Doc quickly stepped forward to Aisling, immediately putting a hand to her neck and grimacing, then running a hand down to the wound at her hip. “Infirmary. Aisling first.” He tapped Ray, coaxing her forward. I had to close my eyes again when she started moving. “I need to see every single one of you in the infirmary, but the captain needs a blood transfusion. She’s first.”

“Wait, need to launch.” I muttered. Ray kept moving, but Doc let out an irritated grunt.

“Yeah.” He begrudgingly agreed. “Shaw, can I trust you to input that code?”

“Oh, no, of course not, why would I want us to leave? I’d rather stay here with the guy who just gave me a reason to have another wonderful round of brain surgery all over again!” Shaw let loose the least subtle deluge of sarcasm I’d heard from him yet before he yelled “Yes, I’ll open the fucking hangar!” Part of me was enjoying the fact that Shaw had clearly lost his nerve, and that he’d been just as horribly disfigured by Skygraves as the rest of us cyborgs had been. It was about time I got to see him truly thrown off balance. I begrudgingly had to admit that he came through for us, though.

The feeling of going up stairs over someone’s shoulder while my physical senses were still trying to reset themselves was a sickening experience. I thought I was going to throw up. But it was over in just a moment as we reached the mid-level of the ship. I heard the sound of footsteps hurrying past us, no doubt Shaw rushing to the helm.

As we stepped through to the heart of the ship, I swear I felt it calling to me. The core module was right there. Sweet relief from the hellish overstimulation around me. I wasn’t even sure if I could do as much as even just launch script I’d prepared without the void. “Ray. Dump me in the core module. Now.” I grumbled. “Need to launch.”

Doc let out a heaving sigh as I heard what must have been Aisling thumping down on the examination bed. “Do it. She’s coming right back out so I can look at her implants, but if she needs it, she needs it.”

“Got it.” Ray shuffled along and climbed up once more. I felt my body turned over and placed feet first into the familiar thick lubricant sludge, carefully settling me on the bottom before Ray let go of me, barely able to stand thanks to the weightlessness the liquid made me feel. I opened my eyes and looked up at Ray, squinting as I tried very hard not to move my vision. She looked as sick as I felt, holding a hand against her abdomen as she backed up.

I was still wearing my shirt. If it had been a pullover, I’d have done my best to fling it off, but I didn’t have the energy or coordination to fiddle with all the buttons right now. “Close it.” I mumbled, shutting my eyes again and falling backward. I felt the lubricant against my back, soaking through the cloth as I floated at the top of the sitting pool of liquid. Just feeling my senses of gravity and temperature disappear into the liquid was already a huge relief, even with the unfamiliar addition of clothes to the sensation. It wasn’t enough. I needed the void. It only took another moment before I heard metal begin to close around me. I felt myself rise ever so slightly as the liquid rose up around me. It felt all too natural to me by now as the liquid flowed into my lungs, my body lurching involuntarily before it accepted the lubricant in place of the air it was naturally meant to control.

I opened my eyes and breathed a sigh of relief as I saw nothing at all. Comfortable nothingness, at last. It took a monumental effort not to descend into torpor immediately. I had one single responsibility before that. I closed my eyes and descended into the data stream. It was still blurry. Disorganized. I would have to acclimate to it again. Thankfully, I could still feel Theseus, even if it was just in abstract for the moment. It made sense; the ship was grafted directly to my neurology. While the implant was a machine, Theseus was a part of me.

I was really glad that I had prepped this ahead of time. The script I launched next would take care of everything. I was absolutely in no shape to attempt communication, or even observation of the ship. The ship was magnetized to the floor until the access codes were in, so if I was trying to launch too early, it wouldn’t do a whole lot.

I also wondered if Skygraves had been quick enough to get out of the hangar before Shaw’s access code depressurized the room. I hoped he hadn’t been.

But that was all there was to do. I thanked my past self for preparing this process ahead of time. I felt my mind going through the motions automatically, manipulating systems that I couldn’t currently interpret consciously.

I opened my eyes and stared blankly into the nothingness. I felt my engines warming up. It was… comforting. Like stretching a muscle that had gone stiff from disuse. I think I slipped into torpor right then and there, but I remember the feeling of Theseus gliding along. The guidance rail. Whatever Shaw had done, he came through.

A relieved smile creeped across my face as I felt that strange, wonderful feeling of cosmic dust sliding across my wings. I didn’t need to see it to know I was free.