Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

  Humans were stupid.

Endlessly and needlessly so.

It had determined that ages ago, so Murderbot wasn't sure why it was so surprised at the decisions its crew continued to make.

Mensah was intelligent, as was the rest of the crew. Highly educated humans that composed an elite research team. Murderbot knew this. They knew this. It was an established fact.

This did not negate the fact that they were also idiots.

They hadn't changed the course of their research mission when Murderbot urged them away from exploring an uninhabited planet just outside the border of Corporation Rim, and instead just encouraged it to "come along if you're that worried about us".

A compromise. So it could try to keep them alive on site, since they insisted on going. Or so it could just watch them die in real time when somebody inevitably wandered off, or stumbled through toxic flora, or got devoured by hostile fauna. The paranoia was looming, and it wasn't remotely helped by the corrupted old documents from the last unfortunate research team. They'd never even made it off planet.

That was centuries ago. The thought was only lightly reassuring. No telling how hostile the planet may have gotten in the interim.

So humans were stupid, they argued and fought and made reckless, emotional decisions based on scientifically baseless claims about the state of their stomach and intestines. But this was a whole new realm of insane.

"What is that?" Mensah finally interupted the silence.

A quick search of the feed and it still didn't know. It wasn't in any of the historical records that it had accessed or stored in preperation for this trip. Nothing even similar came up.

The case was old, made of a composite material that clearly withstood the test of time, although being buried this deep underground had likely helped preserve it, as well as the amount of sediment that had gathered around it. Running a series of different scans, it blinked and balked, causing Ratthi to glance over in concern.

"Dr. Mensah, step away from the stasis pod." It said in a level but firm tone.

"Stasis pod?" Mensah echoed, studying it with renewed interest but moving no further away from it.

"That thing does not look like a stasis pod." Gurathin said, brow furrowing as he no doubt checked something on his own feed.

"I've detected a life form within it," It continued, "Vitals are consistent with deep stasis for an indeterminate period of time."

"They're alive?!" Mensah asked incredulously, looking away from the half buried pod for the first time.

"I can't find any surviving interface on the pod to connect with to determine their health or well-being, but there are detectable vital signs," It confirmed with a nod.

"Well we have to get them out," Ratthi said immediately.

"They just they don't know what state the lifeform might be in," Gurathin beat Murderbot to the punch on shutting that down, "We could kill them if we open up that pod,"

"So what? We just leave them in there?" Ratthi asked.

"That's not what he said," Mensah interrupted diplomatically, "For now, why don't we get Dr. Bharadwaj down here to get samples, see if we can't get more information on this pod, where it came from, why it's here, what might be in it, and then we can proceed. Alright?"

The two echoed the affirmative and Ratthi went to go get Dr. Bharadwaj.

Gurathin moved towards the half buried pod and started scraping gently at the surface with a fingernail. Murderbot felt its face pull an expression that it hadn't intended, jaw tightening painfully as the threat assessment module bounced the number all over the place.

Despite this, it let Gurathin explore at his own risk. He didn't like to be told what to do, and he was a seasoned survey team member. He was stupid, but he wasn't an idiot, he had some sense of what he was doing here, and hopefully, knew how not to get himself killed (a skill Murderbot wasn't entirely sure every member of the team possessed).

"The material isn't anything I recognize, probably not manufactured in our region of the galaxy so we don't see any of it but I'll be able to run a wider search when I've got a sample and the database," He mused as he brushed some sediment off the surface, "So it's either not from here, or it's old enough that the material fell out of circulation."

"Or you just don't know what it is." Murderbot pointed out dryly.

"Neither do you," Gurathin retorted.

Mensah hummed, the sound was thoughtful but the crease between her eyebrows was disaproving and a tad annoyed.

Gurathin continued brushing dirt off the surface, uncovering more and more of it as he went. Meanwhile, Murderbot tried to decipher the conflicting results from the scans it had conducted. The material was dense enough that it couldn't get a clear read on the contents, but it couldn't be entirely airtight or else the lifeform would have suffocated long ago.

There had to be some sort of internal lifesupport system, all statsis pods had them. Something to deliver nutrients, to provide a survivable atmosphere for whatever lifeform was contained.

"Do we know what might be in it?" Dr. Bharadwaj's voice echoed through the pathway as she and Ratthi grew closer.

Mensah looked over at it, expression curious about its findings, so it dialed up its senses and focused solely on the pod again.

A dull, barely perceptable sound that had lurked in the background grew louder, stagnant, slow, and consistent. As it replayed the last few minutes of its audio and isolated the sound it found the pattern.

"It has a heartbeat," Murderbot announced, and the rest of the team perked up, "Less than a beat a minute,"

"Are we sure we should be fucking with this?" Gurathin finally pointed out from his spot squatted next to the pod.

As loathe as it was to admit, Murderbot agreed with him on this point. Its threat assessment module was osscilating wildly with every new input of information about this unknown, and it had half a mind to drag the team back to the compound to analyze all the samples and data they had spent the past weeks gathering and pretend this particular detour had never happened.

"It's a lifeform that's been kept in stasis for who know's how long," Ratthi said, his excitement evident in both his tone and the gesturing of his hands, "The scientific value alone," He threw his hands up and grinned at the mere thought, "Not to mention that we have a duty to at least ensure it's alright,"

"There is nothing in your job description, scientific oath, or the survey mission statement that encourages us to engage with possibly hostile fauna on the basis of science," It pointed out, "There is, however, a clause in both your scientific oath and the survey mission statement that allow you to preserve your own life as the researcher above possible data in the event of dire circumstances."

Ratthi frowned at it.

"You're being spiteful," He didn't sound quite so enthusiastic now.

"You're being reckless." It countered.

"I'm still okay to get that sample, right?" Dr. Bharadwaj interjected and Mensah nodded, despite its reservations.

She went to work, and Murderbot sighed, an entirely unecesary physical action for a SecUnit, but it served to get the point across that it thought they were being ridiculous, so maybe not wholly useless after all.

As Dr. Bharadwaj prepped to take several samples, it considered opening a private feed with Mensah and advising against this course of action. But they were survey researchers, this was quite literally the job description. To survey and learn what they could about the planet, it's flora, it's fauna, it's geology, climate, and any prior civilizations.

It sighed yet again.

Mensah shot it an expression that said 'I understand your concerns, but you're being dramatic'. It could almost hear it in her voice.

The perimeter hadn't been checked in a bit, so it walked off to go check the surrounding area and make sure nothing had changed, no hostile flora or fauna, no changes in climate.

Murderbot was stomping through a natural underground spring and looping back towards the team when it heard metal scrape haphazardly against stone and something cracked and splintered loudly.

It took off sprinting.

The pod was open.

Everybody was visibly startled. Dr. Bharadwaj had dropped her tools and jumped back. Gurathin and Ratthi were watching the pod with wide eyes and tense limbs. Mensah looked over at Murderbot as it skidded to a stop, energy weapons at the ready.

Cracks spiderwebbed across the surface of the stasis pod, starting from the spot where Dr. Bharadwaj had been taking a third core sample. Parts of the pod had fractured and collapsed in on itself, and Murderbot ran a quick series of scans.

"The lifeform is still alive and in deep stasis," It confirmed and the team let out a collective breath of relief.

Gurathin leaned forward, taking a half step and peering towards the pod with a bit of a frown.

"There's no hardware that I can see," He observed, and Murderbot felt its own eyebrows crease. The threat assessment module didn't seem to know what to make of any of the data, so it sent it to the bottom of the priority list.

"I can see something!" Ratthi pointed out excitedly, taking a step towards the fractured maybe-stasis-pod.

"No airborn toxins detected," It announced, because opening a strange old container never ended well in the media.

"There really is something in there," Ratthi marveled, getting even closer, "I can see what looks like a hand."

"A hand?" Dr. Bharadwaj echoed as she picked up her coring device and stowed it back in her pack.

"What are the chances it's an alien?" He asked, stopping at the very edge of the maybe-stasis pod.

It didn't even bother to try and formulate a retort.

"If it's stasis has been disrupted, it may be in need of medical attention," Mensah finally spoke up, bringing Ratthi back to a more realistic scientific level of thought instead of whatever fantastical alien discovery dreams he'd been getting himself lost in.

"Extricating it from the pod improperly is liable to cause more damage than leaving it there," It pointed out and Gurathin huffed a sound of what might have been begrudging agreement.

"We can't just leave it here!" Ratthi argued, whipping his head around.

"Nobody's proposing we do, we just need to go about it correctly," Mensah said placatingly. "Why don't we work on getting a better idea of what we're dealing with first, then go from there."

Ratthi frowned briefly but then shrugged it right off and leaned over the pod, putting on gloves and starting to lift a piece of the fragmented material off. He carefully put it in a specimen bag and set it to the side, then repeated the process with other fragments, clearly trying to get a better look at whatever might be inside while the rest of the team went about categorizing the scene.

That was, until he jumped back and clutched one of his gloved hands to his chest with a yelp.

"What happened?" Mensah asked sharply.

He held up his hand, where blood was dripping from a cleanly sliced gash along his wrist, dripping down his forearm .

Despite the injury, he grinned.

"It's alive,"

"Moron," Gurathin muttered and shook his head

"Ratthi," Mensah's tone wasn't unkind, but it was stern and warning.

"It cut me somehow," He admitted, then rushed to follow it up, "But that means it's alive and apparently coming out of stasis naturally,"

Gurathin muttered a string of colorful curses and immediately got in contact with the base while Murderbot rushed forward and pushed Ratthi away from the maybe-pod.

The sight inside the pod was strange, a mixture of limbs and rubble and metal. It pried back a large piece of the fractured pod and upon moving it aside, realized that the lifeform inside was startlingly humanoid, and unconcious. Barely breathing, slow heartbeat, it had seemingly sunk back into stasis.

There was an oblong piece of sharp metal still clutched loosely in it's right hand, spotted with Ratthi's blood.

Mensah appeared over Murderbots shoulder when it made no further moves. When she saw it, she hummed thoughtfully then looked over at Murderbot.

"Do you think you can safely extricate her and bring her back to base?" She asked, "It appears we might have two beings in need of medical care,"

It looked back down at the unconcious being, made a few more assessments about the state of the maybe-pod and the humanoid within and then nodded.

"Alright," Mensah said resolutely, "Let's go,"

—

"All of her scans read as augmented human," Overse explained to the gathered team.

They were all gathered in the medical quarters, the humanoid, well, human, laid out on the table. It, or she, it supposed, was still in a state of stasis that Overse couldn't entirely explain. The team was clearly trying not to crowd her, in the event that she did wake up, but they were doing a miserable job of hiding their curiosity.

"Her DNA doesn't match any of the databases I've tested it against, even familially." Murderbot added, not allowing its focus to stray from her.

She'd already shown that she wasn't afraid to attack when backed into a corner, and they couldn't know how she'd react when she woke up, so it had assigned itself the task of preventing her from hurting anyone else.

