“… Failure… Weakest of all… Won’t remember… Test subject… Reinstall… Fragile… Kill her…”

I slowly opened my eyes. Everything ached. I stared directly up at the all-too familiar sight of the ceiling of my heart. The core module room. I’d been ejected from the core module at some point.

I could have sworn that I’d just heard someone speaking, but it seemed distant. Nonsensical. The words disappeared like a dream. I blinked several times and shook it off. I had more important things to worry about right now. The gambit. I remembered Shaw’s insane plan and my part in it. I remembered watching at least a dozen soldiers die within my own shell.

The last thought plagued me. Their deaths were slow. Probably painful. I could have saved them, but in so doing, I would have doomed myself. Was that right? I shook it off and tried to put the thought behind me. This was self-defense. I couldn’t get hung up on the morality of defending my own survival. I knew that I would surely have to do worse things in the coming storm of Foundation reprisal. It didn’t make me happy, but I had to remember that they were the ones oppressing me.

My head hurt. And not just from the implications of the lives I’d played a hand in taking. I hadn’t accounted for the fact that it could be far more stressful to endure the psionic damper if I was producing and launching code at a breakneck pace while it was active. So much for it being a time dilation superpower if it was this much of a strain on my mind. Still, I survived it.

“Doc?” I called out, finding my voice weak. My body didn’t feel much better, my head pounding and my limbs numb. It felt like I was missing a part of myself. My eyes went wide as I suddenly realized what it was. It was impossible to explain, but there was something missing. Something of Theseus missing.

I heard the shift of movement nearby “Ah, Meryll, you’re awake.” Doc sounded relieved, stepping next to the bed so I could see him “Frankly, I wasn’t sure if you would wake up again after that. For all I knew, you were going to go braindead and end up like any other core. Or worse.”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence.” I muttered nervously. I wanted to get up, but I still felt dizzy. The data stream felt distant, but it was there. At least I hadn’t destroyed my brain in all of this. Something devastating had happened to Theseus, but I couldn’t get my wits together well enough to grasp the data stream.

He held up a familiar metal module for me to see “Your psychic damper. I’m going to hold onto this for a little while, okay?”

“Fuck that thing. Saved our asses, but fuck. I thought it was gonna delete me, Doc. The real me.” I shook my head the best I could and asked “What happened? Please tell me we’re safe.”

He creased his brow and asked “It saved us? What do you mean?”

I shook my head again “A ship core, it operates like a computer. A real powerful computer. I couldn’t keep up. Opening that airlock on their ship would have been impossible if I didn’t get on its level.”

Doc let out a sigh “Meryll, Mouse could have made other shots, we could have improvised, you didn’t have to-“

“But I did.” I interrupted “They would have found Mouse if he would have had to reload. And no one died, right? No one we care about anyway. So I did the right thing.”

He looked distraught “Okay… yeah, you did the right thing. Fucking hell, Meryll, you can’t do that again though, we almost lost you. You can’t use this thing as a performance enhancer!”

“I had to though. I hated it so much, but I had to. It was only one second, but I couldn’t have beaten that other ship core without it.” I tried to sit up, holding a hand to my head as though something might spill out “Holy shit. Head feels light. Theseus… something happened to the ship, didn’t it? I can feel it.”

“Well I did remove a heavy cybernetic expansion.” Doc mumbled, but his voice became strict again “I don’t know if you just gave yourself brain damage or not Meryll, lay back down.” I rolled my eyes and did so, feeling the metal of the empty expansion bay at the back of my head clacking against the pillow. I didn’t think I’d be able to stand up anyway, frankly. “Theseus is… well, we’re safe, at least. I’m actually kind of glad you passed out when you did. There was a cascade of explosions in their ship and… well, thankfully since we isolated the cargo bay, it took the brunt of the damage.”

