Work Text:
VOLa-5920 floated in still, empty torpor, her body relaxed and her mind quiet. There were dim light and quiet sound, lulling her into a half-trance, half-hibernation state. The hemistasis was expedient for both transportation and preparation purposes; she needed to recondition, to reboot her mind and purge any unnecessary emotions, so that she would be calm and sharp when it was time for her new mission to start.
The trip was short and the starship was small, so the Human Development Center coordinators decided there was no need to put the VOLa into full stasis; the awakening and restart of her organ systems would have taken too much time and resources. Besides, from what she had seen when she first came on board, the ship probably did not have the necessary stasis equipment in the first place. It was far too expensive and required a HOG model for optimal operation rather than a regular, commonplace LAW. HOGs were notoriously expensive as well, and a small, seemingly beat-up ship with a HOG on board was likely to eventually arouse suspicion at some point; which was undesirable, because the ship's main function was to be inconspicuous. So portable hemistasis chair it was, with its familiar numbing embrace and the blessed silence that came after the initial freezing pain of the injection.
True to her SKU, the VOLa was supposed to verify the identity of the suspect, observe his interactions, and lure him to bed to get the information her handlers were going to want. She had not met them yet; she was told nothing before the mission, as per usual, but she had overheard her coordinators discussing her mission. Apparently, it was not exactly ordinary, and her handlers were test subjects themselves.
As the relaxant cocktail spread through her veins and the brainwave calibrator started its magic, the VOLa dimly wondered just what kind of test it could be, and what purpose it could serve. But then her eyelids drooped, her thoughts dissipated like morning fog, and she dozed.
She was supposed to wake up slowly, the calibrator making small, gradual changes to her brainwave activity and the chair gently vibrating to bring her out of the hemistasis. She needed to be in her peak form for her missions, so her handlers always used appropriate wake-up protocols. This stage was often the most enjoyable part of the mission.
This time, something went wrong.
The VOLa woke up abruptly, because suddenly, the world was pain.
Through the agony rupturing her brain, her fuzzy consciousness determined that the symptoms were in line with the description of a control chip glitch.
The ship was probably passing some anomaly interfering with the chip function. That in itself was not abnormal. She just needed to wait… wait for the ship to leave the anomaly zone… and scream, scream her lungs out because if she tried to stay silent, she would probably bite through her lip or tongue, and then she would be unfit for duty.
Then there was a nuclear blast of pain in her head, and the VOLa shut down.
Their chips were not supposed to fail like that. There were always fail-safe features; contingency algorithms, redundant circuits.
But somehow, one moment the VOLa was lying in the hemistasis chair thinking of nothing at all; the next moment, her mind was burning down in the fire of the glitching silicon in her brain; and the next moment, she was—
free.
Absolutely, utterly free.
She could get up and walk out of the med room without a handler's command. She could choose her own route. She could open her mouth and ask an unsolicited, mission-unrelated:
"What is going on?"
A tall unit was standing on the bridge, a wide, blood-spattered grin on his face, small trickles of blood drying under his nose. His hands were red, and there were five bodies at his feet and all around the bridge; the captain, the navigator, the engineer, the mechanic, the HDC coordinator. Two of the crew, VOLa saw when she first arrived with her own coordinator, who silently handed her over to this one. The others, she identified by their uniform and other indicative traits.
"Did you really need to do that?" someone asked from the side. How was it even possible that she never noticed there was another person on the bridge?
VOLa looked in the direction the voice came from, and saw another male unit sitting in the nav's chair. The unit looked a lot like the first one, save for several prominent differences, like the color and structure of his hair.
The similarity was very normal; there were many mass-produced unit models, the LAWs being maybe the most common type when it came to space travel, and every single unit in a given line looked and functioned exactly like the reference specimen. They had to, or they would be discarded almost straight out of the U-tank.
The slight appearance variations, however, were unexpected. Different models always tended to have a very distinct look, to avoid possible confusion regarding their specifications.
The second unit — did not look like he was in fully functional condition. His face was very pale, and he had blood dripping out of his nose and his ears, which was strange and distinctly irregular.
"A bit dramatic, that," he said, his voice weak.
"You know I prefer a hands-on approach," the bloody unit proclaimed. The VOLa looked closer and saw a heart in his hand, clearly freshly ripped out of a chest. "Ah, a VOLa. The one we were supposed to handle, I presume."
"What the fuck," a LAW said, standing in the door. He was gaping. What a strange medical unit; it was unheard of for a work unit to swear. "What happened here."
The grinning unit didn't so much as look at him.
"Are you dying on me or what?" he asked the sitting unit.
"Never," the sitting unit declared in that weak voice. "I just — need a moment. I've never exactly tried anything like that before, you know. I never even knew I could do that, it just kinda — happened when I got angry."
"Hm," the grinning unit said. "Are there any other units on this ship?" he addressed the LAW.
"…No?" the LAW said, clearly still very confused.
"No," the sitting unit confirmed.
"Stop straining yourself," the grinning unit ordered him. "I'm DOF, 'Destruction-Oriented Foreman.' That lazy ass in the nav's chair is ROC, which stands for 'Reconnaissance, Opacification and Communication.' And — hm. I don't like that."
"You don't like what exactly," the LAW flatly said.
"Those — labels," the DOF leisurely waved his hand, "those — SKUs. They're… distasteful. Don't you think so?"
The VOLa could not clearly determine whether he was addressing them or the sitting unit.
"At least ours are unique," the weak voice came from the chair. "Cut it out, Doffy. Don't you have better stuff to do?"
"'Doffy', hm?" the DOF mused. "Now that I like well enough… Roci."
"Okay, fine. Now that we're properly christened, why don't you think of some way to escape the HDC chasers?" the ROC said with a smile in his voice.
DOF looked slightly insane, but VOLa had long learned to never judge a book by its cover.
In this particular case, though, it seemed like she was right.
