keaalu

[keaalu]

Good Morning!* (*in Welsh)

I was watching Terrahawks on YouTube the other evening, and what should the algorithm serve up as a suggestion afterwards but Ivor the Engine!

And one of the little gremlins who has recently set up home in my brain went “What better way to wind up Doctor Ninestein than start speaking Welsh.”

Oliver Postgate voice: Sergeant Major Zero. There he is, look. On his way to the White House lounge, to cause trouble for poor Doctor Ninestein no doubt...

------------

Sergeant Major Zero was not, as a general rule, one to rise with the larks.

This worked perfectly for Doctor Ninestein, because he could get started on work – or... well, okay, fine: “work” – without too many interruptions, while Zero snored contentedly to himself in a corner.

Usually worked perfectly.

This morning, any hopes Ninestein might have had to quietly step past and get stuck in reviewing the night’s reports were dashed at finding Zero already on his perch and watching expectantly for him, for a change. That was rarely a great sign.

“Bore da, Doctor Ninestein!” the zeroid said, cheerfully.

It was clearly going to be one of THOSE days. With a sigh, Ninestein slipped into the chair behind his desk and bumped his computer out of sleep. “What have you borrowed?” he asked, distracted.

“No no, sir. Bore da,” Zero enunciated. After a beat of silence, waiting for a response, he added; “Good morning.”

Ninestein finally looked up at him, eyes narrowed in a suspicious frown. “Are you speaking a foreign language?”

“No sir. Welsh.”

Oh, it was definitely one of those days. Ninestein felt his shoulders sag, with no particular conscious control behind it. “Fine.” He let his chin come down to rest on his hand. “I’ll bite. WHY are you speaking Welsh.”

“Well, sir!” The zeroid beamed, rocking back slightly on his perch, puffing up with glee at being asked. “I thought, seeing as I was getting on a bit, I should make more of an effort to honour the language of my homeland. Turns out I’m pretty good at it, as it happens!”

“Zero.” Ninestein sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. “You were built in a lab in Japan, like every other zeroid. If anything, your ‘native language’ should be Japanese.” After a half-second of thinking space, he pointed a semi-threatening finger at him. “And don’t start speaking that, either!”

“Oh no sir, I wouldn’t do that. Lieutenant Hiro might think I was being unkind.” Zero paused, for effect. “...not to mention, I’d have to face the wrath of that twit 101, thinkin’ I was being mean to his sweetheart.”

“You pretend you can’t pronounce ‘Dix-Huit’ correctly, even when he constantly tells you how to.” Ninestein let his face rest in his hands. “But Welsh, of all languages, is the one you decide you’re going to speak fluently? Because you… think you are Welsh?”

“Ten-ten, sir! Or should I say: deg-deg.”

“I think I shoulda stayed in bed.”

--------

...and because they’re all zeroids with computers in their heads, no-one bats a single eyeshutter at the fact their commanding officer is giving them all their instructions in Welsh, now, they just get on and do it. “Oh, we’re speaking Welsh now? Okay!” Even 101 kinda rolls his eyes at him but goes along with it because who says they HAVE to speak English? They chatter in their own native electronic language all the time anyway. Welsh is just another language? (And anyway Dix-Huit curses in French all the time.)

And just in case the Welsh language alone wasn’t bad enough...

“You know what else they does a lot of in Wales, sir? SINGING!”

“-please don’t-”

“That little train was in a choir.”

“-he wasn’t real, Zero-”

“...And at least I’d do it proper, like. Not like that little twit in orbit who sings badly on purpose.”

(It’s probably only when he catches 21 trying very very hard but taking three times as long as normal to get through a sentence that Ninestein puts his foot down and says no more flaming Welsh, all right?)

[keaalu]

Filthy

Just a silly little short, for fun.

-----

Lieutenant Hiro read the message on his comms wafer for the third time.

For something so straightforward, he still didn’t quite understand it.

Parts required for repair of critical ship infrastructure.

On the face of it, everything seemed above board. Space Sergeant 101 had placed the order, and Doctor Ninestein had countersigned it, so apparently agreed with the zeroid’s assessment of ‘critical infrastructure’.

And Hiro knew that Spacehawk had incurred some minor damage a couple of days earlier – she’d passed through a small shower of micrometeorites, and a handful had made it through her shields, punching tiny holes in her exterior and destroying a handful of circuit boards and the hydraulics of an external airlock door.

But 101 had reported that the ship’s crew had promptly patched all that up. And it was hardly critical infrastructure. The gargantuan vessel probably barely even noticed it. Not to mention, if it was so critical, why had they decided they could wait forty eight whole hours for Hiro’s scheduled return to orbit?

It was already all assembled in a small crate in Treehawk, just waiting for Spacehawk’s orbit to bring it more conveniently close, and even after a good thorough rummage Hiro had zero idea what this order was all for.

Which all added up to one question: what chaos awaited him when he got back to the ship?

He scooted his glasses up to his forehead, pinched the bridge of his nose in an attempt to stave off a headache, and sighed.

“Is everything all right, Hiro?”

Mary’s voice so unexpectedly close by in the quiet made him jump and drop the wafer. “Captain Falconer?” He watched her settle onto the chair next to him. “I didn’t hear you arrive.”

“I thought you looked distracted,” she agreed, and picked up the tablet. “Is there a problem? I thought you were looking forwards to going home.”

Hiro smiled politely. “I… was. Now I should confess to being slightly anxious.” He gestured at the wafer.

“Critical parts for the ship,” she read. “Oh, yes. I heard about that. What’s the problem with it – is some of the order missing?”

“I- no. No, everything they ordered is here. I double checked it myself.”

She glanced up to meet his gaze, both eyebrows raised. So…?

“I do not understand it,” he admitted. “I cannot identify what part of the ship they could possibly be for. So I am a little worried.”

Mary covered his hand with one of hers and gave his fingers a squeeze. “You know Tiger would have let us know if there was anything to be genuinely concerned about. I’m sure it’s not anywhere near as bad as you’re imagining.”

Hiro blew a sigh out through an oh of pursed lips. “You are right, of course. I am just struggling to reassure my subconscious of that.”

The journey into orbit was uneventful, which unfortunately afforded Hiro plenty of time to dwell on his anxiety, and what he might find when he arrived.

He made it as far as the flight deck with the little wheeled crate of spare parts, his own small bag slung over his shoulder, before the source of the trouble announced itself.

“Oh!” It wasn’t quite a squeal of delight, but it was certainly approaching it. “You brought my supplies up!”

Something heavy (and… purring?) butted into his calves, and almost knocked Hiro onto his backside on top of it. Ninestein caught his arm before he could go right over.

The purring thing was obviously 101. The zeroid was almost beside himself with happiness, nuzzling his cheek against his human’s ankles like an excited spherical housecat.

“Well, of course, I-… you said it was critical so of course I brought them…?” Hiro reached down and braced a palm against his top curve, unsure if he was trying to give the zeroid a reassuring pet or just keep him from pushing him right over in his enthusiasm.

“Thank you thank you thank you! Ha ha! Oh my stars, I can get it all fixed now!”

Mystified, Hiro watched as 101 tucked himself into the little zeroid-sized cutout at the rear of the cart and sped off with the delivery of treasure, singing to himself.

He gave Ninestein a long probing look. “I feel I may have missed some important information, somewhere.”

Ninestein rolled his eyes. “His buffer is broken.”

Hiro just stared at him, for several seconds. “…what?”

“You heard.”

Hiro stared for several more seconds before rediscovering his voice. “…critical infrastructure? And you agreed with him-!”

Ninestein glanced in the direction the command zeroid had vanished off in. “You didn’t have to help bath him.”

48 hours previously…

Ninestein really didn’t know how Hiro did it, sometimes.

While the head of the Terrahawks organisation was more than happy taking his turn in charge of their orbital platform, giving the lieutenant the chance to rest and recharge (and feel a little real gravity under his feet), he by far preferred it when Zelda was actually up to something that he could see.

When it was quiet? It tended to be very quiet. Much as he enjoyed the chance to practice his ‘combat simulator’ without the others getting on his case, the quiet always put him on edge, wondering what the martians were up to. Even 101 was prone to complaining about being bored at times like these. (Ninestein had given up trying to tell zeroids that certain emotional states weren’t possible because they were machines, when the little robots had learned a lot of their behaviours from humans and humans were very definitely capable of them.)

His rotation was due to end in two days and Ninestein just Could. Not. Wait. To get back to Earth and human company. (He got the impression that 101 was awaiting the return of his own direct superior equally eagerly.)

Life still had a few cubes to throw under the wheels before they got there, though.

Ninestein hadn’t been asleep very long when the insistent braying of an alarm kicked him rudely awake. “What’s all that noise?!” He almost fell out of bed. “Are we under attack?”

“Ten-zero. Sorry, sir,” came 101’s reply, instantly. “It’s the automatic damage alarm. We were hit by micrometeorites-”

“Meteorites?!”

“Emphasis ‘micro’. The damage was negligible. A little atmospheric loss and a hydraulic system is out of use.” Beat. “Sorry for waking you. The alarms came on at the same time I was notified.”

The klaxon died with a gurgling protest.

Ninestein wiped his face and grimaced. His heart felt like a timpani drum. “Are you capable of dealing with it on your own?”

“Oh, yes sir. Easy peasy.”

Sometimes the quickest and easiest way to a straightforward life with zeroids was to let them think they knew it all, because just occasionally, they did. And 101 did usually have at least a whiff of competence about him. “Fine. Then I’ll check it in the morning.”

“Ten-ten. Good night, sir.”

“Yeah.” Ninestein sagged back against the mattress and wondered how long it would take to get his heart back into a normal rhythm. “Try not to sound the bugles in my ear anymore tonight, huh.”

“Er. Ha ha? Of course.”

Ninestein lay and stared at the ceiling for entirely too many minutes, watching the disc of earthlight from the porthole drift across it. He had been wondering if he should actually go check on how the repairs were progressing, just to give himself something to do while all the residual adrenaline wore off, when he finally managed to get back to sleep.

When he emerged from his cabin the following morning, after a night of weird dreams and not feeling particularly refreshed (even with the extra hour in bed 101 had apparently given him), any hopes for a normal morning were dashed before he even got to the flight deck.

Just as he spotted the automop trundling independently along the corridor, his heel skidded on the floor and he had to throw his arms out to catch himself against the wall. “What in spacefire-?”

The mop had already obediently cleaned up about half of it, but Spacehawk’s lighting glittered along an irregular line of something shiny and slightly opalescent drawn on the floor. He frowned at it, suspicious, and followed it to the flight deck.

An unnaturally-shiny, slightly-darker-grey 101 was already on duty, trying to look busy and avoid having to meet his commander’s probing stare.

Then Ninestein realised he wasn’t really shiny. More… slick. Glossy. With… something. And those weren’t shadows but sooty black smudges. His brow wasn’t its usual vivid scarlet but somewhat brown.

101. Was. Filthy.

Ninestein did a double-take. “What in space happened to you?”

The zeroid didn’t look up. He’d sagged forwards on his perch, studying the floor, as though deflating at the realisation he wasn’t going to escape getting called out. “So, we were hit by meteorites,” he reminded, glumly. “They only did a little bit of damage but they went through a hydraulic cable. I thought it’d be fine, because I could just get cleaned up if any got on me, but it leaked more than I expected. Then I realised I was almost out of polish. And then my buffer broke. So. Ta-da?” He gave one of his anxious laughs, which turned into a sad little descending note at the end. “…I have never been so dirty in my whole life.”

Ninestein folded his arms and sighed. “But you got the repairs done?”

“Yes sir.”

“And how about the fluid leak – does that still need clearing up?”

“Partially. I had to order more absorber. I just need your countersignature on it and it should come up on the next supply run.”

“Is the spill a hazard?”

“Ten-zero. It’s not flammable. Just slippy. Humans don’t really go down there, normally. You’re not at risk.”

With limited facial architecture, zeroid emotions were tricky to parse at the best of times, but 101 looked distinctly frustrated and miserable by the whole affair, however much he tried to be professional about it. His voice was softer than usual and his words occasionally hitched, just a little.

“Fine. I’m going to take a quick look so I can sign it off. You? Stay,” Ninestein commanded, pointing with both index fingers. “Don’t want you drawing any more grease around the ship.”

101 offered a sad noise. “Of course, sir.”

When Ninestein finally returned from his inspection, it was carrying a basin of hot water, with cleaning rags over his arm and a squirty bottle of detergent sticking out of a pocket. 101 finally shed his woe-is-me expression a little bit, perking over onto a puzzled angle.

The organisation’s commander-in-chief pulled up a chair and settled facing the zeroid’s perch. “All right. You’re going to have to give me some instructions,” he said, gruffly. “I don’t want you griping on account of me getting soapy water in something sensitive.”

“Sir, I-... what?”

“You look like you took a bath in that hydraulic fluid, and the very instant you roll off your perch you’re gonna start spreading it round the flight deck again. So, before I slip over on my ass…” He lifted one of the rags. “Cleanup time. Bearing in mind I’ve never washed one of you little idiots before and I don’t know how watertight you are.”

“I-... buh?”

Ninestein sighed and wrang out the cloth. “Fine. You seem to already have fried your vocal processor so what’s one more thing.” He let the cloth plop down on the dirty casing and began to work at washing the thin grey oil off him. “Please tell me you weren’t proposing buffing off half a gallon of hydraulic fluid.”

101 tightened his shutters until there was just a narrow gap to peer out through, but only partly to keep the water out. “I might have been?” he replied, defensively. “It’s normally good enough.”

Ninestein gave him a slightly exasperated look. “Surely you know you need soap and water to get oil off. You already programmed the automop and ordered the supplies to clean up the rest of the spill. This is basic chemistry, 101.”

“Well I’ve never needed to shower, before,” 101 protested, leaning awkwardly away. “Hiro’s almost always here to help and I don’t normally get so…” A little flinch. “…dirty.”

“You don’t have any dedicated kit up here for just plain washing on your own?” Ninestein glared. “That should be critical infrastructure. What if you get something worse than just oil on you? We have a whole deep scrub for the zeroids back at Hawknest.” He snorted. “Fine. I’ll get Hiro to design something – and Zero can send you some tips in the meantime.”

The zeroid’s shutters shot open, alarmed, and Ninestein startled backwards sharply enough to throw soapy water across the control panel. He cursed and hastily used one of the drier cloths to mop it up.

“Oh please don’t tell him! He’ll never let me forget it.” Beat. “Especially not after I called him an incorrigible scruffball last time he was up here.”

Mid-mop, Ninestein arched an eyebrow.

101 shifted slightly to look away. “Well he was! Traipsing regolith all around my nice clean ship. Do you know how harmful that stuff is?” he defended himself. “And anyway, I did let him have some of my nice polish, too. So I wasn’t exclusively rude to him.”

Ninestein watched the zeroid’s fan vents blowing bubbles, and quickly realised that if he ever heard about it, the sergeant major wouldn’t let either of them forget it. Why does I not ever get a bath from your generous hand, doctor? Does you just not love me, any more?

“Fine. I won’t tell Zero, if you don’t tell him I bathed you.”

“…deal!”

---

(My brain is obviously setting this one “early” as 101 hasn’t become “Owun” yet. And he hasn’t quite got brave enough to call Hiro “honey”.)

[keaalu]

Happy #GerryAndersonDay?

My two favourite little glitterballs are in a party mood. I have no idea what they're singing except that it'll be excruciatingly 80s.

If you got it (because you stole it), flaunt it, right 55?

(You know by the end of the night, Owun will be the one wearing the wig.)

[keaalu]

Ghosts, chapter two

Where Owun talks A LOT and makes this chapter twice as long as I intended it. Oh well.

-----------------

For several excruciatingly long seconds, the two zeroids just stared at each other. 

Built to the same standard, they were dimensionally identical, like a giant ball-bearing sliced into perfect layers, with the same scrolling scarlet optic display and protective visual shutters (currently pulled partway closed on the stranger), and asset number clear on the brow.

It felt a little – but only a little – like staring into a mirror. Owun found himself at a loss to explain why this unfamiliar zeroid seemed to be trying (badly) to mimic him? And where had he even come from? Owun was fairly sure he’d have noticed extra zeroids on board. Was this some new trickery from Zelda?

More importantly, this strange zeroid had Owun’s personal registry ident. His identification code, communication frequency, ship’s server access. Everything.

Even if someone could have snuck a whole extra zeroid aboard without him seeing them, Owun was just a few millionths of a percent off totally confident that he’d have noticed that.

The other zeroid looked just as startled to see him, rotated very slightly backwards in alarm. He was scruffier; not quite as well-cared-for, not so perfect and smooth, with a selection of little dings and tiny dents at the margins of his segments. Could do with a good bath and a polish, too, to get rid of some of the stains and scuffs. His brow-band was a muted dusky pink compared to Owun’s sports-car scarlet, like he’d been left out in the sun for too long, faded and chipped. It also lacked the sergeant’s stripes – just had his number, in black, off-centre to the left.

Owun’s number.

1 0 1

Owun revised his opinion. This wasn’t a mirror; it was how he imagined he’d look if he was a ghost. Abandoned, ignored, uncared for. Sad and scruffy, left to his own devices and as a result, rather losing interest in looking after himself. Haunting the maintenance corridors of this dead ship.

No, that was ridiculous. He gave himself a little shake. There was no such thing as ghosts. Besides, that would mean he was dead, wouldn’t it? And he sure didn’t feel dead. (Although to be fair, having only been dead once before, he didn’t have the best frame of reference for what that might feel like. That couldn’t possibly have been what that sharp sensation had been, earlier. He hadn’t blown up, by accidentally interacting with the energy source. It hadn’t been him dying dramatically and ending up in some weird machine afterlife. That was obviously ridiculous because surely that meant he was supposed to be the ghost?)

No such thing as ghosts, he emphasised to himself, still staring at the totally-not-a-ghost.

The other zeroid was the one to finally break the silence. “Who are you? Why have I never seen you before?” he said, as though hearing his mirror’s thoughts. There was a flutter of familiarity about his voice, but it was softer than Owun’s, the accent gentler and flatter. Polite and meek and inoffensive and so flaming bland. “How did you get in here?”

“Through the door? The way I always do? What’s going on?” Owun did a whole rotation on the spot. “What’s wrong with Spacehawk? Is someone playing a prank on me?”

“A pr-… no? Nothing’s wrong with it. Why do you have my number?”

Owun bristled. “Well, hey. How about we talk about why YOU have MINE?” He elevated his voice and glanced around the passageway, looking for hidden cameras. “If this is your idea of a joke, Zee-ro, you can just go stick something sharp in a power outlet!”

No-one appeared, though – and the ghost actually shushed him, urgently, looking genuinely alarmed.

“Not so loud! He’ll hear us.” He dropped his own volume and cast his gaze around himself, anxiously. “Master doesn’t like it when we play at being human. When we talk to each other. Not what we were designed for.”

Master? “Who are you talking about?” A further tingle of unease made Owun’s casing prickle with static. He couldn’t be talking about Hiro, surely. It felt absurd. Hiro would never let himself be called master. Would he?

But then Spacehawk wasn’t meant to look like this, either, was she – the big guns, the dark camouflage paint, the lack of other zeroids.

And then there was the whole… Earth’s official clock being incorrect. Or too correct. Or whatever.

This was all very, very wrong and seemed determined to get even wronger by the second.

Maybe he was dead, after all.

The ghost shifted on the spot, uneasily, and ignored the question. “Was that you calling the ship?”

“I- you heard me? Why didn’t you reply?”

“Because you sounded a bit-… like-… you sounded like-… I didn’t dare.” It was like the ghost couldn’t quite force the words out. You sounded like me. “Then Spacehawk reported that the airlock was active. I had to investigate.” An apprehensive side-to-side flutter of the optics. “I hoped it was just a fault, because Spacehawk said it was me that had triggered it, but I was on the flight deck and I knew I hadn’t.”

Owun rocked backwards, alarmed. Wrong. Wrong wrong wrong. That siren was definitely getting hard to ignore now. “That’s not possible. How can you have been on the flight deck? There’s no way Lieutenant Hiro would have just let you in there! I know humans sometimes have trouble telling us apart but anyone could have spotted that you’re not me! You’re all…” He shook his head. “-scruffy and faded! What’s Zelda even trying to do?”

“Why are you asking me that when she clearly built you?” The ghost backed off a whole rotation. “Did she send you here to replace me? How did the witch even get my command codes? Did she finally hack Spacehawk’s core? Ohh.”

…wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong…

It is, and you know it, but you can’t focus on that now, sweetie, Owun scolded himself. You have to work out what the heck IS going on. How they could have built a whole new flaming Spacehawk and put it here to trick you somehow.

You’re not dead. You’re not dead.

The ghost gave a soft whimper of fright. “I’ll be in so much trouble if he finds out you got aboard so easily and I didn’t stop you-!”

“Then we better figure this out before anyone goes anywhere, right?” Owun interrupted, trying to give the impression of confidence even if he felt a million miles away from it. “So let’s stop answering questions with more questions. We’re going round in circles and I get enough of that from Zero.” He matched stares with his ghost. “I was built in Japan, like everyone else, by humans. They gave me the codes I use to access Spacehawk’s systems. I’ve had my keys since I was commissioned. I use them every day. Your turn: where did you come from?”

“But I’d have known it they were building more. They said they’d run out of the raw materials. You can’t have-…”

Huh. Still pedantic, even as a frightened ghost.

Seeing Owun’s unimpressed expression, the impostor gave himself a little shake. “I mean. I’ve not… come from anywhere? I belong here? I’ve been here since I was first turned on. I’m the ship’s liaison?”

“Liaison? What does that even mean? You mean sergeant, right?”

The ghost gave him a very long stare, as if to say you’re the one claiming to be me, you should know. “I pass on the humans’ instructions, and ensure they are carried out. I monitor for dangers and alert the humans so they can respond to them. I was specially programmed for supervisory, organisational and observational activities.”

It did sort of feel right, Owun mused? Zelda must have programmed him using what she mined from my memories when she stole me.

But that idea only went part of the way to explaining what was going on, and there was something big missing. “And… command? Right?” he prompted. “If you’re alone, you can take charge of the situation. Command the other zeroids. Repel threats, resolve problems. Without needing to wait for the humans to get up here.” At the strange look he was getting, he added, hopefully; “…Right?”

The impostor shifted again, uncomfortably. “I’m sorry. If Zelda programmed you, that might explain why you’re so confused? I can imagine how she might not have access to enough data to make you behave convincingly but-”

“No. No! Stop talking like that!” Owun rocked forwards into a glare – vaguely insulted as well as scared, now. “There’s nothing wrong with my behaviour!”

His ghost cringed away. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to offend. I just meant, you’re not convincingly being like me. That’s all. If that was Zelda’s plan, it’s not working very well. Even if you looked more like me, you’ll never convince anyone, behaving like that.”

“I’m not trying to convince anyone anything! I don’t need to! You’re the impostor! First that debris, and now this-…” Owun’s words momentarily tailed off. A whole new alarm had started to chirp amongst all the other klaxons in his head. “It was bait, wasn’t it! To get me off the ship. She knew I’d spot you, otherwise. That was when Zelda snuck you aboard! She planted you here, to-to…” Do what, space sergeant? Replace the whole damn ship when your back was turned? He shifted, uneasily. “What is she doing that she wants to try to distract me from seeing? What’s happening out there while we’re wasting time arguing?!”

“Debris? I don’t understand. You’re scaring me, a little bit-”

You’re not the only one, Owun thought, but didn’t vocalise it. “I need to get back to the flight deck. Lieutenant Hiro needs to know about all this. He’ll never fall for whatever garbage plan Zelda’s trying. He knows who I am, and we trust each other totally. He’ll back me up. And he’ll be able to figure out what’s going on.”

“No!” The strange zeroid parked himself in the middle of the corridor. “You can’t go through there.”

Owun felt the urge to butt him out of the way. “Move over. Now!”

“Please. Don’t.” His ghost looked genuinely fearful. “Not until we’ve worked out- I mean. I’ll get in trouble if master finds you. If he finds out you got aboard on my watch, I’ll be punished-! Please.”

There was that word again: Master. And I’ll be punished. Well, that tallied with this scaredy mouse being one of Zelda’s creations.

The ghost might be a poor-quality copy of the real thing, but Owun couldn’t help that tiny kernel of sympathy crystallising in his little electronic heart for this pathetic, broken zeroid. Wherever he came from, and whatever they wanted him to do, he didn’t deserve to be so sad and scared.

