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“This way.” SecUnit said, its voice curt and professional.
The company had tried and failed to kidnap her again, so now they were done with subtlety and instead were trying and failing to kill her.
(Possibly they had decided to just cut their losses and pay any fines.)
SecUnit was leading the way as they rushed through the station, taking paths often used by service delivery bots and not often by people. It was brisk, its hand clutched in hers as it navigated them smoothly using its stolen maps to get them into the station’s ship docking warehouse. From there it would be easy to access their transport from the bot exits.
The footsteps behind them from the three heavily armed and augmented people have long faded, the company only sending humans to prevent SecUnit hacking more of their constructs. It was a logically sound decision that Mensah was thankful for, as it gave them an edge in losing them.
SecUnit suddenly stopped dead.
In front of them, the bot exit point they had planned to use was firmly closed, delivery bots clustered around. SecUnit’s brows furrowed as it tried to get it to open.
“This gate is offline.” It tells her.
“Sabotage?” She asks it, glancing around nervously for any would-be attackers. Mensah knows she is unlikely to spot anyone attacking them before SecUnit, but she can’t help it.
It glares at the door like it has been personally offended. “Worse. It malfunctioned and lost power because they’ve been too cheap to investigate the outages.”
She understands, SecUnit would prefer to have the problem of the assassins to handle than something outside of its control, let alone something brought on by people cutting corners.
“What should we do?” Mensah goes to ask more but SecUnit’s head swivels around and scans the warehouse behind them. Then it moves in that way that’s faster than she can see, smooth and a blur as it sprints to the nearest cargo box. It has that look and movement to its eyes that speaks of frantic feed activity as Mensah comes to stand next to it.
The lid of the box hisses as it loses its seal and SecUnit easily opens the rest of it. It steps inside then reaches out to grab her hand again and tug her in after it. She follows, of course.
The space is tight, barely large enough for the two of them laying down. SecUnit reaches around her and pulls the door panel down after her, the box hissing as it seals shut.
Darkness envelopes them, except for the lightest glow from its arm guns as they charge up and point at the lid. She takes a steadying breath and reads the words waiting for her in the feed: Don’t panic, I don’t need a lot of air. You will have 1 hour and 6 minutes before you become at risk of suffocation.
Mensah feels a rush of fondness that even during an emergency it takes the time to reassure her. The trauma modules are clearly helping her with this latest round of impromptu stress testing as she wasn’t stressed at all, she trusted it even as it locked them in.
She tries to convey her confidence in it, and all her gratitude, as she replies: Thank you.
They huddle in the box. Mensah with her back against SecUnit’s chest, its arm guns either side of her clicking faintly as they maintain their charge. It felt a little like being in a very dangerous embrace.
The box is a tight fit, rectangular in shape, with little room for her to reduce the forced physical contact with her. She knows how uncomfortable it finds physical contact, just as much as she knows that it doesn’t mind so much in an emergency situation. She wished she could ease the discomfort anyway.
Mensah tries to listen through the dense walls of the box but it is too thick. All she can hear is the sound of her own breathing and the faint hum of the mechanics in SecUnit’s arms.
SecUnit is in the feed, watching their hunters and sending her camera snippets when the feed goes down. It stiffens against her, its gun lighting up as it stares furiously at the lid, daring at it to open.
The silence of the crate stretched on. If their hunters were out there, she couldn’t hear them.
She tilts her head to look towards the side of the crate. From the corner of her eyes she can just make out its features, the soft light of its guns barely illuminated the space and reflected off the sharp planes of its face. It seems alert, not alarmed, and some of the panic she hadn’t realised she was feeling faded. Muted by SecUnit’s confident stillness and the almost cozy nature of the crate. She can feel SecUnit’s chest rising and falling rhythmically against her back.
They wait. And wait. And wait. The time stretches on and she starts to ache from holding so still. Without the feed, she doesn’t know how long it has been.
Mensah becomes aware that she can hear loud breathing.
“SecUnit?” She whispers to it. Her voice is barely audible, as trapped in the space as they are.
It is silent, the sound of its breathing absent as it returns to its previous stillness.
“Are you okay?” It makes a noise then, a choked off sound, or maybe just a gasp for breath. She can see its neck tensing and relaxing in the corner of her eye, as if it was trying to swallow down the noise it made.
She waits, trying to give it some form of space to make up for the way she is pressed against it. She can’t help but notice how rigid it is against her, unusually cold, except for the fast shallow breaths that have started up again. Her heart clenches as she considers the corner of the crate in dismay at the situation.
“SecUnit? I’m going to move okay?” No response. It remains stiff under her with its arms locked and pointed at the lid. Able to function and respond to the emergency despite the stress radiating off it, its entire being focused on the potential threats waiting for them outside the crate. Mensah used to be jealous of its ability to function even when highly stressed, tried to force herself to achieve a similar state, but now that she was taking the modules she understood it was a trauma response and not confidence.
