Synth

Flit’s proclamation of how they were dealing with Kei, of setting aside the idea of morality and ethics in transporting them or leaving them behind… well, even to TO, it seemed harsh.

Still, they couldn’t deny the sense of Flit's words.

What if they were talking about DH?

The words slipped into TO’s mind unwelcomed. DH would never be in this situation… Right?

They remembered the argument they had made for DH’s replacement eye, How they had argued, brought up the replacement eye they had salvaged from the juvenile synth, and pointed out how DH’s skills were worth the cost of an eye and a surgery.

Of course, allowing that had been the wrong decision for King Decon’s army, wasn’t it? DH was here now, and helping the insurgents.

“If that’s the point, then why are we even here.” Avery hissed, “Clearly, our opinions don’t matter, so-”

“The point is to decide not if we want to bring them with us, but if we can bring them with us.” Flit said, their ears pinning back, their voice taking on a slow, controlled cadence. “We have to put aside what we want and what we hope, and decide only if it’s possible to bring them.” Their eyes flicked to each of them once more, resting on every person for only a moment. “And… I don’t think we can.”

“I think we should make the effort.” Snout said, shaking their head, “It’s such a waste otherwise. We can probably figure out something-“

“If we had more time, maybe.” Flit said. “If we had more time, we could comb over the holding cell in the ship. And make sure that no matter how long they’re in there, they can’t escape. We could make plans. We could keep them bound for the whole trip-“

“We can’t do that!” Avery said, but Flit held up a hand to stop them.

“Again, we are not talking about ethics or morality here.” Flit said. “Foremost, we have to decide simply if we’re able to bring them with us.”

“… Since we’re not talking about ‘ethics’, then I might have an idea.” Snout said, their voice slow and their ears dipping “We could keep them unconscious for the trip and feed them intravenously. They wouldn't be particularly healthy by the end of the trip, and there are obvious medical risks, but it’s possible.”

“I wouldn’t mind that.” Goretta said slowly. “It’s not ideal, but it’s better than letting them perish here. The work that’s been done on them can help many people, and I think that given more time, given the influence of others, they might adapt better. If we bring them to Apoikia, bring them to.. Well, I suppose it’s their ancestral home, then they’ll see what Chilacians are like, what they were like before they became synths. Maybe even that would help.”

“You can’t talk about them like they’re a science experiment!” Avery said. “They’re a person! If you talk about them like they’re a thing…” They paused, huffed, then sat back, “Then you’re doing what King Decon was doing, what you all say is so horrible, right?”

TO felt their ears pin back. “You want to talk of them as a person, not a thing? Not a resource? Fine.” They looked at Avery. “Kei is an excellent synth, but a horrible person.”

“You just don’t know-“

“I know enough.” TO said. “They went out of their way to keep DH isolated because they were different, because they thought DH was too strange. They convinced Q10 to push DH away. They told me frequently that DH and GiDi, and myself were broken. They said the only difference with me was that I was ‘capable’ enough to be ‘useful.’ They said over and over how DH and GiDi were useless, and Kei wanted them to be repurposed.”

“Look, They didn’t like you three, and you didn’t like them…” Avery said.

“Even if they liked us, I don’t think that would have made a difference!” TO snapped. “Kei seemed to like Q10. They seemed to like them enough to be around them, to work with them, and to tell them to stay away from DH. Yet when Q10 had that breakdown when we all thought that King Decon had been attacked, they didn’t care. They didn’t care that Q10 might be corrected–which they were–and they didn’t care afterwards when Q10 was just gone!” TO scoffed, “DH and I cared more about Q10 than Kei did, and Q10 caused us nothing but trouble!”

“… And they almost got us separated.” DH whispered, their ears low.