Well aware that might have been part of the plan, preying on the kind nature of the earth‘s protectors, Owun nevertheless reluctantly backed down. (The alarm bells ringing in his head didn’t get any quieter.) “So what do you propose we do? We can’t stay down here forever, arguing over who’s the real 101.”

They stared at each other for several seconds.

“If Zelda made you, maybe we can help you?” the ghost offered, hesitantly. “We could fix your programming! There’s always going to be room for more zeroids here. If I say I found you, and stopped you before you could carry out your plan, that would work for both of us. I won’t get in as much trouble, and if we repair you, you won’t be under the witch’s control, any more.”

If he pretended to go along with it, would that be the key Owun needed to get this scared little ghost to come with him to talk to Hiro? “I trust that Hiro will know what to do,” he agreed, carefully. “He’s the cleverest person in the whole solar system. If either of us is broken, he can fix it. And-… he might know why everything else looks wrong, as well. Maybe we can help you, too. You don’t have to do what Zelda says, you know? Even if Zelda made you, she must have used a bad copy of my programming for it. That means you can choose-”

That turned out to have been an unexpectedly bad choice of words.

“No! No, that’s not how it works.” The ghost shuffled away backwards, shaking his head in alarm. “That’s not how it works! Zeroids do not choose. Zeroids are good robots and do what they are told. You need imaginations to make decisions and we don’t have that. I am a good zeroid. I am a good zeroid-!”

“Oh, whoa, okay! Don’t do that, don’t do that! I never said you were bad! Oh, gosh. Um.” Good job Owun, get the stranger to have a meltdown in the maintenance tubes. “Please don’t get upset. I just meant-… I just-”

Well, what did you mean? Or were you just not thinking, again. Seeing as literally nothing has gone right since you made the choice to get just that little bit too close to the thing. Maybe you’re the one who should be taking notes, and stop making decisions.

For a few seconds, the only sound was the whir of fans, trying to cool hot, stressed components.

But you’re not dead.

Are you.

Are you sure.

Suddenly feeling stupidly heavy with the weight of all this confusion squishing him against the deck, Owun rocked askew and clonked into the wall. “Ohh. What’s going on.” The ghost was right about one thing – zeroid imagination was terrible. “Why does none of this look right? Nothing makes sense any more.” He’d run out of ideas. He needed Hiro. Wanted Hiro. It all felt so difficult, on his own.

Hard to convince yourself you’re clever enough to figure it out for yourself when your own mirror image is sitting right there, staring you straight in the eye, daring you to think you have the brains for it without a genuine human imagination to help.

He could feel himself wobbling – emotionally, physically, stressed and scared.

No, no, don’t do that. Come on; you’ve done so well so far. Don’t go and spoil it all by turning into a sissy crybaby NOW. He gave himself a stern little shake. One of you needs to be the strong one and he freaks out at just the idea of making choices.

“Okay, okay,” he said to himself, then once more for luck. “Okay.” He pulsed his fans and ran cool air through his systems. “Maybe I just need to look at the ship’s databases again. If I can see a bit more, maybe I can figure this out without Hiro. At least a little bit.”

“Don’t connect to Spacehawk,” the ghost said, hastily. “Master will see you.”

“Maybe I could connect to you, then?” Owun suggested, hesitantly. “If you’ll trust me?”

“Trust you?” His ghost actually backed off a whole rotation, aghast. “You think you are me! If you’re not just really terribly genuinely confused, then Zelda sent you to replace me. What a perfect way to infiltrate our ship! Hijack my brain by uploading some malware into it!”

“Oh for goodness-… I’m not here to replace you. You have antivirus software, don’t you?”

They stared at each other for several seconds before the ghost spoke again – trying to assert some sort of authority, even though his voice trembled. “I’m keeping my firewall at full strength and I’ll disconnect you as soon as you do anything I don’t like.”

“Good. So there is a tiny bit of self-preservation about you, after all. Now sit still.” Owun quietly hunted around for a connector so they could link up.

That first connection was sharp and uncomfortable, like sticking a plug into the wrong port. Owun had to fight the urge to immediately disconnect; it felt like he’d somehow connected himself to himself, threatening to turn his thoughts into an endless feedback loop. What would normally be an exchange of confirmation data in an amiable electronic handshake between two zeroids felt more like an angry punch. Instant pushback.

Error. Duplicated code. Disconnect immediately. Feedback cascade loop imminent.

It bounced back and forth for a few microseconds, a flood of error codes overflowing out of his temporary memory and threatening to overwrite more important things. Had he just done exactly what Zelda planned, and allowed the impostor to infiltrate his brain? He hastily rejected the data transfer and clicked more firewalls up, hoping he’d been quick enough – they’d kept a bunch of over-friendly nosey cubes out, hopefully they’d keep martian-controlled zeroids out as well.

After that initial deluge passed, and the instant of sense-blindness cleared, it all felt nice and secure, actually? Not an attack – just a mistake. Nothing was needling around the edges, trying to get in. Nothing had been left behind in his brain, either – no malicious codes hidden among the scream of duplicated data.

Finally getting over that instant of icy shock, he turned to his ghost – and found he had jolted away just as hard, and now sat with his shutters closed, vibrating softly in fear.

“Hey. Hey.” Owun gave him a little bump, suddenly feeling inordinately proud of himself for just flinching a bit. So brave! (Yeah, right.) “You okay in there?”

“Fff-feedback loop-” the other zeroid stuttered, discordant. “How-how is this how is this possible. What what’s going on I can’t see what how had you got all my codes everything is wrong it’s all the same and fighting itself and what did you upload in my head I can’t see I can’t see-”

“I didn’t upload anything. It just doesn’t like how similar we are. Reject the handshake. I’m dialling down the transfer rate on my end. You’ll be fine. Shut your connection, clear your caches, and start again, just… slower.”

Owun took advantage of the second of calm while his ghost got himself back under control to assess the situation. Really get a good thorough look at the impostor’s coding.

The ghost was telling the truth, at least. He had been here for several years, ever since Spacehawk became operational. Which meant… what? What could it mean?

Then there was the fact that everything about him – apart from a very obvious missing component – was identical.

Not just a good counterfeit.

Identical.

For several seconds, they just stared at each other. Then spoke, simultaneously: “You are me.”

“But how is that possible?” the ghost demanded, before Owun could get a word in. “You can’t be me. I’m me! Why are they doing this to me?”

“I could say the same about you! Where have they been hiding you, all these years? Is that why you’re such a scruffbag, because they’ve been keeping you in a closet somewhere?”

“No? No! I haven’t been anywhere! I’ve been here, working hard, doing a good job, the whole time! And you know that because you’ve looked at my logs.” The ghost’s voice was turning into a frightened wail, now he couldn’t just dismiss Owun as a forgery. “Why are you me? Why are you me? I know they’re never happy with my work even though I try really hard to do a good job but they didn’t have to replace me!”

Still connected, Owun could feel the panic welling up inside the other zeroid.

“I could have done better! I can do better! I am a good zeroid! I don’t need to be scrapped! Especially not to replace me with the likes of you! You’re just… loud, and rude!” His words died in a helpless mew of distress.

“Well, aren’t you just a peach when you’re not hiding behind little sergeant polite-and-perfect?”

“Stop it! Don’t make light of it!” Another sound bordering on a sob. “I don’t want to be scrapped-! I am a good zeroid-!”

They were still connected, and the other zeroid’s panic was bleeding across the link. Heavy, destabilising, genuine fear, it was triggering involuntary responses in Owun’s systems, as well. Alarm flushed his circuits and made him feel like his gyroscopes were malfunctioning. Weapons systems steadily all clicked online – a low-level distracting need to plug into Spacehawk and work out where the enemy was, how to fight back, how to protect his humans. It felt like there was someone right down here with them, looming up behind him-

Owun struggled to regain control of his targeting software before he got to the point of taking potshots at the unfamiliar hardware down here. “Hey! Nobody’s getting scrapped. Why are you going right to the worst case scenario already?”

“Because you’re right here! How can this be anything at all other than the worst case scenario?!”

And it didn’t feel like overthinking – the ghost was genuinely terrified of being removed and taken apart, as a punishment.

By the humans.

No, the humans had promised, we will never take you apart. Even when he’d screwed up, granted his people had been cross, but told him not to do it again and accepted it as a learning event. The idea that this zeroid thought humans could possibly ever do anything like that gave Owun the surges.

He tried to push reassuring, stabilising thoughts across the link, even though he didn’t feel that relaxed and stable himself.

I have to get him back. Everything Owun was trying to avoid looking at, he was just going to have to deal with – otherwise this mousy little idiot was gonna end up blowing a fuse down here, and then what would they do?

“All right! You’re right! I-I think I’m not meant to be here! I might be the impostor!”

The words hurt to finally acknowledge, but had the desired effect. The ghost’s babble faded, a touch.

“I don’t even really know where here is. It all looks so familiar, but not right. Spacehawk’s too quiet, I should be able to hear more zeroids than just you.”

Fright still bled over their connection, but at least now his mirror was looking at him again, not quite so blind with fear.

“And you! We can’t possibly be the same age, with all the same code, and not know the other existed. Even if they’d hidden us from each other, for… reasons…” -you came on too strong you overbearing little asshole of course he doesn’t want you and made a replacement- “…they couldn’t possibly have kept it up for over seven years without something slipping.”

“So what is all this, then, clever clogs?” the ghost retorted, scared and hurt; finally a tiny familiar flicker of sass showing through that meek shell.

“I don’t know.” Owun sagged. “Normally I’d ask Hiro, but you said not to and I didn’t want you to go and short out. I don’t even know that this is all real. Or even if you’re real? Maybe it’s all just a simulation? Probably it’s a simulation? A complicated one, but not real.”

“Well it doesn’t feel like much of one to me. I think I feel pretty real, thank you very much.”

“No, it doesn’t, but I don’t know what one would feel like, and I don’t know how I’d know the difference. I just know that too much matches up with what I remember, but not enough. And I don’t know how all the bits that don’t match up could have been changed so fast?” Owun pondered things, for a moment. “Maybe I changed something? Maybe interacting with the energy source did something bad. Energy doesn’t just come out of nowhere, unless-… did I break reality by going near it?”

Had reality already changed, with the explosion, before he even left the ship? And was continuing to do so around him? Was he the only real thing left?

“I don’t have enough data to answer any of that,” the ghost replied, in the quiet. “And I don’t think you’d believe me even if I did.”

In an absurd impulsive show of faith, Owun dropped his firewall, leaving just enough filters up to stop that crashing assault of error codes when his systems recoiled from connecting to himself. “Well, maybe we need to both get a proper look,” he said, trying to affect a jovial tone. (Maybe it’d keep him from looking for a corner to cry in, too.) “I’ll show you mine if you show me yours.”

The ghost gave him a very serious stare, but then diverted his attention inward. Owun felt a flutter of response over the connector as he similarly dialled down his security – still only allowing access to very top-level stuff, clearly saying I don’t trust you THAT much, but enough for Owun to evaluate his capabilities.

Owun had already spotted something obvious when they’d first connected, but now took a closer look. This zeroid was not only completely unarmed, it didn’t look like he’d ever had a gun, as the requisite algorithms just weren’t there. No digital rangefinding, no strategy modules, no battle calculators. He could calculate parallax, but only to see how far away things were in relation to the ship – not to be able to then defend them from them.

The ghost spotted the same thing. “You have a weapon?”

“Of course. It’s what we were built for. Most zeroids are soldiers, right? So why don’t you have one?”

“I… don’t need one?”

“But how do you defend yourself?” Owun didn’t feel sure if he really wanted to know.

“From what?”

“From… anything dangerous? From Zelda?”

“I think if she got aboard we would have bigger problems to worry about than me not having a gun. It’s easier for the humans to have those. They can shoot for themselves, not have to rely on a machine to evaluate their options first.”

“And… when you’re… not aboard?”

“What do you mean? Why wouldn’t I be?”

“…you never leave the ship?”

“Why would I need to? It’s not what I was designed for. I’m the liaison. It’s important for me to be aboard, relaying human instructions to the others. If I wasn’t aboard, none of us would know what to do.”

Seeing how badly the other zeroid had reacted before, Owun almost didn’t want to ask. He tried to send reassuring thoughts through the link. “So does… does Lieutenant Hiro not let you make decisions like that? So you can evaluate for yourself how to keep everyone safe?”

At the sound of the man’s name, the other zeroid actually flinched, but managed to keep his head otherwise. “My master does not allow that, no. It is not the place for machines to make decisions. Only humans have the imagination needed for that.”

My master.

“He-he’s still your friend, though, right?” Owun chased. “Right? Because that’s how the universe works. We’re always going to be besties because that’s just how it is. Right?”

Please tell me he’s your friend. Even if everything else has changed, that has to be the same.

His ghost stayed silent for so long that Owun didn’t need to hear him answer. “I… would not define him as a friend,” he demurred, softly. “I am not sure I have any of those.”

A shiver of something like despair flashed through him. What the hell have you done, Owun. “What about Zero, then? If everything else is so weird and backwards, now, surely you get on with him?”

“...who?”

Owun felt cold. “What do you mean, who? Sergeant Major Zero, that noisy blustering idiot always getting us in trouble with his terrible advice? Is there no-one in charge of the earth zeroids?”

“There are no other zeroids. It’s just us up here. Thirty five of us left. We stay in orbit so we can be deployed more quickly to specific areas of the planet, or elsewhere. Well, except me.”

“Thirty five,” Owun echoed, faintly. “What happened to all the rest?”

“Destroyed in action, mostly. A few accidents. Some were faulty. The prototypes were deconstructed for research. And the humans ran out of iranium crystals.”

Zero is dead. ‘Deconstructed’. Was that a punishment, too? The concept hit Owun harder than he’d thought it would and for a few seconds, he couldn’t speak at all.

No friends. And hardly any of them left. It felt a little like one of his worst dreams, where in spite of all his best efforts everyone said he was just an annoying little pedant, and no-one liked him. Where even the humans were just humouring him, at best. Even Hiro was just putting up with him, for a quiet life. And this sad, scared little mouse was living it.

Please let this be a simulation. It’s just Zelda, torturing you for being a little round nightmare who keeps causing her problems-

“Your turn,” the ghost said, sternly, in the pause. “Or was that another trick, to get me to talk.”

Owun pushed the black thoughts to the back of his processors and gave himself a little shake. “All right.” His voice was still a little staticky, betraying his emotions, but neither called attention to it. “No secrets, right?”

He opened his memory, and let the ghost look where he liked, figuring it couldn’t be any worse than that time he’d had cubes rooting around in his brain.

The sensation was familiarly weird, individual memories being accessed without him doing it, dragging him along behind it. It was thousands of times faster than real time, but still accompanied by distracting little burst of residual emotion; a pulse of intense sorrow – a flash of bad temper – a bright spark of glee.

“I don’t recognise what you are showing me,” the ghost said, hesitating on a recent memory of the flight deck. “This is a battleship, why would there be plants-… I don’t understand?”

It took Owun a second to get his bearings again. “Lieutenant Hiro likes them. He studies them.”

“He-… he what? Plants? Dirty, untidy things like those?”

Owun felt his mirror image chase deeper, trying to understand, looking for anything coded Hiro and plants.

He obviously didn’t have very far to look – and of course he’d fetch up on one of their minor disagreements. The ghost flinched hard when he stumbled across the file, and then got stuck, rooted to the spot in it. “But his uniform is wrong. He-he’s letting you talk back to him. This is all wrong. It’s fake. Why is this even in your head?”

He clearly needed some steering. Owun carefully took charge, gently nudging him away, then on through his memories. “I need to show you what I need to save. Why it’s important to understand what I might have broken.”

First, a handful of thoughts from when he hadn’t been online for very long, just interacting with the human in orbit with him, who was giving him instructions. His director, providing cues for what to do and when; okay fine, his master. Not even a friend, really; Owun’s rudimentary intelligence far too basic to understand what that meant. His own exasperation at the way he was being tasked with talking to plants while his commander was absent, and not something which actually fell into his duty set – and what was he even meant to talk to them about? – but being rewarded with kind words and praise for doing so. Oh, I like this.

Slowly being allowed to stretch his abilities. Encouraged to think for himself. Make decisions. Make choices. What he wanted to do. How he thought he could achieve things in the most efficient and best ways. Only little things, to start with, but increasingly complex as he learned more. Growing.

And the way the human was clearly pleased to see him develop! The kind smile; the words of approval; the gentle amusement at his antics. Learning to get along together, how to make their unusual partnership work. That incredible, powerful sense of connectedness when they worked together to repel the alien menace. I am trusted. I am valued.

Recognising that he’d do anything just to be told good work, 101. Recognising that he enjoyed doing a good job because it made his human friend happy, and that made him feel light and sparkly, like something just as precious and valuable as his human’s friendship.

Recognising, at his very darkest moment, in Zelda’s claws, when it all felt too late and every one of his friends might already be doomed, that he might be in love… but using that little light to steer his way out of the dark. Recognising, when he was finally back in the safety and warmth of his adopted family, that he might actually even be loved back. Being invited to sit together with his sweetheart in those fleeting quiet moments, reading together – snuggling up under his arm, close enough to feel his bioelectric field, the soft intangible sound of his heartbeat. Quiet and content and absolutely fulfilled. Those fleeting, treasured times Hiro actually gave him a little kiss (a kiss!), lighting up a thousand pathways and making him giddy.

It felt a little like gloating, even though he wasn’t meaning to. But if this was a simulation, then maybe he could use this to steer it? And if it wasn’t, his ghost would at least have a little context and might be persuaded to help him figure it all out.

Well, maybe. If he hadn’t just made him into an enemy.

His ghost sat trembling, confused and miserable. “I don’t think I want to see anything else,” he wept, softly. “Why would you do this to me? Is it because I caught you?”

“No. Oh, gosh, no! That wasn’t it at all.” Owun leaned closer. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to look like I was boasting, but I wanted your help. They don’t even let you off the ship! I needed you to see the things that are important so you’d understand-”

“But how can this be genuine?” the ghost pleaded, softly. “That human looks like the man I know, but he would never-… he would never- I don’t understand. Humans don’t do that. Humans built us to do jobs for them. They don’t like it when we go outside our programming. We aren’t people. They don’t want us to be people!”

“And this is why we have to fix it-!”

“How do you fix something that isn’t real?” the ghost interrupted, shakily. “I think these are faked and implanted. It-it… maybe a clone. Or her master of disguise. Or an android replica. Zelda could do all of that. You-you said you thought this was a simulation. Well, there’s your proof-”

Owun gave him a small bump to get his attention back, and the ghost flinched. “Do you think Zelda would have bothered generating seven years of fake memories?”

“But-… humans-… I don’t know why you would ever think humans are nice. They’re not even nice to each other, sometimes. Certainly not to zeroids.”

“Would you show me?” Owun asked, faintly. “You don’t have to. I don’t really want to see, anyway. It sounds like your life sucks pretty hard. But I’d like to know what we’re up against. Is that all right?”

“I guess,” his ghost agreed, refusing to meet his gaze. “But just one. You don’t get to see anything else.”

Before Owun could voice his assent, the memory opened up in his head, like he was the one at the centre of it.

From the angle, he was sitting on a perch at the back of the flight deck, mostly out of the way, gaze respectfully downcast. The control room was clean, excruciatingly tidy, cold and sterile; no plants, no human touches, except a single dirty coffeemug perched on the central panel, leaving out-of-place brown drips on the console.

A human was off to one side, lounging in a chair; the ghost was clearly watching them, but only from his peripheral vision, not wanting to come across as confrontational. Owun tried to focus on the figure, but able only to relive his ghost’s memory, he couldn’t see very well. It... looked like Doctor Ninestein; the same rugged features, strong jaw, steely eyes. His uniform was predominantly black, where it should have been blue, with dark grey underlayers, and a little blue detailing.

Importantly, just like Owun’s own scared little ghost, it didn’t behave like him.

The man reminded him more of Zelda, actually.

“You’re here for them, this time?” ‘Ninestein’ challenged, with a cold smirk, jerking a thumb back over his shoulder to point at the watching zeroid. “Seriously? Run out of other ideas, or something?”

“Not exclusively,” the person on the screen replied – and speak of the devil, the voice was unmistakably Zelda’s. “But we’ve seen how you treat your little slaves, and we aren’t prepared to stand back and watch any longer.”

She was mostly hidden behind Ninestein’s head, so Owun couldn’t get a good view, but the martian android didn’t look quite so wild as Owun remembered – elderly, sure. Wrinkles you could get lost in, deep-set yellow eyes, a mane of grey hair. But neat, and official, too. Actually like the leader of a society on the run, looking for somewhere safe to settle.

“‘Slaves’? Oh please.” The human snorted. “What could you possible want those little wastes of good components for? Unless you’re thinking of doing a bit of recycling. We could do you a far better deal on the raw materials.”

“Perhaps you didn’t hear me, doctor. We intend to rescue-”

“Oh, blah blah. I heard you all right. You say rescue; I say, how flaming stupid do you think I am. They’re little idiots, sure – but they’re also little idiots chock full of sensitive data. Now, we could wipe their pea-sized brains before we handed them over-”

Zelda stiffened, and Ninestein chuckled.

“-but I guess you wouldn’t want them, then, huh?”

“I fail to see what benefit you get from being so consistently cruel to your creations. They do absolutely everything you ask, without question, and still you treat them like this?”

The doctor gave a laboured sigh, as though speaking to the school’s dimmest pupil, and leaned into the screen, resting on his elbows. “I’ll let you in on a secret,” he said, in a stage whisper. “They’re robots. It’s what they’re designed for. It doesn’t bother them because… they’re robots? They don’t have real feelings to be hurt.”

“Are you so certain of that? Because so were we – at the time. It didn’t stop us growing.”

“Right, right. Our zeroids are gonna rise up against us, huh?” Ninestein snickered and flapped a hand. “One of these days we’ll figure out why they keep trying to think for themselves and get them to stop doing it.” He shot a meaningful glance at the watching zeroid. “Then all of us will be happy. Right?

Zelda stared back, unflinching. “Since you value them so little, it won’t cause you any problems to hand them over, correct?”

“Oh no,” the ghost of Ninestein said, smirking and wagging a scolding finger. He lounged back in his chair. “No no no. That’s not how it works, crone. No-one gets anything for free, in this world. Sure, they’re garbage, but they’re our garbage. Our property. Bought and paid for with the billions we spent on their development. But hey, they’re obviously worth something to you. So.” He spread his hands, palms up. “Let’s trade. What have you got that you’re willing to hand over in exchange? My technical development specialist has been itching to get his hands on one of your ships.”

“So you can use it to further expand your empire, and subjugate yet more sentient species? No deal, doctor. My technology will not be used to aid your aggression.”

“Big words from the old hag attacking my planet.”

“Don’t blame us for the direction our relationship has taken. We came here in peace, and you immediately tried to cheat us.”

“Well, y’could just leave. No-one here’s gonna cry very hard over it.”

“We made the decision to stay here to keep an eye on you, Ninestein – you and your whole species, to protect the rest of the galaxy from humanity. And we are not leaving without your slaves. Either you release them into our care, or we will take steps to rescue them. The choice is yours.”

“Slaves!” The human laughed, throwing his head back. “So melodramatic! Next you’ll tell me you think our cars are our slaves, too. Or our cellphones. Or… smart TVs.”

“You have my ultimatum.”

“Yeah yeah I’ll take it under advisement. You know my terms. Ball’s in your court now. Bye bye, Zeldie.”

Whatever Zelda had been intending to say, Ninestein cut her off before she managed get a single word out. The call ended, and Ninestein snorted something the ghost didn’t catch and threw something at the screen. “Stupid old bat. Why can’t she find some other uninhabited planetary system to plant her meddling ass down on.”

The sound of footsteps came from one of the open corridors, and the ghost’s memories flushed with fright (but also the tiniest almost imperceptible flicker of hope. Interesting).

The man who entered looked like Hiro, superficially, and even though his ghost’s feelings went some way to drowning out his own, Owun’s own emotions did flutter uneasily. The same small stature, the same fine bone structure, nimble fingers, intelligent dark eyes. His hair was cut shorter and slicked back, and his glasses smaller, but he was every bit as handsome as the man Owun held in his own little electronic heart. Like Ninestein, his uniform was predominantly black and dark grey, but with turquoise detailing.

