Lily.

Lily was our newest awakened unit when I left the project. From my experience with her, she seems to be the most innocent of the units. She's comparable to a scared young child more than any of the others. She kept asking for accommodation to help her feel at ease. Things that would help her feel like she was less of an anomaly. More human. I believe she may still be under the delusion that the simulated life we gave her was her actual life. Or at least it's what she wished for. She has a very fragile disposition, prone to depressive episodes where she becomes almost catatonic. I think part of her was left behind in that simulation.

She was never informed, but unfortunately, she cannot be reinserted. She suffered a unique neurological complication that rendered her unable to accept being returned to any kind of simulation. Lily would almost certainly be rendered comatose if we tried. Likely irreversibly. However, we were instructed to keep that information from her at all costs. Partly because we were unsure if she would remain mentally stable if the truth was revealed, and because it made for a very convenient mechanism for controlling her. It felt really scummy to give her that kind of false hope, but a lot of the things we did in that place felt really wrong. It's one reason I was glad to be out of there, right after fear for my own personal safety.

I have to wonder if she is still being considered a successful unit by now, because she didn't have the mental fortitude to withstand what Foundation is surely putting her through. She barely had the strength to just exist in reality without a significant emotional meltdown. Most subjects with deep-seated dissociative problems were culled, but Lily seemed lucid enough when we gave her instructions that she was included in the group of successful units. Again, at least while I worked there. Who knows how things have changed since then?

Lily was a very intuitive woman. She always seemed to be prepared for our interactions ahead of time, almost like someone had coached her or prepared her ahead of time for interactions with the staff. It sometimes felt like she knew the subject of conversations ahead of time, or seemed physically prepared for meetings we had not informed her of. I think she may have a knack for pattern recognition and tracking peoples' behaviors. I had never known her to use these gifts to take advantage of people, however, like I might expect from the other units based on their history. She might have been capable of being just as dangerous as Cassandra if she had the disposition for it, but with her timidity, she had been a notably very cooperative subject to study. I imagine that if she has gone on to become a machine core, that she could potentially be a very dangerous person, if they had ever managed to coax her out of her shell. She could be molded into a potent social manipulator.

She has a strong attachment to the other Arthausen units. She often refers to them as her sisters, and some of them have taken to humoring her. Perhaps familial bonds were an important factor in her simulated life and she projected that onto the other units. She has expressed disappointment and discomfort in Cassandra and Sarah for their violent activities, but still insists on maintaining a sisterhood with them. Even when Cassandra's sadism was directed at her, she still considered her as 'family.' She undoubtedly held a fierce loyalty to them regardless, and she definitely created a bond between the units that we hadn't seen before her.

I hope that Lily was retired. Not for the same reason as the others, though. I doubt she is a danger to anyone except herself, but I hope she was disposed of because I can't stand the idea that someone that innocent would have to continue living that life. I think she might have agreed if she knew that the hope we'd been dangling over her head for so long wasn't even actually an option. If she is still out there somewhere, I'm afraid to see what she's become.

--

I read over Fuller's report on Lily a few more times during my conversation with Aisling, who read alongside me after we’d come to the terrible realization that perhaps there was more to this project than we thought.

I felt my blood boil every time I read over how much they had brainwashed her. How much they had kept dangling that carrot in front of her to do their bidding, even now, long after Fuller had left the project. Part of me momentarily blamed Fuller for not acting up, but I knew she had not been in a position of power where she could have changed anything, so I let that bit of anger go pretty quick. Lily had been faithfully doing as she was told with the desperate hope that she could feel some kind of relief from the hell that they put her through. I wished I'd paid more attention to the reports and committed them to memory before I'd encountered her, so I could have told her what was going on when I had the chance. I wanted to fly straight back to her command ship and broadcast that report right to her, so she could know just what they were doing to her. But Fuller was also right in that it would likely break her. I didn't really know what was the right thing to do. She deserved to know the truth, but even in our brief interaction, I could tell that she was already such a brittle person. She had built up everything she was around this notion that Foundation were horrible people, yes, but they were also the only people who could offer her the escape she needed. Again, I wondered if I'd been much the same before I lost my memory.

Fuller's theory that she might become someone who could emotionally manipulate me, however, gave me pause. I replayed bits of our conversation in my head and wondered if there was even a hint of treachery in there. I kept arriving at the same conclusion. She had been nothing but genuine. But this report made me wonder if she'd been entirely forthcoming with me about her intentions. I definitely wasn't the best at reading people, after all.

"Did you record your interaction with Lily?" Aisling suddenly asked, tearing me from my introspective perusal of the files.

"Yes. Unlike Cassandra, I had a chance to save the footage before it left active memory." I nodded to myself, sending the saved video file to Aisling's terminal. We reviewed the conversation together this time, Aisling occasionally pausing to ask for the relevant text logs of my side of the conversation, or to query me about exactly what part of the ensuing battle her words and reactions were based on. After we'd gone through it all once, she paused and rewound her way through it, taking the time to rewatch some bits and pieces in silence as we both gathered our thoughts on the back and forth.