“Right! And, they also called us horrible things when they caught us in the emergency vessel-“

“Wait… what?” Flit frowned. “What do you mean-“

“Doesn’t matter.” TO said, their ears flushing as they realized what they implied. “They said horrible things and nearly reported us. Then, when they saw us on a news recording, they reported us to Ark-1! Furthermore, they were ready to shoot GiDi-”

“They… they only considered GiDi an insurgent then!” Avery said,

“And they’ve only been violent and uncooperative since they got here. The only reason they allowed the procedure to happen was so they could be a better synth than me!”

“O-ok, but that was before Goretta restored their mind!” Avery said, “They can’t be held accountable-“

“Well, since Goretta restored their mind, they lunged at me with absolutely feral rage. They tricked us into taking them with us out into the outer ring where they waited for an opportunity to attack. They tried to take DH hostage and knocked you down with a pipe! We can only be glad it was PVC and not an old metal pipe otherwise you might be dead!” TO’s eyes narrowed. “And since we came back, all they’ve done is say how awful we are, how I’m such a waste of a synth, and attempt to attack me once they realized I-” Their ears dipped and flushed, “Once they realized how bad my aversion to blood is, they immediately used that to affect me.”

They fell silent for a few moments, breathing heavily as they caught their breath. All their words had come out in a flow and they only realized afterwards how little they had been breathing. “So, no, I don’t think we can trust them.” They said once they felt calmer, “I think they’ll do whatever they can to trick us, and hurt us. The moment Kei finds a weakness, they will absolutely exploit that.”

“They’re still adjusting, still recovering!” Avery protested. “They might get better-“

“We can’t act on who they might become!” TO said, “If they are who they are now when we take them on the ship, and an opportunity to kill us all arises, they will absolutely take that opportunity. And… and you can’t stand for them based on what you hope they’ll be! They might get better, or they might continue to be the awful, hurtful, vicious person they’ve always been. The only thing that the restoration of their mind seems to have done is make them more aggressive!”

There was silence in the room for long moments after that, with only the breathing of everyone around them filling the uneasy quiet. After a while, Snout sighed.

“As a person, they’ve not much experience.” Snout said in a low, soft voice. “They have potential, but TO is right, we can’t rely on that potential at the moment.” They looked up, “but, as a subject… as a resource, if we can keep them knocked out-“

Avery’s ears pinned down as they glared at TO, ignoring anything Snout was saying, “You only know one side of them.” They said, “The anger, the rage, and the loyalty. You didn’t spend weeks with them on a ship, or surface side on a planet. You didn’t sit by their bed while they were recovering from the procedure. You don’t know them!”

“And you do?” TO said, “You know them?”

“I think so.” Avery hissed, “Better than you do.”

The hiss to Avery’s voice, and the way their ears pinned back startled TO, but even so they held their ground, and looked back at Avery with their own ears pinned and held their friend’s glare.

“Very well.” TO said, their voice low and cool, “Enlighten me. Give me one reason you thought they wouldn’t try to kill us all at the first opportunity.” They scoffed, “You can’t, because at the first opportunity they had in the Outer Ring… guess what? They attacked us!”

“Enough.” Flit’s voice was loud and clear, and it made every other Chilacian in the room flinch. “Look, What they're like as a person does not matter at this moment.” They said. They wheeled over to Avery, closing the distance between them and looking at them directly.

“You want Kei to come with us, right?” He asked.

“Yes.” Avery said.

“Alright.” Flit said, “But now, I want you to think about something. Close your eyes.”

Avery frowned, but after a moment did as Flit told them.

“Alright.” Flit said “I want you to picture myself, Snout, DH, GiDi, and TO.” They said.

“A-alright…”

“Now picture Goretta, Tham, Pearla, Mira…basically all the insurgents you’ve met so far.”

Avery nodded.

“Now… I also want you to picture-“ They paused, and looked to TO, “How many civilians are coming with us?” They asked.

TO did up the numbers in their head quickly “65.” They said.

“And of those, how many children?”

“19.”