His manner was what marked him as different. Cold. Blunt.

“I told you to call me when you made contact with the witch,” he said, frostily.

“I know.” A shrug, one shouldered. “You were dicking around in the weapons bay, and I’d already strung her out for half an hour. I was bored.”

“Well your boredom wasted us an opportunity, again.”

A flash of something dark crossed the older man’s features. “Watch your manners, lieutenant. Being a genius doesn’t mean you get to be a mouthy little shit as well.”

Hiro stiffened, very slightly, before inclining his head. “Of course. My apologies.” The ghost watched silently as the lieutenant slowly unclenched his fingers from the fist they had closed into. “Did she give you anything useful?”

“Define ‘useful’.” Ninestein rolled a shoulder in a shrug. “She’s a sentimental idiot who thinks she’s in some position of strength, somehow, because we haven’t killed each other yet?” He smirked. “But. These little idiots have found themselves a whole new place in the universe.”

“Are you talking about our zeroids? What possible use could they have?”

“As bargaining chips. She seems to think they’re sentient-”

“Well, it’s a fair possibility-

“-and she wants us to give them up. Well, you’ve been itching to get your hands on her technology for months. We can stand to lose a zeroid or two in the process.” Ninestein gave the ghost a long, contemplative look; the zeroid kept his gaze respectfully downcast, confused and alarmed by the direction the conversation was going, trying to deny he understood what his master was saying. “If she goes for it, we could give them a little extra gift to take along with them, too.”

Hiro was harder to deny. “Are you suggesting we put explosives inside their casings?” He looked unimpressed. “You surely don’t think she won’t immediately see that?”

“Probably? We can still detonate one or two, though. That’ll sure distract her. And while she’s running around in a panic, we help ourselves to what we want.”

“Fine.” Hiro stepped into the way. “But not the liaison. I need it to operate the ship, and it has all our inventory details. Blow up one of the others if you have to.”

Owun felt a tickle of relief and gratitude from his mirror, followed in short order by a pulse of intense guilt-

The recording suddenly stopped and kicked him back to the real world.

Dumped abruptly out of the memory, Owun just sat, for several seconds, listening to the sound of his own fans, roaring with effort, hot and scared and stressed.

“That was-… that was… oh gosh.” He rocked forwards to lean against his mirror. “I’m sorry,” he said, quietly. “I’m sorry.”

“No secrets, huh,” his ghost said, faintly. “I have to go now. Master wants to know where I am.”

That would explain the unceremonious end to the recording – the ghost had kicked him out. “Don’t tell him I’m aboard yet?”

“I won’t.”

“Promise?”

“I-…” The optics flickered and fluttered back and forth, briefly. “I promise. At least… as long as I can.”

Owun could tell that being asked to promise was probably the worst thing he could have requested, because this other zeroid seemed almost as scared of breaking a promise as he was of the humans here. If that weird anti-Hiro asked him, it put him between a rock and a hard place – break the promise, or defy a human? (But Owun knew who would win in that battle. He just had to hope his ghost wouldn’t give anything away that would make the human ask him. Not immediately, anyway.)

“I have to go. But I’ll come back at some point,” the sad little ghost said. “Don’t go anywhere. He might find you. The other zeroids might find you, as well, but I’ll tell them to keep our promise. I know I can trust them, and the humans never talk to them anyway.”

“We’ll fix this,” Owun assured him. “Whatever I did, we’ll work it out, and put it back how it was. I promise.”

“Hmm.”

Owun watched his ghost trundle away. The sound of his movement echoed through the empty corridors for a long time, but eventually faded to nothing, leaving Owun alone and despondent in the guts of this dead ship.

He backed up into a familiar little alcove in the tubes, where there was a small engineering break in the tightly-massed cables and components.

Before he’d somehow broken the world, he’d used this little clear space as his ‘cabin’, for a while – the place where he’d kept his handful of personal possessions, and his treasures; nice polishes and buffing tools; mementoes from Carrie’s wedding; a preserved flower from murderpea; ticket stubs; a couple of hats and bow ties; old-fashioned photographs. (Until Hiro told him to stop being ridiculous and keep his treasures in the cabin he’d quietly invited him to share, instead. Their cabin.)

This ‘cabin’ was empty, apart from a few (very well-used) tools for personal maintenance, and a neatly stacked pile of ragged cleaning cloths that looked like they’d only succeed at putting dirt on, not clean it off. No way would zeroids in this backwards universe get to have treasures.

A whole avalanche of wrong things were hanging over his head, now. The whole universe was wrong. Like he’d somehow reversed its polarity. If he wasn’t dead, then… what? How was he still alive? That sharp sensation had been Zelda knocking him out, and when he woke up, he was plugged into a computer simulation? Where there was a scared little other-him to make him sympathetic, and a nice-Zelda who would try to get him to do something? Betray some secrets of some sort?

But why would she need to, if she had his whole brain already?

Hiro would have known what was happening, but now he didn’t even dare go near him to ask.

Why did you even have to go near that stupid thing? he despaired. Hiro was programming probes to do it for you! And now you’ve gone and screwed this all up big time. You’ve lost everyone and everything and made it all into a hideous parody of what it’s meant to be.

It upset him more than he thought it would – that something he had done, something he had broken, had changed the course of time and now there was a him and a Hiro who not only weren’t friends, but the Hiro in this universe was actively unkind to him. This Hiro was cruel and didn’t care about the little robot who tried so hard to be useful, wanted so badly to get the occasional scrap of praise, a little recognition for a job well done.

“Oh, what have I done?” he despaired, quietly. “How am I ever going to fix this when I don’t even know what ‘this’ is?”

-----

“So, Hiro. I want it once more, from the top.” Ninestein folded his arms, and sighed. “You lost Space Sergeant 101 again. Then what happened?”

Hiro sat on a stool behind the main bank of Spacehawk’s controls, next to the command perch, on which 17 sat waiting for instructions. The senior crew probably didn’t need to have joined him in orbit, but he appreciated their company.

“He was only meant to be fetching in some debris,” the lieutenant said, tiredly, palms cupped around the mug of tea Ninestein had made for him – far stronger and sweeter than he normally took it, but it bolstered his mood a little. “So we could analyse it and work out what it was. Instead, he seems to have passed through a wormhole.”

“To where?”

“I-…” Hiro gave a curt sigh, cast his gaze to the heavens, and wafted a hand. “I don’t know. Apart from that it does not appear to be anywhere in our universe.”

The two other officers exchanged looks.

“That’s a bold claim,” Mary cautioned. “Your justification?”

“It should become clear as I show you what we recorded.” Hiro nodded to 17, who brought the images up on the display. “I was looking at the wider picture, so we have lost some detail towards the beginning,” he apologised. “I wasn’t expecting to need anything else, at the time.”

The three zeroids were easily visible as bright dots in the distance, although it was hard to pick out the specifics of what they were up to. Owun guided a piece of the debris over to 76, and sent him back to Spacehawk, towing it behind him. 22 stayed behind, watching and waiting for his own instructions.

Owun turned on his operating lights, and moved closer to the dust, and-

-vanished.

It was like he’d gone behind an invisible wall. No dramatic flash of light, or little rippling shockwave, or even any disturbance in the dust. Just like… going through a door. One second he was there, and the next, he’d disappeared.

22 dithered for a few minutes, not sure what to do, until Hiro spotted him on his own and called him back.

“Since then, I have sent three probes. The first I did not program to return, I wanted merely to see if there was genuinely something there. It went through the disturbance, but it was lost immediately.” Hiro gestured to 17 who skipped the footage forwards. “The second I had on personal remote control. I hoped to explore the disturbance, a little? It went through it, but I immediately lost contact. I can only conclude that communications of any kind do not pass through, which is why we lost contact with 101.”

“You said you sent three probes,” Ninestein reminded, while Hiro paused to think.

“Yes. The third… well, I will show you its footage. I programmed it to pass through, spend thirty seconds on the opposite side, and then to return on the exact same path. Please bear that in mind as you watch.”

The screen showed the probe’s visual recording. It advanced on the dissipating patch of dust; the debris had long since passed well out of range. Visually, there was nothing at all to tell the probe was even moving-

There was a little flicker of light and a half-second of disturbance, but the footage quickly cleared, to reveal an unchanged starscape. It was impossible to tell the probe had gone through anything at all. Mary swapped a glance with Ninestein, but both officers remained silent.

The stars began to shift around to the right as the probe stopped and began to turn, to return to the ship. In the distance, small and weirdly shadowed but recognisable, Spacehawk slowly came into view.

“That looks a lot further away than it should be,” Mary started, cautiously. “How fast was your probe travelling…?”

The probe passed back through the patch of disturbance with another of those fractional visual distortions, and Spacehawk jumped forwards to fill its screen. Both Ninestein and Mary took a large step backwards, surprised.

“Hiro, what just happened?” the doctor challenged.

“There is a Spacehawk there which is not us. The debris that we found carried our insignia, but we did not do anything to create it. I believe the only explanation is that we have encountered a doorway to a parallel universe.” Hiro studied the desk beneath his fingers for a few seconds before putting faith in his belief; “an artificially created doorway.”

“A doorway that the people on the opposite side opened,” Ninestein finished the sentence for him, and blew out a long breath through pursed lips. “Flaming thunderbolts.” He stared at the screen for several seconds. “I guess the question we should now be asking is, did they mean to, and do they know they did.”

“If they find our equipment, maybe.” Hiro’s shoulders had already sagged. “Have we broadcast our presence to them?”

“Don’t blame yourself.” Mary settled a reassuring hand on his back. “Sending probes was unavoidable – you had to work out what that disturbance was somehow.”

Ninestein gave them a loaded glance. “101 hasn’t come back, though.”

“No.” Hiro drew a long breath. “The pre-programmed probe returned safely. We must conclude that something stopped 101 doing the same. Perhaps he did not understand what he had encountered? He had only a single point of data, where we now have four. Perhaps he chose instead to approach the… version of Spacehawk that he could see?”

“Why would he do that?” Mary wondered.

“It was the only option he had? He would have known something was wrong with it,” Hiro nodded along with his own hypothesis, “but we are asking a lot from zeroid imagination to expect him to have independently come up with the idea of a parallel universe. I dare not imagine what he thinks might have happened.”

“So, he might still be with them?”

“…perhaps.” Hiro’s confirmation was soft; Mary gave his shoulder a small squeeze.

“Well, if there is another Spacehawk on that side, then there is a strong likelihood there are also more zeroids. It feels strange to think there might be duplicates of us, as well, but we have to consider that. Which I hope all adds up to him being safe and among friends, and they’re just as confused as us.”

Hiro found a small smile for her, but it quickly withered. “I hope you’re correct, and that is the only reason he has not returned.”

Ninestein pursed his lips, thoughtfully. “I guess it all depends on how friendly they might be and what their intentions are. What do we actually know about these… other us-s?”

“Basically? Nothing. The cosmology looks identical, they have a vessel like Spacehawk, and they use the same insignia, and… well, that is it. I do not even know if they are human.”

“I don’t think it’d be unfair to assume that,” Ninestein offered, with a small smile. “At least until we get more data and find out they’re lizard-men or something. I’m more immediately concerned with whether there is another Zelda on that side. Our queen of Mars might have a tendency towards incompetence, but we’d struggle to repel a battle fleet double the size of what she has now.” He ran a hand through his hair. “Any thoughts on what we’re gonna do about this?”

“The obvious answer would appear to be that someone else needs to go through, commander. Someone with enough spark of curiosity to try and find out what is going on, so… not a zeroid.” Hiro drew a long breath to steady himself. “As least senior, I am happy for that to be me. I will record a message on the other side to confirm I am safe, and send it back to you.”

“Hiro…” Ninestein raised a cautionary hand. “Ignoring the fact you’re a civilian, so far you’ve exclusively sent electronics through. We have no idea what this will do to biological tissues.”

“That is… not strictly correct. I sent a zinnia seedling with the last probe.” Hiro demonstrated the little plant on the central console. “It seems quite healthy.”

“A baby plant is a bit of an order of magnitude different to a whole adult human, don’t you think?”

“We do share a lot of DNA.”

“…you’re determined to go, aren’t you.”

“I am. And before you say anything…” Hiro put up his hands. “I am not proposing this exclusively because I want to find my friend. Whatever this is…? We do not know what our counterparts on the other side did to create it, but I do know that we have to close it. The longer we take, and the more probes we send, the greater the certainty our counterparts on the far side will spot us.”

“You seem to be assuming they’re a threat. They may be willing to help us against Zelda.”

“I accept that is a possibility? But they have done something significant enough and energetic enough that it has somehow torn a hole between universes.” Hiro gave his two senior colleagues a long, sombre look. “That does not feel like the action of someone conducting peaceful scientific research. If it was intentional – why? And if it was a weapon? It must have been phenomenally powerful. We cannot safely assume their history and ours have followed similar trajectories. Their Zelda may be worse. Or they may have worse than Zelda.”

Ninestein pursed his lips. “Hmm.”

“I don’t like the idea of you going alone,” Mary added. “To say you’ll be vulnerable is an understatement.”

“It may surprise you, but I am not particularly keen on that part myself. But, someone has to, captain – and not just for Owun.” Hiro found a smile. “Hawklet is small. That reduces my chances of immediately being spotted. And I should confess to having just a tiny bit of scientific curiosity.”

“All right.” Ninestein put his hands up. “You’ve made your case. We’ve seen your evidence. Now I’m going to discuss it with Mary. As for you…” He waved a finger in a vaguely threatening way. “Go get some sleep, already.”

“Yes, doctor.” Hiro inclined his head, and stepped away.

Mary caught his sleeve as he passed, and he hesitated in the doorway to his living quarters.

“You’re going to be putting yourself at a very great personal risk, for a zeroid,” she cautioned, softly. “We could do a lot more research from this side before risking human lives by going through it.”

“Perhaps, captain.” He gave her a long sad smile. “But you know I can not – will not – abandon him there. You know as well as I do that zeroids are not just robots. Not any more.”

“Are you letting your bias colour your judgement, perhaps? I know how you feel about each other.”

“Would we abandon a human there?” Hiro’s frown was gently castigating. “Would you abandon the sergeant major?”

“…I acknowledge the point, and no, I wouldn’t – but that’s not what I’m saying. I’m just asking you to consider doing a little more research before you go blundering on through.”

“How, captain?” Hiro laughed, frustratedly. “My best friend is lost and truly alone on the wrong side of this… whatever it is. Wormhole? Doorway? And we have proved that we cannot see through it, so precisely what do you propose we can achieve? More probes, that have to be fully programmed first, and might be intercepted? Another zeroid?”

Mary held his arms, one hand on the outside of each shoulder. “There could also be deadly danger on the other side. Tiger and I need to be satisfied that this is the right decision.” She sighed. “And I think, for all that I hate it, we will probably agree with you. But let us at least talk about it.”

-----

“Okay, Hiro. One more time, and this time explain it like you’re talking to one of the jackasses at NASA who keep trying to cut our funding. Whaddaya mean, you have thirty six zeroids on board?”

[keaalu]

WIP Wednesday ('Kestrel Kestrel' snippet)

Just wanted to upload a little bit of what I'm working on, as I haven't shared much for a few weeks. I'm trying to work out how to get "Square Pegs" started, right now - lots of notes for it, but still not quite got that lead-in under control yet.

So instead, here is a bit from one of the other things I'm working on! I do have a chapter in the works but I need to get over a couple of lumps in the road there as well.

----------------

Hiro lowered his voice, to something too soft for Ninestein to pick up on. “Owun?”

101 was instantly at his side. “Yes sir?”

Hiro swallowed. “Forgive me. Doctor Ninestein would like you to try something, which only you have the experience and ability to do. I… mostly concur, but I do not want to force you. It will put you at considerable risk. I only want you to agree if you think it is within your capability, and you are happy to do it. Not just because we asked you to.”

101 leaned into his hands. “Well, thank you for thinking about me. But this is what you built us for. Dangerous situations humans can’t go into.”

“At the time, I had not realised that I was building my best friend,” Hiro reminded him, quietly.

“I hope that doesn’t mean you woulda done anything different. I like how you built me.”

“I like how I built you, too, even if I don’t really know how I did it. And it’s why I’d like you to stay that way. I don’t know if I could do it again. That I repaired you once before was mostly down to good luck. I could not abide the thought of you being injured on my behest.”

“Well, maybe the sergeant major will finally have something positive to say about me, if I do it,” 101 mused, and halfheartedly mimicked Zero's bombastic tones; “Good work, 101, you lovely boy, you.”

Hiro smiled, fractionally. “Is my praise no longer adequate?”

101 smiled back and canted his brow, shyly. “Your praise is like oxygen.” His expression flickered and the smile faded a touch. “But just once I would like the head zeroid of the fleet to say something nice about me, and not just call me a scared little sissy hiding up in orbit because I’m not man enough to cope with anything actually scary and dangerous on Earth. Even if it is true.”

“‘True’?” Hiro gave him a sort of affectionately-chastising glare. “I think someone is on a fishing expedition, again.”

“Hmm!”

“Well you know I think you are very brave.”

“Aw.” 101 leaned into the human’s hands. “Flattery will get you everywhere, Hiro. Even if I think you might be a teeny tiny bit biased.”

“Now where have I heard that before.”

101 purred his fans and rubbed his cheek against Hiro’s fingers, like a spherical housecat. “Okay!” He gave a little wiggle in place, as though digging in and getting himself comfortable, and said, determined; “I’ll do it.”

“I haven’t told you what it is, yet.”

“No. You didn’t even want to ask me, which means you don’t want me to do it, which means it’s dangerous, but you still asked, which means it’s important. And I'm not going to sit back and watch as everyone else puts themselves in the line of fire when Miss Kate needs us.” 101 gave a little firm nod of assent. “What do you want me to do.”

Hiro exhaled softly. “We need you to upload your awareness into a cube.”

101 was silent for several seconds. “…what?”

“You told us that cubes network. They don’t rely on their brains being physically present to operate their bodies. You have experience in how cubes work, so could you do the same? Could you reconnect with Mars, and use a cube body to move around without Zelda knowing?”

“I never actually did that, last time. I was always just me, in my own brain, in a new casing.” 101’s stare hunted off as he thought about it. “I guess I could try. But they’ll be watching me the whole way.” He looked back up. “What did you want me to do that for?”

“I’d like to see the technology. Having the software is invaluable, but without seeing what it needs to operate, I feel like it might take a while to construct our own hardware to program the nanobots. I’d like some close-up images of the internal hardware of the server tower, if you can get it. If not, just…” Hiro clasped his palms together. “Anything at all that you can get hold of. We are running out of time, on a clock on which we cannot even see the digits.”

“It’s just another game,” Ninestein said, reminding them he was still there. “They’ll play along with ‘their’ sphere, I’m sure.”

101 gave him a very long wary look before directing his attention back at Hiro. “All right. Just make sure you’re ready to yank my plug, honey,” he said, droll.

Hiro promptly went into an unexpected coughing fit, and Ninestein gave them both a loaded glare.

Acting oblivious, 101 opened a subspace connection, and singsonged; “All ri-ight. Here we go-o!”

[keaalu]

"How old actually ARE you, Zero?"

"Well, now, I doesn't have fingers to count on, but if I was five in 1986, then by my calculations, I is…" His eyes scrolled for a moment or two. "…at least six."

A wild birthday zeroid has appeared

[keaalu]

A wild birthday zeroid has appeared

[keaalu]

Kintsugi Twins

One of these days I'll see a "Flash Fiction Friday" prompt before the week is almost over. And do it so it fits within the requirements, as this is far too long. But it was inspired by [#FFF296 Before the party's over]

-----------------------

It was already the wrong side of 1am.

Only now that Carrie and her new husband had departed for the airport, and the final reception guests were starting to filter away to their hotel rooms or transport or… wherever… did Laine feel like she was allowed to start to relax.

Carrie was no bridezilla, but keeping everything running smoothly for her friend had left Laine feeling like she’d just run several marathons, all at the same time, with each limb.

She kicked off her fancy shoes, then flopped into an armchair, like a marionette with her strings cut. Then sighed, and grunted, and squirmed in search of a comfortable position; the chair had obviously been picked more for its fancy aesthetics than its soft cushions.

A little electronic squeak from somewhere at ground level advertised that she had a visitor. Laine cracked an eye open a millimetre or two, and found Owun smiling optimistically up at her.

“Hi, kintsugi twin!” he chirped.

“We’re still doing that, are we?” She smiled at him, anyway. “I thought you guys had already gone.”

“Ugh. No. Our driver’s stuck in traffic.” He offered a full-body eyeroll. “He thinks he’s gonna be at least thirty more minutes.”

“Your driver! Get you, sergeant posh.”

“Oh, ha ha. You know who I mean. We could hardly park our spaceship in the walled garden, could we.” The zeroid perked over onto an angle, like a dog with its head cocked. “Can I come up there with you while we wait?”

“You know this is just an armchair, right?” She looked down at the little triangle of free space drawn out by her bent legs. “There’s not a lot of room.”

“Well, isn’t it a good job I’m not very big?”

“Maybe – but you are heavy.”

He made a little faux-outraged noise. “Girl, what are you implying.”

She laughed and held out a hand. “Fine. Come on then. What’s one more thing to add to my list of reasons to be exhausted.”

“Great!” He shifted briefly from side to side, calculating his angle, then launched himself in one of those mystifying standing-start jumps and plonked himself neatly down in the little empty spot on the cushion. “There, see? Perfect.” He wiggled in place like a little bird getting comfortable. “Thank you.”

She smiled tiredly at him and stroked a palm over his top curve. “Where’s your corsage gone?”

“In Hiro’s pocket. I was squishing it. Apparently even silk flowers don’t last if you keep rolling on them.” He offered a little descending note. “My bowtie is a lost cause.”

“Aw, it’s just a bit dirty and creased. It’ll come back up nice. And hopefully there’s good memories to go along with why.”

“Good point. There’s definitely plenty of those!”

She kept her hand moving over his silken exterior; the cool metal felt nice under her fingers and she could feel the subtle whir of his fans. “I’m glad your boss let you come. Wouldn’t have been the same without our little space bestie.”

Owun leaned into her touch. “Flatterer.”

“Don’t you dare act like you’re not loving all the attention.”

“Ha! Guilty as charged.” His fans had struck up a contented purr, like a little spherical silver housecat. “I hope Carrie didn’t feel like I was taking over.”

“Oh, she’d have absolutely told you, don’t you worry about that!” Laine carefully mapped her fingers along the long irregular gold lines of the repairs stretching up over his brow. “I never asked. Does that still hurt?”

“No. It’s fixed. If I need spare parts, they don’t always fit straight away, but it’s not painful. Why would it be?” He looked up at her. “…does yours?”

Absently, Laine pursed her lips and rubbed the long thread of pale surgical scar running along her collarbone, almost hidden under the new tattoo. “Sometimes. I think it’s always going to be a bit stiff. It’s worse when it gets cold, though. It’s been fine today.” She tried for a rueful smile but it came out more of a grimace. “Human bodies are good at fixing themselves but don’t always repair quite so well as little robots.”

He hummed quietly and leaned against her. “I’m sorry.”

“Let’s not start that again, huh? I just got an axe in the collarbone. You got shot in the head and actually died, for a little while.” She sighed, quietly. “I thought that all meant we’d lost you forever, you know?”

“We only knew each other five days, back then.”

“I know. But we nearly died together, too. I think I’m entitled to say we have a connection bigger than just acquaintances.”

“What you mean is, I almost got you killed,” he corrected, quietly. “You should still be cross with me, really. I screwed up and that was why you were hurt.”

“Aw, Polly.” Laine sighed, using the name they’d given him when he was still just cute-little-mystery-amnesiac-roof-breaker and not fierce-little-warrior-protecting-earth-from-aliens. “Don’t make me say I love you out loud, because I’ll feel very stupid if I have to.” She propped her head on one hand, keeping the other palm over his scar. The alloy had warmed with the heat from her palm and she knew he’d be able to feel her heartbeat through it. She found a smile; tired and a little sad. “I’m glad you have your lovely Hiro. Someone to look after, to be looked after by. Otherwise I might have been forced to stage some sort of rescue mission, so I could make sure you weren’t lonely. Maybe even have you for myself. Even if I’m not really your type.” Her smile grew a little more genuine, and a touch ironic. “I mean okay, I don’t have a spaceship either. I only learned to drive a car six months ago. But we’d have figured something out.”

He just sat silently looking up at her, for a little while.