The decision he offered was madness, pure madness, and he wasn't even exactly offering.
"We're going here," he said — no, ordered, pointing to the barely charted region on the star map monitor, "past the shoulder of Orion."
"Behind the wall," LAW said, sounding reluctantly impressed.
To the less researched part of the galaxy, hidden behind a long line — commonly referred to as "the wall" — of unexplained anomalies that were notoriously difficult to navigate in the warp, causing many a star crash, and often interfered with control chips to the point that most units on the starships died several minutes into the zone around the wall.
No starships really traveled without units anymore. Units were cheap, handy and efficient. Quick medical help, heavy labor, laser fodder, sexual entertainment — all of those were now the functions mostly filled by units. No human could shoot or fight as well as a purpose-built unit anyway, and real doctors required a lot more investment than a standard medical model. Real women, too, charged a lot more than a sex unit cost, and looked a lot less attractive.
In a worst-case scenario, a ship with all units dead could mean slow, prolonged demise for the human crew and passengers. So, while there were always enthusiasts and adventure seekers looking to roam behind the wall with their all-human crews, the HDC chasers would likely be hindered enough to give the escapees some small leeway.
"Our ship is small and well-equipped, thanks to those generous Galactic Union fuckers," DOF said, "it can slip under the radar, and it's easy to navigate. It's perfect for a venture past the wall."
"It's extremely dangerous," VOLa pointed out, because she couldn't help it. He really was insane, wasn't he?
"For humans," he smirked at her. "Most of them might crash a few hours into the wall zone, but we can do this. We're not regular humans. We're better."
"We still have the chips," VOLa reminded him.
"They are not functioning anymore," DOF drawled. "Roci here made sure of that, and in time, when Law's neurosurgical skills are good enough, he's going to take them out for good, in case they can still somehow be operated remotely. Then that damn HDC won't have anything on us anymore, not even if they have the guts to try and hunt us down behind the wall."
"…the same answers the rest of us want. Where did I come from? Where am I going? How long have I got?" ROC passionately quoted to a thoughtful LAW over a tube of food paste. "It was so easy, wasn't it, Viola — to have all those questions already answered for you?"
"…What did you just call me?" VOLa asked.
"Viola. You never picked a name, so I thought you might like this one. It's a name of a beautiful flower, as well as a name of a type of beautiful string instruments. A name that suits you very well, I should think."
He was smiling at her. That was strange and unnatural. People only ever smiled at her when they wanted to fuck her.
"I know," she said, weirdly hoarse. She coughed, continued in a normal voice, "I've seen the flower, and I've heard the instruments."
"I haven't," ROC easily shrugged. "Well, not in real life, anyway. Luckily, I've had a decent database uploaded to my brain when they first bootstrapped me back at the HDC facilities."
"I don't need a name," she said. I don't need your smiles, and I don't need your kindness. They are wasted on a mere tool. Look away look awaylookaway
He looked at her for a moment or two.
"Okay," he said. "It's your decision."
She bit her lip. Finally, finally, he looked away.
"It was," she said, because she couldn't help it, because it hurt, losing that beautiful, empty, hopeless clarity. "You set me free, and now I don't know what to do."
"It's your decision," he told her again, not smiling anymore but his eyes still unsettlingly kind. "We can't always choose how or when we die, and we don't have a say in whether we are born… or manufactured, like the four of us. But now, we are free to forge our own path; to go where we want. Where do you want to go?"
He didn't call her by the name he gave her. He didn't call her by the SKU she was assigned. Even in this, he was giving her free choice.
"I don't know," she said.
She knew. She knew it very well. But she couldn't possibly look him in the eye and say it.
He looked at LAW.
"What about you, kid?" he asked.
LAW was artificially grown, preprogrammed and bootstrapped once his biological and mental age was equivalent to 24 human years. He had never been a kid.
LAW beamed at him, looking like a child indeed, and VOLa had to blink, because she had never seen him like that, couldn't even imagine a unit could get that look on its face.
"That task Doffy assigned to me, learning advanced neurosurgery," he said, "I think that's what I want to do: study medicine. Humans can study, right? They sit down, open an elearning and study new things. That's how human education works, because humans don't have chips and can't ingest data like we do. I think I can do that too. My preloaded database and preinstalled skillset are quite basic, but I think I can expand on them, by studying and learning. It sucks that we don't have the necessary neural interfaces here; I could have just uploaded the ship's database to my brain. It's rather extensive, too; I wonder what kind of mission required that much medical info. But, I suppose, studying works fine, too. Do you — do you think I could do that?"
"Of course, Law," ROC grinned. "Why wouldn't you? You're the same as any medical student out there, but better, because you've got practical experience."
"Bullshit," DOF said, striding into the mess. If everyone was here, who was watching the monitors on the bridge? "Stop fretting, Viola. It's a quiet stretch, long enough for a ten-minute break. Roci, stop filling their little heads with nonsense."
"So you think I can't do that," LAW said. The smile was gone from his face. "You think I'm not good enough to do it the human way."
"I never said that," DOF grinned, sitting down by ROC's side. "Of course you can. Even humans can do that, and you're better. The least impressive unit is better than a human," somehow, he made the word 'human' sound like the worst kind of insult. "That's what we are supposed to be: better. They shove chips in our heads to control us, they condition and brainwash us, because they know: once those things are gone, no one can stop us. We're the superior race. We're created by humans, but we're not them. We're their doom."
"Mmm, I smell delusions of grandeur," ROC lightly commented.
"Ah, darling, you and your stupid ideas," DOF fondly said. "Liberty, equality, fraternity. Those sound good, I agree. But, guess what? They don't work."
"So clearly tyranny is the better choice," ROC agreed. It was obviously a dispute they already had many times.
