The Watcher [Alien Nation #1]

Chapter 12

Erri slid down the ladder leading to the control room, stepping aside so Avery could drop to the ground behind him. He wondered how she'd react if he reached out and caught her in his arms like in an old human movie. Another time, she'd probably laugh and maybe make a suggestive comment, but now the worry was set into her face, so he thought it best not to try.

He turned towards the crew quarters—despite being intended for a two-man crew, the Phoenix did have a spare pop-up bunk with its emergency supplies, so he thought he should at least offer it to Avery before asking if she wanted to share his bunk—but she took his claws in her soft organic hand before he could take another step.

"Erri, I want to give you something before we leave," she said.

"You sure you don't want to get settled in first?" he said, but he trailed off as she glared at him.

"I know this ship like my own motherboard. And anyway, I'll just sleep in Cass's processor core like I always do," she said, turning to lead him in the other direction, towards the ladder that descended into the bowels of the ship.

"You...you do?" He stopped then, and Avery turned to face him when her hand slipped from his.

"Yeah. Sometimes we have sleepovers, and it's cool in there."

"So how long has Cass been...alive?" he said. He tried to keep his tone as something that would translate to Avery's ears as "conversational," but his back was beginning to ache with forcing his tail to stop the irritated snap that quivered in his muscles. Despite what others thought, despite the hard shell she presented to the world, Avery was never callous or lacking in compassion. At all. If she had kept Cass's existence from his, then she had a reason, probably a damn good one.

That didn't mean it didn't hurt.

By the way her dark eyebrows fell in a low line over her eyes, she knew it, too. Maybe keeping the secret had been hard for her as well.

Sighing, Avery sat down, sliding down against a bulkhead until her black hooded sweater was bundled up against her narrow shoulders. "I guess you of all people deserve to know." She tipped her head up to look at him. "You gonna sit down or what?"

Now it was Erri's turn to sigh, and he made sure it was just a little louder than Avery's had been before he joined her on the floor. "Okay, I am sitting. Now give me the beans."

"It was two years ago," said Avery. Her eyes were focussed on something directly in front of her, but Erri knew she wasn't really seeing anything he could. "I'd only been this--" she held up her cybernetic arm, flexing the fingers so the light danced along the polished surface. She did it again, and the palm of her hand retracted so there was just her universal port—an intricate network of pinpoints of blue light, connected by razor-thin lines that were only slightly dimmer. He'd seen her use it on tech before, seamlessly fusing with the digital as easily as putting on a different shirt. She was impressive, sure, but the way her bright eyes dulled and her mouth slackened as she interfaced always scared the shit out of him, miracle of cybernetics or not.

She snapped her wrist again, and her palm closed with a soft hiss, so quietly that he doubted a human would have heard it. "I'd only been a cyborg, and not lying unconscious on an operating table or hibernation tank, for a year. It had been six months since Lukas had hinted I should start making myself useful. School didn't want me back, since even I can admit that I totally would have used my awesome cyborgness to cheat, and even if they wanted me they'd have had to drag me back in a classroom kicking and screaming.

"That was when I met Cass, sort of. I started up my freelance-AI-patcher thing, and the SESHET programs were the ones I spent the most time with. Not 'cos I liked them or anything, but most of them were broken as shit. Earth Monitors were constantly complaining about how they'd be buggy or their speech programs didn't work right or their personality subroutines were fucked. They were talking desk organisers, not the 'research and companionship AIs' the Monitors had been promised, so they were pretty pissed. Naturally they went to me for help, since I was faster than the techs and basically lived down in the docks anyway. And everyone wanted to say their AI had been fixed by the new cyborg."