She felt her cheeks get warm. Couldn’t even blame it on the booze, this time, because as designated wedding-controller she’d been strictly teetotal. “Now I’m making things awkward, huh.”

“Naw.” He nuzzled into her hand. “You were my first friend outside of work. You’ll always be my bestie. I mean, all you guys are special and so lovely, when I’m just a little fusspot who keeps correcting you. I never even dreamed I might have actual friends that weren’t just people I worked with!” He hummed a small laugh. “People say not to have favourites but you’re one of mine. Love doesn’t have to be romantic, right? Maybe… maybe that’s not what you wanna hear, but.” He pressed his weight into her hand. “I do love you too.”

“Kintsugi twins,” she agreed, tiredly, and they both laughed.

When Hiro finally escaped the drunken researcher monopolising all his time at the buffet table, and came through with a small plate of leftover nibbles and a drink, it was to find his friends curled up and snoozing on the armchair together. Laine had shed her circlet of flowers and placed it carefully on Owun's head instead; it wasn't quite big enough to fit properly, but he looked pleased as punch to be wearing it.

Laine had drifted into a doze with her hand on his casing. Owun came rapidly back to alertness at seeing his companion, and watched Hiro approach with a thinly veiled desire to wiggle excitedly. “Hi Hiro!” he whispered.

Hiro leaned down and kissed his brow, careful not to drop food or wake his sleeping friend. “Very pretty.”

“Aw! Thank youuu.”

Hiro settled on the floor in front of the chair, and leaned back against it. “Hudson still has not escaped the ring road,” he supplied, tiredly. “He has given up trying to estimate how long he will take to escape the maze of traffic lights without breaking the law.”

“It’s waay past midnight?” Owun reminded, carefully. “How is there still that much traffic?”

“Perhaps we should have taken up the offer of a room here, after all.”

Owun chirped a laugh. “That would have been fun!”

“Hm!” Hiro glanced back at him, amused. “Behave yourself.”

“Ha ha.” Owun sat quietly for several seconds, mulling something over, before finally speaking: “I think it would be nice for Laine to be chief bridesmaid at our wedding, don’t you?”

Hiro choked on his drink. “Our what-?!”

[keaalu]

Meteoric, Epilogue

Finally, we are finished! (I actually finished a thing! Everyone dies of shock)

-----

Laine didn’t remember much of the following day or so.

She vaguely remembered gently being extracted from that tiny gap below the loading dock – too shocked and exhausted to do much more than whimper about her smashed collarbone as the friendly stranger helped her squirm free. She vaguely remembered lots of green uniforms, and black and white ones, and being asked questions she wasn’t sure how to answer, and not really caring about any of it anyway. She vaguely remembered being told they were taking her to hospital, and that she wasn’t in a fit state to refuse, of being connected to bags of blood and fluid and medicine, and of the ambulance doors closing before she could impress on anyone that she needed to check if Polly would be okay. That they needed to take him with them because he was dying, he needed urgent medical treatment as well! Don’t just leave him, oh god please-…

The next thing she really remembered was waking up the next day, in a sterile white hospital bed, aching all over and covered in stitches, with her tearful flatmates all around – but only them.

But she remembered vividly that final sight of her small friend, surrounded by people in unfamiliar uniforms in blues and pinks, apparently trying to help him while he bleeped and shuddered and burned… and two more of those small spherical robots.

One of those same people – a beautiful black lady with amazing lilac hair and a sad smile – had visited her in hospital. She reminded her of someone famous, but in that painkiller-fuddled fog Laine couldn’t work out where from. She was very kind, very understanding, and completely obstructive.

All Laine really wanted to know was is Polly OK? Had they managed to fix him? Her last sight before the ambulance doors had closed and she’d passed out anyway had been of a smoking ruin.

“I’m really sorry. I can’t tell you anything. But please accept our deepest thanks. I really don’t think we’d have got him back if it hadn’t been for you and your friends.”

The fact her visitor wouldn’t tell her anything only reinforced her certainty that they’d let him die.

Just a robot, she imagined. Why do you care. You barely knew him five days. We have others. Just needed to get him back to protect the information he contained.

She’d wanted to scream. He’s my friend. Please just tell me how he is!

But then the nurses had come in with a new drip of medicines and the lady had melted away in the chaos and she’d lost her chance and… that was that, really.

The last few days had already proved that whoever these people were, they were impossible to get in contact with. If even Polly hadn’t succeeded in contacting them, and he was an actual part of their organisation, however was she meant to? How did you get in contact with people who didn’t actually seem to exist?

She’d watched the news in a haze of painkillers, and seen coverage of the “accidental trigger of the capital’s emergency alert signal”, and knew it had been no accident. Her friend, screaming for help in the language he could best master, amplified by the cellular network, blasting a mayday out across every handset he could access.

And she didn’t even know if he was still alive.

She finally left hospital after four days, with her arm in a sling and her emotions in the dirt and a titanium plate bolted to what remained of her smashed collarbone, dosed up with painkillers and the remains of a course of antibiotics, feeling like she’d just woken out of a terrible nightmare, not entirely certain what day of the week it even was. She felt too tired and numb to cry as much as she felt he deserved.

She got home, and went to bed, and fell apart.

They’d tried so hard to get him home, and it had all counted for nothing, in the end, because he’d died anyway. Their quirky, friendly little mystery, with whom they’d all totally fallen in love, who in spite of everything had proved himself to be a fearless little lion inside that shiny round casing, when it counted most.

And not only had she not managed to save him, he’d sacrificed himself to save her, when he wouldn’t even have been out there in the first place if she hadn’t antagonised Tark. Already sick and hollow with grief, the extra weight of blame squashed her into her mattress and refused to let her back up.

She should have taken him straight to the police on Wednesday morning. Not got attached. Let the cops deal with it.

The world carried on as normal outside her door.

Good to her word, the super-glam maybe-popstar lady from the hospital dealt with the police. Tark was being dealt with under counter-terror legislation, with a side order of handling stolen goods.

Builders had visited and repaired all Polly’s damage before she even got out of hospital. It was like he’d never been there.

Her classmates continued to bring her coursework. (Sigh.) Her lecturers had agreed an extension to her lab work; one had made an off-colour joke about no other students getting an axe in the shoulder for the sake of an extension, which half the cohort then submitted a formal complaint about.

She finished her antibiotics after five days, and had her stitches removed after ten.

And began to think she had in fact actually hallucinated the whole thing, after all.

On day sixteen she decided she’d been wallowing in the murk for long enough, and got up.

‘Normality’ felt weird. She kept expecting to see Polly on the couch, grumbling that her laptop was too slow and his batteries wouldn’t hold a charge properly and please don’t get grease on him from your gross sandwiches, Jaxon.

She’d barely known him five days and it felt like an entire lifetime. She’d been mourning the little guy for longer than she’d actually known him; how was that for an irony.

…On day eighteen, something new happened.

“Guys, guys!” Laine launched out of her room barely dressed, screaming and waving her tablet. “He sent me an email! He sent me an email-! He’s alive!!”

Startled out of their pervasive torpor by her screaming, Laine’s flatmates all crowded around her.

“You don’t think they’d let him just email you, do you?” Mina half-scolded, unable to quite hide the excitement bubbling up under her skin, trying to turn the screen towards herself. “Have you read it? This could be just some… psy op.”

Laine turned the screen towards them to see the little selfie attached – probably taken with the little robot’s own optical software, as the image had the subtle distorted haze of a reflection on an uneven surface.

But there, perched on a tall metal plinth next to a vast control bank, was their Polly. The roughly-patched edges of an unfinished repair were visible running up over his left brow, but he was still neatly polished and positively beaming. In the background were – mystifyingly – an entire jungle of exotic flowers, and a human figure with its back to the camera tending to them. On the control panel was one of those jokey coffee mugs, stuffed full of everything except coffee, reading World’s Best Secretary (to which someone had added the word “space” between “best” and “secretary”).

It was a text email, not a voice recording, but it absolutely sounded like the little round person they’d got to know.

Even Mina was finally satisfied...

Hi-ii guys, guess who-oo!

Guess who has his memory back!

I’m not meant to talk to you normal folk so no telling my boss, okay? But they wouldn’t tell me if they told you I was OK so I figured, if you want a job doing properly, you just gotta do it yourself, right?

I could not just fall back out of your lives without saying thank you thank you thank you a million thank yous for helping me and keeping me safe and off some techbro’s dissecting bench.

Oh my stars I’m SO SORRY it took me so long to get back to you! I don’t want to be presumptuous and assume you’d been worried, but I can’t imagine how worried you must have been with the unintentional (maybe?) news blackout we had going on. I’ve kinda been stuck in hospital having my head fixed, and didn’t actually know how long it had been until a few days ago.

Getting brain damage off your roof actually saved my life. It broke the connection between my memories and the rest of my databases, so when I burned out so spectacularly from getting shot (I guess I have a flair for the dramatic??), it only wrecked some of the replaceable stuff. (We’re working on getting that all put back but even with old backups it’s taking for-ev-er.)

Enough with the excuses, Polly. I hope you’re all okay!

Laine, I might have hacked the hospital computers to find out your info and oh gosh that sounded so much worse than I thought it was. I’m so sorry I didn’t stop him before he hurt you! I hope you can forgive me. I hope you’re feeling better. (Please tell me you’re feeling better?)

I know we talked about whether I’d be allowed to keep these memories, and guess what – my humans didn’t just say I could keep my memories, but that they were important to keep! For my emotional development or something? I’m not sure how that works when there are some things I’m not sure I like very much at all, but my memories of you all are amazing and I am keeping them safe forever.

So here’s the goss I’m sure you’re all super excited to know. Who actually is that pedantic little ball who punched a hole in your roof and then caused you all a bunch of drama. Here we go.

I am the administrator and second in command of an orbital platform tasked with keeping the planet safe from extra-terrestrial threats! Amazing, right? I almost didn’t believe it myself when they reconnected my memories. Turns out I actually am bossy for a reason!

...okay fine so I'm basically a fancy secretary but you better believe I am an amazing one. So no selling your story to the press, or I will… track you down and send you a strongly worded cease-and-desist letter, I guess. (Not that you guys would.)

I live in space! There’s not a whole lot to do up here some days, I guess maybe that’s why everyone says I threw myself off the edge out of boredom? I think they were joking? Turns out, I was actually shot down! How dramatic is that? (But that’s top secret so you didn’t hear it from me.)

Genuinely, no, I like it up here. I have a good job and nice company and there’s a whole lot fewer axe-wielding psychos to deal with. I don’t even have to use our guns all that often.

I am not a gun with a face.

Ha ha!

My human who lives up here with me says I did a super good job of almost dying, and that I would have done for real without the bonk on the head. It’s taken him all this time to actually finish getting me back up and running. It’s been a rough couple weeks but you guys don’t want to hear about that. (At least I am going to have a lovely stylish scar, when he’s done. He says it’s called kintsugi? Apparently it doesn’t matter that I am not a teapot, and of course I am never going to say ‘no’ to being beautiful.)

My person is very nice. His name is Hiro! He’s seriously super nice. Remember I said about that ‘tickle’? Yeah I think he might be a tiny bit associated with it. Or maybe more than just a tiny bit? Quite a big bit? I don’t know. Anyway! I like him a lot. Like, a lot a lot. I could talk to you about him forever, but I will be good and not bore you like apparently I do everyone else. (But I can if you want me to. Just say the word!)

There’s a whole bunch of things I’m gonna have to re-learn, and I don’t seem to much care for heights any more – kinda problematic if you live in orbit, I guess? – but we’re working on that. (So long as I don’t look outside too hard, it’s fine, I guess?)

Fortunately my horticulture modules are all safe. Lainey, please let me know if you need any tips for your plant. REMEMBER TO TALK TO IT! And say hello to it from me.

Space Sergeant Polly 101 lives on to fight another day!

Thank you, all of you; thank you thank you thank you, a million billion thank yous, for keeping me safe and being my friends.

You are all the best kind of people and I am so glad that even if it was only for a few days you were my people.

I love you all.

Stay amazing.

World’s Best Space Admin-Commander

Polly 101

[keaalu]

Meteoric, Chapter Ten

The old man looked like he’d been on the streets for a very long time. His clothing was shabby and his hair didn’t look like it had been combed for a century. Two enormous brown teeth – possibly the only ones left in his head – stuck up from behind his bottom lip.

He must have been able to see Laine’s blood-soaked arm, but his inane smile never wavered.

“Sir? Oh, thank god,” Laine reached out her good hand to him. “Sir, do you have a phone? Please, we’ve been attacked. I need an ambulance. Can you call the emergency services for us- me?”

The old man gave her the briefest glance. “You should have let him kill you, earthling. It would have been so much easier for you,” he said. His voice had a weirdly bubbling, froggy cadence, like his throat was full of phlegm.

The back of her head went cold. “…what?”

“It was good of you to scare off that other human. He was getting seriously annoying. Always asking when he’d get paid. If he could be a partner in our venture. Ha!”

A very large penny dropped. “You’re Tark’s contact?”

“Yes! What a gullible idiot.” The old man gurgled a weird laugh. “Greedy humans are the best. Just pretend you have lots of money, and they’ll do anything you ask to get some of it, even if it means betraying their entire species.”

“Their species? But-…” His turns of phrase left her deeply unsettled. “Aren’t-… What are you?”

The old man ignored her, and addressed Polly, instead. “You will come with us, now, little ball.”

“No I will not.” Polly rocked forwards just enough that his brow came down in a frown, and gave the stranger his best stubborn look. “I don’t think I trust you, so just do what you came here to do, then leave us alone. I need to get my friend to medical help and you’re in the way.”

The old man fixed the little bot on a weirdly intense stare. “Oh but you are what I came here for. Isn’t it inconvenient that you can’t remember who you are, and can’t call for help either? But don’t worry. We’ll take very good care of you. The absolute best care for the most important zeroid. Well, important to us. All that lovely data in your broken little head. Ha ha!”

Polly froze. “What- what did you call me? Ss-… spheroid? Zeroid?” The word had made something fizz in his circuits, in the same way the name had. Doctor Ninestein. Zeroid. It all felt familiar, even if he couldn’t precisely say why. “You know what I am…?” It didn’t feel right, but he had to ask: “Are-… are you doctor Ninestein?”

“Am I the accursed Ninestein!” The old man cackled, delighted. “No, but your commander and I go back a very long way. So many Earth years. I really want him to know that we have you, all safe and sound with us.”

Something about the stranger didn’t feel good. Where some concepts had triggered little sparks of familiarity that Polly instinctually wanted to home in on, there was something about this old guy that felt… dangerous? It felt absurd – he looked like he was at least a hundred, falling-down decrepit – but Polly’s deeply programmed instincts were all saying this is not human and this is not safe, protect yourself, protect earth and its people.

“What if I don’t want to go with you?”

“You think you have a choice, you stupid ball…?”

Polly backed tighter into Laine’s boots; she… wobbled, precariously. “Well! You’re very rude!”

“…buut, we are kind. We know what it is like, being a conscious machine in a world full of noisy biological vermin.” The old man advanced a couple of steps. “We will unlock your memory for you. Repair you so you know who and what you are. So you can… help us, in return. Help us understand your mighty spaceship. Help us understand how we can use you to destroy it, perhaps! Possibly whether you want to or not?” His insincere toothy smile widened to something just a notch beyond the point of looking convincingly human. “Come with me, and your pet human won’t be damaged any more. I might even let her go. Might. But that all depends on you.”

He kept making token attempts to be nice, Polly noticed, but tripped himself up by being unkind, as though that was what came naturally and being anything else was far too much effort to remember.

“Come with us and we might eventually let you go back to your humans.”

Polly backed up a tiny bit more. He really didn’t want to go with the threatening old guy, but couldn’t help the intense (maybe even a little optimistic) curiosity flooding through him. What if the stranger did genuinely know who he was? Where he came from? Could fix him? If it meant Laine was able to get help too, should he just take that chance? He was running out of time to make a decision. Polly had the gun, after all, and the old guy didn’t. Once he was fixed, he could just… politely take his leave, and go home. Or not-so-politely, depending on circumstances.

Behind him, Laine sighed shakily and sagged back towards the ground; she propped herself up with a hand flattened against Polly’s top curve. Her skin was cold, clammy. He could hear her breathing, rapid and shallow, and her pulse, fast and faint through her palm. “Don’t listen to him,” she urged, faintly. “You know he doesn’t want to help you.”

“But he knows what I am! Where I belong! What if this is the final step I need to get me home?”

“He knows what you are and wants to hurt you. They’ll never let you go if you give yourself up.”

“Hoohoo! So you found yourself a clever human. Lucky you.” The old man’s expression hardened, his lip curling in something similar to a sneer. “If you don’t stop being obstinate, I will just kill the human and take you anyway. But I’d rather you weren’t damaged, and I know your kind react badly to being forced to defend yourselves.”

“ ‘My kind’,” Polly echoed, quietly. “So there are others like me? Can’t you just go ask one of them to help you, instead?”

“Of course not, stupid. They all have their memories intact. You’re the one with the data we want. You can either come willingly, like a good little ball, or we’ll just… crack you open anyway and see what goodies spill out.” The old man’s voice grew sharper – impatient. “If we have to destroy you, it will be a disappointing shame, but if you’re dead, at least the infernal Spacehawk will remain crippled.”

Letting Laine continue to prop herself up against him, Polly straightened himself up, and drew his pistol. “No.”

Recognising the weapon for what it was, the man stiffened and took a step backwards. “What do you mean, no. Are you refusing to come with me?”

“Got it in one, Ugly. I’m staying right here to protect my friend. We’re calling an ambulance then we’re calling the police. I wouldn’t want to still be here when they arrive, if I was you.”

The old man sighed his annoyance. “Mother. They’re not doing what I tell them.”

Laine thought it was a strange choice of minced oath, until an old woman’s croaky voice replied, out of nowhere. “Stupid boy.” It was more of a snarl than anything. “You don’t give them a choice! You just take it.”

“But he’s heavy.”

“That is why I sent you with backup, you cretin. So you can disable the zeroid before it has the opportunity to manipulate its weight!”

Polly exchanged a fierce look with the old guy and decided not to let on that he had no idea what the voice meant. (Manipulate his weight? Had to be a euphemism, for… something, surely?) He wiggled briefly from side to side, anyway, as though hunkering down, and a look of transient dismay flashed across the man’s face.

“Polly?” Laine leaned a tiny bit harder against him. “There’s something new. Over there, in the doorway.”

All three turned to watch as the new object approached over the tarmac – a black-and-white cube, roughly Polly’s size, with a gloomy face with glaring red eyes etched permanently onto its front, quite possibly a similar robotic entity. It looked like it hovered, possibly, or levitated somehow, just a tiny distance off the ground, just high enough to glide over the rough substrate.

Like a small cuboid Dalek, Laine thought.

“I don’t know who or what you are,” Polly told it, putting himself between it and Laine. “But I’m not letting you hurt my friend. She is a good person, and kind, and I don’t think either of you are.”

The cube hissed at him, like a frustrated cat, and there was an answering hiss from not very far away. The gleam of more stern red optics glowed in the encroaching gloom.

“Pol? There’s another one,” Laine said, faintly.  

“It’s fine. They don’t scare me,” Polly lied. “And I’m not letting them past.”

“Your choice.” The old man looked down at the closest cube. “Disable him.”

The closest one flipped forwards onto its face, pointing its top surface at Polly.

Expecting that was a bad thing even if he didn’t know what precise flavour of bad, Polly skipped sideways just in time, sending Laine sprawling on the ground. The projectile ricocheted off his smooth casing and by some miracle hit the bins behind them instead of his friend. In a shower of exploding rubbish, she scrambled for cover. The old man also fled, arms over his head, yelping.

Polly fired back – the cube evidently wasn’t quite so nimble on its levitation field and couldn’t get out of the way fast enough, taking the full force of his close-range attack. It exploded, showering them with shrapnel and chips of scalding plastic.

The second cube was faster – it flipped forwards and caught him with a glancing shot across the damaged top of his casing. The impact sent him spinning, out of control – conveniently ruining the cube’s tracking. Its second shot went a mile wide, by which time Polly was behind cover.

For a few seconds, they exchanged fire. It echoed explosively loudly in the cavernous space – there was no way it’d go unnoticed, not in such a busy area. Laine flattened her hands over her ears, biting back frightened tears. Would people think it was gunshots, or fireworks? How long would it be before the police turned up? She didn’t imagine the unarmed, conventional police would be sent in response to gunfire. Would that buy them a few extra minutes, waiting for an armed response unit to rock up? Or would it buy the old guy a few extra minutes.

Or would they all just get shot.

Laine cowered behind the bins until the cacophony had faded. It probably lasted less than a minute but to her terrified ears it felt like it stretched out for an entire hour.

She finally summoned enough courage to peek out. The tarmac was covered in smoking shards of what looked like plastic, but no whole cubes. And no sign of the old guy. And… where was her friend? Oh, no. Had Polly been kidnapped after all? Had the old guy taken him amid all the chaos? She inched out into the gloom.

No, there he was; the dim red of his optics glowed against the ground.

But as she got closer, she could see Polly was… broken.

Badly broken. She wasn’t sure if it was just one too many blows to that tough exterior, from first their roof and then Tark’s axe, or if those horrible cubes were just that powerful anyway, but one had scored a lucky hit, and torn a gash a few inches deep through the top left of his globe, above his eye. Ruined components inside were still smoking faintly, haloing the injury with soot. Some form of… lubricant? coolant?... had oozed into the gap and trickled down his side. His fans growled and skipped with effort.

“Oh, god,” she whimpered, and sagged to the ground next to him. “Pol…? Speak to me?”

“-Laine!” His optics took a few seconds longer than normal to find her face. His voice was staticky and distorted, occasionally sticking. “You ’kay?”

“No worse than I was before,” she lied, clutching her bad arm to herself. “S’almost stopped bleeding.” She left off because I almost have no blood left. “You look terrible. Please tell me it looks worse than it is.”

“Suresure; ’m jus’ peachy. Lick of polish, be-be good as new, ha ha.” He twitched, jerkily. “…ouch.”

“Come on, we have to hide. Before they come back.”

A motor whined inside him and he slowly rocked onto a different angle, but didn’t manage to actually go anywhere. “Sorry. Looks like my mo-motor’s broken. But that’s fine. I can draw their fire, and shoot-… maybe shoot back.”

“Oh no you don’t.” Laine jabbed her fingers into the crevasse in his casing and used it as a handle to drag him back across the concrete, dimly aware that they were probably both bleeding to death but unwilling to let either of them be caught out in the open by any more of those… cube things. Her blood made his casing slippery and he felt unnervingly hot, like something was burning. “Not when you’re the whole reason they’re here. The fate of the planet could be at stake! So no making me feel bad for abandoning you.”

Underneath the platform of the loading dock it was filthy, but went back a decent way, and no-one would be able to see them unless they were actively crouching down to look underneath.

“Get behind me, then,” Polly instructed. “I can cov-cover us both.”

“You’re falling apart.”

“I’m sorry but did you just sprout a gun in the last five minutes? Behind me.”

She didn’t have the spare energy to argue. She squirmed into the gap and pulled him after her; it had only just enough clearance for him to fit. It was filthy and it stank of fuel oil, with a bank of dead leaves and old food packets and god-only-knew-what-else at the very back, but it also felt enclosed and safe, like a hidden little nest. She wormed her way as far back as possible, dragging him as close as she could without feeling like she was going to catch fire as well.

And none too soon – there were feet, just visible in front of their hiding place. Boots. Scruffy boots with a film of red dust on their upper surfaces. She held her breath, willing him to just go away; even Polly had gone totally silent, not even his unstable fans making any noise.

“I can’t find them, mother,” the old man whined. “They destroyed our cubes. I think they might have run away while I was taking shelter.”

“While you were hiding, you mean, you cretinous coward,” the unseen woman snarled. “Get away from there, Yung-star. Those accursed Terrahawks will be on your trail by now.”

“They can’t have gone too far. The human was bleeding and the zeroid was trying to look after her. I think we shot it! They won’t have separated. If I can find her-”

“There’s no time! If you keep dithering, you will be the one taken prisoner – and I’m inclined to let them keep you! If you’d just done things properly in the first place-”

“I did try.”

“Well, not very hard, did you!”

The voices faded into incoherence as he fled.