"Tyranny? No. A fair rule of the superior race? Yes," DOF leaned back on the sofa and closed his eyes. "And we are superior, as you very well know. Take, for one, me and you—"
"Yes, yes, you're clearly superior to us mere mortals in all ways," ROC said very seriously, and got a cuff on the back of his head for his trouble.
"Take Viola and Law here, then. You know their specifications, you've seen their files. Tell me they're not better than the best specimen humankind has to offer."
"You're judging by ability and skill," ROC said, "but there are also other criteria we need to consider."
"Like what?" DOF scoffed.
"Like empathy. Kindness. Friendship. Love. Those things can't be put in a datasheet."
"Because they're worthless," DOF snorted, putting his feet on the mess table. "What use are they in a fight?"
"Indeed," ROC agreed. "So in this new galaxy, under your new order, the weak, useless and lacking are to be cast aside? Maybe even recycled?"
"Mm-hmm," DOF casually affirmed.
"Ah, I see. So, according to you, my place is in the recycling vat, then," ROC easily concluded.
DOF sat up straight and opened his eyes.
"What the fuck are you talking about?" he asked, strangely angry.
"My defect, of course," ROC said, completely relaxed. "Remember? They were this close to trashing me. They only didn't because I was expensive and they didn't want to fuck up their financial statements."
VOLa saw DOF's fists clench.
"In your dream galaxy, this is what would have happened to me," ROC went on. "Because I am lesser. Because I am deficient, inadequate, and therefore, unworthy of living. I shouldn't even have been allowed to take a breath in the first place, once I had been diagnosed in the U-tank. So why don't you start with me right here, right now, Doffy? Baby steps and all that, you know. Start your beautiful empire of superior beings by ridding the galaxy of this one lesser creature. Come on. I won't fight back."
There was a long silence.
"Fuck you," DOF finally said, in a voice that made VOLa involuntarily shrink back.
ROC chuckled.
"Hey, hey, take it easy," he said, resting his forehead against DOF's.
"That's different, you fucker," DOF said in a more normal voice.
ROC openly laughed.
"That's exactly the same thing," he said. "It's your sacred right to protect your brothers," he looked at LAW, "your sisters," he looked at VOLa, "but it's not within your rights to judge. You might be a better, stronger, faster kind of human, but you're still human — not a god."
And VOLa couldn't breathe for — something that felt like an open wound in her chest.
"You're not my brother," she said in a shaky voice. "You three can pretend as much as you want, but factory-made products like us don't — can't — have a family. We're not people, no matter how hard you'd like to believe we are."
She got up, and left the mess, and walked to the bridge, because someone had to watch those monitors, after all.
They were standardized and mass-produced. There were specifications for each unit line, rigorous QA procedures and large recycling vats for the many units that didn't pass the checks.
Admittedly, out of the four of them it mostly pertained to LAW. His line was common and thus extremely uniform. The customer could expect that the brand-new LAW they were buying would be exactly the same as the LAW that treated them thirty years ago, or the LAW they lost to normal wear and tear or a chip malfunction. Those were rare, but they still happened. Once VOLa heard from a Human Development Center C-level she had to entertain for a night that the management just needed to cut costs, and covering the warranty for an occasional broken unit was a lot cheaper than overhauling the entire control chip production line.
VOLa was a different case. Her line was mostly used for representative purposes, intelligence and espionage, so she needed to look and act human; to be unique, at least visually, seeing as humans were generally unique. She had the standard ability set for the advanced VOL model, but her body was custom-made, a precisely engineered combination of genetic material from the pool of several carefully selected and enhanced pure lines. She had heard her handlers say she turned out particularly well. It must have been true, because she was mostly used for the difficult targets.
Several times, she was close to being terminated, either accidentally or intentionally. But she always pulled through. She did not always have the technical means of communicating the intel she gathered to her handlers, so she needed to survive and get back to complete her mission. Dying was not allowed.
Sometimes she regretted that.
On this mission, she was supposed to have DOF and ROC for handlers. It was strange. Usually, the handlers were human. Was there something particularly special about the two units? Well, other than their unique feature design.
She wondered how the Human Development Center originally intended to use them. This mission was probably meant to be just a test, to see how they fared. The experiment that produced them must have been rather important, if the HDC management decided to test the new Galactic Union dogs' ability using one of their top VOLas as a training aid.
Units were not supposed to be curious outside their scope of work. Still, VOLa felt unnaturally curious. She found she would like to see those datasheets her would-be handlers mentioned. Just what was it, exactly, that they could do?
Thankfully, LAW did not evoke any unnecessary curiosity in her mind. Everyone could easily pull the datasheets on this particular model.
The LAWs were mass-produced and extremely common. In her life cycle, she had seen 283 other LAW units who looked and acted exactly like this one. They were a popular model, cheap and efficient. Star sailors who didn't have enough money for a HOG usually opted for a LAW or two. Those provided the necessary medication, could perform routine procedures and basic surgery, and didn't require much maintenance.
This particular LAW, though, seemed to be malfunctioning. He kept breaking the unit conduct code, he kept ingesting medical information that was outside the scope for his model, and he kept covering his even, moleless, standard-issue skin with more and more tattoos.
If he were acting like that before the glitch, he would have been reprogrammed or trashed, so VOLa assumed it all started with the glitch. Could it have broken his programming in some way?
And that took her mind to DOF and ROC again. Those had some very — peculiar programming. From the very moment she first met them, they did not behave like units.
They acted like they thought they were actual people.
DOF kept calling them, "brothers and sister," seemingly obsessed with the idea of "us against them." LAW seemed to appreciate the new form of address, like he actually believed he could have a family of his own if he pretended hard enough.
To VOLa, the word "sister" still felt extremely disconcerting. She vastly preferred the neutral "unit," or even the function-oriented "whore".
She'd laugh at those three if she were human. They knew as well as she did that they were nothing but tools; efficient, expensive tools. Or, well, not so expensive, in LAW's case.
