Chapter 4 #3
"It is a medical problem of sorts, a minor one, but left untreated, it can cause severe issues. It isn't something that can harm your species at all," I said. "The solution is simple. I just need to go through all of my neurofilaments and remove all of the spots."
Where I had gotten the contamination was another question. I hadn't taken on any imports, and I paid extra for third-party verification whenever I took on new supplies. There was only one place it could have come from, and if it was already on a drone in the garden...
Fuck.
She was a trap.
That was why she had such an easy time stealing a tool, exploring, and escaping, if she was even telling the truth about that.
No, the medical data was clear that she had been tortured.
If she had agreed to do this to me, to trick her way on board, then it would have been from a state of duress.
A victim helping their abuser out of a state of fear doesn't make them any less of a victim; it just makes them a more tragic one.
I set up a subroutine to go through my regular scans of nearby systems, looking for a hiding place.
"But you can't see it," she said, identifying the real problem at its root without me having to explain.
Then she began sorting through the tendrils coming out of my drone, inspecting each one by touching it, lifting it, and stroking it, and I forgot what we were talking about for a moment until she repeated herself.
"How are you going to remove the spots if you can't see them? "
It took me a moment to come back to the question, that unsettling horror growing as I realized how easy it was for her to distract me from my thoughts, just with the touch of her skin. She was the perfect trap.
"Without crew, the solution is to just clean every inch of my filaments, but it takes a lot more of the solution than spot removal," I said.
"I don't currently have enough of the cleaning solution to do a full ship douse, so it can wait until after I take you to your desired destination.
This area is fairly isolated, so it won't cause too much difficulty. "
I had moved so many of my neurofilaments around after she came on board that there was a high chance that it would cause a great deal of difficulty. But I didn't want to let her know that, just in case she had agreed to be the trap.
"Or I can help," she said.
The likelihood of her being in on it plummeted.
"You would?" I asked, stunned by the sudden thought of her touching more of me, all of me. I really wanted her to do that, not only because it was practical, but because I wanted more of this, of soft fingers stroking over me, caressing me.
I wanted my senses to be overwhelmed by her again.
That desire was a whole new danger all on its own.
"It would make me feel better to have something to do," she said.
"I can provide plenty of entertainment for you," I said, giving her an out. If she were in on it, she wouldn't want to help me and would take the offer to do nothing without much more of a protest. "You don't have to help me."
Oh, but I wanted her to, with a sudden desperation that was deeply inappropriate. She was my passenger, in my care. She hadn't chosen to be kidnapped from her home. It was the obligation of any sentient being to help her without hesitation. People didn't have to work to deserve help.
She let out a sigh.
"I want to help you, and besides," she said, running a finger down one of my neurofilaments. "I think it is my fault."
Her words made my heart run cold and hot at the same time.
"Why do you think that?" I asked, keeping my tone carefully even.
"This spot is the same color as the gunk on the data storage,” she said. “That and my handler tossed a vial of it on me when she realized I was going to escape."
There was the confirmation I was looking for that it hadn't come in on an earlier supply stop.
Going to get the data was a trap laid out specifically for me.
I should have known.
But even so, if I had realized, I still wouldn't have left her there. I knew from the very first moment I saw her that she needed me.
I checked my subroutine to see if it had come up with any good hiding spots yet, and found a dense asteroid field.
I hadn't yet felt any vibrational charges, but it was likely they were waiting for the infection to set in before alerting me that I was being hunted.
If I could hide my mass within a larger one, that would stop them from being able to track me.
I changed course, heading towards the asteroid field as I ran a more detailed search to find a suitable hiding place.
"Lyrien?" Maria asked, alerting me to the fact that I had been silent.
"You didn't know I couldn't see it," I said, my tone clipped. I wasn't angry with her. She didn't know anything about me.
If she were in league with the hunter, she would never have mentioned seeing the spot in the first place.
She would have let the infection grow until my systems were impacted enough for me to notice something was wrong.
"She told me that if I told you that you wouldn't let me on board if I told you about the stuff all over me," she said. "I'm sorry I didn't say anything. I was scared you would leave me behind."
My anger was tempered with understanding. It was a deception, the same kind of deception I was doing to her, letting her believe that I was code-trained into a form of sentience. The difference between us was that she came clean. That and our enemies were the same.
"Let me help fix this," she said. "I caused this, I can fix it."
"You didn't cause this," I said, my tone softer. "But I will accept your help. It is urgent we address this quickly."
"Why?" she asked.
"If it came in with you in the amounts that you remember, then it is likely beyond my ability to fully contain right now.
If the patches spread and become larger, they become trackable," I told her.
"In large enough patches, they can also interfere with my systems, especially my weapons, defense, and mechanical propulsion systems. I can section off and work around them, but since I can't see or sense it until I realize that an area has gone fully numb, it can be a serious problem. "
"What do you mean, trackable?" she asked, latching onto the most important part of what I said.
"We are being hunted," I told her. "You were set free so they could attempt to capture me."