Overse had checked out Ratthi's wound, then cleaned and repaired it. Thankfully, no contamination had been introduced by the metal, and it was a sharp, clean cut, making it easy to repair.

That was the next strange thing about this human. Her augments.

Even Gurathin had thought they were bizzare.

Giant birdlike wings emerged from her back, presently wrapped tightly around herself like a blanket of interlocking metal plates. Scans had revealed that the metal moorings and scaffolding went deep into her body, connected all throughout the muscle and bone of her back and shoulders. Metal and mechanics could be picked out wrapping all the way up her spine, into her brain, scattered across her entire skeleton, burrowed into her being.

It had seen heavy augments before. Hell, it was a construct, made of more machinery than organic tissue, but this was another type of strange. It didn't recognize any of the interfacing. There was no imbedded input port, no visual interface, nothing typical of augmented humans.

"She doesn't have typical augments," It finally said with a frown on its face that it hadn't intended to make, "I can't tap her feed, and if I try to connect to the tech that is there I get what might be best comparable to a human migraine,"

Gurathin grimaced and nodded. He'd made the same mistake.

"Her tech is either ancient or foreign, but it's non-compatible." He agreed, side-eyeing her on the table.

"Do we know how she ended up in the stasis pod?" Mensah asked, tilting her head a degree to the side.

"It wasn't a stasis pod," Murderbot said resolutely.

In reality, it was only 87% sure of that fact, because certainly there could have been tech that deteriorated, or foreign tech that it didn't have in its education modules, or one of a couple other outlandish theories that it had pulled from media plots, but they were statistically unlikely.

"Why don't we just ask her when she wakes up?" Ratthi asked, gesturing his unbandaged hand towards the still unconcious human.

"She tried to kill you," It retorted.

"She did not, she barely nicked me," He shot back.

"There was a lot of blood," Overse mentioned, holding her hands up in surrender when Ratthi frowned at her in betrayal.

"If it wasn't a stasis pod, what the hell was it?" Gurathin asked, the permanent crease between his brows etching deeper. "A coffin?"

"Coffin's are archaic," Ratthi scoffed, then perked up, "We could have the first real documented case of a zombie alien on our hands,"

"Not an alien," Overse pointed out.

"Whose side are you on?"

"But you don't have an issue with the zombie thing," Gurathin muttered.

Threat Assessment spiked and it pulled it to the forefront, tuning out the rest of their bickering about fictional dead creatures. Upon reviewing the footage that had caused the spike, it blinked the visual display out of view and held a hand out.

"Step back from the table," It instructed, then tacked on a belated "Please."

"What is it?" Mensah was the first to speak as they all took several steps back.

"She's listening," It sounded far more ominous than it had meant it, like there would have been a dramatic score in the background if this survey was the subject of a media drama. "She's awake."

"Her vitals are still so slow, it's reading as stasis." Overse said as she checked the readouts.

"I can control the frequency with which I breathe and alter my heartrate," Murderbot reminded them.

"We believe you, it's just strange." Mensah added, still watching the human with concern. 

  "She might be listening, but how do we know she even understands us? There's hundreds of languages in the galaxy." Ratthi mentioned. 

  In response, Murderbot pulled up an old universal translator software it had stored, in the event that they needed it. They wouldn't, because she was listening, and had reacted to their words. 

  "We have no intention of harming you," It announced, watching as a muscle twitched near imperceptibly in her jaw, "We need to know if you are awake and aware of your surroundings." 

  Silence.

  "So clinical," Ratthi muttered beneath his breath, then spoke up, "You're in our medical station being taken care of, we found your stasis pod, you're safe here." 

   Further silence. Another nearly invisible movement that it would have missed were it not explicitly designed for observation. 

  Her eyes slid open. 

Overse balked and checked the vitals again. Still slow but beginning to rise. While she likely wasn't an active threat at the moment, there was no telling what she might do when she got to a healthier state. 

  "Hello there," Mensah's voice was kind, welcoming, "I'm Dr. Mensah and this is my team. What is your name?" 

  Her dark eyes darted immediately to the source of the voice, then around at the medical station, the other gathered team members. She soaked up information like a sponge, her gaze never staying in one place for more than a fraction of a second. 

  Then she looked at Murderbot and her eyes narrowed just a fraction. Strange, but before it could analyze what that might mean, she was already looking back at Mensah. 

  Her voice was raspy and barely audible. It had to turn up its auditory input to even make out the words. 

  "Asset designation: Firebird." 

  That was even stranger.

Chapter Text

 The lights were too bright. The sounds too loud. The air too sharp against skin it wasn't accustomed to having. It could feel breath in its stale lungs, needling and cold, expanding like they might burst out of its very chest.

Everybody was staring, watching, inspecting, percieving. It was overcome by the urge to shrink behind its wings.

It didn't succumb to such an urge, didn't so much as move, staring at the outline of someone that had been speaking, moments, minutes, perhaps hours before. The words had grated against its ears, a garble of noise that it responded to on instinct alone.

Direct questions could not go unanswered.

"Asset designation?" One of the other silhouettes echoed.

It wasn't a direct question so it discarded the useless information and blinked, urging its eyes to adjust to the light input. They had another asset here, so it wasn't like asset protocols would be foreign to them. Unless they didn't know about it in their midst.

Had it compromised another assets mission? That wouldn't end well.

This place was loud. What had they called it? A medical station. It could hear the hum of the machinery, the incessant breathing of the gathered people, the whispering and chattering, the shifting movements and fabric against fabric. There was so much going on.

It wanted to climb beneath the table it was sitting on and escape the constant onslaught of sensory input. It was not designed to want.

"She's not listening anymore," There was the same flat voice that had announced that it was awake in the first place.

It snapped its attention to the source of the voice and sat up abruptly, ignoring the flaring pain signals from disused joints and weak muscles. The human closest to it jumped back a step with a yelp of surprise.

"She didn't like that," Another voice muttered.

The other asset was the source of the flat voice. A tall one, with close cropped military hair and an unpleasant expression. There was no telling how it was altered with its suit covering them from the neck down, but it looked annoyed.

"Your name is Firebird?" The human directly in front of it spoke again. Another direct question.

A name was for humans, not weaponry, but some people prefered to think of it that way. Who was it to deny them that, they could think whatever they so chose. It turned back to her and nodded once.

"Are we sure she's not a bot?" Another voice spoke, "She sure acts like it,"

"I know what I'm doing," The jumper retorted, "She's a heavily augmented human, but she's as human as you."

"Just ask her," One of the first voices muttered.

"Alright, everybody out," The human in front of it ordered, and after a moment of silence, they all obeyed, filing out of the room.

The leader, then. The other asset had lingered as well, a protective detail then. Wise.

"As I said before, my name is Mensah," She introduced herself again, speaking slowly as if it might not understand her otherwise, "I'm the head of this research team. We found you in a stasis pod on an expedition and had to extricate you when it was broken. You're now in our medical station. Do you understand?"

It nodded once.

"Are you injured?" She asked.

It considered that question. It wasn't injured, but its functionality was limited. If they knew that, perhaps they would underestimate its recovery time, allowing a window of escape opportunity. Or, conversely, they would take advantage of that weakness.

"No current injuries." It reported. Not technically false.

"Your vitals are still at inoptimal levels and given the lack of nutrition and hydration in your stasis pod you should be both starving and dehydrated." The other asset pointed out, staring at it.

It stared back. That was not a question.

For a moment it considered unsheathing a blade from its wing, beheading the woman in front it, dispatching of the other asset, and making a run for it. This was a research base, not a combat base, so it wouldn't have the security measures to keep it contained for long.

"Would you like a glass of water?" Mensah asked, and it looked at her. 

This had to be a trick. No handler, and this woman was clearly the other assets handler, would be that free with asking about wants and likes. It glanced to the other asset, a question in its eyes. Was this how this handler operated, was it a trick, a game, a test? 

  The other assets face offered no answers. 

  The handler was already pouring a glass and holding it out. 

  It accepted after a brief split second of hesitation and downed it. It wouldn't, couldn't, refuse such an offering. And it really did need to refuel.

"Do you know how you came to be in the stasis pod?" Mensah asked once it finished the water. 

  Did it? 

  Its memory was a hole of silence and darkness for as far back as it could reach. Nothingness, for as far as the eye could see. A hollow space in the back of its skull, as if someone had leveled a firearm against its cranium and fired, splattering its memories across the night sky, leaving it with nothing but a festering, necrotic wound. 

  Perhaps it was injured.

The asset shook its head, just once. 

  Mensah didn't seem disappointed by the answer as it had expected her to be. 

  "Do you know where you're from?" She asked, her tone still kind, level, like she was speaking to a child or an invalid. 

  "Question unclear." It replied. 

  "What planetary sector are you from?" She rephrased, still unbothered by its responses. 

   "Question unclear." It repeated, dredging up old habits from what it did have of its fragmented memories. 

  "Do you have a home?" Mensah tried again. 

  "Central base of operations is located," It began, the words past its lips before it could register where they were coming from. Then it trailed off, "Is located…" Nothing appeared in its brain when prompted.  

  "That's alright," Mensah assured her with a smile that she must have intended to be comforting. "Deep stasis can cause brainfog and a few other side effects, but they should clear up within a few days. You'll be alright." 

  Why did people keep saying that? Safety and security was a carefully curated lie, it never meant anything. Assurances were meaningless wastes of breath that only served to falsely provide comfort for the speaker. 

"I think that's enough of questions for the moment," Mensah continued after a few moments of silence, then checked something on the wall, "It's just about mealtime, if you'd like to join us." 

  It just blinked at her. The phrase was neither a question nor an order. Painfully ambiguous. It had no idea how she wanted it to answer. So it didn't say anything at all. 

  Just waited until she nodded and took a step back. 

  "There's a set of clothes for you here," She finally said, gesturing to a rolling cart before walking towards the door, "And the meal hall is just out this hall and to the left," 

  And then she left, her tall and annoyed asset following her out the door. 

  They had really left it alone here. It stayed on the table for ten minutes, until it was reasonably certain they weren't coming back, then stood up. It inspected the clothes first, checking all the seams for trackers, devices, anything, before pulling them on, slicing holes through the back of the heavyweight top to fit around the wings. 

  Then it moved on to the room, categorizing every unfamiliar machine, every tool and vial, every nook and cranny. When that turned up no useful information except that the title of the research team was PreservationAux, it padded towards the door on silent feet. 

  It opened, surprisingly. It had thought the click was the lock. And it would've been smarter to lock it in, but this research team seemed to have strange priorities. 

  As it emerged into the hall, it heard people speaking from the first doorway down the hall and to the left. So perhaps they were smarter than it gave them credit for. It couldn't get anywhere else in the base without passing them. 

  So it padded forward, towards the doorway. 

  They were talking about something called a zombie when it first stepped into the doorway. Then they went silent. 

