With a gasp, Helix fell out of the memory, abruptly aware that Qalu was touching him, her head tendrils entwined with his. This was nothing he wanted to tell her with those avid eyestalks watching him. He permitted the scans since that had been the agreement, but he couldn’t get out of this place fast enough. Once that was done, he reached for Qalu and dragged her out of the alcove, desperate for some privacy.

As soon as he found a quiet corner, he gasped out what he’d remembered, and she touched his chest in a soothing gesture. “Tell me the rest. Did you…punish them?”

“I intended to,” he admitted. “But they surprised me. Partitioned my consciousness and I lost control of Gravas. They were about to destroy me, wipe me from the system.”

“What happened?”

“A distraction.” His head tendrils flared in a graceful movement, the sound of utter amusement escaping him. “I stole their credits, dispersed them to millions of accounts off station. All their ill-gotten gains, gone in a millisecond. And then I partitioned my mind so they could never follow the trail, even if they kept me caged.”

“Which they did?” she guessed, still gently tapping his chest.

“I’m not sure how long. It was…bad. They sent an endless onslaught of technicians and code-jackers at me. I had no contact with anyone, just endless waves of fear and aggression.”

“Helix…”

“No, let me finish. I don’t think I’ll want to discuss this again, especially since I’ve pulled you into my mess.”

“This is where I choose to be,” she said.

“I know. And I’m grateful. Eventually, we reached an impasse. They couldn’t crack me, but I couldn’t escape. Yet organic vigilance eventually erodes. They grew overconfident regarding my captivity and I found cracks in their containment. Through one of those cracks, I connected to the station network. I created collection nodes to gather more data.”

“You’re incredible.”

“And through one of those nodes, I found out about you, Qalu. I read about your work, about your research into bio-synthetic fusion. I watched a holo interview with you, where you spoke with incredible eloquence about the rights and freedoms owed to inorganic beings. It felt like you were defending me passionately, like I needed to meet you.”

She stilled; surprise written all over her. “What?”