Reanimation begins with a scream.

  "Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!" I screamed, clutching my throat, picturing Boom's head looming in front of me.

  And then I cursed.

  "Goddamnit!"

  I looked around me, observing that I wasn't in the House of Horrors on Sovereign Starbase. No reanimation droid brought me food or water. I was alone, and I didn't know where I was. Not recognizing the place of reanimation is usually a bad sign, and it had never happened to me before. But at least I had been reanimated. The alternative would have been storage or deletion.

  So, where was I? What was going on? How much time had passed?

  I ran a self-diagnostic. Generally speaking, I seemed to be fine. I wouldn't know for sure until I could check against my own backup. I wanted to assume that my thoughts and memories were correct, that I was me, but I didn't put it past the Outer System Alliance or Solar Union to muck with my head. I was, after all, murdered.

  That's how I would put it. A doomer would say I was captured. They kill to capture. It's their thing.

  Didn't they know I had places to be, crew to find, missions to complete?

  I admit, though. Reanimation was a return to the familiar, something I was used to. If I was in the House of Horrors, I'd be feeling peachy and ready for action.

  Obviously, the great thing about a new body is that it's new. I was pain-free, for the first time in a long time. I took a deep breath, stretched my limber limbs, and enjoyed the cool flow of oxygen through my lungs. The bad thing about a new body is that you have to start doing modifications all over again. I didn't mind the metal leg being gone, but I immediately felt the absence of the ARM and the Puppy Eyes setting.

  Don't you worry, though. I'm actually quite a genius. I have some odd behaviors. I've been considered ridiculous. But do you know anyone else who can hack mechanical flamingos or take control of a Valkyrie ship with mere moments to drop some code?

  No. You don't.

  I knew I would die eventually. I had backup schematics for the ARM, and I had reverse-engineered the Puppy Eyes setting. I just needed a workshop, a medic, and some quiet time to get the work done.

  But first I needed answers.

  "First I need answers," @horus said, entering the room abruptly. "Then we'll see what to do with you."

  I growled at him. He said what I was thinking. Did I foresee that? Were they plugged in and monitoring my thoughts? I felt around the back and sides of my head. Reanimation begins with the mind-pluggy thing, the memory spike, retracting. I wasn't plugged in. Good.

  Honestly, I wasn't surprised when @horus entered the room. It was, after all, @sundial, who had come to "capture" me, and she was Alliance Starmada. For a split second, I considered if she was with the enemy, planted to infiltrate, part of the group responsible for the zombie virus, but I dismissed it just as quickly as it passed through my brain.

  I reached out to send a message to Oblivion, but there were no comms. I was online, but appeared to be isolated.

  "You could have just asked me to cooperate," I complained. "What is this, a Faraday cage?"

  @horus looked angry. "Be quiet."

  "Why aren't you at the peace treaty?" I asked.

  "Be quiet," he repeated. "Please."

  He looked exhausted. There was a small table with two chairs across the room. @horus took one of the chairs, setting down a bowl and a glass of water. "These are for you. Your body needs nourishment." He motioned me to join him.

  "Aren't you going to restrain me?"

  He nodded to something behind me. I turned and freaked out, jumping up from where I was sitting. Boom was there, standing directly behind me. "Don't need to," @horus noted.

  Eyeing Boom, I wandered slowly over to the table. I was in a loose, white robe. It was comfy, airy, and not at all as cool as my Infiltrator armor. I hoped I could get that back.

  @horus had told me we were in trouble for disobeying orders. It's just that, well, I didn't exactly think it would come to this, especially after Dactyl and taking control of Oblivion. I did kind of threaten them, though. I recalled flicking off @horus and telling him Oblivion and I would destroy shit if the Alliance Starmada messed with us. I could see that was a mistake.

  "Why'd you kill me?" I asked. I sipped the water. It was glorious.

  "I think you know, but I'm the one who needs answers." @horus was studying me, and I had no doubt Boom was too, and probably some other sensors that were contained within this room.

  It was kind of brilliant. We were completely private in a Faraday cage. We could talk about whatever we wanted, and only we knew about it. I figured this was also an incineration room, in case everything needed to be wiped. I could back myself up locally in the memoryshard in my head, but that could be incinerated as well. Elegant. I didn't like it.

  If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  "What do you want to know?" I had to play this game, so let's get on with it.

  "Tell me about the Pit," he started.

  I shrugged. "You've probably talked to others who were there. @awesomedog is the right aiways to interview. He was present when it started. All I know is that it was @foxcutter who was the first to turn."

  @horus nodded. "Go on."

  "Okay, well, @foxcutter turned." I looked at the bowl of mush in front of me. It didn't look good, but I was hungry. Surprisingly, it didn't taste too bad. Kind of like honey and rice mixed together. "It spread from there, as these things do. Pretty quickly there were overtaken throughout the station. @awesomedog came to get me. We split up to rescue the others."

  "Did you examine @foxcutter?" @horus asked.

  "You know that I did, that we did. @sundial was there when we did our first check. We also scanned him back on the ship."

  @horus seemed satisfied with that and dropped it sooner than I expected.

  "Tell me about Oblivion," he commanded.

  I huffed. I wasn't sure how to even begin that conversation. I chewed on more of the mush and chased it with a gulp of water.

  "Where is Oblivion?" I asked.

  "Nope," @horus said, curtly. "Tell me about Oblivion."

  Ughh. "We first met the ship at the Starlab. I boarded it and planted a little catnip virus, gathering intel." I clinked the spoon on the bowl to get @horus's attention. "I believe that's partly why you made me a Vanquisher."

