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“I’m Ratthi, it’s nice to meet you!” Ratthi bubbled happily. I nudged him in the feed. “And this is Pin-Lee, my legal counsel,” he finished, gesturing at her a little bit awkwardly.
“And who are those two?” The director pointed a thumb at me and Amena.
“Security,” I said. Which would have been obvious if he’d checked my visible feed ID, where I’d listed my name as “Security.” And also my job as “security.”
“I’m Amena,” Amena said, ignoring my advice not to use her real name, on the grounds that the less anyone in the Rim knew about her the better. “I’m security too.”
“And what’s your name?” the director looked at me, and I resisted the sudden impulse to turn around and leave my humans here alone. The director had already made a name for himself as a complete dick, and the collective fandom of Sanctuary Moon (not that I really considered myself a part of that, because that implied interaction with other fans) hated him. He had a reputation for overworking and injuring his actors and crew.
“I’m Security,” I repeated.
“That’s your name?” He looked like he was going to say something insulting, but thankfully, Elyssa Wynn, the actress who played the solicitor, stopped him before he could.
“Lay off of it, you said the same thing to Cat when he changed his name,” Wynn elbowed the director in the side. (I was quietly grateful I’d listed my pronouns in the ID as it/its, and didn’t have to hear her struggle to guess my gender.)
“Cat?” I asked. I couldn’t help myself. I was 84% certain that was a word for a type of domestic fauna.
“He’s on the crew. His name is actually Caterpillar now, but we all call him Cat,” Wynn said. “It’s nice to meet you, Security.”
I just nodded and made a grunting sound about that. It was kind of nice to meet her, I guess. I didn’t actually care that much about the actors, I was only interested in the characters they played. This confused and startled Ratthi to no end when we were first talking about this job. Ratthi had this friend who had a sister who had a friend who knew somebody who knew somebody, I didn’t really care about the reason why, but Ratthi had landed a job as a biology consultant (whatever that was) on Sanctuary Moon. And he was going to go to the filming planet in person, did I want to come? I told him that if he was traveling in Rim space he should bring Pin-Lee, who would be able to protect him, legally speaking. He did a face with eyebrows at me and asked if I wanted to come to protect him. I said if I was coming, he’d also need to bring Amena, because she’d be able to stand in for my legal owner if we ran into any trouble in the Rim. He asked if that question was related to the fact that Amena and I had binged the most recent season of Sanctuary Moon together while she was on break from studying at PUoMaNT, and I didn’t respond, so he thought whatever he wanted to think about that. He got her a ticket too.
And now we were here. Again, I wasn’t that interested in talking to the actors (they’re less exciting when they’re not on a screen and they’re just ordinary boring humans standing in front of you), but I really did want to see behind the scenes of the show. What I’d seen of the sets since our transit shuttle landed was already fascinating, and I’d actually deleted all of MedCenter Argala (a bad show, anyway) from my memory banks so I could start recording video and save my entire time here without worrying about storage. I wished I could have used all my drones and gotten more camera angles, but I was pretending to be an augmented human, so I had to stick to just one. (And I’d given my humans personal drones that they were keeping in their pockets, but again, those weren’t really useful to me.) Still, the footage I’d already collected was amazing, and it was a struggle not to boot up company algorithms and start analyzing it for tiny details already.
“You didn’t need to bring a security team, we’re well-equipped,” the director nodded his head towards the set SecUnit. It looked like a company model (and judging from the company SecSystem I could feel reaching out for me, it had to be a company unit). It was in full armor, faceplate opaque, staring blankly in front of it. Lucky bastard. If there were contract jobs like this, here , how come I’d never even had one? All I’d seen (before Mensah bought me, that is) was the inside of mining installations and the surfaces of planets for as long as I could fucking remember.
“I’ll judge your security for myself,” I said, because I was going to do that anyway but I kind of didn’t want anyone yelling at me for stepping in SecSys without permission.
“You're welcome to it,” the director shrugged, and my performance reliability ticked up half a percentage point. Nice.
The director and Wynn took Ratthi, Pin-Lee, and Amena on a tour, and I sent my one active drone with them while I cozied up to SecSystem. Okay, so first I found myself a chair near the SecUnit and cozied up in a blanket that was definitely a prop from episode 207, not that it was a big deal or anything, even though I was thinking about how easy it would be for ART to replicate this if I sent it a detailed-enough scan, and then I started talking to SecSys. I’m not stupid—I’m not going to ignore a huge chunk of useful security data just because it comes from a source that I’ve got a bit of a traumatic history with. (Bharadwaj likes it when I acknowledge that I’m traumatized, she said that it helps me make more informed decisions about my own status, but I think she thinks something else and just said that to make me do it more.)