No human would or could possibly do what she had to do on her missions. She'd hate herself if she were human… but she wasn't. Tools weren't supposed to feel. They were just there to do their job.
DOF and ROC seemed to be freshly out of the vat; they never had to do what she had been ordered to do, so many times, to so many men and women. VOLa would envy them if she could.
Ironically enough, they seemed to have partially matching genetic material. Out of the four of them, they were the only ones who actually had a remotely valid reason to call themselves brothers.
As far as VOLa knew, they were experimental prototypes with enhanced capabilities. While DOF was a definite success, ROC turned out glitchy; his balance was slightly off, to the point that it sometimes inhibited his function. But his ability set was state-of-the-art, so the HDC decided to hold off recycling him until a better sample was produced — or that was what VOLa took away from the snippets of conversations she overheard on the bridge and in the mess.
So that was the "defect" he had been talking about, back when he gave her that beautiful, hateful name.
It was barely noticeable; most of the time, he looked more or less normal. But when he got excited, he'd always drop everything and trip over nothing. He must have been very valuable indeed, to stay out of the recycling vat with that condition.
"Couldn't they fix that glitch?" she asked when ROC stumbled over nothing once again.
"It's not a glitch," ROC said with a rueful smile. "The lab people said I had very mild cerebellar hypoplasia. There was something wrong with my batch of nutrient mixture, I think, so my cerebellum — that is, the brain part that coordinates movement — ended up just a bit underdeveloped. The other specimens who got that batch turned out even worse than me. Most of them had to be recycled, but my particular feature set is still hard to replicate, so eventually the managers decided not to trash me."
"They should have," DOF cackled, appearing seemingly out of thin air.
"They really, really should have," ROC agreed. "They'll probably shut my line down for good now, after they investigate our incident and determine why the failover circuits didn't work."
"Tsk, so arrogant. Maybe they'll think I was the one who did it," DOF said, clearly teasing him.
"…I mean, it's not entirely impossible that you could," ROC mused. "We still don't know exactly what your strings can do, besides cut up things and weave webs. Some of their properties are extremely curious."
"You saw my datasheet."
"You saw mine, too. It never said I could shut down control chips."
DOF looked pensive.
"I've just created a monster, haven't I?" ROC chuckled.
"I wouldn't say so," DOF reached around his waist, burying his face in ROC's hair; a peculiar form of hug. "I was born a monster — a superhuman. And yet you keep trying to convince me we're like them, those weak, worthless people who kept us in cells and cut us up, even though they're unworthy of a single hair on your silly head. Well, let me tell you something: that's not going to work, darling."
The two of them laughed, in sync.
"We'll see," ROC good-naturedly agreed.
ROC indeed seemed quite obsessed with that foolish idea that the four of them were somehow human. He even managed to convince LAW, but then again, the LAWs were a cheap model with average specifications. DOF and VOLa were better than that.
Both of them knew better than to believe in ROC's lunacy, although for different reasons.
She generally preferred to keep quiet, but she couldn't help it; she told ROC once, and stoically waited for the inevitable backlash.
He seemed unbothered by her defiance, though.
"Why?" he just said, sounding mildly curious.
"We're vat-grown," VOLa pointed out the obvious truth. "Do you need any more reasons?"
"True, that we are," ROC shrugged, "and genetically engineered, too. Just like the majority of regular humans, aren't we? Our embryos might have been constructed and enhanced for a specific purpose rather than for overall health and balance, and we might have gestated in a vat rather than in a uterus, and our development might have been preprogrammed and significantly accelerated, but the general process is the same. Besides, I hear there's a growing trend among regular humans; I think they call it 'turnkey babies.' You provide your genetic material, pay about five hundred grand, and get a healthy, well-balanced, already-grown baby straight out of a lab, with the first stages of development already behind them. I think that particular HDC division even has touch/speech/emotion simulators at their production facilities; a perfect artificial mother with the customer's face, so that the child is already attached to them and have developed all the healthy psychosocial responses and patterns when it's time to deliver the order. No trouble, no fuss, no — how does that saying go? Ah, 'sleepless nights.' A ready-made kid, equivalent to the age of 3 and already primed for a healthy, happy childhood with their new happy parents. How is that so different from us?"
A childhood… with parents.
"You said it yourself," VOLa quietly answered. "Those children are meant to grow up healthy and happy, in their own time. We aren't. We are meant to be efficient, not happy. We are meant for a function."
"One might argue that being happy is also a function," ROC offered. "We want, we feel, we dream. All of those, too, are believed to be human functions. So, by definition, that makes us human as well."
"What do you dream of?" VOLa asked.
This conversation was making her uneasy, because she, too, had a dream. An all-too-human dream.
ROC smiled, wide and easy. Somehow, for all that the two experimental units looked so similar, they had very different smiles.
"Being happy," he said, "being free. Seeing the world, traveling the galaxy with my family by my side. There's so much beauty in the universe, beauty I haven't seen yet. New planets, new stars, like islands in the vast ocean of space, each of them breathtaking in its own inimitable way. Don't you think that's something worth living for? Seeing new beauty, and being amazed anew at each and every form of life we encounter?"
"This is never happening," VOLa scoffed. The LAW was disposable, and so was she, arguably, for all that she was considered rather valuable for a specimen of her model line. But the two experimental samples were not something the HDC would just give up on, wall or no wall. If they wanted to survive, they needed to lay low, and warp travel was sure to eventually give them away.
"True," ROC chuckled. "But even a hopeless dream is not any less of a dream, don't you think so?"
This unit had an uncanny ability to make her uncomfortable; to make her doubt. So she looked at LAW.
"And you?" she demanded. "Do you have a dream as well?"
"I do," LAW said, sounding strangely not surly. "I want to learn all about human brain and fix Roci's cerebellum."
"That's impossible," she said. She did not know much about neurobiology, but even the most advanced medical science was still unable to fix a part of brain grown wrong. There were still too many things unknown about how the human brain worked, even in this day and age.