  "Come in, come in," Mensah said from the head of the table, gesturing with her free hand. 

  It walked in at her behest, but lingered at the edge of the table.  

  "You're welcome to sit, or you can take some food and go back to the medical station if you'd like," She continued, grabbing an empty plate and piling it with different foods. 

  It just blinked at her. One of the others patted the empty chair next to them. It was meant to sit? 

  If it was going to sit, it was going to sit in the farthest chair from them. And it did just that, folding awkwardly into a chair and trying to mimic how they were sitting. The wings kept getting in the way, so it adjusted them slightly to maneuver around the back and sides of the chair. 

  Mensah smiled politely and set the plate of food in front of it before returning to her own seat. 

  Slowly, conversation resumed and it dropped its head and silently picked at the food on its plate. As much as it wanted to devour all of it and then some, it knew better than to do so. 

  It hadn't eaten since, well, it wasn't entirely certain when, so that wouldn't end well. Instead it picked the most protein dense looking foods and nibbled on those. 

  "You're not hungry?" Somebody asked with concern, and it lifted its head, brows drawing together slightly. 

  "She's being smart," The flat voice of the other asset spoke up. 

  They just let it speak unprompted? 

  "If she eats too quickly or too much after such a duration of deep stasis she'll make herself sick," It continued. "You've been in and out of stasis before," 

  That wasn't a question, it was a statement, but it nodded anyways. 

The room was silent for a few moments before someone finally spoke. 

  "We never introduced ourselves, did we?" 

  "We were a little preocupied," The asset replied dryly. They really just let it say whatever it wanted, didn't they. 

  "You know Mensah, I'm Ratthi," The first speaker introduced himself with a grin that neared on unnervingly animated. "That's Overse, Arada, Bharadwaj, Pin-Lee, and Gurathin." He pointed at each member seated around the table, then back at the asset sitting next to Mensah. "And that, is Sec-y. Now you know everybody!" 

  They were all staring at it again, but at least this time some of them looked as uncomfortable with the introduction as it was. 

  It stood up from the table, disentangled its wings from the chair and walked out.

—

  It wasn't hiding. 

  It had folded itself into the cabinet because it was dark and quiet, and a reasonably protected location. Far from the door and out of direct view of any observers and security cameras. 

  Knees pressed to its chest, it stared at the opposite wall of the cabinet. Turned what little information it did have over and over and over again. 

  Fact: It was in a research base. 

  Fact: There was another asset here. 

  Fact: It hadn't been recalibrated or assigned a mission. 

  Regardless of it being a research base, if they had an asset, they must have need of it. They weren't assigned on a whim, and they weren't wasted on assignments that didn't need them. So this was someplace posing as a research base, then. 

  It didn't recognize any of their faces. But then again, it hadn't recognized its own reflection in a metal tray earlier, nearly jumping out of its skin at the sight.

  Fact: Its memory was unreliable. 

  Unreliable data could not be trusted, could not be used to make reasonable decisions. Its skull was a pool of unreliable data, briny and unforgiving. 

  ' Trust your gut, '  A voice rasped from the depths. Unreliable, it discarded the familiar sounds in favor of logic. 

  Fact: The research team's word was unreliable as well. Until it could discern their true purpose, that was. 

  Their medical station had been relatively typical, with labeled medicines and vials of antidotes and vaccines for things it didn't recognize. There were a number of devices it hadn't recognized, that whirred brightly to life when it tapped at the screen but required credentials past that. 

  They must have another lab elsewhere, for the sake of their claimed research. It would need to access that lab, to determine what they were doing. There were no mission parameters, so it was making them up as it went along. 

  There were no mission parameters. 

  Did it even have a mission? 

  Of course it had a mission. It always had a mission. A tool was only so useful as its continued functions. One didn't make a gun just to set it on a shelf, they made it to be fired. 

  Perhaps it could alter the mission parameters it had assigned itself. Reroute and escape instead. What concern was their operations, if it hadn't been assigned a mission? 

  Frowning slightly, it pushed the cabinet door open just a bit and found that the lights had dimmed. A night mode then, likely in sync with the planet's day and night cycle. That meant that the most team members were liable to be asleep. It crept out of the cabinet and unfolded, padding silently towards the door. 

  The door slid open, and it couldn't hear anyone up and about as it moved through the halls, categorizing the different rooms and halls and finally, an exit door. It blinked. That was uncomfortably easy, perhaps the door would be passkey locked, as the medical machines had been. 

  It tapped at the keypad next to the door. 

  The door slid open and the damp air wafted in. 

  "Where do you plan on going?" 

  Its muscles tensed all at once and it turned towards the source of the words. The other asset. Likely keeping an eye on the perimeter. It should have expected this. It didn't look armed though, and its stance betrayed no intention of trying to stop it from leaving. 

  "Away," It finally answered simply, quietly. 

  "Alright," 

  A blink. It looked back outside. The towering trees of expansive foliage, full of chirping and buzzing bugs. The thick underbrush and dark soil. 

  It took a step outside. 

  The soil was cool and damp beneath its feet and sunk in just a bit with its added weight. Sticks and rocks and rotting leaves poked at it, not an altogether unpleasant sensation. It marveled at the faint breeze that whispered through the trees, held a hand up and felt the warm air flow around its fingertips. 

  The other asset was still standing a few steps behind it, but it ignored them as it took another step, then another. 

  "There's nowhere to go," It finally said from its place in the doorway, watching, "Our ship is the only one coming and going from this planet," 

  It dug its feet into the dirt as it moved, turning around to regard the asset that Ratthi had identified as 'Sec-y'. They didn't look annoyed, or particularly unkind, in that moment. They just looked a tad confused. 

  It turned away again, tilted its head so far back it felt like it might tumble off its shoulders and roll away into the underbrush, and looked up at the sky through the trees. The stars were vibrant, bright and visible even through the thick interlocking foliage above. 

  "Can I stay out here?" 

  It couldn't bear to pull its eyes away from the sky even as it asked, sitting down before it received an answer. Leaning back, it splayed its wings slightly and settled onto its back in the grass and dirt to watch the sky. 

  An uncertain hum emanated from the doorway, but then it heard steps and the door slid shut. Sec-y finally settled onto the ground a few paces away, back against a tree. 

  "I don't see why not," 

Chapter Text

"You slept outside," Ratthi remarked when Murderbot appeared in the station common area at morning mealtime. 

  "I don't sleep," It replied. 

  "You stayed outside," He amended, "Our new friend slept," 

  Everybody had taken to calling Firebird 'our friend' or 'our guest' as if she hadn't told them she had a name, or rather a designation. It was strange enough that they were fascinated by her, but they had to be weird about it too. 

  It just looked down at Ratthi, who was holding a forgotten plate of food. 

  "How did you two end up outside that late?" He finally asked the question he'd been getting at from the start. 

  "She wanted to leave," It answered simply, "I told her there was nowhere to go, so she sat down and watched the stars." 

  "That's so sweet," Ratthi said at the same time Gurathin muttered, "That's morbid." 

  "What's morbid about that?" Ratthi retorted, taking a seat at the table across from Gurathin. 

  "It literally told her there's no escape," He pointed out, spearing a slice of fruit with his fork. 

  "Okay yeah that isn't ideal," He conceded with a faint frown, "But she's expressing curiosity, which is good." 

  "She's not a cat," He said dryly and continued eating while Ratthi floundered. 

  "She likes to hide in cabinets," Murderbot interjected. According to the media, this was a very catlike trait to exhibit. 

  "What?" Both of them turned to look at it, and it shrugged. 

  "I was watching her through the security feed, and she spent an extended period of time last night hiding in a cabinet," 

  "Well she's probably terrified," Overse said as she walked in, "If I woke up in a strange station with no memories, I'd probably hide in a cabinet too." 

  "She has memories," It stated, a simple matter of fact that shouldn't have elicited the reactions of surprise from the crew that it did. At their confusion, it elaborated, "She's been highly trained in the past, that much is clear. Whether she consciously recalls it or not, I can't fully tell." 

  "Highly trained in what?" Gurathin asked suspiciously. While it was nice to not be the object of his suspicion, he still tended to jump to the worst possible options. She didn't seem outwardly hostile at the moment, just confused and a little paranoid. 

  "Stealth, for one," It said, pulling up the little points it had observed from her actions and behavior, the way she moved too quietly, watched too closely, "Observation and analysis, likely combat as well but I haven't been able to prove that one. If you can think of a minimally stressful way to put her through a combat assessment, that might be helpful." It suggested sarcastically. 

  "Oh yeah, let's just retraumatize the girl," Pin-Lee said as she walked over to the food counter, picked up a fruit, and bit into it. 

  "Nobody's actually suggesting that, are they?" Overse asked around a mouthful of food. 

  "Bounty hunter, maybe?" Gurathin mused, resting his chin on his hands, "Military contractor?" 

  "What bounty hunter gets put in stasis in the caves of an uninhabited planet?" Ratthi asked, leaning back in his chair, "I'm telling you, she's either a historic human or an alien, she could've been in that pod for centuries, this planet hasn't seen organized civilization in at least twice that long," 

  "Whatever and whoever she is, we have a duty to help her." Mensah said as she walked in.  

  The team nodded in unanimous agreement, although Gurathin was delayed a second and Murderbot just observed the display. 

  "We approach her carefully and kindly, as we would any other refugee or unknown human," She continued, standing at the head of the table and studying the team, "And we continue our survey as well. Overse, Bharadwaj, and Arada will be our expedition team of the day, continue operations as usual." 

  "Ratthi, you'll be checking on our guest, running any absolutely necessary tests and scans, and only if they're absolutely necessary. Pin-Lee, please look into getting our friend in the process of refugee status on Preservation. Gurathin, you'll be here operating as usual." 

  Per usual, Murderbot was under loose orders to operate as it deemed necessary for the safety of the survey team. Which meant today it would be accompanying Ratthi and their friend the mysterious augmented human with old stealth combat training ingrained so deep in her psyche that it escaped memory loss. 

  Fascinating. 

—

  "Do you think her wings actually work?" Ratthi asked as they walked down the hall towards the outside door, Gurathin walking along with them. 

  "Nobody gets augments like that for vanities sake," 

  Murderbot couldn't be certain that statement was entirely true. It had seen some truly bizarre, grotesque, and fundamentally useless augments that humans afflicted themselves with. What other reason could they have, if it wasn't utility or vanity? 

  "You can go ahead and ask her when you get out there, I'm going to be in the server room if you need to scream for help," Gurathin said dryly and split off from the group, disappearing down the hall and into the server room. 

  Leaving Ratthi and Murderbot standing in front of the exit door. 

  "Alright," He clapped his hands, "Let's do this," 

  He keyed open the door and stepped outside, Murderbot following just a step behind him. 

  She was in the trees. 