I slipped into SecSys, and it was annoying digging through a bundle of error codes, but I managed to start parsing the data. And I’d really meant to analyze it for potential threats, but that SecUnit was recording everything, all the time, just like the company wanted it to, and there was so much blooper footage in there, I wanted to scream I was so jealous. I started saving it to my own memory.
There were gaps in the stream. There were a few sections that looked like the unit was doing something a lot like I did, storing footage in buffer systems and then purging them before upload. You can do that if you’re careful and have something you saw that you really don’t want the company to see. There was also a gap that looked very unnatural, and it was all plugged up with more error codes, not to mention the SecUnit itself had been pathetically pinging assistance needed for days and nobody outside the SecSys had actually noticed. That was…actually really upsetting to find, as far as my own security went. It’s like I always say—if the SecUnit can tell you what’s wrong, the threat isn’t very threatening. Well, I say something like that, anyway. I tugged the prop blanket tighter around me.
I picked through the gap, and the SecUnit finally noticed I was in there. It hadn’t even tried to ping me when I’d arrived with my humans. It must have been really distracted with something.
System system, acknowledge? It sent, not really directed at me, but just kind of floating out into the void.
System system. Acknowledged, I sent, trying to look like an ordinary part of the SecSys and definitely not a rogue unit spoofing a valid feed connection.
Assistance needed. Please advise, the unit said, radiating relief all over the feed.
Status? I asked.
The SecUnit sent me a status code that I recognized. One that meant “a client has killed another client.” I tried to request more information, and it glitched at me so hard I thought it was going to give me a virus. I hastily threw up a wall between the two of us. I liked its recorded memories of the behind-the-scenes of the show, but I didn’t want to accidentally catch whatever it was thinking about now.
I pinged my humans. We should go. There’s been a murder.
What? Ratthi jumped a little bit, but at least he remembered to subvocalize. Just now?
I don’t know when, I sent back, annoyed. Recent. The SecUnit here noticed it, but nobody has been helping it. I started scrubbing through the main feed for the set, looking for any reference to a death or a murder, anything that would give me more information.
Are we in danger? Pin-Lee asked, stiffly.
I don’t know, I admitted. Finish the tour. I’ll keep looking.
Great job, Murderbot, you’ve scared your humans half to death, and you don’t even have any useful information to give them. I kept digging in the feed. The SecUnit kept pinging me sadly, and I kept sending it in progress notifications, but that didn’t really calm it down. Not that I blamed it. I wondered what it had seen. Even if there weren’t any files in the inorganic data store, it would have to still remember it, with the organic parts. It clearly hadn’t been wiped. But the video it had recorded was wiped in the external system, implying someone tried to cover their tracks. Implying murder.
“Is something wrong, Security?” a human said to me, with their own mouth and actually trying to make eye contact with me. While I was already stressed. So I clamped down on my reaction as best I could about that, but I don’t think I did a very good job, based on the way they flinched away from me. Quick scan: their feed ID name was Nevyn Mattix, pronouns she/her. She played a minor recurring character on the show.
“Just checking on a potential threat,” I said.
“Oh, that?” Nevyn laughed. “That’s just a SecUnit. Most people think it's a prop, actually.”
“I know what it is,” I said, doing what I thought was a pretty good job keeping the emotion out of my voice.
“It’s…not a security threat,” Nevyn said, backing away from me a step. “It’s our own security system. In fact, they’re supposed to be better than humans at identifying and stopping threats. It doesn’t look like much, but it could disable you in seconds.”
First of all, I could have disabled an idiot human security guard near me in less than seconds. Second, I wasn’t an idiot human security guard, so it would really have to try if it wanted me disabled. Third, it was looking pretty shredded up in the feed. I seriously doubted its ability to do much moving at all.
“When’s the last time it had a repair cycle?” I asked.
“What’s that?” Nevyn asked.
“Where do you keep its cubicle,” I asked, slower. “Where do you put it when it’s not out.”
“It’s a SecUnit, it can stay on duty all the time,” Nevyn said. Which was a gross misunderstanding of how SecUnits worked. The unit was clearly having errors, and mismanagement of it by idiot humans couldn’t be helping the situation. Maybe it was just dumping random error codes into the feed, and it actually hadn’t seen a client murder another client.
Oh, Murderbot. You should be so lucky. I didn’t really believe I’d gotten out of this that easily.