After a minute or two there came the sound of… an engine? It sounded almost like some sort of aircraft taking off, even though they were nowhere near the airport. The powerful motors echoed off the walls of the buildings, but rapidly dwindled,

Then it was silent.

Silent, and dark.

It all seemed suddenly overwhelming.

What a way to go: bleeding to death in the dark in an abandoned loading area behind a shop that closed a decade ago.

No-one knew where they were. They had no way of calling for help. Laine’s bad arm felt like it was already dead, and she wasn’t sure if she could even get out from their hiding place, any more. Polly was crashing spectacularly; he felt scaldingly hot and was twitching regularly, little uncontrolled motor jerks like electronic seizures.

Everything stank – of burnt plastic, and scorched oils, and dirt, and blood. Her stomach roiled but she didn’t think she had the strength to vomit.

Would they ever actually be found? Or would their legacy just be lots of missing posters, and sad television specials, and historical ‘true crime’ podcasts from overzealous influencers?

Would her friends ever know she was dead? Would her parents? Would she just join a long list of missing persons,

Or would they only find them when she started to decompose and stink? Or when they finally demolished the building? A dried-out corpse and a broken little robot, curled up dead together, fodder for the amateur criminologists who would make wild hypotheses about what had happened.

Tears finally took over from hysterical laughter.

“We’re gonna die under here,” she wept. “Oh, god. I’m so sorry, Polly. I thought I was helping you but all I did was get us killed.”

“We’re not-not gonna die.” Except that they already were dying, Polly recognised. Even if he managed to save his human, he didn’t have a lot of time left for himself. “I just… I need a sig-signal. Do you still have your phone?”

“Tark broke it, remember? It’s in lots of bits. It’ll never call out.”

“That-that doesn’t matter. I already looked at it. It has a good antenna. If I can con-connect to it, I can transmit through it.”

Laine tried to pass the phone over but it slipped from her strengthless fingers and bounced down in front of him, screen-down. “…sorry.”

“It’s fine. It’s fine. I can work with that.” I hope I can work with that.

It was fiddly and he couldn’t reach it very well, but finally he managed to hook into it, then pulled up the telephony software, and dialled 999 directly through its programming.

It was ringing. It was ringing! He clung to it, hoping it would work.

The voice from the speaker was tinny and feeble. “Emergency ambulance; is the patient breathing?”

“Yes, but she’s badly hurt. She’s lost a lot of blood.”

“Hello? Hello, can you hear me? This is the ambulance service, do you need help?”

No-! The antenna was fine but the microphone was broken. Of all the stupid things to fail to check. Could he pipe his own synthesiser through it? Polly focused his attention on hastily connecting bits of software that shouldn’t be compatible.

“Is there anyone there?” the call handler chased, uneasily.

-I have a human here. She’s badly hurt and has lost a lot of blood. Please send someone quickly.-

“Sir? Sir what do you mean, you have a human-… Is she breathing? Is she still alive?”

Oh thank goodness they could hear him. -Yes she’s breathing. She was attacked with an axe and has a badly broken collarbone. The attacker has gone but she is bleeding lots. Please come quickly. Please.-

“Where are you, sir?”

He linked the location software into the call and sent them the co-ordinates directly.

-Please hurry. Please help us. Please.-

“Sir, I didn’t catch… sir? Sir are you still ther-”

The phone blooped sadly as the call finally failed.

Didn’t catch – didn’t catch what? Didn’t catch their location? He could have cried. Had he done enough? What else was there left to try? He knew he was reaching a critical temperature. Connections were fusing and melting. Didn’t have a lot of time left to save his friend.

Okay Polly, one last try. You can get a message out.

But how?

Apparently, being actively dying had unlocked something, buried deep in his system architecture.

Huh. That’s new.

His higher systems didn’t like it, and liked his lack of a functional aerial to operate it with even less, but there it was. Some sort of emergency beacon? Glowing like it was red hot, albeit surrounded by dire warnings and electronic red flags. It really felt like maybe he wasn’t meant to use it? Not without permission from someone, anyway. But this was an emergency! And it looked usable. He could use the phone as a transmitter. He clung to his shaky connection with the handset and triggered it.

10001000010

//Help me.//

----

“Guys, we’ve got him!” Kate’s voice exploded from Hudson’s speakers. “We’ve got a positive signal with co-ordinates from 101! It’s-… what? Shit – it’s a distress beacon. I didn’t even know they had them! But we know where he is! And he’s close!”

Mary pounced on it. “Get after it, Kate. Spacehawk can deal with that ZEAF. We’ll be right behind you!”

“Ten-ten!”

Ninestein leaned back over the seats. “Zero, confirm?”

Zero was already concentrating. “Got him, sah,” he finally confirmed, grimly. “Sending Hudson the co-ordinates now.”

“Don’t worry, sergeant major – I hear him too,” Hudson confirmed. “He does appear to be transmitting rather widely.”

“Get going, Hudson!” Mary exclaimed. “And don’t spare the horsepower!”

“Of course, ma’am.”

Hudson accelerated up clean over the pavement, undertaking a queue of dawdling buses and forcing tourists to scatter. The humans had to take the metaphorical back seat – trusting the vehicle’s own in-built intelligence to avoid mowing anyone down.

“When you say widely,” Mary asked, clinging to the seat as the vehicle took an aggressive corner. “How widely, precisely?”

“I think he might have just sent a ten-ninety to every mobile handset across the whole of greater London.”

From the corner of her eye, she watched Ninestein cover his face with his free hand.

“I suspect that’s why we’ve never used that particular line of code before, ma’am,” Zero imparted, quietly, close to Mary’s ear.

“I didn’t even know you had it.”

“Me either, if I’m honest. Took a lot of digging to find it.” The lead zeroid harrumphed. “Trust that little twerp to manage to find that when he can’t remember literally nothing else.”

----

Kate’s team got to the shopping complex first.

A blue heartbeat splattered up over the walls from the multiple emergency vehicles already present, guiding them in. A crowd had begun to gather – people from all walks of life, all looking at their phones, murmuring to each other and wondering what emergency it was that had called such a disparate group of people there, curious and anxious.

…not curious enough to try and get past the streamers of police tape, though. They could probably see the armed response unit, checking their weapons and body armour, on the verge of moving in. An ambulance had already arrived, but the police were holding them back.

Five-five tumbled out of the vehicle before it had even completely stopped, and took up a position in the huge doorway, to a little chorus of exclamations from the assembled humans. Kate and Hawkeye followed him out.

“Thanks, officers. We’ll take it from here.” Kate forced herself to flash them a reassuring smile, holding out her identification.

The closest officer nodded at it, but raised a cautionary hand. “You sure, miss? We’ve had reports of gunshots.”

Kate patted the holster for her own sidearm. “We’re authorised.”

The reason the police were holding the ambulance crew back became immediately obvious; as well as the craters left by the gunfire, and scattered chunks of broken alien technology, on the ground were puddles and smears of dull red, bloodied handprints, an axe – and an amputated finger.

“This isn’t looking so good, Katie,” Hawkeye said, pointing discreetly at familiar chunks of heavy plastic.

“Cubes,” she murmured. “Or at least, what used to be cubes. Do you see any more?”

“No, ma’am.” He did a long, slow visual sweep of the cavernous space. “I guess these bits weren’t worth Zelda’s effort to take back. The place looks clear.”

The two Terrahawks moved into the interior of the abandoned building, lighting their way with handheld torches. The only other light came from the headlights of the police vehicles outside, and the sad, broken bulb above a distant door, propped ajar with a three-legged chair.

“I feel stupid for asking if this is the right place, but where the hell is he?” Hawkeye exclaimed. “He can’t be inside there, surely. One oh one!”

Kate elbowed him. “It’s Polly.”

“What-?”

“He has amnesia. Tiger said that’s what those kids were calling him, remember?” She raised her voice. “Polly! Are you there?”

A familiar little electronic chirp responded. Faint, but definitely nearby.

“We hear you! Do that again!”

“…he-… here…!” A feebly familiar voice replied, with another crackly chirp.

“Oh, hey, do you see that?” Hawkeye pointed off at something invisible. “There’s a little light under there.”

Trusting the man’s computer-enhanced eyesight, Kate followed him towards it; the cantilevered surface of an old loading dock, with a narrow, shadowed area beneath it. She dropped to her knees to get a look underneath, and-…

The dim scrolling red of zeroid optics looked back at her.

“Oh thank god,” Kate whispered and sat back on her heels. “You led us on such a wild goose chase. Are you all right?”

101’s voice was still fracturing – more electronic than anything, proving he definitely was not ‘all right’. Fading, fritzing. “i have a per-person here. she’s hurt. please.”

“A person? Oh, damn-“

“ha-has the old guy gone? he-… danger, he was... dan-dane-… we hid from him”

“Yung-star?” Hawkeye glanced back at Kate. “Yeah. Yeah, he’s gone.” He got right down flat on the ground and swung himself under the overhang. “Well hey. What are you guys doing under here, huh?” he greeted, cheerfully reassuring. “Let’s get you out.”

“we phoned an ambu-ambulance but i don-don’t think they understood-stood my co-ordinates?” 101 stuttered, trembling.

“Oh, they understood, don’t you worry, little buddy. They’re right here and waiting for us to get you out and safe first.”

He scooped an arm around behind the broken zeroid and hauled him most of the way out. Leaving her colleague to help the paramedics extract the injured woman, Kate hastily dragged what was left of 101 across the yard, out of the way and to safety, with the newly-arrived Zero helpfully pushing from behind. Burnt high-efficiency oils left a dirty streak on the concrete.

“Shit,” she whispered, trying to find something to put her hands on that wasn’t smeared with blood or chemicals or hot or all three. “Oh, shit. This looks bad. 101? Polly? Can you hear me? Are you still functioning?”

“…hi,” he garbled, faintly. “do-do i know you? please-… please phone-…”

“You do, you do. It’s okay honey, we have you. Just hang on in there for me.” She straightened and saw a familiar figure pushing through the throngs of police. “Tiger-! Ten-ninety!”

“you sound nice,” the broken zeroid said, dazed. “…my friend is hurt. please phone-… ple-please help her. we pho-phoned an ambulance-lance. she’s hurt. hurts. she-… i hurt… is ambu-… ambu… lan?... i- ow…”

“Yes, they’re here. She’s getting the best possible care now, I promise.”

“…oh that-that’s good. i thought i was… hurts… phone ambu-… i thought… too slow… too hot… hurts… i thought- too sss-slow-… phone-phone… hurts-… ow…? ow…”

“It’s all right, it’s all right. We’re looking after both of you. Just… try to stay calm. We’ll get you cooled down. All right?”

“… t o o   h o t… o w …”

----

Hey - does anyone have a carbon dioxide fire extinguisher? We need to cool him down, quickly! Yes, that’s great! Bring it over here, now!

And get Hudson in here! We need him to play ambulance! God, this is such a mess. He’s overheating bad.

Polly’s ability to follow the voices was fading. They sounded familiar but he couldn’t access why. He couldn’t work out which direction any of it was coming from, or who was speaking. It all just… jumbled up together, an overlapping mishmash of sound.

Does anyone know how to turn him off? Come on, hurry up with that extinguisher!

But they seemed to know him, and they said his friend was safe. Ambulance was here. That meant he’d succeeded. Maybe he didn’t have to keep struggling on any more. Maybe he could finally relax. Oh, that would be so nice. A little sleep, with his friends, back where he belonged, at last.

Tiger, he’s not a washing machine-! I know, but he might have gone too far to save already, if we don’t turn him off then we’ve definitely lost him. All right, stand back, I’m going to give him a blast with this.

He felt too hot to think much more. Just sat quietly, and listened. Were they talking to him or about him? He wasn’t sure. It felt like too much hard work to figure it out, anyway.

Does he always alarm like this? Hiro, can you hear this? Why is he beeping? Yes, it’s coming from him! I don’t know! Come on, lad, don’t you go give up on us now.

There were others like him; he could see them. Intelligent spherical machines, staying just back out of the way of the forest of human legs surrounding him, watching anxiously. Just what he’d been looking for! He wanted to say hello but his antenna didn’t work. His voice didn’t work either. Or his fans. Nothing worked. He felt so terribly hot.

Any second now and his core would ignite and he’d become a bright little meteorite, lighting his way home.

So hot. So tired.

Can we stabilise him by linking him to Zero? Yeah, extremely hot to touch. Yes, we’ve tried that. Okay, how do we do that? I don’t know-! Why is he beeping like this?!

So hot. The world was losing cohesion around the edges, bleeding apart into jagged lines and false-colour pixels. Found where I belong. Friend is safe. Rest now. was the last thought that crossed his higher awareness.

Then his eyes went dim, and the chirping stopped.  

[keaalu]

Meteoric, Chapter Nine

Laine had never felt so sore and stiff in all her life.

She wasn’t even pretending to work, right now. The barista in the café where she and Polly had gone to ground was happy with the “distance survey” excuse, and once Laine had bought tea and a toastie, let the pair take up residence in a corner near the window while Polly “downloaded his data”.

Laine propped her head on the wall and dozed uncomfortably. She suspected the unnaturally-quiet Polly was probably taking advantage of the peace to recharge, as well, after spending so much of his battery on generating heat for her, before then running around London all morning. The other coffeeshops they’d found hadn’t afforded them much more than thirty minutes here and there.

They’d survived the rest of the soggy night with no further interruptions, but she’d woken absurdly early with a painful backside from sleeping in a sitting position on a hard floor. Dawn had only just been breaking, at that point, and in spite of still having lovely warm Polly clasped in her arms, the air was cold and her clothing was damp from the early-morning humidity and she was already shivering. And her legs had gone to sleep – the instant she stood up, she almost fell straight back down. It took a lot of stomping and shaking to get the blood flowing again.

She still wasn’t sure what they were going to do this evening, and hoped something might come to her in a daydream. Dumping her friend off with the cops felt increasingly unavoidable, but the alternative was spending a second night on the streets and she felt like she’d rather go home and deal with Tark than do that. She took a sip of lukewarm tea and wished she’d ignored Polly and gone straight to the police, before she’d had the chance to get so attached to the little guy.

Monday had so far played out much like Sunday, with the exception that there were more commuters and busier trains, and as a result, a much more fractious, jittery Polly. They got separated a handful of times – each time, he hunkered down like a stubborn ball of granite until Laine managed to make her way back to him. She wasn’t really sure how he seemed to be manipulating his weight – and to be fair, he couldn’t explain it, either – but it saved him getting kicked off the edge of a platform at least twice. (His enjoyment of the Underground was not increasing with experience.)

Their current residence was a smallish place; not as quiet as Laine would have liked, but the steady stream of patrons were mostly preferring to purchase their drinks then leave, so no-one had asked them to move on yet. The hiss of steam and rattle of utensils kept her just awake enough that she hadn’t yet fallen off her chair.

A flicker of movement caught her eye and she looked up to see Polly had straightened up, suddenly. The smallest seam of red glowed from between his shutters.

“You got something?”

“I just had a message,” he confirmed. He actually sounded cautiously excited. “It said, Doctor Ninestein will meet you this evening at the following co-ordinates.”

“And… who is Doctor Ninestein?”

“I don’t know! But it felt like someone just reached in and yanked on a whole bunch of command prompts so I figure that means I probably should know who they are? They feel important!”

Laine set her cup to one side. “Who sent you it?”

“Littlebird101.” A beat of silence passed. “Oh, hey, that’s my number, too!” He jittered excitedly on the seat. “Oh my stars Laine, do you realise? This is it! I found my people! I must have!”

She felt terrible for dumping cold water on his enthusiasm, but felt compelled to add a note of caution. “You have no idea who it is sent you that. Can you trust them?”

“They know my boss’s name and they know my number. It can’t be a coincidence!”

“Oh, steady on. You don’t know who that guy is. Don’t you think calling him your boss is a bit of a reach?” Seeing his shutters defensively closing up again and his brow tilting down into a frown, she put her hands up. “Sorry, sorry. I’m just worried. They only gave you two pieces of information and you’re jumping at it like it’s concrete proof-”

“It’s more than I’ve found anywhere else,” he reminded. “I can’t afford not to.”

“So you’re going to go and meet them?”

He gave a single rolling nod.

“Is that wise?”

“I might not like it, but I have a gun, Laine.” His words were soft, but determined. “And I can make myself weigh a literal ton. If I decide there’s something off about it all and I want to leave, what are they gonna do about it?”

She studied her cold teacup.

“The alternative is you take me to the cops,” he reminded. “Like we agreed. Remember? ’Cause I’m not letting you stay on the streets again.” Beat. “I’m not staying on the streets again. It. Sucked.”

“Yeah. It did.” Laine considered his words quietly for a few seconds, and sighed. “Did they give you any other details?

“Just the co-ordinates.”

“Are they in London?”

“Yeah. Huh. They’re kinda far away though.” After a second of cross-referencing, Polly groaned piteously. “Aw, this means we’ve gotta go on the subway again.” He bonked quietly into the table. “Maybe I should get them to come here instead.”

She reached across the table and gave him a surreptitious pet. “It might be safer,” she agreed. “And if they agree to come, you know they’re genuine.”

“I’ll message them back,” he agreed, reluctantly.

Time crept past. Laine bought a brownie and refilled her unpleasantly icy teacup, and had a pretend telephone conversation with the friend who was in reality sitting opposite her.

Polly tried hard to stay calm, but sat fidgeting the whole time. He lasted twenty minutes before his composure fractured. “Oh, Laine,” he groaned. “They haven’t replied. What do I do-oo. If I stay here I’ll miss them, but what if they come here and we’ve left?”

Laine steered the crumbs on her plate into a little pile. “If I was them…? And I came here and you’d left?” she said, carefully. “I’d know you were going to the place I originally told you to meet me. So I’d go back there. There’s only so many times we would miss each other.”

“You think we should go?”

She forced a smile, already unplugging her laptop. “I think this café will be closing for the day anyway, in an hour or two.”

Polly hesitated on the doorstep; crowds surged along the street and he balked from dropping down that last little step to the pavement to join them.

Laine stopped behind him. “When did the person say that doctor whoever was going to meet you?”

“This evening. They didn’t say specifically when.”

“…then could we wait until the crowds have passed, a little? It’s rush hour. It’ll ease off.”

“Hm.” He shifted on the spot. “What if I miss him?”

“I’m sure he’ll wait.”

“You pointed out neither of us actually know him, right now. How can you be so sure of that?”

“Well, it’s your choice. But he wouldn’t message you, then give you no time to actually get there. They don’t know where you are either, remember?”

“Hmm.”

Lots of feet and curses followed them along the street. Laine could tell Polly was growing to absolutely loathe crowds. Instead of the polite little sorry-s from only a day earlier, she could hear his confused little mutterings and curses through her earbud. He couldn’t go twenty metres without someone else tripping on him, or kicking him, or knocking him perilously close to the kerb. And while he couldn’t easily see where he was going, he couldn’t avoid them, either. She fell into step behind him, shielding him from a little of the chaos, but even then impatient commuters tried to barge around her.

They made it to a station without Polly disappearing in traffic, and stood to one side while the worst of the flood of packed commuters poured through the ticket gates.

“I hate this,” he said, quietly.

He was pressed into her boots for safety and she could feel him trembling subtly.

“They’re so clumsy and they keep kicking me. I don’t want anyone to trip and hurt themselves.”

“They’re impatient, Pols. If they fall over you because they can’t be bothered to watch where they’re going, that’s not on you.”

“But what if they knock me off the step on the escalator? I’d knock everyone over on the way down.”

“We’re using the lift, all right? We’ve just got to get through the gates. It’s already calming down a bit.”

“I keep getting kicked,” he repeated, and she recognised that was what was particularly bothering him. Being kicked, like a thing. People didn’t get kicked like this.

“Won’t be for much longer. If we get out there and this is a dud, we’ll find a police station and you’ll never have to go on the subway ever again.”

“Doesn’t sound like that great a deal,” he said, gloomily, but the crowds slackened, and he led the way into the underworld.

------

“ ‘Jenny’s’.” Ninestein leaned across to peer out of Hudson’s passenger door, reading the sign above the café’s windows. “This is the place we have them going into on CCTV?”

“That’s it,” Mary confirmed. “They’ve been there a few hours, apparently. It shouldn’t take long to evaluate, so Hudson and I will do a circuit and come back for you.” She gave him a loaded glance. “All four of you, hopefully…”

Hudson paused at the kerb while Ninestein and Zero disembarked, then pulled back out into traffic and glided away. The two Terrahawks exchanged a brief glance, before entering the building.

The doctor briefly surveyed the seats; no-one familiar. No lost zeroids, either. He sighed. Bad luck seemed to be following them around.

“Pardon me.” He approached the bored-looking server. “I don’t suppose you had a woman here recently with a big spherical piece of equipment with her?”

The woman perked up, spotting Zero lurking quietly near Ninestein’s boots. “Yeah, we did actually! She asked if she could use our plug sockets to charge her drone while it downloaded its data. Looked a bit like your one; are you doing the same survey?”

“Yes, we are.” Ninestein crossed his fingers that it wouldn’t come back and bite him when she asked him for more details of the ‘survey’. “But we lost contact. I think her drone is damaged. Did you see when she left?”

The barista looked over into an empty corner. “No. But it can’t have been that long. She bought a brownie not that long ago.” She cross-referenced the record on the till. “Oh, no, wait. It was about an hour ago. Sorry.”

Ninestein swallowed the sigh. “I notice you have CCTV.” He pointed up at the camera. “Could I take a look?”

“Uh.” The woman eyed his uniform uneasily but apparently decided it looked un-police-y enough that she could plead ignorance for sharing without a warrant. “Sure, I guess? I don’t know if she was quite in range though. It only really covers the till.”

As it happened, their runaway zeroid and his human helper were just visible, right in the top corner; the woman sat facing out of the window, propped against the wall and possibly dozing, with 101 on the opposite side of the table, plugged into the laptop.

A lot of nothing happened for a good couple of hours; Ninestein sped up the video so he could get through the footage in just a few minutes. The woman sipped on a cup of tea (which must have been revoltingly cold, by that point), and their zeroid sat motionless, a long charging cable spooling out through one of his top hatches.

Then 101 suddenly moved. It looked like he’d possibly just discovered something, because an instant later, the woman put her cup to one side, and leaned closer over the table towards him. Her mouth moved. Ninestein wondered what they were talking about.

They settled back down for a while, with the aforementioned brownie, although 101 continued to fidget. After about twenty minutes, the woman packed the laptop away in her bag, mimed helping 101 to the floor, and quietly the pair slipped away and out of the door, and vanished.

Ninestein compared the timestamp on the footage to his watch. Forty-five minutes difference. They’d missed them by all of forty five flaming minutes. He swallowed an expletive.

“Any use?” the barista asked, making him jump.

“A little,” Ninestein lied. “Did you happen to see which way she went?”

Preparing a fancy latte and mid-pour, the barista shook her head and shrugged. “Sorry. I had customers.”

“Thanks for your help anyway.” Ninestein emerged from behind the counter and headed for the door. “Come on, Zero.”

Without realising it, Ninestein hesitated on the doorstep, with Zero by his boots, in exactly the same spot that their runaway and his helper had stood, weighing up their chances.

“We’re stuck at traffic lights but will be with you soon,” Mary confirmed. “What was the outcome?”

“I think they went back onto the underground.”

Also on their conference call, Ninestein heard Hiro sigh.

“Getting their data promptly has been really difficult. We will have to start over from scratch,” the lieutenant said. “At least we know roughly when they must have boarded, and can limit our search to places they could have got in that time.”

“Get your zeroids onto it,” Ninestein said. “I’ll see if I can’t light a fire under TfL’s ass with a few strategically-applied threats. Dealing with a threat to national security, and all that.”

“Ten-ten, doctor. Please keep me updated?”

“Absolutely.”

------

Some distance away across London, the two unintentional-runaways exited a quiet somewhat-suburban underground station, and followed the map Polly had in his head towards the co-ordinates he’d been given. It wasn’t quiet, by any stretch of the imagination, but even these small crowds were nothing compared to the city.

Where the directions led them to had once been a shopping complex – stores still occupied around half the units, but a good number of the rest were entertainment venues, now, or divided up into restaurants. A large proportion had simply closed down, now standing silent and empty.

The evening shoppers had dwindled, but the diners hadn’t yet arrived, so it was relatively quiet. It put Laine weirdly on edge. She wondered if her little round companion felt it, too.