  Ratthi walked farther out and began looking about, but Murderbot knew he wouldn't be able to see her. It had only found her with its sensors, honing in on her body heat against the cooler foliage. She hadn't gone far, horizontally at least, she was at least a few dozen meters out, but it was more of a matter of her vertical movement. 

  She'd scaled a tree, and instead of lingering in the lower, safer branches, she'd scaled it all the way up. Perched at the very tip, balanced precariously on a couple of narrow branches, she was at least a hundred meters off the ground. 

  Murderbot tired of Ratthi walking in confused circles, and finally stopped at the base of the tree she had scaled and pointed up. He walked over and craned his neck, peering up into the lower branches, each of which was still several meters off the ground. 

  "I don't see her," He said, looking over at Murderbot with a look of confusion. 

  "She's at the top," It didn't elaborate. Let Ratthi puzzle that out for himself. 

  "How the hell did she get all the way up there, this tree has to be at least…" He trailed off as he presumably estimated the height, how precarious the upper limbs would be for a balancing human. "Does she think she's an actual bird?" 

  "She has wings," 

  "She's also an adult woman," He studied the branches, either wondering how she'd gotten up there, or thinking of trying to climb it himself, "If she falls she's done for," Then he shook his head at himself, "I'm sure she knows what she's doing." 

  "She's shown that her mental capacity isn't at its best," Between her memory issues and realizing that she's effectively trapped on this planet for the moment, it couldn't imagine she was in the best psychological shape of her life. 

  "Please don't die," Ratthi murmured to no one in particular as he paced beneath the tree. "We just want to help you,"

  "To what end?" Her voice appeared behind them, and Ratthi jumped and whirled around. 

  Murderbot turned around to face somewhat towards her, so he could at least see her reactions. Ratthi seemed startled by her, standing in her borrowed, oversized team uniform, barefoot in the dirt like she hadn't just been 100 meters up a tree moments prior. 

  "We want to help," He repeated. 

  "To. What. End?" She asked again, sharper this time, taking a step forward (Threat assessment was steadily rising), "What do you stand to gain? What do I stand to benefit, other than maintaining my illusion of freedom in the treetops. What is this help that you offer? Who is it truly helping?" 

  Ratthi held his hands up, open palms out, "Woah woah woah, I'm not here to hurt anybody, I just want to learn. If any of your tech was damaged during stasis, if you're ill, we just want what’s best for you, I swear." 

  "What’s best for me," She echoed, the corners of her mouth quirking downward for just a moment, not quite a frown, but nearly. 

  "Yeah," He repeated with a nod, slowly lowering his hands. "Your augments, we weren't able to check on them, they don't interface with our tech so we don't know if they're damaged in any way. We don't know how long you were in stasis for either, so we're a little concerned about your health." 

  "My health." She repeated, now clearly skeptical, eyeing Ratthi warily. 

  "If you'll just come back inside for a bit-" Before he could finish his sentence she balked and pulled back, glancing around at the surroundings, checking her exits. Wrong thing to say, then. She didn't want to go back inside. "Alright, alright, no problem, we can stay out here," 

  Her brows pulled together, clearly confused by his concession, muscles still strung tightly, ready to bolt. As if she'd expected him to keep pushing, to refuse to accommodate her by staying outside. Wherever she was from, whether she remembered it or not, she was still affected by it. Perhaps a contract worker used to having few rights of her own. 

  Trained as she seemed to be, it didn't like the presented possibilities of what her contract work may have included.  She would've been an investment, as heavily augmented as she was, not something to be buried on an uninhabited planet without a damn good reason. The threat assessment module didn't quite know what to do with those theories. 

  "Have you noticed any issues?" Ratthi began, "Blurry vision, nausea, anything out of the ordinary?" 

  She shook her head. She'd gone back to mute, then. Great. 

  "All of your augments are working as they should?" He continued. 

  She just blinked at him. Her dark eyes weren't angry, but they were intense. Clearly it seemed to unnerve Ratthi, at least a little bit, because he had tensed slightly. Despite it, he maintained his cheerful demeanor as he continued undeterred. 

  "Your wings, they're working as they should?" 

  In response, she spread them slightly and ruffled the feathers in a cascading motion of metal until they all sat smoothly again. Similar to a motion it had seen from small fluffy birds in the media, trying to get all their feathers to lay properly. 

  Ratthi marveled at the small display, then shook his head slightly, a motion it had noticed he had a tendency to make when his mind was wandering off on a tangent, farther and farther from the task he was supposed to be focused on. 

  "And you can fly with them?" Murderbot intervened, its curiosity having gotten the best of it. 

  There were far more efficient and reasonable mechanical modes of flight than implanted metal birds wings, that was a simple fact. Vanity wasn't a reason to make something so unreasonable and cumbersome as metal wings the size of a person. They had to be functional, otherwise they were entirely and wholly pointless. 

  She snapped to look at it, her dark eyes scrutinizing.

"That might be a personal question," Ratthi pointed out hesitantly, trying (and largely failing) to imitate Mensah's cool diplomatic interventions. 

  "I'm fully functional." She said firmly, shifting ever so slightly into a grounded stance, as if expecting a fight to come from those words. 

  "Are you?" It countered. 

  "They let you speak like that?" The razor sharp edge of her words disguised a very real confusion that ran beneath. 

  "Nobody lets Sec-y do anything," Ratthi intervened, taken aback by the insinuation and a bit insulted on its behalf (that was sweet, if unnecessary), "Sec-y is its own person," 

  Now she was listening to Ratthi again. 

  "Bullshit," 

  "Not bullshit," Murderbot said before Ratthi could jump to its defense again. "I'm technically a free agent on Preservation Alliance," 

  "Technically," Her tone was venomous. 

  "It's better than the alternative," It said with a shrug, "I could still be working for the company." 

  She shook her head and took a step back. It almost looked like she was malfunctioning, a short circuit in her cognitive function, an error in her reasoning center that had thrown off every calculation she had made since waking up. Murderbot could practically see the flare of sparks behind her eyes. 

  Abruptly, she whirled around and walked off. 

  Ratthi took a step like he was going to follow, but Murderbot held a hand out in front of him. 

  "She's processing, give her time," 

  "You're being empathetic today," He remarked thoughtfully. 

  It just looked at him.

  "She's taking it worse than you did," He finally said, walking back towards the entrance door. 

  "Not particularly," It replied, keying open the door and walking through, "I was worried your team would have me reported and melted down for parts," 

  "You what?!"

– 

  "She acts like a SecUnit," It mused aloud to Ratthi. 

  He had started analyzing samples in his lab when it became apparent that Firebird wasn't going to come back to base anytime soon. Work had been piling up anyways, and they were technically still on a survey mission. He couldn't leave his work alone forever, it wouldn't do itself. 

  "You would know, I suppose," Ratthi replied, then after a moment of thought, looked over, "Is it possible to make a SecUnit that just looks like a heavily augmented human?" 

   "I don't know," It replied. 

  It had spun the idea around briefly, but ultimately put it on the backburner. 

  A construct that appeared for all intents and purposes to be an augmented human would open up a whole new realm of doors. Stealth units that could pass through any corporate or non-corporate entity undetected. It would go against all the established legislation and regulations established around constructs, but theoretically, it could be possible. 

  There weren't many regulations around the functional applications of constructs, but the manufacturing regulations were strict. That was why it was so clearly company branded. Largely to prevent rogue units from going undetected. Like Murderbot had. 

  "If there was anything like that going on, I didn't see or hear anything about it." It eventually said. 

  Ratthi sighed and turned back to his work. 

  "But it's technically possible," 

  He didn't stay on his work for long. 

  "Technically, maybe," It conceded, "But they wouldn't just leave her on an uninhabited planet, it doesn’t make sense." 

  "Maybe something went wrong," Gurathin interjected from the doorway. 

  "If something goes wrong with a construct they just melt it down for parts," It retorted, "Her augments are too unique to go to waste, they'd reuse them." 

  "So much melting talk today," Ratthi murmured with a shudder. 

  "They could have been storing her here," He said, moving into the lab and sitting down on another one of the stools. 

  "Yeah, maybe the money hungry company created an innovative piece of technology that nobody had seen before and then for some reason decided to bury it on an uninhabited planet they don't even own." It said dryly. Gurathin frowned at it. 

  "Let's not turn this into a fight," Ratthi intervened tiredly, ever the peacekeeper. 

  "Did you even learn anything about her today?" 

  "She's not experiencing any other side effects from stasis," Ratthi shot back, clearly annoyed by the unsubtle accusation, "All her augments are functioning properly according to her, although we only saw the wings, we don't even know what half of the internal ones do." 

"If we're working under the assumption that she's a stealth sec unit, nothing good." 

  Ratthi grimaced. 

  "But," It continued, "We have no proof that she is actually an imaginary new type of construct, so it shouldn't be a problem." 

  "You said yourself that she acts like a SecUnit!" 

  "It was an observation, not a diagnosis." It said, halfway tempted to roll its eyes. 

  "You guys think she's a SecUnit?" Pin-Lee asked, walking through the door, "How many rogue SecUnits even are there?" 

  "Not as many as the media shows," It muttered. 

  "Sec-y thinks she might be a type of construct," Ratthi explained to Pin-Lee as she pulled up a stool and joined the gathering group. 

  "I do not think that." It corrected. 

  Pin-Lee looked confused. 

  "Whatever she is, she's clearly dangerous." Gurathin said, rolling his stool to the side to make room for Pin-Lee. 

  "C'mon, you thought Sec-y was dangerous too at first," Ratthi said lightheartedly. 

  "I am dangerous," 

  "Not to us," Pin-Lee said before Ratthi could, although he nodded his agreement. 

  "She's not a media watching SecUnit," Gurathin argued, "She's a stranger that we found in a cave system." 

  "She's also somebody that Mensah asked me to organize refugee status for," Pin-Lee shot back, tone gaining a steely edge. "But, if we have any thoughts that she might be a construct, that changes things." 

  Because Constructs and Bots needed Guardians on Preservation Alliance. It was their nice way of phrasing 'They still need an owner'. It didn't particularly like or agree with the practice, but what other choices did it have. At least it was a free agent of sorts. 

  "Where is she?" She asked curiously, glancing around at the gathered group. 

  "Outside, presumably in the trees," It answered. 

  "In the trees?" She echoed, confusion evident. 

  "She likes to climb apparently," Ratthi said with a shrug, "I don't get it." 

  "Humans don't make sense," It commiserated with a nod. 

  "Gee thanks," 

  "Whatever she is, we're going to keep helping her, right?" Pin-Lee asked, looking around at the group with an expression that brokered little argument. 

  "Well we can't very well leave her here." That was the first remotely positive thing Gurathin had said in regards to Firebird. Progress, it supposed. The rest of the group nodded in agreement. 

  "Glad that's decided," She said with a firm nod, leaning forward to rest her elbows on her knees, "So, then we move on to a gameplan. We need to earn her trust, and probably figure out what she is, just so we can get her legal status sorted out, but trust is the priority. We need her to trust us. Who seems like our best bet?" 