“Your SecUnit is broken. It’s more of a security risk in this state than an asset,” I said, cutting together a quick scan of its feed as if I was a human reading the data from an external source. The SecUnit pinged me again when it felt me scrape across its data. I had a moment where I wished I was a human, because then I wouldn’t have been able to feel the nauseating emotional data it tried to send me. It wanted to initiate a connection and give me a status update. I’m not SecSys, I admitted to it. It didn’t seem to care.
“I don’t know what all this means,” Nevyn said, ignoring the data I had worked relatively hard to spoof. “But the SecUnit is fine. I’ll prove it. Unit, verbal status report.”
A horrible glitching crunching sound came from under the helmet. It didn’t sound like talking. It sounded like something bad had happened.
“What’s wrong with it?” Nevyn frowned.
“You should send it to its cubicle,” I told her. “I need to talk to someone who knows where the security ready room is—”
“Unit, take off your helmet,” Nevyn said. Great. So even disguised as a human guard, nobody listens to security. Perfect.
The unit reached up, slowly, and stiffly. It twisted its helmet at the neck, then pulled up. A faint dribble of red began to drip out of the seam, and I instinctively stepped back and put my hand protectively between it and Nevyn. The unit removed its helmet.
There was blood. A lot of it. It began to dribble down the front of the unit’s white armor. Nevyn screamed. The unit stood there, one eye crusted shut with blood, looking at me through the other.
And then I ended up in a conference room with the director and my humans, which I wasn’t actually going to complain about. Whatever the fuck had happened to that unit, I didn’t want my humans getting in any trouble because of it. (I could probably figure out what had happened to it pretty easily if I could access its logs. Which I might have to do manually through its data port, based on the way it glitched, leaking and bleeding emotion all over the feed. Almost like the way it leaked and bled under its helmet. I was glad my humans hadn’t seen that.)
The director gave us a basic security “stay here and we’ll handle it” speech, warned us not to leave the room or we’d be liable for our own damages, and then left.
“I have SecSys,” I told my humans, as soon as he left. “No one can see or hear us. The room is secure.”
“SecUnit, what’s going on?” Amena asked, nervous.
Pin-Lee and Ratthi both looked at me, waiting for me to report. They’d seen me work before, and they knew how to help. These weren’t the worst humans to be stuck here with. Except for the fact that if anything happened to any of them, I would kill every threat on this planet and then myself. So, no pressure. I just had to figure out what had happened, what was still going on, and keep my humans safe from it. Easy. (That was a fucking lie.)
“I’m working on it,” I said. “The SecUnit here sent me a company code. It saw a client kill another client, and it's been trying and failing to report that to HubSys.”
“What happened?” Ratthi asked.
“I don’t know,” I said, hating that I didn’t have anything more to give them. I mean, I had a guess. Which was that somebody committed a murder and borked the SecUnit so they wouldn’t get caught. But in order to confirm that, I needed to know what the SecUnit had seen.
“What do we do now?” Pin-Lee asked.
“Do I have clearance in my contract to make my own security checks?” I asked Pin-Lee. “Any kind of legal bullshit I can use to justify going to their security ready room?”
“I’ll confirm it. And if I write something—”
“I can add it in, they’ll assume they’ve already signed it,” I nodded. “Okay. Then that’s what I’m going to do.”
“Not alone,” Ratthi bit his lip.
“We’re not going to argue about this,” I said.
“You don’t know what happened to the other SecUnit. What if it happens to you, too?” Ratthi said.
I wanted to tell him that was stupid, because no one here even knew I was a SecUnit, but he actually had a surprisingly good point. “You can’t come with me. You’re a consultant, or whatever. You don’t have security clearance,” I told him.
“I can come,” Amena said. “I’m listed as our security too. And if there’s really a problem and you get identified as a SecUnit, I’ll already be there. If you need your. Um.” She avoided saying “legal owner,” but that’s what she was for me, here. I didn’t mind. (Partially because the concept clearly made her more uncomfortable than me.)
That plan wasn’t horrible, but it still involved a human that I cared about leaving this room where she was safe.
“You have to listen to me,” I told Amena. “Even if it sounds stupid. Even if you don’t want to. If I tell you to run—”
“I know, third mom,” Amena said, hugging herself in the way she did when she wanted to hug me and was politely demonstrating that she respected my boundaries. She smiled at me. “Are we doing this?”
We were doing this. I pulled up a map of the area, and sent it to her over the feed. I left my one active drone with Ratthi and Pin-Lee. I wanted to be sure nothing was going to happen to them. (I wanted to fill this entire planet with my drones and see everything. But again, that wasn’t going to happen. Maybe I didn’t appreciate the “accessibility accommodations” I had on Preservation as much as I should.)