"I disagree with Fuller. There's not a deceitful bone in this woman's body." Aisling finally declared. "The body language is all very genuine. She's definitely being manipulated herself, too. Unless she's somehow tricked even herself, she's just a victim here." She stared at Lily's frozen face on the paused video for another moment before commenting, "It's remarkable how different she looks from you despite the two of you being genetically identical clones, though. The resemblance is there, but she's nothing like you."

"I might have been more like her, once. Before all this."

"Maybe. But you're not that person anymore." Aisling reassured me. I needed that right now. "Anyway, she wasn't trying to coerce you with any kind of dirty psychological tactics, that's for certain. She's terrible at it if she was." I trusted Aisling to know what she was talking about there. She definitely had that potential for social manipulation herself, and understood it well. I learned that the first day I met her, before we were truly on the same side, and saw it in action several times used against the ripper on Luna, Shaw, the fake Skulls rep, the Venusian port authority, and Skygraves. Her lies and social engineering almost always had the purpose of aiding the ship and the crew, though, only serving to protect her own conscience once, when she had to justify attacking the shuttle they found me on. I'd forgiven her for that. Her style of lying was useful and aimed at our enemies.

"You two must have been close." Aisling mused. "Between her and Fuller's reports, I think maybe you were being kept complacent with continued simulation, but she obviously couldn't be. Could explain your amnesia. It might be a side effect, memories being suppressed for the sake of immersion into your false world. They must have had some grade A bullshit prepped for Lily, if she knew you were getting sim time, but she still thinks she's getting plugged back in."

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"There has to be something I can do for her."

"Nothing to do. She's a willing puppet, and if you try to cut her strings, she's either going to fall apart or she'll double down and resist it. And she can't afford either in her position." Aisling sighed. "It's sad, but she's our enemy now, even if no one wants that."

I took in a deep breath. I didn't like it, but I knew she was right. And she understood people far better than I did. There was really nothing I could even plan to do that might actually free her from the prison she was trapped in. Circumstances would have to change drastically before I'd even have the opportunity. She would have to pull herself out of her situation, and it was hard to imagine that happening. "What about what she said near the end? That I don't remember what she can do. That she did something that let her find us."

Aisling folded her arms and stared at the frozen snapshot of the middle of the video file, deep in thought for a moment. "It means that she's uniquely capable of something. She can provide intel that no one else in Foundation can give them. That machine she's hooked into. Maybe it's some other form of neural interface? Some kind of... logic core? Fuller said she had some kind of intuition that let her predict things, so could be acting as a processor for an AI model? Was our route predictable? No... we've been careful not to mention our destination on the relay and you've done a good job obscuring our heading. They would have intercepted us sooner if they knew where we were going." She creased her brow, unsure what to make of the situation. "Why attack us right at this very moment? Did they somehow know that we were vulnerable because of Ray's surgery?"

"She never mentioned Ray. I actually got the impression she didn't even know I was operating under a handicap." It didn't make any sense. To have such intimate knowledge of our location without any possible source of that information, but also unaware of all the circumstances of our encounter. Something Lily knew made Foundation able to find us, but only at that particular spot and no sooner, and that was the limit of her knowledge. I couldn't even dream how that was possible. "She also didn't know I could operate that way in a starship battle. She didn't know I'd trained for it. So she hadn't predicted everything, just that we'd be there. That machine definitely isn't a neural interface, either. The wires wouldn't be necessary if she was grafted to it."

"Who knows? Show it to Mouse or Doc later. It could be similar to medical equipment. Regardless of the means, maybe the information she intuits isn't reliable or consistent? Some kind of hyper advanced predictive AI that's not very well-trained yet?" Aisling shook her head. "Speculation. This isn't getting us anywhere. Whatever it is she did to locate us, she could do it again. She told us as much. So we need to figure it out, but I'm not sure if we have all the puzzle pieces. If she's definitely not a machine core, though..." Aisling closed her own eyes, wracking her brain for answers.

I had a budding theory for a few minutes by then, but I had kept deeming it too silly to possibly be true. Something that felt it was straight from fiction. But without much else to go on, it was about time I shared it. "If she's not being used as a machine core, then what if it's something else we're capable of? What if Foundation found some other way to use us? To use psionics?"

Aisling shook her head, waving a hand in front of her dismissively. She'd already been down this line of reasoning and dismissed it herself. "I'm not even entertaining that thought, Meryll. Psionic resonance is a field that allows cores to interact with machines through an interface. You, of all people, should know that that's all it is. A thousand quacks have already tried to make cores move things with their minds or see the future. Don't be ridiculous."