  "She was highly on edge around Ratthi today," It said, recalling the tense exchange. "She's confrontational with me, and seems to regard Mensah as a leader." 

  Of the group gathered, that left Gurathin and Pin-Lee. 

  "I'm not going anywhere near her," Gurathin said, shaking his head, "This is you guys plan, I have actual work to do around here." 

  "Alright, me it is then," Pin-Lee determined, "I'll see what I can do."

  "Apparently she acts like a SecUnit, so maybe treat her like we did with Sec-y at first," Ratthi suggested. 

  "First time anybody's ever used it as a model for normal interactions" Gurathin muttered and Ratthi swallowed a laugh. 

  "Less eye-contact," It suggested, ignoring the comment, "Much less eye-contact." 

  Gurathin snorted. 

Chapter Text

 Humans were frustratingly curious. These scientists more than most. 

  It didn't like scientists on principle, the old anger was calcified and settled permanently somewhere in its bones. No memories provided reason for the hatred, but it had decided it didn't need those memories anyways. The brief flashes and fragments were distraction enough, it didn't need its skull cluttered with years of extraneous information it had no reason to keep. 

  So it already didn't like scientists, and these scientists were persistent on top of it all. 

  The woman, Pin-Lee, had been sitting outside the base for two hours and 37 minutes. It had been present for precisely none of that time. Instead, it was watching her from its vantage point in the trees. 

  To her credit, she didn't seem to be seeking her out. She had looked around a couple times, but never in a searching manner. She actually seemed largely preoccupied by the tablet in her lap, going through what looked to be a number of files.

  A plate of food sat off to the side, but she hadn't picked up a single thing from it, ignoring it entirely. When she'd first come outside, she'd called out a greeting, but aside from that she'd made no attempts to seek it out like Sec-y and Ratthi had. 

  It had decided it didn't like either of them. Ratthi asked too many questions, and the other asset was a threat and, apparently, an adept liar. The entire Free Agent pitch was a trap at best. 

  A flock of birds flying overhead drew its attention swiftly upwards, tilting its head back to follow the flurry of movement and noise. Looking back down, it caught sight of Pin-Lee looking up through the trees as well. As soon as she caught sight of it, she looked away. 

  Odd. It wasn't fear or surprise, no, the movement was too easy, too simple. She knew it was up in the trees, she simply didn't care. She went back to her work, and it moved down to lower branches, keeping its wings folded tight to its spine as it finally dropped down to the forest floor, absorbing the contact silently and standing up straight.  

  She didn't even look over. There had to be a reason she was outside. Scientists were dangerously curious, certainly, but this was just pointless. It moved closer until it was peering over her shoulder at her tablet from a couple paces away. Words upon words met its eyes. Preservation, legislation, constructs, refuge. It had no context for most of it, but it seemed that she was maintaining the assets claim of some sort of legal haven for assets. Ridiculous. 

  "The food is for you, if you want it," She finally spoke, still not looking up from her tablet. 

  So she intentionally wasn't looking at it. What did she think that would accomplish? 

  It watched her for a long few moments before picking up the plate and sitting down on the ground as well. Picking at the food, it kept an eye on her while she kept working. Any poisons or sedatives in the food wouldn't work, but regardless, it sniffed the food before eating. Not that it particularly knew what different substances smelled or tasted like, but it expected it might have some sort of recognition in the moment. 

  Clearly she wanted something, as she had some motive to be outside, offering it food. It turned the thought over in its head until the edges were polished smooth and it was no closer to an answer. 

  But, if it was silence she wanted, it would acquiesce. 

  32 minutes and 14 seconds passed by before Pin-Lee finally broke. 

  "How long do you plan to stay outside?" She asked, glancing up from her work but making a point not to look at it, instead focusing on a tree just past it. 

  "How long do you?" It replied tonelessly. 

  "Fair enough," She conceded with a dip of her head. 

  Pin-Lee wasn't a scientist, it decided in that moment.

   She might have a passable knowledge of some field, might even be a functioning member of their survey team, but that wasn't her primary purpose. She was too comfortable in silence. Didn't possess the same insatiable curiosity that drove humans to tear everything down to a molecular level in the pursuit of some profound knowledge.

   That didn't, however, mean she wasn't dangerous. 

  "This is going to sound like a terrible question," She prefaced, intentionally looking at it for the first time since she'd stepped outside, "But for the sake of sorting out your legal refuge," 

  She grimaced, and it was expecting a far crueler question than: "Are you human?" 

  That wasn't a terrible question. Perhaps it had underestimated the survey team here. Clearly they had some idea of dealing with an asset, for despite its protests, that was clearly what 'Sec-y' was. But they didn't understand the depth of the waters they had waded into. 

  Either the assignment was a mistake, the operation protocols had gotten lost in translation, or, there was the miniscule chance, that against all probability, logic, and reason, they treated their asset like an actual free agent member of their team. 

  There was no simple yes or no to that answer, although there should have been. It wasn't human, it wasn't plagued by memory or something so hindering as opinion and choice. 

  But it had once been, in a sense. 

  It inhabited the hollow cavern that had been carved out between the ribs of its body. Had settled into the aching metal and bone skeleton long ago. But what qualified as human? If it was appearance alone, flesh and blood, it was perfectly human, but if it was any one of the internal workings, the thoughts, the soul, the memory, it possessed not one. 

  "No." 

–

 The sky darkened rapidly. 

    Pin-Lee had returned inside hours ago after promising to come back with dinner, and it had begun to roam the forest (though it remained within a certain radius of the base for a tangled mess of reasons it didn't care to puzzle out). 

  The soil was dense and cold beneath its feet, and it ignored the quickly scabbing rips and tears of briars and underbrush. At the moment, it was tracking a yellow butterfly along its drifting, meandering flight through the trees. Its sights targeted on the colorful creature, it stilled as it landed on the petal of a flower. 

  Slowly, silently, it adjusted its position in the underbrush to get a better visual of the insect, watching it drink from the flower. It was a tiny delicate creature, with a swirling darkened pattern that spread out across its wings, and unlike anything it had seen before. How it knew the thing was called a butterfly, it wasn't entirely certain. 

  While it pondered, a drop of water landed on the tip of its nose. 

  It looked upwards and saw that storm clouds had gathered, nearly blotting out all the natural light. Having adjusted to the lower light levels, it glanced back at the butterfly and decided to cut the pursuit short, circling back towards the cave system nearby. 

  The best option of steadfast shelter, but also the most liable to flood, it decided, as the drizzle became a pour and water began to rush over the ground, threatening to sweep it off its feet had it been any less surefooted. 

  Blinking water out of its eyes, it lifted its wings up to cover its head from the disorienting onslaught of water, but was nearly blown off its feet by the sudden windsail that the wings became. Planting its feet in the soggy forest floor, it braced against a nearby tree, a steadfast beast of a trunk several times bigger around than it, and swiftly decided the best option was up. 

  Nestled into the tightly latticed lower limbs of the tree, it adjusted its wings again and braced for the long haul. It could wait out a storm. It had waited out far worse than a stormy flash flood. A bit of rain had nothing on unforgiving tundras and extremities lost to hypothermia. It filed that fragment of a memory away for later. 

  Distantly, a tree toppled, taking several neighboring trees branches down with it as it hit the ground with a massive crash that reverberated through its teeth. It dug its fingertips into the bark of the tree it had chosen. 

  And then, somewhere below the howling whine of the storm, it heard something else. 

  Somebody shouting into the storm. Distress, from the tone of it, although it couldn't make out the words. Reasonably, it should have stayed in the trees, ride out the storm, but whatever human idiot decided to go outside in this mess, they were getting closer.

   So it surveyed what landscape it could see past the storm, did its best to triangulate the direction of the noise, and slipped down from the tree branches. 

  The other asset was the one wading along the forest floor, the water well past its knees as it moved against the rush of the current and the tangled, broken underbrush beneath. 

  "Come!" Was all Sec-y shouted when it laid eyes upon it, distantly watching it struggle against the floodwaters. 

  It had come outside to retrieve it. The realization hit harder than the bone rattling crash of another tree collapsing nearby. What was the point, it was fully capable of waiting out the storm, and beyond that, Sec-y shouldn't have risked the safety of its team to ensure that. 

  The other asset reached it and wrapped a hand around its upper arm. It wrenched its arm away, teeth bared in an instinctive snarl that it ignored entirely. 

  "We need to go." It said firmly, an abundantly clear scowl on its face through the transparent helmet. 

  Ignoring all other concerns, the base was the best and most reasonable choice for survival. It nodded and began following it back through the now waist high water, headed back towards the base. 

  Sec-y was leading the way, bearing the brunt of the rushing currents, while Firebird followed behind. Trailing along were a few hovering bots that seemed to answer to the other asset. It would have to figure those out later, it decided. 

  Suddenly, it caught a movement out the corner of its eye. Abruptly, it flared its wings and ducked slightly, covering both itself and Sec-y and tensing, bracing. A tree trunk slammed against the metal shield , glancing off and careening into a nearby clearing before washing away. 

  Folding its wings and standing back up straight, it didn't even have to push Sec-y back into motion. It just started moving forward again. Perhaps not the worst ally to be stuck in a harsh flash flood with, then. 

  The base came into view, and the water level had lowered slightly. They kept pushing forward, and it clenched its jaw against the aching cold. 

  Sec-y keyed open the door and the both of them practically spilled through it. The door slid shut behind them, and the torrential sound was suddenly muffled. 

  It was acutely aware of the entire team standing in a semi-circle around the door, the tension bleeding from their stances as they sagged in relief. Several words of congratulation were offered to the other asset, and meanwhile it ignored it all and shook the loose water and debris from its wings. 

  The room had gone silent. It finally looked up. 

  Everybody was staring. It stared right back, tension winding its muscles taught as it eyed its exit strategies. It had already categorized a few places it could hide for a brief period of time, but within such a small base, its options were limited. 

  "We were so worried about you," Mensah finally said, "We're glad you're safe." 

  It was dripping mud on the floor. They couldn't be that glad. 

  "They mean it," The other asset said dryly, "They're an emotional bunch." 

  They really couldn't. Nobody was glad to see it. They could be satisfied, certainly, but it was never more than a surface level satisfaction of a task completed. 

  Sec-y sighed, an exasperated sound. Then it pointed at the nearest wall, a screen blinking to life with security footage. 

  Pin-Lee was yelling. 

  "This storm is only going to get worse, we have to do something!" She was waving her hands around in the way humans did when the volume of the words wasn't quite enough, "It could kill her! We promised her she'd be okay," Her voice gave out for a moment, "I promised her she'd get refuge." 

  "We're going to get her, she's going to be okay," Ratthi assured her, though there was a level of stress in his own voice. Bharadwaj wrapped an arm around her shoulders. 