I led Amena down one of the hallways towards the security ready room.
“Isn’t this place amazing, SecUn—Security?” Amena asked me. She kept staring, wide-eyed, at all the things around us, instead of at the map I’d sent her.
“A great place to get murdered,” I said, and she actually stopped walking.
“Look. I’m not saying this isn’t serious—” she started, but I cut her off.
“Amena. There’s been a murder. What part of this isn’t serious?” I glared.
“But look around!” Amena gestured grandly at the space we were in, a long hallway full of props and materials and even the costume the solicitor wore in the episode she almost got married to the ex-boyfriend’s sister—no, I was getting distracted, and that was dangerous. I needed to know what was going on here, and then I could pretend to enjoy myself. Even though it was actually…pretty okay, being here. I kind of wanted to steal that costume and try it on, myself. There was no way it would fit. Would it? I was shorter than SecUnit standard— no. Distractions.
“SecUnit,” Amena said quietly, stepping closer to me. “It’s okay.”
“It’s not okay,” I said, through gritted teeth. “If you—if any of you die here, it’s going to ruin this show for me. Forever .”
“Okay,” Amena said. “We’ll try not to die, then.”
I appreciated the sentiment, even if it was a little sarcastic. I pinged my drone and checked on Pin-Lee and Ratthi. Still fine. Calm down, Murderbot. You can’t do your job while you’re keyed up and distracted.
“The ready room is this way,” I said, and started walking. Amena followed me. (I did take a few pictures though, just in case we wouldn’t be coming back this way.)
The security ready room had all its lights on. So there were humans in there. I let my human-like code muster the most dramatic sigh it could, and then I went inside, Amena following me.
The broken SecUnit was, surprise surprise, not being fixed in a cubicle, and was instead standing near one of the walls while three humans talked and yelled at each other around it.
“Who the fuck are you?” one of them glared at me.
“Security,” I said.
“Oh, thank the void,” he relaxed slightly. “We’re just from IT. We don’t even work on the SecUnit, usually.”
“Do you have any specialists in company tech?” I asked him.
“No,” Useless IT Worker One shook his head. “The cubicle is supposed to do all the work.”
“So why isn’t it in a cubicle?” I asked.
“The cubicle would have wiped off the evidence,” Useless IT Worker Two piped up. “Look at that blood.”
“It’s blood,” I said.
“It’s not SecUnit blood,” Useless IT Worker Two shook her head. “Look at the coloration. I’m telling you. We should get somebody from Medical to analyze it, or something.”
…She had a fair point. It didn’t have the characteristic metallic sheen of SecUnit fluids. It did look more like human blood.
I revised her name in my head to just be IT Worker Two. “Did you call somebody from Medical?”
They all looked at each other.
“Go get someone,” I said.
“Right,” IT Worker Two said. She left in an excitable hurry, and her companions kind of stared at each other. Like they really didn’t know what to do.
“I’m Security,” I repeated, which seemed relevant to what I was about to say. “Please leave this room while I conduct my own analysis. I’ll be done by the time Medical gets here, and when they’ve taken their samples, you can do…whatever you do,” I finished, lamely. Neither of them seemed equipped to sort through the broken unit’s code errors. Maybe I’d try and fix that a little, depending on how much time the rest of this took.
Useless IT Worker One looked like he wanted to protest. “But—”
“No buts,” Amena said, stepping forward next to me. “Unless you’d like to tell your supervisor you got in our way.”
They looked at each other, then at the bloody SecUnit, then back at me. “We’ll be right outside,” Useless IT Worker One said, weakly. They left. Amena closed the door.
“What now?” she asked me.
“Can you watch the door?” I asked. It felt weird asking a human for help with surveillance, but I needed her to make sure I wasn’t going to get interrupted with my inorganic parts out.
Amena nodded. She tried not to be too obvious about the way she watched me carefully roll up my sleeve. I opened up one of the panels on my arm and took out a connecting wire for data transfer, like the one I’d used on the technology I’d interfaced with at Ganaka Pit. I pinged the SecUnit and asked it to sit down on one of the tables. It dumped more error codes at me, and twitched as its governor module tried to figure out if I’d given it an order or not. I sighed, and went to stand behind it. The data port was relatively blood-free. Small mercies.
“This won’t take long,” I said, opening up the slot for my wire on the back of the unit’s neck.
“Are you sure that’s a good idea?” Amena asked me, nervously. “What if whatever corrupted it gets you, too—”
“It won’t,” I said. “My walls are too strong.” I was pretty sure my walls were too strong. I made myself another protective layer, just in case. What was the worst that could happen? I plugged in.
