“She has been through a lot, I hope she’s managing to get some rest in there.”

  A voice, I didn’t recognise it.

  My eyes opened.

  A room, I didn’t recognise it.

  I rubbed my eyes with a thumb and finger, I held the palm in front of my face, I didn’t recognise it.

  Did I?

  More murmurs, these I couldn’t make out.

  I winced as my head swam, though I wasn’t nauseous. Echoes of memories reverberated in my skull. Then they clarified. Then they dissipated again.

  I remembered tall buildings, then a tunnel, then a hallway with guards. Were they one after the other? They felt too different.

  Hallway, then buildings, then tunnel.

  More murmurs, not my ones.

  I wonder what those guards had been guarding, they mustn’t have been much good at it if I was still here. Though I hadn’t been running to what they were guarding, right?

  Right. I had been escaping, running away from that prison. Then I found Mark. He seems nice.

  I blinked, shook my head, and sat up. The room was making more sense now, I still didn’t recognise it, but I knew someone else knew it.

  “I appreciate you trying to do for her what you did for me, but it’s getting hot out there. The PEAs alone are buzzing about your area like it’s a gang war, I’m in hot water already from the lock down, you’ve got to find a way to get her off world.” A woman’s voice, deep and comforting. She sounded worried, was she referring to me?

  I heard a deep sigh, “I’m probably going to have to get off world too, they kicked my door down. My public information was encrypted by our mutual friend, but it’s not uncrackable. If they find what I’ve been doing, they’ll imprison me for the rest of my lige.”

  I stood up. That was Mark, he also sounded worried.

  “Are you okay with that? I know this place means much to you.”

  “Ahhhh. well I’m going to have to be. Do you know any pilots?”

  The woman laughed a whooping and loud laugh.

  “I’m the best mechanic in the city, Priest, I know a few.”

  By this point I had walked to the door the voices were coming from. I wanted to open the door, but something stopped me, was I meant to hear that conversation? If I opened the door now, then surely they’d know I had been listening in. But it hadn’t even been my fault, I had heard them talking without moving to where they were, did that mean they thought I could hear? If that was the case, why wasn’t I included in the conversation. I should just open the door.

  Open the door.

  OPEN THE DOOR-

  The door swung into my face, hitting me square on the nose. I stumbled backwards; my eyes closed in an awkward grimace.

  “Oh! I am sorry!” The woman spoke, as my eyes opened, I saw her, her hands moving my wrists out of the way of my face.

  She’s going to hurt you again.

  I yelped, falling backwards and landing hard on my tail bone. I crawled quickly back towards the corner of the room.

  Instead of continuing her approach, she reacted defensively. Had I hurt her? Why was she acting so weak?

  Mark rushed in the door, his stance far more hostile than I had ever seen it, I flinched as he saw me.

  “What happened?” I heard him demand.

  “She was right in front of door when I opened, i-it hit her face, then she freaked out when I tried to check her!” She didn’t sound angry, she sounded like something had gone wrong, that she was worried. Why was she worried?

  “Cerim?” I heard Mark ask, his voice softer than before.

  It was then, when my heart slowed a tiny bit, I realised I had blocked my vision with my hands. I slowly moved them, allowing me to see my surroundings.

  Mark had crouched down, he wasn’t any closer, but he was eye level with me now.

  “Are you okay?” He asked.

  “What?” I blurted; I didn’t want to speak but it just came out.

  He seemed as confused as I was, and for a moment the world stopped collapsing.

  “Are you okay?” He asked again, his delivery was identical.

  “Y-yeah.” I answered, not confident, but I could feel myself beginning to calm down.

  “Are you hurt?”

  I rubbed my nose, “No…”

  “Okay good!” He spoke in a low, almost whispered voice. “Can I come closer?”

  I nodded, blinking tears I hadn’t noticed making out of my eyes.

  He approached me then, staying close to the ground. I flinched as he rose slightly, then settled as he took his time, keeping his hands visible. He was within arm’s reach now, but his arms hadn’t reached for me yet.

  “Can I check your face? See if you’re okay?” He asked softly again.

  I shook my head. I couldn’t say it, but I couldn’t have any hands I didn’t recognise touching me. Only I get to say if that’s okay now. I wondered if I was subconsciously testing him, to see if anything had actually changed, or if it was just the walls that looked different.

  He didn’t even try.

  “Sorry.” I croaked, rubbing my eyes, as if I would gain more clarity of where I was by doing so, the cloud of my psyche still roiling like a distant nebula in my skull.

  “It’s okay.”

  “What?” I asked, baffled.

  Again, Mark looked taken aback. “It’s okay to be sorry? You have nothing to apologise for; you didn’t do anything wrong.”

  “That’s… not how that…” I felt my throat tighten, then I forced myself to move on, I did not like this conversation. “Where are we? I thought your quarters were one room, where does that door go?”

  “We had to run, remember? This is Inim,” He gestured to the woman behind him, “She’s letting us hide here from the people after us.”