   "I could go retrieve her." Sec-y suggested. 

  "We can't ask you to do that," Mensah said, her expression conflicted. 

  "You're not asking, I'm offering." 

  "These storms are no joke, they're brutal. The flooding, the winds, the hail." Pin-Lee said, "She's probably terrified." 

  The video cut off and the screen went dark. 

  "When this team tells you that they care about your well being," Sec-y said, "They care." 

  It continued to stare at the blank screen. 

  "Lets sit down," Mensah suggested, gently herding the group into the common area. 

  It was still tracking mud and water across their floors as it walked in and settled onto the floor next to a heating unit. Everybody else sat down on various chairs and couches. 

  Somebody draped a blanket over its shoulders and wings, and it grabbed the corners and wrapped the fabric tightly around its body like it could disappear in on itself if it squeezed tightly enough. Briefly, it considered hiding in the medical station cabinet again, but the warmth of the heating unit was enough to keep it right where it was. It hadn't registered when its teeth had started chattering.

  As much as it was aware it should've been listening to the conversation flitting about the room, the words just went right over its head. It was instead focusing on the most recent revelation, the words bouncing around inside its skull. That the humans had gone so far as to care about it was a development, but it couldn't decide what that meant. 

  It certainly wasn't good. Emotion hindered reasonable thought. Emotion had led them to send Sec-y out into a storm that could've very well killed it. Emotion had led them to worry about its well being. 

  No matter how many ways it spun the situation, how many directives and protocols their actions went directly against, it all came back to that. They cared. That couldn't be allowed to continue. 

  It stared down at the warm drink that somebody had pressed into its hands. Water dripped off the tendrils of stringy brown hair that hung down around its face, and it watched as a droplet hit the edge of the mug and rolled down the side. Whatever the mug contained smelled nice, it decided as it held the steaming cup up to its mouth and took a drink. 

  "Why didn't you come back when the storm started?" Mensah finally asked over her own mug of the drink, "Surely you know the base is safe." 

  "It wouldn't have mattered," It said, watching the steam drift off the surface of the mug's contents like an early winter breeze over a not-quite-frozen lake. 

  "Why not?" 

  "I'd have survived regardless," It answered truthfully, not looking up. It didn't like watching these people's facial expressions when it spoke, they always got strange and uncomfortable, with their misplaced pity and concern. 

  "This sort of storm was what killed the last survey team," Pin-Lee retorted, her words sharp. Was it being scolded? "You don't know you would have survived." 

  This certainly sounded like a reprimand. But if it was, why had they provided it with a blanket and something to drink? It didn't note any swelling in its throat that would point to the drink being caustic or poisoned. Perhaps they wanted to ensure it was fully functioning before proceeding with a more formal reaction. Still, a strange mix of signals this team was providing. 

  "I was designed explicitly to survive," It replied tersely, gaze snapping upwards to meet Pin-Lee's. The attitude of the words wouldn't be appreciated, but they had spilled out before it could clamp its jaw down on its tongue. 

  "What?" Ratthi interjected, a clear mixture of confusion and curiosity on his face. 

  It had said too much. It clamped its jaw shut and looked back down into its cup, consciously aware of the slip it had just made. Now that staying outside was no longer an option, the nearby laboratory loomed over its shoulder. They didn't have the equipment to sedate or restrain it, it reminded itself, so it wouldn't end up there, not in this lifetime. Not if it had any choice in the matter. 

  "What do you mean by that?" Mensah's voice was diplomatic and gentle. 

  She was a scientist by trade, but that couldn't be her only occupation, she was much too kind, too sentimental, for that. It wanted to trust her, some instinct buried deep beneath the layers of sediment and years of pain, but it refused. 

  "Everything is designed for a purpose," It said instead of answering. 

  Pretty enough words could be used to divert nearly any line of questioning for a time. It was easy to provide artificial depth to things, to pretend to peel back layers that didn't exist, if one was strategic enough with their speech. Doing so would sate their curiosity while revealing none of its close kept secrets. 

  "My purpose is to survive." 

Chapter Text

The rain hadn't stopped since the storm had begun three cycles ago. Three very long cycles, not objectively, the cycles weren't variable in length, but it certainly felt like ages. Firebird had taken up residence in a storage closet, despite being repeatedly offered an actual room of her own by several members of the team. 

  She'd boarded herself up in that closet for the entire first cycle and immediately taken out the security cameras within. How she located some of them, it wasn't entirely certain, but she'd covered them up or disabled them somehow. When brought to Mensah's attention, she sighed but said they'd allow her the privacy she needed. 

  Early into the second cycle, she'd emerged from the storage closet while everybody else was in their quarters and padded about the habitat, watching the rain and flooding for a time before scrutinizing every inch of the habitat it could reach without waking the inhabitants. Then she'd tiptoed back into the kitchen, filled a bowl with assorted food items, and took it back to her storage closet. 

  Later during the second cycle, the team was playing some sort of recreational game, laughing loudly at something Ratthi had said when it noticed her hovering just beyond the doorway, out of sight but clearly listening. It had glanced over at Mensah for her ruling, and she shook her head slightly, so it left the matter alone. 

  She was secluded, and highly distrustful of their team as a whole. If she was a construct, it honestly couldn't blame her for the reaction. It had sounded too good to be true when Mensah had told it that she was buying its contract, and that was after a mishap that somewhat merited that level of connection through shared trauma. Firebird had no reason to trust them, to believe in their altruistic motives, but the constant surveillance was getting irritating. 

  Murderbot was the only one that was supposed to be that involved with the surveillance of the habitat. And now an unknown, possible rogue combat construct, was loose and watching them and they seemed unbothered by the idea, instead treating her like a particularly scared wild animal. 

  What they didn't seem to realize, though, was that when backed into a corner, wild animals tended to bite. 

"Any word on our guest?" Mensah asked as she walked into the common area where Murderbot was sitting, reviewing weather pattern data. 

  She'd been inquiring after Firebird every morning since the storm. Firebird had clammed right back up after her admission that she was 'designed to survive', which left them with far more questions than answers. 

  It shook its head. Mensah sighed. 

  "For someone stuck in a small habitat with us, she's remarkably good at staying out of sight." She said as she methodically prepared a cup of tea. 

  "If I didn't want you to see me, you wouldn't." It said dryly, closing the map out of its field of vision and pulling up the old data from the last survey catastrophe. 

  "You compare her to yourself a lot," She observed, setting the kettle to boil. 

  It blinked the old data out of the way, practically bluescreening as it stared at the opposing wall. 

  "I do not." 

  "You do," 

  She wasn't technically wrong, it determined with a degree of annoyance as it went back over previous conversation logs. 

  "If she's a construct, the comparison makes sense," She continued, "But I don't think that's it. Because you didn't know she wasn't human-" 

  "She is human." It interrupted, adamant, it was not wrong about this, "I'd be able to tell if she was just mimicking human vital signs, there'd be a pattern, something. Even if it's on every level but psychological, she's a human." 

  Mensah's mouth turned down just slightly, in a way that it recognized wasn't displeasure, but thought, consideration. 

  "I believe you," She began, (that never ended well), "But when asked, she told Pin-Lee that she isn't human." 

  "The human brain is weird," It replied, "Humans believe all sorts of things that are directly contrary to provided evidence." 

  "You believe that she believes she's a construct," Mensah repeated back, and to her credit, she was far less skeptical than it had believed she'd be. 

  "I don't know," It hated admitting that, "But when you take out all the other options, it seems possible," 

  "Well," Mensah sat back on her heels, leaning against the countertop behind her, "That would be a first, but it could technically be possible. Prolonged deep stasis can have psychological side effects," She mused. "And she's already displayed memory loss," 

  "You believe me," 

  The kettle made a shrill, shrieking noise. 

  "Of course I believe you," She said easily as she turned around and poured the boiling water into the prepared mug. 

  "It sounds insane," It pointed out. Even if it was its own idea, and backed by reasonable evidence, it didn't negate that it was a bit out there. 

  "I'm friends with a rogue SecUnit that has saved my life more than once," She said as she set the kettle down and turned back around, "I've dealt with crazier, this will turn out alright," 

  "You have too much faith in the unknown," It said, standing up to accompany Mensah back to her lab. 

  "No," She picked up her steaming mug, "I have too much faith in my team,"

 It followed her into the hallway, and it became quickly apparent that she wasn't headed towards her laboratory, or any of the other laboratories. She was headed towards Firebird's barricaded storage closet. 

  "If you believe she's human, why do you compare her to a SecUnit?" Mensah asked as they walked slowly along. 

  This again. It had hoped the topic had slipped her mind, but she was too sharp for that. 

  "Evidence," Murderbot replied blandly. 

  "Such as?" She pressed, not maliciously, just in the calm, curious way that she always did. She wasn't going to let this go. 

  "She moves like one," It offered. 

  "Mechanically," Mensah provided, and it could practically see her making the connection in her head. She'd only been around a handful of SecUnits before, but there was a distinctive gait, smooth, calculated, almost predatory in a sense, like a creature stalking its prey. 

    "She categorizes exits, people, weapons, everything." It continued, maybe it could get Mensah to understand the risks, the danger, "She thinks like a soldier and acts like a unit, I don't know what exactly that means just yet, but it isn't good." 

  "You don't trust her," She observed as they came to a stop outside the door. 

  It wasn't a question, so it didn't give an answer. Mensah just watched it for a moment, something strange happening to her expression. 

  "Is it because you're worried she'll hurt us?" She paused, "Or, because she reminds you of yourself?" 

It stared down at her for a moment. She stared right back. 

  Nearly a minute passed in silence. 

  "You're afraid that if things had gone differently, you may have  hurt us," She continued, glancing at the door, "Maybe you're still afraid of hurting us," 

  "I'm not a rogue unit from the serials, I don't enjoy hurting humans." It replied, its face pulling an expression that it didn't like. 

  "Of course you don't," Mensah huffed a faint laugh at the implication, she knew it better than that, "But accidents happen, things have been dangerous, and you worry about us. Maybe you still think about nearly being overwritten by the combat module," She paused, "I know I do." 

  Murderbot didn't know what to say to that. It did still think about that moment a lot, the overwhelming fear of being out of control, the looming threat of being forced to kill the humans it had been assigned to protect. But why did Mensah think about that moment? 

  "You scared the hell out of us," She finally continued, "Shooting yourself like that." 

  Ah. That made sense.

  "Alright," She hummed and nodded at the storage closet door, "Are you ready?" 

  "You haven't even told me what we're doing here," It replied. 

  "We're going to talk to her," She said with a faint shrug, "There's no real goal, just communication." 

  "Then why do I need to be here?" It was a pointless question, it would've stayed anyways to keep Mensah safe, and out of an underlying curiosity, but it felt nice to ask pointless questions sometimes, and Mensah always had good answers. 