Flit nodded, and turned back to Avery, “19 children.” They said, “Now… if we bring Kei with us, and if they were given an opportunity to escape our observation and control, and if they decided to do something disastrous to the ship, every single person you’ve just thought of will die.” They let their words hang in the air for a moment before continuing. “Now, answer truthfully; Are all those lives a risk you’re willing to take to have Kei on board with us? Can you trust Kei not to do anything to hurt a single person on that ship? If you had to decide yourself, knowing it’s not just your life at risk but the lives of every single person you’ve met as well as the lives of 46 civilian adults and 19 civilian children, what would you do? What would your decision be? Would you be willing to take the risk?”

Avery was quiet for a long, long time. Slowly, their ears tilted back and dropped low, and when they opened their eyes, there were tears there once more.

“That’s enough.” TO said, their own anger dissolving at the sight of Avery’s reaction, “Flit-“

“Would you risk it?” Flit asked again.

“…No.” Avery’s voice was quiet and broken, their eyes rimmed with blue.

Flit nodded and wheeled their chair back a little. “That doesn’t mean we can’t take them, not necessarily.” Flit said, “That means we have to see if there’s a way we can do it and keep everyone safe.”

“… So then, our options are to either leave Kei behind, or keep them unconscious for the entire flight.” Snout said.

“Seems like it.” Flit said. They turned to Goretta. “Is that something we can do?”

“Well, of course we can. I had to do it every so often in my practice, but there are medical risks to be considered-”

“Not what I mean.” Flit said, “Is it possible? Do we have the means?” They looked to TO, “Do we have the space as well to keep them isolated in their own room?”

“The holding cell would work.” TO said. “I considered we might need a place to hold a person if they got aggressive, so I didn’t calculate that into overall space.”

“And the interrogation room is filled?”

A light flush covered To’s ears, “I, ah, figured that it would be best to have a private room for civilians to… have ‘private time.’” They said, “I… recognize that Chilacians aren’t the only species to have… cycles, and that if a couple on the ship when into such a state while we were in space and we had no private room-“

“That’s fine.” Flit said, their own ears flushing slightly, “We can use the interrogation room as a holding cell if something comes up.”

“That might be a decent deterrent.” Snout mused, “If we make it known that the one privacy room on the ship would be repurposed if something came up, I’m certain people would be far less willing to cause problems.”

Flit cleared their throat, “Right. Well. that’s sorted. What about the other essentials?” They looked at Goretta, “You’d need medication, I take it?”

“Yes. I Can use the medication I used to keep them calm while their mind was healing in those first few days after their procedure.” She sighed and checked something on her tablet, “I’ll have to see what I have on hand, and made some calculations as to how much I’ll need in order to keep them under for the trip.”

“I’ll see what I have on hand too,” Snout said, “And we can check to see what’s already on the ship. I’m not saying that all synth ships have a large supply of medical drugs, but there would be something there. As for intravenous nutrition, what we’ve been using should work fine, but we need to see how much we have, and how much we’ll need. If we don’t have enough, we’ll have to see if we have time to make what we need.”

Flit nodded. “The only other option would be to keep them bound at all times, and force feed them… but even with that I have reservations. Their mind is repaired now, and we’ve seen. How capable a synth with an unaltered mind can be.” They glanced at TO. “We don’t know what Kei is capable of at the moment, how clever, ruthless, or violent they might be.”

TO sighed and nodded. What they really wanted to do was say that there was no point in this, to balance out the use of materials that would be needed to keep Kei under, how they could be better used, and make the argument that it was best to keep Kei on Arkane.

There were two things that kept them from doing that. First; thinking about that reminded them of how medical supplies and food had been rationed out to everyone based on their performance and overall value, and knowing that they had been thinking like that for a moment made them somehow angry with themself.

Second: while Avery’s tears had stopped, they still looked heartbroken. Thoughts of Shatter-Sickness drifted through TO’s head.

TO closed their eyes and took a long breath. “I’ll do what I can to make sure they’re on the ship.” They said, their voice low and quiet. “... I’ll make sure we have the needed resources.”