  I nodded, some of my disjointed and unreliable memories coming into a sharper focus.

  “Sorry.” I said again. I was being vague, and not explaining myself, but how could I?

  This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

  “Do not worry.” The woman in the back, Inim, said, “You are safe here, I am sorry for scaring you.”

  I smiled weakly at her. That was nice, they both were. I didn’t really know what my response should’ve been.

  “What were you two talking about, we have to get off world?” I changed the subject again.

  “Well, it turns out you are in much more danger than I thought, staying on this planet won’t end well, for either of us, so we should find another one to retreat to.” Mark tried to say it in a way that made it seem easy, but I could tell it was weighing on him.

  “Can’t we just hide somewhere else here?” I asked, I wasn’t sure why I didn’t want to go to a different planet; I had no attachment to this planet at all.

  It was Inim’s turn to butt in, “Nuh uh, the PEAs will never stop looking for you while you stay here. I have seen them be more committed to less important people.”

  “Important?” I found myself stuttering again, the news of my situation washing over me in waves of anxiety, “What’s so important about someone like me?”

  “Well, you did-“ Inim started, but Mark held up his hand, his eyes closed in some kind grimace.

  “Cerim, what was the last thing you remember? Clearly, that is.” He asked, choosing his words slowly.

  “I…” hesitated, my memory always was unreliable, considering my situation, but nobody had noticed before. Or if they had, they hadn’t cared enough to bring it up.

  Mark had noticed something was different about me, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to let him know.

  Don’t.

  But why not? He has been helping us so far, he has been nice. I can’t live with the facts of my being in secret forever.

  I settled on answering his questions, if he figured it out then I at least couldn’t be fully blamed for it. “I remember going up to that building you walked me to.”

  He nodded, seemingly having confirmed his suspicions of something. “And Cerim is your name, right?”

  The emphasis he placed on ‘your’ made my heart skip, he knew, or at least he assumed something similar.

  “Yes.”

  “Alright, well we can have this conversation later, but I think I know what’s going on.” He gave me a small smile, like he understood, like he didn’t care, like he wanted to help.

  I tried to say something but couldn’t, every attempt got lodged in my throat like I was choking on dry food.

  “Inim?” Mark asked, still level and looking at me, “Do you know where a good pilot would be?”

  “I know a pilot you will want.” She perked up, obviously happy to be of help. “All good ones will not help you, I am afraid. This one is… strange, but he won’t sell you out!”

  “Perfect. I shall go find this pilot. Cerim?”

  I looked up at him, having broken eye contact during his exchange.

  “Rest here for a little bit, are you going to be okay alone with Inim?”

  She waved nervously, it didn’t suit her intimidating stature, and that steadied my heart.

  I nodded.

  “Somebody beat us here.”

  Tae scowled, deeper than her default expression allowed.

  “How can you tell?” Lakma asked, genuinely curious.

  “See that panel in the back? All public spaces have them, stores all the visitor information.” She pointed to a section of the blank concrete wall that had been removed, revealing a mess torn wires and electronics.

  The entire room was bare concrete, including the furniture. Stone pews lined the room up to a dais with a lectern. A sparse bookshelf could be spotted in the back corner; it’s library sparser than Lakma had fingers. The walls were also bare of decoration, there were no windows, no paintings, not a speck of colour. Like all the rooms in this building, it existed purely out of the necessity for minimum personal freedoms.

  “Do the maintenance tunnels come through here?” Lakma assumed they had been beaten to their destination by their target, but assuming things like that before had gotten him shouted at.

  “No… the closest entrance I know is a good distance away here, I think this was our friend from the stairs.” Tae had begun biting her thumbnail, thinking aloud. “Still, have a look at that bookshelf, I’ll see if there’s anything to get from the public information panel.”

  Lakma coughed, “Do you remember who’s in charge here?”

  Tae turned, her tongue impatiently poking the bottom of her cheek, “No. But I also remember you hating your job. If you are going to be like this the whole time, I can find a way to get someone else assigned to your job, unless you find- sorry, found, Falke to be an such an inspiring figure to succeed.”

  Lakma scoffed, but conceded the point. Besides, it was probably better to let Tae take the lead on the investigative side.

  It was easier too.

  The bookshelf had nothing of note. The few books there were all identical; blank covers and spines aside from a tall cross shape, all written in the same illegible language, and they were longer than any book Lakma had even bothered to try. He was surprised to see just how paper thin the pages were, and how tiny the script was, for a book so thick. He made a note to get someone to pick these up and translate them, just in case, but if they were religious scripts like the purpose of this space implied, none of them would be anything of note.

  “Anything?” He called, not needing to raise his voice in the silent and reflective chamber.

  Tae sucked her teeth, “No. Whoever was here purposefully caused as much damage as possible to stop us from following them. Anything there?”

  “Nope, looks like the stuff that should be here normally, if it isn’t I can’t understand the writing anyway.” Lakma shrugged dramatically, “We could probably pull up known associates back at HQ.”