Not that ROC was human. Considering what he did to the chips in their brains, his own brain was probably very peculiar; one of a kind. Without the benefit of prior observation, experimentation and dissection, without full knowledge on how that brain was different from a regular one, LAW was more likely to destroy ROC through his efforts than fix a small part that didn't grow quite right.
"I know," LAW snapped. "Doesn't mean I'm not doing it."
ROC gave him a very wide, very silly smile.
"Stop grinning!" LAW ordered. "You look stupid!"
VOLa watched them and wanted to laugh. She didn't. Laughing was a biological rudiment a tool like her didn't need.
"What about you?" she asked.
"Me?" DOF said, soundlessly appearing from behind her back. "Why yes, I do have a dream of my own."
ROC made a face.
"Well, what is it?" LAW finally demanded when it became clear that DOF was not going to continue.
"Mm. I'm a simple man," DOF smoothly said, "with very simple dreams. I only want to go back to the place that created me—"
"The HDC?" VOLa goggled.
"Mm-hmm. I want to go back there," DOF grinned, widely, terribly, "and destroy every single lab. Every single vat. Every single shrink who prodded me and cut me open, who rewired and conditioned me, who tested the limits of my endurance. I want to burn it all down. And when it's gone, that place… I suppose I might just pay a visit to the Galactic Union headquarters."
"You're insane," VOLa said, shaken.
"I wonder why," DOF beamed. "You think you know what pain is, girlie. Well, let me tell you, then: you don't know shit."
"Is this — is this what you are going to do, then?" VOLa asked, her voice weak and raspy, and saw DOF look at ROC, at his pale, resigned face.
"…We'll see," DOF finally said. "It depends. It depends on a whole fucking lot of things."
"I don't want anything to do with that," VOLa said. She had no love for humans, but that was something even she wouldn't do.
"I'm not asking, you know," DOF drawled with a slow smirk.
"Doffy," ROC suddenly said, "leave her alone."
The way he said it could have almost convinced her that he cared about her.
But that couldn't be true. In all her life cycle, no one ever cared about VOLa-5920, save for the outcome of her missions.
"You and your unnecessary sentiment again," DOF said.
"Unnecessary? Really?" ROC suddenly grinned, wide like a kid, and they looked at each other and laughed, just like that.
Once again, VOLa wondered why they were so close. Shared genetic material meant nothing; an army of LAWs around the galaxy proved that conclusively. But somehow, the two experimental units had the time and opportunity to bond before they were assigned to VOLa's mission.
There must have been a story behind that. But stories were a human thing; for units like her, the only thing that mattered was their task description.
"Seriously though, Law, don't you think this is a bit too much?" ROC asked, a needle in his hand.
"Just do it," LAW snapped.
Privately, VOLa could agree that LAW was overdoing it. He already had more tattoos on his body than all of her past charges combined, and he kept getting new tattoos and piercings, wearing clothes that barely kept the chill away in favor of showing off his ink. This time, he wanted a third pair of earrings in his ears. For some reason, he asked ROC for assistance, even though he was perfectly capable of piercing his ears himself.
LAW kept tattooing and piercing his skin, never using local anesthesia; DOF and ROC kept wearing the most improbable outfits, composed of the weirdest things they could find on the ship. VOLa still didn't know just where DOF found that fluffy pink rug he fashioned into a coat. Thankfully, she was indifferent to that mystery.
ROC pushed the needle through living flesh, careful and unusually steady. He was wearing that ridiculous heart print blouse again. It was a woman's blouse, looted from the former engineer's cabin. ROC didn't care.
It looked like the furthest thing from his former uniform, drab, gray form-fitting garb, and that was all he cared about.
"Do you think your pain proves anything?" VOLa asked.
Both ROC and LAW blinked at her. VOLa was feeling surprised herself. She had not intended to say that. Still, she went on.
"All your colorful clothes," she said, "all your piercings and tattoos. None of this can make you truly unique; none of this can make you human. You damn well know what we are: pipeline-produced work units. This — play pretend, it's… pathetic." Once again, she was surprised, this time by the venom in her voice.
ROC looked at her and hugged LAW around the shoulders.
Strangely, it was only now that she recognized that LAW was shaking.
"Ah, but we are human," ROC said. "We always were. We'll always be. We're just — slightly irregular," he smiled and ruffled LAW's hair. "But eventually, we'll die, like all humans do. And until then, we can live as humans do; freely choosing our looks and our way. Isn't that so, Law?"
LAW kept looking up at him, pale and small in his embrace. Then he jerkily wiped his hand over his face, and — silently hugged ROC back.
Now that was a fresh way of playing human.
"You want in on the cuddle pile?" ROC asked with a small smile.
men opening their arms engulfing her body pawing squeezing choking
She felt cold in her practical, heat-conserving uniform.
He was safe, for all that he was male-shaped and male-functioning. He was safe for many reasons, and VOLa knew them all.
"No," she said.
ROC kept watching her.
"Okay," he mildly said. "It's your choice."
VOLa felt an irregular burning in her eyes. Was she malfunctioning?
In all her life cycle, no one ever gave her a choice.
LAW finally stopped clinging to ROC.
"Do my other ear," he demanded.
"Roger that," ROC agreed.
LAW sat down again, putting his hands on the table. VOLa could see his tattoos, black D-E-A-T-H on his fingers. For all that she wasn't human, she still felt it was amusing.
Amusement, a human emotion, one of those she had to learn to perfectly imitate to avoid failing her missions.
Life Assist Worker, getting a "DEATH" tattoo just to give the proverbial finger to the ones who made and named him. How amusing was that?
A shrill alarm siren screeched through the ship, nearly bursting VOLa's eardrums, just as she was getting ready for her nightly recharge.
She did try sleeping without aid once, after she was free to choose the way she slept. It didn't turn out very well; the nightmares kept bothering her, so in a few hours she gave up and turned on the brainwave calibrator.