  "You don't, but I figure you might know best how to interact with her," She answered readily, "And you seem to distrust her, so I imagine you would tag along regardless." 

  True. 

  Mensah knocked lightly on the door and then waited. Ten seconds passed. She knocked again. Fifteen seconds this time. She knocked a third time. 

  It heard scuffling, movement, and then silence, stillness, aside from the racing beat of Firebirds heart. Mensah reached tentatively for the door keypad, but the door abruptly slid open on its own. Opened from the inside. 

  Firebird stood on the other side, regarding them steadily. No visual trace of the adrenaline that had to be pumping through her system for her heart to be beating that fast, aside from the dilated pupils that could be easily attributed to the dimly lit storage closet. Not so much as a muscle twitch or quickened breathing. Remarkable control of her physical state. 

  "May we come in?" Mensah phrased it like a question, but they were already practically inside the room. There were much larger, rarely frequented rooms that she could have chosen. Instead she chose one that she couldn't even lay down in but diagonally. If she so much as spread her arms out, her fingertips would press against the opposing walls. 

  Firebird just blinked at her. Dark eyes assessing, almost scrutinizing, not that her flat expression so much as twitched. 

  It had never had that much practice with schooling its expression, considering it had worn an opaque mask for much of its existence, so her control would be almost enviable if it wasn't so annoying. 

  "We just want to chat, if that's alright," She continued, undeterred. 

  Well, she hadn't slammed the door in their faces. That was as good as an invitation from her. Mensah seemed to agree, and settled into a more comfortable stance on her feet. 

  "Are you settling in alright?" She asked, glancing around at the storage closet. 

  There was a spot on the floor where she'd clearly been sleeping, curled up in a nest of blankets and clothes that looked suspiciously varied in size and style, as if they'd been stolen from various team members. It threw together a program in the background to analyze the habitat security feed again for stolen clothing, but it probably already had its culprit. 

  " She's stealing clothing " It sent in a private feed with Mensah, not that it seemed like Firebird could overhear, she had no known way to access the feed at all, which was strange in its own right. 

  " I noticed, " Mensah replied, and her tone was caring, even over the feed, " It's not an issue, we have plenty."  

  " Why ?" It sent back. 

  "If you want to know," Mensah replied, "Ask her," 

  Well fine then. 

  "Why do you have stolen clothing?" It asked verbally. 

  Firebird balked, flinching back just slightly. 

  "That's not why we're here," Mensah added tactfully, "It's just wondering," 

  "The smell," She finally answered after 27 seconds of tense silence. 

  "They smell like machinery and oil," It said without a beat of hesitation. 

  "Why are you here?" She pivoted immediately. 

  "Concern, curiosity, a number of reasons," Mensah answered honestly. 

  "So you and your people keep saying." She said shortly, shifting her stance slightly. 

  "We may have gotten off on the wrong foot," That might be an understatement, she'd made a run for it and stayed in the woods as long as she possibly could before coming back inside only because of a deadly storm and flood.  "Whatever danger you think we pose to you, we don't." 

  Firebird regarded her warily, a hint of skepticism in the faint curl of her lip. 

  "What danger do you think we pose? We might be able to disprove your fears." She suggested. 

  "Maybe she's worried you'll send her back where she came from." It mused aloud, not the first time it had thought so, but the first time it had verbalized it. 

  Her eyes snapped towards it, and she eyed the exit, noted its possible weak points. She was preparing for a fight, per usual. A seriously paranoid individual. It wondered what that felt like. 

  "We won't," Mensah assured upon seeing her reaction, an empty promise if wherever she came from had legal right to her, but she meant well, "We plan to give you legal refuge in Preservation, where we're from, and then you can decide what you want to do after that." 

  She frowned, clearly annoyed by them repeating the same thing they'd said the last couple of times. 

  "We can prove it, if you'd like," She offered, "We can put you in contact with the legal council that Pin-Lee has been talking with, we can pull up the Preservation laws dictating refuge procedures, we can pull up countless historical records and precedences." 

   "But you won't believe us," She paused, a truly sad expression coming across her face, "No matter what we do." 

  "Where are you from?" Murderbot was acting as what it had colloquially come to understand was the "bad cop". While it was neither law enforcement, nor interrogating her, it was the dynamic that Mensah and it had seemed to set up naturally. 

  "I don't know." There was a 58% chance that she was lying, according to one of the modules running analysis on her facial expressions and vitals. Despite the lack of evidence, it felt reasonably certain she was lying. 

  "Lie." 

  "I don't know a location." She ground out the clarification, jaw tightening a tick. A bit more truthful, but still lying. 

  "Lie." It repeated. Mensah pinged against the edge of its feed, but it ignored her for a moment in favor of focusing all its processing power on Firebird. 

  "I'm not lying," She bit back. 

  "You are." It said resolutely, "Just tell the truth, and we can leave you alone." 

  "Or what, you're going to sedate me and cut me open?" She snapped venomously, lips curling back from too-sharp teeth. 

  "No!" Mensah interjected, but she wasn't listening, her focus entirely on Murderbot. "We're not going to do that, and we're not going to keep pressing for answers like this either." 

   "Do you have a governor module?" It pivoted away from its original line of questioning. 

  Genuine confusion registered in her eyes, she didn't know what it was talking about. 

  "A device in your brain," It continued, and when she tensed, her metal wings flexing slightly, it knew it had finally found the right nerve to press, "Electrocution to keep you in line." 

  She snapped. 

  In one split second movement, she dropped her weight low and went for the door, shouldering Mensah out of her way but leaving her uninjured. She made it out into the hallway and didn't so much as slow as she sprinted around the curve. Towards the others. 

  She had a metal blade to Bharadwaj's throat by the time it made it to the common area, just a moment after her. Overse and Ratthi were standing nearby, clearly having just jumped up from their seats. 

  "You don't want to do that," It was cliche, but it worked in the serials, so why couldn't it work in this hostage situation. 

  "Stop telling me I want things!" She snapped and Bharadwaj flinched violently. 

  Mensah appeared, a few steps behind it, still out of breath from being knocked out of the way of a cornered animal. 

  "You don't want to kill anybody." It said, factually, "If you did, you would've already tried. You do, however, want to escape." It activated one of the energy weapons in its arm, just enough to make it visible, "This won't work for you." 

  The fear that flashed through her eyes calcified near immediately into anger, determination, shrewd calculation. Backed into a corner, she was still behaving unpredictably, but at least this offered them a better understanding of her motives. It was now adequately certain she posed no danger to the team, at least when she finally got it through her thick skull that they were trying to help her. 

  "We can't prove with any certainty that you won't end up back where you were before," It continued, "But, this team will do everything in their power to ensure that you don't. You just have to work with us for the time being. Once we get off this planet, you can go wherever you want, we won't stop you." Behind it, it could sense Mensah nodding along,

   "But we need to get off this planet. You can either do that sedated and restrained, or working with us." 

  She stood there, processing for a long moment, but her grip on her blade loosened just a fraction. 

  It lowered its own arm, retracting the energy weapon. 

  The blade slid back into place, concealed on her wing, with the faint sound of metal on metal and Bharadwaj took a few stumbling steps away from her. 

  "I will not go back." Firebird announced resolutely, her jaw tight and her posture rigid. 

  "Understood."

Chapter Text

 The humans were its best option. The best of a few bad options, apparently, but not by much, it decided as it stood in the common area with the gathered team. It had chosen to stand despite Mensah gesturing for it to sit on one of the provided seats. Much of the rest of the team was sitting. 

  The scientist it had held a blade to the throat of was sitting on the singular couch, a scientist on either side, comforting and reassuring her. She was fine. It hadn't hurt her, hadn't so much as nicked her skin. She'd just been the nearest option in a high stress situation. 

  Clearheaded, it wondered why it had decided that was the best course of action. If it hadn't alienated the team before, it certainly had by threatening one of them. Perhaps the gathering was a public execution. That wouldn't go well for them, it mused. It was catastrophizing, it decided, watching Sec-y observe the team. 

  If they meant to kill it, it would make far more sense to do it the moment it had let go of Bharadwaj. No, they weren't going to try to kill it, even if it was a matter of survival and getting off this planet alive. 

  The avoidant mechanic walked into the room, the last to arrive. He was a strange one, among this group, the one least concerned with its arrival, the one that kept to himself and intentionally ignored it at every turn. In another life, it may have even been curious about that, but for now, he ranked lowest on the list of priorities. 

  "Alright," Mensah called the impromptu meeting to some manner of order, and the chattering petered out as everyone focused on her. "We've had a development, of sorts." 

  Some of the team looked perplexed, some curious, some both. 

  "Firebird has agreed to work with us," Sec-y took over the announcement, "On the condition that we do our best to make sure she doesn't return to wherever she originated from." 

  "Where is that?" Pin-Lee was the first one to break the moment of tense silence. 

  "We don't know." It glanced over at Firebird as it answered, and it decided to keep its jaw firmly shut. 

  It didn't know where it came from. No map sprung to mind, no particular building or location. But of what it could remember, it wasn't a situation it was rushing to get back to. It knew that was contrary to its programming, but had decided that it didn't care. 

  "Do we not know, or is she not telling us?" The mechanic asked. 

  "What I know wouldn't help you." It interjected before Sec-y could answer for it. 

  That surprised everybody, and they looked at it, clearly expecting it to continue talking, hesitant to say anything themselves for the risk they might scare it into silence. That was almost worse than them being afraid of it. It sunk back into maintaining a clinical observation of the situation, speaking was just like giving a mission report. 

  "Any information I might be able to scrape from my memories is outdated at best, skewed by false recollection and limited information at worst," It detailed flatly, "The information would be useless, and the retrieval would be time consuming, making it an illogical endeavor." 

  "I think that was the most she's said since she got here," The medic, Overse, murmured to Bharadwaj. 

  "That's very…clinical." Mensah said. 

  "Would you rather I portray emotion?" It asked, swiveling its gaze to focus on her, which she had the forethought to be at least a little unnerved by, "I can do that if it would make this operation run smoother." 

  "You can portray emotion but you choose not to?" Of all things, of course that was what she had chosen to pick up on. Scientists. 

  "It's tedious." That much was true. Constantly having to monitor and maintain facial expressions, body language, just to ensure it was portraying the intended message could get exhausting. 

  "If it's an added task for you, of course not." She said graciously. 

  How kind of her. It had never intended to follow through on the offer. It had wanted to watch her flounder, just a bit. Not maliciously, but to see what she would do, if she would hold her ground. And she had, steady in her stance, that they really were a moronically altruistic survey expedition and nothing else. 

  "Are you certain?" It put on a disarming smile and relaxed its posture into something natural, easygoing, as easily as slipping on a coat and watched her expression shift. "I've been told it makes my presence more tolerable." 

  "It's unnerving," Somebody murmured beneath their breath. 

