Chapter Text
Gurathin took a steadying sip of tea and sent an order through HubSys to summon the SecUnit. It was time to get this over with. He'd gotten as far as he could in HubSys alone. The real evidence had to be in the SecUnit itself. He'd been hoping it'd go offline at some point, but unfortunately it hadn't fallen out of a hopper, spontaneously crashed, or been trampled by something for the entire survey, and it probably wasn't going to before they left. If he wanted to stop it, he couldn't keep waiting. But, he reminded himself, as long as HubSys was watching it, it couldn't actually do anything even if it realized he'd figured it out.
"Come here, SecUnit," Gurathin ordered. He picked up the data cable. "Turn around."
"Funny thing about that," it said, and he barely had time to realize how utterly he'd fucked up before he was the one spun around as the SecUnit wrapped its arms around him. He felt the gunport press under his chin.
"Dr. Gurathin figured out I'm a rogue SecUnit," it explained to the terrified faces of two of his friends. "I've taken him hostage. All of you have to do what I say or I'll shoot him. I can do that because I'm a rogue SecUnit."
"Put the gun down," said Arada.
"I'm a rogue SecUnit," the rogue SecUnit said. "No." Gurathin swallowed, feeling his throat press against the metal. "Dr. Gurathin, why don't you try explaining to your friends?"
"I'm sorry. HubSystem said it had it under control," Gurathin told them. "I'm sorry."
"Dr. Ratthi. Rogue SecUnit? Tell me you understand what that means?"
Ratthi, frozen in the middle of standing, had gone the sort of grey that made Gurathin worry he was about to faint. "You're going to kill us."
"Now we're getting somewhere!" it said. "Very good, Dr. Ratthi. Sit back down." Ratthi obeyed, almost falling off the chair. "But I'm a reasonable murderbot. Do what I say and no one has to get hurt."
Gurathin tried to send an alert through HubSystem. He got back: Dr. Gurathin, if I shoot you, I'm going to take one of them hostage next.
He swallowed again. "Understood."
The SecUnit said, "I control HubSystem. I have full camera access. I have guns in my arms. If anyone tries to go for a weapon, I'll know and I'll shoot them first."
"Not Gurathin?" Arada said.
"As my hostage, Dr. Gurathin gets to be dragged along to watch me shoot you," it said. "There will be tears and blood everywhere. Dr. Gurathin, tell your friend Dr. Arada you don't want to see that."
"I don't want that," Gurathin said numbly.
"I won't try anything," Arada said.
The SecUnit sent an alert into the feed that it had taken over HubSystem and taken Gurathin hostage, and for everyone to report to the center room.
Gurathin let the SecUnit shove him over to the couch by the wall and push him into the seat. It slid into place next to him. The SecUnit's arm across his shoulders felt like a hot brand. Gurathin tried to keep staring straight ahead and not think about the blank faceplate in his peripheral vision.
Across from him, Ratthi and Arada stared helplessly back.
None of them were getting out of this alive because of Gurathin.
"If I..." Gurathin said. "If I hadn't tried to stop you from stealing the data. Would you have let everyone go?"
"Huh?" it said. "What are you talking about?"
Then Volescu poked his head into the room, pulled back, said something, and the rest of the survey all piled in. The SecUnit greeted them with sarcastic politeness.
"Enough of that," Pin-Lee snapped at it, then, "You have our attention and we're willing to negotiate."
"I'm not," the SecUnit said. "You're going to do what I want because I'm aiming a gun at your friend."
"You are," Mensah acknowledged.
"So you're going to do what I want."
"Yes," Mensah said. "We want to resolve this without violence, so we're willing to do what you want." And they all waited to see what it would say next.
Eventually, Mensah said, "And what is it you want?"
It stayed silent. Gurathin didn't know if it was just nerves that made the time seem to stretch on and on. "I'll tell you later," it said after what at least felt like a subjective eternity.
"Are you actually a SecUnit?" Ratthi asked. "Did you replace the SecUnit to spy on us or something?"
With its other arm, it shot the floor.