The unit’s emotional data hit me like a fucking train. I would have passed out, if I was human. But if I was a human, I wouldn’t have been able to read that, anyway. The unit was hurting. It kept sending me the same error code, about the client murder it had seen, and I kept having to push it away.
Let me work, I told it.
It responded by sending me a memory file. And I, like an idiot, thought this was what I was looking for, and opened it.
Everything felt weird.
You know, this contract was okay, actually, as far as contracts went. T̵̩̐h̸̯̒î̴̦s̵͚̍ ̴̲̇ḭ̷̓s̸̯̀n̷̟̄'̷̯̍t̷͔͝ ̷̞̋m̷̢͂ỹ̶̥ ̶̫̒c̵͇̒ö̷͓́ǹ̷̝t̶̡͒r̷͉͐a̵̤͝c̴͎͠t̴̮͋.̸̱̌ I didn’t really mind it here, even though there were way more humans than I was designed to watch alone, and there weren’t any other SecUnits around for backup, either. But overall, the contract was pretty boring, which is how I wanted it. I didn’t have to confiscate meal packets or send injured miners back to work, I mostly just stood there and watched the security cameras. Sometimes the humans tried talking to me, but mostly they left me alone. It was…nice.
Except for this part.
Quill Holtz (he/him pronouns, junior camera work intern, tags: My Favorite Human H̴̻͑ę̵̀'̴̧̀s̴̜̑ ̷͔͒n̵̜̈́ô̵̮t̷͎̂ ̴͙̃m̴̹̚ẏ̶͔ ̵̤͆f̶͇͒a̶̰͂v̶̱͒ǫ̷̛r̷̯̃i̷̯̓t̸̃ͅe̶̜͘ ̵̤̋ḧ̶̖́ǘ̶͓m̵̲̍a̷̢̒n̵͚̅.̵̦̄) grabbed my arm and pulled me around a corner. His face was puffy around one eye. He’d sustained damage as if physically attacked. HubSys told me it was okay to break my standard patrol and let him move me to another location, so I could assess his condition. I rolled back camera inputs, trying to track what had happened. There were too many humans here, and only one me, and I’d gotten a little bit distracted because they were filming a big climax scene with dangerous stunts today and I had to watch it.
“SecUnit, watch the door,” Quill said, opening a storage closet and stepping inside. Technically, he didn’t rank high enough to be able to send orders to the governor module M̶͓̍ỹ̷̪ ̸͇͑g̴͍͂o̶̼̒v̸̀͜e̷͕͒r̶̙͝ṇ̷͘o̶͝ͅŕ̷̗ ̷̲̓m̷̘̈́ǒ̸͈d̴̗̂ŭ̵͕l̴̡̾e̴͙̍ ̴̨͋d̵͍͛o̸̱̕é̷̯s̶̱̈n̸͈̎'̶̯̄t̶̐͜ ̷̧͒w̴̠͂ò̷̙r̷̺͝k̴̺̿, so I held the door open when he tried to close it.
“Security threat assessment in progress,” I said. He knew what I meant. (That’s one of the reasons he’s my favorite human I̷͌͜ ̴̰̚d̶̩̊ơ̴͈n̸̯͘'̴̮͆t̵͇̂ ̶̛̗k̷͋͜n̷̰͘ō̴͜w̵̝͠ ̷͓͝ĥ̸͈ȋ̵̝m̴͈̎) I was asking him if he was okay.
“It’s nothing. I’m fine,” he said, holding onto the door knob with two shaking hands. He didn’t look at me, which I usually would have appreciated, except for the fact that I could tell he was doing that because he was crying.
He was a junior camera work intern. He managed four of the filming drones, and he’d used a little of my processing space to run their flight paths. That was another reason he was my favorite human h̵̯͌ẹ̶̐'̴̖̑s̵̩̏ ̷͇͊N̵̺͋O̷̖͑T̴͔͠, because he helped me see more of what was going on. I needed him to tell me what was going on now.
“Accurate reporting is essential for security threat assessment,” I said.
“Please, just let me…I’ll be fine,” Quill said, scrubbing at his eyes with one arm.
I made my faceplate go transparent, and then I told my helmet to retract back into my armor. Maybe that would make him listen to me. “Tell me what happened,” I said.
Quill looked up at me. His eyes were red and blotchy, and one of them was swelling up. He had a small cut bleeding over his eyebrow, too. He opened his mouth, as if he was going to say something.
“There you are, fucker, ” the director said from behind me. Quill jumped, and then tugged on the door harder. “That equipment damage is coming out of your paycheck,” the director stepped closer.
