Network Effect

The kit flashed a handy annotated diagram of what we should do into the feed. Amena swore a lot and helped me roll Eletra over. I started chest compressions, being extremely careful with the amount of pressure I was exerting. Amena frantically grabbed for the resuscitation devices. The kit was trying to be helpful but it was nothing like a MedSystem sliding into my feed with everything I needed to know right there. It was urging me to start rescue breathing, but I couldn’t. My lungs work in a completely different way than human lungs do. It’s not only that I need much less air but the connections are all different. Aside from the utterly disgusting thought of putting my mouth which I talk with on a human (ugh), I didn’t think I could expel enough air for what the kit wanted me to do.

Amena ran over and started the rescue breathing herself, but it wasn’t working.

I told her, “We need the mask.”

Amena gave up with a gasp of frustration and went back to the kit. She found the mask and wrestled with its sterile packaging, trying to rip the plastic with her teeth, and I couldn’t stop compressions to help her. (Yes, I did just realize we should have thought of this possibility earlier. They never showed humans getting the tools ready on MedCenter Argala, it was all just there.)

Then from across the compartment, the MedSystem made a soft clunk and its platform lights turned violet. It had just powered on. Amena stopped, the mask in her hand finally. She spat out a piece of plastic wrapper and demanded, “Did you get it turned on?”

“No.” That was ART’s MedSystem, but without ART. Its reactivated feed said it was operating at factory standard.

It could be one more weird anomaly in this unending cycle of what the fuck. Or it could be a trick, TargetControlSystem trying to get us to put Eletra in there so it could kill her. Except that Eletra was dying anyway so why bother?

And I tried not to see this as some remnant of ART still in the ship acting to save a human.

Well, fuck it. I stopped compressions, scooped up Eletra, and carried her to the MedSystem’s platform.

I set her down and the surgical suite dropped over her immediately, a pad settling over her chest to restart her heartbeat and a much more complicated mask apparatus lowering to work on her respiration. In six seconds it had her breathing on her own and her heartbeat stabilized. The platform contoured to roll her onto her side. Delicate feelers peeled away the wound pack and tossed it onto the deck, then started to knit the raw bleeding spot in her back.

On the gurney, the emergency kit beeped once in protest, then shut up.

Amena let out a long breath of relief, then wiped her face on her sleeve. She started to gather the scattered pieces of the kit’s resuscitation gear. Trying to fit them back into their containers, she said, “So what turned the MedSystem on—”

I said, “I know as much as you do about what is happening on this ship.” Which was why I put the unknown corporate human who was dying anyway in the possibly compromised MedSystem and not, say, Amena or myself.

I didn’t like that Eletra had nearly died, despite the fact that we had followed all the instructions carefully. I didn’t like that Ras had died before we could do anything. I especially didn’t like that the Targets had killed him. He wasn’t my human but he had popped off right in front of me and I hadn’t been able to do anything about it.

They’re so fucking fragile.

Amena glared, then eyed me speculatively. “Are you sure you’re not hurt? You did get shot in the head, again. And didn’t that gray person shoot you before you tore their lungs out?”

I hadn’t felt any lungs while I was rummaging around in Target Two’s chest cavity, but I’m sure they were in there somewhere. “It was just an energy weapon.”

“It was just an energy weapon,” Amena muttered to herself, in a very bad imitation of my voice, while determinedly trying to fit the mask attachment with the oxygen nodules into the wrong slot. “If you weren’t so angry at me, you’d realize I was right.”

For fuck’s sake. “I am not angry at you.”

Okay, that’s a lie, I was angry at her, or really annoyed at her, and I had no idea why. It wasn’t her fault she was here, we were here, she hadn’t done anything but be human and she wasn’t even whiny. And her first reaction to another human shooting me had been to jump on his back and try to choke him.

Amena gave up on the mask and gave me her full attention. “You look angry.”

“That’s just something my face does sometimes.” This is why helmets with opaque face plates are a good idea.

Amena snorted in disbelief. “Yes, when you’re angry.” She hesitated, and I couldn’t interpret her expression, except that it wasn’t annoyed anymore. “I should have said more, when they were talking about you. It was just like my history and political consciousness class. I didn’t think the instructors were making things up, but … it was just like the examples they used.”