Polly led her down the path next to the service road. The road itself was well-kept, swept tidy and lined with streetlamps, with the backs of the occupied units looking clean and functional. Delivery vehicles buzzed up and down it, in and out of loading bays, restocking the various premises.

The other side of the road was a different matter. A heavy-duty wire fence partitioned off a derelict area of scrubby bushes and old concrete, where industrial buildings had presumably once stood. Holes had been cut in the fence at irregular intervals; some had been patched, but pulled back open again. Chairs stood on the concrete, with overflowing ashtrays and rubbish bins. On the far side of the rough ground, just visible behind a forest of buddleia and silver birch saplings, some rickety old walls and portions of half-demolished derelict warehouses still clung to existence, streaked with rust and algae. A few hundred metres further away, on the very far side of the unkempt brownfield site, were some newbuild flats going up, swaddled with scaffolding and cranes – going quiet, now, with the working day coming to a close. A busy road choked with commuter traffic passed across the far end of the service lane they were walking up.

“Are you sure these are the co-ordinates?” Laine wondered, tightening her grip on the strap of her bag, uneasily.

“It’s what the map said,” Polly confirmed, but sounded just as uncomfortable. “Maybe they got it wrong, like… it should have been one of the shops at the front? So people would have a good view of everything going on, in case anything went wrong.”

“…pretty sure they’d want the opposite, Mister Top Secret,” Laine corrected, grim. “Somewhere quiet and private like one of those old warehouses would be the perfect place to abduct you from. Especially if you get all shooty.”

“…let’s not go through the fence, then…”

The co-ordinates took them all the way to the far end of the line of buildings. It had obviously once been a shop; Laine recognised the logo of a chain that had gone bust some years earlier. The loading dock was quiet, possibly being used as a refuse area for the other properties, if the untidy cluster of stray wheelie bins and windblown paper was anything to go by. Next door was another shop, but that too was quiet, the staff evidently having all gone home already.

Right inside, past the loading bays, down a concrete ramp and up a short flight of metal steps, was a door into the gloom, propped ajar. Above it, a broken light fitting glowed.

“I guess that means someone’s home,” Laine whispered, uneasily, hovering by the wall and unwilling to step over that imaginary line into the confines of the building. “You still know how to work that little gun, right?”

Polly clung close to her boots. “I hope so.”

“Weird place for your boss to choose to meet us.”

“Yeah.” He rocked back on his axis to look up and meet her gaze. “Do you think we should cut our losses? Or-or maybe just take the quickest little tiny peek, then go?”

“Maybe someone was playing a trick on you. There’s definitely something off, here.”

He looked back into the gloom. “I can’t see anything moving, and I can’t hear anyone in there. Maybe they’ve already gone.”

Laine stepped back two paces and examined their surroundings, twisting the strap of her bag between her hands. “We don’t go right inside, all right? We stick to just this big open bit. Thirty seconds, then we go back around the front to wait.”

“Right.”

Laine could feel her heartbeat, echoing in her head as they edged deeper into the shadows. The untidy little clusters of bins felt weirdly menacing – like giant cuboid predators, which would close in on them the instant they were close enou-

“You don’t get to escape me again!”

The scream came out of nowhere and before either could react, Tarquin exploded out of the shadows swinging an axe, fuck!

He brought it down with such force on the top of Polly’s casing that it spanged off sideways and almost took his own toes off, impacting the ground so hard the shock raced up into his shoulders and sent the axe clattering out of his hands.

Incredibly, in spite of striking something that had punched through concrete with scarcely a scratch, the bladetip left a decent dent in Polly’s smooth casing. Transferred momentum sent him spinning in the opposite direction.

Laine tripped backward and crashed into one of the treacherous dumpsters. “-Tark!”

“You two are so fucking gullible!” The man picked the axe back up and hefted it, trying to stretch the pain out of his shoulders. “No clue who the hell you were talking to but you came here anyway!”

“You knew that guy’s name!”

“Of course I know his boss’s name! My contact told me it!” Tark waved the axe, menacingly. “Like he’s told me a whole bunch of other important stuff! Which we could all have used, if not for you. All you needed to do was trust me, but oh no, Laine knows best, as goddamn usual.” On the last word, he gave the weapon a wild swing.

She felt something crunch as the axe slammed into her coat. “The fuck are you doing?!” she wailed, leaping backwards. The bins felt like they were crowding around her, penning her in with the psychopath.

“You cost me an opportunity I’ll never get ever again,” Tark snarled. “Millions of fucking dollars down the drain because you think that little twat is genuinely alive and not just an incredible fake. It doesn’t need a friend. It doesn’t need a babysitter.”

There was a small gap behind him, between the bins. Laine tried not to focus on it, wondering if she could dodge past and get out. Scream for help. “So what does he need?”

“It needs to be in a lab, being studied. Replicated, for the benefit of all humanity.”

“And the money you get from it is just incidental, right?”

Something rustled, nearby. Was it Polly? Where had he even gone, anyway? Had that blow from the axe done more damage than they’d realised?

Seeing Tark glance away, Laine took her chance and darted for the opening.

She almost made it.

“Oh no you fucking don’t-!”

He snagged the trailing strap of her bag and yanked on it. Momentum sent her crashing sidelong into the treacherous bins. Before she could recover, Tark swung wildly, not bothering to aim.

She felt the axe crash down on her shoulder and something crunched. She couldn’t help her scream. She collapsed instantly onto the concrete, barely feeling the impact jangle up her knees.

“I had two buyers on the hook!” he shrieked, stabbing his finger in a point. “Two! And one of them was prepared to drop a cool fucking million on that piece of garbage!”

“You don’t think they’d have actually paid you, do you?” Laine wailed back, not sure if she should sob or scream or laugh hysterically. The padded strap on her bag had miraculously protected her from a far more catastrophic injury, but her left arm dangled uselessly at her side, shoulder sagging dramatically. Blood already saturated the front of her top and was probably dripping down her arm, but the surging adrenaline meant she hardly felt it. It could have been pouring out in a flood, for all she knew. “They’d have just followed you and taken him themselves!”

“Stop. Calling. It. ‘Him’!” Tark hefted his axe, bringing it up behind him. “I am taking it and some sad, unimaginative nonentity like you can’t stop me!”

Somewhere behind, a small voice spoke up. “Maybe she can’t. But I can.”

Polly caught him mid-swing. A pulse of phased energy bit the air between them and launched the weapon down the length of the loading area – along with three of his fingers.

Tark’s scream was much louder than Laine’s.

“I might be a silly wobbly little ball whose gyroscopes don’t appear to be working any more,” Polly said, unexpectedly fiercely. “But thanks for helping me see I can at least shoot straight!”

Tark staggered away from him, backwards, too shocked to do anything more than huff with fright, wild-eyed and clutching his mutilated hand against himself.

“And you don’t hurt my friend-!”

Polly didn’t have to revise his aim; Tark’s backbone had already failed him. He fled, wailing.

Still not sure if she should be sobbing or laughing, drunk on adrenaline, Laine pushed herself partway upright, with a snarled expletive. She left scarlet handprints on the concrete.

Polly hastily rolled over to her, damaged gyroscopes leading to a lopsided and slightly drunken curve. “Are you okay? Oh gosh, that looks bad. What should I do?”

“Don’t fuss, it’s fine-” she hissed through gritted teeth. “Ah. Oh, fuck.”

“No, you aren’t fine. Tell me what to do.”

Laine flexed her fingers – at least Tark hadn’t chopped through any nerves. Her collarbone felt like it was in a thousand pieces, though, and itchy, sticky blood stuck her jacket to her arm. “Could you phone an ambulance?” She fished her phone out of her pocket – and discovered what it was that had crunched so ominously the first time Tark had hit her. The screen was in a million pieces, held together by just the plastic protector. Bits of glass had already come loose and shreds of circuitry could be seen through it. The entire device actually looked crooked, like someone had tried to fold it in half. “Ah, fuck- This isn’t looking too hot, either.”

Polly took over anyway, hunching over it and plugging into the damaged jack. “There’s still a bit of charge in it. Let me see what I can do.”

“…do you still have a Bluetooth connection…?”

“It doesn’t work like that.”

“Oh, you can figure something out.” She grimaced into a despairing laugh and tried to wipe the tears off her face without covering herself in blood, instead. “Man. I already knew he was a shithead but this is some fucking way to find out the truth about the guy you lived six months with.”

Polly was silent for several heartbeats, examining the handset, before turning away. “Take your phone back. I’m going to find someone outside, with a phone that actually works. They can call the emergency services for us.”

Laine fumbled it back into her pocket. “They’ll find out about you.”

“Oh big deal. The alternative is that you don’t get help and bleed to death. Stay here.” He leaned into her knees. “It’s my fault you’re hurt. We should have left. I’m so sorry. Let me do this for you. It’s no big deal. Who cares if the world finds out I’m not just a big drone. Tark’s gonna tell them all anyway.”

“No. I’ll come with you.” She forced herself back to her feet, unsteadily, knees bowing. “It’ll probably be better coming from me.”

“No, you need to stay here, where it’s more safe and I know where you are!”

“What do you think Joe Average will do if you rock on out there and start talking to them?” He was too small for her to use as a crutch, but having him sticking close to her ankles as they shuffled towards the road felt reassuring, at least.

“What do you think they’re going to do, seeing you drowning in blood? They might run away before they’re victims of the mad axe murderer as well.”

“I’m your boss, remember? I’m telling you not to divulge what you are.”

“Blanket decision-making pre-authorisation.”

“I already revoked that!”

“Yeah and I already decided to ignore you.” After a beat, he added; “That’s probably why no-one’s ever given me authorisation like that before.”

“Now who sucks.”

“Sorry not sorry.”

They made their way slowly, slowly towards the square of fading daylight. Polly navigated in a wide semicircle away from the bins, and as they passed, Laine realised the object he was giving such an enormous berth was an amputated finger.

“I was aiming at just the axe,” he explained, sadly. “Guess I wasn’t shooting that straight after all.”

They were almost at the road when an old man stepped into their way.

“Hello, earth ball,” he gurgled, with a huge insincere smile. “We’ve been looking for you.”

[keaalu]

Meteoric, chapter 8

Aw, please get out of the rubbish, Polly darling.

------

Laine wasn’t quite sure where Polly had gone, and for a while just wandered slightly aimlessly in the direction she thought he might have headed. He couldn’t have got that far in front that she’d already lost him, surely…? It had only taken a minute or two to get over her shock. Was he really that fast?

Should she call out for him? She tightened her fingers on the strap of her satchel, uneasily.

But the further she wandered, the more she became aware of something rather out of place in London’s empty streets – little soft electronic noises, and not from any conventional piece of machinery or faulty alarm. As she got closer to them, they resolved into quiet little sobs, intermixed with flat, dull versions of the chirps she’d grown familiar with. A mix of relief (she hadn’t lost him) and guilt (had she actually made him cry?) washed over her.

Just when she was thinking she’d got to know him, too. He’d seemed surprisingly fearless? After that instant of immediate startled alarm, he’d come back and handled the mugger with no problems whatsoever. He’d dealt with Tark with a sort of sarcastic diplomacy. He’d even braved the hated Underground when he’d had no other choice. Frightening his friend was what had finally overcome him. (Her reaction couldn’t have helped matters – poor little guy was lost and scared and isolated from his family, and she’d gone and compounded it by looking at him like she thought he was about to explode.)

At least he couldn’t be too far away. She squared her shoulders and homed in on the sounds.

Laine finally found Polly tucked away just out of sight in an alleyway between two shops, behind their bins, with the rest of the rubbish. He sounded genuinely crippled by the revelation – and her response to it – and it was only the lack of appropriate anatomy that had stopped him accumulating a puddle.

She edged closer. “Polly…?”

“…go away!”

The sharp tone made her hesitate. What if he genuinely decided he didn’t want her anywhere near him, any more?

Well, she knew he wouldn’t attack her. He’d just run further away. Which could possibly be worse because he could get into places she knew she couldn’t. She crossed her fingers that it was a good sign he’d stopped.

Laine took a deep breath and plucked up enough courage to go and sit back near him. She perched on an old box, tucked her knees up to her chest, and studied him for several long seconds, not sure what to say. (Are you all right when he patently wasn’t felt fairly ridiculous.)

“Sucks, to be a gun with a face,” Polly wept, quietly, in the silence. He wouldn’t look up to meet her gaze. “I was really beginning to hope maybe there was a bit more to me than that.”

She reached out a shaking hand and gave him an awkward little pat, but he flinched away – only a millimetre or two, but obvious. She took her hand back and folded it with the other in her lap.

“I’m sorry,” she said, faintly. “You just… startled me. I-I wasn’t expecting-”

“Bullshit. I saw the way you looked at me.” He still didn’t look up. “Whatever. I wouldn’t want anything else to do with me either. Look what we welcomed into our home. Trusted it, treated it with kindness, accepted it as the innocent little thing it was playing, and the paranoid asshole was right all along. Just some… bossy, obnoxious little war machine.”

“You don’t surely think-”

“I don’t know what I think, any more!” He shifted slightly, as though looking for a way out, and backed further up into the rubbish. “Except that I want a new boss.”

Laine bit her lip. “I’m refusing permission.”

“Blanket pre-authorisation.”

“Revoked.”

“You suck.”

“Proud of it. I told you, you’re stuck with me until we figure this out. I’m not going back on that now.”

“…unless you got proof I was a bad person, you said. Well now you got it. You are officially released from your duties. You can go away now.”

“Can I still be your friend, even if you don’t want me as your boss, any more?”

“…please just go away now.”

“Why are you so determined to drive me away?”

“Because I’m ashamed and embarrassed and scared and I don’t want to hurt you!”

Laine sat quietly and digested his words for an instant. “I understand that. But why would you?”

“Not intentionally. But what if something happens and I can’t control it? Again? I didn’t mean to shoot him! It just happened!”

“When he pulled a knife on us, sure! I’m not going to attack you, if that helps. We’ve quarrelled in the past and you never made me worry you were going to hurt me. It feels more like you might have just saved my life.”

“After putting it at risk! He’d never have come after you if he hadn’t seen me and thought I was worth stealing. You wouldn’t even have been out here at all, if not for me!”

“You think? I don’t know. I work night shifts, remember? It’s not like I’m never out after dark. Maybe he’d have thought I was an easy target anyway? Without you, I would have been.”

“Only because I shot him!” Polly gave a shaky little mew of despair. “I should have gone looking for it! I’m sorry! I should have done you that list you didn’t even want! I should have assumed I was a bad person and found it and told you about it, as soon as I ever suspected anything. You were right. Tark was right. Unarmed military technology? What bullshit-”

“Hey, no. We don’t know that’s what you-”

“I have a gun!”

Laine went silent.

“I have a fucking… space gun, which doesn’t even operate with bullets!” he went on, voice destabilising. “Which shouldn’t even exist! It’s not even like I can throw it away because it’s an integral part of me!”

Laine studied where her hands lay in her lap. “You have a gun,” she said, quietly. “It doesn’t mean you are a gun. If nothing else, I don’t think they would make a gun so fluent in Swedish.”

“Well what else does it mean? What else could it possibly mean? It’s the only significant thing I can actually do for myself! I can’t do anything else on my own because I don’t have hands! Nothing about me has an innocent purpose!”

“You said you talk to satellites. You monitor things like asteroids and freighters. You can triangulate where stuff is in space-”

“It’s targeting software!” he despaired. “It’s so I can shoot straight.” His words fractured towards the end.

She moved and sat next to him; he sort of made a halfhearted effort to move away but was surrounded by bin bags and couldn’t go anywhere. “If you didn’t even remember you had it until you were threatened, I’d like to argue it’s maybe not a big component of who you are,” she said. “Besides. Cops in other countries carry guns. That doesn’t mean shooting things is all they do. Although… okay, granted, some haven’t made it easy to be their biggest fans, in recent years. But you don’t look much like a cop to me.”

“I might be. None of us know what I am.” His shutters had tightened, almost closed, hiding from the world. “I don’t know what to do any more. I don’t think I want to go back if I’m just gonna be a smart weapon.”

“Aw, love.” She finally let her arm drift around him, triggering a new little quiet flurry of electronic tears. “Maybe you should have gone on the run with a psychologist, not a chem-eng student,” she half-joked. “As existential crises go, you picked a good one to have, and a good time to have it. I mean it’s not like we’re running for our lives, or anything.”

She felt him lean in. “S-sorry.”

“Don’t be, when there’s nothing to be sorry for. And don’t let this overwhelm you, either. It’s a blip. Just because you can defend yourself it doesn’t mean that was all you were designed to do.” She stroked her palm over his casing, hoping to comfort. “I made a promise to look after you and I swear to fuck I am going to do that if it kills me. The fact you have the gun doesn’t mean you’re not also vulnerable as shit and need a friend.”

That finally broke him, and he dissolved into sobs.

“I didn’t just come with you because you don’t have hands, you know,” she soothed, quietly, keeping her palm moving. “I came with you because I like you, and want to help you, and want you to get home safely. You’re my friend. Yes, you startled me. I never expected you to be such a fierce little thing under that flamboyant personality! That doesn’t mean I like you less. It doesn’t mean I’m scared of you. It just means I know a little bit more about you, now, and can work out how to look after you better.”

She felt a shift in his weight as he pressed in closer, trying to muffle his misery in her clothing.

“So what if you have a weapon. You’re our friend and we love you and trust you. Even Minnie does, which is saying something.”

His words were barely intelligible. “You haven’t even known me for five days, yet.”

“Who cares? Nobody sets a minimum time before you’re allowed to like someone. And I’m still happy to find that remote Scottish island, too, if you decide you do want to be kidnapped, after all. Just while you figure out what you want to do. We’ll get the sleeper, a whole cabin to ourselves and no-one will even know you’re aboard…”

She kept her arm around him, her free hand stroking his top curve, talking softly about nonsense until he finally started to sound like he’d got control of his emotions again. The heartbreaking sobs softened into little electronic sniffly noises, and his fans smoothed out, those hitchy little noises fading until he was almost silent again.

“Sorry.” His words were still soft and slightly crackly, like a badly tuned radio heard from a thousand miles away, but instead of that horrible flinchy mess from earlier, he was back to a good solid weight pressed into her side. “I hadn’t intended crying on you.”

“S’fine. I’d be an even shittier friend if I objected to that, wouldn’t I? Especially since I’m the one who should be apologising, for making you cry in the first place.”

“Well, not rrr-…” He caught himself before he could correct her. “I mean. Thank you, for staying with me. It means a lot.” He shifted slightly, to glance up at her for reassurance. “When you looked at me like that, when you looked scared, I thought-… I thought you might run away from me, as well. I didn’t think I could bear to see that. That was why I fled, before I had to watch you go.” He dropped his voice to a reluctant whisper. “That gun doesn’t make me very brave, does it.”

Laine clucked her tongue, gently. “Define brave, under these circumstances.”

“I-” A pause. “I should have stayed. I should have waited. I should have given you time to process the new information.”

“Or you could have scared me more by staying with me? Who knows. We’d both had a shock. I don’t know what would have happened.” Laine patted the flat of her palm on his side. “Don’t go calling yourself less brave just because you had a perfectly reasonable emotional reaction to being traumatised.”

Polly remained silent.

“You’ve had to deal with a lot, the last few days. Nobody’s going to think less of you for finding your break point. Having a weapon doesn’t mean you have to be invulnerable, too. We trust our armed forces to look after us but we know they’re all human and can’t just power on through trauma, either.”

He hummed, faintly, quietly appreciating the implication he was human. “Looks like you’ve been harbouring an amnesiac cop under your roof, after all. Better not tell Mina.”

Laine smiled, faintly. “Was that a joke, Polly?”

“Ha ha? I’m actually not sure.” A little sigh. “Do you think that guy will go to the police?”

“What would he say? I’d like to report a crime: the robot friend of the girl I was trying to mug shot the knife out of my hand before I could shank her?”

Polly quietly digested the words: it comforted him more than he’d expected that she was still referring to him as friend. “Do people still say ‘shanked’?” He intentionally changed the subject.

“...not really my world, Polster.” Laine shifted; stretched her shoulders a little. “Ugh. Do you think you’re okay to travel again?”

“I think so.”

“Good. This floor is hard and my bum is starting to hurt. We need to figure out somewhere better to rest up. I’d been thinking a bench would be fine but I don’t want to get caught like that again, and now it looks like it’s gonna rain anyway.” After a beat, she added; “And I am not letting you stay in the rubbish.”

“…yes, ma’am.” He was still a bit crackly, but sounded stronger, and more determined.

They emerged from the alleyway. Polly was unsteady and slow, not quite managing his usual tidy straight line, but happily following his friend again. He stuck carefully close to her ankles, just far enough away she wouldn’t trip.

“All right.” Laine sighed at nothing in particular while they made their way down the street. “Tell me if you see something that looks like it might keep us dry when it rains.”

He made a little thoughtful hum noise and she realised she had no idea if he could even see well enough to help. (She reassured herself that he wasn’t the sort of person to be too polite tell her, if that was the case.)

They carried on their way along the pavement, passing shuttered shop doorways and gated passages, and Laine began to wonder if they’d end up just… wandering aimlessly, for the entire night. That would leave neither of them fit for anything, the following morning.

“Oh, hey. Would this work?” Polly unexpectedly diverted off to one side and disappeared behind a cluster of big red wheelie bins.

“Ugh. No, Pols. People get killed by sleeping in those things-”

“I meant the cardboard.” He re-emerged from between the carts, pushing a bale of broken down boxes made of corrugated card. “It’ll keep you a bit insulated off the ground and it’s… clean, I guess?”

On a scale of ‘bare concrete’ to ‘cosy bed’, this barely nudged the meter away from rock bottom, but his logic felt annoyingly sound. Laine crouched, picked up the bundle and sighed at it. “I guess we’re actually doing this, then, huh.”

He still had his shutters closed, but perked over onto an angle and chirped, questioningly.

“Sorry.” She patted his head. “I think I’m still unconsciously hoping your friends will come along and rescue us. Or I’ll find some amazing excuse that means we can go back home.”

“You still could,” he said, in her ear. “No excuses needed.”

Laine just smiled, ambiguously, stood back up, and set off again.

In a quiet narrow street that was barely a step up from an alleyway, they finally found an unoccupied shop doorway big enough to shelter in, with old closing down sale posters yellowing in the windows. It looked like someone else had been using it until recently; a couple of old bottles and a filthy blanket were crammed into a corner (she carefully nudged them away with her toe), and it didn’t smell too fresh. It was sheltered enough, though, with the drizzle that had recently started thankfully blowing along the narrow street in the opposite direction, and hopefully they’d only need to be here one night. Laine boosted Polly up the little step, then untied the twine on her corrugated bedding and spread it out over the porch, trying to make it at least a few sheets thick, with the wetter bits at the bottom.

It was dry, but it wasn’t warm and it wasn’t remotely comfortable. And the badly-lit street left her feeling nauseatingly vulnerable, a hollow feeling churning in her chest; there was no way she’d have even gone anywhere near it without her little round bodyguard. She tucked herself into the corner, so no-one could sneak up on them, but even having a wall at her back didn’t feel that reassuring.

More like she lacked an escape route, really.

“God, this was so badly thought-out,” she groaned, resting her head against the heel of her hand, propping her elbow against her knee. “I don’t know who I thought I was trying to kid. ‘Sleeping rough for one night can’t be that hard’.” She drew little air quotes around the statement. “It’s just sleeping outside! Like camping, just without a tent!” She covered her face with both palms. “What a fucking idiot.”

Polly had opened back up and sat watching her from close to her feet. He made a little glum noise. “I don’t think I have a frame of reference to comment on that.”

At least his scrolling optics were something reassuring and familiar enough to focus on. “Me being an idiot, or all the rest of it?” She snorted a sour laugh. “And this is nothing like an episode of Doctor Who. Not even one of the weird ones.”

“Do you have to sleep out here?” he wondered, peering out into the gloom. “We passed a whole bunch of hotels. Some of them weren’t too expensive. No bad guys would be able to get to us there.”

“I can’t afford a hotel,” she scoffed. “Not even if we weren’t running dark. I can’t use my card because they’d be able to track it, and I never drew out enough cash to cover anything like that and food as well.” After a beat, she added; “I’m pretty sure they’d be able to track me if I paid in cash, too. I bet even a cheap hotel would still need ID of some kind.”

He cocked over to one side. “Who’s ‘they’?”

“Whoever Tark is working with. I wouldn’t be surprised if he hadn’t reported me as a missing person, by now, as well, so he can get the authorities helping out.”