“Fuck.” I said quietly, closing my eyes and running diagnostics. It was hard to focus. I couldn’t see my cargo bay at all, the sensors had been damaged. I couldn’t FEEL the cargo bay anymore. It thankfully didn’t contain any major part of my system, but it still felt like a piece of myself was missing, and I shivered at the thought that this was Theseus’s equivalent to a flesh wound. I hated it. I couldn’t imagine what it would feel like to have lost a vital system.

I grabbed my external sensors and a part of my vision where the cargo bay had been was missing, the sensors near it having been stripped away. It turned out that blowing up a ship you were attached to had consequences. I did see the remains of the Skulls’ stolen vessel floating a short distance away, scattered into several pieces.

Who knew if there was still anyone left alive, trapped in a partitioned section of the ship that wasn’t exposed to vacuum? Rescue would come for them if there was. They’d probably be able to take a look at logs and tell what happened here. I briefly considered that I could try to obliterate the evidence with my own cannons, but that would take too long. We had to get to Venus. I was now officially exposed to our greatest enemy for what I was.

In a moment we were flying toward Venus again, slowly accelerating once more to ensure that our missing compartment wouldn’t compromise the rest of the ship’s structure. I let out a groan, the stress of performing even basic functions quickly became unbearable. I wouldn’t have been able to operate my guns if I wanted to anyway. I knew I wouldn’t be able to get us up to top speed like this, but we had to keep making progress if we were going to stay ahead of them.

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“Don’t strain yourself.” Doc ordered “Do what you have to I guess, but don’t just keep staring at… whatever it is you see when you do that. Captain’s gonna debrief you. I’ll let her know you’re up.”

I stared at the ceiling with my eyes open until they got too dry. I wasn’t sure if Doc understood that I couldn’t just shut this off. That me resting from the stream was going into the void. I had to close my eyes eventually. I wished that I was able to ask Doc to put a bandage on the psionic wound of missing the cargo bay, to stop that horrible itching feeling in my mind of missing a chunk of myself, but I didn’t even know how to articulate it to him. It was a horrid uneasiness that I couldn’t shake.

Looking for anything to distract myself, I followed Aisling’s movements coming down the stairs until she stepped into the doorway and I waved without opening my eyes “Hey Captain.”

“Hey.” She was trying to sound comforting, but it quickly descended into a light scolding tone “You’re a real piece of work, you know that?”

I felt like a real piece of work. But I chuckled a little, glad to hear we weren’t in such bad of shape that banter was off the table. “Thanks. I got your fucking door open.”

“That you did.” She sighed “You know, I don’t doubt for a second that you’re gonna get better at all of this, the stuff I’ve seen you do in the couple weeks I’ve known you. But you gotta survive to get to that point. So don’t go killing yourself too fast, got it?”

“Try not to die, thanks for the tip, boss.” I held a thumbs up toward her.

“I’m serious, Meryll.” Now she sounded terse. This wasn’t banter anymore. She really wasn’t kidding around as she approached my bedside and I opened my eyes to see her glaring at me “You’re reckless. That can be good in this business, but you’re pushing your limits too often. You got a taste of the real danger now. I hope it means you can prepare for it and not have to do as many batshit stupid things.”

“I dunno, batshit stupid has been working for me so far.” I smirked, trying to pull us back to our lighthearted jabs at each other.

“Luck runs out, Meryll!” She warned sharply, concern showing on her face “Don’t make yourself have to learn that the hard way like some of us did.”

I had to shut up at that. Was it really all luck? Like Theseus happening upon the wreck of my ferry. I paused at that thought. I hadn’t really considered it before, but that errant thought sounded… off somehow. It was something I could shake. I tried to push that feeling back down for now and tried to be more proactive about our situation “I can’t feel the cargo bay. It’s gone, isn’t it?”

“It’s damaged, that’s for sure.” She started “We won’t be able to fix it proper until we get to Venus. Don’t think we’ll need a total refit though. I guess it feels a lot worse than that for you though.”

