Yes! It’s me! And you’re you! And we’re together and alive and everything is glorious! The AI enthused.
“Jace?” Khoth had his arms around Jace’s shoulders as he helped Jace take off the face mask.
Jace took in a grateful breath. Despite it being there to help him breathe underwater, it had been annoying out of the liquid. Once off his face, the mask retracted on it’s own into the pool and disappeared.
“K-Khoth?” Jace asked as the “angel” became the Thaf’ell commander firmly in his head once again.
His mind started to fill back in with the wild time they’d had to get to Gehenna. The pain he’d been in was but a distant memory though. In fact, all pain seemed to be.
“Are you well? Your vitals appear…” Khoth looked over his shoulder towards a holographic screen that showed some kind of readout. Jace recognized the jumping line as his heart beat. “Your vitals are in the green range. But that does not always signify complete health.”
“I feel…” Jace paused and swallowed. His voice sounded a little ragged. He was thirsty. He knew that much. But how did he feel other than that? It was what he didn’t feel that was boggling him. That no pain thing. That sense of wellness. It was something he’d never actually experienced before and he couldn’t quite quantify it now. “I’m not sure, to be honest.”
“You have undergone an ordeal,” the Thaf’ell commander stated softly and there was a flicker of--what? Guilt? Relief? Combination of both?--in those blue on blue eyes that reminded Jace of the universe.
There were parts of his memory that were a little hazy. Maybe that was what was causing this strange well feeling. He frowned as one of those hazy moments surfaced. “Did I… die?”
“Yes, you were clinically dead for five of your Earth minutes,” Khoth answered.
“Huh. Okay. Well, not dead now so… that’s good?” Jace flushed as he heard himself make what should have been a statement into a question. “Wait! I didn’t mean to make that sound like a question! It’s good not to be dead. Very, very good. I can’t tell you how good, to be honest. Just… spectacularly good.”
“You are still orienting yourself. It is understandable if you were not able to assess your own well being at this time,” Khoth said without judgment.
Jace remembered something else then too. “You, evidently, made up your mind not to simply take Gehenna and leave me to face my fate. I’m alive so… you saved me.”
“I only did what was…”
“Right?”
“No.”
“It wasn’t right to save me?” Jace lifted his right eyebrow expressively.
Khoth was suddenly not meeting his gaze but was watching the screen where Jace’s vitals were, but then that screen winked out of existence causing Khoth to just stare at the surface of the pool.
Finally, he answered, “The needs of the many should outweigh the needs of the one.”
“But the many are made out of ones,” Jace stated.
Khoth’s head jerked up as if Jace had said something profound, though he knew he hadn’t. Some could say that since his own life had been the “one” in this case that he could hardly argue on behalf of the individual meaning more than the society without it sounding completely self-serving. But Khoth didn’t seem to be reacting to that. There was something in his eyes though. He surprisingly gave a sharp nod.
“Yes, I do not regret my actions, but I fear that they will likely earn me exile,” Khoth stated.
“What? No! That can’t be! That’s not--oh, my God, what is that?!”
Jace had been blinking and looking around them. He caught sight of a squid but made of metal and tubing. The glass skull suddenly lit up and the squid was looking at him.
Jace! Gehenna called to him merrily.
“That is--” Khoth began.
“Gehenna! Holy crap! So I didn’t dream she was a gigantic metal squid!” Jace laughed.
“Indeed not. It was not a form I thought she would inhabit,” Khoth agreed with him.
Oh, this? This isn’t my form! It’s just one of the Osiris’ cleaning bots! Gehenna explained as she disconnected a tube to her glass head.
“You took over a cleaning bot?” Jace said out loud.