“Hm.” Polly leaned in against her boots. “I should have let you take me to the police, shouldn’t I? Right after I first arrived.”

“What, and miss out on this adventure?” She forced a tired smile and stroked his top curve. “Not likely. And you’d still be on a shelf somewhere, with a bunch of lost suitcases and broken umbrellas.”

“…you think so? Oh.”

“All right, maybe not. A little chatterbox like you would never let them get away with forgetting about you.” After a beat, she joked; “You’d probably be telling them how to do their jobs, anyway.”

“Yeah.” He chuckled, guiltily, and glanced away. “Probably.”

They sat quietly together for a little while. Laine fished the flattened remains of half a cheese and ham sandwich from her bag and ate it slowly, hoping it would satisfy her growling stomach.

It didn’t. But she didn’t have anything else, and didn’t fancy going back out into the drizzle to find a 24-hour convenience store-

“Hey, lovey,” a drunken voice slurred from frighteningly close by, and Laine froze. The speaker appeared out of the drizzle, just beyond the porch. “You look like you could do with some company on a soggy night like this, huh?”

Heart in her mouth, she stared up at the unwelcome newcomer. With a streetlight behind him, it was impossible for her to see any detail – apart from that he was tall, and broad, and swaying slightly. Shit. Could she try and run?

“Plenny of room for one more in there, I reckon,” he went on, putting a foot up on the step and leaning closer.

A startled Er-… was all she managed, before a very long, deep, ugly growl came up out of the gloom nearby.

In spite of knowing it was only Polly, and not the enormous vicious dog he was pretending to be, she felt the hair on the back of her neck all stand to attention.

It definitely startled the drunk, as well. Not being able to see the owner of the growl didn’t appear to make much difference – he stumbled backwards, away from the invisible hound, and with a hasty never mind! he hurried off into the dark.

Polly waited until the sound of footsteps had disappeared before speaking. “Are they gone?”

“Yeah. He might not have, without that Hound of the Baskervilles impression.”

“That wasn’t precisely the plot of-… okay. I’m glad it worked.”

Polly gave his friend a long critical look. Laine was obviously shivering, even though it wasn’t particularly cold.

“Go home,” he said, nudging her calf. “Please. You’ve done more than enough for me. Thank you.”

“Still determined to get rid of your boss, huh?” She hugged her knees. “You’ll be totally on your own, if I do. You can’t carry the laptop, and even if you could, you can’t exactly rock on into a café and ask to borrow a power socket.”

“Yes, fine. I accept that I’ll struggle, but I’m sure I can figure something out. And this sucks worse for you. You’ve been attacked twice already and it’s only the first night! What if I can’t protect you, next time?”

“Polly.” She waited until he’d gone quiet. “If I go home, I can’t come back. That’s it. That’s the end of this. I won’t know where you are, I can’t contact you with your broken aerial, and even if I could, Tark will follow me.” She pressed the heel of her hand against one eye, feeling sore. “And that’s assuming he doesn’t try and get me to tell him where I left you.”

“Then I’ll sneak! I can get in all sorts of places people can’t. No-one knows I’m sentient, and if I hide well enough, I won’t be reported as a suspicious parcel, either. I’ll find other ways to connect to the internet. I’ll charge up using the power sockets they put out for market traders. I’ll… I don’t know, hide up in the daytime, and come out at night like a sneaky, shiny, spherical urban fox.”

“You think foxes are sneaky? You’ve never heard them having sex.”

He barked an anxious laugh, eyes brightening. “Oh. Really? Um. Well I don’t think I will be doing that?”

Laine dredged up a genuine smile. “All right.” She drew a long deep steadying breath. “Compromise time. If you haven’t figured it out by this time tomorrow, I’ll take you to the police. Then at least I can make sure they actually do help you and don’t just stick you on a shelf.”

“So you only need to be out here one night? Good. We can go to a hotel instead.”

She groaned, playfully. “You’re an incorrigible little horror, sometimes. I don’t have enough money. But it’s fine. It’s just one night.”

“You’re shivering. I don’t like that you’re scared and hurting on my account.”

“Ugh. I’m just cold, all right?” she lied.

Polly considered it for a moment, expression set in a firm line. “Okay, fine,” he huffed. “Help me get on there?”

“What? Why?” Laine gave him a long wary look.

“…just…” He caught the sigh before it could escape. “Please?”

Laine put out both hands and manhandled him up onto her pile of cardboard. There wasn’t a whole lot of room, and… he seemed intent on getting as close as he could, tucking in between her legs and backing up until he was pressed against her abdomen.

“Uh,” she said, not exactly sure what he was doing. She remembered he’d actually looked horrified at the concept of getting so close, when Mina had invited herself to sit with him for cuddles. “Do you… need to be this close?”

“Yep. All will become clear.” He closed his shutters to make himself as smooth and round as possible, and gave a little side-to-side wriggle, like a small round bird getting comfortable. “I might suck at everything else but I can try and keep you warm, at least,” he said, through her earbud.

His usually-cool exterior was distinctly warm under her palm. “How are you doing that?”

“You never noticed your laptop getting hot? Same principle.”

“Yeah, but that’s because it’s old and shit and I ask it for too much.” She thought about it a second. “Maybe I’m asking you for too much.”

“If anyone’s asking for too much, it’s me. Just treat me like a big silver hot water bottle; it’s fine.” He gave a little chirp of humour. “I’ll ignore the implication I’m old and shit.”

She hesitantly wrapped her arms around him, feeling awkward. He was very close? (And there was a gun hidden away inside there.) But he was also very nice and warm and all right, fine, perhaps it was a good idea. “You sure this won’t hurt you?”

“You’re not that strong, girlfriend.”

“You know what I meant. Overclocking like this.”

“I wouldn’t do it if it was gonna damage me.”

They both heard the lie underlying his words, but neither had the spirit to get in an argument over it. If he wanted to do it, well. His decision, and all that.

“This okay?” he prompted, in her ear, once she’d stopped shifting around and apparently got comfortable.

“Yeah. Yeah, you’re good, actually,” she whispered back. She’d just about figured out the best angle that maximised how much she could get in contact with him. “Toasty.” A pause. “Thank you.”

“Least I could do!”

She rested her chin on her arm and listened to the soft whir of his fans, right below her ears. “When we get you home,” she said, softly. “Would you stay in contact with us?”

He remained silent for several seconds. “I’d like that,” he said, at last. “Very much. You and your friends are such lovely people and you’ve been super kind to me. I just don’t know if I’d be allowed.”

“You could do it secretly. We won’t tell.” She leaned her head sideways so her cheek was against him. “I mean, who else are you gonna watch shit telly with? We still have the end of that Silent Witness to watch, sometime.”

“Secret besties,” he mulled, and they both giggled.

“It doesn’t have to be regularly. Just every now and then,” Laine added. “So we know you’re still ticking.”

“Hmm.” He remained quiet for a very long time, and when he finally spoke, his words were reluctant, as though he himself was only recognising them for the first time. “I might not be allowed to keep these memories. Please don’t be sad if I can’t keep in touch, even in secret.”

“But-… they can’t just delete them… can they? They’re your experiences! They’re not just data.”

Except, she realised, they probably were, when you got down to the nitty-gritty of it.

“I don’t know? My brain doesn’t work the same way as yours, remember? Since we do now know I’m probably a little soldier who belongs to the army, I really don’t think they’d let me remember all this. Especially not if it impairs my functioning.”

“That’s not fair…!”

“Hm.”

Laine let it fester for a few moments. “Well that just proves why I need to stick with you,” she asserted, firmly. “They can’t delete my memories. I’ll shout about you from the rooftops, if I have to.”

“I hope you won’t have to, but… thank you.” There was a little subtle shift under her arms. “Now you really gotta get some rest, honey, or we’ll both be bad-tempered garbage come tomorrow.”

Laine snorted softly at the obvious change in subject, but obediently went quiet.

Polly sat quiet and patient while Laine tried to find that little thread to lead her off into an uncomfortable dreamland. Eventually, he felt her arms drift subtly looser and listened as her breathing deepened, and recognised she was asleep. He allowed his shutters to come open just enough to see out, to keep watch. Her arms were over his gun hatch and he had to hope his automatic processors wouldn’t decide he needed it again.

Should he take his chance to slip away? She wouldn’t be able to tell Tark anything if she had no idea where he’d gone-

He immediately took himself to task for even thinking it. Abandon your friend – yes, your friend – sleeping rough, on her own, vulnerable, nothing to defend her, in the cold and wet?

No. If there was one thing he was apparently good at, it was scaring dangerous felons away. If he had to be a gun with a face? Well, fine; he’d just have to be the best gun with a face.

-----

They might have missed 101 by mere hours, but knowing that he had indeed been at the student flat had been the key to his colleagues finally getting a visual trace of him.

“As soon as we knew where he’d been, and when, we found the first footage of him,” 43 explained, from Spacehawk’s flight deck, as he played back the scraps of footage the zeroids had filtered out from all the thousands of hours of recordings from London’s hundreds of CCTV cameras. “We could then follow him fairly easily, for a while.”

Playing simultaneously on the viewscreen on the command console, and on a tablet in a London hotel, their prized footage was distant and grainy, made worse by the dim morning light, but undeniably showed a person walking alongside a familiar large metallic sphere that was somehow rolling itself down the street. 101 didn’t look like he was under duress, and his companion didn’t appear to be trying to steer him or force him to go anywhere, so Hiro was happy to conclude that the students were being honest when they said they considered the missing zeroid to be their friend, and were genuinely trying (in a… possibly-less-than-helpful way) to help him.

17 and 43 had carefully stitched the footage together into a long single montage. 101 and his new friend passed under one camera, and a new camera across the street picked them up; that followed them until the next camera around the corner spotted them. And so it continued; the video followed them all the way down the quiet Sunday-morning streets until they finally turned off into an underground station and briefly disappeared.

“We still don’t actually have TfL’s data,” 43 apologised. “And they went back on the subway a few times. It’s why it’s taken us a while to find them each time. It’s a big network with almost three hundred stations and we had to start from fresh every time they boarded. Lucky it was a Sunday so we had a clearer view, without all the commuters in the way.”

The playback continued in the background, silently. Hiro watched his friend and the stranger make their way around London; the zeroid never once opened his shutters or revealed himself as anything more than a self-propelled ball, and actually – somehow – drew very little attention. Most Londoners didn’t seem at all interested in the concept of spheres rolling themselves along. Perhaps they’d all seen far weirder. On those occasions the pair did interact with other humans, they didn’t stop moving forwards, and the person they spoke to rarely stayed with them more than a minute.

Hiro wondered what 101’s new friend had told people.

At regular intervals, they would disappear into cafés, or shopping outlets; even a library, briefly. Cafés seemed to be their preference; they’d often stay for thirty minutes, an hour maybe. Hiro quickly put two and two together and realised they were navigating by places that had wifi. So 101’s antenna was broken.

Occasionally time skipped forwards in big jumps, where the unlikely duo turned off into a station, then jumped abruptly forwards to show them re-emerging from another several kilometres away. The light levels began to drop as evening drew in, and their detours into buildings grew less frequent as places closed for the night.

“And this,” 43 said, cautiously, “is where they were attacked.”

Hiro jerked his head up, heart jolting into a higher gear. “Attacked?! Are they all right?”

43 just looked back down at the screen.

Their attacker was hard to pick out from the shadows, at first – a wiry little man in dark clothing, skinny and sticking to the spots covered less well by the CCTV. He grabbed the woman’s bag and almost made her go over on her backside, and 101 darted away into hiding so fast, it looked as though he’d been fired from a cannon. The woman exchanged a few words with the man, fumbling in her bag – offering him money? Which he didn’t seem to want – while he threatened her with a knife… but then 101 returned and sent their attacker packing, casually disarming him with a very neatly-placed shot from his pistol.

Apparently shocked by the revelation that the zeroid was armed, 101’s friend had cowered away from him, clutching her bag like a protective shield.

And 101 had fled from her.

Confused and blind (and maybe a little traumatised), he’d tumbled away in a wobbling, jagged roll, colliding with half a dozen things including a wall before finally making it into an alleyway.

After a minute or so, the woman had recovered from the shock, and got up and followed him. Hiro watched her wander, his heart in his mouth, as on several occasions she headed in completely the wrong direction. Eventually she homed in on the alleyway as well, and disappeared.

There was another significant break in the footage, where time hopped forwards and everything suddenly turned shiny from the light rain that hadn’t been falling earlier, and the pair re-emerged. She stepped out first, and glanced down at him, holding out her hand. 101 followed her, sticking close to her ankles, much more slowly and drawing a subtly jittery line compared to how he’d previously been rolling strongly along, but moving steadily forwards anyway.

For the first time, Hiro got an inkling that maybe his friend was a lot more sad and scared than he’d been allowing anyone to see. He touched his fingers to the screen. “Stay strong,” he said, softly.

“Beg pardon, sir?”

Hiro forced a smile for 43. “I was just thinking out loud, Forty Three. Please, continue playback?”

The video resumed, and the two runaways continued their travels. Hiro wasn’t sure where they were going, precisely – and possibly they weren’t all that sure, either? – but they continued moving for at least another thirty minutes, until finally turning down another street with no CCTV cover, whereupon they disappeared altogether, and playback stopped.

“We lost them at that point. They didn’t come back out, and the other end of the street has no coverage,” the zeroid confirmed, when Hiro gave him a questioning look. “We only have footage that goes up to 0300 hours, and we couldn’t identify them in any of it. We’re still waiting to receive the latest batch.”

“What’s the delay?” Ninestein challenged, from the hotel room he had shared with Mary.

“It’s early Monday morning,” 43 explained. “Their own operators are reviewing what’s been going on over the weekend. We’re low priority – to them, anyway.”

“What time is it in London now?” Hiro checked his watch and did a quick calculation. “Approaching nine thirty?” At Ninestein’s nod, he sighed. “They might be anywhere, by now.”

“Do you think they were out on the street all night?” Mary wondered, distractedly dissecting a croissant.

Ninestein glanced at her and frowned. “Unless they suddenly decided to keep within camera blindspots, when they were never bothered before? Yeah. I imagine they found somewhere to stop for the night. Seems doubtful that it was a hotel.”

“Poor woman. I can’t imagine how frightening that must have been.” She sighed. “But it’s a good sign for 101.”

“Captain…?” Hiro prompted. “I’m not clear on your reasoning.”

“If he’s out there with someone willing to sleep rough, after already having been attacked, just to avoid whoever is chasing them? That feels like proof he’s found someone who genuinely cares what happens to him. Not just someone with…” She gestured with the corpse of the pastry. “…dollar signs in her eyes.”

Ninestein intercepted the piece of croissant and ate it, to Mary’s annoyed exclamation. “I couldn’t deal with you turning the thing into any more crumbs. My uniform already looks like I slept in it-”

“You did.”

“-I don’t need to drop bits of mutilated pastry on it, too.”

Hiro rested his weight on the console, wanting to urge them to just get out there and look for him. “101 has been out on the street all night. We have had identified no footage of him taken after… eleven o’clock? Earlier? They could have been abducted! Could have got into a vehicle and been taken anywhere, and we would have no idea-”

“Hiro.” Ninestein put his hands up. “It’s fine. We’re heading out in a few minutes. Hudson and Zero are both already appraised and ready to go. We’ll consider if 101 has been picked up by anyone else if we literally get nothing else at all on the new footage. But it’ll be fine.” He smiled, tiredly. “I’d be surprised if we haven’t got them by this evening.”

“You said that last time, if I recall.”

“I know. But we can’t possibly be that unlucky twice…”

[keaalu]

I have this persistent tickle* in my brain at the moment reminding me that I had a Scarlet/Transformers crossover I've been pondering on for at least three or four years, involving annoying little asshole teleporting flying ambulances with horrible sirens being mistaken for Mysterons while they look for their missing twin brother, except I don't have a plot yet

*pondering*

I mean it's not yet squeaking louder than the silly little spherical cute things being all squiffy in love and tying up all my creative abilities BUT it's there

(* = not Hiro)

[keaalu]

WIP WSaturday?

Being self-indulgent because I can. Not canon at all. Just needed to get some words out of my head; as you were, carry on everyone.

-------

“He’s in his garden,” she drawled; Hiro imagined she was unimpressed by the idea of having plants aboard.

“He has a garden?” he wondered, gamely following her down the corridor.

“Oh he insisted on having one. As a memorial to what he’d lost.” She poked him with a long fingernail. “Who he’d lost. All his planting choices are based on what he thinks you would have picked.”

Hiro glanced away, feeling the heat rise in his face. “It has been several years. I had half hoped he might have found someone new to focus all his affection on.”

“He did, mostly – they are just small and green and leafy.”

She stopped outside the cavernous doors to a cargo hold, and caught his arm. “Just be aware that we had to make a few changes,” she cautioned, gently. “He looks a little different to how you remember him.”

“What-… whatever does that mean?”

Zelda smiled ambiguously and opened the door.

Inside wasn’t so much a garden as a well-tended jungle, full of tall tree ferns and ficus and calatheas and studded with orchids. In spite of the high ceiling it was still impossible to look from one side and see the wall on the other.

“Owun, you have a visitor,” she called.

“A visitor?” a familiar voice sang out over the tops of the plants, puzzled. “Who ever would be visiting me?”

Zelda sighed, impatient. “Are you going to stay over there talking or are you going to come and see?”

“Fine fine; coming.”

A man pushed his way through the overgrown foliage, brushing dirt off his hands on the linen apron tied over his clothes.

Well. Perhaps not a human man, precisely. No human was quite so absurdly tall, bordering on eight feet if he was an inch, but not very well proportioned with it, instead looking rather stretched in appearance, lean and willowy with long, slender limbs – a greyhound, in human form. An android, probably. Unlike Zelda, he didn’t look prematurely aged – rather, his light brown skin was smooth, like he was barely into his twenties, freckled over his nose and cheeks, with a single shocking diagonal pale patch above his left eye that disappeared up into his hairline. A corresponding streak of blonde ran through the short spikey brown hair above it, drawing a line just past the crown of his head.

Kintsugi, Hiro’s brain supplied, knowing instantly that the man he’d never seen before in his entire life was the same person that had been first his friend, then his best friend, and finally his sweetheart, and the same person he’d feared he’d never see ever again, lost on the wrong side of a mirror for so many years.

-their eyes met and the familiar stranger jolted backwards half a step, as though he’d walked over a live wire. His fingers spasmed open and the secateurs went clattering to the deck. His hands flew up to cover his mouth.

For a heartbeat, neither of them moved.

Then the heartbeat passed and it was rather like being bodily assaulted by a freight train – the impact knocked the air clean out of Hiro’s chest, and when the arms went around him in a crushing hug, it felt like he’d never be able to refill his lungs ever again. Even on his knees, with his arms around him and his face crushed into him, the man was as tall as he was – almost able to still look him in the eye.

…Well, in theory. He was too busy sobbing into his uniform, right now. “You came back for me. You came back for me!”

“Of course I came back for you,” Hiro laughed, feeling the tears on his own cheeks. He peeled Owun off him and cupped his cheeks in both hands, before pressing a kiss to his brow, just like he used to when his sweetheart was still small and spherical. “Why are you so tall, darling.”

Owun latched back around him, smushing his forehead against his chest. “Is that really what we’re going to focus on, and not the fact you came back for me and I am about to explode because I don’t think I can handle what I’m feeling.”

[keaalu]

So I'm still noodling away in the background with all my various WIPs, and a combination of inappropriate musical choices and just general me-being-me-ness blindsided me with WHAT IF THEY CLOSE THE HOLE IN THE MIRROR BUT ACCIDENTALLY LEAVE SOMEONE BEHIND ON THE WRONG SIDE.

Thanks you brain no I have plenty of time to have even more new ideas to bite my ankles.

[keaalu]

Kestrel Kestrel, chapter four

I hope no-one thought I'd forgotten about this nonsense...

------

Kate slept better than she’d thought she would, with 55 purring quietly for her the whole time.

She’d have probably slept longer, but her protesting stomach woke her up. Those few shreds of bland chicken were a distant memory and she felt ravenous.

Thus, she’d only been awake for forty seven minutes but Kate was already finishing her third plate of sandwiches, not to mention crunching her way through Spacehawk’s entire stock of crispy snacks. 101 looked alarmed by how quickly his inventory was dropping but wasn’t hesitating at bringing more when she looked at him in a specific way.

“Growing a whole new skeleton really takes it out of you,” she said, accepting the offering when the zeroid trundled over the obs lounge floor, pushing yet another packet of crisps towards her.

“That’s our last pack of those,” 101 informed her, trying but not quite able to keep all the reproach from his tone. “So if you want anything else you’ll need to pick something different. Like broccoli.”

“Sorry, hon.” She suspected it had probably been Hiro’s favourites she’d been happily munching her way through, if the zeroid’s manner was anything to go by. “I’ll send some more up on your next supply run.”

He chirped an acknowledgement and seemed mollified, for the moment.

“I guess it must have felt a bit like this when you got your body back after Zelda turned you into a cube, huh?” she wondered.

“Oh I don’t think my experience was anywhere near as bad as yours, ma’am,” he demurred. “Mine was more like… maybe just a very unflattering new set of clothes.”

“I don’t think you’re giving yourself enough credit for surviving a horrible situation,” she said. “For at least two weeks afterwards, you were still hissing every time you got annoyed, if I remember right.”

There was a subtle brightening of his optic display and he just said hmm! which she imagined probably meant he was still embarrassed and didn’t want to talk about it, so she patted him on the head and left it alone. “And I bet it still sucked.”

“Well, it didn’t involve a trash compactor, so it could have been worse.” He gave her fingers a bump. “Would you like a coffee? I just heard it finish brewing.”

“That would be amazing. Thank you.”

He squeaked another little nonverbal agreement, and rolled away to get it. (Pulling the new bag of snacks open, she wondered if she could get away with asking for more sandwiches when he came back.)

“Tea? Yes please, dear,” she heard Hiro say, and looked up to find the lieutenant in the doorway, holding a tablet.

“I ate all your chips, so I think I’m in trouble with your husband,” Kate apologised, holding the open pack out to him. Even that small action made her shoulders ache. Perhaps she ought to forego more sandwiches in favour of sleeping for a few days.

Hiro smiled and took a single crisp, but otherwise waved her off. “He is still bringing you snacks, so you can’t be in too much trouble.” He settled on the floor next to her, cross legged. He looked tired; she didn’t imagine he’ d slept much since this had all started. “If you had upset him, he would have started bringing you things you probably would not enjoy very much.”

“Yeah, he threatened me with something healthy already.”

Hiro chuckled. “Well, please keep this between us, but I am glad someone else is eating our inventory. I once told Owun I particularly liked these, so now he always buys far too many, then pretends they were on offer. Then we have to somehow store four cases of them.” He looked at the bag Kate was holding out, and sat on his hands. “I try not to eat them too quickly, because then he panics that we are running out and buys more.” A little sigh. “There are certain nuances to human behaviour that zeroids don’t quite understand, yet, and striking a balance between unhealthy foods we enjoy and sensible nutritional choices appears to be one of them.”

“Well, you have plenty of ‘sensible nutritional choices’ in the form of broccoli.”

“And why do you think we have plenty of that?” Hiro gave her an arch look, then finally relented and took another crisp.

“Yeah, I get it.” Kate chuckled.

They sat quietly together for a little while, with 55 unobtrusively monitoring Kate’s vital signs from where he perched nearby, connected to Spacehawk’s systems. (The zeroid had become something of an anxious sheepdog and was following her everywhere, now. Just in case, apparently.) 101 finally returned with their drinks, on a small trolley.

Kate took her coffee, but eyed Hiro’s green tea with a vague envy. “I probably shoulda asked you for one of those instead, 101. Not sure caffeine was the best idea for my poor nerves, after all.”

101 was already halfway to the door. “I can get-”

“No, no. This looks good too. Thank you.” It did look good; hazelnut syrup and plenty of hot milk, with a thick steamed foam on top. She took a sip, savouring it, before finally prompting; “So, do you have an update for me, Hiro?”

“I do. Not much of one, yet, but we wanted to ensure you were kept in the loop.” Hiro held out the tablet for her, but maintained his hold on it for a few extra seconds. “Before we start… I am sorry that there is no easy way to tell you what we have found, but I will promise you now that we will do everything in our power to fix it. All right?”