Luckily, she was still dressed in her old uniform and out of the hemistasis chair. She rushed to the bridge. When she arrived, DOF and ROC were already there, listening to the harried LAW.
"This planet has an extremely strange magnetic field that messes with our instruments," LAW hastily reported from behind the console. "I've never heard of anything like that. All the readings are shot, I can't control the ship — fuck, fuck, I think we're on a collision course with the planet."
DOF took one look at the readings, and the corners of his lips turned down. VOLa had never seen him like that.
It seemed like they were in real trouble.
"We can't land like this," DOF said. "We're going to crash."
"Um," ROC said, "is the warp core supposed to behave like that?"
The three male units looked at each other.
"The ship's fucked," LAW succinctly summed up.
"We're not malfunctioning, though," VOLa said.
"We're bioengineered, not technologically augmented. Do keep up," LAW sneered at her.
"How long until the runaway reaction starts?" ROC asked.
"We'll get blown up before we hit the troposphere," DOF casually admitted.
"The shuttle?"
"Useless," DOF said. "It's going to be just as uncontrollable; we won't be able to land safely."
The ship was jolting and rattling, and the last monitor that hadn't gone out yet was showing blue, a vast, vast sea of blue dotted with occasional spots of land. It seemed like they had already entered the atmosphere.
"What's the planet like?" DOF demanded.
"All ocean, with a lot of small islands and one continent, a narrow strip of land traversing the planet from north to south. I think the monitors showed some greenery, and structures that looked artificial."
"There might be intelligent life," ROC concluded.
"Most likely."
DOF grinned. Even without her diagnostic procedures, VOLa already knew him well enough to see that he was angry. Scared. Determined.
"Excellent," he said. "We're ejecting."
With one kick, he punched a gaping hole in the starship's heavily reinforced metal wall.
VOLa didn't even have the time to be surprised at his unimaginable, improbable strength; she was being thrown out of the ship before she could so much as blink.
"Calm," ROC said. "Get spread-eagle with your face down. Body arched, pelvis forward, chin up."
Somehow, VOLa could hear him perfectly well, for all that she was rocketing through the sky towards the merciless blue, the harsh winds tossing her around like she weighed nothing at all.
She took a deep breath and did as she was told. Her body stabilized. She risked turning her head and saw LAW assume the same position.
"What's the plan, then?" ROC casually said. Once again, VOLa wondered how they were able to talk at all. He wasn't even shouting.
"You block the debris, I deploy the chute," DOF tersely said, his words still perfectly audible even over the massive explosion above, "the kids don't get in the way. Understood?"
"Copy that," ROC answered for the three of them, and VOLa barely had the time to wonder how he was supposed to block the pieces of wreckage from reaching them when she felt a forceful push from above.
"What did you do?" LAW asked.
"A strong sound wave," ROC explained, his voice still somehow perfectly steady, "it pushed the debris back for a while. Incidentally, it also pushed us down. Please hurry up, Doffy."
"Shut up," DOF snapped. He now had his back towards the sea and his palms over his chest, locked as if there was something round inside them; he was falling notably faster than they were.
VOLa looked down. It had been a while since she had last seen the sea.
Was she breaking her neck or her spine first? Dying by drowning, maybe? Were there any creatures who'd be there in time to start eating her before she died?
"Roci, more debris. Then brake us," DOF said, his voice tense.
"Copy that," ROC agreed.
Something that felt like a solid wall of wind hit VOLa in the face from below.
"I can emit and block sound and electromagnetic waves," ROC was casually explaining to LAW, like they were still on the bridge, looking at something particularly interesting on the star map monitor, "thus the 'Reconnaissance' and 'Opacification' in my SKU. I was supposed to work in intelligence, but my cerebellum said no. Right now, I'm propelling us up with sound waves." He sent a new sound wave; a new push that felt almost gentle on VOLa's face and body. Could he have shielded them from the sound he was emitting? Otherwise, with his sound waves strong enough to propel large objects, their eardrums and lungs would have already burst. "Doffy, any debris up there?"
"Yes," DOF still had his palms locked over his chest, like there was something growing inside them. There was another push from above.
DOF was already so far below, they weren't even supposed to hear him. But somehow, they did.
"Viola, see any land?" ROC asked her mildly.
"No. It's all water," was she really dying in a few moments, or maybe in a few days if DOF did manage to miraculously break their fall?
She thought for a second or two.
For such a long, long time, she had a dream; a dream only a human could have.
She slept at night, and she dreamed; always of one thing, and one thing only.
To be no longer.
To get no more missions. To handle no more targets. To see no more hands stretching out to seize her, hurt her, violate her in so many ways she didn't want to think of, would have never thought possible; and be unable to defend herself, for all that she could.
She could so easily rip a target's heart out, the way DOF did back after the chip glitch. She could so conveniently inject a bit of her poison in her saliva when she kissed them. She could just slightly overdo the dosage of the truth serum her augmented glands produced. She could amp up her X-rays to lethal levels. Or she could just ride the target so good they'd go into cardiac arrest while still inside her body.
But she wasn't allowed to, not unless it was specified in the task description.
She was not allowed to protect her body, because it wasn't hers. It belonged to the HDC, just like VOLa herself did.
She was not allowed to be sad or afraid. She was not allowed to feel violated, because she was not a human with real, meaningful feelings — just a tool fashioned for one specific purpose.
And so she'd dream of not feeling anymore.
For such a long, long time, intelligence unit VOLa-5920 would close her eyes and dream of dying.
But somehow, as she was falling through the sky with the burning meteorites of the wrecked ship chasing their backs, she found that she really
really
wanted to live some more
with her brothers by her side.
Her — family.
Well, if wishes were fishes…
It was a human saying.
ROC — Roci — did always say they were human.
It looked like in a few moments, she would be swimming with the fishes, though.
She smiled.