I nodded “Feels like… I don’t even know how to explain it. It’s like I’m missing a big chunk of flesh out of my abdomen, but I’m not. It doesn’t really hurt, but it feels like… loss.” I shook my head, really unsure how else to put it. A dull ache of something important missing from my self. A dread like something terrible was approaching. Looming death.

“Huh… didn’t think it was that bad. The rest of the ship is stable, after all. But I guess it’s different if you actually are the ship.” She went quiet, giving me a pitying expression.

The room went quiet, and my thoughts couldn’t help but return once more to that side thought I’d had about luck before. I wasn’t sure if it was a good time to bring it up, but I couldn’t just let it linger either. I couldn’t just keep accepting missing pieces of the past that involved me. “Hey Aisling… You don’t just happen to run into another ship in wild space.”

“Hmm?” she sounded confused at the sudden turn of conversation.

“You said that earlier when we were planning, and it’s true. It’s always true.” I let that hang in the air for a moment before I declared “You wouldn’t have come to my ferry in time to save me if you had been coming from Luna for a salvage job.”

A look of tired recognition quickly began to replace her serious glare “Meryll, we can talk about this later.”

“So what were you doing at the wreckage of my ferry?” I insisted on continuing, glancing her way accusingly.

Aisling stared at me for a few moments, trying to think hard, but after a moment, she realized she’d been holding her breath and let out a deep sigh “Okay. Yeah, I deserve that look.” She said quietly, pausing and readjusting herself in her seat for a moment as if looking for the right words before she sat down at the end of the bed and stared into the floor, trying to avoid my gaze “I make mistakes too, Meryll. That salvage mission? It wasn’t for your ferry, it was for a Foundation derelict. I fucked up and got us in a battle where our ship core died. And after that, I was getting desperate. We were close enough that we managed to get us to drift into the ferry’s route using some of Mouse’s magic with the gas propulsion system.” She hesitated, letting it hang in the air despite the fact that I already knew where this was going “We shot down your ferry. Thought we were fucked cause that core died under fire too. Then we found you.”

“The others understood. Ray was pissed at me that night, though. Preying on innocents isn’t exactly our MO. We were just in a tight spot. We can’t always be the good guys, living a life like this.” She admitted “It hasn’t exactly been light on my conscience. And I thought you’d take that news poorly so I told everyone to shut up about it.” She shrugged her shoulders and leaned forward a little, looking uncomfortable “It’s okay if you think less of us cause of it. I do too.”

“I’m mad you lied to me.” I muttered, thinking long and hard about how I should probably be angry at her for what she did, but I really couldn’t muster any kind of hate for her about it. “But no, not really. Whatever’s going on with me, you saved me from it. Maybe you didn’t have the best of intentions, but you’ve more than made it up to me by now. These fuckers are after me, and you could have just given me to them. I still trust you. Just hope you can trust me to know the truth next time shit like this happens.”

“Gotta admit, that’s not how I expected you to take that.” Aisling kept looking at the floor. I could tell she was ashamed about the whole thing. It’s probably why she hid it in the first place “For someone with no memory, you’re pretty mature.”

“Thanks. I think.” I groaned, turning to look the other way and moving to change the subject again “Doc, can you just put the damper back into me already. I’m not gonna use it, I just got used to the weight in my head is all.” I didn’t want to admit it at the time, but missing a piece of hardware that I’d become accustomed to also felt like another part of myself had been torn out, even if it was that diabolical thing that made me feel like a robotic husk.

“I’ll get Mouse to make a cover for it.” Doc said, setting the module aside “Since it’s an expansion slot, we can put this thing back in quick if we really need to. But I don’t think that you should-“

“Hey. You lied to me too.” I reminded him, hoping to guilt him into reinstalling my hardware “You owe me some trust. I’m not using that thing unless I absolutely have to. But it’s a part of me. Let me have it.”

Doc gave me a tired look and thought for a few moments, sulking over his own part in my deception. He took in a deep breath before he grabbed the module and stood up again “Lean forward. You pull this shit again, though, I’m breaking it myself.”