“I didn't break the camera drone,” Quill said, whisper quiet, still trying to force the door closed, even though he had to know that wouldn’t protect him now. I wished I’d let him hide. Too late now. “It wasn’t my—”
“Production is losing a whole cycle thanks to you,” the director said, glaring at him. Then the director glanced at me, too, where I was still holding the closet door open. “Are you trying to break the fucking SecUnit, too?”
“I didn’t break it,” Quill went pale. “I—” He flinched as the director made a movement towards him. I was between the two of them, blocking the director from getting much closer.
“Excuse me, SecUnit,” the director said, politely. It wasn’t an order, so I didn’t have to step out of his way.
“Security threat assessment in progress,” I announced, hoping that might de-escalate this situation with a reminder that I was watching.
“I appreciate the thought, but this intern isn’t a security threat, he’s just a useless nuisance,” the director patted my shoulder. “Get out of the way.”
I felt a tingly sensation down my spine as my governor module started to register the order n̸̨̄o̸̧͋,̵̥͒ ̸̰̋n̴͆͜ō̶̹ ̷̞͛ṗ̵̰l̶̥͒e̷̳̿a̶͈̔s̷͖̈e̴̜̓. The director ranked high enough to override HubSys commands, if he needed to. I told HubSys that I hadn’t yet assessed what had damaged client Quill, and determining the answer took priority to following the order. HubSys fortunately agreed, and I breathed slightly easier as the shock died back down.
“Intern Quill should report to Medical for assessment,” I said, still blocking the director with my arm.
“The fuck is wrong with you?” the director looked at me, suspicious, and I really wished I had my helmet on and faceplate opaque. He then went back to ignoring me. “You know what, I don’t have time for this, Quill. I have to finish cleaning up your mess.”
“It wasn’t—”
The director bent my arm down and punched Quill in the face. He flinched to escape it, but not fast enough. “Shut up,” the director said. Quill made a whimpering sound. His nose looked broken. It started bleeding. “SecUnit, teach the intern what happens when he breaks my equipment.”
That order was technically vague enough that I could find a loophole in it. I hoped.
“I didn’t do it,” Quill whimpered, hands over his head now, trying to protect his face. “The camera was right where I was told to leave it, and when the pyrotechnics effect went off—”
I used this information to gather the right video footage. One of the drone’s Quill was responsible for had been accidentally damaged in one of the stunts. It was a very expensive camera. Worth at least three times what Quill was making on his entire internship.
“SecUnit, break his fingers,” the director said. “ Then he can go to Medical if he’s so desperate for that.”
“Please, I can’t afford to pay for that treatment,” Quill was crying, softly.
My governor module was vaguely upset at me that I hadn’t already started breaking his fingers. I did my best to ignore the buzzy feeling in my spine, and I said “Quill Holtz’s productivity level will drop below acceptable norms if that punishment is applied.”
“Do I look like I care?” the director said. He didn’t rescind the order. It was getting harder to ignore the tingling pain of the governor module. I felt my face twitch. “And put your helmet back on,” the director said. I put my helmet back on and the pain lessened, slightly. I could already picture how good it was going to feel to follow through on the punishment order and make my own punishment stop completely. I didn’t want to hurt Quill. But I didn’t have a choice.Í̶̺ ̵̲̌n̵̹̋e̸̢̍v̷̳̏e̵͎͂r̷̪̂ ̸̝̐d̸̗͋î̷̳d̵͕̑
Quill sobbed and backed away from me into the closet. I stepped as close to him as I needed to break all his fingers. I did it quickly, and as efficiently as I could. Trying not to make it hurt more. He screamed anyway. I think I told him to go to Medical. The director watched me until I was done. He smiled at me.
And then two days after that, with my helmet down and immobilized by HubSys, I watched the director beat Quill to death with a—
“Security,” Amena said, urgently. I blinked at her. Where the fuck was Quill? Right, he was dead, he was m̶͇͒y̵̧͌ ̷͕͠f̶͈̆ä̶̬́v̶̱̂ö̷̢r̸̦̓i̵̪͠ṱ̷̓ĕ̴̫ ̸̹̈h̶̭̑u̴̹̾m̴̖̆å̸̜n̸͇͆—
“Security,” Amena said, again, and she actually shook me. “It would be nice if…” she groaned and put her head in her hands. “Please don’t pass out on me again.”
