13
What Civilisation Looks Like
Horgox
JunctionOnesmellslikerecycled air and industrial cleaner, and every corridor looks like the inside of Facility Theta.
Not the same, rationally. The walls here are OOPS orange instead of corporate white. The personnel wear courier jumpsuits, not lab coats. No one carries datapads with product designations. No one looks at me and sees inventory.
But the lights are the same clinical brightness. The ventilation hums at the same frequency. And the uniformed figures moving through corridors with practiced efficiency trigger conditioned responses that no amount of bonding or freedom or Krilly Baxter's fierce certainty can override.
My hands haven't stopped cataloguing escape routes since we docked.
Krilly feels it. I know because her heartbeat in my chest is steady, calm, anchoring, and she doesn't try to talk me out of the hypervigilance. Just threads her fingers through mine and walks beside me at a pace that saysI'm not in a hurry because you're safe here, and every few steps her thumb strokes across my knuckles in a pattern that my nervous system has already learned to associate withI've got you.
Station personnel stare. At me, seven feet of scarred emerald alien with obsidian horns and circuit traceries that mark me as modified. At the claiming color threading through my markings, opalescent and unfamiliar. At the tracker on my ankle, visible below the hem of borrowed pants.
At the bite mark on Krilly's throat, which she has made no effort to conceal.
She catches me watching the corridor's emergency exits and squeezes my hand. "The medbay is in Bay Seven. Standard contamination screening after jungle exposure. They'll check us both over, make sure nothing's hitching a ride from the planet's delightful ecosystem."
"Together?"
"Together." A pause. "Mostly."
Mostly, it turns out, means a semi-transparent partition between examination bays.
The medbay is clean and well-equipped and my body hates every centimetre of it. Clinical white walls. Scanning equipment that hums on frequencies I associate with facility diagnostic arrays. Two medical technicians in teal scrubs who approach with professional efficiency that reads, to the part of my brain conditioned by captivity, exactly like handlers approaching an asset for evaluation.
The Ytrillian tech assigned to me is precise in his movements and professional in a way I catalogue before I can stop myself. He doesn't approach from behind. Doesn't reach for me without warning. Uses my name when he speaks. Asks permission before touching.
Small things. The kind of small things that Facility Theta never bothered with, because you don't ask permission to service equipment.
He catalogues what the scanner finds: healed fractures, scar tissue, the neural implant ports where the harness used to connect, the data implant in my wrist. He doesn't comment beyond clinical necessity. Doesn't flinch. Doesn't look at me like a thing.
My markings shift fractionally warmer. Through the partition, I see Krilly notice, and her relief reaches me like sunlight.
The tech pauses at my wrist. "The subcutaneous implant. STI has requested a full transfer. The biological encryption means the transfer requires your active consent."
My active consent. Placing my body against a machine, voluntarily. Every previous interface was performed on me, not by me.
Krilly feels my hesitation. Her emotional state sharpens: not alarm, not pity. Steady, certain warmth. The specific frequency that means she trusts me to make this choice.
I place my wrist against the reader. The data flows. Everything I stole from Facility Theta, carried in my body like a weapon I was saving for the right moment.
"Data received. Chain of custody established. Thank you, Mr. Ka'reen."
The first time I have chosen to let a machine touch me.
Then an STI security officer enters my bay carrying a small case, and everything in my body goes cold.
The officer opens the case. Inside: a slim black band. Tracking device. Standard witness protection protocol.
I sit on the examination table. Extend my leg. The motion is mechanical, automatic, the compliance response that conditioning installed. My face goes blank. My hands curl into fists against my thighs.
Krilly appears in my bay. Barefoot, borrowed medical gown, hair still tangled from the jungle.
She drops to her knees in front of me.