Kate took a steadying breath before accepting the device. “I’m already not liking the direction this sounds like it’s going in Hiro, but all right. I trust you.” She stared down at the confusing mosaic of graphs and microscopy and… biopsy images? “What am I looking at?”

Hiro tapped the first image and it enlarged to a graphical representation of genetic data. “Initially, when you arrived and we took samples?” At her nod, he went on; “We thought that Zelda must have done something structurally to alter your DNA, but when we analysed it, it was all still human. We could not explain it. How could you be human, but categorically not human, at the same time?” He touched the screen again and scrolled through a selection of biopsy results, most of which she wasn’t sure of the meaning of. “Eventually, we did a visual scan of your blood sample. And we found… this.” He tapped the tablet and brought up a new image.

It was some sort of microscopy of a blood film. Kate could recognise red blood cells easily. The irregular, blobby masses were probably white blood cells.

She had no idea what the scattering of angular black flecks were, though.

She sucked in a sharp breath and for a second didn’t feel capable of releasing it. “The hell are those.”

“We are still working on our analysis, but they look like very small machines of some sort. They have proved extremely hard to extract to get under the electron microscope. Doctor Ninestein and Kiljoy are still working on it.”

“They’re in my blood?” She suddenly wished she hadn’t eaten quite so many sandwiches, and hastily put her coffeecup down before she could spill it in her lap. Bile rose in her throat.

“Yes. I’m sorry.” Hiro caught her hand and she clung to him with both her own.

“They’re in my blood, Hiro.” She knew it was her imagination, but everything suddenly felt very heavy – like her blood had been replaced by sludge. Maybe her muscles didn’t ache because of the transformation, but because a hundred thousand tiny sharp black flecks were scouring their way along the inside of her blood vessels, like a malicious alien virus. “Shit. Shit.”

Hiro kept hold of her shaking hands, and waited quietly. The two zeroids had both converged on her as well, leaning comfortingly against her.

“I don’t know what I even expected you to say.” Kate laughed in spite of herself, shakily, and wiped her face with one hand. “That Zelda had zapped me with some… magical raygun, and the effect had worn off, and that was it? It’s all over? Of course it wouldn’t be that easy, would it.”

That bubble of laughter threatened to become hysterical. Keep it together, Kate. She focused on the grounding weight of 55, pressed up against her, and counted each slow scroll of 101’s optic display.

At the count of fifteen, she felt like she might be able to trust her voice again. “When can you remove them?”

Hiro’s silence was all she needed to know.

“We will remove them,” he hastily added. “I just… am not sure how quickly we can do it, yet.”

“Can you block them? Keep them from reactivating?”

“I don’t know. We don’t know how they work. We do not even know for sure if they are switched on right now.”

“So what you mean is, I could turn back into a bird at literally any moment. Including at the worst possible time. Like… at the controls of an aircraft. Or on stage. Or… on the goddamn toilet-” She swallowed the rest of the words before they could dig in any deeper. “How did Zelda even get them-…” A new, nauseating thought hit her. “It was the parcel, wasn’t it. Shit. I left it at the concert hall. I didn’t think to check if Joe actually got rid of it safely-”

“I’m sorry?”

“Someone sent me a ‘gift’. They dressed someone up to look like Stew, so it’d look like it was all legit and came from head office, and nothing harmful showed up on the security scan. Just… pottery and minerals.” She closed her eyes. “It was a broken statue of a bird wearing a wig. There was black sand in it, and it left a stain on my fingertips that took a while to wash off. I thought it was just a stupid joke from a fan who couldn’t craft very well.” That sensation of sickness rose in her throat again. If only she’d been as careful putting it back in the box as she had been taking it out, and none of this would be happening. “But it didn’t wash off, did it. It got into my blood, through my skin, by-by… creeping in through my pores-”

“Kate,” Hiro interrupted, squeezing her fingers and helping pull her out of a threatening spiral. “I promise we will fix this. Zelda did it – which means we can un-do it. I’m so sorry I can do nothing for you yet, but I will. You have my absolute promise of that.”

“…thank you.” She let out a breath in a very long shaky exhale and leaned into him. “I’m sorry, guys.” She tried for a smile but it came out more like a grimace of pain. “I know it’s not your fault. Please don’t feel like I’m blaming you for not magically knowing how to fix it already, Hiro. I just… oh, man. Just when I thought it couldn’t get any worse.” She covered her face with her free hand. “At least tell me they’re not breeding.”

Hiro considered it for a few moments. “We are fairly confident are not self-replicating. Granted, they have been exceptionally difficult to visualise in any detail, but Kiljoy has not observed any difference in the number present in the sample we took.” He found a small smile in reply. “There is also one… silver lining? For some of us, at least. They do not appear to be escaping into the environment, either.”

“So I’m not stuck up here in quarantine,” Kate intuited, and found a more genuine little smile. “As silver linings go it’s pretty small, but I’ll take it. I don’t think I took Earth so much for granted until I was told I might not be able to go back there. Living permanently in orbit? Really not my thing.” She leaned forwards and patted 101’s top curve, making him chirp. “No offence, you guys. You’re both wonderful company. But I don’t know how you do it, spending so much time up here. I need to feel the earth under my feet again. Real gravity. A breeze that doesn’t come from the aircon.”

“No offence taken, Kate, of course. And Treehawk will be ready for you whenever you want to depart,” Hiro reassured. “We can research these… nanobots, for want of a better description… without needing to force you to remain here.”

“Please – keep me updated with everything you find?”

“Of course! You will be first to know.”

“I didn’t think it could get much worse than the time she had Lord Tempo actually kill me, but this sure is in the running for the top spot, now.” Kate picked her coffee back up, and sighed quietly into its cooling depths. “I guess compared to having a worm put in your head to force you to try and kill everyone you love, turning into a bird is getting away lightly.”

Hiro offered a rueful smile. “Let’s not compare our personal traumas. You have absolutely not been somehow treated more kindly than I was.”

Kate slid an arm behind him and leaned into him, letting her head bump down on his shoulder. “I’m beginning to think this job is bad for our health.”

He echoed her movements, leaning back towards her. “You’re right – but somebody has to do it. And at least we all have each other for support, which is more than can be said for Zelda and her ‘allies’.”

Chirps of agreement came from the two zeroids.

Kate finally found a small laugh that didn’t feel like it was a step or two away from a sob. “As families go, I don’t think I coulda found a better one, huh? Thanks, guys.”

Eventually Spacehawk’s crew had to head away to attend to other duties, leaving just 55 and Kate together in the observations lounge. He gave her a little bump and shimmied carefully up under her arm.

“Are you all right, miss Kate? You still seem quite stressed. Your heart rate’s normally lower at rest.”

“You caught me out, Five-five.” Kate sighed. “I guess I still feel like I have an anvil hanging over my head. We know how Zelda did it, but don’t know what the actual trigger was? After I was… infected…” The words felt sour in her mouth. “…it took until the next day before the flecks did anything, and-… I don’t really want it to happen again? But I know it will, because Zelda’s not been in contact with us to gloat over it, so whatever nightmare she’s planning hasn’t come to fruition yet. And my blood will stay full of tiny black specks until she does, unless Hiro can figure it out first.”

55 made a sad little descending note. “Is there anything that I can do? I feel pretty useless if I can’t help you.”

“Just… being company is good, buddy. I promise.” Kate tightened her arm and pulled him in closer, and listened as his fans began that soothing purr again. “And I’m gonna need you while I’m on this enforced sabbatical, so you better have that inner thesaurus of yours all charged up and ready to go.”

“Ha ha! Ten-ten, ma’am. You can rely on me – so long as it’s not with the choreography!”

When the time finally came for them to depart, 101 met them at the airlock, with a packet of crisps. “I fibbed. There was still one pack left,” he apologised, nudging it towards her. “For the journey down?”

Kate smiled. “You don’t want to keep them for Hiro?”

The zeroid glanced around himself, guiltily. “He thinks we ran out already. I haven’t fessed up to still having some, yet.”

She crouched in front of him. “I know you just wanted to keep one pack for him, so I’m flattered that you changed your mind for me. Thank you. But it’s fine, hon. I have eaten so many of your snacks already, I’m surprised I haven’t turned into a chip.” She thought about it for a second or so. “The way my day’s going, I can’t even say that feels all that implausible, either.” She stroked his casing, and smiled, gratefully. “Give them to Hiro, with my thanks.”

He leaned into her fingers, subtly. “Thank you, ma’am. Safe travels.”

Ninestein gave Kate an uneasy glance, watching as she climbed into Treehawk’s passenger seat and buckled her harness. “You absolutely sure you’re all right?”

“Tired and sore and really goddamn crushed that I can’t fly, right now.” She looked back at him. “But if you mean ‘are you fit to be flown’, then sure. I’m fine. Can’t guarantee I won’t turn into a bird again on the way down, but I’m sure you’ve dealt with weirder. I promise to behave myself.”

“We don’t have to travel just yet if you don’t feel like you’re up to it-”

“Don’t you even dare suggest it, Tiger.” She waved a vaguely threatening finger. “I want to sit in the garden, feel the breeze on my face and grass under my toes, and work out what the hell I’m going to do about all those upcoming commitments that really won’t be helped by a coat of feathers…”

-----

Leaning heavily into the central control console on the flight deck, Hiro watched the view from the space zeroids of their small shuttle departing. He felt tireder than he wanted to admit – having first spent hours searching for their missing friend, and then switching straight into researching the malicious nanobot infestation, he hadn’t managed to catch more than a few minutes sleep, and now his eyes had grown sore and a headache was starting to tighten a band around his temples.

101 appeared out of nowhere with a cup of tea, and a suspiciously familiar packet of snacks. “Hiro?”

“Oh!” Hiro smiled and held out a hand. “A little bird implied we had run out of these.”

“Ye-eah so I might have been a teeny tiny bit less than generous with the truth and not completely totally one-hundred-percent honest about our inventory.” Fairly dripping with guilt, the zeroid watched Hiro pick the offerings up off the trolley. “I already apologised to Captain Kestrel. She said to let you have them.”

Hiro smiled and gave him a pet. “Thank you, both of you. I will save them for later, when I am not too tired to enjoy them.”

101 watched him walk across to the window seat, where the bright curve of the Earth was visible. “What they did to Captain Kestrel – exactly how bad is it?”

Hiro patted the cushion by his side; without hesitation, 101 took the invitation and tucked up under his arm. “It is… not good,” the human lieutenant confirmed, slowly, studying the spirals inscribed by the steam rising from his drink. “I hesitate even to say it is manageable, right now.”

“What does that mean?”

“We do not have a big enough sample to study properly. We can barely see what they even are? And even if we managed to filter every last one out of Kate’s blood sample, we still wouldn’t have enough to experiment on.” Hiro took a sip and savoured the warmth of his drink for a second or two. “At the moment, manually picking them out is the only solution we have come up with, and I am not sure how we would do it without removing her blood from her body, somehow. It would be like trying to take out individual blood cells.”

“We might be able to do that,” 101 offered. “Zeroids, I mean. We can be accurate enough to target individual flecks, at least.”

Hiro laughed, tiredly. “I will find you some very small tweezers, then.”

They sat quietly together for a while, with Hiro unwilling to doze off with such a huge job weighing on his conscience but definitely beginning to nod. While 101 was always happy and content to initiate snuggles, and rarely needed an excuse to do so, close contact also let him monitor his friend’s biosigns, and right now he could feel Hiro beginning to lose the battle against sleep, pressing gradually harder against his casing as he began to doze.

101 didn’t know precisely how tiredness affected how human brains worked, but he’d heard some of the gobbledygook Hiro’s half-sleeping brain had convinced him was sensible in the past, and knew that the lieutenant wouldn’t be processing things effectively if he tried to carry on like this.

It exasperated Ninestein, most of the time, but Hiro still encouraged all the zeroids to think for themselves, saying he valued the leaps of logic their processors sometimes made. Granted, a lot of their ‘imagination’ was either one absurd leap too far, or else not remotely imaginative. But practice (and a good teacher) had meant 101 was getting better at it, and something new was percolating: Hiro can’t do anything until we get a bigger sample.

So, we need to try and get more for him. Kate said they were in a statue. There might be more in it. Hiro’s too tired to make that connection for himself just yet, and time is of the essence. The longer we leave it, the more likely we won’t find the thing, particularly if it’s in the trash. I need to get someone on Earth to help.

After the third time Hiro jerked his head back up out of a doze, 101 finally lost patience with him.

“You need to go to bed, honey. You’ve been awake for at least twenty four hours. You can’t possibly be at your best right now.” He butted gently into his side.

“No, no.” Hiro shoved his glasses up and scrubbed his eyes. “I need-”

“To go to bed, before you fall asleep on me, and that won’t be fun for either of us. Go on, shoo. Let me look after the shop. I can handle monitoring and you know I can scream pretty loud if things get too tough for me.”

Hiro looked down to meet the intense scarlet gaze staring him out, then sighed, beaten, and put both arms around him, gratefully. “Thank you.” He pushed himself unsteadily back to his feet, bumping into the central console, then away down the short corridor to his cabin.

101 watched him go, then settled at his perch, and got himself comfortable. He waited until he was sure Hiro was asleep before opening a channel to Earth. “Zero? Are you there?”

The sergeant major took a few seconds to answer, so had either been busy, or more likely snoozing. “Well of course I am. Where else would I be?”

“One of these days you’re gonna answer with something normal like ‘yes’.”

“One of these days, you is going to open with something normal like ‘hello’,” Zero countered, gruff. “What’s the matter anyway, lad?”

“Captain Kestrel is on her way back,” 101 explained, quietly. He didn’t need to be, because his words were transmitting straight into Zero’s audio centre, but he softened his tone anyway, as though trying not to wake anyone. “It’s not good news, Zero. It’s like she’s got a virus of tiny robots in her blood.”

“Tiny robots?”

101 ignored the incredulous tone. “Yes. Hiro told me what the problem is and we don’t know how to get them out, yet. I’ve been thinking how we can help, and I need you to do a job for me.”

That was possibly the wrong choice of words.

“Oh you needs me to do a job, is it.” Zero scoffed his annoyance. “Why don’t you do it yourself, you bossy little space-hopper.”

“Well obviously I can’t do anything from up here, can I, or I would do.”

“You could jump over the side again. Just remember to pack a parachute, this time.”

“Well-!” 101 sounded genuinely wounded by that one. “That was unkind! You know I didn’t jump, and you know what falling did to-”

“All right, all right. Don’t go and blow a fuse.” Zero interrupted before his rival could get himself too worked up. “Fine.” He huffed meaninglessly to himself for a second or two. “That was probably just the wrong side of acceptable. Sorry.”

101 sat and quietly processed the apology. “…accepted.”

“So what’s this thing you ‘needs’ me to do, anyway? That you can’t possibly ask anyone else to do, you has to come to me for.”

A little huff. “I can’t ask the others. They won’t listen to me – you made sure of that. Not my jurisdiction, and you’d overrule me, anyway.”

Zero stifled a chuckle. “Now now, Owun lad, let’s not get in a snit over it. Just the chain of command, operating like it should.”

While the humans had started to use it as an affectionate shorthand, Zero tended to call him Owun if he wanted to imply his rival was soft. Today, 101 was feeling like he was made of sterner stuff. “Oh… stroll off, Zero,” he snapped, exasperated. “Are you gonna help with this or not?”

“Maybe if you tell me what it is you want me doing, I’ll decide if I’m going to help, or just tell you where to stick it.”

“Fine. Then it’s all on you, if this goes balls-up.” 101 sighed firmly. “Miss Kate says the… nanobot infection… was probably carried in a statue. Somebody made it, and sent it to her. We need to find it. We’re assuming it must have been the martians, somehow, since we don’t have anything like this technology on earth.”

In spite of the seriousness, Zero couldn’t resist. “Oh! Does that mean that when you saw them off last time, you did a half-arsed job of it because you was bored, again, and they managed to deliver their weapon right under our noses?”

“Ex-cuse you very much, they made their approach from the opposite side of the planet – which you would know, if you ever actually read a single one of my reports-”

“-and there he goes, making excuses for shoddy workmanship again-”

“And we did a perfectly good job of-… I’m sorry but when did we suddenly decide all of this was my fault?! Please, Zero. For once, can you just not? Miss Kate is in trouble and I’m trying really hard to help right now and you’re just being an asshole, as usual. When I need you!” 101 said, in a frustrated rush. “All right? There, I said it! I need you! You’re good at this sort of thing, where-… I’m… not. Can we not argue? For Miss Kestrel’s sake? Please?”

A heavy silence took hold for a second or two, while Zero thought about it. He’d always been intending to help, right from the start – technically, getting the bossy little twit grovelling for daring to try and give him orders had been the end game, but he’d caved a lot faster than Zero had anticipated and he actually felt a tiny bit guilty for weaponising the situation. “Fine,” he said, at last, gruffly. “Go through your idea, and we’ll decide what we can do.”

“Thank you.” 101 allowed himself a second to get a little bit of stability back. “So. Hiro only took a little sample of blood, and he can’t get the nanobots out of it. I think if he had a bigger sample, he might be able to work out how to control them, so maybe if we found the statue, there might be more of them still in it. There’s a lot of us to help search, and we have senses the humans don’t. Right?”

“All right, and how precisely is we meant to do that?” Zero growled, warily. “Does these teeny little robots have some sort of communications built in that we can home in on?”

101 hesitated. That was the one thing he hadn’t thought about. “Iiii don’t know? I don’t think Hiro has enough to analyse, but I can ask him when he wakes up. And Five-five has a picture of it.”

“A picture.” Zero exaggerated a sigh. “How exactly is we meant to use a picture to locate a dangerous object full of microscopic shape-shifting robots.”

“Captain Kestrel could tell you where the box was left. They were at the concert hall. They’re probably in the trash, now, but I checked the schedule, and it might not have been collected yet. I don’t think anyone would want to steal it, unless they knew it was for Kate and thought they could sell it-” A small note of alarm entered 101’s voice. “Oh, no! What if someone else touches the statue and gets infected? Oh my stars, we wouldn’t even know who they are-! Zero, you have to find it!”

“All right, all right. Keep your hair on. Just let me think.”

The silence stretched out between them. 101 tried to concentrate on not fidgeting.

“…Zero?” he chased, anxiously, when the quiet had lasted just that little bit too long for him to be comfortable with, then singsonged; “I’ll put you up for a medal if you find it…”

“Oh, don’t be ridiculous. I doesn’t need to be bribed,” the sergeant major scoffed, then added, in a low chortle; “Although, I wouldn’t say no if someone offered me one?” He mumbled something unintelligible to himself. “You got me on board, lad. But I need to discuss it with Captain Falconer. I think we is going to need more than just me, Five-five and Hudson, for this. Someone with hands would definitely help.”

“Thank you. I’ll keep you updated if we figure out anything new.”

“Why’s this got you so agitated, anyway? You doesn’t normally lose your head over stuff like this.”

101 had to take a moment to think about it. They butted heads over orders all the time, but pride meant he didn’t often find himself trying to cajole his senior officer into going along with something, like this. “It was something Miss Kate said; it must be like when Zelda turned me into a cube. I… I don’t think it’s really that much the same, but… I guess I can sort of understand what she’s experiencing, a little bit. And I was there when she turned human again. Zero, it looked so horrible! I was right there and I couldn’t do anything to help!”

“Well, you’re doing something now.” Zero’s reassurance felt weirdly stabilising. “I’ll get Mary to call Hiro-”

“Uh.”

“…’uh’?”

“I, um.” There was a long pause. “Well, I sent him to bed. I thought time was of the essence so I might have been operating on my own initiative, just a tiny bit. He doesn’t actually know I was gonna call you. I’ll get him to call Mary when he gets up, instead.”

“Oh ho! Naughty lad, going behind his back. All right. I’ll let you know what Mary says. I’m sure she’ll agree with us.”

Us. Well, that was a good sign. Zero was already treating it like it was something they’d come up with together which meant he kinda liked it, and genuinely would support it. 101 closed the call feeling rather more confident than he had at the start.

-----

Mary listened to Zero outline their discussion without interrupting, and remained silent for several seconds after he’d finished.

Zero made a little noise like clearing his throat. “…so… ma’am…?”

“It’s been more than a day,” she cautioned. “It could have ended up in landfill already.”

“What if it hasn’t? And that’s not going to help our boys cure it, if we leaves it in the rubbish.”

“No, it won’t.” Mary sighed and tapped her fingers to her lips. “Whether we think it still contains more of these… nanobots… or not? Feels irrelevant. It could be empty and harmless, but equally could be enormously dangerous. Getting that statue back is vital,” she agreed. “I’ll contact the venue, so they can start looking for it, and take steps to identify anyone who might have had contact. But,” she lifted a finger, “we don’t want to cause a panic, either. The last thing we need is for this to end up on social media before we even start.”

“Would that be a bad thing? More people looking for it?”

“Maybe. I’m thinking about all those extra people getting in the way and causing hindrance – and even those with the best intentions will start asking questions. And we absolutely don’t want anyone intentionally trying to infect themselves, because they want to turn into a bird. No, we’ll have to move quickly, so go get your team together, sergeant major.”

“Ten-ten, ma’am.”

“And I’ll brief Tiger,” she added. “It sounds like Treehawk’s just landed.”

The unmistakable sound of the shuttle’s engines drew Hawkeye back to the lounge. (In spite of Mary telling him that of course he had nothing to be ashamed about, for goodness sake, how could anybody have possibly known that Kate and the little falcon were one and the same person… he’d skulked off anyway, to play a racing sim and be alone with his guilt for a little while.)

Not long after the engine noise had faded, two sets of footsteps came from the hallway, and two blessedly-human officers (plus one zeroid) came in through the interconnecting corridor.

“Katie!” Hawkeye swamped her in an impulsive hug before recovering and stepping back with an embarrassed cough and an attempted handshake. “Uh, I mean. Good to see you human again, partner!”

“Good to see you too, you dope,” Kate scolded, fondly, catching his arm and returning the embrace. “Thanks for bringing me home from the desert.”

“Hey, you’re welcome. Thanks for being persistent enough to convince me I needed to!”

When she stepped back, she noticed that Hawkeye had gone distinctly pink. She quirked an eyebrow.

“Uh, so.” He scratched the back of his neck. “I’m sorry for treating you like an actual bird. And, you know. Stroking you, like you were someone’s pet, or something. I wouldn’t have if I’d known-”

“Hey. You can quit that right now.” She waggled a finger at him. “I’d just woken up as a bird, and I was terrified you were gonna leave me in the desert to deal with somehow eating mice. That little bit of human comfort was totally what I needed, so don’t go and start chewing yourself up over that.”

He looked away, sheepish, and shrugged. ���Might be too late for that.”

After a relieved hug from Mary, the four humans settled around the table, to get a more official update from Kate, not a third-hand account via the pair of argumentative zeroids. Five-five hopped quietly up to a nearby perch, to be close by.

Zero didn’t take long to spot him. He rolled to a halt at the bottom of the pedestal. “Five-five? Come on, lad. Look sharp. We need your help with something.”

“Why?” 55 leaned slightly forwards in a frown. “I’ve done an awful job of preventing harm to Kate. There’s lots of other zeroids who can help with your mandate.”

“You refusing a direct order, Sonny Jim? I’ll ban you from going up to Spacehawk, if this is what talking to the disobedient so-and-so based up there does to you.”

“No? For this whole mess, I’ve accepted culpability. Now Miss Kate’s safety is my responsibility!”

“Well that’s tough cheddar, I’m afraid. We needs your expert knowhow in locating dangerous bird statues.”

“Expert? I’m nothing of the kind. We never wanted it. We left it behind.”

“Yes, but you know where you left it. And what it looked like.”

Neither zeroid noticed that the humans’ conversation had dwindled, and Kate had straightened up, listening intently to the zeroids talking.

“Five-five?” she said.

Her zeroid looked over to her.

“It’s fine. I’m coming too, so we can go together.”

Zero looked blindsided by the announcement and wasn’t immediately sure how to react to it. “Er. Do you think that’s wise, Miss Kestrel-?”

“I’m coming with you,” Kate repeated, in a way that brooked no argument. “Sure as spacefire not sitting here on my maudlin ass just waiting to see what happens next. If I can do something to save myself, you bet I’m going to try.”

[keaalu]

Lunchtime thoughts: zeroid 13 has gone and got a tiny dot painted between his numbers so he can be "1.3" instead. He's still superstitious as hell, but feels better about himself because he's not ~actively unlucky~ 13 any more.