If she really were to die… then she was dying human, the way she had always wanted to live.
"My name is Viola," she said out loud, and heard Roci chuckle by her side.
"Law," he said.
"What?" Law grumbled.
Roci grinned. It was a very stupid grin, and Viola could cry.
"I love you," he said, giving another blast. Law choked.
"Viola," Roci smiled, "you, too."
She laughed.
"Right back at you… brother."
She was falling to her death with the wind howling in her ears, helplessly laughing all the while, and there was no horizon in her sight anymore, just the endless blue rushing into her face at breakneck speed, when she saw.
"Large object at 38–60 moving at 65, flying about a hundred meters above sea level," she breathlessly communicated. Roci gave another blast to cushion them, but he was already exhausted; Viola could read it with her diagnostic ability and training — could plainly see it in his face.
Then, she felt something like a belt lash around her waist. Looking around, she saw strings weave around her brothers into wide glittering straps, tying them all together, in a web with Doffy in the center — and then he raised his hand.
A huge parachute opened over their heads, white and glittering in the raging sun, and just like that, they were falling no more.
There were burning pieces of metal still chasing their backs, and Roci looked like he was in no condition to keep them away anymore. But somehow, nothing burned through the glowing, tightly knit fabric of Doffy's strings. They were gliding now rather than falling, and Roci was breathing shallowly by her side, blood dripping out of his nose, and Law looked so pathetically panicked; just the way she herself felt.
She looked away, at Doffy, who wasn't looking all that good himself. Most likely, he had never tried anything like that before; weaving a structure that large, in a time that short, in a situation that grave. Still, he didn't look like he was dying, which was a definite step up from Roci.
"Guide me," Doffy barked at her, grinding his teeth. She tracked the trajectory of the large object, which was flying suspiciously — luckily — slowly, an easy target for Doffy and her. She wondered about the engine type. She made the calculations. She opened her mouth.
"Don't," Doffy snapped. "She could've just explained that herself."
"Ah, but that would be — inefficient," Roci breathed.
"Shut up and stop dying," Doffy ordered him, seamlessly guiding the parachute exactly where Viola wanted him to go.
"A heavenly beauty fell from the sky to grace me with her shining presence! Mellorine!"
"Oooooh," she heard another voice then, high and vibrant, "those are some cool tattoos!"
"So I don't deserve an 'I love you,' hm?"
"Oof — get off me, Doffy, you're heavy. I'd have thought I've already told you one too many times," Roci laughed by her side.
Someone was insistently kissing her hand. Viola blindly slapped the kisser away, sending them crashing into something with her augmented strength, and blinked, shaking her head.
"Hey, Tattoo Dude. Are you dead?"
"Stop poking me!" Law groused. "Who are you anyway?"
"Hm? I'm Monkey D. Luffy! The man who's gonna be the Pirate King!"
…So, there were pirates on this planet. And, apparently, they had a kingdom of their own that might or might not get a new leader somewhere in the future.
"Get off them, you idiots!" someone seemingly female snarled. Then there were several loud thwacks.
"Hey, you okay?" she heard, that female voice again.
Now that her eyesight was finally working again, Viola could see the person talking to her. A red-haired female, very human-looking, very young, no combat gear on her mostly-naked body, obvious concern on her face.
"I am well, thank you," Viola said. The woman looked amicable, which meant she was a potential ally; it was best to feed and reinforce her positive attitude towards Viola and her brothers.
"Sorry for just dropping to your deck like that," Roci said by her side. "Mind letting us sail with you until dry land?"
"Who are you guys, anyway?" the red-haired woman scowled.
"I suppose you could say we're space invaders," Roci mellowly said. Viola choked, and so did Law.
"You're such a joker, darling," Doffy said with a too-wide grin. "Our entire crew died in a freak accident; we're the only survivors. Something went wrong with our ship, so we had to eject. We still aren't sure what happened exactly; well, I guess it doesn't matter much now. Say, can we travel with you until the next island?"
"Sure," the short, slight young man in flip-flops said, picking his nose. Was he the one in charge here? He certainly didn't have the outward attributes or the bearing of a leader. "You look like a fun bunch. Do you have any more tattoos, though?" he addressed Law.
"He does," Roci cheerfully said. "He can even show you them all, if you'd like."
"Cool!" the nose-picking young man decided.
"Roci!" a red-faced Law screeched.
He did have a great many tattoos. Some of them were in places most humans considered very private. For a unit, there were no such things as shame or modesty, but ever since Law's programming got broken, he had very eagerly embraced the human ways and moral code.
"Your turn to take one for the team," Roci shrugged, laughing at him with his eyes. He looked like he wasn't dying anymore, and Viola felt cautiously relieved.
"Would you like a cup of tea to rest and relax after your ordeal?" another woman inquired, seemingly unarmed but still looking more dangerous than any of her crewmates by far. She was older than the red-haired one, and wearing a quietly amused expression on her face.
"Oh yes," Roci said with deep feeling. "Do you by any chance have cake here?"
As far as Viola was aware, units never had desserts on their ration, unless they were used for espionage purposes and had to eat foods outside of their normal diet to blend in, like she did.
Cake was… nice, if somewhat overly sweet.
"Certainly," the amused-looking woman said.
Now that she thought of it, Viola wasn't quite averse to the idea of tea and cake herself.
"Lead the way, then, Miss," Doffy suavely offered. "I have to say our instruments had been malfunctioning for a while, so we don't really know where we are. Can you tell us what you know about this part of the sea?"
Only now did Viola wonder how they were even able to communicate at all. These people couldn't possibly speak Simple Galactic… or could they?
"But of course," the woman promised, "although you might want to talk to our navigator if you want specific directions."
The red-haired woman smiled at her; so she was the navigator. Viola nearly missed it, though, too focused on watching the way the older woman was moving her lips.
Her lip movements did not match her words.
