Walking back through the Cilbuper sewer tunnels, Vaga felt like she was lying to Palo. More than likely the field triage skills she quickly performed on Morigin back at the ship came from her conduit programming, but what she didn’t tell him, is that it frightened her. The black-outs and dreams didn’t bother her. She felt that occurring in the biological part of her brain trying to recover.
But the other oddities, in the escape pod, on Draedus when Morigin handed her a weapon and then again inserting the IV – all those she did not feel in control. And as easily as she recovered from those brief spells, she thought long and hard about whether or not the conduit programming was regaining control, or if these instances were but symptoms of the reboot. Either way, she felt incomplete as if at any moment she could possibly fall under the conduit programming again, or it could be disappearing forever, leaving her mostly human.
As Palo walked in front of her, sloshing in the mess of the largest city on the planet, she wondered about her place in all of this. She got herself onto this ship, now everything that had happened seemed to be keeping her here. Her eyes caught the smoothness of Palo’s cheek in a brief flicker of light, his tousled brown hair and more now, the conviction of some of his words. Talking with Odiacz, he tried so hard to make all this sound like a fleeting dream his father had, but everything they had been through spoke against that. Someone out there wanted something really badly and they had resorted to killing people to get it. Or at least trying to kill people. That put this whole situation in the feasible column for her. A part of her wanted Palo to quit fighting it and accept that this is real, that everything his father had worked for and everything Palo resented him for was actually true and in danger of killing both of them.
Vaga thought about Morigin in medical pod back on the ship, Morigin’s chest heaving slowly within it and Jade whispering secret wishes to him. Palo promised to convince him not to rip Telo’s memories out of her mind, a process that would undoubtedly leave her broken and insane. Then she remembered Odiacz telling Palo about the [pull from previous chapter], her tentacles tight-fisted around the waterpac. Vaga had admired her tentacles. She felt a certain kinship with this creature, even though her own tentacles were nanofibers extending from her fingertips, while Odiacz had six sucker covered tentacles breaking off from her forearms. It wasn’t a direct comparison, but Vaga imagined her fibers wrapped around a terminal coil, drinking the data like Odiacz did water.
Vaga followed behind Palo and heard him muttering under his breath. “What are you thinking?”
“I’m having REAL reservations about myself,” Palo said, trudging through the swamp and muck of the tunnels. “Every decision, every feeling I have ever had, I doubt now. I want to so badly blame my father for this, but I can’t. Not to mention that I remember absolutely nothing that my father ever told me about any of this! I’m of no use to anyone. Morigin should have left me with that huntsman. I’d be better off with a plasma blast to