Chapter Text
Really, Gurathin was surprised that it took this long. He could have guessed that the Company would come after him eventually.
He had what was theirs after all.
Years and years of information. He'd deleted everything periodically, of course. He didn't have any intention of becoming a walking data breach. But he didn't expect the Company would have considered that.
The idea of someone throwing away something that they could make money off was an anathema to them.
He'd been sat in this cell for two hours and fifty minutes, according to his feed clock. Add to that the two days he'd been in transit, blind, his access to the feed blocked, and he was absolutely certain that he had been missed by now.
The stupid mission to one of the free world stations had probably been a trap. Mensah would have realised that.
She would be working on it. They would all be working on it.
He couldn't imagine there would be a legal route this time, that would mean the Company admitting publicly that they had him, but perhaps there might be some diplomatic strings Mensah could pull.
The cell was perhaps two metres square. Just beyond the length of his armspan. He had spent the first twenty minutes or so feeling his way around each of the walls. One door, metal. Blank walls, featureless according to his fingers.
There was a camera in the room. Even though his feed access was blocked, he could feel the inaccessible system. There was no way to hack it as far as he had found. It existed as a strange void, he could only sense it because there was a gap where there should be something.
He had no idea how to work with that.
It wasn't technology that the Company had had access to when he had been here.
The mechanical locks of the door slid with a snap and Gurathin felt the door swing open. Solid footsteps against the metal floor.
A SecUnit. The armour made a distinctive noise. You learnt that sound early on Port FreeCommerce.
A hand closed around his upper arm and dragged him up. He almost fell, disoriented by not being able to see, he couldn't get his feet under him quick enough.
The SecUnit didn't wait. It didn't need to. It was strong enough to drag him easily. It had the same blank presence in the feed. An outline of something that should be there.
He tried to count its heavy steps, for all the good it would do him. Blind. Both physically and digitally.
Thirty-four in between his cell and wherever he was being taken.
The SecUnit manoeuvred him, and then gave him a shove downwards. His stomach flipped over itself before he half hit a chair on his way down. He just managed to steady himself and not fall on his ass.
The hand shifted to the back of his neck, forcing a cable into his data port. An access override flooded his system, like his brain was being condensed into a tiny singularity. For a moment, he thought he must be having an aneurysm.
It was impossible to block. Impossible to even identify the feed-ID that had initiated it.
His face was wet. Hot tears overflowing from the pressure inside his skull.
Something shifted in his augments. He blinked and light seared into his eyes. He felt his ocular augments whir and struggle to accommodate the sudden change. His vision flickered through several filters before he could see.
There was a man seated across a metal table from him. Slim. Neat hair. Expensive grey suit. He was smiling the kind of pleasant smile corporate assholes always wore.
The data cable disconnected roughly enough that it yanked his head back.
"Dr Gurathin," the man said. "I don't believe we've met before."
Gurathin honestly couldn't say. The last few years on the station he hadn't paid attention to much that weren't feed stims, corpo rec-subs or Company tranqs.
The man was still smiling vapidly. "I'm Chief Officer Marcello."
Gurathin didn't answer. He had no incentive to play nice. It wouldn't make a difference.
Marcello just gave a laugh. "They did tell me you weren't much for small talk. I won't insult you be pretending you don't know why you're here."
Gurathin knew well enough. He imagined it was the shit with the survey that did it. The whole thing brought Preservation Alliance into greater prominence with the Company, along with the knowledge that Mensah might prove to be a formidable opponent. One that now had an ex-Company spy and an ex-Company SecUnit to mine for information.
Marcello leaned forward on his elbows. "Now, I'm told you were one of our best, back in the day."
What a fucking joke. He'd been too strung out to remember to even eat half the time. The only reason that he'd been even slightly successful was that the Company's opponents didn't know how to code for shit. All the training, the software and the back-end access was proprietary. No one even knew how their own systems worked.
"I want," Marcello carried on, to all appearances as if he didn't see the disgust that Gurathin was certain was showing on his face, "all of the data you've collected over the past seven years. What happened on that survey. The way Preservation Alliance is governed. Any confidential information you've come across. Conversations. Feed messages. Everything."
Gurathin hadn't really expected him to lay it out so clearly. Usually corpo suits liked to hide behind euphemism.
He folded his arms, trying to make it look defiant rather than nervous. "That's a lot to ask."
"It's really not." Marcello grinned. Too fast. There and gone. "Let me explain your position. You're not a citizen, not anymore. So you don't enjoy any of the rights or protections that come with being a citizen," Marcello said.
Gurathin almost laughed in his face. 'Rights and protections' was an interesting way of describing lifelong indenture and chemical dependence.
"What you are is stolen company property and proprietary data." Marcello leaned forwards again. "Now, you can choose to give up all the data you've collected in the last seven years, on the Preservation Alliance, their freeworld allies and Ayda Mensah. In return, I'll reinstate your citizenship." He waved a hand around, as if he was bored with the conversation. "It can have been a secondment. Deep undercover. You can pick up exactly where you left off, with an appropriate bonus for the extended time."