  “Nah, that’d take too long, and we wouldn’t know who to look out for…” Tae replied, trailing off into thought.

  “Well do you have any better ideas?”

  “Yes, but I’m trying to figure out if it’s a good idea to bring you along.”

  Lakma scoffed again, “What, think I’m too inept or something?”

  Tae turned to him, “No, I think you’re an idiot who will either fuck it up, or try and report me out of a sense of spiteful superiority.”

  He furrowed his brow, he couldn’t deny that he would love to be rid of Tae once and for all, but he found himself actually enjoying his job for once, and this line of thinking was really intriguing him, a feeling he had never felt on the ground outside his office before.

  “Try me.”

  Tae snorted a laugh, “Ok dude, you aren’t that cool.”

  It was the first time Lakma had heard her laugh earnestly.

  “So, a few things before we go in there.” Tae stopped the two of them before the door. It was like all the other doors in the hall, another one of the residential areas, identical to the one they

  had accidentally blown up over an hour or two prior. “I need you to be cool, don’t be a fucking idiot like you usually are. This dude is a little… eccentric? Don’t stare, don’t talk to much, and don’t tell him anything about yourself, no names no nothing. If he tells you something he already knows, that you never told him, just nod and don’t ask why he knows.”

  Lakma nodded, suddenly feeling the urge to appear competent. “Got it.”

  Tae frowned, as she usually did, then sighed, then knocked the door.

  It opened under a second after she had lifted her fist from the cold metal. The sounds of fans and clacking of keyboards could be heard from within.

  “After you.” She offered politely.

  Lakma cautiously entered, ducking under a tarp covering to enter the room proper.

  While this had been a formatted quarter before, it wasn’t anymore. All of the furniture had been removed, torn out or destroyed. No beds, no kitchenware, no tables, no chairs. All of it had been replaced with desks caked in dust, bulky green-monochrome monitors, enormous keyboards with unfamiliar symbols alongside multiple alphabets, large computers were strewn everywhere, under desks, on top of them, hung from the walls, all of them with their fans running at max speed, the sound was almost deafening. Briefly, Lakma thought he would get on with whoever Tae’s contact was, he had an appreciation for an operation that could be entirely handled from behind a screen and in a comfy chair.

  Chairs which, Lakma noticed for the second time, this room was entirely devoid of, where do you even sit in here?

  Lakma looked up, into the corner of the room.

  “GAH! WHAT THE-“

  “SHHT.” Tae silenced him as she strode through behind him. “Hey Delta, sorry about the kid.”

  “Your reaction is reasonable, Lakma Nivas,” Its polite voice echoed from somewhere within the walls, “You are welcome in my quarters, I have been captivated by your exploits.”

  “I uh… thanks?” Lakma hadn’t fully understood what the thing had meant by that, but somehow he remembered Tae’s warning.

  “Miss Dimos, how may I assist?” Delta’s attention turned to Tae, though there was no physical showcase of it.

  “Looking for a guy, Mark Everhart, Public information number A051279, any known associates in the area near his quarters. Also, if you know of any high-class bounty hunters in the area.” Tae spoke with a practiced calm.

  A whirring began from somewhere within the mass of metal and wires. “Very well, permit me a few minutes to cultivate your data for Everhart. Regarding the bounty hunter, there is one in the area, though his whereabouts are currently unknown.”

  “Thank you, Delta.” Tae nodded, then leant against one of the few bare walls. She ignored the suspicious glare Lakma was sending her way.

  He stepped up to her, whispering in her ear. “Why are you being so polite?”

  Tae responded with a concerned shake of her head and a nod to the corner.

  Whatever.

  As much as Lakma tried, he couldn’t help but stare at Delta. To say he had never seen anything like it was an understatement. He had worked with Automatons for most of his PEA career, he felt confident saying that areas of robotics and operating robots were more familiar than interpersonal relationships to him. But this melting of flesh and steel was entirely alien, it was beyond prosthetics, beyond additions like Tae’s augmented eyes, or the more obvious augmentations of the criminal underworld. It was entirely unique. The Automatons of the PEA were created to a standard, for a single purpose, and with the most advanced technology the PEA could afford. Delta was unbound; there was no pattern to its creation or its existence, he would’ve described it as organic if he could visibly see any flesh at all.

  Delta had said it would ‘cultivate’ the data earlier, is that what this experience was like to it? Instead of adding parts to a machine, it was growing it and caring for it like one would a bed of flowers? Only instead of tangled roots in wet dirt it was heavy cables in sallow flesh? Was Delta what Lakma saw right now? Or was this during a metamorphosis, a single stage on a long journey of turning a human being into a something else? Its shape resembled a cocoon almost, was there even an end goal to this transition?

  Lakma shook his head, banishing his wandering train of thought to the task at hand.

  As if on cue, Delta blurted a short cough of white noise, as if to gather the two Agent’s attention.

  “Task complete! Please insert a data storage method of your choice.”