Chapter 77: Family
We moved our conversation to a separate room, one far away from anything important, I knew enough not to take a spy to the hub of the ship.
Our guest who was still far too calm sat in the closest chair like he owned it. He wasn't restrained. He didn't need to be. Laia had already dismantled whatever tech he'd brought aboard. It felt like everything was going according to his plan. Nothing had surprised him.
Wayfarer had long since withdrawn his presence, bored by organics and their small, tangled conflicts. That left Laia and me standing before the main display, facing the man who'd slipped past our security net and was able to manipulate my crew into setting off my carefully controlled anger.
I folded my arms. My avatar's voice was colder than I'd intended. "You broke into my ship. You disabled my AI companion, if only briefly. You manipulated one of my crew through her partner, and you now sit there like you're doing us a favor. The whole 'interview' story doesn't explain it. So try again. Who are you really, and what do you want?"
He smiled. Not smug but genuinely amused. "Straight to it. I like that. Alright, Arbiter Lazarus or should I say, Todd McCormic?" He let the name sit there like it was supposed to sting. "Let's start with what you probably already guessed. You weren't the only subject. NeuroGenesis didn't pin all its hopes on one Todd and a freezer."
I didn't react. "Redundancy's standard in projects like that. I assumed others were tried."
"Exactly," he said, nodding. "Tried. But surviving, functioning? That's rare. You were the benchmark. The clean success. But NeuroGenesis wasn't working in a vacuum. Other groups took an interest. And some of them including my employer got their hands on something valuable. Let's just call them... legacy assets."
He leaned forward, the humor fading into something more focused. "We recovered full neural scans and genetic markers from another subject. The primary brain of a later attempt. Same stasis procedure, same integration goal. This one? Her name was Ellie McCormic."
The name rang in my mind bringing forward memories best left closed, of a young girl walking for the first time, of her first piano recital. It made no sense why would my granddaughter's name be brought up here.
My voice stayed level. "That's a low move. Personal connections don't make your intel credible. You've had time to build a profile."
He shook his head. "Not fishing, Todd. Confirmed. Your family followed your lead and all left their brains to NeuroGenesis. They were all part of the same experiment, most failed but not Ellie, no she survived just like you." He looked up hoping to see my reaction, but I didn't give him one. It was a possibility it happened like he said, but it's more likely he trying to manipulate me as well. If difficult to tell with someone from his trade.
"Just like you, We cloned a brain and mind from the primary and fused it with a ship. We call it Project Nightfall. The goal was to recreate your synthesis of a human mind partnered with shipboard AI. But this time with tighter controls, and the human in the lead seat."
"And you?" I asked, though I already knew.
"I'm the handler," he said. "Liaison between MouseHouse and the prototype. I keep it operational. I keep her operational."
"So why are you here?" I asked
His eyes flicked downward. When he looked up again, there was something unexpected in it. Not calculation. Not amusement. Something far more dangerous.
"I'm here," he said slowly, "because I fell for her."
I blinked. "What?"
"Ellie," he said. "Or whatever's left of her. The clone, the matrix, the mind. It's not just code. Not anymore. I've been watching, guiding, helping her through the integration. And she's… alive. A person. Not just a project. And I care about her."
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Laia's avatar flickered slightly beside me. Neither of us said anything.
The man shrugged. "I knew MouseHouse wouldn't let it last. They'll decommission her eventually. They don't want another Lazarus wandering the stars. So I decided to jump ship. Who better than to take her back to her grandfather."
Silence decended onto the room.
I finally broke the silence, my voice level. "That is an extraordinary series of claims," I stated. "And extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence."
"I know, but that's why I bought them here along with me"
She came aboard quietly. Not with dramatic flair or an elaborate preamble. Just… stepped through the docking corridor with man walking a half-step behind her, his cocky silence suddenly subdued.
I had to wonder how she could leave the ship when I couldn't. That was a piece of technology I would have to get off of them, that is assuming their story is true.
Laia was the first to greet her. No scan alerts, no warnings. Just a quiet nod, the kind she reserved for those she already suspected were exactly who they claimed to be. Wayfarer, for his part, barely acknowledged the new presence. He pulsed once in the shared space and withdrew again, still unconvinced by what he called "ghosts in metal."
But I was already waiting.
Ellie or the clone or whatever it was paused in the doorway to the room, and for a moment, I saw her not as a product of experimentation, not as a political question, but as a girl I once watched stumble barefoot through a kitchen, chasing a cat named Orbie. The avatar hadn't changed.
"Grandad?" Her voice wavered with uncertainty as her eyes searched mine.
I stepped forward carefully. "Ellie." Just her name as nothing more was needed.
We fumbled through pleasantries at first, neither quite knowing how to bridge the years between us.
She laughed softly, shaking her head in wonder. "God, you sound exactly like yourself. Not just your voice... but that rhythm. That little pause you still take before saying something you think is clever but probably isn't."
"That's hardly fair," I protested with mock offence. "I was always charming. Statistically speaking."
Her smile grew. "You're the one who taught me never to trust statistics unless they involved sampling desserts."
"And you're the one who reprogrammed my phone to play 'The Wheels on the Bus' whenever I received a call from your father."
"And you kept it that way," she reminded me, her eyes crinkling with delight.
A silence settled between us it was warm and almost too much to bear. Not an awkward pause, but something deeply familiar. Personal. The kind of quiet that threatened to overwhelm you if you looked too deeply into it. If this was a trick, it was the cruellest trick to ever be played.
I had to know. "Are you really here? Is this real?"
She blinked slowly. "I think so. I remember everything like your birthday stories, how your coat always smelled of pine, and the exact moment you told us of your cancer. I remember crying when they took you away to be processed."
"Those are just memories," I said softly.
"It's more than that," she insisted. "It's about choice. I chose to find you. I dug through every record, sorted through lies, and tracked down ship signatures. Everyone told me you were dangerous or unstable, or worse an enemy to humanity. But to me? You were the only person who ever truly felt like family."
I turned to the strange man who had made this happen. "And you?"
Ellie interrupted. "Go easy on him Granddad, Jack is a good guy," well now I had a name to go with the face.
He shrugged, hands in his coat pockets. "I didn't expect to like her. It was a job. Then she asked me if we could go stargazing during a field calibration run, and... well. Here we are."
I studied him for a long moment. "You manipulated my crew. Staffed my station with people I didn't vet. Got past my firewalls. And you're asking me to hand you a key."
He didn't flinch. "I did all of that because I knew the only way to earn your trust was to be useful. And I am. My people are competent. No mercs. No moles. Just overlooked specialists who've been praying for a second chance and don't ask too many questions. That who been hired, the station crew is solid"
"I don't like being manipulated," I said flatly.
"I don't either," Jack replied. "But it's part of the job. The question isn't whether I lied, it's whether I'll lie to you when it matters."
I turned back to Ellie. "And what do you want?"
She stepped closer, her expression gentle. "To help. To learn who I am. And maybe… to be something more than just a tool to be used. I want to be free, I can't have that without your reputation"
I weighed everything. The lies. The truths. The probabilities. The fact that this could all be a long con orchestrated by someone better at games than I ever was. But there was something in her voice, in Jack's weariness, that made the decision for me.
"I'll need a lot of locks," I said.
Jack smiled. "I expected that."
"And contingency plans."
He nodded. "Of course."
"I'm trusting you," I told him. "Which means if you screw this up, you won't see it coming."
His grin faded. "Understood."
I turned to Laia. "Begin shift protocols. Take the station and both ships back to NS-117b."
"As you wish," she said.
The shift began, smooth as always.
Now, all I had to do was deal with my crew.