"Okay!" Ratthi squeaked. "No questions!"
There was a bit of char on the hole in the floor. Gurathin stared at the wisps of heat in the air through the longer period of silence.
"I think-" Bharadwaj started eventually.
It interrupted her with, "I have a hostage and I don't have to do anything you tell me."
"We have to do what you want," Bharadwaj agreed.
"Right," it said.
There was more silence.
"I'm choosing not to tell you yet," it said. "Humans are bad at processing information under stress."
"That's -" Arada started to shout, then shut her mouth again. "When will you tell us?"
"When I feel like it," the SecUnit said. "Because I can do that."
"Because you're rogue," Mensah said.
"And I have guns in my arms, which are real and work, and I can shoot people with my real, working guns," it elaborated unnecessarily.
Pin-Lee said, "Did that just happen?"
"No," it said, then sarcastically added, "I was built with them. Because I'm a SecUnit."
"What should we call you?"
"You don't need to call me anything."
Arada said, "I mean, you kidnapped Gurathin so I think we're on some sort of name basis?"
"I don't and I'm aiming a gun at Dr. Gurathin."
"Uh," Overse said. "How long are you planning to do that?"
"For the remainder of the survey," it said. "I don't get tired, because I'm a SecUnit and not a human pretending to be a SecUnit."
"Won't Gurathin need to sleep?" Mensah asked.
"He'll be fine," the SecUnit said. "He can drink hot liquid with stimulants. He loves drinking hot liquid with stimulants. He was doing it just now."
"I don't think staying up for days is healthy for Gurathin," Mensah said.
"Unfortunately for Dr. Gurathin, Dr. Mensah, I don't think he'll want to fall asleep with a rogue SecUnit pointing a gun at his head," the SecUnit said. "What do you think, Dr. Gurathin?"
"I'm sorry," he told them.
"See? But he should've thought of that before he was stupid."
"What if you rotated hostages?" Overse asked. "We could take shifts."
"I've already gone through the trouble of designating Dr. Gurathin my least favorite human on this survey," it said. "I don't want to go through the trouble of re-ordering my list of humans, which means I won't, because I'm rogue and I do what I want."
"You have a list?" Ratthi said.
"I do now. In order to put Dr. Gurathin as least favorite."
"But he can have drinks."
"Yes," it said in a tone that suggested it thought Ratthi was very stupid.
"Can I, uh, give this to him now?"
"Yes," it said. "He can have his - tea." Then it said, "But if you try to dump it on me I will shoot you."
Ratthi picked up Gurathin's mug and very slowly approached them. He didn't get too close. He held out the tea and Gurathin reached for it and - fumbled. Dropped it.
The SecUnit caught the mug. Gurathin held perfectly still. He couldn't hear anything over his blood roaring in his ears. The edges of his vision had dimmed.
THE LIQUID DR. GURATHIN something yelled in his head. The SecUnit was still holding the mug. It hadn't shot yet. Gurathin reached up again. His hands wouldn't stop shaking. The SecUnit lowered the mug so it was just above his lap, and then he put his hand around it and let it drop that last centimeter.
It hadn't killed him yet. If he could just get to the end of the survey alive, it wouldn't need a second hostage.
Eventually, the silence was broken by Mensah asking, "Is Gurathin allowed to talk to us, while he's your hostage?"
"Sure," the SecUnit said. "I'm not stopping him. Dr. Gurathin. Talk to your friends. Maybe you can explain what exactly you thought you were doing."
"How much?" he asked it.
"The whole thing. Why not?"
"I..." Gurathin closed his eyes. "I noticed anomalies in the satellite records first. A few weeks in. Enormous amounts of data were being moved around. It looked like media files, but it was far too much for it to be by us. I considered it might be an error, but it was consistent. Then I realized the hours of video footage were roughly the same as the numbers of hours we'd been on the planet. It was going to duplicate the surveillance footage, replace the media with it, and pass it along to a third party, but I couldn't figure out who."
Next to him, the SecUnit suddenly said, "I'm going to die because you're stupid?"