This time Gurathin did laugh. "That's the most tempting offer you have?"
"It's a good offer," Marcello said. "A generous offer, given your crimes against the Company, and the Rim. It's an amnesty."
"I refuse."
Marcello sighed. "I would wait until you have heard your alternative."
"I refuse."
Marcello's eyes were cold, bored. "Your alternative," he continued, "as a non-citizen in possession of stolen property and information, is that we strip that property and information out of your systems."
Gurathin wasn't surprised. He was a little disappointed that he was worth nothing as a hostage. Still, that wasn't the way Rim officials thought. They wouldn't pay to retrieve a prisoner from a hostile enemy, so they couldn't imagine that anyone else would.
Apparently, the information they stood to gain was worth more than what they expected Mensah would pay to see it wasn't shared.
"I refuse," he said again.
"I would advise against that." Marcello drew out something from his pocket in a closed fist, hiding it from view. He placed it down on the centre of the table, and withdrew his hand.
It was a tiny plastic vial, perhaps two centimetres altogether, clear liquid filling it to about two thirds.
Gurathin knew well enough what it was.
Enough for one hit.
"New formula," Mercello said, with a smile that could almost pass for real, if Gurathin hadn't seen what real smiles looked like over the past six years. "Slower release, longer duration, less intense."
Gurathin didn't answer. He stared Marcello down, because anything was better than revealing to this fuck that he was rattled.
"I would think," Marcello said, apparently unbothered, "about exactly what the Company has to offer you."
Gurathin gave his own smile back. He hoped it adequately conveyed the contempt he felt. "I'll have to refuse your generous offer."
Marcello stood up. "Think it over."
The SecUnit behind Gurathin grabbed him by the arm and hauled him up. Marcello picked up the vial and stepped up to him. He tucked it into the pocket of Gurathin's shirt.
"Think it over," he said again.
Gurathin was deposited back in the cell, thankfully still able to see this time. As soon as the door closed behind the SecUnit and he heard the mechanical locks slide into place, he pulled the vial out his pocket with a shaking hand.
It was light. An ambient temperature that felt like nothing in his fingers.
He placed it neatly on the floor and clambered unsteadily to his feet.
He placed his heel over it and crushed it. The thin plastic gave easily. He ground it into the floor for good measure, and then spread the liquid out with his toe so he could watch it quickly evaporate into nothing.
By the time his heart rate had settled back to something approaching normal, he realised his face was still wet.
He was a little beyond mourning his lost dignity, about ten years beyond it, in fact, but he did wish his reintroduction to the Company hadn't been while he was crying.
He didn't suppose it matter in the end.
He wiped his cheeks with the back of his hand, scrubbing a little where the salt tears had dried tacky.
When he pulled his hand away, his stomach dropped through the floor beneath him, and his heart kicked back up into his throat.
Across the back of his knuckles was a thin smear of half dried blood.
He must have slept. He didn't remember it. But then he hadn't slept in almost three days. He must have just passed out from exhaustion eventually.
When he woke, there were nine hours unaccounted for on his feed clock and a bottle of water by the door.
Another little plastic vial stood neatly at its side.
The water was drugged.
There was no scenario that he could come up with where it wasn't. And the Company were not known for their subtlety or their patience.
He'd been given some shitty corpo protein shake in transit. Something that was evidently supposed to be strawberry flavoured, but actually just tasted like chemicals and syrup. He'd wondered idly if he'd ever have liked it, or if he'd been spoiled by Preservation's gardens and orchards.
It was the only thing he'd ingested since he was snatched.
He needed the water. He would die without it.
Not that that wasn't an option he was considering.
He already had a headache like a vice was slowly tightening around his temple. It was difficult to think around it. To trust his own judgement.
They likely wouldn't allow him to refuse the water. Eventually, the dehydration would drive him mad, he wouldn't be able to stand it. Even if he held firm, he'd pass out before the end, and then they would give him and IV, and the whole thing would have been pointless.
Still he was loath to take anything from them.
Even more so given Marcello had tipped their hand with the vial.
It was a long, dark road. One with only one ending.
The headache had him doubled over, face pressed into the cool plasteel flooring, setting himself long division puzzles in his empty feed. Trying to think about anything else.
He rode it out for three hours and forty three minutes, according to his feed clock.
Then he reached for the water.
It was definitely drugged.
Just a tiny, tiny dose that he wasn't sure that he would have noticed if he wasn't so intimately acquainted with the experience.
A kind of pleasant distant feeling, like he was too far inside his own body.
But he was alive.
While ever he played along, they were more likely to overlook something that he could exploit.
Mensah would be doing everything she could diplomatically. He was certain.
He just had to endure it.