Why was she talking to me? Nobody talks to me. Nob—there was something wrong. That wasn’t me. I could feel the other SecUnit’s thoughts and emotions bouncing around in my head. a̴̖͛s̵̗͝s̸̯̚i̸̭͘s̵̯͊t̷̝́a̴͔̾n̷̜͋c̵̗̆e̵̳̎ ̷͉̐n̷̢͋é̴̘e̷̖̐d̵̈ͅe̴̻̎d̶̝͝ I went to unplug myself from it, and I saw that my connector wire had been half-ripped out of my arm. And also, I was sitting down on the ground now.
“What happened?” I gurgled out, fighting the urge not to say anything so I wouldn’t get a governor module punishment. My governor was off. I poked at it. It was off. ä̵̟́š̸̞s̷̡̀i̷̪̕s̶̡̆t̷̟͋ä̶͎́n̴̨̿c̸̠̚e̶̳͒ ̵͕͒n̴̤͗e̶̻͝e̴͎͑d̷̙̀ë̶̻d̶̖̏
“Your medical condition flared up,” Amena made a face at me that involved raised eyebrows. “Which is why we should get you back to the others, they've got your medication.”
I vaguely remembered this was a cover story to be used in emergencies on this mission. I suddenly realized there were humans other than Amena in here—the IT workers had come back, and were staring at me. I got awkwardly to my feet. (Amena helped me. I let her help, because it made my human cover look more convincing. Not because I needed it. ȁ̷̤s̸͉̎ś̴͈ḭ̸͒s̶͙̾t̶̮̐a̵̤̓n̵̗̅ĉ̷̗ẹ̷̈ ̶̯́n̸̺̉é̵̺e̷͍̎d̸̢̂e̵̯͌d̸̢̈́)
“What’re they doing to it?” I asked, as Amena led me out of the room.
“Forensic analysis, first,” Amena said. “They’re—”
“It’s Quill’s blood,” I said. “Quill Holtz. The direct—” I cut myself off, sure I was about to feel a gov mod shock. The director had ordered the SecUnit not to say anything about what it had seen. That order overwrote HubSys and launched a whole spiral of feedback errors. But that wasn’t me.
I shouldn’t have connected without checking the unit over more thoroughly. There was some kind of corruption error that affected me. I felt like those memories were mine. It was…scary. I kind of wanted to hold onto Amena and promise her I’d never hurt her and I’d never let anyone make me hurt her and I’d never watch her die while I was powerless to do anything to save her, but I think if I said all that it was going to sound weird.
Amena didn’t say anything else. She led me back to the room with Ratthi and Pin-Lee and I laid down on the floor. The ground was cold. It was nice. I closed my eyes, and I told my humans what I’d seen in the other units' memories. Ratthi took the personal drone I’d given him out of his pocket. I connected to it, to all of my drones they had, and I could see again. My drones flitted gently around the room and I stopped feeling like everything was spinning. My humans took turns talking at me while I collected myself and scrubbed at my own code errors. I’m not sure how much time passed before I started having coherent thoughts again. Pin-Lee was working on something in her feed, I could tell. After a while, when I was feeling up to it, I sat up, and opened my eyes abruptly. No one startled, because my humans knew me and were used to me.
“What’s going to happen to that SecUnit?” I asked. I didn’t want to leave it here.
“I am the single most important person on this mission,” Pin-Lee said, pushing me a feed document.
I read the papers. Preservation was making some kind of adoption claim on it, on the grounds that it was being mistreated. “Is this actually going to work?” I asked.
“We’ll find out when the Sanctuary Moon producer calls me back,” Pin-Lee said. She’d talked to the producer? Had I missed that? My head hurt a little bit, which didn’t really make sense. Technically, nothing bad had happened to me. Í̵̹ ̸̗̅ẁ̵̠ä̷͙t̷̺͆c̴̡͠ĥ̵͓e̶̞̚d̷̂͜ ̸̛̰m̶̟̉ÿ̸́ͅ ̶̖͋f̷͕͝ä̴̧v̵͍͒ō̷͖r̶͍̿ị̷̀t̸̥͑e̶̖͘ ̶̱̈h̷͇̃u̸͈̅m̸͈͛a̶̡͂n̸͓̓ ̷̣̿d̴̹̑i̸͈͠e̵̹̊ ̵̠̒i̷͈͐n̵͔̆ ̶͙͒f̸̪͌ṛ̷̐o̵̢͝n̷͔̆ṯ̴͝ ̶̜̂ó̸̘f̸̳̀ ̶̜̏m̵̨͐ḛ̷͆.̸̥͑ That wasn’t me.
“What’s happening?” I asked, because I needed accurate security data to complete an assessment, not because I was feeling helpless and confused.