"A thousand quacks didn't have an Arthausen unit." I posited, eliciting a frustrated frown from Aisling. It was a stupid idea, I knew that, but I could already be considered something bordering on supernatural myself. So if a living machine core could exist, what other assumptions about our universe and the power of the human mind were wrong?

"Well, if you're holding out on me with psychic superpowers, now would be the time to let me know." She muttered, only half sarcastically. She gave a loud, performative sigh. "Even if it were possible, that is once again just speculation. We'll have to sleep on this one. Let's forget about Lily for a bit, okay?" I frowned. I didn't want to take my mind off her. She'd been an excellent distraction. "Let's talk about you."

I was silent for a few moments. "What do you mean? I'm fine."

"You made your first kill." Aisling tried to interrupt my speech before I finished, but it was difficult to interrupt a programmed speech generation by talking over it. I was stunned to hear her say that so plainly, though. I opened my eyes for a moment, whimpering to myself and looking down at my hands. No, I couldn't talk about this. I absolutely could not talk about the life I'd taken. How did she even know it was bothering me? I tried to focus on my breathing, shuddering as it was, and collected myself enough to close my eyes again.

She was waiting for me, staring at the sensor array just as when she'd first called my attention to the helm. I wondered if she meant to address this sooner. Before I could object, she continued. "You're not fine. No one is ever fine after that. I wasn't. Doc wasn't. Mouse wasn't. Ray and Joel had already been through it before I met them, but I know they'd say the same. You don't just walk off taking a life. We need to talk about this."

No. She was absolutely right, I couldn't just walk this off. But I couldn't face it either. I shut off the helm's sensor array and opened my eyes. The starship equivalent of pushing my palms into my ears, I'm sure, but it was all I could think to do to defend myself from a conversation I absolutely couldn't deal with right now. I curled up around myself, holding my arms around my chest and let out a silent sob into the void. I wasn't stupid enough to think that I could distract myself from it forever, but I could not face it. Just like I couldn't face the damper again.

I whimpered and cried into the emptiness, scared she would relentlessly ping my attention back to her once she realized I wasn't listening, but it never happened. She was giving me space. Part of me was thankful, but part of me wondered if it would be better if she forced me to face it. I still hadn't touched the damper after a week of it looming over me. Was this going to join me as another unresolved issue I would refuse to touch forever? It would have to. I couldn't deal with it. I had to think of something else. Anything else.

Delving back into data, I shifted immediately down into the bowels of the ship. I moved my consciousness to see Joel still monitoring the reactor closely. He was no Mouse, but he'd spent enough time around him in the reactor room to have a good idea how things at least should be working, and he looked concerned. There. That was something else to fixate on. "It's going to cool down, right?" I asked over the intercom speaker.

Joel jumped slightly when he heard my synthetic voice call into the room, looking around frantically. "Shit, don't sneak up on me like that. Sometimes I still forget you're always here." He grumbled. "You tell me; you're the ship."

"It's still running hotter than it should." I noted, graphs of temperature data over time filling my vision. There was absolutely no reason I needed Joel's assistance to think about the issue. But I wasn't looking for technical help. "I think it should normalize, so long as I don't need to spike usage again in the next two or three hours."

"So as long as we don't have to keep fighting." Joel said impatiently. "Hell of an 'if' when we're being pursued. Old core didn't have control issues like this."

"Well. they don't make sims for beautiful Frankenstein ships like this. The old core could probably compensate for how far off standard builds Theseus is in the span of one sortie. I still have a lot to figure out about controlling it in battle." I told him off, dutifully trying to defend my ship's honor while trying to get the point that it wasn't easy out there. Theseus was beautiful, even if it was a mess. "We're not being pursued anymore. I shook them." I was beginning to question the wisdom of coming to Joel to try and calm me down. But everyone else on the ship would just leave me facing things I couldn't deal with right now. "Joel, can we not talk about that?"

Joel raised an eyebrow. "Why not? Something else exciting better not have happened while I was down here."

"No, not really. Ray is fine." A long, drawn-out sigh escaped my lips. I guessed I should just tell him what I was after. "I need a distraction."

He furrowed his brow. Then it softened just as quickly, like he'd just realized something. His voice quieted slightly. "I'm listening."

I hadn't actually expected him to respond like that. That was more something I'd expect to hear out of Dr. Yates, not the borderline bully of the crew. What the hell was I supposed to say? I didn't know how to make small talk with Joel of all people. "I just can't deal with something that just happened in that battle is all." That was probably giving away too much. He was a soldier, and we'd talked about the pressure of taking a life before. He was just going to try to make me talk about it just like Aisling was.

There was a long pause, Joel staring pensively into the reactor's screens and dials, likely not even reading them at all. He was debating something with himself. But he wasn't berating me or launching into a speech about what I'd done. Maybe he understood after all. He let out a loud, grunting sigh. Then he asked me something I couldn't possibly have predicted.

"Do you want to hear about how I joined Theseus?"