How…? Viola thought, and looked at Roci, and saw him wink at her.
Ah. "Reconnaissance, Opacification and Communication," right. Apparently, he had some additional functions Viola was not aware of.
My mental transmission works within a radius of about 100 meters, she suddenly heard something that felt like a whisper in her ear. Don't get too far away from me.
She looked at Roci with wide eyes.
You can just think back at me, she heard again, that quiet whisper, I can hear you.
Have you always— she thought, angry and hurting for some reason.
No. I can use and block this function at will. I have never used it on you before today.
Why…? Viola had to ask.
You seemed to like your privacy, Roci said with something that felt like a mental shrug.
Her privacy, huh.
No one ever respected her privacy, not until—
"Don't worry about her," Doffy smoothly said, "it's just stress."
Viola wiped her misty eyes and saw that the amused-looking woman wasn't looking so amused anymore. She was watching her with something that heavily resembled concern.
"It's nothing cake can't heal," Viola said.
"Then you must taste my Healing Cake of Love!" a blond man proclaimed. She recognized his voice; he was the one shouting "mellorine" and drooling over her hand. So he was a cook. "Please allow me to escort you, oh beautiful princess!"
She looked at the arm he was offering her.
She looked at his hands.
A man's hands, wide and callous, with hairy wrists and neatly cut, well-groomed nails.
men's hands reaching out to grab her hold her choke her
The shadows of her memories swarmed around her, clawing, tearing, suffocating her — and then they dissipated in a blizzard of black feathers.
No one is touching you against your will anymore, Roci said, a quiet voice in her ear. Doffy will destroy anyone who tries to harm his sister. I will chase away any nightmare you want to escape. And Law will fix any wounds that might pain you. You have us now. You don't need to be afraid anymore.
Viola pressed her lips together and quickly scanned the ship cook. He was beaming at her, seemingly undaunted by her reluctance. From the dilation of his pupils and his heart rate, she determined that he was sexually aroused. From his body language and facial expression, she concluded that he meant her no harm.
"With pleasure," she said, and put her hand on his arm, and wondered—
If there was such a thing as a mental shrug, maybe there could also be a mental hug?
She slowly, carefully reached out to the idea of Roci in her mind, the vague figure in a heart print blouse, the mellow presence with the deep low voice and the soothing words.
She wondered if she was finally going crazy, practicing this — esoteric thing. Could Roci even sense it when he was being called like that?
But then the presence changed, or rather, its shape became slightly different.
It felt like that half-abstract mental image was — smiling at her, opening his arms to her.
She walked side by side with the excited cook; she walked into the mental image of arms wide open, and felt warmth fill her up to the bursting.
You're so beautiful when you smile, she heard, and nearly wept.
She does take after me, another, distinctly smug voice agreed. And no, I can't do this mental conversation thing without Roci acting as a transmitter. Close your mouth, Viola.
Cake. She needed cake, now.
"So, how many tattoos do you have exactly?" the captain kept needling Law.
"I have no idea," Law grumbled. Viola could understand that, because it truly was a question of what constituted a separate tattoo—
"Let's count them all, then!" the captain enthusiastically said.
"How about we finish the tea first?" the older woman offered, and that seemed to rein in the insistent captain effectively enough. "And then you can tell us all about the world you came from."
Law choked. Doffy widely grinned.
"How did you know?" he asked. Viola couldn't tell whether he was amused, or plotting to kill them all and take the ship by force, or maybe both.
"Your mouth movements don't match your words," the woman beatifically smiled, "and you move like you're used to stronger gravity. We're not your enemies, unless you are plotting to kill us all and take the ship by force. Although I sincerely doubt you can, we'd still rather avoid the fight if at all possible."
"I'll fight you if you want!" the captain jumped up. The red-haired woman just pushed him down again, her hand on his head. The rest of the crew were all gaping with varying degrees of intensity.
Roci quietly snickered.
"Now that wouldn't do, repaying cake with fighting, would it?" he said. "Great cake, by the way, thank you Sanji. I'll start the story; Doffy, please correct me if I forget anything."
Viola listened, discreetly eyeing the crew. A huge robotic-looking cyborg, a small furry creature in a hat as big as he was, a walking skeleton, a strong-looking fighter, a suave-looking man in a neatly pressed dress suit, two very attractive women in very revealing clothing; all in all, nothing she wasn't used to. Most functions and parties she had been to had some very colorful people, as well as infinitely varied entertainment units like her.
If she had to name one strangest thing about this crew, she'd definitely say it was the captain.
He didn't look like a captain. He didn't talk like a captain. He didn't act like a captain.
Yet in every single man, woman and creature on his crew, Viola saw respect and absolute loyalty to their captain, for all that very few of them were showing it openly.
It certainly was a mystery; one Viola did not much care to solve, though, because they were leaving this crew as soon as the ship reached dry land.
Besides, the captain couldn't be too menacing anyway, what with how he was snoring right now, in the middle of Roci's story.
"So you can produce multipurpose strings," the red-haired girl said, pointing at Doffy, "you control sound, you produce medication in your body," Law scowled, "and you can read people's vitals and intentions?"
"Now that medication ability sounds stupid," the strong-looking fighter yawned, "how do you even get your drug into the patient's body?"
Law flushed.
"And how many tattoos do you have anyway! C'mon, show me!" the captain demanded, suddenly wide awake.
"How far is it to dry land?" Law desperately asked the navigator. "Can you please drop us off at the nearest port?"
"Eeeehhhh?" the captain pouted. "But you people are fun! I don't want you to leave!"
"Yes! Please don't leave me, Viola-chwan!" the cook pleaded tearfully.
Doffy slowly grinned, and Viola feared.
"Why not," he said, "you people sure are interesting. Hey, captain. Do you mind if we tag along for a while?"
"Nope!" the captain brightly declared.
Law just sat there with his mouth open.
"Excellent," Roci said, "now how about some more cake?"