“The SecUnit is in a cubicle, Medical is running a DNA scan on the blood sample taken from it, and the security footage you sent me inspired the crew to lock the director in his office until they can verify it,” Amena ticked things off on her fingers.
“What footage?” I asked.
“Of…the SecUnit saw…” Amena trailed off, and stared at the floor. She clenched her fists.
“You weren’t supposed to see that,” I said. It wasn’t a pretty murder. Murders were never pretty. I should know.
“Almost everyone on this planet saw that,” Pin-Lee crossed her arms.
“And…they actually did something about it?” I asked, not really believing it. I had to watch the door, what if the director came back and killed one of my humans—
“Turns out, nobody really liked that guy before he was accused of murder,” Ratthi shrugged.
I let my head fall back on the ground and stared at the ceiling. I fucking knew it. The Sanctuary Moon fandom had never liked him. And he’d totally ruined the last season. He was a bad director, and a murderer. I felt fucking justified in not liking him.
“ART is on it’s way to pick us up,” Ratthi said. “It was nearby, and it’s worried about you.”
“I’ll be fine,” I said. “How soon is it going to get here? There’s…something I wanted to do.” Something not actually security-related, but if you get to visit the Sanctuary Moon set, you seize that opportunity.
“You didn’t have to sit with me,” I said.
“I know,” Amena said, leaning back on her elbows.
Pin-Lee sent me an update. The set SecUnit which was now officially the property of Preservation’s SecUnit Restoration Project, so it was coming home with us. Before i came out here, I went to the security room, fought my way past the error codes, and cracked its governor module. The first thing it did was collapse onto the ground, but the second thing it did was hug Amena and cry, and the two of us helped it into our transit shuttle that would ferry us up to ART. The SecUnit was being repaired in a real MedSys right now. It kept sending me relieved updates on its condition. And thanking me, or whatever. I didn’t really feel like I did much. I’d read the feed trail fully now, and Pin-Lee was the one who drew up papers and transferred money and called Wynn’s agent who demanded the director be removed and prosecuted for endangerment of Wynn, blah blah blah, there was a lot of legal bullshit and nobody seemed particularly upset about Quill’s death (other than the other unit. And me) but Pin-Lee assured me justice was happening, or something. I kind of wanted to see the fucker burn.
“Are you okay?” Amena asked me.
“Yeah,” I said. I pulled the prop blanket tighter around me, and messaged Pin-Lee that I needed to keep it. As evidence against the director. She sent me an acknowledgement and an amusement sigil. My performance reliability went up a percentage point. I started an ongoing list to figure out what else I could reasonably steal from the set.
“The other SecUnit…it’s going to be okay,” Amena said.
I agreed with that assessment. It mostly just seemed happy to be free, once I broke its governor module. And a little traumatized, but what SecUnit wasn’t? ART was going to love giving it the “reclaimed SecUnit” protocol it had written and rewritten about a hundred times.
“How are you feeling?” Amena asked me.
The other unit’s memories of Quill still felt like mine. When I thought about him, I was sad he was dead. Which was upsetting. And freaky, because I’d never even met him, and now I cared that he was dead. But I wasn’t going to wipe my memory banks of the incident. Sometimes horrible things happen to you, and you just have to survive them, and go on. I remembered a lot of horrible things, and some of them were mine, and some of them weren’t, but I’d be fine. I really would be. I actually trusted my humans, and they trusted me. It was…nice.
“I’m fine,” I said.
Amena looked like she believed me. “Where are we right now?” she asked.
“This is the oldest set here,” I said. “It’s from the first season. I can’t believe it's still up.” We were sitting in the solicitor’s old office building lobby, with fake doors leading off to fake offices, a missing wall where the cameras had once been, and a not-currently-working fountain in the middle of it all. It wasn’t exactly as glamorous as I’d imagined it. But it was perfect. I was recording all of it. I had a few drones flying around it, taking close-up pictures and video. I was going to tell Dr Mensah to build a fountain like this on her farm. I thought she’d think that was a fun idea.
Murderbot, you did all right. You saw the Sanctuary Moon set, you protected your humans, rescued another SecUnit, and technically, you solved a murder. (It still counts, even if no one knew there was a murder at all until you got here.) I leaned back on my elbows too, mimicking Amena’s pose. We just sat there and drank in the view. I wished I had something witty to say about it. I didn’t. I was just…content.
Ratthi messaged me that he’d done his biology consulting thing, which was a meeting with script writers, or something. He asked me if I was ready to go. No, I sent him. I’m actually going to stay. I live here now.
He sent back an amusement sigil. I picked myself up, and Amena did too. I folded the blanket, and tucked it under one arm. “Let’s go home,” I said.