Slowly and carefully she shuffles, turning her body between its arms until she was laying face down on it. She averts her eyes to look over SecUnit’s shoulder, just enough that she can see its face and the way the faint flow reflects off the lenses in its eyes. Its jaw is clenched, its nose flaring as it glares past her.
It looks terrified.
She feels cold dread creeping in her stomach and takes a calming breath. What would cause SecUnit to react so hard? She’s seen it face down multiple attackers and a Combat SecUnit. She’s heard its stories about the Combat Bots.
“What is it?” She reflexively clutches at its clothes then forces herself to immediately let go. “What’s out there? What can I do?”
It is silent for a couple of heartbeats before making a negative noise under me, a low sort of grunt. I didn’t think it would intentionally ignore me in a situation as perilous as this, not when I was asking for information about a threat. She began to suspect it was unable to speak and the threat wasn’t external to the crate.
Her mind first went to the feed, its main method of connecting with the world and considered how she might feel to lose most of her senses while trapped in a box being hunted.
“Is it the feed going down?” She asks it.
It makes another negative noise.
She peeks upwards at its head, takes in the eyes wide and fixed above them. The way SecUnit’s arms are raised to shoot, but its hands are pressed flat against the lid. Pushing lightly. The edge of its fingers slowly starting to curl and its reinforced nails denting the plastic shipping layer. She can feel the vibrations of it breathing, the exhales disturbing her hair where it has strayed from her bun.
A tremor goes through it.
“Is it the crate?” She puts all the calm understanding that floods her into the words, lets the question hand in the air. Its jaw still working as tries to respond before falling apart under her hands. Its arms drop to its side as it goes limp except for the fully body tremors that take over.
It is still so very silent and her heart breaks for it.
She remembers another type of box, the one it had arrived in at the survey so long ago. The company had delivered it unceremoniously, dropped it off outside the habitat with all their other belongs and a request for a digital confirmation of receipt. Ratthi had helped her with the tie down straps and verify their identity on the digital lock. The lid had been heavy reinforced and fought the change in gravity to slide open and reveal their SecUnit already dressed in its armour. Meticulously strapped down to prevent damages in transit, display screen on the inside of the lid displaying its inactive status.
She wonders now if it had really been shut down or only pretending.
Having her laid across it probably wasn’t helping with the situation, as she remembered all of those straps across its chest and arms pinning it into place. It took Ratthi and Gurathin several minutes to work out how to unlock them.
Mensah takes a breath of her own, holds it, then releases. She wishes she could warm her body the way it could, to give it back some of the comfort it has freely offered her. She takes another intentionally deep breath and SecUnit’s eyes snap to her, flashing under the reduced glow of its guns in standby. She exhales slowly.
“Try and breath with me.” She guides it through her next breath as it mirrors shakily under her, one deep inhale followed by a slow exhale. One deep inhale. A slow exhale.
The trembling slows down, the breathing evens out and returns to its barely perceptible movements.
“Is there anything else I can do to help?” She asks.
It hesitates, mouth still working as it tries to vocalise something. She waits patiently, lets it work through the many thoughts that flash across its face before landing on something conflicted.
“You can hug me if you want.” It offers. Mensah is so surprised she looks directly at its face. It still stares directly upwards, unable to look away from the exit or simply avoiding her gaze.
“I’m fine, SecUnit. It’s you I’m worried about. You’re still shaking.” She notes the return of the shaking in dismay, tries to move herself upwards to reduce the pressure she must be placing on it. Its face twitches under her as it finally turns its head away from staring at their future exit to look at the wall instead. She caught another flash of reflection as the eyes flicked to her then back to the wall.
Its voice is quiet, barely even a whisper, as it rephrases its question and asks the wall: “Could you hug me?”
She thinks, oh.
She thinks, I can help it.
She thinks, I can let it lean on me the way it has let me lean on it.
“I wouldn’t want to be terrible.” She tries to joke as she slowly brings her arms up and tentatively wraps them around its torso, pressing lightly into its back. She thinks she sees its mouth twitch upwards, a flicker of something that could be a smile or just a trick of the light. Its gone too quickly to be certain.
“Is this okay?” She checks with it. Something has shifted between them with the movement of her arms, this new closeness between them of her heart thudding against its subtle hum.
“You’re not terrible.” It tells her as she carefully increases the pressure of her hold, pausing as it takes a deep breath then slowly lets it out. Does it again, repeating her pattern from earlier as she presses down harder
She feels its trembling slow down and eventually stop as the tension leaves it body.
They continue to wait in the crate.
She couldn’t say how long they lay there blanketed in silence before SecUnit gave a sigh and went so limp in Mensah’s arms that she sunk further into the crate.
No longer able to feel the lid of the crate against her back, she chances a glance towards its face to check this isn’t another panic attack in a different form. SecUnit seems almost soft, it’s frown melting away. Its eyes, usually so wide and alert, are half-closed as they move to meet her gaze. They don’t shift away as it slowly and deliberately blinks once then closes them entirely.
It powers down its guns entirely, plunging them into a comfortable darkness, as they breathe together.