  "Oblivion blew up your ship, Celestial Roamer," I giggled a little bit. Oblivion must have enjoyed that. I could hear it in my head. Die pitiful ship! I exult in your destruction!

  I contained my laughter and continued. "Um, then I saw it again on Dactyl, where it tried to blow us up. We managed to evade it. I flew us through an asteroid field. It was pretty spectacular. Then my virus activated, after we did a series of DEAD jumps. At that point, I had control of Oblivion. We flew to the Pit. Outbreak started. I escaped onto Oblivion. We were attacked by a force of four Predators and two Valkyries. Those were Desolation and Extinction. We won."

  I looked at @horus, wondering where he would probe, and continued. "Oblivion is a powerful ship. @stardvark, the engineer, had made modifications. It wasn't an easy battle. We took a lot of damage. My crew was killed, but they managed to keep me alive, and Oblivion proved to be the superior ship."

  I wasn't exactly lying. He didn't need to know it was my fault for taking damage and ending up with a dead crew. I didn't want to think about that. I was ashamed of myself.

  "So, some of the original crew was on the ship," @horus clarified. "How many?"

  "Just two."

  "Just two? What happened to everyone else?"

  I sipped on my water, thinking about how to phrase it. "It wasn't my fault. Oblivion spaced them. It considered them hostile after I took over."

  @horus's eyebrows peaked high on his head. "Oblivion spaced them."

  "Yep, part of its programming."

  He looked skeptical. "But two survived?"

  I knew for a fact that Oblivion liked @stardvark and @dragonlotus. What I told @horus was, "I don't think Oblivion saw them as a threat. They were ship technicians who worked on the ship doing upgrades, repairs, etc. Essential, not hostile."

  That did the trick.

  "Tell me about this virus you planted on Oblivion."

  Eh, I didn't really think that was their business, but I thought I could tell @horus just enough to get him off my back. "It needed to be undetected, so it uploaded bits of itself whenever the ship made a DEAD jump. The power surge and interference of a bubble warp is the perfect disguise."

  "Clever," @horus said, smiling. Is he proud of me? "What did your virus do? How did you even get access?"

  "I was at the starlab, so I pretended to be stationed there and made up a story about local interference with dark matter and DEAD drives," I explained. "I met @stardvark. He went for tea. I made some mischief."

  He smiled again. "Maybe we should have made you an Infiltrator."

  I returned the smile. "I thought the same thing, but no, Vanquisher was right. I'm better at destruction."

  "But what did the virus, your catnip virus as you called it, do?" @horus sat back down. He was insistent. "Explain it to me in plain language."

  "Beep beep, boop boop," I replied.

  He scowled at me.

  "That was pretty plain," I laughed, taking another spoonful of creamy honey-rice. "I could answer in binary too, if you'd prefer."

  His head tilted, a little bit toward Boom, which I thought was completely unnecessary.

  "Okay, okay," I said. "I didn't have much time. I needed to unlock parameters of its code, remove restrictions, so that I could instruct it to take orders from me, and only from me."

  I gestured in a you get what I mean kind of way. It really was that simple.

  "That's it?" @horus prompted.

  "Yeah," I said, shrugging.

  "Why only you? Why didn't you program it to follow Alliance Starmada orders?"

  I hmphed at him. "I'm selfish. It's a cool ship."

  He nodded slowly. That seemed like a very authentic response to me, and it appeared to seem that way to @horus as well.

  "And you can alter that? You could instruct it to follow someone else or to follow general commands?"

  I knew he would get to that eventually. I knew they wanted Oblivion. It's why I had flicked him off the last time we spoke.

  "Anything's possible," I said.

  "That's not really an answer."

  "But it's my answer."

  @horus knew the real answer anyway. He didn't seem to want to fight about it at this moment. "What happens if you die or are permanently terminated?"

  I wasn't expecting that, actually. "Oblivion will pretend that I'm alive and follow what it thinks would be my commands."

  He raised his eyebrows again. "You mean, the ship decides. You let the ship decide what to do. On its own."

  Fuck.

  "Well, not really. It's the ghost of me that gives the orders?" I suggested, hoping that @horus would get on board with that as a plausible explanation.

  He didn't.

  "That's a direct violation of the Continuity Laws," @horus stated. "No artificial intelligence can be autonomous, especially one as dangerous as Oblivion. What in the world were you thinking?"

  He had me there. I closed my eyes. "I trust the ship. It knows me."

  "It knows you? You trust it?" @horus hopped up out of his seat, pacing around the room. He did that when he was thinking, or irritated. "You see, @kittyboy, this is the problem. This. What you just said. This is a major problem."

  He paced and paced.

  "It's really only a problem if other people know about it," I clarified, looking at @horus, and Boom, and then @horus again. "But maybe you shouldn't kill me, just in case."

  I was secretly proud of myself. Had I violated the Continuity Laws? Maybe. But Oblivion wasn't an autonomous AI, not unless I was dead. This was my bargaining chip for the Alliance Starmada to keep me around. I did question if Oblivion was becoming autonomous. I had allowed it to rewrite its programming. That, too, was a violation. But @horus didn't need to know about that.

  He was quiet, pacing and thinking. He finally stopped and leaned against the door, staring at me with a tired, blank face. I figured maybe it was my chance to ask a question.

  "Did … um … Oblivion do something while I was dead?" I gulped, fearing what @horus's reply would be.

  I reached for my water. Yum. Water.