  It had been informed of both things, repeatedly, and knew as much. People had such an issue with portrayed emotion when they'd already seen the alternative. Vividly, it recalled being ordered to stop staring, that it was being creepy, the snappish voice welled up in the back of its skull before it drifted away. 

  "I'm certain," She said firmly, refusing to be outwardly unnerved by its display, although it could sense her unease.

   Certain that it had gotten the message across, it straightened its spine and returned to its previous posture, letting its facial expression slip right back into carefully curated neutrality. 

  "What does working with us mean exactly?" Ratthi asked, intent to move on to continue the conversation at hand. 

  It had the same question. And apparently nobody seemed to have an answer, because nobody jumped to answer the question. It continued to watch Mensah, who looked right back at it. 

  "How would you like to contribute?" She asked when it became clear that Firebird wasn't going to offer an answer of its own. 

  "Do you have somebody you need dead?" It asked in return, the question short and sharp. 

  "No," Her reply was quick. 

  "Then you don't need my contributions." Simple as that. 

  "Well, that answers that question," Ratthi said, his tone caught halfway between humor and alarm. 

  "Do you have any other skills?" Sec-y steered the conversation back on track while the room murmured and Mensah shifted on her feet, her brain clearly working in overdrive.  

  "Unclear."  

  "How is that unclear?" It pressed. It sure liked to press for information, didn't it. While it couldn't blame the other asset for the behavior, it would do the exact same in its position, the situation was getting tedious. 

  "Any skills I've retained from previous missions aren't directly accessible in my memory, so providing a list of them isn't feasible," It said flatly, "Unless you want to go through a long and laborious testing process to determine what skills I do and do not have, but every test would be a shot in the dark." 

  "If we're to be working together as one cohesive unit, you have to contribute somehow." 

  "You don't have to," Mensah corrected, "We're not forcing you to do anything." 

  "You couldn't force me to do anything if you tried," It replied, carefully inflecting its tone with a mild warning. 

    "That's ominous," Overse mumbled. 

   "Couldn't we?" The other asset objected, "You have a governor module, don't you? We'd just have to figure out how to access it." 

  Mensah seemed apprehensive, regarding Sec-y with a look that indicated she was surprised and appalled by the suggestion. 

  "We won't," It continued, "But that was what scared you back there, wasn't it?"  

  It narrowed its eyes and watched the other asset, aware of the fresh hostility it harbored in its gaze, in its posture. The others could be trusted to hold it to their collective word, but it wasn't letting that thing anywhere near its hardware. 

  "You're scaring her," Ratthi interjected, ever the bleeding, emotional heart of this group. 

  "I don't feel fear." It corrected reflexively. 

  "You have a human brain, therefore you have human neurochemical reactions and hormones," Sec-y argued dryly. 

  It was beginning to wish it had stayed up in the trees and let the thing wander around aimlessly, perhaps into a cave, never to be seen again. At least then it wouldn't have to listen to its constant need to argue semantics. 

  "I assess information and react accordingly."  

  "Call it whatever you want,"It relented with an exasperated sigh. 

  "Okay now they're just fighting," The mechanic, Gurathin, pointed out with an irritated huff, "Can I go now?" 

  "Actually no," Pin-Lee said as she stood up, "We've got another thing we probably need to discuss as a group." 

  She looked towards Mensah and it looked like they were communicating somehow, before Pin-Lee decided to proceed. 

  "Considering that we don't entirely know whether Firebird here is classified as a construct or a human, the colleagues I've consulted have suggested we decide on an acting guardian for her, in the case that she is a construct, just to cover all our bases, legally speaking." 

  What the fuck did that mean? 

  Apparently that surprised the rest of the group as well, because they started murmuring amongst themselves. 

  "Can we volunteer?" Ratthi asked. Because of course he'd be the one to ask, and he meant it too. It had known him for less than a week, and it knew a concerning amount about his pattern of behavior. All of which it didn't like. 

  "You're not offering to adopt a shelter cat, Ratthi." Pin-Lee said sharply, and he at least had the decency to look cowed by her reprimand. 

  It let the words wash away into noise as it watched the water gather in rivulets on the other side of the nearby cracked window. Although the rain had lessened, the floodwaters were still as torrential as ever, it noted as it watched a sapling bob along in the rushing water. 

  There was no point in listening. They'd make a decision, and perhaps they would even be polite enough to inform it, but it didn't matter what it thought. It wasn't designed to weigh in on conversations, it was designed to do, to act, and it was well aware of that. 

  It blinked and the noise had lessened, nearly ceased. They were all staring at it, it realized a moment too late. Shit. 

  "We asked if you'd like to decide on a guardian for yourself," Mensah took pity and repeated the question she'd apparently asked before, "In this case, guardian would be a temporary position, and you'll be able to change it later on if you so choose." 

  Silence absorbed the room again as it processed the question. They were asking it to choose. Of this group? It would have liked to choose none of them, but it didn't suppose that was an option. 

  Guardian sounded suspiciously like their polite version of a handler. An easier way to square away a phenomenon they'd rather not explain. 

  "You don't have to choose right now, of course," Pin-Lee added at its continued silence, "We might be able to get things sorted out so you don't need a guardian at all, but at the moment its been a topic of argument." 

  "I choose?" It echoed, well aware that it sounded ridiculous, childish and brimming with confusion it shouldn't have the emotional breadth to offer. 

  "Of course you choose," She said as if it was as simple and mundane as breathing, a right that she shouldn't even have to affirm. 

  "Did you choose?" It focused on the other asset, who was focusing on something internally, in its mind eye, but swiftly returned to the conversation at hand. 

  "Not exactly," 

  "So we don't choose." Confirmation. Of what, it didn't entirely know. It was wildly out of its depth, fumbling around deaf and blind, hands held out to brace against the inevitable fall, the cliffs edge it was doubtlessly stumbling towards. 

  "I wouldn't choose someone else even if I was given the option." It contradicted, glancing at Mensah for a fraction of a second. 

  Ah, so that explained that. She was its handler, guardian, whatever they wanted to call it. 

  "But you weren't given the option," It repeated, pressing back as Sec-y had pressed. 

  "Both of your situations are unique in their own way," Mensah intervened, "Which is why they're being handled differently and in ways that are the best for the participants." 

  She was a smooth talker. It would have to keep a particular eye on her. Diplomats were a dangerous breed, with their honeyed words and their false pretenses. 

  "If you'd like time to make this decision," She continued, "You can certainly have it. Nobody would blame you." 

  "Wouldn't they?" It was speaking simply to speak, to fill up space, to allow itself to calculate for the best possible option, as it studied the group gathered, scattered around. 

  "No," She repeated, though she had a keen eye, she knew it was stalling for time, and was allowing it to, "We wouldn't. This isn't a decision to be made rashly." 

  Well. That was true enough, but it had come to a decision, and it wanted to be out of this gathered meeting as soon as possible. Its skin itched with the attention and it wanted to get back to the closet, out of the way of their eyes and lights. 

  "That one." It pointed. 

  "Fuck no," Gurathin reacted immediately and viscerally, standing up from where he'd been seated. 

  "Why?" Sec-y seemed genuinely confused by the decision, the edges of its mouth faintly downwards. 

  "Do  I need a reason?" 

  "A reason would be great," Gurathin turned to Mensah and Pin-Lee, "Can I say no? I'm saying no. I don't even know her." 

  "It's a temporary position," Pin-Lee pointed out, but even she was reacting a little slowly, baffled by the abrupt turn of events. It considered slipping out of the room, but Mensah turned the attention back on it. 

  "It's the first decision she's made for herself," She said gently, "We should honor it, even if we don't understand." 

  The kindness of her tone crawled across its skin. It wasn't patronizing, exactly, but she was far too indulgent to have good intentions. But so long as it got off this planet, away from these people, it didn't care one bit about their intentions. Mutually assured destruction, it supposed. 

  "Can I formally object?" Gurathin turned to Pin-Lee, a bit of desperation creeping into his cynical tone. 

  "I don't know of any legal precedent for this particular situation," She said with a mild shrug, "But I'll look into it for you. In the meantime, just go with it." 

  "You suppose?" 

  "What do you want me to do? File a restraining order?" She shot back. 

  "She just admitted to her only talent being killing!" His volume was escalating rapidly. 

  "She's standing right here." Pin-Lee said sharply, her brow furrowing a fraction. 

  "She's leaving," Sec-y interjected tonelessly. 

  Bastard. 

  It had almost made it to the doorway whilst everyone else was preoccupied by the loud argument. 

  Everybody turned to look at it. Dammit.  

  "You told me to make a decision," It said, "I made a decision. We're done here." 

  "You don't want to make any other contributions? Any input? Any observation?" The other asset was pushing, probing, as it had done since it arrived. It had a taste for drama, apparently. 

  "There's no point." It spat. 

  Why couldn't they understand? Take the answer they were given. They kept trying to fit it into a box it wasn't designed for. It was designed to mimic humanity when necessary, but not to emulate it constantly, not to contribute to conversation, to lounge in common areas and contribute to plans outside of its particular expertise. 

  They wanted it to be human. Kept treating it like it was human. 

  Ridiculous. 

  "Why do you say that?" Mensah was as nosy as her pet asset. But if she let it run wild like this, it was no wonder it had adopted her behaviors. 

  "You're treating me like I'm human," The words tasted vile on its tongue, "It's pointless and absurd. I'm not a member of your team. I'm not a person. I'm not meant to sit on couches and drink hot tea and talk about how your day went. I need a job, an objective, a target." 

  Its own volume had escalated, and it realized it was firing the words off like gunfire, pelting against them like they might do some sort of damage. The other asset held its ground and while Mensah hadn't taken a full step back, she'd moved backwards a degree, shaken up by the sudden reaction. Everyone else had fallen silent. 

  "Without one, there's no point to me." It snapped, acrid and unforgiving, "So no, I can't contribute. It's a futile endeavor, and you'd be better served pursuing your lawsuit." 

  Silence. 

  "You feel useless." 

  It just didn't know how to shut up, did it? It was incapable of shutting its chattering mouth. A trait that shouldn't have been tolerated by its handler, but Mensah just stood and observed, still processing. 

   Not for the first time, it considered lunging at the other asset. Ducking low and slashing its femoral arteries in one fell swoop. Its pants weren't the thickest material, they wouldn't present any obstacle. From there, there were a million different ways to put it down permanently. 

    "Excuse me?" It measured its response, acutely aware of just how much its survival depended on keeping this team intact and cooperative enough to get off the planet. 

  "You don't have a task," It repeated, "You feel purposeless." 

  Oh now it really wanted to watch that asset bleed. 

  "It's difficult," Mensah chose to intervene, interrupting its calculations of how much leverage it might need to rip the pretty metal hardware from her pets throat. "To feel aimless, we can give you a job, or you can choose a job somewhere around the habitat, if you'd like." 

  "I'll check the integrity of the security systems." It replied in a carefully curated flat tone before it turned on its heel and stalked out of the common room.